Strange Loyalties by William McIlvanney

brother of a friend of mine. A friend unfortunately recently deceased. Jack. This is . . .’
    He gave me the names. I was glad he didn’t ask me to repeatthem. All I was aware of about them was the proximity of a lot of rubicund flesh, well-fed faces, heavy hands.
    â€˜If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen. I have to give Jack here a little of my time. Please. Have more brandies if you want.’
    He lifted his own brandy glass from a table with other glasses on it and coffee-cups and a sheaf of paper with mysterious figures on the top sheet. I caught the whiff of Aramis aftershave. I’d know it anywhere because Jan had once given me a bottle as a present. I had spent a fortnight trying to get used to it. I finished up leaping away from the smell as soon as the cork came off. I’m sure it’s lovely but I had to admit eventually that I was allergic to it. Jan wasn’t too pleased. Perhaps that’s where our relationship had begun to founder: I couldn’t inhabit her ideal sense of me. Maybe I could introduce her to Dave Lyons. Was this the kind of man Jan wanted?
    â€˜We’ll sit over here,’ he said to me. ‘You have a drink?’
    â€˜It’s at the bar.’
    I collected my drink and joined him at the table in the corner, well away from everyone else. He looked at my glass.
    â€˜Soda and lime?’ he said. ‘I take that myself occasionally. When I want to stimulate my taste buds for a real drink. Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder.’
    Dave Lyons was small, getting heavy. The features were thickening but that didn’t diminish their attractiveness. It was a very positive face, the kind you could distinguish from fifty yards. The dark eyes didn’t flicker. Neither the lack of height nor the thinning hair caused him any problems. When he had stood up to shake my hand, he had seemed to be on a podium of self-assurance. Perhaps he was standing on his wallet.
    â€˜I was sorry to hear about Scott,’ he said.
    We talked about Scott’s dying. He accepted as something easily understood my need to bother the people Scott had known. But there wasn’t much he could offer by way of insight. He had lost touch with Scott in any serious terms many years ago. Mainly, they had been friends when they were students. And everybody had changed a lot since then. He had been hearing for a few years how badly things were going for Scott. But the end had come as a shock. Didn’t it always, though?
    His even voice had a mesmeric quality. It almost put my misgivings to sleep. I felt again that I was being stupid. I had interrupted a man’s business lunch in order to have him tell me the platitudes with which we respond to the death of those friends who, due to time and circumstance, had more or less died to us already. What more could I expect?
    Only two things niggled at the lassitude of purpose into which his voice had put me. One was something he said. One was something he didn’t say. He said, ‘I was sorry I couldn’t make the funeral.’ That was understandable. But the deliberateness with which he said it, right in the middle of no context, made me notice. It made me wonder if the deliberateness of the apology was a response to the deliberateness of the absence. What he didn’t say was anything about the party Scott had disrupted.
    â€˜You had a party not too long ago,’ I said. ‘Scott was there.’
    He paused, stared at me, shook his head and smiled sadly.
    â€˜You know about that?’ he said.
    â€˜I heard.’
    â€˜I wasn’t going to mention it. I thought it might be too painful for you.’
    â€˜No, that’s all right,’ I said. ‘It’s not quite as painful as his death.’
    â€˜I can see what you mean. Well, you’ll know about it then. It was no big deal, really. Scott just got steadily drunker. Argued with a few people. Finished up in the television room. Some of the guests