GUILT TRIPPER

by Geoff Small

  “I know, he’s told me all about the place,” Dickens declared proudly.

  Judith was taken aback by this statement. “When did you see Danny then?”

  “Didn’t you know? We’re next door neighbours over at the Great Eastern. I apologised to him for my behaviour that Christmas night up in the Highlands…he was really good about it.”

  “Yes, he’s like that. He’s a good man,” Judith said, trying to maintain a veneer of normality, but her veins were pulsating with shock at the news about Danny’s lowly accommodation. That aside, she was delighted to see Dickens so happy, but, knowing how sensitive and prone to violence he could be, worried about what might happen if his young girlfriend ever decided to leave him.

  After dropping her luggage at a bed and breakfast, Judith took a cab to the Great Eastern Hotel. Here, Danny lived in one of twenty-four white, wooden cubicles which faced one another along a narrow, chlorine smelling corridor. He was sitting on a bed wearing his blue overalls when she arrived, after being shown up to the fourth floor by a masculine looking female warden with tattooed forearms.

  “I’m surprised you want to see me,” he said, forlornly.

  Embarrassed by Danny’s self-deprecation, Judith’s eyes wandered from the single bed at the centre of the cubicle to his mother’s portrait painting, now nailed to the wooden wall behind. Looking down again, her attention was grabbed by a hardback book on the pillow behind him. Staring up from its glossy flysheet, against a backdrop of iron shuttered, concrete tenements was Ryan, head turned just enough to flaunt his battle scar.

  “Why are you here Danny?” She regained eye contact. “Is it because you feel guilty about being happy that year up at Gairloch? Are you ashamed that your contentment was funded by McLeod’s drug money?”

  “How do you know about that?” Danny exclaimed, his eyes following Judith as she approached the bed and picked Ryan’s book up.

  “I overheard your conversation with Bob.”

  Danny looked relieved not to have to explain everything. In the meantime Judith perused the item in her hands. Published by another Rex McLeod front called Highly Educated Delinquent, it went under the title ‘Toi’s Are Us’ — Toi being the name of the ‘team’ which Ryan had led around his housing scheme.

  “I stole it from Waterstone’s,” Danny confessed. “Somehow, shoplifting seemed more moral than subsidising a heroin dealer.” This elicited an exasperated sigh from Judith.

  “Ryan really disappointed me when he accepted McLeod’s proposition. My own corruption was bad enough, but his fall was like the end of all hope. It was as if everything me and him had discussed over that past twelve months meant nothing. After he let me down like that, I didn’t want to be near human beings ever again.”

  “But you let him down first Danny…can’t you even see that! By being all nice things to all men, you allowed the bad to prosper at the expense of the good. You should have been protecting Ryan and all those other kids from spiteful weirdos such as Bob Fitzgerald, but instead you allowed him to sleep under the same roof…you even invited him to stay permanently! You were too blinded by those damned egalitarian beliefs to notice the danger you were putting everyone in. The fact is Danny, there are people who are always going to be bad, no matter what, and they don’t deserve our compassion. Those types have to be expelled from society otherwise it just isn’t worth living in.”

  “I’m not saying you’re wrong, but, because of my upbringing, it isn’t easy for me to think like that.”

  “What’s that toe-rag up to these days anyway?”

  “Bob? He’s avoiding Rex McLeod full-time, odd jobbing his way round the world and restricting himself to remote places. The last I heard, he was supposed to be working at a fish canning factory, somewhere north of the Arctic Circle in Norway. I just hope to God he manages to evade that filth peddling bastard for ever more.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Well, mainly, because if anything terrible happens to Bob then it’ll be all my fault, for making McLeod aware that he’d been sharing trade secrets with me.”

  “But if McLeod does catch up with Bob, then you’ll at least have achieved some justice for that poor girl Carina…what’s her name?”

  “Curran.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, first of all, I’ve learnt that there isn’t any justice and, secondly, if it was wrong of Bob to have inflicted violence upon Carina, then it would be no less wrong for Rex McLeod or anybody else to inflict violence upon Bob. An act of barbarism shouldn’t suddenly become palatable simply because it’s supported by a moral argument. I’m not having a pop at you Judith, but frankly, there’s nothing more sinister than a sadist in search of legitimisation. As far as I’m concerned, you either enjoy violence or you don’t.”

  Judith stood in silence, wracking her brains for a counter argument. But at heart she felt Danny was right.

  “So, apart from festering in this hole, what else have you been up to these past ten months? What’s happened to the college for God’s sake?”

  As Danny’s explanation gained steam, Judith sat down on the bed, listening intently.

  It transpired that he’d never returned north, being unable to set foot in a house financed by heroin. However, he had spent his final fifty grand employing qualified teachers to get the kids through their diplomas. But, according to Katy — who visited him regularly at the hostel — it had been a miserable place thereon. The new employees did only as much as they were paid for and eschewed the students when outside the classroom. The big communal dinners became a thing of the past, and the kids were discouraged from the house altogether. Instead, they were expected to prepare their own individual meals back at the byre, in a tiny kitchen which occupied the room vacated by Ryan.

  With all the joy removed, only six of the original twelve Glaswegians had completed their second year. Thanks to the foundations laid by Danny, Hamish, Judith and Angie, though, they all achieved high grades that summer — most notably Belinda, who passed English with distinction, despite being heartbroken over Ryan’s departure.

  Once the place had been deserted — around mid-May — Danny had put the house and byre on the market for less than he’d paid for them derelict, so desperate was he to be cleansed of any association with Rex McLeod’s money. It sold within days. The only problem was, his charity owned Gairloch College and so he had to conduct the absurd charade of selling a painting to it for one hundred and fifty thousand pounds, in order to get his hands on the cash. At first he’d been more than happy paying the Capital Gains Tax to the government, until he learnt that Rex McLeod’s security firm had just won a large government contract. There seemed to be no escape — he was either being paid by or paying for the drug dealer.

  Carrying the remaining money in a holdall, Danny had walked through some of the city’s most deprived areas, during the early hours, redistributing it as he went. First off, he’d revisited North Glasgow, where Katy and her parent’s now lived in an even worse and older building than their original tenement, which had been demolished for private houses. Not only was it a far cry from the home with front and back doors that the housing association had promised, but it too would soon be torn down. Here, he’d posted ten thousand pounds through the letter box, as thanks for the girl’s unstinting dedication to his ill mother, and to help finance the creative writing degree she was embarking on that autumn, down in East Anglia. Then he’d hit the daunting, thirty floor, Springburn high rises. Despite the elevators not working, he dropped twenty grand at a fourteenth floor apartment, home to a guy called Brucie Cruickshanks, who was dying from Mesothelioma after years working with asbestos in the Govan shipyards. The poor bastard had been denied compensation and Danny hoped his donation might lessen the stress, if not for Brucie then maybe for Mrs. Cruickshanks. After this, he’d returned to the East End, pushing a similar amount through the door of a football club for recovering drug addicts, before crossing the M8 footbridge and walking several miles to a new, semi-det
ached house in the redeveloped Blackhill area, where he posted a manila envelope containing fifty thousand pounds. He hadn’t quite made it back down the path though, when a squat, moustachioed fellow aged about fifty came out, wanting to know what was going on. Danny could not have imagined a worse situation. He’d been left with two choices: run or finally confess his sins to the person he’d exploited most. In the name of decency, he’d felt compelled to introduce himself.

  The man had invited Danny inside, where a thin, dark haired woman lay on the couch watching TV — it was Carina Curran. Having spent months semi-comatose, followed by years in a deep, appetite suppressing depression, she’d shed much of her former weight. She’d made a steady recovery in the three years since the attack, and even regained her ability to walk, but only over short distances and then very slowly.

  Having taken the armchair opposite Mr. Curran, Danny had wasted no time with his revelation, maniacally spewing it up without commas or full stops. He’d been prepared for hysterics from Carina and even physical violence from her dad, but instead they’d just sat in silence, depriving him of any distraction from his shame. Confession over, the eight foot walk to the front door had seemed like a mile.

  Three days later, the Currans had turned up at the Great Eastern Hotel, returning Danny’s money. He’d tried to convince Carina that, as a victim of both Bob Fitzgerald’s violence and Rex McLeod’s drug dealing, she was entitled to some compensation. But she’d said she abhorred the compensation culture and believed all money should be in the hands of communities, not individuals.

  “Individuals waste money on phone ringtones, cocaine and furry dice to hang from their rear view mirrors,” she’d said. “Whereas communities, at their best, spend it on brain surgeons and special needs education. As a beneficiary of both, how can I legitimise taking any more money out of the pot? Without a Health Service, fifty thousand pounds wouldn’t even have paid for my bed and breakfast in a private hospital.”

  When Carina spoke, her brain damage had made itself apparent. She’d had to pause every so often to remember a simple word or regain a train of thought and occasionally she’d slurred her words. Apart from this handicap she’d been remarkably eloquent — especially for someone having to relearn how to read and write.

  Carina said that closing a college for twenty kids in order to make one individual wealthy was absurd. If he really wanted to make amends for what he’d done, she’d told Danny, he could teach her how to paint.

  After the first drawing lesson round at the house, Carina had taken a nap, leaving Danny and Mr. Curran alone together. Mr. Curran had explained how the be all and end all of his daughter’s life had been playing the cello, until Mrs. Curran died, following a protracted illness. It was at this time that she’d become close friends with a wealthy violin player from her orchestra, called Cordellia Henderson. This elegant lady — the wife of a merchant banker — had been smoking heroin in Carina’s company after shows for years without any apparent adverse effects. As a consequence, the young girl had seen no harm accepting an invitation to a toot one evening, as a distraction from her grief. The banker’s wife had enjoyed having a partner in crime and Carina smoked heroin gratis on fourteen consecutive nights before that particular run of shows ended. The following week, she’d been ringing on the Henderson’s doorbell at their West End townhouse, lusting after another toot. But the visit had been ill received, with Carina being scolded for her indiscretion and warned never to visit the house again, under any circumstances. If she hadn’t just inherited three thousand pounds the teenager would have been blissfully broke, as always, and gone straight home, perhaps never touching heroin again. Instead, she’d hit the East End, enquiring for dealers among the street corner gangs, until someone directed her to a Gallowgate apartment. Within a month all her money had been smoked away and her life was spiralling out of control. Having been sacked from the orchestra for falling asleep during a performance, she’d sold the cello her father had worked double shifts for at the Tennents Brewery, before taking up prostitution and the hypodermic needle. The rest, as they say, is history. Fortunately, Carina’s injuries had erased all memory of heroin. Unfortunately, though, they’d also stolen her musical talent.

  “So how are the lessons going then?” Judith asked.

  “I’ve been round at the Currans house every other day for the past month. Like a fool, I actually forgot that I was round there to be punished, until last week.”

  “Why, what happened last week?”

  “Carina was struggling to get a grasp of a sketching technique I was showing her and then she erupted. She said she had more contempt for me than for Bob Fitzgerald, and that she’d only asked me to teach her how to paint so that she could see just how far I’d crawl for absolution. She reckons that the fact I even want forgiveness indicates that I’m not really contrite at all. In her opinion, a truly contrite man would accept his guilt as just rewards and suffer in silence, not go trying to buy peace of mind by dropping money through people’s letterboxes. She said that the only person I was really concerned about was myself, and even though she’s since apologised, she’s right. I used her tragic situation to get cash and never gave her another thought. Then, when I learnt where it came from I tried to use her to get rid of it. Just as Bob and other men exploited Carina for sex, I’ve been exploiting the poor girl for my own salvation.”

  “So what happens now?”

  “Well, I either suffer in silence like Carina says, or I put myself in the same misery as those I’ve profited from. I think the latter is probably the only way my remorse can ever be seen as sincere.”

  “Or, you could just forget all this nonsense and start living like a normal human being.” Judith jumped up from the bed, turning to face Danny. “Bob Fitzgerald’s right. What makes you think you’re so bloody special? That you’re entitled to a life of virtue? You’re fast enough to forgive everyone else’s sins, why not your own? Can’t you see how arrogant that is? I mean, why’s it wrong for you to spend McLeod’s money, but ok for Katy and the Cruickshanks to have it? I’ve as much to feel guilty about as you. I was complicit in the blackmail and I enjoyed the proceeds of drugs money.”

  “No, no…it’s not the same.”

  Judith laughed, flabbergasted. “You think you’re better than me don’t you.”

  “Eh?”

  “It’s ok for me and everyone else to sin because, we know not what we do. But you, you’re a superior being. There’s no excuse for you.”

  “That’s because of my Christian, socialist upbringing! Have you still not got that? It’s all about caring for others while flagellating yourself. Remember what I told you about Crazy Ferguson hitting me with a bottle? How my mother said it had served me right for defending the enemy against my own? Well, it would have been the same had I just stood back and allowed him to slash Bob. Then she’d he have recited the story of the Good Samaritan and condemned me for being a poor Christian. And that’s how my life’s been for the past forty three years Judith, looking for the best in everyone else and the worst in myself… stopping during every experience and wondering: what would mum think of this? Am I a true socialist? Am I good Christian?”

  “You can shake it off! I saw the change in you at Gairloch…it was amazing!”

  “I must admit, I had started enjoying things without constantly consulting her in my head. I could still hear her talking, but she had to compete with the kids’ voices. In the end they were having far more of an influence over me than I ever could have had over them. Thanks to Hamish, Ryan, Angie and yourself, their intellects were expanding, exposing my own mind as stagnant by contrast. They had myriad points of view to offer at the dinner table debates, where as I was trotting out the same tired old Marxist mantras, like a priest performing his thousandth communion. To keep up, I had to become more flexible in my thinking and consequently felt much lighter as a person. I thought that glass of Haut-Brion I drank was symbolic of the great change which had taken place within me. But the
n Bob turned up, almost as if my mother had sent him to remind me that in a capitalist world, one man’s pleasure is always at the expense of other men’s misery.” Danny poked a forefinger against his temple. “And now she’s the only voice in there again, shouting louder than ever, each second of the day.”

  “Well I think it’s time you heard some new voices then. I’m off to Iceland in the morning, and I know for a fact that there are still seats on my flight. Why don’t you come along?”

  “I’ve never been out of Scotland before…I’d never been out of Glasgow except for Gairloch.”

  Judith laughed. “You’re not scared of flying are you?”

  Danny stared forlornly at her. “Ma always said that folk who holidayed abroad were traitors to their community. She reckoned that every penny earned in Glasgow should stay in Glasgow, not be used to subsidise the development of some Mediterranean fishing village, while our own city was rotting and shrinking. Old Annie hated the fact that people spent fifty weeks a year daydreaming about their fortnight in Majorca or the Costa Del Sol, when they should have been living in the here and now and improving one another’s lives. Of course, I inherited this outlook and never hesitated to castigate anyone who was about to embark on their annual, lifesaving break from everything oppressive about Scotland. So, as I’m sure you’ll understand, it would be unforgivably hypocritical of me to jump on a plane now.”

  “Weren’t you going to follow Ingrid to Italy that time, only there was no one to look after your mother?”

  “Not finding anyone to look after my ma was only half the story. Truth is I was as petrified of being sneered at as a hypocrite then as I am now. That’s the real reason I never followed her to Italy.”

  This impossible mind-set was draining Judith, so she left before he could depress her any further and concentrated on Iceland.