The bass begins to synchronise with my heartbeat and I feel my brain expand beyond the confines of skull and grey matter.
There’s people twisting away in the swirling dust, dancing half-naked, some wild and bugged right out, others as jaunty as cabaret dancers on a seventies Saturday night prime-time show.
And I spin away outwards and inwards, upwards, downwards and sideways, juddering in a wonky astral projection until I can feel something like cold marble replacing the hot earth under my bare feet.
I’m here and I’m ready. — Ma boax, whaire’s ma boax, I shout at the boy who’s on the decks, and he nods to my feet and Reedy’s helping me and I get the first tune out my record box and go to put it on. There’s people round the podium. A chant goes up, N-SIGN, N-SIGN . . .
Through it all I hear one voice, a Scottish voice, derisory and malignant. — He’s fucked, it says.
They’re twisting into form out of the dust, clichéd movements defining identity to me before features, which never seem to come into sharp enough focus. I hear concerned voices, and suffocating clothes are draped on me, across my shoulders, stopping my skin breathing, choking me, something is stuck on my head . . . I want to take all the layers off, strip the flesh from my bone, free my spirit from this festering, suffocating cage.
. . . the serpentine currents of hot air twist around me, tormenting and entrapping.
I go right across the decks, arse over tit, and watch the open-mouthed horror of the boys and girls as the music scrunches and I crash onto the hard ground. I feel that way like those super-heroes look when they’ve been blasted by a ray gun and blown from a tall building. Tired out, rather than in specific pain.
I just laugh and laugh and laugh.
There’s The Man, he’s dumped that jacket, he’s just wearing the combat troosers and the vest. There’s a brilliant boy’s fitba tattoo on his arm. Bertie Blade is looking all smug, flexing his muscles as a dishevelled Ossie Owl lies at his feet. Reedy! He’s asking if I’m okay. Now Helena’s here as well, she’s trying to talk to me but I’m grinning stupidly at her.
Helena?
Helena’s here. I must be fucking well dreaming. Helena! How the fuck . . .
I’m petting something, a kind of well-fed carnivore of some description as her words become meaningless, evaporating in the heat of my brain.
The creature purrs then opens its mouth and from its stomach rancid vapours fly up and assault me. Turning away, I rise and move into a crowd. Towards the bass, I hear somebody call my name, not my name as it is now, but my old name, but it’s a girl’s name, not mine.
Carl is the leader of the girls.
Edinburgh, Scotland
Wednesday 8.30 pm
Memories of Pipers DiSCOTec
Juice Terry couldn’t believe his luck when he’d seen the international singing star waiting for him in the lobby of the Balmoral. She wore an expensive-looking white jacket, with black brushed-denim jeans. He was glad he’d made the effort to shower and shave and dig out his own black crushed-velvet disco jacket, even if it was a bit snug these days. He’d tried to gel his frizzy hair down, and had some success, though he suspected it would be up by the end of the night.
— Awright, Kath? How goes it?
— I’m fine, she told him through her shock as she beheld Terry. He looked a mess; she’d never seen anybody dressed so badly.
— Right . . . lit’s git a bevvy ower the road in the Guildford, then we’ll git a taxi doon tae Leith. A couple ay scoops in the Bay Hoarse then mibbe a wee bum burner next door at the Raj.
— I guess so, Kathryn said tentatively, completely baffled as to what Terry was on about.
— Ah say tomatay, you say tomaytay, Juice Terry quipped. The Raj was a good call, a class act in curry houses. He’d only been once before, but that fish pakora . . . Terry felt the ducts in his mouth open and squirt like a sprinkler system in a blazing shopping centre. He cast his eye over Kathryn as they crossed Princes Street. She was a skinny lassie right enough. She didnae look that well. Still, nothing a good Ruby Murray and a few pints couldnae put right. Needed a bit ay Scottish beef inside her and tae fuck wi the BSE or HIV risks involved. He could tell that she was well impressed by him. Mind you, he’d made a bit of an effort with the togs. He reasoned that rich birds were used to standards, you couldnae just wing it with them.
They got into the Guildford Arms. It was full of Festival types and office workers. Kathryn felt nervous and insecure in the crowd and the smoke and ordered a pint of lager, taking her cue from Juice Terry. They found a corner seat and she was drinking quickly, feeling a little dizzy by the time her glass was half-empty. To her horror Terry put Victimised By You on the juke box.
Tell me you don’t really love me
look at me and tell me true
all my life I’ve been the victim
of men who victimise like you
I see the bottle of vodka and pills
my mind hazes over in a mist
I go numb as I consume them all
a victim of love’s fateful twist
But tell me boy, how will you feel
when you stare down upon my corpse
will your heart still be as cold
when my blue frozen flesh you hold
Oh baby what more can I say
In my heart of hearts I knew
that it would just end this sad way
a doomed love, what can we do-ho-ho
— Tell ye what but, it must git ye doon singing they songs. It would drive me up the waw. See the likes ay me, ah’m intae ma ska. Happy music, ken? Desmond Dekker, that’s ma man. The Northern n aw. We used tae run a bus doon tae Wigan Casino, back in the day, ken? Terry said proudly. This was a lie, but it should impress a chick from the music business, he thought.
Kathryn nodded politely, blankly.
— But ma main music wis disco, he opened his jacket and spread it from the lapels with his thumbs, — thus the togs, he added in a theatrical flourish.
— Back in the eighties I spent a lot of time in Studio 54 in New York City, Kathryn told him.
— Ah ken punters thit went ower thair, Terry retorted arrogantly, — but we hud it here better; Pipers, Bobby McGee’s, The West End Club, Annabel’s . . . the lot. Edinburgh wis the real home ay disco. Cunts in New York tend tae forget that. Here it wis much mair . . . undergroond . . . but at the same time mainstream, if ye ken what ah’m drivin at.
— I don’t get it, Kathryn said assertively.
Terry was trying to get it. It was weird, he contemplated, the wey some Yank birds spoke up when they were jist meant tae be polite and nod vacantly, like a real bird fae ower here would dae. — It’s too much tae explain, Terry said, then added, — ah mean, ye’d huv hud tae huv been thaire tae git what ah’m talking aboot.
Blue Mountains, NSW,
Australia
Wednesday 7.12 am
I’ve been taken back into the tent. Helena’s got a hold of me. Her hair is in two pigtails, her eyes are red like she’s been crying. — You’re so fucked, you can’t understand what I’m saying to you, can you?
I can’t speak. I wrap an arm around her shoulders, and try to apologise but I’m too fucked up to talk. I want to tell her that she’s the best girlfriend I’ve ever had, the best that anybody’s ever had.
She grabs my head in the palms of her hands.
— LISTEN. CAN YOU HEAR ME, CARL?
Is this recrimination or reconciliation . . . — I can hear you . . . I say softly, then in surprise that I can hear my own voice, I repeat with more confidence, — I can hear you!
— There’s no other way I can tell you this . . . fuck. Your mother phoned. Your father’s very ill. He’s had a stroke.
What . . .
No.
Don’t be daft, not my old boy, he’s fine, he’s as fit as a fiddle, he’s better than me . . .
She’s no kidding but. She’s no fuckin kidding.
FUCKIN . . . NAW . . . NO MA AULD
MAN . . . NO MA FAITHER . . .
My heart’s thrashing in my chest in panic, and I’m on my feet and trying to find him, looking for him as if he’s in the tent. — Airport, I hear myself say. A voice coming from me. — The airport . . . hooses and shoaps . . .
— What? Celeste Parlour goes.
— He’s saying he wants to go to the airport, Helena says, used to my accent, even when ah’m cabbaged.
—No way. He can’t travel today. Yer going nowhere, mate, Reedy informs me.
— Just get me on that plane, I say. — Please. A favour.
They know I mean it. Even Reedy. — No worries, mate. Do you need to get changed?
— Just get me on that plane, I repeat. Broken record. Just get me on that plane.
Oh my god . . . I’ve got to get tae the fuckin airport. I want to see him, no I don’t.
NO
NO, YOU’RE NOT ON, AH’M NO HUVIN THIS
No.
I want to remember him as he was. As he’ll always be to me. A stroke . . . how the fuck can he have had a stroke . . .
Reedy shakes his head. — Carl, you smell like a filthy old dog. They ain’t gonna let yer on no plane in that state.
A moment of . . . not exactly clarity, but control. The exercise of will. How horrible it must be to always be straight, to have the burden of will all the time, to never be able to surrender it. But I’ve surrendered it at the wrong fuckin time. A drawn breath. An attempt to open my eyes and focus through the noise, dislocation and hold up those tired shutters of eyelids. — What do you think I’m saying to you?
— Yeah, Carl, I hear you, you want me to get you on that plane, Helena says.
I nod.
Helena starts to look and sound like my mother. — I just don’t think it’s a feasible option at the moment, but it’s your call. Your bag is here. I’ve got your passport and I’ve booked a ticket on my credit card. You’ll pick it up at the British Airways desk. I’ve got the locator number here. I’ll take you to the airport now.
She’s done it all for me. I nod humbly. She is the best. — Thanks for doing this for me. I’ll pay you back . . . I’ll clean up, sort masel out.
— There’s a bigger issue here, you selfish bastard. You tried to kill yourself!
I laugh loudly. What bollocks. If I’d tried to kill myself I wouldn’t do it with drugs. I’d jump off a . . . off a cliff or something. I was just looking for somebody.
— Don’t laugh at me, she shouts. — You took all those pills and wandered off out into the bush.
— I just took too many drugs. I wanted to stay awake. Now I need tae see my Dad, oh my God my perr fuckin faither . . . Celeste’s arms go round me.
— How long’s he been up now? Helena asks Reedy.
I’m sorry Helena . . . I’m weak. I’m running again. Holding out and running from a good thing: Elsa, Alison, Candice, then you. And all the other ones I wouldn’t let get anywhere near as close.
— Four days.
I feel like I’ve become a subject again. I think loudly, — Airport. Please. Do it for me, please! and I hope it comes out as a shout.
He’s dying.
And I’m lying fucked, in the bush, on the other side of the world.
Now we’re in the jeep, and tumbling over the stones put down to stop the old dirt track washing away. It jolts and it tears and I rattle in the back seat. I see the nape of Helena’s neck, the braided bunches of her hair. There’s a trickle of sweat on the back of her neck and I’ve an almost overwhelming urge to lick it, kiss it, suck it, eat her like I was a fuckin vampire, which I probably am, though of the social kind.
I resist as the road forks and the mountains cast long shadows and I think in a second of panic that we’ve taken the wrong fork, but what the fuck do I know. The rest of them seem cool enough. Celeste Parlour spots my anxiety and asks, — You alright, Carl?
I ask her if she supports Arsenal and she looks at me as if I’m mad and then goes, — Nah, Brighton mate.
— The Seagulls, I smile. They still going? They were in trouble when I was last back in the UK . . .
Celeste smiles benignly. I look round at Reedy with his coppered, weather-beaten skin, tough and slick as expensive leather. — Leeds, eh Reedy?
— Fook Leeds, I’m Sheffield United.
— Of course, I say as we pull onto another gravel track, then onto a tarmacked road. Lucky Reedy’s sound, I deserved the nut worked onto me for a faux pas like that. He was a boy, back in the day. Blades Business Crewe.
It’s plain sailing all the way, Helena driving in a silence which I sense is violent but which I feel too weak to try and break up any more, and Parlour and Reedy are comfy enough with it.
I doze off, or trip into a strange zone and then I wake with a start, feeling my life force snapping back into the jeep from far away. We’re on the highway to the airport. A nightmare of travel with a bigger one to come. But I have to do this.
My father’s dying, maybe even dead. Fuck that. What was it Wee Gally said, when he told me he was sick? Let’s no bother huvin any fuckin funerals until we’ve goat some cunt tae bury.
Please let it not be my father. Duncan Ewart from Kilmarnock. What were his ten rules?
1. NEVER HIT A WOMAN
2. ALWAYS BACK UP YOUR MATES
3. NEVER SCAB
4. NEVER CROSS A PICKET LINE
5. NEVER GRASS FRIEND NOR FOE
6. TELL THEM NOWT (THEM BEING POLIS, DOLE, SOCIAL, JOURNALISTS, COUNCIL, CENSUS, ETC.)
7. NEVER LET A WEEK GO BY WITHOUT INVESTING IN NEW VINYL
8. GIVE WHEN YOU CAN, TAKE ONLY WHEN YOU HAVE TO
9. IF YOU FEEL HIGH OR LOW, MIND THAT NOTHING GOOD OR BAD LASTS FOR EVER AND TODAY’S THE START OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE
10. GIVE LOVE FREELY, BUT BE TIGHTER WITH TRUST
I’ve been found wanting, especially in 2 and 8. The others I’ve probably done okay in.
But Reedy’s right. I do smell like an old dog, and I feel like one. I remember the corpse of a rotting dingo, by the side of the road in Queensland. Not a car in sight, a clear horizon for miles. That fuckin animal must have been really stupid to have got hit. More likely it was a suicide attempt! Could a dog, in its natural environment, wild as fuck, actually be suicidal? Ha ha ha.
Gorges, cliffs, gum trees . . . the blue haze of the eucalyptus which gives the mountains their name.
Lost contact with home at Christmas.
The suburbs suddenly swallow us. We’re back on the Western motorway.
I remember when we first moved to Sydney. I couldn’t believe that the Bondi beach in Sydney, like the Copacabana in Rio, was just about as far out as Portobello was from the centre of Edinburgh. Mair sand but. We got our apartment out there. Me and Helena. She took her pictures. I played my records.
Edinburgh, Scotland
Wednesday 8.07 pm
Air-brush It
Franklin was devastated. Where the hell could she have gone? The gig was tomorrow night. He had to keep this out of the press or Taylor would just drop her. He picked up the album cover which featured an air-brushed photo of a fresh and healthy Kathryn. He saw a pen on the writing desk in his room and scrawled, with great venom and spite, the words DUMB FUCK across it.
—Mutton dressed as mutton, he said bitterly to her smiling portrait.
And now he had that fucking reception for her, the one the Edinburgh Festival people had put on for them. What was he going to say to them?
An Urban Myth
Kathryn was wary when Terry flagged down a taxi. A drink in the pub across the road was one thing, but getting into a cab with this guy was upping the stakes. But his face seemed so eager and friendly as he held open the door of the taxi that Kathryn couldn’t do anything other than step in. He was chattering incessantly as she was trying to find her bearings as a busy street flashed by. To her relief, it seemed to be still the inner city when they alighted, even though it was a less affluent quarter.
They had taken the taxi to
Leith and went into a pub in Junction Street. Terry was from the west side of the city and reckoned that there was less chance of running into someone he knew down here. He set up more pints. Kathryn was soon drunk and found that the lager was making her babble.
— I don’t wanna tour or make records any more . . . she fretted, — I feel my life isn’t my own.
— Ken what ye mean. That Tony Blair cunt, worse than Thatcher that wanker. He’s goat this New Deal shite. Ye huv tae dae eighteen hours’ work or the cunts stoap yir giro. Eighteen hours’ graft a week some cunt gets oot ay ye for fuck all. Slave fuckin labour. What’s aw that aboot? You tell me.
— I dunno . . .
— You’ve no goat him though, eh no. You’ve goat the cunt that’s shaggin him, that cunt wi the hair . . .
— President Clinton . . .
— That’s the boy. Aye, that Monica bird gied him a blow-job so eh goes n says tae Tony Blair, you kin replace Monica if ye back ays up wi bombin that Milosevic cunt.
— That’s nonsense, Kathryn shook her head at Terry.
Terry was a believer in the force, rather than the detail of argument. — Uh, uh, that’s what thi want ye tae believe, aw they cunts. Ah goat it aw fae a gadge in the boozer whose sister mairried a top civil servant boy doon in London. Aw the news they try tae keep back fae ye. Couldnae run a message, thon twats. New deal, ma erse. The thing is, ah hate workin n aw. Ah’m only daein the windaes tae help oot Post Alec, but eh. The juice lorries, that wis ma game. Tae gie me ma proper title ah wis an Aerated Waters Salesman. Goat peyed oaf back in 1981. Ah used tae dae aw the juice lorries roond the schemes: Hendry’s, Globe, Barrs . . . ah think Barrs are the only yins left. The Irn Bru kept them gaun. So these dole cunts, the restart fuckers, turn roond n sais tae ays: we’ll git ye a joab sellin juice.
Kathryn looked at Terry in utter bewilderment. To her he sounded like the rasping engine of an outboard motor, only much louder.
— Cunts only wanted ays tae work in an R.S. McColl’s, Terry explained, seemingly oblivious to her lack of understanding, — but that would huv meant sellin sweeties n newspapers as well as juice n ah wisnae up fir that. That’s how ah goat the name Juice Terry, ken? The cunt that started R.S. McColl used tae play for the Huns n aw, so thir wis nae wey ah could work thaire. Listen, doll, ah widnae ask, but you must be flush. Kin ye sub ays a score?