by Irvine Welsh
Well, as the old man would say: the best laid schemes of mice n men and all that shit, cause it didn’t flaming well work quite as we planned it, did it. Newcastle’s one of my favourite trips, cause of edge. It’s so bleedin far, for one thing, so different. Let’s face it, those cunts are more like Jocks than real Englishmen: sort of all dirty and uncivilised. There’s something about the place that gives you the fucking creeps. It’s all bleedin hill, with them ugly bridges hanging over that dirty river. The geezers are typically thick northern sods who couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery, but they can fair dish out the old stick, and take it, when it comes to a punch up. Generally takes quite a bit to put one of them cunts down. Anyway, that don’t bother me none cause usually I’ve got quite a bit, and I’m usually drinking fucking vibes like these, but today I just ain’t feeling up for it. I wanted to be back with her; miles away, back in the bleedin Smoke. Some fucking club, or maybe even a full-scale rave or something like that, E’d up. Just me and her.
Anyway, we gets up to the station. There were a couple of pigs at King’s Cross. They got on the train, but they got off at Durham. I thought they’d be radioing Newcastle and I was prepared for a reception of the local Old Bill. When we got off at the station, though, it was almost deserted.
– No fucking filth! Where’s all the fucking coppers then? Bal shouted.
– What’s happening ere then? Riggsie asked.
But I could hear something. A rustling sound in the distance, then shouting. Then they came, steaming across the concourse, some of them tooled up with baseball bats.
– IT’S A FUCKING SET-UP! I shouted, – THESE FUCKING GEORDIE BASTARDS AND THE OLD BILL! WE BEEN FUCKING FITTED UP!
– NO CUNT BACK OFF! GET THESE CAHHHNNTS! Bal steamed in, and we followed suit. I got hit fucking hard across the back but I kept swinging, driving on into the centre of them. It felt good. I forgot everything. There was no tension now, just the connection. I was on a run. This was what it was all about. I had forgotten how good it felt. Then I slipped on the concourse and went down. I could feel the boots going in, but I didn’t even curl, just kept writhing, lashing and kicking out. I managed to get up, cause Riggsie had made space by picking up a mobile barrier and charging them with it. I caught this skinny geezer with Coke-bottle T.Rex and just kept punching the cunt as hard as I could. He dropped this note-pad and I realised that he was just some poor little trainspotting cunt who’d got caught up in all this bother.
The Old Bill eventually showed and this was the cue for everybody to scarper off in different directions. Out in the street, this geezer with a swollen eye approached me. – Fuckin Cockney bastard, he said in a Geordie accent, but the cunt was laughing. I started to n all.
– Aye, that was a fuckin good one n ahl, he said.
– Yeah, it was pretty tasty, wasn’t it, I agreed.
– Ah man, ah’m too fuckin E’d up to get into ahl this just now, he smiled.
– Yeah, right, I nodded.
He gave me the thumbs up, and said, – Ah’ll see ye later, man.
– You can count on it, Geordie, I laughed, and we went our different ways. I headed back down towards the pub we was in. Two other Geordies approached me and I couldn’t be bothered fighting, my adrenalin had dipped.
– You fuckin West Ham? one asked.
– Git tae fuck, ah’m fae Scotland, I growled in my Jock accent.
– Aw right, man, sorry bout that, he said.
I left them and hit the boozer. Riggsie and some other geezers were there so we made our way down to the ground and took up seats in the stand surrounded by fucking Geordies. I thought that I’d start swinging to see what happened, but Riggsie spotted some undercover filth, who’d clocked us. We stayed for the first half, but we was bored shitless so we left and went back to the pub. I gave a couple of geezers on the pool table a good slapping and we broke some glasses and kicked over a couple of tables before heading off.
When we got out into the streets at the end of the game, we saw the main body of the Firm getting a police escort down to the station, a baying Geordie mob behind them. The filth were well in control, they had the horses and the cars out in force now. We couldn’t do no more, but I was glad that I was getting on the train and back down to Samantha.
Bal was well high on the choo-choo home. – These cunts fucking well know who we are! he shouted.
There wasn’t no cunt, Ilford, Grays, East Ham or that, who was saying otherwise. I took an E off Riggsie and came up somewhere around Doncaster.
Sheffield Steel
I see the fucking cunt. Sturgess. That’s the cunt that must die; for what he did to my Samantha. I’ll fucking well have you, you cunt.
The cunt stops his motor on Piccadilly Circus and in jumps this young geezer and they swing round the roundabout and head down the Dilly, taking a right to detour at Hyde Park. I’m in pursuit. The car stops by the Serpentine. I can’t see a lot in the dark, but I know what that queer-beast is doing, don’t I.
After about half an hour, the car starts off. They head back up to Piccadilly Circus and this young fucking sleaze-bag gets out. I can spot a sodding arse-bandit a mile away. I drive round for a bit and then this rent boy’s back in the same fucking location and Sturgess is well gone. I pull up alongside the young queer-beast.
– Oi, want a lift? I ask.
– Yeah, all right, he says, in a northern accent, but not a real northern accent, not a lad’s northern accent like.
– What about a blow-job then, sweetheart? I ask as he climbs in. Dirty, that’s what he makes me feel like. It don’t bear thinking about too much.
– He looks carefully at me with those sodding girl’s eyes. – Twenty quid, Hyde Park, and I get driven back here after, he says.
– Done, I say, starting up the car.
– To this very spot, he minces.
– Yeah, all right, you’re on, I tell him. I put the car stereo back on. ABC: The Lexicon of Love, my favourite album of all time. The greatest album ever fuckin made, innit.
We drove into the park and I pulled up at the same spot this fucking sick thing had stopped at with Sturgess.
– You’ve done this before, he smiled. – Funny, I didn’t think you looked like a punter … you being so young. I’m going to enjoy this, he lisped.
– So am I, mate, so am I. So where about’s is it you come from then, eh?
– Sheffield, he says.
I finger a scar on my chin. I got that at Sheffield two years ago. Bramall Lane: bicycle chain. I’m a poet and I don’t bleedin well know it. These geezers were pretty classy at United. Never rated the Wednesday mob though: fucking wankers.
– You an Owl or a Blade then?
– What? he lisped.
– Football, innit. You support Wednesday or United?
– I don’t really care about football, he said.
– This band, ABC, they was from Sheffield. The geezer in the gold suit. That’s him on the stereo: ‘Show Me’.
I get the little scumbag working on my dick. I sit there smiling, looking at the back of his head, his close-shaven queer head. Nothing happens.
He stops in a bit and looks up. – Don’t worry, he says, – just one of these things.
– Oh, I ain’t worried, mate, I smile, handing him a twenty, for effort n all.
That ABC geezer is still giving it big licks with that ‘Show Me’. What are you gonna fucking show me, you cunt?
– You know, he says, – for a while I thought you were a cop.
– Ha ha ha … nah, mate, not me. The law’s bad news, but’s that all they are, innit. Me, well, I’m more what you might call a fucking catastrophe.
He looks at me for a bit, all puzzled like. He tries to smile, but the fear’s paralysed his queer face before I grab his scrawny neck and smash that sick boat-race against the dashboard. It bursts open and blood splatters all over the bleedin motor. I bash him again, and again, and again.
– YOU FUCKING QUEER-BEAST! I’M G
ONNA KNOCK YOUR FUCKING TEETH OUT! I’M GONNA MAKE YOUR MOUTH ALL NICE AND SOFT, JUST LIKE A NICE GIRL’S PRIVATES, THEN I’M GONNA GET A PROPER FUCKING SUCK!
I saw his face, the Millwall geezer. Lyonsy. Lyonsy the Lion, they call him. He’ll be out again soon. Everytime I brought the queer-beast’s head down he screamed, and everytime I brought it up he pleaded: – Please … I don’t want to die … I don’t want to die …
I was hard now. I pushed his head down on me and pumped and pumped, and he started gagging and puking, his blood and sick spilling over my bollocks and thighs …
– COME ON, YOU CUNT, FUCKING SHOW ME!
… much more blood than the Slag’s when I’m giving her one and she’s on the rag … but I’m coming now and all I can see is Samantha as I’m filling that queer face with spunk … this is for you, gel, this is for you, I’m thinking, but I realise that what I’m doing is shooting into the head of this bleeding monster, this thing …
– OOOOHHHH YOU FUCKING SICK LITTLE PANSY!
Then I pull his head up and watch the blood and spunk and sick trickle out of his burst face.
I should kill him. For what he’s bleedin well made me do, I should fucking well kill him.
– I’m gonna teach you a song, I tell him, switching off the car stereo. – All right? You don’t fucking well sing, you soppy little Yorkshire pudding, I’ll rip your fucking balls right off and stuff them down your throat, all right?
He nods, fucking wretched little pansy.
– I’m foreveah blowing bubbles … SING YOU CUNT!
He mumbles something through his burst mouth.
– Pretty bubbles in the ayyyahhh … they fly so high, nearly reach the sky, then like my dreams they fade and doiii … SING! … fortune’s always hiding, I’ve looked ev-ary-where, I’m forevah blowing bubbles, pretty bubbles in theee …
UNITED!
I fucking well screamed as I slammed my fist into that poof face. Then I opened the door and shoved him out into the park. – Gerrout orf it, you fucking horrible sick little monster! I shout as he lays there, fucking well out off it.
I drove off, then reversed alongside him. I felt like running him over, didn’t I. It ain’t him I’m after though. – Oi, queer face, tell your fucking old sick cunt of a boyfriend that he’s fucking next!
Samantha ain’t got no arms, ain’t got no mum or dad, was brought up in a fucking home, all because of some fucking rich old queer-beast. Well, I planned to sort all that right fucking out, didn’t I.
I get back to the flat and there’s a bleedin message on the fucking answerphone. It’s my mum, who never phones me. She sounds really shit up: – Come and see me straight away, son. Something awfay’s happened. Phone me as soon as you get in.
My old mum; never done nobody a bad turn, never in her life, and what’s she got to show for it? Nothing, that’s what. A queer-beast on the other hand, one that made all them kiddies freaks, the likes of them have got the bleedin lot. Then I’m thinking what could be wrong with my mum and I think about the old cunt, the drunken old fucker. If he’s hurt my mum, if he’s laid a finger on my old mother …
London, 1991
It had been three years. Three years and he was coming to see her at last. There had been the phone calls, but now she was actually going to see Andreas. The last time had been their one weekend in five years. One weekend since Berlin, when they’d butchered the Emmerich child together. Something snapped in her then, his taunting driving her into a frenzy of violence. She would have done anything for him. She did. The blood of the child, the bitter communion wine of their warped relationship.
The joke was that she had fantasised about keeping the baby. Them living in Berlin, a Tenazadrine couple, with a baby. She could have been one of the mothers in the Tiergarten in the lazy summer months. But he wanted the baby as a sacrifice, to prove her devotion to what they were trying to do.
When she killed the baby, part of her died with it. When she surveyed its small, broken, armless corpse, she realised that her life was also effectively over. She wondered if it had ever really started. She tried to remember times she had felt truly happy; they just seemed like embarrassingly small harbours of respite in a life that was a sea of torment. No, there was no chance of happiness, only opportunity for further revenge. Andreas kept saying that you had to get beyond the self, beyond the ego. Agents of change could not be happy.
Samantha had been in shock, almost catatonic herself for the best part of two years. When she came out of this trance, she found she didn’t love Andreas any more. Moreover, she couldn’t feel her capacity for love. She was going to see Andreas for the first time in three years, and the only person she could think about was Bruce Sturgess.
Now they’d found Sturgess. He was hers. Andreas, she chillingly acknowledged, she now had no feeling for. All she wanted was Sturgess. He was the last.
The other one, the one in the cottage in Wales, had been easy. He was unguarded. They had seen him in the lounge bar in the village. She had often thought that when she crawled through that window, she’d feel fear. But no, nothing. After that time in Germany, nothing.
Andreas came to the door. She noted dispassionately that his hair had thinned, but his face retained that youthful freshness. He wore steel-rimmed glasses.
– Samantha, he kissed her cheek. She froze.
– Hello, she said.
– Why so sad? he smiled.
She looked at him for a while. – I’m not sad, she said, – just tired. Then, without bitterness, she told him, – You know, you’ve taken away more of my life than the Tenazadrine crowd did. But I don’t hate you for it. It had to be that way. It’s the way I reacted to it all, it’s my nature. Some people can let go of pain, but not me. I want Sturgess. After him, I’ll achieve some kind of peace.
– There can be no peace as long as an economic system founded on exploitation …
– No, she raised a hand to silence him. – I can’t take on that responsibility, Andreas. There is no emotional connection. I can’t blame a system. People I can blame; I can’t abstract myself to the level of taking out my anger on a system.
– Which is precisely why you will remain a slave to that system.
– I don’t want to argue with you. I know why you’re here. Keep away from Sturgess. He’s mine.
– I’m afraid I cannot risk …
– I want first shot at the bastard.
– As you wish, Andreas said, rolling his eyes. – But I came tonight to talk about love. Tomorrow we plan, but tonight is for love, no?
– There is no love, Andreas, fuck off.
– So sad, he smiled, – Never mind! Tonight will be for drinking beer instead. Perhaps go to a club, yes? I have not had much time to catch up with all the acid house and techno stuff … I have taken the Ecstasy of course, but just in the house with Marlene, to be all loved on … or loved up, is it …
She froze, then, at the mention of the other name, at what it might mean. He confirmed it with a picture of a woman and two small children, a baby and an infant. The image was one of idyllic contentment. Samantha stared at the photograph, at the look of love and pride on Andreas’s face. She wondered what sort of expression her own father must have had when he saw her for the first time.
– No peace until the end of the system, eh, she laughed coldly. It was a harsh distant laugh, and it seemed to unnerve Andreas. She smiled contentedly. It was the first time she’d seen him uneasy in this way and she felt pleased that she had been the cause of it. – All those little limbs … she continued, intoxicated by her sense of power over him.
His claw snatched the picture from her. He scowled, – I am here, am I not? Am I enjoying the peace and contentment? No. Sturgess is here, and I am here, Samantha. Part of me is always here, always where he is. You see, I too cannot let go of the pain.
You Want Some?
When I get round to my old girl’s place the first person I notice is The Slag. – What’s she doin here? I ask.
– Don’t you talk like that, David! That’s the mother of your wee boy, bichrist, my old gel says.
– What’s happened? Where’s Gal?
– He got taken into the hospital, The Slag says, cigarette in her hand, blowing out that fucking sick smoke through her nose. – Meningitis. He’s going to be all right though, Dave, the doctor said so, didn’t he, Mum?
That fucking slag, calling my old mum Mum, like she was part of things here.
– Aye, we goat a wee fright, but he’s all right.
– Yeah, we was ever so worried, The Slag says.
I look at the fucking cow-faced slag, – Where abouts is he?
– Ward Eight of the London …
– If anything happens to him, it’s down to you! I snap, then I run over to her handbag on the table and pull out her fags. – You and this! This fucking snout in his fucking lungs all day every day! I crush the cigarette packet. – If I ever catch you smoking round my boy again, I’ll do to you what I did to that flaming packet of snout! You shouldn’t be here! You ain’t got no business here! You ain’t nothing to do with me no more, you understand!
I’m right out the fucking door and my old mum’s shouting on me to come back, but I’m off. I go round to the hospital, my heart racing. That fucking slag had to make him ill with her snout at this precise moment in time when I got things to do. When I get there, the little un’s asleep. He looks like an angel. They tell me he’s gonna be all right. I have to leave. I got a date.
I’m proper wound up when I get round to that fucking place. I’ve been watching them; I’ve seen them coming and going, but now I’ve got to go in for the first time.
It gives me the fucking creeps. I get a quick proposition from a beast already, who rolls his eyes and says something about a party in the toilets. I tell him where to fucking well get off. There’s only one I want, and he’s at the bar. Easily clocked: he’s the oldest cunt here. I’m over and sitting down beside him.