Boyracers (12 page)

Frannie and Brian have resolved the issue of whether or not a duckling can be called a chick. ‘So the
chickling’s
disappeared, right, and I’m a wee bit concerned for it eh. Cos it’s a wee shame bein lost like that, an the mammy duck’s noticed, an she’s gettin aw frantic, lookin for it, so I starts lookin for it. Then I realise whaur it’s went.’

‘It’d fell doon the drain.’

‘Aye?’ goes Brian, trying not to piss himself at the image of a wee duck floundering in the fag-ends, quacking helplessly.

‘So I lifted up the grill, an I’m just about greetin by now, like, cos the thing’s so panicked, an its fur’s aw dirty an it’s wee heart’s beatin
like a drum and I haud it in my hands and carry it ower tay the mammy duck, really feelin like I’d achieved somethin, ken?’ 

‘But the mother had been killed,’ Frannie concludes, ‘run ower by a car. Aw the ducklings were hoppin and flappin round her body, splashin about in the blood.’

There is a space in which no-one says anything. Frannie gazes towards the window.

We drive on.

races are busier than last time. There’s about eighty motors, and puffa jackets dash across the car park, leaning into windows, making
preparations
, revving engines, comparing sound systems, wheel trims, while Grangemouth oil refinery looms above us spewing smoke. A sticker saying MAD MALC. Neon tubes and dry ice and a Blade Runner effect glowing on the sprayed shells of cars. Alloy wheels gleam
futuristically
. The words BORN TO CRUISE. A repetitive whump of bass.

Shiny is here, even recognises us. ‘Just watchin again, gents?’ he calls, making us feel like perverts. As we cruise past, Brian mentions a rumour that Cottsy, the ned from the Hollywood Bowl who gave us a pasting, might be sending a squad to Smith’s to turn the place over. We watch the action: the pod race from The Phantom Menace with Falkirk scenery. A Renault Megane and a Clio neck and neck and I notice one of them has an Irn-Bru can on the dash and I ask Dolby again why this
can wouldn’t land in the back seat if dropped in the front but he shushes me.

Three neds are heading our way, glowering like plumbers faced with a perpetual leak. Dolby rolls down the window. ‘Can we help youse chaps?’ one of them (sort of) growls.

‘Just here tay watch the races,’ Dolby answers. ‘Cleared it wi Shiny likes.’

The neds frown. ‘But yese are no, eh, racin yersels?’

‘Be a funny thing tay race yersel,’ Frannie laughs, and they look at him, and he shuts up.

‘Naw,’ Dolby says, clutching Belinda’s wheel. ‘We’re no up for that.’

‘And yese arenay doin the burnout?’

One of them has walked to the rear of the car and is checking the licence plate, and it occurs to me that if we just come along here and watch every time – spare pricks that we are – they might actually think we’re

‘Polis,’ one of them says.

‘Fuck off,’ Brian splutters. ‘Look at the age ay this wan. He look like polis?’

The three neds turn their attention on me, sitting there hunched on the back seat as if on a potty.

‘Runt’s no even auld enough tay vote,’ Brian laughs.

‘No even auld enough tay vote,’ I repeat.

They nod, still checking for a hidden blue light or the letters POLIS scratched away from Belinda’s bonnet. ‘Well, if yese arnay polis,’ one says calmly, ‘ye’ll no mind if we use yer car for the burnout?’

‘Course no,’ Dolby replies, powerless.

We wheel Belinda over to a corner, where lassies surround an XR3i. The car is being redecorated with dance music against its will, its features tested by cackling youths (electric sunroof, voice that intones
‘rear door not shut’ as though in a Radiohead track), and as they notice our arrival I feel like a castaway walking into the native tribe unarmed.

‘Ye sure Belinda can take this?’ Brian whispers to Dolby. His large hands cover his knees, flexing.

‘Ye sure
I
can fuckin take it?’ Dolby replies, breathing deeply, as we get out of the car, leaving him in the front seat like a Lego test-pilot. ‘Just make sure ye get oot the fuckin way in time.’

Me, Brian and Frannie are in central position. Our hands splay, our shoulders tense. Three neds (Adidas, Nike, Fila) jostle and grin and I swallow what feels like a ball of paper in my throat and just before Dolby, staring blankly through the windscreen, turns the key, one of them turns, shouts

‘This is what it’s fuckin aw
aboot
.’

and Belinda roars, a waking dragon. We take the strain, our heels digging against the tarmac. The car makes a noise like a rottweiler on its leash, the tyre screaming as the six of us push against it. Frannie looks like a rock singer midway through a ballad, and just as I start to laugh

        our ground slips

Belinda inches forward. Someone shouts, ‘Clear,’ and we leap away as she accelerates, Dolby hard at the wheel, the adrenaline shooting into a five-point star inside me. I whoop, delirious, then hear a

        crack

Someone screams.

A tyre bumping back to the ground.

A long, uncontrollable wailing.

‘Chas? Chas? Ye awright? Ye awright, man?’

Me and Brian glance at each other. My lungs suddenly feel like lead. Dolby, pale, behind the wheel. The noddies all surround Chas, who is howling like the war wounded. The surface of the world ripped open.

‘We should mibbe get ootay here …’ Frannie whispers, but Dolby is a salt-pillar, mouth hanging open as if he’s killed someone, so we just stand there, useless as grandparents at a rave, watching

the same argument erupting as we retire to Blockbuster, Brian a
bulldog
, objecting to every suggestion. Dolby usually mediates, but nobody has seen him all day (probably out with Prontaprint Lisa, latest Lassie Pal, for whom neither Brian nor Frannie has given approval). Frannie has demanded Eddie Murphy’s 1983 classic Trading Places (‘And listen tay you
quote
it aw night?’) while I’ve opted for a film starring Katie Holmes from Dawson’s Creek, but Saving Private Brian gets his own smug way as usual, and we’re forced to suffer another three
maudlin
hours in the trenches with men. With men. Without Katie Holmes. When he sneaks to the toilet, Frannie grumbles it’s as well we never fought in the war beside Brian Mann. ‘Cover ye, ya cunt?’ Frannie mimics, ‘Who’s been coverin ye the hale war? Cover yersel ya lazy bastard. I’ve a pub tay run.’

Back at Brian’s. Outside the window, the day and night have appeared at once like a tragi-comic mask, and the three of us are yakking about Brian’s new barmaid (not only a visible bra strap, but
pantyline) when Dolby comes in. His face is heavy. He looks round the room, his tongue running over his top lip.

‘Where’ve you been?’ Brian grunts, pausing on Tom Hanks’
grime-covered
face.

‘Something tay tell yese,’ Dolby mutters, ashen.

‘Whit? If it’s about that guy’s broken leg–’

‘It’s no about naebody’s broken leg,’ he says, ‘things just have tay change, awright?’

‘Aye, okay,’ Frannie placates him, ‘whit’s the problem?’

‘I’m …’

He breaks off, wipes his hand across his face. There’s a hole in his Ghost Rider t-shirt, just above the eye socket of the Spirit of Vengeance, and I’m sure it’s nothing to do with his news but it terrifies me all the same, like a hole in the universe. Dolby adores that t-shirt.

‘Hurry up,’ demands Brian. ‘Whit is it?’

‘I’m no afraid tay admit it anymair.’

‘Admit whit?’ A shard of panic in Frannie’s voice. Each of us suddenly reassessing all the times we’ve been alone with Dolby – did he say anything? make any untoward gestures? – our mental picture of him shifting. Brian’s face avalanches with terror.

‘Tell us.’

‘Yer no-?’ Frannie can’t even bring himself to say it.

‘I’m,’ Dolby holds up his head, ‘Uriel.’

The room resounds with the clang of a piano falling from a van. For one brilliant second I imagine Dolby is going to open his jacket and unfold a pair of wings.

‘Whit d’ye mean, ye’re Uriel?’ Brian sneers. ‘Is that some sortay gay code?’

‘I’ve changed ma name,’ Dolby nods defiantly. ‘Deed poll. It’s done. Nay mair Martin Dolby.’

My head is roving from Brian to Frannie to Dolby and back and I laugh out loud. The three of them stare at me.

‘Uriel,’ Brian groans, hiding his head with his hands, thinking, no doubt, about the first punter in Smith’s he has to introduce to Dolby.

Frannie looks almost betrayed, as if Dolby has kept a lottery win quiet or something.

‘Let me get this straight,’ he snaps. ‘You want us, yer best mates, tay call ye Uriel?’

‘Or Uri,’ Dolby nods. ‘For short.’

‘Uri?’

His hand shaking, Dolby whips the TV Times out from under Brian’s coffee table, where it lies with the Rangers News and all the books on British undercover agents in the IRA. ‘Oh,’ he goes, totally without conviction, ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s on.’

‘Uri?’

Dolby’s flicking through, rapid, searching for exciting television preferably on now, right now.

‘And Live and Let Die. Dunno bout youse, but I always preferred Roger Moore, like. The actin eyebrow.’

‘Uri?’

‘Fuckin Uriel?’

‘Uriel? Man, ye canny be serious.’

‘Look, lads,’ Dolby collapses back into the settee and his eyes roll up, corpse-like. ‘I’m 19. I’ve been fittin bloody whirlpools the last three years ay ma life–’

‘So?’ Frannie says. ‘I stack shelves for a livin. Dinnay see me changin ma name tay Frodo.’

‘Alvin. You’ve read 1984. At the school eh? I tell ye, I’m sick ay bein a fuckin
prole
.’

He leans back, hands behind his head, weary gaze unravelling the
patterns on Brian’s artex as though they are an escape map to a battlefield of orcs and elves, gladiators and wizards, dragons rearing up from the mist of his imagination and flashing the undersides of their gilded bodies.

‘I’m sick ay being Mar-tin-fuck-in-Dol-by,’ he seethes. ‘Whirlpool fitter.’

Frannie mouths at me: ‘the fuck is a prole?’

‘But Uriel, man?’ says Brian, fraught, as if by changing his name Dolby is telling Brian to quietly go fuck himself. ‘Ye canny seriously expect–’

‘Listen,’ Dolby snaps, scissoring upright. ‘If you’re aw ma mates.’ He glances at me: help me out, Alvin. Please. ‘Then ye’ll be happy for me.’

The only thing I can think to do – what else
can
I do? – is, uselessly, stand up and cross to the drinks cabinet, pick up a bottle of peach schnapps, watch the clear liquid slosh and sway seductively and

you ever have tay restrain a drunk woman wavin a knife in yer face

unscrew the top before my conscience can stop me and

the awful sound of it gurgling, my knees pressed together at the top of the stair, listening to the sound of the cap unscrewed in the kitchen, the hurried gulp and gasp, and though I couldn’t sleep I would not go to her and

‘Since, fellas, we’re aw forgettin that I turn 17 the morra.’ I hand one of the glasses to Dolby. ‘And tay celebrate oor mate’s news.’ I swallow the schnapps. They watch me swallow the schnapps. They can’t believe they’re watching me swallow the schnapps. ‘Let’s get pished.’

so Brian cracks open the Glenfiddich he’s been saving for Judgement Day – ‘heddy haw’ – The Best Rock Album In The World … Ever turned up, up, way up, Frannie hollering

and though a I try a sip of the whisky it makes me feel sick so I stick to the peach schnapps, my stomach fluttering and the Lads raising holy hell and I smile weakly, drain the dregs which are turning, slid

ing snidily, like poi

‘Ur-
i!
’

‘Ur-
i!
’

‘Ur-
i!
’

son, Dolby slugging the Glenfiddich, shaking his head, dazed, while outside the clouds unburden themselves, washing the scum from the streets and Led Zeppelin is allowing No Quarter inside and the next door neighbours start to bang and Brian bangs back, laughing, ‘Fuck youse! Ma mate’s an angel!’ Dolby and Fran flick through Brian’s
classic
rock collection, arranged chronologically – Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Motorhead, Guns n Roses, Metallica, Nirvana – sudden up

surge of schnapps in my gut and I burp, and as Brian absorbs the sight of me skating towards drunkenness he beams, arm trapping my neck, whispering something buddy I don’t quite catch for Dolby and Fran raking through drawers for the photos from our first fishing trip (the one where I fell in) and he’s going, ‘Am I right? Am I right? Aye, ye’re a good wee cunt, Alvin. Number 1 Runt,’ and round about here without me even noticing the decision is made to go to the

‘Toon centre, mate.’

Brian slams us into the taxi, falsetto Blondie-singing, the driver, unamused, another squad of lads at large, an average night, until Dolby leans forward, puts his hand on the cabbie’s shoulder, and goes