by Irvine Welsh
Barney Drysdale, busy packing in his Holland Park flat, was less than amused to hear the sound of the phone ringing. – What now? he moaned, irritated. Barney was preparing to set off to the cottage in Wales for a long weekend; preparing for the family’s big, semi-permanent move out there next month.
– Hello …
– Old boy! Bruce said, almost tauntingly.
– Bruce! Barney laughed, his temper improving at the sound of his friend’s voice, – You old devil! How are they treating you in Yankeeland?
Sturgess offered some bland platitudes. Yes, it was good to hear Barney’s voice. He only felt a little frost in his voice when his old friend mentioned Philippa and the boys. He was not getting on with her. The lads had settled well, in their place over in Long Island, but she hated America. Her fixes of shopping expeditions to Bloomingdale’s and Macy’s failed to soothe her burgeoning discontent. Sturgess, though, loved New York. He loved the anonymity he had, as someone who had not yet made all the contacts he soon would. He loved the clubs. He thought of the boy he’d fucked in the toilets the night before in that wonderfully filthy club in the East Village …
– You caught me at a rather bad time, old man, Barney explained – I’m cottaging this weekend.
So, dear boy, mused Sturgess, rubbing his crotch as he looked out of his office window at Manhattan’s towering skyline, am I.
– How wonderful, he said.
How wonderful, he thought. But his mind was troubled. Deformities and obsessions with young boys: he would have to watch himself. He could so easily throw away what he’d worked for. It was good to talk to Barney. Thank God for Barney.
Injustice
I’m seeing more and more of Samantha. Thing is, we ain’t done anything. I wish I knew where I bleedin well stood with her. As if it bothers me that she ain’t got no arms. We just talk when we’re together, but the thing is I don’t really like the way the conversation heads. She keeps going on about her arms and about the geezers that sold the stuff that made her like that. I don’t wanna hear all that: I just like to look at her.
Thing is, I can’t do anything other than go along with it, cause the truth is, I ain’t really all that bothered about anything else but being with her.
– You look at me, and you want to sleep with me. You want to fuck me, she says. She just sort of says these things out of the blue.
– Well, so what if I do? Ain’t no law against it, is there? No law against fancying someone, I tell her. Then I get a slight panic attack, cause this is round at mine’s and I’m sure she was in the fridge. I hope she didn’t see the fucking melon and the cream. Thank fuck I took the Opal poster down.
– You don’t know what it’s like for me. A freak, an incomplete woman. They took something from me. I ain’t whole, and I want to make them pay. Not a few bob in the bank; I want justice. I want Bruce Sturgess, the bastard who marketed that drug, who butchered us.
– You want me to help you sort out this Sturgess geezer? Fine, I’ll do it.
– You don’t understand! I don’t want you to slap him around. This ain’t some fucking wanker that goes to football or that drinks in the pub round the corner. I don’t want this bastard frightened! I want his arms. I want his limbs hacked off. I want him to know how it feels!
– You can’t do that … you’ll get put away …
– What’s wrong, Firm man? You lost your bottle? she taunted me, her face changing, looking different, not like her.
– Nah, I ain’t …
– I’ll have that fucking bastard, with or without your help. I want the fucker to know how it feels to be made into a freak. He changed the way I am. I just want to change him. You understand? I don’t want their fucking money. I want to take what they took from me and let them see how useful their fucking money is. I want them to know how it feels when somebody you don’t know causes damage, how it feels when they change you … when they deny you your place in the world. Bastards like him do it all the time: they take jobs, homes, lives, by the decisions they make and they never see the destruction they cause, are never held to account. I want him to see it, but I also want him to feel it. I want him to know how it feels to be a freak.
– You aint no freak! You’re beautiful! I love ya!
Her face opened up like I’d never seen it before, like she felt the same as I did. – Ever been foot-wanked before? she asked me.
Pembrokeshire, 1982
Barney Drysdale always felt that surge of contentment as he teased and bullied the old Land-Rover up the steep path towards the cottage. Alighting from the vehicle, he looked at the old stone dwelling, then took a breath of the fresh air and gazed across the landscape around his home. Nothing but hills, streams, a couple of small farm houses and sheep. That would do him.
Tomorrow he would have company, Beth and Gillian would arrive from London. It was part of their family ritual that Barney always went on ahead to the cottage, to ‘light the fire’ as he put it. He enjoyed surveying the place in solitude, looking at what he had achieved in its restoration. In reality, the workmen had achieved it, turning a derelict pile of stone into a dream home. Barney had come out, made out he was mucking in, huffing and puffing and trying to be one of the lads, never quite winning over the suspicious workmen – even when he arrived with beers, or insisted they knocked off early for a session at the village pub. He thought that they were just a little shy, those local types, and embarrassed. He couldn’t see that they were embarrassed for him. In the pub, they’d make excuses and go, one by one. Then they would phone the bar to check whether Barney had left and return to carry on the session without him.
There was a damp chill throughout the cottage and Barney set about getting the coal fire set up. In the short time he had been procrastinating, touring his holiday home, night had fallen. Barney went to bring in some coal from the outside shed, which was almost in pitch darkness, out of range of illumination from the house lights. He felt good making his way in the dark, enjoyed the cold of the night air against his skin.
As his tentative steps crunched the path, Barney thought he heard a noise, like a cough. A spasm of fear exploded in his chest, but it was over instantly and he laughed at his jumpiness. He returned with the coal and the logs.
To his dismay, Barney noticed for the first time that he was out of firelighters. The village shop would now be shut.
– Fiddlesticks, he said.
He piled up some twists of newspaper, the wood kindling, then small pieces of coal. It was a slow job and it took patience, but he was pleased to have started up a satisfactory blaze.
He sat in front of it for a while then, restless, he drove down to the village and had a couple of solitary drinks in the pub, combing through the Telegraph. He was disappointed not to recognise anyone: neither local workmen nor professional incomers. After a while, that gentle melancholy that only isolation can engender settled upon him and he returned home.
Back at the cottage, Barney placed himself in the chair in front of the fire: relaxing with some television, sipping at a glass of port and munching at some Stilton he had brought with him. The boiler from the blaze had warmed the house quickly and Barney felt drowsy and retired to bed.
Downstairs, someone else was inside the cottage.
The figure moved with great grace and stealth in the darkness. Swinging from the shoulder of the silhouette, where the arm should have been, was a large can. The contents of this can were used to soak the carpet and the curtains in paraffin.
Outside, someone else had a paintbrush in their mouth. With incredible speed and dexterity, head flicking backwards and forwards, the dark figure drew slogans against the wall of the cottage:
CYMRU I’R CYMRU
LLOEGR I’R MOCH
Sacred Cows
We take the truck up to Romford where this silly git’s got this old Aston Martin lying outside his door. – Give us fifty quid, mate, and it’s yours, he says, the mad slag, – I can’t be bothered fucking around with it. I�
�ve had a lot done to it; it don’t need much to get it going. I’m just a bit fed up with it.
I open up the bonnet and have a poke around. It don’t look too bad. Bal has a look and tips us the nod.
– Naah … this is fucked, mate. We can take it off your hands for a tenner scrap.
– Leave it out. I paid a ton for that motor. I’ve spent that again on it, the git says.
– Yeah, but this is gonna cost ya two hundred minimum to get this little lot sorted out. Gears seem fucked up to me, for one thing. You’d be throwin good money after bad, mate, take my word for it.
– What about forty? he says.
– We’re businessmen, mate. We gotta make a living here, Bal shrugs.
The mug screws up his face and takes the tenner. I’ll have this little beauty back on the road in no time. We hook it up and tow it back down to the yard.
Something about our fucking lock-up really fucking depresses me. Especially being here on a hot summer’s day like this one. I think what it is is that it never seems to get the heat from the sun, it’s always in the fucking shadow, cause of these tall buildings around it. Inside here there’s no fucking natural light, just those fucking old lamps. One day, I swear, I’m gonna cut a fucking hole in that roof, put in a skylight of some sort. The smell of paraffin from the heater, and oil from the parts lying around, proper goes for me sometimes that does. The other thing is that I always come out fucking manky. All those parts dumped around on the floor and on that big fucking table. Then there’s that huge fucking swinging door which don’t even have a bolt for it any more. We have to padlock the bastard. I get proper narked most mornings, trying to get the fucking thing opened.
Bal loves it in here though. He’s got all his fucking tools, even this big fucking chainsaw he used last winter when he started that sideline of cutting down trees in Epping Forest, selling them as bundles of firewood through the Advertiser.
Yeah, it’s far too hot to be in the yard today.
– One born every minute, eh, mate? Bal laughs, slapping the hood of the car.
– Yeah, fucking stupid cunt. Gor blimey, it’s bleedin hot today. Listen, mate, my throat’s tryin ta tell me something. Fancy a drink?
– Yeah, all right. I’ll see ya down the Grave Maurice. I want to have a little fuck about with this first, he says, patting the bonnet of the car again, touching it like it was a bird’s arse or tits or something. Well, he’s welcome to it: motor mad, that cunt. I’m more into the idea of Samantha’s tits and arse. Whoah. This fucking heat’s giving me the horn in a big way. I sometimes wonder whether or not it’s scientific, or whether it’s just cause all the skirt walk around half bleedin naked at this time of the year. Anyway, I can’t wait to get my hands on her, but in the meantime a nice, cool, pint of lager’ll do me. I leave him to it.
Community fucking policing. I’m in the pub five fucking minutes and had two bleedin gulps, then that cunt Nesbitt from the Old Bill – just walks straight into the bar of the Maurice, like he owns the fucking shop.
– All right, Thorny?
– D.C. Nesbitt. What a pleasant surprise.
– It’s never a pleasure to call on the criminal classes.
– Know wotcha mean, John. I avoid them like the plague. Must be tricky doing that, though, in your line of work. Don’t really give you much scope, does it? A career switch might be in order there. Ever fancy trying your hand at the motor trade?
The cunt stands there taking the hump, trying to stare me down like I should apologise. Billy and the new gel behind the bar are having a proper old giggle. I just raise my glass at the filth cunt, – Cheers!
– Where’s your mate, Leitchy?
– Barry Leitch … ain’t seen Bal in a while, I tell him. – I mean, at work n all, hard not to in a two-man business, but we ain’t hanging around together much socially. Tend to move in different circles these days, if you get my drift.
– So what circles does he move in then?
– You’d have to ask him that. We’re far too busy graftin these days to waste time on idle chit-chat about our social life.
– You’re at Millwall next week, he says.
– I beg your pardon?
– Don’t fuck me about, Thorny. Millwall v. West Ham. Endsleigh Insurance League Division One. Next week.
– Sorry, guv, I don’t take much of an interest in the fixture list these days. Since Bonzo filled the manager’s chair I’ve lost interest. Great servant on the park, but he don’t cut it as a manager, you know. Sad when that happens, but it’s life, innit.
– I’m glad to hear it, cause if I see your miserable arse across the other side of the river in any way, shape or form on Saturday, I’ll have you down for inciting a riot. Even if you’re down in the shopping centre in Croydon loaded with bags of toys for the starving orphans of the neighbourhood, you’re fucking well nicked. Stay away from South London.
– Glad to, Mr N. Never liked it, ain’t nothing across there.
Filth I’ve never been partial to. Not just cause of the job they do, but as people, like. It takes a certain type, if you know what I mean. It was always the sneaky, cowardly little kids you used to give a good slapping to at school what went on to become filth. Like they was trying to put on a uniform and get their own back against the world. The main problem with filth, though, is that they poke their noses in, don’t they. That cunt Nesbitt, once he gets his teeth in, he never lets go. You get them noncing queers that hang around the playground touching up little kiddies. That’s the sick people that the filth ought to be watching out for: not giving bleeding aggravation to someone who’s trying to earn a shagging living.
I bell Bal back at the yard once the filthy cunt Nesbitt had fucked off. – Got to call off Millwall. Nesbitt’s wide for it. He’s been around here, in the Maurice, making threats.
– He comes that bleedin lark: that means he ain’t got the manpower to handle it. Overtime cutbacks, innit. The Advertiser’s full of it. If he had the bodies he’d keep shtum and try and catch us in action. You know as well as I do that the filth love a big rumble; lets them say to the politicians that this public order thing’s getting out of hand, so give us more money for more filth.
– Yeah, and if we call off, the Millwall cunt’s ’ll think the East London have lost it.
– One thing though, Bal says, – we got Newcastle in a couple of weeks.
– Yeah. Get the Firm together for that one. Better than Millwall; bit of fucking travel, innit. Might make the nationals. They’re all sick of aggravation in London. Be lucky if it makes the bleedin Standard, a ruck with Millwall.
Newcastle suited me better. Lyonsy was still inside. I’d been at the weights, increasing my punching power, just preparing for that cunt. I don’t want Millwall without big Lyonsy. I could see that the thought of Newcastle excited Bal, cause he was round the pub in a bleedin flash, and had me right through to the back room. Stared out any cunt who tried to come in, he did.
– You know, he told me, – I’m worried about Riggsie n all them. All that Ecstasy, Thorny, all that love n peace shit.
– Yeah, I know, I say, thinking of Samantha. I’m seeing her tonight. Over at hers, at Islington. The things she can do with her feet. The way she got my cock between both sets of her toes and just tugged so softly at it that I just spurted out like a bleedin fountain before I fucking well knew what was happening.
– It gets to me, Bal’s saying, – proper winds me up it does, Dave.
– Yeah, I know, I tell him.
Samantha. Gor blimey. Can’t be long now before we do the business good and proper. But that cunt Bal: he can read me like a fucking book.
– Listen, mate, Bal goes, all serious like, – you’d never let no skirt fuck things up would ya? Like you n me, the business, the Firm n all that?
– Course not, I tell him. – It ain’t like that with me and Samantha. She’s all right about the violence. I think it turns her on.
I do n all.
– Ye
ah? he smiles, but I’m saying no more to him, not about Samantha. I’ve said enough as things stand. He lets it go. – It’s just that I worry about the main men these days. I mean, Riggsie and Shorthand for instance. They ain’t really up to it any more. It’s fucking decadence, innit. It’s like ancient Rome with these cunts, one big fucking sex trip. No wonder the Ilford fancied their chances. Who’s next? That smart arsed-mob from Basildon? The East Ham? The Gray’s crew?
– Do me a favour! I snorted, – Anyway, it don’t matter who fancies their chances. We’ll have the bastards!
He smiles and we clink our glasses together. Bal n me, we’re closer than fucking blood brothers. Fucking spiritual partners and the like. Always have been.
Now there’s Samantha to think about though … it makes me think about that ABC song which is one of my favourites, when they go on about the past being your bleedin’ sacred cow, and how we all gotta fucking change.
That’s Bal’s problem, he tries to make the past too much of a sacred cow. I think it was old Maggie that said something about how we all got to innovate to meet new challenges. You don’t do that – you end up like all them sad cunts up north crying into their beer over some bleedin factory or mine that’s shut down.
You can’t make the past your bleedin sacred cow.
The present is me and her: Samantha n all. I can’t sit here listening to Bal, I got to get ready to meet her. This could be the night.
When I get home there’s a message on the machine; it’s the Slag’s voice. I don’t even listen to what she’s got to say for herself. It makes me feel horrible because I was thinking of Samantha and it was good and then she tries to spoil it by coming into my fucking life when it’s got nothing to do with her.