James Kelman - A Disaffection

Eh …

Then she said: Do you know what it’s about?

Pardon?

I was just wondering if you knew what it was he wanted to see you about. And you werent telling. Alison smiled.

Aw! You mean that I might be being a devious shite of the first order!

Yes.

Pat grinned at her. Then he sighed. Ach, I’m a bad teacher Alison, being honest about it. I get too worked up about everything. Then I get too fucking depressed. I just get too fucking depressed. And the classes all know. They can tell. Actually I might be a depressive, and I mean clinically, as an actual condition — not manic, but a depressive all the same.

Did ye know Balzac was a manic depressive? she said after a moment.

Balzac!

Alison nodded.

Christ! He’s a great writer! I’ve no read a great deal by him but eh.

She smiled. Do you know what he did with his coffee, he was a big coffee drinker, he used to make his coffee a fortnight before he drank it. He let it sit and go cold for that fortnight. Alison smiled and inhaled on the cigarette. Then he would reheat it. Apparently it was thick as tar.

He must have got hell of a heartburn!

Yes …!

Pat laughed briefly.

You’re right! Alison frowned.

Dont be so bloody damn surprised Houston! I’m no always wrong ye know!

No but … Alison grinned, It never occurred to me before. Sorry.

Do you actually read him in the French?

Well, I have done.

He nodded. He was waiting for her to continue but it seemed like she wasnt going to continue. On the side of the mug facing him this portrait of the head of the monarchy. He glanced at Alison and indicated the thing.

Mm. I must confess I didnt expect you to have anything like that, she said.

No.

It’s a surprise. She smiled: You’re a secret royalist!

…

A smile.

…

It was funny.

Alison was watching him.

…

Yet as well though

but as well, in her face, in her look this great mixture of worry, care, of also affection maybe for him; a feeling for him, it was just obvious — Pat smiled, he gazed at his kneecaps. If he really was cracking up maybe she would rush to his defence, in the future, whenever his name cropped up in staffroom discussions, nostalgic ones about long-gone colleagues

old Mr McGeechan, who had been there when Patrick first started back in Clydebank — a great auld guy whose attitude was spot on and P. Doyle would aye have emulated him if anybody, if ever he had wanted to emulate anybody, auld McGeechan was the one, he was fucking

Alison was watching him.

He said: I was thinking there about an old guy called McGeechan that I used to work beside. Great he was. A genuine socialist and not one of your fucking typical Fabian shites. Just like a Hollywood movie too, the way the weans related to him. Like fucking Clarence Darrow with Spencer Tracy, d’ye ever see that picture? Sentimental drivel right enough. I thought auld McGeechan was fucking great as well. He used to say, Doyle, you’ve got to tell more jokes in the classroom, you’ll be fine if you tell more jokes, you dont tell enough jokes.

Alison was saying something about sentimentality. What was it she was saying it was about sentimentality. But she was wrong and so was he because the person that was right was fucking Desimondi, he of the cynical eye. The man called Desmond was correct and the man called Patrick was not correct and if you birl these two statements about and then say something about the birling process itself, why then you are on to a mystery that certain parties almost solved but no you arent because it isnt true and dont fucking believe it. Alison was there. She was there. The concept of the magic carpet, it being high time she was not here. That she became elsewhere. Because it was really time to ask her to leave. If facts were to be admitted. If he was to be an honest chap who told the truth for once in his life, he was never fucking cut out for it. No really. As a racket, the teaching game, he was never cut out for it.

I actually used to want to paint, he said. See for instance these guys — women as well, lassies I mean, painters, artists, who paint the gable ends of tenement buildings. Eh? Imagine it! Can you imagine it!

She smiled.

Can ye!

She smiled.

Patrick smiled back at her. And no doubt it was best not to continue the questioning, the entire conversation. She was now inhaling and she expelled the smoke into the fireplace while glancing o so briefly swiftly and fucking the next thing — terrible. He got up at once and shook his head — it was the wristwatch she had glanced at, in her surreptitious manner, her wristwatch, a nicely delicate effort in gold and fucking chintzy shite. Excuse me, he said and he walked out the kitchen and shut the door behind himself; he went to the bathroom.

He was sitting on the lavatory pan, aware that had he a couple of blankets to hand he would have stretched himself out in the bath and had a fucking kip. And by the time he woke up she might have vanished. That was type of stunt that happened in the Arabian Nights . Although there was much more of everyday reality in that work than people gave it credit for. If Pat had been a character in one of these yarns what would his characteristics be? and would

And afterwards he dried them thoroughly and cleared his throat while unsnibbing the lock on the door.

Alison was back standing by the bookshelves, her head craned. She said: I dont read as much as I should. I dont seem to get the time.

That’s what my brother says and he’s on the broo.

She smiled a moment, her head tilting to the other side now as she attempted to decipher the title of an elderly volume whose batters were torn and with this hopeless spine which he had sellotaped once but the sellotape did not stick properly down and simply hid the fucking title christ, stupid. You required a diabolic cunning to perform that sort of task in an adequate fashion.

No use talking. There is that stage. He was at it now. He had reached it. He felt, really not good, and no eh

Alison spoke to him. Of a mundanity so startlingly fucking — so banal, so actually banal. He sat down and sighed at the fire, staring at the fire, not too sure of whether it was all a ploy to get her attention, agghhhh agghhh, excrutiating excrutiating, it was

And that just also, laying, laying, the head, on the breast, the lap, onto her breastlap, breastlap

Alison was talking again. He smiled at her. She said, Did you ever consider trying to write?

Naw, no really, did you?

Well, I was actually wondering about you.

Pat shrugged. Just like I says to ye Alison I was aye more interested in painting.

She continued to look at him. She sat back down again.

I’ll tell you what I did do, which I’d forgotten about, it was just after I graduated, I thought it’d be good to rework some of my essays and maybe have a bash at submitting them for publication in a magazine, a political quarterly or a monthly or something. But once I started I found I couldni do it properly. In fact, when I re-read the bloody things it was hard to believe I’d ever passed a fucking exam!

Alison laughed.

Naw no kidding ye it was really terrible. And trying to make them better I made them worse. It was I this and it was I that and the actual sentences kept getting longer and longer and would’ve ended up like that mad German who wrote a treatise with everything bar the verbs, he kept them for the second volume.

Alison grinned.

Naw but the I’s were the worst. Everywhere you looked always this fucking I. I I I. I got really fucking sick of it I mean it was depressing, horrible. I mean that’s exactly what you’re trying to get rid of in the first damn bloody fucking place I mean christ sake, you know what I’m talking about.