Authors: Alan Bissett
‘Did I ever tell ye?’ His eyes alight on the sparrows on the fence outside, and I know what’s coming. ‘That me and yer Mum saw Elvis Costello live?’
‘Elvis Costello? When?’ I have to keep sounding surprised when he mentions this.
‘1979?’ he muses. ‘1980? It was at the Maniqui.’
I dump a carton of orange juice on the breakfast bar – installed during Mum’s formica phase, never removed. A nail-varnish smudge still decorates one end, a quick image of Mum spilling it, her mouth an O of horror, the Baywatch theme playing in the background.
‘Elvis Costello at the Maniqui,’ I marvel woodenly.
‘Well, it was called Oil Can Harry’s back then. Docksy’s before that. But it usedtay attract a lottay big name acts. Costello, the Jam, the Buzzcocks. Nay artists that stature playin Fawkurt now.’
‘Nope.’ I start pulling on my Simpsons socks. ‘Was he, uh, any gid?’
‘Aw aye,’ Dad begins, nodding like a toy dog in the back of a car on a long, long trip, ‘really gid.’
‘Elvis Costello in the Maniqui,’ I say again, as Dad’s mind and mine dance druggedly around each other. When I cross to the fridge there is a pause which seems as fraught with danger as an Arctic journey. ‘The Jam as well?’
‘The Jam as well.’
‘
And
the Buzzcocks?’
‘And the Buzzcocks.’
‘Uh huh.’
‘Just goes tay show.’
‘Yup.’
Dad takes a pensive sip, transporting himself to the fag-end of the seventies, where he is gayly trashing some phone-boxes. I’m waiting to see if there’s more of the Maniqui story to escape those coffee-tinged lips.
Queueing for tickets in the rain? An interrupted kiss on Mum’s
doorstep
? But no, he is treading towards the stereo and the off-button.
We’re so pretty, oh so pretty
We’re vac
The portable kitchen TV. Ghosts flicker on its screen, slide, merge into images of a cricket match, a great white shark, an awards ceremony, Lorraine Kelly. ‘Brad Pitt!’ she says, gleeful as a kid, then probably ‘table tennis banana prince william huddersfiel,’ for all I care.
I Love My Coffee, Dad’s mug declares, like a placard raised at some pro-caffeine rally.
‘See you fell asleep on the couch,’ I mention, for conversation’s sake mainly, but Dad quickly tries to justify it.
‘Aye,’ he coughs, ‘I was watchin a film.’
‘Aw aye. Which wan?’
Dad takes a gulp of coffee, his eyes on Lorraine Kelly. ‘Clash of the Titans,’ he says.
‘Good movie,’ I say. ‘Good special effects for its day.’ Their wedding video is perhaps half an inch further out than the rest in the cabinet. ‘I like the bit with the army ay skeletons.’
‘That’s Jason and the Argonauts,’ he says.
I muse about the kitchen for a bit. The tap is working again. Dad is not going to the job centre today. Or the doctor’s. I move the lid of the breadbin up then down, noticing tiny beige crumbs that have
accumulated
over months. Lorraine Kelly is saying
and later we’ll be making a picture of Ronan Keating from Boyzone using needlecraft.
Dad calls from the living room, ‘So whit did you get uptay last night?’
My reflection shrugs in the mirror. ‘Stayed in at Brian’s,’ I call back, with a composure I should’ve reserved for the Rosie’s queue, ‘Watched Saving Private Ryan. Played the Playstation.’
‘You no too auld for Playstations?’
‘Are you no too auld for the Sex Pistols?’
Dad comes into the kitchen, a wry little snort shuffling out from him.
monday. Schoolday. Graffiti on the bus shelter: FRANNIE +
GREEDO
JABBA
JAR JAR BINKS. Funnily enough, I end up sitting on the bus next to a girl who looks like Carrie Fisher. Skin white as a china doll’s. Hands folded neatly on her lap. I am about to try and talk to her when she leaps to her feet and shouts, ‘Davie, ya fuckin knob ye,’ and throws a Coke can down the bus.
The Blade Runner soundtrack in my headphones drowns out the hordes. By the time I fish out the postcard which arrived from Derek this morning I’m calm as Buddha. On the front is a red London bus. In one of the windows, Derek has drawn a stick-Alvin, carrying a book of Horror Stories. The bus runs over another stick-figure, spurting ink blood. Stick-Me is smiling merrily at this gruesome death. Derek thinks I’m warped cos I read Stephen King and listen to Dark Side of the Moon. A
lot
.
Dear Floyd-loving fuck
All is well in the big city. London has finally been
broken
.
Hoping to grace Hash-Glen sometime soon, but until then give Dad my best and Mrs Gibson reeeespect.
Big D.
know that moment in films? When the boat’s bobbing to a shore decked in metal, or the police helicopter descends to the roof of the jungle, or the police van draws up outside the drugs bust. The faces of the men. Mouths doing chewing. Bodies locked on rifles. Eyes steel, as little things itch in the skin then
GO GO GO
the bay door opens and they stream out into bombs and bullets and shouts and stabs and glory and death and
Anyway. See when our school bus rolls up at the gates? That’s what it’s like.
School’s a war. All these kids from all these different homes all stuffed into uniform, a pen in their hand and a stencil set in their bag, and told to go fight the good fight. The enemy: each other. A common goal: survival. Some are shot on the first day, never to rise again. Some go in and become heroes, immortal in gold leaf on mahogany in the foyer. Dux medal. Their names we shall remember.
Look from a window onto the quadrangle, with your lesson plans and your union protection and tell me it’s not a war. We arrive in first year, our eyes shining like gems, our new blazers coming down past our arms so we can ‘grow into them’, but by Christmas we’re just doing what we can to stay alive, desperate to think of something funny to say in front of the in-crowd and
She’s employed where the sun don’t set
growling at the smallest in the corridor, lest we be growled at ourselves, nipping out during double French to either smoke hash or buy clothes, depending on which part of Falkirk we’re from, and the whole time our whole lives are dependent on every single thing we do in class, every book we (don’t) read, every exam we can(’t) be
arsed to turn up to, and there’s politicians on the telly and they’re promising us that soon every single Scot is going to have internet access in their homes. In my second year, a bottle fight erupted in the quad. Plastic bottles, right enough, but hurled with enough force to break the spectacles of any dozy sod caught beneath it. Camelon lined up one side, Hallglen lined up the other. A no man’s land in between where
She’s the shape of a cigarette
emptiness breathed, as barren as the Somme. Everybody finishing their cola and limeade and orange skoosh, slyly smirking at the opposition, wary of big Ronnie Melville standing like an implacable god,
overlooking
from a high window, eyes picking out sinners the way a hawk hunts mice. But then the bell rang and
She’s the shake of a tambourine
a hundred bottles whistled into the air, spinning, aerobatic, leaving defiant grins behind. The beauty of the sight, like birds in flight, an aerial display – poised, hanging, buoyed on the momentum from
teenage
muscles – that same kinetic force I feel in the pit of my gut as Belinda transports us to where we can be heroes, just for one day.
I’m in fifth year. I’ve been searching for Private Ryan in this war for that long, stopped really caring about finding him now, stopped caring about punny-ekkies just for swinging on my chair, brand name clothes I can’t afford to wear, being chair in the Debating Society, editor of the school yearbook, or even listening to the
hash-heads
yak stonedly about Bob Marley, OK Computer, Trainspotting, and
She’s the colour of a magazine
stopped caring about quadratic equations and French past-participles and whoever Scotland’s First Minister is and the only thing I can find any sort of enthusiasm for is disappearing from the babble into an
eternal
dream where
She’s in fashion
she moves through the rarified air, hair bright as sunlight. She takes her seat beneath the Midsummer Night’s Dream poster. Words in delicate script above her head,
Now fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour draws on apace
. Her hand tanned and smooth. She leans. Her bag: Prada. Her throat, speckled and lightly undulating as she swallows. Her phone: Nokia. It plays the love song from Titanic. I imagine her asleep,
moaning
softly, her hand folded back on her forehead, eyelashes like thin pencil marks. Mrs Gibson is reading to us from The Great Gastby. Outside, a bee bats against the illusion of the glass, and Tyra’s eyes flick over at mine, then away. A pen works lazily between her fingers. I write, and in some way it is a communion: They. Cannot. Touch. Her.
me, Frannie, Dolby and Brian in Rosie’s, laughing and ordering girls off a menu. Dolby’s finger runs down the list and he muses, ‘Hmm, I’ll have the redhead. Lightly bronzed and easy on the
feminism
,’ and Brian goes, ‘Excellent choice,’ and the waiter turns to me, for some reason angry, and barks
What foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams!
Mrs Gibson skelps me on the head with her book and I jerk awake. The whole class is laughing, but Mrs Gibson’s alright about it, so I
mumble something about cough medicine, Miss, um, makes you drowsy. She lets me off, like a guardian angel/fairy godmother/Good Witch of the North. I glance over at Tyra, blushing. Mrs Gibson starts talking about the theme of ‘Desire and the American Dream’ in The Great Gatsby, somehow seeming to know fine that I was out til one in the morning, cruising car parks talking about Schwarzenegger films with the Lads and I don’t care what Brian says, Predator is a much better movie than Terminator.
Tyra’s eyes swim with amusement. Me and her are two of the oldest in our year: my birthday’s in March, hers is in April, which I think means mentally we’re both more mature. She’ll be one of the first in our year to pass her driving test, get a Mazda from her parents, start driving it to school with the window down and Sixties songs playing. I used to sit beside her in Computing Studies and she would have to lend me a pen every week, which usually had her initials on it. Maybe she’s attracted to me because I’m obviously, y’know, a bit of rough.
Mrs Gibson scratches something on the board about symbolism, roses meaning blood/love. Connor Livingstone, meanwhile, is staring at me, imperious and cool. Wealth oozes from him. He does not fall asleep in class. He does not cruise round car parks. He doesn’t have a single spot. Since his first year at Falkirk High School he’s been getting private tuition three nights a week, his future assured in the
paid-millions
-to-move-millions-around industry. His neck suggests rugby and when he speaks, his accent glides all the way down from Windsor Road. Probably reading Tolstoy while I was watching E.T. Still, when Mrs Gibson asks a question and Connor’s hand shoots up like an excited toddler’s, it’s me she turns to.
‘Now that you’re awake, Mr Allison, how would you summarise Gatsby’s character?’
I pause, aware of the eyes of Connor, Tyra, the whole class. I pat my pen against my mouth, look catalogue-model Connor up and down and say, ‘He’s fake. He’s all surface.’
Mrs Gibson cocks her head. The class waits for her reaction, pens poised. Then she scrawls in huge letters on the board THE SURFACE IS FANTASY and everyone writes it down. Even Tyra! She floats some respect my way, as cladding falls in pieces from my heart and I scribble
How I wish
How I wish you were here
then draw the cover of Dark Side of the Moon on my jotter. I am a thin ray of light, refracted through Tyra. Mrs Gibson starts prowling between desks, the novel open in one hand, the other trailing like a silk scarf through the room, and whenever she reads from Gatsby she
bristles
with magic. She should be carrying a wand. Derek confessed once that she was the only reason he ever went to English.
The heat of the classroom. Tyra’s reflection in the window. Mrs Gibson’s mouth making the words
We were content to let their tragic arguments fade with the city lights behind. Thirty – the promise of a decade of
loneliness
– but there was Jordan beside me
Belinda, the Lads
who, unlike Daisy, was too wise to ever carry well-forgotten dreams from age to age. As we passed over the dark bridge
the places we might go, the girls we might meet, the patter
her wan face fell lazily against my coat’s shoulders and the formidable stroke of thirty died away with the reassuring presence of her hand,
hope Dolby’s bought the new Radiohead album
and so we drove onwards
Brian owes me a fiver
through the cooling twilight
might buy a chinky
towards
the sky, fast, lit like a huge dragonfly, the road out of Falkirk before us and Radio 1 doing Ibiza, Sara Cox addressing the glorious San Antonio sun setting over the sea (which would be ruined, for me, by some
pixie-like
presenter sticking a microphone in my face to ask if I was ‘avin it laaaaaaaahge’ but there you go) and each time she shouts the word ‘Abeefa!’ ravers go apeshit in the background, and there’s this joke that Frannie’s telling us:
‘A Rangers fan dies and goes to heaven, right, and the archangel Gabriel is pointin out aw the Ibrox legends. Scot Symon, Davie Cooper, Willie Waddell, Ally McCoist. Wait a minute, the guy goes, Coisty’s no deid! Naw, says Gabriel. That’s God. He just thinks he’s Ally McCoist.’
Seems to me the joke says as much about the teller, with Frannie boy giving it his best/worst Super Ally charm tonight. There’s one god
here. He’s in the mood, and not just for dancing, and while I try to tell Dolby about falling asleep in class, Mrs Gibson skelping me awake, Connor Livingstone sniggering at me, and all about Tyra’s chest, again, Frannie keeps leaning out of the window and whistling at girls and blowing them kisses. ‘Hey, hen! D’ye think I look like Han Solo? Dae ye? Whit? Aye, same back!’