A Disaffection (Vintage Classics)

by James Kelman

  What about a prostitute? A prostitute was sensible. Surely a prostitute was sensible? If it came right down to it and he did really feel as low as all that and the notion that female company, that

  Not all the pubs would be shut. Up the centre of the city they stayed open till later. Half eleven. He could go out the now and snatch a couple of pints no bother, and if he really was as lowly

  Plus what he could do for example; a quick wash and shave and fresh clothes and then off up to a latenight disco, to just fucking try one for fuck sake nobody’s asking more that. But what about the depression never mind the depression the depressings. And it’s no as if people have got these mammoth expectations. Just to see you’re making an effort, that can be enough. It would be enough for Gavin and Nicola. So long as they know he isni fucking giving up. So long as they know he isni a fucking pathetic specimen I mean nothing’s worse than that, nothing, nothing is worse than that, nothing, nothing at all. Get the coffee made, and made strong to keep you alert, an indication of your intentions, that you intend doing something of an optimistic bent. And obviously a prostitute is nothing to be ashamed of; it is quite common-sensible – fairly rational, as a proposition, as propositions go for christ sake, at least rational ones. There is that aversion of course which is also fairly rational, to do with the imagery, of a succession of pricks. But so what? If she is clean? If they were clean? What possible difference could that be from the same one going in and out all the time? Apart from the obvious A.I.D.S.! Venereal disease for fuck sake anything!!

  The temporary English teacher would be at home just now with the wife and the weans and the grannie. They would all be sitting in front of the telly, in the middle of a movie, The Wizard of Oz or The fucking Sound of Music, a tray full of various sandwiches, cakes and chocolate biscuit. Happy Families. The television is good for that sort of carry on, everybody being together without having to communicate conceptually. People have suggested Patrick buys a television. And he has been considering it. Televisions must be good for loneliness. When you are lonely you just go and switch it fucking on. Simple. Nothing to it. And then you just relax with your eyes staring straight at it. But it could put you off reading and listening to music and what Pat likes is playing music and reading books at the same time which is a bad habit maybe but very comforting. And comfort is important. He is not getting any fucking telly unless comfort is guaranteed. Do you guarantee comfort with your tellies? No! Then away and fucking fuck yourself Charlie!

  Even discussion programmes on the radio, Patrick can listen to them while reading. Probably just for the company. To avoid the

  gaps. It is gaps.

  And what about the pipes?

  Fuck the pipes. It was a weanish notion from the kick-off. He would simply discard them. A not uncommon occurrence. But is that really true? Well it seems to be, even although it is the sort of trait Patrick approves of and here he is having it himself for christ sake he isnt a total failure, what do you expect, everybody’s got at least one thing going for them. He was reading this short story recently and the guy in it tried suicide, hacked away at his throat for ages with some kind of fucking supposedly sharp-edged instrument though obviously it was blunt as fuck; the usual, suicide as a last-gasp action rather than a considered event, something you prepare for. How did young Werther accomplish the deed. It is a couple of years since Pat read the novel. And the parallels! Christ, he hadni even thought of that. Young lover on behalf of beautiful-but-not-to-be-got young lass. Had she been spoken for? Was she actually a married woman? Could that be true! Christ. Right: no suicide till you rush out and re-read the book!

  So God is dead is he, well well well.

  Where did that come from?

  Hölderlin was once alone in the same room with auld Goethe but didni know who the fuck he was because he was only there to meet fucking Schiller and was so excited he wasnt able to concentrate! Amazing these coincidences in life. You could actually just be walking down the stairs and something totally amazing could happen to you. Such as? Away ye go.

  Such as?

  Away you go.

  Well how come the pipes are finished? They arent finished. Why was it a weanish notion? It wasnt a weanish notion. It was not a weanish notion. There was something about them, at the very outset. It can be recaptured. There was also something else about that night, a kind of oddness about things. Was it an eerieness of atmosphere! Fuck off.

  But there was definitely an oddness, a strange kind of dullness – like the senses had been dulled and things were being viewed via that of a perception unable to give colour to things. It had been cold right enough. And draughty, at the back of the arts centre. And yes, Patrick had certainly been shivering – no joke when you’re having a pish. And it iced up that night as well because some poor bastards were having trouble with their starter-motors on Wednesday morning. Patrick hadni; that side of affairs is quite good as far as the mechanics of his own motor is concerned. It got him right through the entire winter. Which is more than can be said for so many of these bastards with their big highpowered efforts. Pat’s motor is okay – if it wasni for the fucking bodywork it’s the bodywork that lets it down.

  The coffee was cold. He had a whole mugful of it sitting on the edge of the fireplace and it was cold, the entire contents, the exact 100% of all that there was and could conceivably be, there in his mug, cold, with its regalia of the english monarchy, imperialism’s holy of holies, leaving aside the fucking vatican of course, not forgetting the kremlin, plus of course the fucking white house, then again you’ve got the fucking zionists. Patrick sipped the coffee. It was a good idea to sip the coffee. Healthy. The life force. Plus as well it’s aye interesting to watch how the line of skin affects the inside of the mug, as it shifts and makes its way down. No doubt it was such an enterprise that inspired Copernicus, stuck away in his tower and getting upset at folk. His relations had something to do with it. Did he have fucking cousins that didni get on with him or something. At one point he was living near to the Hook of Holland. Is that right or a load of fucking rubbish. The Zuider Zee. That must be a nice place to visit. How far is it from Jena. Plus you could visit that museum-cum-monastery on the northern section of the Germanias wherein you may find there ancient literary treasures of the old Irish-Scot scholars, that would be fucking good fun. I know: let us get up and go ben the parlour once again and we can look at the fuckers and see what there is to see, if there is anything at all, anything remotely of interest.

  Pipes Two. Painted in Bright Enamels. Of the colours Three. Silver Red Black.

  And the thinner yin:

  okay, fine. Pat stretched out his arm, aware of the weight at his wrist, the weight of his hand or just the strain there because he had been sitting with the arm in question at his side for so long and he lifted the thin one up, as an aid to its description just. But it was not easy to describe at all. Once you had said pipe you had named the world. Consider the panpipes: they have been performed on by mankind since way back at the ancient of days. Aeons. At least six thousand years. And men have been playing the pipes. And here you have Patrick Doyle MA (Hons). What about a pair of fucking bagpipes! No, sarcasm doesni work. He laid his hand on the pipe. Maybe it was just another aid to the relief of sexual tension. Anything was possible in this life. And playing music has always been medicinal, psychotherapeutic. Maybe this was the key to the entire meaning of art. Of course. Obviously. Soothing the troubled soul.

  But all of that which is necessary. All that is required. That is integral and essential and not able to be hidden, that must be to the fore, that has to come right out and enter the

  Enter yourself ya bastard. Play the fucker. Before it is too late. Fine. What is done is just that Patrick raises the pipe to his lips and closes his eyelids; he blows a very long and very deep sound; just one, lips compressed, eyelids shut tightly, and tears springing there at the corners, like a form of ecstasy, something that has sprung from way out of and has relaxed these shoulders and eased th
at terrible terrible fucking tension, just got out from under that pilloriedness, self-pilloriedness, self-flagellation, that Goya one, something there maybe to do with the flagellants but now away there away there, just there, there, there, getting further and further away, not a great distance but a distance, definitely a distance, just enough now so that he can open the eyelids, the eyes maybe and just blink a bit, and a smile of sorts, looking at the pipe and smiling to it, an old friend and a treasure. It was time to walk to the windows and peer out at the side of the curtain; and he breathed out, a sigh; it was followed by a shiver, a shuddering movement of the shoulders, a wee convulsion. Dear dear. Dear dear. The rain falling steadily. The halo round the streetlamp.

  It would be good to report that that night’s sleep turned out to be one of these smashing, all-embracing types of sleep where the body and mind both feel relaxed afterwards but it had not been like that, although neither was it the precise opposite, where you feel like a gang of baddies has been booting you about for the whole seven hours.

  A breakfast might have been useful. He did have a packet of Weetabix in the cupboard, but not enough milk. There was no point in stocking a lot of milk. He only really drank the stuff at breakfast time – discounting coffee of course, he still preferred milk in coffee. Although in tea it didnt bother him either way. Milk-buying was a habit he never seemed able to develop. Perhaps if the maw did give him her old fridge. But that was an awful waste of resources. Then as well if she did give him the thing he would probably stuff the freezer bit full of raw meat and poultry.

  Having a snack bar in the vicinity would be good. Glasgow is very short of snack bars. Why did the Rossis not seize the opportunity and open at the crack of dawn so that the solitaries of the district could arrive for coffee and hot rolls & croissants and salami on rye and maybe a couple of fucking bagels, like they get in all these great wee cafes in New York. Elderly couples meeting for a chat across pots of steaming coffee and hot pancakes with maple syrup! Fucking Mark Twain and Peter Pan territory, Never Never Land, sentimental maudlinity. Uch no, auld Twain was better than that.

  Even if resignation was not the answer it could be a good idea to jump on the panel for a fortnight, just to get things into perspective; it would give him time to set forwards a plan of some description, a way ahead – even if he could just map out the next three months, once the summer arrived it would be all over. And yet resignation for christ sake what a temptation.

  And it always would be a temptation. How could it be anything but? To resign from anything is good, is exhilarating. Just like, for instance, if he was to resign from Monday morning’s interview with fucking Old Milne. It was a while since he had been carpeted. Ach well, no point worrying about such things. Old Milne was a bit of a headbanger but apart from that. Even resigning from a family can be good and exhilarating. One of the better decisions Patrick has ever made centred upon the leaving of the family domicile at the start of his second university year. No matter that he was to stay in a house less than a couple of miles from where his parents lived it wasnt his fault if the university was as close as that. It had been a wise move and necessary to a fuller realization of his male potential i.e. that he could become involved with women properly, or at least come home steamboats.

  One straightforward decision concerned Mirs Houston: it was henceforth silly getting hot under the collar about her. She was the wife of another and that was that. A more practical plan might involve these singles’ clubs where single people meet. But whatever and no matter, the whole carry on, it was something to treat in a less serious fashion. There was a lot of truth in the old cliché about sex being a comedy; it was best Pat found something to smile about, the way married couples were wont to, seeing the entire palaver as a joke; something to share a laugh over, something to be enjoyed in its differing aspects, and not something to crack up about. So much of life concerned sex and its attendant miseries and mysteries, its laughter and its heartbreak. Why get involved? Obviously he would get involved and indeed wanted to get involved, but

  but a problem was one of banality. Once you started in on the subject as a method of easing your mental condition, once you began looking at the situation; aye, it did seem so totally banal. In itself this was encouraging; it meant the problem was not specific, it was run-of-the-mill and not to be taken too seriously. And even aside from the sexual aspect it was better leaving Alison out of the question. What was the point in harbouring feelings as burdensome as he did? It was far better to seek out a proper object for his affections. It was just causing him fucking pain, to be honest about it. If he actually could be said to love her then it was just time to fucking not love her, or else to be doing it in a less pervasive manner.

  He went down to the wee dairy at the corner of the street to buy a paper, also something to eat because he was fucking starving. One of these individual breakfast trays. Terrible efforts. A lump of square sausage and a lump of round black pudding. A wee dod of currant dumpling and a round slice of haggis haggi feminine. To be frank about the carry on, this was a breakfast he enjoyed tremendously, never mind about Alison and her fucking vegetarian hostelries. He was a heart-attack man and that was it finished. If she wanted to save him from himself then that was fucking her problem.

  Once the frying pan was fairly hot Pat placed the pieces of food inside and waited. He could have counted three hundred and then turned them onto their other sides, a further three hundred and drop in the egg to fry with them. Yet okay, the thought of lettuce and cucumber and tomato, healthy portions of cheddar cheese; that had crossed his mind; he was thinking in these terms, maybe for tomorrow. I mean he wasni really that fucking interested in becoming a genuine vegetarian he just fancied getting fit. Not in a daft way. Pat had never really been that interested in going for the swimming, jogging, bicycling, running, hopping, skipping routine; but just to get reasonably fit and healthy! that would be good. Get a regular game of table tennis going with Gavin once again. That last time they played together he had been easing up and trying to let Gavin win and then suddenly he wasnt having any say on the matter, Gavin was fucking running him ragged. Of course he was an ordinary married man and therefore an active healthy male unlike Patrick who was a flabby eunuch. But big fucking brother also smoked a lot of cigarettes and could drink like a fish so fucking explain that one. Some things are fair and some things are not fair and this is a thing that is not fucking fair, and what more can be said except praise the lord if you’re a lucky bastard.

  But just to be reasonably fit and healthy. Just to be in a sound condition. To maybe have a wee go on the pipes. To maybe have a big go on the pipes. A genuine go. That was something. To even just think about it was something: for it must be admitted that in the cold light of an early spring morning, the idea of the pipes as musical instruments and so on. Which made it the more crucial to contemplate.

  Seeing the young woman in the dairy had something to do with it, when Patrick was down getting the grub. She had been standing chatting to the older woman behind the counter. She had a baby sitting on her hip. She had short blonde hair and lived three closes away. Pat saw her quite a lot, usually in the launderette on Sunday afternoons. The baby was aye with her, as if she didnt have a man about the place, whether deliberately so or not.

  In juxtaposition to the pipes.

  Being sentimental had nothing to do with it. It was just a matter of taking it all seriously. Because let us be frank about something: this is what it involved. It was the issue. He had to take it seriously. If he didni he was finished. And irony could have no part in it. Irony was death. And trying to work things out in advance, that was the last thing to do. He would just be there to do it, to accomplish it, what he was to do. Other folk could discuss the other things. Being a teacher caused people to spend their lives worrying out concepts, postulating this that and the next thing, all manner of hypothesising. The further from activity the better. Please allow us to conceptualise your problem, thus we can attain a sensation of nourish
ment ergo that your problem, though not yet solved, has been conceptualised, which is tantamount to a solution of course. That kind of shite. Challenges that must always remain academic. Causes you can throw yourself into. The efficacy or otherwise of reprinting the full unexpurgated twenty-four volume edition of Wilson’s TALES OF THE BORDERS. Tremendous. Earthshattering. Existencestopping. Lifebeginning. Getting a bunch of wee first yearers to think you’re the smartest guy in this here universe then off to the staffroom for a brief but earnest discussion with the peers. Great. And onto the local boozer for a quick bout of mutual backslapping and a vegetarian lunch. And a halfbottle of whisky when nobody’s looking. Aye, we’ve all done it. Smashing, great, fine, yes, and now go and enter the various nooks and crannies, take a look at your ceiling and then take another look at auld fucking Goya and relate that to your fucking life and the way you’re quite content to perform the fencing-in job for a society you purport to detest right to the very depth of your being. Sentimental keech, according to Desmond. The kind of comment that always comes from those whose true desire is steadfast inactivity, those whose one lust is for the absolute maintenance of the status quo, and their own wee remunerative numbers within it. They were probably laughing at him last night. He didni give a fuck anyway. But even Alison. When it comes down to it. And this is a fact he must admit of sooner or later, that the delectable Mirs Houston is aye prepared to sit in that company and to not go rushing off when Pat goes rushing off. She doesnt. She is happy to sit on chatting about fucking Xmas Pantomimes when he is not there, when the company comprises Desmond and Diana and fucking Mrs Bryson and the temporary English teacher. His presence is not at all necessary to her enjoyment of the socialising, amongst her cronies of the teaching racket. It is these types of facts that Patrick wishes to be capable of admitting. It is these types of facts he must be capable of admitting, if ever he is to achieve a genuine vision, a genuine honesty in his method of continuing. And let us further admit – and it is a corollary of last night – Patrick Doyle continues only insofar as he desires that he may continue. If he seeks to fucking die then he dies and that’s that. It is the easiest thing in the world to crash the fucking motor at seventy miles per hour. And dont think he doesnt know about that possibility because he does and he has – o christ since way back when he was doing his Christmas Postman as a student and earning the money for that selfsame damn bloody fucking licence. The incidents of last night relate directly to the moment. He was not in a state of befuddlement. He was not of a disorderly brain. A bit neurotic but nothing unusual in that and nothing for fuck sake in the slightest extraordinary about it. Most of yesterday evening could occur at any time of the day or night. And this is important to remember. And last night was a Friday night as well. Thus today being Saturday. Saturday.