Espedair Street

Stolichnaya. In fact this was a total fabrication, to pay back McCann for his blind man in the toilet, but:

'Aye, Ah heard that too,' McCann said. 'Makes ye sick, doesn't it?'

'I don't know,' I said, annoyed. 'Does it?'

'You sure your boss doesny mind us drinkin aw this booze Jim?' McCann said, ignoring or ignorant. He held up an empty Bud bottle and inspected one of Ambrose's stained-glass windows through it.

'I've told you.' I told him. And I had told him. McCann always asks that question, and I always tell him it's okay. 'It's okay; he doesn't mind.'

'Positive?'

'Certain; he's given it up. Told me to help myself.'

McCann looked around the crates of drink piled up in the nave amongst all the rest of my Comecon booty, and scratched his chin. 'He should sell aw that stuff if he doesnae want it.'

'Too complicated. Have to pay duty... all sorts of things. He can't be bothered.'

'Aye, he must be rich, right enough... awright if I... ?' McCann held up his empty bottle.

'Help yourself,' I told him. McCann went for another bottle.

'Ah've never seen this guy, Jimmy, ye know that? Does he never come round here at all?'

'Last time he was here was... must have been a year ago. More, maybe.'

'Whit's his name again?' McCann used the bottle opener tied to the end of the pew, drank from the bottle.

'Weird.'

'Funny name, that.'

'Funny guy.'

'He's no goannae knock this pile doon an build an office block, naw?'

'Can't. The building's got to stay as it is; that's why he got it so cheap.'

'Diddae get a mortgage on it, aye?'

'I don't think so,' I said, not sure whether McCann was taking the piss or not. 'He's rich. Eccentric.'

'Aye,' McCann said ruefully, 'if yer rich yer just eccentric; if yer poor yer a nutcase an they stick ye in the bin.'

'Rank has its privileges.'

'You're tellin me, pal.'

We drank our drinks. McCann looked round at the piles of booze. ' Aye, this stuff's all very well, but Ah fancy a pint of heavy. Cumin up the Griff?'

'Aye; time for lunch.' The Griffin is our local; a decent, unspoiled but lively enough bar with cheap food. I've never shaken off the tastes of my childhood, and still prefer the Griffin's pie, beans and chips to the Albany's five- star steak au poivre with fennel, asparagus, courgettes and new potatoes... besides, the Albany would mean dressing up. And a bath too, probably. We got up to go. I took our empty bottles of Bud and chucked them into the shovel of the Russian bulldozer as we passed it on the way to the front doors. I had to get some cash before we went to the Griff.

'An what the fuck's he got all this plant fur?' McCann said, shaking his head at the assembled machinery. I hauled open the small door set into the big main doors — barn-sized; I could get a double decker bus in here no problem — and hauled McCann away from the Polish dump truck (full of vodka bottles).

'They're no his,' I told him. 'The builders left them.'

'Aye, affy funny,' McCann said outside, buttoning up his jacket and staring across the road at the glossy, tinted mirror-shade facade of the Britoil building opposite. When I bought the folly, all that had been there was a hole; the office complex had been completed this year. Just in time for the oil slump and redundancies to be announced. I stopped beside McCann, looking at the distorted reflection of the folly shown on its tiered walls. 'Bloody monstrosity ' McCann said, tutting. ' Ah think ah preferred the hole.'

'You're a reactionary old bastard,' I told him, bounding down the steps to the street.

'Reactionary! Me? Ye big pape.' He hurried down to catch up. 'It's no the likes of me that's reactionary, I'll tell you, pal; nothing reactionary about tryin tae maintain yer heritage, even if it is a hole in the ground; reactionary is yer fuckin entrepreneurs and yer shareholders, attempting tae maintain the capitalist system against the tide of history, an it doesnae matter how ye dress up that sort of...'

McCann kept on about progress and regress, action and reaction, and capitalism and communism, all the way to the bank, where I lent him a tenner.

As we walked back to the Griffin, I kept thinking about Rick Tumber's telemessage, wondering what he wanted to talk about, and worrying about his reasons for phrasing it just the way he had.

You get to know how people put things, the way they use words, just where the stresses fall. Trying to recall Rick's rather Midatlantic phrasing style, I couldn't help thinking that if Rick said 'This is good news,' he probably meant 'This is good news,' contrasting it with something else, that wasn't. Or maybe I was just being paranoid, as usual.

Could something have happened that I didn't know about? Easily; I avoid newspapers, television and radio, for most of the year. I have my Information Binges, but they're few and far between, about every two months or so.

During an Information Binge, I rent a few televisions, buy a radio and order every paper and magazine I can get my hands on. I read everything, I have the radio on constantly and I watch TV; all of it; soaps and adverts and quiz shows and kids' programmes. A good, thorough-going Binge normally lasts about a week; after that I'm usually goggle-eyed with lack of sleep, not to mention sickened at what passes for popular culture...

The rest of the time, I still read a lot, but mostly books and magazines, and not even news magazines. So for a large part of the year I'm totally out of touch; they could start the next world war and I wouldn't know anything about it until the streets filled with people pushing carts and prams and sticking tape over their windows...

Had I missed something? Was there really that hidden emphasis in Tumber's message?

No; paranoia. Had to be. Rick wasn't consistent enough for anybody to read nuances into his phrasing. His memo style depended entirely on whether he'd just taken a hit of coke, had a heavy lunch or recently fallen in or out of love again. Still, the message worried me.

There was a song once:

Heard much later that while I sat there
You were flying back east and home.
Never read your note at all dear,
Got the message on my own.
Threw it into the empty fire-grate,
Went out, had a good time.
But as it lay there cold until the daybreak
— It was burning in my mind.

Nothing startling... but I kept hearing the tune in my head, and my old songs have always been bad news, for me or for others. My curse, my jinx; should have called me Jonah at birth and have done with it... Mister Mistaken, Captain Clumsy...

The doors of the Griffin approached. 'That guy wasn't really blind, was he?' I asked McCann.

'Naw,' McCann said firmly. 'Ah never tangle with blind punters...'

'Good.'

'... they carry sticks.'

'McCann...' I turned to him, but he was grinning at me, and winked.

'Naw,' he said again, as we went through the doors. 'Ye wouldnae see me tackle a blind punter.'