One Truth, One Hope, One Salvation: There Is Something I Have Been Meaning to Tell You by Dana G. Smith

Author:Dana G. Smith [Smith, Dana G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781257324484
Publisher: Lulu.com
Published: 2011-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 24

Rosie stood at the bar, nursing a glass of mineral water that was getting warmer by the minute. She knew better than to ask for ice.

There were bars in parts of Glasgow you only went into if you could guarantee a safe passage out without getting your smile widened. This was one of them. If you happened into one of these bars as a tourist, or just for a walk on the wild side, you wouldn’t get the sense straight away of how your night was going to pan out. You might get a cheery word from the barman, or a ‘howsit goin’ big man?’ from a guy propping up the bar. Some bar-room Voltaire might even engage you in friendly conversation. But the secret was to know when it was time to leave. Because what began as genial chat could swiftly become a broken bottle in your neck. That was the Glasgow you wouldn’t see in the Good Pub Guide.

The Globe, smack bang in the middle of Saltmarket, ticked all the squalid boxes. It was close enough to the High Court to ensure that most of its patrons were either on their way to jail, or had just been freed because some clever bastard QC managed to outwit the prosecution – so sending another lowlife scumbucket back onto the streets to resume his career. It was in this dingy hole of a place, which stank of piss and stale tobacco, that the ‘not guilty’ or the ‘not proven’ came to celebrate alongside their brief – who would later repair to the posh O’Brien’s in the city centre and regale the other movers and shakers with tales of his glimpse into the underbelly. And it was at O’Brien’s that he would quaff vintage champagne on the strength of the grand a day he was paid in legal aid to defend the indefensible.

The other punters in the Globe, who sat in dark corners, were the old whores and drunks from the street, who’d come in out of the cold for enough cheap wine to blot out the night and the memory of a squandered life.

Rosie was lucky. She was always guaranteed a safe passage out. She’d been in and out of the bar a million times before, during and after a million High Court trials, and down the years she’d become only as close as you would want to be with the bar staff and the owner. She was respected, and nobody bothered her. Sometimes she would come here to gather her thoughts before writing up her copy after a trial, and other times just to soak up the atmosphere, when her mood became melancholy the way it occasionally did.

Anything could happen at any time in the Globe. On one memorable afternoon, Rosie’s eyes nearly popped out of her head when she became aware of a blootered old wino in her sixties giving her equally blootered pal a hand-job under a table in the corner. It finished in a punch-up

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