Every Short Story by Alasdair Gray 1951-2012

by Gray, Alasdair

  “We are the death squad of the Maryhill Cleansing Brigade,” explained the leader who was perhaps eleven or twelve. “We are licensed terrorists with a sacred mission to save the British economy through a course of geriatric disposal. Too many old gerries are depressing the economy these days. If you can’t afford to get rejuvenated, grampa, you should have the decency to top yourself before becoming a burden to the state.”

  I told him I wasn’t a burden to the state, wasn’t even a beggar, that money was paid into my bank account by foreign publishers and was enough to feed me though not enough to rent a room.

  “You pathetic, hairy old driveller!” shouted the leader, goading himself or herself into a fury. “You’re an eyesore! The visual equivalent of a force-nine-gale fart! You will die in hideous agony as a warning to others.”

  I was alarmed but excited. To die must be an awfully big adventure. Then a small fat person with glasses said, “Wait a bit, Jimsy, I think he’s famous.”

  They consulted a folded sheet with a lot of faces and names printed on it. The fat person, who could read names, asked if I was Mr Thingumajig, which I am. They helped me up, dusted me down, shook my hand very solemnly one at a time, said they would remember me next time we met, said they would gladly kill any old friend I wanted rid off, advised me not to go near a naked flame before my trousers were dry, hoped I had no hard feelings. Honestly, I had none at all. My gratitude and love for these children was so great that I wept real tears. The leader got me to autograph the printed sheet. It was pleasant to meet a young Scot who still valued my signature. The sun had not yet set when they left me. I watched the gloaming fade, warm in the knowledge that I had a privileged place in modern Britain. Not only the children liked me but their bosses in the Cleansing Company or Social Security Trust or Education Industry or whoever had a use for children nowadays.

  Yes, somebody up there likes me even though once I detested the bastards up there, the agents and consultants, money farmers and middle men, parliamentary quango-mongers, local and international monopolists. My books were attacks on these people but caused no hard feelings, and now my books are only read in nations that lost World War Two.

  My host spoke on a politely insistent note. “I suggest you visit my country. Your royalties there will easily rent a private apartment with housekeeper and health care. We are no longer a military nation. We revere old people, which is why they live longer among us than anywhere else.”

  I said I was happy where I was. He shut his notebook and bowed saying, “You are a true master. You have subdued your wishes to your surroundings.”

  This angered me but I did not show it. There are better ways of living than being happy but they require strength and sanity. The poor and weak are as incapable of sanity as the rich and powerful. Sanity in this country would drive the weak to suicide and make the rich distinctly uncomfortable. We are better without it.

  TALES DROLL & PLAUSIBLE

  FOR THE TORY AND LABOUR CREATORS OF MODERN BRITAIN

  EDINBURGH 2012

  EUSTACE

  YOUR ROYAL MAJESTIES AND HIGHNESSES; your Holinesses, Eminences, Graces and Reverences; distinguished Prime Ministers, Presidents and Premiers of these our United Nations; my Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen! Never before in the history of Great Britain, and (here I repeat with peculiar emphasis) the history of Great Britain, have so many owed so much to one man, the modest individual at my side. Two weeks ago the whole population of our planet was threatened by the horror of an overwhelming social collapse. At the last moment his timely words and decisive action made that crisis seem less than the shadow of a cloud passing over a sunlit field. United in his genius we found the diplomatic skill of Knatchbull Hugeson, the hard smoothness of Scipio Todalini and the valorous marksmanship of Second Flight Lieutenant Wulfstan Tempest. I now call upon us all to drink a toast to our saviour and our friend, Eustace MacNulty.”

  “Eustace MacNulty!” cry the vast assembly and the toast is drunk, followed by a storm of hand-clapping and foot-stamping. The guest of honour silences them by jumping up and saying eagerly, “Comrades, how can I follow that introduction with anything that will please or entertain you? It cannot be done. I am very ignorant! So ignorant that I have never before heard the names of the three national heroes just mentioned…”

  These words provoke sympathetic laughter which is prolonged with many cries of “Hear! Hear!” when the Queen of England calls out, “Neither have I!”

  “Worse still,” says the speaker desperately, “I cannot remember my own name, but it is certainly not Eustace MacNulty. And where are my trousers? Why am I naked? I have never appeared in public before without wearing at least a necktie.”

  The speaker pauses, relieved to find he is clothed again and part of a queue in a familiar bank. At the counter he writes out a cheque to himself and places it in front of a teller who asks for proof of his identity.

  “I have been coming to this bank for over thirty years,” the declares the customer, “and have never before been asked such a question. Surely the signature on my cheque proves my identity.”

  Says the teller, “Not nowadays sir. We now need something to confirm it. Your driving license will do.”

  “I have no driving licence. I have no car.”

  “Then I need to see your passport or else two official documents addressed to you.”

  “That is absurd! I do not normally walk about with such documents in my pockets. Do you? Does anyone?”

  Someone behind him in the queue says, “Excuse me for butting in but perhaps I can help. I can vouch for this man. I know him well. Everyone should know him well because he is Scotland’s greatest living author, actor and architect. He is Eustace MacNulty.”

  “ I am not! Not at all! This is my name – read it!” cries the writer of the cheque, holding it out for inspection. Then he notices that both his signature and the printed name beside it are Eustace MacNulty.

  Again he finds himself naked, but in bed beside his quietly snoring wife. Switching on the bedside light he shakes her nearest shoulder until she opens her eyes and drowsily murmurs, “What’s wrong?”

  “Margaret!” he pleads, “Margaret who am I? Please tell me my name.”

  She says, “Shut up Eustace and let me sleep.”

  “If you think I’m Eustace I must still be dreaming,” he whimpers.

  “Then go on doing it,” she advises, turning her back to him.

  WORKING WITH GIANTS

  IN THAT WEEK WHEN ONE Scottish prime minister replaced another three people shared a table on an early morning train to London. A man and woman in the window seats were slightly younger than their companion reading The Financial Times. This so engrossed him that he gave no sign of hearing a word when, after nearly half an hour of silence, the younger man glimpsed machines digging a huge foundation pit and wondered aloud what the building would be.

  “Probably another private hospital!” the woman across the table said bitterly.

  “You disapprove of them?” he asked, smiling, and she replied with a torrent of words telling him, among other things, that she worked in a public hospital as a state-registered nurse. His sympathetic nods and murmured agreement encouraged her speech until it faltered, when he began supporting her main argument with so much detailed information about hospital funding that she asked if he too worked for the National Health Service.

  “For nothing so useful,” he said with a sigh. “I’m afraid I only work with giants.”

  She stared at him. He added apologetically, “I mean the big boys – the not very nice people in charge of British industry, or what remains of it.”

  “Politicians?” she suggested.

  “God no! Politicians thrive on T.V. and newspaper coverage and all the publicity they can get. Most folk in Britain don’t know the names of the big boys,”

  “Why not?”

  “Because they don’t read the…”

  He nodded sideways to the paper in the hands of their companion.
The nurse brooded on that till the man facing her said, “ You see, England is different from the USA. The Yanks know they’ve been ruled by billionaires for centuries. A lot of folk here won’t face the fact, hence the popularity of the Royal family.”

  “So how do you work with your giants? What do they pay you to do?”

  “They don’t pay me. I am usually paid (though not always) by companies or local politicians who want their support for some scheme or other. I’m what is called an entrepreneur – a middleman.”

  “Why do they need you to ask for their support? Can the people who want support not just write or phone to ask for it?”

  “They would get no useful answers that way. Business is too competitive nowadays. The giants avoid putting anything in writing, and phone calls can be bugged and recorded. Most are nowadays, I believe. Surveillance technology has made tremendous strides.”

  “You make it sound very shady, very underhand.”

  “It is. Getting a straight yes or no from a big man (I never meet more than one at a time) is almost impossible. If he smiles after I’ve explained my client’s proposition and says ‘That would be risky,’ the answer is probably no. If he frowns and says, “Of course it’s not for me to decide, but say they can try it if they think it will work,’ that probably means, Go ahead! Only if it goes pear-shaped will we leave you to the sharks.”

  “Sharks?”

  “Investigation committees, journalists, those kind of sharks.”

  A loud speaker announced that the train was about to enter Euston station. The nurse said flatly, “And that’s how you earn your living?”

  “Yes, quite a good living, I always please those I work with, but not always those I work for. It’s a balancing act.”

  He laid a small card on the table in front of the nurse saying, “Sorry to cut our interesting conversation short. Phone me some time if you would like to continue it more privately. I must leave pretty smartly because I’m running late. Excuse me please.”

  The last three words were to the reader of The Financial Times, who carefully folded and pocketed it, then stood to let the younger man out. The entrepreneur took down a briefcase then hurried along the corridor past others taking things from overhead racks.

  The nurse and older man avoided jostling by staying seated for a while. She looked at the card before her without touching it, remembering that the eyes of the man facing her had a hint of sexual appraisal. The older man startled her by suddenly saying, “There is no doubt that our talkative friend knows a lot about our National Health Service, probably because he is one of those working to privatise it. But I doubt if he knows many of the giants he referred to. Believe me my dear, the really big men never trust blabbermouths.”

  THE OFFER

  A BIOLOGIST AND A LAWYER, he Swedish, she Korean, wait to meet the world’s most famous living architect. Both are in their sixties but the lawyer’s calm unlined face appears younger. Resting on a sofa she watches her colleague who stands before a window, staring gloomily down a long slope of villas among pines and many spires of those cypress trees which, to northern eyes, seem improbably tall and thin. The slope ends in a bright sea with sails of yachts near the shore, and on the high horizon the silhouette of an island that might be Monte Cristo.

  The biologist looks at his wristwatch and sighs. The lawyer says, “The maestro always keeps visitors waiting.” “He, at least, should have grown out of playing childish games.”

  Their accents show both learned English in the U.S.A. The lawyer says, “Yes, he is playful – tricks journalists into thinking him an alcoholic invalid and recluse who has retired from business. Three months ago he accepted a commission to design a village in Sri Lanka, and personally surveyed the site while carefully avoiding publicity. Surely you read that in the psychological profile they gave us?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Psychology is too recent a branch of medicine to be an exact science. Only the master’s achievements interest me. Everything he has done has been surprising, has shown the fertility of Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier with the humane humorous detail of Gaudi and Mackintosh. His work convinces me that my work may at last do humanity good.”

  “Your work?” she asks, with slightly mocking emphasis.

  “Mine and Schoenenbacher’s,” he says impatiently, “and Hong Fu’s and Glaister’s. Yes, I am a dwarf standing on the shoulder of giants. Tomorrow I hand in my resignation and retire as soon as possible to my son’s farm in Uppsala.”

  After two or three minutes the lawyer says carefully, “I advise you to stay on the Foundation’s payroll as a consultant.”

  He turns and looks at her, saying, “Otherwise, despite all the confidentiality clauses I have signed, our employers may regard me as a loose wheel?”

  She nods. He asks, “Which might shorten my life?”

  She does not answer. He sits beside her, murmuring, “Then mine will be the sudden, unexpected death that Julius Caesar wanted, and got. But my post-mortem will attribute it to natural causes.”

  They sit a long time in silence, then a little girl looks in and tells them, “He can see you now.”

  The lawyer lifts a briefcase. They follow the child through a corridor and arrive in a big sunlit room with glass walls and a glass ceiling. Some dark blue panes ensure the noonday sun does not dazzle them. A little old man in pyjamas and dressing gown reclines in an invalid chair with a leg-rest exposing his thin legs and plump paunch. From a silky cloud of white hair and beard two sharp eyes look out above a potato-like blob of nose. The line of his mouth is shown by the lower edge of a moustache he seems sucking with tipsy relish. Waving to a couple of chairs he cries in a shrill falsetto, “Welcome! Be seated! What a pleasure, what a privilege to be visited by such eminences.”

  His fluent English has an Italian accent. The visitors sit. The child leans affectionately against the arm of the old man’s chair. Placing an arm round her shoulders he tells them, “Yes, I am a paedophile. I love my grandchildren. Fourteen of them visit me in rotation. All are clever but Minnie is one of the cleverest. Minnie, give these nice people what they want to drink, and bring me a hock and seltzer in memory of dear Oscar Wilde.”

  He points to an adjacent drinks cabinet. The scientist wants nothing, the lawyer accepts a glass of sherry. Before sipping she says, “Maestro, I regret that our talk must not be overheard.”

  “Run away and play Minnie,” says their host. “We are about to discuss indecencies.”

  The little girl curtsies to him and the visitors, and leaves.

  The architect sips from his glass before saying in a surprising baritone, “You have asked for this interview without giving a reason. Let me save you the embarrassment of explanations. Your names were unknown to me before this morning when Minnie consulted the Internet. I now know that, in your very different professions, you are both internationally renowned, and work for the powerful but discreet Endon Foundation. After World War number two Endon absorbed the Blenkiron Trust, and twenty years ago took over some functions of the United Nations World Health Organization. I am right?”

  The lawyer murmurs agreement. The old man nods twice, says, “So your immediate bosses are a clique I call the global employers’ federation, which officially does not exist. I am still right?”

  The lawyer, startled, looks at the biologist who cries, “O yes!”

  Nodding twice again the architect says, “Years ago an American millionaire told the press that with the help of modern medicine he intended to live for ever. Is he a member of that clique?”

  After a short silence the lawyer says, “No. He recently died of natural causes.”

  “Poor fellow! But I assume others as rich or richer need not now die of natural causes. As an old Communist I think this a disaster. A few families (mostly American) command more wealth than the world’s governments combined. Will the world from now on be ruled by a clique of plutocrats who will never let themselves be replaced?”


  “No!” says the lawyer and “Yes indeed!” shouts the scientist with what seems hysterical merriment.

  “Yes indeed,” says the architect. “I now carry my deductions further. The alchemists’ dream of eternal life has often been explored in fiction. The struldbrugs in Gulliver’s Travels, Tennyson’s Tiresias, the foetal ape wearing the Order of the Garter in Huxley’s After Many a Summer are horrific portraits of people who cannot die. Shaw’s Back to Methuselah and Wyndham Lewis’s Trouble with Lichen describe jollier immortals. These hide their good luck from the majority who would also want eternal life – not possible on this over-peopled planet where most still die of malnutrition before maturity. So your ruling clique of billionaires, trillionaires, zillionaires must keep their happy state hidden, while sharing the privilege with scientists and supportive politicians who make it possible. You, my dear visitors, are members of this jolly club?”

  The visitors look at each other. The architect says, “Ignore that embarrassing question. I continue. So many people now share this secret that it cannot stay a secret for ever. How can eternal life be made acceptable to a majority who will never have it? Obviously, by creating something like the Académie Française, wherein folk made popular by their achievements in entertainment, science and medicine are made physically immortal too. The masters of our universe will start by admitting Nobel Prize winners like me – ” (he taps his chest) “ – and you!” He points to the scientist who says, “I am resigning from that club.”