My Life as a Man (5 page)

Now we were going the wrong way, but I decided she wanted me to take her home, and I owed her that much. I could even imagine where we’d be going.

The Mortons would have the kind of house I’d seen pictures of in the paper, a big one in Giffnock, the kind of place someone who owned a factory would live in. We’d turn into a
street of grey stone, detached houses; I’d jump out of the car and take off before she went in. ‘Hello, dear, I’m home. The nice young man took me for a little drive.’
I’d be stranded on the wrong side of the city, miles from anything familiar. As I tried to make my way back, I’d have to keep looking over my shoulder. Only thing was, Morton might not
use this car to come after me. It could be anything. I might look round and see another car and next minute Bernard and his mates would be laying about me.

Working all that out kept me busy. Whenever I asked her for directions, she frowned and gave a little shake of her head, not as though refusing but as if my voice had taken her by surprise. By
the time I noticed there were fields on both sides, it was too late: we were on our way to Edinburgh. It didn’t seem like a choice at all, not for me. You couldn’t say, either, that it
was her decision. It was made somewhere between us, if it was made at all. That’s what happens on that road if you don’t turn right or left. All you have to do is keep on going.

Clutching the wheel, staring ahead in shock, I heard myself being asked, ‘My God, should you be driving?’

I’d swallowed a pint in the Curlers, I remembered, swallowed it too fast on an empty stomach, but I wasn’t drunk.

‘I’m fine,’ I said.

‘I mean, do you even have a licence?’

‘I didn’t know about the middle lane,’ I said.

‘What age are you?’ Her voice wasn’t loud, not much above a whisper, but it was calmer than I’d have expected.

Her question made me angry. My stomach was still in knots from the near miss. ‘None of your business. You tell me.’

‘My age?’

‘Is it a secret?’

‘Thirty-eight,’ she said.

After a time, I said, ‘I’m eighteen,’ and she closed her eyes.

She opened them after a while, but she didn’t speak until we were in the centre of Edinburgh.

‘Can we stop?’ she asked. ‘Please?’

And that’s what I did. I swung in to the pavement and stopped.

Speaking suddenly like that after so long a silence, she’d startled me. She’d seemed not even to notice the glances I’d stolen at her on the journey. As for me, not knowing
whether she was thinking or lost in a dream world of her own, I hadn’t known what to say to her. Now that the dam was breached, I braced myself for the long-delayed flood of questions and
anger. If she’d called me crazy, I wouldn’t have argued.

‘We were driving round in circles.’ She said it as if she felt I needed an explanation.

‘I was looking for somewhere to park,’ I said.

‘Does it matter? One place or another?’

Before I could answer, she was out of the car. I had the door open before I remembered to switch off and take out the key.

Though it was only fifty miles from where I’d lived all my life, I’d never been in Edinburgh before. Despite the crowds on the pavement, I liked the sensation of space, the length of
Princes Street ahead of us, on one side no buildings, just gardens and open sky above the castle on its rock. I felt excited and then I felt hungry. I glanced past Mrs Morton at the entrance to a
department store. ‘I need to eat,’ I told her.

‘It’s late,’ she said, sounding surprised. She started across the street as the lights changed, walking quickly – maybe she was hungry, too – and I followed her
until we finished up in a place with cloths on the table.

When the waiter brought a menu I didn’t even try to make sense of it. I’d never been in a restaurant before, never held a menu. I passed it across. If I’d altered her life, it
seemed only fair that she got to order the meal.

I could hear myself eating the soup, it was quiet, murmur murmur murmur, nobody laughing or shouting. There wouldn’t have been any trouble holding a conversation, if we could have thought
of anything to say. Halfway through the soup, I noticed that she was using a different spoon. I checked at the next table and the one beyond, where they were using spoons like mine for eating ice
cream and fruit. I had the illusion of an endless line of spoons and every time mine was the wrong one. I put the spoon in my mouth and sucked it, then licked under it. When I’d done that I
put it back on the table and took the other one. As I did, I saw her watching a little smear I’d missed spread out as a stain on the white cloth. I felt the heat rise from my neck until my
cheeks were burning.

The silence lasted until the waiter brought her main course, a big plate with slices of meat on it laid out like a fan. When he went away, I asked, ‘What’s that?’

‘Aylesbury duckling,’ she said.

I don’t care what’s wrong with it, I thought. Not much of a joke, but you have to try. I slid one of the little potatoes into my mouth. It was new and had flecks of green round it.
The chicken was nice, too; but, if I’d been allowed only one or the other, I’d have taken the potatoes. I love potatoes.

‘How much will all this cost?’ I asked.

‘I’ve no idea.’

I put another potato in and chewed on what it must be like to be able to buy something without checking the price tag.

‘It’s a different world,’ I said to her.

‘What is?’

‘Your one.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘I mean you could walk out into the street right now, go into the first shop, buy anything that took your fancy. You wouldn’t have to look at what it cost.’

‘Oh, dear,’ she said and pushed her plate away.

What was ailing the duck? Alarmed, I thought she might expect me to call the waiter and complain.

‘How silly of me,’ she said. ‘What was I thinking of?’ I didn’t know what, but the look on her face told me something was badly wrong. ‘I wasn’t
thinking at all. The truth is I’ve stopped thinking. You’re right, I have been in a different world.’

‘I’m sorry if I upset you. It was just—’

‘I don’t have a handbag,’ she said. ‘I’m not carrying a handbag. Where would I have money?’

When she was here before, it would have been with her husband, so I’d been right in one way. What would it have mattered how expensive the place was? Mr Bernard was paying.

‘I got my wage packet today.’ She looked relieved. ‘Have you any idea how much I got toiling for Mr Bernard for a week?’

Of course, she didn’t know. ‘Enough, surely, for dinner?’

‘Not a lot’ was the answer.

My turn to push the plate away, and there they sat, two plates almost touching in the middle of the table. I’d left more than half and she’d hardly started on hers. Clearing the
plates wouldn’t have cost any more; leaving most of it didn’t save a penny. For two hungry people we were being pretty stupid.

We went up Lothian Road and then through Morningside. I knew that because Mrs Morton named the streets as she told me to turn left and right.

‘And petrol.’ I was just talking, saying things as they came into my head. ‘We haven’t got money for petrol.’ At the top of the second hill, I read the sign and
checked with her, ‘Is this the fastest way back to Glasgow? Have we got enough petrol?’

I wasn’t happy about what would be waiting for me there, but we didn’t have any choice but to go back. People were waiting for us. You could say we were overdue.

We weren’t more than half an hour on the road when the range of hills on our right began to fade as light drained from the sky. We didn’t have anything to say to each other, yet I
wanted to talk to her. I wanted to tell her I had never intended to do her this harm. I wanted to tell her who I was. I wanted to tell her I was sorry. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t find
words for any of it. The funny thing is at the same time I was conscious of how my foot easing up and down changed the note of the engine, and of the road ahead like a grey silk ribbon unspooling
from the wheel between my hands. I was coping, and it felt good.

It was Mrs Morton who took fright. ‘You can’t drive like this. Put on the lights’; and when I couldn’t find them and we had to stop (pulling in side-on by a farm gate),
she opened the door of the car and was going to get out until, having found them, I put the lights off again and agreed we’d wait there until morning.

‘If that’s what you want.’ Stupid bloody woman.

While I was sulking, she suddenly sank back away from me, so that she was almost lying down. There must have been a lever or button to adjust the seat like that, and if I’d felt around I
suppose I’d have found one for my seat, but that didn’t seem right and so I sat staring out of the window as night fell. It was dark in the car.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

She didn’t say anything, but I could tell by her breathing she was awake.

‘If it would help, I’ll talk to your husband, tell him I take the blame. I got in the car and drove it away. What could you do to stop me?’

A car came towards us on main beam. When it had passed, I could see stars of yellow light on the dark.

‘Scream?’ she asked. ‘Throw open the door and jump out?’

‘You thought he’d sent me. That’s why you let it happen.’

‘An eighteen-year-old boy? I doubt he’d believe that.’

‘That’s what you told me.’

‘I don’t know . . .’ Her voice trailed off. ‘So why am I still here?’

‘Any way I can make things better. Just tell me what I should do.’

‘And why didn’t I ask for help in the restaurant? He could ask that as well.’

‘Tell him you were afraid of me.’

‘You’re not very frightening,’ she said.

I flared up like a match thrown in a pool of oil. ‘And I can’t drive,’ I said. ‘And no, if you want the truth, I don’t have a licence.’ As soon as the words
left my mouth, I heard them as stupid. Miserably, I finished, ‘I don’t even know which bloody spoon to eat soup with.’

After a silence, she sighed and said, ‘Once at college I made a friend and asked her home for dinner. She wasn’t sure about coming. We lived in a big house in Bearsden and she came
from a poor background. I don’t know what she expected, I don’t know what I expected, I never brought friends home.’

Through the windscreen, I could see the curve of a hill, with the sky lighter above it and a scatter of stars endlessly signalling. I didn’t look down, but all the time and now more than
ever I was conscious of her legs and body solid among the shadows.

‘All through the meal my father talked about this problem at work – he was an engineer – and gradually I saw this girl losing all her shyness and just sitting wondering what
the hell was going on. When it was over, I started to clear away the dishes. “I’ll lend a hand,” she said. “Well,” my father said, “I hope you make a better job
of it than Mother and Eileen. I have to supervise to make sure it is done as it should be done.” In the kitchen, we laid everything out, knives, forks, the different kinds of spoons, and then
the plates, the bowls, the cups. My friend said, “Can I say how we’d do them at home? We wash all the cleaner ones first and then, when the water gets dirty, we wash the worst off the
dirty plates and run clean water to finish them off.” Doing dishes didn’t interest me, but it seemed logical. My father shook his head and smiled and said, “This will give you the
opportunity to see how it should be done.” Somebody told me – there’s always somebody to tell you, isn’t there? – that she swore to everybody next day she’d just
met the most boring man in the world. After that, we weren’t friends any more.’

I listened and kept listening until her breathing slowed and it seemed she slept. Every so often an approaching car would flood the interior with light, making me feel exposed and vulnerable. As
the hours crawled by, I envied her.

My first thought was that I must have slept after all, for the sky was pale and a watery sun sat on top of low clouds. My second thought was that Mrs Morton’s leg was touching mine. She
was sprawled on her back and her mouth lay open a little. It was as if I was seeing her for the first time. She looked as if she didn’t have a care in the world. I felt her warmth and moved
gently away, my breath loud in my ears.

I eased the door of the car shut. A cow resting her head on top of the gate stared at me with big brown eyes. As far as I knew, a cow wasn’t a ferocious beast, but then I hadn’t ever
been this close to one. With a full bladder, getting back in the car wasn’t an option. I needed a few minutes of privacy. When I climbed the gate, the cow didn’t move, but as I swung my
leg over and jumped down she skittered away, stopping after a dozen steps to look back at me. As I started to walk up the field, she slowly followed me and then I realised a dozen others were
taking an interest. Each one paused now and then to take a mouthful of grass, but all tended in the same direction, drifting towards me like sticks in a stream. By now, though, as I came up the
field I had a better view of what looked like a tower on top of the hill.

When I got closer, I saw that the stones of it were unshaped and irregular. It seemed to me that it must be very old. There was an opening in the side and I went in and then saw the stair. It
wound up in the thickness of the wall, and I started to climb, thinking there would be a barrier at the first turn, but the rough irregular steps led all the way to the top. I came out on a walkway
and the air smelled of the early morning as I ventured round it. The stone path was wide enough to be safe, but the parapet on the outside only came up to my knees and the one on the inside was
missing in places. All the way up the field I’d had an erection, but it softened as I peed through one of the gaps. I watched the flow curve out and fray as it fell into the shadow down
towards the broken stones and grass. A little breeze blew in my face and I felt good. ‘Top of the world, Ma!’