The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs (11 page)

— Let’s just take a wee walk through the gardens, Skinner had suggested to his girlfriend. As they descended the steps at the floral clock, now barren for the winter, the throb of a bass line rumbled in the air. Something seemed to be going on at the Ross Bandstand. They heard a wavering voice rising, and saw some groups of freshly scrubbed-looking people, clad in clean brushed denim, and ascertained that some kind of gospel rock band was playing.

— Let’s check this out, Kay suggested.

— Naw, let’s just sit down here for a bit. Skinner pointed at an empty park bench.

— It’s too cold to sit out, Danny, Kay protested, stamping her feet, and pulling some windswept strands of hair out of her eyes.

— Just for a minute, I’ve got something I need to say to you, he pleaded.

Intrigued, Kay followed him, and they sat on the bench. Skinner looked sadly at her. — I’ve been an idiot, a total arsehole. At Christmas . . .

— Look, we’ve been through this before, I don’t want to talk about it. Kay shook her head. — Let’s just put it behind us. It’s Saturday and I –

— Please, angel, just listen to me for a second, he urged, fishing a small box out of his pocket. — I love you, Kay. I want to be with you always.

She gasped as he snapped it open and she caught the sparkle of the diamond ring.

Skinner slid off the park bench on to his knees in front of her. — Kay, I want to marry you. Will you marry me?

Kay Ballantyne was in shock. She’d come to believe that he was bored with her, and wanted them to finish, and that this was what all the drinking was about. — Danny . . . I don’t know what to say . . .

Skinner looked tensely at her. Fortunately, this was one of the responses he’d considered in his myriad rehearsals. — Yes would work.

— Yes! Of course! Kay screamed in glee, bending down to kiss him on the mouth as he placed the ring on her finger.

Brian Kibby, out with Ian Buchan on Princes Street, was sporting his favourite baseball cap. A roaring blast of wind suddenly ripped it from his head, hurling it over the railings into the gardens. — My hat! Kibby gave chase, heading through some gates down a cobblestoned slope.

At first he couldn’t see it, then he registered that it had come to rest underneath one of the park benches at the bottom of the hill, where a girl in a white jacket was sitting alone. Brian Kibby walked up slowly behind her, and bent down to pick up the cap. As he did, he found himself staring, to their mutual disbelief, through the bars on the bench, straight into the eyes of a kneeling Danny Skinner.

Finding themselves practically in each other’s faces, both men were stricken by shock. There was a frozen moment of purgatory before Kibby spoke. — Eh, hi, Danny, he said softly. —
It’s ma hat, it blew away, he inspidly explained, as Kay turned round in her seat. Kibby was trying not to notice that Skinner was on his knees in front of a startlingly beautiful girl. The white leather jacket she wore had a fur trim, and she sported a furry hat with earmuffs. Her pixie-like nose twitched in the cold, and her eyes widened, as if to compensate for the narrowing of Danny Skinner’s, who was ludicrously pretending not to see Brian Kibby. The game was up when Kay nudged him and pointed at his colleague, who was now standing up, clutching the offending cap to his chest.

— Oh, hi, Brian . . . Skinner said with the minimum possible grace.

Kay stood up, thus forcing Skinner to do the same, and put her fingertips together. Cocking her head to the side, she looked up at Skinner in an eager, urging smile, then turned back to Kibby, who marvelled at her dazzling white grin and the swish of her shining black hair in the wind, which cascaded on to her shoulders from under her hat and muffs.

Despite feeling the words jamming in his throat, Skinner managed to cough out, — Eh, that’s Brian. He works with me at the council. Then he added quickly, — This is Kay.

Kay smiled broadly at him and Kibby almost passed out.

She’s lovely, and she’s with Skinner, and they’re probably in love and there’s no justice in this world . . . a lassie like her going out with the likes of that . . . her teeth are so white, her skin’s so smooth, her hair’s so beautiful . . .

—
Hiya, Brian, Kay said, and nodded to his friend Ian, who had appeared by his side. Then she nudged Skinner, who seemed to Kibby to be sick with tension and disgust and said eagerly, — I can’t help it, Danny, I want to tell the world!

Skinner gritted his teeth, but Kay didn’t notice. She extended her hand to show Kibby the ring; the diamond ring he’d given her in that exquistite moment of intimacy, only seconds ago, which had now been completely ruined for him.

Him! That fucking little arse-licking walking foetus is the first person
to know about us, about my cunting engagement! Caught on my knees by that fucking . . . and that cunt he’s with . . .

—
We just got engaged! Kay sang, as the Christian gospel music soared to new heights.

Skinner stole a scornful glance at Brian Kibby’s friend. All he saw was a pair of protruding ears and a prominent Adam’s apple.

Another fucking muppet!

Through witnessing Danny Skinner’s silent rage, Brian Kibby realised that he’d inadvertently intruded on a precious moment. It was of the type he’d never personally experienced, but had enviously seen in the lovers around him; and he felt, through that glacier, psychotic stare of Skinner’s, that he would emphatically pay for this trangression. — Congratulations, Kibby said as warmly as he could, trying to both ingratiate himself to Kay and make a twisted plea for clemency to his enemy. Ian nodded with an awkward smile as Skinner said something like, — Hmmmph, while almost choking in repressed fury.

He’s the first fucker to know . . .

The most beautiful and important thing that has happened in my life, and
he
is the first person to know about it!

Kibby.

And he winced as they departed, dishonoured by Kay’s goodwill, her oneness with the world, as she looked at the sparkler on her finger again, and said, — He seems a nice guy.

Skinner watched Kibby, as his workmate climbed the cobbled path up to Princes Street, holding that cap, clutching it fearfully in the wind.

That cunt dies.

Skinner said nothing. When she prompted him by widening her eyes, he spat out in unbridled repugnance, — Aye, he’s awright. And in Kay’s look he saw that she had caught something in him, something ugly she’d not been privy to before, not even in his most selfish, drunken moments, and it was what
Kibby had brought out in him. Trying to seize control of his emotions and the situation, he suggested that they go for a drink down Rose Street to celebrate their engagement.

One drink turned into several, became more than enough for Kay, but it was apparent that Skinner wasn’t for moving. Now it was Kay’s turn to attempt to wrestle some mastery back into her life, and she started to talk about their plans for the future, where they would live and such, and was soon decorating their imaginary home.

Though trying to bear this affably, Skinner became vexed, as he generally did, when she started to talk of children. To him, this represented the ultimate slavery, the end of his social life. But there was a deeper anxiety: he desperately wanted to know about his own father before he ever thought about becoming one himself. They started to argue, Kay growing close to tears as she saw her special day being washed away in a sea of lager and Jack Daniel’s. — Why do you have to drink like that? she pleaded. — Your mum’s not like that. Your dad’s not . . . I mean, was he?

Skinner felt something cold bite into him, like a giant insect was crushing his torso in its jaws. He simply didn’t know. — No, he said, deeply embarrassed at this ignorance. — He was a straight guy apparently, never touched a drop, he ventured, making it up. Now his rage was shifting in its direction, heading towards his mother. A fatherless child of an only child, all he and Beverly had were each other, yet she would tell him nothing of his origins. She held all the cards and every time he’d pushed the issue she would not back down.

Was it too much tae fuckin ask? Was he a fuckin rapist or a nonce or something? What the fuck did he dae tae her?

—
Well then, Kay argued, looking at his glass.

He had heard from Beverly that her own father, whom Skinner had only known as a toddler, before he had died from a stroke, had taken a good drink. — My grandad was an alcoholic, he said defensively, — it just skipped a generation.

Kay looked open-mouthed at him and gasped, — My God, I don’t believe it, you’re
boasting
about this!

— I wish I could meet my dad, Skinner suddenly said in great sadness. His words shocked him as much as they did Kay. He’d never said this to anyone before, outside of his mother.

She squeezed his hand, and sweeping her hair behind her ear, leaned close into him. — Did your mum ever say who he was?

— She used to joke that he was Joe Strummer from the Clash, Skinner laughed sadly. — She’s got this signed album of his, it’s her prize possesion. I used to get beaten up at school for telling everybody that my dad was in the Clash, he smiled ruefully at the memory. — Then she said he was Billy Idol, Jean-Jacques Burnel, Dave Vanian; any punk who’d ever played Edinburgh or Glasgow. It got so that I’d look at all the old magazines and try to see a resemblance. But this was when I was young, and she was just taking the pish. I got so obsessed as a kid, I started staring at any old guy in the street who smiled at me, wondering if he was the one. It’s a miracle I wasn’t kidnapped by some old nonce, he said woefully. — Now she won’t talk about him at all. Skinner raised his glass and took a big gulp. Kay watched his thyroid cartilage bobble as more drink went down his throat. — Every few years I ask her again and she does her nut and we have another big bust-up.

Kay nervously pushed her hair back again, looked at her drink, decided that she wasn’t going to finish it. — She must really loathe him.

— But it’s irrational to hate somebody like that . . . Skinner stopped in his tracks as Kibby’s face, with those virgin-fool camel-like eyes, blazed into his head, — . . . I mean, after all that time, he mumbled uncomfortably.

I do hate Kibby. I’m just like her. Why Kibby? What is he doing to me?

If only Kibby would leave, get out my fucking life, go back to Fife or something.

The walls were painted bright yellow. Sky-blue curtains hung from the long windows. But the small room’s sedate decor could not deflect the dominance of the aluminium-framed hospital bed. A television screen swung to the side, attached by anglepoise arm to the wall above the bedstead. The only other furniture was a locker on wheels, two chairs and a small sink unit on the wall at the bottom of the bed.

In the bed, Keith Kibby, weak like a punctured tyre, felt his life ebbing away just as slowly and steadily. The saline feed drip-drip-dripped into his withered limb, each drop for him the almost silent ticking of a clock. Outside, the trees were bare, dry sticks, like his arm, he thought, but unlike it springtime would see them reignite with life. Last summer had been good, Keith recalled through a disorientating fog of medication, then, as if in need of affirmation, wheezed to himself, — A good summer . . . But this precipitated a stark, bitter bolt of realisation, and he rolled his bald head ceilingwards in accusation: — . . . and I’ve only been allowed to see forty-nine of the bastards . . .

Francesca Ryan, one of the nurses on the ward, entered Keith’s room to take his pulse and blood pressure. As she went to work, wrapping the Velcro pad from the equipment around his skinny wrist, Keith scrutinised the facial hair under her lip. A small spark kindled inside him and he considered that she wouldn’t be bad-looking if she had it removed.

Electrolysis. That, and losing a few pounds. Aye, then she’d be a comely lass.

Ryan couldn’t wait to get away from Keith Kibby. It wasn’t his illness that made her squeamish, she was used to imminent death, but there was something about him, a hungry waft coming off him that disturbed her. She preferred old Davie Rodgers next door, although he teased her about being a
native of Limerick City. ‘Dinnae let that lassie in the operating theatre wi aw they knives or we’ll have a bloodbath oan oor hands!’

Old Davie could be a pest, but with him, she felt, you got what you saw. When her back was turned away from Keith Kibby she could feel his eyes on her.

So Francesca was pleased when Mr Kibby’s wife, son and daughter arrived. They seemed to her to be a close family, to really love him, and be utterly devastated by his illness. She didn’t find him the slightest bit lovable, but then it was a funny world.

She watched as the teenage daughter kissed the father’s head. Francesca had heard that she was a freshman student at Edinburgh University, studying English. She sometimes went to dos at the student union and glanced to see if she could place the Kibby girl but her face, conventionally pretty, Francesca thought with a little envy, rang no bells. Caroline saw the nurse staring at her and gave her a tight smile back. Slightly flustered, Nurse Ryan departed from the ward.

Caroline had been considering attending a club event that night at Teviot Row, a dance held by one of the societies, where a local name DJ was spinning. But looking at her dad’s worn-out face she wanted to cry. It was only when she noted the tears that were welling up in her mother’s eyes that she felt furiously, perversely, em- powered to fight her own ones back.

I’m not like her. I’ll stay strong.

She noted that her brother had remained silent, but sucked in one of his cheeks, a nervous reaction of his that was familiar to her. Then he started to say something to their father; words that sounded like, — See when you get out of here, we’ll . . .

But Brian Kibby never got to finish the sentence as his father went into a gripping seizure. The Kibbys screamed for the medical staff. They were prompt in their response, particularly Francesca Ryan, but they could do nothing as Keith Kibby hurtled into convulsions right there in front of them. In his
death throes he battled every inch of the way to hold on to his life, bucking up in bed with an almost supernatural force, his eyes unfocused, as, in their torment, the Kibbys silently prayed for him to let go, to leave this earth in peace. For Caroline, this violent, paranormal passing compounded the unspeakable horror of her father’s death. She had assumed that he would go out like the dimmer switches he’d installed in the family home, a slow almost imperceptible ebb into blackness. But as he thrashed around, she could virtually see the life, which now seemed an alien force that had permeated the flesh beneath, rending free from its flimsy cage.