Docherty (41 page)

For some time afterwards people were making remarks to him about it. Somebody in the pit would mention Tam or someone at the corner or Andra Crawford would speak incidentally about him while Conn was in the house. They were all generous remarks, the kind people make about a dead man. Usually they would mention his concern for other people and his guts. Conn accepted them as Tam’s due. They seemed to him to be true but they were not true enough. They were all right for other people but Conn had lived all his life in the almost overpowering proximity of his father’s presence and with him gone, their house seemed at first emptier than any place as small as that had any right to be. Conn found himself wondering how exaggerated his sense of his father had been. He felt that it was very important to be honest in his response to what was happening to him. He trusted no one to tell him what he was experiencing.

It was an ambivalent time. It was then, Conn was later to feel, that for him things fell apart. The tightness of texture he had always known in his life loosened slowly. He saw things clearly that had only been hazy before. Kathleen’s marriage was a pretence. Jack drank like a fish and she was suffering. He wondered why he had never been fully aware of that before. His father was the answer. He had left his father to notice things like that. He saw his father anew and that was a surprising realisation, to have lived in the same house for so long with a man and find a dimension of him you hadn’t known.

He saw it now. His father was like one of those animals Conn had read about. When danger threatened, they attracted attention to themselves and drew it off. The danger was the realisation of what had happened. His father’s passion for each of them was such that he couldn’t admit their defeat, the loss of themselves. He accused himself of their failures, he took them upon him. That was his final drunkenness.

Conn saw it now – the ruins his father had finally lived among, the weakness he had to protect. He tried to absolve them of his demands by failing to meet those demands himself. The last gift of his fatherhood was that of giving them the chance to disown him. He took the blame for himself to himself. He offered them escape from the force of his need to connect with everyone, to be known to the uttermost for what he was.

Angus had accepted that escape. Angus must have welcomed the chance to move out of the house. It was the easiest thing he could do. He hadn’t been to the grave because he couldn’t acknowledge truly what his father had been without denying what he was himself. For his father was a dangerous man, even dead. Conn understood that now. He felt it in the way his own life had atomised into contradictory fragments – his recurrent sadness at his father’s death, the sense of release he felt, an increasingly critical attitude towards High Street. There gathered in him a kind of rootless anger.

One night he went out, not knowing why. The mood stayed banked in him while he walked, while he stood in a pub and drank more than he had ever drunk before, and it wasn’t till he was out in the street again and suddenly saw Angus that the feeling in him found a home.

Angus was turning away from talking to someone, his hand still raised in a flick of farewell. Conn crossed towards him, and was in front of him before Angus had noticed, and said, ‘Ah want you.’

Angus’s head jerked up and then was breaking into a laugh when Conn threw the punch. Angus swung clumsily away, just managing to deflect the blow with his wrist.

‘Hey!’ He stepped back. Incredulity baffled his anger. He looked down at his wrist, flapping his hand and drawing in his breath. It was the pain that told him what was happening. ‘Whit’s the gemme? Wee brither or no’ wee brither, Ah’ll pit yer nose oot through the back o’ yer heid if ye come that wi’ me.’

‘Ye better stert then,’ and Conn made to throw another punch.

Angus jumped back, both hands held up, palms towards Conn. From behind his sign of truce, Angus stared, his mouth coming open.

‘Whit’s it fur, Conn?’

‘Fur whit ye did tae ma feyther.’

Angus’s hands came down slowly. They stared at each other from three yards apart.

‘Jesus Christ! You’re drunk, son, aren’t ye?’

‘No’ that drunk.’

Angus looked round to see if anybody was watching them. The street was quiet.

‘Ye mean the funeral, daen’t ye? Well, come oan hame an’ we’ll talk aboot it.’

‘There’s nothin’ tae talk aboot.’

Conn took a step towards him.

Angus’s right hand came up again, still palm towards him.

‘Richt,’ he snarled. ‘Fuckin’ richt. But we’re no hivin’ it here. Ah widny let them see ma brither gettin’ murdert.’ He pointed at Conn. ‘Ah still think you’re drunk, son. Ye’re aboot fower pints awa’ fae yer brains. The morra mornin’. You still feel like this, you come doon tae the house fur me first thing. We’ll go up the road. The nicht, you jist go hame. An’ get ma mither tae pit a poultice oan yer heid.’

Conn stood staring at him. Angus shook his head and went past him widely as if there was a fence round him. Conn was still standing there when Angus looked back.

14

Annie shook Angus awake, saying, ‘Angus. There’s somebody et the door.’

‘When? Who?’

He raised himself on one elbow. His eyes were open but blank as a statue’s in the dimness.

‘Lusten.’

There was a double knock at the door. In the stillness it sounded threatening, its purpose unimaginably secret. Angus lay with Annie’s hand still on his shoulder, sighing himself awake. He swung out of bed, pulled on his trousers and, buttoning them, padded across to the sideboard. He lifted the clock and held it close to his face, waiting for his eyes to absorb the time.

‘Hauf past six?’

‘Who could it be?’ Annie asked.

Angus stood gouging his eyes with the heels of his hands. He yawned and crossed and opened the door. It wouldn’t have occurred to him to ask who was there. By the time he realised it was Conn, he understood what was happening. They looked at each other for some time as if to verify it.

‘Come in,’ Angus said.

‘Ah’ll wait here fur ye.’

‘Christ. Come in. Ah canny come oot yet. Ye widny hit a man when he’s sleepin’.’

Conn came in reluctantly. He had spent all night honing himself down to what he had to do. The edge of his anger depended on keeping Angus clear-cut in his mind, as an abstract of his faults. It didn’t help his purpose to have to meet the monster’s relatives and see him yawning and scratching his head and stubbing his big toe on the table.

‘Oh, it’s you, Conn,’ Annie said. ‘Is something wrong?’

Conn didn’t know what to say and Angus saved him.

‘Conn seems tae think there is. Stoap actin’ it, Annie. Ah telt ye aboot it last night.’

Annie lay with the covers pulled up to her chin, trapped in bed. Conn stood undecided, embarrassed to be embarrassing her. While they neutralised each other, only Angus seemed himself. He brought himself out of his stupor without haste. He struck the coal in the fire, releasing flame. He crossed to the window and held back the curtain for a moment.

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘It’s mair or less daylight. Ye must’ve chapped the sun up this moarnin’, Conn.’

He walked slowly back and forth, scratching his bare torso and shaking his head.

‘No’ bad, richt enough. Ye’re only here.’

‘Ah think it’s the daftest thing Ah ever heard o’,’ Annie said.

‘Don’ blame me, missus,’ Angus said. ‘Ah’ve tae get banjoed whether Ah like it or no’.’ He pursed his lips and his eyes suddenly filled with something like admiration. ‘Christ. A gunfighter in the faimly.’

‘Haun me ower that frock, Angus, please.’

‘Aye. Make us somethin’ tae eat, hen. Ah don’t want tae dee oan an empty stomach.’

Angus gave over the dress and pulled the curtain of the set-in bed for her. He started to splash his face with cold water from the pail beside the hearth. Annie got out of bed and crossed to the cradle.

‘Ah hope Ah didny waken the wean,’ Conn said.

‘No’ him,’ Annie said. ‘He takes efter his feyther’s side.’ And then, as if she had just remembered why Conn was here, ‘but Ah’m hopin’ he’ll hiv mair sense than his feyther’s side.’

Towelling himself, Angus said, ‘Sit doon, Conn. Sit doon. Rest yer footwork.’

For the next twenty minutes or so, Conn kept losing the reality of what was happening. He found himself thinking at one point that they were preparing to go poaching. Past times with Angus interrupted his thoughts, like mutual friends who didn’t know that things had changed. Drinking a cup of tea while Angus ate, he couldn’t believe that they were really going to fight. He looked round the house and admitted to himself his admiration for what Angus had done. The place impressed him. Angus had decorated it himself, some of the furniture was new.

But the most impressive thing about the place was the atmosphere: Angus and Annie communicating in half-phrases, the warmth, the ease, the breathing of the baby gentle in the middle of it. It seemed an impregnable fortress with Angus as its central pillar. The feeling weakened Conn. He stood up, still finishing his tea.

‘Thanks, Annie.’

Angus looked past him at the wall and nodded, tied up his laces, rose, pulled on a jacket over his collarless shirt.

‘The condemned man ate a hearty breakfast,’ he said.

‘Wull the pair o’ ye no’ sit doon,’ Annie said.

‘Now, now.’ Angus was smiling. ‘We’ll no’ hiv a foreigner fae Irvine tae tell us hoo tae soart things oot.’

They walked up High Street towards the country. It was a fresh morning. Once Angus snittered and said, ‘Ah thocht it wis the rent man.’ Then, ‘Maybe it is, eh?’ But talk was something that was left behind, like the town. They passed places plaqued with private memories. From a tree a piece of frayed rope hung, reminding them of their own games. Past the swinging bridge, a man with a glass eye, out walking his dog, said, passing, ‘A sherp moarnin’, boays.’ They both said, ‘Aye’. About a hundred yards later, Angus said: ‘Ma Uncle Wull. When he wis drunk wance. He put his gless e’e oan the mantelpiece an’ says, “Ah’m fur a sleep. You keep yer e’e oan them.”’ Conn said nothing – inadmissible evidence.

It was hard enough to get where they had to go without taking any unnecessary luggage with them. By the time they had reached the bridge above Moses’ Well, their road was beginning to turn back on itself. To go on would be to retreat from the edge they had created in themselves. Conn stepped through the gateway in the stone beside the bridge, ducked through a gap in the hedge and into the field above. Angus followed.

They stood in the uneven field, not looking at each other. Beyond the hedge, the trees were stirring slightly in the wind. Down the shelving slope where the occasional tree was rooted half in air, the river ran among its stones. If one of them had laughed, it would have been all right. Instead, Conn dropped his jacket on the grass and pulled off shirt and vest. Angus did the same.

Stripped, Angus looked bigger than he had done in his clothes, as if the jacket had been serving to disguise a quarry as a man. Conn looked lean beside him. Both their bodies shone pale in the growing sunshine, immersed as they had been in the pallor of the pits.

They squared up, circling, arms revolving, for an unconscionable time. Conn threw a punch like a signal and they found themselves released into making a series of embarrassed passes at each other until, Angus stumbling on a tuft of grass, Conn’s left hand connected with his cheekbone. Meeting the pain, Angus suddenly came alive. He bull-rushed Conn and for seconds they threshed in a tangle of arms out of which Conn miraculously escaped, like a man passing through a mincing machine intact. They came slowly together again.

The fight had become real. The next couple of collisions tapped the anger in the two of them. Angus burst Conn’s lip and left a red weal like a birth-mark under his heart. Long buried feelings re-emerged, grievances queued up for a go. Each found himself called to answer for the anguished frustrations and complex resentments that had massed up in the other.

The punches were fired from what both had at first believed were unassailable positions. Conn had begun believing that he was so right that he couldn’t lose. He had felt the insuperable justice of his position. Angus had been convinced that his strength was annihilating.

Each proved the other wrong. Conn learned quickly that his assumption was as stupid as trying to stop a stampede by calling it names. Angus saw that Conn simply wouldn’t annihilate. There was something extra there now. He would just have to be beaten.

They wove a crazy pattern in the sunlight. Anyone watching from the farm a mile above them on the hill would have seen them blunder like butterflies about the field, while the grass went black in the shadow of a cloud, greened again in the sun. What they wouldn’t have seen was that the field was crowded. Its bigness, in which they seemed lost, was cluttered with the furniture of their past. They bumped into their father’s failure, backed against countless incomprehensible memories, struck against their mother’s pain. And in their rage they made a wreckage of it all and tried to heap it on each other’s head.

Their breathing became their total context, contained them like a cloud that threatened suffocation – the grunts and gulps and barking exhalations all that was left of their father’s talk, their mother’s silence. They wrestled, their hands skidding on their bodies greased with sweat, and broke apart. Honking for air, they plunged back in. Conn, whimpering with anger, swung a right at Angus and buckled his fist on his shoulder. They closed again, Angus bear-hugging Conn until his spine bent like a bow, Conn writhing and butting and finally kicking himself away.

They moaned at each other, watching. Conn started to let Angus come to him, trying to withhold his punches till Angus was almost on him, his nerves taut with the fear of it. Angus tried to bury Conn under sheer weight of pressure, his assaults failing time after time, like powder refusing to fire, until he hit Conn with a punch that landed like a boulder on his ribs, lifted him and jarred him on to his back. Angus jumped in with one foot raised to kick. By witholding it, he made a counter-pressure in the fight, an eye of self-awareness that inhibited them. At once he was angry with himself. As Conn rose, Angus took a savage swing at him. Conn threw himself clear and Angus spun on his own momentum and sat down.