by Irvine Welsh
In the event, ah only needed tae use one condom that night, and ah still couldn’t come. It was the pills, they sometimes got me like that. It took a while for us to run ourselves down, but it was okay trying. Eventually she just pushed me off her. — Just hold me, she said. Ah did and we fell asleep.
After a funny crash we get woken up by Gretchen. As she’s dressed, ah guess that it must be quite late. Her and Elsa talk away in German. Ah cannae understand but ah get the idea that there’s a phone call for Elsa. She gets up and puts my T-shirt on.
When she comes back, ah’m hoping that she’ll climb back into bed. There’s few things as sexy as a strange bird in your T-shirt. Ah pull back the cover.
— I have to go, I have my tutorial, she explains. She studies architecture, ah mind ay her saying.
— Who was that on the phone?
— Gudrun, back at Wolfgang’s.
— What’s up with wee Gally?
— He is strange, your friend, the little one. Gudrun said she wanted to be with him, but they did not have sex. She said he did not want sex with her. This is not usual, she is very pretty. Most men would want to have sex with her.
— Too right, ah say, which, by her reaction, ah can tell wisnae really what she wanted tae hear. Ah should’ve said; aye, but no as much as they’d want tae wi you, but it sounds shite now though. Besides, we’d shagged a good part of the night away, and I was now sliding into that come-down mood. The sex part of my brain was satiated and parcelled off. What ah wanted was a few beers with the boys.
She heads off for the university, leaving me her number. I can’t settle in her absence, the bed feels big and cold. I get up to find that Rolf and Gretchen have gone as well. Rolf’s left a note with a neatly drawn map of how to get back to Wolfgang’s.
Heading outdoors, ah decide tae walk for a bit, coming from this sidestreet intae a big, main road. It’s got quite warm again, this Indian summer willnae gie up withoot a fight. Ah come intae this big suburban mall and find a baker’s. Ah have a coffee and a banana. Needing some sugar, ah treat masel tae a big chocolate cake, which ah cannae finish as it’s far too rich.
Deciding that I’m too fucked to walk any further, I find a cab and show the taxi driver the address. He points across the road and ah instantly recognise the street. Ah’m here, ah jist came in the wrong fuckin wey. Always did hate Geography at the school.
Gally’s on ehs tod. Wolfgang and Marcia are out and Billy and Terry have gone intae toon. Ah should imagine that they’d be meeting Hedra and that big piece in the dress that Billy wis eftir.
We head out, walking in silence to the local bar. It’s goat a bit caulder again, n ah pit oan the fleece toap ah hud tied roond ma waist. Gally’s goat a toap oan wi the hood pilled up. I’m shivering, even though it’s no cauld. Ah get up n buy two pints. We take them tae a table near a big fire. — Where’s that wee Gudrun? ah ask him.
— Fuck knows, eh.
I look at Gally. Eh’s still got the hood up. There’s dark circles under his eyes and it’s like his face is breakin oot in spots, but jist doon the one side. Like some kind ay rash. — She wis a really sexy wee bird. But what aboot that big bird wi the striped dress, her that Birrell wis eftir? Reckon eh cowped it?
Gally spits oot some chewing-gum intae the fire. A woman behind the bar looks at us, disgusted. We stand oot a bit here, fill ay auld boys n families n nice couples.
— Fucked if ah ken, eh goes aw nippy, taking a big gulp oot ay ehs pint. Then eh pulls ehs hood oaf.
— Dinnae go like that, ah tells um. — Ye wir oaf wi a nice lassie, she wis well intae ye. Yir oan holiday. What’s the fuckin problem wi you?
Eh sais nowt, n looks doon at the table. Ah kin jist see the toap ay that matted black-broon hair. — Ah couldnae huv . . . wi hur . . . ah mean . . .
— How no? She wis game.
Eh lifts ehs heid up n looks me right in the eye. — Cause ah’ve goat the fuckin virus, that’s how.
Thir’s a dull thud in ma chist and ma eyes lock intae his for what seems an age, but it’s probably jist a couple ay heartbeats, as he sais in panic, — You’re the only cunt that kens. Dinnae tell Terry or Billy, right? Dinnae tell anybody.
— Right . . . but . . .
— Promise? Ye fuckin well promise?
Ma brain’s daein a fevered dance. This cannae be right. This is wee Andrew Galloway. My mate. Wee Gally fae Saughton Mains, Susan’s laddie, Sheena’s brother. — Aye . . . aye . . . but how? How, Andy?
— Needles. Smack. Only did it a couple ay times like. Looks like it wis enough. Found oot the other week thaire, eh sais, n eh takes another gulp, but coughs, spitting oot some beer in the fire which hisses.
Ah look aroond, but the wifie behind the bar’s away. A couple ay cunts look ower, but ah stare them doon. Wee Andy Galloway. The trips away as kids, then as young cunts oan our ain: Burntisland, Kinghorn, Ullapool, Blackpool. Me, my Ma, my Dad n Gally. The fitba. The arguments, the fights. Him climbing as a kid, always climbing. Thir no being any trees in the scheme, it wis concrete balconies, hinging oaf underpasses, aw that shite. A wee monkey, they used tae call him. A cheeky wee monkey.
But now ah’m looking at his stupid, dirty face and his vacant eyes and it’s like he’s changed intae something else withoot me noticing. It’s the dirty wee monkey, and it’s right oan his back. Ah look at him again through ma comedown, ma ain grotty lens, and ah can’t help it, but Gally looks dirty inside. Eh doesnae look like Gally any mair.
Where am ah getting those reactions fae?
Ah sip on my pint, and look at the side ay his face as he stares intae the fire. He’s broken, he’s destroyed. Ah dinnae want tae be wi him, ah want tae be wi Elsa, back in that bed. As ah look at him, aw ah can wish is that they weren’t here right now; him, Terry and Billy. Because they don’t belong here. Ah do. Ah belong everywhere.
Windows ’00
People who knew him well would laugh out loud when he told them that he was working as a security guard. Andy Niven, his old mate, after an incredulous pause, was still chuckling. — Davie Galloway, security guard, he said for the umpteenth time, shaking his head, — ah’ve heard aboot the poacher turned gamekeeper, but this is ridiculous.
Not that he socialised that much these days. Davie Galloway avoided pubs and didn’t like telling old friends and acquaintances what he did. A bit of loose drink talk and you were grassed up. It had wrecked his life before, and the others who’d depended on him. If he’d been there, he might have made a difference. He thought about the family he’d left behind all those years ago, how Susan had told him to make a virtue out of necessity and just fuck off for good. Later on his daughter, Sheena, would tell him the same thing; she didn’t want to see him again.
They were like each other. Susan and Sheena; they were strong, and he was both sad and glad of that.
Andrew, though, he still went to see Andrew.
This time, however, he wouldn’t go to jail through his scamming, he was only trying to work. Now it was just his job he’d lose, not his liberty. Davie didn’t want to go back inside, he’d had too much of his life frittered away, seen too many cramped grey rooms, filled with the smells and obsessions of strangers. Now he was working. The poacher turned gamekeeper.
Looking out from the control centre across this large housing scheme, Davie Galloway considered that the monitors were his windows to the world, the black, grey concrete world outside. Monitor six was his favourite, the overview camera sweeping beyond the tower blocks and over the river.
The rest revealed drab underpasses and stairways and entrances to closes. The tapes were seldom switched on and running because who’d be bothered looking through them for anything but a murder?
The punters knew that as well. The bairns were as gallus as fuck. The wee ones would just stand under the cameras giving them the Vs for much of the day. Sometimes they got tanned in, often by masked youths. Two monitors were blank, they couldn’t be bothered replacing the broken cameras they were ho
oked up to.
Alfie Murray, a recovering alcoholic and AA devotee, was working the shift with Davie. — Danielle been oan the day?
— Naw, yir in luck.
Danielle was a young woman who rose early and stood naked on the balcony, exposing herself to the camera in her block of flats. She would mouth something to the lens. Unlike Alfie, Davie Galloway didn’t mind whether or not he saw her. What he really wished, more than anything, was to know what she said each morning when she stepped out boldly to face them, wearing nothing but a smile.
They’d thought about going to see her. Davie would have just loved to have asked her what words she spoke. It wouldn’t be wise though. She would probably deny everything, and as this one generally wasn’t taped, except for periodic times when a savage crime caused moral outrage, they couldn’t prove it. They could do what they were supposed to do and report it to the police, but then she might stop, and they didn’t want that. Nobody complained, or even seemed to know. She wasn’t doing any harm, in fact she was certainly doing Alfie a fair bit of good.
Anyhow, Davie had no desire to contact the police. He knew he’d soon be recognised since he’d once been quite well known to them in this city. Besides, now his shift was almost over, and it would soon be time to go and have a chat with Andrew.
Edinburgh, Scotland
One Tuesday 11.28 pm
Abandonment
Juice Terry Lawson was moved to curse his old mate ‘Post’ Alec Connolly as he stretched his feet beyond the bottom of the bed, out from under the duvet. The cold bit into them, causing his toes to recoil. That daft cunt. Oh aye, there was nothing wrong with the huge, fuck-off, forty-inch state-of-the-art flat-screen bastard of a telly he’d nicked for Terry. Nice one, Alec. But the useless auld jakey twat had forgotten to lift the remote-control handset from that Barnton gaff he’d otherwise so professionally done over. Terry felt his discomfort rise and his perspiration levels increase as he extended his toes and endeavoured to click from BBC 1 through to Channel Four. There was a French job on in a bit and a flash of tit and erse was inevitable. Forget Channel Five: everybody else did.
It was funny, Terry speculated, thinkin aboot the posh cunts that were in toon for the festival. You could pit a bit ay tit and erse in a paper read by schemies and it was oppressing women, but show the same in a French film and they lap it up and it becomes art. So the real question of what constitutes art should be ‘is it wankable, and if so, who by?’ Terry thought, as he arched his back and pulled his buttocks apart to let out a fart at full force.
Settling back down and savouring the creeping, warm, sour odour, Terry propped himself up on his pillows, letting the screen illuminate the room. Opening the small fridge next to the bed, he pulled out and ripped open a tin of Red Stripe. Not many left, he noted. Terry took an appreciative sip of lager and then slurped back a mouthful. He picked up the mobile phone and called downstairs to his mother who was watching EastEnders, which she would have recorded yesterday while she was at the bingo. Terry’s piles started to itch, it was a possibility that the wetness of the fart had irritated them. Moving onto his side, he lifted up one buttock, and moved back the duvet, letting the cold air circulate round his arsehole.
Alice Ulrich picked up the phone in anticipation of the call being from her daughter, Yvonne. Alice had kept the name of her second husband because although Walter had done a runner just as her first man did, in his case in flight from serious gambling debts, he at least never left her with a waster of a son like Terry. Alice was disgusted to hear that the call was only from upstairs, from her son on his mobile.
— Listen, Ma, next time yir up fir a pee or that, goan bring ays some beers up fae the big fridge. Ma wee private stock up here’s nearly empty, eh . . . Terry heard the incredulous silence on the other end of the line. — Jist the next time yir up tae the lavvy likes. Ah mean, ah’ve jist went n goat masel settled doon, eh.
She let the phone go dead. It was a familiar scenario. But on this occasion something crossed over in Alice. She saw her life in brutal focus and, pausing for a minute to take an unflinching stock of her lot, she went through to the kitchen and got her son six cold beers from the fridge. Slowly climbing the stairs, Alice entered his room with the supplies, as she had done so many times. There was the usual musty smell of fart gas, stale socks and spunk. Habitually, she would have made her slight protest by dumping them on his bedside locker, but no, this time she circled the bed and put them in the wee bedside fridge for the laddie. She could see his corkscrew hair in silhouette. For Terry’s part he was vaguely aware of her distracting presence in the margins of his vision. — Cheers, he said impatiently, without looking away from the screen.
Leaving the room, Alice went into her own bedroom, clambered onto the bed and pulled the old suitcase down from the top of the wardrobe. She packed slowly and fastidiously, taking care not to crush the clothes, then lugged the case downstairs. She called a friend, then a taxi. As she waited for it to arrive she looked for some paper to write a note. She couldn’t find any so she ripped open a cornflakes packet and turned it inside out. Her bingo pen scratched out a message which she left on the sideboard.
Dear Terry,
For years I’ve waited for you to leave this house. When you got together with wee Lucy I thought, thank god. But no, that didn’t last. Then that Vivian lassie . . . again, no.
So I’m leaving. Keep the house. Tell the council I’ve committed suicide. God knows, I felt like it often enough. Look after yourself. Try to eat plenty greens, not just junk food. The rubbish men come on Tuesdays and Fridays.
Take care,
Love, Ma.
PS. Don’t try to find me.
Terry was woken up by the Big Breakfast show that morning. That Denise Van Ball. Phoah, ya cunt ye. Well worth one. She was never off the box; Gladiators, Holiday . . . the fuckin loat. A nice wee earner. She should never have dyed her hair though; he preferred it blonde. She’d put on some beef lately though, by the looks of things. But the hair would have to revert. Gentlemen prefer blondes, he thought smugly. Him and Rod Stewart. That Johnny Vaughan guy was sound but anybody could dae that kind of job, he considered. Fuck getting up at that time in the morning though. Getting up early in the morning and talking shite to every cunt. It was just like when he worked on the juice lorries! No now though. No way. Terry tried to get his mother on the mobile for the purposes of tea and toast. A boiled egg might be an idea. The phone rang downstairs, two, three times, but nothing. The auld girl must be out at the shops.
Getting up, he wrapped a bathtowel round his ample waist and headed downstairs where he saw the note. He held it in one hand, holding the towel with the other and staring at the card in disbelief.
She’s gone fuckin radge, he said to himself.
Terry was spurred into action. He had to go out for provisions. It was frozen outside and Terry had never been a morning person. The cold cut into him, through his washed-out, threadbare ‘Smile If You Feel Sexy’ T-shirt. The summer had been a total disgrace: August, and it felt like November. Fuck the crap local shops, he would take a brisk stroll. Stenhouse one way, Sighthill the other. Sighthill, he thought, stealing down the road towards the big flats. He had never minded Sighthill, in fact he’d always liked it.
This morning though, it was doing his fuckin nut right in. As he crossed under the dual carriageway and strode into the shopping centre it seemed to him as if he was seeing the neighbourhood through the eyes of some pampered public-school ponce who wrote those occasional social concern articles for the broadsheets. Everywhere dugshit, broken gless, aerosol spray paint, Valium-stunned young Ma’s pushing go-karts of screaming bairns, purple-tinned jakeys and bored youths looking for pills and powders. Terry wondered whether this was because he was depressed or whether it was due to the fact that it had been so long since he’d gone down the shops for himself.
What the fuck was up wi the auld girl, he pondered. She had been a bit funny lately, but she’d just hit her mid-fifties mi
nd you, which, Terry supposed, was a dangerous age for a woman.
A Fringe Club
Rab Birrell stooped out of the taxi and almost maintained the same posture over the short distance from the kerb to the door of the Fringe Club. He felt like an alcoholic sneaking into an off-licence. If anybody he knew was passing . . . as if they would. But the boys could turn up in all sorts of places these days. Acid House and fitba casuals had a lot to answer for. Now you had a clued-up class of ordinary punters who would inexplicably be where you least expected them, usually having it large. Birrell had the fanciful vision of the Fringe Club being full of gadges, secret lovers of the arts. While Rab himself knew little about the arts, he just loved the Festival atmosphere, the way the city buzzed.
His flatmate Andy followed Rab into the club. Rab flashed the two memberships his brother Billy had managed to secure for them. His brother also managed to get Rab two tickets for a preview of a film, which they’d both enjoyed. Rab Birrell looked around at the London media and arts crowd present. These cunts had even opened up branches of their own clubs up here for the duration of the Festival, so that they could get through the whole three weeks without the risk of accidentally leaving the side of the wankers they incessantly bitched about the rest of the year. Birrell was bitter that it was this class of people who generally decided what you read, heard and saw. He cast critical, appraising glances around. Like a class-war connoisseur, he savoured a perversely satisfying glow of affirmation when a certain look, gesture, comment or accent met his expectation.
Andy saw his disdain and made a face at him. — Settle down, Mr Birrell.
— It’s awright for you, you went tae Edinburgh Academy, Rab teased, clocking a pair of smart-looking women standing at the bar.
— Exactly. That makes it worse for me. I went to school with the likes of those cunts, Andy replied.
— Well, ye should be able tae communicate wi them better, so git the drinks in, then go ower tae they birds and start the chat.