1982 Janine (39 page)

I was shuddering with silent laughter and had a grin that hurt my face. I no longer feared anything because perfect self-hatred casteth out fear. I sat down, folded my arms and
crossed one leg over the other. This made me safer. Standing men cannot with dignity punch a seated one, and these belligerent men stood very much upon their dignity. I said softly, “Please inform your daughter that I love her dearly and will marry her whenever she feels it best that I do so.”

He gaped at me. If (as I suspect, but maybe I wrong him) if his moral bullying had been aimed at making me buy Helen an abortion this outcome was a defeat for him. The abortion was to have been at my expense. A wedding would be at his. He did not shrink, but his mass lost some of its righteous density. I was still grinning but he did not mention that. Maybe the grin indicated pain. He said plaintively, “Would she not prefer to hear these words from
your
mouth?”

I said, “Perhaps. She and I have arranged to meet a week from now when we will discuss the matter in detail, but if you feel before then that she requires reassurance, tell her what I have just said. Tomorrow I am visiting my parents. The news will be as much a shock for them as for the rest of us –”

“No miner need regret seeing his son marry my daughter!” cried Mr Hume.

“Good,” I said. “I will phone Helen when I return.”

I stood up and pointed at the table where my books were spread. I said, “And now I would like to resume my studies. The college will reopen shortly and I had better do well there, I will soon have a wife and family to feed.”

I walked to the door and said to the tall, staring youth who stood against it, “Excuse me please.”

He stood aside. I learned later he was only fifteen. He said uncertainly, “I'm called Kevin.”

I opened the door and said, “Goodbye Kevin.”

He walked through after the briefest of inquiring glances at his father. His older brother followed him without a word though on the way past he gave me a straight hard stare. I answered with a nod and another “Goodbye”.

Mr Hume left with slower steps, sighing and shaking his head. He stopped in front of me and said, “You're a cold fish.”

I shrugged. I felt that what I was no longer greatly interested me. He went out and I shut the door.

The room was calm again. It contained a queerly familiar feeling, a slight but steady pinching pressure on the brain and heart. My parents' house had felt like this in the years before I escaped from it to Glasgow. After the nightmare of the last hour and a half this well-known sensation was a comfort, and it was deserved, which was also a comfort. For more than six months I had lived in a free vast universe with no limit to the things I might do, the love and comradeship I might enjoy. I was now starting to pay for that freedom. From now onward Glasgow and the universe would feel like my parents' house, and in some centre of myself a voice whispered, “Quite right too”, and sniggered meanly.

Back in the long town my parents received the news with regret but no acrimony. Dad said with a sigh, “Well, Jock, it is not the first time that has happened.”

Mum glanced at him expressionlessly. He seemed not to notice and explained that he was referring to history – the unlooked-for pregnancy was a very frequently recorded historical fact. Their resignation must have depressed me if I had hoped they would ask if I really loved the girl? (No.) Did she love me? (No.) Had we not considered adoption? (Yes.) What prevented that? (Money.) How much was needed? (Between two or three hundred pounds.) Well son, your mother and I are by no means rich, but we've a little laid by, so if it's any use to you etcetera. But they only asked if she was a nice girl, and the news that she was receiving a college education, and that her father owned his own shop, reassured them on that point.

So all the McLeishes visited the Humes in Cambuslang. Mum was probably sincere when she told Mrs Hume that it must be wonderful to have a house with your own garden round it but her tone conveyed more politeness than admiration. Mr Hume asked Dad about the state of the British coal industry in the tones of a successful industrialist querying an employee of a less fortunate rival, but Dad's quiet answers discouraged condescension and both sides got down to business. There was not much to be decided. Everyone wanted a quiet wedding. Mr and Mrs Hume
wanted a quiet wedding in a local church followed by a reception for a few family friends at a nearby hotel. I said I would prefer a wedding in a Glasgow registry office followed by a meal in a restaurant for the families alone. Mrs Hume said, “But that will suggest we have something to be ashamed of. Something to hide.”

I said, “We have.”

“
You
have!” Mr Hume said fiercely. “My daughter has not.”

To my astonishment Helen said quietly, “I agree with Jock.”

At this the elder Humes ignored their daughter and future son-in-law and appealed to the elder McLeishes: “Surely
you
see the importance of a respectable start in life for a young married couple?”

My mother said, “I know what you mean, but should not the wishes of the bride and groom come first?”

“Certainly not,” said Mrs Hume.

“Remember who will be paying for all this,” said Mr Hume. “Me.”

This caused a silence. Mr Hume broke it by saying, “Helen! Do you really detest the notion of a decent wedding, or are you trying to curry favour with your future husband?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“Well then,” said Mr Hume cunningly to me, “since both my daughter and your parents are prepared to be guided by your preference, the only real difference is between you on one side and myself and Mrs Hume on the other, and we outnumber you two to one.”

I arose, seized the shaft of the standard lamp and, swinging it like a scythe, knocked the cut glass vases off the sideboard, the framed views of Clyde coastal resorts from the walls, and Mr Hume's spectacles from his heavy selfish dour practical face. Then I peed on the hearthrug. No I didn't. I said, “Do what you like, Mr Hume.”

If there was contempt in my tone he did not notice it.

During this visit I sometimes saw my mother direct upon Helen, when Helen did not notice, a glance of puzzled curiosity. She was clearly wondering, ‘Is this the woman who so exercised my son that he lost half a stone in six
weeks and had to have the waistbands of his trousers narrowed?' She could not understand it. She recognised that Helen was not a sensual woman, or not a woman whose senses could be much roused by me. Denny and I had always slept in each other's arms but even when we were married Helen turned away from me after lovemaking. I saw Mum give up the question with a slight shrug and headshake. Maybe she decided I was a secret footballer. My path to matrimony was punctuated by cryptic shrugs.

So everything was settled to Mr and Mrs Hume's satisfaction, but I planned a small, satisfying revenge on them. I would ask Alan to be my best man. If I rented him an evening dress with starched shirt front etcetera, his friendly but impeccable lordliness would make it impossible for the Humes and their relatives to feel anything but inferior to this peculiar person. And at the reception I would have Isi with his thick German-Jewish accent and absentminded air varied by intense moments of intellectual curiosity, and wee Willie with his Glasgow shipworker's accent, and ancient boyish face, and shining enthusiasm for a future based upon alchemy and anarchy. These three would be perfectly polite but would strike everyone except my father (who would enjoy conversing with them) as indefinably and totally wrong. But I did not at once visit Alan to discuss the matter, because everything concerning my marriage made me lethargic.

Then one day on a billboard outside a newsagent's I read the words GLASGOW TECH STUDENT PLUNGES TO DOOM. One of Glasgow's ornate Victorian buildings near the city centre was awaiting demolition. Alan's fractured body was found shortly after dawn in a lane at the foot of the back wall. The report hinted that he had fallen from the roof while attempting to strip lead from it. Which is possible. He hated waste and was always short of money. But why should a man who feared heights force himself on to a great height to make a few pounds, at most, when many would have felt privileged to lend him a fiver? But he hated borrowing. O, I was enraged with him, but not surprised. With his death the ceiling and walls of my shrunk universe
narrowed even further. I asked Dad to be my best man, and the wedding was as dull as the Humes wanted it to be.

But before the wedding came THE SHOW OF PRESENTS. I had not realised how many folk in the long town respected my parents until I saw in their house the swelling heap of domestic utensils and ornaments which was later carted to Cambuslang and added to THE SHOW OF PRESENTS in the Hume's bungalow. Do other countries than Scotland practise this natural, obscene ritual? Married couples naturally want all the gifts they can get, their families naturally want to display the extent of their friendships, friends and relations naturally want their generosity to be widely recognised. So in the bride's parents' best room the tables and sideboards are loaded with presents all ticketed with givers' names so that everyone's generosity can be priced and compared to whoever is interested in the matter. Well, the fucking royal family do it, why should not the fucking Humes and McLeishes? And this socially competitive incitement to generosity does more than satisfy our greed for gifts and ostentation, it makes the young folk less likely to escape each other.

Shortly before the wedding I got a letter from Helen asking me to phone her at the house of a friend. I did. She said tensely, “Jock, please come and see me tonight. I need to tell you something.”

I said, “Helen, three days from now I will promise before witnesses to see you practically every day of my life. Do we need to start sooner than that?”

I heard her draw breath and moan as if I had punched her so I apologised and went to the home of the friend. Helen opened the door and led me into a room with floral wallpaper, thick Persian carpet, Chinese display cabinet and a fat 1930s three-piece suite. A shadowy brothel atmosphere was imparted by wall-lights in orange parchment shades with scarlet fringes. We sat on the sofa with two feet of space between us. Helen told me that she was not pregnant after all. That morning her bleeding had started again. She said, “It was all psychological – hysterical, if you'd rather call it that.”

I thought hard for a while then said, “Good. You can go back to college and finish your education as you planned. Yes, a baby would have been an economic disaster for us at this stage. Thanks for the news, but you could have told me over the phone.”

She said, “You still want to marry me?”

“No, but I must. Because of the presents. Do you still want to marry me?”

“No, but I will. Because of the presents.”

We both laughed hysterically until Helen, at last, started crying, then I think we cuddled each other. There was no love between us but there was sympathy. Each knew how miserably lonely the other was. I could not ask my parents to return the thirty-odd presents to acquaintances all over the long town, still less could Helen ask her parents to return fifty-odd presents to theirs. No explanation, no excuse, no apology could justify a mistake which had made so many folk spend such a lot of money.

I now think my mother would have had no difficulty in returning these presents. I seem to hear her saying in her driest voice, “Our Jock is a soft mark where the lassies are concerned. One of them persuaded him she was in a state which she turned out not to be in, and her hoity-toity parents took her seriously: However, the mistake was discovered before any real harm was done, and Jock has learned to be more careful in future. I'm sorry to have to return this – I hope you soon find another use for it.”

Mrs Hume could easily have found a similar formula to win sympathy for Helen by discrediting me: “I'm afraid my daughter's fiancé misled her as to his social origins. We discovered that for all his fancy ways he was nothing but a miner's son and an inveterate liar. The poor girl is very cast down, of course, but she'll recover. Please forgive me for having to return this but I'm sure you understand.”

Why did Helen and I not see that returning the presents would hurt our parents a lot less than a marriage would hurt us?

Cowardice. Cowards cannot look straight at the world. I proved a coward when I let Mr Hume bully me into
marrying his daughter. Helen proved a coward when she decided she was pregnant, or when she realised she was not. Stop. Do I believe that? Helen never looked like a coward to me, not even when she was near to screaming in the middle of Miss Rombach's restaurant with her father and brothers ready to attack me from a nearby table. When she seduced me, when she told me she was pregnant, when she told me she was not pregnant, she struck me as a self-willed woman just managing to keep hold of an unbearable situation. That is not cowardice. But if she was not a coward then she married me because she wanted to. What a queer idea. Can it be true?