Every Short Story by Alasdair Gray 1951-2012

by Gray, Alasdair

  “You see Glasgow is in Scotland and from oua point of view Scotland is slightly like Rhodesia in the early yias of the century. Most British industry and money is in the south of England now, so it’s crowded! But we English detest crowds. At heart each of us wants to be a country squia, with wide-open spaces nia oua house and grounds, and if possible a village atmosphia wha we can relax with a few like-minded friends. But a place like that costs a fawtune in England and the neara London you go the moa astronomical the fawtune gets. All the nice English villages have been bought. But by selling quite a small propaty in London you can get enough to buy –”

  “Yes yes yes!” says the dealer impatiently, “I know about propaty development in the north, I own a small tax-avoidance forest near Invaness, but wha does the cultcha come from?”

  “From the Thatcha govament,” says Linda promptly, “and from Glasgow District Council. Glasgow once had the strongest local govament tha was, outside London. It owned a huge public transport system, housing schemes, docklands and lots of otha things Thatcha is allowing it to sell. Like local govaments everywha it is being steadily abolished, but since the people’s elected representatives usually draw salaries until they die and get all sawts of perks they don’t complain. Maybe they don’t notice! Howeva, they want to show they can do moa than just sell public propaty to private speculatas, so they have gone in fo Cultcha with a capital C – and tourism. Commercially speaking cultcha and tourism a the same thing.

  “The European Cultcha Capital notion was started by Melina Mercouri, the Greek minista fo aats. Athens had been stone-cleaned, she wanted tourists to know it, she suggested to Brussels that Athens be the first cultcha capital, then otha countries could have a shot. Nobody objected. Italy chose Florence; the Nethalands, Amstadam; Germany, Berlin; France predictably chose Paris. But being Cultcha Capital is expensive. You must advatise yawself. Put on extra shows and consats. Invite foreign guests. Stage boring receptions. Margaret Thatcha isn’t keen on all that crap; anyway London has enough of it. Like a sensible monetarist she put the job up fo grabs and offad it to the lowest bidda. Bath and Edinburgh put in fo it, Cardiff, Birmingham and Glasgow: but only Glasgow gave a quiet little promise that if it got the job it would not ask the central govament fo cash. So Glasgow, which the Lay-ba Party has ruled fo ova half a century, was given the job by the Tory arts minista who announced that Glasgow had set an example of independent action which should be followed by every local authority in the United Kingdom. Wia funding the entaprize out of the rates and public propaty sales and sponsaship from banks, oil companies, building societies and whateva we can screw out of Europe.

  “And Glasgow deserves the job! It’s the headquartas of Scottish Opera, Scottish Ballet, Scottish National Orchestra, the Burrell Collection, the Citizen’s Theata, the Third Eye Centa and an intanational drama festival: all of them directed and mostly administaed by the English, of course. Sometimes the natives get a bit bolshie about that but I’m very firm with them. I say very quietly, ‘Listen! You Scots have been expoating yaw own people to England and everywha else fo centuries, and nobody has complained much about you! Why start howling just because wia giving you a taste of yaw own medicine?’ They can’t think of an ansa to that one.”

  “But shooali the natives have some local cultcha of tha own?” says the dealer, “What about these young paintas who’ve emerged? Campbell and Currie etcetera.”

  “The ones who did well in New Yawk? Yes, we’ll put them on a show.”

  “Has Glasgow nothing else apart from Billy Connolly?” “Some novels by Glasgow writas have had rave reviews in the Times Lit. Sup., but I’m afraid they leave me cold. Half seem to be written in phonetic Scotch about people with names like Auld Shug. Every second word seems to be fuck, though hardly any fucking happens. The otha half have complicated plots like SM obstacle races in which I entie-aly lose my way and give up. As a matta of fact, Harry, I have one of these books hia to give to you! Some of it reminded me of games we once played with Hjordis.” “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

  Harry, though scrupulously clean when not working, still finds dirt interesting. She stopped listening when she heard Glasgow is now a clean place; she retired mentally into the old play-loft, making occasional trips to the shrubbery. The name of Hjordis restores her wholly to the present. Linda repeats her last sentence and hands Harry a book entitled Another Part of the Forest. Harry stares longer at the cover design than Linda and dealer think it deserves. It shows what first seems a moonlit tropical jungle where eyes glow in the dark between vast blue-green leaves. Then Harry sees the leaves are not tropical but are hawthorn and elder and bramble leaves painted big. Deep among these leaves Harry hears her dealer ask if she wants her next retrospective to open in Glasgow?

  She looks up and says, “No I’m done with retrospectives. Apart from the bum garden everything I’ve eva made has been shit – a waste of time – a silly game I played with myself. I don’t know why others liked it, apart from you. You live by selling that sort of shit.”

  She is looking at her dealer and her clear distant voice suggests neither blame nor regret. Aghast Linda is going to shout “But!” so the dealer says “Sh!”

  Harry seldom talks at length and if interrupted stays silent for days. Harry says, “The bum garden was good because someone else wanted it. It was wanted by the only person who eva wanted me, too, once.”

  Tears stream from Harry’s eyes though her face and voice stay calm and unmoved. Linda weeps in sympathy.

  “But technically the old bum garden is kids’ stuff. I will make it betta and bigga in polished steel and white glazed ceramic spreading through several spaces – large ones. How spacious is yaw Sauchiehall Street venue Linda?”

  “Huge. Hia’s a plan of it. This immense gallery opens into three equally big ones. We have two awdinri big galleries and two small ones in the cornas. Hia is the vestibule: a landing approached by the magnificent double staircase. Skylighting throughout in ceilings ova twenty feet high.” “It’ll do. I’ll put the shrubbery into the cornas. I’ve just seen how to tackle the leaves. Enamelled tin. The big middle gallery will be shrubbery too with birds everywha, birds of glass and polished wood among leaves, birds pecking broken ceramic cake from the green matting floa. Little gels stand in odd places nobody sees at first, little terracotta gels wearing real frocks of the period. One of them in overalls sits high up on a leafy trapeze. The olda gels will be glazed ceramic, the clothes ceramic too, all bright white except fo some culla whea they feel proud of it, red on lips, pink on cheeks, polka dots on a dress, candy stripes on a blouse. Anotha breed from us, the olda gels. We squawk, they murma and coo. I will record and play these sounds along with birdsong and the song from The Fortress, I met an old woman no I met a young woman who gave me a rainbow. But the huge dark bum-shaped Fortress is the middle of everything. Barbed wya brambles stop the adults getting nia but the light and music leak from chinks in the black walls made of tarry black wooden railway sleepas and tarpaulin, how they flamed when Ethel drenched them in paraffin and applied that match. What happened to Limpy Dan the hampsta Linda? Did you see him inside The Fortress?”

  “Thigh neva let me in!” sobs Linda, “I was nuffin but a applicant – allwise allwise allwise!”

  “I feel excluded from something,” says the dealer brightly, “Would you two ladies tell me what it is?”

  They explain. He becomes furiously thoughtful. Nostalgia and grotesque infantilism are booming in many places, but especially Britain. From Christmas pantomimes and revivals of Peter Pan he has seen it expand through books, films, computer games, fashion design, interior decoration and architecture. Harry’s work has so far been no more infantile than most contemporary work, but more noticed because of the surprising range of materials she uses, and because of her royal relations. These royals have no interest in her, have never said a word to promote her career, but important members of some purchasing committees do not know this, and one who wants a knighthood has boos
ted the sales-price of Harry’s work to a height which knowing heads of the London art market think cannot last. Harry’s dealer is one of these heads. He sees that if Harry now makes a lavish indoor sculpture park representing her eerily horrid schooldays (and with right help Harry can make anything) then Harry’s work will be profitably sold by the London art market to the end of the century. So much can be said about it! – this tragically feminist remake of Pooh Corner, Never Never Land, the Secret Garden; this shrine to a dead millionairess who was loved by Marc Bolan, Jimi Hendrix and Sid Vicious, if only for a few minutes. Get the show an explanatory catalogue written by a brainier than usual popular writer (William Golding too old and grand perhaps but try him and Muriel Spark Iris Murdoch Fay Weldon Germaine Greer George Melly Angela Carter David Lodge or whoever wrote The History Man Adam Mars-Jones or whoever wrote The Cement Garden Roald Dahl Martin Amis Tom Stoppard? Harold Pinter? Whoever springs to mind seems suitable) it could be a small bestseller, a cult book if televised why not a feature film? Bill Forsyth directing? But first, the exhibition.

  Dealer’s flattened hand whacks arm of chair. “Funding!” he announces. “Funding! Harry I’m glad yaw think all yaw previous work is shit. Yaw wrong, but it means yaw going to astonish us with wildly exciting new things. But rooms full of steel, ceramic, polished wood etcetera need heavy funding. So do assistants. We need at least six: three high-tech boys and three gophas.5 Linda! Let’s see if you and I can crack the sponsaship problem from the Scottish end. Has Scotland a steel industry?” “Yes, the remains of one. It limps from crisis to crisis, begging money from the govament and getting smalla all the time. It might welcome a bit of publicity.”

  Money talk bores Harry. She open Another Part of the Forest at random and enters a room where a white American woman is questioning a young black American woman sent by an agency that supplies rich folk with domestic servants. Harry, reading, begins to tingle. The questioning shows the older woman is selfish, bossy, cares for nothing but the comfort and appearance of her body, spends most of her life having it pampered and groomed for frivolous social appointments. She is fascinated by her potential servant and seeks to hide this under condescending insolence. The young black woman’s answers show she is intelligent, can provide the sort of body care the other wants, but is not at all servile. She too is insolent, but her insolence is put in words which could be interpreted as compliance, and this is partly what fascinates her potential employer. All has been discussed, when suddenly, after a long silence, the white woman says in a low rapid voice, “Can you take shit?”

  “What does that mean?”

  The white woman licks her upper lip, sucks her lower one then says, “Well. I’ll tell you this. My momma once married a man who was a real gentleman, the finest gent you ever did see. She truly loved him, and so did I, except when he came home drunk and said things so filthy you couldn’t believe. But we put up with it. Had to. He left after a while. I never knew my real daddy so this guy was … influential, I guess. And when I get low, which feels like half the month, I’ve a mouth like Satan’s ass-hole. This shitty language pours out of me over anybody near, especially if they’re – you know – subordinate. That’s why I lost two husbands and why my maids keep checking out. So?”

  The two women watch each other then the black woman says, “What kinda shit do you give? I need a sample.”

  “Well like … nigger bitch?”

  “Oh that! I heard that one before. I slapped the face of the last white bitch who called me that.”

  “But she wasn’t paying you twice what you earn in a high class hair salon.”

  The black woman lights a cigarette, inhales and after a while says, “For shit like that I want four times what they pay me in the salon.”

  “You mean it?” asks the white woman, staring.

  “Yeah. I mean it.”

  “O.K.”

  “You mean it?” asks the black woman, staring. The white woman lights a cigarette, inhales and says “Yeah.”

  “You’re rich!”

  “Rich but no fool! I get value for money. I’ll be mean as hell if I’m paying you that much.”

  “Just words?”

  “What else could it be?” asks the white woman, smiling,

  “Tell me! I’m truly interested.”

  “It could be nothing but words,” says the black woman firmly.

  “Alright, that’s the deal. Start tomorrow.”

  “The hair salon needs a week’s notice – I promised that.”

  “For my money you start tomorrow.”

  After a pause the black woman says, “Give me my first pay cheque here and now – a month’s pay in advance. I’ll start when my bank clears it.”

  “Why you – !” cries the white woman and chokes back a word. Her face whitens but she calms herself and says,

  “What guarantee have I you won’t walk out of here and not come back?”

  “None at all, but you’re rich enough to risk it. And would I lose the chance of another cheque like that just because you shit through your mouth?”

  “I don’t think you will!” says the white woman quietly after a pause. “But I’m sure you won’t mind signing a receipt just to put my mind at rest.”

  She writes a cheque and a receipt, signs the first as the black woman signs the second, then the bits of paper are exchanged. As the white woman hands over the cheque she says, “Take it! Nigger bitch.”

  “Why thank you Ma’am!” says the black woman with a sarcastic drawl, grinning triumphantly at the white woman who grins triumphantly back. End of chapter.

  End of chapter, so Harry turns a page and encounters two wholly different women talking in a completely different land and century. Harry hunts forward and backward through the book but the two who made her tingle appear nowhere else. Each chapter contains a dialogue between women trying to trap each other but seem otherwise self-contained, with no male characters, no plot, no climaxes: nothing but furtive movements toward something sexy and sinister which never happens. Is this supposed to be funny? thinks Harry, exasperated.

  “Stop filleting that book, Harry!” says her dealer. “We want to ask you something. You know how we got you that place in San Francisco so you could work and sell in America without a lot of dreary hassle over customs and impoat licences. Well there are equally good financial reasons fo you working in Glasgow while preparing the exhibition thea. I won’t boa you with the details – they involve development grants, youth opportunity schemes, local govament politics and publicity of the dreariest kind. They also involve screwing a lot of money out of Scotland and some out of Europe. Linda says we can rent studio space beside a decent apartment wha the Hopcrafts can live and look afta you.”

  “Right in the heart of Glasgow!” cries Linda, “Not five minutes’ walk from my office. I’ll love being yaw Scottish business manayja! I’ll help you higha and figha all the local assistance you need. I’ll handle yaw publicity, and show you around. I’ll even introduce you to the native chiefs, which is not essential, but ratha fun.”

  Harry hates restaurants, cannot face parties of more than four people, so on her first evening in Glasgow Linda takes her to dine at the home of a native chief. He is a former Lord Provost who now runs his own housing association consultancy and Harry is enchanted by him, listens open-mouthed to every word he says, brings to his occasional silences a hungrily expectant attention that compels him to say much more. Linda and the man’s wife are astonished. He is three inches shorter than Harry, has the appearance, manners and conversation of many other British businessmen, and a voice with the tones and accents of Harry’s long-lost, best-beloved nursemaid. It fills her with warm feelings of perfect safety and helpless anticipation. If he told her to climb on to the dining table and undress she would unthinkingly obey. He notices his effect on her and thinks it natural. When Linda and his wife leave the room for a moment he suggests a meeting two days later in a private lounge of the Central Station hotel. Harry nods and would faithful
ly keep that appointment but next day something happens which makes her forget him forever.

  Harry spends the night where she will live for at least another year, in a block of converted offices and warehouses filling the north-west angle of Glasgow Cross. Next morning Linda calls to escort her to her new studio in a converted warehouse on the other side of the High Street. While waiting for the traffic lights to signal a crossing they are passed by many clusters of people talking with the tones and accents of Harry’s long lost nursemaid.

  “I’m afraid this always happens at weekends,” says Linda apologetically, “Crowds of people from the housing schemes – employed ones who can afford to take a bus – use Argyle Street as a shopping senta. Also the barrows.”

  “Barrows?”

  “A district nia hia full of little stalls, the sort you see in street markets all ova London. Glasgow has most of them in one place … Do you want to wanda a bit?” asks Linda, seeing that Harry inclines to go with the crowd.

  “Please.”

  They wander along the Gallowgate, through barrowland and across a corner of Glasgow Green. In London and San Francisco Harry knows very few places, and travels through the connecting streets in a car driven by one of the Hopcrafts. She has never before wandered through crowds where shabby and smart folk mix. Turning west along Clydeside they pass the old court house and are about to go under a castellated Victorian railway bridge when Harry stops at the entrance to a narrow but busy lane.

  “Don’t go in tha,” says Linda, “It’s too squalid.”

  “Dangerous?”

  “Oh no! It’s just a miserably poa market – a losers’ market. You won’t find bargains in it. Do come away.”