Skagboys

by Irvine Welsh

  — It doesnae bother us, cause it’s for you, she says, then corrects herself, — for us, you n me. It feels barry now. You’re right good tae me, Simon, she says, although he knows she knows that he isn’t, but is hoping to somehow shame him into becoming the version of himself she wants him to be, — dinnae ever leave us …

  — No danger, babe, you’re stuck wi me. We’ll get back doon tae yours. I ken a couple ay boys who want tae perty, it’ll be a laugh.

  In the bus window, Sick Boy surveys Maria’s reflection, surprised at how young she looks; pallid, wonderstruck. He turns away, anxiously surveying the other passengers. Back in Leith they eagerly head up the stairs of Cables Wynd House, where Maria immediately retreats to the bedroom to lie down.

  Sick Boy heads out again, returning an hour later with Chris Moncur from the Grapes of Wrath pub. Chris is six foot two and solid muscle, the first in his family for at least three generations not to work in the now practically defunct docks. Sick Boy wonders if he’s built in proportion. — Go easy oan her, he says in sudden anxiety.

  Chris nods in acquiescence, but is offended. If she cannae take a good panelling, what the fuck was she daein in this game?

  He emerges twenty minutes later and squares Sick Boy up. Neither man can bear to meet the other’s eyes as the notes change hands. Then Chris says, quite sadly, thumbing back towards the bedroom, — Ah think she’s pished the bed. Ah’d git her showered oaf n change the sheets if ah wis you. No gaunny dae much business thaire.

  Shortly after this, Maria comes out. — Ah feel sair, Simon.

  He’d been fixing up; it was as if she could smell the cooking skag, and they both take another shot. Maria lies back on the couch and whispers in broken contentment, — Ah feel better, Simon … sorry aboot the sheets … ah feel barry now, but …

  — No worries. He slowly but cheerfully rises, getting the old bedclothes, bundling them up and dragging them into the washing machine. He looks outside as a round moon blazes magnesium in the mauve sky, above tenement windows frosted with stark yellow light. Heading back to the bedroom, he curses as his wasted limbs struggle to turn the mattress over. He finds some fresh sheets and makes the bed up as best he can.

  When Maria sees his handiwork, she’s right back under the covers. She wants to doze, and him to join her. He slides in and feels a jolt of fear. — Was he big?

  She nods.

  — Bigger than me?

  — That fix … it was barry …

  — Aye, but how would you compare us, like, size-wise?

  — You’re bigger, Maria says, as Sick Boy senses with both gratitude and regret that she’s learning the game, — but he isnae as gentle as you. He didnae make us come like you do.

  Is the correct answer, he concludes, in bleak admiration.

  He’s quickly up and dressed in anticipation, slotting a cassette of Pink Floyd’s Meddle into his Walkman. It’s a little slower than usual, as the batteries are starting to go. The next guest is punctual, and Sick Boy lets him in with a blank look, securing payment up front, watching him go into the room where Maria dozes in the bed. The client pulls back the duvet and admires her nakedness. Then he looks pointedly at Sick Boy who steps back from the door, but keeps it ajar so he can look through the crack, where the man undresses in a few swift movements. Thank fuck his dick is small. Sick Boy feels a relief, as, in a sudden violent leap and series of thrusts, he’s on her and inside her.

  Maria becomes aware that the mass is heavier than the cloak of sleep and drugs. Sick Boy can’t see her face but she almost says his name, — Si … before realising that the weight, the dimensions, the scent, the feel are all wrong. Her body freezes and she opens her eyes into a nightmare.

  — Ah’m sorry about yir daddy, darlin, he says with a slack grin, as he thrusts inside her.

  — Naw … leave us … LEAVE US! Maria screams, trying to push him away with her thin, wasted arms, as Sick Boy cringes outside, looking away, turning up Floyd’s epic track ‘Echoes’ on his dodgy Walkman.

  — Nivir mind though, ah’m your daddy now, sweetheart, Dickson says, as the batteries die and the guitar riff fades. Sick Boy visualises him putting his hand over Maria’s mouth, simultaneously twisting her head round so she has to look into his eyes.

  It’s Sick Boy’s chance, and he runs through to the coat cupboard, and drags the claw hammer from Coke’s toolbox. He watches the white flabby arse of the beast going up and down, these black flannels round his ankles. The ex-cop’s skull is waiting to be smashed to pulp by his heroic intervention, as his beautiful princess twists her head away to scream loud enough to shake the Bannanay flats, then is smothered by the landlord’s hand again.

  I could do the cunt now … it would be rape …

  But his grip weakens and he lets the hammer fall to the floor as he stands rocking himself slowly, watching the grim proceedings through the door crack.

  Dickson seems to take an age, before finally spazzing up and bucking then flopping to a grateful rest on top of the trapped girl. He removes his hand and Maria’s disbelieving whimper rises to a blood-curdling bellow: — No … no … no … Simon … SI-MIN! SI-MI-HI-HIN …

  Watching Dickson roll off the girl, Sick Boy notes him hesitate for a second, then pulling on his clothes and springing out the room. — You’re some fuck-up, he says admiringly at the door, and slapping his host’s shoulder, sees himself out.

  Maria’s crying softly into the pillow, and Sick Boy’s on her, hammer in his hand, smothering her like a blanket, as if she were on fire, and holding her as she’s bucking and twisting under his grip, all snotters, tears, screams and deep, deep burns. — YOU LET HIM RAPE US … FUCK OFF … KEEP AWAY FAE ME … AH WANT MUH MA … AH WANT MUH DA-HAH-HAD …

  — AH HUD THE HAMMER! AH WIS GAUNNY DAE HIM! BUT NO HERE, AH MADE A MISTAKE!

  — YE LET HIM RAPE ME –

  — SOAS WE COULD GIT HIM! THEN AH REALISED THAT WE CANNAE DAE HIM HERE! WE’D GO DOON!

  — AH WANT MY MA … HUH-HA … Maria convulses, and Sick Boy knows he just has to hold her till her rage is spent and sickness creeps into her junk-deprived cells and they scream for another shot.

  And he does. The banshee howls fade into the background as his mind wanders off to scams and schemes and Maria feels warm and soft again, like somebody else is making the noise.

  Then she sleeps. It’s only when the phone goes off that Sick Boy feels moved to leave her. It won’t stop.

  He picks it up, and it’s Uncle Murray, from a motorway Little Chef. He’s spoken to Janey and he’s on his way to get Maria, and Sick Boy had better fucking well be gone by the time he gets there. Despite repeating to the increasingly irate uncle ‘You’ve got the wrong end of the stick here, Murray’ and ‘That’s not my style, Murray’ and ‘We all need to sit down and talk this through, Murray’, when the phone is slammed down Sick Boy suddenly thinks it may not be such a bad idea to vacate the premises. He leaves the dozy girl and heads out and up to Junction Street, then onto the Walk. He thinks he’ll go straight up the thoroughfare to Montgomery Street, where Spud and Renton will be waiting, or even press on to the Hoochie Coochie Club at Tollcross, where there will be girls who are much less high-maintenance.

  Notes on an Epidemic 4

  THE NEEDLE EXCHANGE in Bread Street, Tollcross, was shut down in the early 1980s by the police, after increasing concern about this facility had been mooted in the local press.

  It meant that members of Edinburgh’s growing intravenous drug-using community no longer had easy recourse to clean injecting equipment. Consequently, people started to share syringes and needles, unaware of the threat of HIV transmission (then publicised almost exclusively as a gay man’s disease) from direct blood-to-blood contact.

  Users began to get sick in hitherto unheard-of numbers, and soon some sections of the media were describing Edinburgh as ‘the Aids capital of Europe’.

  The Light Hurt His Eyes

  STEPPING INTO THE dusky room, his hand had instinctively reac
hed for the light switch, before abruptly stopping. Tracing the hulking silhouette of his former brother-in-law and business associate sat in the chair, he remembered that the light hurt his eyes.

  Following his exit interview at personnel, where they’d alternately humiliated and terrorised him, Russell Birch had spent most of the afternoon trying to get drunk. He’d hopped around several west Edinburgh bars, slowly fuelling his rage against the man who’d brought this nightmare down on him, who was silently ensconced in the wicker-basket chair, so still his bulk produced not even the faintest creak. Russell thought he’d been successful in his mission, but suddenly felt way too sober.

  The awareness that he now faced a different ignominy, even starker and less compromising than this morning’s ordeal in that shabby office, gripped Russell and he found himself internally cursing his stupid fucking slut of a sister who had actually married this animal, in that tawdry biker ceremony in Perthshire. He burned at the memory of that wedding, with its procession of muscled-and-tattooed leather-clad freaks. But Kristen wasn’t that stupid, she soon extricated herself from the relationship. Russell hadn’t been able to do the same.

  He’d come to accuse, but now recognised the inherent lunacy in such a course of action. His lot was to explain. And that was what he was trying to do, in a thin, whining reed of a voice that even offended his own ears. — They pulled me into the office, they’d caught me on these new cameras they’ve installed everywhere. Told me tae clear my desk, Russell shuddered, thinking briefly of the glacial expression on Marjory Crooks, the personnel manager. He knew the woman, they’d been colleagues. Eight years of service down the drain, and for nothing, save a couple of grand in a bank account.

  Yet he found himself parroting Ms Crooks, almost verbatim, to the shadowy hulk in the chair. — They said the only reason they’d decided against criminal prosecution was due to my outstanding previous service and the adverse publicity the company would receive.

  Po-faced security guards (he knew those men!) had been waiting to escort Russell on the short walk from office to street. As they prepared to embark on this humiliating hike, one of the directors had asked him, — Is there anybody else involved?

  — Michael Taylor, he’d immediately said, anxious to cooperate, to try and ingratiate himself. That was his weakness; too hungry to be accepted.

  — He’s a driver-stroke-storeman. Crooks had turned to the director, who had nodded twice, once in slow understanding, the second time to the sanction the security guards to continue ushering Russell Birch outside, onto the cold street.

  He’d given them something, given them Michael, and received nothing in return. And now Michael would want some payback. He recalled the time his now former associate had threatened him. Russell had remained cool, countering by stating that he could easily have this conversation with his brother-in-law. Michael had gone silent, keen to keep it between them. That had been the time his tree-shagging yuppie brother had walked into Dickens in Dalry Road, of all places, with that young shag he’d then brought to their mother’s birthday party. Alexander had made a fool of himself that evening, but he’d gone home with that drunk, slutty, youthful piece of minge. But then Alexander always seemed to land on his feet. The injustice of it all torched Russell inside out.

  And now he had this brooding force sitting opposite him. To think he’d got involved as a personal favour, to help him out. He was in pain, he’d said, since the crash; Russell had to help him. Then, as soon as he did, the former brother-in-law was putting the squeeze on him for more. He cut him in, of course, but Russell had been the one taking all the risks. Bags of it, stuffed inside his underpants, him waddling duck-like to the toilets like he’d had a non-industrial accident.

  Now it had all come home to roost, as his mother was fond of saying. Now he was unemployed, and unlikely to get references for any job in this specialist field. The four-year BSc (Hons) in Industrial Chemistry at Strathclyde University was now a worthless piece of paper in a frame.

  And as he told his former brother-in-law the story, restating the dangers of the security review he’d previously warned him about, with the new monitoring systems, a disembodied voice ripped out of the darkness, silencing him: — So what you’re saying is that yuv fucked things up, fucked things right up fir every cunt.

  — But ah lost my job trying tae help you!

  More silence. Russell could make out the man in the chair now. He was wearing sunglasses. His pain must be bad today; the weather had gotten colder. — You know what ye dae now?

  — What?

  — Ye shut the fuck up.

  — But I tried tae help you … he pleaded. — Craig … The dark shape rose from the chair. He’d forgotten the gargantuan mass of his former brother-in-law. About six five, as if hewn from marble. He recalled a film he’d recently seen, featuring a bodybuilder turned actor; it was like the Terminator coming out of the mist. — I don’t think you get it. He shook his head at Russell, like a disappointed parent.

  All Russell Birch could do was play out the craven, infantile role he’d been cast in. His arms extended, his head turned to the side, his shivering mouth pleading, — Craiiig …

  One sharp blow to the stomach squeezed all the air out of his body. The pain was overwhelming; it couldn’t be fought down or thought away or negotiated. He doubled over, keeping a weak hand out in pathetic appeal. The immobilisation of his body didn’t surprise him, he’d no experience of violence in any form, but what got him was how feeble he was: his pulse urgent, like the keen heartbeat of a small, trapped animal.

  The former brother-in-law looked down at him. — One thing has fuckin well happened. One thing only. You’ve cost me money, through yir fuckin stupidity.

  He’d worked out an unsatisfying contingency plan for this moment. That the plant would eventually uncover their scam had been apparent to him for some time. But while this change in strategy would keep him in the game, it meant a decided demotion. Now he was no longer The Man. All the people he’d been supplying the quality stuff to, through in Glasgow, down in England, with their fucking useless Paki brown shite, stuff the junkies here wouldn’t look at or even know what the fuck it was, now he worked for them. And who was left working for him? Only the worthless wretch at his feet, the clown whose bitch of a sister he’d been poking a while back. He had a debt to pay off, and he needed reminding of this. — Ye still work for me. Ye fuckin drive. Anywhere ah say. London. Liverpool. Manchester. Hull. Ye pick up stuff. Ye bring it back. Goat that?

  Russell Birch looked up at his former brother-in-law, into those impenetrable dark glasses. All he could say was, — Okay, Craig –

  — If you ever fucking call me that again, I’ll tear yir stupid heid oaf. Ma name’s Seeker. Say it!

  And it was. How could he have been so stupid? It was Seeker. Always Seeker. — Sorry … sorry, Seeker, he coughed, feeling like his stomach had been torn open.

  — Right, now git the fuck ootay ma sight.

  Russell Birch groped for the door handle in the swimming twilight. Fear was working through his pain and he was out of there. Out, out, out.

  Thawing

  Seventh Floor

  I DON’T MIND Mark dossing here, he’s a decent geezer, but I ain’t sure about the fella he’s brought with him. Swans around like he owns the place, and that’s when he’s here, which thankfully ain’t that often. Fack knows what he gets up ta.

  It all makes things a little tense first thing in the mornings, specially as I ain’t been sleeping too soundly of late. The one big problem with this flat is that we’re next to the rubbish chute. Bottles and all sorts go crashing past me head inside that wall, hurtling down that farking chute into the big garbage bin, and at all hours.

  This morning ain’t no exception to the uptight vibe; I get up to find that other cunt, Sick Boy by name and Sick Boy by nature, sitting at the window with a plate of toast. — Good morning, Nicksy, he snaps, then, surveying the manor, with that bleedin look on his boat, — Hackney: not
exactly a great part of town, is it? he says, like he was expecting farking Buck House or something.

  — You’re welcome ta find another, I tell the cunt.

  And he just turns ta me, cocky as ya like, — Rest assured, I’m working on it.

  Cheeky fucker. And I heard he’s ruffled a few feathers down the local n all. I ain’t got much time for blokes who think they’re better than anyone else, like they’re the only ones full of big ideas and dodgy scams. And it ain’t like he’s had me up stayin at his Jockland shithole, so a little bit of respect is called for.

  And it ain’t so bad on this estate. There’s a lot worse tower blocks round here than Beatrice Webb House. Even up on the seventh floor we get a decent view; right across Queensbridge Road and over to London Fields. And the lifts usually work; well, they did yesterday. The gaff ain’t brilliant, but I’ve dossed in worse. I inherited a gigantic American-style fridge-freezer which takes up half the kitchen, not that there’s ever anything in it. I got my own room, and there’s mattresses in the spare bedroom for the lads to crash on.

  At least this Sick Boy cunt actually gets up. Ain’t having a go at Mark, but he does a lot of farking kipping; he’s just surfaced now, squinting and rubbing sleep from his eyes, and it’s nearly one o’clock. He picks up a video box from on top of the telly and goes, — Ah prefer Chuck Norris tae Van Damme.

  Sick Boy looks at the cunt like he’s farking tapped. — I’m sure you would, Renton. I’m absolutely certain you would, he says, now sitting in the kitchen at the table, writing on a series of cards, in a very neat, deliberate hand. He’s got his back turned, so we can’t cop a butcher’s. Not that we give a toss what the cunt’s up ta. Mark flops back on the couch and picks up the Orwell novel he’s been reading: A Clergyman’s Daughter. It was the first proper book I read at school, after the dyslexia got diagnosed and I started ta get help. Didn’t matter that it was about five times the size of everybody else’s text and I got the farking piss ripped outta me for being a div, I just loved it. Orwell was the bollocks. Way I see it, the cunt ain’t ever been equalled.