Glasgow
MY FIRST MONTHS back in Glasgow I never once let daylight touch my face. I slept more than seemed possible and woke groggy-eyed from half-remembered dreams. It wasn’t hard for me to hide during the day. Apart from those mornings when train timetables heaved me from my pit, unshaven and blinking, to stagger with my suitcase into the predawn, I’ve rarely ever left my bed before noon.
I perfected my practice method early in my career, around the age of nine, when I stumbled on The Boy’s Own Guide to Conjuring in the local library. I can still see the front cover of the book. A boy with dark hair cut in a side parting, dressed in a red school blazer and grey shorts, pulls a rabbit from a hat. On a table suspiciously swathed by a green cloth, reclines a copy of The Boy’s Own Guide to Conjuring. The boy on its cover is pulling the same rabbit from the same hat and the same book rests face up showing the same image, though it is more of a smudge now.
If I positioned the mirrors on my mother’s dressing-table at a particular angle I could achieve the same effect, myself repeated over and over into infinity. It gave me a strange feeling to see all of these other Williams shadowing my actions. I felt that when I stepped from the glass these other boys did the same and moved on in their own worlds where everything was an inverted image of mine and these Williams were the braves or bullies of their school.
It was a solitary pleasure. Every day when I got home I’d set the panes of the mirror at exactly the right angle, like a precocious teenage masturbator, then set to work. Under my command the army of other Williams stumbled through the same tricks until we had mastered one to perfection. I was the prince of illusion. And even though these doppelgängers might have been tougher or more popular in their worlds than I was in mine, in the world of mirrors it was my decrees that held sway.
In time, the reflection aged into a thirty-three-year-old trickster, standing before dead-eyed hotel mirrors murmuring the patter beneath his breath. Sometimes I’d forget to whisper and my voice would boom across the empty room and into the lifeless hotel corridor.
It was these practice sessions rather than companionship or money that I missed most in Glasgow, because, although I was used to making my fee stretch and sleeping alone in anonymous rooms, I never adjusted to abandoning the ritual of rehearsal.
The bedsit the taxi-driver had taken me to faced south; it would have got the afternoon light if it weren’t for the shadows cast by the building opposite. When I got there I resolved to stay put and think things out. But that very first night the walls started to close in on me like a torture chamber in a bad Hammer Horror movie and I found myself putting on my shoes and coat and setting out into the darkness.
I didn’t go far, a walk of a few blocks, counting the turnings, though I knew the way. I hesitated outside the Tron Theatre looking upwards at its spire, and for an instant thought I saw the form of a hanging man dangling from the window below its turret. It sagged there, still and dark beneath the pointed hat of the building. But perhaps I was just remembering that this was the district where they hanged criminals in the old days, because when I looked again there were nothing but shadows clinging to the walls.
I skirted the building, keeping my eyes on the pavement, then turned up a side street.
Across the road a tattoo parlour glowed iced-neon blue. I thought of my own tattoo. Four aces splayed above a laughing skull in a top hat. It had hurt like a napalm burn but I’d thought the pain worth it. Now I’d happily slice it off. I leaned against the aluminium grille that screened the door and reached into my jacket for my fags. Above my head a sign twirled Tattoo/Artist, Tattoo/Artist, Tattoo/Artist, then reached the peak of its revolutions, hesitated and twisted back in the opposite direction Artist/Tattoo, Artist/Tattoo, Artist/Tattoo.
Opposite, the glass front of the theatre bar shone into the street. I could see the audience crowding into the space. Even from here I could sense the halftime buzz, the disagreements and posturings as they discussed the show. For an instant I thought I glimpsed Sylvie amongst the crowd, but I’d grown used to such sightings and ignored the leap in my stomach. The girl turned and I saw the angle of her jaw was wrong, her face so different it seemed impossible I could have imagined any resemblance.
I was lighting my fag when a slim shadow edged into the doorway, blocking my exit. He was a thin spider of a lad, his jacket even older than mine, hair longer and danker; he stank of piss and neglect. We faced each other across the lighter’s glow and I wondered if I was looking at my future self, Old Scrooge meeting the ghost of Christmas future. I killed the flame and pulled out my cigarettes, offering him one to negate the image in my head. Then I ruined the effect by saying, 'Piss off son, I’m not looking for company.'
The boy took the cigarette impatiently, without thanks and slid it behind his ear. He reached towards me, gentling his nasal whine down till it was close to a keening. 'There’s a lassie round the corner does the business, thirty quid a time.'
'Fuck off.'
'She’s clean.'
His smell penetrated the nicotine. I took the lit cigarette from my lips and threw it to the pavement. Red flakes of ash scattered as it dropped towards the gutter. The junky watched it fall. I waited for him to bend towards the dowt, but he had the single-mindedness of a true scaghead. His eyes fixed mine; his hand touched the edge of my lapel in a tentative stroke.
'I’ll set you up with her for a fiver.'
'Fuck off.'
I shoved him away, but his hands were persistent, patting my body now with all the efficiency of a drunken border guard.
'Come on, mister.'
He was the first person to touch me in an age. His voice was soothing, coaxing.
Revulsion shivered through me, and this time my shove was harder. My only intention was to get him off me, but the boy was frail. He lost his footing and staggered backwards. For a second it seemed he might regain his balance, but then his heel slipped on the kerb, gravity won and he pitched backwards hitting his head against the cobbles with a gunshot crack that sounded across the street. I saw him lie still, felt a sickening realisation, then stepped towards him. My move was reflected across the road in the bright lights beyond the plate glass. In the mirror world of colour and warmth a girl stood up, pointing towards me. A man followed her aim, shook his head and raised his pint to his mouth.
I took a step towards the boy, leaned forward to feel his pulse, then heard a shout. The silhouettes of two policemen stood outlined against the bright lights of Argyle Street.
Suddenly I was on my feet and running, my boots clattering against the pavement. I glanced behind me just before I turned the corner, hoping I’d see the junky move, but seeing only one of the police bending over him and the other one haring towards me. I outran him so easily I guessed he wasn’t putting his whole effort into the chase.
For a week and a half I stuck to my room, only venturing down to the licensed grocers at the foot of the close for essentials. I lived on morning rolls, ham and crisps, washed down with milk or strong lager occasionally braced with blended whisky. The Evening Times was my oracle. I forced my way through drownings and arson, robberies and knifings. I knew of every murder and act of violence reported in the city. I dreaded sight of my crime, but was never relieved to find it absent.
Eventually the walls of my room started their old trick, shifting until they took on the proportions of a coffin. I decided there’d be more space in prison and ventured out, as nervous of a hand on my shoulder as a teenage shoplifter on their first spree.
It was a week before I saw him. A pathetic figure slumped in an Argyle Street doorway, the grey remnants of a hospital dressing still stuck to his head. He didn’t give me a glance until I shoved a tenner into his hand, then the look he gave me was pure love.