My Life as a Man Read online

  ‘What are you playing at?’

  I followed the foreman along the corridor between the doors.

  Without looking round, he said, ‘Keep out of there.’

  ‘Is that a different firm?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ he said.

  ‘What are they making?’

  ‘A special truncheon that works as a whip one way and club the other – that one’s export only.’ He grinned. ‘It’s used on Death Row in the States.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Forget it, I’m joking,’ and marching off he let the doors swing back on me as I followed.

  The women weren’t much more helpful.

  ‘They make all kinds of different stuff,’ one of them assured me.

  ‘And the money’s good. See, if you get through there? You’re on a different rate.’

  ‘I don’t like it,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t bother your head about it, son. A job’s a job. You need a job, there’s plenty worse than this one. Anyways, most of it goes abroad. It’s no for here.’

  ‘Who cares where it’s for?’ the other one said, frowning. It was the first time I’d seen parts slipping past her on the belt, like a stutter, her quick hands missing a beat.

  That night I dreamed I was riding across a bridge, in armour. In the water I saw myself mirrored, metal gloves on my hands, a plume of feathers on my helmet. I was going to rescue the girl in the castle and if I had to kill to do it, that was all right. I had a sword.

  My first thought on Wednesday morning was for the girl. I was as tired as if I hadn’t slept, but I went the long way round the building to check if her car was there.

  Seeing it, I couldn’t bring myself to walk on. After a minute looking, I took a step towards it, then another. Just then, a face round and white as a plate appeared at the first-floor window. That was all it took to spin me round and set me scurrying off with cockcrow in my ears.

  I went into the factory with my mind made up. I’d keep on asking until I found out all there was to know about her. But when I came out of the lavatory (the smell of piss up my nose, if you sat on the toilet holes poked in the partitions at eye height, brown stains in the wash basin . . . thirty years of this; did I say thirty years?) I found the foreman, Ronnie, going through my rucksack, and that put it out of my head. I’d been leaving the rucksack under a bench where the coats were hung, and there he was down on his knees with the straps undone and the flap thrown back.

  ‘You’re sleeping rough,’ he said. He pulled out a shirt, and the pair of underpants wound in it fell out on the floor. ‘What kind of day’s work you going to do if you’re sleeping rough?’

  CHAPTER SIX

  Thursday night it went wrong. Since the Hairy Bastard threw me out, I’d been sleeping on Tony’s bedroom floor. There are people like that, nice guys you think of first when you need a favour. All he asked was that I was out of there before his parents got up. At least it meant for three days I got to work early enough to check the car in the private car park.

  Thursday night I was outside their flat at half eleven on the dot, which was our arrangement, waiting for Tony to open the door and slip me inside. Time passed. I’d walked around for hours; I was starving. I could hardly wait to get inside. Tony would have made sandwiches, the way he’d done the other nights – he was a decent guy. I put my ear to the door, then got down on my hunkers and lifted the flap of the letterbox. There were coats hung behind the door, but I could hear screaming and shouting.

  When the door opened, it nearly pulled me off my feet. I tried to push it further open and Tony’s voice whispered, ‘May’s home.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘She’s up the stick.’ A good job in London, I’d heard his father boasting, not just a pretty face. Now big sister was home and looking for somebody to hold the baby. A bit old-fashioned, but it was a family tragedy, I’m not stupid, I could see that.

  ‘I only need one more night,’ I said.

  ‘No chance, Harry. None of us’ll—’ His head whipped round as if somebody had come into the lobby behind him. ‘The old man’s going mental. None of us’ll get any sleep tonight,’ he said, and nearly took my nose off, he shut the door so fast.

  That night I slept rough.

  I didn’t have the hang of it. I hadn’t even the sense to put another shirt out of the rucksack on top of the one I was wearing. When I woke up in the morning at the back of a close, my legs had gone numb and my neck felt as if I’d grown a hump overnight. I thought it must be time to go to work, but there were hours still to go. I walked about, and the rain came on just after it got light. No bread, no cheese, no slug of milk out of Tony’s kitchen before his folk were up. Pissing against a wall in a backcourt. A woman shot up her window and yelled down at me. The hygiene Gestapo. There was a guy in a long black coat used to beg in Kelvingrove Park when the good weather arrived, ambushed the girls in particular, held out his hand, never said a word, challenged them with a stare. I mean, this was a fierce-looking guy, except that every spring he’d shrunk a little and one came when he wasn’t around any more. Winters are cold this far north.

  I bought breakfast at a corner shop. A macaroon bar wiped me out. Not a penny left. Well, one. I threw it up and toed it into the road. Thank God it was Friday.

  Strange thing is, seeing the car with its windows steamed up that morning, I envied her, sitting inside in comfort, warm and out of the rain.

  Funny, too, how quickly I’d fallen into the routine of the work. It wasn’t hard and, for sure, didn’t take any brains. One of the other boys, a long drink of water called Sammy, grumbled at me, ‘What you whistling for? I’m bored out of my skull. This place is shite.’ Sammy the intellectual; but as for me, sad case that I was, the truth is I was enjoying myself. Boring was lying in bed because you couldn’t face getting up. No, the smell of oil, the heat, the clatter of metal, the fact everybody was busy or pretending to be was fine by me. I liked all of it.

  I even liked being curious about the three men who appeared in the middle of the morning. Two were tall, one with a long, narrow face and gold-framed glasses, the other built like a farmer with a red-brown slab of a face and heavy jowls; the third man was different, just under middle height, and he swaggered like a weightlifter whose thighs were too big for easy walking. The man I’d seen at the office on my first day was escorting them. He’d been in shirtsleeves then. Now he had his jacket on, and was waving his hands and talking nineteen to the dozen. I suppose they were listening to him, though the elegant man seemed to pay no attention, glancing from side to side through his gold-framed glasses as the four of them went down the line of machines. They walked the length of the place quickly; important men with no time to waste, and vanished through the door into the other unit.

  I thought it was interesting. I didn’t mind the way the elegant man had looked at us.

  ‘Like dirt under his feet,’ one of the women said. Hands never still as tongues wagged. ‘Specky bastard.’

  Middle of the afternoon, the foreman, Ronnie, came round with the pay slips. Rule was they weren’t supposed to be checked until the break, but right away the grumbling started about deductions, how the overtime was shared, aches and pains from the repetitive work, and from there somehow to the refrain about how useless men were in general and in particular here in the factory and most particularly the ones they were saddled with at home.

  When I went after him, Ronnie said, ‘Nothing for you.’ He had one of those old wanker moustaches like a bandit in a Gene Autry movie. Down Mexico Way. ‘Lying time. A week’s lying time. Don’t give me crap you weren’t told.’

  Liars’ time.

  ‘You mean I worked this week for nothing?’

  Swindlers’ time.

  ‘You get it when you leave the job.’

  Bastards’ time.

  ‘I need it now.’

  ‘Tough. You should have listened when you were tellt.’

  I didn’t even take time to think. I went out the usu
al exit, marched all the way round the building and in the front door. It was raining again. The receptionist was in the same place, not typing or answering a phone this time, just staring out at the rain. She curled her lip at me; maybe it was the only thing she’d moved since Monday.

  ‘Can I speak to the boss?’

  ‘You want to see Mr Bernard?’

  How ridiculous! But part of the comedy was a glance at the stairs when she said his name. I took the hint and headed for them, her voice shrilling behind me as I took the blue-carpeted steps two at a time.

  There was a landing with three doors. Through the open one I saw a fat man down on his knees, resting his belly on the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet.

  ‘Mr Bernard?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘It’s about my lying time.’

  ‘What’s that to do with me?’ He lost his balance and tipped slowly forward, pushing the drawer shut with his belly.

  ‘I can’t wait a week for my money.’

  ‘Why not?’ a voice asked behind me. He was in shirtsleeves, like the first time I’d seen him. ‘I’m Mr Bernard,’ he said.

  I stood in front of his desk and couldn’t stop talking. That hadn’t been the idea, but he was a good listener. He sat there turning a pen in his fingers and nodding. No hurry; it was as if he had all the time in the world. Who was this exactly who’d thrown me out? How long had my mother been gone? This Tony, he was such a good friend, why’d I have to leave? His sister was pregnant? When he grinned, I smiled back without getting the joke.

  That was the other thing. I wanted him to like me. I don’t mean because he was the boss or because I needed my money; I’d have wanted him to like me anyway. I don’t need to be told how stupid that sounds, but I think most people would have felt the same way – I mean if they’d met him in a pub or at a wedding or a party somewhere. He had a tan, not the kind you got frying on a holiday beach, but as if he was out of doors a lot of the time, and you could imagine him playing tennis or golf or skiing, all that kind of stuff. He wasn’t as tall as I was, but he was broad built. A man who could take care of himself, but not one who’d go looking for trouble; more as if he’d rather swap stories – and his would be good, you’d want to hear what happened to him. A man with a sense of humour.

  Listening, he smiled a couple of times and never took his eyes off my face as if he was really interested in what I had to say. I’d hesitate and he’d nod, go on, and I did. I told him my life story.

  He must have signalled for her because the receptionist came in without knocking. He said, ‘This is Mr Gas.’

  ‘Glass,’ I said.

  ‘He went right past me.’ She scowled at me, but at the same time she shifted her weight. It was as if she didn’t know she was doing it, but one hip swung towards him and the dress tightened across her belly.

  ‘Talk to you about that later.’ He lifted a case from under the desk and handed it to her with a bunch of keys he took from his pocket. ‘Put this in the boot. Oh, and Theresa, I want you to arrange for the young chap here to be paid a week’s wages. Here’s the authorisation.’

  He scribbled on a pad, tore the note off and gave it to her.

  Looking back, it embarrasses me how much I thanked him.

  I was following her out, when he said, ‘Mr Gas.’

  ‘Yes, sir?’ I was thinking, What does it matter if he gets my name wrong? I’ll get it right with the girl when they pay me.

  ‘This man your mother left.’

  I was taken aback by that. I glanced at the receptionist, but she was reading the note he’d given her.

  ‘Sir?’

  Where I was standing, I could see down into a little private car park. I realised this must be the window I’d seen the man looking down from, looking down at me beside the car, the car with the girl in it. The car was still there, the windows still steamed up.

  ‘The hairy gentleman. He ever get into bed with you?’

  He snorted laughter and gave a big smile and I smiled back. What else was I supposed to do?

  ‘Good-looking boy like you,’ he said.

  When the receptionist and I passed the open door, the fat man was still kneeling beside the cabinet. He looked a little desperate and there were files piled knee high around him on the floor. His face had gone bright red, and as we passed he cried out, ‘You could have told the boy to speak to me.’ His voice was thin and pitched very high. It was unexpected coming from someone that size.

  ‘Sorry,’ the receptionist drawled, not sounding sorry at all.

  ‘I could have dealt with it. I’m saying I can deal with a staff problem just as well as Bernard.’

  Who was he? Somebody who kept the books? Not that it mattered. A fat man.

  ‘It’s been attended to,’ she said, giving a little shake in his direction of the note Mr Bernard had given her.

  ‘Let me see.’ He struggled up and took it from her. After a moment, he sighed and gave it back.

  ‘Do you have a bank account?’ she asked me. ‘It says to pay you by cheque.’

  I stared at her; there was no answer to that.

  He blew out his breath, ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake! Give him his money in cash.’ In disgust he pulled out more files. He wasn’t looking at either of us and I saw his sweat shine in the fluorescent light. ‘Just do it,’ he said. ‘Please.’

  I went back determined to show how hard I could work. For Mr Bernard. I was going to be a fan. First, though, I needed a pee. Even the toilets didn’t seem so manky. I used one of the stalls and checked the money. It wasn’t as much as I’d hoped – I’d forgotten about deductions – but that was all right. Then I read the bit at the bottom.

  Lying time.

  You got it when you were finished. First week, last week. I was finished.

  This time I went through the factory, along a corridor and through the door for STAFF ONLY to where the receptionist was just coming back in from the outside. The telephone on her desk was ringing and I followed her round the counter, crowding at her heels.

  As she turned, startled, ‘You’ve made a mistake,’ I told her and held out the pay slip.

  ‘No, I haven’t.’ She picked up the telephone, but covered the mouthpiece for a moment with her hand. ‘I did what I was told to do.’ She had an unfortunate manner, but she probably wasn’t a bad person.

  When she began to talk into the phone, she turned away and spoke too quietly for me to hear. It’s possible she was embarrassed for me, this poor bastard, given the bullet, no thirty years, no gold watch. Career over before it started.

  What had the women on the production line said? ‘But he can. Out of his window, he can see. He can see, all right.’ Now I knew who ‘he’ was.

  She’d laid the bunch of keys on her desk and I picked them up. All the way out I expected to hear her yelling after me.

  I opened the door of the car and said, ‘Mrs Bernard?’

  ‘Mrs Morton,’ she said.

  I got in and switched on. The engine was beautiful. You could hardly hear it.

  It was odd that she didn’t say anything to stop me. We talked about it later. Why Mrs Bernard Morton didn’t say anything to stop me.

  I put the car in gear and we were off.

  It was only after we’d got to Maryhill Road that I turned my head and looked at her and thought, She’s not a girl, which wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. But then I wasn’t a knight on horseback, either.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Mrs Morton and I went north in the end; but that was later and almost by accident.

  The first parking place I found after I came to my senses, appalled at what I’d done, was in a side street off Queen Margaret Drive. I made a hash of reversing in and the nose of the car stuck out into the road as if pointing at the BBC sign on the building opposite. But when I garbled out some kind of an apology and started to get out of the car, she asked, ‘Didn’t he tell you to . . . ?’

  Another first: that was the first time I heard her voice. It w
as deeper than I expected, though there was no reason for me to expect it to be any one thing rather than another. As it turned out, she had a cold. I liked it, that first voice, husky, a little deeper than I’d expected.

  When I couldn’t think of an answer, she panicked. Suddenly she was fighting for breath and saying over and over, ‘My God, my God.’

  ‘You can go back,’ I said. On the other side of Queen Margaret Drive three birds flew up out of a tree in the Botanic Gardens. I ducked my head to the side to follow them up into the sky. Behind me the noises she made went on and on. The birds rose out of sight. ‘Half an hour, twenty-five minutes. You can go back, and he won’t even know you’ve gone.’

  Without waiting for an answer, I got out and walked away. I crossed at the lights and went down Byres Road. My head was thumping and I went into the Curlers, the first pub I came to. I needed to sit by myself and think. Instead, as I stood at the counter this weird old guy started talking at me.

  ‘I’m so glad to be able to piss again, son,’ he said. ‘A month ago I had a catheter in after the operation and I went back to hospital and couldn’t piss. If you can’t manage to piss, you get sent home again with it still bloody in. There were two of us trying that afternoon. He wasn’t having any better luck than I was. “Tom,” I said to him, when we were going off to have another go, “why is it this problem makes us walk like ducks?” “Oh, Billy,” he says, “I always walk this way – I have a deformity.” ’

  At that point I left. That’s the way it is with friends. Win some, lose some, ships that pass in the night.