by James Kelman
Patrick could see Norman frowning at that – then he nodded and looked like he was wanting to add something he considered very pertinent but was holding himself back in case it could be construed as presumptuous. And then he glanced over his shoulder at Alison as if in the hope she would say it for him. But she didni. She had been listening to Patrick but she made no comment. When Patrick looked at her in the rearview mirror she smiled at him and he acted as though he took her smiling for granted, continuing on to say: I mean here I go as usual, meeting people in the arts centre for a pint and christ almighty I hate the place, the whole atmosphere of it. And let’s face it, some of the folk! Okay I absolve Joe but you’ve still got Diana, she goes on and on and on about her own subject. That’s all she ever talks about, her own subject. Who the fuck’s interested! Christ sake we could all go on about our own subjects.
What is it she teaches? Norman asked.
History, replied Alison.
That’s the lassie with the blonde hair?
Yes, said Alison.
Any special period?
I think the First World War.
No kidding ye, said Patrick, sometimes I used to go staggering home moroculous drunk from such nights. Can you imagine it! Unbelievable. Getting drunk and bored like that at the same time for god sake it’s almost like a logical contradiction I mean ye wouldni think it was possible.
He swung the wheel too abruptly and apologised once the corner had been turned. That’s me gabbing too much instead of trying to concentrate on the road. Yous two talk.
But neither did.
Okay? said Pat.
Alison said, Is that it definite then, you’re not going?
Nah. Yous two go. I’ll still drive yous but.
Another silence. It was obviously difficult for them; perhaps especially so for Norman because he didnt really know Pat, so this sort of carry on must have been a mystery. He was probably thinking along the lines of:
Is this the true state of affairs? Or is it all a ploy to get rid of me so’s he can be alone with Alison?
And the guy couldni be blamed for thinking that. It was partly true anyway. In fact Patrick had gone in a huff, from that moment he eased off the handbrake back when leaving the pub. Its cause could be traced directly to Norman who should have had the gumption to appreciate Patrick was wanting to be on his tod with Alison. He was a brother man. Brother men should appreciate such things.
They do appreciate such things. They just sometimes are obliged to shove a spoke into your wheel. Sour grapes or something. And there was also a certain look on Norman’s face occasionally, as of a person secretly enjoying the havoc s/he is wreaking. It was a bit reminiscent of Wringhim in old Hogg’s novel. Norman would have to watch himself: one of the dangers inherent to the teaching racket is starting to act out the character parts of the topics you get paid to encounter.
The silence had been breached. Alison asked Norman a question concerning families. He replied. Gradually Norman attempted to involve Patrick by glancing at him and smiling. Patrick smiled back at him. In the rearview mirror he saw that Alison was also smiling at him. So perhaps a question had been asked him. A traffic light on the amber; he accelerated to get across. No polis motors. This was a bad corner. The bastards had a habit of hiding in the vicinity. One time they had stopped him under the pretext of examining a faulty tail-light but obviously they had wanted a look inside the vehicle and to see whether they should bring out the breathalyser. Wee John and Elizabeth – his nephew and niece – had been in the back. He had been taking them to the pictures as part of a babysitting night, a Walt Disney film.
Gavin and Nicola didnt ask him to babysit these days. He would quite like it if they did.
At the next corner.
Pardon?
Just if you drop me at the next corner, Norman said, gesturing at the window.
Patrick stopped the car. After an exchange of goodbyes the bloke got out onto the kerb, banging the door shut. Alison didnt have a chance to move in to the front seat but appeared quite content to remain where she was, gazing out the side window, nibbling at the corners of her fingernails. She looked tired. Some of the classes she had to contend with were not the most easy. It was Old Milne’s policy to mete out the more difficult ones to the newer staff. She did look tired. She should probably have gone straight home. But the idea of being able to just sit down for a couple of hours would be very tempting. That was how it was for the rest of them as well; they were just glad to sit down – it was the reason these sessions seemed to drag on so interminably; it was a shame. Patrick waited a moment. Then he said, I think I’ll just snatch a very quick pint, before hitting the road.
She didnt say anything.
Naw, he said, eh …
Alison sighed. She shook her head and sighed again. Norman went away because he thought you were wanting rid of him. He was right.
Uch come on Alison.
She didnt reply. Patrick blushed. The drive continued in silence.
It was after 6.30 when they arrived at the arts centre and okay to park on the single yellow line. A small crowd had gathered on the pavement near to the entrance, as if they were waiting to greet a visiting celebrity.
Alison continued on into the lobby of the arts centre and Patrick went quickly after her once he had locked the car door. He followed her along and into the lounge bar where the group would be.
And there they all were in the usual corner. Patrick waved and called: See yous on Monday! He gave a smile to Alison and about-turned. Off he went back along the corridor and out through the small crowd, getting into the car immediately and banging shut the door. He felt too bad to be true. Not good. It was not good. He felt not good. But he couldni stay there where he was at the pavement so he shoved the stick into first gear and switched on the ignition, but the engine did not work, the starter not turning or whatever. He switched it off and then on again. But it still was not working, it still
what it was it was the choke; he had pulled out the choke, by habit, in error. He turned the ignition key and first time now easily.
A happiness based on selfishness. If he was genuinely happy it was based on selfishness and was therefore false. The falsity with both Alison and the guy Norman. Norman had been consistently friendly, consistently so. And Patrick had done nothing but punch him on the mouth. It didnt bear thinking about. There were people crossing the road. It didnt bear thinking about. And Alison of course, she was
it didnt actually bear thinking about.
And that temptation! O god. That fucking temptation, that fucking o god and jesus and everything else and everything else; slow down, slow down; just stop and grab up the handbrake nice and snugly and gaze at the pedestrians walking at the CROSS NOW. Nice ordinary beings whose existential awareness comprises an exact perception of all that there is and can conceivably be; that’s the nature of it, that’s the fucking way of it; and inside the close Goya’s unblinkingness, that steady hand and honest vision, a crazy sort of nostalgia. That’s the most sentimental drivel in a long time. Have ye seen his face? The face. Have ye seen it? Patrick squinted into the rearview mirror, seeing the devilish cunning to the set of the eyebrows. The lights gone green. So this was the way ahead. He grinned, letting his foot rise from the clutch pedal. But wait a minute. The temporary English teacher whose name is Norman has a wife and three weans plus there’s the mother-in-law living with them, and then too his wife has missed her period. This is what the guy was blabbing to Alison about, his wife and three weans and that period. So what does that mean, missed a period, is that a pregnancy? Does it mean they’re going to have another kid? Or do mistakes still occur beyond such a point? If not the situation is dire right enough, him being temporary and soon to be back on the broo. That’s the way it goes poor bastard, a Bob Cratchit if ever this was one.
Then that story of Dostoievski’s! Imagine it! Going up and chapping the bloke’s door to see if he’ll come out for a pint. And then getting invited in and finding there�
�s a wee crowd of relatives and well-wishers gathered inside, all involved in a sort of party to celebrate the forthcoming happy event as implicit in the missed period. And Patrick blundering around trying to apologise for his conduct. Heaping congratulations and thanks onto his wife, praising the other three children and the proud mother-in-law who was probably quite elderly and large, or maybe even thin and frail. Then the ceilidh dancing would begin and he would be invited to remain and enjoy the proceedings; and he would invite the mother-in-law onto the floor and she would wind up fucking collapsing with a stroke because of the way he’s throwing her about during a Dashing White Sergeant for example. Then battling with folk – uncles and brothers and cousins – who’ve taken offence at the bad jokes he’s been cracking; horrible ill-conceived and ill-considered remarks and comments which amount to no more nor less than a very bad insult to Norman’s wife, or his wife’s mother. That kind of blundering stupidity. Just the actual idea of it! Christ. But it really was what you call going to the brink. Right to the very edge. Bending slightly to see over and into it; the precipice; over into the crater – just bending slightly, perched at the very edge, to see over it, into the very depths, right down and into the very depths. Ho. Jesus christ almighty, it was enough to make
something or other.
A fish-and-chip shop at the end of his street and he went there for a bit of grub; he got a fish supper and two buttered rolls. The people behind the counter were an Italian family by the name of Rossi. Four generations of them took turns working the place although the elderly patriarch hadnt been around for several days now. He was maybe ill. The shop stayed open till past midnight most of the week and the old boy was there the same as anybody else. He should probably have retired at least a decade back but kept on because he liked the company; the district itself – he probably liked that as well, having had to move out to a posh place on the south side to please the family but where he never really settled. So he continued putting in the long hours, much to the dismay of the younger folk who secretly must have wanted to see the back of him because when all was said and done he probably was a bit of a tyrant, maybe butting in too often on affairs that were private, telling the young yins whom they were to marry and so on and were they the correct religion and of the right family tree etcetera and if they werent then hard luck and buona sera ya bastard. You couldni blame the auld yin entirely though because it was him built the business up from scratch; slaving over a hot fucking fryer for seventy years only to see all these young whippersnappers and rascals throwing it to the dogs, the fish suppers and so on, all the rest of it! Patrick was chuckling quite loudly while fiddling with the key in the lock of his front door.
And if the truth be told it was these wee yarns he told himself that kept him fucking sane. Without them where would he be? Up a fucking gumpole.
The house was freezing. He kept on his outside clothes till the two bars of the fire glowed orange. He shoved a kettle of water on to boil, flipped the fish and chips onto a plate, used his fingers to eat it all up with. There was hardly a lick of butter on the rolls. One thing about the Rossi family: their total lack of sentimentality; he had been a regular for fucking donkeys but still there was nothing for nothing. The actual fish was not exceptionally white either although fair enough it was at least boneless. But this grey colour meant it had been frozen far too long. It was not unfresh, just not wholly white and new tasting, i.e. in a place like Montrose or fucking Pittenweem they’d have thrown it back in your face.
There was nothing quite like a good piece of bone-free haddock. And that was something else about being a vegetarian; did Mirs Houston actually give up fish as well as all the rest. You would be better off fucking who knows what, no point even considering alternatives. And yet it was one further instance of control, of gaining control over yourself, over your body, your physical well-being. Doctors had shown that vegetarians would generally be in finer health than meat-eaters. There again which doctors are we talking about are we talking about doctors who are vegetarians and therefore biased? Nothing worse than a biased doctor. And how could eating the flesh of dead animals be better than the other thing? The other thing? What other thing? What is this in reference to? Animals fed for the slaughter and those that are trapped in their own environment ergo fish? The distinction between being a cannibal and the straightforward eater of other human beings where these other human beings are bona fide victims of battle as in bygone eras when flesh of the dead brave was consumed by the victors in the belief that a portion of that courage would become part of themselves. In some countries they would kill fierce beasts for the same reason – lions and tigers, and bits of brave fighting bulls in Spain. Nothing wrong with that insofar as reason is regarded as the be-all and end-all. The Pythagoreans had a few wild theories, never touch a white cock for example which is obviously the same as do or dont touch a black cat. Whole lists of superstitious nonsense although it is wrong to describe them as nonsense, simply the common sense of an earlier stage in consciousness, and no more nonsensical than some of our present-day theories. It is always a matter of sifting the good from the bad, the theorems of reality from the shapes of absurdity. Seek and ye shall find. Old Milne’s face when the hands of the clock crept ever on and still the fellow hadnt arrived. Studying the door with that quizzical expression on the fizzog. Confound the fellow, where can he be! How on earth can he have forgotten!!
The very idea he could have forgotten deliberately.
The kettle of water was boiling. His hands were greasy from the fried food and he washed and dried them before sitting back down with a cup of tea. 7.40 p.m. In two hours time he would play the pipes. It wasnt because he had wanted to talk to her about them, it was because he’d had some fanciful notion of playing them with her there as audience, that was it, that was why he had been attempting to manoeuvre things so they would have got away from the idea of the arts centre, to get the temporary English teacher out the road, and then he could have invited her up for a coffee in his place.
And it wouldnt have been difficult for him to play with her there, something very different from playing ‘for’ her. The distinction was keen, and once discovered self-evidently true. And it probably shed a fair amount of light on the whole subject of the performing player. Or rather, the player who also performs in public. That Dostoievski story again: taking the pipes round to that bloke’s house and playing them for all the relatives and well-wishers. It actually made you feel like hiding your face to even think about it it was so bloody horrendous. That brink yet again. He would be as well trying it inside the gas oven. That was what you called a brink. No nonsense about it. Just stick in the head and good-night folks, sorry about the mess on the kitchen floor, putting my big clumsy foot in your basin of fucking jelly. O god and the chest is going going going, the pulse pumping in the temple and the ticking wrists the ticking wrists. That’s the recognition of it. That’s the recognition, the existential flash; revelation; being and not being; fucking oblivion. Stick in the head and turn on the tap. Just play them in public, play them in public. Like unveiling a new painting. Here is my latest masterpiece. I shall be at such and such a place at such and such a time, just pay your admission fee and I’ll be turning up to perform. I shall be blowing the notes; the thing of such timbre, you will not recover, you cannot recover, it shall not be possible to recover. Then there’s the set of the eyebrows.
Patrick had his mug of tea and he sat close to the fire, sipping steadily, with a fair degree of contentment. And it might well have been one of these moments of luxurious absorption; so total that reflection was not the thing at all, not at all.
He was tired, a sudden event. It was as if he spent whole days doing natural chores and the build-up from it was so unobtrusively exhausting that eventually there had to come the collapse. Perhaps if he closed his eyes for a wee while he would awaken refreshed. Also, having had the couple of drinks during the day, this helped engender the lurch into dreamland. One further motive for the resignatio
n from booze, the amount of time he gave over to sleep. So much so the term ‘sleep’ had to be examined, was there something more apposite, what about opiate. Opiation. The brain lulled into opiation through the ravages of alcohol and deep-fried food. That build up of grease and alcohol hardening all the outlets roundabout the heart which has to result in a blockage, the blood not pumping as well up to the brain as it should, thus brain damage, the death of the brain. If the truth be told and looked at unsentimentally then it has to be said that the fish and the chips were not of the best. The Rossis were an okay family but they really should have been throwing the fish overboard far sooner than they did. And here; this is odd; Patrick had a very strange dream about fish some night or other very recently for fuck sake, catching one and trying to dash out its brains on the bottom of the rowing boat because he didni know the ordinary scientific method of death-dealing. He had the poor old fish by the tail but it kept on fighting and slip-sliding its way out his hand and him trying to grip it and then dashing its head on the bottom of the boat until that dirty stuff came oozing out and it was sickening and in that shudder he sent it overboard.
Masturbatory. The ‘ordinary scientific’ must be the ordinary act of sexual intercourse and so on. Although it hadnt been a wet dream. Nowhere near it in fact. More like a dry nightmare if anything. Best not to analyse such things – especially since it sounded a bit sado-masochistic.
There was a letter to be written to Eric right enough. That was something to be done, if he was really desperate. It was good to keep in touch with folk and apart from Eric he didni really have anyone to keep in touch with. Maybe he should get a pen-pal, a pen-chum, a pen-mate, a friend of the pen, one whose existence
Eric was the only person he remained in contact with from university and probably that was because they had gone on to teachers’ trainers together. He was okay, in some ways quite a good guy in other ways a bit of a pest. He taught in a further education college down in East Anglia and was very involved in a club for sailing boats. He was born an Englishman. His maw and da were Scottish. And he had married an English lassie a couple of years back whom Pat had yet to meet. Eric had sent three invitations to go down and visit. Maybe it was now time to accept – if Eric sent a fourth. But Pat owed two letters. He just couldni get down to writing to him. What would he actually talk about! But if he did go down and visit they could maybe sail a boat across to France. That would be good and exciting. Patrick had never sailed on a boat before but it looked great from what you saw at the pictures. And Eric’s missis probably had pals she could bring to make up a foursome.
