Filth

The Tales Of A Tapeworm

The hospital discharge procedures. The discharge in my pants. In my flannels. I wait for the taxi for Robertson in the A&E.

– Is there nobody who can take you home? a concerned nurse asks.

– No . . . I say.

She looks at me with a sick pity and then leaves to attend to her duties. She’s replaced by a jakey who sits sucking on a purple tin. He hands it to me. I take a swig, expecting to wince as the sickening, syrupy liquid hits my gullet, but I feel nothing.

– I’ve been comin here for ages, he tells me. – Got off the skag, but I was straight on this stuff.

Tennents never advertise the purple tin. It’s not a recreational drug; they know it’s as strong a drug as heroin or crack. They know that you don’t need to market hard drugs like those. The desperate will always find them. Scotland’s greatest export next to whisky. The white man cometh. He take your land. He give the whisky. Just when you think it safe to go back in water he give you old purple tin. The white Caledonian Ku Klux Klan are coming.

– Taxi for Robertson.

I’m going home.

The nurse is back. She has a nice smell. Not like the hospital. Not like the jakey. Not like me. – I wish there was someone you could stay with, she says, touching my wrist.

I’m never really alone, but the voices are silent. For now.

I smile and follow the cabbie. I wish there was someone I

The purple tin will destroy America once they import it over there . . . those Russian jakeys begging in the streets under capitalism, we’ll do those cunts as well.

Obliterate surplus labour!

Obliterate them with the old purple tin!

Don’t give em Ecstasy! We don’t want them dancing! Keep them dulled, staggering and incoherent as they die! Make it glamorous. Put it on celluloid, put it on hoardings. Just keep the real thing as far away from us as possible.

And the white race of Caledonia will stalk the Earth as juggernaut superbeings . . . like from that album by that shite heavy-metal band . . . who the fuck was it . . .

Carole, you standing there and me bending your fingers back, loaded up with cocaine and alcohol and you looking at me with your large eyes in a weird state way beyond fear and me trying to think of why I should stop and trying to feel something that will make me stop before that crack

that crack

and your scream changing now; more broken and desperate than ever before, me making you feel but me still feeling

nothing.

How did it make you feel?

But it wasn’t me that did it. We all have to take our share of the blame.

We can cope with this nothingness. We know it too well to be disabled by it. But it’s so cold. The central heating seems to have broken down. The pilot light has blown out. Carole knew how to fix it. We, I, we consider getting a fire together, but it all seems too much: the fetching of coals, the finding of firelighters (is there a new pack?), the kindling, the lighting.

No.

We have knocked on Tom Stronach’s door a couple of times, but there is no reply. We once heard the television, so we know that Julie is in. The New Year’s Day game. Stronach will be playing in that. But no, the papers said that he was dropped. I would think that he would attend though. Surely. We venture out to Safeway’s for food.

We cannot move our head as we walk.

We hear our breathing in the cold air: rhythmic, deep. It puts us into a kind of a trance. We are still alive. We are in the supermarket. Breathing.

The tins and packets on the shelves are just colours and shapes to us. We cannot recognise the products, cannot read the labels. If we take one of each then the chances are that we will have enough of the right things.

This one.

That one.

This one.

– Detective Ser . . . Mister Robertson . . . I hear a voice at my side.

I turn round to see her, a woman. She looks . . .

. . . she has a large smile on her face. Her hair is nice and her teeth are so white. She wears jeans and a beige polo-neck sweater under a brown lined leather jacket. There’s a sadness in her eyes.

Who is she? I’m befuddled and besotted by lack of sleep and all those voices in my head, clamouring for attention . . . for recognition . . .

All I can say is, – How have you been doing?

– Not bad . . . not good, her face screws up and she laughs bitterly. I really want to see her smile again. She looks so beautiful when she smiles. – I’m really missing him. Why is it only the good die young? she asks me, and she asks it in a real way, as a real question, looking at me as if she thinks that I might know the answer.

– Eh . . . I . . . eh . . .

Now she’s seeing me for the first time. She sees my surgical support collar from where I hurt my neck in the fall. She sees the six-pack of the old purple tin in my shopping basket. I hadn’t realised it was there. It was like they just jumped in of their own accord. She’s seeing me now. She’s seeing a jakey with a four-day growth, a manky overcoat, stained flannels and old trainers.

– Are you alright? she asks.

– Eh? Oh, this, I laugh, looking down at myself. – Undercover, I whisper conspiratorially.

– Isn’t it a bit extreme for shoplifting?

– Ha! This isnae shoplifting. This is huge-scale corporate fraud I’m investigating. I nod over to the staff offices at the back of the supermarket.

– I see, she says vaguely, as her son comes over to her side. – You remember Mister Robertson. The policeman. He tried to help your dad.

– Hiya, the wee guy smiles, but as he clocks me he takes a step back. I smell my flannels. Wafting up the inside of my coat under my nose.

– It’s okay Euan. Mister Robertson’s doing detective work. He’s dressed up as a tramp. It must be exciting being undercover, eh Euan?

The wee guy forces another smile.

– Hiya, I smile back. I look at his Hearts tracksuit. The new one. A Christmas present. I point at the crest. – So you’re a jambo eh? Did you go yesterday?

– Naw . . . he says sadly.

– Colin used to . . . his mother begins.

– Who’s your favourite player? I ask, expecting a Neil McCann or a Colin Cameron.

– Tom Stronach, I suppose, he says, then smiles doubtfully, – but he’s no as good as he used to be.

– My next-door neighbour! I’ll have to get Tom to sort us out with some special tickets for Tynecastle. Would you like that?

– Aye, that would be barry.

– Speak properly Euan, his mother says. She looks at me. – You’re really kind, but I couldn’t let you . . .

– It’s no problem. Honestly.

We exchange addresses and phone numbers.

– That’s a really kind man. Mister Robertson. A good man, I, we, hear her tell the kid as they depart.

Our hands are almost cut in two by the handles on the plastic bags, but we are unaware of this until we reach home.

Who are we?

Who are we?

How did we feel?

We put the hands under the warm tap to help our circulation, but the water is boiling from the electric immersion. We flinch with the scalding pain and shed tears at the iniquity of the situation: that transgressors are living better lives than we are currently able to. More festive television, and a load of fuckin

So we watch television. At some point Toal comes tae the hoose. My first foot. At least he comes here, rather than compelling us go in there. That evil, evil place. Some of them would have, Niddrie would have. We have been officially on the sick, our neck in a surgical support collar.

– It might no really seem appropriate Bruce, but Happy New Year.

– Happy New Year Bob, I hear a voice coming from my stiff, cold, numb lips.

Toal explains to us that we are now suspended following an inquiry of the internal variety, the type of all our inquiries.

– Don’t worry, we’ll do what we can, he tells us, looking around our hoose. He’s not taken his expensive-looking camel coat or his leather gloves off. He looks like a football manager. Like the guy who manages Wimbledon, him that played for Spurs. Steaming breath comes from his mouth. A few feet away in our fireplace lie the ashes of his manuscript.

We cannot nod while we are wearing our support collar. – Appreciate it, we say meekly.

Toal is trying to be firm and compassionate at the same time. He must make us aware of the gravity of the situation, but also offer hope that things will improve. We cannot even feel sorry for ourselves any more. This is a bad sign. We think.

– Listen Bruce, we’ve obviously had to withdraw your application . . . for the promotion. Now is not the right time for you to meet with the promotion board. You see that, don’t you?

We understand what Toal is saying. We cannot be bothered responding. They’ve now taken the job we coveted, the one which was ours by right, but the sense of loss that we feel is strangely negligible.

Toal’s looking around the house with distaste. It’s a mess: aluminium takeaway cartons, chip-shop wrappers, beer cans (purple? aye, it’s found us at last!), plates with rotting scraps of food on them, even a pile of dried sick in one corner. – Listen Bruce, Toal’s face pinches as he allows his nostrils to acknowledge the stench we have long been oblivious to, – you can’t live like this. Is there nobody we can get in touch with, to make sure you’re being looked after?

– No . . .

BUNTY

SHIRLEY

CHRISSIE

CAROLE

Carole. The only one who could give us anything. The rest would just take. We have nothing to give them. But Carole will never return.

– You sure?

– I’ll sort it out boss, we tell Toal. His face looks sourly down at us. – Honest, I try to force a smile.

– I want you to Bruce. The police welfare people will be round to see you soon. They’ll be able to offer professional help. I know things seem pretty bleak at the moment, but you’re not the first officer on the job who’s lost it and you won’t be the last. Busby’s had his problems. Then there was Clell. He seems on the mend now. Bruce . . .

Toal looks a bit sheepish. He’s rubbing his gloved hands together.

– Aye?

– You’ve got friends you know, he says softly. Then he smiles slightly. – We’re no as daft as you think. Your wife. We know she was having an affair with a black guy. It’s no a big city Bruce, and it’s a very white one. Things like that get noticed, no matter how discreet the parties are. But, as I said, you’ve got friends. We look after our own.

His words hit me in a slow, stupefying flood. I feel like a test-crash dummy on low impact. I’m trying to work out what he means. – You mean you knew . . . all the time . . . you . . .

– Don’t say anything Bruce, Toal says sternly, – Don’t say a word to me.

He turns and pulls the net curtains and looks out the window. Then he faces me, keen-eyed: – Sometimes things are best left the way they are. There’s reputations, morale and careers at stake. In some ways, aye, it’s penny wise and pound foolish. We’re a bit short-termist in our thinking. But then again, we’re burdened wi this wee problem of three score and ten. Needs must, he grins.

Same rules apply. I try to smile but I feel my face frozen, as if all the muscles and nerves in it have been severed.

– You know, all this stuff about a mystery woman? I wasted a lot of time on her, he laughs and shakes his head looking at me, slightly embarrassed. – I overheard Bob Hurley saying to you in the bar one time: They’re all fucking Jackie Trent. You know, I thought that this Jackie Trent girl was involved and was having it off with most of the guys on the investigation in order to get them to cover things up. I spent ages looking for a Jackie Trent to run checks on. Then I realised it was all just some canteen in-joke, a bit of silly rhyming slang.

– Yes . . . Jackie Trent, I hear the words reverberate in my head and parrot mindlessly out from between my lips.

– Anyway, I’m sick of it all. Funny Bruce, I misjudged you. You see, somebody half-inched a private document of mine. From my office. The bastard stole the hard copy, erased the file and the back-up disk. I had my suspicions, he looks at me and shrugs.

We know that our face is too blank to register anything.

– I got a bit paranoid for a while. I was testing out everyone, trying to find cracks. I mean, all that stuff I was giving you about poor Inglis, as if I care who he shags. You were good though Bruce, I’ll give you that. Anyway, I was daft to have this stuff at the work. I was doing some private stuff, during breaks you know, maybe when I had a spare minute. Sometimes I’d stay late and work on it, it’s quieter at the office than at home. I thought that perhaps you knew, well . . . what we knew. You see Bruce, I was writing a screenplay based on the case of a racist murder. I based it loosely on the Wurie murder, with my own fictive embellishments of course. In my screenplay, the murder is being covered up by a racist cop who has a motive . . . not to solve the crime.

– How does it end . . . I ask too quickly.

– Oh, we fit up some thugs. A happy-ever-after story.

I nod. The sort of ending people like.

– Yes, I got a fright when the document was stolen and the files erased. At first I suspected . . . certain parties. But I knew that the person would have had to have read it, and I would have been able to tell. Of course, I had another copy on the hard disk at home, so it wasn’t too much of an inconvenience. You can’t be too careful, eh! I still might finish it and send it off to a production company. A pipe dream, but nothing ventured, eh?

– Aye . . . that’s good . . . that you’ve done it . . . I mean that you have an interest . . .

– Aye. I’m fed up on the force. Had it up to here, a leather glove salutes his forehead. – Clell’s right. The law spends too much time demonising ordinary people who’re just trying to get on with their lives. Society’s changed and the law hasn’t kept pace; so it’s us, the mugs, who have to enforce them, who get it all in the neck. I’m sick of it. There’s enough genuine bad guys to lock up without sending some daft kids on a H.M.P. University of Crime course for smoking weed or selling pills. You can’t criminalise people for a consumer preference. Might as well jail them for preferring Cornflakes tae All Bran. A load of fuckin nonsense, he shakes his head. – Anyway, I have to go.

I feel an anxiety rising in my chest. I want him to stay. No. I want him to tell me something. I have to ask.

– Boss, one thing. What happens to the guy in your script . . . the, eh racist cop?

– Not got to that bit yet Bruce. Maybe you could help me! he smiles. – Anyway, the welfare will be round soon. As I said, try to hang on in there.

Toal departs.

A good man.

We are alone. We switch on the television. There is nothing on.

No. We love only ouerselves.

No. This is not us. We are thinking of somebody else.

Rhona.

We have to think of Rhona. The mob of hate reminded me, always the mob of hate. There were the pit villagers and then Gorman and Setterington’s thugs. In between them, another mob. Who?

No, it does us no good to think of that.

because it’s done and it’s in the fuckin past

I can’t even eat a thing

– Come if you want, I’m telling her on the phone, – just come if you want.

I put the receiver down on the cradle and I realise that I don’t even know who I was talking to. It was a her though. But I don’t know who it was. Bunty? Chrissie? Shirley? The polis welfare woman? Carole?

Naw, it wisnae Carole.

I’m sitting here inspecting the rash on my thighs. I’ve taken a felt-tipped pen and drawn the border around the extremity of the infected skin. This way I’ll be able to calculate the rate at which the infection spreads. If I could calculate my entire skin surface, I could work out how long it would take for me to be completely covered in the rash.

I’ll fuckin well tell Rossi. I’ll have the information before that useless quack can get it. In three years, four months, twelve days and six and a half hours from now, your patient, Detective Sergeant, no, not now Detective Inspector, Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson will be just one, big festering scab.

Is that news?

You question my method of calculation? My methods are my methods are my methods. I do not give an Aylesbury Duck.

I rise and go to the window. Those are snow storm clouds gathering.

Rhona!

Carole!

Stacey!

I take out her picture and stick it back on the sideboard. She used tae wear braces on her teeth, the wee yin. They really straightened them out. A good thing, though I was against it at first. She never wore anything on her leg though.

The kitchen is smelling bad. Something has died in here. I open the back door. It’s cold and I’m wearing only my boxer shorts and my dressing gown, which hangs open but it’s good to see the snow fall again. Like the Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye film White Christmas, where they open the patio doors of the General’s holiday inn in Vermont and the snow tumbles down and they burst into song and the closing credits come up. I sip on another purple tin as I watch the snow cascade down. I sing to myself: I’mmm steaming, it’s a shite Christmas . . .

There’s something on the ground, in the garden . . .

What is it? A sack of coal. A find.

I drag it into the cold, dark room. I slowly build up the fire and light it. It catches on quickly. I sit transfixed by the lapping flames which provide the only light in the room, except for a small, annoying flash on the sideboard next to me, which throws a dull, sick red tint over Stacey’s picture.

I switch on the answer machine to play back my messages: – Bruce, Bunty. Please call me. Beep. – Bruce, Bunty. I’m worried about you darling. They said you were sick. I called but you weren’t in. Call me. Beep. – It’s Chrissie. Call me sometime sexy! Beep. – Hello Bruce. It’s Gus here. Hope all is well and that you’ll soon be fighting fit again. Gie’s a wee tinkle! Beep – Mister Robertson, it’s Heather Sim here. Euan’s mum. It would be great if you could get tickets for Tynecastle for the Celtic match on the twenty-first. I don’t know if that’s convenient or not. If you could get back to me on six-one-two-seven-double-four three. Thanks again. Beep. – Brucey baby, it’s Chrissie from-be Hynde here; the last of the great Pretenders! You haven’t been answering either your calls or your callers. I was round yesterday. I know you’re in. There are roadworks outside. Your gas needs turned off. What’s the matter big boy? Can’t you stand the heat? Call me if you just happen to rediscover your bollocks! Beep. – Anybody home? Oh well . . . Beep. – Bruce . . . please, please, please call me. It’s Bunty. Please Bruce. Beep. – Bruce . . . it’s Shirley . . . Bruce . . . call me . . . call me! Beep. – Bruce. Gus. Ah didnae git it Bruce. They didnae gie me it. Phone me Bruce, I want to take this up wi the Federation. Ye ken who they gave it tae! Beep. – Hello . . . Beep.

Enough of it. I disconnect the phone. More television, that’s what I need.

More television.

No. The channels, the voices, always the fuckin voices . . .

Then a knock on my door. I can’t be bothered but the knock’s getting louder and louder and it’s just like whoever it is is going to kick the door in, polis-style. I’m opening up and he’s here, standing in front of me in the doorway, and I’m looking over his shoulder, watching Tom Stronach’s BMW pull out and head down the road. The winter sun glints in my eye. The snowstorm. It’s gone. It’s just away. Fuckin hell.

– I had to come Bruce, he says to us. – I was worried about you. You’ve been through the fucking mill. I had to come, he repeats.

We want to close the door, but it seems easier to let him in. We say nothing, but we go through to our kitchen and sit down. We look outside at our garden, a dead mess. It was once so lovely. Carole liked working in it, I never did. I appreciated her efforts though. Liked to sit out there with a can of lager. Simple pleasures. Stacey’s swing . . . got that a few summers ago now. How many?

Ray follows me in and sits down opposite us. A concerned visitor.

– Of course Bruce, ah dinnae need tae tell ye that while I was chuffed aboot the promotion, it’s been a bitter-sweet experience for me. If you hadnae had that . . . well, the problems you’ve been huvin . . . well, you’d’ve walked it mate. Hus tae be said.

– Aye Ray, that’s the way it goes, we nod. This is what it’s about. This is what Gus’s message was about.

Lennox’s face is set in an evaluating smile, tight round the mouth, eyes searching but strangely dead and mechanical, the polis way. – Ken what your problem is, he laughs coldly, – ye dinnae practise what ye preach.

We can say nothing.

Lennox is talking to us in the manner that pretends it’s all for our welfare, rather than his gloating benefit. – You telt me Bruce. Mind what you says: You need to suss out what the party line was and then spiel out the script.

– Aye, I mind, we tell him.

– You see though Bruce, you have tae learn a new script. It’s like all that equal opps bullshit: just spout that at the cunts and do it with conviction. It’s just another wee code you rely on. That’s why the likes of Gillman . . . he shakes his head in a condescending smile. He’s rehearsed this speech alright. – Your behaviour has to be non-racist and non-sexist. You ken the score; all this equal opps stuff started when mass unemployment took its toll. You couldn’t have upwardly mobile schemies taking jobs from the sons and daughters of the rich! So you bring in a handful of overprivileged coons as a Trojan horse sop to equal opps, while making sure you keep the good salaried jobs for the educated bourgeoisie. You start to introduce minimum qualifications, make a uni degree essential where it had never been needed in the past. That way you weed out people that cannae bullshit your script. Of course, fuck all changes. In London coons just get to be truncheoned by a member of their own race once in a blue moon. You know the score.

Lennox gives me an I’ve-got-it-sussed wink.

– Yeah. This is true Ray.

– I’m no saying you’re a dinosaur Bruce, but you’ve allowed these cunts to paint you that way. Keep the cards close to yir chest mate.

– Close to the chest Ray, like I always told you.

– That’s what you told me, he says cheerfully. He looks around the room and he can’t hide his distaste. He stands to his feet. Lennox the victor, Robertson the vanquished.

Who would have thought it. Lennox perhaps.

– Anyway, Bruce, got to nash. There is just one thing, and I suppose it’s something that everybody feels when they get a promotion, you know, how to relate to the old mates and all of that.

He looks closely at us to see as if we understand. We are looking at him blankly. We have nothing to say.

– I can say this because we’re both law enforcement professionals Bruce, but your methods and mines are very different. Now I ken that we’ve pulled some shit in the past, but that’s finito now, all the coke and that shit. He looks hard and searchingly at me with an authority he’s never shown before. The authority of the man who knows he has the state queueing up behind him, on his side. – Savvy?

– Sure Ray, we say.

– Just as long as you realise how the old song goes: ‘These days are gone now, and in the past they must remain’, okay?

– Okay . . .

– And Bruce, nae hard feelings, eh mate?

– Naw Ray, you know me, I’m not one for living in the past. I’m sure you’ll do a great job as inspector.

Ray grips our shoulder harshly. – Thanks mate. Right, I’d better nash. See ye. Things to dae, people tae see.

– Aye. Cheerio Ray.

– Cheery bye bye Bruce . . . oh . . . Bruce, I saw that Bladesey the other day, doon the club at Shrubhill. We all gave him the cold-shoulder treatment. He looked a bit sheepish. Then Gillman went up and put him in the picture, in Dougie’s own inimitable style. So I doubt whether our Mister Blades will be showing his face in the craft again. Cheers then, Ray winks, making a clicking noise from the side of his mouth as he departs.

Click click click

Channel hopping.

I’m hearing the voices and I’m pressing the buttons on the handset to change the channels but it’s the voice in my head. That same, insistent soft voice, eating me up from the inside . . .

. . . I change channels . . .

. . . I change channels . . . a Bond film. This time it’s Roger Moore . . .

I change channels . . . cartoons . . . Walt Disney. Beauty and the Beast . . .

I change channels . . . adverts . . . real Scots read the Record . . .

I change channels: repeats of Please, Sir.

The telly goes off.

I don’t know whether it’s day or night. Some empty purple tins lie in front of me. The fire still flickers. A welfare woman called at some point. I can’t remember what she said. I need to do something.

I pull on some clothes and go outside, making my way towards Colinton Village. The only person I can think of visiting is my physician, Dr Rossi.

The waiting room is full of smelly old cunts, but I’ve got the upper hand on them now. I’m minging in this old coat! Take some of that ya snobby auld cunts. I produce a purple tin from my coat pocket.

– You can’t drink in here, the receptionist tells me. I flash my ID at her. – Police, I tell her. – Working undercover, I explain to the old wifies. One makes a twisted girn with those old, dried-out lips. I want to grab a syringe and fill it up with the contents of the old purple tin and shoot it right into those old lips, rehydrating them instantly! – Plastic surgery, I tell her, – modern techniques. Everybody can afford it, I raise my can to toast technology.

The receptionist calls me and I go in and see Rossi. His jaw drops as I enter, and if I gave a Luke and Matt Goss, I’d say his lack of bedside manner is unprofessional.

He’s the McDonald’s of medicine, and it takes him a shorter time to come to a diagnosis than it does for them to serve up a Big Mac.

– You’re depressed Mr Robertson. I don’t do this lightly, but I’m going to prescribe Prozac.

– Fine, we tell this physician.

Rossi though: something is different about him. It’s as if it’s just dawned on him that he’s approaching middle age and he’s never going to reach surgical greatness. This, prescribing pills to sad old cunts and being a glorified clerk, like polis, teachers, social workers all are nowadays, this is as good as it gets. Our normally buoyant physician is giving off the defeated, depressive stink of a man whose own limitations have caught up with him. It’s a smell we’ve grown accustomed to lately. It oozes from every sick pore in my own body, as surely as the stale whisky sweat which accompanies it.

When we, I, we are leaving his surgery and walking through the village we screw the prescription into a ball and sling it in the Water of Leith at Colinton Dell. Then we go to the Royal Scot for a pint. This is the only fuckin drug we need: peeve. It was that fuckin coke that fucked us up, that cunt Lennox. Brought us down to his level then nipped in and stole the job that was ours. We should have picked that up, should have seen the signs. But we were weak.

We must now be strong.

Sleep fails to take us during the night. Thoughts are flying through our head like an endless merry-go-round. We can see the merry-go-round, our wife and child waving to us from the stupid horses as we sit and drink our tea in the Piazza of Princes Street Gardens, always distracted, lost in our own thoughts, our dreams of revenge against those who transgress the laws of the state.

We cannot break the cycle by having a fuckin wank cause every time we conjure up a picture of a woman we see the yobs’ faces or those of Lennox or Toal, and arousal, to our relief, is impossible under those circumstances.

Terror’s grip on us seems physical; sometimes it slackens but it never lets go.

We are walking again, through the Dell, through the long passage, which is like an old railway tunnel. There is one point in this tunnel, the point we have now reached, where it bends and you cannot see the light ahead, nor can you see it if you look back. A couple of steps forward and the light shines, a couple of steps backward and a glance over your shoulder and it’s the same story. But here, just at this point: this is limbo. There is the sense that if you stay at this point for too long, stop at this point of oblivion for a certain amount of time, you will just cease to exist.

And we cannot move.

The tunnel swirls around us, the stone configuration visible, starting to spin through the filthy, bruised darkness. We hear voices, but we are not tense.

Then we are sadly not in oblivion. We have no sensation of leaving the tunnel or the wooded glen, but know that we have somehow gone back up on to the main road through the noise of the occasional car and its lights.

Then, the Napier University and the rise of twilight and the chirping of birds up towards the gardens at Gilmore Place and then we are at the King’s Theatre.

Stacey and Carole and Stacey’s wee pal Celeste with us at the pantomine, to see Mother Goose featuring Stanley Baxter and Angus Lennie out of Crossroads.

We saw it.

Oh no we didn’t.

Oh yes we did.

It’s light and we are cold; our teeth chatter together. A jakey coughs an insult at us, or it could be a request for money. We look in our pockets and there is a twenty-pound note and some change.

We take out the twenty-pound note and hand it to the jakey who sees the pain in our eyes and his own eyes focus in a grateful then fearful sobriety as he takes the note and mumbles

We travel in the opposite direction, back the way we came. In a shop window we see our thick, dark growth. We should have shaved.

What is there to do but go home.

Home.