Gallowglass Read Free

wasn’t going to question it. I’d vowed never again to take for granted a sunny day or a good night’s sleep. On the wireless this morning I’d heard a new song by Sinatra and couldn’t shake the dratted thing out of my head:
    What a day this has been!
What a rare mood I’m in!
Why, it’s almost like being in love .
    There’s a smile on my face
For the whole human race.
Why, it’s almost like being in love .
    It might have earned me funny looks from my fellow Glaswegians if I’d tried to serenade them first thing on a workday morning. So I stuck to just whistling the tune as I stalked down Mitchell Street and climbed the stairs to the newsroom.
    I strolled to my corner desk across the office. The room was already filling up. The early secretaries were clashing and tinkling away at their typewriters and a few of my fellow journalists were sucking on first fags and mugs of tea, hoping for inspiration to arrive with the nicotine and the caffeine. The small and increasingly rotund figure of the editor was loitering with intent over one of the desks. Bum in the air, elbows on the desk and fag hanging from his lips, Eddie was hunched over the vacant desk of Jimmie Livingstone, the paper’s football reporter. Eddie was picking away at the scraps of paper – Jimmie’s handwritten notes of the weekend’s results – seeing if there was any mileage left in any of the triumphs and disasters. Between them, Eddie and Jimmie could milk a full week of polemics out of an iffy offside decision at Parkhead. Eddie lifted his head and removed his fag.
    ‘Morning, Brodie.’
    ‘Good morning, Eddie. No sign of the wild man yet?’
    ‘Your pal, McAllister? Wheesht, Brodie. To speak his name is to summon the de’il. Let’s enjoy the quiet for as long as we can.’
    ‘Can you no’ just remind the man he’s supposed to be retired?’
    Eddie stubbed out his fag, drew himself erect to his full five feet two inches and pulled down his tartan waistcoat. I noted it was filling out nicely again. Soon he’d be back to his former stature and we could start calling him ‘Big Eddie’ again. At least in circumference.
    ‘It’s no’ that easy, Brodie. McAllister took an awfu’ hammering in the line o’ duty, so to speak. We cannae just throw him on the scrap heap. And technically, of course, he didnae actually get round to retiring before his heid got bashed in.’
    ‘Well, it all adds to the gaiety around here. Is he really knocking out a column or two? I mean, how does he get the stories? Has he commandeered his own tram?’
    I knew his companion-cum-brother, Stewart, had a fulltime job as a teacher and was nobody’s Man Friday.
    Eddie visibly shuddered. ‘Taxis. He’s got a deal with one o’ the taxi boys. Costing us a bloody fortune, him whizzin’ aboot like a dervish. Chasing crime, he says. But if you’re worried about being edged oot of a job, Brodie, dinnae fash yersel’. Wullie is just part time for a while until he works oot his notice. Once we gie him it, of course. Besides, you’ve got this new column to play wi’.’
    World affairs, was how Eddie had explained it. The bosses of the paper thought it was time to raise the profile and quality of the paper and expand the readership by tackling the big events in the world outside Glasgow. Outside Scotland even, if that wasn’t too big a step. The Gazette had taken an ad hoc approach to it in the past; when something big happened, like dropping the first atom bomb or the Nuremberg trials, they’d run special columns. Now they thought there was enough incoming material from the wireless and ticker tape to merit a section on its own. Snippets, they said. A round-up of major news items from across the continents. I was their guinea pig. When I’d asked why me, Sandy Logan, our lanky sub-editor, chewed on his inner cheeks for a while and then explained:
    ‘You’re seen as somewhat more worldly, Brodie. If you take a glance over the last twelve months or so, I think