'I'm going to miss the compassion you bring to the job,' Harkness said.
Milligan was looking out at the passing scene with a kind of sunny malice.
'No,' he said. 'Where you're going you'll get plenty of that. Laidlaw? You'll have to wear wellies when you work with him. To wade through the tears. He thinks criminals are underprivileged. He's not a detective. He's a shop-steward for neds. It'll be a great experience for you. Boy Robin meets Batman.'
- He says it'll burn me up in flames one day, my husband does, me and my blazing hate. He says it can't be kept up for ever, you've got to forgive and forget. I'll never forget, that's one thing that's sure: and I'll never forgive neither, at least I can't see myself doing. The Coal Board's turned my husband, who all his life's been an honest upright working man, into a criminal. They've made him someone with a conviction, and a criminal record for it. And as well as that they've made him into someone who because of it'll never again in his whole life get a decent job. He did nothing wrong in the first place: but they won't relent and give him his job back. So neither will I relent either. Those people, the Coal Board, Ian MacGregor, Maggie Thatcher, the Tories - I hate every one of them and I'll hate them till my dying day for what they've done to my husband. He can forgive them if he likes, and if he does he's a better person and a better Christian than I am. To me they're the biggest bastards who ever walked the face of the earth, and every morning when I get up I curse them and I curse them every night when I go to bed.
(from 'Me and my blazing hate')
'Oh,' John Rhodes said. 'And Panda Paterson.’
‘Correct, John. Your memory's good.‘ Panda said.
He extended his hand to shake and John Rhodes punched him in the mouth. It was a short punch, very quick and very measured, costing John nothing, the punch of a man in training, emerging from reflexes so honed they seemed to contain a homing device. It was only after it had landed you realised it had been thrown. lt imparted awe to some of the others. as if thought was fait accompli.
The effect was reminiscent of the moment in a Hollywood musical when the mundane breaks into a Busby Berkeley routine. Suddenly, Panda Paterson was dancing. He moved dramatically onto the small slippereened square of dance floor and did an intricate backstep. Then, extending his improvisation into what could have been called ‘The Novice Skater‘ . he went down with his arms waving and slid sitting until the carpet jarred him backwards and his head hit a radiator like a duff note on a xylophone.
‘That's the price of a pint in “The Crib”,' John Rhodes said.
There was blood coming out of Panda's mouth. He eased himself off as if to get up and then settled back. touching his mouth gently.
'Ye've made a wise decision,' John Rhodes said, watching him refuse to get up. 'You're right. Ah've got a good memory. Ah don't know where you've been lately. Watchin' cowboy pictures? Well, it's different here. Whoever's been kiddin' you on ye were hard, Ah'm here tae tell ye Ah've known you a long time. You were rubbish then an' ye're rubbish now. Frightenin' wee boys! Try that again an' Ah'll shove the pint-dish up yer arse. One wi' a handle.'
If you could have bottled the atmosphere, it would have made Molotov cocktails. Practised in survival, Macey was analysing the ingredients.
John Rhodes stood very still, having made his declaration. What was most frightening about him was the realisation that what had happened was an act of measured containment for him, had merely put him in the notion for the real thing. He wasn't just a user of violence, he truly loved it. It was where he happened most fully, a thrilling edge. Like a poet who has had a go at the epic, he no longer indulged himself in the doggerel of casual fights but when, as now, the situation seemed big enough, his resistance was very low.
The others, like Panda Paterson, were imitating furniture. This wasn't really about them. Even Panda had been incidental, no more that the paper on which John had neatly imprinted his message. The message was addressed to Cam Colvin.
Fantasy had always come easily to Rachel.
As a very little girl, she had wanted to be Her Majesty The Queen when she grew up. When she discovered the title was not vacant, other possibilities began to haunt her imagination: Judy Garland, Bambi, any one of The Beatles' girlfriends, Ann Jones, Miss Piggy, Lucinda Prior-Palmer and Mrs Hodges, the PE teacher. In her late teens, the onset of political fervour and a semblance of maturity produced a new set of role models: Sylvia Pankhurst, Emma Goldman, Pat Arrowsmith and Nina Simone.
Once upon a happy time in bed, Will had summarized her fantasy life with his customary gentle astringency: 'You really want to be a Greenham woman with an electric blanket and a voice like Ella Fitzgerald's'
He looked at the litter on his desk and wondered how he had come to be manacled to these invoices, how many years he had spent transferring days from the in-tray to the out-tray. It would be some time yet before he could go home, but the thought was merely a reflex, no longer carried any deep regret. Marie would be waiting there with a detailed report of how much hoovering she had done today and what the Brussels sprouts cost. Jennifer would be doing her usual impersonation of a foundling princess who can't understand how she has come to be unloaded on such a crass family and Robert, fruit of his loins and heir to his ulcers, would be playing songs in which the lyrics only surfaced intermittently and incomprehensibly.
From the short story 'Waving'.
'Ah, Brother Sebastian. I was expecting you.'
Michael began, the words becoming slurred in his haste to get them out before his courage failed him.
'Brother Benedict, I must protest in the strongest possible terms about the . . . the thrashing you have just given Owen Kane.'
'And why is that?'
'He did not sign his name to any slogan.'
'Brother Sebastian, I'll thank you to calm yourself.'
'Did you say that the boy signed his initials to some graffiti?'
'I did.'
'O.K. is a slogan itself. They just add it to things.'
Brother Benedict took off his glasses, folded the legs flat and rubbed into the corners of his eyes with finger and thumb.
'Brother Sebastian, do you think I'm a fool? Credit me with a little lore intelligence.'
Michael did not know how to react. He was confused.
'You know and I know,' said Brother Benedict, 'that we could never find the real culprit. By now the boys know that punishment has been meted out. Someone has got it in the neck. It may deter others from doing the like again, for fear their mates get it. The O.K. is just a little irony of mine. "Benny dies O.K." Now the boys know that Benny has risen.' He bunched his big fist and swung it in a slow punch, clicking his tongue at the supposed moment of impact.
'K.O.,' he said with satisfaction.
For the next week Owen had to try and clean the slogan off with a pad of steel wool. To reach it he had to stand on a stool.
Open the door and out, out and away, he doesn't mind, he doesn't care: time for a cup of tea before the next victim. Hope it's that lassie with the screaming infants ya bass. Through the waiting-room: those about to, we salute you. Somebody reading a book for fuck's sake, bad move, looks like a student: get to the back of the queue wanker, make way for the genuine article, you'll get a grant cheque in three months anyway, whadya needa giro for? Totally unjustified assumptions there, totally unfair one is being, but who can blame one? I blame society. Down the stair and out into the rain. Which has now stopped. I blame sobriety: if I could be drunk more often, or maybe all the time . . . but in this day and age thirty-seven pence purchases absolutely no alcoholic beverage of any amount or kind whatsoever, except for those wee bottles of Dutch lager well there you go my point proven, except in France or Spain of course where you can take your billycan along to the vineyard and they'll pour out the vino for you straight from the fucking tap, what a place, and no need for a roof over your head either: sleep rough without your extremities turning blue.
(from 'Loaves and Fishes, Nah')
Tuesday, Aprll 22:
Helen ls too attentive. I think she knows more than she pretends to know which would not be hard since she pretends to know nothing.
Miranda's eyes are everywhere. On Monday I phoned her and she phoned me today. The message is always the same.
Last night I went to the attic and found three pages typed on the Underwood. It's bad enough discovering your father was a closet radical without extra evidence arriving daily.
If I find more of my father's writings, I'll burn them.
SOME OBSERVATIONS ON SCOTTISH DEFINITIONS WITH A VIEW OF THE NATIVE PHILOSOPHY
The ensuing remarks are not intended to trespass upon the domain of such specialist publications as The Scottish National Dictionary or Dwelly's Gaelic-English Dlctionary. I merely wish to inform our English and foreign visitors of certain usages which are common throughout the Lowlands, Borders and most tracts of the English-speaking Highlands and Islands.
HOW SCOTSMEN DEFINE EACH OTHER
A Braw Bugger(1)
One who can shite(2) with the best of them.
A Dour Bugger
One who cannot shite yet refuses to take the medicine.
A Thrawn Bugger
One who can't shite, takes the medicine yet refuses to shite.
A Canny Bugger
One who can't shite, takes the medicine, still can't shite, returns the medicine and has his money refunded.
An Uncanny Bugger
One who can't shite, takes the medicine, won't shite, returns the medicine, has his money refunded, then shites.
Note that the Braw Bugger and the Uncanny Bugger, the alpha and omega of this spectrum, have one common characteristic - their bodily functions are unimpeded by normal imperatives.
1: The term bugger when applied by one Scotsman to another has no sexual significance, even even in sheep-rearing parishes. Since, to the Scot, a man is the highest form of created life, to call a man 'a man' is to overpraise him.
2: The male Scot prefers excretion ro sexuality because, although both are equally inevitable, the first is less expensive.
Jack Bell nodded, and the two men's eyes met for the first time, then both heads turned to face James, who was seated across the table.
"Well, James?" the lawyer said. "What do you think?"
The teenager seemed to be considering the offer. He returned his father's stare as if it were all the nourishment he needed and he had a hunger that would never be stilled.
