The Whole is Less than the Sum of the Parts

She stands in the middle of Sauchiehall Street, watching the commotion. People going up and down, to shops and from shops; the street buzzes like a hive.

All walks of life. Well dressed blue-rinsed ladies with their Marks and Spencer bags crossing path with neds, barely in their teens, pushing buggies with toddlers dressed in little Kappa uniforms and oversized white caps. A young man in a business suit steps out of Greggs, impatiently biting into his sandwich, nearly knocked out of his hand by a lad speeding down the hill on a skateboard; a long black leather coat flowing behind him, flares hugging the chewing-gum-coated pavement. A shiny chain by his waist rattles out the rhythm of the cobblestones: chink, chink, chink.

✤

Just for a moment, somewhere in the midst of the clinking of the metal and the humming noise of the people, she can make out a croaking voice at the bottom end of the street accompanied by an out-of-tune guitar: ‘yesterday, all my troubles …’, but then it drowns in a piercing sound of bagpipes — the kilted musician has finished his pork pie, dedicating himself again fully to the Glencoe massacre; Scotland the Brave will follow, then Flower of Scotland, like a jukebox. For how-manieth time today? – She can recite his repertoire by heart.

All the sounds melt into one discord, the symphony of human life. All these people, rushing around. Behind each of these faces a name, a story; some happier than others. And in front of them, who knows? Good times, bad times, just dreary times? Sometimes worse than bad; she can read them like an open book, she wants to help them all.

✤

A couple of chubby girls in cropped tops run out of Boots, followed by an even chubbier security guard; he is out of breath just yards away from the store, the yellow fingers mopping his brow testimony to his only pleasure in life. The girls disappear in the crowd, laughing over their loot. Their faces stick to her mind. She is sure she will meet them again; her hunches are never wrong.

A man in Rangers t-shirt is selling CDs from an open suitcase, nervously keeping an eye out for the law, while across from him, at the corner of Cambridge Street, a preacher of doom set up his soap box, undeterred by people giving him wide breadth. For a moment, but only for a moment, she feels sorry for him, for she knows what it is like to be ignored. Earlier today she tried to talk some sense into a skiving group of laddetes demolishing a bench in Bellahouston Park. They laughed her in the face, shouting obscenities as she left them to their own devices.

✤

The ornate door of the Mackintosh café opens, behind it an immaculately dressed woman in her mid thirties; there is something very self-conscious about her. Their eyes meet for a second. Dark, beautiful, sad eyes; under the carefully applied makeup a touch of redness. She pictures the long queue for the single loo (the curse of the A-listed status of the building), the woman waiting to cover over the signs of crying. Under the expensive clothes she can sense the bruises; another unhappy marriage.

She has seen it thousand times: the pain, the pretence for the neighbours and friends, the emptiness of the soul. One day the pot overflows, a kitchen knife providing a way out. ‘Leave him!’, she whispers to her, but the words go unheard, the hollow eyes focused on a point behind her, in infinity.

✤

She comes here often to watch the people; she is so fond of people. But this afternoon she came to keep an appointment. She looks impatiently toward the top of the street. A man of indeterminate age makes his way down, trying to contour the wall, his fingers leaving smudges on Jessops sparkling window. It is hard work, his legs refusing to follow his nose, his eyes just swollen slits — he and his red nose; how many times have they gone through this routine?

If it seems as if she has known him for a lifetime, it is because she has, and more than that; their appointment made a long time ago. She remembers that hot afternoon in July of 75 as if it was yesterday. The school was out, there was so little to do in Dunfermline (or, as he would say, Dunfermline). She bumped into him surrounded by palls in Carnegie Park, a bottle making the rounds. At fifteen, the world seen through the bottom of a buckfast bottle seemed at their fingertips.

✤

She can hear the number 27 just around the corner; there is nothing she can do, nothing she wants to do. She watches him to steady himself on the green-man post, then stumble into the road. The breaks screech, ‘Oh, God no!’, he slurs out, then a thud.

✤

She burst out into uncontrollable laughter, the sweet feeling of vindication – this is her turn to laugh. She remembers how they laughed at her that July afternoon, how they mocked her, how they knew better.

‘Someone call an ambulance!’ The onlookers begin to gather, the driver unable to move from behind his steering wheel, shaking. ‘He is a goner’, Sophie overhears someone to say as she makes her way up the street: places to go, people to meet, appointments to keep.

[Prov 1:20ff]