I decide not to probe. – Just trying to make sure I’ve no rivals, I smile, heading for the exit.
– I never thought she wis that desperate, the cheeky old boot says.
I stop abruptly and look around at the stock and give some of the plants a sniff. – Bad time ay the year for flooirs, I say, then: – You got a staff toilet back there?
– Aye, she says. – Anything else?
– Not for now.
That cheeky auld boot is getting a visit from the environmental health; we’re fuckin sure the auld cunt is. Anyway, it seems a good idea to take the rest of the afternoon off and let the form OTA 1–7 take the strain. Call it stress management Mr Toal. Call it stress management Mr Niddrie. Bruce Robertson stress management.
I leave the Hunter’s Square bogs, then stop into the pie shop for a chilli pie. I almost got the bastard worms right out there. There can’t be much of them left. I get in the Volvo and head out to Colinton. The worms are on the run. The worm called Inglis is being flushed out the system; outed and routed, before further infestation can take hold.
At home I cut myself out a big, celebratory line of posh. I’m soon dying on a shag. The only person I can think of belling is Shirley. It’s either that or hooring and she’s cheaper.
Shirl girl.
I succumb to the force of libido and make the call, but as soon as she arrives I can see that I’ve made a mistake and that I’d have been better off with a wank. She’s like a block of ice; she’s staring at me, leaning back on the chair, smoking a fag, looking really nasty.
– I don’t know why I’m here, she says bitterly, and I’m about to retort along the lines of ‘because you’re a slag who wants fucked’ but I bite my tongue. – Carole phoned, she says suddenly in a gleeful inspiration, hoping to get to me. – She told me that she doesn’t want anything to do with you. If you try to see the bairn . . .
– Huh! What does she know? She knows nothing! That’s what she fuckin well kens. The sum total, I snap, feeling my anger rising. I try to control myself. – I mean, she’s deluding herself Shirley . . . it’s said. I’m more sad than angry about it. She’s unstable: I personally think that she’s had some sort of breakdown. I worry about her.
– She seems alright to me . . . Shirley says doubtfully, folding her arms, fixing her eyes on me. Her dark eyes. She’s a sexy cow from a certain angle.
– Believe you me Shirley, the game I’m in, you become something of an expert on human nature. She’s obviously had some kind of breakdown that’s gone undetected. She’s telling lies; lies to poison you against me.
– Poison me against you! Huh! You’ve been quite capable of that yourself, she scoffs, her face contorted in petulance, almost cracking that foundation mask which she wears to cover the acne scars she has. I like the way she does her eyes but, always have.
Time to move. I get ready to make my pitch. – Look . . . I know I’ve been cruel to you in the past. But you know why, surely to God you know why, I plead.
– I wish I did Bruce, I really wish I did, she says, shaking her head.
– Don’t wind me up Shirley, please, and don’t insult the both of us . . . I stand up and walk to the door. Surely the whore can’t be stupid enough to fall for it.
– I’m sorry Bruce, I don’t follow you . . . she says. Her pupils are widening. The fuckin spastic. I don’t believe it. She’s doubting herself. That’s step one: establish doubt. Step two: drive the bus right through her fucking doubt.
– Shirley, you surely to God know only full well that I’ve been trying to drive you away . . . cause I . . . fuck . . . I’m saying too much . . . I shake my heid.
– What! What are you saying?
– I tried to drive you away cause I couldn’t fuckin stand it!
– What! What couldn’t you stand?
– Danny! Carole! Him being with you! Me being with her! Making love to her and pretending it was you! Putting up with sneaky shags in backs of cars when I wanted to take you to my bed and hold you in my arms and make love to you all night and shout to the whole fuckin world: This is her! This is the lassie I love!
She holds my gaze and her eyes start to water and I think of all the injustices that have been perpetrated against me recently and I hope that I feel sorry enough for myself to make my eyes moisten as well and I hope that she mistakes this for some of my soul sliding into them and the spasticated cow does and I can’t hold this gaze for long without bursting out laughing so I pull her towards me in a tight embrace and listen to her sob, – Broossss Broooossss can we no work something out Brooosss, I love you . . . and I see my eyes in the mirror behind her, like the eyes on that Tory Party election poster about that Tony Blair spastic.
I fuck her, and I’m regretting it and regretting my stupid spiel even before I’ve blown my muck inside her. After I have to listen to her rabbiting on about her plans and ambitions for us. The sex with her is nothing like I imagine it to be prior to commencing it. I feel entrapped by my lust, but when I actually get round to doing it, it just seems so pointless and tedious. She’s jabbering away and I’m telling her about Inglis and his misfortunes.
– Bruce, she laughs, – why is it you have to savour everything bad that happens to others?
I think about this for a second or two. – It stems from a belief that there’s only a finite number of bad things that can happen in the world at any given time. So if they’re happening to someone else they ain’t happening to me. In a way, it’s a celebration of joie de vivre.
She wants to stay the night but I tell her I’m on backshift. She reluctantly leaves and I do some more lines before tanning a bottle of Grouse. This gives me the shits and I stagger through to the bogs.
Masonic Outings
It’s there! Waking up from a maddening half-pished sleep and seeing the fuckin thing! It’s slithering out of my arsehole, lying across my hips. I touched it. Its black eyes. Its hooked, sucker mouth. Like a stick of tagliatelle with a head. I went to grab it only for it to be sucked up my arsehole like you eat a piece of spaghetti . . .
. . . and we are awake. I am awake. On the couch. The video’s on: the ones that Hector The Farmer got for me. Vibrator Massacre: the dykes who do the young lassies in the woods.
I can’t fuckin well breathe . . . I’m falling apart at the fuckin seams . . . we’re falling apart . . .
These cunts are trying tae kill us with this OT cutback because they know we cannae kip during the fuckin night, never could. They know we need very little sleep and that all we do in darkness is think and think and think. In order to stop thinking we have to fuck and then you get the complications; financial in the case of hoors, social in the case of slags.
I’m sitting up and waiting, praying for the light. I get through by reading ‘Tam o’Shanter’. It’s an apt that I’ll be asked to toast the haggis at the Lodge Burns supper this year, especially after the mess auld Willie McPhee made of it the last time. I know he’s done it for over fifty years, and it’s the only thing he lives for, but it’s getting beyond a joke and it’s time the auld cunt left the crease and embarked on that long walk to tae the pavilion. Eventually the light comes and I sleep for a few hours.
Then I’m up and into work. It’s the Christmas Party the night. I take some more of Rossi’s laxatives. We’ll flush this fuckin thing right out of Bruce Robertson, every last trace, sure we fuckin well will. It’ll be an early start the day alright; I want the first bevvy sank before midday and nae fuckin nonsense aboot deid coons or any ay that shite.
At the station everyone’s in a party mood. Inglis has already had a few, probably been drinking alone in the sad way of the closet homosexual. That, an inspector? I don’t fuckin well think so. A bum inspector, maybe. He’s fuckin well gettin it, I kid you not. The graffiti was only a start. Soon everybody’s gaunny ken what kind of a nancy-boy’s been sharing their cutlery in the cannie.