by Alan Spence
‘Naw.’
‘Whit ur ye well?’
‘Ah work in a hospital.’
‘That’ll be handy then, eh!’
I felt as if we were exchanging dialogue, stiff and wooden, in a play. The words were a thin surface only, covering some other unspoken thing. We all knew what was coming next. But for the sake of the play we pretended not to know as the scene moved to its close.
I tried to edge past and they were on me. A shove from behind, a kick aimed at my balls but missing as I dodged back. Then a butt in the face, blood seeping from my nose, a punch to the head and one had me by the neck and down I went in a tangle of legs and the boot went in to my ribs. Seeing, in sharp focus, clear, the dark line of a crack across the wet pavement, a scrumpled newspaper in the road, a spatter of mud on a trouser-cuff, brown stain on blue check pattern. Seeing, in the harsh glare under the streetlight, things just being themselves, in minute and meaningless detail. Iron grating in the gutter. Wire mesh across a shop front. The grain of a worn stone wall.
Something glinted in a hand, a steel comb, its handle sharpened to a point.
‘Ah’m gonnae stick the bastard.’
And this was actually happening, real. And somehow I was up and swinging with my rucksack, breaking clear and running, running, faster than I knew how. They gave up chasing me after half a block, too tired or drunk to follow, but they shouted after me till I rounded a corner out of their sight. And still I ran till I reached George Square and slumped down panting on a bench.
When I’d stopped shaking I crossed to the drinking fountain to wash away the blood that still trickled from my nose. But the pressure in the tap was too high and sent a jet of water smashing into my face. The shock of that made me laugh, even as I cursed it. I held back my head till the bleeding stopped, then wiped my face clean and drank deep from the fountain. I was shivering now, probably as much from the fright as the cold.
‘Some fuckin welcome back!’ I said, out loud, and kicked at my rucksack, half-hearted.
Scattered about the place were a few other late-night stragglers, waiting, like me, for the buses. And we didn’t have to wait long. I saw my bus swing its green and yellow bulk into the square, and grateful for that, I hurried across to the stop.
On the side of the bus was the city coat of arms with the bell the bird the fish the tree. I thought of the jingle and of reading it in the haiku book. What was it I had said to Doug? An auspicious return to Glasgow! I dabbed at my nose with a sodden paper hanky.
I sat towards the back of the bus, sideways on the seat, my feet out resting on my pack. I wanted to sleep and sleep forever.
‘Been in a bit a bother?’ asked the conductor.
‘Aye,’ I said. ‘Got jumped bi three young fellas.’
‘Terrible, eh,’ he said. ‘Bastards int they.’
He took my fare as the bus moved out.
My mouth and throat felt raw, tasted stale. Rummaging in my rucksack, I found what was left of my food-pack. The apples were untouched and gladly I picked one out and bit into it. Clean, it brimmed its juices into my mouth, tasted fresh.
I looked out the window at the empty streets, the city asleep. Glasgow. Home. Mental. Pure mad.
The bell that never rang. The fish that never swam. The tree that never grew. The bird that never flew.
Four hundred miles from my friends, the apples they gave me for the journey.
The same old song
I should have realised it was a dream, for although I was in it, at the same time I was outside, watching it all go on, as if in a film.
I was in the hospital I knew that though it didn’t look the same. My back was to the ward. I was standing at the window looking out. But instead of the hospital courtyard, what I was seeing was a dark, shifting landscape. There was no light anywhere and nothing I could hold in focus; no form, just vague threatening shapes at the edges of my vision. I felt myself being drawn out into it. Darkness leading into deeper dark. The glass of the window was all that kept it from me. I wanted to turn and run, but I knew that if I turned my back it would shatter the glass and engulf me. I tried to call out, but no words would come. My eyes filled with tears and through them I saw the landscape resolve itself into more familiar shapes, less hostile but still desolate. Black had given way to grey. It was more like the hospital courtyard now, but dead, in decay, the colours of bone and ash. All except for one small patch of colour in the foreground.
As I looked it grew clearer and I saw that it was a bush. Its leaves were the faintest green, its single flower a deep intense red. The flower seemed to glow and pulsate. It moved and opened out towards me, passing through the glass as if through air. It touched the centre of my chest, my heart. It was my heart. The rhythm of its pulse was my heartbeat. Its petals unfolded from within me. It had never been outside at all. What I had seen was its reflection in the glass. This was what I had always known, this reality. The flower was my true being.
Looking down at my body, I saw it clothed in the white hospital coat. I saw the plastic badge with my name and NURSING AUXILIARY printed in block letters. There was something comic in the fact that I was labelled. ‘This is me,’ I said, and laughed, knowing I was so much more, I felt an affectionate warmth towards my little everyday self. I took off my white coat. Underneath I was perfectly naked.
I pressed my head to the glass. I wanted to push through, to the other side. I looked out once more, but instead of the flower I saw the darkness again, filling the space, negating, blotting everything out. And I panicked as the certainty grew in me that the darkness, like the flower, was not out there. I was seeing it reflected in the glass. It was inside. It was here in the room around me.
Turning, I saw three doctors. They laid heavy hands on me. They covered my nakedness with a patient’s bedsmock. They were leading me to the ECT room for treatment by electric shock.
In the room, Doug was waiting. He too had been brought in for treatment.
‘Just karma man,’ he said, grinning.
Two bodies were wheeled out past us, covered over with sheets. One was Ritchie, the other was Mag, both dead.
‘Just karma.’
Behind us, on the other side of a glass wall, Mary and Jenny were trying to reach us, calling us back.
The doctors made me lie on a trolley. They fastened straps across my chest and legs. They made me bite on a bit of rubber. They put the electrodes to my head . . .
Waking, I sat up in bed, the panic still on me from the dream, but glad to wake, even to this. Cold half-light of morning. My head and neck ached, my nose felt swollen, clotted where it had bled.
The dream had left me shaken. It was like one I had had before, a month or two back . . .
(That time too I woke in panic, not knowing where I was. The room was unfamiliar. Above me was a pale square of light. I thought I could hear the sea. Then I remembered we had come away for a few days. We were in Millport. The square above me was a skylight in the sloping ceiling, feathered over with frost. It was cold in the room. I was shivering and could see my breath. Mary was a warm sleepy bundle beside me.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, not quite awake. My head was clearer now.
‘Thought ah was in the hospital an the doctors had got me.’
‘Nobody’s goin to get you,’ she said, yawning, already drifting back into sleep.
Lying back I looked up wondering at the perfect patterns on the skylight, the fine delicate leaf of frost on the glass. I felt calm now, listening to the wash of the waves on the shore. Mary was asleep, her hair a soft dark tangle on the pillow. To be here beside her was sanctuary and warmth. And this was real. The threatening shadow-world of my dream existed, if at all, out there, in some other universe altogether . . .)
I got up and splashed my face, switched on the fire and crouched in front of it. No sanctuary now, no comforting warmth. Mary had gone, perhaps for good.
Another daft song went singing in my head. Never felt more like singin the blues. Old so
ngs. Old songs. Play it again. One more time.
I thought again of the songs programming me. Once I had imagined a report being made on my progress. I had even written it out, as part of a story I’d never completed . . .
‘response of subject to media rape . . . displays considerable deviation from norm . . . difficulty in accepting our version of the way things are . . . insists on levels of reality behind and beyond what we have sought to imprint by back-projection . . . some struggle against entanglement in the dream . . . nevertheless there is one area in which our efforts have been successful . . . subject’s susceptibility to manipulative use of pop music . . . effective since onset of puberty . . . obsession with such music masturbatory in character . . . substitute for direct experience . . . provides escape/comfort/refuge . . . exposes subject where most vulnerable . . . womb-longing/sexual guilt . . . Oedipus programme . . . note also subject’s association of pop songs and hymns . . . connects religious insight/mystical experience/womb memory/longing for void . . . could perhaps be utilised . . . note particular susceptibility to certain old songs (from 1910 on) . . .’
I peered out the window. I had slept late and the morning was almost gone. The overnight snow had been trampled to slush on the pavements.
There had been no letters while I’d been away, not even a postcard from Mary. The only mail had been a reminder from the library to take back two books, The Divided Self and Metamorphosis.
That old uncomfortable feeling as I thought again of the hospital. The books were both ones I had read in the ward, through the long bleak hours of the nightshift. And for that the Charge Nurse was forever poking at me. He would ask what I was reading, and dismiss it.
Of the Laing book he’d said, ‘That’s the guy that thinks we’re all mad except the loonies, isn’t it?’
‘There’s a bit more to it than that,’ I’d said.
‘Well then,’ he’d said. ‘He thinks it’s us that make them the way they are.’
I’d said, ‘One thing he’s sayin is that we all see things too much in terms of “Us” and “Them”. What we need’s more . . . integration . . . wholeness.’
‘Ach!’ he’d said to that. ‘Words!’
Of the Kafka book he’d been even more terse. ‘Another heidbanger,’ he’d said. ‘Keep readin stuff like that in here son an ye’ll finish up as bad as them.’
The place was numbing me. I would distance myself from it while I was actually there. I would cope. Then on my way home I’d feel like crying. Grey and depressed, I’d feel physically sick.
I could talk about wholeness. But what I had to do was find it in myself. The job might be just one more necessary experience. But I knew now I couldn’t go back. I was doing no good, to myself or anybody else.
I would phone this afternoon and tell them I was leaving. They would want reasons of course. I’m sorry I can’t come back because. Because I am tired. Because Mary has gone. Because my nose has been punched. Because there are no letters. Because the sky is yellow and there is slush on the pavements. Just because.
I decided to take a walk into town and change the library books, pay my fine and redeem myself . . .
On the way I stopped in at the Art Gallery, for no particular reason. I had time to dawdle and I drifted, aimless, peering at suits of armour and model ships, fossilised bones and bits of machine. I had intended going upstairs to sit somewhere quiet, try to lose myself in a painting. But a tiredness came on me and I sat down in the hall of the stuffed animals. Facing me was what had once been a giraffe, front legs splayed out, neck stretching down to the ground. Sad and old and dusty he was, like all the other animals crowded behind glass into this grubby jungle clearing. He was coming apart at the seams, stitched up the front with thick coarse twine, to keep his stuffing in. He straddled a painted stream, reached forward to drink no water. His glass eyes looked at nothing, like old dead Mr Hendry in the hospital. Sad old deadstuff. I got up to go and remembered there were Buddha statues in another room. I sought them out, and suddenly I knew that this was why I had come. This was the no-reason that had brought me here.
The Buddha sat facing me, carved in smooth white stone. Poised and perfect he sat, all grace and ease of bearing, the source and sustainer of the universe. His smile seemed ancient, like something I had known forever, but long long forgotten.
Existence is suffering. Its cause is desire.
And this had been carved by a human hand. Each fold of the garment; the curve of the limbs; the left hand resting, palm upwards in the lap, the right reaching down to touch the earth.
And the smile.
Suffering can be conquered. There is a way.
And whoever had carved it had known that reality, had known that smile from the inside. He had looked at a chunk of marble and seen in it the Buddha. He had chipped away at the stone until this form had emerged. And here it was in Glasgow, smiling at me. Behind the Buddha’s head, out through the window, were trees and a lamp-post, a glimpse of buildings against a grey Glasgow sky. Here.
An attendant passed behind me, shoes squeaking on the polished floor. I bowed to the Buddha and made my way out, through the revolving doors, out again into the street . . .
I felt like talking to somebody, so instead of heading for the library, I cut across the park, thinking I would go and visit Tommy. Tommy was a writer. He had lived in London for years, but now he had come back. He was trying to make some kind of life for himself, here, with his wife and his children. He had been through all the things that were drawing me to London. He had come full circle and was back at university, just for survival. Tommy was about the only one in Glasgow I could talk to about spirituality without feeling self-conscious. He had taught me mantras, loaned me books on meditation.
When I rang the doorbell, his little daughter answered.
‘Ma daddy’s just away out tae the shops,’ she said. ‘E won’t be a minute.’
‘Should ah come in an wait?’ I said. ‘Or just come back after?’
‘Just come in,’ she said. I stepped inside.
‘Come on,’ she said, leading me into the kitchen. ‘Ma mummy’s upstairs in bed. She’s got the flu.’
‘Ah better be quiet then,’ I said. ‘Not disturb her.’ I sat down to wait.
‘It’s ma birthday today,’ she said.
‘What age?’
‘Seven,’ she said, proud.
‘That’s big,’ I said.
‘Ah got shoes an a dolly an a colourin book an paints.’
‘That’s a lot.’
‘It’s quite a lot,’ she said.
‘Ah wonder if ah’ve got anything,’ I said, digging into my jacket pocket. I had a packet of sweets I’d bought at the corner, a tube of Smarties, unopened.
‘Ta!’ she said as I handed them to her, and she flipped off the plastic cap and shook some into her hand.
‘Blue yellow red,’ she said. ‘Red green brown. Take one.’
I took a red one and she swallowed the rest.
In my other pocket, along with a scrumple of paper and a bunch of keys, I had a ten pence piece and a bright green felt-tip pen. I gave her both and she put them in her own pocket, pleased with her haul. She had finished the tube of Smarties, pouring them down her throat.
‘Did ye get a birthday cake?’ I asked.
‘Ma granny’s bringin one after,’ she said. ‘When’s your birthday?’
‘Couple a weeks ago,’ I said.
‘Was it! What age are you?’
‘Hundred an twenty-two,’ I said.
‘Ach away!’
‘Honest!’
‘Ach!’
‘Guess what age ah am.’
‘Well . . . ma daddy’s therty, so you’re . . . ah don’t know.’
‘Guess.’
‘Twenty?’
‘Nearly.’
‘Twenty-one?’
‘No.’
‘Twenty-two?’
‘Oh, yer gettin warm!’
‘Twenty-three!’
‘Right!’
‘Ah’m a good guesser sure ah am.’
‘Brilliant.’
‘Did you get a cake?’ she asked. ‘For your birthday?’
‘No.’
‘What did ye get?’
‘Socks an a book.’
‘C’mon an ah’ll make a cake,’ she said, jumping up and running to the back door. ‘It can be for the two ae us.’
‘Where ye goin?’ I asked.
‘Out the back,’ she said. On the way she picked up a bashed tartan tin that had once held a round of fancy shortbread.
The backyard was a muddy square of garden, a little tree against the far wall, a tangled rosebush on a ramshackle frame, some sparse grass in tufts here and there. Scattered around were a bucket and spade, an overturned tricycle, a red plastic ball, burst.
‘What kinda cake are ye makin?’ I asked.
‘A snowcake,’ she said.
She was crouching down under the tree where some snow still lay, untrampled. With a bit of broken slate she scraped up snow and grit into the tin. I knelt to watch.
‘Looks like it’s gonnae be a great cake,’ I said. ‘We can give some tae yer daddy when e gets in.’
‘What did ye come tae see him for?’ she asked.
‘Jist to talk,’ I said.
‘What about?’
‘Oh, lots a things. London an writin an . . . lots a things.’
‘Ah was born in London,’ she said, then, for no reason, ‘Where’s Mary?’
‘She’s away,’ I said.
‘Where?’
‘Far,’ I said. ‘Germany or Italy or somewhere.’
‘Is she comin back?’
‘Don’t know. Maybe.’
‘There!’ she said. ‘The cake’s ready.’
‘Looks delicious,’ I said, taking the cake and standing up.
And we laughed . . .
The child was smiling up at me. I held the gift she had given, snowcake melting in a battered tartan tin. We grinned at each other, grinned at the colossal mirth of this suddenly lovely day.
We stood there smiling in the tumbledown garden. Smiling, smiling. Years ago . . .
the same old song sweeter than ever reach out somewhere knowing we can be real love is you love is me walk on so sad about us I need you I can’t give you anything again if you know hey little girl save the last dance for me over my shoulder goes one care you ain’t nothin but beyond meanwhile I’m thinkin all this world for being an angel but a play on your mind it’s time we began to laugh and cry again baby it’s you everythin’s fine right now it’s gonna be alright there is a flower that bloometh you really got blue horizon remember me but it’s all right now you do the hokey kokey put your whole self in on a clear day you just you can see forever but love who you are rise and look you feel part of all those endearing young charms believe me if all around you voice is calling our pain love is my sweet lord but I saw the harbour light I don’t believe in leaning on a lamp isn’t it a pity but it takes so long blues ain’t nothin there’s a place where I can go thank you slopes of peppermint bay I’m sittin on top of the good ship lollipop I really want to see you where bon bons play on the sunny dear dead days beyond recall thank you thank you it won’t be long it’s a nice trip the world love’s old sweet song bop shewaddy waddy la la la tarara boom dee ay aum aum aum.