Ирвин Уэлш - Dead Men's Trousers

You’re wonderful x

Defo worth another bang after she pops. Also, potential Edinburgh Colleagues personnel if she can dump the bairn with her mother.

Unfortunately, she springs awake. Sits up in the bed. — Hiya… you going?

— That was great, it was really lovely meeting you, I say, lowering my weight onto the bed, taking her hand in mine and stroking it gently as I look into her eyes.

— Will I see you again?

— No. You’ll never see me again, I tell her, sad and honest. — But it’s for the best.

She starts to cry, then she apologises. — Sorry… it’s just that you were so nice… my life’s going tae total shit. I’ve had to stop working. I dunno what I’m going to do. She looks at her lump.

I lift up her chin and kiss her softly on the lips. My hand rests on her swollen belly. I gaze into her wet eyes, letting my own mist up, through recounting childhood injustices visited upon me. — First World problems. You’re a beautiful woman and you’ll get through this bad patch and off this scary path that you’re on. Somebody will love you, cause you’re the sort of person who gives out love. You’ll soon forget me, or I’ll only be a nice but fuzzy memory.

She shakes in my arms, and the tears are streaming down her face. — Aye… well, maybe, she bubbles.

— Tears are the beautiful, sparkling jewellery of the feminine soul, I tell her. — Men should cry more, I never, ever cry, I lie. — But it’s good to cry together, and I feel my own tears come on cue; gritty and thick, along with ching snotters. I stand up, wiping them away. — This never happens to me… I have to go, I tell her.

— But… this is… I thought we made some kind of…

— Shh… it’s all good, I coo, slipping on my jacket, and stepping out the room, as she erupts in loud sobs.

I leave the flat with a jaunty step, bouncing down the stairs, pleased with my work. A memorable entrance is fair enough, but the best thing to do is provide the emotional exit that breaks the other party in two with a crippling sense of loss. That’s what leaves them wanting more.

Through the chaos I have to walk towards Meadowbank before I find a cab and get back to Carlotta and Euan’s. I hit the hay again about 6 a.m. Monday morning, but, unable to sleep, I watch the entire game twice. I do one on BBC, and one on Sky, with the latter by far the best. The British imperialist state broadcaster is full of wet-eyed Unionists, with no pretence of impartiality, bleating because their chosen outfit got severely rogered. I phone up two women in Edinburgh, one of them Jill, and three in London, to tell them that I’m madly in love with them and we need to talk about our feelings for each other. I scour Tinder’s constant stream of headshots while watching Stokesy’s brace and skipper Sir David Gray’s winner again and again. The best thing about it all is the Huns taking the strop and not coming out for their losers’ medals, nor doing any interviews. It means that the coverage is just solid Hibs, our sheer joy uninterrupted by the unwanted, though probably hilarious, intrusion of sourpusses. The pundits and commentators just don’t get it: every time I hear a bitter, snidey, sweetie-wife tone deploying the term ‘tarnished’ to reference the pitch invasion, I just feel the entire occasion being massively further enhanced. This is a victory for class, for Leith, for the Banana Flats, for the Italian-Scots. I say this because I regard Hibs as essentially an Italian rather than Irish outfit. Hibernia may mean Ireland, but it means it in Latin . So the club’s real origins pre-date both Scotland and Ireland.

Renton calls and I pick up. — Unless you have decent drugs, end this conversation now, I tell him, as I’ve arranged to meet Jill for a ride. Spunk is already trickling back intae the baws from some factory in that little annexe of heaven deep within my life force. I also need to start phoning round for some more ching. Could handle a belt up the Vespa scooter.

— I don’t want to end the conversation, Renton says. — Prepare to be astonished.

— Hibs just won the Cup after one hundred and fourteen years. What the fuck is going to astonish me now?

The answer comes a couple of days later when Renton is back in town. He has summoned myself, Begbie and Spud up to his spacious, well-designed hotel suite with its soft lights and luxury furnishings (and this is a cunt who says he isn’t rich). He has the paraphernalia spread out across a low-slung Arabian coffee table, and I cannae believe what the fuck he’s up tae. Does the cunt want us to hit a fucking crack pipe?

— What does DMT stand fir? Spud asks, still looking like shit.

— Danny Murphy’s a Twat, I tell him. — I should have pummelled that gash in your gut when you were under. Would have at least then have gotten a fuckin ride out of you, and I dry-hump his wound, perhaps a little robustly.

— Get off, it’s sair. Spud pushes me away as I catch a stare from Begbie. It goes from me to Spud and back to me again. Not quite as psychotic as of old, but still with enough reprimand in it to calm me down. Ching. It can compromise one!

— Frank, are you up for this? Renton asks.

— I’ve telt ye, ah stoaped aw that shite, Franco says. — Ching n bevvy were the only drugs ah did, n ah’m done wi aw that now.

— Honest, Frank, this isn’t a drug. It’s not a social thing. It’s an experiment, Renton stresses.

— You’re an artist, Frank, I volunteer, trying to subtly get at the cunt, — see it as a new frontier to explore. I’ve heard it’s an incredibly visual experience.

— The Leith heids, Renton smiles.

All eyes are on Begbie. He cracks a low, reptilian grin. — Awright. But only for art’s sake.

— Top man. Renton starts preparing the DMT, as tutored apparently by that fucking Jambo drug apparition Ewart. — This will blow your mind, but at the same time, you’ll be totally relaxed. My theory is that it takes us back tae a time before we were born, or after our death, and in the process exposes human mortality as just a sliver in between, and, I think –

— Shut the fuck up, Renton, I tell him, — I’ve done every drug except this one. Listening to you is like working through the box set ay Breaking Bad , getting tae the final season, then having some cunt tell us what happens in the last episode.

— Aye, Mark, lit’s huv this convo eftir the collies, catboy, Spud agrees.

I’m first on that fucking bottle. It’s not that hard on a smoker’s lungs…

ONE…

TWO…

THREE…

FUCK THIS SHIT! AVANTI!!

I’m sitting back and dissolving into somewhere else…

I sense the drug is leaving me and it’s over. When I exit the trip, I’m still on the couch. Renton, Spud and Begbie are all in the 4-D vision Mark was havering on about; it’s sharper with dramatically greater depth perception. In fact, they seem like translucent computer windows, stacked in front of each other. Renton looks at me like a scientist does a chimp he’s just given a new drug to.

I look over at Spud, whose eyes are blinking, trying to find focus.

— Whoa, man… Spud gasps, — how mad was that!

— That was pretty fucking phenomenal, I concede. Most times in your life you have to be cool, even blasé. Call it dignity. But there are others, where you just need to surrender to the power of the situation. These are very few. But, like the appearance of your first – wee Dawn no – child, and Hibs winning the Cup, this is certainly one of them.