Every Short Story by Alasdair Gray 1951-2012

by Gray, Alasdair

  The Gael brandishes his weapon shouting, “You have been brainwashed, my friend, by the capitalist press which derides a man for loving trees, old architecture and a woman as unglamorous as himself – the only man fit to lead a second-rate nation like modern Britain! Come with me and help the last of the Stuarts redeem his nation!”

  He departs, slamming the door behind him as the pipe music is suddenly quenched by torrential gurglings, but these are not loud enough to drown splashes that suggest the Gael is leaving the pub by wading upstream.

  The two left behind watch a damp stain in the carpet advance slowly toward them from the foot of the door. The barmaid says sadly, “We’ll have to leave soon.”

  “Mhm,” says her last customer, “half the Scottish Lowland will soon be submarine. But let’s have a whisky before our feet get wet. I’ll pay.”

  The barmaid fills two tumblers saying, “These are on the house. Will you be moving to the Highlands?”

  He says, “If there’s room. The English have been buying houses there for years. I admire them. They’re always a jump or two ahead of us.”

  She drinks deeply, choking sometimes but emptying the glass before giggling and saying, “You know, that is the first whisky I ever tasted. Why did our government not build dykes? The Dutch have had dry houses under sea level for centuries and Holland is still” – she hiccups – “safe.”

  “Dearie, the Scottish coast,” he explains, distinctly pronouncing each word, to counteract a tendency to slur, “is so intricate that we have a longer coastline than most continents. And for centuries our taxes had to pay for us being the world’s policemen. We could not afford to embank our coasts. Then the Yanks started policing the world and needed our armed forces to help save democracy from terrorists who do not share our values. So less, no I mean let us fish, no I mean finish, yes finish the blot, blot, blottle.”

  The lights go out. In total darkness comes a prolonged crash of falling masonry, then nothing is heard but rushing water.

  MAISIE AND HENRY

  MY PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHER made every girl in her class knit the same size of socks and when I told her they were far too big for me said sharply, “You’ll grow into them.”

  I never caused her trouble but she did not like me, perhaps because I questioned her occasional daftness. In my last primary year I was surprised and embarrassed to be the only one given navy blue wool to knit again more socks that would never fit me. Blue was the colour of the local academy uniform. Girls bound for junior secondary school were given maroon wool, those the teachers were unsure of received grey, so I was certainly going to the academy. This delighted my dad, a Communist shop-steward in the shipyards. He said, “Nowadays only an education for the professions leads to financial independence. Marriage won’t give it.”

  Mum, a dependent housewife ever since marriage, agreed with him, so I despised girls who thought attracting men was life’s main aim. Passing exams was more important. I was not very intellectual, so in my first university year missed parties to order to study harder than students who were, yet failed my first German literature test. I wrote that Die Leiden des jungen Werthers was not really tragic, that Der zerbrochene Krug was not much of a comedy. My tutor declared sternly, “These are German classics!” I replied that her exam paper had asked my opinion of these, so I had written what I thought.

  “Are you here on an education grant?” she asked, though she knew I was. In those days even children of rich families got education grants, which was supposed to show Britain was now a classless society. The tutor said, “Students of your sort should know you are here to learn, not think.”

  This shocked me until I saw that I need not study original texts if I regurgitated what tutors said about them. After that I easily passed exams and had time for parties. Some affairs before graduation taught me that lovemaking is enjoyable but not good for lasting partnerships, and that I could live without. Before the age of thirty I was managing the supplies department of a firm with bookshops in several universities. This meant interviewing folk who applied for jobs, which is how I met Henry.

  He was young, tall and bony, thin yet not weak, polite and shy but not nervous, and he usually looked mildly amused. His voice was soft yet deep, his accent (like mine) academy-trained working class. His application form showed he had taught Maths for four years in a secondary school so I asked why he had left. He said, “I don’t hate children but whole classes of them are too many for me. I want an easier job.”

  “You won’t get one here,” I told him. “You’ll be constantly unpacking books from big boxes, then repacking them in smaller boxes. You’ll be paid less than half what you earned as a teacher despite your first-class honours in Philosophy. That’s a far better degree than I ever got.”

  He shrugged and said, “A philosopher who cannot teach may as well supply people with books.”

  “But a first-class degree from a good university should get you something better!”

  He said he had been offered an Oxford scholarship but had to stay in Glasgow – his invalid mother needed him to look after her. That was why he had taught for so long, though hating it. He said, “She died last month so here I am. Please employ me.”

  He was obviously conscientious and truthful, so I did.

  He arrived for work each morning before 8.30 a.m. when our place opened. It was my job to know he was punctual, though I arrived after 10 a.m. because new orders seldom came earlier. To process them properly I worked later than everyone else, being able to concentrate better when my clerical staff were not pestering me with their problems. One evening when nights were growing darker, thinking myself as usual alone in the building, I went to the exit through the loading bay and saw Henry standing beside the door in his overcoat.

  “Why are you still here?” I asked and he said, “There was still a lot of tidying to be done.”

  “You’re not paid to work overtime,” I pointed out.

  “Neither are you.”

  “I’m paid a helluva lot more than you are, so it’s worth my while.”

  He sighed then spoke slowly as if explaining something obvious to a child or an idiot: “This door leads into a very dark lane. This is a rough neighbourhood after most workers leave. The only people around are from council houses, many of them unemployed, so it is not safe for a woman to be alone here at night. Staying late doesn’t bother me and my workmates leave the place in a disgusting mess. I hate messes and like tidying them up.” I said, “In that case I’ll buy you a drink.”

  Neither of us had a car. I led him to a nearby pub where I often relaxed over a pint of lager after working late. Neither of us wished to seduce the other. I am a good judge of character, knew Henry was unselfish, knew he would have stayed late for any woman, old or young, married or single. Nor would he have made a pass at them. In such circumstances I think any single woman could have got him to marry her, for he thought it right to give women what they wanted if it would not hurt them. I had a proposal for him that was not romantic.

  Over the lager I said, “If you insist on working late you can do better than tidy the basement.”

  The basement staff sent big consignments to shops all over Scotland. They also sent single books ordered by customers up to my department, a smaller but equally important job that was not done regularly. The single books accumulated on a basement trolley for a day or more and often came up with invoices missing, causing me endless trouble. I had asked the basement foreman to send the trolley up twice a day. He grudgingly said he would, but never did as he hated taking orders from a woman. Our managing directors also disliked taking orders from women so would not speak to the foreman on my behalf, saying I should deal with him. I asked Henry to look out for the single books and bring them upstairs whenever he could. If this was not possible during normal working hours he could bring them to me after his workmates left. I said, “Manage that and I’ll try getting you paid overtime, though the directors will likely say the firm can’t afford it. Th
ey’re very stingy with everyone who is not upper management and I’m only head of middle management.”

  “No matter!” said Henry cheerily. “Every business should be efficient.”

  From then on he made my life easier, and his only reward was the pint of lager I bought him afterward.

  When the rest of my staff learned of this arrangement they decided we were lovers. The women all thought Henry “a heart-throb” because of his deep soft voice, and one said, “I honestly don’t know what he sees in you.”

  Women who are not wee and chubby often wonder why men like me. At university one such man told me loftily, “Compact, manageable female bodies always appeal to the average male sensualist,” though I never let him manage mine. My deputy (another heart-throbbist) said bitterly, “Henry knows which side his bread is buttered. Guess who will be promoted when the next vacancy occurs.”

  She was promoted when the next vacancy occurred. The directors employed whoever I thought fit but never promoted those I recommended, and certainly not Henry. They called him “over-qualified”. Six months passed before he and I knew each other well enough to be lovers, another month before we married, yet in all his time with the firm he was one of the worst paid despite (unlike some with four times his salary) keeping an essential part running smoothly.

  We honeymooned on a Mediterranean coast where we did not know the language of the natives, so I forget if they were Spanish or Italian. We mostly met English holiday makers who seemed just as foreign, often dining with a couple from Felixstowe who seemed to like us. I once heard the husband say, not knowing he was overheard, “They’re terribly Scotch, aren’t they dear?”

  “Very!” said his wife. “But quaintly entertaining.”

  He said, “You find them that, but I prefer the company of normal people.”

  We enjoyed the local food but never got used to the unrelenting sunshine. That was our first and last trip abroad. Since then Millport and Lamlash on the Firth of Clyde have been our holiday resorts.

  The pattern of our evenings had changed long before our marriage. Henry still worked for almost eleven hours a day and I for over nine, so instead of visiting the pub we dined in Chinese or Indian restaurants. I hate making meals and other housework because Mum did these chores for me before I left home, and after moving to my own house I paid an agency to clean it, and for weekends bought meals that could be simply heated and tipped onto a plate. Henry preferred shopping for the ingredients of meals he cooked, having done that for his mum, so at weekends he did so for us, though I felt slightly guilty about that. But the real test of a partnership is how a couple manage together when not doing much. I am a television addict, Henry a thinker. After work and at weekends I relaxed watching a soap opera or reality show and he sat with me reading or thinking. The TV’s noise did not disturb him because, he said, his parents had been television addicts in a two-room flat. The kitchen was the only room with steady heating so at first, when doing homework at night, he had shut out noise by putting fingers in his ears. But this annoyed his dad and Henry had learned to ignore noise by concentrating harder. When Dad died his mum offered (as I did) to listen to the TV on earphones, but he said there was now no need – he could ignore any amount of noise by concentrating.

  “Concentrating on what? You’ve no school homework nowadays,” I said, never having seen him read a book. Neither did I, partly because my university tutors had made them boring, partly because I worked all day with books. Henry said he needed no books now because he remembered enough of them, and the Times Literary Supplement told him how things were going.

  “What things?” I asked and he said, “Things in general – things Victorians used to call The March of the Mind.” “How is it marching?”

  “Badly. New discoveries in physics and biology are always happening but only do good to corporations who finance them. Humane sciences are at a standstill since Marx and Freud stopped being thought important, while linguistic philosophy – the watchdog of speech – is also out of date. So is Existentialism, the last school of philosophy relevant to human action. But I enjoy seeing how academics keep carving cosy niches for themselves and their friends.”

  That was not a conversation I could continue. Normally after discussing the daily events we shared he would start reading the T.L.S., underline a word or two in an article, then sit looking into space for a long time with the unread journal open on his lap. When I asked what he was thinking once he jerked slightly as if waking from a dream then said, “Numbers.”

  “Mathematics?” I asked and he replied, “Not exactly. I ought to have said quantities – not quantities of things, just quantities in general. Even when very different – even when seemingly contradictory – they still harmonise. Is this a law of nature? Or the result of quantities being human constructs, like language? I can’t decide which.” “Neither can I. It’s totally above my head,” I confessed. “You would understand me better if you were a musician,” he said. Not being musical I returned to watching EastEnders while he resumed thinking about quantities or music with the little smile that some wives might have found annoyingly secretive. Not me. It showed my company was enough for him.

  Our lives flowed very smoothly then because (I thought) we enjoyed safety and comfort that would last until retirement and beyond. Children do not guarantee future comfort, so though never discussing them we did without. One day I told my main assistant of our good time together and she said, “I suppose you get on well with him because he does everything you want.”

  “Perhaps,” I said, “but I never want anything stupid or difficult.”

  “Good for you!” said she. “But I could never respect a man without initiative.”

  Almost angrily I said, “He has plenty of initiative! He keeps it for his hobby.”

  “He has a hobby?” she asked, incredulous. With hardly a pause I said, “Yes – quantity surveying.”

  “What on earth is that?”

  Not knowing, I said, “I’ve no time to explain. Look it up.”

  Henry and I might have continued comfortably like that for years had I not hit him with a new idea.

  One night I asked, “Have you noticed that the cost of dining out, plus paying the agency to clean this house, comes to more than your wage?”

  “Yes,” said he.

  “So we would save money if you left the firm and did the ... I mean became a ...”

  I hesitated before saying househusband because the word might offend him, and was still hesitating when he said, “Househusband. I wondered when you would think of that. But how will you manage at work without me?”

  “As badly as I did before you came. But I would be used to it, and I hate you wasting your life emptying and filling boxes.”

  He sat silent and frowning for so long that I grew worried and asked, “Are you annoyed?”

  Said he, “No. I was thinking that before financiers and politicians grabbed our economy it derived from a Greek word for housekeeping. So does ecology. Thucydides said the most satisfying economy was seen in rows of full pots arranged cleanly on shelves. Your idea is excellent. I will be a good housekeeper.”

  He was. After leaving the firm he rose each day at his usual 7 a.m., made breakfast for us both, and would have brought it to me in bed had not guilt made me rise an hour before my usual time and leave earlier for work. I never asked about his routines but the house was spotless when I returned. He put away clean clothes so neatly that I knew they had been ironed and told him housewives nowadays never bothered with ironing. He said, “They should. Clothes are better for it.”

  I had never much noticed what I ate but our meals now tasted so nice that I asked if he bought special ingredients. No, said he, the ingredients were cheap and local, but he was learning to properly cook them. He began baking bread and brewing ale. On a patio off the kitchen, in warm days of the brighter months, we enjoyed the ale while overlooking the back garden. My neighbours paid gardeners to keep their lawns and flowerbeds pretty, an
d had given me dark looks because I had left mine to the weeds. Henry planted our back with neat plots of potato and other root vegetables, built a glasshouse for tomatoes, dug a pit for compost and surrounded it with gooseberry bushes. On what had been the front lawn he planted a herb garden with blackcurrant hedges. One evening at dinner he produced a bottle of wine saying the French believed that a meal without wine is not a meal.

  “Is that why France has an alcohol problem?” I asked.

  “Scottish alcoholism is worse than French,” he said, “and French alcoholism is only rife among those who drink the worst and cheapest wines.”

  “So we are drinking expensive wine?”

  “Just expensive enough to be good,” he said, “and one glass each with a dinner won’t impoverish us.”

  I enjoyed that dinner so much that I stopped arguing. Not since early childhood had home been pleasanter than my time at work. Work was getting more difficult, and not just because Henry had left.

  The firm had been founded by a man who sold first editions of Burns’ poetry, and had prospered and expanded until the late 20th century when I joined it. The owner was now someone I will call Sanker, who treated the business as a hobby he could leave to underlings. I thought him charming and aristocratic, partly because he made me boss of the orders department, partly from his eccentric terminology – he called me Mistress Maisie and pronounced John, Shon. Then he made someone I will call McGeeky the firm’s general manager. McGeeky had been a good manager of our biggest shop but knew and cared nothing about ordering books, and was put in charge of the firm because he always told Sanker it was doing wonderfully. Since McGeeky was now in charge of promotion all the senior managers became folk who saw nothing wrong with the firm. McGeeky imitated Sanker’s speech eccentricities, they imitated McGeeky’s, and at meetings I was the only one who did not, and was the only woman. I privately called them The Smug because they tolerated me as a joke – a grumbler whose words could be ignored. Without consulting me The Smug began telling members of my staff to do small jobs for them immediately, then complained to me when this slowed delivery of big jobs. Once I had overcome such problems by working overtime, but now the problems threatened to overcome me. New problems arose. The manager of technical book sales was put in charge of computerizing the firm and several hitches followed. He asked for and got two young assistants, each one of whom (I discovered) knew enough about computing to alone modernize the firm. That would have made their manager unnecessary, so he needed two assistants to play against each other, and the hitches continued. Then our works manager, though needed for heating maintenance, could seldom be found in his office or any of our shops. I suspected that, while paid by the firm, he was supervising the repair of Sanker and McGeeky’s private properties. All this was reducing our profits so The Smug sent the rest of the staff on expensive re-education courses which improved nothing. Then from my office invoices for large sums began mysteriously vanishing. Nobody in our building, or even out of it (I thought), had anything to gain by these thefts which caused nothing but pointless delay. Continual frustration sometimes made me weep because I loved my work.