GUILT TRIPPER

by Geoff Small

  After a drink and nibble from the Mediterranean buffet, which degenerated into a full on olive and feta-cheese fight, Danny sat everybody round him in a semi-circle of orange, plastic chairs. While trying to explain his vision he was constantly interrupted by ‘Scar Face’ much to the amusement of the girls present. However, a raven haired beauty called Belinda became embroiled in an argument with Scar Face, causing Danny to have to intervene and ask the lad what he hoped to derive from the course, should he embark upon it.

  “What’s it to you?” He stared through Danny as if challenging him to a fight.

  “Well, I’m here to help you.”

  “Oh is that right big man? What do you want me to do, kiss your butt or something?” His audience roared with laughter.

  “No, I…”

  “Aye you do. This isn’t about helping us. It’s all about your middle class ego. We shouldn’t be in a position where we’re beholden to ‘charitable’ individuals like you.”

  “I quite agree,” Danny concurred. “But we’re here to facilitate and develop whatever interests you may have in art?”

  “Listen, I couldn’t paint ma shoes and I never want to.”

  “Ah, so you want to learn about writers?”

  “Learn? Listen pal, there’s nothing you and your ilk can teach me about ‘literature’. Shakespeare, Cervantes, Hardy, Dostoyevsky, Joyce, Kafka, Carver, Kundera, they’re the only existence I’ve ever been able to afford. I don’t need to be taught how to read, I need to be enabled to write.”

  Danny’s eyes dwelled on the lad a moment, as if identifying something there that nobody else could.

  “How can we enable you to write then?”

  “By getting me out of that hell hole I live in and allowing me some peace. They reckoned that J.K Rowling wrote in crowded cafes. Well, I’d like to see her even write a note to the milkman at our place, with my sister’s kids running about the apartment and my dad watching the TV at full blast, night and day.”

  “Tell me about it. I had to share with a brother and four sisters”

  “Yeah, in a nice big house I bet?”

  “No. Possil.”

  “You’re from Possil? Get away.”

  “What made you think I came from a big house?”

  “I don’t know, the way you talk — all bourgeois like.”

  Judith sniggered at the irony.

  Once Danny and this particular lad had established some mutual respect, the rest of the meeting continued in an orderly fashion, ending with the handing out of application forms to be returned at enrolment the following week. Unfortunately, only three people were to turn up, including Scar Face and Belinda, who completely ignored one another.

  Poor student numbers were to be the least of Danny’s worries. After six months deliberation, Gairloch Community Council seemed set on denying permission for the college, fearing that drug addicts and razor gangs would invade their idyll. He was about to abort the project when, one cloudy afternoon in June, a Daily Herald journalist and photographer came knocking at the trailer home door. They wanted to know Mr. White’s feelings about his recent exhibition in London. Of course, Danny thought they had the wrong person, but they hadn’t. An anonymous dealer had organised the event, which resulted in a collector, who owned a string of kebab restaurants, paying one million pounds for the whole lot.

  Just as Judith had predicted, Bob Fitzgerald was now two hundred and forty thousand pounds richer for having been blackmailed. Thankfully, though, the journalists knew nothing about his involvement, otherwise Danny’s dream would have been sunk forever. As it was, the Daily Herald interview spawned a tissue of positive publicity, prompting Gairloch Council to change their minds. However, there were conditions. Places would have to be provided for local youth and the situation would be subject to quarterly reviews.

  Now Danny had discovered public relations, Judith went into Glasgow and selected him a wardrobe of clothes that the kids on the schemes would connect with. Undoubtedly, his hotchpotch of rags had repelled them up to now, so she purchased a pair of Nike trainers, Rockport boots, two pairs of Armani jeans, some check Lacoste shirts and a navy blue Stone-Island bomber jacket. At first he went berserk at the cost — a grand in total — until Judith argued it amounted to less than two pounds a week over the decade he’d gone without any new garments whatsoever. Once he’d calmed down about the cash, he went into one of his moral diatribes. He claimed it was principles and beliefs, not clothes, which made a person, and that a true socialist prophet would never set himself above those he professed to help, in any way. But Judith reckoned that people would only follow if they saw their own aspirations reflected in their leader. Just because he valued an ascetic existence, she said, he shouldn’t expect everybody else to. Eventually he wore the clothes, though not before having removed all the logos, including the swoosh from his trainers. This infuriated Judith, because she knew that without them Danny remained a nothing in their target group’s eyes.

  As the street kids got used to them being about, recruitment drives became less hassle and, by the middle of August, they had at last secured a full complement to take up north. The only thing they needed now was an English teacher.

  Rather than having to pay obscene salaries, Danny reckoned he knew unoccupied guys from his neighbourhood who were capable of teaching; their love of literature far outweighing any lack of formal qualifications. In fact, he argued that he’d sooner have self-taught guys with passion than some kid who’d been through the sausage machine of university, merely to attain an “easy” twenty grand a year in the classroom. But he was to be disappointed. The people he’d been banking on were too set in their beer, cigarettes and gambling ways to relocate to the wilderness, making him so angry that he vented his spleen on several, telling Judith that he’d be glad to get out of “this amorphous dump.”

  It was beginning to look like they’d never find a teacher, until Judith’s graduation day up at the university, where the White brothers were her guests. Here, she introduced them to Angie and Angie’s boyfriend Hamish, the couple having just collected first class English Literature degrees. On learning this, Danny wasted no time inviting them to teach with him up at Gairloch, in return for free board and lodging and a hundred pounds a week pocket money. Hamish – who had his sights on a career in journalism – declined the offer outright, until Angie agreed to go along for free. This caused an argument between them, but by lunchtime the next day both had committed themselves to the project. Just as things were looking up for Danny, events had most definitely taken a turn for the worse for Judith. The morning after her graduation, she awoke with a hangover to a letter giving notice of redundancy, from her employers at Worcester City Council, who were cutting staff in non-essential services due to a budget shortfall.

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER: 11

  But for a small lounge, the ground floor of the crofter’s cottage up in Gairloch was now dominated by a flagstone kitchen with an oak table, which almost spanned the room and seated thirty people. It was to be during long evening dinners here that Danny believed his little community would be cemented. These soirees would be overlooked by his mother’s portrait, which took pride of place on the back wall, directly opposite as you entered from outside. Fortunately, this painting had avoided the apartment fire, having been moved to Katy’s house just after Mrs. White’s death, because it had been upsetting her son too much.

  As for the byre, well, its wooden walls had been replaced with red brick and white stucco, its tin roof with terracotta tiles. Inside, either side of a long corridor stood six small rooms, just large enough for a bed, wardrobe and a writing desk with a computer on top. Meanwhile, the ablutions were situated at the far end, beneath a loft conversion which served as a recreation suite, featuring a TV, pool table and library.

  On a blazing day at the end of August, Fin drove six lads and six girls up to this new Highland home, in a custard yellow, Ford Transit Minibus. The journey was a silent affair where suspi
cious, sideways glances were the only communication. But, as they pulled up outside the cottage, the sight of eight local students lounging about on the grass seemed to bring the Glaswegians together at last, against a common foe. Throughout the next hour, the two groups remained stand-offish until they were called in for their welcome dinner, cooked by Judith and Angie who, along with Hamish and Danny, had already been in residence for a fortnight.

  Townies and Highlanders were alternated around the table so that they had no choice but to mix, with the five adults making up the numbers. At first it was uncomfortably quiet, but as soon as everyone had finished their aperitifs a pleasant murmur was developing. The townies were a tad cautious about their food, though. “Urrs” and “yuks” accompanied the smoked salmon starter, much to the amusement of the locals, who scoffed theirs enthusiastically. Each student was allowed one glass of wine during the main dish — grouse in black cherry sauce — helping to create a more boisterous atmosphere by the time desert arrived at the table. By now there was something of a first night on vacation mood about the newcomers, so much that the locals reluctantly boarded Fin’s minibus back to their villages, many wanting to stay behind with their exciting new friends instead.

  That night, raucous laughter bellowed from the student accommodation until dawn. At one point Judith was woken by cheering and, as she looked out of her dormer window she caught the pink flash of a teenager’s backside, streaking across the meadow. For the next hour she lay in darkness, sharing the kid’s amusement as the young naturist pleaded to be readmitted to the byre, its door and windows having been so cruelly locked in his wake. Judith entertained Angie with this recollection next morning, while they prepared a massive picnic in the kitchen.

  The local students arrived at around eleven and everyone walked to Big Sand Beach. While a mass game of water volleyball ensued in a turquoise and cobalt sea, Judith sat on a dune admiring the Torridon Mountains, situated across the bay. There, the students would run wild for the next month, hiking, canoeing, learning to fish and generally bonding. All except Danny’s scar faced friend, Ryan Kearney, who chose to disassociate himself and write a book in his room, where he’d work day and night. Whenever Judith went out the back for a cigarette in the early hours, his light was the only hint of life in an otherwise sleepy byre. His curtains were never shut and she’d often stand in the darkness, just feet from the window, marvelling at the boy’s stamina and commitment. Usually, he’d be bent over his desk scribbling so frantically that four sides of A4 were filled before her cigarette was spent. On others, he’d have his baseball capped head in his hands or be pacing about the room in search of inspiration, looking haunted. Danny had tried coaxing Ryan to join in with the others, but he said he’d sooner leave than waste valuable time playing “kiddies’ games”. Out of everybody, Belinda took particular exception to this isolationism and, whenever he left the dinner table — having rushed his food to get writing again — she’d start her daily moan about what she considered rude behaviour.

  “Why did he come here if he just wants to be on his own? He’s treating the rest of us like idiots…someone should sort him out!”

  This was said loud enough for Danny to hear, and was interpreted as a challenge to do something about the situation; but he left Ryan in creative peace all the same.

  October arrived and it was time to start lessons, held in two mobile classrooms, situated behind the cottage, at the foot of the mountain. Each morning, Judith taught art history, followed by Danny’s painting classes, where he wore the blue, paint dappled overalls which would become his second skin. Meanwhile, Hamish and Angie took turns with their eight literature pupils, seven of whom were girls, including the patron’s dear young friend, Katy, and Ryan’s nemesis, Belinda. Ryan didn’t attend either class, much to the chagrin of the raven haired beauty. Inevitably, one night at dinner, things came to a head. Ryan had arrived slightly late, as usual, and as he squeezed past fellow diners on route to his seat he inadvertently nudged Belinda’s arm, just as she was about to sip from her wine glass. The spilt claret soaked into her white tracksuit top like ink on blotting paper, causing her to leap up from her seat.

  “You stupid friggin’ idiot!” Ryan, oblivious to his crime, looked bewildered as he turned to face her. “You’ve got no social skills what-so-ever have you! You friggin’ retard!”

  Belinda stormed off, before the loner even had chance to reply.

  Uncharacteristically, Ryan ended up being last to leave the table, obviously upset by Belinda’s remarks. Judith and Hamish were actually clearing plates around him when he got up, but Danny told him to stay put and laid down an ultimatum: either he started attending classes with the rest of the group or he’d have to go.

  Ryan wore the expression of a man who’d been betrayed and reproached his benefactor.

  “I was starting to think you were alright…that you were a fellow traveller. But you’re just another out of touch asshole aren’t you?”

  Danny tensed up, clenching his right fist as if on the verge of striking the irreverent teenager. Judith, who’d never seen him like that before, intervened before something happened which everybody would regret.

  “Ryan? If you’re going to be staying here, then I think Danny should at least be able to monitor your progress, see where you might need help. You are here to learn after all.”

  “I know how to analyse literature, alright…you can’t teach people how to write!”

  At this point Hamish, who was now sat opposite, interjected:

  “Even the best writers relied on quality editors. You know, the objective, academic eye.”

  “If you want me to go, then fine. I’ll leave in the morning,” Ryan said stubbornly and got up to leave, but Judith headed him off at the door.

  “Ryan? Just let Hamish see your work and then we’ll take things from there.”

  Ryan looked petrified at the prospect of people seeing his writing, so much that Judith had to spend half an hour alone with him in the lounge before he agreed to fetch a sample from the byre. When he returned carrying a thick sheaf of A4, he refused to share it with anyone but her. Indiscriminately, she selected a page of spidery handwriting and found herself enjoying his first recollection of snowfall on the Easterhouse housing scheme, while he paced around the couch anxiously. In truth, she’d been expecting a pile of drivel, but not only was his work poignant and poetic, it was well structured too. She was instantly gripped and only stopped reading when he asked her opinion, some seven pages later.

  “Ryan, I’m astounded. It’s absolutely beautiful.” He wandered over to the window and stared out at the night, biting his nails as if unable to deal with the compliment. “Why haven’t you word processed your work?”

  He turned to face her. “I don’t know anything about computers.”

  “See! There are always new things we can learn, aren’t there?” Judith declared with great enthusiasm, causing Ryan to shrug his shoulders diffidently. “I tell you what: I’ll teach you how to get round a computer if you let me read the rest of your book…you’ve got me intrigued.”

  Judith winked at Ryan and he couldn’t help but return a lovely, wide smile. It was the first time she’d ever seen him anything other than sullen.

  As they re-entered the candlelit kitchen, Danny pulled a chair out from between himself and Angie, so that Ryan could join them for a dram of whisky. “If you’re as well read as you reckon, then there’s no reason why you can’t sit in and help teach. We’re promoting a philosophy of co-operation here. There’s no place for elitists,” he told the youngster.

  “But I spend every minute of my day working on the book,” Ryan protested. “When I’m not actually writing I’m thinking about what I’m going to write. It’s a torment, like having an eternal itch. The only way to find relief is to scratch. So I have to keep writing all the time. You should know this as an artist. Did the renaissance masters have time to waste?”

  Danny laughed and grabbed Ryan in an affectionate headlock,
full of admiration at his passion.

  “Two days a week you can help Angie here with her seminars — that gives you five days undisturbed to work on the book. Ok?” He pulled his captives head back, playfully. “Ok?”

  “Ok.”

  On being released, Ryan struggled to repress only his second smile since they’d known him. He even removed the checked baseball cap — hitherto welded to his head — revealing a sandy crew cut, which made him instantly more amenable. As more whisky flowed the mood became so relaxed that Ryan announced he had a confession to make to Danny. All went silent.

  “You know that first meeting you had? Up in the old textiles mill?”

  “Aha.”

  “There were about twelve of us, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “There should have been more — a lot more.” Ryan placed his cap back on, holding the peak and rubbing it against his scalp, nervously. “There were a good fifty from all over the city waiting outside in small groups, but our little crew chased them away with potato peelers. If you’d got us to fill the applications in there and then you’d have seen that nine of the thirteen people present where all from my scheme. They only turned up coz I told them to. That’s why there were just three the following week.”

  “Why would you want to scare the others away?” Angie interrupted.

  “Get rid of the competition of course. I knew places would be scarce and that you’d never pick some volatile loser with a second prize. In my experience most people are out to disadvantage you, so you have to make your own luck.” Unable to look at anyone he stared past Hamish sat opposite and focused on Danny’s mother’s portrait. “I’m sorry…not just for you, but for the people I scared off too.” He let go of his cap and emptied his glass in one. “So, if you want nothing more to do with me, I totally understand.”