The Boys…Boy… Are Is
Back In Town
Glasgow
Central station, Victorian glass roof and vaulting arches, had gathered the
heat as it seeped from the streets, night falling breathless and sticky. No
current stirred in the dead air as I stepped from the train, footsteps
clattering with others’ like an inept round of applause rattling along the
platform. I felt the keys in my hand, their dull jangle of metal and plastic
sounding a flat tinkle of welcome. You’re home, Stevie.
A
slender scatter of commuters scanned destination boards, waiting for their
trains to the southern suburbs; fewer long-distance travellers on this midweek
night sat with heavy baggage, slumped in the heat, destined for Manchester,
Birmingham… some for London. Why they drooped out here in the accumulated
warmth of the day, instead of on the air-conditioned carriages…? Maybe they
were just too wabbit not to, or maybe they knew something I didn’t.
The
Bat-signal had blazed in the sky for me, but here, nobody had noticed.
“Haw,
mate? Bung us a pound bit for my fare? Coupla quid’d be good, ye got it.”
My
new ‘mate” had eyes like hunted animals – not, you understand, eyes like those of hunted animals, but eyes
which in themselves were like animals. It made quite the impact.
“Where
is it you’re goin’…mate?”
“Uh…hame,
know? Uh…” – eyes darting to the destination boards – “over by Whifflet.”
“Christ,
bud – you ever been near Whifflet? Can ye spell
Whifflet? Listen, what’s a pint cost over in the Toby Jug?”
“Eh…three-forty.
How?”
“Right,
show us yer kitty...c’mon, what’re ye up to so far? Right…all of it…okay…let’s
see…one, one-fifty, sixty, eighty…Christ, eighty-two…ninety-two…two pound two, two pound seven. Right, here’s a
quid. Away and tap somebody else for 33p, my pleasure, you’re welcome.”
My
time at St Mungo’s hostel hadn’t been in vain. I’d just used the ‘skills’ I
learned there to befriend somebody, venture into some basic economics and encourage some personal enterprise,
all for the cost of a pound, albeit it would end in drink. Glasgow was already
the richer for my five minutes in town, even if I was marginally poorer.
***
***
My
key turned in the lock, and the build-up of solar gain that had pumped into the
apartment through my undrawn curtains rushed out to meet me. I took a moment to
let some of the wave of heat dissipate and stepped inside. Everything was the
same, of course, because I hadn’t been that long away and there was nobody else
to change anything. No mail piled behind the door, which meant my re-direction
had been successful…which also meant that I’d have to especially pleasant to
Joanna at Centrus, where my “business” was nowadays located. It was strictly an
anonymous cubicle-and-mailbox accommodation address and they won’t have been
too impressed to see all of McCabe’s mail
suddenly clog up my doocot. My buddy Joanna on the front desk probably wouldn’t
mind, I told myself. She was sharp and sassy, she’d be happy to be bending the
rules. Maybe…
I
slid up all the sash windows to let some of the heat escape and there was a pressure-change
as the night air – cooling now that darkness had fallen – seeped in and sent
the trapped Fahrenheit thermalling up and away.
I
left the flat to cool for a moment and went downstairs and into the street,
then back up the exterior stoop to the separate tiny property that had once
been my office, two rooms – well, one of those was really a small lobby. I’d
given it up when Mrs Mac robbed me, legally and illegally, and I found myself
in a new/old world of hand-to-mouth, both glad that my Bernie was a lawyer and
depressed that I needed her income, however indirectly. The office still stood
empty, the way I’d left it. A strange, awkward space, it was eagerly available
for lease. And it would be cheap.
I
went back upstairs, the flat now exhaling, and looked out at my part of what I
called home.
It
wasn’t London and I didn’t have much of a view from the flat. Audio, I had...the
buzz of Byres Road and further distant streets drifting across rooftops to me
in an indecipherable pattern, the scat singing of the city. But visuals, no.
Just an occluded half-vista of gables and roofs, windows and back-courts. No
dizzying heights, only an array of flickering lights in the dark, and
definitely no romantic river far below.
No
river to ponder, just reflections on the overlapping sheets of glass in my
raised window, the twin images not quite aligning, overlaid and distorting,
reflecting versions of me and the future. We both looked okay.
There
would be something out there tomorrow and I would be ready for it.
But
who am I to judge?
No comments:
Post a Comment