‘We’ll sit over here,’ he said to me. ‘You have a drink?’
‘It’s at the bar.’
I collected my drink and joined him at the table in the corner, well away from everyone else. He looked at my glass.
‘Soda and lime?’ he said. ‘I take that myself occasionally. When I want to stimulate my taste buds for a real drink. Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder.’
Dave Lyons was small, getting heavy. The features were thickening but that didn’t diminish their attractiveness. It was a very positive face, the kind you could distinguish from fifty yards. The dark eyes didn’t flicker. Neither the lack of height nor the thinning hair caused him any problems. When he had stood up to shake my hand, he had seemed to be on a podium of self-assurance. Perhaps he was standing on his wallet.
‘I was sorry to hear about Scott,’ he said.
We talked about Scott’s dying. He accepted as something easily understood my need to bother the people Scott had known. But there wasn’t much he could offer by way of insight. He had lost touch with Scott in any serious terms many years ago. Mainly, they had been friends when they were students. And everybody had changed a lot since then. He had been hearing for a few years how badly things were going for Scott. But the end had come as a shock. Didn’t it always, though?
His even voice had a mesmeric quality. It almost put my misgivings to sleep. I felt again that I was being stupid. I had interrupted a man’s business lunch in order to have him tell me the platitudes with which we respond to the death of those friends who, due to time and circumstance, had more or less died to us already. What more could I expect?
Only two things niggled at the lassitude of purpose into which his voice had put me. One was something he said. One was something he didn’t say. He said, ‘I was sorry I couldn’t make the funeral.’ That was understandable. But the deliberateness with which he said it, right in the middle of no context, made me notice. It made me wonder if the deliberateness of the apology was a response to the deliberateness of the absence. What he didn’t say was anything about the party Scott had disrupted.
‘You had a party not too long ago,’ I said. ‘Scott was there.’
He paused, stared at me, shook his head and smiled sadly.
‘You know about that?’ he said.
‘I heard.’
‘I wasn’t going to mention it. I thought it might be too painful for you.’
‘No, that’s all right,’ I said. ‘It’s not quite as painful as his death.’
‘I can see what you mean. Well, you’ll know about it then. It was no big deal, really. Scott just got steadily drunker. Argued with a few people. Finished up in the television room. Some of the guests were watching something. And for some reason Scott threw a heavy crystal vase at the TV. It sent a certain frisson through the party, you might say. Didn’t do the telly a lot of good either. Or the vase. Still, they were replaceable. Could’ve been somebody’s head. Anna had to get Scott out of there. I think she was afraid he might set fire to the curtains next. He was wild that night. But then I think he usually was towards the end.’
‘The television. You wouldn’t know what was on at the time?’
He looked at me and his expression distanced itself from the remark. He seemed measuring me for a strait-jacket. It did sound like a ridiculous question, I had to admit to myself, and his eyes, taking on a sheen of amusement, confirmed my feeling.
‘You know,’ he said. ‘That’s something I neglected to find out. That’s a bit remiss of me. But maybe that’s it. You think that might explain it? Scott was just practising to be a television critic?’
The comforting cosiness of his presence had changed suddenly. In a few sentences he had turned the mood of the conversation from warm to cold. I saw how much he disliked me. In my modesty, I wondered why. Quite often, I don’t like me either. But I couldn’t see what I had done to earn such quick contempt — unless I was encroaching where I shouldn’t. So I encroached further.
‘You don’t see the point of the question?’
‘Well,’ he said. He sipped his brandy. ‘It does seem about as relevant as asking what colour of tie he was wearing.’
‘Not really. The people I know don’t usually go to parties to watch television.’
‘I have big parties. Very big parties. The house is populated like a village. There are people doing lots of things. Maybe we don’t go to the same kind of parties.’
‘I just wondered if there was any special reason for them to be watching television. If maybe the programme had special associations for the people at the party. Including Scott.’
‘I really wouldn’t know. In the mayhem after it, nobody thought to check the TV Times.’
He sighed. He took some brandy. He glanced across to where his friends were sitting. He was effortlessly making me look silly. I had given him a lot of help. I gave him some more. If he thought my last question was a weird one, wait till he heard these.
‘Do you know Fast Frankie White?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Fast Frankie White. Do you know him?’
He put his hand to his head.
‘What is this? Am I appearing on “Mastermind”? Specialising in the works of Damon Runyon?’
I waited.
‘I do not think I’ve ever had that pleasure,’ he said.
‘Where’s Anna?’ I said.
‘She’s not in Graithnock now?’
‘No. She’s selling the house.’
‘Maybe she’s trying to avoid answering your questions.’
‘Maybe she is.’
‘I honestly don’t know. Perhaps she went home. She comes from the Borders, too, doesn’t she?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why don’t you try there?’
‘Do you know who the man in the green coat is?’ I said. His head was cupped in his left hand by now. He was talking to the table, presumably since it seemed more sane than I was.
‘I imagine he could be quite a lot of people,’ he said. ‘I also imagine that, if you keep on talking the way you’re talking, he may enter this room at any moment in search of you. With a very large net.’
‘Before he does,’ I said. ‘Have you ever had a beard?’
His hand came down over his nose and he looked up at me, seeming genuinely alarmed. He laughed briefly and stood up. He didn’t offer to shake my hand. Interview over.
‘Well, Mr Laidlaw,’ he said. ‘It’s been interesting meeting you. I hope the pills work soon.’
I stood as well.
‘Thanks for your time,’ I said.
‘Don’t mention it,’ he said. ‘Please. Not to anyone. I must admit I could have spent it more fruitfully. Take care of yourself. Or maybe you should get somebody else to do it for you.’
He had chewed me up nicely. This was him spitting me out. As he walked back to his friends, leaving me standing, I noticed that his stomach had the protuberance of a Russian doll. I wondered how many smaller men were hiding inside the polished confidence of his exterior. I intended to find out.
12
I drove to 28 Sycamore Road. My route was hardly direct. I cruised the countryside for a while. I stopped beside a bridge above the Bringan, an area of woods and fields we had known as boys. I leaned on the parapet and watched the river running. It looked like melting glass below the bridge. Downstream it hit the rocks and the glass went frosted the way glass does around where it has broken. I looked among the trees where gangs of us had played at hide-and-seek. You’re hiding again, I said to him in my head, and everybody else has gone home. But I’m still seeking.
I got back in the car and drove some more. Dave Lyons’ dismissiveness had been counter-productive. It came too pat, it was too complete. Nobody could justify that much self-assurance. He froze me out too fast. That made me suspicious. If he had lost touch so long ago, how did he know where Anna came from? If he had become such a stranger to Scott, why did he invite him to a party?