Remedy is None

by William McIlvanney

  He left a tip under his saucer and excused himself from the elderly woman’s eyes. Coming out, he told the waitress that she would find the usual few roubles under his plate, and she said, ‘Thank you, comrade.’

  Outside, the sun had upped a few degrees and managed to take the icicle out of the air. Spring was under rehearsal and Charlie had a sudden desire to look on for a little while. He decided he would take the roundabout way to his destination so that he could go through the park. On the way he bought a newspaper as if it were a ticket entitling him to sit in the park among other people. He felt the need of some badge of normalcy to hide behind.

  The park was enjoying its first crop of tentative flowers and perennial people. A few groups of school-children were blowing about like puff-balls. Two of them were noisily taming the stone lions at the top of the steps. Four or five Indians stalked each other round the rhododendron bushes, discharging soundless arrows. Charlie found a bench about half-way up the slope, facing down into the central bowl of the park. Almost at once an old man came to sit at the other end of the bench. His rheumy eyes were veined like marble and they stared as impassively on the scene below him. Only the mouth that puffed at his pipe proclaimed life in thin wisps like smoke from a distant fire. Charlie made only a brief show of reading his paper before he rested it on his knees and let his attention drift over the park. The number of people about was surprising when you considered that the weather was still cool enough for a coat.

  Below Charlie and near the bottom of the slope there was a group of factory girls sitting on the grass. They would be from the mill just across the river from the park. They sat wearing buttoned-up coats and head-squares, tonight’s waves foretold in curlers. They gestured freely, raucously dismembering reputations, blobs of primary colour against the pastel shades of the park. Some of the remarks they threw at each other splashed as far as Charlie.

  ‘Aw her! A wee spew!’

  ‘Thinks she’s goat a catch wi’ thon yin.’

  ‘If ye skint ’im, ye widny get a poat o’ soup oot ’im.’

  ‘The wey she speaks tae!’

  ‘Ah ken. Needin’ her tongue scrapit.’

  ‘Ah canny stick ’er! She’s that bloody common!’

  On the terrace above Charlie, a young woman was pushing a large new pram, airing her baby. She leaned forward frequently, mouthing into the raised hood and fussing with the covers. On a bench along from him, a schoolboy sat in pubescent conclave with a schoolgirl. They had grown together furtively. The boy’s left arm was 4 draped casually round her shoulder, innocent as a frond, but the hand to it disappeared under the collar of her blazer, rooted in something more serious. Her right arm was invisible beneath his blazer. Their heads touched fractionally and from time to time they kissed quickly when the park wasn’t looking. Watching them tied in their secret love-knot, Charlie remembered the exquisite agony of adolescence as if he was as old as the man beside him. Condoning their conspiracy, he was careful to look away.

  Down in the bowl of the park, some apprentices were playing football. The game had been going on for some time and was beginning to lose its impetus. It had reached the stage where one of them, having been beaten in a tackle, lay down, plucked himself a piece of grass, and started to barrack the others. One of his team-mates went over to try to hector him to his feet and was pulled down himself. They wrestled on the grass, a thresh of boilersuits and tackety boots. There were other signs of a certain lack of team spirit until somebody shouted, ‘Next goal wins!’ and the game was galvanized briefly into mock intensity. The wrestlers jumped to their feet. There was much shouting and running and pulling of overalls. Just when one team was running in for a certain goal, one of the opposing defenders brilliantly saved the day by running ahead to steal the jackets that served as goalposts. He re-established their goal a good thirty yards from the danger zone, and half-way up the hill. The game came to an end when somebody booted the ball out of distance of their energy. They sprawled in a sweating huddle on the grass, talking. One of them said something and they all looked towards the factory girls, laughing. There was a short consultation and two of them rose, stretching casually. They walked away to retrieve the ball and returned at a jog-trot, passing it between them. As they drew level with their friends, one of them kicked it very deliberately into the group of girls. They squawked and raised their legs as if there was a mouse among them. The apprentices, watching proceedings from ground-level, cheered. One of the girls jumped up, seized the ball angrily, and threw it away as far as she could, only to see it roll back down the hill to the feet of the boy who had kicked it, symbolizing how effective her indignation was. The apprentices cheered again. Then they struggled to their feet, disputed the ownership of jackets, and went off, throwing the ball among them and laughing at unheard comments.

  Charlie watched them until they were out of the park. Something about their casual assurance fascinated him. Recently he had developed an almost awe-struck admiration for the trivial encounters between people that he witnessed. They seemed so certain about everything. On street corners, in cafés, in cinemas, he had become an onlooker, a hanger-around of places where people met, observing their poise. The past fortnight had taught him to savour other people’s enjoyment, to be a connoisseur of ordinariness. The sort of flippant confidence that he had taken for granted in himself such a short time ago now filled him with wonder simply because he no longer possessed it. It had forsaken him completely and looked mockingly at him from other people. And what did he have in its place? A need that denied his right to be self-satisfied, an injustice that demanded utterance. A dark insistence. And a key. He sat with his hand clenched round it, giving resolution time to muster. By the time he rose, the park had lost most of its people. The boy and girl had unravelled and were gone. The young woman had disappeared with her pram. The small boys had stabled their horses for the afternoon. The factory girls had returned to the mill, leaving a patch of flattened grass that the breeze, like a fussy housewife, was already fluffing back to shape. Only the old man remained, to lift Charlie’s paper when he left and peer at it through his one-legged spectacles.

  Charlie went over the bridge out of the park and crossed the empty lot. He had his key out as he reached the big double doors of the lock-up. But as he touched the half that held the lock, he found that it was open. The hinges hawked with rust as he pulled it ajar. Light infiltrated the gloom ineffectually, an unsuccessful assault. He went in and the door swung shut behind him, nudging him into the dark like the head of some docile animal. He stood waiting while his eyes came to terms with this contradiction of the sharp incisive sunlight outside. Gradually the amorphous darkness solidified into form. The walls drifted into shape and objects floated to the surface like men seven days drowned.

  It seemed strange that he should have been almost frightened to come into this place. It was simply an old lock-up, very dusty, very overcrowded, but still completely commonplace. The central area was occupied by a van, single-coated with a maroon paint that did not quite obliterate the vague outlines of fruit beneath it. Near the door was a tool case with the fading initials J. A. on it. Jack Anyone. On top of the case sat a Gladstone bag with a broken handle. Beyond them and just visible round the van, the metal of a freezer showed dully, cancered with green mould. From a hook on the wall above it was draped an overall. One comer was divided into two sections by a couple of empty orange-boxes placed one on top of another. One section was heaped to overflowing with gas masks from which the metal had been removed. The other section was empty. Two treadless rubber tyres improvised a seat at the side of the van and Charlie sat down on them.

  It might seem quite unmoving, but Charlie knew why he had avoided it, and what he felt now justified his reluctance. The experience was as eerie as being alone in a dark sarcophagus. This place seemed as sombre and remote from what was going on outside as the vault of someone dead for centuries, whose only memorials were these ridiculous emblems of the materialism which he had served. I
t should have been thrown open to the public. Charlie could have labelled every object in it, each one representing a pathetic dream. These were the toys with which a man had been stunted, the means of preventing him from realizing his own manhood. They were what Charlie had not wanted to face, the utter shame of what his father had become, the pointless suffering he had been subjected to until he had capitulated and betrayed himself, recanting his faith in himself and accepting the identity they gave him. Everything here was a refined instrument of torture and, thinking of each one, Charlie relived his father’s pain. He felt how considerable it must have been, because he knew that his father had been by nature sanguine and self-sufficient, and his despair must have been wrung from him with great difficulty. It must have been a truly difficult thing to achieve. But they had achieved it. They had done it with absolute thoroughness and commendable discretion. All that were left were these innocuous fragments that could be related to no one but himself. What was there here that could indict anyone else? Who was to be blamed for this? Who would pay for it? Who was guilty?

  An accidental answer came in the scuffling of feet in the yard outside. The door opened and closed, and the dim figure of a man stood just inside the lock-up. He was swaying slightly and his breathing was noisy, with a hint of slaver in it. Small sounds of content came from him. ‘Oh, aye,’ he was saying to himself. ‘Aye, aye. Right, then.’ He was carrying a bottle and he crossed towards Charlie. He was almost on top of him when he suddenly halted, seeing him for the first time.

  ‘Hullo, Mick,’ Charlie said.

  Mick blinked and looked at the bottle, as if he thought Charlie had emerged from it.

  ‘Who the hell’s that?’ he asked himself, bending closer. ‘Aw, it’s yerself, Charlie.’

  At once Mick seemed to sober a little, as if he had been douched with cold water. He straightened himself and his eyes came into focus, glinting warily in the gloom.

  ‘Whit are ye doin’ here, Charlie?’ he asked, and his voice had become careful. He put down the bottle of cheap wine beside the van.

  ‘Ah just thought Ah wid look in,’ Charlie said, watching him steadily. He saw Mick’s eyes flick towards the corner where the gas-masks lay. He suddenly understood the open door and the emptiness of one part of that corner. What he was thinking must have registered on his face, for Mick became belligerent.

  ‘Whit’s yer feyther been tellin’ ye?’ His voice crackled with aggression. ‘If it’s aboot the metal aff thae gas-masks, ye’re not on. That wis a’ mine. The lot. Ah stripped them all when yer auld man wis lyin’. He never struck a blow. They’re sold. Ah’ve just been gettin’ rid o’ the rubber there. That’s the last of it, there. The metal’s delivered an’ paid for. Tae me. Nobody’s due anythin’. Not a coorie. Yer feyther had nothin’ tae dae wi’ it.’

  ‘Ye’re a liar,’ Charlie said.

  Mick leaned over, jabbing his finger in Charlie’s face, seconded by the drink.

  ‘Say that again an’ Ah’ll brek yer back. Think because ye’re a college boy, we’ll let ye aff wi’ that? Ah’ll learn ye a lesson right enough. Wan that ye’ll no’ get in yer books.’ Holding up a mace of knuckles, ‘Five-finger exercise. Is that no’ whit they call it?’ He paused, his breath like a blow-torch on Charlie’s face. ‘Now, Ah don’t ken whit John’s been tellin’ ye – God rest ’is soul. But Ah ken whit Ah’m tellin’ ye. Ah’m tellin’ ye there’s no’ a brass farthin’ o’ that money cornin’ tae you or anybody like you. It’s no’ ma style tae speak ill o’ the dead. Let them rest in peace. That’s ma motto. Rest in peace. Ah canny imagine that yer feyther wid try tae pull a fast yin like that. Ah fancy you’re tryin’ to paddle yer ain canoe here. Well, ye’re up the creek. An’ if it wis yer feyther that put ye up to this. An’ if he did tell ye that some o’ the money wis his, then he’s a liar. A rotten liar an’ a cheap-skate.’

  Charlie rose under the impetus of his own blow. Mick blocked it and split Charlie’s cheek with his counter, knocking him against the wooden wall of the lock-up. Before Charlie could recover, Mick had butted him with his head but made only partial connection, drawing a thread of blood from his nose. Blinded, Charlie caught Mick and closed with him. They grappled in a stalemate of strength for some seconds, heaving for vantage. Charlie’s knee pistoned twice into Mick’s groin, and he felt him sag. Feeling the deadlock break, Charlie slung him against the van and strung him up with punches, refusing to let him fall. His anger held Mick there desperately, keeping the valve open on itself until it should be exhausted. Charlie embedded his fists in Mick’s stomach, following his buffeted body round the front of the van until a flurry of punches threw it against the door, which swung wide open, pitching Mick out into the day like a corpse thrown up from a grave, a portent in the sunlight.

  Mick lay motionless for some time. Charlie stood watching him while the mist compounded of pain and anger cleared away from his eyes. Mick stirred painfully, groaning, and levered himself almost into a sitting position. His head turned and he was sick, on the ground and on himself. Then he sank back into his own vomit.

  All at once Charlie felt overwhelmingly revolted. What was he doing venting his anger on a man who was pushing fifty and fuddled with drink? What did he care about a little scrap metal or who owned it? Why should he exact payment from this travesty of a man? He was as much a victim as Charlie’s father had been, his life reduced to little windfalls like this one, small financial killings that bought a few glassfuls of oblivion, gave him the company of a bottle. The same thing that had made his father believe devoutly in his own failure had made this man what he was, a scavenger, a gatherer of crumbs. He wore the same uniform as Charlie’s father had, the livery of defeat. He was friend, not foe.

  Mick groaned again on a rack of movement, striving to get up. Charlie went over and bent to help him.

  ‘Come on, Mick,’ he said. ‘Come on.’

  ‘Get away from me. Ya bastard,’ Mick said, whimpering with pain and humiliation.

  He rose unaided, with anguished dignity, biting on his pain. Hobbling over to the wall, he went off slowly, his hand propping him up against the stone.

  Charlie felt terribly alone and the waste lot seemed to stretch indefinitely in all directions.

  Chapter 9

  SHE HELD HIS ARMS IMMOBILIZED IN A CASUAL LOCK, one of those courting holds that Nature forwards free with menstruation. It was a truce of the kind that punctuates such engagements, during which energies are restored in comparative stillness. Only his right hand made fitful, restricted movements around her breasts, like a bored sniper. She suffered no loss of calmness from it. The same campaign had been fought often enough before, strengths had been tested, tactics resolved into a pattern, and a measure of mutual understanding realized. It was more a matter of exhibiting honourable endeavour than of seeking complete success. The customary concessions had been granted towards the satisfaction of honour. Her blouse had been separated from her skirt and three of its five buttons had yielded. His left hand had gained the top of her thigh, but only outside her skirt. She was even relaxed enough to let the hem of her skirt remain turned up, a permissible laxity, like open gates in a city, the citadel of which has been proved impregnable. From past experience, she knew that no further ground would be lost. In any case, there wasn’t time.

  She tried to squint round his head, without moving her own, at the clock on the mantelpiece. She knew how offended he would become if he was aware that she was allowing such mundane considerations to come between her and his attentions. The tip of the minute hand appeared round the lobe of his ear like a diffident conspirator, pointing to four. He could stay barely ten minutes longer. It was a pity. Her neck relaxed back into communion with his cheek. With some surprise, she realized from the position of the clock in relation to herself that they were lying on the couch. Their running battle had started by the fireside. She tried to retrace the line of pursuit that had cornered her here. But it had been lost in that blackout to external things that lust uses to foc
us concentration on itself. She wondered a little at her ability to forget everything so easily and it occurred to her that she should perhaps be ashamed of being able to forget so soon, even for a little while. She tried to feel guilty, but it was an empty gesture, carrying no conviction.