Alasdair Gray - The Ends of Our Tethers

Though still telling my host about the massacre of Glencoe and Ezekiel’s valley of dry bones I remembered the death of Mr Anderson, a former radio announcer with whom I once shared a kind of cave, a very safe secret little hidey-hole, we thought, in a shrubbery of Kelvingrove Park. In those days I had not learned to sleep in small snatches while sitting upright so I slept by drinking half a bottle of methylated spirits. One morning I woke to find my companion had been stabbed to death and scalped. I did not know why I had been spared until several weeks or months or years later. Perhaps it was yesterday. I’m sure I did not dream it.

I stood on the canal towpath enjoying a glorious gold, green and lavender sunset when I was tripped and knocked down. I lay flat on my back surrounded by children of seven, eight or nine. Their sex was not obvious. All wore black jeans and leather jackets. All had skulls and crossbones painted or tattooed on top of heads that were bald except for a finger length of small pigtails all round. One poured petrol over my trousers, the rest waved bats, cutting implements, firelighters and discussed which part of me to bruise, cut or set fire to first.

“We are the death squad of the Maryhill Cleansing Brigade,” explained the leader who was perhaps eleven or twelve. “We are licensed terrorists with a sacred mission to save the British economy through a course of geriatric disposal. Too many old gerries are depressing the economy these days. If you can’t afford to get rejuvenated, grampa, you should have the decency to top yourself before becoming a burden to the state.”

I told him I wasn’t a burden to the state, wasn’t even a beggar, that money was paid into my bank account by foreign publishers and was enough to feed me though not enough to rent a room.

“You pathetic, hairy old driveller!” shouted the leader, goading himself or herself into a fury. “You’re an eyesore! The visual equivalent of a force-nine-gale fart! You will die in hideous agony as a warning to others.”

I was alarmed but excited. To die must be an awfully big adventure. Then a small fat person with glasses said, “Wait a bit, Jimsy, I think he’s famous.”

They consulted a folded sheet with a lot of faces and names printed on it. The fat person, who could read names, asked if I was Mr Thingumajig, which I am. They helped me up, dusted me down, shook my hand very solemnly one at a time, said they would remember me next time we met, said they would gladly kill any old friend I wanted rid off, advised me not to go near a naked flame before my trousers were dry, hoped I had no hard feelings. Honestly, I had none at all. My gratitude and love for these children was so great that I wept real tears. The leader got me to autograph the printed sheet. It was pleasant to meet a young Scot who still valued my signature. The sun had not yet set when they left me. I watched the gloaming fade, warm in the knowledge that I had a privileged place in modern Britain. Not only the children liked me but their bosses in the Cleansing Company or Social Security Trust or Education Industry or whoever had a use for children nowadays.

Yes, somebody up there likes me even though once I detested the bastards up there, the agents and consultants, money farmers and middle men, parliamentary quango-mongers, local and international monopolists. My books were attacks on these people but caused no hard feelings, and now my books are only read in nations that lost World War Two.

My host spoke on a politely insistent note. “I suggest you visit my country. Your royalties there will easily rent a private apartment with housekeeper and health care. We are no longer a military nation. We revere old people, which is why they live longer among us than anywhere else.”

I said I was happy where I was. He shut his notebook and bowed saying, “You are a true master. You have subdued your wishes to your surroundings.”

This angered me but I did not show it. There are better ways of living than being happy but they require strength and sanity. The poor and weak are as incapable of sanity as the rich and powerful. In this

country sanity would drive the

weak to suicide and make the

rich distinctly uncomfortable.

We are better without it.

DEDICATION: Agnes Owens is the most unfairly neglected of all living Scottish authors. I do not know why. It is not because she worked for years as a house cleaner in a district of high unemployment, since working class origins and experience are often put to an author’s credit. Nor has she been ostracised by other Scottish writers. Liz Lochhead first read one of her best stories — Arabella — in the 1970s, when she met Mrs Owens at a writing group in the Vale of Leven. Liz introduced her work to several other Scottish writers who admire it. In 1984 James Kelman introduced to Polygon Press Gentlemen of the West , her first novel, which became a Penguin paperback. Two collections of her stories have since been published and four short but perfect novels, the last ( Bad Attitudes ) by Bloomsbury in July 2003. Though not widely reviewed all her reviews have been highly favourable, yet she is never remembered when awards are handed out. Perhaps she is ignored by publicists because they cannot believe a creative intelligence can thrive long in a council housing estate.

BIG POCKETS WITH BUTTONED FLAPS first appeared in New Writing 9 published by Vintage and the British Council in 2000.

NO BLUEBEARD The naming of this man’s wives by number is taken from Eventide , a novel Roger Glass, one of my students in Glasgow University Creative Writing Programme, began writing in 2002.

JOB’S SKIN GAME was conceived as a monologue when eczema recurred to me after an abeyance of nearly forty years. I connected the monologue with ideas in the Book of Job when Lu Kemp, a director of Scottish BBC Radio, commissioned a modern story from me based upon that Book. This story, in a shorter version, was broadcast by BBC Scotland in January 2003 and printed in Prospect , April 2003.

SINKINGS. The two hideous experiences in this story befell my friend, Peter Gilmour.

AIBLINS is an old Scots word meaning ‘perhaps’. The tale is partly based on my experiences as a writer employed by Glasgow University between 1977 and 1979, and non-connected with my experiences as a professor (with J. Kelman and T. Leonard) between 2001 and 2003. Ian Gentle is a real person; Luke Aiblins a composite of several, but chiefly of myself. The Proem and Outing poems were part of a sequence I wrote in my late teens and luckily failed, despite many efforts, to get published, though my friend Robert Kitts recorded many of them for his television documentary Under The Helmet networked by the BBC in 1964. A shorter version of Aiblins was published by the magazine Prospect on 17 April 2003.