Irvine Welsh - If You Liked School, You'll Love Work

When I get to the bar Seph’s sitting at a table outside, writing postcards, a white bag at her feet. Looks as lonely as a virgin on Valentine’s Day. She’s wearing shades under a big straw hat with a scarf tied round it. That’s a fetching little aqua-coloured dress, plenty of flesh on show, and her hair’s tied with a blue ribbon in one ponytail, one of those jobs what hangs to the side. That’ll have to go when I nail her: I wanna see that stuff farking flying all over them pillas.

Course, when she sees me she starts playing it all standoffish; kiss on each cheek, Euro-style. I was hoping for a big embrace and a tongues job from the off. The chaste approach don’t impress me none. Right load of old bollocks that one: you don’t come all this way if you don’t want a bleedin good rattling at the end of it.

The good news is that the tash has gone! She’s been doin a bit of waxing, or zappin with the laser, by the looks of things.

I sit down and she starts tellin me about the aggravation she’s getting from her old man, this police geezer. Seems he wants her to go to college somewhere, and she’s thinking about England. Asking me what part’s the best.

Maybe it’s all down to recent personal experiences with certain parties who shall remain nameless, but I suppose I ain’t painting that much of an enticing picture. I tell her that the North’s grim, the Midlands are dull, and the countryside’s boring: full of farking inbred mutant toffs, and London’s chock-a-block with scum and ponces these days.

— I was thinking about Brighton, Sussex University, she says, and I’m hoping that long vodka I’ve set up for her will thaw her out a bit. Worked before, and you gotta stick to tried and tested methods. What was it that the great man said: ‘It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.’

Got to come in on the B-word though. Even my liberalism’s got its limits. — Nah, you don’t wanna go to flaming Brighton, do ya. Full of bleedin arse bandits, innit, I explain, and that gets me wondering if she’s into the Greek love, her being Greek and all that. Ain’t my thing, that kinda dirt; I’m not sayin I ain’t stuck it in some manky holes in my time, but they’ve all been front uns. — The best part of England to go to now is Wales, I venture, — it’s all sort of unspoiled, Aber… whatever the fark they call it, by the sea n all that. Good university town, I am led to understand. Prestigious, some might say.

She lifts her shades over her head and her big dark eyes blink in the sun. — Wales is good?

Good? What is farking good? I find myself squelching through a swamp of moral relativism every day, as the geezer on the Discovery Channel said the other night. I shouted at the screen: ‘Tell me about it, mate, it’s called the licensing trade.’ — Yeah, but the only problem with Wales is that there’s too many Welsh. They don’t count themselves as English down there, and neither do we as it happens, although they still come under England.

She shakes her head, and delves into that white leather bag of hers for a packet of fags. — I would want to be close to London.

I can see the point. Seen enough sheep in Greece, I suppose.

A very civilised people, the Greeks. Homer. Aristotle. Socrates. Plato. Just some of the names who’d walk into the starting line-up of any country’s Grey Matter First Eleven. But your classics ain’t exactly what’s on my mind just right now. — So, eh, what do ya want to do? I ask, knowing full well the answer. It’s a long way to come from Greece and they got enough beaches there.

Suddenly there’s a big light in her eyes and a smile across her face. — I have come to tell you that I have fallen in love, she says.

I look at her and in spite of everything, all the farking aggravation it’s gonna cause me, I can’t help but feel a little warm glow, nestling in the gut. — Well, you’re young, but I understand… I tell her, and grab her hand.

She shakes it all sort of funny and says, — It is good that you understand these things, after what has gone between us.

I’m thinking: the older the fiddle, the better the tune right enough, but I elect to keep shtum as it’s an emotional time for her. She’s still young. Proper idealistic n all. Though I suppose I’m the same. Numerical years: it don’t matter a fark. If that’s the way you are, you never lose it.

Her little face glows and she says, — His name is Costas and he comes from Athens. He is an actor and…

And I can’t hear nothing all of a sudden.

And she goes on and on about this flaming bubble and squeak geezer, waving this packet of Marlboro Lites in my face as she talks, but I can’t hear the rest. I’m thinking, what the fuck is she doing over here then…

But all I can do is look at the turkey ducks, them birds that just lie out on the ground around the harbour. Fuck knows what they are, I ain’t seen them anywhere else. They just sit there on the tarmac, like they was all gonna lay eggs. All together, a proper little mob of them. They got turkey-like faces and necks and fat bodies but they got ducks’ bills and webbed feet.

Weird-looking cunts, but they ain’t no bother to nobody, just like them old boys who sit and talk on the benches, or the tourists under the patios of the harbour bars. Yeah, the old town here is quite picturesque. The rest? Too shit to even discuss.

The turkey ducks.

It’s me who’s the right bleeding turkey now though. Turkey ducked. Or maybe not. — So, what brings you here? Don’t tell me that you came all this way just to share this news, excellent as it is, with your old buddy Mickey? I say, reasoning that she probably wants a good old-fashioned seeing-to before she ties the knot with this bubble thespian. Last days of freedom n all: perfectly understandable.

— I am here with Costas. He is filming here and over where you stay in Fuerteventura. He plays an Italian policeman from Interpol in a movie they are shooting.

You cunt! A wasted afternoon, by the sound of things. Farking films. They’re always shooting farking movies here. In theory at least, they got the weather all year round. It’s Worthy’s boast that Moonraker was shot in his flaming backyard. Well, at least them bits on the moon was.

But right now I’m feeling like one of them Failed Men, only don’t farking bother ploughing me up. Cause there ain’t gonna be no nailing taking place this afternoon, not with this pace of drinking any roads. — Same again, señorita! I shout at the waitress.

So as I slide back into a mire of despondency, she starts recounting the tale. — I met Costas back on the island where my father, who is chief of police, was able to advise him on how to play this detective.

All I can do is smile through my disappointment and nod like a fucking muppet as the drinks slide down.

After the tale, she gives me one of them looks and says, — You are a good man, Michael, loyal and faithful. What was it your friend said back in Athens? ‘He shines like a diamond fountain.’

— Diamond geezer, I correct her. — That was Billy Guthrie, bless him, I say, and I’m starting to feel the drink, so I clink glasses. — Diamond fountain of love, gel, that’s me.

Reminds me that I must call Bill, see how he is. He wasn’t well for a bit. Packed in the drink, then lost a bollock in a freak paintballing accident. So much for harmless sport. Don’t know what the fuck he was up to, mind you, surely some abuse of the old equipment going on there. That’s what being off the booze does for ya.

Not that we’d know much about that here. Seph’s looking well trolleyed. She can’t decide whether or not she wants a cigarette. She takes one out from her packet, then puts it back in. — You would have been a good man to marry, but in men of your age the seed is likely to be spent, my father says, she kindly informs me. — The gift I must give to him is that of a grandson. My three sisters all have daughters.