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i.
Here is a list of things Jamie is good at: doorstepping-- better than anyone you’ve ever met, always knowing where to get a takeaway at precisely 4:52 am, how to punch you without leaving bruises, how to punch you leaving lots of bruises, spitting out whisky and setting it on fire, high-calibre surveillance, low-calibre surveillance, nicking shit out of your bins you hoped no-one would ever see, pissing in public without getting arrested, but, nevertheless: getting arrested, smashing a hard drive and throwing it in the Thames, chess and poker but for some reason not monopoly, and being a normal fuckin’ human being.
Here is a list of things Malcolm is good at: smiling exactly like the sting of a papercut, reading a thousand words in the time it takes most men to take a piss, subterfuge, menace, psychological warfare, spitting in other people’s coffee, speaking fluent French and German, pursuing a story like it killed his Mam and only he can bring it to justice, forgetting to eat, never forgetting to make the phone call you never wanted to answer, finishing pub fights very, very quickly, making you feel like you are the only person in the world and that the sun shines out of his arse, organising the most vicious sting operations imaginable, getting really good pictures of babies, and, to the surprise of most people in his later life, also being a normal fuckin’ human being.
Here is a list of things they both excel at: war.
ii.
Jamie has burned in the fires of Malcolm’s belief since he was twenty-four years old, heart in his chest turned sacred in the flames of what Malcolm sought to build-- and still does, twenty years later, in the life he chose because he could have chose no other, fighting a holy war because the fight is all there is.
Lesser men have led and won revolutions, red flags at their backs and red on their hands and boots and the edges of their bayonets. Men have died for conviction half as iron-clad as the certainty that is looking in Malcolm’s eyes. Leaders with a tenth of the charisma in that too-thin frame have toppled empires and killed kings and started religions. But Jamie was born to devotion, the movement of hands over his chest, touching his forehead in deference to the divine, and to him Malcolm is a comprehensible figure: a warrior saint with Marx in his mouth.
It is said that true believers remake their God in every generation, find in their world the image of what they recognise as their messiah. Jamie has never wondered, never questioned, not since the day he left the seminary, where all he did was question. He believes because he believes, a mobius loop closed by the sharp pull of Malcolm’s mouth to the right, in the edge where he hides a smile only Jamie can see. Like finds like, people say.
Jamie’s messiah is nothing like him, except for the accent and the cruel sense of humour and that ruthless beating heart. Jamie found Malcom because finding Malcolm was all there was. Jamie found Malcolm because Malcolm is all there is. Jamies knows: like did not find like. But like became like, and then it became something with no name, a crowbar in the boot and leather gloves on his hands and an ironkey in his pocket. Like became many words that began with L, but none so much as Labour.
So, no. Like did not find like. But it became in league with, it became on the left, it became legislate, lobby, the Lords. There are, of course, other words that begin with L, but do not mention them.
Jamie never has. His god is a cruel god, and, besides, he’s more than sure that his god, in his omnipotence, knows already.
*
They call him Mal, when Jamie first meets him, and it’s a joke, almost.
Mal Tucker the terrible, Mal Tucker the mad-- and it’s not until a good ten years later that Jamie even bothers asking why Cal is The Fucker, what with the obvious rhyming, and all that.
(“Ye know, I don’t even fuckin’ know,” says Malcolm, briefly, beautifully honest, and that is the end of that.)
It’s a byline that threads through the paper like a virus, like the ink on the page and the fibres holding the pulp of the paper together. Mal Tucker, Mal Tucker, he doesn’t like liars and he doesn’t like thieves, and Jamie chases it everywhere, same as he chases Malcolm, down alleyways and into carparks, out of council meetings, out of pubs, off on some mad adventure at three in the morning, because something’s on fire or somebody’s died or someone is on fire and dead, and it’s a red flag, the reddest reddest reddest, to a bull, so Jamie follows and follows and follows, watching and waiting for the light that never goes out.
“Ach, I fuckin’ hate that song,” says Malcom, which is a baldfaced lie, and they both know it.
“Might die be yer side, the way you drive,” says Jamie, smirking, showing Malcolm he’s been had, that he sees him clear as the day this isn’t, and Malcolm shoves him off the bench and into the traditional mid-October Glaswegian puddle.
“Aye, and it would be yer fuckin’ privilege,” says Malcolm, but concedes to not kick the puddle with his Docs when he stands up to walk away.
Jamie doesn’t reply, because, well. Malcolm’s not the only one, on this grey October day, who’s been seen.
iii.
It’s day three of the Labour Party Conference, and Malcolm hasn’t slept for five, give or take a few hours, some visibly during Fatty’s speech, just to teach that bastard a lesson.
“Don’t smoke in here,” he says, curtly, as Jamie lights a cigarette, sneering in Malcolm’s general direction, “Fuckin’ hang out the window like ye did in the fuckin’ seminary.”
Jamie’s been awake for nearly as long, trying not to murder junior ministers, hating the fucking enclave of middle class fuckwittery his party has become. The conference is always the worst, addresses full of double-speak with journalists taking notes who only show deference to Jamie out of fear, not respect, and fuck you, Jamie MacDonald knows the difference between those two things. He’s smoking to stay awake, and sane, and keep his mouth shut, at this point. He’s a rabid dog on a leash and no one respects him, ever, cos they all know where he came from and no boy from Motherwell will ever be shown respect in these hallowed halls, no matter what terrifying life-ruining shite he has under his metaphorical (also, literal) floorboards.
“Want me t’show ye some other things I learnt in the seminary?” says Jamie, stubbing the cigarette out on the sad grey duvet on Malcolm’s bed. Tragically, it barely seems to leave a mark.
Malcolm stares him down, says, eventually, “Not now.”
“I didn’t specify which things,” says Jamie, “Could hear yer fuckin’ confession, fuck off, ye dinnae knae what I was gonna offer ye. So presumptuous, Malc.”
“Alright,” says Malcolm pulling up a chair opposite, sitting down, legs spread wide, hands digging into the beige, boring wood, “Hear it.”
“Yer confession?” says Jamie, his eyes widening, “I-- Yer’ve nothin’ to tell, Malc. Not that I don’t already know.”
“I miss simplicity,” says Malcolm, and his voice is low, and steady, and terrible, “I miss knowin’ what I was fightin’ for. I miss door-knockin’ and getting bylines. I miss singin’ ‘The Red Flag’ every fuckin’ week and I miss that mad old fascist bitch, God never rest her soul, for makin’ it so fuckin’ easy. I miss Glasgow and I miss my Mam and I miss feelin’ like I was doin’ the right fuckin’ thing, not lubin’ it up so the right fuckin’ thing can come along, eventually, which it never fuckin’ does. I miss bein’ young. I can’t stay awake for five days straight, not anymore.”
The room is silent for a long, long time.
“No you fuckin’ do not, Malc,” says Jamie, hands visibly shaking with fury, “No you fuckin’ DON’T, because we’ve changed the fuckin’ WORLD, don’t ye fuckin’ DARE denigrate what we’ve done to get this far. Ye don’t regret a thing and you wouldnae change it, neither.”
“Right,” says Malcolm, “Neither would you.”
It’s quiet, too, quiet and small and devastating, unseen and unexpected and unchallengeable, like the best bombs always are.
“I see ye, even if they never will,” says Malcolm, and: exactly.
iv.
There’s a concept Jamie understood, in his fingertips, in the back of his throat, in his clenching hands and his raising voice, long before Malcolm came along and gave him the vocabulary he needed, not as good as the priests could do but equal, all the same belief in the end: the vanguard.
Power is a complex thing, particularly when you haven’t got any of it, and only seeing the world through Malcolm’s eyes did Jamie learn the truth: power is more simple than you’d think. One voice alone can be loud but it can’t burst the ear drums of a Tory cabinet minister, a thousand, a hundred thousand, a million voices shouting as one? Can change the world. They can change the world, can go out into it and tell them not to be afraid, to fight back with bared teeth and brass knuckles, that it’s theirs for the taking and keeping, fuck the Tories, fuck London, workers of the world unite and beat the shite out of them until they listen. And they will, that is: listen. No one listens to anyone like they listen to Malcolm. Watching him do it is eerie, almost, a magician at work. A general addressing his troops. A preacher leading his flock.
“Come with is, and be fishers of fuckin’ men,” says Jamie, half to himself, watching Malcolm proselytize, and it’s not blasphemy, never was.
*
Jamie kisses Malcolm because he can’t not, like he can’t stop fighting, like he can’t stop hating the ground they have to cede or not punching Ollie Fucking Reeder, right in his stupid smug thinking-he-can-get-one-over-on-The-Boss face. He kisses Malcolm because kissing Malcolm is the right thing to do, especially because so much of the country thinks it isn’t, and you can bet your fuckin’ boots that Jamie is on all the public lists as Not Hetero, thanks very fucking much, and he always grins extra-nasty at the Tory backbenchers who cast him fearful glances in the bar. (The ones who cast him hopeful glances get two fingers up and a sneer. Who the fuck do they think he is? He’s thrown better than them away.) He lives as he is, all threat and foul language and everything little conservatives were taught to fear by nanny, and he doesn’t care what you think-- revels in it, even. Jamie MacDonald fucks men up the arse, but not as hard as he’ll fuck you up if you make a thing out of it, you prejudiced jessie cunt.
Jamie kisses Malcolm, right there in the lobby of the Commons, because fuck you, fuck you all, and it’s brief and it’s barely a peck but it’s there and it happened, because fuck you, he’s come to take it all, and try and stop him, he dares you-- because some things are right and some things are Right, and the left hums in his blood and his cock and he loves this man and he loves his cause and fuck you, fuck you, FUCK YOU. He is what he is, and what he is is a warrior. He isnae fuckin’ scared of the likes of you.
Try him. Motherwell rules. He’ll even let you get first punch in. Nah? He didn’t think so.
v.
“Ye know what tae do,” says Malcolm, his mouth pulling tight at the side, a half a smile for Jamie, half a grimace for the rest of the world watching, even when it’s not, mind like a vice and mouth like a sewer, the man Jamie loves and the cause he would die for all in one, skinny and feral and brilliant in his off-grey suit, beautiful in the weak morning light.
“Aye,” says Jamie, pulling his boots on, lighting up a fag, smiling like the wolf he is and will become, on Malcolm’s orders, “Kill ‘em all, let God sort ‘em out.”