My Life as a Man (4 page)

That night I slept rough.

I didn’t have the hang of it. I hadn’t even the sense to put another shirt out of the rucksack on top of the one I was wearing. When I woke up in the morning at the back of a close,
my legs had gone numb and my neck felt as if I’d grown a hump overnight. I thought it must be time to go to work, but there were hours still to go. I walked about, and the rain came on just
after it got light. No bread, no cheese, no slug of milk out of Tony’s kitchen before his folk were up. Pissing against a wall in a backcourt. A woman shot up her window and yelled down at
me. The hygiene Gestapo. There was a guy in a long black coat used to beg in Kelvingrove Park when the good weather arrived, ambushed the girls in particular, held out his hand, never said a word,
challenged them with a stare. I mean, this was a fierce-looking guy, except that every spring he’d shrunk a little and one came when he wasn’t around any more. Winters are cold this far
north.

I bought breakfast at a corner shop. A macaroon bar wiped me out. Not a penny left. Well, one. I threw it up and toed it into the road. Thank God it was Friday.

Strange thing is, seeing the car with its windows steamed up that morning, I envied her, sitting inside in comfort, warm and out of the rain.

Funny, too, how quickly I’d fallen into the routine of the work. It wasn’t hard and, for sure, didn’t take any brains. One of the other boys, a long drink of water called
Sammy, grumbled at me, ‘What you whistling for? I’m bored out of my skull. This place is shite.’ Sammy the intellectual; but as for me, sad case that I was, the truth is I was
enjoying myself. Boring was lying in bed because you couldn’t face getting up. No, the smell of oil, the heat, the clatter of metal, the fact everybody was busy or pretending to be was fine
by me. I liked all of it.

I even liked being curious about the three men who appeared in the middle of the morning. Two were tall, one with a long, narrow face and gold-framed glasses, the other built like a farmer with
a red-brown slab of a face and heavy jowls; the third man was different, just under middle height, and he swaggered like a weightlifter whose thighs were too big for easy walking. The man I’d
seen at the office on my first day was escorting them. He’d been in shirtsleeves then. Now he had his jacket on, and was waving his hands and talking nineteen to the dozen. I suppose they
were listening to him, though the elegant man seemed to pay no attention, glancing from side to side through his gold-framed glasses as the four of them went down the line of machines. They walked
the length of the place quickly; important men with no time to waste, and vanished through the door into the other unit.

I thought it was interesting. I didn’t mind the way the elegant man had looked at us.

‘Like dirt under his feet,’ one of the women said. Hands never still as tongues wagged. ‘Specky bastard.’

Middle of the afternoon, the foreman, Ronnie, came round with the pay slips. Rule was they weren’t supposed to be checked until the break, but right away the grumbling started about
deductions, how the overtime was shared, aches and pains from the repetitive work, and from there somehow to the refrain about how useless men were in general and in particular here in the factory
and most particularly the ones they were saddled with at home.

When I went after him, Ronnie said, ‘Nothing for you.’ He had one of those old wanker moustaches like a bandit in a Gene Autry movie.
Down Mexico Way.
‘Lying time. A
week’s lying time. Don’t give me crap you weren’t told.’

Liars’ time.

‘You mean I worked this week for nothing?’

Swindlers’ time.

‘You get it when you leave the job.’

Bastards’ time.

‘I need it now.’

‘Tough. You should have listened when you were tellt.’

I didn’t even take time to think. I went out the usual exit, marched all the way round the building and in the front door. It was raining again. The receptionist was in the same place, not
typing or answering a phone this time, just staring out at the rain. She curled her lip at me; maybe it was the only thing she’d moved since Monday.

‘Can I speak to the boss?’

‘You want to see Mr Bernard?’

How ridiculous! But part of the comedy was a glance at the stairs when she said his name. I took the hint and headed for them, her voice shrilling behind me as I took the blue-carpeted steps two
at a time.

There was a landing with three doors. Through the open one I saw a fat man down on his knees, resting his belly on the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet.

‘Mr Bernard?’

‘Eh?’

‘It’s about my lying time.’

‘What’s that to do with me?’ He lost his balance and tipped slowly forward, pushing the drawer shut with his belly.

‘I can’t wait a week for my money.’

‘Why not?’ a voice asked behind me. He was in shirtsleeves, like the first time I’d seen him. ‘I’m Mr Bernard,’ he said.

I stood in front of his desk and couldn’t stop talking. That hadn’t been the idea, but he was a good listener. He sat there turning a pen in his fingers and nodding. No hurry; it was
as if he had all the time in the world. Who was this exactly who’d thrown me out? How long had my mother been gone? This Tony, he was such a good friend, why’d I have to leave? His
sister was pregnant? When he grinned, I smiled back without getting the joke.

That was the other thing. I wanted him to like me. I don’t mean because he was the boss or because I needed my money; I’d have wanted him to like me anyway. I don’t need to be
told how stupid that sounds, but I think most people would have felt the same way – I mean if they’d met him in a pub or at a wedding or a party somewhere. He had a tan, not the kind
you got frying on a holiday beach, but as if he was out of doors a lot of the time, and you could imagine him playing tennis or golf or skiing, all that kind of stuff. He wasn’t as tall as I
was, but he was broad built. A man who could take care of himself, but not one who’d go looking for trouble; more as if he’d rather swap stories – and his would be good,
you’d want to hear what happened to him. A man with a sense of humour.

Listening, he smiled a couple of times and never took his eyes off my face as if he was really interested in what I had to say. I’d hesitate and he’d nod, go on, and I did. I told
him my life story.

He must have signalled for her because the receptionist came in without knocking. He said, ‘This is Mr Gas.’

‘Glass,’ I said.

‘He went right past me.’ She scowled at me, but at the same time she shifted her weight. It was as if she didn’t know she was doing it, but one hip swung towards him and the
dress tightened across her belly.

‘Talk to you about that later.’ He lifted a case from under the desk and handed it to her with a bunch of keys he took from his pocket. ‘Put this in the boot. Oh, and Theresa,
I want you to arrange for the young chap here to be paid a week’s wages. Here’s the authorisation.’

He scribbled on a pad, tore the note off and gave it to her.

Looking back, it embarrasses me how much I thanked him.

I was following her out, when he said, ‘Mr Gas.’

‘Yes, sir?’ I was thinking, What does it matter if he gets my name wrong? I’ll get it right with the girl when they pay me.

‘This man your mother left.’

I was taken aback by that. I glanced at the receptionist, but she was reading the note he’d given her.

‘Sir?’

Where I was standing, I could see down into a little private car park. I realised this must be the window I’d seen the man looking down from, looking down at me beside the car, the car
with the girl in it. The car was still there, the windows still steamed up.

‘The hairy gentleman. He ever get into bed with you?’

He snorted laughter and gave a big smile and I smiled back. What else was I supposed to do?

‘Good-looking boy like you,’ he said.

When the receptionist and I passed the open door, the fat man was still kneeling beside the cabinet. He looked a little desperate and there were files piled knee high around him on the floor.
His face had gone bright red, and as we passed he cried out, ‘You could have told the boy to speak to me.’ His voice was thin and pitched very high. It was unexpected coming from
someone that size.

‘Sorry,’ the receptionist drawled, not sounding sorry at all.

‘I could have dealt with it. I’m saying I can deal with a staff problem just as well as Bernard.’

Who was he? Somebody who kept the books? Not that it mattered. A fat man.

‘It’s been attended to,’ she said, giving a little shake in his direction of the note Mr Bernard had given her.

‘Let me see.’ He struggled up and took it from her. After a moment, he sighed and gave it back.

‘Do you have a bank account?’ she asked me. ‘It says to pay you by cheque.’

I stared at her; there was no answer to that.

He blew out his breath, ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake! Give him his money in cash.’ In disgust he pulled out more files. He wasn’t looking at either of us and I saw his sweat
shine in the fluorescent light. ‘Just do it,’ he said. ‘Please.’

I went back determined to show how hard I could work. For Mr Bernard. I was going to be a fan. First, though, I needed a pee. Even the toilets didn’t seem so manky. I used one of the
stalls and checked the money. It wasn’t as much as I’d hoped – I’d forgotten about deductions – but that was all right. Then I read the bit at the bottom.

Lying time.

You got it when you were finished. First week, last week. I was finished.

This time I went through the factory, along a corridor and through the door for
STAFF ONLY
to where the receptionist was just coming back in from the outside. The
telephone on her desk was ringing and I followed her round the counter, crowding at her heels.

As she turned, startled, ‘You’ve made a mistake,’ I told her and held out the pay slip.

‘No, I haven’t.’ She picked up the telephone, but covered the mouthpiece for a moment with her hand. ‘I did what I was told to do.’ She had an unfortunate manner,
but she probably wasn’t a bad person.

When she began to talk into the phone, she turned away and spoke too quietly for me to hear. It’s possible she was embarrassed for me, this poor bastard, given the bullet, no thirty years,
no gold watch. Career over before it started.

What had the women on the production line said? ‘But he can. Out of his window, he can see. He can see, all right.’ Now I knew who ‘he’ was.

She’d laid the bunch of keys on her desk and I picked them up. All the way out I expected to hear her yelling after me.

I opened the door of the car and said, ‘Mrs Bernard?’

‘Mrs Morton,’ she said.

I got in and switched on. The engine was beautiful. You could hardly hear it.

It was odd that she didn’t say anything to stop me. We talked about it later. Why Mrs Bernard Morton didn’t say anything to stop me.

I put the car in gear and we were off.

It was only after we’d got to Maryhill Road that I turned my head and looked at her and thought, She’s not a girl, which wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. But then I
wasn’t a knight on horseback, either.

The first parking place I found after I came to my senses, appalled at what I’d done, was in a side street off Queen Margaret Drive. I made a hash of reversing in and the nose of the car
stuck out into the road as if pointing at the BBC sign on the building opposite. But when I garbled out some kind of an apology and started to get out of the car, she asked, ‘Didn’t he
tell you to . . . ?’

Another first: that was the first time I heard her voice. It was deeper than I expected, though there was no reason for me to expect it to be any one thing rather than another. As it turned out,
she had a cold. I liked it, that first voice, husky, a little deeper than I’d expected.

When I couldn’t think of an answer, she panicked. Suddenly she was fighting for breath and saying over and over, ‘My God, my God.’

‘You can go back,’ I said. On the other side of Queen Margaret Drive three birds flew up out of a tree in the Botanic Gardens. I ducked my head to the side to follow them up into the
sky. Behind me the noises she made went on and on. The birds rose out of sight. ‘Half an hour, twenty-five minutes. You can go back, and he won’t even know you’ve gone.’

Without waiting for an answer, I got out and walked away. I crossed at the lights and went down Byres Road. My head was thumping and I went into the Curlers, the first pub I came to. I needed to
sit by myself and think. Instead, as I stood at the counter this weird old guy started talking at me.

‘I’m so glad to be able to piss again, son,’ he said. ‘A month ago I had a catheter in after the operation and I went back to hospital and couldn’t piss. If you
can’t manage to piss, you get sent home again with it still bloody in. There were two of us trying that afternoon. He wasn’t having any better luck than I was.
“Tom,” I said to him, when we were going off to have another go, “why is it this problem makes us walk like ducks?” “Oh,
Billy,” he says, “I always walk this way – I have a deformity.” ’

At that point I left. That’s the way it is with friends. Win some, lose some, ships that pass in the night.

I walked at first and then found I was running. I ran all the way until I saw the car and then I went slowly, but it wasn’t long before I could make her out, in the same seat, everything
just the same. She hadn’t moved.

I was so angry. I thought, Any man could make her sit in a car all day.

And then I was ashamed.

She wasn’t crying any more, though, and I should have paid more attention to that, for when we got to the traffic lights she put her hand over mine on the wheel and pulled firmly. Taken by
surprise, I turned left instead of right. I’d wanted to take her back to the factory, park the car where it had been, get out and leave her there, hope her husband hadn’t looked out of
the window and no one had noticed she’d gone. It wasn’t much of a plan, but I wanted to make everything all right for her, the way it had been before.