by Irvine Welsh
Joyce Kibby deposited two large shopping bags in the hallway and opened the front-room door to find her children sitting in there together, watching television. It was like old times.
Danny Skinner arrived shortly after this, clutching a bottle of full-bodied, quality Bordeaux purchased from Valvona & Crolla, and some flowers, which he presented to an almost orgasmically welcoming Joyce.
It was Skinner’s third appearance at the house, though the first two had been brief visits and this was the only time he’d properly set foot in the front room. He drank in the surroundings. The furnishings were old, but spotless. It told him what he could have already guessed: the Kibbys weren’t into spending cash on luxuries, nor were they prone to throwing wild parties. A large, patterned three-piece suite dominated the room, though it was a bit big for it, and it gave the place a somewhat cluttered feel.
His biggest impression, though, was that this was a house of ghosts. The most prominent one, however, was not Kibby’s father; most of the pictures of him were sun-faded due to having been taken in an era of poor-quality prints. No, it was the ghost of Kibby past. To Skinner, portraits of the young, gangling, keen, much-hated Kibby seemed ubiquitous.
Did he ever really look like that?
Sneaking a sideways glance at his grim, bloated, adversary who had just panted into the room and stared at the guest as if Skinner’s sole purpose of visiting was the liberation of the family silver, he looked back at the picture. Infused by a sense of unease, Skinner just about managed to convert it into a thin smile.
Joyce had set the table up nicely in the front room, and a bottle of wine sat on it. She then placed the one Danny had brought alongside it, making Kibby, whose bearing alternated between aggressive and sullen, first give a disapproving start at such a lack of frugality, then quickly light up in anticipation of a pain-easing drink.
— I know we shouldn’t, she said, glancing furtively at her late husband’s picture, — but what’s it you sometimes say, Brian: a little of what you fancy does you no harm at all? I mean, with the meal . . .
— Yes. Kibby spat the validation of his endorsement out through clenched teeth.
— I’ll drink to that, Skinner seconded.
— Me too, Kibby said slowly, deliberately.
— Brian . . . Joyce pleaded.
— One willnae hurt. I’ve a new liver, he said, suddenly rolling up his jumper to expose a large scar which snaked in and out of his rolls of fat, fascinating Skinner, — a clean sheet, he added threateningly.
— Brian! Joyce’s eyes briefly bulged in horror but she was relieved as her son quickly pulled down his jersey. In spite of her nervous, spastic jerks she managed to fill the glasses up as Caroline looked on, obviously in extreme discomfort which was only eased slightly by Skinner’s indulgent squeeze of her hand.
They sat down to dinner. Though the meal – Joyce’s carbonara sauce and pasta – was bland to his indulged palate, Skinner forced himself to make appropriately positive remarks. — Nice food, Joyce. Bri, Caroline, your mum’s some cook.
— I expect your mother is too, Danny, Joyce obligingly cooed.
Skinner had to think about his response here. He knew that he himself was a better cook than his mother had ever been. It was simply a matter of availability of different ingredients and a more comprehensive knowledge of food, a generational thing. — She has her moments, he said, thinking with some guilt about Beverly.
The sense of trepidation that hung around the table was broken with the drink, into a nervous then hostile irritation on Kibby’s part. — So, it didnae work out for you in America then, Danny?
Skinner refused to rise to the bait. — Oh, I loved it, Bri. Planning to go back. But . . . he turned towards Caroline and smiled, — . . . you know how it is.
Kibby sat seething in silent fury at this response. It took a good couple of minutes before he decided to have another pop. Changing tack, he asked pointedly, — So, Danny, how’s Shannon getting on, encouraged to see that Caroline was now looking quizzically at Skinner.
— Fine . . . but I haven’t seen much of her; he thought about Dessie Kinghorn. — Obviously, I’ve been in America.
— Shannon works, or should I say, worked, with us, Kibby snidely hissed.
— Yes, Joyce said tensely. — I spoke to her on the phone a few times when you were in the hospital. She seems such a nice girl.
— Her and Danny were very close, eh, Danny?
Skinner looked evenly at Kibby. — Correct me if I’m wrong, Brian, but didn’t you and Shannon spend a lot of time together? Didn’t you go to lunch together regularly?
— Jist in the canteen . . . she was a colleague . . .
— You always were a dark horse, Bri, Danny Skinner winked, almost with affection, even feeling confident enough to spread his grin around the table.
Kibby was so frustrated and drunk, he had to fight to avoid dissolving into a hyperventilating spasm.
This behaviour hardly registered with Joyce, so happy was she to have that vacant seat at the table, long empty, once again occupied. She thought that Danny Skinner was charming, he had such a friendly and dignified bearing and that he and Caroline looked so good together.
Caroline Kibby contemplated the wheezing, sweating mass her brother had become. She thought about the constant embarrassment he’d been to her over the years, whenever she’d brought school or college friends round. At least then he’d tried to be friendly in his inept way, but the vexation then was nothing compared to the discomfiture his behaviour now induced. In those acid comments and bitter asides she saw how much her brother had changed.
Skinner found it hard to stop scanning the room, feeling like an anthropologist attempting to ascertain the social fabric of some strange tribe. Yet the proximity to Brian Kibby made him uncomfortable. It was disconcerting being so close to that reeking, wobbling flesh and it was he who was loath to make eye contact with his old enemy.
This was not at all easy due to Kibby’s omnipresence, particularly on that fifties tiled art deco mantelpiece, which was lined with so many of his portraits. While the heavy drapes on the windows shut out much of the light, as if in acknowledgement that Kibby was best appreciated in shadow, one picture dominated and it seemed to keep catching Skinner’s glance. Once again it was a large portrait of the Kibby of old; the thin, cadaverousness of his complexion contrasting with the large, liquid eyes of almost incomparable luminosity – in fact, just like Caroline’s were now – and the thin, fine features of the mouth and the nose. The current vintage caught him engaged with the image of bygone days and issued a derisive look so knowing that Skinner at first felt worried and then disgraced by it. Real guilt pricked at him as he considered what he had once put Kibby through with his bullying, recognising that he had inflicted considerable pain even before you contemplated the peculiar and devastating hex.
Yes, this thing opposite me is surely a different fuckin species to the youth in the photo. It’s a Frankenstein monster, and one created purely by my own indulgence! Sometimes, though, I can feel the presence of this other Kibby, the young cunt I’d been workmates with, gone to college with, eaten in the refectory with. The guy who’d blushed and coughed as I chatted up the hairdressing and secretarial studies lassies. The sap that looked mortified as I casually mentioned the explicit details of some sexual encounter, which I’d never been prone to doing in most company, but couldn’t resist due to the effect it had on poor Kibby. Yet afterwards this made me feel so crass, which, in turn, only made me detest Kibby even more. I remember what I once told Big Rab McKenzie about the young Kibby: that I hate him because he brings out the bully in me, brings out a side of me that disgusts and repulses me.
Rab, God rest his inherently minimalist soul, had an immediate suggestion: ‘Well, burst the cunt’s mooth then.’
If only I had taken the big man’s advice. I did much worse: I burst his soul.
Skinner made a pointed decision to ignore that haunting picture and go back to the re
al thing. For all the short-term jolts of discomfort Kibby’s barbed comments and looks induced in him, they were passing irritations, failing to draw real blood. Instead, Joyce’s gratitude at his simple appreciation of the food and Caroline’s indulgent smile, to say nothing of the wine, were having an intoxicating effect.
Indeed, he clicked back into that sickeningly wonderful false mode, which, he knew with a bitter-sweet sadness, he was just too weak to resist. — Tell you what, Bri, I hear you’re sorely missed in the office.
Brian Kibby moved his big, bulging-eyed head up slowly. His mouth hung open, framed by his slack, rubber lips. Yet there was something incongruent in the eyes: a resigned, brutalised pain, way beyond anger. Skinner saw it as a last leak of outraged defiance coming from Kibby’s beaten psyche, drip-feeding into the fetid atmosphere of the room around him.
Aye, Caroline was well out of here, Skinner thought, glancing at her and feeling like a knight in shining armour.
Kibby panted softly. The faintest of light tortured his eyes. The most routine burst of sound from outside caused him to start like a dog that had been disturbed by a high-pitched whistle. The sweet odour of the fresh-cut flowers Skinner had brought for Joyce sickened him, while his own bodily smells induced nausea. In the morbid acuteness of his senses only the most bland and insipid food was tolerable to him. And here was Danny Skinner, at his table, torturing him like a matador does a lumbering, wounded bull. And his own mother and sister were screaming ‘Olé’ with every flourish, cheering this arrogant poseur on. It was too much for Brian Kibby. — Aw aye, ah thought ye might have found somebody else tae be the butt of your jokes by now, he spat.
— Brian! Joyce pursed, looking apologetically at Skinner.
Danny Skinner, though, threw his head back and laughed off the intervention. — Pay no heed, Joyce, it’s just that old Brian Kibby sense of humour we all know and love so well. We’re all used to it by now. He can be such a grump!
There was a wave of cloying laughter from Joyce as Brian quivered again, in that uncomfortable hard chair, feeling it digging in treacherously as his monstrous buttocks spilled across its hard edges.
Skinner is in my home, fucking my sister, eating at my mother’s table and the bastard has the audacity to invent a fictitious camaraderie which is at best spurious nonsense, and at worst the most blatant attempt to deny a systematic campaign of bullying and abuse . . . and . . .
— Well, I think it’s inappropriate, cantankerous and obnoxious, Caroline sniffed fractiously.
Kibby looked her with a heavy heart. She was a woman; mature, bright, alive, cool and he . . . well, he had never been able, had never been allowed to become a man.
But maybe I can.
After dinner Brian Kibby made his excuse of fatigue and headed up to his room. From under the bed he fished out a whisky bottle. He took a slug at it. The golden elixir burned: thick, strong and nasty in his blood. Hardening him. Making him harsh, squalid, arrogant and, for all he knew, as immortal and timeless as those qualities.
38
Muso
THE SUCCESSFUL, THE semi-successful and the shameless blaggers of the city had gathered in their habitual uneasy federation on the opening night at Muso, Alan De Fretais’s newest bar-restaurant venture. De Fretais himself had arrived in a foul mood, which was only now being assuaged by some excellent Chablis. The builders had promised him that the enterprise would have been ready for a grand opening during the Edinburgh Festival, and a host of visiting celebrities and the national press had been lined up. Now it was considerably later, in the autumnal dead zone, and he was stuck with the local Z-listers and burning with spiteful reproach in the knowledge that it would take that elusive third Michelin star to give him anything like the coverage he craved.— My own little Holyrood, he remarked acidly to a Daily Record entertainment correspondent, who looked as disappointed as he did.
But the fruity grape, given its distinctive character by the localised Kimmeridge clay soil, was working its considerable charms on De Fretais. Soon he was soothingly reflecting that it was a good turnout for the time of year, when many of the city’s cognoscenti were still recovering from festival burn-out or anticipating the Christmas headache.
Skinner entered with Bob Foy, who had told him the welcome news: the Master Chef had returned from his German excursion. They had enjoyed a cocktail at Rick’s Bar, and so arrived a respectable twenty minutes late, though not late enough to miss out on the supplies of free booze. His fragile nervous system told him that Brian Kibby had obviously put a few sneaky nips away last night, and he had needed a decent drink to take the edge of his hangover. Skinner had almost forgotten how polluting and weakening alcohol could be. At least it was quite dark in here, he considered, regarding the suitably subdued lighting with gratitude.
That wee fucker must have a peeve stash in that fucking midden of a bedroom of his. I’ll get Caroline to search for it . . . or Joyce even. I’ll stop that fucking dingul in his tracks! Daft wee shite doesnae ken what he’s doing, how dangerous this is!
The bar area was imposing enough in a minimalist sort of way. Although the walls were an uninspired light blue, the old bar had a nice slab of marble on it and the gantry was oak-panelled. An impressive stripped and gloss-effect wooden floor and a series of sunken lights completed the look.
Skinner glanced around at the company thinking: so far, so dull. He was habitually checking out women, trying not to think of Dorothy in San Francisco or Caroline closer to home. Without success.
It’s fucking peculiar with Caroline and me. We just can’t seem to get it on. Probably cause she reminds me of Kibby. Once I get him back in his sickbed where he can’t hurt me, it’ll be full steam ahead; his sister will get legged for Scotland. If it turns out to be just a sex thing, then I’m right back over to California. First I need to get steamboats, and this shithouse is as good a place as any to load up in.
Could go a ride though. No sign of Graeme or any of that crowd. Maybe a full-on ungreased erse-tanning might slow Kibby down a bit!
In the rhythmic sips of the confirmed dipso, he quickly disposed of his first proffered glass of champagne. Disturbed by a digging elbow in his side, he turned to see Foy draw his attention to the high ceiling, where a series of musical instruments hung suspended from the roof. There was an electric guitar (which Skinner fancied as a Gibson Les Paul of some vintage), a large harp, a saxophone, a double bass and a set of drums, all at measured heights, as if a troop of gravity-defying musicians could just float up there and strike up a tune. But most impressively and implausibly, there was a white grand piano, hanging about fifteen feet above the bar, joined to the roof by four cables going into a single large hook which he thought must be bolted through one of the ceiling joists.
In spite of himself, Skinner felt some sense of awe.
Suddenly a voice came into his ear, so close he could feel the heat of its originator’s breath. — You’re thinking: how did we get that up there?
— I certainly am, he admitted to his host, the Master Chef Alan De Fretais.
De Fretais moulded his face into a languid, obsequious grin. — The answer is: with great difficulty, he mused, shaking his head at his own wit before heading off into the crowd.
Wanker, thought Skinner, but without any real hostility, tracking the chef’s meanderings. Only a tube, and a coked-up one to boot, could find that shite funny. Which, in essence, was exactly what he thought De Fretais was. There was surely no way that such a twat could be his old man. He reflected that it was how they talked to semi-strangers in such scenes, effecting an intimate profundity while saying nothing, but doing it in the manner of high gravitas perfected by Connery’s Bond. Above all, keeping a tight reign on all information, however trivial. Keeping secrets. Like all those fucking chefs, he thought, as he moved to circulate and chat casually to some vaguely known faces.
He’d quickly ascertained that this was the sort of do where looking over people’s shoulders was not considered rude but obligatory
. It was almost prestigious to show how bored you were in the company of your casual acquaintance. Your mouth spraffed away from a stock of responses based in one sparkling region of the mind, while your eyes wilfully scoured the other guests to see if you could upgrade your company.
It’s an ugly, status-conscious survival of the shitest.
Now he was doing the same, as he was still engaged in tracing De Fretais’s movements. He saw the fat chef talking to Roger and Clarissa and seized his chance, bounding across to them. — Excuse us a second . . . he nodded to the others. — Alan, can I have a quick word?
— It’s our young Unionist friend, Clarissa purred, her eyes and lips scrunching into a couple of gashes in her face. — Did you enjoy your little . . . union at our last meeting?
— I’m incredibly busy right now, Mr Skinner, afraid it’ll have to wait, De Fretais said, suddenly bounding over towards the bar area.
— It’s important, it’s about my moth– Skinner began.
De Fretais wasn’t hearing him, though, and Skinner was about to set off in angry pursuit, when in an instant he was rooted to the spot and his heart nearly bounded out his mouth as he saw the familiar black sheen of a young woman’s hair. She was dressed in a traditional white-and-black waitress’s uniform, but with a short skirt, wrapped tightly around an arse he knew well, the look completed by black tights or stockings. Serving up some savouries from a tray, she turned in profile and Skinner caught a beaming toothsome smile.
Roger made some comment, which he couldn’t hear through the pounding of the blood in his head, but he could tell it was a sarcastic one by Clarissa’s mocking laugh.
Skinner turned distractedly to her. — Bet you were a looker in your day, he said, her imploding face telling him he’d got the requisite amount of sadness in his expression. — Long time ago now but, eh, he added. He moved away from them, behind the waitress, watching the curves of her buttocks in the tight skirt as he felt something stir inside him.