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.
‘Been doin’ a wee job,’ he said.
‘Checkin’ out a couple of things,’ he said.
‘A good thing I don’t pay income tax.’
‘This round’s on the Bank of Scotland.’
‘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 white suits. 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.
‘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.
‘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.
‘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 you the right to face more and more obscure questions the relevance of which to football wasn’t easy to see. ‘Tell me,’ Frankie had once said to Mick by way of parody. ‘In what Scotland–England game did it rain for four-and-a-half minutes at half-time? And how wet was the rain?’
Over in the usual corner Gus McPhater was sitting with two cronies. Frankie hated the big words Gus used. That left Big Harry behind the bar, besides three others Frankie didn’t know. Big Harry had finally noticed him and was approaching with the speed of a mirage.
‘Frankie,’ Big Harry said.
‘Harry. I’ll have a drop of the wine of the country.’
‘Whit?’
‘A whisky, Harry. Grouse. And what you’re havin’ yourself?’
Big Harry turned down the corners of his mouth even further. He looked at Frankie as if dismayed at his insensitivity.
‘Me?’ Big Harry said. ‘Ye kiddin’? Wi’ ma stomach? Ye want a death on yer conscience? Still.’ His face assumed a look of martyred generosity. ‘Tell ye what. Ah’ll take the price of it an’ have it when Ah finish. Probably no’ get a wink of sleep the night. But ye’ve got to get some pleasure.’
Frankie remembered Harry’s nickname – Harry Kari. He wasn’t sure whether the nickname was because that was what everybody felt like trying after a conversation with Harry or because that was what people thought Harry should do. No wonder Gus McPhater was quoted as saying, ‘Harry does for conversation what lumbago does for dancin’.’ Harry was the kind of barman who told you his problems.
‘Religion?’ Gus McPhater was saying. He was always saying something. ‘Don’t waste ma time. The opium of the masses. It’s done damage worse than a gross of atomic bombs. Chains for the brainbox, that’s religion. Ministers? Press agents for the rulin’ classes. Ye’ll no’ catch me in a church. If Ah could, Ah’d cancel ma christenin’ retrospectively. Take yer stained-glass windaes. Whit’s a windae for? To see through. Right? So what do they do? They cover it in pictures. So that when ye look at the light. The light, mind ye. That’s how ye see, ye know. Light refractin’ on yer pupils. When ye look for the light, it gets translated intae what they want ye tae see. How’s that for slavery? An’ whit d’ye see? A lot of holy mumbo-jumbo. People Ah don’t know from Adam. What’ve a bunch of first-century Jewish fanatics got to do wi’ me? Ah’ll tell ye what. Know when Ah’ll go intae a church? When it’s man’s house. When the stained-glass windaes are full of holy scenes of rivetters in bunnets and women goin’ the messages wi’ two weans hangin’ on to their arse an’ auld folk huddled in at one bar of an electric fire after fifty years o’ slavin’ their guts out for a society that doesny care if they live or die. Those would be windaes worth lookin’ at. That’s what art should be. Holy pictures of the people. Or a mosaic even. How about that? See when they made that daft town centre. The new precinct. The instant slum. See instead o’ that fountain. Why not a big mosaic? Showin’ the lives of the people here an’ now. How about that? The Graithnock mosaic. Why no?’
Frankie had no desire to join in. He contented himself with a mime of his superior status. Gus McPhater depressed him. People listened to him as if the noises he made with his mouth meant something. He was a balloon. A lot of stories were told about him. He was supposed to have travelled all round the world. He was supposed to be writing a novel or short stories or something. Frankie didn’t believe any of them.
Gus seemed to Frankie an appropriate patron saint for Graithnock. He was like the town itself – over the hill and sitting in dark pubs inventing the past. Frankie could remember this place when the industry was still going strong. There had been some vigour about the place then. They were all losers now – phoneys, like Gus McPhater.
Frankie couldn’t believe this place. The only kind of spirit in it was bottled. He felt like an orchid in a cabbage-patch. Where was the old style, the old working-class gallousness? Since the Tory government had come to power, it had really done a job on them, slaughtering all the major industry. They believed they were as useless as the government had told them they were. These men were the cast-offs of capitalism. They were pathetic.
Well, he was different. If the system was trying to screw him, he would screw it. He had his own heroes and they weren’t kings of industry. He thought of McQueen. He wondered how long it would be before McQueen got back out. McQueen, there was a man. He was more free in the nick than most men were outside it.
That was what you had to do: defy your circumstances. You were what you declared yourself to be. Frankie looked round the bar and made a decision. He would buy a drink for someone. He pulled his wad of money from his pocket. In the flourish of the gesture he became a successful criminal.
He
