The Blade Artist Read online

  One Saturday morning Grandad Jock came into the shop with Carmie. Willie Carmichael was a colossal, silent man with hands like shovels, and was forever by Grandad Jock’s side. Jock wore this trademark lopsided smile, which I now associate with the word snide. He stared deeply at Malcolmson, who shuffled around uncomfortably as they talked, his voice growing higher. — The Leeeeth dockers, aw aye, Jock, we’ve got tae keep the Leeeeth dockers happy!

  My grandad’s cuntish smile never left his pus. He and Carmie took Malcolmson aside and whispered something to him. I kept out the way, stacking tins of pineapple chunks onto the shelves, but I could see Malcolmson’s eyes get bigger and wider and Jock’s and Carmie’s get all narrow and slitty. After, Jock said to me, — Make sure you work hard and behave yirsel for Mr Malcolmson here, boy, right?

  — Aye.

  Then they left the shop. Malcolmson said fuck all for a while, but later looked at me in a strange kind of awe and fear. Then he told us that Gary Galbraith would be doing most of the deliveries and I would be stacking shelves, inside, in the warm. This was good news for me, but not for Gary. It was fuckin Baltic outside on that bike. But there would be just one delivery that I would have to make three times a week: a box of fruit and veg to the Leith dockers. I had never seen my grandad or any of his friends ever eat a single piece of fruit, or a vegetable that wasn’t a tattie.

  A nutter called John Strang, thick glasses, slicked-back hair, was the boy on the gate. He was known as a violent psycho, who had done time in Carstairs, a facility for the criminally insane. The stanes were cobbled, which didn’t matter too much going in, but when I came out, after visiting their howf, the box was full of heavy bottles of spirits, which you could hear rattling and clanking together. Of course Strang said fuck all; he was obviously being looked after by Jock and the others, but just going past that magnified gape was unsettling enough. Then I would cycle back to the shop and dump the bottles into the skip at the rear of the building. Johnnie would later come by in a van to pick them up. I knew this was their way of operating, as I waited behind the bushes one night, down by the Water of Leith walkway, and saw him appear.

  But I liked going down to the dockyards to meet my grandad Jock and his mates. You could tell they were a group apart and that the other dockers had no time for them. They hung out at this brick outbuilding by an old dry wharf, which they had commandeered as their HQ. It was right at the eastern side of the docks, bordered by a big wire fence and a set of industrial units, well away from the other dockers. I think this arrangement suited all parties. The ‘howf’, as they called it, was obviously meant to be an old storeroom; it had a wooden table and chairs, and a rack containing some cleaning materials. There was a light, no windows, the place ventilated only by air bricks at the top and bottom, and sealed off by a big wooden door, which was left slightly ajar when we were inside.

  I’d sit with them, drinking tea from a mug, keeping warm by a Calor gas stove they always had on in the winter, listening to them chat. They sounded weird to my young ears, often talking in riddles, using words and ways of expressing themselves I couldn’t decipher. It was as if it was a different language, some kind of a code. They were like relics from another era.

  They might have known fuck all about the Jam being top of the charts, but they knew about people, and their frailties. — See yir brother Joe, he’s scared ay you, Grandad Jock said to me once down the howf. — He kens he’s weaker than you.

  I was floored by this revelation. Joe constantly bullied me: battering me, making my life hell. But I recognised a strange credibility in my grandad’s statement. There was a panic in Joe’s eyes when he beat me, like he was almost anticipating a retaliation that never came. But, armed with this insight, I resolved that it would now arrive. And he wouldn’t be expecting it. This old bastard Jock, who could smell a man’s vulnerability like a shark does blood in the water, he saw everything. He understood it all.

  When I was younger I used to tell everybody this story of Joe and me, the story of the game-changer. The way I told it, though, I made it out that it was my dad that took me aside and told me to batter Joe’s face in with a brick as he slept. That was how I wanted my father to be, to have that kind of will to power. But it wasn’t my dad. It was my grandad. It was old Jock.

  The main thing, however, was that the face was Joe’s and the brick was in my hand. He wept all night, blood leaking into his pillow. I was scared, but exhilarated, almost tripping on my own sense of might. We both knew the score from then on in.

  7

  THE SISTER

  The plane journey was a glorious, tortuous blur of knowledge. The audiobooks blasted into his ears through headphones, now supplemented by the Kindle. It was a magnificent liberation. He could enlarge the text, enhancing his focus on individual words without the proximate jumbled distraction crowding them out. He had learned how to modify the typefaces; some fonts were easier to read than others, and this experimentation yielded fruit. In tandem with the actors who read him the text, he had taught himself how to recognise words on a page. Gradually, the searing frustration of failure had been replaced by the buzz of learning. The sneers of teachers, the giggles of classmates, the mordant shame and the violent, incandescent rage, they belonged to another person, in another age.

  Yet the name was still on his passport: Francis James Begbie. This, despite him using ‘Jim Francis’ professionally, and his wife mostly referring to him as Jim. It had been an easy development: by minor coincidence, Melanie’s surname was the same as his first name, and she was often referred to as ‘Frankie’ by college friends. Nonetheless, she was flattered when he told her that he wanted to be known as Jim, and when Grace arrived, they would all take the surname Francis. — I don’t want her growing up a Begbie, he’d said emphatically.

  But whatever he was called, he hadn’t believed that he would ever come back to Scotland. It simply wasn’t on his agenda, and he vowed that his mother’s funeral would be his last visit. He wasn’t close to his brother and sister, nor his sons, whom he imagined would just do what they would do. What he hadn’t really thought about any of them doing was dying. And his visceral reaction hadn’t surprised him, but what did shock him was how deep it went.

  As for friendships, those that existed between unreconstructed men of violence could thrive in camaraderie and even genuine affection for a while, as long as a pecking order was steadfastly adhered to. When it broke down, however, the results were devastating and few relationships could survive them, assuming both parties managed to. But in any case, his old friends lived lives that no longer had any appeal to him.

  He’d spoken to June, quickly sensing through her anti-depressant-fuddled and muffled weeping that her principal agenda was to get him to pay the funeral costs, which he readily volunteered to do. She’d told him the bones of the case; that after an anonymous tip-off, Sean had been found bleeding in a flat in Gorgie, having suffered multiple stab wounds. The police reckoned he’d been assaulted there, but nobody else was present and the neighbours heard nothing to indicate a struggle. The flat was rented by a landlord to a well-known drug dealer who was currently serving a prison sentence. There was no evidence of a drug transaction, and as far as everyone knew, the dwelling had been empty a long time prior to Sean moving in.

  As the flight dragged on it grew tiring, and the connection from London Heathrow was late. Now he emerges back into Edinburgh, cold and fatigued, wearing a light leather jacket, and wheeling out the mid-sized red case he’d stuffed mainly with T-shirts, socks and underpants. Winds from the North Sea blast him as he exits the airport terminal building. It had been a mistake not to bring more appropriate attire. He pulls out his iPhone, as a message from the phone company pops into his text box, outlining the extortionate rates he will pay while abroad. It is followed by a more welcome one from Melanie:

  Love u!!! XXX

  He texts back:

  Arrived in one peace! Love u!!! XX

  He looks in dismay, realising tha
t he spelled piece wrong. Then, to his surprise, when he gets to the taxi rank, he finds he knows the cabbie, instantly recognisable by his distinctive corkscrew hair. And the driver knows him. — Awright, mate? It’s Franco, ay? Sick Boy’s auld mate!

  — Terry. Franco, as he will always be known in Edinburgh, pulls a tight smile back. Juice Terry is one of the city’s characters, and it is comforting to see an old face. Last he’d heard Terry was still making stag vids with his old friend Sick Boy, and driving a cab in his spare time.

  — Read aw aboot ye. Yir daein well, Terry grins, then his face creases. — Listen . . . ah heard aboot yir laddie. Really sorry, mate. Young boy n aw.

  — Thanks, but ah’d sortay lost touch wi him.

  Terry quickly mulls over the response, trying to work out whether it’s genuine, or stoic bravado. — Ower fir the funeral, aye?

  — Aye.

  Driving Franco to the requested address in Murrayfield, and a street that is a mishmash of low-rise dwellings, Terry leaves him a card. — If ye ever want a cab, gies a shout, he winks. — Ah dinnae huv the ‘For Hire’ sign on that much, if ye git ma drift.

  Franco takes the card and puts it in his inside pocket, exiting the cab, saying goodbye, and watches Terry speed off. Through a descending, eerie morning mist, he looks across at the imposing rugby stadium. Then, wheeling the red case behind him, he walks down the short driveway of the pebble-dashed house where his sister lives wth her husband and their two sons. He knocks on the door and Elspeth opens, hair piled high on her head and held there by an almost implausible range of pins and clips. She immediately embraces him, hugging him tightly, — Aw, Frank . . . I’m sorry . . . come in, ye must be exhausted . . . .

  — I’m fine, he purrs, patting her back. They break their grip and Elspeth takes him indoors to the welcome heat, offering him a beer, which he rather curtly refuses. — Dinnae touch that stuff.

  — Sorry, she says, making a bit of a fuss about the apology, then corrects herself. — Ye still teetotal?

  — Nearly seven years.

  Elspeth fixes herself a gin and tonic, though it’s still morning. — You look really well, she offers, sitting down beside him.

  Frank Begbie can’t say the same about his younger sister. She seems heavier, bloated around the face. — Pilates, he smiles.

  — You’re joking!

  — Aye, Mel does aw that. I just go to a boxing club four times a week.

  Elspeth laughs in a manner that sheds years from her. — Ah couldnae see you doing Pilates, but California, ye never know!

  — I suppose stranger things have happened.

  As if acknowledging the truth in this, Elspeth states, — So you’re an artist now, aye?

  — So some people say.

  Her eyes narrow as she raises the glass to her lips. Takes a sip. — Aw aye, I read a piece aboot ye in Scotland on Sunday. All those Hollywood stars, wanting to be pals with you. Elspeth raises an eyebrow. — You ever met George Clooney?

  — Aye. Met him once.

  — What was he like?

  — I liked him, Franco concedes. — And because of that I don’t think it’s good manners to talk about people when they aren’t around.

  There is a pomposity in his response that rankles Elspeth. — Since when did you start caring about good manners?

  — It’s never too late.

  Elspeth seems to consider this, as if contemplating, then biting back a stinging retort that was forming on her lips. — I’m really sorry about Sean, she begins, then her expression sets sternly. — But we should put our cards on the table. Just soas we both know where we stand.

  Franco raises a single brow. — Fine by me.

  — Ye kin fool some ay them wi your big rehabilitated act, Elspeth smiles scornfully, — but ye cannae con me. Ah know you. Ah ken what you are. She looks at him, waiting for a reaction.

  None is forthcoming. Her brother seems not so much to have failed to take any offence as to have not heard what she actually said.

  — But we’re still family, she sighs. — So you’re welcome to kip in our spare room till after the funeral.

  — I’m much obliged.

  Elspeth’s eyes narrow. — But one step out of line and you’re out the door. Ah mean it, Frank. I’ve the boys here.

  Frank Begbie feels something familiar rise inside him. He wants to stand up and tell her to fuck off, and just get out of that dull, ordered suburban home, with its bland, beige decor and furnishings. But he sucks air into his lungs and looks at the two china dogs on the mantelpiece. They were his mother’s, they came from the old place. Then he turns and nods slowly at her in the affirmative. — I understand.

  Elspeth seems disconcerted at this compliant response, and visibly swallows. — Sean came round here a few times, you know.

  — Aye?

  — It was good at first, lovely tae see him, she smiles, before grimly shaking her head, — then when he went downhill, he was only here tae cadge money.

  — I’ll pay you back.

  — It’s no about that. Elspeth lifts her glass. — I didnae want him hanging around Thomas and George. They’re good boys. But they looked up to him, because he was older and their big cousin.

  Frank tries to take all this in. Sean, his nephews, this house here in Murrayfield. It is acceptable enough, though nowhere near as impressive as his own home in California, he reflects with some satisfaction. When he was a kid in Leith, Murrayfield appeared to be a millionaires’ playground. Now, to his critical eyes, it seems – at least this part of it – just another drab, shabby neighbourhood and nothing whatsoever to aspire to. But his head is crackling with static and a huge yawn rips from him. — Listen, ah’m a bit jet-lagged. Would it be okay tae get my head down for a bit?

  — Of course, Elspeth says, and she leads him through to the spare room.

  Franco strips to his underpants and gets beneath the duvet. Enjoying the luxury of stretching out flat after the cramped plane, he drifts off into an unsatisfactory sleep full of disjointed dreams. A few hours have elapsed when he is woken by noises coming from downstairs. Punching Terry’s number into his iPhone, he then does some stretches, followed by a bit of shadow-boxing in the full-length mirror and 150 pushups, before taking a shower.

  The boys, George and Thomas, aged ten and nine, have returned from school. They regard him in blank fascination. After an exchange of pleasantries about flights and America, George ventures, — Mum said that you were in prison.

  — George! Elspeth hisses.

  — Naw, it’s okay, Franco smiles. — Yes, I was.

  — Wow . . . you must have done some bad things, right?

  — Some bad things, Franco concurs, — but mostly stupid things. That’s why people go to jail. But you lads seem far too smart for that caper. So how’s school?

  The boys are both keen to recount their days, and as he chats to them, Franco is confounded by how much he actually likes his nephews. Even Elspeth seems to lighten, and he shows her pictures of the girls on his iPhone. — They’re beautiful, she says, but almost in accusation, her tones hinting at the inevitability of him somehow destroying them.

  Greg, Elspeth’s husband, arrives home from work. He has put on a bit of weight and his hair has thinned. — Frank! Great see you. He extends a hand and shakes Franco’s firmly. — Obviously sorry about the circumstances, he glumly corrects himself.

  — Aye, you too, and thanks, Franco manages, thinking how Greg looks like the classic British middle manager; tired, harassed and beset with the crippling awareness that he’s gone as far as he’s likely to, and that the next big life change will be long-off retirement or worse, not-so-long-off redundancy. — How’s work?

  — You do not want to know, Greg shakes his head.

  You do not want to know how much I do not want to know, Franco thinks.

  But Greg, like his sons, is friendly, and keen to make conversation. — Merger talk in the air. Never good, Frank. He stares out the window. Dropping his breath, he
repeats, — Never good.

  After dinner (Franco is disconcerted to find himself calling it that too, instead of tea) the boys go to their rooms, and Greg gets more serious, nursing a whisky, as Elspeth loads up the dishwasher in the kitchen. — I really admire you, Frank, the way you’ve turned your life around through art. It must be so rewarding.

  — Money’s good but, ay.

  — I always fancied writing the great Scottish novel . . . Greg wistfully intones as he points to a bookcase. — I took a creative writing course once . . .

  Franco tracks Greg’s gaze, taking in the spines of the usual suspects, finding that he’s read most of them. — They ey said ah was good at art at school, but I could never see it. I once drew this picture wi a black sun. The teacher went radge; ‘A black sun, Francis Begbie?’ But I liked the idea of a black sun, like a black hole in space. Sucking everything intae darkness: where we came from, where we’re headed.

  Greg nods, but his grin crumbles as the desolate weight of Franco’s words hits home. He rallies, and ventures admiringly, — To have that kind of creativity . . . I wish it was me! Meeting all those stars . . . Have you ever met Jennifer Aniston?

  — Best blow job ah ever had.

  Greg raises his brows, glances towards the kitchen, and lowers his voice. — Wow, you’re joking, right?

  — Aye. She wisnae that good.

  — Ha ha ha . . . Greg chortles, falling into silence as Elspeth reappears.

  Frank has been looking at the CDs displayed in a big cabinet. Underneath there are several board games stacked on a shelf that grab his attention. He rises to inspect them. — Monopoly . . . an Edinburgh yin! Never knew they did that. Fancy a game?