by Alan Bissett
everything dead. And lovely. And dead. Pre-programmed dance moves. Youth risen for one last final oh-fuck-it-then rave before the whole charade collapses and when I turn I see a
ned at the summit of the stairs, being told the News by his big weapon mate. His face turns bad, like fruit in speeded-up film, his mouth hurling sounds into the thick air. Hair seeming to grow on his arms. Oh jesus, it’s Cottsy and he’s looking at us. The words ‘kill that cunt’ stab from his mouth and Cottsy has Dolby down on the ground and is trying to kick the shit out of him but Brian and Frannie are racing from the dancefloor and everyone is staring, appalled, and I charge into the fray like a super-hero, like Spider-Man, grabbing Cottsy’s arm, booting at his ankle, biting his elbow, and then someone’s hand closes on my shoulder and I’m
in the back of the taxi
headlights passing. Sullen shop windows, street names. Me slumped in the corner of the cab singing Animal Nitrate to myself, which is on
the first Suede album?
Dog Man Star?
anyway, the boy in the song, he’s just an animal and
My black eye pulses and my back hurts, my Mum on the corner of Montgomery Street, waving fondly, so I wave half-heartedly back (just totally can’t be arsed with her right now) but Shelley from Smith’s is in the back seat next to me, stroking my hair, saying to someone on the phone, ‘Brian, how did you let this boy get in such a state?’ and
Shelley from Brian’s pub?
likes stuff from the Gadget Shop, her flat crammed with toking aliens, bottle openers in the shape of scarab beetles, inflatable chairs, lava lamps. She crosses the room, puts David Bowie’s Hunky Dory on, laughs at me trying to remove my shoes, as a chess set, with shot glasses for pieces, is brought out from a side cupboard, more Gadget Shop shite, Shelley filling one side with whisky, the other with vodka, and before I can protest I’ve lost a bishop and three of my pawns and Shelley’s lost her blouse, her socks, her earrings, the lobes burning a sexy red, her upper chest flushed with whisky, the CD jumping at Oh You
Pret
Pret
Pretty Things, and her bookshelf filled with fat Marion Keyes paperbacks (Rachel’s Holiday, Watermelon). ‘You’re next,’ I try to warn her, like that guy at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. ‘The whole world’s fucked,’ I say, but she doesn’t hear, drawing my zip down, down, without any fuss, and Shelley’s mouth touching the bruises on my neck, and she’s whispering ‘sssshh –’ and all I can think about is that line from Robocop which goes dead or alive you’re coming with
I wake.
The morning light twists in smooth, slow curves.
A dream about the River Ganges fresh in my head. Me and Robert DeNiro in a canoe, the soft sound of paddles in water, lulling. Nice dream.
The first thing that seems out of place is the duvet. It’s not mine.
My bed doesn’t usually have a woman in it either.
Shelley from Brian’s pub is zonked out next to me. Her hair plasters her face, Medusa-like curls. I lift the duvet cautiously. Look down the length of her body.
Yep, she’s naked.
making my way home is like scaling the north face of the Eiger with a head full of Nirvana b-sides. The Lads are ship shape in Brian’s kitchen, folding toast into their mouths and flicking through the Sunday papers, various cuts and bruises on their faces, and I can just about read one of the headlines through the slats of my eyes (a Rangers win) as they clock me and roar, as though I’ve knocked one in during the last minute of an Old Firm final. I crumple, wincing. Posh and Becks loom apocalyptically on the front of the News of the World.
‘Well then?’ Brian beams.
‘Ye shag her?’ Frannie beams.
‘Long did ye last?’ Dolby beams.
I can barely swing my head round to look at them. TLC singing No Scrubs on the radio and I feel yuk. ‘Just think,’ Brian seats himself next to me. ‘Everyone in that pub has been dyin tay dae what you did last night.’
‘Look, I’m sure she’s a very nice girl,’ I protest, ‘but –’
‘Nice-girl shmice-girl. Ye shagged Shelley. Be prouday it.’
and I can only groan at the stark sound of it. While they celebrate my virginity drying on the bedroom sheets, I press my face to the formica, where it’s nice and cool and nothing is demanded of me and Life’s Little Instruction Booklet lies innocuously open, saying
76. Remember, overnight success usually takes about five years.
77. Never indulge in lawsuits.
78. Always keep warm blankets in the boot of your car.
79. Avoid sleeping with barmaids you hardly know.
80. Forget about Tyra Mackenzie now, knobhead.
and I catch sight of the date at the top of the paper, just above Beckham’s fringe.
Happy birthday to me.
week later, Richard and Judy are featuring a slot called ‘Back From the Brink’, about suicide. Linda from Sussex, Eloise from Maidstone-on-Kent, Susan from Peebles all call up with heart-wrenching tales of shaking in the doctor’s surgery/being driven to drink/failed infertility treatment. I watch, transfixed, the tea in my hand cooling until I look down and find it’s grown a limpid skin.
‘An hour at a time, a day at a time,’ Richard says sincerely, ‘and reach out to the ones who love you.’
Dolby is beeping the horn outside, but I am slack-jawed, struck dumb by the level of grief in the voice of Susan from Peebles. I cannot move. Dolby continues to beep, the noise of a cartoon character opening and closing its mouth on the edge of a galaxy. I cannot face him. The possibility of movement. Richard and Judy are conducting a phone in quiz
What planet is named after the goddess of love?
What nationality are Abba?
Who is married to Brad Pitt?
creep to the window, kink the blinds and see Dolby looking at his watch, hear Belinda’s engine chug. The caller has won a cash prize. A rebellion seems to be occuring deep within me, then fading, then resurging again. I nearly run out into the street in my socks to tell Dolby to step on the gas, collect Brian and Frannie from work (like in An Officer and a Gentleman) and drive, drive to Florence or Reykjavik or the Côte d’Azur, where we four can live in illicit comfort, sinking pink drinks and summoning ladies to show us their tan lines and
the lack of love from Tyra Mackenzie, like cold light from a distant star. In its beam I am hunched, riddled with evil (Dolby is still beeping) and if you’re going to force the issue – though please, for my sake, don’t – I remember this:
It is the beginning of the nineties. Everything is black and white, the furniture is angular. That is what is in. I am eight years old, and Mum is about to burst with fury, and Derek, tearful, is trying to subdue her. I am watching Children’s BBC. Mum has chain-smoked her way through a packet of Silk Cut, twitching, bird-like, with the effort of each sentence.
That day, she’d taken me and Derek down to Falkirk to buy new clothes for school, when she’d bumped into a couple of old schoolfriends, now doing well – why they were planning to buy their house, where you should really go for your holidays – and Mum’d been hesitant and clipped, her nerves sucked down to the filter. Me and Derek made faces at each other, monkeys and donkeys. Falkirk had newly opened the Howgate shopping centre, heralding a bright new dawn for the local retail economy. Mum dragged us in and out of Poundstretcher and What Everys. She moved us with the agitation of a cat. Derek didn’t like the the shoes he was fitted with, couldn’t he have Nike or Adidas like everyone else at school? I’d whined at the scratchiness of the shirt, imagining who might have worn it before me, gripping the guard of an electric fire when Mum tried to pull me over to the trousers. Grey and flannel. Me and Derek stopping at the paradisal window-fronts of John Menzies, Woolworths, Toys R Us, awe-struck by towering blocks of Gameboys and Nintendos. Can I get that, Mum Mum, see when Dad gets his wages, can I get that Can I get! Can I get! Mum repeated, trying to haul us onto the Hallglen bus, Aw I ever hear fay you pair is can I
get. Into the house and the TV switched on and Derek in a sulk and Mum’s voice peppering the cartoon soundtrack, ordering me to get that turned down and stop diggin intay they fuckin Coco Pops, ye’ll spoil yer tea. Whit is it for tea, Mum? Ye’ll get whit I fuckin make ye. Aye, but whit is it? Is it stovies, Mum? Mum, is it stovies? Is it Mum? I hate stovies! Mum, I hate stovies! Tough. Ye’ve ate them afore, ye’ll eat them again. Weans these days have got awfy fancy stomachs. Mum, I’ve jist goat a normal stomach, but I still hate stovies. I’m no wantin stovies. Mum clattering with the pots and Derek with a petted lip in the corner and the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles blaring and I’m wailing about the unfairness of stovies, following Mum round the kitchen to tell her this. My bare feet cold on the black and white tiles, chipped from things being dropped, thrown. Derek, tell her, eh we’re no wantin stovies? Mum, dinnay pit stovies oan. I’ll just pit some oven chips oan fir Alvin. Yese arnay gettin oven chips, yese are gettin fuckin stovies. Yer Dad wants stovies, so I’m makin fuckin stovies. I’ve no goat the time tay make four separate dinners, Derek, noo get oot the road tay I get the ironin board doon. The starved horse of the ironing board clanks to the floor. Mum sweating, the dinner erupting in plumes from the hob behind her. She kneels to my level. I wish I could remember her eyes, even their colour. Alvin, son, d’ye ken whaur I keep ma crabbit pills, upstairs at the side ay the bed? Can ye go up and bring me wan doon? Will ye dae that for me? I wid, Mum, but that wan I got for ye earlier was the last yin. There’s nane left. Mum stands, sighs, runs a hand through her hair, covers her eyes. Derek is peering over the top of the ironing board at me, making more monkey faces. I laugh; Mum swats him away, lifting the iron, muttering. The water hisses a steamy tantrum. Me and Derek play furniture Olympics, an assault course of coffee table, sofa and drinks cabinet. Empty drinks cabinet. Will you pair fuckin shut up through there? I’m tryin tay make the dinner and iron yer Dad’s shirts and ma period’s due and I’ve nay crabbit pills till I can get tay the doctor’s the morn. Mum, he kicked me! Shut up, ya wee clipe. Mum, I did not kick him. Mum, Derek kicked me! Will yese fuckin shut up the pair ay yese. Mum stomps towards the drinks cabinet, finds it is empty, clutches at her own ears and squeezes closed her eyes. Bastard never even left me a drink. Mum, Dad says ye’ve no tay have ony mair drink. He telt us it’s bad for ye. Aye, well, yer faither disnay need tay pit up wi you pair aw day, wi yer fuckin can I get and yer I dinnay want that an will you fuckin stop jumpin on that couch, there no enough holes in it awready? Mum? Mum? Ye dinnay make holes in a couch by jumpin ower it. Aye well, jist quit it. Aah! He’s kickin me again! Mum! He’s twistin ma arm! Mum! Aah! Muuum! Will yese fuckin shut up I swear tay Christ yese are drivin me roon the bend, ye’ll have me in fuckin Bell’s Dyke before the year’s oot. I’m tellin ye, if it wisnay fir you pair an yer faither oot at work aw day an I’ve nay fags whaur’s ma drink go an get ma crabbit pills the fuckin doctor’s is shut I’ll no be able tay get them tay Tuesday ma fuckin heid that’s ma migraine startit an I’ve the claes tay finish an the dinner tay iron an the dishes tay buy an the messages tay be washed afore he gets in will yese fuckin just gies peace Bell’s Dyke ya wee bastards that’s whaur I’ll end up will yese just sit soon an I canny cope I canny cope I canny fuckin–
Derek puts her to bed before Dad gets in. He takes the stovies off the ring and makes me oven chips. And when I go up to see her, she is staring slackly into the middle of the room. There is a beaded chain of saliva, like a dewy web, connecting her mouth to the pillow. She doesn’t seem to hear me when I try to say sorry. And everything is black and white and angular, because that’s what is in that year, but I wish I could remember the colour of her eyes.
Dolby slams his hand onto the horn one last time, making me pull on my trainers, grab my bag, breathing hard, and run down to
the surf, and two men in waders trying to haul a small boat. It bobs and pulls against them, an unruly child that wants to stay out longer. Forcibly manacled to a tractor, it is dragged home, shamefaced, across the length of the beach.
Two girls carry surfboards towards the water, blonde hair waving in a sea breeze. They skim the boards nose-first onto the spume, then charge into the cold like foals. In the foam and dip of the grey waves, they darken, wetten, shine. Their eyes press into the saline creases, as they ride, and fall, and rise to ride again.
Small boys digging plots on the tideline. The muscles of their faces are determined. They dig, flicking the sand behind them into the sea, which creeps silently and fills the hole again. The boys dig and flick, strenuous, the centre of the earth beckoning, the sea inching and swallowing up their world, but they must keep at it, keep it at bay.
Further up the beach: the ritual of the upturned bucket. Other children burying their mothers in a dress rehearsal of death. The old folks, nosing mournfully towards the real thing.
This isn’t a holiday, I think. It’s Saving Private Ryan.
‘Braw drive. Lovely wee beach. Plenty young yins! Nice pubs. Away doon. Enjoy yersels fir god’s sake, ya miserable–’
We’d been lurching towards boredom in Falkirk. The same roads. The same conversations. There’s only so many times you can smirk about the size of Brian’s nipples. I’ve been unable to think about anything but the recent, tragic loss of my virginity to Shelley the Barmaid, the fact that when Tyra Mackenzie gets around to doing it with me, I’ll already be spoiled goods. So me and Dolby chucked a couple of sleeping bags into the back of Belinda (as well as a pile of practice exam papers, York Notes, Torrance’s Higher Biology, just in case I get the inclination/fear) and after we drove past Tyra’s house (so I could look, yearningly, at the light from her bedroom window), we took off to one of my Dad’s old pit stops in his days before Mum. Saltburn-by-the-sea, North East England.
It was like running away from home. Putting the foot on the accelerator and following Belinda’s nose and the spirit of adventure. The surging landscape, the pulse of road signs past the window. The second we pulled away from Hallglen, the patter and the laughter jet-planed, the sun crashing against the windscreen, Dolby starting to insist that I call him Uriel (still can’t believe he went through with it) and Scotland mutating into strange regions – every time we say the name Hawick, we pretend we’re dragging phlegm – over the border to Angleterre and the window rolled down and Bat Out Of Hell roaring fantastically, triumphantly uncool and
I’m gonna hit the highway like a batterin ram
on a silver-black phantom bike
when the metal is hot
and the engine is hungry and
we arrive to find this. Grim England.
The window-wipers sweedge wearily before a beach.
‘Whit d’ye want tay dae?’ says Dolby.
‘Dunno. Whatever.’
‘Could go for a swally?’
‘Heddy haw.’
We exit the car and head along the promenade. The sand skitters across the shop-fronts like insects. We’re both thinking the same thing: we could have been this bored just staying in Falkirk. We could’ve sat one more night in Brian’s living room, Frannie listing the minutiae of his daily routine in Tesco, Brian tour-guiding us through his favourite Bruce Lee scenes. We could’ve drank the money we’ve forked out on petrol, or gambled it, Kenny Rogers warning
know when to fold
know when to hold em
know when to walk away
know when to run
the two surfers have tired of wrestling the elements, jogging to their car across the beach. They begin to strip, chilly, behind the cover of a car door, and we both try to transmute the metal into glass. Then, so suddenly it’s funny, one of them hoists the leg of a shop dummy onto her shoulder and carries it to the boot.
‘Hey,’ Dolby shouts, friendly, ‘sorry tay hear about the accident!’
‘Up yours,’ she replies, as her friend wheels her chair out from behind the car.
‘Aw, eh, I didnay mean …’
In the Ship Inn later, I’m still giggling.
‘I dinnay want the Lads hearin aboot that,’ he warns, pointing. ‘I mean it. It wisnay funny.’
‘It wisnay funny wan bit,’ I agree, trying to gag my splutters, knowing Brian and Frannie will think it’s Christmas Day when I tell them.
Dolby, you see, until he changed his name to Uriel (which the Lads have embraced with the same enthusiasm as they did Celtic’s 3–1 defeat by Caley Thistle), was notoriously difficult to slag. I have crap hair. Frannie has a love of Tesco bordering on the obsessive. Brian has nipples like satellite dishes. Dolby? Has the same name as a sound system. Hilarious.
But that ‘up yours’ is going to stick to him like shit and he knows it.
‘Mocking the afflicted’s nay laughing matter, man.’
‘Aye, awright,’ he mutters, ripping up a beermat, ‘wido.’
Our accents have attracted attention. England neds. Funny differences between the neds here and the ones in Scotland, they’re all blond, for a start (probably a remnant of a Nordic invasion they’re desperate to take out on somebody) and they don’t have that crewcut so beloved of the Scottish ned. They don’t growl, either, or ask if you’ve ‘got a fuckin problem’. They just stare. Like menacing fish.
I ignore them, listen to some crap old Sixties song on the jukebox, my gaze roaming the decor of the inn for distraction, learning that Saltburn used to be a smuggling haven. Mocked-up Wanted posters and sepia newspaper cuttings warn us to be on the lookout for strangers. Well, we won’t be smuggling anything in, me old mateys, but we might just leave with the hearts of some of your local wenches. I’m even more ecstatic to learn that the King of Smugglers, their very own local hero, was a Scot. A poster recounts a pitched battle on this very beach front between Scots bandits and King George’s tax men. For once, we won.
