The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs (13 page)

Fuckin bams . . . no fuckin intae this . . . no at aw . . .

Panic struck in his chest like a bolt of lightning. He stopped in his tracks. Surely the pint would still be there.

The pint of golden nectar. In the pub, that seat still warm, and moulded for my arse-cheeks.

The world was a better place when he emerged from the bar for the second time. The sharp edges had gone. Leith was no longer stuffed with cruel, brutish psychopaths who hated him. They had vanished, replaced by a convivial community of jaunty salt-of-the-earth types.

Now I’m in shape to meet Kay. To explain to her what’s gone wrong. To seduce her, even. It’s good that she’s coming down here and we’ll be able to talk. Aye, I’ll make it up to her. Some red wine, she loves red wine. Red, red wine . . .

Skinner dived into Thresher’s and, thinking of Bob Foy, bought their most expensive Pinot Noir.

There was still some time to kill before Kay arrived. He watched another of the interminably meaningless turkey-shoots of a Scottish Premier League game between the millionaires of the Carling beer-sponsored sides, coffers bloated through years of exploiting religious sectarianism, and their impoverished journeymen opponents.

The label on the bottle of wine looks interesting. Full-bodied. Aromatic. Rich. Fruity. It looks good stuff, right enough, even though I’m not a red man. Surely one glass wouldn’t hurt, just to sip, to feel the flavour on my palate. Then when she arrives I’ll hit her with that big Danny Skinner smile and an urbane, — Ah, the lovely Miss Ballantyne, my beautiful fiancée. Care to join to me in a glass of wine, my darling?

Kay’ll gie me that look, the one which said, ‘You incorrigible, lovable rogue, how could I resist?’ Aye, and she might even concede that she’s been a bit of a spoilsport, a bit of a wet blanket. You’re only young once, after all.

But when Kay did enter the flat there was a distance about her and a resolve that he’d never seen before. And at that point a dagger seemed to twist deep inside him and he guessed that it was over before she even opened her mouth.

And as if on cue she delivered the words, — It’s over, Danny, with a stark, uncompromising air of finality.

Skinner was crushed by her words. He wished he wasn’t but he was. He felt something real, something essential die inside him; felt it actually leave his body. It was a rich, deep and vital energy, a cardinal component of the self. Stricken, he wondered if he would ever get it back, or if that’s what life was to be: steady erosion followed by an occasional big subsidence. He was surely too young to feel like this. His anguished gasp was deep, disturbing and primal, shocking both him and Kay. — Whaaat . . .?

Kay needed every part of her new-found strength and
determination not to go to him, to take him in her arms, the way people are conditioned to do when they see a loved one hurting so deeply.

Skinner always thought that he would never beg in a situation like this. And he was wrong, because he was losing everything. His life was draining from him, walking away from him. He wouldn’t survive this. — Please, darlin . . . please, Kay. We can work this out.

— What is there to work out? Kay asked, her face still expressionless, nerves cauterised by all the disappointments he’d unremittingly provided. — You’re an alcoholic and guess what? You love it. There’s only room for one romance in your life, Danny. I don’t mean anything to you. I’m just a pretty girl who looks good on your arm. She fretfully chewed on her bottom lip. — You don’t care about me or my career, or what I need. I don’t like drinking, Danny. It’s not what I want. I don’t think you even like having sex with me any more, because all you want to do is drink. You’re an alcoholic.

The shock of hearing those words from her. Was he an alcoholic? What was that? Someone who drinks all the time? Who can’t say no to a drink? Who drinks in secret? Somebody who anticipates the next drink before he’s finished the one in front of him? — But . . . I . . . I need you, Kay . . . he said, but he couldn’t say what for. He couldn’t say ‘I need you to help me beat this disease’ because he felt that he was a young guy who drank far too much but wouldn’t always drink far too much. He didn’t feel diseased, he just felt empty and incomplete.

— You don’t need me. I don’t think you need anything except that. She nodded at the glass and the empty bottle of wine.

And Skinner hadn’t even realised that the bottle was empty. He was just going to have one wee glass of that full-bodied, aromatic red . . .

. . . was it full-bodied? Was it aromatic
?

Diseased
.

How could I have let this happen
?

Kay left him alone in the flat. He had no power to try and stop her from leaving any more. He didn’t even hear the front door close behind her; it was as if she was already a ghost to him.

Maybe she would change her mind and come back. Maybe not.

Skinner choked back the tears. Self-pity overwhelmed him; he felt small, childlike and bullied. He wanted his mother; not Beverly as she was now, but some younger, abstracted ideal he could submit to and be indulged by. But she too had gone out of his life, until he came back on her terms and played the dutiful son.

The stubborn old cow would never give in . . .

But he wanted her.

He also wanted a drink, but he couldn’t leave the flat feeling like this. He’d heard the alcoholic stories before; the accounts of betrayal, of injustices perpetuated on their protagonists by a mother, a father, a lover or a friend. They were all essentially the same tale: a bitter paean to the loss of love, comradeship or money. And then there were the plans, the utopian schemes for the bright future that would be enacted, after the next drink, of course.

The day it is passing in laughter and song . . .

After a while the pisshead was just one big giant whisky glass talking, telling the same, sad stories, over and over again. Alcohol had just the one voice. No matter who it possessed, all it let them do was add their own distinctive tone, before even that was subsumed into a general jakey growl. And that glass didn’t need to take responsibility, it only had to sit there and be refilled.

I’m becoming one of them. I am one of them. I have to do something. I have to act . . .

I mind of when first we got together, it was so fucking sensual and I’d take in the scent of her, kissing her eyes, ears, kissing her all over, totally lost in being with her.

Aye, right.

Other times I’d push her aside and roll away grumbling, made dirty,
heavy and thick-headed by the drink, needing to sleep it off and never quite getting enough kip to do so.

What am I? A social drinker? Aye, but more than that. A binge drinker? For sure, when I’m not drinking socially or thinking about drinking. A fucking alcoholic. Aye, that’s the one.

I’m an alkie. I dinnae do sober so much any more, it’s being squeezed out between the two big ones: being drunk and being hung-over. Being hung-over is not being sober. Being hung-over is hell.

In Skinner’s anguished mind, he was taking stock of his life and working out some basic propositions that had been close to gnawing him into action for some time. Firstly, he never knew his father. His mother refused to talk about him. All he had was this limited but persistent information, now backed by a strange intuition, that he may have been a chef.

Could you miss what you never had?

Yes. Yes, you could. I’d see them with their dads at the fitba. Their big proud dads. Tense, serious, Ross Kinghorn with his young Dessie, ‘How many you gonny score the day, son? How many?’ Bobby Traynor with gap-toothed Gary; like his son, always a joker. My Old Girl did her best, standing there by the side of pitch chain-smoking, pretending to take an interest in the game. But there was something missing. Even Big Rab knew where his old boy was, even if it was usually HMP Saughton.

Missing his father, Skinner reasons that he is missing essential information about himself. Who does he come from? What is his genetic and cultural inheritance? Is alcoholism cruelly written into his DNA? Is he just depressed at the lack of filial connection and will all be well if he meets his dad?

If I found my old man, the fucking chef, then I could see if he was a drunk, if this was his legacy.

Fuck my mother, I’ll find him myself! I’ll show her . . . I’ll show them aw!

The Old Girl was a waitress for a while, years ago, she told me. Where the fuck did she work again? . . .

It hit Skinner slowly, in a big wave that seemed to rise up
from his bowels. He looked at the glossy, hardback book on his coffee table:
The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs
by Alan De Fretais. He picked it up and read a section as his heart raced.

Skinner felt the sweat releasing evenly from his ducts with every pulse in his body as he lowered the book on to the coffee table.

Greg Tomlin. Sandy Cunningham-Blyth. Alan Cunting De Fretais.

The Archangel Tavern.

Dougie Winchester was positioned at his computer wearing a pained expression that switched to neutrality as Skinner popped his head round the door. Sometimes his office was locked and when quizzed about this a red-faced Winchester would mutter that it was the only way he could get peace to concentrate on the important project work he was undertaking.

Winchester’s title was Special Projects Officer (Environmental
Health) even though the department currently had no special projects. In established local authority fashion, they simply made one up, as it would have been too costly to sack him. He had managed to wangle a five-year contract in a previous department and now only had eighteen months left till it expired. Winchester had gone round the departments, a man out of time and unconcerned with his work, such as it was.

Dougie Winchester and Danny Skinner were an odd pairing, one man supposedly close to the start of his working life, the other who, though still only in his mid-forties, would probably never be employed again when he left the council. They were, as Winchester had once said, ‘related through drink’. Skinner considered that there must have been a time when he used that phrase in irony rather than in a purely descriptive manner.

Now Winchester had uses other than that of a drinking partner and Skinner wanted to draw on his local knowledge. The older man was surprised when Skinner had suggested a lunchtime pint in the Archangel. Although it was not one of their regular spots, as a very well known Edinburgh hostelry, Winchester had used it many years ago.

The Archangel was situated alongside Waverley Station, at a side entrance, and so was more popular with commuters than tourists. It was really two premises rather than one. The large bar, McTaggart’s, was a spartan pub, which could be atmospheric and lively, especially at weekends. Next door, and there was also a connecting passage through shared toilets between the two establishments, was the Archangel itself. It had a smaller bar, which attracted an arty, bohemian crowd, and an upstairs restaurant that had always been renowned for its good food. Skinner had never eaten there but had once inspected the immaculately run kitchen.

It was the smaller bar that Danny Skinner sought to visit, much to Winchester’s consternation. — No going in there, he said, shaking his head, — the place is full off arse bandits. Or at least it was back then.

— It’ll no be like that now, especially no at lunchtime, Skinner said. — Let’s give it a go and if it’s shite we can nip next door.

Winchester was less fussy than he made out. His only real consideration was volume, as he liked to get his four pints in at lunchtime. The first one was hammered back in two or three gulps, the second and third drunk steadily and enjoyed, with the fourth usually getting the same treatment as the first. In the afternoon, the door of the office of the Special Projects Officer (Environmental Health) was generally locked.

The little bar’s only occupants were one small group of Fife housewives with shopping bags and a couple of young backpackers, but it already looked crowded. The tubby barman wore an old St Johnstone football replica top advertising The Famous Grouse Whisky. He had blond hair, which he wore slicked back; the sort of guy, Skinner thought, who would have had real girl appeal, before the days of the obesity epidemic. He ordered a couple of pints and noted Winchester giving the first one his usual treatment. — Was this an old haunt of yours then? he asked his gulping pal.

— Aye, said Winchester, — everybody used this place back then. Every hoor and comic singer came here. Great atmosphere it had.

— Was that back in the punk era?

Winchester shook his head briskly, his features puckering in distaste. — I hated all that shite. Killed musicianship. Led Zeppelin, the Doors, they were the boys, he waxed. — The Lizard King!

In Winchester’s elation Skinner was privy to a hitherto unrevealed side of his associate. He disconcertingly glimpsed a younger, livelier soul, before the reductive powers of ageing and alcohol had done their work. — You remember an Edinburgh band back then called the Old Boys? he asked Winchester. — My ma was into them. I think she hung about with them.