The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs

by Irvine Welsh

  But in spite of my efforts, there’s nothing; no strange alchemy takes place. There is absolutely fucking zero to resemble the immense shattered, dizzying sensation, followed by the surge of energy when I put the hex on Kibby. Now I just feel stupid and self-conscious; aware of the looks I’m getting from the bar.

  In spite of it all I just can’t muster the same hatred for Busby. Is this because it’s him, that thing, that’s my dad? Is it that I can’t kill my own?

  So what is it about Kibby, this obsession? Just who is he to me?

  22

  Brummie Balearics

  THE DARKNESS WAS illuminated by the pearly smiles that Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen flashed across the screen of the multiplex. The experience was, for Brian Kibby, entrancing and uplifting. A New York Minute was one of the best movies he’d seen in a long time. It was the way to go for the twins, he considered. Nonetheless, he worried about the images of them being burned into his brain. Tonight would be a big test. It had been twelve days since he’d last chalked up a black mark. He was doing so well.

  On the way home he stopped at a newsagent and had browsed through a magazine, which featured the Olsen girls on the cover. He was horrified to read that one of them was involved in a battle with an eating disorder. On his return home, he was moved to write a letter of support to her mother.

  Dear Mrs Olsen,

  I was upset to hear about your daughter’s illness and I sincerely hope that Mary-Kate recovers from her health problems. My name is Brian Kibby. I am a twenty-one-year-old Edinburgh man who has recently contracted a terrible rare disease, and one that the doctors and medical specialists are at a loss to explain.

  I very much enjoyed the movie A New York Minute, which I saw earlier today, and please pass on my wishes to the girls for continued success. I hope that we are able to see Ashley and Mary-Kate together again on the big screen soon.

  I don’t have any motive for writing this note; this is

  definitely not a begging letter. I just find your daughters very inspiring figures and want you to know that.

  Yours sincerely,

  Brian Kibby

  He sent it care of the magazine, hoping they would forward it.

  Due to the progressively debilitating nature of his illness, Kibby had stopped going out with the Hyp Hykers. The summer party, though, was a big event on their annual social calendar. Aware of how he was coming to be perceived, and in spite of his mounting frailty, he resolved to attend.

  It had been Ken Radden’s idea to book the function rooms in the Zoological Gardens at Corstorphine. — Get two bunches of animals together, he had joked. The proximity of the venue was appealing to Kibby, who walked slowly down the main road, feeling the pain of dragging his aching, worn body with him. And then there were his nerves, those tattered, shredded nerves. They registered everyone who crossed his path as a hostile force, the most innocuous persons coming over to him like a McGrillen or a Skinner.

  When he got to the do, he could feel the unease around him. Paranoia tore out of him; he wondered what they thought of him and he tried to make a big show of not drinking alcohol.

  Despite his ostentatious efforts with the Pepsi and the orange juices, for the most part he was either resolutely ignored or met with stares of pity. Those who did engage with him only felt comfortable in conversation for a short while, then would quickly head off when somebody more suitable to talk to crossed their line of vision. He was an embarrassment, and felt it acutely.

  I thought they were my friends. The Hyp Hykers. The crazy gang . . .

  Then he saw Lucy. She was wearing a green dress.

  She’s better than Mary-Kate or Ashley . . . or as good as . . .

  She looked so beautiful, but he couldn’t approach her: not as the tubby, suspiring, red-eyed wreck that he now seemed to be. But she caught his eye and looked at him quizzically, the recognition slowly dawning in her expression and she cautiously approached him, tentatively asking, — How are you keeping?

  It was a question . . . she’s no sure it’s me. She doesnae even ken for certain that it’s me!

  Brian Kibby forced a sad smile of affirmation. — I . . . eh . . . I think I’m getting better but it’s slow, he said, finding himself almost moaning at his own lies. He then hopefully added, — Mibbe get a game of badminton again, when I feel up tae it . . .

  — Yes, Lucy grinned forcibly, wanting the ground to swallow her up. To think she’d actually liked him, found him a bit fanciable, even. Rescue came in the form of Angus Heatherhill, who skipped across the floor and pushing his fringe out of his eyes said to her, — Hey, Luce, fancy a wee dance?

  — Okay, Angus. Excuse us, Brian, she said, and left Kibby with a fresh orange juice which tasted like poison to him.

  He watched them for a bit, first on the dance floor, then in the corner of the room.

  His hands are all over her. She loves it as well. It’s like she’s mocking me!

  She’s just like the rest of them!

  Kibby sloped miserably away from the function, wandering into the night. As he headed down a cobbled path, towards the zoo exit and the main road, a screeching noise lacerated his bedraggled nerves. He felt his heart was going to explode in his chest. Then there followed a cacophony of squawks. Huge, murderous grunts heaved from somewhere behind him. The smells were overpowering as he hurried down the path and through the zoo gates. He got home as fast as his weary frame and a slow taxi could take him.

  The next morning Kibby struggled through his agony, rose and boarded the train to Birmingham for the convention. He’d booked the ticket in advance and he was determined to confront Ian, who was certain to be there, and explain things to him. But on his arrival he felt too sick to visit the centre; apart from a tired, breathless canalside walk, he stayed in his hotel room, watching television. It was useless. There was no way he could face Ian or anyone else in this state. He had to go straight home next day. And that evening as he groaned in his bed back in Edinburgh, Brian Kibby noticed something else. He had come out in strange spots, which were like nothing he’d ever seen before.

  Dr Craigmyre, called in by Joyce Kibby, could not believe what he was seeing. — Birmingham, did you say? he shakily enquired of the supine Kibby, who groaned in weak affirmation. — It’s only that . . . these look like mosquito bites to me!

  Mosquito bites?

  And Dr Craigmyre saw a strange thing as he looked at Brian Kibby. He saw a small blood vessel in his patient’s cheek rise and burst before his very eyes. Kibby felt it as an itch, and his face twitched.

  The champagne cork popped as Danny Skinner stuck its frothing neck to his lips, washing down the two ecstasy pills, which were drying out his mouth and throat. The crowd around him on the dance floor let out a cheer as he passed the bottle round.

  Skinner had enjoyed a good Ibiza, at least to outside eyes. There he was, just having it every night, and on the beaches during the day also. He never seemed to sleep. But in a club called Space as the morning broke, Danny Skinner himself couldn’t understand something. Why was it, in spite of Fatboy Slim hammering, pounding and tweaking the crowd of demented revellers into a frenzied liberation of the senses, he himself was thinking of nerds in anoraks? And how did it come about with the MDMA pulsing through him and with him swamped in a sea of hugs and smiles in a force of goodwill, party hedonism and, yes, pure love that he was mentally scouring the canals and backstreets of Birmingham? And there was just no way that he could envisage why it was that, when he had his hand inside the silk knickers and on the tight buttock of a breathtakingly beautiful girl from Surrey called Melanie, her lithe body bending around him, rubbing in slow rhythmic thrusts against his groin, her burning hungry lips pressing against his, that he was thinking of . . .

  No.

  Yes.

  He was thinking of Brian Kibby, and what was happening to him right now!

  Skinner convulsed, almost oblivious to the beauty around him, as he considered the grim truth: he always missed Kibby if th
ey were apart for more than a few days, craved the morbid, knowing fascination of ascertaining how his rival was doing.

  For although Kibby would field what he regarded as Skinner’s transparently insincere enquiries as to his health, his desperation meant that he would inevitably confide in someone, usually Shannon McDowall, with whom Skinner was still on good, if now non-sexual, terms. And Skinner would gleefully pump her for information.

  No, Skinner was thinking about Brian, about the impact of his work. He was like an artist who couldn’t see the effect of his strokes on the canvas. What would that marathon LSD trip have done to Kibby? What about those grimy, badly-cut-with-laxative lines of cocaine? Or that blithe, indiscriminate mixing of the grain and the grape? What about the bottles of voddy at Manumission, or the chasing of some brown on that yacht; that horrible tinfoil would surely play havoc with the weak lungs of his old adversary.

  A weekend was enough to wait, enough to savour and anticipate the destroyed presence or the non-appearance of Kibby on those wonderful Monday mornings, truly the best time of the week for Skinner. A week was tolerable. But two weeks! It was doing his nut in. He had to know.

  Unlike almost every other holiday visitor to the magic island that summer, Danny Skinner could not wait to get home.

  23

  High Concept

  HER EXPRESSION SEEMED preoccupied, even haunted, as she made her way through the crowded bar. But when she saw him beckon her to a seat beside him in the corner, Kay Ballantyne was stunned at just how well her ex-fiancé looked. — And you’re just back from Ibiza as well, she said, quite awestruck, then wondered whether there was someone else in his life now. She felt a sense of failure, thinking, Why couldn’t he do that for me?

  Kay looks worn out, Skinner thought with a cold detachment. There were new lines around her eyes, deeper lines. This made him cast his mind back to the time he first saw her, at the fair on Leith Links. Her long, black shining hair, that red nylon bomber jacket, but most of all, her twinkling smile, her white teeth and her lovely dark eyes.

  No. Not true. Most of all it was her arse, clad in those clinging, blue CK jeans as she raised that air rifle and shot at the targets. The way her tight buttocks moulded into those jeans as she shifted her weight. A dancer’s arse, the girl from the dance troupe.

  Now, sitting with her in the Pivo, almost two years after meeting her in that fairground, he realised that he felt a desperate urge to see her arse again. So overwhelming was it that Skinner engaged in a protracted game centred on getting her to remove her long brown jacket.

  — Take yir jaykit off, Kay . . . he smiled, but Kay wasn’t listening. She was going on about how it hadn’t worked out with Ronnie, how he’d gone to pieces when they’d lost the baby, how she had too, but now she was fighting back and getting control of her life again, and starting a job, even if it was only waitressing.

  Control of her life . . . who the fuck is Ronnie? Lost a fucking baby . . .?

  — Take yir jaykit off, it’s hot in here, Skinner urged, now in a strange gasp.

  — I’m okay, she said and smiled at him, in a way that disgraced and humiliated him. It made him think how beautiful she still looked. And something was rising in his soul as he was moved by her story.

  Please take off that jacket . . .

  Please go to the toilet . . .

  So that I can critically scrutinise your arse, see for signs of overhang, for signs of collapse, so that I can gauge my mortality by your decline, as I do with everything around me . . . bringing to recall the words of the golden poet:

  The flower in ripen’d bloom unmatch’d

  Must fall the earliest prey;

  Though by no hand untimely snatch’d,

  The leaves must drop away.

  But then Kay started to cry. Just a trace of a tear, then her hand rushed to her eye. For a few excruciating seconds Danny Skinner wanted to wind the clock back, so he’d be able to be the man who could hold her hand, who could raise his own hand to her face and brush away that heavy bomb of a tear. But in his sick loss he realised that he was no longer that man, could never, ever again be that man. Then Kay abruptly rose. — Sorry . . . I have to go . . . I have to go, she repeated, moving away towards the door.

  Danny Skinner thought that he should go after her, to try and comfort her, but he nodded back sadly and watched her turn and leave. He looked at her arse, but it was still covered by her jacket. He could still go after her and he did rise, but he had to pass the bar first and, as ever, it got in the way.

  It had been a terrible fortnight in the life of Joyce Kibby.

  The laddie had come back so sick and ill from his trip down to Birmingham. He stayed only one night. For most of his holiday he’s been lying around in bed or groaning on the couch. For almost two weeks! Now it’s time for him to go back to work but he’s just no able.

  The laddie just isnae able.

  On the eve of her son’s proposed return to work, Joyce had wanted to get Dr Craigmyre out again. Brian could hardly breathe. He lay under the bedclothes, sweating and writhing. — Nae doctor, he gasped in a thin but determined protest.

  The tears welled in his mother’s eyes. — I’m going to have to phone in again, son, tell them you’re not fit for work . . .

  — No . . . Kibby muttered faintly, — . . . I’ll be fine . . .

  The mosquitoes . . .

  Joyce shook her head. — Don’t be silly, Brian, she said, turning on her heels and heading for the door, oblivious to her son’s pleas. No way was he going to struggle into work again, as he had so many times before.

  Now her son, swollen and gasping, was delirious and muttering nonsense. — Skinner and the mosquitoes . . . Skinner and the mos-quitoes . . . he brought them to Birmingham . . .

  Birmingham . . . mosquitoes . . . Skinner . . .

  . . . not a mark on him . . .

  . . . I need to get married . . . get to Harvest Moon . . . Ann . . . Muffy . . . finish the game . . .

  Trundling down the stairs, Joyce dialled the city council’s number, asking for Environmental Health, only to be snootily informed that the department was now called Environmental and Consumer Services. Brian had always told her to phone Bob Foy, but Joyce had grown to detest his surly lack of compassion with regard to her son’s condition. However, there was one man she spoke to once, he had been so kind and comforting.

  Danny, his name was, Danny Skinner.

  Brian didn’t like him and had made Joyce swear that she’d never call him, but she just couldn’t face that Mr Foy’s cold sarcasm. She gave Skinner’s name to the receptionist who put her through to his extension.

  Sitting at his desk, Danny Skinner was reading in The List about a new high-concept bar which had just opened up in town and apparently did not just push back the frontiers of service and comfort, but threatened to change the whole nature of how we perceived entertainment. And all one had to do to enter this new dimension was simply to turn up. With, of course, plenty of cash or a credit card. He didn’t have plenty of cash, only red bills, but credit was readily given these days and he’d pay off his Visa with his MasterCard. Aye, he’d go along there tonight, thinking that it might serve to remove the increasingly pensive thoughts he’d been having.

  He couldn’t stop thinking about his recent encounter with Kay. It played through his head, over and over again. Maybe he should call her and make sure that she was okay. But she wasn’t his responsibility, that chance meeting being the first time they’d seen each other in ages. No, you couldn’t go back, you had to let go. There were other people in her life closer to her now. Let them sort it out. But what if . . . what if she was alone? No. That was his vanity talking. Kay was always vivacious, outgoing and popular. She never had any shortage of friends. That Kelly, the other dancer and her, they were tight.

  But she doesnae dance any mair.

  Naw.

  Work. Clear your mind with work. Sometimes it has to be done.

  He clicked on the VDU, dragged up an in
spection report on another new bar-restaurant, which was due to open on George Street. Then he was distracted by the phone, an external ring and a bit too early for real business. Something made him rise and look out from his office on the mezzanine, and a wicked smile played across his lips as he saw the space at Brian Kibby’s desk. He picked up the receiver. — Daniel Skinner, he sang.

  Joyce Kibby’s voice seemed to run a tortured obstacle course down the phone, from high to low, booming to breathless. — . . . I’m at my wits’ end, Mr Skinner . . . he needs to keep his job, he fears being sacked so much . . . my daughter’s at the university and Brian made a promise to his dad that Caroline would go through the university . . . he was obsessed with it . . .

  That voice, though ragged, edgy and shrill, sounded like a symphony of angels in melodious choir to Skinner’s ears. He was paying for his sister to go through college, Skinner thought in a weird sympathy, straddling across completely fake to utterly genuine.

  Then he intervened, his tone reassuring, but, he thought, with the correct gravitas: — Hold on, Mrs Kibby, let me tell you not to worry about that. I know that Brian’s had a lot of time off, but everybody here’s aware of his illness and we’re all rooting for him. Brian’s got a lot of friends in this department.

  — You’re so kind . . . Joyce almost cried in gratitude.

  — We need to cut Brian some slack, Mrs Kibby. What I want you to do is sit down and put the kettle on. I’ll be straight round myself in about an hour. For goodness’ sake, tell Brian to take it easy. I know how proud he is. And try to take it easy yourself, he said, in a burst of empathy.

  For her part, the song Skinner was singing was also sweet, sweet music to Joyce Kibby. — Thanks so much, Mr Skinner, but there’s no need, you must be so busy . . .

  — It’s not a problem, Mrs Kibby, he reassured. — I’ll see you shortly. Bye.