by Irvine Welsh
I’m soon flirting with the barmaid, absolutely 100 per cent certain in the knowledge that I’ll be shagging her later. She’s wearing a black top and black leggings. Perhaps not obese, but certainly overweight with rolls of cold, wobbly beer fat peeking through the spaces between the clothes. It’s amazing how some women like to show off a bit of flab, use it sexually, the puppy-fat nonce thing. Yet naebody accuses those fat girls of advancing paedophile chic, that’s just for the thin, anorexic waif-like birds. She’s drinking a big tumbler of Coke, twenty-two sugars per glass.
Come on now, sugar
Bring it on, bring it on, yeah
Just remember me when
You’re good to go . . .
Funny, but I’m hoping that I can really love her, if just for one day. — Whatcha say, I smile, getting her attention. — Ever made love? I ask her.
Love . . .
— Yeah . . . she says looking at me, but in that same empty, predatory soulless way I am probably regarding her. Just wanting her lumb swept, nothing else, probably her boyfriend working away on the rigs or in jail or out on the piss.
But there is no fucking way back. — Want to do it again? I ask.
— Mibbe, she says, and I ask her what time she finishes and have another pint and wait till she knocks off and gets her coat and we head for mine.
She’s nothing to do with my shit, but fuck it, none of us are saints and scapegoats are always handy.
And almost as soon as we’re at it, I’m wishing that I was somewhere else, with someone else. But her face is flushing up, one of those birds that you can keep the foreplay minimal with and if you just fuck them enough they’ll come. It’s like humping Leviathan: a fucking war of all against all, a shag of attrition. Eventually she goes off and I shoot my load and, save for a shaving of egotism, am completely unmoved by the experience.
It was bad sex but not as bad as last night with Shannon. Cause then I had really just fancied talking to her or playing Scrabble or watching the telly. Why? We both need friends more than we need shagging partners.
Kay . . .
We did dance, we really did.
Contemplating the girl underneath me, I know that she could never be my friend. Her gasps as she came sounded like mocking laughter, as empty and pointless as I feel inside.
Not only have I forgotten her name, I can’t remember if I ever asked it or if she bothered telling me.
Probably not.
20
Black Marks
MORE CHICKENS HAD hatched. Despite another attack in the night, he’d risen early this morning and put a shift in on Harvest Moon. Kibby was pleased that he’d managed to avoid all the girls, particularly Muffy. It had been a gruelling session, where he’d concentrated on hatching chickens, planting and harvesting crops and mending fences. That was what Harvest Moon was really about, it wasn’t meant to be a tawdry tool for masturbation. He pulled the small calendar from the drawer under his desk. No black marks yesterday.
It was a clear, raw morning and Brian Kibby ventured outside, slowly and painstakingly walking up Clermiston Hill. With great effort he sniffed deeply through his scrunched sinuses, struggling to get air into his starchy lungs. Yet the effort was worthwhile as the fresh, sharp oxygen intoxicated him. Breathing was sore though, and for some reason his jaw hurt terribly.
The days were stretching out: only seven forty-six on his watch and a slither of blue space separated the sun from the earth. The sky tapered upwards into a bruised yellow-blue skin with a few cavorting white cumulus clouds in the foreground.
Kibby felt a surge of triumph in his soul, briefly transcending the pain of his mortal flesh, as he stood at the summit of the hill. Looking one way he could just about make out the cool metallic sliver of the firth, and the Fife coast behind it. Forcing some more air into his tired lungs, he turned to see the Pentland Hills, still powdered with snow.
I mustn’t think about Shannon, or Lucy, or Muffy. Muffy is just part of a game. I’m stronger than those urges. I can beat them. No black marks today either.
Content with his exertions, he walked slowly down into Corstorphine, letting the momentum take him to the doctor’s surgery at the bottom of the hill.
A pint of Lowenbrau and a large Jack Daniel’s and Pepsi sat in front of him as Skinner thought with satisfaction: I’ve beaten Big Rab McKenzie into the pub! Only just though, as the doors of the Pivo Bar swung open and the big man lumbered in. Unusually, Big Rab didn’t head straight up to the bar, he came across to Skinner’s table. — It’s over, McKenzie said starkly to him.
— What? Skinner quizzed, the cold edge in McKenzie’s tone bending something inside him.
Over? What was over? What was he on about?
— The quack. Ah went intae doc. For the pains . . . He rubbed his side and slapped his chest. Skinner had only been vaguely aware of McKenzie recently muttering something about pains. — The boy says, see, if ye drink again, yir deid.
— What dae they cunts ken? Skinner sneered, raising his glass of Jack and looking at his friend for affirmation.
McKenzie shook his head. — Naw, it’s over, he repeated with the solemn finality of a minister performing the last rites. They looked at each other for a small passage of time.
Fuck me, what is that shit in McKenzie’s eyes! Is it fear? Hatred?
Danny Skinner then said something that, even as it tumbled from his lips, sounded implausibly limp to him: — Sit doon, stey for a Pepsi or something . . .
McKenzie stared harshly at him as if he was taking the piss, and in the current confusion of his life, Skinner wondered if maybe part of him was. — See ye later, Big Rab McKenzie said, and made for the exit, leaving Skinner sitting alone at the table.
— Geez a bell, Skinner shouted after him. McKenzie half turned and grunted something before continuing towards the door.
Of course, he knew that McKenzie would not call him again. Why should he? Skinner was now distancing himself from their Saturday fix of aggro. Outside of that, during the eight-year tenure of their adult friendship the only time they didn’t have a drink in front of them was when a line of coke was there in its place, or if they were up on a strong pill.
Big Rab would just have to get intae the blow. A lifestyle change!
Skinner thought about his friend’s heavy, doughy flesh and ran a finger over his own taut, unlined skin in reassurance. He had long wondered whether his father was a drinker or not. It was inevitable; chefs always liked a peeve, as De Fretais said. That old fucker Sandy certainly did, although Skinner supposed that having your wedding tackle scorched all over the New Town was a good enough reason to hit the sauce. He wondered whether or not the American, Greg Tomlin, took a drink.
Me out on a session with my chef old man. That would be some pub crawl. A real battle of the heavyweights. No McKenzies need apply! Poor Rab, without the constitution to play hardball with the big boys. Who would have thought it?
Gulping back a large slice of his pint and knocking down the double JD and Pepsi, Skinner sat back in his chair and started laughing. Then he found he couldn’t stop. His foot hammered a loud tattoo on the laminated wooden floor of the bar room as the other drinkers regarded him in mounting concern, but he was completely oblivious to the scene he was making.
21
Muffy
BOLTING UP FROM under the surface of the pool’s turquoise waters, Caroline ripped her wet, streaming hair from her face. As she filled her lungs with air, taking in the white, cavernous surroundings of the indoor pool, she noted that little had changed since her father took her here as a girl; the big electronic scoreboard dominated one wall, standing over the banks of orange plastic-benched spectator seating. The adjacent diving pool was still there.
For a few moments she was even moved by the notion that she could sense her father’s presence. There was a phantom smell in her nostrils of the pleasantly musty odour he gave off, the scent she would for ever associate with masculinity. She looked around at the other swimmers
, but the perception of his proximity slid from her consciousness like waking from a dream.
This was always their time, as she recollected how she’d learned to swim: his big hands ready to steady her faltering progress. She always recalled feeling so safe in their grip. Yet they were ugly hands, almost like claws: burned a withered yellow and angry red at the fingers, stiff at the joints, due to some accident at work he’d never talk about.
She remembered his jet-black hair which he centre-combed to cover the receding ‘V’ at his temples before he gave up and had a functional number-one cut, as it started to meet the ‘O’ at his crown. There was the Desperate Dan growth on his chin, adding to his ever-present aura of strength. It had filled the house, only waning in his sickness, and now that he was gone it had died with him.
At first she gained no empowerment from these memories of him, they only seemed to deepen her sense of loss. It was as if her backbone had been ripped out of her. To find the courage she lacked, she had taken to drinking alcohol in quantities. But this had only increased her sense of jeopardy and disorientation as she had woken up in strange beds with near strangers on a couple of mornings, with little to remember from the encounters.
Gradually realising that what she needed could only come from within herself, rather than the flesh of a partner or the contents of a glass, she slowly began to find strength. I’m my father’s daughter, everybody always said it, became her mantra. What has he left me? she wondered. And she stopped the heavy drinking, and went back to the Royal Commonwealth Pool.
Now she was swimming again. She loved it here: the water, the freedom and abandonment of it. It seemed to bring her closer to her dad, as this was their thing, neither Brian nor Joyce being swimmers. And the tears flowing from her eyes could be lost in the chlorine waters of the pool, and her sobs of grief could meld into the gasps of extreme exertion as she forced herself through the water until her arms and legs ached.
And like her body, her spirit was becoming stronger.
Brian Kibby shook and twitched with the resonant gratings of the bus; the rancid smell of old leather, diesel and stale bodies queasing him out. It was a simple perennial routine for many, but a hideous, twice-daily dose of hell for his weak but increasingly bulky frame and tortured soul to endure.
Murrayfield and the rugby stadium had given way to Western Corner and the zoo. At the other end of Corstorphine was home. He was lost in his thoughts and realised that, given his disabilities, he had not allowed himself sufficient time to get to the exit door. Moving slowly, to the impatience of those around him, the young man gasped, struggling to get to the point of egress.
By the time he had stumbled his way to the doors, they had closed and the bus was speeding off. He couldn’t even shout stop, didn’t want to draw attention to his blotchy, bleary, destroyed face with the sunken black eyes, his bent-over stoop, or his profuse sweating and gasping. At the next stop on the Glasgow Road, he creaked as he stepped on to the pavement, forcing breath into his harsh, stiff, shrunken lungs, then sloped across the park, hunched and cold, in the bitter rise of sunlight towards his home.
She’d have soup on, his mother would. Get some soup, son, that’ll put you right. Joyce Kibby’s faith in the recuperative powers of her Scotch broth remained undiminished, in spite of all evidence to the contrary. Like the Christian Scientists with their healing prayers, Joyce had to keep faith in her concoction. Standing over that pot in the kitchen like a sorcerer, subtly altering the ingredients, Joyce hoped to find the winning balance of chemistry that would restore her stricken son to full health. Nor was she above putting the odd prayer into the mix.
Brian Kibby well knew his mother’s obsessive foible. And just maybe it would work, he thought hopefully, as he looked up at the pallid sun. Then, as he suddenly stepped out from the buffeting shelter of the sports pavilion, he gasped in the lashing wind, which tore across South Gyle Park. It stung his watering eyes, pushing the very breath he tried to expel right back into his tight and tired lungs, so that he was forced to turn his back on it, simply in order to breathe. It whipped his long coat around him like the big hands of a master butcher wrapping a cut of dead flesh into a sheet of greaseproof paper.
— Maybe it’ll work, he sobbed aloud in an exasperated state between forlorn hope and terrified despair as the cruel wind boxed at his ears. It seemed to take an eternity to get home, but when he did, Joyce had sat him down in Keith’s old chair, tray on his lap, with a bowl of her steaming hot broth.
He struggled through the soup and dozed in the chair for a little while. When he woke he had the sense that Caroline had come in, and sure enough, her sports bag was on the floor. Trying to order his senses, he turned to Joyce, who was watching the end credits of EastEnders and asked, — Was Caroline here?
— Aye, you were talking to her, silly! I think you had just woken up from a deep sleep.
— Was I . . .?
— Aye. Joyce smiled stoically, as Brian had been talking in his sleep, muttering disturbing things, although it was all just gibberish. — But it’ll do you good to get a nap. You said you hadn’t been sleeping well.
— Is Caroline upstairs working?
— No, she’s just gone round to her friend’s.
— To that Angela’s, I’ll bet.
— I don’t know, Joyce shook her head. I’m just about to watch this video I got for us. It’s Chinese or Japanese, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Everybody raves about it.
Kibby had never heard of the film, and he thought of how well he’d been doing lately, with no black marks for several days. Then the two female leads in the movie began to establish themselves and Kibby’s brain in his skull soon felt like a joint of meat bubbling in a casserole dish.
Muffy . . .
He looked down, to see his erection poking through the mat-erial of his trousers.
No more black marks . . . avoid being alone the pamphlet says . . . I can’t go upstairs . . .
— This is so good, Joyce murmured, but although she was enjoying the film, exhaustion was gripping her and she was drifting off, as she always did in front of the television. Soon she’d established a pattern of loud, grating snores.
Kibby looked at his erection, sticking up towards his face, challenging him.
Mum’s out for the count, that wee lassie is so gorgeous . . . if I just rubbed the head . . . you want it, don’t you, you wee sha . . .
— STOP! Kibby screamed in anguish.
Joyce sprung bolt upright, eyes bulging, chest in palpitations. — Wha . . . what is it, Brian?
Kibby stood up, struggling for air. — I’m going up to bed, he announced.
— Are ye no going to watch the end of the film, son?
— This is rubbish. Crap, Kibby sneered, heading out.
Joyce felt that she could do nothing right. — But it’s kung fu, son, I only got it cause it was kung fu . . .
— Walkin on buildings like that, Kibby whined, — nonsense, as he padded up the stairs.
Bed offered him no rest. The computer seemed to be urging him to switch it on, though he knew who would be waiting for him in cyberspace. But anything had to better than lying here, in this torment.
Muffy . . .
Prone in the darkness, Kibby tried to think of mundane reports of site visits, but when he inspected a restaurant, he would be greeted by a waitress in a short skirt who looked like Lucy, and she’d bend over a table . . .
The Lord’s my shepherd
. . . or in a Chinese restaurant, the girl from the film who looked like Muffy . . .
. . . I’ll not want . . . office . . . office . . . Foy . . . Foy’s office on the mezzanine floor . . .
. . . but inside Foy’s office was Shannon, sitting on the desk, looking at him, unbuttoning her blouse. — I’ve been remiss, Brian, I’ve let Danny inspect me but I haven’t given you your turn . . .
— Stop!
He pulled up the duvet and looked at his tentpole erection. Why did it look so robust and taut
when the rest of him was so weak, flabby and stricken? He took long deep breaths as he tried to compose himself. He heard Joyce turning in, then Caroline using the bathroom before going to bed.
No black marks . . . no black marks . . .
The minutes dragged and tugged and sleep still wouldn’t come. Images of naked Japanese girls kept intruding into his thoughts.
Muff . . .
He remembered the pamphlet’s advice: make a snack, even if you’re not hungry. The only thing to do was to get up and reheat the Scotch broth. His stomach was full, but he forced more down. However, when he returned to his bedroom, he still found sleep as elusive as ever. He attempted some more prayer but his heart thudded in his chest as he realised his prick was stiffening again.
I mustn’t touch it . . . but they want it, Lucy, Shannon . . . the Jap girls. They want to be fucked but why don’t they want to go with me . . . what’s wrong with them? But in here, in my head, I can make them want me, but it’s wrong, it’s fucking wrong, it’s evil, Shannon’s my friend, Lucy’s a nice girl . . . Muffy’s a computer icon . . . the Japanese lassies are actresses, playing a role . . . I wonder if the director ever . . . no . . .
He threw aside the duvet and rose again, fetching an old tie from his wardrobe, using it to bind his right hand to the post of his pine bed. And then he put his left hand outside of the bedcover and silently prayed for strength.
The next morning Brian Kibby sat at his desk, miserable, rubbing at a red bracelet of an indentation circling his wrist. He’d tied it far too tight and had cut off the circulation.
That was so stupid and dangerous . . . I could have lost my hand!
Danny Skinner appeared in the open-plan office, emerging from the connecting door to the staircase and the mezzanine floor. As was commensurate with his duties, Skinner was going over the rota for the approaching summer holiday period. He couldn’t remember how many pints he’d had last night, but Kibby’s sweaty, heavy breathing and hunched silence told him that it must have been quite a few. — You’re offski in a couple of weeks then, Brian? he breezily enquired.