Glue (53 page)

— There’s a bigger issue here, you selfish bastard. You tried to kill yourself!

I laugh loudly. What bollocks. If I’d tried to kill myself I wouldn’t do it with drugs. I’d jump off a . . . off a cliff or something. I was just looking for somebody.

— Don’t laugh at me, she shouts. — You took all those pills and wandered off out into the bush.

— I just took too many drugs. I wanted to stay awake. Now I need tae see my Dad, oh my God my perr fuckin faither . . . Celeste’s arms go round me.

— How long’s he been up now? Helena asks Reedy.

I’m sorry Helena . . . I’m weak. I’m running again. Holding out and running from a good thing: Elsa, Alison, Candice, then you. And all the other ones I wouldn’t let get anywhere near as close.

— Four days.

I feel like I’ve become a subject again. I think loudly, — Airport. Please. Do it for me, please! and I hope it comes out as a shout.

He’s dying.

And I’m lying fucked, in the bush, on the other side of the world.

Now we’re in the jeep, and tumbling over the stones put down to stop the old dirt track washing away. It jolts and it tears and I rattle in the back seat. I see the nape of Helena’s neck, the braided bunches of her hair. There’s a trickle of sweat on the back of her neck and I’ve an almost overwhelming urge to lick it, kiss it, suck it, eat her like I was a fuckin vampire, which I probably am, though of the social kind.

I resist as the road forks and the mountains cast long shadows and I think in a second of panic that we’ve taken the wrong fork, but what the fuck do I know. The rest of them seem cool enough. Celeste Parlour spots my anxiety and asks, — You alright, Carl?

I ask her if she supports Arsenal and she looks at me as if I’m mad and then goes, — Nah, Brighton mate.

— The Seagulls, I smile. They still going? They were in trouble when I was last back in the UK . . .

Celeste smiles benignly. I look round at Reedy with his coppered, weather-beaten skin, tough and slick as expensive leather. — Leeds, eh Reedy?

— Fook Leeds, I’m Sheffield United.

— Of course, I say as we pull onto another gravel track, then onto a tarmacked road. Lucky Reedy’s sound, I deserved the nut worked onto me for a
faux pas
like that. He was a boy, back in the day. Blades Business Crewe.

It’s plain sailing all the way, Helena driving in a silence which I sense is violent but which I feel too weak to try and break up any more, and Parlour and Reedy are comfy enough with it.

I doze off, or trip into a strange zone and then I wake with a start,
feeling my life force snapping back into the jeep from far away. We’re on the highway to the airport. A nightmare of travel with a bigger one to come. But I have to do this.

My father’s dying, maybe even dead. Fuck that. What was it Wee Gally said, when he told me he was sick? Let’s no bother huvin any fuckin funerals until we’ve goat some cunt tae bury.

Please let it not be my father. Duncan Ewart from Kilmarnock. What were his ten rules?

1. NEVER HIT A WOMAN

2. ALWAYS BACK UP YOUR MATES

3. NEVER SCAB

4. NEVER CROSS A PICKET LINE

5. NEVER GRASS FRIEND NOR FOE

6. TELL THEM NOWT (THEM BEING POLIS, DOLE, SOCIAL, JOURNALISTS, COUNCIL, CENSUS, ETC.)

7. NEVER LET A WEEK GO BY WITHOUT INVESTING IN NEW VINYL

8. GIVE WHEN YOU CAN, TAKE ONLY WHEN YOU HAVE TO

9. IF YOU FEEL HIGH OR LOW, MIND THAT NOTHING GOOD OR BAD LASTS FOR EVER AND TODAY’S THE START OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE

10. GIVE LOVE FREELY, BUT BE TIGHTER WITH TRUST

I’ve been found wanting, especially in 2 and 8. The others I’ve probably done okay in.

But Reedy’s right. I do smell like an old dog, and I feel like one. I remember the corpse of a rotting dingo, by the side of the road in Queensland. Not a car in sight, a clear horizon for miles. That fuckin animal must have been really stupid to have got hit. More likely it was a suicide attempt! Could a dog, in its natural environment, wild as fuck, actually be suicidal? Ha ha ha.

Gorges, cliffs, gum trees . . . the blue haze of the eucalyptus which gives the mountains their name.

Lost contact with home at Christmas.

The suburbs suddenly swallow us. We’re back on the Western motorway.

I remember when we first moved to Sydney. I couldn’t believe that the Bondi beach in Sydney, like the Copacabana in Rio, was just about
as far out as Portobello was from the centre of Edinburgh. Mair sand but. We got our apartment out there. Me and Helena. She took her pictures. I played my records.

Wednesday 8.07 pm

Franklin was devastated. Where the hell could she have gone? The gig was tomorrow night. He had to keep this out of the press or Taylor would just drop her. He picked up the album cover which featured an air-brushed photo of a fresh and healthy Kathryn. He saw a pen on the writing desk in his room and scrawled, with great venom and spite, the words DUMB FUCK across it.

—Mutton dressed as mutton, he said bitterly to her smiling portrait.

And now he had that fucking reception for her, the one the Edinburgh Festival people had put on for them. What was he going to say to them?

Kathryn was wary when Terry flagged down a taxi. A drink in the pub across the road was one thing, but getting into a cab with this guy was upping the stakes. But his face seemed so eager and friendly as he held open the door of the taxi that Kathryn couldn’t do anything other than step in. He was chattering incessantly as she was trying to find her bearings as a busy street flashed by. To her relief, it seemed to be still the inner city when they alighted, even though it was a less affluent quarter.

They had taken the taxi to Leith and went into a pub in Junction Street. Terry was from the west side of the city and reckoned that there was less chance of running into someone he knew down here. He set
up more pints. Kathryn was soon drunk and found that the lager was making her babble.

— I don’t wanna tour or make records any more . . . she fretted, — I feel my life isn’t my own.

— Ken what ye mean. That Tony Blair cunt, worse than Thatcher that wanker. He’s goat this New Deal shite. Ye huv tae dae eighteen hours’ work or the cunts stoap yir giro. Eighteen hours’ graft a week some cunt gets oot ay ye for fuck all. Slave fuckin labour. What’s aw that aboot? You tell me.

— I dunno . . .

— You’ve no goat him though, eh no. You’ve goat the cunt that’s shaggin him, that cunt wi the hair . . .

— President Clinton . . .

— That’s the boy. Aye, that Monica bird gied him a blow-job so eh goes n says tae Tony Blair, you kin replace Monica if ye back ays up wi bombin that Milosevic cunt.

— That’s nonsense, Kathryn shook her head at Terry.

Terry was a believer in the force, rather than the detail of argument. — Uh, uh, that’s what thi want ye tae believe, aw they cunts. Ah goat it aw fae a gadge in the boozer whose sister mairried a top civil servant boy doon in London. Aw the news they try tae keep back fae ye. Couldnae run a message, thon twats. New deal, ma erse. The thing is, ah hate workin n aw. Ah’m only daein the windaes tae help oot Post Alec, but eh. The juice lorries, that wis ma game. Tae gie me ma proper title ah wis an Aerated Waters Salesman. Goat peyed oaf back in 1981. Ah used tae dae aw the juice lorries roond the schemes: Hendry’s, Globe, Barrs . . . ah think Barrs are the only yins left. The Irn Bru kept them gaun. So these dole cunts, the restart fuckers, turn roond n sais tae ays: we’ll git ye a joab sellin juice.

Kathryn looked at Terry in utter bewilderment. To her he sounded like the rasping engine of an outboard motor, only much louder.

— Cunts only wanted ays tae work in an R.S. McColl’s, Terry explained, seemingly oblivious to her lack of understanding, — but that would huv meant sellin sweeties n newspapers as well as juice n ah wisnae up fir that. That’s how ah goat the name
Juice
Terry, ken? The cunt that started R.S. McColl used tae play for the Huns n aw, so thir wis nae wey ah could work thaire. Listen, doll, ah widnae ask, but you must be flush. Kin ye sub ays a score?

Kathryn considered this. — What . . . yeah . . . I got money . . .

— Sound . . . fuck . . . Juice Terry looked around and in a state of annoyance saw Johnny Catarrh and Rab Birrell entering the pub. He was wondering what they were doing in this quarter when he noted the fluorescent greeny-yellow Hibs away top Rab was wearing. There was a midweek game up at Easter Road and Catarrh and Birrell must have come into some dosh if they’d been to that and were now making a night of it down in the historic old port. Terry was always suitably intrigued when any of his associates seemed to be in the poppy.

Rab Birrell and Johnny Catarrh were equally surprised to see Juice Terry drinking outside the more familiar environs of The Gauntlet, Silver Wing, Dodger, Busy Bee, Wheatsheaf and other west-side boozers he frequented. They moved towards Terry’s table but then stalled noting his female company. Catarrh felt instantly resentful. A fat cunt like Juice Terry was always surrounded by women. Slappers, granted, but a ride was a ride and not to be sneezed at. This one was haggard and skinny, but better turned out than most of Terry’s usual conquests. Mind you, that Louise bird Terry had been shagging was as tidy as fuck, but she reeked of gangster connections. A few dubious cunts had given her the message, Larry Wylie being one of them. You never moved in on fanny that took in that sort of cock unless you were sure it no longer had claims on a berth there. It was a pisser though, a Greek god like him currently unable to get his hole for love nor money.

— Awright, John boy, Juice Terry said as Catarrh sat down. Catarrh hated it when Terry referred to him in that way as he was only a couple of years younger than the fat, slovenly cunt. It was almost as bad as being called Johnny Catarrh.

Johnny’s real name was John Watson, a common enough one in Scotland. His older brother Davie was a blues and rock ’n’ roll fan and started calling him Johnny Guitar after Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson. Unfortunately for Johnny, he was cursed with bad sinus and catarrh problems, and had spent many years unaware that his nickname had been corrupted.

Rab Birrell had stopped off at the fag machine to purchase some Embassy Regal before joining them. Terry made the introductions. Catarrh had heard of Kathryn alright. — Muh Ma’s your number-one fan. She’s goat tons ay your records. She laps you up. She’s gaun tae the concert the morn. Ah read aboot ye in the
Evening News
. Sais ye hud split up wi that boy fae Love Syndicate.

— That’s correct, retorted Kathryn steelily, thinking of that Copenhagen hotel room, — but that was a while back.

— Ancient history, but, eh, Juice Terry confirmed. Catarrh sucked some mucus down the back of his throat. He wished that he’d remembered to get his garlic pills. They were the only remedy.

— Ah could settle fir your life right enough, Rab Birrell considered, declining as Juice Terry crashed the ash. Johnny didn’t want one either. They were Silk Cut and Catarrh was a purist when it came to cigarettes. — Ah’m a Regal eagle, he smiled, pulling out an Embie.

— Aye, Rab continued addressing Kathryn, — the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle but, ah could go for that. Tons ay birds . . . mind you, you dinnae huv tae worry aboot that, no wi you bein a bird, eh no, ah mean unless yir like, em . . . ken what ah mean but eh . . .

Juice Terry had been mildly pissed off about his friends’ intrusion into his and Kathryn’s little scene, now Birrell’s rambling was starting to really irritate him. — So what are ye fuckin well tryin tae say, Rab?

Rab climbed down, realising that he was a bit drunk and pretty stoned from all the joints he’d smoked at Easter Road, and that Juice Terry could be a nippy cunt who was known to be able to punch his considerable weight. How the fuck did that fat tea-leaf pill a bird like that? Thirty-six years auld and still livin at hame wi ehs Ma. — Jist makin the point, Terry, he said defensively, — the point bein that guys in bands can have thir pick ay birds. If thir famous likesay. But any bird can huv thir pick ay guys . . . is that no right, Johnny? He turned to Catarrh in appeal.

Catarrh was suitably flattered. It meant that Rab was acknowledging his background of playing in bands or his expertise with women, neither of which he’d seen fit to refer to before. He was flummoxed by this welcome, if obscure, flattery. — Eh, aye . . . jist aboot. No an auld hound couldnae, but any young bird likes.

They considered this point for a while and then looked at Kathryn in appeal. Their accents were almost impenetrable to her, but being drunk was helping. — I’m sorry, I don’t quite understand.

Juice Terry slowly explained the proposition to her.

— I guess so, she replied warily.

— Nowt tae guess, Catarrh laughed, — thet’s the wey it goes. Always hus been, always will be. Endy story.

Kathryn shrugged. Juice Terry drummed his empty glass on the table. — Set ’em up then Kath, eh hen. There’s the bar, he pointed a few feet away. Kathryn looked uneasy at the throng of packed bodies between her and the bar. The alcohol was definitely assisting though.
The doctor had told her not to drink on those anti-depressants but Kathryn had to admit that she was enjoying herself. Not the company especially, though it was certainly different to what she was used to, but the lack of inhibition, the feeling of breaking out and letting go. It was good to be away from all the management, band, crew and record-company assholes for a while. They would be wondering about her. Kathryn smiled to herself and pressed towards the bar.

Juice Terry looked up and watched as she jostled to the bar. — She’s intae that wimmin’s lib in aw they songs, so she kin go up n git the Don Revie in.

Catarrh nodded in empathetic agreement. Rab Birrell studiously avoided reacting, which vexed Terry a little.

While she waited as the pints of lager were being poured, Kathryn was apprehended by a large woman with thick arms, steel-wool hair and glasses. — It’s you, eh! she asked.

— Er, I’m Kathryn . . .