Walking Wounded by William McIlvanney Page A

wi’ it. Ye’re only young once.’
    The barman laughed and turned his back on him. He had to cut more lemon. He had to find one of the lemons the pub had started getting in specially for Sal. After brief puzzlement, he did. He cut it carefully. He filled out gin, found ice, added the lemon. He turned back, put the drink on the counter, pulled a pint. As he laid the pint beside the gin and opened the tonic, pouring it, he noticed something in among the activity that bothered him. He suddenly realised what it was. The big man’s pint-dish held nothing but traces of froth.
    The barman was about to speak to the hard-faced man in denim when the big man walked back from the lavatory to the bar. His arrival froze the barman. The big man made to touch his paper, paused. He looked at his empty pint.
    â€˜Excuse me,’ he said to the barman. ‘Ah had a pint there.’
    The moment crackled like an electrical storm. Even Old Dave got the message. His purse hung in his hand. He stared at the counter. The barman was wincing.
    â€˜That’s right,’ the man in denim said. ‘Ye had a pint. But Ah drank it.’
    The silence prolonged itself like an empty street with a man at either end of it. The barman knew that nobody else could interfere.
    â€˜Sorry?’ the big man said.
    â€˜Ye had a pint, right enough. But Ah felt like it. So Ah drank it. That’s the dinky-dory.’
    So that was the story. The big man stared and lowered his eyes, looked up and smiled. It wasn’t convincing. Nonchalant surrender never is. But he was doing his best to make it look as if it was.
    â€˜Oh, look,’ he said. ‘What does it matter? Ah can afford another one. Forget it.’
    The barman was grateful but contemptuous. He didn’t want trouble but he wouldn’t have liked to go to sleep in the big man’s head. And when the big man spoke again, he could hardly believe it.
    â€˜Look. If you need a drink, let me buy you another one. Come on. Give the man a pint of heavy.’
    The barman felt as if he was pouring out the big man’s blood but he did it. It was his job to keep the peace. The man in denim lifted the pint, winked at the barman.
    â€˜Cheers,’ he said to the big man, smiling at him. ‘Your good health. You obviously value it.’
    He hadn’t managed his first mouthful before the side of the big man’s clenched right hand had hit the base of the glass like a demolition-ball. There was a splintered scream among the shards of exploding glass and the volleying beer.
    Not unused to fast violence, the barman was stunned. The big man picked up his paper. He laid the price of a pint on the counter and nodded to the barman.
    â€˜If he’s lookin’ for me,’ he said, ‘the name’s Rafferty. Cheerio. Nice shop you run.’
    He went out. Lifting a dish-towel, the barman hurried round the counter and gave it to the man in denim. While he held his face together with it and the cloth saturated instantly with blood and he kept moaning, the barman found his first coherent reaction to the situation.
    â€˜You’re barred,’ he said.

8
    In the steps of Spartacus
    B enny Mullen had dogs. It wasn’t that he deliberately kept dogs or bought them or reared them. They were a periodic manifestation in his life, like acne in teenagers. Every so often he developed a dog.
    Perhaps the condition wasn’t unrelated to the fact that he had become a widower in his early thirties. His wife, Noreen, had encouraged him to acknowledge the helpless compassion that was hidden at the centre of his nature and he still felt it, like internal lesions. Maybe dogs could sniff it out. He certainly couldn’t explain their affinity for him. They seemed to attach themselves to him from time to time without warning.
    One night when he came out of the pictures feeling particularly aggressive (it had been a Clint Eastwood film), he got on a bus with the