Trainspotting - Irvine Welsh [139]
— They’d git a cheaper fuckin ride back it yir mate’s hotel, what the fuck d’ye call um, the Greek cunt?
— Andreas. But that’s the last thing these cunts want, says Sick Boy, racking up the balls, — and that fucker Rents. That’s the umpteenth time he’s tried tae kick. Doss cunt chucked in a good joab n barry flat doon here n aw. Ah think me n him’ll go oor separate weys eftir this.
— It’s a good joab he’s fuckin back thair though. Some cunt’s goat tae watch the fuckin loot. Ah widnae trust Second Prize or Spud tae look eftir it.
— Aye, Sick Boy says, wondering how he can ditch Begbie and get off in search of women’s company. He wonders who he will call up, or whether he’ll check out the backpacker. Whatever he decided, he’d move soon.
Back at Andreas’s place, Renton is sick, but not quite as sick as he’d led them to believe. He looks out onto the back garden and sees Andreas cavorting with Sarah, his girlfriend.
He looks back at the Adidas bag, stuffed full of cash, the first time Begbie has let it out of his sight. He turfs its contents out onto the bed. Renton has never seen so much money. Almost without thinking, he empties the contents of Begbie’s Head bag; putting them into the empty Adidas bag. Then stuffs the cash into the Head bag, and puts his own clothes in, on top of the money.
Briefly, he glimpses out of the window. Andreas has his hand inside Sarah’s purple bikini pants and she is laughing and shrieking: — Dahnt Endreas . . . dahnt . . . Gripping the Head bag firmly, Renton turns and stealthily scuttles out of the room, down-the stairs and along the hallway. He looks back briefly before striding out the door. If he bumped into Begbie now, he was finished. As soon as he lets that thought form consciously in his head, he almost collapses with fear. There is nobody in the street, however. He crosses the road.
He hears chanting noises and freezes. A group of young guys in Celtic football tops, obviously down for the Pogues gig in the afternoon, are staggering towards him, out of their heads on alcohol. He walks tensely past them, although they ignore him; and to his relief, he sees a 253 bus coming. He jumps on, and away from Finsbury Park.
Renton is on automatic pilot as he alights in Hackney to get a bus to Liverpool Street. Nonetheless, he feels paranoid and self-conscious with the bag full of money. Every person looks like a potential mugger or bag-snatcher to him. Whenever he sees a black leather jacket similar to Begbie’s, his blood turns to ice. He even considers going back when he is on the bus to Liverpool Street, but he sticks his hand in the bag and feels the bundles of notes. At his destination, he walks into an Abbey National branch and adds £9,000 in cash to the £27.32 already in his account. The cashier does not even blink. This is the City, after all.
Feeling better with only £7,000 on him, Renton goes down to Liverpool Street station and buys a return ticket to Amsterdam, only intending to go one way. He watches the county of Essex transmute from concrete and brick into lush green as they rumble out towards Harwich. He has an hour’s wait at Parkston Quay, before the boat sails to the Hook of Holland. This is no problem. Junkies are good at waiting. A few years back, he worked on this ferry, as a steward. He hopes that nobody recognises him from those days.
Renton’s paranoia subsides on the boat, but it is replaced by his first real feelings of guilt. He thinks about Sick Boy, and all the things they went through together. They had shared some good times, some awful times, but they had shared them. Sick Boy would recoup the cash; he was a born exploiter. It was the betrayal. He could see Sick Boy’s more-hurt-than-angry expression already. However, they had been drifting apart for years now. Their mutual antagonism, once a joke, a performance for the benefit of others, had slowly become, through being ritualised in that way, a mundane reality. It was better this way, Renton thought. In a way, Sick Boy would