Hardly to be an Unaccountable Creature

Helen McClory

One cold spring morning niche spoken-word influencer, small-circuit darling Robert Wringhim was sitting in an armchair in a café in Edinburgh, speaking with loud animation at his phone as he made a video call. To look at, he made quite an impression. His height was touching six four. His face seemed to belong to a much smaller man, all dense-loose like a pug’s, and the eyes set deep were large and wet. His foreshortened upper half was solid too, with a heavy gut. All his length was in his legs, which he had at the present moment tucked away under him, so only his trainers – gold and red, against the general black of his garments – stuck out.

“It’s all—it’s all such a gift to me.” He found himself saying, “I’ve been performing for ten years now, and I still don’t always think I’ve worked out how to be a poet. I am though, I am blessed by how it’s been received, you’ve all been . . . so wonderful. Really went on that journey with me. With each poem you’ve seen more of me, naked and vulnerable, you’ve responded to my depth with the depths of your own. The amount of people who stop me after a show and tell me their own stories, tell me they feel inspired to start on spoken word – It’s so nourishing. In an age of starvation for so many . . .”

Across the narrow room, a couple of women looked up at him, then away, whispering. It was that sort of café, he thought, the kind a specific sort of woman came to – the judgy, and, let’s just be honest, past it women, with their superior expressions and infuriating confidence. For a long time he had been intimidated by women like that, had shrivelled from them like a slug against salt, but those days were well behind him. Who were they, anyway? He blinked, becoming aware again of the interlocutor in his hand. The person who wanted to hear what he had to say, to say nothing of the silent two hundred others listening in.

The interviewer was nodding, smiling. Something about that smile was uneasy, Robert thought, sitting oddly with his deferential tone. Probably he wasn’t a real fan, maybe read one or two of his collections, but hadn’t finished this latest one, maybe got it too late. It was clear he was wrongfooted on the politics of it, which were very clear, so clear, Robert thought, a comatose child could get it. But you had to put up with some of these clods, when you were on the publicity circuit.

“There’s some who say, Robert, that now you’ve entered that eschelon of ‘established poets’ you’ve maybe begun to swim in circles. How do you respond to that? What does it mean to be ‘established’, to be part of the community, and does it inevitably mean you become slightly a – self parody?”

Robert smiled back, though he felt bile at the back of his throat. “Well, I don’t consider myself established, as my work should show,” Robert said. “‘Established, establishment’, fixed, finished – it’s all so limiting, isn’t it? I have to speak to readers on their level, the level of what was called ‘the common man’ once upon an unenlightened time. You can’t just sit in your ivory tower. I get down off my pedestal, uh,” he realised he had forgotten his interlocutor’s name, “I do so much in-person work, you know, with real people, speaking at schools, libraries, leading workshops in, in . . . you know, prisons? — people have to connect in real life, don’t they? Community. That’s real life. That’s where it matters.”

The interviewer smiled again. Broad, assured, on the miniscule face. Robert felt the touch of something spidery travel down his back.

“You’ve done workshops in prisons, eh?” the interviewer said, unctuously.

“Not actually, not—in youth groups. Up at . . . that centre in the highlands. I’m sorry—the name escapes me right now. I’ve been lucky enough to have funding to . . . to help people reach into themselves and find and craft their voice. That’s how I found my mission and keep it pure – following the voice, the breath. And it just so happens that my breath – my words – have real meaning. And continue to—”

“And you’ve been a recipient of Alba Scotia Cultural Funding for Excellence grants . . . let’s see . . . eight times? Twenty thousand and more a pop. That must be some kind or record. How did you pull that off?”

“Well,” said Robert, modestly. He picked up his coffee and took a sip. Even with his best efforts, a look of fury flitted over his face. He snapped his fingers until the barista turned.

“Cold” Robert mouthed at him. The barista gave him a blank look.

“. . . golden boy. Lad with the golden tongue. A way with words, naturally. Eh, I’d like to turn the conversation now . . .”

I’d like to turn it too, Robert thought. Wait—had he said that? He looked at the interviewer. He was frozen. Connection dropped. Wait a second. He waited, stroking his hair back. He again mouthed “cold” at the barista.

“Well, let’s talk about something else then,” shuffle of papers. He had lost his thread then, how unprofessional. Robert tugged at his black cuffs. The women were staring at him openly now, but murmuring to each other. I’d like to wring your necks, he thought. I’d like to throw you down. The women got up suddenly and left.

“I am sorry,” said the interviewer. Robert coughed.

“So,” the interviewer began again, his voice slower and more careful, “how do you address these allegations that you . . . well you aren’t, haven’t been the ‘golden boy’ forever, have you?”

A bell above the door tinkled. Robert felt his smile seize upon his face. In blew a frigid wind. He thought, every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings. He had once written a poem about that, addressing male suicide, called ‘Christmas Ideation’. Now he would never use a word like ‘Ideation’, it just cut off too much of his audience. He tried to stick to words of at most two syllables.

“Oh god, what has my ex been saying?” said Robert, pitching his laugh at a gentle chuckle.

“Not just your ex, Robert,” said the interviewer, with infinite gentleness, “allegations of going after some of the women in your workshops, let’s not sugarcoat it here, of harassing them with obscene photographs of yourself. How do you address this?” Pause. Robert said nothing. “Is this the right behaviour for a man in your position, a figure much lauded in the literary community, continuously given grants to cement yourself in place . . .”

Robert felt a great rush of blankness come over him. He looked down at the figure, tiny, whose mouth was moving. His thumb moved over to cut off the call. Who was he? Where was this stuff suddenly coming from? Allegations. Harassment. This journalist, he thought, tiny little man he was. What’s a journalist these days? A meaningless title for someone too stupid to pick a profession that wouldn’t be made obsolete by AI in a matter of years. Who much of the time does top ten lists of gigs you must see, top ten sausage rolls the capital has to offer. Robert pressed down his thumb as if squashing a beetle. His skin pressed hard against the cold surface of the phone, as hard as if it would crack. But the figure did not vanish.

“Now, Robert, you can’t expect that to work,” said the interlocutor.

Robert felt something move behind him. He screamed. The barista, giving him space, said, gravely, “your cup?”

“Get back, you creep!” Robert said, twisting in his seat, the barista stepped back, holding up his hands. The cup and saucer on the table clattered,

“Woah pal,”

“Woah you.”

Robert fumed at him, but below the flaring anger, which was as natural and everyday a feeling to him as jovial self-confidence, or a peckish hunger, he became aware there was a depth inside him, a thick and footless hollow. He scratched at the table with his fingernails. The thing in the phone waited him out.

“I’m only recounting,” it said, “what has generally come to be known about you, though not much widely shared out of the usual whisper networks.”

“What do you want,” said Robert

“Oh, me? Nothing,” said his tormentor, “I have everything I need.”

Robert made a kind of chuckling noise again, got up shakily, walked to the long window and stared out. The traffic rushing past shoogled the frame of the door, making the bell on the door ring. Then he became aware that it was not just the traffic producing the din and the shaking. Something was coming up the road, something great and towering, utterly uncanny to see. A pair of huge feet, and vast legs.

He threw the door open and stood in the street. Here it came, with a terrible slowness, the great and terrible form. Robert stared, and the phone, forgotten, dropped to the ground. Before him, stepping between the tenements, enormous hands grasping at the rooftops, was a huge man, sixty-one metres tall exactly. He wore tatty slippers on his feet, fine but worn trousers, a waistcoat and cravat. In outline in trouser fabric could be seen his gigantic penis, which was, by scale, rather on the diminishing side. On his face as he stooped to look more closely at Robert was a kind of deep, anxious weariness, approaching like the approach of death. And sighing like the wind he brought his two great hands crashing down on two cars, parked in front of the café. His knees followed. He crouched, and he filled the whole curve of the street. Robert was shuddering uncontrollably. The gigantic head was peering at him steadily now. The huge, wet, deeply set eyes made up the whole of Robert’s world, and indeed, there he was, in their reflection, tiny, obscure. He opened his mouth.

‘Hardly to be an Accountable Creature’ was originally published in Issue #30. It was a co-commission with Edinburgh International Book Festival, to mark 200 years since the publication of James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner.

Helen McClory is a writer and editor based in Edinburgh. She is the author of two story collections, the Saltire First Book Award winning On the Edges of Vision, and Mayhem & Death, as well as a novel, Flesh of the Peach and The Goldblum Variations, a book of micro-fictions on Jeff Goldblum. Her short stories have been listed for distinction in The Best of British Fantasy (2018), The Best of British and Irish Flash Fictions (2018/19), and nominated for the Pushcart prize. McClory is a part-time lecturer at the University of Glasgow and co-founder of writing retreat Write Toscana.