Ирвин Уэлш - Dead Men's Trousers

— I’ll be back up tomorrow, I say as I see Vicky coming towards me. — Strangely enough, I’m at a funeral right now, down in England. I have tae go. Ah’ll call you later and see ye the morn.

I’m instantly at one wi the funeral party. No longer a tourist in their grief, but stewing in my ain bubble ay numbness. We head back into town, tae the King’s Head Inn for the reception, which, in my distraction, I can’t fucking well stop calling the after-party. I’ve been in clubland too long. Following a bit of small talk, Vicky says tae ays, — I need some air. Come and walk down Fisherton Street with me.

— Anywhere you want tae go, I tell her, taking her hand.

When we get outside, I start talking about Spud. I instantly apologise, telling her that I realise this isnae his or my time, but I just heard it and it’s hit ays hard. She takes it well, pulling me intae the doorway ay a wool shop, and wrapping her airms roond ays and squeezing. I whisper, — I’m not going to say I know how you feel, because I don’t. My brother Billy and I had a very different relationship fae the one you had with Hannah. But we were young when I lost him. I’d like to think we’d have been closer now, had he lived, I tell her. I can’t believe my own ears. I don’t understand why I’m mourning Billy now, after all these fucking years, as much as Spud. I’m snivelling thinking about them, and old mates like Tommy, Matty and Keezbo too.

— Hannah and I fought loads, she laughs. — We were only a year apart and had the same taste in boys. Can you imagine?

As we press on down the street, I’m thinking that Billy and me never really had the same taste in girls, although ah did fuck his pregnant fiancée in the toilet after his funeral. I rub my eyes as if trying tae erase the memory. Aye, I definitely would class that as iffy behaviour. Then Vicky suddenly shudders, as if reading my thoughts, but she’s reacting tae something else. It’s two girls, giggling, playful, walking down the shopping street of narrow white buildings. Probably going to a bar or somewhere else on that trail she and Hannah regularly traversed as teens, or when they returned home to catch up. Every gurgling fountain of their girlish laughter must be a devastating blow to her right now.

I stay the night at Victoria’s parents, sleeping with her in a single bed. It isn’t actually her old one, she explains; that was thrown out when they got the room done up, about a decade ago now. I tell her that Dad still has my room pretty much the same as when I left it, even though I never considered it home after the Fort. We whisper and kiss and make love tenderly, both having tested clear from chlamydia after the three months. It’s hard tae leave her the next day, I want us tae be together until we both go back tae California, but her parents need her time more than ah do right now. I can’t face even a short flight, so ah take the long train ride up tae Edinburgh, reasoning that it will gie me mair time tae think.

When I get intae the city early evening, I head tae my dad’s, letting myself in wi the spare key. He isnae in, it’s the night he goes tae the Dockers Club with some auld mates. His routine is etched into my consciousness from a million phone calls. Fuck knows how he would have reacted had he seen the contents ay the Sellotaped brown-paper package Alison brings round.

Alison looks quite different. She has put on weight, but carries it with an almost luxuriant swagger. Underneath her upset about Spud, she has an underlay of contentment. She was always a vivacious soul, though one permanently on the run from a dark cloud that hovered above her. That seems to have gone.

I contemplate the brown package on my lap. — Shall I open it now?

— No, Ali says urgently. — He said it was for your eyes only.

I put it under the bed and we head out tae the big Wetherspoons at the Fit ay the Walk for a drink. Ali’s done alright; went tae university as a single parent to study English, then Moray House, and now teaches at Firhill High School. Yet she doesnae see this as a triumph. — I’m massively in debt and will be forever, in an incredibly stressed job that’s killing me. And everybody tells me how successful I am, she chuckles.

— The only successful people are the one per cent. The rest ay us are just fighting over the crumbs those bastards spill fae the table. And their media are constantly telling us it’s all good, or it’s our ain fault anyway. Probably right about the second: ye get the pish ye put up wi.

— For fuck sake, Mark, this convo is depressing the fuck out ay me, ah hear it in the staffroom every day!

I take the point. Nae sense in dwelling on the world’s shit, even though it’s pilling up mair every day. — Hibs won the Cup! Impossible not tae believe in the revolutionary, transformative potential ay the human citizenry in such circumstances!

— My brother was on the pitch. He’s worried cause he’s already on a life ban from Easter Road. I’m glad Andy never had much interest in football. It’s like everything else in working-class culture now, a route tae jail for doing practically nothing.

— Now who’s the depressing yin? I laugh. She joins in, and it rolls years off her face.

It’s great to see Ali again, and we have a decent drink, both a little tipsy when we leave. We exchange emails and swap hugs and kisses. — See ye at the funeral, I say.

She nods and I head down Great Junction Street. This stretch of Leith has struggled since as long as I recall; my auld girl and Auntie Alice taking ays up to the Clocktower Cafe in Leith Provy Co-op for juice; the auld State Cinema, long closed, where I watched the matinees on Saturday with Spud and Franco; Leith Hospital, where I got my first stitches, above my eye, after some cunt smashed the swing seat in my pus at the playground. All ghost buildings. Crossing over the bridge at the river, a place of phantoms.

Dad’s still out, the boozy auld fucker, so I open the package.

On top, a card. It just says:

Mark

Sorry, mate. Did not think at the time that it would mean so much to your folks.

Love

Danny (aka ‘Spud’) x

The card sits on a pair of jeans. Levi’s. 501s. Washed and folded. My first thought is: what the fuck, and then I see it all. The Nick Kamen advert. Billy getting dressed in them, pulling them on, the cool stud who fancied himself, going out tae fuck Sharon or some other wee bird. While me, the reluctant virgin, lay on my bed, reading the NME , thinking aboot the lassies fae the school, and ma burning desire to pop ma cherry up the goods yard. Where no goods trains had run through for years. Willing the posing cunt tae leave so that I could pull the end oaf it tae the images of Siouxsie Sioux and Debbie Harry, kindly provided by IPC magazines.

Then my mum, storming in fae the drying green, teary mascara eyes like Alice Cooper, screaming, speaking her first words I remember since Billy’s death, about how they’ve taken everything, they’ve even taken ma bairn’s jeans…

Spud had kept them all this time. Couldnae even flog them or gie them away. Too shamed tae hand them back, the sentimental snowdropping gyppo cunt. I could see him in my mind’s eye, sitting shivering with junk withdrawal in a back pew at St Mary’s Star ay the Sea, watching ma old girl light another candle for Billy, maybe overhearing her say, Why did they have tae take his clathes, his jeans…?

Billy was always a thirty-four, me a thirty-two. I’m thinking that they bastards’ll fit me now. — Who knows the mystery ay the Murphy mind, I muse. Ah cannae tell Ali aboot this, at least no now. It’s her son’s dad.

Then, the packet underneath the jeans. I open it up. It’s a thick manuscript, typed, with some handmade corrections. Astonishingly, it’s written in the same style of my old junk diaries, the ones I always thought I might do something with one day. In that sort of Scottish slang that takes a wee while tae get on the page. But after a few pages of struggle I realise that it’s good. Fuck me, it’s very good. I lie back on my pillow, thinking about Spud. I hear my auld man come in, so I put the chunky document under the bed, go through and greet him.