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

It takes him all of two seconds to agree to this. — And see if ye kin git hud ay a pair ay gairdin shears.

— That shouldn’t be a problem. But why?

— They jaggy nettles ur fuckin gittin it, he says angrily, fingering his lumpy face.

I prepare to depart, and feel moved to give him a chaste kiss on his sweaty brow. Just then, a painfully thin woman with made-up eyes and long, brown hair, comes hobbling in on a walking frame. — Mrs Forsyth… Frances… Jason says sorrowfully.

She moves over to the bottom of his bed. She looks at me, then at him, and then bites her lower lip for a bit. Then she speaks in a slow, sad voice. — This coonty took muh son, Jason. It took muh laddie. Ah ask masel, why did eh come back, whin thir wis nowt fir um here…?

— Eh jist wanted tae be wi ye whin yir wirnae well, Jason says sadly.

— Aye, that’s what ah thoat. So it wis ma fault. Ah kilt um! Muh ain flesh n blood, and she looks from Jason to me.

— Naw… ye cannae say that, Jason gasps. — You ken Kravy, ehs a free spirit. Naebody ever telt him tae dae anything eh didnae want tae dae. If anything it wis ma fault, fir littin um run ays up tae Perth fir that daft table-fitba game. Ah should’ve goat the train or bus!

The woman, Mrs Forsyth, looks so spectral, as if she’s just emerged from a three-thousand-year entombment. — They said eh hit a road sign that wis buckled, she sadly muses, — bent back by human hand, she almost howls, the lips in her ash-grey face trembling.

I feel moved to say something, so I cut in. — The kids do that. Vandalism. They twist the road signs.

— This horrible coonty swallowed up ma bairn, she cries in pain, then turns her walking frame and starts moving away. She twists her head round, — Get oot ay here, Jason, you n aw, hen: git oot while ye still kin.

— Mrs F, Jason pleads, — lit me dae one thing fir Kravy… n fir you n aw.

She stops and turns at an angle, so she can bend round to see him.

— Ally’s funeral. Eh wisnae intae aw that Christian shi—nae offence. Aw ah ask, is let me organise a send-off the boy wid be proud ay.

— Dae it, son. Any kind ay service ye want. Aw ah want is tae see um one mair time, in an open coffin.

— But Mrs F… Jason begs.

But she’s manoeuvred her frame round, and she’s off.

As she departs, Jason says to me, — Ah’ve been thinkin aboot that fir ages. Gittin oot ay here, ah mean. In fact, that’s jist aboot aw ah think aboot.

— It’s all anybody thinks about, I tell him. — That was his mother? Ally Kravitz’s mum?

— Aye.

— What a terrible way to lose your own flesh and blood. Something you’ve grown inside you…

— Aye, perr hoor’s hud nae luck at aw, Jason observes, and he now seems tired as he stares off into the distance. — First her man Coco Forsyth cashes in ehs chips, then she’s caught compromised oan the steps ay the Welfare, and now this… He suddenly stares intently at me. — I need one mair favour.

— What?

— Ye ken yon auld boy that sits oan the bench ootside the sports centre?

— The tramp? That disgusting old man?

Jason seems a bit upset at my description of this down-and-out. — That’s the boy, he says glumly.

The nurse enters to check his charts and Jason lowers his voice, forcing me to move in closer. He smells of a sweet, fresh perspiration, almost like girls’ toiletries. And he tells me what he wants me to do.

— You can’t be serious, I gasp.

— Nivir mair, he says earnestly.

When I get home I check on Midnight in the stable. A sinking feeling hits me as I can sense that something isn’t right. The stable door is open. A wave of panic moves through me. I go in and for less than a second I’m relieved, as he’s in the stable, but he’s lying down, on his side. Something horrible rises in me. I fall onto my knees and burst into tears. His breathing is shallow and he’s making a horrible dry wheeze.

The feed hatch has been left open.

I run into the house and scream at my mother to call the vet. Indigo comes running back out with me to the stable. Dobson soon comes by, but by the time he does Midnight’s gone. I hold Indigo in my arms, we’re both in tears. Clifford the pony sniffs at Midnight’s body, then lets out a distressed bray. After examining him, Dobson puts his hand on my shoulder. — It looks like extreme colic; he’s eaten himself to death.

A car pulls up and my father gets out and comes across to the stable. He puts on an expression of contrived shock and I can’t look at him. — I’m sorry, hen, he says.

— Keep the fuck away from me, I snap, pushing him in the chest. — You did this! You wanted Midnight dead! I’ll never ride another fucking horse as long as I live!

— But, princess…

He’s giving me Indy’s title now, he hasn’t called me that in years, probably since I had a period. — Do fuck off! I storm away and head to my car.

— Go then, my dad shouts, — go away and greet like a daft wee lassie tae that dippit boyfriend! If you’d let me pit him in La Rue’s stables where he could have been looked after this would never have happened!

As I head to the car I can hear Indigo bursting into tears and my father comforting her. — It’s okay, hen, it was an accident. There, there. He’s at peace now.

I drive off and I’m crying and laughing at the same time. I think about Jason; how if he’d been there he would have noticed that my dad or somebody had left the feed hatch open. After a while I just seem to find myself in the B&Q garden centre, looking at shears, thinking about the damage you could inflict on somebody with them.

I have a coffee at the new Starbucks as darkness falls. I get into the car and I drive into Cowdenbeath. I’m thinking of my dad, a man who loves himself, but who’s a parochial failure, never leaving this place, never really testing what he’s got inside; just content to lord it over the people he works and drinks with. Or the uptight Dr Grant with his practice on the hill, like his father, the one who sent all the silicosis-ridden miners back down the pit to dig up more coal as they coughed up their lungs. Then there’s snotty Fiona La Rue: all those so-called successful people in this town; as beaten and insignificant as the supposed plebs they despise.

I feel a burning rage against everything and everyone in this world, and somebody’s going to pay. I realise that I’m carrying the shears with me. And there he is, right by the leisure centre, still barely compos mentis. That disgusting, foul old tramp.

I’m breathing heavily with the horror of what I just had to do, when I get to Jason’s house, right behind the railway station. I ring the bell and his father comes to the door. That terrible mark on the side of his face: I can’t help but stare for a second. — Aye?

— I’m Jenni, I gasp. — I’m a friend of Jason’s. I was here before.

— Aye, ah mind.

— He said I was to come and take some clothes into the hospital for him. They said he can wear his own clothes.

He looks doubtfully at me for a second, — You his official fashion consultant? Cause yir no daein much ay a job.

— No, I start, — I’m only trying to help.

Mr King graces me a sympathetic nod. — Okay, hen, ye’d better come in. Ah’ve no long done a washin.

I follow him inside and through to the kitchen, where he starts laying out some clothes: jeans, T-shirt, jumper, socks, underpants. — Right, thanks, I say, as he puts them into a plastic Co-op bag.

— Ah think ehs shoes are still in the hospital, but thir’s trainers here onywey, he says. — Tell him I’ll be in the morn tae see him.

— Righto, thank you, Mr King.

Jason’s father is very chatty, but he’s quite eccentric and has some strange ideas. He tells me that he has ‘irrefutable evidence’ that the council had got a team of trained cats to rip open bin liners so that they could introduce wheelie bins to the area. Apparently a contractor who manufactures them is a business partner with a prominent local councillor. — It’s aw profit n personal gain. Ah’m gonnae write tae Gordon Broon, ya hoor. If wi still hud the likes ay Willie Gallagher in Parliament n Auld Bob Selkirk up the toon hall…