THE DOUBLE OF MY COUSIN FROM FIFE

by
Mark Fleming

I keep hearing David Byrne asking how I got here? I’ll tell the bastard. Itchy and Scratchy. They’re how I got here. £52K plus bonuses plus car out the fucking window. Quarter to 10 on a Tuesday. That used to be the weekly team meeting. Instead I’m kids clothes-shopping.

The security guard wears this Napoleonic uniform, as if shoplifters will be sabred. Anyone stealing these ‘Made in Vietnam’ shirts deserves fuck all less. He chews gum like a cow at pasture. It keeps expression creeping into that face. I resent the authority granted this automaton and his epaulettes.

I pick up a mug, stare inside, remember the aroma of fresh, expensive coffee. I used to buy a big fuck-off Latté with cinnamon en route to the office. Kiera the gorgeous Kiwi always winked and gave me extra. Maybe one day someone will drink from this mug laced with brandy. I touch it to my lips to picture the scene. After what? News of a sudden death? A phone call that has altered the course of their life with 3 bleating rings. This is the police. The hospital. Tony Capaldi from Human Resources.

‘Calum, we’re not here to buy kitchenware’. Katriona raises her eyebrows. I slip it back into its perch. Its design is simple; compared to engineering the software system for a corporate takeover. This time of day I used to be surrounded by colleagues, plugged into iPods, coding-up java programmes. Now I check my immediate neighbours. A skinny redheaded female cuts me up, dragging a sullen boy by his Hearts top. The mother has MYT inked on her hand. Maggie Youth Team? Her East Fortune perfume envelops me.

When Katriona shops she reminds me of a TV antiques expert. She was like that before I lost the job. She reaches out, selects items from shelves. Studies them from all angles. Tests their weight. Carefully returns them. She scrutinizes prices. As soon as my gaze hovers Katriona tells me the extent to which we don’t need that, can’t afford that. I always look at objects precisely. It is intuitive. Years of study at Heriot-Watt then working in software development have granted me an analytical mind. I see the world in terms of objects. Everything, everything from the neon striplights to that maroon football shirt with PRESSLEY on it, is an object. And all these myriad objects drill down to the 2 properties they share. Their attributes: what they are. Their methods: what they do. As I look around, this information registers instinctively. Skylight. Attributes? One metre squared. Transparent. Methods? Can open and shut. Allows daylight in. Blocks rain.

‘Calum? Daydreaming again? You should be concentrating on what you’re going to be saying at tomorrow’s interview’.

‘Christ, it’s for a supervisor in a computer games wholesaler. Hardly a fucking rocket scientist’.

‘Don’t talk like that when your daughter’s in earshot’.

‘She’ll soon be teaching us a thing or two’.

‘Rubbish. She’s four. Anyway, you’re in no position to get snooty about what jobs you’re applying for’.

‘I’ll be the oldest one who works there. By twenty years. Some spiky-haired kid will ask what was the first album I bought and when I say Damned Damned Damned, original Stiff label, he’ll think I’ve got dementia…’

‘Sometime I wonder… I know it’s coming up for five months and this’ll be interview number nine. But twenty years experience will sound good at any panel. As long as you don’t intend spreading nasty messages…’

Bethany is beaming. Clutched in her arms is a furry killer whale with a big grin: one of the cuddly toys placed at child’s eye level at strategic points around the clothes displays. I chuckle at the irony. It could be a mascot for my ex-employers. She’s already christened him ‘Toothy’. Katriona thumbs through her purse for her store card. Then I see alarm register.

‘I’ve only picked up one shirt’. This is relayed with the gravity of a weather reporter announcing a storm. Hurricane Katriona.

‘And?’ I snap.

‘The sign definitely said two for a fiver. I’m going to get another. There was a wee skirt I wanted to show Bethany, anyway. You keep our place in the queue. We’ll only be a minute’.

I watch them head towards the T-shirt racks. I’m still angry at her reaction. Katriona had been horrified, naturally enough; but purely at the reason Orca Solutions had dismissed me, not its unfairness. According to Capaldi, Seattle-based Orca have strict core standards for employees. So 9 programmers were sacked because our names cropped up in a joke email. Management had no way of determining the instigator. But the mere act of forwarding rather than deleting was sufficient incrimination.

I picture that stupid cartoon. A doctored Itchy and Scratchy: the mouse wielding a chainsaw, the cat being repeatedly slaughtered in an explosion of guts and blood, the managing director, Chris Newlands’ face superimposed on his feline shoulders. That’s why we’re scurrying around fucking bargain basements instead of Fraser’s.

The queue edges forwards. I stare at the fidgety Hearts top in front of me. The woman continually tugs the boy to stand still. At one point she glowers towards the exit. Beneath her locks I notice her profile. As if she knows she is being watched she peers around. She holds me in her gaze. The effect is like a cattle prod. She seems so familiar. Then again, with their herd-like dress codes and repetitious music, the youth are a homogeneous tribe. In my day we were punks, mods, soul boys, Bowie freaks, goths, rude boys. Now they all download the same mp3s when they’re not filming car chases or muggings.

But a flashback comes.

* * *

It was the weekend before I started my BA in Computer Sciences. And it was my 18th. At the end of my first legal pub crawl, events went beyond my control and I found myself queuing at a night club in Abbeyhill. Cat’s Pyjama’s. This weedy guy was refused entry. He produced a samurai sword and lunged at a bouncer, impaling it in the door. The guy was so drunk he couldn’t tug it out. Mutual shock got me chatting to the girl behind me. Her name was Claire. Her hair was cascading and flaming red. I told her she was the double of my cousin from Fife. She was sixteen; worked in a baker’s. Inside I persuaded her to dance. This was more of a balancing act as, by that time, we were equally drunk. Later, while the crowds gyrated to ‘A-Ha’, she unzipped me and toyed with my balls, right at our table, while her pals larked around. We went back to her flat for a wild night of what at times seemed like a bizarre meld of sex and Judo.

She never phoned. Days later I tried finding her tenement. I recalled it overlooked a railway because trains had rattled past during the night. But I’d forgotten her surname. Studying the name panels looking for the initial ‘C’ was fucking pointless. I couldn’t even remember if it was her flat, although my hormonal drive compelled me to try scores of doorbells. A skinhead threatened to punch my fucking lights out.

* * *

‘Run to Grannie’.

The Hearts fan’s mum ushers him to a Fiesta where a middle-aged woman holds the door open. Katriona gazes in, then steers Bethany to our own car, next aisle.

As I gun the engine, she says: ‘That was so weird’.

‘What was so weird?’

‘Remember Lynda?’

‘Lynda? Lynda who?’

‘Lynda?’ Irritation seeps into her voice.

‘God… I’ve not thought about her for ages… Mind you, every time we take that slip road near Inverkeithing you still see the stump where her motorbike sliced through the tree..’

‘I know. You mention it every time. Poor Lynda. She was a brilliant laugh. Great singer, too. That demo tape her band did …’

‘God. What made you think about Lynda?’

‘Oh. It’s just a weird co-incidence. That woman who got in the car’.

‘What about her?’

‘She reminded me of Lynda when I last saw her, her pretty face and red hair, plugged into all those tubes... And the other one, the driver, she’s how Lynda might’ve looked now. So weird... They were almost your cousin sitting there, with their red hair, how she’d look if she’d woken up after all…How she looked when she stayed sleeping…’

‘Almost my cousin’, I mumbled, watching their car cruise up to the main road. My eyes were riveted to the 3 silhouetted heads as they followed the traffic flow, left and right, waiting to move again; waiting to move on.

© Mark Fleming
Reproduced with permission

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MARK'S TOP 5 PUNK ALBUMS

1. Spunk (bootleg) by Sex Pistols
2. Eternally Yours by The Saints
3. All Mod Cons by The Jam
4. Give 'Em Enough Rope by The Clash
5. Another Music in a different kitchen by The Buzzcocks

MARK'S TOP 5 NEW WAVE ALBUMS

1. Chairs Missing by Wire
2. Play by Magazine
3. Metal Box by PiL
4. Systems of Romance by Ultravox
5. Closer by Joy Division