Ecstasy

by Irvine Welsh

  It’s Samantha I want.

  I get ready and round to hers in double quick time. I’m back in a great mood just thinking about her because this fucking slagheap pulls out in front of me and instead of peeping him and tearing after him and giving him a mouthful, I just smile and raise my hand. Too nice a day to get all hot and bothered about a load of bleeding bollocks, innit.

  She’s got that look on her face. She ain’t wasting any time.

  – Take all your clothes off and lie on the bed, she said to me.

  Well, right, I did just that. I got out of those jeans, shirt and shoes. I took off my socks and my pants. As I climbed onto the bed I could feel the old knob starting to firm up.

  – I’ve always liked pricks, she said, wriggling out off her top like a snake. That’s what she moved like, a snake. – I find all limbs beautiful. You’ve got five and I’ve only got two. That means you have to give me one, doesn’t it?

  – Yeah, right … I said, my head starting to spin and my bleeding voice going all hoarse.

  She pulled off her leggings using her other foot, one leg at a time. They were like hands, them bleedin feet. The more I saw of her in action, the less I believed.

  I look at her naked for the first time. I’d thought about it n all, pulled myself off on the thought of it for fucking days. Funny, I always felt sort of, like guilty afterwards. Not on account of her having no arms, but like cause it was somebody you really care about which is fucking weird but I can’t help the sort of geezer I am or what I feel inside. She’s there in front of me. Her legs are so long and shapely, just like a gel’s should be, and she’s got that lovely flat stomach, a beautiful arse, great tits and that face. That fucking face, like a fucking angel’s. Then I looked at where her arms should be and I felt … sad.

  Sad, and fucking angry.

  – I love to fuck, she says. – I didn’t have to learn how. I was a natural. The first guy I had, I was twelve and he was twenty-eight. In the home. I blew his mind. It’s all in the hips, and nobody can use their hips like somebody like me. Nobody can use their mouth like me. A lot of men really like it, you know. Oh, I know, there’s the old pervy thing about fucking a freak …

  – Nah, you ain’t no freak. Don’t go talking about yourself in that way …

  She just smiles at me. – What it’s all about, though, is having access. No arms to fight off the boys. They like to think that there’s nothing I can do about it, no awkward arms to push them away, to stop them doing what they want to do. You like that, don’t you? You’ve got it all there, access to my breasts, my cunt, my arse. Anything you like. If only I had no legs either, eh? Just a fuck toy. You could rig up a harness, put me in it and have me any way you wanted, any time. You think I’m just defenceless, just here for you, for your steamy cock to penetrate, any time.

  This ain’t fucking right, her talking like that. It just ain’t fucking right. I’m getting paranoid here. She must’ve found that melon in the fridge that time … she must’ve.

  – If this is about the melon …

  – Wot you talking about? she asks.

  It ain’t that, thank fuck. I say back to her, – Wot you talking like that for? Eh? I love ya. I fucking love ya!

  – You mean you want to fuck me.

  – Nah, I love ya, don’t I.

  – You’re a bit of a disappointment to me, Mile End boy. Didn’t anybody ever tell you that there ain’t no love in this world? It’s all money and power. That’s what I understood: power. I grew up learning about it. The power we ran up against when we tried to get our compensation, our justice from them: the industrialists, the Government, the judiciary, from the whole fucking clique of them that run things. The way they fucking closed ranks and stuck together. It would’ve done you proud, Dave. Ain’t that what you and your Firm’s all about, in your own toytown way? The power to hurt. The power to have. The power to be somebody, to be so feared that nobody’ll ever fuck you around? Ever? But it’s misguided, though, Dave, cause there will always be somebody to fuck you around.

  – Maybe that’s wot I felt then, but I ain’t like that now. I know what I feel inside, I say to her. I cup my hand over my balls. My erection’s going and I feel fucking weird sitting here starkers with a naked bird and not doing nothing.

  – Well that’s too bad, my sweet little Firm boy. Because if that’s the case, you’re no good to me. I don’t need some fool who’s lost it. You men: you talk tough, but you always run away. Right from the start. My own fucking father ran away.

  – I ain’t fucking lost it! I’ll do anything for ya!

  – Good. In that case I’m going to suck you off until you’re as hard as you once were and then let you choose what you want to do with me. Your imagination is, as they say, the only frontier.

  That was what she said, and I couldn’t do nothing. I loved her and I wanted to look after her. I needed her to love me, not to talk like some fucking weird slut. I don’t go for gels talking like that. She must be reading some pretty grotty things or mixing with funny people to pick up that kind of talk.

  So I couldn’t do nothing, and you know what? I think she fucking well knew it would be that way: I’m fucking well sure she knew.

  She put a gown over her shoulders. It made her look so beautiful, cause the way it hung it made me think for a minute that she had arms. But if she had arms she wouldn’t even be sitting here with the likes of me. – When are you going to do Sturgess? she asked.

  – I can’t do that. I bleedin can’t.

  – If you really love me you’ll do it! Anything you fucking said! She screamed at me. She started crying. Fuck me, I can’t stand to see her crying.

  – It ain’t right. I dunno the geezer. It’s murder, innit.

  She looked at me, then sat down on the bed beside me. – Let me tell you a little story, she said. She sobbed it all out.

  When she was born, her old man scarpered. Couldn’t handle having a kiddie wot didn’t have no arms. Her old gel, well, she only went and bleedin well topped herself, didn’t she. So Samantha grew up in care. The Government and them in the courts took the side of them that made the drug, they didn’t even want to give her none of that compensation, for her or any of them kiddies born with no arms. That was the thing. It was only when the papers got a hold of it and started a campaign that they bleedin well coughed up. That fucking Sturgess, he was the cunt that caused it all, he got a bleedin knighthood, that fucking old slag. He was the main man, but they all protected him. He did that to my gel, my Samantha, and they gave him a sodding knighthood for his services to industry. There’s got to be a bit of justice going on here, innit. Don’t bear thinking about.

  So I just said to her that I would I do it.

  After that me n Samantha went to bed and made love. It was really beautiful, not like with The Slag. I got there proper n all, which made me feel so fucking good. And when I done it with her, I could only see her face, her beautiful face, and not that fucking Millwall queer-beast’s.

  Orgreave, 1984

  The term ‘terrorist’ sounded faintly ridiculous to Samantha Worthington’s ears. International terrorist sounded crazier still. Samantha Worthington, who grew up in a home outside Wolverhampton, and had been abroad once, to Germany. There was also another trip to Wales. Two trips, where the prospect of capture had always been present. Two occasions where she felt more alive, more redeemed than ever, and more motivated for her next one. – It does not work like that, Andreas told her. – We go to sleep for a long time. Then we wake and strike. And then, it is time to sleep again.

  Part of Samantha had done more than see the possibility of capture; in one corner of her mind she’d embraced it as her destiny. Her story would be told, and although there would be revulsion at her actions, there would be sympathy as well. It would polarise things, and that was what was needed. She knew that she’d either be portrayed as a cold-blooded psychopath, ‘Red Sam, International Terrorist’, or as a silly, innocent young girl, duped by more sinister
figures. Wicked Witch or Gullible Angel: a misleading but inevitable choice. Which one would she play up to? The fantasy crossed her mind time and time again as she rehearsed both the roles in her head.

  Samantha knew that the truth about her was infinitely more complex. She looked at the force that was pushing her: revenge; and the one that was pulling her: love; and reasoned that she could do nothing else. She was a prisoner, but a willing one. There was a lightness about Andreas that indicated that he could forget all this, once the wrongs had been righted. It was just an indication and, again, Samatha knew deep down that it was improbable. Hadn’t he started talking about moving from single-issue causes to the whole business of state oppression? Yes, it was a mere indication, but as long as it existed, she would be with him.

  Andreas, for his part, understood that all it took was discipline. That and discretion. The difference between them and the people who were ostentatiously radical or revolutionary was in their low profiles. They were ordinary citizens, not politicos, to the outside world. Samantha let this guard drop only once.

  Some friends of hers in London were on a Miners’ Support Committee and they talked her into going to Orgreave. The sight of beleaguered representatives of the working class in full battle with the oppressive forces of the state proved too much. She had snaked her way to the front line where the pickets pushed against the police cordons which protected the scabs. She was compelled to act.

  The young Met white-shirt drafted up from London on the promise of a healthy pay-packet bloated by overtime in service to his Government masters could not believe that the girl with no arms had just dispatched a violent kick to his testicles. As his eyes watered and he struggled to draw breath, he watched her disappear into the mob.

  A hidden camera, positioned in a white van, had also witnessed Samantha’s actions and departure.

  London, 1990

  Bruce Sturgess sat in a chair in his spacious garden on the banks of the Thames at Richmond. It was a hot, fresh summer’s day as Sturgess looked languidly out onto the rolling waters of the river. A horn from a passing boat sounded and some people waved from the deck as it cruised by him. As he wasn’t wearing his spectacles, Sturgess didn’t recognise the boat, far less the people on it, but he lazily waved back at the collection of smiles and sunglasses, feeling at one with his small part of the world. Then, for some reason that he didn’t want to explore, he pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket. It read, in spidery handwriting:

  MY MYSTERY MAN, PLEASE PHONE ME. JONATHAN.

  There was a number with a large X beside it. That pathetic little urchin. Did he really think that he, Bruce Sturgess, Sir Bruce Sturgess, would compromise himself with a mercenary little rent-boy from the meat-rack? There were plenty more of those filthy ten-a-penny queen whores down there, their faces set in artificial innocence, just the way he liked it. No, thought Sturgess, there were many choice cuts to select from on the rack. What he really needed, though, was someone who could be relied upon to be discreet. He crushed the slip of paper in his hand, allowing himself to be overwhelmed by a delicious surge of violence. After this wave subsided, it was replaced by a fleeting sense of panic as he flattened out the paper and slipped it back into his pocket. Bruce Sturgess couldn’t bring himself to throw it away. Instead he settled back to watch the boats slide idly down the Thames.

  Sturgess began reflecting back on his life, something which he tended to do quite a lot since his retiral. This generally never gave him anything less than satisfaction. The afterglow from the knighthood had still not worn off. It was good to be called Sir Bruce – not just for the best restaurant tables, hotel suites, directorships and all the other trappings – it just sounded good to him, aesthetically pleasing to his ear. – Sir Bruce, he repeated softly to himself. He did this often. However, if anyone deserved it, they all said, it was him. He’d steadily climbed the corporate ladder, moving from a professional scientific research and development background into management, then into the boardroom at United Pharmacology, the drugs, food and alcoholic beverages conglomerate. Tenazadrine had undoubtedly been something of a blemish. Heads had rolled after it, but it was just another corporate disaster for Bruce Sturgess to worm out of. Somebody less senior and less shrewd would always be there to take the rap, and there were many in that position vis-à-vis Bruce Sturgess. His cool manoeuvrings on this issue had only increased his stock as a smooth operator.

  The tragedy had been one he assessed purely in terms of pounds: the monies lost to the company. Sturgess refused to look at the newspaper ‘human-interest’ reports and the television pictures of the Tenazadrine children. Limbs and deformities seldom entered his thinking. There was a period when it was not so: during his stint in New York, where the tempting anonymity of life in that city had become too much, he had been forced to come to terms with a side of his sexuality he’d repressed since his schooldays. It was then he realised what it was like to be different, and a terrifying empathy had stricken him for a while. Thankfully it hadn’t lasted.

  He remembered the very first time his Tenazadrine legacy forcibly impacted on his life. He had set up a game of cricket with his two young sons on Richmond Common. The stumps were positioned and Sturgess was ready to bat when something crossed his line of vision. In the distance he saw a small child without any legs. The boy was propelling himself along on some kind of trolley, like a skateboard, using his arms. It was perverse, obscene. Briefly Sturgess felt like Dr Frankenstein in the Baron’s lowest moments.

  He didn’t make the drug, he told himself over and over, he only bought it from the Krauts and sold it. Yes, there were the murmurings – more than murmurings, there was the report he suppressed indicating that the tests were not as stringent as they could have been and that the toxicity of the drug was greater than at first believed. As a former chemist, he really ought to have taken a greater interest in that side of things. But this was Tenazadrine, the wonder pill for pain-relief. Nothing had gone wrong in the past, with similar products. Besides, there were competitors for the franchise to market the drug in the UK. They would not hang about and Sturgess felt that he could not afford to either. He signed the deal with the German, the strange fellow, in the lounge at Heathrow. The Kraut had got cold feet, started bleating on about more tests needing to be done, and passed him over a copy of this report.

  Too much, though, was invested in the drug not to put it on the market. Too much time, too much money, and too much in terms of the credibility of certain corporate careers, his being one of them. The report was never passed on, it was incinerated on the open fire at Sturgess’s West London home.

  All this flashed back when Sturgess saw this child, and for the first time he felt a crippling flood of guilt. – You chaps carry on, he squeaked to his bemused sons as he staggered back to the car, trying to compose himself, breathing hard until the apparition had gone from his sight. Then he got on with the game of cricket. You coped, he reasoned. It was the English way: that ability to compartmentalise pain and guilt into a separate and secure part of your psyche, like burying sealed vats of radio-active waste inside granite.

  He remembered old Barney Drysdale; Barney who had been with him all the way.

  – I feel bloody haunted, Barney, he had told his colleague.

  – Pull yourself together, old son. We make one dodgy product and we get all this bad publicity. We just have to tough it out; the gentlemen of the press will soon find another fad to concern themselves with. All the life-saving work we’ve done through advances in drug technology and nobody gives a monkey’s. We all have to stand together at a time like this. All those prying journalists and bleeding hearts think you never have to pay a price for progress. Well, they are wrong!

  It had been a good talk; done wonders for Bruce Sturgess’s state of mind. Barney was a reassuring fellow. He taught him to be selective about what one deliberates on, to concentrate on one’s virtues, to leave the guilt to our foreign friends. Yes, it was the English way. He missed Barney greatly. His
friend had perished in a fire in his Pembrokeshire cottage several years ago. They blamed some Welsh Nationalist extremists. Scum, thought Sturgess. Some might say just retribution, but Bruce Sturgess didn’t believe in that. It was just bloody bad luck.

  Who was the Kraut again? he sleepily thought as he dozed in the heat. Emmerich. Gunther Emmerich. Sir Bruce drifted off with the sun in his face. I never forget a name, he thought smugly.

  Fitted Up

  We got just over a hundred of the Firm together to trash Newcastle. Things were getting a bit fucking tight. With this Taylor Report and these all-seated stadiums on the way, this might be one of the last seasons for a full-scale terracing ruck. They were already starting work on grounds up and down the bleedin country. Killing the fucking game, those cunts.

  For this one we knew that the filth would be out in force so there was no prospect of a major toe-to-toe. Bal and I gave strict instructions on Friday night down the Grave Maurice: no cunt was to be tooled up as such. The filth were arresting people for anything these days. The whole operation was to be a show of strength, a bit of PR: show them fucking fat Geordie gits that the Cockney lads ain’t lost it. We’ll fling them a few sharpened pound coins, sing a few songs and generally treat their slum like the fucking toilet it is. But we won’t do nothing in the ground itself: nothing that’s gonna fill the cells with the Firm. Bal n me was giving all the orders; nobody from the Ilford was batting a fucking eyelid, nor none of them other fuckers.

  Anyway, thirty-two of us were to get up on the train from King’s Cross, hitting a boozer we’d picked out in Geordieland for opening time at eleven. Another thirty-odds would be coming up on the nine o’clock to get into this other pub, a few hundred yards away. The third were coming up on a supporters’ bus, done up as scarfers for the journey, and they would get into Newcastle about one. The idea was that they would split up into two factions and head for both the pubs. They would be the bait to entice out the Geordie gits who wanted some, then we’d steam in and do them. We’d sent two Scouts up on Friday lunchtime, and they were keeping us posted on the mobiles.