The Low Road Read Online Free PDF Page B

died when he was wee, so my mother helped out when she could. Once, on the Fair Fortnight, we all went on holiday together, to Millport. When we were boys, we hung around the fire station, always trying to cadge a shot at pretending to drive the engine, or sliding down the pole. You know.” He paused. Tried the whisky. Was pleased at how good it was. She was waiting, and again he knew she was good; a good reporter knew how to listen.
    â€œI won a scholarship to Glasgow High School, escaping the Jesuits, escaping Dennistoun,” he told her. In this he was telling her which side of the Glasgow divide, religious and social, he’d been born into. “Gerry went on to the local, but he left at thirteen.” He did not have to explain how decisive a rent in a friendship that meant, especially for boys from a hard, harsh neighborhood like Dennistoun. “We never really met up much after that. But when my father, and all on his engine, were killed in the Clydeside Blitz, Mr. Dochery, a good man, kept an eye on my mother, as I was too busy being the big-shot journalist.”
    McAllister surprised himself by saying that, but it was the truth, and something about Mary demanded the truth.
    â€œAnd this McPhee fellow, he a friend of yours?”
    â€œKind of.” He was nodding his head slightly as he tried to sum up his relationship with Jimmy McPhee. “Let’s say there’s a mutual respect. For him and his mother.”
    She understood. The Traveling people were a part of Scottish folklore, past and present. Having grown up in the country near Perth she knew the farms and fruit growers could never harvest the crops without the tinkers. She also knew that the Travelers were too different, too separate in their language, their way of life,ever to form close relationships with outsiders. She also knew well the widespread prejudice against them.
    â€œMcAllister, I’ll do what I can to help you find your tinker friend, but if Gerry Dochery, or whoever he’s working for, finds him first, it will be nasty.”
    They both took a good mouthful of whisky to swallow that thought.
    â€œMaybe you should ask your old pal Gerry yourself.”
    â€œMaybe.” He was reluctant.
    She sensed it. “Keep me in the picture. Here’s my home number if anything comes up.”
    The way she said this, he knew he would regret it if he ever crossed her. He nodded, asked her if she wanted another drink. She did. He fetched them.
    They toasted crime and punishment. She asked about his time in the war in Spain, teasing him by saying she’d studied his reporting in modern history at university. She wanted to know about Paris after the liberation. He told her of the artists and writers he’d met. Of the cafés and art galleries and music venues he’d frequented.
    She told him of her very proper family, her father dying in Thai-Burma railway as a prisoner of war of the Japanese, her isolated childhood in a freezing, almost derelict, castle in Perth-shire, her even harsher isolation in a girls’ school where the pupils were expected to study hard but not too hard, the principal purpose of their education being to marry well.
    Not once did the twenty-year age difference, and the class divide, and her being at the start of her career and him beginning to feel in the twilight of his, make any difference to their ability to talk and talk and talk.
    It was closing time before he knew it.
    â€œSee you around,” Mary said as they parted on the pavement outside the bar. Without a wave or a thanks, she was gone up the street. From a distance her small figure looked as though she was speed-skating.
    And he hadn’t phoned Joanne. And now it was too late.
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    It was Saturday morning, two days since he’d left, before he made the phone call to Joanne. He’d bought the Saturday papers, and then found that the local newsagent cum corner shop no longer stocked