Walking Wounded Read Online Free

inventing the past. Frankie could remember this place when the industry was still going strong. There had been some vigour about the place then. They were all losers now – phoneys, like Gus McPhater.
    Frankie couldn’t believe this place. The only kind of spirit in it was bottled. He felt like an orchid in a cabbage-patch.Where was the old style, the old working-class gallousness? Since the Tory government had come to power, it had really done a job on them, slaughtering all the major industry. They believed they were as useless as the government had told them they were. These men were the cast-offs of capitalism. They were pathetic.
    Well, he was different. If the system was trying to screw him, he would screw it. He had his own heroes and they weren’t kings of industry. He thought of McQueen. He wondered how long it would be before McQueen got back out. McQueen, there was a man. He was more free in the nick than most men were outside it.
    That was what you had to do: defy your circumstances. You were what you declared yourself to be. Frankie looked round the bar and made a decision. He would buy a drink for someone. He pulled his wad of money from his pocket. In the flourish of the gesture he became a successful criminal.
    He decided on Gus McPhater’s group. His distaste for them somehow made the gesture grander. He felt like Robin Hood giving the poor a share of his spoils. Besides, Gus was a great talker. Buying him a drink was as good as a photograph in the paper. They would know he had been. He threw a fiver on the counter.
    â€˜Harry,’ he said loudly. ‘Give Gus an’ the boys whatever they want.’
    He noticed a boy who was drinking alone watching him interestedly. It was all the encouragement Frankie needed. He made an elaborate occasion of getting the drinks and taking them over to Gus’s table. He dismissed their thanks with a wave. He took his change and put some of the silver into the bottle where they collected for the old folks. The whole thing became a mini-epic, a Cecil B. De Mille production called ‘The Drink’.
    â€˜Okay,’ Frankie said, saluting the room. ‘Don’t do any-thin’ Ah wouldn’t do. If ye can think of anythin’ Ah wouldn’t do.’
    As he went out, he heard the boy asking, ‘Who is that?’ Stepping into the street, he felt the gulped whisky sting his stomach. It was a twinge that matched the bad feeling the pub had given him. Hopeless, he thought. But maybe he was wrong. He remembered the admiration on the boy’s face as he had asked who Frankie was. Frankie lightened his step and started to whistle.
    A good actor never entirely knows the impact he is having. Perhaps in the thinnest house, unnoticed beyond the glare of the actor’s preoccupation, a deep insight is being experienced or young ambitions being formed for life.
    He would try ‘The Cock and Hen’. There might be some real people in there. He side-stepped into a shop doorway and checked his wad of money. He had three fivers left and he repositioned them carefully to make sure they were concealing the packing of toilet paper inside that made them look like a hundred. He would try ‘The Cock and Hen’.

3
    On the sidelines
    B ritish Summer Time had officially begun but, if you didn’t have a diary, you might not have noticed. The few people standing around in the Dean Park under a smirring rain didn’t seem to be convinced. They knew the clocks had been put forward an hour – that was what enabled these early evening football matches to take place. But the arbitrary human decision to make the nights lighter hadn’t outwitted the weather. The Scottish climate still had its stock of rain and frost and cold snaps to be used up before the summer came, assuming it did.
    Two football pitches were in use. On one of them a works’ game was in progress. On the adjoining pitch two Boys’ Brigade teams were