Clive was now having his hair done in the latest style. It was gelled up into straight peaks.
‘I liked you better with it natural and smooth,’ Paul told him. He had insisted on keeping his own dark hair long until it kept sliding forward over one eye.
‘I see by the programme,’ Paul said now, ‘that there’s going to be a police officer as one of the speakers. That’ll be interesting to all of us, but especially to crime and thriller writers. I was just wondering if it might be Jack Kelly from number one.’
‘I wouldn’t think so. It would be too much of a coincidence.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Remember he told us he works constant day shift so at least he’d always be free to come to an evening meeting.’
‘Look, there’s the name of the speaker in the programme. It’s Sergeant Paul Rogers.’
‘Oh well,’ said Paul.
‘I’m really looking forward to next week’s subject. How all art can be therapeutic,’ Clive quoted from the programme.
‘Yeah. So am I. It’s a real godsend, this place. I hope you don’t mind always coming with me, Clive. I mean, writing is my thing, not yours.’
‘Haven’t I just said I’m really looking forward to next week? And anyway, I’m a teacher and I have to teach my class essay writing, etc. No, don’t you worry about me joining the writers’ club, Paul. The writers are a great bunch and I’m loving it.’
‘One of the great things about writers,’ Paul said, ‘and about being a writer is everything is your raw material – people, experiences, places, but especially people. Even an elderly person who’s not doing anything or saying anything. Remember that one I wrote called ‘Disposable People’?’
‘Who could forget that.’
As they stood together in the writers’ club sipping their cups of tea, Paul began to quietly recite it.
Disposable People
Blind stares from milk and water
coloured eyes, reveal all
to those who would care to look.
There, the disposed sit the long day
doing nothing
saying nothing
eating bland and little,
leaching all of their nourishment
from the cathode ray nipple
housed in the black box.
A second childhood they say
A second childhood without
the toys
the joys
the expectations.
‘Paul, you are so very talented but it’s novels you should be concentrating on now. That’s where your big successes will be. It’s novels that’ll make you famous.’
‘I must confess that’s really where my heart lies. And I’m looking forward to getting good practical help from some of the successful novelist speakers here. You see, you can say so much more about the human condition through the medium of a novel. And bring places to life, as well as people.’
‘Yes, and the two you’ve already written are good, Paul, and maybe the speakers or other members of the club will give you a helpful crit, some advice to help you get them published.’
Paul nodded. ‘Wouldn’t that be wonderful. Meantime, I’ll keep my hand in the writing mould with my poetry. It gives me something to take to the club every week. And keeps me being creative and happy. Nothing our awful neighbours can do will ever spoil that.’
28
Paul was reading his new poems at the writers’ club, eager for feedback.
For Worse
Coloured grey,
gilded with sweat,
large enough to grind
flour for the world’s poor,
granite hangs around her neck
Every movement
she sees the man
and forgets
the child.
She waits the thrill of the phone
someone else’s life.
She dreams of better times,
resents the vow that doesn’t list
what ‘for worse’ might entail.
But she can forget the wife
and be the woman
for a rosary of moments,
It might save them both.
Afternoon Tea and Teeth
It was the sort of tearoom where ladies would attend
an anecdote, the curve at either end of their
smile as thin as a crochet hook, while they promised
themselves they would laugh later.
One such lady of lavender years
sat at the far end of the hush, silver-lipped, lilac twin-set,
lean as a walking cane, face creased in crepe as she rued
the young women of the day and their
penchant for coffee with foamed milk
and their insistence on a career.
Maybe it was the child behind her
fitted snugly at her mother’s naked breast,
or that woman’s vulgar handbag
gold lettering against white, screaming DIOR
… but something made her sneeze.
Her head moved in increments
ratcheted back by her desperate desire
not to draw attention, but the tickle insisted.
The pressure built, her head jerked forward
and her teeth bulleted out of her mouth,
complete with a lady’s bite-sized portion
of date and wholemeal scone.
Face polished white with resolve not to be noticed
she slid off her chair and on hands and knees
crawled across the room, retrieved her dentures
and popped them in her mouth, complete with scone.
Remaining low she returned to her seat
and a more considered chewing action.
Not a stitch in the room’s conversation
was dropped. In a concert of collusion not one eye
strayed during the retrieval, invisibility
guaranteed by the collective will to do
and say the right thing.
Another lady paused
at her friend’s no doubt embroidered comments,
pushed her tongue against the roof of her mouth
and harrumphed into a square of bleached linen.
Just in case.
‘All right,’ Clive told Paul. ‘They’re good.’ Everyone in the writers’ club agreed the poems were good but they also agreed that Paul should be concentrating on writing a novel – a publishable novel. The two he had written had been passed around and given verbal and written crits. The books (like many of his poems) were written from a woman’s viewpoint.
‘I believe that’s where you’re going wrong, certainly in the novels,’ Sheena Brown said. ‘You keep insisting that novels are your first love and you’re desperate to get one published but I don’t think you’ll ever succeed until you start writing from a man’s viewpoint.’
‘OK,’ Ray Cook said, ‘we know you’re gay. So why don’t you write from a gay man’s viewpoint?’
‘I keep telling him that,’ Clive cried out, ‘but he won’t listen to me.’
Paul cast his eyes heavenwards. ‘No wonder. You of all people know what we have to suffer from a lot of people. I don’t need publishers joining in.’
‘But, wait a minute,’ Ray said. ‘I’m sure publishers wouldn’t be prejudiced like that. There’s bound to be publishing firms that publish gay material. Look up the Writers and Artists Yearbook. That’s probably where I’ve come across them.’
‘Gay publishing firms?’ Paul echoed incredulously.
‘Yes, why not? Give it a try,’ Ray insisted. ‘Put all your feelings into a novel about what gay men have to suffer.’
‘Gosh,’ Clive laughed, ‘think of the revenge you could have – on people like that ghastly reverend gentleman at number seven.’ He turned to the others. ‘He’s a hook-nosed skeleton of a man who tells us we’re an abomination in the sight of God.’
Paul visibly brightened at that. His eyes acquired a mischievous sparkle. ‘Right eno
ugh, I could make a great villain of him.’
‘He is a villain,’ Clive told him, and then to the others, ‘Fancy him being a minister and he shouts horrible names at us and tramples over our nice garden and kills our flowers and puts all sorts of filthy things through our letter box.’
‘No!’ their fellow members gasped. ‘And he’s supposed to have been a Christian minister?’
Maisie Jenner said, ‘You should report him to the police. That’s harassment.’
‘All we want is to have a peaceful life,’ Paul said, but brightened again. ‘But do you know, you’ve really got me excited now. I really believe I could write a story about how people like him make people like Clive and me suffer. We’ll get a Writers and Artists Yearbook right away and check the addresses of publishers who accept gay material.’
They had a great laugh during the tea break and exchanged all sorts of ideas about how Paul could wreak vengeance on the Reverend Denby.
‘Look,’ Ray said eventually, ‘if you like, you can come home with me tonight and I’ll give you my Writers and Artists Yearbook. You can return it as soon as you can.’
‘We could check it in your house, if you didn’t mind. Then we wouldn’t need to take it away.’
‘Sure. Come on. I’ve the car outside. We won’t take a minute.’
Off they went and sure enough, in the Writers and Artists Yearbook, they found several who specifically published gay material. Paul was over the moon.
‘Oh, thanks a million, Ray. I’ll never be able to thank you enough.’
‘You can thank me by presenting me with a signed copy of your first published novel.’
‘Deal!’ He and Paul smacked hands together. Then Ray drove them home.
After they got into number four Waterside Way, Paul said, ‘Talk about a friend in need being a friend indeed. What a good friend that is.’
‘Yes,’ Clive agreed. ‘But of course they know that we’d always do the same for any of them when they need help. Already you’ve helped a couple of them to write poetry, Paul. In fact, you’ve done quite a few helpful crits for the members who want to be poets.’
‘Right enough. But now I must organise my time so that I can get down to writing my novel right away. Do you know, I think I’m going to enjoy doing this one. The characters will be set in a different place, of course, and will look different, etc.’
‘Even in real life,’ Clive said, ‘I bet Denby is not the good Christian gentleman these two posh characters believe he is.’
Paul looked thoughtful. ‘I wonder if our pal Bashir knows more about him and those two women. Bashir’s a great one for the gossip about everybody.’
‘I don’t think he’ll have succeeded with the two women. Remember he said he got a right brush off from them. And he, like us, was just trying to be friendly.’
‘I could always ask him anyway.’
A time schedule for his writing was arranged, with Paul getting up at six o’clock in the morning to write for a couple of hours before breakfast and setting out for his work at the school.
Before long, he was happily wreaking his revenge on not only the Reverend Denby, but on the double-barrelled character and Mrs Jean Gardner as well.
29
Clive and Paul strolled through the galleries, admiring the latest exhibition.
‘Certainly original,’ Paul said. ‘I’ve never seen the like of it in my life – anywhere. Have you?’
Clive shook his head. ‘It’s a really wonderful and original place all together. They call the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum a portal to the world, and rightly so.’
‘I was glad the Reverend Denby didn’t get a sympathetic audience when he was giving his ridiculous sermon in the park. Fancy condemning such a beautiful place as evil. I suppose he was thinking of all the pictures and sculptures of naked women. Anyway he won’t be able to do it now.’
‘Surely he hasn’t really been inside,’ Clive said. ‘The paintings are so beautiful. One of my favourite things is actually a sculpture. That heart-rending plaster called Motherless – the one with the child in the arms of a distraught father. But everyone, even the Reverend Denby, must sure admire and be moved by Salvador Dali’s Christ of St John of the Cross.’
‘Not nutters like the Reverend Denby. Probably it was him that attacked it.’
‘God, yes.’ Clive rolled his eyes. ‘I forgot about that. It was attacked twice. Once the canvas was punctured with a sharp stone and then ripped open. The other time it was attacked with an air gun.’
‘I’ll never be able to understand the thinking behind that,’ Paul said, ‘and as a writer, I’m supposed to understand what makes all sorts of people tick. What motivates them. I keep trying to work out how the Reverend Denby can believe he’s a Christian. What Jesus is he acting on behalf of?’
‘It’s the Old Testament he keeps quoting and raving on about.’
‘I know, but he claims to be a Christian and a Christian is supposed to be a follower of Jesus Christ.’
‘Och, let’s try to forget about that nutter and enjoy the Gallery.’ Clive liked the painting Old Willie – The Village Worthy by Paul Guthrie. Paul admired Cadell’s masterpiece Interior – The Orange Blind.
‘That orange blind in the background,’ he said, ‘provides the picture with a dazzling focal point and contrasts so starkly with the bold expanses of black and green. And of course, we’re left with the puzzle of who is the man in the background playing the piano and who is the mysterious lady in the foreground taking tea. The whole thing has a sense of nervous energy and expectation.’
‘It’s a bit like Lady with a Red Hat in a way,’ Clive said, going over to stare at the portrait by William Strang. ‘The bold colours and elegant posture make it, for me, one of the most striking portraits in the collection.’
‘It’s Vita Sackville West,’ Paul said, ‘aristocratic poet, novelist and lesbian. Her lesbian affair with Virginia Woolf was immortalised in Woolf’s novel Orlando.’
‘Yes, I read that years ago. I remember reading about the stir it made at the time. And just you wait and see, Paul. Your book about gay men will make just as big a stir.’
‘It’s not written yet, Clive.’
‘Not finished yet, but you’re getting there, Paul. It’s wonderful that you’ve been able to do so much as you have, when you’re working at teaching full time.’
Neither of them were all that keen on Lowry’s busy pictures of matchstick men but both stopped to admire Avril Paton’s Windows in the West. They had both lived in tenements in the past and could relate to the glowing interior of the tenement with glimpses of people going about their everyday lives inside.
It was while they stood admiring Windows in the West that they noticed a young couple walking nearby. Clive nudged Paul.
‘That’s Mirza Shafaatulla and Sandra Arlington-Jones, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah. If that horrible snob of a woman saw her daughter just now, she’d have a fit. Sandra looks really besotted with Mirza, doesn’t she. And he with her.’
‘Real love birds, they look. Poor things. They don’t stand a chance.’
Mirza and Sandra were walking along with arms entwined around each other and Sandra’s head with its thick cap of red gold hair was resting against Mirza’s shoulder.
Suddenly, the young people stiffened with shock and fear as they stared over at Clive and Paul.
‘Don’t worry,’ Clive called over, but quietly, ‘your secret is perfectly safe with us.’
‘Thanks,’ both of them mouthed in reply.
Clive and Paul moved away to study some sculpture but as they did so, Clive murmured, ‘God help them’ and Paul said, ‘They’ll need plenty of help. Mirza’s Muslim parents will be against them and Mrs Arlington-Jones would, I bet, rather see Sandra dead that hitched up with Mirza.’
Suddenly Clive laughed. ‘Look at that. If the Reverend Denby has been in and seen that, no wonder he’s been preaching hell and damnation outside.’
; ‘What’s it called?’ Paul stared at the sculpture of the naked woman.
‘Syrinx. It’s by William McMillan. One lady visitor apparently stripped off and was photographed beside it by her companion. I don’t know if it was a lady companion or not. Even more interesting is Rodin’s Age of Bronze. It had its penis stroked by so many visitors, especially lady visitors, that the bronze patina wore off. It’s been restored to its originally glory and it’s now at the Burrell Collection.’
Paul said, ‘The reverend gentleman would definitely be horrified at that. I can just see his dashing straight from the gallery to the park and roaring out his sermon denouncing all the evils he’d just seen and heard about in here.’
Clive suddenly remembered about Mirza and Sandra. ‘I hope he doesn’t come across the young love birds. He’d immediately report them to Mrs Arlington-Jones. Then all hell would be let loose.’
‘It’s pathetic, isn’t it? Why can’t people live and let live. They’re not doing anyone any harm by loving each other. It’s the same with us.’
Clive said, ‘We’ve had to live with unfair attitudes for a long time. But at least we’re mature adults. We’ve had time to harden ourselves to protect ourselves from it. They’re only children. Their hurt and suffering will be so much worse.’
‘I know. God, talk about suffering. Look at that sculpture.’ Paul pointed over at Pierre Bracke’s Wives of Fishermen. It was a sculpture in dull grey marble of four tragic-looking women clinging close together, waiting anxiously for the return of their husbands from a storm at sea, hope fading.
‘That just shows that artists don’t always choose physical beauty when searching for a subject. A painful or difficult side of life can result in a more moving work of art. That’s what I’m trying to do, I suppose. There’s much in my book that’s painful and difficult but I’m hoping the end result will be a work of art that will touch everyone.’
‘And I’m sure it will be, Paul. If only you could afford to give up teaching and concentrate on writing it. You know what my wages are – not enough to keep both of us. Otherwise I’d gladly support you.’
The Kellys of Kelvingrove Page 10