Also by William McIlvanney
Fiction
Remedy is None
Gift from Nessus
The Big Man
Walking Wounded
The Kiln
Weekend
The Detective Laidlaw trilogy
Laidlaw
The Papers of Tony Veitch
Strange Loyalties
Poetry
The Longships in Harbour
In Through the Head
These Words: Weddings and After
Non Fiction
Shades of Grey – Glasgow 1956–1987, with Oscar Marzaroli
Surviving the Shipwreck
‘A splendid and utterly convincing portrayal of Scottish working-class life’
Stephen Glover, in the Daily Telegraph
‘An absorbing study of a man and the small economically depressed Scottish town that has formed him. At his best Mcllvanney digs deep and fruitfully into a class unconscious, into the way men dispossessed not only of jobs but of their belief in past or future, struggle to make – and unmake – their own heroes’
Margaret Walters, in the Observer
‘His LAIDLAW thrillers brilliantly marry tension and acute observation with a style that would do justice to the best urban tradition. They’re his most successful books, but DOCHERTY and THE BIG MAN are no small achievements. His people are powerful creations, his dialogue a crisp slap in the face for defeat’
Nick Kimberley, in City Limits
‘As so often his work surprises, jolts, impresses, THE BIG MAN is the work of a thoroughly intelligent and adult novelist writing at the height of his powers. (It is) the book that will make 1985 a pivotal year in our fiction . . . it tackles unemployment and its psychological wounds, and illuminates the roots and roles of violence in Scottish notions of manhood’
Isobel Murray, in the Scotsman
‘A brilliant study, truly beautiful . . . Mcllvanney makes most of his contemporaries seem effete and ineffectual; a massively gifted, totally aware, compassionate writer’
Bob Flynn, in New Musical Express
‘An exciting blend of violent action and perceptive character study’
Glasgow Herald
‘When Mcllvanney allows his characters freedom in the lives he has created for them, THE BIG MAN succeeds both as moral drama and first-rate entertainment’
James Campbell in The Times Literary Supplement
‘Brilliant... A commentary on the state of Scotland itself’
Kevin Dunion, Radical Scotland
THE BIG MAN
William McIlvanney
This edition published in Great Britain in 2014 by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
First published in Great Britain in 1985 by Hodder and Stoughton Ltd
Sceptre edition 1986
Copyright © 1985 by William McIlvanney
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 78211 1955
Contents
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
For Siobhàn
What is a rebel? A man who
says no: but whose refusal
does not imply a renunciation.
ALBERT CAMUS
ONE
‘Look,’ one of the three boys in a field said as the white Mercedes slid, silenced by distance, in and out of view along the road. The boy had bright red hair which the teachers at his school had learned to dread appearing in their classrooms for it meant mischief, a spark of social arson.
‘A shark. A great white.’
His two companions looked where his finger pointed and caught the melodrama of the gesture. The one who was holding the greyhound said, ‘Kill, Craigie Boy, kill,’ and the big, brindled dog barked and lolloped on the leash. The red-haired boy started imitating the theme music from the film Jaws and the other two joined in. Their voices hurried to crescendo as they saw the car disappearing over the top of a hill.
The car moved on under a sky where some cloud-racks looked like canyons leading to infinity and others were dissolving islands. There, floating in the air, were the dreams of some mad architect, wild, fantasticated structures that darkness would soon demolish. They were of a variousness you couldn’t number.
‘Five,’ the biggest man in the car said. He was called Billy Fleming. He spoke without expression. His face looked mean enough to grudge giving away a reaction.
There was no immediate response from the other two. A boring journey had made reactions in the car sluggish. Each was in his own thoughts like a sleeping-bag.
‘Five what?’ the driver said after a time, thinking it wouldn’t be long until he needed the lights. His name was Eddie Foley.
‘Dead crows. That’s five Ah’ve counted. Two on the road. Three at the side of it. They should take out insurance. What are they? Deaf or daft? Always pickin’ on passin’ cars.’
They came to a village called Blackbrae. The council houses at the edge of it, badly weathered but with well-kept gardens, led on to private houses lined briefly along each side of the street. These sat slightly further off the road, solidly and unelaborately built. Designed less to please the eye than persuade it to look elsewhere, they were squat fortresses of privacy. It was hard to imagine much vanity in possessing them. Yet the meticulous paintwork or the hanging plant in a doorway or the coach-lamp on the wall beside a recently added porch suggested a pleased possessiveness. The names, too, had a cosy complacency. There was Niaroo and Dunromin and, incredibly enough, Nirvana. A passer-by might have wondered at how modest the dreams had been that had found their fulfilment here.
The street turned left towards a hill that climbed back into the countryside. Changing