The Favour
by John McGroarty
Genre: Humour
Swearwords: None.
Description: The consequences of not keeping a promise to an old Comrade.
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McManus was snoozing on his polyskin blackbuck couch when the phone had the audacity. He ignored it but it was persistent, impertinent, invasive, brazen. The mid-evening nap was essential to the sane running of McManus’s days and nights, his weeks and years. He had worked hard right after lunch, searching, rummaging in drawers and cupboards, for his crab crackers, vice grips and small shellfish mallet. Laying the table. Polishing glasses. He had even reread a substantial chunk of “The Holy Family”- The Un-Critically Critical Mass- in expectation of debate with Archie. His eternal adversary. Weasel of a man, unsound Marxist scholar, and main rival for the amorous gifts of Cara. A mere ten minutes before this latest disturbance his slumbers had been gripped with guilt and he had felt obliged to arise and fish the chardonnay out of the cupboard and put it in the fridge. Nicholas was coming for dinner at nine thirty. And he would bring that Archie and Cara and Claire. Maybe a night would be made of it all. Post-New Left intellectual debate. Crab, potted prawn cocktails, and chilled chardonnay. The phone would not rest. McManus opened up one eye and it fell on the garden of earthly delights. He sat up, leant across to the table, and picked up the receiver. I’d like to do you a favour, said a voice. McManus’s imp stirred. Good, it said, I like favours. He lit a cigarette and slipped his feet into slippers. We have a special price for our Venetian blinds all this month. Sounds good, said McManus. When can I come round? Why, how about right now, my friend? McManus imparted the address. I’ll be there in half an hour. Look forward to it, said McManus, and hung up. He was happy. A favour on a Friday evening was an unexpected boon. And just before his little dinner party. It was a sign. He would be able to announce something positive to his guests. Impress Cara. Strike a blow against Archie. For a change. It was always bad news and defeat. But this. A favour! It thrilled McManus. Tickled him. He went into his American kitchenette and poured a cup of coffee, sat up on a stool, flicked through yesterday’s Daily Record, and waited for the man with the favour to arrive. McManus opened the door in his dressing gown and slippers. It was only eight twenty-one. He had plenty of time before dressing for dinner. William Chambers, said the salesman and held out his hand. McManus shook it heartily. Call me Willie. Come away in, man with a favour called Willie, said McManus, deciding to be Irish on the spur. Willie looked at him strangely. He searched and sorted the voice box in his brain. I didn’t realise on the phone, he said, that you were from across the water. I was practising my Scottish accent on you. I always do that on the phone. McManus ushered him into the living room. Willie looked around at all the strange prints on the walls. The mad mountains and vindictive valleys, the bilious towers and human faces smiling peaches and pears. The bulls and the concubines in circles and cubes. Apples for heads and heads for tails and crazy cloud lands for sustenance. Do you mind if we speak in Scottish? So I can practise. Oh, yeah, no problem, said Willie Chambers, that’s my normal preference. Eager to please and a little cheeky he was. Aye, said McManus, not yeah, yeah is American. McManus was starting to suspect something was askew with the man with the favour who had told him to call him Willie. Would you like a cup of tea, or coffee, or a wee snifter? Better to remain polite in enigmatic Scots. Or would you like to take a shower? I have a nice dressing gown that I think is your size. Or bring your wife up for the weekend? Willie sat down. Eh, just a cup of tea, he said. McManus went into the kitchen and switched on the kettle and the tape recorder. It blasted out the Soviet National Anthem. McManus stood to attention while the kettle squealed. He thought of how Archie had abandoned the heritage and his hair. The baldy traitor. Willie got his bag open and whipped out the brochure. Do something. Calm your nerves. Make the sale. Even in the company of the strangest. He sat with it on his knees, scanning the room. His eyes stopped abruptly at the closed Venetian blinds. They looked new. Just a couple of dust light cracks shot into the room. Are the windows for the blinds in the back room, he shouted into the kitchen. McManus entered the room with two mugs of tea and his face bright red from the emotion of the proletarian revolution. No, he said, these are the only windows I’ve got onto the street. Why do you ask? There was a silence. But, said Willie, I sell Venetian blinds, I told you we had a special offer and you told me to come over. That’s why I’m here. There was just a wee touch of annoyance in Willie’s desperation. McManus’s face took on a confused twist. No, no, no, just you wait a minute, Willie, you told me you wanted to do me a favour and now you’re saying you want to sell me something. He put a hurt emphasis on the last part. That rather than a man with a favour you are in fact one of the lowest types of capitalists. Unmasked in minutes. Call me Willie he says! You haven’t even had a cup of tea, man. But, went Willie. But what? McManus cut him off. Where’s my favour? You told me categorically on the phone you were bringing round a favour. You’ve excited me, Willie. Built me up. Restored my faith. People can’t just go around calling you up when you’re lying on your settee half comatose preparing yourself mentally and physically for a dinner party and an intellectual joust and saying that they’re going to come and do you a favour and arranging to take up your time and then arriving and trying to sell you a set of Venetian blinds, especially when you’ve already got, bought and paid for less than six months ago, a perfectly good functioning set which you do not want to change or sometimes, even, open up in the morning. I am, Willie, more than disappointed, but I should have known. Aye, should have known. This is typical. Typical of the state of our society, of the rotten soul of man under capitalism, of the parting of man from his organic roots, the cash nexus, aye, the cash nexus, is the only relation between men now. I was just reading all about it this very afternoon. McManus was getting het up. One of the Holy Family, I see. The Holy Father? Son? The worst of them all, the Holy Ghost, are you?? If there was no favour, at least he would have this anecdote of teasing a petty bourgeois and a sense of outrage for his dinner guests. Don’t think now, Willie, that you’re going to have a shower in this house, oh no, or bring your wife up here for the weekend and spend your time drinking my tea and shooting my breeze, no way, comrade, do you think I’m a sort of charity? Do you? As if I had nothing better to do. My life is in earnest, Willie. Believe me. Then McManus had another idea. There never was a favour, was there, Willie? Go on, confess. You just said that to get into my living room and then try to sell me some blinds. A sales technique, I believe. Blinds? Is that what you’re about, Willie? All there is to you? He sprang at Willie and snatched the tea from out of his hands. Yah, bugger, yeh! I ought to give you a thrashing! The liquid spilt everywhere. On the carpet. On the fake leather couch. On Willie’s cheap Burton’s suit and battered brogues. On the Venetian blind brochure. Willie was by now in a state of agitation and complete confusion. He stuttered an apology and then tried to explain himself. To explain absurdly to McManus his whole existence. He told him how he had five children under sixteen and a wife too fat and neurotic to work. His three jobs. His surreal existence in the freezing cold tomb of the cash and carry. All about the failed ice-cream van venture. The midnight hours of the shelf stacking, and the Venetian blinds at the weekends. That was how he had been willing to come out on a chance at seven thirty on a Friday night. When most men were on their way to the pub, he said emotionally. About his sciatica. How the doctor had told him it was all psychosomatic. The increased chances of heart failure from working at nights. His blood pressure at 160. But still he was optimistic deep down. That he hoped to go to university someday to study something lucrative and get a good nine-to-five job in a bank. That that was his dream. His only dream. He was no agitator. Oh, no! If only he’d studied more before. At school. Listened to his father. That he was a good and trusted worker. A loved and respected husband and father. Even his mother-in-law liked him. That was how good a person he was. A good person, aye, that above all. One of the best people in the street. That he had had, and beaten on more than one occasion, a nasty dose of haemorrhoids by sheer willpower. No extra costs on creams and ointments splashed out. No bread snatched from the children’s plate for his bottom. He was a great economizer. That he had nearly died just the year before from a perforated ulcer because he didn’t want to cause the government expense and go to the doctor’s. McManus tutted. This tale of petty bourgeois squalor disgusted him. He was quiet for a moment. A good person, said Willie with feeling. When the air had settled McManus spoke. Do you think that gives you the right to go around making promises you have no intention of keeping? Well, does it? Does it, Willie?? Willie didn’t know what else to say. He hung his head. Just then the phone rang. Excuse me, Willie, said McManus sarcastically. Hello, Nicholas, what, you’re not coming? McManus looked savagely at Willie as he listened. And Archie? No, okay, faking lack of disappointment. No Archie, no Claire, he was thinking, and no Cara. No Cara. The real object of his earnest life. Ah, a party at Graham’s in Girvan, staying over, all of you, no I understand. Some other time. McManus put the phone down . He stifled the ape for a full five seconds. Then he screeched simianly and launched himself at the Venetian blinds. He tore them off the wall and started to dance on them with violent gusto. Willie watched incredulously. When McManus had finished he slumped down on the couch. The leather made an irreverent farting sound. You, he said, wagging a finger at Willie, have ruined my evening. It’s all your fault. Everything was going well until you phoned with your damn favour and your silver salesman’s tongue. I had everything prepared, all my arguments thought out to beat Archie, the bloody sell-out gradualist. McManus stared into space for a few seconds. And then you phoned, Willie. I think Archie knew that I was having fun with you. Somehow he knew. Just knew, he repeated, looking around the room. That he would now feel, McManus stopped, getting a faint whiff of his own cruelty, morally superior. That I am indeed a cruel beast of a person. That I am all abstract philosophizing. That we have to engage with real people with compassion he would say. Aye, people like you, Willie! He sprang to his feet. Did Archie put you up to phoning me? Aye, Willie, I see it all now. You’re not even a Venetian blind salesman. That’s just a rouse. You’re a friend of Archie’s. An actor, a good one, aye I’ll allow you that. And your name isn’t even Willie, is it? Five children, hah! You did have me fooled for a minute. But who has five children nowadays? You cannot fool me anymore, Willie, or whatever your name is! McManus got up and looked closely at Willie’s face. Where’s the seam of the mask, I must see it, he was mumbling to himself. You are in fact Archie in a Willie mask, a clever mask, but I see you. The same height and build. And a cunning wig! But you can’t trick me, Archie. I see right through you. Willie jumped up and tried to make a bolt for the door but McManus was a big loony. He grabbed him by the tie and pulled him into the kitchen and forced him into a chair. Keep calm, do something, make the sale, Willie was saying over and over to himself like a prayer, still keeping the salesman’s faith. Nicholas is in on it, eh Archie? All of you laughing at me. A party in Girvan. Who has a party in Girvan? What is there to party about in Girvan? There is no Graham, is there? I’ve never met him. You didn’t want to come, Archie, because you were afraid of my superior arguments. Of my intellectual prowess. And then in your weakness you thought up this plan to humiliate me. Well, now, Archi-bald, you are going to debate with me here at this kitchen table. This very night! You will see how all your ideas are fatuous, ill-informed, childlike, and bourgeois! McManus went over to the fridge and opened a bottle of chardonnay. He pulled two prawn cocktails out and slapped them down on the table. Eat, Archie, he ordered. Willie picked up a spoonful of prawn and slipped it into his mouth. So Archie, you think, that it is your position shall we say, like that old dotard Kautsky, that we should just wait for the system to collapse, eh? Make small gains and forget about the Revolution and abandon our revolutionary heritage. Dare to win no more, eh? Well, I tell you that we are part of the dialectic, we are animals, we react to provocation, the world is us and we are the world. The world as spirit and body. The moment is now. The Hegelian dialectic has not been flipped to mid-point. I see you, Archie, faking your radicalism day after day, teaching your students the Young Marx, the great humanitarian, like yourself, eh? But I tell you, Archie-Willie, in this house we ascend from the Earth to Heaven, from the bowels to the skies, and the critique, the critique is, and always will be, of the economy. And you, Archibald O’Keefe, can do nothing. Your day has passed. If it was left to you, our day would never ever come! For you the left is a life style choice. He drank down a glass of chardonnay. Willie filled his glass too and drank it down in one go. Aye, drink, Archie, drink, champagne, Archie. McManus was now radiant in his madness. Can’t you see, Archie, how your creeping Marxism is just the wastrel Whigishness of your teachers and your father!? You have progressed from the bastard son to the Holy Son to the Holy Father and now, complete treason, the Holy Ghost propagating eternally the rich man’s philosophy, you are an unwitting mouthpiece of the structured High Bourgeoisie, the end of history, Archie, the end of history, the ding-ding-donging of the end, the end, Archie!! Right on cue the doorbell went. McManus was uncertain what to do. He hyperventilated. Maybe it’s your guests, said Willie. He filled his glass again. McManus threw himself down on his couch and closed his eyes. His head was thumping. He sat up and looked around. You don’t get it, Willie. McManus grabbed hold of a stapler that was lying on his desk and started waving it around. This is what we all are, Willie. Staplers. All day, karump, karump, karump. When you tire they open your body up and stick in pieces of metal and on you go. He threw the stapler into the corner in disgust. Or like this lamp. He picked it up and stared at it like Hamlet gazing upon the skull of Yorick. Aye, all day, sitting in the corner, on off, on off, on off, no friends, no life, just burning meaningless miserable hopeless bulb after bulb. And then when you can’t take it any longer and you fuse they toss you out into the rubbish and get another one. That’s what I can’t take, Willie. Willie smiled weakly. A steady job with a decent salary would be a start, he said. The doorbell rang again. McManus ran out into the hall and sprang at the handle. There was Archie and Nicholas, Claire and Cara. The car broke down, said Nicholas. We got a taxi and decided to come to dinner after all. I hope you haven’t drunk all the vino, McManus, said Archie, pushing past him and barging into the kitchen. Hi, said Willie. William Chambers, he said, handing them all a card. Call me Willie. They all filed in. McManus sidled his way along the wall. Yes, eh, this is my friend Willie. He works in a cash and carry. And he sells Venetian blinds at the weekend. One of my proletarian brothers waiting anxiously for the revolution. He rewound the tape and put on the Soviet National Anthem again. They all stood to attention, except for Archie. Willie saw his chance and got up but McManus had a plan. I called Willie, he said, putting his big shovel hand on Willie’s shoulder and looking at Archie in a superior way, because I knew he was in a bad position financially. When you cancelled I thought I would treat him to a good meal and buy some new blinds as a way of helping him out. Cara’s heart fluttered. She knew deep down that McManus was a good man. And he still had all his own hair. He has five children and recurring haemorrhoids, said McManus. Life has been cruel. Where’s that brochure, Willie? Willie went into the living room and came back with it in his hand. He pointed out the most expensive set. I’ll just get my wallet, said McManus. He wrote a cheque. Willie put the cheque in his pocket. Well, McManus, I’ll be getting along, many thanks for your help, I’m sure the children will be very grateful. Good to see you again after all these years. Cara looked lovingly at McManus. He smiled bashfully. Archie mumbled to himself. I’ll just show you to the door, said McManus. He thrust a bottle of wine into his hands as he stepped out. I think you’ve done me that favour after all, he said in his ear. You and your wife have a wee party to yourselves tonight. The door closed and McManus turned back to Cara and his guests. The revolution sure does work in mysterious ways he thought to himself and went off to do battle with Archie. The final victory was within his grasp at last. Or, at the very least, within striking distance.
Swearwords: None.
Description: The consequences of not keeping a promise to an old Comrade.
_____________________________________________________________________
McManus was snoozing on his polyskin blackbuck couch when the phone had the audacity. He ignored it but it was persistent, impertinent, invasive, brazen. The mid-evening nap was essential to the sane running of McManus’s days and nights, his weeks and years. He had worked hard right after lunch, searching, rummaging in drawers and cupboards, for his crab crackers, vice grips and small shellfish mallet. Laying the table. Polishing glasses. He had even reread a substantial chunk of “The Holy Family”- The Un-Critically Critical Mass- in expectation of debate with Archie. His eternal adversary. Weasel of a man, unsound Marxist scholar, and main rival for the amorous gifts of Cara. A mere ten minutes before this latest disturbance his slumbers had been gripped with guilt and he had felt obliged to arise and fish the chardonnay out of the cupboard and put it in the fridge. Nicholas was coming for dinner at nine thirty. And he would bring that Archie and Cara and Claire. Maybe a night would be made of it all. Post-New Left intellectual debate. Crab, potted prawn cocktails, and chilled chardonnay. The phone would not rest. McManus opened up one eye and it fell on the garden of earthly delights. He sat up, leant across to the table, and picked up the receiver. I’d like to do you a favour, said a voice. McManus’s imp stirred. Good, it said, I like favours. He lit a cigarette and slipped his feet into slippers. We have a special price for our Venetian blinds all this month. Sounds good, said McManus. When can I come round? Why, how about right now, my friend? McManus imparted the address. I’ll be there in half an hour. Look forward to it, said McManus, and hung up. He was happy. A favour on a Friday evening was an unexpected boon. And just before his little dinner party. It was a sign. He would be able to announce something positive to his guests. Impress Cara. Strike a blow against Archie. For a change. It was always bad news and defeat. But this. A favour! It thrilled McManus. Tickled him. He went into his American kitchenette and poured a cup of coffee, sat up on a stool, flicked through yesterday’s Daily Record, and waited for the man with the favour to arrive. McManus opened the door in his dressing gown and slippers. It was only eight twenty-one. He had plenty of time before dressing for dinner. William Chambers, said the salesman and held out his hand. McManus shook it heartily. Call me Willie. Come away in, man with a favour called Willie, said McManus, deciding to be Irish on the spur. Willie looked at him strangely. He searched and sorted the voice box in his brain. I didn’t realise on the phone, he said, that you were from across the water. I was practising my Scottish accent on you. I always do that on the phone. McManus ushered him into the living room. Willie looked around at all the strange prints on the walls. The mad mountains and vindictive valleys, the bilious towers and human faces smiling peaches and pears. The bulls and the concubines in circles and cubes. Apples for heads and heads for tails and crazy cloud lands for sustenance. Do you mind if we speak in Scottish? So I can practise. Oh, yeah, no problem, said Willie Chambers, that’s my normal preference. Eager to please and a little cheeky he was. Aye, said McManus, not yeah, yeah is American. McManus was starting to suspect something was askew with the man with the favour who had told him to call him Willie. Would you like a cup of tea, or coffee, or a wee snifter? Better to remain polite in enigmatic Scots. Or would you like to take a shower? I have a nice dressing gown that I think is your size. Or bring your wife up for the weekend? Willie sat down. Eh, just a cup of tea, he said. McManus went into the kitchen and switched on the kettle and the tape recorder. It blasted out the Soviet National Anthem. McManus stood to attention while the kettle squealed. He thought of how Archie had abandoned the heritage and his hair. The baldy traitor. Willie got his bag open and whipped out the brochure. Do something. Calm your nerves. Make the sale. Even in the company of the strangest. He sat with it on his knees, scanning the room. His eyes stopped abruptly at the closed Venetian blinds. They looked new. Just a couple of dust light cracks shot into the room. Are the windows for the blinds in the back room, he shouted into the kitchen. McManus entered the room with two mugs of tea and his face bright red from the emotion of the proletarian revolution. No, he said, these are the only windows I’ve got onto the street. Why do you ask? There was a silence. But, said Willie, I sell Venetian blinds, I told you we had a special offer and you told me to come over. That’s why I’m here. There was just a wee touch of annoyance in Willie’s desperation. McManus’s face took on a confused twist. No, no, no, just you wait a minute, Willie, you told me you wanted to do me a favour and now you’re saying you want to sell me something. He put a hurt emphasis on the last part. That rather than a man with a favour you are in fact one of the lowest types of capitalists. Unmasked in minutes. Call me Willie he says! You haven’t even had a cup of tea, man. But, went Willie. But what? McManus cut him off. Where’s my favour? You told me categorically on the phone you were bringing round a favour. You’ve excited me, Willie. Built me up. Restored my faith. People can’t just go around calling you up when you’re lying on your settee half comatose preparing yourself mentally and physically for a dinner party and an intellectual joust and saying that they’re going to come and do you a favour and arranging to take up your time and then arriving and trying to sell you a set of Venetian blinds, especially when you’ve already got, bought and paid for less than six months ago, a perfectly good functioning set which you do not want to change or sometimes, even, open up in the morning. I am, Willie, more than disappointed, but I should have known. Aye, should have known. This is typical. Typical of the state of our society, of the rotten soul of man under capitalism, of the parting of man from his organic roots, the cash nexus, aye, the cash nexus, is the only relation between men now. I was just reading all about it this very afternoon. McManus was getting het up. One of the Holy Family, I see. The Holy Father? Son? The worst of them all, the Holy Ghost, are you?? If there was no favour, at least he would have this anecdote of teasing a petty bourgeois and a sense of outrage for his dinner guests. Don’t think now, Willie, that you’re going to have a shower in this house, oh no, or bring your wife up here for the weekend and spend your time drinking my tea and shooting my breeze, no way, comrade, do you think I’m a sort of charity? Do you? As if I had nothing better to do. My life is in earnest, Willie. Believe me. Then McManus had another idea. There never was a favour, was there, Willie? Go on, confess. You just said that to get into my living room and then try to sell me some blinds. A sales technique, I believe. Blinds? Is that what you’re about, Willie? All there is to you? He sprang at Willie and snatched the tea from out of his hands. Yah, bugger, yeh! I ought to give you a thrashing! The liquid spilt everywhere. On the carpet. On the fake leather couch. On Willie’s cheap Burton’s suit and battered brogues. On the Venetian blind brochure. Willie was by now in a state of agitation and complete confusion. He stuttered an apology and then tried to explain himself. To explain absurdly to McManus his whole existence. He told him how he had five children under sixteen and a wife too fat and neurotic to work. His three jobs. His surreal existence in the freezing cold tomb of the cash and carry. All about the failed ice-cream van venture. The midnight hours of the shelf stacking, and the Venetian blinds at the weekends. That was how he had been willing to come out on a chance at seven thirty on a Friday night. When most men were on their way to the pub, he said emotionally. About his sciatica. How the doctor had told him it was all psychosomatic. The increased chances of heart failure from working at nights. His blood pressure at 160. But still he was optimistic deep down. That he hoped to go to university someday to study something lucrative and get a good nine-to-five job in a bank. That that was his dream. His only dream. He was no agitator. Oh, no! If only he’d studied more before. At school. Listened to his father. That he was a good and trusted worker. A loved and respected husband and father. Even his mother-in-law liked him. That was how good a person he was. A good person, aye, that above all. One of the best people in the street. That he had had, and beaten on more than one occasion, a nasty dose of haemorrhoids by sheer willpower. No extra costs on creams and ointments splashed out. No bread snatched from the children’s plate for his bottom. He was a great economizer. That he had nearly died just the year before from a perforated ulcer because he didn’t want to cause the government expense and go to the doctor’s. McManus tutted. This tale of petty bourgeois squalor disgusted him. He was quiet for a moment. A good person, said Willie with feeling. When the air had settled McManus spoke. Do you think that gives you the right to go around making promises you have no intention of keeping? Well, does it? Does it, Willie?? Willie didn’t know what else to say. He hung his head. Just then the phone rang. Excuse me, Willie, said McManus sarcastically. Hello, Nicholas, what, you’re not coming? McManus looked savagely at Willie as he listened. And Archie? No, okay, faking lack of disappointment. No Archie, no Claire, he was thinking, and no Cara. No Cara. The real object of his earnest life. Ah, a party at Graham’s in Girvan, staying over, all of you, no I understand. Some other time. McManus put the phone down . He stifled the ape for a full five seconds. Then he screeched simianly and launched himself at the Venetian blinds. He tore them off the wall and started to dance on them with violent gusto. Willie watched incredulously. When McManus had finished he slumped down on the couch. The leather made an irreverent farting sound. You, he said, wagging a finger at Willie, have ruined my evening. It’s all your fault. Everything was going well until you phoned with your damn favour and your silver salesman’s tongue. I had everything prepared, all my arguments thought out to beat Archie, the bloody sell-out gradualist. McManus stared into space for a few seconds. And then you phoned, Willie. I think Archie knew that I was having fun with you. Somehow he knew. Just knew, he repeated, looking around the room. That he would now feel, McManus stopped, getting a faint whiff of his own cruelty, morally superior. That I am indeed a cruel beast of a person. That I am all abstract philosophizing. That we have to engage with real people with compassion he would say. Aye, people like you, Willie! He sprang to his feet. Did Archie put you up to phoning me? Aye, Willie, I see it all now. You’re not even a Venetian blind salesman. That’s just a rouse. You’re a friend of Archie’s. An actor, a good one, aye I’ll allow you that. And your name isn’t even Willie, is it? Five children, hah! You did have me fooled for a minute. But who has five children nowadays? You cannot fool me anymore, Willie, or whatever your name is! McManus got up and looked closely at Willie’s face. Where’s the seam of the mask, I must see it, he was mumbling to himself. You are in fact Archie in a Willie mask, a clever mask, but I see you. The same height and build. And a cunning wig! But you can’t trick me, Archie. I see right through you. Willie jumped up and tried to make a bolt for the door but McManus was a big loony. He grabbed him by the tie and pulled him into the kitchen and forced him into a chair. Keep calm, do something, make the sale, Willie was saying over and over to himself like a prayer, still keeping the salesman’s faith. Nicholas is in on it, eh Archie? All of you laughing at me. A party in Girvan. Who has a party in Girvan? What is there to party about in Girvan? There is no Graham, is there? I’ve never met him. You didn’t want to come, Archie, because you were afraid of my superior arguments. Of my intellectual prowess. And then in your weakness you thought up this plan to humiliate me. Well, now, Archi-bald, you are going to debate with me here at this kitchen table. This very night! You will see how all your ideas are fatuous, ill-informed, childlike, and bourgeois! McManus went over to the fridge and opened a bottle of chardonnay. He pulled two prawn cocktails out and slapped them down on the table. Eat, Archie, he ordered. Willie picked up a spoonful of prawn and slipped it into his mouth. So Archie, you think, that it is your position shall we say, like that old dotard Kautsky, that we should just wait for the system to collapse, eh? Make small gains and forget about the Revolution and abandon our revolutionary heritage. Dare to win no more, eh? Well, I tell you that we are part of the dialectic, we are animals, we react to provocation, the world is us and we are the world. The world as spirit and body. The moment is now. The Hegelian dialectic has not been flipped to mid-point. I see you, Archie, faking your radicalism day after day, teaching your students the Young Marx, the great humanitarian, like yourself, eh? But I tell you, Archie-Willie, in this house we ascend from the Earth to Heaven, from the bowels to the skies, and the critique, the critique is, and always will be, of the economy. And you, Archibald O’Keefe, can do nothing. Your day has passed. If it was left to you, our day would never ever come! For you the left is a life style choice. He drank down a glass of chardonnay. Willie filled his glass too and drank it down in one go. Aye, drink, Archie, drink, champagne, Archie. McManus was now radiant in his madness. Can’t you see, Archie, how your creeping Marxism is just the wastrel Whigishness of your teachers and your father!? You have progressed from the bastard son to the Holy Son to the Holy Father and now, complete treason, the Holy Ghost propagating eternally the rich man’s philosophy, you are an unwitting mouthpiece of the structured High Bourgeoisie, the end of history, Archie, the end of history, the ding-ding-donging of the end, the end, Archie!! Right on cue the doorbell went. McManus was uncertain what to do. He hyperventilated. Maybe it’s your guests, said Willie. He filled his glass again. McManus threw himself down on his couch and closed his eyes. His head was thumping. He sat up and looked around. You don’t get it, Willie. McManus grabbed hold of a stapler that was lying on his desk and started waving it around. This is what we all are, Willie. Staplers. All day, karump, karump, karump. When you tire they open your body up and stick in pieces of metal and on you go. He threw the stapler into the corner in disgust. Or like this lamp. He picked it up and stared at it like Hamlet gazing upon the skull of Yorick. Aye, all day, sitting in the corner, on off, on off, on off, no friends, no life, just burning meaningless miserable hopeless bulb after bulb. And then when you can’t take it any longer and you fuse they toss you out into the rubbish and get another one. That’s what I can’t take, Willie. Willie smiled weakly. A steady job with a decent salary would be a start, he said. The doorbell rang again. McManus ran out into the hall and sprang at the handle. There was Archie and Nicholas, Claire and Cara. The car broke down, said Nicholas. We got a taxi and decided to come to dinner after all. I hope you haven’t drunk all the vino, McManus, said Archie, pushing past him and barging into the kitchen. Hi, said Willie. William Chambers, he said, handing them all a card. Call me Willie. They all filed in. McManus sidled his way along the wall. Yes, eh, this is my friend Willie. He works in a cash and carry. And he sells Venetian blinds at the weekend. One of my proletarian brothers waiting anxiously for the revolution. He rewound the tape and put on the Soviet National Anthem again. They all stood to attention, except for Archie. Willie saw his chance and got up but McManus had a plan. I called Willie, he said, putting his big shovel hand on Willie’s shoulder and looking at Archie in a superior way, because I knew he was in a bad position financially. When you cancelled I thought I would treat him to a good meal and buy some new blinds as a way of helping him out. Cara’s heart fluttered. She knew deep down that McManus was a good man. And he still had all his own hair. He has five children and recurring haemorrhoids, said McManus. Life has been cruel. Where’s that brochure, Willie? Willie went into the living room and came back with it in his hand. He pointed out the most expensive set. I’ll just get my wallet, said McManus. He wrote a cheque. Willie put the cheque in his pocket. Well, McManus, I’ll be getting along, many thanks for your help, I’m sure the children will be very grateful. Good to see you again after all these years. Cara looked lovingly at McManus. He smiled bashfully. Archie mumbled to himself. I’ll just show you to the door, said McManus. He thrust a bottle of wine into his hands as he stepped out. I think you’ve done me that favour after all, he said in his ear. You and your wife have a wee party to yourselves tonight. The door closed and McManus turned back to Cara and his guests. The revolution sure does work in mysterious ways he thought to himself and went off to do battle with Archie. The final victory was within his grasp at last. Or, at the very least, within striking distance.