‘But nothing’s open… we’ve still got drink here. Nah, let’s stay here.’
Watt sidles clumsily out of the recess, muttering, ‘Well, maybe, we can just… there’s a club, a wee club, the cellar under the Cot Bar.’
Manuel suddenly stands up. Nettie hears him pull his jacket off the back of the chair, the chair leg clunks on the floor. Then he stops. ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘but what about Dandy?’
William’s voice is smiling. ‘The Cot cellar is famously discreet. He won’t find us in there.’
John whispers, ‘Dandy McKay?’
Nettie watches their reflections in the window above the sink. Manuel and William are pulling their coats on. John stands too, hands out, eyes wide with panic. ‘Dandy McKay is looking for you? And you’re hiding from McKay? William, are you bloody mad?’
William doesn’t answer, he is smiling awkwardly as he backs away from John. Manuel is at the front door already.
John shoves the full whisky bottle at his brother. ‘Take it.’
‘John, this is for you,’ says William, by habit high-handed. ‘You keep it.’
‘I don’t want this in my house.’
The door closes behind them. Their steps recede on the stone stairs. Nettie turns to see John slump into his seat. She is still holding the burning drips of tea in the cup of her hand.
‘Husband,’ she hisses, ‘I don’t want that filthy man in my house ever again.’
‘I know,’ says John, ‘I know.’
Neither of them is talking about Peter Manuel.
10
Tuesday 3 December 1957
WATT AND MANUEL DRIVE away from John and Nettie’s house and into the night city. It is three thirty in the morning and the streets are empty. They pass the high hedges of a bowling green and head uphill, through tall tenements with dark windows. Frozen mist clings to the pavement and the chimneys are all dead.
It is a time of night Manuel is familiar with. Watt isn’t and he doesn’t like it. He is sick with tiredness and drink and finds the empty, misty streets creepy. It feels as if everyone in the city has died. This is when Manuel loves Glasgow, when it’s defenceless and the people are still.
But they are both excited by the prospect of the Cot Bar cellar. The cellar under the Cot Bar is a place of legend. Naked women serve you drink? Women in their underwear serve you drink? Women dance naked or become naked? Men who will never go to the cellar have heard rumours about it from other men who will never go there. It is a small dark room and costs a pound a head just to get in.
Manuel remembers what just happened and sounds annoyed when he says, ‘You wanted me out of that house sharpish.’
William is contemplative. ‘They know, I think.’
Manuel is surprised. ‘Did they say?’
‘No, I’m guessing.’
‘How could you guess that?’
‘Just… from the way they looked at you.’
Watt turns onto the Alexandra Parade, a long broad road running between huge Victorian factory buildings. It is a place of industry and is usually mobbed with workers as the vast tobacco factories change shifts. Lights shine in the windows but the streets are deserted. Newspapers and litter tumble softly along the pavement, following the stream of wind down from Townhead.
Manuel clears his throat. He seems troubled. ‘D’you tell them? When I was in the lavvy?’
‘No. They just knew, they guessed.’ Watt can feel the alcohol ebb in his veins. He needs a top-up. He pulls the car over to the kerb, takes the Gleniffer whisky bottle out of the footwell and uncorks the lid. A lorry rumbles past them.
Watt takes a glug. He offers it to Manuel but Manuel says no. Watt pushes it at him again. Manuel shakes his head, irritated by how much Watt thinks about drink. He mutters, ‘Fucking hell.’ He seems upset by something. He looks away, out of the window, at the tobacco factory. He gets his cigarettes out and lights up. Watt takes the opportunity to have another sneaky drink.
Manuel’s voice cracks as he whispers: ‘It’s a fuck of a lot to just guess, is what I’m saying.’
Watt shrugs, feeling better. ‘They won’t know the details, Peter, just the general… you know.’
‘Is that what they said?’
Watt feels the whisky dull his nerves, salve the sense of bristling panic that worsens when the drink wears off. ‘They never said anything, Peter. I’m just supposing from the way they looked at you.’
Manuel smokes and shakes his head. Watt drinks again. Liquid confidence. He feels normal now. He looks at Manuel. ‘You don’t see it, do you?’
Manuel looks at him with the blank expression he saw in Whitehall’s when the bill came: he doesn’t know what William is talking about.
‘You don’t see what other people think. You can’t tell. You can’t see.’
Manuel tuts, ‘Shut your fat fucking gub, Watt.’
Watt shrugs. He wants to add–and that’s why you can’t make a plan and stick to it, you can’t anticipate what other people will be thinking about or expecting. He has noticed over the course of the night that Manuel’s plan of action changes constantly: I’ll give you the gun, I’ll give you a suspect, I’ll give you a story. In the business world sticking to a course of action is the key to winning. Even if Manuel’s ideas are brilliant, which they are sometimes, he hasn’t got the self-control to see them through. As soon as a new thing occurs to him he goes off and does that. This fellow is all over the shop. So much the better for Watt. He starts the car again and pulls out but then realises the whisky bottle is open.
He pulls over again and struggles to fit the cork into the bottle held upright between his thighs. It won’t seem to go in. Manuel watches him. Watt tries again and misses badly and giggles and a bit of spit shoots from his mouth, landing on his suited leg.
Manuel laughs at him. He laughs so much he bangs his foot on the floor of the car for emphasis.
Watt laughs along with him. Laughing makes him shift his chubby legs and the bottle nearly falls and he grabs it and laughs more and more.
They look up at the empty street, laughing, remembering the spit and the falling bottle and the cork that won’t go in. Watt laughs loud and hands the cork and the bottle to Manuel but Manuel drops the cork onto the floor of the car.
‘Jesus H. Christ,’ laughs Manuel, ‘we are fucking ruined.’
And Watt laughs more.
Finally, Manuel manages to get the cork in the bottle. He looks at Watt and says, ‘You want a–?’ He offers him the bottle.
Then they laugh at that one too. Watt gets out his own cigarettes and they both smoke and calm down.
Watt exhales as Manuel says, ‘Really, how do you know they know?’
‘I don’t know really… from their faces? The faces they made.’
‘Oh.’ Manuel titters, remembering. He looks at his cigarette. ‘You think I read the faces wrong?’
Watt doesn’t really want to have a conversation about what is wrong with Peter Manuel. He shrugs.
‘Oh!’ Manuel pulls a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket. He is staring at Watt. ‘Did you put that in there?’
‘What?’
‘This. A pound note. In my pocket. Did you put that in there?’