Irvine Welsh - A Decent Ride

How important is a decent ride?

A rampaging force of nature is wreaking havoc on the streets of Edinburgh, but has top shagger, drug-dealer, gonzo-porn-star and taxi-driver, ‘Juice’ Terry Lawson, finally met his match in Hurricane ‘Bawbag’?

Can Terry discover the fate of the missing beauty, Jinty Magdalen, and keep her idiot-savant lover, the man-child Wee Jonty, out of prison?

Will he find out the real motives of unscrupulous American businessman and reality-TV star, Ronald Checker?

And, crucially, will Terry be able to negotiate life after a terrible event robs him of his sexual virility, and can a new fascination for the game of golf help him to live without … A DECENT RIDE?

A Decent Ride sees Irvine Welsh back on home turf, leaving us in the capable hands of one of his most compelling and popular characters, ‘Juice’ Terry Lawson, and introducing another bound for cult status, Wee Jonty MacKay: a man with the genitals and brain of a donkey.

In his funniest, filthiest book yet, Irvine Welsh celebrates an un-reconstructed misogynist hustler — a central character who is shameless but also, oddly, decent — and finds new ways of making wild comedy out of fantastically dark material, taking on some of the last taboos. So fasten your seatbelts, because this is one ride that could certainly get a little bumpy …

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

— YI’LL NIVIR GUESS whae ah hud in ma cab the other day, ‘Juice’ Terry Lawson explains, his solid build contained by a luminous green tracksuit. His luxuriant corkscrew curls lash wildly in the gale that slaps up against the side of the perspex barrier winding from the airport concourse to a bank of parked taxicabs. Terry stretches, rips out a yawn, sleeves riding up to expose gold chains at the wrists and two forearm tattoos. One is of a harp that looks like an egg slicer, with HIBERNIAN FC and 1875 scrolled above and below. The second is of a fire-breathing dragon, which offers the world a lavish wink, inviting it in winding letters beneath to LET THE JUICE LOOSE.

Terry’s mate, Doughheid, a thin, asthmatic-looking man, gazes blankly in response. He sparks up a fag and wonders how much of it he can suck back before he has to deal with the approaching planeload of passengers, jostling their luggage-laden carts towards him down the enclosed ramp.

— That cunt oaffay the telly, Terry confirms, scratching his balls through the polyester.

— Whae’s that? Doughheid mumbles, sizing up the piled suitcases of a huge Asian family. He’s willing a distracted man who struts behind to overtake them on the ramp, so that he won’t have to load the many bags into the cab. Let Terry get that one. The man wears a long cashmere coat, open over a dark suit, white shirt and tie, with black-framed glasses and, most strikingly, a Mohawk haircut.

The man suddenly sprints ahead of the pack, and Doughheid’s spirits soar. Then he stops dead, and looks at his watch, as the Asian family trundle past him, all over Doughheid like a rash. — Please, please, quickly, please, please, a cajoling patriarch calls, as buckshot rain suddenly lashes against the perspex.

Terry watches his friend struggle with the cases. — That stand-up boy, oan Channel 4. Eh wis ridin that burd, what’s-her-name, tidy fuckin boady oan it. He traces an hourglass, then steps up snugly against the perspex barrier for shelter.

But as Doughheid strains and grunts with the cases, Terry regards the bespectacled man in the long coat, his incongruous hair blowing everywhere in the wind, fingers delivering heavy number-punches into his phone. Terry recognises him from somewhere, a band perhaps, then sees that he’s older than the haircut suggests. Suddenly, a cowed associate appears, blond hair shorn above a tense face, cautiously standing alongside him. — I’m so sorry, Ron, the car we had ordered broke down –

— Get outta my sight! the punk businessman (for this is how Terry now thinks of him) barks in an American accent. — I’ll take this goddamn taxi! Just have my bags delivered to my hotel room!

The punk businessman doesn’t even make eye contact through his pink-tinted lenses with Terry, before climbing into the back of his cab and slamming the door shut. His shamed associate stands in silence.

Terry gets into the cab and keys the ignition. — Whaire is it yir gaun, chief?

— What? The punk businessman looks over his light-reactive glasses, into the back of a mop of curls.

Terry pivots round in the seat. — Where. Do. You. Want. Me. To. Take. You. To.

The punk businessman is aware that this corkscrew-headed taxi driver is talking to him as if he, the punk businessman, is a child. Fucking Mortimer, can’t see to anything. Puts me through this BS. His hand tightens on the straps of the cab. He swallows tightly. — Balmoral Hotel.

The Immoral! — Good choice, mate, Terry replies, his mind spinning through the database of the sexual encounters he’s enjoyed there, usually during two discrete periods on the calendar. There was nothing like the International Festival in August, and Edinburgh’s Hogmanay, for adding garnish to his basic diet of scheme minge and jaded porn performers. — So what line ay work is it yir in?

Ronald Checker is not used to being unrecognised. An influential property developer, he is also a reality-TV star, known widely for his successful show The Prodigal. The scion of a wealthy Atlanta family, the Harvard graduate had followed his father’s footsteps into real estate. Ron Checker and his father had never been close, this fact making him utterly mercenary at utilising the old man’s extensive contacts. Thus son became more successful than father, breaking out of America’s sunbelt states to go global. Ron decided that he would pitch a TV show to the networks, positing himself as a Southern, youthful, punkish version of Donald Trump, who had enjoyed success with The Apprentice . A designer friend gave him the Mohawk look, and a researcher at the network coined his catchphrase: ‘Business takes balls.’ Now The Prodigal is a third-season globally syndicated show and Checker knows it screens in the UK. Uneasily, he asks the cabbie, — Have you ever seen The Prodigal ?

— No live, but ah ken what yir talkin aboot, Terry nods. — That ‘Smack Ma Bitch Up’ wis controversial, aye, but thaire’s some burds thit like that. A bit ay rough action, if ye ken what ah mean. No thit ah’m sexist or nowt like that. Tae me it’s ladies’ prerogative. They demand, you supply, it’s what gentlemen dae but, ay, mate?

Checker is finding it difficult to understand this cabbie. All he can do is respond with a gruff: — Yes.

— Ye a mairried man yersel, mate?

Unused to being talked to with such presumption by a stranger, this common Scots taxi driver, Checker is thunderstruck. About to respond with a terse ‘Mind your own business’, he recalls how he’s been urged by his PR team to try and win hearts and minds after the Nairn fiasco. As part of the development process, a cove and a couple of listed cottages had been demolished, with a few rare nesting ducks relocated. Rather than welcome the golf resort, apartments and service jobs it created, the natives had largely taken a dim view of the enterprise.