No they wouldni. He was down and out. He really was down and out. What he needed
What did he need?
Ink exercises! A whole host of them. Why was he not marking ink exercises? a whole host of them. The new rates had just come out and if he got himself down to doing it he would earn good bonuses. And then he could go out and buy a new motor with plenty of in-car entertainment. Christ but the actual work itself would have been okay. He could have purchased himself a couple of flagons of nice red wine, a couple of cans of superlager, a few red biro pens; a blast of music in the background softly. He could have developed new theories on examining the pre-school age-group, just to see if some of them were actually fit to learn because a lot of these wee bastards are so fucking unknowledgeable they shouldni even be allowed in through the primary schoolgates in the first place. Auld Swift had the right idea. Fucking eat them.
He sat down on the throne. His recurring daymare was the idea of seating yourself down on the outer lid by mistake, and crunching the bollocks to a pulp.
In the name of fuck!
And yet, his parents would have been delighted to discover he was meeting a young woman tomorrow. It would really please them. Except of course her being a married woman. That would not please them. It would not upset them, just not please them.
They wanted him settled down. They didnt think he looked after himself properly. As if being involved with a woman would change all that. Maybe it would. There were things he would have to alter if he was so involved. He would have to get a fridge, for example, so that he could store milk and fresh dairy products. Also a hoover vacuum machine for cleaning carpets.
He pulled the plug, gazed at the water flushing the pot. He waited until the cistern refilled. As a boy he used to have to wait for the final click before being able to wash and dry the hands. But now such superstitious nonsense could be shoved to one side.
Time to go for a pint.
But he had yet to finish the dishes. His da would be waiting.
But his da wasnt waiting. His da had finished both the washing and the drying and was now sitting on his armchair and watching the telly. Patrick remained by the door and he called: For another pot of tea anybody?
Now you’re talking! said his da while Mrs Doyle raised her head briefly from the newspaper on her lap, and smiled in reply.
He almost crashed into a bloody lamppost on his way home. A big patch of black ice on the ground just beyond the turn into his own street. It was bitter cold. He had stayed on at his parents’ home until after midnight, just watching television and yapping about old things from the past.
He was awake at 3.45 a.m. looking at the ceiling. It was a very very bad dream. He was unable to close his eyes and drift back into a good slumber. The things were all continuing to happen. He was in the middle of it. A crowd of evil phantoms had sprung to existence in the room. Each space he looked to contained someone and they had lives of their own, these phantoms, and they were evil and wearing a dishevelled type of waistcoat with these sort of ankle-length cloth boots like sixteenth-century peasants, or maybe fur yins they were and not cloth, with straps of twine tied round the top uppers to keep them from falling off.
They were actually there and had big sort of staves or hoes and they just were hovering and when he shifted onto his side and stared into the recess wall with the blankets firmly at his chin there came a couple moving towards him from the rear and he knew exactly where they were and it gave him this sense of weightlessness. He spoke to himself. A method of eradicating it all. He spoke distinctly. I have had this very bad nightmare, a very bad one, but only a nightmare; there is no reality to it unless one of insanity, unless, since it is not only a nightmare but here and now, something that is occurring at this moment, while I am awake, it is not a nightmare but a living experience, reality; and a reality of which I am the central part, a central part. But what is to become of me now? Is this the end of my sanity? maybe now I am to be like this for all the time and what will happen to me? If I maybe cannot move out of my bed for all eternity and the nurses will have to break my door down.
And it was becoming expedient, to turn round the way and look out from the recess wall, now, expedient, to turn, to confront them, because there would be not a thing there, no phantoms, nothing, and it was worthwhile turning just for that very reason and he moved slowly but surely from the hips firstly and the shoulders and head lastly and true to form there was not anything there but the darkness of course and the gloominess, there was a kind of integral gloominess to this room which appeared to be charged from the middle someplace, all related to it, threads, silken and steadfast, threads.
This sensation of feeling behind the eyelids, an ordinary feeling though in some way, as if he had been scratching there. Maybe it was just a sign of tiredness. But he was not exhausted. Occasionally he did have these terrible mornings when he was exhausted, tired and drained, through lack of sleep — although sometimes it couldnt really be called a lack of sleep.
In the word itself, ‘sleep’, there was something implying succour: the term required redefining. ‘Sleep’ simply as a word to denote a concrete state of non-reflective consciousness and just fucking leave out all suggestions of mental or physical relaxation, recuperation, and so forth.
There are times when it is best to play music. And also perform any wee bits of business needing done about the house, the more mechanical the better. One project he did wish to begin at some point was erecting a bedshelf, with a small ladder for climbing up to; a square platform 8′ in length would do it.
And the motor car as well of course there were a million and one things needing attention to there. But fortunately you couldni drive the car up the bloody damn stairs and park it in your lobby. So that was that. But the grating noise was definitely worsening. If maybe the hinges were slackened off and the door panel hoisted aloft, and the hinges fixed on firmly while the door is being held. A job for two people. The sound was awful, that grating — close to the anguished cry of a human being, and continual, like a wail. A flattened worker, a carassemblyman, one from Linwood, has been squashed inside the door for the past decade, right since the final asset-stripping occurred. The guy was working cheerily away inside the panel and then came the bell for teabreak and the rest of the gang went off while he was in applying grease and paint to the interior surfaces, him being slightly deafened at the time because of the echoes. And then it was a case of:
Where the fuck’s Bertie?
Bertie … maybe he went for a shite.
Okay, will we just pour his tea the now or what?
Better no, in case it goes cold, you know how fussy he is about that.
But poor old Bertie never reappeared and gradually everybody forgot about him. He and his missis had been having a series of difficult arguments around this period and when he didni return from work at the usual time she assumed he had gone and left her, and now she and the kids would have to fend for themselves. But poor old Bertie had got stuck, he was wedged tight inside that door, his lower jaw twisted so that he couldnt scream out for help, and when the motor moved on down the line the ends of the panel were sealed fast together by the heavyduty punchguns, totally flattening him. Fucking way to go! Poor auld Bertie. Nice guy as well apart from having that wee bit of a bad temper.
Frost still showed in patches on the street and rooftops, though the sun was shining between clouds. He collected the Observer and Mail from the newsagent. Often he would have had his dirty washing with him and he would go there and then to the launderette and enjoy the read while the stuff spun round in the machine. But he had other things to think of. Back up the stairs he ate a boiled egg and toast and it was most enjoyable. There was this feeling he had, as though some sort of unstated vow about fried food had been made by him. Was he going to give it up! It was quite exciting to contemplate. What the fuck would he eat in future? No, he had probably just decided to stop eating so much of it. Fried grub was one of the main factors in why Glasgow suffered the highest incidence of heart disease in the whole of Western Europe.