Between Friends

By David Scott

Between Friends explores, in thirty-six texts, friendship in the modern world across a range of scenarios. Several texts investigate the special nature of male sporting affinities while others reveal the pleasures and disappointments of friendships with literary writers. The collection’s concern with the neuroses of masculinity is evident in ten vignettes devoted to male clothing, bodily adornment or sports equipment. The last six stories, mostly based on archival photographs, imagine scenarios of extreme male anguish or difficulty.

Overall the collection is a provocative psychological study of sometimes unconventional relationships which takes readers to a new level of understanding of the bonds between individuals. A particular strength of the work is its vivid powers of evocation – of scenarios, events and relationships – and its witty and often humorous expression of the significance of the situations recounted. Ranging over a wide spectrum of social and sporting subjects and interactions – from boxing to fashion, from the gym to home situation, from war to peace, from exotic places to familiar environments – the stories’ varied styles and forms aim to capture the particular flavour of the experiences recounted.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Mar 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781398409859

David Scott

David Scott is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the History of Parliament Trust and has formerly taught at both York and Yale Universities. His previous book (for Palgrave) 'Politics and War in the Three Stuart Kingdoms 1637-49' was chosen by the Sunday Telegraph as one of its Books of the Year in 2004.

Book preview

Between Friends

David Scott

Austin Macauley Publishers

Between Friends

About the Author

Dedications

Copyright Information ©

Acknowledgements

Part I: Between Friends

1: Between Friends

2: Breaking the Windscreen

3: Two for One

4: Imaginary China

5: S&M between Friends

6: The Cactus and the Orchid or the Laws of Hospitality

Part II: Men Together

7: Those Two Men

8: Two Torsos

9: Between Gym-Mates

10: Between Sparring Partners

11: Two Men Take a Walk: Peddars Way Journal – 5 July 2015

12: Do You Like What You See?

Part III: Writer Friends

13: Ian McEwan: ‘And There Were, Like, Swans…’

14: Philip Larkin: ‘Oooh! Can We Tell Them…?’

15: Angus Wilson: Darling Dodo

16: Martin Amis: How, or How Not, to Take a Bow

17: Philadelpho Menezes: Um Gênio Para a Amizade

18: Robin Fuller: Quiet Revelation

19: Philip MacCann: Highways and Wry Ways

20: Frankie Gaffney: Seven Types of Generosity

Part IV: A Man’s Best Friends

21: Gum Shield

22: Lucky Boxers

23: Favourite Shirt

24: Levi’s 501 Jeans

25: A Sharp Haircut

26: How to Wear a Tie

27: Pockets and Their Contents

28: Tattoos

29: Boxing Gloves

30: Boots

Part V: Vulnerable Warriors

31: Death with an Overcoat

32: Mercury in Underpants

33: Relaxing Between Scrambles

34: Interrogation by the Enemy

35: Amateur Boxers Waiting to Fight

36: Anxious Run-Up to Running

About the Author

David Scott is the author of numerous books on art, poetry, travel and graphic design. His novel Dynamo Island, The Cultural History and Geography of a Utopia was published in 2016. His first book of short stories, Cut up on Copacabana, came in 2018. A former 5000-metre athlete and amateur boxer, he has written widely on boxing, The Art and Aesthetics of Boxing, 2009, Cultures of Boxing, 2015.

’Like his previous volume of short stories, Cut up on Copacabana (2018), David Scott’s new collection, Between Friends, explores themes of travel, sport and personal encounters; it also, as before, draws on his work as a boxing writer. In his new book, however, the focus is on male friendship in some of its multifarious and even unsuspected forms. Steering a delicate course between the conventions of heterosexual conjugality and homosocial mate-ship, the collection explores some of the marginal regions of (mostly but not exclusively) male interaction, discovering in these often-uncharted waters, new channels of interpersonal communication and experience.

‘An observation that founds the ethos of the collection is the existence of persistently separate levels on which males conduct relationships; for, conjugal felicity in no way excludes pleasure in close sporting friendships, moments of wildness or other forms of masculine excess. Such discrete activities indeed reflect the nature of modern life in which the internet, personal media, the selfie, the smartphone, offer a more or less alluring array of interpersonal modes that increasingly supplements the central axis of human interactions, previously more clearly and rigorously defined.’

Marcus Brisbane, from ‘Male Friendship: a critical reaction to David Scott’s Between Friends’

Dedications

For Graeme Cunningham and Frankie Gaffney

Copyright Information ©

David Scott 2022

The right of David Scott to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398409842 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398409859 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2022

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Robin Fuller for designing the book cover. Also to Robin Fuller and Gregory Kerr, for critical feedback on some parts of this collection during the writing process. I would in addition like to thank Daanadell Peertalon, for his careful reading and criticism of the manuscript.

Let your feelings slip, boy,

But never your mask, boy…

(Underworld: Born Slippy)

Part I

Between Friends

1: Between Friends

As a couple, Michael and Yvonne have been together for several years and seem devoted to each other. Yvonne, as is natural, has many female friends, a state of affairs accepted without difficulty – or even curiosity – by Michael. Yvonne, however, has never been able fully to accept the close – though non-sexual – relationship between her boyfriend and his best friend Henry. The psychology of ‘mate-ship’ is something she finds difficult to understand. What is it that makes men want to travel together, watch or play sports together, drink together, and occasionally do other wild things, without the company of women? Perhaps Yvonne’s view is in part a function of that primitive urge towards possessiveness that seems to be hard-wired into women, as opposed to the equally primeval male proclivity towards same-sex bonding and gregariousness.

Yvonne’s initial response to this conundrum is to observe Henry closely in order to try to see what it is that Michael finds attractive about him. Like Michael, Henry is of average looks: tall, slender, athletic; he is polite, intelligent and amusing. He dresses in a manner similar to Michael, except for a weakness for army surplus clothing and dark glasses. The men sometimes swap clothes, in particular sports gear, T-shirts or hoodies, as they enjoy training together. Although Michael’s favourite sport is cricket, Henry has taught him to box, and they spend whole evenings at the pub laughing over video recordings of their bouts of sparring. They also exchange books, as both are voracious readers, and have occasional long evenings together drinking and experimenting with various substances.

As Yvonne’s observations bring little insight to bear on the men’s friendship, she sets out to devise a more radical plan to enter the mystery of male intimacy. In the event, however, there is no necessity for this as an opportunity arises of its own accord. One Saturday night, Yvonne is invited to a hen-party in another part of town and does not expect to return early. Michael and Henry, therefore, decide to go to the pub for a few drinks before returning to the flat Michael shares with Yvonne. As it is a warm summer evening, they sit out on the flat’s small balcony, drinking, smoking, getting pretty high and listening to house music playing not too loud on the hi-fi. Time passes quickly and imperceptibly.

Suddenly, it is around 2 a.m. and Yvonne is returning from her evening out. As she enters the living room of the flat, she makes out the shadowy forms of two males clad only in T-shirts and shorts lolling on the balcony. As she has downed many glasses of prosecco that evening, she is in a mellow mood and does not resent the presence of her partner’s male friend. She gives both men a hello kiss and the three start to move around to the music.

The combination of the novelty of dancing for the first time with Henry while enjoying at the same time the familiar presence of her partner Michael, provides a feeling of well-being that Yvonne finds delightfully intense: she is able to register the softness of Henry’s eyes as he engages with her and the mild abrasiveness of the stubble on his face as it brushes hers in a flirtatious embrace. At the same time, she is aware of the familiar presence of Michael as his arms encircle her.

For Yvonne, the effect of the double interaction is very powerful and leaves for subsequent reflection many questions not only as to what she herself feels but also as to the inevitably divided impressions experienced by her male partners. Will this joint flirtation with her cement the connivance of the two men, enlarging further their sense of an exclusive connection? Did the two men’s eyes meet as their arms simultaneously embraced her? Did her presence paradoxically confirm their union in a way otherwise impossible for two heterosexual males? Or did the coming together of the three bodies merely constitute a further demonstration of the ineluctable separateness of human individuals, despite their wishes or desires? Whatever the answers to these questions, from then on Yvonne seemed more relaxed about the friendship between Michael and Henry, felt that she was to a slightly greater degree implicated in it, and that she was able to let the two men explore their mutual friendship without jealousy or envy on her part. For, she reflected in her calmer moments, there’s nothing to worry about if there is something different going on, between friends.

2: Breaking the Windscreen

Between my second and third years at university in the late 1960s, I spent nine months as a language assistant in a French lycée in Perpignan, capital of the southerly province of Roussillon, part of the region of Catalonia that spans a bit of Spain as well as France. The immersion in the Mediterranean climate and style of life had a deep impact, not least in that the relaxed approach of the southern French to carnal knowledge hastened the loosening of sexual inhibitions and enabled me to lose the