Skagboys Read online

  ‘That was very thoughtful, Spud. Fire in there, mate. Ah’d certainly ride her. In a fuckin minute.’

  ‘Naw, it wisnae like that,’ he bashfully protested, ‘she’s a nice lassie, n ah wis jist tryin tae be helpful, ken?’

  ‘Still, you’ll be oot soon, Spud, free tae impress the fair maidens ay the Port wi yir near-death and rehab tales.’

  ‘Naw, ah dinnae want tae go back tae Leith. Thaire’s nowt tae dae.’ He shook his head. ‘Ah’m pure no ready, man …’

  Then he put his head heid in his hands and I felt masel turn tae stone as he started to cry started tae greet. Proper greeting, high, snivelling, wee bairnish whines. ‘Ah’ve messed things up that much … wi muh ma …’

  I put ma airm roond him; it felt like hugging a workie’s pneumatic drill. ‘Whoah, c’moan, Danny, take it easy, mate …’

  He stared up at us, face red, beak all snottery. ‘… if ah could jist git a joab, Mark … n a girlfriend … somebody tae care aboot …’

  Then Sick Boy pushed the door open. He rolled his eyes camply, as Spud rubbed at his own red, bloodshot lamps. ‘Am I interrupting anything?’

  Spud sprang to his feet. ‘You kin stoap slaggin oaf Alison! You keep yir mooth shut aboot her, right! How you’re like wi lassies … IT’S WRONG, KEN! IT’S JIST PURE WRONG!’

  ‘Daniel …’ Sick Boy went, palms upturned, ‘… what’s wrong?’

  ‘YOU! PEOPLE LIKE YOU!’

  They squared up, shouting at each other, faces inches apart. ‘You need tae git fucking laid!’ Sick Boy sneers.

  ‘N you need tae treat people wi respect!’

  ‘Spare me the tired axioms.’

  ‘Dinnae think ye can get oot ay it by usin big words,’ Spud screamed, his face florid and eyes watering. ‘Ah sais you need tae treat people wi respect!’

  ‘Aye, n it’s done you loads ay fucking good!’

  ‘YOU’RE IN REHAB N AW, SON!’

  ‘AT LEAST I NEED MAIR THAN ONE HAND TAE COUNT THE NUMBER AY RIDES AH’VE HUD!’

  ‘YOU’RE GAUNNY GIT YIR BIG MOOTH SHUT ONE AY THESE DAYS!’

  ‘N YOU’RE GAUNNY DAE IT, LIKE?’

  The palaver rippled through the centre’s wafer-thin walls and Len and Skinny-Specky burst in trying tae calm things doon. I was fucked if I was getting in between them: let them swedge away. Although a gentle soul, Spud can row when he has just cause and I’d wager he could take Sick Boy. It would’ve been damn fine sport tae see them exchange blows.

  ‘This is not the way we deal with conflict, by shouting and making threats. Is it, Simon? Is it, Danny?’ Skinny-Specky ticked rhetorically, in her school-marm style.

  ‘He started it!’ Spud squealed.

  ‘Like fuck ah did! I came in here tae see Mark and you started shoutin the odds!’

  ‘Cause you wir …’ Spud hesitated, ‘… cause your wir sayin things aboot other people!’

  ‘You really do need tae git fuckin laid!’

  As Spud turned away and exited, I ventured, ‘I think we all do, that’s a general axiom,’ stealing the latest word Sick Boy’s obviously found in his trusty dictionary, lamely hoping that Skinny-Specky might get flirty, or at least humorous with me, but she pointedly ignored the comment. Poor Spud was seething but he’ll be apologising to Sick Boy for the next ten years, once the Catholic guilt kicks in. If you’re gaunny be saying sorry anyway, you should at least panel the cunt and make it worthwhile: an error of judgement on his part. Len followed after him, while Skinny-Specky looked at Sick Boy n me as if we were going to disclose.

  We stood staring back at her. ‘It’s a domestic dispute, Amelia,’ I smiled, ‘a sort ay Leith thing.’

  ‘Well, keep it in Leith,’ she snapped.

  ‘Not that easy when half of Leith’s in here,’ Sick Boy observed, as Skinny-Specky looked piqued, then followed Len out.

  Sick Boy looked down the corridor towards the departing Skinny-Specky. ‘Amelia, Amelia, let me fuckin feel ya,’ he said tae naebody, raising his brows and patting his crotch. ‘I reckon she’d go … if conditions were favourable’.

  Day 15

  The racket-making birds are black, white and blue magpies, nesting freely in the tree outside my window. I’ve been here now just over two weeks, which seems like two years.

  My senses are almost overwhelming. These smells from the past: the thick, rich aroma of Ma’s chocolate cake, the sharp ammoniac tang of Wee Davie’s piss that watered your eyes as you sat in front of the telly.

  Sick Boy cracks me up, the way the cunt constantly changes his clathes. He dresses smartly in the evenings, as if he’s going to a nightclub, and he totally mings ay aftershave. During the day he wears tracksuit bottoms and T-shirts. We’re both at the washing machine a lot, because of the sweat. Saw Molly around there after breakfast, loading up some underwear. I dinnae like her but the sight compelled me to go back tae my room and batter one off. The carpet looks like Murrayfield ice rink wi aw the dried spunk.

  Molly is in the meditation group, as is Sick Boy, who chips incessantly at her defences. ‘Ah’m finished wi guys after Brandon’, I hear her announce. He responds with; ‘You don’t have the right to say that. You have a heart and a soul, and an emotional life. You’re a beautiful girl, with so much to give. Some day the right guy’ll come along,’ he proclaims, holding that deep gaze of probity. It forces her fingers to her hair, whispering, ‘Ye really think so?’

  ‘I know so,’ he pompously declares.

  It’s the process review group that reminds me of why I take drugs. We’re meant tae be looking at how we interact with each other here in the centre, but it generally descends intae shouting matches and name-calling, inevitably ‘resolved’ by insincere hugs instigated by Tom or Amelia. Nonetheless, it aw feels a bit like the Cenny, the Vine or the Volley at closing time. The positive feedback we’re encouraged to gie each other seems tae be little more than wishful thinking or damning wi faint praise. For instance, the best thing Molly can find tae say aboot Johnny in one ay their stagey reconciliations is that she likes his navy-blue-and-white-hooped jersey. Their main bone of contention is Johnny’s dealing, which he gets a fair bit of stick for. He eventually rises, announcing, ‘Fuck this. Ah’m no takin this shite. Ah’m gaun.’

  ‘I want to go means I want to use,’ Tom entreats his departing figure. ‘Don’t do this, Johnny. Don’t run. Stay with us.’

  ‘Aye, right,’ he says, walking out and slamming the door behind him.

  ‘When we start taking ourselves away, using isolating behaviour, that’s when we risk relapse,’ Tom explains. The meeting ends in confusion and disarray. Tom thinks we’ve ‘made progress’, describing it as ‘healthy’ that such conflicts are coming out into the open.

  To borrow the immortal words ay the White Swan: aye, right.

  We’d been allowed tae make our own tapes up, to play in the recky room. Swanney, who we find sitting there on his tod following his exit stage left, has brought in a C45 featuring ‘Heroin’ by the Velvets, Clapton’s ‘Cocaine’, Floyd’s ‘Comfortably Numb’, the Stones’ ‘Sister Morphine’, Neil Young’s ‘The Needle and the Damage Done’ and some other belters. Side Two has ‘Suicide is Painless’ (the theme from MASH), Terry Jacks’s ‘Seasons in the Sun’, Bobbie Gentry’s ‘Ode to Billie Joe’, Bobby Goldsboro’s ‘Honey’, and the Doors’ ‘The End’, among others. Skinny-Specky instantly confiscates it on the grounds of ‘inappropriateness’.

  I now spend most mornings out on the back patio. In a corner there’s a rack of hand barbells at different weights. The big biker, Seeker, is the only cunt using them, so I join him. It’s cold cauld, but after a while you don’t ye dinnae notice because ye work up a fair old sweat.

  Roast chicken for lunch. I eat it.

  Wank and read for most of the afternoon. I’m just getting ready to go to my kip when Swanney, eyes wide like he’s wired, bursts into my room and sits on my bed ranting at me. I learn that Raymie’s in Liverpool (or is it Newcastle?) and Alison’s ‘gone s
traight and sold out’.

  ‘Polis came in and turned ower the flat. Lucky there was a drought on and aw they could huckle the White Swan fir was some percy and a wee bit ay speed. They offered us this shitey deal. It’s a smoking gun, Rent Boy,’ he says. ‘Ah cannae be clean. Ah hate it. Ah git too worked up aboot aw the shite ay the day withoot ma skag. Ah just need it!’

  ‘Ah ken what ye mean.’

  ‘But some cunt defo spilled the Coco Steins. That polis raid, it hud aw the hallmarks ay a textbook grassin-up job, ah’m sure ay it. But who? ah thoat. Well, I ain’t in the biz ay naming names, it isnae they wey ay the White Swan, he prefers tae just gracefully cruise doon that river ay love n enlightenment; but who is the only cunt who’s been nicked lately n no goat sent tae the chokey or pit through here?’

  I instantly ken who he means, but elect tae play dumb.

  ‘That snidey wee cunt Connell, that’s who. Ah ken Matty’s your mate, Mark, auld Fort loyalties n that, but he’s eywis hoverin aroond askin aw sorts ay questions, like wantin tae ken where ah git ma gear fae, n aw that shite.’

  I think of an old picture ay me and Matty, standing outside the walls ay the Fort in Hibs strips. We’d be about eight. ‘He’s a tea leaf. He just wanted in on your action, Johnny. He wouldnae gie info tae the polis.’

  I’m genuine. Like most people, I thought it was weird that Matty just got a suspended sentence and a few poxy days on remand, rather than proper jail or detox, but I cannae see him as a grass.

  Day 16

  I’ve had my first individual counselling session with Tom Curzon, the ‘superstar of rehab’, according to Skinny-Specky. She’s defo got the hots for him.

  Tom seemed tae expect me to dae all the talking. No way: I clammed right up. It must have been like trying tae get a drink out ay an Aberdonian coconut. It was quite a tough session: jockeying for position in a covert battle of wills.

  Day 17

  Woken up by the chattering birds again. Go for a stroll in the garden, even though it’s pishing doon. A disturbing sight under a bush at the back wall: a waddling crow jabs its beak through the breast of a dead pigeon repeatedly, till it locates a coil of gut, then twists out a slimy stretch and starts to devour it. This scene transfixes me, and I wonder if the pigeon was still alive, dying, but yet to perish, when the crow punched its first few holes into its chest.

  I think about this during breakfast, and feel queasy and distracted.

  Keezbo returns, but he’s deep in his room, he never leaves it. I refuse to chap on his door, it’s better to give the chubby cunt some space, it’s obviously what he needs. Ted fae Bathgate tells me he heard that Begbie battered some cunt in Saughton, but it apparently wisnae Cha Morrison.

  One gadge I’ve warmed to is the Weedgie boy, Skreel. He got done for trying to bump a taxi. He’d been living in various homeless hostels here and through in Glesgey, and still has yellow-black bruised eyes from swedges. On arriving here, his long hair was shorn off as it was infested with lice – we telt him we’d have expected nothing less from a Weedgie. He has more abscesses on his hands, feet, arms and legs than I’ve ever seen, and he wears them like badges of honour. He’s a bit gimpy from a bad fall, and the fact that he has practically no usable veins left in his limbs and had started injecting in his arteries. He boasted that last year he was on 750 mg of heroin per day, which I don’t doubt. His teeth are rotten and give him constant gyp; he blames that on the barbiturates, which he loves as much as the skag. You have to respect Skreel, he’s proper. I’ll say one thing for the Weedgies: they don’t go in for half measures.

  ‘Ah’ll be deid soon, big man,’ he cheerfully informs me over a lunch of almost inedible cheese salad for me, and pie, chips and beans for everybody else. (Skreel is, at six foot, an inch taller than me.) ‘Ah jist wahnt tae stey aff ma face till it happens, know whit ah mean?’

  Day 18

  Wake up to a gold sun, shimmering in a blue sky. On the patio, I marvel at its heat on my bare arms, listening to the excited magpies nesting in the sycamore tree, sounding like 1950s football rattles. I have an urge to get beyond those big, dark-stoned walls and that dense foliage; that light-bladed horizon.

  Getting more into the weights. Seeker and I generally do a few sets together every morning and afternoon, following breakfast and lunch. I like the discipline of it, pushing upwards, the rushing of the blood in my body and head, feeling the ebb and flow of eternal, mysterious forces inside me. Seeker does much bigger weights than me, and has really started tae bulk up, he has that kind of physique, but I notice wee clusters of muscle coming up on my arms and shoulders. It would be cool to have that sleek, feline, Iggy Pop look; muscular and defined but still slim and lithe. Seeker shows me how to be systematic about it: sets, reps and all that stuff. Before, I would have just lifted them till I got tired or bored. This interaction is a big deal, as Seeker isn’t a man of conversation, in fact his comfort with silence is probably his only redeeming feature. He wears shades indoors.

  A spiky session with Tom; he asks me about my discussions with cunty baws Dr Forbes, fae the clinic. ‘Are you depressed, Mark?’

  ‘I’m in rehab for heroin addiction,’ I tell him. Then add, only half jokingly, ‘In Fife.’

  ‘But before. Your brother died last year. Did you mourn him?’

  I want to ask him, ‘Why in the name of suffering fuck would I mourn the loss of constant humiliation and embarrassment? If you were a gangly, sensitive, yet highly egotistical kid growing up in Leith, would you not be pleased that a source of your torment had been removed?’ Instead I say, ‘Obviously. It was a sad loss.’

  Day 19

  I spoke too soon! Seeker speaks! He tells me he was in a bad bike smash a few years back. They put a steel plate in his nut and a pin in his leg. The pain was bearable in the summer. In the winter, though, only gear could sort it oot, and he ended up hooked. I also learned that he wears the shades on account ay being light-sensitive since his accident. Fair fucks tae the cunt; the overhead strip lights in here are harsh as, and I usually have a thumping headache just bubbling under migraine level by the time I turn in. We discover we’re baith early risers, so agree to do a larger set of weights before breakfast.

  Now I know how Tom feels with the rest of us. Like I’ve made a breakthrough.

  Day 22

  This diary bullshit is getting as addictive as the skag. But it’s also as dangerous; that personal shite you’re somehow compelled tae put intae it. I had to rip oot the diary page yesterday, and a couple ay pages in the journal section, screwing them up and flinging them in the waste-paper basket. Suppose some cunt had read it? They say it’s confidential, but what’s that in here?

  Len’s clocked me daein the weights with Seeker, so I’m deemed ready for the group sessions on addiction issues – SORRY! – substance-dependency issues.

  While the process review group looks at our general behaviour, this one focuses purely on the issue of our drug addiction and matters directly pertaining to it. We sat in a semicircle, the bones in my skinny erse pressing on the curved and slidy, one-piece laminate chipwood chair. The only other items were a flip chart and some pens. Tom sat with his long fingers locked together, clasped roond his knee, also uncomfortable, the traction and strain in his gangly frame belying the nonchalant air he tries tae exhibit. He wore slip-on shoes, the cunt unaware this means about 80 per cent of the room automatically think he’s an irredeemable wanker.

  I was dreading it as there had been plenty of shouting in the process review group that morning; that Ted is quite an aggressive wee bastard, and he and Sick Boy and Swanney were having a fair old go at each other. They only stopped when Seeker suddenly said, ‘Turn the fuckin volume doon. This is daein ma heid in.’ And they did, cause everybody’s feart ay Seeker.

  Tom introduced me, even though I kent every cunt. ‘I’d like to welcome Mark to the group. Mark, can you tell us what you want from these sessions?’

  ‘Just tae stay clean and get myself sorted out, and
help others do the same,’ I heard a squeaky Boys’ Brigade voice wobble from somewhere between my mouth and nose. Swanney sniggered and Sick Boy puckered his lips.

  That kicked things off, though; everybody started chipping in, but the group consisted of rambling discussions that went nowhere.

  Afterwards I decided to go and see Keezbo, who’d bolted straight back to his room.

  When I walked in he was sitting on his bed, looking through a photo album. At least the old pictures helped me get some conversation oot ay the cunt.

  There was a lot of us as kids in the Fort. I’m one of the tallest and my hair seemed so much more pure ginger then.

  One picture seized ma attention, simply because I hadn’t seen it before. A bunch ay us as wee laddies are standing on the waste ground, outside the Fort. It was a team photo in the Wolves strips we had all agreed that we were going to get for Christmas. We’d be about nine.

  Anyway, I warmed tae Wolves as they’d totally pumped Hearts in the Texaco Cup at Tynecastle, even after letting the muppets win the first leg at Molineux! In this photo there’s me, Keezbo, Tommy, Second Prize, Franco Begbie and Deek Low stood along the back, and, sat crouching in front ay us, Gav Temperley, ‘English’ George Stavely (who moved back to Darlington), Johnny Crooks, Gary McVie (who died in a joyriding accident some years back), half-caste Alan ‘Chocolateface’ Duke (the product of some West Indian se(a)men that had drifted into the port) and Matty Connell.

  ‘I’ve never seen that picture before,’ ah telt Keezbo. It struck me that in those old photaes, Matty was already fading away, a ghostly smudge, or, as in this yin, sneaking off; face bisected by the white edge ay the Instamatic’s prints, only one furtive eye visible.

  ‘Ye must huv,’ Keezbo said, looking at me properly for the first time. ‘Ken whae took it?’

  ‘Nup. Your dad?’

  ‘Nup: your dad.’

  ‘How’s it you’ve goat it but?’