The Kellys of Kelvingrove (12 page)

once I recognise the curve of your speech.

I should learn to listen,

allow the words to settle

in that padded-room

between denial and understanding.

It would be easier to place one foot

on the low wall of the bridge

spread my arms crucifix wide

lean forward

and will flight into the span of my arms.

There was enthusiastic applause and one member said, ‘Here, Paul, that was good. And it’s damned difficult to write poetry. I know. I’ve tried. Have you got another one there?’

‘Yes.’

‘OK, let’s hear it and then after a wee bit of discussion, we’ll go on to someone else.’

A Close Shave

It sat on the window sill

above the sink, bounced back

my father’s movements as he shaved.

I would sit on my hands

on the toilet seat and watch

mouth open,

the ritual of soap and razor.

Skin was prepared,

soaked with water

hot enough to open pores,

relax wire follicles.

Bristles whisked the soap

until cream peaked.

I loved the sound of the blade

As it rasped over his face.

Breath on hold,

I watched a thin river of red

wash through white soap.

No cry of pain.

He was tough, my Dad.

Clive joined the others in clapping enthusiastically. It was such a blessing that they’d found the writers’ club. There was no discrimination, no prejudice here. They had remarked on it and another member had said,

‘Right enough. When you think of it, in what other profession would people help each other so much and be genuinely delighted and happy when one of them achieved success?’

Sometimes there was a speaker but always, after the formal part of the meeting, everyone enjoyed a cup of tea and a chat, or a blether to use one of Clive’s favourite Scottish words. They were each given a programme when they joined and it contained an interesting mix of speakers. Some were very successful writers in different genres – playwrights, romantic authors, thriller writers, science fiction authors. They came to help by telling of how they succeeded. They also handed out typed sheets of helpful hints and suggestions. On other occasions there were speakers whose knowledge helped with research. A librarian from the Mitchell Library was listed and both Clive and Paul were looking forward to hearing him. The Mitchell Library was one of their favourite places. It had been founded by a Glasgow tobacco baron, Stephen Mitchell, and was the largest public reference library in Europe. Both Clive and Paul were great fans of the poet Robert Burns and the Mitchell had the largest collection of first editions of the poet’s work, as well as a host of Burnsania. It had more than four thousand first editions in thirty two languages. The place itself was impressive. The solid Edwardian baroque building was topped by a beautiful copper dome. The Mitchell was one of many buildings in Glasgow that inspired the architecture enthusiast and poet laureate John Betjeman, to describe Glasgow as the ‘greatest Victorian city in Europe’.

The writers’ club was situated in Ashton Lane, off Byres Road in the West End. It was a really trendy area, with a variety of restaurants and pubs where crowds of people (mostly young people who looked like university students) stood drinking their pints outside. Further along, there were a few tables and chairs in front of a small restaurant. When Clive and Paul were able to go out and about, they favoured a larger restaurant called the Ubiquitous Chip. There the food was, in their opinion, about the best in Glasgow. Many famous people ate there.

The whole atmosphere in Ashton Lane and the West End, in Clive and Paul’s opinion, was very typically Glasgow. One New Yorker said that Glasgow had the disputatious cheek and the pace of Manhattan. Glasgow had grit to it and an exhilaration that made the place buzz.

Especially in the centre of the city in front of the Royal Exchange building. There, a statue of the Duke of Wellington mounted on his horse sat high on a plinth. One guide to Glasgow claimed that if Edinburgh had poise, Glasgow had swagger. And it had a determination to break free of its background of poverty and deprivation and give everything a whirl.

Clive was now having his hair done in the latest style. It was gelled up into straight peaks.

‘I liked you better with it natural and smooth,’ Paul told him. He had insisted on keeping his own dark hair long until it kept sliding forward over one eye.

‘I see by the programme,’ Paul said now, ‘that there’s going to be a police officer as one of the speakers. That’ll be interesting to all of us, but especially to crime and thriller writers. I was just wondering if it might be Jack Kelly from number one.’

‘I wouldn’t think so. It would be too much of a coincidence.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Remember he told us he works constant day shift so at least he’d always be free to come to an evening meeting.’

‘Look, there’s the name of the speaker in the programme. It’s Sergeant Paul Rogers.’

‘Oh well,’ said Paul.

‘I’m really looking forward to next week’s subject. How all art can be therapeutic,’ Clive quoted from the programme.

‘Yeah. So am I. It’s a real godsend, this place. I hope you don’t mind always coming with me, Clive. I mean, writing is my thing, not yours.’

‘Haven’t I just said I’m really looking forward to next week? And anyway, I’m a teacher and I have to teach my class essay writing, etc. No, don’t you worry about me joining the writers’ club, Paul. The writers are a great bunch and I’m loving it.’

‘One of the great things about writers,’ Paul said, ‘and about being a writer is everything is your raw material – people, experiences, places, but especially people. Even an elderly person who’s not doing anything or saying anything. Remember that one I wrote called ‘Disposable People’?’

‘Who could forget that.’

As they stood together in the writers’ club sipping their cups of tea, Paul began to quietly recite it.

Disposable People

Blind stares from milk and water

coloured eyes, reveal all

to those who would care to look.

There, the disposed sit the long day

doing nothing

saying nothing

eating bland and little,

leaching all of their nourishment

from the cathode ray nipple

housed in the black box.

A second childhood they say

A second childhood without

the toys

the joys

the expectations.

‘Paul, you are so very talented but it’s novels you should be concentrating on now. That’s where your big successes will be. It’s novels that’ll make you famous.’

‘I must confess that’s really where my heart lies. And I’m looking forward to getting good practical help from some of the successful novelist speakers here. You see, you can say so much more about the human condition through the medium of a novel. And bring places to life, as well as people.’

‘Yes, and the two you’ve already written are good, Paul, and maybe the speakers or other members of the club will give you a helpful crit, some advice to help you get them published.’

Paul nodded. ‘Wouldn’t that be wonderful. Meantime, I’ll keep my hand in the writing mould with my poetry. It gives me something to take to the club every week. And keeps me being creative and happy. Nothing our awful neighbours can do will ever spoil that.’

Paul was reading his new poems at the writers’ club, eager for feedback.

For Worse

Coloured grey,

gilded with sweat,

large enough to grind

flour for the world’s poor,

granite hangs around her neck

Every movement

she sees the man

and forgets

the child.

She waits the thrill of the phone

someone else’s life.

She dreams of better times,

resents the vow that doesn’t list

what ‘for worse’ might entail.

But she can forget the wife

and be the woman

for a rosary of moments,

It might save them both.

Afternoon Tea and Teeth

It was the sort of tearoom where ladies would attend

an anecdote, the curve at either end of their

smile as thin as a crochet hook, while they promised

themselves they would laugh later.

One such lady of lavender years

sat at the far end of the hush, silver-lipped, lilac twin-set,

lean as a walking cane, face creased in crepe as she rued

the young women of the day and their

penchant for coffee with foamed milk

and their
insistence
on a career.

Maybe it was the child behind her

fitted snugly at her mother’s naked breast,

or that woman’s vulgar handbag

gold lettering against white, screaming DIOR

… but something made her sneeze.

Her head moved in increments

ratcheted back by her desperate desire

not to draw attention, but the tickle insisted.

The pressure built, her head jerked forward

and her teeth bulleted out of her mouth,

complete with a lady’s bite-sized portion

of date and wholemeal scone.

Face polished white with resolve not to be noticed

she slid off her chair and on hands and knees

crawled across the room, retrieved her dentures

and popped them in her mouth, complete with scone.

Remaining low she returned to her seat

and a more considered chewing action.

Not a stitch in the room’s conversation

was dropped. In a concert of collusion not one eye

strayed during the retrieval, invisibility

guaranteed by the collective will to do

and say the right thing.

Another lady paused

at her friend’s no doubt embroidered comments,

pushed her tongue against the roof of her mouth

and harrumphed into a square of bleached linen.

Just in case.

‘All right,’ Clive told Paul. ‘They’re good.’ Everyone in the writers’ club agreed the poems were good but they also agreed that Paul should be concentrating on writing a novel – a publishable novel. The two he had written had been passed around and given verbal and written crits. The books (like many of his poems) were written from a woman’s viewpoint.

‘I believe that’s where you’re going wrong, certainly in the novels,’ Sheena Brown said. ‘You keep insisting that novels are your first love and you’re desperate to get one published but I don’t think you’ll ever succeed until you start writing from a man’s viewpoint.’

‘OK,’ Ray Cook said, ‘we know you’re gay. So why don’t you write from a gay man’s viewpoint?’

‘I keep telling him that,’ Clive cried out, ‘but he won’t listen to me.’

Paul cast his eyes heavenwards. ‘No wonder. You of all people know what we have to suffer from a lot of people. I don’t need publishers joining in.’

‘But, wait a minute,’ Ray said. ‘I’m sure publishers wouldn’t be prejudiced like that. There’s bound to be publishing firms that publish gay material. Look up the
Writers and Artists Yearbook
. That’s probably where I’ve come across them.’

‘Gay publishing firms?’ Paul echoed incredulously.

‘Yes, why not? Give it a try,’ Ray insisted. ‘Put all your feelings into a novel about what gay men have to suffer.’

‘Gosh,’ Clive laughed, ‘think of the revenge you could have – on people like that ghastly reverend gentleman at number seven.’ He turned to the others. ‘He’s a hook-nosed skeleton of a man who tells us we’re an abomination in the sight of God.’

Paul visibly brightened at that. His eyes acquired a mischievous sparkle. ‘Right enough, I could make a great villain of him.’

‘He
is
a villain,’ Clive told him, and then to the others, ‘Fancy him being a minister and he shouts horrible names at us and tramples over our nice garden and kills our flowers and puts all sorts of filthy things through our letter box.’

‘No!’ their fellow members gasped. ‘And he’s supposed to have been a Christian minister?’

Maisie Jenner said, ‘You should report him to the police. That’s harassment.’

‘All we want is to have a peaceful life,’ Paul said, but brightened again. ‘But do you know, you’ve really got me excited now. I really believe I could write a story about how people like him make people like Clive and me suffer. We’ll get a
Writers and Artists Yearbook
right away and check the addresses of publishers who accept gay material.’

They had a great laugh during the tea break and exchanged all sorts of ideas about how Paul could wreak vengeance on the Reverend Denby.

‘Look,’ Ray said eventually, ‘if you like, you can come home with me tonight and I’ll give you my
Writers and Artists Yearbook
. You can return it as soon as you can.’

‘We could check it in your house, if you didn’t mind. Then we wouldn’t need to take it away.’

‘Sure. Come on. I’ve the car outside. We won’t take a minute.’

Off they went and sure enough, in the
Writers and Artists Yearbook
, they found several who specifically published gay material. Paul was over the moon.

‘Oh, thanks a million, Ray. I’ll never be able to thank you enough.’

‘You can thank me by presenting me with a signed copy of your first published novel.’

‘Deal!’ He and Paul smacked hands together. Then Ray drove them home.

After they got into number four Waterside Way, Paul said, ‘Talk about a friend in need being a friend indeed. What a good friend that is.’

‘Yes,’ Clive agreed. ‘But of course they know that we’d always do the same for any of them when they need help. Already you’ve helped a couple of them to write poetry, Paul. In fact, you’ve done quite a few helpful crits for the members who want to be poets.’

‘Right enough. But now I must organise my time so that I can get down to writing my novel right away. Do you know, I think I’m going to enjoy doing this one. The characters will be set in a different place, of course, and will look different, etc.’

‘Even in real life,’ Clive said, ‘I bet Denby is not the good Christian gentleman these two posh characters believe he is.’