Espedair Street

NINE

I sniffed my fingers; they still smelled of rubber, or lubricant, or whatever the hell it is makes condoms smell the way they do. Betty hadn't always been so doubly cautious; it was only during the last year— as stories about AIDS multiplied faster than even the disease — that she'd started using the damned things. I'd washed my hands at least once since last night, but they still smelled. I wondered if anybody else would be able to smell it.

I lay in bed. It was raining; another rainy Saturday in Glasgow. Hail and snow mixed in with the rain, and a ragged-clouded sky between the showers. Rick Tumber was due to arrive tomorrow. I thought about getting out of the city again, but couldn't think where to go.

Edinburgh? I hadn't been there for a year or so and I'd always liked the place. Or maybe I could get a booking at one of the hotels in Aviemore and have a terribly festive and maybe even snowy Christmas there. But I didn't feel like it. I have a very old-fashioned attitude to Christmas; I try to ignore it. This is an old-fashioned Scottish attitude, of course, not an English one.

It's changed here too now, largely thanks to TV and a combination of very expensive toys, saturation advertising and the tyranny of a child's tears, but even I can remember when most people would work Christmas day to get an extra day at Hogmanay. All changed. But I still hate Christmas. Bah and humbug and all that.

I didn't want to stay and see Rick Tumber, but I couldn't be bothered getting up and going. Even the fact it was raining was enough to put me off. Anyway; McCann and I usually investigated a few pubs on a Saturday night, and I hadn't said I was thinking about going away. It would be bad manners to pullout now.

I sniffed my fingers again, thinking about Betty and wondering whether I felt like heading down to the crypt to guddle about in the studio. There were a few jingles and potential themes I could work on, but I didn't really feel very enthusiastic. Rain beat against the windows of the tower bedroom. I turned on the TV monitor and looked at the dull grey views of the various doors and walls. God, it looked depressing.

Wes did eventually rig his house for vision as well as sound. People stopped coming to see him after a while; maybe that was what he had in mind all the time. I did screw Jasmine, and we both found it a thoroughly disappointing experience. We tried a few more times but we just didn't match. She took the chauffeuse uniform with her when she went off to front a punk band; I counted myself lucky she hadn't taken the car as well. Last I heard she was married to a car dealer, had two kids and lived in Ilford.

I peered closely at the monitor when I switched to the Elmbank Street camera. There was an anorak-covered figure struggling through the rain with an overloaded shopping trolley out there, and it looked suspiciously like Wee Tommy.

The shopping trolley was loaded with white cylinders.

I got down to the door just as he rang the bell.

'Aw, hi there, Jim; ye all right, aye?'

'Fine. Come in.' He came in, dripping rain from anorak and trolley. 'Tommy, why have you brought a shopping trolley full of' — I looked closer— 'whipped cream containers?'

Tommy had about a hundred of the pressurised cans all jumbled in the trolley. He had. enough whipped cream there to cover a small building with the stuff. Tommy hung his anorak up and stood looking down at the rain-spotted white cans. 'Laughin gas,' he said, in a conspiratorial tone. I shook my head.

'This is whipped cream, Tommy. You wanted a dentist's, not the dairy section of Tesco's.'

'Na, na,' he said, picking one of the containers up. 'There's gas inside here too; the stuff that pushes the cream out. It's laughing gas; nitric oxide.'

I took a can from the pile in the trolley and inspected it. 'What? You sure?' I found the ingredients label; sure enough, the propellant was nitrous oxide. Inez, Dave, Christine and I had had some laughing gas once, in Madrid I think it was. Very odd stuff.

'Aye, I'm sure. One of ma mates said his brother read about it in Scientific American.'

'Good grief.'

'Want tae try some, eh?'

'Mm, not particularly, but don't let me stop you. Come on into the body of the kirk.'

The space heater was on at full blast, filling the folly with its booming white noise. I'd put on some Gregorian Chants to compete with the sound. Tommy and I sat in a couple of the CRM chairs, just far enough downwind from the space heater not to overheat. Tommy had taken his black socks and black jumper off to let them dry; he draped them over the shopping trolley we'd brought up the steps from the vestry. He selected a can of foam. 'Ah'm really sorry about the dug the other day, Jim,' he told me, shaking his head and compressing his lips. 'That dug was right out of order, so it was. Ah'd a skelped it, but it wouldnae have done any good.'

He didn't add that it would probably have eaten him if he had.

'It's all right,' I said. 'I cleaned everything up. Don't worry about it.'

'Well, it's back with ma uncle now, so Ah reckon we're safe from it now. Unless his piles act up again, of course.'

'Well, of course.'

'Sure you don't want one of these?' Tommy offered me a whipped-cream container. I shook my head.

'I'm trying to give them up. Do you want a drink?'

Tommy thought about this. 'Aye; Ah'll take a wee voddy, if that's all right, Jim.'

I brought a bottle of Stolichnaya and two glasses. There had been a brief hiss while my back was turned. When I got back to the seat, Tommy was pressing down the top of the cream can and frowning. 'Get anything?' I asked. He shook his head.

'No much.' He put that canister on the floor and took another one, raising it to one nostril and then pressing the nozzle button. He jerked back as a small blob of foam squirted up his nose. 'Ah, ya bastard!' I tried not to laugh as he leant forward, blowing his nose.

'Try bumping the base a bit first,' I suggested.

Tommy tried that with the next one, and avoided getting a nostril full of foam. The hiss of gas was still very short, though. He smiled ruefully and reached for another container.

'Where did you get all these, anyway?' I asked him.

'I've got a pal works in Presto's; he's been stashing the odd can from the boxes as they come through, ye know? Got them out tae me today cos of the Christmas rush, 'nat.' He snorted from another can, then put it down too. He giggled, experimentally, then looked at me as though waiting for a reaction. I shrugged.

'Anything?' I asked.

'Nup. Don't think so.' Tommy started taking the containers out two at a time, bashing them on the carpet-covered stone floor and snorting from both at once. He went through about twelve of the cans that way, then sat back, breathing hard and looking a little odd. He tried giggling again.

'Now?' I asked him.

'Bit light-headed,' he said.

'Oxygen high,' I told him.

'Is that what ye get from them?' Tommy looked at another can. 'Well, Ah dinnae feel smashed.'

'No, you still look glazed.'

Tommy looked at me, then giggled again, then started laughing. I sat back with my vodka for a moment or two, decided it hadn't been that funny and reached for a couple of the cans.

The truth is, I don't know if the damn cans worked or not. Wee Tommy and I sat there, telling each other jokes and laughing and giggling, but for all I know it was just suggestion, and the minuscule amounts of gas in the canisters had little or no effect. We laughed because we thought we ought to.

I've seen people fooled into thinking Capstan Full Strength cigarettes were joints, accept speed and paracetamol as cocaine, and not notice that their drinks have been watered down until they're practically alcohol-free. It all depends what you're expecting, what you've been told to believe in.