by Alan Bissett
and there is a quiet heroism which goes on every day
Me and Derek chat about what I’m up to (revision for my Highers mainly, these days), and thank god he doesn’t ask if I’m still a virgin, and although I try to tell him that Dolby has changed his name to Uriel, that Brian is still planning to emigrating to California, that Frannie’s Mum and Dad are on the verge of splitting, Derek’s somewhere else. Vague. Haunted. He’s blinking, nodding, saying ‘aye’, and laughing in the right places, but he’s not there.
‘When I got in,’ he whispers, interrupting my story about Cottsy and Brian, ‘I found Dad in the garden, holding Mum’s wedding dress.’
This is a sight I’ve seen more often than he has, so it doesn’t faze me.
Derek recounts times when he found bottles of vodka hidden all over the house; when he had to go out on his bike to look for her, see if she’d collapsed anywhere, only to come back and find her snuggled up in the loft with Smirnoff. I stare at the mahogany knots in the table while he tells me this, wondering at the strangeness of the past, how if you drop it in the front seat of the present it does not land in the back.
‘I’m amazed she survived as long as she did,’ I say.
Derek looks at me. ‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.’
The waitress comes over, but Derek hisses her away and she withdraws, sullen, unsmiling, and just before he starts talking I notice a photo of Marilyn Monroe reading Ulysses, sitting in a swimsuit with her legs drawn up and her face slack with incomprehension, like a little girl trying to keep up with the teacher. The book is huge and heavy and has JAMES JOYCE on the front in big, bold letters, and I’m surprised she can hold the thing up, let alone read it. She is almost on the last page, and though I don’t believe that she’s managed all that, I feel bad about not believing her, believing in her. Maybe she has read it, and I’m being a dick. The photograph disturbs me for the length of time it takes Derek to say, ‘I think Mum’s still alive.’
The three of us talk that night for the first time in years, dotted in separate corners of the room. Things are fraught with restraint. When we speak, cages are opened a crack. The beasts inside sniff, consider, then retreat. There’s too much.
there’s
too
much
blame almost attached and just lifted before the sting, and Dad plays an Elvis Costello song, Alison, flickering in and out of my awareness, making it feel as though Elvis is strolling the room, crooning, knowing this world is killing me and I can’t concentrate on what Derek’s saying. I feel far away from things, behind glass, mouths moving but no sound coming out, a vague terror mounting, a feeling I get in Belinda sometimes as we cruise in and out of Scottish new towns like panthers in the night – when the Lads are talking about wages and shagging and beer and Rangers – as if I’ve gradually slipped down a crack beneath the seat and none of them can hear my plea.
Derek thinks Mum’s been following him.
He’s turned, several times, and glimpsed her standing on street corners, staring coldly at him, then disappearing – blink! – and he reminds us (why? don’t we know this?) that the police never found her, that there was no body, while on TV a male goat stands waiting to be castrated, which I watch on the edge of my seat. The goat blinks at the camera, chewing stupidly, making me wonder if it’s, like, the goat version of Brian Mann, and has to return to its mates in the pasture dickless.
I feel like telling the two of them that hope is born, but lives in a short, frantic burst, like an insect, and then dies. But instead I find myself screaming hysterically, ‘That’s a lie. She never said that. You’re a fucking liar, Derek Allison, you cunt.’
Sunday night.
The three of us not talking now, lurking in different rooms. Like the good old days. The walls feed off our resentment. The shower slow-dripping. The garden slabs broken. I head down to Dolby’s with an idea for a new Clive Barker novel that I’m thinking of sending to his publishers. Dolby’s Dad says he’s at Brian’s (Dolby, that is, not Clive Barker!) with DVDs and popcorn, but when I chap on Brian’s door nobody answers, though I want, ache, to head out in Belinda tonight, break onto uncharted roads at the speed of sound, shouting, ‘Heddy haw,’ from the sunroof, Led Zep playing loud enough to obliterate all this shit. I knock again, peering in the window. The lights are on. I knock a third time – still no answer – then, warily, like in a murder mystery, squeeze the handle.
Brian and Dolby are eating popcorn on the couch.
‘Aw. Alvin. It’s you,’ Brian says, flatly. ‘How did I ken it wis gonnay be you?’
‘Never mind that,’ I say, ‘why did yese no answer the door?’
‘We, eh, thought it wis the guy for the TV licence,’ Dolby says, and Brian nods. ‘He’s no paid the bill, ken?’
‘No paid the bill,’ Brian mumbles.
‘Ye forget I said I’d be doon the night?’
‘I did,’ Brian sighs, unpausing the film, then pausing it again as I tell them, excitedly, about Tyra’s nipples straining at the fabric of her blouse today, and my idea for the Clive Barker book which has a really cool baddie and should be made into a film and
Brian yawns.
next morning, the school assembly hall is filled with universities plying their trade. Suits, stalls, clans of prefects all honing their careers over milky cups of tea. Mrs Gibson has forced me to go. I was hoping to use that morning’s free periods usefully, to watch Scarface or something. As I wander round the stalls, several scenes from the film keep
stuttering in my head
You kno what capitaleesm ees?
I tell you.
Get fucked! Dat what capitaleesm ees.
Get fucked!
All the other local schools are visiting ours today. The hall is a tide of bobbing blazers. Photos of campuses, scientists and smiling students of every ethnicity are arranged on the walls in a collage. Tyra Mackenzie, who I’ve been following all morning, meets-and-greets boys from Graeme High, St Mungo’s High, Denny High, who she knows through the Debating Society, her face lit up for them. She is handing out invitations to her forthcoming 17th birthday party, gushing, ‘Oh, I’d love it if you could come, guys,’ but I can’t get close enough for her to accidentally find herself beside me and realise she hasn’t given me one, so I manoeuvre myself in and out of the crowd so that the next stall she visits, St Andrews, I will be there, casually perusing a prospectus, ready to exclaim, ‘Oh, hi, Tyra. St Andrews? Yeah, I dunno, I suppose you just feel a calling to some places. What? A party? Oh, I’d love to.’ But just as she says goodbye to some Denny High prefect with awful acne, her hand lingering (too long) on his sleeve, just as I start discussing with the rep the fact that no decent bands ever came out of St Andrews – ever – there’s a tug at my arm.
‘Alvin,’ Mrs Gibson says, her smile glowing. ‘There’s someone here I’d like you to meet.’ I’m pulled away from Tyra’s light like in a near death experience, as she finds herself alone at the stall, glancing round (for me?) before her image is obscured by a drifting cloud of blazers.
!Fuck!
Mrs Gibson drags me to the Stirling Uni display, giving it mucho peptalk. Photos of greenery, rabbits, freshfaced boys with folders grinning ouside lecture halls.
‘This is Alvin Allison,’ she says, introducing me to the stiff behind the stall, ‘a very talented student of mine. He sort of needs a bit of convincing to go on to further education, though, so if you could …’
I am only half-listening, scanning the crowd for Tyra, who is blowing through the far end of the hall shedding invites like sweetie papers.
‘Well, I think you’d really warm to the Stirling Uni environment, Alvin,’ the rep’s blethering. ‘It has excellent facilities, a beautiful campus, and–’
‘Hmm. Yah. Supah,’ I say, rubbing my chin.
The suit coughs, perturbed, looking at Gibson, who frowns and explains to him my keen interest in, uh, Gothic literature.
‘Alvin’s Higher English review
is on Stephen King, and it’s quite an insight into, the, um, mindset of, um, pathological violence …’
‘Pathological violence,’ I repeat, smiling.
‘Excuse us a minute.’
Gibson draws me aside, glowering. ‘What do you think you’re playing at?’ she snaps, hands on hips. ‘Is your future some sort of a joke?’
‘Oh, come on Miss,’ I protest. ‘I ken whit yer daein, an it’s cool. You shall go to the ball an aw that. But mibbe I dinnay want tay go. University’s full ay tossers like this–’
and I sweep my arm around the pack of well-bred crocodiles snapping for tidbits at the Edinburgh stall, but Gibson’s having none of it.
‘Will. You. Just. Stop,’ she says, the magic wand replaced in her act by a whip. ‘Think about your potential for once. This isn’t a class issue, Alvin.’
‘Everything’s a class issue,’ I mutter, switching to Smirk Automatic as I wonder why Bernard Butler really left Suede (cos he would have sounded great on the Coming Up album) and shrug, walk away, strangely furious with myself, and I don’t mention that my future seems like one yawning great chasm in which nobody loves anybody else and Scotland breaks away from the British Isles and crumbles pointlessly into the sea – plop – since each of my thoughts is precious, hidden, hoarded and pored over, and Mrs Gibson shouts something like, ‘promise me you’ll think about it,’ but I can’t promise anybody anything of the sort.
‘Well, if we’re talking forte,’ one of the prefects is braying at the Dundee stall, ‘we’d be talking chemistry.’
‘Do you have active theatre groups?’ asks another.
I start drifting round the tables, only half interested in the patter, humming
still haven’t found what I’m looking for
no I still haven’t found
and realising that Tyra has left. Her invitations are given out. Her purpose is spent. Her perfume is only a lingering scent, which fades into mindless excitement for Business Law at Glasgow, Media Studies at Napier, Accountancy at Strathclyde, and so I drip back to the Stirling stall, which Gibson, exasperated, has quit.
and I still haven’t found what I’m looking for
no I still haven’t
Connor Livingstone is beside me all of a sudden. He’s had a haircut, and looks like one of the actors from the Scream movies. He says, ‘Stirling?’ Shrugs. ‘I suppose it’s the right place for someone like yourself.’ And the weird thing is that I can see on his face that he probably means well. After my set-to with Gibson, my uninvited status to Tyra’s (the world’s?) party, and a mother who has every right to be dead after all this time surfacing just when I need my sanity most, I’m spoiling for a fight.
‘Could you, um, clarify that, Connor?’ I ask, gritting my teeth. ‘That, ah, “someone like yourself”?’
Livingstone has total recall to the Times Educational Supplement.
‘Well,’ he begins, smiling like a toothpaste advert, ‘it didn’t make the list of the top ten best universities in Britain in the recent survey. It clings a bit to its left-wing reputation from the seventies. And if you compare it to somewhere like, I don’t know, Edinburgh, it just can’t compete in terms of resources and finances …’
I’m nodding, encouraged by his insights.
‘I didn’t mean to sound patronising, Alvin. All I was trying to say is that, for someone like yourself, who’s obviously talented but not, er, academically gifted, as such–’
‘Academically gifted.’
‘– it would meet most of your needs. You wouldn’t find it as stretching as, say, Cambridge or Oxford, and some of the people there will be from your own background.’
‘What kind of background is that?’
Connor smiles reassuringly, his prognosis delivered. Then he adjusts his hair, which, it has to be said, looks bloody marvellous.
I am totally sold on Stirling.
‘Anyway, Alvin,’ he says, patting my shoulder, ‘I really have to go and see the Edinburgh rep, he’s my dad’s–’
‘Hang on,’ I stop him, ‘can I ask one more question?’
‘Of course,’ he smiles, surprised but delighted by my willingness to learn.
‘Who the fuck do ye think you are?’
He stares back at me, startled, as though I have jumped him on his way home from a fund-raising bash.
‘Excuse me?’ he says politely.
‘Dae you ken me?’ I snarl. ‘Dae you have any idea who I am or what I feel? How dare you dismiss me like that, you cunt.’
I say the word ‘cunt’ formally, enjoying the experience of it on my tongue. It feels like introducing a madman to a dinner party. Connor frowns. My challenge has riled him, and he lets slip that facade which I knew, I fucking knew, wasn’t the real Connor Livingstone.
‘At least I don’t spend my nights boyracing with a pack of neanderthals. I’m–’
‘You’re nothing,’ I sneer, smelling a kill, seeing visions of myself as a shop-steward inciding the workers to arms, to rebellion, to crush the Suits. ‘You’re an empty blazer. A prefect badge. A fucking haircut. That’s Connor Livingstone.’
He takes a step back, and I like that feeling of power, that reversal of power, my hatred for him actually hurting, as I stare, willing him to test me, force me to reveal the true, seething, nature of this outcast thing that dares litter the corridors of Connor Livingstone’s school.
‘You won’t be going to Tyra’s party,’ is all he can say. ‘You won’t be going. I’ll make sure of that.’
He stumbles, glancing back as if expecting me to come after him like a rottweiler, and I form a confident picture of the moment he reaches the prefect hut, trembling, some girl handing him a glass of water while he shakes and tells them about this rabid thing that would
take
no
more
and then I think Fuck! I’m never getting into her party now!
I rush to find Tyra before he can, checking the places she spends interval duty, the Maths corridor, the refectory, the tuckshop, then spot her at the top of the stairs. She is with Louisa Wainwright and Jennifer Haslom, all chatting excitedly on their phones, her words floating like pink paper on a breeze, so I bound up the first two, three flights, energised, knowing that I have to ask her now, right now, but I can’t.
Livingstone’s right. I am a broom-pusher. A car park attendant. My children are destined to work in McDonalds. Tyra and her friends live in houses that have actual names, not just numbers. Money swirls and eddies about them like confetti. I gaze at her from the lower step and she is a promise that I will not reach. She exists at the end of a long corridor in some perfect, white, silicon future world. The deft movement of her wrist as she talks, brands coasting her body like pilot fish, her phone is blue and
I still haven’t found what I’m looking for
emits love songs and right now I am the feeling you get when you switch on the TV and see that the Simpsons has just finished.
‘… and then he said to me, “I can see that you are a woman, not a girl”, so …’
‘… get your tongue out of my ear! But it’s, like, this silver Merc, cos he is loaded …’
‘… what? Oh? Like, whatever …’
Some people exist for the past. My Dad, for example. Some people exist for the present: ravers and extreme sports fans and party girls and armed robbers and junkies and boyracers. The present to me feels like candyfloss dissolving on the tongue: I can’t quite hold on to it’s beauty for long enough. No, I think that I
still haven’t found what I
exist for the future, the hope that it’s as bright as they promise. But it’s just that the faster I charge towards it, the further away from me it seems to stretch.
I traipse dejectedly away from school, unable to face Tyra and the rest of my classes, just desperate to return to bed, soft safety, not even in the mood for Scarface now, and all I can visualise, with stunning clarity, is the sticker I once spotted on a car Belinda couldn’t overtake, whic
h said GO ON THEN, TRY AND OVERTAKE ME.
These are the top ten things Alvin Allison has looked forward to in his life:
10. The Blair Witch Project
(my generation’s The Exorcist)
9. Guns ‘n’ Roses album, Chinese Democracy
(should be out later this year)
8. X-Men movie
(ohhhh they got Wolverine right)
7. The Third Book of the Art by Clive Barker
(Book Two published 1994. Still waiting, Clive)
6. Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows
(my generation’s The Exorcist II, unfortunately)
5. Spider-Man movie
(Peter Parker is the role I was born to play)
4. Kid A by Radiohead
(even though I didn’t understand it)
3. forthcoming Lord of the Rings movies
(possibly makind’s single greatest-ever achievement ever?)
2. All That You Can’t Leave Behind by U2
(classic me and Frannie bonding moment, oh yes)
1. American Psycho movie
(there is an idea of a Patrick Batemen, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable,
I simply
am not
there
singing like they’re winning – Frannie with the actual money from his wages splattered against the windscreen, lording it over all the passing skanks and weapons, and after we picked him up in Belinda with a poly bag of Becks, which Brian cracked open and handed round to the sound of whoops, cheers and classic Bon Jovi (yes, there is such a thing) and it’s the end of the month and the Lads have just been paid and the four of us are rocking and we drive to: