Skagboys (29 page)

How did I feel about him …?

N ah’m sittin here in this hotel bar aware thit it’s aw bullshit. Tracin a line fae Wee Davie tae aw this; the junk habit, the soon-tae-be-single status when Fiona walks through that door. Cause Sick Boy, Matty, Spud, they nivir hud a Wee Davie. Nivir needed yin tae git oan the gear. Ma big brar, Billy, he hud yin, but he’s nivir even smoked a joint. Cunts that try and psychoanalyse the fucked-up miss the crucial point: sometimes ye jist dae it cause it’s thaire n that’s wey ye are. Ah watched my mother and father tear themselves apart and rip each other’s family trees up at the roots, trying tae work oot where all Wee Davie’s bad genes came fae. But in the end, they grew tae accept that it doesnae matter. It just
is
.

N here comes Fiona. A dark green hooded top. Tight black canvas troosers. Black gloves. Purple lipstick. Makin me feel like greetin wi her big, easy smile. — Sorry, Mark, me dad was on the phone – She stops abruptly. — Wharrisit, love? What’s wrong?

— Sit doon.

Dinnae say it
…

She does. Her face. Ah cannae dae this. Ah need tae dae this. Because somehow ah sense that it’s the very last unselfish thing I’ll ever be able tae dae. Ah can’t stop. Now ah’m gaunny hurt her but it’s for her ain good. Weed-like fear creeps through me. — I was thinking we should go our separate ways, Fi.

Fuck … did ah really say that?

— What? She tries tae laugh in my face. A bitter laugh, like it’s a sick joke ah’m makin. — What’re ya ahn aboot? What d’ya mean, Mark? What’s wrong?

It is a joke. Laugh. Tell her it’s a joke. Say, actually, I was wondering what you thought about us gittin a place together
…

— You n me. Ah jist think we should split up. A pause. — Ah want tae split. For us tae stoap gaun oot thegither.

— But why … She actually touches her chest, touches her heart, and at that moment mine nearly breaks in unison. — There’s somebody else. In Edinboro, that Hazel lass …

— Naw, thaire’s naebody else. Honest. Ah jist think wi should baith move oan. Ah’m no wantin tied doon. See, ah’m thinkin ay packin it in, the uni n that.

Tell her you’ve been depressed. You don’t know what you’re saying. TELL HER
…

Fiona’s mouth hangs open. She looks dafter and more undignified than ah could ever have conceived. That’s my fault. It’s me. It’s me that this is aw doon tae. This shite. — We wor merkin plans, Mark! We were ganna travel!

— Aye, but ah need tae git away oan ma ain, ah say, feelin masel settlin intae a rhythm ay cruel apathy. Finding the cuntishness ye need, tae go through wi something like this.

— But why? Summat’s wrong wi yer, you’ve been really weird. You’re always sick with the cold, you’ve had it ahl winter. Yor brootha –

Yes … yes … that’s it. Tell her it’s him. Tell her SOMETHING
…

— It’s nowt tae dae wi ma wee brar, ah say emphatically. Another pause. Confession time. — Ah’ve been usin heroin.

— Oh Mark … Ye can see her workin it aw oot. The scabs on the underside ay ma wrist n the crook ay ma airm. The constant sniffling. The fever. The lethargy. The mingingness. The paring back and avoidance of sex. The secrets. She’s almost relieved. — Since when?

It feels like since always, though it isnae. — Last summer.

Something sparks in her eyes and she pounces, — It’s yor Davie’s illness … and him passing away. You’re just depressed. You can stop! We can get through this, pet, her hand shooting across the table, grabbing mine. Hers warm, mine like a slab ay troot oan ice in a fish shoap.

She isnae getting the big picture. — But ah
dinnae want
tae stoap, ah shake ma heid, pullin ma hand away. — Ah’m sortay intae it, but, ah confess, — n ah cannae keep a relationship gaun. Ah need tae be oan ma ain.

Her eyes bulge out in horror. Her skin glows a pink flush. Ah’ve never seen her look like this; it’s like an extreme version of when we’re in bed and she’s startin tae get there. Finally, she erupts. — You’re dumpin me?
You’re
dumpin
me
?

Ah glance ower her shoodir at the reaction ay the barman. He pointedly turns away in displeasure. A tight sneer ah’d never thought her capable ay disfigures Fiona’s face. It husnae taken long fir some arrogance tae come tae the fore. But ah’m gled ay it. — It’s just me, ah tell her, — thaire’s naeboody else. It’s jist the junk.

— You … you’re packin
me
in, cause you wanna spend more time doin fuckin
heroin
?

Ah look at her. That’s it, in a nutshell. Nae sense in denyin it. Ah’m fucked. — Aye.

— You’re runnin away, cause you’re a fuckin coward, she spits, loud
enough
for a few mair heids tae turn. — Go on then, ya crappin bastard, she says, standin up, — pack it in, pack me in, pack
us
in, pack in the uni! That’s ahl ye are, that’s ahl ye’ll evah be. A COWAHD N AH FUCKIN WASTAH!

Then she’s off, slammin the frosted-glass door behind her. She briefly turns, as if to try n look back in. Then she’s gone. The hooker, her cunty-bawed John and the cocksucker barman look briefly roond as she vanishes. In her rage, ah see a different side tae this gentle, loving girl and, although it shocks me, ah’m glad it’s there.

Ah thoat it went quite well.

Supply Side Economics

RUSSELL BIRCH, DRESSED
in a white lab coat, clipboard in his hand, strode past Michael Taylor, clad in his customary brown overalls, on his way into the plant’s largest processing lab. The two men ignored each other, as was their custom. They’d both agreed that it was better if all factory workmates remained unaware they had any relationship.

As he punched the security code into the new lock system, Birch satisfyingly reflected that Taylor would now be unable to access this area. Opening the door and stepping into the blindingly white room, he recalled the time he’d caught his partner red-handed here, about to fill up a plastic bag. No, Taylor, as a storeman, shouldn’t have been there at all, but as Russell Birch was stuffing his own bag into his trousers at the time, they’d gaped at each other in mutual guilt, for a few stupefying seconds. Then both men had looked shiftily around, before their eyes met again and made an instant pact. It was Taylor who had seized control of the situation and spoke first. — We need tae talk, he’d said. — Meet me in Dickens in Dalry Road after work.

The entire scenario would not have looked out of place on the stage of a West End farce. At the pub, as the pints had flown nervously back, they’d even joked about this, before coming to the arrangement that Birch would get Taylor the bags from processing, which he would then smuggle out of the plant in canteen meal containers.

The instruments on the console blinked and moved slowly to a dull hum under the fluorescent strip lights above. Sometimes the room seemed as stark and white as the synthetic powder it produced, in this, the newest and most lucrative part of the plant. But Russell most reverently regarded the precious white powder, running in a steady, abundant stream from the tube into the perspex cases on the automated but almost silent line. His eyes traced back to the big bowl of cloth filters, then the ammonium chloride tank, where the solution cooled, back to another set of filters and the giant hundred-gallon steel drum. Into this drum, every hour, went sixty gallons of boiling water, to which thirty kilos of raw opium was added. The impurities would rise to the top and be filtered out. Then the
solution
passed into a smaller adjoining tank, where slaked lime – calcium hydroxide – was added to convert the water-insoluble morphine into water-soluble calcium morphenate.

After some drying, dyeing and crushing, the end product comes pouring out, pristine white, into the plastic containers. And it was Russell’s job to test the purity of each batch. So easy, then, for him to scoop a load of the merchandise into a plastic bag, and stuff it down his trousers.

Russell Birch felt the satisfying padding in his groin. He was keen to leave, take that trip to the toilets, ensuring it was all Taylor’s responsibility and risk from there on in. But he dallied for a while, taking some samples and readings. It seemed beyond belief, what people did for this stuff. Then, as he turned to go, the door suddenly flew open. Donald Hutchinson, the head of security, stood before him, backed by two guards. Russell read the discomfit on his long, drawn face, but then witnessed the steel in the man’s eyes.

— Donald … how goes … what’s up … Russell Birch felt himself run down like a record player suddenly switched off at the mains.

— Hand over the stuff. Donald stretched a hand out.

— What? What are you on about, Donald?

— We can do this the hard way if you like, Russell. But I’d rather spare you that, Donald Hutchinson said, pointing over Russell Birch’s shoulder, at a black camera mounted on the wall. It was looking right at them, a red dot blinking by the side of the lens.

Russell turned round and gasped into it. He felt unmasked, not just as a thief, but worse, as a fool. It was as plain as all the other mundane apparatus of the plant, and he hadn’t even noticed its installation. Russell stood gaping and powerless, as he wondered what the men watching the monitor on the other side saw in his face. Humiliation, fear, self-loathing, but mostly, he assumed, defeat. He turned round and reached down the front of his trousers, pulling out the large flat bag of white powder. Then he handed it over and followed the uniformed men, knowing that whatever happened next, he was leaving the processing lab for the last time.

On the humiliating march down the corridor, flanked by his inscrutable escorts, he saw Michael Taylor again, pushing a trolley of metal food containers from the loading bay, making for the canteen. This time Taylor made eye contact. His expression seemed to beg mercy, but Russell Birch was certain that his partner was only looking back into an empty void.

A Mature Student

AH WAS AVOIDIN
everybody and they reciprocated, even Bisto; he and Joanne were still going strong. Ah was like a Quasimodo figure, the smelly, shufflin hunchback expelled fae the ranks ay decent folks, and ah fuckin well
loved
it. Ah stopped callin home every Sunday. My mother’s unabatin sobs and tears, from gentle to ragin, were too distressin tae behold. Billy had been arrested; charged wi assault oan a boy in a boozer. As ma auld girl telt us the story, ah envisioned him wi a trail ay his spazzy brother’s spunk skited across his pus. Drip, shock, humiliation, accusation, pagger. — But
you’re
okay, son, aren’t ye? Ma would bleat. — Everything’s okay wi
you
?

— Aye, course it is, ah’d say, tryin tae maintain an acceptable degree ay focus and concentration.

But the waws were closin in oan us, everything aroond me turnin tae shite. Sick Boy was on at me tae head tae London wi him, for us tae stay with my ‘Ingloid mates’ for a bit. It grew a mair tempting prospect every day. But even wi a growin junk habit ah was too restless no tae look for clues. Ah read wi a voracious desperation. Read everything but what ah was supposed tae read for ma classes. In lectures ah’d sit at the back half dozin and ask some swotty kid tae photocopy their notes. In seminar groups ah often took speed tae buck us up, manoeuvrin the discussions towards ma personal obsessions, wi long, ramblin druggie speeches as ah mentally groped aroond, tryin tae scratch at the phantom itch in ma brain. Phlegm sat in my chist cavity like Wee Davie’s, tricklin down from a constant stream in my sinuses. Ma breathin was fucked. Ah even noticed the wey ma ain voice had changed; it was as if it was easier tae force the sound up through my nose, producing a tinny, whiny sound ah hated but couldnae stop emittin. One lecturer looked sadly at us n said, — Are you sure you should be here?

— Naw, ah told him, — but ah don’t know where else tae go.

It was true. At least ah had
some sort of reason
to be here, even if ah’d ceased handin in work: ah knew ah’d never get close tae ma 70 per cent threshold ay acceptability now. Ah stopped checkin ma student pigeonhole.
People
often seemed tae assume ah’d already left, appearin surprised when ah occasionally showed up. In a sense ah had; all they were seein wis the ghostly remnants.

The odd time ah went in the student union bars, ah mocked people and their daft projects, their bands, InterRail travel plans, sporting activities, just because ah knew ah could no longer join in. Ah grew tae hate Bob Marley’s music; ah’d loved it as a punk in London, but loathed the way white middle-class students had shamelessly appropriated it. Headin home tae the residences one night, I saw some drunk and emotional public-school wankers singing about sitting in a government block in Trenchtown. They were singin about livin in a
scheme
in Kingston, Jamaica. Ah shot them a brutal look and they snapped intae a guilty sobriety. It was pathetic. Ah wis pathetic. People avoided me. Ah’d gone fae being regarded as a warm, witty, fun-loving sceptic, tae a cynical bore: cold and caustic. Yet the more ah alienated people, the stronger ah felt. Ah fed off rejection. There was nowt good or normal or straight that ah couldnae sneer at. Ah was a critic ay everything, one ay the worst kind, whose every ounce ay bile is generated by their ain sense ay failure and inadequacy, risin off them like steam fae a jakey’s pish.

And ah started tae stink like a wino in classes. Before, ah’d always been a bit compulsive aboot personal hygiene, tidiness and order; now ah could feel a permanent swamp ay fire and scum aroond ma weddin tackle, erse and airmpits. It wis like ah wis gaunny combust. One time ah met Fiona in a corridor. We couldnae avoid eye contact wi each other. — You still here then, she said, like a challenge.

But ah could tell that she still cared, or maybe no, perhaps ah was just kiddin myself. Aw ah could say was, — Hi, eh, see ye … n move the fuck on.

After this incident ah more or less stopped gaun tae the uni. Basically, ma plan, such as it was, wis tae stay in ma residence. Ah’d bang junk with Don and, occasionally, genitals with Donna, ironically, the prostitute from the bar where ah’d ditched Fiona. Ah started visiting it regularly, working up the bottle tae approach her. She took us tae a functional flat with Van Gogh sunflower prints, which was obviously just used for clients. Ah spent maist of the time eatin her pussy rather than fuckin her. I wanted to develop some expertise in that. Tae ma embarrassment, she had tae tell us it was called cunnilingus. Sick Boy would never have made that mistake. Ah’d cairry on till dosh or libido was exhausted, or ah formally got kicked oot, whichever came first.