Ugly Puggly 92

It wasn’t often I was glad to get out and go to an AA meeting—it didn’t matter where it was, I’d have went—but I was glad to get out the house.

I told wee Jim about my dilemma when we were walking into the Napier Hall. We stopped to chat outside the toilet. We were early, and nobody else had arrived. Wee Jim’s advice was ‘truth always sinks tae the bottom of the bucket’.

‘Whit does that mean?’

He passed me a mint humbug and took his time taking the wrapper off his. It was a bit sticky and passed its sell-by date. I stuck mine in my trouser pocket. He made chewing noises as he sucked on his thoughts. ‘It means whit it means.’

I let it go because another punter had come in. I didn’t want to start arguing with him. But he started on me.

‘You shouldnae have too that drink of Coke if you thought there was vodka in it. That could have started you aff again. Then where would yeh have been?’

I waited until the other guy had gone into the hall before I answered. ‘I’d huv been here Jim. Cause I tasted it. And there was vodka in it.’

‘That’s no the point.’

‘Whit is the point?’

‘Doesnae matter. Whit matters is you shouldnae huv drunk it. And you should trust people mair.’

I gave up. ‘I’m goin intae get a seat,’ I told him and if I could have left him in Old Kilpatrick and not drove him home, I would have. But it was too much like work. And the meeting had been sporadically attended, but a good one, which made me feel more sympathetic.

The guy that had arrived early shared that all the things he did were like picking at scabs. That was his insecurity speaking. Nobody gave a shit. And that was his addiction speaking. We held hands as we said The Serenity Prayer. And I wandered over and told him that was the way I felt all the time.

My serenity was tested when I got home. I’d this speech in my head about how sorry I was. And when I told Molly about my own insecurities and how it wasn’t her fault she was an alky, but I’d be there for her. But I didn’t get the chance.

Molly had out the best china and tea cups. All the lights were on. Dave sat at the table with another guy that looked a few years older than him. Closely cropped brown hair and thin physique, he wore a shirt and tie with shiny shoes. He was a good match for an undercover cop. I wondered if he was going to give us an update and tell us they’d found Ugly Puggly. But the way he glided over words and took the playboy’s hand I feared it was far worse, he was a middle-class schoolboy that had never grown up.

‘We came to run a few things past you,’ Dave began to sound middle-class too. I’d have to watch myself in case it was contagious.

‘That’s great,’ I told him.

Molly came and stood at my back, and put a cup of tea in front of me on the table. I sat facing the twin playboys. She made the introductions. ‘That’s Darrell and he’s a lawyer.’

Darrell chuckled like a barrister swallowing the truth. ‘I don’t do very much.’  

‘Lawyers never did much for me,’ I admitted. ‘But yeh never know when yell need wan. Did Dave no tell you about his past?’

The playboy glared at me. Molly wandered away, but I turned my head as I heard a plink and fizz of a can of Coke being opened. She tilted her head and took a drink, knowing I was watching her.   

Darrell’s chest lifted as he took a breath, squeezing his eyes shut, before plunging into laughter. ‘I didn’t know he had a past.’

I was tempted to tell him yer boyfriend and me were part of a trio that were part of a murder gang. But noo the guy that’s done it is missing. Murdered by gangsters. How’s that about no havin a past?

But I said what he expected to hear. ‘I bet he told yeh, he had a very sheltered childhood?’

Dave cleared his throat. ‘I told him about Howard. How we were engaged to be married.’ His eyes welled up. Darrell rubbed his arm.

Molly shuffled towards the toilet holding her can of juice.

‘Anyways,’ the playboy settled for a line in quiet grief and morbidity. ‘That’s whit I’m here for.’ He nodded to include Darrell, ‘We’re here for. Because we’re gonnae do a Podcast about Howard. Include some of his writings—he’s got stacks of stuff lyin aw oer the place—and drum up support for the green movement and our trip oer tae France tae claim asylum.’

‘That’s great,’ my tea was getting cold and I was hungry. ‘But whit’s a Podcast?’

The playboy sniggered. Darrell explained the format to me and I nodded as if I was listening. I was sure he wouldn’t cross-examine me. ‘But as I said, whit’s that got tae dae wae Ugly—em—Howard?’

The playboy scrambled to find scraps of paper with Ugly Puggly’s writing on them. I thought they were going to be about his calculations regarded roofs and tiles, but Darrell filled me in.

‘Quite interesting ideas, actually. He compared the oil and fossil fuel industries approach to the existential threat of government intervention as the same as the Provisional IRA in the seventies. First line was defence. Second line: Defence and retaliation. Third line: a sustained offensive and guerrilla campaign. With a seeming separation of the army’s ruling council and political wing. The IRA gave primacy to military reprisals, but it was in propaganda that they were most successful. Ireland was best left for the Irish. Global warming was a global hoax best left alone, idea.’

I nodded a few times as he was speaking. ‘Aye that sounds like Howard awright. He did talk some shite.’

The playboy flattened his sheets of paper ready to read them verbatim. I held a hand up. ‘Ne er mind. I get the gist o it. And I’m gettin a bit tired.’ I added a note of encouragement. ‘You wire in wae yer thing on the radio.’

‘It’s no the radio.’ Dave corrected me, only to correct himself. ‘I suppose in a way it’s similar. Anyways when we go on tour, Darrell will be driving and broadcasting wae me.’

Molly put her hand on my shoulder. ‘No he willnae. If yer goin anywhere, yer taking Jim and me. And he drives. That’s the way Howard would have wanted it. Otherwise—’