The Long Glasgow Kiss

Bobby Kirkcaldy’s place wasn’t the most expensive, but it was a huge step up from his origins in Motherwell. But then again, having a toilet indoors, and one that you didn’t have to share with four other families, was a huge step up. Truth was I quite admired Kirkcaldy as a boxer. He had started off welterweight, later moving up to middleweight but retaining a certain grace and lightness on his feet. I had seen him fight twice and it had been like watching two completely different boxers. Kirkcaldy was one of those boxers who, while probably no mental giant in any other way, seemed to possess a profound physical intelligence: a constant process of interpretation and fine re-calibration to match every move his opponent made. It was as if he could read any fighter within the first minute of a round and adapt his style to suit: if he was up against an infighter, Kirkcaldy subtly increased his range, forcing his opponent to stretch outside his preferred zone; if Kirkcaldy was up against an outfighter, he closed in with tight jabs, forcing his opposite number always backwards and onto the ropes.

One of the fights I had seen had been against Pete McQuillan. McQuillan was a slugger and bruiser; a stump of a man who struggled to stay in the middleweight bracket and in terms of style was just one step up from the pikey bare-knuckle boys. McQuillan winning a fight – and he had remained undefeated until then – depended either on a knockout, or his doing so much devastation to his opponent’s face that the referee stopped the match. Then he had been matched with Bobby Kirkcaldy. It had been an amazing thing to watch: McQuillan viciously scything empty air while Kirkcaldy had danced around him, placing stinging jabs with absolute precision. It took McQuillan to a place he’d never been before: the distance. Kirkcaldy had been the unanimous points winner. Now he was the clear favourite for the European Middleweight Championship and would be meeting the West German Jan Schmidtke.

And I would be there. I had a ticket.

The house was roughly the same size as MacFarlane’s in Pollokshields but was more recently built, maybe in the Twenties or Thirties, and it benefited from a more prestigious geography. It had also benefited from whitewash, which made it look bright and foreign in the sunlight. The front door faced south but was shielded by a Deco arch edged in earth-red brickwork. The whitewash walls beneath the red tiles and the terracotta brick detailing was an ambitious attempt to give the house an almost Mediterranean look, which in Scotland was an achievement akin to making Lon Chaney look like Clark Gable. I wasn’t sure how much of the credit should go to the architect and how much to the alien climate that seemed to have invaded the West of Scotland.

The door was answered almost instantly when I rang the electric push-bell. I got the idea that they had heard my Atlantic crunch its way up the drive. They were looking out for visitors, welcome or otherwise, I guessed. It wasn’t Bobby Kirkcaldy who answered the door but someone probably even more pugnacious-looking, an older man in a dark suit and thin woollen tie. He was lean and mean-looking and he had the appearance of something assembled from the toughest material; he had white bristle for hair and a deep-lined, leathery face that was more than weather-beaten. It looked as if anything capable of giving it a beating, weather or otherwise, had had its turn on his face. His flattened nose had that thick, rubbery, formless look that suggested it had been broken so many times that there was no cartilage left to give it any kind of meaningful shape. The damage wasn’t just visually apparent; when he spoke he sounded muffled and nasal. Even more than the average Glaswegian did.

‘What do you want?’ he asked.

‘A quiet life, money, a beautiful girl and a sense of inner peace.’

He looked at me blankly. Along with the crap, he had clearly had the humour beaten out of him.

‘I’m here to see Bobby,’ I sighed. I was not appreciated here. ‘My name is Lennox. I’m expected.’

He looked me up and down. I mirrored his examination. It was difficult to age him. He could have been a battered fifty or a fit seventy. It was obvious he was an ex-fighter, but I reckoned as much damage had been done to his face outside the ring as in it. I tilted my head and smiled impatiently. The old warrior stood to one side to let me in. I was going to hand him my hat but he didn’t look the Jeeves type, so I hung on to it and followed him down a long hallway with terracotta tiles on the floor and tasteful art, some original, on the wall. I guessed that a Motherwell-raised boxer like Kirkcaldy would probably have about as much good taste as my elderly companion with the devastated nose would have a sense of smell; I put the domestic aesthetic down to a good decorator.