GUILT TRIPPER (2 page)

CHAPTER: 2

 At Oran Mor, Judith
got befriended by a pair of local celebrities. Bob Fitzgerald was singer-songwriter
with a band called The Squeaky Kirk, his fiancée, Ingrid, a model in TV
commercials for a furniture chain. Not only did they buy her champagne, but
invited her to their engagement party the following Friday as well.

 During the week in
between, everything went well, not least because Judith had won a place on her
course. Most evenings she utilized her half price taxi driver, who always
seemed strangely put out if she went anywhere other than Oran Mor. Indeed, he
seemed positively obsessed with the place, constantly quizzing her about it
whenever he picked her up outside. In fact, the only time he didn’t look
disappointed not to be going there was the night of the party, which he seemed
more excited about than she did.

 Bob and Ingrid lived
in a trendy red-stone tenement near the university, off a blacked out landing
on the second floor. Here, Judith struggled through the packed apartment
searching for a familiar face, until Ingrid grabbed her by the hand and led her
away, zigzagging through the crowd to a big brick walled kitchen, where she
poured the pair of them a flute of champagne. With Swedish blonde, elbow length
hair, high cheekbones and striking cornflower blue eyes, Judith thought this
tall, svelte English woman was possibly the most beautiful female she’d ever
met. Wearing a lemon coloured silk cocktail dress, she could only have been
about twenty-six, making her fourteen years younger than Bob, who was an
athletic six foot-two with a tanned, horsey face and expensively styled, spiky
brown coiffeur. A conceited man, he wore a white designer suit and a pink silk
shirt, making him unmistakable as he moved about the party alone, watching
people enjoy his champagne like a proud chef watches happy diners.

 Ingrid and Judith
were soon joined by others and a conversation ensued about art. With everyone
name dropping the contemporary painters they knew personally, Judith thought it
apt to mention her taxi driver and produced his card, printed with the name
DANNY WHITE. Ingrid’s smile disappeared. She excused herself from the other
guests and shepherded Judith to the twin Belfast sinks in the far corner, which
were filled with bottles of Moet and ice.

 “You say this Danny
White is a taxi driver? Only, the Danny White I know is supposed to be looking
after his ill mother full time.”

 “Yes — that’s the
one!”

 Ingrid took another
long look at the card then disappeared, leaving her guest to go among the
designer clad crowd. They proved a genial bunch, though Judith was a little
upset by their treatment of a bespectacled, lanky Englishman called Dickens. Not
only had they laughed on mass when he’d introduced himself to her as a writer,
but they’d also ridiculed his ragged brown suit and jibed about him being a
scrounger. This proved the final straw, prompting her to drain her third flute
of champagne and leave. As the apartment door boomed shut behind her, though,
she stopped suddenly in the darkness, hearing voices coming from the landing
above. One of them was definitely Ingrid’s and the other, a broad Scot’s, was
familiar too.

 “How do you think I
felt, having to choose between my mother and my girlfriend?”

 “Oh don’t be
ridiculous!”

 “It’s the truth! You
weren’t prepared to stick around coz you didn’t want to be held back. You knew
that my looking after mum would prevent you from having all the goodies you
were after. I can understand that, she’s not your mother. But how could you
choose materialism over love?”

 Now Judith knew it
was her taxi driver, Danny, no mistake.

 “Love?” Ingrid
laughed mockingly. “Life’s short Danny and us girls haven’t got time to mope
about like you…we’ve got nests to build…babies to contemplate. That’s when
romantic love ends and we have to start being practical and sensible. Sometimes
you can’t buy the prettiest coat. You have to buy the one that’s going to keep
you warm.”

 “So you don’t love
Bob then?”

 “No. The very notion
of being in love with somebody else negates what you were convinced was love in
the first place. It’s a catch-22. If you’ve only ever had one love then how do
you know it’s the most you can be in love? Likewise, if you’ve had several or
more then you no longer know how to value it. In other words, there’s no such
thing! Love and Communism Danny, they’re just ideals, and you’re just a
hopeless romantic. I mean, how many girlfriends have you had since me?” There
was a silence. “How many Danny? Over the last eight years, how many?”

 “None.”

 “See. Rather than
accept that love is just a hallucination experienced by the young, you cling
onto the idea, like a religion. To have another relationship — not love, but a
grown up relationship — would mean betraying the saintly image you have of
yourself. You’d rather martyr yourself to loneliness than be accused of being
fickle, just like you martyr yourself to poverty to avoid being implicated with
‘capitalism’. Grow up!”

 “Just because you’re
devoid of honour, don’t ridicule mine.”

 “God, you’re so
sanctimonious!”

 “Ingrid, you walked
out on me coz you couldn’t handle my responsibility for my mother…Yes, that’s
right, the very sort of practical, sensible responsibility you said you had to
renounce our love for. Then you ran off to Italy with my best friend, coz he
didn’t have any baggage, and, more importantly, he’d just released his second
album and could buy you the middle-class existence you wanted.”

 “No Danny! That’s the
version you choose to believe because you’re frightened of confronting yourself…Do
you want to know the truth? Do you, really?”

 “Come on then, tell
me!”

 “I’d been plucking
up the courage to finish the relationship months before your mother fell ill. Then
I postponed my actions because of the stroke. I stuck with you for another six,
hard months…and they were hard because I was forcing myself, trying to convince
myself it was right so as to avoid hurting you any further. So don’t you dare
call me selfish! You’re not the only person who makes sacrifices you know!”

 “So it was all a lie
then?”

 “No! But I couldn’t
put up with your ugliness any more.”

 “Oh thanks.”

 “Not physical
ugliness, ugly personality traits…traits that were destroying me.”

 “Go on,” Danny’s
voice was quavering now with emotion.

 “Your stubborn
inflexibility on love is reflected in your politics, your morals, even in your
art for God’s sake. Your all or nothing crusade…well, it’s not natural…it’s
suffocating! At first it was really attractive. I was a young drama student and
your views helped me to view the world differently — something essential to my
acting that I’m forever indebted to you for. But as your opinions kept going
round on a loop, while the rest of the world was changing all about us, you
started becoming a parody of yourself. You had all this anger at the human race
and it was caught up in a non-productive, vicious cycle. Put bluntly, you were
a miserable bastard and you were making me miserable too. I mean this in all
honesty Danny: it disappoints me that you haven’t changed.”

 There was a long
silence. Judith tensed up, mindful not to make any noise which might betray her
eavesdropping.

 “So why did you go
with Bob then?”

 “Some of what you
say is true, of course. But again, only you could portray positive things in
such a negative way. Yes, Bob’s ambition and success are important to me. We’ve
been together for eight years, not because of ‘love’ but because we’re compatible.
We share needs and aspirations. We can travel together. See, Bob’s not an
absolutist like you. He doesn’t shout at me because I state an opinion he
doesn’t believe in. We have dialectical conversations. We work together...You
know, Danny, you’re a very intelligent man, but there’s no beauty in being
right all the time. I mean, why is it that all your wisdom is so negative? Most
of us ignorant people go hunting for goodness among the horror, but you already
know there’s no goodness and so you search for horror to bolster your case.”

There was an intense
silence before Ingrid spoke again, trying to mitigate any upset she’d caused. “Will
you come inside for a lemonade or something?”

 “No, it’s best I get
off.”

 “You’ve got to move
forward…start being positive… come on, eh?”

 Judith removed her
heels and tip-toed downstairs, wincing at the crackling sound made by grains of
chipped stone beneath her feet. Outside, she went to get a well-earned
cigarette from her handbag, only to discover that she’d left it in the party. When
she returned, she found Danny encircled by old friends in the kitchen, where he
cut a startling contrast in his market clothes. However, everyone seemed
genuinely delighted to see him, but refrained from being too demonstrative, due
the presence of Bob. The latter stared down at the floor, which was
understandable considering the circumstances. Being forced to stand with his
former best friend, whose girlfriend he’d stolen, must have been excruciating.

 Judith weaved her
way to the far corner of the kitchen and reclaimed her handbag from near the
ice filled sinks. On turning round again she jolted. A dark haired, brooding
character called Herman was leering at her from the periphery of the circle
surrounding Danny, oblivious that he was himself under surveillance. Among the
babbling crowd over his shoulder, a small, skinny girl with long, red curly
locks stared at him in a sort of obsessive trance, until the sound of exploding
glass brought the whole party to an abrupt halt. Seething with jealousy at the
attention being lavished on his rival, Bob Fitzgerald had hurled a champagne
flute at the architrave of the door, showering those in its vicinity with small
pieces of glass, before barging out. Of course, Ingrid ran after him and
neither would be seen again that night. They’d booked into a plush hotel in
town until the Monday anyway, so as to recover from their hangovers while the
cleaners tidied the apartment.

CHAPTER: 3

The following Tuesday
morning, Judith took the roof down on her Aquarius blue, Volkswagen Beetle and
started for home, driving in warm sunshine, across the city centre’s sloping
gridiron of fine Victorian buildings. Coming out along Duke Street in the East
End, she passed the Great Eastern Hotel: a homeless hostel in a former garments
factory, six sandstone floors high and thirty windows long. Around its front
steps, a dozen young men wearing jogging trousers, matted fleeces and baseball
caps were congregated, smoking cigarettes and drinking from a can of strong
beer, a one legged character among them on crutches. While passing, Judith did
a double take. A bespectacled figure in an old brown suit had just come out of
the doors and was making his way down the steps through the huddle, sucking on a
roll up cigarette. She slowed down until he drew level then cruised alongside
him.

 “Dickens?”

 Dickens stopped to
stare into the now stationary vehicle, then, realizing who it was, rolled his
eyes and carried on. Judith felt sorry for the guy because of the
condescending, if not downright nasty manner in which the Oran Mor crew had
treated him. He’d obviously taken great offence to their mocking and, she
reckoned his rudeness now was due to him associating her with them. So, feeling
guilty, she gave it another go and cruised alongside him once more.

 “Dickens, can I give
you a lift somewhere?”

 Dickens stopped dead
in his tracks, turned, tugged on his roll-up then sighed heavily, filling
Judith’s face with Old Holborn tobacco smoke.

 “I’m on my way to
Herman’s – to do his garden,” he said glumly, like a sulking schoolboy.

 The mere mention of
this name seemed to paralyse Judith with fear.

 “Err…I can err…I can
drop you there,” she replied, hesitantly.

 Dickens climbed into
the car, which now had a hooting traffic jam behind it. Following his
directions, Judith drove across the River Clyde to a leafy part of
Pollokshields, where sandstone villas and Baronial mansions stood set back from
the road. On learning that Herman had already left for a hospital appointment,
she accepted her passenger’s invitation to a cup of tea and followed him into a
seven bed-roomed, blonde-stone gothic pile, complete with conical roofed corner
turret. While he made drinks in a kitchen the size of most people’s apartments,
she perused the sepia photos on the oak panelled hallway walls, where she was a
little perturbed to find all twelve were of Bob Fitzgerald singing.

 Dickens led the way
out through some French doors to a wrought iron table and chairs on the
terrace, carrying bone china crockery on a silver tray. While he poured the tea,
Judith wiped the creases from her white cotton summer dress then sat down to
admire the olive and emerald green stripes of the long, sweeping lawn.

 “I suppose you want
to know how I came to be at the Great Eastern?” Dickens asked, perceptively.

 Judith shrugged her
shoulders, embarrassed by his insight.

 It transpired that
Dickens had been abandoned as a baby and spent his formative years in care. Since
then, if he wasn’t backpacking or sleeping in a tent, he’d resorted to the
hostels. He’d spent the previous summer dossing in the Scottish Highlands and,
on his way back to England, had wandered into Glasgow and a little bar called
The Mitre. The place was packed with arty types from all over Scotland, who met
there every six months to discuss their ‘movement’. Dickens had merely been an
anonymous onlooker, but people kept enquiring about what he did and where
they’d seen him. He’d never been noticed before without deliberately courting
attention, so for people as important as writers and painters to see value
where he felt there was none, was flattering. It was the night he’d first seen
Bob Fitzgerald, stood alone in the corner, perusing his fellow artists with
disdain. On spotting Dickens, though, he’d made a beeline for the drifter, who,
desperate not to jeopardise this newfound attention, had introduced himself as
a writer. Indeed, from that moment on, Dickens had been masquerading as a man
of literature, hence the nickname which he only now recognised as Oran Mor
sarcasm. Writing, he’d thought, was the easiest way to fit in. Anybody could
pick up a pen, whereas painting and music took years to learn and he couldn’t
afford the equipment for photography.

 Dickens had deluded
himself that these artists could be like the family he’d never known, with Bob
as a father figure. But, he told Judith, he should have learned long ago that
such things never could be, having made the same mistake time and again throughout
his thirty years — working on a fairground, running with football hooligans and
even living with new-age travellers.

 Dickens explained
how he’d never had time for his carers. He’d constantly run away from homes in
search of unconditional love, or at least people to want him for who he was,
not simply because he was the vehicle to a pay packet. Paradoxically, though,
he was constantly pretending to be somebody he wasn’t in order to attract that
love. For example, he reckoned he’d never enjoyed violence, but was always the
first one into fights at football matches, often at the expense of a broken
nose or rib, in order to impress the older, ‘top boys’. He reminisced about
their post combat hugs of approval.

 “And it’s exactly
the same now, pretending I’m a writer so they’ll like me.” Dickens pulled the
rimless glasses from his big, beaklike nose and skimmed them into a nearby pear
tree. “There’s absolutely nothing wrong with my eyesight — I just thought it
gave me a bit of a WB Yeats look.”

 Judith was grateful
for this light relief, laughing away some of the embarrassment that confidantes
often have to endure.

 “As you’ve probably
noticed, they’ve all sussed me out,” Dickens continued. “Some bastard must have
told them where I live. You should have seen the way they used to treat me when
they thought I was the next Alasdair Grey, compared to how they mock me now. I’m
a laughing stock.”

 “No!” Judith grabbed
Dickens’s hand across the table to reassure him, even though she knew he was
right.

 “As soon as
possible, I’m leaving Glasgow for good.”

 “But why throw it
all away just when their getting to know you for who you really are…the thing you
claim to want above all else?”

 “Yes, I want people
to like me for who I am, but these people only like you for what you’ve got. No,
the more they get to know me the less I’m respected.”

 She couldn’t argue. Their
lack of respect for Dickens was written in neon lights for everyone to see.

 “How come you’re
doing Herman’s gardening then?” Judith asked, trying to change the subject.

 “So I can raise the
funds to get out of here. If I do all the flower borders he’ll give me a
hundred quid.”

 She scanned the
expansive lawn. It was a big job.

 “Do the two of you
talk much?”

 “Talk? Herman?” Dickens
pulled a bewildered expression. “Herman talks to nobody.”

 “Not even to Bob?”

 “Not even to him.”

 “Then how come he
hangs around with him? I mean, how did they meet?”

 Dickens shrugged his
shoulders, “I’m damned if I know. Herman used to turn up very occasionally at
Oran Mor to see Bob, who always looked embarrassed by the guy and got him out
of there pronto. Ingrid and the other girls were petrified of him, coz he used
to just sit in silence, staring at everyone. Then, all of a sudden, he and Bob
became inseparable. Wherever Bob goes Herman’s there, even though it pisses the
others off…To be honest I think he’s a bit of an imbecile. He’s only got this
place coz it was inherited from his parents.”

 Just then, somebody
appeared behind Judith. She turned to find the redheaded girl from the party
standing on the terrace, looking extremely nervous.

 “Oh…I’m really sorry
to disturb you…I’m err, I’m looking for Herman?” She spoke with a trembling,
honeyed Surrey accent.

 “He’s not here at
the moment,” Judith replied. “Is there anything I can do?” She asked this
because the girl looked so perturbed, haunted even. “Would you like some tea?”

 As the girl put the
palm of one hand against her stressed brow and shook her head, a tear ran down
her left cheek. Judith shot up immediately to put an arm around her slight,
quivering frame. As she did so, Dickens gave them some privacy, taking off up
the garden on a motorized lawnmower, sucking on another roll up.

 Once Judith had got
the young girl sat down at the table and given her a big hug, drying her tears
for her with a hanky, she began opening up.

 “At the party I
couldn’t quite grasp where I’d seen Herman before. It wasn’t until Sunday
afternoon that it suddenly hit me.” The girl stopped talking, seemingly
reluctant to carry on.

 “What? What suddenly
hit you?” Judith probed.

 “This is a little
awkward for me. Promise, promise, promise you won’t tell anybody what I’m about
to say.”

 Judith took both of
the girl’s hands with her own. “I promise.”

 “Last year, I spent
a night trying to be a prostitute…I can’t believe I did it, but I had no money
and was determined not to ask my parents for any help. You see, I’m trying to
divorce myself from them, from their ideas, from their expectations…from
everything, so that I can finally be my own person.” At this point she made a
limp hand gesture, dismissing the tangent she was racing off on. “I say
‘trying’ because in the end I just couldn’t go through with it. I got into a
car with some guy, but when we pulled up at Glasgow Green for the business, I
sprang out of the passenger seat and ran as fast as my legs would carry me.” She
gripped hold of Judith’s arm as if pleading to be understood. “That same night,
one of the girls was beaten almost to death. I was the last person to see her
out of a wheelchair.” She raised her eyebrows ashamedly. “She was getting into
a Mercedes — with Herman. I came round to confront him myself… thought it best
to get his side of the story before doing anything rash.”

 “Why don’t you just
ring the police?” Judith asked, confounded.

 “Would you if it meant
the whole world thinking you were a prostitute?”

 “There’s no need to
tell them that and, besides, you’re not are you?”

 “Oh, and you think
that’ll make any difference to some defence barrister? By the time they’ve
finished with me I’ll be Madam Whiplash.”

 “But what if he does
it to somebody else?”

 Sighing deeply, the
girl took a phone from her jeans pocket.

 “You’re absolutely
right. It’ll be good to get it off my conscience once and for all. That’s one
of the things I wanted to talk to somebody about. It’s been bad enough keeping
this to myself for so long, but now I know who it is – Christ!”

 The police said
they’d send someone round to the girl’s apartment within the hour and Judith
agreed to go along and provide moral support. Before leaving, she went down
onto the lawn and said farewell to Dickens, though kept him in the dark
concerning their intruder’s revelation.

 “Thanks for the tea.
I’m really glad I met you.” She gave him a warm hug and kissed him on the
cheek. “I love you Dickens.”

 This was said in a
platonic way, but it was obvious that Dickens, so starved of affection all his
life, saw something there that wasn’t.

Judith’s new acquaintance
lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Mount Florida, on a steep street of blonde
sandstone tenements, whose bow windows created a wonderful ripple effect. Judith
had assumed it was in the process of being redecorated, until the occupant
confessed it had never looked any different in the two years she’d been living
there. The walls were bare but for the odd stubborn patch of patterned wallpaper,
and there were no carpets, just rough floorboards. Indeed, the only décor in
the living room was an old chintz patterned couch and a portable TV on top of a
crate. Nobody would have guessed that this pasty girl, called Angie, was the
daughter of wealthy parents down in London; her father a City hedge-fund
manager; her mother a novelist. But this was because she’d divorced herself
from them and their middle class ways, intending to plough her own path, free
from accusations of ‘privilege’ every time she achieved something under her own
steam. Not only had she changed her surname by deed poll, but turned down a
place at Oxford University — where both her parents and her two elder sisters
had graduated with first class degrees — for Glasgow instead.