Alasdair Gray - Old Men in Love

I gave her what she asked and sat down again facing her, sipping a whisky I had poured for myself and wondering what to say. She said suddenly, “Put on some of that music.”

“What kind?” I asked. She leaned toward me so that her hair fell forward and hid her face. She mumbled, “Something romantic.”

I went, tingling a little, to the pianola and inserted the Siegfried Idyll with which Wagner greeted Cosima on the morning she gave birth to their son. I returned to where the intruder sat, her face still hidden behind her curtain of hair. I again sat opposite not knowing what to say until, “Are you Zoe?” occurred to me. She said, “Aye.”

I said I had met her father a while ago. She said, “Where? How?”

“In a pub,” I said. She said, “Aye. Give me another whisky.”

I poured it saying, “Exactly what do you want? Is it money?”

She said, “I don’t need money .”

“So what do you want?”

“Is that not obvious?” she shouted, angrily glaring at me. I gaped at her. She said, “Let’s go to bed.”

“Not,” I said firmly, “before I have another whisky.”

Sounding disappointed she said she hadn’t known I was the kind that needed it.

What followed was too quick to be perfectly satisfying, but the relief was wonderful.

Post coitum omne animal triste est 42 is attributed to Aristotle who never said it, because it is Latin and he Greek. It is not always true of me but is certainly true of every woman who has lain with me, so I was not surprized when Zoe, after bringing me to that rapid climax, started sobbing. Feeling happy and grateful I asked what was wrong, knowing from experience nothing I said would help. She said, “Now you’ll think I’m just a hoor, nothing but a hoor.”

I pointed out that a whore was paid for being fucked; she had fucked me rather than vice versa and had refused my offer of money. She said, “I told you I don’t want your money.”

“Then you aren’t a whore,” I said. She said, “Aye, alright, but I’m still a bad girl. I’ve done things, I do things that are utterly wrong, completely rotten. You see I —”

Not wanting to be horrified I firmly interrupted saying, “Say no more. I hold myself to be indifferent honest, but know such things of me it were better my mother had never bore me.”

She stopped sobbing and asked what the hell did that mean? I said I was quoting Hamlet by William Shakespeare, and in Shakespeare’s time “indifferent” meant “ordinary”, so Hamlet meant he was as honest as most folk, but had still done things that meant the world would be better if he had never existed. She said, “Does that mean everybody is as bad as me?”

“That’s what Hamlet meant.”

“Even you?”

“Certainly,” I said, though doubting it. I was a fair kind of school teacher and never needed to use the belt in any class I had charge of, though until 1986 in Britain it was legal to do so. Even in primary schools a well-dressed, confident male teacher could torture the hand of a little girl in districts where working class parents thought that commonplace. When headmaster I told my staff not to use it, but to send troublemakers they could not handle to me, and every week four or five came to my door, usually the same four or five. Most were very active kids incapable of sitting still, or had bad manners learned at home which teachers had no time to correct. I am now ashamed of having belted these kids, but had I not done so my staff would have felt unsupported, insecure, so I tortured small children at least four times a week. Too disgusted to work out how many times a year, how often in a lifetime of teaching I said in a firmer voice, “Yes, perhaps even worse than you, though not as bad as Eichman.”

Zoe, highly interested, said, “Tell me about it.”

I said, “No. I will not tell you how rotten I have been if you don’t tell me how bad you are. Let us please just be good to each other.” She said thoughtfully, “That’s an idea. Do you want us to do the other thing again?”

I said yes, if we did it slowly this time. She said, “I thought men like it quick.”

I said a lot of men learned about sex in ways that stopped them doing it slowly, but I was too old to be quick twice a night. We cuddled. She began weeping again in a different, less stormy way and at last I may or may not have ejaculated and we fell asleep with my male part comfortable inside her.

Which I hope often happens. This morning I awoke greatly refreshed, kissed her awake, said “Breakfast!” and rushed downstairs to make it, dressing as I went. She followed soon after, not realising I would have brought it to her in bed. Facing this bossy, confident woman across the kitchen table, drinking coffee with her and eating poached eggs on toast with grilled tomatoes felt familiar because the last time I had felt that way was with Aunt Nan before illness confined her to bed. Well, if Zoe stays long enough I’ll die long before she does, hooray hooray. And it’s wonderful that she doesn’t expect me to serve her hand and foot. After the meal she said, “Mind if I smoke?” and rolled and smoked a thin cigarette, watching while I washed, dried and put away breakfast things. She said, “You’re a very queer kind of man.”

I told her it would be a bad world if men were all the same and now I must work. She said, “So will I as soon as the pub’s open, but I thought you’d retired from teaching.”

I told her I was a writer. She asked what stuff I wrote and could she get it from the library. I said I hadn’t been published yet and my field was historical sociology. She said, obviously disappointed, “O very highbrow,” but came into the sitting room and sat smoking, being careful not to scatter the cigarette ash while I scribbled in this notebook. She showed no interest in what I scribbled, probably thinking it was historical sociology. Perhaps it is, but I am also coming to terms with the new adventure my life has become. At intervals I put on rolls of Bach, Joplin, Stravinsky, Souza, Verdi, varying the music as much as possible and asking after each piece if she liked it. She always said, “Just you carry on playing it.”

Shortly before noon she stood up saying, “I’m for offski.”

I gave her a key so she could return when she liked. That was ten minutes ago. This house feels like a home again.

The miracle of Zoe makes me astonishingly happy. I now know why bad sex is a big part of life and good sex a small part — it lets me enjoy so many other things. Each morning I waken refreshed for the adventure of a new day and our breakfast together tastes as good as breakfasts in childhood. I kiss her goodbye, scoot to the library, immerse myself in exciting new researches. Building a scientific Scottish history on its geological foundation is certainly essential to making us a nation again, but a chore good research students could finish if they continued on lines I have laid down. My masterpiece should draw readers into a real life as free and romantic as my own — need I first steep them in their present miseries by showing how these evolved? I am studying the historical vision of Goethe’s Faust, Ibsen’s Emperor and Galilean, Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Hardy’s Dynasts. Can I instil the great breadth of these visions into something of my own?