Fractions (51 page)

‘That you're not interested in politics.'

‘Is that all? Huh, and there was me thinking he'd be telling you as much about me as I've told Sheena about him.'

‘That must be a relief.'

‘Sure is…And he's wrong about that, too!' she added.

‘How d'you mean?'

‘Well, it's not that I'm not interested. I just don't like talking about it.'

‘Fair enough,' I said. ‘But why?'

‘I grew up in Belfast,' she said. ‘Left when I was about ten. There's a saying over there: “Whatever you say, say nothing.” I still have family over there, still visit. The habit sticks.'

‘Even here?' I glanced around. ‘What's the problem?'

She leaned forward and spoke in a lowered voice. ‘Half the people in this city have some Irish connection, and a good few of them have very decided views. So it doesn't do to shoot your mouth off, especially in pubs.'

As Dave tended to do, I thought. Interesting.

‘OK,' I said. ‘I'm not curious. I can't even tell what I'm sure anybody from around here could: whether you're a Catholic or a Protestant. Me, I don't have a religion and I don't care what flag flies over me or what politicians do so long as they leave me alone.'

‘Which they won't.'

‘Aye, there's the rub!'

We both laughed. ‘So,' I said, ‘what
are
you interested in?'

She thought about it for a moment. ‘I like my work,' she said.

‘So tell me about it.'

And she did, explaining how she didn't just do the technical stuff but tried to find out about the science behind it. She talked about evolution and population and the future of both, and that got me on to talking about SF, and she admitted to having read some dozens of Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion novels when she was younger (or ‘young', as she charmingly put it). Before we knew it the bell had rung for last orders.

‘There's a disco at Joanne's,' Annette said. ‘Shall we go there?'

‘Good idea,' I said.

It wasn't. We hadn't been there half an hour when the music stopped and the DJ told everyone to pick up their things and leave quietly. We all knew what that meant: a bomb scare. Annette grabbed my hand with surprising force and hauled me through the crowd, with a ruthless disregard for others that I'd hitherto only seen in the QM bar crush.

We spilled into the street just as somebody authoritative shouted ‘False alarm!' and the surge moved the other way. Annette stood fast against it. I looked down at her with surprise and saw it wasn't just the drizzle that was wetting her face. Holding her parka around her shoulders she looked miserable and vulnerable.

‘Don't you want to go back in?' I asked.

‘I want to go home,' she said. I held her parka while she struggled to get it on properly. She grabbed my hand again and started walking fast.

‘What's the matter?'

‘Oh, God. I just remembered the first time I was in a bomb.'

‘Yeah,' I said, trying to be reassuring, ‘it's crazy how we've got used to bomb scares.'

She glanced up at me with something like pity.

‘I wasn't in a bomb scare,' she said witheringly. ‘I was in the
blast radius
of a bomb. Loyalists hit a loyalist bar. Christ. I could see people screaming, and I couldn't hear them.'

I didn't think it would be a good move to ask if many people were hurt.

‘I'm sorry,' I said. I squeezed her hand. ‘I didn't know.'

She stopped, throwing me off-balance. I turned, tottering, to face her. She held her balled fists in front of her as if grasping and shaking by the lapels someone much smaller than myself.

‘Christ
!' she spat. ‘I
hate
this shit! I hate it
so much
! We were just going to enjoy ourselves, we all were, and some fucking swine has to ruin it! I blame them for all of it! For the bomb scares and the false alarms and the hoaxes – they wouldn't happen if it wasn't for the bastards who do the real thing. Ears and feet all over the pavement!' She closed her eyes, then opened them as if she couldn't bear what she saw. ‘And Dave used to say we had to listen to the oppressed. Nobody listens to me because I'm not an “oppressed”. I'm a
focking prodistant
!' Her voice dropped to a harsh whisper, remnant of a caution otherwise thrown to the sodium sky. ‘Fuck them all! Fuck the Pope! Fuck the Queen! Fuck Ireland!'

As suddenly as her outburst had started, it stopped. She rested her fists on my shoulders and looked up at me, dry-eyed. She sniffed.

‘God, you must think I'm crazy,' she said. ‘You didn't deserve that.'

I wrapped my arms around her and held her close, taking the opportunity to look around. It must have looked like we we'd been having some kind of fight. This being Glasgow, and she not having used a bottle, nobody was paying us more than the idlest flicker of attention.

‘I'd prefer that to “whatever you say, say nothing”,' I said. ‘Especially as I agree with what you just said.'

‘You do?' She pulled back and frowned at me. ‘You mean you don't believe in
anything
?' Her voice was incredulous, hopeful.

Myra's taunt came back to me:
Ey'm en individualist enarchist, eckchelly.
No point going into it that way, with a string of isms. I believe in you, I thought of trying, but that wouldn't do, either. She looked so desperately serious!

I swallowed. ‘No God, no country, no “society”. Just people and things, and people one by one.'

‘Just us?'

I considered it, tempted. It would be a good line to hug her closer with.

‘No us either, unless each of us chooses, and only as long as each of us chooses.'

‘I don't know if I could live with that.'

‘Better than dying with something else.'

She gave that glib response a more welcoming smile than it deserved.

‘Well,' she said, ‘I can see you're not just trying to chat me up.' She caught my hand again and shoved it, with hers, into her parka pocket. ‘Come on, see me home.'

We walked through the wet streets as if we were joined at the hip, stopping every couple of hundred metres for a clinch and a kiss. Neither of us talked very much. At her flat a faint glow and giggles came from Sheena's small room. We had the front room, and the couch, to ourselves. We did a lot of hugging and kissing and groping and rolling, but when it became obvious that I wanted to go further she pushed me away.

‘Not ready yet,' she said.

‘That's all right,' I said.

‘Maybe you should go now. Some of us have to get up in the morning.'

I thought of several smart replies to that and in the end just nodded and smiled.

‘Maybe I should. What about tomorrow?'

She stood up and pulled me to my feet.

‘Let me see…I'm going to a wedding on Saturday. I've got shopping to do tomorrow lunchtime. Hen night in the evening, recovering the night after. And sorting out dresses and stuff.' She mimed a curtsy. ‘How d'you fancy coming along to the dance at the reception? Saturday evening.'

‘That sounds great! Thanks.'

She peeled a sheet of paper from a pad and scribbled on it. ‘Place, time, bus routes,' she said, handing it to me.

‘Thanks very much. OK, I'll see you there then.'

We found ourselves at the door.

‘We still have to say goodnight,' she said, and made good on it.

The reception was in a hotel in a part of Glasgow I hadn't been before, reached by a succession of buses through parts of Glasgow I didn't know existed. They looked like a war had been lost there: entire blocks and streets razed or ruinous, street-lamps smashed, derelicts or wild kids around fires…

I later learned that this was the result of a road-building programme disguised as a housing policy, but at the time – sitting in the smoke-filled top deck of the bus in a suit I normally wore only for interviews – I indulged in some enjoyably pessimistic thoughts about the breakdown of civilisation. As the bus wended on, however, the islands of darkness became less frequent and I eventually hopped off in a residential area in front of a reassuringly bright and noisy hotel. I followed the light and noise to the function suite where I found a scene just like a disco except that most people were wearing something like Sunday best and the age range approximated a normal distribution curve.

Around the edges of the room were tables, a buffet with food and trays of drinks, and a bar at the far end. I picked up a glass of whisky at the buffet and looked around for Annette. The music stopped, a dance ended, people moved on to or off the floor.

Annette came out of the crowd as if it were parting just for her – for a moment, it seemed a spotlight had caught her, so that she shone, while everyone around her dimmed. Her hair was circled with leaves and small red roses, and her dress started with a frill at the throat and ended with a flounce at the floor. It was likewise rose-patterned, red on green on black, and over it she wore an organza pinafore with ruffles from the waist to over each shoulder, the tapes wrapped to a bow at the front. Her face, flushed by the dance, was smiling. As she stopped in front of me I smelt her strong, sweet perfume.

‘Hi, Jon, you got a fag?' she said. ‘I'm gasping.'

As I lit the cigarette for her she caught my hand and pulled me to a seat by a table. She dragged up another chair and sat down facing me, our knees almost touching through the rustling mass of her skirts.

‘Ah, that's better,' she said. A passing waiter offered her a tray – she reached past the expected wine and lifted a shot of whisky. ‘Thanks for coming.'

I raised my glass. ‘Thank
you.
You look different. Beautiful.'

‘Aw, gee, thanks.'

‘Beautiful in a different way,' I hastened to add.

She gave a quirky smile to indicate that she was only pretending to misunderstand.

‘You didn't mention that you were a bridesmaid,' I said.

‘Didn't want to scare you off.'

I laughed, unsure what to make of this. ‘I like your dress,' I said.

She leaned closer and said in a gossiping whisper: ‘So do I. I dug in my heels to get one that I could wear again for parties, so after long discussions with Irene – that's the bride, went to school with her – we settled on this nice little Laura Ashley number. Then she decided it wasn't
icky
and
brides-maidy
enough, so she got her Mum to run up this thing.' She flicked disdainfully at the apron frill.

‘Oh, I don't know,' I said. ‘The pinny's what makes it. You really must keep that for parties.' I was only half teasing – there was something undeniably sexy, in an undeniably sexist way, about its trailing associations of feminine servitude.

‘Oh yeah, and get taken for a wench?' she grinned.

‘Never,' I said. ‘Lady, would you like to dance?'

‘Well,' she said, considering, ‘perhaps after you've refilled my glass, and I've emptied it.'

 

By the time this was accomplished, more than once, Annette had introduced me to some of her friends and relatives and the dancing had changed from disco-style bopping to traditional, but much wilder, Scottish dancing. Annette drew me into it, and started flinging me about until suddenly, like a memory of a previous life, I discovered I knew the steps and the moves and was able to fling her – and the bewildering, spinning succession of other partners – about with the best of them.

As I danced, skipped, stomped, turned, twirled, lifted and swung, I tried to remember how I remembered all this, and realised it was all down to my father. His interpretation of Marxism – broad-minded even for his socially tolerant, if politically dogmatic, party – insisted on the desirabilty of culture in all its forms. Hence, piano practice and dancing classes – and, when that had led to playground taunts, boxing lessons. Hence also, the Science Museum and the BMNH and the Zoo and the theatre. He was interested in everything. He was there.

And at Hyde Park on Sundays, telling unbelieving onlookers that whatever demo-of-the-week was passing through was a complete waste of time…He thought he was turning a space-age schoolkid into a scientific socialist, but all he was doing was raising me to be as stubborn an outsider as himself.

The dances flew past as fast as the dancers, with only snatched gulps of whisky and puffs of smoke between one and the next. An eightsome reel finished the set. Annette and I leaned on each other's shoulders with one thought between us. ‘Drink?'

‘Drink.'

We went to the bar this time, our fortuitous and fortunate position at the end of the dance getting us there ahead of the rush. Annette perched on a stool, the hang of her skirt concealing it so that she seemed suspended on air. I propped my elbow on the bar and ordered pints.