1982 Janine

by Alasdair Gray

  260 MIXING AND JOINING

  All sorts of mixing and joining occurred in the club but that night I felt most of it was happening in my head. There seemed nothing in the universe I did not understand because my mother’s cryptic silences, my father and Old Red’s conversations, Hislop’s poetry, the lectures at the Technical College, Alan’s middenraking, the arguments of Alan’s friends, even Denny’s wish to understand geography, amounted to a complete and satisfying explanation of the whole. I was eager to pass this understanding on to my friends. I was sure it would do them great good. My idea was simple and single but even the women kept laughing at the words I used, and they, I felt, had more to gain from them than anyone else. “If universe cone or globe,” I told Heldianjud, “which same thing really then dictor-ship, hiarchy because of topbottom, insideout, but no! Allcontinuum! Democracy!”

  “Jock,” shouted the English director, “you are becoming a bore.”

  “Must make clear then,” I said, bathing in and clutching Judianhels hair which kept flowing away from me. “Shoot up far fast enough head crashes into own bum, fall fast enough down bum crashes on own head so why travel, no centre except where we are no matter who we are therefore need for infinite respect, infinite love or all makes no sense ken? Bodies X sympathy + a lot of space = democracy, I love ye, ken? Because we can all do what we like.”

  I noticed that the English director was standing up and bawling in the voice of an English sergeant-major.

  “JOCK! SLAVE OF THE LAMP! LISTEN TO ME YOU ORRIBLE LITTLE MAN! I COMMAND YOU TO TRANSPORT THIS CELLAR WITH ALL ITS REVELLERS, AND SUPERSTRUCTURE, AND ROCK, AND CATHEDRAL, AND CRUDE OLD CASTLE, TO THE GARDEN OF THE EMPEROR OF THE DEMOCRATIC CHINESE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC! SET US SAFELY DOWN THERE BEFORE DAWN BREAKS, GENIUS OF THE LAMP, LEAVING NOTHING BEHIND BUT THE SMALL HAIRY MOLE ON THE INNER SURFACE OF JUDY’S LEFT THIGH.”

  261 FOR GETTING AND WAKING

  He was taller than me so I stood on my chair and said, “This cannot be done because I have left my screwdriver upstairs, but anyone who keeps hold of their screwdriver can do anything, moreover”

  At this point the chord of recollection snaps and I remember nothing more

  NINTH NIGHT

  before waking in bed with a feeling I became familiar with in later years. All my muscles ached but it was a refreshing ache, like the ache of having been born or of having done good exercise, yet my brain was uneasy. It suspected that I did not deserve to be born. My mattress was on a plank platform, scrubbed very clean, which bridged the well of the stair from the room below. I was wearing pyjamas and my clothes lay folded beside me as neatly as usual, though the socks were under the pile instead of on top. Beside the clothes was another small sign of derangement, my watch, which had stopped at half-past-eleven. I had failed to wind it up. Through a small high-up window I saw that the sky was the colour of late afternoon. The evidence was that, however intoxicated, I had left the company and gone to bed in decent order.

  I got up, put on dressing-gown and slippers, took my toilet things and went to the least visited lavatory on the premises by the most roundabout route. Having carefully washed and shaved without being seen by anyone I returned to the closet and put on clean socks, underwear and shirt along with a jacket, waistcoat and trousers unworn since the last pressing. I knotted on a necktie, polished my shoes, then went downstairs with what I hoped was my usual air of alert self-possession. Though less than half full the restaurant was doing brisk business. I went behind the counter and poured myself a bowl of cereal and a mug of coffee. I carried them to our table where nobody paid me any attention.

  262 NEWSPAPER

  They were discussing a newspaper article. Everyone seemed depressed or angry. Helen looked white and ill. She said, “Oh how could he write that? How could he write that?”

  I asked what was wrong and they passed me the paper.

  Under the headline WOULD YOU LET YOUR DAUGHTER? MINISTER DENOUNCES COWLAY COMMUNE IN THE FESTIVAL FRINGE was a photograph of the room which the helpers and performers used as a dormitory. It had been taken in poor light with an exposure that made it look shabby, dark and dirty. The story beneath began with the words, “How would you feel if you learned that your daughter was sleeping for nights on end in this huge barn-like chamber with thirty or forty men, most of them total strangers to her? Long-haired, bearded strangers with so-called advanced opinions about sexual morality and how society should be organised?”

  This was written by a journalist who had recently spent a lot of time in our company. He was a cheerful, friendly soul and his paper had printed one of the first articles which had said that the club was an exciting, glamorous place. This was no longer news, so having learned of our sleeping arrangements (which nobody had thought to hide) he discussed them with a popular and easily shocked Church of Scotland clergyman who liked having his words broadcast through the press. The clergyman said, “This sort of example is leading thousands of young people down the slippery slope to perdition. I know my views are old-fashioned, but that cannot be helped. I got them from Jesus.” The journalist had then referred the matter to a more liberal clergyman who said that Christ taught that forgiveness of sin was a higher virtue than strict sexual continence. Having thus obtained a balanced religious view of the matter, the journalist had discovered the home addresses of the girls who used the dormitory and had phoned their parents to ask what they thought. Under the subheading A TERRIBLE SHOCK, Helen’s mother was quoted as saying, “This comes as a terrible shock to us. Her father and I knew nothing about it. Perhaps Helen has been a little bit unwise, but I’m sure my daughter is doing nothing very wrong, really.”

  263 NEWSPAPER

  Under these words was printed the bottom part of the big photograph which had greatly upset Helen two days earlier. The caption said, “Nineteen-year-old Helen Hume as she appears with Rory McBride in the Cowlay Communists’ political pantomime.”

  I reread the article carefully. It was cleverly written. It described a place in which fornication was conceivable, then quoted the words of one who, without knowing the place or people, assumed that multiple fornication was actual, then the words of someone who thought fornications were forgiveable, then the words of some anxious people who had also never seen the premises but were almost – but not wholly – convinced that their child was not fornicating. Yet not one libellous word stated that anyone was fornicating. Of course there must have been some lovemaking in the upper chamber, because a lot of mixing and joining happened in that club, but I am sure there would have been more if we had been using the North British Hotel. Communal sex is even less probable among the Scots than the private kind, which is why I had shifted my mattress into a closet.

  After a long silence Helen said again, “How could he write that? I gave him my age and my address because I thought he would write nice things about us. I told him my parents had been upset by that photograph, and he said he would do his best to redress the balance. How could he write these things?”

  “He makes his living by it,” said the English director.

  “That is the excuse German businessmen gave for manufacturing Zyklon Β gas,” said the Scottish director.

  “Exactly,” said the English director. “Exactly. Exactly. But this stuff isn’t lethal gas, it’s nothing but a cloud of foul language and in our business we learn to shrug that off. Three-quarters of what appears in the press is just a silly game. The pressmen know it’s a game, they laugh at it themselves. So should the readers.”

  Helen said, “My parents have no sense of humour, I’m afraid, and neither have I. I don’t think I can go on tonight. Cowlay Communist! My dad will murder me.”

  Her voice suddenly sounded like Denny’s. She wept. Our director laid an arm round her shoulders. She shrugged it off but allowed Diana to dry her tears with a handkerchief. Judy said in a matter-of-fact voice, “You must go on tonight. Because of Binkie, you know.”

  264 CRYING FOR DENNY

  “Dam
n Binkie.”

  Judy turned to me and spoke as if opening a more cheerful topic.

  “Did you sleep well, Jock?”

  “Yes thanks.”

  “Who undressed you, by the way?” I stared at her.

  “Do you remember who put you into your pyjamas?”

  I had to shake my head.

  “Surely you remember the anal entry?”

  “You’re joking.”

  “The flagellation.”

  “Certainly not.”

  “The fellatio.”

  “What is fellatio?”

  “Sisters!” Judy said to Diana and Helen in a tragic voice,

  “Our charms were wasted on this man. He doesn’t remember a single thing.”

  I was confused. I said, “Do you mean that you er – ?”

  She said, “Yes we put you to bed. You were amazingly articulate for a bit then you suddenly collapsed and went infantile. Men don’t know how to handle a baby so we had to do it. By the way, who exactly is Denny?”

  I stared at her again. She said, “You kept calling for Denny in the most heartrending tones while clutching as much of us as you could get your hands upon. Then you said angrily, ‘I don’t love you! You aren’t Denny’, and wept passionate tears.”

  Diana said, “I don’t remember that. I remember him saying he was cold all the time. Even when we were tucking him in he kept whining about how cold he was, then he stopped and said in a perfectly sober voice, ‘I am going to marry Denny.’ Then you passed out, Jock.”

  This was disturbing news. Helen said, “You behaved disgustingly, Jock. We all behaved disgustingly. Especially him.”

  She nodded grimly at the English director who frowned then said, “Careful, Helen. You’ll end up believing that hypocritical reporter was telling the truth about this place.”

  265 ACTING BADLY

  “I think he was,” said Helen, and started sobbing again. Judy and the English director stood up. He said in a tired voice, “Who wants a hair of the dog?”

  I went with them to the Deacon Brodie tavern where we met Brendan or perhaps it was Dominic Behan and I had several hairs of the dog that had bitten me so badly.

  Helen did not withdraw from the show that night. Her performance at the start of it was shaky and nervous but by the interval she had picked up confidence and we felt everything was going to be all right. Shortly after the interval a bad thing happened. In order to keep a travelling but vertical spotlight on Helen I was moving stealthily along the gantry over her head when my foot slipped, the light crashed and burst against a girder, for a second or two I was dangling by my hands. The audience gasped then laughed and applauded as I swung myself up, screwed in a new bulb and continued as if I was perfectly resigned to accidents like these. But the laughter and applause were the wrong kind. Helen started speaking faster and faster, clearly wanting the play to end as soon as possible. She hardly let the other actors finish their lines before gabbling her own. Her vowels changed from posh English ows and aws to very flat ehs of a sort then common in the Glasgow Kelvinside district. Before the end of the play she stopped acting altogether and became nothing but a brave Scotswoman performing a distasteful duty. The audience no longer laughed. Only Rory’ s final speech gave it an opportunity to applaud.

  Helen did not come forward to bow at the end. I remained up the scaffolding with my back to the audience even after I had put the house lights on, even after the public had filtered out. I hated myself. I did not want to be seen or heard by anyone, especially not by those in the company. I had ruined the show and did not know how to apologise. I fiddled with a junction box while Roddy, Rory and the director cleared up below in almost total silence. At one point one of them said, “I take it Diana is looking after Helen?”

  266 THE BAD DREAM

  “Yes.”

  A bit later someone muttered, “I doubt if Binkie found that very impressive.”

  “To hell with Binkie!” said our director too loudly and too cheerfully. “We don’t need him. Before he turned up last night I thought he had died centuries ago. We can’t expect to do equally well every night of the week, and we’ve been performing steadily for nine nights running – even a professional company would find that hard to sustain. Stop brooding up there, Jock. Come downstairs for a drink.”

  I said, “No drink for me tonight thankyou and I am not brooding. I’m checking connections. Some wires were wrenched.”

  “See to it tomorrow. Come for a coffee.”

  “No thanks. When I’ve finished working here I’m going straight to my bed.”

  When everyone had gone I went quickly to my closet, opened the fire-exit into Deacon Brodie’s close, made a quick visit to the tavern and returned from it with a quarter-bottle of whisky. I got into bed, switched the light off, downed the whisky fast. I was an alcoholic novice in those days because that small quantity made me unconscious almost at once. I had several whirling and uncomfortable dreams. In one of them I was crossing a wet street which I suddenly noticed was covered by thousands of worms, so many that I had to stand perfectly still to avoid crushing them. They were the usual thickness but their length varied enormously. One, which was travelling very fast, was twenty or thirty feet long. I heard a stumbling noise and when I opened my eyes the wormy street vanished and I saw darkness. Someone was gasping for breath beside me. A hand, I think, brushed my leg. I switched on the light and saw Helen glaring at me wildly. I was so sure she had come to attack me for ruining her performance in the play that I raised my hands to protect my face. I took several seconds to notice she was not heaping insults on me. Her voice was loud and accusing as she said, “Jock, you keep looking at me all the time, you don’t think I’m completely ugly and stupid and untalented and dreary do you? Do you? Do you?”

  I said, “Er no, not at all. No.”

  267 I TURN WHORE

  She said, “Then show it”, and sat on the edge of my mattress. She was acting as if she was drunk but it was a poor performance. I could see that she was perfectly sober. I realised what she wanted me to do and felt terribly depressed. I started explaining that I was not good at sex, that I needed to sleep a long time with a woman before I could make love, but she interrupted me by saying, “All right, you’re throwing me out, but can I wait here for just five or ten minutes please? I know I’m imposing on you but will five minutes take too much of your time?”

  I said, “Please stay here as long as you like.”

  She turned and embraced me, pushing her tongue deep into my mouth, and I was astonished to notice I had an erection. She withdrew a little and said, “Well?”

  I gazed at her openmouthed. I nodded a couple of times. She quickly took off her blouse, jeans etcetera, got in beside me and lay perfectly flat. She said, “Right. Go ahead.”

  I cried out wildly, “This is impossible!”

  She said, “Are you impotent or something?”

  That angered me and I knew how to turn anger into lust. I mounted her and after some stiff shoving I got inside. Everything was over in two minutes. I rolled off her and lay feeling as destroyed under the waist as a bee which has lost both sting and abdomen. I put an arm round her, hoping for some warmth and gentleness, but she sat up and said, “I need a cigarette.”

  She sat crosslegged on the bed, draped her blouse round her shoulders, took a packet from her jeans pocket. The under-blanket had slid partly aside exposing the shiny cold green plastic of the mattress. She said, “Cowlay Communist.”

  Her face looked stone hard and completely miserable. I wanted to tell her how wrong all this was but she obviously knew. She said, “Now, of course, you’ll go about telling people I’m a whore.”

  “Certainly not.”

  “Then you’ll go about thinking it.”

  “I certainly will not.”

  Whores give quick sexual relief to those who don’t want affection or cannot obtain it, so I had been the whore. I started telling her this but she said, “Damn. I’ve left my lighter d
ownstairs and damn, I need a smoke. Really need it.”

  268 DIANA’S DIRECTORS

  She glared at me. I said drearily, “Where did you leave your directors lighter?”

  “On the table, in my handbag. You know what my handbag looks like?”

  I realised that some man, probably Brian, had made her feel a helpless outcast so she was consoling herself by using me as a servant. I got out of bed feeling glad she did not love me. I would only need to console her for a short period of time. I sighed and said, “I suppose I had better get properly dressed.”

  She said, “Don’t be so stupidly Victorian. It doesn’t matter what people do or think in this hellhole.”

  So in my pyjamas, slippers and dressing-gown I went looking for her lighter.

  The hour was some time between two and five in the morning. As I crossed bare floors and descended stone steps I heard a harsh repetitive roaring which grew louder and louder. At the end of the great cellar Albert Finney and a friend, or else Tom Courtenay and a friend, were slowly riding a motorbike round and round in a circle. The only other people were the Scottish director, Diana and the English director. They were sitting together in a row but seemed to have big spaces between them. The Scottish director looked furtive, Diana looked lost but strangely smug, the English director looked stunned. I walked across to them and shouted over the racket, “I’m ashamed of myself. I ruined the show tonight. I am very sorry.”