wardrobe, never to wear again.
He didn’t sense his dad entering the room as he gazed outside, just heard John Lennox’s cough and saw him pointing at a pile of his school books and saying, — These are your windaes, son. Nothing out there but tatty hooses and snottery beaks.
1986
The promise to Les was kept; they never went back down Colinton Dell, or talked to anyone about the incident. Only once was it ever mentioned between them. It was 1986, a Friday, in early May.
Les’s family had recently moved out to Clermiston, another scheme. The Lennoxes had bought their council home, sold it at a profit and moved to a modest private development at Colinton Mains. The boys were almost sixteen and had been drinking concealed vodka in their Coke with Shirley Feeney and Karen Witton, two girls from Oxgangs, whom they had met and got off with at a teen disco at Buster Brown’s nightclub earlier. They went down by the canal to kiss and fondle. Dissatisfied with his rations, frustrated that there was nowhere else to go, Les started to pressure Karen, demanding that she perform fellatio. He became more insistent, working up to outright bullying and threats. The girl’s obvious fear took Ray Lennox back to the tunnel. He’d realised he and Les were growing apart, held together only by the football. His behaviour scared and nauseated Lennox, while Les was angry with him for not colluding and subjecting Shirley to similar harassment. Manoeuvring him away from the increasingly distraught girls, Lennox said, — Mind that time down the Dell? Those three nutters?
— What aboot them? What the fuck’s that goat tae dae wi anything?
But Lennox saw the shame that fuelled his aggression. He’d looked steadily at Les, till his friend’s glare weakened.
— Cunts, Les Brodie said in a low growl. — Ah’d really like to meet those fuckers now.
It wasn’t an empty boast. They had remained friends since that day at the Dell, but Les had changed. An unbridled aggression became part of his make-up, and the mark of the bully began to taint a previously playful soul. The seagulls. He loved to shoot the gulls. But Ray Lennox had also changed. They said he was antisocial at school. Not a burgeoning gang member, like Les. More of a loner. Withdrawn. Weird even.
Lennox felt intimidated by Les’s new Clermiston pals; they seemed like the semi-feral bams of predatory cast that they’d studiously avoided back in Oxgangs. And the following day he was on the train to Dundee with some of them.
That morning he’d looked at the crushed booklist he’d kept secret all those years. He’d never read the books back then. He couldn’t say why. Couldn’t explain he wanted to so much but needed to find them for himself. Didn’t want anybody giving them to him. He was currently enthralled by Melville’s
There were about two dozen loosely connected groups of friends who’d come up on the train. Like all mobs of fifteen-year-old apprentice hard men, it contained those just along for the laugh as well as others gripped, if fleetingly, by the excitement and the possibilities that such a scene might offer them. A few were already immersed in that life, evidenced by the dull, cold stillness in their eyes and the tightness around their mouths and jaws. Les had seemed to be avoiding Ray Lennox, surrounding himself with the more dangerous element. There was a hierarchy, which Lennox sensed he’d have to work his way up. But he did get to ask his old friend about his pigeon loft.
— Gittin rid ay it, Les had spat tightly, barely making eye contact. — Fuckin seek ay they things.
Ten thousand Hearts supporters had match tickets and packed on to the terracing behind one goal and the enclosure along the side of the pitch. All were looking to the tunnel under the stand, as their nervy team, clad in an away strip of silvery-grey shirts and maroon shorts, took the field to explosive applause. They believed that the League Championship flag was on its way to Tynecastle. After all, Hearts had now gone twenty-seven League games undefeated, thirty-one, if you counted the Scottish Cup.
Scotland’s legendary commentator, Archie MacPherson, had perched on gantries even more rudimentary and less salubrious than the one he stood on at Dens Park, microphone in hand. No pundits to assist him, it was a lonely furrow to plough, but always the pro and enthusiast, he went for the big opening to do the occasion justice. — Well, who, way back in August, blessed with a second sight, the seventh son of a seventh son, could have foreseen Hearts on the very last day of the season, playing for the championship, requiring only one point…
As ten thousand voices sang ‘Hello, Hello, We are the Gorgie Boys’, the club chairman, Wallace Mercer, took his seat in the directors’ box, giving the stage smirk of the man resigned to the fact that he’d never be as loved as he felt was his due. But something had evaporated inside Mercer. Almost before anyone else in the stadium, he believed that his team would not triumph. There had been a dressing-room virus precipitating the absence of Craig Levein, a key defender. Mercer had detected a lethargy about many of the players. When he had looked into their eyes before they went to change, they did not seem to him like men willing to take the prize. They looked as if they felt their work was done and now craved a long rest, resenting this further imposition.
Down on the terraces, the smell of Bovril, pies. Stale lager and whisky and tobacco. Of swaying men, intoxicated by alcohol and nerves. The referee’s whistle blows and Dundee make the early running, as a shaky Hearts defence clear an effort over the bar. The first half flies by, then time slows down. Lennox can perceive it during the break. That sense of the speed of life fading like autumn light. Hearts have held their own against a lively Dundee, but no more than that. A feeling takes root that the day of celebration is turning into something else. If there is to be glory, there will be pain first. Disappointment, then a barely repressed anger are suddenly hanging in the air.
At half-time Mercer’s gut is in such turmoil that he can’t touch the food in the directors’ hospitality or imbibe another drink. He’s heard the news from Paisley, where St Mirren are tamely capitulating to Celtic, who are eating into the Hearts goal-difference advantage. Now one strike for Dundee will lose the Edinburgh side the flag. Like every other Hearts supporter in the ground, Mercer feels they need to score to be sure of the draw. He’s heard from the dugout that Alex MacDonald has hooked midfielders Whittaker and Black, both of whom are spent. Feeling the sweat on his brow, Wallace Mercer heads to the washroom to wipe it off and move his thinning strands of hair back into place. He urinates, washes his hands and curses as boiling water from the red tap scalds him. He belatedly notes a sign that says WARNING VERY HOT WATER above the sink.
Shaking off the discomfort, he looks into the mirror, resets his face to its trademark grin. Mercer’s spent enough time in front of cameras and in the business world to know that fear and anxiety are emotions best kept hidden. He straightens the tie he was unaware that he’d tugged out of place during the first forty-five minutes. An advocate of the power of positive thinking, he considers: we were ninety minutes away from the flag, and now we’re only forty-five. So it’s so far, so good. But other emotions intrude: he’s seen enough games to be aware of how sport inflicts temporal distortions, how a goal conceded early gives you time to regroup and fight back. But a late strike… He knows the sense of entitlement success confers on those who have enjoyed it; doubts that Celtic, or Rangers, or even Aberdeen under Alex Ferguson, would falter at this point.
Worst of all, the businessman, a logical risk assessor, starts to whisper in his head: if you’re unbeaten in thirty-one consecutive games, does that not make the probability of losing the thirty-second one even greater? He thinks of that fantastic undefeated run, comparing performances, trying to compile a balance sheet between the devastating victories where the opposition had been brushed aside, against the occasions where luck was ridden. It hits him that the team are short of class. They have Robertson’s predatory strikes, Colquhoun’s electric runs, the absent Levein’s elegance and judgement at the back, but the rest are journeymen and old pros playing out of their skins in a well-organised side built on efficiency and work rate. And the virus has taken its toll on the team’s engine. A silent prayer spilling from his lips as he leaves the toilets, Mercer heads back out to the box in the stand. Les Porteous, the club secretary, says something he doesn’t catch, but registers its good intent with a nod and smile. The second half kicks off.
In a crowd of surly, youthful acquaintances, Raymond Lennox feels suddenly guilty that he’s not here with his dad. The unspoken inference is that it would be fitting for father and son to watch the game together; the history-making match that wins Hearts the flag. He announces his intention of going to look for the old man. As he departs, he hears a derogatory remark passed. Turns to see some of the boys, including Les, laughing at him, but his momentum has carried him down the steps and he continues snaking through the crowd, not looking back. He touches the bumfluff under his nose. Mutters a curse on the treacherous Les, the hard man with his new hard-men mates. Continues his search for his father. In a sea of ten thousand, he knows he will easily find him behind the
