Scratch Read online

  SCRATCH

  By

  Danny Gillan

  Copyright © 2011 Danny Gillan

  The author assert the moral right under the Copyright, Designs and

  Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

  stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any

  means without the prior written consent of the author, nor be

  otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than

  that in which it is published and without a similar condition being

  imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Not to be resold.

  Cover by janedixonsmith.com

  Published for Kindle by Jakobian Books in association with Quinn Publications

  Chapter 1

  I tried not to think about Paula Fraser too often, but Terry had a habit of reminding me of her, even though he didn’t know it.

  ‘So, Jim,’ Terry said. ‘It’s your birthday. Tell me about your sex life.’

  ‘Not sure I get the connection,’ I said.

  ‘Just figured I’d give you a prompt to get you all miserable and depressed. That’s what you’re meant to do on your birthday, isn’t it? Go on, tell me about the last time you had a hug. And by hug I mean so adventurous it hurts sex, obviously.’Best-mate is a relative term. I liked Terry a lot, but something about the word best didn’t always seem to fit. Especially after a couple of pints in The Fixx.

  ‘Yeah, I got that,’ I said.

  ‘And?’

  I sighed. ‘It was a few months ago and involved a lot of alcohol, so the details are fuzzy. She was Irish, I remember that much.’

  ‘I reckon you’re a bit obsessed with Irish women.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The last twice you’ve been drunk enough to admit you fancied someone off the telly they’ve been Irish.’

  ‘Only because the last twice I’ve been in your flat we’ve watched The Commitments and then every episode of Father Ted, including the one with Dervla Kirwan in it.’

  ‘Aye, at your suggestion.’

  ‘So? I hadn’t seen them for ages,’ I said. ‘Coincidence.’

  ‘Whatever. Continue.’ I must have looked scared, because he went on to clarify. ‘Fuck’s sake, Jim. I’m not asking you about the last time you were in love, or the first, God forbid. Just, you know, your last hug. Which I’ll point out again is a euphemism for—‘

  ‘I know. But unlike you I’m not into telling tales.’

  ‘Boring bastard.’

  ‘Yep, I am.’ I finished my pint and looked at the table.

  ‘Christ, look at you! You are fucking miserable. You’re only thirty-three, mate. It’s not all over, yet. It’s when you hit thirty-five you need to start worrying, you’re fine till then.’

  ‘Cheers, that helps.’

  ‘S’what I’m here for.’ Terry tore open his fifth bag of crisps. ‘Your round,’ he mumbled through a mouthful of Smokey Bacon.

  ‘Okay. New topic of conversation required when I get back.’

  ‘On it. I have hunners. Get more crisps while you’re up, cheers.’

  As I headed for the bar I reflected, not for the first time, how strange it must be to live inside Terry Kendal’s head. To my knowledge, in the two years I’d known him Terry had never so much as held a girl’s hand. He talked about women a lot, but the only people he ever eyed-up when he thought I wasn’t watching were guys - specifically well-built, over-tanned guys, generally with very short hair and very tight T-shirts. He clearly wasn’t ready to admit his true nature yet, but whether he maintained the pretence only to others or if he was also lying to himself, I wasn’t sure.

  ‘Okay, rules for the new topic,’ I said, placing two full pints and three more bags of crisps on the table. ‘Has to be something vague and not even nearly connected to me or my love life.’ Or yours.

  ‘Right,’ Terry said, pausing for a moment. ‘If you were legally obliged to kill five people, who would they be?’

  ‘From history or now?’

  ‘Now. No one famous either, just people you know personally.’

  That was better.

  ***

  As I wandered the two miles home that night, accepting the rain pouring between the back of my neck and the collar of my cheap white shirt as just punishment for spending my last tenner on tequila instead of a taxi, I remembered Terry’s comment about not asking about the last, or first, time I fell in love.

  The first time was easy; too easy, in fact.

  Paula Fraser.

  We met in a pub; we courted in a pub; we fell in love in a pub; we argued in a pub; we made up in a pub; and we split up in a pub. And that pub was The Basement.

  The Basement had been my favourite mid-week haunt for months before I started working there. I, and a few other futureless idiots who didn’t think attending lectures and seminars was all that important, used to head down to The Basement at least three times a week to get blootered. It’s a funny thing about student life – no matter how skint we were, we could always scrape together enough coppers for another pint of snakebite and black (if we were flush and had forgotten that brain cells are important, we’d throw in a Pernod and call it a red-witch).

  The Basement was aptly if obviously named. A steep set of concrete stairs ran from street level down to the, well, basement, of a swanky office building in Glasgow city centre. Even on an eye-burning summer’s afternoon it felt like the middle of the night by the time you reached the bottom of those stairs. Once you pulled open the creaking oak door this impression was bolstered by dull, orange lighting and a ceiling Danny Devito could have clattered his head off with a decent jump. Everything was made of wood – deeply-stained, chipped, generally knackered-looking wood. The floor, the tables and chairs, the bar itself and the wobbly barstools facing it were all identically mahogany-hued. Even some of the staff had grainy skin and a plank-like demeanour, although that may just have been the lighting.

  The day I finally admitted that a Business Studies degree was unattainable and even less desirable, I marched straight from the college to The Basement and practically demanded (with pleading) a job. Luckily the manager, Sammy, knew me fairly well by that point. Even more luckily, he had that very day sacked one of his full-timers for ‘arsing around with the no-sale button’ (which I later discovered meant omitting to ring drinks through the till and pocketing the cash). He gave me a job on the spot.

  Paula Fraser already worked there. She was part-time though and only worked weekends, so I’d been making a merry tit of myself for five days before we met.

  ‘Pint of Moosehead, mate,’ some swine said at six o’clock on the Friday, nodding towards the tap that had become my mortal enemy.

  Moosehead was a Canadian lager whose claim to fame was that it was ‘double-cooled’. This was supposed to provide the aspiring alcoholic with an ice-cold beverage experience to match no other. In reality, it provided the punter with a ten-minute wait as the poor sod pouring it (i.e. me) battled the excessive foam spurting and farting from the tap. It was a right bastard, even for the staff who knew what they were doing.

  As my face was being sprayed with CO2 propelled yeasty bubbles for the umpteenth time in five minutes a girl so gorgeous it was scary brushed past me, clearly trying not to laugh as she opened the wooden door beside the till that led into the tiny office/cloak-room/staff-room/skive-area.

  It’s a cliché to say I had to rub my eyes, unsure of the veracity of the angelic vision I’d just witnessed. In this case though, it was true. By the time I cleared the bulk of the sticky, stinging, bloody-freezing Canadian gold from my lids, she was back out of the office and behind the bar. And looking at
me.

  ‘Jim? I’m Paula. Welcome to the crypt. I hope you remembered to abandon all hope before you signed on,’ she said, with a smile that made me wobble.

  ‘Hah, yeah, hiya. I’m Jim,’ I said hastily and, on reflection, unnecessarily. I thrust out a hand to shake hers. However, my vision was still limited thanks to the recent beer-bath my eyes had received and this, coupled with the distraction of some fuckwit shouting at me for another pint of Moosehead, led me to misjudge spectacularly the distance between us. Instead of exchanging a polite greeting with this Venus, I shoved my right hand into her left breast, with a reasonable amount of conviction.

  I like to think it was more shock than pain that led to Paula taking a speedy step backwards as I cried: ‘Holy Christ bollocks shit sorry!’

  To her credit Paula laughed, sort of, as she set about having very little to do with me for the rest of the shift. She did, however, have time for everyone else, staff and customers alike. It amazed me the way she was able to maintain her smile and her temper no matter how frantic the place got or how offensive the drunken advances from some of the punters became. With a lean forward and a few softly spoken words, she calmed even the most belligerent of complaining customers. And she looked happy throughout it all. She was the first (and possibly the last) person I ever knew who actually enjoyed their job.

  The one benefit to come out of my blurred vision was that I got to view Paula in an, albeit painful and irritating, halo of soft-focus.

  She was only an inch or two shorter than me, which put her at around 5’7 or so. She had a big, long, curly, brown perm (it was the early nineties, remember), and, in all honesty, the nicest bum any ogler could wish for - her skin-tight faux lizard-skin jeans helped there. Her eyes were hazel, her teeth were white, her nose was cute and her skin was somehow both pale and full of life. She smiled at everyone (not so much me, that night), and had an aura of joy and, I’m not joking, unadulterated goodness about her that I had never come close to witnessing in anyone before. Thanks to me her bust was probably a touch on the sore side, but it looked fabulous. She was, without doubt, the most attractive person I had ever punched.

  By the end of the shift I’d served God-knows how many customers, wrangled twelve more pints of Moosehead, developed a new and surprisingly intimate relationship with the glass-washing machine, and said not another word to Paula Fraser. Plus I was bloody knackered.

  Once the bar was re-stocked and the floor swept and the chairs lifted onto the tables and the drip-trays washed and the wine glasses polished and the ashtrays cleaned and the toilets checked and the floor mopped and the rubbish put out (tasks which, even at the time, I knew it was a bloody liberty to make me do on my own just because I was the new boy), I got to sit down and have a beer with the five other staff, who were well into their second drinks by then.

  I was so buggered I chose not to notice the flash of discomfort that crossed Paula’s face when she realised the only empty seat at the table was next to her. I plopped myself down with a sigh and tried to smile as I raised my pint to my lips (I can’t remember what I’d poured for myself but it wasn’t bloody Moosehead, I know that).

  Sammy lifted his glass from the other end of the large round table. ‘Well done, Jim,’ he said. ‘Welcome to the underground.’

  ‘Cheers,’ I said.

  ‘Do yourself a favour, though,’ Sammy went on, ‘and stop walloping my favourite barmaid in the tits, okay?’

  I cringed, but heard Paula laugh along with everyone else.

  ‘I’m so sorry about that,’ I said to her as the rest of the table resumed their various conversations.

  ‘Yeah, don’t worry about it,’ she said, chuckling.

  ‘Normally I wait till the second meeting before attempting a fondle.’

  Her smile widened briefly as she changed the subject. ‘So, did you get the hang of the Moosehead?’

  ‘Nah, I’m still its bitch,’ I said.

  ‘Tough tits.’

  ‘Don’t put yourself down, they felt soft enough to me.’

  Paula reddened and gave me a look.

  ‘Sorry, sometimes I just say things,’ I said. ‘I’m thinking of getting counselling.’ I gave her what I hoped was my best puppy-dog expression.

  ‘I can see I’m going to need to keep an eye on you,’ she said. She was still smiling, thank God.

  ‘If you insist.’

  ***

  ‘Jim Cooper, you are by far the biggest wanker I’ve ever met.’

  This wasn’t quite the start I was hoping for to our first date.

  ‘I’ve been sitting here like a twat for half-an-hour, where have you been?’

  ‘Sorry, sorry,’ I said, sitting next to Paula. ‘It all went a bit wrong, getting here.’

  Paula waited expectantly. I just waited.

  ‘And?’ she said.

  ‘Oh right, well. I was all set to go for the bus when my mum started going on about my career and shit, I think she’d had a wine, and probably a fight with my dad. Anyway, by the time I got rid of her I’d missed my bus. I tried to get a taxi but none were passing so I had to wait for the next bus. Sorry.’ I tried the puppy-dog thing again. ‘Do you want a drink?’

  Paula managed to shake her head and nod at the same time. I went to the bar, thankful for miniscule mercies.

  As it turned out the night was a good ’un. I was telling the truth about my mum delaying me so I didn’t have any guilt to hide.

  We had planned to meet for a quick drink then go and see Jurassic Park. In the end up we skipped the cinema and stayed in Nico’s drinking till shutting time. By eleven we were inebriated enough to think our sarcastic comments about the state of everyone else’s dress sense were both hilarious and discreet. By midnight we had drunkenly bonded enough for it to feel natural when I draped an arm around Paula’s shoulder as we waited in the taxi rank in Sauchiehall Street.

  We had a wee kiss in the taxi queue. We had a bigger kiss in the taxi. I pretended I really needed the toilet, thus eliciting an invite up to Paula’s flat.

  ***

  We were together for two years. Not coincidentally, we both continued to work in The Basement for those two years.

  When Paula graduated from University she got a proper job as a languages tutor (she’d studied English and German, and ended up qualified to teach both) in that very same University. In the equivalent time span the only thing I had graduated from was my inability to pour a pint of Moosehead, and even that remained shaky.

  It was a Wednesday and I’d been on a lunch-time shift. As usual when finishing at four I’d had three pints by five-thirty when Paula came in to meet me after her work.

  ‘Hiya,’ she said, perching on the barstool next to me. She looked tired.

  ‘Hey, all right? Drink?’

  ‘Just a coke.’

  ‘No worries.’ I ordered a coke from Sammy. He poured it from the gun, so I didn’t have to pay.

  ‘Can we get a table?’ Paula said.

  I already knew something was up, and Paula’s face as we sat down at the corner table confirmed it. Her eyes were as red as mine had been the night we met, but for patently different reasons. Her hair was scraped back in a ponytail and she wasn’t wearing her usual make-up. She was far paler than she deserved to be and her lips formed the saddest smile in the world. I knew what was coming.

  I braced myself. What would it be? ‘We need to talk’? ‘I’ve been thinking’? ‘We’ve been drifting apart for a while now’? What gentle way would she find to say it?

  ‘Jim Cooper, you are by far the biggest wanker I’ve ever met.’

  That was unexpected, if consistent. ‘Eh,’ I said.

  ‘Two years, two years.’ Paula shook her head. ‘We were both nineteen, now we’re twenty-one.’

  This was both factual and correct. Beyond that I couldn’t see what she was getting at. ‘Hmm, yes,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t have a feckin’ clue what I’m talking about, do you?’

  Again, factual a
nd correct. ‘Not ... specifically, perhaps,’ I said, winging it.

  ‘Where’s your life?’

  ‘That depends; define your terms.’ I hoped some levity might help. It didn’t.

  ‘The life you said you wanted. You were going to look into going to ArtSchool or something; you were going to find a way to prove your father wrong. What happened to that?’

  ‘Ah well, that would be the whole entropy thing.’

  ‘I’ve been offered a job.’

  ‘Another one? Bloody hell, well done.’

  ‘It’s in London.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘It’s a good offer.’

  This was the time for me to say something devastatingly witty, intelligent and endearing in order to make her stay with me. ‘Is the money good?’ Pathetic, utterly pathetic.

  The thing was, I knew I couldn’t keep her. Paula was way beyond me; I’d known that since the day we met. Our paths happened to merge for a couple of years, and I was a lucky bastard to have the time I’d had with her. She was always cooler than me; she was always going further than me; she was always smarter than me; she was always, when it came down to it, bigger than me.

  And, that day, she chucked me.

  ***

  So, that was the first time I was in love.

  The last time? Now there’s a story.

  She was, I’m neither afraid nor ashamed to say, a goddess.

  Ah, there was a girl. She had the eyes. That’s always been the thing for me, the eyes.

  They could look at you, through you, past you and deep inside of you, all at the same time. They could see the truth of you.

  A simple colour doesn’t do that justice. They were, pure and simple, home.

  She had the finest of hair, the sweetest of smiles, the most perfect of faces, the most beautiful of personalities. Fortunately for me she also had, for a time, the lowest of expectations.

  She made friends like I made fag burns on the carpet. Just hearing her name was enough to make anyone who knew her smile like an idiot.

  When was this?

  It was the year before, the month before. It was the day before, it was that day. It hadn’t faded, yet.