Irvine Welsh - The Blade Artist

— What? Greg says, lowering his voice and leaning in towards Franco.

— Am I getting a faint trace of coriander in this sauce? and he half closes his eyes to savour the taste. — It’s very good.

Within five minutes of Juice Terry dropping him, Greg and Elspeth off in the drizzling rain at Warriston Crematorium, Franco feels uncomfortably wet. A cold dampness has settled under the collar of his shirt, seeming to spread between it and his skin. The Tesco phone appears to have mysteriously unlocked, and he manages to send Melanie a text, having little confidence that it will actually reach her. There are groups of people assembling, some who look gravely over at him. Elspeth, thankfully silent this morning (probably, he considers, due to a hangover), has started circulating with Greg. However, Franco is disinclined to make small talk with anyone, and is glad of Terry’s company as a deterrent. The scud-flick cabbie’s gaze has shifted to a girl with brown-blonde hair, who wears a black zip-up top and smokes an electronic cigarette. — Tried tae git that yin intae the Roy Hudd, he grins. — A right wee doady-basher. Gied it the message n even screen-tested it, but she’s an awfay pish-heid, n she’s tied in wi that Anton Miller boy. Your auld buddy Larry Wylie’s been there n aw, n thir sayin he’s goat the David Bowie, Terry rolls his eyes in disdain, sweeping the rain out of his curls, — so it’s a ‘steer well clear’ job.

Franco takes an interest at the unsolicited mention of Anton Miller. — What’s her name?

— Frances Flanagan.

Those new names are once again featuring. Franco watches Frances Flanagan as she looks over at a group of swaggering youths. Wonders if they were friends of Sean’s, and if the other name he’s been hearing lately, Anton Miller, is in their midst.

— Mo’s lassie, Terry notes. — Mind ay Mo Flanagan?

That name rings several bells, and Franco nods, recalling Mo as an old YLT foot soldier back in the day. South Sloan Street suggests itself. Another recollection is that Mo hit the drink badly, and Terry informs Frank that he died several years ago. — Lassie’s got the same weakness as her auld man. Shame, cause she’s a wee honey n aw, he laments. — That’ll no last but, ay.

Franco looks across at Frances Flanagan, now talking to two older women. She did possess a fragile, vicious beauty, her scraped-back hair highlighting lacerating cheekbones. He shivers as the cold, trickling rain seeps further into him. Thinks of California and dispassionately considers how much he hates this place. He checks the Tesco phone for any signs of Melanie, laboriously punching out another text to tell her he’s now at the funeral.

There is a fair crowd gathering. From what he’s gleaned, Sean seems to have been a bag of drugs, perennially locked in to shady deals, but he was evidently popular enough. Or perhaps the crowd was simply about his youth. You could be a bad bastard, but if you died young, you were sort of forgiven; there was always the possibility of change, however realistic-ally remote. He thinks about the very first funeral he attended here, his old grandad, Jock Begbie, how that one could have been held in a phone box. Very little about the crematorium has changed in those thirty-odd years. The same functional buildings and landscaped gardens, tucked away in this secluded, inhospitable nook of the city. The constant rain.

Then he sees June, kitted out in black clothes. They look quite expensive, like she’s really made an effort. Her sister Olivia is alongside her, recognisable by her trademark pensive expression. He recalls fucking her once, when she was babysitting the boys. He and June had returned home, and June, pished, had passed out cold on the settee. Franco had picked her up and deposited her into the bed like a sack of coal. Then he’d gone through to the living roon, nodded to the couch and said to Olivia, — Get them fuckin off, then. Me n you.

She’d protested that they shouldn’t, and he’d countered that it was only a bit of fun. Olivia had looked at him strangely, but then started to undress. He was over to her and was guiding her onto the couch, then jumping on her and getting up her quickly, in a silent, aggressive cowp, groping roughly at her breasts as he pumped. It was over swiftly. Afterwards she’d started to cry, and he’d mumbled, — Fuck sake, youse cows ur daein ma fuckin heid in, and retired to bed.

Olivia is now overweight, but not yet at June’s level of morbid obesity. The black insect-dead eyes in her suety, pockmarked face gaze at him in much the same expression she’d dispensed back then. A visible shiver racks her plump frame. Franco is considering that the episode perhaps wasn’t as sordid as it seemed; what was youth but a violently puckish romp? If there have to be lamentations, he considers, poking somebody isn’t one worthy of inclusion on the list, especially as he can feel almost zero connection to that incident.

Increasingly his life seems fractured, as if his past had been lived by somebody else. It isn’t just that the place he now resides in and the people around him are poles apart, it’s like he himself is an entirely different person. The overriding obsessions and foibles of the man he’d once been now feel utterly ludicrous to the current resident of his mind and body. The only bridge is rage; when angered he can taste his old self. But in California, the way he is currently living his life, few things can vex him to that extent. But that’s over there.

June catches his eye and approaches. Franco would have raised a hand to stop her advance, had he anticipated that she would wrap her meaty arms around him. — Our laddie, Frank. . she wails miserably, — our bonnie wee beautiful laddie. .

Franco looks over her shoulder, focusing on the stonework outside the Chapel of Rest. The stink of fags from June is so profound that no perfume could even begin to cover it up. If he had still been drinking, the effects of last night’s alcohol would quite possibly make him retch. — Aye, it’s a sair one, right enough, he says through gritted teeth. — Scuse me a sec, and he pulls her clinging arms from him. Fortunately Michael, wearing a charcoal-grey suit, has appeared and June fastens onto her second son, announcing in a high bleat, — MIGH-EY-KEL. .

This gives Franco the opportunity to slip back over to Terry. The cab-driving scud-merchant is chatting to a well-dressed woman who raises a flirty eyebrow at him. But as Franco approaches them, he hears a familiar voice rasp in his ear, — Ye should’ve got in touch!

Larry looks pretty much the same, maybe pared down a little with age. It interests him in a morbid way, how the passing years chunk up some, while reducing others. — Larry, Franco acknowledges.

— Ah kent Sean well, Frank. Larry moves in close and drops his voice. — Tried tae keep a wee eye on him. Steer him right, he mutters, blinking a little under Franco’s unwavering gaze. — But eh goat in wi Anton Miller n that crowd. Larry is now whispering, as his eyes swivel round to scan the attendees. — Notice he’s no here the day tae pey his respects, but, ay.

Franco wouldn’t have known Anton Miller from any of the young men present, but it is good to have his absence confirmed. There are certainly enough of them. Some steal reverential glances at him; others offer cocky half-sneers, as if they fancy their chances. A year in London, five more in California, and another world has grown up in his absence. Or perhaps an oddly familiar one, merely staffed by different personnel.

— So while yir here, consider anything ah huv at yir disposal, Larry says, with ponderous formality. — Ye want tae borrow the van, any time, it’s yours. Ye need a place tae stey, yir welcome at mine.