Green - part v (conclusion)

It’s only now that I have realized this, but I think that that money was actually my share of my grandfather’s estate. I doubt there is anything I can do about it now, but it just shows what it's like when those bastards in uniform get you surrounded. They get you all intimidated. You talk any amount of pish. Head’s not straight. Anyway, it seemed like a good time to get out of the city.

Josh had a connect that sorted us out with jobs at T in the Park, a music festival held in Perthshire, a manageable bus journey from Glasgow. We were distributing soft drinks around the site vendors; it sounded easy, driving about in a golf buggy, watching bands. The first day we worked from four in the morning until late at night. It was boring, backbreaking work. Suddenly the £100 day rate seemed derisive. We made the best of the day by analysing the events from a Marxist perspective; we were truly horrified by the mark-ups being applied. The whole festival experience seemed to be a capitalist trick of the most offensive sort. Here was a field in Perthshire, a place of outstanding natural beauty, were the young had gathered to listen to songs and be merry. And the bastards were charging over £100 to get in, and there were adverts everywhere, and the beer was expensive (‘Fuckin’ London prices mate, loadafuckin’ pish so it is’) and the vendors were making £2.50 on every £3 bottle of Coca-Cola they sold.

We finished a little earlier on the second day, and, though we were exhausted, decided to venture into the arena. We ended up in the camp site taking ecstasy and dancing to the Flaming Lips on the radio, which was being broadcast live from about a mile away from us. We could see the fireworks quite clearly. The remaining days were excruciatingly dull; our depressing chore was now combined with hangovers of insomnia and serotonin depletion. By the end we were suicidal.

With the money we decamped to Spain for a week and went to the music festival in Benicàssim. We then spent even more money on MDMA and we swam in the sea at night while we were high and we somehow didn’t die. We spoke to Spanish people in English with cartoon Mexican accents. They taught us a new trick: the boily.

*

Winter had been all about asphyxiation; then there was spring—mushrooms, and the third summer of love. Now as we approached autumn, I—we, Glasgow—needed the boily.

*

I walked blithely by the boxes on the landing. I was in a state of semi-hypnosis after a disrupted travel schedule. Our flight out of Alicante was delayed so we missed our connection in Rome and had to stay in a hotel overnight, dining on a measly sandwich (contrary to the advice we received, it tuned out the airline would have paid for room service.) Our flight from London was missed, so we resorted to travelling home by coach, which we aimed to improve with many cans of cheap lager, and perhaps did, but by the time I arrived at the flat I was much unimproved, and heavily unrested.

I had been trying to fit my key into the latch for quite some time before I noticed the alien lock and the notice of eviction. I called the telephone number on it and was told of a number of factors, including failure to make rental payments, failure to maintain the property in a habitable condition, and complaints from neighbours. I offered them all the cash I had and was informed that they would not let to me if I paid twice market rate, and if I ever wanted to rent from anybody again they advised me not to request a reference from them. I was just about to launch into a pointless, histrionic tirade when I remembered the drugs. My K bags, or what was left of them.

‘Where’s all my stuff? I need in to get my stuff!’

‘We packaged everything in boxes and left it on the landing.’

I had wrapped the bags containing the drugs in tinfoil, then double-bagged them, and then hidden the package in a compartment I had fashioned with a stanley knife in the underside of the divan bed. It seemed unlikely that I was going to find this package in the cardboard boxes in the hallway, but this didn’t stop me looking. I tore into the boxes with my hands and rifled aimlessly around. In my frustration, I wanted to upturn everything, to scatter my chattels indiscriminately around the close. But even in my desperation I knew I was much too sick and lazy to repackage everything, and this was all I had.

Josh was now living just down the road in Partick, so I took a taxi with my four structurally unsound boxes to his flat. The situation was one of immense urgency. We were unwell, we needed sleep and salt and water, but we went instead to Partick Library to research lockpicking on the internet. Armed with inchoate understanding of the philosophy of breaking and entering, and with a series of wiry nicknacks from the pound shop, we arrived back at the flat in Whiteinch.

We fumbled blind for several senseless seconds before the futility of the operation became apparent. We fumbled a further few minutes before collapsing in exasperation. Drained, desolate, we regathered ourselves in the Thornwood pub on Dumbarton Road. We sat in silence. I was homeless. Josh had no income from which to pay his rent. It was over. We were going to have to get jobs.

‘Could we get a locksmith?’ he said.

I asked for a phone book from the barmaid and we went through them in order of distance.

‘Hi,’ I said, ‘I’ve been evicted and locked out of my flat and my possessions are still inside and I wondered if you could let me in to get them.’

The answer to that question, it turns out, is no. On the second try I decided to impart much less information. ‘I’m locked out,’ was the extent.

I’m sure the man found us in some way suspicious; sallow but sunburnt; nervous and taciturn. I’m sure he could see the residue of tape on the door from where the eviction notice had been removed. And then when the door was opened to reveal that the flat was completely empty, all the furniture removed, even the flooring taken up, he must have been as miffed as we were devastated.

I thanked the man and paid him. After a forensic search we found three fluffy ecstasy tablets and about a gram of soapbar.

*

We were in Waterfoot again, the same place, the same party, a year later. The same pyrrhic defeat by the midges, the same order of drop-outs, until it was just me and Josh up, discussing Thatcher’s war on class consciousness.

‘Now everybody thinks they are middle class.’

‘Work in a call centre for £5 an hour and you think you’re middle class because you’ve got Sky TV and a new car on finance,’ etcetera

‘I blame the rustic craftsmen,’ he said, but he always said that.

‘Even Lenin succumbed to rustic craftsmanship on occasion,’ I countered.

‘Maybe in the aftermath of the revolution, with the NEP and war communism going on.’

‘This was pre-revolution, I think,’ but I didn’t actually know.

This rif went on for a while, and then, eventually,

‘Okay, shall we do it?’

‘End of an era,’ etcetera.

We took the final pill and we crushed it into dust. We split the dust between two shot glasses and boiled the kettle. We mixed the dust with freshly boiled water and downed the mixture in one, without blowing to cool it down. This method, the boily, insures the instant release of endorphins to counterbalance the pain of the burned mouth. The drug then seems to be released faster into the bloodstream, it seems to be subjectively more powerful. Maybe it is a placebo effect, but my reaction was to take off my clothes and go for a walk, leaving Josh to lay on the floor rubbing his face against a velvety cushion that he had taken a liking to.

It was still dark, and still warm. It felt nice to be outside. I felt exhilarating; I was at one with the world, an atom within a global molecule. The breeze was braw against my skin. All was waves. I walked down single track farmers roads, not really knowing where I was going. I know these roads well now; I cycle at the weekends and seek out these quiet tracks on the far outskirts of the city, where you can ride for fifty miles and barely see a car. I thought: I have an hour til daylight, so I will walk for half an hour, then turn back. It would be easy to hide if I heard a tractor or a Jeep coming. I may have been breaching social convention, but I did not want to harm anyone. This was unusual but not immoral behaviour. There was no criminal motive.

So off I wandered, lost in my thoughts and in my feelings, and I guess I took a turn or two when the road demanded it, and when it became time to turn back, turn back I duly did, and I guess I took a turn or two when the road demanded it, and after a while a horrible feeling sort of sunk in that I was somehow lost. This feeling grew as the sun climbed into view. I no longer enjoyed the feeling of the breeze against my skin; each little gust was a horrendous reminder of my vulnerability. I was naked to the invisible eye; scurrying in a crouch near by bushes, cursing under my breath as I stepped variously on sharp stones and into puddles. I was no longer part of the connected world; I was profoundly alone, naked and on the brink of ostracization. I could feel the cold sweat on my back; the chill ran down to my tailbone. I wanted to cry, to disappear.

I must have doubled back on myself several times—the light was no longer crescupular but definitely the silver-grey of dawn—when I heard a dog barking. I panicked and climbed over a wall, ducked down and waited and hoped. I could hear its breathing. It was on the other side of the wall; it started barking again.

‘Come on, Archimedes!’ said a woman’s voice. Middle-aged, typical posh south Glasgow accent. ‘Come along!’

But still the dog was less than a metre away from me, barking frantically, drawing attention to its interesting discovery. She gave in, ‘what have you found? What has mummy’s little puppy found?’ I could hear her approaching. There was no chance that I wasn’t going to get caught, so I stood up, one hand covering my genitals, and I said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I got lost, I didn’t mean it, I don’t know where I am.’

A look of revulsion flushed through her. She was around fifty years old, five foot four tall, she was evidently fit, lean and active. She wore proper walking clothes; sturdy boots, a red lightweight waterproof jacket. I was still standing there, apologizing for all my life was worth, the dog was barking like an idiot, and then she quite suddenly regained her composure and starting going on at me like a schoolmistress. All sorts of words: disgusting, antisocial, drunk, pervert, police, not-getting-away-with-this.

‘I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean it, I’m sorry.’

‘I’m going to telephone the police right now,’ she said, and then to my horror she took out a digital camera.

I ducked back down behind the wall, out of shot. My heart was going insane, I thought I may actually have a heart attack. ‘I’m calling the police right now,’ she announced. I glanced up over the wall and saw her, just a couple of metres away. She had the camera on me but her phone was still in her pocket. I ducked quickly back out of her line of vision, then reemerged with a rock that I threw at the camera.

One, totally accidental, blow to the temple was all it took. Little bubbles of saliva came out of her mouth, blood gushed down the road from her head. The dog was still barking like mad on the other side of the wall, but it calmed down after I climbed over and patted it. I picked up the bloodied rock and the camera and ran. I felt sick, but intensely sober. I somehow knew exactly what way to go. I dumped the rock into a burn where it looked the same as similar, peaceful, rocks. I looked through the photos on the camera. There were a few blurry captures of the scene, but I was not in them. I deleted them anyway. Back at the party I dressed then called my brother to get a lift home before anyone woke up.

*

I decided to move back in with mum and dad, take some time out to regroup. I stopped taking drugs, even stopped drinking for a while. I didn’t really go out much at all for a few months, other than for a daily five mile run along Clarkston Road to Muirend, then along Braidbar Road to Giffnock, up Fenwick Road, then up the hill on Eastwoodmains Road back home. One night I was lying in my bed and I recalled a day some months prior. It must have been just before I moved to Whiteinch. I had woken up with a hangover and called in sick to work. Nobody else was in the house. Everyone else had managed to comply with their daily commitment to employment. I was just wondering how I was going to spend this unexpected day off, when the postman came and deposited a box of magic mushrooms I had ordered online through the letterbox.

I figured it probably wouldn’t make the hangover worse, and got in about them. It ended up being a pleasant day. I listened to music for a while and stared at the radiator (very trippy, highly recommended). Later on, by now so high I wasn’t sure if my eyes were open or closed, I listened to Roots Manuva. ‘There’s going to be fun and lots of laughter,’ was the lyric I remember. I remembered feeling nice, all over my body feeling a great niceness, a comfort so great that it felt decadent. I remembered thinking to myself: from now on, I will only do things that feel nice. And I had tried to stick to this as far as possible. Always take the shortest route, always work the least amount possible, never miss a chance to get high.

But I think I finally understood the folly of this mantra.

I watched TV a lot. I watched the news. There had been a murder in Waterfoot. The story kept coming up; police looking for leads. It was a shocking crime; a woman walking a dog killed in a savage attack. Everyone was talking about it. She worked as a teacher at Eastwood High School. She did charity work—she raised money for Alzheimer's research by climbing every munro. She had also had a volume of poetry published in the 1980s. Her name was Hazel Watts. She was survived by her husband and two daughters, one of whom was my age, the other my brother’s. It was an unpleasant story, but oddly compelling.

It was a great relief when the culprit handed himself in; a local boy, bit of a loaner, aged 18. No motive, just a real bad kid.

By this time I had started socializing again, every now and then when I had my dole money. Just with people who lived nearby, that I’d been at school with. We went into the town sometimes, had a drink at the Wetherspoons. It was in the Crystal Palace, just up from the Sub Club, that I bumped into Jenny. It was nearly closing time and a lot of the people in where getting one last drink in before joining the queue for Optimo. But I couldn’t be arsed with all that. That scene was over for me.

‘How are you doing?’

‘What about you?’ all that sort of stuff.

‘You must give me a text.’

And I did do that and I got the old job back, just for a month or so though, before uni started up again, and then I was back at uni, and I went to every tutorial and I guess that’s when the bad feeling sort of started.

*

So that was all ages ago now; half a lifetime ago. I had never had any reason to return to it, but, I don’t know, it was like the fog just lifted. I guess it was just part of my journey. I’m a lawyer now, I do corporate law. I live in Hyndland. I bought at more or less the right time; we had a bit of a scare after the crash, but it’s recovered the value and more now.