Remedy is None. William McIlvanney

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      Chapter 1

      ‘OF COURSE, GENTLEMEN, AT THE BEGINNING OF THE play you will remember (those of us who have read the text) that Romeo is in love not with Juliet, but with someone called Rosaline. In fact, it might be truer to say that at this point his love is not so much directed at any specific person as at woman in general. The American writer William Saroyan has a short story entitled Seventeen which effectively conveys the state of mind we may assume him to be in. I think we all know it. Do not all young men fall in love first with a chimera . . .?’

      ‘I am a chimera,’ Andy said, raising his hands like claws, putting on his monster’s face. ‘I was a teenage chimera.’

      ‘I’m in love with a darling young chimera,’ Jim sang quietly.

      ‘It is only later that this idealized woman transmigrates to the body of a living person – and the trouble starts. At this point in the male’s life there enters the unknown Max Factor.’

      Dutiful laughter was struck up in the lecture-room, disconcerted by a jeering bassoon from the back, closely followed by an operatic facsimile of agonized death.

      ‘Hey, Charlie,’ Andy said, nudging him. ‘Waken up. Ye’re missing all the riotous fun. We’ve just had a joke.’

      ‘Ah wondered what the smell wis,’ Charlie said. ‘Hell, Ah wish he would give ye some sign, like dropping a hanky or something. Ah always miss his wee jokes.’

      ‘Ah know why you missed it, too,’ Jim said. ‘You were off to Mary-land there again.’

      Jim’s guess was right. Charlie had been thinking about Mary. Since her last letter his mind had developed a kind of stutter and he couldn’t get past thinking of what she had written. He closed his mind on the lecture-room again, locking out Professor Aird’s insistent voice. He thought again of the sentence that his mind had been pushing out like a mad teleprinter for three days until he had barely room for another thought. СКАЧАТЬ