Every Short Story by Alasdair Gray 1951-2012

by Gray, Alasdair

  “Well, the next guy who comes along says ‘How about it, dearie, are you game?’ I say ‘Yes Mister Sandilands,’ because he was my old history teacher. He says ‘Oh God, Donalda you aren’t doing this are you? Go home to your mother, girl!’ I says ‘I’d like to Mr Sandilands but it’s no possible and I really need the money.’ He looks from side to side then slips me four quid and says ‘You shouldnae be here and neither should I but I’d like to see Lorraine. Do you know if Lorraine’s around?’ I says ‘No I just started tonight,’ so he groans and rushes away. Next second the man who slapped me is beside me taking the four pounds off me. He says ‘Four pounds for two minutes chat is nice work, doll. Maybe you’ve talent. Try leaning against the wall with your legs crossed.’

  “Well, the next guy who comes along is MacFee who says ‘Have you a place?’ I say ‘Yes, near the start of Parliamentary Road.’ He says ‘I know that place. I have wheels. Let’s go.’ He takes me round the corner to his van. I get inside and he drives to a place near Parkhead Cross. ‘Oh God!’ I think, ‘another lunatic!’ He takes me up to a room and does it to me, then says it was very nice and did I like it too? ‘Oh yes!’ says I, ‘Lovely. But can I please have some money now?’ ‘Before we discuss that I think we should eat something because I feel distinctly peckish,’ he says, ‘There’s the cooker, there’s the sausages, there’s the eggs. Do your best.’ Well I was starving, really starving, so I made a really big fry-up. I fried nearly everything I could see because I’m thinking ‘If I get nothing else out of him at least I’ll get a decent feed.’ I use half a pound of margarine and most of a white pan loaf. When we’ve scoffed it he says ‘You are a first-class cook. You fry like a duck takes to water.’ I ask him for money again and he says ‘I will not deceive you. I have money – a lot of money – but I need it for petrol because in my business I must keep on the move. But there are more important things in life than money. Why do you want money?’ he says. I tell him about Theresa and he says ‘The man’s back is broad. Let’s pick her up.’ So he drives us to my Mammy’s house, we pick up Theresa and that’s that. I’ve kept well away from Bath Street ever since. MacFee is not a bad soul. He never gives me money but if I need something he always manages to get it, eventually.”

  Mrs Liddel rests her head on her hand for it feels heavy with the news inside. She is so stupefied by this news that she lets slip a sentence which sounds like a judgement:

  “You’re not married.”

  “Oh I’m married!” says Donalda glumly. “Married for three years, though I havenae signed anything. I wouldnae mind a real wedding with a white dress and organ and cake and confetti – it would be a day to remember but who would pay for it? The man’s back is broad. I wonder who he was talking about? There was nobody in the room but him and me.”

  “I think he was referring to himself,” says Mrs Liddel cautiously.

  “But MacFee’s back isnae broad – or no very.”

  “I think he meant he was able to carry burdens.”

  “So MacFee thinks me and Theresa are ... That’s not fair! I don’t like that! MacFee is a decent enough provider but it’s me who always finds us places to stay, especially nowadays when he’s in trouble Oh!”

  Donalda claps a hand over her mouth, removes it and says, “I shouldnae have said that.”

  After a long pause Mrs Liddel says faintly, “You’d better tell me about it.”

  “I will. MacFee would thump me if he knew but you are definitely not a clype – you’re a decent spud, like my Mammy. Anyway, MacFee is very good at stripping lead and copper and zinc and iron from old factories and houses that are going to be demolished – folk pay him to do that, and when work is short he never goes on the burroo. ‘If I registered with them I’d be done for,’ he says, so he sometimes takes stuff out of places whose owners arenae easy to contact and mibby don’t want it taken away. I’ll give you an example. Like, he sees this old tractor in the corner of a field he keeps passing – it’s been there for years so he goes there one night with his brother-in-law (no my brother – his sister’s husband’s brother) and they take it to bits and go off with it. But someone sees the number of the van, so there are enquiries. Personally, I think the brother-in-law shopped him, but never mind. Everywhere we stay for a while the police come sniffing around and we have to move on. I’ll hate having to leave this place. As soon as I saw you and your man in the lobby out there I felt safe. I havenae felt safe for years. But maybe they’ll no find him here, or not for a long time. Anyway, thanks for the tea and chat, it’s fairly cheered me up. Do you think the bath-water’s ready?”

  Mrs Liddel is so overwhelmed by this story that when her husband returns she cannot repeat a word of it and alarms him by sighing and shaking her head. She tells him when they are both safe in bed that night and then she falls asleep. He cannot sleep for he cannot now doubt that Britain is getting worse. He remembers the thirties and the prostitutes he saw when on the tramcars, especially nightshifts. Some were hard and aggressive, some gloomy and passive. None seemed happy with their work, but who ever is apart from removal men? For a while Mr Liddel ponders why men shifting furniture seem cheerier than other manual workers, with the possible exception of housepainters. He comes to no conclusion, but is sure that in the forties and fifties he saw very few prostitutes and hardly any brawls between poorly dressed youths. In those years the country was mobilized to fight Hitler or repair the damage of having done so. There was full employment, working-class leaders in the Labour Party, Tory leaders who had promised that Britain after the war would be better for everyone. But in the sixties unemployment climbed past the million mark again and has been growing with inflation ever since. Inflation, of course, has benefited those whose annual incomes increase without them having to strike: lawyers, doctors, most managements and directors, brokers, bankers, higher civil servants, the police, members of parliament, the monarchy: also electricians. For a while Mr Liddel ponders why the electrical workers are better off than miners, dockers, seamen, railwaymen, postmen. He sighs, recalling a time electrical workers are better off than miners, dockers, seamen, railwaymen, postmen. He sighs, recalling a time in the fifties when he was a loyal member of the local Labour Party. An election was approaching and the branch secretary suggested that if Mr Liddel put himself forward he might be chosen and elected. He did not put himself forward. A gas board official was elected who is now in the House of Lords. “Perhaps if I had stood I could have tipped the balance,” thinks Mr Liddel, and starts imagining the Britain he would have helped to create. It would have a decent minimum wage for everyone, a sensible maximum one too. Unemployment would be abolished by forbidding all overtime work and introducing the Australian system of giving a whole year of fully paid holidays to those who have worked for seven years. Such thoughts have almost soothed Mr Liddel to sleep when he is roused by a nearby clicking.

  Someone outside the bay window and very close to it is tapping discreetly on glass, the glass of the bedroom window. Mr Liddel remembers the new lodgers have no house key, so this is MacFee returning. The time is half-past one in the morning. Mr Liddel hears Donalda stealthily open the bedroom and front doors. They click shut again after what sounds like several people have crept softly through them, but he may be wrong about this. Mr Liddel knows that people who spy on others are likely to exaggerate what they hear. However, Britain is getting worse again. Mr Liddel fears he may see again before he dies the hateful things he took for granted in childhood: undernourished children in the streets; nurses with tins begging passers-by for money to keep their hospitals running; well-fed voices explaining that the poor have caused their own poverty by being too lazy, greedy or selfish to work longer hours for less pay; unemployed youngsters fighting, even killing, because of religious and who will not grow much richer or poorer through the mismanagement of the nation.

  Meanwhile, what should he do? He cannot enter a police station and say, “My wife tells me our lodger tells her that her lodger’s man sometimes steals sc
rap metal – a tractor, for example.” To knowingly shelter a criminal is a criminal act, but nobody should be suspected of crime on the basis of gossip and hearsay. And if the police did investigate and arrest MacFee what would happen to the mother and child he supports? The mother would probably lose her daughter or return to prostitution or both. A queer question strikes Mr Liddel: is the bedroom next door being used just now as a brothel? Yes, that seems possible, but he has no evidence, and he has always been sorry for people who snoop after such evidence. He has not forbidden his lodgers to invite guests to their room – a landlord who made such a rule would be a tyrant. All a good landlord should expect of his tenants is quiet and orderly conduct, especially at night, and his lodgers have been as quiet as possible, in the circumstances. Tomorrow he will give them a door-key.

  Having decided this a relaxation which is almost happiness pervades Mr Liddel. Cautiously he moves his large pyjamad body backwards until it touches Mrs Liddel without waking her. Instinctively she nestles close against him, placing an arm as light as a ribbon across his waist. They both sleep.

  THE BUM GARDEN

  HARRY is an odd but elegant girl, strikingly tall, thin, supple and strong. This comes from solitary acrobatics in the school gymnasium where she often hangs upside-down on the wallbars for many minutes. She normally walks on tiptoe with rapid little steps and knees close together, body and neck and head so erect that viewed from the hips upward she seems to stand still while the world slips past her. She has no conversation. Her few brief remarks are in a clear little voice which seems to arrive from a great distance. Any question which cannot be answered by yes or no she answers with a slow gloomy nod. She reads every book the tutors give her very fast, with the brooding concentration she brings to comic papers and film magazines. When asked to write essays on her reading she quickly covers many pages with lines which look like different lengths of knotted string. If told to write slowly so that her words can be read she takes half an hour to form a sentence, often stopping to consult a dictionary and ponder, so her occasional eccentric spelling reads like subversive criticism.

  PRIDE AND PREJUICE IS A STUPID BOOK UNLESS YOU LICK MR DANCY.

  All her readable sentences are a simple statement with one reservation, laboriously written in minute, widely-spaced capitals.

  MOBY DICK IS A GREAT BOOK UNLESS YOU LACK WHALES.

  HUCKLEBBERY FUN IS GREAT FUN UNLESS YOU LOCK CIVILIZED PUPIL.

  “I spy intellect hia. I hope it is conscious intellect,” says the headmistress. “I feel on the verge of knowing what she means.”

  In another child Harry’s mannerisms would be thought signs of a damaged mind, but they are fascinating in a cousin of a queen. Even older girls would gladly be her friend but she treats everyone with an equal aloofness they think truly regal.

  Harry is happiest when modelling clay. Her character has been shaped by two people: a mother who wanted a passive bit of female cleanness on which to exhibit some astonishingly expensive and fashionable little frocks, a nurse who worked to make her exactly that. She overcomes it all when she puts on denim overalls and grapples with a wad of cold, grey, tough but yielding muck. In her first year at school she likes the clay as wet as possible, splashing as she moulds until her surface is like the surface of the sloppy mound on the stand. One day in her second year she achieves a smooth dome, cuts a groove across it and works on each half, pinching it rough and stroking it smooth until the art tutor, delighted to see a distinct form, cries, “That is the best thing you’ve done! Let’s pop it in the kiln.”

  Two days later the work has been fired and cooled. Harry takes it to the play-loft, returns to the sculpture studio and starts again.

  “Are you making anotha of these?” asks the tutor. When modelling clay Harry’s voice sometimes loses its distant bell-like tone and sounds almost drowsy.

  “I am besotted by a dream of total privacy,” she murmurs. “You cannot imagine how much a paw woman sometimes craves fo absolute, uninterrupted privacy.”

  Later that day she asks the headmistress if she can do her modelling in the play loft. This is the first time she has asked anyone for anything since she asked Linda to smack her. The headmistress says, “Why not? I’m shoa Hjordis won’t mind.”

  Hjordis is no longer a hysterical dictator who thrives by rejecting people. She allows a modelling stand and bin of clay to be brought to the loft and placed near the space where the others play. Harry starts work at once. Hjordis watches her for a while then asks, “Is that a bum?”

  Harry pauses and looks at the cleft dome on the stand as if expecting it to reply for her.

  “It could be fatta,” says Hjordis, and goes to play with the others.

  Harry makes many cleft domes, eventually using cement fondu as that dries solid without needing to be fired. She also shapes energetic waves which bend into loops or twist together like snakes, but she always returns to the serenity of domes, partly because Hjordis also likes them. “I wish you would make me five really big ones,” says Hjordis, “Bums big enough to sit on. And a lot of small supporting bums, as many as you can.”

  “Material,” says Harry.

  “I’ll arrange that. And I’ll organize extra help too, if you want it.”

  Very few young artists are given such an opportunity. Harry is inspired. The five big ones she makes by herself, but shows the twins how to build up rough globes and slice them in two with a wire. With a trowel she swiftly gashes each hemisphere, and Harry smooths the surfaces of the result. Meanwhile Hjordis strides around a space cleared for the first British bum garden, sometimes stooping to mark the floor with chalk. The small domes are placed to mark the edges of a lane spiralling inward through nine revolutions and ending at a small arena protected by the five big ones.

  “And now I want a HUGE bum fo the very middle!” shouts Hjordis. “A bum as big as me!”

  “No,” says Harry, and refuses to be persuaded. Hjordis falls back on another idea.

  “Every Wednesday afta dinna the gang will come up hia, march to the middle with me in front, sit on a bum and talk about very rude things. I want you all to think very hard and come up with a very rude thing to talk about next Wednesday. Make it as sawdid as you can.”

  On Wednesday they march to the middle as arranged but find the central bums far too hard to sit upon. Only Hjordis insists on doing so. The rest squat on the floor and lean against theirs.

  “Right! Who starts?” demands Hjordis.

  Twin one, after nudging from twin two, says Ethel should be covered all over with her own poo-poo then made to lick it off.

  “Very good!” says Hjordis approvingly, “Yes, that’s a highly satisfactory rude idea. Next!”

  Twin two’s rude idea involves the assistant headmistress and is otherwise the same as twin one’s. Linda says suddenly, “Wouldn’t it be great if we all –” then goes white and can’t be persuaded to say another word. Nobody expects Harry to speak.

  “What a dull lot of wets you all a!” says Hjordis bitterly, “I have some wondaful dirty things I meant to tell you, all about Christine Keela and boy scouts and Lawd Mota Museum and the queen and Harold Wilson and President Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, but I won’t tell you a thing if that’s all I’m getting from you. Anyway, yaw too young to undastand me. You don’t know a thing about biology.”

  But the bum garden has social consequences. Older girls hear of it, make discreet enquiries, and are one at a time invited up to look. Near the door Hjordis introduces the visitor to her artist and workers, then escorts the guest round the lane to the bum centre. Both sit on cushions, nibble liqueur chocolates, smoke Turkish cigarettes and sip very strong black sweet coffee. These refreshments are served by Linda, who wears a turban and beaded Edwardian ball-gown pinned up round her to look oriental. When she withdraws Hjordis says, “I’m afraid Linda is a bit of an eye-soa.”

  “Don’t apologize!” says the New Statesman reader, “You’ve worked wondas. Last yia you wa an obnoxious little prat, Hjo
rdis, and now yaw an intelligent woman who can get things done. You a a woman, an’t you? Biologically, I mean.”

  Hjordis nods, willing herself not to blush.

  “Then you should start seeing less of these little gels and mingle moa with yaw own age group. You won’t find that easy at first. Yaw so filthy rich the othas can’t help envying you a bit, but I am a socialist,” says the guest, whose father is a Labour cabinet minister, “I loathe class prejudice in all its forms. You can no moa help being a millionaire than the pawest slum-child can help being a paw-pa. I am willing to be yaw friend.”

  If Hjordis could weep openly she would shed tears of relief, joy and gratitude. Instead she gulps and nods.

  Then takes her things from the loft and never returns. Linda and the twins find it an unglamorous place without her and go back to playing in the shrubbery where they can glimpse the exciting older girls. Surveying the solitude of the loft Harry’s slight sensation of abandonment is gradually replaced by a lovely feeling of power over space. She shifts all her favourite objects into the centre of the bum garden: the modelling stand, clay and cement bin, rocking horse, stuffed seagull and a bust of Garibaldi. To replace the gang she models fat, tadpole-like figures with features which resemble them. Linda’s head is mostly mouth. The twins are a single body with two heads. Hjordis is biggest, with distinct breasts and a sting in her tail. The headmistress enters, watches the progress of the work for a while then says, “Since Violet Stringham and the Sickert-Newtons left I have three vacant bedrooms wha the otha gels sleep, Harriet. Shall we go and see if tha is one you would like to occupy?”