EVERYONE’S LOOKING FOR SOMEONE
‘Have you seen Col?’
Berlie’s was open for the afternoon. They had to close before six-thirty, but a Sunday afternoon could be good business. Mad Martin had interrupted Wallace, who was himself asking after the whereabouts of someone. Wallace looked Mad Martin up and down before taking the time to answer the question he’d been asked.
‘I have not seen your Col. Or maybe I have, for how should I know? I do not know this Col. What does he look like?’
Mad Martin was confused for a moment. Like a cloud that passes quickly in front of the sun and the shadow changes everything for just the time that it takes to blink, so the confusion moved across Mad Martin’s face. Then:
‘He looks like Col.’
And Wallace laughed, like he’d been beaten in a game by a child. There was only sense in what the kilted man had said. And before Wallace could ask his next question, Mad Martin was onto someone else and asking if they had seen Col.
Evelyn and Morag were there, at Berlie’s. They’d gone for a drink again, as they had after work the day before. Morag was keeping an eye on Evelyn, making sure that she wasn’t about to throw herself at the first available young man. They were on the dodgems, sitting together in the one car and laughing together. Bran from The Silver Herring was there, too, and they were pretending to make space between them for him. Like an invitation it looked.
‘Where have you been all my life?’ Evelyn cried. And all the words seemed joined together she said them so fast.
It was the drink talking, Bran could see that, but he kept looking back over his shoulder, to see if it was something else, too. He saw the man he thought of as Berlie, skip between the cars, and lean in close to the two girls from ‘Christine Cuts Hair’ and take their money for their next shot.
‘I was wondering,’ said Wallace to Evelyn and Morag, ‘if you had maybe seen the boy, Kelso. He works here, and as you can see here he isn’t. Have you seen him at all?’
Evelyn said something about Kelso having crawled back under the rock he’d crawled out of and something about good riddance and how he was a bastard and some other things besides, all of them worse than the last.
Wallace thought he understood and he skipped quickly from their car to the next. Morag took Evelyn’s hand in hers and said something into her ear and their attention was back on Bran and where he had been all Evelyn’s life, and they were soon laughing again.
‘Have you see Col?’ said Mad Martin and this time he was asking a lady from the Victoria Hotel, the one he’d seen sitting in the dark of ‘The Bobbing Boat’ café with Guthrie. ‘Have you see Col?’ he said again.
Moira shook her head. ‘No Martin, I am sorry but I have not seen Col? Is he lost?’
And again the cloud of confusion passed briefly across his face.
‘I know you,’ Mad Martin said. ‘I know you from before.’
Moira smiled at Mad Martin. It was, she thought, good to be in a place where she was known and remembered. That was what home should be, she felt, and Martin was just the someone she'd been looking for this afternoon. 'And I know you, Martin,' she said. And the way that she said it was kind and soft so that Martin did not walk away from her. Not for the rest of the afternoon. And every little while he turned to her and asked again if she had seen Col. And every time Moira smiled and said again that she was sorry but she had not seen Col.
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