Irvine Welsh - Skagboys

That kicked things off, though; everybody started chipping in, but the group consisted of rambling discussions that went nowhere .

Afterwards I decided to go and see Keezbo, who’d bolted straight back to his room .

When I walked in he was sitting on his bed, looking through a photo album. At least the old pictures helped me get some conversation oot ay the cunt .

There was a lot of us as kids in the Fort. I’m one of the tallest and my hair seemed so much more pure ginger then .

One picture seized ma attention, simply because I hadn’t seen it before. A bunch ay us as wee laddies are standing on the waste ground, outside the Fort. It was a team photo in the Wolves strips we had all agreed that we were going to get for Christmas. We’d be about nine .

Anyway, I warmed tae Wolves as they’d totally pumped Hearts in the Texaco Cup at Tynecastle, even after letting the muppets win the first leg at Molineux! In this photo there’s me, Keezbo, Tommy, Second Prize, Franco Begbie and Deek Low stood along the back, and, sat crouching in front ay us, Gav Temperley, ‘English’ George Stavely (who moved back to Darlington), Johnny Crooks, Gary McVie (who died in a joyriding accident some years back), half-caste Alan ‘Chocolateface’ Duke (the product of some West Indian se(a)men that had drifted into the port) and Matty Connell .

‘ I’ve never seen that picture before,’ ah telt Keezbo. It struck me that in those old photaes, Matty was already fading away, a ghostly smudge, or, as in this yin, sneaking off; face bisected by the white edge ay the Instamatic’s prints, only one furtive eye visible .

‘ Ye must huv,’ Keezbo said, looking at me properly for the first time. ‘Ken whae took it? ’

‘ Nup. Your dad? ’

‘ Nup: your dad .’

‘ How’s it you’ve goat it but? ’

‘ Ah goat it done fae the negatives. Your ma gied my ma the negatives cause it hud that New Year perty at oor bit oan it.’ He flipped forward, showing me some pictures ay my folks and his, wi some other friends and neighbours, getting rat-arsed. That fascist cunt Olly Curran was there, looking as sly as ever but with black hair instead ay silver. But it’s another snap that cuts through me. My heart misses a beat as Wee Davie’s magnificent, mindless smile, on that accordion-like body, filled the frame ay the glossy Kodak print. My dad’s looking at him with a mixture of love and sadness. It’s a snap I always found compelling and repulsive in equal measure. I wanted tae say something tae Keezbo, but it came out as: ‘Funny how I’ve no seen that picture before .’

Dinner was haggis, neeps and tatties. I tried no tae eat the haggis, but it was either that or a fried egg, which would have been utterly shan wi mashed tatties n neeps, so I went for it .

In this affie’s individual counselling Tom asked me about the diary. ‘Have you been keeping up with it? ’

‘ Aye. Every day .’

‘ Good. What about the journal? ’

That section at the back. Mine is mostly full of wank stuff (literally), but Tom looked so serious and keen that I decided to lie. ‘They read more novelistically, or like essays. I suppose I’m experimenting, working on a few things .’

‘ What sort of things? ’

‘ An essay I couldn’t finish at the uni,’ I started bullshitting, warming to my theme, ‘I mean, I handed it in, but I didn’t feel that I’d really finished it. It was on F. Scott Fitzgerald. Do you know his work? ’

‘ I confess that I haven’t read him. Not even The Great Gatsby.’ He made a passable imitation of regret .

‘ I prefer Tender Is the Night, though’, and as I spoke, I got a raw jolt in my chest that could only be described as tender, as an image of Fiona, on the Bosphorus ferry, under a lambent soak of light, sweeping her hair out of her face, flickered in my brain. Even wasted she looked so poised and dignified. I loved her I loved her I loved her I wanted to melt into her bones. Her absence now felt like I’d been eaten from the inside. I couldn’t work out how I had got from her and the halls of residence at Aberdeen to here with Tom. In my mind’s eye a quick procession ay faces flashed by — Joanne, Bisto, Don, Donna, Charlene — and I felt myself swallowing hard as a dark memory swooped down like a stricken plane. Whatever the pencil says is erasable, unlike oor dirty, spraffing mooths, smoking our lives wi billowing toxic fumes, coal-black and indissoluble. Ootside, a sudden angry squall ay rain thrashed at the windae, as if begging entry. As I looked tae it, Tom glared impatiently at me, urging me to continue .

‘ That was the novel I was writing about,’ I embellished the lie, in order tae divert his attention fae my anxiety. ‘Just being in here made me realise that I’d completely missed the point of that book, perhaps a wee bit like F. Scott himself .’

‘ How so? ’

And as I was sitting there, making all this up, it came to me in a raging epiphany: a rerun ay something that first dawned on me while tripping on that boat back in Istanbul, the shit I ought to have written. ‘Fitzgerald thought that he was writing about his wife’s mental illness. He was actually writing about his own descent into alcoholic oblivion. The second part of the book is just a rich guy jaking out on the peeve .’

HOW COULD I HAVE MISSED SUCH A BASIC, OBVIOUS POINT?

‘ Interesting,’ said Tom, looking searchingly at me. ‘But might his wife’s mental illness not have been one of the reasons for his excessive drinking? ’

I could see where the cunt was going with this. For mentally ill wife, read handicapped deceased brother. I thought, fuck that. Smokescreen time. ‘There’s a thesis that F. Scott was sort of bullied by Hemingway, a more dynamic figure, whose approval he sought. But it’s still wrong. It’s a bit like suggesting that E. M. Forster’s decline was precipitated by the critical attentions for the less inhibited D. H. Lawrence. But it was Fitzgerald’s alcoholism and Forster’s fear of the consequences of expressing his sexuality — he was a closet buftie boy’ — (Tom looked puzzled) — ‘homosexual — that did that. But that’s no tae say that Hemingway and auld D. H. werenae above being bad bastards who could smell a weakness in their more fragile peers. After all, literary rivalries are like any other .’

‘ I’ll check out those books with great interest. I did read Lady Chatterley at university —’

‘ Sons and Lovers is better .’

‘ I’ll read it,’ Tom declared, and getting intae the spirit ay things, handed me a copy ay Carl Rogers’s On Becoming a Person. Ah’ll get tae it when I’m done with James Joyce .

Later Sick Boy came tae my room, and I told him about my session. ‘They think everything is about sex.’ He waved his hand disparagingly. ‘It is, but not in the way they imagine. Never got on with that Tom cunt, that’s why I asked to be transferred tae Amelia. At my first session he told me he wanted candour. So I told him that I wanted tae fuck just about every woman I met. Not only that, but I wanted to make them fucking well beg for it. He said I was exploitative and sexually dysfunctional. I told him, “No, mate, it’s called male sexuality. The rest is just denial.” He didnae like that! He didn’t like reality intruding in his Guardian reader’s carefully constructed world of poncy middle-class bullshit .’

‘ Good for you …’ I yawned, tired and wanting him to leave, so that I could get some kip in. ‘… surprised Amelia took ye on, eftir that .’