Irvine Welsh: Skagboys

Mark Renton has it all: he’s good-looking, young, with a pretty girlfriend and a place at university. But there’s no room for him in the 1980s. Thatcher’s government is destroying working-class communities across Britain, and the post-war certainties of full employment, educational opportunity and a welfare state are gone. When his family starts to fracture, Mark’s life swings out of control and he succumbs to the defeatism which has taken hold in Edinburgh’s grimmer areas. The way out is heroin.

It’s no better for his friends. Spud Murphy is paid off from his job, Tommy Lawrence feels himself being sucked into a life of petty crime and violence — the worlds of the thieving Matty Connell and psychotic Franco Begbie. Only Sick Boy, the supreme manipulator of the opposite sex, seems to ride the current, scamming and hustling his way through it all.

Skagboys charts their journey from likely lads to young men addicted to the heroin which has flooded their disintegrating community. This is the 1980s: a time of drugs, poverty, AIDS, violence, political strife and hatred — but a lot of laughs, and maybe just a little love; a decade which changed Britain for ever. The prequel to the world-renowned Trainspotting , this is an exhilarating and moving book, full of the scabrous humour, salty vernacular and appalling behaviour that has made Irvine Welsh a household name.

Irvine Welsh is the author of seven previous novels and four books of shorter fiction. He currently lives in Chicago.

www.irvinewelsh.net

Journal Entry: Concerning Orgreave

Even the plank-stiffness of this old, unyielding settee can’t arrest my body’s slink into deliverance. It reminds me of the university residences in Aberdeen; lying in the dark, basking in exalted freedom from the fear that coalesced in my chest, like the thick phlegm did in his. Because whatever I hear outside, cars scrunching down the narrow, council-house streets, sometimes sweeping their headlights across this fusty old room, drunks challenging or serenading the world, or the rending shrieks of cats taking their torturous pleasures, I know I won’t hear that noise .

No coughing .

No screaming .

No thumping sound: doof doof doof …

None of those urgent, raised whispers which, by their panic levels, enable you to calibrate just how sleepless your night will be .

Just the dozy, relatively silent darkness, and this settee .

Nae. Fuckin. Coughing .

Because it always starts with a cough. Just one. Then, as you will him to settle down, your quickening pulse tells you that you’ve subconsciously been waiting for that bark. Then the second one — the worse moment — when your anger shifts from the source of the cough onto those who would assist him .

Just fuckin leave it, ya cunts .

But, of course, you hear the disturbance from behind the paper-thin walls; a weary sigh, the sharp click of the light switch, the skittish footsteps. Then the voices, cooing and pleading, before the grim procedure starts: the postural drainage .

Doof … doof … doof …

… doof … doof … doof …

The dread rhythm of my father’s big hands pounding on his thin, crooked back, insistent, even violent. Such a different sound and beat to my ma’s timorous taps. Their hushed and exasperated encouragement .

I wish they would leave him in the hospital. Just keep him the fuck away. I’m not going back to that house until he’s gone forever. It’s so wonderful that from this haven you can forget all that and just let your mind and body dissolve into sleep .

‘ C’mon, son! Up! Move it! ’

Awakening sore and stiff, to the gravelly voice of my father. He’s standing over me, his thick brow furrowed, naked from the waist up, his chest a forest of blond-grey fur, as he brandishes a white toothbrush. It takes me three full seconds, each measured in an eye blink, to remember that I’m on my gran’s couch in Cardonald. I only got to sleep a few hours ago and it would still be pitch black except for the small table lamp he’s clicked on, oozing a fatigued aquamarine glow across the room. But he’s right, we have to go: to make the bus at St Enoch’s Square .

I know that once I get moving I’ll be fine, even though I’m a little untidyFUCKIN DAEIN IT AGAIN!!

Ah ken that once ah git movin ah’ll be fine, even though ah’m a bit scruff order and ask tae borrow Gran’s iron; just tae get the worse creases oot ay the navy Fred Perry before ah pill it ower ma thin, white, goosebumped body. Dad’s huvin nane ay it but. ‘Forget it,’ he says, waving his toothbrush, marching tae the bathroom across the hall, clicking oan the overhead light as he goes. ‘It’s no a fashion show! C’moan! ’

Ah dinnae need that much encouragement; the adrenalin’s leaking intae me, buzzing us up. There’s no way ah’m missing this yin. Granny Renton’s up tae see us off; small, white-heided in her quilted dressing gown, but robust and ever-alert, peerin at us ower her glesses, duffel bag in her hand. She gapes at us for a second, makes some kind ay gesture, then she’s off fussing eftir ma dad in the hallway. Ah can hear her soft sing-song voice. ‘Whit time’s the bus go … where does it leave fae … whit time will ye get there …? ’

‘ Go back … tae yir … bed … Mother,’ ma dad garbles in between moothfaes ay toothbrush and spit, as ah take the opportunity tae quickly pull oan ma clathes; shirt, jeans, socks, trainers n jaykit. I’m looking at the framed pictures of my Granda Renton on the mantelpiece. Gran’s taken oot the four medals he got in the war, including the VC, which I think was fae Normandy. He wouldnae have liked them being on display like that; he kept them in an old baccy tin and always had tae be cajoled intae showin us them. Fair play tae him, he told us from the off, me n ma brother Billy, that it was aw bullshit. That some brave men got nae medals for their heroics, while wankers could get decorated for nowt. Ah recall, one time when we were aw oan holiday in the guest hoose doon in Blackpool, ah was pressing him, ‘But you were brave, eh, Granda, charging up that beach, ye must have been brave .’

‘ I was scared, son,’ he’d telt me, his face sombre. ‘But most of all ah wis angry; angry at being there. Really angry. I wanted tae take it out on somebody, then go hame .’

‘ But that man hud tae be stoaped though, Faither,’ my dad had implored, ‘ye said so yirsel! ’

‘ Ah know that. Ah wis angry that he wis allowed tae git started in the first place .’

The two pictures ay Granda R offer subtle contrast. In one he’s a cocky young gadge in a uniform that lends him gravitas, aboot tae swagger off oan an adventure wi his mates. The second, more recently taken, shows him wi a deep smile, but different tae the other presumptuous grin. It’s no exactly false, but it looks set and hard-won .