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
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
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,