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

impetus, as if he had accidentally hit the start-button of a machine he didn’t know how to stop. Matt Mason was nodding to Billy Fleming. Billy Fleming lifted his pint and began to finish it.
    ‘We’ll never get anywhere,’ Vince Mabon was saying, ‘through the parliamentary system. It’s a set-up. The game’s rigged. Look at the last time. They brainwashed the public with a lotta lies.’
    Billy Fleming walked up to the bar.
    ‘A pint of heavy,’ he said.
    Preoccupied, Alan reached for the empty glass and made to put the next pint in it.
    ‘You not got two glasses, like?’ Billy Fleming said.
    ‘Sorry.’
    Alan lifted a fresh glass and started to fill it.
    ‘I’m tellin’ ye, Alan. To hell with gradualism. It’s revolution we need. Violence is the only way we’ll go forward. Take the struggle into the streets.’
    ‘You talk shite!’
    The remark had the suddenness of a gun going off, leaving you wondering where it came from or if that was what you had heard at all. The confirmation that it had happened was the solidity of the silence that followed it.
    ‘You hear me? You talka loada shite. Ah’m fed up listenin’ to you.’
    Vince shuffled uncomfortably like a man looking for the way down from a platform. When he spoke, his voice had lost its rhetorical tone.
    ‘I’ve got my opinions.’
    ‘Shurrup!’
    The pint Alan had been filling foamed, forgotten, over the rim of the glass.
    ‘Ah don’t want to hear yer opinions,’ Billy Fleming said. ‘You believe in violence? Come out here an’ Ah’ll show ye violence.’
    Vince spoke quietly.
    ‘That’s not the kind of –’
    ‘Ah said shurrup! You’re not payin’ attention. Open yer mouth again and I’ll put a pint-dish down it.’
    The others in the room watched helplessly while Vince went as still as if a block of ice had formed round him. Alan turned off the beer tap.
    ‘Hey!’
    The word was out of Dan Scoular’s mouth before he knew he was going to say it. Some basic feeling had expressed itself beyond his conscious control. The trouble taking place in the pub wasn’t his and he would have preferred to have no part init. But the injustice of the event was so blatant. His instincts had cast his vote for him. But nobody else voted with him or, if they did, the ballot was secret. He felt his isolation, and his head was left to work out how to follow where his heart had led.
    The word had been quiet but it introduced a counter-pressure in the room, a careful groping for leverage. Billy Fleming turned slowly, almost luxuriously, towards where he felt the pressure coming from. He looked steadily at Dan Scoular.
    ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Can Ah help ye?’
    ‘The boy’s just talkin’.’
    ‘Not any more he’s not.’
    They watched each other.
    ‘An’ if he does open his mouth, he’ll get it.’
    ‘You’ll not touch the boy.’
    ‘Are you his daddy?’
    The pressure was balanced evenly between them and, deliberately, with very measured calculation, Billy Fleming tilted it in his favour.
    ‘Well, you’ll get it as well, if ye interfere.’
    Dan Scoular smiled, realising Vince had been a decoy. The smile was camouflage he knew couldn’t protect him much longer. He was angry with himself for having been so easily left with no options. He thought of something Betty had once said of him: ‘When you walk into a room, the only attitude that seems to occur to you is, “What game do you play here? I bet I can play that as good as you.” It never seems to occur to you to say, “I don’t believe in that game. I think it’s a rotten game. I’m not playing.” Why do you think you have to accept the rules?’ It looked as if he had done it again. But he was in the game now and all he could think of to do was try and play it with style.
    ‘You want it badly, don’t ye?’ he said.
    He walked towards the other man and, as Billy Fleming tensed in preparation, walked past him. Billy Fleming was momentarily uncertain, thinking he was being