Ecstasy (27 page)

The Poisonous Cunt shagging: what a thought right enough.

– Well? she snapped.

– Goat it likes, ah said, handing over the bag ay coke.

She tore into it like a predator having a frenzied feast, chopping and snorting, her face contorted the same way it was when ah once saw her rummaging for fag dowts in the contents of my rubbish bin, which she’d tipped out onto the newspaper when she’d run out of snout. Ah cursed her angrily that time, and she went timid as she rolled up a single skin of stale baccy.

It was the first and last time ah saw The Poisonous Cunt deferential.

It was Monts that had given her her nickname. He’d fucked her once and either wouldn’t do again, or did do it but no tae her satisfaction, so she’d got the pre-vegetative Solo tae trash his coupon.

– That Poisonous Cunt Veronica, he’d muttered bitterly when ah went to visit him in the hospital, his face wrapped in bandages.

– How ye feelin? ah asked. Ah was staring at her profile. Ah could see the ring in her navel where the top part ay her tracksuit had ridden up.

– Shite, she hissed, sucking on the cigarette.

– Dae some rocks, eh?

– Aye … she said, then she turned towards me, – ah’m feelin fuckin crap. Ah’ve goat bad PMT. The only thing that helps me whin ah’m like this is a good fuck. Ah willnae git one fae that fuckin cabbage through thair. That’s aw ah want. A good fuck.

Ah realised that ah was looking straight into her eyes, then ah was tugging at her tracksuit bottoms. – Ah’m fuckin well up fir that …

– Lloyd! she laughed, helping me undress her.

Ah stuck my finger in The Poisonous Cunt’s fanny, and it was dripping. She must’ve been touching herself or it was maybe the crack or something. Anyway, ah got on top of her and pushed my erection into her fanny. Ah was licking her craggy face like a demented dug wi a dry, chipped auld bone as ah pumped mechanically, enjoying her gasps and groans. She was biting my neck and shoulders, but the crystal meth had numbed my body and made it as stiff as a board and ah could have pumped all day. The Poisonous Cunt had orgasm after orgasm and ah showed nae signs ay coming. Ah stuck the poppers under her nose the final time and pushed my finger up her arsehole and she screamed like a fuckin banshee and ah expected everybody tae come ben the bedroom but nae cunt did. Ma heart was thrashing and ah was frightened ah’d just peg oot cause ah got that rapid blinking for a bit but ah managed tae control it. – That’s it … that’s enough … ah heard The Poisonous Cunt gasp as ah pulled out as stiff and tense as when ah had gone in.

Ah sat up on the bed trying to bend my stiff cock into a semi-comfy position in my jeans. It was like having a piece of wood or metal down your pants. You just wanted tae break it off and chuck it away. Ah shuddered at the thought of how high my blood pressure must be.

– That was fuckin mad … The Poisonous Cunt lay back and gasped.

Ah had tae lie with her until ah could hear the others go. Fortunately she fell into a deep sleep. Ah lay rigid, looking up at the ceiling and thinking aboot what the fuck ah was daein wi ma life. Ah reflected that ah should’ve fucked The Poisonous Cunt’s airmpits while ah hud the chance. If ye huv tae dae something unsavoury that
yir
gaunnae regret as soon as you’ve done it, then at least realising a sexual fantasy would make it mair acceptable.

Eftir a bit ah went through tae the front room and noted that Solo and Jasco were asleep oan the couch. Ah left and wandered for a while through the city, ecky heads going to and coming from clubs smiling, arm in arm; pish-faces staggering down the road groaning songs and other cunts cocktailed oan aw sorts ay drugs.

17 Heather

My mind was buzzing as I wandered down Princes Street. Marie had had to stagger into her work at the Scottish Office later that morning, but no way for me. That morning I had, in her flat, picked up a book of Shelley’s poems. I couldn’t stop reading them, then Blake and Yeats. It’s like my mind was in an overdrive for stimulus, I couldn’t get enough.

I looked around an art shop in Hanover Street. I wanted to paint. That was what I wanted to do, buy a set of paints. Then I saw an HMV record store and went inside. I wanted to buy every record I saw and I drew the maximum amount of three hundred quid out of my cashline. I couldn’t decide what to buy, so I ended up getting some house-music compilation CDs which were probably not that good but anything would be all right after Hugh’s Dire Straits and U2 and Runrig.

I went into Waterstone’s. I looked around and I bought Ian MacDonald’s book on the Beatles and their music in the context of the sixties. There was a quote on the back about a guy who read the book then went out and bought the entire collection of Beatles’ albums on CD. I did the same. Hugh didn’t like the Beatles. How could you not like the Beatles?

I went for a coffee and thumbed through an
NME
which I hadn’t bought for years and read an interview with a guy who used to be in Happy Mondays and had started a band called Black Grape. I then went back to HMV and bought their album,
It’s Great When You’re Straight … Yeah!
, just because the guy said he had taken loads of drugs.

I bought a few more books and got the train home. There was a message on the machine: – Honey, it’s Hugh. Phone me at work.

I then came across a scribbled note in the kitchen:

You gave me a fright. I think you’ve been a bit selfish. Call me when you’re home.

Hugh

I crumpled the note up. Hugh’s Dire Straits CD,
Brothers In Arms
, was lying on the coffee table. He always played that. I particularly hated the song Money For Nothing which is what he always sang. I stuck on my Black Grape CD and put
Brothers In Arms
in the microwave to prove that what people say about CDs being indestructible is a lot of rubbish. Just to make doubly sure though, I watched
Love Over Gold
obliterate in a similar manner.

Hugh is perturbed when he comes in. By this time my mood is different. I feel run down, depressed. I had four Ecstasies the night before, which Marie said was way too much for the first time. I didn’t want to stop, didn’t want to come down. She warned me about the comedown. It all seems hopeless.

And Hugh is perturbed.

– Seen the
Brothers In Arms
CD, Honey? Can’t find it anywhere … we got the music n the colour te- veeeehhhh

– No.

– … munneee for nothin … listen, why don’t we go for a drive?

– I’m really tired, I tell him.

– Too much to drink at Marie’s? What a pair! Seriously though, Heather, if you’re going to take days off work, well, that I can’t condone. I’d be a hypocrite if, after underlining the importance of a good attendance record to my own employees, word was to get around; and Dunfermline’s not a big place, Heather, if people were to say that my own wife was a slacker and that I was turning a blind eye to it …

– I’m tired. I did drink a wee bit too much … I might go upstairs for a lie down.

– A drive, he says, holding up the car keys and waving them at me like I was a dog and the keys were the leash.

I can’t argue with him. I’m feeling sick, dizzy, tired and washed
out
, just like I’ve gone through a cycle on the washing machine.

– I thought that a drive might help cheer us up a wee bit, he smiles, as he pulls the car out of the garage.

Next to him sits this woman with lank hair and dark circles under her eyes. I recognise her from somewhere.

I put on a pair of sunglasses from the glove compartment. Hugh frets disapprovingly.

– I’m ugly, I hear myself say in a small voice.

– You’re tired, he says. – You should think about going part-time. It’s the strain of being in an organisation that’s rationalising. I know; it’s the very same at our place. They’re bound to feel it at your level of the organisation too. There’s always a human cost, unfortunately. Can’t make an omelette, eh? Bob Linklater’s been off for two weeks now. Stress. Hugh turns to me and rolls his eyes. – Anyway, I’m sure in your case it’s genuine. Some people just can’t cut it in today’s working environment. Sad but true. Anyway, we’re doing okay so there’s no need for you to martyr yourself at that place to prove some big point, Heather. You know that, don’t you, Honey-bunch?

I take off the glasses and look at the white sick face staring back at me, reflected in the side window. My pores are opening up. There’s a spot under my lip.

– … take Alan Coleman’s wife … what’s her name? She’s a perfect case in point. I doubt whether she’d go back now if they paid her. We’d all like to be in that position, thank you very much! Iain Harker: never off the golf course since he took early retirement …

A man of twenty-seven talking about early retirement.

– … mind you, Alasdair and Jenny have turned that section around. It’s a pity that one of them has to be disappointed when they eventually come to fill Iain’s vacancy. The smart money’s on Jenny now, though I suspect they’ll go outside and bring in a fresh face to avoid one of them being let down …

I wondered when Jenny was going to come into the conversation.

– Do you want to lick her cunt?

– … because when all’s said and done – and they’re both professional – but if one’s appointed and the other isn’t … sorry, Honey, what did you say?

– Do you think she’s got the front? Jenny? Quite a shop-window post, stacks of PR, I recall you saying. I’m shivering: paralysing shivers are going through my body in a digitally precise rhythm of one every two seconds.

– God, yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever worked with anyone more assertive, man or woman, Hugh smiles fondly to himself.

Are you fucking her have you been for four years I hope so for your sake cause surely you can’t be fucking me that badly unless you’re fuckin someone else … – Does she have a boyfriend? I ask.

– She’s living with Colin Norman, Hugh says, trying and failing to make the words ‘Colin Norman’ not sound like ‘child molester’ or, worse, ‘employee with below-average sickness record’.

But the drive is, of course, stage-managed. I know where we’re heading. We pull into a familiar driveway.

– Bill and Moll said it was hunky-dory to pop round for a drink, Hugh explains.

– I … eh … I …

– Bill’s been on about his office extension. I thought I’d check it out.

– We never see
my
friends!

– Honey-eh-eh … Bill and Moll
are
your friends! Remember!

– Marie … Karen … they were
your
friends as well.

– Well those were Uni friendships; all that student nonsense, Honey. The world moves on …

– I don’t want to go in …

– What’s wrong, Honey?

– I think I should go …

– Go? Go where? What are you on about? You mean you want to go home?

– No, I whisper, – I think I should go. Just go. For good, my voice has gone into nothing.

Go away from you, Hugh. You play squash but you’re still getting a bit paunchy …

– That’s the spirit, Honey! That’s my girl! he says, springing out of the car.

Bill’s in the doorway, ushering us in with pretended surprise. – It’s
the
Thomson twins! How’s the fair Heather? Looking gorgeous, as per usual!

– Hugh’s jealous, I say, fingering a button on Bill’s shirt distractedly, – he says that your extension is bigger than his. Is it?

– Ha ha ha, Bill laughs nervously and Hugh bounds on ahead and has pecked Moll, and now my coat is being tugged off my shoulders. I shudder and I start the shivering again, although it’s warm in the house. There’s a sort of buffet on the table in the living-room. – Come and try some of Moll’s world-famous garlic dip, Bill says.

I feel at this point I should say to Moll: YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE GONE TO ANY TROUBLE, but I can’t be bothered. I feel the words coming but there’s too many of them and they’ve stuck in my mouth; I feel I’d have to physically pick them out using my fingers. Anyway, Hugh gets in first: – You shouldn’t have gone to such trouble, he smiles at her. Such trouble. I see.

Moll’s saying, – It’s no trouble at all.

I’m sitting down, hunched forward, and I’m looking at Bill’s flies. I decide that opening them and looking for his prick would be like opening a knotted binliner and rummaging through its contents: that fetid stench in your face as you grasped the limp, rotting banana.

– … so Tom Mason stipulated in the contract for the service agreement that we would have a penalty clause on a sliding-scale basis for late delivery which, suffice to say, fairly had the desired effect of concentrating our friend Mister Ross’s mind somewhat …

– … sounds like our Tom, covering all bases, Bill says with sage affection.

– Of course, our pal Mark Ross was far from amused at this. Well, the shoe was on the other foot.

– Too damn right! Bill smiles, and Moll does too and it makes me want to shout at her: what the fuck are
you
smiling at, what the fuck is all this to do with
you
, when he adds, – Oh, by the way, I got the seasons.

– Excellent!

– The seasons? I ask. Frankie Valli … and the Four …

– I’ve got a couple of season tickets for myself and your good true-blue hubby at Ibrox, in the old stand.

– What?

– The football. Glasgow Rangers FC.

– Eh?

– It’s a good day out, Hugh says sheepishly.

– But you support Dunfermline. You always supported Dunfermline! For some reason this makes me angry, I don’t know why. – You used to take me to East End Park … when we were

I can’t finish the sentence.

– Yeah, Honey … but Dunfermline … I mean, I never really
supported
them as such; they were just the local team. It’s all changed now, though, there’s no local teams. You have to get behind Scotland in Europe, a real Scottish success story. Besides, I’ve a lot of respect for David Murray and they know how to put a good corporate hospitality package together at Ibrox. The Pars … well, that’s a different world … besides, I’ve always been a bit true-blue deep down.

–
You
supported Dunfermline. You and I went. I remember when they lost that cup final to Hibs at Hampden. You were heartbroken. You cried like a wee boy!