A Decent Ride (9 page)

Another savage rattle on the window; this goddamn hurricane is closing in, finding its strength. Edinboro is by the sea. That castle, that’s where the high ground is, that’s where I gotta be! I’ll bet that Salmond guy – Jesus, even the politicians are out of shape here – and all those assholes are up there right now, drinking the best Skatch, gorging themselves on sheep’s intestines, safe and secure from this fucking apocalypse! I grab the phone again and get an outside line. They don’t even have 911 here, it’s all this 999 shit. Which is like 666 upside down! It’s a goddamn message! I can practically feel the breath of Satan on the back of my neck! Forgive me, Lord!

Our father, which art in heaven . . .

— Lothian and Borders police –

— Is that the Edinboro police?

— Yes . . .

— You said something different! Why? Why did you say that?

— We call it Lothian and Borders Police . . . but we cover Edinburgh.

— Well, I’m trapped in room 638 of the Balmoral Hotel, here in Princes Street, Edinboro, right in the middle of this goddamn hurricane! The asshole on the line actually chuckles, like this life-and-death scenario is one big fucking gag! Do these people value human life so cheaply? — What’s so funny?

— Nothing.
You
might think it’s very funny, but you’re blocking up emergency services lines –

— I’m
blocking up
emergency services lines cause this is a fucking emergency, you asshole! I’m Ronald Checker! I am a businessman and an American citizen!

A tired sigh comes down the line, like this asshole, this duty cop, is
yawning
at me! — Aye, I read in the paper that you were in town, Mr Checker. Love
The Prodigal
, by the way. Well, just you relax and calm down.

— Relax?! How can I goddamn relax –

— Mr Checker, you’re in the best possible place. I’d stay right where I was if I were you!

— No way! This crumbling tip is a death trap! We have a situation here. I want a police escort to take me to Edinboro Castle!

— I don’t understand. Why would you want to go out to Edinburgh Castle? There’s a hurricane on and we’re strongly advising people to stay indoors.

— No,
you
don’t fucking understand! There is a hurricane situation! That’s why I’m calling: you assholes have obviously never seen a goddamn hurricane before! You have no levee, no emergency services, and you do not give a rat’s ass! Well, I do! And if you can’t see the shit that’s going down, then damn you all to hell!

I smash the phone onto its cradle, and get down on my belly and crawl under the bed. I’ve got Mahler’s soothing strings on my headphones.
Spare me this torment. Spare me, Lord.

That cab driver, Terry, he said he can fix anything! He’ll be able to see me through this panic attack . . . I find his number on my cell . . . the signal bars are coming up . . . it’s ringing . . .

— Ronnie boy!

— Terry . . . thank God! You gotta help me. I’m caught up in this hurricane!

— Got caught up in yin masel, Ronnie. Inside the cab, if ye git ma drift . . .

— What?

— Nivir mind. Whaire are ye?

— I’m in my room at the Balmoral.

— Yir fine thaire, mate, try being caught baw-deep in –

— I’M NOT FINE! EVERYBODY KEEPS TELLING ME THAT I’M FINE! YOU DON’T KNOW ABOUT NEW ORLEANS!

— Okay, buddy, you hang on in there. Sounds like you’re huvin a wee panic attack . . . you’ve no been takin anything naughty, huv ye?

— No! I don’t touch drugs! Well, just a few whiskies and some Ambien . . .

— Whisky and prescriptions disnae count as drugs, Terry says, which I like,
know
. — Okay, well, hing loose, wir oan oor wey!

— Terry, thank you, you are a godsend . . . but please hurry!

I’ve built over two hundred tower blocks, trying to get closer to the Lord with every development, but my vertigo means that I’ve never been anywhere near the top of any of them.

I put on the TV, there’s still a signal, but you can’t get Fox News on any of those Limey channels. It’s all godless commie liberal shit, full of assholes talking funny and parading around in strange clothes. I’m relieved when I find some repeats of
Magnum P.I.
I swallow two more Ambien with my Skatch. I pick up the phone and call room service again. It rings once, twice . . . they’ve fucking deserted me! Left me in this Gothic ghost hotel, which is gonna crumble around me as the hurricane rips it to pieces and –

— Room service! Hello, sir! Can I help you?

— Send up two bottles of your most expensive Skatch!

— Our most expensive is a 1954 single-malt Macallan, but we only have one bottle of it. It costs two thousand pounds.

— Send it up! What else ya got?

— The next most expensive is a 1958 Highland Park, which is eleven hundred pounds.

— Send them up! And tell the guy to knock three times!

— I will be glad to do just that, Mr Checker.

So I’ll drink their shit, and just hope I’m spared to get those proper bottles of real Bowcullen Skatches back to the USA! But I gotta get through this goddamn nightmare first.

New Orleans . . . Please God, I swear that if I get through this night I will donate a seven-figure sum to the Katrina disaster fund!

THE PUB WITH
No Name nestles in darkness underneath a block of tenements and a railway bridge. The clandestine, forbidding site with its esoteric feel has made the howf a favoured spot for the area’s uncompromising drinkers since its founding back in the Victorian era. On match days, the bar’s proximity to Tynecastle stadium has secured its popularity with football supporters. Outside of that it has enjoyed a chequered history. There has been a steady chain of unfortunate owners, and the hostelry has attracted a mixed clientele of rival biker factions, right-wing loyalist elements, some veteran drinkers who appreciate its competitive prices, and antagonistic football gangs, who attack it regularly on the basis of its Hearts connections.

To some, most of whom have never set foot inside, The Pub With No Name has an unsavoury, even notorious edge: an ugly, brutal hole full of knuckle-dragging dinosaurs representing a darker age. To others, those who frequent the bar, it is simply a place of liberation: an old-school boozer, free from the tiresome ministrations of the professional moralisers and disapprovers, and satisfyingly resistant to the bland brush of modernity.

Now it’s under a different kind of siege. Bawbag whistles outside like an accordion played by an asthmatic Satan, vaguely seductive in its threat. But back in the warmth of The Pub With No Name, they soon become attuned to his frequencies. Those high-pitched sounds are punctuated by the odd crash, which might just be that of a pool cue falling on the floor. The regulars exchange sage glances and faux-impressed comments of the I-would-not-fancy-being-outside-in-that variety. However, nicotine cravings show an aggressive weather phenomenon scant respect, and they soon begin to venture through the doors, braving the volley of grit, crisp packets and takeaway cartons that come swirling their way. Defiant cries of ‘moan tae fuck!’ rage against a wind that makes lighting up such a frustrating undertaking.

Then, in the early hours of the morning, around 2 a.m., it all stops. Nobody quite notices the precise time. Many, indeed, have forgotten all about the hurricane as they spill out of the pub, into the ghostly, rubbish-strewn avenues, and make their way unsteadily home.

One of the last to leave the party is Jinty Magdalen, who heads down the cold-morning street; shivering, her nasal cavities wrecked, eyes stinging and head throbbing in dreadful dislocation.

THE FOLLOWING MORNING
the cracked light rises weakly and Jonty MacKay wakes up with it, as is his fashion. But there is no Jinty next to him. A surge of panic explodes in Jonty’s chest, as a deluge of memories flood through him, causing him to convulse. He springs out of bed and runs to the door, which he opens slowly. He wants to shout something, but the words catch in his dry throat. He trembles, and sweat trickles from him, as he steps out into the hallway. Then, through the crack at the edge of the door to the front room, he sees that Jinty has slept on the couch. Her tousled dark hair spills out from under the Hearts duvet he remembers placing over her last night. He opts not to disturb her, but quickly dresses, then steals out of the flat, along the landing, down the stairs.

On the floor below, a young woman, clad in a burka and struggling with a small child and a buggy, peers at him through her visor. Jonty senses her eyes grinning, dancing in his soul, and he smiles back. They exchange pleasantries, he in his rambling way, her minimally, as silent as a deer in a forest. He assists her by taking the buggy downstairs as she carries the child. Then he shoves open the heavy common stair door of his tenement dwelling and steps out into the day. He watches the woman, Mrs Iqbal, push her infant in the buggy through the rubbish the hurricane has spilled on to the street.

Jonty blinks in the pallid daylight. He feels bad sneaking out, but why shouldn’t he? There is just one tea bag left, and Jonty recalls making that very point to Jinty the previous day. And no bread – he’d toasted the last piece, the crusty bit, yesterday. That was no good as he is working today, painting a flat in Tollcross. He needs a hearty breakfast, so opts for McDonald’s, considering the possibility of an Egg McMuffin. He doesn’t like the smell of them, however; they always remind him of the scent of his body if he was working up a sweat at work, then getting caught in the rain on the way home. This is the second big decision he must make. The first was whether to head to the McDonald’s in Princes Street’s West End, which is on his way into town, or backtrack and go down the street to the Gorgie restaurant. He opts for the latter, as he likes to take his breakfast there.

In the McDonald’s at the junction of Gorgie Road and Westfield Road, small groups of obese adults and children sit alongside the stick-thin, who seem immune to the high fat and calorific onslaught of the outlet’s offerings. The thinnest of them all, wee Jonty MacKay, enters and looks open-mouthed at the menu board, then glances at two women diners, as plump as Christmas turkeys in their Sainsbury’s blouses and overcoats. He comments on their meal. Repeats this comment. They acknowledge his comment by repeating it back to each other. Then they laugh, but Jonty doesn’t share the chuckle they have invited him to join them in. Instead he blinks back at the menu, then at the sales assistant, a young girl with a rash of pimples on her face. He orders Chicken McNuggets in preference to the Egg McMuffin, even though eggs are meant to be for breakfast, and chicken is more of a lunch or dinner thing. Jonty thinks that this answers the question: what came first, the chicken or the egg? The egg, as it’s breakfasty. But if so, has he broken some kind of law made by God? The quandary gnaws at him as he takes the proffered food to a free seat. He covers just one McNugget in ketchup, the Hearts McNugget, which he will eat last.
Go away, Rangers! Go away, Aberdeen! Go away, Celtic! Go away, Killie! Most of all: go away, Hibs!
Jonty chants under his breath, as he chews on the nuggets, swiftly swallowing them down, one by one. He worries that people might think the sole red one signifies Aberdeen instead of Hearts. — It’s no Aberdeen, he says to the Sainsbury’s women, waving the nugget on his fork.

From the window, he spies a girl walking past with a golden Labrador. Jonty thinks it might be good to come back as a dog, but one that would be discerning about what it sniffs. He returns to the counter for an After Eight McFlurry. Taking it back to his seat, he looks at it for a few seconds: the ice cream and the mint chocolate. The steam, from the refrigeration, rising from it. These are the best moments. Then he systematically demolishes it, leaving a little piece so that he can sit and think for a while.

A couple of hours later, Jonty meets Raymond Gittings at the Tollcross flat. Raymond is a skinny, slope-shouldered man with thinning brown hair and a shaggy beard. He always wears polo-neck sweaters, in all weathers. This, and his beard, has led to speculation that Raymond has some kind of birthmark or scarring on his neck, but nobody knows for certain. Raymond has a solid gut, like a growth, which juts out almost as if he is pregnant. This is regarded as a strange phenomenon, as he seems to carry no weight elsewhere.

Raymond likes Jonty, as he is a steady worker and cheap. He can paint all day and is happy with a wee bung, no questions asked. Of course, Jonty would be more useful if he could drive and had his own overalls and sheets and brushes and turps. The upside is that by not carrying around such items, Jonty has avoided being grassed up about his labour not going through the books.

— Hiya, Raymond! Hiya, pal!

— Jonty, how ye daein? Ah goat ye a sausage roll fae Greggs. Ah thoat, ah dunno if Jonty’s awready hud ehs breakfast, so ah’ll git him a sausage roll oot ay Greggs!

Jonty can still feel the taint of the Chicken McNuggets and After Eight McFlurry bubbling in his gut, but doesn’t want to disappoint Raymond, so he feigns starvation. — Ta, Raymond, ta, pal, yir the best boss in the world, aye sur, ye are, aye, aye, aye.

A slight twinge of shame, like a fleeting shadow, passes over the small businessman’s soul of Raymond Gittings. Then Gittings rationalises that Jonty seems so happy, so in some ways he probably
is
the best boss. — Aye, we ey huv a laugh, ay, Jonty!

— We do, Raymond, aye sur, aye, we do that! Aye, aye, aye . . . Jonty pants.

Raymond smiles into Jonty’s bright, grinning face, before squirming inside at the silent impasse that follows. He clears his throat, pointing at the sausage roll in Jonty’s hand. — Righto, you git that doon yir neck, then sheet up in the front room n let’s get that emulsion oan they waws!

So Jonty wolfs the sausage roll, realising that he actually is hungry again. A McDonald’s did that. Then he sets to work and puts in a good shift, before stopping for half an hour for his lunch, a Greggs steak bridie and a bottle of Vimto. Then he works steadily till the early evening. Jonty can fairly throw paint on to a wall, coat after coat. When it is time to knock off, he thinks about Jinty, and the terrible argument they’d had before he’d gone to bed. He can’t face going home so calls his brother, Hank, to make arrangements to go there for his tea. It’s best Jinty doesn’t join them, she doesn’t get on with Hank’s girlfriend, Morag. Let her cool down after that bad tiff.