by Irvine Welsh
The minister could find little decent to say about Venters and, to his credit, he didn’t bullshit. It was a short and sweet performance. Alan had made many mistakes in his life, he said. Nobody was contradicting him. Alan would, like all of us, be judged by God, who would grant him salvation. It is an interesting notion, but I feel that the gaffer in the sky has a fair bit of graft ahead of him if that bastard’s checked in up there. If he has, I think I’ll take my chances in the other place, thank you very much.
Outside, I checked out the wreaths. Venters only had one. ‘Alan. Love Mum and Sylvia.’ To my knowledge they had never visited him in the hospice. Very wise of them. Some people are easier to love when you don’t have to be around them. I pumped the hands of Tom and the others, then took Fran and Kev for some de luxe ice-cream at Lucas in Musselburgh.
Obviously, I had deceived Venters about the things I did to Kevin. Unlike him, I’m not a fuckin animal. I’m far from proud about what I did do. I took great risks with the bairn’s well being. Working in a hospital operating theatre, I know all about the crucial role of the anaesthetist. They’re the punters that keep you alive, not sadistic fuck-pigs like Howison. After the jab puts you under, you’re kept unconscious by the anaesthetic and put onto a life-support system. All your vital signs are monitored in highly controlled conditions. They take care.
Chloroform is much more of a blunt instrument, and very dangerous. I still shudder when I think of the risk I took with the wee man. Thankfully, Kevin woke up, with only a sore head and some bad dreams as a remnant of his trip to the kitchen.
The joke shop and Humbrol enamel paints provided the wounds. I worked wonders with Fran’s makeup and talc for Kev’s death mask. My greatest coup, though, was the three plastic pint bags of blood I took from the fridge in the path lab at the hospital. I got paranoid when that fucker Howison gave me the evil eye as I walked down the corridor past him. He always does though. I think it’s because I once addressed him as ‘Doctor’ instead of ‘Mister’. He’s a funny cunt. Most surgeons are. You’d have to be to do that job. Like Tom’s job, I suppose.
Putting Kevin under turned out to be easy. The biggest problem I had was setting up and dismantling the entire scene inside half an hour. The most difficult part involved cleaning him up before getting him back to bed. I had to use turps as well as water. I spent the rest of the night cleaning up the kitchen before Frances got back. It was worth the effort however. The pictures looked authentic. Authentic enough to fuck up Venters.
Since I helped Al on his way to the great gig in the sky, life has been pretty good. Frances and I have gone our separate ways. We were never really compatible. She only really saw me as a babysitter and a wallet. For me, obviously, the relationship became largely superfluous after Venters’s death. I miss Kev more. It makes me wish that I had a kid. Now that’ll never be. One thing that Fran did say was that I had revived her faith in men after Venters. Ironically, it seems as if I found my role in life — cleaning up that prick’s emotional garbage.
My health, touch wood, has been good. I’m still asymptomatic. I fear colds and get obsessive from time to time, but I take care of myself. Apart from the odd can of beer, I never bevvy. I watch what I eat, and have a daily programme of light exercises. I get regular blood checks and pay attention to my T4 count. It’s still way over the crucial 800 mark; in fact it’s not gone down at all.
I’m now back with Donna, who inadvertently acted as the conduit for HIV between me and Venters. We found something that we probably wouldn’t have got from each other in different circumstances. Or maybe we would. Anyway, we don’t analyse it, not having the luxury of time. However, I must give old Tom at the group his due. He said that I’d have to work through my anger, and he was right. I took the quick route though, by sending Venters to oblivion. Now all I get is a bit of guilt, but I can handle that.
I eventually told my parents about my being HIV positive. My Ma just cried and held me. The auld man said nothing. The colour had drained from his face as he sat and watched A Question of Sport. When he was pressed by his wailing wife to speak, he just said: — Well, there’s nothin tae say. He kept repeating that sentence. He never looked me in the eye.
That night, back at my flat, I heard the buzzer go. Assuming it to be Donna, who had been out, I opened the stair and house doors. A few minutes later, my auld man stood in the doorway with tears in his eyes. It was the first time he’d ever been to my flat. He moved over to me and held me in a crushing grip, sobbing, and repeating: — Ma laddie. It felt a world or two better than: ‘Well, there’s nothin tae say.’
I cried loudly and unself-consciously. As with Donna, so with my family. We have found an intimacy which may have otherwise eluded us. I wish I hadn’t waited so long to become a human being. Better late than never though, believe you me.
There’s some kids playing out in the back, the strip of grass luminated an electric green by the brilliant sunlight. The sky is a delicious clear blue. Life is beautiful. I’m going to enjoy it, and I’m going to have a long life. I’ll be what the medical staff call a long-term survivor. I just know that I will.
There Is A Light That Never Goes Out
They emerge from the stairdoor into the darkness of the deserted street. Some of them move in a jerky, manic way; exuberant and noisy. Others cruise along silently, like ghosts; hurting inside, yet fearful of the imminence of even greater pain and discomfort.
Their destination is a pub which seems to prop up a crumbling tenement set on a side-street between Easter Road and Leith Walk. This street has missed out on the stone-cleaning process its neighbours have enjoyed and the building is the sooty-black colour of a forty-a-day man’s lungs. The night is so dark that it is difficult to establish the outline of the tenement against the sky. It can only be defined through an isolated light glaring from a top-floor window, or the luminous street-lamp jutting out from its side.
The pub’s façade is painted a thick, glossy dark blue and its sign is the early 1970s design favoured by its brewing chain when the paradigm was that every bar had to have a standard look and play down any individual character it might have. Like the tenement above and around it, the pub has enjoyed nothing other than the most superficial maintenance for almost twenty years.
It is 5.06 a.m. and the hostelry’s yellow lights are on, a haven in the dark, wet and lifeless streets. It had been, Spud reflects, a few days since he’d seen the light. They were like vampires, living a largely nocturnal existence, completely out of synchronisation with most of the other people who inhabited the tenements and lived by a rota of sleep and work. It was good to be different.
Despite the fact that its doors have only been open for a few minutes, the pub is busy. Inside, there is a long formica-topped bar with several pumps and fonts. Battered tables in the same formica style stand shakily on dirty lino. Behind the bar towers an incongruously grandiose finely-carved wooden gantry. Sickly yellow light from the shadeless bulbs bounces harshly off the nicotine-stained walls.
The pub contains bona fide shift workers from the brewery and the hospital, and this is as it should be, given the avowed purpose of the early licence. There is also a smattering, however, of the more desperate: those who are there because they need to be.
The group entering the pub are also driven by need. The need for more alcohol to maintain the high, or to regain it, and fight off the onset of grim, depressive hangovers. They are also drawn by a greater need, the need to belong to each other, to hold on to whatever force has fused them together during the last few days of partying.
Their entry to the pub is observed by an indeterminately old drunkard who is propped up against the bar. The man’s face has been destroyed by the consumption of cheap spirits and overexposure to the frozen wind blasting cruelly from the North Sea. It seems as if every blood vessel in it has ruptured under the skin, leaving it resembling the undercooked square sausages served up in the local cafes. His eyes are a contrasting cool blue, although the whites of the
m are the identical colour of the pub walls. His face strains in vague recognition as the noisy group move up to the bar. One of the young men, perhaps more than one, he sardonically thinks, is his son. He had been responsible for bringing quite a few of them into the world at one time, when a certain type of woman found him attractive. That was before the drink had destroyed his appearance and distorted the output of his cruel, sharp tongue to an incomprehensible growl. He looks at the young man in question and considers saying something, before deciding that he has nothing to say to him. He never had. The young man doesn’t even see him, his attention focused on getting in the drinks. The old drunkard sees that the young man enjoys his company and his drink. He remembers when he himself was in that position. The enjoyment and the company faded away, but the drink didn’t. In fact, it expanded to fill the gap left by their departure.
The last thing Spud wants is another pint. Prior to their departure he had examined his face in the bathroom mirror back in Dawsy’s flat. It was pale, yet marked with blotches, with heavy, hooded eyelids attempting to draw the shutters on reality. This face was topped by sticking-up tufts of sandy hair. It might be an idea, he considers, to have a tomato juice for his aching guts, or a fresh orange and lemonade to combat his dehydration, before drinking alcohol again.
The hopelessness of the situation is confirmed when he mildly accepts the pint of lager Frank Begbie, first to the bar, had got up.
— Cheers, Franco.
— Guinness fir me Franco, Renton requests. He has just returned from London. He feels as good to be back as he did to get away in the first place.
— The Guinness is shite in here, Gav Temperley tells him.
— Still though.
Dawsy is raising his eyebrows and singing at the barmaid.
— Yeah, yeah, yeah, you’re a beautiful lover.
They’d had a crappest song competition, and Dawsy hadn’t stopped singing his winning entry.
— Shut the fuck up, Dawsy. Alison nudges him in the ribs. — Ye want tae git us flung oot?
The barmaid is ignoring him anyway. He turns to sing at Renton instead. Renton just smiles wearily. He considers that the trouble with Dawsy is, that if you encourage him, he’ll tear the arse out of a situation. It was mildly amusing a couple of days ago, and in any case, he feels, it had not been as funny as his own version of Rupert Holmes’s ‘Escape (The Pina Colada Song)’.
— Ah kin remember the night that we met down in Rio . . . that Guinness is fuckin loupin. Yir mad gittin Guinness in here, Mark.
— Telt um, Gav says, triumphantly.
— Aw the same but, Renton replies, a lazy grin still on his face. He feels drunk. He feels Kelly’s hand inside his shirt, tweaking his nipple. She’d been doing that to him all night, telling him that she really liked flat, hairless chests. It feels good having his nipples touched. By Kelly, it feels better than good.
— Vodka n tonic, she says to Begbie, who gestures to her from the bar. — Gin n lemonade for Ali. She’s jist away tae the bog.
Spud and Gav continue talking at the bar while the rest grab some seats in the corner.
— How’s June? Kelly asks Franco Begbie, referring to his girlfriend, suspected to be pregnant again after having just recently given birth to a child.
— Who? Franco shrugs aggressively. End of conversation.
Renton looks up at the early morning programme on the television.
— That Anne Diamond.
— Eh? Kelly looks at him.
— Ah’d fuckin shag it, Begbie says.
Alison and Kelly raise their eyebrows and look to the ceiling.
— Naw but, her bairn hud that cot death. Same as Lesley’s bairn. Wee Dawn.
— That wis a real shame, Kelly says.
— Good thing really bit. Wee lassie would’ve died ay fuckin AIDS if it hudnae died ay cot death. Easier fuckin death fir a bairn, Begbie states.
— Lesley did not have HIV! Dawn was a perfectly healthy baby! Alison hisses at him, enraged. Despite being upset himself, Renton cannot not help noting that Alison always speaks posh when she is angry. He feels a vague surge of guilt at being so trivial. Begbie is grinning.
— Whae’s tae say though? Dawsy says sycophantically. Renton looks at him with a hard, challenging stare, which he’d never dare do with Begbie. Aggression displaced to where it will not be reciprocated.
—
— Aw ah’m sayin is, nae cunt really kens, Dawsy shrugs tamely.
At the bar, Spud and Gav are slurring a conversation together.
— Reckon Rents’ll shag Kelly? Gav asks.
— Dunno. She’s finished wi that Des dude, likesay, n Rents isnae seein Hazel now. Free agents n that likesay, ken.
— That cunt Des. Ah hate that wanker.
— . . . dunno the cat, likesay . . . ken.
— Ye fuckin do! He’s your fuckin cousin, Spud. Des! Des Feeney!
— . . . right man . . . that Des. Still dinnae really ken the boy. Only likesay run intae the gadge a couple ay times since we wir ankle-biters, ken? It’s heavy though, Hazel bein at the perty wi that other guy, likes, n Rents wi Kelly, ken . . . heavy.
— That Hazel’s a torn-faced cow anywey. Ah’ve nivir seen that lassie wi a smile oan her face. Nae wonder, mind you, gaun oot wi Rents. Cannie be much fun hingin aroond wi some cunt thit’s eywis bombed ootay his box.
— Yeah, likesay . . . it’s too heavy . . . Spud briefly wonders whether or not Gav is having an indirect dig at him, by going on about people who are always bombed, before deciding that it’s an innocent remark. Gav was alright.
Spud’s muddled brain turns to sex. Everyone seemed to bag off at the party, everyone except him. He really fancies a ride. His problem is that he is too shy when straight or sober, and too incoherent when stoned or drunk, to make an impression on women. He currently has a thing about Nicola Hanlon, whom he thinks looks a bit like Kylie Minogue.
A few months ago, Nicola had been talking to him as they walked from a party at Sighthill to one at Wester Hailes. They had been having a good crack, becoming detached from the rest of the group. She had been very responsive, and Spud had chatted freely, high on speed. In fact, she seemed to be hanging on his every word. Spud wanted to never get to that party, wishing that they could just go on walking and talking. They went down into the underpass and Spud thought that he should try to put his arm around Nicola. Then a passage from a Smiths’ song, one he’d always liked called: ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’, came into his head:
and in the darkened underpass
I thought Oh God my chance has come at last
but then a strange fear gripped me
and I just couldn’t ask
Morrissey’s sad voice summed up his feelings. He didn’t put his arm around Nicola, and his attempts to chat her up were half-arsed after that. Instead, he jacked up in a bedroom with Rents and Matty, enjoying blissful freedom from the anxiety of wondering whether or not he’d get off with her.
When sex did happen for Spud, it was generally when he was possessed by a more forceful will. Even then, disaster never seemed to be too far away. One evening, Laura McEwan, a girl with an awesome sexual reputation, grabbed a hold of him in a Grassmarket pub, and took him home.
— Ah want you to take my arse virginity, she had told him.
— Eh? Spud could not believe it.
— Fuck me in the arse. Ah’ve never done it that way before.
— Eh yeah, that sounds . . . barry, eh likesay, eh right . . .
Spud felt like the chosen one. He knew that Sick Boy, Renton, and Matty had all been with Laura, who tended to attach herself to a company, fuck every guy in it, and then move on. The thing was, they had never done what he was about to do.
However, Laura wanted to do some things with Spud first. She bound his wrists, then his ankles together with sellotape.
— I’m daein this because ah don’t want you to hurt me. Dae ye understand? We do it from the side. The minute ah sta
rt tae feel pain it’s fuckin over. Right? Because nobody hurts me. No fuckin guy ever hurts me. Ye understand me? She spoke harshly and bitterly.
— Yeah . . . sound likesay, sound . . . Spud said. He didn’t want to hurt anyone. He was shocked at the imputation.
Laura stood back and admired her handiwork.
— Fuck me, that’s beautiful, she said, rubbing her crotch as a naked Spud lay trussed up on the bed. Spud felt vulnerable, and strangely coy. He’d never been tied up before, and never been told that he was beautiful. Laura then took Spud’s long, thin cock into her mouth and started to suck him off.
She stopped, with an expertise part intuitive, part learned, just before an ecstatic Spud was about to come. Then she left the room. Spud started to get paranoid about the bondage. Everyone said Laura was a nutter. She’d been shagging everyone in sight since she’d got her long-term partner, a guy called Roy, committed to a psychiatric hospital, fed up with his impotence, incontinence and depression. But mostly the former.
— He never fucked me properly for ages, Laura had told Spud, as if that was justification for getting him banged up in the nuthouse. However, Spud reasoned, her cruelty and ruthlessness was part of her attraction. Sick Boy referred to her as the ‘Sex Goddess’.
She came back into the bedroom, and looked at him, bound and at her mercy.
— Ah want you to dae us in the arse now. First though, ah’m gaunnae Vaseline your dick heavily, so that it doesnae hurt me when you put it in. My muscles’ll be tight, cause this is new tae me, but I’ll try tae relax. She toked hard on a joint.
Laura was not being strictly accurate. She couldn’t find any Vaseline in the bathroom cabinet. She did, however, find some other stuff she could use as a lubricant. It was sticky and gooey. She applied it liberally to Spud’s dick. It was Vick.
It burned into him, and Spud screamed in excruciating agony. He writhed fitfully against his bonds, feeling like the tip of his penis had been guillotined off.
