They are standing together in the prime spot in Jackson’s, at the corner of the long bar. The corner calls the night in Jackson’s.
Bar positioning in Jackson’s is a complex language, a poem about power. The men who drink here are powerless. Some are fatherless sons, motherless sons, Barnardo’s Boys gone bad. Some would have done better without the hapless parents fate has foisted on them. These are clever men though, some are brilliant, but none of them has the legitimate means to exploit it. They’re prison fodder. If polis see these men coming out of somewhere nice they’ll lift them on suspicion. Powerless, but within that powerlessness there are still grades to be measured and weighed. These men gather night after night, dressed in new duds, flashing wads of readies, determined to prove to other members of the underclass that they’re not down yet.
From the corner of the bar Watt and Manuel can see the whole room and both doors. They see who comes in with hungry eyes, who is here on the scrounge, who swans in with a brand-new suit and a dame on each arm. Everyone coming through the doors sees them first and picks up on their mood.
Because of the power of the corner, it’s a fight to keep it. Shows of weakness or impecunity, or a slight against you, witnessed but unavenged, will see you bumped around the corner. The least ambivalence and you’ll be hustled off the spot.
Holding the corner is a first for Manuel. He has washed up here by accident a few times but has always been pushed off, not by one person but by the consensus of the crowd. Watt has had the corner before but he has never held it this long. It’s because they are together and they don’t belong together. It throws everyone.
The reckless threat that Manuel exudes adds to Watt’s wealth and height. Eyes flick between them, confused by their conjoining and therefore disadvantaged. As with all unexpectedly powerful unions, they will eventually have to decide what to do with it, but for now they are just intoxicated by it, euphoric, drinking quickly, talking fast and loose. Watt is saying things to Manuel he wouldn’t otherwise–I killed my wife–when they are interrupted by the sight of Scout O’Neil staggering in through the door.
Watt is trying to call him over to buy him a drink. Watt wouldn’t have done that if he wasn’t blootered because O’Neil shouldn’t even be in here. He’s a ridiculous mess tonight.
Scout stands at the door, two black eyes and the bridge of his nose swollen and split, his suit jacket ripped on the shoulder. He has partially wiped the blood from his chin with his sleeve. His cheeks are crusty with salt white. The broken nose must have made his eyes water. Even O’Neil knows he’s not getting served tonight. He’s just looking for someone, probably someone that owes him money from the Gordon Club.
Watt calls his name: ‘Scout O’BloodyNeil!’ Scout hears it and raises a hand while he scans the bar for the debtor’s face. He shoots Watt a preoccupied smile. His front tooth is freshly missing.
Watt and Manuel both see this and laugh, though it must still be very sore. The gummy gap is ragged, his remaining teeth framed with bloody saliva. It’s only funny because it’s O’Neil.
Scout O’Neil is crazy. Wherever, whenever, Scout has always just had an adventure, usually involving money, a dame and a fist fight. At the end of most nights Scout will try to fight whoever is around, if he hasn’t already had a fight. Everybody loves Scout O’Neil. He always has money and is honest about his proclivities–I love fighting, he says. When anyone says they don’t like Scout it’s just because they owe him money. They come around again when the debt is settled.
Scout O’Neil scans the bar but can’t see who he’s after. Walking backwards towards Watt, he catches the manager’s eye.
Brady, a surly big bastard, is drying ashtrays at the gantry but has stopped still, staring at O’Neil.
‘Sorry,’ says Scout, raising a hand in surrender and ducking behind it as if to hide.
Brady watches him sidle to the corner, eyebrows rising slowly, asking if O’Neil’s really going to make him put him out? Really? They both know Scout can’t be in here with that face, in that suit, with blood on it. Scout brasses it out and sidesteps to Watt.
Brady moves towards Watt, ‘Ho! O’Neil!’
‘Couple o’minutes, Brady?’
Brady shakes his head and mutters a warning, the conditions of which are lost in the burble of the bar–ye better fucking fucking fucking, son. Something like that, not happy anyway, but O’Neil has two minutes’ grace. He accepts the conditions with a nod.
‘Hey, Watt, you seen Dandy the night?’
Scout is scanning the faces for his boss, Dandy McKay, so he doesn’t see the reaction to his question. All he feels is the frost and stillness seeping back at him. He looks round to see if Watt has heard him. And then he sees Peter Manuel standing next to William Watt.
Scout is aghast. ‘The fuck yees doing?’
Smirking, Manuel shifts his weight so that he is obscured behind Watt’s massive frame. Watt stands tall though. He’s loyal because they have the corner and he’s enjoying that. Scout runs his eye between them, sees that they are, indeed, together.
For a man who looked like he had been run over by a tram when he came in, O’Neil suddenly looks very much worse. He pales as he looks between them, from Watt up high and Manuel down low, to the dirty glasses in front of them that show they’ve been tanning it, matching each other for half and halfs, holding the prime position at the bar. He sees that Watt and Manuel are not just together, they’re making a show of being together and they’re doing it in Jackson’s, of all fucking places.
‘The fuck yees pulling?’ O’Neil backs away. He shakes his head at Manuel. ‘You better fucking run, boy. If I was you, I’d fucking run.’
Manuel bends back to call around the massive wall of Watt. ‘Hey, Scout. Gonnae not say?’
William Watt is oblivious. He has picked up on none of this. ‘A drink for O’Neil! Let us have drink!’
He doesn’t clock Scout O’Neil’s horror or hear his warning. He doesn’t see Brady’s annoyance. He doesn’t sense the shift in O’Neil, from a man trying to get into Jackson’s to look for Dandy, to a man who now wants to get out, get out, get out and away from whatever the fuck is unfolding between himself and Manuel.
‘A whisky for Scout O’Neil!’
Scout holds both hands up again, higher this time, not in surrender this time. He’s washing his hands of them.
The door flaps open to the night. Watt tries to blink away a sudden sting of cigarette smoke. The door flaps shut. Watt’s eyes open and Scout O’Neil is gone.
Watt barely remembers that O’Neil was even there. All that remains is the shape of the name in his mouth, like a memory of a flavour. He goes back to what he was saying before.
‘I killed my wife, they say. I suppose anyone might kill their wife, but her sister? Why would I? Who would? And my daughter?’