James Kelman - A Disaffection

Now,

and after that, Tenerife. Tenerife! Does the sun shine in Tenerife on Marchday mornings! No doubt — these foreign bastards get all the luck, the sunny climes and belly dancers. And afterwards, afterwards

How come these afterwards aye rear their ugly mugs? What about Goya? go there, he lived in Saragossa and they’ve got no a bad football team. Christ it’s great to have money, ye can just fuck off wherever you like and take a fancy to. What about Velasquez and auld fucking Rubens. Where did they dwell? Was the climate luscious. Did oranges fall off the fucking trees. Carlos Williams’s grannie? Handgrenades? And of course El Greco who was a sixteenth-century chap from the isle of Crete.

There is no time that is not the present and if Master Doyle is to break out of his life then this early hour of a Marchday morning is ripe.

A boiled egg, a pot of tea, a couple of water biscuits. Picasso was a multimillionaire communist. So what. And then as well you’ve got Galileo.

Arse.

Patrick was having a bath; it was twice in three days and a new all-comers record. He had a selection of books in with him although he was actually wanting to have an uncluttered think. He knelt in the water. It was quite hot, thus he was not yet able to sit down. He uplifted a knee, it was redly pink. A book setting the limits of geography in a freemarket economy was lying on the floor. It was him responsible for having brought it in here. It was like a form of self-torment. Next to it was this novel he started last night which was so horrendously boring that fuck it, he couldnt be expected to continue any further, not even on behalf of 5b, one of whose members had thrust the yarn upon him. Horrendous books are difficult. Patrick objects to being forced to complete them. There again but it isnt only horrendous fuckers he fails to complete. If facts are to be admitted even while one is bathing then let the following be admitted: that the latter chapters of books are often the more difficult to finish and upon the higher shelves of both the walls of the parlour and kitchen you will find a plethora of works that are yet terminated incompletely. This has nothing to do with existential psychology although, having said that, when he reaches the three score and ten mark perhaps he will bring them all down and get them terminated completely, read all these last chapters, get them all over and done with.

Now there you are about painting. You canni do that with a painting. You canni fucking

Or can ye? Maybe ye can. At some subconscious level. Imagine looking at that one of Goya’s where the wee dog is staring out from the quicksand, and you fail to notice the dog. Or decide not to take it into consideration. But only later, suddenly, you make that decision: let me consider that dog now. Okay, I can see the whole thing in its entirety, the painting, all of it. I’m now in a fit state to actually consider it as a total entity.

Fuck it, he was even going to wear a tie this morning and an ordinary shirt. That would increase his advantage. Because something important about the forthcoming interview: Old Milne had no way of knowing it was set to take place. Patrick hadni been in touch with him. So how could he possibly know. He wasnt a fucking mind-reader. Old bastard, if he wanted to he could just forget all about it, or pretend to forget all about it. Nobody was breathing down his neck. Headmasters are fucking autonomous, just like police commissioners and admirals of the fleet and the foreign office and the fucking aristocracy and all the secret services, the Watchdogs of Greatbritain.

Everything depended upon the nature of the carpeting viz. what it was about. Being so freshly scrubbed and sweet-smelling, dressed in the fresh outfit, maybe a dab of after-shave perfume. It could put him at an enormous advantage. Or disadvantage — Old Milne’s line of reasoning might run along the following track: Ah! So the chap appreciates the seriosity of the situation! Grand. It renders a tough task that wee bit easier.

And then he would proceed to dish out the punishment in man-to-man fashion i.e. you would do it to me if the roles were to be reversed and that sort of keech. The only fly in the ointment that Patrick would do no such thing if he was the headmaster. Not at all. If he was headmaster he would act very differently, very differently indeed. For a fucking kick-off he would abandon the entire practice. No more teaching. None. None whatsoever. Sorry but that’s fucking that. No more okay wages for a bad day’s work. That’s you out on your fucking neck. It’s finished, all over, no more teaching. You’re all bad influences on these weans so good-night and thank you very much, buona sera ya bastards, you assumed the role of judge and warden on behalf of a sick society so fucking hell mend ye, away and read Cicero.

That’s what P. Doyle would do if he was the fucking headmaster, so there, stick that in your pipebowl ya congregationalist person!

An alternative of course might be to go in for a government re-training scheme, and while engaged on that he could be

Fine.

Yes.

P. Doyle.

He also missed out on a couple of evening duties recently. The headmaster is sticky about evening duties. He likes them to be attended to. But it wouldnt be that. Surely not. Unless it was an amalgam of things, one of which was the evening duties while another

was anything you like. The best advice in the world is just to be calm, be calm, take things easy, easy. Not to worry too much about events over which you exercise no control. Over which you have lost control is more like it. In fact that sums it up. Control has been had and eschewed so fuck it. Really.

And it is just as well in terms of sanity. Many years have come and gone since those far-off days of the sun-drenched uni. Surely high time to be getting ahead of things instead of just what just eh doing things, things that could be better, that could be much better, than what they are, because they could, they could be much better, they could really fucking be better than they are and it all lay in his power for fuck sake he really was in control and even if by some figment of the imagination Old Milne had honestly forgotten all about the stupit fucking interview then Patrick hadnt, and wouldnt, because he was just going to walk in quite the thing in his good clothes, okay, and that was that. Fuck. Okay. No danger at all. Shite. Shite and arse and fucking tollie, keech and so on. But he was doing it now and standing by it, he was standing by it.

Aye, and maybe things would have turned out differently if he had got himself involved in the Christmas Pantomime with the rest of the morons.

Exactly.

And maybe also if he did not procrastinate, if he did not procrastinate, if he went for a pish when he needed a pish, if he finished a book when he started a book, if he

O fuck. Terrible. Terrible terrible terrible. What was Gillian Porter doing just now! And did she ever recollect Patrick with affection! God, was it possible? A really good woman. It would be nice to talk to her. She liked a laugh. That was what was good about her as well, how she liked a laugh. And probably about the difficult things in life, she would laugh them all right up in the sky and away with the wind.

Even Mrs Bryson. It would be nice talking to her. But what would it be nice to talk to her about, anything, anything at all, anything she fancied. The trials and tribulations of being an old maid. She wasni, it was him, she was a married woman with grown-up weans while what was he he was a bachelor, an old maidenly chap, that’s what he was. So what? Who’s fucking bothered about such shite.

Also, he would have a flat tyre. Nothing surer. Auld fucking Zeus, that’s what he would dish out. A flat tyre. So there he would be having to change this mawkit and clattily manky wheel, getting it all on the trousers and jacket and shirtsleeves; the shoes covered in it, plus the dog shit; and then kneeling in the gutter by mistake and having to dive back up the stair for another bath and a new set of clothes! In the name of the deity! Any fucking deity! Please assist a bloke in distress! The son of a pair of Aged P’s. One with no expectations whatsoever. One with just this honest, god-fearing bunch of relatives and forefathers/mothers who have always done their duty by monarch, the rich and the church. Honest! So what’s to be done? Well, an easy approach to the morning was number 1. And number 2: a well-ironed breakfast. Good. Number 3? A sharply brushed sandwich on toast. Okay.