Walking Wounded. William McIlvanney

      

      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

      WALKING WOUNDED

      WILLIAM MCILVANNEY

      First published in 1989 by Hodder and Stoughton

      This digital edition first published in 2014 by Canongate Books, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE

      Copyright © William McIlvanney 1989

      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 194 8

       www.canongate.tv

      FOR MY FRIENDS

      ‘Come, come. Did we not all start out with more important matters on our minds?’

       A man I think I overheard in a bar.

      Contents

1	Waving
2	Performance
3	On the sidelines
4	Death of a spinster
5	The prisoner
6	Homecoming
7	At the bar
8	In the steps of Spartacus
9	Sentences
10	Getting along
11	Mick’s day
12	Tig
13	Beached
14	How many miles to Babylon?
15	Callers
16	End game
17	Hullo again
18	Holing out
19	Deathwatch beetle
20	Dreaming

      And so adrift in unknown selves we lie

      Abandoned to dark plucks of circumstance,

      Not knowing what will come or what we’ll do

      Or where the tides of sleep will wash us and

      Shy from the sculling shapes that feed on mind,

      Feel every certainty drift out of reach

      And sigh and hold each other, tryst with touch

      To share what is not shareable, and know

      The jerking terror of time’s undertow

      And madly try to dream ourselves a beach.

       1

       Waving

      Bert Watson had had a busy day. The consignment of pullovers with the lion rampant on them was behind schedule. Manufacture of the turtle-neck sweaters was having to be put back. Sitting in his office, he heard the looms run down and they seemed to him like his ambition giving out.

      He looked at the litter on his desk and wondered how he had come to be manacled to these invoices, how many years he had spent transferring days from the in-tray to the out-tray. It would be some time yet before he could go home, but the thought was merely a reflex, no longer carried any deep regret. Marie would be waiting there with a detailed report of how much hoovering she had done today and what the Brussels sprouts cost. Jennifer would be doing her usual impersonation of a foundling princess who can’t understand how she has come to be unloaded on such a crass family and Robert, fruit of his loins and heir to his ulcers, would be playing songs in which the lyrics only surfaced intermittently and incomprehensibly.

      His mind dwelt on the still sheen of silence from the factory,