‘Even a woman who has a wife?’ she said.
‘Yes. We live in enlightened times,’ I told her.
‘You may think so,’ my wife said. ‘I think we’re living in an age of darkness.’
‘That’s something I also address in some stories,’ I said. ‘That possibility.’
‘It’s a racing certainty, if you ask me,’ she said. ‘Anyway, getting back to the point, I want you to keep me out of the public view. You make me look and sound stupid.’
‘I’ve already said,’ I explained, ‘that they are not about you.’
‘And why not?’ she demanded, changing tack. ‘What’s so wrong with me that you can’t write about me?’
‘Nothing is wrong with you,’ I said.
‘If you loved me you would write about me, and write nicely,’ she said.
Just then my real wife came into the room, bringing me a cup of coffee. She leaned over my shoulder and read what was on the screen. This is something I wish she wouldn’t do.
‘Is she bothering you again?’ she asked. ‘Tell the sad cow to leave you alone, or she’ll have me to answer to.’
‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘I’m dealing with it.’
‘Well, deal with it,’ my real wife said.
29 June
Hag-Ridden
‘Let me up on your shoulders.’
You know those women, the ones at music festivals who get themselves hoisted on their boyfriends’ shoulders? They’re often small, petite even, but they are not light. They ignore the people shouting at them because they’re blocking the view. They just carry on singing and swaying, reaching into the air as if they’ve got a hold of something special. They look like sylphs or wood nymphs. That’s what they want you to think they are, spirits of the woodland blowing in the breeze, singing with the band up on the stage. ‘Get down!’ people are yelling. Their arms are outstretched and their fingers are making little signs of victory or peace. All they hear is the music. Their boyfriends are buckling under them, because how long can you go without your neck cracking or your shoulders aching as your girl bounces and sways on top of you? How long can you last, tell me that?
I once had a girl. We went to some concert in some stadium. When the band started playing she uttered the fateful words and like a fool I bent my knees and let her on. And before I was upright again I felt her legs lock behind my back and she was riding me.
She rode me for the next two hours despite the abuse of the people behind us, despite my own screaming pain and exhaustion. Afterwards I carried her away until we came to a quiet place where I begged her to come down. She was only small but the weight of her was immense. She laughed derisively, and rode me till I dropped. ‘Hag-ridden’, that’s what you call it. I was hag-ridden. At last I fell, and no matter how hard she kicked and cuffed me I could not rise.
She left me for dead. I was not dead, but my youth had abandoned me. That’s why, when I see those women now in the fields of summer music and mud, I want to warn those boys. I shout but they don’t hear me. All they hear is the music and the soft, enticing plea. They don’t know what it means.
30 June
Sir Walter’s Notes on Art and an Elephant
after Sir Walter Scott’s Journal
Two visits today, despite the rheumatism. First Francis Grant’s gallery. Grant’s work well done, in my consideration, but do I know what I am looking at, or looking for, in a painting? Raeburn’s portraits: very lifelike. His Highland chiefs do all but walk out of the canvas. Grant’s productions not in that league, but still pleasing to my inexperienced eye. No false modesty there – I am ignorant of what constitutes art, but I think I can detect artifice. These seem genuine or at least good paintings. Would happily have one or two on my walls but my walls must go naked. And he has priced them too high for this market of grudging tastes and pockets to match. One must be a bold player in the game of picture buying and selling, bold as a horse-jockey – or a bookseller! A gentleman cannot make much of any of these without laying aside some of his gentility.
Next, the show of wild beasts: both more and less satisfying. The creatures kept much cleaner than in former days, I think. The strong smell used to make the nose run, the eyes sting and delivered a headache for the day. They are tamer than I recall, or less angry at their lot. Cause: more knowledge of their habits? Kinder treatment? Or ennui and despair on the part of the beasts? I fear the latter. A lion and tigress went through their exercise like poodles, jumping, standing, and lying down at the word of command. This is rather degrading. (Yet you too leap through the hoops, sir, now that they have you trained and obedient, a slave to the offer of a morsel.)
The elephant: a noble fellow. I treated him to a shilling’s worth of cakes. I wish I could have enlarged the space in which so much bulk and wisdom is confined. He kept swinging his head from side to side, as if he marvelled why all the fools that gaped at him were at liberty and he cooped up in the cage. We watched each other for a long time. I doubt he found me as interesting as I found him. I shall not go there again.
JULY
1 July
Halfway
Halfway, he reckons. The strain in his calf muscles, the sweat he has to wipe from his face, the care with which he has to watch his footing, guarding against a twisted ankle – these things make their own computation of how far he’s come, how far he has to go. He’s on the spine of the hills now. The path – a thin scribble of peat through the heather – stumbles up and down as if over vertebrae, the short drops giving him the momentum to take on the rises. He is hurting but it feels good. He knows it could all go wrong – one bad step and he could twist or snap an ankle, have to limp the rest of the way home or maybe even drag himself because there’s no one else up here, in all the times he’s run these hills he’s never come across another person – but he doesn’t think it will come to that. Not now, today, because now he’s halfway to home.
He’s never been on exactly this route before. He knows the land, its contours and moods, but this is a new path. It’s led him round the edges of bogs and clear of standing water and so far it’s left him with dry feet. Halfway. This long stretch along the tops is where it feels best. The warm wind is pushing at his back, the sky is mostly blue, dotted with unthreatening white clouds, the great sweep of mountains is to the north, a loch below him to the south. When he came up the forestry track, that hard, aching climb, this was what he was putting in the effort for: running across the rough ground, alone, himself against himself, heading for home.
Twenty minutes earlier, just below the treeline, he surprised a red squirrel crossing the track. It darted away in sudden, comical panic. Last week a deer did the same thing. He relishes these meetings. They are signs of life, brief, unexpected, treasured; they, and his own body traversing the backbone of the hills. This, nothing else, is what he is for. Halfway. Another mile and it’s all downhill from there, but this, now, is the moment.
2 July
The Searchers
Frank and I were aiming for Death Valley but the truck driver who picked us up in Bakersfield en route to Las Vegas thought that was a bad idea. Frank said he’d always had a yearning to see Death Valley and it didn’t seem far on the map so that was where we were going. The trucker took us along Interstate 15 and at the junction where we proposed to get out and hitch down to Death Valley he pulled over, switched off his engine and told us not to be so goddamned stupid. ‘Put your hand out there,’ he said, ‘feel that heat. You’ll fry before you’ve gone a mile.’ It was July and in Death Valley the temperature could reach 130°F. ‘How much water are you carrying?’ We had to admit we weren’t carrying any. ‘And where are all the goddamned vehicles that are going to stop for you?’ We looked around and all we could see was miles and miles of nothing. ‘You ain’t getting out,’ he said. ‘Let me take you to Vegas instead. It’s a hell of a place too but you probably won’t die there, which you surely will out here.’
I have to say he made the right choice for us.
Those big casinos would let almost anybody in. They let me and Frank in, in our filthy clothes and with beards down to our chests. We picked up free newspapers and tore out the coupons that gave you complimentary drinks or complimentary all-day breakfasts or a dollar’s worth of dimes to play the slot machines, and we milked that town for everything we could from morning till midnight. We got drunk and ate our fill of junk food, and by the time we found a patch of hard earth on the outskirts to sleep on Frank was two dollars up and I was two dollars down on where we’d started. And that was a lot better than being dead in Death Valley.
Later Frank admitted he’d been thinking of Monument Valley, where they filmed The Searchers and Easy Rider, which is in Utah and about five hundred miles away. We never did make it to Monument Valley.
3 July
Archie
One morning a boy called Archie came into school with the news that Bobby Kennedy had been shot. This was exciting to young boys, because although most of us couldn’t remember where we were when President Kennedy was shot we all knew it had happened and what a big deal it was. And now it had happened again, to JFK’s little brother Bobby. Some of us had little brothers and some of us had big brothers, so this meant something. The story spread like a fire.
There was a teacher called Mr Cheyne, who taught English, History and Scripture and sometimes played the piano at assembly. Mr Cheyne also sang, in a very loud tenor voice that I didn’t like. He had a singing career as well as being a teacher. He gave concerts and made records on which he sang sacred songs in his loud and, to me, objectionable way. He was not shy about proclaiming his Christian faith.
Something snapped in Mr Cheyne when he heard the story about Bobby Kennedy. He said it was nothing but a rumour, and demanded to know who had brought this rumour into the school. Pretty soon Archie was fingered. Mr Cheyne cornered him. This big, blustering man in his thirties roared at wee Archie, accusing him first of spreading malicious gossip and then, when Archie stuck to his guns, of lying. Archie said he was only repeating what he’d heard on the radio at breakfast, that Senator Kennedy had been shot in a hotel kitchen. That was all he knew.
The hotel kitchen detail made Mr Cheyne madder and redder than ever. I think he would have exploded if another teacher hadn’t come by and quietly confirmed that everything Archie was saying was true.
Mr Cheyne should have deflated like a punctured balloon, but he didn’t. He blew off down the corridor and was not seen for a while. Later he took Archie aside and apologised, but it was too late. General respect for Archie went up tenfold – we thought him a hero for defending himself and the truth. But as for Mr Cheyne, none of us ever believed a thing he told us after that.
4 July
The Coin
The man wore a tall grey hat with a bashed-in crown, a black tailcoat and striped trousers, and a stained white shirt with a cravat. He either needed a shave or was growing a beard. He looked like a lord who’d lost everything at Ascot, or a bridegroom who’d baulked at the altar and been on the run ever since.
‘Fuel?’ I asked.
‘Sustenance,’ he said, holding up a Milkybar.
‘Have you bought fuel as well?’ I said, pointing to the pumps outside.
‘I am without carriage.’ He spoke like an actor. ‘Wait,’ he continued, resisting my attempt to take the Milkybar from him. ‘How much does it cost?’
‘Forty pence.’
‘Unfortunately this is all I have,’ he said, producing a twenty-pence piece. ‘I shall buy half.’
‘You can’t,’ I said. ‘You have to buy the whole thing or none of it.’
‘Really?’ His eyebrows rose. Deftly he snapped the bar in two, tore open the wrapper and slid one half out.
‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ I said. ‘Now you have to give me another twenty pence.’
‘I am without further coin,’ he said. ‘I will return tomorrow, or the next day. For now, I am restricted to purchasing this portion.’
I looked around for Karen, the manager, but she was through the back.
‘You can’t,’ I said.
‘I have,’ he replied, and popped it in his mouth. Then he stuck his hands in the pockets of his striped trousers, smiled, and ambled out.
I suppose I should have rung the bell for Karen, but I didn’t. He looked pathetic in his tired old fancy dress. I felt sorry for him, mainly because I didn’t think it was fancy dress.
Other people came in to pay for fuel, sandwiches, cigarettes. They handed over their credit cards and parted with fifty, sixty, seventy pounds without blinking. They didn’t seem to have noticed the man in the top hat.
I never said anything to Karen. I kept the coin and the second half of the Milkybar for a week, intending to ring through the sale if he ever came back, but he didn’t. So I ate the chocolate and put the coin in the charity box.
5 July
Boredom
He was lying on the floor, reading. The sun through the window made a little oblong of heat on the carpet. He shifted so that his feet dipped into the heat. At the end of one chapter he checked how many pages there were in the next. He moved back to his bed and lay on it, wondering what to do. He read the next chapter.
He’d had breakfast an hour ago. His mother was in the kitchen or outside. Everybody else – his father, his sister, his brother – was away. There was nothing to do and this was fine. Downstairs the grandfather clock struck ten. He put away the book and listened to the pigeons cooing in the cedar tree. They just went on cooing and cooing. It was already hot. He might go out on his bike. Later he’d take the dog for a walk.
He was bored. This was fine.
His mother or his father or perhaps both of them had instilled in him the idea that once you started a book you should always finish it. Why was that? Was it a duty to finish it, or a mark of respect to the author, or just something you were supposed to do? He always did finish a book, but sometimes he cheated, skimming the pages if it was boring him. This was what he would do with the book he was reading. He’d skim the last few chapters, so he could say he’d read it. Not that anyone was checking, but he needed to be able to say that, for himself.
Later he’d go on his bike down to the library and swap his books for three more.
Not just the day but the summer stretched out before him. He’d take the dog for a long walk. Nothing would happen.
He could go and see one of his friends. A bunch of them could get together, but school had broken up only a few days earlier. He didn’t want to see them. He liked being on his own. He liked being bored.
Days and days of it. There was so much time in a day, a year. There was so much left.
6 July
On the Division of Labour: The Nail Painters of Pathhead*
for Davey Stewart
To take an example from a very trifling trade, that of a nail painter: a worker not educated to this business (which the division of labour has rendered a distinct trade), nor acquainted with the use of the machinery employed in it (to the invention of which the same division of labour has probably given occasion), could scarce, perhaps, with her utmost industry, paint one nail in a day, and certainly could not paint twenty. But in the way in which this business is now carried on, not only the whole work is a peculiar trade, but it is divided into a number of branches, which are likewise peculiar trades. One worker assesses the condition of the nail; another cleans it; a third cuts it; a fourth points it; a fifth prepares it for receiving the paint; to select the correct paint requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on is a peculiar business; to dry the nails is another; it is even a trade by itself to admire them when painted; and the important business of painting a nail is thus divided into about eighteen distinct operations, which, in some salons, are all performed by distinct hands, though in others the same woman will sometimes perform two or three of them. I have seen a small salon, where ten women only were employed, where some of them consequently performed two or three distinct operations. But they could,
when they exerted themselves, paint among them about twelve pounds of nails in a day. There are in a pound upwards of four thousand nails of a middling size. Those ten persons, therefore, could paint among them upwards of forty-eight thousand nails in a day. Each person, therefore, might be considered as painting four thousand eight hundred nails in a day. But if they had all wrought separately and independently, they certainly could not each of them have painted twenty, perhaps not one nail in a day; that is, certainly, not the two hundred and fortieth, perhaps not the four thousand eight hundredth, part of what they are at present capable of performing, in consequence of a proper division and combination of their different operations.
7 July
Haymarket
In this neglected novel by the author of works such as Waterloo, Belvedere and Mortlake, an innocent youth, Edward Mortimer, journeys from Surrey to St Andrews in Fife, where he is to study English Literature at the university. There he is introduced to Rose, the lovely but sensible daughter of a Perthshire landowner. She is studying Accountancy, and while Edward quite fancies her he finds her dull and a little prudish. Anxious to lose his virginity, he falls in with a bad set of folksong enthusiasts who are keen to initiate him into their regular habits of drinking, smoking and the consumption of fish suppers. Chief among this crowd are brother and sister Fergus and Flora, who hail from the West Highlands and are ardent followers of the Scotland rugby team. Edward becomes infatuated with the high-spirited Flora, who is studying for a joint degree in Celtic Studies and Fine Art, and accompanies her by train from Leuchars to Edinburgh to attend a rugby international against England. As the train approaches the capital Edward tries to persuade Flora that they should stay on until Waverley Station, but she insists that they ‘get off at Haymarket’,* since this is closer to the rugby stadium.
365 Page 22