by Irvine Welsh
Kay . . . what the fuck is she . . .?
And worse still, he saw that De Fretais was approaching her, with a big smile on his face. The chef put his hands around her waist. She gave a reluctant smile and tried to wriggle away, but she was unsuccessful, as she couldn’t let go of the tray she was holding.
He’s got his fuckin greasy mitts all over her!
No . . .
She’s fucking well just standing there . . . just letting that fat cunt paw at her!
The bilious acid rose up in his guts as he felt the glass in his hand. He envisioned plunging it into the neck of the fat chef, like a dagger, watching him bleed on the floor; his vacant uncomprehending livestock eyes as he kicked out in his death throes. Skinner could feel his own blood bubbling warmly in his veins, but his thoughts were still composed and abstract. Fortunately, one of those notions was to wonder how many previously socially functioning men had killed in such circumstances, and this was enough to make him abruptly exit the bar.
Outside, the street was full of small groups of people between hostelries. As he filled his lungs with the cool, night air, he realised the champagne glass was still in his hand. He hurled it to the ground, his loud curse drowning out the sound of the glass shattering, and he flagged down a passing taxi, oblivious to the nervous stolen looks of passers-by.
That boy is a typical alkie, Mark Pryce, the sales assistant at Victoria Wine, thought, as Brian Kibby shuffled into the shop, now so desperate as to be devoid of his normal furtiveness. He asked for two bottles of whisky: one Johnnie Walker Red Label, one The Famous Grouse.
Mark was a second-year psychology student at the university. He thought deeply about some of the regular customers he served in the shop. In a sane society he would have referred many of them to the local health and social services rather than sold them alcohol.
That boy doesnae have much time left, Mark considered in a sombre evaluation, as he bagged the bottles and handed them over to a wilting, trembling Kibby. He felt so strangely moved by the subdued but intense disconsolateness of this particular customer, he almost felt like saying something. But when he made eye contact with Kibby, he could see nothing, just a dark void once inhabited by a human soul.
Pryce took the money and rang up the sale and made a mental note to get another part-time job. Somewhere more socially rewarding, like McDonald’s or Philip Morris.
Arriving home, Brian Kibby entered in clandestine silence, anxious to avoid his mother and a potential scene about his drinking. Fortunately, nobody was in. He tried to pull his frame up the aluminium stepladder to his old hiding place, but after a few steps he felt giddy, the blood throbbing in his head, and he knew that he wouldn’t make it. Descending slowly, he went to his room where he abjectly drank one bottle of the whisky, and made a respectable dent in the second before passing out.
Morning rolled in as the seagulls squawked in the mottled light that faded up slowly over Leith. Danny Skinner was feeling very rough already, suspecting Kibby, but his discomfort was massively augmented when the phone rang and Shannon McDowall greeted him with some devastating news. — Bob’s in the Infirmary . . .
This galvanised Skinner, and fighting through a sickening hangover, he made his way up to the hospital. He almost vomited on the bus and drew disapproving stares from a woman with a small boy who wore the new green Whyte & Mackay whisky football strip that had replaced the Carlsberg lager one.
At least when it was only beer the poor wee bastard had a sporting chance . . .
When he got to the hospital and up on to the ward, he saw the prostrate figure of Foy, unconscious, lying back in a bed, hooked up to an electrocardiograph, a tube coming from his nose. Not good, Skinner thought.
Amelia, Foy’s second wife, was sobbing by his side, along with Barry, his teenage son from his first marriage. — Danny . . . Amelia blubbered, rising and hugging him tightly, the smell and proximity of her causing an awkward Skinner to remember that time, in a drunken session some months ago, when he’d ended up round at the Foy household.
After a formidable drinking binge, Foy had passed out on the couch, and Amelia had grabbed Danny Skinner and had practically tried to force him to fuck her on the kitchen worktops. Skinner had pushed her away, leaving her with Foy’s slumbering body. They hadn’t spoken since.
Wonder if she still wants it. Probably now more than ever. At least there’s somebody I can fuck . . .
Amelia seemed to sense something in him, some hint of the sewer, and quickly pulled away. Stealing a fretful glimpse at the depressed-looking Barry, she explained in a fluster, — I found him lying in the garden. He’d been sweeping up leaves. I was trying to get his diet sorted out, the doctor had said that his cholesterol levels were way too high . . . he wouldn’t listen, Danny, she bubbled, — he just wouldn’t listen!
Skinner squeezed on her hand, caught Barry’s eye over her shoulder and gave him a lugubrious nod. Then he looked at Bob Foy, lying there, but where was he? In the bed? No, more like trapped on some strange mezzanine floor between life and death.
He wondered if Foy could hear him, if he should say anything, if the doctors had said that he could hear. Skinner thought of that old council epitaph: He knew his way around a menu in French.
It’s certainly been a diet heavy on the arteries. But then Bob never had a Brian Kibby.
Then he felt the ache in his kidneys. It seemed like Brian Kibby was realising that he had a Danny Skinner.
The bastard fuckin kens awright.
39
Alaska
HIS HEAD THUMPED and his stomach went into dry spasms as he bent down to pick up the mail. A letter from the sheriff officers informed him that the bailiffs would be applying for a warrant to gain entry to his home and seize goods to auction in order to pay off the large amount of debt he’d accumulated. He couldn’t bear the thought of his expensive goods being sold so cheaply to the extent that they wouldn’t even dent the debt.
It’s just a fucking show of strength . . .
As fate would have it, he had been approached to come back to the council for the duration of Bob Foy’s illness. The last thing Danny Skinner had wanted to do was to recommence his employment, but the pistol was at his head. He resolved that he’d return and get started paying off the arrears, to get the sheriff officers off his back. Then he’d sell everything he could and resume his career break in California.
Might be there for a long fuckin time as well.
It had been, he realised in his guilt, a while since he’d responded to Dorothy’s last email. This was almost exclusively due to Caroline and his fascination with her and the Kibbys. As he couldn’t tell Dorothy about them but had done little else, there was simply nothing to report to her. But now he felt an overwhelming need to see her.
Although Caroline’s good looks were readily evident to him and the rest of the world, he found her oddly sexless. He couldn’t even get hard thinking about her, but whenever he contemplated Dorothy’s nose and hair, he thought that his cock was going to explode. His head rattled and pounded. He thought about Kay, about how he’d so resented De Fretais touching her. Was it because it was her, or because it was him?
On his way up to the office for his first day back, he stopped off at the Internet café.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Re: Things
Hi Dotty Yank
Sorry I haven’t been in touch for a bit. I don’t like Internet cafés – the ones in Edinburgh are so grungy and crusty compared to the ones in Frisco. There’s nothing been happening at all in Leith. Zero to report, except I’m still on wagon (that’s why there’s nothing to report – sad but true). I’ve been forced into going back to work temporarily, in order to pay off some debts. Obviously missing you and California very much. It’s so dark and cold and dreary over here. Glad to hear that you’re still thinking of coming over. I’m sure I’ll find ways to keep us warm!
On that subject, see what you were talki
ng about with the screws, well, the old baws are quite delicate but I’m always game. Agree that we shouldn’t be thinking of involving other participants at this stage. Dot, to be honest, I just want to make love to you slowly, sweep back that curly mop and whisper in your ear ‘mein liebling Juden Fräulein’ or something like that. Skinner: sick or sexy? – you decide.
Love
Danny XXX
PS: Will phone later on.
PPS: Poles: born to suffer or what? Russia one side, Germany the other. Like sharing a railway compartment with a Jambo and a Hun.
PPPS: The Poles played a largely unheralded role in the history of Scottish football and were known as dapper dressers: Felix Staroscik at the now defunct Third Lanark, Darius ‘Jackie’ Dziekanowski at that Irish diaspora multinational heritage corporation formerly known as ‘Glasgow’ Celtic.
I recall when we last made love we almost sucked the fucking breath from each other.
Aye, I’m better with Dorothy and California, away from all these terrible obsessions that drive my life; alcohol, my father’s identity and, most of all, the fucking Kibbys.
Too fuckin right.
It felt odd stepping back into the office. It had only been a few weeks but it seemed like epochs to him. It was welcoming and disheartening at the same time. Shannon was still temporarily in his old job, with him having the same status in Bob Foy’s. Cooper had retired slightly earlier than expected, and Skinner and Shannon’s new boss was a thoughtful, bespectacled man called Gloag, who seemed fair and decent, if a little dull. He threw himself back into work, undertaking several tasks on his first day, mainly catching up with paperwork. One thing that he realised was how little Foy actually did, as it dawned on him that he himself, in fact, had effectively run the section. This was a mantle that would be passed on to Shannon.
After a late finish and a few beers it was time for him to meet Caroline for some Italian food at that old favourite of Foy’s, the Leaning Tower. They shared a bottle of wine, at his insistence, a full-bodied Chardonnay from California’s Sonoma County. Skinner felt he needed a good drink.
Gillian McKeith can get tae fuck.
As he sat looking at Caroline, he saw a row of three red spots, forming a crescent on her chin. She was picking at the skin around her fingers. There was an air about her: increasingly desperate and needy. Basically, he thought, she just wanted fucked, and he wouldn’t, couldn’t, do the business. And she was blaming herself. It wouldn’t last of course, she’d soon get to the ‘well, fuck you then’stage. Her self-esteem wasn’t low enough to carry on like this for ever, although he had no reason to deny the veracity of her emotions when she told him how she felt about him.
But do I love her? In a way. But there’s Dorothy, and I love her in a proper, non-fucked-up way.
— You okay, Danny? You look a bit rough, Caroline said.
— I feel like I’m coming down with something. Some kind of flu or the likes, he muttered. Then Paolo, the proprietor, asked him how Bob Foy was and he was forced to tell them both the story. They listened with sympathy and put Skinner’s distracted manner down to shock.
The drop of white wine nestling in the bottom of Caroline’s glass looks to me like the remnants of pish in a latrine. Things are becoming corrupted . . . no, they’ve always been that way. I’ve just noticed because the corruption has taken on a new hue. Now my cock’s failed me. Nearly twenty-four and I can’t fuck a gorgeous girl who’s nuts about me.
Is that it, it that the answer to this fuckin mess? Can I only gain power in hate? No. I didn’t hate Kay, or Shannon. I certainly don’t hate Dorothy.
And Skinner thought he just couldn’t go back with Caroline again, his head so messed with Dorothy, and with Kay and De Fretais. He couldn’t subject either of them to more of that fumbling, tense, perverse psychosis. He needed distance, space to order his thoughts, so he made his excuses and headed home alone. Or intended to head home.
The city streets were morgue-like by this time. He saw the odd bunch of revellers but felt as forlorn and abandoned by his home town as he had been by the father he had never known.
As lonely as a bastard on Father’s Day.
Part of him wanted to be back in his flat, with his books of verse for inspiration, but he found a vague sense of purpose gnawing through his ennui, as he walked through the city. He found himself murmuring a recitation under his breath:
The Devil went out a walking one day
Being tired of staying in Hell
He dressed himself in his Sunday array
And the reason he was drest so gay
Was to cunningly pry, whether under the sky
The affairs of earth went well.
The nature of his impetus remained opaque until he came by Muso. A light was still on. Without thinking what he was doing, he went round the back and pushed at the kitchen door. It was open. He heard noises; slow, gasping sounds, punctuated by the odd terse, sharp, cry, and followed them, gingerly tiptoeing round to the restaurant area. The sounds were coming from the bar.
It’s De Fretais. He’s shagging somebody. On top of them, on the bar. Somebody is underneath his sweating mass, pinned to the bar.
I know who it is. Kay. He’s shagging her. Her heid’s away from him, turned to the side, but there’s no mistaking that long, raven-black hair . . .
He’s fucking well shagging my Kay . . .
The fuck . . .
Instinct seemed to propel his movements. He stepped back into the shadows and climbed a set of stairs that led into the attic of the building. He could feel his heart pounding and his lungs forcing the air into his body as he mounted the steps.
The attic was partially floored with rough plywood. It was barely used, even for storage, and was all but empty barring a film of dust and some spiderwebs. The half-moon shone murkily through a Velux skylight, shedding its light on a bag of tools. A rubber torch lay on the bag and he picked it up and clicked it on. The light revealed a few misdriven nails in the floor and some overhead beams to avoid. There was a full-length mirror, propped along the outside wall. He could see two large bolts coming through a beam across the floor.
Of course, the piano. It’s directly above them. That dirty creepy cunt . . . and Kay, my Kay . . .
He moved around in the darkness, saw a light filtering up from the grill of a vent. Looking through it he could see them, or rather De Fretais, his bulk obscenely smothering her, his ex-fiancée. All that was visible was her head. He tried to make out the expression on her face. Full of dread, or orgasmic? He couldn’t tell.
And De Fretais’s fingers in her mouth . . . to stop her screams . . . The fucking rapist bastard . . . just like he did to my fuckin ma all these years ago, that’s why she hates the cunt . . .
. . . to stop her groans of pleasure . . .
The dirty fucking hoor . . . couldn’t resist the fucking lure of the dance, the fame she so badly wanted but wasn’t good enough to get, so she thinks she can get it by proxy by letting a fat monster rifle her . . .
Danny Skinner couldn’t tell. Training the torch on the bag of tools, he searched for something with which he could loosen those bolts.
It’s so strange with Danny and me. He looked really down at dinner; he’d heard bad news about his friend. We’re both worried about this sex thing coming between us. It’s only a shag, but it seems to weigh so heavily on us. I want him so much, I think about him all the time, but when we get in each other’s company I feel so . . . squeamish, when I think about sex. Like I was a daft wee virgin.
Sometimes Danny seems to carry the whole weight of the world on his shoulders. When he was telling me and the guy at the Italian place about his friend, it was so reluctant, like getting blood out of a stone. He should try to share his problems instead of keeping everything to himself.
My evening’s ended earlier that I anticipated, so I decide to go back home to look for some old books I need for college, ones I’ve stored in Brian’s attic, or what we know as Brian’s attic.
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When I get in Mum’s sitting watching the telly. She’s been crying, telling me that she found Brian drunk upstairs with two bottles of whisky. I tell her that I think this may have been at least part of the problem all along, that he somehow managed to conceal it from the doctors and from us. She argues weakly to the contrary, but I can tell that she’s also reassessing things.
I leave her and go upstairs to look in on him. He’s lying on his bed, fully clothed, mouth open, his breathing ragged and hollow. The room stinks worse than ever. I can barely recognise that thing on the bed as my brother.
I go into the hallway and pull down the hatch and the aluminium stepladder and scramble up. It’s all dusty and neglected, due to Brian’s illness. It’s been ages since anybody was up here. Switching on the lights I can see the big model village rolling out in front of me. The trains, the station, the blocks of flats, the town growing around the hills. It is impressive, if you like that sort of thing. Even if you don’t, I suppose.
One life gone, the other draining away, and that’s their legacy. Dad’s hills. He always liked Edinburgh for its hills, he said it was the hills that kept the city compartmentalised, kept us minding our own business, keeping our little secrets. He’d take me up them all; Arthur’s Seat, Calton Hill, the Braids, and the zoo at Corstorphine Hill, the Pentlands.
Danny said something similar about San Francisco. He told me that he loved walking there; up and down its steep hills, getting a different view of the city each time. He even spread a big map on the table and talked me through them; Twin Peaks, Nob Hill, Potrero Hill, Bernal Heights, Telegraph Hill, Pacific Heights. He made it sound great, even said that we might go there together one day.
But we can’t make love. We want to but we just seem to tense up around each other. I love him. I seem to really need to be with him, to be around him, so much. I’ve become the kind of pathetic lassie with him I said I’d never be. I want to fuck him, or I think I do. But, I wonder, what does he want, because he’s as uptight around me when we get intimate as I am with him. Is it that American woman he’s mentioned, does he love her? Does he have her on his mind every time we go to get it on?
