Every Short Story by Alasdair Gray 1951-2012

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Every Short Story by Alasdair Gray 1951-2012 Page 47

by Gray, Alasdair


  “I’m not showing you this to prepare you for a cruel orgy,” Senga tells June, “We’ll have a wee bit of one, of course, but our headmistress is too good a teacher to rely mainly on punishment. Usually she relies on me. Turn round again Miss Cane please.”

  The woman faces them and again looks peculiar.

  “And now,” says Senga, folding her arms and looking like a schoolteacher too, “I must once again ask you, Miss Cane, if you want to take the new girl? Do you like the look of her? Please speak up because we all need to know.”

  The woman whispers yes she’s beautiful in a voice so soft and hoarse that June hardly hears it.

  “Then money must change hands,” says Senga firmly,

  “Among many useful items which I packed into your great big pockets, Miss Cane, is a pen and cheque book. Unbutton the pocket on your left leg and produce them.”For the first time the tall woman stares hard at June and seems unable to stop looking. Her hands, as if of their own accord, go to the pocket and take out what Senga ordered. Meanwhile June without conscious effort has risen to her feet. She stares back into the woman’s face because it fascinates her. June also tugs at the strap which ties her wrists behind her, it does not yield but this does not distress her. Her body moves without consulting her mind. She hardly notices that Donalda and Senga now stand on each side of her.

  “Write down the seventeenth of October nineteen eighty-nine,” says Senga, “And Hideout Leathercraft and your name. I will then mention an exact sum of money. Have you written all that? Are you ready? Three thousand pounds.”

  The woman stares from June to Senga and whispers you’re joking.

  “Oh no,” says Senga firmly, “You are buying the best weekend of your life and don’t pretend you can’t afford it. If you sell your holiday home in Greece you can buy a hundred weekends like this. But I’ll give you thirty minutes to think about it, thirty minutes to see what you’ll get for the price. I need a clock … is this the bedroom?” Senga bustles towards the other room in June’s flat and suddenly June awakens from something.

  Suddenly June decides this is not a fascinating dream but an embarrassing and silly situation.

  “Listen!” she cries, “I’m tired of this! The three of you are posturing all over my room as if I’m nothing but a … a … an audience and I don’t like it. Untie my hands and clear out. At once. Now!”

  “Hold her,” says Senga firmly, fumbling in the pocket of her skirt. Donalda steps behind and puts an arm round June’s waist, a hand over her mouth. The hand stays there by pinching June’s nose between forefinger and thumb while June wrenches her head and tries stamping on Donalda’s feet but plump wee Donalda is tough and heavy and inexorable. She does not move.

  “Mouth,” says Senga. June finds her mouth uncovered and draws a breath to scream but something hard enters, crushing her tongue. Across cheeks, ears and nape of neck she feels a strap tighten which no amount of head-wrenching shifts, though her hair is shaken over her face. It blinds her.

  “Sit,” says Senga. June is dragged backward and down till she sits on Donalda’s lap, tied tight to Donalda’s body by an arm round her waist and neck. June can do nothing but kick her legs about. Senga steps between them, parts the hair over June’s face and says kindly, “The gag you are tasting will turn all your yells to moans and mumbles, but when you get used to it you will be able to say please and thank you.”

  She kisses June’s brow then walks to the bedroom, goes in and reappears with a small stool and says, “I need some more nice things from your pockets, Miss Cane.”

  Senga steps up onto the stool and the bald woman hands her a bradawl, a gimlet with a long thick shank, a ring screw of the sort children’s swings are hung from, then a pair of handcuffs. Senga bores an efficient hole in the underside of the lintel, screws the ring into it using the gimlet as a lever, and locks one of the handcuffs into the ring. As these preparations start making sense to June she grunts and kicks more wildly and uselessly than ever.

  “Lift her,” says Senga.

  The lean woman embraces June’s legs around the knees, Donalda stands and they carry her to the doorway.

  “Higher!” says Senga. June is hoisted to shoulder-height with her face to the floor and stops struggling for fear of being dropped.

  “Sensible!” says Senga, doing something to June’s arms which frees them.

  Senga grips a wrist, drags it up, clips the steel cuff round it. Then Senga steps off the stool and says “Stand.”

  June’s feet are dropped onto the stool and she totters there trying not to fall off, flinging her free arm about to keep balance while the other arm wags above her head with the cold steel round the wrist.

  “Steady!” says Senga from behind, putting her hands on June’s hips on each side under the waist. This steadies her.

  Not blinded by her hair now but by tears of rage and frustration, June only sees that she faces into her bedroom when Donalda, with a tissue, delicately dries her eyes and cheeks and says softly, “You’ve nothing to worry about – I wish I was you. Being a new girl is the best fun of all and you’ll feel great afterward – a new woman!”

  June’s free hand hits the side of Donalda’s face with a sharp crack like a gunshot. Donalda jumps back, her face whitening with shock. She fingers her right cheek on which a bright blush shaped like a palm with five dim fingers starts to develop.

  “That hurt!” she complains sadly, “And I was only trying to be nice.”

  The lean lady chuckles, goes to Donalda, embraces her, smiles down at her mournful face then abruptly kisses her mouth. It is a long kiss. When Donalda is released she looks cheerful again and smirks at June as if saying: somebody likes me even if you don’t. Senga, chuckling also, has grabbed June’s free forearm and twisted it behind her back, hard enough to easily hold it there but not hard enough to hurt.

  “Oo you wildcat!” coos Senga admiringly, “Oo you spitfire! Does she look wild and glaring and insulted and beautiful, Miss Cane? I can’t see from here.”

  The lean woman sits down on the edge of June’s bed with her knees wide apart and hands gripping them. She gazes at June’s face, smiling and nodding.

  “Good!” says Senga, “But our heroine has studied a photograph from my wicked album hard enough to know that she must stand a lot straighter than this and wear her highest heels. Look in the wardrobe, Donalda, and get me some of those magazines in case the heels aren’t high enough.”

  June chokes with little sobs of fury while Donalda rummages eagerly in her wardrobe until she finds a pair of black open-toed shoes with four-inch stiletto heels and a slingback fastening. She then collects five or six Vogue magazines from a pile on the bedside table. June is whimpering now. Senga kneels behind her, embraces June’s legs, lifts her off the stool and knees it aside. June clutches with free hand the cuff round her wrist, clings tight to stop herself swinging by one arm. Donalda kneels humbly before her and fits and fastens each foot into its shoe, then Senga lets her legs go. For a sore second both of June’s arms are stretched by the weight of her whole body, then her downward-yearning toes touch the pile of magazines slid under them, her heels touch it too, her weight is shared equally by every stretched muscle between her fingers and toes. Senga tests this tautness by rippling her fingers over her hips and bum, lightly caressing June’s waist, stomach, breasts; lightly stroking her spine, shoulderblades, arms. Senga is breathing hard from recent efforts and another excitement. When June tries to spit at her she smiles and murmurs, “You wanted this, oh you wanted it!”

  Beads of sweat now glisten on the naked parts of June’s body. With a small moan Senga embraces her and explores her left armpit with nose, lips, tongue.

  stop says the woman on the bed.

  “I will not!” cries Senga turning fiercely to that woman, “She belongs to Donalda and me, you havenae bought her yet! Thanks for reminding me.”

  Senga goes to the bedside table, lifts the clock from it, changes the alarm switch and puts it on the
mantelpiece where June can see the dial. “It will ring in thirty minutes,” she tells June, “Then we’ll give you a rest.”

  “You’re being unkind,” Donalda tells Senga, “Half an hour is a long time to stand like that.”

  “You stood like that for forty minutes,” says Senga.

  “Yes but I’m tough. I’ve had a hard life. She hasnae.”

  “She needs the exercise and I need a drink,” says Senga, sitting down beside the bald woman.

  “I poured drinks for us before I asked you up,” says Donalda, “But of course nobody notices what I do.”

  “What was it?”

  “Sherry. Her sherry. Harvey’s Bristol Cream.”

  “Ugh,” says Senga and the bald woman says bubbly.

  “You heard her,” Senga tells Donalda, “Bring the bags in.”

  “We may have a new girl now but I still seem to be the skivvy around here,” grumbles Donalda, and squeezes sideways past June into the other room muttering, “Excuse me.”

  i’m signing that cheque says the lean woman, doing so.

  “I won’t take it till the alarm goes off,” says Senga, staring at June. Senga’s expression is not gloating or triumphant, she has the lost look of a child watching something wonderful which she is too poor to possess. Suffering makes most folk uglier but though June’s face and breasts are glazed with a mingling of tears and sweat her distress makes her more beautiful than ever. She moves her head slowly from side to side, trying not to think, not to feel the strain in every part of her body. It is not a very great pain – she would faint if it was. It seems bad because it is continual, she cannot escape it, it is bound to grow greater. The clockface tells her that one and three-quarter minutes have passed, that she must stay for twenty-eight minutes twenty-five seconds. She knows that willing a clock to go faster is the worst way to pass the time, but cannot stop straining to see movement in the hour and minute hands while seeing nothing but torture in the slowly sweeping second hand. She tries to blind herself by shaking her hair over her face but her position prevents that. With the free hand she rakes some hair over her face but the steel ring bites so deep into the other hand that it is a relief to cling to it again and stand exactly as she was before with only one eye partly covered. She hears Senga say wistfully, “Wildcat has lovely hair.”

  yes

  “Longer and thicker than Dona’s.”

  yes

  “Are you jealous of it, Miss Cane?”

  very

  “Excuse me again,” says Donalda, squeezing sideways past June and carrying a bag in each hand.

  From one bag a bottle of good champagne is produced, also a small leather case of crystal goblets with stems.

  “Only the best for Miss Cane,” says Senga, releasing the cork and pouring.

  her health murmurs the bald woman, raising her glass.

  “Here’s to Wildcat,” says Senga and drinks.

  “That’s you!” Donalda tells June.

  As the trio stand sipping and contemplating her it strikes June again that they are the performers, she the audience of this show and she starts feeling a dazed acceptance of her position. This vanishes when Senga puts down her glass, removes a smart camera from a bag and says, “Will you take a few for the album, Miss Cane?”As the lean woman squats low and flashes the dazzling box at June, prowls closer and does it again, slips past the side of her and flashes her from behind, returns and directs Senga and Donalda to pose on each side of her, gets Senga to embrace June and kiss her armpit again, then finally flashes four dazzling closeups of her face, June twists her head and body about with many little choking outcries. Every bit of her body and soul hates, fights against being taken, caught, kept in prints which many others may see and enjoy. Shock and exhaustion at last leave her hanging in a daze of pain she accepts. Dimly and without protest she sees the lean woman recline full-length on her bed, sipping from a crystal glass and glancing from June to Donalda and Senga and back. Donalda and Senga are emptying June’s wardrobe of all her clothes, holding them up, trying them on, whirling about in them with little squeals of excitement.

  “Wildcat knows what to wear – she really understands glamour – she doesnae give a damn for ordinary fashions!” cries Donalda wrapping a silver sari round herself, “I’m too wee for this, you should wear it, Miss Cane.”

  The bald lady smiles.

  “Notice something?” asks Senga, holding a scarlet flamenco dress to her body, “No trousers! No jeans, tight or baggy; no shorts, slacks, harem pants, not even a divided skirt. She definitely hates trousers. She’ll look gorgeous in them.”

  “Yes, you’ve brought her the right present,” says Donalda. Senga says, “Tidying up time.”

  She and Donalda pack June’s dresses, suits, skirts, jackets, coats, hats and shoes into black plastic sacks taken from one of the bags. They then empty all the drawers in the room onto the floor and pack the contents into more sacks: underwear, letters, photographs, jewellery and everything except the cosmetic articles. These are piled on the dressing-table. For a moment Senga pauses with a pair of dolls in her hands which June has never discarded, a teddy bear and a cloth Dutch girl so dilapidated that only a very poor child would play with them now. Before stuffing them into a sack Senga looks thoughtfully from one to another then tells June, “If you and I get to be pals – real pals – I might give you them back one day.”

  June nearly laughs aloud but aborts the laugh in a gasp and headshake. Laughter would destroy the stupor, the exact balance of pain and acceptance she now clings to as tightly as her free hand clings to the handcuff.

  Donalda and Senga tie the mouths of the sacks with tape and pile them against the wall. The clock starts twittering. Senga silences it with the press of a fingertip and says, “All right Miss Cane. Give me that cheque.”

  She is given the cheque, reads it and pockets it. She says submissively, “Thank you very much Miss Cane. Can we give her a rest now?”

  no says the lean lady, laying down her glass and standing up. She faces June and smiles slightly, then draws the thin cane from her hip-pocket, flexes it then suddenly slices the air with it in a swish which is almost a tweet. June starts wakening from her stupor. Senga takes another set of handcuffs from her skirt pocket, steps up onto the stool, cuffs Jane’s free wrist to the ring also then steps down saying, “More comfortable?”

  It is more comfortable. June’s fingers are freed from the strain of clinging and the strain in her arms is now equal, though she stands rigid with dread.

  “I don’t like this,” says Donalda loudly. She sits on the bed with her back to the others, “I don’t think she needs it.” “She needs it,” says Senga soberly, “Go to the bathroom and run the water. Don’t make it too hot – test it with your elbow – and remember the salts.”

  Donalda gets up and takes a jar of coloured crystals from one of the bags. She does not look at June but mutters “Sorry” while slipping past her. The bald woman, with a beseeching look, puts her free arm round June’s neck and tries to kiss her mouth, but despite her dread June twists her head from side to side and prevents this. tell her the lean woman whispers sadly to Senga, then slips past June to stand behind her. June is confronted now by Senga standing with legs wide apart and arms folded, looking angry.

  “Our headmistress wants you to know,” says Senga in a hard sarcastic voice, “That she is about to make you feel that her and you are the only two in the universe – the only ones alive. But before she makes you feel that, and after she makes you feel that, remember that no matter how much she hurts and loves you – no matter how much you get hurt and love her back – you are wearing the skirt you ordered from me, so she can’t draw blood and you can’t faint. Start when you like Miss Cane.”

  The pain which follows is so astonishing that June does not try to scream but jerks her body at each hard regular stroke with a small indrawn cry of “ah”. After the second stroke she feels nothing exists but her body and Miss Cane. After the twentieth she feels
only the strokes exist, nothing else, not even her body, and when only the strokes exist each one evokes, as a kind of echo, a sensation of luxury. The luxury grows until she chokes with laughter and is about to faint. Someone shouts “Stop!”

  7 WAKENING

  A mug of liquid black warmness is held to her lips by a motherly stranger who has raised her head by an arm behind her shoulders. The liquid smells of coffee and something peculiar, tastes sweet; she always hated sugar but drinks eagerly. Another full mug is offered. She takes it in her hands and drinks more slowly, feeling she has wakened into another dream. She can see nothing familiar. The pair of legs stretched along the bed before her move when she moves them but cannot be hers as she never wears pants. The room is like a display bedroom of a sort seen in big furniture shops. It holds no objects of personal use or ornament except a clutter of things not hers on a dressing table. In a corner is a sinister heap of fat black plastic sacks. There are three strangers. One beside her on the bed supports her shoulders. One sits sideways on the bed-foot looking glum. These are big-bummed, big-breasted little women with hectically messy hair, naked but for black aprons which June eventually sees are short leather skirts fastened carelessly at the waistband. The third stranger stands on tiptoe in the open doorway with arms stretching straight up. Seen from behind the figure is that of an amazingly thin tall bald beautiful gymnast with hips perhaps a little too broad to be male. But what makes this room unlike all others past or possible is the strong tones, clear colours, distinct edges of everything, everyone in it; also an ache of sexual longing. June feels this ache like the solid presence of a fifth person who knows them all intimately, has brought them all together, who stands invisible among them but cannot be handled.

 

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