The Blade Artist Read Online Free

say you never knew him. Neither did I, Jim mutters, his dark brown eyes clouding. — When he was younger he was just a distraction to me. An irrelevance. Then I was inthe jail. I did everything wrong with him and his brother, he says, seeming to Melanie to grow almost conversational in his tone, like he is talking to someone else. It disconcerts her, and he picks up on it, sinking his voice. — When I had kids I said I’d never be the way my old man was with me. And I kept my word; I was worse, he allows, almost bluntly, as he pulls up the American Airlines page on the screen. Then he turns to her and says, intently, — But I’m different with the girls.
    — Of course you are, you’re a great dad, Melanie says, probably a little too urgently. — It’s different now. You were too young, you –
    — I was addicted to violence, Jim coldly confesses, tapping in information and pulling out his credit card. — But I’ve got that nonsense under control now, cause it doesn’t take me anywhere interesting. Just jail. Done too much of that.
    — Yes. Melanie looks at Jim, squeezes his hand. She tries to find him, this man she’s married, whom she’d taken with her back to the States. All she can see is a Scottish jailbird she’d met years ago called Francis Begbie.

6
     
THE DELIVERY BOY 2
     
    They came by the house on Friday nights for card school, when my ma was at the bingo. There was Grandad Jock, Carmie, Lozy and the much younger man, ‘Handsome’ Johnnie Tweed, the only one of them who ever gave me money. He’d take me aside and crush the odd quid note or ten-bob bit into my hand, and tip me a wee wink, so I knew that this was just between us. They were an arrogant, entitled quartet, prone to swaggering around in long Crombie overcoats and trilbies. I was fascinated by them all, so was my brother Joe.
    My dad would be pished, with my uncle Jimmy. He was always rat-arsed. My ma would throw him out, sometimes for years. When he came back he’d be sober for a while, but that never lasted. Then he went away for ages. They said he was working on the rigs, but I knew he was in the jail or kipped up with some dozy hoor. Then he returned once more, and stayed long enough to give Ma my wee sister, Elspeth.
    I eagerly anticipated those Friday nights, even if they had a strange edge to them. Grandad Jock would be nursing a beer, which he rarely finished, and sipping at a whisky. One only. He’d look at his two sons: drunk, sprawling, flatulent and loud-mouthed, and even as a kid, I could feel him seethe with disappointment. I suppose it was something that we shared.
    My ma hated him and his trio of mates. Gangsters, she called them. Back then, in the late seventies, they were among the last men on the dwindling docks. All of them, bar Johnnie, had been there since the war and were nearing retirement. The older three, through being in a reserved occupation, had missed all the fighting. I always thought it ironic that cunts thought of as hard had used their job status to shite out from swedging the Nazis. But personal gain was their real motive. — They took everything that was meant for the working people, I mind my mother once saying to me. — Stole fae their ain. The war stuff, it was meant for everybody, no just they thieving ratbags.
    That was a wee bit disingenuous. I’d look around at all the stuff in our house compared to the scruffs’ hooses. We had everything, until the old man pished it away. And you knew where it all came from. I never heard any talk from my ma of sending it back.
    But she tried to keep me away from Grandad Jock and his mates. I was thirteen and in first year at school when they started to take an interest in me. That they didnae give a fuck about my brother Joe, fourteen months my elder, was good. It made me feel important.
    Not a lot did back then.
    I struggled with reading throughout primary school, and was put in dumbo classes in secondary. Letters and words on a page meant nothing,