James Kelman - A Disaffection

It was a good day, and that was a surprise; and it exemplified much of what was going on. It went side by side with things. There were two things always and just now one of them was this being a good day. Ideally Patrick could have had the two things out in the open so that he could compare them — even just to have seen them side by side, that he could have known he had seen them so that in the future there would be these two things that had happened and he had known and borne witness to them. Perthshire was the opposing team. They came from around the High Possil district and if Patrick minded correctly their own football park had one touchline about six feet higher than the other which was great if your team was hitting in corners but rubbish if it was the other mob. Anyway, Holm Park was not like that. The pitch was really muddy today. It was great. The full-backs came sliding in with mammoth upenders of tackles, leaving deep scoops out the ground and one occasion nearby the touchline a big guy came crunching in on this poor other guy and he goes crashing to the deck, a big shower of mud came flying through the air and the spectators had to fucking all duck in case they got spattered. It was fucking marvellous and made everybody laugh. There too was the sound of the guy peching when he finally got himself onto his feet and trotted back down the field. You could see the gash down his shin, the blood and the muddy streaks, that especial whiteness at the bit where the studs had erased the outer skin. He was a lanky big guy and he reminded Patrick of an inside-forward who used to play for Partick Thistle years ago, back when the family lived in Maryhill and the da used to take him and Gavin to some of the home games. It was a teacher he reminded Patrick of. Not any teacher in particular. It was just something about the way he looked when he got himself back onto his feet and trotted back into the fray. And the way he played the game, an attitude to it, as if the playing was just some strange sort of obligation he had, and that absent determination. Patrick felt the kinship. He had felt an awful pity for him at the same time and dreaded the moment the ball was passed to him. He couldnt watch the game because of it, not being able to look away from this man. And he couldni have been more than ten years of age at the time and yet recognising that something. It was something important.

But was it something good? Probably it was fucking something bad — a stupit fucking self-consciousness. He was probably just a big self-conscious fellow who felt he was just too skinny and lanky to be playing professional football, he was all knees and fucking elbows. And Patrick felt like greeting. My god. Imagine a ten-year-old boy wanting to greet about something like that! How in the name of fuck had he managed to survive the next fucking twenty years. Christ. He was a poor big guy but. And he was out there doing his best. The sort of player who hears every last shout from the crowd:

Ya big fucking flagpole ya cunt ye! Gone ya big fucking flagpole! Ya big drainpipe! Heh look at the state of that cunt man he’s a fucking drainpipe, look!

And the poor guy blushing as he attempts to hit the ball round the full-back and ends up tripping over his own two feet.

Look at the fucking poof! Heh you Hen Broon, ya fucking dickie ye! Your maw’s a fucking shagbag, she’s a darkie ya cunt! Beautiful cries from the heart. Gone ya fucking dumpling ye ya cunt ye couldni score in a barrel of fannies! A what? A barrel of fannies. A barrel of fannies? What in the name of christ!

It had taken him another couple of years to work that yin out and he would have been best left in ignorance. A barrel of fannies. It was enough to put ye off sex for the rest of your life. A case of the shudders everytime he thought about it. What was it like at all? a barrel of fannies — was it actually a nightmare, a form of male nightmare?

A man with a hat and a mournful face was standing a couple of yards from Pat. He looked like the stereotype of a hardbitten football journalist. Or a scout. He could have been a scout for one of the senior clubs. But no, definitely more like a journalist. Unless even here you were getting the fucking CIA or the fucking MI5. Dirty bastard. Here he was infiltrating one of the last bastions of ordinary life. Journalists were a lesser breed than teachers. Or were they? maybe they were on a par. They all sold out. What the fuck difference did it make. At least the MI5 were proud of being fascist rightwing bastards.

He had his hands in his coat pockets, the man, gazing at the play, his head turning to follow the flight of the ball, a cigarette wedged in at the corner of his mouth. And his mouth had a meanness about it. A kind of a crimped look there, in the lips.

Shocking!

To say that about somebody. Just because of the physical characteristics of the face you make snap judgments on personality, how the person makes his or her decisions, how they move in the midst of their fellows. Desperate. It is just not fair. It is not good. It is shocking.

Patrick missed the only goal of the game at this juncture. And serve him right. He was shaking his head and looking in the direction of his shoes, and then the blokes roundabout were cheering and applauding and waving. Yoker had scored. And what a goal as well according to everybody: their winger had cut in from the right and chipped the ball over the heads of the defence and back to the eighteen-yard line where the striker caught it on the volley and bump, straight into the corner of the net, a fucking beauty. And you aye remember goals. It is a fact one does not hesitate in admitting. There was one Patrick scored when he was playing for the BB and it was a real fucking beauty although painful, a header, but him letting the ball bounce that wee bit instead of actually meeting it on the attack, which is the correct way of using the nut, you have to go and meet it and not let it come and crash against ye. Joe Cairns said that as well, about remembering the goals you scored. He didnt talk about football very much but when he did Pat liked to be in the vicinity. There was that good yarn about when he was with Stirling and they were up for a cup game at Ibrox and holding them to a draw right up till the last couple of minutes and then the jammy bastards got their usual last minute Loyalist handshake of a penalty. So typical. So absolutely typical.

Junior football was much better. Although some of the supporters there were just as bigoted and fascist and some of them were fucking maniacs. Pat was at a game just after Christmas and he was standing down near to the corner flag; up comes a player to take a corner and the entire section of the crowd nearest started clearing their throats at him, dollops of catarrh. They were all men as well, no boys. Frightening. A shower of catarrh. Worse than a storm of hailstones.

There was one goal and I missed it.

That would make some fucking epitaph right enough! Missing the only goal of the game. But who cares. Life just cannot be taken as seriously as that. Otherwise it becomes too much. It becomes a total burden. Pat’s life

Pat’s life! Who the fuck cares. In the name of all that is and is not holy, that becomes as holy.

The man with the mournful face was looking at Pat. He was actually looking at him. It was funny. No it wasnt. But just as well paranoia was not a problem. No doubt he was an emissary from the education department of Scotland, sent to keep an eye on the chap Doyle who fails to turn up for headmagisterial appointments on top of everything else, these ghastly rumours, the chap’s political beliefs, it seems he’s agin the government. How awful. How absolutely fucking awful and incendiary. Dont tell us the bounder dislikes being a teacher! Dashed uncivil! And he has the dem cheek to stand up in front of children! Old Milne should maybe not have been ignored though. Patrick has probably shown him disrespect. But he deserves disrespect. That is the thing he deserves, disrespect. Him and his fucking flapping MA gown. Auld Clootie come to haunt the weans. The wee first yearers going to the big school for the first time and meeting up with that sort of reality. Middle-aged warders. Middle-class warders — policemen; professional wanks on behalf of institutionalised terror. Institutionalised terror Patrick you tell them! Aye I’ll tell them, dont worry about that. What happens is you want to punch some bastard in the mouth, him with the mournful face for instance. I’ll give him something to be fucking mournful about, him and his crimped fucking lips the bastard.