The Long Glasgow Kiss

I read through back issues of the Greenock Telegraph, covering the earlier years of the war. There had been a lot of French sailors stationed in the area during the war and I scanned every mention of the French forces. They were mainly the usual flag-waving, forget-Napoleon-we’re-all-pals-now pieces. The Scots had a very different relationship with the French than the English had: there had been the Auld Alliance, the Franco-Scottish–Norwegian treaty that had preceded the British Act of Union, and to which the Scots romantically attached great importance. The relationship between the French sailors and the locals had been generally positive. There was certainly not going to be anything negative said about it in the wartime press.

But I did find something significant in the court records. Three Greenock dockyard workers, exempt from military service because of their reserved occupation, had appeared in the town’s sheriff court charged with breach of the peace, assault and police assault. Apparently the three locals had been involved in a melee in the town. The local police, and provosts of the Gendarmerie Maritime had had to break up a major brawl that had spilled out of a Greenock bar and into the streets. The date was significant: 5 July, 1940 – two days after the British Royal Navy had attacked the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir to stop the ships falling into German hands. Ten ships had been sunk and nearly 1300 French sailors killed. It had been a diplomatic disaster and had left the French asking ‘with friends like these …’

It didn’t take massive skills of deduction to work out that tensions had been high and some loudmouth must have said something to get a fight started between the French sailors and the locals. Of course, it didn’t need to be that. In the West of Scotland you didn’t need much of a reason for a fight, and seeing as many of the local girls had earned, with much enthusiasm, the epithet of matelots’ mattresses, the good old standards of sexual jealousy and booze were always available for the potentially pugnacious.

I was about to move on when a statement by one of the witnesses drew me back into the report. A group of French sailors had found themselves surrounded by a mob of locals. They were rescued by a group of local police and French naval provosts made up of naval gendarmes and Fusiliers Marins. The witness’s statement described how some of the French provosts had used ‘some kind of fancy foot-fighting’ to drive back the crowd.

I asked my librarian if she could photostat the report for me and, after a little gentle persuasion and much Lennox charm, she agreed. But I would have to pay for the materials and call back for the prints.

It was nearly lunchtime and I made my daily trip to see Davey at the hospital. His face was becoming slightly more recognizable but, if anything, he seemed less chipper than he had been right after the attack. After you’ve taken a beating, it takes a while for the pain to settle itself in, to find the little corners it wants to occupy; to soak itself deep into your muscle and bone. Usually it invites shock and depression as roommates. It was clear that young Davey Wallace’s broken body was now fully let.

It suddenly occurred to me that I had been so obsessed with what had happened immediately before the attack on him that I hadn’t asked Davey if anything unusual had happened earlier in the day, during his watch.

‘Did you find my notebook, Mr Lennox?’ Davey asked through his cage of wired-shut teeth – that was another thing to dampen your spirit a week or so after a beating, having to be fed through a tube because your teeth are wired shut. Whoever had done this to Davey had opened an account with me and I was due them a lot of interest.

‘No, Davey,’ I said. ‘There was no sign of it where the car was parked.’

‘I’ve been thinking about that notebook, Mr Lennox. I have a lot of time to think, here. I don’t lose things. I’m very careful that way. Even with what happened to me, in all of that confusion. That notebook was in my jacket pocket. It should still be there and it’s gone now. Whoever duffed me up took it. I think I saw something or someone that I didn’t take seriously and they thought I’d made a note of it.’

‘What?’

‘I’ve been racking my brains about it. It’s been doing my head in.’ Davey paused to wince. Some pain, somewhere inside, had moved about a bit, just to remind him of its tenancy. ‘Like I said, I’ve had lots of time to think about it. But nothing special happened that day. The only thing that came to me was the car that I saw.’

‘Someone who went into Kirkcaldy’s place?’ I asked. I lit a cigarette and held it to his lips.