Trainspotting - Irvine Welsh [61]
— Ye need brains fir that, the father said, addressing Renton, but looking at Dianne. Renton couldn’t make eye-contact with the daughter. He was aware that such avoidance was more likely to arouse suspicion than anything else, but he just couldn’t look at her.
— Ah wouldnae say that, Renton shrugged.
— No, but qualifications though.
— Aye, well, ah’ve goat a degree in history fae Aberdeen University. This in fact, was almost true. He’d got into Aberdeen University, and found the course easy, but was forced to leave mid-way through the first year after blowing his grant money on drugs and prostitutes. It seemed to him that he thus became the first ever student in the history of Aberdeen University to fuck a non-student. He reflected that you were better making history than studying it.
— Education’s important. That’s what we’re always telling this one here, said the father, again taking the opportunity to make a point to Dianne. Renton didn’t like his attitude, and liked himself even less for this tacit collusion with it. He felt like a pervert uncle of Dianne’s.
It was just as he was consciously thinking: Please let her be sitting her Highers, that Dianne’s mother smashed that prospect of damage limitation.
— Dianne’s sitting her O Grade History next year, she smiled, — and French, English, Art, Maths and Arithmetic, she continued proudly.
Renton cringed inside for the umpteenth time.
— Mark’s not interested in that, Dianne said, trying to sound superior and mature, patronising to her parents, the way kids deprived of power who become the ‘subject’ of a conversation do. The way, Renton shakily reflected, that he did often enough, when his auld man and auld doll got started. The problem was Dianne just sounded so surly, so like a child, she achieved the opposite effect of the one she was aiming for.
Renton’s mind was working overtime. Stoat the baw, they call it. Ye kin git put away fir it. Too right ye kin, wi the key flung away. Branded a sex criminal; git ma face split open in Saughton oan a daily basis. Sex Criminal. Child Rapist. Nonce. Short-eyes. He could hear the psycho lags now, cunts, he reflected, like Begbie: — Ah heard thit the wee lassie wis jist six. — They telt me it wis rape. — Could’ve been your bairn or mine. Fuck me, he thought, shuddering.
The bacon he was eating disgusted him. He’d been a vegetarian for years. This was nothing to do with politics or morality; he just hated the taste of meat. He said nothing though, so keen was he to keep in the good books of Dianne’s parents. He drew the line at touching the sausage, however, as he reckoned that these things were loaded with poison. Thinking of all the junk he had done, he sardonically reflected to himself: You have to watch what you put into your body. He wondered whether Dianne would like it, and started sniggering uncontrollably, through nerves, at his own hideous double entendre.
Feebly, he attempted to cover up by shaking his head and telling a tale, or rather, re-telling it. — God, what an idiot ah am. Ah wis in some state last night. I’m not really used to alcohol. Still, I suppose you’re only twenty-two once in a lifetime.
Dianne’s parents looked as unconvinced as Renton by the last remark. He was twenty-five going on forty. Nonetheless, they listened politely. — Ah lost ma jacket and keys, like ah wis saying. Thank god for Dianne, and you folks. It’s really hospitable of you to let me stay the night and to make such a nice breakfast for me this morning. Ah feel really bad about not finishing this sausage. It’s just that ah’m so full. Ah’m no used tae big breakfasts.
— Too thin, that’s your trouble, the mother said.
— That’s what comes ay living in flats. East is east, west is west, but home is best, the father said. There was a nervous silence at this moronic comment. Embarrassed, he added: — That’s what they say anyway. He then took the opportunity to change the subject.