Stonemouth (7 page)

‘So, how much does this floodlighting scam pay?’ Ferg asks.

Fuck. Back to reality. I clear my throat. ‘A fair bit.’

‘Don’t be fucking coy with me. How much?’

‘
I
don’t know. I get more in expenses most months but, obviously, it’s all been spent already. And some of it’s in—’

‘What did you put down on your mortgage application?’

‘I lied.’

‘How much?’

‘Oh, I lied quite a lot.’

He punches me on the shoulder, not hard. ‘How much
money
?’

‘Hundred grand a year,’ I tell him. This is a lie.

His eyes narrow. ‘Was that a lie upwards or downwards?’

‘Why’s it fucking matter?’

‘
I’m
supposed to be the exiled prince,’ he tells me. ‘I’m the returning alpha star here, not you.’

‘The
what
?’ I say, laughing. ‘You’re not even exiled. You’re only in fucking Dundee and you’re back here all the time.’ I nod at the scrappy, much ducted rear wall of the pub. ‘That barman knew your order. He called you Ferg.’

‘It’s voluntary exile. And I like coming back to make sure nobody’s overtaken me.’

‘Over
taken
you?’

‘In
fame, coolness and financial reward.’

I stare at him. I so want to tell the fucker I’ve just been made partner, but it actually feels cooler not to somehow. I can win this one without even using that semi-trump card (it’s only a semi-trump card – if there is such a thing – because it’s just junior partner, not equity, which is the kind of distinction Ferg is likely to know about and pounce on).

I shake my head. ‘I’m sure even you used to be cooler than this, Ferg, I’ll give you that.’

‘So, what—’

‘And what about Zimba? He’s a DJ, isn’t he? He must be—’

‘That’s—’

‘And Craig Govie. He plays for QPR. Arsenal are interested. Coining it in, I—’

‘Not counting lumpen randoms who’ve risen without trace on the strength of making round things revolve.’

‘I bet they’ve both been back more often in the last five years—’

‘Never mind them, what do you make?’

‘I’m not telling you.’

‘Don’t be a cunt. Why not?’

‘Because it seems to matter to you so much. That’s unhealthy.’

‘Don’t be so naive. It’s not unhealthy to hate the very idea of one’s friends doing better than oneself—’

‘And when the fuck did you start referring to yourself—’

‘—in fact it’s only natural. Everybody feels the same way. They just don’t want to admit it.’

I tap my chest. ‘Well,
I
don’t feel the same way.’

Ferg snorts. ‘Bet you do.’

‘No I don’t. I want all my friends to do at least as well as me. That way I can stop worrying about them.’ I draw on the J, pass it back. ‘Makes it less likely the fuckers’ll ask for a loan, too.’

‘I haven’t forgotten!’

‘Eh?’ I’m having a little trouble focusing now. Ferg looks quite upset. ‘What?’

‘I’ll
write you a cheque! They still have cheques, don’t they?’ He starts fishing inside his jacket, patting pockets.

‘That’s right,’ I say, remembering. ‘You owe me money. I’d forgotten. Where’s my fucking dosh, O exiled superstar?’

‘Give me a second!’

‘And, anyway, how much do
you
make?’

‘I can’t tell you.’

‘What?’

‘It’s commercially sensitive.’

‘You fucking hypocrite. Give me that.’

I swipe the joint off him while he’s still digging into his inside jacket pockets, muttering. There’s not much drug left. I grind it out against the railing; it joins what by now must be a whole stratified carpet of roaches under the decking. One day, after an admittedly unlikely month or so of no rain, the wee, brown, screwed-up remains will all be ignited together by a stray match or unextinguished butt and half the town’ll get stoned.

We’re so old-school, to be smoking at all. Young folks today, they have this bizarre idea that all smoking’s bad for you, not just tobacco. Prefer pills. Clean, chemically; no need to sit drawing all this greasy, heavy-looking
smoke
into your pristine little lungs. Lightweights, say I.

I look round the people on the decking. I recognise most of them. So many people doing the same things they were when I left, hanging out in the same places, saying the same things, having the same arguments. It feels comfortable, reassuring, just being able to step back into our old shared life so easily, but at the same time a bit terrifying, and a touch sad.

They’re happy.
Are
they happy? Let’s assume they’re fairly happy. So, that’s all right. Nothing wrong with that. Life is patterns. Old man Murston said that, I think, on one of our hill walks: Jo the Obi. Nothing wrong with people having patterns to their lives, some stability, some set of grooves they can settle into, if that’s what they want. Don’t get the existential horrors just because
some people like staying where they were raised, marrying the bod next door and getting a job that means they’ll never win
X Factor
. Good luck to them having steady paid employment these days.

Though these are the survivors, of course; you can’t see the ghosts who aren’t here, the casualties we’ve lost along the way. We don’t leave room for them as we dance and chatter and mingle. Four dead – two in car crashes – a handful scattered to the winds, fallen into distant lands, fucked up on drink or drugs or gone religious – or even hunkered down with a conspiracy-theorist gun-nut and a litter of wild kids up a dead-end track in South Carolina, in one case. Two in prison; one in Spain for drug smuggling, one in England for child abuse. Allegedly the bairn-botherer was got at inside; he lost part of an ear and was told that was just a taster – if he ever showed his face in the Toun again he’d get a free sex change.

I look at Ferg as he pulls a scrap of paper out of a pocket and holds it up to the light, grimacing. He flaps one long-fingered hand out, finds his glass of vodka on the wooden railing, drains it and replaces it without pulling his attention away from the vaguely cheque-shaped bit of paper. Most dextrous. But worrying. He always did drink too much.

Later. Somebody’s flat. Not sure where. Navigation back to the maw and the paw’s may be interesting. Taxi recommended, but that’ll be a wait. Loud, pounding music: Rihanna? Pink? People up dancing, though I’m a bit slumped. Ferg clutching my shoulder, shaking me, yelling in my ear: ‘You’re like me, Gilmour! It’s just something to get through. You realise they’re all fucking mad! All of them. Statistically the clever ones like you and me hardly count! We are surrounded by idiots. Trick is not to let them know, to keep your head down as proudly as possible, or raise it and let them do their worst, the fuckers. But we’re surrounded by idiots. Idiots! Fucking nutters!’

I
raise one index finger and point it at him. I can see this finger; it is waving from side to side like a strand of weed in a gentle current. ‘Do you,’ I ask him slowly, ‘still listen … to … System of a Down?’ It comes out more as ‘Sisim’ve Dow?’, but he knows what I mean.

‘Of course!’ he says, jerking upright, instantly defensive.

I use the pointing finger to poke him in the chest, even though it turns out his chest is slightly further away than I’d initially estimated. ‘Then don’t … pontificate to me about being surrounded by idiots.’

‘Oh, fuck off !’ He inspects an empty-looking bottle of cider and gets to his feet. ‘Another drink?’

I shake my head. He goes off. The beautiful Haley appears before me and seems to be trying to drag me to my feet, to dance, but I just sit there, slumped and smiling and shaking my head while she tugs at my arms.

‘My dear,’ I tell her, ‘I’d be no use to you. But, rest assured, you have made an old man very happy.’

At least, that’s what I try to say, what I think I might have said. She shakes her head and scrunches her face up, turning to one side as though to indicate that she can’t hear what I’m saying. I extract one of my hands from her grip and use it to pat both of hers. I try to repeat what I think I may have just said, though the exact details are already a little hazy. This and the patting seem to do the trick, as she gives a big theatrical sigh and lets her shoulders slump expressively, then smiles and disappears. Lovely girl. I indulge in a fairly theatrical sigh myself. I need a cup of tea or a Red Bull or something.

Ferg falls back into his seat, waving a half-bottle of supermarket vodka. ‘Listen, Stewart, we are surrounded by
idiots
!’ he yells, as though he’s only just thought of this. Oh fuck, here we go again. ‘They deserve all they fucking get: everything. Fucking global fucking warming if that’s really our fault and not fucking Icelandic fucking volcanos, and lying politicians and war and everything else. But
we
don’t deserve what they fucking bring us! And that’s the fucking trouble with democracy!’

‘It’s democratic,’ I say. I’m not sure about the value of this contribution myself, frankly, but it’s all I’ve got.

Ferg was trapped in Miami when the Icelandic volcano with the unpronounceable name went off last year, and obviously took it personally. I want to tell him that it turned out the volcano was actually a green event, climatically; they worked it out: while it released north of a hundred and fifty thousand tonnes of CO into the atmosphere each day, the flights that it grounded would have released significantly more. Who’d have thought?

But I’m being honest with myself, and my chances of getting this fascinating, instructive point across are fairly minimal in my present, pleasant state of advanced inebriation. I’ll just make a note to myself in my brain’s on-board Notes app to tell him this at some other juncture, when I’m sober.

Ha ha. Like that’s going to happen.

‘The smart are forced to pay for the stupidities of the fuckwits!’

‘Boo,’ I say, trying to be supportive.

Ferg looks at me. ‘You’re completely fucking wasted, aren’t you?’

I nod. ‘Pletely,’ I agree.

But then I have had a lot to drink, and some blow, and I vaguely recall knocking back a pill of some sort earlier. So I have every right to be completely fucking wasted. I would have considerable cause for complaint were I in any other state than completely fucking wasted. Questions would need to be asked, heads metaphorically roll and possibly refunds offered for goods purchased in good faith, were I not.

Ferg has probably had more than I have, and he still seems relatively together, but then that’s his problem. I should, at this point, probably remind him again that he drinks too much, and that not being completely fucking wasted by now, given what we’ve put away, is positively unhealthy, and a cause for some concern. But I’m
not sure I’m entirely capable of articulating something so relatively complicated. And, to be fair, he may have heard this before.

‘… with these fair hands, Mr Gilmour,’ a girl with short black hair and laughing eyes is saying to me. I may have dozed off for a second there. She looks
very
young: late high-school age. But still: ‘Mr Gilmour’? Fair, bonny face, short hair a chap might want to ruffle his hand through. ‘But it wasn’t me. Not the ones that – the famous ones!’ I think that’s what she’s saying. ‘Just so’s you know.’ Music’s very loud. ‘Talk anybody into anything, that girl.’ Then she disappears.

And she’s back again! No, my mistake; it’s the delightful Haley. Here she is before me. Holding what looks like my jacket. Well, that is forward. Still, what a persistent girl. You have to admire that.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I start to tell her, waving one hand in what I hope looks like a sad, regretful and yet still respectful manner, while remaining expressive of the hope that this is only No for now, and might not mean No for ever, depending on how things work out elsewhere.

She thrusts my jacket into my hands and leans her lovely head right down to mine. ‘Your taxi’s here!’ she yells.

I stare at her, dumbfounded. I ordered a taxi?

Then she and Ferg are helping me up and taking me downstairs and putting me in the back of a taxi and I’m saying hello to the driver because I know him from school, I think, and Ferg gets in beside me and Haley kisses me on the cheek and then we’re at Mum and Dad’s front door, and next thing I know I’m standing in the front hall and Ferg’s on the step outside and I’m saying, ‘Well, thanks for coming,’ and Ferg’s shaking his head and retreating and saying something about idiots before getting back into the waiting taxi and the front door closes and leaves me standing in the front hall in the darkness.

Tea and bed, I think.

I wake up with my head on the kitchen table, a full, cold mug
of tea by my head, a small pool of drool on the table surface wetting my cheek and a grey dawn hazing the window panes.

I head upstairs for more sleep in a room and bed still familiar even after five years away.

Home.

She drove me to the station. That night, that warm night when it all went sour, when the world collapsed around me, five years back; still, despite it all, it was her.

‘Is there anything I can say?’