A Gift from Nessus. William McIlvanney

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      ‘We’ve got one almost exactly like that,’ Elspeth said. ‘I would say you had been copying. Except that you can’t have seen ours. It’s in the bedroom.’

      Satanic oh-hos from Jim Forbes. Why did Allison buy these things anyway? Every so often the fever took her and she went forth to buy, armed only in a vague sort of covetousness. Her sorties had won them a motley assortment of booty. Her trophies were uniform only in their uselessness and their spurious ‘classiness’. One had been a painting – an abstract of bilious ugliness, which Cameron detested and which Allison could only defend wanly as being ‘really contemporary’. She had wanted to hang it in the girls’ bedroom but when Cameron objected, implying that Spock wouldn’t like it, it had been shunted to their room, where it hung above their bed like an invitation to a nightmare. Another buy had been what Allison claimed was an African mask. The face it depicted looked as if it came from darkest Gallowgate. And now the Chinese (Cameron preferred Jim Forbes’s theory) cushion. Soon they wouldn’t be able to see each other for status symbols.

      ‘Eddie!’ Jim’s voice was confidential. He was taking advantage of the preoccupation of the others. ‘I’ve got a very good night fixed up for us. Next week. Can you make it? Thursday.’

      To judge by the furtive excitement of Jim’s tones it should be at least a free run of a harem.

      ‘I think so, Jim. What is it?’

      ‘You’re okay for Thursday?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Dalmeath Burns Supper. Some night. Special invitations only. We’ll have a great time.’

      Cameron couldn’t think of any excuse to make.

      ‘Drink’s tremendous. Stag night. Good speeches. It’s tough to swing admission. But I’ve managed to get tickets. Only two, though. So keep it quiet just now. You know?’

      Jim indicated with a nod to Cameron that Morton’s luck was out and then chimed in with the laughter of the others, deftly camouflaging their transaction in case there should be a stampede for tickets.

      ‘Fine!’ Cameron muttered, the low pitch of his voice keeping it conveniently neutral. That was another night dead. Even time came pre-packaged. In convenient capsules. To be taken like tranquillisers. Morton reminded him of more.

      ‘You’re not forgetting next month are you, Eddie?’ he asked.

      ‘What’s that?’

      ‘“What’s that?” he says. Some salesmen I’ve got. The conference. In London. The Big Dinner. How could you forget? Different hotel this time. That place last year was a dead loss.’

      ‘You salesmen have a great life right enough,’ Allison said. ‘Any excuse for a good time.’

      ‘It’s all business, though,’ Morton said, mock-serious. ‘Mind you, we do manage to squeeze in the odd orgy afterwards. Nero had nothing on us. Talking of orgies. An office-party next month as well. After we get back from London. You’d better lay in a heavy stock of Alka-Seltzer, Eddie. Two of the girls leaving to get married. An epidemic. And then we didn’t have our party at New Year. Thought we’d better celebrate.’

      ‘Now there’s a thing I’d fancy,’Jim said. ‘A genuine swinging office-party. The only kind we have are tea and buns. Three old maids discussing knitting patterns. And the blokes arguing about eight-iron shots. Your place should be able to generate some action.’

      ‘It has been known to,’ Morton agreed. ‘Fill in an application form and we might get you a ticket.’

      Maybe Jim was regretting rashly promising the extra ticket for Dalmeath to Cameron. He could have used it to influence Morton. Strange how boyishly enthusiastic Jim was about anything that could be construed, however mildly, as a male adventure.

      Cameron’s inattention scrambled their talk for several minutes before he tuned in again to Allison and Morton arguing about immigration. How did they get onto that? They were kidding each other clumsily, aware of their audience.

      ‘West Indians have been exploited long enough by us,’ Allison was saying. ‘We owe them something.’

      ‘Allison!’ Morton remonstrated. ‘Noble sentiments. But you can’t run a country on them. You’re too generous for your own good.’

      ‘And you’re too efficient to be altogether human. You can’t streamline human affairs the way you do your work.’

      They both laughed. It wasn’t so much an argument as an exercise in verbal back-scratching.

      ‘How can you live with somebody as efficient as this, Elspeth?’

      ‘No. But seriously,’ Morton said. ‘We owe them nothing. We gave them the greatest culture in the world. We educated them. Gave them religion. Taught them democracy. Anything we took in return was what they didn’t want. Or couldn’t use. They’re our debtors. And now they want to come over here in hordes. No go. They haven’t reached our level of civilisation yet. They’ll only upset the balance.’

      ‘Rubbish!’ Cameron said suddenly, surprised to find that his time-bomb had exploded and was after all only a squib. ‘I have seldom heard so much bollocks in such a short space of time. Who the hell are you to set yourself above anybody else? And what have we got that’s so sacrosanct nobody else can share it? Folk like you are so bigoted you could use a thimble for a hat. It’s true that my uncle’s a negro, but that’s not why I’m defending them.’

      The last remark was a weak attempt to change the tenor of what he had said, make it seem funny. But nobody was laughing. There was a strained silence until Morton saw fit to break it.

      ‘Report to my office first thing in the morning,’ he said.

      They all laughed thankfully. It could be treated as a joke, a rather feeble one. Cameron became the butt of a few jocular remarks at which he betrayed himself so far as to smile. Morton rounded it all off by telling Cameron that he really did want to see him in the morning in his office. ‘But purely on business,’ he laughed. ‘And not necessarily first thing. Nine-thirty will do.’ How could Morton always contrive to make Cameron feel as if he was wearing short trousers?

      6

      Cameron knew that Allison was going to quarrel with him. Although she was in the kitchen and he stood in the living-room, the fact transmitted itself with absolute clarity. Roger. Over and out. He accepted it with tired resignation, not even bothering to wonder why. Obviously he had once again said or done something that offended Allison’s delicate code of hypocrisy. It was one of those things you couldn’t escape.

      You could postpone it, though. He lit a cigarette, moving slowly about the room to gather up the debris of empty coffee-cups and sticky glasses. Bring out your dead, he thought, heaping them carelessly on the tray he had brought from the kitchen. They made a sad, cluttered little still life, and he sat down in front of it as if it was a shrine, smoking. What a waste of a night! They should give lessons, the lot of them. How to kill your nights stone dead. How to talk without saying anything. Bore life into submission. Cameron’s Simplified Course in Catalepsy. Instant futility. He had a quiet moment of panic wondering if it was scientifically true that each night dedicated to being nobody in particular meant that there was less of you to be СКАЧАТЬ