Through his drunken fug the veteran chef registered Skinner’s horror, immediately noting its source. Prodding at the bag he laughed. — The number of times I had to empty this old bugger tonight . . . still, at least I remembered. Sometimes I forget and it bursts open. On one occasion recently, there was a very unsavoury incident . . .
Skinner was aghast. — What happened to you . . .?
Cunningham-Blyth, as if sobered by his embarrassment, hiked up his trousers and pulled himself up on to the rim of the toilet pan, where his buttocks perched precariously. Silence hung for a second or two. When he commenced speaking it was in clipped, detached tones. — As a young man back in the sixties, I became interested in politics. Particularly the national question. I wondered how it was that most of Ireland was free, while Scotland was still in servitude under the English Crown. I looked around at the New Town, its streets named after English royalty due to that toady Scott, while a great, Edinburgh native son and socialist leader like James Connolly merited little more than a plaque on a wall under a shadowy bridge . . . ehm, do you really want to know this?
Skinner nodded, urging him to carry on.
— I was always a recipe maker . . . a concocter, I suppose one might say. As a gesture, I resolved to fashion a home-made bomb and blow up one of the symbols of British imperialism that litter this city. I had my eye on the Duke of Wellington’s statue at the east end. So I made a pipe bomb. Unfortunately, I had the device between my thighs as I was packing it with explosive. It went off prematurely. I lost my penis and one of my testicles, he said, now almost cheerfully, Skinner thought. — It probably wouldn’t even have scratched the Iron Duke. Cunningham-Blyth shook his head and gave a resigned smile.
— I was eighteen years old and had only known one woman, a strapping wench who taught primary school in Aberfeldy. She had a face like a bag of spanners but there’s not a day that goes past that I don’t think of her with a song in my heart, and yes, I can feel it, the phantom erection, as strong and thick as an old beat bobby’s truncheon. Look after your old fellow, son, the old chef said ruefully, — best fucking friend you’ll ever have and don’t let anybody tell you different.
Skinner stood paralysed for a few seconds, then nodded curtly to Sandy Cunningham-Blyth and left the flat. His head swam as he snaked down the cobbled streets of the New Town towards the black, oily waters of the Firth of Forth.
I’m finding out the bedroom secrets of the Master Chefs alright, but not the ones I want.
13
Spring
SPRING SETTLED CAUTIOUSLY into Edinburgh, as unsure of its tenure as ever. Its citizens, though customarily wary of its fickle bounty, nonetheless enjoyed its arrival with optimism. The staff at the council’s Environmental Health Department were no exception. There was expected to be some positive news about the departmental budget, and employees gathered in the conference room to hear John Cooper tell them that this was being increased, in real terms, for the first time in five years. This meant a reorganisation, which would put another Principal Officer post on the establishment. Somebody was on a promotion.
Though it was often joked in council circles that Cooper could make a promotion feel like a redundancy, the news was heartily welcomed by most of the employees present. Skinner looked at Bob Foy and saw a muscle twitch in his face. Wondered if anyone else did. He glanced round at Aitken, impassive, who was retiring, then McGhee, who had stated his intention to go back to his native Glasgow. Then he saw Kibby, looking serious and focused. He’d been working hard to get into Foy’s good books lately, and with some success, Skinner recognised. His own promotion prospects were harder to take stock of. His heavy drinking had not stopped but it had certainly plateaued during his developing relationship with Shannon.
So during one of the first genuinely mild nights of the year, the departmental staff found themselves in the Café Royal. Bob Foy, as Principal Officer in the section, had suggested a pint after work to celebrate the good news. One pint, of course, became several, and in the oak-panelled and marble-tiled grandeur of the bar, people soon grew happily intoxicated. Brian Kibby was the notable exception. As was his habit, he chose to limit himself to soda water and lime for most of the night.
Skinner found his cynicism crank up in correspondence with the units of alcohol in his system. Scrutinising his colleagues’ faces – bright, smiling, optimistic – his thoughts grew dark. Everybody was keen, especially, Danny Skinner thought, Brian Kibby.
Oh aye, Kibby’s keen. If there’s one word that’s synonymous with him, that’s it. They all said it, the old hands: ‘Aye, he’s keen, that laddie.’
And Skinner felt that Kibby, with this keenness, would shape up to be his closest rival for the new post.
Skinner did what he generally tried to do in these circumstances: shame Brian Kibby into having a drink. — Soda water and lime . . . hmm, ducky! he lisped at Brian in front of Shannon, on whom Kibby still had an obvious unrequited crush. After a long stint on the soft drinks, Kibby eventually relented to Skinner’s baiting and sipped two pints of lager tops. It didn’t spare his colleague’s derision but he felt he didn’t stand out so much with a full pint in his hand.
Get lost, Skinner.
To escape the harassment, Brian Kibby went up to the jukebox and made some selections. He was hoping to impress Shannon, because he knew that a lot of girls liked Coldplay, through the postings on the official site.
There’s a really beautiful-looking girl who posts on there, from her avatar picture, but maybe she loves herself too much, putting the picture up like that. No as good as Lucy but, or Shannon.
Kibby stole a poignant look at Shannon McDowall, who was laughing at some racy joke Skinner had made, as the track ‘Yellow’ struck up:
— What fucking muppet put that shite on? Skinner screwed his face up, looking around. When he saw Kibby redden, he rolled his eyes in a canny exasperation and turned to Dougie Winchester at the bar, shouting up more drinks.
— Ah think they’re no bad, Winchester opined.
— What sort ay music dae you like? Kibby asked Shannon.
— All sorts really, Brian. New Order’s probably my favourite band. Do you like them?
— Eh . . . ah dinnae really ken their stuff. What dae ye think ay Coldplay? he asked hopefully.
— They’re okay . . . she said, screwing up her face, — but it’s like . . . background music. You know, elevator music, supermarket music. It’s just a wee bit bland and insipid, she said distractedly, as Skinner passed a glass over to her.
That must mean that she thinks the likes of me’s bland and insipid . . . just good enough for the background . . . no like the likes ay Skinner . . .
With the evening suitably soured for him, Brian Kibby finished his drink, made his excuses and headed off. When he got home he drank two pints of water, then had a Horlicks with his mother.
When he went to bed his stomach was knotted, his head buzzed and he couldn’t sleep. All he could think of was the Principal Officer’s job and the man who would be his main rival for the post.
Danny Skinner.
We got on okay at first, but Danny seems to see himself as the golden boy. Oh aye, he didnae mind me when I was content tae play second fiddle to his wisecracking, but he disnae like it when I get credit in my own right. No, not one bit. And Skinner takes the mucking around at work and college too far, and he tries to bully me, to make me the butt of his daft jokes. Everybody knows that his drinking is out of control. And to think that Shannon went with him, with Skinner. She’s crazy. I used to think that she was smart but she’s just stupid and easily conned, like so many of them.
Danny Skinner, though acutely aware of the threat Kibby poised, could do little about it. One midweek evening in a High Street pub, his voice took on a weary resignation as he defeatedly agreed to another pint from Rab McKenzie.
I should say no.
He had the presentation tomorrow, the one on the new set of procedures that many in the department were
calling the unofficial first interview, as Brian Kibby was undertaking a similar one the following day. Aye, he thought, I should call a halt now and go home; get a good night’s sleep so that I’ll be on the top of my game. Yet since Kay had walked out of his life a good night’s sleep had become something of a rarity. It was hard to sleep in an empty bed. Shannon and he had only slept together twice. On both occasions she’d taken a taxi home after unspectacular, perfunctory drunken trysts.
Not only was there no Kay, but there was still no contact with Beverly either. He’d gone past the shop one afternoon, glimpsed at the chunky body and scarlet head of his mother as she put another woman under the dryer. But no, let her wait. The next time he spoke to her it would be to see her reaction to two simple words: the name of his father.
He thought about the book again, The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs.
De Fretais and Tomlin, the American guy, were the only other young chefs at the Archangel who got a mention. Cunningham-Blyth is definitely off the list. Surely it couldnae be that fat cunt De Fre . . .
Naw. No way.
Gloomily looking into his half-full glass, Skinner could project to tomorrow and see his trembling, unassertive figure bowed and sweating under the fluorescent strip lights, feeling himself internally cowering before Cooper and Foy. No better than Kibby, he snorted to himself as he watched McKenzie at the bar, obtaining another drink.
Another fucking pint.
Yes, every casual enquiry would be amplified and distorted; decoded by his fevered, racing brain into a harsh interrogation, designed to show him up for the drunken, inadequate malingerer that they believed him to be.
The problem, and paradoxically the solution, to this nagging awareness of the next day’s horror, was more drink. The consciousness of the evil to come would leave him with a few more pints. Then they’d stagger on to a club or either back to his, McKenzie’s or somebody’s they met on the way with a hastily procured carry-out. All this fear would be forgotten, until it returned with savage interest the next morning, as the alarm clock ripped him out of unconsciousness.
And there would be Kibby, in early at the team meeting for networking purposes; fresh, enthusiastic and, above all, keen.
He turned to McKenzie, looking quite sorrowfully towards the full glass his friend was setting down beside him. — Is it worth it, eh, Rab?
— Doesnae matter whether it is or it isnae, it’s what ye dae, eh, McKenzie retorted, as stoical and implacable as ever. Vulnerability and Rab McKenzie went together like gerbils and fishcakes.
So McKenzie and Skinner drank with their customary enthusiasm, until Danny Skinner felt the delicious liberation of entry into the ‘not-giving-a-fuck-zone’. Yes, work was only a few hours away now, but it could be light years. And what did it matter? He, Danny Skinner, could run rings round all of those second-rate wankers. Aye, he’d show that arse-licking, little bastard Kibby. His presentation was ready, well, as good as, and he’d blow them all away!
They commenced a pub crawl; a besotted voyage of drunken camaraderie with friends and sneering antagonisms with foes. Then after a muddled, timeless passage, a sweating foray through different lands and states of fevered being, he achieved the goal of nothingness, oblivion. It was this condition that often made Skinner retrospectively wonder, as he started to scramble out of its grip into lighter dozing: is that what death is like, our alcoholic sleep?
Auld Perce made the great proclamation:
How wonderful is Death,
Death, and his brother Sleep!
Then the alarm clock thrashed, hammering on the outside and inside of his head as Danny Skinner woke up with both socks still on. As he gasped to fill air into his lungs via a blow-torched throat, Skinner felt a surge of relief to slowly realise, as his confused brain ordered all the objects around him, that at least he was in his own bed.
Then he saw his best deep blue Armani suit crumpled on the floor, the trousers, the jacket. Skinner launched himself up, too quickly, and started to retch and so urgently propelled himself towards the bathroom. The thin rug between his feet and the pinewood floor slid from under him but actually assisted his transit to the big white telephone as he crumpled to his knees. A series of convulsive, strength-sapping retches, that seemed to be trying to tear his soul from him, eventually ebbed into dry spasms.
Flushing away the cruel reminder of last night’s excess into the city’s drainage system, he attempted to compose himself. Facing the blue wall tiles, finding a newer, more intimate intricacy in their pattern, he tried to control his breathing. Then he stood up, wobbling like a newborn calf, and opened the small frosted window which led into the stairwell. What happened last night? he asked himself, in the shaving mirror, looking into his own red, tear-stained eyes.
NO.
The word resounded in his head, from which he almost expected to find an axe protruding, as he examined it.
NO NO NO.
Sometimes we said no when we hoped no.
McKenzie. A quick beer after work. Then the pub crawl. Then we’d run into Gary Traynor. Thanked him for the copy of the religious porn video, The Second Coming of Christ. Said he had another one for me, that he would drop it round. He was telling me about it and we were laughing . . . what was it called again . . . Moses and the Burning Bush! Aye, that was the one. So far, so fair. Then the lassie. She seemed okay. Did ah make a cunt ay masel? Nup . . . well, yes, but so, fuck, I’ll never see her again. But no . . .
OH NO . . .
. . . then . . . NO, NO, NO, I’m not having it. I AMNAE FUCKIN WELL HUVIN IT . . .
NO.
NO.
Cooper.
He’d been in that pub on the Mile yesterday. After the full council meeting.
NO.
With two councillors. Baird and Fulton.
NO.
I went up to them, approached the cunts . . .
NO.
I sang in their ears.
NO.
I’d . . .
NO NO NO . . .
. . . I’d planted a kiss on Cooper’s face! On his lips! A contemptuous, mocking gesture which said: ‘I’m Danny Skinner and I’ve nae respect for a wanker like you or your status, or your shitey fucking council.’
Cooper. It couldn’t have been worse if I’d punched the cunt.
NO.
Oh fuck, please to God, no.
Now Cooper knew: in that instant of folly, every unflattering rumour that had ever been aired about Skinner was marvellously confirmed. Every piece of gossip whispered into the boss’s ear by the corrupt sweetie-wife Foy, it had all been spectacularly vindicated in those few moments of madness. Danny Skinner was now known at senior official and council member level to be a loose cannon, a drunkard; a weak, frivolous young man, unable to be trusted in a position of authority without letting the side down. Yes, he had shown Cooper that all this snide conjecture was, in fact, based on reality. He’d sabotaged his career, his life. The studies, the college, the school. The deferred gratification (and nobody hated deferring gratification more than Danny Skinner), it was all for nothing.
NO.
Skinner clutched at straws. Maybe Cooper was pished as well, maybe he’d remember nothing.
NO.
Sometimes we said ‘no’ when we hoped ‘yes’.
But no.
Cooper seldom drank, and never, ever to excess.
Even more than Foy, he was that sooky wee bastard Kibby’s role model.
John Cooper would remember every single part of their meeting in forensic detail. It would be carefully recorded, in some diary, or even on Skinner’s personnel file. Because now they were going to snuff him out. Marginalise him, consign him to that limbo where, at best, he’d serve as a piteous example to departmental newcomers as how not to develop your career. He thought of Dougie Winchester and many others like him, the guys tagged the office alcoholic; how, when their youth had gone and the dashing bonhomie of their condition went with it, they were reduced to shambling, sh
ameful figures of contempt and ridicule. Stuck in a dead-end low-paid job, working diligently, but without expectation of anything, except the ticking of the clock and the next drink.
I’ll be a fucking pariah.
Skinner’s raw nerve endings jangled and his overheated brain did somersaults in his head. The only shard of light was repentance.
They loved that. Why not go to Cooper, and play the game?
He ran it over in his mind, like a radio play:
SKINNER: I’m sorry, John . . . I know I have a problem. It’s actually been apparent for some time, but last night really brought it home. When you disrespect, no, when you abuse somebody that you look up to in working life . . . well, the upshot of it is I’ve decided to get help. I contacted the AA this morning and I’m going along to my first meeting on Tuesday.
COOPER: I’m sorry to hear that you think you’ve got a problem, Danny, but don’t make too much of last night. It was a joke, you were just a bit the worse for wear. Nothing wrong with that. Everybody has a blow-out sometime. It was quite funny, you gave us all a laugh. Aye, you’re some boy, Danny!
No.
He could assign his own part with certainty; after all, it was all a game, and trickery and subterfuge were now regarded as legitimate business tools, but the response was unconvincing. Would Cooper have the range or inclination to play the magnanimous, jocular role?
Unlikely.
Cooper maintained a cold detachment from the minions, and the truth was that although he didn’t know for sure how he’d react, Skinner couldn’t envisage that mask slipping.
More like:
COOPER: It was an embarrassment for everyone. I’m glad you admit you have a problem. I’ll contact personnel and we’ll give you all the help we can. Brave of you to come forward et cetera, et cetera.
No.
Sometimes you said no because you meant no.
Because whatever Cooper did say, Skinner knew that he could never assign himself such a servile part.