by Alan Bissett
Heddy, and indeed, haw.
Dolby is blethering away about Prontaprint Lisa, as he did the whole way down. We couldn’t leave Falkirk until he’d cruised past her shop twice (once catching her – gasp – photocopying). Plain looking lassie if you ask me, but she’s lit Dolby’s fire. No doubt Brian the Mann’s right in his prophecy that she’ll join Dolby’s bulging club of Lassie Pals, these being the ones he invites out to listen patiently to their problems, before dropping them off at their door resolutely unkissed, untouched.
‘Gettin a peck on the cheek an bein called a nice guy at the end ay the night?’ Brian usually sneers, thumping his Rangers badge and slurping a Stella. ‘Whaur’s the fun in that?’
I have to interrupt Dolby’s rhapsody to point out the impending ned trouble we have, urging him not to look round, which he does, then snorts with such Brian Mann contempt that I have to check I’ve come on holiday with the correct Lad.
‘Them? Weapons? They’re wee fuckin laddies, Alvin.’
He laughs, but indulges me, draining his pint. I finish my peach schnapps and lemonade, and we head out to judge the local talent contest. Mother Hubbard’s cupboard is bare, however, and no heddy haws are uttered the entire way to the chip shop, where, unbeknownst to us, a third En-ger-land encounters awaits.
‘Whatsit called, mate?’
The guy sticking his hand behind his ear theatrically, leaning across the hiss and fizz of the batter.
‘Irn-Bru,’ Dolby repeats, keeping his annoyance in check, drumming his fingers on the sauce-stained counter and contemplating, I can see, the wisdom of the whole trip.
The guy shakes his head, his assistant giggling behind her hand. ‘Sorry mate, don’t know him. Live round here, does he?’
‘Gies a can ay fuckin Tango, then.’
Outside, two girls sit hunched on a wall like frogs, straws jutting out at odd angles from their mouths. Thick jackets, thick stares. They look us over, snigger, and in such a situation Brian would be asking them what the fuck they’re laughing at, Frannie would be dashing over to offer them a chip. Either way, problem nullified. But me and Dolby trundle on, moodily, picking at our soggy haddock as our enthusiasm for Saltburn, for life, for the space-time continuum itself, unspools. Their taunts follow us, like extras from one of Brian’s Clint Eastwood movies, eyeing the new gunslingers in town and croaking, ‘ay, Greengo.’
‘Wankers!’
Dolby’s fists clench the newsprint. He turns, sees what I see: the animals that were lurking behind the facade of this seaside town have reared out into the dusk. The genus that hunt in packs and use Childline as a defence policy. I count one, two, four, seven beady eyes blinking like Midwich Cuckoos.
‘Whaur’s Brian Mann when you need him?’ Dolby mutters, retreating quietly as more of them emerge from the shadows, following, yelping.
‘Hey, jocks.’
‘Och aye the noo, MacTavish.’
‘Where’s your haggis?’
We thrust our hands into our pockets, upping the tempo, no idea where we’re going, ducking from street to side-street, each empty, dust-blown. A chill blustering off the sea, howling, dropping, and the beach-blond weapons laugh and close the distance.
‘Belinda?’ Dolby mutters, glancing back.
‘Heddy,’ I agree. ‘Haw.’
We make for the beach-front, speeding up, vaulting walls, cursing my Dad, but when I look back to see how close the raised knives are they’ve
Gone.
The street hangs, patient. A shopkeeper pulls the grate down over his store, stares warily. His quaint Saltburn-by-the-sea shop taunts us with granny ornaments, when truncheons and black masks are more the sort of thing I’m thinking tourists are likely to need. Seagulls wheel above us. Slivers of adrenaline thread through my veins.
‘Hey,’ I whisper. ‘is this no like that scene in Jaws?’
‘Whit?’
‘Ken – when the shark disappears under the water, an everybody’s holdin their breath, waitin for it tay smash oot fay the sea …’
Dolby stares at me. ‘Fuck are ye talking about?’
‘I dinnay ken. I feel a bit light-heided.’ I swallow. ‘Are we gonnay get battered again?’
‘Shut up.’
The beach-front is deserted. The Somme veterans trying to sunbathe in the drizzle have died, or given up, along with the one-legged source of Dolby’s shame. Only sea ghosts are out now, writhing in the moonbeams.
‘Beaches are terrifyin places at night, eh?’
Dolby doesn’t reply, picking up the pace of his strides.
I’m glancing at the brood of waves, which bring to mind another scene from Jaws, the one I remember being glued to, wide-eyed, in front of my Auntie Marlene’s TV. The girl’s nude, phosphorescent form enveloped by waves. She rubs the sea into her hair, smiles, calls, ‘Come on into the water!’
‘Hey. D’ye ken Bram Stoker wrote Dracula twenty miles from here? Place called Whitby.’
‘Aye.’
Dolby grunts again, picking the cold fish from the newspaper then dumping it back in its puddle of vinegar.
‘And Queen once played in that pub we were in earlier?’
The sand hops across the salt-encrusted concrete, in and out of the thin gaps. The sea hisses like one of the relaxation tapes my Mum was given by the AA.
‘Aye.’
Dolby scrunches the newspaper, chucks it grimly across the car park, then peers through the darkness, eyes pinched, troubled.
‘And did ye ken Saltburn was where the vibrator was invented?’
‘Aye.’
‘Ya liar. I’m making aw this up.’
‘Shush the now, Alvin.’
I squint, trying to make sense of the grey shapes, blurry without my contact lenses. Belinda’s still waiting at the far end of the beach, coldly wondering when we’re coming back
except
Perched on the bonnet, his fag-tip glowing lke a firefly on a stalk, sits a local ned. Arms folded. He sees us coming and smiles, almost charming. I don’t believe it, the stereo’s playing, which means the little bastard has managed to get into the
‘Owya doing, lads?’ the cheeky fucker’s beaming, off on some James Dean fantasy I’m looking forward to seeing Uriel, avenging angel, end for him.
‘Awright,’ Dolby replies, and gestures. ‘Want to get off the car, mate?’
The ned frowns, peers down at Belinda’s scratch-work, then shrugs, careless and free as a wean in a playpen. ‘Nah, not rilly.’
Dolby nods, checking automatically for the boy’s backup. We can see up the length of the beach, and like I say, just ghosts.
‘Fuckin move it,’ Dolby growls, my heart starting to pound with fight-nerves. ‘We’re wantin away fay this shit hick toon.’
The wee boy – about 14 we’re talking here – raises his eyebrows and places his palms on his cheeks. ‘Ooooh,’ he says, like a camp game-show host.
‘Whit’s your name, pal?’
He explodes. ‘Andy-fookin-Pandy’s my name. You keep yer mouth shoot, yer fookin jock bastid.’
Dolby retreats a step, wondering, as I am, what’s making this underage knob so cocky. He soon supplies the answer, calmly taking his phone from his puffa jacket. Punches numbers. The song playing inside the car says
the English motorway system is beautiful and strange
‘Jez? Gaz? Yeah, they’re back at the car. Givin me plenty hassle too. Fink they’re summat out of Trainspotting, this pair, Scots gits. D’yer wanna send a squad round, sort em aht?’
Dolby’s calm, listening to this, but I know he’s sweating. A small lump expands in his throat. Brian, Frannie, two hundred miles away, and a platoon of Englishmen about to get us back for Braveheart.
Then Dolby surprises even me. He takes out his own phone and starts dialling.
‘Brian? Aye? Listen, how far away are ye? Well, we’re just doon at the beach and there’s a wee noddy sittin oan the bonnet, willnay move.’ He glances up at me, then away. ‘Doon in a cou
ple ay seconds? An ye’ll bring the whole team? Cool.’ He snaps closed the phone, turns round and gazes out to sea as if studying it for a photograph.
The ned looks at the back of Dolby’s head, then at me.
‘You erda the S-Burn Posse?’ he asks. ‘Craziest fookin gang in North England.’
‘That right?’ I nod, as if he was telling me about some mark he’d managed in a science test at school.
‘Be ere any second. Any second nah.’
Dolby leans over to me, speaking just loud enough for the boy to hear, ‘Brian bring that stanley blade doon wi him?’
‘Um. I think so.’
Dolby nods. The ned’s hand strays to the phone inside his jacket. Dolby reaches for his, and the boy draws his hand back, slow. They stare at each other like gunslingers.
Headlights.
At the far end of the car park a motor swings into view. ‘Yer dead naah,’ the weapon says, ‘S-Burn Posse.’
Dolby walks towards the car, raising his hand. It stops. Too dark to see in, but me and the nedboy try anyway. The far window is rolled down and Dolby leans in to speak to the driver. I can’t hear what he’s saying, but he points in our direction. Two silhouetted heads in the back seat turn to the ned.
But he’s gone. A vacant space on Belinda’s bonnet where his mardy arse was.
The car pulls away, slipping out of the other side of the car park and onto the main road. Dolby trots back to Belinda and glances at me across the roof.
‘Directions,’ he says, and we
exhale
On the pier, we breathe in the salt air and try to calm down. Dolby grins/sighs/laughs. The adrenaline has washed away, leaving my insides a desolate shore. The sky meeting the sea before us in a seamless black accident and there are gunshot stars and lights from the boats and cold rolling off the sea in waves and the sound of slopping water and my virginity floats on the surface like a discarded polythene bag. Everything mesmerisingly bleak.
‘How ye gettin on studying for yer exams?’
‘Shite.’
‘Who’s yer teachers again?’
‘Harry Kari for Geography–’
‘I had him. Mad bastard.’
‘Deansy for French, Picairn for Biology, Gibson for English.’
‘Gibson? There’s a wifey who wants tay change the world.’
‘Ye reckon?’
‘Aye. Shame she’ll wake up in twenty years and realise she made fuck-all difference.’
Dolby stops. Spits. Watches it fall spit-kilometres.
We stare down into the water, vast, black as dreams. His words ripple in the empty air
fuck
all
difference
When I was wee, I was terrifed of swimming, could always imagine this massive prehistoric shark, Megaladon, roaming the pool, waiting to swallow me whole, Poundstretchers trunks and all. That beast grins beneath the surface now, tail beating the deep. Its mouth stretches as wide as a cavern, my arms spread as I leap and fall, the wind wrapping my face, the brittle sea collapsing under my weight, the waters rolling over my head. Endless. Comforting as death …
‘Alvin?’
‘Whit?’
‘Ye gettin a feelin like ye want tay jump in?’
‘Aye.’
A beat.
‘Want tay head ho–’
‘Aye.’
and so we smuggle ourselves back to Scotland under cover of darkenss. The lights of England shrink into the night. I think about the shark, swimming in huge circles, leaning its smooth head out of the water with its mouth yawning. Dolby steps on the gas.
if you travel at lightspeed, or fast enough, then things become illusory, ghosts are produced
when I get back, I find my brother in the living room talking to Dad. I linger, dumb, by the door for a second, almost believing the jazzy eyes and pearl-white grin aren’t really there. Then Derek jumps from the chair and we shake hands in the middle of the room, beaming.
‘Looking good, Billy Ray.’
‘Feeling good, Valentine,’ I reply, a quote from Trading Places, one of our favourite films. He curls an arm round my neck and we box a bit and nearly hug, but don’t. ‘When did you get back fay London?’ I say, stunned by how pleased I am to see him.
‘About an hour ago.’
His accent is odd and anglicised. He steps back, gives me the once-over, folds his hands back into his worn denim jacket. Grins again. ‘Well,’ he says, rubbing his hands together.
‘Well,’ I say.
‘Well,’ Dad says. His fly is undone.
We all smile.
Derek looks more like a Highland chieftan than a banker. The paltry stump at the back of his head is the beginning of a ponytail. His denim jacket is frayed at the cuffs, the elbows turning the colout of old men. He hasn’t shaved and his bum-fluff is growing in ginger, like mine, like Dad’s, and the overall impression is of Damon Albarn during the recording of Blur’s 13 album, as though he’s just split with Justine from Elastica.
‘How was the journey?’ I say, a fill-the-space type question I’m disappointed with myself for asking.
‘No bad,’ Derek shrugs, grabs a rake of bourbons from the biscuit barrel, shovelling them one at a time into his mouth while he speaks. ‘Sitting next to this guy on the train – mind Handlebarus Moustachius?’
‘Naw. Him that used tay sit ootside the shops? Eywis –’
‘Pissin himself.’
We both laugh.
‘It wisnay him, wis it?’ Dad interrupts, from the edge of things.
‘Looked pretty damn like him.’
‘Nay way. Whit did he dae?’
‘He pissed himself.’
‘On the train?’
‘Never.’
‘Always. I think it was him.’
We slot into routine, each absorbing the contrast between old footage and new: caravan holidays; Derek bringing me home caked in mud; Sunday dinner and our grubby hands reaching out to grab the bread, Mum slapping them away and
mum slapping them away and
Dad folds his hands over his stomach, burbles softly with middle age. Something not quite fled from his face suggests he and Derek met at a strange, unwieldy angle. I realise they have been sitting in diametrically opposed chairs, like facing statues in an old, sealed tomb. Guardians of the dead.
‘Ye see the Old Firm game last week?’
‘I ken. 6–2. Poor Rangers.’
So much not being said, the absence hovering between us. We fill it desperately. The last time we saw each other, what were we wearing/listening to/on about? Who’s number one in the charts just now? What did ye make of that new Radiohead record? I think it’s shite, too experimental. All of this sends emergency air into our punctured tyre, keeps the family unit trundling on, and the three of us are gathered here after all this time, all that’s happened. Polite. Nodding. Like all the remaining Beatles meeting up on John Lennon’s birthday.
take Derek to Comma Bar. ‘Did this no used to be a bookshop?’ he asks, as we wait for the waitress (not unlike Winona Ryder in Heathers, except prettier, not so pale). It did used to be a bookshop, called Inglis, and I can still picture the shelves, their ghostly spines emerging from the glamour. The Children’s section, where a machine is now selling damaged lungs. Horror/Sci-Fi now a framed print of Manhattan at night, its lights unblinking, the clouds eerily frozen, and I remember Dolby buying his first Tolkien in that corner, rapt by its paperback immensity, and as an oblivious waitress disperses him, it occurs to me just how many worlds are going on at once that you don’t notice. An untrendy town staggers through trendy blinds and Derek orders something called mocha, gazing up almost hopefully at the waitress, who smiles, which is of course an excellent quality. Brian thinks a good arse is important for bar staff, but I’ve always liked people who smile at their work. It makes a difference, it really does. I order a peach schnapps and lemonade. Winona seems impressed, doesn’t even ask for ID.
Ordering drinks. Paying my own way.
Handing over money. Not being a virgin.
‘Ye remember when ye were ten in here and you bought that book about the boy who turns into a dog?’
‘Woof?’
‘An for two months after, you were tryin to change into a dog. Crouched down on all fours, yer face screwed up like ye needed a shite.’
‘Chrissake, man.’ I redden, as the waitress is in earshot. ‘I wis only ten.’
‘An me an Davy Pearson bet ye couldn’t, and down you went …’
The memory hisses back, singeing my skin. Me with my eyes clamped shut, straining the word dog into my sinew, then standing up, utterly the same, utterly embarrassed. Hallglen seemed greyer, more drained of mystery, after that day.
The waitress places our drinks down.
‘Woof,’ she says.
‘I wis only ten!’
I remind Derek of the time he jumped from a tree in Callendar Woods, snagged his trouser leg on a branch and swung, screaming, upside down for five minutes. Our laughter ripples.
It’s good to see him. It is. I’ve decided.
Derek peers at the shoppers outside, their different shapes, fads, hairstyles, somehow worried, and he so much does not look like a banker. Do they allow him to go to work unshaven like this, I ask him, but he just shrugs and looks away, doing a double-take on a passing girl. ‘So, whit are ye daein back?’
‘The streets of London are not paved with gold,’ he grunts, and seems edgy, almost paranoid, resisting my attempts to find out about his job or London with a firm, ‘Let’s no talk about work.’ His face, which was always either a glinting humour or a sullen brood, has now settled permanently between the two. His boyishness is gone.
Dolby said once, when I asked him how he could be bothered getting up and fitting whirlpools every day, ‘ye just dae it. Ye get up, put on the work heid and just day it.’ After he said that, I realised that just doing it had pulled all of us – me, my family, the Lads – this far. Broken. But doing it.