The Last Days of Disco Read online

  ‘So you two clowns seem tae have made a right arse o’ yersels then.’

  With these words from his father, Gary silently took his leave, pulling a Kilmarnock FC jersey from the radiator as he went. Harry watched him from the other end of the long, narrow room. Harry was of average height and the stereotypical outline for a working-class male in his late forties from the west of Scotland. But, silhouetted against the bright sunlight from the window behind him, Bobby thought he looked like the Michelin Man.

  Harry nodded towards the other window behind Bobby, where wisps of smoke betrayed Gary’s current location. ‘Ah suppose he was responsible?’ It was more statement than question.

  ‘Ach, ah dunno. Ah can’t really remember much. Ah don’t think ah can really blame Gary though. No this time at least …’

  ‘That’ll make a change then,’ mumbled Harry as he unfolded the Sunday Mail in the comfort of his armchair.

  ‘Gie him a break, Dad. He’s been like a different guy since he came back fae England.’

  Harry did have to concede that the Army seemed to have made a decent person out of Gary, and while he didn’t quite extend to pride, Harry did now have a modest foundation of respect for Gary.

  ‘So anyway, Dad. He’s away back tae Wellington soon. Ah think you should maybe go out for a pint wi’ him. Whit dae ye think?’ It was unnerving Bobby to be talking to the back of his dad’s balding head, but he continued nonetheless. ‘Why don’t ye take him tae the Masonic next time yer goin’ doon?’

  No response.

  ‘He kens Stan and he kens Desi O’Neill tae. It’s no like he’d be sittin’ there like a spare pri … part in the corner.’ Bobby still found it awkward to use foul or coarse language in front of his parents, unlike his best mate, Joey Millar, who positively relished the opportunity.

  ‘Is there no somethin’ on the night?’

  Still no response. The younger man sighed.

  ‘Look Bobby, jist leave it eh, will ye? Things are better wi’ him an’ me. That’s enough for just now.’ Harry was in no mood to expand. He put down his paper, got up and went over to the television. Having flicked quickly through the three channels he settled on Farming Outlook.

  ‘Did ye get me the Sunday Post, Harry?’ Ethel’s wavering, high-pitched voice floated through the same door her husband’s had twenty minutes earlier.

  ‘Aye.’ There weren’t going to be any long conversations involving the main man of the house this morning.

  Ethel strode towards the kitchen, pausing only to address Bobby. ‘When did you two get in?’

  ‘God knows.’ Bobby was aware he’d need to get up from the chair soon or face a grilling, but he had a real concern that his legs wouldn’t support him.

  ‘Bobby, put a shirt on when yer at the table.’

  This prompt from his mum was enough to make him move. More focused interrogation would surely follow if he didn’t.

  ‘Bobby, there’s blood on ma seat covers!’ Ethel had come back in from the kitchen and spotted a small red stain low down on the beige hessian.

  ‘It’s no me, Mum. Ah’m no bleedin’.’ proclaimed Bobby, as he slowly spun around trying to examine himself.

  ‘Whit’s that oan your back? Right doon low. There,’ said Ethel, squinting.

  ‘Ah can’t see anything. Where?’ Bobby was still pirouetting.

  ‘It says something about a H-E-A-R-S-E,’ said Ethel. ‘Hang on. Ah need to go an’ get ma glasses.’ Harry watched Ethel disappear upstairs to retrieve her glasses from her bedside table and then got up to take a look, already suspecting the worst.

  ‘Ya bloody eejit! You’ve got a fuckin’ tattoo that says “I TAKE IT UP THE ARSE” …’

  ‘Eh? Aw fuck! Away ye go!’ Bobby’s shock at the tattoo being the source of his back pain made him temporarily forget to whom he was speaking. ‘FUCK! Is that all it says?’

  ‘Hey. Mind yer language, and naw, that’s no everythin’.’ Below that there’s a line sayin’ “THIS WAY FOR A GOOD TIME”, an’ then there’s an arrow pointing tae the crack o’ yer erse! For fuck’s sake, Bobby, that’s a real bloody tattoo! That’s no washin’ off!’

  Split between hunting Gary down and avoiding his mother’s return, Bobby headed for the back door. Needless to say, his brother was long gone.

  ‘Fuckin’ bastard, Gary,’ mumbled Bobby, as he pulled a white Adidas T-shirt – Gary’s, fuck him – from the line and pulled it on to cover the lightly bloodied artwork. It was bitterly cold and hung like frosted cardboard, having been left out overnight.

  ‘Where’s Mum?’ said Bobby to Harry, who had joined him in the crisp, clear air of the garden.

  ‘Sadie Flanagan’s at the door. She’ll be there for ages. Yer bloody lucky, boy. She’ll have forgotten by the time they’re by bletherin’.’

  Father and son sat on the damp timber bench. They stared out across the garden towards the school where Bobby intermittently showed his face as a sixth-year student, but where Harry went every weekday throughout term time, and the odd Saturday.

  ‘What are ye doin’ wi’ yer life, son?’ Harry had posed this question many times to his middle child – mostly over the last five months and always with no tangible reaction.

  Bobby shrugged. He was always irritated by this line of questioning. He had just turned eighteen. The ink on the cards in the living room had barely dried. He just wanted to fanny about. When his dad used that term, it was with disdain. When Bobby said it to Joey Miller, it sounded aspirational.

  Joey was slightly younger than Bobby. Not eighteen until October, Joey could be really intense and the lassies thought he was a bit strange, verging on creepy. A lot of them called him Jeeves, because he always seemed to be in Bobby’s shadow, and that really irritated both of them. But Bobby saw the other side – Joey was really witty, heavily into music and completely on the same wavelength as Bobby was. Joey wouldn’t have gone to the Killie match. Bobby knew that much. Joey was a Rangers fan, but he’d at least grown up on the south side of Glasgow, so he was entitled. Kilmarnock was full of fucking Old Firm glory-hunters and Bobby hated all of them.

  ‘What are ye thinking about after leavin’?’

  Bobby’s protracted hangover made it feel like he was hearing his dad from underwater. It wasn’t a good feeling.

  ‘Are ye listenin’ tae me?’ Harry shook his son’s shoulder.

  ‘Och, Dad, ah dunno. Ah just …’

  ‘Just whit? Ye’ll need tae dae well wi’ yer English this time if yer goin’ tae university after the summer.’

  Bobby couldn’t bring himself to admit that he’d virtually given up on the English higher. His prelim only a few weeks earlier had been a disaster. His mark had been of a level that only Norway’s entrant for the Eurovision Song Contest would’ve considered acceptable. He’d concealed this from both parents so far, but truth was he was heading for expulsion. The Beak had already warned him twice that if he was asked to leave English, he’d be out of school altogether. This situation also applied to Joey, although maths was his particular nemesis. Bobby was fully aware of the creek into which he was drifting – and also the paddle that he had dropped overboard about half a mile back. The last thing he had on his mind now was to jump in, swim back and retrieve it. Fuck that. If the waterfall was just around the bend, he’d continue just to drift towards it, lying back and soaking up some rays en route. Waterfalls are way more exciting than fucking creeks.

  ‘Look Dad, I’m sorted. Joe and I are gonna start up something. Just don’t ken whit yet.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Bobby, he’s the same as you! If brains were dynamite, he widnae have enough tae blow his nose.’ After he’d said this, Harry felt a bit guilty. Joey was undoubtedly clever – he used loads of big words that Harry had never heard before. Harry didn’t mean that Joey was stupid; he meant that he was perhaps the most lazy, unmotivated person in the Northern Hemisphere. He just couldn’t think of an appropriate gag to illustrate that.

  ‘We were thinking about someth
ing tae do wi’ music,’ said Bobby, with enough optimism to inflect the tone.

  ‘Any ideas then?’ prompted Harry. ‘Record shop? Studio work? A band? A&R …?’ There was a softly sarcastic edge to Harry’s promptings, but it was concealed enough to avoid his son’s impaired senses detecting it.

  ‘Naw. We can’t play anythin’,’ announced Bobby, as if this was totally new information for the older man. ‘We were thinkin’ more along the lines of DJ-ing.’

  Harry held his Embassy Regal packet between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. He had no option – a couple of years ago the other three digits had been sliced off by a loom in the BMK Carpet Factory, where he had gone after leaving school. With his other hand, he pulled a cigarette carefully out of the newly opened pack of twenty. Bobby watched how effortlessly his damaged hand performed the lighting of the cigarette with a Swan Vesta. He genuinely admired his father for the way in which he had coped since the accident. There had been no anger, no bitterness; simply an acceptance that it was a big pothole in life’s bumpy road that he hadn’t been able to swerve. Initially, Bobby hadn’t been too enamoured that his dad’s only offer of employment following his recuperation had been as a janitor at the school that Bobby attended. But Harry was a well-known and well-liked guy around New Farm Loch, and, as a consequence, nobody took the piss. In fact, given the number of Mitre 5 footballs Harry had brought home during the last few years, Bobby had to concede that the arrangement had some advantages. Today was just about to be one of those occasions where the same held true.

  ‘Well, if you are serious about it, there’s a note on the staffroom noticeboard,’ said Harry, following a long period of making his ‘little stick of heaven’ vanish into perfectly constructed smoke rings.

  ‘Sayin’ what?’ A suddenly attentive Bobby turned for the first time to look directly at Harry.

  ‘A wee lassie’s lookin’ for a mobile disco for an eighteenth birthday party.’

  ‘Where?’ asked Bobby.

  ‘Ah telt ye! It’s on the noticeboard in the teach—’

  ‘Naw, naw … where’s the party?’ Initial exasperation diminished as Bobby realised his dad was gently pulling his leg.

  ‘The Sandriane. In about three weeks’ time. Her name’s Lizzie. She’s no at the school so ye might need tae be quick. She’s probably stuck the same note up oan other noticeboards tae. There’s a phone number at the bottom.’ There was another pause in the conversation as Harry could almost visualise the wee technicians in Bobby’s overheated brain working hard to compute the information he’d just been given. Harry laughed as Bobby’s eyes darted backwards and forwards. He pondered the idea of pressing Bobby’s nose to see if a piece of ticker paper would have come out of his mouth with the words ‘Get number please’ written on it.

  ‘Will ah get ye the number then?’ said Harry, jumping ahead.

  ‘Eh, em, aye. Ah think so …’ Bobby had moved onto rehearsing the conversation he would have with Joey later that afternoon. The Brain Trust techies had also started formulating some pertinent questions of their own: Where are you getting the equipment? Do you have enough records? What about lights? A van? A driver?

  The wee bastards were asking too many questions now. They were supposed to be coming up with the fucking answers. That was their job. Bobby got up and headed for the stairs. He was shivering a fair bit, having just realised how long he’d been outside in the January air of a Scottish morning. He was planning to go and run a hot bath then get ready to go and get Joey. Probably contact Hamish May as well. Although he did think it might be better to have something more concrete to tell them. He should call this Lizzie and get the details. Make sure the job was actually still available. There was a lot to be done, but he had to acknowledge feeling a lot more vibrant than he had half an hour ago. Even Lemmy’s mob had fucked off.

  ‘Hullo, Bobby, son.’ Mrs Flanagan’s voice was as deep as a Cumnock coal mine and twice as dangerous. ‘Ah see ye hud yersel a wee time last night, spray paintin’ yer name oan the side ae Viviani’s shop wa.’

  Ethel turned to look at Bobby, her mouth partly open.

  ‘Oh, ah’m sorry. Huv ah said too much?’ Mrs Flanagan put her hand over her mouth theatrically.

  Auld fucking cow, thought Bobby as he edged past his tut-tutting mother and headed for the comparative safety of the bathroom.

  ‘There was something else ah wanted tae talk to you about, Bobby. But ah can’t remember whit though.’ Bobby and his dad were often concerned about Ethel’s increasing forgetfulness, but, today, and with the blood not yet starting to steep through Gary’s white T-shirt, he was grateful for it.

  When Bobby got to the top of the stairs, he could hear the Sunday morning sound of the Human League coming from the small transistor radio; a sure sign that his sister had taken up residence in the bathroom. He’d be going nowhere soon. Bobby stealthily moved back down the stairs past his glowering mum and auld bag Flanagan who – just to rub it in – said a second cheery ‘Oh hullo, Bobby, son.’

  Rot in Hell, you piss-stained auld cunt, he thought. Bobby hunted for the telephone. They had recently bought a new ‘mobile’ handset, which was absolutely fucking brilliant. It didn’t have much of a range and, at the size of a brick, it was bigger than the Bakelite one it had replaced, but with the aerial fully extended, you didn’t have to sit out in the hall – or in the same room as everybody else – when phoning your pals.

  He inclined his foot forward far enough to see the slightly faded number. After five rings, a voice hoarser than auld ‘smelly cunt’ responded.

  ‘Hullo? Hullo?’ The voice said this with such timing that it was all Bobby could do to avoid replying ‘We are the Billy Boys …’ He didn’t, and the sandpaper sound snapped back at him.

  ‘Hullo! Who the fuck is this?’

  ‘Em, ah’m Bobby Cassidy. Who’s this?’

  ‘You phoned me ya cunt!’

  ‘Aye, but ah think ah might’ve been given the wrong number.’

  ‘Ah’m Franny fuckin’ Duncan. Noo whit dae ye want. Ah’m in ma fuckin’ scratcher.’

  Franny Duncan. Jesus Christ. What was he doing with Fat Franny Duncan’s number written on his foot? Bobby’s brainiacs were running about in a panic. Words like ‘gangster’, ‘dealer’, ‘doings’, ‘big’, ‘fat’ and ‘bastard’ all ricocheted around like the steel balls in a multi-play pinball game.

  ‘Ah’m thinking of becomin’ a DJ.’ Bobby stumbled over the words, all too aware that he’d already volunteered his name.

  ‘For fuck’s sake. Phone back later on, at about four. Ask fur Hobnail. He’ll sort ye oot.’ Click. The phone flatlined, with a constant droning sound.

  Bobby stared at it for a few seconds. Hobnail? Was that a fucking code word? Along with all those words that sprang to mind when thinking of Fat Franny Duncan came another two: ‘mobile’ and ‘DJ’. It was a big risk, but at least Franny Duncan would know where to get equipment, and might even have some for hire. Bobby Cassidy had taken one wee step back from the edge.

  MEN MAKE PLANS AND GOD SMILES

  2ND FEBRUARY 1982: 2:26PM

  Fat Franny Duncan loved the Godfather movies, but he did not belong to this new band of theorists who reckoned II was better than I. For Fat Franny, original was most certainly best, although, given the success of the films and the timelessness of the story, he was staggered that there hadn’t been a III, like there had been with Rocky. He also couldn’t comprehend why there had been no book spin-off, although, even if there had, he would certainly not be wasting his time reading it. He knew the dialogue from both films pretty much by heart, and used their most famous quotes as a design for life. Particularly the lines of Don Corleone, who Fat Franny felt certain he would resemble later in his life. He was, after all, fat. There was no denying this. Bulk for Brando’s most famous character helped afford him gravitas and – as a consequence – respect; a level of respect that Fat Franny felt was within his grasp. Michael was a skinny Tally bastard and, al
though he undoubtedly commanded reverence, it was driven by fear.

  Fat Franny was intent on pursuing a line of legitimacy with his business that would bring him universal veneration. The burgeoning entertainment venture was the vehicle for this. It had started reasonably well. The mobile DJ-ing had begun slowly, but over the last year and a half had branched into more lucrative gigs such as weddings and anniversary parties. There was money to be made in functions, of that there was no doubt. As a consequence, Fat Franny had assembled a roster: a collection of acts for every eventuality. From kids’ parties, to coming-of-age celebrations right up to charity do’s – Fat Franny Duncan had it all covered. So, as he surveyed his talent – sat at the kitchen table for their twice-weekly meeting in his expansive ex-council house – why did he feel like he wanted to stab a butcher’s knife through each of their hands?

  ‘Franny.’ A sheepish Bert Bole broke the silence that had engulfed all present for the last fifteen minutes.

  Everyone at the table eyed their black-clad leader nervously. He ran chubby fingers through the thinning, greying hair on the top of his head and then tugged at the black hairband that was holding the rest of it in a tight ponytail. Finally, he teased at the slim moustache with his forefinger and thumb. To Bert Bole, it looked like a ritual before a slaughter.

  ‘Franny! Boss …?’ Bert had raised the level of his voice – but only slightly – in an attempt to get a reaction from the fat man with the faraway look in his eyes at the end of the table. Fat Franny often thought of the Don at times like this – and there had been a few too many lately. Surrounded by his subordinates, he imagined what Corleone would have said to Bob Dale – Fat Franny’s Luca Brasi – if these morons had told him what they’d just announced at the meeting.

  Bob Dale responded, barley audible.

  ‘He hearths ye. He just disthnae belief ye!’ Bob Dale didn’t speak often. A hair-lip and ill-fitting teeth gave his speech a very pronounced lisp, which had been ridiculed mercilessly at school. As a consequence, Bob had found it more productive to retaliate with his fists than with his broken voice. His stature grew, along with a reputation that he was not to be messed with. But by that time the lasting damage was done. The legacy of those early brutal days was a nickname – Hobnail, which was the sound he made when trying to tell people who he was.