James Kelman - The Burn

Mmhh, I see.

It was on the streets, past tense.

Aw for fuck sake man look I’m sorry! And that was as far as he was going with this charade, no more, no more.

It doesni fucking matter about sorry, it’s too late.

It’ll no happen again yr honour. . Peter attempted a smile, a moment later he watched the gaffer leave, his bowly swagger, taking a smoke from his pocket and lighting it as he went. Death. The latest legislation. Death. Death death death. Death. Capital d e a

He continued to watch the gaffer until he turned the corner of Moir Street.

Well there were other kinds of work. They were needing sellers of a variety of stuff at primary-school gates. That was a wheeze. Why didnt he get in on that. My god, it was the coming thing. Then with a bit of luck he could branch out on his own and from there who knows, the whole of the world was available. Peter cracked himself on the back of the skull with such venomous force Aouch that he nearly knocked it off Aouch he staggered a pace, dropped his brush and clutched his head. O for fuck sake christ almighty but it was sore. He recovered, stopped to retrieve the brush.

It was bloody sore but christ that was stupid, bloody stupid thing to do, fucking eedjit — next thing he would be cutting bits out his body with a sharp pointed knife, self-mutiliation, that other saviour of the working classes. O christ but the head was still nipping! My god, different if it knocked some sense into the brains but did it did it fuck.

Who had shopped him? Somebody must have. Guiseppe wouldni have been so cocky otherwise. One of the team had sold him out for a pocket of shekels; that’s the fucking system boy no more street-sweeping for you. Yes boy hey, he could do anything he liked. Peter smiled and shook his head. He glanced upwards at the heavy grey clouds. He felt like putting on a shirt and tie and the good suit, and get Carol, and off they would go to a nightclub, out wining and dining the morning away. He liked nightshift. Nightshift! It was a beautiful experience. My god Robertson I’d love to fucking do you in boy that’s what I would fucking like. But he had no money and he was eighteen years short of the pension. And he was not to lose control. That was all he needed. The whole of life was out to get you. There’s a sentence. But it’s true, true, the whole of life. Who had shopped him but for fuck sake what dirty bastirt had done the dirty, stuck the evil eye on him, told fucking Robertson the likely route. Och, dear. I had a dream, I had a dream, and in this dream a man was free and could walk tall, he could walk tall, discard the brush and hold up the head, straightened shoulders and self-respect:

the guy was still lying there.

Ohhh. A whisky would be nice, a wee dram. Peter carried a hipflask on occasion but not tonight, he didnt have it tonight. Ohhh. He paused, he stared over the road, seeing the guy in that selfsame position. Perhaps he was dead, perhaps he had died during the tiff with the gaffer. Poor bastard, what was his story, we’ve all got them, we’ve all got them.

Morning has bro-ken.

Of course Margaret wasnt the sort of woman you trusted. She had that way of looking at you as if she was wondering how she was going to con you this time and if she could just take it for granted she would get away with it or else did she have to work out methods of escape afterwards. It put you on your guard. And I mean everybody, even the paperboy or the milkboy, when they came to collect the money at the end of the week, they were wary as well. You couldnt help watching her. Even if you were talking to somebody else, if you were standing somewhere where she was, if you were talking to somebody, in the post office for instance, you were always watching her at the same time, so that your eyes might meet and she could go surprised, a bit taken aback, as if she was having to think to herself ‘Did he see me there?’ but then she would give a wee self-possessed smile and you would give her one back. It was funny the way she managed it, because the truth is she would have won as far as that particular exchange is concerned. And if ever she had to actually say something it would nearly always be a ‘What was that?’ and this made you know she hadnt been listening to a word you said, this because she rated you so low there was nothing at all you could say would ever interest her, whereas probably you thought she had been waiting for you to speak to her all the time. It wasnt easy being in her company and you were always glad to see the back of her, I mean relieved. But it didnt dawn on me she had disappeared till a long time after — I mean when you told me about it, about how she hadnt been around for a while, it hadnt dawned on me.

O mirs! And a slice of square sausage please!

Beg pardon?

I squinted at her. A slice of square sausage — she didnt have any idea what I was rabbiting on about. A piece of absentmindedness, I had forgotten I was in fucking England. But too late now and impossible to pretend I only said ‘sausage’ and that maybe she had misheard the first bit, something to do with ‘air’ or ‘bare’ maybe, ‘scare’, ‘fare’ — sausages are excellent fare I could have said but structured as excellent fare sausages, although the strange syntax would probably have thrown her.

Square sausage? She was frowning, but not unkindly, not hostilely, not at all, this lass of not quite tender years.

It’s a delicacy of Scotland.

You what. .

It’s actually a delicacy, a flat slice of sausagemeat approximately 2 inches by 3, the thickness varying between an eighth of an inch and an inch. . making the movements with both my hands to display the idea more substantially.

The girl thinking I am mad or else kidding her on in some unfathomable but essentially snobby and elitist way. It’s fine, I said, just give me one of your English efforts, these long fat things you stuff full of bread and water — gaolmeat we call them back where I come from!

She was still bewildered but now slightly impatient.

Glasgow sausage manufacturers could earn themselves a fortune down here eh! Ha ha.

Yeh, she said, and walked off to the kitchen to pass in my order.

But at least she had answered when spoken to and not left me high and dry. When you think about it, imagine having to take part in such a ridiculous conversation! And yet this is how so many parties have to earn a living. One time I was aboard a public omnibus and dozing; it was a nice afternoon and the rays from the good old sun streaming in the window there. An elderly chap of some seventy or so summers sat nearby. The bus was fairly empty. The driver, a rather brusque sort of bloke I have to confess, and taking it slowly in an obvious attempt at not gaining time. At one point he stopped altogether and applied the handbrake and he sat there gazing ahead, his elbows resting on the steering wheel. Suddenly the elderly chap turns at me and he has to lean threequartersway across the damn aisle so you thought he was going to fall off his seat! He gesticulates out the window in the direction of a grocer cum newsagent shop. You see that there, he says, that shop there, he says, you see it?

Yep.

Well there used to be a cigarette machine stood there, right outside the door.

Is that right?

Aye. He nodded, giving a loud sniff of the nose, then sat back again without further ado. From the way he had performed the whole thing he was obviously a nonsmoker. But even this deduction is a boring try at producing something not so boring from something that is utterly beyond the defining pale even as a straight piece of abject boredom. If the old fellow had simply leaned over the aisle and whispered: Cigarette machines. . just starkly and in a low growling voice and left it at that, well, I would still at this very moment in my life be incredibly interested in just what precisely the full set of implications