Mr Gray, not very graciously, seemed to accept this but said the final choice of title would probably be decided by the eventual publisher’s marketing department. He said that if I paid for the printing out of John’s estate the book, edited as he envisaged, would certainly be distributed by Bloomsbury Publishing of London, a highly successful firm that had done well out of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books. Mr Gray (who clearly has a high opinion of his own talents) said he would design and provide the book with decorative illustrations, “in colour, if the money stretches so far”. He indignantly refused my offer of payment for his editorial work because, “It is a privilege to be midwife to so unique a volume.” John Tunnock would never be a popular success (he said) but he would “claw back” something from Bloomsbury in royalties if I signed a paper granting him possession of copyright. This I was pleased to do.
He differed from Alan Riach, however, by insisting that I write the introduction, because his reputation as an occasional writer of fiction often led critics to doubt the value of his serious work. But Lady Sim-Jaegar (he gallantly declared) was both known in United States business circles and remembered in Britain as the glamorous wife of a popular American ambassador. My introduction would publicize the book better than anything by him if I described my discovery of the material and his editorial method: he would use the undated diary entries to introduce and connect the fictions, thus annoying purists but making the book more entertaining. He had also found a verse among the papers that would give the book a cheerful end, and as editor, he would provide notes explaining details that some readers might find puzzling.
“Footnotes or endnotes?” I asked. He said, “Marginal notes. I like widening my readers’ range of expectations.”
I saw no sense in that but let it go.*
Writing this introduction has so saturated me in what seems a bygone era (though actually modern Scotland) that I am tempted to say that I now lay down my pen, satisfied in having done all I can for my unfortunate cousin’s memory. But I dictate these words to a secretary sitting with her wireless-enabled laptop on the sunny patio of my Los Angeles home. It only remains to add that the publishing director of Bloomsbury, or perhaps her marketing department, insists for commercial reasons that the book be called Old Men in Love, which is certainly more accurate than Alasdair Gray’s original idea. I will now do my best to forget John Tunnock while hoping that Mr Gray manages to “claw back” more money from the publication than he has led me to believe possible.
Beverly Hills, California
28 July 2007
* The marginal notes from the print edition have been converted to endnotes for the ebook format.
ONE TUNNOCK'S DIARY 2001
The time is now three in the morning after the most bemusing hours of my life. They started yesterday when I arose and as usual on days when cleaners come, had to start by tidying away signs of female presence scattered over my floors from living room to lavatory: discarded garments, cosmetic tools, photographic magazines about the sex lives of beautiful rich people. The women I once knew kept a tidy house — why are young things who stay here different? I begin by showing them cupboards, drawers and the newspaper rack but when I suggest they tidy things into them they snort and ignore me. They love their messes like cats that have not been housetrained so claim a new territory by pissing over it. When serving breakfast to Niki yesterday I told her so. Her reaction was violent and I came near to apologising for my honesty. Our parting was acrimonious. Worked all day at University Library on Athenian economics, left late, called in at Tennants. It was buzzing with the communal elation that usually follows Scottish football victories, though the TV kept showing what seemed a Hollywood disaster movie. I joined the Mastermind1 who told me suicidal terrorists had made two passenger planes crash into the World Trade Center, totally destroying it and killing hundreds. He thought the elation in Tennants resembled the delight of mobs in Berlin, Paris and London who in 1914 cheered the start of the first great modern war — they knew the world would now change unpredictably, which gave them a brief illusion of freedom. I disagreed. The Twin Towers have been the main financial house of an Empire State whose bankers and brokers (according to New York writer Tom Wolfe), think themselves masters of the universe although they do nothing but enrich themselves by manipulating international money markets. They do not care what this does to other nations, but know they control them, and such capitalists should not be perfectly safe. The destroyers of the Trade Center must have thought like John Brown and the blacks who attacked the United States armoury in Virginia and those who in 1916 flew the Irish Republic flag above the central Dublin Post Office: they knew they would die but thought their example would change history in a way years of appealing for justice had failed to change it. Mastermind is an old-fashioned Tory since his father was a landowning squire in the north of England. After a thoughtful silence he said the atrocity would not even slightly damage Capitalism, which is fully insured against the worst conceivable losses of life and property. The calamity was an act of guerrilla warfare by folk without an army and air force to fight the U.S.A. — folk from several lands where the U.S.A. have propped dictatorships, usually to let the U.S.A. buy natural products cheaply — Iran had been one before the recent war. This propping had been done secretly with British assistance, so most Americans and Britains knew nothing of it. If President Bush reacts by declaring war on much poorer nations another Vietnam situation will arize, which the terrorists probably want. Bush’s richest supporters will want that too, as their wealth gathers interest from an expanding war economy. It will also excuse them for seizing dictatorial powers unthinkable in peace. “Interesting times,” concluded Mastermind, having turned my temporary elation into worry for the future.
I came home and was pleasantly surprized at first, thinking Niki had recovered from her huff and tidied the house more thoroughly than I had ever seen it since she moved in. Several minutes passed before I saw she has finally moved out, helped by a systematic partner or partners who own or have hired a van. They have removed enough from this house to equip another, also many small, valuable ornaments. I wandered from room to room in a kind of daze, wondering what to tell the police. My fondness for young things could lead to difficulties if Niki is under the age of consent. What is the age of consent? (Memo: find out.) Such thoughts, troublesome at first, are now eased by blissful relief not caused by sipping this brandy the robbers failed to discover under the pianola lid.
Yes, my life suddenly feels wonderfully simplified by the disappearance of Niki and familiar objects I now realize I never liked. The silver-framed photographs were especially depressing. Inside them our family history flowed through three misleadingly respectable generations: the grandparents I never knew, then my mother and aunts in their younger days, finally me standing between Nell and Nan clutching my Ph.D. scroll, capped and gowned, plump and po-faced like an alarm clock between two candlesticks. My aunts said that was the proudest moment of their lives but I hate being reminded of my appearance. I hope Niki and partners get good money for those frames. The rising crescendo of our quarrels over the last month has been exhausting. Yvonne, equally messy, heralded her departure in the same way. I keep forgetting how each unexpected disappearance restores me to the hopeful freedom I first enjoyed after Aunt Nan’s funeral. Once more I am a man again. In fact more than a man — a writer! Remember the words of Vasari that inspired that bashful university student, poor wee John Tunnock: Nature has created many men who are small and insignificant in appearance but who are endowed with spirits so full of greatness and hearts of such boundless courage that they have no peace until they undertake difficult and almost impossible tasks and bring them to completion, to the astonishment of those who witness them.2 The years of school teaching and running a home for elderly invalids only allowed time to collect raw materials for my book. Since Nan died I have sketched out many adequate chapters but completed none. Niki, Yvonne etcetera. were wildly distracting but necessary, for without the sexual pleasure they gave I could not convincingly describe passionate people. True, I found passion late in life, but so did Fra Filippo Lippi, also orphaned at an early age. He too was in his forties when he helped a young thing escape from a nunnery and began his great paintings in Prato Cathedral. But at last, thank God, I am exiled from fleshly distractions. Silence, exile and cunning will now let me reveal, here in Glasgow, the European Erdgeist to the world in a vision of three unique civilizations. It will be called WHO PAID FOR ALL THIS? and when that Great Book Booms, none other will be left upstanding. Tomorrow, Tunnock, to work!