Marabou Stork Nightmares (23 page)

The shag in the suit looked at me with an expression which had a mild, playful overlay of flirtatiousness

sexual contact? I know what you're feeling; I was on a course on sexuality and the disabled . . . I want to make you feel, Roy. . . I know they'd say it's unprofessional but it'll be our little secret. I can make contact with you, Roy . . . you're getting harder with me touching you like this. Would you like me to take you into my mouth? Would you like that?

No, please don't Patricia, please don't . . . ah dinnae want any . . .

— That's what I'm going to do. Roy. I'm going to suck you off . . .

No . . . somebody come and help

somebody come

somebody come

somebody

please

come

ooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

— Mmmm . . . it looks like somebody's come! You can make contact. Roy! You're going to come out of this!

DEEPER

DEEPER

DEEPER

DEEPER – – – I'm still in the woods, alone. I'm startled to see that there's blood all over me; I'm covered in it. I draw in a breath. I let a few seconds tick by. I don't feel hurt or injured. It isn't my blood. It's not mine. I follow its dark trail into the woods, but I hear a noise in the forest, the crackling noise of something advancing through the undergrowth and I run.

I run through the bush until I stumble upon the track and follow it towards the shores of the lake. The beautiful lake. I step into its soft, lukewarm waters, and wash the blood from my body and clothing. After a while I emerge from the water in the heat and I'm walking back up the trail towards our camp, when I come across Sandy, looking distraught.

— Roy! Are you alright? What in the blazes happened?

— Sandy . . . I don't know . . . 1 just went into the woods and I felt suddenly weak . . . I crouched down and sort of passed out. I woke up covered in blood, and it was like some animal had attacked me or something . . . I don't remember.

— My God! Let's get back to camp! Sandy wrapped his arm around me and supported me up through the woods.

We came across the bloodied trail again. — Oh shit, I said, for as soon as we looked up we saw the prostrate, naked body of a young native boy. The body lay half-covered in leaves and shrubbery. The eyes had been gouged out and the genitals mutilated.

— Oh my God, I said. I felt a gagging sensation, that strange dryness in my throat again, but I couldn't be sick. It was only when I saw the discarded blue pants in the bushes that I realised it was the little fellow we'd met earlier.

— The work of terrorists, I'll wager, Sandy said sagely. — I wouldn't even presume to blame our friends the Marabou Storks for this. Mind you, the removal of the eyes look like they've been done by the beak of a Stork or perhaps a blunt knife . . . possibly a purchase from Boston's of Leith Walk . . .

What in the name of. . . — Sandy, this whole fuckin thing . . . it's just fucked man, d'ye realise? It's just fucked!

— Yellow carded. Yellow fuckin carded, Sandy moaned. What is this shite? What's happening to me?

Ah mind what happened awright.

When I got home, it seemed as if there was nobody in. Then I heard voices from upstairs, giggling sounds. When I went for a slash I heard heavy panting from Kim's room. She had somebody in her bedroom; somebody was giving her one. Obviously some cunt fae the scheme.

I made some toast and watched the telly with the volume turned low, but I had to switch it off because one of the lassies in the Aussie soap opera reminded me
of her.

About twenty. minutes later, Kim came down. She looked shocked to see me, like she hudnae heard ays come in. I saw why she was so fuckin bothered, because Tony came straight in after her. He was dressed in a suit and tie, which he was straightening.

— Awright, Roy, he said.

— Tone, I goes.

— Tony came roond for a sandwich, Kim said, in a nervous whine.

Aye, n ah ken whae the fuckin meat wis n aw ya cunt.

— Ah felt really fuckin sick, Tony shook his head glumly. — It's the upholstery oan that new motor: gies ays the boak. Threw up n everything. Hud tae go n lie doon, eh. Then this daft fucker, he nods at Kim, — comes in n starts ticklin ays.

Tony knows how to lie. He's been deceiving his wife with everything for years. He'd stick his cock in anything that moved.

— Ah wis only muckin aboot Tony, jist muckin aboot. . . she says, all clumsy and stagey.

Kim does not know how to he.

Tony departed after we tentatively arranged to go for a couple of pints and onto the match together next weekend. I couldn't sit there and look at Kim. It was her stupid, large potato head; her fuckin idiocy was just so offensive to me. I went upstairs and when I got to my room I was surprised to find that I wis greetin.

Did anybody else live like us? Did any cunt?

I'd never really gret before; no since I was a really wee bairn. I learned not to as a kid. John and Vet just ignored you, or battered you for it, so there was no emotional currency in it. Now it felt good, therapeutic, just to surrender to all the shite and let it flow out. I wasn't Roy Strang.

I wasn't a top boy. I wasn't even Dumbo Strang either. I didn't know who the fuck I was and it didn't matter.

The only other occasion I ventured outside before the court case was to visit Elgin. I don't know what made me dae this. I had long stopped thinking of Elgin as my brother, that was if I ever had; I always cringed when John or Vet referred to him in that way. To me he was just something that pished, shat and drooled over itself, and asked questions in a secret language that no other cunt had ever learned.

Once again I was as para as fuck on my journey. I could see those cunts, all those fuckin schemie bastards that lived in this shit-pit, all of them staring at me. The word 'casual' on their breath was okay, it meant they knew not to mess, but now it was 'rapist' which was worse than 'Dumbo'.

When I got to the GORGIE VENTURE FOR EXCEPTIONAL YOUNG MEN I saw a boy or a man; I didn't know which, he could have been any age. He had the largest head I'd ever seen. My own, Kim's, even the auld man's, they just paled into insignificance alongside this. Elgin still drooled incessantly, more than ever. I'd forgotten his face, that expression on it, or perhaps I'd never really looked at him before. That was it; all those years in the same fuckin hoose and I'd never really looked at his face, I mean I'd looked at it, but never really seen what was there. All that was human had been sucked out of that face. He just sat on a chair beating out a monotonous rhythm on his thighs.

I didn't even attempt to talk to him; didn't even try to go through the token patronising crap the so–called experts laughingly refer to as communication, as therapy, as meaningful interaction. It was nothing like that for either myself or Elgin. I just sat looking at him for a while. I don't know where Elgin was but I sat looking at him, thinking of my situation and that wherever he was it didn't seem such a bad place to be.

On the eve of the courtcase, John and Vet were dealt another blow. We learned that Kim was up the stick. I suspected it was Tony's, but practically everyone in the scheme had been up Kim: at least that was how it seemed to me. It wisnae her fault. She was gullible, impressionable. No, that's too kind. She was just totally fuckin thick, as solid in the head as the concrete support pillars in a multi-storey car park. John raged at her. — Whae's is it? Ah'm asking ye, Kim! Like ah sais, whae's is it! Tony, who was normally never away fae the hoose, kept a low profile around this time and Kim kept quiet. Her drama, which she seemed to thrive on, didn't really concern me. I had my own problems.

Our brief, Conrad Donaldson Q.C., was supremely confident. He was the best there was. We'd set up a fund for his payment, jointly managed by Ghostie and Lexo's partner in his second-hand furniture shop in Leith, a psycho named Begbie. There were plenty of publicans and club owners only too willing to contribute to Donaldson's legal fees.

Donaldson was a ruddy-faced man with a slack mouth and large, rubbery lips. — Rape's a funny bugger, he told us in his offices in the New Town. — Somebody gets raped, the first thing they want to do is to obliterate all traces of the assailant. They just wash everything away. Then it generally takes a long time until they've recovered sufficiently from the shock to report it. The police's first response is to interrogate the complainant: that generally puts most of them off. Your girlie though, she seems persistent. I can only assume that she's getting some bad advice. She's on a pretty sticky wicket here. Even if the police refer the case to the Procurator Fiscal, in over thirty per cent of such referrals he simply won't initiate proceedings. Even then, only a quarter of defendants are convicted. Most of them get it reduced to sexual assault and almost half don't get custodial sentences. Statistically speaking, the rapist who goes to jail is a most unfortunate sod. The odds are heavily weighted against that happening.

— Thing is, we never raped naebody, Lexo said, smiling and chewing on some gum.

— Quite, Donaldson replied tritely. It was obvious he didn't believe a word of what we were saying.

He explained that there were no real witnesses for the prosecution, nobody who could actually say they had any real evidence to suggest that she'd been raped or held against her will. — It's a minefield for a girlie. Wouldn't touch it with a bargepole if I were her. I don't know who's put her up to this, some dykey feminist group trying to make the unfortunate wench into a
cause célèbre,
no doubt. Well, she has two chances; slim and none. I contend that she can't win; we can only lose. We can only throw it away. So I'm expecting exemplary behaviour from you chaps. Put yourself in my hands and we'll give her a damn good shafting, he said smugly, his smile crumbling around the edge of his mouth in realisation of a poor choice of metaphor.

I cringed and looked away, but something made me glance at Lexo, who just smirked and said softly, — Again.

Demps rolled his eyes and Ozzy laughed.

— One other factor very much in our favour, Donaldson said, anxious to move on, — is the judge. Judge Hermiston's attitudes are very much influenced by his practising of criminal law in the fifties where the dominant school of criminology was the Freudian model. This essentially does away with the concept of the crime of rape by proving that there are no victims. Female sexuality is deemed by nature to be masochistic, hence rape cannot logistically take place since it directly encounters the argument that all women want it anyway.

— Ah believe that, Lexo opined. — Simple whin ye think aboot it. A boy's goat a cock, a bird's goat a fanny. Thir meant tae be thegither.

— Right, Donaldson snapped, distaste for the first time playing across his thick lips, — I think we understand each other.

For the trial we had to move out of being Lexo, Strangy, Ozzy and Demps, top boys. We were now Alex Setterington, businessman (Lexo had his second-hand furniture shop in Leith), Roy Strang, Analyst with a reputable Edinburgh insurance company, Ian Osmotherly, Sales Manager with a busy nationwide retailer, and Allan Dempsey, who was a student. Demps had enrolled to do a Social Care course at Stevenson College before the court case. It gave a better impression than dole-mole.

So it was her word against the four of us. We were described by Donaldson as 'a far cry from the picture of rampaging soccer yobbos that my learned friend so unconvincingly tried to paint; in fact decent, articulate, upstanding professional young men with excellent prospects, from good families.'

I caught a glimpse of the auld man nodding in stern approval across the court at that statement.

The worse thing for her case was that numerous guys at the party testified to how flirty and out of her face she was. So did several women; top boys' birds we had primed, or just jealous cows cause every cunt fancied her the most.

We had our own skills, our organisation, our cool. Lexo metamorphosised into a large, gentle giant in court; a choirboy with a baleful, slightly nervous and bewildered expression, polite and deferential to the judge.