He’s the first fucker to know . . .
The most beautiful and important thing that has happened in my life, and he is the first person to know about it!
Kibby.
And he winced as they departed, dishonoured by Kay’s goodwill, her oneness with the world, as she looked at the sparkler on her finger again, and said, — He seems a nice guy.
Skinner watched Kibby, as his workmate climbed the cobbled path up to Princes Street, holding that cap, clutching it fearfully in the wind.
That cunt dies.
Skinner said nothing. When she prompted him by widening her eyes, he spat out in unbridled repugnance, — Aye, he’s awright. And in Kay’s look he saw that she had caught something in him, something ugly she’d not been privy to before, not even in his most selfish, drunken moments, and it was what Kibby had brought out in him. Trying to seize control of his emotions and the situation, he suggested that they go for a drink down Rose Street to celebrate their engagement.
One drink turned into several, became more than enough for Kay, but it was apparent that Skinner wasn’t for moving. Now it was Kay’s turn to attempt to wrestle some mastery back into her life, and she started to talk about their plans for the future, where they would live and such, and was soon decorating their imaginary home.
Though trying to bear this affably, Skinner became vexed, as he generally did, when she started to talk of children. To him, this represented the ultimate slavery, the end of his social life. But there was a deeper anxiety: he desperately wanted to know about his own father before he ever thought about becoming one himself. They started to argue, Kay growing close to tears as she saw her special day being washed away in a sea of lager and Jack Daniel’s. — Why do you have to drink like that? she pleaded. — Your mum’s not like that. Your dad’s not . . . I mean, was he?
Skinner felt something cold bite into him, like a giant insect was crushing his torso in its jaws. He simply didn’t know. — No, he said, deeply embarrassed at this ignorance. — He was a straight guy apparently, never touched a drop, he ventured, making it up. Now his rage was shifting in its direction, heading towards his mother. A fatherless child of an only child, all he and Beverly had were each other, yet she would tell him nothing of his origins. She held all the cards and every time he’d pushed the issue she would not back down.
Was it too much tae fuckin ask? Was he a fuckin rapist or a nonce or something? What the fuck did he dae tae her?
— Well then, Kay argued, looking at his glass.
He had heard from Beverly that her own father, whom Skinner had only known as a toddler, before he had died from a stroke, had taken a good drink. — My grandad was an alcoholic, he said defensively, — it just skipped a generation.
Kay looked open-mouthed at him and gasped, — My God, I don’t believe it, you’re boasting about this!
— I wish I could meet my dad, Skinner suddenly said in great sadness. His words shocked him as much as they did Kay. He’d never said this to anyone before, outside of his mother.
She squeezed his hand, and sweeping her hair behind her ear, leaned close into him. — Did your mum ever say who he was?
— She used to joke that he was Joe Strummer from the Clash, Skinner laughed sadly. — She’s got this signed album of his, it’s her prize possesion. I used to get beaten up at school for telling everybody that my dad was in the Clash, he smiled ruefully at the memory. — Then she said he was Billy Idol, Jean-Jacques Burnel, Dave Vanian; any punk who’d ever played Edinburgh or Glasgow. It got so that I’d look at all the old magazines and try to see a resemblance. But this was when I was young, and she was just taking the pish. I got so obsessed as a kid, I started staring at any old guy in the street who smiled at me, wondering if he was the one. It’s a miracle I wasn’t kidnapped by some old nonce, he said woefully. — Now she won’t talk about him at all. Skinner raised his glass and took a big gulp. Kay watched his thyroid cartilage bobble as more drink went down his throat. — Every few years I ask her again and she does her nut and we have another big bust-up.
Kay nervously pushed her hair back again, looked at her drink, decided that she wasn’t going to finish it. — She must really loathe him.
— But it’s irrational to hate somebody like that . . . Skinner stopped in his tracks as Kibby’s face, with those virgin-fool camel-like eyes, blazed into his head, — . . . I mean, after all that time, he mumbled uncomfortably.
I do hate Kibby. I’m just like her. Why Kibby? What is he doing to me?
If only Kibby would leave, get out my fucking life, go back to Fife or something.
The walls were painted bright yellow. Sky-blue curtains hung from the long windows. But the small room’s sedate decor could not deflect the dominance of the aluminium-framed hospital bed. A television screen swung to the side, attached by anglepoise arm to the wall above the bedstead. The only other furniture was a locker on wheels, two chairs and a small sink unit on the wall at the bottom of the bed.
In the bed, Keith Kibby, weak like a punctured tyre, felt his life ebbing away just as slowly and steadily. The saline feed drip-drip-dripped into his withered limb, each drop for him the almost silent ticking of a clock. Outside, the trees were bare, dry sticks, like his arm, he thought, but unlike it springtime would see them reignite with life. Last summer had been good, Keith recalled through a disorientating fog of medication, then, as if in need of affirmation, wheezed to himself, — A good summer . . . But this precipitated a stark, bitter bolt of realisation, and he rolled his bald head ceilingwards in accusation: — . . . and I’ve only been allowed to see forty-nine of the bastards . . .
Francesca Ryan, one of the nurses on the ward, entered Keith’s room to take his pulse and blood pressure. As she went to work, wrapping the Velcro pad from the equipment around his skinny wrist, Keith scrutinised the facial hair under her lip. A small spark kindled inside him and he considered that she wouldn’t be bad-looking if she had it removed.
Electrolysis. That, and losing a few pounds. Aye, then she’d be a comely lass.
Ryan couldn’t wait to get away from Keith Kibby. It wasn’t his illness that made her squeamish, she was used to imminent death, but there was something about him, a hungry waft coming off him that disturbed her. She preferred old Davie Rodgers next door, although he teased her about being a native of Limerick City. ‘Dinnae let that lassie in the operating theatre wi aw they knives or we’ll have a bloodbath oan oor hands!’
Old Davie could be a pest, but with him, she felt, you got what you saw. When her back was turned away from Keith Kibby she could feel his eyes on her.
So Francesca was pleased when Mr Kibby’s wife, son and daughter arrived. They seemed to her to be a close family, to really love him, and be utterly devastated by his illness. She didn’t find him the slightest bit lovable, but then it was a funny world.
She watched as the teenage daughter kissed the father’s head. Francesca had heard that she was a freshman student at Edinburgh University, studying English. She sometimes went to dos at the student union and glanced to see if she could place the Kibby girl but her face, conventionally pretty, Francesca thought with a little envy, rang no bells. Caroline saw the nurse staring at her and gave her a tight smile back. Slightly flustered, Nurse Ryan departed from the ward.
Caroline had been considering attending a club event that night at Teviot Row, a dance held by one of the societies, where a local name DJ was spinning. But looking at her dad’s worn-out face she wanted to cry. It was only when she noted the tears that were welling up in her mother’s eyes that she felt furiously, perversely, em- powered to fight her own ones back.
I’m not like her. I’ll stay strong.
She noted that her brother had remained silent, but sucked in one of his cheeks, a nervous reaction of his that was familiar to her. Then he started to say something to their father; words that sounded like, — See when you get out of here, we’ll . . .
But Brian Kibby never got to finish the sentence as h
is father went into a gripping seizure. The Kibbys screamed for the medical staff. They were prompt in their response, particularly Francesca Ryan, but they could do nothing as Keith Kibby hurtled into convulsions right there in front of them. In his death throes he battled every inch of the way to hold on to his life, bucking up in bed with an almost supernatural force, his eyes unfocused, as, in their torment, the Kibbys silently prayed for him to let go, to leave this earth in peace. For Caroline, this violent, paranormal passing compounded the unspeakable horror of her father’s death. She had assumed that he would go out like the dimmer switches he’d installed in the family home, a slow almost imperceptible ebb into blackness. But as he thrashed around, she could virtually see the life, which now seemed an alien force that had permeated the flesh beneath, rending free from its flimsy cage.
Time seemed to freeze, seconds stretching out into hours, as he died with all their arms around him. Brian, in particular, seemed to hold that bony carriage in a manner that suggested he was trying to shore up any cracks through which the essence of his father might escape. But when it was over, it was as if Keith had ripped some of the life from every Kibby in the room to take with him. A long silence followed, before Brian Kibby, the thin youth with the long-lashed cow-like eyes, hugged his mother and sister to him.
Caroline smelt the sweat on her mother, rank and foul, oddly like her father’s corpse, and then the sweet, sharp aftershave on her brother’s face. After a bit it was Brian who spoke and Caroline looked up and saw the tears running across the peach fuzz of his cheeks. — He’s at peace now, he observed.
Joyce looked up at him, first in a stunned bovine bemusement, then sharply and imploringly. — Peace, Brian said again, tightening his grip on his mother.
— Peace, Joyce repeated, swamped by the mindlessness of grief.
— Peace, Brian confirmed once more, looking at Caroline. She nodded and wondered whether or not she would go to this dance tonight; then she heard her mother recite in a small but eerily defiant voice:
The Lord’s my shepherd, I’ll not want
He makes me down to lie
In pastures green: he leadeth me
The quiet waters by.
When she heard her brother join in with ‘My soul he doth restore again’ she knew that she would not – could not – stay at home with them tonight.
11
Funerals
THE OLD DRUNKARD was a handy cunt in his day. I’ve seen him knocking around for ages and even on occasion knocking ten types of shite out of other pissheids who got a wee bit too lippy. Aye, he got plenty dangerous for a while, when he was in that last angry menopausal flush of power, just before the physical and mental enfeeblement of old age started to kick in. Then a younger guy he got wide with did him badly and now there’s a broken yellow light in the cunt’s eyes. I suppose it might be peace but it’s more likely to be a fucked liver. Sammy, I’m sure they call him.
Now he’s reduced to slavering drivel in old Busby’s ear; they’re always in here together, in this grotty Duke Street dive. Only Busby’s not around today, he’s probably up giving my old girl a fucking length . . .
It’s just this old cunt; donkey jacket, hands like shovels, Mars bars, mind fuddled by drink, but you still don’t want to get too close, cause the last thing that goes with an old boxer is the punch. Worse than that, it’s probably the second last, to that bell they hear in their doolally heids at the strangest of times!
I think about the my old boy, how I’ve always envisioned him: tanned, square-jawed, thick hair, with his well-preserved and impeccably groomed wife in a New South Wales or southern Californian suburb, and realise that I’ve almost certainly been kidding myself. He’s more likely to be some broken jakey, in this very bar. That’s doubtlessly why the Old Girl hates him so much; she probably bumps into the cunt on a fuckin daily basis, as he staggers down Junction Street to the foot of Walk, maybe trying to put the bite on her for a few quid. Perhaps she’s just trying to save my crushing disappointment, and my father is a man who, when you take away the drink and cigarettes, is just a total void.
They’re talking about banning smoking from pubs. You ban smoking from this doss you might as well torch the fuckin place behind ye, because if you don’t, sure as fuck the owner will for insurance purposes cause no cunt will ever set foot in here again for trade. Tabs define this place more than whisky or beer: from the nicotine-stained walls to the tubercular hacking, rasping coughs of the locals. Not that there are many in right now, just two toothless auld gimpy cunts on the dominoes in one corner and me and the old boxer at the bar.
— Awright, he growls at me. Aye, Sammy’s his name.
Peace, brother. — No bad, boss. Yersel?
The old white hope shrugs in a you-see-it-all gesture and I’m thinking, ‘Bad as that, is it?’ but I offer to buy him a beer, help the fucking aged, ya cunt. Forget the credit-card problems, a salaried man has to do his bit. He accepts with only a modicum of grace. Then he fixes me in his narrowing eyes, trying to get a focus. — Bev Skinner, the hairdresser; you’re her laddie, eh?
— Aye.
— The Skinners . . . aye . . . Tennant Street, back in the day . . . Jimmy Skinner . . . that would be your grandfaither . . . oan yir ma’s side. Yir faither wis the chef, wis eh no?
I shudder inside and look the old cunt in the eye. — What?
The old boy looks cautious now, wary that he’s said something that he shouldn’t have. I’ve heard this shite before. I remember my old neighbour, Mrs Bryson, before she went totally potty, telling me that my dad was a chef. I half put it down to dementia. I asked both Trina and Val about this but the Old Girl had done a number on them and they denied all knowledge. The auld felly here’s got something to say though. — Yir auld man. Wis he no a chef? he warily repeats.
— Did ye ken um, likes?
Some memory seems to play across his mind as his eyes roll into accord like the symbols on a fruit machine. But he’s paying out nae jackpot right now, cause the Sammy boy goes aw furtive, and no mistake. — Mibbe ah’m thinking ay somebody else.
— Whae’s it you were thinkin ay then? I ask challengingly.
The old cunt raises his brows and I can see the thug that I had presumed long departed, seeping slowly back into the lamps underneath them. — Somebody you dinnae ken.
I can see where this is leading so I drink up. Fucked if I’m bursting chops with an old bastard in a shithouse like this. Win, lose or draw, the only real result is humiliation for even being daft enough to take part. — Right, I’ll see ye then, I tell the old cunt, and I can feel that his eyes never leave the back of my head until I’m out the door and into the rain at the foot of Leith Walk.
I stop off in a couple of boozers, throwing back six pints of Guinness and three double JD’s quickstyle, the lush charge hitting me like a ton of bricks. When I get back to the flat Kay’s there, in tears again, saying some stuff about dancing, her career, her ambitions, how I don’t respect them, how they mean nothing to me, then leaving. Everything is muffled and car-crash-like and I want to speak but she’s looking through me and I’m looking through alcohol. We’re nowhere near each other even as we stumble in tandem through our disintegrating lives.
She came to dance . . .
I couldn’t feel her presence, but I sure as fuck notice her absence. I can’t stay here alone and I head down the street, passing the Duke Street dive and glancing in where I can now see that big gadgie, swaying in the non-existent breeze, and wee Busby’s in now, crouched at the bar, in sour disapproval.
I feel like gaun in thair an . . .
Get up that fucken road . . .
And I cannae remember the walk tae my ma’s hoose, can’t mind her opening the door and me going in, all I can mind is saying to her,— So eh wis a chef then . . . ma dad wis a fuckin chef . . . a fuckin cook . . .
And we’re shouting at each other and I mind of repeating to her, — chef, chef, chef . . .
Then I see something in her e
yes, not anger but something harsh and mocking, and I stop and she says, — Aye, son, and how many fuckin meals did eh ever make ye?
I storm out, resolving that I’m never talking to that stubborn, evil auld hoor again, no until she tells ays the fuckin truth . . .
Then when I get round to mine, back up the stairs to my flat, I see it on the mantelpiece, and I freeze in shock.
It’s the ring. The ring I gave Kay.
I’m not ready for this. Can you ever be ready?
My father, my poor old dad. He never harmed anybody, he was such a good man. Why did this happen? Why? But now it’s Mum’s grief, the sheer power and force of it; it’s every bit as harrowing as my father’s death. I’ve not been ready for anything, it’s all just happened to me and I haven’t coped. I don’t know what to do and Caz won’t even talk, she won’t say a word.
There’s a slow drizzle as we wait to go into the chapel. I look around and see that there’s hardly anybody here. My dad was a family man and his family was very small. He has no living elderly relatives. So apart from us and some people from the church congregation, there’s only a few neighbours and former workmates from the railway present.
It seems so sad and makes me angry that a good man can just go like that and be mourned by so few, when the likes of the big loudmouths on television like that De Fretais would have thousands at their funerals, all weeping and saying how great he was. But it would be crocodile tears, not real grief like this: this horrible, quiet misery and paralysis that can tear people apart.
Dad’s old railway friends all say the same thing about him. He was a decent, sober man, who was warm and friendly enough, but who largely kept himself to himself. The men who worked in the signal box at the old railway junction in Thornton, Fife, they are telling me about the side of my dad that is a mystery to me, a man who whiled away his spare hours reading and writing, filling up notepads with doodlings. That seemed to be his great passion, outside of his family. When he became a driver, Dad really appeared to have found his vocation. Sitting alone in the hot seat, taking the train up the West Highland line.