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Ah borrow Curtis’s mobile phone n ah bell Rents, arrangin tae meet um the night up in a pub in the Grassmarket. Ah cannae see Begbie in the Grassmarket, n wi both pure dinnae want tae see Begbie, ken.

71

Whores of Amsterdam Pt 10

S
pud looks in a bad way. His jaw’s swollen like a second head’s trying tae grow out of his face and he’s exhausted climbing the stairs tae Gav’s. He still won’t talk about who done him, just vague mutterings through a broken jaw about radges he owed money to. Sarah looks particularly shocked at the extent ay the poor cunt’s injuries. If it
was
Begbie then he’s no mellowed, not one bit. Gav and Sarah come out with us for a drink, then head away to the cinema.

— Everybody vanishes when ah show up, he says in a small muffled voice, — must be ma personality. Still, it’s good that we’re in touch again, eh, Mark, he chunters, all eager and hopeful.

I hate to burst what little bubble he has, but I lift my pint, put it down and take a deep breath. — Listen, Spud, ah’m no gaunnae be sticking aroond here much longer.

— Cause ay Begbie? he asks, life suddenly fusing into his tired eyes.

— Partly, I concede, — but no just him. I want to move away, with Dianne. She’s been in Edinburgh all her life and she fancies a change.

Spud looks sadly at me. — Right then . . . ah’ll need ye tae bring Zappa back tae me before ye go. Will ye dae that for ays, Mark? It’s hard tae manage the cat-carrier wi they ribs aw bandaged n jist the one airm, he nods wretchedly at his sling.

— Aye, nae bother, I tell him. — But thir’s somethin you kin dae fir me n aw.

— Aye? Spud says in a manner that indicates he’s not used to being thought of as able to do something for anybody.

— Tell me where I can find Second Prize?

He looks at me as if I’m a fuckin radge, which I suppose I am, the shite I’ve let myself get mixed up in already. Then he smiles and says: — Okay.

We have a few mair scoops and I drop Spud off back at his, without getting oot the taxi. Then I head back up tae Dianne’s and we go to bed. We make love and lie in the next day, doing more of the same. After a while I become aware that she’s a bit tense and distracted. Eventually she says: — I have to get up and go over this dissertation. Just one more time.

I reluctantly go out and head over to Gav’s to give her peace. By fuck, it’s a pissing wet and cold day. Summer is round the corner my arse; conditions are still fucking alpine. My mobile vibrates inside my coat pocket. It’s Sick Boy, and he’s oozing suspicion when I tell him that I’m not coming out to Cannes straight away. I inform him that Miz’ll be there anyway, and I need to go to the Dam first and sort out a few things at the club.

When I get to Gav’s he tells me that
he
ran into Sick Boy and Nikki in town and invited them up for a meal, with me and Dianne. My face falls at the prospect and I doubt whether Dianne’ll be chuffed. But when I catch up with her she’s okay about it, probably because Nikki’s her mate.

When we meet up Sick Boy’s on his best behaviour, or as close as he gets to it. He’s flirting with Sarah in such an obvious way, but Nikki doesn’t seem to mind, she’s just making a fuss ay Gav, who looks bemused, like he’s being set up for a foursome, which, with these two, is probably the case.

After a bit, Sick Boy collars me in the kitchen. — I need you in Cannes! he wails. He’s always on about trying to save money on the trip; the doss cunt can start with me. — Ah cannae just up and leave. All my stuff’s in Holland and I’m taking it, I don’t want Katrin getting her hands on it, which she will if ah’m no lively.

He tuts and hisses better than Deirdre in
Coronation Street
. — So when will you be out then?

— I’ll be in the South of France by Thursday.

— You’d better, I’ve booked the fuckin room, he snaps, then his eyes go wide in appeal as he swirls his brandy around in the glass. — C’mon, Mark, this our moment, mate. All our life we’ve been waiting for this. Leith boys in Cannes, for fuck sake! We’re quoted. What a fucking experience it’ll be!

— That’s why I wouldnae fuckin miss it for the world, I tell him, — I’ve just got to sort things out with Katrin. She’s pretty volatile . . . I don’t want my stuff trashed. And I can’t just leave Martin in the lurch like that. ‘Sorry, mate, I know we’ve been running a club for seven years through thick and thin but now my old buddy Simon’s back on the scene and he wants me to produce porn flicks with him.’

He raises his hands and lowers his head, as Sarah comes through with some dirty dishes. — Awright, awright . . .

Seizing the high ground, I add: — I’ve had a fucking life the last nine years, I cannae jist click it oaf like a fuckin light switch because you deem me
persona grata
again, as I watch Sarah trot out like she’s walking on broken glass.

He says something back and we bitch and bicker to an impasse before catching some mischief in each other’s eyes and bursting out laughing. — We cannae do this any mair, Simon, I tell him. It was awright as young boys, but now we’re starting tae sound like a pair ay auld queens. Can you imagine us ten years on?

— I’d rather not, he says, looking genuinely ulcerated at the prospect. — The only thing that can redeem us is having a) lots of money, and b) young chicks in tow. In your twenties you can do it on looks, your thirties on personality, but in your forties you need cash or fame. Simple fucking mathematics. Everybody thinks I’m aspirational, but I’m not. It’s a maintenance thing with me, a kind of crisis management.

It disturbs me, him opening up like this, because under the nihilistic bravado I can tell that the cunt’s being absolutely honest. Can I take this scam away from him? It seems so harsh. But what would
he
have taken away from me, if Begbie had found me? Nah, Sick Boy’s a cunt. It’s no that he’s such a bad bastard, he’s just ultra fuckin selfish. When you swim with sharks you only survive by being the biggest one.

But he’s strangely appreciative of my motivations, saying I was right to leave Britain. — It’s clapped-out, and if you don’t have wealth or money you’re a third-class citizen. America’s the place, he argues, — I should get over there, start my own Church and take the piss out of those naive, gullible Yanks.

Nikki comes through and says to me, eyebrows arched: — Simon and kitchens? A bad combination? She regards him. — . . . You
are
behaving?

— In an exemplary manner, he says. — But c’mon, Rents, let’s join the body of the kirk. We don’t want to leave Temps with all the chicks.

We’re back round the table and Sick Boy, Gav and I have an old-style argument about the lyrics to Roger Daltrey’s ‘Giving It All Away’. — It’s ‘I’d know better now, giving it all away’, Sick Boy opines.

— Naw, Gav shakes his head, — it’s ‘I know better now’.

Ah gie the cunts a dismissive wave. — Your different positions are just minor pedantic squabbles which don’t change the essential meanin ay the song. If ye listen, really listen, you’ll find it’s ‘
I’m no
better now’, as in
not
any better now. I’m just the same. I haven’t learned anything.

— Bullshit, Sick Boy snorts, — the song’s about looking back with the benefit of hindsight and maturity.

— Aye, Gav agrees, — sort ay ‘if I knew then what I know now’ kind ay thing.

— No. That’s where you’re both wrong, I argue. — Listen to Daltrey’s vocal, it’s a lament, there’s something defeated in it; the tale ay a gadge who’s finally acknowledged ehs limitations. ‘I’m no better now’, cause I’m the same fucked-up cunt I always was.

Sick Boy seems suddenly hostile at this, enraged like it’s something important. — You dinnae ken what you’re fuckin talkin aboot, Renton, he turns to Gav. — Tell him, Gav, tell him!

Our Mr Williamson seems to be taking this a little personally. The argument continues until Dianne interrupts. — How can youse get so worked up over such trivial shite? She shakes her head and turns to Nikki and Sarah. — I’d love to be able to spend just one day in their heads, just to feel what it was like to have all that crap swimming round in there, and one of her hands brushes my brow as the other falls onto my thigh.

— One hour would suit me fine, Sarah maintains.

— Aye, Sick Boy ventures, now seeing the lunacy of it all and smiling at me. — In the old days we had Begbie tae say, ‘It’s a load ay fuckin shite n it’s gittin oan ma tits so shut the fuck up or yi’ll git yir fuckin mooths burst.’

— Aye, sometimes too much democracy can be a killer, Gav laughs.

— This Begbie seems a real character? I’d like to meet him, Nikki declares.

Sick Boy shakes his head. — No, you wouldn’t. I mean, he doesn’t really like girls, he sniggers, and Gav and I find ourselves joining in.

— Nor boys for that matter, I add, and we’re pishing ourselves now.

After a bit Nikki starts on about Cannes, which Dianne has told me is a fairly staple thing with her right now, and Sarah and Gav are getting spiky with each other. Dianne and I take this as our cue to get away, her saying something about needing to print out another copy of her thesis. Unfortunately, Nikki and Sick Boy elect to join us in the cab.

— That Sarah’s fuckin tidy, Sick Boy states.

— Gosh, isn’t she? Nikki rasps, her face flushed and sweaty with drink.

— I suggested a foursome but she wasn’t into it, Sick Boy confirms my suspicions. — I think Temps was a bit put out as well, he adds. Then he turns to Dianne. — I haven’t asked you, Di, not because I don’t fancy you, but you come in a package and the thought of Rents in the buff . . .

I’d actually confessed to her that the cunt
had
already sounded me out about it. She looks witheringly at him and starts talking to Nikki who seems pretty drunk. We get up the stairs and go to our separate rooms, and I can hear Nikki and Sicky, as Terry calls him, having a drunken argument.

I start reading the latest draft of Dianne’s thesis as she goes to the bathroom. I can’t understand a lot of it, which I take to be a good sign, but it looks, well, academic enough; research evidence, references, footnotes, extensive bibiliographies, etc., and it reads quite well. — It seems excellent, I tell her as she comes in, — I mean, as much as I know about these things. But it reads well in lay person’s terms.

— It’s a pass, but probably not a great one, she says without any hint of despondency.

We start talking about what she’s going to do now that it’s finished and she kisses me and says: — You mentioned lay persons, and she unzips me and pulls out my stiffening cock. Holding it firmly, she rubs her tongue over her lips. — I’m going to do this, she tells me. — Loads and loads and loads more of this.

I’m thinking: we can’t possibly do any more than we already are.

We sleep through and it’s the cusp of the following afternoon before we wake up. I bring two mugs of tea back to bed and decide it’s time to tell Dianne everything, the lot. I do. How much she knew or had figured out I’m not sure, but she doesn’t seem too surprised, then again she never does. I’m getting dressed, pulling on a fleece and jeans as she sits up in bed. — So you’re going to find an alcoholic friend you haven’t seen in nearly ten years and give him three thousand pounds in cash?

— Aye.

— Are you sure that you’ve thought this through? she enquires through a yawn as she stretches. — It’s not often that I agree with Sick Boy, but you might be doing the guy more harm than good giving him that sort of money all at once.

— It’s his dosh. If he chooses to drink himself to death, then so be it, I tell her, but I know I’m only thinking of me, of
my
need to set the record straight.

The cold seems to settle into the fabric of the city. It’s like a disease the old place just can’t quite shake off, the weather forever threatening to recede back into full-blown winter in face of the cruel, icy winds from the North Sea. The Mile’s looking spooky, even though darkness has barely begun to fall. I trudge along the cobblestones and find the Close. I move down the tight, narrow lane, which opens up into a small dark courtyard, surrounded by towering old tenements. A tiny vennel slopes down towards the New Town.

The courtyard is crowded with people; they’re all listening to a bearded old gadge with wild, traumatised eyes, preaching from the Bible. There’s a lot of jakeys here, but also plenty AA and NA rehab cases, where the need for drug ingestion is replaced by the fervoured fix of evangelical outpourings. After scanning the crowd for a bit I see him, looking thinner, clean-shaven, but like a man in recovery from something, because that’s it, the frozen state of being
in recovery
, that status the temperance movement sets in stone. It’s Rab McNaughton, Second Prize, and I have to give him three thousand pounds in cash.

I approach him warily. Second Prize was close to Tommy, an old pal of ours who died of Aids. He blamed me for getting Tommy on junk and even physically had a go once. The man always was endowed with quite an unequivocal nature. — Sec . . . Robert, I quickly correct myself.

He looks at me for a bit, registers me in brief contempt, then turns back to the preacher, his eyes burning, devouring every word the man says, as he mouths the appropriate ‘amens’.

— How’s things? I prompt.

— What dae you want? he asks, again momentarily engaging with me.

— I’ve got something for you, I tell him. — The money I owe ye . . . I put my hand into my coat pocket and feel the wad, thinking that this
is
absolutely fuckin ridiculous.

Second Prize turns to face me. — Ye ken what ye kin dae wi it. You’re evil; you, Begbie, that pornographer Simon Williamson, Murphy the junky . . . you’re all evil. You’re killers and yis dae the work of the devil. The devil lives doon in that port of Leith, and youse are ehs workers. It’s an evil place . . . he says, his eyes rolling tae the sky.

A baffled sensation between mirth and anger wells up in me and I have to fight the temptation to tell him that he’s talking a load ay shite. — Look, ah want tae gie ye this, just take it and I’ll see ye in the next life, I tell him, crushing the bundle of notes into his jacket pocket. A stout woman with curly hair and a thick Belfast accent comes up and says: — What’s wrang? What’s wrang, Raburt?