Novels by A. Gray

Call Me Ishmael. Jesus wept. Reader, I married him. Pithiness prevents flow.

There was a silence. The older navvies thought about death and the youngest about a motorcycle he wanted to buy. He was known for being the youngest of them and fond of motorcycles. Everybody in the gang was known for something. Mick the ganger was known for being Irish and saying queer things in a solemn voice. One navvy was known for being a Highlander, one for having a hangover every morning, one for being newly married. One of the ex-army men was known for his war stories, the other for his fucking adjectives. One of them was a communist who thought The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists a better book than the Bible and kept trying to lend it; but schooling had given most of them a disgust of books. Only Old Joe borrowed it and he said it was a bit out of date. The communist wanted to argue the point but Old Joe was known for being silent as well as old. The youngest navvy liked working with these folk though he hardly ever listened to what they said. Too many of them wanted his attention. They remembered, or thought they remembered, when they too had been just out of school, sixteen and good-looking, happy because their developing muscles could still enjoy the strain of working overtime, happy because it was great to earn a wage as big as their fathers earned. The worst paid workers reach the peak of their earning power early in life.

“The Signoras!” announced the story teller suddenly, “The Signorinas! They were something else. Am I right? Am I wrong?”

“Aye, the fuckin Signoras were somethin fuckin else,” said the other ex-army man. With both hands he shaped a huge bosom on the air before his chest.

“I’ll give you a bit of advice Ian,” the story-teller told the youngest navvy, “If you ever go to Italy take a few tins of bully beef in your suitcase. There is nothing, I’m telling you nothing you won’t get from the Italian Signorinas in return for a can of bully beef.”

“That advice may be slightly out of date,” said Mick the ganger.

“You’re sticking up for the Tally women because they’re Papes and so are you, ye fuckin Fenian Irish Papal prick ye,” said one of the ex-army men pleasantly.

“He’s right, of course,” the ganger told the youngest navvy, “I am a Papal Fenian. But if these warriors ever return to Italy they may find the ladies less welcoming now the babies have stopped starving.”

He nipped his cigarette, stuck it under his cap brim above the right ear and lifted his pick. The gang began digging again.

Then looks around and says, “Are you expecting someone?”

He smiles sadly, says, “Expecting someone? I only wish I was.”

“But this food! … And the room. You did not always keep it so spick and span.”

“I do nowadays. I’ve become a real old woman since you left me, Vlasta, hoovering the carpet, dusting the clock — I’ve even grown cranky about food. I don’t eat regular meals any longer. I keep plates of fruit and cold chicken beside me and have a nibble whenever I feel like it.”

“How odd! But have you no little girlfriend? No mistress?”

With a harsh laugh Alan throws the apple core into a brass coal-scuttle he uses as a waste basket and says, “None! None! I know plenty of women. I’ve invited some of them up here, and they’ve come. A few stayed the night. But (I don’t know why) they all bored me. After you they were all so insipid.”

“I knew it!” cries Vlasta exultantly, “Yes I knew it! When I left you I told myself, You are destroying this man. You have taught him all he knows and now that you leave him his confidence will vanish also. In fact you are castrating him! But I had to do it. You were sweet but… oh so deadly dull. No imagination. And so I had to leave.”

“It was agony,” he assures her.

“I knew. I was sorry for you but I needed excitement. I will take my coat off, this room is far too warm, how can you bear it?”

She stands and flings her chicken bone into the scuttle. But Alan has risen first. Slipping behind her he helps remove the coat murmuring, “Perhaps you’ll remove more before you leave.”

“What a fool you are Alan — you still know nothing about women. It was four years ago, not last week we ceased to be lovers. I came here for peace, not erotic excitement. In the last three hours I have had more excitement than many of the bourgeoisie experience in a lifetime.”

“Sorry!” murmurs Alan, and carries coat to bed. He lays it there then sits on bedfoot, right elbow on knee, right hand supporting chin like Rodin’s Thinker.

“I am a dreadful woman, I destroy men!” says Vlasta, yawning and stretching her arms, “Arnold kept shouting that while the policemen dragged him away.”

“Please sit beside me. I’m very lonely.”

She sits beside him saying, “Think of Mick McTeague, old before his time and drinking like a fish.”

“He was a sixty-year-old alcoholic when you first met him.”

“He’s worse now. Last week I saw Angus pushing his baby in a pram in the park, a slave to a woman too foolish to understand him.”

“He seems perfectly happy to me,” says Alan, looking at her, “We play snooker sometimes.” She laughs aloud at his naivety.

“Oh Alan have you forgotten everything I taught you? Beneath the calmest of lives all sorts of dreadful things are happening: spiritual rapes, murders, incests, tortures, suicides. And the calmer the surface the worse what is hidden beneath.”

Her perfume fills his nostrils, her body is an inch away, with real excitement he declares, “I love the way you turn life into an adventure, an exciting, idiotic adventure.”

“IDIOTIC?” she cries, glaring.

“No no no no!” he explains hastily, “That was a slip of the tongue, a device by which my conventional bourgeois hypocricy attempted to defend itself.”

“Hm!” she says, only slightly placated, “I see you remember some of the things I taught you.”

She sits beside him again, yawns and says, “Ahoo I am very tired. It is exhausting work, explaining life to thick policemen.”

She lies back on the bed with her face upward and eyes closed.

A door opens so she puts cushion over book and notepad then sits back on heels, watching a man enter. Ten years older than she he wears good tweed overcoat and looks about in worried way muttering, “Keys. Forgot keys.”

“There!” she says, pointing. He takes keys from top of sound-deck, returns toward door but pauses near her asking, “What did you hide under the cushion?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“Why not look and see?”

“Thanks. I will.”

He grasps cushion, hesitates, pleads: “Do you mind if I look?”

“Oh look look look!” she cries, standing up, “I can’t stop you. It’s your cushion. It’s your room.” He moves cushion, lifts book and turns to the title page: The Pursuit of the Millennium, a Study of Revolutionary Anarchism in the Middle Ages. “Very clever,” he murmurs, and puts the book where he found it and settles on a sofa, hands clasped between knees. This depressed attitude angers her. Looking down on him she speaks with insulting distinctness. “Shall I tell you what’s in the battered green suitcase under our bed? Sidney’s Arcadia. Milton’s Paradise Lost. Wordsworth’s Prelude. And a heap of notes for a thesis on the British epic.”

He sighs. She walks up and down then says, “You’d better hurry, you’ll be late for the office.”

“What office?” he asks, astonished.

“Wherever you work between nine and five.”

“You know nothing about my life,” he tells her sharply, “Or have you been reading my letters?”

“Nobody writes to you.”

“Good! When I go through that door each morning I become a mystery. Maybe I don’t need to work. Maybe each morning I go to see my mistress. My other mistress!”

“Then you’d better hurry or you’ll be late for your other mistress.”

But he does not move.

While putting food on a plate at the buffet find him close beside saying, “Can I help you to some of this?”

Thank him. Stand eating with back to the wall. So does he, saying thoughtfully, “Odd to be at my cousin’s friend’s wedding on the day my divorce comes through.”

Or is it an insane idea? Henry Pitt is over sixty, must soon retire and has no children. Phimister has his Loch Lomond fish farm. It began as a rich man’s hobby because he enjoys messing about in boats, but Mulgrew and Tramworth gave him a lot of help and a recent article in The Scots Magazine said it was now profitable. It also quoted him as saying, “I want a cleaner, fresher life for my children. Modern cities are becoming intolerable.” If Pitt and Phimister sold the business they would make quite a lot. Since it is the only remaining firm of its kind in Scotland the buyers would almost certainly be southerners who would keep the depots but shut this distribution centre. Do you think we are coming to that, Lumley? It has happened with ship building, the car industry, textiles, steel, sanitary engineering et cetera.

What do we need most in life? What, if we suddenly lost it, would make us both feel, and be, worthless? Some Christians will answer: their religion. They think their lives are given meaning by their faith in God who made and sustains the universe and became Jesus of Nazareth. Well, they are wrong. Faith in God can make us very strong — for centuries it has enabled Christians to suffer and inflict, prolong and endure hideous agonies for the most splendid reasons. But it is not what God wants. Paul tells us why: ‘Though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not Love, I am nothing.’ ‘Though I give my body to be burned, and have not Love, it profiteth me nothing.’

In many (not all) Bibles you will read ‘charity’ where I have written ‘Love’. Paul used Greek word meaning ‘loving respect’ — the deepest affection possible between people. Charity used to mean that in English, but has come to mean ‘goodness to people who are badly off.’ This sort of goodness can be a wonderful expression of Love, but is not Love itself. People have founded hospitals…

“Excuse me, I know I’m butting in again but I have something to say which will do you good if you will only listen to me and not lose your temper. There is only one reason why a man or a woman comes to a pub and it is not the booze. You could easily be drinking cans of lager in the privacy of your ain hame and it would be cheaper, for Christ’s sake. So like everybody who comes to a pub you are here for the company, so why shut me out by sticking your nose in a book? I mean no offence, but you are a very attractive woman, in spite of wearing jeans and no being very young. I cannae be too plebeian nor too old for ye neither. You would have gone to a pub higher up Byres Road if you wanted posher or younger company.”

“I will tell why I come here if you promise to leave me in peace afterward.”

“Fair enough. Fire away.”

“I have two daughters and a son in their late teens, and a homeloving husband who works in the finance department of the district council. They leave all housework to me but I enjoy keeping the house clean and tidy so can honestly say I do not feel exploited. I do voluntary work for Save the Children, and Amnesty International. I have no money worries, family worries, health worries and used to think I was one of the luckiest people alive. Nothing seems to have changed but my life is now almost unbearable. No doubt a doctor would blame the menopause and prescribe Valium. I think I’ve suddenly started seeing myself clearly after eighteen years of looking after other people.

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.

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.

Or was. Rinse your mouth. Let me — keek — inside. Oho! And if you want to sneeze, gargle, hiccup or blow your nose just raise a finger of your left hand and I will stop what I am doing almost at once but here goes. Chigwell. Chigwell. An English name. Yes there are a lot of your kind in Scotland nowadays, but you’ll never hear me complain. Do I bother you, talking away like this? No? Good. You probably realize I do it to stop your imagination wandering, as it would tend to do if I worked in perfect silence. There is, let us face it, something inherently sinister in lying absolutely passive while a stranger in a white coat — no matter how highly qualified — does things you cannot see to this hole in your head — between your jaw and your brain; inside this wee toaty cavity — I am opening — in a bone of your skull. Even the presence of Miss Mackenzie, my assistant here, might not stop your subconscious mind cooking up weird fantasies if we dentists, like barbers, had not a professional tendency to gossip. Which reminds me of a cartoon I saw in a bound volume of old Punch magazines: a barber says, “How would you like your hair cut sir?” to a bored-looking aristocratic type slumped in his chair who says, “In a silence broken only by the busy snipsnap of the scissors.” Sometimes I hear myself saying ridiculous things, utterly absurd things, just to avoid that deathly silence, but if you prefer silence just raise two fingers of your right hand and silent I will be. But you like the chatter? Good, rinse your mouth again.

I do not believe in miracles. I believe the human mind can solve, rationally, any problem it recognizes and closely attends to. I decided not to finish dressing before I solved this one, though I usually earn my pocket-money and the right to stay here by working on the problem of time travel. I dropped the left sock on the floor (Zoë would pick it up) and from a sitting posture on the edge of the bed moved to a prone one on top of the quilt, which I must remember to call a doovay. If I do not learn to use the new words people keep inventing I will one day find I am talking a dead language. I decided to tackle the problem of the chewing-gum by a strategy combining Algebra, Euclidean Geometry and Baconian Induction; but feeling slightly cold in my semmit and single sock I first crept under the doovay and wrapped it round me because a snug body allows a clear mind.

GIVEN: M — Me who sometimes patter barefoot round this room. P — Pellet of gum stuck to the foot of M. UG — Unknown Gumchewer who is the source and prime mover of P.R — Room that M never leaves and UG never enters. W — World containing M, P, UG, R and other items and events.

REQUIRED: To find the likeliest event or events which could move P from the mouth of UG to the foot of M while preserving these conditions:-

1. M and UG remain ignorant of each other.

2. M is ignorant of P before finding P between his toes.

3. UG is ignorant of P’s movement after it leaves him, but not while it leaves him. (Chewed gum only leaves a mouth by being swallowed or spat or removed by fingers and flicked into air or removed by fingers and attached to other item: all of which are conscious acts though soon forgotten.)

CONSTRUCTION! — Yes, I was now ready and able to set out the problem in geometrical space-time. I needed no pencil, paper, ruler or compasses. The decay of my organs and senses stops me doing or showing much to other people but strengthens my ability to see things inside. When completely dead to the world I expect to see it all perfectly. Without even closing my eyes I now visualize this:

She finds herself peering along a central corridor with rows of three high-backed seats on each side, all facing her. The backs of the six front seats hide all but the rows in front. Beside one window a sturdy old man sits reading a newspaper published by the British Orthodox Communist Party. The teacher nods approvingly, for though never a Communist she approves of radical politics. Beside the old man is a housewife with a worried expression, beside the woman a restless little child wearing a blue canvas suit. The teacher, proud of her ability to read character at a glance, decides these are three generations of a family belonging to the skilled artisan class. Beside the opposite window a middle-aged, middle-class couple sit bolt upright staring straight ahead. They seem to be ignoring each other, but with another approving nod the teacher sees on the arm-rest between them the man’s left hand clasping the woman’s right. The teacher sits in the empty seat beside this couple, saying to nobody in particular, “I suppose modern trains look like aeroplanes because they travel nearly as fast! I regret that because I hate air travel, but I’m glad our compartment is close to the bit that pulls — the bit we called the engine in the days of steam. I feel safer when I’m near the driver.”

“My father feels that way too, though he won’t admit it. Will you Dad?” says the housewife, but the old man mutters, “Shut up Miriam.”

“I feel that too dear,” murmurs the rigid lady to her husband who murmurs, “I know you do dear. Please shut up.”

The teacher at once thinks of the married couple as Mr and Mrs Dear. Delighted to have started a conversation before the journey begins she says, “In most railway accidents the train is struck in the rear, isn’t it? So statistically speaking we are safer near the engine.”

“That’s stupid!” squeaks the child.

The mother says, “Don’t be rude Patsy,” but the teacher says eagerly, “Oh please, I’m a teacher! Retired! But I know how to handle difficult children. Why is what I said stupid Patsy?”

“Because in collisions the front of one train always hits the front or back of another, so the safest place in a train is always the middle.”

The old man chuckles slightly, the other adults smile. After a moment of silence the teacher opens her purse, removes a coin and says, “Patsy, here is a bright new silver-looking fivepound coin. I give it to you because what I said was stupid and you were right to correct me.”

The child grabs the coin. The other adults stare at the teacher and the conversation seems about to take a new direction when it is interrupted.

Mr Meikle was my English teacher and managed the school magazine. I met him when I was thirteen. He became my first editor and publisher, and a year or two later, by putting me in charge of the magazine’s literary and artistic pages, enabled me to edit and publish myself. There must have been times when he gave me advice and directions, but these were offered so tactfully that I cannot remember them: I was only aware of freedom and opportunity. Quiet courtesy, sympathy and knowledge are chiefly what I recall of him, and a theatricality so mild that few of us saw it as such, though it probably eased his dealings with those inclined to mistake politeness for weakness. I will try to describe him more exactly.

The lack of old police restraints allows many more than the Irish to be falsely accused and punished. It let some muddled policemen break in on a blind man, knock him down and have him fined for it. I use this event to make my story funnier, not for propaganda purposes. If you dislike such mistakes vote into power a radical party which will restore the ancient safeguards.

THE TRENDELENBURG POSITION

Although the writing of this story was helped by my dentist, Mr J Whyte of Glasgow G12, it does not reflect his political, religious and sporting preferences.

MISTER MEIKLE — AN EPILOGUE

Mr Arthur Meikle was born on April the 17th, 1910, and died on March the 30th, 1993. Sometime before his death he allowed me to use him as a character in my last tall tale, read the result, and approved. He also kindly sat for his portrait in the illustration. Thousands of former pupils know him as a real good teacher of English who worked in Whitehill Senior Secondary from 1939 to 1956, Hutcheson’s Boys’ Grammar from 1956 to 1975. He also edited Julius Caesar in the Kennet Shakespeare series, published by Edward Arnold Ltd in 1964. This very cheap little book has been reprinted more often than all the editions of my books added together. The easily read, richly informative notes have the wise, thoughtful tone of Mr Meikle’s teaching voice, making it both an excellent school-book and acting script.