Remedy is None

by William McIlvanney

  The bar itself had undergone some modification due to its offshoot, so that its old robust identity was somewhat compromised. Patrons swore in a lower key. New formica tables had been introduced to various parts of the room, making it look like the lounge’s poor relation. They had installed a television set in which grey figures gestured mutely behind a barricade of beery voices. The dart board had been relegated to a symbolically tight corner, just one remove from the window. And behind the extended bar was displayed a new cosmopolitan hierarchy of exotic drinks, venerable whiskies of ancient ancestry standing beside parvenu vodkas and alien brandies, while the wines and liqueurs ranged above them jostled for precedence. But most of these drinks were for transportation to the lounge. In the bar the most popular drink was still, as it had always been, the draught beer, pulled up manfully on the pumps in cloudy pints. It imparted to *hose who drank it its ancient secret brand of expletive philosophy and wet-mouthed argument, so that the bar still retained some of its old earthy vigour.

  And this was especially true at week-ends. During the rest of the week, the lounge seemed to succeed in imposing its atmosphere of restraint upon the bar. But on Fridays and Saturdays, the air was so laden with exhaled spirits, alcoholic and merely human, was so thick with the smoke of cigarettes and obscure argument, that nothing could have properly subdued it, not even the presence of Gowdie himself. And on such nights Gowdie was not anxious to subdue it. Gowdie was a big-boned and bluff man, body and limbs put together roughly in powerful slabs. He was by nature choleric. The air of camaraderie he assumed was strictly professional, as formal as a buttonhole and liable to wilt at the first whiff of trouble. He measured people according to their pockets. You rated as high with him as your rate of exchange and your friendship ended with your money. But on this night, since it was Saturday, the spendthrift of the week, three figures in the credit column, he was playing mine jovial host, hail-fellow-well-spent, and his laughter rang out regularly like a cash register. He walked amiably about the place, dropping remarks like receipts on this group and that, supervising expenditure, and keeping an eye to the waiters who scurried back and forth to the lounge with trays that brimmed with liquid money.

  His face clenched as if he was wrestling with a thrombosis when a young man stood up suddenly in the path of one of these waiters and nearly spilled a couple of quid on to the floor.

  ‘Ah’m sorry, Mac,’Jim said to the waiter. ‘Ah nearly made ye swallow yer tray.’

  The waiter nodded brusquely and went past. Gowdie’s face relaxed into a spurious smile.

  ‘Ah better watch that,’Jim said to Charlie and Andy. ‘That stuff’s too valuable to baptize the floor wi’. Well then, gents? Same again?’

  ‘Thanks, Jim,’ Charlie said.

  ‘Wait a minute now,’ Andy said. ‘Ah’m thinking we’ll be after haffing a drap o’ the dimple forbye, Jamie my lad. Just for to whet whur whistles, you understand.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Jim. ‘An’ I’m thinking you’ll be after halfing me with the bill, Andrew my friend.’

  ‘All right, all right.’ Andy dropped his Highland accent under pressure. ‘Three doubles an’ we’ll split the damage.’ Jim returned with the whiskies in a few moments, but had to go back to supervise the drawing of the pints.

  Charlie drank off what was left of his pint and gave the glass to Jim to take back with him. The beer was winning all right. The first couple of pints had seemed to be absorbed almost at once into his porous sadness. But now his thoughts were beginning to drift aimlessly in a gentle wash of beer, tugged lazily back and forth by the talk of Andy and Jim and the other activities in the bar. He was seeing things with a cool and casual clarity, and his mind was lazily treading water like a swimmer in a sheltered moonlit bay where every landmark is familiar and the winking lights ashore are each one known to him and signal that he is safe. He saw Gowdie, a constant presence in the bar, his attention sweeping the room at regular intervals like a lighthouse beam. He saw Jim easing his way towards them, holding aloft two pints.

  ‘Dinna ye hear it, dinna ye hear it?’ Jim said. ‘The pipes at Lucknow sound.’

  When Jim had brought across the third pint and sat down, Andy raised his whisky glass.

  ‘A toast,’ he said. ‘To such natives as prove friendly tonight.’

  ‘May they also prove good-looking,’ Jim added.

  ‘Hell, you want jam on both sides of yer toast, right enough,’ Andy said.

  Charlie and Jim downed their whiskies in a oner, while Andy sipped and savoured, holding his glass like a yellow nugget to the light.

  ‘Please, dear proles,’ he said. ‘Don’t gulp. Your palates could sue you for assault and battery. You’ve got to woo each taste bud individually, not rape the bleeders en masse. That’s the worst o’ the Union Bar up at university. No spirits. Beer, lager, and cider. Ye jist canny achieve the full symphonic inebriation on that lot. Ye need the contrapuntal thingamijig of the more subtler spirits. Ye just canny do it wi’ beer on its Todd. It’s like tryin’ to play the ’cello without a bow.’

  ‘Aye,’ Jim agreed. He was consciously attempting to regain sobriety because he sensed the direction in which Andy was heading and he knew the need to be serious was at hand. ‘This is better. It’s just no’ the same in the Union. No wonder the clients is going elsebit. The place is gettin’ derelict.’

  ‘Aye, aye,’ said Andy. ‘What wi’ the absence o’ spirits and then the absence o’ Charlie. Times is bad.’

  ‘Aw leave ma heart in one bit, Andy,’ Charlie said. ‘Ye’ll have me watering ma beer. Gowdie’ll report me tae the Brewers’ Union.’

  ‘No, but jokin’ and kiddin’ aside, Charlie.’ Jim was doing his hazy best to put on his ‘fidus Achates’ expression. ‘When are ye comin’ back up, man? Ah mean it’s no’ the same without ye.’

  ‘Aye right, Jim,’ Charlie said. ‘My gums bleed for you. Naw, Ah’ve got no plans in that direction.’

  ‘But why no’, Charlie?’ Andy leaned forward concernedly, beer sketching the gesture into caricature, so that he looked like a doctor in an advertisement. All he needed was a pair of glasses in his hand with which to tap knowledgeably. ‘Why do ye say that? What do ye have against it?’

  ‘Ah’ve got nothing against it.’ Charlie shrugged, contemplating his beer. ‘Ah just don’t have any notion o’ goin’ back up, that’s all.’

  ‘Is it because o’ the money side of it?’Jim asked. ‘Because if ye see about it, ye must be due for a bigger grant because of, ye know, what happened.’

  ‘Naw, naw. Ah’m no’ exactly neck-an’-neck wi’ Aristotle Onassis right enough. But Ah haven’t really thought about it from that angle at all.’

  Andy was nodding, wise in years and hops, waiting his chance to proceed with the diagnosis.

  ‘Is it because of – what happened to yer father, Charlie?’ he asked gently. His expression was expectant as a doctor’s probing a pain, and his eyes asked, ‘Does that hurt?’

  Charlie shuffled slightly in his chair – as if he was skewered uncomfortably on the remark.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Ah suppose it is. Aye.’

  Andy paused on the kerb of his next remark, like someone letting a cortege go past, before he took a deep breath of philosophy and went on.

  ‘Well, Ah suppose Ah know how ye must feel, Charlie,’ he said. ‘Ah mean it must be quite a thing to have to take. Especially wi’ somebody like yer father or mother. Ye live that close to them all the time. It’s the kind of relationship that’s tacit. Ye just grow into it. Ah mean there’s no time when ye have to work at it consciously. Ye get to feel as if it’s always goin’ to be there. But it isn’t. That’s the way it is, Charlie. Ah mean ye just can’t spite yerself because of it. It may be corny, Charlie, but, after all, what’s happened to yer father happens to everybody.’

  ‘Naw, but it’s no’ just that he died, Andy. There’s a bit more than biology involved. Fair enough. So he died. But it was the way he died an’ everything about it. Ah don�
��t know. But it shouldny have been like that. Ah mean ye’ve no way of realizin’ what he musta felt like before he died. Nobody could ever know what that man musta felt. Ah mean, me. Ah’m his son, an’ Ah just didn’t know ’im. What a waste it was! The good things in ’im that were wasted. That’s what gets me when Ah think of ’im. . . .’

  Suddenly Charlie was talking fluently about his father. Mysteriously it had happened. A series of things, his mood, the night, the beer, the place, the talk of Andy and Jim, had all come together in the right million-to-one sequence, and it was as if someone should fiddle long and futilely with a safe and then for no apparent reason should hit the combination. Without warning and without Charlie’s understanding why or how, the click came and it swung open. He was bringing out many things about his father and showing them to Andy and Jim. He was talking about incidents from the past, some serious, some humorous, about the things his father talked of, about how he remembered his uncle Sanny, about the great egg-breaking contest, about habitual sayings his father had. He ranged from the serious to the comic, was nostalgic and thoughtful and laughing by turns, and Andy and Jim listened well, put in appropriate comments and seemed to appreciate the things he was saying. They formed their own closed circuit of conversation and attention, oblivious to the rest of the bar. They made a little private moment among them, and Charlie found an ease and naturalness in it that he hadn’t known for a long time. He talked at length and bought another round of beers and whiskies and talked some more. And while he talked the pain and bewilderment seemed to ease out of him like pus.

  When he had got it out of himself, they let a pleasant and unstrained silence rest for a time like a poultice on his revelations and Andy bought another round and they all talked sensibly round the situation, comparing attitudes. Jim’s mother had died when he was very young and he explained how he had really been too young to understand fully what was going on. He remembered mainly the oppressive need for quietness that had preceded her dying and in his memory the images of his relatives’ eyes, watery with sympathy, suddenly overtaking him at his self-absorbed activities, alternated with those of forefingers being put to lips. He said that even after her death he had for a long time moved about the house on perpetual tip-toe, especially in the dusty rooms upstairs, as if he was frightened to waken her from a sleep. But he admitted it wasn’t the same as losing a parent when you were old enough to appreciate what was happening and feel just what it meant.

  Both of Andy’s parents were alive, but he made up for this deficiency by talking of how his feelings might be similar to Charlie’s in the same circumstances. He tried to explain what his relationship with his father meant to him and the things about him he would miss most if he died, as if he was making out a blue-print of prospective grief.

  The situation was to some extent ridiculous. Beer had so clouded that mirror of self-consciousness in-built in everyone that they couldn’t see their own ludicrousness. Here they sat like a panel appointed to draw up the definitive attitudes to grief, The Handbook of Filial Piety. They were somehow like boys telling each other secrets momentously trivial. But alcohol was not the only component in the situation, nor was the ludicrous its only dimension.

  Sentiment and beer and indulgence might have gone into its composition but out of them had grown something genuine. The feeling of community they had among them was real, so that in their mouths dead cliches vibrated for a moment into life, were reaffirmed instantly by their exact correspondence to the thoughts of those who heard them.They met together on common ground, and Charlie continued to feel a genuine affinity that counteracted his sense of isolation, his sense that he was someone alone with a private problem. They were three young men on a Saturday night, talking to each other. The feeling of identity was so strong among them that when the conversation came round again under Andy’s direction to university, Charlie was able to join in and at least talk about his reasons for not going back. The only excuse he could think of was that he had already missed too much work. As soon as he had made that admission, Andy became more animated.

  ‘Ah, but ye don’t have to worry about that, Charlie,’ he said.

  ‘Ah don’t see how ye arrive at that, Andy, Charlie countered. ‘It wid be pretty well impossible just to take up where Ah left off. It’s no’ just a matter o’ missin’ a few weeks’ work. Ah’ve missed a coupla class exams in the time Ah’ve been off as well.’

  ‘Calm yerself, youth,’ Andy said. ‘You are reckoning without yours truly, the poor man’s Clarence Darrow. I have been arguing your case for you. Only this week Ah dropped a bug in the esteemed lug of your august tutor –’

  ‘Ye spoke to Ramsey?’

  ‘How did ye guess? Ye must have secret information. Naw, but Ah did, Charlie. Ah told ’im the circumstances. An’ Ah quizzed ’im about the class exams. He’s definitely on your side, Charlie. He reckons he can virtually guarantee ye your class ticket in English. Yer first term exam was good enough on its Todd. He says he wid also put in a word for ye wi’ the history department as well. He wants to see ye, himself. How about that, Charlie? Fair enough?’

  ‘Pretty good, right enough.’

  ‘Well how about it, Charlie?’ Jim was insistent. ‘What about Monday? Get right in there.’

  ‘Are ye gemme?’ Andy asked.

  Charlie was hesitant. But the eager optimism reflected in the faces of Andy and Jim made it seem churlish to refuse. And the beer was prompting him to share their optimism.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Monday it is.’

  Andy and Jim cackled triumphantly, slapping Charlie’s shoulders. The mood created by Charlie’s answer completed the work of the beer. Drunkenness was now in order. Jim was the first to fall. Delight unclicked the safety-catch and seven pints and three doubles seemed to explode in him simultaneously. He banged the table obstreperously and blew an invisible hunting-horn. Gowdie materialized beside the table, his face forcing itself into a constipated smile. Jim nearly swallowed his hunting-horn. Andy nodded reassuringly to Gowdie and he hovered off.

  ‘Aye, come on,’ Charlie said. ‘Let’s get out before Gowdie goes for his six guns.’

  They all rose noisily and were heading for the door when Jim suddenly stopped them.

  ‘Wait a minute, though,’ he said. ‘We have forgot the traditional cairry-oot. The entrance-fee to Eddie’s is a bottle.’

  ‘Jeez aye,’ Andy said.

  They crowded round the bar, jostling their way in to make their choice. Now Gowdie appeared behind the bar, with a smile as wide as his wallet.

  ‘Yes, gentlemen. Can I help you?’

  They looked at the glittering array of bottles.

  ‘Have ye anything for a penny?’ Jim said.

  ‘Ye’ve got to choose carefully here,’ A.ndy said. ‘It all depends on how dishonourable yer intentions are. Sherry for a wee bit slap-and-tickle. Liqueur for the heavy necking. An’ whisky if ye really mean business.’

  ‘Ah’ll have a case o’ whisky,’ Jim said. ‘A half-bottle o’ Bell’s please.’

  ‘Here, Andy,’ Charlie said. ‘Ah’ll get your bottle. You got an extra round of drinks there. Ye’re throwin’ yer money about like a man wi’ nae arms.’

  ‘Think nothin’ of it,’ Andy said. ‘Ah’ll get it. The old man had the fixed odds up the day. An’ he slipped me a coupla quid on the strength of it. Then Jim an’ me had a wee double up with our turf accountant. You are hobbing and also nobbing with men of some substance.’

  Charlie bought whisky too and Andy took vodka.

  ‘Now,’ said Andy. ‘If youse will accompany me to the toilet, I will show youse something to your advantage.’

  ‘Right,’Jim said. ‘We’ll go to the lounge one as being more sedater and more suited to men of our calibre.’

  In the lounge toilet Andy supplied each of them with a small square packet.

  ‘I trust, gentlemen,’ he said, debonairly arching one eyebrow, ‘that you are fully cognizant of the wee contrivances that is contained
in these packages? And that I need not instruct you as to their application to the human anatomy?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Jim said. ‘The only thing is, Ah have an exceptionally big forefinger. Ah just hope this fits it.’

  They went out through the lounge with a lot of laughing and jostling. Jim lagged behind in the toilet, so that Andy and Charlie were out in the street before he came through the lounge. On the way out, he brushed against a man at one of the tables and went on without an apology.

  The man looked after him briefly. When he turned back round, the woman with him was smiling at him.

  ‘Temper, temper,’ she said.

  ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘I was just thinking it’s an awkward age. Don’t you think it’s about time we went up?’

  ‘In a minute,’ she said, thoughtfully sipping her drink.