Irvine Welsh - Skagboys

Renton fills his nostrils. Silvikrin, Vosene or Head & Shoulders? He recalls, in grim shame, how he once tried to encourage her to take heroin. He thought it would be something they could share. She point-blank refused and he was actually quite offended at the time. Not now though. Now he’d give nobody a single thing. There was nothing to give.

He gently strokes her hair, marvelling at how fine it feels. Remembering the first time Hazel approached him; she was in first year, he in second. She’d kept smiling at him in the corridors, playground and street. Then, through a friend in his registration class, she’d slipped him a note:

Mark,

Be my boyfriend.

Hazel xxx

After this, she and her mates would giggle in nervy conspiracy whenever he passed them. His own pals started laughing, and took the pish out of him. People began saying that they were boyfriend and girlfriend; that they were ‘going out’ together.

Mark n Hazel, up a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G …

This mortified him; they’d barely spoken. Hazel was a sweet, slight wee lassie with specs, who at thirteen looked aboot nine.

— Fuck the erse of it, he recalled Sick Boy threatening, — or I will.

But the infatuation passed. He didn’t see her much again till the end of her second year. She’d changed physically; tits, make-up, cooler specs, ones which set up the horn in him (the contact lenses would come later), had all been acquired, and her legs had achieved that definition at the calves that re-routed the flow of blood from brain to cock. But she’d lost something as well. Gone was the sass, and she didn’t seem to want a boyfriend any more. Instead, she wanted a friend. And that was what they’d become. They made tapes for each other, went to gigs, developed an emotional intimacy, while pretending to the outside world that they were conventional girlfriend and boyfriend; eighteenth-birthday parties, twenty-firsts, weddings, funerals, they attended together in a strange closeness and awkward resentment. That fucking animal had wrecked her, his own child. Renton was so glad he’d put that call into Begbie. That stoat would be feeling real pain now.

Renton crawls out the bed. Hazel’s started to do little whistle-snores. He grabs his jeans like a bouncer would a renegade, windmilling youth in a disco, pinning them down and interrogating them, addressing each pocket with lunges like blows. The first produces some change, a crumpled fiver and a Hibs fixture list, the second a wrap, which causes his spirits to soar, before he sees that it’s not only empty, but licked clean. He looks back to Hazel; now he’s too sick to be a friend to anybody. He’ll have to go, to find gear.

He pulls himself into the discarded clothes and goes through to the front room to be confronted by the crumpled presence of Sick Boy, shivering under a duvet, an instant visual memo of his own condition. As is his mysterious habit, when denied the bed, he’s sleeping on the floor rather than the couch, angled across the ripped beanbag that has scattered its polystyrene beads over the worn brown carpet; they’re like maggots spilling from him. In case there has been any doubt, Simon Williamson’s eyes instantly flick open into an alert rage, taking in Renton’s form for a beat, before demanding, — Call Seeker again!

— It’ll be the same fuckin story as last night. Renton picks his overcoat from the back of the door and places its weight around his protesting shoulders. The electric bar fire, obtained following the cutting off of the gas for unpaid bills, has been on all night, chucking out a dry heat into the fusty room. But he’s shivering.

— Jist call um!

Sick Boy’s words are unnecessary; Renton’s nerves are singing the same song more effectively. Ghosting across the room, he picks up the plastic phone and stabs out the number. His astonished relief when Seeker’s harsh voice growls in his ear: — Aye?

— Seeker. It’s me: Mark. Nowt happenin yet?

The long exhalation down the line; Renton can almost see it rising from the holes in the receiver, scalding his ear. — Look, ah telt ye ah’d phone ye soon as ah kent. Ah’m no fuckin hudin oot oan ye. This is my livelihood. There is nothing at aw in this fuckin toon. Goat that?

— Aye … sorry. Jist thought ah’d gie ye a wee tinkle –

— Skreel says Glesgey’s the same. Phone who ye like, it’s no fuckin go. Ah’ll tell ye when ah git some news. Now dinnae bug me, Mark, right?

— Sound. See ye.

The line clicks dead.

It’s okay for that cunt, Renton considers; he really has stuck with the programme and stopped using. With the cash he’s salted away, he’s buying an apartment in Gran Canaria. His plan is to head there from November to March, to avoid the weather’s assault on his body. Since leaving rehab, Seeker dismissively describes skag as a fool’s game and does his best to make it so; selling well-cut gear to boys for cash and bartering it to lassies for fucks and blow jobs.

One night when Renton shakily traipsed along to his flat in Albert Street to score, he disturbed Molly, rattling around in the kitchen in a vesty top and washed-out knickers, scrambling eggs. Her edgy vivaciousness was gone; scattered into dark places even way beyond those desolate, practically deserted streets. She looked old and worn out, curly hair stretched to a limp frizz by whatever greasy substance was in it, face pale but sweaty; she glanced at him with tombstone eyes, before proffering a faint smile of recognition. He averted his gaze, mindful that if you stare for too long into an abyss, it will reciprocate. Anyway, Seeker’s icy smile told him that there was a new sheriff in town. To ensure there was no misunderstanding, he informed Renton that he’d ‘had a wee word’ with her ex-pimp/dealer boyfriend. Once his fractured cheekbones had healed up, he’d come to work for Seeker.

Seeker was more of a gym-hewn mountain than ever. He squeezed Renton’s vanishing biceps and told him he should get off the gear and back onto the weights. Although he’d become a valued customer, Seeker made Renton feel as if he was somehow disappointed in him for being on junk, that he was better than that. — Mark Renton, he smiled, — you’re a strange yin. Can never quite figure you oot.

Like everything Seeker said, Renton was aware it carried a barely suppressed element of threat. But this, he supposed, was as close to friendship and respect as it was possible for Seeker to get. Renton declined his offer of some business with Molly, and was relieved that Hazel had refused the gear. He didn’t want her around any of them. Her wounds might have been made for skag but would only be deepened by it; he’d strive to keep her away.

Sick Boy stands up, pulling the duvet around him like a cape. Then he falls onto the couch, issuing a miserable plea of despair: — What are we gaunny dae?

— Fuck knows. I’ll try Swanney again … Renton picks up the phone, dials, hearing nothing but the same empty ring. Replaces the receiver on the cradle.

— We go roond there!

— Okay … Hazel’s asleep …

— Leave her, Sick Boy says, — naebody’s gaunny bother her here, and he looks at Renton acerbically. — Cavoli riscaldati , or reheated cabbage, as we say in Italy. It never works oot.

— Ta for the advice, he cheerlessly replies, heading through to the bedroom. Hazel’s still asleep, though her soft snores have ebbed into silence, and he scratches out a note for her:

Hazel ,

Had to go out with Simon on a wee message. Don’t know when we’ll be back, so see you later .

Thanks for taping all those records for me. It means a lot. You’ve given me back something precious, that I lost through my own stupidity. I used to think that I loved albums as artefacts, for their gatefold sleeves, the track listings, production notes, artwork, etc. But now I realise that a cassette tape with the tracks written out in your hand with one of your drawings and your wee reviews is what I love owning more than anything .