KT Tunstall. Irvine Welsh

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KT Tunstall

Stay.

Stay. Stay at home

While others go,

They leave, they show

That staying is an act of love,

An air-punch pledge to rise above

This tiny thing; invisible,

That’s come to change the world.

Stay. Stay at home

For while this sweeping wave will grow,

We grieve, we share, we talk again

And in our words we dream of when

We’ll hold each other so completely,

It will change the world.

Stay. Stay at home

Create firm ground for all of those

Who risk their lives to do what’s right

To beat this darkness with their light

And tend to those in desperate need

In hope, to change their world.

Stay. Stay at home.

And even when it drives you mad,

Be glad of all the little joys

That wait for us beneath the noise,

And wave this caring army off

To work

To save

To tend

To keep

Our loved ones in this world.

Irvine Welsh

Don’t Even Ask

Well, it was bound to get a bit intense on lockdown at Josh’s place. I mean, we’d only been going out for two weeks! It wasn’t like we was living together or anything like that. I just ended up there after a mad one and he said: –Might as well just stop here, Cloh, I’ve got everything we need; grub in the freezer, plenty booze, loads of posh, and Netflix. All this bollocks’ll be over in no bleedin time. Old Boris, prime minister, he said it was nothing, shaking hands with all them infected sorts, he was.

Well, it’s a nice house with a back garden, better than the tip my flat is right now, truth be told.

I suppose I was still missing Chris. It was my own stupid fault we broke up and I regretted it almost straight away. Chris: so hunky, sweet and loving. Problem was he was absolutely devoted to his old mum. Don’t get me wrong, I think that’s lovely but sometimes it can get too much, innit. Nah, it ain’t right really. But I suppose she is old and she’d had a minor stroke, and he was going to the hospital with her for tests on her high blood pressure. How many bleedin tests do you need, though?

Thing is, I was really premenstrual at the time, and I said something like: –You care more about her than you do about me!

Chris just looked at me and said: –I gotta do my best for her, Cloh. You and I, we got lotsa time ahead of us. She ain’t.

Well, maybe I should’ve been a bit more understanding but I always thought that devious old cow played him like a bleedin fiddle. Anyways, long story short, we had a row. Again, my fault, cos he never so much as raises his voice. And I was the one that ended up walking out.

I met Josh at Caz’s party that weekend. I didn’t want to go but Ange said it would be better for me than staying indoors moping about Chris. Everybody was sloshed on these cocktails Camp Trevor was mixing and there was loads of gear kicking about. I noticed Josh straight away; he had a bit of a rep as a lad and he was racking up really killer lines of nonsense on the dining table. Call me a dopey slag if you like, don’t you farking dare, but it impresses me no end when a geezer puts out proper poodle’s legs. One thing I can’t stand is a tight-arsed bloke. Anyway, when I went to smash one up me hooter, he said: –Get down on it, gel, and gave me this saucy wink.

Later on, when I was dancing with Ange to that Calvin Harris ‘Acceptable in the 80s’ song that we both love, I saw Josh sitting there with a couple of his mates, drinking Stella and looking over at me. She said: –Oi, Cloh, you know he fancies ya?

Maybe it was the drink and drugs but I gotta say he looked quite tasty in his white shirt with his tan. I’d heard him say earlier that he was back from Tenerife but had ‘cheated a bit’ and topped up on the sunbed he had at home. I thought: Sunbed at home? Mmmhmm. Downside: a fair old gut on him (not like Chris, watched what he ate, worked out, avoided lager) and a bit of a weak chin. But I suppose he could always grow a beard.

So we ended up snogging away and, long story short, started seeing each other. Well, Chris was just taking his mum into hospital all the time, constantly round at hers, dropping off shopping. I suppose I just wanted to make him jealous, to get him to notice me. It wasn’t nothing serious, this thing with Josh, just a bit of a giggle.

The next weekend we went to the Printworks for his mate Billy’s birthday bash. Pretty messy it was; we was all properly on it. So me n Josh was more or less holed up at his place sweating out the comedown, ignoring all this coronavirus nonsense. I remember him making me laugh when he said: –Coronavirus? What the fuck is that? That’s a bleedin nonce virus! Call it the farking Stella virus, then I’d be bothered!

Then this bleedin lockdown kicked in, so I just stayed put. Well, he had the lot in, so we was well set!

But it was too soon really and we started to get on each other’s nerves. Josh has got a great house though, glass coffee table, leopard-skin rugs. –I ain’t saying they’re real, but I ain’t saying they’re imitation either, he laughed. I wasn’t mad keen on the two giant porcelain apes, standing thumping their chests on either side of the couch, looking onto the 75-inch flatscreen. As I said, he’s a bit of lad and he’s only got a big collection of these samurai swords mounted on the wall.

We was still a bit shaky so we started doing this cats jigsaw puzzle that he’d got his mum for Christmas but forgot to give her. That sort of set my warning bells off: I mean, you can’t really trust a bloke who neglects his old mum, can ya?

Anyway, we soon got bored with that and chopped out a big line and started messing about, as you do. Soon we was properly at it, if you know what I mean. One thing that impressed me about Josh was he never let the ching get to him in the downstairs department. Chris didn’t do it a lot, but his went into a floppy little nothing after a toot. Not Josh. But as hard as he stayed, he didn’t have much in the way of stamina, even after a big line.

Afterwards, we lay on one of them leopard-skin rugs and I rested my head across his chest. But I was a bit depressed. Not exactly buyer’s regret, but it just wasn’t feeling like it did with Chris. Anyway, I think Josh caught my mood, cos he got up, his face still all red, and started clowning around again. Racking out more bugle!

Well, I blame the sniff for what happened.

Josh took one of them swords off the wall and started telling me about it. Then he showed me this book about samurai warriors and all the poses they did with the swords. I saw one that reminded me of a yoga position we do in Chell’s class. When I told him it was actually called the warrior pose, he got me to hold the sword. I didn’t want to at first cos I was off me tits and it was dangerous cos it looked razor sharp. –Go on Chloe, he was all excited: –You do yoga, like you say, it’s the warrior pose, shows them things is all connected, you’ll be a bleedin natural at it!

I was surprised at how light the sword felt, and how good it felt in my grip. I started swinging it gently and striking the pose, like what’s-her-face in that Kill Bill film. Josh was having a proper old laugh, encouraging me. It felt great, it was like a wild dance, and I just got really lost in it.

Then it happened.

I was waving it around like one of them Jap farking warriors and then I saw his hand rising up just as my blade swished through the air. Then I felt the very lightest of contact and heard a faint chopping sound.

Suddenly, his face changed.

His eyes bulged right out and his mouth was shaped in a big O.

Then the blood.

On the leopard-skin rugs.

My sister Von being a nurse, I knew exactly what to do: pressure on the wound. Poor Josh was fucked, he was just shaking and saying: –How the fuck did you do that … how did that happen … over and over again as I got him through to the bathroom. Luckily there was bandages and plasters and stuff. As he moaned, I just carried on trying to stem the flow of blood.

Once I stopped it I went through to the living room and saw it, lying on the floorboards, just beside one of them rugs. There wasn’t much blood. I half shut my eyes and picked it up off the floor and ran with it into the kitchen, without looking at it. I found a Tupperware box, which I filled with ice, and stuck it in there.

I got Josh out the bathroom and called a taxi. –We’re going down to Tommy’s; we’ll get this stitched back on.

Josh was as white as a sheet when we got into the cab. I told the driver: –St Thomas’ Hospital, accident and emergency.

He looked at the hand, wrapped in a bloodstained handkerchief, and went: –Little accident then, what happened?

Poor Josh couldn’t speak, looked like he was gonna pass out.

–Don’t even ask, I told him.

Well, when we got to the A&E it was proper nuts! People coughing, all them old folks: some of them like death warmed up. Then Josh starts screaming, waving his bloodstained mitt around: –HELP ME! I NEED HELP!

We goes up to this desk, where the receptionist, a geezer, asks him what happened.

Josh waves his bloodied hand in the air. –WHAT DO YOU THINK! I NEED HELP!

The bloke tries to hand Josh a ticket.

Josh just looks at him, eyes bulging out. –What’s this?

–It’s your number in the queue. We’ve a lot of coronavirus cases, and he points over at that coughing mob, some of them not even observing social distance! –Now I just need to look up your records …

–You wot? FUCK MY RECORDS!

–Shh, I told him, –You’re causing a right bleedin commotion!

–There is a pandemic, the reception fella says.

–THIS IS MORE SERIOUS THAN ANY FARKING PANDEMIC!

Then a nurse wearing a mask and plastic gloves comes up to us. She glances at his hand and the blood on the handkerchief wrapped round it. I waves the Tupperware box at her. –It’s in here, and it needs stitched on bleedin sharpish.

The nurse only turns round and says: –I’m afraid he’s going to have to wait …

–Even if it means losing it? I looks at Josh.

The nurse looks at me, then nods: –We have to observe the new procedures.

Well, I just opened the farking box and showed her what was in it. She proper gasped. Just at that very minute, the blood started to seep through Josh’s trousers at his groin. He looked down at it and he started shaking, like almost fitting, and the bloodied handkerchief he’d been holding as a diversion just sorta slipped outta his hand. Of course everyone could see all his fingers was still there!

–Oh … the receptionist looked like he was gonna faint.

The nurse shut the box and nodded to the receptionist and we helped Josh through to a treatment room. –You will be able to help me! Won’t ya? he was begging her.

She just stayed all calm, pulled the blinds round him. They got to, ain’t they, it’s the way they’ve been trained. Our Yvonne told me that. –You really gotta stay calm, she said.

Well, Josh wasn’t staying bleedin calm: tell you that for nothing. Cos the nurse ain’t talking, he’s asking to me: –Am I gonna lose it, Cloh? Am I gonna lose it?

So I had to stay composed for us both. –Course not, they’ll sort it, it’s the NHS, I told him. –Bleedin miracle workers, they are!

It was only about half of it.

This doctor came along and they said I had to go. So I left Josh there, sitting on the bed, tears rolling down his cheeks. What got me was when the nurse asked: –Who are you to him?

I couldn’t even think of what to answer.

So I took a seat back out in the waiting room and tried to ignore all that coughing in my ears from them bleedin spreaders. That A&E must be the most infectious place in London!

Then one of them old geezers was looking round at me.

–Wot? I said, and he turned away. Proper creepy old cunt, he looked like that old perve in Game of Thrones.

Funny thing was, that fat, useless ponce of a prime minister was upstairs in intensive care, from shaking hands with all them cunts wot had the Billy Ray. What do they teach them at those posh schools besides noncing? Anyroads, I wasn’t sticking around here to breathe this air. I thought I’d best scarper to the cafe for a cup of tea.

When I got there, the place was shut: no social gatherings, only a long queue for a poxy vending machine. Might have made an exception for a farking hospital is all I can say.

But then I got a proper old surprise when I saw who was there, first in line. It was Chris! He nodded at me and got us a second cup of tea. I was absolutely made up to see him, but he just looked so sad. –She’s gone Chloe, his eyes were blinking and tearing up. –Me poor old mum. Virus got her, he said, all sniffy. –Didn’t stand a chance.

I really, really wanted to hold him but I couldn’t, not with all this social distancing lark. But I let him know that he shouldn’t be alone, not at a time like this. Told him I was going back with him to his place.

We got outside and there was cabs waiting so we climbed into one. Just as well, cos it was starting to rain. On my life, I said there and then, in the back of that bleedin taxi, I’m so sorry I was such a bitch the other week. Told him what a great woman his old mum was, proper salt of the earth.

Then I thought about poor old Josh, but at least he was in the best place. Hopefully they’d be able to do something for him. They really were bloody heroes. He would be OK to find his own way back home: there was loads of cabs. The way I was thinking was that Chris was the one what needed looking after: devoted to his old mum he was. You can imagine; predictably, he was in bits.

–What you doing here anyway, Cloh? he asked, his big, dark, dreamy eyes glistening.

I shook my head and settled back in the seat. –Don’t even ask.

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