Filth (52 page)

– Sure Ray, we say.

– Just as long as you realise how the old song goes: ‘These days are gone now, and in the past they must remain’, okay?

– Okay . . .

– And Bruce, nae hard feelings, eh mate?

– Naw Ray, you know me, I’m not one for living in the past. I’m sure you’ll do a great job as inspector.

Ray grips our shoulder harshly. – Thanks mate. Right, I’d better nash. See ye. Things to dae, people tae see.

– Aye. Cheerio Ray.

– Cheery bye bye Bruce . . . oh . . . Bruce, I saw that Bladesey the other day, doon the club at Shrubhill. We all gave him the cold-shoulder treatment. He looked a bit sheepish. Then Gillman went up and put him in the picture, in Dougie’s own inimitable style. So I doubt whether our Mister Blades will be showing his face in the craft again. Cheers then, Ray winks, making a clicking noise from the side of his mouth as he departs.

Click click click

Channel hopping.

I’m hearing the voices and I’m pressing the buttons on the handset to change the channels but it’s the voice in my head. That same, insistent soft voice, eating me up from the inside . . .

. . . I change channels . . .

. . . I change channels . . . a Bond film. This time it’s Roger Moore . . .

I change channels . . . cartoons . . . Walt Disney.
Beauty and the Beast
. . .

I change channels . . . adverts . . . real Scots read the
Record
. . .

I change channels: repeats of
Please, Sir
.

The telly goes off.

I don’t know whether it’s day or night. Some empty purple tins lie in front of me. The fire still flickers. A welfare woman called at some point. I can’t remember what she said. I need to do something.

I pull on some clothes and go outside, making my way towards Colinton Village. The only person I can think of visiting is my physician, Dr Rossi.

The waiting room is full of smelly old cunts, but I’ve got the upper hand on them now. I’m minging in this old coat! Take some of that ya snobby auld cunts. I produce a purple tin from my coat pocket.

– You can’t drink in here, the receptionist tells me. I flash my ID at her. – Police, I tell her. – Working undercover, I explain to the old wifies. One makes a twisted girn with those old, dried-out lips. I want to grab a syringe and fill it up with the contents of the old purple tin and shoot it right into those old lips, rehydrating them instantly! – Plastic surgery, I tell her, – modern techniques. Everybody can afford it, I raise my can to toast technology.

The receptionist calls me and I go in and see Rossi. His jaw drops as I enter, and if I gave a Luke and Matt Goss, I’d say his lack of bedside manner is unprofessional.

He’s the McDonald’s of medicine, and it takes him a shorter time to come to a diagnosis than it does for them to serve up a Big Mac.

– You’re depressed Mr Robertson. I don’t do this lightly, but I’m going to prescribe Prozac.

– Fine, we tell this physician.

Rossi though: something is different about him. It’s as if it’s just dawned on him that he’s approaching middle age and he’s never going to reach surgical greatness. This, prescribing pills to sad old cunts and being a glorified clerk, like polis, teachers, social workers all are nowadays, this is as good as it gets. Our normally buoyant physician is giving off the defeated, depressive stink of a man whose own limitations have caught up with him. It’s a smell we’ve grown accustomed to lately. It oozes from every sick pore in my own body, as surely as the stale whisky sweat which accompanies it.

When we, I, we are leaving his surgery and walking through the village we screw the prescription into a ball and sling it in the Water of Leith at Colinton Dell. Then we go to the Royal Scot for a pint. This is the only fuckin drug we need: peeve. It was that fuckin coke that fucked us up, that cunt Lennox. Brought us down to his level then nipped in and stole the job that was ours. We should have picked that up, should have seen the signs. But we were weak.

We must now be strong.

Sleep fails to take us during the night. Thoughts are flying through our head like an endless merry-go-round. We can see the merry-go-round, our wife and child waving to us from the stupid horses as we sit and drink our tea in the Piazza of Princes Street Gardens, always distracted, lost in our own thoughts, our dreams of revenge against those who transgress the laws of the state.

We cannot break the cycle by having a fuckin wank cause every time we conjure up a picture of a woman we see the yobs’ faces or those of Lennox or Toal, and arousal, to our relief, is impossible under those circumstances.

Terror’s grip on us seems physical; sometimes it slackens but it never lets go.

We are walking again, through the Dell, through the long passage, which is like an old railway tunnel. There is one point in this tunnel, the point we have now reached, where it bends and you cannot see the light ahead, nor can you see it if you look back. A couple of steps forward and the light shines, a couple of steps backward and a glance over your shoulder and it’s the same story. But here, just at this point: this is limbo. There is the sense that if you stay at this point for too long, stop at this point of oblivion for a certain amount of time, you will just cease to exist.

And we cannot move.