— Ye dinnae care, dae ye? Ah used tae think it wis aw a game wi you –
— Seven …
— … but now ah know, ye jist dinnae –
— Six …
— … CARE! YE DINNAE CARE!
— Five, what dae ye want?
— Ah want you tae stoap! Tae stoap daein this! Wee Hazel, she –
— Four …
— COME HAME, SON! PLEASE COME HAME!
— Three …
— WE LOVE YE! Please, Mark –
— Two …
— Dinnae pit the phone doon, Mark –
— One … so if there’s nowt else –
— MAAARK!
Renton rests the phone down gently onto the cradle. He turns to face the boys who stand staring at him, open-mouthed like fat goldfish in a botanical pond at feeding time. — The old man’s gone vigilante oan us, so it might be a good idea tae git the fuck oot ay here in case he comes roond. Wuv no goat time for aw that shite right now.
Sundown, and the bellies of the clouds flush pink. Renton reflecting that no matter how early you rise or how late you turn in, you never see that point where light begins or the first bruise of darkness bleeds in under its fragile skin; the beauty, and the scary, unfathomable wisdom of transition. They head out from the lock-up in Matty’s van, stopping at the Canasta Cafe in Bonnington Road, ostensibly for some food, but really to dispense the Valium that Renton liberated from his mother’s medicine cabinet. They wash the pills down with milky coffees.
Renton is watching Keezbo eating two doughnuts and licking the third and fourth free of sugar. The power of smack: fat cunt actually seems tae be losing weight. He himself struggles to get down some scrambled egg on soggy toast. It still cramps his guts. Sick Boy is the same. Spud and Matty manage only the coffee and six cigarettes each. The elderly proprietor becomes disturbed by the shaking of Matty’s mug on the Formica table. Sick Boy pacifies him with, — È stanco: influenza.
— You’ve been knockin aboot wi Swanney fir years, Renton whispers to Matty. — You must ken whaire he gits his gear.
Matty’s tight mouth twists, mean and salty. — He’s no gaunny tell the likes ay me anything, is he?
— You’ve goat eyes n ears. N yir no stupid, Matty.
Keezbo rises and heads to the toilet. Matty looks, then shrugs and moves closer in. — Cunt, this is between us. Right?
— Aye … nae worries, likesay, Spud says.
— Swanney’s mate, this boy Mike Taylor, he hud a job at the plant. He was in stores. You’ve seen the cunt, he half challenges Renton, who nods, but can’t place the boy. — Mike’s mate worked fir a caterin firm deliverin meals tae their canteen. Ken the grub that comes in they big aluminium trays?
— Like school dinners? Spud asks.
— The very same, Matty grants, but evidently annoyed at the interruption. — Well, the skag came oot in they trays. Mike set it up for Swanney, n some other cunts were involved. But he goat huckled, n basically, they sacked him without prosecutin the cunt. Kept it quiet, cause it’s bad publicity fir them. But now the security for the staff is meant tae be unbelievable; cameras everywhere, random searches, the lot. Cunt, ye cannae git a fart oot in yir troosers now.
— What aboot Seeker? Sick Boy asks.
— Cunt, ye dinnae want tae ken aboot him, Matty shivers. He clamps his yellow and brown teeth together to stop them chattering. — He’s a law untae hissel. Even the likes ay Fat Tyrone huvnae been able tae git thair hooks intae that cunt.
Keezbo returns from the toilet, and Matty pointedly clams up. They settle up and head outside into the street. A newsagent’s billboard for the local paper declares:
CITY STREETS ‘AWASH WITH HEROIN’
They look at it in grim, derisive laughter. — If only, Sick Boy sneers.
They go round to the timber yard, where they have two planks of wood cut into fifteen-foot lengths. Vince, a chunky operative with dark, spiky hair, can tell that they’re up to no good, but he knows Renton, Matty and Keezbo of old from the Fort and won’t grass. The noise and relentless power of the saw distresses Spud. He imagines the wood as his limbs, being violently sheared off. Matty is fucked; he stands outside in the yard, frantically trying to light a cigarette, wasting match after match. He gives up and begs Sick Boy for his lighter. As they load the planks in the back, and over the front passenger seat, he reveals he’s too fucked to drive. The Vallies have had no impact. — Ah cannae dae it.
Everybody looks to each other, then Keezbo sticks out a doughy hand. Matty hesitates, but after the prompting of the others, drops the keys into it. He gets in the front with Keezbo, while the others climb in the back, cramped and awkward with the diagonally placed planks. They are still unable to shut the back doors and Keezbo has to get out and tie them together. — Gaunny git fuckin well huckled before we get anywhere near there, Matty complains.
Sick Boy flicks a V-sign at the back of his head as Keezbo returns, starts up the van and drives. Renton watches the sweat beads grow and spot his shaved dome and neck like he was a cold bottle of beer. As they pull up onto Ferry Road they see Second Prize out running, and most look away in some sort of shame. As he passes the van, lost in his own world, Renton notes how good he looks.
They turn off Gorgie Road, onto a path by some wasteland, parking the van against a wall. They can hear the rumble of traffic on the street, but are out of sight as they exit, Renton and Sick Boy emerging from the back of the van with two Sealink bags. Although he lost his, Renton’s learned that Sick Boy filched a good few from their brief employ. The heavier of the two contains a short crowbar. Sick Boy glances at the thick pieces of wood, and opts for the holdalls. Taking Renton’s bag, he bounds ahead, leaving Renton and Matty to each carry an end of the first plank, with Keezbo and Spud taking the second. They are cramping, sweating and shivering as they slowly make their way up the overgrown path towards the embankment.
— Cunt, this isnae a good idea, Matty says again.
— Geez a better yin, then, Renton once more retorts, as they wrestle the wood up towards the fenced-off railway line.
Sick Boy, scurrying ahead along the banking, has found a hole through the patchwork of metal and wooden fencing, shrubbery and barbed wire. He throws the Sealink bags through and scrambles after them. They all squeeze in, although they have to hold up the fence while Keezbo commando-crawls through on his belly. Matty winces as he reaches out and a cluster of nettles brush and spear into his hand. He squeals, watching miserably as it throbs up in white, poisonous spots. — Cunt …
— You goat stung by a jaggy nettle, Spud helpfully informs him, as misanthropy burns through Matty like the venom in his hand. But there’s a surge of euphoria induced by their meagre success, which he can’t help but share in: they are on the railway embankment. They feel a sense of anticipation building, as they look down the tree-and-shrub-lined rail track in the fading light.
They flow like blood from a deep wound, along the gravel-strewn railway banking. After repeatedly stumbling, they give up and take the easier way, striding along the wooden sleepers, as the subtle curving of the rail track draws their laboured steps to the misty vanishing point.
The edge of the world turns dark as the sun sinks behind the broken tenements and the ancient castle, the chilling air now slightly ozone, but augmenting those fumes that the oncoming chemical plant and distillery boak constantly skywards in hazy, almost phantom, tendrils. Ahead is the plant. Why here, Renton asks himself, why in this city? The Scottish Enlightenment. You could trace the line from that period of the city’s global greatness, to the Aids capital of Europe, going straight through that mix of processing plants and warehouses within those security fences. It was a peculiarly Edinburgh brainchild of medicine, invention and economics; from the analytical minds of the Blacks and Cullens, filtered through the speculations of the Humes and the Smiths. From the deliberations and actions of Edinburgh’s finest sons in the eighteenth century, to its poorest ones poisoning themselves with heroin at the close of this one. A shiver in his eye.