1982 Janine (22 page)

For a few years Helen and I received a greetings card from her each Christmas with a Dunedin postmark but no address which would have let us answer it. Did Dad get a card also? If he did he never spoke of it. The cards stopped after five or six years. If she is still alive she is over seventy. I never remember her birthday. We did not celebrate birthdays in our family. Wait a minute, Dad did keep her cards. I found them in the little bureau drawer after he died along with his birth certificate for 14 January 1896 (
father, Archibald
MacLeish, Coalminer/mother, Jeanie Stevenson, Power Loom
Weaver
) and his First World War medals, and wedding photo, and a little magnifying glass which came with some stamps he once bought me. I threw all these things out. No good comes from brooding upon the past.

O I have just realised that the whore under the bridge was Denny. That is why my body recognised her at a distance after all these years. But the face old bloated discoloured someone had hit her, yes that was Denny's face but I was thinking too much about my prick to recognise it until now. God damn my fucking prick, ha! My hair is trying to stand on end. Did she recognise me? We were both drunk. She asked me to marry her, it must have been Denny. No it must not have been Denny. It was not Denny please.

The boy took the stolen groceries from my pocket, laid them on the counter and said quietly, “Out of respect for your age and pity for your condition I am taking no steps in this matter. But if I find you doing this again I will inform the police.”

I looked at him lovingly. I patted his shoulder and said, “You are a good man.”

I left the shop feeling sober and proud to be one of a species which had produced a boy of such dignity and decency. And now I am a coward if I do not eat these and drink that. Divide into three piles of roughly twenty, no need to count, and fill tumbler.

Gulp swallow. Gulp swallow. Gulp (rotten taste) swallow, swallow. Pills, whisky all gone tata.

And now?

No sweat, no hassle, no bother at all. Quickened heartbeat like strong wee galloping horses
dradadum dradadum
but I lie like a duke in a speeding carriage, jocose and easy-oasy, relaxed and okey-dokey, in love with easeful death and ceasing upon the midnight with no pain. Actual time 5.52 but thank you Hislop, your account of present state is otherwise accurate and melodious. It cannot last, of course. How long till coma and zero? Fifteen minutes? An hour? Must I completely digest these pills? Full digestion takes at least two hours. I should have asked the chemist about this but do not worry. Jolly Jimmy Body has been slipped a Mickey Finn by his aristocratic jockey Melancholy Montague Mind and before sunrise both will drop out of the human race damn. Damn, I am starting to feel randy. How inappropriate. How annoying. Temporary side-effect of? Last assertion of expiring? Prick's Last Stand as in (so they say) hanging? Why not? Mine not to reason why, mine not to make reply, mine but to backward lie as in rape, enjoying, what?

Red velvet divans, oriental luxury, the Ruby Divans in Green's Playhouse, biggest cinema in Europe so they said.
The fog on frosty Novembers made it hard to see the screen from the highest circles but in one of the Rubyred Divans, snug little alcove for two, Denny and I saw
Sudan
in which Pharaoh's daughter, sultry 1940s Hollywood brunette, is captured by Arab slavers and branded but falls in love with barbarian leading to happy ending with total abolition of slavery in ancient Egypt. Denny asked wonderingly, “Did it really happen like that?”

I laughed and cuddled her for wondering if it could have happened like that. She said mournfully, “You shouldnae laugh. I cannae help being ignorant. My education was rubbish.”

Gone soft, I have. She who first made me stiff now makes me weak. Good Denny, sturdy wee compliant pony, a lovely ride. Be glad she loved you. Melt. Wait softly for your end, wail softly for your end. I WILL NOT. Prick knows there is still a spark of delight under this dying ash, poke for it. Stiffen poker how? Let heart beat me harder,
dradadum
. My kingdom for a horse. Help me, Hislop. It fell about the Lammas tide

When the muir-men win their hay,

The doughty Douglas went forth to ride

Into England, to drive him a prey.

AND HE HAS BURNED THE DALES OF TYNE

AND PART OF BAMBROUGHSHIRE, AND

THREE STRONG TOWERS ON ROXBURGH FELLS

HE LEFT THEM ALL ON FIRE.

Young Lochinvar is come out of the West,

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,

I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three,

Bring me my bow of burning gold!

The battle closes thick and bloody,

Forth flash'd the red artillery,

Storm'd at with shot and shell,

Boldly they rode and well,

Into the jaws of Death,

Into the mouth of Hell

Rode the six hundred.

Steady, boys, steady. Sweating, hard are we?
Preclimactically tense? Excellent.

Sound the clarion, fill the fife!

To all the sensual world proclaim,

One crowded hour of glorious life

Is worth an age without a name

BUT please also always

to remember that beneath the hammerblows of fate (
drada
dum
) in the very storm, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion (
dradadum
) you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. So cool it, man.

Bravo Hislop. Maybe you knew your job. Perhaps all teachers should pour fine stuff into children's ears and leave their memories to resurrect it when they find their own thoughts inadequate. I stand again tense in the chariot of bed, controlling hands on the reins of a foul imagination which, properly controlled, will pull me to a little glowing core of delight in the valley of the shadow of death (perhaps you are not dying) SHUT UP SHUT UP oh what can I do tomorrow if I do not die tonight? I cannot face another superintendent of bonded warehouses, another bank manager, another security officer with acting rank of colonel. I can no longer hide from them the Hislop in me, the mean snigger at a world ruled by shameless greed and cowardice and which thinks these insanities are serious essential traditional straightforward commonsense business. They are that, indeed they are, but the knowledge now stamps my face with a smug little rigid grin. Just before I took the pills something happened (what?) which makes me incapable of my job although I cannot live without the movement it gives, the rides and blissful naps in planes trains taxis, the cosy anonymity of a different loungebar and bedroom every second or third evening. But I need the rides most, hurling warm through all weathers and seasons with a paperback thriller on my lap and always Scotland outside the window with more changes of nature in ten miles than England has in fifteen or Europe in twenty or India, America, Russia in a hundred. If I stop travelling and stay in one place I will become a recognisable, pitiable (“Out of pity for your condition I will take no action”) despicable drunkard. I can only keep my dignity and stay mysterious by ceasing upon the midnight with no pain etcetera. The chemist was a
heavy man with a face like a glum cherub's. “These will do the trick,” he said putting the little bottle in my hand. A soft hiss and a foosty smell came from the gas chandelier, yes a gas chandelier dimly lighting that queer little parlour. Can pills lose their potency? These have not. They are working.

They are working. My heart aches and a drowsy numbness pains my sense as though etcetera and the ache, the pains are rhythmical,
dradadumba dradadumba
, a change from our old friend dradadum. Shakes me, it does. Cold sweat now, too. Splendid, I like this. At school I envied the sickly types who went down with flu, broke a leg, had tonsils or appendix out; it freed them for a while from the common rut. I have never been ill. Even hangovers, in the days when I noticed my hangovers, did not unnerve this hand which delicately, firmly manipulated the tiniest and most intricate connections. Now the raised forefinger vibrates violently, I feel the pulse ache in it. The stiff indicator under the belly also coldly vibrates. Queer feelings queer words are abroad in me, words like Chimborazo Cotopaxi Kilimanjaro Kanchenjunga Fujiyama Nagasaki Mount Vesuvius Lake Lugano Portobello Ballachulish Corrievrechan Ecclefechan Armageddon Marsellaise Guillotine Leningrad Stalingrad Ragnarok Skagerrak Sur le pont d' Avignon Agincourt Bannockburn Cavalry Calvary Calgary Wounded Knee Easterhouse Drumchapel Maryhill West Kilbride Castlemilk Motherwell Hunterston terminal megawatt kilowatt dungaree overall kilowatt equals one-point-three-four horsepower I'm back to dradadum, I am in chaos, I am sick, my head is full of rubber bullets, my head is full of snow and it's melting, my head is full of wee boats and they're all sunk, my head is full of Reichstags and they're all burning, my head is crammed with engines doing different things at different speeds (you can't control them) I CAN'T CONTROL THEM QUICK GRAB JUMP ASTRIDE ASTRIDE ASTRIDE THE NEAREST CLING LIKE GRIM DEATH TO BIGGEST FASTEST LOUDEST GOING UNGDUNGDUNGDUNGDUNGDUNGD UNGDUNGDUNGDUNGDUNGDUNGDUNGDU NGDUNGDUNGDUNGDUNGDUNGDUNGDUN GDUNGDUNGDUNGDUNGDUNGDUNGDUNG

 

 

 

 

 

braver girls raised her hand. He nodded. She said in a small voice, “Bird thou never wert sir.”

“Good!” he said in delighted voice. “Bird I never wert. Who else finds that euphonious?”

Heather Sinclair, a friend of the brave girl and our best speller, put up her hand then all the girls did and most of the boys. The only ones who still sat with folded arms were myself and the other toughguys who no longer feared the belt and did not give a damn for Hislop and his stupid games. He paced up the passage between the boys and the girls muttering, “Wert. Wert. Wert. Wert” with every footfall. He stopped by an empty desk, produced a cigarette lighter and said, “Hands down. Agnes, doubtless, remembers me saying that Percy Bysshe Shelley pinnacled dim in the intense inane is one of our most mellifluous poets, but to my ear
bird thou never wert
sounds damnably ugly and a downright lie when we consider that wee Percy is talking to a skylark. But vox populi, vox dei. I must give Agnes something for trying.”