Glue (63 page)

She sucked in air and looked at the men at the table. — He used to say I was peculiar, cause I didn’t like him fingering me, she laughed coldly and turned to her father. — I’ve had more real sex, better sex than a sad fucker like you ever could. What have you done? You’ve put your dick in an insecure, stupid woman and your finger in a child, who used
to be, but isnae now, your daughter. That’s the only sex you’ve had, you pathetic damaged piece of fuckin shite. She turned to the men at her table. — What a fucking stud, eh?

Her father was silent. His friends looked at him. One spoke up for him. The lassie must be mad, twisted, out of it on drugs, not knowing what she was saying. — Out of order. You’re out of order, hen, he said.

Rab was swallowing hard. He never got into violence outside of football, it had never seemed to be part of anything. Now he was ready to go. — Naw, he snapped, pointing straight at him, — you’re out of order, drinking with this sick cunt here.

The harder guy ignored Rab Birrell, instead turning his attention to his own friend. His drinking partner, the man called Keith Liddell. But who was he? Just a guy he drank with. Traded porn mags and videos with. It was just a laugh, just a bit of relief for a single man. That was all he knew about him. But he saw it now, saw something creepy and sick and diseased in him. He wasn’t like this man, he wasn’t like Keith Liddell. He drank with him, but this man was nothing to do with him. The man scrutinised Keith Liddell. — This your lassie?

— Aye . . . bit . . . 

— Is what she says right?

— Nup . . . Keith Liddell said, his eyes watering — it . . . it isnae  . . . he shrieked like an animal in pain.

In a blinding movement, his mate’s huge, tattooed fist thrashed into his face. LOVE. Keith Liddell sat there, almost too shocked to even feel the blow. — Dae me a favour, and especially dae yirself a favour, and git the fuck oot ay here, his ex-friend said. Keith Liddell looked around the table and they either glared or averted their eyes. He stood up, his head hung low while Charlene stood her ground, her eyes boring into the back of his head as he floated like a ghost to the far side door.

Rab went to follow him, but Lisa tugged on his arm. — We’re gaun the other way.

For a second Rab felt desperate to kick it off, pumped up to the extent that his head and body were almost spinning with adrenaline. Johnny’s face came into his line of vision, in back-up mode, twisted and pinched. Rab felt himself almost sniggering as the tension drained from him. He grabbed Charlene’s hand.

Charlene was only in shock for a second. As she went to the door, images flooded her mind, a loving, dutiful, affectionate father. It wasn’t hers, it was somebody else’s. The one perhaps she wanted him to be. At least he’d always been a bastard, he’d left no real set of
contradictions for her to resolve. You couldn’t lament scum. Charlene thought she’d cry, but no, she was going to be strong. Lisa guided her into the toilets, Rab reluctantly loosening his grip.

Locking her friend in a tight embrace, Lisa urged, — Let’s get you hame.

— No way. I want tae stey oot.

— C’moan Charlene, eh . . .

— Ah said ah want tae stey oot. I’ve done nothing wrong.

— I know, but you’ve had a fuckin big upset . . .

— Naw, she said, suddenly harder than Lisa had ever seen her. — I’ve done nothing wrong. Aw ah’ve done is lanced a boil. Ah can’t be bothered any mair: dealing with what he’s done, and what she’s let him dae. Ah’m just fuckin well fed up wi it, Lisa. It bores me now. Let thaim handle it, thaim oot thaire! She gestured aggressively back at the door.

Lisa pulled Charlene closer to her. — Okay, but ah’m watching you doll.

They applied some make-up and exited just as Terry came over, irritated that he’d missed something. — What was aw that aboot? he asked.

Lisa smiled, — Jist some cunt gittin wide, she linked arms with Charlene. — Rab sorted it, she said, pulling Rab to her and kissing him on the side of the face, noting that he was too focused on Charlene to even notice. Then she nipped Terry’s arse. — C’mon, lit’s git oot ay here.

They headed outside and wound their way in twos and threes into town, squinting in the sun, dodging tourists as they straggled through the West End. — Ah dinnae ken aboot this, Alec moaned. He preferred to drink in places where the spaces between pubs could be measured in yards at the most.

— Not to worry, Alexis, Terry said, giving Lisa’s shoulders a squeeze, — my good friend William ‘Business’ Birrell will make us more than welcome at his charming little hostelry, he contended camply, before turning to Rab. — Is that not right, Roberto!

— Aye . . . right . . . Rab said warily. He’d been trying to explain something to Charlene without sounding like a patronising dick. Last night had been a disaster. The lassie saw him as a social worker when all he wanted was a ride . . . well, a bit of love and romance really, but you needed a ride tacked on the end. It was essential. But last night when they’d done the lot except put it in, she’d gone on about
condoms, before the sickening truth had come out. But she’d handled it well, he’d backed her up and they were closer than ever. Lisa was even up for him now.

— It’ll happen soon, Rab, she said to him.

— Look, ah jist want tae be wi you. Let’s just get on wi that and we can decide how as we go along. Ah’m gaun naewhaire, Rab said, surprising himself by how noble he sounded, how
pure
he felt.

I’ve fuckin well fallen in love, Rab thought. Ah came oot for a drink and hoping for a ride, and ah’ve fuckin well fallen in love. And he felt like a foolish god.

Even from the West End, cunted and without his glasses, Alec fancied that he could still see the cleaning platform outside the Balmoral Hotel. As they got closer before turning off towards George Street, Terry looked up and shuddered. He wouldn’t, couldn’t go up there again. It was too high. It was too easy to fall.

Franklin had been up all night, unable to settle. His stomach churned and he couldn’t sleep. He’d scream in his head, fuck that selfish bitch, why should I bother? Then minutes later he’d be fretting, phoning around clubs and late-night bars, checking Kathryn’s room.

He tried wanking to the porn channel as a means of relaxing. Through his anxiety he took ages to reach a climax, and when he did he felt sick and hollow. Then he remembered, my God, the fucking wallet! The fucking cards! Noting the time difference in New York, he phoned up some numbers to cancel them. It took him ages to get through. By the time he did, the assholes who dipped him had got through about two thousand pounds’ worth of goods.

Eventually, he fell into a sick slumber. When he awoke with a shuddering start, it was nearly lunchtime. Despair turned to gallows humour. Everything’s gone, he told himself. It’s over.

She’d never done this before, gone missing on the eve of a gig.

Everything’s gone.

He thought about Taylor.

Franklin was off out. Fuck that bitch; if she could do it, then so could he. He was going to have a drink in every single bar he could find in this godforsaken hole.

6.30 pm

Britain. No, it’s England. It’s not Scotland. Britain never really existed. It was all some PR con in the service of the Empire. We’ve different empires to serve now, so they’ll tell us that we’re something else. Europe, or the fifty-first US state or the Atlantic Islands, or some shite like that. It’s all fuckin lies.

But it was always really Scotland, Ireland, England and Wales. Off the plane. Onto the plane. Off to Scotland. Not much more than an hour away.

I can’t get on an Edinburgh plane. The first one is for Glasgow. I don’t want to sit here, even though the next Edinburgh one’ll get me home at almost the same time, by the time I train it through. It seems important to keep moving though, so I buy a Glasgow ticket.

I phone my mother.

It’s great to talk to her. She seems together, but she’s a bit away, like she’s on Vallies or something. My Auntie Avril comes on the phone, tells me that she’s bearing up well. There’s no change in the old man. — They’re just waiting, son, she says.

It’s the way she says it. They’re just waiting. I go into the bogs, sit down in paralysed anguish. No tears come, and it would be pointless, like trying to empty a reservoir of grief by drip feed. I’m being daft. My old boy will be okay. He’s invincible and the doctors are fuckin wankers. If he does die it’ll be because he’s been left out in the fuckin car-park on the rubbish skip with another dozen non-rich patients instead of in a proper hospital bed, getting treatment that he’s fuckin well paid for all his life through his stamps and his taxes.

All I can think of is my Ma’s place. Get a kip, shave and shower and wash off the external dust and grime and then I’ll see everybody.
Maybe even catch up with some of the boys. Well maybe yes, and maybe no. I’m too fucked to feel anything about Scotland, only being an hour away. I just want a bed.

Lies.

It was all lies. We kept away from each other because we reminded each other of our failure as mates. For all our big talk, our friend had died alone.

It was all lies.

I kept away from Terry and Billy.

Gally told me that he had the virus. He’d banged up a couple of times in Leith with a guy called Matty Connell. Just two or three times, depressed at how things were going with his kid. The nutter his bird was with, the one the kid called Dad.

Mark McMurray was the boy’s name. Gail’s felly. Doyle’s mate. He’d taken a piece of Gally on two occasions.

Polmont, we used to call him. The Dalek.

Poor Polmont. Poor Gally.

Gally’s first ride produced a pregnancy and a loveless, shotgun marriage.

His first or second bang-up produced the virus.

He told me that he couldn’t handle the hospice, couldn’t handle everyone, his Ma n that, knowing it was drugs; heroin and AIDS. He thought he’d already taken almost everything from his Ma, he couldn’t take any more. He probably thought that death by drunken misadventure sounded better than death by AIDS. As if she’d see it that way.

Gally was a proper boy though, right enough.

But he left us.

He left us, I saw all that, the way he looked straight ahead as we started shouting for him no tae be sae fuckin daft, and tae git back ower the rail. Gally had always been a climber, but he was over the railing at George IV Bridge and looking down onto the Cowgate below. It was the
way
he was looking down, in a strange trance. And I saw the lot, I was the closest. Billy and Terry were heading down towards Forrest Road, showing him that they were unimpressed by his attention-seeking.

I was right beside him though. I could have touched him. Reached out and grabbed him.

No.

Gally briefly snapped out of the hypnotic state and I saw him bite
his lower lip, and his hand went up to that lobe and he twisted on his earring. It seemed that even after all those years, it was still always getting scabby and weeping. Then he shut his eyes and stepped or fell, no
stepped
, off that bridge, falling sixty feet and smashing onto the road below.

I roared, — GALLY! WHAT THE FUCKIN . . . GALLY!

Terry, turned, froze for a second, shrieked something, then grabbed his ain hair in his hands and started stomping his feet on the spot, like he was on fire and trying to put it out. It was a mad St Vitus number, like something connected to him was perishing, being torn from him.

Billy went straight down the small winding road which took him to the street below.

I looked over the balustrade and saw Gally lying, almost like he was just playing dead, on the road below. I mind thinking that it was somehow all a joke, a piss-take. Like he had somehow miraculously managed to climb doon onto the road and was lying down, kidding on, like when we were kids and we ‘shot’ each other, at Japs and Commandos. The evidence of the eyes seemed weirdly contradicted by a horrific hope, so strong it nauseated, that this was just a bizarre setup. Then Terry looked at me and shouted, — Come oan, and I followed him down the narrow lane to the main road below where Gally lay.

There was a pounding in the side of my face and the tendons in the back of my neck felt like knives. There was still a chance we would surely be back to what we were: just a bunch of cunts out on the piss. But this fantasy, this hope, was shattered when I saw Billy cradling Gally’s body.

I mind of this drunken, dopey cow who just kept on saying, — What happened? What happened? Repeating it over and over like a moron. I wanted her to be dead instead of him. — What happened? What happened? Now I realise that the poor lassie must have been in shock. But I wanted it to be her instead of him. Just for a second or two, then I didn’t want anybody to die ever again.

Most of the people gathered around had come out of the pubs, and they were all looking for the car that had run over Gally, trying to work out which way it had went. Nobody thought to look up to the Bridge.

Then I’m standing in what I think is silence, but they all look at me like I’ve been hurt, like I’m bleeding badly and Terry comes over and
shakes me like I’m a wee bairn, and it’s only then that I realise that I’ve been screaming.

Billy’s jist holdin Gally and sayin softly, wi a sad tenderness I’ve never heard before or since from anybody, — What did ye dae that for, Andy? What fir? Surely it wisnae that bad. We could’ve sorted it oot, mate. The boys. What fir that but, Wee Man? What fir?