gave a short speech, and then chose the prettiest girl in the group to come and tie me up. She was too shy, but the boys obliged, setting on me with cowboy whoops and primitive yells. I flexed my non-existent muscles, like I’d read Houdini had done, and kept my face straight, though the bellows and rough jabs from the boys all eager to bind me as secure as possible made me want to struggle. Eventually I was trussed. Some of the strapping was slack but at its core was a tight tangle of metal, a firm pressure through my clothes and onto my flesh. My hands were cuffed behind my back. I felt a strange excitement in my stomach. The boys stepped away, I put on a deep voice that demanded they leave me for fifteen minutes precisely; the audience hesitated and my vulnerability entered the room. I gave them a strong hard stare. Then Ewan McIvor, the tallest of the group, said, 'He’s a fucking weirdo.' Neil Blane picked up the refrain, 'Weirdy Wilson.' And it became hard to make out individual insults beneath the melee of abuse.
Stupid fucking poof… silly cunt… weirdy bastard… Jessie… fucking spazmo… Joey Deakon
…
Ewan pushed me to the ground and the others joined in with quick kicks and jabs, then almost as suddenly as it had started the assault was over. They turned and ran whooping out into the sunshine, slamming the door behind them.
It wasn’t completely black in the hut. Light filtered in through cracks in the untrue slats, but it was dark enough to give the old signalling equipment a sinister aspect. I bumped up onto my bottom, brought my hands round in front of me and grasped the small metal pick I’d hidden beneath my tongue. Then I got my second shock of the adventure.
Police handcuffs are not as easy to unfasten as the trick set I’d been practising on.
It was dinner-time before my mother noticed I was missing. Neighbours’ children were interrogated and my fate soon discovered. My father shook his head, borrowed a pair of bolt cutters and set off to release me. The summer nights are long in Scotland, and it was not quite yet gloaming when he found me. But the shadows inside the signal box had spread their fingers until the little space was black. The darkness had crept inside my clothes, filtered into my nose and mouth, and slunk into my ears until I was unsure whether the rustling noises and groans came from the trees and grasses outside or from some creature inside the box with me.
My father ruffled my hair, and slowly cut my bonds, scolding and comforting in turn, finally releasing me, piss stained, snot crusted and tearful, into my mother’s custody. That was the first time I learned a fact that has haunted me throughout my return to Glasgow. I can’t stand to be locked up and I was never destined to be an escape artist.
After a few of my usual consolations I decided I was finished with pubs for that morning, so I bought myself a picnic and went down to the Clyde to drink it. In Berlin the rivers and canals were part of the centre of the city, there was bathing and boating, tourist barges and river taxis. People sunned themselves and played tennis and frisbee by the banks of the Spree, and though there were rainy days I only ever went there when it was sunny, so my impression is of brightness and good times.
It was damp down by the Clyde. The concrete walkway was deserted but there were signs others had been there before me, rusting beer cans, dead bottles of Buckfast, old porno magazines splaying already splayed women in the breeze. There were a few boats moored by the riverside, but the water was lead-grey dead, if I’d had any thoughts of drowning myself I would have ditched them for the day. The water was too cold to consider it. It would swallow you with a slurp and no word of pardon afterwards.
I walked along by the edge for a while trying to keep my mind empty. I didn’t bother trying to conceal my carry-out from the early afternoon. It swung from my hand in the kind of thin plastic bag licensed grocers seem to think sufficient for transporting lager, though every drinker knows they’ll bend and snap before you’ve walked a mile.
An old man with Struwwelpeter hair lay skippered in the shadows beneath Jamaica Bridge. He’d made a nest from an army-issue sleeping bag supplemented by a bundle of rough-looking blankets and some dismantled cardboard boxes. A tattered tartan trolley stuffed with newspapers lay toppled on the ground beside him. The old man mumbled something and I leant beneath the bridge’s supports and passed him a can of lager. It was more a plea for karma than any kind of sympathy, but the old tramp tipped his hand to his forehead and whispered ‘God go with you son’ in a voice raw with phlegm and cold. I nodded and said, 'And with you.' Though I thought any god had probably given up on both of us a long while back.
I found a bench, tucked my supplies neatly beneath its seat and settled myself down with my first tin, pulling the collar of my jacket up. It was pretty bitter down there by the river, but there was a distant gleam somewhere across the sky and it was no longer impossible to believe that spring was somewhere in the beyond. I took a sip of the beer. The liquid was warmer than the air outside, but it was better quality than the stuff I’d been supping in the bar. These old tramps were obviously men of discernment. Who knows what I might learn if I joined their ranks?
Berlin
THE SOUND OF Montgomery’s voice had sent me out into the street cursing Bill with his public-school vowels and his gangster pretensions that got people killed. This whole escapade was nothing to do with me.
There was money in my pocket; I could catch a flight that afternoon if I wanted. I fished out the scrap of paper Sylvie had written her number on. It took me a while to find a phone box, and then it took me a while to follow the instructions in German, but eventually the phone at the other end started to ring. Sylvie picked up and I asked her, 'Still looking for a job?'
'You found something already?'
'How do you fancy working with me for a while as my assistant?'
I left the phone booth with her shriek of excitement still ringing in my ears and started to walk towards the theatre, wondering what was inside the envelope I had sent home.
Glasgow
SEAGULLS WERE CACKLING above the Clyde. They made low, swift, argumentative swoops towards the water, maybe remembering times when they fished for their supper, instead of splitting restaurant rubbish bags and vying with urban vermin for abandoned takeaways. I wondered why they chose to live in this city when there were swathes of white sandy beaches and clear seawaters up north on the coast, but then who was I to judge? I raised my can to the sky and said, 'Go on yoursels. Away and shite on as many heads as you can.'
A posse of neds sloped down the walkway towards me. I lowered my eyes and tilted my head so they wouldn’t catch me following their progress. The last thing I wanted to hear was the immortal line, 'What the fuck’re you looking at?' A prelude to a Glasgow kiss or worse. There were five of them, dressed in trainers and shell suits, each with their hood up, hands in pockets. They had an excited bouncing walk, their heads bowed towards the ground,
