Pandaemonium

by Christopher Brookmyre

  The smoke is almost invisible as it drifts its way down the bus, detected by most, identified by some. Marianne recognises it as immediately as she recognised the music, though in both cases this is despite interference from closer to the front. Gillian and Deborah and their little clique have their own iPod playing in competition, showcasing ‘Ibiza Club-Ned Anthems Volume 103’. It’s the same stuff that’s always blaring out of the open windows of souped-up chav-mobiles when they pull up at traffic lights. She’s often wondered whether the little guys at the wheel are secretly hoping you’ll lean in as you walk past and say: ‘Your tunes are the bomb, mate. You must be cool as.’

  The smell of blow is one of the few things to penetrate the fug of perfume and body spray enveloping this section of the bus. If the collective scent could be bottled, it would be called Trying Too Hard. Marianne hopes they’ve brought dental mints too, because even all that eau-de-teen-queen isn’t going to mask what’s on their breath.

  ‘Eeuugh,’ splutters Yvonne, looking with distaste at the green bottle. ‘Is white wine no’ meant to be chilled?’

  God’s sake, some front she’s got, Gillian reckons. Never brought anything more intoxicating than a packet of Lockets and the cheeky cow is slagging her contribution?

  ‘Aye, sorry,’ Gillian responds. ‘Hang on till I get my ice bucket out of my bag. If you don’t want it, pass it on.’

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ Yvonne clarifies with a giggle. ‘I’ve just got more rarified taste than you plebs.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ asks Julie. ‘It’s been decanted and everything. Right into that Appletise bottle.’

  Yvonne hands the bottle to Theresa, who helps herself to a long swig.

  ‘Aah,’ she says approvingly. ‘Liebfraumilch. Shitey German sweet white wine served at room temperature with just a hint of three different shades of lipstick.’

  Julie has taken the bottle next, and spills a little on her chin as she laughs at what Theresa just said.

  It was quite funny, Gillian would concede, but the lassie better be as ready to break out some vintage swally when they get there as she’s ready to break out the cheeky patter.

  ‘Still tastes better than Buckfast,’ Gillian asserts.

  ‘You’re tootin’ there,’ Yvonne agrees. ‘Michael McBean could do a big grogger into the bottle and it would still taste better than Buckfast. I think those monks must make that stuff to drink as a penance.’

  ‘Whereas if Liam Donnelly did a big grogger in it, you’d be the first to drink it,’ Debs suggests.

  ‘No I would not,’ Yvonne replies with a blush that is only partly fuelled by indignation.

  ‘Of course she wouldnae,’ agrees Gillian. ‘Different story if he came in it, right enough.’

  ‘I still wouldn’t be the first to drink it, though. I’d be lucky if I was third behind you pair.’

  They all laugh, though Deborah silently notes that Yvonne didn’t deny she would drink it. It’s always worth storing such ammunition, especially on a trip like this. You never know who you’ll end up sharing a room with and therefore how dirty you might need to fight in five-way conversations at two in the morning.

  She notices Gillian glancing back and across the aisle. Gill’s got a smirk on her face when she sees Deborah’s caught her. Deborah smiles too and steals a peek over the back of their seats. The subject is he of the supposedly coveted jizz (even when diluted in warm Liebfraumilch), Liam Donnelly. He’s gorgeous, but let’s face it: the only way she, Gill or Yvonne were likely to get near his bodily fluids would be if he spooged into a bottle. Him and his equally pretty pal Jason might be on this same coach, might be in the same classes, but it didn’t seem like they attended the same school. They were aloof: that was the word, one she finally understood when she saw them glide down a corridor like it was a catwalk, somehow disconnected from the world of damp duffle coats and dinner-hour tribal warfare that everyone else was stuck in. For years before that, she had assumed it meant something to do with being gay, mainly because it rhymed with poof. In a way that was a measure of their status: they were fey and preening enough for ‘poof’ to be the more readily applicable description, but they had this disdainful maturity about them that meant even the hard cases seemed to regard slagging them as a self-defeating exercise.

  They had their female equivalents in Rebecca and Samantha, two more of the Beautiful People who had always managed to come across as more grown-up and sophisticated than some of the staff. They hung around out of school with the same crowd as Liam and Jase, but it wasn’t clear whether or who might be boyfriend-girlfriend among them. Even the ambiguity of their relationships was as much an indication of their status as their fevered speculation reflected how Deborah and her pals were still daft wee lassies.

  ‘I heard she’s had a Brazilian,’ says Gillian, indicating Rebecca. ‘My cousin works at a tanning place in Hamilton, and she says she’s been in and had it done.

  ‘A Brazilian?’ asks Yvonne. ‘I’ve heard she’s had an Argentinian, an Australian and two Poles.’

  ‘I bet she’s had more poles than that,’ Deborah says, seizing the chance to trump Yvonne’s joke.

  Deborah steals a look to make sure she hasn’t been overheard, feeling suddenly anxious, not to mention distantly guilty. She knows her remark was based on nothing but a kind of vicarious wishful thinking. She just made it up to sound bitchy but she feels like she’d actually be jealous if it was true.

  She is relieved to spot that Rebecca is oblivious. She is sitting on her own, neckband cans plugged into her iPhone, head bobbing to the music and the rhythm of the bus as she stares serenely out of the window. It would look like a carefully considered pose if it wasn’t that Rebecca probably looked perfectly composed even when she first woke up each day.

  Samantha also has a double seat to herself, as do Liam and Jase. It is a further demonstration of their aloof self-assurance. As far as the rules apply to everybody else, only complete sad-sacks end up sitting by themselves. Odd numbers unavoidably meant some folk would be sitting alone in the row behind or across from their mates, but if you weren’t situated adjacent to your pals, you would settle for sitting next to someone you weren’t that friendly with rather than end up conspicuously on your Jack.

  Apart from the Beautiful People, the only folk sitting in true isolation are the weirdo loner Matthew Wilson and that creepy English Goth, Marianne.

  Marianne’s only excuse is that she is the new girl, but she isn’t that new; otherwise why would she be on the trip? You hardly need grief counselling if you barely knew the person who’s dead, do you? She’d been here most of a term, joining after the summer holidays. Not just your Matalan bulk-issue Goth, either. Definitely weirder. Some of the ones you saw hanging about the town made you think there must be ‘emo look’ pages in the new Next Directory, whereas Marianne’s gear seemed to have come from a Victorian jumble sale. She looks like she’d smell of rickety houses and old ladies’ perfume, but nobody is venturing close enough to verify this.

  Then, of course, there is the music, some of which Debs can hear coming from further up the bus: probably courtesy of Cameron McNeill. He isn’t a Goth or an emo but he is definitely trying to make some kind of pathetic statement by playing that stuff. It’s a total pose. Nobody really likes listening to that depressing and tuneless racket; it’s like the Emperor’s New Clothes. They just think it makes them dead cool if they say they don’t like the X Factor, and then there is an ascending scale of alternativeness according to how weird the stuff they claim to like is.

  With this thought, Deborah climbs across Gillian and into the aisle so that she can reach to turn up her own music, drown out all that gloom. Soundtrack to a bloody horror movie. Wasn’t this trip supposed to be about making everybody feel less depressed? If so, the staff should have stipulated that it was to be a strictly Goth-free venture, confiscated Cameron’s tunes and completely barred Marianne from getting on the bus. It’s not like she would be missed.

>   Now there is a conundrum: did being a creepy weirdo who nobody wanted anything to do with turn you into a Goth, or did being a Goth turn you into a creepy weirdo who nobody wanted anything to do with? Christ, even Rosemary and the God-squadders have all found somebody to share a seat with.

  ‘Have you both got a copy of the latest CYG news-sheet?’ Rosemary asks, turning around to thrust a sheaf of yellow A4 pages at Caitlin and Maria. Sweet Jesus, Caitlin thinks, in the horrified knowledge that it’s not a question. Rosemary personally compiled, printed, photocopied and distributed the newsletter, not to mention writing most of its content, so she knew fine who did and didn’t have one. Knowing Rosemary, she probably kept a register.

  The CYG: St Peter’s Catholic Youth Group. Caitlin started going to meetings back in second year, after being misinformed that it was Justice and Peace. Instead she found Rosemary’s big sister Vera presiding over what she regarded as ‘an umbrella group for all school involvement in Catholic causes’. This had nominally included Justice and Peace, which was why her conscience kept dragging her back, but in practice the CYG meetings under Vera’s direction mostly comprised singing hymns and taking turns to demonstrate how much more vehemently pro-life you were than the previous speaker.

  Caitlin stopped going more than a year ago, but Rosemary still talks to her as though she’s part of the fold. She has never been sure whether this is intended as an inclusive gesture or an ongoing punishment. Either way, it has a horrible tendency to rub off, leaving even certain teachers under this embarrassing misapprehension. She’s long had to tolerate being regarded a quiet little goody-two-shoes, but she draws the line at this.

  Rosemary hands her two copies of the sexy and sizzling CYG news, leaving it incumbent upon Caitlin to pass one along to Maria. Wonderful. This is an act of complicity that Maria will unavoidably interpret as Caitlin saying: ‘I’m just as far from the trendicentre as you, so let’s all be dweeby little church mice together.’

  Caitlin can feel the heat in her cheeks as Maria takes the paper from her hand.

  ‘Thanks, Rosemary, I’ve not read this,’ Maria says politely, and Caitlin feels something in her gut turn to stone.

  ‘Which topic would you like to discuss first?’ Rosemary asks.

  Caitlin gapes, unable to stop her mouth falling open as she contemplates the projected length of the journey ahead.

  ‘If no one has a preference,’ Rosemary goes on, ‘I’d like to start with Pope Benedict’s universal indult restoring an individual priest’s permission to celebrate the Tridentine Rite.’

  Caitlin swallows, her throat suddenly too dry to speak. A guilty wee voice inside her head, the same one that always told her to log off MySpace and get back to studying, nags her that she ought to learn from Rosemary’s example. They were always being told that if they found religion boring, it was because they weren’t giving enough of themselves to unlock its rewards. Caitlin is well versed in knuckling down and getting on with even the least engaging tasks. If she can sit down to an hour of calculus, she should be able to apply herself to anything. Maybe she should read the signs, try that bit harder. This is supposed to be a retreat, after all.

  However, as she listens to the subsequent discussion, she feels like something inside her is being denied, something that makes her want to scream. To avoid this outcome, she decides to try and zone out. Too bad Maria has the window seat, so she can’t just lose herself in watching the road go past, but she can stare at the sheet in front of her without reading it, like she does with her missal at mass: take her imagination for a trip while the words become meaningless squiggles in her field of vision.

  She’s almost back at the Barrowland watching Jimmy Eat World when Rosemary crashes the gig and hauls her back to the bus.

  ‘And what do you think, Caitlin?’ she asks, leaning over the seat.

  She’s about to mumble ‘I don’t know’, in lieu of ‘fuck off’, but she knows from experience that a disinterested response will not be enough to deter Rosemary from further attempts to drag her into the discussion.

  Okay, she thinks, you asked for it.

  ‘To my mind,’ she begins, ‘the term “universal indult” is the first thing that calls for analysis. How universal are we talking? If we discover intelligent life on a distant galaxy, and it turns out they’re Tims, does the Pope get to call the shots? What if they’ve got their own Pope? Do they have a Pope-off to decide it? They’re both alpha primates, after all. Would it be bare-knuckle, or would it be like Gandalf versus Saruman using those papal croziers?’

  They leave her alone after that.

  ‘I can only apologise, Father,’ Kane overhears Guthrie telling Blake as another gale of cackling laughter billows from amid the pounding dance music and the ever-swelling cacophony of teenage voices. ‘They’re a damp disgrace.’

  Kane feels sorry for Dan Guthrie. The deputy head is wound tight enough at the best of times, but the strain on his blood pressure over the next few days could be catastrophic. He’s the most sincere and well-intentioned man Kane has ever worked with, but with the burdensome side effect that he holds himself and everyone around him to the highest ideals, and consequently takes the most trivial things far, far too seriously.

  ‘They’re teenagers, Mr Guthrie,’ Blake replies, an explanation that would be enough for anybody else.

  ‘But behaving this way when they’re supposed to be reflecting on the death of their fellow pupil? They’re a damp disgrace, that’s what they are. Unbelievable.’

  Guthrie is unable to even use the word ‘damned’ in front of the priest, low as it might rank on the sweary scale. This would be fine if it didn’t look like it was costing him something each time. There were plenty of folk who never swore because they never felt the desire to express themselves thus, but Guthrie, the poor bastard, clearly wanted, needed to swear: every oath censored, every unworthy feeling suppressed, every thought unspoken seems to add to the torrent that is straining against the flood barrier.

  Sorry as Kane feels for Guthrie, he feels sorrier for his old pal Con Blake, or Father Blake, as Guthrie still unwaveringly insists on calling him, despite his having been school chaplain for nearly three years. He must feel like somebody’s maiden aunt whenever Guthrie is around, trying to shield him from - and apologise for - all of the uncouth and inappropriate (i.e. normal) behaviour of the St Peter’s pupils.

  Blake is conspicuously uncomfortable with the deputy head’s unstinting deference, given the vast experience gap in terms of the years they have each put into their respective jobs. This discomfort is greatly exacerbated by the fact that Guthrie’s deference comes into the same category as his not swearing. An anxiously self-conscious young prelate couldn’t fail to disappoint the idealised expectations of such an unreconstructed traditionalist, but that wasn’t going to stop Guthrie bowing and scraping nonetheless. As long as Blake wore that collar, he was untouchable.

  Kane hears a retaliatory salvo from the boys at the back, upping the volume on the latest from some troupe of American self-harm fetishists resourcefully plundering the album collections gathering dust in their divorced parents’ lofts. Funny how the same ideas keep coming around. Used to be each generation discovered the Beatles: maybe each generation will now also discover back-combing, mascara and The Mission. Fair play to them: the genre hasn’t merely stood the test of time, it’s even got Dan Guthrie to his feet. Bus-aisle moshing, however, is unlikely to feature high on his list of intentions.

  Adnan senses the danger just a moment too late. He’s trailing a few paces behind Radar, crossing a short bridge over a river of toxic slime. The cross-hair of his reticle fixes on his companion, giving him a stat readout on his Heads-Up Display: armour, health, weapon, location. On the other side of the bridge lies a wide, empty cavern, deep in the gloom of which he can see the glow of a blue keycard, sitting on a raised plinth.

  Radar’s charging around totally gung-ho since he got hold of that plasma weapon. Adnan is sticking with the shotgun, as Rad
ar has hoovered up all the plasma cells. Unhindered and unopposed, he is making a beeline for the plinth, but moments before he reaches it, Adnan sees what Radar doesn’t: an unhindered and unopposed route to their objective at the rear of a large, gloomy cavern.

  ‘Radar, it’s a trap!’ he cries, by which time Radar has already bounded on to the plinth, and they are immediately beset on all sides by the biggest ambush of Stygian spawn Adnan has ever seen. There are Bull Demons, Pain Elementals, Cacodemons, Mancubii, Hell Knights, Revenants and a veritable swarm of Lost Souls. Radar starts spamming plasma in a circular arc, haemorrhaging health points as fast as he’s spending ammo. Adnan gets a few good blasts off with the shotgun, then strafes sideways in search of cover behind some boxes. It’s only as he gets up close that he spots they’re of the exploding variety. Schoolboy error. A fireball hurled by a lowly imp - oh, the ignominy - connects with the combustible crates and reduces him to chunky kibbles.

  ‘Gibbed,’ he reports.

  Radar ’s demise isn’t long in following, his defiant but suicidal stand finally ended by a disembodied-head-butt.

  ‘That was mental,’ Radar laughs. ‘Ridiculous overkill. You said this was a custom map?’

  They are playing a home-brew port of Doom II on their DS Lites, the game engine modded to run on the handheld machine and the net code updated to support wireless multiplayer. It is a museum piece of a game, about all the Nintendo’s puny processing power can handle by way of first-person shooters, but there’s a reason why everything that has come since has owed its dues to this original; the same reason he and Radar have been playing this for the past hour in preference to thirty-odd other games on their data cards: it’s still the best.