Irvine Welsh - Skagboys

— Aye, but ah need tae git away oan ma ain, ah say, feelin masel settlin intae a rhythm ay cruel apathy. Finding the cuntishness ye need, tae go through wi something like this.

— But why? Summat’s wrong wi yer, you’ve been really weird. You’re always sick with the cold, you’ve had it ahl winter. Yor brootha –

Yes … yes … that’s it. Tell her it’s him. Tell her SOMETHING …

— It’s nowt tae dae wi ma wee brar, ah say emphatically. Another pause. Confession time. — Ah’ve been usin heroin.

— Oh Mark … Ye can see her workin it aw oot. The scabs on the underside ay ma wrist n the crook ay ma airm. The constant sniffling. The fever. The lethargy. The mingingness. The paring back and avoidance of sex. The secrets. She’s almost relieved. — Since when?

It feels like since always, though it isnae. — Last summer.

Something sparks in her eyes and she pounces, — It’s yor Davie’s illness … and him passing away. You’re just depressed. You can stop! We can get through this, pet, her hand shooting across the table, grabbing mine. Hers warm, mine like a slab ay troot oan ice in a fish shoap.

She isnae getting the big picture. — But ah dinnae want tae stoap, ah shake ma heid, pullin ma hand away. — Ah’m sortay intae it, but, ah confess, — n ah cannae keep a relationship gaun. Ah need tae be oan ma ain.

Her eyes bulge out in horror. Her skin glows a pink flush. Ah’ve never seen her look like this; it’s like an extreme version of when we’re in bed and she’s startin tae get there. Finally, she erupts. — You’re dumpin me? You’re dumpin me ?

Ah glance ower her shoodir at the reaction ay the barman. He pointedly turns away in displeasure. A tight sneer ah’d never thought her capable ay disfigures Fiona’s face. It husnae taken long fir some arrogance tae come tae the fore. But ah’m gled ay it. — It’s just me, ah tell her, — thaire’s naeboody else. It’s jist the junk.

— You … you’re packin me in, cause you wanna spend more time doin fuckin heroin ?

Ah look at her. That’s it, in a nutshell. Nae sense in denyin it. Ah’m fucked. — Aye.

— You’re runnin away, cause you’re a fuckin coward, she spits, loud enough for a few mair heids tae turn. — Go on then, ya crappin bastard, she says, standin up, — pack it in, pack me in, pack us in, pack in the uni! That’s ahl ye are, that’s ahl ye’ll evah be. A COWAHD N AH FUCKIN WASTAH!

Then she’s off, slammin the frosted-glass door behind her. She briefly turns, as if to try n look back in. Then she’s gone. The hooker, her cunty-bawed John and the cocksucker barman look briefly roond as she vanishes. In her rage, ah see a different side tae this gentle, loving girl and, although it shocks me, ah’m glad it’s there.

Ah thoat it went quite well.

RUSSELL BIRCH, DRESSED in a white lab coat, clipboard in his hand, strode past Michael Taylor, clad in his customary brown overalls, on his way into the plant’s largest processing lab. The two men ignored each other, as was their custom. They’d both agreed that it was better if all factory workmates remained unaware they had any relationship.

As he punched the security code into the new lock system, Birch satisfyingly reflected that Taylor would now be unable to access this area. Opening the door and stepping into the blindingly white room, he recalled the time he’d caught his partner red-handed here, about to fill up a plastic bag. No, Taylor, as a storeman, shouldn’t have been there at all, but as Russell Birch was stuffing his own bag into his trousers at the time, they’d gaped at each other in mutual guilt, for a few stupefying seconds. Then both men had looked shiftily around, before their eyes met again and made an instant pact. It was Taylor who had seized control of the situation and spoke first. — We need tae talk, he’d said. — Meet me in Dickens in Dalry Road after work.

The entire scenario would not have looked out of place on the stage of a West End farce. At the pub, as the pints had flown nervously back, they’d even joked about this, before coming to the arrangement that Birch would get Taylor the bags from processing, which he would then smuggle out of the plant in canteen meal containers.

The instruments on the console blinked and moved slowly to a dull hum under the fluorescent strip lights above. Sometimes the room seemed as stark and white as the synthetic powder it produced, in this, the newest and most lucrative part of the plant. But Russell most reverently regarded the precious white powder, running in a steady, abundant stream from the tube into the perspex cases on the automated but almost silent line. His eyes traced back to the big bowl of cloth filters, then the ammonium chloride tank, where the solution cooled, back to another set of filters and the giant hundred-gallon steel drum. Into this drum, every hour, went sixty gallons of boiling water, to which thirty kilos of raw opium was added. The impurities would rise to the top and be filtered out. Then the solution passed into a smaller adjoining tank, where slaked lime — calcium hydroxide — was added to convert the water-insoluble morphine into water-soluble calcium morphenate.

After some drying, dyeing and crushing, the end product comes pouring out, pristine white, into the plastic containers. And it was Russell’s job to test the purity of each batch. So easy, then, for him to scoop a load of the merchandise into a plastic bag, and stuff it down his trousers.

Russell Birch felt the satisfying padding in his groin. He was keen to leave, take that trip to the toilets, ensuring it was all Taylor’s responsibility and risk from there on in. But he dallied for a while, taking some samples and readings. It seemed beyond belief, what people did for this stuff. Then, as he turned to go, the door suddenly flew open. Donald Hutchinson, the head of security, stood before him, backed by two guards. Russell read the discomfit on his long, drawn face, but then witnessed the steel in the man’s eyes.

— Donald … how goes … what’s up … Russell Birch felt himself run down like a record player suddenly switched off at the mains.

— Hand over the stuff. Donald stretched a hand out.

— What? What are you on about, Donald?

— We can do this the hard way if you like, Russell. But I’d rather spare you that, Donald Hutchinson said, pointing over Russell Birch’s shoulder, at a black camera mounted on the wall. It was looking right at them, a red dot blinking by the side of the lens.

Russell turned round and gasped into it. He felt unmasked, not just as a thief, but worse, as a fool. It was as plain as all the other mundane apparatus of the plant, and he hadn’t even noticed its installation. Russell stood gaping and powerless, as he wondered what the men watching the monitor on the other side saw in his face. Humiliation, fear, self-loathing, but mostly, he assumed, defeat. He turned round and reached down the front of his trousers, pulling out the large flat bag of white powder. Then he handed it over and followed the uniformed men, knowing that whatever happened next, he was leaving the processing lab for the last time.

On the humiliating march down the corridor, flanked by his inscrutable escorts, he saw Michael Taylor again, pushing a trolley of metal food containers from the loading bay, making for the canteen. This time Taylor made eye contact. His expression seemed to beg mercy, but Russell Birch was certain that his partner was only looking back into an empty void.

AH WAS AVOIDIN everybody and they reciprocated, even Bisto; he and Joanne were still going strong. Ah was like a Quasimodo figure, the smelly, shufflin hunchback expelled fae the ranks ay decent folks, and ah fuckin well loved it. Ah stopped callin home every Sunday. My mother’s unabatin sobs and tears, from gentle to ragin, were too distressin tae behold. Billy had been arrested; charged wi assault oan a boy in a boozer. As ma auld girl telt us the story, ah envisioned him wi a trail ay his spazzy brother’s spunk skited across his pus. Drip, shock, humiliation, accusation, pagger. — But you’re okay, son, aren’t ye? Ma would bleat. — Everything’s okay wi you ?