Authors: Alan Bissett
I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.
Dolby and Frannie are talking about some girl that Brian used to go out with. ‘Mind ye telt her ye’d seen Noel Gallagher’s willy in a toilet in Glasgow and when she asked whit it looked like ye said–’
‘It’s goat a big bushy eyebrow and sings Wonderwall!’
They both crack up and Brian tries to shush them, sorting out yet
another pub crisis on his phone (which I hope isn’t Cottsy wrecking the joint) and I obsess on that dark slice in the pure crystal of Winona Ryder’s eye, then the fishing night, where beside a fitfully flickering campfire we talked about Jack Nicholson movies and listened to the midnight hymn of the water and Dolby, distantly, without emotion, mentioned that he would rather die than go back into Whirlpools Direct on Monday.
‘Awright, Alvin?’ Frannie frowns, lifting the drink from my hand. ‘Bit green around the gills there, bud.’
I wish they all could be California
(I wish they all could be California)
I wish they all could be California girls
best of the Sixties playing and what looks like a porno but is actually the new Britney Spears video flickering on MTV and an entire section of the living room turned into a hash-head zone which the Lads have quit in protest at the giggling, virginal dope-ridden faces of the prefects, and framed Scottish landscapes/glens/Tyra’s modelling shots (so
soft-focus
as to be hallucinatory), and row upon row of Absolut Vodka/Omega cider/White & Mackay/Bacardi Breezers (such pretty colours) compete in my reeling vision and someone suggests heading out to Rosie’s to which I snarl, ‘No, I don’t fuckin know what Derek does in London, okay? Where’s Tyra?’ and Frannie shakes Brian’s hand, congratulating him on Celtic’s 3–2 defeat by Aberdeen and I hear
telepathic messages?
saying?
Tyra’s voice floats from the top of the stairs, so I stumble towards it, my poem about her and the moon memorised. Someone – Frannie? Mum? Stephen King? – tells me they saw her slip away upstairs, and I creep towards a door ajar and behind it Travis are singing Last Laugh
of the Laughter and a voice, two voices are moaning, so I repeat the poem quietly in my head, pick up a photo of Tyra with her three sisters, who are all as gorgeous as she is, posing like the Virgin Suicides, kiss Tyra on the forehead, open the door and
My eyes acclimatise to the dark. Someone is kneeling on the floor. Tyra is on her knees before Connor Livingstone. He has a sordid grin on his face and his jeans at his ankles.
Tyra turns. Her eyes are steely as bullets.
‘Alvin, get the fuck out.’
I stand frozen. I can only hear the door swinging on its hinges. I am trying not to look at Connor’s dick dripping with saliva, or Tyra’s vicious face. ‘Well, fuck off then,’ she spits. ‘Shut the
door
.’
Dumbly, I retreat. Connor Livingstone’s dirty laughter echoes. The door closes, the room becoming a thin strip of dark. Downstairs
the party has become the universe at the dawn of time. Things fly, smash, die. Curtains balloon and fall. A window has been broken in the kitchen and people stand around like dead weights. The night roars in, black and relentless, while the room swirls in the breeze.
Brian comes over and fits a Becks into my hand. ‘Aye,’ I mutter to whatever he’s saying, ‘aye,’ and the next time I look the Becks is drained although I can’t remember having drunk it.
The smashed window has ended the party. People are fraught with concern, stomping to and fro, blaming each other, you drank this, you threw that. Someone has turned MTV over and a programme that nobody is watching is imploring us to look after our bodies, because
by the age of seventy we have lost a third of our muscle strength
the hairs in the cochlea die, leading to hearing loss
cartilage rubbing causes sharp pains at the joints
and computer graphics detail the cross-section of a knee grinding, twisting, gristling like torture.
Tyra and Connor. Oh god.
I stagger outside, my stomach so light it feels as though it has floated away. Dolby follows, worried I’m going to be sick again.
‘Alvin,’ he asks. ‘Ye awright?’
My world pierced. The life escaping it in a thin, whining hiss. I feel functionless, fucked. I collapse on a sun-lounger by the fish pool, my hand dappling its cold shallows, a smooth silver body brushing against my fingers, then away. The sky is huge and timeless and black. The point is there is no point, etc. Oh god.
‘It disnay really exist, does it?’ I murmur to Dolby.
‘Whit?’
‘Youth.’
He doesn’t answer. We stare at the shimmering skin of the water. Things dance, then disappear like phantoms.
‘It’s a con,’ I say. ‘A clear surface. It breaks when you touch it.’
There’s a pause. Dolby blinks at me.
‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ I say.
The cold wind on our faces. I lean back, realising how devoid that sky is of any secrets, how poor Oasis are now, all those Britpop bands, how fucking drunk I am, and after all that, all I can remember is Dolby stretching my jacket across me, the police arriving, maybe several times, and an anonymous kiss on my cheek, a brief waft of a girl’s perfume, my name whispered once, only once, and then
Our living room.
Me, Derek, Mum and Dad watching Family Fortunes in the dark.
The light sharpening the corners of the ceiling. The TV makes
everyone’s
face a flickering, aquamarine mask. I’m on my belly, jabbing at crinkle cut crisps, one sock dangling halfway off my foot.
Name something, says Les Dennis, you would use in the garden.
Derek passes me the George and Lynne cartoon from the Sun and we snigger sneakily at Lynne’s melon-like breasts as she cooks
breakfast
, as ever, in the nude. Bet when she’s in the shower, Derek’s giggling, she wears a woolly jumper and a bodywarmer. Simmering resentment from the couch behind us. Mum and Dad’s blank faces crackle with light.
Name something you can cut with.
A contestant buzzes, hesitantly. Paper?
Me and Derek trade punches to the arm.
Enough, Dad mutters.
He told us earlier tonight that he has been paid off from the oil refinery down Grangemouth. Being paid off always sounds exciting in gangster films, like here’s some pay-off money for you to keep ya mouth shut, but Derek told me that it isn’t good at all. There was a lot of screaming and banging from the kitchen after Dad told Mum (though Derek took me through to watch cartoons while this was going on). Mum always does the high-pitched stuff. Dad grunts, sighs, and asks whit exactly is it that ye want me tay dae? Sometimes we can hear her sobbing in the middle of the night, along with Dad trying to calm her down.
Derek turns to Page Three and shows me Lena, 19, from London’s ‘boob-ti-ful assets’.
Her jeans are faded at the knees, I point out.
Derek tuts and drags the paper away. That’s the fashion, he says.
The TV fills the limp, blue darkness with chattering light, rising and falling across the cliff-face of my parents. Their eyes are lost to
the loveless flow, the cue-track of laughter, the adverts flinging
themselves
into the hurtling path of programmes, or the other way around.
D’ye think Pepe jeans are better than Naf-Naf? Derek asks.
Pepe le Peu! I say.
Enough, Dad murmurs, automatically.
Derek glowers at him through the dimness.
Name a country, says Les Dennis, That you would
stairs rising to a glue-patch of darkness, and I can hear skulking,
moaning
sounds coming from it. Mum awake and roaming. Derek has a new haircut. He is being insistent about something.
Listen Alvin, I’m fed up. I’m gon oot. I’m sick ay tellin ma pals that I’m no well, just cause ay–
He glances upstairs; there is a crash and some muffled swearing.
Sick ay it full stop. Ma pals are aw oot havin a laugh, gettin birds. Whit am I daein? Babysittin ma Mam.
I gaze down at the carpet. A bleach stain.
Whit time does Dad get back in? I mumble.
Late. He’s oan the back-shift.
The darkness at the top of the stairs is silent now.
If she tries tay get oot, lock all the doors and windays. Ye ken the drill. Then just put on a video or somethin. She’ll soon faw back asleep. Ye’ve goat Dad’s number if there’s an emergency. He cocks his head. ‘Okay, pal?’
I nod.
C’mon Alvin. Ye’re 11 now. Auld enough tay help look after her. Canny sit wi yer face shoved intay a Spider-Man comic aw yer life.
I nod again.
He ruffles my hair. The hallway feels like a vacuum. The ear of the china dog on the phone table is chipped. So are most of the ornaments in this house.
One night oot we ma pals. That’s aw I’m askin.
Derek opens the door and goes out into a hubbub of 15 year olds, hands thrust into his jacket, their fags making smoke graffiti in the air. I watch them cross the grass and wander off, whooping. The throat of the stairwell is cold and narrow. Shaking, I climb the stairs.
She lies in bed like pale driftwood. Her skin is 34 years old, but shineless, worn. Her hand clings to the edge of the duvet. Her eyes are her only motion, the only tiny, wet sounds. A breeze makes a belly in the curtain.
Son?
I ignore her, tidying. Everything in its right place. More chipped ornaments. A china donkey. A ballerina on tippy-toes.
Son. I need ye.
Dust wafts through the light in the room. There is a smell of talcum powder and stale nicotine. I raise the duvet so that it covers her bony shoulders. Outside, cars speed past on the main road, the sound a pulsing rush. Here, there is stillness. Son, I need ye to do somethin for me.
Whit is it, Mum?
Her lips make a small clicking sound as she moistens them. Her pills lie spilled on the carpet.
Yer fuckin Dad–
She coughs. The window is open too wide. I close it.
Yer fuckin Dad willnay let me hae a drink. No even wan, the bastard.
Mum, ye ken why that is.
She raises a hand, slim as a flower stem, and points to the ceiling.
But I’ve goat a wee bottle ay vodka in the loft. I just use it for … for a treat. Will ye get it fir me, son? Wid ye dae that fir yer mammy?
I walk to the edge of the bed. Run my finger along the stitching of the duvet. She looks up at me, hopeful. Her tired lips are fighting with a smile.
You were eywis ma favourite, wee Alvy. Ye mind me takin ye oot in yer tartan shawl tay watch the stars? Ye mind the songs I used tay sing tay ye …?
Her eyes start to close. The spilled pills.
I pull back the duvet and get into bed beside her.
… yer tartan shawl …
I kiss her head. Her hair is papery on my lips. Her face closes.
… just a wee treat … dinnay hate me son … dinnay …
Outside the cars hurtle past. The sound of air whooshes and falls. Her mumbling finally ceases. I lie down next to her and sink into the pillow and
wake in Tyra’s garden?
An orchestra of birds is practising somewhere, so I know it’s either early morning or dusk.
Fuck, man.
Weak and shaky. My neck’s complaining loudly. I lift and sniff a rose which has been soaked in beer. The windows of Tyra’s house hang tall and desolate and her garden is a mess: broken window, cans
floating
in the pond. I imagine groans shuffling out from sleeping bags all over the house. Maybe I’m the first one awake. Maybe everyone’s died in the night and I’m the last man on Earth. The idea appeals to me.
I watch a butterfly for a few minutes, listen to the birds, feel the day warm up, the useless beauty of things. I think about nothing in
particular
, just look about, peaceful, swallowing, until eventually I stand up and head for home. Always home. There is no other place to go but home.
I bet if I could look at the street plans of Falkirk town centre, I’d see that it’s shaped like a loop. I suspect that’s why it’s called the boyracer circuit: they just go round and round, like little Scalectrix cars. Round and round. Which reminds me, shit, today me and the Lads had agreed we would be
singing in unity – Brian’s voice basso-rumbling, Frannie’s high, squeaky, Belinda a clanking, disharmonious backing-track, while we eat, drink, be merry, tearing down the motorway and stopping for a ripe pish every 15 minutes. A competition soon starts over who can think up the most ridiculous insult – ‘Unlicensed Bug Lover’, ‘Dirty Big Purse Snatcher’, ‘Promiscuous Potato Peeler’, but I win with ‘Chrome Plated Wife Swapper’ (my reward, Frannie’s unfinished packet of peanuts) – as we drive and drive and unfurl our collective petroleum self and Dolby
interrogates
Brian about the chick he pulled at the party – a distant cousin of Tyra’s called Morvern who had dragonflies painted on her shoes and a spiderweb on her skirt – and Brian is describing every part of her
anatomy
except the ones we want to hear about. I ask Frannie if he pulled.
‘Only ma pole,’ he grumbles, then relates to us his horror at Dolby introducing himself to someone as Uriel.
‘Well, it’s ma name,’ Dolby complains, adjusting the plastic Han Solo on the dash, which is in difficulty, hanging by one foot and a blob of Blu-tac.
‘No,’ Frannie says, ‘it’s no. Yer name is Martin Dolby. Ye were born Martin Dolby. You will always be Martin Dolby.’
Dolby’s face closes and he shakes his head.
‘Thing is,’ I pipe up, ‘there’s probably some boyracer in Brazil with the name Uriel who’s desperate tay change it tay Martin Dolby.’
The three of them laugh, hearty, genuine, and a warm glow suffuses my chest until Brian growls, ‘We’re no fuckin boyracers,’ and everyone goes harumph.
accelerating across the surface of the land leaving a wake of crisp
packets
/Springsteen lyrics/tyre tracks to mark our passing while the Ibrox Twins discuss which Rangers Wives they (don’t) want to shag – ‘Seen his girlfriend?
She
could play for Rangers.’