Read Online The Big Man by William McIlvanney - Free Book Online

It was as if every man and his family were a private company. Once, thanks to a man he had made friends with in Fraserburgh, he had gone out to make some extra money on a boat that fished out of Mallaig. Even those fishermen, brave, and kind to him, had sounded like wealthier versions of the men on the train.
    He had wondered often if he had all his life been pursuing the wrong dream, since it was supposed to be a shared dream and so few other people seemed to be having it. More and more, he understood Betty’s dismay at him. Lately, he had been thinking he should look more to his own perhaps, make what he could for Betty and the boys and forget anything else. It seemed a way he might win Betty back, for he dreaded he was losing her. Maybe it was just his preoccupation with that dread that had made him wonder if it was something about Betty Wullie Mairshall had been hinting at before Dan left them.
    Dan had walked away several yards when Wullie followed him, leaving Steelie swaying on the pavement like a slightly top-heavy potted plant. Wullie put his hand on Dan’s arm and looked at him with maudlin affection. His words seemed surfacing from the bottom of a very deep pool.
    ‘Dan. Ah’ll need to see ye in private sometime. A quiet talk.’
    ‘What is it, Wullie?’
    Wullie’s forefinger hovered in front of his own lips like an eyesight test.
    ‘Personal, Dan. Very personal.’
    ‘Ye can come to the house anytime, Wullie.’
    ‘Not suitable, Dan. Anyway, Ah’m not a hundred per cent sure of ma information yet. Let’s leave it the now. But remember. Ah’ve always got your interests at heart. Nobody takes liberties wi’ you on the fly while Ah’m around.’
    ‘Liberties? In what way, Wullie?’
    ‘Dan. Let’s leave it there. Enquiries will be made. Meantime, my lips are sealed. Ah’ll be sure before Ah speak. And when Ah am, it’ll be for your ears only.’ He winked. ‘Ah’m your man, Dan Scoular. Ah’m your man.’
    The knowledge hadn’t reassured Dan. As he nodded to Frankie White in acknowledgment of his second pint, Dan hopedWullie’s drunkenly decorous secrecy hadn’t been about Betty. He didn’t know how he could cope with hearing bad things about her. He tried to convince himself it would be about something a lot less important, perhaps that somebody had informed on him to the Inland Revenue for building a garden wall for a man in Blackbrae and not declaring the money he earned for it. It could be that. Wullie Mairshall, who was still only sixty-four but had taken early retirement with his redundancy money two years ago, did gardens in Blackbrae, for some of what Wullie called ‘the big hooses’, and Wullie always talked as much as he delved. He might have heard something.
    He hoped, whatever it was, it didn’t impinge too immediately on his family. Being so insecure about himself, he felt an awareness of vulnerability spread to Betty and his children. He feared the susceptibility of Betty to another man. He worried about how his sons were supposed to grow up decent among the shifting values that surrounded them, when he wasn’t sure himself what he stood for any more. Sometimes just the sheer amount of undigested experience they were asked to deal with through watching television troubled him. It seemed to him that at their age his experience had come at him through a filter of shared, accepted values which they perhaps lacked, or which at least had more gaps. Their experience came at them more quickly and they rushed more quickly to meet it.
    He remembered Raymond telling him last week about a dream he had had. Raymond was walking in a street alone when he saw a woman lying there. He had known, as you know in dreams without knowing how you know, that she was dead. She was dressed in a skirt and a blouse. ‘Maybe like an office worker,’ Raymond had said. He had knelt over her and noticed blood trickling from the side of her mouth. While he was studying her, he had heard a noise that