battle.’
He glared round. ‘I don’t know how to get rid of all this shit.’
I hadn’t realised he could be angry. Even when he had been punching Davie to the ground, it had seemed more like an execution than something done in anger. It came out of him like
something you could touch, but it wasn’t aimed at me.
‘Come on,’ he said, ‘but remember I didn’t ask you to follow me.’
I didn’t feel like arguing with him. We crossed at an angle and went side by side into a rear close entry. After the sunlight it was very dark. I limped up the stair after Primo. Old man
Morrison’s close had been several cuts of respectability above this. There the walls had been tiled; here it was dull maroon paint and whitewash peeling from shoulder height. On the first
landing it was too dark to read the names on the brass nameplates. The sash window on the half landing was boarded up apart from a slot of light where a plank had been torn away. When I peered up
the stair, I couldn’t see him though I had the impression he was there.
‘That you, Primo?’
My voice sounded thin and young. I took a breath and deepened it.
‘Anybody there?’
He was hunkered down between the doors like a bull in a June heatwave. The doors looked like the others I’d passed coming up, only instead of a brass nameplate or a clan tartan one in
plastic from Woolworth’s, each of these, one on either side of the landing, had a white card pinned in the middle of the upper panel. The one beside me had the word ANDERS printed on it like
a business card.
‘Is this where you live?’ I asked.
I did not know his real name but only the joke nickname the driver Andy had given him out of malice.
‘I don’t live anywhere any more,’ he said.
As he stood up, I backed down a step. He reached out and prised the white cardboard nameplate from the door. He held it out to me and I snatched it from him because I was afraid he would grab my
hand. I had seen people pulled into a punch that way. I kept backing down one step at a time.
‘Take your chance,’ he said from above me. ‘You should go away.’
I groped my way down. The light was dim like a church but the walls smelled of evil and too much poverty. It was a bad church. One afternoon in a close like this, when I was looking for digs, I
had surprised two boys holding a cat out of a third floor window. They had tied a string to its hind legs and it swung sobbing hate high above the stones of the back court. This is the city, I had
thought, I’m in the city.
I came out of the front of the close into another street of desolate tenements and walked out of it into a hallucination of green fields. They had demolished streets of buildings and sown the
vacant places with grass. These dazzling plots glowed like jewellery in the vivid light. On the far side, with the dirt of a hundred years cleaned away, it turned out that tenements were built of
brown stone and cream stone. They shone like summer castles, but there were no banners.
A bus came and I took a seat at the front which was a mistake. When the driver swerved to avoid a dog, my bad foot slammed into the partition. I swallowed vomit and thought either you were the
kind of driver who could run over a dog or you weren’t. Children were being killed all the time by drivers like this bastard who swerved.
Waiting on the bench outside the X-ray department, I found the card Primo had given me in my pocket. It had a puncture in each corner where it had been tacked to the door.
On the back of it in the same neat print as ‘Anders’ on the front, someone had lettered the word BROND.
FOUR
T here was something wrong about Kennedy. He would come in and sit with me for half an hour and then get up and go off to work. I had never asked to
be any more than his lodger. He was always working, but now he had time as well for these communions. It was not as if he was a great conversationalist.
‘A strange thing . . .’
Pause till he had
He glared round. ‘I don’t know how to get rid of all this shit.’
I hadn’t realised he could be angry. Even when he had been punching Davie to the ground, it had seemed more like an execution than something done in anger. It came out of him like
something you could touch, but it wasn’t aimed at me.
‘Come on,’ he said, ‘but remember I didn’t ask you to follow me.’
I didn’t feel like arguing with him. We crossed at an angle and went side by side into a rear close entry. After the sunlight it was very dark. I limped up the stair after Primo. Old man
Morrison’s close had been several cuts of respectability above this. There the walls had been tiled; here it was dull maroon paint and whitewash peeling from shoulder height. On the first
landing it was too dark to read the names on the brass nameplates. The sash window on the half landing was boarded up apart from a slot of light where a plank had been torn away. When I peered up
the stair, I couldn’t see him though I had the impression he was there.
‘That you, Primo?’
My voice sounded thin and young. I took a breath and deepened it.
‘Anybody there?’
He was hunkered down between the doors like a bull in a June heatwave. The doors looked like the others I’d passed coming up, only instead of a brass nameplate or a clan tartan one in
plastic from Woolworth’s, each of these, one on either side of the landing, had a white card pinned in the middle of the upper panel. The one beside me had the word ANDERS printed on it like
a business card.
‘Is this where you live?’ I asked.
I did not know his real name but only the joke nickname the driver Andy had given him out of malice.
‘I don’t live anywhere any more,’ he said.
As he stood up, I backed down a step. He reached out and prised the white cardboard nameplate from the door. He held it out to me and I snatched it from him because I was afraid he would grab my
hand. I had seen people pulled into a punch that way. I kept backing down one step at a time.
‘Take your chance,’ he said from above me. ‘You should go away.’
I groped my way down. The light was dim like a church but the walls smelled of evil and too much poverty. It was a bad church. One afternoon in a close like this, when I was looking for digs, I
had surprised two boys holding a cat out of a third floor window. They had tied a string to its hind legs and it swung sobbing hate high above the stones of the back court. This is the city, I had
thought, I’m in the city.
I came out of the front of the close into another street of desolate tenements and walked out of it into a hallucination of green fields. They had demolished streets of buildings and sown the
vacant places with grass. These dazzling plots glowed like jewellery in the vivid light. On the far side, with the dirt of a hundred years cleaned away, it turned out that tenements were built of
brown stone and cream stone. They shone like summer castles, but there were no banners.
A bus came and I took a seat at the front which was a mistake. When the driver swerved to avoid a dog, my bad foot slammed into the partition. I swallowed vomit and thought either you were the
kind of driver who could run over a dog or you weren’t. Children were being killed all the time by drivers like this bastard who swerved.
Waiting on the bench outside the X-ray department, I found the card Primo had given me in my pocket. It had a puncture in each corner where it had been tacked to the door.
On the back of it in the same neat print as ‘Anders’ on the front, someone had lettered the word BROND.
FOUR
T here was something wrong about Kennedy. He would come in and sit with me for half an hour and then get up and go off to work. I had never asked to
be any more than his lodger. He was always working, but now he had time as well for these communions. It was not as if he was a great conversationalist.
‘A strange thing . . .’
Pause till he had
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