Alasdair Gray: Ten Tales Tall and True

“Goodnight Joe, and goodnight to you Ian. See you next week on the dot of one youngster. Joe will be taking a bit of a rest. Right?”

“Thanks,” said the young navvy, and hurried after Joe wondering why he had said thanks instead of goodnight when he had been given nothing, had not even been paid yet for his labour.

The young navvy overtook Joe walking into the back lane and said, “Are you no going for a bus, Joe?”

“No. This is a shortcut.”

“Can I come with you?” asked the young navvy, wondering why he was asking. Joe said nothing. They walked beside each other in a lane with a brick wall on one side, a railway embankment on the other. It could have been in the depths of the country. Grass, daisies and clover grew between two parallel paths made by car wheels and the verges were thick with dandelions, dockens, thistles, burdock. Branches from trees in the gardens behind the wall hung overhead. From the embankment hawthorns and brambles stuck thorny, leafy shoots between the sagging wires of a fence. The old and young navvy walked side by side in silence, each on one of the parallel tracks. The young one felt Joe was angry, feared it had to do with him, tried to think of something to say.

And at last said, “When the boss turned up beside us there I thought he was McIvor at first.”

Joe said nothing.

“Don’t you think he’s a bit like McIvor, Joe?”

“Of course he’s like McIvor. McIvor is a foreman.

Stoddart is the foreman’s foreman — the gaffer’s gaffer. Of course he’s like McIvor.”

“But he’s cheerier than McIvor — he calls ye by your first name. Have you had drinks with him before, Joe?”

“That was the first and last.”

“The last? Why the last?”

“Because you’ve done for me.”

“What do you mean?” asked the young navvy, suddenly seeing exactly what the old one meant but confused by two amazements: amazement that the boss preferred him to Joe, amazement at the unfairness and speed of the result. Together these amazements stopped him feeling very happy or very angry. But he liked Joe so the unfairness puzzled him.

“Are you sure he doesnae ever want ye back Joe? I never heard him say so.”

“Then you need your ears washed.”

“But that cannae be right, Joe! I’ve got more muscle than you but I havenae the head yet — the skill. That’s why Mick keeps pairing us. If I’m working just by myself I won’t do so much because I’ll need to keep stopping to think.” “Too true!” said Joe, “Stoddart is stupider than he knows, but he’s a boss so nobody can put him right. In a week or two when he sees you arenae doing as well as you did today he’ll think you’ve started slacking so give you the heave and get in someone else. Or maybe no! If ye arrive ten minutes early every day, and work your guts out till he tells ye to stop, and if you take a five minutes tea-break or none at all when the housekeeper forgets ye — well, if ye sweat enough at showing you’re a boss’s man he’ll maybe keep ye.”

Joe climbed over the fence and went up the embankment by a path slanting through willow herb and the young navvy followed, his confused feelings tinged by distress. Joe led him across three sets of railway lines to a gap in a fence of upright railway sleepers. They were now in a broad, unpeopled street between old warehouses. “What should I do Joe?” asked the youngest navvy. He was not answered, so said it again. After a long silence Joe suddenly said, “Get out of this into civil engineering, son. No bastard can own you in civil engineering because ye travel all over. Highland power stations, motorways in the Midlands, reservoirs in Wales — if ye tire of one job ye just collect your jotters and wages, clear out the same day and go to another. Naebody minds. No questions asked. And the money, the overtime is phenomenal. Once at Loch Sloy I worked a forty-eight hour stint — forty-eight hours with the usual breaks of course, but I was on the job the whole time without one wink of sleep. Someone bet me I couldnae but I could and I did. Civil engineering is the life, son, for folk like you and me. Of course most of the money goes on booze and betting, there’s nothing much else to do with it. Some keep a wife and weans on the money but why bother? Ye only get to see them one week in six maybe. Family life is a con, a bloody imposition. Not that I’m advocating prostitutes! Keep clear of all women, son, is my advice to you: if they don’t give you weans they’ll give you some other disease. Chuck Stoddart and go into civil engineering. It’s the only life for a man while he has his strength. That’s what I did and I’ve never regretted it.”

Joe seldom said more than one sentence at a time so the young navvy brooded over this speech. Booze, betting and prostitutes did not attract him. He wanted to hurl himself through the air toward any target he chose, going faster than a mile a minute with maybe a girl clinging on a pillion behind. But a good bike cost nearly £400. After paying his people two thirds of his weekly earnings in return for the home and services he had enjoyed since infancy, about £4 remained which (despite his intentions of saving £3 a week) seemed always to get eaten up by tram, café, cinema, dancehall, football, haircut and clothes expenses — he had begun to like dressing well on his few nights out. But if he worked on a big civil engineering job in the Highlands, and did all the twelve or sixteen hour shifts his strength allowed, and slept and ate cheaply in a workers’ hostel, and paid his people a few shillings a week till he felt like returning, he might earn enough to buy a good bike in less than a year. Then the neglected Honda in the boss’s tool-shed came to mind, and Stoddart’s words A neglected tool is a wasted tool. He decided that next Sunday, perhaps during the tea-break, he would set the Honda in its blocks, clean it and tidy away the tools. Stoddart would certainly notice this and say something during the five o’clock inspection, and the young navvy had a feeling this might lead to something useful. He did not know what, but found the prospect oddly exciting, though he still felt sorry for Joe.

While he pondered these things they crossed a bridge over a railway cutting and came to Kilmarnock Road. It was a busy road with the railway on one side and on the other wee shops and pubs on the ground floors of ordinary tenements. The young navvy knew this road well. He travelled it by tramcar six days a week from his home to the building site and back. He was perplexed to find it so near the foreign, almost secret city of huge rich houses. A few blocks away he noticed a sign of a station where a subway train would take him home in time for the usual family tea. His distress vanished. He said, “I don’t think my ma or da would like me going off to civil engineering just yet, Joe, but I’ll take a crack at it one day. Thanks for the tip. See you the morrow.” Joe nodded and they separated.

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.”