Unlikely Stories Mostly

by Alasdair Gray

  “Are you sure of what you’re saying?”

  “Take me away, Gordon.”

  “What about Clare?”

  Nan laughed vindictively. “Clare isn’t the one to pity.”

  “Yes, but that dog!”

  Nan cried out, “Do you want me or not?”

  As they went through the dark hall, the kitchen door opened, Nan’s mother looked out, then shut it quickly. In the front garden they met Kenneth and Gibson, both shamefaced and subdued. Kenneth said, “Hullo. We were just coming to look for you.” Gordon said, “Nan’s coming home with me.”

  Kenneth said, “Oh, good.”

  They stood for a moment in silence, none of the men looking at each other, then Gibson said, “I suppose I’d better wait for Clare.” The absence of teeth made him sound senile. Nan cried out, “She won’t want you now! She won’t want you now!” and started weeping again.

  “I’ll wait all the same,” Gibson muttered. He turned his back on them. “How long do you think she’ll be?” he asked. Nobody answered.

  The drive back into the city was quiet. Gordon sat with Nan in the back seat, his arm around her waist, her mourning face against his shoulder. He felt strangely careless and happy. Once Kenneth said, “An odd sort of evening.” He seemed half willing to discuss it but nobody encouraged him. He put off Gordon and Nan at the close-mouth of the tenement where Gordon lived. They went upstairs to the top landing, Gordon unlocked a door and they crossed a small lobby into a very untidy room. Gordon said, “I’ll sleep on the sofa here. The bedroom’s through that door.”

  Nan sat on the sofa, smiled sadly and said, “So I’m not to sleep with you.”

  “Not yet. I want you too much to take advantage of a passing mood.”

  “You think this is a passing mood.”

  “It might be. If it’s not I’ll see about getting a marriage licence. Are you over eighteen?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s good. Er … do you mind me wanting to marry you, Nan?”

  Nan got up, embraced him and put her tear-dirty cheek against his. She laughed and said, “You’re very conventional.”

  “There’s no substitute for legality,” said Gordon, rubbing his brow against hers.

  “There’s no substitute for impulse,” Nan whispered. “We’ll try and combine the two,” said Gordon. The pressure of her body started to excite him, so he stood apart from her and started making a bed on the sofa.

  “If you’re willing, tomorrow I’ll get a licence.” He had just settled comfortably on the sofa when Nan came to the bedroom door and said, “Gordon, promise you won’t ask me about him.”

  “About who?”

  “You can’t have forgotten him.”

  “The dog? Yes, I had forgotten the dog. All right, I won’t ask … You’re sure nothing serious has happened to Clare?”

  “Ask her when you see her next!” Nan cried, and slammed the bedroom door.

  Next day Gordon bought a marriage licence and an engagement ring and arranged the wedding for a fortnight later. The next two weeks were among the happiest in his life. During the day he worked as an engineering draughtsman. When he came home from work Nan had a good meal ready for him and the apartment clean and tidy. After the meal they would go walking or visit a film show or friends, and later on they would make rather clumsy love, for Gordon was inexperienced and got his most genuine pleasure by keeping the love-making inside definite limits. He wasn’t worried much by memories of the white dog. He prided himself on being thoroughly rational, and thought it irrational to feel curious about mysteries. He always refused to discuss things like dreams, ghosts, flying-saucers and religion. “It doesn’t matter if these things are true or not,” he said. “They are irrelevant to the rules that we have to live by. Mysteries only happen when people try to understand something irrelevant.” Somebody once pointed out to him that the creation of life was a mystery. “I know,” he said, “and it’s irrelevant. Why should I worry about how life occurred? If I know how it is just now I know enough.” This attitude allowed him to dismiss his memories of the white dog as irrelevant, especially when he learned that Clare seemed to have come to no harm. She had broken with Gibson and now went about a lot with Kenneth.

  One day Nan said, “Isn’t tomorrow the day before the wedding?”

  “Yes What about it?”

  “A man and woman aren’t supposed to see each other the night before their wedding.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “And I thought you were conventional.”

  “I know what’s legal. I don’t much care about conventions.”

  “Well, women care more about conventions than they do about laws.”

  “Does that mean you want me to spend tomorrow night in a hotel?”

  “It’s the proper thing, Gordon.”

  “You weren’t so proper on the night I brought you here.”

  Nan said quietly, “It’s not fair to remind me of that night.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Gordon. “No, it’s not fair. I’ll go to a hotel.”

  Next evening he booked a room in a hotel and then, since it was only ten o’clock, went to a coffee bar where he might see some friends. Inside Clare and Kenneth sat at a table with a lean young man Gordon did not know. Clare smiled and beckoned. She had lost her former self-conscious grace and looked adult and attractive. As Gordon approached Kenneth stood, gripped Gordon’s hand and shook it with unnecessary enthusiasm saying, “Gordon! Gordon! You must meet Mr. McIver. (Clare and I are just leaving.) Mr. McIver, this is the man I told you about, the only man in Scotland who can help you. Goodnight! Goodnight! Clare and I mustn’t intrude on your conversation. You have a lot to discuss.”

  He rushed out, pulling Clare after him and chuckling.

  Gordon and the stranger looked at each other with embarrassment.

  “Won’t you sit down?” said Mr. McIver in a polite North American voice. Gordon sat down and said, “Are you from the States, Mr. McIver?”

  “No, from Canada. I’m visiting Europe on a scholarship. I’m collecting material for my thesis upon the white dog. Your friend tells me you are an authority on the subject.”

  Gordon said abruptly, “What has Kenneth told you about the dog?”

  “Nothing. But he said you could tell me a great deal.”

  “He was joking.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  Gordon stood up to go, sat down again, hesitated and said, “What is this white dog?”

  McIver answered in the tone of someone starting a lecture: “Well known references to the white dog occur in Ovid’s ’Metamorphoses’, in Chaucer’s unfinished ‘Cook’s Tale’, in the picaresque novels of the Basque poet Jose Mompou, and in your Scottish Border Ballads. Nonetheless, the white dog is the most neglected of European archetypes, and for that reason perhaps, one of the most significant. I can only account for this neglect by assuming a subconscious resistance in the minds of previous students of folk-lore, a resistance springing from the fact that the white dog is the west-European equivalent of the Oedipus myth.”

  “That’s all just words,” said Gordon. “What does the dog do?”

  “Well, he’s usually associated with sexually frigid women. Sometimes it is suggested they are frigid because they have been dedicated to the love of the dog from birth …”

  “Dedicated by who?”

  “In certain romance legends by the priest at the baptismal font, with or without the consent of the girl’s parents. More often the frigidity is the result of the girl’s choice. A girl meets an old woman in a lonely place who gives her various gifts, withholding one on which the girl’s heart is set. The price of the gift is that she consents to marry the old woman’s son. If she accepts the gift (it is usually an object of no value) she becomes frigid until the white dog claims her. The old woman is the dog’s mother. In these versions of the legend the dog is regarded as a malignant spirit.”

  “How can he be other than malig
nant?”

  “In Sicily the dog is thought of as a benefactor of frigid or sterile women. If the dog can be induced to sleep with such a woman and she submits to him she will become capable of normal fruitful intercourse with a man. There is always a condition attached to this. The dog must always be, to a certain extent, the husband of the woman. Even if she marries a human man, the dog can claim her whenever he wants.”

  “Oh God,” said Gordon.

  “There’s nothing horrible about it,” said McIver. “In one of Jose Mompou’s novels the hero encounters a brigand chieftain whose wife is also married to the dog. The dog and the chieftain are friends, the dog accepts the status of pet in the household, sleeping by the fire, licking the plates clean et cetera, even though he is the ghostly husband of several girls in the district. By his patronage of the house in this ostensibly servile capacity, he brings the brigand luck. His presence is not at all resented, even though he sometimes sleeps with the brigand’s daughters. To have been loved by the dog makes a woman more attractive to normal men, you see, and the dog is never jealous. When one of his women marries he only sleeps with her often enough to assert his claim on her.”

  “How often is that?”

  “Once a year. He sleeps with her on the night before the wedding and on each anniversary of that night. Say, how are you feeling? You look terrible.”

  Gordon went into the street too full of horror and doubt to think clearly.

  “To be compared with a dog! To be measured against a dog! Oh no, God, Nan wouldn’t do that! Nan isn’t so wicked!”

  He found he was gibbering these words and running as fast as possible home. He stopped, looked at his watch, forced himself to walk slowly. He arrived home about midnight, went through the close to the back court and looked up at the bedroom window. The light was out. He tiptoed upstairs and paused at the front door. The door looked so much as usual that he felt nothing wrong could be behind it; he could still return to the hotel, but while he considered this his hand was stealthily putting the key in the lock. He went softly into the living room, hesitated outside the bedroom door, then opened it quickly. He heard a gasp and Nan shriek, “Gordon!”

  “Yes,” said Gordon.

  “Don’t put the light on!”

  He switched the light on. Nan sat up in bed blinking at him fearfully, her hands pressed protectively on a mound between her legs under the tumbled bedclothes. Gordon stepped forward, gripped the edge of the bedclothes and tugged. “Let go!” he said. She stared at him, her face white with terror, and whispered, “Go away!” He struck her face and she fell back on the pillows; he snatched away the bedclothes and the white dog sprang from between the sheets and danced on them, grinning. Gordon grabbed at the beast’s throat. With an easy squirming movement it evaded his hand, then bit it. Gordon felt the small needle-teeth sink between his fingerbones and suddenly became icy cold. He sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the numb bitten hand still gripped between the dog’s grinning jaws: its pink little eyes seemed to wink at him. With a great yell, he seized the beast’s hind leg with his free hand, sprang up and swung its whole body against the wall. Nan screamed. He felt its head crush with the impact, swung and battered it twice more on the wall, leaving a jammy red stain each time, then he flung the body into a corner and sat down on the edge of the bed and stared at his bitten hand. The sharp little teeth seemed to have gone in without piercing any veins or arteries, for the only mark on the skin was a V-shaped line of grey punctures. He stared across at the smash-headed carcase. He found it hard to believe he had killed it. Could such a creature be killed? He got to his feet with difficulty, for he felt unwell, and went to the thing. It was certainly dead. He opened the window, picked the dog up by the tail and flung it down into the back court, then went over to the bed where Nan lay, gazing at him with horror. He began to undress as well as he could without the use of the numbed right hand. “So, my dear,” he muttered, “you prefer convention.”

  She cried out, “You shouldn’t have come back tonight! We would all have been happy if you hadn’t come back tonight!”

  “Just so,” said Gordon, getting in bed with her.

  “Don’t touch me!”

  “Oh yes, I’ll touch you.”

  Toward morning Gordon woke, feeling wonderfully happy. Nan’s arms clasped him, yet he felt more free than ever before. With a little gleeful yelp he sprang from the nest of warmth made by her body and skipped upon the quilt. Nan opened her eyes lazily to him, then sat up and kissed his muzzle. He looked at her with jovial contempt, then jumped on to the floor and trotted out of the house, the shut doors springing open at the touch of his nose. He ran downstairs into the sunlit street, his mouth hanging open in a grin of sheer gaiety. He would never again be bound by dull laws.

  THE CRANK THAT MADE THE REVOLUTION

  Nowadays Cessnock is a heavily built-upon part of industrial Glasgow, but two hundred and seventy-three years ago you would have seen something very different. You would have seen a swamp with a duck-pond in the middle and a few wretched hovels round the edge. The inmates of these hovels earned a living by knitting caps and mufflers for the inhabitants of Glasgow who, even then, wore almost nothing else. The money got from this back-breaking industry was pitifully inadequate. Old Cessnock was neither beautiful nor healthy. The only folk living there were too old or twisted by rheumatism to move out. Yet this dismal and uninteresting hamlet saw the beginning of that movement which historians call The Industrial Revolution; for here, in seventeen hundred and seven, was born Vague McMenamy, inventor of the crankshaft which made the Revolution possible.

  There are no records to suggest that Vague McMenamy had parents. From his earliest days he seems to have lived with his Granny upon a diet of duck-eggs and the proceeds of the old lady’s knitting. A German biographer has suggested that McMenamy’s first name (Vague) was a nickname. The idea, of course, is laughable. No harder-headed, clearer-sighted individual than McMenamy ever existed, as his crankshaft proves. The learned Herr Professor is plainly ignorant of the fact that Vague is the Gaelic for Alexander. Yet it must be confessed that Vague was an introvert. While other boys were chasing the lassies or stoning each other he would stand for long hours on the edge of the duck-pond wondering how to improve his Granny’s ducks.

  Now, considered mechanically, a duck is not an efficient machine, for it has been designed to perform three wholly different and contradictory tasks, and consequently it does none of them outstandingly well. It flies, but not as expertly as the swallow, vulture or aeroplane. It swims, but not like a porpoise. It walks about, but not like you or me, for its legs are too short. Imagine a household appliance devised to shampoo carpets, mash potatoes and darn holes in socks whenever it feels like it. A duck is in a similar situation, and this made ducks offensive to McMenamy’s dourly practical mind. He thought that since ducks spend most of their days in water they should be made to do it efficiently. With the aid of a friendly carpenter he made a boat-shaped container into which a duck was inserted. There was a hole at one end through which the head stuck out, allowing the animal to breathe, see and even eat; nonetheless it protested against the confinement by struggling to get out and in doing so its wings and legs drove the cranks which conveyed motion to a paddle-wheel on each side. On its maiden voyage the duck zig-zagged around the pond at a speed of thirty knots, which was three times faster than the maximum speed which the boats and ducks of the day had yet attained. McMenamy had converted a havering all-rounder into an efficient specialist. He was not yet thirteen years of age.

  He did not stop there. If this crankshaft allowed one duck to drive a vessel three times faster than normal, how much faster would two, three or ten ducks drive it? McMenamy decided to carry the experiment as far as he could take it. He constructed a craft to be driven by every one of his Granny’s seventeen ducks. It differed from the first vessel in other ways. The first had been a conventional boat shape propelled by paddles and constructed from wood. The second was cigar-shaped
with a screw propeller at the rear, and McMenamy did not order it from the carpenter, but from the blacksmith. It was made of sheet iron. Without the seventeen heads and necks sticking up through holes in the hull one would have mistaken it for a modern submarine. This is a fact worth pondering. A hundred years elapsed before The Charlotte Dundas, the world’s first paddle steamer, clanked along the Forth and Clyde canal from Bowling. Fifty years after that the first ironclad screw-driven warship fired its first shot in the American Civil War. In two years the imagination of a humble cottage lad had covered ground which the world’s foremost engineers took two generations to traverse in the following century. Vague was fifteen years old when he launched his second vessel. Quacking hysterically, it crossed the pond with such velocity that it struck the opposite bank at the moment of departure from the near one. Had it struck soil it would have embedded itself. Unluckily, it hit the root of a tree, rebounded to the centre of the pond, overturned and sank. Every single duck was drowned.

  In terms of human achievement, McMenamy’s duckboat ranks with Leonardo Da Vinci’s helicopter which was designed four hundred years before the engine which could have made it fly. Economically it was disastrous. Deprived of her ducks, McMenamy’s Granny was compelled to knit faster than ever. She sat in her rocking-chair, knitting and rocking and rocking and knitting and McMenamy sat opposite, brooding upon what he could do to help. He noticed that the muscular energy his Granny used to handle the needles was no greater than the energy she used to rock the chair. His Granny, in fact, was two sources of energy, one above the waist and one below, and only the upper source brought in money. If the power of her legs and feet could be channelled into the knitting she would work twice as fast, and his crankshaft made this possible. And so McMenamy built the world’s first knitting frame, later nicknamed “McMenamy’s Knitting Granny”. Two needles, each a yard long, were slung from the kitchen ceiling so that the tips crossed at the correct angle. The motion was conveyed through crankshafts hinged to the rockers of a cast-iron rocking-chair mounted on rails below. McMenamy’s Granny, furiously rocking it, had nothing to do with her hands but steer the woollen coils through the intricacies of purl and plain. When the McMenamys came to display their stock of caps and mufflers on a barrow in Glasgow’s Barrowland that year, the strongest knitters in the West of Scotland, brawny big-muscled men of thirty and thirty-five, were astonished to see that old Mrs. McMenamy had manufactured twice as much as they had.