Children of Albion Rovers

by Laura Hird

  Leaving Jonah to his quest he escaped into the beckoning bathroom at the top of the hall. As he peed he heard her coming back upstairs and the argument resuming. Glowering at his flaccid prick, he hid it back in his trousers and considered just going home. He was on a high low from the grass and whisky and sexual struggles, however, there was also the now-or-never question to ponder. The thought of taking her out after the exams was rapidly losing its appeal. It would be too complicated, too much hassle. Of course he still wanted to fuck her, yes, but this preliminary crap took too much effort and made him feel ancient. Foreplay was bad enough but this – Jesus! And that grass had fucked him up too. He’d never have guessed that Jenny would be into all that, and who’s to say it stopped there? She could be into anything. Fumbling in his shirt pocket he caressed the condom wrapper for reassurance. Sod it. Just brass it out for a little longer, fuck her and be done with it.

  She was waiting, sheepishly for him in the bedroom when he got back through. Jonah was still rummaging around in David’s room.

  ‘I’m sorry I lost my temper a bit there. It’s his fault. I had it all planned and he’s spoiling everything.’

  Mmm, ‘planned’? Planning to seduce your teacher surely involved masturbation. Is that what she meant, he wondered. He purred inwardly.

  ‘Anyway, he’s just after a smoke,’ she continued, shaking an envelope in front of him, ‘He’ll stay for one joint and then go.’

  ‘You really think so?’

  ‘Definitely, it’s all he’s after. I’m really sorry about all this. I’ll make it up to you when he’s gone.’

  The enticing offer subdued his irritation somewhat but his nerves were still shot to bits. Jenny laid the envelope on top of her bookcase and went through to bring the glad tidings to the twitchy one. He came rushing back through behind her.

  ‘Where? Where?’ he screamed, his eyes devouring the room. No sooner had she pointed it out to him than he had it opened and was taking a flamboyant sniff.

  ‘Oh ya beauty, ya fucking wee beauty!’ he screamed at Jenny, humbled and happy at last. The idea that a toaty wee pile of smelly twigs could bring such jubilation in these materialistic times was slightly heartening.

  ‘Can I skin up here, like. PURLEEEASE. I’m fucking gimping?’

  His excited reaction was making her smile.

  ‘Don’t get too settled then. We’re going soon.’

  ‘Anything you say sweetheart. Anything you say,’ however, he’d probably have agreed to anything since he was practically pishing himself with joy.

  Jonah ran his fingers and wobbly eyes across the spines of Jenny’s Penguin Classics, pulled out Mrs Dalloway and threw himself onto the bed, rolling a lethal-looking brute of a joint on it in the time it might take someone not travelling at cartoon speed to take the wrapper off a new packet of cigarettes and get one in their mouth. His joints were parsnips to Jenny’s gentle runner beans. He found himself strangely captivated as Jonah gibbered on about Morocco trying to get into the EC and the European Commission telling them they had to clean up their act first, and his heinous tales of evil American drug enforcement people going over and spraying poison on all the cannabis crops. Tears welled in his eyes as this dreadful tale of man’s inhumanity to man was emotionally recounted. What lives other people had to lead.

  ‘Like it’s serious shit, I’m telling you. No more solids, man. Plastic and diesel, that’ll be it. The coffee shops in Amsterdam are even closing down, like, a few of them, I tell you. With the kikes getting stuck into the Lebanon again, like …’ he nodded his head in despair. ‘Its serious shit, I tell you.’

  Shaking the envelope in front of them his face returned to its reassuring idiot grin.

  ‘Fucking gold dust this, I’m telling you.’

  He wondered if Jonah ended every sentence with the words, ‘I tell you’.

  Flamboyantly producing a zippo from the pocket of his denim shirt he lit the joint, taking in several lungfulls until his intense, jittery eyes shut and a sublime smile hatched on his mean little mouth. Reclining against Jenny’s headboard he languished in it, savouring each draw like it was the final cigarette of a condemned man.

  ‘Aw, that’s beautiful, man. This is the longest I’ve gone without it for years.’

  ‘How long has it been?’ asked Jenny, enjoying the fact that she’d unwittingly brought light into someone’s dark and dreary life.

  ‘Three days, man. Three long fucking awful days. This famine’s going to kill me, I tell you. I’ve fallen out with every cunt already.’

  Edging over to the end of the bed, Jonah offered the joint to him.

  ‘No, no thanks. I don’t touch the stuff. Good job really by the sounds of it.’

  Leaning over to get a better look at him, Jonah hissed through his teeth.

  ‘Oh yeah! I’d see a doctor if I were you. Worst case of conjunctivitis I’ve seen in a long time.’

  Shit. What was wrong with his eyes? He hadn’t noticed them in the toilet, but then he’d been too busy lamenting his lifeless cock. He spoke, if only to change the subject.

  ‘So what are you doing with yourself these days? Scrap metal business still doing well?’

  Jonah looked confused. ‘Eh?’

  ‘Still liberating people’s cars and crashing them I mean.’

  ‘Aye, good one mate,’ he smirked, rolling his eyes towards Jenny in a ‘who-is-this-sad-fuck’ way and handing her the joint.

  ‘Not even the odd ram raid on bank holidays?’ he continued, determined to undermine the little bastard.

  Jonah shook his head and sat on the bed above him in an attempt to intimidate he supposed.

  ‘Stealing motors is for neds, right. I’m a businessman now. Computer chip procurement consultant you might say. And I bet I make more than you do teaching, I tell you.’

  Desperate as he was to give the little shit a right verbal assault he recalled how easy to antagonise he’d been at school where he’d been expelled for belting a female teacher. Despite not wishing to find out if he still bore a grudge against the teaching profession, he couldn’t resist a little dig.

  ‘I always knew you’d make a success of your life.’

  ‘Aye, fuck you!’ Jonah whispered.

  Jenny gave him a look of disgust and a sharp kick in the leg as she passed the joint back to her friend apologetically.

  ‘Like I said. We’ve got to go out soon for this tutorial …’

  Tutorial? What fucking tutorial?

  ‘… so make one more for the road then we’ll have to make a move.’

  Jonah sucked at the joint from one hand, assembling cigarette papers and picking grass from the envelope with the other.

  ‘So where’s your “tutorial” then?’ he drawled, mocking her use of a word so obviously alien to him.

  ‘Oh, that pub in Dalry. What’s it called again? The one opposite the garage?’

  ‘The Balmoral?’ they both yelped in disbelieving unison.

  What was she raving about. Obviously she’d never been in the dive in question.

  ‘So is it just the lassiesget this treatment orisit somenew concept in education?’ he addressed him over the side of the bed. ‘… naw, naw, wait, don’t tell me, it’s the overcrowding?’

  He resolved to try and humour the guy. Even the sharpest wit couldn’t get one over on a numptie like him. You just spoke over their heads.

  ‘It’s just my way of making sure I’m not the only one going into school with a hangover in the morning, you know?’

  ‘Ooooooh! Isn’t he with-it?’ minced Jonah, thrusting the joint in front of him again, ‘… go on, surely a hip old thing like you can allow himself a couple of toaks.’

  Upon his refusal, Jonah took two last puffs and ground the roach into the ashtray.

  ‘So what time is this so-called “tutorial”?’ he asked, lighting up the next joint before he’d finished exhaling the last one.

  ‘About 10.30,’ he interjected, thinking, it must be nearly that time, alth
ough he couldn’t see the face of the alarm clock from where he was sitting. Jenny apparently could, however, as he noticed her cringing before Jonah looked up from his watch and chirped, ‘Excellent. Plenty time to twist up a few more of these.’

  The strong urge to just go home was again toyed with until the promise of that tight, young fanny made him decide to grin and bear it. Jonah now tore cigarette papers out of their packet, licking them together like a man possessed.

  ‘I’ll take a bit home with me too if you don’t mind. Dave said I could, oh, and a glass of that Grouse would go down a treat.’

  Jenny forced a tight smile, poured them all a drink and sat down in cross-legged resignation in front of them. Half an hour, two more whiskies and several joints were passed as they listened in virtual silence to Jonah giving a monologue about the evil of drink, the joys of drugs, security cameras, TV ads for football boots, the crime wave which would apparently follow the cannabis drought, a girl he thought fancied him who sounded more like she was on the verge of having him done for stalking, how over-rated The X-Files was, the dogs’ dirt problem in Gorgie, what a slapper his father’s new girlfriend was, Jimmy Corkhill in Brookside giving honest drug dealers a bad name, a boy called Dode he’d been at school with who used to make the young boys pee in front of him … My God he was a mine of useless information. With nothing but the whisky and the few puffs of a joint he’d had when Jonah was in the toilet to sustain him, he listened, fascinated, mute until finally, at 10.15, they left the house in a bid to finally be rid of this obnoxious, greedy paki.

  The shock of the fresh night air after the stuffy claustrophobia of Jenny’s room invigorated him briefly until the biting cold and space made him feel a bit weird. It had been foolish to take more of that grass but he’d needed something to see him through the bullshit he’d been forced to listen to for the past half hour.

  Huddling his jacket round him for warmth and because it made him feel slightly safer he followed them down the street, consciously trying to walk as normally as possible, unable to remember what this entailed. As they reached the library the pungent smell of grass again invaded his nostrils and he realised to his horror that Jonah had lit another joint.

  They stopped at the bus stop directly opposite a police caravan which had been set up as an incident room following the murder of a girl up the street the previous weekend. He kept a distance from them, happy in his assumption that Jonah seemed finally to be pissing-off but anxious about the possibility of surveillance from the police van.

  Luckily, the only other person at the bus stop was a whisky-riddled old dodderer who, unable to negotiate which arm belonged in the sling around his neck seemed unlikely to notice the illegal aroma.

  Pretending to be engrossed in the contents of the hairdressers window he watched them giggling round the joint in the glass. Surely if Prince Naseem buggered-off she wouldn’t still expect them to go to that bloody awful pub? Jenny was dancing about on the pavement trying to keep warm, rambling on about the recent murder.

  ‘Yeah, I’m sure I saw her on the bus the other week. She was English. It really looked like the girl in the paper. I don’t think it was a serial killer or anything though. She was into drugs and that.’

  Huh, she could talk! This area was the pits. He wanted the security of being back at her house. Forcing a few yawns to block out their being there he studied the reflection of the police caravan in the shop window. Jonah suddenly spoke really loudly and made him jump.

  ‘Aye, she probably had the last piece of tarry in Edinburgh. I’d have cut her throat myself if I’d known,’ he sniggered, presenting the joint to Jenny vertically to draw as much attention to himself as possible. It was as if he wanted to get caught. Maybe he did. Maybe that was the plan. What sort of a fucking wind-up was this? How long had they been standing there anyway? It felt like half an hour had passed.

  Searching in his pockets for nothing in particular, just for something to do other than take them on, Jonah’s loud voice echoed again,

  ‘Fucking hell! This is a turn up for the books,’ as a big, beautiful, blood-red, shiny number 34 twinkled ethereally round the corner of the brewery. He felt like kissing it. Unable to stop smiling he waited, knowing the moment of liberation was upon them.

  As the bus opened its doors to rid them of this scourge, Jonah handed him the joint before disappearing on board, whooping with laughter. Throwing the offending article sparking into the air in an instantaneous reflex action he cursed as the bus pulled away taking the bastard, fucking little bastard, sneering from the window, with it.

  Jittering, he turned to the old drunk, who was still utterly engrossed in his sling then to Jenny who was now, gloriously alone and grimacing.

  ‘He does go on a bit. Sorry about that.’

  Putting her arm in his she began leading him back along the street. He pulled away, teasing her.

  ‘Hang on. Don’t you want to go for that drink?’

  Knowing he was joking she grabbed his hand and again pulled him towards the house, his cock giving an appreciative jolt as she did so. Staggering up the street together, hand-in-hand, they stopped to slobber over each other a few times before they reached the door.

  Once back in the splendid safety of her house he pinned her against the anaglypta, crushing his lips against hers until she had to pull away for breath. He attacked her neck, biting, nuzzling, licking her ear-lobes, zip straining in a horny daze. No qualms now about her grabbing for his balls, he growled as she traced the outline of his stiff cock with her hand, gently biting her tongue as it again invaded his mouth.

  Pushing her onto the stairs he chewed her nipples through the cotton t-shirt, yanking her jeans open with considerable, one-handed expertise. The remaining buzz from the stolen puffs of the joint took all the clumsiness out of their fondling. Intensified it. Made it all drift seamlessly into place like a fucking dream. Forcing his hand down her jeans he pushed his fingers under the flimsy wrapping of her knicker elastic, stroking her lusciously soft minge. Jesus, it was so soft. Did they just go wiry when they got into their twenties, he wondered?

  ‘Not yet, not yet!’ she gasped, wriggling under his touch.

  Letting his middle finger press into the warm folds of her cunt he could feel her wetness, smell it. It seemed to swallow his finger in an envelope of moistness. She tried to pull his hand away, the epitome of ‘stop-it-I-like-itness’. He continued ramming it in and out until he could hear her juices clicking.

  ‘No, no, wait. Not yet. I want to make it better.’

  Better? What could possibly be better than the sound shagging he was about to give her? Waggling free of him she zipped up her trousers and gestured to the bedroom.

  ‘Come on. I’ve got a special treat for us first. To get us in the mood.’

  In the mood? If he was any more in the mood his balls would explode. Dirty little bitch. Though aching to fuck her he let her draw it out to delay the inevitable disappointment when it was over.

  The special treat was, unbelievably, a bottle of Moet her parents had given her for her birthday, which she messily cracked open over the rug. He’d for some reason been hoping that suspenders or handcuffs might be part of the special treat equation but pretended to be pleased none-the-less since he was now certain he was going to have her anyway.

  The tin of grass made a reappearance and she sat at his heel showing him the flower-heads. Squeezing the oily, redolent herbs between his fingers he kissed the top of her head as she explained the difference between these and the leaves they’d been smoking earlier.

  She rolled a joint as he sat in a dream, aware of something droning away in the background, imagining fucking her, what it would look like. Helping himself to more champagne he visualised his cock in her mouth, feeding his hard-on with filth, making sure it stayed where it was this time.

  As she lit a much larger joint than her previous efforts, no doubt influenced by Jonah’s monstrosities, he again checked his shirt pocket for the condom. There were m
ore in his jacket if he needed them which, in his current state, seemed more than likely. He hated using the things but you really couldn’t trust women nowadays. You didn’t know where they’d been and now that single-parenthood was the fastest growing profession you had to be extra careful if you were a genetically-appealing specimen like himself.

  Jenny put on some modern music of the all-beat and no melody variety, the kind that sounded like the noise blood made as it pumped round your body. Taking a few puffs on the joint and handing it to him she began dancing in front of him, thrusting her arms and hips in his face to the throb of the CD. Leaning his head back on the bed he watched her grinding away, Salome-like, through half-closed eyes and exhaled smoke. Gyrating over with the bottle she filled his glass, made him swallow it all down and topped it up again, twisting her lithe, tight young body as she did so.

  The CD thumped on. It felt as if the sounds were emanating from within his rib cage. As a rule he despised this kind of modern crap but at the moment he could almost understand its appeal – its meditative, brain-clearing qualities. It was like when he went fishing and his thought and memory reduced to himself and the fish. Delighted with the analogy he wanted to tell her about it but found that he simply couldn’t be bothered.

  Standing with her feet between his legs she twisted, dreamily down until she was kneeling in front of him. With heavy eyelids she took the joint from him, put the lit end in her mouth and blew smoke, through the roach, into his head. Wow, hey, he felt like he was floating, anaesthetized. Repeating the process she leaned back, laughing at his expression, whatever it might be, taking a slug from the bottle.

  He squinted at her, drowsy, no longer feeling that he was really there but that he was an observer, looking in. Fumbling around with a numb arm on the carpet at his side he found his glass and swallowed some champagne to liven himself up. The bubbles set off a series of tiny explosions at the back of his throat. Gulping back more of the grass to counteract this he again tried to explain what he’d been thinking about the music.