162 LAST SIGHT OF DENNY
For a few years Helen and I received a greetings card from her each Christmas with a Dunedin postmark but no address which would have let us answer it. Did Dad get a card also? If he did he never spoke of it. The cards stopped after five or six years. If she is still alive she is over seventy. I never remember her birthday. We did not celebrate birthdays in our family. Wait a minute, Dad did keep her cards. I found them in the little bureau drawer after he died along with his birth certificate for 14 January 1896 (father, Archibald MacLeish, Coalminer/mother, Jeanie Stevenson, Power Loom Weaver) and his First World War medals, and wedding photo, and a little magnifying glass which came with some stamps he once bought me. I threw all these things out. No good comes from brooding upon the past.
O I have just realised that the whore under the bridge was Denny. That is why my body recognised her at a distance after all these years. But the face old bloated discoloured someone had hit her, yes that was Denny’s face but I was thinking too much about my prick to recognise it until now. God damn my fucking prick, ha! My hair is trying to stand on end. Did she recognise me? We were both drunk. She asked me to marry her, it must have been Denny. No it must not have been Denny. It was not Denny please.
The boy took the stolen groceries from my pocket, laid them on the counter and said quietly, “Out of respect for your age and pity for your condition I am taking no steps in this matter. But if I find you doing this again I will inform the police.”
163 ENOUGH
I looked at him lovingly. I patted his shoulder and said, “You are a good man.”
I left the shop feeling sober and proud to be one of a species which had produced a boy of such dignity and decency. And now I am a coward if I do not eat these and drink that. Divide into three piles of roughly twenty, no need to count, and fill tumbler.
Gulp swallow. Gulp swallow. Gulp (rotten taste) swallow, swallow. Pills, whisky all gone tata.
And now?
11:
THIS IS VERY NICE.
No sweat, no hassle, no bother at all. Quickened heartbeat like strong wee galloping horses dradadum dradadum but I lie like a duke in a speeding carriage, jocose and easy-oasy, relaxed and okey-dokey, in love with easeful death and ceasing upon the midnight with no pain. Actual time 5.52 but thank you Hislop, your account of present state is otherwise accurate and melodious. It cannot last, of course. How long till coma and zero? Fifteen minutes? An hour? Must I completely digest these pills? Full digestion takes at least two hours. I should have asked the chemist about this but do not worry. Jolly Jimmy Body has been slipped a Mickey Finn by his aristocratic jockey Melancholy Montague Mind and before sunrise both will drop out of the human race damn. Damn, I am starting to feel randy. How inappropriate. How annoying. Temporary side-effect of? Last assertion of expiring? Prick’s Last Stand as in (so they say) hanging? Why not? Mine not to reason why, mine not to make reply, mine but to backward lie as in rape, enjoying, what?
Red velvet divans, oriental luxury, the Ruby Divans in Green’s Playhouse, biggest cinema in Europe so they said. The fog on frosty Novembers made it hard to see the screen from the highest circles but in one of the Rubyred Divans, snug little alcove for two, Denny and I saw Sudan in which Pharaoh’s daughter, sultry 1940s Hollywood brunette, is captured by Arab slavers and branded but falls in love with barbarian leading to happy ending with total abolition of slavery in ancient Egypt. Denny asked wonderingly, “Did it really happen like that?”
165 GALLOPING
I laughed and cuddled her for wondering if it could have happened like that. She said mournfully, “You shouldnae laugh. I cannae help being ignorant. My education was rubbish.”
Gone soft, I have. She who first made me stiff now makes me weak. Good Denny, sturdy wee compliant pony, a lovely ride. Be glad she loved you. Melt. Wait softly for your end, wail softly for your end. I WILL NOT. Prick knows there is still a spark of delight under this dying ash, poke for it. Stiffen poker how? Let heart beat me harder, dradadum. My kingdom for a horse. Help me, Hislop. It fell about the Lammas tide
When the muir-men win their hay,
The doughty Douglas went forth to ride
Into England, to drive him a prey.
AND HE HAS BURNED THE DALES OF TYNE
AND PART OF BAMBROUGHSHIRE, AND
THREE STRONG TOWERS ON ROXBURGH FELLS
HE LEFT THEM ALL ON FIRE.
Young Lochinvar is come out of the West,
The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three,
Bring me my bow of burning gold!
The battle closes thick and bloody,
Forth flash’d the red artillery,
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.
Steady, boys, steady. Sweating, hard are we?
Preclimactically tense? Excellent.
166 GALLOPING
Sound the clarion, fill the fife!
To all the sensual world proclaim,
One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name
BUT please also always
to remember that beneath the hammerblows of fate (dradadum) in the very storm, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion (dradadum) you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. So cool it, man.
Bravo Hislop. Maybe you knew your job. Perhaps all teachers should pour fine stuff into children’s ears and leave their memories to resurrect it when they find their own thoughts inadequate. I stand again tense in the chariot of bed, controlling hands on the reins of a foul imagination which, properly controlled, will pull me to a little glowing core of delight in the valley of the shadow of death (perhaps you are not dying) SHUT UP SHUT UP oh what can I do tomorrow if I do not die tonight? I cannot face another superintendent of bonded warehouses, another bank manager, another security officer with acting rank of colonel. I can no longer hide from them the Hislop in me, the mean snigger at a world ruled by shameless greed and cowardice and which thinks these insanities are serious essential traditional straightforward commonsense business. They are that, indeed they are, but the knowledge now stamps my face with a smug little rigid grin. Just before I took the pills something happened (what?) which makes me incapable of my job although I cannot live without the movement it gives, the rides and blissful naps in planes trains taxis, the cosy anonymity of a different loungebar and bedroom every second or third evening. But I need the rides most, hurling warm through all weathers and seasons with a paperback thriller on my lap and always Scotland outside the window with more changes of nature in ten miles than England has in fifteen or Europe in twenty or India, America, Russia in a hundred. If I stop travelling and stay in one place I will become a recognisable, pitiable (“Out of pity for your condition I will take no action”) despicable drunkard. I can only keep my dignity and stay mysterious by ceasing upon the midnight with no pain etcetera. The chemist was a heavy man with a face like a glum cherub’s. “These will do the trick,” he said putting the little bottle in my hand. A soft hiss and a foosty smell came from the gas chandelier, yes a gas chandelier dimly lighting that queer little parlour. Can pills lose their potency? These have not. They are working.
167 GALLOPING
They are working. My heart aches and a drowsy numbness pains my sense as though etcetera and the ache, the pains are rhythmical, dradadumba dradadumba, a change from our old friend dradadum. Shakes me, it does. Cold sweat now, too. Splendid, I like this. At school I envied the sickly types who went down with flu, broke a leg, had tonsils or appendix out; it freed them for a while from the common rut. I have never been ill. Even hangovers, in the days when I noticed my hangovers, did not unnerve this hand which delicately, firmly manipulated the tiniest and most intricate connections. Now the raised forefinger vib
rates violently, I feel the pulse ache in it. The stiff indicator under the belly also coldly vibrates. Queer feelings queer words are abroad in me, words like Chimborazo Cotopaxi Kilimanjaro Kanchenjunga Fujiyama Nagasaki Mount Vesuvius Lake Lugano Portobello Ballachulish Corrievrechan Ecclefechan Armageddon Marsellaise Guillotine Leningrad Stalingrad Ragnarok Skagerrak Sur le pont d’ Avignon Agincourt Bannockburn Cavalry Calvary Calgary Wounded Knee Easterhouse Drumchapel Maryhill West Kilbride Castlemilk Motherwell Hunterston terminal megawatt kilowatt dungaree overall kilowatt equals one-point-three-four horsepower I’m back to dradadum, I am in chaos, I am sick, my head is full of rubber bullets, my head is full of snow and it’s melting, my head is full of wee boats and they’re all sunk, my head is full of Reichstags and they’re all burning, my head is crammed with engines doing different things at different speeds (you can’t control them) I CAN’T CONTROL THEM QUICK GRAB JUMP ASTRIDE ASTRIDE ASTRIDE THE NEAREST CLING LIKE GRIM DEATH TO BIGGEST FASTEST LOUDEST GOING UNGDUNGDUNGDUNGDUNGDUNGD UNGDUNGDUNGDUNGDUNGDUNGDUNGDU NGDUNGDUNGDUNGDUNGDUNGDUNGDUN GDUNGDUNGDUNGDUNGDUNGDUNGDUNG
168 THE MINISTRY OF VOICES
169 THE MINISTRY OF VOICES
170 THE MINISTRY OF VOICES
171 THE MINISTRY OF VOICES
172 THE MINISTRY OF VOICES
braver girls raised her hand. He nodded. She said in a small voice, “Bird thou never wert sir.”
173 THE MINISTRY OF VOICES
“Good!” he said in delighted voice. “Bird I never wert. Who else finds that euphonious?”
Heather Sinclair, a friend of the brave girl and our best speller, put up her hand then all the girls did and most of the boys. The only ones who still sat with folded arms were myself and the other toughguys who no longer feared the belt and did not give a damn for Hislop and his stupid games. He paced up the passage between the boys and the girls muttering, “Wert. Wert. Wert. Wert” with every footfall. He stopped by an empty desk, produced a cigarette lighter and said, “Hands down. Agnes, doubtless, remembers me saying that Percy Bysshe Shelley pinnacled dim in the intense inane is one of our most mellifluous poets, but to my ear bird thou never wert sounds damnably ugly and a downright lie when we consider that wee Percy is talking to a skylark. But vox populi, vox dei. I must give Agnes something for trying.”
He set fire to a corner of the pound note, dropped it on the desktop, quenched the flame after a minute with the flat of his hand, placed the charred fragment of paper ceremoniously in front of Agnes then went back to his own desk shivering and making an ach-ach-ach sound like a parked lorry in bad condition with the engine running. I feel fine. These pills are definitely harmless, there is nothing at all wrong with me. All the changes of heartbeat and temperture, the cold and hotsweatcetera were causeby nothnbut funkan, but funkanan (you gibber) THE SWEATS WERE CAUSED BY NOTHING BUT FUNK AND (GOD HELP ME) FUNKANANANANANANANANANAN HYSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSTERIA good to see you again folks thought we had lost you back there just as things were getting interesting. “But Momma,” says the Doctor, “the committee feels that a change of role may do you good. Of course at first you will not enjoy it, nobody ever does. But that phase is temporary. You have helped many girls through it. Do what our new director suggests!” “You are out of your mind if you think I’m taking that crap from you,” says Momma shakily and walks to the door, it jerks open, she squeals for who comes in but coalblack naked sixfootsix ME with this huge erect dong and I
174 THE MINISTRY OF VOICES
175 THE MINISTRY OF VOICES
176 CLEAN
boa?
All over
equally aching
in what feels like every nerve muscle bone
every part of me except the teeth.
But I will live,
And I’m not sorry either.
And I am completely clean! Not a drop missed the basin.
A miracle.
Thank you mother.
Thank you father.
Early training counts.
Turn on taps, flush down mess.
Complex mess.
White pills, green peas, diced carrot.
Rest of dinner indistinguishable but all there.
My stomach must have gone on strike quite early tonight.
It knew something bad was on the way before I did.
Wise old stomach.
I won’t be so nasty to you again.
But what a typical piece of human daftness, to poison myself in a fit of despair because I could no longer stand work that I hate, work that was killing me! Idiocy.
Typically human.
Some scum still sticks, scrape loose with fingers.
Swirl away, whirl away down plughole.
Wash fingers – dry fingers.
All clean. Good. Stop tap.
To bed. Lie down. Slip under sheet.
Good.
Ache. Ache. Ache. Ache. Yahoohay. Ache.
Slip asleep?
Yes.
Slip,
slip aslee
burning? No heat, no smoke, no burning here. Another dream then.
I sat in an open sportscar speeding over the small wooded hills east of Glasgow between Twechar and Kilsyth. It was a clear cold sunlit autumn day, the colours inexplicably bright. The sky was pure cold cold blue blue blue, the leaves on the trees a yellow like none I have known, leaves like steady flames undimmed by the sunlight, too yellow to be golden but dusted a little with gold in the distance. The best yellow. And under the yellowleaved branches grew mild green pure dewy turf between orangebrown clumps of bracken, crimsonbrown and purplebrown drifts of fallen leaves, khaki carpets of withered grass. The car, veering and twisting between the treetrunks, followed no track but went smoothly by going very fast. It skimmed through bracken-clumps and crossed ditches and hedges without the slightest jolt. I felt recklessly happy, recklessly sure of the driver’s skill. She was driving dangerously but well, I knew I would laugh aloud and still love her if the car crashed. Which happened. Bang! we struck a tree. I was flung through many screens of yellow leaves and came down flat on my back in an open field. I lay looking at a small high white cloud in the huge skyblueness and suddenly a voice near my elbow, speaking so distinctly that it woke me up, said, “His room is burning.” It is not burning yet these words seemed, still seem very hopeful. I don’t know why.
181 I PREPARE
Awake again with less than an hour till daylight, more than two hours till breakfast. What shall I do with my mind? What story is left for me to tell?
It behoves a man every so often, from time to time, now and again, to speak out and inform the world (that is to say, himself) just what his game is; and if (having been carried by the prevailing current up shit creek after mislaying the paddle) he has no game of his own and finds life pointless, it even more behoves him to tell truthfully how he reached this pointless place in order to say Goodbye to it and go elsewhere. If he wants a change. Which I do.
The story of how I went wrong is called From the Cage to the Trap and describes events which took place in my eighteenth year of life during certain months of 1953, particularly those three months and three weeks when I was richer and happier than kings presidents millionaires etcetera, for my talent and personality were recognised – I had a good friend – I enjoyed the only true wife of my body – became one of a noble community which depended upon and honoured my genius – and at last captured the bride of my fancy, a glamorous and enchanting actress. Unluckily these months also contain my meanest and most cowardly actions, actions I have been trying to forget ever since. But as a radical friend once said to me in a voice shrill with conviction, “Those who forget their own history are condemned to repeat it – as farce.” She was quoting Marx but I don’t care who I get helpful hints from. Only socialists refuse to learn from their opponents. I don’t mean the ordinary corrupt socialist politicians, I mean faithful hopeful innocents like my father. The pureinheart socialist believes he can learn nothing from his opponents becaus
e these will shortly vanish since they are WRONG and therefore somehow, even now, a thing of the past. Why am I into politics again?
182 DIVERSION
Funk, of course. I am postponing the moment when I start telling my story in the difficult oldfashioned way, placing events in the order they befell so that I recall the purchase of my new suit before, and not after, I seduce Denny in it. This had better be done, though it will be hard. When we cannot see our way in the world of course we circle circle circle until we stumble on a straight stretch of it, but then, even though that stretch was left behind years ago, let us use it to go forward for a change. Straight movement leads to pain, of course. As a leader of the Scottish Educational Authority once said to me as I moved toward his desk on trembling knees, wondering if he was going to belt me, and how much, and why, “To travel hopefully, Jock, is better than to arrive.” But if we prolong hope by circling round and round the spot which was once our destination hope dies of its own uselessness. We have avoided the disappointment which comes from finding out about a place, but also the regret, the delight, the renewal of departure. I once said a very witty thing to a man who asked what I got from work which made life worth living. After thinking for a while I said, “The travelling expenses.”
1982 Janine Page 20