by A. J. Kirby
‘I was in the forces myself,’ continued Burt. ‘Way back when. But after the war, when my wife got ill, we just found ourselves stuck here. Couldn’t go nowhere. Can’t remember I left the town boundary last nowadays. But you can make something of a life for yourself.’
I must have grunted my disbelief then for Burt leaned in closer. I could smell the drink off him and also the stink of death. Time wasn’t long for him now. And from somewhere deep inside me, I got the funny feeling that the only reason Burt was alive at all was so he could impart this advice to me in the Choke.
‘Just don’t listen to the voices,’ he breathed. ‘Keep your head down and your nose out of trouble and you’ll be okay.’
But I knew I wasn’t going to be okay. I knew that I was about as far from okay as I could get without passing go and collecting two hundred pounds. I lowered my head onto the bar and felt the weight of the world and of Tommy Peaker on my shoulders. Thing was; the voices Burt was referring to… Well, they were my voices, weren’t they, if what Dick had said were true. I’d brought it on myself, this guilt, and there was nothing anybody could do about it.
‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered, to nobody in particular.
And then I heard everything as a mumble of indistinguishable voices. Someone, probably the young barman shouted something angry. Burt tried to pick me up off the stool and I heard his pained whistling burning a hole in my ears. Someone else was laughing. It could have been Old Tommy Peaker. Somewhere else, a stool collapsed. The sound of rushing feet. A scream as rough hands grabbed me under the arms just like in the C.U.M building way back when. And then it was all darkness as the black hole enveloped me again. Head loss.
Within the black hole, we were young again. I felt strength in my arms and even in my leg. I felt a kinda craziness in my head, like everything was being fast-forwarded. We were sat at the back of the dinner hall at school. On tables which had the chairs affixed to them so they couldn’t be thrown, like in prison. Us slouching and posturing. A handful of girls looking-on with lusty eyes. Dinner ladies trying not to look.
Tommy Peaker was pinned into a corner, unable to go anywhere. To one side there was the big dinner hall window, to the other, Twinnie. Behind him was the wall, and facing him down was yours truly. Lion and Dick were kinda leaning across the tables, using their school bags like pillows. Trying to block the view from the other side of the hall.
‘Why’s your mam such a slag, then Tommy?’ someone sneered. Painfully, the realisation came to me that it was me; it was me conducting this interrogation.
Tommy didn’t speak.
Twinnie jammed a pencil into the smaller lad’s ribs.
Tommy still did not react.
‘Are you fucking her now, twatty? Is that why you don’t want to say anything? Are you trying to protect her?’
Me speaking again. The bile in my voice, the pure anger shocked me.
Tommy blinked back the tears. Made this gurgling sound at the back of his throat.
Twinnie twisted the pencil in harder, as though he was using Tommy’s ribs as a sharpener.
‘Little prick like you must have a little prick,’ laughed Dick.
‘That’s right,’ I agreed. ‘Show the girls here your little prick.’
The gaggle of girls screeched in mock alarm. One of them turned her face away but the others had that same blood lust on them as we did. Unfortunately, their scream alerted a teacher, and Mr. Swann swans up to our table with a busybody policeman’s what’s going on here then?
How could he have missed the agony which was etched across little Peaker’s face? How could he have missed the fact that the four of us lads had him, Tommy, trapped in a corner like a wounded animal? But miss it he did. With a tut, he span on his heels and made for the opposite end of the dining hall, where his presence would have more chance of controlling the raggedy, half-wild children that made up our school. He was probably counting down the seconds until he could quietly slip out and have a crafty cigarette in his car.
‘Right. Pull your fucking kecks down,’ I ordered.
Tommy snivelled.
Twinnie drove the pencil in still harder.
Tommy tried to back away, but there was nowhere for him to go.
‘Kecks. Now,’ said Twinnie.
‘Leave it now lads, eh?’ said Lion, sounding concerned.
We didn’t listen to his moaning. He was last seen backing away, probably going to re-join the queue for Swiss Roll, which was always his favourite pudding.
Dick tutted.
Tommy started whimpering as he unzipped his too-small trousers. Twinnie pulled them down for him. The girls screeched with laughter. Dick clapped his hand on the table with excitement.
A little Pooh-stick of an erection poked out of Tommy Peaker’s boxer shorts. A nice n’ spicy Nik Nak of a nobbled little cock straining for the light.
‘Disgusting!’ cried one of the girls, without taking her eyes away.
‘What the fuck?’ demanded Twinnie.
‘Dirty bastard,’ I roared.
‘I can’t help it,’ snivelled Tommy Peaker, grovelling on the floor to grab at his trousers again.
‘You fucking can,’ I shouted, wheeling my school bag like some medieval weapon around my head and then cracking it into one of his sticky-out ears. Swiftly, we all vacated the back table and made for the exit.
Within the black hole, there was the me from then and the me from now looking on as we strolled past the big dinner hall window, laughing and gesturing at the slumped figure of Tommy Peaker in the corner of the room, still with his pants around his ankles. The me from now wanted to run to him and tell him that we didn’t mean it. We just had nothing better to do and we were sorry.
The me from back then decided to inform one of the dinner ladies of the state of Tommy. That he’d been flashing the girls in the dinner hall… He was last seen being marched to the headmaster’s office in tears. His trousers were ruined. But we knew he wouldn’t tell.
I tried to shout to him.
‘I’m sorry!’ I tried to yell. But all that came out of my pig-ignorant young mouth was further abuse.
I came to, feeling gnarled old hands touching my cheek.
‘What are you sorry about, son?’ asked a soothing voice.
I tried to open my eyes. Anything to dilute the poison that they’d just seen.
‘You’re in a bad way, lad,’ continued the voice. ‘But you’ll be reet.’
Burt, I thought. Burt touching my cheek. Back in the day, the very idea would have caused the rest of the gang no end of amusement. But back in the day, we were amused by anything that caused misery for anybody else.
I opened my eyes. Saw his face almost too close to mine. Almost flinched backwards but managed to stop myself. For in his own eyes was written concern rather than malice. He looked as though he wanted to help.
‘Where am I?’ I managed to gasp.
Really, I should have already known the answer. Really, the relentless smell of off-meat which permeated the place should have told me that I was in one of the upstairs rooms above where Burt’s shop used to be… and where the butcher’s shop of my dad’s history books once was.
Burt creaked himself up to a half-standing position and shuffled away to a moth-bitten armchair by the curtained window. My eyes followed him and took in the room. Like the Royal Choke, it was stuck in a time-warp. Old prints of horses in the fields on the walls; the floral print on the three piece suite; the bare patches on the carpet. As well as the lingering smell of meat, there was also the sharp smell of a million cigarettes smoked over the years in this room. Burt lit up a cigarette now, struggling through a rack of coughing to get the damn thing lit.
‘I’m above the shop,’ I said eventually, answering my own question when it appeared likely that Burt’s coughing fit wasn’t going to cease in the near future.
He managed to nod his assent, before clicking on a radio – more a wireless actually such was its age – in order to muffle the sound
. Finally, he managed to regain control of himself.
‘These things,’ he winced, holding up the Dorchester and Grey and regarding it as though he’d never seen the like of it before. ‘These things put me in such a state that the only way I get to feel any better is just by lighting up once more.’
I nodded.
‘And there hasn’t been a shop down there in years,’ he continued. ‘Trouble with the school, and the parents of the kids from the school. They advised me that it would be better to close down than face whatever penalties they had in store for me. How’s your leg doing now, lad?’
In truth it itched, just as Do-Nowt had said it would back in the British hospital. It itched to kick a football or to run or to dance. Not that I’d ever danced in my life, but you know what I mean. Or maybe you don’t. Maybe you’ve no sympathy for me whatsoever, after what I’d done. Even Burt, the old sly trickster, might have a few things to say if he knew. And I’m not sure if the word ‘rehabilitation’ would enter into any of it.
‘Wrecks,’ I said finally. I tried to shift it on Burt’s sofa, using both of my arms to lift it up like the whole thing was dead and never coming back, and not just my foot.
‘Know the feeling, lad,’ smiled Burt. ‘There’s some wounds you can’t hide, aren’t there?’
And there it was again; that mysterious gleam in his eyes which told me that everything was not exactly as it seemed.
‘Do you honestly not remember me?’ I asked.
‘Nope,’ said Burt.
I fished around in my wallet for a while before producing my old army ID card which I slid across the coffee table towards him, avoiding unknowable spillages and stains along the way. Burt strained and grunted as he reached over. For a moment, I thought he wasn’t going to make it, but a sharp draw on his cigarette – like Popeye with his spinach – gave him the strength for that final push, and red-faced, he clawed the ID badge.
‘Lance Corporal Gary Bull; Third Infantry,’ he read. ‘Gary Bull… the name sounds familiar…’
‘I’ve heard it all before,’ I replied. ‘Terry-bull.’
Burt shook his head.
‘No… I’ve heard the name recently. Since all that happened with the shop and everything. Just give me a minute and it’ll come to me…’
Burt stared wistfully through the curling smoke from his cigarette. I saw him counting through the years and faces and names that he’d long since forgotten. Saw him trying to wire up the old connections up there again. Then, suddenly, he ground out his cigarette and slapped his hand on his thigh.
‘Gary Bull, the Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment’ he read. ‘Now I remember. I have something I need to give to you.’
He made no move to get out of his seat. For a moment, I thought he was going to start ordering me around to find whatever it was in his own flat.
‘Now where did I put it?’ he mused.
‘What is it? Who gave you whatever it is? Why did they give it to you?’ I asked, trying to jog the old boy’s memory.
Burt shook his head wearily, tossed the ID badge back onto the coffee table in front of me. I picked it up and looked at it, mainly so I wouldn’t have to watch any more of the desperate guessing game which was going on in Burt’s head. I looked at the photo but it didn't look anything like me, or at least the me that I saw when I looked in the mirror now. I had to check the name twice just to reassure myself that I’d not picked up the wrong badge by accident. What the hell was going on?
It’s the guilt, said a voice which was not Burt’s or mine.
I tried not to look panicked.
Guilt does funny things to a person, continued the voice. Think of all of the guilty secrets possessed by this town. Think of all the skeletons which are liable to come crawling out of the closet at any moment.
My eyes shot across to Burt. He was staring intently at the back of his packet of Dorchester and Grey. It was definitely not him that had spoken.
Ask him about the purpling, continued the voice. He knows all about it and you need to know. Ask him about the purpling…
I screwed up my eyes and tried to forget my burning desire to take a drink. Or to repeatedly bang my head against the hard wooden armrest of Burt’s sofa. Why the hell had I come back here, to hell, after everything I’d done to rid myself of the memories?
Chapter Ten
“Do you recall what was revealed the day the music died?”
A sound; for a moment I couldn’t work out exactly what it might have been, but it had certainly shaken me out of my reverie. Then I heard it again; a heavy thud coming from downstairs; the old shop. I glanced over at the armchair, where Burt was fast asleep, still gripping his packet of cigarettes as though they were the only thing ensuring that he’d wake up. Behind him, the thick curtains were still drawn. I couldn’t tell if it was light or dark, night or day. To be honest, I couldn’t even tell whether either of us was alive until Burt gave out a loud snore and my heart nearly did a runner up and out of my chest.
I tried to calm down. Tried to talk myself down from the precipice; at the bottom I could only see madness. Perhaps this was how it had happened for Lion. Perhaps the constant pressure had finally got to him and that was why he’d leaped from the bridge. And then been marked with the number one on his chest.
And how could I stop Tommy Peaker – the new Tommy Peaker – if it was him come a-knocking downstairs? How could I, a semi-cripple now, armed only with my cigarette lighter; protected only by an eighty-year old somnambulist, stop the new big Tommy from straddling my chest, pulling down my trousers and laughing at my shrivelled penis? How could I stop him from carving the great big number two on my hairy chest, above where my heart should have been?
When I heard the sound again, my only reaction was to whimper. Something heavy was being launched against the locked front door. Of that I was sure. I tried to gauge the weight of whatever that heavy object was; tried to decide how much it is that dead people weigh. Was the heaviness all wrapped up in the revenge thing?
My ears pricked up as I heard footsteps walking away from the front door. Heavy tread; purposeful. Strong, I thought.
Go away, go away, go away, I whispered to myself, or to God, or to Tommy Peaker himself. And for a moment, I almost believed that someone, somewhere had answered my prayer. But then I heard a sound which chilled my blood. Everyone knows what a smashed window sounds like, but at that moment, it sounded to me as loud and overweening as the peal of bells on a Sunday morning, calling the worshippers to one of Newton Mills’s two competing churches. It was loud enough to wake the dead, and was probably intended to do just that.
Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, I moaned. Louder and louder I moaned, and yet old Burt still did not rise from his chair. I longed for the strength to pull myself up from the sofa, but now both legs felt numb. I was at the mercy of whatever was coming through that door.
One of the worst nightmares I could imagine was being buried alive, but only just behind that was being completely paralysed, like the man in the old Metallica video, where he was screaming to be put out of his misery and yet nobody could hear him. In that moment, I felt like that man. Trapped – buried alive – within my own body. And for the second time in recent memory, I involuntarily lost control of my bladder. I was becoming just like Tommy Peaker in our school days.
And Tommy Peaker was evidently becoming like me. Relishing the minor details which would build up and finally, make my life the living hell that his had been. I could clearly hear him tramping through the shop downstairs. It had been left, almost exactly as it was on the day Burt was advised he could not trade any more, or so he’d told me. Rather like the bedroom of a dead or missing child, I suppose. I imagined the chocolate bars and crisps on the shelves gradually rotting away. The cakes going hard like stones and the biscuits becoming soft and pliable; mossy almost. And through this vision of childhood hell he stepped, knocking over the display rack of birthday cards which were sun-bleached and out of date even when we were boys. Crashing
past the arcade machines and their life support machine echo bleeps which probably still sounded once in a while.
Then the footsteps abruptly stopped. I couldn’t help myself from imagining the monstrous Tommy Peaker helping himself to some monstrous snack to build up his strength before his strike. Perhaps a ten-year-mould covered pasty; one of the ones we used to claim contained dog-meat back in the day. Or perhaps he was helping himself to a packet of cigarettes from behind the counter. I listened out for the tell-tale cough as he inhaled. Tommy could never properly take cigarettes. Always duck-arsed them; I imagined what he left behind on the filter tip now. What with his half-face and decaying tongue, he’d probably extinguish the thing…
Soon he was moving again. And he reached the bottom of the stairs which led up to Burt’s living quarters and our hideaway. He told me that he reached the bottom of the stairs by tapping his misshapen stick or cane – the spear that he had ripped out of me back at the C.U.M building against the door jamb.
Tap, tap, tap. Little pig, little pig, let me in.
I closed my eyes. Like a child does, hoping that the world will simply go away. Hoping that once they were open again, I’d be in a new, brighter reality.
Tap, tap, tap. Little pig, little pig, I’m going to come up there and find you whether you like it or no-ot…
I heard old Burt’s breathing becoming more and more ragged. He was going to wake up and be subjected to whatever fresh hell awaited me. And I felt guilt again. Guilt for having dragged the poor old man into this mess.
Tap, tap…
Tap, tap, nothing. That third tap never came. I waited some interminable amount of time and then gingerly opened my eyes, half expecting Tommy to be rearing up over me, ready to spear me in the heart, but there was nothing there. Just the bare room and Burt, drooling in his chair, still clutching on to his packet of Dorchester and Grey.
I reached under the sofa, for where I hoped my crutch would be. I touched things that were unclean; items which had lain dormant for years. Tried not to think of what they might be. Tried not to imagine them starting to scurry and then bite into my flesh like the rats back at the British military hospital. I forced my fingers to search out the familiar cold, clean metal of the crutch. But it wasn’t there.