1982 Janine

by Alasdair Gray

  An article by Cordelia Oliver or Martin Baillie or someone else in the Manchester Guardian or the Glasgow Herald or the Scotsman said that our club provided the only truly Scottish contributions to the festival. After mentioning the folksingers and dancebands the critics said that the political pantomime McGrotty and Ludmilla, “although clearly an amateur production”, was performed with so much zest and technical ingenuity that it communicated more pleasure than the official festival production of a play by Bernard Shaw or Brendan Behan or John Osborne or John Whiting. Diana was especially commended in the part of Miss Panther and I as the electrician.

  This publicity caused high spirits and hilarity among all the club performers except Helen, Diana and me. Helen became very quiet. Diana said, “I feel like a traitor. Helen is a far, far better actress than I am. That critic has no judgment whatsoever.”

  243 PAYMENT

  Helen said, “I don’t give a damn for the critic, I’m worried about that photograph. What will my father do when he sees it? He’s terribly square. He didn’t want me to go to drama college.”

  Diana said, “Maybe he won’t see it.”

  “Oh yes, he’ll see it. The neighbours will show it to him.”

  I realised that Helen’s people were less posh than I had thought. Very posh people don’t have neighbours, or none they care about. And I was sure we were all becoming too lucky too fast. I felt as my mother possibly felt one morning when the postman, delivering a parcel, told her it was going to be a fine warm summer day. She said grimly, “We’ll pay for it.”

  I went to the director and said, “Brian, the show is now making money. For reasons I will not explain to you I need money. I know that half our take goes to the club and the rest will be divided among us equally. Please pay what you owe me now, and hereafter I want my cut of each night’s take on the following morning, or better still, after the show.”

  He said, “Oh you are an impossible man. Frankly, I would prefer to give everyone their cut when the show ends and we’ve had time to add up the expenses.”

  I said, “No. So far the expenses have been equally shared between us. The actors have provided their own costumes, I have bought petrol for the van, everything else has been borrowed.”

  “But I’ve provided my own costume AND bought booze for the company.”

  “None of which I have drunk. If you do not give me what is due to me today, or at the very latest tomorrow morning, I promise I will return to Glasgow and register as an unemployed student.”

  The director groaned and said, “All right Jock, all right. But I wish you wouldnae clap a loaded gun to my skull every time you ask me for something.”

  The Oxford accent and the mannerisms I had once hated in him had almost vanished, he sounded like an ordinary man with ordinary worries and I was sorry for the change. As an ordinary man I respected him more but enjoyed him less. I was sure his worries came from his lovelife, and was glad my lovelife had no complications. I was lusting to return to Denny though I had been too busy to send her a postcard yet.

  244 BINKIE

  He gave me the money. I hurried over the bridge to the central post office and put it in my savings account. The show went on as usual.

  EIGHTH NIGHT

  More newspapers reviewed us favourably and so did the Scottish Home Service. I thought of asking my parents to come and see the show, but if I asked them to do that why should I not ask Denny? So I asked nobody.

  At twenty to eleven Brian and I, who were on the door, had just told the end of the queue that the house was full when our friend the English director arrived with someone who wore very good clothes and had a well-groomed but strange head. The top half looked old and the bottom half young. The English director said, “Listen, could you possibly squash in just two more of us?”

  Our director said, “Sorry, but if we let in one more body suffocation will ensue. We’re almost a fire-hazard.”

  The actor said, “But you see this is …”

  His companion said, “No no no. I can surely come back tomorrow night, if your friend will be kind enough to keep us a couple of seats and not make a fire-hazard of his theatre.”

  His English accent was so smooth and grave that it made the smoothly accented English director sound unstable.

  After the show we all cleared the place up then went downstairs and found, as usual, the English company and its friends at the table reserved for our company and its friends. The stranger was sitting beside the English director who told us, “Meet Binkie.”

  245 BINKIE

  This struck our company almost totally silent, though our director said, “O.”

  Diana and Helen stiffened while the joints of Roddy and Rory seemed to slacken and their manly faces began to smile vacantly. We hesitated until the stranger, with a slight nod and turn of a hand, indicated that he expected us to sit at our own table. I sat as far from him as possible beside an English actress who was straining to hear the conversation. I asked her who he was. She whispered, “Binkie used to own the whole of the West End but he still has quite a slice of it. Shh.”

  This sounded like a line in a highly improbable novel so I asked Helen the same question. She whispered, “He’s a great producer. We get lectures on him at the drama college. Shh.”

  In the bright light of the restaurant Binkie no longer looked strange, he looked like a plump, elegant, ageing but not yet old man. He sometimes smiled or nodded but said almost nothing. It seemed that he neither wanted nor was expected to speak. The other English kept entertaining and informing him by talking loudly to each other in a strangely ritualistic way. Nobody spoke about themselves, except indirectly, but all praised each other while pretending to tell stories against each other. The English director looked modestly embarrassed while his cast gave different versions of a tale which demonstrated how, under stress, he became forgetful and rude in ways which strengthened, almost by accident, his superb qualities as a director. The subject of this tale suddenly interrupted it by crying, “I’ve had enough of this! I may be pretty bad but what about you, Judy?”

  He pointed at his leading lady and told a story about how comically prone to sexual misadventure she was in ways which somehow enhanced, or showed up by contrast, her qualities as an actress. As he came to the titillating details of the story Judy hid her face in her hands and cried, “Oh no! Please stop! Don’t let Binkie hear about that!” and afterward her friends emitted a burst of laughter which the director bridged by shouting, “And then! And then! And then she …”

  Binkie was being steadily told that they were all eccentric, silly, lovable, efficient, talented, and related to important people.

  246 BINKIE

  And now the English tried to widen the game. Their director told an obliquely flattering story about our company, and appealed to our director for confirmation, and our director answered with a monosyllable. The English director hesitated, but Judy took the story from him and continued it with great energy for a minute, then tried to pass it to Rory, who grinned and nodded, then to Roddy, who grinned and nodded, then to Diana, who seized it and brought it to an end with one bright hysterical sentence. The English laughed appreciatively and then there was silence. The Scots could not play this game. It was not a game in which we could be beaten, like football, it was a game in which we displayed ourselves, like beachball, and we had been taught not to display ourselves, taught that it was wrong to talk in class, unless the teacher asked a question and we knew exactly the answer he wanted. So the Scots were silent until Binkie, who should have been silent too because the game was being played for his benefit, decided to join in. He asked our director a question, and our director answered with three monosyllables. I was ashamed for him, ashamed of the Scottish. I wished he would turn into the old glib garrulous Brian with the phoney accent and the sickening catch-phrases. The English would despise him for these but they would also notice an energy they could not despise, an energy which could be useful to them or useful to someone. B
ut he spoke three short words. Binkie nodded as if he had received weighty information, then asked another question and our director pointed at me. The English director jumped up and shouted, “Jock! You’re being very quiet at that end of the table. Come up and join us.”

  He placed a chair between Binkie and himself and I sat down in it determined to be as dour as the rest of my company. On my right hand was a man people treated like God. I did not think he was God yet my heart beat as hard as if I was on holy ground. I despised the illogical action of my heart, so I wanted to despise him.

  Binkie gave me no chance to do that. He smiled and murmured something polite. The English director said, “We’ve all been telling Binkie about the strikingly original lighting effects you produced for the show.”

  247 BINKIE

  I said, “I tried to produce suitable effects.”

  The English director said, “Could you adapt these to a more traditional theatre space?”

  “Certainly not. I would devise different effects for another theatre.”

  “How would you go about doing that?”

  “First I would examine the acting space, because I have never visited the stage of an ordinary theatre. Here we had to build our own. Then I would familiarise myself with the lighting resources, and find how much money was available to extend them.”

  The English director said, “Extend them?”

  I said nothing. Then Binkie spoke in a remote, rather sleepy voice: “The lighting resources of a well-equipped modern theatre are pretty extensive already, and I gather you have done something quite stunning with a few ordinary floods and spots.”

  I shrugged and said, “If you want the best from a creative electrician you must expect him to enlarge his scope.”

  “Creative electrician!” said Binkie, and somehow conveyed, without smiling, that he was amused. I said sternly, “What is the nature of your connection with the theatre?”

  After a pause Binkie said, “I make money by it. I find it an interesting way of making money. I meet such very charming people.”

  He gave me a small charming smile then transferred it to Rory who sat across the table from him. Rory no longer looked manly. His head lolled so far to one shoulder that the neck seemed broken. He had the face of a wistfully dreaming girl. The English director said loudly, “Creative electrician, yes, an interesting idea. You see in the professional theatre only the artists – the directors and actors and designers – are expected to be creative. The technicians do what they’re told, though they’re well-protected by their unions, and very adequately paid.”

  I shrugged and said, “Most folk who train for a trade or profession become mindless tools of it, even in engineering. Even in architecture. Even in banking, I believe. But in Glasgow – Glasgow Tech – we have a different approach.” This was a lie. I had no reason to think our Glasgow lecturers were more inspiring than in other technical colleges. It was Alan and his friends who had made me feel that great new things could come from us, but I enjoyed suggesting that I had a city and an institution behind me.

  248 BINKIE

  “Of course,” said Binkie thoughtfully, “some people have to be mindless tools. If our hammers refused to hit our nails because they were sorry for nails then nobody would have a decent roof over their head.”

  I said, “Men and women are not hammers and nails.”

  Binkie nodded and pursed his lips in a way which indicated perfect tolerance of my opinion and perfect understanding of why I held it. And I saw a world where most folk were ignorant wee nails, like Denny, being struck again and again by cleverly forged hammers, like me, in the hands of directors and designers and artists who were encouraged to be charming human beings by a few people, like Binkie, who found this an interesting way of making money. And these few folk thought they were producers! They really believed that without them roofs would not be built, crops planted, cloth woven or plays performed. And people agreed with them. All the actors, Scottish and English, knew that Binkie could not build a stage, or write a play, or light one, or act in one, but they reverenced him as A GREAT PRODUCER because he had once owned the whole of the West End and still had quite a slice of it. No doubt he also had theatrical judgment, but probably no more than the young English actor-director who was now acting as his adjutant-in-the-field, or Secretary-of-State-for-Scotland, or highly intelligent flunkey. What made Binkie a power was his wealth and the intelligence he used to keep it, and this intelligence was not necessarily his own. As Old Red once said, “Capital can always buy brains. Brains swarm to it like flies to a dungheap.” Yes, intelligences go whoring after money more than bodies do, because we are not taught that it is whoredom to sell a small vital bit of our intelligence to people we don’t like and who don’t like us. The worst crime in the world is murder, but selling your intelligence comes close behind because murder follows it, gaschambers, Dresden, arms manufacture, napalm, body dumps and every sort of massacre. I now know that that sort of selling is exactly the great whoredom and mystery and manyheaded creature of the Apocalypse which the rulers and nations of the world worship to this day. Except in Poland. Recently some Poles refused to bow the knee, but I cannot possibly have seen that the world was like this in the early fifties.

  249 BINKIE

  In the year which followed The Conquest of Everest and The Coronation of the First Royal Great British Elizabeth I cannot possibly have seen that the world was like this. I did not know if Binkie’s power was inherited like money or rented by money but I did recognise it. I recognised and admired and desired the power of this elegant, plump old man. I felt my mouth soften into the effeminate smirk which disfigured Rory’s face, and when I noticed that, my small spark of dislike became hatred and my mouth hardened again. He turned and faced me with a courteous glance of mild inquiry and I wanted to lean forward and bite his nose off without in any way touching the rest of his body. This impulse was so astonishing that I could not move, I merely gaped and perhaps bared my teeth a little. I felt the English director’s hand on my arm. He said urgently, “How would you go about expanding the resources of modern theatrical lighting?”

  “Eh?”

  “Modern theatre lighting. You spoke about expanding its resources. Were you talking randomly or had you something in mind?”

  It was plain that if I did not suggest something interesting (in the theatrical sense of the word) the English company would feel they had patronised a gang of inarticulate, truculent louts. I said, “Stage-lighting today should be more positive in its use of shadow. Darkness could be as distinct a dramatic element as light is. With a little more invention we could use blocks and beams of it.”

  The English director said, “What exactly are you referring to?”

  I said, “Imagine a big stage sticking quite far out into the audience from the … the … that square arch the curtains hang from.”

  “The proscenium.”

  “Thanks. On this stage we have people doing things in front of what is supposed to be a house, but the house is represented by a block of darkness. I will call it negative light instead of darkness, because the eye can always pierce the darkest shadow a little when there is light near by, but it couldnae pierce this black block. The block can contain whatever furniture you like, and actors who step into it become invisible. Yes, and we could surround the blocks with pillars of negative light which people could come out of or vanish into on cue. Then at the touch of a switch the negative and positive light zones are reversed. We see a well lit room surrounded by spotlights with people in them.”

  250 NEGATIVE LIGHT

  “Is this practical?” said Binkie.

  “Certainly not. The concept of negative light is a recent one. But a team of people I know will make it possible in ten years, if you give us the money.”

  “And you are a lecturer in a Glasgow polytechnic?”

  “No. I’m a second-year student in the Glasgow Royal Technical College founded by Professor John Anderson, author of The In
stitutes of Physics, in 1796.”

  “It sounds enchanting,” said Binkie in his sleepy voice. I thought he had decided that the Scots, when not inarticulate and truculent, were a race of boastful fantasisers, but I felt friendly toward him now. My sudden conception of negative light had restored my confidence. I even had a notion of how to achieve it. I believed that after a few discussions of the problem with Alan I would be able to map out a research programme. I relaxed and became voluble, remembering a speculative article in one of Alan’s old technical magazines, probably The Scientific American. I said, “If you are interested in more immediate practicalities I offer you the hologram. It is possible to project a small solid-looking image into an open space, an image people can view from every side but not touch, because nothing is there but reflection. With adequate funding my team, two years from now, will project on to a stage the solid-looking image of a big tree in the Amazonian rainforest. The branches will sweep down over the audience until they appear to touch the back row of the stalls. We could even project a pro, what did you call it? a proscenium with all those daft plaster cherubs and gilded twiddly bits, and a curtain that looks like scarlet velvet and seems to open, and private boxes on each side with posh people in them who lean out and even applaud at certain moments. I am not talking about an image projected on a screen, don’t think that, I refer to an image projected upon a space. Looked at from any angle in the auditorium it will appear three-dimensional. Looked at from the stage it need not appear at all, if we do not want it to. The actors would know the position of the illusion by marks on the floor. If one of them placed a kitchen stepladder a few inches behind the trunk of my big tree, and climbed up and stuck his head forward, the audience would see a living bodiless head stuck to the trunk of a tree twelve feet above ground.”