by Alan Bissett
I’m glad he’s home.
But I still don’t know why he’s home.
The wind creeps between the houses. The boarded-up shell of one gutted by fire. I tell him about Wendy (but not her touch, not her scent, not her voice), and he nods, impressed but doesn’t tell me about a single girl he met in London. We wander into a swing park where we both used to play, now desolate.
‘Imagine you wiping your dick on your t-shirt,’ he tuts.
‘Whit else could I use?’
‘The last of the great romantics,’ Derek snorts and nudges an empty vodka bottle with his boot. Then he picks it up, weighs it, and hurls it against a nearby wall.
The smash rings round the scheme.
‘I found her here once,’ Derek gestures to the climbing frames, which rear against the dark like dinosaur skeletons. ‘She was lying unconscious. Weans had put dog shit on her chest.’
I sit in one of the swings, rocking gently. The chain makes a comforting, nautical creak.
‘Derek, why did ye come hame?’
He glances at me, then away, his eyes white marbles in the dark. He starts rolling a piece of the vodka bottle with his boot. ‘She is alive, Alvin.’
He climbs onto the wee wall, gazes round at the unblinking lights of a place he once lived in, but never called home. Derek is the only one of us who followed his dream to see where it would lead. And where it led was straight back here. I swing despondently, my feet making random pushes against the rubber slab. The glass shards of the vodka bottle lie waiting for a kid’s foot, so I sweep them to the wall. Then I climb up, stand next to Derek, listen to the howl of dogs’ separated souls, while in the swing park phantom children laugh.
‘She’s out there somewhere. I can feel her.’
My older brother – who always took care of me, who always knew exactly what he was doing, why he was doing it, or so it seemed to me – grown up into an unwound ball of string, and I can’t help but think:
Weren’t we promised something?
Sitting in our primary schools (little chairs, little tables), listening open-mouthed to the magic sounds made by the teacher, we could see something, just past her shoulder, out there beyond the playground: a rough-draft of the world, an artist’s impression. But it looked wonderful. Something true. Something good. Something to run towards.
‘Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?’ Derek murmurs, hopping down from the wall, wrapping his arms around himself as
we soar in and out of the badlands and Brian makes slurping noises with his Irn-Bru while music from gleaming vehicles veers close then away and Frannie, hollering, obscene with laugher, ignores the crap rap music on Belinda’s stereo (Asian Pub Foundation?) to pose the question, ‘So, if Batman wis a pop star, who wid he be?’
which is a tricky one, since you have to think about Batman’s iceberg-cool image and it’s pointless comparing him to, say, Robert Plant, the two just don’t go together, silly even to consider it, and we pass a sign saying DON’T FALL ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL and I can’t believe how many beautiful women Frannie has ignored tonight – forty-something trolley dollies with their Mrs Robinson maturity on show, carrying shopping bags, parked at traffic lights – he’s totally possessed with the Batman question, and he should be, it’s an important one, crucial, and I can’t stop thinking that it’s been seven years since the last Floyd album/tour (do they do weddings and ceilidhs for Richard Branson and Bill Gates now?) and Dolby is fighting with Brian to try and get some of the Irn-Bru but Brian’s pulling it away, teasing him, bringing it closer, pulling it away, cackling, and the sky is mottled red-pink, the clouds ridged and quilted like herringbone, and the Scotland game hisses on the radio (they’re drawing 1–1!) and England were beaten 1–0 by Germany and this holds deep, almost mystical significance for everyone (Dolby gives the loudest cheer and he doesn’t even like football) and I answer the Batman question:
‘Surely he’s cool enough tay be Bono?’
‘Bono yer arse,’ says Brian.
‘Naw,’ Dolby says, shaking his head seriously. ‘Spider-Man’s Bono. He’s got the patter and the charisma. Batman’s dark and tortured. Batman’s Thom Yorke.’
‘Aah,’ everyone sighs in agreement, this flash of insight illuminating the whole car.
‘But whit about Superman?’ Frannie asks, concerned, plunging us into despair again, and mini-neds throw chips as we pass the Golden Bird and one of them hits Belinda’s rear window, sliding greasily down its surface and we rack our brains, the four of us, to solve this problem somehow, and there are two girls in the car next to us, pointing and smiling (I’m guessing one of them is called Janice, since she has that Strathclyde look, and let’s be honest, Janice is a Strathclyde name) but no lassies for us, not now, the Superman issue must be resolved and quickly, it’s ruining the night. ‘Elvis Presley!’ shouts Brian, at the same time as Frannie shouts, ‘Cliff Richard!’ then they look at each other, incredulous, and Brian says, ‘Cliff fuckin Richard?’ at the same time as Frannie says ‘Elvis fuckin Presley?’ and as they argue we screech towards Grangemouth, the refinery lights like an enormous art installation around us, pollution spewing from a crystal carapace, God’s own mad-scientist experiment, which we zip through as a chemical compound, as Brian goes, ‘Naw. Superman is yer All American Hero. He is America. He’s the King. He’s tay superheroes whit Elvis wis tay rock n roll.’
‘Whit?’ Frannie whines. ‘Aw Brian, yer insane. Superman’s yer typical straight-laced, squeaky clean, dae yer job wi the minimum ay fuss for fifty years, borin the tits aff everybody in the process sortay superhero. He’s no cool, dark an edgy like Batman. He’s no funny an smart like Spider-Man. He is a personality-free zone. If he didnay hae his job at the Daily Planet, mark ma words, he wid be releasin Christmas records every year,’ and the argument continues like this, even though Dolby tries to arrange another fishing trip to the Ness, even though Frannie’s phone chirrups Shaggy’s It Wasn’t Me six times and even though I’ve got my baseball cap on back-to-front like a rapper and I’m making unconvincing Eminem noises and everyone laughs, with affection, and I tell Dolby I’ve reached the bit in Lord of the Rings again where Frodo meets Shelob the spider and we discuss this, excited, like kids swapping stickers.
‘How dae you think they’ll dae that scene in the film?’ he asks, wiping his mouth, as if preventing himself from salivating, and Bruce Springsteen reminds us that it ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive, and we honour him, raising our Irn-Bru in a toast, making plans to drive right across America when Brian emigrates, like Thelma and Louise, swapping these drizzly streets and Daily Record vendors and all of Scotland’s crapness for wide-open desert landscapes, Belinda possessed by the spirits of Red Indians, as we drink Wild Turkey and get sunburnt and slam our glamorous Falkirk patter at yank chicks bored with Boston guys and we live on the road, forever the people, the ones who had a notion, a notion deep inside, and the Scotland game finishes 1–1 (a difficult away game to Croatia) and drunk on our own youth, speed, LedZepness, we roll down the windows and start singing
Bonny Scotland, Bonny Scotland,
We’ll support you ever more,
We’ll support you ever mooooooore
as one single male beast of a chorus, as Dolby suggests that, ‘we should go abroad, support the Tartan Army,’ his face bright with patriotism, which is weird, since the only places I’ve ever seen him patriotic about are Narnia and Middle-Earth.
‘Fuck that,’ Brian spews, ‘Rangers fans dinnay support Scotland abroad. Ye daft? We need oor money for the Champions League, man,’ making me and Dolby shake heads, unimpressed by the suddenly Hun atmosphere, then Dolby’s phone rings Start Me Up by the Rolling Stones, but he switches it off, whooping and slapping, why? for nothing really, no reason, just cos he can, just cos he can do things like wrench Belinda’s wheel and practise handbrake skids in a deserted area of Bainsford, grannies peering worriedly from behind net curtains at the screeching sound, the tyre tracks imprinted in the road,
our calling card, since we’re off again, too fast for them, too fucking fast for anybody, and then it’s a debate about our fantasy night out, our ideal drinking partners, and names like Gary Oldman, Lemmy, Keith Richards, Judd Nelson’s character in The Breakfast Club and Homer Simpson are bandied about and Frannie narrates like David Attenborough, ‘as Lemmy and Homer sink their twelfth pints, Brian Mann and Dolby sink to the floor and Alvin talks shite to a bored Keith Richards,’ and Brian’s mobile beeps the Top Gun theme and Dolby says, ‘So who would be Wonder Woman?’ and we all go, ‘Madonna!’ as another Irn-Bru is burst open and
The headlights become jewels in the flow of night. Our car is linked to them. We drape onwards, jewel after jewel, life after life, glittering in the distance. The road ahead is all that we know. The thrum of cat’s eyes on tyres. The beckoning threat of darkness. We keep good company against it, building a close, comforting fire with our laughter.
on Friday night, after I slouch home from school, there is a doctor in the kitchen speaking to Dad and Derek. I fumble about, boiling the kettle, while she chats politely, hands folded across her lap. After she leaves I collar Derek upstairs, turning Top of the Pops up full so Dad won’t hear.
‘He’s having a nervous breakdown,’ Derek tells me, over the wail of Placebo’s Slave to the Wage. ‘He isn’t mentally fit for work, but can apply for disability allowance.’
I sigh and place my forehead in my hand.
‘And one of us can apply for a Carer’s Allowance to stay home and watch him.’
I look at Derek. He looks back.
‘Hey, it’s no gonnay be me,’ I say. ‘Whit if I wantay go tay university?’
‘I thought that was for poofs.’
‘But whit if I decide I want tay go!’
‘Well, you can’t. Listen. I took my turn years ago.’
‘Aye awright,’ I say. ‘You fuckin left. Who d’ye think’s got him this far?’
‘And a fine job you’ve made of it! He’s had a nervous breakdown since I’ve been away. Oh, you are one selfish wee shite, Alvin.’
‘…’
‘Eh? Come on, Alvin, whit d’ye say?’
‘…’
‘Alvin?’
Frannie, in the backseat next to me, shakes my shoulder.
‘Alvin, yer a million miles away, man.’
‘Sorry. Just tired.’
‘Aye, well. Whit d’ye say? Ye want tay go pickin oranges in California?’
‘Oot Carmen Electra’s bra,’ says Brian filthily.
I look round the car. The three of them are staring, expectant. I scratch my nose, then eventually think I say something like, ‘every night I dream I’m in Aliens. Fightin monsters wi, um, big teeth,’ but they’ve started practising handbrake skids again and none of them hear me.
Dolby halts Belinda on the forecourt. Her brakes whine. We stumble out, almost bewildered, into Sunday morning, blinking like cats after our overnight fishing trip at Loch Ness. Last thing I remember before falling asleep was a particularly gruelling debate about which hairstyle Brian should adopt for the States when/if he goes. Frannie favours a classic mullet. I personally think he would look very dashing with Tom Cruise’s greasy do in Magnolia. Dolby reckons he should go baldy, right down to the wood and be done with it.
‘Why’ve we stopped?’ Brian yawns. ‘Whit’s the story?’
‘Morning glory.’
‘Petrol,’ Dolby grunts, wheel-fatigued. ‘Belinda could dae wi a drink.’
‘So the fuck could I.’
I stretch and look through the grey morning across the street, at toilet seats in the window of a bath showroom, their mouths gulping the cold air.
‘Whit’s yer favourite?’ Frannie asks.
‘That pink wan.’
‘Whit? Naw. See that lilac wan. Lavender seat.’
‘Frannie, yer insane,’ I cry. ‘A lavender seat?’
He shrugs, slaps a tempo on the car roof. ‘Ach, it’s aw shite anyway.’
On Friday, in class, I wrote a note to Tyra, telling her that I hope she is very happy with Connor. It took me fifteen minutes to write, probably missing valuable exam info. I wrote and wrote, my heart channelled through the pen onto the torn page of my homework diary, while she rested her flawless chin in her hand and gazed across the class at Connor, lovelorn. Then I folded the paper, wrote her name on it, and passed it across to her.
‘It’s aw shite!’ Frannie hoots. ‘Ye get it?’
She glanced up at me, took the note in her slim fingers and unfolded it.
‘Alvin, ye get it? It’s aw shite.’
As she read, her eyes gave little away. I watched them, sheathed in smooth lids, flicker along the lines. She seemed to hesitate over certain passages, pausing to re-read them, her brow furrowing gently. When she finished, she picked up her pen, scribbled, and slid the note back across the desk to me. It said
stay away from me, you fucking weirdo
We slam back into the car, Belinda refreshed and the rest of us waking. Fingers of light creep across the morning’s corpse, Brian guzzling at the bottle of whisky and Irn-Bru left over from the fishing. His brain revolves with hangover.
‘Guuuuh,’ he manages. ‘Fuckin Clapton solo in ma heid, man.’
‘Nay hangovers like that in California,’ I say.
‘Tell me about it,’ he says, brightening, ‘the hangovers ower there are like orgasms!’
The next week, Brian is picking the empty glasses from in front of his arse-nosed customers. Not that the booze-hounds notice, jammed into their Sun, Record, racing papers or even (one of Brian’s regulars, Terry, fancies himself as a bit of an intellectual, wears polo necks and everything) A History of Falkirk. Me, Frannie and Dolby are hunched over the bar like the Ochil Hills in miniature, Frannie watching Sportscene on the telly, Dolby talking to Brian about the Simpsons, while I read an interview with Bono in Q magazine (he looks very cool for 40). Orange streetlights simmer outside, Falkirk on fire. The pub is quietly beery. Decent jokes. Scrooge still trying to cadge a pound for Neil Diamond. Frannie peers at my copy of Q during the lull of a Motherwell feature.
‘Imagine Bono was perched on the end ay the bar,’ he beams. ‘Whit would ye ask him?’
‘I’d ask him whit the fuck he was daein in Fawkurt.’
‘Naw,’ Frannie shakes his head, Coisty-eyes glinting, ‘cos he’d be oor guest. We’d have bumped intay him backstage an invited him on a pub crawl roon Fawkurt–’
‘Aye right,’ I say. ‘Bono in Behind the Wall? Bono in the Newmarket? Bono in the Welly?’
‘Hiy,’ Frannie protests. ‘Bono widnay be seen deid in the Welly.’
The interview with Celtic’s new Latvian striker ends and Frannie resumes watching Sportscene as Terry clears his throat, officiously, wetting his finger and leafing through A History of Falkirk, just aching for one of us to say, ‘Interesting book, Tel?’
‘It is that, Brian,’ Terry nods ponderously. ‘Oor fair auld toon has quite the chequered past.’
‘Whit, Fawkurt?’ Frannie screws up his face. ‘Whit ever happened in Fawkurt?’
‘Ye’d be surprised,’ Terry replies, appalled by the ignorance and arrogance of this generation. ‘Youse boys should read aboot it some time. It’s yer hame toon.’
‘Ach, that’s a lot ay shite,’ Brian waves a dismissive hand. ‘Nane ay that mettirs. The here an noo’s whit counts, that’s it.’
‘Son,’ Terry shakes his head wearily, ‘ye’re young. Ye’ve no been oan the planet that long. It’s right that ye think like that. But ye’ll learn soon enough that ye canny ignore the past.’
‘Fuck that,’ Brian dismisses him, wiping the bar aggressively. ‘We’re the fuckin history ay Fawkurt, eh boys? This is oor toon.’
His face shines with an almost fascist superiority, opposed by so much age and crapness, Brian Mann, king of the master race of youth. The three of us raise our glasses to him and he bows.
‘Tay the history ay Fawkurt!’
‘The histo
ry ay Fawkurt!’
and the front window shatters, spraying coloured glass across the tables. Shouts from outside – ‘ya fuckin’ – and Brian is out with the speed of a cheetah. We follow him, confused, into the street, in time to see car lights disappearing round the corner and before we can even realise what’s happened Brian’s hustled us into Belinda, handing Frannie a pint glass, ‘At the next red light, get oot an chuck that at their fuckin winday,’ then he runs back into Smith’s and we’re giving chase, like in a film, Dolby swearing uncontrollably.
‘Who wis it, d’ye think?’ I ask.
Frannie with the pint glass in his hand is like a statue of justice.
finally
you’re paranoid
but not an android
‘Dunno.’ He looks at Dolby. ‘Cottsy?’
‘Or them fuckers fay the races,’ Dolby adds, screeching into the Cow Wynd and onto Comely Place, veering towards the traffic lights. Belinda roars righteously, and I want to be the one who throws the pint glass, feel it leave my hand, just like in the bottle fight at school, years ago –
But the streets are empty.
Even though we scour the roads like pirates for ten minutes they’ve gone. Dolby turns, sweating, and heads back to Smith’s. Behind the bar, Brian stands like a Goliath.
‘Yese get them?’
Dolby shakes his head, kicks a post, knowing he should have braked before he went over that boy’s leg at the burnout.
‘Right. The morra night,’ Brian vows. ‘We’re gon doon the races to see these fuckin–’
cars revving, in heat, the howling of chromium dogs. Engines noise each other up. Belinda slinks between them, sleek, fish-like. Eyes follow her through windscreens. There is fake cheering on the chorus of a dance track. The Central Scotland boyracer circuit gathered, and beneath my Radiohead t-shirt I flex scrawny muscles.
