Every Short Story by Alasdair Gray 1951-2012

by Gray, Alasdair

house, clothing, story, music & tasty stew.

  “Though lacking the gaiety Yeats thinks essential this is a highly successful Marxist version of his poem Lapis Lazuli,” I cried, laughing.

  “Never read it.”

  “Never mind. Perhaps you strain the last two lines by squashing into them every kind of animal and human maker you can think of, but it’s still a good piece of seriocomic light verse. But the other poems resemble the efforts of a runner jogging up and down at the starting line before the pistol is fired.”

  “Another simile,” said Aiblins brightly.

  “What are you reading these days?”

  “Henryson’s Fables.”

  “You enjoy that stuff?” said Aiblins, incredulously.

  “Yes. When I concentrate I find it astonishingly good. I’m concentrating just now because I’m reviewing a new edition of them for Cencrastus.”

  “Hallelujah! Keep concentrating. I’m sticking to Shakespeare. Have you read The Two Gentlemen of Verona?”

  “No. I’ve never even seen it acted.”

  “You should. It’s great. Some idiots think he wrote very little of it but—”

  For fifteen or twenty minutes Aiblins talked about The Two Gentlemen of Verona until I had no desire to read or see that play, then he looked at what seemed a new expensive wristwatch, apologised for having to leave now, lifted the folder, went to the door and paused to say, “Mark Twain.”

  “Yes?”

  “Have you read his American Claimant?”

  “No.”

  “You should. And don’t blame yourself too much for the things you’ve just said. A couple of them made sense. Think on! I’ll contact you when I need you. Cheerio.”

  I was left feeling horribly confused. Was he a genius? Was I an idiot? His damned Proem kept repeating in my head when I would have preferred to remember McDiarmid’s The Watergaw or Hardy’s After a Journey or even Lear’s Dong With the Luminous Nose. Did that mean it was better than these? Impossible. But why could I not forget it? He had said he would contact me. A few weeks after seeing him I approached his sociology lecturer. She was chatting with colleagues in the staff club.

  “Pardon me,” I said, “Can you tell me how Luke Aiblins—” “I can tell you nothing about Luke Aiblins except that he is mad, stupid, nasty and has, thank God, left this place for good.” She turned her back to me.

  The college changed its creative writing teacher every two years, perhaps to avoid paying a pension contribution due to regular teachers. I found similar jobs elsewhere, then had a book of poems published, then another. With an American friend I visited Edinburgh Castle and saw that an attendant in one of the regimental museums was Ian Gentle. I asked if the job bored him. He shrugged and said, “Not more than teaching, or punching railway tickets, or nursing in a mental hospital, or canning peas, which I have also tried. It’s like reincarnation. You don’t need to die to become somebody else. Have you read Schopenhauer’s The World As Will and Idea?”

  I had not and asked if he ever saw Aiblins.

  “Poor Luke,” said Gentle, “I’d rather not say anything about poor Luke.”

  I left the castle with a weird feeling that Aiblins would soon appear again.

  Yet was unprepared when the phone rang and a voice said, “Luke Aiblins contacting you as arranged. Remember?”

  “I remember you but remember no arrangement. It’s years since you said you’d contact me.”

  “I’m doing it. I have a job for you. You’re at home?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  He hung up on me and arrived in four.

  He was no longer beautiful because his nose was thickened and flattened except at the tip, which bent sideways. He was also haggard, with long bedraggled hair, and wore a shabby duffel coat and carried a duffel bag, articles I had not seen since my own student days. His manner was still eager but more tense. I asked if he would like tea or coffee.

  “No thanks,” he said, settling into an armchair with the bag between his legs. “Let’s get down to business. You are at last able to help me because you are the king.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Poet Laureate of Dundee!” he said, grinning.

  “I was born there.”

  “Honorary Doctorate from Saint Andrews University!” he said, chuckling.

  “I was a student there.”

  “Winner!” he said, almost inarticulate with laughter, “Winner of the Saltire Award and a colossal Arts Council bursary for Antique Nebula! Antique Nebula!! Antique Nebula!!!”

  “Have you read it?”

  “Enough of it to see that it’s crap, rubbish, pretentious drivel, an astonishing victory of sound over sense. You won’t mind me saying that because you’re intelligent so must know it’s crap. I bet you often have a quiet wee laugh to yourself about how you’ve fooled the critics. Ours is a comic opera wee country with several comic opera imitations of English establishments. They’re even thinking of giving us our own comic opera parliament! Our old literary crazy gang, MacDiarmid, Goodsir, Garioch, Crichton Smith et cetera were also crap but they’ve died or are dying and leaving your clique on top. You are now the boss and godfather of Scotland’s literary mafia and at last in a position to help a real poet.”

  From the duffel bag he removed and handed me a thin, grubby folder with a tartan cover. I looked into it then told him, “These are the poems your teacher typed twelve years ago.”

  “Of course. You said you liked them, so prove it. Get one of your posh London publisher pals to print them. Tell them you’ll write an introduction. Of course you won’t know what to say so I’ll write the introduction. It will appear under your name so you’ll get the credit of introducing a great seminal book that won’t give you any bother at all.” “Mr Aiblins,” I said, “since you invoke the past let me remind you that I praised these poems for heralding much better work. Where is it?”

  “Have you learned nothing in the past twelve years?” he groaned, then with an air of immense patience said, “The voice in my head says there is no point in dictating more poems to me before the first lot are in print, so to get the later poetry we both want, you must first get these published. Send them to Faber or Bloodaxe with a strong letter of recommendation by registered post tomorrow. Phone regularly at weekly intervals and pester them till they’ve read it and offered a decent advance against royalties and a definite publication date. And remember to photocopy them before posting because then you can send single poems—”

  I said, “Listen—”

  “No! Last time we met I did the listening, now it’s my turn to lay down the law. In the weeks before publication prepare for it by getting single poems published in Stand, Areté, The London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, Chapman and Cencrastus beside good reviews of the book itself by well-known poets rather than academics. I suggest for England, Ted Hughes and Craig Raine; for Ireland, Heaney and Paulin; for Scotland, Lochhead and Duffy; for former colonies, Les Murray, Walcott, Ben Okri and Atwood. We have only one problem. My wife won’t let me into our house, the people I’m staying with are trying to push me out, so for a while I’ll have no contact address. Fear not, I do not plan to camp on your doorstep. I’ll call here once a week for your report on developments at an hour you, not me, will choose. Make it as late or early as you please. Well?”

  I said, “Mr Aiblins I am not the godfather of a Scottish literary mafia. There is no such thing. No firm will publish a book, no editor commission a review of it or print a poem from it because I order them. It is also many years since I was employed to show an interest in other folks’ writing. I am now a selfish old bastard who cares for nobody’s writing but his own. Please go away and tell that to as many other writers as you can. But you appear to be in poor circumstances. I am not. By a coincidence I refuse to explain I have seventy pounds in notes upon me. Here, take them. Goodbye!”

  “You condescending piss-pot!” he said, smi
ling as he took the money, “But buying my poems won’t get rid of me. I know they’ll be safe here because your only claim to fame, your only hope of a place in world literature depends on them. So why postpone that? Your Antique Nebula will be forgotten long before critics notice where you got the few good lines in it.”

  “Are you suggesting that I have plagiarised you?” I cried, horrified, “I deny it! I deny it!”

  “You sound as if you believe that,” he said, frowning thoughtfully. “Perhaps you’re unconscious of it. Perhaps most plagiarism is unconscious reminiscence.”

  “I am staring hard at that brass-topped coffee table,” I told him, “because it is tempting me to lift it as high as I can in order to smash it down on your idiotic skull. But instead I will phone for the police if you do not take your poems and get the hell out of here.”

  “Dearie me, dearie me,” he said waggishly.

  “I seem to have annoyed the poor old fat bald wee man. He must still envy me.

  I wonder why?”

  He strolled with bag and folder to the front door, which I opened. On the doorstep he turned and said quietly, “One last word of advice. Publish these poems under your own name then try to live up to them. You’ll fail, but the effort may make a real man of you, if not a real writer. And think of the fame you’ll enjoy! I won’t resent that because great poetry is more important than fame. Here, have it.”

  I closed the door on him. A moment later the folder, bent double, fell in through the letter box. My self respect felt as if it had been squeezed between the heavy rollers of a mangle. His poems were so strongly associated with this feeling that I could not bear to pick them up. Opening a cupboard holding gas meters I kicked them inside and locked them in. I so dreaded hearing from him again that I fixed an answering machine to my telephone and never took a call direct, but he never called again.

  Time passed away. So did the Berlin Wall and the Russian Empire. In The Times Literary Supplement I read reviews of abstruse books by the former Marxist student who liked classical opera and now had a medical practice in Stuttgart. I discovered that the little Chinese girl who once visited me was now an award-winning feminist poet who wrote popular, very gruesome crime thrillers under a pseudonym. I read her works closely for signs of my influence and detected none at all.

  One day I heard a friendly, eager voice say, “Hullo, how are you doing? What are you reading these days?”

  I stopped and after a moment recognised poor Aiblins. He was completely bald with many bruises on his head and face and many unhealed cuts between them. He wore jeans, a leather jacket and shambled in a way I had not seen before, but his battered features had amazingly recovered the happily relaxed expression I had first envied.

  “What happened to your face, Luke?”

  “Oh, I had an argument in a pub with a man who glassed me so it became a police matter. I mean the police took me in and gave me a doing before turning me out. But it was all just usual reality, it doesnae matter. Have you read The American Claimant yet?”

  “Not yet. Can I buy you a drink?”

  I said this because we were in a street very far from where we might be seen by people I know.

  After two unsuccessful attempts we found a pub that would serve him and sat with pints in a quiet corner. I admitted I had not yet read Two Gentlemen of Verona and steered the talk away from literature by asking if he ever saw his wife nowadays. “Neither her nor my son. In fact she kicked me out before he was born because she hated the name I was going to give him – a lovely name it was too, a perfect poem in itself: Tristram Pilgrim Aiblins.” He announced the name with great enthusiasm then repeated it slowly as if separately enjoying each syllable, then he asked if I knew what it meant.

  “Tristram means sadly born,” I said, “I’m not surprised the mother didn’t want her boy called that.”

  “You’ve forgotten what Aiblins means.

  That makes a difference.”

  “What does Aiblins mean?”

  “Look it up, wordsmith,” he said, laughing. “Consult a Lallans dictionary, you antique Scottish nebula.”

  “But how did you know a son was coming before he got born?”

  He tapped his brow saying, “I heard it in here.”

  I asked if his inner voice ever gave him poetry nowadays. He said, “I think it’s trying to. Sometimes a good line gets through but never a whole couplet or verse because the government is jamming me.”

  “The government? How?”

  “It keeps sending other voices into my head, loud ones that accuse me of terrible things I’ve never done, never even imagined doing. Why? Why should the government spend money on elaborate broadcasting equipment just to torture me with false accusations only I can hear? It makes no sense. It’s a total waste of taxpayers’ money.” He did not say this angrily or miserably but with a kind of puzzled amusement. I said, “Some people in high places must think you very dangerous.”

  “Yes, but why?”

  “Tell me a line your inner voice has given you recently.”

  He pressed a finger to the side of his brow and after a while said, “Since breathing is my life, to stop I dare not dare.”

  “I like that line. Any more?”

  “Er … Great vessels sink, while piss-pots stay afloat.”

  “Better and better. Do you still think I’m a piss-pot?”

  He grinned apologetically and murmured, “If the cap fits … Oh, here’s another coming through: To die, to me, today, is like returning home from a war.”

  “That’s the best line of all. You’re still a poet, Luke, in a fragmentary way.”

  “The government must want to keep me fragmentary. Has your inspiration ever been broken up by outside broadcasting?”

  “No.”

  On his discoloured, distorted face appeared a smile of pure childish happiness mingled with sly mischief.

  “Your work isn’t good enough to frighten them,” he murmured and gave my shoulder a consoling pat.

  “True. I must leave now.”

  I gave him money that he tranquilly accepted. I hurried away in a state very near panic. By pretending to share his world view I had almost been convinced by it. I was glad to learn later that the dare not dare line came from the introduction to John Lennon’s In His Own Write, that the sunk ship and floating piss-pots were from a translation of a Gaelic proverb in one of McDiarmid’s most rambling monologues. I haven’t found the source of the third, which may be a genuine Aiblins invention. But I am afraid to re-examine the verses in the creased folder in my lobby cupboard, afraid to show them to people who might judge them differently. It might emerge that I have driven a great poet insane by suppressing his earliest works.

  For the same reason I fear to destroy them.

  JOB’S SKIN GAME

  FOR GOD’S SAKE don’t believe what my wife says: I am still one of the luckiest men who ever walked the earth. Yes of course we’ve had our troubles, like hundreds and thousands of others recently, and for a while it seemed impossible to carry on. I’d have paid a man to shoot me if I’d known where to find one. But I survived. I recovered. The sun is shining, the birds are singing again, though I perfectly understand why the wife has not recovered and maybe never will.

  It was my father who had the really hard life, years and years of it: a joiner’s son, self-educated, who after many slips and slides turned a small house-renovation firm into a major building contractor. Before he expired he was a city councillor and playing golf with Reo Stakis. He sent me to the best fee-paying school in Glasgow because “it’s there you’ll make friends who’ll be useful to you in later life”, and yes, some were. Not being university material I went straight into the family business and learned it from the bottom up, working as a brickie’s labourer for a couple of months on one job, a joiner’s labourer on another, a plumber’s mate elsewhere and so on till I had firsthand experience of all those jobs and painting, plastering, slating, wiring, the lot. Of course the tradesmen I served knew
I was the boss’s son. He told them so beforehand and warned them to be as tough on me as on other apprentices. Some were, some weren’t. Either way I enjoyed gaining manual skills while using my muscles. I even worked as a navvy for six weeks, and (under supervision, of course) drove a bulldozer and managed a crane. Meanwhile, at night school, I learned the business from a manager’s standpoint, while calling in at the firm’s head office between whiles to see how it worked at the costing and contracting level. So when the dad collapsed of a stroke I continued the business as if nothing had happened. My mother had died long before so I inherited a fine house in Newton Mearns, a holiday home on Arran and another in the south of Spain.

  Is it surprising that I was able to marry the first good-looking woman I fell in love with? She was more than just a pretty face. In business matters she resembled my father more than me. I was less brisk than he in sacking workers when we lacked orders to fully employ them.

  “You can’t afford to keep men idle,” said the wife. I told her that I didn’t – that I found them useful though not highly profitable jobs until fresh orders arrived. “Maybe you can afford to do that but your wife and children can’t!” she said, using the plural form though still pregnant with our first child, “You’re running a modern business, not a charity, and seem anxious to run it into the ground.”

  I quietened her by signing the family property and private finances over to her on condition that she left the firm to me. It prospered! We sent our boys to the same boarding school as the Prince of Wales.

  Being smarter than their old dad they went from there to Glasgow University, then Oxford, then one took to law and the other to accountancy, though both eventually got good posts in a banking house with headquarters in Hong Kong and an office in New York. Alas.

  By that time I had sold the main business, being past retiral age. I kept on the small house-renovation firm my dad started with, more as a hobby than anything else. I had always most enjoyed the constructive side of business. Meanwhile the wife, on the advice of her own accountant (not mine) invested our money in a highly respectable dot com pension scheme which she said “will make every penny we own work harder and earn more”.