‘How’s the best wee ma in Britain? Aye, Da. Ah’ve got a mate with me, Ma. We’re here to talk to Mastermind there.’
‘Jimmy! Ah thought ye’d forgotten the address.’
What should have been anger became laughter in her mouth by the alchemy that enables mothers to transmute their children into what they believe them to be.
‘No chance. This is a mate up from Birmingham. Mickey Ballater.’
Gus looked at the big man who stepped in behind his brother. Whatever he did in Birmingham, he wasn’t a bank-clerk. Gus’s mother shut the door.
‘Come in, son. Come in. Mickey, is it? Ah’ll make a cuppa tea. We’re just finished. Gus comes every Saturday fur his dinner. Then Ah know he’s gettin’ at least wan good meal in the week. Ah don’t know why he canny stay here a’ thegither. But that’s the young yins nowadays.’
‘Ah know whit ye mean,’ Mickey Ballater said.
‘Ma. Don’t bother wi’ tea. We’re on our way somewhere. We were passin’ an’ we jist came in to settle an argument. Ah told ’im ma brother’s a genius. He would know.’
Gus realised that his brother was improvising desperately, didn’t know what to say next. Hook Hawkins noticed that the doorway to the balcony was open and continued talking.
‘Look, we’ll no’ disturb ma Da’s telly. We’ll nip out on the balcony. Okay, Gus?’
He went out onto the balcony, followed by Mickey Ballater.
‘Fair view, innit?’ he said.
‘No’ bad at all.’
Gus put down his book slowly. He looked at his mother and couldn’t be sure whether her expression was what she really felt or a determined cover-up. It seemed to suggest her older son was an awful wag. Gus crossed and stepped out onto the balcony.
Three was a crowd out there. It was thirteen storeys up and Mickey Ballater seemed impressed.
‘Never seen the Gorbals from this high up. Seen it from doon there, right enough. Surprised how wee it is. When Ah wis in among it, Ah thought it went on forever. Ah suppose this is progress, eh?’
Gus said nothing. Half of his head was still dealing with Aimé Césaire’s Return to my Native Land. He hadn’t worked out how he came to be standing on the balcony of his parents’ house with his brother and another heavy. He was waiting to catch up with events.
‘Gus,’ Hook said. ‘Mickey wants to ask you about Tony.’
‘Tony who?’
‘Come on, Gus. Tony Veitch.’
‘Tony Veitch? What’s this about?’
‘Tony Veitch,’ Mickey said.
‘What’s he to you?’
‘Money,’ Mickey said. ‘That’s what he is. Just money.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He owes me money.’
‘Tony owes you money?’
‘Ah’ve come a long way,’ Mickey said. ‘It’s gettin’ to feel longer. Ah didn’t do it for nothin’. He owes me money.’
Gus saw his father still watching television, his mother clearing up. The programme was an old film on BBC2, a grey actor talking nonsense to a grey actress listening nonsensically. It was the kind of film about which the clever Sunday papers would find something clever to say, like ‘a delicate sense of period’ or ‘survives in spite of itself’. It was just crap, a lot of people making what money they could in the way they knew best.
Gus felt angry. Why was his father watching it? He had had a life more harrowing than any of their melodramas. And he hadn’t once seen what had happened to him shown on that screen. Gus saw his parents in cameo, peripheral to this moment, peripheral to their own sons, frozen into decoration. He resented it. His anger spilled over.
‘What’s this about?’ he said to his brother.
‘Mickey’s just askin’ a question,’ Hook said. ‘Where’s Tony Veitch?’
‘Naw.’ Gus was staring at his brother. ‘What’s this about?’
‘Where’s Tony Veitch?’ Mickey said.
Gus didn’t look at him.
‘I’m talking to my brother,’ he said. ‘What’s this about?’
‘Gus,’ Hook Hawkins said. ‘People are lookin’ for Tony.’
Gus looked at his parents a moment.
‘Why don’t you organise gang-fights in the kitchen?’ he said. ‘You bring a hoodlum to ma mammy’s house?’
‘Listen,’ Mickey said.
‘Naw. You listen.’ Gus Hawkins looked like a bomb that might soon explode. He was staring at Ballater. ‘This is where good people live. We don’t need you.’
A signal went off in Mickey Ballater’s head. He remembered a chip-shop in the Calton. He had been young and hard and drunk, and he had casually insulted a small, middle-aged man. He had said for the titillation of bystanders, ‘Somebody in here’s fartit. It wis you!’ pointing at the small man. The small man had said nothing, paid for his chips and gone out.
Mickey Ballater had forgotten he said it by the time he came out the door, when he forgot everything for several minutes. He worked out later that the small man must have hit him from the side as he came out, presumably with a gib-crane he had handy. Since then, Ballater had understood that the fiercest man is the one who has had his incomprehensibly private values encroached upon. Attack a mouse in its hole and it will try to nibble you to death.
This was no mouse. He saw one of an endlessly repeated species, the young who haven’t found their limits yet and wonder if you could help them. Gus Hawkins was puffed out like a cockerel with his own aggression. He had started before Mickey had even thought of it.
Mickey knew that steel to steel the boy had no chance. Six days a week, Mickey would kill him. But this was one of those seventh days — wrong time, wrong place. It wasn’t why he had come. So he had recourse to a feeble gesture.
‘Wait a minute!’ he said.
Gus Hawkins waited. Mickey found it useful that Hook Hawkins intervened.
‘Listen, you,’ Hook said.
‘Jim!’ Gus said at once. ‘Don’t give me your routine. I’m your brother. In my book you’re just a liberty-taker. We’re where you come from. Don’t try to frighten us. I’ll put up with you. But I really don’t need his nonsense. He doesn’t behave, I’ll show him a quick road down.’
He nodded to the pavement thirteen storeys below. Mickey Ballater couldn’t believe how silly the boy was but he was trying to. This was unbelievable but it was happening. What struck him was how seriously Hook was taking it.
‘For Christ’s sake,’ Hook was saying. ‘You get a grip. The man’s just askin’ a question. Tony owes him money.’
‘I don’t believe that.’
‘But it’s true,’ Mickey said.
‘Tony Veitch’s got money. His mother left him it. He doesny need to owe anybody.’
‘Ah don’t mean he borrowed it,’ Mickey said. ‘Ah just said he owes it.’
‘What for?’
‘That’s ma business.’
‘Fine. Take it with you when you go out. Like as fast as your legs’ll carry you.’
Hook held up his hand to forestall Mickey. He looked down at two boys playing with a ball.
‘Gus. Ye’re no’ in a book now, son. This is serious business. Ah didny want to come here. Ah tried for ye at the flat. Then Ah knew ye wid be here for yer dinner. There’s people in a hurry tae find where Tony Veitch is. Mickey’s just one o’ them.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Big John Rhodes is lookin’. And Cam Colvin.’
Gus looked from one to the other, unbelieving.
‘Come on. Tony blew his finals.’ He laughed. ‘Is Cam a member of the University Senate?’
‘Whatever that is, Ah think your Tony did a bit more than that,’ Mickey said.
‘They reckon he did Paddy Collins,’ Hook explained.
Gus stood looking over the balcony as if he had never seen the view before. He started to laugh and stopped and looked at the sky. When he looked back at them, his certainty was already clouding.
‘Tony?’
‘Tony,’ Hook said.
‘But why would he do that?’
‘He owed Paddy as well,’ Mickey said. ‘I came up and we were gonny collect together. By the time I get here, Paddy’s dead. Veitch’s shot the crow. Looks a bit that way, doesn’t it?’