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  I pull back my duvet. — Now come under here and give me a proper cuddle, I say.

  Lauren looks at me, averting her eyes from my naked body. — Stop it, Nikki, she says bashfully.

  — I only want a cuddle, I pout, and move towards her. She senses that there’s her thick dressing gown between our naked flesh and that she’s not going to be raped and she gives me a stiff reluctant hug, but I won’t let go and I pull the duvet over us.

  — Och, Nikki, she says, but soon I can feel her settle and I drift off into a beautiful sleep with the smell of lavender in my nostrils.

  In the morning I wake up to a space in the bed and can hear busy kitchen sounds. Lauren. Every woman should have a sweet young wife. I rise, wrapping my dressing gown around me and head to the kitchen. Coffee hisses and spits from the filter into the pot. I can hear her in the shower now. Back through in our front room, the red flickering light on the answer machine tells me to check the messages.

  I either overestimated or underestimated Colin. He’s left quite a few messages on the machine.

  Beep.

  — Nikki, call me. This is stupid.

  — Well, hello, stupid, I say in the direction of the phone, — this is Nikki.

  He gives good phone, Colin does, but only in the comedic sense.

  Beep.

  — Nikki, I’m sorry. I lost my head. I really care about you, honest I do. That was the whole point I was trying to make. Come up to my office tomorrow. C’mon, Nik.

  Beep.

  — Nikki, let’s not end it like this. Let me take you for lunch at the staff club. You liked it there. C’mon. Call me at the office.

  Age makes most girls into women, but men never really stop being boys. That’s what I envy about them, their ability to wallow in silliness and immaturity, which is something I always strive to imitate. It can be tiresome though, if you are constantly on the receiving end of it.

  3

  Scam # 18,733

  It’s the last shit-arse section of Soho; narrow and sleazy with the reek of cheap perfume, fried food, alcohol and kerbside rubbish from split black bin liners. Rasping banks of neon slowly, almost defiantly, crackle to listless life through a twilight of frail drizzle, proffering those ancient and barren pledges.

  And you only occasionally glimpsed the agents of these sublime pleasures, the square-jawed, shaven-headed, suited and coated wideos in the doorways, or the worn crack hoors hanging in a stair whose faces flashed sick naked-lightbulb-yellow at weary punters, nervous tourists and drunken, sneering youths.

  For me though, this is the closest to home I’ve ever felt. Swaggering past the brawny chappie of my acquaintance at the drinking-club door, his expensive overcoat flapping in the wind, this to me is a sign that I’ve come a long way from when I worked with sauna rejects in Leith, pimping out smackhead lassies who fucked for fixes.

  And Henry the Bus was nodding. — Alroight, Si mate, and I’m smiling and trying not to let my nostrils flare that slight involuntary way they always did when I’m confronted with brainless, ten-a-penny muscle – cause you needed them and these boys always knew when they were being patronised. So my coupon crinkles into a wincing smile. — Awright, Henry? I’m a bit dazed right now, mate. Sticking my cock in all the wrong faces.

  Henry nods grimly, and we rap away for a bit, as I watch his cold eyes set in that troglodyte head occasionally flick over my shoulder in concern at something happening behind me. Firing a gaze raptorish enough to put out small fires before they grow into bigger ones.

  — Is Colville in today?

  — Nah, thank fuck, Henry tells me. Safe ground that one; we both hate our boss with a passion. I’m thinking of Matt Colville’s wife as I go in and say ta-ta to Henry. While the cat’s away . . . I should get Tanya down here to start punting. I bell her on the mobby but surprise, surprise, hers has been disconnected, the voice tells me. It’s hard to maintain both smack and crack habits and remember to keep up mobile-phone payments. It spells minor opportunity lost and I feel my soul frost over slightly as it tends to do when I’m indirectly inconvenienced by the careless actions of others.

  But minus Colville, and with Dewry in the office, I’m the man. And Marco and Lenny are on today, both good, keen grafters, which means that my role is purely social. I sit mainly on the right side of the bar, and hold court, only getting up to serve and show attentive respect if a face, footballer, villain or a very sexy lady (every one of them) enters the establishment. At the end of my shift I stop off at Randolph’s shop and pick up a load of gay pornography, which will be an anonymous gift to an old buddy of mine. Then I head for a beer in a nondescript café-bar. I always like to get the fuck away from the club when I finish, the social equivalent of having a good bath. This bar fits the bill, an Ikea-bland monument to our lack of imagination. It’s Soho, but it could be anywhere that has no character any more.

  I’m a bit run-down and therefore surprised that I seem to have pulled quite easily. I thought that the timing was way off. I was even starting to feel stupid and weak once again. Weak to end up destroyed with Croxy, as if the use of the cunt’s van and gaff and muscle to help me move entitles him to poison me with chemicals. He’s useless, they all are fuckin useless. That fuckin dippit little hoor Tanya, hanging around King’s Cross when I set it up for her to go to the club and pull some punters with proper cash. Weak. And the older you get, the more of an expensive luxury that type of weakness becomes.

  But enough of the self-loathing, cause I got through the shift okay and now I’m in a Soho bar with an enthusiastic and pretty lassie in a suit called Rachel, who works in advertising and has just done an important presentation and is a bit pished cause it went well and who says ‘oh gosh’ a lot. I caught her eye up at the bar, the pleasantries and smiles were subsequently exchanged and I’ve separated her from her drunken pack. Of course, my own place in Islington is being renovated and I’m forced to stay at a friend’s crummy bedsit. Thank God for that Armani suit, worth every penny. And when I suggest hers at Camden, she says: — Oh gosh, my flatmate’s having some people round.

  So now I’m having to eat humble pie and cough out the E8 address to the minicab boy. At least he’s got the fuckin decency to take us out there. The black-cab wankers won’t, or if they do they look at you like they’re fuckin social workers – all for the privilege of taking twenty quid out off your pocket for five or six poxy miles. Even this Arab or Turk tosser’s on about fifteen snaps.

  Sly sideways glances at this Rachel woman, discreetly stolen in between conversational lulls, indicate that her expectations are lowering with every set of traffic lights we pass. She’s pretty gabby though, and with the weekend hangover’s ferocity, I’m finding it hard to maintain concentration. Also, when you’ve pulled and you know you’re in, there’s that feeling of anti-climax. You’ve got her back so you’re on a ride, there’s no fucking shiting around, but then the ritual becomes so depressing. You start making the small talk, then move onto the Benny Hill stuff. And now the hardest thing to do is to listen, but it’s also the most important. It’s important because I can see that she needs to pretend more than I do that all this has a social veneer and is (at least potentially) more than just a shag, more than just animal lust. But for my part I feel like saying, shut the fuck up and git those keks off, we’re never going to see each other again, and if our paths do cross we’ll cover up our embarrassment with stoicism and feigned indifference, while I’ll be thinking, hatefully, of the noises you make while you’re getting fucked and the regret on your face the next day. How it’s only the negatives that stand out, that are in any way memorable.

  But this won’t do, because we’re up the stairs and into the gaff, me apologising for the ‘upheaval’, and sorry that all I have to offer is brandy, and as she drones on, I’m replying, — Yes, Rachel, Edinburgh originally, as I get the drinks for us. I’m delighted to find a set of real brandy glasses unpacked.

  — Oh, it’s so lovely up there. I was up there for the fes
tival a couple of years ago. We had a great time, she informs me as she looks through some of the boxes of records.

  That should have been a crass and hateful statement for schemie ears, but it sounds so agreeable as I teasingly chuck the brandy around in a glass. I’m admiring her grace, the umblemished skin, and that full toothy smile as she says: — . . . Barry White . . . Prince . . . you’ve got great taste in music . . . there’s loads of soul and garage stuff here . . .

  And it’s not just the glow from the brandy because as she picks up her glass from the stained coffee table I feel the imaginary zip in my belly starting to open up, and I think NOW. Now is the time to fall in love. Just open that fuckin zip up and let the entrails of love engulf you both in a messy rapture, as this raging bull and mad cow get on board the love boat. Look stupidly into each other’s eyes; talk shite, get fat. But no. I do what I always do and use sex as a means of undermining love by grabbing her, enjoying her theatrical appearances-sake shock, and we’re snogging, then undressing, frigging, licking, teasing and fucking.

  Prior to this though, I’ve ascertained that her salary, position in the organisation and social background are not as impressive as I first envisaged. She’s a fuck, that’s all. You sometimes have to fight hard not to get to know somebody.

  After a bit of kip we’re at it again in the morning. As soon as I’m hard I’m back up her and we’re shaking and pumping away as the 7.21 express to Norwich thrashes through Hackney Downs station, almost like it’s going to sweep us up to East Anglia with it and she’s going: — Oh my God . . . Simon . . . Si-mehnnnn . . .

  Rachel falls asleep and I get up, leaving a note, which informs her that I have an early start and that I’ll give her a bell. I go over to the café across the road and sip at some tea, waiting for her to come downstairs. I get a bit dewy-eyed when I think of her pretty face. I fantasise about going back up those stairs, maybe with some flowers, opening my heart, pledging undying love, making her life special, being that prince on the white charger. It’s as much a male fantasy as a female one. But that’s all it is. A sickening feeling of loss hangs over me. It’s easy to love, or for that matter hate, somebody in their absence, somebody we don’t really know and I’m an expert at that. That hardest problem is the other bit.

  Then, like the polis on a stake-out, I see her leave by my stair door. Her movements are tense and jerky, as she struggles to orientate herself, looking like a chick who’s fallen out of a nest; ugly, gawky and graceless, a different girl from the gorgeous alcohol-assisted fuck who shared my bed, and briefly my life, last night. I turn away to the sports pages of the Sun. — I think England should have a Scottish manager, I shout over at Ivan the Turkish proprietor. — Ronnie fuckin Corbett or somebody like that.

  — Ronnie Corbett, Ivan repeats with a smile.

  — A Jambo cunt, I tell him, raising the hot, sugared tea to my lips.

  When I get back up the stairs, Rachel’s left some of her scent behind in this squalid box, which is welcome, and a note, which is less so.

  Simon,

  Sorry I missed you this morning. I’d like to see you again. Give me a call.

  Rachel. X

  Aw. It’s always nice to leave somebody when they say they’d like to see you again, because there will inevitably come a time when you leave them because they don’t want to see you again. So much more pleasant all round. I crumple the note up and stick it in the bin.

  I can’t really place Rachel on my matrix. When I started off in London in a Forest Gate squat, I was determined I’d work my way west: Essex Girls to North London Jewesses, ending up with Sloane Rangers. They know the score though. While the first ones want to exchange sex for the trinkets of life, the middle ones will swap neuroses, and the last will bang you till the cows come home but the ring on the finger’s not for you, it’s promised to Chinless Chuckie. These fucking feudal inbred rich-peasant cunts always have arranged marriages. So I gave up scanning Debrett’s, and checked back into Hampstead.

  Now Tanya, who doesn’t even hit first base on my classification, calls me on the red mobile to say she’s coming over. I consider that skull-white face, which has seen as much sun in recent years as Nosferatu, lips big and blistered as if she’s had bad implants, her jerky frame and bug-eyed stare. Crack hoors; where the fuck do they fit in?

  I stick a copy of the Great Eastern Railway timetable on my headboard and by the time she gets here, everything’s in place. She confesses to me that that shit-broker Matt Colville threw her out the bar the other night. Her big eyes crave smack, not cock. I’m telling her that she’s an ungrateful slag, that I’ve set everything up for her, and that she’d rather have her arse panelled in by some scab-baws for a bag or a rock in some shitey hovel in King’s Cross than ply her trade in a nice entertainment-industry establishment in Soho. — I try so hard for you, but it’s no good, I spit, wondering how many times she’s heard that one before from parents, social workers, care officers. She takes my rant, crumbling on the settee, her arms around herself, looking at me like her jawbone’s become detached from her skull and is just hanging loosely in the skin.

  — But ee frew me aht, she moans, — Colville. Ee bleedin well frew me aht.

  — No wonder, look at ye. You look like a fuckin Weedgie. This is London, you’ve got to have some fuckin standards. Am I the only person that believes in standards . . . ?

  — Sorry, Simon . . .

  — It’s okay, doll, I sing, and pull her up from the couch, and take her in my arms marvelling at her lightness. — I’m a bit grumpy today because it’s been a funny old week. Come and lie down beside me . . . I pull her on to the bed and look at the clock on the locker: 12.15. I’m touching her, watching her lips go into spasm, then the clothes are strewn and I’m on her and in her. Her face is fucking mangled in discomfort and I’m thinking, where’s that fuckin train?

  12.21.

  That fuckin train, fuckin Anglian Railways or whatever you call the privatised shit . . . 12.22, the fuckin cunts . . . should be due here by now . . . — You’re fuckin gorgeous, babes, you are fucking dynamite, I lie in encouragement.

  — Eughhh . . . she’s wheezing.

  Fuck me, if that’s all she puts into it she should go to work filling burgers cause she’s got nae future in the industry.

  I grit my teeth and hold on another five miserable minutes till 12.27 when the bastard finally slices through the station shaking the gaff to bits and she starts screaming undying love.

  — Strong finish, I explain to her. I’m trying to do a Terry Venables-coaching thing; stick to basics, remind them what they’re good at. Positive encouragement, no shouting or losing the rag. — But we need mair commitment. I’m telling you this for your own good.

  — Thanks, Simon, she smiles, exposing that crownless chipped tooth.

  — Now I’ll have to chase you, as I’ve business.

  Her face drops a bit again, but she hauls her clothes on, almost in one miserable action. I hand her a tenner for fares and fags and she says her goodbyes and files out.

  When she’s gone, I gather up the load of gay porn I picked up yesterday in Soho. I stick it in a padded envelope and address it:

  FRANCIS BEGBIE

  PRISONER NO: 6892BK

  HMP SAUGHTON

  SAUGHTON MAINS

  EDINBURGH

  SCOTLAND

  I always take a wee stock for my old pal Begbie, which I post every time I go back to Scotland, so that he sees the local postmark on it when he receives it. I wonder who the fuck he blames for sending it, probably everyone in the Lothian region. It’s all part of my little war against my home city.

  Liberally applying the Gibbs SR, I brush the scabby dregs of Tanya from my mouth and jump in the shower, scrubbing from my genitals the remnants of that diseased pot I’ve been stirring. And wouldn’t you know it, the phone goes and my weakness is that I can never, ever let it ring, and the answer machine is not switched on. I wrap a towel round myself and pick it up.

 
; — Hiya, Simon son . . .

  It takes a second or two to register the owner of the voice. It’s my Aunt Paula up in Edinburgh.

  4

  ‘. . . badly executed handjobs . . .’

  Every time I change my course I feel more of a failure. But for me academic courses are like men; even the most fascinating only seem to hold the interest for so long. Now Christmas is over and I’m a single woman again. But changing course doesn’t make you feel as bad as when you change educational institutions or towns. And I content myself with the fact that I’ve now been at Edinburgh University for one whole year, well, almost. It was Lauren who convinced me to change from literature to film and media studies. The new literature is film, she said, quoting from some stupid magazine. Of course, I told her that where people learn about narrative now is not the book, but it’s not the film either, it’s the video game. Split narrative. If we really wanted to be hip, radical and cutting edge, we’d be down Johnny’s Amusements on the South Side, jostling with anaemic truants for space on the machines.

  I have to stick to one module of literature, however, and I elected to keep with Scottish literature, as I’m English, and contrariness is always reason enough to do anything.

  McClymont is lecturing to the smattering of patriots and wannabe Scots (God, I was one myself last year on account of some great-grandmother I never knew who went to Kilmarnock or Dumbarton for her holidays . . . We move on, quickly, hopefully . . .). You can almost hear the soundtrack of pipes playing in the background, as he spouts his nationalist propaganda. Why do I stick with this? Lauren’s idea again, it’s easy grades, she reckons.

  The gum in my mouth tastes metallic and the effort of chewing it is hurting my jaw. I take it out and stick it under the desk. I’m really hungry. I made two hundred quid last night, on badly executed handjobs. Masturbating men under towels. Those fat, red faces gazing at you with intent as you look through them pulling different expressions for what you think they want: cold, cruel bitch; doe-eyed, open-mouthed little girl; anything. It’s all so remote, so detached, it reminds me of when my brother and I used to wank the dog, Monty, and watch him try to bring himself off against the couch.