Ирвин Уэлш - Dead Men's Trousers

We put the kettle on and talk about Spud, but I can’t tell him about Billy’s jeans. When he turns in, I find sleep impossible, and I need to converse more, to share all this grim news. I can’t talk to Sick Boy. It’s pathetic, but I just can’t. For some reason the only person I can think ay telling the now is Franco, no that he’ll gie a fuck. But ah send him a text for old times’ sake:

No good way of saying this, but Spud died this morning. His heart gave out .

The fucker bats it right back at me:

Too bad .

And that’s the extent tae which he cares. What a first-class cunt. I’m enraged, and I text Ali to tell her.

A charitable response comes back immediately:

It’s just his way. Go to bed. Goodnight. x

The sun beams obstinately in the cloudless sky, as if offering any potential troublemakers planning to drift in from the North Sea or the Atlantic a pre-emptive square go. Summer has bubbled its usual promise, but now there are signs of real traction. The old port of Leith seems to sprawl in heat’s lazy vulgarity around the churchyard of St Mary’s Star of the Sea, from the run-down 1970s Kirkgate shopping centre and flats on one side, to the dark lung of dock-bound Constitution Street on the other.

Despite the grimmest of circumstances, Mark Renton and his girlfriend Victoria Hopkirk are powerless to resist a nervy onset of levity occasioned by her first meeting with Davie Renton. Mark’s father has never set foot inside the Catholic church. As a Glasgow Protestant, he initially resented it on ecclesiastical grounds, but when his stubborn sectarianism finally started to wane, he grew to see it as a rival for his wife’s affections. It was his Cathy’s place of refuge, indicative of a life he couldn’t share, a competitor. Guilt wracks him, as it all seems so trivial now. To calm his nerves Davie has taken one nip too many. On seeing his son, in the churchyard with his English, American-based girlfriend, he undertakes a rakish Bond impression, kissing Vicky’s hand and stating, — My son never showed good taste in women, then adding the waspish punchline, — until now.

It is so ludicrous they both laugh out loud, forcing Davie to join in. However, this reaction excites a chastising look from Siobhan, one of Spud’s sisters, and they rein in their mirth. They greet the other mourners sombrely, filing into the church. In the icon-laden camp palace of unreformed Christianity, Victoria is struck by the contrast to her sister’s cremation. In the coffin, the body of Daniel Murphy lies out on display in an open casket, in preparation for the full requiem Mass.

Renton can’t avoid running into Sick Boy, who is present with Marianne. After a terse nod of acknowledgement, they are silent. Each wants to speak, but neither can bypass the powerful saboteur of pride. They studiously avoid meeting each other’s eyes. Renton registers that Vicky and Marianne have exchanged glances, and is keen to keep them at a distance.

They file past the coffin. Renton notes uneasily that Daniel Murphy looks positively wholesome, better than he’s done in about thirty years – the undertakers deserve a medal for their craft – the Hibs scarf he found at Hampden folded on his chest. Renton thinks of the DMT trip, and wonders where Spud is. It brings home how life-changing that experience was, as he’d previously simply have thought of him as completely extinguished; like Tommy, Matty, Seeker and Swanney before him. Now he genuinely doesn’t know.

The priest gets up and gives a standard speech, Spud’s extended family shivering under the meagre psychic comfort blanket he provides. The proceedings are uneventful, until Spud’s son, Andy, gets up into the polished pulpit to make a testimony to his father.

To Renton, Andrew Murphy looks so like a young Spud, it’s uncanny. The voice coming from him instantly undermines this impression though, a more educated, blander Edinburgh, with a hint of north of England. — My dad worked in furniture removals. He liked that manual labour, loved the optimism people felt when they were moving into a new home. As a young man, he was made redundant. A whole generation were, when they shed all the manual jobs. Dad wasn’t an ambitious man, but in his own way he was a good one, loyal and kind to his friends.

At these words, Renton feels an unbearable tug in his chest. His eyes glass over. He wants to look at Sick Boy, who is sitting behind him, but he can’t.

Andrew Murphy continues. — My dad wanted to work. But he had no skills or qualifications. It was important to him that I got an education. I did. Now I’m a lawyer.

Mark Renton looks to Alison. Through her tears, she glows with pride at her son’s performance. Who, he thinks, will provide a testimony to him? Thinking of Alex, something catches in his throat. When he’s gone, his son will be alone. He feels Vicky’s hand squeezing his.

Andrew Murphy changes the mood. — And in a few years, maybe five, maybe ten, I’ll be as redundant as he ever was. The lawyer will be gone, like the labourer before him. Made obsolete by big data and artificial intelligence. What will I do? Well, then I’ll find out just how much like him I am. And what will I say to my child, he points at his girlfriend, her belly swollen, — in twenty years’ time, when there are no labourers’ or lawyers’ jobs? Do we have a game plan for all this, other than wrecking our planet in order to give away all its wealth to the super-rich? My father’s life was wasted, and yes, a lot of it was his own fault. Still more of it was the fault of the system we’ve created, Andrew Murphy contends. Renton can see the priest tense up to the point where the pressure in his arsehole could crush a solar system. — What is the measure of a life? Is it how much they’ve loved and been loved? The good deeds they’ve done? The great art they’ve produced? Or is it the money they’ve made or stolen or accumulated? The power they’ve exerted over others? The lives they’ve negatively impacted upon, cut short or even taken? We need to do better, or my father will soon seem a really old man, because we’ll all start dying again before we reach fifty.

Renton thinks about Spud’s manuscript. How Spud’s life wasn’t all wasted. How he sent it off to that publisher in London, with some minor modifications. He imagines he can feel Sick Boy’s gaze, rapacious, on the back of his neck. However, his old friend and nemesis has averted his eyes to the floor. Sick Boy fights down a poignant, undermining reasoning that significance in life is only found in relationships with others, and we’ve been cruelly hoaxed into believing that it’s all about us. A pain is intensifying behind his eyeballs, a sour sickness curdling in his guts. It shouldn’t be like this; Spud dead, Begbie absent, him and Renton estranged. He’s trying to convince himself that he tried to save Spud but his friend was let down by two people: his brother-in-law Euan McCorkindale, and brothel-keeper Victor Syme. — They fucking killed Spud, he raises his head and whispers to Marianne, — that two who urnae here.

— Begbie?

— No, not Begbie. Sick Boy scans the mourners. — Euan. He shat out of doing his duty as a doctor, couldnae even stop Spud getting infected. And I reunited that cunt with my sister!

‘Sunshine on Leith’ strikes up as the mourners rise and file past the coffin, paying their last respects. Spud, strangely, scarily, doesn’t even look deceased. There isn’t that lifeless, soulless, toneless quality dead bodies generally have. He looks like he could spring up and demand an ecky, Sick Boy thinks. He crosses himself as he looks at his friend’s face for the last time, and heads outside the church, lighting up a cigarette.