by Laura Hird
George though, what is he like? He’s in amongst all these 19 yr old Ukrainians. He says where else can an old cat like him get off with all these young girls. They’re always wanting to bring the whole family to the west. George is forever asking me if I know any jobs for artists. I have to tell him like it’s not my line, George. Go and see Demarco or that. But I think the time the family are becoming in evidence is about the time when George takes his icons and splits.
Davie I’ll tell you the biggest laugh. No I’ll tell you later.
She reached down into her knickers, pulled out a bloodied Lil-let and threw it at the band. I can’t remember which band. Maybe The Flowers. I don’t want to go on about punk bands and all that Davie. I know you’re into it but I find that there’s a lot of the enthusiasms of my youth that I just can’t get a hard-on for anymore (like if I could get one at all). So she threw the fanny-pad and I thought – that’s the girl for me. We got off. We met at gigs and wrote to each other.
She sent me some poems:
Stuff my cunt with broken glass
Stick your cock right up my arse
Precocious work. Kelly’s parents had a book Kiss of the Whip, a pseudo-scientific book on flogging, like on the bookshelf in the living room. The family bible.
Another of Kelly’s verses treated of her first sexual experiences: stripping off in the dark, in the cupboard under the stairs; skelping her bare arse with a ruler. She had no English blood either. I gave her that Angela Carter book The Sadeian Woman and she fairly lapped that up. There was a carfuffle about this punk group called The Moors Murderers so we had to read Emlyn William’s book on Brady and Hindley. Now Ian Brady had a secret library that he had hidden in a suitcase in a locker. Kiss of the Whip was one of the books he had. Kelly wanted her own secret library stacked up in the bedroom. I agreed to help. She called it the Kentral library.
In no time at all the paraphernalia she wanted began to accrue around her: plastic belts in gaudy colours, a frayed piece of rope, a wig, hardly the full accoutrement of the dungeon. But, the books. It’s hard to get into all that claustrophobic S&M nowadays, but you had to go to extraordinary lengths to get books. A lot of Sade wasn’t published in Britain in the late 70’s so it was sending away to New York for Sade in English (international money orders and commission to pay to a broker for finding out what the exchange rate is). I remember having that cartoon Story of O and 120 Days of Sodom seized by HM customs. Did you ever get one of those letters? ‘Such goods are obscene … legalese … bullshit … will take action to condemn thereof.’
I remember in one letter she told me about when she’d been in her bedroom putting the heavy eye make-up on, dressing up as a punk to go out. Her father came in and smashed the hand mirror off the wall. Her father had been a pit manager at Monktonhall but had been made redundant with the rest of them. Kelly became wistful when she told of the days when she and her sister had good winter coats. Such beautiful little coats.
Her mother worked as a bank clerk for the TSB. I wish I’d known before I phoned up one day and got her father on the phone, ‘Ms Burns? Ms Burns? Which Ms Burns are you wanting? There’s two Ms Burns lives here. Which Ms Burns, eh, which Ms Burns?’ On and on like this. She painted him to me as the classic tyrant along the lines of Eugene O’Neill, etc. She told me she had to get away from Penicuik; from her father, from having to sell the medicine cabinet to get records, from the rows: that’s why she was at university.
She lived in Dundee and I was living in Leith. She wrote me all the time. This was when she studied English at Dundee University. Rows of the black and orange-spined Penguin classics by the bed. That was when Thucydides was ‘Sook The Diddies’. A desk in the lecture hall had first year girls suck cock on it and she wrote next to it yum yum. William Wordsworth’s birthplace was Cockermouth … you can imagine. She copied me out passages of The Prelude. I don’t have them now. What could they have been? I can hardly look at the book, but I know the passages didn’t include: The poet, gentle creature as he is/Has like the lover his unruly times – his fits when he is neither sick nor well/Though no distress be near him but his own unmanageable thoughts.
Davie imagine my perturbation, in fact I was right pissed off at what that lassie said in the paper. She came to meet us in the pub at 11 o’clock on a Friday night. I said to her firstly that we get enough creepy journos hanging around us. They want Edinburgh gossip – they can fuck off. I’m sure that’s why we got slagged for our drinking, smoking, raving. The evidence of her own eyes, but Friday night 11–3 (her early bedtime) there’s plenty going on. No, I don’t mind having the tale told on us for that; that we are disorganised, are wasters, or having described the common or garden procrastination that anyone would recognise. Aye. Fine. No Davie. What was very irritating was to be described as incomprehensible. Put me in mind of this academic-type I met recently who asked, ‘What are you doing nowadays?’ I said I was looking at some Tudor bawdry.
‘That’ll sound great with your accent.’
Christopher and Brian mind, were going to be film directors. They were at university but really wanted to be at film school. It was movies, movies, movies with them all the time. Someone built a joint in front of them, it was oh I don’t like those Cheech and Chong films. If they’re sitting with a couple of girls you’ll overhear, ‘I don’t think The Maltese Falcon is misogynistic’ and so on. They ran the film club though and we could go and see films anytime for nowt. We saw them all. I remember this Japanese film, Diary of a Shinjuku Thief I think it was called. It starts in black and white. Guy goes in the bookshop and pinches Genet’s Thief’s Journal (heavy irony). There’s some business about a romance but this isn’t clear. The young hero gets caught pinching a book. It swings into 16mm colour footage of the Tokyo riots at the end; good punk stuff but Brian said it was ‘very 60’s’.
Christopher and Brian moved next door to me in Leith. Hippies lived there. They had a wooden plaque on the front door with a toadstool painted on it. A hippie guy that lived there fancied Kelly so I had her borrow his complete bound editions of Evergreen Review. Most of the stories and poems in them you could find in other books, but the adverts were the best. There was one from about 1959; it had a cartoon of a guy in black beard and tights holding a book, while a sexy girl is swooning at his feet. The copy goes: Things you need for beatniking: 1. Like, a book of verse man. 2. A chick. 3. A BOTTLE OF SEAGRAM’S SEVEN. That was it. Seagram’s Seven is liquor; you always drink it with 7 Up so you can ask at the bar for a 7 and 7. Reading the Evergreen Reviews through from issue one, until it stopped, you can see how Madison Avenue encroached on the Village, and they were never very far apart. And the best you can say for that ‘beatniking’ is that you can have it.
Kelly and I went to some festival reception. Enough wine to fill the Assembly Rooms, or much more than enough. Kelly goes missing. This older woman comes up to me and says a very drunk Kelly is asking for me in the women’s toilets. The older woman carries her out by her arms while her man takes her by the legs to carry her to their car. We’d had enough – nice of them though. En route to the car, at the same time, they both notice she’s got no knickers on under her red mini skirt. The woman’s frantically trying to pull down her skirt. But the boy on the ankles end can see right up the breakfast. She was sick in their car. They took us back to the student room with the sink in it.
I knew what crapulence was the next day. Shagging away in such a pitch of a hangover; culminating in a reversal of the senses I’d been looking for for a long time. I ate a shite off the floor. It appeared as pure gold to me.
It was a muggy day and she wanted to go out onto The Meadows to sunbathe. I say no it’s not a good idea. She puts down on the grass too near the guys setting up the fair rides. One of them comes over and says, ‘Whatever turns you on darling.’ We can’t have our scene to ourselves.
From time to time I see submissions for Jock’s magazine. Don’t want to see another story set in a pub, or starts, ‘Two pints of h
eavy mate.’ I hope you’ve done nowt like that Davie. That said though, an old guy came up to me, in a pub, and says to me like this, ‘I sure hate drinking alone.’
‘Me too,’ I said. Turns out he was an American from Chicago – a Lutheran minister. He was with some sort of convention/pilgrimage. It seems St Giles in Edinburgh is as The Vatican to Lutherans. You don’t meet many men of the cloth – I got right in amongst the issues. I said I’d met these hippies recently who believed that having ‘good’ thoughts stopped you from getting cancer. I’d said it was carcinogenic substances that caused cancer. ‘Ah yes,’ the minister said, ‘and no one knows what these substances are.’ He said he knew a lot of men of science who were also religious. He told about some particle physicists that had built a cyclotron, which was a huge underground tunnel 24 miles long. And that this tunnel generated the same power as a human sneeze. I realise – man I’m being sermonised here; that sneeze was contrived to blow my mind, along the lines of ah the vanity of human wishes, etc. He asked me where I stood in the matter of religion. Purely for mischief I said, ‘I’m drawn towards the concept of Our Lady.’
‘Ah Mary,’ he said. ‘Mary I don’t mind at all – as long as Joseph can have equal billing.’ You could tell he’d come out with that one before. It had that doctrinaire air.
I was reminded of the old surrealist story of how they made ‘St Matthew’s Martinis’ by holding up the vermouth to sunlight letting the rays of sunlight then pass through the gin, like the Holy Ghost had passed through the virgin’s hymen, leaving it intact as St Matthew had written.
I felt I could hardly speak to this Lutheran anymore. I wished I had bugs in my hair I could throw at him. Joseph was surely the most inconsequential boy in all the gospels; only fit for pulling the donkey’s nose along. Made a cuckold of by the Holy Ghost. Ars Theologia: Arse Theologia. I made my excuses and left Davie, aye.
It wouldn’t have happened overnight, but it seems compressed in my mind. Kelly was this gawky punk lassie with black drainpipes, bony knees sticking out. Then the hair grew and grew into dresses and mini skirts. One day she came out with the phrase, (used without irony), ‘Us leggy model types’.
She met this girl at university who put her onto this camera club, in the back of Portfolio on Dundas St. You have a contact-sheet done in various states of undress down to ‘full figure’ or nude shots. Guys come in and look at a collection of these contact-sheets and pick a model to photograph, one guy or groups of guys. Tenner a shot to the girl. The changing rooms were downstairs and you had dusty feet by the time you’d walked from there onto the cardboard rollers used as backdrops. She did plenty of work and was gifted clothes and make-up. She even bought a bra which she’d never worn before.
She came to visit me in Leith one night. Threw down this £20 on the bed. ‘I stood under the statue of Rabbie Burns. The first car that stopped I asked the man for £15, but he said it was too much and drove off.’ She said, ‘I got in the back with the next guy. He came in the johnnie as soon as he got it in. Said it was the quickest tenner I’ll ever make. He said he had a friend and I said I don’t do anything kinky. But he said: No no nothing like that, I’ll drive you out to the farmhouse and it’ll be just him. It was like he said. His pal with these rough farmer’s hands over me. He had a tiny cock. I’ll have to get a shower.’ She said the guy wanted to meet her the next night. We went to the pictures instead.
Kelly got her degree. Replying to an advert in the paper she was a salesperson in a car showroom in Corstorphine in no time. She gets the punters interested … aye you know … Old Rab comes round later and gets them to sign. Teamwork. How was the parlance: Close the deal.
Rab took her to an Indian restaurant. The meal was lousy so they didn’t leave much of a tip. The waiter helped her on with her coat saying, ‘Your coat … yes, it’s a very old one.’ She said she made it with Rab back at his hotel in gratitude for the Indian meals. Apropos of nothing one day she comes out with, ‘My Boss has got balls like tennis balls.’
‘Did you suck his cock?’
‘No, I’m sort of saving that up.’
The fat Essex man (you know him) king of porn rip-offs managed to get a licence from the council for two sex shops. One on Leith Walk, the other on Dalry Road. I had a job in them. A heavy guy came over from Glasgow to train me up, ‘Now we’re wanting the stuff going out the door. That’s the main thing. Punter takes a magazine for £8 you take one from behind the counter here – they’re crap, it’s all crap. You give ’um, “We’ll call it a tenner then big boy O.K.” He takes two at £6 each; chuck in another one for £15. He takes two £8 ones; we’ll call it the £20. See the principle? Fine. They’ve got a hard-on looking at all the magazines and they want offsky pronto. Don’t let nobody take the shrink-wrapping off the magazines. The videos on the wall are £30. The ones down here, they’re the right ones, they’re £70. Only play the right ones through the lounge. The lounge is a fiver. You’ll no want to go in there yourself, the spunk’ll be fleein’ about through there. I’m only jokin! Any bother phone me or Harry, got it? I’ll sit with ye the day, see if yer any good an ’at.’
‘What about the lingerie and dildos?’
‘Nobody buys that stuff, but if any perverts do come in it’s all marked. Throw in one of these wee crappy vibrators. Same as the magazines.’
So it was two or three days a week in the sex shop with Pete and Marie. Poor junkies, both dead now Davie, aye. The sex shop was a brief gig though. They started putting prostitutes’ addresses and phone numbers (snap-shots in some cases) on a cork pin-board behind the till. The papers got hold of it and the council took away their licence.
Christopher and Brian wanted me to write a screenplay based on the Book of Job. They get this idea purely from they like Blake’s illustrations for Job. I set to work in Old College library right away. This is the library at the top of the Mound, right under the armpit of John Knox’s statue. It is the most serene place. I ate it up. I would walk from the sex shop to there. I read everything on the Book of Job. Even unto The Proceedings of the Society of Dermatologists; Psychosomatic Dermatology circa 4 BC (Job is smitten with a plague of boils). I made copious notes, and when I felt like it I’d just browse through the place. A good book was The World’s Bible: The Bible, The Koran, Gita, Vedas, Gilgamesh, etc. A good book to have. I’ll have to take a diversion here and say that when you have a kid Davie, be sure and teach it the value of comparative religion. There’s no underestimating learning generally, but tolerance they should know.
I lived in Shepherd’s Bush for a little while and it was just a little while I’ll tell you: now Shepherd’s Bush seemed to me like a vast council estate that feeds the BBC with workers. We had a make-up artist staying with us (the rest were unemployed actors) whose room was a shrine to a soft pack of Marlboros. She’d swiped them ages ago from David Bowie when he’d come to the BBC to do Brecht’s Baal. She’d done his make-up. Everyone had gone out this night. I was left in the house with no fags and no fuck all. You can see it. I smoked them all. There were about two draws in each one … It only took until the next again day ’til she twigged and she lost it. She attacked me with a fork. Sausaged my ribs. She created such an atmosphere that it was impossible for me to stay. I left London. So Davie teach your kids they can fuck with anybody’s god they feel like, but they should cover their arse and always remember to replace the fags.
Christopher, Brian and all their university/film school pals had been round a typewriter one night and had made this thing called a ‘treatment’. They had National Geographics out and typed out: We propose to shoot the film in India. We propose to shoot it in the desert. A point’s system will apply for all the crew, etc. Brian’s girlfriend had done a couple of drawings of costumes. They showed me this document. I said why don’t you let me do it and put this in the bucket. They were offended that I wanted to put their sweated labour in the bucket. They hawked this treatment (which I thought should’ve included a synopsis of the actual film) aroun
d and eventually gave up on the whole thing when the Arts Council described it as illiterate.
The pain Davie, the ‘toothache’ in the baws. I’m going to have a look at your MS now: I thought it was a novel, but it’s a sheaf of short stories. I’ll pick out the first one.
* * *
DAVIE’S STORY
Mr Archibald was blind. Most Sundays he would go out walking under the patient care of his guide dog, Lucky. Mr Archibald had had the golden lab’ for seven years. This particular Sunday had been the fairest for weeks and after his Three O’Clock sherry, man and dog took a pleasant walk on Queen’s Drive; a well-paved road that runs by the palace of Holyrood House. A gentle wind blew ripples on St Margaret’s Loch and displaced Mr Archibald’s thinning hair. He stopped in his tracks as he heard Lucky bark. The dog struggled and broke from him. He thought perhaps Lucky had gone up Arthur’s Seat after a rabbit, but was distressed as this was contrary to his training and an unique occurrence. Whistling and calling heel he slapped the ground with his steel cane. In a short while a policeman came by and raised the alarm, but the dog was nowhere to be seen. Lucky ran and ran until finally he paused whimpering and shaking on top of the crags at Arthur’s Seat. In a second he leapt straight over the edge and dropped down the two hundred feet.