Slip of the Knife Read Free Page A

by an unsympathetic journalist who’d print a picture and ruin what little anonymity he had. Most journalists would have bitten Sean’s hand off for the opportunity but Paddy had her doubts about writing it: she couldn’t guarantee a sympathetic story, and anyway, Callum didn’t want to talk to anyone.
    She loitered in the hall, looking down at the boxes of Dub’s records and a cardboard rack of her work clothes. Unpacking had ground to a halt a month ago and now they only noticed the boxes when they saw them from an unusual angle.
    The ceilings were high in the flat. The early Victorians took tenements seriously, built them on a grand scale with servants’ quarters and drawing rooms that could accommodate dance parties, and Lansdowne Crescent was one of the oldest tenements in the West End of Glasgow.
    It was a student flat before Paddy bought it. The hall was still purple with canary yellow trim, the detailing on the magnificent cornicing obscured under a century and a half of pasty emulsion. The three bedrooms were painted in colors that would exacerbate a hangover and the kitchen ceiling was so nicotine stained that it was hard to tell whether it had been painted white or kipper yellow.
    At twenty-seven, she was in her first home away from her family and she was still gliding around it like a triumphant child in a longed-for Wendy house.
    Back in the living room Dub smirked up at her. Paddy could tell by the crumbs on his T-shirt front that he’d stolen some of her biscuits.
    “Who was it?”
    “A wee journalist from the Mail. Asking about Callum Ogilvy. How’s the show this week?”
    “Oh, bliss, it’s even worse.”
    “Can’t be.”
    They watched as George H. Burns demanded a welcoming round of applause from the audience, his eyes flashing angry as he backed offstage to the wings. The curtain rose on a sweating ventriloquist with a cow puppet sitting upright on his knee, its impertinent pink udders quivering in the spotlight.
    The Saturday Night Old Time Variety Show was arse-clenchingly poor. George H. Burns’s compèring style revolved around insulting the audience. He guessed where they were from, told jokes about skinflints from Aberdeen and half-wits from Dundee. His material was obvious, the intervening acts mediocre, the musicians plodding.
    “Even the curtains look tired,” said Dub.
    The viewing figures were spectacular: every single week the numbers halved. But it wasn’t really funny. If Burns’s career took a nosedive he’d stop giving Paddy money, even sporadically, and she was stretched tight enough as it was.
    Dub had been George’s manager when the TV company approached them and offered the show. He advised Burns not to host it on the grounds that it would be absolutely fucking shit. Burns, greedy and headstrong, sacked the guy who’d brought him to the brink of stardom and replaced him with a manager who wore shiny suits and couldn’t talk to a woman without staring at her tits. Now even he knew the show was crap. He was angry, blaming the producer, the writers, the quality of the acts, but the flaw was in the concept: variety theater needed revival because it was dying, and it was dying because it was patchy and dull. Worse for George, going mainstream had alienated all his comrades on the alternative comedy circuit. Far from being alternative, the circuit was suddenly all there was, apart from guest spots and workingmen’s clubs.
    “Mother of God,” muttered Paddy, dropping into her chair. “Where are they finding these people? Backstage must be like the bus to Lourdes.”
    “They’re all actual performers. Dinosaurs. Actually, mini-saurs. Baby saurs.” He lay there, grinning, his chin folded into his neck, the sole pocket of fat on his entire six-foot-two frame. She’d been flat sharing with him for two months and saw how much he ate. She’d always hoped that thin people were lying, that they didn’t eat giant meals and keep their figures just the same, but Dub ate