Authors: Irvine Welsh
I looked at her face and all I could see were teeth. She started making circles in my flesh with her fingers. — You've got baby-soft skin, haven't you?
There isn't really much you can say to that. I just laughed.
— You think I've got a good body? I'll bet you reckon I'm past it, don't you?
— Naw, naw, ah widnae say that, May.
I thought: by light years.
— Des is on these pills you see. He had a heart-attack a while back. It stops the blood coagulating by keeping it thin. Trouble is, he don't get hard. I love Des, see, but I'm still a young woman, love. I need a little bit of fun, a little bit of harmless fun, don't I? That's not so unreasonable, is it, love?
I looked harshly at her. — Do these seats fold down?
They did.
I went down on her and gave head; flicking my tongue deftly onto her clit, then lolling it around teasingly. I started thinking about Graeme Souness, because he had heart trouble. I wonder if he has a problem getting it up due to the pills? I started to think about his career, focusing on the 1982 World Cup in Spain which I remember watching with my dad. My mum had only been gone three years, and we'd come back from my Auntie Shirley's. She'd looked after us all that time, until Dad felt able to cope. He'd had some sort of breakdown. Never talks about it. Thing was, we had liked it at Shirley's in Moredun, and we didn't really want to go back to Muirhouse, or have 'the family all together' as he described it. As a sweetener, he let us watch all the 1982 World Cup games. A huge wallchart was stuck up in the front room above the fireplace. The tapemarks still show where the four corners were, although it's been painted over at least once to my knowledge. Cheap paint, I suppose. Anyway, the praise that was heaped on Souness men, but I thought that he just posed and preened his way through mat tournament. I mean, the two-each draw with the Soviet Union, for fuck sake.
— Ohh, you're a naughty one and no mistake ... ooh... ooh, she hissed excitedly, crushing my face against her cunt. I was going nowhere, struggling to take in air through nostrils which were filled with a pungent scent. There was no taste, only the smell which suggested it.
I have an image of Souness strutting arrogantly like a peacock in the middle of the park, but he's doing nothing with the ball, just holding it, and we need a win as the seconds tick by. Still, that was in the days when people actually gave a toss about the Scottish national football team.
— Give it to me ... she whispered, — you've got me all juiced up, lovey, now give it to me . . .
I was too soft to go in, but she took it in her mouth for a bit and I firmed up. I got in and she was moaning so loud I got really self-conscious. I jutted out my jaw Souness-style and pumped away. After about half a dozen strokes she came powerfully, kneading my buttocks in her hands. —
YOU DORTY LITTLE BOOGAH! EEH, YOU DORTY LITTLE SHITE! LOOVLEY
... she screamed.
The old tongue-job never fails. The only fuckin real use for the guid Scotch tongue. I thought about her daughter and blew my muck inside her.
I wondered if I'd get asked back for tea again.
May carried on as if nothing had happened, except that she gave me an occasional saucy smile and she'd also taken up goosing my arse by the photocopier. I was a bit bemused by the whole thing. How mad was that.
It was the next week after my liaison with May that the invitation came through the door. It read:
T
OMMY
A
ND
S
HEILA
D
EVENNEY
Invite you to join them at the wedding
of their daughter
Martina
to
Mr Ronald Dickson
on Saturday, 11 March 1994 at 3.00 p.m.
at Drum Brae Parish Church, Drum Brae,
Edinburgh and afterwards at the Capital
Hotel, Fox Covert Road.
I stuck it on my bedside table. It was next month. In one month's time Ronnie would be a married man, although the potential hurdles that stood in the way of that actually happening didn't bear examination.
A couple of days later I got a phone-call from Tina. I was tempted to offer congratulations, but I hedged my bets in case the gig was off. The whole thing wasn't really constructed on a very firm basis.
— Brian?
— Aye.
— It's Tina, ken?
— Tina! Barry! How's tricks? Ah goat the invite. Brilliant! How's Ron? There was a silence from the other end of the line. Then: — Ye mean he's no thair wi you now?
— Eh .. . naw. Ah huvnae heard fae him. The pause was even longer this time around.
— Tina? I wondered whether she'd hung up.
— Sais he wis gaun doon tae see ye. Tae ask ye tae be best man. Wanted tae ask ye tae yir face, he sais.
— Fuck... dinnae worry aboot Ronnie though, Tina. Must've goat waylaid. Probably jist a bit emotional, wi the weddin n that, ken? He'll show.
— He fuckin well better, she snapped.
Three days later I had just got home from work and was eating a bacon sanny and watching the six o'clock news with Darren. We were ranting bitterly everytime someone we hated appeared on the box, which was every other feature. Avril was reading a magazine. She got up to answer the door.
— There's someone here for you, Brian, she said. — A Scots guy ... he seems a bit out of it.
Ronnie slouched into the room behind her, obviously jellied. I didn't even attempt to ask him where he'd been. I took him upstairs and let him crash on my floor. Then I phoned Tina to tell her he'd shown up. After this I went downstairs and sat on the couch.
— A friend of yours? Avril asked.
— Yeah, it's this mate who's getting married. Wants me tae go best man. I think he's had a tiring journey.
— Look at that slimy cunt Lilley, Darren hissed at the image of this politician on the box, — I'd like to get that rucking arsehole and cut his bollocks off. Then I'd like to stuff them down his throat and sew his mouth up so he has to swallow them .. . fucking child-killing cunt!
— That's terrible, Darren, Avril tutted, — you're no better than he is if you think like that. She looked at me for support.
— No, Darren's perfectly correct. Sick, exploitative vermin ay mat sort need tae be destroyed, I said and, recalling Malcom X, added, — by any means possible.
I had been reading the biographies of radical black Americans. X's was an interesting read but Bobby Seale's
Seize The Time
was far more enjoyable, as was Eldridge Cleaver's
Soul On Ice.
My favourite was
Soledad Brother
but I can't remember which of the Jackson brothers, Jonathan or George, actually wrote it. Perhaps it was Michael.
Darren shook a clenched fist at me. — That's the difference between me and those fucking wimpy arsehole socialists, I don't want the Tories out, I want them fucking dead. Just because I've got a bus-pass doesn't mean I'm part of the system. An anarchist with a bus-pass is still a fucking anarchist. All hate to the state!
— You're sick, Darren. Avril shook her head. — Violence achieves nothing.
— It is satisfying when you see a polisman with his heid burst open though, you have to admit it, I ventured.
— No it's not. There's nothing satisfying about it at all, she replied.
— Naw, c'moan Avril. You're no tryin tae tell me that you didnae feel good when you saw the pictures of those slimy dead-souls looking shit-scared in that pile of rubble after the Brighton bomb? Tebbit n that?
I remember that well. When it came on the telly, my old man said, — Aboot time somebody had a go at those fuckers. I remember being full of pride and admiration for him.
— I don't like to see any human being suffer.
— That's all very well as an abstract moral principle, Avril, a coffee-table theoretical construct, but there's no denying the sheer gratuitous pleasure to be derived from seeing members of the ruling class in pain and torment.
— I really hope that you two are winding me up, she said pityingly, — I really hope so for your sake. If not, you're sick, brutalised people.
— Too right, said Darren, — but at least we're not brutalising anybody else in turn. We don't mug, rape, serial-kill or starve the innocent. We just fantasise about destroying the vermin that have been fucking us over for years. And another thing we don't do, he added snidely, — is steal people's underwear.
Avril told him to fuck off, and left us. It was at that point I strongly began to suspect that Darren was the guilty man, the undergarment thief.
Ronnie didnae really get to know anyone. He slept for two days, and on the odd occasion he joined us was almost comatose. Then it was time for him to return as his ticket had been booked. He took some downers before getting on the bus at Victoria Station. I didn't bother waving at him as the bus pulled away; he had fallen asleep as soon as he'd taken his seat. The only things I remember him saying during the time he was down were: Darren ... I thought, naturally, that he was talking about Darren in the flat, but I realised he wasn't. — Darren Jackson, followed by an appreciative nod, and, — Best man ... sound, with a wink and cock of his head. When Ronnie winked, the act involved the opening, rather than the closing, of one eye.
The month dragged. I was looking forward to getting back to Edinburgh but no so much tae the wedding. I got into town the night before the stag and took a taxi tae the auld man's.
When I got in, Norma Culbertson and her wee lassie were there. There was something different about the house.
— Hello, son, my dad said awkwardly, — Eh, sit doon. I suppose I should have told you this before, but eh, well, wi you bein in London n that. You know how things are ...
— Aye, I replied, totally fuckin clueless as to how things were.
— Has Derek, eh, mentioned anything?
— Naw .. .
— Well, Derek's moved out. He's in a flat now, in Gorgie. Stewart Terrace. No bad flat as well. Wi him getting that Civil Service promotion, he had to go for it. You know?
—Jeff... Norma urged.
— Oh, eh, aye. The thing is, son, Norma and I have decided to get married, he smiled weakly, apologetically.
Norma simpered and exposed an engagement ring for my examination. I felt a dull thud in my chest. Surely this was a wind-up. Norma was a young woman; not bad looking either. Deek once admitted to me he used to wank about her, though that was a while ago. She was too young for Dad; he was old enough to be her father. Mind you, Dino Zoff was still playing European club football at my auld man's age. But that was Dino Zoff. This was real life.
My Ma and him
My Ma this was too young for him anyway my Ma gone for years him getting married again his business, what's it to me?
— Many happy returns, I stammered, — eh, I mean, con gratulations ...
Norma started talking about how she wanted us to be friends and my auld man ranted on about my mother ...
— I'm saying nothing against her, but she abandoned yous laddies. Abandoned yous and never wanted tae see yis. Surely a real mother would want tae see her sons ... bit no her, no sae much as a letter . . .
I started to feel a bit sick and thankfully the door went, saving us all further embarrassment. It was Crazy Col Cassidy, an animal from the scheme with a fearsome reputation for violence against the person. — Yir auld man in? he growled.
Well, the chickens have come home to roost now, Daddy. This anti-drugs campaign is about to blow up in your face.
— Col! my dad shouts. — Come in mate, come in! Cassidy pushes past me. My auld man gives him a matey slap on the shoulder. — This is ma laddie, he says, — he's been in London.
Cassidy growls an incomprehensible greeting.
— Col's the secretary of Muirhouse Action on Drugs, he explained.
I might have guessed: the nutters will always take the side of the forces of reaction.
— We ken the dealers in this scheme, son. We're gaunny drive them out. The polis willnae dae it, so we will, my auld man says, seemingly unaware that he's talking in a low Clint Eastwood drawl.
— Good luck with your campaign, Dad, I said. I had no doubt that he, with Cassidy's assistance, would succeed; succeed in making every fucker's life a misery. I made to hit the town.
— Oh, son, remember mat wee Karen's got your old room. You'll be down here on the couch now.
Welcome home: evicted from your room in favour of some cretinous brat. I left and bounced up the town. The stag started off good-naturedly enough. Ronnie was jellied, out of his face, when we met up. Things were happy but uneventful until we met Lucia and a couple of her mates who insisted on tagging along with us. She got drunk and had a heavy spraff with Denise about who should get tae suck Ronnie off.
We went on to a few pubs, a couple of silly arguments started and a fight broke out. I swung at Penman who'd been on my case all night. I was held by Big Ally Moncrief while Penman danced away from me gesticulating sharply and breathlessly: — Moan then, moan then ... ootside ... think yir a wide-o . . . cunt thinks he's a wide-o . . . moan then, ootside . . .
Big Moncrief said that he hated to see mates fight, particularly on such an occasion. Denise said that we should kiss and make up. We didn't, but we did hug and make up. We did an ecky each and clung to each other like limpets to a rock for the rest of the evening. I'd never felt so close to anyone, well, not another man, as I did to Penman that night. It was a lovers-without-the-shagging type scene. Conversely, I've seldom felt so awkward as I did when we met up with Tina's crowd at the Citrus. Olly was there. Former lovers generally find these things a strain; too much ego, no too much id involved. Once you've been with each other in a primal, shagging state, it's hard to talk about the weather.
Olly called herself 'Livvy' now. She had been going through A Period Of Personal Growth and now seemed enough like her friends to want to be like someone else, someone they wanted to be like. She was painting now, she told me. It seemed to me that what she was actually doing was talking and drinking. She asked what I was doing. I told her and she said: — Same old Brian, in a condescending way, as if to make the point that I was a useless reprobate from a mildly embarrassing past she'd left behind; a figure of pity.
She then shook her head in contempt, though I was not her target. — I've tried to tell Tina that she's being stupid. She's too young and Ronnie ... well, I don't think I can ever comment on him because I don't know him. I've never seen him straight; never had a conversation with him. What the hell does he get out of being like that?
I thought about it. — Ronnie's just always enjoyed the quiet life, I told her. She started to say something, then stopped, and made her excuses and left me. She looked good, the way that somebody who used to be but is no longer into you can do. I was glad she'd left though. People who are undergoing Periods Of Personal Growth are generally pains in the arse. Growth should be incremental and gradual. I hate these born-again wankers who try to completely reinvent themselves, and burn their past. I went over and held Penman in my arms for a long time. Over his shoulder I cringed as I caught Roxy's malevolent gaze and I thought of Blind Cunt for the first time in ages.
I could see the stag passing into the next week. I'd be drunk and stoned the whole time, and it would roll seamlessly into the wedding. I was wondering whether or not I'd bother going back to London, my room in that flat, my arrears and my crap job.
The day after the stag, when I had been in the Meadow Bar with The PATH and Sidney, I ran into Ted Malcolm, a guy from the parks. He was at me to put my name down for a Seasonal Park Officer job. — You wir ey well thought ay in the parks, ken? he told me in the confidential bullshit manner that people associated with the council used. The culture of civic corrup-tion and innuendo permeated down from the shit-brains at councillor level to the ranks of the lowest official; Stalinism with a sweetie-wife's face, complete with headsquare.
— Aye, I said noncommitally.
— Garland always liked ye, he nodded.
Yes, in spite of it all, I'd maybe give Garland a bell. London had been starting to feel like Edinburgh had before I'd left it. Gleaves, May, even Darren, Avril, Cliff, Sandra and Gerard; they all constituted a set of expectations which snapped around me like a sprung trap. You can only be free for so long, then the chains start to bind you. The answer is to keep moving.
It was a nightmare getting Ronnie up and ready for the church. A total fuckin nightmare. His ma gave me a hand dressing him. She never seemed to show any concern at his state. — It must've been some night last night, eh? Well, ah suppose ye only git married the once.
I felt like saying, don't count on it, but I held my tongue. We bundled Ronnie into the car then into the church.
— Do you, Ronald Dickson, take Martina Devenney, to be your lawful wedded wife, to have and to hold, to love and to cherish, forsaking all others, so long as you both shall live?
Ron was jellied, but he managed tae gie the minister cunt the nod. It wasn't enough for this fucker though, he looked intently at him, trying tae elicit a more positive reaction. I nudged Ronnie harshly.
— Sound, he managed to mumble. It would have to do. The minister tutted under his breath, but left it.