The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs (5 page)

How long have I been after one of them?!

His heart began to race as he looked at his watch. The shop would be open at nine o’clock, in just five minutes’ time, but he was due to report to a Mr Foy at 9.15 a. m. It was 105 pounds and if he left it there, it would be snapped up before he could get back at lunchtime. Brian Kibby charged across the road to the cashpoint and withdrew his money, all the time shaking with excitement and fear, lest some other model-railway enthusiast sneak in and plunder the coveted artefact.

Racing back over to the shop, Kibby saw Arthur, the old proprietor, limp into the doorway and turn the keys to open up. He lurched in after him, unable to contain his excitement, having to stop abruptly as the old man suddenly bent down to pick up the morning mail. Taking what to Kibby seemed an agonising time, he gathered the letters and files together, then said sagely, — Aye, Brian son, I think I ken what you’re after.

Quickly glancing again at his timepiece, Kibby was now concerned that he’d be late. He couldn’t do that, couldn’t make such a bad impression on his first day of work. Getting off on the right foot was important. His dad had always stressed punctuality to the point where it now obsessed Brian Kibby. It was a train driver’s thing, he supposed.

Old Arthur seemed a bit put out when the young lad left promptly after purchasing the engine, not staying for a chat as was his custom. Young people were always dashing around, he thought in some disappointment as he had long considered Brian Kibby to be different.

Kibby sprinted across the road, box under his arm. No, he couldn’t be late, he kept saying to himself over and over again in an agitated mantra. He was going to the hospital tonight and he had to be able to look his dad in the eye and tell him that everything had gone well on his first day. The clock at the Tron told him there was a bit of time, and he started to relax a little and get his puff back.

Outside the City Chambers some major roadworks were taking place. They were always digging up the cobblestones on the Royal Mile, Kibby considered. Then he recognised one of the workmen. It was McGrillen, his old tormentor from school, wearing a sleeveless quilted jacket as he operated a big pneumatic drill, the vibrations of which showed his powerful muscles rippling in his arms. Kibby contemplated his own puny biceps, and recalled the ridiculousness of his dad saying, — If anybody mucks you about at school, just gie them that, holding up his own scared fist in illustration.

Brian Kibby’s grip tightened on the box he was carrying.

As McGrillen looked up and clocked him in slow recognition, Kibby felt rising in him the customary bolt of fear his old adversary’s presence engendered. However, as he contemplated McGrillen, it seemed to settle into another, less definable emotion. The contempt in his old tormentor’s eyes was still there, but this time, clad in workman’s clothes, he was
confronted by Kibby in a suit and some repressed bourgeois part of McGrillen’s soul was belittled. And Kibby saw it; saw that McGrillen could see his own life elongating out ahead of him, digging roads, while he, Brian Kibby, was in his suit and tie, a man of business and substance, a council inspector!

And Kibby couldn’t resist a little smirk, in that, after all the school playground humiliations and the years of crossing the road at the baker’s or chip shop, he had now gained some measure of revenge, some kind of vindication. That small self-satisfied smile, how it must be like a nail in poor McGrillen’s heart! he thought as he danced over the forecourt, instantly withdrawing his glance and proceeding in a studiedly distracted, businesslike manner, as if McGrillen was somebody he thought he maybe knew but was obviously mistaken!

Inside the impressive hallway, Kibby climbed a mahogany-panelled staircase to a set of lifts. Getting into one elevator, he saw a guy in a suit, his own age, maybe a little older. Kibby thought the boy looked cool, as the suit seemed expensive. And the guy nodded and smiled at him; at
him
, Brian Kibby! And why not? Now he was somebody, an officer of the council, not just an unskilled workie like McGrillen.

The likes of that boy wouldnae even gie the likes of Andrew McGrillen the time ay day!

Then he realised that the boy was with this lassie; well, Kibby felt his hormones race, and she gave him a smile too, before she started talking to the young guy. Wow, Kibby thought, admiring her light brown hair, her busy, big brown eyes and her full lips. What a doll, he gasped to himself, seized with a kind of ecstatic rush so strong, he almost forgot for a few moments about the box under his arm.

At the next floor two men in blue overalls got into the lift and then a hot, fecund stench filled the box they were crammed into. Somebody had let off. It was awful, and the guy in the suit caught Kibby’s eye and looked to the boys in the overalls and screwed his face up in disgust. The workmen got off at
the next stop. The young guy in the suit said loudly, — That is minging!

A few people grinned and the young lassie laughed. — Danny, she tutted.

— I’m no joking, Shannon, Kibby heard the boy say. — There’s nae need for thon. There’s a toilet on every floor.

Shannon, Kibby thought, too excited and flustered to turn and see if they were going his way. No, he thought, this was his big chance. They didn’t know him; he wasn’t going to be the timid boy at school or the quiet apprentice in the office who made the tea for grumpy old guys like in his last job. He was going to come of age here, going to be confident, outgoing and respected. Then he sucked in air and turned to face this Danny guy and this Shannon lassie. — Excuse me . . . can you tell me where the Environmental Health section is? I’ve an appointment to see Mr Robert Foy.

— You must be Brian, the girl called Shannon smiled, and so, Kibby noted in appreciation, did the boy Danny.

— Follow us, he said.

Just in the door and I’ve already made pals with some really good people!

THE ALARM CLOCK’S
relentless jackhammering jolted Danny Skinner from one hell into another. His hand shot out, slapping its ‘off’ switch, but for a while the noise continued to pulse inside his brain. The tormented, feverish dreams had gone, but they were only to be traded for the reality of a cold, stark Monday morning of work. His heavy head started to clear as the dawn shadows began to define the room. A surge of panic exploded in his chest as he reached out by instinct, his bare leg surging into the cold of the other side of the bed.

No.

Kay had not come back, had not stayed the night. She stopped over at his a lot, most weekends, in fact. Perhaps she’d gone for a drink with her friend Kelly; two fit girls, two dancers, on the town. The thought appealed to Skinner. Then a sour smell rose in his nostrils. Across in one corner he saw a pile of vomit. He gave thanks that it was confined to the strip-pine floor, missing the oriental rug with several Kama Sutra positions illustrated on it, which had cost him half his month’s wages from an antique shop in the Grassmarket.

Skinner snapped on the radio and listened to the implausibly cheerful DJ slaver on for an excruciatingly long time, before a welcome, familiar tune alleviated his misery slightly. He sat up slowly and looked at his clothes strewn over the floor and hanging on to the bottom of the brass bedstead, with the desperation of shipwrecked men on driftwood. Then he morbidly contemplated the bottle of empty beer and full ashtray by the bed. These dregs were lit up like an abhorrent composition by the
thin early-morning sun, which filtered in through the threadbare curtains. A chilly wind whistled through cracked, rattling window frames, stinging his naked torso.

Wrecked again last night. Last weekend. No wonder Kay had elected to go back home. Fuckin dingul Skinner . . . fuckin useless phantom bastard . . . acting like an idiot . . .

He considered that he never used to mind the cold. Now he felt it chipping away at his life force. I’m twenty-three, he thought in nervy desperation, jagged with the hangover. His hand rose to his temples to rub out a twinge of neuralgia he felt might herald the onset of the explosive aneurysm that would blow him into the next life.

It’s fucking cold in this place. Cold and dark. It’ll never be Australia or California
.
It’s not going to get any better.

Sometimes he thought about the father he’d never met. Liked the idea of him being somewhere warm, perhaps in what they call ‘the New World’. In his mind’s eye, he could see a healthy and tanned man, perhaps with salt-and-pepper hair and a bronze-limbed family, youthful and blond. And he would be accepted into their midst in an act of reconciliation that would make sense of his life.

Could you miss what you’d never had?

Last winter he was skint and he’d tried to stay in, to stay off the drink. He found himself listening to Leonard Cohen, studying Schopenhauer’s philosophical works and reading assorted Scandinavian poets, who seemed to him to be clinically depressed, tortured by those long winter nights. Sigbjorn Obstfelder, the Norwegian modernist who wrote at the end of the nineteenth century, was a particular favourite with those great lines of morbid decadence, Skinner’s most memorable being:

Sometimes he thought that he could see it on the faces of the old boys in the Leith pubs: each pint and nip seeming to bring the Grim Reaper one step closer, while fuelling delusions of immortality.

But what sweet delusions!

And he remembered dragging his girlfriend out to the pub on Sunday afternoon, when all she’d wanted to do was lie around watching television with him.

Skinner, though, had needed to drink off his Friday night and Saturday hangover and he’d all but jostled her out the door and steered her up Leith Walk to Robbie’s, where several of his cronies were drinking. Yet Kay sat there, the solitary woman, smiling and uncomplaining, indulged or ignored by those weird and wonderful men who just drank and drank and drank. It was as if some of them had never set their bloodshot eyes on a woman before while others had seen at least one more than they ever wanted to. It didn’t concern Kay that much; she was just happy to be with the boy that she loved, wherever they went. She couldn’t be like them though. She needed to watch her weight, to stay fit, so that she could dance. She would say, You don’t understand, I need to stay fit. He’d say, But you
are
so fit, babe.

But with each drink Skinner had got more boisterous and pedantic. He was arguing with his mate, Gary Traynor, a wiry young man with close-cropped fair hair and a harsh but mischievous face. — They huvnae got a proper mob these days. How many could they pull the gither?

Traynor shrugged, a faint smirk on his face, and sucked at his beer. Alex Shevlane, a torpedo-headed gym rat of a guy who looked like he overdid the weights, surreptitiously clocked his biceps in the wall mirror as he raised his bottle of beer to his mouth. — Last time we wir through thair the cunts never showed up. Fuckin waste ay time, he hissed.

— You’re eywis oan aboot that, Traynor grinned, slapping Shevlane’s broad back heartily. — Let it go. Ye want tae sue the
cunts for damages? Emotional damages for wreckin yir weekend, he laughed, nodding towards a well-dressed, shifty-looking young man who was drinking alone at the bar. — Dessie Kinghorn thair’s yir man!

Skinner turned round to clock the solitary Des Kinghorn, who caught his glance with hard, penetrating eyes. Skinner rose and walked over to him as Traynor’s face expanded in glee.

— Dessie, how goes it, mate?

Kinghorn looked him over, checked the Aquascutum jacket and new Nike trainers. Gave a slow, evaluating nod. — Awright, he said gruffly. — New threads?

Three years and the cunt’s still got the cream puff, Skinner thought. — Aye . . . want a drink, mate? He nodded towards the bar.

— Naw, yir awright, got tae head, Kinghorn said, killing his beer, nodding curtly and moving to the exit.

As he went out through the door into the street, Traynor looked across at Skinner, pursing his lips and rolling his eyes. Shevlane’s grin mirrored the shark motif on his black-and-white-striped jumper. Skinner shrugged and opened his palms in appeal. Kay was taking this entire scene in, trying to work out what was happening and why this guy had snubbed her boyfriend. — Who was that, Danny? She asked.

— Just an old buddy, Dessie Kinghorn, he said. Noting that this response satisfied nobody round the table, least of all Kay, he was forced into recounting a tale. — Mind I told you, the summer before we met, I got run over by a motor? Broken leg, broken airm, two ribs, fractured skull?

— Yes . . . she nodded. She never liked to think of such injuries. Not just to him, but in general. She had an important audition coming up. Who could recover after such injuries and dance again? How long would it take? Even now, she sometimes imagined that her boyfriend had an unevenness to his gait, perhaps a legacy of the accident.

— Well, I put a claim in for the injuries. Dessie works in
insurance and he put it through for me, like got me the forms and that, put me in touch with a photographer.

Kay nodded. — Like to take pictures of your injuries?

— Aye. I mean, ah wis grateful, telt him there would be a drink in it for him. Well, I got fifteen grand, which I was chuffed about, dinnae get me wrong, but ah wis off work for six months, in traction, the lot, Skinner appealed. — I went tae gie him five hundred quid when it came through. Ah mean, ah appreciated what he did, but every cunt was gaun oan tae me aboot claiming compensation, I just did it through the insurance company Dessie worked for. The way ah saw it was ah put a bit ay business the cunt’s way, n offered him a nice wee backhander. The bastard wouldnae take it. ‘Forget it, ’eh goes. Took the huff and been in it ever since. Skinner gulped on his pint like he was swallowing down his bitterness. — The fuckin fandan was puttin it aroond that he was entitled to half. Skinner turned to Traynor then Shevlane, then Kay, then some others in appeal.— Telt the cunt in McPherson’s, ‘If ye want half, I’ll gie ye half . . . if ahcan brek
your
leg, airms, ribs and skull wi a baseball bat. Cause that’s the only circumstances under which you’d be entitled tae half.’ Bastard went aw para eftir that, thought ah wis trying tae threaten him. He pointed at himself as his eyes widened in outrage. — Me. Threaten
that
cunt. As if. I was only trying to make a fuckin point.