2 Step We Gaily

STEP WE GAILY £3 £3 STEP WE GAILY As an opening story this is a rather unconventional piece for Professionals fandom, and therefore quite appropriate from the Glaswegian. Told entirely from one character’s viewpoint, it excavates past the public surface and into the private interior, bit by bit revealing both the perfections and imperfections of the man, examining the control of self and others that he strives to maintain, and watching as he finds himself unraveling with a passion and lust that may bring his ruin or his salvation. Two notes to the reader: certain events of the 1980s have been moved backwards about five years or so. Think of them as creative anachronisms meant to enrich the story. Also, beware the Scots English through- out. A dictionary which defines Scottishisms may be helpful to the lexicologically inclined. CURSING himself for both on sturdy legs, but there were no soldiers’ names his cupidity and the mortal weakness that drove carved into them with pocket-knives, no society him here even when he knew better, George sobriquets linking themselves with favourite Cowley passed through the street door and pushed Guardsmen. The tables along the walls were of the open the inner door that led to the scene of so many same half-moon shape, polish gleaming with the of his downfalls, so many of his defeats at the reflections of light and the hopes of those looking hands of his own carnality. for love or sex, but the banquettes now were of Packenham’s, it had been in his day, this discreet textured cloth, the plush velvets and leather of pub with even more discreet clientèle. For all that before worn out and discarded. Small pools of the name over the lintel was different these days, subtle light still that bespoke and begat intimacy some things never change, although others had seeped from the same low-hanging lamps, and the changed beyond all recognising. Oh, it was still the high-backed booths topped with a topiary of same odd mixture of the sort of rough pub that carved wood promised the same seclusion and soldiers and workmen would frequent, with the secrecy that George Cowley had enjoyed more elegant touches here and there to ease the sensibili- times than he would ever confess. ties of the upper crust æsthetes who came here for Clothes and hair and chatter different, yet the the coarseness of base passion but who would clientèle of today would be instantly identifiable to shudder if enclosed by unplastered walls and the founders of the inner circle of this pub, as uncomfortable seats. Within these walls, the décor would the mix of ages, older men with younger, a had scarcely altered, the unlit murals touched up group of older women sitting together, providing for years and then gradually, one panel flowing the only loudness of laughter, the occasional young infinitesimally into the next, the images were woman hesitating by the bar until a gentleman of updated, until the entire history of this place could her choice invited her to a table. Of course, once be seen on its walls, from the early days of starched our vision adapted to the subtle shadings of light, upright collars, boating on the river and the Elysian as did George Cowley’s from the safety of the backdrops to summon thoughts of Greek love, into doorway, we would realise that the women were the War years and beyond, coming to War once actually those brave souls who dared transform again, moving eventually into handsome, stylish themselves, some arriving in full regalia, others profiles that could have graced the covers of stepping into the private rooms upstairs as stolid Homme—or been perfectly at home in the original businessmen and emerging, chrysalis-like, as murals. The tables were still the small round ones painted beauties, or as the still-ugly with attempted 4 £3 …AS THREE £3 NOTES £3 by M. FAE G LASGOW STEP WE GAILY £3 £3 beauty painting over the cracks. and the benefits he’d garnered. Thought, again, of Some things never changed, indeed, but others how young he’d been, his body whole and were so different as to be inconceivable to a man unscarred, knee not yet maimed into ugliness, skin who had been scarce out of his teens the first time not yet wrinkled by the years. Remembered his he had taken a deep breath and pushed open those own laughter in here, remembered how he had doors to step inside a magic world of acceptance flirted and danced and flattered, and the changes in and seduction. Cowley looked around, taking his him were bitter at the back of his mind and the time, identifying the difference before he would corners of his eyes. But as he looked around at the commit himself fully once more to this den of his handsome young men, his body and soul reminded iniquities. It took him a moment before he realised him that there was one thing that never changed, that his suspicion was caused by the atmosphere never altered for him, and that was the need that that had become so different in the year since last haunted him and drove him, herding him in here he’d yielded and come here, but most of all, the like lamb to the slaughter when the hunger and problem lay with those things that had been loneliness became too much and the dangers were transformed since he’d come here as a young man. nothing compared to the siren-song of sex. For all It was far more than the immediately obvious, the that everyone from his agents up to the Prime reduction of blue tobacco smoke clustering at the Minister herself would doubt it, even George ceiling and the absent undersmell of Brylcreem and Cowley was only human, a failing for which he Kölnischwasser: it was in the ambience itself, the never could forgive himself. attitude of these people. In his day, when he’d been The door dunted him from behind, someone else young and spry and handsome and his hair still wanting in, someone less inclined to linger, or gleamed redly in the sun, the laughter in this place perhaps simply someone with less to lose than had been undercut by despair, the jollity barely George Cowley, head of CI5. He moved forward masking the fear, the invasive knowledge that this quickly, stepping aside to permit entrance to the place was but a temporary respite, and that the law collieshangie tumbling in with such a riot of noise and prison lurked outside. and movement, the chaos sorting itself out into Not so different today, for the men of his own disparate people, the group claiming several tables, generation still coming here after so many years, the racket of them settling themselves and garner- but the young ones, oh, they were the ones who ing drinks covering Cowley as he slipped quietly were so different, and deserving of the new word. up to the corner of the bar. He had to wait while Gay. He tried the word for himself, the fit awkward the chattering, laughing horde—’gay’, as they and uncomfortable, alien to his own image of called themselves, well-deserved here, with their himself. He wasn’t like these blithe young men bright smiles and laughing eyes—were finally who had come to maturity—what little of it they satisfied with their drinks, but eventually, the had—after the sword of ‘justice’ had been lifted barman was finished with them and was there in from their necks. He was of the old school, who front of him, his pretty face bedecked in a prettier had first thought themselves diseased and insane, smile. corrupt and debased, for whom epithets defined “Yes, sir?” the names they used for themselves. He was a “Laphroaig, please. A double.” Enough to see dinosaur, a remnant of the days when ‘gay’ was an him through the initial uneasiness, the time when adjective to describe a mood or a colour, not the both his conscience and his security awareness word that told the world the self-same secret men troubled him. There still lingered in him the horror had died from. In his day. For these young men, of first understanding that the sweet joys he shared their loyalties were forged from friendship and the with Alec McCluskey were the sins of Sodom, the embattling of disease, where for him, in his day, sins that caused God to destroy Sodom and all the loyalty had come from mutual fear and protection, sodomites. And the words in the New Testament, friendships formed to take care of those few who letters from Apostles long dead to church groups were one of ‘us’. long turned to dust but condemnation potent In sadness and in relief, he thought about the enough still to turn his love to ashes in his mouth. man he’d been then, and what he’d done and for And then there was his dear Annie, taking him in which reasons: thought about the rôle he’d played hand and promising him the Cure, one that faded £3 …AS THREE £3 NOTES £3 5 by M. FAE G LASGOW STEP WE GAILY £3 £3 and died as soon as she left him behind, the love of There was a particularly handsome young man a good woman naught but a temporary denial to holding court at the centre of the group that filled hide the hopeless truth from himself. Not that he the pub with their liveliness, and staring at him, could blame her for leaving him, mind: running Cowley found himself drawn not only by the man’s and hiding and hating himself, he hadn’t been good looks, but by the mystery of what a man like much of a catch, had been less of a companion.

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