Sooz 9

The best place for a walk in Clydebank was down by the Clydeside. Eddie could get out from under his wife’s feet and take a dander down to Cable Depot Road past the derelict factory that used to produce asbestos. ‘Clydebuilt’ was synonymous not only with quality and workmanship, but with men racking their lungs out and women and children picking up the slack, when their father died by the time they were thirty, and they inherited his cough. He sucked on a roll-up, spitting out traces of tobacco on his tongue, and stepped through a gap in the fence that took him closer to the Clyde. It was no Lourdes, but there was talk of there being enough oxygen in the water that salmon could once again by found in stretches of the river. Looking down towards the Erskine Bridge it was hard to believe, but breathing in the tangy taste of the wind whipped water it was easier than he’d catch a glimpse of steelworks, coalmines, locomotive works or even the lesser spotted Linwood car plant all of which haemorrhaged jobs. He’d done his time as a welder in John Brown’s, and ancient shipyard cranes studded the skyline as it clung to the shoreline, but even then as boy—that thought he was a man—he knew the shipyard game was hollow as a puppet’s glove. In a post-industrial city built on the backs of the working man, his time had come and gone and he hadn’t even noticed. Offshore he’d been a man.  

He pulled up his collar against the wind and smirry rain, jinked in and out of back lanes and blackened back courts of tenement buildings that once held thousands of workers and kept walking. He’d a piece in his pocket with bread and cheese and turned towards Kelvingrove Park and the West End to find shelter under a bandstand. Glasgow University owned a fair part of the land, including the hospital site, and there were three other colleges and new universities dotting the city centre overflowing with youngsters that were joining the service industries. Not one of them could tell them what to do with his time. But he liked noseying about the bookshops around Gibson Street. With thirty pence in his pocket, he could tunnel for treasures.

The cobbled sheen of Ashton Lane was a mark of affluence, not poverty, of keeping the modern world at bay, although it was thronged with restaurants and trendy bars. A baldy old bloke with a sprinkling of ginger hair around his ears and grizzled face plonked himself down at the corner of the Cul De Sac, a Crombie wrapped around his sticky-out kneecaps like a blanket, creating a bottleneck. A tartan bunnet at his feet with copper coins and a few ten pences in the lining. The cosmopolitan crowd that washed up through Dumbarton Road and Byres Road hurried past him avoiding his gaze.

Eddie dug into his coat pocket and flung the thirty pence he was carrying into the cap, and went to squeeze past him.

‘Hing on Eddie,’ the old guy spoke with a deep rumbling voice.

He stuck out his hand and Eddie helped pull him to his feet, his coat falling open to show a blue Scotland top covering his barrelled chest. ‘You don’t know me,’ peering at his face with eye scrunched up with laughter lines. He smelled fruity as a corpse.

Eddie shrugged and tried to sound convincing. ‘Aye, I dae, I’m just no very good wae names.’

A party of men in suits and women with their hair up and wearing long dresses clacked into the lane wearing high heels. Their necks craned they were looking up at the buildings, trying to get their bearings.

‘Here, haud this,’ the old geezer said out of the side of his mouth, handing Eddie his flat cap as a begging bowl. And he started warbling:

‘I’m only a common old working chap,

As anyone here can see,

But when I get a couple of drinks on a Saturday

Glasgow belongs to me.’

      He was giving the ‘I Belong to Glasgow’ big licks when the head of the group in a black bow tie approached them.

‘Can you tell me where the Cul de Sac restaurant is?’ he asked in an English accent.

‘Aye, it’s in there.’ Eddie hooked a finger to give him directions. ‘Just around the corner.’

‘That’s great,’ he smiled. ‘I thought we were lost there,’ his aside as much for Eddie’s benefit as the people stepping up behind him.

The old guy whipped the cap off Eddie and held it under the English guy’s chin, belting out another verse, ‘But when I get a couple of drinks on a Saturday

Glasgow belongs to me. Tae me!’

He made it more of a threat than a popular ditty.

‘Oh, right,’ said the English guy, reaching into his side pocket for his wallet. He frowned as he looked in at the notes, and pulled out a crumpled fiver, but the old guy gave him the eye and, red faced, he quickly peeled off a tenner and flung it into the cap and hurried past.

‘Keep the cap up’, the old guy warned Eddie, talking to him like a ventriloquist would its dummy, and as if the others couldn’t hear. ‘And keep smiling.’ He kept singing, although he only seemed to know one verse.

The guy behind the leader of the group flung in a fiver and the women peeled with laughter as they emptied their handbags of change and floated past them like an expensive perfume factory.  

The old guy stopped singing as soon as he knew they were away, and took the cap off Eddie, and shaking it. ‘I’ve no seen that much money since Christmas.’ He took the notes out and stuck them into his pocket. ‘It’s no Christmas is it?’

‘No,’ Eddie shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. The wife would have said something.’

‘Half of this is yours,’ the old guy pointed a finger like a gun.

‘Nah, I don’t want anything.’

He shook all the change that was in the cap. ‘Whit about your thirty pence back?’

‘Aye, I suppose,’ Eddie picked out three ten pences, holding them up to show what he was taking. He looked up at the sky and the light rain falling on them. ‘That way I could get the bus hame.’

The old guy took out two fifty-pences and handed to him, slapping his shoulder. ‘Go on treat yersel’ and get the train hame.’ His scooped the change into his side pocket and his voice rose as he pulled on his cap, ‘You still livin’ in Clydebank?’

‘Aye.’

‘Mind we used to always dog the train when we went doon to Balloch?’

‘Eh, aye.’

The hesitation in his voice was enough of a clue for the old guy to look at him squint eyed.

‘Davie Logue,’ he spoke in something of a hurt wee boy’s voice. But soon perked up. ‘Mind there was fucken millions of us. Mrs Boyle had to round us up like the Lone Ranger. And she didnae so much take the register as an electoral poll: Burrowes, Connollys, Dodds, O’Donnells and Logues…’

He grabbed Eddie’s arm and tugged him towards the entrance to the lane at Byres Road. ‘Mon, I’ll take yeh for a pint.’

Eddie walked beside him, ‘You used to make bus noises and want to drive a bus?’ The memory made him smile. ‘Did you ever dae that?’

‘I drove tanks in the army.’ They stood on the edge of the pavement and busy road, waiting to cross, traffic splashing by. ‘It’s quite hard to crash a tank, did you know that? But not impossible, especially if you’re pissed.’

‘Nah, I didn’t know that.’

A gap in the traffic and they rushed across. ‘We could go up to The Tennent’s Bar.’ He made a face. ‘It alright,’ he jerked his head in the other direction, ‘or The Quarter Gill?’  

‘Nah, I’m just goin’ hame.’

‘You still wae that—’ and it was him searching for names.

Eddie put him out of his misery. ‘Aye, I married her.’

‘Funny that, eh? The first part of your life you can’t wait to get your cock out. And you follow it around sniffing like a dog. The second part you live wae the consequences.’ He broke into a version of Tina Turner’s ‘What’s Love Got To Dae Wae’ It, and hit the ‘romance being a second-hand emotion’ note and made them sound remarkably like ‘I Belong to Glasgow’.

‘You married?’

He sucked in his breath, ‘Kinda, we’ve got an understanding. I hate her and she hates me.’

‘I didnae have you pegged as the romantic type.’

‘Och, we’re aw romantics. We aw remember our first kiss. Our first feel. Our first drink…Mon, I’ll take yeh for a pint. We’ll catch up. I’ll tell you about the time I went to Rothesay to get a feel of Liza Zavaroni’s fanny but I couldnae find her.’

Eddie ran his hand through his wet hair. ‘No a surprise, she lives in London.’

‘But I was a bit drunk anyway. I did find the Helensburgh train and the ticket guy was cheeky to me…Because I never had a ticket,’ he admitted. “I fought for my country” I told the cunt.’

He stared at Eddie, waiting for him to challenge him.

‘“Jail me”, I told him. “Go right ahead.”’

‘Whit did he dae?’

‘Oh, the cunt jailed me…But you’ve got to look on the bright side. It gi’e me time to dry out.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘Och, these things happen. We never really grow up.’ He shook Eddie’s arm. ‘It’s great to see yeh. You goin’ for a pint or no?’

‘Nah.’

He held a flat hand in salute as he walked away. ‘Alright, then. Don’t say I ne’er asked.’ He pointed across the road. ‘You know where my office is. Next time, don’t be shy. I could get you a spot playin’ the penny whistle and we could clear up, big time.’