Boyracers (19 page)

‘So, how’s work?’ I say, and the silence mutates into a sigh.

‘Fuck work.’ Frannie sounds nothing like himself, as if he’s been body-snatched by some lurching misanthrope. ‘See bein a guy these days? It’s a joke. Women are too smart for us. This
lifestyle
dangled in front ay you wi one hand while yer work steals yer soul wi the other. I tell ye, we’ve been betrayed. Fuckin betrayed.’ I hear what sounds like Frannie putting down the phone, walking around the room and saying ‘fuck, fuck, fuck’ to himself in an infuriated whisper.

‘Fran? Ye there?’

Then he’s back on the line, exhaling. ‘See the Rangers game last night?’ he says. ‘Ally McCoist wis commentatin.’

‘I did, man.’ I say. ‘His patter’s magic.’

So we talk about Coisty for a while before he puts the phone down, in a better mood than he was. I suppose our story – mine, Brian’s Frannie’s, Dolby’s, Belinda’s – will end up just another Scottish folk tale, no more than a modern day Fairies O’ Merlin Craig or The Brownie O’ Ferne Den – sort of shite you find in flog-it-to-the-tourists books with tartan spines and I’m not sure if Scotland even exists anymore. Maybe Scotland was only ever a dream agreed upon by people who shared the same land and the same shit life and that’s it, and I stand before the bathroom mirror, seething with confusion,
imagining myself as Mr Blonde from Reservoir Dogs, his open razor raised, smirking

as I press the blade against my cheek and red oozes from its edge and

‘Post been delivered, Dad?’

I’m padding downstairs after a (for once) dreamless sleep, my
stomach
roaring for Coco-Pops (king of cereals). The morning sun makes jungle-dapple on the floorboards. The neighbours exiting stage left for work. Birds tweeting. The Sex Pistols drowning out Derek’s complaints at the Sex Pistols drowning out Derek’s complaints. I pass the front door, vaguely registering that the postman has–

Joy catches in my throat.

I pounce on the pink envelope, buzzing with hope.

And though my head is spinning like it’s in a washing machine filled with petals, I notice

the rest of the day shoots by like a torpedo! The drugged, soulless
teachervoices
– droning on and on about transferred epithets, verb tables, isotopes – skirt the ground like dust in a breeze, while texts buzz back and forth between the desks and my mind soars upwards, whirls, becomes orchestral and limitless. I feel heightened, alive,
muscle-bound
, like Brad Pitt after being bitten by the Cruiser in Interview with the Vampire. The whole school is alive with talk of Tyra’s party, and I, Alvin Allison, am centre of the whirlwind, a god amongst
inconsequentials
. Everything is beautiful. First-years collared by Melville for running in the corridor have genius in their trespass. The word ‘
children
’ in Connor’s Dad’s notice on the PTA board

strikes me as lawlessly funny, the way a swear word leaps out in the context of a poem (would these be the same ‘children’, Mr Livingstone, who recreate the Grand Prix in Falkirk town centre, masturbate like Duracell bunnies and run up phone debt with each twitch of their hash-stained fingers?) Connor gives a letter from his mother to Mrs Pitcairn, complaining that the class tests are too easy, not stretching him enough, and I can’t bring myself to care about this as I’ve just realised I have another eighty or so years left on Earth in which I can do whatever the fuck I want and I’m wondering what booze I should bring to Tyra’s party and

we swagger from the shop at the bottom of the Glen Brae with two bottles of Famous Grouse and eight Strongbow (for the price of four). Brian and Frannie insist on singing Hello, Hello, We are the Billy Boys
all the way up to Tyra’s house while I try to tell Dolby the latest on the forthcoming Lord of the Rings movie. The evening is blue and clean and billowing. My stomach is full of circus performers.

The music pumping from Tyra’s house (Abba), the antiquity of Albert Road – its stoic, middle class retirement air – filled with Europop and Rangers terrace anthems.

‘So whit’s the name ay the birthday bint?’ Brian asks, thumping my shoulder with a Strongbow. ‘Tie Her Up?’

‘Tire Her Oot?’ suggests Frannie.

‘No,’ I say. ‘Tyra. So the thing about the film,’ I carry on, my jaw tight as we approach her door, ‘is that they’re using the same
technology
as Gladiator, except they have to make you believe in a fantasy world, not a real one.’

‘That’s very interestin,’ says Dolby.

I ring her doorbell. The Grouse bottles clink gently. I can see dark shapes through the frosted glass; woozy, ghostly heads. I ring the doorbell again and the music is turned down briefly. Someone says, ‘… at the door? But everyone’s here …’ then a grey shape swells towards the glass.

‘I could shag a whole room full ay schoolies,’ Brian growls.

Frannie, in a ‘Vietnamese’ voice: ‘You so honny! Two dollar! Sucky-fucky!’

‘So, when’s the movie due?’ asks Dolby, but I shush them frantically and the door swings open.

‘Alvin?’ I actually intake breath at how beautiful she looks. Her hair has been set in golden curls for the evening. Her face is glowing with excitement. The temptation to touch her hand, resting on the
doorjamb
, is overwhelming.

The Lads say nothing, dumbfounded by her beauty.

‘You. Uh – you’re
here
.’ Her voice goes up on the last word, flecked with surprise.

‘Well, I’m a wee bit late, but–’

She’s staring at the cut on my cheek, concerned. ‘How did you get that scar?’

‘Oh,’ I fumble, ‘shaving accident.’

I thrust the gift at her and she stares at it for a second, as if unsure of something vital to the cogency of life. Then she shrugs awkwardly. ‘Well, I suppose you’d better come in.’

We stride past her into the lobby, the Lads mumbling ‘Evenin’/‘Happy birthday’/‘Hiya’ the same cowed way children speak to their dentists. Her hall is resplendent with balloons and streamers, littering the
paintings
and framed prints like clowns invading a serious arts debate and (I am in Tyra’s house!) the mahogany thrums with drum n bass. The Lads spread sheepishly into the hall as Tyra unwraps her present.

‘Oh,’ she gasps, reading. ‘Is this a box set of … the complete albums of Pink Floyd?’

‘Digitally remastered,’ I add.

‘Thanks,’ her small mouth utters. I was hoping she’d cry, but she’s obviously too stunned and grateful.

‘It’s a real idea of how the band developed,’ I point out to her, ‘over fourteen albums.’

party is littered with star names from the senior school, the detritus of an exploded galaxy: Jennifer Haslom, earrings glinting, curls swinging gently on a slender neck; Louisa Wainwright brushing a fawning hand down David Easton’s arm. All eyes turn as we enter, grinning like village idiots, hauling our Strongbow from the poly bag to offer them round. No takers. For most of the evening we remain in a tight,
defensive
phalanx, moving from room to room as a unit.

Brian’s eyes goggle at Tyra’s tanned, summery friends. ‘Canny remember schoolies ever lookin like this.’

Frannie is horrified by evidence of Tyra’s Dad being a Celtic fan. ‘A Souvenir fay Dublin?’

Dolby scours the bookshelves for confirmation of his own good taste, his fingers resting on all seven of the Narnia books in hardback. The party shifts

up a gear. Someone plays Fatboy Slim’s You’ve Come A Long Way Baby, Brian and Frannie rolling into an argument about lyrics. ‘Does that song say
Carol Vordeman is druggy druggy druggy
?’

‘Naw. It’s
California
.’

Frannie cocks an ear, raises a finger

‘It’s Carol Vordeman.
Carol Vordeman is druggy druggy druggy
.’

‘Shut up,’ Brian rumbles.

Through the swelling crowd I catch a glimpse of my mother
watching
me the way she once looked into my cot, and for some reason Louisa Wainwright is giving Gordon French a massage, her hands easing and rising on his shoulder blades as a look of bliss breaks across his face, and a couple of guys – older guys who claim to know Tyra (they wink)
very
well – ask about Derek

‘Is your brother back from London?’

‘Naw, he’s stickin it oot,’ I say.

and I half-deflect, half-ignore their questions, Fatboy Slim’s loops burrowing a dull worm of pain into my skull and Tyra is nowhere to be seen, and so, slurping at the syrupy warmth of the Famous Grouse, I go hunting, asking vague party girls if they fancy my mates, cos they’re, like, all single, glimpsing Mum several times – sipping gin on the stairs, helping someone be sick in the garden, browsing the Mackenzie CD collection – and when next I return to the living room the hash heads from the back of the History huts are talking to the Lads, Barry holding court like Shaun Ryder, his lit joint making the Lads stiff, wary,
subdued. He is telling Frannie and Dolby about his idea for a novel called Twelve Storeys High, which is, ‘a bit like Trainspotting except set in this high-rise in Fawkurt, an there’s like, twelve different stories for the twelve different storeys, an they’re aw drug dealers so that’s why it’s cawed Twelve Storeys
High
. Robert Carlyle’ll play me in the movie likes.’

Gordo, meanwhile, is imparting one of his prophecies to a rapt Brian Mann. I shuffle close, inconspicuous, to hear Gordo say, ‘Just tay let ye know, man, I’ve heard it said that Cottsy fay Camelon’s still gunnin fir ye.’

Brian grunts moodily, retorts something about Cottsy having to fucking catch him first.

‘Whit happened at the races, by the way? I heard somethin like yer mate ran ower some nutter fay Langlees?’

A monosyllabic reply from Brian.

‘Well, they’re keepin an eye oot fir yese an aw. Cottsy’s crew
and
the Lang Boys? Yese better stey aff they roads fir a while, man. They aw recognise that car ay yours. An mair important, they ken whaur ye work.’

‘Fucksake!’ Brian explodes, prodding Gordo’s chest and producing a brief splutter of smoke. ‘Gonnay tell us some good news?’

‘If ye like,’ Gordo shrugs. ‘Celtic are winning 2–0.’

I head (am directed? divinely?) to the garden to write a birthday poem for Tyra, trying to ignore the Slipknot slam-dancers who’ve
colonised
the kitchen, one of them barging into me and dislodging a fantastic metaphor which I’ve just composed. On a low wall which borders the calm of the lawn, I listen to the gurgle of the fish pool over the screech of guitars, raising my face to the sky, burbling with poetry. The sky is an irresistible velvet blue, rippled with stars and an indolent moon. I try to picture Tyra’s face – just at her moment of ecstasy when she opened my present – then write on the back of a napkin

and get up to look for her, eager to impart these lines, my head
swimming
with whisky, romance and the complete albums of Pink Floyd, but over the pogoing heads of the Slipknot parade, between the prefects who smooch in drunken poses on the settee, beyond the champagne pyramid which someone is attempting to build, I can’t

see

her

but take the chance to steal carelessly left drinks (the tastes blending in a gloop on my tongue) and no-one knows where she is, not even, strangely, after I regale them with my joke about the Pope on a tour of Ibrox, which suddenly seems important – vital – to my quest. The party evolves into a vortex, me anchored to the centre by the logic of my Pope joke as pretty, educated, drunken faces rotate around me then away before the punchline and someone

!

I’m sprinting to the bathroom, hitting the porcelain and suddenly making a weird sound like this, ‘Blooooouuuurgh.’

‘Bohemian Rhapsody will not be played on this piano, thank you very much.’

‘Blaaaaarrruuuugh. Uh. Help. Eough.’

‘Me, Jonesy, Gordo and this bird wi huge–’

‘Aah. Aaah. Heeelp! Boooooaaagh. (ohh)’

‘invited that Alvin and those
awful
schemies …’

‘(fugg) Gooooaaaagh. Goooaaaggh. (ohfug)’

‘… you are my Falkirk, my only …’ 

then wipe my hand across my face, feel the slavers fall away in drips, and piss, making a Z in the foam with my urine. In the living room, people are gyrating hip against hip, kissing, and a copy of Empire magazine lies stuck to the coffee table in a glaze of dried beer, so I pounce on it, ignoring the lovers crushed against me on the couch, their sex-crazed elbows digging into my ribs. Winona Ryder is on the cover, her face clear and white like the moon above the trees on a
fishing
night with the Lads last summer, Dolby, pencil-thin in the dark, whispering so the fish wouldn’t be startled, ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’

Winona has hazel-coloured eyes, with a sphere of reflected light
glistening
in the centre. Inside the sphere the photographer is visible, his sinister outline like a fleck of evil. There is a serial-killer in the chamber of Winona Ryder’s eye. Empire are advertising a 2-for-1 DVD offer and I lose myself in the glossy sheen of the pages, the glinting promise of each crisp edge, and soon I notice that the sky outside the room is the colour of slate, remember there’s one street in Bainsford that has three – count them – three chip shops and

All I want is to find a ruby in the trash.

Something that is true and good and right.

Every night we head out in Belinda like road warriors, avenging angels, and I search for it with Terminator-like determination, my eyes lingering on the actresses in the video shop windows and the drunks who appear randomly and who we ignore, laughing, nosing through a relentless shoal of streetlights but