Read Online Mavis Belfrage by Alasdair Gray - Free Book Online Page A

less beautiful Mavis.”
    â€œThat’s the first compliment you’ve ever paid to my looks, Colin Kerr! You used to take them for granted. I hated it.”
    He smiled back and said, “I was maybe too shy to pay compliments, but I never took your looks for granted. Have an ashtray. How’s Bill?”
    â€œHe’s at a boarding school.”
    He stared at her in horror. She said defensively, “It’s a very good boarding school. His father is paying for it.”
    â€œYou sent him to strangers? Maybe you’re a wicked woman after all. I think, Mavis,” said Colin firmly, “you had better come back to me.”
    â€œI don’t recognize you, Colin.”
    â€œIt’s your fault…” (he looked down ruefully at the curve of his abdomen) “… whenever I feel lonely nowadays I eat. It helps.”
    â€œI’m not talking about your figure.”
    â€œI love you.”
    â€œYou don’t
look
unhappy.”
    â€œI’m not. I’ve learned to love you without that. I’m grateful, Mavis!”
    â€œI don’t know what you mean.”
    â€œYes you do! You’re responsible for it. Before we metmy life was almost wholly shaped by my father and I didn’t even know. He’s such a decent man that I don’t think he knew either. Going to Cambridge changed nothing because Cambridge was a cosy patriarchy too. That’s why I needed you who hated everything that cramped me. So you drove Dad out and started shaping my life yourself. Thank God you weren’t a decent Scots woman who would have kept me at my pointless job in that dull college for the rest of my life! I’ve never been good at asserting myself. But you
forced
me to assert myself – before you cleared out.”
    â€œSo now you’re happy and free?” she asked sarcastically.
    â€œI’m independent. I can be alone without going melancholy-mad. What others think no longer worries me much. I don’t need you, Mavis, but I want you because you’re bonny and reckless and clever and now I can love you like a man. It wasn’t a man who loved you three months ago. It was …” (he thought a little then smiled with amusement and distaste) “… a dog shaped like a man.”
    Abruptly Mavis stubbed out her cigarette and said, “You’re a stranger to me Colin.”
    â€œGood! Your life has been full of strangers. Try life with this one.”
    â€œBut you aren’t the sort of stranger I like.”
    His smile faded. She stood up and said, “I suppose I’m glad you’re happy, Colin, but you’re the sort of man I most detest because the world is so full of you: all glib and grinning and damnably, damnably sure of themselves. You used to be … not like that. I loved you then.”
    â€œAnd showed it!” he said bitterly.
    With a cold little smile she said, “Goodbye Mr Kerr,”
    and went too fast to the front door to be overtaken before he managed to open it for her.
    â€œThanks,” she muttered, passing through. When she was halfway down the garden path he cried on a note of pain, “Mavis!”
    She paused and looked stonily back. He said wistfully, “Good luck, Mavis!” and meant it. She suddenly smiled back with what seemed affection, shrugged her shoulders and went away. He looked after her, a hand pressing part of his stomach where twelve years later an ulcer would develop after his African wife left him.
    Closing the door he returned to the living-room, lifted Mavis’s quarter-smoked cigarette from the ashtray and looked at it for a long time. Then he threw it into
the hearth and went on tying up his books.

    FIVE

    OTHER

    SOBER

    STORIES

A Night Off

    In 1986 the British government abolished physical punishment in the schools it controlled. This story is from the dark age before that happened.
1
    One Friday afternoon at fifty-nine minutes and several seconds past