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.
Wait. Soot could be brown, soot could be purple. Soot need not be black, black grey. How do real artists manage? They just plunge in and try, they do not ask first; what colour is such and such; they just jumped in and did what it was, in front of their eyes, their eyes, theirs and nobody else, it lay in front of their eyes. What lay in front of their eyes? Whatever, what it was, whatever it was, and if it was green it was green, and why should it not be green, if soot is green it is green, fucking green!
I looked at the drawing, then out the window. A pigeon. One of the tenements lay derelict and a commune of pigeons had taken over the top flat. One landed exactly then, wings barely flapping. They flew in and out the broken windows, lined the juncture of the roof and on the chimneypots, digging their beaks into the moss-covered slates. Imagine worms on the roof. And hopeless-looking birds, but not in flight. The bigger the bird the more graceful it was, leaving aside pelicans. What was the wee fat bird that nests on these break-neck cliffs overlooking the sea? Not terns.
That was you getting old when your memory went. My uncle said it. Once the memory goes it becomes a downward spiral. They fly ten thousand miles without a break. Wee fat birds that the old St Kildans used to eat. These men climbed up incredible cliff faces in their bare feet because maybe only their big toe could find a grip. They had feet like shovels, with webbed toes, evolved from a thousand years of climbing. More. When had the first humans come to the island? Probably chased there five thousand years ago, same period as the Skara Brae settlers in Orkney.
Webbed toes! Surely not. How could it be? If they had had webbed toes the whole world would have known. Maybe they did. Anthropology was the appropriate area.
Life was just extraordinary. In some ways it was. Even you looked out the window, observing from the window, and saw the big puddle. Really, it was an enormous puddle. It flooded the entire backcourt and left all the families up two closes no way to reach the midden. Not unless they trailed through the water. Fucking webbed feet, ye needed webbed feet to live in Glasgow.
How to reach the midden? Send the weans!
What the hell else do we have children for? They would love the adventure!
But it was disgraceful; a scandal said Lindsey and she was right. Why should any child have to live in this environment. This place was horrible; infant mortality rates scandalous, scandalous; people living in confrontation with their surroundings, a pitched battle between the two, unlike what’s his name, Lowry the great Lancashire artist who painted scenes from working-class life, crowds of people going to work in the factory, returning home from the factory. Lowry had been a political animal. He had to have been. Otherwise why use the subject matter?
I was not a political animal. This was a confession I enjoyed. I felt justified. Perhaps not. But it was a justification, whether I felt it or not. I liked to think I was political but I was not — my God, a bird had popped out the top window of the derelict building, out onto a windowsill, arms behind its back, beneath the coat-tails, head cocked, gazing down to the backcourt, supreme observer, a God-like witness.
But why the hell had they allowed the building to degenerate into dereliction? It was a nonsense. This city’s political leaders, the ones that werent corrupt, were a bunch of cowardly bastards, no-good cowardly bastards. But it was up to the citizens to take up arms. Fight the buggers. Fucking fight them, dont be scared. Not that they were scared, they werent scared at all, they just had better things to do with their time, unlike me.
I was a do-nothing.
Like every place else on the globe, the battle in Scotland lay between the people and the politicians, the people and the political system, the class system, the people and the bullies, the people and the sycophants, the people and the armed forces.
Why not get actively engaged in politics. How to manage that? Go out and do something. Find a campaign and go and join it. People were fighting against racist laws. Go and join a picketline. Why was I unable to do that? Or Trident missiles, the people down at Faslane, young and old, elderly, all fighting against the army, navy and cops and the secret services, not to mention their American coozans, all down there fighting ordinary Scottish folk. Why didnt I go and join them? And take my child with me. People took their children. I didnt. Me and Lindsey, we didnt. If I suggested that to her she would run a mile. I never did suggest it, I didnt have to.
But who said I was unable to do it!
Unproven.
One day I might. One day soon. I had only been home a couple of months. Even being home was a surprise, never mind the accoutremon. Girlfriend and babee.
Life moved on. A lighter touch was required. Defective technique. One day I would seek tuition. There were leisure classes in the field. How to be an artist in ten weeks. It shore sounded good ol partner.
Yet the political activists were the ones to admire. Both my siblings were activists. I was not. But so what! Here at the base level, street level, the level of existence, ordinary existence. My siblings didnt deign to stoop so low. I had the family, they had none.
That aspect of white crayon, its smoothness in application, no, I did not care for it.
Down in the backcourt dissolving lumps of excrement and tissue paper clogged the water. The flooding caused by three days’ heavy rain and one burst pipe. The level of the puddle had risen to the extent that one now had to search for the source. What could one do. Very little. I dampened the white crayon with my fore-finger.