Enter yourself ya bastard. Play the fucker. Before it is too late. Fine. What is done is just that Patrick raises the pipe to his lips and closes his eyelids; he blows a very long and very deep sound; just one, lips compressed, eyelids shut tightly, and tears springing there at the corners, like a form of ecstasy, something that has sprung from way out of and has relaxed these shoulders and eased that terrible terrible fucking tension, just got out from under that pilloriedness, self-pilloriedness, self-flagellation, that Goya one, something there maybe to do with the flagellants but now away there away there, just there, there, there, getting further and further away, not a great distance but a distance, definitely a distance, just enough now so that he can open the eyelids, the eyes maybe and just blink a bit, and a smile of sorts, looking at the pipe and smiling to it, an old friend and a treasure. It was time to walk to the windows and peer out at the side of the curtain; and he breathed out, a sigh; it was followed by a shiver, a shuddering movement of the shoulders, a wee convulsion. Dear dear. Dear dear. The rain falling steadily. The halo round the streetlamp.
It would be good to report that that night’s sleep turned out to be one of these smashing, all-embracing types of sleep where the body and mind both feel relaxed afterwards but it had not been like that, although neither was it the precise opposite, where you feel like a gang of baddies has been booting you about for the whole seven hours.
A breakfast might have been useful. He did have a packet of Weetabix in the cupboard, but not enough milk. There was no point in stocking a lot of milk. He only really drank the stuff at breakfast time — discounting coffee of course, he still preferred milk in coffee. Although in tea it didnt bother him either way. Milk-buying was a habit he never seemed able to develop. Perhaps if the maw did give him her old fridge. But that was an awful waste of resources. Then as well if she did give him the thing he would probably stuff the freezer bit full of raw meat and poultry.
Having a snack bar in the vicinity would be good. Glasgow is very short of snack bars. Why did the Rossis not seize the opportunity and open at the crack of dawn so that the solitaries of the district could arrive for coffee and hot rolls & croissants and salami on rye and maybe a couple of fucking bagels, like they get in all these great wee cafes in New York. Elderly couples meeting for a chat across pots of steaming coffee and hot pancakes with maple syrup! Fucking Mark Twain and Peter Pan territory, Never Never Land, sentimental maudlinity. Uch no, auld Twain was better than that.
Even if resignation was not the answer it could be a good idea to jump on the panel for a fortnight, just to get things into perspective; it would give him time to set forwards a plan of some description, a way ahead — even if he could just map out the next three months, once the summer arrived it would be all over. And yet resignation for christ sake what a temptation.
And it always would be a temptation. How could it be anything but? To resign from anything is good, is exhilarating. Just like, for instance, if he was to resign from Monday morning’s interview with fucking Old Milne. It was a while since he had been carpeted. Ach well, no point worrying about such things. Old Milne was a bit of a headbanger but apart from that. Even resigning from a family can be good and exhilarating. One of the better decisions Patrick has ever made centred upon the leaving of the family domicile at the start of his second university year. No matter that he was to stay in a house less than a couple of miles from where his parents lived it wasnt his fault if the university was as close as that. It had been a wise move and necessary to a fuller realization of his male potential i.e. that he could become involved with women properly, or at least come home steamboats.
One straightforward decision concerned Mirs Houston: it was henceforth silly getting hot under the collar about her. She was the wife of another and that was that. A more practical plan might involve these singles’ clubs where single people meet. But whatever and no matter, the whole carry on, it was something to treat in a less serious fashion. There was a lot of truth in the old cliché about sex being a comedy; it was best Pat found something to smile about, the way married couples were wont to, seeing the entire palaver as a joke; something to share a laugh over, something to be enjoyed in its differing aspects, and not something to crack up about. So much of life concerned sex and its attendant miseries and mysteries, its laughter and its heartbreak. Why get involved? Obviously he would get involved and indeed wanted to get involved, but
but a problem was one of banality. Once you started in on the subject as a method of easing your mental condition, once you began looking at the situation; aye, it did seem so totally banal. In itself this was encouraging; it meant the problem was not specific, it was run-of-the-mill and not to be taken too seriously. And even aside from the sexual aspect it was better leaving Alison out of the question. What was the point in harbouring feelings as burdensome as he did? It was far better to seek out a proper object for his affections. It was just causing him fucking pain, to be honest about it. If he actually could be said to love her then it was just time to fucking not love her, or else to be doing it in a less pervasive manner.
He went down to the wee dairy at the corner of the street to buy a paper, also something to eat because he was fucking starving. One of these individual breakfast trays. Terrible efforts. A lump of square sausage and a lump of round black pudding. A wee dod of currant dumpling and a round slice of haggis haggi feminine. To be frank about the carry on, this was a breakfast he enjoyed tremendously, never mind about Alison and her fucking vegetarian hostelries. He was a heart-attack man and that was it finished. If she wanted to save him from himself then that was fucking her problem.
Once the frying pan was fairly hot Pat placed the pieces of food inside and waited. He could have counted three hundred and then turned them onto their other sides, a further three hundred and drop in the egg to fry with them. Yet okay, the thought of lettuce and cucumber and tomato, healthy portions of cheddar cheese; that had crossed his mind; he was thinking in these terms, maybe for tomorrow. I mean he wasni really that fucking interested in becoming a genuine vegetarian he just fancied getting fit. Not in a daft way. Pat had never really been that interested in going for the swimming, jogging, bicycling, running, hopping, skipping routine; but just to get reasonably fit and healthy! that would be good. Get a regular game of table tennis going with Gavin once again. That last time they played together he had been easing up and trying to let Gavin win and then suddenly he wasnt having any say on the matter, Gavin was fucking running him ragged. Of course he was an ordinary married man and therefore an active healthy male unlike Patrick who was a flabby eunuch. But big fucking brother also smoked a lot of cigarettes and could drink like a fish so fucking explain that one. Some things are fair and some things are not fair and this is a thing that is not fucking fair, and what more can be said except praise the lord if you’re a lucky bastard.
But just to be reasonably fit and healthy. Just to be in a sound condition. To maybe have a wee go on the pipes. To maybe have a big go on the pipes. A genuine go. That was something. To even just think about it was something: for it must be admitted that in the cold light of an early spring morning, the idea of the pipes as musical instruments and so on. Which made it the more crucial to contemplate.
Seeing the young woman in the dairy had something to do with it, when Patrick was down getting the grub. She had been standing chatting to the older woman behind the counter. She had a baby sitting on her hip. She had short blonde hair and lived three closes away. Pat saw her quite a lot, usually in the launderette on Sunday afternoons. The baby was aye with her, as if she didnt have a man about the place, whether deliberately so or not.