His glaring face is an inch from hers, his fists hammer the space on each side of her body.
She whispers, “God?”
He has never been so menacing or she so subdued. He clasps, kisses her and is embraced. Her mouth yields to his, which is hard at first then softens as he starts to tremble, feeling he is losing all control of things. Still holding her tight he withdraws his face, gasps for breath and demands, “Who did you tell them ordered that unwiring?”
“You, Tommy! I told them you ordered it! They were tremendously astonished and impressed!”
Her voice and face are eager, submissive and amused. He groans and they kiss again. Full of wonder he says, “I know nothing about you! Nothing at all.”
“I’m very ordinary, Tommy.”
“Do you like me, June?”
“You’re a very impressive man, Mr Lang.”
“But do you like me?”
“I … I’m not sure. I like this, though.”
A few minutes later they separate. He pulls his crumpled clothes straight and says soberly, “I want you down on the carpet with me.”
“A bad idea,” she says, going into their washroom.
“Listen!” he calls through to her, “I’m going to phone my wife and tell her I’m still on the MI. that I’ve had a breakdown and I’ll be back tomorrow, right? She’s used to that happening. Then I’ll drive to Renfrew airport and book a room for us in the hotel. You finish here at fivethirty as usual, look up and go and Central Station where you take a taxi straight out to me, right?”
“I don’t think we should be hasty,” she says, emerging, “My mother expects me for tea and I’ve arranged to meet a friend afterward.”
“Does that mean we discuss it tomorrow?”
“Yes, at nine. Tomorrow. Sharp.”
“You’ve a sense of humour,” he tells her, sighing. They kiss and cling again for a moment, then he tells her to photocopy the orders in his briefcase and pass them to Teddy. They look at each other for a moment. He leaves.
Three days later they stay overnight in the airport hotel. Next day a kiss before lunch break leads to a coupling, interrupted by a phone call, on the carpet. Ten days later they spend another night in a hotel. Ms Tain finds he has just one short way of pleasing a woman intimately, and likes doing it three or four times a night. This makes him perfectly happy (“Oh I needed that!” he exclaims, almost every time) but she feels hardly any intimacy at all. For over a month Ms Tain gives her mother’s poor health as a reason for not meeting Tom privately, and there are no more carpet fucks. Then one weekend he takes her for a two-day holiday to Paris.
The season is not spring but the weather is springlike and fresh. They do not sit together on the plane in case someone recognizes him, but the flight, taxi-ride and arrival at a fine little hotel on a narrow street near the Arc de Triomphe make her happy and hopeful; their first fuck in the bedroom ten minutes later even enhances that mood. She would now like to drift about gazing at things, exploring without urgency the quais and parks beside the Seine, chatting about what they see, reminiscing about childhood and getting to know each other better. But Tom cannot enjoy looking at things. Drifting makes him uneasy. He assumes every stroll needs a destination and a schedule for reaching it. He takes her to Versailles and examines it with an offended frown, sometimes muttering, “Oh very nice, if you could afford it.”
He is jealous of the monarchs who once lived here, not at all consoled by it now being public property. He talks a lot about his unhappy marriage. He is paying for this holiday so she murmurs sympathetically, feeling guilty that she can hardly stand his company now, guilty that the first thing she will do when they return to work will be hand in her notice, but beside the guilt, she also feels hopeful. She is dressed beautifully, her hair hangs freely down her back, she draws several admiring glances. These gradually make Tom feel enviable and secure. At dinner that night he is amazed by the splendid woman across the table from him and says solemnly, “This is the happiest moment of my life.”
She manages to smile. He drinks nearly two bottles of wine and three large brandies without apparent effect, but when they go to bed he falls asleep at once. She is glad, although she does not sleep for a long time. She feels her first holiday in Paris, like Tom Lang in private, should be better than this.
Next morning he wakens her by satisfying himself. He would do it again but she says she has a headache. He becomes gentle, apologetic, says, “I know I’m too much sometimes. Will I get you a cup of tea? Or coffee, maybe?”
She realizes Tom does not know there is more to love than he learned in his teens. Given time, a tactful and experienced woman could make a very satisfying lover out of Tom, but he will never give a woman enough time and luckily he is not the only man in her life.
They return by an afternoon flight. It is Sunday. On Wednesday she hands in her notice. He is appalled, offers to double her wages, declares the firm needs her, proposes marriage, announces he will buy a house for both of them anywhere she likes while the divorce is going through. She leaves and six months later marries someone who is rather like Tom Lang, but fonder of home and less obviously selfish. The marriage does not last. She has a habit of getting entangled with the same sort of man and only discovering it later.
Lang Precision Ltd does not last either, though it receives a Scottish Industries Award for being the most successfully competitive small firm of 1975. It supplies tools to factories in a province where heavy industries are being closed or shifted south, where light industries are sending their labour to factories in Taiwan and Thailand. Tom, with the assistance of an expert accountant, goes profitably bankrupt. He moves to London where his ability to deal with buyers and suppliers is found useful by a subsidiary of a gigantic company whose directors will never know his name or face.
IN THE BOILER ROOM
THE boiler room is entered from a dirty little yard behind an old hotel with a grand big front. The room has a concrete floor and walls of unplastered, unpainted brick. It is windowless and lit by a bare bulb hung from the ceiling at the end of the room not occupied by the boiler – the end with the door. The boiler is like the engine of an old steam locomotive without wheels and cabin. It has the same circular front of riveted steel plates, the same large dials indicating water level and pressures, the same small grim furnace underneath. It eats the same sort of fuel. Near by is a heap of small coal and a heap of coke. A long-handled and short-handled shovel lie on these, an iron-handled rake and a stout sweeping-brush with very coarse bristles. In a corner a heap of tumbled-together chairs slopes up to the ceiling, chairs too old or damaged for the hotel and sent down here for use as kindling. There is a stack of expensive but out-of-date fashion magazines sent down for the same purpose. These heaps are all close together because the boiler fills most of the room.
It may not seem a comfortable room but some find comfort here. The boiler pipes are old and leak a bit, so the hot air is neither too moist nor too dry and on this late January afternoon the heat is welcome after the freezing slush of the yard and the streets beyond. Even the thin sharp fume of burning coke smells pleasant by association, and after a while has a slightly narcotic effect. Three gold-lacquered basket chairs, chipped and soiled but with wicker frames too difficult to break up for kindling, stand in a small space before the boiler for the convenience of visitors. The boilerman prefers a plain wooden chair on which he sits by the furnace door, smoking his pipe and reading a library book. He is tall, lean, craggy and old; he wears a black boilersuit, big boots and flat cap, also spectacles with a fractured earpiece bandaged by electrical insulating tape. He does not hear a faint distant sound of dance music until it swells louder as the door opens and a small determined woman walks in, followed by a worried little boy. She wears a plastic headscarf and plastic raincoat and carries a heavy suitcase in each hand. The boy wears a thick duffel coat with the hood up and clutches a doll wearing the clothes and equipment of an American soldier in Vietnam. The boilerman look
s at them blankly then says, “Hullo Senga.”
She says firmly, “Yes, hullo Granda. I’m finished. I’m through. I’ve had all I can take.”
She puts down her cases and tells the boy, “Shut that door.” He does.
The boilerman, nodding thoughtfully, stands and points to a chair near his own. He says gently to the boy, “Sit down son.”
He does not ask the woman to sit. She is clearly in no mood for that. She takes a packet from her pocket, removes a cigarette, asks for a light. The boilerman hands her matches. She lights the cigarette and returns the matches saying, “Thanks. Yes I’ve had it, had it up to here” – she makes a slicing gesture across her throat – “I’m leaving him and this time it’s final … Take your coat off and sit down like your granda says,” she tells the boy, who has been staring at her uncertainly. He obeys her. The boilerman looks thoughtfully at the bowl of his pipe then pockets it with an air of decision. He says, “I’ll get you a snack from the kitchen, we’ve a wedding reception tonight …”
“Huh! Wedding reception! Save your trouble, I don’t need a snack.”
“Did he lay hands on you?” askes the boilerman quietly. The wife, smoking in quick little angry puffs, grins grimly and says, “Hit me? I’d like to see him try. I’d have him in the Marine Police Station before he could blink. His feet wouldnae touch the pavement.”
The boilerman glances at the boy who seems not to be listening and murmurs, “A woman, maybe?”
“Oh I wish it was! I wish he’d do something I could take him to court over, but no. No it’s because of something ordinary. He went out for a drink last night, as usual, and said he’d be back in forty minutes. As usual. And as usual he comes rolling in at half-past eleven. Met a pal and went up to his house for a chat about the future of socialism while muggins here is left alone in the house with the kid and the telly. As usual.”
“Does he never let you out by yourself?”
“Oh aye! All for sweet human reason is that man of mine. ‘When you want a night out just tell me,’ says he, ‘I’ll sit in with the wee chap, no problem.’ Where can I go for a night out? I’ve no pals to talk politics with. The only folk I know are a lot of silly women with nothing in their heads but babies and food prices and bingo. I married that man for his company and the bastard won’t stay in the room with me for more than an hour at a time if we’re no in bed with the light off. That’s the only time we’re together and it isnae enough.”
She is close to weeping, so he takes a deep breath and says, “I shouldnae call him a bastard, Granda, because he’s your son. You know what I mean, but.”
“I think so Senga.”
“Funny. I can say anything I like to you and you never take me wrong.”
“That’s because I’m neutral, Senga.”
“Aye, you keep saying that, but I know you’re on my side. Listen, I’m leaving the kid here for half an hour while I see about a room. I met a friend last week who needs a lodger. I havnae seen her for years, she’s not very bright but she’s got a good heart and she lives three streets from here.”
“Would you like a cup of tea first?”
“Definitely not.”
She goes to the boy and makes small adjustments to the collar of his shirt, the sleeves of his pullover. She tells him quietly, “I won’t be long, Hughie,” and leaves. The boilerman strokes his chin and studies the boy for a moment. The boy, hunched over the doll on his lap, seems to be studying the furnace door. The boilerman quietly coughs. The boy looks at him. The boilerman raises a forefinger, says, “Hughie, I’m going to get you something,” and walks out. The boy turns back to the furnace door and frowns thoughtfully, sometimes moving his lips as if talking to it.
The boilerman returns with a plate containing triangular sandwiches, vivid pastries and a glass of green liquid under a layer of white froth. He lifts a crate from the floor, stands it short-end-up beside the boy’s chair and lays the plate on top. He says, “That’s for you.”
“Not hungry.”
“Then we’ll let it rest there.”
The boilerman sits down, lights his pipe and resumes the library book. After a while the boy says, “Granda, what’s the worst trap you were in?”
The boilerman looks at him closely.
“I mean in the war,” explains the boy, “The first war.”
“Passchendaele, I suppose.”
“Did you kill many Germans?”
“You’re keen on war, eh?”
“I’ve got three action men,” says the boy earnestly, “An infantryman, a paratrooper and a frogman. Of course they’re just toys but you can learn things from them, can’t you? I mean the wee weapons are all to scale. Look at this! Look at the wee grenades.”
He holds up his doll. The boilerman glances at it briefly then blows a smoke ring.
“Tell me about the first war!” pleads the boy.
“Yes,” says the boilerman and lays his book down, “Well. You know the big greenhouse with the palm trees in it behind the museum on the Green?”
“Aye.”
“That was where I slept on the night of the day war was declared.”
“Why?”
“When I read about the war on the placards, you see, I joined at once. I was seventeen, you see, and I’d been working as a clerk on a weighbridge at the docks. Oh yes, my parents had great hopes for me, but it was not a job I liked. As a hobby I had joined the volunteer reserve, which was a free kind of night classes in soldiering. So when war was declared, I was prepared. I signed on like a shot and bought my first tin of pipe-tobacco with the shillings they gave me. So many of us signed on they had to billet us in all kinds of queer places. So there was I, lying on my palliasse on the walkway of the People’s Palace conservatory, under a tree with a label on it saying Phoenix dactilifera. That was the very first night I ever slept outside a house with my parents in it, and every hour I wakened to a queer dank jungle smell and saw that label with the words Phoenix dactilifera.”
“Yes,” says the boy, “but –”
“Next day!” says his grandfather, lifting a forefinger, “We were sent up to Dunfermline and billeted in a whisky bonding warehouse. Three months later twelve of us marched down Queensferry Road to the railway station and marched onto the Glasgow train, just as if we were a picket. Now what do you think of that?”
“What’s a picket?”
“A small group of soldiers with a special warrant to travel on a train without tickets. But we had no warrant.”
“Why?”
“We had been three months without leave, you see, and felt justified in taking what was called French leave, which is without permission. Well, just before the train came into Queen Street station, it halted in the shunting yards of Saint Rollox. The money in our pockets added up to just less than five shillings, which was judged too little to bribe the ticket collector at the barrier. So we jumped out of the carriage, ran across the lines, climbed the fence and … walked back to our proper homes. Now listen!”
The boilerman points a finger. “The next evening, at ten to nine, two polis-men knocked at the door to ask if Private MacLeod was at home. He was. A laggard among us had been caught skipping over the fence and had clyped on us. I was taken down to Old Dalmarnock Road polisstation –”
“Someone maligning the police again?” asks a policeman who has quietly entered.
“Aye, there you are Fergus,” says the boilerman but pays the policeman no other attention, so the boy ignores him too. The policeman enters a dark space between the coke heap and the boiler-room wall. He does something with his arms inside a tea-chest while the boilerman says, “They took me to Old Dalmarnock Road polisstation, where it was discoverd they had no food, and that I was hungry, for they’d arrested me before supper-time. So a polis-man went back to my mother’s house and she gave him food for me, and to spare. I was put in a cell with a stone bed and stone pillow, both painted red. There was also a fine fire blazing in the hearth –”
“Th
ere is not, and has never been, a Scottish police-station cell with a fireplace in it,” says the policeman firmly, returning to the space before the boiler. He carries a paper cup of clear liquid, sits down and sips from it. After a pause the boilerman tells the boy mildly, “As I was saying, a fire in the hearth. I sat there with a couple of friendly inspectors, eating my mother’s scones and … just talking. Just talking. I slept that night wrapped in a blanket on that stone bed and the next day I was marched to Tobago Street where I met the others, all twelve of us. Two unarmed polis-men walked us to Maryhill Barracks where a small company of fixed bayonets marched us to the train back to Dunfermline.”
“What did they do to you? The officers, I mean.”
“Sixty days confined to barracks,” says the boilerman promptly.
“That’s not a real war experience,” mutters the boy.
“It could have happened at no other time.”
“You should ask about my war experiences,” says the policeman.
The policeman is not a young man but has an unlined, indefinite face which at first sight seems boyish.
“Were you – ?” the boy asks hopefully.
“Yes indeed son. You see before you one of the original desert rats. North Africa nineteen-forty. And so on.”
“You fought for General Montgomery?”
“Monty?” says the policeman, “A big balloon! There was only one general the British soldier respected in that concise area of conflict. Will I tell you his name?”
The boy nods vigorously.
“Rommel.”
“Did you see Rommel?”
Every Short Story by Alasdair Gray 1951-2012 Page 37