Marabou Stork Nightmares

by Irvine Welsh

  Dawson

  Dawson, who looks like a criminal seal, eyes alert and open in all that blubber . . .

  What does Patricia Devine look like

  HAIR

  EYES

  TEETH

  COMPLEXION

  TITS

  ARSE

  MINGE

  LEGS

  It needs a woman in this not as a real person just for the shag interest just for

  DEEPER

  DEEPER

  DEEPER

  DEEPER

  DEEPER

  DEEPER

  DEEPER

  DEEPER

  DEEPER – – – – – Dawson. . . on our arrival at the lodge he had stolen over to me, completely ignoring Sandy, and shaken my hand with a theatrical warmth. He let his eyes hold mine for a few seconds of contrived intimacy and boomed in a deep, affectedly sincere voice, — Roy Strang. I've read so much about you in the papers. A pleasure to meet you.

  — You're no slouch in the publicity stakes yourself, Mr Dawson, I commented.

  — Lochart, please; call me Lochart, he implored. He grinned idiotically for a few more rather excruciating moments then once again looked penetratingly at me. There was a snidey, manipulative aspect to his eyes which was totally incongruent with the open, garrulous set of his mouth. He reminded me of nothing more than a desperate old queen attempting to score in a singles bar, apparently casual but ever conscious of the remorseless clock. He looked mildly uneasy for a brief second or two, as if he was reading my thoughts, and then cackled, – We'll, I hope that my publicity is a little more, eh, salubrious, than yours. But they say that there's no such thing as bad publicity. That is an adage that I have at least some sympathy with.

  This conversation was becoming rather upsetting. — I don't believe that to be the case. Few people would welcome what I've gone through . . .

  — All this self-pity, Roy! Very disappointing, he boomed, slapping my back, his hand making a sound like a wet fish hitting a slab. Then he ushered me through to a library, leading to a conservatory at the back of the Lodge. As we moved towards the French windows, he plucked a book from the shelf and handed it to me. — For you, he smiled. I looked at the title:

  YOUTH IN ASIA

  I stuck it in a plastic bag I had been carrying.

  — I see you have the toolkit handy, he smirked. Damn and fucking blast, I felt a little uneasy at this statement. I started to remember something, no, not remember a thought, but an experi ence, I started to feel something unpleasant and was happy when Sandy came through and interrupted this sensation before it could flower into recall.

  Sandy had said something about a jeep. Our rusty ancient blighter had buggered up badly on reaching the lodge. As Sandy had suspected, Dawson was pleased to sell us an old one from Jambola Park, at about three times the normal price. — This one, he smiled, and looked at Sandy in a way which caused him to visibly twitch, — is surplus to requirements.

  As well as being ripped off with the jeep, we were forced to accompany Dawson on a visit to his favourite spot in the hills, a place he visits regularly for its natural beauty. We had to walk about two and a half miles from Lodge 1690 and it was now overpoweringly, miserably hot; a smudge of sweat on the back of Jamieson's shirt had become a large heart. I made reference to this and Dawson smiled approvingly, lavishly, from his one-man buggy. Sweat trickled down my legs. Sandy looked quite fresh but Dawson, despite the motor cart, was saturated and breathing in a laboured, heavy manner. One of the wheels of his vehicle crushed a snake, mashing the animal into the path. His head poked out the side of the cart and grinned hideously back at us.

  — Unfortunately, only one available, he'd smiled widely as he'd twisted his girth into the motorised cart. Starting it up, he had, with snapping jocularity, bade Sandy Jamieson and I to follow him on foot. Dawson's skin was the colour of barbecued tandoori chicken; clashing vividly with a Brylcreemed shock of brown, thinning hair, white and blue eyes, and pearly teeth which seemed permanently hanging out to dry. He also appeared to be covered in a strange, translucent oil.

  Dawson stopped the buggy, climbed out and swept a doughy paw around his terrain. Our track wound around the precipice of a spectacular gorge, which swung down towards a fast-flowing river. — Not bad for a lad who left home with the less than princely sum of ten pounds sterling in his pocket, he smugly observed.

  I saw a dead rodent by the side of the path. I picked it up by the tail. It had a fat slimy leech attached to it. I dropped it and looked at Sandy. — I came to Africa to study parasites, I told him, glancing back at Dawson. Sandy appeared a little bit uneasy, and gestured at me to keep my voice down.

  I remembered Sandy saying that he once worked for Dawson. Gosh and golly.

  Our destination was a building which on the outside looked rundown and ramshackle, but internally was very stark, modern and functional, its harshness only dissipated by a number of large, exotic plants in pots. We were greeted by a stout, middle-aged African woman, who made a particular fuss of Lochart Dawson.

  — This is great pleshah, Missuh Dossan, she smiled.

  — On the contrary, Sadie, the pleasure is always mine in visiting your fine establishment.

  His smile made me feel as if I'd eaten or drank something decidedly unpleasant.

  — For my guests, he smiled, turning to Sandy and myself. — You see, I own this place, and I use it as a sort of unofficial hospitality suite for potentially special customers. Special being defined as those who can advance the interests of Jambola Park PLC. This facility was specifically constructed on the impetus of the board of Jambola Park PLC, of which I am a member.

  Dawson owned seventy-eight per cent of the Jambola Park PLC shares.

  At that point Sandy went to light a cigarette but stopped after noting the look of disapproval on Dawson's face. He extended his palms and looked at me in appeal. I shrugged briefly.

  I felt the hand of the African woman called Sadie rest on my shoulder. — You are veh tense, she said. — Would you like me find girl massage you neck? Perhaps bit more than you neck?

  — Eh . . . if I could just have a glass of water, please.

  Dawson curled his lips downwards in disapproval. — Yes, Sadie, the water. For myself and Mr Jamieson as well. I should imagine you two are rather thirsty camels after your exploits.

  — I'll say! I nodded appreciatively.

  Sadie departed but returned quickly with a tray on which sat three glasses and a pitcher of iced water. Also now in attendance were three young white girls. They looked skinny, malnourished and dirty and their eyes were thickly clouded over.

  I sipped at the water which was so cold that it made my teeth hurt.

  — So you are, like Mr Jamieson, a hunter?

  — Yes, though perhaps not as successful as Sandy . . . I started.

  Dawson interrupted me with a nasty smirk. — I would hardly say that Mr Jamieson has been particularly successful on the trophy hunting front. I must say, though, that I've found it persistently difficult to find hunters who look like bagging trophies. What is your specialisation, Roy?

  — Sharks mainly, but also scavengers.

  Dawson raised an eyebrow and gave a knowing nod. — And you, Mr Jamieson, still hunting the maneaters?

  — Eh, yes, said Sandy nervously, — I mean, with only spears to rely on in defence, African villagers are effectively helpless in the face of lion attacks on their settlements . . .

  — Yes, smiled Dawson, — in nearly all cases the maneater is an animal well past his prime. He has lost all his youthful agility and is simply not up to the capture of wild game for food.

  — Man, though, is easy to procure, Sandy said, the unease of realisation coming into his voice.

  — Oh yes, agreed Dawson with a slow, sly nod, — oh yes. Then he looked intently at Sandy and, with his face strangely blank and dead, said in a teasing tone out of synch with his expression: — I'd like to ask you, Mr Jamieson, have you an awareness of the role of
ritual?

  Sandy, obviously fazed, looked across at me, then back at Lochart Dawson. — As a sportsman, he began, but Dawson raised a Pillsbury Dough-boy hand to silence him.

  — A sportsman. How . . . anachronistic. I should not have addressed such a statement to a sportsman. His voice went low and mocking at the term 'sportsman'. — The role of ritual is to make things safe for those who have most to lose by things not being safe. Wouldn't you agree, Roy?

  — It's not a concept I've thought about exploring deeply Lochart, though I have to confess it does have a certain prima facie appeal.

  Dawson seemed irritated that I was not getting into things with him. — And my proposal that the sportsman is an anachronism? Is that a concept you've had time to explore? His pitch is now challenging.

  — I'd probably need to have the proposition defined in a little more detail before I would presume to comment.

  — Very well, Dawson smiled, tucking his shirt into his trousers and belching, — I contend that sport, like everything else, has been replaced by business.

  Dashed if I didn't find myself arguing in spite of what I'd intended. — Up to a point. Sport though, when it has a cultural locus, becomes a source of identity to people. Lose such sources of identity, and you have an atomised, disjointed society. Sport can move some people in a way that the profit motive can never. Our values have become obscured and warped to the extent that the means for self-actualisation, i.e. money, has become an end in itself. One of the ends is the appreciation of sport. Another might be art. Another might be the precipitation of chaos.

  Dawson chuckled pneumatic-drill style, his flesh wobbling steadily as he laughed. — Yes Roy, sport does move the masses, but they only gain any relevance insofar as they are involved in the economic process, insofar as they become consumers. Sport has to be packaged to the masses, leisure has to be sold to them in a way they understand. Yes, in the past people had families, communities. There was a sense of living together. Through this they developed a shared understanding of the world, developed different cultures. Now not all of these cultures are in empathy with the profit system, and therefore they have to be replaced by another, stronger, richer culture, or at least assimilated into it. Families and communities have to be broken up further, have to be taken to where the work is, have to be denied at all costs meaningful interaction with each other. They have to live in, as our American friends call them, subdivisions. They have to be economically and physically subdivided . . .

  I smiled and cut in, — And the old culture replaced by advertisers and marketeers telling people what to enjoy. Easy when they have no other ponts of reference, e.g. other people in the same economic and social circumstances. So through the media you have people in different economic and social circumstances telling them what to consume. The key is the increasing of choice through the process of subdivision you alluded to. The increasing experiencing of leisure and sport indirectly, has encouraged a decrease in real participation, which is direct communion. Therefore you have the replacement of one or two really decent experiences with loads and loads of crap things.

  — Yes. But what you're doing is merely illustrating my point.

  — Or you mine. Perhaps sport has colonised capitalism rather than the other way around. The rampant self-promotion of busi nessmen in the eighties is an example. They refer to themselves as main players and their vocabulary is a sporting one; whole new ball games, level playing fields, moving goalposts, and all that.

  Dawson looked a bit shirty. — Yes Roy, but we have colonised sport and plundered its language . . .

  — But perhaps the superiority of that terminology illustrates that sport and the sporting instinct are sovereign and that capitalism is just a branch of sport, a warped, inferior branch of sport, sport with money . . .

  — In which case, then, it disproves your contention that the pursuit of profit, the only truth, cannot be self-actualising, if the accumulation of that wealth has sporting elements.

  — No, it proves it. Capitalism has had to graft on sporting culture, the culture of games, in order to make the pursuit of money seem a worthwhile endeavour in itself.

  — Look, Dawson began, exasperated, — you obviously don't understand the process of debate. Anyway, it's time to water the plants.

  He snapped his fingers and began rubbing at his groin through his flannel trousers. The three girls took up position in front of him, squatting over some of the plant pots.

  Unzipping his flies and removing a stumpy, semi-erect penis from his trousers and pants, Dawson masturbated himself hard as the girls discharged hot, steamy urine into the soil of the robust plants. He came powerfully, looking like a man going into cardiac seizure, gasping like

  like

  like somebody else. Just somebody else.

  I REMEMBER the party we had in the lounge bar of the Ferry Boat public house, a couple of days before we set off for London on our way to Johannesburg. They booked the top bar. Everyone was there. We were allowed in; me, Kim, and Gerald with our lemonade, Tony was allowed beer. It was brilliant. Mum serenaded John with 'Big Spender'.

  The minute you walked in the joint,

  I could tell ye were a man of distinction,

  A real big spender.

  Good lookin, so refined,

  Suppose you'd like to know what's goin on in ma mind.

  So let me get right to the point do-do,

  I don't pop my cork for every man I see.

  Hey big spender,

  Hey big spender,

  Spend a li-ril time with me.

  do-do-do-do-do

  — Still got the voice, Vet, Uncle Jackie said.

  So would ye like tae have fun, fun, fun,

  How's about a few laughs, laughs, laughs,

  Let me show you a good time,

  I could show you a good time . . .

  I sat in the corner with Bernard and Kim, munching on our Coke and crisps. I was enjoying myself. My Ma was a good singer, especially with the band backing her, and I was drinking in the applause she was getting. I felt like royalty. The only ghost at the feast was Elgin. It had been decided that he wasn't coming to South Africa with us.

  He had got a place at the GORGIE VENTURE HOSTEL FOR EXCEPTIONAL YOUNG MEN. There, it was explained, he'd be properly looked after by specialist staff. My Gran would visit, so would my Uncle. and Auntie Jackie. (They were called John and Jacqueline respectively, but when they got together, neither had wanted to surrender their accustomed name of Jackie, so they were both known by that title.) One day, Dad had told us, we would send for Elgin. Kim was heartbroken, but I was relieved. To me it was one less embarrassment to have to worry about and I still had plenty.

  I remember that night. It was good until Ma spoiled it by getting pished and acting like a slut. Dad punched this guy who'd been chatting her up. Uncle Jackie then glassed the guy's pal, and the polis came and broke up the party. Dad was done for causing a breach of the peace, which resulted in a minor fine for him, while Uncle Jackie got six months for malicious wounding. The guy went into shock following the attack and his heart stopped. He had to be revived by the ambulance crew. They were quite near at hand, coming from the Western General. Now they've shut down the accident and emergency there, so he probably would have died if it had happened today.

  — Ah nivir fuckin well touched um! Jackie roared unconvincingly as blood spilled from the man's twitching body and he and Dad were huckled into the station which was right next door to the pub.

  I remember walking home with Tony, Bernard, Kim and Ma down Pennywell Road. The night had ended in disaster, our last proper night in Scotland, and it was all Ma's fault. I hate to see women who should have dignity acting like sluts. I hate because it

  No way.

  Deeper

  I fear it more than ever.

  Patricia Devine's voice; cloying, but yet with a harshness to it. When we're alone together she tells me all about her life. I want to gather her up and protect her and love her be
cause of all the hurt and disappointment she's suffered. I want to do this to make up for my . . . there's nothing to make up for. It was all Lexo's fault.

  I've revised my image of what Patricia looks like. I see her now as slightly older than I first imagined, formerly very attractive but now a little gone to seed. Perhaps a bit over made-up and carrying a couple of extra pounds. She never married that surgeon. She seems a bit like the air hostess I saw on that plane to Johannesburg, the first time I'd flown. Bitter, having failed to marry the pilot. Travelling from one ugly airport building to another, from one systems built airport hotel to another. The glamour of flight my arse. What was she? The airways bike. Even at ten years old, I knew what she was like.

  Patricia is similar. After the doctors, it's the male nurses, then perhaps the technicians. She'll be on the porters soon. Downwardly mobile sexually. You're simply Devine though, Patricia. If only I could brush your tears away. No. I know you too well now. I'd just be another source of hurt and betrayal to you. You scream desperation. It's going to take an exceptional piece of luck to arrest your decline, to break this sad cycle.

  Why is it that I can only see people in the negative, only recognise them through their pain and their thwarted ambitions?

  Because I'm a

  — Yes Roy, it's your visitor friend from yesterday. She's back. Patricia says. Yes, We have company. I can tell by Patricia's tone. She has her in-company voice on; sugary, pretend intimate but in reality anything but.

  The visitor does not respond. It is a she though. I can smell traces of her perfume. I think I can smell it. Maybe I'm just imagining I can smell it. Whatever, it's oddly familiar. Maybe I fucked her once.

  I went through a phase when I fucked loads of women. This was after I discovered that all you had to do was be what they wanted for about twenty minutes. I suppose we're talking about a certain type of woman here. Each time you went through that bullshit act to get closer to them, you got further away from what you wanted to be. At the time it made me feel good about myself because I was younger. This shagging period represented a change in what I was doing before, which was not getting a ride and this was not a good place to be, for all sorts of reasons. Now it seems a very good place to be, but that was then. I doubt if a shag would make me feel good about myself now. I doubt if I'll ever fuck again. It wasnae about sex anyway, no at that time, what it was about was . . . oh fuck all this shite. Stick to the Stork; maybe if I could kill the Stork.