The Wrong Coat

I don’t want much. I just want a black trench coat that collars up, will make me more Kevie Whoriskyish or Alfie Murrayish, more buttoned down with the girls, winching and pulling them into dark corners, feeling their hot knockers and poking their hairy fannies. My Wrangler denims are high-waisters, eighteen inch flares, with an ironed-sharp edge, and are ready zipped with a cockfull of ideas, all jumping at what is really the same idea, of getting a coatful of Catherine Massey, Anne Gallacher, or even Jan Park because she always let you feel her big tits the first time she goes with you. I’d never ask her, because she’s a dog. And I’d never ask Pauline Moriarty, because she’s Pauline Moriarty. I’d never ask any others because talking to girls is having a boner in my throat, being unable to breath and my face going squidgy as the last tomato on the highest shelf in the world. So high nobody can see it, but me. I’m not too bad. I mean, I’m not a smelly tramp or anything. I’ve got shiny polished Doc Marten's with sixteen holes for yellow football laces, bright enough to be seen from the moon. From the waist down I’m fine.

I’ve grown too tall. That’s the problem. Wrists spangle knock-kneed out of my sleeves and leave my hands dangling. Everybody looks at them and laughs. I’ve a shape shifting duffle coat hanging, like a KuKluxKlan hood on a hook in my bedroom wardrobe. It’s worn out as a brown-dimpled old couch, a cast-off from my older sister Phyllis, with a hoodful of fish scales, crackling to the touch with hairspray. It hugs me and has followed me about for so long that it’s like a calendar made of dead skin. I can only slink about with it on, never lifting my eyes from the ground, and try to ignore it, like the PE changing room smell of heart-beating failure.

I’m too old for Bay City Roller jumpers. I wear a yellow Fred Perry when I’m gallivanting. Shivering keeps you warm. And you can’t really get a reddy when you’re cold. Cold is another country where you can talk to girls like Lynn, with hair like Charlie’s Angels and a faceful of Farah, who everybody fancies, and Debbie, who nobody fancies, not even me. It’s like those old games of telephones with string and tin cans. Nobody says much and nobody listens, but I’m happy because I’ve got a connection, all I need to do is hold it. When it buckets, Cammy and Jim and me get wet, but we can roll up a plastic bag and put it on our heads to keep the rain off, run about like dafties, and stay out longer. We’re from something of the same tribe, only different.

The idea for a new coat isn’t mine. It’s not my birthday or anything. Mum’s got a Provy cheque. We get most of our clothes with Provy cheque. Dad hides in the room when the Provy cheque man comes around on a Friday. It’s John. He knows John well. But John doesn’t take it personally. He just stands in our living room with his black folder open, laughs and says, ‘Big Dessy is Big Dessy.’ We know what he means. He hides in the room from us and we’re his children. John doesn’t laugh if mum misses a payment. It’s nothing personal. It just gets added on. It’s a bit like winning the pools backwards. They give you the money and then you need to pay ten times more back. We understand that you pay Provy cheques for the whole of your life and if you die too young the debt gets passed on like head lice. It’s Saturday and my turn for the Provy cheque.

There’s only one place to spend a Provy cheque in Clydebank. Dee’s on Dumbarton Road near my Secondary school has the kind of clothes that you get up the toon. If you want a pink suit like the one worn by Dave Bartram, Showaddwaddy, and thick soled purple brothel creepers, like the ones he wore when singing ‘Under the Moon of Love,’ then Dee’s have it spotlighted in their shop window. But it’s just a ruse. It’s a long corridor of a shop. They know a real person would never wear that. They keep their best gear locked up inside. It’s a bit dearer than normal shops because it’s so modern. A pair of denims cost about eighteen quid, but they just love Provy cheques. They’ve got two or three foot soldiers to protect their stock.

I’m kinda glad that mum has got to go with me to get my new coat. Obviously, it’s the worst reddy in the world going anywhere with your mum. The only thing worse than that is going somewhere with your mum and dad at the same time. But there’s a guy that works in Dees that even when I’m going in for new studs for my football boots makes me uneasy. He wears square specs and has a blown up body that balloons over his trousers and out of his vertically striped shirt

He lurks at the door waiting for us. As soon as we are inside he pounces, getting so close he almost stands on my toes, his Old Spice smell corroding the inside of my nostrils. He’s sweating all over me.

‘Sir, are you looking for anything in particular?’

He beams a false smile to mum who edges in behind me. A younger guy with slick hair and bad skin behind the counter looks over at the mauling I’m taking and he too smiles. My eyes dart along the line of denims, the jackets, the trousers, the Doc Marten boots toe tapping on the counter. At the bottom end of the shop, where the coats and double breasted jackets are kept, another shop assistant is pulling rank with another mother, probably just in for a pair of aluminium studs for her boy.

I begin the slow walk down to that end of the shop, like a man walking the plank. ‘I’m looking for a trench coat.’ I mumble out of a face swollen red as a balloon on the stalk of my neck, ready to blow away. Mum follows on behind me. She smiles at the man behind the counter. She smiles at small children, big children, dogs, cats, everybody. She’s daft that way.

He’s on my heels, chasing me up. I can’t get away from him. ‘Shall sir be paying cash or…?’ He lets it hang in the air with a certain warble on his final note of regret.

I’ve reached the end of denim and the end of the counter. Mum goes through her bag. She pulls out the Provy cheque. The man behind the counter ducks down and lifts up the machine that the cheque fits into, runs over, and triplicates the carbon copies of the sale and clunks it onto the glass topped counter. Everybody is happy.

The fatman lips slobber. ‘Come this way sir.’ He is ecstatic. He paws at me, driving me down to the bottom of the store. It’s a dead-end. There’s no escape. ‘We’ve got a fine selection. His arms are outstretched showing me, guiding me…What size are you?’

I look at my mum. He looks at my mum.

‘Em, I think he’s…’ Mum is not sure. It’s on her face and on her lips.

I’m not sure either. All the coats look wrong. Round collars. Buckles on the sleeve. Belts round the middle that would make me look like a pint-sized Columbo.

‘What about this one sir?’ He pulls one out of the line of Columbo corpses hanging on the rack. He holds it up against me.

‘Try it on.’ Mum prompts me.

I hate her. I fold it over my arm and take it into the changing room and pull the curtain across and try on my new skin.