Big Boy Did It and Ran Away (24 page)

Aberdeen, fucking Aberdeen – he just wasn’t supposed to be there. He wasn’t supposed to be doing this job, he wasn’t supposed to be yoked with any of it. Aberdeen was for farmers and fishermen and fucking SSCs with no greater ambition for their lives than shiting out smaller versions of themselves and occasionally winning the Employee of the Month award at their mundane and meaningless jobs. It was the kind of place he was supposed to drive into, play a sell‐
out gig, go back to his hotel, get stocious, pick up one of the marginally less hefty local boilers, shove it in her mouth so he didn’t have to listen to her stupid accent, kick her out, go to bed, get up and drive away again, all the time thanking fuck he was only passing through.

He was meant to be living in London; well, maybe New York, Berlin, Amsterdam or Paris by this time, but London was where he was supposed to finally get the right people together for his band. Down there he would have found people who were serious about their music, not a bunch of stupid wee boys wanting to play at pop stars in their dad’s garage. University had been a major disappointment in that respect. Too many time‐
wasters, too many clowns who were more interested in grabbing a share of the limelight than playing a part in creating something special. Not one of them had the maturity to see past their own egos and notice true musical vision when it was right in front of them.

Maybe it was just the wrong time. Musical scenes often developed in cities through a fertile cross‐
pollination of ideas, influences and personnel, such as the Madchester phenomenon of the early Nineties, or the Bromley contingent that was an incestuous nucleus for The Banshees, The Ants, The Cure, The Creatures, Gen X, PiL and others. It had been just his shite luck to be looking for musical soulmates in Glasgow in the mid‐
1980s, when the Pied Piper traded in the woodwind for a jangly guitar and led the weak‐
minded masses down the path of infantile mediocrity.

Nobody cared about musicianship, innovation, structure, experimentation or stagecraft: all it took was three chords and a cheery melody and these fucking morons were getting indie record deals. Half of them could hardly play, and even those that could weren’t interested in pushing any boundaries, just treading the same worn‐
out turf and justifying it with the usual deluded bleating about ‘songs’ and ‘tunes’ being the important thing. Any idiot could do what they were doing. A cheap guitar from the Barras, a practice amp, a copy of The Best of The Byrds, three like‐
minded fuckwit mates and you were away.

Any idiot? Every idiot. There were hundreds of them, not one with the self‐
awareness to realise that they all sounded the same and nothing they were doing was remotely original. The Pastels. The Boy Hairdressers. The BMX Bandits. The Close Lobsters. The Vaselines. Primal Scream, before someone told Bobby Gillespie that rock was trendy this month. The Shop Assistants. The Woodentops. His Latest Flame. Fruits of Passion. God, there were so fucking many of them, like fucking lice. It was horrible. All wearing their anoraks, singing songs about sweeties and strawberries and Kylie cunting Minogue.

Awash on that ocean of twee and insipid three‐
chord pretendy‐
pop, it was no wonder he couldn’t find anyone with the musical intelligence to understand what he was trying to do. He wrote his university years off, filed under ‘Wrong place, wrong time’, and set his sights on a more metropolitan future. He intended to head south and take whatever job would pay the bills, subsistence living while he honed his playing, developed his ideas and assembled the right personnel.

But that was reckoning without his dad dying a few weeks before his finals, the true state of the family finances emerging literally in the wake. With the onus on him and him alone to save his mum from losing the house and ending up in some council high‐
rise concentration camp, he was forced into the previously unthinkable endeavour of applying his degree in the job market.

He had undertaken a BSc in Geography and Earth Sciences because it was the subject he’d been best at (and symbiotically most interested in) at school, but there had been absolutely no vocational aspect to it. These days, he knew, university courses were increasingly focused on specific careers, whereas back then there was still an ethic of ‘learning for its own sake’, even if that did translate in practice into ‘learning for the sake of annual metriculation and thus renewal of the cheap‐
drink season ticket that was student union membership’. His degree, like most, didn’t specifically qualify him for much other than further study, but that hardly mattered because at no point had he ever really imagined his studies leading to a job. The term ‘career’ for him was going to be something measured in albums and tours, not appointments and promotions. And he didn’t even joke about ending up a teacher, unlike those other sad bastards who could obviously see further down the tracks than they’d care to admit.

However, when he suddenly found himself having to join the eager hopefuls at the ‘Milk Round’, he was grateful that the substantial Geology part of his degree did open a few doors. Unfortunately, they were all situated on the front of grey granite buildings in ‘Europe’s Oil Capital’.

He had tried to look on the bright side. A proper job with proper wages meant that he’d be able to afford some decent kit, even after the slice he’d have to send south. Maybe he’d be surprised and find some willing musical collaborators up there, where they might be grateful to have someone among them with fresh ideas instead of all looking out for the next bandwagon to leap on. Besides, it would just be for a while, until he could get things on an even keel.

Yeah right.

‘Just for a while’: Death’s opening chat‐
up line in His great seduction, before He drugged you with soporific comforts, distracted you with minor luxuries and ensnared you with long‐
term payment plans. Join the Rat Race ‘just for a while’. Concentrate on your career ‘just for a while’. Move in with your girlfriend ‘just for a while’. Find a bigger place, out in the burbs ‘just for a while’. Lie down in that wooden box ‘just for a while’.

The light wasn’t quite ready to fade by the time they arrived, so Simon pulled the Espace off the road under cover of some trees and waited. An inventory passed some of the time, though he knew May’s equipment‐
check was merely an exercise in going through the motions. He wouldn’t have left the farmhouse if he wasn’t one hundred per cent sure everything was operational. Inflating the mini‐
dinghy killed another few minutes, after which there was more uncomfortable silence, punctuated occasionally by redundant questions confirming technical and logistical details they had already long since worked out, serving only to emphasise the growing tension. It would pass when they had work to do, but it was hard going in the meantime. By the time darkness finally began to fall, Simon was about five minutes off starting a game of ‘I Spy’.

They crossed the road and got changed into their wetsuits at the waterside, hitting the floor any time a set of headlights approached. The first one came by when they were both down to their underwear.

‘If somebody stops, we’ll have to pretend we’re shagging, okay?’ Simon told May. He looked back, confused and horrified until Simon laughed to let him know he was kidding.

‘I’d die of the shame. Rather go to jail,’ May said.

‘Didn’t know you were so uptight that way.’

‘I’m not. It’s getting seen with someone as ugly as you that I’d never live down.’

‘Aye, right. You couldn’t pull me in your dreams, pal.’

The smiles were wiped off both their faces when they had to get wet before pulling their rubbers on, northern European waters being less than inviting on a September evening.

‘Next job has to be in the Med,’ May muttered.

‘That’s a given.’

May placed the plastic crate containing his gear into the inflatable and pushed it away from the shore as he waded in behind it. The bridge was a two‐
hundred‐
yard swim away, on the other side of a small outcrop which masked the moonlit‐
glinting waves from the road. It spanned two spiked inlets that otherwise would have forced the road against the steep hillside, the waters plunging deep only a few feet from the edge, following the same sharp gradient from the summit to the abyss. The shoreline was jagged through much of the long, snaking, narrow valley, scars of the glacier that had carved it.

Unlike most of the rudimentary and frequently ancient pontoons you’d expect to find in such rural spots, this one was a sturdy and modern affair, one of several erected on this route to accommodate the abnormally large vehicles used in constructing the target. The bridges had to be built so that it could be built. Kind of appropriate then, that demolishing one should be a necessary overture.

They worked slowly and carefully, torchlight supplementing the rippling reflected illuminations of what might accurately be described as a Bomber’s Moon. May asked for tools and components like he was the surgeon, Simon supplying them like the admiring assistant. Water splashed around their waists, the inflatable bobbing gently next to them, lapping sounds echoing around the sheltered inlet. The buzz was growing, and it felt good, really good. He’d been right. The tension was gone, transmuted into exquisite adrenaline by the purifying sacrament of action. It was always exciting, always, but this one … this one felt special. This one felt like a homer, with a personal edge to the thrill that he hadn’t experienced since his amateur days.

Back then there was this sense of infinite possibility, the feeling that he could hold the power of life or death over anyone: from the prick who’d just ruined his day to an unknown face in a magazine. And acting on that impulse was an exhilaration that started in your toes and ended in the stars. Better than sex? Please. He’d had wanks that were better than sex; he’d had shites that were better than sex. It was obviously the ‘ultimate experience’ yardstick of people who didn’t get much. Oh make no mistake, sex could be good, it could be great, it could even be worth some of the conversations you had to endure before you got it; and then it was over, and you just wanted to be somewhere else, or more accurately you wanted her to be somewhere else. The LDB, in one of his more lucid and perceptive moments, compared it to the curse of the mortal condition: in sex (for the male at least), what you work towards, strive towards, crave and desire is in itself the end. Death comes in spurts.

Standing on a stage, facing a mic, hands on an electric guitar, singing a song you’d written – even with three numpties backing you up and a hundred fucking yahoos out front – was way better than the best sex he’d ever had. Why else would The Stones be touring into their dotage when they had enough money, power and kudos to have a different sixteen‐
year‐
old sliding up and down their poles each hour, every hour for the rest of their lives? But nothing – nothing – could compare with the feeling that electrified every molecule in his body when he was doing what he now knew he did best.

The first time was … well, the first time; better than sex, but not unlike it. Same as that first shag, it was unforgettable in every detail but hardly a masterclass in panache or technique, and too clouded by fear, anxiety and the consequences of it going wrong to actually be enjoyable. In his case it was also too personal, too coloured by emotion for the physicality of the act itself to transcend its deeper meaning. The best sex, like the best killing, was with someone who didn’t mean everything to you, but didn’t mean nothing either; though as a matter of preference he would always choose the latter. Too personal and it could feel a little squalid: rank with the self‐
disgust that followed getting what you had wanted just a little too much. When it was utterly impersonal you could concentrate more on the moment and your own desires rather than worrying about what the other person was feeling. But it was at its best when it was just personal enough.

Like fine wines, it was difficult to choose a favourite: so many different flavours, nuances, memories, associations, and the fickle palate could revise its evaluations at each time of asking. However, there were certain vintages that would always make the list, such as Jeremy Watson‐
Bellingham. That one brought a smile to his face every time. He’d deserved to die just for the fucking name alone, but there was more, so much more. It wasn’t murder, it was a selfless, public‐
spirited civic gesture that in a more civilised society would have earned Simon some initials after his name, as opposed to a life sentence.

‘Jeremy Watson‐
Bellingham. JWB. Judgement. Wisdom. Brains. Jump With the Ball. Job? Work Better. And that’s what I’m going to help all of you do.’

Tit.

‘Your name, sir?’

‘Simon. Simon Darcourt.’

‘Simon Darcourt. SD. Stand Defiant. Strength and Diligence. Super Dynamic. And yours, madam?’

‘Helen Woods.’

‘Helen Woods. HW. Hard Worker. Heading Way up. Hopefully We can achieve great things together this weekend. All right!’

Tit. Tit. Tit.

JWB. Jobbie. Wank. Bawhair.

The occasion: Sintek Energy’s annual conference weekend. The location: Craig Dearg Hydro Hotel, Deeside. The Tit: a management consultant and ‘Motivational Guru’, into whose hands the company had delivered its staff for an inhumane twenty‐
four hours, along with fairly unambiguous impressions of what would happen to anyone who didn’t participate with maximum enthusiasm.

The introductions were just the beginning of the ordeal, his ‘preparation for self‐
empowerment through harnessing just a tiny part of the power within the self’: viz, glib wee phrases that abbreviated to more or less the same letters as your name. As ‘preparations’ went, it ranked alongside having Vaseline smeared liberally around your ring by a guy with a sack full of ferrets.

‘Initials. Beginnings. We’re beginning. We’re initialising. Initialising the system, prepping for ignition, counting down to blast‐
off. And that system is you.’

The guy got paid a fucking mint for this.

Throughout one of the longest and most excruciating afternoons anyone ever endured without anaesthetic, he subjected them to an interminable, audio‐
visually enhanced lecture, the crux of which appeared to be that greater dynamism and efficiency lay via the simple expedient of using new verbs that had previously led an unmolested existence as nouns. Simon had previously heard words such as ‘action’ and ‘showcase’ bashed forcibly into this unintended use like square pegs through round holes, but had until then been unaware that one could ‘simultaneously desktop multiple homogenised throughput channels’ (take more orders), or even ‘striplight retro‐
referenced identifiers’ (no idea, but the Tit was looking at the girl who booked ad space, if that helped).