Every Short Story by Alasdair Gray 1951-2012

by Gray, Alasdair

  “Are you suggesting that I and my friend are corrupt?” demands his victim. “Certainly not!” says Big with a sudden cheerful grin. “Your jargon makes it clear you have so little power that you aren’t worth bribing. I am sorry to hurt your companion’s feelings, because she seems keen to understand things …” (the woman at the other table seems near to tears) “… so let us all talk more quietly now.”

  “Bring me the bill!” the other man tells the waitress. “I will never set foot in this restaurant again, and will make sure none of my friends do either.”

  He pays. The couple leave. Before reaching the door the man tells Big, “You are a right bastard.”

  Big chuckles and resumes his meal.

  Without obvious blame Proody says, “You enjoyed humiliating that man.”

  “It relieved my feelings,” says Big pleasantly. “You must admit that he talked a lot of shit.”

  “Did you hear me say I was going to leave you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anything to say about that?”

  “No. I knew you were going to leave me.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since we became lovers.”

  She stares at him until Big feels an explanation is due.

  “You’re very attractive Proody,” he says, “attractive and intelligent. I find it easy to charm women like you at first and can keep doing it if they don’t see much of me. But when the sex thing starts they do see more of me, and start not liking what they often see.”

  “A bully,” she tells him.

  “If you say so,” he answers humbly.

  They stop eating. After a while she almost begs, “Since you know yourself so well, can you not change?”

  “I’ve tried. I was married you know, with kids and apologies for not remembering anniversaries and politeness to in-laws who bored me stiff. I kept forgetting how much hypocrisy marriage needs to keep it going. I employ more than forty people, some of them with smart ideas of their own. I can only control them by being what you call an bully. I am not a Mr Hyde or Ebenezer Scrooge at work who could completely become Dr Jekyll or Mr Pickwick in the bosom of my family. Maybe that was possible in pre-mobile phone days, but now folk with thriving businesses can never lose touch with them. My wives couldn’t understand that. Luckily I can afford to support them, being one of those fat cats people complain about.”

  They are silent for a whole minute then she says, “So from the start you knew our affair was an episode? An emotional dead end?”

  “That’s an ugly way to describe some very nice times we’ve had, Proody.”

  “From now on my name is Prue or Prudence.”

  They are speaking too quietly for the waitress to hear. She comes to remove the plates, saying that the kitchen is closed but she can serve coffee or anything else they wish to drink. Big says, “Bring me – ” but Prue or Prudence interrupts saying, “Nothing for me. I’m leaving. Make out a bill for the risotto and my glass of wine.”

  “Please don’t leave like this dear!” he begs. “Can’t we part like friends?”

  “No. I will lose all self-respect if I stay with you another minute.”

  She follows the waitress to the bar, pays and receives her coat. He stares forlornly after her, but she leaves the restaurant without a backward glance.

  Putting an elbow on the tabletop he rests his chin on the palm of the hand, sighs deeply and groans quietly. Seeing the waitress approach he groans more theatrically and announces, “I may not seem a tragic figure to you, but once again a good woman has rejected, dumped and done with me, having discovered what a selfish, exploitive bastard I am. I have never got used to this, no matter how often it happens.”

  Unimpressed, she asks, “Do you want the rest of your champagne?”

  “You are a clever girl, Maggie. I must indeed soothe myself with plonk before leaving, but not with the plonk in my black velvet which, though tolerable mixed with Guinness, was obviously your cheapest. Bring me a bottle of your most expensive.”

  “My name is not Maggie.”

  “You astonish me. What is it?”

  Almost surprised into smiling she says, “None of your business. We have Moet et Chandon 2003, seventy-three pounds.”

  He pleads pathetically, “Please don’t leave me to drink it alone. For a short time before leaving here I need a good-looking, intelligent woman to sit here pretending my company is bearable. I will not try to make you drunk. Please invite the chef to drink with us too.”

  “He’s gone home,” says the waitress, looking at him thoughtfully.

  There is no record of how their conversation ends.

  THE PATIENT

  WITH NO MEMORY OF ANYTHING PREVIOUS he found himself sitting up in a hospital bed wearing a hospital nightgown while a young woman checked his pulse, temperature, tested his reflexes then asked, “How do you feel now?”

  “Perfectly all right,” he said because that was exactly how he felt. She made notes on a clipboard while he wondered if she was a doctor, a highly-trained nurse or something between the two. His main experience of hospitals had been half a century earlier, when everyone’s rank in a hospital was shown in the clothing. Doctors had white coats, usually open to show suits worn by most professional people then. Ward matrons and the nurses they commanded wore crisp linen aprons over blue dresses, with the matrons’ superiority asserted by a linen head-dress rather like the wig of a sphinx. He thought about changes that had altered most things he once took for granted until a young man in a green t-shirt and trousers came and began checking his pulse, temperature etc. The patient said, “This has been done already.”

  “Yes,” said the man, “but we like to make sure.”

  The patient thought about asking what was wrong with him, and how he had come there, but felt that admission of ignorance would demean him. Instead he asked (for the thought had suddenly occurred) “Where is my wife?” “She’s staying overnight in a hotel. We’ll probably let you out tomorrow, but had better keep you here till then in case complications develop.”

  The man went away and the patient took stock of his situation.

  His clothes, neatly folded, were on a chair beside the bed with his shoes on the floor beneath. A window behind showed total darkness outside so the hour was very late or very early in the morning. He was in a square ward with a bed in each corner. The bed facing him was empty. The other two beds, on each side of the ward’s entrance, had curtains pulled round them with two or three people inside talking in low voices. This was certainly an Accident and Emergency ward, but what had been the accident and where was the hospital? There was no ache in any part of his body and no stiffness in any joint, but on top of his skull where hardly any hair now grew he felt a mound like half a hard-boiled egg without the shell, sore when pressed, and with what seemed a gritty groove across it. How had that happened? Margaret and he had gone to a conference at Edinburgh University. His speech had received the usual friendly applause, and in a staff room afterwards they had stood eating wee sandwiches and sausage rolls and from cardboard plates, gossiping and sipping wine. Or was it whisky? Or both? Both were possible. Had this led to him falling down? But he had no hangover. He really did feel perfectly well and (he suddenly noticed) hungry.

  After a while he got out of bed and went between the curtained beds to the entrance. Here he met the young man in green clothes coming in with a piece of medical equipment and asked him, “Can I have something to eat?” “Certainly. Soon. Soon.” said the man, going behind the curtains around a bed. The patient went back, lay down and after a while decided that the Emergency staff had more important things to do than feed him, so he would go out and buy a supper from the nearest fish and chip shop. Without removing the hospital nightshirt he tucked it into his trousers, put jersey and jacket on top, strapped on his sandals and went out into the corridor. Following EXIT signs with pointing arrows he passed through several corridors without passing anyone who noticed him, then arrived at a big doorway and went
through. There was no street outside, only an acre of tarmac with a few parked cars and on the far side the black silhouettes of treetops against the slightly less black night sky. Then he remembered that Edinburgh City Hospital was no longer beside the University with nearby shops and pubs. This modern hospital was obviously miles from a fish and chip shop. With a sigh he went back inside. Seeing some seated men who seemed to be ambulance drivers he asked if there was a place where food could be got.

  “You’ll find a vending machine through there,” said one of them, pointing. He found a big waiting room with nobody but himself there, and beside an empty reception desk a big glass-fronted cupboard containing many shelves. On the upper shelves packets of differently flavoured potato crisps were displayed, on the lower shelves those sweets that Americans call candy bars. Each was identified by a number and a letter of the alphabet beneath it on the shelf. A bar of chocolate interested him but could only be acquired by pressing buttons on a small switchboard at the side and putting money into a slot. He had not used a slot machine for years so had not realized they had become as bafflingly intricate as modern telephones, wireless sets and the latest models of probably everything else. He went back to the Emergency ward, again without anybody appearing to notice.

  On the locker by the bed was a sandwich in a plastic wrapper and a cup of tea that was still warm enough to drink. Whoever left it there had perhaps assumed he was in the ward’s lavatory. It was a cheese and tomato sandwich. He ate it and drank the tea with great pleasure while sitting on the bed, then removed his sandals, stood up to undress, then saw that what had been the empty bed opposite had now a woman in it who was much younger than he. She was watching him with an absence of expression that somehow made him feel apologetic. Before pulling the curtains around his own bed he told her, “I’m doing this because I’m going to get undressed.” She said, “Don’t worry – I won’t jump on you.”

  He pulled the curtains round his bed, undressed, got in and slept.

  And awoke to a new day because there was a bright sky outside the window. He got up and dressed. The bed opposite was empty again. The two beds beside the entrance were now uncurtained. One was empty, the other contained a body he did not look at closely because of the low distressing sounds it made and the many tubes running into it. A clock on the wall showed the time was 8.20 a.m. National Health Hospitals had certainly changed a lot. Until the 1970s or perhaps later he remembered all patients being wakened soon after 7 a.m. by nurses serving breakfast. Then he heard a familiar voice from the corridor saying a sentence ending with the words, “… my husband.”

  He stood up and went to her saying, “Here I am.”

  “So he’s all right? I can take him home?” she asked the man in green who was obviously still on duty.

  “Yes, take him home. If any of the symptoms described on this sheet occur, send for your GP at once, but if he takes things easy for a few weeks and avoids booze for a fortnight, I think he’ll be fine.”

  As they walked hand-in-hand to the exit he asked, “What happened? How did I get here?”

  “We were going down some steep steps into the Old Quadrangle. I needed help and got it. You thought you didn’t, and tripped, and would have fallen on your face had you not twisted sideways and banged your head instead. I thought you were dead – it was a nightmare. The ambulance came quite quick and the doctors here said it was a simple case of concussion, and I needn’t worry, but how did I know they weren’t saying that just to calm me? We are not going back to Glasgow by train. We’re going by taxi the whole way, no matter what it costs.” And they did.

  BILLY SEMPLE

  LEANING HEAVILY ON A STICK and walking with great difficulty, a man came into the pub where I usually drank a few years ago. The pub has since been gentrified out of existence. I did not think the man leaning on the stick was drunk, but the barman refused to serve him. The man said, “I’m Billy Semple, I used to play for Rangers.

  My legs are all shattered.”

  “You still have to leave here.”

  “How?”

  “The way you came.”

  Both were silent for a while, then the barman asked if he should phone for a taxi. Semple nodded.

  While the barman phoned I helped Semple to the door and stood outside with him, though standing seemed as hard for him as walking. I also noticed he was, in a quiet way, very drunk indeed. I know nothing about football, so to make conversation said, “Not easy, eh?”

  He muttered something like, “You never know how things will end.”

  The taxi arrived, but when the driver saw Semple he said, “Not in my cab,” and drove off. I returned into the pub and asked the barman to phone for an ambulance. He did, then came outside. The three of us waited, and when the ambulance came the ambulance men also refused to take Semple. I had not realised that our public health service now rejects helpless invalids for being drunk, but of course the world keeps changing all the time.

  “Nothing for it but the police,” said the barman going back inside.

  When the police came they lifted Semple into their van and drove off.

  End of story. Maybe they charged him with being drunk and disorderly, maybe they took him to where he lived, or maybe both. I asked a football enthusiast if he had heard of Billy Semple. He said, “Yes. Used to play for Rangers. Definitely a name to conjure with.” Maybe the man was lying about his name but he convinced me.

  ENDING

  HAVING BEGUILED WITH FICTION until I had none left I resorted to facts, which also ran out.

  AT THE MOMENT OF HIS GREATEST TRIUMPH Captain Hook falls into a melancholy that is perhaps familiar to many old Etonians. He then and there decides to give his dying speech, in case the inevitable tick-tocking crocodile leaves him no time for it later. The same vanity has made these endnotes tell more about my life as a fiction writer than I first intended. An astute critic said my last book would bore many readers by its repetition of passages printed elsewhere. Many sentences that follow have also been printed before.

  INTRODUCTION

  Wordsworth is right to say the younger we are the brighter our world appears. I was born in a pleasant home, a flat in a newly built Glasgow housing scheme with gardens, trees and skies as good as anywhere else, but when these had grown familiar by the age of two I wanted extravagantly different experiences. My parents satisfied this want. I cannot remember not knowing Cinderella, Aladdin and the adventures of other weak or exploited folk helped to happiness and wealth by magic gifts. I then came to enjoy the cosy fantasy of Pooh Corner with its soft toy inhabitants, and the dangerous, more challenging worlds of Hans Anderson. From him I learned that even in magical lands people like me could come to grief and die, and I felt like the main character in every interesting tale, even the Little Match Girl. Fabulous tales free us from immediate, everyday suffering but also prepare us for it. The talking animals known to Dr Dolittle and Toad of Toad Hall are not more fabulous than Aesop’s, but Aesop’s fables (like Beatrix Potter’s) promote common sense, undeluded, Stoical views of life. I was not such a stoic as The Brave Tin Soldier, much as I pitied him. I preferred the unemployed soldier of The Tinder Box who murdered an old woman then became a spendthrift, an abductor of a princess and at last a king.

  It is a small step from feeling like heroes or heroines of other peoples’ stories to swaggering through stories of our own imagining. Most children take that step, instinctively editing what they hear, read and enjoy in films and comics into daydreams of the sort Doctor Freud called (when sleepers had them) wish-fulfillment dreams. Experience mostly changes our childish daydreams into what we adults hope and fear for our future. My serial daydream of having a magic gift granting extraordinary power is the basic plot of Superman and must have inspired several presidents of the USA. Most American comics came to Britain at the end of World War Two, fascinating me by their competent outlines, lavish colour and pictures of damsels in distress, but my serial fantasy was active before that war started, and was so sat
isfying that I sometimes resented its interruption by adults, but not often. Mum, Dad, my sister and me were close together most evenings of the year because only our living room usually had a warm fire. Mum had given me fairytales. Dad showed me The Harmsworth Encyclopaedia, The Miracle of Life and other books with pictures proving there were, or had been, or could be, wonderful realities outside our douce housing scheme that also fed my fantasies. To make these more real I needed an audience and sister Mora became that. I told her my fanciful adventures as we walked to school, then later as we lay in adjacent bedrooms with the doors between open. Like most parents Mum and Dad put us to bed earlier than we thought right because (they said) we needed a good night’s sleep. They may also have wanted more time to themselves. They never interrupted my serial story by shutting the bedroom doors. Mora did not interest me as a person, being two years younger and a girl, but until I was thirteen or more I needed her as much as I have since needed a public for my books.

  The world outside my fantasies imposed itself. The 1939 war evacuated us from Glasgow. For a few years I enjoyed a privileged childhood in Wetherby, a Yorkshire market town where I explored the countryside, climbed trees and played with other boys. Our main game was finding or making dens – secret places in bushes, up trees or in odd huts or buildings where none suspected us. I recall nothing remarkable done in our dens or even stories associated with them, apart from one. I discovered a den by myself in an isolated outhouse, one of several in the munition workers’ hostel where Dad was manager. It must have been an auxiliary furnace room, to be used if one of the hostel’s other power sources was damaged. I could not open the door or window but found at ground level a low shutter and slid it up far enough to let me crawl under – a hatch through which fuel could be raked from an outside heap of coke. Within was a cement floor, bare brick walls, the cold furnace and a secrecy I much appreciated, for I had a notebook in which I meant to write a story of my own. It was inspired by a booklet in a series, Tales for the Young Folk, each of which cost thruppence, and were often so puerile that I easily imagined improving on them. Why did I want secrecy to write this one? To discourage exhibitionism my parents never praised my writings and drawings, but I knew they approved of them – Dad had typed silly verses I had written under the inspiration of A.A. Milne. I suspect my version of this tale gave it a cruel twist Mum and Dad would dislike. I now recall nothing of the story I attempted, but in that outhouse came a glorious conviction that one day I would write a book that many would read. After that I think every interesting story or experience was regarded, often consciously, as potential material for fiction. This happened when I was eight or nine, because for what seemed years after I meant to astonish the world with a book completed when I was twelve – the first of my many failed literary projects.