The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs (21 page)

His throbbing, dizzy opponent was happy to accept. — A good show by your chaps, it has to be said, he acknowledged.

— Min, ye took some beating there.

— Ah well, industrial accidents, mate. Anyroads, they breed them tough in Leith, he grinned through his terrible sweet pain.

I hope that for somebody else’s sake they do the same in Featherhall
.

Eyeing the boy’s jacket, Skinner commented, — Smart
threads. Is that a new range Paul & Shark? he asked, pointing to the man’s chest.

— Aye, got it doon in London, ken? the Aberdonian beamed. Skinner tried to return his smile but his face hurt too much. It wouldn’t last though, he thought cheerfully.

Well, no for me at any rate.

Ian Buchan had been concerned when Brian Kibby had gone back to the hotel early. He pondered as to why Brian had left; maybe he should have gone with him. But leaving with that strange guy, what was all that about? Could it be . . . was Brian gay? Surely not, he’d always professed interest in girls, like that Lucy for example. And that girl at his work he always talked about. But maybe . . . it might have been a case of the lady protesting too much.

Returning to the hotel, Ian was disinclined to go up to the room. Brian was an adult, what he did or didn’t do was his business. Stopping along the riverside gangway, he watched the moonlight glisten on the Tyne, noting the new waterfront theme-bar zone emerging from under glass and chrome.

Brian might just have that guy back!

He sat up at the bar half the night, with some other Trekkies, talking about conventions past. The party carried on in one of the hotel rooms, Ian waking up fully clothed alongside a Trekkie he vaguely knew.

In a room on the floor above him, the dawn was rising, filtering a tepid light in through the curtains. Brian Kibby tried to lift his banging head from the pillow but his body only snarled back a threatening response. In terror, he recalled the events of yesterday. That weird guy touching him up. He’d felt terrible anyway but with the harassment and humiliation, he’d headed back to the hotel, without even telling Ian. And now Ian’s bed was empty, hadn’t been slept in.

The creepy guy had even tried to follow him back, had said disgusting things about them having sex together! He shuddered
at the recall of the pervert’s words:
‘I want to burst your arse. I want to make you squeal.’

—
LEAVE ME ALONE! Brian Kibby had howled in his face, exploding into tears and running away, as everyone entering and leaving the hall looked round at the moustached pervert, to his shock and shame.

Then Kibby had gone, nerves jangling, back to the hotel, wondering what was happening to him. He’d curled up into a ball under the blankets. Instead of the settling into a comforting dreamland, he just lay there in a stupor, feeling like he’d been in a car crash. His mouth and throat were completely arid, as if he’d swallowed some hot desert sand. He tried to generate saliva but only managed to weld his tongue to the roof of his mouth. Now he was gagging with the rasping dry heat, which seemed to push right down into his throat and chest . . . he reached for the tumbler of water by his bed but he’d forgotten to fill it up. Exhausted and in pain, he was disinclined to be harassed so blatantly by his needs, but a racking cough grappled him, watering his eyes, and he was compelled to stagger to the minibar and get some mineral water, his legs, back and head burning in excruciating agony.

His lips were strangely numb and swollen: as he sipped the water, it ran on to his chest and pyjamas.

The early-morning hours slowly faded away, just as the night had slipped by in a sleepless agony. Kibby’s swollen eyes ached and itched full of sleeplessness’s phantom dirt. He squirmed like a beached porpoise on his sweat-soaked bed.

When he heard a knock coming from outside he clambered up, feeling like a parade of drummers were beating out a tattoo on his legs, back, head and arms. Timidly opening the door, he saw Ian’s face contort in horror.

Far from being charged for his activity in the row after the Aberdeen game, Danny Skinner had taken such a bad battering that the duty sergeant had sent him straight up to casualty,
castigating the officers who’d snatched him from the paramedics. They planned to keep him in overnight for observation. On the ward he talked to a reporter from the
Sunday Mail
who was looking to get information from the wounded. He was a young man, with already thinning hair and terrible pockmarked skin. With his earnest but nervy manner, Skinner felt sorry for him. The reporter sat a tape recorder in front of him and said, — Do you mind? Like he was about to light up a cigarette.

Skinner’s line was that as he was leaving the ground he was set upon by Aberdeen thugs. Fortune had smiled upon him as the only conclusive CCTV footage of his involvement in the conflict showed him lying prostrate and being kicked by different individuals. He talked at length as the reporter listened in grave, but detached, concern.

He was given painkillers that night, which seemed to have absolutely no effect on the terrible aches he suffered from. At one stage he needed to go to the toilet but was too tender to move. He lay still until he eventually fell into an even sleep. When he awoke early in the morning, he skipped out of bed and drained his bladder, contemplating himself in the mirror.

Not a mark on me!

Chagrined by his poor show in the row, he took up the stance and practised shadow-boxing for a bit. Then he got dressed and left the ward, discharging himself, embarrassed at the absence of any marks on his face. — The doctor will need to see you before you leave, said the surprised nurse, looking at the notes, trying to reconcile this Skinner with the one her colleagues admitted yesterday.

She went to find the duty doctor, but when she returned, Skinner had gone.

When he got home that Sunday morning, he heard the phone ring three times, but stop just before his messaging service kicked in. He dialled 1471 hoping that it might be Kay, concerned at his injuries, but his mother’s number came up. She must have read about him in the
Mail
. He thought about
calling her, but his pride stopped him. He reasoned that if she really cared that much, she’d call back.

— C’mon, slowcoach, Ken Radden smiled back at a battered and bruised Brian Kibby who panted and gasped behind the rest of the pack on the West Highland way. — If we don’t make that lodge before dark . . . he said ominously, adding, — . . . you should know that more than most.

Ken had never said that to him before. It was their private guilt-tripping phrase, one they often used in the sly condemnation of others whom they perceived were letting the side down. And worse, ‘slowcoach’, that Hyp Hykers generic term of patronising abuse for someone who wasn’t really up to scratch.

Now Brian Kibby felt guilty for his tired snorts of exasperation when Gerald, always Fat Gerald, held them up. How he was always keen to shout words of superficially friendly badgering encouragement to Gerald when Lucy was in earshot: — C’mon, Ged! You can do it, mate. No far now!

And Lucy, all they had done was exchange pieces of chocolate. This time his was a Yorkie, hers a Bournville dark. Now he could see her ahead, trying to wait for him, but unable to help herself as he fell further behind. He watched her orange backpack, moving out of his reach. A swarthy-faced young Hyp Hyker called Angus Heatherhill, whom Kibby had never talked to, was pulling up alongside her. Heatherhill had an unruly mop of black hair, under which a pair of dark and steely eyes were sometimes visible.

Kibby’s heart grew leaden, becoming another part of his physical burden, and seemed to drop a couple of inches in his chest cavity. Things were going so terribly wrong. He couldn’t understand it. He was waking up every morning feeling so dreadful. And now, the state he was in . . .

And Ian hadn’t called. He had been so strange on the return train journey, when Kibby had woken up badly bruised, having suffered what he had since fearfully postulated was everything
from some severe allergic reaction to the bizarre improbability that he’d been sleepwalking and fallen down a flight of stairs. His mother, like Ian, couldn’t believe it; she thought that he’d been beaten up. She wasn’t even going to let him go to the Hyp Hikers!

As he watched Lucy’s back grow smaller, and Heatherhill’s windmilling arms gesticulating to the side of her, Kibby thought of her sharp, frail features; accentuated under those thin, gold spectacle frames she occasionally wore instead of contact lenses.

He often fantasised about being Lucy’s boyfriend. In these sketches, mundane domestic scenarios produced almost as much satisfaction and not so much guilt as full-on masturbatory set pieces. A particular favourite had Lucy sitting next to him, riding shotgun in the car, his dad’s old Capri, while Joyce and Caroline sat in the back.

Mum would love Lucy while Caroline and her would be real pals, like sisters, but at night it would just be me with Lucy in our own flat and we’d kiss and . . . but that’s enough ay that!

Shaking himself out of his fledgling fantasy, Kibby looked up to the darkening sky.

God, I’m sorry about all my touching myself cause I know it’s wrong. If you could get me a girlfriend I’d treat her nicely and there would be nae need to . . .

Kibby gasped again as he looked ahead and saw the backs of the group receding further on the horizon. But somebody had stopped. He staggered forward on his aching legs. It was Lucy! Her almost translucent face appeared to open up as he advanced unsteadily. A cast of disquiet – or was it pity again – seemed to chisel her brittle smile as Kibby felt his legs going. With every step it seemed as if they were shortening or he was submerging into a swamp. But the sodden earth was rushing up and before it met him the last sight he saw was Lucy’s mouth forming a perfect ‘o’.

He stood at the bus stop, waiting for one of the maroon Lothian vehicles to take him up Leith Walk, full of beans, entertaining the
other regulars in the queue with his chat. The Sunday newspapers had mentioned the trouble at Easter Road, now the Monday morning ones were full of it. He’d already made the
Daily Record
, where he was described as Daniel Skinner, Local Government Officer and an innocent victim of Saturday’s violence.

A 16 bus rolled in and he saw Mandy, his mother’s hairdressing apprentice, disembark as she regarded him in some surprise. — Danny! Are you alright? I mean . . . it said in the paper that you had serious head injuries!

— I’ve always been a serious head case, he laughed, adding, — Naw, it was a good thing it was only my heid. He banged his skull with his knuckles, quite hard, wondering if Kibby would feel it. — The newspapers always exaggerate, they’re full of crap.

At his office Skinner scored brownie points by coming into work in an assured frame of mind, never complaining about his injuries, and strangely, there were no marks on his face. He did have a pronounced limp but it was Dougie Winchester who had noticed that after a few pints at lunchtime it seemed to have miraculously healed.

Brian Kibby, by contrast, had not appeared, calling in sick. This was highly unusual for him.

Beverly Skinner’s probing fingers worked the conditioner through Jessie Thomson’s steel-wool hair. The label information on the bottle mentioned ‘fruit oils’, describing them as ‘nourishing’, and strangely, it did seem that as she massaged the older woman’s scalp, some kind of rejuvenation was taking place. Jessie’s eyes and mouth were becoming more animated. — Of course, Geraldine’s ey been prone tae ovarian cysts. Her sister had them n aw. Martina, mind? Her wi the laddie that died, mind the motorbike? Death traps. Awfay sad though, rare laddie n aw. How dae ye get ower something like that? Ah mean, ma two, thir nae angels but if anything happened tae them . . .

The customer was fishing, trying to get Beverly to open up about Danny’s plight. She should go round and see him. The football assault had been preying on her mind all weekend.

I’ve telt that stupid wee fucker about that fitba nonsense for years . . .

He’s all I’ve got. My wee boy. He wasn’t a bad laddie. He was
–

Mandy Stevenson breezed in, hair plastered to her scalp and the side of her face, the shoulders on her beige coat dark from a sudden heavy burst of rain. — Sorry I’m a bit late, Bev. Saw your Danny at the fit ay the Walk.

— What . . . how was he?

— He was just getting on the bus for work, Mandy smiled. — He looked fine, you know Danny, always joking aboot.

— Aye, ah ken um awright, Beverly mused. Selfish little bastard, worrying us all for fuck all, she thought, and worked more conditioner into Jessie’s grateful locks. — This will
really
suit ye, hen, she threatened as Jessie Thomson fell into an abrupt tense-eyed silence.

Brian Kibby had been prone to hypochondriac tendencies for a long time. As a schoolboy he was seldom far away from the doctors: a sick note procured in order to attain some respite from bullying was a precious commodity. But since then, he had grown shy of visiting his physician and was never off work. Any supposed illness was generally now little more than self-pitying habit, his routine phrase ‘I think I’m coming down with something’ usually deployed to get some sort of attention from women. Now that he actually had a genuine ailment, and one undiagnosed, he was worried that he might be going crazy.

But that Monday morning, Joyce’s promptings and his bruising and terrible pains, to say nothing of his embarrassing collapse while hiking, at last compelled him to visit Dr Phillip Craigmyre, the family physician, at his Corstorphine practice. — Listen, son . . . his mother began uneasily, — mind and put on fresh underpants . . . you’re seeing the doctor, mind.

— What . . .? Kibby beamed bright red. — Of course I’ve put on clean pants . . . I always –

— It’s just that I found . . . boy stuff . . . in your pants when I put them in the wash, Joyce said nervously, — you know the sort of stains boys can sometimes make . . .

Kibby’s cheeks burned and he hung his head in shame. She’d mentioned this to him once before, but that was way back in his teens.