Walking Wounded by William McIlvanney Read Free Book Online Page B

a ridiculous naked man with one sock on hiding in a cardboard house, waiting for his own true love.
    â€˜Ah can’t wait to get home an’ get the wife’s knickers off,’ one of the players in the works’ game said to another. ‘They’re killin’ me.’
    â€˜Aye,’ the other one answered. ‘If they had pints laid out across the park, Ah would cover the ground a lot quicker.’
    â€˜Referee!’ somebody shouted. ‘There’s a man here wankin’. Is that a foul?’
    The player who had been adjusting his shorts responded at once: ‘Only when the balls are in play.’
    The harsh self-confidence of everything they said and did was like a mockery of John’s uncertainty about himself. He stood on the path of neutral ground between the two games and felt his position as an irrelevant spectator to be a just expression of himself. In his attempts to adjust to the kind of life Katherine had wanted, he had lost the rough spontaneity he had come from, the ability the works’ game was celebrating to take whatever life offered and shrug and have another pint in a way that suggested you hadn’t expected much more of the devious bastard. Yet, leaving that behind, he hadn’t managed to reach the place that presumably Gary and most of these other boys were practising to get to, where you knew all the practical social rules and could apply them to your advantage. He felt as if he didn’t fit anywhere, didn’t seem to know what position he was supposed to be playing, might never know what the score was when the final whistle blew.
    When it blew for the end of Gary’s game, he was glad. Gary’s team had won three–two.
    â€˜Shake hands! Shake hands!’ Gary’s Company Leader shouted unnecessarily.
    All the boys were shaking hands anyway. John approvedin theory of the idea that they should. But the formality with which they did it seemed to him false, an adult imposition on their natural reactions, like a bow-tie on a tee-shirt. As they came off the field, some parents joined them on the walk back to the clubhouse.
    â€˜Well played, Freddie. Well played!’
    John settled for gently slapping the back of Gary’s head as he passed and Gary’s right hand hinted at a wave of acknowledgement. It was their relationship in miniature: affection inhibited by circumstances. As John waited for Gary to come back out, he wondered if Katherine had told the children that the divorce had been finalised. He thought that she must have told them. But in the car he glanced at Gary and wondered.
    â€˜What did you think, Dad?’ Gary asked.
    â€˜You played well, son.’
    â€˜Made a mess of that corner.’
    â€˜The wind was deceptive. What did Helenio Herrera say?’
    The name of the famous football manager was their private joke about the Company Leader.
    â€˜He’s daft. Know what he said? “You didn’t die for the jerseys.” You’d think it was the World Cup.’
    John agreed with Gary but the distance in years between them made that agreement strange. At Gary’s age, John would have taken the Company Leader seriously. He would have wanted to die for the jerseys. Gary’s perspective on things disconcerted him, as it often did.
    â€˜Gary. Your mother’s told you about the divorce?’
    â€˜Uh-huh.’
    Gary had been fiddling with the glove compartment. He took out a sheet of petrol stamps and studied them like a philatelist.
    â€˜How do you feel about that?’
    â€˜Doesn’t make any difference to us, does it?’
    â€˜No, that’s right.’
    â€˜Well.’
    â€˜Any word of the other house yet?’
    â€˜Not yet. Mum says there’s plenty of time. We don’t have to move out of this one for a while.’
    Gary seemed calm. John didn’t want to disturb that calmness. He didn’t say anything else till they pulled up at the