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  And with that we went through and joined the rest of the mourners.

  Terry, so big, fat and loud, seemed to shrink, to diminish in that room. Even more than Billy, he wasn’t himself. He wasn’t Juice Terry. The quiet, powerful animosity coming to him from Susan Galloway was tangible. It was like we were kids again and Terry, as the eldest, had let that happen to her boy. Billy and I seemed exempted from her rage at the death of her son. In contrast, she had this primal hatred for Terry, as though he was the big contaminating force in Andrew Galloway’s life. It was like Terry had become the Mr Galloway, the Polmont, the Doyles, the Gail, that she could hate.

  Now I’m on this train looking out. It’s stopped at a station. I glimpse at the sign on the platform:

  Polmont

  I turn back to my Herald, the one that I’ve read about three times, cover to cover.

  Edinburgh, Scotland

  6.21 pm

  Git Her Shoes Oaf! Git Her Slacks Oaf!

  In the cab, Rab heard Terry mutter something about Andy Galloway, his brother’s mate. Rab had known Gally well; he was a nice guy. His suicide had cast a large shadow over them all, especially Terry, Billy and, he supposed, Carl Ewart. Carl was doing okay now though, at least he had been, and he probably never gave any of them a second thought.

  Gally’s funeral had been weird. People you thought wouldnae know Gally were there. Gareth was there. He’d worked with Gally in the Recreation Department. Rab minded Gareth’s words. — We tend to be rather murky little ponds, containing many layers of suspended dirt and grime and our greatest depths are stirred by the strangest of currents.

  This, Rab reflected, was the cunt’s way ay saying that we can never really ken each other.

  Up in the room of the hotel, a weary Kathryn flopped onto the bed, and promptly slipped into unconsciousness. — Right Rab, help ays git her in the bed, Terry said. — Git her shoes oaf.

  Complying wearily, Rab deftly eased off one shoe, while Terry roughly twisted the other from Kathryn’s foot, making her wince through shut eyes.

  — Help ays git her slacks oaf . . .

  For some reason Rab felt something rise in his chest. — Yir no takin the lassie’s troosers oaf, Terry, jist stick the cover ower her.

  — Ah’m no gaunny fuckin rape her, Rab, it’s jist tae make her mair comfy. Ah dinnae need tae dae that tae git ma hole, Terry snorted.

  Rab stopped dead and looked Terry straight in the eye. — What the fuck’s that meant tae mean?

  Shaking his head, Terry looked back at him and smiled. — You wi that wee Charlene bit. What wir ye playin at, Rab? Ah mean, what’s aw that aboot? You tell me.

  — You fuckin well mind yir ain business . . .

  — Aye. You gaunny make ays like?

  Rab moved forward and pushed Terry in the chest, forcing him back onto the bed and causing him to fall on top of the stunned Kathryn who groaned under his weight. Terry sprang to his feet. He was livid. He’d already been gubbed by one Birrell today and this other cunt was getting it for them both. Rab saw the signs and moved away swiftly, Terry chasing after him. Rab Birrell ran out the door and up, rather than down, the hotel staircase. Kathryn groggily shouted after them, — What are you guys doing? What is this?

  Terry was going to stomp that cunt Birrell into the ground. He should have years ago. In his frenzied mind, the Birrell brothers became indivisible as he charged up the steps in pursuit of Rab. As his quarry ran round the bend in the stairway, Terry lunged to grab at him, but his weight shifted and he lost his footing, tipping over the rail into the stairwell. As he cowped over, Terry made a frenzied grip at the sides of the banister. Fortunately for him the well was very narrow and he became wedged in with his beer-gut girth.

  HERE IT FUCKIN IS

  THIS IS HOW IT ENDS

  Crammed upside-down between banisters, with his heart beating wildly, Terry could see the polished wooden floor of the hotel lobby, some fifty foot beneath his head.

  THIS IS IT

  THIS IS HOW IT ENDS

  Then in a flash Terry envisioned chalk marks around a smaller, slighter body on the floor below him, showing him where to fall, where the optimum position to attain death lay. It was Gally’s outline.

  AH’M JOININ THE CUNT

  IT SHOULD’VE BEEN ME AW ALONG

  Venturing back down the stairs, Rab Birrell stopped, examining the extent of Juice Terry’s plight: his friend’s face pressed upside-down against the wooden bars of the handrail. — Rab . . . Terry wheezed, — . . . help ays!

  Looking coldly at Terry, all Rab could feel was his own anger surging through the lens of over ten years of petty humiliation, a lens which was Terry’s sweaty, corkscrew-heided face. And Charlene, a young lassie who deserved better, who needed understanding; it would be her lot in life to have her problems sneered at by bigoted cunts like him who measured a woman solely by the speed in which they opened their legs. Help him? Help fuckin Lawson? — Ye want fuckin help? Ah’ll gie ye fuckin help. Here’s a helpin hand, Rab stretched out his hand.

  From his twisted vantage point upside-down, Terry looked in bemusement as Rab’s hand came to him. But his arms were pinned. How could he grab it? How could he . . . Terry was just about to attempt to explain his plight, when to his horror he realised that the hand was making a fist and it was coming through the bars straight into his framed face at considerable force.

  — THAIRE’S A HELPIN HAND, YA CUNT! WANTIN ANOTHER? Rab screamed.

  — FUCK . . . YA FUUCKHHNNN . . .

  — What does Birrell mean? Birrell means business. Mind ay that one? Eh? Well it’s this fuckin business! Rab smashed his fist into Terry’s teed-up face again.

  Terry felt his nose burst and a sickening dizziness fill his head. He threw up, his puke falling down the stairwell and splattering on the floor. — Rab . . . stoap . . . it’s me . . . ah’m slippin Rab . . . ah’m gonnae faw . . . Terry wheezed and coughed in desperate plea.

  — OH MY GAD, WHAHT’S HAPPENED TO HIM!? WHAHT ARE YOU DOING TO TERRY? Kathryn screamed, from the stair below.

  Kathryn’s obvious alarm, and the helpless, begging tones coming from Terry, brought Rab to his senses. In a panic, he grabbed a hold of Terry’s hips and waist and pulled. Kathryn moved in to grip his legs, as much to keep herself upright as to secure him. Terry managed to wedge his arms against the steps of the stair and started to push up. He painstakingly struggled and twisted his way to freedom. Grappling over the other side to safety, he straightened up and found himself on the right side of the banister, breathing heavily.

  Terry gave thanks for all those years of excessive beer-drinking and takeaways. Without them he would have fallen to certain death. A lesser man, body honed on exercise and diet rather than sloth, indolence and abuse would be dead by now, he reflected. A lesser man.

  Rab Birrell stood back, both relieved and ashamed, as he contemplated his sweaty, bleeding friend, whose face was swelling up. — Ye awright, Tez?

  Terry grabbed Rab Birrell’s hair and yanked down his head, booting him in the coupon. — Fuckin great! We’ll see who fuckin well means business now, Birrell! Terry gave Rab another harsh dig in the face with his boot. There was the chopping-vegetable sound of a mouth bursting, followed by steady drops of blood onto the stairway’s thick pile.

  Kathryn was on Terry’s back, tearing at his mop of hair. — Stap it! Stap it the pair of you, goddamn it! Let him go! Terry tried to roll his eyes backwards almost in the hope that Kathryn would see them and realise that the situation was under his control, but he couldn’t make eye contact with her. When he saw two uniformed men, one of whom he vaguely recognised, bounding up the stairs, two at a time towards them, he complied, releasing Rab, whose eye was already swelling where Terry’s boot had connected with it, and who was trying to staunch the flow of blood from his mouth. Rab raised his head as Terry’s gub came into his sights. As he was about to let fly he was grabbed and bundled to a bend on the stair by the two porters who had come to investigate the fracas
, one of whom Terry had clocked as quite a tidy cunt from Niddrie.

  Baberton Mains

  He’d been on a payphone at the almost deserted station at Haymarket for what seemed like hours, now practically destroyed with the time differences and the drugs comedown. His nose was blocked completely, forcing him to breathe through his mouth, and every time he drew a breath it twisted and gouged like broken glass in his dry, ulcerated, throat.

  The rank was empty. No taxi had its sign up. The Festival.

  The taxi firms seemed to treat him like he was some sort of comedian, a hoax caller. Exhausted, Carl Ewart began the soul-damaging ritual of heaping his bags up the stairs. From the corner of his eye he saw a strong, tanned arm grab one of his bags. A fuckin thief: it was all he needed!

  — You’re mawkit, Mr Ewart, the thief said. It was Billy Birrell.

  All Carl wanted was a few recuperative hours before the horror of facing his distraught mother and his stricken father. But there were no taxis and thank God for Billy. — I’m fucked, Billy, the jetlag. I’d been playing at a rave when I heard . . .

  — Say no more, Billy told him. Carl remembered how comfortable Billy was with silence.

  — Nice motor, he observed, sinking into the comfortable upholstery of Billy’s BMW.

  — It’s awright. Ah hud a Jaguar before but.

  Over the road at the Clifton Hotel, something was going on. Carl heard the shouting in the street.

  — Drunks, Billy said, concentrating on the road.

  But they were recognisable.

  It was . . .

  Fuck naw, surely no

  It was Billy Birrell’s brother, Rab, and he was being cautioned by a police officer. Carl and Billy were encased in the motor, only about twenty feet away from where it was all happening.

  Billy’s brother was in a strange yellowy-green shirt, which was splattered with blood. Carl was tempted to shout, to shout ‘Rab’, but he was too fucked, too drained. And he needed to get home now. He looked again and there was a woman he vaguely recognised . . . but he could also see that corkscrew heid and that sweaty face, shouting the fuckin odds as usual. It was Terry. That fat cunt Juice Terry! The woman seemed to be talking loudly and she was defending Terry and Rab. Even this po-faced jobsworth polisman was deferring to her.

  Then the BMW sped through the amber light and headed down the Haymarket loop and back onto the Dalry Road.

  Settling back into Billy’s passenger seat, Carl felt a right cunt at not telling his old pal that his brother was in bother, but he couldn’t waste any more time. Home; changed; hospital. He thought of the word EWART shouted in Terry’s raucous tones. No. It had to be Baberton, then the Royal Infirmary.

  Baberton.

  It wasn’t his old house, it was his mother’s house. He always hated it, and only really lived there a year before moving into his own place.

  Terry.

  Great to know that he still feels passionate enough about things to be a complete arsehole.

  Fuckin stupid cunt.

  Billy.

  Right here beside him, driving him to the hospital; Terry outside in the street, in bother with the cops. That old cliché about the more things change, the more they stay the same, filtered through Carl’s tired mind.

  Terry. When was the last time he saw him? After the funeral. At Billy’s fight. Carl was with Topsy and Kenny Muirhead. Terry was with Post Alec and some other guys.

  Billy’s fight, Billy’s non-fight, he thought, as he watched his friend in profile. Doyle’s hatchet scar had faded over the years. Back at Leith Town Hall that night but, Carl always fancied that there was more to it than the thyroid. Billy seemed haunted; it was as if every doubt he ever had about everything ever in his life just flooded his mind in that instant and completely paralysed him.

  He minded Terry laughing and sneering with derision as he left and made his way down Ferry Road. There was a brawl outside as some boys attacked Morgan’s supporters who’d come up on a coach. A boy from Wales got badly glassed.

  And he heard Terry, that fat cunt Lawson, shout back towards the Town Hall, — That’s the wey it’s done, Birrell, at Billy’s brother Rab, who was on the steps, and he knew then that he never wanted to see the fucker again.

  Billy waited downstairs with Sandra, his mother, as Carl dived upstairs for a quick shower. He could have stayed under the comforting jets for ages, then just flopped into bed, but the circumstances kept hitting him, and he exited in haste and put some new clothes on.

  — There’s no a pick oan ye, laddie, Sandra said, squeezing his frame as he kissed her, then did the same to his mother’s sister, Avril. It was good to see them again.

  Billy and Carl headed up in the car to the hospital. Carl was rabbiting at Billy. — I never saw Hearts win the Cup, Billy, I never even knew until a few months after that they’d won it . . . It sounded bizarre now, not to care. Where the fuck had his head been at? — How long’s it been since Hibs won it then, Birrell? Eh?

  Billy smiled and pulled out a mobile phone and dialled a number. There was no reply. — Lit’s get up that hospital, he said.

  Carl was dying a few more deaths in the car. He couldn’t handle seeing his dad, not the way he feared that the old man might look. Avril and Sandra were big, chunky caricatures of the women he’d known as a kid. What would his dad look like, his mother even? Why did it matter so much? It’s cause I’m in love with youth, he considered miserably. He spent his time surrounded by girls half his age, feeding his ego, his denial of the ageing process, his own personal flight from responsibility. But was that necessarily a bad thing? Not until now; but now, because he loved his mother and father and needed to be there for them, it surely fucking well was. It was no preparation for times like these.

  Carl’s mind was in overdrive. If it would just get into harmony with his fucked body. That was the real torture of drink-and-drugs hangovers: the way they pushed your mind and body in different directions. Now Carl was considering the illusion of romance, which evaporates with the passing of youth. The ugliness of pragmatism and responsibility will wear down on you like waves on a rock if you let it. When you saw them on the screen telling us to be like this or do that, and buy this, and be that, and we sat at home, confused, complacent, tired and fearful, you knew that they’d won. The big idea had gone and it was just about selling more product and controlling those who couldn’t afford to buy. No utopias, no heroes. It wasn’t an exciting time, as they constantly hyped it up to be, it was boring and exasperating and meaningless.

  His old man’s illness brought everything back to basics.

  Slipping

  They had moved him. He was now in a room with three other beds, but she saw him straight away. Maria didn’t concentrate on the people in the beds, she moved towards her husband. Approaching Duncan, she heard his shallow, ragged breathing. She watched the thick blue veins on his wrist recede into his hand. The hand she’d held so many times, since he’d slipped the engagement ring on her finger as they sat in the Botanic Gardens at Inverleith. She went back to her office in the solicitor’s, light-headed, ready to fall over every time she looked at it. He took a bus back to the factory. He told her all the songs that played in his head.

  Now he was monitored by an electrocardiograph, the heartbeat traced by a green line of light on the cathode-ray tube. There were some cards on the locker, which she’d opened and put beside him:

  GET WELL SOON

  SORRY TO HEAR YOU’VE BEEN UNDER THE WEATHER

  and one with a buxom, short-skirted nurse clad in stockings and suspenders. She’s bending over a sweating, drooling man in a bed whose erection is visible making a tent pole under the covers. A small bespectacled doctor says:

  HMM, TEMPERATURE STILL RUNNING A LITTLE HIGH, MR JONES, only Jones is crossed out and EWART is scrawled alongside it. Inside it’s signed, ‘From the Awkward Squad, Gerry, Alfie, Craigy and Monty’.

  The boys from the old works, long shut-down. It seemed more than ridiculous, the bana
lity of the card. More likely they didn’t know the seriousness of it all, the extent of it. The doctors had warned her to expect the worst.

  There was a more appropriate card, sent to her from Wullie and Sandra Birrell: THINKING OF YOU.

  And Billy had called, asking her if he could do anything. He was a nice laddie, doing well, but he never forgot the people he knew.

  There he was. Billy. He was here. With Sandra. And Avril. And Carl!

  Carl was here.

  Maria Ewart hugged her son, and was briefly concerned at his thinness. He was skinnier than ever.

  Carl looked at his mother. She was older, and she looked so worn-out, not surprisingly. He looked down at the parcel of shrivelled flesh and bone which was his father. — Eh’s still under, still asleep, she explained.

  — We’ll sit wi um fir a bit, if youse two want a word, Sandra said. — Goan, git a coffee, she urged Maria.

  Maria and Carl went out arm-in-arm. Carl didn’t know who was supporting who: he was totally fucked. He wanted to stay with his dad, but he wanted to talk to his mum. They went over to the vending machine.

  — Is it that bad? Carl asked.

  — Eh’s goin, son. Ah don’t believe it, but eh’s goin, she sobbed.

  — Aw Christ, he said as he held her close. — Ah’m sorry ah’ve been so selfish. Ah wis at a gig, ah goat here as soon as Helena told me.

  — She seems nice, his mother said. — Why haven’t I spoken to her before? Why did you shut her out of our lives, son? Why did you shut yourself out?