If it is your life (17 page)

My parents did not have a big house but I still had a room and could coorie in for a few days; nobody to bother me; I could get on with the essays and just take it easy. I was quite looking forward to it. Maybe even I would stay in and not go out, not even bother seeing Eric or anybody for a beer. I quite sometimes liked essays.

At least I could relax.

Jees I was bursting and would have to find a place soon or else.

In my recollection this part of the city was hopeless. Even if there was a club bouncers were on the door, and they did not let people use the toilets; you had to buy something and be a customer otherwise ‘eff off’. It was too late for bars. And the problem too was over-21. Bouncers picked me out. But it was illegal, so it was not their fault; only annoying if they let other people through and they were the same age. It happened with Celia all the time. It was females, they got away with it. Bouncers just let them in. Then if you did it outside and got caught. It was a real problem. But that was it and across the street was a lane. I walked over and along.

People did not like this area. Even rapes against males. Males raping males. There had been an outbreak of that. Not just young males. One had been in his forties. Imagine a guy of forty being raped! What did that mean? Who ever would do that? That had to be a monster.

I did not like the look of this lane. Some lighting but not much, so dark and shadowy, but that was good for the police.

The usual bins and old rubbish stuff. People just dumped things. You were scared to look down at where you were walking. Shit was the best of it. Then a spot that was better and I was able to unsling the backpack, just taking the opportunity, and what a relief to balance it on the ground a minute. You do not realize how heavy it is until you take it off and lurch a couple of strides. The straps would have left imprints on my shoulders.

Nearer into the wall jees I was bursting. My boots crunching on glass, then another noise. I heard another noise. A real noise, sounding like a woman and she was moaning. That is what it sounded like: ‘oh no oh no oh no, no, no, no, oh no oh no.’ Muffled and not too close. I waited a moment but it came again. Not a scream but moaning. I finished the piss and stepped aside, facing in that direction, staying still and listening hard. By this time my eyes were accustomed to the dark. A shape appeared and it was a man walking, heading this way along the centre of the lane; not too fast, coming along towards me. I started walking, acting normally, just keeping going, not hesitating and not too slow either, so not intimidated by him. But not to intimidate him either. Just not anything. He was approaching now he really was and he really had seen me. A thick-set man, older, oh fuck really heavy-looking too like a mafia gangster or something you could imagine him, and on he came. I would not confront him. How could I? Not here anyhow. Did I even know for sure it was him? I did not. He might just have been a guy, just out strolling.
Maybe he had seen something suspicious or if he heard her moaning. Maybe that was it and he just went up the lane to find out and here he was. On he walked down the centre of the lane, the crunching noise of his feet on the ground. Then he had passed. I wanted to look round to see him, to make sure he was not doing something behind my back. The way he had passed was like he had not even seen me. That was the way he acted, like he had not even noticed me. Even I was irrelevant. Maybe he thought that. Some older guys are like that, really arrogant the way they dismiss you. I kept on, walking in the opposite direction. I had to, that was what I thought. What else could I have done? It would have seemed completely strange. I could not look back. I would not tempt anything, although what could have happened? Nothing. No sound except my own. I would have heard, if somebody had been sneaking up. I would not have backed down. I had been in some bad situations in the past. I would not have backed down. I was not timid and nobody would have accused me of it, and not a coward, but not foolhardy and not silly brave. That was just stupid and helped no one. I was counting as I went, all to fifteen, and nothing, no woman, nothing. Maybe it was my ears. Ears play tricks. It was in all the books, your ears. Maybe they had. I was alert for anything yet nothing was there, all along the lane there was nothing. It was just dark.

Unless something had happened to shut her up. Ahead now was the end of the lane. On either side were weeds and a stack of rubbish bags. It was a place
where bodies were found, you saw it all the time; the guy sneaking along with his girlfriend, looking for a safe place for sex and suddenly there is a foot and it is a leg twisted in the undergrowth. Call the police. Coldblooded murder. That was television. But such things did happen. Maybe not much but definitely some of the time, they did. Most murders were in the home and the murderers that did it were known to the victim. It was not strangers you had to worry about it was the next of kin, the person that stood to inherit, if you were rich or even if it was insurance and if you were just an ordinary person and oh my God almighty the backpack, what kind of a fool I was such a fool, back along immediately, but just a fool, just fast walking. It
had
gone. Maybe not. I checked roundabout and everywhere, everywhere and everywhere all along, the edge of the building, I could not believe what kind of a fool. I was a very very stupid guy, very very stupid, just naive and so stupid and just a total naive idiot. Could ever I have been so daft! Never. Never ever. Never in my whole life.

Sometimes if you were dead, only if you were dead. People said that. I thought it myself.

Objects do not move by themselves, they do not walk, backpacks do not walk.

I was not a headless chicken. My essays and everything else, books from the library.

Anyway, I could calm down and just look, look for things, anything, calmly. Sometimes they get put to the side, if somebody sees it, a lost article, if somebody
finds it, they put it at the side of the road, or like a glove or a scarf, they hang it on a railing so the person who has lost it can find it, so they retrace their steps and then they see the lost article.

I hunted around. Horrible bastard, dirty evil, just a horrible, horrible horrible. He would have been long gone. Probably someplace checking the contents, sorting through it all, maybe dumping stuff along the way, because it was just clothes and a lot of them were unwashed, and just old tee-shirts and stuff. That is what he would think. But some were good; especially the tee-shirts. It was not all crap, though maybe that was how he would see it, crooked coward. He would not bother about the books, or anything, essay notes, just dump it, they were not of value. There was nothing of value. What did he expect to find a bag of money! thousands of pound notes stuffed into plastic bags! People watch too much television, all these detective programmes. They go about seeing themselves involved in mystery dramas, the earphones in and the music playing, their music, people choose their own music, they do not choose the best songs, the ones that they like the very best, they choose the ones they see as soundtracks to their own sweaty lives. Pathetic. You saw them walking along the street, and even their voices, you heard their voices.

Unless it was for my benefit. If the woman was in it with the man and that was why she moaned like she had. Because that woman moaned I swear to God she really did. Really, she did. If so it was the very last time, never ever would I ever fall for such a thing again if ever
it was a woman and she was in trouble, it would never ever happen again, that was me now, just finished. Imagine a woman and she did that moaning so people would be tricked.

I had stuff at home but it was for emergencies only; basics, old stuff. Even socks. My parents would loan me money, just give me it. If I asked. I would not ask. I would just sell something or else the pawnshop. They would laugh. Mum would be glad it was nothing worse. I would not tell them.

Except my essays and the books, library books, and where would I get them again.

I was at the top of the lane, and stopped. It was the second time I had reached here. I turned to stare back along, silence all the way, just nothing. I had to retrace my steps again. I did not want to, not again. But I had to. Although nothing would be there. My backpack was gone and the guy that took it, and the woman, if ever there was a woman, or just my ears playing tricks.

What else, but I just had to, just go back along the lane, that was all I could do because what if I saw it, it might be waiting for me right at the very end, I might see its shape, just sitting there waiting for me. How could I have missed it! How ever could I have missed it? It would be the strangest strangest experience ever and I would just get it up onto my shoulders and rush fast to get home, oh jeesoh, jeesoh, I so wanted home.

At this stage, when things appeared to be running smoothly, his transgression surprised me. Upon reflection it was no more and no less than I should have anticipated. His life may have been seen as one to emulate, to strive after or towards, but it was far from commendable. I knew that. He had not lived a perfect life. My friends respected him; young men like ourselves. It is safe to say that.

A companion of ours, a musician, did not survive though his existence exhausted itself in a similar way. When we three were together and smiling on how things had been, partly it was relief that we had survived at all. None among us pretended, none among us was the hypocrite.

In the ordinary ethical sense we had not lived just lives but nor had we pretensions toward the religious or theological sense of other existences, nor of existences yet to come. For myself I had no intentions of accepting a second existence. I grew weary of Lives to Come, a Life to Come, that Life to Come. As with our former friend I was one of many, content that those who follow should wield the baton.

Universals do not exist. There is no ethic, no code of morality, no moral sense at the inner depth of our
being. From an early period I too was aware that the sensibility is unaffected by the violence or abuses perpetrated by one on another, even if the one is close to us. Yet I was perceived as ruthless. So too was our former friend. But did he fully understand what ruthlessness might amount to? Perhaps he did. When his grandfather died he rowed the boat that carried his ashes. His father and younger brother were seated at the stern. His younger brother unscrewed the receptacle and emptied the ashes midway across. His father could have stopped him. The following is hearsay, that he too could have stopped him.

I was not an artist and not a schoolteacher, I had never been a schoolteacher. People thought I was. That was a peculiar misjudgement. ‘Misjudgement’
was
the word.

I was observing, even as I thought in this self-conscious, deliberately reflective manner, and the subject of my observation was the world about me. Here beyond the window, far below at ground level the rubbish piled high and overflowing although the rubbish men had come two days ago. What the hell had they been doing? All they did was stand there gabbing and sharing a smoke. Probably a joint; they pretended it was tobacco in case the rubbish police were spying from windows. I wanted to shout at them. It made me angry. Was that the way to do a job? Okay if it was a middle-class rural piece of suburbia but this was a slum man, a slum, s l u bloody m. Ordinary working-class people, these were brothers and sisters. We dont shit on them for heaven sake. So no wonder I got angry, living round here. It was just important. I thought so anyway, if no one else did. Lindsey did. Lindsey was shocked; truly she was. This was her first time in the city and the idea of bringing a baby up in such a place, my God. Where do the children go to play?

The same place they went when I was a kid.

Oh dont give me that, she said.

Give you what? I wasnt giving her a thing. It was true. All I did was tell her. If she chose to not believe me or to be annoyed by it, or be irritated; whatever, it was up to her. She accused me of being lev – lev – lev something. What the hell was the word! Levaticus? That was the name of a biblical character. Leviticus. She couldnt have accused me of being a biblical character? Or could she? It depended on her mood.

But it was no laughing matter.

People did not believe in laughs and she was no different. Neither was I. Laughs laugh laughter. I didnt believe in laughs either. That is why I returned to Glasgow, when any sane individual would have remained elsewhere, excluding Scotland obviously, if one might distinguish between the two, as most folk do.

The backcourts, backstreets, back alleys, the shadowy lanes nearby the river, derelict warehouses with caved-in roofs, broken glass and old iron, and weeds, and people; people who might be anything, dangerous, anything. That is where the children played, so what was new in that? Kids survive.

It wasnt my decision. I would have stayed south. I kept that to myself. Lindsey would have jumped down me throat, be entitled to jump down me throat.

Hoh hum.

Black soot ingrained brick buildings.

Black soot ingrained brick buildings, sandstone bricks, forming a rectangle. For every two entrance ways there was a midden containing three large metal containers
inside of which piled black polybags full of rubbish and shite, shite. The containers should have been emptied weekly. They were not.

I would to have drawn them.

I adjusted the stub of charcoal between my fingers, my pinkie and ringfinger ached. The charcoal was finished and these two were the fingers that had the most work to do, thankless work. I should have thrown the stub away. If I hadnt paused to perform the adjustment the ache in my fingers would have gone unnoticed. A proper artist wouldnt have noticed. He would have been too engrossed. I was not a proper artist. I engaged in pastimes; this was one such.

When was soot anything other than black? It was always black. Soot was soot. No wonder I was having the difficulty. How do you draw soot you do not draw soot, who could draw soot, no one could do it, ever do it, they would never succeed.