Weekend
Authors: William McIlvanney
Also by William McIlvanney
Fiction
Remedy is None
Gift from Nessus
The Big Man
Walking Wounded
The Kiln
Weekend
The Detective Laidlaw trilogy
Laidlaw
The Papers of Tony Veitch
Strange Loyalties
Poetry
The Longships in Harbour
In Through the Head
These Words: Weddings and After
Non Fiction
Shades of Grey – Glasgow 1956–1987, with Oscar Marzaroli
Surviving the Shipwreck
‘In an enlightened world,
Weekend
would sell like lottery tickets … Among the most compelling and convincing characters is the Updikian-sounding Harry Beck, whose party banter could have been scripted by a whisky-soaked Woody Allen.’
Alan Taylor,
Sunday Herald
‘A poignantly funny variation on a French farce … wonderfully witty and wistful’
John Harding,
Daily Mail
‘It’s more than 10 years since William McIlvanney’s last novel,
The Kiln
. That book, and his much earlier
Docherty
, are two of the best novels of the last half century … Now, long awaited, comes
Weekend
, and it is every bit as good’
Allan Massie,
Scotland on Sunday
‘Deftly switching the narration between characters, McIlvanney examines the frailties of human nature, and the underlying motives that drive the often-inexplicable behaviour we all indulge in when it comes to sexual relationships. Adeptly, he also makes us empathise with several difficult, self-involved characters, and juxtaposes the highbrow literary theory of the weekend’s study with the base human desires wonderfully, pulling the two together in a climax which is considered yet surprisingly moving. A subtly thrilling return.’
Doug Johnstone,
The List
‘McIlvanney offers a masterclass in how to treat our very ancient modern condition: with as much high seriousness and sly wit as it deserves, with compassion for our foolishness and awe at our powers of endurance’
Ronald Frame,
Scottish Review of Books
‘All his old characteristics are there – the finely wrought style, the deft one-liners, the arresting authorial interventions, the omnipresent mockery (self-mockery), the undertow of sadness at the harlequinade of life – but his writing, cleansed of all traces of rage and violence, now has a deftness and gentleness not always evident before … [a] fine novel’
Joseph Farrell,
Times Literary Supplement
WEEKEND
William McIlvanney
This edition published in Great Britain in 2014
by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
First published in Great Britain in 2006 by Hodder and Stoughton
A division of Hodder Headline
Copyright © 2006 by William McIlvanney
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Extract from Phoenix Too Frequent by Christopher Fry
© 1946 reproduced by kind permission of Oxford University Press.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance
to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available on
request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 78211 196 2
For Siobhán McCole Lynch – the best – with love and thanks
Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve been sphinxed
but don’t let it spoil your weekend.
Contents
One
It was that time when, during an evening’s drinking, conversation puts away the telescopic rifle and takes out the scattergun. Jacqui had been the first to reach that point, Alison thought.
‘Crap,’ Jacqui was saying. ‘All men. Crap. Why do we bother?’
Kate was laughing her nervous laugh.
‘I could believe you more,’ Alison said, ‘if you didn’t seem hypnotised by the bum-parade at the bar.’
‘Choosing a target,’ Jacqui said. She went into an American accent. ‘I feel like kicking ass.’
Alison managed not to yawn. She didn’t like Jacqui in this mood, one which she was putting on more and more, like power dressing. It had been like that ever since Kevin walked out on her. That must have been a traumatic moment, it was true. But it bothered Alison that what had been an understandable reaction was threatening to extend into a lifestyle.
Alison understood how she must have felt but, concerned as she was for Jacqui, she couldn’t quite see how she was justified in judging everybody by one dire experience. One creepy man didn’t define a species. Why did Jacqui have to
come on like an embittered veteran of the sex war when she had only been involved seriously in one skirmish? She sometimes acted like fifty instead of twenty-one. At twenty-six, Alison still felt more open to experience than Jacqui seemed, though not as vulnerable as Kate, she had to admit. But then who was?
Alison watched Kate reacting to any loud laugh or shouted comment that happened in the bar, sensitive as a thoroughbred filly to every shift in the wind. She looked younger than nineteen. She hadn’t even realised yet how good-looking she was. The thought endeared her to Alison all over again. Surrounded by people who wore their ordinariness like peacock feathers, Kate’s modesty was luminous. In a place where so many voices seemed to be inventing what life owed them, she appeared still to be waiting for life to discover her.
Alison thought of a television programme she had seen some time ago. It was supposed to be an attempt to discover new pop stars. One of the contestants was a weedy boy with an ego so big he should have had an articulated lorry to carry it around. His voice was awful but, when he was voted out, all he felt was contempt for the stupidity of the voters. He explained why, stroking a scrawny moustache that looked as if his father might have given him it for Christmas, like a cowboy suit. But he should never have allowed his son out of the house with it on. ‘You see,’ the boy said, explaining why he should have won. ‘What they don’t seem to understand is. You can teach anybody how to sing. But you can’t teach good looks.’ Nor, it had occurred to Alison, how to recognise them.
The wild egotist would have fitted in perfectly in this bar. Alison was wondering when, instead of waiting for the world to tell us what we need to know about ourselves, people had decided to tell the world what it needed to know about them.
She felt that Jacqui was already hardening into an example of that attitude: take one pinpoint of experience and project it assumptively to infinity. Life is what you say it is, not what it tells you it is.
When Kevin left, Alison and Kate had arrived in Jacqui’s flat to help her through the trauma – at least that was what Alison had thought they were doing. They had finished up moving in with her. But instead of helping her to get beyond her bad time, they seemed to have allowed her simply to get comfortable in it. Their sympathy had apparently reinforced her bitterness rather than alleviating it.
As if confirming what Alison was thinking, Jacqui looked round the bar critically, like a judge at an amateur-dramatics competition who wasn’t impressed. Kate observed her anxiously.
‘I still fancy going,’ Kate said.
‘For what?’ Jacqui said. ‘What can you get there you can’t get here?’ She indicated the busy bar. ‘If you want it, that is.’
Alison resented Jacqui’s enjoyment of the influence she had over Kate. It was obvious that Kate was keen to go on the study weekend Professor Lawson had organised. It was also obvious that she didn’t feel confident enough to go without Jacqui’s company. Alison smiled. It was so like Kate to get excited about something as banal as a trip to Cannamore. Peter Pan with tits – to go on a study weekend will be a great adventure. Still, such naïve enthusiasm was refreshing. In deciding to try to help Kate manoeuvre Jacqui into going on the trip, Alison admitted to herself that she had her own reasons for wanting to be in the flat without them this weekend. But maybe altruism was always leavened with self-interest.
‘What can you get there that you can’t get here?’ Alison
said. ‘Maybe the chance to explore more than somebody else’s crotch.’
‘You mean there is more?’ Jacqui said.
‘Oh, enough with the Cynic-of-the-Year stuff,’ Alison said. ‘For a start, you’ll have a chance to talk to men without any assumptions being made. In places like this, you smile and some of them think you’ve thrown your knickers at them.’
‘Men? You mean like Andrew Lawson?’
‘He’s nice,’ Kate said. ‘He’s very nice.’
‘I didn’t say he wasn’t.’
‘At least he says some interesting things,’ Alison said.
‘He said I was to phone him tonight if we decided to go,’ Kate said. ‘He’s got two cancellations. He’ll be waiting to hear.’
Jacqui turned her mouth down.
‘Come on,’ Kate said. ‘What about it?’
‘I went last year,’ Alison said. ‘It was really good.’
Jacqui took a delaying sip of her Bacardi and Coke.
‘Where is it anyway?’
‘Willowvale,’ Kate said.
‘I’ve never heard of it,’ Jacqui said.
‘You missed the lecture when Andrew Lawson told us about it. He told us a lot about the place. It sounds really interesting.’
‘Willowvale?’
Its foundations had been laid in the imagination of a Victorian mill-owner, Andrew Lawson had told his students. He knew that because the present owner, Gordon Mitchell, had given
him a copy of a monograph called
Edward Muldoon: The Other Carnegie
, by P. Vincent J. Witherspoon. Gordon had offered him the pamphlet not just because he was a frequent visitor but because he was obviously as fascinated by the place as its owner was. From the first time he went there with his students, he had sensed the building not just as a place but as a brooding presence. Like a stranger looming large but saying nothing, it challenged him to understand it.
The monograph, Andrew quickly decided, wasn’t about to tell the true story of Willowvale. As he read, turning back from time to time to look at the black-and-white cover, it occurred to him that the way the author presented his own name was a clue. P. Vincent J. Witherspoon was as stiff as a starched collar. The date of the printing was 1926 but P. Vincent J., to give him his informal name, would already be old by that time and must have remained a discreet Victorian while the twenties roared around him.
Also, he had been a personal friend of Edward Muldoon, a slightly more youthful, admiring one, and was writing after Muldoon’s death. It was an act of homage, a Victorian statue in words, offering a life as a frozen stance rather than a fluid reality. Witherspoon was anxious not only to choose the most flattering posture he could find for his friend but for himself as well. There would be no treacherous deviation into harsh truth from this staunch supporter. That the monograph appeared to have been printed privately with Witherspoon’s own money must have allowed his work to avoid any interference from others.
Witherspoon wasn’t actively dishonest. Hints of an interpretation of Muldoon’s life bleaker than the one on offer here were scattered through his writing like polite coughing, which you were left to interpret as you would. Andrew learned to
appreciate trying to work out what the tangential remarks and discreet silences might mean.