Ten Tales Tall and True (16 page)

This discussion impressed and disturbed me. Education – schooling – was admired by my parents and praised by the vocal part of Scottish culture as a way to get liberty, independence and a more useful and satisfying life. Since this was my own view also, I had thought the parts of my schooling which felt like slavery were accidents which better organization would abolish. That the parts which felt like slavery were a deliberate preparation for more serfdom – that our schooling was simultaneously freeing some while preparing the rest to be their tools – had not occurred to me. The book I at last wrote described the adventures
of someone a bit like me in a world like that, and though not an autobiography (my hero goes mad and commits suicide at the age of twenty-two) it contained portraits of people I had known, Mr Meikle among them. While writing the pages where he appeared I considered several pseudonyms for him. (Strang? Craig? McGurk? Maclehose? Dinwiddie?) but the only name which seemed to suit him was Meikle, so at last I called him that. I was forty-five when the book got published and did not know if he was still alive, but thought he would be amused and perhaps pleased if he read it.

And he was alive, and read it, and was pleased. He came to my book-signing session at Smith's in St Vincent Street, and said so. It was wonderful to see him again, as real as ever despite being a character in my book. Of course his hair was grey now, his scalp much balder, but my head was greying and balding too. I realized he had been a fairly young man when I first saw him in Whitehill, much younger than I was now.

Three years ago I got a note from Mr Meikle saying he could not come to the signing session for my latest novel, as arthritis had confined him to his home. He had ordered a copy from the bookshop, and hoped I would sign it for him, and either leave it to be collected by Mrs Meikle (who was still in good health) or bring it to him myself.
I phoned and told him I could not bring it, as I was going away for a month immediately after the signing session, but I would inscribe a copy for Mrs Meikle to collect, and would phone to arrange a visit as soon as I returned. He said he looked forward to that.

I went away and tried to finish writing a book I had promised to a publisher years before. I failed, came home a month later and did not phone Mr Meikle. He was now one of many I had broken promises to, felt guilty about, wanted to forget. When forgetting was impossible I lay in bed remembering work to be finished, debts to be paid, letters to write, phone-calls and visits I should make. I ought also to get my false teeth mended, tidy my flat and clean the window facing my door on the communal landing. All these matters seemed urgent and I often fell asleep during efforts to list them in order of priority. Action only seemed possible when I jumped up to fend off an immediate disaster, which Mr Meikle was not.

Suddenly I decided to visit him without phoning. It seemed the only way. The sun had set, the street-lights shone, I was sure he was not yet abed, so the season must have been late in the year or very early. The close where he lived was unusually busy. A smart woman holding a clipboard came down and I was pressed to the wall by a bearded man rushing up. He carried on his
shoulders what seemed a telescope in a felt sock. I noticed electrical cables on the stairs, and on a landing a stac of the metal tripods used with lighting equipment. None of this surprised me. Film making is as common in Glasgow as in other cities, though I did not think it concerned Mr Meikle. It did. His front door stood open and the cables snaked through it. The lobby was full of recording people and camera people who seemed waiting for something, and I saw from behind a lady who might have been Mrs Meikle carrying round a tray loaded with mugs of coffee. Clearly, a visit at this time would be an interruption. I went back downstairs regretting I had not phoned first, but glad the world was not neglecting Mr Meikle. I even felt slightly jealous of him.

A while after this abortive visit I entered a public house, bought a drink and sat beside a friend who was talking to a stranger. The friend said, “I don't think you two know each other,” and introduced the stranger as a sound technician with the British Broadcasting Corporation. The stranger stared hard at me and said, “You may not know me but I know you. You arranged for a whole BBC camera crew to record you talking to your old school-teacher in his home, and did not even turn up.”

“I never arranged that!” I cried, appalled, “I never even discussed the matter – never thought of it!”

“Then you arranged it when you were drunk.”

I left that pub and rushed away to visit Mr Meikle at once. I was sure the BBC had made a mistake and then blamed me for it, and I was desperate to tell Mr Meikle that he had suffered intrusion and inconvenience through no fault of mine.

Again I entered his close and hurried up to his flat, but there was something wrong with the stairs. They grew unexpectedly steep and narrow. There were no landings or doors off them, but in my urgency I never thought of turning back. At last I emerged onto a narrow railed balcony close beneath a skylight. From here I looked down into a deep hall with several balconies round it at lower levels, a hall which looked like the interior of Whitehill Senior Secondary School, though the Whitehill I remembered had been demolished in 1980. But this was definitely the place where Mr Meikle lived, for looking downward I saw him emerge from a door at the side of the hall and cross the floor toward a main entrance. He did not walk fast, but a careful firmness of step suggested his arthritis had abated a little. He was accompanied by a party of people who, even from this height, I recognized as Scottish writers rather older than me: Norman MacCaig, Iain Crichton Smith, Robert Garioch and Sorley Maclean. As they accompanied Mr Meikle out through the main door I wanted to shout on them to wait for me, but felt too shy. Instead I turned and ran downstairs,
found an exit and hurried along the pavement after them, and all the time I was wondering how they had come to know Mr Meikle as well or better than I did. Then I remembered they too had been teachers of English. That explained it – they were Mr Meikle's colleagues. That was why they knew him.

But when I caught up with the group it had grown bigger. I saw many Glasgow writers I knew: Morgan and Lochhead and Leonard and Kelman and Spence et cetera, and from the Western Isles Black Angus and the Montgomery sisters, Derick Thomson, Mackay Brown and others I knew slightly or not at all from the Highlands, Orkneys and Shetlands, from the North Coast and the Eastern Seaboard, Aberdeenshire, Dundee and Fife, from Edinburgh, the Lothians and all the Borders and Galloway up to Ayrshire.

“Are all these folk writers?” I cried aloud. I was afraid that my own work would be swamped by the work of all these other Scottish writers.

“Of course not!” said Archie Hind, who was walking beside me, “Most of them are readers. Readers are just as important as writers and often a lot lonelier. Arthur Meikle taught a lot of readers that they are not alone. So did others in this mob.”

“Do you mean that writers are teachers too?” I asked, more worried than ever.

“What a daft idea!” said Archie, laughing,
“Writers and teachers are in completely different kinds of show business. Of course some of them show more than others.”

I awoke, and saw it was a dream,
though not entirely.

This book is inscribed to Tom Maschler because in 1989 he suggested I write another book of stories; to Xandra Hardie because she reminded me of his suggestion; to Morag McAlpine because she gave me the home where I wrote it.

This tale is informed by three sources: five weeks as a joiner's labourer in the summer of 1953; talks with my father who, after a spell of manual labour, worked ten years as a wages and costing clerk on Scottish building sites; a paper by A J M Sykes called
Navvies: Their Work and Attitudes
published in
Sociology
, Volume 3, Number 1, by The Clarendon Press, Oxford, January 1969.

This tale was inspired by the
Memoirs
of Kingsley Amis published by Hutchinson in 1991, and especially by the account of his meeting with Dylan Thomas.

This gives two examples of people overpowered by strong organizations, one of them fantastic, one which happened. The true example is included because its mad logic harmonized with the fantastic. It should not be read as propaganda
against our police for the following reasons.

1. Most of the police I meet are polite and helpful. I also know a detective who enjoys my fiction.

2. Propaganda, like pornography, is a low class of art. The Bible and the writings of Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Shelley, Dickens, Tolstoy et cetera often denounce or promote social organizations, but readers who notice these bits usually find them dull or offensive.

3. Although High Court judges have recently released people unfairly imprisoned by our police the police are less to blame than those who have forced bad working conditions on them. Our police used to have a good reputation because they seldom arrested folk without evidence against them. It was illegal for them to break into our houses without a warrant signed by a justice of the peace; illegal to arrest without charging the arrested person with a crime; illegal to quote as evidence what they said we had said, if we denied it and no independent witness confirmed it. As a child in a Yorkshire primary school I was taught that these safeguards of British liberty were guaranteed by the Magna Carta.

In 1982 the government abolished these safeguards because Irish Republican Army bombers were getting away with murder. In effect the government told the police, “Fight the dirty bastards as dirtily as you like. Arrest people on suspicion and get the evidence afterwards. Up and
at them!” So careful search for evidence was put second to quick results, and since our police now had some of the freedom enjoyed by Stalin's police they got quick results. After IRA bombings in Guildford and Birmingham clusters of Irish were arrested, tried, convicted and jailed. The British government, press and people were sombrely glad; the police were relieved. Had they worked carefully, without using torture and perjury to back their suspicions, innocent Irish would have walked free but the guilty might not have been caught and the government would have looked impotent. Conservative governments willingly declare their impotence when confronted by unemployment and widespread wage reductions (their strongest supporters are enriched by these) but when confronted by violence they prefer injustice to looking impotent.

The lack of old police restraints allows many more than the Irish to be falsely accused and punished. It let some muddled policemen break in on a blind man, knock him down and have him fined for it. I use this event to make my story funnier, not for propaganda purposes. If you dislike such mistakes vote into power a radical party which will restore the ancient safeguards.

Although the writing of this story was helped by my dentist, Mr J Whyte of Glasgow G12, it does
not reflect his political, religious and sporting preferences.

Mr Arthur Meikle was born on April the 17th, 1910, and died on March the 30th, 1993. Sometime before his death he allowed me to use him as a character in my last tall tale, read the result, and approved. He also kindly sat for his portrait in the illustration. Thousands of former pupils know him as a real good teacher of English who worked in Whitehill Senior Secondary from 1939 to 1956, Hutcheson's Boys' Grammar from 1956 to 1975. He also edited
Julius Caesar
in the Kennet Shakespeare series, published by Edward Arnold Ltd in 1964. This very cheap little book has been reprinted more often than all the editions of my books added together. The easily read, richly informative notes have the wise, thoughtful tone of Mr Meikle's teaching voice, making it both an excellent school-book and acting script.

I also thank Archie Hind for letting me describe him as one of Mr Meikle's colleagues, though the two never met.

The patient skills of Donald Goodbrand Saunders, Michelle Baxter and Joe Murray set up all of this book except the illustrations.
Goodbye!