Spike

‘I’ll drive you,’ said Spike.

‘Nah,’ I said. ‘I’ll just walk.

‘But its thirty odd miles,’ he said. ‘And it’s pissing down.’

‘Doesnae matter, I’m like a duck, waterproof. I walked here and I’ll walk back. I’m no in any hurry. And I can see you’re busy.

Bought house, council, with three bedrooms, ensuite. In France, I was told, that means toilet. In Stirling that means you’ve got aspirations. You’d think their house was pillared in marble. Rich in ebony and oak. Bronze Sky dish on outer wall. Tower and temple of intricate architecture.   Public theft for private gain.  That’s another way of looking at it.

I’d taken enough of their time. Shona behind Spike in the hall, grabbed his arm to pull him inside. Her boss was a well-known Tory councillor whose name I could never remember. You know what he looks like. He looks like the rest of them.  

Shona was good at that kind of thing, shafting folk. She worked PR for some big company that stole from the poor and gave to the rich. Her clothes branded and worn like an overpriced clucking broiler chicken never on special offer, or so she’d have you believe.  Her hair was blonde, unnaturally so. She glowed like Sellafield and she was about that size. If gorgons had a choice they’d have chosen this colour of blonde over snakes every time.  Look away or you’re fucked. Look at her and you’re even more fucked.

Always sidling up sniffing at you like a bitch on heat that wants to know how much you want to screw her and how much they can screw you for. Her face, well, I used to do a lot of drawing and could never get the big gob right. I was never sure if that was down to my limitations or hers. I modelled it on woodpigeons. That’s how she talked, non-stop and made as much sense.

Shona was a dab hand with make-up. Started with the trowel around her pretty blue eyes and laid it on so thick that the folds in her forehead no longer cracked a mixed metaphor or a smile.

She had nice tits right enough. I’ll give her that. Picked from Which Magazine’s silicon selection.

That’s a lie. She always had nice tits. Everybody in Spike’s school had a feel of them, from boys that didn’t know their apples or oranges, to men that did and knew what she was up for.  I even had a shot myself. Shona invented the right to buy scheme before Thatcher.

He gave me one of those defeated looks. I’d carried him in my arms and on my shoulder and I taught him how to ride a bike in the Playpark while holding onto the handlebars and then floating along to the saddle and saw him taking off into the world. He fell off and started greeting. When I looked at his face I saw my da’s face too. Defeated and angry.

‘I’ll ne’er be able to go a bike,’ said Spike.

That’s what I called him because of his hair. I thought the name suited him.

‘Just let him go, Davy,’ said Shona. ‘You know what he’s like.

‘Aye,’ I said. ‘Let me go, Spike,’ and started walking home, shouting as I left, so the neighbours could listen. ‘You know what I’m like. The problem here is you don’t know what she’s like and those other cunts that are like her.’

Typical Tory, more chance of a twinkle in the sky than compassion in Shona’s eye. The Ufo capital of the world and I never got a wee hurl in one of those wee spaceships. Travelling at the speed of light I’d be back in Glasgow before I arrived. But I came from sturdy Irish peasant stock, men who built bridges and roads and all that stuff that’s meant to encourage you bent backed and on and on, but my feet were louping and I was drookit. I’d have settled for a tilt with a donkey.

I was willing to be the big man, let bygones be bygones. Strathkelvin and Kirkintollich.  Nobody, not even wee green men lives in Kirkintollich, especially not wee green men. Only fifteen miles, or so, from home, as the sign says or the woodpigeon flies.  

I’d have settled for the police lifting me for imitating a human being and walking along the middle of an A-road with my thumb out. Surely that’s illegal? But they’re never there when you want them. The thought cheered me, Shona would make a good police, now there was no longer a height restriction and they took any cunt that could fit into stretchy pants and able to file a creative-writing report and jail working class folk for being suspicious.

The thing about walking is it gives you time to think. I was a fucking, raving, sexist, nonentity without the sex, of course. The French have got a good word for it celibataire. In Scotland, virgin of the parish, they just call you a sad poke or a useless unemployed wanker living off the largesse of the state.

I stood at the side of the road, with my thumb out and a black diesel guzzler car passed me and pulled in. My brother in the driving seat. She was there with him, spilling out of the passenger seat. She played the part, dressed up and dressed down like a play, the kind they used to take you to at school full of innuendo and malapropisms you didn’t want to see and didn’t want to listen to, but had to go for your own good, because it was educational.  Would have you greeting and dogging school.

He leaned out the window. ‘How you gettin on?  

‘Aye,’ I said, ‘no bad.’

‘Look,’ he said, ‘we’ve had our differences.’ Spike turned to his wife and she gave him the nod. ‘And Shona can be a bit outspoken.’

‘Perhaps a bit too honest for my own good,’ said Shona, leaning over and glaring at me.

I stood and closed my eyes, hoping, but when I opened them again she was still there. I just started laughing and couldn’t stop.