1982 Janine

by Alasdair Gray

  Mum said firmly, “I have never heard a more ridiculous suggestion. Why buy the lad a lot of nice clothes if we don’t give him some variety? Jock needs a couple of ordinary suits for everyday wear, one in a medium grey check and one in brown. And he needs a dark suit for formal occasions and a blazer and flannels for sunny weather and holidays. I can see the sense in two trousers to a jacket, yes, fine, but seven identical trousers and three identical jackets are utterly daft.”

  Dad replied in the cautious, downcast but obstinate tone he used when speaking of sexual matters.

  “I do recognise that a variety of clothing is biologically essential to women, especially to the young ones, because they use clothes to draw attention to themselves, and men (younger men) like them for that. But what an employer values in a man – what a man values in his workmates – what a man values in himself – is consistency. If Jock goes to Glasgow equipped as I suggest he will impress his teachers and workmates and prospective bosses with a neat, simple, consistent appearance bordering upon the miraculous. The material of the suit I have in mind is dark enough to wear at a funeral but not dark enough to suggest one, so with the right colour of necktie it can be worn on any occasion. In rough working situations, of course, it will be protected by overalls. But I agree that he requires a blazer and flannels for especially sunny days. We don’t get many of these.”

  192 WHAT MEN VALUE

  Mum said firmly, “The idea is ridiculous. People will laugh at the boy.”

  Dad said, “I doubt that.”

  They could not agree so I was in a position to adjudicate. Like most seventeen-year-olds I had very little sense of my own identity, so the idea of striking a mysteriously consistent note in the turmoil of Glasgow appealed to me. I opted for six pairs of trousers, three jackets, two waistcoats and an overcoat of the same cloth, and a black dinner-jacket with matching trousers, and the blazer and the flannels.

  The suit was ordered from a tailor in Kilmarnock and after the second fitting we visited a haberdasher to get socks, shirts and underwear. Since Dad had gained most of his own way in the matter of the suit he agreed completely with my mother’s choice of the other things, so my wishes were not consulted before we came to the necktie counter. The salesman displayed ties of silk and cotton and wool in a great many patterns and colours. My mother fingered them, held them up and laid several aside before it occurred to her to ask, “Have you any idea of what you would like, Jock?”

  I pointed to a rack of bow ties and said, “I would like those.” Mum and Dad stared hard at me and then at each other. They were alarmed. Bow ties in those days – perhaps even nowadays – were worn by professional people in risky businesses like horseracing, the arts and journalism. University lecturers who courted publicity often wore bow ties. My mother said, “Are you sure you want one of those?”

  193 BOW TIE AND HANKY

  “I want them all like that.”

  “But is it important to you?”

  I shrugged and said, “The money you are spending is not mine so I’ll wear whatever you buy. But you asked what sort of tie I would like, and now you know.”

  There was a look of helpless worry on her face which cut me to the heart. She said faintly, “What colour?”

  I said, “I leave that entirely to you.”

  The only bow ties without vivid patterns were wine red or dark blue, so she bought half a dozen of the dark blue, then returned to the shirt counter and changed my white shirts for pale blue ones, so that they would match. My father, for political reasons, would have preferred a red tie, but a red tie on a white shirt was too strikingly radical even for him, and a pink shirt for a man was unthinkable. It hinted at homosexual tastes which in those days were downright criminal.

  I cannot remember what weather lay over the streets and houses of the town when the train took me away from it. Mum and Dad saw me to the station and we said very little before the train pulled out. Beyond the station the line curved across the valley on a high viaduct, and a minute later I could look back and see two tiny figures on the end of the station platform, one with a flickering white speck attached to it. Either Mum or Dad was waving a handkerchief. By the time I had pulled out my own hanky and lowered the carriage window some trees had come between us. I shut the window, crossed my legs carefully to avoid injuring the trousercrease, folded my arms across the neat new waistcoat, sunk my chin on to the tie and was perplexed by a total absence of feelings. I knew I would be revisiting the long town, but in an essential way I had left it for ever and I did not care. I thought that perhaps, in Glasgow, when I was a lonely unit among a million others, a toothpaste advert or a face in the street might bring back childhood memories on a big warm wave of nostalgia. But this never happened. Yes, at first I was very lonely in Glasgow but I enjoyed that. Loneliness felt like freedom. I was sure it would lead to something exciting, something with sex in it. With a pang of guilt I decided that my childhood, apart from a few infantile memories, had been a depressing business and I was better away from it.

  194 DENNY

  My parents had found me lodgings on Paisley Road West in the home of a dependable motherly woman who would tell them if anything went wrong with me. I soon shifted to the flat of a young law student in Hillhead who did not care what went wrong with his lodgers, as long as they paid the rent and did not fight each other. At college I had difficulty at first with the purely mathematical functions, but after six weeks I suddenly realised the almost complete congruency between these and the practical work, and had no trouble with my exams after that. In the Tech refectory I sometimes ate at the same table as Alan. One day, when that table was full up Alan said, “Make room for Jock,” and tilting his chair on its back legs he stretched an arm across and grabbed an empty chair from a table near by. So I knew we were friends. And then I met Denny.

  The woman behind the serving hatch in the refectory had always been pleasantly chatty, but one day I noticed a new girl who seemed to actively hate me. She was small and chubby with a moony petulant face which she turned away while serving me, and when I handed her the money she took it with a disdain which suggested I was the filthiest man in the world. I found this upsetting because I had been perfectly polite. Next day when I approached the hatch one of the other women called out, “Denny! Here’s Jock.”

  She served me in exactly the same way, except that this time she refused to take my money at all but scurried sideways and started serving someone else. I laid the coins on the counter and went away feeling puzzled. She served me the third day with the same averted face, placing the food on my plate more slowly. Before passing it to me, with the fearful look of someone forcing herself to jump across a dangerous gap, she bit her lip, hesitated and whispered, “Rotten weather.”

  I said, “Yes it is,” and held out the money. She gave an obstinate little shake of the head and hurried to the next customer. The other serving ladies smiled at each other and I left the hatch feeling I had been made to look foolish. I now knew that I attracted her, but she did not attract me. My notions of female attraction were based on Jane Russell and various fashion photographs. I was ignorant.

  195 DENNY

  Walking back to Hillhead that evening I began to feel different. It occurred to me that Denny might let me do anything I wanted with her and the thought made me dizzy. I had never, never, never believed that a woman could desire a man. The universal habit of marriage showed that they needed men, but folk often need what they don’t want and want what they don’t need. My sexual daydreams were full of capture and bondage because I could imagine no other way of keeping a woman I wanted. Denny had no place in the world of my imagination yet I found myself walking faster till I was almost running, and when I reached the lodgings I had decided that next day I would ask her out. But a fortnight passed before I asked her out. In the evenings I walked the streets past couples standing in cinema queues and troops of girls hurrying to the dancehalls, and now the only fact which fed my strong feeling of a great good ti
me coming was the fact of Denny. But next day the sight of her in the refectory completely chilled me. She looked too small and ordinary to associate with enormous desires and satisfactions – she was exactly the same height as myself. Not that she was an ugly girl. When she did not notice I was near she joked brightly with the other students, who were fond of her, and she looked pretty on these occasions. But whenever I came near she lost all confidence and behaved like a young schoolgirl in front of a ferocious headmaster. This did not please me at all. I desperately wished I knew some other women. Alan said, “You ought to be nicer to Denny. She’s a beautiful piece. If you made her happy she would operate with an astonishing absence of friction. And you need a woman.”

  I said, “I don’t like her voice. It sounds cheap and tinny.”

  He sighed and said, “Then think of her from the economic standpoint. She not only refuses to let you pay for your meals, she now refuses to let your friends pay for theirs.

  This won’t last for ever if you don’t encourage her a bit. She loves you.”

  196 DENNY

  But only the coldest sort of sexual frustration drove me to Denny in the end. I lay at night in bed haunted by imaginings which seemed thin and futile. I could no longer take Jane Russell seriously. So when one day Denny whispered, in her fearful jumping-over-a-precipice voice, “What do you do in the evenings?”, I said, “Will you meet me tonight?” She nodded and said, “Mhm.”

  I said, “What about seven o’clock at the front entrance?”

  She said, “Aye, all right.”

  She did not look happier, she looked slightly more worried and resigned than usual. I left the serving hatch thinking, ‘The bitch! She doesn’t like me but she certainly wants it. All right, I’ll give it to her.’ I had the shallowest notion of what “it” was – a minute of naked grappling and kissing followed by a minute of slotting together and pumping was all I could conceive. And I was completely wrong about Denny. She wanted me, not “it”, but accepted that “it” was the price she must pay for my company.

  My heart sank when I saw her that evening. The cheaply fashionable dress she wore was wrong for her kind of shape, and though she had taken a deal of trouble with her hair and lipstick the result was not successful. But she looked cheerful and hopeful for a change, and when we started walking she slipped an arm through mine, and the part of my arm and body which touched her felt warm and secure. Only my head was irritable with her appearance beside me, so I took her into the dark of a picturehouse and we kissed and cuddled in the back row of the stalls among several similar couples. This was not satisfying. My furtive squeezing and fumbling brought none of the quick passionate excitement I sometimes saw enacted on the screen before us, so when we came out at nine-thirty I said, “Are you coming home with me?”

  She said miserably, “I’d like to, but I don’t want to get into trouble.”

  I said, “I’m not a fool, Denny. I know what precautions to take.”

  197 DENNY

  She said, “It’s not that. You see I live in a hostel where they lock the doors at ten. If I’m not back before then I get into trouble.”

  I said grimly, “So this is the end of our evening, is it?”

  I stared at her accusingly until she whispered, “Mibby I could say I missed the tram and spent the night with a girlfriend.”

  I said, “Fine!” and steered her firmly by the arm to Cow-caddens Underground, but when I got her into my room off Hyndland Road I was nearly paralysed by embarrassment and worry, because I had never before been all alone with a woman. I coped by behaving almost as if I was completely alone. I made a supper of toasted cheese and cocoa (for two instead of one), ate and drank mine, then brushed my teeth, and wound up the clock, and carefully undressed, folding each article of clothing into its proper place. She sat watching all this with an empty cocoa mug clutched on her lap. I did not put on my pyjamas. I took a contraceptive from a packet, showed it to her and climbed into bed saying, “Come on, Denny, we arenae doing anything unusual.”

  She said in a wobbly voice, “Can I put the light out?”

  I said, “Please yourself.”

  She switched the light out and undressed. Meanwhile I managed, with much fumbling, to fit the sheath on to my wholly flaccid penis. Then I felt her cold body slip in beside mine and we lay together for a long time. I was waiting to be possessed by a demon of desire which would inspire me to seize and pierce her. This did not happen, though the chill gradually left her skin. I wondered if I was impotent, then remembered how often I masturbated. I wondered if Denny was getting impatient, and if I was perhaps a suppressed homosexual. Would she tell the other refectory women next morning how useless I was in bed? She sighed and snuggled more deeply into my side, and a moment later I noticed she was asleep. I thankfully pulled off the sheath and fell asleep also.

  I woke before dawn to find our bodies intimately twined although Denny was still sleeping. For half an hour I lay wholly comfortable and at peace, though I regretted that this was not a sexual feeling. I could not help being ignorant. My sexual ideas came from films and books and jokes which all showed love as quick climaxes, because they had to describe it faster than people did it. The alarm clock rang and we got up and dressed on opposite sides of the bed without looking at each other. I heard her say thoughtfully, “No harm done, anyway.” I said nothing. I did not know what to think or feel about what had or had not been done. She said, “Mind you, I’ll be crying my eyes out before tonight.”

  198 DENNY

  “Why?”

  “The matron of the hostel where I stay takes herself very seriously. A girl who isnae in on time can say she’s sorry till she’s blue in the face, but matron is never satisfied till she sees the tears.”

  I thought of Hislop who was never satisfied until he had dammed the tears up. The world seemed a terribly queer place. I made a breakfast of bacon, eggs, toast and tea and we talked while eating it.

  “My Daddy was not very nice to my Mammy but I think he’s dead now. We havenae seen him for years. Good-riddance to bad rubbish, I say. My Mammy’s all right, but she sometimes takes funny turns. And when she takes one of her funny turns she has to go into hospital and I have to go to the hostel.”

  “Have you no relations you could live with?”

  “Hundreds, but I wouldnae live with scruff like thon.’

  It turned out that our birthdays were in the same week, a coincidence which struck her as miraculous. I learned she was sixteen years old. I had thought she was older than me and much more experienced. I was glad I had not seduced her for she had enough trouble in her life. I avoided travelling into college with her that morning by telling her my first lecture was at eleven, which was a lie. We separated without making plans.

  But in the following days her manner when we met at the serving hatch was relaxed and cheerful. She seemed now to think we were connected. I did not tell Alan I had taken her out, but in the dinner queue he once glanced from her to me and murmured, “Excellent.”

  199 DENNY

  We were connected. I could not forget the smooth comforting warmth of her body when I had wakened with her. I lay awake at night, wanting it again. I became very angry with myself. I said, “You idiot! You don’t need comfort, what you need is –” here I hesitated, rejecting “extasy” as too romantic –“What you need is fun,” and I masturbated, but that did not help. Masturbation was a substitute for extasy but no substitute for the comfort of a smooth warm body that liked me. So on Friday I said, “I’ll see you tomorrow at one o’clock.”

  She nodded and said “Mhm.”

  Her appearance in the street was as disappointing as the first time. I took her home with me at once and when we got inside the room I said, “Please come to bed with me, Denny,” and was surprised to notice my voice was humble and pleading. It surprised Denny too. She said wonderingly, “Don’t worry, Jock.”

  We undressed and got into bed and cuddled for an hour or two. Nobody ever had a skin which wa
s smoother and sleeker than Denny’s so it was easy for us to slide and swim all over and around and under each other, though we had sometimes to stop and disentangle the bedclothes. The palm of my hand still remembers the exact shape of her foot, a small soft globe blending into a larger squarer globe (there cannot be a square globe, yes there was) a soft globe blending into larger squarer globe with five little crisp globes along an edge. Her body was all smooth tight soft globes (how can tight be soft? It was) soft smooth tight globes like silken dumplings blending into each other at the wrist ankle knee elbow breast thigh waist blending in lovely curving creases which a fingertip exactly fitted. Sometimes I said, “Are you tired of this yet?” and she said, “No, not yet.”

  I took her out for a meal and no longer cared if her dress looked poor and her lipstick wrong. I was so dazzled by my knowledge of her body that I could not face her and kept blushing and keeking sideways at the floor. I had meant to take her to a cinema after the meal, but when I whispered, “Can we go back and do more of that?” she said, “Don’t worry, Jock, it does no harm.”

  200 OUR WEDDING

  I wondered if I had invented a completely new and harmless sort of lovemaking that could go on for ever because it was never satisfied. And when, later that evening, I saw her on to the tram which would take her to the south side where her hostel was, I felt very pleasantly exhausted. “See you on Monday,” I called, waving cheerfully, and the tram moved off and I turned to walk home and