But he’s gettin’ on all right. Some reckon he’s past it.’ He slapped Dan on the leg. ‘You’ll take him, Dan. Don’t worry. As long as ye’re fit. And you’ll be fit.’
‘That’s not what Ah asked ye, Frankie.’
‘How?’
‘Who is he?’
‘He’s Cutty Dawson.’
‘But who’s Cutty Dawson? What does he do ? Does he have a family? What kinda man is he?’
‘Christ, Dan. How would Ah know? What d’ye want to know that for? Ye’re not gonny be his pen-pal. Ye’re gonny batter the shite out ‘im. The less ye know about him the better.’
‘Ah just wonder what he’s like.’
‘Dan, listen. You’re not getting paid to be a private detective. Don’t ask. Just fight. Just as long as Cutty’s handlers know his blood group. So that when they rush him tae hospital, there’s no time wasted.’
They didn’t feel so close any more. Frankie chewed his stalk of grass and stared down towards the road. He was grateful that it led away from Thornbank. He was here to earn some money. He didn’t need complications.
Dan felt embarrassed again by their track-suits, a pretence of unified professionalism. They weren’t engaged in preparation for the same event at all. Frankie was training him for Frankie, for the serving of a purpose in Frankie’s life. Dan wasn’t sure what he was training himself for but he would have to find out on his own.
Their previous laughter, which had seemed like camaraderie at the time, was in retrospect like the nervousness of strangers. It left a gloom on them. The cloud that went across the sun felt like a private arrangement.
There is an abandoned quarry near Thornbank, one of those mis-hewn, unfinished monuments to industry with which natureis left to improvise. It had at first grown grass and trees around its rim that attractively concealed the sheerness of its sides till you might unsuspectingly find yourself poised over a fifty-foot drop into a pool of black water, depth unknown. It is filled in now, but not before a few children had drunk the black water. Jack Ferguson, Dan’s best friend at primary school, had been one of them. Every time Dan passed the place, Jack’s death acknowledged him, seemed waiting for his own. Dan passed the quarry every day in training.
It was only one of many places on his route where ghosts of his childhood confronted, not reassuringly, the man he was trying to become. There was the park where he had played football as a boy through long, dishevelled games that could reach exotic scores like 25-18 and where the numbers playing could swell so much that sometimes, having the ball, you felt as if you were trying to dribble through a city. He passed every morning the tree where the rope had broken and catapulted Andy Mills into a coma from which he emerged asking what month it was. There was the small wood in which he and Sadie McAvoy had explored each other through a series of compulsively repeated evenings until they worked out how to get it right and, in the first orgasm he had had in company, he felt like a Catherine wheel going off and wondered where the pieces of himself might land.
Memory feeding corrosively on the future and Dan living still in the countryside where he had been born, he was running every day through an intensifying awareness of his own transience, through an argument with his past he wasn’t sure he could resolve. Occasionally, his self-doubts referred themselves to Frankie White in his need to bounce them off some surface, no matter how hollow.
‘You notice somethin’?’ he said one day at the end of a run. ‘You notice how much rubbish there is around?’
‘Sorry?’ Frankie was preoccupied with his own thoughts.
‘The places we pass. People are dumpin’ rubbish anywhere these days.’
‘It’s not any different from it ever was, is it?’
‘Oh, it is. It never used tae be like that. Just dumped at theside of the road. As if they didny care much any more. This place is different.’
‘Maybe
‘That’s not what Ah asked ye, Frankie.’
‘How?’
‘Who is he?’
‘He’s Cutty Dawson.’
‘But who’s Cutty Dawson? What does he do ? Does he have a family? What kinda man is he?’
‘Christ, Dan. How would Ah know? What d’ye want to know that for? Ye’re not gonny be his pen-pal. Ye’re gonny batter the shite out ‘im. The less ye know about him the better.’
‘Ah just wonder what he’s like.’
‘Dan, listen. You’re not getting paid to be a private detective. Don’t ask. Just fight. Just as long as Cutty’s handlers know his blood group. So that when they rush him tae hospital, there’s no time wasted.’
They didn’t feel so close any more. Frankie chewed his stalk of grass and stared down towards the road. He was grateful that it led away from Thornbank. He was here to earn some money. He didn’t need complications.
Dan felt embarrassed again by their track-suits, a pretence of unified professionalism. They weren’t engaged in preparation for the same event at all. Frankie was training him for Frankie, for the serving of a purpose in Frankie’s life. Dan wasn’t sure what he was training himself for but he would have to find out on his own.
Their previous laughter, which had seemed like camaraderie at the time, was in retrospect like the nervousness of strangers. It left a gloom on them. The cloud that went across the sun felt like a private arrangement.
There is an abandoned quarry near Thornbank, one of those mis-hewn, unfinished monuments to industry with which natureis left to improvise. It had at first grown grass and trees around its rim that attractively concealed the sheerness of its sides till you might unsuspectingly find yourself poised over a fifty-foot drop into a pool of black water, depth unknown. It is filled in now, but not before a few children had drunk the black water. Jack Ferguson, Dan’s best friend at primary school, had been one of them. Every time Dan passed the place, Jack’s death acknowledged him, seemed waiting for his own. Dan passed the quarry every day in training.
It was only one of many places on his route where ghosts of his childhood confronted, not reassuringly, the man he was trying to become. There was the park where he had played football as a boy through long, dishevelled games that could reach exotic scores like 25-18 and where the numbers playing could swell so much that sometimes, having the ball, you felt as if you were trying to dribble through a city. He passed every morning the tree where the rope had broken and catapulted Andy Mills into a coma from which he emerged asking what month it was. There was the small wood in which he and Sadie McAvoy had explored each other through a series of compulsively repeated evenings until they worked out how to get it right and, in the first orgasm he had had in company, he felt like a Catherine wheel going off and wondered where the pieces of himself might land.
Memory feeding corrosively on the future and Dan living still in the countryside where he had been born, he was running every day through an intensifying awareness of his own transience, through an argument with his past he wasn’t sure he could resolve. Occasionally, his self-doubts referred themselves to Frankie White in his need to bounce them off some surface, no matter how hollow.
‘You notice somethin’?’ he said one day at the end of a run. ‘You notice how much rubbish there is around?’
‘Sorry?’ Frankie was preoccupied with his own thoughts.
‘The places we pass. People are dumpin’ rubbish anywhere these days.’
‘It’s not any different from it ever was, is it?’
‘Oh, it is. It never used tae be like that. Just dumped at theside of the road. As if they didny care much any more. This place is different.’
‘Maybe
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