Trainspotting - Irvine Welsh [108]
Since I helped Al on his way to the great gig in the sky, life has been pretty good. Frances and I have gone our separate ways. We were never really compatible. She only really saw me as a babysitter and a wallet. For me, obviously, the relationship became largely superfluous after Venters’s death. I miss Kev more. It makes me wish that I had a kid. Now that’ll never be. One thing that Fran did say was that I had revived her faith in men after Venters. Ironically, it seems as if I found my role in life — cleaning up that prick’s emotional garbage.
My health, touch wood, has been good. I’m still asymptomatic. I fear colds and get obsessive from time to time, but I take care of myself. Apart from the odd can of beer, I never bevvy. I watch what I eat, and have a daily programme of light exercises. I get regular blood checks and pay attention to my T4 count. It’s still way over the crucial 800 mark; in fact it’s not gone down at all.
I’m now back with Donna, who inadvertently acted as the conduit for HIV between me and Venters. We found something that we probably wouldn’t have got from each other in different circumstances. Or maybe we would. Anyway, we don’t analyse it, not having the luxury of time. However, I must give old Tom at the group his due. He said that I’d have to work through my anger, and he was right. I took the quick route though, by sending Venters to oblivion. Now all I get is a bit of guilt, but I can handle that.
I eventually told my parents about my being HIV positive. My Ma just cried and held me. The auld man said nothing. The colour had drained from his face as he sat and watched A Question of Sport. When he was pressed by his wailing wife to speak, he just said: — Well, there’s nothin tae say. He kept repeating that sentence. He never looked me in the eye.
That night, back at my flat, I heard the buzzer go. Assuming it to be Donna, who had been out, I opened the stair and house doors. A few minutes later, my auld man stood in the doorway with tears in his eyes. It was the first time he’d ever been to my flat. He moved over to me and held me in a crushing grip, sobbing, and repeating: — Ma laddie. It felt a world or two better than: ‘Well, there’s nothin tae say.’
I cried loudly and unself-consciously. As with Donna, so with my family. We have found an intimacy which may have otherwise eluded us. I wish I hadn’t waited so long to become a human being. Better late than never though, believe you me.
There’s some kids playing out in the back, the strip of grass luminated an electric green by the brilliant sunlight. The sky is a delicious clear blue. Life is beautiful. I’m going to enjoy it, and I’m going to have a long life. I’ll be what the medical staff call a long-term survivor. I just know that I will.
There Is A Light That Never Goes Out
They emerge from the stairdoor into the darkness of the deserted street. Some of them move in a jerky, manic way; exuberant and noisy. Others cruise along silently, like ghosts; hurting inside, yet fearful of the imminence of even greater pain and discomfort.
Their destination is a pub which seems to prop up a crumbling tenement set on a side-street between Easter Road and Leith Walk. This street has missed out on the stone-cleaning process its neighbours have enjoyed and the building is the sooty-black colour of a forty-a-day man’s lungs. The night is so dark that it is difficult to establish the outline of the tenement against the sky. It can only be defined through an isolated light glaring from a top-floor window, or the luminous street-lamp jutting out from its side.
The pub’s façade is painted a thick, glossy dark blue and its sign is the early 1970s design favoured by its brewing chain when the paradigm was that every bar had to have a standard look and play down any individual character it might have. Like the tenement above and around