Every Short Story by Alasdair Gray 1951-2012

by Gray, Alasdair

“I salute you,” cries the architect, sitting upright and raising his hand in a smart military salute. “Tell me why.” “For personal reasons that have nothing to do with the therapy. This will allow you, at least, many more centuries of good work. I am a Swedish Socialist who sees as clearly as you the evils of a self-perpetuating propertied class. I hope that a self-perpetuating academy of mankind’s intelligent servants will counteract it, as the Christian church sometimes counteracted feudal warlords. That will be a long, weary struggle of which I am already tired.”

  The architect presses a switch that lowers his leg-rest, saying, “I must now furiously think in silence for a while. Excuse me.”

  He springs up and paces round the big room with bowed head and hands clasped behind back.

  The scientist strolls to the drinks cabinet, lifts a sherry bottle, silently offers to fill the lawyer’s half-empty glass. She refuses with a shake of the head. He fills a tumbler from a can of Pilsner lager and carries it to the longest window. This allows a larger view of the landscape he watched earlier, with tops of pines and cypresses visible through walls to left and right. The wall with the entrance door is a huge mirror reflecting the three window walls, so the room seems a magic carpet floating above the Italian Riviera. The architect halts before this mirror and examines his reflection like a zoologist studying a fascinating but repulsive beast. He asks, “Would this bloated belly of mine also be immortalized?”

  Without turning the scientist says, “Eat less, exercise properly and you could be rid of it in a few months.”

  “Oho! So your therapy involves no grafting? No healthy young man of my blood group will be kidnapped and murdered and have his good organs replace my decrepit ones?”

  “Of course not!” cries the lawyer, standing and refilling her sherry glass. The scientist says, “The results of such therapy are too patchy to last. My therapy keeps restoring cells inherited at birth.”

  “Good! I have never believed that our intelligence and memory exist mainly in the brain. Lucretius knew our spirits are distributed through every part of our body. An architect’s talent is gained by striding through lands and rooms while his eyes notice every kind of spatial limit, the nerves and muscles of arms and fingers learn skill in draughtsmanship. Like Leonardo I am ambidextrous, a fact I hid from my closest assistants, though not from my dearly beloved wives. I give you this secret in return for the dangerous secret you are offering me. If I understand rightly, I need not be rejuvenated? Need not forget the carefully, painfully learned experiences of a lifetime?”

  “Not at once,” says the scientist, “but in an eternal future you will only make room for new discoveries by forgetting more and more of the past. I predict that after several millennia immortals will have forgotten their childhoods, first marriages and children and probably the planet where they were born. I want no such future, but am not an artist, far less one who builds good homes for people who are not rich and privileged. Perhaps Goethe was right. He said artists have recurring puberties that keep returning them to a younger state before they advance to a new one.”

  “You compliment me,” says the architect, now standing beside the scientist and watching the island that might be Monte Cristo, “but Goethe was an old bore long before his death, when he had just managed to finish writing the end of Faust. Remember what Schiller said on reading the start of that play thirty years earlier – it would be wonderful to see if Faust would be corrupted or win free of the Devil he employed. Goethe went on to make Faust a heartless seducer, murderer, warlord, an evictor of peasants and piratical millionaire who thinks he is liberating mankind when his grave is being dug. So Goethe sends his soul up to a heaven ruled by a female from Dante’s Paradiso.”

  Behind them a harsh voice cries, “I must interrupt this comradely swapping of cultural references. I reject the cynical reasons given by the maestro for our Foundation’s offer, but the offer exists. Does he accept it? Maestro, please sign this contract.”

  She takes a sheaf of pages from her briefcase, goes to a map chest and spreads them on top saying, “Endon expects no payment for the therapy, which will be provided painlessly once a month by a doctor from the Foundation. All Endon requires in return is your complete silence about the matter.”

  “Nor will it change your character at first,” says the scientist dryly, “though I think it will inevitably induce insane smugness toward all who have died or will die.”

  The architect goes to the chest, takes a fountain pen from the pocket of his gown saying, “I do not want to know the exact terms of this shameless document, but I will obviously be safer if I sign it.”

  “Sign each page separately and we will witness them,” says the lawyer.

  The architect asks the scientist, “You have signed such a contract?”

  “Yes, years ago. It commits the signatory to keeping the therapy secret, but allows freedom to refuse or discontinue it, as I am doing.”

  “You have chosen rightly,” says the architect. “I will stay as I am.”

  He carefully signs every page to which his guests add their signatures, then he asks, “Am I to have a copy?”

  “No.” says the lawyer, putting the sheaf into her briefcase. From a drawer in the chest the architect takes two cream-coloured papers with a small picture on each saying, “Thank you for this visit. Please accept a little gift as a souvenir. My latest hobby is the obsolete art of mezzotinting.”

  He carries the prints to a desk, lifts a pencil, sees that the point is needle-sharp, then carefully writes small words after his signature in the lower margins. He slips each print into a black plastic envelope, lifts a drumstick and strokes a copper gong with the padded end, making a noise like the roar of a melodious lion. He hands each visitor an envelope and shakes their hand as the little girl enters.

  “Minnie,” he says, “lead the fine lady and gentleman down to their car where a poor bored chauffeur has been languishing for nearly two hours. Goodbye my friends. This has been a pleasant meeting, productive of much thought. Tell your Foundation that I will keep their secret and stay as I am.”

  The child leads the visitors to a lift with glass walls. It takes them down a glass-walled shaft to a yard where they enter an old-fashioned Rolls-Royce with a screen dividing passengers from driver. As it speeds to the nearest airport the scientist asks, “Are we still being recorded?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Yesterday Endon invited me to have a discreet chip embedded in my neck so that all the maestro said, and (of course) all we said, would be recorded. I refused. You will have received the same invitation. I assume you accepted?”

  She turns her head and looks at passing scenery. He sniggers and says, “That question may be taken as proof that I am a loose wheel. You might say you are sorry for my imminent demise, if that would not compromise you.”

  She says sharply, “Your pessimism is absurd. Endon knows how trustworthy you are.”

  He murmurs, “A safely ambiguous remark.”

  A moment later he removes the print from the envelope he carries and studies it. The lawyer does the same with hers, then she says, “Talking of ambiguous remarks, was there no ambiguity in his, I will stay as I am?”

  “None,” says the scientist. “Read this.”

  He hands her his print. It shows the architect’s house at night, the sky above and surrounding pine trees in a variety of velvety blacks and greys, contrasting with bright rooms within the glass walls. The biggest room has a little self-portrait of the architect in his chair, shown from behind. The other rooms are crowded with nearly nude women wearing long black stockings, and men in evening dress with horned heads and scorpion tails growing from their bums. After the architect’s signature in the margin beneath is written in neat, forward-sloping letters the scientist’s name and the words, You have chosen rightly. Having read this the lawyer hands his print back with her own. After her name in the bottom margin the biologist reads, in meticulous backward-sloping letters, I accept Endon’s
offer.

  THE THIRD MISTER GLASGOW

  MR MACBLEANEY, SLIGHTLY FUDDLED, came home by taxi after midnight. A young woman helped him out, helped him up four steps to the front door and, when he started fumbling with his keyring, removed it, unlocked the door, gave the keyring back and pushed him into the lobby. He stood for a moment trying to remember an invitation he had devised in the taxi – “Come in for a drink dear, surely you won’t leave an old man alone at this time of night?” – but before recalling these words he heard the front door shut firmly behind him, a distant car door slam and the taxi drive off. He sighed, trudged to the door of his apartment and fumbled in his pocket for the key until the lobby light went out. It had switched on automatically when the front door opened and was usually on long enough for him to unlock the door but now he could not see its keyhole. He trudged back in darkness to the front door, pressed the switch beside it and again there was light. With a pleased chuckle he noticed the apartment key on the ring in his left hand where the girl had placed it – silly of him to have forgotten it was there!

  Back at the apartment door he carefully inserted the correct key, tried turning it left without success, then right without success, then jiggled it back and forward many times. For over a year this futile jiggling had lasted longer and longer each time he came home, always making him determined to do something about it, but when the lock yielded and door opened, the matter was no longer urgent. Tonight, after wrestling with the key for what seemed ten or fifteen minutes, Mr MacBleaney decided it would never turn: also his legs were tired. He sighed and leaned against the door, contemplating a rocking chair, the only furniture on the lobby’s chequered marble floor. His wife had loved that chair. Its emptiness by the fireside brought her so painfully to mind that he had shifted it to the lobby, and even now was shy of sitting on it. He sat on a low step of the staircase to the upper apartments, pondering.

  The apartment key must be worn out by too frequent use, since the copy used once a week by his cleaners gave them no trouble. He seemed to remember his wife had given a spare copy to a neighbour, but that was twenty or thirty years ago. So many neighbours had since come and gone that now all were strangers whose faces he could not remember. Of course they certainly knew him – the third Mr Glasgow – but why should Mr Glasgow know them? As usual, MacBleaney avoided thinking about a difficulty by remembering his fame.

  The first Mr Glasgow had been Jack House, a journalist who knew more about the city than anyone else – he had written books on it, The Square Mile of Murder, Heart of Glasgow and Pavement in the Sun. Jack had represented Scotland in Round Britain Quiz, a famous radio programme when there were only three British broadcasting channels, none of them commercial. Then had come the second Mr Glasgow – Cliff Hanley, another journalist. He wrote Dancing in the Streets and a song that was likely to be voted Scotland’s official national anthem by a large majority – Scotland the Brave! Or was it O Flooer of Scotland? Hanley’s catchphrase on a comedy programme, “Sausages is the boys!”, always raised a laugh – or had that been Jimmy Logan’s catchphrase? Anyway, House and Hanley were both nice men, unlike B … (MacBleaney’s mind recoiled from a name he did not wish to remember). Yes, House and Hanley had been nice friendly Mr Glasgows, he had cheerfully drunk and chatted with them several times during his three highly successful careers.

  He had started as a footballer, and for two and a half years was Bully Wee Clyde’s mightiest outside-left, almost in the Charlie Tully league, though he said so himself. Clyde was not one of Scotland’s most famous clubs, but it was one of the most decent, unlike Rangers, whose followers were nearly all True Blue bigots – some of Celtic’s Emerald Greens were almost as bad. But early retirement was forced on Bully Wee MacBleaney by a torn ligament too many. A bad time followed when he nearly killed himself with the drink – no wonder his first wife walked out.

  The shock of the divorce did him good. He quit drinking. Through Alcoholics Anonymous he met a television producer who needed an adviser for sport reports. MacBleaney turned out to be exactly the right man for Independent Scottish Television. He was soon, as a football commentator, almost as famous as Arthur Montford, though he said so himself. Being younger and handsomer than Montford he had appeared on television commercials and newspaper adverts promoting a brand of shaving cream. He took up golf as a hobby and met his second wife. Their marriage was a big news story with photographs in all the dailies. “Mr Glasgow Weds!” said the Daily Record, and “Golfing Gloria Hooks Scotland’s Most Eligible Bachelor”. This brought an angry postcard from his first wife asking how a divorced alcoholic could be an eligible bachelor. His career as a sports commentator had ended very strangely. For a short spell he had replaced Archie Macpherson in Scottish BBC, then he too had been replaced without learning exactly why. British broadcasting works in mysterious ways.

  But by then he had appeared in Taggart, the epic Glasgow television detective serial. An episode had a crime during a football game between clubs called Glasgow Rovers and Saint Mungo United. For this he had both advised the writer (who knew nothing about football) and played himself – Rory MacBleaney – the famous sports commentator who helped Taggart solve the murder in the directors’ box of Hampden Park stadium. That episode had made television history, in Scotland if nowhere else. After that he had been given parts in several television films and one or two widely distributed London and Hollywood productions – small parts, admittedly, but when producers wanted the friendly sound of a good Scots voice they would often send for Rory MacBleaney, sometimes dubbing his voice onto a younger actor or a character in an animated cartoon. He had also been given a small important part in a film so horrible that, despite the low budget, every subsequent history of the cinema mentioned it. At the London showing a critic said to him …

  Mr MacBleaney’s memories had been making him feel warm and happy, but now he felt the hard, cold step under his bum and felt tired of life because the critic had said, “You were quite good, but of course they only employed you because they couldn’t afford Billy Connolly.”

  A storm of rage brought him to his feet, stamping up and down the lobby. Billy Connolly was better known than Rory MacBleaney for bad bad bad bad bad reasons. Connolly and his what – partner? second wife? – had been pally with Prince Charles and Diana before the royal divorce, what claim to fame was that? Connolly was not a bad comedian – not as good as Jimmy Logan, though still quite good – but he was not an actor! In his biggest film, Mrs Brown, he had played Queen Victoria’s Highland gillie with a Glasgow accent! It was the only accent he could do! The English and Americans didn’t mind because they think every Scottish accent is the same, but every Scot in the world knew Connolly’s voice was wrong in that part. Connolly must have known his voice was wrong! So he had only taken the part for the money and the fame. How could he stoop so low?

  “I could have played John Brown!” said Mr MacBleaney aloud. “Yes, my normal accent too is Glaswegian, but I’m enough of an actor to sound like a teuchter from Drumnadrochit when I want to, yess inteet to gootness Donalt, whateffer. Shimerahaa mahay!”

  A fit of coughing made him sit on the step again, no longer happy, because directly or indirectly Billy Connolly was responsible for everything that had gone wrong with Scotland – small shops replaced by supermarkets, local schools and hospitals amalgamated into big central ones, and nobody asked to recall the old ways and speak for elderly marginalised folk. Newspapers no longer phoned the third Mr Glasgow for soundbites on politics and showbusiness; no wonder he had started drinking again. Gloria had foreseen that. When they knew she was dying she had not gone out of her mind (as he had) but calmly discussed their finances with an accountant and lawyer, and made him sign forms so that his home and finances were secure no matter how stupidly he acted. O yes, she had loved him. He wept for a while then began to cheer up again.

  The indoors smoking ban had been wonderful for him! At first he thought it would kill him because smoking had made him drink more slowl
y. It still did because now he went outside to smoke, standing and puffing on pavements with other nicotine addicts. This had given him a new lease of life. Being now a persecuted minority smokers shared a liberty, equality and fraternity unknown to those who skulked in pubs until closing time. He had new friends because of the ban – older folk who remembered him as a footballer, sports commentator, actor, also younger folk who enjoyed his tales of those times. One of these usually brought him home in a taxi, often a woman, though it was hard to remember which – most women under fifty seemed the same equally attractive young woman nowadays. None had stayed the night, yet he still had hopes.

  The cold step again reminded him where he was, then a sudden memory made him stand joyfully up. Gloria, in case one of them got locked out, had put a copy of the apartment key on top of the door frame. Being about three inches taller than him she could easily reach it by standing on tiptoe. They had never needed to use that key so it must still be there. A low box or stool was all he needed to reach it, but the hour was far too late to rouse a neighbour and borrow one; he must use the rocking chair. He pushed it over the marble tiles until the hind rockers and chair-back together touched the door, but this left the seat at an angle impossible to stand upon. He turned it round and put the front against the door, but now the back and arms stopped him climbing onto it, so he placed it sideways against the door. Holding onto the doorknob, he managed to kneel on the seat, which still rocked a little. Standing upright was a delicate balancing act. He did it by keeping hold of the doorknob with one hand, grasping the chair-back with the other, and cautiously raising his left leg until the foot was flat on the seat. That done, with equal caution, he began straightening the leg, then gradually raising his body while letting go of the doorknob and reaching upward to –

  While doing this something happened so suddenly that he neither understood nor remembered it afterward. For a time he seemed comfortably at home in bed, in a darkness suitable to someone who has wakened in the early hours of a winter morning, yet he seemed to hear people overhead discussing him, though their words made no sense. That did not worry him, and soon he was asleep for good.