Alasdair Gray - Old Men in Love

Cannot work on my book with Niki and Mo in the house and am afraid to leave them alone here for longer than it takes to run to the Byres Road shops and back. She won’t go out because she says people are after her. I do not ask who or why because her answers would certainly be lies. For three weeks she has hardly left the bedroom. I am sick of carrying trays of food upstairs, sick of the queer looks shopkeepers give me when I buy disposable nappies, women’s underwear (since she brought no change of clothes) also lipstick, mascara and false eyelashes. When asked why she who wants to see nobody must doll herself up she said her face in the mirror was all she had to look at, and why didn’t I have a television set? I answered that television is a drug that added nothing to life, that it distracts, deludes, insulates people from reality and she yelled, “That’s why I want it!” When I said it was unhealthy to keep a baby in one room all day she said I could take it out as often as I wanted. I do NOT want to take it out. If Mo starts liking and trusting me I will start feeling responsible and be stuck with the child until it is old enough to support itself, which will not happen before I die of natural causes.

A dull dreadful day. Having paid one of the cleaners to buy Niki and Mo warm coats with big hoods, also the modern equivalent of the sling-seat squaws used to carry papooses, I got my lodgers out of the house by going for a taxi, using it to collect them from the house and take us to Anniesland station. Here Niki was sure nobody would recognize her if I carried Mo and she kept her head well back in the hood and a scarf over her mouth as if she had toothache. We took a train to Helensburgh, walked along the esplanade, looked in shop windows, had tea and ice cream in café, took train and taxi home. They enjoyed the outing. I would have enjoyed it too had I been a character in a sentimental Victorian novel. I did not enjoy it.

My life a hopeless nightmare. Now nearly a year since she came. Work on my book at a standstill. Whole idea of it awkward, wrong, impossible. Can sometimes snatch half hour in library reading dull social histories of Glasgow, half-heartedly meaning to write another. My former womanless, childless existence used to make me feel outcast from life’s feast — know now it was a paradise of freedom and hope. An implacable force, probably Nature herself, has enslaved me to a selfish bitch I neither love nor have sex with. Only a masochist could stand more of this. I was not a slave when I shopped, cooked, cleaned for Nell and Nan — they had done as much for me before taking to their beds, and I knew they would one day leave me by dying. Niki and Mo won’t die unless I

Have never never never lost my temper because nothing annoying used to happen, but for weeks now am containing with difficulty rage that must end in bloodshed and infanticide when it finally overwhelms me. This diary will prove I was driven to it. I may only be suffering what many married men endure but they must have been immunized against weeping women, screaming infants by miserable childhoods full of frantic mothers and blubbering siblings. I was spared that normal-family-life shit and am too old to take more. Am on brink of breakdown, verge of insanity. Another day of this life will drive me to

Amazing improvement. This morning overheard cleaners casually refer to me as Mo’s father! Cross-examined, they said Niki told them so. I thanked them politely for that news, went upstairs, and to stop myself grasping Niki’s throat seized an ornate vase I have never liked and hurled it to smash in the fireplace. Then I stamped around the room clawing the air with hooked fingers, howling like a wolf, growling like a tiger, spitting at Niki the filthiest names I knew — “Inconsiderate mother! Untruthful parasite! Selfish manipulator!” I only went quiet when starting to enjoy this undignified performance. Its effect was remarkable. Baby Mo stopped wailing and watched me with obvious delight. Niki stopped weeping and when silence fell asked in a plaintive but sensible voice what I wanted? I pointed to the mess in the fireplace and said, “Clean that up, bitch, and you’ll hear!” — using an American accent which somehow seemed appropriate. She has now agreed to take Mo out after breakfast each morning when I go to the library. She will not be given a key to the house but receive twelve pounds a day for expenses and be let back in when I return after five to make dinner. In the evenings she and Moloch will be left in the house if I go to Tennants, but if I find she has let people in when I am out she and infant will be evicted, and if she robs me again I will call the police. She knows I will keep my word so at last, with peace of mind and enriched experience, I can devote myself to a new and better book. What kind will it be?

I am starting to glimpse something truly original, like a great figure emerging from a fog, a narrative uniting global and Scottish history and my own without fictional masks, an immense task. Hurrah and onward, Tunnock, while keeping your eyes on the world around you.

Last week, on the way back from Heraghty’s around noon, called in at the Hasta Mañana on Gorbals Street and saw the small big-nosed lawyer I met there over a year ago. Perhaps I was looking for her. I took an empty chair opposite as she talked into a mobile phone with her usual speed and intensity. She spoke to people about impending court appearances for over fifteen minutes without seeming to see me. I finished an excellent bowl of soup and was starting on a salad when she switched the phone off and said, “Well John Tunnock, how’s Medician Florence?”

I told her I had been forced to abandon it and was embarking on something that would also show visions of the local and contemporary. She asked why and after pondering my very wordy answer thrust an unclenched fist at me across the table. I stared at it, puzzled, until I saw she was offering to shake my hand. I allowed this and found my new book has made me a new, very useful friend. Her name is —— 21 She gave me her phone number. I gave her my address.

Yesterday I received her postcard telling me Tony Blair (though she spelled him Bliar) would be addressing the Scottish Trades Union leaders in Glasgow Conference Centre, that folk from all over Scotland would be marching there to protest against another Anglo-American war with Iraq. Other big protest marches would be happening in London, most European capitals and New York and Sydney, so she would call in a taxi at nine today and pick me up to take part. This frightened me. I approve of people publicising their ideas in peaceful protest marches, whether they are workers who don’t want their industries shut, or pacifists who want nuclear missiles banned, or even Orangemen who think the world’s worst menace is the Catholic Church. Freedom of speech needs everyone to openly show what they believe, even if their beliefs are stupid and wrong. Without public discussions and demonstrations the only alternative to government by millionaire politicians is terrorist bombings. But I am emotionally incapable of public appearances. When the taxi came I went out and began explaining this, but before I had said two sentences through the taxi window this implacable woman opened the door and said “Stop talking, ostrich! Get in!” I did. It was a bright, fresh, sunny morning so I had no excuse to even go back indoors for a coat.