1982 Janine

by Alasdair Gray

  I wanted to tell him that first thing tomorrow I would get back all the scaffolding, renting it myself if need be, but that would have been a phoney suggestion. Stage and auditorium had taken four days to erect. It just might be put up in one day if everybody co-operated, but who would have the energy to act after that? Certainly Helen would not. I said firmly to nobody in particular, “I have acted hastily and foolishly.”

  “Yes,” said Brian, “yes I think so too. But thanks for the help you’ve given us. I hope the pay was sufficient. You’ve done rather better out of the show, financially speaking, than the artists, but that’s usual, isn’t it, for technicians? I’m sorry you ended by dropping us in the shit –”

  “He’s a mediocrity, that’s his problem!” shouted the writer.

  “Not always,” said Brian, “not to start with. But he’s probably tired by now. So am I. So are we all. Come to think of it, I dropped us in the shit too, by losing my temper in a police station. Most unwise. Let’s go back to Glasgow.”

  “This is stupid!” shouted the writer. “You don’t need a lot of poles and planks to put on a play, you don’t need him –” he pointed at me in a way which demonstrated why pointing is a technical assault –“He ruined our last performance by his stupid tricks with a handheld spotlight. All a good play needs is a room, an audience, your talent and my words. We have these. The talent and the words are inside your heads. Draw a space for the action with chalk lines in the middle of the floor. Place mattresses round for the audience to lie, kneel or sit on. Get them settled and act! Act! This is an opportunity for my play to be performed as it should be performed, without a lot of contraptions and paraphernalia and stupid bastarding glamorous magic machinery.”

  278 A WEE HARD MAN

  “A very daring concept,” said Brian, “but I doubt if the public is ready for it. I know I’m not.”

  That evening Brian and the writer and I went back to Glasgow by train. Roddy and Rory had decided to stay at the club till the festival ended. I had given them vanhire money to return the remaining equipment to Glasgow whenever they liked. I now felt that, financially at least, I was now no luckier than the rest of the company, excepting Brian. Brian had legal expenses and perhaps a fine to pay, but he recognised that the fault was his own. Diana also remained in Edinburgh, I suppose to see the English director again. She accompanied us to Waverley station and at the barrier kissed Brian, and even the writer, with very great warmth, but she wholly ignored me. I was sorry, because before today I had felt that Diana was my best friend in that company.

  On the train the only person who said much was the writer, who would sometimes stare out of the window and make a cryptic remark for no apparent reason, though it was always aimed at me.

  “Wee hard men!” he muttered as the train pulled out of Falkirk. “The curse of Scotland is these wee hard men. I used to blame the English for our mediocrity. I thought they had colonised us by sheer cunning. They aren’t very cunning. They’ve got more confidence and money than we have, so they can afford to lean back and smile while our own wee hard men hammer Scotland down to the same dull level as themselves.”

  Brian said wearily, “Leave Jock alone will you? He was one of us before the journalists and the police put their boots in.”

  I said, “Thanks Brian.”

  His defence disturbed me though the writer’s remark had not. Criticism always fails when it tries to upset someone by linking them to a national group.

  I said goodbye to Brian (not the writer) at Queen Street station, and did not see him again for ten or fifteen years or could it be twenty (yes it could be twenty) years. I decided to be extravagant and take a taxi, yes a whole taxi for myself, though there would have been plenty of room for my two big suitcases on a tramcar. O, I yearned for Denny. I was glad now that the Edinburgh business had ended so soon and we could be together again. I felt in my bones how delighted she would be to see me three days sooner than expected. In spite of my burdens I raced upstairs, opened the flat’s front door, dropped the cases and twisted the handle of my room shouting, “I’M BACK DENNY!”

  279 RETURN TO DENNY

  The door stayed shut. I knew it was not locked, because only an inner bolt ensured privacy when someone inside wanted that. I was perplexed by the door’s resistance. I seemed to hear movement yet nobody opened it for me. I panicked without knowing why. I certainly did not imagine what I eventually discovered, I probably imagined Denny on the floor in some sort of fit. I stood back, then ran and struck my right heel against the spot with the bolt behind. The door sprung in. I entered and saw my landlord standing on the hearthrug.

  His appearance puzzled me for he had very large testicles and no apparent penis. This was an optical misreading. His penis was not evident because it was erect and pointing at me, not because I had aroused it. Someone nude and female crouched on the rug behind him. He looked foolish because he wore neatly polished shoes and anklesocks with a pinstriped shirt, collar and waistcoat. The woman behind him, Denny of course, was not completely nude either. She wore a skirt I recognised with unfamiliar net stockings and high-heeled shoes. I think I said in a vague way, “Aye of course. This is it. Yes indeed.”

  Denny started making the same intolerable whining sound she had made when I last saw her. What should I have said?

  I should have politely allowed the landlord to leave us alone, because he was eager to do that. I should then have made us both a cup of tea, and sat beside her, and talked kindly and reasonably. “Denny,” I should have said, “I hope you do not love that man, because he is not able to love you like I do. He needs sex but he does not need you, and it is you who I need – and sex too of course. So from now on we had better stick together. This should be easy because I don’t think you love that man, I think you were just doing a bit of whoring because you felt lonely. You probably are a wee hoor, sometimes. So am I. I’ve been whoring too, but it isn’t as much fun as the publicity suggests, so I’ll stick with you if you don’t walk out on me.

  280 WHAT I DID NOT SAY

  “But there must be changes, Denny!” (I should have said). “You’ve got to stop hiding from the world in this wee room of ours. We must visit people. Take me to see your relations – they can’t be all as nasty as you say – and you can come and meet my father and mother. Social shocks will be experienced by one and all, because like nearly everyone in these fucking islands you and I and our nearest and dearest are snobs, Denny. But true decency and intellience are not destroyed by social shocks, Denny, they are exercised and strengthened by them. And you must come and meet Alan and his friends, who are not snobs because they are interested in learning about the world, and real learners find snobbery a waste of time.

  “Moreover, Denny” (I should have said), “let me teach you to cook a decent meal. If you learn to do that I will clean up afterwards because I like a tidy room. Careful cooking takes time but it’s fun when you do it properly, and if you get it wrong I will only spank you if you ask nicely for it. And now can we go to bed please? I have been very lonely without you.”

  I said none of that. It did not occur to me. My head had a dull humming inside which made speaking and thinking difficult. I looked absentmindedly round the room at my most essential possessions: books, drawing instruments, an alarm clock. They were not much. My clothes and toilet things were packed in the two cases outside. There was also a radio and dishes and cooking utensils, but Denny was welcome to those. My third suitcase, an empty one, lay on top of a wardrobe. I took it down and put the books, instruments and clock inside. I doubt if Denny saw what I was doing. Her hands covered her face, she rocked her body to and fro making this continual irritating keening sound, yes it was her keening which made clear thought impossible, made it absolutely necessary for me to get away. Our landlord hopped about on one foot and then the other, pulling on first his underpants and then his trousers and gabbling this sort of thing: “looks bad but not what you think not serious at all she doesn’t care for me really
you don’t know how lucky you are crumbs from a rich man’s table yes crumbs from a rich man’s table I’ve been picking up I mean you didn’t even write to her not one postcard till today what do you think you’re doing? What do you want that for? That’s mine.”

  281 HOW I BROKE WITH HER

  My problem was to carry three suitcases with two hands. I saw a striped necktie on the bed. I picked it up and tugged it to test its strength. The landlord thought I meant to strangle him because he retreated behind Denny who uncovered her face and went quiet. That was a relief. I knotted the tie in a loop round the handle of the suitcase and slung it from my shoulder. I said, “Don’t worry, Denny. You still have a man to look after you.”

  She screamed like a steam whistle. I bolted. I charged across the lobby, flung the front door open, swung the two other cases and myself on to the landing and slammed the door behind me. I leapt downstairs with the third suitcase banging against my hip. The screaming did not seem to diminish with distance. It was a sequence of screams, each short and identical, each divided from the next by the same short space of frantic breath. The screams sounded louder when I got into the street. A couple stopped and stared openmouthed from the opposite pavement. As I ran towards the underground I realised that each scream was a word, my name, repeated again and again. ‘She must faint if she keeps that up,’ I thought, ‘Oh God let her faint now please.’

  But she had not fainted when I turned the corner and for a time I heard a distant Jeek! Jeek! Jeek! behind the footsteps and clanging trams on Byres Road.

  Goodbye Denny. I never learned what became of you. When the Technical College reopened I did not revisit the refectory in case you were there, for I was about to become a married man. When friends told me you were not there I still did not go to the refectory in case the women you had worked beside gave me painful news of you, or worse still, asked me what you were doing. A lot later I met someone who lived in our lodgings a year after I left. He had never heard of you but he told me something surprising about the landlord. He became a skydiver. In the sixties he joined a club whose members leapt from aeroplanes and fell great distances before opening their parachutes. He died in the highlands when his parachute did not open in time, a strange death for such a neat, orderly, legal young man. My informant was an officer in the Royal Air Force and a very posh type indeed – or he pretended to be. He said, “It wasn’t his class of sport, you see. His social background was, well, not quite top drawer. His father was a chartered accountant of lowly origins so the son joined the club to prove he could be one of us. It was a very very sad business. That type always makes a mess of things.”

  282 NO SYMPATHY

  So the landlord was the second man I knew who died by falling from a height, and I will never discover what you did when you stopped crying my name, Denny.

  I arrived on Alan’s doorstep and asked if I could stay with him until I found another room. He said, “Of course, come in”, but when I told him what had happened he nodded thoughtfully and placed an ancient typewriter on the kitchen table. He started reducing it to its components so methodically that I began to feel I did not exist for him. I said, “You are not very sympathetic.”

  He said, “I thought you and Denny loved each other. You looked as if you did.”

  I said, “I thought so too, till an hour ago.”

  He said nothing. I said, “What would you do if you found Carole in bed with … with me, for instance?”

  He said, “I’m not sure. I would probably thump her and kick you out. But I doubt if I would cut communications with either of you. I have no real pride you see.”

  I said, “I have no taste for physical violence.”

  He shrugged. I felt exhausted. The sun had not yet left the sky but too much had happened since I had wakened that morning in Edinburgh. I unpacked and spread my sleeping-things on a sofa, got between them and slept.

  283 A DULL TIME

  I dreamed I was a redhot demon raping Denny among the flames of Hell. She screamed and beat my face with her fists, and I awoke and found I was beating my face with my fists. I lay till dawn in a state of petrified longing for her, yet it never occurred to me to return to her. The thought of her half-nude and doing enjoyable things with that half-nude lawyer made me groan aloud. I was rotten with rotten pride. When I got up next morning I was still exhausted but determined to find a place of my own. Instead of seeking a new place I returned to the flat kept by the respectable lady on Paisley Road West. I asked if she had a room to let. She asked why I needed one, and why I had left her premises ten months earlier. In a low, monotonous voice I said that I had gone to live with friends who were not as I had thought. I had the previous evening discovered them engaged in an activity which, though not criminal, was of a sort I would not insult her ears by describing. While saying this I almost believed I was an innocent country lad appalled by the corruption of the big city. The respectable lady softened at once. She said that since I had at last learned the value of a respectable home she would not bar me from one: she had a spare room, and it would be mine.

  A dull time began. I still visited Alan’s house but was no longer at ease there. Alan certainly had great natural talents but why did he surround himself with charlatans and eccentrics and bores? I think now that I was disappointed with myself and therefore disliked folk who were still hopeful. My disappointment was partly sexual. Once again I had no woman acquaintances and did not know how to make any. So when Alan said, “A friend was looking for you the other day”, and handed me a note from Helen, I felt a spurt of hope. The note gave me her phone number and suggested we meet for a chat. I phoned at once and thought she answered. I said, “Hullo Helen. Jock here.”

  The voice said, “Exactly who is speaking?”

  “Jock McLeish. Could I speak to Helen Hume please?”

  “Just wait there please.”

  284 HELEN’S NEWS

  I realised I had been talking to her mother. Then Helen spoke and suggested that she come to my lodgings. I said, “That would be awkward. My landlady doesn’t approve of female visitors. Let’s meet in a pub.”

  “No thankyou Jock, I saw enough of you in pubs during the festival. Let’s meet in a tearoom. Where do you live, by the way?”

  I told her my address and she suggested we meet in Miss Rombach’s at the foot of Hope Street. Her tone was businesslike. I asked if she had heard from the other members of the company. She said she would tell me what she knew when she met me and hung up. I felt chilled. She had not used the tone of a friendly girl talking to a former lover.

  The sight of her at the tearoom table also chilled me. She was well dressed, elegant and handsome as ever but in a “please don’t touch me” way I had not noticed before. While the waitress was bringing tea she said almost nothing at all. I said, “Have you heard from Diana recently?”

  “Yes. She’s in London. She’s pregnant.”

  “O.”

  “So am I.”

  “O?”

  “And I don’t know what to do.”

  I thought about it. The only possibilities were abortion, marriage or adoption. I feel, “It must be very difficult for you. How does the er, father feel?”

  “The father?”

  “Brian.”

  “You are the father.”

  “But Brian and you were … Surely it was Brian and you who were …?”

  “Yesyes Brian and I were lovers, but not lovers in any way you would understand. If you must know the truth, I was a virgin before you did what you did.”

  I felt inclined to laugh. Helen not only sounded as if she was acting, she sounded like a poor actress in a very poor play. I was sure she was telling the truth because nobody lies about such important things, but when she said, “So what can I do?” I wanted to tilt my chair on to its two back legs, hook my thumbs into the armholes of my waistcoat and say with an American accent, “Any damn thing you like, honey. Any damn thing you like.”

  285 HELEN’S DAD

>   But she stretched a hand to me across the tablecloth, I saw tears in her eyes, I took her hand in mine and thought hard. Abortion was illegal and dangerous. Marriage, no no no. She did not love me, I did not love her. I said, “The child should be adopted. I hear there are waiting lists of childless people who want to adopt unborn children.”

  “Yes I’ve heard that too. But who will pay for it? You see the neighbours and my relations must never find out. Father and mother are absolutely firm about that. They will die, they will kill me if anyone else finds out. So I must go away to a hotel in the south of England before I become noticeable, and then go into a nursinghome, and that will cost a lot of money.”

  “Your parents have decided this?”

  “Yes but dad, I mean my father, has had a very difficult life. He’s always been careful with money so he doesn’t see why he should pay for anything. And if you look at the business from his viewpoint, why should he?”

  She was staring straight at me. Without moving her head she slid the pupils of her eyes sideways for a moment, and without moving my head I realised that three men at a nearby table were watching us. Could the oldest of them be her father? I stared a question. She nodded slightly and whispered, “Yes, I’m sorry Jock. I’m sorry.”