— Well, it does have certain advantages, Martin agrees, pointing at the image, — but the problem is that there’s the brick wall here and no window –
— It’s fine, Francis reiterates, looking over to a nearby table where a group of Independence Day revellers are drinking off hangovers with bottles of Corona beer turned upside down, tipped into outsized glasses of margarita.
— Well, uh. . okay, Jim, I guess it’s your call. Martin Crosby smiles tightly. — I like the understated classical pillars to mount the head sculptures, giving it a kind of last days of ancient Rome effect –
— Aye, sound. Did you ever hear back from Rod Stewart’s people? Francis interjects, as the server arrives with the omelettes.
— Nothing yet. I’ll get Vanessa to chase it up, Martin says in increased despondency, watching Francis throw some hash browns towards the scavenging gulls that loiter on the sands outside the patio area. To his eyes, his client seems to derive an inordinate amount of pleasure from the act of feeding those aggressive birds. He is particularly taken by one that hangs in the air on the thermals, careful to chuck food its way, enjoying its excited screeches, oblivious to the patent disquiet of the cafe’s other patrons.
Later, when Martin Crosby is driving back to LA, his assistant puts a call through to him on his car speakerphone. It isn’t Rod Stewart, or any of his representatives. It is a woman with the same sort of accent as Jim Francis’s, and she claims to be his sister.
5. THE CALL
He hadn’t heard Elspeth’s voice in several years. Yet he recognised it straight away on the phone, without checking caller ID. Not that it would have come up, as they had long since lost touch. Their mother had died a few years back, after Jim had moved to the USA. Jim returned for the funeral, but had headed back to LA immediately afterwards. He had changed his number since then, without bothering to tell her. How had she got it? Elspeth was resourceful. His younger sister, ten years and four months between them. His brother Joe, just over a year older than him. And why was she getting in touch? It had to be about Joe, he was a heavy drinker. The drink took their father. It would get Joe too. — Elspeth. .
— I googled you. Got your number from your agent. Took me a while to work out it was actually you. . the Jim thing. Anyway, it’s not good news. . Her voice wavers. — I’m really sorry. . he can sense her crippling hesitancy, — . . but Sean died yesterday. He was found in his flat.
Sean. . what the fuck. .
— That’s all I know right now, Elspeth says, a sad, fretful pain in her voice. More than the news, which provides only shock, her tone moves Jim Francis, as he and his sister hadn’t parted on good terms. — I’m so sorry. .
Jim’s brain is scorched by the questions that pop into his head, jostling for his focus. He sucks air through his nose, filling his lungs. He thinks of June, the woman by whom he’d had Sean, and another boy, Michael. She’d presented the firstborn to him with an almost defiant pride. See? See what I can do? He’d felt some strange kind of personal vindication that had been beyond his expression, but little else. Then he’d gone to the pub and bought drinks for everybody and got hammered. A vision of baby Sean’s face, then June’s, and all the boys in that pub, suddenly sears into his consciousness. And then there’s Elspeth’s, his sister, now silent on the phone line. How proud she was then, as a young girl, to be an auntie. They all seemed to belong to a different life, one lived by somebody else. He looks at his tanned countenance in the mirror on the wall. Melanie is hovering behind him, her own face tense in the reflection. When Grace and Eve had come along it had been so different. He’d felt himself as something small, yet part of an infinite cosmos, and swarmed by an internal kaleidoscope of emotion, he’d cried and squeezed her hand.
— Are you still there? Elspeth’s voice on the line.
— You got a number for June?
Elspeth slowly enunciates the digits, which he taps into his iPhone with his free hand.
— Obviously I’ll be over. Will you phone me if you get any more details?
— Of course I will.
— Thanks. . he coughs out, then lowers the landline receiver onto the cradle.
— It’s Sean, he says to Melanie. — He’s dead.
— Oh my God. Melanie clasps her hand to her mouth. — What happened?
— Found dead back in Edinburgh. Jim’s voice is flat and even. — I have to get over there, for the funeral, and to find out what happened, obviously.
— Of course, Melanie gasps, wrapping her arms around him. He is tense; she feels like a sweater hanging on a bronze statue. — What did they say?
— He’s dead, that’s all I know.
She lightens but maintains her grip on him. His bearing reminds her of when she first tried to hold him, when they got together, that terrible stiffness in his body. — I feel so bad, I never knew him, or Michael.
Jim is silent, as still and immobile as one of his pieces of sculpture. Melanie can feel his tension seeping into her, hardening her. Breaking off her grip, she lets her arms fall by her sides. — You won’t get involved in anything over there, will you?
Jim shakes his head dismissively. — What’s to get involved in? I just want to find out what happened, go to his funeral, he says, then adds, in a different voice, — see whose tears are real, whose are crocodille, and he moves through to the small office, sits down in front of the computer and goes online.
— Jim. .
— You say you never knew him. Neither did I, Jim mutters, his dark brown eyes clouding. — When he was younger he was just a distraction to me. An irrelevance. Then I was in the jail. I did everything wrong with him and his brother, he says, seeming to Melanie to grow almost conversational in his tone, like he is talking to someone else. It disconcerts her, and he picks up on it, sinking his voice. — When I had kids I said I’d never be the way my old man was with me. And I kept my word; I was worse, he allows, almost bluntly, as he pulls up the American Airlines page on the screen. Then he turns to her and says, intently, — But I’m different with the girls.
— Of course you are, you’re a great dad, Melanie says, probably a little too urgently. — It’s different now. You were too young, you –
— I was addicted to violence, Jim coldly confesses, tapping in information and pulling out his credit card. — But I’ve got that nonsense under control now, cause it doesn’t take me anywhere interesting. Just jail. Done too much of that.
— Yes. Melanie looks at Jim, squeezes his hand. She tries to find him, this man she’s married, whom she’d taken with her back to the States. All she can see is a Scottish jailbird she’d met years ago called Francis Begbie.
6. THE DELIVERY BOY 2
They came by the house on Friday nights for card school, when my ma was at the bingo. There was Grandad Jock, Carmie, Lozy and the much younger man, ‘Handsome’ Johnnie Tweed, the only one of them who ever gave me money. He’d take me aside and crush the odd quid note or ten-bob bit into my hand, and tip me a wee wink, so I knew that this was just between us. They were an arrogant, entitled quartet, prone to swaggering around in long Crombie overcoats and trilbies. I was fascinated by them all, so was my brother Joe.
My dad would be pished, with my uncle Jimmy. He was always rat-arsed. My ma would throw him out, sometimes for years. When he came back he’d be sober for a while, but that never lasted. Then he went away for ages. They said he was working on the rigs, but I knew he was in the jail or kipped up with some dozy hoor. Then he returned once more, and stayed long enough to give Ma my wee sister, Elspeth.