Alasdair Gray - A History Maker

“Send them to Dryhope but first help me onto this bloody big horse.”

HE DISMOUNTED on Dryhope common, stabled Bucephalus and went through the garden without seeing a soul. He was thankful but puzzled, then realized that if Bowerhope had warned the Dryhope mother of his filthy and disordered appearance she would certainly have organized a party or expedition to move the children where they would not see him. She had also made the walls of the house opaque except for a line of clear portholes under the eaves. As he approached the veranda she was waiting for him there and said sternly, “What hit ye? Have ye been pioneering in the woods? Is this the result of alfresco fucking?”

“Aye, but not how ye think. Where are the bairns?”

“Off to watch the circus being pitched on the hills round Selkirk. The aunts and a few grannies have gone with them.”

Standing on the path beneath her he said, “I’m coming no nearer till nurses have seen me. Mibby I’m infected with something.”

“Aye? Well, they’re waiting for you.”

He walked round the path to the infirmary door. It was ajar. He mounted the veranda and entered.

Two nieces, a sister and a cousin swiftly undressed him and were shocked by the sight of his body. They said, “Naebody in Ettrick makes love like that!” and, “Were you playing soldiers with a queer man, Wat?”

“No.”

“Was it a gangrel lass?”

“No.”

“Was it a circus woman?”

“Mibby. She said she was famous but I didnae ken her. Be quick with this.”

One cleaned his body and put lotions on the wounds. The others took samples of his breath, blood, lymph, urine and (by an exertion which almost had him screaming) semen. They analyzed the samples and keyed the results into the network while he was shaved and massaged by hands which expertly avoided the bites and bruises. One told him, “Your brother Joe is a lot cheerier. Annie Craig Douglas visited him last night. She’s still with him.”

“Good.”

“She says her mother sent her — Nan, ye ken? — but I think Annie would like to see you.”

“I’ll see naebody till I’ve seen Kittock.”

“You can see her as soon as you’ve dressed and had your medicine,” said another handing him a diagnostic printout.

It said Wat Dryhope’s excellent constitution had been exhausted by at least nine days of intense muscular and nervous exertion, by opiate overdose from a cocktail of caffeine-lavoured chloroform water plus heroin plus alcohol plus cocaine plus L-dopa aphrodisiac, also by a common and harmless throat infection which only afflicted the exhausted. For the exhaustion it prescribed a fortnight of mild activity, sauna baths and massage; for the narcotic poisoning, detoxification with naloxone and total avoidance of all stimulants including caffeine; for the throat infection, a syrup of squill liquid extract and capsicum tincture, one spoonful after meals. A nurse went to order these medicines from the powerplant. In a puzzled way Wat re-read the diagnosis.

“A few hours ago I was in the worst fever of my life,” he said, frowning, “My heart was hammering and the sweat lashing off me, but I don’t remember coughing. Are ye sure I’ve just a throat infection?”

“No, Wat, we’re too ignorant, but the network is sure. The network has records of every virus that ever mutated naturally, along with those invented by murderous governments and business corporations in the bad old days. It knows all viruses that have evolved on the satellites and the planets, all viral mutations which could possibly happen in the last three weeks and next ten days. You’re safe , Wattie. Your fever was a sober body’s healthy reaction to bad drugs in your coffee. I hope you gave the bitch as good as you got.”

“Here’s a billet doux from her!” cried one of his nieces triumphantly, returning from Wat’s room with clean clothing and a rainbow-coloured ticket which she waved above her head, “I found this and a book about shaking the world while emptying his dirty pockets. It’s for tonight’s circus and on the back it says — ”

“Gie’s it!” yelled Wat so fiercely that she stuck out her tongue at him, threw the clothes into his lap, dropped the ticket on top. He lifted it and read with the other nurses peering over and round his shoulders.

Cher Liebling!

I will never forget the maddening

sweetness of your caresses. Dressed in flame

tonight I will again be yr

slave after the big show.

D.P.

Someone asked him what the initials meant and he said they wouldnae believe him if he told. He spoke absent-mindedly because the words on the card filled him with a murderous desire for Delilah Puddock. Someone asked if she was a circus artist, a gopher or a camp follower. He cried, “I’ve telt ye I don’t ken a thing about her! I just ken that I’m going to — ”

Their startled faces silenced him. He saw his hands clutching the air before him as though throttling a neck.

“Lassies,” he said plaintively, “I’m hungry. My wame thinks my throat’s cut.”

They brought him powsoudie, drummock, kebbuck and farle. He ate it and dressed.

Kittock had no modern intelligence communicators so he went through the garden to the old tower near the duck pond. The smoke of her oven trickled up through bushes on the ruined top. She was not in the goose field or poultry runs and as usual (he thought with a smile) the tower door was locked against him. She might be entertaining a gangrel. On a scrap of paper he wrote, “Wat is home, mother, and badly needs you,” slipped it under the door, returned to the house, and entering his room suddenly saw it was too small for a grown man. When he had returned from the stars, and found it kept for him, and realized the women had foreseen he would return, he had been so grateful that he had refused offers of a bigger room. The only change since infancy was a bed which now covered half the floor, also a new telecom with commander facilities — the mother must have ordered and installed it as soon as she heard of his colonelization. The screen showed names of many who wished to speak with him but none was Delilah Puddock. A thick sheaf of pink, blue and violet printed sheets had issued from it. He could not face them so made the outer wall transparent and was soothed a little by the familiar view: a garden with a tower holding the wisest person he knew, the loch and hills beyond the tower under a cloudy April sky which was brightening to a fine afternoon. With a faint cough the telecom spat a rainbow-coloured message onto the sheaf. Its print was too eye-catching to be ignored.

PROFESSOR DOGBITCH Z. CELLINI

Virtuoso Assoluto of the

COSMOPOLITAN CLOUD CIRCUS

invites

COLONEL WAT DRYHOPE

Commander of the Ettrick Warriors

and Prime Instigator of the New Era of

Military Power and Poetry

to be

GUEST OF HONOUR

At a Grand Banquet Breakfast for

ARTISTS, HEROES, COMMANDERS

Attending the Dusk-to-Dawn

Never-to-be-Repeated Cloud Circus

Production of

HOMAGE TO ETTRICK

A Four Act Evolutionary Opera

Hymning Creative Strife From The