Laura and Annie arm in arm, a can each, meander through the stanes, the shrines, the domes like mosques, the tall crosses. Laura is mesmerised by the skyline bleeding from Rangers blue to the murky navy of her school uniform that she keeps at the back of her wardrobe. She’s thinking about the show on Saturday and what she’ll wear to the party after.
Annie’s thinking about her Nan. She lives in a place like this. Not as grand but. She visits it every year, takes her irises. When Annie was younger and acting up her Mam would shout ‘yir Nan wud be turning in her grave’. It gave Annie the heebeegeebees to think of her Nan, cold and stiff, rolling in the mucky earth. As she got older, it lost its effect. Although her Mam, would still say it if she thought Annie had taken a drink. Maybe cause Granda had been an alkie and both her Nan and her Mam were dead set against the drink. Laura’s Mum liked a swallie which meant Laura could lift a few cans fae her stash. Laura waited till her Mum wis pished. It was easy then, like taking milk from a wain.
Annie looks at the view from the necropolis and wonders if she has been further than she can see. The Brewery chimneys aspire upwards, John Knox points an accusing finger at the sky – he gives her the creeps, the charred looking Cathedral stands behind him, the Royal Infirmary is a grim looking pile at the rear and the Pinkston high flats spike the horizon like some bar-graph that she doesn’t get. I can see yir flat, in fact I can see yir Mam naked, Laura says. Where? says Annie mortified, laughing. That’s no her boyfriend she’s shagging - it’s a burd, Laura ends herself on the grass; lies back gurgling, the lager foaming at the back of her throat.
Laura got picked for the show at the school. Annie didn’t want to be in it; everyone’s taking the piss out of it already before they’ve seen it. But Williams is organising the whole thing so Annie thinks it can’t be that bad. They get Miss Williams for English and Annie likes the lessons, though she doesn’t tell Laura. She and Laura sometimes pass the time by imagining what Williams’ life is like: where she gets her clothes from, where she lives, what music she listens to, what she eats, who she shags. Laura quickly gets bored of this game. Annie doesn’t but she feigns indifference. Laura is the talk of the school because she’s the only second year to be in the show. She’s got in with the fourth years from the chorus. Annie thinks that she might go and see it for a laugh. She reckons that Laura hasn’t got as much talent as she makes out but she’s got something; she always gets chosen for stuff.
Annie won’t lie on the grass cos she’s got her Bench hoodie on that her Mam got her yesterday and she’ll kill her if its dirty. Laura says she’s no worried in her Goretex cos that’s whit its designed fir and so Annie pours a bit of lager o’er it tae see. Dinnae waste the can I’ve only got the four, Laura bellows. Mam wis crashed out after the game last night and the hoose wis dry so I had to beg my brother to buy me some and you know what a selfish bastard he can be. She jumps up, starts running, hair flinging out behind her; a clumsy comet orbiting the graves. Annie hides from her behind a stane and lights a spliff. Laura’s no bothered about spliffs, says she prefers something to make her go faster, something that makes life brighter. Annie stares at the carvings on the graves a while, drinking it in. She loves auld stuff. It does her heid in thinking that the guy who carved it must be long deid; she traces the grooves of the lettering with her finger. Laura shrieks in her ear and she almost dies before chasing her to the bit where the cemetery ends and it slopes down to the back of the Tennents factory.
Laura has stopped and is holding her finger to her mouth and pointing at the trees below. Annie can see the glow of a fag end and hears low voices circling it. Wylie’s crew, Laura whispers. Bet they’ve got mair cans than us. Wylie’s pal works in Tennents. That’s where they get the pockle, Laura says. Annie knows that the workers get searched before they leave and so naebdy pockles from the factory; she knows cause her uncle used to work there but she doesn’t argue. Laura says she can hear Marco’s voice and Annies stops listening. Marco is the dark haired boy from the year above. Laura says he’s Italian but he speaks like he’s fae Brigton. Annie thinks he’s a tosser but there’s nae talking to Laura about it, nae point falling oot o’er it. She watches as Laura stumbles down the dark path to the glow of light.
Annie wanders back up from the slope. She carves ‘Laura and Annie’ into green lichen on a stane and downs the last of her drink. She throws the can behind the railings of one of they small temples. It rattles against a pile of other offerings: faded cans, vodka bottles and milk cartons. It smells like a stank. The quiet falls about her. Its quite creepy but Annie likes it; that feeling you get watching a horror film. Annie loves horror films, they make her laugh. Laura is a woose that way, she jist screams so you cannae hear the film, so it’s no worth the rental. She’d watch them though, if a boy suggested it; says it’s a guid excuse tae jump their bones.
Annie watches her breath form clouds in the freezing air. There is no way she’s going down to Wylie’s crew so she calls Laura, tells her she’s going home. Coming, Laura’s voice slurs on the mobile. Annie meets her at the top of the slope, she can hear the boys’ voices louder now - rutting each other with rough boasts. Laura leans on Annie’s arm half the way home. Laura’s flat is empty though all the lights are on, and the telly. Annie manages to get her onto the bed and takes her trainers off. She only gets one arm out of the jacket before Laura slumps to the side so she’ll just have to sleep in it. Annie walks the three blocks further on to her flat. Her Mam gives her an earful of abuse so she goes to her room to watch T.V. before falling asleep; she wakes up the next morning to some kids programme way too loud.
*
When Laura died she was on page seven of the Evening Times. Annie knew that Laura would’ve bin ragin. She’d have expected front page and a picture but then she’d have to have bin mair inventive than jist a drugs overdose at 14 to get a picture. Annie hadn’t seen her fir six months since she’d starting hanging out wi Marco 24/7. Annie went to the funeral but she got annoyed at the fourth year lassies, who didn’t even know Laura, bawling and greeting. She’d asked Williams how you went about getting buried in the Necropolis but it wis a no go. Apparently it got filled up years ago. Dead rich and dead famous people are buried there and the rest. Williams had given her a book about it. The only book she’d read cover to cover. It smelt of her. She’s seen Miss Williams out of school in her jeans and trainers, she seen her with another woman being close and that.
Annie went up to the Necropolis the week after the funeral, about the same time the two of them had been the year before. She found their names still there, where she’d scratched them and a few others added now beneath. She scratched deeper this time into the sandstone, it was soft enough for the key to bite in. She still had a t-shirt of Laura’s that she’d borrowed and not given back so she burnt it, watched the embers die then kicked the ashes tae fuck around the grass. She opened a can fir old times’ sake, though she rarely drunk lager now, and toasted Laura’s borrowed gravestone.
The night tasted thick in her mouth; it tasted of the factory’s sweet repulsive smell, of stale smoke, of buses revving and middens burning. It hung about her like fog. She wisnae scared though. She’d picked the night of an old firm game when she knew all the bampots would be in-front of the box. She lay down on the ground, in her old hoodie, and looked at what would have bin the stars. Williams had done a poem wi the class about the stars and she’d explained that they were maistly dead. It blew Annie’s mind so she looked it up on the internet when she got home. It said that the light from a star takes so long to reach us that by the time we see it, the star is maist likely dead. Like watching a film of an old Hollywood legend, Annie thought. Annie didn’t want to be famous although she had auditioned for the show this year, she didn’t get in. She wasn’t sure what else she wanted to do. She’d told her Mam that she loved English but Mam had said that English wasn’t a job. She was still waiting for a boy to make a move on her; get it over and done with.
From where Laura lay, John Knox’s finger appeared to hover, dismembered by the smog, pointing to the dead lights in the sky. The towers were pale shadows on the night behind him. She didnae bother about him this time, now that she knew he wasn’t even buried here, it wis jist a statue. Williams’ book had told her that. The Infirmary windows looked warm almost inviting until Annie imagined the hunners of beds in there filled wi people moaning and groaning, knocked oot or dying. Some maybe lay on the operating tables right at that moment wi their intestines exposed, she pulled her sleeves down over her freezing fingers; a bit like a horror film withoot the laughs.
Annie lay still fir some time. She could feel the damp of the grass curling her hair. She was, she thought, waiting to be chosen for something; if she lay there long enough maybe she’d find out what fir. As she waited the ground grew uncomfortable, all lumps and bumps, and she wondered if it wis aw the bodies slowly turning the earth beneath her.
ANGELA CARTER
CAROL ANN DUFFY
KATHLEEN JAMIE
DAVID MITCHELL
BILLY COLLINS