If it is your life

by James Kelman

Nothing up with me, I said.

  Grumpy bastard, muttered Arthur.

  Tim was frowning at me. The man’s got a point.

  I dont fucking give a fuck about his point. I’m chittering standing here, it’s fucking freezing fucking cold. I spat into the fire, slapped my hands the gether, turned to see Nicky Parkes arrive. When he did he opened the polybag and brought out a six-pack.

  Pure astonishment.

  He broke the cardboard, tossed us each a can. Arthur dropped his in the excitement, then moved to clap Nicky Parkes on the shoulder.

  Tim was laughing, snapping open the can. Ya fucking dancer! he shouted.

  Well done Nicky Parkes, I said.

  I tapped a five, he said.

  Who off?

  Nicky Parkes patted the side of his nose.

  Fair enough.

  Tim had the tobacco out and was rolling the two of them a smoke.

  Maybe I should have got a bottle of wine, said Nicky, that is what I was wondering.

  Aw naw, the beer’s great.

  Aye but Pat I might have got fucking two: buy one get one free.

  Oh.

  A can of beer is a pleasure, said Arthur.

  A pleasurable experience, I added.

  That’s right, said Arthur, and it provides a basis.

  I looked at the fire and at Arthur and Tim. Somebody needs to get burnables.

  They looked at me.

  I got the last lot.

  Did ye? said Arthur.

  I dont remember that, said Tim, then he smiled. Heh Pat mind that idea you had about saving the empties and bashing them down, taking them to a scrappie?

  Aye.

  It was a fucking mad idea! Tim guffawed.

  I nodded. I stared at the fire a few moments. It did need replenishing. There was a kids’ cot someplace, some fucking thing, I couldnay remember. Tim was saying to Arthur about the story, finish the story. I thought he had finished it. It was a dream, I said, it wasnay a story.

  Tell us it anyway, said Tim.

  Aye, I said, we’re all ears.

  Arthur squinted at me.

  Tell us, said Tim.

  Ach naw, a stupid dream.

  Stupidity hasnay stopped ye before, I said.

  Thanks Pat.

  Nicky Parkes glanced at me then at Arthur.

  I was gony go for the burnables then I thought Naw, I want to hear the cunt. Get it ower and done with, I said.

  Arthur sniffed and continued, repeating some of the earlier stuff for the benefit of Nicky Parkes. I only half listened. I hadnay heard much the first time and what I was hearing now didnt greatly interest me. I find that stuff childish, like dirty jokes and that kind of shite, boring crap.

  The beer was tasty, given the label was foreign and I could not remember having seen it before. Some of it trickled down my chin. I wiped it with the cuff of my coat sleeve.

  Parties were watching me. I’ll wring it out later, I said, once yous mob have fucked off.

  Charming, said Tim.

  You dont have to listen, said Arthur.

  I sighed. Know something Arthur you are a shifty cunt.

  No as shifty as you man you’re a byword in this parish.

  Parish, oho, the Pape patter. This is mixed company you behave yerself.

  Finish the story, said Tim.

  Arthur shrugged. I’m no inventing fuck all

  It’s a dream, said Tim.

  Exactly. I knew the two guys, Arthur said, but it wasnay like we were pals. It’s more like we used to be pals. Years ago. We had went our separate ways and just bumped into each other.

  So what ye saying?

  Well it’s obvious. The two of them were shagging the same bird.

  What do ye mean ‘obvious’?

  The way things happen in a dream, said Arthur. Ye just know. He was a nasty fucker. He was pointing back down the lane. I looked to see what he was pointing at. Sure enough it was the other guy, his mate, the first yin’s mate. I watches the two of them laughing and joking the gether.

  Aw jees, I said, I’m lost.

  That is how I felt, said Arthur, fucking sidelined man. I thought These three bastards are keeping me out of it.

  Ye mean you wanted yer hole as well?

  Tim laughed.

  Naw Pat I dont mean that.

  Well what then?

  It was like They know something I dont.

  Tim stopped laughing and said, Who was the woman?

  Arthur nodded. I was wondering when somebody would ask that.

  Nicky Parkes sniffed, cleared his throat and cleared his tubes, dumped the lot on the fire.

  I hope it’s no about us, I said. I hate stories about where that happens, where a guy winds up his wife’s having it away with some cunt. It’s as auld as the hills and it will never stop but that doesnay mean ye’ve got to like hearing about it. Personally speaking I dont like hearing about it, no if it is mates involved.

  Nicky Parkes looked at me, then at Tim, then swigged from his can, wiped his mouth.

  Ye want to hear my dreams, I said, they’re fucking murder fucking polis man. Mind you I dont usually get any. And see if I do, they’re fucking boring as fuck. No kidding ye man they’re that fucking boring I dont remember having them once they’ve gone. Nay fucking wonder!

  Nicky Parkes spluttered. He spluttered and spluttered. He went into a fit. It started with a giggle. Then the beer went up or down his gullet, nose and tubes. He definitely had something wrong in the nostrils department. I slapped him on the back. When he was able to speak he said, Sorry man ye just made me laugh there.

  I’m glad of that, I said, I like making cunts laugh.

  Tim said, Tell ye my problem, I cannay get to sleep.

  If yer dreams were really boring then they would make ye go to sleep.

  Arthur wagged his finger at me. Pat, he said, ye wouldnay get dreams if ye were awake. Ye would be already sleeping.

  What is this April fool! I said. What day is it?

  What about the third man? said Tim, I want to know about him. The one the two guys met.

  It was me they met, said Arthur, I was the third man.

  So it was your wife? said Tim.

  What?

  Is that the punchline?

  There’s nay punchline.

  Nicky Parkes leaned closer to me and said quietly, What did he say there?

  I shrugged.

  The dream just went on, said Arthur, the two guys were taking me down the lane.

  What were they wanting to shag you as well?

  Pat gie us a break?

  Well nay wonder, I said, fucking Gone with the Wind. I swigged another mouthful, wiped my chin with my coat sleeve. I didnay like the way this was going but could do nothing to stop it, bar go for the burnables. But it wouldnay stop the dream being telled, just me from hearing it. And if these cunts heard it I needed to.

  At the same time I wasnay wanting to be dishonest. Arthur had persisted in telling us it. Maybe I was doing him a disservice. Okay he was a shifty cunt but he wasnay an arsehole. And now he was looking at me. What ye looking at me for?

  What?

  I stared at him.

  I’m just telling the story.

  Well tell the fucking story.

  Okay. So the lassie comes out the house and she looks about. There’s a wee flight of stairs. It’s like she is looking for the next guy along. She doesnay see us, me and the other two guys, she just doesnay see us. The funny thing is I recognize her. She’s wearing a blue and black speckled jersey and a black skirt and she’s got a jacket on, a kind of blazer type of thing, and she’s wearing black tights.

  Black tights! said Tim. I might have known.

  Me and all, said Nicky Parkes, and his eyebrows twitched.

  We need burnables, I said, I know where there’s cardboard boxes.

  Want a hand? said Tim.

  Naw.

  Get a bottle of wine while ye’re at it, said Nicky Parkes.

  Ha ha, I said but away I we
nt.

  Vacuum

  She was moving around. She would be tidying. She did this to keep up her spirits. Thump thump. No she did not, she did it to make me feel guilty. One thing was for sure, there was no need to tidy. Nobody ever visited the place. How come she had to tidy? How come she kept on tidying? Morning noon and night it drove me crazy. The girls never visited, nobody visited. The last people to visit were neighbours with a burst pipe who shouted about water coming through their ceiling. It had not come through any ceiling, it came down through the light. The water followed the track of the wire: electrical wire. They failed to notice. Stupidity. They were lucky they had not short-circuited the entire block of flats. That was a month ago. The wife did the talking, she was good at that kind of stuff. I could not look at them. Except for the postman that was the last visitors. We had sons. They never came. When was the last time? I could not remember. A month ago at least. Of course they had their own lives. Of course.

  This tidying and dish washing drove me up the wall; counter cleaning, washing machines, mopping the linoleum, polishing the bloody ornaments and hoovers hoovers hoovers. What a din! That is what it was, a pandemonium, if you were trying to read so you needed to concentrate. I tried to concentrate. It was not easy. Nothing was easy. Not nowadays either; it was hard reading at all without her to contend with. I determined to ignore it, including the sound of her moving, she would move, move, move move move, to irritate me. She done it to irritate me. She said it was to make me aware of reality. That was the way she put it, as though reality had given me the slip. She could get on with life roundabout, the daily grind, unlike myself; this is what she meant.

  Oh, I said, okay, right, of course, you’re so much more at home in the world than I am. Excuse me. It is so obviously the case why bother talking about it. So obvious I forgot.

  No answer.

  The door was ajar. I pushed it further open, enough to shout through: What exactly is this reality you keeping talking about? Just tell me, I would be very interested to hear.

  No answer.

  Eh! I said. Do you know something the rest of us dont?

  Still no answer. She knew a trap when she heard it; I would have something up my sleeve. If she replied she would be finished. I would get her. I would have something lined up to say, and I would say it. She was cornered. She was. I had her. She knew it now, if not already, I mean before, I think she would have, definitely.

  But it wearied me. I retreated to the kitchen, shut the door, sat down at the table. I closed my eyes. I opened them. It was true: I was trying to get her cornered. That is what I was doing. Looking for ways to attack. It was quite bad, even perhaps despicable, if you were describing it.

  It was our lives. This is what it had come to. And it was me responsible. She was not doing it. It was me. I was doing it.

  I needed to straighten myself out. It was not her it was me.

  But I was at a low ebb. I knew it. She did too. Both of us. It applied to our relationship as a whole. Although it was me especially. I accept that. I would never have denied it. There was something up with me and I could not get myself out of it. I tried but could not. I needed to and I wanted to, if only I could and I would, if she would help, if only she would, and she could. She had it in her power.

  Oh but she had such faith in my mental strength! So she said. Not in so many words. It was all unspoken with her.

  My mental strength. Some hopes. My mental strength had gone. Did I have any to begin with? She thought I did. She thought I could sort out myself, like how I sorted out everything else.

  She was being sarcastic.

  But I could have, and I would have. Of course I would have. As long as I knew what it was. Then I would deal with it. You have to know the situation. She spoke about reality but that was reality. If you were unaware of the situation then you could not deal with it. She could have helped but she did not. Even to let me think, if she had let me think, let me think and I would work it out. She did not let me think. All this tidying and cleaning nonsense. How could a body think! Washing and bloody polishing. It should have been reminders she was giving me, not all this racket racket racket damn racket. That was a pure attack. It was help I needed and she attacked me.

  I needed help, to handle the situation. It was not only for my sake. It was the two of us. We would both suffer. Did she want us to suffer? Maybe she did, she hated me that much. Else why attack the person closest to you? This is what she was doing. Why would you attack the person closest to you? It is a contradiction. Maybe I was not the person closest to her at all; maybe it was somebody else. At our age! Why not? Why not at our age? In this world anything is possible. People and things we regard as immovable, they are not; things change and so do people; your soul mate turns out to be something else.

  But I knew that was not how it was, I knew it was not, it was only how she did things and got it into her head, if she would just not get things in her head.

  There was no sound now.

  Of course not. She had been at it all morning and needed a rest, she would want a cup of tea, and could not get one. She could not get one because I was here, in the kitchen, so she could not come in and put on a kettle of water. What a situation. I got up from the table and opened the door, went ben the front room. The hoover was there but she was not.

  She was in the bedroom, sitting on the bed. She looked up, surprised to see me. I smiled. Why attack me? I said. I’m the person closest to you in this whole rotten world.

  I dont think it’s a rotten world.

  Well I do.

  I dont.

  My world’s rotten.

  Well dont drag me into it, she said. She did not look at me when she spoke. I preferred her to look. I was looking at her. She knew I was. Just dont drag me into it, she said.

  I’m not going to.

  Then dont.

  I waited a moment. Now she glanced at me. I knew she would. I just knew she would. I dont want to drag you into anything, I said, and I wish I didnt have to.

  Well you dont have to, she said. You dont have to at all. You dont. Go away and drag somebody else. Why are you smiling?

  Who me?

  Why are you smiling?

  I’m not smiling, I said, except at this point I did smile. It was unfair and I knew it was unfair. Blatantly unfair. Yet still I did it. Sometimes I have a thing in me; I know that I am a man. We both do. She is weaker, as a woman. It is just a physical thing. I have the physical strength. I have it in me. She is so much weaker. I could just hit her. I could. I would not like to say what I could do to her. She was staring at me. She did not know what I was thinking. It was inside my head. She did not know what went on. I was glad she did not. I needed her not to. People need their space and their privacy, me too. Sometimes she looked at me. I did not like how she did it.

  But it was my fault. It was. I knew it was. If she would just help me, why did she not? I wished she would. I honestly did. But she did not even talk, she did not talk, why did she not talk it drove me actual mad, just straight angry mad that was what she did and she did not have to, she just did it. Did she even know I had her cornered? Of course she did but what did she do about it? Nothing. I wanted to scream. She reached for a pillow; why I do not know. I do not know why. What was a pillow going to do, a piece of flimsy cotton or wool or some stuff. She did not speak. Why did she not speak? That aggravated me. She did aggravate me, she had it in her power and she used that power. She had her power. Women do. She did.

  She was looking at me but then was not, just at the carpet floor; if she needed to hoover, maybe she was wondering.

  She knew how this would start. The very words that came out my mouth. It did not depress me. Her challenge on reality was the key. I had not replied openly. I pretended to mishear. We might have been watching television for all the difference it would have made. I brought it up out the blue and her heart sank. I was smiling. I was unable to stop myself. Even before saying it I was smiling. At the very idea! She would hav
e been expecting it but not even knowing she was expecting it! Until I did it. Then she would. And she was beat. She knew she was beat. She knew I had beat her, just cornered, she was cornered.

  How had I managed it? It was so good I felt like writing it down for future situations. It was a beauty. I could have written it down on an old envelope if I had found one, also a pen, if I could find one of them. But we did not keep them in the bedroom. Bedrooms were not there for that purpose. Envelopes and pens were for the front-room writing-cabinet just like cups and saucers were for the kitchen and vacuum cleaners the walk-in lobby cupboard.

  I had no interest in any of that. The present was difficult enough. Just concentration concentration, that was the key, apply the brains, the grey matter. Or so I thought. Only for a moment or two. Who was kidding who?

  But what was it? I wondered. Even the way she was looking at me. How come she was looking at me? I looked at her. I stared at her. It was not hard to do.

  Pieces of shit do not have the power to speak.

  Date of arrival: April.

  Another dream laid waste.

  I had prepared my defence but when the time came they gave me no chance to deliver it. I wasnt allowed to shave and my hair was in an unkempt condition. The Accompanying Officer showed me into court, told me where to stand and the proper way of standing. The Court Official read out the bare facts of the charges so rapidly I had little time to mumble your Honour, Lordship or Worship and wondered what term I was supposed to use hereabouts. Different authorities different formalities. The Court Official’s speech consisted of rambling passages that degenerated into confused utterings. Then he added a bit on. I was to be kept in the cell for seven more days, then taken to the port of departure, set on to a boat and returned posthaste to the mainland. A clerk coughed. From local-government coffers a sum was to be settled with the shipping company such that a single fare might be purchased.

  I smiled, a reflex action which only antagonized the Accompanying Officer. The fellow gripped my wrist forcibly once they departed the inner area. I allowed it. What else could I have done. I smiled again. I was going to speak, I said, I thought I would have had the chance to speak.