Trainspotting (38 page)
Authors: Irvine Welsh
— Mibbe yir better no tae ken. Ah mean, likesay, whit sortay life did Matty huv whin he kent he wis HIV?
— That wis Matty. Whit sortay life did he huv
before
he kent he wis HIV? Alison said. Spud and Renton nodded acquiescence at this point.
before
he kent he wis HIV? Alison said. Spud and Renton nodded acquiescence at this point.
Inside the small chapel attached to the crematorium, the minister gave a short spiel about Matty. He had a lot of burnings to fit in that morning and couldn’t afford to fuck about. A few quick comments, a couple of hymns, one or two prayers and a click of a switch to send the corpse down into the incinerator. Just a few more of these, and that was his shift finished.
— To those of us gathered here today, Matthew Connell filled a number of different roles in our lives. Matthew was a son, a brother, a father and a friend. Matthew’s last days in his young life were bleak, suffering ones. Yet, we must remember the real Matthew, the loving young man who had a great lust for life. A keen musician, Matthew loved to entertain friends with his guitar-playing . . .
Renton could not make eye contact with Spud, standing next to him in the pew, as nervous laughter gripped him. Matty was the shitest guitarest he’d known, and could only play the Doors’ ‘Roadhouse Blues’ and a few Clash and Status Quo numbers with any sort of proficiency. He tried hard to do the riff from ‘Clash City Rockers’, but could never quite master it. Nonetheless, Matty loved that Fender Strat. It was the last thing he sold, holding onto it after the amplifier had been flogged off in order to fill his veins with shite. Perr Matty, Renton thought. How well did any of us really know him? How well can anybody really know anybody else?
Stevie was wishing he was four hundred miles away, in his Holloway flat with Stella. It was the first time they’d been apart since they moved in together. He was ill at ease. Try as he might, he could not sustain the image of Matty in his head. Matty kept turning into Stella.
Spud thought that it must be really crap to live in Australia. The heat, the insects, and all these dull suburban places that you see on
Neighbours
and
Home and Away.
It seemed like there were no real pubs in Australia, and that the place was like a warm version of Baberton Mains, Buckstone or East Craigs. It just seemed so boring, so shite. He wondered what it was like in the older parts of Melbourne and Sydney and whether they had tenements there, like in Edinburgh, or Glasgow or even New York, and if so, why they never showed them on the telly. He also wondered why he thought of Australia in connection with Matty. Probably because whenever they called round, he was lying junked on his mattress, watching an Aussie soap opera.
Neighbours
and
Home and Away.
It seemed like there were no real pubs in Australia, and that the place was like a warm version of Baberton Mains, Buckstone or East Craigs. It just seemed so boring, so shite. He wondered what it was like in the older parts of Melbourne and Sydney and whether they had tenements there, like in Edinburgh, or Glasgow or even New York, and if so, why they never showed them on the telly. He also wondered why he thought of Australia in connection with Matty. Probably because whenever they called round, he was lying junked on his mattress, watching an Aussie soap opera.
Alison remembered the time when she had sex with Matty. That was ages ago now, before she was using. She would have been eighteen. She tried to remember Matty’s cock, the dimensions of it, but couldn’t visualise it. Matty’s body came to mind though. It was lean and firm, though not particularly muscular. He had skinny good looks and busy, penetrating eyes, which gave away the restlessness of his character. What she remembered most however was what Matty said to her as they got into bed that time. He told her: — I’m gaunnae fuck you like you’ve never been fucked in your life. He was right. She’d never been fucked that badly, either before or since. Matty came in seconds, depositing his load into her and rolling off her, gasping breathlessly.
She made no attempt to hide her displeasure. — That was fuckin rubbish, she told him, getting out of the bed, all anxious and tense, charged up but unsatisfied, wanting to scream in frustration. She pulled her clothes on. He said nothing and never moved, but she was sure that she saw tears spill from his eyes as she left. This image stuck with her as she looked at the wooden box, and she wished she’d been a bit kinder.
Franco Begbie felt angry and confused. Any injury to a friend he took as a personal insult. He prided himself on looking after his mates. The death of one of them confronted him with his own impotence. Franco resolved this problem by turning his anger on Matty. He remembered the time that Matty shat it off Gypo and Mikey Forrester in Lothian Road, and he had to have both the cunts on his puff. Not that it presented him with any difficulty. It was the principle of the thing though. You had to back up your mates. He’d made Matty pay for his cowardice: physically, with beatings, and socially, with heaps of humiliating slaggings. Now he realised, he’d not made the cunt pay enough.
Mrs Connell was thinking about Matty as a wee laddie. All boys were dirty, but Matty had been particularly bad. Hard on shoes, reducing clothes to threadbare status in no time at all. She was therefore not concerned when he grew into punk as he grew into adolescence. It seemed merely to be making a virtue out of necessity. Matty had always been a punk. One particular incident came to her mind. As a child, he had accompanied her to get her false teeth fitted. She felt self-conscious on the bus home. Matty insisted upon telling everyone on the bus that his Ma had false teeth put in. He was a particularly loving child. You lose them, she thought. After they get to seven, they’re no longer yours. Then, just when you adjust, it happens again at fourteen. Something happens. Then when you put heroin into it, they’re no longer their own. Less Matty, more heroin.
She sobbed softly and rhythmically, the valium measuring out her grief in sickening little breezes, attempting to dissipate the raging hurricane of raw angst and misery within her, which it simultaneously struggled to keep under wraps.
Anthony, Matty’s younger brother, was thinking about revenge. Revenge on all the scumbags who’d brought his brother down. He knew them, some of them had the fucking gall to be here today. Murphy, Renton and Williamson. These pathetic arseholes, who breezed around like they shat ice-cream cones, like they knew something nobody else did, when all they were was junky trash. Them, and the more sinister figures behind them. His brother, his fucking weak, stupid brother, had got in tow with that scum.
Anthony’s mind cast back to the occasion that Derek Sutherland had beaten him up badly at the disused railway yard. Matty found out, and went to have Deek Sutherland, who was the same age as Anthony, and two years younger than himself. Anthony remembered his eager anticipation of Deek Sutherland’s complete humiliation at the hands of his brother. In the event, it was Anthony who was again humiliated, this time by proxy. It was almost as intense as the one he’d received from Deek Sutherland himself, as he watched his old adversary almost casually overwhelm and kick the shite out of his brother. Matty had let him down there. He had let everybody down since.
Wee Lisa Connell felt sad that her Daddy was in that box, but he would have wings like an angel and go up to heaven. Her Nana had cried when Lisa had suggested that might happen. It was like he was sleeping in that box. Her Nana said that the box went away, to heaven. Lisa thought that angels grew wings and flew to heaven. It mildly concerned her that he would not be able to fly, unless they let him out of the box. Still, they probably knew what they were doing. Heaven sounded good. She would go there some day, and see her dad. When he had come to see her in Wester Hailes he usually wasn’t well so she wasn’t allowed to talk to him. It would be good to go to heaven, to play with him, like they used to when she was really wee. He’d be well again in heaven. Heaven would be different from Wester Hailes.
Shirley held her daughter’s hand tightly, and tousled her curls. Lisa seemed to be the only evidence that Matty’s life was not a futile one. Yet, looking at the child, few could argue that it was not substantial evidence. Matty, though, had been a father in name only. The minister had irritated Shirley by describing him as such. She was the father, as well as the mother. Matty had provided the sperm, came around and played with Lisa a few times, before the junk had really got to him. That was his sole contribution.
There had always been a weakness about him, an inability to face his responsibilities, and also to face the force of his emotions. Most junkies she had met were closet romantics. Matty was. Shirely had loved that in him, loved it when he was open, tender, loving and full of life. It never lasted. Even before smack, a harshness and bitterness would descend upon him. He used to write her love poems. They were beautiful, not in a literary sense perhaps, but in the marvellous purity of the wonderful emotions they conveyed to her. Once, he read and then set fire to a particularly lovely verse he’d written to her. Through her tears, she asked him why he’d done that, as the flames seemed so symbolic. It was the most hurtful thing Shirley had experienced in her life.
He turned around and surveyed the squalor of the flat. — Look at this. Ye shouldnae huv dreams livin like this. Yir jist connin yirsel, torturin yirsel.
His eyes were black and inpenetrable. His infectious cynicism and despair took away Shirley’s hope for a better life. It had once threatened to crush that very life out of her, before she bravely said: No more.
2
— Keep it down, please gentlemen, the harassed-looking barman pleaded with the hard core of heavy drinkers the group of mourners had whittled down to. Hours of stoical drinking and wistful nostalgia had finally given way to song. They felt great singing. The tension flowed from them. The barman was ignored.
Shame on ye, Seamus O’Brien,
All the young girls in Dublin are cryin,
They’re tired o’your cheatin and lyin,
So shame on ye, Seamus O’Brien!
— PLEASE! Will you be quiet! he shouted. The small hotel on the posh side of Leith Links was not used to this sort of behaviour, especially on a weekday.
— What the fuck’s that cunt fuckin sayin? Entitled tae gie the fuckin mate a fuckin send oaf! Begbie cast a predatory eye over the barman.
— Hi Franco. Renton grabbed Begbie’s shoulder, realising the danger, and trying to move him quickly into a less aggressive frame of mind. — Mind yon time when you, me n Matty went doon tae Aintree fir the National?
— Aye! Ah fuckin minday that! Ah fuckin telt that cunt thit’s oan the fuckin telly tae goan fuck hissel. Whit wis the cunt’s name?
— Keith Chegwin. Cheggers.
— That’s the cunt. Cheggers.
— The guy oan the telly likes?
Cheggers Plays Pop
? Mind that? Gav asked.
Cheggers Plays Pop
? Mind that? Gav asked.
— The very same cunt, Renton said, as Franco smirked indulgently at him, encouraging him to continue the story. — Wi wir at the National, right? This cunt Cheggers is daein interviews fir City Radio Liverpool, jist blethering shite tae punters in the crowd, ken? Well, he comes ower tae us, n we didnae wantae talk tae the cunt, but ye ken Matty, he’s thinkin, this is fuckin stardom, n he’s gaun oan aboot how great it is tae be here in Liverpool, Keith, n wir having a whale ay a time, n aw that shite. Then this doss cunt, this Cheggers fucker, or whativir ye call the cunt, thrusts the microphone in front ay Franco. Renton gestured towards Begbie. — This cunt goes: Away n fuck yirsel ya radge cunt! Cheggers wis fuckin crimson. They’ve goat that three-second delay oan the so-called live radio, tae edit that sortay thing oot.
As they laughed, Begbie justified his actions.
— Wir fuckin doon thair fir the fuckin racin, no tae talk tae some fuckin doss cunt oan the fuckin radio. His expression was that of a man-of-affairs, bored with being hassled by the media for interviews.
Franco could always find something to be enraged about, however.
— Fuckin Sick Boy should’ve been here. Matty wis his fuckin mate, he announced.
— Eh, he’s in France but . . . wi that burd, likesay. Probably couldnae cut it man, ken . . . ah mean . . . France, likesay, Spud drunkenly observed.
— Makes nae fuckin difference. Rents n Stevie came up fae London for this. If Rents n Stevie kin come up fae fuckin London, Sick Boy kin come up fae fuckin France.
Spud’s senses were dangerously dulled with the alcohol. Stupidly, he kept the argument going. — Yeah, but, eh . . . France is further away . . . wir talkin aboot the south ay France here, likesay. Ken?
Begbie looked incredulously at Spud. Obviously the message had not got across. He spoke slower, higher and with a snarl twisting his cruel mouth into a strange shape below his blazing eyes.
— IF RENTS N STEVIE KIN COME UP FI FUCKIN LONDON, SICK BOY KIN COME UP FAE FUCKIN FRANCE!
— Yeah . . . right enough. Should’ve made the effort. Mate’s funeral likesay, ken. Spud thought that the Conservative Party in Scotland could do with a few Begbies. It’s not what the message is, the problem is just communication. Begbie is good at getting the message across.
Stevie was badly feeling the session. He was out of practice for this type of thing. Franco whipped an arm around him and another one around Renton.
— It’s fuckin great tae see yous cunts again. The fuckin baith ay yis. Stevie, ah want ye tae fuckin look eftir this cunt doon in London, he turned to Renton. — If you go the same fuckin wey as Matty, ah’ll fuckin sort you right oot ya cunt. Listen tae fuckin Franco talkin here.
— If ah go the same wey as Matty, th’ill be nowt left ay us tae sort oot.
— Dinnae you fuckin believe it. Ah’ll dig yir fuckin boady up n boot it up n doon Leith fuckin Walk. Git us?
— Nice tae ken thit ye care Frank.
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