The Long Glasgow Kiss

It may have seemed like a pointless exercise, but I followed him anyway. An ugly jade demon and a dead gangster’s son were pointing me in that direction. And then there was the gut feeling I had about the Frenchman too: I liked the guy but every time I thought of him it was like someone prodding something that had been curled up for a nap in a room somewhere at the back of my brain.

One afternoon I waited outside the bonded docks until about six. When Barnier’s Simca pulled out through the gates, I followed. When he drove west towards Greenock, I guessed we were heading straight to his home in Langbank. I had to hold back as far as I could without losing him. The road ribboned along the side of the Clyde and, despite this being the main road that connected Glasgow with its satellite town Greenock, there were practically no other cars in either direction. We passed the point where I had turned south and camped out in my car by the reservoir. Then, surprisingly, the Simca drove past Langbank and out towards the west. I couldn’t imagine what business an importer of fine wines and oriental curios could possibly have in Greenock.

He drove towards the town and I lost him where the coast takes a sudden sweep southwards. I accelerated a little and nearly missed his turning. Port Glasgow had a vast sugar works and the hill above it had been named Lyle Hill. Why Tate didn’t deserve recognition was something I didn’t know. Driving up the sweep of Lyle Hill I passed Barnier’s parked Simca. I drove on, not even slowing down until I was around the bend in Lyle Road, out of sight of where he had parked. I pulled over and took a set of binoculars out of the glove compartment. I had to scrabble up the hillside to get a vantage point from which I could watch Barnier. The leather soles of my Gibsons slipped on slimy grass and I came down onto my knees several times, cursing the damp, dark staining on my suit trousers. Glasgow was a city with a heavy-industrial attitude to everything and I had found out to my cost that laundries in the city approached the dry-cleaning of my best suits with a delicacy that make steel-smelting look like needlepoint.

I made it to the top of the hill and seemed to be on the edge of a golf course. There was brush and some meagre trees to give me shelter and I looked down at where the road swept around the edge of Lyle Hill. The view was breathtaking: out across the Clyde to the mountains of the Cowal Peninsula. Immediately below was Greenock on one side and Gourock on the other. And, further out, the Tail of the Bank. This had been the departure point for my parents when they took me, as a baby, to start a new life in Canada.

But what struck me most about what I was looking at was the fact that Barnier had stopped at the monument that commanded the best of the view. The memorial was in the form of a vast white ship’s anchor, the shaft of which thrust dramatically up into the sky. But instead of having the usual rode-eye at the top, the anchor shaft had two beams cross it, one shorter than the other. A Cross of Lorraine. As a piece of civic sculpture, it could not have been more dramatic. And I knew something about what it commemorated.

I watched Barnier. It was difficult to tell if he was waiting for someone or if the monument had some particular significance for him. He stood as if reading the inscription on the base. Then he turned and leaned against the border rail, with his back to me, and seemed to be gazing out over the Firth of Clyde. He stood there for a good ten minutes before turning and heading back towards his car. I cursed inwardly. I had been sure he was going to meet someone, and the monument seemed an ideal place for a rendezvous. But I had probably just watched too many Orson Welles movies.

I scrabbled down the side of the hill as fast as I could to get back to the Atlantic. If Barnier turned back down the hill then I would have to hurry or lose him. As I scrambled, fingers of tree branch snagged at my suit to impede my descent. My hat came off a couple of times and it was only by some nifty goal-keeping that I saved my Borsalino from the mud. I burst out from the green web of bushes and onto the road, a few feet from where I had parked the Atlantic.

You see it all the time in Westerns. The settlers look up from the pass and spot the menacingly still and silent silhouettes of mounted Apaches or banditos up on the hillside looking down on them. The Badlands.