Irvine Welsh - Skagboys

The Walk was filling up with singing, wolf-whistling drunks spilling out of the pubs. Then, from some distance behind her, she heard glass shattering and shouting followed by a terrible stillness in the air, which was dramatically breached by screams more animal than human. Alison kept walking, knowing who would be responsible. Yet she was afflicted every step of her journey home by Begbie’s pained, malevolent spirit. In her own psychosis of loss, his was the devil’s voice, permeating all the other sounds; the grinding of cars down the street, the shivering of the bare trees in the wind, the guffaws of drunk girls, the shouts of men weaving in and out of the public houses. Her brain was blackened with remorse, gummed up like damp, dirty amphetamine powder in a wrap. She thought of June’s pain, the death’s head of her mother, then the women at the poetry group, those lassies who seemed like they’d graduated from a finishing school on some far-off planet. Making love to Simon, to Alexander, then that guy she’d met the other night at the Bandwagon, Andy? No, Adam. For a second she sensed that if she just closed her eyes, something like a pattern, a semblance of order, might insinuate itself, but she was too scared to try.

From out of the darkness, a wailing police car, followed by its bigger sibling of an ambulance van, tore past her at speed.

1. Customs and Excise

SICK BOY, RUCKSACK on his back, considers his friend Renton really is a skinny junky cunt ; that even Spud or Matty might now appear sprucer. Walking quickly through the brightly lit customs area, every fibre in Sick Boy’s being screams: he is not with me . The air hangs heavy with old sweat, augmented rather than buried by the tang of cheap, noxious deodorants. The thickset official, tattooed spiderweb straddling the bridge of one hand, pulls on a cigarette, feigning disinterest, but Sick Boy can tell that he’s clocked them. He’ll have to pass through this gate every day, and, if Marriott has his way, sometimes with a sizeable packet of class-A drugs sweating in his underpants.

Nicksy, carrying a large imitation-leather travel bag, mirrors Sick Boy’s decline. He’s conversing with Marriott but focused mordantly on a trickle of spittle coming out of his gob, which slops down the older man’s chin. Nicksy is transfixed by the horror of his private dilemma; if he suffers this for just one more second then he feels death will surely follow but, if he breaks off, he’ll never work in this town, sordid as it is, again.

In the event, Renton, with two plastic carrier bags, is the only one detained and searched. He wears a goofy, nervy smile as the grim-faced customs men tip some faded T-shirts and underwear onto a table for inspection. Meantime, his personal stash burns his toes at the bottom of his trainers. He took a fortuitous late decision to leave his spec-case works at home, and gives thanks with an awkward nod as he’s waved on. Nicksy’s way up ahead, not looking back.

They move outside the customs area, a set of glass doors transiting them to the dock where they’re lashed by a viciously bitter wind. Bloated, slate-coloured clouds suck the light out of the sky as they head onto the gangway to board the large white ship, renamed The Freedom of Choice , following privatisation, from its former designation, The Arms Across the Sea .

Though imposing enough from the outside, the interior of the vessel seems a charmless warren of green-and-white-painted steel decks, cabins and stairways. Manoeuvring through several sets of hostile swinging doors, they descend a nightmarish staircase, proceeding deeper and deeper down towards their billets.

Renton inspects the narrow coffin of the cabin he’s to share with Nicksy (ensuring that his cockney friend is in the bottom bunk as he’s detected a bit of the bed-wetter about his persona), and craves getting his head down. But they’re swiftly whisked back up those stairs to a deck — sweating, lungs punching for air and calves burning — for a potentially torturous induction. Here they get issued with reasonably smart blue holdalls, bearing the Sealink logo. Each bag contains a red waistcoat and silk tie or scarf and either two shirts or blouses, depending on the gender of the ‘operative’. (In the post-privatised, non-union epoch, they are all referred to in this way rather than ‘stewards’. Operatives are paid less.) The supervisor, a thin, short, bespectacled man of around thirty, sporting a neat Beatle cut and resplendent in his own cream shirt, is telling the dozen-strong group of new recruits how it’s their responsibility to make sure that the issued attire gets washed, and that they’re wearing a clean top at all times. — This is of paramount importance, the overseer they’ve instantly dubbed Cream Shirt lisps, focusing on Sick Boy, who stands at the rear of the assembly with Renton and Nicksy, — do I make myself clear?

— Affirmative, Sick Boy barks, causing the assembled inductees to whirl round, before adding, — Can’t run a ship if we’re not shipshape.

Cream Shirt looks at him as if he’s taking the piss, then thinks he might not be, and lets it slide, escorting them on a tour around the vessel. Renton and Sick Boy simultaneously recognise the wild-haired girl from back at the interview. — The only half-decent bird on offer, Sick Boy says to Renton in disdain. — I got a smile fae those chunky Pauline Quirke barrow girls, he nods towards two women moving in coy, close proximity to them, — but sorry, girls, you’re destined for a life of kitchen sweat, as opposed to the bedroom variety!

Renton looks over cursorily, thinking that one isn’t too bad, before his eyes flick back to their original position. — You gettin the baboon vibe?

— Don’t be so immature and sexist. Just cause a chick’s had a kid doesn’t mean thir written off, Sick Boy scoffs.

Renton chooses to ignore him. — That wee honeybunch, he licks his lips, again acknowledging the girl with the big hair, his eyes pulling around in a guileful way that Sick Boy almost appreciates, — she’s gorgeous, he whispers, as they ascend another narrow set of stairs.

— She’s acceptable, Renton, no gorgeous. Sick Boy sucks more air into his chest, hoping some of it will reach his legs.

— Get tae fuck. Check that Robert Plant hair, Renton says, as the inductees struggle onto the next deck, fanning out in assembly. He sees Nicksy, scratching at one really red ear, but can’t locate Marriott anywhere.

— You are a highly disturbed young man, Mr Renton. You would say Robert Plant; I’d prefer to think Farrah Fawcett-Majors, Sick Boy tells him, as Cream Shirt, grasping a clipboard, glances their way. He’s started his spiel and, in face of the competition from the back, raises his voice a decibel, picking them out as potential troublemakers. — So when the alarm rings, we all have to be fully pursuant with our evacuation duties.

— Aye, but great hair, Renton nudges Sick Boy, — however ye look at it. Besides, fuck Farrah Fawcett-Majors: Kate Jackson’s the sexiest Angel. That husky voice …

Sick Boy looks to Cream Shirt, still blowing compressed hot air through those tight, pursed, cock-sucking lips that would undoubtedly make him a hit in fagland, now whingeing on about what to do if the boat sinks. Fuck aw that baws, if such an event occurs ye run tae the nearest lifeboat elbowing every cunt in your path ootay the fucking road . He edges closer to Renton. — We’re talking about a woman here, Rents. A sexy woman. We can debate Fawcett-Majors versus Jackson, or Plant versus Page, but the analogy you used in this context was disturbingly homosexual. Are you getting curious being on this boat, Rent Boy? he asks, as Cream Shirt stiffens, and once again picks up his volume. — … to know exactly where each evacuation station is situated …