Alasdair Gray - Ten Tales Tall and True

He nods, his mouth open and face paler than usual. She laughs and says, “Don’t worry! I’ll pick you up. I’m your mistress, not your cat. I’ve got arms.” She lifts keys off the top of the sound-deck where he has dropped them again, puts them in his coat pocket, grasps his hands and pulls. He sighs and stands.

“Kiss me!” she says. He doesn’t so she kisses him hard until his lips yield.

“Now go off to wherever you always go,” she says, taking his arm and leading him to door, which she opens.

“But…” he says, pausing.

“Sh!” she whispers, pressing a finger to his lips, “I’ll be here when you come back. Off you go.”

He sighs, leaves. She shuts door, goes back to work.

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.

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.”

Look at him, surprised. He says, “I feel there’s a lot of aggro going on under our jolly surfaces here. Do you?”

Agree.

“I don’t think the tension is as Scottish-English as it looks. It’s just bloody British. Whenever two British families come together one lot feel up, the other lot under. Guilt and resentment ensue and much silly jockeying. Even the Royals do it. I find these tensions boring. Do you?”

Agree.

“A woman of few words! I will shortly say good-bye to the chiefs of my lot and the chiefs of your lot, then I will drive to the Albany and enjoy one of the best things your country makes: a Macallan Glenlivet malt. Have you been to the Albany?”

Have not.

“It’s nice. I never stay there but I can always find a quiet comfortable bar there. I would like you to have a drink with me because (to be honest) this wedding on top of the divorce is making me feel lonely, and you look a nice person to talk to. And I promise not to say a word about my ex-wife and her wicked ways. I’d rather talk about something more pleasant and different. I’d love to talk about you if you can stand being probed a little by a disgusting Sassenach. Please don’t say a word because I am now about to leave. In fifteen minutes I will be at the carpark, sitting hopefully inside a puce Reliant Scimitar. It’s a silly car with a silly colour but perhaps it suits me. I can’t tell you how I got it.”

Ask if they let girls dressed like this into the Albany.

“Don’t be so boringly British. But of course you’re teasing me a little.”

He leaves. He has done this before. Be careful.

The Albany has lounges upstairs for residents and their guests. He is neither, but the waiter serves him without question. Can people with his kind of voice and clothes go anywhere? But he does not try to make drunk.

“Do you prefer sweet or dry drinks?”

Prefer sweet.

“Good. I will buy you a very special cocktail which I’m sure you will enjoy if you sip it as slowly as I sip my Macallan, then we can have a coffee and I’ll drive you home. Do you stay with your people?”

Live in a bedsit.

“Shared?”

Not shared.

“Good! Bad idea, sharing. It has destroyed many a friendship. Tell me about your people. Having no family of my own now I like hearing about other families.”

Tell him about Dad, Mum, relations. He says thoughtfully, “It’s nice to know there are still pockets of affection in the world.”

Ask about his mum and dad.

“Aha! A touchy subject. I hardly ever see them, not even at Christmas. My father is nothing — nothing at all. He made a big killing in property and retired like a shot. My mother is merely supportive. They live in Minorca now. They were never very close.”

Frown, puzzled. His words suggest bodiless people separating or propping each other after a ghostly massacre. Sigh. Silence. Here come the drinks. Sip. Enjoy this. Tell him so.

“Thought you’d like it. May I ask what you do for a living?”

Tell him.

“What’s the firm like, the boss like?”

Tell him.

“What — if it’s not an indelicate question — do they pay you?”

Tell him.

“How very mean! Can you live on a wage as low as that? We ought to do something about that. You would earn a lot more if you came to London. I know, because I’m in Systems Analysis which deals with your kind of firm, among others.”

Don’t be fooled by that one. Tell him everything costs more in London, especially the bedsits.

“Perfectly true, which is why London wages are higher too. But not everywhere. If you decide to come to London contact me first. And now I’ll drive you home.”

He does not try to touch on his way to the car or inside it, and stays in his seat on arriving. Not inviting himself in, he sits with hand on wheel smiling sideways. Think of saying thank you, good night, but instead ask him in. The loving is surprisingly good. He seems shy at first, not embarrassingly shy but charmingly shy, responds vigorously to hints, pleasuring first a long time with fingers and then with tongue, murmuring, “With this instrument I also make my money.”

He pulls a condom on later saying, “I’m thinking of your health. You don’t know where I’ve been.”

Feel safe with him. Have known nobody make love as long as he does. Say so. He says, “We share a talent for this. Let’s do it again soon.”

Yes do it again soon.

Of course his money smooths things. The second night starts with a meal in the Shandon Buttery costing more than a (not his) weekly wage, on the third night another ditto at One Devonshire Gardens, fourth night ditto in Central Hotel after the disco. Dislike these meals, excepting the starters and sweets. The main course is always too fancy, too sauced, too spiced. Never say so. And all the time he is kind, polite, funny, telling stories about people whose faces are seen, names and voices are heard on the news. His stories could never be told on the news, make giggle they are so stupid, blush they are so dirty, madden with rage they are so unfair like the Duke of Westminster and asbestosis. He seems to stand outside the dark tank of an aquarium full of weird cruel filthy comic fish, shining a light onto each in turn, explaining with humour but also with a touch of regret, how greedy and wasteful they are. He never explains how he knows them so well, never talks about himself, but always about them, the others. Maybe he learned about them as he learned about Mum, Dad, the boss, by asking their daughters and employees. If asked about himself he gives a crisp reply in words that sound definite but say nothing definite. Ask where he lives.