James Kelman - If it is your life

Ye want to hear my dreams, I said, they’re fucking murder fucking polis man. Mind you I dont usually get any. And see if I do, they’re fucking boring as fuck. No kidding ye man they’re that fucking boring I dont remember having them once they’ve gone. Nay fucking wonder!

Nicky Parkes spluttered. He spluttered and spluttered. He went into a fit. It started with a giggle. Then the beer went up or down his gullet, nose and tubes. He definitely had something wrong in the nostrils department. I slapped him on the back. When he was able to speak he said, Sorry man ye just made me laugh there.

I’m glad of that, I said, I like making cunts laugh.

Tim said, Tell ye my problem, I cannay get to sleep.

If yer dreams were really boring then they would make ye go to sleep.

Arthur wagged his finger at me. Pat, he said, ye wouldnay get dreams if ye were awake. Ye would be already sleeping.

What is this April fool! I said. What day is it?

What about the third man? said Tim, I want to know about him. The one the two guys met.

It was me they met, said Arthur, I was the third man.

So it was your wife? said Tim.

What?

Is that the punchline?

There’s nay punchline.

Nicky Parkes leaned closer to me and said quietly, What did he say there?

I shrugged.

The dream just went on, said Arthur, the two guys were taking me down the lane.

What were they wanting to shag you as well?

Pat gie us a break?

Well nay wonder, I said, fucking Gone with the Wind. I swigged another mouthful, wiped my chin with my coat sleeve. I didnay like the way this was going but could do nothing to stop it, bar go for the burnables. But it wouldnay stop the dream being telled, just me from hearing it. And if these cunts heard it I needed to.

At the same time I wasnay wanting to be dishonest. Arthur had persisted in telling us it. Maybe I was doing him a disservice. Okay he was a shifty cunt but he wasnay an arsehole. And now he was looking at me. What ye looking at me for?

What?

I stared at him.

I’m just telling the story.

Well tell the fucking story.

Okay. So the lassie comes out the house and she looks about. There’s a wee flight of stairs. It’s like she is looking for the next guy along. She doesnay see us, me and the other two guys, she just doesnay see us. The funny thing is I recognize her. She’s wearing a blue and black speckled jersey and a black skirt and she’s got a jacket on, a kind of blazer type of thing, and she’s wearing black tights.

Black tights! said Tim. I might have known.

Me and all, said Nicky Parkes, and his eyebrows twitched.

We need burnables, I said, I know where there’s cardboard boxes.

Want a hand? said Tim.

Naw.

Get a bottle of wine while ye’re at it, said Nicky Parkes.

Ha ha, I said but away I went.

She was moving around. She would be tidying. She did this to keep up her spirits. Thump thump. No she did not, she did it to make me feel guilty. One thing was for sure, there was no need to tidy. Nobody ever visited the place. How come she had to tidy? How come she kept on tidying? Morning noon and night it drove me crazy. The girls never visited, nobody visited. The last people to visit were neighbours with a burst pipe who shouted about water coming through their ceiling. It had not come through any ceiling, it came down through the light. The water followed the track of the wire: electrical wire. They failed to notice. Stupidity. They were lucky they had not short-circuited the entire block of flats. That was a month ago. The wife did the talking, she was good at that kind of stuff. I could not look at them. Except for the postman that was the last visitors. We had sons. They never came. When was the last time? I could not remember. A month ago at least. Of course they had their own lives. Of course.

This tidying and dish washing drove me up the wall; counter cleaning, washing machines, mopping the linoleum, polishing the bloody ornaments and hoovers hoovers hoovers. What a din! That is what it was, a pandemonium, if you were trying to read so you needed to concentrate. I tried to concentrate. It was not easy. Nothing was easy. Not nowadays either; it was hard reading at all without her to contend with. I determined to ignore it, including the sound of her moving, she would move, move, move move move, to irritate me. She done it to irritate me. She said it was to make me aware of reality. That was the way she put it, as though reality had given me the slip. She could get on with life roundabout, the daily grind, unlike myself; this is what she meant.

Oh, I said, okay, right, of course, you’re so much more at home in the world than I am. Excuse me. It is so obviously the case why bother talking about it. So obvious I forgot.

No answer.

The door was ajar. I pushed it further open, enough to shout through: What exactly is this reality you keeping talking about? Just tell me, I would be very interested to hear.

No answer.

Eh! I said. Do you know something the rest of us dont?

Still no answer. She knew a trap when she heard it; I would have something up my sleeve. If she replied she would be finished. I would get her. I would have something lined up to say, and I would say it. She was cornered. She was. I had her. She knew it now, if not already, I mean before, I think she would have, definitely.

But it wearied me. I retreated to the kitchen, shut the door, sat down at the table. I closed my eyes. I opened them. It was true: I was trying to get her cornered. That is what I was doing. Looking for ways to attack. It was quite bad, even perhaps despicable, if you were describing it.

It was our lives. This is what it had come to. And it was me responsible. She was not doing it. It was me. I was doing it.

I needed to straighten myself out. It was not her it was me.

But I was at a low ebb. I knew it. She did too. Both of us. It applied to our relationship as a whole. Although it was me especially. I accept that. I would never have denied it. There was something up with me and I could not get myself out of it. I tried but could not. I needed to and I wanted to, if only I could and I would, if she would help, if only she would, and she could. She had it in her power.

Oh but she had such faith in my mental strength! So she said. Not in so many words. It was all unspoken with her.

My mental strength. Some hopes. My mental strength had gone. Did I have any to begin with? She thought I did. She thought I could sort out myself, like how I sorted out everything else.

She was being sarcastic.

But I could have, and I would have. Of course I would have. As long as I knew what it was. Then I would deal with it. You have to know the situation. She spoke about reality but that was reality. If you were unaware of the situation then you could not deal with it. She could have helped but she did not. Even to let me think, if she had let me think, let me think and I would work it out. She did not let me think. All this tidying and cleaning nonsense. How could a body think! Washing and bloody polishing. It should have been reminders she was giving me, not all this racket racket racket damn racket. That was a pure attack. It was help I needed and she attacked me.

I needed help, to handle the situation. It was not only for my sake. It was the two of us. We would both suffer. Did she want us to suffer? Maybe she did, she hated me that much. Else why attack the person closest to you? This is what she was doing. Why would you attack the person closest to you? It is a contradiction. Maybe I was not the person closest to her at all; maybe it was somebody else. At our age! Why not? Why not at our age? In this world anything is possible. People and things we regard as immovable, they are not; things change and so do people; your soul mate turns out to be something else.