All the Colours of the Town by Liam McIlvanney Page A

first I thought I’d hit someone: shouts of protest sounded from the rear. Something banged on the roof. A hand appeared beside me making the ‘wanker’ gesture – no; he wanted me to roll down the window. No chance: I shook my head. He jabbed his finger at me, then at the ‘One Way Street’ sign. I know ; I nodded. The crowd was thick on either side now, the car stuck sideways across the white line.
    Two middle-aged guys stepped round the bonnet, and one of them paused: the Cross Keys guy, the Black-and-Tan drinker. He grabbed the other’s sleeve and pointed. The second man turned, gestured to someone behind him.
    I leaned on the horn; the sound was thin and somehow effete. It brought more onlookers round the car. I revved the engine but nobody moved. Black-and-Tan stayed out in front with his palms on the bonnet, as if waiting to be frisked. His eyes were dull with drink.
    Pointlessly, as if a winking yellow light would bring everyone to their senses, I applied the left indicator.
    A gob splattered the windscreen. Someone was trying the door. There was an icy tinkle, barely audible, that I knew was a headlight breaking.
    My bag was on the passenger seat: I scrabbled in the side pocket, fingers paddling for my phone. More spit slid down the glass. The banging on the roof started up once again. I saw a man lean backwards to give himself room, and a shoe sole the size of a suitcase came pistoning towards me.
    I found the phone.
    As I thumbed the buttons a different noise cut through the hubbub, a thin slicing sound, hissing at the window. I craned round. For a moment the whole scene – the jostling bodies, the opening mouths – had a barley-sugar tinge, an orangey film, and I was back in my childhood sickbed, viewing the world through the cellophane wrapper of a Lucozade bottle. Then the window cleared and a brown cock jiggled comically for a second before flipping into a waistband.
    The cabin darkened: someone was up there, blocking the sunroof. Then he was down again and my ear was hurt, stinging, as if something had struck it. My bag thudded down from the passenger seat and the mobile jumped out of my hand. The glove compartment slumped open and my CDs skittered out. Through the front windscreen the sun was swinging into my eyes and out again, like a torch clicking on and off.
    They were rocking the car.
    Three or four bodies on either side, working together, hitting a rhythm. Each time the car rocked to the right, the window thumped into my ear. I braced my right arm on the door frame and gripped the handbrake with my left. The windscreen kept pitching like a boat on heavy seas, a little steeper with each new heave. Then the sun flared in my side window, not the front, and I was rising, floating, suspended in air as the car tipped onto its fulcrum .
    Even then, as a rhombus of blue sky paused in the window , and a vast protracted second gave me all the time in the world to review my situation, I didn’t feel afraid. That I might be seriously hurt, in a small town in Lanarkshire, on a sunny weekend afternoon, by a crowd of militant Calvinists in blue suits and sashes, seemed – even then – unrealistic. How serious were these people? How angry? I don’t think they themselves were sure. Had something happened, had the car tipped over and the windows shattered, with shards and splinters and blood on the roadway, they might have claimed it as a joke, a prank, a piece of wayward fun. And they might have been right. At that point things could have gone either way.
    Then the chassis was bouncing with the shock of impact and ironic cheers greeted my landing.
    I waited for the rocking to start again but the bodies had moved away, the cabin suddenly bright, and a policeman’s face – incredulous, angry – loomed at my elbow. He rapped on the window.
    Out front another cop – arms spread wide in a green fluorescent jacket – was moving back the crowd. A blue light whirled mutely from a squad car.
    I pressed the