Glue (67 page)

After, they planned to go back to Terry’s for a party. Kathryn was exhausted and wanted to crash in her hotel room. — I need the goddamn hotel . . . she kept muttering deliriously. Johnny was comatose. No way was that dirty wee cunt kipping with her tonight, Terry thought, slipping Lisa and Charlene his keys and instructing them to get Johnny’s head down. Rab and him would take Kathryn out to the hotel and then they’d come straight back to his.

Rab wasn’t too pleased, but Terry flagged a taxi and it was a
fait accompli
. Lisa and Charlene already had Johnny in another one.

As they came into the scheme, Lisa minded that she had an auntie and a cousin who lived here. She didn’t know them well. She did mind,
as a kid, coming for spaghetti hoops on toast. One of her cousins had died years ago, he’d fallen off a bridge when he was drunk. Just another young guy who went out on the town, full of life, and came back cold and dead. Her mum and dad had gone to the funeral.

Since she’d last been here, the buildings had broken out in a rash of satellite dishes. Adjacent to the bucket holder, the wall had been pished up against that often that the cladding had been badly stained and it seemed to be dissolving in parts. She didn’t know whether her Aunt Susan’s was this one or the one behind. Maybe Terry knew her.

Lisa saw that Charlene was totally fucked, and she wanted to get her head down. And that Johnny laddie: he was done in as well.

5.27 pm

Buchanan Street; the stench of diesel fumes and Weedgies filling the air, disconnected currents of harshness that the new shopping malls and designer boutiques seem to strangely accentuate rather than cover up.

I can’t even mind where Queen Street station is from here, it’s been so long. Of course, it’s only just down the road. My mobile doesnae work, so I call my mother from a payphone. Sandra Birrell answers. My Ma’s at the hospital. With my Auntie Avril.

She tells me how things are. I mumble some shite for a minute then go to get the train realising that I haven’t asked after anybody, I haven’t even asked after Billy.

Billy Birrell, all those aka’s; some that he liked, some that he was nippy as fuck about. Silly Girl (Primary). Secret Squirrel (Secondary). Biro (scheme mob name, arsonist thug). Business Birrell (boxer). It’s been a long time. The best cunt I’ve ever met in my life. Billy Birrell.

Now I need to move back. I head round to Queen Street and get onto the train.

I recognise a boy on this train. I think he’s a deejay, or something to do with clubs. A promoter? Runs a label? Who knows. I nod. He nods back. Renton, I think they call him. Brother in the army that got killed, a guy who used to go to Tynecastle back in the day. Not a bad guy, the boy’s brother that is. I never thought much of that cunt, I heard he ripped off his mates. But I suppose we have to be strong enough to live with the fact that those closest to us will disappoint us from time to time.

Gally’s funeral was the saddest thing I’ve ever been to. The only thing that was strangely uplifting about it was Susan and Sheena. They
clung to each other like limpets by that graveside. It seemed as if the bricks of maleness around them, Mr G. and Gally, had been exposed as straw and just blown away. It was only them now. Yet through the sheer and utter devastation of it all they seemed so strong and so righteous.

They had a family plot. I was one of the pall-bearers and I helped carry the coffin and lower Gally into the ground. Billy helped as well, but Terry wasn’t asked. Gail, as she said she would, stayed away and kept Jacqueline away. It was for the best. Gally’s old man was missing, probably inside.

My mother and father, and the Birrells, they were there, including Rab Birrell and a couple of Gally’s fitba mates. So were Terry’s Ma and Walter. Topsy turned up. The biggest surprise was at the hotel, where Billy told me that Blackie fae the school had shown up. He was now the headmaster and he’d heard that a former pupil of his had died. I hadn’t seen him in the chapel or round the graveside, and he didn’t come back to the hotel, but Billy assured me that it was him, standing sternly in the rain by the graveside, his hands clasped together in front of him.

The gravel from the path got stuck in the treads of my shoe, and I remember being annoyed about that at the time. I wanted to punch some cunt, just because of some fuckin gravel in my shoe.

It was an ugly, cold morning, the wind drove into us from the North Sea, gobbing rain and weak snow into our faces. Thankfully, the minister kept it short and we shivered down the road to a hotel for tea, cakes and alcohol.

At the do, Billy was shaking his head, mumbling to himself, still in shock. I worried about him at the time. It wasn’t Billy Birrell. He looked the same but it was like his focus and undercurrent of power had gone. The batteries had been taken out. Billy had always been a tower of strength and I didn’t like seeing him like that. Yvonne Lawson, who was crying, was holding his hand in shock. Billy was fucked and he had a fight coming up.

I had one of Susan’s hands in both of mine, and I was saying the old speech, — If there’s anything . . . anything at all . . . and her tired, glassy eyes smiled at me, like her son’s, as she told me that it was alright, that her and Sheena would manage.

When I went to the toilet for a pish, Billy came up to me and hesitantly started telling me something about Doyle that I vaguely got through the drink and grief.

Doyle had come down to Billy’s club after training. He was waiting for Billy. — Ah thought, he said, fingering his scar, — this is drastic, here we go again. So ah tensed up. But eh seemed tae be oan ehs ain. Eh said that eh kent ah wis in wi Power n that, eh didnae want any bother, eh jist wanted tae ken something. Then eh sais tae ehs, wir you wi Gally doon at Polmont’s that night?

But back then, at the funeral, I didnae really want tae hear this. Ah’d had enough and ah was selfish. After Munich, aw that shite, that was like a line I’d drawn under that part of my life, that part of my life in my hometown. I just wanted tae bury my mate and move on. The night we’d went out, the night Gally jumped, it was just an old-time’s-sake do for me, before I headed to London.

Billy dug his hands deep in his pockets, making himself go aw stiff and rigid. I remember being more struck by that than what he actually said at the time, as it was not the body language you associated him with. Billy normally moved in a fluid, graceful, easy way. — Ah sais tae him, what’s it tae dae wi you? Doyle said Polmont said thir wis naebody else there, it wis jist Gally. Ah jist want tae ken if that’s right.

— Well, ah wisnae thaire, ah telt him. So, Billy said, looking at me, — if thir wis anybody else, well, Polmont obviously never grassed um up tae Doyle.

— So? I asked, shaking oot ma cock and sticking it back in my flies. As I said, I wasn’t interested. I suppose I still felt a great resentment towards Gally, at what I saw as his selfishness. Susan and Sheena were the main concerns for me now; as far as it stood with me, that day was about them. I certainly had nae wish tae discuss fuckin Doyle, or Polmont.

Billy rubbed his close-cropped scalp. — Ye see, what ah didnae tell Doyle wis that Gally belled me and asked me if ah’d go doon wi um tae see Polmont. Billy let out a long exhalation. — Well, ah kent what eh meant by
see
. Ah telt um tae leave it, telt um that we’d aw goat in enough bother cause ay that wanker.

I couldn’t take my eyes off Billy’s scar, from the time he’d been smashed in the face with Doyle’s flenser. I could see his point, he didn’t need that shite again; he had a fight ahead. I think Billy wanted to move on as much as I did.

— Ah should’ve done mair tae talk him oot ay it, Carl. If only ah’d just went roond tae see him . . .

At that point I came so close to telling Billy what Gally had telt me: about him being HIV. That, to me, was why Gally jumped. But I
promised Gally. I thought about Sheena and Susan through in the lounge bar, how if you told one person something like that, they had a habit of telling somebody else . . . then it was out. I didn’t want them hurt further, knowing the wee man had jumped because he didn’t want to die of AIDS. All I could say was, — There was nowt you or anybody else could dae, Billy. His mind was made up.

And with that we went through and joined the rest of the mourners.

Terry, so big, fat and loud, seemed to shrink, to diminish in that room. Even more than Billy, he wasn’t himself. He wasn’t Juice Terry. The quiet, powerful animosity coming to him from Susan Galloway was tangible. It was like we were kids again and Terry, as the eldest, had let that happen to her boy. Billy and I seemed exempted from her rage at the death of her son. In contrast, she had this primal hatred for Terry, as though he was the big contaminating force in Andrew Galloway’s life. It was like Terry had become the Mr Galloway, the Polmont, the Doyles, the Gail, that she could hate.

Now I’m on this train looking out. It’s stopped at a station. I glimpse at the sign on the platform:

Polmont

I turn back to my
Herald
, the one that I’ve read about three times, cover to cover.

6.21 pm

In the cab, Rab heard Terry mutter something about Andy Galloway, his brother’s mate. Rab had known Gally well; he was a nice guy. His suicide had cast a large shadow over them all, especially Terry, Billy and, he supposed, Carl Ewart. Carl was doing okay now though, at least he had been, and he probably never gave any of them a second thought.

Gally’s funeral had been weird. People you thought wouldnae know Gally were there. Gareth was there. He’d worked with Gally in the Recreation Department. Rab minded Gareth’s words. — We tend to be rather murky little ponds, containing many layers of suspended dirt and grime and our greatest depths are stirred by the strangest of currents.

This, Rab reflected, was the cunt’s way ay saying that we can never really ken each other.

Up in the room of the hotel, a weary Kathryn flopped onto the bed, and promptly slipped into unconsciousness. — Right Rab, help ays git her in the bed, Terry said. — Git her shoes oaf.

Complying wearily, Rab deftly eased off one shoe, while Terry roughly twisted the other from Kathryn’s foot, making her wince through shut eyes.

— Help ays git her slacks oaf . . .

For some reason Rab felt something rise in his chest. — Yir no takin the lassie’s troosers oaf, Terry, jist stick the cover ower her.

— Ah’m no gaunny fuckin rape her, Rab, it’s jist tae make her mair comfy. Ah dinnae need tae dae that tae git
ma
hole, Terry snorted.

Rab stopped dead and looked Terry straight in the eye. — What the fuck’s that meant tae mean?

Shaking his head, Terry looked back at him and smiled. — You wi that wee Charlene bit. What wir ye playin at, Rab? Ah mean, what’s aw that aboot? You tell me.

— You fuckin well mind yir ain business . . .

— Aye. You gaunny make ays like?

Rab moved forward and pushed Terry in the chest, forcing him back onto the bed and causing him to fall on top of the stunned Kathryn who groaned under his weight. Terry sprang to his feet. He was livid. He’d already been gubbed by one Birrell today and this other cunt was getting it for them both. Rab saw the signs and moved away swiftly, Terry chasing after him. Rab Birrell ran out the door and up, rather than down, the hotel staircase. Kathryn groggily shouted after them, — What are you guys doing? What is this?

Terry was going to stomp that cunt Birrell into the ground. He should have years ago. In his frenzied mind, the Birrell brothers became indivisible as he charged up the steps in pursuit of Rab. As his quarry ran round the bend in the stairway, Terry lunged to grab at him, but his weight shifted and he lost his footing, tipping over the rail into the stairwell. As he cowped over, Terry made a frenzied grip at the sides of the banister. Fortunately for him the well was very narrow and he became wedged in with his beer-gut girth.

HERE IT FUCKIN IS

THIS IS HOW IT ENDS

Crammed upside-down between banisters, with his heart beating wildly, Terry could see the polished wooden floor of the hotel lobby, some fifty foot beneath his head.

THIS IS IT

THIS IS HOW IT ENDS

Then in a flash Terry envisioned chalk marks around a smaller, slighter body on the floor below him, showing him where to fall, where the optimum position to attain death lay. It was Gally’s outline.

AH’M JOININ THE CUNT

IT SHOULD’VE BEEN ME AW ALONG

Venturing back down the stairs, Rab Birrell stopped, examining the extent of Juice Terry’s plight: his friend’s face pressed upside-down against the wooden bars of the handrail. — Rab . . . Terry wheezed, — . . . help ays!

Looking coldly at Terry, all Rab could feel was his own anger
surging through the lens of over ten years of petty humiliation, a lens which was Terry’s sweaty, corkscrew-heided face. And Charlene, a young lassie who deserved better, who needed understanding; it would be her lot in life to have her problems sneered at by bigoted cunts like him who measured a woman solely by the speed in which they opened their legs. Help him? Help fuckin Lawson? — Ye want fuckin help? Ah’ll gie ye fuckin help. Here’s a helpin hand, Rab stretched out his hand.

From his twisted vantage point upside-down, Terry looked in bemusement as Rab’s hand came to him. But his arms were pinned. How could he grab it? How could he . . . Terry was just about to attempt to explain his plight, when to his horror he realised that the hand was making a fist and it was coming through the bars straight into his framed face at considerable force.

— THAIRE’S A HELPIN HAND, YA CUNT! WANTIN ANOTHER? Rab screamed.

— FUCK . . . YA FUUCKHHNNN . . .

— What does Birrell mean? Birrell means business. Mind ay that one? Eh? Well it’s this fuckin business! Rab smashed his fist into Terry’s teed-up face again.

Terry felt his nose burst and a sickening dizziness fill his head. He threw up, his puke falling down the stairwell and splattering on the floor. — Rab . . . stoap . . . it’s me . . . ah’m slippin Rab . . . ah’m gonnae faw . . . Terry wheezed and coughed in desperate plea.