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  LABOURERS IN DUNFERMLINE, £5 PER HOUR, 40-HOUR WEEK.

  It’s 8–5 Monday–Friday wi nae weekend work, temporary fir six weeks. That’s two hundred quid a week before deductions ay tax, national insurance, which leaves 170, which is nae wage at aw. If ah dinnae gie the auld man rent n cut doon oan the black gold n avoid ma creditors (and new debtors) that means ah could save five hundred in six weeks. Ma hairy hole. They say experience no essential as trainin will be given but thill nivir huv a runt like me workin oan a site.

  Ah comes out intae a surprisin sun glintin in ma eyes, n the first person ah sees sittin oan the waw is oor disgraced exminister, Jack ‘Jakey’ Anstruther, whae’s indulgin in a fortified wine ay some dubious vintage.

  — Jason King! eh shouts at ays. — Any luck in the employment market?

  — Naw, Jack, it’s jist no happenin, buddy. Nae vacancies for commie ex-jockeys.

  Jakey laughs n the wey that probably causes another few blood vessels in ehs swollen rid coupon tae rupture. That hair’s still stickin up, like yon Don King boxin promoter hoor. Along wi the doolally eyes, it gies um a permanent air ay shock, like a bairn whaes fingers uv located they three wee holes in the waw. The auld coat’s seen better days; mair ripe thin the fruit oan sale at Central Perk merkit. — Funny, son, it’s the same fir commie ex-Church ay Scotland Ministers, eh laughs, hudin the boatil oot tae me.

  — Eh, naw, yir awright, Jack, no ma tipple, ah tell um. Dinnae like tae refuse a drink, but ye are what ye peeve n despite ma financial worries ma position as a champion ay the black gold pits ays a guid few notches above the El-D and Buckie boys.

  Ah leave the auld man ay the cloth tae ehs fun. Ah clocks wee Jenni leavin the leisure centre, the pride and joy ay the Beath, but like Lara, skilled in snobby St Andrews. Thaire’s a wee yin whae isnae half shaping up, ya hoor! Possibly been daein that Pilates class. That’s at the very same venue whaire ma grudge Scottish Cup tie wi the hoor Mossman will take place. Ya cunt, ah git a check ay thon rounded erse ay hers as it slides intae the front seat ay thon motor. Makes ays gled ay jist emptied the tank or ah’d be tempted tae fire yin oaf in broad daylight!

  Instead, ah head back up the street. Ah wince every time ah pass thon Spider’s Web Tattoo Parlour. Saved up like fuck tae git the big hert wi ALISON oan it, jist afore the hoor kicked ays intae touch. The Canada boy, a Lochgelly cunt, hud sponsorship tae the colonial lands, n better prospects wi yon pipe fitter’s papers under ehs belt. Wisnae aw the cunt hud under ehs belt accordin tae her, a contention made in aggression whin oor parting goat a bit heated.

  The Clansman’s ower the road, wi thir Crazy Vimto cocktail, or £2.50 fir a WKD Blue wi a shot ay port, n ahm fair tempted, bit that Big Monty jist might be in thaire. Instead ah head intae the bookies n look at the form, hopin tae crack the code tae untold riches.

  2.

  JENNI AND DEATH

  I RISE AND move over to my computer and spark it up, checking my emails. One from last night, from Lara, who in any case, is coming round later.

  To: [email protected]

  From: [email protected]

  Jen

  God, I hate this town. This county. This country. I want out. If it wasn’t for Scarlet Jester, the stables, the competitions, and of course, your good self, I hesitate to think how unbearable it would be. Just coming back from the (highly successful – if you’ve got it, flaunt it!!) tournament in Ireland, walking down the high street the other day, en route to the leisure centre, I was reminded of Ginny Woolf’s great words: ‘On the towpath we met and had to pass a long line of imbeciles … everyone in that line was a miserable shuffling idiotic creature, with no forehead, or no chin, and an imbecilic grin, or a wild, suspicious stare. It was perfectly horrible. They should certainly be killed.’

  That’s how I feel about them all in this town. Particularly that weirdo, Jason King, who literally drools at the mouth every time he sees me. To think I once hung about with him!

  Hope Midnight is shaping up. Fiona La Rue and all the stables very pleased with me right now.

  Anyway, see u tomorrow.

  Love

  Lara xxx

  Cocky fucking bitch, but it perfectly encapsulates how I feel, not just about Cowdenbeath, but about this house. I update my blog in MySpace, checking out what some of the usual suspects have been up to. Then I pull on a sweatshirt, leggings and trainers, which are in a sports bag at the foot of the bed, and tiptoe downstairs.

  I’d intended to sneak into the little gym and use his cardio equipment. But he was there with his new dog. It was harnessed onto the treadmill and running along. He spends all his time with it. He looks at me, and the dog mirrors his action, glancing sadly from the side. — Just building Ambrose’s legs up, he says, with some guilt. — He’s quite weak for the sort of dog he is.

  — Why not just take him outside? I ask him. He looks repulsive and brutish in that vest and those uncool, old man’s tattoos. They’re so thuggish, and devoid of style: a dragon, a skull and crossbones, a saltire and my mother’s name in a scroll.

  — He keeps me company when I work out, he says, moving across to the bench press by his multigym. — You’re welcome to join us, he says, noting my tracksuit.

  — No … I’m going to the leisure centre.

  He shrugs and starts to bench-press his weights. His round face goes an unfeasible crimson shade and his eyes bulge. The dog’s tongue is lashing out as it pants heavily. I find myself wondering which of them will die first. Then I get to thinking: Would I cry at his funeral? Probably. What a depressing thought.

  I leave them and get into my Escort and drive down to the centre. I do some stretches, then twenty minutes on the treadmill and another ten on the Stairmaster. I check my weight: ten stone two pounds. A three-pound loss since last week! After a shower I have a coffee, read a section of my novel, Danielle Sloman’s Reluctant Survivor. It’s about a girl, Josephine, who is in a coma following a road-traffic accident. She’s willing them to pull the plug, but the doctors and the family refuse to do so. Now one of the doctors, Steven, has fallen in love with her. Meanwhile, Josephine is recounting her life from her vegetative state, little knowing that her fiancé, Curtis, who was HIV-positive, has perished in the crash. After a while, I drive home.

  I have some gym aches so I run myself a bath, remembering that Lara’s coming over later and we’ll probably take the horses for a canter, the state of Midnight’s leg permitting.

  I stretch out my own legs in the bath; they are so ugly and stumpy I want to die. No shape to them at all. I turn the jets on so I don’t have to see them through the frothy bubbles. I find myself contemplating the possibilities of suicide by wilfully drowning oneself. Yes, obviously, by jumping from a boat into a stormy sea. But could you drown yourself in a bath? Would this be possible with solemn intent?

  It would take a Herculean exercise of will. We would really need to want to die, but for longer than the second that it takes to jump over a cliff.

  I fall back, sliding down into the tub made slimy by the bath salts and let myself go under the two feet of water.

  I want to die.

  R.I.P.

  JENNIFER LOUISE CAHILL 1987–2006

  Beloved daughter of Thomas Cahill and Margaret Mary Cahill née Alexander,

  Much loved sister of Indigo Sunita Cahill

  I can’t do it. I can’t open my mouth and swallow, can’t even stop expelling air out from the holes in my nose. I just can’t. Then I force myself to try to take it in, but as soon as a trickle of water hits my lungs my body shoots bolt upright as I cough and splutter it out. The bathroom floor is soaked. My eyes sting with the bath salts that have dissolved into the tepid water. I’m gasping, my body a machine, a biomechanism with a sickening power over my will, filling itself full of air, fighting back, overcoming my conscious desire. Surviving.

  I gather my breath as the pounding in my head subsides. I write in the condensation steam on the blue tiles:

  I WANT TO DIE

>   Then I obliterate it with a sweep of my hand. Cancel that thought: who would look after poor Midnight?

  Downstairs I can hear my mother at the door. She shouts up the stairs: — Jenni! Lara’s here!

  Best-friend Lara. Back from Ireland, basking in her triumph, coming round here to gloat. And then I hear his voice, a low grunt. He’ll be sniffing around her, his cock stiff in his trousers, his tongue hanging out. Just like his poor miserable killer dog that accompanies him everywhere.

  I haul myself out of the bath and, wrapping a towel round me, I dry off, throwing on the clothes I looked out. Those green tight combat trousers Lara thinks are cool will do for me. I know this by the way she looks at them. If she didn’t like them the bitch would say, ‘Oh, they look so good on you.’ I hear my mum’s voice again; insistent and desperate, possibly aware that she’s two-thirds destroyed. (The best two-thirds.)

  — Come on up, Lar, I shout.

  — We’re going to the stable to check on Midnight, my father shouts in his gravelly tones, straitjacketed into an ill-fitting corset of nonchalance.

  — Fun, I snort. Like he cares.

  — Come down and join us, he shouts again, in a patently insincere tone. Of course, he doesn’t want me there. He wants to ogle Lara, maybe even feel her up. He’s scum. But so is she. She’s a slag. Once when we were drinking she even confessed that she ‘quite fancied’ him. I think she said it just to shock, but all the same, what a sicko way to talk about your friend’s dad.

  All the more reason to spoil their party.

  I leave it for a bit, waiting until they go outside. I can see in my mind’s eye the dog following them, always a few paces behind. Both the pooch and my dad from the back: squat, square, thuggish versions of their particular species.

  I hear him shout, — Stay, to the dog. From behind the frosted bathroom mirror window, I see them joking and laughing in a nauseatingly flirtatious way, her anoraked and wellingtoned back following him into the stable. Then I creep downstairs and run out, suddenly joining them. — Hey, I say breezily, studying first his expression then hers, looking to see how my unwanted presence has impacted on them. They stand a little apart from each other, and it might be my imagination, but their faces seem eaten up with guilt and disappointment.

  Lara has cut her brown hair short and slightly spiky on top. With her upturned nose and freckled face it gives her a mischievous, pixie-like look. Her eyes are her best feature, almond-shaped, glowing, a warm brown, that and her mouth, those full lips which hide small, white teeth, till she smiles. She’s seven stone and never had a spot in her life. She’s rich, an only child, and she gets everything she wants. She’s my best friend and I fucking hate her.

  Midnight is in the stables, standing beside Clifford, Indigo’s pony, who is his companion animal. Originally bought for that purpose was Curran, the psychotic pig, who makes both animals lives a misery with his butting and nipping. Even the dog keeps away from Curran.

  Lara explains to me that she’s driven over to give Scarlet Jester a break after his Ireland exertions. — He looked peaky and was a wee bit snottery. Fiona’s looking after him at the stables.

  She keeps him at Fiona La Rue’s stables, which is only a mile down the road, out of town. They take better care of him there than we evidently do with poor Midnight. He’s strained a tendon in his front lower leg and has been on anti-inflamatory drugs. Dobson the vet came over yesterday to check it, massaging the tendons and ligaments and manipulating the foot to assess freedom of movement. Midnight hurt it when I was riding him over the boards at home a few weeks back.

  As the vet urged, I try to replicate his actions. Then I put on Midnight’s harness and walk him around the field, leaving my dad and Lara in the stables. I can hear her laugh, shrill, insistent: desperate to affirm some comment he’s made in his phoney James Bond voice. I stroke Midnight’s long, velvet-smooth face and watch his nostrils flare. — It’s a good thing I’ve got you, Midders, I tell him in a whisper.

  3.

  THE FIFE STYLE OF PLAY

  BACK IN THE New Goth for the evening, enjoyin a decent pint ay the black gold. Now ah ken thit oor Celtic cousins acroas the Irish Sea will tell ye thit the black gold ower here tastes like it’s been strained through the bloomers ay a seasoned Lochgelly hoor, but this ey fair hits the spot fir me.

  — The cunt’s mad. Stab-yir-faither n shag-yir-ma mad, Neebour says, talking aboot Monty. Aye, thon hoor’s a wrang yin awright.

  Bit ah’m no wantin tae talk aboot bams, no the now, so when wee Reggie Comorton, Mister Reflected Glory himself, starts oan aboot this Mossman boy ah’m playin the morn in the Scottish, ah gits right intae the discussion. — Ya hoor ye, the cunt’s no goat a flick in um. Boy’s a fuckin slider, ahm tellin ye.

  So Comorton, looking like auld Peter Falk’s Columbo in this dirty wee overcoat, turns tae me n says, — It’s the Fife style ay play. Yir still trapped in the Fife style ay play, Jason. The game’s moved oan.

  — What ye tryin tae say Comorton?

  — Eftir yon twa thoosand n twa World Cup they selt nearly one million table-football pitches in South Korea. Think wir gaunny huv it wur ain wey in Fife forever?

  Ah looks tae the Neebour tae see if yon bourgeois revisionist sentiments are bein endorsed, but ehs goat that staney coupon oan. No thit it bothers me. As ah’m short ay black gold tokens, n ah’ve goat the big game oan the morn, ah takes ma leave n gits hame tae ma residence, jist roond the corner next tae the railway station. Central Fife: as central as it gits.

  Ah gits up tae ma room n pits oan ma Cat Stevens album, skins up n starts tae huv a wank thinkin aboot yon Lara n her chunkier wee pal Jenni, jodhpur-clad erses bouncin oan yon saddles, sweaty wee minges batterin oaf yon hoarses’ backs as they brek intae a trot, n ah manage a fair auld spurt withoot video assistance! Whoa, ya cunt ye! Tea for the Tillerman. Aye, sor.

  Some ay they equestrian-orientated lassies’ll take some satisfyin n aw, ah kin tell ye. Thir’s been a few thit huv hud that hymen burst acroass the back ay a hoarse, ahm stressing through sportin endeavour, nowt untoward, ya hoor sor! Been a guid few marital ceremonies throughout the ages declared null n void oan the absence ay thon elastic twang on the end ay the cherry oan the first night in yon marital bed, but it kin happen in pure innocence wi a sportin maid. Funny tae think ay that perr Princess Di as a wee thing huvin tae go through the indignity ay the ‘intact fud test’ before her marriage tae Prince Charles. Nae danger ay thon Camilla needin tae subject that aulder clam tae the same scrutiny! Progress, ya hoor, whin feminism finds its wey intae the royal gynecological services! Bit hoarses n lassies; aye, once yuv hud that sort ay power between yir legs yir standards might jist go up a wee bit!

  That Lara; eywis tidy, but awfay snooty, even back in the day. Went oot wi her whin she wis fourteen n ah wis twenty-one. Ah hae ma doots thit her faither, Doaktir Grant fae yon practice oan the Lochgelly Road, wid huv blessed a fully-fledged sexual relationship back then. Academic point cause she gied ays ma marchin orders jist eftir the fuckin stable ah wis attached tae did, purely by coincidence ah’m sure! Ah reckon she still huds a candle fir me, but. But aw aye, sor, ya hoor ye, it wid take some satisfyin these days, by maist accoonts.

  Mind you, thir aw boozer accoonts, and by thaime every cunt takes some satisfyin. Telt muh auld man aboot this n he sais it wis much different in his day. A lassie wis gled ay a length back then, n accordin tae the auld yins they aw went oaf like nuclear bombs. ‘A sexual fuckin utopia, right here in Fife,’ tae paraphrase the auld boy, ya hoor.

  Ya hoor sor, ah’m better gittin back wi that Alison Broon, she wis the lassie fir me. Ah wanted tae git back the gither wi her, bit as Scottish Table-Football Cup Champion. Fower n a hauf inches didnae bother that wee yin. Or so she sais at the time. Mind you, she’s in Canada n she’s married. Three bairns n aw, they tell ays.

  Too far away tae contemplate a visit oan the mere speculation ay a ride, so ah gits oot the table-football n practises for the game the morn. A
h’ve jist goat Cowdenbeath and Dunfermline set up whin the phone goes. Ah cannae hear the auld boy in the hoose, eh must be doon at the library reading socialist tracts, so ah runs doon n picks it up.

  — Kingy! What kept ye? You been huvin a wank?

  It’s ma auld mucker Kravy fae Spain. — It’s pointless lyin tae ye, buddy; aye, a substantial chug wi the usual suspects oan the jukebox.

  — They hoarsey lassies? Dae you never change the record?

  — If it isnae broke thir’s nae need tae fix it, sor.

  — Sorry if ah put ye off yir stroke.

  — Thir’s nae danger ay that, ah goes, n ah ken it’s just phone lines n thir aw the same, but ah git a wee hunch eh’s a wee bit closer thin Spain. — Whair ur ye?

  — Jist this minute walked intae the New Goth, Cowdenbeath, Fife, Scotland. Where else?

  — What aboot Spain, ya hoor?

  — Hud tae come back tae look eftir the auld mare. She hud a faw while pished n smashed her hip comin doon they big steps outside the Miners’Welfare.

  — The Fountain Bar n Pool Hall as we call it now.

  A wee silence, then eh goes: — Aye, ah heard they hud changed it. Now thuv changed the auld mare’s hip n aw.

  — Sair yin.

  — Aye, but they reckoned it wis riddled wi arthritis anywey, so they stuck in a plastic joab, the hoor explains. — Ye comin fir a pint?

  Ah’m thinkin aboot the contest versus Moosey-Face Mossman the morn. — Ah’m a bit short ay the sheckles, bro, the giro ay last week bein jist a nostalgic memory.

  — Ah’m in the chair. Goat enough narks tae pit Boots oot ay business n aw.

  Well, thir wis nae mair tae be said!

  Jist then ah heard the door open n the auld boy came in wi a cairry-oot. — What up, bro? eh sais, then regards Cat Stevens oan the stereo n looks at ays, shakin ehs heid as eh lays the bevvy oan the table. — Nae cunt listened tae Cat Stevens, even back in the day. It wis wankers’ music, even back then. Thon 50 Cent boy’s the man.