James Kelman - If it is your life

So that was it. My behaviour had become curious.

The behaviour of long-time intimates might change, might become ‘curious’. I was an eccentric as far as she was concerned. Why not call a spade a spade, you think I’m an eccentric?

She smiled again. Her hand was to her mouth. There was a word for this. What the goddam hell was the word!

She reminded me of a salesman who thinks he has you cornered. What will he have you buy! You will buy something. But what? It is his choice. You have no escape. Not until he has finished enjoying himself at your expense.

This is the mistake salesmen make. They dangle you on their fishing rod and wont reel you in, like a cat with a mouse and to hell with metaphors. Once he toys with you your chance arrives.

They always become arrogant. Salesmen amuse me. They really do. I had been dealing with them for years. Their major psychological error is the search for applause, whether from you as customer-victim or one of their colleague-perpetrators. You see them grinning; cats at the cream jug.

We have all been salesmen at one time but generally we are not, generally we are the fish trapped in the net, preparing to be served on a plate. Now here was Jennifer. My God but it surprised me that she too, she too …

What is it? she said.

I didnt think you would remember the old Duponzers.

Are you serious! I’m not likely to forget them. She shook her head. She blinked at me. Why did she blink at me? Now she frowned. Frowned! They provided half our conversation, she said.

Oh well that’s not fair, I said, that really is not fair.

She shrugged.

It isnt. I stared at her. I found her incredible. Each gesture she made, no matter how minuscule, was a question. Excluding words her language contained the widest vocabulary of anyone I ever met, including my father who was a scholar if not a gentleman. He was too, mean old bastard. But he never tired of learning; even on his deathbed. Bring me my Thesaurus! His favourite book. He had three of them. That was my legacy. Two were different editions of the same thing but the third was a wee old edition of Roget’s Everyman, volume 1, 2 or 3.

Jennifer had a wider vocabulary than my father and it all stemmed from the body. Words had nothing to do with it. Every last move was a comment, each part of her body, everything, from fingers to toes, every indice a sentence, a statement. If she wiggled an ear I was obliged to answer: What am I to do? What do you ask of me? What is it you want!

Which is what I had never discovered.

But what did I want of her? She said I was the most suspicious man she ever had known. She meant ‘slept with’. She always slept with her boyfriends. From girl-hood upwards. She experimented. She told me herself. I hated it. I wish she hadnt but she had. Oral sex too. I hated it, hated it. Not the act but just, my God, why did she tell me? I did not want to hear about it, none of that stuff, I didnt want to know about those guys. I imagined them laughing. Macho shits, drooling over their beer.

Jennifer went her own way. She always did. That was that. That was indeed that. If she had been male she would have been into science; something I was never into myself.

I pointed at the Duponzers and then to the big sign at the corner of the bar. See that, I said, they go shopping together and they eat bar meals together. They do meal-deals if you havent noticed, they give you membership cards, you buy three beers and they give you a bowl of chips and a slice of pizza; another beer and you get these onion things in batter. There is nothing wrong in that. I dont think so anyway. Maybe other people do. If other people think so, well then, they are entitled to their opinion, whatever it is. Even sex, why do we think things about older people?

Ssh.

But it is true.

Yeh but be quieter.

Okay but if they perform sex acts together. Why not? If they are older, so what?

Ssh.

Okay, I whispered, but surely you would not deny it to the elderly?

Dont be ridiculous.

It isnt to do with ridiculous, it is natural, human nature. It is a normal need, an everyday part of our life. Even homely, if we think of it in this sense, sex is homely.

Jennifer grinned.

This caught me off guard. What I said was stupid. At the same time, you find it funny, I said, but it’s true. Sex is an ordinary everyday experience, every bit as natural as eating or drinking so this is why I said what I did because to me it is homely. Sorry but that is what I think and I am not going to retract it. You are two years younger than me, ergo thirty-four.

Thirty-three.

Thirty-three? Yeh …

She smiled.

It’s your birthday next month.

Dont remind me.

Imagine forgetting your birthday!

Oh Mike.

I’m being serious.

Dont be silly. Anyway, you didnt, you just said it.

Right … But I had forgotten. I lifted my beer and sipped at it — for only the second time since our arrival. She put me on guard, praise the Lord.

There was something in her smile that complemented the yellow cardigan. Since the split she had transformed into another being. I thought it unfair. There was a lack of justice in the world that rendered major questions meaningless. ‘Transform’ was not the word, and not ‘transmogrified’ either.

Blossom! She had blossomed! She had blossomed into a sort of

What! A flower? What a total and absolute half-baker of a cliché. I felt like roaring in laughter. A flower! Oh pretty little petal. Imagine I said it to her, pretty little petal! My leetle chickadee! I was a wreck. Maybe I was having a breakdown. Not emotional but mental. Intellectual. I had failed to recognize it. Because it was happening to me and not someone else. She would recognize it. She knew me. She was the very person that could tell if I was really me, rather than a mad variation! Am I a mad variation of myself?

What are you smiling about? she said.

Pardon?

You were smiling.

Was I?

You were.

Only being with you I suppose, it is so damn difficult.

Huh?

It is. You dont think of that.

Yes I do.

You dont.

Oh of course I do.

If you did you would have stopped visiting me. You would have stopped visiting me months ago.

She was smiling. I smiled back at her. I had to. Because what else.

And why was she smiling. Because I was predictable. Because she did not believe me. She did not believe I thought what I thought. Now she shook her head. But at the table; not at me, she did not shake her head at me. That would have been playful and she was not being playful. The playful days had gone. Now she avoided looking at me. I was going mad. I had this sensation I had spoken aloud. Did I speak aloud? I must have spoken aloud. Otherwise

From the moment we sat down at this table. I saw it now. She was avoiding eye-contact.

Because eye-contact was the very breath, the very breath. She took pleasure in such contact, even in exaggerated forms such as staring people down. It was a game she and her daughter played, and mummy always won.

So she would not look at me. After what we had endured. Which was sad, that surely was sad. Oh but I wished, I wished …

She was smiling.

Why are you smiling?

I thought you were going to ask if I wanted a drink.

Pardon?

The way you looked at me, I thought you were about to ask if I wanted a drink.

But I bought you a drink.

Yes I know.

I pointed to her orange juice which was untouched. Would you like a gin or something?

No.

Are you sure? A Cointreau?

It is two o’clock in the afternoon. Anyway, I dont drink much alcohol, only the odd occasion.

Could there be a more odd occasion than this, I wondered, but not aloud.

I was close to abstinent myself nowadays so it was a surprise she should refer to alcohol in that manner, as though I were an habitual drinker. I was never one. I knew habitual drinkers and knew their habits; enough to know about myself. We see ourselves in others and I did not see myself when I looked at them. Maybe she mixed me up with someone else, one of her other menfriends.