An Old Pub Near the Angel (18 page)

I read work by writers who touched on it from the outside; in my teens I enjoyed A.J. Cronin and had no knowledge of James Barke or Walter Greenwood. But who tackled poverty and its effects, whether malnutrition or degradation, as an existential experience? In U.K. prose fiction a masterwork such as Knut Hamsun’s
Hunger
was a logical absurdity. Fortunately we could learn from European writers in translation.

When I started writing I looked with longing to rock music. It was never to do with being a liberated young male, it was to do with being a liberated young working-class male. The Who’s ‘My Generation’ was exciting but it let the upper classes off the hook once again, it universalised rebellion. You and me brother, the whole world could hold hands and join in. Oh no, here we go, a penny for the black babies. Religion and spirituality and wholefoods and tolerance for one another. Even the richest man in the world will bleed if pricked. Leave the guy alone, he is a suffering soul. Let us read the Beats and rebel against Daddy and his corporate chums. If only they loved one another they could join with Bob Geldof and Bono and become multibillionaire charity heroes. Perhaps then they could dance and let their hair down, use words like ‘gig’ and ‘cool’ in context; sniff a line, smoke a joint, listen to Jimi Hendrix, read Ginsberg and not shave on weekends. Thus ‘we’ might come to halt this beastly systematic brutality being perpetrated by corporate capital on working-class and indigenous communities across the globe. Absafuckinglootely, as they say in Cambridge and Yale.

In 1964 Los Angeles I had no money and no way of getting money. There was no game in town, not that I knew about. Since boyhood me and my pals gambled for money for as long as we had any. Once or twice the cards landed correctly or the horses ran to form. Here in L.A. the local newspapers had racing-form pages. Maybe the locals could make sense of them, I could not. Nor could I find a betting shop. The only money I had
was skimmed off the busfares, or given by my father or elder brother. I did not like being in that position. Who does? I was not used to dependency.

So who knows, had I been offered dough by one of the men that hung around the bus station, probably I would have taken it and dealt with the consequences later. I was never completely sure what went on between men anyway. Stories in
An Old Pub Near the Angel
are set in England where I lived from the spring of 1965. The same business option existed there. Two Scottish guys I knew in London had taken the money. One referred to an elderly man who paid him for minor masochistic pleasures. The other said, I would have kicked his arse for ten Woodbine – a cheap brand of no-filter cigarettes; you could buy them in fives. That stuff was incredible to me, and by then I was 21. At 17 I thought anal sex was a metaphor.

In L.A. I just wandered about, along to Grand Central Market; maybe one of the butchers was in need of a delivery boy and I would just happen to be passing and that would be me with a job. My elder brother met my father here on Friday evenings to stock up on food before catching the bus home to Pasadena. By then I was on the road home myself. A hamburger stall on 5th had become my second home. An older man operated the stall, open from 7 a.m. and finished by mid afternoon. He did not know of any jobs for 17-year-olds but offered coffee refills for as long as I stayed.

His hamburgers were magnificent. When he dished one up to me he used to ask, With everything?

He soon stopped asking. Of course with everything, what are ye kidding? Mustard and ketchup, fried onions, chopped jalapeños, pickled gherkins: it was all over my nose and down my neck. I rationed myself to one a fortnight.

I came to realise that he assumed I was Jewish. It was my name. There are more Jewish Kelmans in the U.S.A. than there
are Protestant Kelmans in the entire north-east of Scotland, including Macduff. In the 1990s I did a reading in New York City at an Irish club near the Museum of Modern Art. It smelled of money. I read from
How Late It Was, How Late
. A few individuals in the audience hated it, they really hated it, and harrumphed, coughed and spluttered throughout. Afterwards I heard one of the harrumphing elderly men say to his female partner, Kelman is not even a Scottish name, it is Jewish.

The hamburger-stall owner was not put off when I told him I was a Protestant Atheist, as they say in parts of Scotland and Ireland, just embarrassed and apologetic that the subject had arisen. His son was my age and a soccer freak; he tuned in to foreign stations to get results from Europe. For some reason he had latched onto Partick Thistle. I explained to him that there was only one team in Scotland worth bothering about and they played at Pittodrie Park. He never had heard of Graham Leggatt, George Kinnell or Ian Burns, not even Paddy Buckley let alone the legendary ‘Gentleman’ George Hamilton, my father’s hero. When the Dons thrashed Rangers 6–0 in a cup semi-final at Ibrox Park back in the early 1950s, ‘Gentleman’ George ran amok. As I recall he missed the cup final and Celtic beat us 2–1 before a record 134,000 spectators.

In L.A., football was one of the primary absences in our family’s life. My mother was used to us ranting and raving about it but she missed it too. But she was missing everything. With five sons she was accustomed to the absence of female company, but not inured to it. Here she had none at all, and saw nobody. In Glasgow we lived in tenement blocks; six, eight or even twelve families lived up a close, and the next close was a five- to ten-second walk away. It was a community, even if ye hated the neighbours. Here in Pasadena the tied cottage was down at the
end of a private lane, nobody except us. A family of animals with striped tails appeared in the evening to stare in the window, watching us watch television.

My father’s job at the private gallery in Pasadena deteriorated to the extent that he handed in notice to quit. The owner was looking for cheap labour only, and practised in the arts of obedience. Now she wanted us off the premises immediately. If we stayed even one minute beyond the period of employment, she would have us charged with all sorts of criminal misdemeanours, and each of these minutes would cost us rent.

Our tied cottage was located on the grounds of a large home on Arlington Drive. The owner had a Japanese gardener ages with herself, and an established Japanese garden with plenty shrubbery; bushes and trees and a burn flowing through the middle. There was a wee temple with a shrine where the gardener spent much of his time. My younger brothers, Alan and Philip, ran wild in the garden playing chases, splashing through the burn and sneaking into the temple and making the gardener’s life a misery. I climbed up on the roof to keep out the road, reading and sunbathing. My mother spent most of her time in the tied cottage, doing the domestic work and dreaming of Scotland. The mindset we entered into reminds me of that opening in the Cassavetes movie
Gloria
. The accountant father has cooked the books of his employers, a team of mafioso. It is useless to run. His wife has bouts of rage, then lapses into lethargy, like her mother and daughter, just staring at him occasionally, as they wait for the executioner. It is a brilliant scene.

One of my father’s ex co-workers was our saviour, a young Puerto Rican picture-framer by the name of Mario. My father had been free with his skills to the other workers. Now Mario was quick to offer his support. They hatched a plot a week or so later. In Glasgow we call it ‘doing a moonlight’. Mario had a rusty old banger, wings falling to bits, exhaust system knackered.
They stuffed everybody in, bags and suitcases, the lot, and we hightailed it out of town, straight onto Pasadena Freeway, Mario’s car rattling and shaking the whole way south to an apartment in Hawthorne, south L.A. This was more like it.

Hawthorne is next door to Watts where much racist violence hit the street in 1965. Around 15,000 National Guard troops were sent in to show the black American community who was boss. On any bus into town I sat at the back because I was a smoker. Only blacks sat there, whites went to the front. Sometimes the back of the bus was crowded and only a few seats being used in the white section. None of the whites gave me a row, they just kind of looked, as did the blacks, but nothing more than that. Not even a vague frown, that I recall. Perhaps the clothes I wore advertised my foreign origins. What happened to other colours or ethnicities, I do not know, I do not know.

Walking about in L.A. was no different from walking through the foreign neighbourhoods of Drumchapel: not for youths. This pressure is known to almost every full-sighted urban male that breathes, every day of our lives. Who will step out the way first? After an entire day tramping the streets, one wearies of the constant decision-making, and the longer it goes on the more complex the judgment. I start making
a priori
decisions: it does not matter the male, for every second one I shall step out of the road. For every third male over the age of 70 I shall keep my ground and stick out my elbows.

Then you start playing games: I think I will step out the road of this cunt and see if he smiles, if he smiles I will batter him across the fucking skull. By the end of the evening ye weary of everything and just step out everybody’s way. Then ye start making a virtue out of it. After you!

No, after you.

Please, take my ground.

No, you take my ground.

Take my ground ya bastard.

Fuck you man, fucking fag bastard.

Wait a minute you I am from Scotland we always look at guys, nay ambiguity intended.

In California they have detox macho units where males learn how to step out of the other man’s path. It is a rich, rewarding field of study, all the more so for its increasing complexity. Just when you think you have mastered the basics ye land on yer back. I was trudging along a quiet, tree-lined street at dusk. Sixty yards away a guy approached. We were heading along the same track of the same path. Aw naw.

Nobody else was in sight. I walked on, less steadily. From many yards off I decided to step sideways. I just made the decision. I just thought I cannot be bothered with this. Even so, I did the manoeuvre from far off, so it would seem like a natural, absent-minded veer, rather than me being forced out by him and his damn presence. He just kept coming, he just kept on. I did not care. Now I saw he was black, a sturdy-looking guy, still not slowing, but he knew I was coming. When we passed he said, God bless you brother.

My father had a start in one of the picture-framers on La Cienega Boulevard. Quite a few galleries and linked businesses were there. Some still are. I passed through L.A. in the late 1990s and checked to see. My father much preferred this job; Puerto Rican and Central American workmates, a lively atmosphere. But the money was poor and the work repetitive; almost no gilding, let alone picture restoring. The apartment was costly and with seven of us there my mother was working miracles. He could not afford to buy a car. He still had not acquired his driver’s licence. These things take ages. It was difficult getting a day off work, then when he did it was problematic with buses, and they took
so long to get anyplace, and you got sick of not being understood, repeating the same questions time and time again.

Though wearying of it myself I still went on the tramp once or twice. Word arrived about a Scottish fast-food joint. My brother had spotted it from the bus. It was miles away but worth a shot. Maybe if I threw myself on their mercy, in a guid Scotch tongue, they would give me a start. I got the busfare and next morning set out. I got off the bus too early and had to continue on foot. Then I found the place, it was a proper Scottish name – McDonald’s. Two white American lassies were serving. They noticed me. It became a male v. female interlude. I was enjoying it. I hung about by the counter awaiting an opportunity to chat, all too aware that my only line was, Any jobs?

I gave up and went hame. About my last throw of the dice came via an advertisement in a newspaper. A big soccer day was scheduled one Saturday. Teams of players of different nationalities were involved. There was bound to be a Scottish contingent. Maybe I could make a connection. Secretly, I still dreamt about making the grade as a player. There were a few semi-pro teams in the Los Angeles area. Some junior and ex-senior Scottish players had gone out, in the twilight of their years. I was never anywhere near that standard but this was America, could they even tell the difference? At least I was young. I decided to have a go. The one genuinely great Scottish player to have made L.A. his base was before my time but his name was still known and my father had seen him play; the Scottish international and ex-Dundee inside-forward Billy Steel.

If a U.S. team signed you they ensured you had a day job. Even if I was not good enough to play maybe somebody would know about a day job. Off I went. A bus into downtown then another one out. Miles away as usual. In area, Los Angeles was the biggest city in the world, in those days something like 35 miles wide. When I reached the football ground, to my dismay,
the entrance fee alone would swallow up every cent of busfare I had left. I would be stranded, and the walk home was as bad as the Pasadena marathon.

Three games were to be played consecutively. Okay, it was good value. I agreed with the guy on the turnstile. But I only needed to see the one featuring the Scottish players. I argued it out but to no avail: full entrance fee or nothing. Watch the football or get a bus home. No contest. My whole world depended on it. In the stadium I strolled to one of the empty seats. There was a German team, an Italian team, a Mexican team, a British team and a couple from Central America. Where were the Scottish boys? Maybe I missed them.

At the final whistle of the final game I wandered towards the exit, postponing the reality of the long hike home. Then there on the ground, was a crumpled but complete copy of the Saturday ‘Pink’
Times
!

In the old days the proprietors of the Glasgow
Evening Times
published a late edition on a Saturday afternoon that gave all the sports results. They used pink newspaper to distinguish it from the boring early editions. The newspaper I found was a fortnight old but it induced a spring in my step and every mile or so I was stopping to read extraordinary snippets of news. Brechin City 0–0 Alloa Athletic, Maryhill Juniors 7–1 Pollok. Was I dreaming?