Mavis Belfrage

Money

In Britain only snobs, perverts and the wholly despairing want friendship with richer or poorer folk. Maybe in Iceland or Holland or Canada factory-owners and labourers, lumber-jacks and high court judges eat in each other’s houses and go holidays together. If so they must have equally good food, clothes and schools for their children. That kind of classlessness is impossible here. Mackay disagrees. He says the Scots have democratic traditions which let them forget social differences. He says his father was gardener to a big house in the north and the owner was his dad’s best friend. On rainy days they sat in the gardener’s shed and drank a bottle of whisky together. But equal incomes allow steadier friendships than equal drunkenness. I did not want to borrow money from Mackay because it proved I was poorer than him. He insisted on lending, which ruined more than our friendship.

I needed a thousand pounds cash to complete a piece of business and phoned my bank to arrange a loan. They said I could have it at an interest of eleven per cent plus a forty-pound arrangement fee. I told them I would repay in five days but they said that made no difference — for £1000 now I must repay £1150, even if I did so tomorrow. I groaned, said I would call for the money in half an hour, put down the phone and saw Mackay. He had strolled in from his office next door. We did the same sort of work but were not competitors. When I got more business than I could handle I passed it to him, and vice versa.

He said, “What have you to groan about?”

I told him and added, “I can easily pay eleven per cent et cetera but I hate it. I belong to the financial past. I agree with Maynard Keynes — all interest above five per cent strikes me as extortion.”

“I’ll lend you a thousand, interest free,” said Mackay pulling out his cheque book. While I explained why I never borrow money from friends he filled in a cheque, tore it off and held it out saying, “Stop raving about equality and take this to my bank. I’ll phone them and they’ll cash it at once. We’re still equals — in an emergency you would do the same for me.”

I blushed because he was almost certainly wrong. Then I shrugged, took the cheque and said, “If this is what you want, Mackay, all right. Fine. I’ll return it within five days, or within a fortnight at most.”

“Harry, I know that. Don’t worry,” said Mackay soothingly and started talking about something else. I felt grateful but angry because I hate feeling grateful. I also hated his easy assumption that his money was perfectly safe. Had I lent him a thousand pounds I would have worried myself sick until I got it back. If being aristocratic means preferring good manners to money then Mackay was definitely posher than me. Did he think his dad’s boozing sessions with Lord Glenbannock had ennobled the Mackays? The loan was already spoiling our friendship.

Five days later my business was triumphantly concluded and I added a cheque for over ten thousand pounds to my bank account. I was strongly tempted not to repay Mackay at once just to show him I was something more dangerous than decent, honest, dependable old Harry. I stayed honest longer by remembering that if I repaid promptly I would be able to borrow from him again on the same convenient terms. Since handing him a cheque would have been as embarrassing as taking one I decided to put the cash straight back into his bank. Despite computerization my bank would have taken two or three days to transfer the money, which would have meant Mackay getting it back the following week. I collected ten crisp new hundred-pound notes in a smooth envelope, placed envelope in inner jacket pocket and walked the half mile to Mackay’s bank. The morning air was mild but fresh, the sky one sheet of high grey cloud which threatened rain but might hold off till nightfall.

Mackay’s bank is reached by a road where I lived when I was married. I seldom go there now. On one side buildings have been demolished and replaced by a cutting holding a six-lane motorway. Tenements and shops on the other side no longer have a thriving look. I was walking carefully along the cracked and pitted pavement when I heard a woman say, “Harry! What are you doing here?”

She was thin, sprightly, short-haired and (like most attractive women nowadays) struck me as any age between sixteen and forty. I said I was going to a bank to repay money I owed and ended by asking, “How are your folk up at Ardnamurchan, Liz?”

She laughed and said, “I’m Mish you idiot! Come inside — Wee Dougie and Davenport and Roy and Roberta are there and we haven’t seen you for ages.”

I remembered none of these names but never say no to women who want me. I followed her into the Whangie, though it was not a pub I liked. The Whangie’s customers may not have been prone to violence but its drab appearance had always made me think they were, so the pleasure I felt at the sight of the dusty brown interior was wholly unexpected. It was exactly as it had been twenty or thirty years before, exactly like most Scottish pubs before the big breweries used extravagant tax reliefs to buy them up and decorate them like Old English taverns or Spanish bistros. The only wall decorations were still solidly framed mirrors frosted with the names and emblems of defunct whisky blends. This was still a dour Scottish drinking-den which kept the prices down by spending nothing on appearance, and it was nearly empty, being soon after opening-time. Crying, “Look who’s here!” Mish led me to people round a corner table, one of whom I knew. He said, “Let me get you a drink Harry,” starting to stand, but, “No no no sit down sit down,” I said and hurried to the bar. Apart from the envelope in my inner jacket pocket I had just enough cash to buy a half pint of lager. I carried this back to the people in the corner. They made room for me.

A fashion note. None of us looked smart. The others wore jeans with shapeless denim or leather jackets, I wore my old tweed jacket and crumpled corduroys. Only my age marked me off from the rest, I thought, and not much. The man I knew, a musician called Roy, was almost my age. The one oddity among us was the not-Mish woman, Roberta. Her hair was the colour of dry straw and stood straight upright on top of her skull, being clipped or shaved to thin stubble at the back and sides. The wing of her right nostril was pierced by several fine little silver rings. Her lipstick was dull purple. She affected me like someone with a facial deformity so to avoid staring hard I completely ignored her. This was easy as she never said a word the whole time I was in the Whangie. She seemed depressed about something. When others spoke to her she answered by sighing or grunting or shrugging her shoulders.

First they asked how I was getting on and I answered, “Not bad — not good.” The truth was that like many professional folk nowadays I am doing extremely well even though I sometimes have to borrow money. It would have been unkind to tell them how much better off I was because they were obviously unemployed. Why else did they drink, and drink very slowly, at half past eleven on Thursday morning? I avoided distressing topics by talking to Roy, the musician. We had met at a party where he sang and played the fiddle really well. Since then I had seen him busking in the shopping precincts and had passed quickly on the other side of the street to avoid embarrassing him, for he was too good a musician to be living that way. I asked him about the people who had held the party, not having seen them since. Neither had Roy so we discussed the party. Ten minutes later we had nothing more to say about it and I had drunk my half pint. I stood up and said, “Have to go now folks.”

They fell silent and looked at me. I felt that they expected something, and blushed, and spoke carefully to avoid stammering: “You see, I would like to buy a round before I go but I’ve no cash on me. I mean, I’ve plenty of money in my bank — and I have my cheque book here — could one of you cash a cheque for five pounds? — I promise it won’t stot.”

Nobody answered. I realized nobody there had five pounds on them or the means of turning my cheque into cash if they had.

“Cash it at the bar Harry,” said Mish.

“I would like to — but do you think the barman will do it without a cheque card?”

“No cheque card?” said Mish on a shrill note.

“None! I’ve never had a cheque card. If I had I would lose it. I’m always losing things. But the barmen in Tennent’s cash my cheques without one …”

Davenport, who had a black beard and a firm manner, waved to the barman and said, “Jimmy, this pal of ours wants to cash a cheque. He’s Harry Haines, a well-known character in the west end with a good going business —”

“In fact he’s loaded,” said Mish –

“— and you would oblige us by cashing a cheque for him. He’s left his cheque card at home.”

“Sorry,” said the barman, “there’s nothing I can do about that.”

He turned his back on us.

“I’m sorry too,” I told them helplessly.

“You,” Mish told me, “are a mean old fart. You are not only mean, you are a bore. You are totally uninteresting.”

At these my words my embarrassment vanished and I cheered up. I no longer minded my social superiority. I felt boosted by it. With an air of mock sadness I said, “True! So I must leave you. Goodbye folks.”

I think the three men were also amused by the turn things had taken. They said cheerio to me quite pleasantly.

I left the Whangie and went toward Mackay’s bank, carefully remembering the previous ten minutes to see if I might have done better with them. I did not regret entering the Whangie with Mish. She had pleasantly excited me and I had not then known she only saw me as a source of free drink. True, I had talked boringly — had bored myself as well as them — but interesting topics would have emphasized the social gulf between us. I might have amused them with queer stories about celebrities whose private lives are more open to me than to popular journalism (that was probably how the duke entertained Mackay’s father between drams in the tool shed) but it strikes me as an unpleasant way to cadge favour with underlings. I was pleased to think I had been no worse than a ten-minute bore. I had made a fool of myself by wanting credit for a round of drinks I did not buy, but that kind of foolery hurts nobody. If Mish and her pals despised me for it good luck to them. I did not despise myself for it, or only slightly. In the unexpected circumstances I was sure I could not have behaved better.

The idea of taking a hundred-pound note from Mackay’s money and buying a round of drinks only came to me later. So did the idea of handing the note to Mish, saying, “Share this with the others,” and leaving fast before she could reply. So did the best idea of all: I could have laid five hundred-pound notes on the table, said, “Conscience money, a hundred each,” and hurried off to put the rest in Mackay’s account. Later I could have told him, “I paid back half what I owe today. You’ll have to wait till next week for the rest — I’ve done something stupid with it.” As he heard the details his mouth would open wider and wider or his frown grow sterner and sterner. At last he would say, “That’s the last interest-free loan you get from me” — or something else. But he would have been as astonished as the five in the pub. I would have proved I was not predictable. Behaving like that would have changed me for the better. But I could not imagine doing such things then. I can only imagine them since I changed for the worse.

I walked from the Whangie toward Mackay’s bank brooding on my recent adventure. No doubt there was a smug little smile on my lips. Then I noticed someone walking beside me and a low voice saying, “Wait a minute.”

I stopped. My companion was Roberta who stood staring at me. She was breathing hard, perhaps with the effort of overtaking me, and her mouth was set in something like a sneer. I could not help looking straight at her now. Everything I saw — weird hair and sneering face, shapeless leather jacket with hands thrust into flaps below her breasts, baggy grey jeans turned up at the bottoms to show clumsy thick-soled boots laced high up the ankles — all these insulted my notion of how a woman ought to look. But her alert stillness as her breathing quietened made me feel very strange, as if I had seen her years ago, and often. To break the strangeness I said sharply, “Well?”

Awkwardly and huskily she said, “I don’t think you’re mean or uninteresting. I like older men.”

Her eyes were so wide open that I saw the whole circle of the pupils, one brown, one blue. There was a kind of buzzing in my blood and the nearby traffic sounded fainter. I felt stronger and more alive than I had felt for years — alive in a way I had never expected to feel again after my marriage went wrong. Her sneer was now less definite, perhaps because I felt it on my own lips. Yes, I was leering at her like a gangster confronting his moll in a 1940 cinema poster and she was staring back as if terrified to look anywhere else. I was fascinated by the thin stubble at the sides of her head above the ears. It must feel exactly like my chin before I shaved in the morning. I wanted to rub it hard with the palms of my hands. I heard myself say, “You want money. How?”

She murmured that I could visit my bank before we went to her place — or afterward, if I preferred. My leer became a wide grin. I patted my inner pocket and said, “No need for a bank, honey. I got everything you want right here. And we’ll take a taxi to my place, not yours.”

I spoke with an American accent, and the day turned

into one of the worst in my life.