The Fall of Kelvin Walker

Alasdair Gray

• Publisher: Canongate Canons
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781838853860
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

It is the Swinging Sixties and Kelvin Walker has moved from Scotland to London to make his fortune. Through his wanton ambition, a megalomania surfaces that is unrelieved by his insensitive attempts at friendship and romance. Yet is he all bad, or are the true villains the establishment figures who he tricks and deceives? And, ultimately, does it matter?Gray's twist on the follies of religion, the media and the imperial British centre is as relevant now as ever.

1
THE
DISCOVERY
OF LONDON

One bright fresh summer morning, in a prosperous decade between two disastrous economic depressions, a thin young man disembarked in Victoria Coach Station from one of the buses plying between Scotland and London. He wore a black homburg, a black double-breasted overcoat, a celluloid collar and a tartan tie; his shoes were slightly worn but beautifully polished, and the visible parts of his legs were clad in thick woollen stockings whose tops were hidden by the coat. His lank hair had a side parting and sloped across his brow in the style of Adolf Hitler, and he stood in the warm grey early morning air holding a battered suitcase and looking around with a blank, nearly characterless face while other passengers hurried past to the refreshment room or to waiting friends. Suddenly his expression grew grimly purposeful. He walked to a stationery kiosk and said to the woman behind the counter, “I would like, please, a cheap ball-point pen, a small hard-covered pocket notebook, a street map of London and a guide to your transport system.”

“You can have them, son,” she answered in a Scottish voice. He relaxed and when she had got the articles together he indicated a row of newspapers and asked on a more intimate note, “Which of these advertise good jobs?”

She handed him a paper which he glanced through then carefully refolded and returned, saying, “I’ll be frank with you. I’d like a paper which offers better jobs than these.”

She smiled and said, “What about The Times?”

He looked through The Times then nodded, paid for his purchases and pocketed all but the map, which he unfolded and brooded over thoughtfully before leaving the station.

No one seeing him guessed that he was gripped by a gigantic excitement and had no idea where he was going. He believed he was “just getting to know the place”. His quick scissoring stride suggested a determined man with no time to waste, his tight mouth and straight stare portrayed a total indifference to surroundings, yet the streets brought continually into the centre of his eye or carried past the corners of it sights which struck and intoxicated: new huge unfamiliar buildings, famous old ones recognized from films and newsphotos, girls and women dressed and decorated with a wealth and wildness and nonchalance he had never seen before in his life. The excitement went to his legs. He had eaten nothing that morning and had hardly slept on the journey down, but the thought of sitting in a restaurant was impossible. Several times he entered a bakery or sweet shop then walked forth from it eating a pie or bar of chocolate. His only other pauses were to look at the map.

Crossing Trafalgar Square for the third time that afternoon he sat suddenly on a bench near a fountain and tried to subdue his excitement by turning it into thoughts. London was wealthy. Other British cities, Glasgow for example (he had seen Glasgow), had been built by money and still contained large amounts of it, but money seemed a slower substance in the north—a powerful substance, certainly, but stolid. Those owning it had not been liberated by it. Their faces were as severe, their mouths as grimly clenched as those without. But here in London—had it happened a year ago or a century or many centuries?—money had accumulated to a point where it had flashed into wealth, and wealth was free, swift, reckless, mercuric. He could feel it humming behind the ancient and modern facades, throbbing under the streets like silver-electric sap or semen. The ornate fountains, ostentatiously squandering great cataracts of public water, symbolized it. The day was warm but freshened by sudden little windy gusts which tossed fountainspray like handfuls of coin into a by-passing crowd of men and women whom only wealth could have made so well-dressed, sure of themselves and careless. He examined the map once again. He felt sufficiently familiar now with the rough triangle of streets between Marble Arch, Westminster Abbey and St Paul’s and that was something gained, but with half the day gone he had not found lodgings yet.

“That should have been your first aim,” he told himself sternly. “Let it be your next. But now it would be sensible to drink something warm.”

He found a small café on the Charing Cross Road and went inside. Most customers were at tables by the open door. He ordered tea and sandwiches at the counter and sat in the quiet interior. The one other person there was a stout not quite middle-aged man, wearing casual clothes of the best quality and smoking a cigarette with an air of such perfectly relaxed inattention that the new arrival could only justify himself against it by becoming businesslike. He folded The Times open at the Situations Vacant page and read it carefully, underlining desirable jobs while devouring sandwiches and tea with steady mechanical bites and sips. Later he opened the notebook and copied names and addresses into it. A girl passed him carrying a coffee cup and sat at the stout man’s table. It was impossible not to distinctly see her, even from the corner of an eye, for she was coloured like a traffic sign: white boots, black jeans, white shirt, a pale face with dark eyes and long black hair. Her voice was clear and curt and could have been called emotionless if the quick utterance had not suggested a wish to evade emotion. The newcomer had heard her accent before on BBC radio plays. He pressed the end of the pen against his underlip and looked at her, frowning thoughtfully to convey that he was considering something inside himself. She had a beautiful, rather thin bony face and was saying, “I believe I owe you an apology, Mike.”

The stout man stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray and mildly murmured, “Oh, I don’t think so.”

“Was I stinking drunk?”

“You were pretty pissed.”

“And I don’t suppose Jake helped much.”

“You know Jake better than I do. How is he now?”

“Still in bed. It was decent of you to get us home.”

“That’s what a car’s for, after all. How’s the head?”

“Oh, better. I woke about dawn and was sick as a pig into the chair beside the bed.” (She giggled.)

“That helped quite a lot.”

The newcomer stared down at his notebook, so confused that he almost wished not to hear more. He came from a place where girls who got drunk were ill-educated and despised. This girl had not the manner of one who could be despised. She was saying, “Did you undress me, by the way?”

“Afraid not.”

“Oh good. I must have done it myself.”

The stout man looked at his wrist watch.

“Well, Jake certainly couldn’t have done it. Look I’ve got to go now. You’ve not forgotten tomorrow night, have you?”

She said, “If you haven’t changed your mind about us.”

The stout man stood up saying, “I’ll always love you two, no matter how alcoholic you get. See you about nine then.”

“Do we bring our own bottles, Mike?”

“Not if you’re broke.”

“That’s good because we will be.”

The stout man put a hand inside his jacket pocket.

“Do you want a loan?”

“Not now. I’ll come to you when I’m desperate, shall I?”

“Yes, do that. Well, have fun,” said the man, and left.

The girl sipped coffee then sucked daintily at the end of her thumb. The newcomer was gripped by a spasm of determination. He stood, pocketed paper and notebook, stepped over to Mike’s empty chair, laid his hat carefully on the table and sat down. The girl seemed not to notice. He placed his elbows on the table, interlocked his fingers, cleared his throat and said sharply, “Do you mind if I engage you in conversation?”

She smiled and said, “Why not? I suppose we met at the party last night.”

He sternly shook his head.

“Well, I suppose it was some other party.”

“No.”

After a slight pause she said coldly, “I see. Well, don’t let it worry you. Engage me in conversation.”

This invitation was exactly what he had hoped for. He relaxed at once and started talking in an eager voluble way.

“Thank you. I’d like to begin by being honest with you. I’m a stranger here. I first arrived in London at eight o’clock this morning; I know nobody in this city and to be perfectly frank with you—”

She said, “You haven’t any money.”

He was puzzled.

“Why do you think that?”

“I find most strangers who start by being perfectly honest and frank go on to borrow money.”

He was impressed.

“Is that so? I’m very glad you told me. That’s a very handy thing to know. But”—he brightened—“as a matter of fact I have a great deal of money.” He brought a wallet from an inner pocket, laid it on the table between then and tapped it with a finger. “I think you’d be surprised at how much money I’ve got in this wallet.”

She nodded twice and said, “I see. And you think you’ve found a girl who can give you a nice time.” He paused, puzzled, then suddenly blushed pink. He grabbed the wallet and stood up, speaking wildly, almost tearfully.

“I . . . I see I have pushed my company and conversation on to somebody who does not want them. I hope you will believe though that I did . . . I did not mean anything insulting towards you. I’m really sincerely very sorry for my rudeness.”

In her own way the girl grew equally upset. She said, “Oh Hell. Look, do sit down. Please sit down.”

“But . . .”

“No, please! I’ve just realized you’re much more foreign than I thought. I’ll feel hellish if you go now.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“Yes, I promise. I just didn’t understand.”

Completely reassured he sat down and at once resumed his bright and eager manner, saying, “Where were we?”

“You were going to be frank about something.”

“True. Well, when I came out of the bus station I went for a lengthy stroll through your city centre, in order to acquaint myself with it, and eventually found this place. I noticed that the people near the door, if not beautiful, were definitely artistic. So I came in and overheard you talking to that man who went out a few minutes back, and it struck me from your conversation that you are the sort of person I’ve come to London to meet. I am from Glaik. Have you heard of Glaik?”

“No. Tell me about it. Is it a small place?”

“No, it’s big. We manufacture fish-glue and sweaters and process a lot of cheese. Some folk think the Americans were the first people to process cheese. In a way that’s true, but it was a Glaik man, Murdoch Stairs, who discovered the process. And Hector McKellar, who arranges things for television, is a Glaik man, so you see that, geographically speaking, Glaik is more than a dot on the map. But culturally, it lacks scope. It was the lack of scope that made me leave it. Have...