The pigeons clattered round the chimneys, white wings exploding on the rise to catch the morning sun, fantails and blues in tight formation. He watched them circle and wheel. A lone snow feather cradled its way to the grass.
"Is that you Jack? Come in, hombre."
Jack waited a minute or two, admiring the way the birds stayed tight and drilled, turning or gliding, all in unison, perfect teamwork.
He pushed between the pigeon loft and his uncle's big old motorbike, opened the door and almost fell over a thigh-high black plastic bin. He sniffed thick musty air.
"What's that stench? It would knock you flat."
Sandy Bruce laughed. "You get used to it."
"Man, you'll never get used to that. What the hell is it?"
Sandy came out of the kitchen into the hall. He wore a sixties-style string vest under his boiler suit, a pair of fifties style octagonal glasses and a quarter inch of silvery stubble from two days before. He must have been busy with the pigeons or the boat boys who hung about down on the river.
Sandy pointed to each of the three plastic bins, counting off in turn. "Irish stout, heavy and lager. Pilsner lager, the kind you young fellas like. Bueno cerveza." Sandy had picked up a few languages from his sailing days. Tomorrow it might be Italian. Today it was something like Mexican bandido.
"Are you sure? It smells like dead bodies. "
"Sure I'm sure. That's just the mash fermenting. Once it stops, it's okay."
"How much are you making?"
"Sixty gallons this time. It's the club's AGM in two weeks and you probably heard that tosser Tim Farmer's done a bunk with the kitty. Being entertainments convener, it's up to me to make sure we've got a decent purvey."
He was using a broom handle to stir the contents of the bin nearest him, sending up a blister of bubbles that stank as badly as the marshes out on the golf flats and looked even more poisonous. Jack held his nose.
"I really don't think it's worth it."
"Sure it is. You get to pension age and see how much beer you can buy. The price of it's just an absolute scandal and every year the tax goes through the roof. Hell, it's the only pleasure a man's got left, that and the birds."
"So you say. You're up to every scam going."
"You know what it's like Jake. The older I get, I stand for more and fall for less."
"I thought you were racing the birds today."
Sandy shook his head and kept stirring and Jack kept his hands clamped on his nose. The thick malty smell caught him in the back of the throat and he wished he hadn't had so much to drink the previous night."
"Have you got a license for this?"
"Don't need one, seeing it's just home brew. Me and Willie McIver chipped in for the sugar and stuff and what we'll do is charge entrance money, so we can't get done for selling."
"You're a twenty carat scoundrel, Sandy."
"Takes one to know one. Tell you what, if I had a still, I could turn this into whisky, and then we'd really be in business."
"And then I'd be bailing you out of jail."
"My old grandfather, he had a still himself, him and my uncles, up the back of beyond some place near the Cardross Hills. Made it out of an old copper boiler. That was back in the twenties, a whole long time ago. That stuff they made would have lifted paint and raised blisters but they got a taste for it. All you do is make beer and then steam it off."
"And you end up going blind."
Sandy laughed and stirred and the bubbles farted about on the surface as if the mash was alive.
"You got to take the opportunity. Like what you're always telling me about supply and demand. I've got the supply, and the boys in the club, well, they'll be doing the demanding, and me and Willie can make enough to get another batch going and make a bit of profit besides."
"But it stinks. I mean, it would make you boke. You should let him do it in his place."
"He's doing it in his place. That way we end up with a hunner' and twenty gallons. There's a bowling club smoker coming up as well and we're catering for that as all. Then the Boat Club bash. Next thing you know, we'll be bigger than Interbrew."
Sandy laughed again and scratched his stubble. "Wish I'd thought of this years ago. I could have been big. Muy grande. Here. . . " he made a beckoning motion. "Bring that siphon across. I have to decant the first batch."
He opened the little cupboard beyond the kitchen door and Jack stood, open mouthed. From floor to ceiling it had five deep shelves and each one of them was jammed to the edge with bottles of all kinds. Lemonade, Iron Brew, Lucozade, a few dry sherry bottles and a couple of big whisky optics that had obviously made their way from some bar.
"Been all over the place this week, collecting them. Me and Willie. You wouldn't imagine how much good glass people throw away."
"Oh, come on, Sandy, you can't go feeding people moonshine in old chuckaway bottles. You never know who's pee'd in them. You could poison all of the old biddies."
"Less of the old. And don't you worry boy, they're clean as a whistle. We got your Mam to go into Boots and buy us some of that stuff she used to clean your baby bottles. If it's good for babies, then it's good for the pigeon men. You think my head buttons up the back?"
"I'm not so sure."
Jack handed him a corrugated tube that looked like a windpipe with some plastic attachment that Sandy jammed onto the third bin and the beer started to flow. Jack had to admit that the finished article smelt a whole lot better than the fresh stuff and he was surprised that it actually looked like beer when it began to fill the bottles. He did a mental calculation on how many bottles would be needed for twenty gallons and worked it out that they could be siphoning the brew for an hour and a half. He turned out to be off by only twenty minutes.
"You want a beer?"
"At this time of day? Give me a break. Your kidneys must be like saddlebags."
"Don't get smart. Put the kettle on then and I'll get the board."
It was a tradition between them and had been since Jack had been only seven or eight and they'd started playing draughts before progressing to chess. Sandy sometimes managed to con him into a game of shoot pontoon and always took a few notes off him and Jack never saw how he palmed the royals but he knew his Uncle was fast as a snake when he wanted to be, a throwback to his old days on tramp steamers up and down the Americas. He'd been a wild man, so the stories went, and Sandy embellished just a few of them. Jack made tea thick as tar and got a pair of penguin biscuits from his jacket pocket. Sandy dunked them until the chocolate spread out on the surface and then slurped them between his teeth. Nothing changed.
"Here," he said. "You have to try this stuff."
He went into the hall and came back with a big demi-jon that held a gallon of opaque liquid.
"What is it?"
"Try it first and you tell me." He poured some into a small glass. Jack raised it, sniffed, recognised a familiar scent and tasted.
It was smooth as silk with a full, warm aftertaste. For a moment he thought it was the stuff he and the Swedish twins had been drinking at Robert's party. He drank again, and Sandy grinned.
"Not bad, eh?"
"What is it?"
"I met this widow woman in Ireland last year, when we were across for the Connaught race. Me and her, we sort of..."
"I know what you sort of, you old skank chancer. I swear to god, when you go, you'll be the last of the diehards. They'll never get the lid down."
Sandy cuffed him light on the back of the head.
"Some respect young man. Anyway, she had the recipe for some woman's drink from the place she worked. She made a batch, just some whisky and bits and bobs. It loosened the laces on her inhibitions right enough."
"And you loosened the rest. Heard it already."
"Anyway, I watched her and picked up the gist of it. Then I added a few things of my own. The old biddies, they can't get enough of it. The bowling night's going to be a hoolie. Want some more?"
"Another time," Jack said. It was good, but not with a fading hangover. He took a sip of tea to kill the alcohol taste, Sandy moved a pawn and they were off, sitting in the kitchen, surrounded by bottles of every variety, in a fug of beer and Sandy's Virginia flake roll-up, stout tea and chocolate biscuits and apart from the beer and the creamy liqueur, that's how it went most early Saturday mornings.
"It's not looking too clever at the dairy." Pawn up two squares.
"I heard that too." Knight two up, freeing the bishop. "I also hear Andy Kerr's facing a whole heap of trouble."
"Looks like. His cousin Billy's been at some sort of scam. I'll get the details on Monday."
"Billy was always sticky fingered. Had too much too easy. I hear he's done a bunk with some bimbo, just like that daft old git Tim Farmer. He's nicked off with a secretary from the distillery, just half his age."
"Tim's about seventy, is he not?"
"Aye, and she's about forty. Far too young for him. Once the money's gone he'll be back with his tail between his legs and his willy shrivelled to a peanut." Bishop out and hunting.
Sandy looked at him over the cup, judging his next move and his next remark.
"Billy Kerr was keeping two sets of books and working one for himself. He was supposed to pay the VAT and your national insurance, is what I heard, and none of it's been paid, and that means you could be in a wee pile of hot manure."
"I heard that as well. You don't miss much."
Sandy winked, while Jack contemplated the defence of his queen.
"But what are you going to do?"
"I'm going to take your queen's knight."
"Don't get smart." King's knight out on a flanker, threatening the queen.
"Watch the board." Jack looked up. Sandy was still gauging him. "It looks like I'll get to sleep late in the mornings."
"Billy Kerr will take a fall as well. Once a chancer, always a chancer. Makes you wonder Jake, does nobody do a decent job around here without their hands in the till or stealing off somebody else? Look at Tim Farmer. Off with two grand of our money that was set aside for the big Christmas party and all the prizes. Brains in his balls and head up his arse. Everybody stealing from everybody else. Used to be a time when people were honest. Honest enough anyway. Nowadays it's the done thing to rip people off. That's the way business is, am I right? Dog eat bloody dog and to hell with the hard-working folk."
He watched as Jack moved his queen deep infield and tut-tutted disapproval like the old women on the golf course.
"And what are you going to do?"
"I don't know, Gramps. Tell you the truth, I'm really fed up getting up at daft o'clock and delivering other folk's milk. Fed up bursting my arse."
"Watch your fucking language, boy."
Jack laughed. His Sandy always said that.
"And don't call me Gramps. You make me feel old."
"You are old."
"Not too old to cuff your ear. Watch your queen."
"Don't make me laugh. Watch your king. Check." The games were always fast.
Sandy castled, got the king right out of there.
"You don't steal off people, that was always the rule. Maybe lift a length of two by four, or a bag of coal from the railyard. Lead off a roof, or some whisky from the distillery, but you didn't steal off real folk. Maybe net a salmon or two out of the river, but not steal folk's money." He shook his head and rubbed his chin, a gesture of scratchy disgust. Jack ignored it. He always did that to distract him.
"Ever tell you about the time your Granddad stole a bull?"
That got Jack's attention. He finished the biscuit and washed it down with thick tea.
"That would be when you rode the trail in the wild west, I suppose. Rustlin' Sandy Bruce rides the range."
"Don't mock boy, I got around when I was your age. Went right round the world with the marines and then on the boats. And watch your queen."
Jack had seen it coming and took the other knight, quick as a blink. Sandy sat back and kept on scratching his chin. He was under pressure.
"Was back in the fifties. Fifty two I reckon, just after the big TB epidemic that took your aunty Janet. Rationing was still on and we were all built like whippets, skin and gristle. I'd be about three or four. My old Grandpa, he was still alive at the time and stayed with us, down in the old house beside the river before they cleared all the tenements away. He was a tough old coot, I can tell you."
The stories always started with a preamble. Sandy had been plenty of places and seen things in his service days and always had a yarn and some of them were undoubtedly true. Jack couldn't always tell which ones were.
"Anyway, the old man was knocking on, and he hated the rationing. He used to take me up the hill, snaring rabbits, and once he caught a sheep that had its horns caught in some bushes and before you knew it the skin was off and buried under a pile of rocks and the whole street was eating mutton. It was tough as old boots, but with the rationing you'd have eaten old boots and the insoles, laces, hob-seggs and all. Everybody stuck together and nobody said a thing. We took about forty salmon out of the river that spring and Jimmy Crawford, who was foreman at the shipyard wood store gave us all the oak sawdust we wanted and we cured them in Malky Dunnet's rail shack and then the whole street was like royalty, eating smoked salmon for weeks. You did what you could, know what I mean?"
Sandy moved a bishop up in a new threat. Jack pulled his king back, on the run, waiting for the rest of the story.
"But beef? You couldn't get beef, or chicken either. The old fella had worked the railroads in the states back in the twenties when my dad was a boy, and he used to talk about steaks the size of washing boards. Two inches thick. I tell you Jake, sometimes I was drooling at the mouth just listening to him, sitting at the fire, just thinking about big beefy steaks. Anyway, your granddad and Willie McIver and a couple of others, yon ginger boy's grandfather, Davie Watson, dead now, bless him. They were on a trip up by Linnvale and there were fields full of cattle, every one fatter than the next, and with udders like blown up bagpipes. The guys were droolin' just to look at them, because there were no cows around here. All the farms were growing turnips and potatoes. But up there it was all the Colquhoun land and the laird, whatever pull he had, he had one of the best dairy herds in the country, all of them feeding all day and getting fat as lard."
Sandy laughed, thinking back, and Jack knew this would be a true one.
"They hatched this idea, and a mate of theirs, he was in the army, doing national service but he was in the transport corps and he got the loan of a five tonner. They went up, all of them in old uniforms so they could say we were on exercise if they got caught, and they went into this shed at night and got a rope around this big cow. It never said a word and they walked it up the back ramp in pitch dark and freewheeled it down the track for half a mile without the engine on and back home. Big Peter McFarlane, the butcher's apprentice, was all set to cut the thing up and they had worked out who was going to get what, and somebody's mother could make sausages for everybody. It wasn't until they got it round the back of Malky Dunnet's old yard and into his shed that they saw it wasn't a cow at all. Even I could tell that. It had a pair of cojones like melons, scraping and bouncing off the ground they were, and something else they never noticed in the middle of the night. It had a big brass ring stuck through its nose."
"That would be better than a cow," Jack said. "Better beef."
"Aye, so you'd think. But what they never knew that the merdo had hit the fan in a big way. Somebody had seen an army truck out in the middle of the night and there was a general alert out and the laird, he was spitting bullets and going to sue the ministry of defence."
"For a bull?"
"For his bull. He had the best milk herd in the west, and that was because he had the biggest bloody prize bull you ever saw. Even then it was worth five hundred guineas. It was more famous than him even. It's picture had been in all the papers. My dad was only earning seven pounds a week back then, so It was like ten years spending money, all of it stamping about on the hoof."
"So what happened?"
"Pete McFarlane, he took cold feet and said he couldn't cut the beast and Mickey Dougan, he was shitting himself because he had nicked the van for the night. That turned out okay, because it was never signed out and nobody was the wiser. So there they were, with a fortune on legs and nobody knew what to do, and all of them facing the jail. Yon old chinless wonder would have hanged them for rustling, without a second thought,"
The old man chuckled again, scratched his chin and moved a pawn to free the bishop's line of sight, making it look casual.
"Somebody came up with the idea of taking it back, and they decided just to dump it along the Linnvale Road, make it look like it had just gone a-wandering, and maybe later on go after one of the cows. But when they were getting the thing into the back of the truck to take it back, it started kicking and hauling and it butted Willie right in the chuckies and he went down like a sack. There was only your Grandad and Mickey holding it and that wasn't enough and the bull took off with them dragging behind it. I swear to god it was like a rhino, must have weighed a ton. Off it goes, slipping and sliding in its own shite and it knocked the yard door off its hinges and out in to the street. You should have heard the screaming then. There was a bunch of women all gabbing together and when this thing came out, snorting and pawing they all started yelling and running about like headless chickens. Mickey grabbed the rope and it tossed its head and he went flying arse over tit and then it was off. It went down the alley by Thomson's bakers, and across the greens, dragging all then washing with it, and straight through the hedge at the dairy as if it wasn't there. It came out the other side and hit a car straight on and knocked it into a wall. It went bombing up Gooseholm Street, ploughed up all the allotments and out the other side, doing about forty, balls swinging like a sporran and it clattered straight through the big fence on the far side and onto the flat."
Sandy chuckled again. "What a mess!"
"What happened?"
"It ran straight on to the railway line and the big morning freight from Oban smacked its head clean off its shoulders."
He shook his head, grinning.
"There wasn't much anybody could do then, and everybody was up on the line before the cops arrived. There was no mobile phones then, and they only needed half an hour. Pete McFarlane had his bone saw and a set of butchers knives and somebody brought a big two-handed bandsaw and in no time at all there was nothing left but a puddle of stinky grass that had been in its belly. Everybody got a share and that night we threw the biggest street party we ever had. My grandfather had a T-bone a yard wide and we were all eating beef for a fortnight. The Laird, he could do nothing about it, even after the cops identified the hide they found hanging on the railway fence. It was just an act of God, so they said. It was finders keepers, and nobody ever said a thing. It was the best kept secret ever. But like I said, that's the way it was."
He reached out and moved the bishop. Check.
Jack pulled the king back and the rook moved to block. Check.
He ran back, using his queen as a shield. His grandfather took her by automatic reflex and Jack used the vacant space to free his second bishop and move six diagonals until he was two in front of the white king.
"You're screwed."
Sandy paused, scanned the deck and blew out from puffed cheeks.
"Sucked me in, Jake, so you did. Best of three?"
He shook his head. "I've got to sort a few things out."
"Like Gus Ferguson?"
Jack was pushing his chair back and he came to a sudden stop.
"How did you know about that?"
"I'm an old soldier. Knowledge is power. What you don't know sneaks up and bites your arse. I hear that polecat's well pissed off at you."
Jack shrugged. There wasn't much he could say.
"I heard what you did, and that was pretty good. Yon Cullen's got brains in his arse, but he's an animal. I heard you hit Wiggy Foley with a six iron."
"It was a sand wedge."
"Even better. That would give you lift." Sandy chuckled at his joke, but not for long.
"Both of them are worth the watching, but Ferguson, he's loony tunes, so you keep an eye on your flanks Jake, and have somebody watch your back."
"They were kicking him half to death."
"I saw the boy last night. He's carrying the tattoo marks. Your pal's a good lad, but he can't put a brake on his mouth. It'll get him into worse trouble some day, you wait. Anyway, Ferguson, he's a stoat, and I don't want to have to look out the old Italian shooter, know what I mean?"
Sandy fixed him with hard eyes behind the glasses. Jack knew he was tough as nails and had been things and seen places too. The looted gun was their secret from way back.
"Ferguson," Sandy let the look fade. "I grew up with his old man, and he couldn't punch his way out of a wet hankie. But big Rosie, she was something else, a mean big bitch if ever there was one and that boy took after his mother. I remember the dancing down at the Burgh Hall, me in brothel creepers and a velvet jacket, doing the palais glide. She was only sixteen, but big with it. Hands like hams. Anyway, this wee fellow dances her and asks her up again and when he walks off he claps a hand to her backside. Man, he was very brave or really stupid. Next thing he's up on his tiptoes and she's got his goolies in a grip of steel, giving them a twist. I never saw the blood drain out of anybody's face just as fast. She walked him straight across the floor and out the door, slammed him into a wall. Told him never to embarrass her like that in public again. She made him walk her home all the way to Corrieside and then she made him give her a standy-up in the washing shed, and by Christ, he had to do the business right or she'd have torn them off."
He looked over at Jack.
"You watch that Ferguson, compadre. Okay?"
Jack nodded. He didn't need to be told.
"And I'm sorry about the job. It doesn't look too promising. You keep at the books and make something of yourself. It's a good wee town for them with no ambition, but there's nothing here for a man with your brains, so you got to grasp the opportunity and run with it, know what I mean? Screw the opposition. You supply the brains and they'll demand it. Start your own business and make something of yourself before it's too late. You don't want these tossers to be ruling your life, do you? Get to my age and you have to brew your own beer in a bin? Get cuffed at chess by a bloody milkman?"
Jack laughed, but he knew the old guy was serious now, trying to make it light.
"You have to remember who you are."
He knew what was coming, but he sat still for it.
"Told you before, You're a Lorne on your father's side, god rest him, and a Bruce on your mother's. Go back far enough and the Lornes were the kings of the islands, and Bruce, I don't have to tell you about him. You come from good stock boy, and you've got a good head on your shoulders. Don't let these creeps rule you. You get out and take what's yours."
"Sure."
"Remember the story of Bruce in the cave? Before Bannockburn?"
"Sure I do."
"That spider tried six times and failed, and then succeeded on the seventh. If at first you don't succeed. . . Then you know what happened?"
Jack waited for it.
"Robert the Bruce picked it up in his royal mailed fist and smacked it flat with the other. Splat! He hated those crawly fuckers."