A star had fallen beyond the horizon, in Canada perhaps. (He had an aunt in Canada.) The second was nearer, just beyond the iron works, so he was not surprised when the third fell into the backyard. A flash of gold light lit the walls of the enclosing tenements and he heard a low musical chord. The light turned deep red and went out, and he knew that somewhere below a star was cooling in the night air. Turning from the window he saw that no-one else had noticed. At the table his father, thoughtfully frowning, filled in a football coupon, his mother continued ironing under the pulley with its row of underwear. He said in a small voice, “A’m gawn out.”

His mother said, “See you’re no’ long then.”

He slipped through the lobby and onto the stairhead, banging the door after him.

One day Ian Nicol, a riveter by trade, started to split in two down the middle. The process began as a bald patch on the back of his head. For a week he kept smearing it with hair restorer, yet it grew bigger, and the surface became curiously puckered and so unpleasant to look upon that at last he went to his doctor. “What is it?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” said the doctor, “but it looks like a face, ha, ha! How do you feel these days?”

“Fine. Sometimes I get a stabbing pain in my chest and stomach but only in the morning.”

“Eating well?”

“Enough for two men.”

The doctor thumped him all over with a stethoscope and said, “I’m going to have you X-rayed. And I may need to call in a specialist.”

Over the next three weeks the bald patch grew bigger still and the suggestion of a face more clearly marked on it. Ian visited his doctor and found a specialist in the consulting room, examining X-ray plates against the light. “No doubt about it, Nicol,” said the specialist, “you are splitting in two down the middle.” Ian considered this.

“That’s not usual, is it?” he asked. “Oh, it happens more than you would suppose. Among bacteria and viruses it’s very common, though it’s certainly less frequent among riveters. I suggest you go into hospital where the process can complete itself without annoyance for your wife or embarrassment to yourself. Think it over.”

The painting departments of modern art schools are full of discontented people. One day Mildred said to me, “I’m sick of wasting time. We start work at ten and tire after half an hour and the boys throw paper pellets at each other and the girls stand round the radiators talking. Then we get bored and go to the refectory and drink coffee and we aren’t enjoying ourselves, but what else can we do? I’m tired of it. I want to do something vigorous and constructive.”

I said, “Dig a tunnel.”

“What do you mean?”

“Instead of drinking coffee when you feel bored, go down to the basement and dig an escape tunnel.”

“But if I wanted to escape I could walk through the front door and not come back.”

“You can’t escape that way. The education department would stop your bursary and you would have to work for a living.”

“But where would I be escaping to?”

“That isn’t important. To travel hopefully is better than to arrive.”

The Reverend Dr Phelim MacLeod is a healthy, boyish-looking bachelor who has outlived all his relations except a distant cousin in Canada. Though unsurpassed in his knowledge of Latin, Hebrew and Greek his main reading since retirement has been detective stories, but he can still beat me at the game of chess we play at least once a fortnight. I tell you this to indicate his apparent normality before the accident last year. A badly driven, badly stacked glazier’s van crashed beside his garden gate as he walked out of it, and a fragment of glass sheered off a section of skull with his right ear on it. I am his closest friend. At the Royal Infirmary I heard that no visitors could be allowed to see him in his present state, but I would be called if it changed.

I was called a week later. The brain surgeon in charge of him said, ‘Dr MacLeod has regained consciousness. We are providing him with peace, privacy and a well-balanced diet. His unique constitution makes it impossible for us to do more.’

“But is he recovering?”

“I think so. Judge for yourself. And please tell him nothing about his appearance that would needlessly disturb him.”

On a sunny afternoon two men went by car into the suburbs to the house of a girl called Nan. Neither was much older than twenty years. One of them, Kenneth, was self-confident and well dressed and his friends thought him very witty. He owned and drove the car. The other, Gordon, was more quiet. His clothes were as good as Kenneth’s but he inhabited them less easily. He had never been to this girl’s house before and felt nervous. An expensive bunch of flowers lay on his lap.

Late at night a young man entered a phonebox in the suburb of an industrial city. He put coins in the slot, lifted the receiver, dialled and waited a moment. Later he heard a girl’s voice say, “Hello?”

“Hello Joan!”

There was no answer. He said, “This is Donald.”

Silence.

“Donald Purdie.”

Silence.

“How are you, Joan?”

Silence. He frowned in a puzzled way and said, “I’m just back from Loch Lomond — I’ve been boating with the McEwans. They asked me to give you their love.”

Silence.

“Listen Joan, is anything wrong? …

Are you all right Joan? …

Joan, is this a joke? …

If you don’t want to talk to me you’d better put the receiver down.”

After a while he heard faint movements, then more silence.

The Greeks were wrong about the sun; she is definitely a woman. I know her well. She often visits me, but not often enough. She prefers spending her time on Mediterranean beaches with richer people, foreigners mostly. I never complain. She comes here often enough to keep me hopeful. Until today. Today, perhaps because it is Spring, she arrived unexpectedly in all her glory and made me perfectly happy.

I was astonished, grateful, and properly appreciative, of course. I lay basking in her golden warmth, a bit dopey and dozey but murmuring the sort of compliments which are appropriate at such times. I realized she was talking to me in a more insistent tone, so I occasionally said, “Yes” and “Mhm”. At last she said, “You aren’t listening.”

“Yes I am —” (I made an effort of memory) “— You were talking about your spots.”

“What can I do about them?”

“Honestly, Sun, I don’t think they’re important.”

“Not important? Not important? Oh, it’s easy for you to talk like that. You don’t have to live with them.”

I almost groaned aloud. Whenever someone makes me perfectly happy they go on to turn themselves into a problem. I gathered my energies to tackle the problem.

I said, “Your spots were first noted by Galileo in the sixteenth century, through his new improved telescope. Before that time you were regarded as the most perfect of all heavenly bodies —”

She gave a little wail: I said hastily, “But they aren’t permanent! They come and go! They’re associated with several good things, like growth. When you have a very spotty year the plants grow extra fast and thick.”

She hid her face and said, “Why can’t I have a perfect heavenly body like when I was younger? I haven’t changed. I’m still the same as I was then.”

I tried to console her. I said, “Nobody is perfect.” She said nothing.

I said, “Apart from a few top-level physicists and astronomers, nobody gives a damn for your spots.”

She said nothing.

I said, “The moon has spots all over her and nobody finds those unattractive.”

The sun arose and prepared to leave. I gazed at her in horror, too feeble to move, almost too feeble to speak. I whispered, “What’s wrong?”

“You’ve just admitted seeing other planets when my back is turned.”

“Of course, but not deliberately. Everybody who goes out at night is bound to see the moon from time to time, but I don’t see her regularly, like I see you.”

She said, “Perhaps if I played hard to get you would find my spots interesting too. What a fool I’ve been to think that give give giving myself seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, a hundred years a century was the way to get myself liked and appreciated when all the time people prefer a flighty young bitch who borrows all her light from me! Her own mother! Well, I’ve learned my lesson. From now on I’ll only come right out once a fortnight, then perhaps men will find my spots attractive too.”

And she would have left without another word if I had not jumped up and begged and pleaded and told her a lot of lies. I said a great deal had been discovered about sunspots since Galileo’s day, they were an electromagnetic phenomenon and probably curable. I said that next time we met I would have studied the matter and be able to recommend something. So she left me more in sorrow than anger and I will see her tomorrow.

Nowadays Cessnock is a heavily built-upon part of industrial Glasgow, but two hundred and seventy-three years ago you would have seen something very different. You would have seen a swamp with a duckpond in the middle and a few wretched hovels round the edge. The inmates of these hovesl earned a living by knitting caps and mufflers for the inhabitants of Glasgow who, even then, wore almost nothing else. The money got from this back-breaking industry was pitifully inadequate. Old Cessnock was neither beautiful nor healthy. The only folk living there were too old or twisted by rheumatism to move out. Yet this dismal and uninteresting hamlet saw the beginning of that movement which historians call The Industrial Revolution; for here, in seventeen hundred and seven, was born Vague McMenamy, inventor of the crankshaft which made the Revolution possible.

Modern Cessnock shortly after implementation of the smoke abatement act.

Old Cessnock from General Roy’s ordnance survey of 1739. Fig. A represents the swamp, B the duckpond, C the McMenamy hovel.

There are no records to suggest that Vague McMenamy had parents. From his earliest days he seems to have lived with his Granny upon a diet of duck-eggs and the proceeds of the old lady’s knitting. A German biographer has suggested that McMenamy’s first name (Vague) was a nickname. The idea, of course, is laughable. No harderheaded, clearer-sighted individual than McMenamy ever existed, as his crankshaft proves. The learned Herr Professor is plainly ignorant of the fact that Vague is the Gaelic for Alexander. Yet it must be confessed that Vague was an introvert. While other boys were chasing the lassies or stoning each other he would stand for long hours on the edge of the duckpond wondering how to improve his Granny’s ducks.

In 1975 there came straight to Glasgow from a Berlin gig Pete Brown the poet, Pete Brown the friend of Horowitz, Pete Brown the songwriter and sometimes pop-song singer. And I dined with him at the home of Barbara and Lindley Nelson. As usual Pete was with a new girlfriend who received most of his conversation, but first he showed the Nelsons and myself a souvenir of Berlin, and that was what we discussed. It was a street photograph of Pete arm in arm with a bear. Berlin takes its name from a bear, so commercial cameramen prowl the streets with a suitably dressed partner. But though the bear in the picture was a disguised man he appeared so naturally calm, so benignly strong, that beside him Pete (who in isolation is as calm, benign and shaggy as a sapient man can be) looked comparatively shifty and agley. We were also intrigued to find the image in the photograph oddly familiar though Barbara, Lindley and myself had never seen another like it. Did it recall dim memories of our infancy in the thirties when the British bear cult was still a political force? As we discussed what we knew of the cult I realized that the time had come for a television programme on it, one which mingled public archive material (photographs, films and sound recordings) with dramatic re-enactments of what took place in private. In 1975 the British Broadcasting Corporation was celebrating the fiftieth year of its charter, archive material was being daily broadcast and displayed, surely the BBC would be interested? It was not. I discovered that although Lord Reith’s restrictions upon clothing, drink and sexual conduct had for years been matter for jest in the corridors of Broadcasting House and the Television Centre, his tabu upon all reference to the cult after Ramsay McDonald’s famous broadcast to the nation was still in force. The BBC rejected my documentary drama. I offer it here, hoping readers will not be afraid to view it upon the television screen of their minds.

1 STUDIO INTRODUCTION

To a recording of The Teddy Bears’ Picnic the camera advances upon a commentator leaning casually against a table on which is displayed: a fancy-dress bear costume, a toy teddy bear, a Buckingham Palace sentry’s bearskin helmet, a Daily Express Rupert Bear cartoon annual, and a copy of The House at Pooh Corner.

RECORDING:

If you go down to the woods today you’re sure of a big surprise!

If you go down to the woods today you’d better go in disguise!

For every bear that ever there was

Has gathered there for certain because

Today’s the day the teddy bears have their picnic!

COMMENTATOR: If you go down to the woods today, you’d better go in disguise. Yes. And if you were clearing out an old cupboard recently it’s very likely that you found one of these at the back of it.

(HE LIFTS THE BEAR COSTUME AND STANDS UP)

Perhaps curiosity prompted you to try it on. You can slip into them quite easily …

(HE PUTS IT ON)

Once the zip is pulled up it’s surprising how warm and comfortable you feel. And then, if you adjust the mask over your head, like this … (HOLLOWLY) you are not only completely weather-proof, your voice has acquired a hollow, resounding note.

(HE REMOVES THE MASK)

The costume you found was almost certainly a relic of the great bear cult which swept Britain in the early thirties. Nobody who remembers those years likes talking about them, but most of you watching tonight were born rather later, so perhaps the time has come to give the origins of the cult, its wildfire spread and wholly unexpected collapse, some sort of dispassionate examination. So let me take you back to 1931, a year of world-wide trade-depression and economic crisis. There are nearly three million unemployed in Britain alone. A former socialist is prime minister of a National Coalition government with the conservative leader as his deputy. In Trafalgar Square the photographic business is in a bad way.

2 TELECINE: TRAFALGAR SQUARE, STUDIO, STREETS, LAWCOURT

Henry Busby, a licensed street photographer, squabbles with two others for the custom of a foreign visitor (“I saw him first!”) who manages to escape all of them. Henry returns glumly to his studio and to George, his brother and partner. Ruin faces them. Must they also join the armies of the unemployed? Henry has a sudden idea — he has heard that in Berlin the street photographers have partners dressed like bears because there is a bear on the city coat of arms. Why not try that here? George objects that London has no bear on its coat of arms and people come to Trafalgar Square to be photographed with pigeons. Henry shows a newspaper photograph of people queuing in hundreds to see a new bear acquired by London Zoo. Bears are popular — Rupert Bear in the Express, Winnie the Pooh etc. He rents a skin and persuades George to put it on. George finds it surprisingly comfortable. They go out into the streets arm-in-arm and reach the Square followed by a small crowd of laughing onlookers.

HENRY: Come on now, who’ll be first to be photographed with this fine chap?

They do a brisk trade, drawing clients from their competitors, who complain bitterly that the bears are frightening the pigeons. But next day when they return to the Square they find the other photographers also accompanied by bears, a black bear, a polar, and a child dressed as a koala. They protest. A brawl develops. The bears are arrested, fined and bound over to keep the peace. However, the press and BBC are glad of some comic relief from a grim world situation, and the matter is widely publicized. The queues to see the new bear at London Zoo grow longer. The Teddy Bears’ Picnic becomes a popular hit. Furriers start marketing teddy bear suits for children.

3 ARCHIVE MATERIAL: RECORDING OF BBC NEWS PROGRAMME IN TOWN TONIGHT Dr. Karl Adler, discoverer of the inferiority complex, is visiting London for an international psychiatric conference. A BBC interviewer asks his opinion of the growing enthusiasm for bears. He replies that though the bear cult is (he believes) of German origin he feels it is destined to make great headway in Britain. He is asked the causes of the cult — why not an elephant or a tiger cult?

ADLER: In the first place a bear is one of the few creatures that do not look ridiculous when walking about upon their hind legs. But there are more significant reasons for their popularity. They are not normally flesh-eaters — their favourite food is honey and buns — so women and children feel safe with them. But they have claws and teeth which they can use if threatened, so men can identify with them without losing their self-respect. In my opinion a civilization such as ours has much to gain from this cult. The greatest part of a psychiatrist’s work is with people who feel inadequate as human beings, and considered objectively most of them are physically and mentally inadequate; but dressed in a properly padded skin they make surprisingly adequate bears …

4 TELECINE: STUDIO, STREET AND LAWCOURT

The words of the interview emanate from a wireless-set in George and Henry’s photographic studio. George, wearing the bearskin without the mask, sits reading a newspaper. Henry switches off the wireless, saying irritably:

HENRY: What blasted rot! … Take that thing off, George.

GEORGE: No. I’d feel cold.

HENRY: I feel cold, but do I complain?

GEORGE: Yes, all the time.

HENRY: Then you might have the common decency to give me a shot!

GEORGE (STANDING): I’m going for a walk.

HENRY: Like that?

GEORGE: Yes, why not? This is a free country. And I’m comfortable in it.

(HE FITS THE MASK OVER HIS HEAD)

HENRY: But you look utterly ridiculous … what’s the use in talking? When you’ve your mask on you might as well be deaf.

George walks slouch-shouldered through Soho followed by a small jeering crowd, most of it children. He meets another bear followed by a similar crowd. Coming abreast they glance at each other’s muzzles, suddenly stand erect, put their backs to the wall, roar and menace their persecutors with their paws. The children stop laughing and run away. The remaining adults calls the bears “cowardly brutes” and one or two of the most belligerent accuse them of being “afraid to fight like men”. The other bear hangs back but George flings himself on the critics and is badly beaten up in an affray which knocks over a costermonger’s barrow. He is rescued by the police and accused of provoking a riot. He is brought before Lord Goddard, a highly punitive judge of the period. There is a man dressed like a bear in the public gallery and the judge begins by having him removed by the ushers. George’s lawyer makes a dignified and convincing defence, pointing out that the accused has been the only person to physically suffer, that he was outnumbered and unjustly provoked etc. Nonetheless, the judge sees George as “one of these misguided individuals who seem determined to lead Britain backward to an age of primitive savagery” and condemns him to an unusually savage term of imprisonment, while regretting that the laws of the land make it impossible to have him publicly flogged into the bargain. George, asked if he has anything to say to this, responds with dignity and courage.

GEORGE: I do not blame the children who mocked me — I do blame the parents who failed to restrain them. I can’t blame the roughs who attacked me — I do blame the society which deprives them of honest employment and leaves them with nothing to do but roam the streets jeering at innocent animals. For I am innocent! Bears are strong, but bears are gentle! Lastly, I blame neither the police or the laws of Britain for bringing me here, but I will say this! I would rather wear a bearskin, and stand in the dock, than wear a wig, and sit on the bench, and pass such an inhumanly cruel sentence as you, my Lord, have passed upon me!

(A STORM OF APPLAUSE SWEEPS THE COURT. THE JUDGE ORDERS IT CLEARED.) 5 ARCHIVE MATERIAL: NEWSPAPER STILLS AND PATHE NEWSREEL CLIP

We see headlines denouncing unkindness to bears in popular and progressive newspapers, then photographs of bears at Hyde Park Corner demanding justice for their martyred brother, bears with collecting cans gathering money for an appeal fund; processions of bears with banners urging George’s release; then the banner headlines annoucing that the appeal has been upheld. A newsreel clip shows George emerging from the wicket-gate of Wandsworth prison to be confronted by a cheering crowd, a third of it wearing bearskins. Two supporters assist him into one. He makes a speech before donning the mask.

GEORGE: Fair play has triumphed! For myself I am happy, but for my fellow Bruins I am jubilant. The British people have always admired us for our gentleness; they are now learning to like us for our strength, and believe me, we live in an age when strength was never more necessary. Sinister forces are abroad in the world, forces eager to tear the fur from our backs and the buns from the muzzles of our cubs. We must organize!

(HE PUTS ON THE MASK AND EMITS A HOLLOW ROAR)

A rapid montage of stills shows the growth of the cult, starting with trademarks for Bear-brand stockings, Polarmints and the Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer panda growling through its celluloid arch. We see photographs of a bear-garden-party at Cliveden House which the German ambassador attends in the costume of a prehistoric grizzly. In Oxford Street shop windows expensively furred bears posture among the wax dummies. In poorer districts you can buy costumes made of rabbit-skin. In Piccadilly Circus furry prostitutes attract pin-striped businessmen by throatily roaring.

6 TELECINE: A SUBURBAN BUNGALOW

An insurance clerk, Mr. Osborne, returns excitedly from his work in the city carrying a big wrapped box.

MR. OSBORNE: I’ve bought you something, my dear.

MRS. OSBORNE: Ooh let me see, what is it?

(MR. OSBORNE TEARS OFF WRAPPING AND LID. HIS WIFE STARES INTO IT) MRS. OSBORNE: Not one of those!

MR. OSBORNE: Why not? They’re all the go you know.

MRS. OSBORNE: But I don’t want to be a bear. I want to be a squirrel, a super squirrel with a great big bushy tail.

MR. OSBORNE (FIRMLY): No! You’ve got to be a bear.

(HE TAKES A PEAKED CAP FROM THE BOX AND CLAPS IT ON HIS HEAD)

I’m going to be the keeper.

6 ARCHIVE MATERIAL: NEWSPAPER STILLS AND PATHE NEWSREEL CLIPS.

We see photographs of main streets in Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow with a high proportion of bears among the passers-by. At Brighton and Blackpool they are being photographed in family groups. Then, in newsreel, we see a guard in a sentry box outside Buckingham Palace. His conical steel helmet has a Prussian spike projecting from the top, a Norman nosepiece and Viking horns sticking out each side.

NEWSREEL COMMENTARY: For more than eleven hundred years — ever since the days of Ethelred the Unready — the Guards of the British Royal Family have worn the traditional horned helmet, popularly known as the Wanky.

(WE SEE THE HORNED HELMET BEING PLACED IN A GLASS CASE)

NEWSREEL COMMENTARY: Today the Wanky is consigned to a niche in the Imperial War Museum and the guards are on parade wearing a new kind of headgear! Bearskin helmets!

(WE SEE THE CHANGING OF THE GUARD) NEWSREEL COMMENTARY: Traditionalists may sneer, but throughout the Empire many will find reassurance in the thought that the British monarchy is able and willing to move with the times.

To the tune of The Teddy Bears’ Picnic, photographs and headlines show George Busby becoming eminent through the British Bear Cult. We see him attending rallies in public parks where bears hug each other and share buns and honey in perfect freedom.

RECORDING:

Every teddy bear who’s been good is sure of a treat today!

There’s lots of wonderful things to eat and marvellous games to play!

Beneath the trees where nobody sees

They hide and seek as much as they please,

Today’s the day the teddy bears have their pic-nic!

(CUT TO NEWSREEL OF TORCHLIGHT RALLY WHERE GEORGE, IN WHITE POLAR SKIN, IS EXCHANGING CHANTS WITH A MASSED BEAR-HORDE) GEORGE: Bears are gentle!

HORDE: Bears are strong!

GEORGE: Our fur is soft!

HORDE: Our claws are long!

NEWSREEL COMMENTARY: Many find this fervent emotionalism tasteless and unBritish, but one thing cannot be denied: bears know how to encourage one another, and in grim times like the present, who can blame them? Headlines announce that George Busby will stand for parliament in an East Croydon by-election. Photographs show a junior branch of the Bear Cult, the Cubs, canvassing for him in the streets. Headlines announce his victory over the communist candidate by a narrow majority.

8 TELECINE: A CITY STREET, SUNDAY MORNING

To the sound of church bells a well-dressed spinster, approaching the corner of an avenue leading to a church, is passed by a furtive little brown bear going the opposite way. Turning the corner she stumbles on something, looks down and screams.

9 ARCHIVE MATERIAL: CUTTING

News headlines announce: CHOIRMASTER CLAWED TO DEATH IN COVENTRY PAVEMENT CARNAGE!

10 TELECINE: SUBURBAN BUNGALOW

We see a wooden 1930s wireless set on a sideboard and hear six pips from a quartz clock followed by:

BBC ANNOUNCER: Here is the six o’clock news. Just two hours ago the body of Kevin Streedle, former welterweight champion of the world, was discovered clawed to death in a shrubbery near Greenwich Observatory. This is the eighth murder of the type to take place in the past five days. George Busby, leader of the British Bear Cult and member of Parliament for Croydon East, has expressed grief at the incident and hopes the police will soon …

(A FURRY PAW SWITCHES THE SET OFF. IT BELONGS TO A BROWN BEAR IN A FLOWERY APRON. SHE CONTINUES SETTING TABLE FOR THE EVENING MEAL. THE DOOR OPENS AND A LARGER BROWN BEAR ENTERS CARRYING A BRIEFCASE AND A COPY OF THE TIMES)

LARGER BEAR (HOLLOWLY): Thank God I’m home again!

(HE FLINGS DOWN HIS LUGGAGE, WRENCHES OFF HIS MASK AND EMERGES AS MR. OSBORNE. HE STARES AT THE SMALLER BEAR) MR. OSBORNE: I do wish you’d take that thing off.

MRS. OSBORNE (HOLLOWLY): It was you who bought it for me.

(SHE REMOVES THE MASK)

MR. OSBORNE (UNZIPPING): That was just for a lark — but it’s serious now. Haven’t you read the papers? The hidden claw has struck again. And there are more bears on the streets than ever. Even little old ladies are dressing like this.

MRS. OSBORNE (UNZIPPING): Well, the killers aren’t likely to attack their own kind, are they now?

MR. OSBORNE: Fur isn’t sexy any more, it’s become a uniform. More than half the tube tonight was filled with bowlerhatted grizzlies. (HE STEPS OUT OF HIS COSTUME) Promise me something, dear!

MRS. OSBORNE (STEPPING OUT OF HER COSTUME): What?

MR. OSBORNE: Wear that thing in the street, but not at home with me. I’d rather you were a squirrel again. Or even a woman.

(THEY EMBRACE SHYLY IN THEIR UNDERWEAR)

MRS. OSBORNE: Can’t the police do something?

MR. OSBORNE: Apparently not.

MRS. OSBORNE: Can’t the government do something?

MR. OSBORNE: The Times says they’ve scheduled a debate.

11 TELECINE: THE HOUSE OF COMMONS

James Maxton, Leader of the Independent Labour Party, arises to ask what the government intends to do about the wave of killings which everyone in Britain associates with a certain political movement, a movement backed by the international fur trade, a movement whose leader occupies a bench in this very chamber.

David Lloyd George, leader of the Liberals, declares that he does not find it in his heart possible to blame these misguided people who have taken to wearing bearskins. Bearskins are ridiculous! They are ridiculous! But they are also warm, and comfortable, and cosy, and we live in chilling times. He does blame the government which in spite of all its promises has failed to give people the coal to keep them warm enough to dispense with bearskins. Ramsay McDonald the prime minister rises to reply. He says that in a democracy like ours every section of the community must be represented. The Bear Cult is still a minority party but anyone who walks the streets of Britain can see that it already musters more support than (say) the Independent Labour Party. Moreover he is sure that the bear who did the killing is a minority of the minority, and no responsible government will condemn a broadly based popular movement for the action of a fanatical extremist whose activities have been mainly confined to the south London district. The killer must certainly be found and punished, but this is a matter for the police. And now George Busby stands up to speak for the British Bear Cult. He does not remove his mask.

GEORGE (HOLLOWLY): Mr. Speaker, a new and terrible slur has been cast upon those I represent. Yes, in South London — the centre of the Great Bear Movement — yet another innocent victim has been clawed to death. The hearts of every true British Bruin must bleed for the relations of the bereaved, but that is not enough, not enough by a long chalk. We must not rest until the criminals are captured and who are the criminals? Not bears, at any rate!

(CRIES OF OH! OH! HE RAISES HIS VOICE) Bears are strong but bears are gentle! Bears do not kill choirmasters, welterweight boxers or innocent ratepayers! We too are innocent ratepayers! Bears have claws and know how to use them, but our claws are only used in self-defence! I have no hesitation in declaring that when the culprit is finally tracked down he will prove to be an enemy of our movement, a fanatical socialist or liberal, hell bent on bringing our party into disrepute! I declare the author of these crimes to be a bare-faced human being and I personally promise that the police will have the help of every true British Bruin in their sacred task of bringing these obnoxious beasts to book!

12 ARCHIVE MATERIAL: BBC NEWS ANNOUNCEMENTS, PRESS AND NEWSREEL EXTRACTS

In response to widespread criticism of their failure to arrest the Hidden Claw murderer, the London Metropolitan police make a special announcement. The bobby on the beat feels he commands too little respect among the population as a whole, so as an experiment it has been decided to try a new kind of uniform in certain districts. This is a black bearskin with extra large claws, and the mask, instead of covering the head, rests on top of it, the constable looking out of eyeholes in the chest. South London patrolled by eight-foot high Rocky Mountain grizzlies. With the help of Scotland Yard these manage to arrest a little man who admits to being the Hidden Claw murderer. His aunt is secretary of East Croydon Labour Party. At a rally in Trafalgar Square George cries out to the assembled Bearhorde:“The miserable Faustus responsible for these crimes is in the hands of the police, but where, I ask you, is the Mephistopheles?” Bearhordes attack local Labour Party headquarters throughout South London. The police remain aloof until the riots are nearly over and most of the people they arrest are left-wing and furless.

13 ARCHIVE MATERIAL

Collapse of the National Coalition Government. Ramsay McDonald announces an election in three weeks time. George Busby announces that bears will be contesting at least 260 seats.

14 TELECINE: THE TRIAL OF THE HIDDEN CLAW

While the small man insists he is the criminal, and the police are sure he is, the only evidence against him is the word of the respectable spinster who saw a bear leave the scene of the first killing. She stands in the witness box and the prosecuting counsel ends his examination with the time-honoured words, “Look carefully around this courtroom. Do you recognize anywhere the individual in question?”

We see the Old Bailey with the eyes of the witness: the pathetic brown bear in the dock, the jury-box half full of bears, the public gallery crowded with them, a bear’s muzzle sticking out of the judge’s wig and coal-black eight-foot grizzlies towering behind everyone else. She screams and faints. The case has to be dismissed for lack of evidence. And before the prisoner is discharged word comes through that the Hidden Claw has struck again — in Hampstead. North London is no longer safe.

15 TELECINE: A ROOM IN SCOTLAND YARD

The detective responsible for the case is visited by a Scottish forensic expert with an international reputation.

EXPERT: No doubt about it, yon poor devils were killed by bears.

DETECTIVE: Of course they were killed by bears. But what kind? Brown bears? Polar? or Grizzly?

EXPERT: A grizzly, most likely. But it could be a bigger than average brown bear or a smaller than average polar. Koalas and pandas are out.

DETECTIVE: That’s not much help! There are hundreds of thousands of these species in South London alone.

EXPERT: Havers. There can’t be more than a couple of bears at large in the entire United Kingdom.

DETECTIVE: Do you mean a real bear is responsible?

EXPERT: That’s what I’m telling you! The digits of the human hand are incapable of carving someone to death like that — even if they did have artificial claws on the ends.

The detective starts investigating circuses and zoos and learns that a few weeks earlier a couple of bears escaped from the private zoo of the eccentric and senile Lord Pabham.

16 TELECINE: A SUBURBAN BUNGALOW

Mr. and Mrs. Osborne sit on either side of their fireplace listening to Sandy McPherson on the BBC cinema organ. She is patching his skin — a piece of fur was nipped off by a door in the underground. They are waiting for a special announcement to the nation by the prime minister. The music stops. Big Ben chimes. Reith, the governor of the BBC, personally introduces the Right Honourable Ramsay McDonald.

McDONALD: Good evening. Isn’t modern science a wonderful thing? Here am I sitting comfortably in my Downing Street study talking to all of you seated beside your hearths throughout the length and breadth and depth of Britain. But I have something more important to tell you than just that, because, of course, you know that already. What I have to say is this. At a special emergency cabinet meeting this afternoon the government decided to make it illegal to dress up like bears in public places for the foreseeable future. I know this will come as a shock to many decent honest folk throughout the length and breadth and depth of Britain, but …

He explains the the police have no hope of catching the real bears while so many of the artificial kind roam the streets. The police themselves are abandoning that sort of uniform. He is sure the public will co-operate. Perhaps, after all, the cult of the bear has been based on a misunderstanding. Bears, though strong, are not always gentle, it now appears. The broadcast ends with a recording of Blake’s Jerusalem while Mr. Osborne jumps up, snatches the skin from his wife’s knees and, despite her protests, stuffs it dramatically into the fireplace causing a great deal of smoke.

17 TELECINE: VARIOUS PLACES

Throughout the country people thrust bearskins into dustbins and cupboards shouting, “I told you it was silly!” We see George at a desk, frantically telephoning in an effort to hold together his crumbling organization.

GEORGE: These murderers are not real bears — bears are strong but bears are gentle — these bears are only criminals because they have been soured by captivity! In next week’s General Election bears will be fighting two hundred and sixty seats! Every furrier in Britain is behind us! We don’t need skins, we’ll wear badges instead!

The real bears are detected, netted and sent back to the zoo. Under exploding rockets we see a crowd in an East End street dancing the Hokey-Cokey round a bonfire with several stuffed bearskins burning on top.

18 ARCHIVE MATERIAL

Headlines announce the 1931 general election result: the National Coalition government is returned to power with a substantial majority. George Busby, Britain’s only Bear Cult M.P., forfeits his deposit. All the other bears withdrew at the last moment.

19 THE TELEVISION STUDIO

The commentator, wearing his costume without the mask, sits before the table of cult objects with an expert beside him.

COMMENTATOR: And that, politically speaking, was the end of the bear cult. I have with me the renowned social anthropologist Professor Grotman. Professor, we are all aware that the beast in man lies only a little way under the surface so I will not ask you to refer to the psychological basis of the cult, I will ask how it came to disappear so utterly.

GROTMAN: In my opinion the psychological basis of the cult has been much exaggerated. It is now clear that the main cause of the movement lay in the coal shortages of the winter of 1931. It was actually warmer to dress as a bear in those days. What killed the movement politically was not disillusion with bears as a species. By 1932 it had become abundantly clear to the intelligent part of the population that a second World War, with its promise of full employment for everyone, lay just round the corner. What killed the movement, in fact, was hope for the future.

COMMENTATOR: But is the movement really dead? Remember, at its peak it had a following which numbered well over three million. Perhaps the person most qualified to answer that question is the Great Bear himself, the founder of the cult, George Busby: still remarkably fit and active for a man of 68 and living at present in a bed-sitting room on the Old Kent Road.

20 VIDEOTAPE RECORDING

George Busby, white-haired, spectacled, with the air of a vaguely dissolute grand old man, sits in a small room crowded with trophies of his former grandeur: stuffed bearskins of the three main species, framed photographs of such moments of glory as the programme has revealed. He wears a yellow pullover, check trousers, a badge with a Rupert Bear head on, and is flanked by a shelf of every sort of beardoll from Winnie the Pooh to Paddington. Answering the questions of an invisible interviewer he speaks sadly of the collapse of his cult, of his present situation (he still receives cheques from the children of furriers who made their fortunes in the 1931 fur boom) and his hopes for the future.

GEORGE: My movement was ahead of its time. So the adults decided to forget it. But the children remember. Children know without being taught, you see. So the bears will return one day soon, to save England in her hour of need. Though I may not be there to see it.

(HE TURNS AND CONTEMPLATES A FOUR FOOT HIGH PADDINGTON DOLL. THE CAMERA SLOWLY RECEDES FROM THIS FINAL IMAGE OF GEORGE AS AN OLD MAN ALONE WITH HIS DREAMS AND MEMORIES)

21 THE TELEVISION CENTRE

Freeze frame, then the camera zooms further back to show the image of George multiplied on the monitor screens of a television gallery. The control surface of a console occupies the foreground. A hairy paw appears and turns a switch. We see the whole gallery is staffed by bears: a large polar director stretching himself, a panda secretary scribbling on a clip-board, a grizzly technician with headphones. The director stands, stretches, yawns hollowly, then walks through into the studio where the commentator is in the act of fitting on his mask. Professor Grotman is zipping himself into a costume of his own.

DIRECTOR: That didn’t go too badly.

COMMENTATOR: No hitches then?

DIRECTOR: None to speak of. Coming to the staff club for a drink, Professor?

GROTMAN: Certainly, certainly. Just wait till I adjust my dress. (HE PLACES THE MASK ON HIS HEAD. TOGETHER THE THREE BEARS, CHATTING AMIABLY, STROLL OFF DOWN CORRIDORS FULL OF VARIOUS BEARS GOING ABOUT THEIR VARIOUS BUSINESSES.)

I write for those who know my language. If you possess that divine knowledge do not die without teaching it to someone else. Make copies of this history, give one to anybody who can read it and read it aloud to whoever will listen. Do not be discouraged if they laugh and call you a liar. Perhaps they are dull herdsmen who think milk and wool more important than history. Their own history is a tangle of superstition and confused rumours. Those who lived inside the great wheel used to call them the perimeter tribes. “Were you born outside the rim?” we would ask someone who was acting stupidly or strangely and this question was a grave insult. The perimeter tribes lived so far from the hub that they only saw the axletree for a few months before it was completed and then only on unusually clear days. Even at sunrise its shadow never quite touched them, so now they say it was the last impiety of a mad civilization, an attack upon heavenly god which provoked instant punishment and defeat. But the axletree was a necessary inevitable work, soberly designed and carefully erected by statesmen, bankers, priests and wise men whose professional names make no sense nowadays. And they completed the axletree as intended. For a moment the wheel of the civilized world was joined to the wheel of heaven. The disaster which fell a moment later was an accident nobody could have foreseen or prevented. I am the only living witness to this fact. I have been higher than anybody in the world. The hand which writes these words has stroked the ice-smooth, slightly-rippled, blue lucid ceiling which held up the moon.

I was born and educated at the hub of the last and greatest world empire. We had once been a republic of small farmers in a land between two lakes. Our only town in those days was a walled market with a temple in the middle where we stored the spare corn. Our land was fertile so we developed the military virtues, first to protect our crops from neighbours, then to protect our merchants when they traded with the grain surplus. We were also the first people to shoe horses with iron, so we soon conquered the lands round about.

FIRST LETTER

DEAR MOTHER, DEAR FATHER, I like the new palace. It is all squares like a chessboard. The red squares are buildings, the white squares are gardens. In the middle of each building is a courtyard, in the middle of each garden is a pavilion. Soldiers, nurses, postmen, janitors and other of the servant-class live and work in the buildings. Members of the honoured-guest-class have a pavilion. My pavilion is small but beautiful, in the garden of evergreens. I don’t know how many squares make up the palace but certainly more than a chessboard has. You heard the rumour that some villages and a small famous city were demolished to clear space for the foundation. The rumour was authorized by the immortal emperor yet I thought it exaggerated. I now think it too timid. We were ten days sailing upstream from the old capital, where I hope you are still happy. The days were clear and cool, no dust, no mist. Sitting on deck we could see the watchtowers of villages five or six miles away and when we stood up at nightfall we saw, in the sunset, the sparkle of the heliograph above cities, on the far side of the horizon. But after six days there was no sign of any buildings at all, just ricefields with here and there the tent of a waterworks inspector. If all this empty land feeds the new palace then several cities have been cleared from it. Maybe the inhabitants are inside the walls with me, going out a few days each year to plant and harvest, and working between times as gardeners of the servant-class.

The

Secret and Apocryphal Diurnal

of

SIR THOMAS URQUHART

OF CROMARTIE

Knight

IT WAS UNKIND OF THE JEWS TO GIVE the job of building the world to one man for it made him very lonely. Earlier people saw the creator as a woman giving birth, which is sore, but not sore on the head, and fulfils body and soul until the empty feeling starts. But these wandering shepherds were so used to featureless plains under a vast sky (not even the sea is vaster than the sky) that they thrust a naked man into formless void and left him there forever with nothing to remember, not even the sweetness of a mother’s breast.

The emperor died, and his tomb was built in the centre of the capital city, then enlarged to enclose everything he had wanted. His suggestions for the name were also adopted. The inhabiters called it the work, outsiders called it the axletree. People travelling there saw it for a fortnight before arriving and I speak of the work itself, not the pillar of cloud overhead, creamy-gold on bright days, thunder-black on dull ones, and flickering with reflected orange light in the hours of darkness. As the traveller drew near, the huge solitary bulk so filled his mind that sometimes he grew frightened and turned back before seeing the canals and merchant navies entering the artificial sea around the foundation. The roads bridged this by viaducts sloping up to market-gallery-level, a full mile above sea-level, yet rising so easily that blind travellers thought they were flat. It was a safe structure in those days and foreign kings bought shares in it as a way of banking their wealth. The construction company became the government of the empire — our emperors dropped their ancient title and were known as company chairmen. The first of these was a man of simple tastes who had a farm near the top of the work where he grew his own vegetables. He liked to feel he did not need the earth below, but everyone else in the axletree was fed off that. People in the nearest provinces usually looked thin and glum. It must also have been very depressing to live where half the world bent up to shut you out. Dwellers in remoter provinces saw us as a steep-sided mountain on the horizon, but to insiders we were not one thing but many: our living rooms and the rooms of friends, some connecting galleries lined with shops and parkland, the offices where we calculated or the scaffolding where we laboured. The simplest thing we knew was the world spread below like a map. Merchants, soldiers and tax-collectors had to visit that. Most of us were luckier.

Not everyone inside the great work was happy there. When the structure was repaired the masons found odd cavernous spaces full of mummified bodies. These had been slaves who died while putting the building up. They were buried this way because it did not interrupt the labour, and because the founding emperor wanted everyone who worked on his tomb to end up inside. But the re-opened crypts held signs of life: rough tables with winestains and cheap candlesticks on them, and there were gaps in the surrounding stonework just big enough to admit people on their hands and knees. The police discovered that these crypts were used by a society of slaves, labourers and women who met there once a week to exchange subversive gossip. The society was cooperative. Members paid small sums to an agent who cooked them a communal meal and guarded their articles of association. These articles set out the wildest hopes of uneducated people in the language of company law. They said:

“Listen, you owe me an explanation. We’ve had such great times together — you’re beautiful — you know I love you — and now you don’t want to see me again. Why? Why?”

“Jings, you take everything very seriously.”

FOR AGNES OWENS AND JAMES KELMAN

LONDON 1996

MY FATHER WAS THE REV. JOHN KIRKWOOD OF EDINBURGH, a man very well known for the rigour of his life and the tenor of his pulpit ministrations. I might have sometimes been tempted to bless Providence for this honourable origin, had not I been forced so much more often to deplore the harshness of my nurture. I have no children of my own, or none that I saw fit to educate, so perhaps speak at random; yet it appears my father may have been too strict. In the matter of pocket-money, he gave me a pittance, insufficient for his son’s position, and when, upon one occasion, I took the liberty to protest, he brought me up with this home thrust of inquiry: “Should I give you more, Jamie, will you promise me it shall be spent as I should wish?” I did not answer quickly, but when I did, it was truly: “No,” said I. He gave an impatient jostle of his shoulders, and turned his face to the study fire, as though to hide his feelings from his son. Today, however, they are very clear to me; and I know how he was one part delighted with my candour, and three parts revolted by the cynicism of my confession. I went from the room ere he had answered in any form of speech; and I went, I must acknowledge, in despair. I was then two and twenty years of age, a medical student of the University, already somewhat involved with debt, and already more or less (although I can scarce tell how) used to costly dissipations. I had a few shillings in my pocket; in a billiard room in St Andrew’s Street I had shortly quadrupled this amount at pyramids, and the billiard room being almost next door to a betting agency, I staked the amount on the hazard of a race. At about five in the afternoon of the next day, I was the possessor of some thirty pounds — six times as much as I had ever dreamed of spending. I was not a bad young man, although a little loose. I may have been merry and lazy; until that cursed night I had never known what it was to be overpowered with drink; so it is possible I was overpowered the more completely. I have never clearly been aware of where I went or what I did, or of how long a time elapsed till my wakening. The night was dry, dark, and cold; the lamps and the clean pavements and bright stars delighted me; I went before me with a baseless exultation in my soul, singing, dancing, wavering in my gait with the most airy inconsequence, and all at once at the corner of a street, which I can still dimly recall, the light of my reason went out and the thread of memory was broken.

I came to myself in bed, whether it was that night or the next I have never known, only the thirty pounds were gone! I had certainly slept some while, for I was sober; it was not yet day, for I was aware through my half-closed eyelids of the light of a gas jet; and I had undressed, for I lay in linen. Some little time, my mind hung upon the brink of consciousness; and then, with a start of recollection, recalling the beastly state to which I had reduced myself, and my father’s straitlaced opinions and conspicuous position, I sat suddenly up in bed. As I did so, some sort of hamper tore apart about my waist; I looked down and saw, instead of my night-shirt, a woman’s chemise copiously laced about the sleeves and bosom. I sprang to my feet, turned, and saw myself in a cheval glass. The thing fell but a little lower than my knees; it was of a smooth and soft fabric; the lace very fine, the sleeves half way to my elbow. The room was of a piece; the table well supplied with necessaries of the toilet; female dresses hanging upon nails; a wardrobe of some light varnished wood against the wall; a foot bath in the corner. It was not my night-shirt; it was not my room; and yet by its shape and the position of the window, I saw it exactly corresponded with mine; and that the house in which I found myself must be the counterpart of my father’s. On the floor in a heap lay my clothes as I had taken them off; on the table my passkey, which I perfectly recognized. The same architect, employing the same locksmith, had built two identical houses and had them fitted with identical locks; in some drunken aberration I had mistaken the door, stumbled into the wrong house, mounted to the wrong room and sottishly gone to sleep in the bed of some young lady. I hurried into my clothes, quaking, and opened the door.

IN BRITAIN ONLY SNOBS, perverts and the wholly despairing want friendship with richer or poorer folk. Maybe in Iceland or Holland or Canada factory-owners and labourers, lumber-jacks and high court judges eat in each other’s houses and go holidays together. If so they must have equally good food, clothes and schools for their children. That kind of classlessness is impossible here. Mackay disagrees. He says the Scots have democratic traditions which let them forget social differences. He says his father was gardener to a big house in the north and the owner was his dad’s best friend. On rainy days they sat in the gardener’s shed and drank a bottle of whisky together. But equal incomes allow steadier friendships than equal drunkenness. I did not want to borrow money from Mackay because it proved I was poorer than him. He insisted on lending, which ruined more than our friendship.

NOBODY OVER FIFTY can tell where or how they’ll live a few months hence Mrs… Mrs?”

“Dewhurst.”

“Look at me, for instance. A year ago I was headmaster of a very good comprehensive school in Huddersfield. My wife made me take early retirement for the good of her health — not mine. She thought the warmer climate in the south would suit her so down to Berkshire we came. Fat lot of good that did. A fortnight after settling into the new house she died of a stroke. Since I do not intend to follow her example I will pause here for a few seconds Mrs… Mrs?”

“Dewhurst. Let me carry that,” she said, pausing at a bend in the staircase.

“No no!” he said putting a cumbersome suitcase down on a higher step without releasing the handle. “I was talking about losing my wife. Well my son has a garage with five men working under him in Bracknell. ‘Come and live with us, Dad,’ says he, ‘we’ve tons of room.’ Yes, they have. New house with half an acre of garden. Huge open-plan living-room with dining alcove. Five bedrooms no less, one for marital couple, one each for my two grandchildren, one for guests and one for poor old grandad. But poor old grandad’s bedroom is on the small side, hardly bigger than a cupboard and although I have retired from education I have not retired from public life. I am now ready to proceed — to continue proceeding — upward Mrs… Dewhurst.”

They continued proceeding upward.

“I edit the You See Monthly Bulletin, the newsletter of the Urban Conservation Fellowship and that requires both space and privacy. ‘Use the living-room!’ says my son, ‘it’s big enough. The kids are at school all day and if you work at the sun patio end Myra won’t disturb you.’ Myra did. How could I get a steady day’s work done in a house where lunch arrived any time between twelve and one? I didn’t complain but when I asked for a shelf in the fridge where I could keep my own food to make my own lunch she took it for a slight on her housekeeping. So this!” said Mr Goodchild putting the suitcase down, “is my fourth home since last September. I’m glad my things arrived.”

THERE IS A SOUR TASTE in my mouth no matter how hard I brush my teeth, and though I change my underwear every morning and take a bath every night I am haunted by a faint, stale odour. Maybe the sourness and staleness is the taste and smell of myself. Is something rotting inside me? I have very little energy nowadays and often sweat for no apparent reason. My urine is the colour of very strong tea — I’m sure it used to be the colour of very weak tea — and I keep running to the lavatory and shitting almost nothing but wind and water. Last week, while shopping, the top half of my body suddenly felt too heavy for the bottom half and I got this pain round my middle, especially in the small of the back, a pain which made it hard to sleep at night. I saw two doctors: my General Practitioner who thumped me all over, said the pain was purely muscular and gave me a bottle of pills to reduce inflammation; and a chiropractor who said I had a slightly displaced vertebra then wrenched my thigh and shoulder before working on the inflammation with heat rays, massage and acupuncture. The backache remained. I went to bed and lay reading dull books I had read before and not enjoyed much, even then. I lacked the strength to read anything enjoyable.

BECAUSE OF A MISTAKE (though I do not know whose) someone was shut in a windowless room with nothing to look at but a door which could only be opened from outside, a lavatory pan and a wall poster showing the face of the nation’s ruler. After imagining a great many dealings with this official the prisoner tried to find pleasure in a landscape behind the face. This first soothed by its suggestion of spaciousness, then annoyed by its completely tame nature. On one side wellcultivated farms receded to a distant line of blue hills, on the other was a seat of government, a cathedral, university, and very clean factory and workers’ residential block. There were no clumps of forest or winding rivers to explore; the bland distant hills clearly contained no ravines, torrents, cliffs, caverns or mountain passes, they were a mere frontier, shutting off the horizon. Though designed to advertise a sunnier world than the electrically lit cell, the poster showed the inside of a larger jail.

On the brink of melancholy madness the prisoner found a pencil on the floor behind the lavatory pan. When this had been carefully nibbled to a sharp point it might have been used to draw anything on the whitewashed walls: faces of friends, bodies of lovers, the scenery of great adventures. Not able to draw these convincingly the prisoner carefully drew a full-size copy of the room’s unopenable door, with one difference. The drawn door had a key in the lock, and it could be turned. Then the prisoner turned the lock, opened the door and walked out. Though describing how fantasy works this is a realistic story. Free will being the essence of mind, everyone who feels trapped must imagine escapes, and some of them work. New arts and sciences, new religions and nations are created this way. But the story of the door can be told with a less happy ending.

A blind man living alone in a municipal housing scheme heard people breaking through his front door, so phoned the local police station. While he was asking for help the housebreakers got to him and knocked him down. They were policemen who had mistaken his door for the door of someone they suspected of selling dangerous drugs without a licence. The mistake was discovered when one of the housebreakers lifted the telephone receiver and found he was talking to a colleague. He told the colleague in the police station not to worry, because the blind householder would be stitched up. So the blind man was summoned to a court of law and charged with assaulting the police while they were trying to do their duty.

In Britain all emergency phonecalls to police stations are recorded twice: once by the police stations for the use of the police: once by the British telecommunication company for the use of the caller. The blind man’s defence lawyer played the Telecom recording to prove that his client was innocent, pointing out that stitched up was slang for arrested on false evidence. The police witness agreed that stitched up meant that in criminal slang, but explained that in police slang it meant properly arrested with no hint of falsehood or perjury in the procedure. The sheriff on the bench (magistrates are called sheriffs in Scotland) believed the police witness, since our nation will sink into anarchy if magistrates distrust the police. So the blind man was fined, but not imprisoned, as would almost certainly have happened in an old-fashioned fascist or communist nation.

Like the sheriff on the bench my sympathy is mainly with the police. Opening a door with the big key (which is police slang for sledgehammer) is a desperate deed, even if you think someone behind the door is wicked, and that if you grab them fast enough you may find proof of this. Nearly all our experience and education, besides the natural law of do-as-you-would-be-done-by, teaches us to handle doors gently. They are usually quiet, unthreatening, protective creatures. Some of our dearest joys and most regular functions have been made easier by them, so smashing one MUST feel like punching a face, or bombing pedestrians from an aeroplane in broad daylight. We may earn a wage by doing it, we may believe we are defending decency and justice by it, but we cannot help feeling abnormally excited, so mistakes are inevitable. I also sympathize slightly with the blind man, for I am not one of those who think everyone in a municipal housing scheme deserves what is done to them. The man’s blindness may not have been his own fault, and may have stopped him seeing he ought to live in a better part of the city. But he should certainly have used his imagination, which would have let him see in the dark.

The big key unlocked the blind man’s door in 1990 when Glasgow was the official Culture Capital of Europe. The story was not reported by the press. I give it here because the police, like the prisoner in my first story, found themselves in a terrible situation but imagined a way out. They created a fictional exit which worked.

I READ THIS STORY many years ago in a newspaper. It had no big headline and filled very few inches but I cannot forget it.

THE MOUNTAIN HAD TWO SUMMITS. One of them had been excavated to uncover ridges of rock around the main contours, ridges with flat upper surfaces and sheer cliff-like sides. I noticed that some ridges were not natural rock but reinforced with concrete.

TWO BIG MEN CALLED A AND B are discussing how to cut up a territory which is in contest between them. Their organization, their cunning, their success are about equal. The contest, if continued, will so weaken them that both will fall prey to X, a much bigger man who has hitherto held aloof. This is partly because he is doing very well in a distant territory where he has destroyed or absorbed every other competitor, and partly because he knows A and B will unite against him if he tries to destroy or absorb either. Their problem is that the disputed territory cannot usefully be cut in two. For geographical, religious and linguistic reasons, splitting it will more than wipe out the profit to be got by taking it over. Yet they cannot leave it alone. The disputed ground is occupied by small independent people who mostly want to stay small and independent, but some of the richer among them also want, with foreign help, to grow bigger at the expense of their neighbours. If A or B do not offer this help X will regard it as a sign of weakness and move into the territory himself. Of course, if A and B combined forces they could easily run the whole territory for the profit of both, but when B suggests this A says, “Combine under who?”

And the subject is dropped

PERHAPS YOU KNOW that musclemen — hard men who want to be extra strong — have a habit of eating big feeds of steak and chips, and the minute the last mouthful is swallowed they heave big weights, or run great distances, or work machines that let them do both at the same time. This converts all the food in their guts into muscle without an ounce of additional fat. When a dedicated muscleman overeats, sheer strength is the only outcome.

In 1960 I went on holiday to Ireland with Andrew Sykes, a tough small stocky man with a thick thatch of white hair and a face like a boxer’s. Like myself he dressed comfortably rather than smartly. We had met when he was a mature student at Glasgow University and I a very callow one just out of Glasgow Art School. We were from the working class who had benefited when two post-war governments (Labour and Tory) agreed that all who qualified for professional educations might have them whether or not they or their parents could pay. Andrew, who had been a sergeant with the British army in India, eventually won a doctorate through a paper on trade unions in the building industry, getting his knowledge by the unacademic ploy of working as a navvy. His army experience and a course in economics had also given him insights into the workings of our officer and financial class. He took malicious glee in gossiping to me about the insider trading by which this minority manipulate the rest. My notion of Britain had been formed at the end of the Second World War when our government announced the coming of a fairer society and the creation of social welfare for all. I had thought Britain was now mainly managed by folk who had mastered difficult processes through training and experience. Andrew explained that, as often today as in the past, most British civil service and business chiefs had stepped into senior positions because they had been to three or four expensive boarding schools and a couple of universities in the English east midlands: institutions where exams mattered less than their parents’ wealth and friends they had made. He persuaded me that Britain was not (as most of our politicians and publicity networks claimed) a democracy, but an aristocracy.

OUR COLONEL WAS EVERYTHING such a British officer should be, though not always as clever as he believed. He enjoyed playing chess and had never lost a game before Harrington joined us. Before then his only steady chess partner was near retirement age and kept having to be reminded how the pieces moved. After one game with the Colonel everyone else refused his challenges saying, “No point in playing you Sir! We know the result beforehand.”

He took that as a compliment. On Harrington’s first night in the mess he was pleased when the young man admitted to enjoying an occasional chess game, while declaring he was a very poor player. The Colonel may not have known that every player who is not a grand master says that before playing a new opponent, because he replied cheerfully, “Then you will probably learn something by playing me.” Those of us who understood chess gathered to watch this game with unusual interest.

THIS HAPPENED IN 1971 OR 72 when public education and health were better funded, when British manual workers were better paid, when the middle classes were almost as prosperous but less in debt than today, when the richest classes were (by their own obviously high standards) much poorer. Other tales in this book have sour endings but none as bad as this because the others are fiction. I heard it from Angel Mullane, once a colleague of the teacher who is the story’s most active yet least interesting character.

I MET JESUS CHRIST only once, in Cana, at some sort of marriage feast. I say “feast” because that word was distinctly printed on the invitation card, though it aroused expectations which were not fulfilled, for the parents of the bride had either pretentions beyond their incomes or were downright stingy. The waiters’ tardiness in refilling our glasses suggested the booze was in short supply, and long before we finished the unappetizing main course there was none to be had. The person most obviously upset about this was a little old Jewish lady who had already (I seem to remember) consumed more than her fair share of the available alcohol.

“They have no wine!” she hissed in a stage whisper which was heard throughout the room and embarrassed everyone except (apparently) our hosts. I was compelled to admire their equanimity in the face of so audible a hint. The little lady was addressing a man who looked like — and actually was — both her son and a carpenter wearing his best suit. Like many mothers she was blaming her offspring for other people’s faults, but his reaction surprised me.

“Woman!” he declared, “My time is not yet come!”

This struck us all as a meaningless remark, though I later realized it was advance publicity for his brief, disastrous career as a faith healer. However, a moment afterwards he beckoned the head of the catering staff, and whispered something which resulted in more wine being served.

A BIG TELEVISION COMPANY regularly broadcast a news programme informing the viewers of bad deeds: not the bad deeds of corporations who might withdraw advertising revenues, or the bad deeds of big businessmen and government officials who could afford to bring strong libel actions, but the exploitive practices of private tradesmen. This did some social good and entertained viewers, who were also encouraged to help the programme by supplying it with evidence of scandalous instances. The broadcasters heard of a man who liked horses but had become so poor that the few he owned were badly fed and stabled. The broadcasters tried to contact the man but he hid from them. A camera crew besieged his house until he emerged and was filmed fleeing from an interviewer who ran after him shouting unanswered questions. This was broadcast along with distant views of the horses, the faces and voices of concerned neighbours, the comments of a qualified animal doctor. The owner was subsequently charged with cruelty to animals by the Royal Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, was found guilty and jailed for several months as he could not afford to pay a fine. The horses were humanely killed because nobody else wanted them.

Which of the following cared most for the horses?

I WAS IGNORANT when I was young. I didnae know that sex and children were connected — they seemed to belong to different worlds. My Mammy and her pals talked about sex in a queer oblique kind of way but they were quite open and direct when they spoke about children: “She’s decided not to have a child yet,” they said about a girl who had just married. I was sixteen when I married and I decided not to have a child either. I talked it over with my husband — he was a year older than me — and he entirely agreed. “Time enough for us to have children when we’ve a home of our own,” he said, “and that won’t be for a few years yet.”

My Mammy thought it was a wise decision too. We were living with her.

NOWADAYS THE DANISH CROWN PRINCE is a keen amateur actor who only talks to friends, members of his family, civil servants and journalists in Copenhagen’s Theatre Royal, on a stage set for the last act of Hamlet. Admission is free. On Tuesday and Thursday afternoons the front stalls are full of children brought by teachers from primary schools all over Scandinavia, as part of their social science education. At other times the audience is seldom more than eight or nine adults, mainly American tourists. Broadcasters agree that the prince’s performances are lifelike and convincing but too dull to be recorded or televised. The prince believes that as standards of living and decency deteriorate throughout the world, many will start to enjoy watching what he calls “the banality of virtue”.

I DID NOT STRUGGLE FOR IT. By accident alone five older brothers died before I took the crown of a thousand-mile-long kingdom, founded by our grandfather, when the T’ang dynasty could not hold China together. My handwriting was excellent. I was not blatantly unfaithful to my wife. Like a true philosopher I eschewed ambition and let landlords and merchants run the country. The Sung empire swallowed us whole. When ordered, I killed myself. Never mind. I once wrote my name on a famous painting. I am remembered, though my people are not.

THE ELDER GRANDMOTHER, or stipendiary magistrate, or rich farmer’s prodigal son scratches, or ignores, or perhaps greedily enjoys the young slave-girls of the harem, or the petitioners from an unimportant suburb, or the white feathered-longnecked-furiously-hissing denizens of the poultry yard: while in another continent and century and civilization I turn a vertical row of pictograms into a horizontal sentence of phonetic type, without spilling a nuance.

And one mild midsummer day, high among the rocky and heathery summits of Ben Venue, we found a small hollow brimful of perfectly smooth untrodden snow, and shouting “See the lovely white snow!” jumped into the middle of it with our great big boots.

MY CEILING ADMITS NO RAIN. I admire the movement of clouds over the city. Every weather, every season has its unique beauty.

HARRY is a foetus before the sexual scanning of them is practical. She is pulled from her mother’s body through a caesarian section because the mother believes a surgical delivery will ensure her husband’s presence. Just before the operation she is told that a local, not a general, anaesthetic must be used.

“I felt every bloody thing they did to me down thea,” she tells friends, “It didn’t hurt, but it was loathsome.”

When Harry is held up in the air her mother says, “Oh God a fucking little gel! For a boy I might have whipped up some maternal instinct but a gel is not on.”

She weeps passionately and the husband and father pays no attention to Harry, who is also weeping passionately. He pats his wife’s hand and says, “Don’t worry, dia, it isn’t important.”

SENGA is still a schoolgirl before contraceptive pills are cheap and widely used. In these years many girls under eighteen have no steady boyfriend, those with one are usually virgins, a popular girl can be friendly with several boys who do not necessarily dislike each other or distrust her. Senga at fifteen has a reckless gaiety which many find attractive. Instinctive caution usually inclines her to Tom who is not very amusing or good looking. He is tall but walks as if ashamed of that. He dresses well, but moves and sits as though to stop his clothes getting creased. He is two years older than Senga and her other friends find him dull. They belong to a small group who attend the same school and meet most evenings in a local café. Tom has more pocket money or is more generous than the others. He buys drinks for the group which it would not consume if expenses were shared equally. Senga’s other friends think this is Tom’s way of buying the pleasure of their company and the pleasure of sometimes walking home with Senga, though she never invites him inside. But Senga is not mercenary. What she likes in Tom is her power over him.

DONALDA is usually met through other people. Today this is an old man who trots up and down a busy pavement, showing a light bulb to passer-by and asking them if they know about electricity. Most pretend not to see or hear him. A few pause for a second with pained smiles then shake their heads and hurry on. The old man is not discouraged. He is a peculiar little man with the bent back and knobbly joints of somebody who was once big. He wears black canvas gym shoes, a shirt printed with orange and purple silhouettes of palm trees, a fine tweed suit so large that the trouserlegs are turned up three inches at the ankles, the sleeves turned back as much at the wrists. Apart from these folds his clothes are neatly pressed and very clean. Maybe people are repelled by his voice. He has the accent of a city in north-east England and the pavement is in a city of the Scottish west.

OUTSIDE the film industry most modern bosses distrust entourages. They like to see their underlings one at a time, or round a table where they sit at the top holding agendas to control proceedings. When Tom gets his own business he enjoys having people nearby who depend on his wishes and must not intrude on him. With his heels on his desktop, his heavy muscular body tilted back in a solidly crafted swivel chair, he talks loudly over the phone in the presence of one actual and one potential employee. “We despatched exactly what you asked for, Mr Cockport,” he says. “Our correspondence shows it. The only item missing is your original order form which I will have to hand when the last of our filing cabinets arrive. But why not consult your own records? You’ll see the problem is not mine but yours. Good day.”

He puts the phone down, yawns, stretches and asks “Anything else, Ted?”

“The storage racks in the loading bay,” says his undermanager, “The head joiner wants overtime.”

“The hell he does! Send him in.” The undermanager leaves. Tom tells a young woman standing near the door, “Not long now Miss er …”

The head joiner enters and Tom puts his feet on the floor. The two men talk truculently. Tom is aggressive, the joiner obstinate. A verbal bargain is struck and the joiner leaves. Tom phones his undermanager and says, “I’ve sorted out the joiner, Ted. He’ll finish the job at the agreed price and he’ll finish it this week. He thinks that next week he’ll be putting up shelves in the basement, but find another firm for that job will you? We can’t trust this lot.”

Tom puts the receiver down and says, “I’ve been a bad lad leaving you standing here all this time though I must say you stand well Miss er …?”

“Tain,” says the woman.

“June Tain,” agrees Tom, nodding at a letter on his desk. “The agency has told me all about you. You’ve had experience as a receptionist, I see, but in a receptionist experience counts a lot less than appearance so let’s have a look at you.”

He looks at her.

THE boiler room is entered from a dirty little yard behind an old hotel with a grand big front. The room has a concrete floor and walls of unplastered, unpainted brick. It is windowless and lit by a bare bulb hung from the ceiling at the end of the room not occupied by the boiler — the end with the door. The boiler is like the engine of an old steam locomotive without wheels and cabin. It has the same circular front of riveted steel plates, the same large dials indicating water level and pressures, the same small grim furnace underneath. It eats the same sort of fuel. Near by is a heap of small coal and a heap of coke. A long-handled and short-handled shovel lie on these, an iron-handled rake and a stout sweeping-brush with very coarse bristles. In a corner a heap of tumbled-together chairs slopes up to the ceiling, chairs too old or damaged for the hotel and sent down here for use as kindling. There is a stack of expensive but out-of-date fashion magazines sent down for the same purpose. These heaps are all close together because the boiler fills most of the room.

DOORBELL rings. Mrs Liddel opens to Mrs Mathieson who says, “I took my pain to the doctor — I’ve just got back from him.”

“Would you like a cup of tea?” asks Mrs Liddel. Mrs Mathieson enters the sitting-room. Mrs Liddel enters the kitchen where Mr Liddel reads a library book, a kettle of water steams gently over a low flame.

“Mrs Mathieson!” explains Mrs Liddel preparing tea and biscuits. Her husband says, “Mhm.”

In the sitting-room Mrs Liddel pours two cups of tea as Mrs Mathieson draws a deep breath and announces, “The very first thing he did was tell me to strip myself naked all over.”

“Oh dear!” whispers Mrs Liddel. As the story continues her kind, alert face expresses wonder, sympathy, dismay and dread. These expressions are genuine. Mrs Liddel, her husband and two grown-up daughters have never been painfully ill, drunk or quarrelsome, or accidentally involved with criminal or indecent or eccentric behaviour, so most people’s lives strike them as surprising. They have no television set because the things shown on it strike them as too surprising for comfort. When a visitor has no more to say Mrs Liddel can only shake her head and say, “Fancy that!” or “That should not be allowed.”

When the visitor leaves Mrs Liddel takes the tea things back to the kitchen saying, “Mrs Mathieson took her pain to the doctor this morning. The first thing he made her do was strip herself naked all over.”

While talking she washes and dries tea things and restores them to exact places in cupboard, sideboard and drawer, sometimes pausing when the gravity of the news makes movement impossible. Mr Liddel is slightly ashamed of being the only one who knows his wife gossips. A casual observer might think he was ignoring her — he has raised his eyes only a fraction above the book held open before him. When the recital ends he says, “Well well!” and resumes reading, or else, “I see. So that’s the way of it. I’d better take a wee walk. Come on Tippy.”

Their old dog follows him to the park where he strolls up to the flagpole in dry weather or through the museum when wet. He broods deeply on what his wife has told him. It usually confirms what he deduces from newspapers and wireless broadcasts: Britain is getting worse.

HARRY is an odd but elegant girl, strikingly tall, thin, supple and strong. This comes from solitary acrobatics in the school gymnasium where she often hangs upside-down on the wallbars for many minutes. She normally walks on tiptoe with rapid little steps and knees close together, body and neck and head so erect that viewed from the hips upward she seems to stand still while the world slips past her. She has no conversation. Her few brief remarks are in a clear little voice which seems to arrive from a great distance. Any question which cannot be answered by yes or no she answers with a slow gloomy nod. She reads every book the tutors give her very fast, with the brooding concentration she brings to comic papers and film magazines. When asked to write essays on her reading she quickly covers many pages with lines which look like different lengths of knotted string. If told to write slowly so that her words can be read she takes half an hour to form a sentence, often stopping to consult a dictionary and ponder, so her occasional eccentric spelling reads like subversive criticism.

PRIDE AND PREJUICE IS A STUPID BOOK UNLESS YOU LICK MR DANCY.

All her readable sentences are a simple statement with one reservation, laboriously written in minute, widely-spaced capitals.

MOBY DICK IS A GREAT BOOK UNLESS YOU LACK WHALES.

HUCKLEBBERY FUN IS GREAT FUN UNLESS YOU LOCK CIVILIZED PUPIL.

“I spy intellect hia. I hope it is conscious intellect,” says the headmistress. “I feel on the verge of knowing what she means.”

In another child Harry’s mannerisms would be thought signs of a damaged mind, but they are fascinating in a cousin of a queen. Even older girls would gladly be her friend but she treats everyone with an equal aloofness they think truly regal.

PHONE rings. Ella patiently lifts the receiver. Most of the calls she answers are for a friend who is seldom in. She says quickly, “Hello.”

“Hello Jean!” says a loud eager voice, “I’m a free man.”

“I’m sorry, Jean is out. She won’t be back till quite late. Can I give her a message?”

She hears a sigh, then silence, then a sad little voice asks hesitantly, “Is that you, Elaine?”

“I’m Ella Warner, Jean’s flatmate.”

“Of course you are!” says the voice loudly, “You are Ella Warner, Jean’s flatmate. We met at Jean’s housewarming party and had an interesting chat. You think modern mothers allow their daughters too much freedom —”

“I don’t think I said that.”

“You wore a blue trousersuit —”

“A blue dress.”

“I got the colour right. I’m Leo Brown and you don’t remember a single thing about me.”

The voice is triumphant and accusing. She says defensively, “I remember hardly anyone from that party. Why should I? It wasn’t my party.”

“You’ll remember me when you see me, Ella. I’m coming round.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“I’m taking you out for a meal.”

“I’ve just eaten.”

“I’m taking you out for a drink.”

“I don’t like drinking, usually, and just now I’m studying. I’ve an exam on Monday. I don’t know you and I don’t think you know me.”

The voice turns hard and ugly.

“All work and no play makes Jill a very dull girl indeed, Ella! What you need is a break from your routines, Ella! It will help your studies so I’ll knock your door half an hour from now, right.”

“I won’t open it if you do.”

Ella is firm about this but does not put the receiver down. She hears another sigh, and silence, and once again the sad little hesitant voice.

“Do you… know the lounge bar of The Lome?”

“Well?”

“In half an hour I’ll be having a drink there. I’ll be smoking a rather unusual pipe. The bowl is carved to look like the head of a bull —”

“Oh!”

“Now you remember me?”

“No, but I remember your pipe.”

After four seconds the voice says dully, “If you want a drink you know where to come,” and the line goes dead.

HARRY meets her dealer and Linda, who has come south to discuss Harry’s 1990 exhibition in Glasgow.

“First tell me about the European Cultcha Capital thing,” says the dealer. “Why Glasgow? How has a notoriously filthy hole become a shining light? Is it an advatising stunt?”

“Certainly, but we have something to advertise!” says Linda. “It all began when John Betjeman discovad Glasgow in the sixties and found what nobody had eva suspected. The city centa is a mastapiece of Victorian and Edwardian architectcha. But in those days it was unda such a thick coating of soot and grime that only the eye of a masta could penetrate it. Even moa off-putting wa the people. In those days most Scottish impoats and expoats passed through Glasgow, and the good middle bit was squashed up tight against docks and warehouses and the tenements of those who worked in them. What would visitas think of London if Trafalga Squaya was on the Isle of Dogs? If every day hordes of homy-handed men in filthy overalls percolated up and down Regent Street and half filled the Fleet Street pubs? But London is vast, so the classes segregate themselves easily and naturally. They couldn’t do that in Glasgow so respectable Londonas passed through it in fia of thea lives. It is perhaps not logical fo well dressed British people to dread the working classes, but when they flagrantly outnumba us the recoil is instinctive.

IF a man is middle-aged between thirty-five years and fifty-five I have been old for several years. When I stopped being young I did not expect life to go so quickly but I have no other complaint. I will likely take twenty or thirty more years to die and it will be the smooth comfortable dying of someone protected by money. My ceiling admits no rain so I enjoy the movement of clouds over the rooftops. Every weather, every season has its unique beauty and this large window allows a good view of it. My flat is at the top of a building on a hill so I see right across the roofs of the other tenements and terraces. A tree-filled groove zigzagging among their roofs shows the course of a small river. This flows into a fine park in the middle distance, a park between two hills. One is crowned by the pinnacles of our mock-gothic university, one by the towers of an old theological college converted into luxury flats where my friend Leo lives. I see all this distinctly, and much of the city beyond, and on a clear day many fields and tree clumps on the hills beyond that. I am in the west end where most of the prosperous residential districts are in cities where the wind usually blows from the west. Even so, smoke from the east and other industrial districts so stained our finest buildings that a few years ago they made a very poor impression on visitors. Since the industries closed the richest districts have been extensively cleaned, partly with public money and partly through tax concessions to property owners. We now advertise our city as a splendid one and a lot of foreigners are buying places in the posh parts. I am lucky to have moved here from the east (where I was born and educated) before the prices went up. Like all poor parts of Britain the east end has got poorer in the last twenty years and will be poorer still when the poll tax is in full working order.

DONALDA fastens her mouth on June’s mouth in a kiss which is almost a bite and June enjoys a melting delicious weakness like nothing she has known. Her astonishment at this feeling is so great that she does not move when Donalda releases her, stands, touches buttons on the radio phone and says, “Senga? Senga, she’s all ready for you, and she’s got no arrangments this weekend, nobody’s coming, or expects her … Yes bring up the teacher.”

Donalda, a little nervously (June thinks) straightens her skirt and tucks her blouse into the waistband without refastening anything. A buzz from entryphone. Donalda presses street-door switch, opens door to landing then stands beside it, listening to the coming of her friends. June has several seconds to think about screaming, a few seconds to do it. She doesn’t do it because she is almost certain that most of her neighbours are out on Friday nights, and if some are at home, and come when she screams, and the visitors run away, what will the neighbours find? June nearly naked in an embarrassing skirt with her arms bound behind her. All her life June has dreaded embarrassment more than pain, which she has hardly ever experienced and even now does not expect. She feels part of a surprising play or dream which cannot hurt much — if it does she will walk out of it or wake up. The obvious reason for not screaming — that as soon as she starts Donalda will jump on her and gag her — does not enter her head.

JUNE wakes in dark, feeling robbed of something essential to life and dignity. Aching muscles in arm, leg and shoulder, various throbs and ticklings in the skin recall what happened. She rises, puts on light, telephones speaking clock, is told by rich and manly English voice that on the third stroke the time sponsored by Accurist will be 2 hours, 27 minutes and 30 seconds. She has slept dreamlessly for over nineteen hours. She now sees the theft of her clothes, personal ornaments, souvenirs, hair, the piercing and tattooing of her skin are not the worst that happened, though they constantly recall it. Her body has been deliberately toyed with and teased into a sexual hunger she only now fully feels, gnawing and dreadful hunger. Her one hope of satisfying it is someone who said “I’ll phone you at the end of the week.” The time is half-past two on dark Monday morning. If she had hope of finding where Senga lived she would hunt her up, break in on her, DEMAND satisfaction, spank her till she yielded it. Is there nobody else she can break in on? A man is not what June wants but would be better than nothing. However, for three years she has tried to give men up, and succeeded. The only man she knows who can be reached by taxi and would love to be invaded is her ex-husband. She shudders at the thought of him — better use her fingers. Which she does, but not at once.

June has usually been lonely, having cultivated reticence because her beauty has mostly attracted men she has found boring or predatory. She has therefore evaded or retreated from what she dislikes, never opposing or trying to change it. The discovery that her mere appearance now disturbs conventional, timid people feels like release. Stepping jauntily through the streets in her defiantly sexual suit she enjoys a freedom which is more than sexual. Next day, instead of brooding over Senga and what will happen when they meet at the end of the week, June returns to work as if nothing had happened. Her office job prevents loneliness and earns money, but today she approaches it with a mischievous interest in how her workmates will cope with her.

FOR MORAG McALPINE TOM MASCHLER XANDRA HARDIE

LONDON 1993

I AM THE DESCENDANT of a race whose stolid unimaginative decency has, at all times, rendered them the dependable tools of others; yet from my earliest infancy I grew self-willed, addicted to the wildest caprices, a prey to the most ungovernable passions until bound and weary I thought best to sulk upon my mother’s breast. Too romantic.

EIGHT MEN DUG a trench beside a muddy crossroads, and the mud made two remember Italy where they had fought in a recent war. These two had not known each other in Italy, puffy and swole up like a balloon — I think only his uniform stopped him bursting. The heavy traffic must have kept the rats away. Every time we went that road I but both had seen a dead German who lay at a crossroads near Naples, though one thought it was perhaps nearer Pisa. They discussed the matter when the gang paused for a smoke.

“Not Pisa, no, Pisa was miles away,” said one,

“Naples was the place. He was a handsome big fella. We called him Siegfried.”

“Our lot called him Adolf, because of the fuckin moustache,” said the other, “He wasnae handsome for fuckin long.”

“I don’t remember a moustache, but you’re right, he wasnae handsome for long. He went all white and hoped to God someone had shifted him but no, there he always was, more horrible than ever. Because eventually a truck ran over him and burst him up properly. Do you mind that?”

“I mind it fuckin fine.”

“Every time we went that road we would say, ‘I wonder how old Siegfried’s doing,’ and look out for him, and there was always something to see, though at last it was only the bones of a foot or a bit of rag with a button on it.”

THIS thirty-year-old college lecturer is big, stout, handsome, with the innocent baby face of a man used to being served by women, the sulky underlip of one who has never been served as much as he wants. It is Sunday afternoon. He compares the dial of his wristwatch with that of a small ornate clock under a glass dome on his mantelpiece. Both indicate 2.49. He sighs and looks critically round the apartment like a mechanic surveying a machine that has stopped working for him. Walls are pale grey, woodwork white, the moss-green fitted carpet harmonizes (not too obviously) with his immaculate dark-green sweater. A large low bed lacks foot and headboard, has big blue cushions strewn on it, and derives an air of invitation from a nearby coffee table on which lie a board supporting cold roast chicken, oatcakes, pat of butter, knife, salt-cellar; a salver of apples, peaches, grapes; a dish of small bright cakes and sweets. A few stones in the marble fireplace look nothing like coal, but bright flames among them give the air warmth which would make undressing easy, without making clothed people sweat. Through an oriel window a view of sunlit treetops can be blotted out (when wished) by smoothly running floor-length curtains, curtains with the light tone of his finely creased flannel trousers. Yet he sighs again, not feeling truly at home. Maybe an apple will help. He goes determinedly to the table but hesitates to disturb his arrangement of the fruit. A bell chimes softly. Smiling with relief he leaves the room, crosses a small lobby, opens the front door and says, “Vlasta.”

A bitterly sobbing woman runs in past him. He looks out into the corridor, sees nobody else, closes the door.

IN HER MID-TWENTIES she does not move or dress attractively so only looks handsome when still, like now. She sprawls on floor, arms folded on seat of the easy chair she uses as desk. Pencil in hand, notepad under it, she studies open book propped against chairback: the one book in a room whose furnishings show only that the users are neither poor nor rich. This a room to lodge, not live in, unless your thoughts are often elsewhere. She frowns, writes a sentence, scores it out, frowns and writes another. A vertical crease between dark eyebrows is the only line on her face.

GO TO WEDDING and reception afterward where, as usual, the bride’s people and groom’s people are strangers to each other. Tension. The groom’s family are English, new here trying not to show they are richer, feel superior to the bride’s people, the Scots, the natives. Are in a small gang of bride’s friends who know their best dresses will look cheap beside groom’s sisters’ and women friends’ dresses, so dress deliberately down, making a uniform of jeans spectacularly ripped, tiny denim jackets showing midriffs and that we don’t care how much money you lot like wasting on clothes. Bride’s people are mortified. Feel sorry for them. Groom’s people act amused, are perhaps not very, so to hell with them. This tall quite old man, nearly thirty — the well dressed kind who knows he is suave — keeps looking, not openly staring but giving quiet little humble yet slightly amused glances meaning hullo, I’m turned on, do you think we could? He is careful nobody else sees him giving the eye, but stays with his own posh English sort but only with the men until wonder (disappointed) is he gay? and (indignantly) does he think this get-up just comic? Forget him.

TO: LUMLEY

FROM: LESLEY

The following will seem bad-tempered and in fact is. It says what I meant to raise at yesterday’s meeting but my only chance came at the end when Phimister said, “Is there any further business?” and Henry Pitt (looking at me out of the corner of his eye) said, “No, I think that’s everything,” and suddenly I felt too tired. I seem the only manager in this firm who is allowed — indeed expected — to complain about practical everyday details. When I start doing it our directors exchange little smiles, stop listening and retreat into private dreamlands. They think everyday practical details are not their business but the business of Mulgrew the buildings manager and Tramworth the accountant. Nobody, not even Mulgrew, denies that what I ask to be done ought to be done, but only he and Tramworth can authorize it so it is never done. I have raised items on this list at meetings from last month to years ago. You joined us less than two months ago so the first and longest item on the list may strike you as an accident. I assure you that something of the sort happens every winter.

MILLIONS of people lived in rooms joined by long windowless corridors. The work which kept their world going (or seemed to, because they were taught that it did, and nobody can ever be taught the exact truth) their work was done on machines in the rooms where they lived, and the machines rewarded them by telling them how much they earned. Big earners could borrow money which got them better rooms. The machines, the money-lending and most of the rooms belonged to three or four organizations. There was also a government and a method of choosing it which allowed everyone, every five years, to press a button marked STAY or CHANGE. This kept or altered the faces of the politicians. The politicians paid themselves for governing, and also drew incomes from the organizations which owned everything, but governing and owning were regarded as separate activities, so the personal links between them were dismissed as coincidences or accepted as inevitable. Yet many folk — even big earners in comfortable rooms — felt enclosed without knowing exactly what enclosed them. When the government announced that it now governed a wholly new world many people were greatly excited, because their history associated new worlds with freedom and wide spaces.

THOUGH I SPEAK with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not Love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not Love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not Love, it profiteth me nothing.’ — Paul wrote this in his first letter to the Christians of …

“Excuse me but I want to ask you one question, just one question. Are you a lesbian?”

“I am not a lesbian.”

“That answer, if you will pardon me for saying so, is not satisfactory. For the last two Sunday mornings I have watched you stroll in here at five-thirty, wearing jeans. You order a pint of lager, bring it to this corner and sit reading a book and shrugging off every man who tries to start a conversation with you. Why act that way if you arenae a lesbian?”

“That is your second question. You said you would ask just one.”

“Aye, all right. I take your point. Fair enough.” Paul wrote this in his first letter to the Christians of Corinth, less than twenty years after Christ was crucified. And now, a question.

COME IN, come in, Mrs Chigwell. Sit down. My partner is sorry he cannot attend to you, as arranged, but there will be no complications. His wife was unexpectedly struck down by something this morning and though (thank goodness) she is not exactly at death’s door he would find it hard to concentrate on your (thank goodness) smaller problem. His mind might wander, his hand tremble, so you are safer with me. His X-rays indicate two fillings, one of them a wee toaty tiddler of a job, and I am so sure of my skill that I promise you will feel no pain if I work without anaesthetic. But maybe you are nervous and want it, even so? No? Splendid. I am starting the motor — which lowers and tilts the chair — so easily and smoothly that your heart and semi-circular canals have suffered no shock or disturbance. The Trendelenburg Position — that is what we call the position you are in, Mrs Chigwell. This chair gets you into it, and out of it, in a manner which ensures you cannot possibly faint. I wonder who Trendelenburg is.

I DISCOVERED an odd thing about my left foot when about to pull on a sock this morning. In the groove between the second and third toe, reckoning from the big toe, is a small grey pellet of chewing-gum. I do not chew gum, or know or remember meeting anyone who does. I sometimes patter about this room in my dressing-gown and bare feet, but I never go out of it, and nobody comes here nowadays except the one who cares for me, who is Zoë I believe. And hope. Zoë would never play such a sly wee disturbing trick as putting a sticky sweet between the toes of a sleeping man. Her tricks were all bonny and lavish. I once came home to find that a friend had given her back money we had lent him, money we had stopped expecting to get back, though we needed it for food and rent. Zoë had spent half of it on food all right — we had food enough to last a fortnight. She had spent the rest on flowers. The bedroom floor was covered with vases, jugs, bowls, pans, basins, kettles so full of irises, lilacs and carnations that the bed seemed afloat in a small Loch Lomond of blue, purple and crimson petals. The scent nearly knocked me out. I had to be angry. I saw the loving goodness in that gesture, but had I encouraged lavishness we would have ended up homeless. She knew it, too. Once when I chose to be lavish she grew thoughtful, worried, then angry. She I wanted me to be careful and mean so that she could be lavish, which does not explain how this chewing-gum arrived between my toes.

THIS intelligent, kind old lady was once a school-teacher, and it shows in her forth-right manners and alert appearance. On the station announcement board she reads that the 11.15 Aquarian from Bundlon to Shaglow will leave from platform H, and this worries her. While aware that her memory is failing she is sure station platforms used to be numbered, not lettered, so why the change? And walking along the platform she sees the carriages have very small square windows with rounded corners. The last time she travelled by rail the windows seemed to be big long glass panels that stretched the entire side of each carriage with hardly any interruption. She also remembers when carriages were divided into compartments like the insides of stage coaches, each with a door in the middle of either side, a door whose window could be raised or lowered by fitting holes in a thick leather strap onto shining brass studs. The handles of these old doors were shining brass levers. She stops and examines a door of a carriage near the front of the modern train. It has neither window nor handle, just a square plastic button in the middle with PRESS engraved on it. She presses. The door slides up like a blind. She steps through and it snaps down behind her.

FOR AGNES AND MORAG AGAIN

EDINBURGH 2003

WAKENING HE TURNED HIS HEAD and saw she was still reading. After a moment he said, “About that e-mail you sent.”

“I never sent you an e-mail,” she said, eyes still on the book.

“Not before today, perhaps, but this afternoon you e-mailed me and said—”

“I repeat,” she interrupted, looking hard at him, “I have never sent you or anyone else an e-mail in my life.”

“But you did send one to the office this afternoon. I remember it perfectly — the heading stating it was from you to me and everyone else in the firm. Why did you have to tell them? You must have sent it from a friend’s computer or one in the public library.” “You’re still drunk.”

“If you mean I was drunk when we came to bed you are wrong. We had only one bottle of wine with the evening meal and I drank only one more glass of it than you. I’m glad you’re sorry you sent that message but you’ll never persuade me you didn’t.”

“You’re hallucinating. What am I supposed to have said?” “That you want to leave me. Five words — I want to leave you — just that.” She stared at him, shut the book and said bitterly, “Oh, very clever. Cruel, but clever.” “Do you want to leave me?”

“Yes, but I never told you so. I’ve never told anyone that — they think ours is such a solid marriage. You must have noticed it’s a farce and this is your bloody cunning way of blaming me for something I never said and was never going to say.”

“Blethers!” he cried, “I am never cunning, never cruel. I remember these words coming up very clear and distinct on the computer screen: I want to leave you.”

“Then why didn’t you mention it when you came home? Why didn’t you mention it over dinner? Are you going to pretend you were brooding over it before we came to bed?” He thought hard for a while then said,

“You’re right. I must have dreamed it before I woke a moment ago.”

“I’m glad you’ve sobered up,” she said and resumed reading.

I WAS NINETEEN when Colin and I met at a friend’s party. He was nearly the same age and had a job in the navy. Though not in uniform and not remarkably handsome he was well dressed and carried himself handsomely without seeming arrogant. His conversation was good humoured, with a pleasant touch of shyness. He was also interested in me: the first to be interested since my father’s death seven years earlier. We decided to marry. I had a good secretarial job. We raised a joint loan that let us buy a nice house in a pleasant street.

Shortly before the wedding I discovered he expected me to marry his mother too, so was terrified by the thought that our marriage might be a lasting one. In 1960s Scotland this was not an absurd idea. At that time the law made divorces too expensive to be usual in working-class districts where the few divorced men were widely pitied because they must now cook their own meals and wash their own clothes. The divorced women were thought easy meat by men and public dangers by other women. I hated the idea of a divorce but knew I could not live till death parted us with a man who expected me to eat with his relations. I had no mother, having been orphaned in my teens. My only relatives were two aunts who prided themselves on their intelligence and avoided me because I was cleverer than their own children. I was therefore shocked to find Colin expected us to visit his mother almost every night of the week and his married sister every weekend. He said the meals they made were more normal than mine. Here is an example of that normal.

BEFORE TALKING ABOUT TILDA I’ll mention earlier wives. Wife I was an ordinary tidy home-lover. We met at secondary school and after leaving it she let us make love then refused to allow any more of that unless we married. So we married. Wife 2 was a bossy manager, wife 3 very quiet and messy. I married all of them because it made us feel more secure for a while and separated from them without fuss or fighting, so I am obviously no Bluebeard. Indeed, most of my life has passed in sexual loneliness which makes me hopeful when a new affair looks like starting, as happened a year ago.

A MILD SEPTEMBER MORNING. A man no longer young strolls thoughtfully on a narrow footpath along a former railway line. Noises tell of a nearby motorway but brambles, elders and hawthorns on each side hide all but the straight empty path ahead until he sees a small clearing among bushes on his right. Two girls sit here at the foot of an old telegraph pole. He pauses, gazing at the top of the cracked grey timber pole. It has cross-pieces with insulators like small white jam pots from which broken wires dangle. He is aware that the girls are in their teens, look surly and depressed, wear clumsy thick-soled boots and baggy military trousers from which rise pleasantly slim bodies. One says crossly, “What are you staring at?”

“At the wires of that sad sad pole!” says the man without lowering his eyes. “A few years ago they carried messages from this land of ours to a world-wide commercial empire.” “A few years? It was yonks ago,” says the girl scornfully. Without looking straight at her the man glimpses a stud piercing her lower lip and one through the wing of a nostril. He says, “Yonks. Yes. I suppose telegraphs were defunct before you were born.”

He continues looking up at it until the other girl stands, stretches her arms, pretends to yawn, says, “I’ll better away,” and walks off through the bushes. Her companion still sits as she did before the stroller arrived.

LONG AGO a college of further education paid me to help folk write poems, stories and other things that bring nobody a steady wage. I had applied for the job because I was in debt and needed a steady wage. The college also provided an office, desk, two chairs and flow of hopeful writers who met me one at a time. I must have talked to nearly a hundred of them while the job lasted but can now only remember:

Rascals whose energy made history

had splendid banquets, buildings,

songs of praise

they never made. Digestion, rot and fires

undid their solid things. The finest hymns

cannot outlive the language of their choirs.

Only the joy of making things anew

outlive the owners & the makers too —

those fabricators, songsters, cooks who give

web, honeycomb, nest, burrow, beaver dam,

house, clothing, story, music & tasty stew.

“Though lacking the gaiety Yeats thinks essential this is a highly successful Marxist version of his poem Lapis Lazuli,” I cried, laughing.

“Never read it.”

“Never mind. Perhaps you strain the last two lines by squashing into them every kind of animal and human maker you can think of, but it’s still a good piece of seriocomic light verse. But the other poems resemble the efforts of a runner jogging up and down at the starting line before the pistol is fired.”

“Another simile,” said Aiblins brightly.

“What are you reading these days?”

“Henryson’s Fables.”

“You enjoy that stuff?” said Aiblins, incredulously.

“Yes. When I concentrate I find it astonishingly good. I’m concentrating just now because I’m reviewing a new edition of them for Cencrastus.”

“Hallelujah! Keep concentrating. I’m sticking to Shakespeare. Have you read The Two Gentlemen of Verona?”

“No. I’ve never even seen it acted.”

“You should. It’s great. Some idiots think he wrote very little of it but—”

FOR GOD’S SAKE don’t believe what my wife says: I am still one of the luckiest men who ever walked the earth. Yes of course we’ve had our troubles, like hundreds and thousands of others recently, and for a while it seemed impossible to carry on. I’d have paid a man to shoot me if I’d known where to find one. But I survived. I recovered. The sun is shining, the birds are singing again, though I perfectly understand why the wife has not recovered and maybe never will.

It was my father who had the really hard life, years and years of it: a joiner’s son, self-educated, who after many slips and slides turned a small house-renovation firm into a major building contractor. Before he expired he was a city councillor and playing golf with Reo Stakis. He sent me to the best fee-paying school in Glasgow because “it’s there you’ll make friends who’ll be useful to you in later life”, and yes, some were. Not being university material I went straight into the family business and learned it from the bottom up, working as a brickie’s labourer for a couple of months on one job, a joiner’s labourer on another, a plumber’s mate elsewhere and so on till I had firsthand experience of all those jobs and painting, plastering, slating, wiring, the lot. Of course the tradesmen I served knew I was the boss’s son. He told them so beforehand and warned them to be as tough on me as on other apprentices. Some were, some weren’t. Either way I enjoyed gaining manual skills while using my muscles. I even worked as a navvy for six weeks, and (under supervision, of course) drove a bulldozer and managed a crane. Meanwhile, at night school, I learned the business from a manager’s standpoint, while calling in at the firm’s head office between whiles to see how it worked at the costing and contracting level. So when the dad collapsed of a stroke I continued the business as if nothing had happened. My mother had died long before so I inherited a fine house in Newton Mearns, a holiday home on Arran and another in the south of Spain.

WHEN LOCAL NICKNAMES were common I grew up in a place we called The Long Town, a name not printed on maps or railway timetables. It had council houses where coal miners lived, a high street of properties rented by our shopkeepers and tradesmen, and several mansions and bungalows owned by so few professional folk that everyone in the town knew them. Conversations about local affairs usually mentioned Big Tam Kincaid the Free Kirk Minister, also his son Big Sam, schoolteacher and Labour councillor. I knew both by sight, the first as a gaunt striding figure in the streets, the second as a stout one crossing the school playground. I was never Big Sam’s pupil but often heard his voice booming from an adjacent classroom. Joe Kincaid, a second son, was of usual height but in the merchant navy so hardly ever seen. Almost as invisible were Poor Mrs Kincaid and a daughter, Wee Chrissie, who were only mentioned in women’s conversations. When I asked why Mrs Kincaid was Poor my mother said, “Her men need a lot of her attention.”

I left The Long Town for university when television aerials had sprouted on most rooftops and the cinema had become a bingo hall. A job and a marriage kept me away from it but I often returned to visit my parents so saw the town change like the rest of Scotland. The railway and colliery closed. Cars and unemployment increased. Council houses took on a slummier look. At the edge of the town arose an estate of private houses, each with a garden and garage facing a circular drive. To discourage outsiders, it had only one way in, no through road and no shops, but it brought little extra business to the high street. The owners were commuters who mostly shopped in Glasgow or Edinburgh, where they worked. The wee shops of my childhood (baker, grocer, draper, sweet shop, newsagent, cobbler, clock mender) became mini-markets or shut forever.

I PHONE OUR ADMINISTRATOR and say that in ten minutes I will bring her the overdue assessments. She says, “Thank you, Doctor Gowry. And will you also bring the introduction to the new handbook?”

“That will take a little longer, Karen, perhaps another hour.”

“Then don’t bother bringing me all these things today. Leave the assessed portfolios and introduction in my front-office pigeon hole when you go home tonight. I’ll process them first thing tomorrow.”

“Thank you Karen, that would be much more convenient.”

“I’m Phyllis, Doctor Gowry. Karen left three months ago.”

“Haha, so she did. Sorry, Phyllis.”

SUCCESS IS OVERRATED. The best proof of our worth is how we respond to failure. Herman Melville said that or something very like it. My marital partner still loves me, so do our children, I have recently retired with a cosy pension from a professional job which did some good and very little harm, so I have never been tested by really big failures. Yet the moments I remember with most interest are not my happiest ones, but those times when the ordinary ground under my feet seemed suddenly to sink, leaving me several yards lower than I thought normal or possible. This lower level did not prevent pleasures I had enjoyed at higher ones, but the pleasure never seemed to raise me up again. These sinkings (depressions is too mild a word for them) were never caused by irrevocable disasters, like the death of a parent. I am no masochist, but disasters on that scale stimulated and bucked me up. What let me down worst were failures of common decency, especially the first two.

I SAW A PLAIN strewn with marble rocks, the smallest higher than a man, the largest as big as a cathedral. They were pieces of a statue that had once stood taller than Ben Nevis. Groups of little people moved with horse-drawn wagons among these rocks. They were searching for a piece recognisably human yet small enough to carry away — the lobe of an ear or tip of a toe. Each group wanted to put such a fragment where they could love and pray to it, as it would prove there had once been power, beauty and unity that the world no longer contained. A group found a rock pierced by a beautifully smooth oval arch, part of a nostril. As they lifted it into their cart other groups combined to attack and rob them. This happened to all who found a good fragment, so none was ever carried away and love and prayer were impossible. I opened my eyes because my Japanese host was asking a question.

“In the second chapter of book ten you say till all the seas gang dry, my dear. My useful dictionary defines gang as a band of ruffians or criminals, a number of labourers working together. None of these definitions seems to fit.”

I said that gang was also a Scottish transitive and intransitive verb meaning go and these words were a quotation from Robert Burns’s greatest love song. My host murmured politely, “I believe Robert Burn’s poetry is still sung in parts of North America.”

I nodded. I was happy.

FOR THE TORY AND LABOUR CREATORS OF MODERN BRITAIN

EDINBURGH 2012

YOUR ROYAL MAJESTIES AND HIGHNESSES; your Holinesses, Eminences, Graces and Reverences; distinguished Prime Ministers, Presidents and Premiers of these our United Nations; my Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen! Never before in the history of Great Britain, and (here I repeat with peculiar emphasis) the history of Great Britain, have so many owed so much to one man, the modest individual at my side. Two weeks ago the whole population of our planet was threatened by the horror of an overwhelming social collapse. At the last moment his timely words and decisive action made that crisis seem less than the shadow of a cloud passing over a sunlit field. United in his genius we found the diplomatic skill of Knatchbull Hugeson, the hard smoothness of Scipio Todalini and the valorous marksmanship of Second Flight Lieutenant Wulfstan Tempest. I now call upon us all to drink a toast to our saviour and our friend, Eustace MacNulty.”

“Eustace MacNulty!” cry the vast assembly and the toast is drunk, followed by a storm of hand-clapping and foot-stamping. The guest of honour silences them by jumping up and saying eagerly, “Comrades, how can I follow that introduction with anything that will please or entertain you? It cannot be done. I am very ignorant! So ignorant that I have never before heard the names of the three national heroes just mentioned…”

These words provoke sympathetic laughter which is prolonged with many cries of “Hear! Hear!” when the Queen of England calls out, “Neither have I!”

“Worse still,” says the speaker desperately, “I cannot remember my own name, but it is certainly not Eustace MacNulty. And where are my trousers? Why am I naked? I have never appeared in public before without wearing at least a necktie.”

IN THAT WEEK WHEN ONE Scottish prime minister replaced another three people shared a table on an early morning train to London. A man and woman in the window seats were slightly younger than their companion reading The Financial Times. This so engrossed him that he gave no sign of hearing a word when, after nearly half an hour of silence, the younger man glimpsed machines digging a huge foundation pit and wondered aloud what the building would be.

“Probably another private hospital!” the woman across the table said bitterly.

“You disapprove of them?” he asked, smiling, and she replied with a torrent of words telling him, among other things, that she worked in a public hospital as a state-registered nurse. His sympathetic nods and murmured agreement encouraged her speech until it faltered, when he began supporting her main argument with so much detailed information about hospital funding that she asked if he too worked for the National Health Service.

“For nothing so useful,” he said with a sigh. “I’m afraid I only work with giants.”

She stared at him. He added apologetically, “I mean the big boys — the not very nice people in charge of British industry, or what remains of it.”

“Politicians?” she suggested.

“God no! Politicians thrive on T.V. and newspaper coverage and all the publicity they can get. Most folk in Britain don’t know the names of the big boys,”

“Why not?”

“Because they don’t read the…”

He nodded sideways to the paper in the hands of their companion. The nurse brooded on that till the man facing her said, “ You see, England is different from the USA. The Yanks know they’ve been ruled by billionaires for centuries. A lot of folk here won’t face the fact, hence the popularity of the Royal family.”

“So how do you work with your giants? What do they pay you to do?”

“They don’t pay me. I am usually paid (though not always) by companies or local politicians who want their support for some scheme or other. I’m what is called an entrepreneur — a middleman.”

“Why do they need you to ask for their support? Can the people who want support not just write or phone to ask for it?”

“They would get no useful answers that way. Business is too competitive nowadays. The giants avoid putting anything in writing, and phone calls can be bugged and recorded. Most are nowadays, I believe. Surveillance technology has made tremendous strides.”

“You make it sound very shady, very underhand.”

“It is. Getting a straight yes or no from a big man (I never meet more than one at a time) is almost impossible. If he smiles after I’ve explained my client’s proposition and says ‘That would be risky,’ the answer is probably no. If he frowns and says, “Of course it’s not for me to decide, but say they can try it if they think it will work,’ that probably means, Go ahead! Only if it goes pear-shaped will we leave you to the sharks.”

“Sharks?”

“Investigation committees, journalists, those kind of sharks.”

A loud speaker announced that the train was about to enter Euston station. The nurse said flatly, “And that’s how you earn your living?”

“Yes, quite a good living, I always please those I work with, but not always those I work for. It’s a balancing act.”

He laid a small card on the table in front of the nurse saying, “Sorry to cut our interesting conversation short. Phone me some time if you would like to continue it more privately. I must leave pretty smartly because I’m running late. Excuse me please.”

The last three words were to the reader of The Financial Times, who carefully folded and pocketed it, then stood to let the younger man out. The entrepreneur took down a briefcase then hurried along the corridor past others taking things from overhead racks.

A BIOLOGIST AND A LAWYER, he Swedish, she Korean, wait to meet the world’s most famous living architect. Both are in their sixties but the lawyer’s calm unlined face appears younger. Resting on a sofa she watches her colleague who stands before a window, staring gloomily down a long slope of villas among pines and many spires of those cypress trees which, to northern eyes, seem improbably tall and thin. The slope ends in a bright sea with sails of yachts near the shore, and on the high horizon the silhouette of an island that might be Monte Cristo.

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 slowly. 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.

MY LIFE HAS CONTAINED VERY LITTLE PAIN. Even in childhood the worst I endured was boredom. My parents wanted dull lives because their own had been too exciting. They had belonged to an unemployed industrial class and lived in a slum in fear of having their dole money cut and in equal fear of sectarian violence. My dad’s family were Protestant bigots, my mum’s equally bigoted Catholics, and joined in matrimony were equally disliked by most of their neighbours. World War 2 greatly improved things, bringing employment, fixed wages, regular meals at the price of some danger. Dad fought in North Africa, was injured by a fragment of shrapnel, then found a safer job in the army pay corps. Mum was directed into an underground explosive factory. When reunited after the war he started working in Clydebank for Singer Sewing Machines, she became a steady housewife. I was born when politicians of every party wanted Britain to be a Welfare State for everyone. Only those who had enjoyed great pre-war privileges found this boring, and young folk like me who had never known worse times. I matured before The Beatles were famous and being a teenager became exciting.

But the dull routines of home and school were made bearable by steady doses of art. There were two local cinemas within an easy walk from our home and half a dozen others a cheap tram ride away, so Mum and Dad and me saw three or four films a week — not unusual in these mainly pre-television days — and I saw more, being in the ABC Children’s Saturday Film Club. I recently reread The Moviegoer, a novel about a lawyer in New Orleans who says the greatest moments of his life were not his love affairs, but when Gary Cooper straps on his guns and goes out to face the villains in High Noon, or when a cat runs across a dark lane, rubs herself against someone, and a spot of light briefly shows the sinister, slightly babyish smile of Orson Welles in the part of Harry Lime. My own best moments were when a whirling black tornado sucks the grey wooden shack of Dorothy’s home up into the sky — when she sees through the window a cow bobbing past, two men rowing a canoe, a bicycle pedalled through the air by the nasty woman who stole Dorothy’s dog Toto — when that woman and bike transform into witch on broomstick before the house crashes down — when Dorothy opens the door, and steps out of the grey monochrome bedroom into the full Technicolor land of Oz. In the local public library I found other exciting adventure stories, sometimes horrific but always safer than games played in the school playground. I am not a coward but have always avoided pointless risks. My favourite books had magic openings through which children not unlike me found wonderlands like those Alice entered through a rabbit hole and looking glass. I read Masefield’s Midnight Folk and Box of Delights, also an Enid Blyton series about children finding secret passages into The Valley of Adventure, Castle of Adventure, Island of Adventure, Mountain of Adventure. I read several times Dan Billany’s The Magic Door about an unruly class of primary school children with a silly teacher, Mr Rocket. One of the class finds a bronze doorknocker that, banged on any wall, creates a door into the past through which they meet Julius Caesar, King Arthur and prehistoric monsters. I would have enjoyed The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe but it was published when I had outgrown childish stories.

Visiting the library had an advantage over seeing films with Mum and Dad, because on the way home together we always cheerily discussed what we had seen, but never referred to erotically suggestive episodes that nowadays would hardly bring a blush to the cheek of the most innocent child. But they greatly excited me in ways I could only enjoy remembering when completely alone, so visits to the library were often more satisfactory. Here I filled my head with exotic fantasies whose only hero was me, daydreams so engrossing that I sometimes woke from them to find I had walked home with no memory of crossing roads busy with traffic. I would have been knocked down had a part of my mind not been unconsciously guiding me by noticing the traffic and traffic signals. It is commonplace for habitual actions to free our minds by becoming automatic, but the extent of my subconscious guidance was unusual, and I found it could be enlarged. Mum told me I had annoyed her friends by not answering their greetings and acting as if they did not exist when I passed them in the street. I promised this would not happen again. It did not. I still returned from the library in a complete daydream, but now unconsciously smiled back and exchanged conventional greetings with her friends.

Ever since I have enjoyed more and more imaginative freedom by making more and more conduct automatic. This meant deliberately learning the fewest words and actions that satisfy employers, after which I could forget and perform them in perfect intellectual freedom because I was truly living elsewhere in daydreams I absolutely controlled. At first their geography was banal and escapist with ancient castles, Oriental cities, Pacific islands, Tarzan jungles and Sherwood forests peopled by ruthless kings, mad scientists, American crime bosses and women who wore very little clothing. Between rising in the morning and undressing for bed at night, the minutes when I noticed what others thought reality added up to less than an hour, and only happened when occasional accidents required me to show initiative. I easily passed school examinations, automatically absorbing and regurgitating formulas I was given. Students who failed had either bad memories or a habit of thinking for themselves.

Life since then has been the maintenance of intellectual freedom through work needing no intelligent initiative. I found less than might have been expected in the army, when boys of eighteen were conscripted for two years of National Service. Obeying military rule and orders came easily to me. I must have been robust in those days because I hardly noticed the square-bashing that afterwards left other squaddies exhausted and cursing. This made me unpopular because they thought my indifference to what they most resented was a display of social superiority. Word got about that my father was a senior army officer I had quarrelled with, and that after this spell in the ranks I would enrol for Sandhurst. I became victim of practical jokes too painful to ignore. They stopped after I had thrashed two of the worst bullies. After that I was unpopular but generally ignored, however the continual forced intimacy of barrack life was often hard to shut out. One day I was summoned to an interview with an officer who suggested I apply for an officers’ training course. I told him that giving orders would distract me far more than receiving them, and I would be as unwelcome in an officers’ mess as I was among privates because I did not want friends to distract me. “Distract you from what?” he asked. He obviously meant well and seemed intelligent, so I explained the scope of my imaginary worlds at that time — a cluster of planets combining ideas got from H.G. Wells’ First Men in the Moon and Lindsay’s Voyage to Arcturus, along with some of my own. He listened carefully then passed me to an army psychiatrist who discharged me as unfit for military service.

I then trained as an engineer, mistakenly thinking that those who design machines can also work mechanically. This was partly true at the lowest drawing-board level where the main distraction was office camaraderie. I managed to ignore that, achieving a smooth efficiency that soon led to promotion. In the headquarters of a firm making hydraulic engines I found myself discussing with three others the best design for a casing that must (1) be securely attached by screws and brackets that would not interfere with an interior motor, (2) be easily opened when the motor needed serviced, (3) be easily cleaned, (4) and look good. The discussion of how to satisfy all these requirements was so trivial, boring and endless that I muttered, “Use a tough transparent plastic bubble. Stick it on with polymonochloropolytetrafluroethyline adhesive. When necessary the operator can smash it off with a hammer and stick on a cheap replacement.”

I was joking so they laughed until the boss said, “Excellent! Our entire approach has been out of date. Your idea obviously needs refining but you are due for further promotion, my son.”

So I left that firm and went north to Aberdeen and the oil rigs. Another mistake. Safety is impossible on these structures if you don’t keep looking out for potential accidents. The only industrial jobs I found that paid steady wages for truly mindless toil were on assembly lines. The best was at a belt carrying chocolate biscuits out of a slot to where I tapped them with a little rod, changing their position so that they passed easily through another slot. A newer machine made that job redundant. For years I attached windscreen wipers in a car factory assembly line that eventually closed like every other productive Scottish business. And then I did what I should have done at first: trained as a teacher.

The subject I chose was Careers Guidance, for I thought my previous experience of several different jobs would be helpful. Wrong again. Everyone else on the course had entered straight from secondary school and were learning Careers Guidance without knowing any other career. But at last I have found the social haven I always wanted. It is a small office in a vast secondary school serving a fifth of Glasgow. Single pupils arrive at twenty-minute intervals throughout the day, each leaving at least five minutes before the next. I ask automatic questions provoking predictable answers that I record by ticking boxes in a standard form. The outcome is always one of seventeen suggestions because there are only seventeen courses possible for people leaving this school. My desk contains a small larder and electric kettle so I need not visit a staff room during tea-breaks and the lunch hour, so apart from the Headmaster and his secretary hardly anyone else in the staff here knows I exist. I will tell you a secret. There is a cupboard in this office to which only I have a key. I have cut down a mattress to exactly cover the floor, where I can now sleep comfortably curled in a foetal position. Since travel to and from the office became pointless I gave up my lodgings, got rid of everything but a few essentials, brought these here and have since never left. I have keys that let me leave and return once a week with essential shopping. The janitor suspects I am here at unauthorised times but pretends not to know because I tip him well. Nothing — not even hostile applicants for careers guidance — interfere with my work of preventing old-fashioned catastrophes.

Many years ago, sick of fictional fantasy, my imaginary worlds became wholly shaped by real history and biography. I now know enough to travel back in time and, using no magic or miracles but my knowledge of the future and some basic physical science, give a few key people enough knowledge to prevent disease and warfare. Using freak tempests and tampering with his compass I stopped Columbus crossing the Atlantic and brought him to the coast of China, which he had set out to find. Europe learned of America in the following century when I had prepared the Mexican and Aztec civilizations to resist conquest by acquainting them with firearms and domesticated horses and vaccines that immunized them against European diseases. The rulers, alas, continued using human sacrifice as a means of limiting their populations, but no Native Americans were exterminated by foreigners and African slaves were never brought to the New World. I am currently preventing the miseries of the British Industrial Revolution by helping James Watt’s son (a hitherto neglected historical figure who favoured the French Revolution) to develop clean hydro-electric power so efficiently that by 1850 coal furnaces, steam engines, gas lightings and black Satanic mills were banished from Britain. I have no time to say more about this, except that I am free to enter any room at any time in the past through any door I choose, and I am always welcomed as an entertaining and useful friend by many splendid people, mostly still famous nowadays.

But I must use great care to choose the right door when leaving any of these rooms in the past. I must summarise a short story by H.G. Wells to explain why. I read it when a child and it starts with a child, an unhappy little boy, an orphan lost in a dull London street. Here he finds a strange door admitting him to a sunlit garden where a lovely lady accompanied by tame leopards treats him wonderfully well, making him perfectly happy and at home. She then shows him an album with bright pictures of people who seem to be his parents with a baby which, as it grows older, becomes more like himself as he is now. She turns the pages until at last, fascinated, he sees the picture of himself in the street outside the magic door. She is reluctant to show him the next page but he insists, and when the page turns he is back outside in the street. That garden and woman become his most precious memory. He grows up into a man both rich and powerful, twice glimpsing the door again, but always in a wall he is passing on the way to a meeting that will advance his career or, if he does not arrive on time, completely damage it. Whenever he seeks the door after the meetings it cannot be found. He becomes a famous politician at the end of the 19th century when even these used the London Underground, and dies by stepping off a platform in front of a train for no known reason. The story suggests he thought he was stepping through the illusory door, and may have found his lovely garden and spiritual mother on the other side of death. Superstitious rot.

I always hated that end of a fascinating story. I did not want the garden to be an illusion. But when taking leave of a friend in the past nowadays — Jane Welsh Carlyle, William Blake, Charles II or Shakespeare — I usually find a door that is neither part of the room itself or the one by which I re-enter this office. It attracts me strangely though I know it leads to nothing, and when I go through I will go completely out like a candle flame.

CHILDHOOD MAY CONTAIN everyone’s happiest times, though it is hard to live without looking forward to better. That must be why many poor souls believe in heaven. When nearly all British homes were heated by coal fires, I would sprawl on the hearthrug at my mother’s feet, warm and safe, playing with treasures from the Button Box while she knitted and read politely romantic stories in The People’s Friend. The Box was made of solid wood, about a foot square and nine inches high, with a hinged lid. It held buttons of all sizes and colours, beads from broken necklaces, earrings and brooches of what seemed rich jewels but were really coloured glass. There were also dominoes that must have come from grandparents or uncles who died before my birth, since nobody in our house played that game. Some were wooden and black apart from spots of many colours. The rest were pale bone or ivory with black spots, though smaller and more numerous — they went up to double nines instead of double sixes. I arranged the dominoes like the walls of a castle with a city round it where I was king. To mark my royalty Mum pinned to my jersey three medals from the Box, medals with vivid ribbons given to my father for no special action but being in the British army from 1914 to 1918. I then put the brightest jewels in my castle’s inmost rooms, and arranged the buttons in the streets outside, pretending they were admiring subjects and regiments of soldiers. Brass buttons were the officers, big coat buttons commanded enemy troops who, after battles, became prisoners in my dungeons or slaves in my factories. Amber and mother-of-pearl beads were princesses to be rescued, though after rescue I could not imagine what to do with them. These power games made me perfectly happy.

IN WHAT IS BOTH A STUDY AND LABORATORY our Headmaster is contemplating an array of crystalline forms when one of his deputies arrives from a distant province. This visit has been long expected, yet the Head nearly groans before turning enough to give the visitor a mildly welcoming smile and say, “Hullo Jimmy. What brings you here?”

He has the mandarin voice of a lowland Scot unlocalized working class, though not Englished by a university education. His employee answers in a slightly plebeian Dublin accent, “You know well why I’m here. You’ve stopped answering me emails.”

The Head says gently, “I know what they say.”

“What use is that if you’ve no advice to give?”

The Head sighs with a slight shrug of his shoulders.

“Is that meant to be some kind of answer?” demands Jimmy. “Are you giving my wee place up as a bad job?”

The Head contemplates his crystalline models again but cannot shut his ears to the cry, “Then I’m giving it up too! Abandoning that nest of graceless ignorant self-destructive creatures! Leaving it! Done with it!”

The outcry becomes wild sobs which slowly quieten and end.

THE DARKNESS IS SO COMPLETE that only steady continual snoring suggests this is a bedroom. Then come muffled clicks, a sliding sound, thumps of someone coming stealthily through a window. A narrow beam of light pierces the dark from what can be dimly seen as a slit between curtains. The beam swings from side to side until it fixes on the foot of a big bed where the snorer lies, then explores sideways to light on a bedside table with many bottles on it. The source of the beam comes through the curtains. It is a torch in the hand of a black thin figure who advances carefully to the bedside table, crouches on the floor, then switches on a table lamp among the bottles before turning off and pocketing the torch. The light now, though not great, shows the head of the snorer half sunk in plump pillows. It is old and mostly bald, with clumps of white hair behind the ears. This man is called Rudi. Behind him is an elaborately carved bed head with a large letter F surrounded by a laurel wreath both under a layer of cracked gold leaf. The rest of the room also suggests palatial splendour down on its luck. The croucher at the bedside wears black canvas shoes, pants, anorak, woollen hood with eye slits and holds a gun pointed at the sleeper’s head. With the other hand she pulls the hood off, and now is a tiny, haggard, desperate woman of any age between thirty and fifty. She listens carefully for sounds outside the room, but only those from the sleeper’s nose are audible, so at last she reaches over with her free hand and pinches the nostrils shut.

STREETS OF BUNGALOWS are called suburban when part of cities, but exist in many much smaller British places. A wife sits in a bungalow beside an electric fire, knitting with the concentrated fury of one with no other outlet for her energies. A husband sits opposite, examining magazines received that morning with a bulky weekend newspaper. Discarding the one called Sport he leafs unhappily through Lifestyle, Homes, Travel, Arts and Entertainment, but every page seems to have colourful photographs of glamorous young people in richer, more exciting surroundings than his own. He leaves the magazines, goes to a window and looks out for signs of other life, but in the pale grey sky above the bungalows opposite not even a bird is visible. He says, “I can’t make out what the weather is like.”

“Where?” she demands.

“Outside.”

“Go and look.”

“No. I am insufficiently…” (he thinks for a while) “… motivated. You’re lucky.”

“Why?”

“You can knit. Shop. Do housework. Retirement has made me…” (he thinks for a while) “… an appendage. I should cultivate something.”

“What?”

“A hobby perhaps. Friends perhaps.”

“Friends are not cultivated,” she tells him. “They grow naturally, like weeds.”

“I bet I could cultivate one,” he says with sudden enthusiasm. “This is a free country. I can go into any pub, see someone interesting, walk straight up to them and say: Excuse me for butting in, but you look like a man of more than average intelligence and I need advice. Jim Barclay’s my name, tax avoidance expert, retired, and I’m looking for a hobby to cultivate.”

He falls silent for a while, then says, “If I was American it would sound much better: Howdy stranger. Jim Barclay’s the name, and tax avoidance is the game. What brings you to this neck of the woods?”

“Woods don’t have necks,” she tells him.

“Not around here, anyway,” he says, sighing. Returning to the fireside he sits down again and at random opens a magazine at a page advertising an expensive gown. This looks like bunches of glittering rags not quite covering a glamorous, charmingly worried young woman in what seems the boiler room of an obsolete factory. He studies her wistfully for a while, then the doorbell rings.

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?”

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.

AND,” SAYS HARRY GUMBLER. His secretary types that then waits for some minutes until he says, “Delete that Sarah. No! Do not type delete that, delete And. I can dictate nothing more intelligent today so we’ll tackle something else.”

From a filing cabinet he removes a folder labelled NOT URGENT and from the folder takes a sheaf of letters. After gloomily examining the first he dictates the following.

SHORTLY BEFORE MIDNIGHT only two tables are still occupied in this small expensive restaurant. At one table a couple sip coffee and liqueurs and the man says, “It will be a stormy meeting tomorrow. All kinds of people will be trying to wriggle off hooks.”

“That won’t be our problem,” says the woman, and he agrees with her.

At a nearby table set for two, a woman with a glass of wine beside her is reading a magazine. A waitress tells her, “I’m sorry, but the chef will be closing the kitchen in ten minutes if not told to start the meal you ordered. Surely you’ve waited long enough?”

“I certainly have,” says the woman, closing the magazine. “My friend has never been as late as this before so tell the chef to — no — wait a bit, Mr Big is finally arriving.”

A quiet, penetrating voice reaches them before the speaker saying, “And Starky was hanging about your office today. Why? Sorry I’m late Proody. That last remark was not for you, Mrs Russell. You want to get to bed as it is near midnight. I am about to order a late dinner, first tell me why you let Starky natter to MacLeod for nearly twenty minutes.”

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.

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.”