“Yes Dad. Thanks.”
“I’m not asking for thanks! Like half the folk around here my own dad was unemployed between the wars. I left school at fourteen to work as an errand boy and every penny I earned went to my mother. Son, I want ye to have money. I also want you to do more with your life than I’ve done with mine.”
“You havnae done badly, Dad.”
“All right, I keep a paper shop and make adequate money by it. But with a decent education I could have been a, a, a lawyer, a doctor, a teacher even! One of the people who give something important to the world and who never lose their jobs when a depression comes. Because the professional classes know how to protect themselves. And that’s the chance I’m giving you!”
“I don’t want to be these things.”
“When you get to university you can choose to be anything you want! Even a shopkeeper if you think that’s fun. But it isn’t.”
Tom suppresses a sigh. They have discussed this many times, usually in the same words, so he is surprised when his father adds, “And don’t get entangled, Tom.”
“What do you mean?”
His father, pointing to the strip of photos on the table says, “Why are you keen on this wee dolly bird?”
“She likes me,” says Tom defiantly.
“Wait till you’re at university, Tom. You’ll meet girls of your own sort there.”
“What sort is that?”
“Dependable?” suggests his father.
“I am NOT dependable!”
“Then you’re well suited to Senga!” says his father, grinning, “I hear a lot of things in the shop, you know, and I can tell you –”
“I don’t want to know anything you have heard about Senga!”
His father stands up to face him and says just as fiercely, “Then don’t get entangled!”
They stare at each other. The father is first to look away. He says, “If she’s keen on you she wants you to make something of your life. If you’re keen on her you want to provide her with a decent home. Does that make sense?” “Oh yes it makes sense!” says Tom bitterly. His father frowns at his shoes and mutters, “Your mother is worried sick about you.”
Tom says uncomfortably, “Tell her not to worry, Dad.”
“Then you’ll work at your English?” his father pleads, “You’ll start tomorrow night and really grind at it? It’s only four months till the Highers but four months at your age can make or break you for life – I only want what’s best for you.”
“I want what’s best for me too!” says Tom desperately. “I’ve only done badly in one subject! Won’t you trust me to do what I think right?”
He too is pleading. He has never before pled with his father, who first stares astonished, then smiles thankfully, pats Tom’s shoulder and says, “Thanks for setting my mind at rest, son. I’m sorry if I’m hard on you at times – I can’t help it. My dad was like that with me. But I’ll tell your mother not to worry. I know you won’t disappoint us.”
He leaves. Tom wants to howl again, but instead thinks very hard about what he must do tomorrow. He sleeps very little that night.
Neither does Senga. She has never before been given the chance of completely changing her life. She cannot help loving Tom for giving her this enormous chance, though at the moment he gave it she saw he is not a man she can live with, not even a man who attracts her: hence her hysteria. In bed she fantasizes about what might happen if Tom were more interesting. In sleep the fantasies become delicious nightmares which shock her awake. Tom Dracula’s horde of lovely victims pursue her, begging her to join them. Next morning at breakfast her mother asks, “Is it your time of the month again?”
“Nearly, I suppose.”
“Take a day off school, I’ll write you a note.”
“It’s not as bad as that, Ma,” says Senga crossly. She cannot yet reject the gift of Tom’s proposal. Her mother’s sensible mirth at the idea would destroy it at once, so she tells nobody but a friend whose credulity prolongs it, one she meets in the girls’ lavatory during the morning interval and swears to secrecy. But the secret is too exciting to be kept. No other girl of her age has had marriage proposed to her in that school, and proposed by a tall, well-dressed older boy who has never before surprised anyone. At lunch break in the playground a crowd forms around Senga, a quarter of it composed of very little girls who ask to see her engagement ring.
“I’m not engaged!” says Senga with angry annoyance which is only half pretence, “He proposed to me, I haven’t said yes yet, Dona shouldnae have told anybody, she promised not to.”
“But you will say yes?” ask girls who have admired Tom from a distance and a number who have not.
“I havnae made up my mind yet. I might and I might not. I mean, I don’t need to marry him, I’m not pregnant, for God’s sake.”
This causes a silence. Most of the girls find marriage an excitingly romantic word and pregnant not. Several of the small girls do not know there are sometimes connections between marriage and pregnancy, and most older ones now suspect she must be pregnant since she mentioned the possibility. Senga’s reputation for boldness comes mainly from a speech-style learned from her mother. Tom never uses words boldly, another contrast which makes their affair interesting to the general public.
The school has three playgrounds: one for boys, one for girls, and a playing field with entrances from the other grounds where both sexes can mingle. By the afternoon interval Tom’s proposal is general knowledge among all the girls and most of the older boys, also the fact that Tom, after an early morning visit to the school careers adviser, left the building and has not returned. Only two girls and a boy in Senga’s group know the café where he has arranged to meet her at six-thirty. They tactfully offer to stay away. She says, “No, don’t. I’ll need all the support I can get.”
She is now frightened by the publicity she has gained. She enjoys being the star of a small group but now an audience of three or four hundred expects her to perform. This audience will be satisfied by an engagement or elopement, otherwise it will boo or applaud Tom’s humiliation by a girl who has made his honestly loving proposal public before refusing him. She fears that if Tom comes to the café with a practical marriage plan she will not have the courage to refuse him. She is glad to have her ordinary pals beside her in the café, especially the group humorist who treats the whole business as a joke. Senga smiles at his jokes but is unusually quiet. Her two girl friends watch her closely.
At seven o’clock the joker says, “Mr Romeo seems to have run out on you, Juliet. He’s probably at Scotch Corner on the M1, hitching a lift to London.”
“I don’t think so,” says Senga firmly.
At quarter to eight the joker suggests that Tom has been locked in his bedroom by his mother and offers to lead an expedition to free him. Senga laughs until she cries real tears. Tom’s arrival and non-arrival are now equally dreadful to her. Between eight-thirty and nine it dawns on them that Tom will not come tonight and at once all of them grow happier, especially Senga. She feels she has wakened from a colourful but embarrassing nightmare which can now be treated as a joke.
“‘Yes or no?’ he demands and I go really tragic, real tears pouring out of me, ‘How can I say yes?’ I cry and he really rises to the occasion. Tom can easily do the dramatic Hollywood thing when he wants. ‘Don’t say yes! Leave it all to me! I will save us from our evil parents,’ no he didnae really say that but –”
They are all laughing but eventually quieten. At quarter past nine, shortly before the café shuts and when the group are the only customers, Tom enters. He walks taller than usual but looks worn and tired and so, untypically, do his clothes. He says “Hullo” to the group and to Senga, “Sorry I’m late. Can I have a word with you?”
He goes to an empty table. Senga’s limbs tremble. For a moment she feels too weak to stand. The feeling passes. She gets up, gives a little smile and shoulder-shrug to her observant companions and follows Tom to the nearby table. She
is relieved by his subdued manner but also saddened. She assumes he too has realized they must not marry.
She sits facing him. He says, “Sorry I’m late, I had trouble with the room. But it’s all right, the deposit is paid. It isn’t a very nice room but we can shift to another if you find a better one at the same rent. That’s your problem, however. At eight tomorrow morning I start as a window cleaner.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Tomorrow I start work as a window cleaner,” says Tom patiently, “Twelve pounds five shillings a week or seventeen with overtime. It won’t be for ever. Five months from now I can start as an apprentice technician with Colville’s or Scottish Electricity, or Dexter Delvers, or Shedden Maguire. It will mean, at first, a drop in our weekly wage, but after four years I will be earning a far bigger wage than my dad earns so I’ll be able to support you. Until then you’d better think of getting a job too. I mean, what I earn will feed us and pay the rent, but you may want a few luxuries on top of that like clothes and a fancy cooker. Anyway, you can collect the marriage form from Martha Street registry office as soon as you like.”
“I can collect the marriage lines?” says Senga, faintly.
“Senga,” says Tom more patiently than ever, “I apologize. I am very sorry that just now I am unromantic, and practical, and very very tired, but I have had an exhausting day. I have visited three government offices: the Youth Employment, the Labour Exchange and the Ministry of Pensions. I had to queue for more than an hour in every one of them and they were no help at all. The only good news I got was from the school’s careers teacher who told me about my apprentice technician prospects. But he would not believe I needed to start earning money now. I couldn’t tell him that I’m going to marry you and you are not the waiting kind. If I’d done that the news would have been all over the school in a couple of hours. He would also have told my mum and dad. So I looked for a job in the newspaper adverts and I got one, didn’t I? Didn’t I? Yes I did, a job where they don’t even want to know my National Insurance number or anything else if I start first thing tomorrow at eight. But of course I couldn’t wait for my first week’s wages before I got us a room. I went to the only man who might lend me money, my uncle the bookie who’s never asked to our house. I told him everything and asked for twenty quid. He gave me sixty straight away as a wedding present. He probably did it to annoy Mum and Dad who’ll disown me when they hear about it. And then it was half-past seven and I still had to find the room. Well, I’ve found one. It’s wee, you’ll hate the wallpaper, I wish we could have looked for it together, Senga, but of course I can’t expect you to go to a bother like that. So now you know what I’ve done for us today and I honestly think I deserve some thanks, even if you are incapable of gratitude.”
The possibility of a completely new life now opens its jaws in front of Senga like an enormous trap. The sight makes her shudder. She says, “I don’t think I like you, Tom. You’re trying to bully me and we’re not even married.”
“Am I a bully just because I expect you to go to Martha Street to collect our marriage lines?” asks Tom querulously, and she suddenly sees that though he has worked amazingly hard to make the new life possible, he too now feels it a trap. She says, “I don’t want to marry you, Tom, and you don’t want to marry me – not if you’ve to work as a window cleaner and live in a poky wee room.”
This is more truth than Tom can at once swallow. A great rage enters him which would drive a noisy man to shout and a violent man to smash things. Tom gasps, nods and says grimly, “That’s what you think, is it?”
She says, “Yes. That’s what I think.”
Tom puts his elbows on the table and rests his brow on his fists.
Then looks up and sees the three at the other table craning their heads to listen. He sees by their faces that they know all about his proposal. He leans across the table and whispers to Senga, who now looks like and is a frightened little girl, “You’ve made a right fool of me, Senga McGuffie. You must be right proud of yourself.” She stares at him dumbly. He stands and says aloud, “You and I are finished now. Done. Totally and completely and absolutely and … and totally finished.”
“You said that before,” says a voice from the other table. “Said what before?” demands Tom.
“Totally. You said it twice.”
“Shut your face or I will shut your face,” says Tom ominously, “And here, Miss McGuffie, is a wee present for you.”
He takes the strip of photographs from his inner breast pocket intending to rip it and fling the bits at her, but he likes her too much to do that. He hesitates, lays it gently on the table and hurries out. Senga has another fit of hysterics. Her girl friends rush to her, cuddle her, stroke her, wipe her tears with handkerchiefs and make soothing noises.
“He’s daft! He’s daft! He’s utterly daft!” she raves between fits of weeping and laughter, and “I never wanted him to ask me to marry him!”
“Then why get upset about it?”
“Because he isnae really daft.”
Tom enters his home with no attempts at quietness. “Tom! Come here!” calls his father. Tom enters the familiar living-room where his father stands glaring and pointing and shouting, “Tom, last night you asked me to trust you, asked me to tell your mother you would resume your studies! And you have not even come home for your tea!”
“Good news!” cries Tom, flatly and bitterly. “Senga and I are finished with each other.”
After a moment his parents’ faces, struck suddenly blank, brighten a little though they are too polite to smile. His father strokes his chin. “Finished, eh?”
His mother says quietly, “Tom, do you know what I’m going to tell you?”
“Yes,” says Tom, “You are going to tell me yet again that she isn’t good enough for me, by which you mean that her mother works in Woolworths and my dad owns a paper shop.”
“You’re completely wrong,” says his mother firmly, “I was going to say she’s a flirt.”
“Why should she not be?” cries Tom passionately. “She’s full of life, she wants to enjoy it, a lot of men are keen on her, why shouldn’t she flirt? She was the best thing that ever happened to me, and she liked me a lot better than the others.”
“Then why have you finished with her?” asks his father.
“Because she’s refused to marry me!” screams Tom through clenched teeth.
His parents look to each other for support and see nothing in each other’s faces but bewilderment. Tom masters his emotions and speaks more calmly. “Another thing,” he says, “I’m starting work in May as an apprentice technician, probably with Colville’s. I’ve spoken to them at school about it and the careers teacher says it will be the best thing for me. So the university notion is out, done with, totally scrubbed and I must say it’s a relief.”
His father stares at him in such a stricken way that Tom in tenderness and pity goes to the smaller man and places a fatherly hand on his shoulder. “Ach don’t worry, Dad! My job will be as good as anything folk are taught to do in university and just as well paid. And it will be work I can do with no bother, so there’s no use worrying about it. Life’s too short. I’m also very hungry just now.”
He goes to the kitchen door, pauses and asks them wistfully, “I’m going to make some sandwiches. Would anyone else like one? And a cup of cocoa maybe?”
But his father stares at his shoes, his mother at the wool on her lap, as if searching for something in these. He sighs and leaves them.
After a while his father mutters, “I’ve got to speak to him but I don’t know what to say.”
His mother, who is trying to knit, flings the needles down and cries, “How dare that Senga refuse our Tom! The CHEEK of her! The CHEEK! The CHEEK!”
During Tom’s last months at school he finds his proposal to Senga has done him good. Girls of his own age now look at him with interest. He stops wearing his suits as if afraid of creasing them, stops feeling ashamed of his height and starts findin
g it an advantage. He and Senga never become close friends again though he never quite manages to stop loving her. Even after they have left school he keeps informed of her doings. Five years later he learns that Senga is engaged to a cranedriver in a shipyard. Tom is now an expert in precision grinding. His abilities are useful to several companies. He invites her to a meal in a good restaurant, expecting her to look older and more working-class than he remembers her, but he can see no difference, she is as attractive as ever, so he proposes again. He explains that he wants to start a family because a family is the only thing he lacks. His bullying nature is now obvious. Senga finds this second proposal purely comic and cannot hide the fact. She marries the cranedriver, a man with many friends who talks a lot about politics. Two months later Tom marries a woman who looks like Senga but was bred in a wealthier home and wants to be kept in another one.
THE MAN WHO KNEW ABOUT ELECTRICITY
DONALDA is usually met through other people. Today this is an old man who trots up and down a busy pavement, showing a light bulb to passer-by and asking them if they know about electricity. Most pretend not to see or hear him. A few pause for a second with pained smiles then shake their heads and hurry on. The old man is not discouraged. He is a peculiar little man with the bent back and knobbly joints of somebody who was once big. He wears black canvas gym shoes, a shirt printed with orange and purple silhouettes of palm trees, a fine tweed suit so large that the trouserlegs are turned up three inches at the ankles, the sleeves turned back as much at the wrists. Apart from these folds his clothes are neatly pressed and very clean. Maybe people are repelled by his voice. He has the accent of a city in north-east England and the pavement is in a city of the Scottish west.
At last the old man says, “Dost thee knoo aboot electricity John?” to a boy with a new leather briefcase full of books and with the badge of a new university on his blazer pocket. The boy knows a lot about electricity. He asks the old man to repeat his question and answers, “Yes”.
Every Short Story by Alasdair Gray 1951-2012 Page 33