Espedair Street

SEVEN

'There's a funny smell in here, so there is, Jim.'

Well, yes. Pigeon crap and dogshit, dog vomit, dog pee, and curry. Apart from that...

I spent a deeply unfulfilling couple of hours yesterday evening, sniffing and searching and mopping and scraping and washing and cleaning. The pigeon is still at large; I can hear the little bastard cooing sadly every now and again, somewhere up in the roof. I have put my umbrella up over the turntable to protect it from further aerial bombardment and, if I remember, I'll take a wander down to one of the specialist hi-fi shops to look for a new turntable cover. I used to have one but Wee Tommy and I broke it one drunken night, testing the point at which more-or-less regularly shaped objects with cavities underneath stopped behaving like frisbees.

Plates; yes. Most hats; yes. Perspex turntable covers; not really.

I threw out both the curried rug and the sheet the pigeon shat on (luckily, I have several cases of Rumanian bedclothes). I could have washed them instead, but my greatcoat had finally become so dirty — following my adventure on the motorway flyover and TB's hairy attempt at copulation — that even my fairly robust sensibilities were becoming offended. So I stuffed the coat into my heavy-duty industrial Czech washing machine and left the pair of them to fight it out.

I didn't have another coat, or even a warm jacket to wear while my coat was in the wash, but I took a look at the weather and decided it wasn't a day for going out anyway. It was a cold, grey day; showers of sleet and hail blew hard over the city, swirling like clouds of frozen white buckshot. A day for staying in.

Besides, I was expecting somebody. No pigeon today; this morning the visitor to my bedroom was an altogether more acceptable one.

I lay on my side, head on hand, watching Betty smoke.

Ah, the following-fornication fag, the post-coital cigarette, the aprés-orgasm gasper. That's the one I miss most of all. Every time Betty lights up I think... just one. Just one, now, for old time's sake. It's allowed; your conscience would understand... but then I think about how I'd feel later. The big G again, rearing its siren head and wanting to be fed.

'Yeah, I spilled some curry yesterday " I said, economising with the truth.

Betty tutted. 'Cannae stand curries. See ma Jack? He'd eat them fur breakfast dinner an tea, so he wid. Basturt used tae smell like a take-away when he didnae smell like a distillery.' She sucked in smoke and held it, obviously enjoying her cigarette. I felt my mouth start to water, but I ignored it. The sheets had slipped off her breasts as she filled her chest, and I was smiling at her rosy nipples. She saw me looking, pulled the sheet back up and said, 'Hi, you,' in a disapproving tone.

Betty is curiously prim in some ways. She won't undress in front of me, and she always pulls the sheets up to cover her chest when she sits up in bed. I find this amusing, almost quaint, but she gets annoyed if I say anything, so I don't. She's been climbing up this tower to this room for the past two and a half years now; two or three times a week as a rule. Keeps me sane, keeps my libido ticking but not boiling over. I really feel quite an affection for her, even if her heart is, as I slightly suspect, pure brass.

Betty is about forty, I think. She won't say. She is petite, she has scrunched up wee toes from far too many pointed shoes, legs she is proud of, and a pale, allowing body. Dyed blonde hair; naturally brown. It's only over the last few months she's told me anything about herself. That wasn't what I was paying for, and none of my business. I think she maintains this rule still with the rest of her clients, but maybe not; we'd all like to think we're special, even when we're just paying for attention.

Maybe it's only because she's been seeing me so long she feels she can talk. I must be boring to her now; we are more like old friends than whore and john. I'm sure at first she was terrified of me; a huge weird-looking guy living in a big church. Nutcase; maybe dangerous. I've always wondered whether she expected my prick to be in proportion to the rest of my body (it isn't, but what a bastard that the one average thing I do have is not the sort of thing you can point to in public and say, 'Look, see? I'm normal! I'm just like you guys!'). I meant to ask her about that, but... I never did get around to it.

She seems to enjoy sex; tells me I'm the only one that makes her come. Somehow, the way she says it, I believe her... but I still half-suspect she says that to all the marks. Maybe I'm just a bad and cynical man, though.

'Have you heard anything from him?'

'That bastard? Not a peep. He can rot.' Betty draws on the fag again. A steely smile crosses her face. 'Ah hope he's missin his curries. They dinnae serve too many a them in the Bar-L.'

Betty's husband is six years into a ten year sentence for assault and armed robbery. He was part of a gang who split a trucker's skull and nicked forty tons of fags from a transport cafe's trailer park. He'd be due out soon if he didn't keep hitting his fellow inmates. Probably after their snout; old habits die hard.

Betty's eyes narrowed. 'Aye, Ah bet there's somethin else the basturt's missin as weel.' She put the fag out in a saucer balanced on her sheet-covered tummy. 'He liked his nookie, did that man. No much good at it, but he liked it. Couldnae go two days withoot it. Wonder whit he's daein aboot that in the jile?' Her face held an unkind smirk. 'Wee chap too; a right hard ticket, but just wee ... an he had dead smooth skin, no much hair... Ah've oftin wondered whit aw they big hard men thought aboot when they saw him take his kegs aff fur the shoors.' She smiled widely at one of the twin peaks her knees made under the bedclothes, plainly imagining her husband stripping in front of twenty large, scarred, sex-starved lifers. I looked away.

He used to knock her about; broke her arm once. I already know all this. He was one of those men — they can't be unique to Glasgow — who know in their hearts that for all their edgy, belligerent llardness they are just unhappy kids, emotional retards. They can drink and they can fight, but even they know that's not enough, and the only other way they have to prove they're men is by knocking as many weans out of their wives as possible. Betty has an amusing story of being chased round the flat by her Jack; he was after the packet of pills he'd discovered and she'd snatched away from him. He caught her eventually, and threw them on the fire.

Her best story, the one that makes me most angry, but one that she tells with a sort of baleful irony, is of the time she was sent down for three months for soliciting, by a judge who'd been one of her clients.

I was incensed; I'd always regarded the law on prostitution to be almost as stupid, almost as guaranteed to bring law in general into contempt, as the law on drugs (with the laws they still have on homosexuality running a distant third), but to discover an act of such gross, such focused hypocrisy being perpetrated on somebody I knew and liked made the arrant nonsensicality of our supposedly shared values far clearer for me than they ever had been before. I wanted to get that judge's name and expose him; get him, somehow.

Betty couldn't understand why I was so angry. She told me to stop being daft. Occupational hazard. She'd met worse bastards than that. I think she decided then not to risk telling me about some of the really bad experiences she's had, in case I took off after some violent client with an axe.

Anyway, I'm glad she could tell me about that, even if there are all those things she won't talk about. I think she has at least one kid, but she won't talk about that either. Maybe in another few years.

Betty and I have a very simple and satisfactory relationship; we screw, and I pay her. I remember that I used to think that any man who had to pay for it was a rather pathetic creature, and could not understand that quite a few of the rich, not unattractive men that I knew did just that. I think I understand now. The physical need is dealt with, but emotional commitment never even arises. Just a transaction. Easy to get along with. Clean and simple.

It's only recently I've started to worry about exactly why I'm doing this. Betty might be a mother figure to me. She doesn't look very similar, but there is a vague similarity. Worse, there's her man and my da.

Because he too was in the Bar-L. For most of my childhood, in fact.

You want to hear a sad wee story? I was five years old, having my birthday party in the flat in Ferguslie Park; my ma and four or five of my brothers and sisters. My ma had made a special effort for me, buying a cake and putting candles on it. I had a present, we all had paper hats, there were lots of bottles of skoosh to drink and that cake to eat, once I'd blown the candles out.

Only I never got a chance to, because my da came home after being down the pub, and he'd heard a rumour — I don't know; probably just somebody making a joke or some thoughtless remark— that my ma had been seeing some other man. He practically kicked the door in, stormed through to the kitchen, and picked my ma out of the seat. Us kids just sat and watched, amazed, frightened.

He held her by the chin, swiped her across the face with his other hand. I can still see her hair flying out, still hear the noise her head made as it cracked against the kitchen cabinet, smashing glass, sending cups and saucers flying. She fell, he picked her up and hit her again, shouting and swearing. She tried to beat him off, but he was too strong. He threw her down and started kicking her.

We were all just young. We sat on our seats and screamed, tears streaming down our faces, howling. Steven, a year older than me, jumped off his seat and went to help ma; he was battered across the face and fell back against the formica table, spilling our lemonade. My da stood over ma, kicking her and shouting and throwing mugs and cups and plates down at her; she was crumpled against the cupboard under the sink, sobbing, arms over her head, all curled up like a baby, blood flowing from her head. My da kicked her a few more times, then heaved the kettle out through the window. He turned the table over, skelped me and the others he could reach round the ear, then walked out.

We clustered round ma eventually, going down to where she lay on the lino, in that same position, and all of us were crying, close to hysterical.

Happy fifth birthday.

And I never did get to blowout my candles.

My da reappeared three nights later, with some flowers he'd stolen from a garden, brimming with contrition and tears. He hugged my ma and swore he'd never raise his hand to her again ... but then he always did that.

I must have taken it bad. I went to school that autumn, and did all right except that I wouldn't say or write or use the number five. For me, the numbers went; one, two, three, four, (blank), six, and so on. I wouldn't say the word, I wouldn't use the figure.

It was a blank space, something I didn't want to think about.

Took a school psychiatrist two years and a lot of patience (and tea and biscuits) to worm that out of me. I wouldn't think about it. I couldn't remember anything anywhere near my fifth birthday. I had terrible nightmares, about being chased by a lion or a bear or a tiger, and being beaten and mauled before I died/woke up, but I wouldn't remember anything about that birthday.

By the time I was persuaded to dig up that memory, my da was safely in Barlinnie prison. Killed a man. Nobody in particular; just a guy who annoyed him one night in a bar, and who happened to have a thin skull. Hard luck really. He'd been a regular visitor to the local nicks since before I was born; for stealing, assault; always when he was drunk. Not really a violent man, just a stupid one, a weak one. He knew he became belligerent when he drank, but he always thought that next time it would be different and he'd stay in control. So he kept on getting drunk and he kept on getting violent and he kept on getting into fights and he kept on getting sent to jail.

Here's my joke about my da. It so happens that he really did despise education; thought all students were wasters and poofs. He used to boast that he'd been to the University of Life (no, honestly; he really used to say that). Well my joke is; my da went to the University of Life... but he kept getting sent down.

Funny,eh?

He was eventually transferred to Peterhead prison, before Betty's husband went to Barlinnie, so they could never have met, which I think is a pity. He got out ten years ago. My ma took him back; by that time he was a wee, grey, broken man, and now he sits in their new house in Kilbarchan and stares at the telly all day. He won't touch drink or go out, and he goes to bed when my ma tells him. I don't know what they did to him to make him like that, but in my less charitable moments I can't help feeling it was no more than he deserved.

But maybe I'm just a callous bastard.

'Yer a bit pale yerself.'

'Hmm, what?' Betty rescued me from my memories. 'Pale?'

'Aye; ye look like ye've been in the jile yersel, so ye dae. An what's this?' Betty picked up one of my knuckle-skinned hands, inspecting it briefly then letting it fall back to the sheets. 'Didnae think you were a fighter. Whit ye been daein?'

'Nothing.' I looked at the grazes on my fingers, and flexed them.

'Aye ye have. Ah know whit fighter's hauns look like. Ye've been fightin, haven't ye? Whit wiz it aboot?'

'I haven't been fighting. I was climbing something and I grazed my knuckles.' (But I'm starting to wonder; did McCann tell the truth? Did I hit somebody? What about after McCann left me; I went to get a take-away curry somewhere after we split up. What happened after that? Was I in a fight? I suppose I could have been ... But no; I don't know how to fight. A street-wise twelve year old could probably take me, even when I was sober. I'd remember something as traumatic as... as a fight... wouldn't I?)

'Aye, ye fell doon the stairs. Pull the other wan; it's got bells on it.'

I laughed. 'I didn't fall; I was climbing.'

'Were ye trying tae break in somewhere?'

'No; it was just... I was drunk. Just climbing. I wasn't trying to nick anything.' I put my hands under the sheets and lay on my back.

I lay, she sat, silent for a while. I stared up at the high ceiling of the tower bedroom for a while. I was thinking. 'You know,' I said eventually, 'I've never stolen anything in my life.' I looked at her. 'Isn't that extraordinary?'

'Bloody amazin,' Betty said, dark eyebrows lifting briefly. She leant down, subtracted another fag from the packet. 'Ye sure?'

'I think so.' I nodded. How on earth did I get through my childhood and youth without nicking anything? All my friends did. Almost everybody I knew did. I didn't; I was frightened. I always imagined what it would be like getting caught; the guilt, the awful feeling of knowing you'd been told not to do something, having done it and then being caught and punished. The appalling sequentiality of it, as though it was all pre-ordained, already set up. I couldn't bear that. Fear stopped me. Fear of guilt. Fear of the sheer embarrassment. Fear of what my mother would say.

So instead I ended up feeling guilty about not joining in with my friends.

Betty lit another cigarette. I lay there thinking.

I didn't think I'd even stolen any hearts. Not with my looks. I had my fans when I was Weird, and sure some of them were female, but that was different. It's a very dubious proposition indeed that fans actually love their idols; they worship them but they don't, can't, love them. It might feel like love, but have kids, adolescents, suddenly learned how to tell what is and isn't love? Jesus, I didn't know when I was that age. I don't even know very much more about it all now, and I've been trying to work it out for half my life.

But even if you can call the glorification of the average star 'love', I wasn't even a normal idol. I think I was chosen by some kids as a sort of anti-hero figure, proof that you didn't have to be pretty to be in rock, but there was also a sort of adult-baiting perversity about making me an object of adulation. Kids stuck posters of me up on their walls to shock their parents. Weird leered down, mirror-shaded, wild-haired, scowl-mouthed, from thousands of bedroom walls, something menacing but contained; a safe cheap thrill and a kind of token totem of glossy threat. I displaced the prettier stars so that kids could make a point; as though, in its own small, modest way, my elevation to honorary stardom prefigured the half-sincere, half-pretended disgustrionics of punk.

Or maybe I was a different sort of threat, and kids encountering parental resistance to their latest choice of clothes or decoration used me for comparison; you think this is bad; think yourself lucky I don't look like him. Could be even simpler of course; maybe they just found my big stupid face funny.

No, I don't think I broke or stole any hearts. I didn't steal Inez'; that was safely under lock and key, somewhere deep inside her. It had been stolen once before, and she'd had to pay a lot — in exactly what currency of the heart, I never did find out — to get it back, battered and torn. It would never escape or be stolen again. She was in control from the start. We lived on her terms.

Christine... no, she loved me for a while, or said she did, but it was as a friend, I think... Maybe even as a pet. That was the way I felt with her; like a big stupid clumsy dog; likeable and loveable, but too keen to please, too liable to jump up and slobber all over your face, and slap ornaments off tables with a wagging tail.

There were others: Anthea, Rebecca, Sian, Sally, Sally-Ann, Cindy, Jas, Naomi ... but I don't think they really lost their hearts to me either, and I don't think I wanted them to, really. Too much responsibility. I wanted to be liked, not loved. Love was dangerous. Love could cripple, love could kill.

But I never wrote songs like that. My songs, when they were about love, were fairly conventional, if a little more enlightened than the standard of the time (and one hell of a lot more enlightened and unobjectionable than what you'll find in the con�temporary rump of rock, heavy metal). The most I ever did was write sarcastically about love songs ('Love in Transit'; 'Well when the seas freeze, and the air leaves, will you really still be loving? Will you behave, past the grave? And are the ghosts of dead lovers still coming?'), which is better than nothing, but not vastly so.

I was too conventional altogether. I ought to have spread my wings, flexed my muscles; all that shit. I could have written different songs, I could have been more radical, more adven�turous, more daring. Instead I just kept on churning out the same old stuff. Oh it changed a little as we went on, but not that much. Why did I keep doing that? It wasn't the money; after the first couple of albums, and finding the number of cover versions being done, I knew I could live quite comfortably for the rest of my life without writing another note, and that was really all that con�cerned me. So what was it? Why did I produce all those nice hummable songs?

Because it was easy. Because it was expected of me. Because it was what people seemed to want. Because they always seemed to see more in what I was doing than I did, and the tunes I thought all very standard and conventional were praised as stretching the limits of the popular song, and creating a fusion of rock and classical styles. (What? My knowledge of classical music began and ended with the fact I didn't like it. I thought you fused rock and classical music by putting strings on a backing track... and we only ever used strings twice in about sixty songs... But if that's what people say, who am I to argue?)

But I should have made the effort. I ought to have experimented more. I was writing the sort of songs I wanted to write, but I should have wanted to write different sorts of songs. I know me; it wouldn't have been difficult to interest myself in something a bit more challenging and original. If I'd done that, if I'd listened to different types of music, I'd have thought, 'Hey, I quite like this. This is okay... but I could do it better,' and at least have made the attempt. But I never got round to it.

Betty's exhaled smoke made a grey-brown cloud across the tall window on the far side of the bright, warm room. Smoke rolled slowly against grey cloud. A few seagulls crossed the sky.

There was a little more noise than usual from St Vincent Street; they were ceremonially opening the wonderful new Britoil building across the road, and the area was thick with police and security men.

I had, reluctantly, allowed a policeman into the folly that morning, to check the roof of the tower for snipers. I don't think he liked the look of me any more than I liked the look of him, but at least I hadn't had a police marksman stationed on my roof.

Betty sighed and stubbed her fag out in the saucer, exhaling smoke and lying back. Her breasts were slipping out again. The very tops of her aureoles were exposed above the sheet. She licked her lips, gazing vacantly at the far wall. She stretched, still not looking at me, put one of her arms back behind her, between her head and the white plaster wall; blonde hair spilled over her smooth forearm, gold on white. I lay there, thinking about what her mouth was going to taste like; faint disgust and extreme nostalgia combining.

Maybe I could ask her not to smoke when she's with me; I'm the client after all. But I couldn't. That would put a barrier between us, make everything less natural. I'd no sooner ask her to do that than ask her to do some of the 'special' things some of her other clients requested.

But I guessed I was a fool to pretend that my relationship with Betty was anything other than a commercial transaction. Can't buy me friendship. Well, I'd settle for sex and a chat. Even if the sex was rubberised (Betty is — very responsibly — worried about AIDS) and the chat only reminds me of things I'd rather forget.

'Ah suppose you're gettin randy again?' Betty looked at me disapprovingly. I was surprised.

'How did you guess?'

'Two fags.' Betty put the saucer/ashtray down on the bare wooden floor and lay down, turning to me. 'You alwiz want it again aftir two fags.'

I laughed, but uncertainly. Am I really so predictable? Betty put out one hand to me, rolled on her back.

'Men,' she said, through a sigh. I kissed her.

Her mouth tasted of smoke, her hair smelled of cheap perfume. A curiously comforting combination.

'There's still a funny smell in here,' she said, unrolling a Durex down my dick.

'You get to like it eventually,' I told her.

She wrinkled her nose up, lay back again. 'You're weird,' she said. Then: 'Whit's so funny?'