James Kelman - A Disaffection

Pat … Alison was whispering to him. In fact she was not whispering at all she was just speaking normally. He had been gripping onto the edges of the seat with both hands and maybe set to leap across and start punching in at Desmond. It was possible. He was a fucking bastard and Patrick hated him. He was the kind of bloke who devalued everything, who devalued every last thing in the world and he was the last kind of person who should ever have been let loose in a classroom. Or outside in the real world. It was an utter obscenity, an utter obscenity. What was it about them, about that kind of person, that got them there, that made them so successful. Just exactly that, their cynicism; the way they could sneer and scoff at every last thing that might be of value. Even Alison seemed impressed by it. Her husband was probably the same type. A millionaire seller of double-glazed windows. They could fucking stuff the schools full of them as far as Patrick was concerned. He was finished with it, finished with it; he was just finished with it.

Dinnertime crept up on him. The bell went and he was sitting on his stool having a laugh with something one of the boys was saying. This was very unusual these days. He had definitely been enjoying the class, a bunch of stupit fourth-yearers, they were all stupit; fourth-yearers. What was it about fourth-yearers. A couple of them were smiling at him as they headed for the door, instead of the usual, avoiding the eyes. It was like how things used to be. They really did, they did use to be like that, things — back when the spark still existed. Before it had been extinguished. But it hadnt been extinguished; it still existed, it was just fucking dormant.

The door shut and a rustle of the paper on his desk. What a peace. He could just sit here until the afternoon began. Awaiting the afternoon! Pat grinned. What was that quotation. There was a good quotation about it.

Most things have got good quotations. Patrick was smiling; he was shaking his head, and getting down from the stool. He dawdled on the walk along the corridor and down to the playground. He was not wanting to meet the colleagues. He paused at the doors and he crossed slowly to the schoolgates, but the place was deserted, but for the two polis standing sentry duty. They nodded to him and he nodded back to them.

He peered along the street but Alison and the others had walked on ahead. They were going to the local boozer. So was Patrick. Friday dinnertimes were now as institutionalised as everything else. But this was fine; just a few teachers making a point of going out together for a couple of jars and a nice lunch. Pat had no objections. For some reason it was always good and relaxing, the atmosphere more congenial, more companionable, than at any other time during the week. He enjoyed these fifty or so minutes a lot, but perhaps he was beginning to look forwards to them far too much: a symptom of his lifestyle, viz. the lonely man.

And today was no different though maybe he was just too sad a bit and he kept having to avoid cuddling Alison. It was almost asexual. Or maybe it was sexual. Maybe it was just that his brand of sexuality had become somewhat different from the norm. Maybe he was now thinking in terms of cuddles rather than penetration. For fuck sake. It was probably a direct effect of the total lack of practice. He would just have to do it more often. Maybe even if it meant something like paying. Maybe he could just pay and get things cleared up. The preliminaries. He could get all them out the road and over and done with and then that would be that and he could just carry on until the ordinary daily routine of communion with the female sex picked up, until he was able to conduct a normal physical relationship with a young woman, rather than the big sister/mother/auntie routine which seemed the case at present if cuddles were to be the end of it all. Alison’s physicality was very delectable indeed and she had certain ways of standing and taking part in general conversations, as if she was watching every solitary, individual action performed by any one person. And if so she would have to be completely aware of Patrick for the fundamental reason that he was so completely aware of her. Plus she was a vegetarian — a central factor in how come they always wound up here every Friday, the vast selection of fresh salads and stuff. Becoming a vegetarian was something he had considered doing himself except it appeared extremely difficult to think of what you were supposed to eat. Tomatoes and toast and boiled eggs, vegetable stews and cheese omelettes of course. Perhaps he was just being lazy. He never used to be lazy. Here again was one further symptom, a further manifestation of something.

Desmond was being friendly to him. It was evident. Not so much talking to him directly as not especially not talking to him. Or was that true? Maybe he wasni really being friendly at all, he was just wanting it to appear as though he was. If anything he seemed to be his usual sneering self. But perhaps that in itself was a sign of friendliness. It was obvious he was not a happy man. Plus too his marriage not being of the best; and that general habit he had of sighing whenever the chat drifted backwards to university days and the good times had by all. It was distinctly possible that he envied Patrick. His own life was awful and his future seemed more awful. He had passed forty years of age whereas Pat had yet to hit the thirty mark. He used to loan Patrick an occasional record, but not for a long long while. Not that Patrick wanted to borrow anything from the likes of Desmond. Poor bastard that he was, stuck in a job he hated, forced into the role of classroom cynic. Patrick almost felt like buying him a drink but he was not going to buy him a drink because he was a fucking bad bastard and there was no sense in falling into any of these sentimental type traps to do with pity. People dont thank you for pity. Look at Pat, if you were to pity him he would punch you on the fucking gub. The job was secondrate and that was that. Who wanted to be a teacher. Nobody. And no fucking wonder. You could hardly blame Desmond when it comes down to it. A lot of teachers were like him, or tried to cultivate the appearance of being so. Not the women right enough. They didnt seem to regard the job as settling for secondbest in life. They regarded it as something different. They thought of it as a plum. No they didnt, that was the temporary English teacher he was thinking of. Wait till he was made permanent! Then he would fucking know all about it. Him and his fucking TALES OF THE BORDERS. What a fucking idiot. At present he probably thought of teaching as a fairly comfortable method of earning a better-than-average salary. And it wasnt a better-than-average salary. Well it was, but only in relation to the average hourly-paid wage of working-class people and teachers were not interested in the average hourly-paid wage of working-class people, they were interested in the average weekly wage of a full-blooded member of the professional classes, and if you compared it with theirs then the teachers’ was fairly damn bloody abysmal. The women didnt seem to worry too much about that either. Some did of course. Some felt exactly the same as the men. And yet some of them were not all that perturbed. Patrick was one. He didnt really worry about the wage. He used to, but not nowadays. There were more important things. Maybe the women were right. Which women? Not Mirs Houston; she thought teachers were pretty hard done by. Maybe her and Desmond were having an affair. That would be the kind of thing that happened. Obviously she hated him and that was often a spur for women like her and for men like him. He would try to bend her to his will while she, totally detesting him, would appear to succumb by having sex with him, even though she wasni really succumbing at all but was remaining firmly in control viz. she would be in control, he would be in her power. And in one sense at least she would have won a battle over cynicism. Patrick could understand such reasoning. For some women cynicism is supposed to be anathema. And Alison was also the sort of woman who would regard moral battles as worthwhile, very worthwhile. This was part of her attraction for Pat. Or was it? She had the knack of making him feel confident. And yet she could also make him feel less than confident; she could undermine him quite easily. But that is because he was a transparent fellow. There wasnt much going on below the surface. Most of it was going on right at the surface. That was aye the problem with his way of living, his way of seeing existence, that he couldni allow things to remain unsaid, he had to bash on and go and fucking yelp; that was why he was now in the present fix, that was why he was now on the road to the Department of Health and Social Security, that was why