lobe fusing. I thought of making some smart remark to Jamie about stunting his growth, but all lines to and from my brain seemed to be jammed with urgent messages coming from my guts. I could feel an awful churning going on down there, and I was sure it would only end one way, but I couldn’t move. I was stuck there like a flying buttress between the floor and the pillar, and Jamie was still gibbering away to the girl about the sound a Triumph makes and the high-speed runs she’d done up the side of Loch Lomond at night.
‘You on holiday, like?’
‘Aye, me an’ ma mates. Ah’ve got a boyfriend but he’s oot on the rigs.’
‘Aw aye.’
I was still breathing hard, trying to clear my head with oxygen. I didn’t understand Jamie; he was half the size I was, half the weight or less, and no matter how much we drank together he never seemed to be affected. He certainly wasn’t dumping his pints on the floor on the sly; I’d have got wet if he was. I realised that the girl had finally noticed me. She poked my shoulder for what I gradually comprehended wasn’t the first time.
‘Hey,’ she said.
‘What?’ I struggled.
‘You all right?’
‘Aye,’ I nodded slowly, hoping to content her with this, then looked away and up to one side as though I had just found something very interesting and important to look at on the ceiling. Jamie nudged me with his feet. ‘What?’ I said again, not trying to look at him.
‘You staying here all night?’
‘What?’ I said. ‘No. How, are you ready? Right.’ I put my hands behind me to find the pillar, found it and pushed myself up, hoping my feet wouldn’t slip on the beer-wet floor.
‘Maybe you’d better let me down, Frank lad,’ Jamie said, nudging me hard. I looked sort of up and to the side again, as though at him, then nodded. I let my back slide down the pillar until I was virtually squatting on the floor. The girl helped Jamie jump down. His red hair and her blonde looked suddenly garish from that angle in the now brightly lit room. Duncan was coming closer with the brush and a big bucket, emptying ashtrays and mopping things. I struggled to get up, then felt Jamie and the girl take me one under each arm and help me. I was starting to get triple vision and wondering how you did that with only two eyes. I wasn’t sure if they were talking to me or not.
I said, ‘Aye,’ just in case they were, then felt myself being led out into the fresh air through the fire exit. I needed to go to the toilet, and with every step I took there seemed to be more convulsions from my guts. I had this horrible vision of my body being made up almost completely of two equal-sized compartments, one holding piss and the other undigested beer, whisky, crisps, dry-roasted peanuts, spit, snot, bile and one or two bits of fish and potatoes. Some sick part of my mind suddenly thought of fried eggs lying thick with grease on a plate, surrounded with bacon, curled and scooped and holding little pools of fat, the outsides of the plate dotted with coagulated lumps of grease. I fought down the ghastly urge coming up from my stomach. I tried to think of nice things; then, when I couldn’t think of any, I determined to concentrate on what was happening around me. We were outside the Arms, walking along the pavement past the Bank, Jamie on one side of me and the girl on the other. It was a cloudy night and cool, and the streetlights were sodium. We left the smell of the pub behind, and I tried to get some of the fresh air through my head. I was aware I was staggering slightly, lurching sporadically into Jamie or the girl, but there wasn’t a great deal I could do about it; I felt rather like one of those ancient dinosaurs so huge that they had a virtually separate brain to control their back legs. I seemed to have a separate brain for each limb, but they’d all broken off diplomatic relations. I swayed and stumbled along as best I could, trusting to luck and the two people with me. Frankly, I didn’t have much faith in either, Jamie being too small to stop me if I really started to topple, and the girl