Chapter 18 #3
Doll had a deck of tattered playing cards, but he was in no state to concentrate.
After a few hands, Cal could recognise the chewed edges of each card and he cheated from boredom.
They had brought bags of crisps with them, and in a maternal fashion, Cal split them open and laid them in front of Doll.
He slumped and shovelled messy handfuls into a wet mouth.
After a while, Cal couldn’t watch it any longer, so he said he was going for a piss and turned to the door.
He walked for miles. He waited in the Perspex bus shelter and stared at nothing and thought of nothing.
He waited for the evening to draw in and for the people to come out and for it all to be over.
His thumb worried the edge of his wallet.
He took out and unfolded the piece of paper.
He read Innes’s phone number several times, before he folded it again and returned it to his pocket.
The band began with a folk rendition of the U2 back catalogue.
The singer, a pretty girl with red curls, brought tears to every eye with her version of ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’.
As the crowd slid deeper into drink, the band matched their mood and by the time they played Chumbawamba, the entire place rushed the back of the bus and started bouncing.
Cal was caught up in the moshing. The coach tilted on its axle. The crowd screamed in delight.
The hen party acted as though the gathering was for them.
Ellie Nelson wore a veil and a garter belt stretched over her denimed thigh.
It had been months since Cal had seen a woman in trousers.
She looked like she was starving herself and whenever someone said how thin she looked, she seemed delighted to hear it.
Her circle of friends, who were robust-looking in matching pink T-shirts, had spent what looked like days straightening their hair.
These island girls didn’t know how to wear heels and they had the high trotting gait of Eriskay ponies.
They flicked their hair as though a gentle wind followed them everywhere they went.
Mildew and Peepo were wearing checked shirts.
The girls kept them running back and forth to the bar like they were waiters.
Hoggy sat off to the side. His friends barged through the crowd and told everyone of his failed bet.
The news spread quickly and despite his protests, Hoggy, the butcher’s son, would now be known as ‘Cheeks’, the man with the blistered arse.
Cal could see his feelings were hurt. He wondered why they hadn’t christened the butcher’s son ‘Rasher’, or ‘Streaky Back’, something porcine, but then straight men always did have a strange fascination with each other’s arses.
A girl with poker-straight hair, herself round with health, came over to Cal. She pointed at Doll and shouted over the music, “See your friend there. He’s an absolute disgrace. He’s just been sick over everyone.”
As soon as she said it, Cal could smell the stench. “Should we clean it up?”
“You’re too late,” she said. “He kicked it into the corner. He kicked it.” She wiped her leg before stalking off to warn the others, her fat pink tongue chasing her straw around her drink.
Cal watched as Doll tried to put his arms around one of the bridesmaids. When she shook him off, he put his hands in the air and punched the ceiling as though he was at a rave. When he noticed Cal watching him, he gave him the thumbs up. His face was melted with drink.
There was a cold water spigot attached to Tormod’s house.
Cal was contemplating going and getting Doll a jug of water, but as he looked to the door, Shiv Malone and her neighbour, Georgina, stepped up and onto the coach.
They let out a wild howl and the crowd howled back.
The women pushed their way to the back of the bus where they danced with each other, an elbows-out, forwards, backwards, pelvic two-step.
Doll wiped his mouth on his sleeve. He saw Shiv and Georgina, swivelled on drunken ankles, and shoved his way towards them.
Shiv threw her arms around his neck. If she smelt the sick on him, she didn’t let it show.
Tired of the girls and their wedding talk, Cheeks moved away from his friends. He lumbered over to sit beside Cal. They sat against the window, glad of the cool glass against their crowns. The bus was crowded and people trod on their toes as they tried to squeeze past.
Cheeks tapped Cal’s leg and when Cal looked down, he saw he had a bag of pills. He mouthed, Half? and broke a pill in two. He handed half to Cal and Cal swallowed it.
The band took a break and melted into the crowd. A DJ came on, a man Cal knew to drive a mobile hairdresser’s around the islands. He had a large ghetto blaster and a pile of CDs.
“I knew that I knew you,” said Cheeks. “You’re the lad whose mother ran away.”
“You collecting autographs?”
“I start a new job in a week. Can you guess what it is?” When Cal shrugged, he said, “I’m to be the general manager of shipping and logistics for a boutique company.”
“. . . You’re helping my mother box soaps?”
“I am,” he said. He took a swig of the beer. “I am.”
Cal felt a pang of jealousy. “Well, good for you. Good for her.”
Cheeks whispered a figure that was almost twice what Cal made – not that Cal knew what he made an hour because the labour never ceased and he got no docket for his work.
But it was twice as much as he’d made cleaning toilets in Edinburgh and he felt a real envy, a bitterness that he tried to conceal with a downturned smile.
Cheeks hadn’t told him out of malice, he had told him because he was pleased, because Grace was a generous employer, and Cal thought – not for the first time – how he had chosen the wrong side.
They talked about his mother for a while and Cheeks asked for the best way to get on her good side. Cal wasn’t sure he knew her that well. In the end he said something banal about initiative, about doing a little more than what was expected of you.
Cheeks leant closer, Cal could feel his breath against the side of his face.
His lips were close to his ear, which made the hair on the back of Cal’s neck stand up.
There was a pleasant puckering behind his balls.
It was an unexpected intimacy and without listening, Cal found himself agreeing with anything Cheeks would say, if only to keep him close and keep him talking.
Cheeks tapped his hand on Cal’s thigh. It drummed with the tempo of his words.
The DJ played House of Pain, which set the crowd jumping. Cal watched as Doll started pogo-ing. He missed the beat and jumped on every other note which meant for a split second, as the crowd landed and coiled to jump again, Doll rose into the air as though he was levitating.
“Want another half?”
Cal nodded. This time, Cheeks split the pill between his front teeth and used his thumb to slide it between Cal’s lips.
Cheeks nodded at the hen party, who were passing a bottle of MD 20-20 between them. “Do you know what’s worse than getting married? Listening to some idiot talk about getting married. I wouldn’t have come if I’d known the bus was getting hijacked by a hen party.”
“That’s funny,” Cal chuckled to himself. “Sounds like a Sandra Bullock film.”
Doll was dancing with Shiv. In the span of two songs, they went from being apart, to being propped against each other, his hands groping the back of her.
They were shoving like they wanted to pass through one another, stumbling like they might fall over.
Then they began to kiss; rough kissing in a way that made Cal raise his hand and touch his own front teeth.
“How the fuck am I going to get him home?”
“Do what they do with whales. Blow him up. Move him in pieces.”
Cal winced as Doll started to maul the older woman. He was opening his mouth so wide he could swallow the lower half of her face.
“You two staying at swinger’s paradise?” When Cheeks saw the dismissal on Cal’s face, he added, “You must know . . . you saw the pampas grass, right?”
“C’mon, that’s only a nasty rumour.”
“It’s true. I swear it. You’ll see. Auld Shiv will be waddling in the morning.”
Cal thought about Doll and the summer they had experimented with lube, stealing liquids from around the house, seeing if anything would help ease the pain.
They had tried butter, hair conditioner, and a fragranced face cream, all before settling on a palmful of cooking oil.
As the weather turned, and the summer grew more certain, the van had stunk of shit and chips.
Every now and then the crowd parted, and they would catch another glimpse of Doll and Shiv.
There was hardly any room, but the bus had arrived at a tacit agreement to hang back from the odd lovers, to surround them with a moat of empty space.
Cal was thinking about the church, and how people loved to shame others, when Cheeks said, “Do you want to come to T in the Park with us?” He gestured at the lads sitting opposite.
“We’re borrowing some vans, heading down, making a long weekend of it.
About a hundred and twenty quid should cover it, diesel, ferry, tickets and that.
You can bunk in my tent. It’s going to be amazing.
The Prodigy, Pulp, tha fuckin’ Beastie Boys! ”
It was still several months away and Cal thought that maybe he could get his hands on the money in time. He would love a couple of nights away and the promise of spending a weekend in a tent with Cheeks was very appealing. “I’ll come if I can get the money.”
“Want me to ask your mam for you?”
Cal huffed.