The Last Days of Disco (2 page)

‘Some night, eh boy?’ said Gary, the lean, bare-chested Scots Guardsman.

‘Ah don’t ken. Canny fuckin’ remember anythin’ … an’ ah really mean
anything
,’ said Bobby, still contemplating which parts of this greasy feast set before him might stay the course following consumption.

‘It’s yer eighteenth! Fuck’s sake, Boab, yer no supposed tae remember anything. It’s a well-known fact. Like yer stag do … or the ’60s.’

‘Is it fuck! Ah don’t remember the ’60s cos’ ah was a
wean
, no because ah was pished. When did we go out?’ Bobby tried to turn the focus to questions that would hopefully prompt small fragments of recollection to return.

‘About nine in the morning,’ Gary said proudly, before adding,
‘on Friday.’ Bobby’s face first recorded emotions of surprise, then shock, then shame and finally – as Steve Wright wished everyone a pleasant Sunday from the kitchen – resignation. A whole day (and night) of Bobby’s life had gone AWOL. He asked if they had gone to the Kilmarnock v Hearts game on Saturday. Gary nodded, his soldier’s mouth full of toasted equivalents. Bobby enquired if they had gone to Casper’s Nightclub at the Cross.

‘Friday … and Saturday tae,’ Gary replied.

‘Where the fuck did we stay on Friday night?’ Bobby tentatively asked, not entirely sure if he was prepared for the answer. His head was now firmly back in his hands.

‘Picked up three wee lassies fae Galston … went back tae theirs for a party, ken whit ah mean?’ said Gary with a salacious wink.

‘What, just the two of us?’

‘Naw,’ said Gary. ‘Thommo was wi’ us. How can ye no remember any o’ this?’

Gary was suddenly aware that Bobby was staring transfixed at his left arm. He was particularly focused on the tattoo on its upper part, running from shoulder blade to just above the elbow. The dark-blue ink on its pale canvas looked a bit like a police badge, but with the words ‘2
^nd
Battalion’ above the crest and ‘Scots Guards’ below it. The crest lay over a bayonet that had a serpent coiled loosely around it. Sensing the question forming slowly in his brother’s head, Gary stood up to break the spell. Bobby looked down at his bare feet, through the absurd glass dining table his mum had recently badgered Harry into buying. All the Cassidy males had simultaneously thought the same thing the first time they saw it:
A glass table! How can you rearrange your balls and give yourself the occasional secret wee fiddle when you’re sitting at a fucking glass table?

Ethel’s justification was that it would make the room appear much bigger than it was. Harry considered this to be a typically female attitude: looks over function.

At this precise moment, though, the table’s permeability
was
performing a valuable function. It permitted sight of a series of numbers written on Bobby’s right foot. While not opening an immediate portal into his
Lost Weekend
, it was nevertheless a clue, since, on closer inspection, it was obviously a phone number. With Gary
playing the cunt,
it was apparent that he was going to have to piece this mystery together himself.

The front door opened and, a full thirty seconds later, closed again. Gary and Bobby stared at the closed door separating the entrance hall from the room they were in. It opened slowly and before either could see him, Harry announced, ‘It’s bloody freezin’ out there.’

Harry had returned from a walk to pick up the Sunday papers – a journey he took and enjoyed every Sunday morning, although this particular morning’s jaunt had taken longer than normal. Harry had bumped into Stanley May, who had felt the need to impart his own second-hand knowledge of Harry’s sons’ activities over the last forty-eight hours.

‘So you two clowns seem tae have made a right arse o’ yersels then.’

With these words from his father, Gary silently took his leave, pulling a Kilmarnock FC jersey from the radiator as he went. Harry watched him from the other end of the long, narrow room. Harry was of average height and the stereotypical outline for a working-class male in his late forties from the west of Scotland. But, silhouetted against the bright sunlight from the window behind him, Bobby thought he looked like the Michelin Man.

Harry nodded towards the other window behind Bobby, where wisps of smoke betrayed Gary’s current location. ‘Ah suppose
he
was responsible?’ It was more statement than question.

‘Ach, ah dunno. Ah can’t really remember much. Ah don’t think ah can really blame Gary though. No this time at least …’

‘That’ll make a change then,’ mumbled Harry as he unfolded the
Sunday Mail
in the comfort of his armchair.

‘Gie him a break, Dad. He’s been like a different guy since he came back fae England.’

Harry did have to concede that the Army seemed to have made a decent person out of Gary, and while he didn’t quite extend to pride, Harry did now have a modest foundation of respect for Gary.

‘So anyway, Dad. He’s away back tae Wellington soon. Ah think you should maybe go out for a pint wi’ him. Whit dae ye think?’ It was unnerving Bobby to be talking to the back of his dad’s balding head, but he continued nonetheless. ‘Why don’t ye take him tae the Masonic next time yer goin’ doon?’

No response.

‘He kens Stan and he kens Desi O’Neill tae. It’s no like he’d be sittin’ there like a spare pri … part in the corner.’ Bobby still found it awkward to use foul or coarse language in front of his parents, unlike his best mate, Joey Millar, who positively relished the opportunity.

‘Is there no somethin’ on the night?’

Still no response. The younger man sighed.

‘Look Bobby, jist leave it eh, will ye? Things are better wi’ him an’ me. That’s enough for just now.’ Harry was in no mood to expand. He put down his paper, got up and went over to the television. Having flicked quickly through the three channels he settled on
Farming Outlook
.

‘Did ye get me the
Sunday Post
, Harry?’ Ethel’s wavering, high-pitched voice floated through the same door her husband’s had twenty minutes earlier.

‘Aye.’ There weren’t going to be any long conversations involving the main man of the house this morning.

Ethel strode towards the kitchen, pausing only to address Bobby. ‘When did you two get in?’

‘God knows.’ Bobby was aware he’d need to get up from the chair soon or face a grilling, but he had a real concern that his legs wouldn’t support him.

‘Bobby, put a shirt on when yer at the table.’

This prompt from his mum was enough to make him move. More focused interrogation would surely follow if he didn’t.

‘Bobby, there’s blood on ma seat covers!’ Ethel had come back
in from the kitchen and spotted a small red stain low down on the beige hessian.

‘It’s no me, Mum. Ah’m no bleedin’.’ proclaimed Bobby, as he slowly spun around trying to examine himself.

‘Whit’s that oan your back? Right doon low. There,’ said Ethel, squinting.

‘Ah can’t see anything. Where?’ Bobby was still pirouetting.

‘It says something about a H-E-A-R-S-E,’ said Ethel. ‘Hang on. Ah need to go an’ get ma glasses.’ Harry watched Ethel disappear upstairs to retrieve her glasses from her bedside table and then got up to take a look, already suspecting the worst.

‘Ya bloody eejit! You’ve got a fuckin’ tattoo that says “I TAKE IT UP THE ARSE” …’

‘Eh? Aw fuck! Away ye go!’ Bobby’s shock at the tattoo being the source of his back pain made him temporarily forget to whom he was speaking. ‘FUCK! Is that
all
it says?’

‘Hey. Mind yer language, and naw, that’s no everythin’.’ Below that there’s a line sayin’ “THIS WAY FOR A GOOD TIME”, an’ then there’s an arrow pointing tae the crack o’ yer erse! For fuck’s sake, Bobby, that’s a real bloody tattoo! That’s no washin’ off!’

Split between hunting Gary down and avoiding his mother’s return, Bobby headed for the back door. Needless to say, his brother was long gone.

‘Fuckin’ bastard, Gary,’ mumbled Bobby, as he pulled a white Adidas T-shirt –
Gary’s, fuck him
– from the line and pulled it on to cover the lightly bloodied artwork. It was bitterly cold and hung like frosted cardboard, having been left out overnight.

‘Where’s Mum?’ said Bobby to Harry, who had joined him in the crisp, clear air of the garden.

‘Sadie Flanagan’s at the door. She’ll be there for ages. Yer bloody lucky, boy. She’ll have forgotten by the time they’re by bletherin’.’

Father and son sat on the damp timber bench. They stared out across the garden towards the school where Bobby intermittently showed his face as a sixth-year student, but where Harry went
every weekday throughout term time, and the odd Saturday.

‘What are ye doin’ wi’ yer life, son?’ Harry had posed this question many times to his middle child – mostly over the last five months and always with no tangible reaction.

Bobby shrugged. He was always irritated by this line of questioning. He had just turned eighteen. The ink on the cards in the living room had barely dried. He just wanted to
fanny about
. When his dad used that term, it was with disdain. When Bobby said it to Joey Miller, it sounded aspirational.

Joey was slightly younger than Bobby. Not eighteen until October, Joey could be really intense and the
lassies
thought he was a bit strange, verging on creepy. A lot of them called him Jeeves, because he always seemed to be in Bobby’s shadow, and that really irritated both of them. But Bobby saw the other side – Joey was really witty, heavily into music and completely on the same wavelength as Bobby was. Joey wouldn’t have gone to the Killie match. Bobby knew that much. Joey was a Rangers fan, but he’d at least grown up on the south side of Glasgow, so he was entitled. Kilmarnock was full of fucking Old Firm glory-hunters and Bobby hated all of them.

‘What are ye thinking about after leavin’?’

Bobby’s protracted hangover made it feel like he was hearing his dad from underwater. It wasn’t a good feeling.

‘Are ye listenin’ tae me?’ Harry shook his son’s shoulder.

‘Och, Dad, ah dunno. Ah just …’

‘Just whit? Ye’ll need tae dae well wi’ yer English this time if yer goin’ tae university after the summer.’

Bobby couldn’t bring himself to admit that he’d virtually given up on the English higher. His prelim only a few weeks earlier had been a disaster. His mark had been of a level that only Norway’s entrant for the Eurovision Song Contest would’ve considered acceptable. He’d concealed this from both parents so far, but truth was he was heading for expulsion. The Beak had already warned him twice that if he was asked to leave English, he’d be out of school
altogether. This situation also applied to Joey, although maths was his particular nemesis. Bobby was fully aware of the creek into which he was drifting – and also the paddle that he had dropped overboard about half a mile back. The last thing he had on his mind now was to jump in, swim back and retrieve it.
Fuck that
. If the waterfall was just around the bend, he’d continue just to drift towards it, lying back and soaking up some rays en route.
Waterfalls are way more exciting than fucking creeks.

‘Look Dad, I’m sorted. Joe and I are gonna start up something. Just don’t ken whit yet.’

‘Jesus Christ, Bobby, he’s the same as you! If brains were dynamite, he widnae have enough tae blow his nose.’ After he’d said this, Harry felt a bit guilty. Joey was undoubtedly clever – he used loads of big words that Harry had never heard before. Harry didn’t mean that Joey was stupid; he meant that he was perhaps the most lazy, unmotivated person in the Northern Hemisphere. He just couldn’t think of an appropriate gag to illustrate that.

‘We were thinking about something tae do wi’ music,’ said Bobby, with enough optimism to inflect the tone.

‘Any ideas then?’ prompted Harry. ‘Record shop? Studio work? A band? A&R …?’ There was a softly sarcastic edge to Harry’s promptings, but it was concealed enough to avoid his son’s impaired senses detecting it.

‘Naw. We can’t play anythin’,’ announced Bobby, as if this was totally new information for the older man. ‘We were thinkin’ more along the lines of DJ-ing.’

Harry held his Embassy Regal packet between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. He had no option – a couple of years ago the other three digits had been sliced off by a loom in the BMK Carpet Factory, where he had gone after leaving school. With his other hand, he pulled a cigarette carefully out of the newly opened pack of twenty. Bobby watched how effortlessly his damaged hand performed the lighting of the cigarette with a Swan Vesta. He genuinely admired his father for the way in which he had coped since the accident. There
had been no anger, no bitterness; simply an acceptance that it was a big pothole in life’s bumpy road that he hadn’t been able to swerve. Initially, Bobby hadn’t been too enamoured that his dad’s only offer of employment following his recuperation had been as a janitor at the school that Bobby attended. But Harry was a well-known and well-liked guy around New Farm Loch, and, as a consequence, nobody took the piss. In fact, given the number of Mitre 5 footballs Harry had brought home during the last few years, Bobby had to concede that the arrangement had
some
advantages. Today was just about to be one of those occasions where the same held true.

‘Well, if you are serious about it, there’s a note on the staffroom noticeboard,’ said Harry, following a long period of making his ‘little stick of heaven’ vanish into perfectly constructed smoke rings.

‘Sayin’ what?’ A suddenly attentive Bobby turned for the first time to look directly at Harry.

‘A wee lassie’s lookin’ for a mobile disco for an eighteenth birthday party.’

‘Where?’ asked Bobby.

‘Ah telt ye! It’s on the noticeboard in the teach—’

‘Naw, naw … where’s the
party
?’ Initial exasperation diminished as Bobby realised his dad was gently pulling his leg.

‘The Sandriane. In about three weeks’ time. Her name’s Lizzie. She’s no at the school so ye might need tae be quick. She’s probably stuck the same note up oan other noticeboards tae. There’s a phone number at the bottom.’ There was another pause in the conversation as Harry could almost visualise the wee technicians in Bobby’s overheated brain working hard to compute the information he’d just been given. Harry laughed as Bobby’s eyes darted backwards and forwards. He pondered the idea of pressing Bobby’s nose to see if a piece of ticker paper would have come out of his mouth with the words ‘Get number please’ written on it.