by Laura Hird
Sean and Eva go into hysterics. I pretend I find it funny as well, but I’m too desperate for a wank now to be very convincing. It’s been building up since we done the phone calls this afternoon. Maybe Dad’s pills have got rhino horn in them.
Too conscious of my stiffie to act normally any more, I tell them my hay fever’s playing up again. I’ll just end up saying something stupid to Eva when I’m like this. She’s four years older than me as it is. I have to try and act at least a wee bit mature.
As I limp up to our floor, a drunk guy suddenly appears from nowhere and almost knocks me flying as he staggers down the stairs. He snarls something at me as he steadies himself on the rail and takes tiny, careful steps down to the next landing. Who the fuck is that? He must have come out of Mrs Anderson’s, but I can’t imagine an old sweetie wifie like her knowing someone like that. Then I mind hearing about her embarrassing son that’s not allowed to go round there any more. He supposedly went to America to join the Ku Klux Klan, so he’s probably an alkie as well. I wonder what he’s come back for? It’d be barrie if he’d just murdered her.
Chapter Twenty
ANGIE
FUCK, WE WERE back here last night. I’ve no idea if anyone was in, or came in, or what, but Raymond was definitely here. Scared to go through to the living room for fear he’s lying unconscious with his cock out, I hide under the shower for 15 minutes, trying to wash the sweats away.
Towelling my tender body dry, I squeak condensation from the mirror and check the damage. My eyes, like my skin, are completely bloodshot. The right side of my face is covered in a corned-beef rash. Scrubbing my teeth and the roof of my mouth with bicarbonate-of-soda toothpaste, it’s more ow than wow. My skin drinks up moisturiser like a plant left to starve over the holidays. By the time I dress and get my make-up on, I’m sweating like a bastard again.
The living room looks fairly innocuous. There’s a lump of duvet on the settee, but the protruding raw, picked feet are proof enough that this is only my husband. Retrieving my crumpled coat from the kitchen floor, I try to make the door without waking him. Just as I click down the snib, though, he comes coughing through in all his turquoise Y-fronted, milky-skinned glory. There’s a purple bruise above his left eye. Has there been a punch-up in my honour?
‘All right, love?’ he mumbles, cagily.
‘I’ve got a fucker of a migraine.’
As this isn’t taken as a cue to make some drink-related crack, I assume I’m still in the clear.
‘Take a sickie. It’s no your fault they don’t employ enough staff.’
I grab my bag, hastily pulling the zip over the empty vodka bottle. Shit, if we polished that off, Raymond must have been here for hours.
‘If it doesn’t go away, I’ll come home. It’s the Head Office do tonight, though. I promised I’d show face.’
He gives me a scary, we-need-to-talk kind of look.
‘Ange, about the other night…’
‘What other night?’
‘Thursday, y’know. I don’t want us to fight all the time. It’s no good for anyone.’
What the fuck did I do on Thursday? What day is this? Saturday? Is that the night he went fishing? I didn’t give a shit he was late. Raymond left early for a management meeting, I was just pissed off.
‘Aye, Vic. See you later.’
There’s a bus at the stop. As soon as I get on and the doors close, I start over-heating something awful. I feel a damp patch blossoming on the back of my dress. What am I wearing a fucking coat for? Oh Christ. Someone’s crunch, crunch, crunching on a bag of cheese and onion crisps, behind me. Fucking what? Who eats crisps at this time of the morning? Believing I can actually taste the smell provokes a hastily swallowed rush of vomit. I have to go downstairs and stand. It’s even hotter down there. My mascara’s probably streaming down my cheeks. Giving up, I get off.
The joint spur of seeing Raymond and having a large vodka encourages me to run the rest of the way. The fucking pub’s closed. It opens an hour later at weekends. There’s nobody at the shop yet, either. I don’t believe this. We’re not due to start work for another half-hour. The pub along the road, the one that opens earlier for shift workers, beckons. Just as I start to walk towards it, though, Raymond’s car squeals round the corner. He notices the dormant pub before he notices me.
‘Fuck, I forgot they opened late on Saturdays. Ach, well, there’s always this,’ he says, producing a half-bottle of Grant’s from his hold-all. We decide to go to the shop.
I go through to the kitchen and pour us a couple of large ones as he pins up the Racing Post. I’m taking it over to him when someone knocks at the door. As it’s probably just some over-ardent punter wanting early prices, we ignore it. Going back behind the counter, Raymond puts his arms round me, and nibbles the back of my neck. I rub myself against him, desperate for a quick, sticky shag to start the day off. But still the knocking. It’s so fucking distracting. Raymond lets go of me and starts marking a sample bet up on the board. I light a fag.
‘We were back at my place last night, eh? Nobody came in, did they?’
The phone rings before he has a chance to reply. Answering it, he immediately starts arguing with someone on the other end. I pour us both another drink.
‘… look, we’re fine as we are … nothing we can’t deal with …’ The knocking starts again. ‘… all right then, awright, I don’t seem to have an option … fine,’ and he slams it down.
‘They’ve sent us a fucking relief cashier. I’ve got to take her. Fucksake.’
Knocking back the fresh drink, he throws a mint in his mouth and goes to open the door. I don’t believe this. I can’t believe we’ve wasted the only time we’re going to have alone at work today, working.
Then suddenly he’s walking back towards me with this tanned, blonde piece of white trash. Her name is Debbie. She isn’t wearing a bra and immediately proceeds to tell us she’s really a model and is only working in bookies’ at the moment to make a bit extra cash for her wedding. Model my arse. She has tiny, rat-like eyes; in fact, with a different hair-do she could pass for Frank Skinner. It’s probably not her face they photograph though.
‘So where do you model?’ asks Raymond, seemingly fascinated.
‘Oh, magazines mainly. Glamour shots. Tasteful, though. I’ve not been doing it long. I was in my 20s before I accepted how attractive I was.’
Raymond goes to make coffee before he falls down her cleavage.
‘Just a cup of boiling water for me, please. I don’t touch caffeine, it’s really bad for the skin.’
So’s boiling water, if you throw it in someone’s face. Desperate for a distraction, I open the shop ten minutes early. Old Harry’s up immediately with his dog bets. He writes them out the night before as he comes off the night-shift at six, so is usually blotto by opening. I go up to serve him but he gestures to Debbie.
‘I’d like her to take it.’
Cheers, Harry. I gesture to the till. Debbie stays where she is, chewing her lip.
‘Actually, I’ve not been doing this very long. I’m a bit uncomfortable taking bets. Can I do the pay-out? I’m fine w’that. D’you mind?’
Inspired, Harry starts pulling ancient betting slips out his pockets, studying them, searching for that elusive key to the kingdom of Debbie. Debbie, taking my silence as some kind of agreement, sits down at the pay-out and starts thumbing through a Brides magazine. I feel ashamed to be female.
The whole point of the gambling business is that we take money, not give it out, subsequently she’s glued to her seat for most of the morning. At eleven, one of the Chinamen wins two grand on a dog forecast. Raymond has to go out to get money from another shop to pay him. He asks if we want bacon rolls brought back. Debbie almost chokes on her hot water.
‘Oh, I couldn’t. How can you eat things like that? You’d be as well eating pure fat, the damage it’ll do to your thighs.’
I suggest that people usually eat such things for the taste, rather tha
n the desire to have lumpy legs. However, not wanting her looking down her nose at me if I so indulge, I decline Raymond’s offer, despite being fucking starving.
As he’s leaving, half the Ming Dynasty dash in and start scribbling out screeds of bets. There’s already a queue of about five people. Harry insists on early prices for all his horses, so I have to flick them up on the screen. Debbie slowly peels a nectarine.
‘Is it usually this quiet?’
I’m taking bets for a solid 20 minutes before there’s a lull. Escaping briefly to the toilet, I scream as I piss. It’s near impossible to work up the incentive to get off the pan and go back through. When I do, another huge queue has formed. Debbie is showing Harry her engagement ring.
‘I said it was daft to spend so much, but that’s what Daryl’s like. He always has to get the very best for his princess.’ Harry’s just standing gawping. I used to like him as well.
Fumbling for my fags, I light one up. She starts coughing, but I ignore her, since I only lit up to annoy her in the first place.
‘Hack, hack … oh sorry, I’m asthmatic … hack. Cigarette smoke’s one of the worst things for it.’ I continue puffing. ‘… I thought the shops had a no-smoking policy behind the counter these days.’
‘No this one.’
She goes on until I finally stub out.
‘Oh, I don’t know how you can do that. It really makes people stink, euch. I couldn’t stand smelling like that.’
I look at the clock. Five fucking hours to go. By the time Raymond comes back, I’m ready to hand in my notice.
‘Any problems? No pissed-off Irish psychopaths?’ he asks, devouring his roll.
‘It’s been dead, hasn’t it?’ Debbie says, inexplicably.
The saucy bacon smell soon saturates the tiny space we’re working in. As this is due to Raymond, however, Debbie says nothing. Peeling another nectarine, I’m convinced she’s rubbing the segments on her lips as she speaks to him. She has the sort of face that usually has come running down it.
We’re chock-a-block in the run up to the first race from Aintree. Still, Debbie ploughs her way through the complex text of her Brides magazine. Even the Chinese guys, who usually don’t give us the time of day, hang round the pay-out, leering at her. One of the ridiculous bastards knocks on the glass partition.
‘I’m not being funny, but are you Baby Spice?’
Rolling her eyes, she howls with laughter.
‘Ooh, I don’t look that old, do I?’
Jesus, the whole shop’s in fits. It’s like An Audience with Debbie. By two-thirty I can stand it no longer, and escape to the pub on a makeshift late lunch. It’s heaven to be away from her but, pretty quickly, the paranoia sets in. Twenty minutes is as long as I can stand before visions of Raymond pawing her drive me back there. It’s like fucking Hillsborough by then.
The National starts. Three horses look like they’ve had it immediately.
‘I hate when you see them twitching like that. You know they’re fucked,’ confides a new, sensitive Raymond.
Debbie, having had her attention drawn to the spectacle, gets very emotional, and runs off to the bog, in tears. It’s the first time she’s left Raymond and me alone all day. We’re too busy to even look at each other. The race is run and replayed, the injured horses destroyed, the bets settled and paid out, before she reappears. Not that it really matters as she’s fucking useless anyway. She says she’s been sick and feels terrible. She doesn’t feel right paying money out to people who are partly responsible for the deaths of horses.
Raymond tells her if she wants to go home, he’ll still pay her till the end of the day. She’s so overcome with gratitude, she seems to forget she was ill in the first place. Still, being rushed off our feet till closing time is a small price to pay for the beautiful image of her walking out that fucking door. The shop’s still packed for the last race, the 5.25 at Hereford. But at least she’s fucking gone. We finally herd them all out at ten to six.
We agree unanimously that the shop we borrowed the two grand from earlier can wait till Monday to get it back. Raymond insists on cashing up, so I can get my face on for the do. Miraculously, it’s spot-on first time. He throws the till roll at me to countersign and phone through to Head Office, as he splits the money between the two safes. I long for him to come back through and fuck me on the carpet. Instead, he comes back through, with his hold-all.
‘I forgot to do my fucking washing. Our machine’s fucked. She’ll make me do it when the match’s on tomorrow, now.’
I don’t like when he mentions ‘her’. I almost feel like crying because he has a washing machine with another woman. For God’s sake.
As we walk towards the door, the alarm behind the counter goes off. Raymond runs back and fiddles desperately with the digit display. Christ, it’s such an awful noise. It reminds me of Debbie’s laugh. Both are still ringing in my head as we make for the pub.
‘I don’t know if I can be arsed with this Head Office thing. I’m no in the mood for hobnobbing with a bunch of wanky Area Managers. I saw them aw the other night.’
‘Have a few drinks and think about it.’
We do have a few drinks, but it doesn’t get mentioned. After my third double, I’m feeling less compelled about the whole thing anyway. Raymond makes up for not fucking me in the shop, by fucking me verbally, whispering obscenities as the two bitchy barmaids sneer at us. By eight-thirty, half an hour after the do was due to start, we’re desperately trying to think of somewhere we can go to have sex. We can’t go back to the shop or the alarm’ll go off again.
‘What about your place? I can fuck you up the arse in Mr Scott’s bed again.’
‘We did that?’
‘You can’t remember? You were crying out for it last night, you dirty bitch.’
I don’t doubt him but if I forgot that, I could forget anything.
‘Have you any idea when it was you left? My mind’s blank from the pub onwards.’
‘I’m no sure. Sportscene was on when I got in, so it must’ve been before ten.’ His recollection of events seeming more assured than my own, I take it as gospel and assume nobody saw him. We have another double each, then leave.
‘It’s getting dark. Fancy a bit of a Lady Chatterley up Colinton Dell?’
I agree. Rather spookily, however, the traffic’s been diverted, and we end up in a tailback right next to the pub where the function’s taking place. Convinced that fate has brought us here, we decide to go in for a few swifties.
When we get inside and I’m suddenly surrounded by high heid yins and faces I’d forgotten existed, I suddenly feel rat-arsed. I’m scared to talk to anyone in case they notice. This senseless feeling soon passes, though, so I position myself strategically against the free bar. There’s no spirits left but gallons of wine, so I get stuck into the Chardonnay. Raymond gets accosted by a group of management knobs. I have to resist the temptation to hang round him limpet-like. Everyone else is mingling. As I get fired into my third glass of wine, Katy, a cashier I used to work with up Tollcross, throws her arms round me. We never got on that well, so she must be half-cut. We do the usual dull small talk. She’s working down Portobello now. I tell her I’m working with Raymond.
‘Oh God, Ray Ramage? I once worked relief with him. It wusnae the kind of relief he had in mind, though. He’s awfie slimy, d’you no think?’
‘I find him all right. Can’t say I’d noticed.’
‘Oh, come off it. I tell you, if Ray’s no made a pass at you, I’d take it as a knockback. You must be the first.’
How dare she refer to him as Ray. He doesn’t even let me call him that. I go quiet. The conversation somehow turns to her husband’s gall bladder. Knocking back another glass of wine, I look for an escape route. Unfortunately, I have to endure a full forty minutes of her family woes and frantic bitching before Raymond finally rescues me. He’s taken his jacket off and can’t remember where he put it. His shirt is sodden with perspiration. His eyelids are droopy
and inebriated. Grabbing me, he plants a soggy kiss on my cheek and waits to be invited into the conversation. His appearance seems to unnerve Katy, and after a derisory glance at our embrace, she feels a sudden need to circulate.
Struggling, with Raymond’s full weight on my shoulder, I drag him over to a seat in the corner. He seems to collide with every table we pass, cursing as he goes. When I finally get him seated, he tries to pull me onto his knee.
‘Aw, babes, sorry I got lumbered w’these bastards. Are you throwing a moody on me?’
Struggling free, I sit opposite.
‘They’re probably taking notes. I bet they just have these things so they can spot the staff that look like they’re screwing each other.’
He stares across at me with a big glaikit grin on his face. His pupils seem to be moving independently of each other.
‘Ah’m gonna fuck you, Mrs Scott.’
‘Ssh.’
‘Ssh, what? What are you shushing me for? I’m just saying, ah’m gonna fuck you.’
I gesture to the District Manager, who is standing not ten feet away from us.
‘What? I dinnae want t’fuck him. I want t’fuck you.’ He starts shouting. ‘HOI EVERYONE, I’M GONNA FUCK ANGIE SCOTT. See, so what, nobody gives a shit.’
Hopefully, the boom-boom-boom of the makeshift disco will have drowned him out but, really, if anyone heard him, we’ll both be fucked. Draining my wine, I suggest going back to our pub. Raymond’s just starting to warm up, though. Not wanting to seem like a wife, I let him drag me up for a slow dance. The only other couple up are Ian Dawson and his Filipino bride. I give them a what’s-a-girl-supposed-to-do smile as I try to avoid Raymond’s tongue.
As soon as the record ends, something fast, boomy and tuneless comes on and my desire to leave returns. Raymond keeps a grip of me, jostling me about to the thump of the music, jigging around in that embarrassing way people over 35 call letting their hair down. Then he starts grabbing at my arse, trying to grind against me. I see a group of managers, standing by the buffet, smirking at us. I see Katy giving us a knowing smile. I suggest we get another drink before it runs out and we stagger back to our seats with another two overflowing glasses of wine each. Raymond immediately drains half of one. I look at the rest in trepidation, knowing that if we consume them, all hell will break loose.
