Carl MacDougall (2023) Already, Too Late.

I read all of Carl MacDougall’s books apart from his short-story collection Elvis is Dead. Reading is what I do. But I had ulterior motives. I was sponsored by Scottish Book Trust and mentored by Carl MacDougall for an unpublished novel The Cruelty Man 2018, which belatedly is being published by Spellbound Books as Beastie in 2024. I wanted to meet the man on the page before meeting the actual man.

I knew far more about him than he knew about me. I’d joked with him that all he would have to do was die and his book sales would take off. Now is the testing time, but gone is the man. His best book, ironically, was one he didn’t write, but edited, The Devil and the Giro: Two Centuries of Scottish Stories. A must read for any Scottish writer. A classic showcase of Scottish literature when he was at his peak. He also appeared on-screen. Two series, on BBC, discussing Scottish literature, high and low. Already, Too Late, is too late for acclaim, but this is perhaps the pick of his books.

Carl was a war baby. The book begins at Kettle Station in Fife and reads like a novel. The old man that was the boy lives to recreate the scene and put words on the page in people’s mouths. Not the words they spoke, but what they said are the words of memory and distortion, which is much the same thing.

‘I jumped two puddles and run up the brae.’

My mother shouted, You be careful. And stay there. Don’t you go wandering off somewhere else where I’ll no be able to see you.

The Ladies Waiting Room was damp. There was fire in the grate and condensation on the windows. The LNER poster frame were clouded. Edinburgh Castle was almost completely obliterated and the big, rectangle of the Scottish Highlands above the grate had curled at the edges. There was the faint smell of dust.’

We know it’s a wee boy, because he was doing that thing wee boys do and jumping in puddles. His mother was watching and waiting. The reader waits with them. For what we’re not really sure, but that question makes us turn the page, which is what drama is.

In terms of style, you’ve probably noticed, Carl doesn’t use quotation marks to separate speech. Speech is part of life.

Kettle Station marks the boundaries of life. Women have got a separate Waiting Room from Men. And it’s laid out like a front parlour with a fire in the grate. This isn’t the type of Waiting Room a working-class woman would feel comfortable in. So it’s a big occasion. Scottish landmarks are laid out for the reader. Edinburgh Castle was obliterated. The Scottish Highlands have their own rectangle of poster. But they are living in the age of coal. The LNER poster frames the power of the Flying Scotsman to connect British cities.   

Carl’s grandparents on his father’s side were German. His father was in the British Navy and miraculously survived the sinking of several ships by U-Boats. But Carl and his mother were suspect. Treated as enemy aliens and checked up on by the local bobby.

Another miracle was the NHS which began shortly before Carl went to school. Carl cocked his head, when listening. He was deaf in one ear. He’d have been deaf in both ears, but for the NHS.

His dad returned from the war and went back to his job as a railwayman. He was killed by a train due in Burntisland Station at 5.31pm, 26^th September 1947. A different kind of life emerged for Carl from the wreckage.

A primary school teach sets the children from the Glasgow tenements the task of writing about their family. The annual what did you do in the summer holiday?

Please miss, I don’t know what to write? Carl said.  

This was unusual because Carl could read before he went to school aged five and was equally precocious in writing and comprehension. He was set against the stopwatch in puzzles and tests in this new thing the authorities were measuring called IQ. His IQ didn’t match what should have been his supposed performance in the classroom.

‘We’ll write to you, my mother said.

Carl, said Grandad. This is for your own good. You are going to get better, and get on with your studies.

I nodded, at first unable to speak. Everyone was on the verge of tears, so I couldn’t cry.’

When I was writing about children in tenements terrorised and sent into exile in a Children’s Home I was writing fiction. Carl was living it. Read on.