by Louise Welsh
She had left her sewing on the carpet near the coal-scuttle. She had been making a petticoat. He picked it up and touched it, feeling where her breasts would sit under the yellow cotton. That morning he had seen her head enveloped in a frock. He saw her, thin in her nakedness, as a bag of skin and henna drifting out of the light. He let the petticoat drop on to the floor again.
Why, he wondered, was there this image of the red and broken dog? It was the first time he had seen the brains of a living creature burst out of the skull. He had been sick at the last yelp and the sudden caving of the dog’s chest. He could have killed and shouted, like a child cracking a blackbeetle between its fingers.
A thousand nights ago, she had lain by his side. In her arms, he thought of the bones of her arms. He lay quietly by her skeleton. But she rose next morning in the corrupted flesh.
When he hurt her, it was to hide his pain. When he struck her cheek until the skin blushed, it was to break the agony of his own head. She told him of her mother’s death. Her mother had worn a mask to hide the illness at her face. He felt the locust of that illness on his own face, in the mouth and the fluttering eyelid.
The room was darkening. He was too tired to shovel the fire into life, and saw the last flame die. A new coldness blew in with the early night. He tasted the sickness of the death of the flame as it rose to the tip of his tongue, and swallowed it down. It ran around the pulse of the heart, and beat until it was the only sound. And all the pain of the damned. The pain of a man with a bottle breaking across his face, the pain of a cow with a calf dancing out of her, the pain of the dog, moved through him from his aching hair to the flogged soles of his feet.
His strength returned. He and the dripping calf, the man with the torn face, and the dog on giddy legs, rose up as one, in one red brain and body, challenging the beast in the air. He heard the challenge in his snapping thumb and finger, as she came in.
He saw that she was wearing her yellow hat and frock.
“Why are you sitting in the dark?” she said.
She went into the kitchen to light the stove. He stood up from his chair. Holding his hands out in front of him as though they were blind, he followed her. She had a box of matches in her hand. As she took out a dead match and rubbed it on the box, he closed the door behind him. “Take off your frock,” he said.
She did not hear him, and smiled.
“Take off your frock,” he said.
She stopped smiling, took out a live match and lit it.
“Take off your frock,” he said.
He stepped towards her, his hands still blind. She bent over the stove. He blew the match out.
“What is it?” she said.
His lips moved, but he did not speak.
“Why?” she said.
He slapped her cheek quite lightly with his open hand.
“Take off your frock,” he said.
He heard her frock rustle over her head, and her frightened sob as he touched her. Methodically his blind hands made her naked.
He walked out of the kitchen, and closed the door.
In the hall, the one married shadow had broken up. He could not see his own face in the mirror as he tied his scarf and stroked the brim of his hat. There were too many faces. Each had a section of his features, and each a stiffened lock of his hair. He pulled up the collar of his coat. It was a wet winter night. As he walked, he counted the lamps. He pushed a door open and stepped into the warmth. The room was empty. The woman behind the bar smiled as she rubbed two coins together. “It’s a cold night,” she said.
He drank up the whisky and went out.
He walked on through the increasing rain. He counted the lamps again, but they reached no number.
The corner bar was empty. He took his drink into the saloon, but the saloon was empty.
The Rising Sun was empty.
Outside, he heard no traffic. He remembered that he had seen nobody in the streets. He cried aloud in a panic of loneliness:
“Where are you, where are you?”
Then there was traffic, and the windows were blazing. He heard singing from the house on the corner.
The bar was crowded. Women were laughing and shouting. They spilt their drinks over their dresses and lifted their dresses up. Girls were dancing on the sawdust. A woman caught him by the arm, and rubbed his face on her sleeve, and took his hand in hers and put it on her throat. He could hear nothing but the voices of the laughing women and the shouting of the girls as they danced. Then the ungainly women from the seats and the corners rocked towards him. He saw that the room was full of women. Slowly, still laughing, they gathered close to him.
He whispered a word under his breath, and felt the old sickness turn sour in his belly. There was blood before his eyes.
Then he, too, burst into laughter. He stuck his hands deep in the pockets of his coat, and laughed into their faces.
His hand clutched around a softness in his pocket. He drew out his hand, the softness in it.
The laughter died. The room was still. Quiet and still, the women stood watching him.
He raised his hand up level with his eyes. It held a piece of soft cloth.
“Who’ll buy a lady’s vest,” he said, “Going, going, ladies, who’ll buy a lady’s vest.”
The meek and ordinary women in the bar stood still, their glasses in their hands, as he leant with his back to the counter and shouted with laughter and waved the bloody cloth in front of them.
A MAN FROM GLASGOW
W. Somerset Maugham
William Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) was born in Paris to English parents. He was orphaned at the age of ten and sent to live with a clergyman uncle and his wife in Kent. He worked briefly as an accounts clerk before qualifying as a doctor. Maugham acted as a secret agent in Russia during the revolution. He is best known for his semi-autobiographical novel, Of Human Bondage.
It is not often that anyone entering a great city for the first time has the luck to witness such an incident as engaged Shelley’s attention when he drove into Naples. A youth ran out of a shop pursued by a man armed with a knife. The man overtook him and with one blow in the neck laid him dead on the road. Shelley had a tender heart. He didn’t look upon it as a bit of local colour; he was seized with horror and indignation. But when he expressed his emotions to a Calabrian priest who was travelling with him, a fellow of gigantic strength and stature, the priest laughed heartily and attempted to quiz him. Shelley says he never felt such an inclination to beat anyone.
I have never seen anything so exciting as that, but the first time I went to Algeciras I had an experience that seemed to me far from ordinary. Algeciras was then an untidy, neglected town. I arrived somewhat late at night and went to an inn on the quay. It was rather shabby, but it had a fine view of Gibraltar, solid and matter–of–fact, across the bay. The moon was full. The office was on the first floor, and a slatternly maid, when I asked for a room, took me upstairs. The landlord was playing cards. He seemed little pleased to see me. He looked me up and down, curtly gave me a number, and then, taking no further notice of me, went on with his game. When the maid had shown me to my room I asked her what I could have to eat.
“What you like,” she answered.
I knew well enough the unreality of the seeming profusion.
“What have you got in the house?”
“You can have eggs and ham.”
The look of the hotel had led me to guess that I should get little else. The maid led me to a narrow room with whitewashed walls and a low ceiling inwhich was a long table laid already for the next day’s luncheon. With his back to the door sat a tall man, huddled over a brasero, the round brass dish of hot ashes which is erroneously supposed to give sufficient warmth for the temperate winter of Andalusia. I sat down at the table and waited for my scanty meal. I gave the stranger an idle glance. He was looking at me, but meeting my eyes he quickly turned away. I waited for my eggs. When at last the maid brought them he looked up again.
�
�I want you to wake me in time for the first boat,” he said.
“Si, señor.”
His accent told me that English was his native tongue, and the breadth of his build, his strongly marked features, led me to suppose him a northerner. The hardy Scot is far more often found in Spain than the Englishman. Whether you go to the rich mines of Rio Tinto, or to the bodegas of Jerez, to Seville or to Cadiz, it is the leisurely speech of beyond the Tweed that you hear. You will meet Scotsmen in the olive groves of Carmona, on the railway between Algeciras and Bobadilla, and even in the remote cork woods of Merida.
I finished eating and went over to the dish of burning ashes. It was midwinter and the windy passage across the bay had chilled my blood. The man pushed his chair away as I drew mine forwards.
“Don’t move,” I said. “There’s heaps of room for two.”
I lit a cigar and offered one to him. In Spain the Havana from Gib is never unwelcome.
“I don’t mind if I do,” he said, stretching out his hand.
I recognised the singing speech of Glasgow. But the stranger was not talkative, and my efforts at conversation broke down before his monosyllables. We smoked in silence. He was even bigger than I had thought, with great broad shoulders and ungainly limbs; his face was sunburned, his hair short and grizzled. His features were hard; mouth, ears and nose were large and heavy and his skin much wrinkled. His blue eyes were pale. He was constantly pulling his ragged, grey moustache. It was a nervous gesture that I found faintly irritating. Presently I felt that he was looking at me, and the intensity of his stare grew so irksome that I glanced up expecting him, as before, to drop his eyes. He did, indeed, for a moment, but then raised them again. He inspected me from under his long, bushy eyebrows.
“Just come from Gib?” he asked suddenly.
“Yes.”
“I’m going tomorrow – on my way home. Thank God.”
He said the last two words so fiercely that I smiled.
“Don’t you like Spain?”
“Oh, Spain’s all right.”
“Have you been here long?”
“Too long. Too long.”
He spoke with a kind of gasp. I was surprised at the emotion my casual inquiry seemed to excite in him. He sprang to his feet and walked backwards and forwards. He stamped to and fro like a caged beast pushing aside a chair that stood in his way, and now and again repeated the words in a groan. “Too long. Too long.” I sat still. I was embarrassed. To give myself countenance I stirred the brasero to bring the hotter ashes to the top, and he stood suddenly still, towering over me, as though my movement had brought back my existence to his notice. Then he sat down heavily in his chair.
“Do you think I’m queer?” he asked.
“Not more than most people,” I smiled.
“You don’t see anything strange in me?”
He leant forward as he spoke so that I might see him well.
“No.”
“You’d say so if you did, wouldn’t you?”
“I would.”
I couldn’t quite understand what all this meant. I wondered if he was drunk. For two or three minutes he didn’t say anything and I had no wish to interrupt the silence.
“What’s your name?” he asked suddenly. I told him.
“Mine’s Robert Morrison.”
“Scotch?”
“Glasgow. I’ve been in this blasted country for years. Got any baccy?”
I gave him my pouch and he filled his pipe. He lit it from a piece of burning charcoal.
“I can’t stay any longer. I’ve stayed too long. Too long.”
He had an impulse to jump up again and walk up and down, but he resisted it, clinging to his chair. I saw on his face the effort he was making. I judged that his restlessness was due to chronic alcoholism. I find drunks very boring, and I made up my mind to take an early opportunity of slipping off to bed.
“I’ve been managing some olive groves,” he went on. “I’m here working for the Glasgow and South of Spain Olive Oil Company Limited.”
“Oh, yes.”
“We’ve got a new process for refining oil, you know. Properly treated, Spanish oil is every bit as good as Lucca. And we can sell it cheaper.”
He spoke in a dry, matter–of–fact, business–like way. He chose his words with Scotch precision. He seemed perfectly sober.
“You know, Ecija is more or less the centre of the olive trade, and we had a Spaniard there to look after the business. But I found he was robbing us right and left, so I had to turn him out. I used to live in Seville; it was more convenient for shipping the oil. However, I found I couldn’t get a trustworthy man to be at Ecija, so last year I went there myself. D’you know it?”
“No.”
“The firm has got a big estate two miles from the town, just outside the village of San Lorenzo, and it’s got a fine house on it. It’s on the crest of a hill, rather pretty to look at, all white, you know, and straggling, with a couple of storks perched on the roof. No one lived there, and I thought it would save the rent of a place in town if I did.”
“It must have been a bit lonely,” I remarked.
“It was.”
Robert Morrison smoked on for a minute or two in silence. I wondered whether there was any point in what he was telling me.
I looked at my watch.
“In a hurry?” he asked sharply.
“Not particularly. It’s getting late.”
“Well, what of it?”
“I suppose you didn’t see many people?” I said, going back.
“Not many. I lived there with an old man and his wife who looked after me, and sometimes I used to go down to the village and play tresillo with Fernandez, the chemist, and one or two men who met at his shop. I used to shoot a bit and ride.”
“It doesn’t sound such a bad life to me.”
I’d been there two years last spring. By God, I’ve never known such heat as we had in May. No one could do a thing. The labourers just lay about in the shade and slept. Sheep died and some of the animals went mad. Even the oxen couldn’t work. They stood around with their backs all humped up and gasped for breath. That blasted sun beat down and the glare was so awful, you felt your eyes would shoot out of your head. The earth cracked and crumbled, and the crops frizzled. The olives went to rack and ruin. It was simply hell. One couldn’t get a wink of sleep. I went from room to room, trying to get a breath of air. Of course I kept the windows shut and had the floors watered, but that didn’t do any good. The nights were just as hot as the days. It was like living in an oven.
“At last I thought I’d have a bed made up for me downstairs on the north side of the house in a room that was never used because in ordinary weather it was damp. I had an idea that I might get a few hours’ sleep there at all events. Anyhow it was worth trying. But it was no damned good; it was a washout. I turned and tossed and my bed was so hot that I couldn’t stand it. I got up and opened the doors that led to the veranda and walked out. It was a glorious night. The moon was so bright that I swear you could read a book by it. Did I tell you the house was on the crest of a hill? I leant against the parapet and looked at the olive–trees. It was like the sea. I suppose that’s what made me think of home. I thought of the cool breeze in the fir–trees and the racket of the streets in Glasgow. Believe it or not, I could smell them, and I could smell the sea. By God, I’d have given every bob I had in the world for an hour of that air. They say it’s a foul climate in Glasgow. Don’t you believe it. I like the rain and the grey sky and that yellow sea and the waves. I forgot that I was in Spain, in the middle of the olive country, and I opened my mouth and took a long breath as though I were breathing in the sea-fog.
“And then all of a sudden I heard a sound. It was a man’s voice. Not loud, you know, low. It seemed to creep through the silence like – well, I don’t know what it was like. It surprised me. I couldn’t think who could be down there in the olives at that hour. It was past midnight. It was a chap laughing. A funny sort of l
augh. I suppose you’d call it a chuckle. It seemed to crawl up the hill – disjointedly.”
Morrison looked at me to see how I took the odd word he used to express a sensation that he didn’t know how to describe.
I mean, it seemed to shoot up in little jerks, something like shooting stones out of a pail. I leant forward and stared. With the full moon it was almost as light as day, but I’m dashed if I could see a thing. The sound stopped, but I kept on looking at where it had come from in case somebody moved. And in a minute it started off again, but louder. You couldn’t have called it a chuckle any more, it was a real belly laugh. It just rang through the night. I wondered it didn’t wake my servants. It sounded like someone who was roaring drunk.
“Who’s there?” I shouted.
The only answer I got was a roar of laughter. I don’t mind telling you I was getting a bit annoyed. I had half a mind to go down and see what it was all about. I wasn’t going to let some drunken swine kick up a row like that on my place in the middle of the night. And then suddenly there was a yell. By God, I was startled. Then cries. The man had laughed with a deep bass voice, but his cries were – shrill, like a pig having his throat cut.
“My God,” I cried.
I jumped over the parapet and ran down towards the sound. I thought somebody was being killed. There was silence and then one piercing shriek. After that sobbing and moaning. I’ll tell you what it sounded like, it sounded like someone at the point of death. There was a long groan and then nothing. Silence. I ran from place to place. I couldn’t find anyone. At last I climbed the hill again and went back to my room.
You can imagine how much sleep I got that night. As soon as it was light, I looked out of the window in the direction from which the row had come and I was surprised to see a little white house in a sort of dale among the olives. The ground on that side didn’t belong to us and I’d never been through it. I hardly ever went to that part of the house and so I’d never seen the house before. I asked José who lived there. He told me that a madman had inhabited it, with his brother and a servant.
“Oh, was that the explanation?” I said. “Not a very nice neighbour.”