Every Short Story by Alasdair Gray 1951-2012

by Gray, Alasdair

  There is a long silence, then without turning he asks if she said something. She says, “A poem I remembered.”

  He says, “For a moment I thought you were talking to me.” She resumes knitting. He resumes wondering about the state of the weather outside, and sometimes (as a result of his conversation with Bill) also worrying idly about the state of Britain.

  WHISKY AND WATER

  A PUBLIC HOUSE has been expensively refurnished and redecorated by owners who hope it will now attract a richer class of client, but while other pubs in the district are crowded as usual, this has only one customer. He sits at the bar, slowly sipping whisky while talking, though not conversing, with the barmaid. He wants a female audience to punctuate his monologue with agreeable sounds, and the barmaid does this easily while looking through a fashion magazine. Her most frequent sound is “mhm”, a Scottish word of agreement which can be said without opening the mouth. The regular customer asks, “You know my brother the artist?” “Mhm.”

  “He is more than an artist now. He is now chief arts administrator for the whole of North Lanarkshire. He has shagged nearly every woman in North Lanarkshire. Has he shagged you?”

  “No.”

  “Where do you live when you’re at home?”

  “West Dumbartonshire.”

  “That explains it. He is also a property genius. He collects property like some folk collect postage stamps. You know the tenement at the corner of Boghead Road and Sheriff Irvine Smith Street? That’s his.”

  “A prime site,” says the barmaid, turning a page.

  “Yes, a prime site. He has stuffed every room from floor to ceiling with old earthenware sinks, cisterns and lavatory pans.”

  “I’ve seen them through the oriel windows.”

  “You’ll never see them again. Yesterday he had the windows white-washed on the inside to deter burglars. Modern bathroom fixtures are mostly plastic. My brother thinks rich folk (not billionaires with gold-plated bathrooms but slightly poorer rich people) will soon want antique earthenware plumbing. When that kind of retro design hits the colour supplements he will unload his Irvine Smith treasury and make a killing, as we say in the Stock Exchange.”

  “Good.”

  “Do you know what, in my opinion, is life’s best thing?”

  She does not answer because an old man wearing a long coat and flat cap has entered and stands gazing round in dazed way. The barmaid asks if he is looking for someone. He says, “Whaur are the muriels?”

  She tells him she knows nobody called Muriel.

  “Ye’ve goat me wrang, misses,” he says. “Am talkin aboot big wa’ pentins, same as Michelangelo pentit a’ owr the Pope’s private chapel.”

  “This is a respectable pub in a respectable neighbourhood,” says the other customer sternly. “Don’t drag religion into it.”

  “What would you like to drink sir?” asks the barmaid kindly.

  “A wee goldie, please miss. But whaur did the muriels go? Did Kelvingrove Art Gallery grab them?”

  “When did you ever see a mural painting in this place?” asks the regular customer with contempt.

  “At the time of the Upper Clyde work-in. A wiz a fitter in the yards and a shop steward. Jimmy Reid led us up this wie tae a protest meetin ootside the B.B.C.”

  “The B.B.C. building is south of the river,” says the barmaid placing a small whisky on the bar. “Twenty pounds please.”

  “Twenty pounds for a wee goldie!” cries the old man, dismayed. He sadly lays down two ten-pound nickel coins, then sips his drink murmuring, “A great man, Jimmy Reid. Him and me wiz oot thegether in the 1950s apprentice strike. A great man for the Working Class and for Culture. That is why he broat me in here. ‘This pub is whit every Scots pub should be,’ says Jimmy, ‘a livin centre of local community culture. Here the Scottish intelligentsia mingle with ane anither and with the common workin man. Hugh MacDiarmid! Jack House! The Wee MacGreegor! Wullie Joss of the MacFlannels! Duncan Macrae who appeared in Our Man In Havana alang wi’ Alec Guinness and Noel Coward! And James Bridie, the Scottish George Bernard Shaw – Bridie who wrote that great London West End success, Bunty Pulls the Strings! And if they’re no actually here today when we drap in, ye can still see them pentit on the wa’s as large as life’ and so they were. Aye, so they were. Mhm, so they were.”

  “Do you know how absurd you are being?” demands the regular customer.

  The old man stares at him,

  “Absurd and also obnoxious!” says his critic. “It is offensive to have a list of forgotten has-beens recited over us. Since the Upper Clyde work-in fiasco this pub has been completely renovated umpteen times by more managements than you’ve had decent breakfasts. You can bet your bottom dollar that soon after you saw them those old mural panels were chucked into a skip and taken straight to Dawsholm incinerator.”

  “Even the muriel of the novelists? Barke, Blake, Gaitens and Guy McCrone who wrote No Mean City?”

  With sadistic relish his tormenter says, “They were the first to go.”

  The old man, stupefied, puts his empty glass on the counter and wanders out.

  His departure seems to free the regular customer of a burden.

  “As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted,” he tells the barmaid briskly, “do you know what the best thing in life is?”

  “No.”

  “The kind of frank and friendly talk I am having with you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Outside this pub I find it almost impossible to have a civilized conversation. Last night I was served in the Grosvenor Hotel lounge by a young chap, a very tight-lipped, taciturn, depressed chap. To cheer him up I told him about the wife leaving me, about the bills I had to pay and goldfish I had to feed. Do you know what he turned round and said to me?”

  “What?”

  “He said, My friend, have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal saviour?”

  “And had you?” said the barmaid, studying the astrology page.

  “Had I what?”

  “Accepted Christ as your personal saviour.”

  “For God’s sake!” he cries. “Is every pub in this city staffed by religious fanatics? I refuse to tolerate fanaticism, fundamentalism or any form of bigotry. Every Protestant, Catholic, Muslim, Hindu or Quaker bigot should be hung, drawn, quartered, cut down while still living, buried up to the neck in the ground and stoned to death regardless of race, religion, nationality, political creed or – ”

  Someone breenges in saying “Amen! Hear hear! Good thinking! I’m with you all the way on that!”

  The stranger looks like a younger, happier version of the man he interrupts. He lays a wad of notes on the bar crying, “Drinks all round! For me, a large malt of the month. For you miss, whatever you like. For my pal here, whatever he likes.”

  “I don’t drink at work,” says the barmaid, pouring the malt for him.

  “No more for me thanks,” says the regular customer, quickly taking a newspaper from his pocket, holding it up and appearing to read closely. In one swig the stranger empties his glass, slams it back on the counter and tells the barmaid, “Another. And keep them coming until that’s used up.”

  He points to his money on the bar then asks the regular customer what he thinks of the weather.

  “I don’t discuss politics,” is the short reply from behind the newspaper.

  “O come come come!” says the stranger cheerily. “You used to be mad about climate change. You were a pal of Harvey Drambogie.”

  “I have never in my life known a man called Harvey Drambogie.”

  “But you shared a flat with him when you were students together. That flat was a hotbed of Greenpeace and climate control freaks.”

  From behind the newsprint barrier a voice says distinctly, “As a student I once shared a flat with a lot of folk whose faces and names I cannot now remember and do not want to remember. Someone called Harvey was maybe one of them, maybe not. Even then I was staunchly unpolitical and am even more
so now – a Tory, in other words.”

  “You can’t possibly have always been so antisocial!” says the stranger, chuckling. “And Utopian politics were an innocent hobby in those days. There was no harm in you and Drambogie making pirate radio broadcasts, telling us the government should be throwing up dykes.” “You are mixing me up with someone else.”

  There is a long silence in which the stranger quickly drinks several large whiskies before saying coldly, “It is clearly time to remove my velvet glove and give you a touch of the iron hand. Look at this. Know what it means?”

  He holds out a card in a transparent plastic envelope. The regular customer glances at it, sighs, says, “Yes,” and gloomily lays down the newspaper.

  “Let me spell it out in detail. This card gives me power to arrest whoever gets on my tits and hold them indefinitely for questioning, without their family and friends being informed, and without access to legal advice.”

  “But I’ve done nothing. I’m innocent.”

  “You cannot touch pitch without being defiled,” says the stranger implacably.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Do you deny that your brother has impregnated half the women in North Lanarkshire? And filled his Sheriff Irvine Smith Street flat with illicit unregistered earthenware plumbing? And white-washed the windows from inside without local community planning permission?”

  “Why should that make me a criminal?”

  “Because you cannot touch pitch without being defiled.”

  This conversation so interests the barmaid that she has laid aside her magazine. The regular customer cowers under the policeman’s accusing glare, and begs humbly, “Don’t arrest me please. Yes, Harvey Drambogie once inveigled me into voting for the Greens before I knew they were terrorists, but I’ve never voted since. I promise not to see my brother again as long as I live, and I’m very sorry I was so stand-offish when you first spoke to me. I admit that my manners to you then were deplorable so please, please, please accept my humble apologies and let bygones be bygones.”

  The policeman drinks the last whisky his wad has purchased and murmurs, “You’re beginning to sound sincere.”

  His former cheerful manner suddenly returns. He extends a hand saying, “Apology accepted. Shake, pal.”

  They shake hands heartily, then the policeman says, “You will now prove your sincerity by handing over your wallet.”

  It is handed to him. He looks inside, removes a banker’s card, hands the wallet back saying, “Without your personal identification number this card is useless. So?” “Zero zero nine zero.”

  “Not a number I’ll forget,” says the policeman, going to the door. Before leaving he looks back and with a mischievous smile asks, “Would you like to know what will happen to you if you’ve lied to me?”

  “Please don’t tell me,” the regular customer whispers. “I wouldn’t dare lie to you.”

  “Wise man. See you around. Goodbye miss.”

  The door closes and the regular customer says gloomily, “That’s the third banker’s card a plain clothes cop has pinched from me this year.”

  “I’m surprised you’ve any money left,” says the barmaid. “I’ve taken precautions. I have several bank accounts with small token sums in them and only carry one card at a time. My real savings are in a waterproof condom gaffer-taped to the inside of the U-bend behind my lavatory pan.”

  “Not much room in a condom.”

  “If I say that condom contains items to the value of nearly half a hundred million pounds, will you believe me?”

  “No.”

  “It does. When I saw how galloping inflation was devaluing the currency I converted my capital into diamonds, pearls and a few well-cut multi-faceted amethysts, for which I have a weakness.”

  “I like a good amethyst too.”

  “Well you’re not getting any of mine!” he yells in sudden parsimonious frenzy. “Don’t expect it! I am not an idiot! Whit is mine is ma ain ye bitch, and whit’s ma ain is nain o’ yourn – ”

  The regression of his speech to a primitive level of dialect is abruptly cut short.

  A tall dark brown man has entered wearing the traditional dress of ancient Gaelic warriors: rawhide pampooties on his feet, a tartan plaid upheld by a broad leather belt, a tweed waistcoat with voluminous linen sleeves. On his head is a white turban with a moorhen’s tail feathers sticking up from a cairngorm brooch. There is a targe on his left arm, his right hand grasps a basket-hilted claymore which he lays carefully on the bar counter before saying in a soft, clear, Western Isles accent, “If you please, mistress, a small celebratory Inverarity.”

  He is paid no particular attention by the barmaid serving him. The regular customer has resumed reading his newspaper, as it is nowadays safer to ignore eccentricity. The Gael seems hurt by their neglect of his appearance. Having paid for his whisky he rotates the glass without tasting, then asks loudly, “Have none here heard the news?”

  Without looking up from his paper the regular customer says, “You can save your breath if you want to tell us the Broomielaw embankments have burst and rising water is turning Glasgow into a cluster of islands. We knew that was bound to happen years ago.”

  “Indeed yes, it is happening, but that is not the great news.”

  The Gael lifts the whisky glass high above his turban, cries, “The Prince has landed –– slanjay vawr,” empties the glass down his throat and flings it to smash in a corner, so that no inferior toast may again be drunk from it. The barmaid looks annoyed. The regular customer says, “Exactly what Prince are you on about?”

  “Prince Charles Windsor Xavier Sobieski Stuart the Tenth, our Once and Future King.”

  Says the barmaid, “I have more to worry about than politics these days.”

  In exasperation the regular customer flings his paper down and demands, “Exactly where did you dredge up that Prince?”

  With a lilt in his voice the Gael says, “Charlie has been with us all his life, but kept from his rightful inheritance by treacherous politicians and a bad old mother wrongly called Elizabeth the Second of Britain. The first monarch of all Britain was Jamie Stuart the Sixth of Scotland! He came after Elizabeth the First of England. In 1707 a German dynasty with Stuart blood in its veins was put on the British throne, blood of which Queen Victoria was rightly proud. And now Prince Charlie has extirpated his German taint by fully identifying with his Stuart ancestry. All Scotland must now arise to make him rightful King of Scotland, England, Ireland, Poland and North America!” “If you asylum seekers had more sense you would keep your mouths shut,” says the regular customer.

  “Asylum seeker!” asks the Gael in a dangerously quiet voice. “Does that epithet refer to my complexion?”

  “It stands out a mile.”

  In dignified speech that grows increasingly passionate the Gael announces, “I will have you know that I was born a subject of the British Empire. My father fought for it in two World Wars. In 1944, inside Buckingham Palace, King George pinned a medal to my father’s chest in recognition of his conspicuous bravery. At the same ceremony he met my mother, a MacTavish of Jura, a nurse being honoured for her services to our troops in Malaysia. They married a week later and I was born twenty years after, since when I have farmed my people’s ancestral croft with my own two hands. And now you – a Lowland Sassenach without land or ancestry – have the gall to call me an asylum seeker!”

  “I’m glad the British Empire gave you a chance in life,” says the regular customer, “but frankly, since the year dot, your sort have been diluting the purity of Scottish culture and enough is enough.”

  “What Scottish culture?” ask the Gael and barmaid simultaneously. The regular customer starts talking didactically but he too grows passionate as he tells them, “Scotland gave the world the Protestant Bible, steam engines, gas lighting, the bicycle, Tar Macadam, Macintosh raincoats, the electric telegraph, television, penicillin, Campbell’s Soup, and McDonald’s Burger King. Asylum seekers
have been diluting that proud culture ever since 1890 when the Eye-Ties came here with their decadent ice-cream parlours, their corrupting fish-and-chips shops. Then came the Jews, Indians, Pakis, Chinks, Serbs and Croats. Every stupid nation we’ve helped by invading has brought us a new wave of asylum seekers destroying our native culture with filthy foreign cuisine until now ...” (he chokes and sobs) “... now Scottish salmon, Highland venison, Aberdeen Angus beef, Forfar bridies, Finnan haddies, haggis, black pudding, shortbread and even my old granny’s tablet is for export only.”

  By a strong effort he pulls himself together and announces, “Let us now change the subject.”

  The Gael, eager to speak, raises his hand but again finds himself neglected as the regular customer tells the barmaid, “The wife phoned me again last night.”

  “Mhm?”

  “Said she still passionately loved me. She doesn’t know what passion is. She’s frigid. Never had an orgasm in her life. She was drunk of course. Alcoholic.”

  The barmaid says non-commitally, “I heard she’d sorted that out.”

  “Alcoholics never change. She sits at home seeing nobody, just boozing and making up her face and polishing her piano.”

  “She sees Senga Spotiswood.”

  “God knows why. What the hell’s happening out there?” From a great distance but growing swiftly louder and nearer is the sound of a big pipe band playing Wha Daur Meddle Wi’Me? The Gael seizes his claymore crying, “I told you! The Prince has landed!”

  The regular customer raises his voice above the music of the pipes to ask, “Why should anyone pipe up for a second-rate no-user like the Prince of Wales?”

  “Excuse me!” cries the barmaid. “That language is wholly out of order.”