Childish Things

by Robin Jenkins

  Considering that the combined ages of the guests were close to 1000 years, and their ailments and decrepitudes were numerous and comprehensive, the party did not turn out to be as dreary as our hostess had feared. To be fair to Susan, she helped make it a success by providing good food, mostly of a kind suitable for false or shoogly teeth, and plenty of excellent wine. With all that assortment of worn-out bladders and dodgy prostates, it wasn’t surprising that there was a steady leaving of the table for short periods. Henry Sneddon had to leave twice, with Helen assisting him. Luckily he made it both times without mishap.

  If I seem to make fun of old Henry, I apologise. His was a painful as well as a discomfiting malady.

  The subject of the Tullochs was brought up early.

  ‘Poor Millie,’ said Helen Sneddon, and added, somewhat inconsistently, ‘She’s so happy now.’

  ‘Poor Millie nothing,’ said Susan, in her harsh voice. ‘She should have libbed the big brute years ago.’

  Susan was noted, or notorious, for plain speaking. This latest example was pondered by her guests.

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ she went on, rubbing their noses in it, ‘all men, when they reach the age of fifty, should be libbed. Don’t you agree, Gregor?’

  Mrs Donaldson, who insisted on wearing her hat – to hide her baldness, it was thought – asked, in a thin high voice like a child, what was ‘libbed’.

  ‘You tell her, Gregor,’ said Susan.

  I smiled. ‘That’s for Bruce, surely.’

  But Bruce Donaldson, Mabel’s husband, like her close to 80, wasn’t following the conversation. He was giving all his attention to the wine. Good for you, Bruce, I thought.

  ‘It would prevent a lot of useless lust, wouldn’t it?’ said Susan, still rubbing our noses in it.

  There was a rumour in the town that Albert Cramond, wealthy ironworks owner, had found Susan when she was working as a barmaid in an Edinburgh pub. No one had ever dared to ask her if it was true.

  There followed a small silence.

  It was broken by Jimmy McDowall, one of my ‘Murchison pals’. He thought it was time he contributed to the conversation. Unfortunately, he usually spoke irrelevant nonsense and punctuated it with sly giggles. That he was 74 and therefore on the verge of dementia, might have been regarded as an excuse in other company, but not there, where most were older than he.

  ‘This Mrs Cardross that Bill’s run off with,’ he said, with a typical giggle, ‘is fair-haired, isn’t she? Gregor prefers fair-haired women, don’t you Gregor? Kate was fair-haired, wasn’t she?’

  They all looked crossly at him and his wife Agnes stepped on his foot under the table, but he had given them an opportunity to speak about their friend Kate.

  ‘Kate was the nicest-looking woman I ever saw,’ said Archie McBain.

  His wife Sheila smiled and nodded. She was a sensible woman. There was no point in being jealous of a woman who was dead. If you were 75, there was no point in being jealous at all.

  ‘I never heard her say a bad word about anyone.’

  ‘She had such a merry laugh.’

  ‘Did you ever see her dance a Duke of Perth? Light-footed as a fairy, she was.’

  Yes, but not latterly. She still had danced, but not so nimbly. I felt desolate.

  ‘It’s all right, Gregor,’ said Sheila McBain. ‘You’re not parted forever. You’ll meet again in heaven.’

  It would be difficult, for neither Kate nor I had been able to believe in such a place.

  Morag McVey had been waiting, like a vulture, for an opening to try to ruin the party. Born and brought up in Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, she was a member of the Free Kirk. Probably she was the only person there who thoroughly believed in heaven. The rest were Protestants or Presbyterians, which meant that they did not believe in heaven (though they weren’t sure about hell) or in the Resurrection, or the Virgin Birth, or miracles, but of course they still called themselves Christians.

  ‘Gregor and Kate can never meet again,’ said Morag, sternly. ‘Kate is in heaven, but he will go straight to hell.’

  If it had been meant as a joke, it would have been in bad taste but worth perhaps a twisted grin.

  No doubt some of the guests, like myself, were reflecting that Morag’s heaven would be worse than most people’s hell. Nothing enjoyable would be allowed. It would be Bible-reading and psalm-singing morning, noon, and night.

  ‘That’s not a nice thing to say, Morag,’ said Helen Sneddon.

  I would have liked to ask the McVey bitch what she thought I had done or not done to deserve an eternity of separation and pain. There were such things, but she did not know about them. No one did. No one ever would.

  ‘Don’t heed her, Gregor,’ said Helen. ‘I see you as Orpheus, you know, the singer who went down into the Underworld to ask Hades the king to let him have back his wife Eurydice, who had died. He sang so beautifully that Pluto agreed, on condition that Orpheus on his way up to earth didn’t look back. He couldn’t resist looking back to see if she was following. She was, but she faded before his eyes and he never saw her again. What would you sing, Gregor? “Maiden of Morven”?’

  That Celtic cry of anguish and longing for a dead sweetheart. It would certainly have drawn ‘iron tears’ from Pluto’s eyes.

  Henry patted his wife’s hand. ‘You’re too old to believe in fairy-tales,’ he said fondly.

  Orpheus had not loved his Eurydice more than Henry with his fragile bowels did his Helen.

  ‘But you know what happened to Orpheus,’ said ex-Sheriff Alec Riddick, with a chuckle. ‘He was torn to pieces by savage women.’

  Somehow, that picture of me being set upon by harpies lightened the mood and cheered everybody up. Perhaps, metaphorically, they were putting their fingers to their noses at death, an ominous if invisible presence. Someone proposed that they should have a wee dance. In Susan’s mansion there was plenty of room.

  Susan wasn’t sure, she had no objection to their dancing, but she was afraid that one, perhaps more, might drop down dead.

  ‘Gregor’s the guest of honour,’ she said. ‘He might not feel like dancing, considering the circumstances.’

  I said that dancing was as good a way of remembering Kate as any. She had been so keen on it and had enjoyed it so much.

  Anyone looking in would have been moved or amused or both to see those shaky legs and gouty feet foxtrotting and waltzing, so cautiously but also so happily. No one dropped dead, though some puffed and wheezed. A Duke of Perth was recklessly demanded. If there was going to be a heart attack, it would be during that dance, however sedately it was performed. Luckily it passed off without mishap.

  At last they all departed. Several offered to give me a lift home but Susan stepped in and said I ought to walk, the fresh air would sober me up.

  She sat down purposefully beside me on the big couch. She smoked a cigarette, I a cigar. We both drank cognac.

  ‘Well, Gregor, it went quite well, I suppose.’

  ‘Very well, Susan, thank you.’

  I was wondering, with some apprehension, what it was she wanted to say to me.

  ‘That bitch McVey wasn’t getting at you, you know. She was getting at me.’

  ‘She’s not worth heeding.’

  ‘I said I had something to say to you. Well, here it is. Go to California. Get over Kate. Don’t wait till March. Come back soon after the New Year. We’ll go off together on a world cruise.’

  In my astonishment, I let cigar ash fall onto my golf-club tie. But I couldn’t help imagining myself in white slacks and nautical cap, strolling round the deck.

  Would there, though, be one or two cabins?

  ‘We’re suited to each other,’ she said. ‘Some would say we deserve each other.’

  ‘But, Susan, you’re an unrepentant Tory and I’m a committed socialist.’

  ‘Piffle. You’re no more a socialist than I am. You’re a worse snob than me. Ask anyone who knows you.’

  Was that how people saw me
? I remembered overhearing a remark at the golf club: ‘That Gregor McLeod’s a pain in the arse.’ I had been captain at the time and had taken my duties seriously. If I saw a rule being wilfully broken, I immediately reprimanded the offender. It had not made me popular.

  ‘We’ve got a lot in common, Gregor. We like the best of everything. We’ve got a guid conceit of ourselves. We like books. We like music. We like good wine. We don’t give a damn who we offend.’

  I winced. Was I as insensitive as that?

  ‘As for the fucking side, we’re both long past it.’

  In the turmoil of emotions aroused in me, resentment surged to the top. How dare she imply that I was a eunuch, libbed by age?

  ‘What about it, Gregor?’

  ‘You’ve taken my breath away, Susan.’

  ‘Imagine, outside the window, not the dreich wintry Firth, but the South Atlantic. Sunshine. Blue skies. Flying fish. Tomorrow Cape Town. No whimpers, please, about oppressed blacks.’

  ‘Not even a sigh or two of righteous indignation?’

  She laughed. ‘All right. A sigh or two. It wouldn’t be you, Gregor, if you weren’t allowed a dollop of humbug.’

  Chrissie had called me a fraud. What they all meant, without knowing it, was that, having been born into the most dishonest, the most hypocritical century in the history of mankind, I had had to cultivate enough guile to preserve my self-respect.

  ‘We haven’t a great deal of time left, Gregor. Let’s enjoy it together. I’m sure Kate wouldn’t mind. She wasn’t one to let death have the last word.’

  Surely, if death had anything, it had the last word? But would Kate mind, wherever she was? She had always been wary of Susan.

  ‘What would your children say, Susan?’

  She had two sons and a daughter, all married. She was a grandmother several times over. In fact she was a great-grandmother.

  ‘It wouldn’t matter a damn what they said. Would you let your daughters stand in your way?’

  I had already made it clear to Jean that I wouldn’t.

  ‘We wouldn’t get married. No need for such nonsense. When we come back, you’d go on living in your place, I’d go on living here; but we’d meet more often.’

  I would have dearly liked to live in her house. I coveted it. It had been built more than 100 years ago by a wealthy Glasgow merchant, and no expense had been spared, including the employment of an architect who had loved beautiful things. Everything in the house was a pleasure to see and use. Even the door knobs were things of beauty, made of porcelain with coloured pictures of elegant ladies and gentlemen in 18th-century dress. The woodwork was mahogany, the ceilings high and splendidly corniced. The staircase was palatial. In the three bathrooms, the lavatory pans were adorned with paintings of flowers. Hence, they were known as the rose lavatory, the daffodil lavatory, and the thistle lavatory, respectively.

  It wasn’t I, Gregor McLeod, retired headmaster, who had a great longing to live in that magnificent house. It was the small boy I had been, more than 60 years ago.

  ‘On this cruise, Susan,’ I said, ‘would there be one or two cabins?’

  She laughed. ‘One would be a lot cheaper.’

  Yes, but a lot less private. Being shut up with Susan would have its travails. Flying fish seen through the porthole would be small compensation.

  ‘Well, Gregor, what do you say?’

  ‘Would you mind, Susan, if I took a little time to think it over? I could give you my answer from California.’

  ‘Please yourself. I won’t see you again before you leave. I’m off to Perth tomorrow to spend a few days with my daughter Elizabeth.’

  She gave me her cheek to kiss and then she telephoned for a taxi for me. I was too drunk to walk, she said.

  She didn’t wait for the taxi to come but excused herself and went up the grand staircase to bed.

  I was much relieved that I wasn’t going up with her.

  The taxi-driver, it turned out, had once been a pupil of mine. He helped me into the taxi.

  ‘Remember, Mr McLeod,’ he said cheerfully, ‘every Friday morning you used to give the whole school a lecture on the evils of strong drink.’

  8

  I was to fly off from Prestwick Airport on Saturday morning. On Thursday evening, I had a telephone call from Millie Tulloch. I hardly recognised her voice: it was still a little girl’s, but not as before an ill-done-to self-pitying little girl; on the contrary, a haughty sly little girl. Pathos had suited her, haughtiness and slyness did not.

  ‘Good evening, Gregor. Have you heard? About me and Tulloch? Of course you have. You were all discussing me at Susan’s, weren’t you?’

  Her friend Morag McVey must have told her.

  ‘We were all sympathising with you, Millie.’

  ‘You needn’t have bothered. I don’t need anyone’s sympathy. Except yours, Gregor. Yes, definitely, you’re excepted.’

  She giggled. It wasn’t, though, like all her previous giggles, nervous and silly. This giggle had ominous purpose in it. What was that purpose?

  ‘So you’re off on Saturday?’

  ‘Yes, Millie.’

  ‘I hope you weren’t sneaking off without saying goodbye?’

  ‘Certainly not. I was just about to ring you when you rang me.’

  ‘It’s not the same, is it, talking on the telephone? I want you to come here and talk to me. I’ve got something very important to say to you.’

  I was wary. ‘I’ve not got much time left, Millie.’

  ‘You’ve got tonight. I want you to come now.’

  All I could think to say was ‘But it’s pouring rain.’

  ‘Are you trying to insult me, Gregor? But I know it’s not the rain you’re afraid of. It’s Tulloch, isn’t it? Well, you needn’t be. He’s not here. He’ll never be here again.’

  ‘So it’s finished between you and him?’

  ‘Absolutely finished. I’m getting a divorce as soon as I can.’

  ‘How long have you been married, Millie?’

  ‘Thirty-four years.’

  ‘Isn’t it sad when a marriage of that length of time ends so miserably?’

  ‘What’s miserable about it? It’s not a bit sad. I’ll expect you in half an hour. Have you eaten?’

  ‘No.’

  I should have lied and said yes. Millie was not a good cook.

  ‘Good. Then you can eat with me.’

  Half an hour later, with rain slotting on my umbrella, as I was walking along the avenue to Millie’s, I made a discovery. The prospect of being alone with her and so seeing at long last that delicious rump, perhaps in naked pulchritude, did not delight me. I was like a child who, having longed for a toy in a shop window, found, when it was in his hands, that much of its magic had disappeared.

  The alacrity with which the door opened alarmed me. She seized my arm and dragged me in. This was not the timid little Millie I had known; this was a rapacious little Millie that I had never seen before. She was wearing a pink jumper and skin-tight pants that were yellow with black stripes: imitation ocelot, she was to tell me later.

  To show her an example of calmness, I shook my umbrella, folded it, and placed it in the stand. Then I took off hat and raincoat and hung them up.

  Impatiently she grabbed my hand. ‘We’ll go through to the kitchen, Gregor. It’s cosier there.’

  In the kitchen, a most untidy place, there was an unpleasant smell. It came from a pot on the cooker.

  ‘What are you cooking, Millie?’ I asked.

  ‘Goulash. I’m good at goulash.’

  ‘It smells as if it’s burning.’

  She laughed. ‘That’s a secret ingredient, Gregor. You see, I’ve bought wine. Is it good wine?’

  There were two bottles on the table. Yes, it was good wine. My heart rose a little.

  When her back was turned, I peeped into the fridge and saw cheese, cold meat, and beetroot. If the goulash was uneatable, I would still have something to eat with the wine.

  Sh
e was stroking her rear. ‘What do you think of my pants, Gregor?’

  ‘Very attractive, Millie.’

  ‘Imitation ocelot. I’ve got a nice round bottom, haven’t I?’

  ‘You have.’

  ‘Susan Cramond accused me of showing it off. She was jealous. She’s got nothing here at all. It’s not womanly to have a skinny bottom, is it?’

  ‘No, it isn’t.’

  ‘Mind you, I had an awful job getting into them, and I expect it’ll be an awful job getting out of them, unless of course I have assistance.’

  There was that giggle again.

  I sat down at the table and poured wine into the two glasses. I only half-filled hers.

  ‘More for me, please, Gregor.’

  ‘But wine makes you sad, Millie.’

  ‘It won’t tonight, I assure you. I’m very happy, haven’t you noticed? Isn’t it funny, Gregor, I’m going to get a divorce and you’re a widower.’

  What was funny about that?

  ‘We’ll both be free.’

  What was she getting at?

  ‘Ready for your goulash, Gregor?’

  ‘Thank you, Millie. Not too much, though. My stomach’s been bothering me these last two or three days.’

  ‘Is it nerves, do you think?’

  ‘It could be.’

  She heaped my plate with the nauseating stuff.

  She sat down and ate with relish. She drank her wine as if it was water.

  ‘Drink it slowly, Millie,’ I said.

  I was beginning to feel alarmed. At any moment she might break down.

  ‘I said I had something very important to say to you, Gregor.’

  Whatever it was, I tried to put it off. ‘If you divorce Bill, do you think he’ll marry this Mrs Cardross?’

  Too late I realised that that was a damned tactless thing to say.

  She answered calmly enough. I should have been warned. ‘I don’t care if he marries her or not. I expect he will, for he’s always wanted children and I couldn’t have any. Did you know, Gregor, that I couldn’t have children?’

  ‘No, Millie, I didn’t know.’

  To humour her, I was eating the goulash as if I liked it.

  ‘We won’t bother with them, will we, Gregor?’

  ‘Not a bit, Millie.’