Remedy is None

by William McIlvanney

  What was happening in Charlie was barely thought. He was not thinking of any particularity. He did not think of his father dead. He did not think of that bitter room, nor of his mother’s desertion, nor of Mary’s thumbscrew of sadness, nor of the girl laughing on the bed, nor of the fleeting faces in the pub, nor of the windy graveyard. All of these things he had taken into himself, had allowed them to take possession of him and convulse him, until they emitted him now into what he was, the result of their interaction upon him. They were not his thoughts. He had become their physical agent. A series of finite situations and thoughts and wonderings had so worked upon him that they had brought him to a state of mind beyond themselves, a consciousness that transcended finite reasons and intentions, existing in its own right.

  As his body brought him nearer to the house, his mind was not engaged in consecutive thought. The motive power of his brain had run to a halt. Reason had guttered, doused, gone out. Thoughts had stilled like icicles. In the void they had left, his consciousness was a slow vertigo, a gently rotating darkness whose blank progress insistently recorded a fixed point ahead like radar oscillations. The point was unseen, unknown, but it was towards this that the feeling in him moved and sought to come. Only this unseen point, whatever it was, mattered, and nothing else registered, so that the familiar markings of his route seemed to bring him on without his awareness. The car parked at the kerb outside the house went unnoticed by him, with its sleek outline and shining chrome and the small flag on the bonnet furled in midnight calm. The path led him up to the door with a key in the lock, and the key took his hand and turned and the house took him in.

  He was alone in the hall, the bland darkness of which showed a scar of light along the bottom of the living-room door. He took off his coat and hung it up, making the familiar sounds with the precision of someone making flag-points on a map, charting his position in time and place. He handled his way from contact to contact across the hall, fingering for the little table until it found his hand. The darkness seemed to absorb movement like a porous surface. He tilted on the crutch of his hand upon the table as he untied his laces, which were damp and impacted with walking. His body maintained the steady ripple of these sounds and contacts like a rope running through his hands, leading him blindly. Like an experienced valet it performed its habitual tasks without prompting. His jacket slid from his shoulders and was held in his hand. Then suddenly the automatic actions of his body were interrupted by an unfamiliar sound, startling in its unexpectedness, a bright flare of conversation, the simultaneous sound of several voices. Without thought, without anticipation, he blundered towards the sound like a moth to light, and pushed open the door of the living-room.

  The scene came to him fragmented, like a torn photograph. There were Elizabeth and Harry, their faces made familiar in the turning of a head, nose, mouth and eyes sketched swiftly into the patterns he knew. Harry acknowledged him with a facial cliche of recognition. But made separate from them by unfamiliarity were two others, a man and woman. The man exuded well-being, was like an advertisement for success from the well-groomed hair to the dark suede shoes. He sat with one leg resting on his other knee in a posture of cultivated youthfulness. The grey hair that flecked his temples looked more an affectation than an effect of age, a decorative addition to his toilette. The left hand resting across his leg, blazoned with gold ring and wrist-watch, held a half-burned cigarette between well-manicured fingernails. His face, like a calendar someone has forgotten to change, still showed a smile that antedated Charlie’s entry. The woman at first glance seemed to come from a page of the same magazine. She wore a smart green fitting suit that carried on one lapel a glittering brooch like a badge of membership to an exclusive club. The total effect, upwards from the trim legs sheathed in nylon, coincided with that of the man, was one of the arrest of the years. The clothes covered her like preservatives, so that an immediate assessment of her age was difficult. But something distinguished her from uniformity with the man. There was a subtle diffidence in her appearance, as if all of her had not been able to subscribe to it fully, but part of her somehow remained aloof from it. It could be seen especially in the face, set in its frame of lacquered hair. It had been carefully made up, but behind the cosmetic mask of assurance the features were set in a habitual expression of uncertainty like a tic. And now, as Charlie looked at her, this tic became intensified. Her expression changed like a broken barometer, worry extinguishing an incipient smile, rue supplanting gladness, each returning to apprehension. It was this uncertainty that enabled Charlie to penetrate the smart appearance and see the person within it. The realization of who she was struck him with guilt, as if he had been betrayed into a moment of cerebral incest. And it made the two halves of the scene all the more incompatible, especially since his understanding was obliged to link them in the improbable connection that the tea-things on the table meant that they had been having tea together. Elizabeth could not have been taking tea with her.

  ‘Hullo, Charlie,’ his mother said quietly.

  His hand dropped the jacket he was holding on to a chair and it slid unnoticed to the floor, assuming an attitude of anguish.

  ‘Hullo, Charlie,’ the man said nicely.

  ‘We’ve just been waiting for you coming in, Charlie,’ his mother went on. ‘We wanted to see you and get a chance to talk to you –’

  ‘Look,’ Charlie heard his own voice saying urgently. ‘You’d better go. Now, on ye go. Just go away. Please. Please go away.’

  He heard his voice acting as intermediary between them and the feeling that was mounting inside him, trying to forewarn them, to keep them away from it. He was aware of a twin consciousness in himself, a strange duality in which a dark part of him, who seemed to welcome the presence of these people here and sought to come at them, existed in conflict with his customary self, that part of his nature which recognized the dangerous provocation of their presence and was concerned to evade the danger. He felt himself locked between these two forces, the latter of which held the upper hand for the moment, strengthened as it was by habit, but how long it could keep its hold he did not know.

  ‘Charlie, Charlie,’ his mother said. ‘Please don’t be like that. Please. I know how you must feel. But at least give us a chance to talk.’

  ‘Talk!’ Listening to her induced in him a series of minor irritations, against her strangeness, her complacence, her politeness of speech. They affected him like an acne and he wanted to scratch them, to counteract their annoyance, so that he spoke with deliberate broadness, interpolating swearwords.

  ‘Whit the hell dae we huv tae talk aboot? Whit the hell did ye come here for, anyway? You’ve nae bloody right tae be in this room.’

  ‘All right, Charlie, all right. I’ll tell you why we came. We came to see you and Elizabeth. Oh, I know what you’re going to say. I should have thought of that a long time ago. Perhaps you’re right. But you know the way things were. What happened between your father and me’s in the past. And it’s better to leave it there. You think I was the villain. All right, maybe I was. But it wasn’t all as black and white as you seem to think. There were reasons for what I did. Reasons you can’t imagine. But I didn’t come here to talk about that. It’s over and done with. Long ago. Charlie, Peter and I want to help you. We’ve talked it over. Peter’s very kind about it and he understands how I feel. He wants to help as well. We could do an awful lot for you. I mean we could help you with the university. You could finish your studies. And we would see that you didn’t have any money worries. And then it’s not good for Elizabeth being herself in the house like this. I mean I don’t see why we should all go on living separate lives like this, as if we’d never heard of each other. You won’t know it, but I tried to send money and things for you before, only your father wouldn’t hear of it. I’m not blaming him. But it was hard for me not knowing how you were getting on, although I always tried to find out as much as I could about you. But after that – what happened – I could never get seeing you. B
ut I don’t see why we can’t all try to understand each other a bit better now. Probably even your father would have wanted it that way. We just want to help you, Charlie. That’s all.’

  She had started talking very quickly to prevent Charlie from interrupting her before she had a chance to explain things properly to him, and then when she had been given a hearing and Charlie surprisingly made no attempt to cut her short, she had continued in a desperate effort to break through his impassivity, casting around her for the phrase that would evoke the response she was hoping for. But when she had talked herself to silence, Charlie still stood silent too. The unreality of the situation was too much for him. Too many strangenesses surrounded him, overgrew this familiar room like foliage, so that he could not see where he was nor what was happening. Here was Elizabeth sitting taking tea with his mother, in this room where she had not set foot for so many years. Here was this man who before this had only existed in his mind as a sort of expletive asterisk, now suddenly created in person for him, daring to appear in complacent flesh in this house. Here was his mother talking to him and explaining why they should all simply carry on together and forget the past. The whole situation was so incredible that he could not answer his mother directly, could not participate in it until he had slowed it all down to his pace, had pruned it to fit his comprehension. He ignored his mother and looked round the room.

  ‘This is very nice,’ he said, like giving a commentary, supplying his laggard understanding with the necessary intelligence. ‘Awfu’ nice. A tea-party. Just a nice wee family group. Daughter and boy friend. Mother and . . . husband. Ye’ve just been sittin’ here havin’ a cup of tea and a talk. Very sociable. An’ ye’ve been waitin’ for the son tae come in tae tell ’im the good news. We’re all tae become one big happy family again.’

  He paused, as if waiting for the full realization of it to catch up with him.

  ‘Well then, Elizabeth,’ he went on quietly. ‘You seem tae be easily won over, don’t ye, hen? Whit did they promise you? Nice frocks and drives in their big car?’ Elizabeth was near to tears, and Harry was looking down at his hands in embarrassment. Elizabeth’s reaction to her mother’s coming here had developed from a simple incompetence to deal with the situation. The tea and the talk had merely been improvisations on an awkward circumstance, delaying tactics until things should resolve themselves into some established form or other. She always tried to act according to the dictates of a straightforward social ethos. But no clause in these ethics covered this eventuality, the arrival of a divorced mother with her second husband. ‘Very nice. That’s more than yer feyther could ever give ye, isn’t it? All he ever did for ye was keep ye alive when yer mither ran away an’ left ye. All he ever did was work an’ scrimp an’ save till they dug ’im under, just tae see that we didny miss onything. But that’s easy tae forget, isn’t it? Ye can forget aboot that when Mother comes back with her car and a brand new man. Ye’ve really got tae be nice tae her. So ye sit them doon an’ give them their tea. Ah hope ye attended tae them with proper care.’

  Inevitably, Mr Whitmore cut Charlie short. If Charlie had been allowed to talk on to himself, it might have given the anger in him a safety-valve. But Mr Whitmore couldn’t listen any longer to his ludicrous monologue.

  ‘All right. Right.’ He almost shouted, on the point of rising. ‘I didn’t come here to listen to your stupid insolence. Now, listen to me –’

  His anger touched off Charlie’s own like igniting gas.

  ‘Naw. You listen, stud bull. You listen to me, fancy man. An’ you, “Mother”. An’ you, Elizabeth. Dae ye no’ see whit they want, Elizabeth? Dae ye no’ see? Oh, they wid like it right enough. They wid like tae help us, all right. That wid make everything fine. Because we wid be condoning whit they did. There wid be naebody left tae say whit they had done, or whit they are. They wid be makin’ up for it. But ye canny make up for it. Ye canny hide whit ye did tae ma feyther. Ye destroyed a man that wis worth baith o’ ye put thegither. Ye destroyed him.’

  ‘Charlie!’ His mother was crying. ‘How can ye talk like that? How can ye?’

  ‘Because Ah see you. Whit ye are. Ah ken why ye come here. An’ it’s no’ wi’ the divine spirit of giving. You’re here tae take. That’s why ye’re here. You want tae get back whit ye lost when ye left us.’

  ‘I don’t see anything here that Jane would miss,’ Mr Whitmore said angrily. ‘Not a thing.’

  ‘Naw, you widny. You don’t see anythin’ unless it’s got a price on it. Ah don’t mean the place. Ah don’t mean us. Ah’m quite sure your good woman managed tae overcome her maternal instincts without too big a struggle. But even she must’ve felt since just whit she did. Have ye no’? You’ve had a long time tae think noo. An’ ye don’t have tae be a deep thinker tae understand you, tae see whit ye did or arrive at why ye did it. You just milked a man until he had nothin’ and then ye left him. With nothin’! Ye waited until he had used himself up and then you turned round and told him it was worth nothin’. An’ ye went tae this! Whit is he? Look at ’im. My God, how could ye dae it? Ah hope ye think it’s worth it. Ah hope the fancy clothes an’ the bungalow an’ the car make up for it. For don’t kid yerself. Ye as good as killed a man tae get them.’

  ‘Charlie, how can you talk like this? It wasn’t like that at all. And I don’t believe what you’re saying. I don’t believe it.’

  ‘You’d better no’! For if you ever turn round by mistake an’ catch yerself when ye’re not lookin’, if you ever really see whit ye are . . . you’ll bloody well vomit. You’d better go back among yer cars an’ yer bank balance. An’ never look back. Never even think o’ whit ye left ahint ye in this hoose. Don’t think o’ it. For that’s the only way you could live wi’ yerself. An’ never come back here. Never come back expectin’ tae get told it’s all right. A few bloody pennies for the poor. Did ye think that wis all it took? Ah hell. Ye’re known fur whit ye are here. It’s written all over this hoose. An’ whit you are Ah don’t even want tae put ma tongue on. It’s too dirty! Jist take yer boy friend an’ go away. The two of ye jist go away somewhere else an’ play at bein’ human beings there. Just go away. Go away.’

  The scene had disintegrated completely. The centrifugal force of Charlie’s anger had thrown the others to the edge of what was happening and held them pinned there helplessly. He raged in the room, a fanatic hurricane, leaving them bereft of their social composure, isolated in their own emotions. Elizabeth was crying quietly to herself and Harry was attempting to console her from his position of non-involvement in the whole thing. Charlie’s mother was weeping terribly, shaking her head in disbelief, and at the same time holding out her hand to Mr Whitmore to restrain him, coiled as he was with fury.

  ‘No, Peter, no.’ She shouted as if he was a long way away from her. ‘Please don’t do anything. Please don’t.’

  In the centre stood Charlie. He leant on the sideboard, his left hand covering his eyes. Conflicting emotions harangued for a hearing in his head. He was aware that this was his mother he had spoken to in this way. He was aware of how pleasant the scene had seemed when he entered. He was aware of Elizabeth crying. He hoped that it was finished, that somehow enough had happened to appease the anger in him. He wanted them to leave before he lost control of himself completely.

  Mr Whitmore stood up, staring at Charlie, gathering his bile. As he made towards him, Charlie’s mother moved to intervene. She attempted to compose herself so that she would lessen her husband’s motive for anger.

  ‘Peter,’ she said. ‘Let’s just leave. Please come on out now. Please.’

  But she was too late. Mr Whitmore was already standing over Charlie. And the realization of what was going to happen suddenly flashed on her like lightning and she could only wait helplessly for the physical confirmation that would follow as inevitably as thunder.

  ‘No,’ Mr Whitmore said. ‘We’ll leave when I’ve told this upstart one or two home-truths. You scum!’

  Charlie gestured with his han
d, not looking round.

  ‘You’d better go away,’ he said.

  ‘You filthy, rotten scum!’

  ‘For God’s sake now,’ Charlie said. ‘You’d better go away.’

  ‘You know what your trouble is?’ Mr Whitmore was sneering. ‘You’re the same as your father was. I’ve heard enough about him to know. You just can’t bear to see somebody successful and making a go of things, can you? You just can’t face up to reality. All this talk about your father. What happened to your father was his own fault. He failed just because he was a failure. That was all.’ Having found his range, Mr Whitmore regained his composure. ‘He didn’t deserve to have your mother. He wasn’t good enough. Do you understand? He just wasn’t good enough.’

  The face seemed to enlarge before Charlie’s eyes, to bloat until it filled the room, like the huge head of some malign idol. It was not like a human face at all, capable of change. It was fixed impacable as stone in that dual expression of rejection and complacency, complacency in itself, rejection of everything but itself. No matter how much suffering it was shown, it couldn’t be moved. It was the face that everyone showed to the world. It was the mask that everyone wore, the frozen gesture behind which each one hid from the truth, the deceit that became grafted on the living flesh until it was the only identity they had. There was no hope for any of them, Charlie saw, for people do not learn, cannot be taught what they have done, become inured to themselves. Failure only serves to redefine the limits of success, so that what is becomes all that might have been, and standards are corrupted by the partial realization of themselves. This mask could never change its expression, could not be moved with words. It could only be broken.