Every Short Story by Alasdair Gray 1951-2012

by Gray, Alasdair

“I had not that honour. My own North African campaign was passed in a supply depot: a fuel-tank of the military apparatus. All kinds of armaments and food and drink passed through our hands, and furnishings, you know, for the top brass.”

  The policeman sighs nostalgically.

  “Our tents had wall-to-wall carpets in them with dressing-tables and three-piece suites. Crazy paving was laid up to the front flap of each, and every morning my barber wakened me sharp at eleven with a bottle of champagne.” “Fergus,” says the boilerman, “I am aware that strange things happen in supply depots but I find your crazy paving hard to take.”

  “It was a fact!”

  “Were you a … a major or something?” the boy asks, awed.

  “A humble lance-corporal.”

  “But how did you have a barber?”

  “We were in a very poor part of the world, you see, and there were always a lot of homeless children hanging around to do anything you liked for a coin or a half-bar of chocolate. One of them attached himself to me – two or three years younger than you he was, an orphan, but intelligent. I trained him to shave me in bed in the mornings. I would waken to the warm lather going on to my cheeks and I would be shaved and dried without my head once leaving the pillow.”

  “But did you never fight?”

  “Indeed!” said the policeman, nodding, “Yes, each day after lunch we swept the horizon with our binoculars and if we saw anything unusual we reported it to the commanding officer. ‘Beg to report sir, a duck has appeared beside the palm tree at half-past three o’clock.’ ‘Right! That duck is our enemy! Open fire!’ Whizzbang, whizzbang. Ten thousand pounds of explosive missile waste their sweetness on the desert air.”

  “But why?” asks the boy, exasperated by this waste of explosives.

  “There was a war on son! If we hadn’t exploded a certain number of shells per week the brass at headquarters would have thought we weren’t doing our bit. Of course it wasn’t a typical situation – not everyone did well in that war. In fact I’ve heard that in the thirty-nine-forty-five affair it was the civilians who suffered most.”

  “There you are wrong, Fergus!” cries the boilerman forcefully, “I know the blitz was gey hard on the Londoners and Clydebankers, but life here in Britain during the war was far kinder and more decent than before or since. We had a working government then, controlling the industries and regulating the prices. Full employment for all! And food rationed, and clothes rationed, so the rich got no more than they needed and the poor no less. Even the king was eating spam off his gold plate in Buckingham Palace. No petrol for private cars then – we all used the trains and trams and buses. People with big houses had to give rooms to bombed-out kids from the slums, and the miracle is, hardly anyone grumbled! Even the advertisements had a democratic look. WORK OR WANT, they said. MAKE DO AND MEND, COUGHS AND SNEEZES SPREAD DISEASES, DIG FOR VICTORY. People with gardens were encouraged to plant vegetables in them. Now listen to this!”

  From the stack of fashion magazines he seizes one, leafs through, then reads aloud: “The young admire it for its reckless good looks. Their parents like it for its thrifty fuel consumption. Not everyone can afford the life-style indicated by a Blenheim table cigarette lighter, but those who can usually own one. What is that but a sneer and a gibe at working people who could pay three months rent with the price of their fancy cigarette lighter? Here’s another advert for a holiday in the Bahamas. It is aimed at young working women and is a straightforward invitation to them to prostitute themselves! Rich boys know how to enjoy life, it says. They have the money and time. Meet them in their favourite playgrounds for …”

  The policeman, who has been smiling and shaking his head at the boilerman’s vehemence, laughs aloud and raises his hand.

  “Cool it Mr McLeod, cool it!” he says. “Less of the communist manifesto and a bit more judicial calm.” The boilerman becomes calm instantly. He puts the magazine back on the stack and says quietly, “Quite right.”

  Another man has entered and sat down with them, a no-longer-young man wearing neat but not expensive clothing. The boilerman and the boy pay him no special attention though he is the son of the first and father of the second. But perhaps his arrival stimulates the boy who says with sudden vehemence, “Granda, did you never, you know, stand waiting with your bayonets fixed till the order came to go over the top and then you charged across no man’s land and jumped into shell-holes to miss the shells and then came to the German trenches and jumped down into them and you know what I mean?

  You did do that didn’t you?”

  “I did as little of that as I possibly could!” says the boilerman firmly.

  “Nobody will tell me about fighting,” mourns the boy.

  “Why do you want to hear about fighting?” asks his father.

  “Because I might pick up useful tips – useful for school, I mean. I don’t always know what to do, you see. I mean, what can you do when they chase you into the lavatory, and you’re holding the door shut, and two of them are shoving it to try to get in, and one is reaching his hands under the door to grab at your legs, and another starts climbing in over the side wall? What can you do?”

  The men glance at each other, thoroughly disconcerted. They do not want to tell the boy he is in a world which cannot be improved, but only the boilerman has a suggestion for improving it. He says softly, “Take a cake, Hughie.”

  The boy looks at the plate and selects a tight spiral of yellow crumbs and scarlet jam. He bites it and talks mainly to himself.

  “James Bond is full of tricks: guns and explosives inside fountain pens and the heel of his shoes. I don’t want to kill anybody, but it would be great if I could give them an electric shock whenever they touch me. Or what if I flashed a light that blinded them – not for ever, but for an hour or two. That would be all right, wouldn’t it?”

  The last question is another appeal to the adults. The policeman is the least embarrassed by it. He says, “Wait till you’re a bit older, son, then you can send for me if thugs get on to you. Oh yes, we know how to handle thugs. When you first arrest these big tough guys they’re very sure of themselves, calling you all kinds of names. But the nearer they get to the station the quieter they become. And by the time they’re inside – if they’ve sense – they’re as mild as wee lambs.”

  He imitates a cringing whine: “Don’t give me the stick! Not the stick!”

  He chuckles as if it is a cheerful memory.

  “What bothers me,” grumbles the boy, “Is that you’ve all been in the army and none of you talk about the killing you’ve done.”

  “You were in the army?” the policeman asks the father, surprised.

  “Yes. National Service. Cyprus.”

  “Kill any terrorists?” says the policeman, interested.

  “No, but I broke an old woman’s china teapot.”

  They stare at him. He sighs and says gloomily, “We were stationed on this village for a while – nice enough folk, they seemed, and they liked football, so we got up a team to play them. It was a good game. They beat us two-nil but there were no hard feelings. Afterwards one of our boys went to a well for a drink. It was booby-trapped. His head, legs and other bits travelled a long way in different directions, a sight to sicken you. Then one of us remembered that during the game a young kid had gone to the well for a drink and a woman – an ordinary housewife – had called it away. We saw that the whole village had known about the booby-trap! Well, we had to search the place then and of course we made a right meal of it. There were quite a few breakages, and lots of pillows, mattresses and cushions got ripped. Oh, they didnae sleep soft that night I can tell you! I didnae enjoy doing that. It was a relief to be doing something of course but I felt bad afterwards. I mean, they werenae all bad people, but when the soldier went for a drink at the well could the woman not have warned him away too?” “If she had, the terrorists might have … done something to her,” says the boilerman quietly.

  “I know!” says the father with
a hopeless shrug.

  “You have no cause for self-recrimination!” says the policeman loudly, “In certain circumstances the forces of law and order cannot afford to be mealy-mouthed. You were defending your country, defending an artery of trade that was essential to Britain’s survival as a nation.” The two other men look at him. The boilerman says, “What artery is that, Fergus?”

  “Gibraltar. Cyprus. Suez. Aden. India.”

  “Fergus, the Suez Canal was blocked for three years before my boy was sent to Cyprus, and for about six after he came back.”

  “Is that right?” the policeman asks the father, who nods. The policeman frowns then remembers something which cheers him up again: “Without the British presence the Greeks and Turks would have torn each other apart, like the Irish in Ulster,” he explains, “If they now live in peace it is because we taught them to. If they’re still carving each other up it shows they needed us.”

  “Everybody talks about politics,” grumbles the boy. After a silence his father says, “I loved Cyprus.”

  Nobody asks for an explanation so after more silence he says, “If you take a walk in the country side here, what do you see? Cows and sheep looking over fences. But in Cyprus … I remember being on sentry go at the edge of a camp up in the hills. Stony bare hills they were, hardly any green, but lots of gnarled kinds of bushes with big leaves. I was the only one awake when the dawn came up. You never see colours like that in dawns nowadays – I mean not here. No sound but a few birds cheeping and some sheep-bells or goat-bells clanking down in the valley. And this slight feeling of danger keeping you alert to it all. Because the Eeky-Oakies might be somewhere near.”

  “We all had moments like that,” says the boilerman thoughtfully. The policeman nods.

  The door bangs open and the wife enters. Her lips are pressed very tight together. The boilerman stands up and says, “Senga.”

  She says, “Give me a light, Granda.”

  She lights a cigarette with his matches and returns them.

  “Any … luck?” he asks delicately.

  “Luck? For me? You must be crazy. Donalda Ingles used to be a decent wee girl but she’s turned into a slut. Her sink’s full of dirty old bean tins, the place stinks like a lavatory, she’s living with a tinker and smells like a midden. She needs help, poor soul, but I cannae give it. I cannae stay in a place like thon.”

  The husband rises and walks to the suitcases his wife brought in earlier. He says crisply, “So you are coming home?”

  “Oh!” she jeers, “You want me home do you?”

  “I didn’t say that,” says the husband, “When you have a place to live in, go there and good luck to you. Meanwhile, are you coming home? I’ll carry the cases.” He bends to lift them. She cries, “Don’t you touch my things! I’ll mibby spend the night here. It’s a hotel, isn’t it?”

  “Senga,” says the boilerman gently, “The cheapest room here will cost you ten pounds a night.”

  “Senga,” says the husband, “If you’re leaving me you cannae afford that sort of money. You’re far too impetuous – you’ll never get away from me by charging out the house like a madwoman. You must plan things calmly. If you do I’ll help you for godsake. It will mean less damage, especially to … to …” With a small gesture he indicates the boy, then stoops to the cases again, saying, “Do I take these home?”

  She says coolly, “Take them where you bloody like.”

  He lifts them and says to the boy, “Come on, Hughie.”

  The boy stands up loking worried. He says, “Do I go with him, Ma?”

  “Up to you, intit?” says his mother, blowing out smoke.

  “I’ll stay with you, Ma, if … if you want me.”

  “Hm! And who do you want?”

  The boy stares at her looking terribly lost. Her husband says in a low voice, “Senga, that isnae fair.”

  “Oh go with your dad!” she cries impatiently. “I’m coming soon enough. Just clear off both of you and let me finish a fag in peace.”

  The father with suitcases, the boy with his doll, go to the door. Before leaving the man turns and says, “One thing, Senga! Don’t think I’ve apologized to you. I’ve done nothing I’m ashamed of, nothing I’m sorry for, nothing I won’t do tomorrow night. Come on son.”

  They leave.

  The wife walks up and down, puffing angrily.

  “You heard them, didn’t you?” she asks the two others.

  “He wasn’t exactly brutal to you, Mrs MacLeod,” says the policeman.

  “And would he be with two witnesses here? And one of them a policeman?”

  The drink is giving the policeman a pleasant sense of extended intellectual powers.

  “Well you know,” he says, “A husband is entitled to beat his wife to the point of correction. That statute is graven on the foundation stones of the British Legal Constitution.” “You’re blethering, Fergus,” says the boilerman, “There is no such thing as a British Legal Constitution.”

  “The Scottish legal system is the finest in the world,” the policeman announces to nobody in particular, “And I am fifty-five per cent certain that it permits a man to beat his wife up to, but not beyond, the point of correction. But where do we locate that point? Aha! That is the point!”

  He chuckles at his wit. The wife throws the cigarette down and stands on it, saying, “I’m getting out of here.”

  The boilerman goes to her saying, “Fergus is drivelling, Senga, at least stay for something to eat.”

  “No thanks, Granda. I’ll see you when you’ve more … privacy.”

  She leaves. The boilerman wanders back to his seat murmuring, “Poor souls.”

  “I’m sure you were wrong about the Suez Canal,” says the policeman. Britain did not fight in that war for nothing. I shall look into it.”

  He throws the empty paper cup onto the coke heap, stands and pulls his tunic straight. He says, “Aye aye. Everyone goes about saying how much they want war, and they’re right to want it, because war is a very fine thing. But in my humble opinion war keeps manufacturing tensions which can only be resolved by a thorough-going peace.”

  The policeman notices the boilerman watching him and stroking his chin. A sudden doubt occurs to him. He asks, “Did I say that the wrong way round, Mr MacLeod?”

  “I honestly don’t know, Fergus.”

  “Neither do I. Well, duty calls.”

  He leaves. The boilerman looks at the dials, opens the furnace door and flings three shovelfuls of coke along a red-hot gullet of flames. Then he shuts the door, puts the shovel away, sits down, lights his pipe, and continues reading.

  QUIET PEOPLE

  DOORBELL rings. Mrs Liddel opens to Mrs Mathieson who says, “I took my pain to the doctor – I’ve just got back from him.”

  “Would you like a cup of tea?” asks Mrs Liddel. Mrs Mathieson enters the sitting-room. Mrs Liddel enters the kitchen where Mr Liddel reads a library book, a kettle of water steams gently over a low flame.

  “Mrs Mathieson!” explains Mrs Liddel preparing tea and biscuits. Her husband says, “Mhm.”

  In the sitting-room Mrs Liddel pours two cups of tea as Mrs Mathieson draws a deep breath and announces, “The very first thing he did was tell me to strip myself naked all over.”

  “Oh dear!” whispers Mrs Liddel. As the story continues her kind, alert face expresses wonder, sympathy, dismay and dread. These expressions are genuine. Mrs Liddel, her husband and two grown-up daughters have never been painfully ill, drunk or quarrelsome, or accidentally involved with criminal or indecent or eccentric behaviour, so most people’s lives strike them as surprising. They have no television set because the things shown on it strike them as too surprising for comfort. When a visitor has no more to say Mrs Liddel can only shake her head and say, “Fancy that!” or “That should not be allowed.”

  When the visitor leaves Mrs Liddel takes the tea things back to the kitchen saying, “Mrs Mathieson took her pain to the doctor this morning. The first thing he made
her do was strip herself naked all over.”

  While talking she washes and dries tea things and restores them to exact places in cupboard, sideboard and drawer, sometimes pausing when the gravity of the news makes movement impossible. Mr Liddel is slightly ashamed of being the only one who knows his wife gossips. A casual observer might think he was ignoring her – he has raised his eyes only a fraction above the book held open before him. When the recital ends he says, “Well well!” and resumes reading, or else, “I see. So that’s the way of it. I’d better take a wee walk. Come on Tippy.”

  Their old dog follows him to the park where he strolls up to the flagpole in dry weather or through the museum when wet. He broods deeply on what his wife has told him. It usually confirms what he deduces from newspapers and wireless broadcasts: Britain is getting worse.

  Mrs Liddel is small and pretty, Mr Liddel massive and handsome. He is asthmatic. This shows if he moves quickly so he never moves quickly. A tram-driver from 1928 to 1961, he fails the army medical exam and is promoted to ticket inspector a year before trams are replaced by buses. He never learns to love the buses as he loved the trams and his world-view is shaped by this. He remembers when Glasgow tram lines reached to Loch Lomondside and most of industrial Lanarkshire; when the head of Glasgow Public Transport was invited to cities in North and South America to advise them on the running of municipal light railway systems. The scrapping of Glasgow tramcars is mingled in his mind with the Labour Party’s retreat from socialist intentions. His favourite reading is biography and novels which present a rich social variety in a strong moralizing sauce. Dickens and Victor Hugo are his favourites, and only the confusing Russian names stop him enjoying Dostoevsky. He has read Upton Sinclair, J.B. Priestley, A.J. Cronin and Grassic Gibbon, but compared with Dickens and Hugo most twentieth-century writing strikes him as feeble. His detailed knowledge of modern existence now depends mainly on his wife, who is too busy to read.

  Since marriage the Liddels have lived in a ground-floor flat in Minard Road, a street of tenements which offers better-paid workers most of the domestic amenities of the wealthy, apart from spaciousness. An entrance porch as large as a doormat has a double outer storm-door and an inner door which is two-thirds frosted glass. This opens into a tiny lobby which the Liddel daughters (shortly before they married and left) insisted in calling The Hall. Here are doors to a cupboard with a coalbunker in it, to a lavatory two feet wider and four feet longer than the bath, to a back kitchen with a bed recess facing the window and sink, to a front bedroom one and a half feet wider and five feet longer than the bed, to a front sitting-room with enough room to walk comfortably round a heavy three-piece suite which boxes in the fire-place. The sitting-room also has a bed recess facing the window: a bay window divided from the street by a garden filled by a privet hedge round it and two small rhododendrons. The gardens and bay windows give Minard Road its prosperous look, but Mr and Mrs Liddel would feel well housed without them. They are glad that each of their daughters has a whole bed of her own: indeed, the eldest has a whole bedroom. When the eldest marries and leaves, the youngest inherits the bedroom and the kitchen bed recess is converted to a dining alcove. When the youngest leaves the older people move to the bedroom, returning after a week to the bed in the sitting-room recess because they sleep uneasily without a wall on three sides of them. They are slightly ashamed of this lack of sophistication, but Mr Liddel says, “We must accept ourselves as we are.”