by Zoe Strachan
It had started raining. Disorientated by the haloes of the streetlights and their reflections on the glistening road, Richard walked a few yards in the wrong direction before realising his mistake and turning. Taxis hurled past on their way to the ranks in the town centre, and he wished he was far enough from his destination to flag one down and step in, away from the rain and echoing shouts and the niggle of threat that dogged him on the dark walk back to his hotel. When he reached its shining faµade he toyed with the idea of continuing, finding someplace else where he could salvage the remnants of the evening. Then he saw a clutch of girls of about Stephie’s age careening towards him, all spike heels and snarls of lip gloss, and ducked through the automatic doors into the lobby instead.
Richard looked at his face in the mirrored wall of the elevator, tilting his head to ascertain whether his pallor was the result of tiredness or poor lighting. Thinking ahead to the drive home the next day, he was glad to be heading for bed rather than the noise and crush and heat of some club, which underneath its sleeker surface might not have been so very different from the bar he’d been in earlier.
‘I wish I wasn’t like this,’ the man had said to Richard. Richard hadn’t been sure what the man meant, if he’d been talking about his character or his sexuality. Perhaps one day you had to rationalise the stories you’d told and the parts you’d played. Scrutinise the version of yourself you’d created for others, and see how it matched up to the real thing.
0
You know where I came from, I told Luke, you know the kind of place. Stunted, grey, the industry gone, black carcasses of pits on the outskirts of town where teenagers go to drink cheap, fortified wines with poignant names. Between fighting and fucking and sucking dirty heroin into their tarry, vitamin-deprived lungs. A shithole, we called it, and it was. Education the best way out, that and crime. Or, like Kenny Dodd, a swooping, swallow-like dive from the remains of the pithead to the rough, broken concrete below. Eldorado.
But Luke pressed me for the piquant details, and flattered, I obliged. Though I called myself working class, and it was true, we were part of the elite in the ’Leck, in that both parents actually worked, in jobs they hoped to keep until death or retirement did them part. My father, whose father and his father before him had held their breaths as the cage took them deep down underground, now drove up the valley to a manufacturing plant. Plastics, I think it was. He didn’t say much about it (and shame on me, I didn’t ask). My mother was not a dentist’s receptionist, she worked at the surgery in an administrative capacity (ditto). So no Thunderbird or smack for me. I should mention, though it seems ungrateful to do so only as an aside, that I did love my parents. They did their best, comforted me when I was bullied (though I wouldn’t tell them why), gave me pocket money and no reason to cry. And yet, alone in my room night after night, fat, selfish tears would moisten my pillow. The huge, insurmountable wedge between us was of course my inversion, my deviancy, my never-to-be-confessed secret. Later I was fascinated by the tales my more out-coming contemporaries told of how their mother always knew. Mine didn’t, though of course it was to be revealed with a flourish – tada! – later on.
It might seem hard to believe, but all I used to dream of was a big double bed with a patchwork counterpane like the one my granny stitched by the gas fire; the coal, like her husband, long dead. Somewhere to indulge a gentle and romantic relationship, a pure love. But no one was gay, or if they were they kept it quiet, haunted by the memory of the man who was lynched in the town down the valley because he loved other men. This in the 1980s, mind.
There was television, there were books (not many, but some, and the interlibrary loan for that first tantalising Edmund White). I knew the lie of the land pretty early, all told. Even if, when my voice deepened and my penis developed a life of its own, there was no-one to receive the fire of my loins. The shame started then, I suppose. Oh, I harboured secret passions, for a boy in the sixth year nicknamed Coco, and Mr Martin the maths master, with his tight, teacherly trousers. But I knew they must stay secret, or else.
One day, just below and to the right of the ripely swelling breasts of Mandy, 18, 34-25-36 with her frozen lip-gloss smile and neon tanga briefs, an article in the newspaper caught my eye. A city scandal, resulting in the closure of public conveniences around Glasgow. The first time I’d heard the term cottaging. Instantly I thought of the cream-painted public bog down by the railway path. Imagined that inside the door, amid the metal urinals and shit-smeared walls, there might exist a dreamy gymnasium packed with lithe lads throwing discuses. Or the Scottish equivalent of such. Clones of the porridge oats man, in his pristine t-shirt and convenient kilt.
Knowing the mindset of some of the local lads – if any of them had seen the article, the punishment delivered upon anyone spied within a half mile radius of a public toilet would be brisk and brutal – I waited until another winter evening a few weeks down the line before I casually went for a stroll. Which wasn’t very casual. Both my mother and my father asked what I was doing, as I ran fingers through my hair and splashed on my aftershave (Hi Karate, can you imagine?). Walking without a dog was considered morally suspect, so I made up a story about going to see someone. This was implausible given that I didn’t have any friends, but it worked out for the best as my jumpy, forced bonhomie convinced my parents that there was some girl I fancied and hoped to glimpse.
Of course, when I got there, there were no boys with bows and arrows, no gentle, thorough Greek teachers, never mind the porridge oats man. Not that night, nor the next time I went, nor the one after that. By my fourth visit, I’d given up hope. Dejected I sat in the only cubicle, reading the signs of my Armitage Shanks Sibyl. Kirsty McGill is a slag. Benny does dugs. For a good time call Stanesy’s maw. More promisingly, down beside the broken toilet roll holder, smaller letters proclaimed, I need hard dick. Meet me here 7pm. Where are you now, Hard Dick? I pondered, and then I heard a phlegmy cough.
I leapt to my feet and lunged towards the urinal, whipping open my fly en route. It might have been thought poofy to bother going to a public convenience to piss when you could just expose yourself in the street, but it would have been even more unseemly to be caught in a public convenience not pissing at all.
In came a man, who nodded at me and with inebriated clumsiness, withdrew a whopping great dong from the depths of his trousers, groaning as he started a long, luxurious urination. I recognized him, the curious blue pock marks on his face. It was Mr Sim from the miner’s cottages by the war memorial. I stopped peeing, but I didn’t stop staring. The thing was immense. I had only seen, during unguarded moments in the PE changing room, the youthful, teenage specimen. This was positively Neanderthal. Homo erectus eat your heart out. He noticed I hadn’t moved, and swiftly, with trembling hands, I did up my jeans. But I must have done something right, because he swivelled round, newly-relieved penis still out in the open, and met my eye. I backed against the wall, wanting nothing more than to run past him and away, along the railway path and home, to Red Dwarf on the telly and my mother nipping at Stephanie for being a little madam.
Well, whit are ye waitin fur?
And that was that. I sank to the ground. Mr Sim seized me by the ears to better adjust my position, and growled with pleasure as I got to work on his savoury, urine-tanged member. I soon realised the significance of the swallow or spit debate amongst the loucher girls in my year. Mr Sim unleashed such a torrent (of a consistency not unlike over-diluted Campbell’s condensed mushroom soup) that it didn’t go down in the first swallow, but spilled out over my chin. He sighed, withdrew, hauled me to my feet. I hadn’t even got as far as thinking that he might reciprocate when he slammed me against the wall and pinned one massive hand to my throat. With the other he seized my twitching testicles through my jeans and squeezed until tears came to my eyes.
If ye open yer gub aboot this, ah’ll throttle ye, ye wee pervert. Comprende?
I nodded, he released me, and rapturous, my knees soaked through with wh
at was probably piss, I ran home. I was in love. Not with unwashed, beer-addled Mr Sim, but with my future.
10
Richard shifted down a gear as the road narrowed to single track. It was tragic, really. Not yet thirty and he’d been unable to pull in a gay bar in Glasgow, of all places. Oh well, not every trip to a city had to mean sifting through the scene in search of a quick fix. A smart little convertible flickered into sight round the bend and he pulled into a passing place to let it sweep by. Tourists coming back from the fancy hotel along the coast, he supposed. He’d never been there himself, partly out of solidarity with the locals, who were happy enough to supply it with tatties and guinea fowl (John the Egg Man’s latest venture) but less enthusiastic about spending eighty pounds a head on its tasting menu. The drama in the bar the night before seemed more distant now but Richard could still picture the expression on the man’s face as he’d steeled himself to walk out the door and get into the car in which his lover was waiting. It seemed absurd, here, heading for home with the sun sharpening the tips of the mountains and turning the shallows of the sea loch lucent and inviting.
When Richard had called Stephie earlier to see if she needed anything from the supermarket she’d sounded distracted, he thought, first telling him not to go to any trouble then insisting on making him a proper dinner.
‘Don’t worry, just keep on with your studying,’ he said, but she was already listing the ingredients for coq au vin.
‘And get plenty of vin,’ she’d said, to which he’d managed to resist bemoaning his ability to procure any of the other main ingredient.
He hadn’t mentioned that John had been known on occasion to wring a chicken’s neck and sell it to his neighbours. Richard was far too daunted by the idea of plucking and cleaning the bird but Stephie, after two years of training to be a nurse, might have a stronger stomach. As he got closer to home he saw John chasing some plump hens from his vegetable patch, and decided that his squeamishness was skin deep. He was already starting to feel hungry.
When Richard pulled up at the house he could see Stephie standing in the porch, her arms folded across her chest, but by the time he’d jumped out to open the gate she had disappeared. The muscles in his legs were groaning after the long drive. As he reversed the car up the driveway he caught sight of her again in the wing mirror, walking down over the grass to close the gate behind him. She was wearing her floral blouse again, he noticed, this time with an A-line skirt and flip-flops. The bath would be ringed with leg hairs again, he surmised.
‘Hey,’ she said. ‘How was your trip?’
‘Okay thanks,’ he said. ‘Though I feel pretty done in now.’
‘Late night?’
‘Not as bad as all that,’ he said, opening the boot and handing her two shopping bags then picking up the wine carriers himself. He started walking towards the house, but Stephie didn’t move.
‘How are things here?’ he said. There was music playing upstairs, he noticed. The Velux window on the landing was flung wide open.
‘Fine,’ Stephie said, shaking a pebble out of one of her shoes. She’d broken something, he decided. Worse than that, she’d used his office and something had happened.
‘You haven’t crashed my computer, have you?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Of course not.’
‘Thank god for that,’ he said, walking towards the house.
‘It’s just,’ she said behind him, making him turn to face her. ‘It’s just that, this friend of mine, see, she was just kind of passing and well, she’s here now …’
Richard put down the wine, the noise of the bottles clinking against each other appealing despite the mild hangover he’d woken with that morning.
‘When you say here,’ he said.
‘In the house. I made up the other bed in my room.’
Richard pressed his thumb and middle finger to his temples and circled them slowly. ‘Stephie, nobody’s ever just passing, not here. Did you plan this?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Well, not really.’
‘Oh Stephie, for god’s sake. You know how much work I’ve got to do.’
He stepped round her and made for the house, leaving the wine on the driveway behind him.
‘Look Richard, I’m really sorry, honestly,’ she called after him. ‘I didn’t know she’d come yesterday.’
‘Well she can get on the post bus and leave tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I’m not running a bloody youth hostel.’
As he pushed open the porch door he heard Stephie say, ‘You sound just like Dad.’
He hurried to his study, firing up his computer and checking his email straight away. A message from Neil’s home address, which he skimmed for gossip: Rupe refused entry to Diamond Dolls on the grounds of the age, gender and intoxication of members of his party; Lisa insisting they stopped the car on the way back to Dundee so she could be sick on the hard shoulder. Neil signed off with an arch little, hope you had fun, whatever you got up to …
Richard could still hear the music from upstairs. He got up and stood to the side of the French doors, trying to keep out of sight as he peered towards the driveway. A dark-haired girl in narrow indigo jeans followed Stephie to the car. Her hair whipped around her face as she stooped to pick up the wine carriers, creating a disconcerting Medusa effect that disappeared as soon as she straightened up and carried the boxes to the side door.
By the time Richard had left home Stephie had only just been beginning to hang out, favouring evenings spent sitting with a row of pals on the wall of the petrol station. His recollections of her friends before that time were sketchy: a proliferation of My Little Ponies being cantered round the table by Stephie and a ginger girl with a tight French plait, the drone of skipping rhymes and the thunk, thunk, thunk of a tennis ball in a knee sock hitting the wall below his bedroom window, the sound of dislodged roughcast sprinkling to the ground. Once he’d opened his wardrobe and found dolls, shorn-headed Barbies dangling by their ankles from the clothes rail, some other kind of naked plastic female with no arms rotating in a truss of parcel string between his school shirts. Laughter rang out as Stephie and her co-conspirator congratulated themselves on their macabre little tableau.
Footsteps thudded up the stairs and the music stopped mid-song, just as Richard heard a knock at the door. He rubbed his face. His eyes felt hot and teary. Not enough sleep and a long drive, the air conditioning vent blasting his contact lenses all the way.
‘Yes?’ he said.
Stephie stuck her head round the door.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘Why didn’t you ask me?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Oh Stephie, come on …’ he began, but then he remembered her saying that he was just like their father. ‘You could have warned me at least,’ he said.
‘I did try to put her off, you know.’
‘Not hard enough, obviously.’
He wanted to say: why don’t you stop apologising and take some responsibility? Stephie came into the room and closed the door behind her.
‘It’s not that easy,’ she said. ‘Loren’s quite … determined.’
Richard picked up a ballpoint pen and started clicking the nib in and out. ‘You know that I’ve got to get on with work, Stephie, I can’t afford any more disruption.’
He saw her eyes turn limpid with tears but before he could speak she swung round and walked out, slamming the door behind her.
0
Sprawled on the grass of the Links, I closed my eyes against the sunshine of a late autumn afternoon that seemed to have forgotten all about heralding the winter. The cricket club was practising nearby, and the gentle strikes and calls of their play recalled another of those tantalising prospectus scenes. My thumb slipped from the place it was keeping in Lemmon’s Beginning Logic.
After a few minutes, or it could have been longer, a shadow passed above me, too swiftly to have been a cloud. Suddenly I felt fingers in my mouth, opened my eyes; Luke, of course. His papery h
and, prone to eczema, and a surge of unwilling arousal at his rough fingers against my tongue. And then a taste, unfamiliar but guessable. The flashing memory of Wendy, scrawny despite her diet of soggy chips and sausage suppers. I choked, and he laughed and withdrew his fingers.
Fuck you, I said, spluttering on the ground beside me. By the time I recovered he was sitting a couple of feet away, reading a small paperback.
Where’ve you been hiding? I said.
Had to see someone, he said, turning his page.
Yeah, I guessed that.
No, he said. I just dropped by Katie’s on my way back from seeing them.
Very mysterious.
Not really. Just a kind of progress report, eh.
With your advisor of studies?
He looked up and smiled. Kind of, he said. Yeah.
I like this Wednesday afternoon free for sport malarkey, I said, struggling upright and brushing the grass from my hair.
Hmm. Luke was hunched over his book.
I reached out and flicked the nail of my middle finger at the name on the spine.
Trocchi, I said. What are you like, with your I’m-so-cool-I-study-literature texts.
He didn’t lift his eyes from the page as he said, It’s not a course text.
Hmmph, I said, and returned to Lemmon. When I reached yet another new rule I said: I’m bored.
Luke laid his book to one side and looked round at me.
Well, that’s the trouble with small ponds, isn’t it? You’d be better off in a city.
I rolled onto my back and squinted up at the clouds which were now scudding across the sky. Bored with logic. Not bored with here, I said.
Logic dictates that you’d get your end away more often in a city. And then – he splayed the spine of his book and placed it beside him on the grass – you’d be far less bored.