James Kelman - If it is your life

But really, I didnay want to be deported. Had the Court Official stated such categorically? Perhaps he meant something else. Ambiguity was a feature in small southern towns. Sure they had found me ‘lurking’ beside the garbage bins down a ‘back alley’. But all alleys are out the back and anyone found in such a byway is said to be ‘lurking’. Come on now tell the truth and state the case fairly: Mr Duncan was sheltering from a gale wind.

I was. That was a hellish gale wind and no mistake. Sure I had the smell of alcohol on my breath. What in God’s teeth was wrong with that? I was twenty-one years of age and beyond the age of legitimacy. It was my first day in the place and I had got ashore safely, safely. A celebration had been in order. Such behaviour was normal. What did ‘normality’ mean in this here burg.

No job; okay. Abode there was none; okay. Cash ditto; nothing new in that. And no Verifiable Information as to Previous Whereabouts. So they said. Mr Duncan begged to differ. I did. I offered to verify anything, anything. To no avail. Then too, there also existed, and freely confessed: Bad Tidings from a certain Ship’s Restaurant.

Such was the crime, such the criminal.

At 4.30 a.m. they had chanced upon me. My first day in the place. Two glaring flashlights inches from my eyes. Eighteen hours earlier could life have been rosier! Bestriding the upper decks in jaunty fashion bidding fellow passengers G’day.

Envious stares all round. I had been the only person left at the bar with a pint of stout in front of me. That was no sentimental nonsense. Truly the case. A six-hour sail had become a ten-hour battle through some of the worst seas the stewards had witnessed in fifteen years on the run. So they said.

Ah but it suited me. I was trying a new approach to life and so far it was working. It was simple. I had ceased being stand-offish. I was always interested in the lives of other people but in the past had looked on from afar. The idea of opening a conversation with a guy behind the bar would have been unthinkable, even more unthinkable that I would carry it forwards. But I persisted and the barman repaid me by blethering on about all manner of oddities, some boring, some not so boring.

At long last I was becoming a sociable animal. It was bound to aid my job prospects. I bought the guy a couple of black rums, then tried one myself. I sniffed at it firstly. Mm, an okay aroma. But the taste itself made me groo. The barman was relishing his. Black rum was a tradition, a fighting tradition. Besides being an old salt he was a decent guy and chatted away about life in general. He came from a wee island himself and had been raised to a life of easy servitude. He was even content! Tips were good and although a married man of somewhat advanced years, female tourists beckoned occasionally.

It sounded the thing to me. But were there vacancies aboard the boat? I was set to enquire but for some reason the thought of work vanished from my mind. I certainly fancied life as a sailor. On short trips definitely. But if pushed I would hire on for longer sojourns. On ocean-going vessels only. Above all they must be sea-worthy!

These ruminations were at an end when came an announcement. Last orders for the restaurant which soon would be closing.

But man man man I was starving! I had not noticed this until that very moment! This call to knives and forks had been announced for me and me only. There was naybody else left. I bade the barman G’day and followed my nose to midships. I had to hold on to banisters and walls. The sea was going up and down to heights my fellow travellers found tricky and the floors were slippery with a mixture of vomit and the golden briny. But the God of Empty Bellies urged me on. Shipahoy, I was starving.

The place was empty. A waiter showed me to a table and passed me a sheaf of menu pages. I thanked him, nodded appreciatively at the listed contents then ordered a meal that would plunder more than half of my entire life savings. But Gahd sir it was worth every coin. A three-course meal, plus a half carafe of casa rosa. The Starter I had was this: the Chef Special with Prawns and Mussels and Choice Fruits à la Merand it came in a fishblood gravy — how else to describe it — with wee splashes of syrup at the side of the plate and a skinny trail of green peppery stuff. And thick bread to wipe it up; a sweet bread with a cake-like crust that one hesitates to describe as crust at all and yet as tasty a bread as ever succumbed to my advances.

I was not alone after all. Gadzooks. This reached the higher slopes of sentimentality. Two fine-looking elderly ladies were to the side of the room, having a laugh together, both tucking into whatever it was, marzipan jelly and devilled ice cream with marshmallow sauce, chocolate nuts and very thin, mint biscuits, onchontay madames. These ladies were French, a la chic chic

Meanwhile strong men crumbled, their bellies succumbing to the heaving seas. Why oh why did we have the last six pints of stout, they screamed to an uncaring hurricane! Or was it eight pints? Oh for fuck sake, Quick quick quick, was the shout, and which way doth the wild wind blow? Always spew portside. Such I had learned from a venerable sage of the sea.

Between courses I endured a moment’s anxiety. Okay now my life had been short. Who could argue with that? Me! I would have argued. It had been forever! But I had already ordered the grub so no way back. Sink or swim.

For the main dish I ordered another Chef Special. And never antagonize a Chef. We all know that. Chefs are unpredictable creatures in diverse ways when off-duty but not in the fucking kitchen.

But no Chef worth his salt ever disliked a trencher-man. Any Chef worth his weight in biscuits was above and beyond the call of La cuenta por favor. For any creature such that that creature was a Chef, what occurred on the plate was the sole and overriding issue.

The strict course of action was to finish the plate and wipe it clean, to cry for bread and sook up the gravy. That gave one a head start. Sympathy would be mine. Whereas to order such a meal and dilly-dally with it! A veritable slap on the face. No Chef worthy of the name could endure the insult.

It was true. I knew it for a fact. I had experience of Chefs, having worked in a restaurant on three occasions, howsomever in a cleansing capacity, having failed to traverse the higher rungs of the cookery ladder.

For the Main Course, oh boy: Halibut Steak in Basic Garlic Sauce, with Chargrilled Tomatoes and Okra. Chargrilled tomatoes! A girl of a loquacious bent once advised me that along the Chargrilled vegetable route lay a cancerous labyrinth, that once entered could only advance. What did I care. Plus a mélange of thick red onions, red cobweb cabbage and chunky red peppers. Placed alongside this a pewter bowl with a further trio of vegetables: dark-green broccoli, blue-white cauliflower and slender green items that may have been beansprouts, peapods, or a luxury vegetable item rarely seen on workaday dinner plates and whose name seldom registers in the brain of such as oneself, to wit, me. Little wonder the two elderly ladies laughed so loudly. I waved across.

A waiter lingered by the ladies’ table for a moment’s conversation, poured tea from the pot. I noticed that the fellow’s crisp white teacloth dragged from his elbow across the dessert plates. It must have been the roll of the sea for these waiters were top-notch servers, given they operated as gigolos on the side and were wont to exhibit a smug exhaustion. Of course I envied them. Of course I did. I was a personable young fellow. The position of gigolo was not beyond me.

Ah but a most delicious and succulent repast. The waiter now served me Choice Cuts of Cheese and Rare Stuffed Olives. One’s compliments to the Chef. A brandy to follow would have been injudicious. On second thoughts