Espedair Street

by Iain Banks

  This was, after all, the woman I'd promised to take away from here, even if she'd been sure at the time it could never happen and it was all just a pipedream. But I'd spoken a kind of vow, made some form of pledge to her, hadn't I?

  Suddenly I wanted to hug her right there; take her by the shoulders and say, 'Come away with me; come to London, come and see me be famous. Be my girlfriend, be mine, or just be a friend, but don't stay here; come away!' I was so fired up with enthusiasm for life in general and my own future in particular that nothing seemed impossible just then; I could do what I wanted, I could make things happen, I could command the world. If I wanted Jean to come with me, I could do it. Difficulties and problems would evaporate before the brilliant force of my decided future. Why not? Why the hell shouldn't I ask her?

  I thought about it. Why not, indeed? We liked each other; maybe we'd even loved each other, and we'd been nearly-lovers, or just-lovers. The only reason we'd split up was because I'd been so clumsy in every way with her; but I was getting better at controlling myself now. My stutter had improved, I was tramping on fewer feet and spilling fewer drinks — all right, so I'd spilled a little of Jean's a few minutes ago, but that was nothing compared to what she was used to me doing— and best of all I didn't get so embarrassed any more; I'd never again leave without seeing her, without saying goodbye. But why not make up for leaving without seeing her that time at the hospital? Why not make it so I'd never have to say goodbye again? Why not?

  There was a quivering, terrifying but incredibly exciting, almost sexually intense feeling in my belly as I thought about asking Jean to come with me. It was like the feeling I used to get playing chess in the school club, when I'd set up some trap, or had seen a brilliant, game-winning move, but it was my opponent's move, and I was sitting there, trying not to tremble or sweat, praying that they wouldn't see the danger they were in. The same feeling I used to get in class, knowing I had something to say and trying to pluck up the courage to say it...

  The words were forming like a song in my mind. But would it be right to speak them?

  This was my one big chance. I'd been outrageously lucky so far; I felt like I must have used up the luck of half a dozen normal lifetimes just to get here; there'd never be another opportunity like this. Could I afford to push it even further, try to make that luck stretch to encompass two rather than one? Was it wise or even possible to burden myself with more things to think about, another person to worry over ?

  I might speak, I might say all I felt and persuade her to come with me, and then screw it up. Even if I was going to screw it up anyway, and her being there would have no effect for good or ill, could I take on the responsibility of messing up her life as well as my own?

  And... wouldn't it be wiser to wait? See how things worked out. Set out unencumbered for the big bad city and take the risks with only myself to worry about, and then, if I was successful, I could always come back, having prepared the way, and ask Jean to come with me then. Spare her the times of hassle and hard work and nerves, when all was uncertainty and worry. Wouldn't that be better?

  And wasn't Jean already part of my past, part of Paisley and school and all that had gone before? That might sound cruel, but how could I ever know the truth of it without getting away from everything I'd known until now, so enabling me to see it all in perspective?

  I hesitated, on an edge of indecision.

  'Well, look, Daniel, I've got to go.' Jean finished her drink.

  She looked at her watch. 'Ma mum's expectin me; I'm late already. D'you mind?' She picked up her bag from the seat.

  I felt dismayed, let down, but said, 'No, of course not. Hey, I hope I didn't keep you too long.'

  She got up, stood by the table. I stood too, feeling awkward, wondering if I should kiss her cheek, or cuddle her, or shake her hand, or what. She just nodded at me, looked me up and down, took a deep breath and said, 'Well, Daniel; just don't forget all your old pals when you're famous.'

  I laughed. 'Aw, naw ... no...'

  She smiled with one side of her mouth. 'See you, Daniel.'

  'Aye... yeah, see you, umm, Jean.' I'd almost called her Chris. I watched her go to the lounge door and out into the sunlight.

  I sat down again, feeling suddenly deflated.

  There were a couple of old guys over in one corner of the lounge, quietly playing dominoes, nursing their hauf an haufs. Old, grey, hunched, small, I don't think I'd even noticed them when Jean and I had first entered the bar. I shrugged to myself and went back to my drink.

  It was only about ten minutes later, finishing my pint, that I realised I'd forgotten to ask Jean how well her arm and collar bone had healed.

  FIVE

  I woke up in a panic. I didn't even know what was causing it at first, but there was an alarming, erratic whirling and chopping noise filling my bedroom in the folly's tower. I got my eyes open at last and sat up — head pounding after an afternoon, evening and night drinking with McCann — to discover a pigeon fluttering madly about the room. It careened from wall to wall like a fly in a jam jar, scattering feathers behind it and making bewildered, terrified cooing noises. It headed towards the window and thumped against the glass, losing more feathers and leaving a long stream of shit sliding down the glass. It bounced back through the air, circled briefly and then had another go, cracking its head against the glass.

  The pigeon repeated this manoeuvre three times while I was still trying to focus properly and untangle myself from the bedclothes. Each time it missed the opened top section of window — which it must have flown in through — by a few centimetres. I fell out of bed and knocked over the loudspeaker that serves as a bedside table, spilling a glass of water and a silvery container full of some sluggish brown mess allover the sheepskin rug. I lay staring at the debris for a moment or two, wondering what it was, then saw the chunks of meat and the plastic fork sticking out of the glutinously spreading pile of food; I could smell it, too; curry. Must have gone for a take-away last night.

  The pigeon slammed against the glass again. 'Cretin!' I shouted, and heaved a pillow at it. The pillow hit the opened top window and wedged in the gap. The bird increased its frantic efforts to smash the glass. I struggled off the floor, dragging most of the bedclothes after me, hauled the pillow out of the top window and started waving my hands about to try and guide the bird through the gap. The main part of the window wasn't designed to open, so there wasn't much else I could do.

  It was like trying to catch a small feathered explosion. The bird twittered, crapped on my bed, thumped into a wall and started circling round the light fixture in the centre of the ceiling. It swooped towards me, veered away again, then made for the window once more. I looked at the mess it had left on my bed, and the mess I'd left on the rug. I thought about heaving the loudspeaker through the window so the animal could escape that way, but the window looked onto St Vincent Street and I didn't want to brain a pedestrian. I decided to leave the stupid beast to it. With any luck it would get out on its own, or break its neck. My hangover required attention.

  The bird shot over my head and down the tower's spiral staircase the instant I opened the door. I stood breathing heavily, then followed it downstairs.

  It was nearly one by the time I felt sufficiently rehydrated to face the outside world. The Griffin was the place to go; if McCann was there he might be able to tell me what I'd done the previous day. My memory entered a sort of grey area sometime round about the middle of the evening, after we left the Griff. We'd gone for a meal then, hadn't we? ... in fact I thought we'd gone to the Ashoka for a curry, and not a take-away either. I also had a vague recollection of stumbling about in the darkness on a curiously deserted piece of roadway, but that was about all that came back to me. The question was, where had my body picked up all these aches and pains?

  I had a shower and inspected myself for signs of damage. I already knew about my grazed hands and barked knuckles, but my knees were bruised and cut too, and there was a big bruise forming on my le
ft hip. My face showed no signs of damage beyond that inflicted by my genes. Looked like I hadn't been in a fight (not that I normally get into fights, but barked knuckles always make you wonder).

  My coat was hanging over the large samovar in the choir. The rest of my clothes were missing. A cooing noise came from somewhere overhead, but the pigeon wasn't visible anywhere amongst the plaster scrollwork and dark wood beams of the roof, sixty feet overhead.

  The place was cold. I have an industrial space heater which looks like a small jet engine on a large wheelbarrow and runs on paraffin; I lit it and stood twenty feet downwind, keeping warm and drying my hair at the same time, while I dug some new clothes out of an old trunk. I chose a pair of trainers that matched, just for a change.

  I felt okay. Coffee, orange juice and most of a bottle of Irn Bru (not the diet version), seemed to have restored my body's fluid level. A handful of paracetamol had blasted the headache, and a couple of seasickness tablets dealt with my queasy stomach. And, no, I was not set for another day's hard drinking; I'm not that stupid, not these days.

  McCann wasn't there but Wee Tommy was. Tommy is seventeen or eighteen, tall and thin, and sports a shaved blond head. He is always dressed completely in black. Style; New Austerity. My other occasional accomplice.

  Just as McCann is too old to have heard of me in my Weird incarnation, so Tommy is too young. Too young to care if not to know about; to him even Punk is something from the bright and distant past, and anything before that is from some almost mythical age. He regards bands like Frozen Gold as the musical equivalents of multinational corporations; big, efficient, heartless, impersonal, profitable, and with interests and values either irrelevant to his, or opposed. Don't entirely disagree myself. Anyway, he too thinks I'm just the folly's minder, not its owner. He's shown even less interest in Weird than McCann, he just thinks St Jute's is a cool place to hang out, man. (That's almost a direct quote by the way. Don't ask me what's going on; fashions in language have always confused me, too.)

  'Drink?'

  'Aw, it's yerself Jim ... Aye, I'll take a wee voddy.'

  I got Tommy a large vodka. I was on English shandies; half and half beer and lemonade. 'Aw, Jim,' Tommy said, 'could I have a half a heavy for TB?'

  'Aye,' I said, looking round. I'd thought Tommy was alone. 'Who?'

  'The dug.' Tommy pointed to his feet. Under the table there was a large black dog lying with its massive head resting on its sphinxed legs; looked like a cross between an alsatian and a wolfuound ... or maybe just a wolf. It lifted its head and growled at me; I growled back and it snorted, lowered its head onto its arm-thick forelegs, probably going back to the contemplation of which of the regulars to gnaw on first.

  'In an ashtray, that all right, Jim?'

  'What?'

  'The heavy; could ye get Bella to put it in an ashtray?'

  'Dyae waant a straight ashtray, aye?' The wee wifey behind the bar said as soon as I turned back to order the hound's bevvy.

  I admired Bella's toothless smile for a moment and couldn't think of a smart reply. ' Just as it comes, Bella,' I told her.

  'That thing yours?' I sat down with Tommy between me and the beast's teeth and watched it lap enthusiastically at the beerfilled ashtray. Damn hound spilled less than I normally do.

  'Naw, it's ma uncle's. I'm lookin after it while he's in the hospital.'

  'What bit of him did it eat?'

  'Na; he's in tae get his piles done.' Tommy grinned. 'He'll only be a few days. You wouldnae bite anybody, would ye, TB?' He reached down and scratched the animal vigorously behind its neck. The dog didn't seem to notice. 'That you on the shandies, big yin?' Tommy looked at my glass.

  'Aye. I'm looking for McCann to tell me what we did last night.'

  'You up to no good, aye?'

  'Probably.' I looked at my barked knuckles.

  Drink is bad for you. It's a drug. A poison. Of course I know that; don't we all? It just so happens it's legal and available and accepted and there's a whole tradition of enjoying it and suffering the consequences, even boasting about the consequences, and that tradition is especially strong here in Scotland, and especially in the west, and especially in Glasgow and surrounding areas...

  I drink too much but I enjoy it, and I've never once woken up needing a drink; water, orange juice, something fizzy like lemonade, yes... hundreds and hundreds of times, but never the hard stuff. If I ever do I just hope I can catch it there and stop it going any further. All the best alkies start out this way, I'm sure.

  But of course I'm different.

  Ah, dear God... many a good man ruined by drink...

  The only person I ever saw ruined by drink was my father, and he wasn't a good man in the first place.

  'Your YTS scheme finished, or what?' I asked Tommy. He'd been providing cheap labour for a furniture manufacturer over the past few months.

  'Aye; finished early. Got ma cards.'

  'How come?'

  'Ah, Ah was sniffin the glue, ye know? This foreman caught me in the bog wi a plastic bag over ma heid.'

  I shook my head. 'You're a mug.' I tried not to sound too much like just another adult.

  'Aye, yer right; wiznae even the right glue.'

  'What?'

  'Water based, or sumthin. Ah'd been there sniffin for about an hour. Ah got sumthin at first like; a sort aw buzz, ye know? But nothin spectacular. Ah'd wondered how that wiz; Ah'd a big enough tin a glue. Smelled horrible too.'

  'Water based...' I shook my head, and felt too much like an adult. What had I been like at his age?

  'Ach, ye've got tae try these things, ye know?' Tommy told me. 'Ye never know.'

  'You know/ You never know' ... no, it wasn't worth mentioning. I marvelled at Tommy's attitude. When I was his age I was paranoically careful. I used my flatmates as guinea pigs, I sought out people who'd been using drugs for years and carried out my own covert psychological examination on them, I even read medical journals to find out what the side effects of the most popular drugs were. Tommy seemed to approach things from exactly the opposite direction; when in doubt, try it out.

  I'd survived, but would Tommy? I could just hear him: 'Strychnine? Aye, gie us a wee dod a that...' Holy shit. Babes and innocents.

  Little ding bat had even tried smack. I'd surprised him when he told me that; I took him by the collar and pushed him up a wall and told him if he touched the stuff again I'd shop him to the polis. Didn't mean a word of it, but it seemed to impress him. 'Aye, okay then big yin, don't get in a fuss. Ah like glue better anyway, apart from the headaches.' (To which my reply was 'Oh, for God's sake...')

  Oi! These kids today!

  But was I just jealous? H was about the only drug I'd never tried; the one substance I was genuinely frightened of, because I knew I had an addictive personality and one taste might be too many. Crazy Davey had tried it and given it up, though not without a struggle, and not without losing Christine for a while, but I didn't think that I'd be able to stop. So, did I envy Tommy his experience? I didn't know.

  And what was I supposed to say to him? Don't try all the things I've tried? Stay off grass and cultivate the weed? Holy shit; there's logic for you.

  Peddle one of the least harmful drugs humanity's ever discovered, and you get twenty years. Peddle something that kills a hundred thousand a year... and you get a knighthood.

  Hell no, I don't know what to say to kids like Tommy. It wasn't until I talked to him I even knew what sniffing glue did. You hallucinate, is it, basically. A cheap, nasty, short-lived acid substitute that gives you pounding headaches.

  This is progress?

  The dog looked up from a dry and empty ashtray, and growled. 'I think he's wantin another one,' Tommy said, digging into one black trouser pocket.

  'Nothing for me,' I told him as he got up, taking the ashtray with him. The dog watched him go, then lowered its head onto its paws again. 'When's it his round?' I shouted to Tommy.

  'It's his next,' he told me, quite seriously. I loo
ked at him. 'Naw, really; ma uncle gied us a tenner tae buy the dug's drink while I'm looking after him.'

  'I bet he leaves before it's his shout.' Tommy brought the ashtray back full of beer and put it down in front of the dog. It sniffed at the beer then looked up at him silently. 'Hmm,' Tommy said, scratching his head. 'Doesnae eem to want it.'

  'Maybe he wanted a clean ashtray.'

  'Aye... it's a fussy beast sometimes.' He knelt down and risked his right hand again, chuckling the dog under its chin. Its jaws looked like a fur-lined mantrap. 'Yer a fussy beast, aren't ye, TB?'

  The door opened and McCann came in, looking a little grey.

  He looked down at Tommy on his way to the bar. 'Ma Goad, Tommy, Ah've seen ye with some right dugs in here, but that yin takes the biscuit.' He winked at me. ' Aye, big yin, how's yer heid? ... Mornin, Bella; usual, please.'

  'Hi, Mr McCann.' Tommy is strangely deferential to those older than me.

  'My head's fine,' I told McCann. 'How's yours?'

  'It'll be better by the time I get this down me,' McCann said, bringing a pint of heavy and a whisky to the table. He shifted a canine leg out of the way with his foot as he sat down opposite, and ignored the resulting snarl.

  'Hair of the dog?' I suggested.

  'Just maintaining an even strain, James; just maintaining an even strain.' He supped his beer. Wee Tommy sat down again. Sounds of lapping came from under the table.

  McCann drained half of each drink, then looked under the table. 'That your dug, Toammy?'

  'Ma uncle's,' Wee Tommy said. 'It's name's TB.'

  'Disnae look ill...' McCann said, looking puzzled.

  'Whit were you two up tae last night then?' Tommy asked McCann.

  'Ho, you no remember, big yin?' McCann winked at me.

  'Dancing in the road,' I said. ' And I know we went for a take-away.

  'McCann started laughing. 'That aw?' He found this highly amusing. 'Dancing on a "road"! Ho ho ho!' He finished the whisky, shook his head. 'Ho ho ho!'