Boyracers (23 page)

‘Why’s that?’ Brian asks.

Shiny points to a weapon in a stookie, hauling himself on crutches towards a thumping VW. ‘No eftir yer GBH on Chas there. Broke a boy’s leg, if I mind right.’

‘Aye man,’ says his pal, staring. ‘Ye mind right.’

‘That wis an accident,’ Dolby stresses. ‘He didnay get oot the way in time. Took his chances.’

‘Aye?’ Shiny shrugs, drawing himself nose-to-nose with Dolby. ‘Maybe yer pal who works in the pub’ll no get oot the way when we smash it tay fuckin bits. Wantay take yer chances there?’

Brian places a hand on Shiny’s chest and replaces Dolby with himself. ‘That’s whit we’re here tay talk tay yese aboot.’ He eyeballs them. ‘Wan race. Eftir that, nay mair squads uptay Smith’s. Ye’ll leave ma fuckin windays alane. Agreed?’

They consider this, huddled and swearing, inciting then calming each other while Fran sits protectively on Belinda’s bonnet, eyeing up
neds. Brian’s arms are muscled and tense. I try to hang near the front, my tendons expecting any second to spring.

my tendons expecting any second to

‘Awright,’ Shiny nods. ‘We’ll race ye fay there–’ he points to the far end of the car park ‘– tay there.’ The finishing line is a high brick factory wall

‘Okay,’ says Dolby, reaching for his keys.

‘Naw,’ Shiny grins, pointing to me. ‘We want him tay drive it.’

‘Me?’ I say.

‘He’s no got a licence.’

‘He canny drive.’

‘Me?’

‘No take him long tay learn,’ Shiny shrugs theatrically. ‘Only goat tay accelerate and brake.’

‘Naw,’ Brian says, ‘he’s no–’

‘I’ll dae it,’ I say.

‘– he’s never had a lesson–’

‘I said I’ll dae it.’

‘– no fair, come oantay–’

‘Brian,’ I say, something new and determined rising inside me. ‘Let me dae it.’

Shiny nods. Car horns make ugly noises behind him. ‘If he disnay, we kick yer fuckin heids in. Fair enough?’

so Dolby slopes Belinda to a clear corner to instruct me, like Mr Miagi in the Karate Kid, in the ways of the pedals, while Brian and Frannie kick gravel across the ground. My blood is rich with adrenaline. It sucks and breathes through my veins. I feel – actually – amazing.

‘Feel that wee nudge? That’s yer bitin point. Hold that an then–’

‘Now lift the clutch, and ye’ll need tay slam yer foot ontay the–’

‘An as soon as ye get anywhere
near
that wall, hit the clutch, then the fuckin brake or–’

for twenty minutes I’m lifting and dropping pedals, testing biting points, practising emergency stops until I’m ready. Or ready enough to trail smoke for a few hundred yards then stop. Ready enough to prove something, as Bono, in U2’s Rattle and Hum era, moans

the headlights blast along on the track, and we’re revving, and though I don’t glance at Shiny, I can feel his stare, and someone has turned a tape of UK garage way up, the tarmac pounding with off-time beats, and I am an anarchist, I am the antichrist, James Dean, John Travolta in Grease, ha ha, my trainers growling on the gas and Dolby is leaning in the window, reminding me of the pedal motions (‘ye dinnay have tay dae this’) but I’m not really listening. Can’t. I’m on fire

and everything I’ve done, seen, fucked up at or obsessed upon, every time I wanted to talk to Tyra after English and that shimmering image of her kneeling before Connor, every time my Dark Side of the Moon CD sticks (on Money), everything I ever wanted to say to my parents, everyone I ever wanted to kill or fuck is now channelled through my rigid hands.

Shiny, in the next car to me, draws his finger along his neck and mouths
dead
.

A lassie raises the flag. The Lads are watching, as I flex the ball of my foot across the biting-point and we’re

alive. Belinda roars outrage in my hands as the world slips past
frighteningly
fast, like fluid, and the wall is growing, a side-glance – Shiny’s face, focused – then the wall approaching faster than I can

(–the brake?)

stab randomly at the pedals, panicked. A shout escapes then I’m

screeching

wailing

bricks rushing towards me and

Stop.

The world is still.

The world is very still.

Just ahead of me, a car (which car? what? where am I?) has met a wall and someone is hobbling from the front seat with blood on their face, and the slow, still world – so beautiful and within my reach – suddenly whirrs back to speed, noise, screams, the face near me, hammering a bloody fist on the windscreen and leaving marks. I stay locked in my seatbelt, watching him. Nearly fascinated. After what seems like a year of his hammering and shouting, people
swarm the car. I am in a bubble. Their cries are dull. I start to shiver. Sirens are wailing and there are yells and in the rear-view mirror cars are exiting, blue light splashing, as Belinda’s door is wrenched open and Dolby is pulling me out – ‘move it, Alvin!’ – into the back seat with Fran and Brian, taking off, hissing, hauling at the wheel, the world sliding to the side as noddies scatter like marbles and the police grab at

Stirling University is gorgeous. Green on every side. There’s a loch shimmering in the middle and students coming and going across the bridge with folders and important-looking books with mind-boggling titles and they wear baseball caps and yak into mobile phones without – I stress this – without looking like boyracers.

Fuck Derek and his ‘carer’ plans for me. I want to see what this place looks like.

The four of us are led by a bubbly young guide in a Stirling Uni tracksuit who keeps yelping ‘Great!’ and ‘Good question!’ but she’s nice. She looks like she’d be fun in Smith’s after a couple of Aftershocks, Frank Sinatra playing in the background.

‘Fuckin students,’ Frannie mutters, ‘why don’t they get a real fuckin job?’

Ducks splash oddly in the water and sprays of violet flowers leap like effete muggers from the lochside, while canoes slink and young couples walk hand in hand, stop, read books, walk on again, and our guide tells us that classes are suspended on Wednesdays for sports and bees buzz and the Lads are just about impressed. Dolby nods at everything she says, asks a question, nods again. Brian checks out the girls gliding past like swans. Frannie wants to go to the sports union to see the swimming pool, lithe bodies cutting its blue skin, and then Dolby takes us to the MacRobert Arts Centre
(tonight showing a reissue of Hellraiser) where a stall nearby sells posters of Kurt Cobain, Moulin Rouge, Eminem, Christian Bale in American Psycho, the Beatles recording Sgt Pepper and students amass and muse and laugh and talk about maybe going to the pub and the posters advertise a Traffic Light Disco in the Fubar and the Star Wars trilogy at the Sci-Fi Club. They have a Sci-Fi
Club
? We visit the library: three floors of books! I go to a terminal, type in Stephen King and see

and that one student who has taken The Shining out fascinates me. I fantasise about meeting her on the first day of term over a peach schnapps, talking about Kubrick’s film adaptation, its strengths and its flaws, in the Student Union where our tour party is soon taken and where beardy intellectuals sup ale and trendy young things touch their lips against crystal-clear drinks and rugger boys slam tequilas and people are brought toasties and hot-pots on steaming plates and a birthday party for a girl called Claire kicks off in the corner and

We sit by the lochside, overwhelmed.

A group of tanned students roll a football across the grass, their shadows long on the ground.

‘Christ,’ Brian remarks between mouthfuls of sandwich, ‘this place is a fuckin holiday camp.’

In the Falkirk Herald this week there was a story which went

taking shots at an imaginary goal. Hip hop stutters from their ghetto blaster. Girls lounge in the afternoon next to half-open books and silver phones and a light veil settles over everything: the bridge, dotted with French accents, the loch speckled with white birds, the Wallace Monument standing like a dazed sentry, the lulling spell of an American woman reading a fairytale to her child. There is a vague, Spring work ethic. From an open window I can hear a chiming waterfall of guitar notes and someone sing

and I feel like I might belong somewhere.

Everything is beautiful and vibrant. The campus rings with
tantalising
laughter. Nobody looks like they might want to kick my head in. Myriad windows, where students lean, chatting, smoking, so many people to meet. I keep the desire to explore close to my chest – while
the Lads yak about the Rangers game and a new clutch for Belinda – until eventually it churns in me, burns, aching for them to be gone.

Frannie’s patter. Brian’s disaffected grunt-language. Dolby’s
pop-philosophy
. My wide-eyed naivety. The rightness of our being together.

But for the first time ever,
they
seem a burden to
me
, not the reverse, and though the shame of this goes deep, the louder they talk – the more fucks and fenians – the greater is my need to be rid of them, although I don’t know what they have done to deserve this. On the way home I will remember the translucent laughter that drapes the campus, will close my eyes as Belinda chugs and splutters into the concrete jungle of Hallglen and a shoplifter tears from the corner shop with a bottle of Buckie screaming, ‘Paki bastaaaard!’

‘Student poofs,’ says Frannie, untouched by it all. ‘Look at them. These arenay real people. Aw the guys are nancy boys and the girls are up themsels.’

‘Just as well,’ Brian says, ‘cos you’ll no be up them.’

Dolby shrugs. ‘Dunno, man. The Runt could dae worse.’

‘Ye’d come up an visit me, though?’ I ask, a chill thought passing through.

‘Wid we no just,’ Brian says. ‘Fuckin Butlins here, man.’

Dusk floats in. The sun settles orange petals on the water. But the Lads seem sad, darkening like shadow, ageing right before my eyes.

‘Hey, whit’s the coolest thing ye’ve ever seen?’ I ask, quickly, fearful they’ll grey and collapse if I don’t divert them.

‘Brian’s nipples,’ Frannie clucks with revenge.

‘Dinnay be a dick. Whit’s the coolest thing ye’ve ever seen?’

‘That girl’s arse.’

‘Gonnay take this seriously.’

‘Gonnay take this seriously? “Whit’s the coolest thing ye’ve ever seen?”’

‘Coolest thing I’ve ever seen,’ Brian begins, surprising us all, ‘was when I was walking through Dollar Park wan night as a bairn. The sun wis gon doon, the sky wis lit-up aw different colours, just like this. And I mind there was this guy, this auld guy, an he was jist sittin under a tree, an he was–’ he blinks, as if the guy is flitting before him just now ‘– playin the saxophone.’

He swallows his Irn-Bru, burps, hurls the can. I see it spin, the
droplets
falling like parachutists.

‘An that’s it. That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.’

There’s silence for a while.

Imaginary saxophone notes curl between the student halls, the old guy treading carefully, lest he tread on our dreams. My hands have grown cold, the fingertips numb, and my favourite episode of the Simpsons is still the one where Homer tries to join the Stonecutters. The fizz of the beer on the rim of Frannie’s bottle, and the two of us leaning against his bed, laughing so hard that his Mum banged upstairs.

Dolby turns to me suddenly. ‘Sam Raimi’s directin the Spider-Man movie.’

‘Sam Raimi?’ I gasp, shocked.

‘He did the Evil Dead.’

‘Whaaaat?’ I whine. ‘Whatever happened tay James Cameron?’

Dolby shrugs. ‘Jumped ship.’

‘Ha-fuckin-ha.’

The old guy shedding languid notes in the dark and I know this:

I can’t connect with the people I love.

‘I hate that,’ Brian mutters. ‘I hate when yer lookin forward tay somethin and it turns oot tay be crap.’

We all grunt agreement.

‘Anybody want tay know the coolest thing I’ve ever seen?’ I ask, but Frannie snorts, shoving a crisp packet down my back.

‘Alvin. Two ay your heroes are called
Brett
.’ (Anderson and Easton Ellis) ‘Nothin you’ve seen is cool.’

Everything must go.

Events are slowing down, speeding up, slowing down. Hour after hour spent cruising Polmont, Bo’ness, Dennyloanhead,
stopping
for petrol and Loaded magazine, schmoozing half-heartedly with girls behind the counter, playing the soundtrack to Fight Club. Patter is flat. Belinda has the feel of a once-beautiful film star long past her prime. The streets hold all the fascination of an empty paper bag rotating in a slight breeze. Frannie tells a joke; only one of us laughs. Dolby mentions that Whirlpools Direct might be shutting down. Brian reassures him that he’ll get him work in Smith’s, but this is forgotten in a debate about Al Pacino (does he over-act?) which also expires, uncertain of itself, unresolved. We whistle at girls – shining white in GAP – and for a second the sky has all the brilliance of a summer’s day, until grey clouds make everything concrete, dead, and nobody expresses disappointment at this, its predictability.

Brian says, ‘California’s takin longer than I thought. Havenay heard yet about ma visa.’

Dolby says, ‘I’m thinkin of takin an evenin degree in Philosophy.’

Frannie sings, ‘If you steal my sunshine.’

I say, ‘Is anybody listening to me?’

while anti-capitalist demonstrators in London break the windows of McDonalds, defacing a statue of Winston Churchill, spray graffiti across banks and building societies, and William McIlvanney is on the radio saying that ‘the event has reminded us of the rights of the young to be subversive. But there is a question of how immature protestors
can be and still claim to be expressing more than their own petulance. These caperings carried as much threat to capitalism as a kindergarten sit-in. If you–’

‘– don’t pay attention to us then we’ll break our toys. Meanwhile, the protestors were distressed by the violence of the anarchists, the
anarchists
were distressed by the passivity of the protest, the right-wing papers where distressed by anyone who wasn’t a statue, Tony Blair was distressed that Britannia had lost her cool. If you–’

‘– want to think of this event as a sort of cultural compass, then we are headed into a perpetual and vacuous present.’

Brian starts drumming his fingers on his knee and talks about
franchising
his own chain of pubs. I compose silent poems about graves. Frannie tells us that Elaine Section Manager was looking ‘miiigthy fiiiine’ today. Dolby changes the music, constantly.

How would we do it, if we were ever famous? Would we be
media-hugging
icons like Robbie Williams, describing on chat shows our years cutting the Falkirk tarmac, before confessing our alcohol
addictions
? Or would we be interview-shunning enigmas like the Floyd, emerging from our ivory towers once every decade to a world that has mourned our absence?

I’m never sure how we are expected to reach this level of stardom, since we won’t become famous for quoting Raiders of the Lost Ark, but hey it’s Saturday and

we’re at this guitar exhibition at the SECC in Glasgow, with Dolby’s Dad (who really does resemble Lee Van Cleef). Guitars mounted all over like hunting trophies and I touch the strings of one. Gruff trolls in denim spring immediately from behind amps to challenge my un-Def Leppardness.

‘Wow,’ Frannie remarks. ‘Nice armpits.’

Dolby’s Dad has paused at a stall where some poodle-haired rocker is lost in playing the guitar solo from the Cream song White Room, his fingers performing frottage on the fret. Dolby’s Dad turns to us, nods seriously, and says, ‘That’s fuckin good music.’

Funny how overweight the world can seem sometimes, how if you pause and concentrate for long enough you can hear it groaning.

it is the sound of Derek coming into my bedroom, as he is now, sitting, his face tight and troubled. He passes me a tray of bourbon creams. Bad start. They’re the biscuits we devoured by the barrel-load when we were kids. Why does he think I need comfort food?

‘Eat them,’ he instructs. ‘I’ve went right off them.’ He goes to my CD rack and draws out OK Computer, puts it in the CD player, presses play, then watches the lights and sits down. ‘Good album,’ he nods, ‘but no the best ever made,’ and he seems to have shrunk in the time since he’s been gone to London. Outside it decides to rain

Derek says ‘Ken, Alvin, when I lived in this house, I wanted to do almost anything to get away. As far away as possible. There was a whole world out there full of excitement. So I went to London, where the money is. Like Dick Whittington or something. Thought if I had enough money they’d let me in.’

He shrugs.

‘Didn’t even know who “they’’ were. Didn’t know where it was I was trying to get into …’

He tails off, examines the six holes in a bourbon cream.

‘Got the job in the bank. Ya dancer. Still couldn’t bring in enough money to pay the rent. Moved to a bedsit. Could afford the bedsit, but it barely left me any money to go out or see a film or hire a video, never mind go to a club. My landlady didnay allow me to have visitors over, and I didn’t complain cause the rent was so cheap, but if I wanted to see anybody I had to wait for them to invite me over, which they never did, and I couldnay get a better job cause my CV only had on it this crappy post at the bank, and I couldn’t get promoted cos there’s millions of young folk down there with a better CV than you. They’re like a pack of snarling dogs down there, these young guys. Every day all these rich folk are handing over their cash, giving me all the attention they’d give a hole-in-the-wall, griping about their mortgages and the rates on their savings while I’m thinking, Do you know what a luxury a mortgage is? Do you know how few people have savings? You don’t have a clue, do you?’

Chapter VIII of The Great Gatsby, open, unrevised, in my lap, is beginning

Derek breathes in and places his hands on his knees.

‘Then I started seeing Mum. I saw customers who looked like her. Beggars who looked like her. Prostitutes who looked like her. She was everywhere. One morning I chased her down the street. I chased her, shouting, and she screamed and ran into a police station, so I thought I’d better leave her alone, ha ha.’

He leans back in his chair and folds his hands behind his head.

‘Later that day, this woman came in. Middle-aged, middle class. I was trying to count her money, but I couldn’t do it. I was thinking about Mum. And Dad. And you. And what was I doing there, alone, scraping out a living, roaming the streets in boredom every night,
looking
in the shop windows at things I couldn’t afford. This wasn’t what it was supposed to be like. This wasn’t what I was promised. And this woman starts shouting at me to hurry up. And I looked at her. And she looked at me. And there was nothing in her eyes. They were just like steel. She had so much money she’d just become a robot, and I realised she could never connect with me, that it just wasn’t possible, that there was nothing out there for me in the whole, wide world, it had all been an illusion, and I’d fallen for it. Something snapped. I was just standing there, counting her cash, listening to her hissing at me to hurry up like I was some kind of servant. Then I picked up her money, hurled it at the glass partition and told her to go take a fuck to herself. It was all I could think of to do as a protest. Silly, really. But it was so funny.’

He smiles, cheeky, like the daredevil wee boy I remember playing chap-door-run, and as I picture some rich old bat watching her money swirl and flap through the air, while Derek picks up his copy of the NME and leaves, right there, everyone watching. I’m proud of him. For feeling it enough.

‘So,’ I say eventually, ‘ye lost yer job.’

He raises an eyebrow, dabs with his tongue at a roll-up.

‘The job, the bedsit, ma mind.’ The roll-up is finished expertly and waves in his mouth as he talks. He searches his pockets for a light. ‘All that’s out there, Alvin, ma man, is the Withs and the Withouts. An it’s worse bein a Without among the Withs, let me tell ye.’

The fag is lit. ‘That’s why I came hame.’

His eyes pinch as he draws at the fag. Tiny orange brightness.

‘Dae ye really think she’s alive?’ I ask, my voice small in the room, but Derek stands up, having said enough, and we hold each other’s gaze while Norman Bates twitches nervously in Psycho in my mind.

‘I’ll watch Dad,’ he says, ‘if you can prove tay me staying away’s no impossible.’

‘Whit d’ye mean?’

‘It’s your turn to go.’

I nod, then we smile against the memories, somehow defeating them, and he shuffles off back to his own room in a hash-haze, quietly, as though