Republics of the Mind

by James Robertson

  Shandon felt his skin go cold. It was as if someone had come in the door, letting in a gust of icy air as they did so, but nobody had come in. He wasn’t sure how he was going to deal with this, but he really only had the one option – to brazen it out, shut the bastard up before he started.

  ‘Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?’

  ‘I know who I’m talking to. I’m talking to you.’

  So there was going to be a fight, was that it? Shandon was in no mood for a fight. He wasn’t feeling charitable, but he felt too slow, too tired. He wanted the barman to intervene, throw the bastard out, but the barman had disappeared through the back a minute or two before and was on the phone. Probably the guy had seen his chance then, to sneak up on him.

  ‘It’s all right,’ the man said, ‘relax. I’m not going to batter you. Here, shake on it.’

  Shandon wasn’t daft. He did not extend his hand.

  ‘No,’ said the guy, ‘I mean it. No violence.’ He held one hand up, palm towards him. ‘My name’s Jack Mathieson. Not that you need me to tell you that.’

  ‘I don’t know you from Adam,’ said Shandon. ‘You’re making a mistake, and if you don’t fuck off you’ll be making an even bigger one.’

  ‘Nasty,’ said Mathieson. ‘That’s a nasty streak in you. But I don’t want to fight. I want to talk.’

  ‘Listen,’ said Shandon. ‘Let’s get this clear. I don’t know you and you don’t know me. And I don’t want to talk to you. All right?’

  ‘We don’t know each other,’ said Mathieson. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘You got it in one, pal,’ said Shandon.

  ‘Fine,’ said Mathieson. ‘If you say so.’

  ‘It’s not that I say so. It’s that it is.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Mathieson. He didn’t move.

  ‘Funny,’ he said. ‘You look just like the cunt.’

  By rights Shandon should have let him have it right then and there, but the barman came out again, and not being a witness to the first part of the conversation he would have seen Shandon laying into the smaller, frailer-looking man for no apparent reason. So Shandon moved away slightly, saying to the barman, ‘Tell this wee shite to get off my back, will you?’

  The barman didn’t even hesitate. He pointed a finger at Mathieson and nodded down the bar. ‘On your way, Jack.’

  Most likely he tried it on with any stranger, any face that might fit. He’d had a disaster of a marriage and never got over it. But it was a bit close for comfort. Maybe Shandon would be like that one day. Aye, maybe he would, if he didn’t get his act together and decide what to do with himself. He ordered another whisky – a single – and a pint this time. But coming out to drink on your own was as bad as staying in in front of the wars on the telly. It didn’t solve anything. What you needed was something to inspire you.

  ‘I mind, Tom, I mind how I got in with her in the first place. Mind it clear as if it was yesterday.’

  ‘Aye.’ The barman sounded bored, but maybe he thought this way he’d keep the guy down at the end of the bar, away from Shandon.

  ‘Clear as yesterday,’ said Mathieson.

  ‘How was that then?’

  Then Mathieson was talking, as if he had reached a stage of the night or a state of mind which triggered something in him. His voice was calmer than when he’d spoken to Shandon. Shandon stared ahead, not looking; listening.

  ‘She’d just split up with her previous man. I didn’t know this at the time but she had. And he was a personal friend, a good friend of mine. Except he ceased to be, after what happened between her and me, I mean. We never spoke to each other again. Probably just as well or he’d have killed me. I met her in this pub somewhere, God, I can mind what it looked like, the interior and that, but I’m buggered if I know where it was now. Down in London it was, but where exactly … We were all working down there in these days.

  ‘Anyway, there we were, sitting next to each other in the corner of this pub – I can’t even remember but I think she’d phoned me, arranged to meet, and I’d not thought anything of it – and I says to her, “Where’s Paul the night?” She says, “It’s over.” Just like that. No tears or nothing. Right in there – it’s over.

  ‘And straightaway I’m thinking, you know what I’m thinking, Christ you could be in here, mate. You’ve always fancied her. Could catch her on the rebound if you play your cards right. I mean, I was sorry for her if she was upset, but to be honest that’s exactly what I was thinking.’

  ‘You weren’t wasting any time,’ said the barman. He was supplying the punctuation, the pauses for drink to be taken.

  ‘Aye, but you know how it is, you caw canny. I waited. I let her do the talking. That was the idea – ease in gently, establish some basic facts. Like, is she angry or distraught or couldn’t care less? So I tried it out. “I’m sorry,” I says. “I’m not,” she says. Okay, so that meant she was angry.

  ‘Then she says he could be an animal. Is this in bed?, I’m wondering. But no, she goes on, “He could be a right bloody animal, farting and belching around my flat like he owned the place.”’

  ‘Is that what she said?’

  ‘Aye. Well, that made things a wee bit problematic. I’m partial to a wee bit farting and belching myself. All in good time but. Have to break them in slowly sometimes.’ The barman gave a false kind of laugh, as though he didn’t really agree with the sentiment but didn’t want to make an issue out of it. ‘She says, “He’s a bastard.” Well, what a cue. “Well,” I says – it wasn’t my place to say anything but – “now you’re finished I suppose it’s all right to say I never did trust him all together.”

  ‘She says, “I thought you were his pal.” “Aye,” I says, “but if you two are finished like …” She says, “Well, he’s a fucking bastard.” And she tells me why too. Some of the things. The farting and belching, that was just the tip of the iceberg. What it boiled down to was, he didn’t respect her. That’s what she reckoned. She kept going on about this respect thing. I couldn’t see it myself, but I played along with it. Didn’t want to blow my chances, you know. I just sat back and let her use me for an audience, till she got it out of her system. It like, sets you up as the opposite of the guy they’re slagging off, know what I mean?

  ‘Anyway, she talks for quite a while, me nodding away in time to her, then she’s nothing left to say. So we’re sitting there the pair of us, not really drinking much, and I suppose she’s thinking over all the things she and him did, all the things that were good while it lasted. Or maybe all the bad things, I don’t know … the things women think about. Me, I’m wondering, should I put my hand over hers just now, friendly like, comforting, give it a squeeze, or is it too obvious? Too soon? Maybe give it another five minutes and then the arm round her. And then she says, “Can I trust you, Jack?” And I says, “Course you can, Audrey.” And she just kind of snuggles in. That’s what she was looking for – reassurance or something. Well, it felt great. I hadn’t even put her under any pressure or nothing and she’d just melted.

  ‘Audrey. I always fancied her. And you know, these women, they always go for it. I went home with her that very night. Never spoke to him again, either of us. And then we got married. Five years of it. Makes you think, eh?’

  ‘Aye,’ said the barman. A sound less like that of someone thinking was hard to imagine.

  ‘She always went for bastards. First him, then me. Then she left me for some other bastard.’

  ‘Oh aye?’

  Shandon waited for it. He felt himself tensing up. But it was as if Mathieson had forgotten he existed. He downed the rest of his pint. ‘Oh aye, I’m a bastard all right. No question. We all are. Aye well, it was good while it lasted. I’m away. I’ll see you the morra.’

  ‘Aye, right you are. Night.’

  ‘Night.’

  And he walked out. Just like that. Never even looked at Shandon again.

  Shandon said to the barman, ‘That guy, does he come in here much?’


  ‘Aye, he’s a regular. Was he giving you bother earlier?’

  ‘Aye, nothing serious but. What’s his name, do you know?’

  ‘Jack,’ said the barman. ‘That’s all I know – Jack. You can get too close to some of these loners.’

  ‘An occupational hazard, I would think.’

  ‘Aye,’ said the barman, glancing at him. ‘Not if I can help it.’ He went down the bar to get the empty glass. ‘Are you wanting anything before I close up?’

  ‘Yes, please.’ It was the old fellow in the dinner-suit. He’d come up behind Shandon without making a sound.

  ‘Same again, Gordon?’

  ‘Same again, Tom, thank you very much.’ His voice was rich and plummy, not English but what some people would call educated Scots. He had a big chest and thick grey side-whiskers; his silver hair was well combed and oiled. These things seemed to go with the voice: they stood for power, maturity, self-confidence. But when Shandon looked more closely he saw food stains on the white shirt-front, and an unsightly clump of hairs sprouting from his ear.

  ‘All right, my friend?’ said the older man. He leaned heavily on the bar, turning sideways to look directly into Shandon’s face. ‘Doing all right?’ He spoke very loudly, and it was clear he was well on.

  ‘Aye, I’m fine,’ said Shandon.

  ‘Don’t mind that chap that was in earlier. He doesn’t mean any harm. Just a poor unfortunate sort of chap.’

  ‘Aye, it’s no problem,’ said Shandon. The barman had the drinks ready – a gin and tonic and a white wine. The man handed over a fiver. ‘Would you like one yourself, Tom?’

  ‘Thanks, I’ll have a half-pint of lager,’ said Tom. He got the change and poured his own drink. ‘At the theatre again the night, Gordon?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Gordon. He was poised, holding the drinks, about to walk back with them to the woman at the table. ‘Noel Coward, I think. Or was it Terence Rattigan? I can never remember. Mary would know.’

  ‘It was Private Lives,’ the woman in the blue dress called. Her voice was also loud and rich. ‘He knows perfectly well.’

  ‘Good, was it?’ asked the barman.

  ‘Marvellous,’ she said.

  ‘It was rubbish,’ said Gordon. He carried the drinks over and slid in beside her. They said nothing to each other, but started in on the drinks.

  ‘Did you say you wanted something?’ the barman asked Shandon.

  ‘Eh, no, I’m just off.’ But he nursed the last of his beer for another few minutes. He’d no idea people still got dressed up to go to the theatre. Well, nobody did, except these two.

  When the barman was away putting chairs on tables, he walked out.

  It was cold. The sky was clear but he couldn’t see many stars because of the glow of the city. He crossed over the street and was about to head off when something made him stop. It was the realisation that he was going back. He had resolved nothing. He wished the bar was open till two, or three. He’d stay there all night if he could.

  He pulled his coat around him and rested on a wall. It was too cold to be hanging around, but still he waited. After a while he saw the old couple coming out of the bar. They stood for a moment, he looking up at the sky, she adjusting her stole. Then they began to walk, unsteadily, arm in arm along the pavement.

  Shandon didn’t move until the storm-doors of the bar, as if unassisted by human hand, swung shut. He heard the sound of bolts being shot home. The barman would probably leave by a back entrance. He thought about the man Mathieson, who had left twenty minutes earlier. Mathieson could be waiting for him, somewhere out here. Mathieson could be waiting for Shandon and Shandon could be waiting for Tom, the barman. It was an interesting scenario, all of them waiting in the shadows. But what would he be waiting for Tom for? Only after he had thought about it for a while, how it might have come about, only then did he push himself away from the wall and start to move. He had a fair walk ahead of him.

  Facing It

  Then one day he looked down between his legs and he knew it could no longer be avoided. He looked down and saw white and then the bowl filled red and dark and nothing solid in it at all and he knew something was very wrong. Just for a moment as he sat there in privacy, his throat constricted, and he thought he was going to cry. But he held that back at least. Everything else had failed him. He went through another quarter-roll of paper but he knew no amount of paper could staunch the flow now, the lemon-scented air-freshener had failed him and the open window, beyond these the attempt to keep an upright posture, the firm handshake and cutting out the whisky, even in the last few weeks a kind of muttered, embarrassed praying – more a plea really against the pain – everything had failed him, he knew it was all coming apart in there, it was breaking up into pieces and flowing out of him. He would have to go to the doctor but he would go without telling her. He could hear her busying herself in the kitchen as if she knew what was happening, but she didn’t. He didn’t want her to worry or be upset but when it came to the bit that was what would happen.

  And the doctor would say, he could hear him saying, yes, it’s very bad, I’m afraid it’s very bad indeed, so maybe he wouldn’t go there after all, maybe if he just gave himself a final wipe and flushed away all that stuff that was himself, flushed it twice and got himself on his feet and composed, deep breaths in the mirror, he could just call to her, not have to go into the kitchen at all, just call saying, I’m off out for a paper, and once outside turn left towards the park and then with the back held as straight as possible keep going, keep walking, walking, walking, through the park, through the city, through the suburbs, out towards the hills, as far as he could go until he dropped.

  What Love Is

  Something in the light changes, and Dan, who is not long home from his work, realises it has started to snow. He goes from the kitchen to the front room of the flat and stands at the bay window, looking down on the traffic and the orange glow of the streetlights. A small thrill shivers through him as he watches the first flakes pass by. It’s like being a child again. A gust of wind blows the snow upwards, and the falling flakes mix with the rising. Dan looks into the cloud-laden sky over the grey city. He sees it as a great sagging mattress stuffed with tiny feathers. The mattress has burst and there are feathers everywhere. He looks at his watch. It’s half-past five. He thinks about Joan coming back on the bus through the snow, but she won’t leave her work until after seven. He has a couple of hours.

  Amazing what you can see through windows. Once, through this very one, he saw a woman fly. She lived on the other side of the street, on the other side of the constant stream of cars and taxis and buses, in a fourth-floor flat. She cleaned her windows by climbing out on the ledge and holding on to the frame while she wiped and polished. Forty feet above the traffic she stood, on a ledge six inches wide, and Dan could hardly bear to look at her. He closed his eyes because she frightened him, balancing there, and he saw the arc of her body falling backwards and being held like a sheet of paper in the air and then suddenly her gift of flight – this being the only way to save her – and when he opened his eyes again the window was closed and the woman gone.

  Another time, he was washing his breakfast things in the kitchen sink before leaving for work, and across the back-greens he saw a young woman doing the same, directly opposite but one floor down. As his hands moved in the bowl of soapy water he saw her stop and lower her head. She was wearing a white blouse and he saw her fingers, which must, like his, have been wet, go to touch the front of it. Then she reached for a towel, wiped her hands, and swiftly unbuttoning the blouse she slipped it off. She must have spilt something on it, coffee or marmalade or something. She held a corner of the towel under the tap for a moment, and he watched her dab at the blouse with it. He imagined the tops of her breasts curving out of her bra – it was too far for him to really see this – her hair falling forward, her breasts rising and falling as she worked at the stain – even through two lots of glass she seemed very alive to
him. After a minute she held the blouse up to the light, then draped it over one arm and left the room. Tears sprang into Dan’s eyes. He was leaning hard up against the sink unit. He took his wet hand away from himself. Sex. That was what he wanted. He couldn’t, though. He couldn’t go back to bed. He couldn’t wake Joan because she was on the late shift and would want another hour’s sleep. He felt guilty because in any case he didn’t want to have sex with Joan, he wanted it with a woman across the way, in another room in another flat in another life.

  Dan isn’t frightened of other lives. He imagines them all the time. The only life he is frightened of is his own.

  Every morning, whether she is on the early shift or the late one, Joan takes a bus to her work. She works from eight till five or ten till seven, and she does a morning every third Saturday as well. She would drive to work if they owned a car, but they can’t afford one. She learned to drive when she was eighteen, in her father’s car, and she passed her test first time. She needs this skill for her job. She works on the reservations desk of a car-hire firm. Self-drive, to use the jargon. She has to be able to drive the cars from one area of the forecourt to another, and park them in confined spaces. The self-drive desk is only one part of the place, which is a big Ford dealer’s. There is a showroom for new models and a parking lot full of second-hand ones, and there is the self-drive desk. Joan has been there for fifteen years.

  Other lives disturb Joan. The bus is full of them, different ones at different times of the day, and when she finds herself thinking about them she does her best to block them out. She doesn’t want them to encroach. Her life may not be perfect but it is hers and she has it worked out, the routine of it. The routine is what keeps her going; she will not allow it to oppress her.

  ‘How was your day?’ Dan asks her. He is cutting up vegetables for tea. He cooks the tea on the days when she is on the late shift.