by James Kelman
Rangers sign Eire winger. Sammy O’Flaherty, a naturally gifted winger, will today sign the dotted line at the home of the famous Glasgow club. A crowd of fans was waiting on the Ibrox doorstep for a glimpse of the new boy.
So drink up and leave.
Come on, time to leave.
Patrick was tired so it was time he left. He was not leaving. How come he was not leaving? Was there something wrong with the dickie? Let us examine the circumstances:
Patrick, how come you’re no leaving?
Because I’m fukt. I’m knackered. I’ve been leading a dog’s life. I’ve been braying like a donkey.
How do you mean?
Pardon?
You were speaking nonsense there. Garble. Something about donkeys – braying like a donkey or something.
O. Sorry. I shouldni do that in case it upsets ye. There are guys looking at me but I dont want to upset ye so I wont show worry, I wont show discomfort, in case you get upset.
Mm.
I mean sorry, dont let my plight interrupt your life. At least they’re no torturing me, it isni Pakistan or Ulster.
Shut up, you’re garbling, people’ll start worrying.
I know fuck sake, exactly.
So hold onto the table.
I’m trying to.
If it’s magic it might rise up and carry ye home. That’s what happens in certain tales from the Orient. Always allowing for the fact that the Arabian Nights arent Oriental. They’re from the Middle East. Yes. Who gives it capital letters. The naming process and Imperialism. Arse is a typical form. Poor old Mirs Houston. Her problem
her problem.
Seriously but, she doesni have a problem. Especially not Patrick Doyle.
Patrick Doyle
is holding onto the table and is now letting go and lifting a glass of tomato juice. What gives them the right. That is what he wants to know. Okay they’ve fucking bought him but no his da. Why not? Of course they have. Bastards. Thales of Miletus. How come he’s so fucking important. My nut. It is aching. It is just a sore head, that’s all, a case of water on the brain. This day has been extremely difficult. It has taken the form of an anti-climax. The weekend had built towards it and now it has come and is past, passed. And Patrick is, and no wonder, absolutely fucking shattered. He should just be collapsing somewhere. Into his bed with a hot water bottle and a strong milky bastarn drink, Ovaltine or somefuckingthing.
He farted.
Not too loudly but loudly enough. Farts and arses. How vulgar. How dashed fucking uncivil of the dem bounder. The two guys looked like they might have heard. They were still chatting with the dem bartender. And now they were gazing across at him, all fucking three of them what was wrong. What could they do? Pat is neither big nor small nor thin nor fat and he would fight back and with luck could snatch a bottle or glass or anyfuckingthing that came to hand. But maybe not. Maybe he would just go hysterical and start screaming and yelling and kicking his feet like a baby who doesnt want to go to bed. And it is full of wind. Which is how come the fart. When you spew the way he did in the classroom the lungs gasp in oxygen and it all gets mixed up with your belly and intestines, thus expel boarders, out it has to come, or tries to come albeit in company one attempts to restrain it; unfortunately, as in the present case, it can catch you unawares. I mean what is he supposed to fucking do? go and apologise because he farted! That would be so typical of this life. You must forgive me, the belly and intestines
Salvador Dali: better to fart in company than die in a corner.
What about vegetarians? Do they fart as much as meat-eaters? With all these anti-Pythagorean bean mixtures! So much for the luscious Houston.
The lack of food. When did Doyle last eat. He hasnt eaten for fucking months! He could purchase a poke of potato crisps, and he could dunk these potato crisps into his tomato juice. Which would appear the perfect way of applying this liquid, of using this liquid, this juice.
There are two guys staring at Patrick, that’s what I want to know. He got up off his seat and he walked to them. He said: Is there something up?
They glanced at each other.
Naw it’s just eh, the way I keep catching your eye and all that, I’m wondering how come I mean if we know each other or some-bloodything.
What ye talking about?
Patrick nodded. He gazed at the two of them.
What’s up?
Nothing’s up with me, said Pat. I thought there might be something up with yous. The way yous were looking at me.
Who was looking at ye? said one of the guys. Ye kidding? He shook his head and he said to the bartender: He thinks we were fucking looking at him!
Hh! The bartender frowned.
Patrick nodded. And he added, Give us a bag of crisps.
What did ye say?
Patrick stared at him: A packet of crisps.
What kind?
Any kind. He laid the exact cost in coins on the counter, looking at the bartender as he reached to the side of the gantry, to where about twelve cardboard boxes were stacked, each one offering a different flavour of potato crisps. Cheese & onion.
One of the two guys glanced at him. Pat stared to the front as he returned to the table. He sipped at his beer when seated. And now they would definitely be looking at him; they would make it plain; it would have to be seen as a challenge. But he had made his point. It was become best to leave. Now. He finished the beer, stuck the crisps into his pocket, got onto his feet again and, taking care not to face the bar, he walked steadily to the exit, the hand grabbing him and birling him roundabout and getting battered by a fist on the jaw – but no, and he stepped somewhat jerkily outside, the door closing behind. He felt like laughing, he had to stop himself from laughing, and he succeeded easily, it not being funny, it being no funny thing, no funny incident. It was deadly serious. Pat glanced back over his shoulder then continued along the road quickly.
Scott was unlucky. He got pipped at the post by The Foreigner Amundsen and received a posthumous knighthood, arise Sir Robert. While plucky old The Foreigner Amundsen kept going until being lost at sea some score of years later, out looking for a missing frigate the Nobile. Imagine being aboard the Nobile, one of its hands, and getting lost. What like would that have been! And was it even a frigate. It could have been a yacht. Out there drifting noiselessly midst the freezing, ice-laden fogs of Kilimanjaro.
What the fuck are ye blethering about ya fucking donkey!
Poor old donkeys.
If prostitutes’ feet are not warm should the client accede to the moral imperative vis-à-vis the bearing of hot water bottles as the universal male obligation? And the corollary:
what is the nature of a contract?
And:
was Kant a frosty auld shite?
Who knows. Who cares. Nowadays people dont even consider such idle controversy.
The serving of steak pie suppers in chip shops, with salt and sauce and vinegar.
An effervescent ending to his life, a sparkling effect – something to fire him straight upwards and outwards, out from the mire. He laughed at the tin of Andrews Liver Salts. He could swallow the whole fucking lot, the entire contents, followed by a bottle of disinfectant. Or maybe the other way about. All he sought was death. Death: purely and simple: simply and pure.
How come he was not able to just be dead like everybody else. Everybody else was dead. They were dead. How come he was not like them, and not able to just be dead. How come he was not able to just be dead and buried and out the road of trouble and strife and all things rotten and putrified and shitey.
Was it his fault? Was he the bloke to blame? The chap at whose feet etcetera.
Without other parties the house is cold. The house is not warm. The house is a cold place to be. To live in such a state in such a house, to not be with parties, to be cold and to be there, a party in such a state, of cold, a numbness, that lack of warmth, all-embracing, that cold clutch
a cold clutch, of something. There is a cold clutch of
something. There in the house; a house of coldness, where nobody lives except this solitary, this one, when he has returned.
There can be spectres. Ghosts. Apparitiones. Nightly death-shades. An ethereal shade. Hosts of gloomy spectres.
One is dutybound. One is bound by one’s duty. One has made the contract towards life, the essentiality. Okay? Aye. Fine. So I can fuck off now? Aye, go ahead, I’m fine, fine, everything’s fucking okay.
So how do you do it. Well, you pick them up; but one at a time, obviously. The thinner one. It doesni actually seem as friendly as heretofore, but so what, it is just an instrument and not really anything, until being called into action. He blew the sound, his eyelids shut; then he was looking at the carpet, there was a threadbare patch; he laid down the pipe and knelt to examine it – it was almost a hole it was so thin. His maw had donated this carpet. But back to business. He picked up the pipe, the thinner one again. It was no use going to the other one, that would be wrong and silly, as though it was the pipe’s fault rather than his, for not attending to it properly. And concentration was just fucking there was not anything else; he closed his eyelids, back seated once again, and blew this note, not big enough then big enough and straightforwards, a note that was straightforwards, the sound. He paused for air, keeping his eyelids closed. But he opened them. Okay, it was still fine and he closed them once more and breathed in through his nostrils in a move and started then, there, at the back of the throat, the air expelled by the roof of the mouth fuck it was fine, right, and good also, exact and precise and the thing, just correct, correctly stated. A drone: not exactly, not exactly; no, not
It was rubbish. He dropped it to the floor and left the chair and went to the window. A crassness about it all. And there was that lassie across the way, the tenement across the street facing, the window looking out.
Perhaps he should not have painted the bloody things, that stupid enamel paint. Had he turned them into objects that were just fucking garish? Was he responsible for a quality of garishness? Until he had tampered with them they could not be said to be impure. Now they could be, they could be so designated. The lassie across the street used to stand by the window quite a lot but Pat hadni seen her for several weeks – a good couple of months – maybe back about December. One could construct a fantasy about her but that would be unclean. She could even have been one of his pupils. What age were folk?
What age were folk.
Patrick lifted the thicker pipe and settled himself on the floor, his rear to the settee. But before anything happened the settee shifted back the way on its castors and he needed things to be solid, if things were not solid how could he be expected to play things. This was the worst of it. But it was true. Things had to be solid. If they were not solid, christ.
He sat on the armchair. He very rarely used this armchair for any purpose yet here it was now becoming functional at long last. What did that imply. It implied that a teleological
And when the armchair was pushed back against the cupboard he could sit down on the carpet with his back placed firmly, solidly. That threadbare patch was quite large all things considered so why the fuck had he never noticed it before. How come his mother had never said anything about it. I mean that was distinctly odd. Most not like the Mistress Doyle who was rapidly becoming older than she used to be, the da’s last heart attack probably. She was getting quite absent-minded. She was only in her mid-fifties as well and scarcely to be described as ‘old’; you dont describe somebody in their mid-fifties as ‘old’. Having the wealthy schoolteacher for a son, who fails to remember her birthday till the very last moment, when it is over and in the past, this is the sort of son she has, a son
But that was fine that was fine.
How come him and Sheila Monaghan had never slept together? It was so good getting her bra off and there was that time as well when she let her hand lie on his bollocks and maybe you were thinking she knew more than she was letting on, maybe that was it and just Doyle being too inexperienced to see what was what. But surely if they had truly, if they had truly, if
fuck off
He blew a sound, deep, long; a good sound. He blew another one, the same sounding. He did another one and extended it. These sounds were good sounds. He was pleased with them. He had wanted to prove he could do it and he had been successful. He had achieved it, he had blown them – he was blowing them. He blew another, shortened, a shortened version. He laid down the pipe and got up onto his feet. The lassie had gone from the window.
Sex.
Pat was at the mantelpiece, elbows up on its edge and his chin on the backs of his clasped fingers, staring into the wall. If he stared hard enough he could see this wee toty hole in the wallpaper, it being porous. He
What was wrong with him there was something wrong with him, with he. Had Alison
What had she
What was the question, the form of questioning.
The transfer was a strange thing except for the most stupit of all explanations, just that he had done it in a fit of pique, maybe while under the influence, but not drunk, just having had a couple, maybe after a Friday’s lunch with the colleagues, and he had got truly browned off, more than usual, and then he had just gone ahead and fucking done it, anything’s fucking possible, for christ sake, probability, that’s all we know about, fucking probability. And these bloody strange damn stupit events. This was a problem with being Doyle pee for Patrick, one was inclined to perform the less weightier feats, the slightly more absurd actions, the grosser deeds. What was wrong with him. What was actually wrong with him! What was actually fucking wrong with him christ you felt like asking such questions with a blanket over your head they were so shameful, so fucking shameful. What he should do is get out the house. He had to get out the house. He had to get
out
the house. Why was he not out the house? Why was this him here? Why was for christ sake and not partaking of the glorious riches of this postindustrialised western capitalisticobliquesocialisticexploitative
How come he wasnt blowing it up? Yessir, that was the first fucking out-in-the-open question he had posed for quite some certain length of the present.
So sentimental but that was the problem.
A motor car arriving down in the street. A man without a hat, on the pavement opposite, entering the close next to the one where the lassie lived. With a blunderbuss etcetera etctera, one could have blown him apart if perhaps he had been a member of the baddies. Pat’s shins burnt: the material of the trousers touching against them, and burning, from where he had been in front of the fire at the mantelpiece; and what a sharp pain when he rubbed the right one! really fucking sore – he raised the trouser leg, the skin being ripped asunder, there on the shin, the skin was torn. Some blood too although dried and hardened. It was from when he had tripped and cracked it on the stairs earlier at school. The image of a splintered shinbone; hopping to the hospital, queuing there with all your health insurance certificates, seeking a good firm glue and the aid of a strong pair of hands. The nurse telling ye to stop behaving like a spoiled brat and to cut out that sobbing. But please miss I’ve got a splintered shinbone! Stop your fucking nonsense and away home at once ya naughty boy. But I’m twenty-nine! I’ll twenty-nine ye!
Imagine finding a nurse like that. And probably she would want to take you home and insist on you hiring an ambulance so ten minutes later there you are home with this nurse, would you care for a coffee while we’re waiting for the glue to set; well okay, if you would; well I actually would so will I just pour you one, or what; aye, just fucking pour it; and her tits soft and supple, in the name of the holies.
When I am dead.
When I am dead I shall be thingwi and there shall be no more problems insofaras the world ceases to exist when I shut the fucking eyelids. Okay! I’m going to fucking wipe yous out ya bastards. One quick blink.
Sex though.
Sex. Erections and fantasies.
Here you have women and men
This is
a man
Doyle needs a woman.
What a fucking syllogism that is! A fucking beauty! No wonder the dark ages were so fucking absolutely unregenerative.
Right.
Okay. One could actually make a sign at the window to the lassie. What would be the nature of the sign. In what sense could it be true for her while being true for myself. And if this sign managed to be true for us both what would happen next.
It wouldnt work that way. She would just see me and know straight off what was happening and when I flickered my eyelid a fraction that would be that and ten minutes later she would meet me at the foot of her stairs and off we’d go for a night on the town, and on to a cosy wee restaurant maybe followed by a quiet disco for a wee dance, then home, her head on my shoulder as I drive slowly in that direction:
I had been standing by the window for the past six months awaiting just such a sign Patrick.
For god sake woman how did you no tell me!
I was too bashful.
Too bashful! Aw … I see … But you could just have maybe I dont know, waved or something. But her father of course. The lassie didni want to take any chances in case he spotted her. What a jealous auld guy her da is! Never lets her out his sight. So she has to just stare out the fucking window all the time. Some fucking social life! Almost as bad as Doyle P. MA (Hons). That’s how come the pair of them are so suited. That’s how come
The phrase ‘hollowness of tone’; what did it mean. Why was it in his head. Hollowness of tone. It was a fine and smashing phrase. There is something of it in the work of old Goya. It is a thing that what is it. What is it. I wonder what the fuck it is. An ineffability about such abstractions, these affairs that arent tangible, the slippery yins, and only their names remain, arcana celestiae
Back to the drawing-board! Yet the lassie: still standing there, not too close to the window, so that she can remain unseen from outside. She will have a body. Yes. Legs and torso and arms and all the rest of it. She will have them, she herself. And maybe she isnt a lassie, maybe she just looks young from a distance. She might be a lady of some seventy summers.