Docherty by William McIlvanney Read Free Book Online Page B

spoken by the time Dougie McMillan came up. Dougie wasted no time.
    ‘Ah’m lookin’ fur a local lad wi’ a notion o’ the game,’ he said. He flashed his jacket open to show that he was wearing his professional pockets. This is a nicht that wis made fur poachin’, boays. Ah’ can smell the salmon. They’re lyin’ doon at Riccarton Water waitin’ tae surrrender. Noo Ah’ve a couple of vacancies. Wan oan the net an’ wan tae be steerer. Who’s it tae be?’
    The others laughed.
    ‘Who’ll pey the fines?’ Buff asked.
    ‘Ma lawyers attend tae a’ these wee things. Noo, come oan, boays. Don’t make a rush like this. Form an orderly queue. Buff, Ah’m sorry Ah hiv tae turn ye doon. Ye’re guid but ye’re auld, son. Tam Docherty. There’s ma man. The finest hundred-yards melodeon-player in Ayrshire. Tammas. Ah guarantee success. Riccarton’s yer oyster. I will make youse fishers of fish.’
    Since Tam’s mood was unemployed, and since this was a night for picking out the lining of your pockets, he felt interested in any diversion. He let Dougie banter him into the idea of a poaching expedition. Gibby, who had been wilting with boredom for more than an hour, suddenly bloomed with enthusiasm, and insisted on offering his services. Conscious of the danger involved in using somebody subject to such unpredictable fits of not unobtrusive violence, Dougie was doubtful. He only agreed after making clear the special terms of Gibby’s contract.
    ‘Nae brainstorms,’ he cautioned, as if they were a hazard as avoidable as taking matches down the pit. ‘An’ if we pass ony shithoose doors, fur any favour shut yer een. In case ye get the notion.’
    Gibby nodded soberly, guaranteeing sanity at all times. Now that the outing was fully manned, there was an atmosphere of expectancy as they waited for darkness. Gibby especially was impatient. He had suggested that he should go up and let his mother know, in case she worried. But when Dougie replied that she might not let him out to play again, Gibby abandoned the idea sheepishly. Dougie had the net and a couple of rough towels in the special pockets that were sewn inside the jacket, so that there was no need for anybody to bring more gear. Even Buff caught the fever. While they waited, he recounted a long, involved story about how he had been taught the art of guddling salmon. He looked a little forlorn, mulling his memories, when they left him in the gloaming to walk down through the town.
    As Tam went with them, the night that was coming seemed to mute the hardness of the town with an influence like a woman’s, draped a corner with shadow, made a back lane pungent with the breath of trees. Blowsy with summer, scented with a thousand subtle mysteries, it seduced him from his loneliness and made him feel right simply to be walking towards the dark. The smells he moved among were like an aerial language, incomprehensible to him yet instinct with memory as if, could he decipher them, they would tell him who he was. He let their soundless babble break over him, feeling quicken far within him vague sensations, half-thoughts.
    He remembered the summers of boyhood, not as a continuity, a part of his own history, but in one small instant ecstasy of pain, as if a bubble of blood were bursting in his heart. Borne on the air, it seemed, like dragonflies, as faint, as glimpsed, as fleet, came his regrets for what he had been, was, would never be. But they were gentle with him, as if to acknowledge them was partly to atone. Irrelevantly, the three of them walking brought back to him another night, and miners walking. He had been only a boy, ten, twelve years old, but he was there among them – miners, thousands his memory made them, walking through the darkness towards a hill. They held a meeting.
    That memory still held him, when they emerged from the town along the river’s edge. The darkness was waiting for them like a friend. Having made the night’s acquaintance at