Old Men in Love

by Alasdair Gray

  I told her it would be a bad world if men were all the same and now I must work. She said, “So will I as soon as the pub’s open, but I thought you’d retired from teaching.”

  I told her I was a writer. She asked what stuff I wrote and could she get it from the library. I said I hadn’t been published yet and my field was historical sociology. She said, obviously disappointed, “O very highbrow,” but came into the sitting room and sat smoking, being careful not to scatter the cigarette ash while I scribbled in this notebook. She showed no interest in what I scribbled, probably thinking it was historical sociology. Perhaps it is, but I am also coming to terms with the new adventure my life has become. At intervals I put on rolls of Bach, Joplin, Stravinsky, Souza, Verdi, varying the music as much as possible and asking after each piece if she liked it. She always said, “Just you carry on playing it.”

  Shortly before noon she stood up saying, “I’m for offski.”

  I gave her a key so she could return when she liked. That was ten minutes ago. This house feels like a home again.

  The miracle of Zoe makes me astonishingly happy. I now know why bad sex is a big part of life and good sex a small part – it lets me enjoy so many other things. Each morning I waken refreshed for the adventure of a new day and our breakfast together tastes as good as breakfasts in childhood. I kiss her goodbye, scoot to the library, immerse myself in exciting new researches. Building a scientific Scottish history on its geological foundation is certainly essential to making us a nation again, but a chore good research students could finish if they continued on lines I have laid down. My masterpiece should draw readers into a real life as free and romantic as my own – need I first steep them in their present miseries by showing how these evolved? I am studying the historical vision of Goethe’s Faust, Ibsen’s Emperor and Galilean, Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Hardy’s Dynasts. Can I instil the great breadth of these visions into something of my own?

  This morning a letter from —— commanded me to lunch with her at the Hasta Mañana, because she had information the book she thinks I am writing needs. The worst lunch of my life. She began by asking what extraordinary rendition meant. I did not know. She said, “It is American jargon for disappearing people – the C.I.A. secretly kidnap them, usually on foreign soil, with or without the secret connivance of the local police, because they are suspected of being or knowing active terrorists. They are then taken into U.S.A.-run jails in other countries like Guantanamo in Cuba or Abu Ghraib in Iraq (there are plenty of others), and there they are questioned – which means tortured – and sometimes killed without a trial.” She went on to say that trials held in public according to U.S.A. and European laws prove most folk arrested on mere suspicion are innocent, and when Nazi or Russian dictatorships did these things U.S.A. and British newspapers denounced them as evil. But though Amnesty International and other decent organisations say extraordinary rendition had disappeared hundreds, maybe thousands since Bush announced his War on Terror, the fact that R.A.F. bases in Scotland are being used in these illegal abductions is not mentioned by British newspapers or broadcasting – “which is why you must write about it!” I said I would think about that and tried to leave, which stimulated an even longer diatribe about what she called global money and the international arms trade which she said was responsible for World War 1, the 1930s Depression, the Nazi Party, World War 2 and every war since. She said that after Britain started the industrial arms-race in 1890 every leading politician from Lloyd George to Thatcher and Blair have been secretly enriched by policies whose result in human deaths they openly regret or denounce. “So you believe world history is controlled by a conspiracy?” I managed to interject: she replied, “Of course! An obvious, undisguised conspiracy! Britain has now only seven highly profitable industries and they all sell armaments! Every prosperous bastard has investments in them!” Not me, I told her, because my accountant had invested my savings ethically. She cried, “That’s what the Corporation of London and Manchester and half the other local authorities say and they’re lying, deliberately or through ignorance. The universities, successful trade unions and so-called charities have all invested in them! So has Cancer Research, Care for the Handicapped, Co-operative Insurance, the Boys Brigade. The arms industries produce several things with peaceful uses so brokers and accountants fool folk like you into thinking your money only helps these, but they’re lying. For over a century the names of politicians, newspaper owners, clergymen etcetera enriched by the arms trade have been recorded in stock exchange reports, but the only folk who try to publicise the fact are denounced as Loony Leftists by the media.” She also said Britain’s secret police force has been part of this open conspiracy since 1993 when its headquarters shifted from a drab, inconspicuous building off the Euston Road to a swaggeringly huge structure in the Postmodern or revived Art Deco style, which is now as conspicuous a part of 2004 London as Orwell’s Ministry of Truth in 1984. When she was a student it was an open secret that the head of the Extra-mural department was Glasgow University’s spy for the Ministry of Information. Everyone found that comic. That Ministry is now inviting staff in every British university department to apply for the job of spying for it. Those who apply successfully will not be made known: their extra source of income will not be taxed, and they will earn it by reporting on every student or colleague who questions the wisdom of what our increasingly right-wing government does. An American celebrity law professor is now arguing that the Geneva Conventions are out of date and the U.S.A. government should legalise torture and the assassination of its enemies, even if this causes the death of innocent people in the vicinity. Lawyers who want such things legalised know their government has already started doing them. I said, “How can I put all that into a book?” She said, “It’s your job to find out – you’re the historian.” I told her I would think about it and rushed off leaving her to pay the bill, for she insists on doing that anyway. As a child I saw Viva Zapata in the Hillhead Salon, and since I left her something said in it has been echoing in my head: “Jesus Christ! I’m not the world’s conscience.”

  I love the twelfth floor of this library. It allows views across Glasgow in every direction. Instead of reading today I strolled, just looking, from one glass wall to another. Recent strong winds had swept away clouds and haze so eastward I saw the Victorian terraces of Park Circus and tops of 1960s tower-blocks. Between a couple I saw the cathedral spire. The Cathkin Braes summit above Rutherglen has a line of trees with sky visible between the trunks – near there in 1820 Purly Wilson raised the red flag to start the Great Scottish Insurrection – that never happened. Further east was the dim Fuji Yama-like cone of Tinto, the ancient volcanic centre of Scotland round which the Clyde flows from the border country. I looked down on the Gothic-revival pinnacles and quadrangles of the university, with the red sandstone minarets of Kelvingrove museum and gallery beyond, and beyond them, then grey tenements and the long white wall of Yorkhill Hospital, and the tops of some big cranes to remind me Glasgow is still a port. Through a gap between facades a ship’s funnel slid past.43 The slender pencil of the research tower building reminded me how modern technology can get things wrong . South of the river were the wooded hills of Queen’s Park and Bellahouston Park, with white farmhouses, fields and lines of hedge on hills beyond rising to Neilston Padd, that queer, steep-sided plateau beside Fenwick Moor. Further west were the Gleniffer Braes of which poor Tannahill sang, and the dim but distinct summit of Goat Fell on Arran. On a summer holiday in my teens I climbed that mountain with Gordon MacLean. Why not climb it again with Zoe? It is a Munro, but the gradient is easy.

  Yes, today I feel so happy that I no longer want to show how Scotland, Britain and the world is being messed about, probably destroyed by get-rich-quick financiers and corrupted politicians. Scotland is now exactly where I want to be and I refuse to worry about it.

  Suddenly the story of Belovéd Henry James Prince dawned on me like a holiday excursion. The information needed to write it is in th
is library. Abandoning all other research notes crossed to the office of the Special Collection with its view to the North of the Campsie Fells, Kilpatrick Hills and Ben Lomond. Here I ordered Br. Prince’s Journal and volume one of Hepworth Dixon’s Spiritual Wives. They were brought.

  Having immersed myself again in these familiar pages I will now write Prince’s tale as briskly as if singing love’s old sweet song – tell how a terribly conscientious Christian so loathed his evil Self (which Freud calls the Ego) that he cast it out, becoming nothing but a mad imagination with a penis – a Super-ego and Id in such harmony that he created a New Jerusalem in England’s Green and Pleasant Land where he was the only cock in a coop of crinolined hens, and enjoyed his Zoe for Ever and Ever Amen! I will enjoy writing this.

  20: THE YOUNG PRINCE

  Near the start of the 19th century there was a brief truce in the commercial warfare that France and Britain had fought from the reign of Queen Anne to the Battle of Waterloo. Gilray, a popular artist, depicted two statesmen enjoying a little supper, their meal being the world laid out like a big plum pudding on a table between them. At one side small swarthy Napoleon enthusiastically sliced western Europe onto his plate with a sabre; on the other Britain’s Prime Minister, tall, thin, pointy-nosed William Pitt, quietly helped himself to most of the rest of the globe. In 1815 Napoleon’s empire ended at Waterloo but the British King George III still nominally ruled Ireland, Canada, the Caribbean, Australia, India, many Chinese and African ports: also Hanover, a German state that was his family’s homeland. The British Empire was now the richest and biggest in the world, without a single competitor, but the British did not yet trust their monarchs enough to give them the title of Emperor. Poor George was now incurably mad so the Prince Regent performed the crown’s few legaly required ceremonies. In 1816 Rossini’s The Barber of Seville was first performed, and Jane Austen’s Emma and Coleridge’s Kubla Khan were published.

  Widdicombe Crescent, Bath, was then a terrace of smart houses in that most aristocratic of British holiday resorts and here a little boy had a pain in his side. It brought tears to his eyes and sweat to a brow he pressed against the cool glass of a window. Behind him a doctor told his widowed mother that he could help the boy no further: cold compresses had brought no relief; purging and reduced diet had merely weakened the lad; so had bloodletting which must not continue, despite the temporary alleviation it induced.

  “I will give drops to ensure he sleeps at night, Mrs Prince. I could give more tincture of opium to reduce his pains when wakeful, but more will stupefy him. I fear that, like older people, he should learn that pain must be lived with.”

  “I have told him so many times, Doctor, but he seems to want me to bear it for him. Two other sons, three daughters and a paying guest leave me no time for that,” said his mother.

  “There are physicians in Bath who charge higher fees, Mrs Prince, but none I can honestly recommend. In London you might find one who would prescribe opening him surgically –” (the boy whimpered; they glanced at him) “– I do not advize it. If he were female and older his pains might be due to hysteria, which is incurable. As things are I advize you to let nature take its course.”

  The doctor left. Without turning the boy said in a small voice, “Mamma, let me go to Miss Freeman.”

  “You spent most of yesterday with her, Henry.”

  “She helps me. She’s nice to me.”

  “I would be nice to you too if I had nothing else to do all day, but we will go to her since you insist. And remember, she is a papist. You must pay no attention if she talks to you about the Pope, or confessors, or transmutation, or other foreign things.”

  They went upstairs and on the first floor landing tapped a door; it was opened by a plump, hectically flushed young woman wearing a black dress and thin gold necklace with small pendant cross.

  “I dislike troubling you again Miss Freeman, but the doctor is helpless and Henry loves being with you – ”

  “ – I love to have him – ”

  “But you too are an invalid Miss Freeman!”

  “Which is why Henry and I understand each other. Come here Henry James.”

  She held out her arms. The boy ran into them and pressed his face to her stomach. She caressed the back of his neck, smiling fondly and saying, “Leave us Mrs Prince, we will refer our troubles to Jesus.”

  As the door closed she drew him to a chaise longue beside a small table on which lay an open box of chocolates, a Bible and a standing ebony crucifix. Fixed to the crucifix with gold-headed pins was a white ivory figure crowned with gold thorns. She sat down asking, “Where does it hurt Henry James?”

  “Here,” he said, kneeling at her feet, pressing his side with one hand and clasping her knee with the other.

  “Yes! That is where the cruel Romans thrust their spear into the flesh of Lord Jesus on the cross – ” (Her fingertip touched the side of the ivory figure.) “ – do you see the wound? He must have felt as you do.”

  “Did he?” said the boy staring.

  “Worse! See those nails through his hands and feet and the crown of cruel thorns. And Jesus was God’s beloved son.”

  “But I’m not, why should I be hurt?”

  “Because,” Miss Freeman gently whispered, “you are an evil little sinner, Henry. But another sinner much worse than you, a wicked robber was crucified beside Jesus, and loved Him, and that night the robber sat in Heaven at God’s right hand.”

  “I’m afraid of going to Hell, Miss Freeman.”

  “Where you will go Henry, if you don’t love Jesus.”

  “How can I love anybody when I’m hurt?”

  “That is how God tests our love, Henry. You must forget your wicked fleshly body Henry. You must think only of Christ, and how he desires you. Listen! This is what Christ is saying to you . . . and sit beside me, Henry.”

  He sat on the sofa, leaning against her side, staring at the chocolates.

  “You may take one,” she said, lifting and opening the Bible at a page marked by an embroidered ribbon, “Listen Henry, listen. Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse; thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes, with one chain of thy neck.”

  “I’m not a sister Miss Freeman, I’m a brother,” said the boy indistinctly, for he was chewing.

  “I know that, Henry, but when God – who is also Jesus – loves somebody he talks to them as if they are women, even when they aren’t.”

  “Why?”

  Miss Freeman, slightly puzzled, said, “Perhaps because women are . . . usually . . . more lovely than men. I’m not sure. So just listen Henry, and remember, Christ is really speaking to you in the words of Solomon, that great wise king. How fair is thy love, my sister, my spouse! How much better is thy love than wine! Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honey comb: honey and milk are under thy tongue . . . Is that not lovely Henry ? –” (she stroked his hair) “– and the smell of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon. Leb . . . a . . . non. What a delicious word!”

  She sighed happily. The boy said drowsily, “I’m feeling a lot better, Miss Freeman.” She said, “So am I. Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits.”

  Nearly twenty years later the wallpaper in that room had been changed twice and Miss Freeman was white-haired and stouter. She lay on the chaise longue with closed eyes still smiling fondly, her head resting on a flowery big cushion, her feet on a smaller one. Henry James Prince, a pale young man with a careworn, patient face, sat on an easy chair nearby, one leg flung over the other to support the Bible. He was soberly dressed and reading out a favourite passage in a low, sweet but unemphatic voice that allowed full value to the beauty of each word.

  “Thy navel is like a round goblet that wanteth not liquor,” he said. “Thy belly is like an heap of wheat set about with lilies. Thy two breasts are like two roes that are twins. Thy neck is like a tower of ivory,
thine eyes are like the fish-pools of Heshbon; the hair of thine head like purple; the King is held in the galleries. How fair and pleasant art thou O love for delights!”

  Miss Freeman sighed, opened her eyes, clipped to the bridge of her nose the pince nez she now needed to see things near her and said, “O Henry James, I’m glad your mother is letting you train for the church at last.”

  He closed the Bible and placed it on the table by the crucifix saying gravely, “She would not have done so were you not paying the fees. She thought that having one son a clergyman was sufficient.”

  “But everything about you speaks of God! Your voice, your manners, your . . . hands.”

  He smiled, clasping the hand she stretched out to him and saying, “You’ve forgotten my soul, Martha.”

  “No I haven’t,” she said tenderly, “and your new clothes suit you wonderfully.”

  21: LAMPETER

  Said the principal, “Welcome, gentlemen, to St David’s College, Lampeter. We don’t know each other yet, but when we separate four years from now I hope we shall be firm friends.”