Remedy is None (22 page)

The question was thrown out absently, like a bone to a barking dog, and Jim slavered on it bitterly, sharpening his anger.

‘Whit did Ah do? Whit do Ah do? Ah’ll tell ye what Ah did. Ah was the perfect gentleman. Ah made Cary Grant look like a corner boy. There we were, necking away like champions. An’ she was lappin’ it up. That’s the bit. An’ then, not surprisingly, a certain part of my anatomy commences to get up to see what’s going on. Well, Ah mean, whose fault’s that? What the hell! Ye canny buck biology. Anyway, Ah senses her going very stiff, as if a stranger had come into the company. So Ah decides Ah’ll have to put her at her ease. Do the introductions sorta thing. “You’ll have to excuse my friend,” I whispered politely in her ear, smooth as honey. “It’s just that he’s so polite. Always stands up in the presence of a lady.” Wouf! A bunch of five right across the chops. Ah mean, why? She must be subject to fits or something. Could Ah have been nicer? But that’s what ye get. Ah’m a bloody martyr.’

The bus cut across Jim’s careering train of thought like a level-crossing. It was so surprisingly busy that they had to stand downstairs. At this time of night they should have had it pretty much to themselves. They couldn’t understand it at first until they realized from the talk (about prizes and who had won what and how long somebody had gone without winning anything) that they were all coming back from the bingo. There was a popular bingo hall in the village two miles along the road. Half of its clients must have been on the bus. Charlie hung from his rail, watching them bitterly.

Some swayed back and forth from their straps further up the bus. Like carcases in a butcher’s shop. Only these ones were alive. Alive? Well, euphemistically speaking. For the moment, more or less. Let us say that they are, as it were, en route for the butcher’s shop. And this is a cattle cart. Forward. To the knacker’s yard. Communal euthanasia awaits us. Outside, people walk and talk, look and point, single, in twos, in threes, in groups, bending and leaning, holding and letting go, lying on beds, doing things in houses, screaming, laughing,
cutting their fingernails, being sad, being sorry, feeling anger, feeling love, stirring tea in cups. Little boys dreaming virility. Old men spitting rheum. Being born. Dying. And someone dismissing the universe in a hiccough. The newsreels running in silent cinemas, lighting the dumb upturned faces* Television sets shining in darkened rooms. Fingers writing a letter, exuding sweat on to the page. And a woman in the bus sits chewing on her gossip, wearing on her head a hat made from feathers presumably plucked from the living dodo. They might as well have been. Their source is dead. Just as the source of everything we do and have is dead. Where is the point of meaning found? Nowhere. Lost. We simply accept it all like an aimless nursery rhyme we learn as children. This is the house that Jack built. Falling down. Falling down. What can survive it? Nothing. Death means more than we do. We bow down to a dead man. He supersedes us. He is our destination. We hurry towards him. Home is the belly of a worm. An announcement for my people. Friends, we hasten towards nothing. People on this bus, the driver is dead. We travel on time’s driverless bus, zigzagging into the empty dark. The driver is dead. Even if the conductor isn’t. He’s here, with his hand out. They still charge you, just the same. Even when your only destination is No. i, Narrow Place.

‘Fares, please.’ The conductor had edged his way towards them, running out tickets and talk. ‘Make a bit o’ room there. Ye wid need a tin-opener tae get into yese. An’ get yer donations ready. Whit dae ye think Ah am? A public servant?’

Jim reached into his pocket to pay, but Andy had his money out first and got three tickets. As Jim brought his hand out of his pocket, the package Andy had given him in Gowdie’s came out with it and fell on the floor of the bus. Jim picked it up and looked at it wryly.

‘Look at that then. Aye, friend,’ he said to it. ‘Ah’ve got about as much use for you as the Venus de Milo has for a pair o’ gloves. Ah think Ah’ll blaw it up an’ give it to ma wee brother for a balloon. Cut ma losses. Or rather cut yours, Andy.’

As he was putting it back in his pocket, he grimaced and hissed with pain.

‘Oh,’ the small man next to him said. ‘Was that your foot Ah stepped on?’

Jim looked at him incredulously.

‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘It’s really ma brother’s. Ah’m just wearin’ it in for him.’

‘Ye don’t need tae get narky,’ the small man said, bridling slightly.

‘Ah’m no’ narkin’, Mac,’ Jim said. ‘Ah enjoyed it. Anyway, Ah’ve got another one in the hoose. Ah just use this one for walkin’ wi’.’

‘A funny man, eh?’

‘They have been known to die laughing, friend.’

‘Look. It wis an accident.’

‘An accident? More of an atrocity, Ah wid say maself.’

‘Anybody could step on your foot.’

‘It just wouldny be the same, some way. You’ve got that professional touch. What are ye to trade? A foot-powderer?’

‘Now, listen, you,’ the small man said, anxious to get back to first principles. ‘Ah just asked ye a civil question. If it was your foot Ah stepped on. All right?’

‘Whose bloody foot is it likely to bloody be on the end of my bloody leg?’

‘ Ah’ve just about had a bellyful of you.’

‘An’ Ah’ve had a footful of you, friend.’

The small man was beginning to dance slightly, like a ferret on fire. He was thrusting his face as near to Jim’s as he could get it. Jim put his hand flat on the small man’s chest.

‘Keep back,’ he said. ‘Ye’re standin’ so close Ah can see the reds of yer eyes. Get away from me. Before Ah do yer dentist out of a job !’

Their argument had begun to assert itself on the other people in the bus and an insidious silence came just as Jim spoke, so that the volume turned up even further on his remark. The little man looked as if Jim had been trying to crucify him.

‘D’ye hear that?’ he said to a jury of strap-hangers.

Their eyes put Jim in the dock.

‘Did you hear him threatenin’ me?’ The little man appointed someone with a paper as foreman. ‘Did ye?’

The other man almost ate his paper with embarrassment. But someone further along the bus took up the cry, smelling blood.

‘Ah heard him all right, Sam,’ he said loudly. ‘It’s the polis ye want for that kind.’

There was a round of ominous murmurs on Jim.

‘Ah’ll go quietly!’ Jim said dramatically.

His jest was not appreciated. Mutters of ‘Enough o’ that!’ and ‘Who does he think he is?’ and ‘No’ safe in yer ain house any mair!’ were spat at him like poisoned arrows.

‘Ya buncha mugs!’ Jim stood nobly defiant, Rome surrounded by Huns. ‘Morons. All you can count up to is “Bingo!” Dae ye want me to stand here an’ let this wee runt do a tango on ma taes?’

‘Right, Jim. Here’s our stop,’ Andy said hurriedly.

They were a stop too early. But Andy decided a diplomatic withdrawal was called for. They managed to get Jim hustled off before he realized it. A woman sitting on one of the side seats by the door snarled at him like a maenad. Sneers and angry voices pursued them.

Outside, Jim ran to the front of the bus. He stood to attention at the kerb as the bus pulled away and gave all the inmates the fingers with both hands, bowing when they mouthed out at him.

‘Come on, ya half-wit,’ Andy said. ‘You’re definitely buckin’ for a pair o’ handcuffs the night.’

‘Not at all,’ Jim said. ‘An’ what did ye get off there for anyway? That’s no’ our stop. Ah was enjoyin’ it fine.’

‘Aye, that’s right,’ Andy said, catching up with Charlie. ‘Ah heard ye laughin’. Ah just didny fancy goin’ up to yer father the night an’ handin’ in a paira shoes an’ a coupla fingernails. “Hello, Mr Ellis. Here’s Jim. Divide him out among the weans.” You want to watch yer mouth, man.’

‘Me? Me? Ah want to watch? What would ye make o’ that, Charlie?’

Charlie said nothing.

‘Me?’ As they cut through the side streets, Jim expostulated with the world. ‘It’s no’ me. It’s all a bloody plot. Ah’m tellin’ ye. Ah mean, don’t think this is anything new. Ah’m hardened to it. If Ah go into the pictures just, they’re waitin’ for me. Somebody there is goin’ to pick me out. Specially. Some sixteen-stoner is goin’ to decide to use ma head for a footstool. Or else the smoke from ma fag is definitely goin’ to go into someone’s eyes.’

The door of ‘The Hub’ came like a hyphen in Jim’s diatribe, introducing a smoky parenthesis of brightness and noise.

‘Look at them,’Jim continued, crossing to the bar. ‘They’ve got the word already. He’s here. Have your insults ready. Will you have first nark, Cedric? Or shall I? Have a little mercy, friends. Ah, lead me to the malmsey-butt. Ah’m goin’ to do ma Clarence. Drown ma persecution complex in its depths.’

‘Three pints, please,’ Andy said. ‘Heavy.’

‘Very heavy,’ Jim added.

Andy repeated the order a couple of times because the place was still quite busy. Elbows were working against the minute-hand. ‘The Hub’ was purely utilitarian, as cramped and functional as a W.C. It afforded little more than room to stand and manipulate your arm, plus a small adjoining cubicle in which to make way for more beer. The only concessions to
la dolce vita
were a draughtsboard without draughts and a set of veteran dominoes, showing the hollows of missing pips like empty eyes. The bar had been named from its position at the centre of the town. But time had made it a misnomer in any but the shallowest physical sense. ‘The Hub’ had been the centre of a town where ‘wheel’ connoted stage-coach and penny-farthing. Inside, the past was preserved, pickled in alcohol. The steel bar-rail glowed dully, scuffed with several fashions of footwear. In the dim prints on the walls horses
contested a forgotten handicap and dogs chased an eternal fox across dun fields. Outside, the town had reorientated, making this place as peripheral as a barnacle. But both the bar and ‘auld Simpsy’, who stood behind it, were too old for change. Cornered in the present, ‘The Hub’ clung like an arthritic hand to the past.

‘Three pints of heavy over here.’ Andy was touching his forelock like someone at an auction.

Simpsy relayed the order to his assistant.

‘Aye, in a minute,’ the younger man called over. ‘Ye can see how we’re placed.’

Hands were reaching out all over the bar, a Briareus of orders. A young man bumped Charlie roughly as he pushed towards the bar. Charlie found himself pivoted on his own anger and his hand shot out to clamp on the young man’s arm, an automatic extension of his mood. Acting without thought, he forced the young man back, aware distantly of a faceful of amazement at the end of his arm, an expression that was undefined and smudged with beer, that receded steadily until it merged into a background of others, a press of lurid faces, each one wearing its preoccupation like a mask. Distended mouths. Blank eyes. Gargoyles pouring out words like water. Was this all people were meant to be? Begetters of aimless actions? Celebrators of nothing? He looked round the vivid faces. All worshipping their private totems. Frenzied dancers round a fire that fed on their own flesh. Faces and voices fading inconspicuously into the dark. Unnoticed. Others took their place. No questions asked. Just be yourself. Don’t impinge on anybody else. And don’t let them impinge on you. Be casual. The password to manhood. Don’t care about things. Pretend that nothing is happening. Let each one die in lonely innocence. Never seek to know who lives behind the ridiculous pot-belly, the operational scar, the balding hair. It was all an extended joke. This was the refined way to die. Decorate the void with pointless little actions and concerns. Like his father’s grave. A hole covered with flowers. How long can you go on shutting out the smell of death with
the scent of flowers? The flowers withered too. How long could you conceal meaninglessness behind clusters of little actions that stemmed only from their own purpose? How long could conviction last that was rooted in error? How long could you feed on lies before you were mortally sick? Some time you had to say ‘Enough!’ There had to be a time when you threw them back in their faces, when you said no to the easy smiles and the calm assurance and the unquestioning acceptance and the laughing intoxicated faces and Andy being sad and Jim being elaborately funny.

Suddenly he blundered from the bar and into the toilet. Almost before the door swung shut behind him, he vomited. An old man wavered on the edge of his awareness, seeming as distant as a tree on the horizon. While Charlie spewed, the old man buttoned his trousers and looked on philosophically.

“To much bad beer, son. Ah doot ye’ve been gettin’ the bottom o’ the barrel,’ he said, and went back into the bar.

In the bar Andy was drinking thoughtfully. Jim was apostrophizing his pint.

‘Aye,’ he said intimately, using his pint-glass like a microphone. ‘Ah’ve got it. A sudden inspiration. The Ellis Plan. How to turn failure to your advantage.’

Andy stood impassively beside him. He felt the night dim depressingly to boredom, like someone putting off street-lights in his head. They were swigging from the whisky bottle Jim had salvaged from the party’s wreck, shoving it to and fro along the counter. At last complete drunkenness, following them all night like a patient footpad, waiting for the right moment, had relieved them of sobriety.

‘I have called this press conference,’Jim said into what was left of his pint, ‘to inform youse of my latest venture. Everything to date in my life has only been a sort of preface to . . . Where the hell is Charlie?’

They faced each other across the question as if it was a misted pane of glass. The talk of the others in the bar ran out around them like water from an abandoned hose. Andy
peered at Jim, like someone trying to remember where he had seen him before. His hand waved vaguely.

‘Ah thought he went for a pee.’

‘But his pint’s no’ touched.’

Andy’s eyes detoured towards the counter to corroborate the statement. Understanding staggered after sight. The pint glass was full and losing its ruff of froth.

‘His pint’s no’ touched,’ Andy informed Jim.

‘He hasny touched it,’ Jim relayed to the upper air.

A few moments were consecrated to the interment of the news.