“I could have played John Brown!” said Mr MacBleaney aloud. “Yes, my normal accent too is Glaswegian, but I’m enough of an actor to sound like a teuchter from Drumnadrochit when I want to, yess inteet to gootness Donalt, whateffer. Shimerahaa mahay!”
A fit of coughing made him sit on the step again, no longer happy, because directly or indirectly Billy Connolly was responsible for everything that had gone wrong with Scotland — small shops replaced by supermarkets, local schools and hospitals amalgamated into big central ones, and nobody asked to recall the old ways and speak for elderly marginalised folk. Newspapers no longer phoned the third Mr Glasgow for soundbites on politics and showbusiness; no wonder he had started drinking again. Gloria had foreseen that. When they knew she was dying she had not gone out of her mind (as he had) but calmly discussed their finances with an accountant and lawyer, and made him sign forms so that his home and finances were secure no matter how stupidly he acted. O yes, she had loved him. He wept for a while then began to cheer up again.
The indoors smoking ban had been wonderful for him! At first he thought it would kill him because smoking had made him drink more slowly. It still did because now he went outside to smoke, standing and puffing on pavements with other nicotine addicts. This had given him a new lease of life. Being now a persecuted minority smokers shared a liberty, equality and fraternity unknown to those who skulked in pubs until closing time. He had new friends because of the ban — older folk who remembered him as a footballer, sports commentator, actor, also younger folk who enjoyed his tales of those times. One of these usually brought him home in a taxi, often a woman, though it was hard to remember which — most women under fifty seemed the same equally attractive young woman nowadays. None had stayed the night, yet he still had hopes.
The cold step again reminded him where he was, then a sudden memory made him stand joyfully up. Gloria, in case one of them got locked out, had put a copy of the apartment key on top of the door frame. Being about three inches taller than him she could easily reach it by standing on tiptoe. They had never needed to use that key so it must still be there. A low box or stool was all he needed to reach it, but the hour was far too late to rouse a neighbour and borrow one; he must use the rocking chair. He pushed it over the marble tiles until the hind rockers and chair-back together touched the door, but this left the seat at an angle impossible to stand upon. He turned it round and put the front against the door, but now the back and arms stopped him climbing onto it, so he placed it sideways against the door. Holding onto the doorknob, he managed to kneel on the seat, which still rocked a little. Standing upright was a delicate balancing act. He did it by keeping hold of the doorknob with one hand, grasping the chair-back with the other, and cautiously raising his left leg until the foot was flat on the seat. That done, with equal caution, he began straightening the leg, then gradually raising his body while letting go of the doorknob and reaching upward to –
While doing this something happened so suddenly that he neither understood nor remembered it afterward. For a time he seemed comfortably at home in bed, in a darkness suitable to someone who has wakened in the early hours of a winter morning, yet he seemed to hear people overhead discussing him, though their words made no sense. That did not worry him, and soon he was asleep for good.
THE MAGIC TERMINUS
MY LIFE HAS CONTAINED VERY LITTLE PAIN. Even in childhood the worst I endured was boredom. My parents wanted dull lives because their own had been too exciting. They had belonged to an unemployed industrial class and lived in a slum in fear of having their dole money cut and in equal fear of sectarian violence. My dad’s family were Protestant bigots, my mum’s equally bigoted Catholics, and joined in matrimony were equally disliked by most of their neighbours. World War 2 greatly improved things, bringing employment, fixed wages, regular meals at the price of some danger. Dad fought in North Africa, was injured by a fragment of shrapnel, then found a safer job in the army pay corps. Mum was directed into an underground explosive factory. When reunited after the war he started working in Clydebank for Singer Sewing Machines, she became a steady housewife. I was born when politicians of every party wanted Britain to be a Welfare State for everyone. Only those who had enjoyed great pre-war privileges found this boring, and young folk like me who had never known worse times. I matured before The Beatles were famous and being a teenager became exciting.
But the dull routines of home and school were made bearable by steady doses of art. There were two local cinemas within an easy walk from our home and half a dozen others a cheap tram ride away, so Mum and Dad and me saw three or four films a week — not unusual in these mainly pre-television days — and I saw more, being in the ABC Children’s Saturday Film Club. I recently reread The Moviegoer, a novel about a lawyer in New Orleans who says the greatest moments of his life were not his love affairs, but when Gary Cooper straps on his guns and goes out to face the villains in High Noon, or when a cat runs across a dark lane, rubs herself against someone, and a spot of light briefly shows the sinister, slightly babyish smile of Orson Welles in the part of Harry Lime. My own best moments were when a whirling black tornado sucks the grey wooden shack of Dorothy’s home up into the sky — when she sees through the window a cow bobbing past, two men rowing a canoe, a bicycle pedalled through the air by the nasty woman who stole Dorothy’s dog Toto — when that woman and bike transform into witch on broomstick before the house crashes down — when Dorothy opens the door, and steps out of the grey monochrome bedroom into the full Technicolor land of Oz. In the local public library I found other exciting adventure stories, sometimes horrific but always safer than games played in the school playground. I am not a coward but have always avoided pointless risks. My favourite books had magic openings through which children not unlike me found wonderlands like those Alice entered through a rabbit hole and looking glass. I read Masefield’s Midnight Folk and Box of Delights, also an Enid Blyton series about children finding secret passages into The Valley of Adventure, Castle of Adventure, Island of Adventure, Mountain of Adventure. I read several times Dan Billany’s The Magic Door about an unruly class of primary school children with a silly teacher, Mr Rocket. One of the class finds a bronze doorknocker that, banged on any wall, creates a door into the past through which they meet Julius Caesar, King Arthur and prehistoric monsters. I would have enjoyed The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe but it was published when I had outgrown childish stories.
Visiting the library had an advantage over seeing films with Mum and Dad, because on the way home together we always cheerily discussed what we had seen, but never referred to erotically suggestive episodes that nowadays would hardly bring a blush to the cheek of the most innocent child. But they greatly excited me in ways I could only enjoy remembering when completely alone, so visits to the library were often more satisfactory. Here I filled my head with exotic fantasies whose only hero was me, daydreams so engrossing that I sometimes woke from them to find I had walked home with no memory of crossing roads busy with traffic. I would have been knocked down had a part of my mind not been unconsciously guiding me by noticing the traffic and traffic signals. It is commonplace for habitual actions to free our minds by becoming automatic, but the extent of my subconscious guidance was unusual, and I found it could be enlarged. Mum told me I had annoyed her friends by not answering their greetings and acting as if they did not exist when I passed them in the street. I promised this would not happen again. It did not. I still returned from the library in a complete daydream, but now unconsciously smiled back and exchanged conventional greetings with her friends.