Read Online 1982 Janine by Alasdair Gray - Free Book Online Page A

dressed less timidly.”
    She said, “Why don’t you dress less timidly?”
    I said, “My friends are perfectly satisfied with my clothes.”
    She said, “Liar. You’re like me. You have no friends, only colleagues and an occasional one-night stand with women as lonely as you are.”
    I said, “You are trying to change the subject. My clothes are well cut and fit me perfectly.”
    She said, “They are also terribly dull.”
    â€œMen don’t need to look interesting.”
    â€œNeither does this woman.”
    I said, “There is a difference between us which has nothing to do with gender. I don’t need friends, but you would be happier if you were less lonely. You are, and I really believe this, a very fine-looking woman. If you would spend just a bit of imagination on your appearance folk would know you were willing to give yourself socially, not just sexually. They would notice you and want to be with you, women as well as men.”
    She said, “You don’t need friends?”
    â€œNo. I am perfectly happy without them.”
    She giggled and said, “You liar. You poor, poor liar.”
    I said nothing because I was close to becoming angry. She said, “Tell you what, let’s do a deal. Buy me the sort of clothes you want me to wear and I’ll spend the same sum on clothes for you.”
    â€œWhat sort of clothes would you buy me?”
    â€œJeans and corduroy slacks. A leather jacket. Coloured T-shirts. Perhaps a caftan to wear at home.”
    â€œI’m too old for that sort of nonsense.”
    â€œIn America and the continent even grandfathers dress like that and nobody thinks them ridiculous.”

    43 BAD MOMMA NOT MY MUM  
    â€œThis is Scotland.”
    â€œThen the deal is clearly off.”
    Her figure would be lovely for Superb if it did not remind me of her loneliness, her habit of telling me to leave as soon as we had made love, her sadness which is starting to infect me although I haven’t seen her for eight or nine years. Someone told me she had a stroke which paralysed her right side and keeps her indoors, I ought to have visited her, I meant to visit her. Let Superb have Marilyn Monroe’s body no, she was vulnerable and friendless too, Jayne Mansfield’s JESUS, NO head cut off in car accident, give Superb Jane Russell’s body and face. Remember nobody but Jane Russell, I mean Superb, and mother, I mean Big Momma, why did I confuse my mother with Momma, there is NO CONNECTION ATALL, my mother was a respectable woman (until she ran away from home) and no lesbian (she ran away with a man) she was tall and not a bit fat, I got Momma’s body from that Glasgow barmaid and the whore under the bridge AND MOMMA’S NATURE IS BASED ON NOBODY REAL ATALL. My mother may have hated women, sometimes, but they trusted her. She never enjoyed humiliating people in her imagination the way I do. I’m almost 100 per cent certain of that. So I am not 100 per cent certain of that?
    Â Â 
    Finish the whisky in the tumbler. Nobody can be 100 per cent certain of anything. The mechanics of the universe make it impossible to look at anything without altering it. She must have found some satisfaction in thwarting my friendships, keeping me beside her, encouraging my studies, but she cannot have enjoyed the thrill I feel as Momma stubs out the cigarette, points to the small scatter of Janine’s clothes on the floor and says softly, “Put these on. Start with the suspender-belt.”
    But can I imagine my Superb obeying that order? Even if she hesitates first, and sees Big Momma pick up the rubber tube in her right hand and once again suggestively smack the palm of her left? Of course I can imagine it. Mad Hislop was a small man and he terrorised six boys, one bigger than himself, into standing in a row, holding out their hands, and receiving six blows each from his three-thonged Lochgellytawse. And five