James Kelman - The Burn

Now she was frowning at something.

What is it? I said.

She whispered, Is that yer grannie?

What of it?

Thought so. What’s she doing here?

Pardon?

The wee woman was staring across the room at her.

She’s my cousin’s grannie as well. She’s got more right to be here than any of us, I mean it was her that fucking started it all.

Mm.

Do you know her like?

I havent seen her for years. She was watching us.

Watching us?

Yes.

Ach it disni matter, she’s blind as a bat. Anyway, she never minds what I get up to, I’m her blue-eyed boy

— which is true. I could sleep with every woman in Glasgow and she wouldnt mind. But she would mind if I stopped discussing

what I’m doing on a day-to-day basis, how I’m living my life generally. She enjoys hearing me speak. She lives in one of these sheltered housing places where it’s all old folk and it drives her daft. So she likes to listen to the young folk. She says she doesnt but she does. Up to a point I’ve always confided in her.

I know about yer grannie, said the wee woman, she’s meanspirited.

I beg yer pardon?

It’s true.

Naw it’s no she’s an auld woman. Her view of life’s oldfashioned, she thinks men have got one thing on their mind and one thing only and she just puts up with it. As long as it disni involve her. She stopped having sex when she was twenty-eight. She told me. She never liked it very much except one experience she had in her mid-teens when she worked on a farm and she met this aulder guy who turned her on behind a haystack in the month of June. Apart from that no, it was just a chore to do with evolution. She’s an atheist but she’s got a humanitarian outlook; if people want the world to continue and develop then fair enough, that’s her opinion, she’s no going to stop them, even although personally she’s a pessimist, I mean a real one.

Is that yer wife over there?

D’ye want to have a word with my grannie like?

No thanks. I dont think it would be appropriate somehow. . She spoke out the corner of her mouth.

Appropriate?

The big tall man with her. God he’s a beast. .

What! I turned to follow her eyes. Bloody bastard! Soon as my back’s turned! Fucking Tojo, there he was, bending over her yet again. A mental age of twelve the bastard. Mind you but I mean that’s how me and her were going through a bad feud at the present moment in time. Women dress the way they dress and it’s us get provoked. That’s the problem with summer weddings as well, ye get all these females parading around with their bodies everywhere. The cousin’s wife man what a cracker! Fuck knows how he managed to get off with her, weedy wee cunt. A lassie from Balornock. I used to see her quite a lot. She ran around with a team that thought they were heavy. One of them was a guy from the Milton I used to play football with. We knocked fuck out each other at all grades, Boys’ Guild to the fucking Juveniles. I bumped into him recently in a pub up the town, he tried to click my ankles on the way to the fucking bar. What was I saying. The new sister-in-law. When we were boys and that, playing football, her and her mates on the touchline, she used to wear these jeans and her figure was something to behold, it drove ye fucking potty with that shirt blouse thing tied at the ends and her waist so slender and then the beautiful hips and the tight creases under her bum and at the front too like it would cause her extreme uncomfort vagina-wise; that’s how women get thrush — but even now in her wedding-gown Christ almighty it hid everything and revealed everything because ye knew precisely what she looked like below, there she would be standing in her bra and panties just I mean that’s all — silk too because it’s her wedding night and ye can imagine yer hand on the hem line it drives ye fucking bananas.

But ye wonder how yer cousin gets off with women like that. When we were wee he wouldni say boo to a goose. Now he can patter any woman he meets. Wee fucking bastard so he is, smug wee cunt. There’s a side of life that’s hard to work out. Sex is right at the root of it, it’s right at the very soul. That’s how I think my grannie’s got her head screwed on. I just personally think she shouldni have given up on it when she was twenty eight which is only a year aulder than the wife.

I saw the cousin leave the room. Probably away to change out the bridegroom suit. I noticed as well before the cake was cut all the close relations, we were all lined up for the photographs, and she was to give us all a kiss, the new bride, all the men; he wisni too pleased, ye could see it on his coupon, the cousin, trying to kid on he was hearty or somefuckingthing. The same when I got her up to dance later on. We did one of these stupid waltzes and it wound up we were gonni chuck it because folk were looking and she was getting embarrassed. But they were just looking cause she was the bloody bride. So we started doing one of them stand-on-the-spot-and-wiggle numbers, and her wedding dress man, beautiful, all silk and just fucking gorgeous, I got a semi immediately, I had to leave the floor, and who’s staring at me, wee fucking weedy chops man the cousin, staring at me.

Fuck him.

Just nature anyway. Maybe he thought I was taking the piss cause I left her standing. Fucking eedjit.

A wee nephew came walking by in his kilt, pulling a clockwork lorry on a bit of string, a big piece of slabbery chocolate cake in his hand. I grabbed his shoulder. Heh you, get a plate for that cake else it’ll fall on the carpet.

Uncle Boabby, he said, I need the toilet and there’s somebody

Well just wait at the door.

But there’s a big queue.

Well just bloody go to the front and skip in first.

I canni and I’m needing.

I’ll take him, said the wee woman.

— I had forgotten all about her. Ah he’s alright, I said, let him go himself.

I’ll take him, she said.

Look missis, the truth is you’re a bit of an interloper here I mean it’s a family deal know what I mean, know what I’m talking about?

There’s family and family.

Ye can say that again.

I’ll take the boy, she said.

Whatever ye like, I dont fucking care. I’m going for a pint anyway.

D’ye no think you’ve had enough to drink?

Naw.

She turned her head and went off with the wee nephew. I knew her game. Fucking obvious. Taking the wee yin to the lawy man it let her kid on she was tried and trusted. Ye could see through it a mile away. All the yarns she’d been handing me. Maybe I just hidni made myself clear. I couldni give a fuck what she did, or thought for that matter — I didni give a fuck what any of them thought. All except the wife. And big fucking mafioso was still all over her. Definitely out of order. I should just have walked across and let him have it, just banjoed the bastard. Charles fucking Atlas. Steve fucking Zchwasenbacker or whatever his fucking name is, Arnold or something. Either that or I should’ve got a return bout with the bride, but she had disappeared as well now, probably through with the rest of the women, the aulder generation — fuck them all. For some reason but I wanted to gub my Uncle Dan.

— as for example were a Small Bird to thud into your face. Consider the following: a Young Person is chancing to stroll upon an island somewhere in the Firth of Clyde. THUD. A Small Bird crashes onto the bridge of the nose of the Young Person. The day has been fine, a mid-afternoon with an Autumnal sun warm enough to enable the coat to be discarded should the breeze die. Now, the idea of ducking to avoid the collision will never have occurred to the Young Person for quite often you will come to find that birds do fly on courses indicative of just such a collision. At the last possible moment, however, they will dip a wing sufficiently to swerve off. Not this time! While the Young Person is staggering the Small Bird will drop to the ground and lie still, its feathers stiffly spread. Having covered face with hands the Young Person will, in time, withdraw the hands for an examination of the person. But effects to the body will almost certainly be minimal; a little blood, the slight cut, a possible temporary swelling. And nothing else, apart from the stunned Bird. While the view hereabouts will be extensive the Young Person can see nobody in sight. After a moment the spread feathers begin fluttering; soon the Small Bird starts rising in helicoptereal fashion. Staring at it with furrowed brow the Young Person will turn suddenly and yell, before dashing headlong in the direction of the shingle shoreline.