Skagboys (79 page)

The line clicks dead.

It’s okay for that cunt, Renton considers; he really has stuck with the programme and stopped using. With the cash he’s salted away, he’s buying an apartment in Gran Canaria. His plan is to head there from November to March, to avoid the weather’s assault on his body. Since leaving rehab, Seeker dismissively describes skag as a fool’s game and does his best to make it so; selling well-cut gear to boys for cash and bartering it to lassies for fucks and blow jobs.

One night when Renton shakily traipsed along to his flat in Albert
Street
to score, he disturbed Molly, rattling around in the kitchen in a vesty top and washed-out knickers, scrambling eggs. Her edgy vivaciousness was gone; scattered into dark places even way beyond those desolate, practically deserted streets. She looked old and worn out, curly hair stretched to a limp frizz by whatever greasy substance was in it, face pale but sweaty; she glanced at him with tombstone eyes, before proffering a faint smile of recognition. He averted his gaze, mindful that if you stare for too long into an abyss, it will reciprocate. Anyway, Seeker’s icy smile told him that there was a new sheriff in town. To ensure there was no misunderstanding, he informed Renton that he’d ‘had a wee word’ with her ex-pimp/dealer boyfriend. Once his fractured cheekbones had healed up, he’d come to work for Seeker.

Seeker was more of a gym-hewn mountain than ever. He squeezed Renton’s vanishing biceps and told him he should get off the gear and back onto the weights. Although he’d become a valued customer, Seeker made Renton feel as if he was somehow disappointed in him for being on junk, that he was better than that. — Mark Renton, he smiled, — you’re a strange yin. Can never quite figure you oot.

Like everything Seeker said, Renton was aware it carried a barely suppressed element of threat. But this, he supposed, was as close to friendship and respect as it was possible for Seeker to get. Renton declined his offer of some business with Molly, and was relieved that Hazel had refused the gear. He didn’t want her around any of them. Her wounds might have been made for skag but would only be deepened by it; he’d strive to keep her away.

Sick Boy stands up, pulling the duvet around him like a cape. Then he falls onto the couch, issuing a miserable plea of despair: — What are we gaunny dae?

— Fuck knows. I’ll try Swanney again … Renton picks up the phone, dials, hearing nothing but the same empty ring. Replaces the receiver on the cradle.

— We go roond there!

— Okay … Hazel’s asleep …

— Leave her, Sick Boy says, — naebody’s gaunny bother her here, and he looks at Renton acerbically. –
Cavoli riscaldati
, or reheated cabbage, as we say in Italy. It never works oot.

— Ta for the advice, he cheerlessly replies, heading through to the bedroom. Hazel’s still asleep, though her soft snores have ebbed into silence, and he scratches out a note for her:

Hazel
,

Had to go out with Simon on a wee message. Don’t know when we’ll be back, so see you later
.

Thanks for taping all those records for me. It means a lot. You’ve given me back something precious, that I lost through my own stupidity. I used to think that I loved albums as artefacts, for their gatefold sleeves, the track listings, production notes, artwork, etc. But now I realise that a cassette tape with the tracks written out in your hand with one of your drawings and your wee reviews is what I love owning more than anything
.

Love

Mark xxx

PS I really do think that you are the most beautiful person I’ve ever known
.

He drops it on the pillow by her head, and goes back to Sick Boy with a crushed, jagged heart. They’re embarking on a quest both recognise as futile, but it seems preferable to doing nothing. They take two Valium each and leave the flat, walking down towards Leith. It’s daunting but they find a grim, mute stride, which they don’t even break with a giggle or ironic nod as they pass the Bendix.

They go to Alison’s flat in Pilrig. She looks terrible; minus her make-up and wearing a long blue dressing gown, her increasingly gaunt features heightened by her hair pinned tightly back, with dark circles under her eyes, Renton has to look twice to ascertain it’s actually her. She sniffles, unable to stop the thin trickle of snot running out of one nostril, and is compelled to wipe it on her sleeve. — Got a stinkin cauld, she protests, in response to their cynical, hungry scowls. They request that she call Spud at his mother’s, reasoning that neither of them would be a welcome voice should Colleen Murphy pick up. — Danny’s fell oot with her again, Alison tells them. — He stayed here on the couch the other night, now he’s at Ricky Monaghan’s.

They call Ricky’s, and Spud picks up the phone. Before Sick Boy can ask, he blurts out, — Simon, any skag? Ah’m seek as a poisoned rat, catboy.

— Nup, we’re aw in the same boat. Ye hear anything, make sure they ken we’re in the frame. Call ye later. He puts the phone down. During the conversation, his eyes have never left Alison. — Are you sure thaire’s nowt gaun aroond, he asks her, tones both pointed and pleading.

— Nup. Nowt, she says with a final, vapid shrug.

— Right … Sick Boy’s lip curls south, and he and Renton depart briskly. Alison’s glad to see them go, even Simon, as she’d come within an ace of disclosing her mother’s morphine stash. Fuck them all: you never know how long this drought would last for and she craves her dead mother’s silver needle, can envision one last drop of maternal blood lodged there sliding into her own hungry veins.
Mum would want me to have it
.

Renton and Sick Boy find themselves once more on the well-worn path towards Tollcross. They head up the Walk and then the Bridges and across the Meadows without exchanging a single word and barely looking at each other. Their silence is a serious pact; they’re still at the stage where, with mental effort, they can try and negate the worst of their personal misery. They get to Swanney’s and it looks as lifeless as an empty film set. — What now? Sick Boy says.

— We keep movin till we see something or think ay
something
, or we just lay doon and die like dugs.

Walk on through the wind
…

Walk on through the rain
…

Billy and me were bored oan that drizzly early-morning walk, n cauld wi waiting oan wheezy auld Granda. It was farcical. He couldnae dae this any mair. Then, just beyond the tower, he suddenly stopped, standing rigid and sucking in a huge breath. It was as if he was trying to pull the shrapnel lodged inside him towards his core. A strange smile played on his lips, then it was obliterated by a spluttered cough as he keeled over, crumpling in a kind ay slow motion tae the tarmacked esplanade. — Stey here! Billy commanded. — Ah’ll get help! He ran off down the prom, talked tae two teenagers who looked aw awkward, then left them, bolting ower the road. He was only going tae the shops tae get somebody tae phone, but at the time I thought he’d just run away, leaving me tae deal wi the embarrassment
.

Though your dreams be tossed and blown
…

So I watched my grandfather die, sometimes glancing oot tae the sea, when the witnessing of that grotesque, bewildering event got too much. Because, as he struggled for air, his florid face burning, his rolling amphibious eyes being squeezed from his skull, I had the sense he’d come from the ocean, was caught ashore with the tide out. Ah wanted to tell them tae get him tae the water, even though it made no real sense. Ah felt the woman before ah saw her, ages with my mum, perhaps a bit younger, comforting me, her bosom muffling the sobs ah hudnae realised ah’d been making, as two men tried to help Granda. But he’d gone
.

Walk on
…

Billy ran back down the prom, glaring at me accusingly like he wanted to batter
me,
like ah’d failed tae keep Granda Renton alive till the ambulance came. Ah mind that woman wanted me tae go wi her, and ah kind ay wanted tae cause she was nice, but Billy gied her a black look n tugged oan ma hand. But when they took Granda away, he put his airm roond ma shoodir, and then bought us baith a cone, for that silent walk back tae the guest hoose. Ma and Dad and Grandma Renton had gone, but Auntie Alice was there and took care ay us
.

Oan the bus gaun back up, while Granny Renton sat in shock, my ma and dad kept lookin at me as ah pit my
Shoot
fitba stickers intae their album. Manchester City: Colin Bell, Francis Lee, Mike Summerbee, Phil Beal, Glyn Pardoe, Alan Oakes. Kilmarnock: Gerry Queen, John Gilmour, Eddie Morrison, Tommy McLean, Jim McSherry. — Why does he no say anything, Davie? ah mind ay Ma asking, gurgling doolally Wee Davie in her lap. My dad just sat in a trance, occasionally squeezing his mother’s hand. — Shock … he’ll be fine … he croaked out
.

Walk on
…

They walk for what seems like an age, shivering, dropping coins in phone boxes with spirits rising each time in anticipation, but the same grim message prevails: nothing doing, no room at the inn. Those tired, beaten voices on other end of the line: groaning as if in recognition that Death is already chalking their doors with crosses. Still they walk; walking for the sake of walking, unthinking blood and bone and breath, stripped of volition, walking themselves into inertia, a dullness of intellect, sensibility, hope and consciousness. All calculations purely biological.

Glancing sideways at his reflection in the passing shop windows, Renton is reminded of an orang-utan; arms swinging pendulously like he’s wearing lead bracelets, greasy tufts of red hair spiking up through a nest of matted sweat and dirt.

After a while, they realise they’re in Gorgie. This part of the city makes them feel like intruders. They seem to smell the Hibernian off you over here, Renton reflects; not just the gadges coming out the bookies and boozers, but the young mothers in trackies wheeling the pushchairs, and strangely, worst of all, the auld wifies with gobs like feline ringpieces, who glower witchlike as they shamble by, sick and paranoid.

Who are these people, these aliens, that we move among in such sadness?

Renton thinks their walking has been aimless, with no pattern. But fragments of information and supposition have been coalescing in his fevered brain, guiding his tired legs. Sick Boy senses it from him, following like a hungry dog in pursuit of a jakey master who still might be able to provide some sort of a meal. They steal down Wheatfield Road into a deathly stillness, which spells H-E-R-O-I-N to him, as Renton scents the
same
desolate skag reek of Albert Street. — What are we daein here?

He strides on, Sick Boy still following in psycho-puppy mode, sinews bulging in his neck. The grass grows thick and coarse between the cobblestones on the street. Yet the Victorian tenements seem to escape any sun as they head past them, looking over at Tynecastle Stadium towards the back of the Wheatfield shed, recalling derby-day battles of old under its long roof, back in the pre-segregated times. The distillery stands at the bottom of the deathly quiet street, and there’s a narrow slip road to the left that snakes under the railway bridge, easily missable, he thinks, if you weren’t aware of its presence.

— This is it, Renton says, — this is where they make it.

They shuffle under it, and just a few yards ahead a second railway overpass towers above them. Sandwiched between the two bridges, on the right, a three-storey, Victorian building of red sandstone bears the sign: BLANDFIELD WORKS.

This building is the first part of the pharmaceutical manufacturers, the offices where company sales reps are greeted and enquiries dealt with. The subsequent ones, past the next set of railway tracks, are less welcoming, surrounded by high perimeter fences and topped with razor wire. Renton immediately clocks the plethora of security spy cameras, pointing out at them into the street. He notes that Sick Boy is doing the same, his large protruding eyes, scanning and his fevered brain processing information. Employees mill around, coming and going to and from different shifts.

As they walk, Renton gives voice to his thoughts. — This has tae be where the likes ay Seeker n Swanney got their original skag supply, that fabby white stuff. Seeker obviously put the bite on some poor cunt workin here.

— Yes! It all has tae come fae here, Sick Boy twitches. — Let’s phone him again!

Renton disregards his prompt, his heated mind trying to piece things together. Seeker and Swanney would each have some poor sucker on the inside and they’d be getting the boys to take big risks by bringing the shit out. But no longer: their contacts are either in jail, have taken off, or worse. The company had cottoned on to the scam, and increased the security, making it impossible for employees to smuggle gear out of the complex. Now Swanney and Seeker are down the pecking order in a national pyramid that brings in the brown from Afghanistan and Pakistan, instead of being local top dogs selling pure product. Renton looks grimly through the fortified chain fence into the plant. — It’s aw in there. The best, purest shit we ever hud, or will ever get. Behind those gates, fences and waws.

— So what do we dae? Ask the cunts in thaire tae sort us oot? Sick Boy scorns.

Once again, Renton ignores him, continuing his brisk walk around the site, pressing Sick Boy to string along. The latter’s busy eyes follow his friend’s sight line, opening a window to the thoughts ticking over in his head.

This cunt can’t be fucking serious
…

But Renton has never been more serious. The logical side of his brain has given way to the imperative of sickness. The strained muscles, the throbbing bones and the shredded nerves keep screaming: YES YES YES …

The opium factory. Those railway lines seeming to define the place, one set dividing the plant from the distillery, the other bisecting it. They walk past the employee car park, looking over the big fence to the most startling building in a site made up of many disparate examples of industrial architecture: a large silver box with a multitude of gleaming pipes and tubes spilling out from one side, some of them rising skywards. — That looks like chemical processing taking place in there, Renton says. — That’s goat tae be where they make the fuckin skag!