Strange Loyalties by William McIlvanney Read Free Book Online Page A

was a long fortyminutes. The car would make it but not my head. I could hear over the phone the background noises of domesticity, like an old tune I could still remember but had forgotten the words. I didn’t want to take any contagion of gloomy obsessiveness into that nice place.
    â€˜Well, I’ve still got a couple of people to see, Morag.’
    â€˜Jack. Who do you think you’re kidding? You’ll sit in a room the size of a coffin and get pissed. Your habits are known. Come up here and get a decent meal and some company. Brian told me about your fridge. He said you could sell it as new. If you can’t look after yourself, let other people do it now and again.’
    â€˜What it is, Morag,’ I said. ‘I just tasted whisky for the first time there. And, you know the way you can sometimes just tell right away? I really think I’m going to like it. So what I thought I would do, I’ll just stay with it for a while and see if I can acquire the taste. And it’s awkward to do that when you’re driving.’
    â€˜You’re hopeless. You not coming up?’
    â€˜Not the night, lovely wumman. But it’s in my crowded diary. How’s Stephanie and the mystery guest?’
    â€˜Steph’s fine. The other one’s kickin’ like a football team. Listen. We’re going to feed you properly soon. Even if we have to put you on a drip. No escape. You want to speak to Brian?’
    â€˜Please, Morag. He’s in, is he?’
    â€˜Yes. I don’t swallow all that Crime Squad stuff about having to work late all the time. The fate of the nation hanging on a break-in in Garthamlock. I’ll get him. You watch yourself, you.’
    â€˜Like an egg in a cake, Morag. Cheers.’
    â€˜So Morag’s seductive tones didn’t persuade you?’ Brian said. ‘Actually, the way she’s goin’ on at me. D’you mind if I come down there? Can you get me a room?’
    â€˜I’d change places any day,’ I said. ‘So how did it go today?’
    â€˜You first,’ Brian said.
    I started trying to give him a brief outline and began to feel as if I was drawing pictures in the air with my finger. I found myself interpreting Brian’s silence as the sound of scepticism. Maybe obsessions are essentially incommunicable. What did I have to tell him? I visited an empty house. I found an abandoned painting. I met a schoolteacher and his wife and family. It was all as interesting in the telling as one of those childhood compositions: What I Did At The Weekend. Even to myself it seemed that I was not conveying my experiences so much as my symptoms. Brian’s response wasn’t a hopeful diagnosis.
    â€˜Christ, Jack,’ he said. ‘What’s the point of what you’re doing?’
    â€˜I’m not telling you,’ I said. ‘’Cause you’re not a nice man. Anyway, what about you?’
    I think Brian was relieved to get back to talking about the real world. Buster was looking at me from the floor as if he shared Brian’s opinion of me.
    â€˜Meece Rooney,’ Brian said. ‘You know him?’
    â€˜Meece? I know him.’
    â€˜Well, you did,’ Brian said. ‘He’s dead.’
    â€˜You mean he’s the one? On the waste ground?’
    â€˜Meece Rooney. Listen. Somebody said he was supposed to have studied medicine. Would you know about that?’
    â€˜Meece did about a month at university,’ I said. ‘Before he decided there must be quicker ways to fulfil yourself. If Meece was saying he studied medicine, he must’ve meant he had been reading the label on a cough-bottle.’
    I found myself shrugging. Grief can be selfish. I didn’t dislikeMeece. I hadn’t disliked Meece. By the rule of thumb you sometimes applied to the troublesome people you dealt with, he wasn’t the worst. The thumb was almost up. He had been in my experience more victim than