I go back tae my room and read.
I get disturbed by Skinny-Specky, who tells me that I have a session with Molly. I’m wondering what the fuck she’s on about, and she tipples and says, ‘Sorry, the other Molly.’
The other Molly is a straight-backed, horsey Englishwoman called Molly Greaves, who is a visiting clinical psychologist. She couldn’t be more different from our own beloved Moll if she tried. I first met her at the clinic, where I answered her probing, insistent questions in a dazed compliance. Now I’m far more testy and resistant to her violating edge, and it doesn’t go well.
At night I sit on the back porch with the guitar, strumming under the inky-black sky, but a string breaks and there’s no replacement, so the party’s over.
Day 38
Tom’s getting under my prickly skin. I’m due tae be discharged next week, but as well as scheduling me for another fruitless session with the clinical psychologist, in our one-to-ones he’s changed his softly-softly tactics. Today, he looked me in the eye and said in frosty detachment, ‘Don’t lie to yourself, Mark.’
‘What?’ I was wrong-footed, and I thought, once again, about The Big Lie. If he wis gaunny pill us up oan it.
‘Work with me.’
‘What d’ye mean?’
‘You’re an intelligent guy. But you’re not that intelligent. For as well read and educated as you are, you can’t solve the mystery of why you’re doing this to yourself.’
‘Ye think so?’ I challenged him, while aw the time ah kent that the cunt was spot on.
‘You don’t know why you’re a junky and that bugs the shit out of you. It offends your intellectual vanity and your sense of yourself.’
It was like being punched in the guts. Because it was true. I was perplexed, but more than that, a bit shaken, as much by his U-turn towards this more confrontational approach, as by what he said.
CUNT.
I could hardly hear my own words over the blood bubbling in my brain and I started to rant. It went something like this: ‘Ah cannae value this type of world. It’s no good for me, this shithole we created and cannae make better. That’s what offends me. Ah’m choosin no tae engage, tae drop out, if you want tae use that shitey hippy term!’
And that’s making it sound more articulate than it was.
‘That’s not normal talk for a young guy,’ Tom responded. ‘You’re simply depressed. What’s making you depressed, Mark?’
Couldnae think ay anything to say. ‘The world.’
‘It’s not the world,’ he shook his head emphatically. ‘Yes, it’s bad, but people like yourself should be trying to make it better. Besides, you’re smart enough to get by and thrive in any sort of society. What is it?’
‘Skag’s a good buzz,’ I telt him. Anything tae burst the bubble, tae avoid confronting The Big Lie. ‘Ah eywis liked a good buzz.’
‘So you’re at an age where you discover that the world is fucked up and it can’t be easily fixed. So deal with it. Grow the fuck up.’ There was a new iron in his eyes. ‘Get on with your life. So what?’
‘So this.’ I rolled up my sleeve and show him the scar tissue ay my healed track marks.
The Big Lie.
We were all playin a fuckin game: the rehab game. We had tae collude wi the staff in the myth that we wanted tae stop using heroin. Few, if any ay us, really gied a flying fuck though. What we wanted was to clean up, soas we could get back tae using at a reduced dosage. But we didnae want tae stop, fuck that! We wanted a clean slate so we could use without things getting out ay hand. Success in this game was based on our ability tae deceive the staff, and their ability tae con themselves, by buying intae the myth that we actually wanted tae embrace this bullshit ay a drug-free life.
TO DO WHAT?
Only Seeker wanted something else: tae find a place in Tenerife so that the crippling winter cauld wouldnae get at the metal in his body.
Scribbled more mair aboot that Yorkshire trip wi Dad. The writing’s my refuge; my life here would be intolerable without it. For experimental purposes I tried tae frame it in the form ay a story, writing as events actually affected me.
Journal Entry: Concerning Orgreave
Even the plank-stiffness of this old, unyielding settee can’t arrest my body’s slink into deliverance. It reminds me of the university residences in Aberdeen; lying in the dark, basking in exalted freedom from the fear that coalesced in my chest, like the thick phlegm did in his. Because whatever I hear outside, cars scrunching down the narrow, council-house streets, sometimes sweeping their headlights across this fusty old room, drunks challenging or serenading the world, or the rending shrieks of cats taking their torturous pleasures, I know I won’t hear that noise.
No coughing.
No screaming.
Day 39
High drama, as Skreel was discovered tae have gone AWOL late last night. He comes back wasted early this morning, shuffling in wi a dopey smile on his face, and some blood tricklin fae his big, bust nose, responding tae aw interrogations wi an offhand shrug. It seems he managed tae score smack in Kirkcaldy. The way I see it, the cunt deserves a medal for initiative. He’s only around for half an hour, presumably as some sort ay negative example tae us all, before the polis arrive and he’s carted off tae jail.
We have an emergency process group meeting tae discuss, predictably, ‘our feelings’ about the incident. Emotions are running high and Ted, who had become close tae Skreel, gets intae a shouting match with Len, Tom and Amelia, storming out the room, calling them ‘grassin cunts’. Molly shrilly parrots on about Skreel ‘letting everybody doon’. Well, the cunt certainly let me fuckin doon, no telling us that he was daein a runner and had a connection locally. I’d have been right ower that fuckin waw behind him. Being contrary by nature, I say absolutely fuck all, except a philosophical, ‘He’s gone. Can’t really see the point of inquests and recrimination. Let’s just get oan wi it.’
The fat lassie — Gina, her name is — she’s fresh out of detox but still rattling like fuck, is constantly whining, ‘Ah cannae handle aw this …’ as she rocks away, sitting on her hands, meaty airms tight by her side. The wee felly wi her is called Lachlan, or Lachy, he tells us timidly. Lackey of the state, I’ll think of him, as he’s in the care of a state agency.
Molly and
How soon they forget! Aye, I fair had a wee smirk at that yin, knowing full well that if Sick Boy walked in that door her keks would be roond her ankles in seconds.
‘Great thit yuv learned yir lesson,’ Seeker says, and flashes me a grim, collusive smile, while Keezbo picks and chews at the dry skin aroond his heavily bleeding nails.