Walking Wounded

Walking Wounded Read Free Page A

Book: Walking Wounded Read Free
Author: William McIlvanney
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would survive, which aspects of your character would wither and which get more pronounced. Then maybe you could tell which randyteenager was destined to become a pillar of the Women’s Guild, which demure young woman would learn how to keep a tiger in the bedroom, and which girl who could bare herself beautifully among the trees would, in middle age, wear a nightdress like a cotton chastity belt.
    Bert Watson sighed. He sat in his expensive suit, successful, longing for mud. What was the exact miscalculation with the dresses?
    â€˜Who gives a monkey’s fart?’ he said aloud and looked at Samantha and wondered if Sally had left the office yet.

2
    Performance
    F ast Frankie White didn’t go into a bar. He entered. He felt his name precede him like a fanfare he had to live up to. As with a lot of small criminals, he had no house of his own, no money in the bank, no deposit account of social status to draw on. He had no fixed place in the scheme of things that could feed back a clear sense of himself, be a mirror. His only collateral was his reputation, a whiff of mild scandal that clung round him like eau-de-Cologne.
    Being an actor, he needed applause. His took the form of mutterings of ‘Fast Frankie White’ most places he went because he chose to go places where they would mutter it. Without that reminder of who he was, he might forget his lines. His favourite lines were cryptic throwaways that reverberated in the minds of the gullible with vaguely dark potential.
    â€˜Been doin’ a wee job,’ he said.
    â€˜Checkin’ out a couple of things,’ he said.
    â€˜A good thing I don’t pay income tax.’
    â€˜This round’s on the Bank of Scotland.’
    â€˜He’s got his own style, Frankie,’ some people said. But that was a less than astutely critical observation. It was really a lot of other people’s styles observed from the back row of the pictures, a kind of West of Scotland American. Once, when he was twenty, he had seen a Robert Taylor film about New York where some people were wearing whitesuits. He had snapped his fingers and said, ‘I’m for there!’ A few weeks later, by a never-explained financial alchemy, he was. A few weeks later, he was back but he liked to talk about New York. ‘There’s half-a-million people in the Bronx,’ he would say. ‘And most of them’s bandits.’ It wasn’t Fodor’s Guide to the USA but it sounded impressive, said quickly. And Frankie said everything quickly.
    â€˜The Akimbo Arms’ was one of the pubs where he liked to make his entrance. He was originally from Thornbank, a village near Graithnock, but he lived in Glasgow now, people said. Frankie didn’t say where he lived. He would simply appear in a Graithnock bar, dressed, it seemed, in items auctioned off from the wardrobe department of some bankrupt Hollywood studio and produce a wad of notes.
    This time he was wearing a light blue suit, pink shirt, white tie and grey shoes. He looked as if he had stepped out of a detergent advert.
    â€˜Where’s ma sunglasses?’ somebody said.
    But Frankie was already flicking a casual hand in acknowledgement of people who didn’t know who he was. He walked round to the end of the bar where he could have his back against the wall, presumably in case the G-men burst in on him, and he prepared to give his performance.
    It was a poor house. Matinees usually were. Mick Haggerty was standing along the bar from him, in earnest debate with an unsuspecting stranger, who probably hadn’t realised Mick’s obsession until it was too late.
    â€˜Give me,’ Mick was saying, ‘the four men that’ve played for Scotland an’ their names’ve only got three letters in them.’
    Frankie hoped for the stranger’s sake that he didn’t get the answer right. Doing well in one of Mick’s casual football quizzes was a doubtful honour, earning

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