Alasdair Gray: Ten Tales Tall and True

Getting Started — a Prologue

Houses and Small Labour Parties

Homeward Bound

Loss of the Golden Silence

You

Internal Memorandum

Are You a Lesbian?

The Marriage Feast

Fictional Exits

A New World

The Trendelenburg Position

Time Travel

Near the Driver

Mister Meikle — An Epilogue

Notes, Thanks and Critic Fuel

Novels by A. Gray

This book contains more tales than ten so the title is a tall tale too. I would spoil my book by shortening it, spoil the title if I made it true.

I am the descendant of a race whose stolid unimaginative decency has, at all times, rendered them the dependable tools of others; yet from my earliest infancy I grew self-willed, addicted to the wildest caprices, a prey to the most ungovernable passions until bound and weary I thought best to sulk upon my mother’s breast . Too romantic.

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

I remember the whole beginning as a succession of flights and drops, a little see-saw of the right throbs and the wrong . Far too vague.

A man stood upon a railway bridge in Northern Alabama, looking down into the swift waters twenty feet below. The man’s hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord .

That’s the style for me.

Eight men dug a trench beside a muddy crossroads, and the mud made two remember Italy where they had fought in a recent war. These two had not known each other in Italy, but both had seen a dead German who lay at a crossroads near Naples, though one thought it was perhaps nearer Pisa. They discussed the matter when the gang paused for a smoke.

“Not Pisa, no, Pisa was miles away,” said one, “Naples was the place. He was a handsome big fella. We called him Siegfried.”

“Our lot called him Adolf, because of the fuckin moustache,” said the other, “He wasnae handsome for fuckin long.”

“I don’t remember a moustache, but you’re right, he wasnae handsome for long. He went all white and puffy and swole up like a balloon — I think only his uniform stopped him bursting. The heavy traffic must have kept the rats away. Every time we went that road I hoped to God someone had shifted him but no, there he always was, more horrible than ever. Because eventually a truck ran over him and burst him up properly. Do you mind that?”

“I mind it fuckin fine.”

“Every time we went that road we would say, ‘I wonder how old Siegfried’s doing,’ and look out for him, and there was always something to see, though at last it was only the bones of a foot or a bit of rag with a button on it.”

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.

Though their work was defined as unskilled by the Department of Labour they worked skilfully in couples, one breaking the ground with a pick, the other shovelling loose earth and stones from under his partner’s feet and flinging it clear. At the front end Mick the ganger set a steady pace for all of them. The youngest navvy was inclined to go too fast, so Mick had paired him with Old Joe who was nearly sixty, but still worked well by pacing himself carefully. The two ex-army men were liable to slow down if paired together, so Mick always paired one of them with himself. The gang belonged to a workforce of labourers, brickies, joiners, plumbers, slaters, electricians, painters, drivers, foremen and site clerks who were enlarging a city by turning a hillside into a housing estate. During the recent war (which had ended seven years before but still seemed recent to all who remembered it) the government had promised there would be no return to unemployment afterward, and every family would eventually have a house with a lavatory and bath inside. The nation’s taxes were now being spent on houses as well as armed forces, motorways, public health et cetera, so public housing was now profitable.