The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs (12 page)

Time seemed to freeze, seconds stretching out into hours, as he died with all their arms around him. Brian, in particular, seemed to hold that bony carriage in a manner that suggested he was trying to shore up any cracks through which the essence of his father might escape. But when it was over, it was as if Keith had ripped some of the life from every Kibby in the room to take with him. A long silence followed, before Brian Kibby, the thin youth with the long-lashed cow-like eyes, hugged his mother and sister to him.

Caroline smelt the sweat on her mother, rank and foul, oddly like her father’s corpse, and then the sweet, sharp aftershave on her brother’s face. After a bit it was Brian who spoke and Caroline looked up and saw the tears running across the peach fuzz of his cheeks. — He’s at peace now, he observed.

Joyce looked up at him, first in a stunned bovine bemusement, then sharply and imploringly. — Peace, Brian said again, tightening his grip on his mother.

— Peace, Joyce repeated, swamped by the mindlessness of grief.

— Peace, Brian confirmed once more, looking at Caroline. She nodded and wondered whether or not she would go to this dance tonight; then she heard her mother recite in a small but eerily defiant voice:

When she heard her brother join in with ‘My soul he doth restore again’ she knew that she would not – could not – stay at home with them tonight.

THE OLD DRUNKARD
was a handy cunt in his day. I’ve seen him knocking around for ages and even on occasion knocking ten types of shite out of other pissheids who got a wee bit too lippy. Aye, he got plenty dangerous for a while, when he was in that last angry menopausal flush of power, just before the physical and mental enfeeblement of old age started to kick in. Then a younger guy he got wide with did him badly and now there’s a broken yellow light in the cunt’s eyes. I suppose it might be peace but it’s more likely to be a fucked liver. Sammy, I’m sure they call him.

Now he’s reduced to slavering drivel in old Busby’s ear; they’re always in here together, in this grotty Duke Street dive. Only Busby’s not around today, he’s probably up giving my old girl a fucking length . . .

It’s just this old cunt; donkey jacket, hands like shovels, Mars bars, mind fuddled by drink, but you still don’t want to get too close, cause the last thing that goes with an old boxer is the punch. Worse than that, it’s probably the second last, to that bell they hear in their doolally heids at the strangest of times!

I think about the my old boy, how I’ve always envisioned him: tanned, square-jawed, thick hair, with his well-preserved and impeccably groomed wife in a New South Wales or southern Californian suburb, and realise that I’ve almost certainly been kidding myself. He’s more likely to be some broken jakey, in this very bar. That’s doubtlessly why the Old Girl hates him so much; she probably bumps into the cunt on a fuckin daily basis, as he staggers down Junction Street to the foot of Walk, maybe
trying to put the bite on her for a few quid. Perhaps she’s just trying to save my crushing disappointment, and my father is a man who, when you take away the drink and cigarettes, is just a total void.

They’re talking about banning smoking from pubs. You ban smoking from this doss you might as well torch the fuckin place behind ye, because if you don’t, sure as fuck the owner will for insurance purposes cause no cunt will ever set foot in here again for trade. Tabs define this place more than whisky or beer: from the nicotine-stained walls to the tubercular hacking, rasping coughs of the locals. Not that there are many in right now, just two toothless auld gimpy cunts on the dominoes in one corner and me and the old boxer at the bar.

— Awright, he growls at me. Aye, Sammy’s his name.

Peace, brother. — No bad, boss. Yersel?

The old white hope shrugs in a you-see-it-all gesture and I’m thinking, ‘Bad as that, is it?’ but I offer to buy him a beer, help the fucking aged, ya cunt. Forget the credit-card problems, a salaried man has to do his bit. He accepts with only a modicum of grace. Then he fixes me in his narrowing eyes, trying to get a focus. — Bev Skinner, the hairdresser; you’re her laddie, eh?

— Aye.

— The Skinners . . . aye . . . Tennant Street, back in the day . . . Jimmy Skinner . . . that would be your grandfaither . . . oan yir ma’s side. Yir faither wis the chef, wis eh no?

I shudder inside and look the old cunt in the eye. — What?

The old boy looks cautious now, wary that he’s said something that he shouldn’t have. I’ve heard this shite before. I remember my old neighbour, Mrs Bryson, before she went totally potty, telling me that my dad was a chef. I half put it down to dementia. I asked both Trina and Val about this but the Old Girl had done a number on them and they denied all knowledge. The auld felly here’s got something to say though. — Yir auld man. Wis he no a chef? he warily repeats.

—
Did ye ken um, likes?

Some memory seems to play across his mind as his eyes roll into accord like the symbols on a fruit machine. But he’s paying out nae jackpot right now, cause the Sammy boy goes aw furtive, and no mistake. — Mibbe ah’m thinking ay somebody else.

— Whae’s it you were thinkin ay then? I ask challengingly.

The old cunt raises his brows and I can see the thug that I had presumed long departed, seeping slowly back into the lamps underneath them. — Somebody you dinnae ken.

I can see where this is leading so I drink up. Fucked if I’m bursting chops with an old bastard in a shithouse like this. Win, lose or draw, the only real result is humiliation for even being daft enough to take part. — Right, I’ll see ye then, I tell the old cunt, and I can feel that his eyes never leave the back of my head until I’m out the door and into the rain at the foot of Leith Walk.

I stop off in a couple of boozers, throwing back six pints of Guinness and three double JD’s quickstyle, the lush charge hitting me like a ton of bricks. When I get back to the flat Kay’s there, in tears again, saying some stuff about dancing, her career, her ambitions, how I don’t respect them, how they mean nothing to me, then leaving. Everything is muffled and car-crash-like and I want to speak but she’s looking through me and I’m looking through alcohol. We’re nowhere near each other even as we stumble in tandem through our disintegrating lives.

She came to dance . . .

I couldn’t feel her presence, but I sure as fuck notice her absence. I can’t stay here alone and I head down the street, passing the Duke Street dive and glancing in where I can now see that big gadgie, swaying in the non-existent breeze, and wee Busby’s in now, crouched at the bar, in sour disapproval.

I feel like gaun in thair an . . .

Get up that fucken road . . .

And I cannae remember the walk tae my ma’s hoose, can’t mind her opening the door and me going in, all I can mind
is saying to her,— So eh wis a chef then . . . ma dad wis a fuckin chef . . . a fuckin cook . . .

And we’re shouting at each other and I mind of repeating to her, — chef, chef, chef . . .

Then I see something in her eyes, not anger but something harsh and mocking, and I stop and she says, — Aye, son, and how many fuckin meals did eh ever make ye?

I storm out, resolving that I’m never talking to that stubborn, evil auld hoor again, no until she tells ays the fuckin truth . . .

Then when I get round to mine, back up the stairs to my flat, I see it on the mantelpiece, and I freeze in shock.

It’s the ring. The ring I gave Kay.

I’m not ready for this. Can you ever be ready?

My father, my poor old dad. He never harmed anybody, he was such a good man. Why did this happen? Why? But now it’s Mum’s grief, the sheer power and force of it; it’s every bit as harrowing as my father’s death. I’ve not been ready for anything, it’s all just happened to me and I haven’t coped. I don’t know what to do and Caz won’t even talk, she won’t say a word.

There’s a slow drizzle as we wait to go into the chapel. I look around and see that there’s hardly anybody here. My dad was a family man and his family was very small. He has no living elderly relatives. So apart from us and some people from the church congregation, there’s only a few neighbours and former workmates from the railway present.

It seems so sad and makes me angry that a good man can just go like that and be mourned by so few, when the likes of the big loudmouths on television like that De Fretais would have thousands at their funerals, all weeping and saying how great he was. But it would be crocodile tears, not real grief like this: this horrible, quiet misery and paralysis that can tear people apart.

Dad’s old railway friends all say the same thing about him. He was a decent, sober man, who was warm and friendly enough, but who largely kept himself to himself. The men who worked in the signal box at the old railway junction in Thornton, Fife, they are telling me about the side of my dad that is a mystery to me, a man who whiled away his spare hours reading and writing, filling up notepads with doodlings. That seemed to be his great passion, outside of his family. When he became a driver, Dad really appeared to have found his vocation. Sitting alone in the hot seat, taking the train up the West Highland line.

One senior rail official, a Mr Garriock, comes up and says to me and Mum,— They don’t make men like Keith any more. You should all be very proud, and he seems overtaken by genuine emotion.

The service is so nice. I said that I wouldn’t cry but can’t help it when Mr Godfrey, the minister, talks about my dad, how he knew him well through the church activities and what a good person he was and the things he would do for the pensioners in the parish.

I wait outside in the doorway of the church to shake hands with the mourners. Ian shakes my hand but he doesn’t stay or come back to the reception. He looks at me quite strangely but I suppose that’s what grief brings out in other people, they don’t know how to take you. The biting, whipping wind is numbing my head like an ice-cream toothache, and I’m relieved to get into the car and head for the function at the hotel in Ferry Road.

The funeral party isnae busy and Mum’s estimates of the amount of whisky, sherry, sausage rolls, egg-and-cress sandwiches, tea and cakes look to be a wee bit too optimistic. Still, Mum did say she could take any spare food down to the pensioners’ club at the church. One neighbour, Phil Stewart, raises a glass of whisky: — Absent friends, he toasts.

A few of the railwaymen join in eagerly, while Mum smiles
tightly, putting down her cup of tea and raising a glass of whisky that she has no intention of drinking. Dad would have understood, as he wasn’t a drinker.

I hold up my glass of orange juice. The railwaymen would probably have disapproved if I’d done this on another occasion but probably just think, like father like son. I shudder with embarrassment as Caroline picks up a whisky glass and knocks it right back, then just grabs another.

What the hell is she –

My stomach’s already in turmoil and that makes things worse. I head to the toilets and sit in a cubicle, and I’m cramped over with constipation. It’s a terrible struggle to move my bowels. Ken Radden from my Hyp Hykers club always says that it’s important for your health to keep your bowels moving.

I’m thinking about the other two chickens I hatched at
Harvest Moon
last night. It’s great to get a video game that involves building stuff, not just shooting and destroying things all the time. The Rockstar North people here and up in Dundee who make the likes of
Grand Theft Auto
are so talented but they make such destructive games. And
Game Informer
gave it 10. Why do they have to use their gifts in that way? How can they live with themselves? If I had that ability I’d design games like
Harvest Moon
. Only the Japanese could have made that though; they’re different to us over there. It would be great to go to Japan one day. Some of the girls are really beautiful and it’s said that they’re nice lassies, really clean and they make good wives. And they’re meant to like Western men.

That’s my problem, finding a wife! I’ve now ruled out Celia but that still leaves Ann, Muffy, Karen and Elli to consider.

Muffy . . .

From inside the booth I hear two men enter and start relieving themselves at the latrine. Their pee drums on the stainless steel.

— Sair ficht, bonny lad.

— Aye, sad tae see the faimly sae upset.

— That wee blondie, that’s Keith’s lassie.

— Aye, a wee belter n aw.

— She’s beltin back they fuckin nips awright.

— Fuckin belt her back in a minute!

— Hi, you, behave yirself! Mind whaire ye are!

— Jist sayin . . .

— Ah ken what you’re like, you jist pick oan somebody yir ain size, Romeo!

The sick cackles of these odious men send shivers down my spine. I just sit here on the cold toilet in a nauseating, impotent wrath. Surely such men couldn’t have been friends of my father! But there are so many of them, men like that, they are everywhere. Lowlife scum like McGrillen back at school. Dirty pigs like Danny Skinner, and him with that lovely lassie. And Shannon fancies him as well, you can tell. Somebody even said that they were snogging at a Christmas party but that’s just rubbish! How could they . . . how could girls be so daft . . .? If they kent what I was really like then they’d want to be with me . . . I just ken that they would . . .

A TREMBLING DANNY
skinner looked at the pint of lager in front of him. It could take away this pain, this torment. But no, he’d resist, he owed it to Kay. He’d prove that he was stronger than it by just walking straight out of this pub.

Right now.

So Skinner stood up and strode determinedly out of the bar. In Junction Street the cars and buses grinded, honked and roared, while prams and pushchairs steered by robotic, Prozacstunned mothers threatened to sever his Achilles tendons. He could feel the eyes of hard men from the bookies, bars and bus stops burrowing into him. Old women – witches heading to their bingo – seemed to be hexing him with their disapproval as they passed him in the street.