The Busconductor Hines (16 page)

This is no longer something that Hines is finding; and what is said – all of it – all that is said, of that, of what is going on the fucking shite going through him ear to ear a sickener, he has been sickened. That's it. The lines split and the curves tailed off. A pile of lines left lying about. Each being there for the taking. What you do is choose one – like Hines. Hines has chosen 1 and this 1 leads maybe as far as the sky and that point up there, the point is somewhere up there you see and there is no lurch backwards because the line is always curved, the choice is being made; either you fucking go or do not fucking go. Understand the position. Hines has been having a think. The curve has been perceived. What he is doing is becoming the curve that the way is forwards only, there being no backsliding nor turnoffs nor tangents of any kind; the 1 way forward, and it can even be a charge; and from this charge the 1 fell swoop
delivered, the pure on the pure the red on the white; staged in an absent square; one clear stretch for one fell swoop, the sweet implementation of a rightful strategem, ah, good on you Mr Malthuse, the fresh air and the green pastures.

Paul was yawning and staring about the place, amazed to find himself where he was maybe. It was well past his bedtime. Hines helped him undress, conducting a cheery conversation about the joys of snow.

Yet the District of D. can be fine during colder weather. Hines used to live at the top of a hill and his gang held the bottom gang at bay. It was fucking great fun. Snow can be really exciting when you live in a place where it lies. You build your snowmen and that, the good slides etc. Even going to school's a laugh, throwing snowballs at the lassies, big fights in the playground, sneaking piles of it into the classroom to leave melting beneath your seat, kidding on you've pished your trousers to see the look on the teacher's face. Great; and always plenty of other kids to play with, it's good, a good place, Drumchapel's a good place.

Paul resembles either parent, depending on the position looked from. Hines had wanted him circumcised at birth but allowed himself to be dissuaded by a variety of agencies. Why had he wanted it in the first place. He wanted him different. He wanted him to think of things. And it could have been a good reminder. Every time he went to the toilet he might have been remembering what was what from his auld man's teachings. Too late now. That's the trouble with the present. Never mind.

At first sight the position he is in is of an appalling nature. It is not appalling. He is empowered to take care of items. All he desires to add as father is that the world should be admitted at an early age. This can help stop folk careering round the dump like a bunch of imbeciles – the poor auld fucking imbeciles!
Sandra should never have needed telling but. She looked for him to do something. Yet if she had worked things out she would have recognised the extent of the choice. She didnt work things out. She stayed with him in the rejections but failed to see the sum as finite.

There is a clock that is ticking.

She gets set about things right enough. A person like Sandra thinks first and only acts after a great deal of thinking. A person like her will do nothing until reckoning out all that appears to matter in that connection. Then she goes and does it, bang, no bother. That's how she went fucking out and got married to him. No cunt forced her. She made up her own mind. Her parents were against it. Quite fucking right.

Hines' head gets thick.

Sandra was not acting correctly. She was going about in an absentminded manner, not really speaking to him properly. What was she speaking about: questions concerning the festive season maybe; Xmas with her parents and Hogmanay with his, the usual – although Reilly and Isobel were wanting them up to their place or something, after the Bells, they could be leaving Paul up in Drumchapel and then trying for a taxi or something, fine, it would be great to

The current situation cannot be said to be good. It is not an irretrievable disaster nor yet absolutely pathetic. Get-outs must certainly exist – although the bastards, they have it so well worked you sometimes dont know if you're coming or fucking going man these real early starts where you're out the close and it's still darkly, the fucking streetcleaners man, the slipshod busworker, one whose shoulders ache; he spends his life leaning; he dishes the tickets from the pleasant machine. So what is to be done. The rude ticket dished from the pleasant machine
while the replete suit of the colour bottle green on lucid days. He does hanker, however, after primaries. Let the reds also appear, and where are the blues.

It is the subtractives.

The magenta the yellow the cyan. The black. It has to be the black. To fuck with the white it's no good. The items to be being produced.

Take it calmly. Send over a cross. Up go the heads. Bang. It was a windswept wintry forenoon and the bent figure, huddling into the morrow.

Naw son, naw; nah, fucking rubbish. I'm sorry. Hines had an idea. At a certain stage he would – naw, he was not in a state of harbour. He would to have had. He had the things. What it was son, he went round in a series of rigid quicksteps. He was a funny kind of a cunt. He got a hold of facts. He would be getting a grip on such as are regarded as facts, as items not for the challenging. He got a hold of them, and his head was supposed to

Now, his head: it was a pattern producing entity. Unlooked for stuff just shot in; and while in there went dangling about till clamping together with other stuff. And the result: he wanted to be eh, an assortment of things. That's him. An assortment – smelly and not smelly. Your mummy now, your mummy. Things are very black really. There is no question of this any longer. This blackness. You take your 3 colours and stir. They mix, and then the black. This black doesnt have to be not nice. This black can be a clearing away to the transparency. Your head can get filled with the black and what comes out is distinct. Take 3 colours and stick them into your head; they clamp about on each other; and then the pattern's jet black. Onto this black other black is clamping, odd variants of it, clinging together as though merging, until at last out shoots the transparent item. Stuff like eyes are filmy and are set up for this kind of thing.

And once there it is always there. It is the magenta, the yellow, the cyan. Once the line exists they must always come in. Admitted once they can only return. There is no option. At first spasmodically it becomes more regular then constantly for christ sake that everything enters becomes the black.

And similarly the white. A lot of the time what go in are the green, the red, the blue. They go in that white is being produced. This white but is not the transparency. It is coloured that no black is to be seen. That no black can appear to exist. This is it, the whole fucking story really, of how colours come in and come out. This is what Hines is seeing, that strand, the o jesus aye, you see the thing then, happening, that it is happening now, and has always been happening, is having always been being happening. You see this clearly because of the transparency, the items produced transparent that the world has become distinct, the black transforming into the most clear, the pure, it is the purity.

And the white just makes everything opaque. And most cunts go about like this, heads chokablok with the primary rubbish that what they realize from input has been shovelled into them. And being so choking on the rubbish they cannot, they can never, never even hope, to realize the black, that depth, from there into transparency. No chance, not a fucking iota, not a solitary fucking hope.

And then you have got to do something becomes the cause. The things being seen, no longer whitewashed. It can take a while. It can rumble about for ages, in different forms even, but the result will be fine; it will be fine if allowed to come to pass. It rumbles around gathering force, then bubbling up and spewing out in terms of whatever the fuck it doesnt matter, it doesnt matter; it does not matter, fuck them all, just straight in, straight in to clear it all out.

She used her own key to open the front door and thereafter a while seemed to pass; she would have been taking her coat off and so on, checking to see Paul was okay in the cot, that he was sleeping. Then she was in the lobby, into the lavatory for what seemed like ages; and when she came from there she must have paused for a time in the lobby prior to opening the kitchen door. It closed and she paused again, before passing across the floor to boil a kettle of water. In a sense this was all thoughtful. She has always had particular ways of going about her business; thus Hines had planned nothing but assumed he would be staying silent. Then she was set to break the silence and he spoke. He told her of the need to understand how things would definitely be better in terms of himself, and therefore of her and Paul, the unit. There was no point really in talking about this because far better just doing things than talking about doing things. What was required was a bit of faith – not really faith, commitment; it was commitment they required, to the three of them, the unit. The situation they were in was bad but not a disaster. It was not beyond recall. A lot had to be done, practical stuff; Hines knew this. But she knew as well as he did that when it came down to it, when it came down to it he had never let her down, not really. If they were to actually split up just now it would be in a sort of uneven sense and fuck that for a game it was stupid, it really was. He wasnt bothered about this evening. He could figure out why it had happened and the rest of it. He just didnt see that it truly
mattered, as long as it was perceived clearly. All he wanted was that she should understand.

Now sitting on her armchair Sandra had crossed her legs, and she was watching him, only partly relaxing when he smiled. He walked to her and stood between the wall and the side of the chair, and smoothed the hair at the nape of her neck; she didnt move her head. It was the first time she had ever stayed out in this way and he could appreciate how she was feeling, how she would have had to endure certain moments of awareness while in the pub with her office friends. He bent to kiss her, and did so, on the forehead; but she was looking at him in too set that manner of hers. He shook his head, went to the sink, to await the water boiling. There was grub in the pot could be reheated but she wasnt wanting anything. Although she hadnt eaten she wasnt hungry. The others had gone for a Chinese meal but she hadnt felt like it.

He faced the oven when she seemed set to be continuing to speak.

And he was to get the coffee spooned into the cups, the boiling water from the kettle, and the milk to be poured from the bottle. His cigarette wasnt burning; he got it so from the pilot-light on the oven. Passing her a cup of the coffee he began telling her how bad he had been, cracking up almost; she has no idea, not really, she could have no real idea of how bad it had been, for the past while – almost cracking up it was so bad, really really bad. He was sitting on his chair now and making a flurry of movements with his hands and head, even his feet, and smoking rapidly, keeping her going and away, not to let her speak, needing himself to do so, to not be silent; but then, eventually, there was nothing to be said any longer. He apologised. She asked about the uneven. What was it about the uneven. He had said something about the uneven. What was it he was meaning? if they split up? in an uneven sense?

You must've meant something by it.

What.

When you said it, a wee minute ago.

He nodded; he studied the cigarette; he was holding it between fore and middle fingers, and the nicotine stains. He gazed at the ceiling, the mantelpiece. How could a gas-bill amount to so much. 1 gas-oven and 2 gas-fires, 1 of which was hardly used.

You were talking about us splitting up Rab.

What – naw; naw Sandra, what I was saying: it wouldnt be right if we split up, no just now, I mean christ sake it would be uneven, it really would, if we split up, it wouldnt be fair, it just wouldnt be fair, no to the two of us. And Paul. But forget about Paul as far as this is concerned.

O Rab.

Naw Sandra really; christ sake, we're getting fucked about; please . . . I mean, a bit of honesty.

What?

A bit of honesty, let's have a bit of honesty; you and me; between us, fuck sake, I dont care where you were tonight – it doesnt matter, it doesnt matter Sandra, honest.

She was looking at him. After a few moments he glanced at the fire, he inhaled on the cigarette. The clock that is ticking. I'm going to bed, he said. And she nodded slightly without replying. They continued to sit until at last he got up.

Dont go yet Rab . . .

He shrugged. Early tomorrow.

I thought it was your day-off.

Naw.

You sure?

Aye.

She glanced away from him; I've never heard you talking seriously about us splitting up before.

A comedy. He made to speak but remained silent. She stared at the floor. He felt himself to be caving in; he continued looking at her, and when eventually she returned his look neither smiled; he sat back down on the armchair.

They went on looking at each other, he with a vague smile on his face but she had no smile on her face. It was terrible, and he got up at once and across to her, and she was onto her feet, and they clung to each other, her head at his shoulder. I am not playing a part in the system of the British Greats, he muttered. And he became aware of a something in her, that she was attempting not to cry maybe – she hated to cry. He had to open his eyelids very widely to stop himself from doing it.

It was a chuckle. She was chuckling. He grinned. The system of the Greater Brits is neither here nor there, honest. He kissed her on the lips. Your nose is hell of a cold.

She snorted.

Aw jesus christ. He laughed, I feel like getting the wee man up to celebrate.

She kissed him.

It was him who broke the kiss. The swimming – I told him we were going tomorrow, christ sake.

Well take him in the afternoon, get him out early from the nursery.