Mavis Belfrage by Alasdair Gray Read Free Book Online Page B

apologize. She flushed red and cried, “Phone him and tell him I’m ..! What about the party? What sort of time will I have here without Clive, with only you and your friends and your father to talk to? Nobody kind? Nobody who loves me?”
    â€œOur guests,” he said with hard clarity, “will be decent, reasonable men and women.”
    â€œUnlike me, you mean. Tell them I may be rather late as I’ve gone to pick up a friend. There’s a piece of meat in the oven. It will be ready by eight if you don’t burn it.” She strode to the door. He jumped up crying, “If youtake the car you’ll have plenty of time to get back before the guests arrive!”
    â€œI’ll certainly take the car,” she said and left.
    Half a minute after the front door was slammed Colin heard Bill say, “I suppose I can come back now that people have stopped shouting. Have you a pain there?”
    Colin, looking down, noticed his hand was pressing his midriff and was surprised to feel tension there. He nodded.
    â€œIt goes away when she comes back,” Bill told him. “Will we look at the meat?”
    But Colin knew nothing about serving a complex meal. He phoned his father and asked him to come earlier to help with an unexpected snag, then he went upstairs and changed his clothes for less festive ones.
15
    Gordon was the only guest who did not find the party perplexing. The rest expected Colin to be less taciturn than at college but between short spasms of small talk he was more so. He had not told them he was living with a woman yet the place had a feminine look. His father (who they met for the first time) served the meal with eager assistance from a small boy who said he was Bill Belfrage and that his mother had gone to fetch a friend and would turn up eventually.
    â€œHer movements are sometimes slightly erratic,” he explained.
    â€œBill Belfrage!” said Doctor Schweik thoughtfully. “In my psychology class last term I had a student called Mavis Belfrage. Your mother perhaps?”
    â€œYes!”
    â€œA good-looking woman who asked interesting questions but, as you say, was a little erratic. Who has she gone to fetch?”
    Bill looked at Colin who seemed listening for a sound outside the room. Schweik repeated his question. Colin said, “I think he’s called Evans.”
    â€œEvans? Clive Evans? He used to sit beside Mavis in my psychology class and he too asked interesting questions. I look forward to meeting them once more.”
    The other guests knew each other almost as little as they knew Colin. Schweik became the star of the party because he could talk with little or no help from others. After the meal three guests gave reasons for leaving early, the rest gathered near the fire. Bill, refusing to go to bed, dozed on an armchair with his hands in his pockets.
    â€œFor years no one has been a more radical critic of the system than myself,” said Schweik, “but an extended bureaucracy is no answer to the problems created by a bureaucracy.”
    â€œI’m glad you said that. It so definitely did need saying,” said another lecturer who was inclined to fawn on Schweik.
    â€œThat was a lovely piece of meat Colin,” said the other lecturer’s wife.
    â€œThese ego-powered rebellions change a few superficial details and leave us with even more unwieldy superstructures,” said Schweik. “Colin willagree with me.”
    â€œI’m trying to keep an open mind,” said Colin.
    â€œDo you see a solution?” asked the other lecturer.
    â€œNone, because I see no problem. Our societies are shaped by technological evolution, the only effective historical manifestation of the human will when religion fails. Since the shaping process is often painful many feel compelled to exclaim and proclaim and campaign, especially in democracies where crushed worms are permitted to wriggle. But nobody is being badly crushed