Scabby Queen

by Kirstin Innes

  ‘I do know you! You’re proper famous, intya? You had that song, when I was a kid. Rise up! People got to rise up!’

  ‘Aye, that’s me. But that was a long time ago now. Not so famous any more. One-hit wonder, eh?’

  She grinned and blew a smoke ring, and Sammi gazed at its perfect circle for a second until it broke, drifted.

  ‘Well, what about you, then?’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘Yeah. You know. You’re like a pop star and that. You was in Smash Hits. An now you’re in a party in a filthy dirty squat. How did you get –’ and here she started giggling, because it was fucking funny, everything was fucking funny ‘– rrrrrradicalized?’

  ‘I’ll tell you a story about my daddy, Sammi, some day. My daddy was a great revolutionary. A freedom fighter. He travelled the world helping the oppressed wherever he could. When you’ve got someone like that in your life, someone who’s a constant beacon of what’s right, you know; it all just comes naturally. I had no choice in this, in a way. I couldny just settle down and live a normal life when there’s fights to be fought for folk who canny do it themselves. You know? You know.’

  ‘Yeah. I know.’

  ‘But really, babe, I’m like you. I left home and school at sixteen too. Never looked back. We teach ourselves, you and me, right? We know we’re smart enough, so fuck their fancy university degrees and all that shit. People like us, we live by our moral codes, eh? A finely honed sense of what’s right.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Sammi said, and she shouted across the rooftops, across the city: ‘Fuck your degrees!’ They held each other tightly again, laughing as the sun started to rise.

  SIMON

  Bristol, 2008

  It was not a wedding Simon had really expected to find himself at. It wasn’t that he’d ever really thought Jess and Greg were going to break up, it was just that the idea of marriage could have any interest for them. And yet, here they were, in a scuffed church hall decorated with paper flowers made by friends, drinking from a bar composed entirely of bottles the guests had brought, but married under the law all the same. At the end of the day, they were still a nice middle-class heterosexual couple, he supposed, raising his glass to the uneasy gathering of well-dressed friends-of-their-parents clustered in the corner of the hall, flecked by the sweat of a dance floor moshing to Chumbawamba.

  It came to them all, though. All the straight couples from his little group had parked the sculptural prams bought by their well-off parents far away from the crackling speaker set up by Greg’s friend who organized raves; wheeled them home after an hour or two. Their places had been filled by the second-tier guests, colleagues and comrades in their twenties, invited in after 7 p.m. to make the dance floor look busy. No matter how ostentatiously they’d skimped on the trappings of what he remembered Jess once calling ‘the self-policing patriarchy of the matrimonial industrial complex’, they had observed the protocols. She even wore white, although the back had been cut out to show her tattoos. Within six months, there would be a pregnancy announcement. There always was – the way the marriage certificate seemed to give all these radical feminists permission to ditch their contraception had made him laugh at first. Now it just seemed grimly inevitable.

  Oh, it was easy to be mean. He looked about and realized he was pretty much friendless. He recognized a few people from the service earlier, but didn’t know them well enough to go and plonk himself down beside them. He wished he’d brought someone. He’d considered Luke, but worried that the pressures of being seen as a couple in that context might trough up all the issues they’d ignored on their last go-around. He’d also thought that Luke’s clean-fingernailed perspective on what he’d always jokingly called ‘Si’s crusty crew’ might leave a sour taste in his mouth – and yet here he was, providing the acid-tongued commentary for himself.

  Maybe it was time to go home.

  Soft heat and a gentle sweat smell, as a woman threw herself down at the table. He recognized Clio Campbell right away – she’d sung ‘A Case of You’ at the service, as they were signing their names, after he’d rolled his well-taught enunciation around a straight recital of the lyrics to Bob Dylan’s ‘Wedding Song’, but he would have known her anyway. The gorgeous young Asian guy she’d been snogging in the middle of the mosh pit leaned over her for a final kiss, but she was already reaching for the discarded bottle of wine in the middle of the table. He made a toking gesture at her, and she laughed, slapped his bum and sent him on his way. She poured more from the bottle into the nearest glass (Simon thought it had maybe been his at dinner), drained it noisily and smacked her lips at him.

  ‘Oof. That’s me done dancing for another year, eh! You not getting up there?’

  Had he known she was Scottish? He wondered whether he’d ever actually heard her talk. He remembered seeing her on Top of the Pops when he was a kid – she must be at least ten years older than him by that reckoning.

  ‘You’re Scottish.’ He’d said it out loud – he must be drunker than he’d thought.

  ‘You’re not.’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  They smiled at each other, and he realized she was probably as drunk as him. She filled up her glass again.

  ‘Nothing like a warm white wine to really not slake a thirst! I’m Clio.’

  ‘I know. I’m a huge fan.’ Huge? It was what you said, wasn’t it? He qualified, hastily. ‘I mean, your song today. “A Case of You”. I’ve loved it for years and I don’t think I’ve ever heard it done so gorgeously. Maybe not even by Joni herself.’

  Too much? Too much.

  She waved a hand.

  ‘You know what? I’ve never worked out what I’m supposed to say to that sort of thing. The polite thing to do, it seems, would be to blush all dainty-like and apologize for my presence. Unless I was a bloke. Then I should just nod, like of course, take what is probably just you being a nice polite guy as my due, graciously allow you into my presence. But a woman doing that, you think, ooh, she’s up herself, don’t you? So instead I get all flustered and self-deprecating when what I really want to do is say yeah, today I fucking nailed that, didn’t I?’ She beamed at him. ‘Thank you! Thank you is what I should say. Jesus, manners, you silly bint. It’s Simon, isn’t it. Si?’

  His head was swimming with her.

  ‘So, how do you know the happy couple?’

  ‘Oh God, just uni. We were all in the Green Party student chapter at Bristol. Went to dance parties. Bit more hardcore than this.’

  He smirked, being Luke again, tried to tell her about the thrum of bassline, bloated cartoon characters done in UV paint shining on the walls, the smell of Jess’s sweat, her cropped top and massive frayed army trousers, a keffir scarf wound round her head; running his hands over Greg’s flat teenage stomach and under the waistband hanging off his hips that once. Simon had been a handy sounding board for all those enlightened little straight boys feeling a bit curious, had wrapped palms round each of their cocks at some point or another, received precious little back. A tick-off along the way, a thing to do before you were thirty, before you got the girl.

  ‘And nine years on, here we are. Wearing suits, signing marriage certificates –’

  Jess, in the centre of the hall, spun in a circle and rolled herself into Greg’s waiting arm, a pastiche of old-time dance-hall moves.

  ‘– watching all your old pals committed and settled down, feeling lost and wondering where your youth went?’

  ‘It’s like you’re in my head.’

  She poured the last of the wine into two glasses, then reached over and grabbed another half-empty bottle from a different table, topped them up red-into-white. He winced, involuntarily, imagining his father’s thoughts on the subject, and she caught him at it.

  ‘Sorry. Call it a cocktail. I don’t think I’m spoiling any particular vintage, eh no.’

  He grinned and she clinked his glass.

  ‘Anyway, here’s an unasked-for life lesson from yer Auntie Clio, as she’s had
a bit to drink and feels like spreading her wisdom. I was you for years, sitting at weddings as the people my age paired off and had their babies and stopped being fun. I realized after a while you just need to find the people who are still at your level. The kids and the gays, basically. No offence, pal. Obviously. Because I don’t know about you, but I’m not really interested in the conversation of parents, and I don’t think they’re interested in me. No matter what they believed in before those wee darlings popped out, no matter how radical they thought they were, there’s something that changes about them. All they really want to do is sit on some comfy seats with other parents, comparing notes on exhaustion and bleeding nipples and laughing at cute little flubbed sentences, maybe get competitive about which one walked first. It’s evolution, isn’t it? Mama Nature ensuring that parents can’t think beyond their babies for more than five minutes at a time means those babies don’t get eaten by wolves. Good parents make shitty friends, hon, as I’m sure you’re finding out.’

  ‘You’ve never fancied it yourself?’

  ‘A big fat no to that. I’m one of the ones who’d make a shitty parent – fortunately I realized it in time.’

  ‘Maybe you’re just too good a friend,’ he said, toasting her. Her face wasn’t quite readable.

  ‘Kids chain you down. That’s not really a new observation, but it’s something I saw happening from quite a young age to my pals, and realized I couldny take it myself. Maybe I’m just too selfish, ha. Anyway, I come to the weddings of people I’ve loved through their twenties and sometimes they ask me to sing, and it’s all very nice, but what they don’t realize is that in my head, as I’m raising a glass, I’m saying a silent goodbye. I mean, what do you give it before these two are letting us all know about the little bundle of joy on the way?’

  ‘Six months. You are inside my head.’

  Clink.

  ‘Exactly so. So, you read them your toast, you give them a wee present that you’ve made yourself and put some love into, and you’ll send them something nice again when the first baby’s born, if you’re not too fucked off that they not only didn’t come to your birthday night out but forgot it completely, but you know that really that’s all that’s left. When they come out the other side, blinking in the light when the kid’s about ten or something, you might meet them in the street by chance, and it’ll be so friendly; you’ll hug, you’ll swap numbers, you’ll make promises to go for coffee, but you know they’re secretly hoping you don’t call. You’ve lived on different planets for too long by that point.’

  Simon slumped even further into his seat. ‘Shit. I was hoping you’d tell me it was just a phase, and we’d get through it.’

  ‘Babe, I’m forty years old. Loads of people my age have teenagers now. I’ve had it happen time and time again. They’re gone, they just haven’t realized it yet.’

  ‘Biology.’

  ‘Biology. See, as a woman and a feminist I’m not supposed to admit that, but it totally, totally is.’

  ‘You really don’t look forty, by the way. I’d never have thought—’

  ‘That’s very sweet, but I do look forty. This is what forty looks like when you still get eight hours’ sleep a night, all your pals are twenty-four, and you don’t really have anyone else to worry about beside yourself. See, at – what age are you?’

  ‘Twenty-nine.’

  ‘Yeah. When thirty still feels like a big scary monster on the horizon, forty seems like death. But you take all that biology out of the equation and it’s pretty fucking great, actually. I’m not in a race to procreate before my body trips me up; I’ve been around long enough to know what sort of clothes, drink and pals do and don’t suit me; I don’t feel the need to apologize for who I am any more. So, you have to say your farewells to the people who got you through the first bit of growing up, and that’s the toughest hurdle to face. But if you have a look around, you’re actually in the perfect place to meet your next set of friends. Look at all these babbies still dancing away because they don’t have anything more pressing to do on a weekend evening. Imagine how wise you’ll seem to them, hon! Ten years’ time and you’ll be looking this fucking fabulous, sitting someone else down to talk their face off just like this. You find your team, your new tribe, in the leftovers after the ceremony’s done. The ones hanging on to the bitter end.’

  ‘I just – I really hope you’re right.’

  Clio’s young boyfriend was weaving between the tables, his beautiful amber eyes stoned and shining for her. She rose, put her arms around his neck and he dipped her backwards for a kiss. She winked at Simon over his shoulder as she rose again.

  ‘Hamza, my love, this is Simon with the lovely speaking voice. We’re hanging out with Simon for the rest of the night. He’s sad, and he shouldn’t be. Have you got a little present for us?’

  ‘You know I have. Come and get it.’

  She fished inside his suit jacket and extracted a little polybag of white powder, magician-quick, tucking it into her sleeve, then grabbed at Simon’s wrist gently but firmly. Her hand found its way into his, her fingernails painted shiny iridescent purple, glittering in the party lights.

  ‘Come on, babe. Let’s go celebrate the momentous occasion of your rebirth, like people with fuck all responsibility should.’

  NEIL

  Glasgow, 23 January 2018

  Gogsy had answered his phone the same way for decades now. Crisp, irritated intonation, ‘Gordon Duke.’ Every time. Even after he got a mobile phone that showed him the name of the caller on the screen.

  ‘Hi, Gogs. How are you, man?’

  ‘Is that you, Neil?’

  Oh, you know fine well it’s me, Neil thought. Stop this.

  ‘A wee bit early, is it not? What can I do for you today?’

  There was something sad about Gogsy these days. He’d lost his seat in the SNP general election putsch two years ago, to a woman, of all things. He’d been far too easy a target for the vitriol aimed at the Labour Party post-referendum, because he’d bought into the party mindset far too much by this time. Neil saw him on television not long after his defeat talking about the ‘post-truth’ age the electorate were living in, where truth meant Labour, meant Gordon Duke.

  Like Clio, Gogsy would only contact Neil when he wanted a story placed, so they hadn’t seen much of each other in the last two years. The suit was as sleek as ever, the hair as thick and silvery, the sovereign rings as prominent, but he’d deflated, somehow, no longer commanded a room just by entering it. Faces did turn, eventually – he was still a former cabinet minister, had been regularly on television for ten years – but once they registered him, turned back.

  ‘Nobody from the paper come here any more, then?’

  ‘There’s nobody from the paper left, Gogs.’

  ‘Christ.’

  It was ten in the morning. They drank.

  ‘Off the record, Neil, the now. But what a stupid, stupid lassie. To do a thing like that.’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Stupid waste.’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Tell you about the last time I saw her? We were on this BBC panel discussion up at the university. Run-up to the independence referendum, you know, passions were high – but she just lost it, eh. Fell to pieces right there in front of all these students, just because I’d challenged her on something – oil or who knows what. The rage, this incoherent emotional nonsense she was talking, making it all about me, about my “moral failings”. She stood up and she screamed “Judas” at me. Actually screamed it. I’d not seen her like that, the whole time we were together, but then it takes its toll on women, doesn’t it? At that age. The hormones. I mean, you could see something wasn’t right. And all these students laughing. I wanted to stop the whole thing, right away, just wrap my coat round her and take her offstage, you know? Make it stop. But I didn’t, because it meant we were winning.’

  He exhaled noisily, went back to his drink.

  ‘That was always Clio’s problem, though, was
it not? Never knew when to keep her mouth shut.’

  Neil just nodded.

  ‘Do you know what I think it was with that one – and I’m still off the record here, Neil. I’ll let you know when we go on, eh. What it was, I think, was she never could just settle down. She had to keep itching away at the next thing and the next, she never really grew up, you know what I’m saying. I mean, when we were together – I actually asked her to marry me, can you imagine. What a close escape that was, eh. She wouldn’t have made a politician’s wife, would our Clio. She broke my heart at the time, right enough, but when I think of taking her along to, say, dinner with the Prime Minister, or even officiating at a constituents’ evening? Oof. I mean, at the time she turned me down, she said, “I’m not the marrying kind, Gogs,” and I thought she was being cool, you know, that this was her feminist principles or whatever. Something to admire about it, even. A younger man then, Neil. A younger man. But then she went and married that music guy and I’ll admit it, even though I was very happy with Sharon by that point, there was a part of me that took that as a punch to the stomach. You know what I’m saying, pal. That didn’t last, though, did it? I met him, you know, some sort of council bash or something. He was looking at moving his festival to East Ren at the time. I did say to him, after a couple, “I understand we have an old flame in common, pal,” you know, and I regret that. You don’t refer to a man’s wife as an old flame, ex-wife even. There are lines, Neil. There are lines.’

  ‘There are lines, Gogs.’

  ‘Always struck me as a bit of a Flash Harry type, that one. She probably thought she was going up in the world with him. No conscience, do anything for a buck. I mind I thought at the time that they wouldn’t have that much in common. You know. You know, pal.’