‘Are you all right?’ she said.
‘What’s all right?’ I said.
‘Uh-huh. I see. It’s one of your metaphysical nights. Well, we’re just trying to have a party.’
‘Let the party proceed,’ I said grandly.
‘Oh, thank you. Will that be all right? Listen, Jack. You’re welcome here if you can behave yourself. But I’m not having any trouble.’
‘Could Ah talk to you, Jan? About Scott?’
‘Jack. You ever heard of timing? Enjoy. If you can. I’ll maybe see you later.’
She went off to mingle. Unable to have what I needed, I made for what I needed least of all — another drink. It was white wine I thought wouldn’t have been out of place in a vinegar bottle.
‘The champagne’s finished,’ someone told me.
‘It is, it is,’ I said darkly.
That opaque exchange, as if we were speaking different languages, crystallised how alien I was to the others. I wasn’t part of the occasion. I was something unnecessary that had been added, a quibbling footnote to the text of their enjoyment. I wandered about the place, wilfully editing their pleasure into the significance it had for me.
If I had been them, I would have thrown me out. It would have saved us all embarrassment. People were talking loudly to one another. They were being pleasant enough. But I heard them talking about house prices and cars and business-deals and I decided that this wasn’t a party. It was an auction. I saw the flower-pot of money that had attacked me. I managed to be polite in refusing a woman’s offer to dance. If she wanted me as a partner, I wasn’t the only one who might be well advised to go easy on the drink.
I took another glass of wine as the night suddenly caved in on me. I couldn’t reconcile this convention of the terminally self-satisfied with the bleak world I had been wandering through outside. Davy’s idea about the pyramids came back to me — all those wasted lives to construct a false, exclusive certainty, a habitat for wilful egos. I thought of Scott and Mrs White and Dan Scoular and Julian and Marlene in Drumchapel and Melanie McHarg. Somehow, I wanted a way to invite them to the party. Unfortunately, in my confused sense of things, I found it.
There was a wild logic to my madness. I decided that I wouldn’t pick a fight with Barry Murdoch. I stopped myself from haranguing a group who were explaining to one another how the poor create their own problems. With great difficulty, I refrained from demanding that Jan talk to me about Scott. Yet these minor triumphs of comparative wisdom only led me relentlessly to an absolute folly, a way to offend in one move every single person at the party.
I don’t know where my inspiration came from. But I suddenly found myself wrestling with my arch foe, the pot of money. Those closest to me were nonplussed at first and then amused. I suppose they thought they were witnessing one of those impromptu moments of cabaret that can happen at a party — the drunk woman’s dance on the table, the man who decides he can balance a bottle on his forehead. Drunkenness can give you surprising strength, just as rage can. I had both of them on my team at that time. I managed to lift the pot off the floor, to a spattering of derisive applause. As I made my way across the restaurant with it, legs splayed, struggling, people parted to let me pass. I had become an interesting curiosity. Was this my party piece? Was this what I did to get attention, being unable to say something witty or arresting? Perhaps it was. By the time I was standing facing them from behind the table where the food was, the room had gone silent. People were watching me, some with amusement, some in puzzled expectation. They possibly thought I was about to dedicate the money to a favourite charity. I suspect some of them believed it was a pre-arranged event. They seemed to be waiting for a formal speech. It was a short one.
‘You bastards!’ I shouted. ‘Eat money. It’s all you can fucking taste.’
I decanted the money carefully into the biggest Boeuf Bourgignon in the world. As I did so, I shook the pot meticulously along the full length of the dish, as if to make sure the ingredients were properly mixed. The coins rasped against the inside of the pot to shower on to the stew and submerge in it, instantly indistinguishable from the food. The notes fluttered and settled on the surface like some novel topping of yuppy haute cuisine. I stood looking at them, holding the charity pot that contained nothing but verdigris.
Into a vacuum of astonishment rushed a hubbub of shock. I was confronting a hydra of contorted faces. Voices bayed outrage at me. Five or six men, Barry Murdoch among them, started towards me. I wanted them to come ahead. The first one to reach me would be wearing a metal flowerpot for a hat.
‘Stop this!’
The stridency of the voice froze the room.
‘This stops now!’
The voice was Jan’s. Everybody waited, held in their poses.
‘Nobody will touch that man. Nobody. Jack, you leave now. Leave!’
I set down the flowerpot, which was as empty as my sense of myself.
‘Betsy. Let him out. And nobody touch him. Don’t dare.’
I passed through them like somebody walking among statues. Betsy let me out and locked the door behind me. I stood on the cobblestones of the alleyway in the soft rain. And drunkenness, like a false friend who was only there for the wild times, deserted me at once. I felt I had nowhere to go. I felt I had no one to be. I seemed to have consumed myself in my own grand gesture. I stood in a void and was simply a part of it. The rain was more real than I was.
‘Jack.’
It took me some time to locate the voice. It was Jan, standing on her balcony. No place was ever further away or less attainable than that balcony. Once she knew I was seeing her, she threw something down to me. My hands reached out automatically and caught it. It was a plastic bag. It didn’t weigh much.
Romeo in middle age: you won’t have to climb up to the balcony, which is maybe just as well. Juliet will stand there and fire down at you whatever you need, and even what you don’t need.
‘Just in case,’ she said, ‘you ever imagine you’ve got a reason for coming back here.’
She went into the flat. I looked in the bag. There were some of my clothes there. Maybe they were telling me who I was — Tom Docherty’s iron rations of the self. They brought me back from the disorientated wildness of what my mood had been, reminded me that living is a matter of small practicalities. Postures solve nothing. Action, not movement. It was necessary to re-engage with the small practicalities. I decided on the first one.
Taxi-time.
SEVEN
39
And on the seventh day I rested. It’s exhausting trying to remake the world in your own image.
As I let myself into the flat, carrying my little parcel of rejection from Jan, the phone was ringing. Moving hurriedly through the darkness, I stumbled on something and cursed it. It hadn’t been there when I left. Had the furniture been mating in my absence? I lifted the phone.
‘Where are you?’
It was a good question. I would have to give it some thought. ‘We’re having a slight gay-and-hearty here. You should be the guest of honour.’
It was Brian Harkness. He sounded like a town-crier. I had to hold the ear-piece side-on to my head. There was the sound of merriment in the background.
‘Jack? Is that you? What are you doing there? We’re in the Getaway. Behind closed doors. A mob of us. Marty was great tonight. They’re all asking for you. That doesn’t happen often. You should cash in on it while it lasts. Get over here. We’ve done it, we’ve done it. Mason, Brogan and Walker. How’s that for a half-back line? Signed, sealed and delivered.’
‘That’s good.’
‘Matt Mason still hasn’t believed it, I don’t think. You should have seen his face. When we were bringing him out, he looked as if he’d never seen a street before. As if he didn’t recognise where he lived.’