Docherty by William McIlvanney Read Free Book Online Page A

actually said, was instantaneous, like an electric charge passing along them. Twenty-odd men stiffened.
    Somebody muttered, ‘Naw. Naw, sir,’ almost pleadingly.
    The stranger walked slowly along the line, mixing his insults with the measured deliberation of someone trying to brew a riot. The silence of the others was a debate. He was a big man. From his jacket pocket a bottle protruded. He might be too drunk to know what he was saying.
    ‘Fine,’ a voice said. ‘That’s fine! On ye go hame noo.’
    ‘Ah’ll fight any one of ye first. In a fair fight. Jessies! A bunch o’Jessies!’
    The main problem was a technical one. His malice was indiscriminate and they couldn’t all answer it. The stranger drew lots for them.
    The Pope’s a mairrit man,’ he said.
    He had reached the end of the line.
    ‘A meenit, chappie!’ a voice said.
    It was Tadger Daly, father of ten. A champion had been chosen. The big man turned. Tadger was walking towards him.
    ‘That’s a nasty thing tae say, chappie. Noo . . .’
    The big man’s right hand was easing the bottle out of his pocket. From about four feet away, Tadger took off. In mid-air his head looped so that it hit the big man’s nose, which opened sickeningly (‘Like the Red Sea,’ somebody later suggested). When the big man lay on the ground, there was a moment in which the physical ugliness of what had happened almost became dominant, until someone said matter-of-factly, That’s whit ye call doin’ penance, big man.’
    And another remarked, ‘You were the richt man fur the job, Tadger. As the Pope’s auldest boy, ye were the natural choice.’
    The incident was in perspective. Water and a cloth were brought from a nearby house. Tadger helped in cleaning up the big man. Then a couple of the men conducted him, wet cloth still held against his nose, to the end of the street, off the premises, as it were, and faced him towards the railway station. The whole thing had the quality of a communal action, and had been conducted without rancour.
    That night became part of the history of the corner. Any memorable incidents, remarks or anecdotes would be frequently gone over in the nights immediately following their occurrence, like informal minutes of previous meetings. Later, they would recur less often, having been absorbed into the unofficial history of their lives, the text of which was disseminated in fragments among them. Any man who stood at the corner had invisibly about him a complex of past events like familiar furniture, the images of previous men like portraits. The corner was club-room, mess-deck, mead-hall. It was where a man went to be himself among his friends.
    5
    But tonight it was quiet. A dozen or so were douring the evening out. Tam joined Buff Thompson and Gibby Molloy, who were standing in silence together.
    ‘Aye, Tam,’ Gibby said.
    Buff nodded and winked.
    ‘A clear nicht,’ Tam said.
    And each stood letting his own thoughts feed on him.
    Their silence was the infinity where three parallel despairs converged. Over the past few years Buff’s whole nature had contracted. The gradual recession of his physical powers had taken with it his defensive reflex of wry humour, and left him stranded on the hard, unrelieved futility of his own life. With only a few years ahead of him, he was clenched round a frail sense of purpose that was diminishing to nothing. Gibby’s natural habitat was moroseness. Living alone with his mother, held in a net of trivia, his life consisted of occasional spasms of wildness contained in a long inertia.
    For Tam the moment was a funeral service for a former self. Tam Docherty, Catholic, seemed finally dead. He couldn’t resist going back to memories of his boyhood, like holding a mirror to the corpse’s mouth. But no strong doubts came to cloud his thought. There was in his head a clarity, a cold emptiness. The talk of the others at the corner seemed less related to him than the sound of the river had.
    He still hadn’t