Irvine Welsh - A Decent Ride

— Gowf. . Jonty accepts this with a slightly confused bearing. But it only intensifies his burgeoning brotherly love for Terry, along with his belief in the cabbie’s goodness, and that he has Jonty’s best interests at heart. So he waves Terry off and sneaks down the lane, climbing over his own back fence so that no neighbours will observe his entry.

Karen, idly looking out the window as she washes the dishes, sees him and her eyes widen in recognition. — Jonty!

She lets him inside and they go into the living room. Jonty tells her everything, about Jinty, and her burial in the concrete pillar under the new tram bridge.

Karen is shocked at first, her blue eyes seeming to grow to tennis-ball size as Jonty recounts his grim tale, intervening with the odd, breathless ‘oh Jonty’. But Jonty keeps talking, like he wanted to do with Kind Terry, but reluctantly respecting that Terry didn’t want to listen.

Not Karen. Every fibre of her being is riveted. — It wid be the same thing that her ma died ay, that brain aneurysm. Must run in the faimlay. N aw that cocaine, well, that widnae help. But ye should’ve jist telt the polis, Jonty. They’d be able tae tell that ye widnae hurt a fly.

— Aye, but ah git nervous n shy n they’d jist think: ‘he’s awfay daft, like no aw right thaire in the heid’ n they’d say it wis me thit done it n pit ays away. Aw aye, they wid!

Karen thinks about this. She follows high-profile police investigations in the tabloids, and has become obsessed with wrongful arrests. The Colin Stagg case comes flooding back, reminding her of the lengths the police went to fit up a harmless oddball as a murderer. For all the complications, Karen reasons that her brother had quite probably made the correct, chillingly rational choice. Neighbours could have heard them arguing over cocaine, following Jinty staying out during Bawbag. The autopsy, of course, might have revealed the truth, but Jonty, well, she could see why he took the course of action he did. — Well, she’s buried in concrete now, Karen says, not without an edge of satisfaction that is discernible to Jonty. — If this ever gits oot tae anybody, you’ll get the jail for daein that, n for makin the trams run even later, cause they’d huv tae take doon that pillar!

— Take doon the pillar.

— They wid. N then ye ken what they’d say: wee Jonty MacKay, the man whae made the Edinburgh trams run even later!

Fear’s arrowhead strikes cleanly in Jonty’s chest. People were so upset about what was happening with the trams. If he made them any later. . He sees in his mind’s eye a lynch mob, led by a mutilated Evan Barksie, carrying blazing torches, chasing him down the narrow, darkly lit tenemented section of Gorgie Road. — They wid hate ays. .

— Aye, so wi huv tae keep it oor wee secret, Karen stresses, her face lighting up, — yours, mine n Ma’s. No Hank, cause he’s goat nowt tae dae wi this hoose. Aye, keep it a secret here, Jonty, just these four waws.

— Four waws. . Jonty glances around at his old home.

During this exchange, there has been no sign of life from their mother upstairs. Visitors generally set off excited shouting, but now there is only silence. When Jonty and Karen get upstairs, they find Marjory wearing an oxygen mask. Jonty fancies he can already detect the same whiff that Jinty gave off after Bawbag. Urged on by Karen, he tells the weary, dying woman his story.

— Yi’ll be safe here, at least till ah’m away, his mother wheezes, her eyes yellow and her gaze unfocused, seeming to be looking at something beyond them, perhaps into the next life itself. — Dr Turnbull tells me ah’ve no goat long now. At least ah’ve goat ma wee Jonty back wi us for ma final days!

— Final days. .

— Jonty’ll be awright, Karen tells her. — Ah’ll look eftir um.

Marjory MacKay’s eyes briefly spark in some kind of wrath. It seems that she’s going to speak, but a consequential thought visibly beats her mute as her stare glazes over and a purple-fingered hand rises slowly to adjust her mask.

So Karen takes Jonty aside, escorting him out the bedroom. — See, whin Ma dies, ye cannae go tae the funeral, Jonty. Ye kin nivir go outside this hoose. Ye kin nivir even go lookin oot the windae. If they call the polis yir life’s ower!

Jonty’s features slowly sag as he heads down the stairs behind her.

Karen abruptly halts in the middle tread, causing him to bump into her. — But this is aw jist for a wee while!

— Wee while. .

— Better bein a prisoner here fir a few months thin in Saughton fir aw yir life, Karen expounds. — Whin ah’ve saved enough money we’ll leave here, eftir Ma goes.

— Aye. . whin Ma goes, aye sur, aye sur. .

Karen touches her hair, does a little shuffle. — Ah kin lose weight, Jonty. That’s what ah’ll dae; ah’ll lose it n you kin dae wi pittin some oan! She looks back to the bedroom and takes his hand, escorting him down the remaining stairs. — Once Ma’s away ah’ll no be under pressure tae eat sae much. Ah read aw aboot it, Jonty: Ma’s the enabler ay ma weight problem. Once she’s deid, it’ll faw oaf.

Jonty looks at her and then breaks into a big smile. At the bottom of the stair he gives her a skelp across her big arse, like Hank did to them both when they were younger. — Dinnae be takin too much oaf, and Jonty pats his groin, — if yir still eftir some ay this, cause ah like sumthin tae hud oantae, aw sur, that ah dae!

— Dinnae worry yirsel aboot that, Jonty! Karen beams.

IT IS A beautiful warm spring morning of the sort Edinburgh can occasionally offer up, in order to cruelly taunt its citizens with the promise of a long, hot summer, before it settles back into its usual rhythm of grey skies, pissing rain and biting cold winds. Terry is determined to enjoy it and parks up, by habit, in his old slot at Nicolson Square, opposite Surgeons’ Hall.

Ronnie has been over a couple of times, and he and Terry have played golf. He never mentions Sara-Ann, though Terry knows that they are seeing each other, having once spied them going into the Traverse Theatre together. Later, he’d picked up the venue’s festival programme, learning that her new play A Decent Ride would be premiering at the Fringe in August. It was described as a ‘hilarious, pitch-black comedy, looking at the age-old themes of sex and death, but in a thoroughly original and invigorating way’. A cursory glance at the back of the brochure saw Ronnie’s company Get Real Estates listed as one of the major sponsors.

Terry regularly picks up Jonty from Penicuik. He’d been relieved when he met Karen that he couldn’t recall ever riding her, although with her transformative weight escalation there was no real guarantee this was the case. It has been agreed it is not for the best that he met their mother, ailing badly up the stairs in her bed. Remarkably, in the face of his dire medical prognosis, Henry is still hanging around, Alice continuing her cheerless vigils to his side.

Terry has become so engrossed in golf, he has barely noticed, unlike the excited Jonty, that Hibs and Hearts are improbable Scottish Cup semi-final victors against Aberdeen and Celtic respectively, and will face each other in an all-Edinburgh final. He has also played with Iain Renwick sometimes, taking the pro golfer to the nineteenth hole, where the drink drew increasingly lurid confessions about his infidelities, one particular set being hard for Terry to listen to, as they involved a certain Donna Lawson. Terry only managed to check his rage by thinking of the small digital camera he’d concealed in a plant on a nearby ledge, which surreptitiously recorded Renwick’s disclosures.