James Kelman - A Disaffection

Gibberish. Outpourings. People see facial expressions of silence, not seeing, not

How is it all contained? The heads craned over the plates, the three people eating, this man and woman and man, while within the limits of each an intense caterwaul. We are alone! We are isolate beings! The good Lord alone

Fucking bastards.

And of course Patrick, going in for a bath to avoid being alone with his da.

Pardon?

And of course Patrick, going in for a bath to avoid being alone with his da.

Is that possible?

Fucking right it is ye kidding! The only reason. His maw had to go into the kitchenette to see to the grub and Pat would have been left in the living room with his daddy. And he couldni handle it. The very thought. It is just that he canni quite feel them, the pair of them, his maw and his da, he would like to be able to feel them. He does get urges to cuddle them but that is different, almost the exact opposite.

Mr John Doyle, a man of 5′ 6½″, with a head that is bald at the crown, having hair round the sides, who used to sport a moustache when Pat was a boy. He still works as a machinesetter in a factory. He is not a deep thinker but so what and go and fuck yourself. Patrick reached for the teapot. He half refilled his cup. His maw was gazing at her plate. She had glanced at him. Anybody want a refill? he said.

Mrs Doyle held her cup for him.

Mr Doyle said, Yous pair are too quick. I’ll have mine in a minute. I like to take my time. It’s no good for your digestion either, if you drink your tea while you’re eating.

He glanced at Pat who nodded, even though he had actually finished eating. There again but he had been eating and drinking together during the meal. There were always problems in this life. Even being more like his da could be worthwhile. A man in his mid-to late-fifties, which is young compared to some folk with sons as old as Gavin and Pat. Charlie Chaplin had been fathering weans into his eighties. If Patrick had been his own father not only would he be a grandfather he would be an ordinary run-of-the-mill sex-performing male.

Gavin was the lucky one. He took things nice and easy and didnt get upset over trifles and things of mammoth import. No. What he did

But he did get on with living. He had his wife and his two great wee children, just like his own da; the two of them, the father and the elder son, being involved with the women they’re involved with, the wives and the lovers and the mothers and so on, the sentimental sort of shitey stuff. Patrick

It is not his fault. He just cannot get on with things. It is a form of living that so far he is unable to encounter in a personally meaningful manner. He is involved with other affairs. He is involved with a pair of electrician’s pipes. He is going to take this pair of electrician’s pipes and create harmony — no he isni, that isnt even what he’s after, he just wants to fucking make music from them. Not exactly music either. Something else. Not anything greater. It isnt to do with that. Something else. Something good. Just something good and fucking new, newish, different anyway, at least. He smiled. He smiled at his maw. She was holding a plate of biscuits to him. And why not? If plates are to be held why not by mothers and why not with biscuits? Delicatus delicatessen. Otherwise he would just end up in bother. If he was no able to play the pipes. Something would happen. Something bad. He knew it. Maybe he would murder Old Milne! Or else be murdered by him. Old Milne would make a good murderer. So would Patrick right enough. The pair have that in common. If nothing else.

Something was definitely going to happen.

It was this being alone.

There’s another biscuit there, said his maw.

No thanks. He smiled. He didnt have any option, smiling and not smiling.

I think I’ll open the chocolates …

Aw maw, said Pat, they’re for you, they’re no for me and da.

Aye, said his da.

I just want to open them, she said, if it’s alright with yous. She got up from the table. In the time it took for her return Mr Doyle had nipped across to his armchair and got his cigarette packet and matches, and was back at the table seated, smoking his cigarette. It was comical. Not once did he glance in Pat’s direction and Pat stared at the milk jug, pretending to be lost in the depths of thought. But if only the two of them had been yapping together when she came back in. Even if it had just been about hospitals. Ach well. It was not something to worry about. It related to the dreadful Doyle fucking huffiness. His da was really bad for it. There again but so was his maw. They could both be huffy. And so too could Patrick, when it comes down to it, though maybe not so huffy as Gavin. Gavin was the world’s worst. He still wasni speaking properly to Patrick because of something that happened last summer, nearly nine months ago! Bloody terrible how these unfashionable traits run in families. And you couldnt even blame your parents for it because they were just picking up the habits of the rest of the clan. Probably the whole of Scotland is huffy. This is why their history is so shitey. The English are not huffy, just fucking imperialist bastards. Which ones? Quite right. And that applies to the Northamericans as well. Imperialists cannot be huffy: it would be a contradiction.

And fuck the tomato juice he was going for a pint. He was going to go home and dump the motor and then come back out. Where was he going to come back out to? Anyfuckingwhere, it doesnt matter. He just required to get out; he just required to get away; if he did not get away he would collapse and die in front of the two of them, right here at the dining table, the nut landing on the sauce-streaked plate. What else could he do? Could he do anything else? He couldni go and have a fucking bath because he’d already had one. I’ll do the dishes. He moved his chair back and started collecting plates while rising onto his feet.

You will not do the dishes, said his maw.

I’m doing them, said Mr Doyle. I always do them on Saturday night.

Naw. Honest. I want to do them … Pat was saying, I really do. Plus it gives me a chance to think as well. Pat chuckled: Hey, no mind when we were wee how I always had to do the drying. Gavin wouldni let me wash, it was always him had to get doing that because the one that did the drying was aye last. No matter how fast you dried them you were aye last! It just wasnt fair!

Mr and Mrs Doyle chuckled.

His da was standing beside him. A heavy smell of tobacco and sweaty socks. He had just come in and lifted a teacloth, and he started doing the dish drying without a word. Patrick acknowledged him with a brief nod. What else could he do. He stared into the soapy water in the bowl in the sink and stuck his hands back in to find the washing clout. Poor Hölderlin. In his early thirties he finally succumbed to that insanity which seems to have been threatening him for years. Years he spent fighting it, a form of melancholic schizophrenia. He used to be Hegel’s best pal as a youth. They were exactly the same age and so on.

Hegel was never near to insanity. He never was. Or so we are given to understand. He had a good cheery lifestyle as a student. He caroused with women and drink. It is best not to talk. What one does is say nothing, one says nothing, especially to parents and to other people. He caroused with women and drink and no doubt that is why Schopenhauer hated him. Kierkegaard didnt fucking like him either.

And Hölderlin had become involved with this woman, the wife of the guy who employed him to tutor his child. Also of course; she died while he was still in control of his faculties. It was only after she was dead that he succumbed. She wrote him smashing letters.

Mr Doyle was whistling — not really whistling, his breath way to the back of his mouth; a noise but not a whistle; a more sort of intimate thing, it signified security. A man who had nothing to worry about, standing here in his own kitchen at his own sink with his younger son. It was best as well. What was best as well? Nothing.