Irvine Welsh - The Blade Artist

I just thought, why? Why was she doing this? She came from money. Why work with the scum of the earth? But she surprised me. As well as being a good person, she was strong and righteous. There was nothing wishy-washy about her. Yes, she’d had all the advantages, but she’d chosen to try and make a difference in the lives of some of the most broken, lost men.

I recall in that first class she wore a tight green sweater and black leggings, with a green band in her hair. Afterwards, I thought I’d be pulling the fuckin end off it all night thinking about her. But I didn’t wank for a second. I just lay there, remembering her words, her voice, constructing romantic fantasies about her. They made me feel pathetic and weak. But I imagined talking to her, alone. Without the giggles and comments of all the arseholes in the group. How could I talk to her? I didn’t try. I worked.

There was the portrait I started, Dance Partner, of Craig Liddel. Seeker. He was the guy I’d got the big sentence for killing, my second manslaughter conviction, reduced from murder, as the court (correctly) deemed it was self-defence. It was our third confrontation, the first being in jail, when he came off best, the second at an old mill house in Northumberland, where I had the advantage. The decider bout in the car park was conclusive. In the picture Liddel’s face, not set in a sneer, or crumpled with cold contempt or murderous rage, as it was when we met, but open and smiling. Around it, a series of ghosts of men, women and children. Then, Melanie Francis, approaching me, intrigued. Asking me about my work. The way she called it that; not my painting, but my work.

I told her it was the man I’d killed. The people whose lives around him I had changed. His family and friends. There were others; the women he’d never know, the children he’d never have, and the places, the Eiffel Tower, Statue of Liberty, he’d never see.

— Do you aspire to see those places? she asked me.

I looked into her deep blue eyes and realised for the first time, to my shock and horror, that I did. — Yes, I told her.

I was falling for her from day one. It seemed ludicrous. I was daring to dream, to fantasise a future for us together when I’d barely spoken a word to her. I thought of us being together in America, in a big convertible, driving to Big Sur and the Joshua Tree. I could find no weakness in her warm, missionary light, couldn’t even determine its source; political, religious, philosophical, or just rebelliousness against her own privileged class? I didn’t care. I read as much as I could, fighting through my dyslexia, now I had motivation, till my brain hurt. I was listening to audiobooks, and finally learning to decode all that jumbled nonsense. She was a powerful catalyst, yes, but this change wasn’t just about her.

I grew bored with the staple True Crime books I had used to develop my reading skills; most were shabby affairs of self-serving bullshit, ghostwritten by grubby journos to impress kids, and wankers whose balls would never drop. I read more challenging stuff. Philosophy and art history. The biographies of the great painters. To learn, yes, but also to impress her.

But who was she? She was good and strong and I was bad and weak. That’s what hit me most of all from being around her. That I was weak. The notion was ridiculous; it went against everything I’d come to believe about my persona and image, against the way I’d consciously forged myself over the years. Yet who else but a weak man would spend half his life letting others lock him up like an animal?

I was one of the weakest people on the planet. I had zero control over my darker impulses. Therefore I was constant jail fodder. Some mouthy cunt got wide; they had to be decimated on the spot, and I was back in prison. Thus such nonentities were in total command of my destiny. That was my first major epiphany: I was weak because I wasn’t in control of myself. Melanie was in control of herself. In order to be with somebody like her, to live a free life, not in a tenement or scheme on the breadline, or even a suburb and crippled with a lifetime of debt, I needed a free mind. I had to get control of myself.

I told her this.

Franco had returned to Elspeth’s quite early the previous evening, and called Melanie on the American phone. The battery finally died in mid-conversation. This frustrated him, as he sensed that she was ramping herself up to say something important. The Tesco device seemed to belong to an era from about three prison sentences back. It sat in the palm of his hand like the last of an endangered species. He plugged in the charger and pumped electricity into this corpse, seeing if it might reanimate. He’d put ten pounds on the account, at the sales clerk’s advice. — Twenty’s too much, she’d told him earnestly. He’d shaken his head in disbelief. Now he saw what she was on about, the thing seemed designed to fall apart as soon as he exited the supermarket. Now he had to remember to get an adaptor for the US charger. Then, suddenly, the jet lag he thought he’d mastered hit him like a sledgehammer, and he retired early, sleeping deeply and restoratively.

Rising into a dull morning, Franco makes his usual breakfast, with provisions he’d picked up in Waitrose, substituting feta for Swiss cheese, and this time is able to tempt his sister into joining them. As they sit around the kitchen table, with the exception of Greg, who has gone to work early, Elspeth asks, — So how is June?

— Same. But fatter, he adds.

George and Thomas smirk, then stop under Elspeth’s reprimanding stare.

— Did she tell you about the funeral arrangements?

— Aye, but there’s nothing much, other than what we already know: it’s on Friday, two o’clock at Warriston, and I’m footing the bill.

— Well, it is your son, Elspeth glared, — and you can afford it and she can’t.

— I didn’t say I was complaining.

Elspeth looks doubtfully at him, but sees the boys taking an interest, so pulls back. — Greg says he’s taking the afternoon off.

— I told him that there’s no need.

— We’re still family, she states, her gaze challenging him. But there is no response; his eyes are on his plate.

— Wonder what happens when you die, George says.

Fuck all, Franco thinks. You cease to exist, that’s it. He is about to say something, but considers it might not be his place.

— Never mind that, Elspeth barks, — finish your breakfast.

— But it’s just so strange to think we’ll never see Sean again, George says. — Never ever.

— Nobody knows, Franco offers.

— Do you think you go to heaven or hell? Thomas asks him.

— Maybe both, Franco says. — Maybe there’s some kind ay transit between the two, when you get bored with one, you can mix it up a bit, and head to the other.

— Like on holiday? Thomas wonders.

— Like a bus between two airport terminals, George volunteers.

— Aye, Franco considers, — why not? If nobody knows, what happens after could be anything we imagine, or maybe nothing at all.

Thomas is still in holiday mode. — Holidays in hell, he says dreamily.

— Been there, done that. Frank Begbie looks at his sister. — Mind the time we went to Butlins at Ayr? He turns to the boys. — Nah, your mum won’t, she was just a wee baby.

The boys seem to look at their mother in an almost mystical light, trying to envisage this. — I can’t imagine Mum as a baby, George says, half shutting his eyes as if to conjure up the image.

Elspeth turns to her sons. — Right, you two, jildy.

— Ah’ve no heard that word in years, Franco says.