Macbeth

‘Who’s driving, you or your dad, son?’ Banquo said with a warm smile and accelerated. Macbeth looked at the people on the pavement, the housewives shopping, the unemployed men outside the bars. In the last ten years the town had become busier and busier in the mornings. It should have lent the town an atmosphere of hustle and bustle, but the opposite was true, the apathetic, resigned faces were more reminiscent of the living dead. He had searched for signs of change over recent months. To see whether Duncan’s leadership had made any difference. The most glaring and brutal street crimes were perhaps rarer, probably because there were more patrols out. Or maybe they had simply shifted to the back streets, into the twilight areas.

‘Afternoon lectures at police college,’ Macbeth said. ‘We didn’t have them in my day.’

‘It’s not a lecture,’ the boy said. ‘Me and a couple of others have a colloquium.’

‘A colloquium? What’s that?’

‘Fleance and some of the keener ones swot together before exams,’ Banquo said. ‘It’s a good idea.’

‘Dad says I have to study law. Police college isn’t enough. What do you think, Uncle Mac?’

‘I think you should listen to your dad.’

‘But you didn’t do law either,’ the boy objected.

‘And look where it got him.’ Banquo laughed. ‘Come on, Fleance. You have to aim higher than your wretched father and this slob.’

‘You say I don’t have leadership qualities,’ Fleance said.

Macbeth arched an eyebrow and glanced at Banquo.

‘Really? I thought it was a father’s job to make his children believe they can do anything if they try hard enough?’

‘It is,’ Banquo said. ‘And I didn’t say he hasn’t got leadership qualities, only skills. And that means he has to work on it. He’s smart; he just has to learn to trust his own judgement, which means taking the initiative and not always following others.’

Macbeth turned to the back seat. ‘You’ve got a hard nut of a father.’

Fleance shrugged. ‘Some people always want to give orders and take charge while others aren’t like that — is that so weird?’

‘Not weird,’ Banquo said. ‘But if you want to get anywhere you have to try to change.’

‘Have you changed?’ asked Fleance with a touch of annoyance in his voice.

‘No, I was like you,’ Banquo said. ‘Happy to let others take charge. But I wish I’d had someone to tell me my opinion was as good as anyone else’s. And sometimes better. And if you’ve got better judgement you should lead, it’s your damned duty to the community.’

‘What do you think, Uncle? Can you just change and become a leader?’

‘I don’t know,’ Macbeth said. ‘I think some people are born leaders and become them as a matter of course. Like Chief Commissioner Duncan. People whose sense of conviction rubs off on you, who can make you die for something. While others I know have neither conviction nor leadership skills, they’re just driven by the desire to climb and climb until they get the boss’s chair. They might be intelligent, have charm and the gift of the gab, but they don’t really understand people. Because they don’t see them. Because they understand and see only one thing: themselves.’

‘Are you talking about Duff?’ Banquo smiled.

‘Who’s Duff?’ Fleance pleaded.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Macbeth said.

‘Yes, it does. Come on, Uncle. I’m here to learn, aren’t I?’

Macbeth sighed. ‘Duff and I were friends at an orphanage and at police college, and now he’s head of the Narco Unit. Hopefully he’ll learn the odd thing on the way and that will change him.’

‘Not him.’ Banquo laughed.

‘The Narco Unit,’ Fleance said. ‘Is he the one with the diagonal scar across his mug?’

‘Yes,’ his father said.

‘Where did he get it?’

‘He was born with it,’ Macbeth said. ‘But here’s the school. Be good.’

‘Yeah, yeah, Uncle Mac.’

The ‘Uncle’ came from when Fleance was small; now he mostly used it ironically. But as Macbeth watched the boy sprinting through the rain to the gates of the police college it gave him a feeling of warmth anyway.

‘He’s a good lad,’ he said.

‘You should have children,’ Banquo said, pulling away from the kerb. ‘They’re a gift for life.’

‘I know, but it’s a bit late for Lady now.’

‘Then with someone younger. What about someone of your own age?’

Macbeth didn’t answer, staring out the window rapt in thought. ‘When I saw the red man at the lights I thought about death,’ he said.

‘You were thinking about Cawdor,’ Banquo said. ‘By the way, I spoke to Angus while he was staring at Cawdor dangling there.’

‘Religious musings?’

‘No. He just said he didn’t understand rich, privileged people who took their own lives. Even if Cawdor had lost his job and maybe had to do a short stretch, he was still well set up for a long, carefree life. I had to explain to the boy that it’s the fall that does it. And the disappointment when you see your future won’t live up to your expectations. That’s why it’s important not to have such high expectations, to start slowly, not to have success too young. A planned rise, don’t you think?’

‘You’re promising your son a better life than yours if he studies law.’