Ripping off Sick Boy was the other reason (as well as being the cause of Begbie’s injury) that I left running a club to manage DJs. My first client, Ivan, I put everything into. Then, as soon as he broke big, a manager with even fewer scruples and a bigger Rolodex poached him. It was an important lesson, and I showed I had learned it when I saw Conrad play in a Rotterdam club. He was being sort of looked after by his friend’s older brother. I quickly realised that the cunt was a prodigy. He could do any kind ay dance music. I talked tae him and ascertained that he wouldnae consider it beneath him to try and make pop hits. Those would make me the kind of money where I could pay off big debts quite easily. And now they have.
Of course I dinnae want tae gie that hard-earned money tae Sick Boy! But if I’m consistent wi this rehabilitation and personal atonement plan, I need to see him right as well. And Second Prize, who refused payment back then. He got religion and nobody’s heard from him. Like Franco, he’s due his fifteen grand. But it’s fucking Sick Boy who is gaunny totally wipe ays oot wi his big chunk. So I deserve some compensation.
When we get tae the hotel, I make the pretence of indicating the bar, but Marianne abruptly says, — Let’s go to your room.
I can’t fucking do this, and yet I have tae do it. It’s Marianne. I recall her as a teenager; feisty and contemptuous ay me, impossibly beautiful and sexy as she hung from a lecherous Sick Boy’s arm. I had zero chance with her back then, but now she’s offering herself tae me on a plate. Maybe it’s all part ay the process; maybe ye need tae exorcise past demons before you can move on.
We take the lift and get tae the room. I’m embarrassed because the bed hasn’t been made yet and there’s a dusky smell. Ah cannae recall if ah shot my load or no last night. I never wank these days, as ah enjoy such vivid wet dreams in the waking hours. There’s also a miserable lonely ennui with masturbation after you’ve shot your duff in a hotel room, something that bothers you mair as ye get aulder. I switch on the air con, even though ah ken it’ll freeze the place within five minutes. — Do ye want a drink?
— Red wine. Marianne points tae a bottle on the desk, one of those that ye eywis open because ye subconsciously think thir complimentary, but they never are.
I open it as Marianne collapses in a sprawl on the bed, kicking off her heels. — We doing this, then? she says, looking pointedly at me. In such situations it’s best not to speak, and I start removing my clothes. She sits up and does the same. I’m thinking that outside of my ex, Katrin, Marianne is the palest-skinned lassie I’ve ever set eyes on. Of course, the fabulous architecture ay a woman never fails tae excite, and that arse is as utterly splendid as I have observed-imagined from my youth. One day this magnificent charge will go, like vision, hearing, continence, and I hope it’s the very last of them to succumb. Then I realise there’s a problem. — I don’t have any condoms…
— I don’t have any either, Marianne says, nutter imperious, hand on her lily-white breasts, — because I don’t shag around. I haven’t fucked anyone in months. You?
— Same here, I concede. I stopped banging young chicks from clubs several years back. They’re only really after the DJ, and you’re generally a consolation prize. What starts off as succour to the psyche eventually tramples the self-esteem.
— Then let’s get it on, she says, like she’s challenging me to a square go.
We do, and I try to bring my A-game, in order to show her what she’s been missing.
Afterwards, as we lie alongside each other, the distance of an ocean and continent I thought I’d put between Victoria and myself suddenly narrows. Guilt and paranoia rips out ay ays tae the extent that she could be in the next room. Then Marianne says with a harsh laugh, — You were better than I thought you’d be…
This would have been affirmation had her expectations no been rock-bottom. If I still saw her as the too-cool-for-school chick, it figured that she’d always see me as the socially awkward, ginger-heided loser. We were condemned tae those perceptions ay our fourteen-year-old selves. I can not only feel the ‘but’ coming; much worse I ken exactly who he will be.
—… But not as good as one person we both know, she says, as her eyes take on a faraway aspect. I feel my spent dick shrivel a little. — He always left me wanting more, and feeling as if I could have given him more. Teased me, and she looks at me with a bitter smile that ages her. — I always liked good sex, and she spins catlike in the bed. — He gave me the fucking best.
My exhausted cock retracts another half-inch. When I speak, tae break my own ruinous silence, ma voice is at least an octave too high. — Ye let him wreck your life, Marianne. Why? I force my tones down. — You’re a smart woman.
— No. She shakes her head, her static blonde locks, like a nylon wig, falling exactly into place, just as they’d done when we’d been going at it full steam ahead. — I’m a fucking child. He’s made me that, she states, then looks at ays. And he’s here. In Edinburgh, not in London. Up here for Christmas, the cunt.
This was a revelation. Of course he’d be here: his mother, sisters, the big Italian family thing. — Do you know where?
— His sister’s, for Christmas, Carlotta, the younger one. But his brother-in-law… She suddenly looks awkward. — I met them in George Street. Simon told me that he was taking his son to the hospitality suite at Easter Road, for the game at New Year.
— Right… maybe see him there.
But I’m a fucking child too. So when Marianne leaves, I find out fae the Hibernian FC website that the game at New Year is against Raith Rovers at home. This is what we now have instead ay the derby. I’m glad I’ve been spared Hibs, and even fitba, in the last twenty years, becoming an armchair supporter. Ajax went downhill when I started following them. From the European Cup and the last season at De Meer, tae the fabulous Arena, and fucking mediocrity. I cannae even remember my last Hibs game. I think at Ibrox with the old boy.
So I go back tae my dad’s down in Leith. He’s seventy-five and sprightly. Not Mick Jagger sprightly, but nimble and strong. He still misses my mother every day, and his two dead sons. And, also, I suspect, his living one. So when I come into his life beyond the weekly phone call, I take him to Fishers down the Shore for some seafood. He likes it there. Over the sublime fish soup, I tell him how it came about that I’m pally with Franco again.
— I read about him, Dad nods. — Nice to see that he’s doing well. He waves his spoon at me. — Funny, I thought that art stuff was mair your thing. You were ey a good wee drawer at school.
— Ah well… I smile, a little infantilised. I love this old bastard. I look at his white hairs, plastered back in thin strands like a polar bear’s claw on a pink scalp, and I wonder how many of them are down to me.
— Good that you’ve put aw that behind youse, he growls. — It’s a short life; far too short tae faw out over money.
— Shut it, ya auld commie. I can’t resist the opportunity to recentre his politics. — Money is the only thing worth fawin oot ower!
— That’s what’s wrong wi the world the day!
My work is done! We finish a bottle ay Chardonnay, him still a bit fucked as he shifted too much whisky – as did I – on Christmas Day. When he starts tae get a bit woozy in the chair, I call a cab and drop him off home, then head on tae the hotel.
As the car trundles through the dark streets, I cannae believe who ah see begging on the pavement under a street lamp. Tae my mixed joy and trepidation, it’s Spud Murphy, sitting there, just yards fae my hotel. Ah ask the cabbie tae stop, and climb oot and pey the boy. Then I walk quietly up tae Spud, who wears a Kwik-Fit baseball cap and cheapo bomber jaiket, jeans and incongruously new-looking trainers, wi a scarf and mittens. He’s sat like he’s folding in on himself. Beside him, one of these wee terriers, dunno if it’s a Yorkie or a Westie, but it looks like it needs a wash and fur trim. — Spud!