‘Our fishing club takes families up into places which are good, where they can picnic, walk and run. We hire coaches, we lend rods, we tie flies and buy bait. These things cost money and yet we have never asked this Centre for money. Our club is quiet and law-abiding, it brings custom in, has a varied and numerous membership. All we ask for now is the use of your Centre one Friday night, for a fund-raising ceilidh. We will pay you a hire fee, if you wish.
‘We ask this for the good of our children’s souls.’
People wondered if they should clap and Heather got up to go to the kitchen. She preferred to sit in there when they had evening meetings – it meant she could read her book and get a wee bit peace.
As she would often say, ‘The trouble with folk here is, they can’t see there’s any difference between volunteers and slaves. Sure, neither of them gets paid.’
The arguments continued: there were good points to be made about bars and glasses, the number of sinks and fire exits, if hot food would be served. Was an important precedent being set: the ceilidh would involve singing and dancing, drink and forms of gambling, would it not? Would children be present? Would a sectarian element creep in? Would ashtrays be stolen, or provided?
Mr Lawrence waited to take the last word.
‘Well, I think we’ve probably spent enough time on Mr . . . Mr . . . Graham’s idea. This committee was, you will remember, only formed as a courtesy to Centre users, to keep them informed of our plans. It has no executive power. However, as Councillor Naylor and myself were discussing the possibility of hiring the Centre out to appropriate groups at commercial rates, it may be that the ceilidh will serve us as a useful dry run. We certainly cannot ignore such strong, almost religious fervour on Mr . . . Graham’s part. No indeed.
‘Perhaps Margaret can see to all the necessary details. Is there any other business, good, meeting adjourned.’
As Margaret locked the final padlock on to the door, Lawrence came back from his car, across the dark gravel.
‘Margaret, you don’t understand, do you. I can’t have decisions forced on me like that. There’s a principle here. We take the decisions, Margaret, we make them. That’s our job.
‘It is also your job to prevent gentlemen like Graham from overstepping the mark. I know his type, you see – scuttling off to Adult Education, getting degrees by correspondence course. I know him, you don’t. He can’t face reality; none of them can. He can’t learn from experience. Believe me, his kind can do nothing but harm. They think their little spark of education can save the world. But how do they save us all? By keeping their wonderful knowledge to themselves. They get what they want and go – leave us behind. He will never change one thing in his life; these people just manufacture dissatisfaction which you and I then have to deal with. Talking about his soul when you can guarantee he doesn’t believe in God. We deserve better than him. You and I, we make ourselves useful. We serve the public. We help.
‘People want to be happy, that’s all. They don’t want stupid promises, they don’t want to think. You may not like me – people often don’t – but I do the thinking for people and I never make promises I can’t keep. This Centre is here because of me – so is your job. No one remembers it, but I do provide that little public service for you. Every day.’
He coughed neatly and caught her eye, left a soft pause, smiled.
‘Sorry to have to lecture, but I’m disappointed. I interviewed you for this job. And I hired you, picked you out, because of what I knew you could do. You have potential. Take my advice, my friendly advice.’
Another smile.
‘Keep Graham and people like him out of your life, or they’ll make you regret it. You’re a clever girl. You know what I mean. It’s not as if you really belong here, is it? It’ll be onward and upward for you. Better things.’
Lawrence squeezed her hand before he walked away.
‘And there’s better company you could keep.’
‘What?’
‘If you needed a good friend, someone to come to, I’d be there. Do you understand?’
‘I –’
‘Goodnight.’
‘I wish I’d been there.’
Colin made her tea when she got home, took off her shoes and rubbed her feet.
‘This always worked with my mother.’
‘Thanks. Thanks, love. But I’m glad you weren’t there.’
‘I wouldn’t have done anything. Only gubbed him, dirty old man. Just a wee gub.’
‘Exactly. It’s not that I might not have done that myself. It’s complicated. And I need the job.’
‘Nobody needs a job like that.’
‘You know how many applicants there were for my post? One hundred. I bet more than half of them had degrees.’
‘And the other half would have been qualified for the job.’
‘I’m qualified for it, thank you. It’s just impossible to work with people in the community, if your boss hates people and communities are being phased out as barriers to enterprise and foreign travel. I thought Lawrence hated me – the alternative is even less pleasant.’
‘You’ll tell me if he tries anything.’
‘He won’t. It’s probably just a feeling I got. It’s probably nothing.’
‘Whatever he does, tell me. Only let’s not talk about it now, let’s take our minds off that. You should look for something else, but not now. You shouldn’t look for something else now.’
He slipped his hand under her sweater, already knowing the way. The other hand reached round to pull her close.
‘I smell of smoke.’
‘That’s alright, I taste of whisky.’
‘I thought you were in training.’
‘Night off.’ He licked her eyes, then fed his tongue between her teeth. The whisky bitterness faded, while their mouths looked for something together.
He was good at taking off her clothes now, good at fiddly bras and awkward zips. He didn’t give her time to think, just drove on. She folded her arms round the back of his neck while he suckled in, his hands cold against her back. She started to kiss his hair, knowing things had begun and wouldn’t finish for quite a while. Colin was changing under her lips, the way he always did. He became almost a boy and quite like an animal, or perhaps a blinded man.
When her father had been with her mother, had he changed like that? Margaret didn’t think she changed at all, but wasn’t sure if Colin noticed. He never mentioned she was doing something wrong.
They walked to her bedroom naked, bumping elbows and hips, unable to fit through the doorway arm in arm. Margaret stepped through first, oddly modest as she swung into bed; knees together, head low, leaving the sheet back and sliding across to give Colin room.
‘You put fresh sheets on.’
‘They’re not fresh, they’re new. I bought them. Some housewife. Did you know you only had two pairs of sheets.’
‘What colour are these?’
‘They’re purple. Can’t you tell they’re purple. They feel it. You feel pink. Wet and pink, can I get in there, I want to get in there. Get in you in purple sheets. There we go, there we go. There.’
She did like it there. She liked their stomachs being together and their arms round each other’s backs. But she didn’t know why she liked it, she didn’t know why her mind would sometimes wander when they lay together afterwards. Even with him still inside and twitching like a sleepy fish, there had been times when she forgot that he was there.
Margaret hoped she would come tonight. It made him pleased when she did, he would kiss her forehead and stroke her cheeks and he would smile. She never liked to lie about it. Even though it did seem kinder.
‘Maggie, Maggie. I’ll take you up to the Centre, we’ll go up at night, you’ve got keys, we’ll go in and lock the door on the inside and fuck, in the wee front office, we’ll do it there, take your knickers off, take off your skirt, and up against the fridge in the kitchen, how about that, with your arse against the fridge, and then we’ll go
in Lawrence’s office, I’ll sit in his chair and you can suck me off, taste yourself on my prick in his office, you can sit on his desk and I’ll play with your tits and we’ll fuck on his desk, me inside you, naked in his office, on his desk, I will shoot my load right up you on his desk.’
Margaret came.
THE NEXT MORNING Lawrence stood in his office doorway and called her in.
‘Margaret. I’ll expect you to arrange this ceilidh: you’ll be au fait with all the details: special licence, informing the police, ensuring the entertainment is suitable . . . But if you need any help, I will be on hand. Mmm? Well, I have nothing more to say. Do you? Is there something you’d like to say?’
She shook her head.
‘I see. My wife and I, we’ll be attending. I think you should meet. My wife.’
Lawrence seemed to be wincing, then he let out a breath and told Margaret she could go. Conversation round the café tables dimmed a touch, Lawrence’s door snapped shut behind Margaret’s back and somebody somewhere sighed. A match scratched into life, things relaxed.
‘The auld bastard nipping your head?’
Heather was leaning over the café counter in her Mother Confessor position.
‘How d’ye guess. Could I have a coffee and a wee glass of paraquat.’
‘He’d drink it, then eat the glass. Would you like a Penguin on the house, or a custard cream?’
‘No thanks, I couldn’t take it.’
‘Aye, he makes me sick, too. Still, we’re getting the ceilidh.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I heard Graham rehearsing his speech in the gents’ yesterday. And wee Hughie said, just now.’
‘It’ll be more work for you.’
‘Oh no, the boys want a ceilidh, the boys can do the work. I’ll be there to eye the talent and that’s all. Not a tea-bag will I lift.’
‘Nae change there, then, eh?’ Graham slapped his mug on to the counter.
‘Were you wanting that filled.’
‘Aye, darling.’
‘Well you know what you can do then, don’t you?’
‘Of course, I shall creep through to the wee man’s office, puncture his jugular vein, insert my spiggot and drink his chilly blood at my leisure. Gie’s my mug back.’
‘I think I’ll leave you to it, Heather.’
‘I’ll just tell him you’ve ate the last Penguin, then watch him greet.’
‘Aw, Heather, man, don’t be like that. Hey, Maggie, by the way, we’ll deal with the ceilidh and that, don’t worry. It’ll be a good night.’
‘Lawrence says he’s coming, you know, and his wife.’
‘Jesus, Marx and Lenin, that’s the bar in the black.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘It’s thirsty work, being Mrs L. That’s why she doesn’t get out much – a popular local figure like William Lawrence appearing with a partner who terminates every outing by spewing her ring. If we’re lucky. No, no, wouldn’t do at all. If Dirty Daisy’s coming, we’re in for a rare wee time. Terrific.’
Graham winked, touched Margaret’s shoulder, saw her walk up the passage that led to the toilets and turn in.
She waited until she was sitting, the cubicle door snibbed shut, and then leaned her head forward, into her hands, ready to cry. It didn’t come at first, because she had held it back for just too long, but then she felt the tears against her palms and a rising sob.
When she had finished, she seemed chilled and her throat was aching. She ran the tap and held handfuls of cold water up to her face, drinking some and shivering. There was no mirror so she couldn’t tell how she looked. But she knew it would be bad.
THE YOUTH THEATRE wanted to do something in the ceilidh.
‘Can we?’
‘Hm?’
Tam took Margaret by surprise, slipping up behind her shoulder, the way that he usually did.
‘Can we do something – in the ceilidh?’
‘I wouldn’t have thought you’d be interested in a ceilidh.’
‘We’re not, it’ll be pathetic – but if we do something, folk’ll come.’
‘Aye, we could get loads of people to come.’
Margaret found herself in the mouth of a crowd.
‘What kind of people? The Drugs Squad.’
‘Actually, we could get loads of folk and our teachers – half of them are old hippies, anyway, they’d think it was great.’
‘Wee Chrissy could bring all her social workers. Fill the place.’
‘And you could bring all your customers.’
‘Spin on it, slag.’
‘Get tae fuck.’
Margaret likes the Youth Theatre. They somehow understand each other. She goes to their rehearsals and feels herself relax while they do her swearing for her, run and fight, while they talk about Mr Lawrence in terms she feels it would be unprofessional, if not unwise for her to use. They’re Fun. Gus, Elaine and Susan, all the rest, they all have something Margaret would like: a kind of insolent relaxation, a pride. It’s an attitude she wants to learn about.
‘What would you do in the ceilidh, Gus?’
‘What everyone else does, Auntie Maggie, we’d fucking sing.’
‘If we came here to practise every night, we’d do it no bother.’
‘Tam, the last time we tried to do that much rehearsal, you all ended up barred. I think you might still be barred.’
‘We wanted to be barred, then. This time we don’t.’
‘Well, thanks for explaining that. I was finding it hard to understand. Once you get to my age, the senility creeps in.’
‘Naw, it’s just your sinful life. We’ll come straight in from school. Four o’clock.’
‘Aye, four o’clock.’
‘And we’ll practise for the gig.’
‘How many nights?’
‘Every night.’
‘Naw. We’ll have Mondays and Fridays off.’
‘Why can’t we come on Mondays.’
‘Well Susan can come any time, but. Can’t you, eh?’
‘How would you know, prick?’
‘The BB marching band told me. All thirty-four of them.’
‘Couldnae get it up without a splint, you’re fucking jealous, Gus.’
Margaret knew they would get things decided in the end and she had learned to keep very calm and wait. The Youth Theatre wouldn’t understand impatience in anyone, on principle.
‘Shut up. So. Right. We’ll start next week. Next Tuesday. Maggie can you come every night.’
‘No comment, eh, Auntie Mags?’
‘I can be here most nights, but I do need to go home sometimes.’
‘So do we.’
‘Aye, but she’s got a man to go to.’
‘Aye, Colin. I’ve seen him. Nice arse.’
‘I go home to have my dinner, watch the telly and go to sleep. The things that normal people do, you know? And talking of which, it’s time to go home now; past time and I’m starving.’
‘Aye, but there’s no a janny here. We don’t have to go.’
‘I’m the janny. Come on and get lost, or I’ll lock you in.’
‘YEEEES!
‘Lights going off now, burglar alarm going on – you’ve got two minutes. One minute and fifty-eight seconds, fifty-seven . . .’
The Youth Theatre evaporated, whooping into the night, banging the grilles across the windows and trailing wolf howls. They prided themselves on being predictable. Except when they weren’t.
Gus, whose proper name was Raymond, had just lost his Saturday job in the supermarket. He’d stolen an old stuffed weasel from the art room at his school and hidden it under the sausages in the fresh meat display.
Gus had slowly unravelled a layer of pork and beef links and a nice wee lady customer had obligingly collapsed. She had glanced down at two little glinty black eyes and a long, long weasel tail and then passed out.
Nobody knew why he’d done it, not even Gus. It wasn’t as if he didn’t need the job, or at least the mo
ney from the job. But the look on the nice lady’s face as she slipped down the counter, the easy way the weasel lounged against the sausage meat; he found that all very pleasing, very pleasing indeed. Even when his father punched him for being an arsehole, Gus felt pleased.
Margaret rode the bus home, still thinking of Gus, of how he was able to do something like that. She had only ever been rebellious as an infant.
Her baby memories are full of startling wilfulness. She looked up at the sky through the square mouth of her pram and saw a bordered world, the same shape of world where spaghetti westerns happened. Cinemascope. Perhaps for this reason she glared at everything outside her like a tiny gunfighter; belligerent, uncontrolled and perversely endearing.
She still finds trips to the cinema strangely comforting, but in her pram, the sky beyond her had always been very bright, more white than blue, and she much preferred to lie on her stomach and look at the dark.
She seemed to have been born set in her ways. In harsh weather, she wanted to be without shoes and gloves and socks. She would squirm them off, only to have them replaced for fear of coldness. She would cry and start to squirm again. Margaret would lie on her stomach, and not on her back, so her father would faithfully change her about, for fear of her smothering. She would rather dangle, upside down, from the slope of her father’s lap, something forbidden, for fear of her eyes being turned. She would worm to the edge of his knees, like a little seal, until her head hung in mid-air. She had a photograph of herself in just such a position.
Margaret worried her daddy, by being so strange when he was just a man and wasn’t sure what he should do about it. Women he hardly knew would give him advice in shops and on street corners which made him sure he was failing as a father: his faults must be so obvious.
As Margaret grew, her character seemed to shrink and by the time she was Gus’s age she had almost forgotten what she was like. And, oddly enough, Mr Lawrence and the Factory were proving very educational.
‘Graham?’
Margaret caught him in the café, eating two potato scones with cheese. The house speciality.
‘Aye, hen, don’t fret. We’ve hired the stripper from a feminist collective and she’ll jump out the haggis, with a carbon rod in each hand, just as we finish singing “Dainty Davie”. How does that suit you?’
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