Playfair

by Jamie Tuck

  Metal face to metal face

  Thirty-seven minutes into the new day, and Billy ‘Hash’ Brown moves his limbs around Foggy’s living room floor with a conductor’s joy, a burning joint hanging from his bottom lip.

  ‘Cured!’ he says. ‘I am! I’m fuckin cured man!’

  He sucks hard on the spliff.

  Liberated by tetrahydro-cannabinol.

  ‘Looker, man!’ Hash says. ‘I am! I’m fuckin cured.’

  He lifts the joint away from his mouth and beams like a ventriloquist’s dummy - all teeth and eyes.

  Foggy is slowly sinking into the folds of the sofa.

  ‘Aye, class man,’ Foggy says, eyes nipped half-closed by the same herbal tweezers.

  He tries to look through Hash to the TV screen.

  Hash moves like a Sixties hippy in a field, all he needs are a few flowers painted on his filthy white hat, Jimi Hendrix up on stage - and he’s there. He weaves around the carpet’s stains then sits back down in the easy chair by the window.

  He passes Foggy the joint, who reaches for it with nicotine fingers that could have been pulled fresh from his anus. Hash puts his feet up on the coffee table, blocking Foggy’s view as an advert for dead turkeys roles by.

  “Bootiful,” Hash says to the TV screen.

  Foggy squints his eyes to try and focus around Hash’s white Converse All Stars.

  “Hey,” he says.

  “Wha?”

  “Is that blood on your shoes?”

  Hash looks at him, pulls his trainers down from the table.

  “Silly cunt,” he says.

  “I dunno how you can work in that fuckin fish market. It’s mingin.”

  “Aye.”

  Images flick across the state-of-the-stolen-art TV screen. The first few hours of a new day - Saturday – video tapes found on dusty shelves in a BBC cupboard, rammed into the broadcast machinery and the ‘play’ button pressed, the technician goes back to sleep on a sofa.

  Foggy changes channels.

  An advert rolls by - a spy on skis desperate to deliver a box of chocolates, putting an unreasonable amount of effort into getting a shag off some horsey-looking posh bird in a pearl necklace.

  ‘‘All because the lady loves,’’ Foggy mimicks the voice over, tapping the joint into the ash tray in his lap. ‘. . . it right up the fuckin jacksy. Why doesn’t this bloke just stay home and have a wank, scran the chocolates himself?’

  The spy ski-jumps over a white mountain.

  ‘I wish it’d fuckin snow here,’ Hash sighs. ‘It’s like Tener-fuckin-rife out there. We’re not built for it man.’

  ‘Aye, we’re honkies mate,’ Foggy says, sucking hard on the spliff.

  ‘Sun’s for the darkies like Jackson next door,’ he continues, pointing the spliff at the wall. ‘Y’met Jackson?’

  ‘Nah.’

  ‘Good lad, buys spliff off me. He’s been sprawled out in his back yard all week, like the cunt’s back in the jungle.’

  ‘He was a bouncer at The Jungle?’

  ‘Nah man, not The Jungle pub. The real jungle - Africa, or wherever the fuck the place is. Lions and gorillas and that.’

  A woman on the TV seems to be having a shower wank, lubricating her hair with the latest generation of magical shampoo with some brand new just-this-very-second discovered extra-potent hair-rejuvenating magic ingredient scraped from a Martian’s testicles, probably - follicle re-animating, life-giving meadow-down-smelling . . .

  ‘It’s just fuckin soap,’ Hash says.

  ‘Y’could use some soap, y’cunt,’ Foggy says. ‘Y’fuckin stink man.’

  Bong.

  It’s time for the news: Sporadic riots across eastern Britain.

  Bong.

  Small pockets of people loot and burn.

  Bong.

  ‘Bong?’ Hash says. ‘Bong! Man, we should have a bong?’

  ‘Aye? Dunno where it is though.’

  A talking beard starts to say something, Foggy pulls the trigger – Channel Four.

  Never listen to The Beards. It’s the law.

  Yet more televisual turd dribbles down the screen; some crap, pretentious French film.

  But there might be tits in it, maybe even a fanny - so it stays.

  ‘Your turn to make the tea,’ Foggy says.

  ‘Is it fuck?’

  ‘Ah go on Julio, y'make the best tea in the world.’

  It’s true, Billy ‘Hash’ Brown makes a damn fine brew.

  ‘Just coz y'bird's out suckin cocks doesn't make me y'skivvy.’

  ‘Just think of it man, mmmm,’ Foggy says, miming the holding of a mug of tea.

  He’s almost horizontal on the sofa now – sinking - head tilted just enough to watch the TV and suck on a spliff.

  ‘A nice cuppa. That lovely taste across y’tongue and that. Mmmmm.’

  He turns to look at Hash.

  ‘And y’can try out y’new improved skin like, on the way.’

  Hash looks at him, red eyed.

  ‘Go on man,’ Foggy continues. ‘I made the last one.’

  True.

  Two scuffed mugs sit on the coffee table, right enough. It was piss weak and milky, Hash’s mug untouched.

  ‘That was yesterday, y’wanker,’ Hash says.

  ‘Looker!’ Foggy says, pointing the joint at the TV screen. ‘Looker!’

  Two PG Tips monkeys drive a classic car, dressed like blue rinse old women.

  ‘Howay man,’ Foggy says. ‘That’s a fuckin message from ‘above’ that like. ‘Billy Brown make the tea, make the tea Billy Brown. Make the fuckin tea, Bill-lee.’’

  A chimp dressed as a granny takes a sip.

  ‘Fuck it,’ Hash says, leaning forward. He reaches for the mugs, tightens the required muscles in his lower back and rises. ‘Y’lazy bastard.’

  ‘Good lad.’

  Hash exhales and heads painlessly out of the door to the kitchen.

  ‘Fuckin cured.’

  He moves the top layer of rancid dishes piled high in the sink to make room. Fills the old metal kettle. Then returns it to its cable. He grabs both mugs and lifts his arms like a kid pretending to be an aeroplane. He flies the mugs into the sink.

  ‘Nyeeeow. Fuckin cured!’

  Hash turns on the tap to rinse the mugs, deciding against using the 15-year-old dishcloth festering beside a dirty frying pan, a hardened crust of lard sealing in stagnant water. He waits for the kettle to boil, leaning against the bench. He reaches over to a black plastic radio, flicks the 'on' switch.

  Metro Radio, the local station.

  ‘Alan, me name's Julie,’ a woman crackles.

  It’s the Night Owls programme.

  ‘Am a forst time caller and I'm a little bit norvus.’

  ‘Don’t be nervous Julie, we’re all friends here,’ the presenter says.

  She yabbers on about how she'd been in hospital to have her tubes tied but still managed to get pregnant.

  ‘Fuck me,’ Hash mumbles. ‘Why y’tellin people this grim shit?’

  He turns to the whistling kettle.

  ‘‘Get to those phones,’’ he says, just like Alan Robson, the presenter. Last month, the local hero had opened the new Prestos supermarket down the road – finally putting a face to a voice.

  ‘Fuckin ginga, ageing soft rocker in tight jeans.’

  Hash opens the fridge and drips a little milk in each mug then puts in a tea bag. He fills them with boiling water. Stirs. Crushes the bags against the side, stirs again then waits for the liquid to turn the correct shade of beige.

  He stirs again.

  Waits.

  The stoner’s perfect cup of tea requires patience.

  ‘Alan, me name’s Harold and I'm a first time caller,’ says a new radio voice - trying to sound old.

  Hash squeezes the tea bags against the inside wall of their respective mugs with the back of a spoon, then puts both bags into his own mug, stirring, listening.

  ‘Hi Harold, don't be nervous. What wo
uld you like to talk to Night Owls about?’

  ‘Well, Alan. It’s a little bit embarassin.’

  ‘Don’t worry Harold,’ Alan - I’m-Your-Pal-Honest - says. ‘The Night Owls will understand.’

  Hash moves both teabags into the other mug – gives them a squeeze against the side.

  ‘Well Alan, it’s about me piles. . .’

  Hash snorts at the radio.

  ‘. . . they're really raggin me arse man.’

  ‘Harold’ sounds heavy and amused - getting higher then lower, obviously a kid faking it as a grown-up.

  There’s a giggle, far in the background.

  ‘Errm, ok? Yes. Harold, well. Lots of our listeners suffer hemorrhoids from time to time Harold. They’re very common. Especially during pregnancy and . . .’

  ‘But, but, Alan man, listen.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘They're hangin out of me backside Alan like, I dunno, like a bush full of bloody plums. Big purple PLUMS. Not even grapes man. PLUMS! D’y’know what I’m sayin? They're gonna burst. I daren’t sit down. I daren’t go to work.’

  ‘Oh dear Harold, sounds very painful.’

  ‘Painful? Painful . . . ?’

  ‘Well Harold they’ll . . . ‘

  ‘I’m a bloody bus driver.’

  Hash erupts.

  ‘Ha ha ha ha.’

  Alan, an old pro, fishes his own laugh from the back of his throat, clears it.

  ‘What am I gonna do?’ says the sore-arsed bus driver.

  ‘Well, have you been to see a doctor?’

  ‘A doctor? Alan, a bloody doctor? I can't be bendin over and stickin me anus hole in a quack's face Alan. What if I, y'know, pump?’

  There's loud, childish sniggering behind the caller now, as the caller catches a note an octave higher - stifles it.

  ‘Well Harold, there's really no need to worry. That's what doctors’ are paid for and . . .’

  There’s a splutter down the line.

  ‘Alan?’

  ‘Yes Harold?’

  ‘Ah think you're lovely.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I says, ‘ah think you’re lov-er-ly’ Alan. I saw y’openin the new supermarket the other day. You’re loverly. Fancy poppin round to my place later?’

  There's a sound in the background like monkeys falling from a cage.

  ‘Right, thanks for calling.’

  ‘Y'should come round here Alan, y’should come round here now and show me your lovely little ginga haired co . . .’

  The producer cuts the line.

  ‘Well, very mature. You know, in all my years at Night Owls, I don’t know why these people ring up and . . .’

  Hash hits the ‘off’ button and reverses out the door, turns and pushes open the living room door with his foot, holding the two steaming mugs.

  The perfect cup of tea.

  Shame there’s no digestives.

  ‘What y’laughin at?’ Foggy asks, a Stranglers LP cover on his lap, assembling a spliff. Skins in hand. He licks one.

  ‘Some little fucker on Night Owls.’

  Foggy smirks.

  ‘Had that presenter bloke from Presto’s fucked.’

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘Aye, kid sounded as fuckin stoned as us.’

  ‘Doubt it mate,’ Foggy says. ‘We’re the only ones with any blow in a hundred fuckin miles.’

  ≈

  The hours and the spliffs roll by, the clock’s minute hand spinning north, east, south and west like a fucked compass.

  Foggy’s fingers keep on rolling.

  ‘Man, I’m fuckin baked,’ Hash says.

  A slice of light spills through the curtains over his shoulder, hot and white.

  ‘Fuck, is it gettin light?’ Hash’s skin tries to roll away like a rug, all the way up into his slightly loosened hat.

  Hash nods at the thick old curtains.

  ‘Ugh, aye,’ Foggy says, curled up on the sofa, one hand holding a spliff. Black discs forming around his eyes like the kohl on an Afghani fuck boy.

  ‘Fuck, we’ve been smokin for hours.’

  ‘Aye,’ Foggy smiles.

  ‘It’s Saturday?’ Hash says.

  ‘Dunno? Is it?’

  ‘Aye, fuckin hell eh?’

  Hash moves his arms around.

  ‘I’m still fuckin cured mate.’

  ‘Aye?’

  Hash sits way back, deep in the easy chair in his chocolate brown Kappa tracksuit.

  ‘Bedtime for Bonzo. I might head home, have a bath and a kip.’

  ‘Aye?’

  Foggy scowls, he looks up at the clock.

  ‘Hey?’

  6.47am.

  ‘What?’ Hash says.

  ‘It’s Saturday?’

  ‘Aye. It is.’

  Hash’s face stretches open, on its way to a fat yawn.

  ‘Don’t y’work down the fish quay with Talbot on Saturdays?’

  Hash freezes in his pose, relaxed in the back of the sofa - deep and cosy - mouth halfway en route to a lovely yawn.

  ‘Fuck!’

  He erupts from the chair, reaching into his deep tracksuit trousers for his car keys. He pauses and looks, aghast, at Foggy.

  ‘Fuck!’

  Then makes for the door.

  ‘Fuck!’

  Down by the river’s edge, and Rick E. Delaney sits watching the Tyne’s fishing fleet gather in the dock like a postcard picture.

  ‘Ye shall have a fishy on a little dishy,’ Delaney sings the famous local folk song in a crap attempt at a Geordie accent, sounding more Welsh - most do. ‘Ye shall have a fishy – when the boat comes in.’

  He taps his splayed fingers on the steering wheel.

  ‘Northern gimps.’

  He sits in the staff car he’d taken from The Kernel’s garage last night, he’d simply reached behind the security guard’s desk for the keys while Norman the security guard had sneaked off to the bar.

  A standard-issue white Ford Escort driven by every salesman and civil servant up and down the land.

  And the police.

  A kid carrying a fishing rod walks passed. He turns and looks at Delaney, makes the universal wanker gesture with his right hand.

  ‘Copper wanker,’ he squeaks. ‘Fuck off!’

  Delaney tries to smile at him, can’t meet his eye - looks away.

  ‘Spotty little oik,’ Delaney mutters as the boy saunters off along the river’s edge and sits on a stool.

  ‘These bloody people,’ he sighs. ‘No respect for anything.’

  The sun drifts her vaporising way in from the east, as is her wont, and Delaney moves his flour white arms away from the steering wheel as her veil edges up the bonnet to the windscreen.

  He rolls down his sleeves and buttons the cuffs.

  Demented seagulls form a screaming white cloud over a boat called Kirrin as she shunts her bulging way into The Gut, bowels swollen with cod dragged choking from the Dogger Bank fishing grounds. Her wake bobbles smaller boats tied to the dock like rowing boats on a municipal lake.

  She arrives at her guaranteed berth with an angry reverse of her engines.

  Delaney glances at the blue digits of the dashboard clock.

  ‘0737 on a Saturday,’ he says. ‘I should be in bed. This better be worth it.’

  He flicks his hair curtains away from his eyes and steps out of the car and scuttles straight into the shade.

  The smell licks him. And the sweat from his armpits spills down his sides and into his beige chinos and, as he walks to the fish market’s entrance, a cold stream flows to his anus.

  Two smeared sentries stand at the entrance in orange rubber dungarees.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he says to either.

  No response.

  ‘Erm, excuse me?’

  The man on the left, hair greased down to his eyebrows like spilled tar, turns his sunburnt face.

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘Is this the fish market?

  ‘Eh?’

&nb
sp; ‘Erm, you know, the market. The fish market?’

  The man turns his head and looks up the strip of concrete that runs under a corrugated iron roof.

  Cluttered masts rock in the water. Seagulls squeal overhead.

  A squall of civilians stare into stacked boxes guarded by men in dirty rubber clothes, picking up fish and holding them close to their faces, turning them this way and that. Prices are scrawled on boards in chalk.

  ‘Nah mate,’ he says. ‘It’s a fashion shoot.

  ‘Estee fuckin Lauder,’ says the other.

  Delaney looks up as a sunburnt gorilla of a man steps from the big boat called Kirrin and lands on the dock, two fish boxes balanced on each shoulder.

  ‘Fashion shoot?’ says Delaney, turning to face them.

  The man gives him a 'you still fuckin here?’ stare then resumes talking to his twin.

  ‘Thanks, thank you. Erm. Thanks.’

  Delaney walks ten yards and looks into the first stack of fish.

  He braces himself then reaches into one of the plastic crates and pulls out a fine silver cod.

  Dead.

  It’s ice cold with a suprisingly hard body beneath the oily skin. He holds it up by its tail, copying another man further up the dock - it starts to slip from his grasp.

  He squeezes.

  ‘Oh!’

  It flies out of his hands.

  ‘Oh!’

  He tries to catch it. Reconnects, squeezes and launches it again.

  ‘Jesus!’

  It slaps onto the seething floor by the feet of a man sitting in the shade inside a dark iglu made from two stacks of iced fish.

  ‘Oh sorry, sorry about that.’

  Delaney picks up the fish.

  The man moves his head back on his neck so he can see from under the dirty rim of his once-white jungle hat.

  ‘Ayaz man,’ the man whispers slowly, closing his eyes.

  Delaney stares at the biblical figure below.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ he squeaks.

  The blistered young man stares back through sleepy, blood basted eyes.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t, erm. Jesus!’

  He holds the fish at his face.

  ‘Erm?’ Delaney asks, his face a painful question mark.

  ‘One pound fifty.’

  ‘One pound fifty!’ he says. ‘For one fish?

  The leper says nothing.

  ‘Oh yes, yes,’ Delaney says. ‘Okay. Fine, fine.’

  He places a green note and a seven sided coin in the outstretched palm. It’s pink and healthy but Delaney still tries not to touch it.

  It closes around the money.

  ‘Jesus!’

  The back of the hand looks like a seared trotter.

  ‘Erm thanks. Thanks. Thank you.’

  Delaney carries his new friend to the water’s edge.

  He turns to look back at the young man in the hat. Only his feet and filthy tracksuit pants stick out from the side of the stacked crate.

  ‘Leprosy? Scabies? Sailors get scabies, don’t they? Jesus Christ – what’s wrong with these people? Don’t they wash? Don’t they have doctors?’

  He stares at his fish.

  Its eye seems to follow his then - winks.

  ‘Jesus!’

  He drops it.

  Slap.

  To the floor.

  ‘For God’s sake!’

  He bends to retrieve it, gripping the body.

  ‘What y’after son?’ a voice barks, hoarse and loud.

  Heavy rubber boots step in front of his eyes.

  Delaney rises and reassembles his face.

  It’s the fisher-ape from the big boat Kirrin.

  Delaney throws the switch in his brain marked 'charm'.

  ‘Hi,’ he says, holding out his hand. ‘I'm Rick, Rick E. Delaney.’

  The sailor grabs hold of it with his slimy, sand-papered paw – pauses - then crushes it.

  Slowly, looking Delaney in the eye.

  ‘Talbot,’ the man says. ‘Wade Talbot.’

  Delaney rescues the limb, massaging it gently with his other hand while trying not to drop the fish again.

  ‘Nice fish,’ he says.

  Talbot turns his head and squints into the top box of the stack, he pulls his hand up and flattens his moustache against his top lip.

  ‘Fresh as it gets.’

  Fish sequins glitter in the grey hair.

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Twelve knicker.’

  ‘Twelve pounds? Really? That seems an awful lot.’

  ‘Aye? Y’reckon?’

  ‘If you don’t mind me asking. Fish and chips is only 80 pence. How can you charge £12 for a fish?’

  ‘The box son, the fuckin box. There’s two dozen cod in there.’

  Hot blood races up Delaney’s chest and squirts into his face.

  ‘Hah,’ Delaney says. ‘Only joking.’

  A man walking up the dock slaps Talbot on the back.

  ‘Alreet big fella?’ he says.

  ‘Hallo John son,’ Talbot roars after him.

  He turns his head back to Delaney – his face says ‘well?’

  Delaney looks up the dock passed the sentry twins, the boy sits with his rod tipped in hope towards the river. And there’s an old man with a rod further up. Another picture postcard.

  ‘Actually,’ he mutters. ‘I was wondering if you could help me.’

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘Does anybody sell anything else down here?’

  Delaney winks, slow and deliberate.

  The stoned-leper-on-the-stool shakes his head and mutters; ‘Who the fuck IS this twat?’

  ‘Somethin wrong with y’eye son?’ Talbot replies.

  ‘Erm, ha ha.’

  Talbot stares at him.

  Delaney looks up and down the quay.

  ‘Y’know. Something ‘special’? A ‘special’ box.’

  ‘Prawns?’

  ‘No, no,’ Delaney conspires. ‘I’m after a ‘special’ box. I’ve been told to look for ‘special boxes.’’

  Delaney’s eyebrows are entirely out-of-control, the right one is currently somewhere in his hair.

  He winks again.

  ‘A ‘special’ box? Y’need to get yersel to The Jungle tonight for one of them kidda, and she’ll charge ya more than twelve quid,’ Talbot replies in equal tones.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘There’s only blue or fuckin white man. Haven’t got any fuckin solid gold or silver ones kidda, blue or white. Plastic. Them’s y’choices. Not even got a pink one like, for southern poofs . . . like you.’

  Delaney feels like a three-year-old determined to cross the English Channel in his armbands, drowning in all of three inches of water.

  He keeps paddling.

  ‘I mean, you know. I hear there’s somewhere you can buy – you know - down here. I’m after some, you know, ‘stuff’.’

  A membrane flicks over Talbot’s eyes then retreats into his forehead.

  ‘Stuff’? Twelve quid for a box son, that’s the price.’

  Something dawns on Rick E. Delaney.

  ‘Oh right! Right! I get you! Hah!’

  Delaney’s face opens into a smile, he lifts a hip and reaches down for his wallet.

  ‘A box it is then,’ he almost adds ‘my good man.’

  Delaney gives Talbot a brown note and two greens.

  ‘Doddsy,’ Talbot shouts to a YTS trainee teenager on Kirrin’s deck. ‘Box of cod for the gay lad here.’

  The youngster steps forward in ubiquitous tracksuit bottoms.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Crate for the lad here.’

  Doddsy takes a good second longer than the average human being to register the instruction.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Crate. Fuckin fish man, Doddsy. Jesus Christ. This is the fish quay man kidda. Fish.’

  ‘Oh, oh. Aye.’

  He lifts a blue crate from one of the stacks.

  ‘Hurry up y’dumb cunt,’ Talbot shouts,
walloping Doddsy across the ear, sending him off at an angle like he’s being pushed by a strong wind.

  ‘Ouch! That’ll rattle his brain cell,’ Delaney says. ‘Ha ha.’

  Red eared Doddsy heads to Delaney with the box in the crux of his arms.

  Delaney puts his single fish on top of the box then hold out his arms in the same pose, the boy drops it down.

  The crate smells like an abandoned sperm bank.

  ‘Right, right. Thank you,’ Delaney says, but Talbot has dropped over the side onto his boat.

  ‘Right,’ he says again to no one, and walks up the dock with his stinking dripping box, through the gate, passed the sentries and out to his car, making the extra effort to keep himsef in the shade. He puts the box on the roof and fiddles with the key until the boot opens. He lifts the box from the roof and places it next to the spare wheel.

  His Marks and Spencer shirt is licked and slapped to his back like an oversized stamp.

  ‘That was EASY!’ Delaney says. ‘Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Investigative journalist, that’s me.’

  Delaney looks up and down the quayside over the raised boot, people are milling around, the old man and the boy have their rods tipped towards the Tyne in their garden gnome poses.

  He lifts the lid, moves the top layer of fish around the white ice, they slip about on top of each other, one slips out and onto the dirty carpet in the boot. He shuffles around in the box, looking for the drugs package he knows he just bought, tipping more fish into the boot.

  ‘What the?’

  He spills them all and moves the frozen shoal around.

  Nothing.

  No drugs.

  Just the dead fish.

  High above the fish quay in the middle house in a row of five, and a teenage girl throws open heavy curtains to the rude late-morning sun.

  Spilling hot gold over Ted Berry’s face.

  ‘Uh? Guh? Uh?’

  Wrenching him up, up and away like a hooked fish from his dark comfortable place on Wedge’s living room floor, asleep on the Afghan rug.

  ‘Uh?’

  A burning angel stands at the window. She peels aside the second maroon stage curtain that had, until just now, been holding back the day.

  ‘Wakey wakey,’ the angel sings. ‘Rise and shine.’

  ‘Holly!’ Wedge croaks from the sofa. ‘Shut the fuckin curtains.’

  Weasel, the Wujkowski family’s chilled-out jazz cat, isn’t happy either, he buries his black head under a cushion.

  ‘You two are mingin,’ she says. ‘Y’been smokin joints? Y’shouldn’t smoke in here. Even Trudi doesn’t smoke her spliffs in here.’

  She pushes the middle sash window up its frame. The manic preaching of seagulls drifts up from the river below.

  Holly rolls up the two remaining windows on either side of the living room’s bay.

  There is no escape.

  ‘Hiya Ted,’ she says.

  ‘Holly,’ Berry croaks, burying his vibrating head into the fold of his arm curled on the floor, his elbow knocks the phone.

  ‘Aw? Bad head, handsome?’

  ‘Uh? Nah. Eh? Aye. Ha heh heh.’

  He lifts his arm away from his eyes.

  And sees a black shadow cut into a yellow world - Holly at the window.

  ‘Shit!’ she says - hands on those hips – and turns her head back to the room. ‘What y’done now? It’s the POLICE! Looker!’

  Berry jerks alive.

  ‘Looker,’ she says.

  Wedge leans forward and rises then pauses - he stares, blinking his eyes, his sun-slapped face marked with white ruts from lying all night on one of the sofa’s many zips.

  He stumbles to her side, one hand held out to guide the way.

  Berry stares at the red Adidas bag, open by the fireplace next to three empty brown plastic two-litre bottles, all of which once contained Olde English Cider. He sits up sharply from the floor to grab the bag, but it’s way too much for his mashed brains to cope with.

  ‘Oh. Fuck me. Man.’

  He grips his head with both hands.

  ‘Slag!’ Wedge says pushing his fraternal twin sister to the side. ‘I nearly shat meself.’

  False alarm.

  There’s nothing there but parked cars.

  ‘Ha!’ she says. ‘Made y’look! Made y’stare! Made y’shit y’underwear.’

  ‘Slut’

  Berry falls back to the cushions.

  ‘Fuckinhell man.’

  ‘It’s a lovely day,’ Holly says. ‘Shouldn’t you two be out, y’know, playin?’

  ‘Shouldn’t you be out suckin cocks?’ Wedge says, miming a blow job with his tongue against a cheek.

  ‘Jay!’ she jabs her brother in the ribs. ‘Y’horrible little prick.’

  Her feet squeak away from the window.

  ‘Need a piss,’ Wedge grunts.

  He follows Holly, scratching his balls.

  Berry gathers his legs and rises. He staggers to the Adidas bag and tucks it behind the curtain then looks out of the window.

  It’s bright outside.

  ‘Fuck’s sakes.’

  Too bright.

  He closes his eyes, and can feel the route the wires take as they curl their way into his brain.

  He squints blind across the roofs of the fish quay’s buildings and the parked masts of two dozen or more fishing boats, gathered in The Gut like pencils in a jar.

  The fat river glides towards the city like spilled gold.

  Holly patters along the hallway on the otherside of the plasterboard and out into the sunshine, she turns and looks up at the sky.

  She’s in her shorts, tight jeans she’d cut the legs off. They grip her flesh, slashing out the Beetle bonnet shape of her fanny in definite brush strokes.

  ‘Ai yai yai.’

  The soldier in Berry’s trousers starts his slow salute.

  A silver Mercedes purrs up to the pavement behind her, the engine dies. The springs relax and out comes Wedge’s neighbour of two doors separation.

  The one, the only - the living legend.

  Wade Talbot.

  ‘Shit the fuckin bed,’ Berry says.

  Talbot has the face of a thousand photofits: a rag of greying hair covers his head, a nose battered flat by fists, steel moustache rusting at frayed ends. Two oily black eyebrows – oddly unfaded with age. It’s a face that would scream ‘Guilty!’ to any jury in the land.

  No matter the offence.

  Holly turns her face from the sky to greet him.

  ‘Hey pet,’ Talbot shouts. ‘Bloody hot again innit?’

  ‘Aye Wade,’ she says. ‘It’s lush.’

  ‘Phew, dunno bout that like pet,’ Talbot says. ‘Say hiya to ya mam for iz.’

  Talbot walks up two doors and into his house.

  Slam.

  He closes the door.

  Berry needs to sit down, the cider drank and the dope smoked last night have left dirty boot prints inside his head.

  ‘Fuckinhell,’ he sighs.

  The Wujkowski living room has a middle eastern feel, rugs and cushions for the floor, throws and cushions for the huge sofa and cushions and cushions and more fucking cushions - plus a live cat - for the armchair. Berry sits in it, next to Weasel, to spread the load that has been shed inside his skull.

  He plays with the lumps and contours of the cat’s chewed ear. Weasel looks up in appreciation, stretches his paws so his claws extend like talons.

  Berry presses the remote’s little red button.

  A bland TV presenter is in his ‘broom cupboard’ talking to a young girl on a telephone. She gets some retard-grade questions right and wins a ‘radio-in-a-bag’ and some other cheap useless crap for the bottom of her wardrobe.

  The presenter drips pure cheese.

  ‘Wanker,’ Berry mutters.

  His thumb hovers over the trigger as Mr Cheese’s sidekick appears on the desk, a yellow puppet called Gordon who is, apparently, a gopher.

  ‘Fuck’s a gopher
anyway?’

  The gopher creases, squeaks cheaply, turns then looks at the camera with its sewn on button eyes.

  ‘What a fuckin shit job,’ Berry says.

  ‘What?’ Wedge says, returning to the imprint his supersized skull had left in the monster couch.

  ‘Fuckin Sock Bloke,’ he says, pointing at the television with the remote.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Some silly prick’s crouched on the floor there, under that desk - with their hand inside a fuckin sock.’

  ‘Aye? So?’

  Mr Cheese raises up slightly on one arse cheek and a guilty smile slides across his face, which briefly flushes pink. Then he chuckles – for no apparent reason.

  ‘Did he just . . .’ Berry coughs, pointing the remote at the screen. ‘. . . fart?’

  The presenter grabs a sheath of papers, taps them on his desk, then turns them to the side.

  He gives the air a gentle - but most definitely deliberate - waft.

  ‘He did!’ Wedge says. ‘He fuckin guffed!’

  Even the puppet looks shocked, it disappears under the Formica. There’s the sound of a man on his knees scrambling away, holding his nose with a fucking gopher sock/puppet.

  The screen turns to a Bananaman cartoon.

  Berry rises from the chair.

  ‘My turn,’ he says. ‘Oh . . . fuckinhell man.’

  He steadies himself and then walks out the door and down the corridor to the toilet where his stretched bladder begins to empty like a fire hose, he puts his hand against the wall. Then his forehead.

  Still the piss flows.

  It stops, spits - ‘Fuck’s sakes man’ - spurts again.

  He draws out the last few drops manually, pulling two fingers along the tube behind his nutsack before shaking and tucking. He pulls the chain.

  His mouth feels like a tramp’s blanket.

  He heads through the compressed shade of the hall to the white light of the kitchen for a drink of water.

  The pipes in the wall rattle and scream as he opens the stiff tap into a glass. He pours the whole thing down his throat.

  He fills the pint glass again, drinks half of it.

  ‘Ah man.’

  And suddenly life feels a whole lot better.

  He finishes the water, opens the tap and swallows a third of the new glass before turning and heading back to the living room.

  Wedge is back at the window.

  Berry hands him the glass.

  ‘Cheers.’

  Berry looks up the street.

  ‘Here’s y’mam.’

  Trudi Wujkowski is walking down the road like she’d just found her way home from a Happening that finished sometime around 1970. She’s dressed in a short, tight Paisley dress. She was 17 when the 60s ended, but she can still pull it off.

  Sort of.

  An earlier draft of perfection.

  She stands next to her daughter.

  Neither has a supersized skull.

  ‘Fuckinhell?’ Berry says.

  ‘What?’

  Berry smiles.

  ‘Y’take after y’dad then eh?’

  ‘Dunno. Never met the prick. Why?’

  Berry snorts.

  ‘Ha heh heh.’

  Wedge looks at him confused, his nose and cheeks sprayed with a fresh crop of freckles.

  ‘Fuck y’witterin on about now?’

  ‘Nothin, nothin,’ Berry says. ‘Ha heh heh.’

  Trudi walks up the path and into the house. Her heeled shoes tap down the hall and the toilet door opens.

  ‘Where’s the bag?’ Wedge says.

  ‘Behind the curtain.’

  Wedge reaches for Smithy’s bag and walks to the kitchen, Berry follows.

  Berry sits at the big round table while Wedge unlocks the back door and steps out into the yard with the bag.

  ‘Fuck’s he doin?’

  He listens to the piss fountain as Wedge’s mother squats on the toilet on the other side of the thin wall behind the table.

  He cringes.

  It seems like just too much of an intrusion.

  It slows.

  Speeds up again.

  There’s just the faintest sound of a thin, drawn out fart.

  The toilet flushes.

  Trudi arrives, smelling of cigarette smoke and spilled wine.

  Back from her Friday night out.

  ‘Hi Bez,’ she ruffles his short black hair and sits in a chair.

  She sighs.

  ‘Have a good night?’ she says, reaching for the pack of menthol cigarettes on the table.

  ‘Aye, good laugh.’

  ‘What y’do?’

  She has the cigarette at her mouth, lights it.

  Trudi Wujkowski looks exactly like an art teacher at a sixth form college - because that’s what she is.

  ‘Just stayed in. Here. With Wedge - I mean Jason. Runt and KP came round too. Watched telly, drank cider, listened to Night Owls and that.’

  ‘That’s nice.’

  Silence.

  She exhales mint tobacco and stares vacantly out across her kitchen. Her feather earrings look like pheasants shot from the sky.

  Berry realises, she’s probably feeling even worse than he is.

  A conversation is in order.

  ‘I just saw Talbot,’ he says.

  ‘Wade?’

  ‘Aye. Is it true what they say about him like, that he’s a nutter and that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Wedge says he got done for killing someone, in the ‘60s.’

  ‘1976. It was hot.’

  ‘Hot?’

  ‘He had a fight with a bouncer outside The Jungle, that’s all. He only got three years. The bloke was bigger than Wade. And, anyway, he started it.’

  ‘Didn’t he cut the bloke’s head off with a shovel?’

  ‘Spade,’ she exhales. ‘A spade.’

  Berry’s eyes light up with fear.

  True awe.

  Missplaced, Trudi thinks.

  ‘Wade’s a lovely man,’ she says. ‘Don’t listen to Jay. Wade just overheats sometimes, that’s all. He’d do anything for you, give you the shirt off his back he would. Honest.’

  She looks up to where the sun shines in the back window.

  ‘I’m glad he’s me neighbour, he makes me feel safe. He’s not someone you wanna be scared of Ted. There’s worse blokes out there than Wade Talbot, believe me.’

  Wedge returns from the back yard with a badly rolled spliff at his lips.

  Trudi crushes her menthol cigarette into the soil of the plant pot that sits on the cheap plastic table. Two dozen other butts lie curled up in the family graveyard.

  This is a smokers household.

  ‘Cuppa?’ Wedge says, kettle poised over the sink.

  ‘Yes please?’ she says, face suspicious.

  Wedge fills the kettle from the tap.

  ‘What y’done now Jay?’ she sighs.

  Wedge turns at the sink, innocent, the spliff still at his lips.

  ‘Nothin. Nothin.’

  Mock hurt in his voice.

  He wanders off for his lighter.

  The kettle boils.

  Wedge returns, splashes water over the tea bag, removes it and then glugs in some milk.

  He hands it to her.

  She takes a sip.

  Winces.

  ‘Mmm,’ she says. ‘Thank you son.’

  She pushes it to the side, waiting for him to talk. She puts a stray strand of hair behind her ear, brushing away approximately 20-years.

  ‘Mam?’

  ‘Yes,’ she smiles - big as Texas - full of wisdom and mischief. ‘Dear?’

  Berry smiles with her, resistence is futile.

  ‘Ehm?’

  ‘What Jason? What y’done?‘

  Her eyes sharpen.

  ‘Is that a?’

  She smells the air.

  ‘Are you smokin a joint?’

  He passes it to her. She looks at it, it’s a mess - she�
��ll have to give him a spliff-rolling lesson.

  ‘Where’d you get this from? There’s a drought on.’

  She puts it to her lips and inhales.

  ‘Nice,’ she exhales. ‘Oooh, really nice.’

  Wedge looks at Berry then back to his mother.

  ‘Do y’wanna buy some, mam?’

  She stops, turns her eyes to him - a second toke of smoke still inside her lungs.

  Berry’s head falls off his shoulders, bounces out the back door, up and over the wall and rolls away to safety up the street.

  ‘What?’ she says, exhaling.

  Berry nips his eyes closed.

  ‘Fuckinhell,’ he whispers.

  ‘A mate’s got some to sell, that’s all.’

  Wedge pulls out a fat brick of brown gold.

  ‘Can you help us – him - sell it?’

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ Trudi says. ‘Where the hell did you get ALL that from?’

  Trudi grabs hold of the block, the corner peeled off – smoked last night on Wedge’s living room floor by Berry and Wedge, plus the departed Runt and KP, now out spreading the good word around town.

  ‘Is that a lot?’ Wedge says.

  ‘You fuckin what? Where the hell did you get this from?’

  ‘From a mate!’ Wedge says.

  ‘What ‘mate?’ Who?’

  ‘Just a bloke.’

  ‘A bloke?’

  She eyes him up and down.

  He’s panicking, she knows her son, he’s panicking.

  ‘Bez’s mate, Berry knows him.’

  She turns her body and looks into Berry’s eyes and straight out his anus.

  He fixes his face in time.

  ‘Aye, ehm. Jerry.’

  ‘Jerry?’

  ‘Aye, ehm. He’s a mate of me brother. Will. Mate of Will’s like. Brought some back from abroad, like. Abroad.’

  ‘Abroad?’

  ‘Will’s in the navy,’ Wedge says.

  ‘Merchant.’

  ‘The navy?’

  ‘Aye. They were in, ehm, some Arab place.’

  ‘Some Arab place?’

  ‘Ehm, aye. In Arabia. Camels and that.’

  ‘Camels, Bez?’

  ‘Ehm, aye. Camels.’

  She turns the block around in her hands.

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Aye. I swear,’ he looks at Wedge. ‘On Jason’s life.’

  ‘Jerry?’

  ‘Aye, that’s his name,’ Wedge chips in.

  She rolls the block in her hands, bouncing it up and down in her hand, testing the weight.

  ‘Must be about four or five ounces.’

  She smells it. Takes a draw on the spliff.

  ‘This is probably worth about four hundred quid.’

  Berry and Wedge’s eyes meet.

  ‘Shit the fuckin bed!’ Berry says.

  ‘Four HUNDRED quid?’ Wedge agrees.

  ‘Maybe more. Foggy, do you know Foggy?’ she says. ‘Y’know? Mark Fogarty?’

  ‘Skinny bloke?’ Wedge says. ‘Looks like a fuckin refugee?’

  ‘That’s him.’

  ‘Know who he is, like. But don’t really ‘know’ him.’’

  ‘Same,’ Berry says.

  ‘He’s a nice lad, he might buy it off you.’

  Wedge and Berry smile.

  ‘Four HUNDRED quid! For just ONE block?’

  She sniffs it again, with real pleasure.

  Then scowls, tuning in to what her son just said.

  ‘’Just ONE block’? You mean there’s MORE than one? How much has this bloody Jerry bloke got like?’

  Wedge flicks his eyes to Berry.

  ‘Ah, dunno, ehm. A few.’

  In the social club at the bottom of Wedge’s street, and Wade Talbot stands at the bar.

  ‘Bottle of Dog please Marion,’ he says.

  Saturday afternoon on the piss, a Talbot family ritual.

  Marion the landlady lifts her peroxide-scorched hair up from under the illuminated gravestones screwed to the bar, wet beer towel in hand.

  ‘Hiya Wade,’ she replies, reaching behind to the row of Brown Ale bottles, standing proud with their chests puffed out. She pulls a steaming glass from the white plastic wash tray.

  Talbot turns.

  ‘Lager?’

  ‘Aye,’ Billy ‘Hash’ Brown replies, scanning the McEwans, Guinness and guest ales.

  He nods at the blue pump.

  ‘Fosters.’

  His skin nips and tweaks.

  ‘Ayaz,’ Hash catches his breath. ‘Man.’

  Marion tilts the glass under the tap and presses the button.

  ‘Y’gonna take that stupid fuckin hat off kidda or what?’ Talbot asks.

  Hash reaches up.

  Stops.

  ‘Nah, I can’t man.’

  ‘Y’could have had a fuckin shower at least,’ Talbot grunts. ‘Y’fuckin stink man. You’ve been in them clothes since Wednesday.’

  Talbot turns.

  ‘Ladies?’

  Kathleen – Hash’s wife - turns to her father. Her carefully exploded hair is spray-locked into position with enough CFCs to rip the ozone off the top of a small Australian town.

  ‘Gee and tee,’ she says, turning to a squat, Weeble-of-a-woman – Wilma’ll wobble but she won’t fall down, no matter how many gin and tonics she downs. ‘Mam?’

  ‘Aye pet,’ answers Mrs Talbot. ‘The usual.’

  ‘Two gee and tees please dad.’

  ‘Okay pet,’ he turns to the bar.

  ‘Two gin and tonics pet.’

  Hash lifts his frothing, over-gassed pint from the lager spill it sits in. He wipes the bottom on a blue beer towel.

  ‘Cheers.’

  Clink.

  ‘No bother son.’

  Hash turns to the door and the flashing fairground of a one-armed bandit. He glides towards it, locked on to the bright lights like an epileptic rabbit. He looks into the reflection of the machine’s black glass and watches the female Talbots head to the torn bench beneath the bay window.

  The same bar, the same drinks, same seat even - every single Saturday of the year, aside from their week in Lloret-de-Mar. No need for that this year, with all this ‘nice’ weather.

  They sit, fussing with their hair.

  ‘One pint and then I’m fuckin off to Foggy’s for a spliff,’ Hash mutters to the reflected leper, now caked in suntan lotion from a bottle in Kathleen’s bag.

  Way too late.

  ‘Maybe two, tops.’

  Coins fall down its throat and onto the landlord’s pile, he pushes the fat red button and fruit flash by, settling on two cherries and a slice of melon.

  Nudge.

  Bonus.

  The excited machine lights up a red herring.

  He ignores the offered nudge and spins the wheel.

  Loses.

  Spins the wheel again.

  Loses.

  Making the machine think it’s got the better of him.

  Two melons and a jack fill the line and he’s offered six nudges, he squats down.

  ‘Ayaz man!’

  And looks around the rim to the top of the wheel. He senses another jack and pushes the middle yellow button twice, nudging the jack into line. He jabs at the left button and a lemon appears at the top of the reel - he presses again - a jack.

  ‘You fuckin beauty!’

  Two nudges and it falls into place – jackpot.

  Ten pounds.

  ‘Cher-fuckin-ching!’

  Chucker, chucker, chucker.

  The machine spills its worthless beans.

  Hash’s skin cracks over the back of his neck like the label on a plastic bottle as he bends to the tray to shovel out his winnings.

  ‘Fuck AYAZ man!’

  Hash looks in his hand.

  ‘Fuckin tokens? TOKENS? For fuck’s sake.’

  Currency accepted only by this machine, refused even at the bar.

  Hash feeds the thieving bandit.

/>   Talbot’s face appears in the black screen. His moustache smoothed and an effort made with a comb through the greasy tangle of hair for the most important social engagement on the Talbot calendar.

  ‘Y’luck’s changin kidda, looker,’ Talbot says.

  He sips at his Brown Ale, poured into a half pint glass being held in the fist marked MASH.

  Hash had never taken to the national drink of Geordieland, the city’s most famous export.

  Rightly so, it tastes like farts.

  ‘Aye,’ Hash replies, looking at his scorched hand. ‘Maybes.’

  Click, roll, click.

  Click, roll, click.

  He ignores its excited lights and noises. The tokens are sent back where they came from. He pushes the button.

  ‘How’s y’burns? Look much better.’

  ‘Better. Aye. Much better. Kathleen’s an angel,’ Hash says. ‘She should have been a nurse. That cream worked wonders.’

  ‘Ah that’s good, good, kidda,’ he says, putting a paw on top of the machine. ‘She loved playin nursies when she was a bairn and that.’

  The screen lights up and Hash winds the wheels round as he gets his required nudges.

  ‘She says y’didn’t come home last night,’ Talbot says.

  Hash nudges a watermelon - too far - it sits at the base of the screen, missing, this time, a cash pay out.

  ‘Jesus Fuckin,’ he says.

  He spins another token.

  ‘It’s just me skin y’know. It keeps me awake. So I just stayed up watchin telly at a mate’s.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Foggy. Y’know Foggy.’

  ‘Aye. Bloody waster. Half asleep all the time. Smokes too much dope. Kid should get himself a job.’

  The public phone nailed to the wall next to the bar rings out across the saloon, Marion lifts the black handset from its housing.

  ‘Hello,’ she sings. ‘Queen Street Club.’

  ‘Anyway,’ Talbot continues. ‘I thought y’skin was alright now?’

  ‘Aye, but it’s still, y’know. A bit sore at night and that.’

  Even through the active fairground of a screen, Talbot still meets his reflected stare.

  ‘Don’t you go playin away from home son, y’hear?’ he says, nodding to his wife and daughter. ‘That girl’s seven months pregnant.’

  ‘Wade,’ the barmaid shouts.

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘Phone.’

  Talbot’s steps away from the bandit.

  Hash edges back an inch to see Marion in the machine, holding the handset out across the bar. Talbot puts it to his ear.

  ‘Hullo?’

  ‘Maybes I should have a cold shower?’ Hash sighs. ‘Get the fuck outta here.’

  Hash calms the bandit, hand poised over the red button, and watches his father-in-law turn and look at his back and then to the two women sitting at the window table.

  ‘Just messin?’ Talbot mutters.

  Talbot’s sunburnt face tightens into a scowl, an eyebrow creasing up in the middle like a sliced centipede.

  ‘Aye? Right, right. Aye. Bye.’

  Hash re-ignites the machine as Talbot hands the receiver - ‘Thanks Marion’ – back across the bar. He watches him arrive, the paw marked PIES reaches over his shoulder and up to his drink on top of the machine and his eyes settle in the same position, ignoring the fruit - staring at his son-in-law.

  The glass heads to his mouth, foam bubbles settle on his moustache. His chest lifts and he burps; pure hops and barley, same as a good fat fart.

  ‘Everythin alright?’ Hash asks, as he scans the lower line of fruit.

  He presses the middle button.

  A fruit mixture falls on the line and sends the machine bat shit with excitment, Hash moves his eyes to make sense of it all.

  ‘What?’ Talbot replies.

  ‘Y’know. Phone.’

  ‘Nothin for you to worry about, kidda,’ he turns and heads over to his family, pulls out a stool and squats with the two wittering women.

  ‘Gotta go girls,’ he says.

  He necks his drink.

  ‘Aw dad, it’s Saturday,’ she says, like it’s Halley’s Comet.

  ‘I know, I know petal,’ he soothes her. ‘Just a bit of business. I’ve got to go check on a boat. I’ll be back in a bit.’

  He rises, rattling his car keys.

  Hash looks at himself in the machine, sun cream clotted around the wounds on his cheeks.

  ‘Thank fuck,’ he sighs. ‘For that.’

  He drops in the final few tokens.

  ‘It’s spliff o’clock for Billy Brown!’

  And spins the wheels.

  ‘Lose y’bastard, lose.’

  Up in the park, and an excitable ginger-haired 15-year-old boy called Runt races down the curling path of scattered stones that leads under the road on his BMX bike, yellow plastic wheels flashing beneath him as he goes.

  ‘Bez!’ he shouts.

  Ted Berry stands in the tiled mouth of the subway, Wedge is out on the grass - burning stuff.

  As usual.

  ‘Bez!’ Runt pants. ‘Wedge!’

  Cars flit flit along the deadly dual carriageway overhead.

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘Crosby wants some. He says he’s gonna meet y’down here.’

  ‘Crosby?’ Wedge says.

  He looks at Berry.

  ‘Crosby?’ Berry says. ‘Fuckinhell man!’

  ‘What?’ Runt says, defensively. In answer to the look on Berry’s face.

  Runt - Neil Donnelly - is a sickly gingerbread of a boy, the runt of the litter, his two older brothers both rugby playing thugs.

  ‘What y’tell that wanker for?’

  ‘Y’know, I just? I dunno, man. Wedge said, y’know, to try sell the stuff.’

  Runt parks his bike behind the bench, walks to the front of it and sits down.

  Quietly.

  Berry turns to look at the red Adidas bag, stashed under the other park bench on the opposite side of the thin path.

  ‘Fuck’s sakes man,’ he sighs.

  Wedge fumbles into the weeds that run up the hill on either side of the path down to the subway and pulls out a Presto’s shopping trolley.

  ‘Let’s take his money?’ he says as he pushes the trolley’s limping wheels towards the tunnel under the road. He turns it on its side. ‘Y’could take that fucker anyway Bez, I reckon. He’s not that hard. He’s just a fuckin pikey.’

  Wedge has an empty Tizer can at his toes.

  Game on.

  ‘But?’ Berry says.

  ‘What?’

  Berry looks at him.

  Then at Runt.

  ‘Wedge man? We can’t?’ he looks at Smithy’s red Adidas bag. ‘Fuck’s sakes.’

  Sighs.

  ‘Fuck it. Nothin, nothin.’

  Wedge boots the can, it skims over the bar of the trolley goal and down towards the subway.

  Berry fetches it, heads up the hill and kicks it, it spins on its axis and clatters into the back of the metal net.

  ‘Kee-gan!’

  Wedge has another go – but boots the Tizer can well wide.

  Berry takes the can, lines her up.

  Smashes her into the goal.

  Wedge fetches the can from the goal, boots it – way too hard. It flies over the trolley and deep into the ceramic tiled subway.

  ‘Ah bollocks.’

  There’s a flash inside the cave, someone lighting a cigarette.

  Watching them.

  ‘Ah man,’ Berry mutters. ‘Crosby already?’

  It isn’t.

  A man saunters from the bunker dressed in faded black jeans, turned up at the bottom - white socks stuffed into black boots. White t-shirt. He’s thin, skin and bone, and has a truly dreadful haircut - combed to the left. Greasy. The back of his head a long perm.

  A mistake, surely?

  He walks up the stones, a rolled cigarette hanging out of the side of his mouth.

  ‘Nice shot, br
u,’ he says, the tin can in his hand. He straightens up, drops it and kicks it up the ramp to Wedge’s feet.

  ‘It is very hot today, no?’ says the man. ‘The forecast says today is the hottest day in so many years.’

  ‘Aye?’ Wedge says, warily. ‘Bastard hot mister.’

  ‘Is there somewhere to eat around here?’ he asks.

  He has a weird accent.

  The word ‘Scorpions’ is written in fat red letters across his chest.

  ‘Aye,’ Wedge says, foot on the can like a hunter with a shot rabbit.

  ‘Gunslinger’s.’

  He nods up the hill.

  ‘Chippy. Up there. Through the park. In the precinct.’

  The man’s smile raises the pockmarked skin below his eyes like a stage curtain.

  But there’s no light in those smeared black eyes.

  ‘Get a chip stottie wi gravy,’ Berry adds. ‘That’ll sort y’right out.’

  ‘A chip stottie with gravy? Ah fosure. I will do that. Thank you.’

  He steps up the ramp.

  ‘Tell them to go easy on the hair tho,’ Berry says, grabbing the can with his right foot.

  The foreigner’s smile collapses, cheeks falling down the sides of his face like a Basset Hound’s jowls.

  ‘I am sorry?’

  He stares, too long.

  Way too long.

  Berry feels like blinking for him, to wet his eyeballs.

  ‘Easy on the hair,’ Berry blinks. ‘Chips. They always come with hair.’

  ‘Pubes,’ Wedge says. ‘Probably.’

  The foreigner’s face lifts again like a window blind.

  ‘Uzut? Ha ha ha. Easy on the hair,’ he says. ‘I shall remember that.’

  He comes up parallel with Berry and his foot darts out, quickly stealing the can. He twists, rolls it under his body, deft as Johan Cruyff, and kicks.

  It ricochets around the inside of the goal.

  ‘Have a nice day boys.’

  He heads up the curling strip, the crap Euro-metal band’s tour dates written in blood red on his back.

  KP passes him on the path.

  ‘Hallo mister,’ he says.

  The foreigner ignores him.

  Berry gets up and collects the can.

  ‘Man,’ he says. ‘I know that bloke from some-fuckin-where.’

  He kicks the can, it skims the trolley cross bar and skids down deep into the subway.

  ‘Ah bollocks.’

  Tyres whoosh whoosh on the road overhead.

  Berry can’t be arsed to go fetch the can. He sits on the bench.

  ‘Alreet fuckstick,’ KP greets him.

  ‘Knob jockey.’

  He sits next to him on the bench.

  ‘Bell end.’

  ‘Cock shopper.’

  ‘Arse face.’

  ‘Wank pilot,’ Berry smiles.

  ‘Piss flaps.’

  ‘Bum boy.’

  ‘What’s this like?’ Wedge says. ‘A fuckin swear-off?’

  KP and Berry turn on Wedge.

  ‘Cunt features.’

  ‘Piss bucket.’

  ‘Fucksucker.’

  ‘Fucksucker?’ KP nods in appreciation. ‘Nice one. That’s just what the cunt looks like.’

  Wedge sits with silent Runt on the bench on the other side of the skinny path.

  ‘Reckon that bloke was a copper?’ Wedge says.

  ‘With that fuckin hair?’

  ‘Miserable cunt looks like Droopy,’ KP says, looking up the hill.

  Wedge pulls his Ventalin inhaler from his pocket, takes a dose.

  A cigarette takes its place at his lips.