Some folk would think it was her keeps them the gether, without her who knows what they would do, making sure they get their grub, whatever it is, the bowl of soup, the sausage and egg, whenever she gets round to making it. But it’s all an illusion, it just isnt true. It’s sentimentality. It isnt a true picture at all. People just like to think that because they dont want to think something else. You see her, she hardly talks at all. And she never walks in the middle. There is something but right enough, you dont quite know what it is about her. Plus the fact she never seems to hear what the other two are talking about. She has a set look on her face all the time. Probably she knows everything they have to say anyway, their conversation’s probably the same all the time. The older guy is about fifty years of age, the younger one about thirty-five, maybe even a nephew, because their relationship appears to be to do with family rather than friendship, but this is guesswork. It looks like the older one has been the longest with the woman, that the younger one just came along and decided he wanted in on the act. Unless it was a case of being invited in by the other two, or just the man, because his nephew, you dont feel he’s really up to doing things for himself and neither do you get the feeling about her, about the woman, that she ever gets a say in the matter either, unless maybe she doesnt want one; she has such an inferior way of going about you can hardly imagine her ever saying much at all. But this might no be true, maybe she does, maybe she just gives the impression she doesnt. Whenever they walk down the road people stare at them, and they’re open about it, because of the way they look, as if they’re full of their own lives, as if what they do concerns them to the exclusion of everything else. Not only does that make them interesting it means folk feel able to stare at them without them noticing which is just as well maybe because the older guy is quite aggressive; you get the feeling about that, there’s a nastiness about his face, he’s always got a grin. He’s definitely the chief. But then one time right enough she was on her own and she walked normal, she was swigging from a can of stout, so she might not be as docile as people think. Somebody looked at her and she looked back. The person had just came out the baker shop near the Botanic Gardens and maybe was having to step out her road—whatever, but the woman just gave her a “look”. Somebody told me, apropos of what I dont know, that she “liked the men”, meaning she liked to go with men. But that makes it seem she’s got choices. It makes it seem like she’s been able to make up her mind about things some of the time but maybe she doesnt, folk just like to think about other folk, especially women, they like to think they make up their minds about everything. But they dont, it’s a fallacy.
Except I suppose there’s the swing of her skirt. That lurching movement makes you think of a piece of material just thick with dirt and that is what you think of that skirt it’s like you can imagine the sperm of quite a lot of men. Having said that it’s important to say about her how you always think she is the one who is reflective, that it is her who reflects on what is happening roundabout; she’s the one that notices what people are signifying when they look at the three of them. Plus if ever you’re confronted by them, it’s her eyes that stay with you; it’s her you see eventually, the one who makes it hard for you. It can start you thinking about things, probably about men and women I suppose, the different types of relationships they have, how you think the women it is who carry the burden yet in such a veiled aggressive way you never feel sorry for them. They know the score. It’s as if it’s always them that work out the percentages. Even her, this one, the weight of her skirt, you dont for a minute think she is a hopeless victim and you dont think she is as passive as she makes out. Right enough she is a victim in the way she is just one woman having to face up to two men and you dont know quite what goes on in that situation, even if she sometimes has to find a punter if they’re in trouble. That time she was overheard when they were seated on the bench down by the River Kelvin, just over by the kids’ swing park, and she says something that showed how she felt on her own in the company, what she said wasnt heard by the two guys—or else they didnt pay it any attention, they never “heard” her. They were on the paving stones at the edge of the flower beds, the two of them involved about something or other, or maybe nearer the point, the guy with the permanent girn on his face was talking and the nephew was listening, and then the woman says, It’s no like that. Her hair straggling down her shoulders and her mouth gumsy. I think the nephew heard her and the other guy didnt because he just never expected her to speak unless spoken to, something like that. But again you know there’s that way you can tell when somebody isnt very bright, maybe just how he sometimes smiles for no reason anybody can see and that nephew was a bit like that, I dont think he was the full shilling. So girny, the older guy, he turns to her: Did you speak there?
Naw.
Aye you did.
I didni.
Aye ye did.
I didni.
Ye fucking did.
Then she just shut up. Girny stared at her and you would have expected him to hit her one. I think he would’ve if she had said anything more. He was daring her, that’s what he was doing. But she never says fuck all. She just stared at the other women, the ones with their kids playing on the swings, and you wondered about that, if she was away thinking about them and relating it to herself, the way she was. It was sad. You felt as if there was this terrible awful gap between them but there wasnt really. It was all a bit weird. I just wish she could have washed her hair. I felt that for her. I felt if she had done that then the gap wouldnt have been so bad and so big, all them with their weans playing in the wee swing park, all standing there having their wee chinwag the way women do, enjoying the sun and all that, while there was this other one, their comrade I suppose in solidarity, there she was, but they werent bothering about her, trying no to see her, then there was girny himself getting up off the bench and giving her the wire, Come on you, he said, not in actual words but just the way he jerked his thumb; the nephew as well, giving her a look, and then they went away down towards the old dummy railway.