Daft Wee Stories (6 page)

Or maybe you're a guy reading this on a beach. A guy on the beach holding an upside-down book. You'll look like a perv. You'll look like you're pretending to be transfixed on an interesting story, when in fact you're transfixed on somebody's arse. Or a child.

Or if you're on a bus or train, you might look suspicious, trying to appear to be normal. But you're not – your book's upside down, your mind's on other matters. A bomb, perhaps? Look around: is anybody looking at you with suspicion? Oh dear, you looked around, now you've gone and made yourself look all shifty.

Anyway, I thought I'd try this out, maybe get you into a spot of bother for a laugh.

I hope you're not dead.

Jamie staggered away from the club; he was an absolute disaster, zigzagging from one side of the pavement to the other. He wasn't quite sure if this was the right way home. He wasn't quite sure if home is where he wanted to head. Was he not heading for a taxi? He couldn't remember. Maybe the bus. But where was his money, where was his wallet? Was it in his jacket? But where was his jacket? Did he leave it in the cloakroom? Did he even come out with a jacket tonight? He just couldn't remember, he just didn't know. His head was wasted, his brain felt like it had been bounced about in a tumble dryer for three hours. He just didn't know. He did know one thing, though: this was his last night of dancing. It was no longer for him. And that was a big deal.

It was a big deal because dancing was something he looked forward to all week, every week. It was one of the few things that made Monday morning bearable, knowing that he was only four days away from Friday night and whatever club he'd end up in. Around Wednesday, he and his mates would start chatting online about where they planned to go. Depending on the line-up over the weekend, they'd maybe decide to take it easy on the Friday and save themselves for the Saturday, or vice versa. Sometimes they'd go daft on the Friday and even dafter on the Saturday. And on the rare occasion, they'd go a wee bit daft on the Sunday night as well. To mix things up, they'd sometimes take a drive up north or down south for a change of scenery, or just stay local but visit two or three clubs in one night. And, of course, there were the dance festivals, there was Ibiza. He blew a fortune on it all, and it was worth every penny.

Tonight was his favourite time to go clubbing: the last Saturday of the month here in Glasgow. It was one of the big Saturdays where Jamie and his mates had taken it easy the night before, so when they all met up in the pre-club pub, everybody was tip-top and full of life, no heavy comedowns or hangovers, nothing that couldn't be sorted with a drink or two, at least. To Jamie, this was what it was all about, catching up with everybody, tapping his feet, bobbing his head, handing over his cash to whoever got the pills this time around, then clinking glasses with a wink and a smile. Eventually they headed round to the club, where the bass from the inside filtered through to the queue, before booming their chests as they walked through the door.

That was when the night began, as far as Jamie was concerned. As much as he loved the chatting and drinking that came before, he was here for the dancing. All around were people at various stages of their night out. Some, like Jamie, were just standing around on the outskirts, patting their legs with their hands as they drank their drinks, waiting for their pills to kick in. Others were in full swing – hands in the air, not giving a fuck – and it didn't take long for Jamie to join them. He and his mates would stick together for a while, moving from one room to the next, following their ears, before breaking off into wee groups, then wee-er, until Jamie was left dancing by himself.

He looked forward to that the most. Dancing alone, surrounded by a sea of strangers. He could lose himself in that. With mates by your side, you sometimes felt the need to check up on them and ask them how they were doing or what they thought of the tunes, and they sometimes felt obliged to do the same. But when you're there by yourself, you can wander here and there without having to tell somebody where you're going. You can dance in new and unusual ways you've never danced before, without your mates looking you up and down. You can go into your own wee world, floating from one strange thought to another, without interruption.

And it was then, just after two in the morning, that he had one of these strange, funny thoughts. It stopped him right there, in the middle of the dancefloor, as the rest of the club danced around him.

What are we doing? he thought.

He looked to the clubbers in front of him, the ones closer to the DJ, and watched them from behind as their shoulders and arses boogied away. A smile crept across his face. Then he glanced to the people to his side, and watched their faces as they moved in time to the music, here, in a darkened room full of people they don't know – the fact that some of them looked deadly serious made him smile even more. Then he turned around to look at the rest of the club behind him. He saw one lassie reaching her hands out to random locations on each beat, like she was one of those 1950s telephone exchange operators, pulling out invisible cables and putting them back in. There was an angry-looking guy with his top off who looked like he was marching on the spot while knitting. And there was a lassie with her eyes shut, shaking her head and wagging her fingers side to side, like she was telling a wee boy that her answer was no and she won't hear another word about it.

He had to bite his bottom lip to stop himself from laughing. Honestly, he thought. ‘What the fuck is this?'

The crowd cheered at some bit in the song, and he started to dance again. Until he realised what he was doing. He realised he didn't know what he was doing. He looked at himself moving his arms and legs about, next to other people doing the same. It felt fucking mental. This whole thing suddenly felt like the most mental thing in the world. It felt peculiar. He tried one more time to start dancing and get back into it, but when he saw his hands wave around in front of his face, he thought, What are you fucking doing, mate? and stopped.

He shook his head and smiled, then turned to his mates to tell them about it, this thing that had popped into his mind, but then he remembered they weren't there. Just as well, really, it could have ruined their night. He could imagine how it would go. He'd tell one of them, then they'd be unable to dance, just like him. Then his other mates would ask why neither of them were dancing, which would pass it on to them, like a virus. It'd only be a matter of time before the other clubbers asked why a group of a dozen people were standing in the middle of the dancefloor, static. And then one by one, they'd all stop dancing as well, every last one of them.

Jamie laughed at the thought. A whole club not dancing. That's the sort of thing that could get a place shut down. A whole club not dancing, then walking out, then tweeting about it on their way home. Other clubbers in other clubs would read about it, catch the bug, stop dancing and fuck off up the road as well, never to return. Forget about all this other shite that can ruin a club like drug busts and fights, there's an idea that could crush the entire clubbing scene in a fucking weekend. For ever.

He turned to the guy next to him, some sweaty guy dancing with an empty bottle of water. Jamie just had to get this one out.

‘What are we doing, eh?' shouted Jamie over the music.

‘What's that, mate?' asked the guy.

‘I said—'

A fist came flying into the back of Jamie's head from nowhere.

The bouncer dragged him by the hair to the door, punched him once more in the chops and literally kicked his arse out onto the pavement. When Jamie looked up to the bouncer for an idea of what the fuck just happened, he got another boot in the arse, and one in the head for good measure.

Jamie wasn't the only one to have had that zany thought, you see. The bouncer, having stood rooted to the spot in club after club for over twenty years, had thought the very same thing, many, many times.

It kept him awake at night, so it did. The impact that would have on the business. A lot of good lads in security would lose their jobs, many of them with families to feed and bills to pay. So when he overheard that loudmouth on the dancefloor, the one that had stopped dancing, well, I'm sure you'll understand …

You've just got to nip that sort of shite in the bud.

He was on an island. Somewhere. He didn't know. The Pacific, maybe. The type he used to see in picture frames, hanging up in offices and waiting rooms, to help take people's mind off things. The type you'd see pictured from above, green in the middle, within a ring of white sand, surrounded by an ocean of blue. He'd sometimes look at pictures like those if life wasn't going that well, wishing he could be on that island, wherever it was, far away from everybody that was doing his nut in. And now here he was, on one, with palm trees to his left and a sunset to his right, watching his bare feet sink into the soft, powdery sand as he walked along the beach, slowly, like a man with all the time in the world.

Hell. Hell on earth.

It was the loneliness. James had been stuck on the island for over two years now. Maybe three. Or maybe five, it was hard to say. He didn't keep track, not to begin with anyway. Keeping track was for people who wanted to count the days until they were rescued, like the castaways you'd see in films. It helped prevent them from losing the plot. But he didn't want to be rescued; this was like a dream come true. If anybody had tried to rescue him back then, he'd have climbed up one of those palm trees and told them to fuck off.

But that was then. After a while, one day of sand and sea began to merge into every other day of sand and sea. Sand and sea on a Saturday. Sand and sea on a Tuesday. He'd fall asleep looking at it all, and when he'd wake up, there it would be, same as before. He found himself counting ants under a rock one day just to give himself something to do, and that's when he knew it was time to start counting days instead. Then he just counted weeks. Or was it months? He couldn't tell you how long he'd been there, he really couldn't. Could have been five hundred years, for all he knew. Nobody told him otherwise, because since arriving on the island, he hadn't spoken a word to another living soul.

And that was killing him. The loneliness. If anything on this island would finish him, it was that. He didn't know why he cared so much, maybe it was because everything else was taken care of. He didn't have to worry about food or drink: there was plenty, not only from the island but also from everything washed up in the wreckage. And he wasn't worried about being eaten himself, nothing here was capable of that. A wild boar, maybe, if it had a go at his face while he slept, but he doubted it – they seemed as scared of him as he was of them. No, he wasn't worried about boars or going hungry. That wasn't what killed you in a place like this.

It was the loneliness. The never-ending loneliness.

Yet as he looked up from his feet to the beach in the distance, he saw something that told him that maybe he wasn't alone after all. Something on the sand. Walking. He rubbed his eyes, and looked again.

It was a man.

It couldn't be, could it? James searched for alternative explanations for the sight. He didn't want to get his hopes up, only to get closer and discover that it was merely a man-shaped tree stump. In his fragile state of mind, an upset like that might put him over the edge. He might go berserk and start punching fuck out it, causing himself an injury. Or worse, he might decide to befriend it.

But after a few more paces, he could see that there would be no need to brace himself for an upset. It was a man, definitely a man, with ragged trousers and a beard coming down to his belly. And he was walking this way. James began wondering who the man was, how he got here and when. But as they drew closer, James knew that the man had arrived here the same way as himself. He recognised him. He remembered him vaguely from the cruise.

The cruise! Jesus, he'd almost forgotten. It seemed like centuries ago. Now, seeing this guy, it was all coming back.

The cruise. It was his wife Lisa's idea. They'd never been on a cruise before, it was never something he fancied, but they saw it on a shopping channel on a particularly shite telly night. What started off as a slagging session of the presenter turned into them both saying, ‘You know, that actually looks quite nice.' There were videos showing people relaxing on deckchairs around the swimming pool, there was an all-inclusive bar, and the food looked good. It looked all right. A nice, lazy way to spend a fortnight. The reality, of course, was a bit different.

The deck chairs by the pool were nabbed each morning by the same dozen or so couples, who would get up at the crack of dawn to claim the chairs with their towels, then bugger off for half the day. The all-inclusive bar was at least three people deep from midday onwards; you didn't stand a chance of being served unless you were a queue-jumping prick who didn't give a fuck. As for the food, the food was nice, but not where you had to eat it. Your table was numbered, and there you would eat in front of the exact same people three times a day for two weeks solid, getting to know the sights and sounds of each other's eating habits intimately.

By the end, nobody liked anybody. Nobody even tried to pretend. Yes, it was all coming back to him now. And as the guy brushed past James without saying a word, James breathed a sigh of relief.

He reckoned it had all come back to him, too.

‘What are we doing here?' asked Claire, as Marty drove them into the scrapyard. It was a Friday night. They were supposed to be going for a meal.

‘Oh, I forgot to tell you. I'm thinking of getting a new motor.'

She looked at him. ‘That's good, Marty. But …'

‘I know this isn't the best time,' he said, ‘but I wanted to nip in before they shut for the weekend; just want to find out what they'd give me for this.'