Read Online The Blade Artist by Irvine Welsh - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Irvine Welsh
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around fourteen comes in. He fixes June with a sneer of defiant belligerence as he picks up a packet of cigarettes from the coffee table, then swiftly leaves.
— Yours? Franco asks.
— THEY ARE MA FAGS! she shouts after the departing boy, as she sparks up again.
— No the fags, the laddie.
— Aye, that’s Gerard. June takes a drag, her cheeks buckling in. — Ah’ve goat Andrea and Chloe tae. As well as oor Michael and Sean . . . Her eyes glaze over and a tissue, torn from a box on the coffee table, goes right to them. As she coughs raucously, Franco watches June shake: her fat wobbling inside shapeless, washed-out leisurewear garments. Her first pregnancy and Sean’s birth had seemed to wreck her body, but rather than bloat, June had shrunk into a Belsen skeleton, and he’d pretty much lost interest in her after that. He had muttered something like ‘fuck sake’ when she told him she was expecting Michael. There had been the jail, and their domestic life together, in which he recalled her swathed in blue light from the television set, through a fog of cigarette smoke. Although still a specialist in tobacco consumption, June is now obese and looks as grey-skinned as he’d done after his longest prison stretch. She inhales again, her chunky face caving in so radically it is as if her teeth have been extracted. — So you goat married again, ay?
— Aye, official, he announces, looking coolly at her, waving his rings, — no just common law. We had tae, for my immigrantstatus. Wanted tae as well but, ay. If you feel the love, why no make the statement?
June bristles a little. — Aye, they say it was that American lassie ye met in the jail.
— She was the art therapist, aye. She expects me to say, Ah ken how it looks. Fuck that. — She’s young, good-looking, intelligent, from a wealthy family. We’ve got two lovely daughters. So what about you? Any romantic ties?
June looks up at him and coughs, managing to shake her head before being beset with an eye-watering fit.
— That snout’ll kill ye, he observes.
June sucks in some air and wheezes, — Ye pack them in, likes?
— Aye. Stopped the peeve n aw. Got bored wi it aw, ay.
— What aboot aw the other stuff? The fightin?
— Aye, got fed up with the jail. This art thing’s a good living, and I enjoy it.
June shifts her head, and it seems to sink into her body. Franco can’t discern a neck. — You were eywis good at art. Back at the school.
— Right, Franco laughs.
— Angie Knight, when she heard ye were back, she goes tae me, and June’s expression takes on a coquettishness he finds grotesque, — ‘Tell ye what, June, ah widnae be surprised if you n Franco ended up back the gither.’
— Ah wid, Franco says brutally, thinking: She’s a fucking simpleton. Why didn’t I see it before? Probably because I was too.
June’s face suddenly and dramatically flushes red. It is such a violently abrupt transformation that for a second Francobelieves that she’s having a seizure. Then she starts to cry. — Oor son, Frank, oor Sean, what are you daein aboot it? Somebody killed our laddie and you’re daein nowt aboot it!
— See ye, he says, getting up to leave. It was a familiar pattern. They would whisperingly condemn his violence with those sour, baleful expressions, until they wanted some cunt sorting out, then he would suddenly become the big hero. Manipulation. He’d discussed all this with Melanie, with his mentor, John Dick, the prison officer. It had suited them all to keep him as he was. It still suits them. He will leave them back here in Edinburgh. They can either shut the door in his face or seize him in a hypocritical embrace, it won’t matter; he will be walking away from them all.
— Find whae did it and hurt them, Frank, yir good at that, she shouts after him.
This stops him in his tracks. He turns to contemplate her. — I mind I battered you bad a couple ay times. Once when you were expecting him, Frank says. — That
— Yours? Franco asks.
— THEY ARE MA FAGS! she shouts after the departing boy, as she sparks up again.
— No the fags, the laddie.
— Aye, that’s Gerard. June takes a drag, her cheeks buckling in. — Ah’ve goat Andrea and Chloe tae. As well as oor Michael and Sean . . . Her eyes glaze over and a tissue, torn from a box on the coffee table, goes right to them. As she coughs raucously, Franco watches June shake: her fat wobbling inside shapeless, washed-out leisurewear garments. Her first pregnancy and Sean’s birth had seemed to wreck her body, but rather than bloat, June had shrunk into a Belsen skeleton, and he’d pretty much lost interest in her after that. He had muttered something like ‘fuck sake’ when she told him she was expecting Michael. There had been the jail, and their domestic life together, in which he recalled her swathed in blue light from the television set, through a fog of cigarette smoke. Although still a specialist in tobacco consumption, June is now obese and looks as grey-skinned as he’d done after his longest prison stretch. She inhales again, her chunky face caving in so radically it is as if her teeth have been extracted. — So you goat married again, ay?
— Aye, official, he announces, looking coolly at her, waving his rings, — no just common law. We had tae, for my immigrantstatus. Wanted tae as well but, ay. If you feel the love, why no make the statement?
June bristles a little. — Aye, they say it was that American lassie ye met in the jail.
— She was the art therapist, aye. She expects me to say, Ah ken how it looks. Fuck that. — She’s young, good-looking, intelligent, from a wealthy family. We’ve got two lovely daughters. So what about you? Any romantic ties?
June looks up at him and coughs, managing to shake her head before being beset with an eye-watering fit.
— That snout’ll kill ye, he observes.
June sucks in some air and wheezes, — Ye pack them in, likes?
— Aye. Stopped the peeve n aw. Got bored wi it aw, ay.
— What aboot aw the other stuff? The fightin?
— Aye, got fed up with the jail. This art thing’s a good living, and I enjoy it.
June shifts her head, and it seems to sink into her body. Franco can’t discern a neck. — You were eywis good at art. Back at the school.
— Right, Franco laughs.
— Angie Knight, when she heard ye were back, she goes tae me, and June’s expression takes on a coquettishness he finds grotesque, — ‘Tell ye what, June, ah widnae be surprised if you n Franco ended up back the gither.’
— Ah wid, Franco says brutally, thinking: She’s a fucking simpleton. Why didn’t I see it before? Probably because I was too.
June’s face suddenly and dramatically flushes red. It is such a violently abrupt transformation that for a second Francobelieves that she’s having a seizure. Then she starts to cry. — Oor son, Frank, oor Sean, what are you daein aboot it? Somebody killed our laddie and you’re daein nowt aboot it!
— See ye, he says, getting up to leave. It was a familiar pattern. They would whisperingly condemn his violence with those sour, baleful expressions, until they wanted some cunt sorting out, then he would suddenly become the big hero. Manipulation. He’d discussed all this with Melanie, with his mentor, John Dick, the prison officer. It had suited them all to keep him as he was. It still suits them. He will leave them back here in Edinburgh. They can either shut the door in his face or seize him in a hypocritical embrace, it won’t matter; he will be walking away from them all.
— Find whae did it and hurt them, Frank, yir good at that, she shouts after him.
This stops him in his tracks. He turns to contemplate her. — I mind I battered you bad a couple ay times. Once when you were expecting him, Frank says. — That
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