Remedy is None

by William McIlvanney

  ‘Ah don’t know, Elizabeth,’ he said. ‘It’s something Ah don’t even understand maself. But Ah didn’t mean what Ah said. Honest. Ah’m sorry.’

  She sat away from him and rubbed at the tear-tracks round her eyes.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘That’s not what Ah meant. It’s no’ just that. It’s everything. Why are ye no’ going back up to the university?’

  ‘Ah don’t know. There just doesny seem to be any point to it any more. There’s just no reason for goin’ back.’

  ‘Don’t say that, Charlie. Don’t say that. Of course there is. There’s lots of reasons.’

  It was a simple statement of faith, and one that she could not on the spot justify rationally. But she knew who could.

  ‘Charlie. John wants to see you. He wants to have a talk with you.’

  Her words sank into the silence of the room, across the surface of which the clock still fluttered its fly-wings of sound.

  ‘Charlie. Will ye do it? Will ye go up an’ see John? He wants to talk things over with you.’

  Well, it was what he had wanted. The company of others. So here it was – a cordial invitation. Why not? He had learned already that what troubled him was not something it was easy to talk about, but perhaps talking with John would help him to see things more clearly. Perhaps this moment of accidental objectivity that he had found with Elizabeth could be repeated with John.

  ‘All right, Elizabeth,’ he said. Something prompted him to commit himself more definitely while he was still in the mood. ‘Ah’ll go up the night. Right after ma tea.’

  ‘Oh, good, Charlie. Thanks.’ Elizabeth felt as if she had been granted a real favour, and the concession created an appetite for more. ‘There’s just wan other thing, Charlie. Mary was up the night.’

  The statement masked a question. But Charlie’s stillness in the dark suggested no answer.

  ‘She was nearly greetin’, Charlie. She wanted tae see ye.’

  Somebody simulated maniacal laughter outside in the street and it was followed by a clatter of running feet and the whoops of mock pursuit.

  ‘Ah had to do something, Charlie.’

  Elizabeth was edging towards the point where she would have to just close her eyes and jump.

  ‘Ah said ye would see her on Friday night. Seven o’clock. Outside McPartlin’s.’

  She had done it. She waited for the jar of landing. But still nothing happened. Charlie’s first instinct was to refuse, but he paused. He remembered burning the letter and the finality he had meant that action to have. Yet it seemed to him now somehow a pathetic gesture, like sticking pins in a clay doll. Mary was present in his life. He couldn’t efface her by destroying her verbal image. Anyway, the physical pleasure he couldn’t help anticipating at the thought of being with her made him wonder if his anger at Elizabeth and Harry wasn’t alloyed with jealousy. It would please Elizabeth if he accepted. He owed her some gesture of apology.

  ‘Friday,’ he said. ‘Ah’ll see her then.’

  ‘That’s great, Charlie.’

  Elizabeth involuntarily touched his cheek and retracted her hand at once, joy in cryptogram. Intuitively, she kept her pleasure to herself, as if to reveal its location externally might make it possible for it to be taken from her.

  She rose and switched on the light. The room, like everything else, was practical again. It was no longer ominous with shadows, but bright with mundanity – a fire whose embers were growing a fur of ash, a window that called for the decency of drawn curtains. She crossed and closed the curtains.

  ‘What’s happened to yer face, Charlie?’ she asked, noticing the bruise for the first time.

  Charlie fingered it self-consciously.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said.

  ‘What is it? Were ye in a fight?’

  ‘It’s nothing, Ah said.’

  She didn’t want to disturb their new-found equilibrium with too many questions.

  ‘Ah’d better mend the fire,’ she said, lifting the pail. ‘It’s like Christmas day in the workhouse.’

  ‘Ah’ll get it,’ Charlie said.

  He took the pail from her and went out to the coal house, foraging in the dark for nuggets to get the fire going again. By the time he had finished and was washing his hands, Elizabeth had made fresh tea and his meal was on the table, with apologies for hors d’oeuvres.

  ‘Ah’m sorry, Charlie. But it’s a bit dry by now. It’s been heatin’ for that long.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘Ah like things done to a turn. Even if it’s an ill yin.’

  As he ate, Charlie enjoyed a sense of respite. The immediate future was at least filled in two places, like the spaces in a diary. Something was being done and that salved his conscience for the moment.

  Through in the living-room, Elizabeth took pleasure in the small sounds that came from the kitchen. The house was being used as a house should be. Everything seemed normal again. She felt a temendous conviction that the worst of it was over. The rest would be a steady return to the old order of things. Charlie’s anger had had the effect of bridging the separation that had been growing between them. Optimism enclosed her thoughts like a halo.

  Suddenly she had an inspiration. Something that would make certainty even surer, turn the key another time on her happiness. She would have to hurry, before Charlie came back through. She went to the bookcase and took out writing-paper and envelopes. A search through the miscellany in the drawer revealed a biro. She felt almost mischievous, as if she were preparing a surprise birthday present for Charlie. After a brief consultation with what she remembered of form, she had her address in the right place. She wondered for a second about their address. But that was all right. It was the same as Charlie’s had been, c/o Mrs Wright. ‘Dear Andy and Jim,’ she wrote. It seemed strange, writing two names like that, as if they were a comedy team, like Laurel and Hardy. But Charlie had always seemed to refer to them in that way, as if they weren’t so much two people as one split personality. She would have to be careful what she wrote. She wouldn’t say too much. Just hint at Charlie’s moodiness and suggest that they might come down and see him. She felt quite daring, as if she was taking command of the whole situation.

  She wondered how she should address it. Messrs. Layburn and Ellis? That sounded as if they were in business together. A. Layburn and J. Ellis. That would do.

  She reinforced the comma after Jim’s name and thought again of how easy it had been to get Charlie to see John and Mary. That was the most hopeful thing of all. His own willingness. The way he had grasped at the opportunity for the meetings endorsed the importance of them.

  She did not realize that straws may look like logs to a man who is drowning.

  Chapter 10

  CHARLIE PRESSED THE BELL AND WAITED ON THE DOOR-step, as diffident as a collector for charity. He felt a little awkward about arriving at the door like this for a hand-out of elder wisdom.

  A brief shower had fallen as he was coming up, and the street steamed slightly under the lamps. They weren’t in any hurry to answer the door. He listened for a moment, but he could only hear vague indecipherable sounds drowned in a burst of gun fire from the television. He waited till the smoke cleared and rang again. This time a voice shouted something, incomprehensible as a newsvendor’s cry, and a sudden thunder of hooves meant that the living-room door had been opened. The hooves reached crescendo as the outside door opened and John peered round it, holding himself in miniature under his arm.

  ‘Aw, it’s yerself, Charlie,’ he said. ‘Welcome tae the madhouse.’

  ‘That’s a sair oxter ye’ve got, John,’ Charlie said, chucking wee John on the cheek.

  ‘Aye. An’ sometimes Ah canny get sleepin’ for it at nights. Hang yer coat up there.’

  The pegs, like everything else in the hall, were new. The house was a re-let and John was systematically obliterating the signs of former tenancy. He had finished decorating the hall and the living-room and was starting on the kitchen.

>   As they went into the living-room, Margaret shouted ‘Hullo’ from the kitchen. The room had that occupied air that the presence of a baby brings. Fender, chairs, and table were no more than improvised billets for the paraphernalia attendant on babyhood. Vests and a nightgown lay in neat array on the table. A pile of laundered nappies was on one chair and on another, one nappy was laid out ready for use. Talcum and cream stood ready by the fire. A rubber mat lay on the hearth rug.

  ‘Just wait till Ah fit Bronco wi’ a silencer,’ John said, crossing to turn down the volume of the television. The horses galloped on in silence.

  ‘An’ how’s the Scarlet Pimpernel the night? Ye’ve been doin’ yer invisible man lately, right enough.’

  ‘Aye, Ah haven’t been about much,’ Charlie conceded.

  ‘About much? Ah thought we were goin’ tae have tae send out the police message. Whitehall 1212 stuff.’

  John was preoccupied with completing the stripping of the baby that Charlie had interrupted. He laid him on the carpet and unpinned his nappy, averting his head from the contents.

  ‘Oh, son. Ye’ll need tae come fae a’ that. That’s inhuman. Ye’ll no’ make many friends that way. Ah’ve heard o’ B.O., but that’s goin’ too far.’

  The baby lay unconcernedly while he was wiped. Then John started to hold him above his head, raising and lowering him while he gurgled regularly like a mechanical toy.

  ‘There he is. Look at ’im,’John said. ‘Five months an’ he hasn’t struck a blow yet. They say they’ve got nothing for ’im at the Broo. He’s still to say a word, too. Definitely backward. Spell “constipation”. Ye can’t, can ye? Well, if ye can’t spell it, what about getting it? Eh? Before the hoose gets condemned.’ A thread of saliva trailed from the baby’s mouth. ‘Ye can see the intelligence looking out ’im though, can’t ye? See the witty way he’s drooling at me there? Ye’ve got a great career ahead of ye, lad. Remember that. The sky’s the limit for you. You could be slaverer to royalty if ye put yer mind to it. Hup, 2, 3, 4. Hup, 2, 3, 4.’

  Margaret came in carrying a large basin steaming faintly with hot water.

  ‘Stop it, John,’ she said. ‘You’ll make ’im sick. An’ how’s Charlie? John. Ah’ve told ye already.’

  She bustled out and back in again, bringing with her a yellow square of foam-rubber that she submerged in the basin. Charlie realized how much she had changed since the baby was born. She had become much more defined as a person, had gained a new authority. The way she went about bathing John junior typified it.

  ‘Ye’re just in time for the big performance, Charlie,’ she said. ‘First house.’

  She spread a towel on her knees, took the baby, and eased him into the water, cooing him into a sense of security. Conversation between John and Charlie was only incidental to the performance that was taking place in front of them. It had that natural rightness about it that makes people look at a flying bird or accord a few minutes’ silent homage to the running of a river. Margaret was no more than an elemental extension of the baby, her hands providing the protection he couldn’t yet give himself. He turned placidly this way and that in her grip, prismatically reflecting pleasure in whatever he was facing, the flames of the fire, his father, the edge of the basin, while the water was laved about him. Dry-docked on his mother’s lap, he lay like an apprentice Michelin man, radiating with wrinkles, while John supplied Margaret with the required articles in turn, muttering tersely as he did so.

  ‘Cream. Talcum. Nappy,’ he said dramatically. ‘Do you think the patient will live, Doctor? Look at it. Isn’t it fantastic the amount of care that’s lavished on the human bum? It’s no’ that it’s a braw thing, either. But that’s all weans are, when ye think of it. A pickle o’ flesh round two openings. Entrance and exit. It’s no’ a human bein’ we’ve got at a’, Margaret. It’s a one-way street for chuck.’

  Margaret was unimpressed by John’s philosophical insight.

  ‘Never mind, son,’ she said. ‘It’s just yer daft daddy talking.’

  Now that he was nappied and nightgowned, hunger came on him like a conditioned reflex. It started as a preliminary wail and was maturing into a howl by the time Margaret had taken the bottle from the fireside, tested the heat of the milk on her wrist, and plugged his mouth with it. The yell transmuted to a gurgle and the gradual lowering of his eyelids registered his progress to satiety. In the silence that ensued, muffled voices could be heard from the television.

  ‘Ye might as well put that off, John,’ Margaret said. ‘There’s no’ much point in leavin’ it like that.’

  ‘Ah like tae get ma money’s worth,’John said. But he went over and switched it off.

  ‘He wid leave it on all night,’ Margaret explained to Charlie. ‘He forgets it’s burnin’ electricity. Because it’s rented, he likes tae get every penny out it. Ah don’t know why ye’ll no’ buy one outright, anyway.’

  ‘Ah’ve telt ye till Ah’m Prussian blue in the face, woman. But ye’ve just got nae grasp of economics. Any repairs needed are done right away. No charge. Any new model that comes on the market, Ah can get it. When colour television comes in, Ah just get them tae install it. It’s the best thing since bottled beer.’

  It was an attitude that was typical of John. He was one of those people who like to surround themselves with very definite attitudes to everything, to whom manhood is a sort of masonic intimacy with practical things, discernible in the conviction with which you express yourself on the workings of a car or the way you talk about women. It could be recognized in revelatory flashes, code messages that could range from the telling of a joke to the stubbing of a cigarette, and it presupposed a common philosophy that knew what it was all about. John liked to feel that he knew the right way of everything, down to how to tie a parcel.

  ‘It’s no’ the same as it bein’ yer own,’ Margaret said. ‘Anyway, Ah’ll need tae get yer heir to his cot. If ye wid make yerself useful for once.’

  Charlie sat feeling superfluous while Margaret put the baby to his bed and John cleared up in the living-room. Their simple reoccupation mermerized Charlie. They epitomized themselves. Everything had its place. This night, like every other, was a series of small things to be done. Their lives were limited to themselves and the house and the baby. They needed nothing else. The world was reduced to these practical dimensions and nothing extraneous could come at them except via these routes. When Margaret came back, she lifted a pile of freshly washed clothes and excused herself to the kitchen to do her ironing. She was tactfully leaving John and Charlie free to talk. John came back in and closed the living-room door.

  ‘Did ye notice the hall, Charlie?’John asked, settling back down by the fire.

  ‘Aye, John. It’s very smart.’

  ‘Once Ah get the kitchen done, Ah can really get into the garden. There’s always something. No rest for the wicked.’

  He was pretending not to relish it, but that was really what he wanted to have, a kind of Forth Bridge of trivial household tasks, so that by the time he got to the end it would be necessary to start at the beginning again. It was like knowing that he could never become redundant as a person. He was going to be needed here as far as he could foresee. It was a good, safe feeling.

  Charlie gave him a cigarette.

  ‘Well then,’John said, giving him a light from a strip torn off a newspaper, a habit inherited from his father. 4 An’ when are ye goin’ back up to the uni., Charlie?’

  ‘Ah didn’t know Ah was,’ Charlie said.

  ‘Aw, don’t give us that, man. Can ye give me one reason why ye shouldn’t?’

  Charlie could think of a coffinful. But they weren’t easy to articulate.

  ‘If it’s money,’John said, anticipating what to him was the most logical answer, ‘ye’ll surely get a bigger grant after whit’s happened. An’ ye could work spare time or something.’

  ‘Aye. Ah suppose Ah could.’

  ‘Well. What then?’

  ‘Ah’ve just got no urge to do it
any more.’

  ‘Why no’, Charlie? Why no’?’

  For Charlie the question metamorphosed into another.

  ‘What dae you think o’ ma feyther’s death, John?’

  The question seemed somehow improper to the practical little room. John saw how things were going. He remembered the scene at the graveside. He felt a bit embarrassed for Charlie. What did these things have to do with them?

  ‘For God’s sake, Charlie. Ah think it was sad. It was very sad. So what?’

  ‘But that’s all you think? Ah mean, it was just sad and that was it?’

  ‘What else is there?’

  ‘Ah don’t know, John. But it seems tae me there must be something. Ye can’t just leave it like this.’

  ‘How not? What else can ye do? Go into mourning for the rest of yer life? What is it with you anyway, Charlie? What’s getting you?’

  ‘Ah just can’t accept it, John. Ah can’t accept it.’

  John reflected momentarily on the hazards of going to university and spending too much time just thinking. It had isolated Charlie from his family. John had felt it before. Now it was as tangible as a wall between them.

  ‘Ye just have to accept it,’John said. ‘That’s it. Everybody dies. What are you goin’ to do about it? Dae ye think ma feyther wants ye tae go about lamenting ’im all yer life? Listen . . .’

  Charlie listened, having to remind himself that this was his brother talking. It was only a few years ago that they had slept in the same bed, sometimes talking on through the night until the sparrows twittered that it was dawn. There had been a time when their thoughts and ideas had been so close that they had spoken in a kind of conversational shorthand. They had told each other so much, had shared experiences, had talked of girls and feelings and ambitions. They had helped to make each other, piecing together the fragments of themselves. Through the long summer holidays of boyhood, in games and in the wild prophetic vauntings that punctuated them, they formed a brotherhood of their own that was more intense than Nature’s. At different stages of their development, the slight disparity in their ages had thrown their relationship out of joint. In childhood, Charlie had been only an embarrassment to John’s freedom, like a tin can on a cat’s tail, a hindrance at his heels when he wanted to play football or climb trees, a parental fifth column betraying the daring of boyhood to his mother, a teller of weepy tales. And again in the early teens, John was already apprenticed to manhood when Charlie was still a collector of skinned knees and preposterous facts, and to whom girls were no more than inadequate boys. But growing up is a cyclic process, and at other times when John lapped Charlie and they travelled some way abreast, they would find their old affinities reaffirmed. In their late teens they seemed to come more closely together than ever and it was like the meeting of old friends who had lost touch with each other. They found the same dreams still existing in each other, purified of their wilder impossibilities, but still reaching for fulfilment. Each restocked his faith in himself from the other’s encouragement. The great things that they wanted were no clearer in outline, but much more imminent, and they were moving towards them together. Then almost casually, incidentally, it seemed, John had got married. And they lost any real contact with each other again.