James Kelman - A Disaffection

Children approach! Two males and a female. Second-year bracket. Smoking fags. One of the males is spitting through his teeth, making a tthhh noise.

At that age Patrick hadnt been a smoker. He had not been a smoker even then. That was it about the boy Doyle even then, him no being a smoker. A perverse wee bastard, let’s face it. Pat grinned. He was proud of himself as a wee boy. He had been perverse, so fucking ha ha ha and he was not going to change now.

The launderette. The light was on inside. Nobody was in except the lady who ran the place. She was a Muslim. She spoke very little English, especially to men maybe but she gave good smiles and was often amused at the ways of the world. Here she was in Scotland after having fervently believed she would become a moviestar in Delhi. And it amused her because life itself she found amusing, knowing fine well that men were created from clots of blood so why bother if here you are in Glasgow on a cold and quiet and fairly dreichlike Sunday evening in March, you were best just to get on with things and soon you would be home in front of the fire with maybe a video out on hire to relax to later on, when you had locked up the launderette and fucked off down the road.

Patrick had his hands in his trouser pockets; he had been leaning against the window. He glanced along to the corner of the street to see if the coast was clear, then walked off quickly in the opposite direction, being careful not to collapse in a vertigonoreac heap.

Early morning was a time he enjoyed reading. His mind was alert, the attention span seemed to continue indefinitely, right until he remembered about having to go to school. It was a nice time, a peaceful time. There was something about giving your best to the things you liked the best. And he quite liked reading. He really did quite like reading. He quite liked the things you get in books. In this book it was China and the treatment of cancerous diseases. There was much to be said in favour of China. Pat could motor south, down the Bay of Biscay and dive across to Morocco and head straight left along the northcoast of Africa, bypassing the whole of fucking Europe because he was sick of it, the whole thing, its politics and its history. Even this kind of thinking was a malaise, a western malaise — a luxury. Far better to think about sitting in a desert without the energy to lift a beetle to your mouth. It was 5.47 a.m. And still dark. He could go down to the backcourt and sit right in the middle of that, next to the midgies and where the rats and mice and cats and dogs scrabble for the edible scraps. If nothing else it would affirm a general braveness of spirit and mental control. The animals would be quietly surprised by the human presence but would no doubt get used to it. How would it be to go spiralling at a furious rate upwards into the sky towards that ethereal spindle. Copernicus seems to have been a similar sort of personality to Schopenhauer but perhaps that’s being unfair. Probably Patrick’s largest error was the purchase of the petrol-powered automobile. He missed out on experiences because of it. The unexpected. His unexpected was just the occasional mechanical breakdown and that was hopeless, freezing cold and total boredom unless the breakdown chanced to take place near a pub. And then you ran the risk of being drunk when the mechanic arrived to right the wrong. Near to a brothel would be better. As long as you had the dough. This is another thing about being rich, how you take money for granted. So many of the predicaments of the Reverend Doyle MA (honS) are the effects of having no financial worries of any kind whatsoever. If he was skint for example he would never even consider a brothel, nor a pub for that matter. And all chatter on the subject of motor cars a mere bagatelle, a trumpery, a flumpery, a frumpery, fump. Arse is a better word than fuck. From now on Arse is Fuck. Fuck off. What does it mean. Hey you ya wee second-yearers! You’re all snug in your wee kips! Little do yous know the trouble in store this morning! Heh heh heh he intoned evilly. In fact though it would be a fine thing to enter Old Milne’s office with a trusty Dobermann Pinscher and a big fucking double-barrelled shotgun. I mean that really would be something. Good morning Mister Milne.

Good eh morning Mister eh eh ahh eh

D you mean the beast?

Yes ah eh ehhh ah ah

The fucking double-barrelled shotgun?

Yes eh

Because ye see ya auld fucking conniving bastard ye I’m resigning my commission and then after my dog’s fucking bit ye I’m gonni fucking shoot ye! Okay? So there! Stick that in your pipe and smoke it! But god, it would be nice to just leave the motor at home this morning, to just walk it the whole road there, and get the nut sorted out, a bit of mental equilibrium, get the fucking brains operating properly, some kind of fucking synchronicity. Because at the moment

At the moment! There was no at the moment. There was no at the moment. How could there be when it was so bloody damn difficult to gain any idea whatsoever of this coming fucking on-the-carpeting. If he could maybe work out a list of possible occurrences, a contingency list.

Patrick couldni find a pen. It is most odd indeed how objects disappear in rooms wherein the only moveable entity is oneself. Scary. And not at all the

On the sink next to the fucking dishes.

1) When your man enters the office the headmaster screams: Get out ya anarchist fucking bastard or I’ll send for the MI5.

Which is where a knapsack comes in handy and Patrick just happens to have two of these efforts, one for long journeys and one for short yins. So he can fill the latter with a set of emergency goods and chattels. Renew the Youth Hostelling membership card, the passport and so forth, remember the driver’s licence.

2) A posse of polis awaiting his arrival within the grounds of the school, the entire area having being cordoned off. And as soon as he drives into the carpark the barricades come down behind him.

So, he would drive round the back and park in a sidestreet, with a belaying pin and a massive rope coiled over his shoulder, and toss its looped end high round the topmost chimney of the main school building, and swing from an adjacent tenement roof, straight across all their heads, softly alighting in through an open window on the upper floor, surprising the awestruck staff and weans down in assembly as you sneaked ben the corridor and down into the office of the terrorstricken Old Milne. The image of a pair of frogman’s flippers and a black SAS balaclava cum falseface, and crying to Old Milne: Your number’s up auld yin! Say your prayers to the congregation and make your peace with the Christian God whom for the sake of common decency I’m begging the existence of this morning and just awarding the capital, ‘G’, as in ‘God’. Okay okay get off your knees, I hate to see a guy humiliating himself in company.

3) Milne!! Yes you! I’m addressing you. You are an arse. You are a total arse. Aye, you heard alright — capital A R S E arse.

And what about going back to bed and staying there for the rest of the morning. Patrick had also considered that. Then he could sign off sick altogether, go and visit the doctor and maybe find out that his mental state, his nervous disposition, certainly warranted a six-month leave of absence the which he could fill by travel. It would not be difficult. He could make a phonecall to the secretary’s office, at ten to nine, just to give her a fair chance at getting some other bastard to do his registration with poor auld 2e. 2e!! What a poor wee bunch of fucking bastards they were! Never mind. They would have to get along without him. Old Milne might actually be grateful if he went on the panel. Because it could render Friday’s astonishing absence null and void. How can it be otherwise? Here you have a bloke being taken ill and having to sign off sick. So how the hell can you hold him morally responsible for an action, when that selfsame action was governed by the deterministic machinations of a bone-coffin? In other words sir he wasnt really being disrespectful to the forces of law and order in the classroom. He wasni really fucking doing something that was fucking quite upsetting in many ways that at first sight appear unimportant but in actuality, as you and I both are aware, is the very stuff of which the strongest citadel may ultimately crumble and fall into disrepute.