A Disaffection (Vintage Classics)

by James Kelman

  A slight irritation from both, which they dutifully attempted to conceal; they were wanting to watch television

  naw listen a minute, honest, it’s quite interesting

  while Gavin’s face fixed stonily in that same direction.

  So what actually happened was this: I was round the back of this building, down a very dark and shadowy lane, an eerie and danksmelling lane with high moss-covered dykes that kept out the light, where owls were hooting and cats miaowing in a very controlled but semi-scary manner; you should’ve heard these damn owls and cats my fine friends!

  naw, no kidding ye, it was quite scary; I mind at one minute I happened to look up, I just happened to look up, and there I saw this lithe grey cat stalking along the very top of the highest wall, its round eyes glistening because it was getting the glare of the moon high up there with its old pockmarked face going back thousands and thousands of years, and this cat, its hairs all bristling like thin wee jaggy spikes

  and for one quiet, very very quiet and drawn-out, long, long, solitary solitary majestic moment in time, I thought like running, running fast, running away fast, getting away quick, quick quick quick, quick quick quick, quick quick quick quick quick quick quick!

  Then the physically active bit here of the sudden leap off the armchair onto the settee and tickling the two of them in the bellies and they were roaring in laughter. Their gazes returned to the television screen immediately after that but only for a moment:

  so, just along a bit down the lane I found these pipes; one was long and thin and the other yin wasni so long and it wasni so thin either, it was more like I dont know, just sort of a wee bit shorter and a wee bit thicker. Okay now what I did I just bent down a wee minute to see them the better, and looked this way and then looked that way, just in case people were watching maybe, a big bad security man from the government that would want to take ye away and put ye into prison!

  but nobody was there

  so what I did, I just bent down and lifted one up, because do you know this weans, I had a sudden wee think to myself that I wanted to play a tune! Patrick laughed aloud. He looked at the kids and shook his head, then laughed aloud again, but stopped it quickly in case it lasted forever.

  Gavin was now gazing over, smiling, not falsely.

  Naw kids I’m no kidding, it was an urge, like a magic spell had befallen me. It was as if these two pipes themselves were calling out to me to come on and play me come on and play me, so I lifted one up and what I did I just, okay, blew into it, and out came this long and deep sound that made me think of scores and scores of years, and generations and generations and generations of people all down through the ages, and this tune – not exactly a tune, more of a sound, the one kind of long sound that you could occasionally just pause from doing, then start again as if ye hadni stopped at all except when you came to the very end of it you would know about the pauses you did, they would all be a part of it. It was really really beautiful weans and it made me think of magic. I’m no kidding ye on. Magic. These pipes had something special about them and it was a magical something. So do ye know what I did next?

  wide eyes. Elizabeth with her thumb in her mouth and John with his hands holding his chin. And Gavin smiling, watching them both.

  Naw I’m no kidding ye, what I did I actually lifted them both up off the ground and after I played them I smuggled them away home with me. And that’s where they’re lying right at this very minute in time, this very second in the universe, in my parlour, that selfsame old parlour where yous pair of weans always sit whenever yous come up to visit your stupit auld uncle Patrick MacDoyle.

  Elizabeth and John smiled.

  Naw but I’m being serious. The two pipes are in my parlour. And I’ve painted them colours. Says you what colours! Well I’ll tell ye so just be quiet. Bright silver and red and black. All shiny. And whenever I get down in the dumps I just sit back and play these pipes and I get cheered up. I dont always get the tunes right but sometimes I do and it sounds great. Well it sounds great to me; I dont know if it sounds great to anybody else – or is that just being stupit and sentimacbloodymental!

  What like is the pipes? asked John.

  They’re just ordinary. They’re round and they’re made out of a kind of thick cardboard stuff. And what I do ye see I cover one end up with my hand and and then when I’m blowing into the other end I just let my hand off at the bottom end a wee minute and so the air comes out.

  Is it real magic but? John asked.

  Just listen to this: I let my hand off the bottom end for one wee minute and the air comes out making a sound. And I’ve got to really concentrate; I’ve got to really concentrate really really hard; I just close my eyes and I switch off my ears and then what I do I just put the brakes onto my brains so they seize up and lie still for a wee minute, and then everything’s fine, all fine, and I start – and I dont know when I’ve started, it’s just as if it’s magic. Honest, I’m no kidding ye.

  The weans continued to watch him and he smiled, he winked; then he leant back on the armchair; they smiled. When they knew he had definitely finished they gave their attention back to the television screen. But it had been well worth it and Patrick felt very happy; he would like to have shut his eyes and dozed off but this was not his place and it would not have been a good thing to do and also something at the back of his mind saying: fucking watch yourself Doyle or the game’s a bogey! What did that mean? It meant he better fucking watch himself or the game was a fucking bogey. Okay.

  Gavin had looked at him.

  No signs of a job? said Pat.

  Eh naw, no really.

  Nothing doing then?

  Naw eh no that I know of. Gavin lifted down the cigarette packet, extracted one and got it alight. No that ye have to bother looking anyway, he said, the way things are in this place if there is anything going there’s aye somebody tells ye. Rumours are on the go all the time.

  And nothing in the papers?

  Ye kidding! Gavin smiled; he was gazing at the screen, dragging slowly on the cigarette. Plus the fact when you do get the paper you know every other able body in Glasgow’s looking at the same time. Be better in the summer once the building game starts proper. Then I’ll really start worrying if I canni find something.

  You think it’ll pick up then?

  Bound to.

  Pat nodded.

  Gavin glanced at him: You dont agree?

  Ah well ye never know right enough.

  So you dont think it will?

  Eh … do you?

  Gavin frowned; and grinned: I asked you first.

  Aye but I’m biased as ye know; I hate Greatbritain. It was fine before all these selfish and greedy aristocratic capitalist mankindhating landowners started dividing things up between them and saying where ye could walk and where ye couldni walk – it was fine up till then, before these effing boundaries roped you in, when it was just a big chunk of stuff you could just set out and do what you liked on.

  Such as?

  Such as – such as build yourself a mud hut and feed your effing chickens! Patrick smiled. Course I’m talking about thirty thousand years BC. Seriously but, maybe; maybe things will improve. I dont know. You’ll have a better idea than me. Do you think things’ll improve?

  Gavin shrugged.

  I’m just no over-confident. I think jobs are a thing of the past in this country, even in the building game.

  So what’re you chucking yours in for? Gavin coughed slightly, and he coughed again, then he put his arm back round Elizabeth’s shoulders. She looked as if she was about to close her eyes.

  Eh … I dont like being forced into things. Plus them transferring me to a different school just when I feel in some ways as if I’m getting used to things. If they would leave me to get on with things myself! You know me brother, I dont like being told what to do!

  Gavin nodded.

  I dont like being forced to live my life a certain way.

  …

  I dont.


  …

  I prefer to make up my own mind.

  Mm.

  Life’s too short to let people push you about all the time.

  Gavin nodded. He inhaled on the cigarette and exhaled the smoke towards the television screen, away from Elizabeth.

  That’s what I think anyway.

  Aye … Gavin tapped ash onto the ashtray and Patrick squinted at the television screen. Gavin said, So you’re getting pushed about?

  Aye.

  Mm.

  I am.

  I believe ye. Gavin nodded and his tongue flicked out his mouth and licked his lips; he took one more drag on the cigarette and nipped the burning ash into the ashtray, laid the good piece down on the tiled fireplace. He said to John. Away and see when tea’ll be ready!

  John did so at once, leaving the door wide open, then the thump thump thump as he raced back … Mummy says she shouted a wee minute ago! Dinner’s on the table waiting! He laughed and rushed back to the kitchenette.

  After a moment Gavin said, I never heard her did you? He got to his feet with Elizabeth clinging onto him and he hoisted her up so that she was leaning her head against his neck with her arms roundabout him. She gazed at Patrick as he followed them out of the living room and across to the kitchenette.

  Nicola was eating. She was sitting at the small three-sided table that was affixed to the wall. The two places beside her had been set for the children. She said to Gavin: I thought you and Pat would prefer to eat in the room.

  We could’ve set the table for everybody, he replied.

  Nicola nodded. He had seated Elizabeth on her stool and John was up seated on his and already digging in with his knife and fork. Gavin passed a plate of food to Pat.

  Thanks for the eh … Patrick said to Nicola.

  Dont be daft, she said.

  The two men returned to the room without speaking. Then Gavin returned to the kitchenette. He was gone almost five minutes. Patrick cleared the cans and remaining bottles from the dining table, stacking them on the floor. Gavin came back. He lifted his plate, balanced it on his lap and ate while watching the television. It was the news showing and Patrick glanced at it too. A couple of items were of interest and the subject of the Centralamerican assassination recurred. At one stage he was set to comment but changed his mind. Gavin was obviously not in the mood for conversation. And politics was the last subject on Earth; especially if it called for a dialogue with the brother on a basis of equality. Gavin didnt wish to speak to his young brother, especially on a basis of equality. His young brother had a good sort of middle-class job and a good sort of middle-classish wage whereas he had fuck all. His young brother could make all the comments and criticisms he had a mind to, then walk along to the licensed grocer and buy a bottle of whisky and a dozen cans of superlager – just about the most expensive lager in the entire premises. So what was the point in talking to him, to somebody like him.

  And that was precisely the case. Patrick was somebody like himself. It didni actually matter a fuck that he was Pat Doyle a young brother. He was not an individual. So what right did he have to be treated as such. None. He had no rights at all. He had sold his rights for a wheen of pennies, a large wheen of pennies. Alison was correct after all with that Judas Iscariot patter, it was just that Patrick had misunderstood her context. And Gavin was correct to think as he did. Good teacher or bad teacher it made no difference. He was an article that was corrupt. He was representative of corruption, representative of a corrupt and repressive society which operated nicely and efficiently as an effect of the liberal machinations of such as himself, corruptio optimi pessima, not that he was approaching the best but just a person who had certain tools of the higher-educational processes at his command yet persisted in representing a social order that was not good and was not beneficent to those who have nothing. What right did he have to be treated differently to any member of the fucking government or polis or the fucking law courts in general who sentence you to prison. Doyle had sold his rights.

  There was not an answer. It was most depressing. Gavin had never asked him the question of course. But only because he loved Pat. Only because he felt pity for him. He knew there was not any answer that the young brother could make. Look at the food on the plate. He did not have an answer to give. Most depressing. Most depressing. Tasty food as well it was nice ox liver and mashed potatoes and carrots and cabbage. Very very tasty indeed, just the occasional splash of gravy onto his trousers if a bit of something fell off his fork. It was most depressing. He did not know what to do. Not any longer, he just didni know. He didni know what was right and what was not right, what was wrong and what was not wrong that being not wrong, that being right

  He did not know what to do. An answer could be to walk out on it all, to get away completely and get the tonsils straightened out. Get the tonsils straightened out. The idea of heading across the channel to France and driving on down south via the Basque country and Spain, maybe stopping off to see Eric in Anglia. There was a screech of brakes outside and Pat was up on his feet and over to the window immediately but much of his vision was obscured because of the fucking veranda. But his motor was okay whatever it was. He could just see the rear bumper of a van in the middle of the street, not all that far from his but absolutely nothing to do with it. Possibly a dog or cat had dashed out and forced the guy or woman to slam on the emergency brakes. The van moved off. Patrick stared but could see nothing. That bad habit cats have of hiding up the insides of a mudguard and then dashing out for no apparent reason.

  Gavin was looking across.

  Nothing – no that I can see anyway.

  A wee boy got knocked down last week, did you hear? He’s still in intensive care. It was a paki that was driving.

  Pardon?

  A wee boy got knocked down, it was a paki that was driving the car.

  The car that knocked down the wee boy?

  Aye. Gavin had stopped eating. He placed the plate in beneath his chair, reached for a cigarette.

  Patrick had stopped eating as well because his stomach had dropped out and what he had taken already was close to being on the carpet because this was just so bad it was barely possible to say a word but that it had to be said and faced up to. He stared at his big brother. His big brother was staring at the screen and he was fucking poised there what a challenge, knowing fine well what he had done, fucking bastard. Patrick breathed out and shut his eyelids but not to screw them up, seeing the redness of the interior lids, the blood no doubt. He was not going to carry on with any of this sort of shite. His stomach, the insides, were just fucking it’s amazing, amazing

  where’s the whisky. But I dont want a whisky with that evil bastard because this is evil this is the existence of pure evil, a putrefication, a putrefaction of the spirit, the spirit of life but I dont feel like crying I feel like fucking battering but who the fuck to batter, who do I batter,

  who do I kill

  I dont know whom to kill. I dont want to kill my brother not only because he’s my brother but because he’s a person and not only that but he is a person who is in ignorance. He is my brother who is in ignorance. I dont want to kill him. And I dont want to cry. I dont want to kill myself, I dont want that. I may want to be dead but that’s another question; a different form of questioning, a logic from another world.

  Is it fuck a logic from another world it’s a logic from the same fucking world and you’ve just got to find that method which lassos the bastard.

  So okay; let us not depart. Let us all be together. Let us all be at one where to be at one is to be at peace, beyond conflict, a reconciliation of opposing forces.

  What is the connection between being a man who is a Pakistani who has knocked down the wee boy who is now in intensive care o brother that the relationship includes you and me and your kids plus Nicola and the existence of maw and da and the ancestors, erupting their way out of the sewage system, when some form of fucking enlightenment, some form of fucking enlightenment

  L
et us just for fuck sake go up and visit the wee boy in intensive care and then go and visit the guy that was driving the car that knocked him down: let us just do that as a beginning. Me and you o brother ya bastard except that we cannot talk, as a beginning. Let us talk. Even just as a beginning. What is that. There isni a beginning. There is no beginning. You cannot discover a beginning. No beginning exists. There arent any at all. There are two blokes in quicksand with cudgels belaying each other. There are two blokes one of whom is the ignorant Gavin Doyle from Cadder man and the other the ignorant or not ignorant man who may or may not be from Pakistan.

  Meanwhile the wee boy is in intensive care.

  He is the beginning. And after that there isnt anything. I dont matter and you dont matter. Nobody else matters. Not even the wee boy’s parents. None of us matters at all. Fucking ignorance and warped brains and diverse corrupting forces in the name of fucking shit and fucking swamping keech, keech and fucking shite and soiled semen and blood that is congealed.

  Fine. Fine. I dont have any doubts. My doubts ceased a long while ago. I am fine. I am in instrument of all that is fine and far-sighted. I receive almost twice as much of the provender of survival as do my brother and sister-in-law and nephew and niece all rolled up into one neat bundle. And we are all to be at one, yes, at peace, reconciled, fully. Says who? Says me. I say it. I say to my big brother, dont for fuck sake do what you are doing but listen to me as an equal and let us talk to each other, and in that talking we shall be finding the way ahead.

  What a pile of fucking shite! What a pile of absolute gibbers! The very idea that such forms of conflict can be so resolved! This is a straight bourgeois intellectual wank. These liberal fucking excesses taken to the very limits of fucking hyping hypocritical tollie.