The Ends of Our Tethers Read Free

don’t attract me. Her clothes were of very good quality and conventional in a smart country-wear style, yet seemed slightly odd, either because they did not perfectly match or were more suited to an older woman. The silence between us grew embarrassing. I asked if she would like a coffee. She seized my hand saying, “Lead the way,” and I found us walking toward a hotel outside the park gates, gates through which the man who had shouted at us was rapidly vanishing without a backward glance. We walked side by side so easily that I thought she was leading me, though later I found she knew nothing of the neighbourhood. I asked her name. She said, “Mattie orTilda, take your pick.”
    â€œSurname?”
    â€œ That ,” she said emphatically, “is what they want me not to advertise. The less said about that the better you cunt.”
    Her loud clear voice had the posh accent that strikes most Scottish ears as English. I decided she was an eccentric aristocrat and suddenly, because I am a conventional soul, had no wish to take her to a hotel lounge or anywhere public. I suggested going to my place. She said, “Lead on,” so I did.
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    We had not far to go and as we swung along she murmured, “Cunt cunt. Cunt cunt,” very quietly to herself as if hoping no one heard. That excited me. My flat is a large bed-sitting room, workroom, bathroom and kitchen. She stood in the largest room and announced, “This is certainly more salubrious than that other man’s place.”
    As I helped to remove her coat she whispered, “You cunt,” which I took as an invitation to help her out of more garments. She muttered, “Right, carry on.”
    I led her to the bed. What followed was so simple and satisfying that afterwards I laycompletely relaxed for the first time in years, almost unable to believe my good luck.
    â€œAnd now,” she said, lying flat on her back and talking loudly as if to the ceiling, “I want apple tart with lots and lots of cream on top. Ice cream.”
    â€œYour wish is my command,” I said jumping up and dressing.
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    The nearest provision store was a street away. I returned in less than fifteen minutes and found her in the middle of the floor, clutching her hair and dressed as if her clothes had been thrust on in panic. She screamed, “ Where have you been ?”
    â€œBuying what you ordered,” I said, displaying tart and ice cream. She slumped grumpily into a chair while I prepared them in the kitchen. Later, while eating, I asked what had made her hysterical. She said, “You left me alone in this strange house and I thought you would come back hours later stinking of whisky and wanting us to do it again.”
    I did want us to do it again but was not greedy enough to insist. I told her I was a freelance programmer who worked at home and I detested booze because mydad had been alcoholic. She looked pleased then said slowly and slyly, “Regarding the dad situation, ditto. Ditto but if disorder is confined to the family apartments others do not notice. And if you too detest alcohol and work at home like all sensible people it is possible, cunt, that you may be possible.”
    I laughed at that and said, “Possibly you are too. Where are you from?”
    â€œI have already said they do not want me to say.”
    I explained that I was not interested in her disgustingly snobbish family but assumed she had not been long in Glasgow. She said cautiously, “Until the day before yesterday, or maybe the day before that, I occupied a quite nice caravan in a field of them. People came and went. Mostly went.”
    â€œThere must have been a town or village near your caravan park.”
    â€œThere was a village and the sea but neither was convenient. I ate in a hotel called The Red Fox. I met the man who brought me here in The Red Fox. He turned out to be most unpleasant, not my sort at