‘Just the usual,’ she says. Once – only once – Dan went to see her at her work. It was a summer afternoon and he decided to walk at least part of the way home. It wasn’t much of a detour to go by the Ford dealer’s place. Afterwards he wished he hadn’t. There were three women on the self-drive desk, Joan and two others. They were dealing with five customers and all the phones were ringing. The women were making bookings, taking money or credit cards, inspecting driving-licences, explaining the insurance, checking that returned cars had full tanks, taking customers to their cars and demonstrating the controls to them. Whenever they got out from behind the desk they seemed to be about to break into a run. Their manner was polite, efficient and subservient. All of the customers were men. Dan stood just inside the door watching this scene for a few minutes, without Joan seeing him. Thirty feet away, a couple of sharp-suited salesmen were standing about in the showroom. They were doing nothing, and seemed oblivious to the frantic activity of the women. Occasionally one of them would run his finger along the roof or bonnet of one of the new cars, as if to demonstrate his expertise, his familiarity with the merchandise. They paid Dan no attention because he did not look like someone with the money to buy a car. This was true. Several of the models on display cost more than his entire year’s salary. He quietly left before Joan saw him. He never mentioned to her that he had been there.
‘Just the usual,’ she says, and Dan is horrified and ashamed that his wife has done that job for fifteen years. He chops the carrots with a vengeance.
* * *
Yvonne at his work keeps lecturing him, in a friendly, good-intentioned way. ‘You’re too willing,’ she tells him. ‘You’re too conscientious. Nobody should have to put up with the amount of work they give you.’
Yvonne herself is no slacker. She’s the receptionist. Apart from not having to deal with the cars, her job is as frantic as Joan’s. She fields the phone calls and the visitors and does some typing and she even finds time to give Dan advice. She is twenty-two – half his age – but she doesn’t see any irony in giving advice to a man old enough to be her father. Dan’s official job title is Requisitions Manager. The firm – a small but industrious firm of architects – gave him this name and a ten per cent rise after he’d been with them for five years and ‘Storeman’ had become too much of an under-statement to be ignored. As well as running the stores, Dan is in charge of repairs, equipment, the post room, and health and safety. He is responsible for the main tenance and cleaning contracts and the stationery purchases, and often he acts as a courier, delivering documents to other locations in the city. When he has a spare half-hour he’ll sometimes work the switchboard to let Yvonne get on with something else. He is indispensable to the firm, and this gives him enough satisfaction to offset the nagging feeling that he is underpaid and overworked. Yvonne, who is not long out of college and is afraid of no one, fuels his suspicions. ‘They take advantage of your good nature,’ she says. ‘They exploit you, you know they do. You shouldn’t let them.’
Dan at home. He has a big record collection. He loves the sound of a woman singing, and it doesn’t much matter to him if it’s Jessye Norman or Mary Black or Nina Simone. There’s something about any woman’s voice which is worth listening to. That’s what he thinks. But most of all he listens to Billie Holiday. He could listen to her sing for hours and think only minutes had gone by. He has about twenty different albums of Billie Holiday, many of them with different recordings of the same song, little variations that he has become totally familiar with – so that he can listen to a song and say, ‘Yes, with Ray Ellis and his orchestra, 1958 sessions.’ Joan likes Billie Holiday too, but she gets irritated by this perfectionism. ‘Sometimes I think you don’t listen to the songs themselves anymore. You listen for the bits that are missing.’ Dan gives her his smile, the one that says, yes, you’re right, but you don’t know anything. ‘You don’t know,’ Billie sings, ‘what love is, until you’ve learned the meaning of the blues.’ What a life, thinks Dan, alone in the front room at two in the morning, what a life she had to have, to sing like that.
Joan sits on the bus and different lives come at her, veering away at the last moment. She tries to be untouched by them, but it’s hard. One morning there are three Asian girls going into town. Their hair is thick and black – she can imagine how heavy it must feel just by looking at it – but their loose black silk trousers look lightweight. Although young they seem very dignified, aloof even. She is not a racist, but she is sure of one thing: their lives and hers have nothing in common.
Another time, coming home in the evening, it’s three white girls. They are loud but at the same time conspiratorial, trying to impress the bus with their grown-up talk, which is about the different stages of undress they have reached with their boyfriends. Joan, who could be their mother, is embarrassed and intrigued. She can’t stop herself listening. Then a woman of her own age stands to get off the bus, and as she passes the girls her rage comes pouring out: ‘You’re disgusting! Decent people having to listen to your filth! Dog-dirt! You’re worse than dog-dirt!’
‘Piss off!’ the girls chorus as she steps off the bus. Joan finds herself turning to watch the woman disappear on the crowded pavement.
One day there’s an old drunk man giving the world-view to everybody on the bus. It’s only mid-morning but already he’s had a skinful. ‘Too many people ’assatrouble. Westafrica’neastafrica’ntha. Six families tae a hoose. The Ashian shituashion. I know, I know.’ The other passengers seem to find him funny. He’s a Scotch comedian pretending to be a drunk. They nod and smile and shake their heads to one another. Joan is alone.
Then one night, with winter coming on, she gets on the bus to come home and as soon as she sits down at the back she knows she has done the wrong thing. There are three boys just in front of her – all these young lives seem to come in threes – and apart from them the lower deck is empty. They are busy carving up the seats. She should get up and move to the front but she doesn’t want to draw attention to herself. She listens to the blades slicing through plastic. The bus stops and an Inspector gets on, a Sikh. ‘Oh, here we go,’ says one of the boys, ‘a fucking towelheid. Eh, lads, feet up on the fucking seats.’
Joan sits mesmerised. The Inspector is a middle-aged man with a full, greying beard. He comes down and checks their tickets, then hers. As he goes back past them he says, ‘Take your feet off the seats, please.’ He can’t help but see the ripped covering. ‘Fuck off, ya black cunt ye.’ He calmly walks to the front of the bus, where he speaks first to the driver, then into his radio. At the next stop the boys run off the bus.
Joan breathes out. The air is so oppressive. She just sat back, shrank back in her seat and hoped it wouldn’t touch her. She has to admit her fear.
It’s not just that she is frightened about things like that. She thinks about what she is becoming, has become. She keeps telling herself that she could be a lot worse off, that she and Dan have a roof over their heads and two jobs that are secure and a holiday every year (not that they go away, but the option is there) and all right it would be nice to have children, but she doesn’t really know if it would be, she just says that because it’s expected of her, not that anyone ever says, ‘Wouldn’t you like children?’, she wouldn’t think much of someone who came out and asked as personal a question as that, not after all this time. But she can’t avoid the truth. She can cope with her own life now simply because, at some point, she can’t remember when, she lost the courage to change. It’s not that she doesn’t have fear – she has. It’s that she doesn’t have courage.
And what would her children be? Like those boys, those girls? It’s too late, but she can’t help wondering.
Yvonne says to Dan, ‘You’ve got to put your foot down. Brian abuses you, Diane exploits you. You’re exploited. I mean, we all are, but we get paid enough for it. You do far more than you need to for them. Coming in at the weekend last week. Staying on to change her office around for her. They don’t even thank
you for it. You’re a really nice man, everybody likes you, we only want to see you getting fairly treated.’
‘I’m all right,’ he tells her. ‘I appreciate your concern, but really I’m all right. I’m quite happy doing that kind of thing.’
Although they don’t own a car Dan and Joan have a problem with car ownership. Many of the neighbours who have cars have had them fitted with alarms, and the alarms keep going off, usually at two in the morning. Dan hates them. ‘It’s just blatant selfishness,’ he rants. ‘Every time they go off they’re saying, I’m looking after Number One, don’t touch, I’ve commandeered the space in and around this tin box and if the wind buffets it or someone knocks it trying to squeeze by to get to the pavement and your sleep’s disturbed that’s tough, that’s not my problem.’
Joan says, ‘They have to protect their property. I know what you mean, but they have to do something.’
‘They’re noise pollutants,’ says Dan. ‘Those alarms going off is a worse kind of pollution than the exhaust fumes.’
One night Dan’s going to sort them. He’ll go down into the street in his pyjamas and take a hammer to the windscreen of the screaming car, and for good measure he’ll smash in the headlights flashing in time with the alarm. ‘Now you’ve something to make a fucking noise about,’ he’ll shout. And all the people leaning out of their windows in their nightwear, the non-carred, cheering and applauding.
Joan at work. One of the salesmen is called Maurice. The first thing to notice about Maurice is his hair. It stands upright and waves like a cornfield in the breeze. It does this by design not by nature. He keeps it corn-coloured too and it looks absurd on a fifty-year-old. Margaret, who works with Joan, christened him The Coxcomb, and they all take the piss out of him, but Maurice is immune to anything that might alter his own good opinion of himself. If you’re on your knees in front of the filing cabinet Maurice is the guy that always says, ‘Say one for me when you’re down there, love.’ Or if you’re not wearing your best smile he’ll say, ‘Cheer up, it might never happen.’ At quiet moments he deigns to lean on their counter, practising his chat-up lines. As soon as a customer appears he skates off again: ‘A woman’s work is never done, isn’t that right, Joan?’
‘It’s well seen a man’s work never gets started in here,’ says Margaret. But Maurice can make a sale in twenty minutes and float back with his ego refuelled. An Asian man approaches the desk.
‘Oh-oh,’ says Maurice under his breath, ‘looks like you’ll be trading on the black market this afternoon, ladies.’
‘What was that, Maurice? I didn’t quite catch that,’ Margaret calls after him, but Maurice is back among the new cars, on his own territory.
The women are talking about Thelma and Louise one day. It’s not long out on video. Margaret’s saying, ‘It’s brilliant, the way she lets that bastard have it,’ and suddenly Maurice is there, sidling in.
‘Is that the film about the two lezzies?’
‘No, Maurice, it’s not,’ says Margaret.
‘Only joking,’ he says, ‘I saw it myself. Liked the music.’
‘Oh, just the music?’
‘Well, some of the rest of it was a bit O. T. T. if you want my opinion.’
‘Did you not think he was asking for it, then?’
‘Oh, now, I’m not saying he was right, of course I’m not. The guy was out of order, no question.’
‘He was raping her, for God’s sake,’ says Margaret.
‘Aye, but he backed off. I mean, she shot him after he’d backed off. A bit strong, surely.’
‘Sounds fair enough to me,’ says Joan. She’s amazed at herself. She hasn’t even seen the film.
‘Joan, I’m disappointed in you,’ says Maurice. ‘I didn’t think you were into women’s lib. All these years we’ve worked together, Joan, and I never knew you were for burning your bra.’
‘You’re pathetic,’ says Joan, ‘if that’s what you think women’s lib is about. You’re pathetic anyway.’ She can’t believe she said that. Neither can Maurice. He retreats, pink-faced, the coxcomb bouncing ludicrously. Margaret hoots derisively at his back. ‘Imagine being married to it,’ she says.
And Joan feels good. She suddenly feels alive. She feels sorry about telling Dan to stop moping about with Billie Holiday. She wants to speak to him, to tell him that they do know what love is, they’ve just let it get buried somewhere along the way. As soon as she gets a quiet moment she’s going to phone him, just to see if he’s home, just to let him know she’s thinking about him. All this distance they’ve let come between them, a lot of it’s her fault, she wants to try and break it down. Maybe they could move away, start again somewhere where no one knows them. Maybe it’s not yet too late.
* * *
Twice, sometimes three times a week, Dan has the flat to himself for a couple of hours. And one Saturday morning in three. These times are good for listening to records, reading the paper, watching something on the telly that Joan doesn’t like or approve of. And sometimes they’re good for other things.
Sometimes Dan gets out his magazines. The best bit about the magazines is after you buy them but before you start to read them. Even before you get home, walking back with them under your jacket, it’s like you’ve bought an entry into another life. At this point they can contain anything, anything you want them to. The perfect woman might be in there, the woman that’s perfect for you. It’s only once you read them that the disappointment sets back in. You’re always disappointed. The other life never lives up to your expectations. This is the nature of the magazines, their purpose, to leave you dissatisfied and send you back, sooner or later, for more. Dan understands this, but it doesn’t stop him doing it.
Lately some of the magazines have started advertising phone-lines. Lately Dan has started reaching for the phone. It’s a new thrill, he knows it won’t last for ever. But just for now he likes what he hears, the security of the women’s voices, the repetition of familiar phrases. He likes the posh voices that say, you can suck my nipples, and the taunting voices that say, get down on your knees and beg for it, but most of all he likes the close, breathy voice that says, I’m glad you’re here and we’re all alone … It’s pathetic really, he knows what a con it is. Maybe it’s this, and not the loneliness in the woman’s voice, that sometimes brings the tears after he has come.
All Dan wants is something else, for life to be something more than what it is. He is a nice man, a decent man. Really he is. But when he looks in the bathroom mirror, cleaning up, he does not much like what he sees.
Joan has a breathing space, a lull. No phones ringing, nobody returning their car. Outside, the air thickens. She dials the number. In the space before the connection is made, she wonders if he’ll answer, if he got home before the snow. She hopes so. She hopes he is safe. She wants everything to be all right.
Tilt
‘What’s it about? That’s the only question in the world worth asking.’
‘What do you mean, what’s it all about?’
‘Not all. Just what’s it about. What’s it all about’s a different question and it’s too big.’
‘All right. What’s it about. What do you mean anyway, ya picky bastard?’
‘Well, like you’re in a museum, or a gallery, say, looking at a painting, and you ask, what’s it about? Or you read a book, or you go to the pictures, or you see something on the news, or a fight in the pub. Or a woman crying in the street. Anything. What’s it about?’
‘Probably it’s not any of your business.’
‘You can still ask it though. Into yourself like.’
‘Then you wouldn’t get an answer.’
‘You might. You’ve only got to ask the question and find out. But all right, so maybe you don’t get an answer. You still asked the question. You can come back to it another time. If it’s important you will come back to it.’
‘You might think you’ve got an answer but it’s the wrong one.’
‘It doesn’t matter. Y
ou’ve still got an answer. I’m not saying it has to be right. You just have an explanation. Maybe the next time you come back to the gallery and go to that painting, you’ll think, ah, that’s what it’s about. All right, so you were wrong before. It was still the only question worth asking. And anyway the answer can change. The answer is fluid. Only the question is a certainty.’
‘I’ll tell you what’s a certainty. You talking a lot of bollocks, that’s what.’
‘Thanks, neighbour. You want me to roll another one of these?’
There was a time when Alan was ten, or maybe twelve. And this was what he was thinking, that that time was two-thirds of his life away. Right enough there was a time when he was five that was even worse – six-sevenths of his life away – but you don’t remember the very early years at all, not at all. And yet they’re the ones that make you. You’re made in just a few years, and then the rest is unmaking. Did he really believe that? It was just that sometimes it seemed everything you did was a response to conditions. You didn’t make yourself but were made by others, by what happened to you in childhood, and then as an adult it was as if you could only behave the way you’d been designed, buttons were pressed and levers pulled and all you could do was react. Parts of his childhood he remembered with amazing clarity, feelings and smells that immediately transported him back, and yet it was so distant, it was like somebody else’s life. A previous existence. The clock was ticking and back then he had been impatient with its slowness but not any longer. Now it went with a speed that was terrifying and there was a simple reason: he wasn’t young anymore.
But even then, at twelve years old, he was worrying about the big things. He used to lie awake at night, spinning in his bed, pondering the mysteries of the universe: he was in bed because it was night; it was night because the earth turned on its axis once every twenty-four hours, and during half of these hours the side of the earth with Scotland on it faced away from the sun; here it was dark, on the other side of the earth it was light. And the nights were long now because it was winter, and winter was because it took the earth three hundred and sixty-five and a quarter days to orbit the sun, and in the winter months Scotland was further away from the sun than in the summer, while in New Zealand – the antipodes, meaning ‘diametrically opposite’ although this wasn’t really the case – it was summer at Christmas. The further north or south you went from the equator the colder it got because the poles were the points on earth where the angles of the sun’s rays were at their weakest. Scotland had a cool climate because it wasn’t far from the Arctic Circle, northern Scotland was in fact on the same latitude as bits of southern Alaska. All this was disturbing; it meant, if it was true, that the tiniest shift could completely alter or even destroy the climate. He watched an old film called The Day the Earth Caught Fire, in which a series of nuclear test explosions knocked the earth off its axis, and worried about it for weeks afterwards.
Republics of the Mind Page 8