James Kelman - If it is your life

Webbed toes! Surely not. How could it be? If they had had webbed toes the whole world would have known. Maybe they did. Anthropology was the appropriate area.

Life was just extraordinary. In some ways it was. Even you looked out the window, observing from the window, and saw the big puddle. Really, it was an enormous puddle. It flooded the entire backcourt and left all the families up two closes no way to reach the midden. Not unless they trailed through the water. Fucking webbed feet, ye needed webbed feet to live in Glasgow.

How to reach the midden? Send the weans!

What the hell else do we have children for? They would love the adventure!

But it was disgraceful; a scandal said Lindsey and she was right. Why should any child have to live in this environment. This place was horrible; infant mortality rates scandalous, scandalous; people living in confrontation with their surroundings, a pitched battle between the two, unlike what’s his name, Lowry the great Lancashire artist who painted scenes from working-class life, crowds of people going to work in the factory, returning home from the factory. Lowry had been a political animal. He had to have been. Otherwise why use the subject matter?

I was not a political animal. This was a confession I enjoyed. I felt justified. Perhaps not. But it was a justification, whether I felt it or not. I liked to think I was political but I was not — my God, a bird had popped out the top window of the derelict building, out onto a windowsill, arms behind its back, beneath the coat-tails, head cocked, gazing down to the backcourt, supreme observer, a God-like witness.

But why the hell had they allowed the building to degenerate into dereliction? It was a nonsense. This city’s political leaders, the ones that werent corrupt, were a bunch of cowardly bastards, no-good cowardly bastards. But it was up to the citizens to take up arms. Fight the buggers. Fucking fight them, dont be scared. Not that they were scared, they werent scared at all, they just had better things to do with their time, unlike me.

I was a do-nothing.

Like every place else on the globe, the battle in Scotland lay between the people and the politicians, the people and the political system, the class system, the people and the bullies, the people and the sycophants, the people and the armed forces.

Why not get actively engaged in politics. How to manage that? Go out and do something. Find a campaign and go and join it. People were fighting against racist laws. Go and join a picketline. Why was I unable to do that? Or Trident missiles, the people down at Faslane, young and old, elderly, all fighting against the army, navy and cops and the secret services, not to mention their American coozans, all down there fighting ordinary Scottish folk. Why didnt I go and join them? And take my child with me. People took their children. I didnt. Me and Lindsey, we didnt. If I suggested that to her she would run a mile. I never did suggest it, I didnt have to.

But who said I was unable to do it!

Unproven.

One day I might. One day soon. I had only been home a couple of months. Even being home was a surprise, never mind the accoutremon. Girlfriend and babee.

Life moved on. A lighter touch was required. Defective technique. One day I would seek tuition. There were leisure classes in the field. How to be an artist in ten weeks. It shore sounded good ol partner.

Yet the political activists were the ones to admire. Both my siblings were activists. I was not. But so what! Here at the base level, street level, the level of existence, ordinary existence. My siblings didnt deign to stoop so low. I had the family, they had none.

That aspect of white crayon, its smoothness in application, no, I did not care for it.

Down in the backcourt dissolving lumps of excrement and tissue paper clogged the water. The flooding caused by three days’ heavy rain and one burst pipe. The level of the puddle had risen to the extent that one now had to search for the source. What could one do. Very little. I dampened the white crayon with my fore-finger.

Kids and adventure. On the dry land athwart the puddle they were building a flat wooden vessel. Call it an ark. These little humans were raising an ark to set sail for Treasure Island. Forget the religious connotation, the small ones were into Pieces of Eight Massir Awkins. You had to laugh. I did, I liked kids and having one of my own was beyond anything imaginable. Incredible that a human could bring another human into being. Of course Lindsey had played a part in the process. It takes two, two.

And where was the child to play. The backcourt was a massive adventure playground and I would have loved it when I was a wean, but now: now it was too dangerous. You could not let kids out there, not until they were older. Other parents did and I had no problem with that although Lindsey did. She was from the south seas of England and dint understand tenement life ol partner.

Neither did I.

On one roof across from me I could see two men working with slates and tarpaulin, repairing the recent storm damage.

That or a storm similar had struck the south-east coast of North America. Although the information was an irrelevance it helped people feel better. Nevertheless this here had been the worst storm for twenty years according to Mrs McAuley on the ground floor left; a crabbit woman who spent most of her life in the local butcher shop. Was that not unnatural behaviour? My father was a horse punter and spent most of his life in the betting shop which, if not admirable, was at least understandable. But butcher shops! There was something deviant about that. Every time one passed along the pavement and gazed into the butcher-shop window lo and behold that female personage was there at the counter, in conversation with the butcher’s wife, Mary, a local tradition-bearer. Forget the word ‘gossip’; ‘gossip’ did not do justice to the scope of what passed locally from mouth to mouth.

I was chuckling. I caught myself doing it. My thoughts delighted me. Yes and the toddler had returned in the backcourt below. Post haste. Red crayon red crayon. Nee naaawww neee naaawww. Red crayons for toddlers, certain toddlers. Definitely a red crayon for this wee being of the gender female with the spoon and cup

the spoon and cup

lost to the world making sandpies from out the black slime. The wee darling. I knew her mother and for God sake she was okay for all that never could she be described as a good mother. Never ever. She definitely was not a good mother. On this Lindsey and I agreed. As disinterested observers no other judgement was possible. She smoked like a chimney, went to the bingo, no doubt drank copious quantities of alcohol, to wash down the copious popped pills, all the while allowing her wonderful wee girl to toddle around this hellhole of a backcourt. What happened if she fell in the damn puddle; what if she fell on broken glass; if her flesh was sliced open? She would contract diphtheria. Nothing more certain. One felt like charging downstairs and lifting her out of harm’s way.

But was she in harm’s way?

Halt! Who goes there!

Middle-class missionaries.

Ah, pass on.

Artist as interventionist. The toddler in the puddle. I scraped an edge on the crayon, sketched quickly. Blunt crayons annoyed me unless appropriate. Appropriate crayons. How does one distinguish black-slime sandpies from sand sandpies? Weans dont why should adults? Might they be so distinguished?

By an understanding of the nature of ‘essence’. What is ‘essence’ mine fuhrer?

The aeroplane overhead. Fasten seatbelts. A London flight. The wealthy business class, commuters commuting. I commute, you commute. Five minutes to land. Already on the final descent. Oh my ears a-poppin. Here is a boiled sweet. The stewardess on the side seat stares vacantly, knees glued together. Glued together. I was once on a plane and a stewardess sat so facing me. Her knees! It was a big plane and I was on the seat at an exit door. And travelling alone, though such information is not relevant. The stewardess sat on the pull-down seat facing me. And amid much turbulence and a most bumpy landing her knees remained together, dimpled knees, not beautiful but yes, well, maybe they were.