Trainspotting - Irvine Welsh [140]
It didn’t take much effort to rationalise that he had done Second Prize a favour. He felt pity when he thought of Second Prize using his criminal injuries compensation board cash to front his stake. However, Second Prize was so busy destroying himself, he’d scarcely notice anyone giving him a hand. You would be as well giving him a bottle of paraquat to drink, as three grand to spend. It would be a quicker and ultimately more painless way of killing him. Some, he considered, would argue that it was Second Prize’s choice, but did not the nature of his disease destroy his capacity to make a meaningful choice? He smirks at the irony of him, a junky who has just ripped off his best mates, pontificating in such a manner. But was he a junky? True, he had just used again, but the gaps between his using were growing. However, he couldn’t really answer this question now. Only time could do that.
Renton’s real guilt was centred around Spud. He loved Spud. Spud had never hurt anybody, with the exception perhaps of a bit of mental distress caused by his tendency to liberate the contents of people’s pockets, purses and homes. People got too het up about things though. They invested too much emotion in objects. Spud could not be held responsible for society’s materialism and commodity fetishism. Nothing had gone right for Spud. The world had shat on him, and now his mate had joined it. If there was one person whom Renton would try to compensate, it was Spud.
That left Begbie. He could find no sympathy for that fucker. A psycho who used sharpened knitting needles when he went to sort some poor cunt out. Less chance of hitting the rib cage than with a knife, he’d boast. Renton recalled the time when Begbie had glassed Roy Sneddon, in The Vine, for fuck all. Nothing other than the guy had an irritating voice and Begbie was hungover. It was ugly, sickening and pointless. Even uglier than the act itself, was the way that they all, including Renton, had colluded with it, even to the extent of creating fictitious scenarios to justify it. It was just another way of building Begbie’s status as somebody not to mess with, and their own indirectly, through their association with him. He saw it for the extreme moral cowardice it was. Alongside this, his crime in ripping off Begbie was almost virtuous.
Ironically, it was Begbie who was the key. Ripping off your mates was the highest offence in his book, and he would demand the severest penalty. Renton had used Begbie, used him to burn his boats completely and utterly. It was Begbie who ensured he could never retum. He had done what he wanted to do. He could now never go back to Leith, to Edinburgh, even to Scotland, ever again. There, he could not be anything other than he was. Now, free from them all, for good, he could be what he wanted to be. He’d stand or fall alone. This thought both terrified and excited him as he contemplated life in Amsterdam.
Table of Contents
Kicking
Relapsing
Kicking Again
Blowing It
Exile
Home
Exit