1982 Janine

by Alasdair Gray

  144 MY PRISONERS

  ‘Act calm,’ thinks Janine. ‘Pretend this is just an ordinary audition.’ Splendid.

  2 SUPERB

  A ripe housewife in her early forties. A thickish body slightly flabby in some places (stomach, forearms, thighs) but practical and sensual with dark shoulderlength hair which is straight, not curly like Janine’s. The breasts I will not neglect are nude under the bib of yes, her whole body is naked under the white sweatsoiled denim of yes, dungarees which tightly cuddle her fulfilled cunt but are otherwise very loose and baggy and rolled up to the knees as she sprawls dozing on the fleecy flattened carseat. Charlie leans down to kiss her. He says, “We’ve arrived, honey.”

  “I don’t want to move.”

  “Lie on your front.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve a surprise for you – a present.”

  She turns over. She feels him grip her right arm. Something cold clicks round it above the elbow, her left arm is wrenched painfully back and with another click she finds her elbows locked together behind her. She cries, “Hey that hurts Charlie!” and starts struggling on to her knees but his arm forces her down, he lies with his face close to hers and whispers, “Honey, you’ve got to listen or you won’t understand a thing. Will you listen?” – and his hard hands squeeze her soft forearms cruelly tight – “Will you listen to me?”

  145 MY PRISONERS

  She stares at him, mouth and eyes wide open. He says softly, “Remember the night we met and I told you I could make you an actress? Remember I said on the phone this afternoon that I’d have you giving performances sooner than you expected? Well I meant every word. And your first performance will be tonight.”

  He kisses her violently then says, “I’m going to tell you something that won’t make much sense till you’re a few weeks older. I love you, you bitch, and I’m giving you to people who will teach you tricks you never dreamed existed. But I’ll keep returning to you again and again and in the end you won’t want to live without me and we’ll have had more fun together than you thought possible in your whole goddamned selfish little life. Understand?”

  And grabbing her head in both hands he kisses her again, then sits up and touches a switch. The hood of the car rolls down. He sounds the horn loudly, twice, then gets out of the car, comes round to her side and opens the door. In one hand he holds a thick leather collar. Too stupefied to understand anything she lies staring at him as he reaches in and buckles it round her throat, then takes a chain leash from his pocket and slips it to a ring on the collar, then stands back from the car and tugs the chain hard. He says, “Walk, bitch.”

  (Control yourself) trembling and aghast she obeys the pressure of the collar and struggles to her knees, extends a leg and again feels the chilling grittiness of concrete under her bare foot. The buckle of the collar is huge and sharp-edged so she must stand with her chin held very high. She is facing a closed door. He comes behind her, a hand unfastens the buttons over her right hip then slips inside the dungarees and caresses her belly while the other hand slips under the bib to caress her breasts. He presses her back against him, she feels between her buttocks his penis blunted by two layers of cloth, feels his lips kissing her between the shoulderblades. In her state of strangeness and dread these pressures are comforting. The door suddenly opens and that is enough for now. Except that this happens in a windowless garage with twelve cars parked in it and room for several more.

  3 BIG MOMMA

  I don’t know her age. She has a small girlish head with closecropped ash blonde hair and you have to look very close to see the fine little wrinkles of age. The head rises from the body of one of those hippo-like whores who keep surfacing in Fellini films. In my teens and twenties I found them repulsive. But what is she wearing and where is she? Since I abolished the police station sequence I have left her nowhere. I will compensate by putting her in two places at once.

  146 MY PRISONERS

  (A) In the pool of light toward which Janine walks Big Momma is standing astride astride astride with her hands on her hips and a smile like the smile of a greedy little girl looking at a plate of cream cakes. But she is looking at Janine. She wears one of those conspicuously openable dresses I am far too fond of: tight creamcoloured linen with great big buttons many of them unfastened. Her flirtatiously scanty black panties and bra are obvious through it. No stockings, sensible sandals.

  (B) The door before Superb suddenly opens and Big Momma walks toward her grinning like a greedy little girl looking at a plate of etcetera. She is dressed as in (A) and walks straight up to Superb who is clasped by Charlie against his body. Momma says in a coarse throaty whisper, “Gimme a taste,” and standing on tiptoe she kisses Superb quite gently. Then she says, “The leash please, Charlie. It’s my turn to take her a walk. I’ve a pack of hot dogs back there who can’t wait for her.”

  Ooooh nasty.

  4 HELGA

  In her mid-thirties. Of all my women she is the most athletically lovely with no sagging lines at all. She has the tall spare slender figure which unobservant idiots call “boyish”. She is not at all boyish, though her breasts are small and far apart. The nipples cover half of them and as I consider her I am disturbed by a strange feeling which has nothing to do with the story she is in, a feeling of … friendliness. Why? Friendliness is irrelevant here. I feel like a gangster play on the radio which is being interrupted by an opera on another wavelength. Dad liked opera though he pretended not to. Sometimes mum or myself came into the kitchen unexpectedly and found him playing the Third Programme very quietly with his ear close to the set. He always switched at once to the Light Programme or Scottish Home Service and turned up the volume. I believe he sang in some sort of choir before I was born. He would have detested the nasty sexual world I have devised. I am sure he felt in his bones that sexuality was wicked. Which is why I feel in my bones that wickedness is sexy. Get back to Helga in the viewing theatre.

  147 INNER RESISTANCE

  4 HELGA

  In her mid-thirties. She wears She is wearing Why can’t I make her something inside my head is resisting the story of Helga. God, probably. I should never have asked him here. Helga is crucial, she brings all the other girls together. Forget what she looks like, what she wears. Imagine what she sees, hears, says. It may be possible to slip her past him that way. Here we go again.

  4 HELGA .

  watches the film of Janine’s audition right to the end, then presses her cigarette carefully into the ashtray. She says,

  “The editing was crap but the material is real hot stuff. She wasn’t exactly acting, was she?”

  “The word act is employed in two ways,” says Dr von Stroud whose first name had better be Wilhelm or something even more Germanic, “The proverb, It is actions, not sentiments which count suggests that value is mainly in deeds. The phrase, She did not mean it – she was just acting suggests that deeds are worthless unless caused by a sincere, immediate feeling or desire. The actions of Janine in your own beautiful film indicated lust and terror but were caused by a desire for money and to flaunt herself.” (This Doctor is a bore.) “In our film her declared feelings and acts were directly caused by what her fellow actors did to her. Yet our film did not succeed! We who helped create the performance were greatly entertained by it at the time, but the art by which we recorded it was inadequate. Editing, camera-work, lighting, the setting could have been improved. Which is why we are paying you to direct our future productions.”

  148 MY PRISONERS

  “Who has directed them so far?” asks Helga.

  “Mummy,” says Hollis and giggles, but Helga looks at Dr Wilhelm no but Adolf is too trite, Siegfried too operatic, Ludwig, no I like the Pastoral Symphony just call him the Doctor, Helga looks at the Doctor who says, “You will meet her shortly. But first let me show you some other people you will be working with.”

  The Doctor climbs up to a slide-projector behind the back row of seats which are as deep as oriental divans. Max and the w
aitress sprawl here embracing but apparently asleep, though his right hand, inside her dress and between her thighs, sometimes moves a little. The cinema darkens. With a click the screen suddenly shows damn damn, damn damn no satisfaction. (You’ll have to skip this bit.)

  I’ll have to skip this bit. Helga says, “Who’s the big woman? The cropped blonde.”

  “She is the member who has so far directed our productions,” says the Doctor, “we no longer find her satisfying. She knows nothing of filmwork and has become such a prima donna that she insists on acting in everything and always the same role.”

  “Oh I can’t wait to see her face when she realises she is no longer in charge,” squeals Hollis.

  “We will allow the truth to dawn upon her in easy stages,” says von Strudel. “She knows you are being employed as a film-maker but does not yet know this will affect her position. So you will watch one of her productions, one of her rehearsals. If you suggest an improvement she will at once reject it, she only likes her own ideas. But we will support you and make her do what you suggest, and thus establish your authority.”

  149 AND INCREASES

  “Have you fixed a date for this rehearsal?” asks Helga.

  “It will take place here, and very soon. Momma is bringing us a completely new girl – a girl new, I mean, to the disciplines of our organisation.”

  “And what is the piece called?”

  “It is called The New Girl’s First Day and is my friend Maximilian’s favourite production. You have chosen the actress for it, have you not, Maxie?”

  “That’s right,” says Max, and bringing his lips close to the waitress’s ear he murmurs (but the acoustics of the place are so good that every word is audible), “And if you don’t make with the sex exactly when I want it I’ll have you acting in it too.”

  “But honey,” the waitress quietly wails, squirming against him, “you know I always give you what you want.”

  “In that case,” says von Strudel, “since we have a few minutes to while away before the production team arrives, I suggest postures drench sobs “Please don’t make me,” but drenching but but and and and it’s no use. The resistance is too strong. I’ll have to think about something else until it vanishes. Think about real sex. How often have I had it? Start at the beginning.

  150 REAL SEX

  DENNY 1953

  Two months of sex three times a night. Is that possible? Is memory exaggerating? Perhaps, but I often went to bed with her thinking, ‘Not tonight, I’m too tired.’ I would embrace her cosily and slowly come awake all over. Nearly every night I am sure we loved on getting into bed, then once when waking in the smaller hours, and once just after or before the dawn. What delicious deep sleep she gave me in between. But surely it cannot have been three times a night? Let’s say twice a night which is 2 months X 4 weeks = 8 weeks X 7 days = 56 nights X 2 per night = 112 times, let’s say 140 no no no 150 times at least with Denny I’m certain.

  HELEN 1953–4

  In the six weeks before marriage we did it fully only twice, or perhaps only once. Nothing happened during the honey-moon, then twice a week for not more than ten months is 10 × 4 × 2 = 80 but some weeks we didn’t so more like 60 plus twice before marriage and once just before she left me in 1967 is 63 times with Helen.

  SONTAG 1971

  Six or seven weeks but so erratically that three times a week on average is probably on the generous side so 18 times with Sontag.

  THE EDITOR 1974

  Once one night and twice one night is 3 times with the editor.

  151 REAL SEX

  THE CHEMIST 197?

  No times. Nothing really happened.

  THE WHORE 1982

  No times either but for a moment I felt alive again. For years I had lived in great deadness of spirit, a deadness I still inhabit but last week was unusually painful. Spring is always the worst time for me and we had three or four days of sunny weather which affected the women as usual. It looked as if all of them between fifteen and fifty had come out dressed to provoke my lust. The sight gave me such pain that I had to walk about staring at the pavement a yard before my feet. I also grasped the pillbottle in my pocket like a talisman though I was in no danger of suicide. I will only be in danger if I sit down, empty the pills on to a tabletop or bedspread like this one and count them. There should be more than fifty. If I count them it will occur to me that only cowardice stops me swallowing them with a big tumbler of Glenlivet, and that if I do not swallow them I will detest and despise myself till my dying day. But I am in no danger of counting them if I walk about, keep staring at the pavement and visit crowded pubs. When I’m at home at the weekend I make a practice of pubcrawling. I spread my drinking between about twenty pubs, visiting six or seven in a single night but never the same pubs two nights running. In this way nobody gets to know me thoroughly or notices how much I drink. There is a lane which rises from the bank of the Kelvin and is so little used that it is still cobbled with stones of the horse and cart days. After dark I approached the arch of a high bridge where the lane begins and saw a shapeless dark figure descending the slope on the far side. I do not know how I knew the figure was female or how I sensed that it had sensed me. We slowed down as we neared each other and when the width of the arch separated us we were standing still and I had an erection. This was a novelty to me. I can induce erections by fantasising but I must cuddle real women for a very long time before I go stiff down there. I was astounded by what this woman was doing to me. She was squat and old with a bloated discoloured face but I felt hopeful and grateful, I crossed over and put my hands on her shoulders. This is hard to remember.

  152 WHORE PUB

  Remember it.

  She said, “Yes all right but I’ve got to be careful, I want to see what I’m getting, ken?”

  I thought she was talking about my prick and that she was worried in case it was diseased. I led her into a dark space behind a cast-iron pillar of the bridge, unzipped my flies and took the penis out. She felt it. I said, “It’s all right, you see. Come home with me,” and I zipped it in again and led her back the way I had come. I was so excited that I babbled to her, I can’t remember what. I wanted to make her excited and hopeful and compliant also, I put a twenty-pound note into her hand and told her she would get more tomorrow if we spent a good night together. She suddenly stood still and said, “But will ye marry me?”

  I said, “No, I’ve been married already.”

  She said, “Then I’ll never content ye. No no no no I’ll never content ye, I cannae dae it.”

  We were beside the entrance to the underground railway. She walked away into it with my twenty-pound note. I stared after her and shouted feebly, “Please come back,” but she disappeared round a corner wailing, “No no no I cannae content ye, I cannae content ye.”

  I grew angry and bellowed, “YOU ARE UNJUST!”

  I turned and ran up that lane and in a minute was in a crowded pub ordering a large gin and tonic. Gin has a foul taste but I take nothing else at the weekends because it is not noticeable on the breath. The penis was lying down again but I still felt like babbling though I do not often talk because people who talk give themselves away all the time. I saw a man I knew slightly and said to him, “A funny thing just happened to me.”

  I told him about it. His face took on a vague, absentminded look, he said, “Excuse me,” and went away.

  ‘Not very social,’ I thought. I saw a girl who attracted me, a student possibly, she stood in a group of other girls. I said to her, “Hullo.”

  She answered, “Hullo!” with a surprised but pleasant smile. I think she thought we had met before and that she had forgotten where, I am obviously a respectable man who does not chat up young strangers just because they are attractive. I said, “There are a lot of funny people around here, you know. I’ve just met one.”

  153 SHOP PILLS

  I told her about the whore under the bridge. To make the girl laugh I used an astonished, half-glaikit Glasgow voice
like Billy Connolly’s. I spoke loud enough for a lot of people to hear me. Oh God let me not remember. I don’t remember much else. Except getting very angry when they turned their backs, and hurling my glass over their heads at the gantry and grabbing another glass from a table and hurling that too then running out. I ran and ran a long way. Later I saw a Pakistani grocery which was still open. I remembered I had no eggs and bacon for breakfast and went inside. A boy of perhaps twelve, thirteen, fourteen was serving behind the counter, a handsome self-contained little boy. The shop was otherwise empty, I

  Do not make me remember more. I do not deserve mercy but I need it. Give me peace God. Stop me remembering that I went to the back of the shop where a cold cabinet full of dairy produce stood. Stop me remembering that I thought I could not be seen from the counter and started stealing eggs bacon butter, dropping them into my broad coat pockets and it is not far to the wardrobe.

  Wardrobe doorcreak. Coat pocket. Cool small bottle fits hand snugly. Back to bed. Unscrew cap. Slight rattle of little white blunt torpedoes spilling on to coverlet. Will you stop remembering that you went to the counter with only a carton of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, milk in your hand 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 and stop remembering that the boy marked the price on the till and said, “Is that all?” and I said, “Yes” and 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 stop remembering that he came round the counter and quietly put his hand in my pockets and took out all I had stolen and laid it on the counter and 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50 will do the trick but I still have 51, 52, 53, 54, 55 and 56 if I cannot stop remembering that he said