This excerpt is taken from: pp232-4 Hamish Hamilton hardback edition (2010)

An extract from the story entitled ‘Vacuum’

She was moving around. She would be tidying. She did this to keep up her spirits. Thump thump. No she did not, she did it to make me feel guilty. One thing was for sure, there was no need to tidy. Nobody ever visited the place. How come she had to tidy? How come she kept on tidying? Morning noon and night it drove me crazy. The girls never visited, nobody visited. The last people to visit were neighbours with a burst pipe who shouted about water coming through their ceiling. It had not come through any ceiling, it came down through the light. The water followed the track of the wire: electrical wire. They failed to notice. Stupidity. They were lucky they had not short-circuited the entire block of flats. That was a month ago. The wife did the talking, she was good at that kind of stuff. I could not look at them. Except for the postman that was the last visitors. We had sons. They never came. When was the last time? I could not remember. A month ago at least. Of course they had their own lives. Of course.

This tidying and dish washing drove me up the wall; counter cleaning, washing machines, mopping the linoleum, polishing the bloody ornaments and hoovers hoovers hoovers. What a din! That is what it was, a pandemonium, if you were trying to read so you needed to concentrate. I tried to concentrate. It was not easy. Nothing was easy. Not nowadays either; it was hard reading at all without her to contend with. I determined to ignore it, including the sound of her moving, she would move, move, move move move, to irritate me. She done it to irritate me. She said it was to make me aware of reality. That was the way she put it, as though reality had given me the slip. She could get on with life roundabout, the daily grind, unlike myself; this is what she meant.

Oh, I said, okay, right, of course, you’re so much more at home in the world than I am. Excuse me. It is so obviously the case why bother talking about it. So obvious I forgot.

No answer.

The door was ajar. I pushed it further open, enough to shout through: What exactly is this reality you keep talking about? Just tell me, I would be very interested to hear.

No answer.

Eh! I said. Do you know something the rest of us dont?

Still no answer. She knew a trap when she heard it; I would have something up my sleeve. If she replied she would be finished. I would get her. I would have something lined up to say, and I would say it. She was cornered. She was. I had her. She knew it now, if not already, I mean before, I think she would have, definitely.

But it wearied me. I retreated to the kitchen, shut the door, sat down at the table. I closed my eyes. I opened them. It was true: I was trying to get her cornered. That is what I was doing. Looking for ways to attack. It was quite bad, even perhaps despicable, if you were describing it.

It was our lives. This is what it had come to. And it was me responsible. She was not doing it. It was me. I was doing it.

I needed to straighten myself out. It was not her it was me.

But I was at a low ebb. I knew it. She did too. Both of us. It applied to our relationship as a whole. Although it was me especially. I accept that. I would never have denied it. There was something up with me and I could not get myself out of it. I tried but I could not. I needed to and I wanted to, if only I could and I would, if she would help, if only she would, and she could. She had it in her power.

Oh but she had such faith in my mental strength! So she said. Not in so many words. It was all unspoken with her.

My mental strength. Some hopes. My mental strength had gone. Did I have any to begin with? She thought I did. She thought I could sort out myself, like how I sorted out everything else.

She was being sarcastic.

Giving voice to the dispossessed and crafting stories of lives on the edge, lives almost lost, lives held in the balance, James Kelman writes about the things that touch us all. With honesty, toughness and humour, he confronts the issues of language, class, politics, gender and age – identity in all its forms – with a sympathetic pen and a sharp and observant eye.