Filth (54 page)

I only care about me and about why I don’t care about anybody else.

She thinks that she can do what she likes, well there’s no fuckin way, and she’s poisoned the bairn against us with these silly stupid lies that she tells, the festering hoor, and it’s all gone wrong and she has tae be shown, has tae be made tae pey cause this is nae fuckin use.

When we call her at her mother’s all we can say is that we want to see the bairn again, that we want to talk. Sort out the divorce.

Her voice is not the voice of the Carole we know. There is now no room for the words that she had waited for for so long, the words we were not capable of speaking, the ones that might have made a difference. In the absence of the words she became meat, a repository for my come. To be fucked, to be wanked over. To be made to do things she would not otherwise have done. In the sex clubs we joined. Bent by the will of my . . . need? It’s not her voice. I almost like this woman. She sounds like Carole before

Enough.

Now that we’ve told her to come, all we can do is sit and wait. And prepare. Prepare to do the cow.

For good.

I’ve made the t-shirt we are wearing. It has YOU CAUSED THIS on it in big, black letters. The noose feels tight around our neck. We look up at it, strung on the rafters of the attic and we’re now just waiting, ready to drop out of the hatch as soon as she turns the key in the lock and pushes the door open. We’ll land right in front of her in the hallway, so she’ll have that on her conscience for the rest of her fucking life the fuckin whore and liar.

We wait and think and doubt and hate.

How does it make you feel?

The overwhelming feeling is rage. We hate ourself for being unable to be other than what we are. Unable to be better.

We feel rage.

The feelings must be followed. It doesn’t matter whether you’re an ideologue or a sensualist, you follow the stimuli thinking that they’re your signposts to the promised land. But they are nothing of the kind. What they are is rocks to navigate past, each one you brush against, ripping you a little more open and there are always more on the horizon. But you can’t face up to that, so you force yourself to believe the bullshit of those that you instinctively know to be liars and you repeat those lies to yourself and to others, hoping that by repeating them often enough and fervently enough you’ll attain the godlike status we accord to those who tell the lies most frequently and most passionately.

But you never do, and even if you could, you wouldn’t value it, you’d realise that nobody believes in heroes any more. We know that they only want to sell us something we don’t really want and keep from us what we really do need.

Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe we’re getting in touch with our condition at last. It’s horrible how we always die alone, but no worse than living alone . . .

Now I’m ready and I hear the key. I jump and I’m falling, then I feel myself rising, I hear a crash, but there’s no pain and there’s a figure at the frosted glass of the door but it’s not her it’s too wee it’s Stacey no Stacey for fuck sake don’t open the door . . . don’t . . . and I care . . .

. . . I want more than anything for Stacey not to be there and see this and I’m trying to shout No go away and I hear her screaming Daddy and I want to live and make it up to her and Carole, I can hear her now too, screaming BRUCE because I care and I’ve won and beaten the bastards but what price victory

STACYE PLEASE GOD BE SOMETHING ELSE SOMEONE ELSE . . .

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