Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2012 15:27:13 +0530 (IST)
From: bert galway <marcusmcnallyfanclub@indiatimes.com>
Subject: The Marcus McNally Fan Club  C4

This story is partly a work of fiction.  But Marcus is real and is the best
author ever! It is meant as a tribute to, not a rip-off of, one the best
(one of??) stories ever to appear on Nifty.
Apologies to any 'Rocks' fans who were offended.
And heartfelt thanks to Mr McNally for the hours of pleasure he has given
us all.


The Marcus McNally Fan Club  4

It felt as if George was about to take me by the ear and lead me off like a
naughty schoolboy.
My head was spinning; my brain teemed with a dozen ideas, all crazy; I felt
hot and cold at the same time.  All I could think was 'what the hell is
going on?'  Please God, let me wake up and find this is all some terrible
dream.  Mickey?  With Josh?  Arguing?  What about?
"You've been reading too many stories, young man.  Not good for you.
Affects the brain, you know.  Moves in on the imagination and before you
know it, takes over your life."
And with that George gripped both my shoulders, wheeled me round, and
guided me back out of the Palace.
In silence I found myself propelled back towards Great Western Road, the
main thoroughfare heading out of the city towards the bonnie banks and the
wild romance of Rob Roy country.  It wasn't that I was being frog-marched.
I was so bewildered that I was not resisting. It did not even occur to me
to wonder where I was headed under George's direction.
Then I heard it and then I didn't hear it.  There was a sudden noisy
screeching of brakes from the main road. This was followed by an eerie
quiet.  It was as if, all of a sudden, the city had gone to sleep.  I
glanced around.  The gardens, which moments before had been filled with
citizens going about their business - men on benches reading newspapers,
boys playing ball on a distant court, women with bags of shopping, couples
wandering arm in arm beside the flower beds - were now strangely still.
For a moment I thought that it had all been freeze-framed.  The stillness
and quiet were unsettling.  But it was not quiet nor still.  I suddenly
realised I could hear from all around me the tapping of thumbs on keypads.
I could see the dexterous fingers flick.  The whole city seemed to have
decided to go online at the very same moment.
And then the truth dawned.
"He's posted chapter thirty four!" I exclaimed.
George started back and let go of my arm.
A woman with a pram glanced up, frowned at me, then turned her attention
back to her blackberry.
Damn!  If C34 had been posted then I was damned sure I had to read it.  I
set off at a sprint towards the park gate.  George was far from my mind now
and anyway he too was thumbing away.  Sure enough the traffic on the main
road had ground to a halt.  Buses remained at bus stops.  Some cars had
pulled over; others had simply stopped dead in the middle of the road.
Pavements were full of what appeared to be statues, but all in the same
position, all hunched over screens.
I began to punch out the log-in on my phone.  Fuck!   Low battery!  Why
does that always happen at the critical moment?
I tore across the street and sprinted down towards the Library, dodging
past the immobile figures that cluttered the pavements.  My progress was
now orchestrated by reactions - sighs, gasps, cries of horror and many
sharp intakes of breath.
"Fuck," I thought, "it must be another cracker."
Little did I know then just what a cracker it was!
I found myself wondering if Mickey was already reading it.  What had
happened?  Why had Mickey taken off like that, without leaving any sort of
message?  But no time now to dwell on that!
I raced into the library and headed over to the section where the computers
were located.  Every machine was taken but I had expected that.  Bound to
be when something as momentous as this happened.  I headed over to a screen
around which four boys were gathered.  No point asking them to go back to
the beginning.  I just had to settle for joining in where they already were
in the story.
"Oh my God!"
"Tell me this is not happening!"
"Oh!  No, no, no!"
"Oh, Mike.  Poor, poor Mike!"
"He didn't?"  "He just so did!"  "Oh, I can't bear this!"
"I think there's a spelling mistake on page four," averred the lady in dark
glasses who was making notes on an A4 pad - pencil notes.
"Oh shut up Doris!" chorused the others.
As more and more people reached the chapter's end it was as if one great
collective sigh went up; a sigh that said much about C34 but also was
filled with a longing, a deep desire for the speedy appearance of C35.

I wandered out of the library.  Like most others I was in a total daze.
Mike had moved out, out of the apartment and perhaps out of Ty's life!
That took some getting your head around.
"What is he doing to us!" muttered an elderly gentleman with a spaniel at
his heel.  He reached down to fondle the dog's ear as if to console the
abject canine.
"Scruffy'll be fine, don't worry," he muttered, but his voice was far from
reassuring.
I exchanged a glum and sympathetic glance with the dog.
On the board at the Library entrance there was a poster advertising a sale
next week of 'Artefacts of Oz'.  It was the sub-head that stopped my breath
- 'including Love on the Rocks memorabilia'.  Across the road there was
blond boy in budgie smugglers selling Turkish Delight from a tray strapped
round his neck.  He grinned at me and nodded down - was it towards the tray
or to what lay snuggled in the Speedos?
I continued down Byres Road, passed the Oxfam Book Shop where things were
returning to normal - or at least what passed for normal given the
devastation of that latest chapter and that irritating woman behind the
cash desk.  At the first corner there stood a lad with a placard, a large
wooden finger-pointer.  It signalled the way to the Western Baths and read
'Father and Son Sessions Now In Progress :  Lend a Hand?'
In a totally confused daze I crossed Great George without a glance up
towards S'Mug.  What the fuck was going on?  It was as if McNally had taken
over.  A little ahead of me lay the Curlers.  I decided what I needed was a
good think and a pint of Best.

The Curlers is probably the oldest building on Byres Road and dates back,
as the name suggests, to a time when the area was countryside and boasted a
large pond nearby.  More recently it got a reputation as the poet's pub for
here McDiarmid might sit and sup and hold court.
I bought a pint of eighty shilling and retreated into a corner to think.
As I nursed my pint glass I become aware of voices, the hum of
conversations all around me.  I stilled my ears, remembering my
embarrassment earlier that day but sometimes you can't help yourself.
"Holy Buttons!  Yon Tyson's no' wan o' us," winked the man with the
backpack and a copy of Denis Matthews' book on the Beethoven Sonatas.
"Amor in saxa conturbat me!" lamented the man in the clerical gown, who
had grown even more morbid since C33 (and c1513, come to that).
		"It's
		 Not
	       Really
	     Happening
	       Really
   	        It's
		Not,"
opined Mr Morgan, a bit too concretely.
"It's very sad a good story cannot know how lovely it is?" muttered the man
with the long face whose every statement seemed to carry a question mark.
I slunk away into a corner to muse upon events. The world had gone mad.  I
was sure I must have slipped into some alternative universe.  Perhaps the
world's spinning had rotated into some kind of mobius strip which flipped
me from reality to reality.

"Simon is a rat.  No way should Scott go back to him."
God, not again.  Not more, I thought.
A group of lads who, from their garb, must have been students, were nursing
half quaffed measures and were clearly engrossed in conversation.
A 'Love on the Rocks' conversation.
There were approving grunts from the Simon-Haters.
"Oh?" queried the lad with the blondish curls.  "Who says?"
"Scott does.  He does.  In C29 he tells Mike ..."
The guy with the curls interrupted him.
"Yeah, and Mike tells us.  The whole thing is down to what Mike tells us."
"So?  You saying Mike is ...."
Here the speaker dropped his voice, as if shocked by what he was about to
say.
"... telling lies?"
The boy with the flaxen hair raised an eyebrow and shook his head.
"Look, we all know about first person narratives.  Even the bible.  Can you
trust it?  Tobiah was a bad man.  Who says?  Nehemiah says.  We never do
get to hear what Tobiah thinks when old Nehemiah chucks him out of his
apartment at the temple.  Do we?  You have to remember who's telling a
story.  It's his point of view of the truth.  Not the same as the truth."
The others shrugged but looked unconvinced.
"It's become standard practice in fiction these days.  The unreliable
narrator.  Loads of examples now.  The Brontes sort of started it.  Take
Villete.  You read the book and take it all at face value until the very
end, the very last fucking page.  And then she hits you with it.  I'm not
telling you what happened to the ship, she says.  Telling you would spoil
the story, she says.  That's when a firework goes off in your head and you
think three hundred pages and how much can I trust?"
The others nodded.
"Remember that lecture we got on Madox Ford?  The unreliable narrator who
didn't know he was unreliable.  That was masterly.  That daft American
hadn't a clue what was really going on.  So maybe Mike isn't exactly
telling lies.  Maybe he can't see what is really happening?"
"Mike is a lawyer, for fuck's sake," exploded another of the lads.  "And a
damn good lawyer.  Look at how he operates over Ty's contracts.  Super
smart."
"According to who?"
"Whom?"
"Don't do a geegee.  You know what I mean.  According to the sainted Mike,
that's whom!"
The speaker sat back, took a large swallow and smirked in self
congratulation.
"Besides," he continued, "what is a lawyer's stock in trade?  To manipulate
the truth, to shape it to suit his purpose.  Why the fuck do you think
McNally made his narrator a lawyer?"
"But that means we can't believe any of it," wailed the one in tight pants
who looked he might have bother zipping back up after a pish.
"McNally is a very clever writer, I reckon," argued the fair one with a
stroke of his chin.  "He builds in little contradictions, little clues that
all is not as it seems.  Take the farm at Stanthorpe.  We all rush to
google it and wow!  There is a Stanthorpe.  In Queensland.  But this farm
is a magical farm.  It's a sheep farm.  No, it's a fruit farm.  Yeah?  But
do we notice?  Nah!  We are all too caught up in thinking this restaurant
sounds swish, that recipe tastes delicious.  It's the old conjurer's trick,
divert the audience's attention."
The one with the cock barely contained in his pants stood up at this point.
"Show some respect for McNally.  He's ... he's ... he's the greatest ever
writer!"  Saying this, the guy balled his fists.
Oo, I thought, fisticuffs?
But no.
"Of course he is," retorted the boy who was making me wonder what colour
his pubes were.  Would they be fair?
"That is my point," he went on.  "The way he had set it up, it's not
McNally telling the story, it's Mike.  It's Mike's version of reality, not
reality itself."
Aha!  Epiphany!
"Of course!" I exclaimed as a thousand light bulbs went on in my head.
"When Misha Donat says the Amadeus Quartet is the version to have what he
means it's the version to have in his opinion.  Or like Lord Dacre.  When
he said that these are the Hitler Diaries, he meant that in his ..."
I suddenly realised that the whole pub had gone quiet.  I hadn't realised I
had been shouting out.  I hadn't meant to stand up.  I had just got carried
away, as usual, in my enthusiasm.
All eyes were fixed on me.  And these eyes were not exactly friendly.  I
felt like Burton would have if his disguise had slipped when he was half
way round the Kaaba.
My eyes swivelled from one hostile face to another.  Finally they rested on
a boy standing at the bar, a glass of what looked like XXXX in his hand and
a smirk on his face.  It was Josh, the barista from S'Mug.  I had gone off
him big time of late but even now I felt a gentle stirring in my pants as I
saw his grin and let my eyes fall from his face to his low necked tee (from
which manly reddish hairs sprouted) and from there to the denim that
bunched suggestively around his fulsome crotch.
The students at the table next to mine were on their feet, looking as if
they were looking for ... well, trouble and me, in either order.  They were
not alone.  Men were rising from seats and stools all around me.
What had I said?  What had I done?
Josh winked at me and raised his glass as if to say 'cheers' or whatever
the ozzie-boy equivalent is.  And then he spoke.  Loudly.
"I heard chapter thirty five was online ..."
Silence.  And then a wild scurrying of activity.  All manner of gadgets
appeared - iphones, blackberries, blueberries, laptops.  Everyone in the
place was in haste to get onto Nifty.  Others, those with no mobile device,
were hastening out the door.
"... and I just ordered a pint, too," muttered a guy in a kilt as he
flounced out.
Me?  I was forgotten.
Josh approached and took me by the elbow.
"Let's get you out of here."
He steered me doorwards.
"You need to learn some self control," he said.  "Speaking out of turn like
that.  And your snooping.  Don't deny it.  I could see you were up to your
old tricks, listening in on other people's conversations.  Jumping ... no
pole vaulting to conclusions, getting the wrong end of the stick.  Remember
Mike in chapter six?"
"When he thought an old flame of Ty's had come back but it was really
Lachie, Ty's brother?"
"That's the one.  Got that one so wrong.  Nearly wrecked the romance before
it got going.  Poor Mike might be a hot-shot lawyer but he's not so good on
the relationship front. First time we meet him he is escaping one failed
affair.  Then there's that crap relationship with his brother Steve ..."
"Stop," I cried.  "That is so unfair.  None of that was Mike's fault."
"Oh?" answered Josh, with a quizzical look.  "Says who?"
"Says ...." but I let my voice trail away.  He was right.
Josh took my arm and steered me away up Byres Road.  Explaining to me that
although he wasn't on duty he thought a strong coffee might do us both
good, he guided me toward S'Mug.

"I saw you and Mickey."
We sat nursing our Americanos (extra shot)facing each other across the
table.  I had gone off Josh
"Yeah, that wasn't meant to happen.  I guess that's why I came after you.
Followed you out of the Botanics."
"You followed me and George?"
He grimaced but did not answer.  I looked into his eyes for I could see
that he was thinking, unsure what to do, what to say.
"That wasn't George.  It was my uncle Bruce.  I just gave him some pointers
about how to behave.  Sorry."
"Oh."
I couldn't think what else to say.  He made that face that people do when
they are trying to say 'sorry'.  Now it was my turn for my brain to go into
overdrive.
"Hang about," I suddenly said, "and what about that couple, Frank and Dot
..."  I pointed to the table where they had been sitting.
He shrugged a sort of 'I'll come clean' shrug.
"My mum and dad.  They are over on a family visit. I knew you were a big
fan of Love on the Rocks and ..."
"And Scott?" I interrupted.
"My brother."
I sighed then smiled.  It was like all the pieces of the jigsaw were
finally fitting together.  Yes, I was annoyed but at the same time I was
relieved that I was not going mad.
"Look, I am sorry, mate.  Really.  Truly sorry.  I ... I ... I don't know
why I did it," he ended lamely.
"Maybe I'll find it funny later but just now ... Josh, you really fucked
with my head."
"With your head ..." he said, and his voice sounded somehow wistful.
"Yes, I did," he said suddenly and decisively.  "Guilty."
There was a silence, the sort of silence in a movie where well chosen music
swells while the camera pans, close up, from one face to the other.  Faces
speak louder than words.  I think that's what they say in Hollywood.  But
cue music?  Who the fuck would find the right song?
"Try to forgive me.  Please.  If you can, then maybe catch me in here?
Coffee on the house?"
I nodded.  Slowly, and with seeming reluctance, he rose, smiling at me.
"Sorry, sorry, sorry," he said.
"You'll be apologising next for the mistreatment of the aborigines, and
slavery, and the Costa Concordia," I replied, with a smirk.
"Why leave out the Titanic?" he countered.  "At least that's topical."
"I don't do the Black Armband School of History," I said with a firm shake
of my head.
"Manning Clark?  You are up on all things Oz!"
"Us McNally-ites all are," I objected.
He smiled again and left.
I sat finishing my coffee.  My feeling of relief was short lived.  Okay,
Josh had explained some things but fucking hell, there was a busload of
other stuff going down that still made no sense.  I mean what he had told
me didn't explain the feeling that Love on the Rocks had taken over the
world or, at the very least, that it had transferred itself into Glasgow's
West End.

I had nothing to do except wander back to my flat. I went up Byres Road and
crossed Great Western into Queen Margaret Drive, heading to Wilton Street.
That's when I came face to face with Mickey and the boy I had assumed was
Scott.  The pair of them must have been in the Botanics.
"Mickey!  Scott!"
I couldn't help myself, the words were out before I remembered what Josh
had said.
"Scott?  What do you mean Scott?  This is Simon!"
There was no mistaking the note of triumph in Mickey's voice as he
announced this.
"No," I said firmly, "no way is this Simon."
Mickey frowned with an exasperated expression.  Clearly he thought I was
being very stupid.
"Look," he said.  "I got this note.  It was shoved under my door early this
morning.  It warned me that Simon here was being held hostage in a house
down near the river.  You know how some Love fans are such Simon-haters.
And it warned me that some of my medico flat mates were in on it."
He stared at me as if to say 'there now, you see!'
"Well," he went on, "I just packed up and got out from there and fucked off
down to rescue the boy.  I always knew them pseudo-doctors were bad guys.
Fuck, you should see the stuff they have in their rooms!  Weird or
nothing!"
I stared.  Mickey was in full flow. I was sure my face must be showing my
total disbelief but Mickey didn't notice.  He just kept talking.
"Well, I'm heading down these posh Riverside apartments full steam ahead
and fuck it, this guy comes belting round the corner from Morrisons, the
one at Partick, slams right into me."
"Him?" I asked, pointing at the other guy.
"Yeah!  He'd escaped.  How about that!"
"Some coincidence that," I frowned.  But I don't think he noticed the
frown.
"Look, Mickey .... he is not Simon," I said, feeling like I was Woodie
explaining to Buzz that he was a toy.
"He is Simon!  You ask!"
"He's Scott!"
"I am Simon!"
"You keep out of this, mate."
"Who're you anyway?"
"I'm Ty.  Tybalt to you."
"Nuts to you as well, mate."
"I am Ty."
"So you'll be the top selling Oz singer who's ..."
"No, it's just my name.  I am Ty."
"Fine.  And me?  I'm Simon and this is Mickey.  All straight?"
"You are so not straight!  Hell, in chapter ..."
"We settled now?" interrupted a bemused Mickey.  "We all know who each
other is?"
"But Josh said ... I'm sure he said ... fuck, what did he say?  I was sure
he said you were his brother."
Mickey laughed scornfully but the one who called himself Simon suddenly
went quiet and looked thoughtful.
That was when I too stopped and started to think.  It was something about
the way they were standing together, something about the looks they were
exchanging, something about the smell of the whole thing.  And then I just
knew; they had been having sex.  So much for that.  There was me, who just
a few hours ago was feeling like shit because I thought the love of my life
had disappeared and in fact he had just ... just!  ... moved on.  Huh.
I turned to go.  I wanted to get away fast as I did not want either of them
to see the tears forming in my eyes.  I made it a few yards up the street
before I felt an arm on my elbow.  I thought it must be Mickey but when I
turned I found myself face to face with Josh's brother.
"Look, sorry.  Josh did not mean it to work out this way.  Really he
didn't.  He just wanted Mickey out of the way.  You know?  So he could
...Fucking hell, can't you see?"
But I had had enough of Josh's schemes and Josh's plotting.  I shook my
head and turned away.
I did not look back.


I went down by the river, to where the old quays and yards were deserted
and derelict.  There, amongst the rubble, I could be sure of being alone,
of having time to think.  Upriver, nearer the city centre, were the new
developments, the big apartment blocks, the office buildings, the
Exhibition Centre and the new museums.  Downriver, there was still a
shipyard and across from it the Braehead Shopping Centre.  Here, between
the two, the land lay undeveloped, a post-industrial wasteland.  It spoke
of what had once been but now lay unwanted, unused, unloved.  I guess it
reflected how I was feeling.
I went and sat on a pile of debris near the water's edge.  The evening was
cool and to the west the sun was setting.  Darkness crept in from the east
but out there, where the river broadened into estuary, there was a gentle
glow behind the hills.  The water made hardly a sound and only occasionally
was the silence broken by the swooping cries of the gulls.
So much had happened in so little time and I could make no sense of it.  My
head buzzed with puzzlement.  What was real, what unreal?  And as if that
was not enough, what sense was I to make of the turmoil of emotion?  I had
found Mickey and I had lost Mickey, all in the space of a day.  It seemed
like forever ago that I had trotted past that figure hunched over a laptop
in the Offshore window but it was only yesterday.  Yesterday!  For the
first time in a while I smiled as I thought to myself, 'cue the music'.
		Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away?
Oh, I believed in yesterday all right!
I think it was then that I realised I heard other sounds.  There was a
crackling noise from further downriver.  I looked and sure enough there was
a drift of smoke rising from a dip in the quay a hundred yards away and the
distinctive smell of burning wood clung in the air.
And another sound seemed to float towards me, a new song, probably from one
of the apartments up there behind me.  Someone must be playing music on the
balcony as they drank a chilled chardonnay before dinner.  The words came
in unconnected little bundles, like half heard conversation ...
		Speak low when you speak love
		Our summer day withers away too soon, too soon
		....
		Our moment is swift, like ships adrift, we're swept apart,
		too soon, too soon, too soon
		.....
		Love is a spark, lost in the dark too soon, too soon
		....
		We're late, darling, we're late
		The curtain descends, ev'rything ends too soon, too soon ...

Too soon?  How fucking too right, I thought.  Everything ends too fucking
soon.

I made my way cautiously towards the sound of burning wood.
There, sitting by a haphazard pile of driftwood, sat what looked like an
old tramp.  He had a battered old kettle balanced precariously on his make-
shift fire.  He wore an old overcoat which he had drawn tightly around
himself. His hair was white, not that silvery grey but shocking white like
new fallen snow.
He turned as I approached.  There was no alarm in his expression.  In fact
it was as if he had been expecting me.
"It might be some time before she boils," he said with a resigned smile,
"but then we shall have tea.  Mint tea all right for you?"
I nodded as I came down to join him.
There was a stillness about him that was curiously unsettling.  For a
moment I wondered if he was hallucination, if he was part of some crazy
dream that I was living.  As if he sensed my doubt he extended a hand as if
to shake mine but in fact he took mine and drew me down beside him.
"It'll get colder soon, now the sun has gone.  And the wind is northerly.
Draw close, keep warm."
I smiled my thanks and did as he suggested.
I began hesitantly.
"You're like a character from a movie.  I can't remember.  Something dad
watched a lot.  Robin Williams, I thought?"
"I'm real.  Too real.  You need to watch that imagination.  Imagination is
a fine thing but like a horse or a boy it has to be kept in check or it
will run wild, go places it is better not to go."
He prodded at the fire with a length of stick.
"You think that's what I have done?"
"Fictions can degenerate into myths whenever they are not consciously held
to be fictive."
I pondered this with not much comprehension.
"That's not me talking," he said as if to reassure me.  "It's Frank
Kermode.  A great man.  Insightful.  You know people visit 221B Baker
Street as if Holmes had really lived there?  Or they stumble through
Edinburgh's lost streets to see where Rebus found that mutilated body?
They go by train to Hogwarts or plan trips to Stanthorpe.  Shakespeare said
'imagine it as if you were there at Agincourt'.  Now the poster tells us we
are there.  It's as if we have lost that capacity to think, the imagining
is all done for us.  We cannot tell real from unreal."
I stared at him then for although his words made a sort of a sense, I did
not find them helpful.
"The great icons of today, they are not real.  They are their own version
of reality, carefully constructed, carefully managed.  They are the
narrators of their own fictitious lives."
I began to have a weird sense of things fitting together, as if the jigsaw
that was my life was filling in around the edges and the centre, the heart
of it, was at last making sense.
"Son, you must decide what is real in your life.  Real.  Not what you wish
was real.  A man's head can get jumbled.  Think.  In the darkness of the
night a man can make himself believe in all manner of impossibilities, can
conjure up nightmares.  In the bright sunlight of the day he daydreams
sweet fancies.  It's all trickery.  Listen to what we call the heart.
Thoughts mislead.  Emotion never does."
We sat in silence for a while and then he made tea.

I thought a lot about what he said.  And that's why I've written this.  I
won't go to S'mug to claim that free coffee but perhaps someday he will
read it and then he will know.  Know that I love him.



Thanks to any LOTR fans who have visited.
And thank you, Mr  McNally.  From those who mailed you and from those who
read you without ever saying.