Irvine Welsh - Skagboys

Love

Mark xxx

PS I really do think that you are the most beautiful person I’ve ever known .

He drops it on the pillow by her head, and goes back to Sick Boy with a crushed, jagged heart. They’re embarking on a quest both recognise as futile, but it seems preferable to doing nothing. They take two Valium each and leave the flat, walking down towards Leith. It’s daunting but they find a grim, mute stride, which they don’t even break with a giggle or ironic nod as they pass the Bendix.

They go to Alison’s flat in Pilrig. She looks terrible; minus her make-up and wearing a long blue dressing gown, her increasingly gaunt features heightened by her hair pinned tightly back, with dark circles under her eyes, Renton has to look twice to ascertain it’s actually her. She sniffles, unable to stop the thin trickle of snot running out of one nostril, and is compelled to wipe it on her sleeve. — Got a stinkin cauld, she protests, in response to their cynical, hungry scowls. They request that she call Spud at his mother’s, reasoning that neither of them would be a welcome voice should Colleen Murphy pick up. — Danny’s fell oot with her again, Alison tells them. — He stayed here on the couch the other night, now he’s at Ricky Monaghan’s.

They call Ricky’s, and Spud picks up the phone. Before Sick Boy can ask, he blurts out, — Simon, any skag? Ah’m seek as a poisoned rat, catboy.

— Nup, we’re aw in the same boat. Ye hear anything, make sure they ken we’re in the frame. Call ye later. He puts the phone down. During the conversation, his eyes have never left Alison. — Are you sure thaire’s nowt gaun aroond, he asks her, tones both pointed and pleading.

— Nup. Nowt, she says with a final, vapid shrug.

— Right … Sick Boy’s lip curls south, and he and Renton depart briskly. Alison’s glad to see them go, even Simon, as she’d come within an ace of disclosing her mother’s morphine stash. Fuck them all: you never know how long this drought would last for and she craves her dead mother’s silver needle, can envision one last drop of maternal blood lodged there sliding into her own hungry veins. Mum would want me to have it .

Renton and Sick Boy find themselves once more on the well-worn path towards Tollcross. They head up the Walk and then the Bridges and across the Meadows without exchanging a single word and barely looking at each other. Their silence is a serious pact; they’re still at the stage where, with mental effort, they can try and negate the worst of their personal misery. They get to Swanney’s and it looks as lifeless as an empty film set. — What now? Sick Boy says.

— We keep movin till we see something or think ay something , or we just lay doon and die like dugs.

Walk on through the wind …

Walk on through the rain …

Billy and me were bored oan that drizzly early-morning walk, n cauld wi waiting oan wheezy auld Granda. It was farcical. He couldnae dae this any mair. Then, just beyond the tower, he suddenly stopped, standing rigid and sucking in a huge breath. It was as if he was trying to pull the shrapnel lodged inside him towards his core. A strange smile played on his lips, then it was obliterated by a spluttered cough as he keeled over, crumpling in a kind ay slow motion tae the tarmacked esplanade. — Stey here! Billy commanded. — Ah’ll get help! He ran off down the prom, talked tae two teenagers who looked aw awkward, then left them, bolting ower the road. He was only going tae the shops tae get somebody tae phone, but at the time I thought he’d just run away, leaving me tae deal wi the embarrassment .

Though your dreams be tossed and blown …

So I watched my grandfather die, sometimes glancing oot tae the sea, when the witnessing of that grotesque, bewildering event got too much. Because, as he struggled for air, his florid face burning, his rolling amphibious eyes being squeezed from his skull, I had the sense he’d come from the ocean, was caught ashore with the tide out. Ah wanted to tell them tae get him tae the water, even though it made no real sense. Ah felt the woman before ah saw her, ages with my mum, perhaps a bit younger, comforting me, her bosom muffling the sobs ah hudnae realised ah’d been making, as two men tried to help Granda. But he’d gone .

Walk on …

Billy ran back down the prom, glaring at me accusingly like he wanted to batter me, like ah’d failed tae keep Granda Renton alive till the ambulance came. Ah mind that woman wanted me tae go wi her, and ah kind ay wanted tae cause she was nice, but Billy gied her a black look n tugged oan ma hand. But when they took Granda away, he put his airm roond ma shoodir, and then bought us baith a cone, for that silent walk back tae the guest hoose. Ma and Dad and Grandma Renton had gone, but Auntie Alice was there and took care ay us .

Oan the bus gaun back up, while Granny Renton sat in shock, my ma and dad kept lookin at me as ah pit my Shoot fitba stickers intae their album. Manchester City: Colin Bell, Francis Lee, Mike Summerbee, Phil Beal, Glyn Pardoe, Alan Oakes. Kilmarnock: Gerry Queen, John Gilmour, Eddie Morrison, Tommy McLean, Jim McSherry. — Why does he no say anything, Davie? ah mind ay Ma asking, gurgling doolally Wee Davie in her lap. My dad just sat in a trance, occasionally squeezing his mother’s hand. — Shock … he’ll be fine … he croaked out .

Walk on …

They walk for what seems like an age, shivering, dropping coins in phone boxes with spirits rising each time in anticipation, but the same grim message prevails: nothing doing, no room at the inn. Those tired, beaten voices on other end of the line: groaning as if in recognition that Death is already chalking their doors with crosses. Still they walk; walking for the sake of walking, unthinking blood and bone and breath, stripped of volition, walking themselves into inertia, a dullness of intellect, sensibility, hope and consciousness. All calculations purely biological.

Glancing sideways at his reflection in the passing shop windows, Renton is reminded of an orang-utan; arms swinging pendulously like he’s wearing lead bracelets, greasy tufts of red hair spiking up through a nest of matted sweat and dirt.

After a while, they realise they’re in Gorgie. This part of the city makes them feel like intruders. They seem to smell the Hibernian off you over here, Renton reflects; not just the gadges coming out the bookies and boozers, but the young mothers in trackies wheeling the pushchairs, and strangely, worst of all, the auld wifies with gobs like feline ringpieces, who glower witchlike as they shamble by, sick and paranoid.

Who are these people, these aliens, that we move among in such sadness?

Renton thinks their walking has been aimless, with no pattern. But fragments of information and supposition have been coalescing in his fevered brain, guiding his tired legs. Sick Boy senses it from him, following like a hungry dog in pursuit of a jakey master who still might be able to provide some sort of a meal. They steal down Wheatfield Road into a deathly stillness, which spells H-E-R-O-I-N to him, as Renton scents the same desolate skag reek of Albert Street. — What are we daein here?

He strides on, Sick Boy still following in psycho-puppy mode, sinews bulging in his neck. The grass grows thick and coarse between the cobblestones on the street. Yet the Victorian tenements seem to escape any sun as they head past them, looking over at Tynecastle Stadium towards the back of the Wheatfield shed, recalling derby-day battles of old under its long roof, back in the pre-segregated times. The distillery stands at the bottom of the deathly quiet street, and there’s a narrow slip road to the left that snakes under the railway bridge, easily missable, he thinks, if you weren’t aware of its presence.