Sawn-Off Tales

by David Gaffney

  Sawn-off Tales

  David Gaffney is from Manchester. He is the author of Sawn-off Tales (2006), Aromabingo (2007), Never Never (2008), Buildings Crying Out, a story using lost cat posters (Lancaster litfest 2009), 23 Stops To Hull short stories about every junction on the M62 (Humber Mouth festival 2009) Destroy PowerPoint, stories in PowerPoint format for Edinburgh festival in August 2009, The Poole Confessions stories told in a mobile confessional box (Poole Literature Festival 2010) and has written articles for The Guardian, The Sunday Times, The Financial Times and Prospect magazine.

  Sawn-off Tales

  David Gaffney

  London

  Published by Salt Publishing

  Dutch House, 307–308 High Holborn, London WC1V 7LL United Kingdom

  All rights reserved

  © David Gaffney, 2006, 2010

  The right of David Gaffney to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Salt Publishing.

  Salt Publishing 2010

  Created by Salt Publishing Ltd

  This book is sold subject to the conditions that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  ISBN 978 1 84471 838 2 electronic

  Your Name in Weetos

  I WAS A stacker, working nights. I had been incubating a desire for Mildred for a long time and that night she was nearby, on chillers, wearing plastic gloves and a paper hat. I was on cereals, yard after yard of gaudy motifs repeating like a nagging one-note riff. I shuffled the boxes around and called her over.

  She laughed. ‘My name in Weetos. Thanks, mate.’ Then she went to the deli and daubed William onto the sneeze shield with squeezy-cheese. I was going to say something else when the shift super arrived and broke us up. We never spoke again. At the end of the summer she went to university and I stayed on stacking. Stacking suited me. You filled the shelves, the stuff got sold, you filled them up again. There were other female stackers, but I wasn’t interested. To my mind, a moment can be worth a whole relationship.

  The Lost Language of Hairgrips

  THE TINY THINGS she had. The tweezers, the eyelash curlers, the cuticle pushers, all of them so small, so brittle. That’s what I miss most about Joanna. The little things. Not the little things she did, or the little things she said; the actual little physical things she owned.

  Without Joanna’s little things littering the place, everything looked giant. Overstuffed chairs, hulking shampoo bottles, breeze block soap. I possessed nothing small enough to be mislaid and this thought disturbed me, made me feel feline and uneasy.

  One night I was rubbing one of Joanna’s hairgrips against the cheese grater, sending orange plastic slivers spinning into my soup, when I realised this obsession was completely wrong. What I needed were some little things of my own.

  I discovered the answer in the aisles of the DIY store. Here were a billion little things for men to own and cherish; curious devices like the discarded tools of a lost civilisation. I filled my trolley and wheeled it to the checkout, but before I’d even paid I met Pat. Pat had just one item in her trolley — a giant architectural plant — and, following my eyes, she told me that there was nothing she hated more than little things. When her last fellah brought home a pathetic little plastic man to wave at his toy locomotives, it was the final straw.

  ‘There’s something sinister,’ Pat explained to me in the car, ‘about little things. I worry that they will divide and multiply in the night, creep inside me, and possess me. You know where you are with a big thing. A big thing would never do that.’

  I fell in love with Pat. Everything about her was big. Her house had huge bay windows like a comforting bosom into which I sank each night. I forgot completely about the little things. Think big, Pat said, and I did.

  Last to Know

  HE SHOWED ME the back of my head in a mirror and I nodded. ‘£6.50 then,’ he said, and pressed the foot pedal. The hydraulics sighed as I sank to the floor.

  ‘I normally pay five.’

  He indicated the price list. ‘It’s been £6.50 for a while.’

  ‘Yes, but . . .’

  What had happened? I was regular. Only new customers paid full. It was never spoken of, but that was the system. The barber could tell that someone else had cut it; the blending between the longer and shorter sections was poorly executed.

  ‘Look me in the eye,’ he said, ‘and tell me you haven’t been to anyone else.’

  ‘I haven’t been to another barbers in years.’

  The barber sucked in his lower lip. ‘So we’re talking home clippers.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, and felt my cheeks redden in shame.

  ‘OK. Call it £5.50. I know you won’t do it again.’

  Flying Lessons with Gary Numan

  HIS FACE WAS scratched, his clothes dishevelled, but he looked alright, not like he would lunge at you with a sharpened toothbrush or anything. He was going to watch Man City training — it was free and it passed a morning — and all he needed was the bus fare, so I gave him £1.40. He told me about his son, well his stepson really, who had got pally with Gary Numan, the singer. But Mr Numan didn’t sing anymore, he flew planes.

  This relationship infuriated my new friend — did I know what music was all about? The Moody Blues were what music was all about. But the year before, when the hostel got him a free ticket to see his heroes at the Apollo, he leapt onto his seat, shouted, ‘Justin, Justin’, and a huge fuck-off bouncer chucked him out. ‘It’s all,’ he spat onto the road, ‘synthesisers now.’

  Intimate Zone

  I COULDN’T BELIEVE it. He pushed through the door and squeezed himself onto the same seat. Right next to me, you know, touching. I told him I wouldn’t be long but he starts right in with this stuff about different cultures. ‘We English,’ he says, ‘we worry too much about personal space. I’ve just landed back from Spain and they have a completely different attitude. You are sitting on a deserted beach and another group of Spaniards appear? They set up right next to you. On an underground train alone? The next Spaniard will plonk down on the same seat. It’s a liberating attitude. We English are too distrustful.’

  There was nothing I could do to get rid of him. So I climbed off, yanked up my jeans and flushed. The cold water splashed up onto his bare skin and he just sat there looking up at me.

  Happy Place

  HE HATED GROCERY shopping, hated the time it took. But he came up with a method. People bought the same things, more or less. So he would look for someone of his type, sneak up behind them and roll their fully-laden trolley off to the checkout.

  It made life interesting. Often there were things he would never have bought; once there was a fat orange pumpkin.

  But today he was in trouble. He had been stealing mostly from women because he liked the sense of order to their selections, but his victim had spied him and was stomping over. There were women’s products in the cart, so it was going to be difficult. He decided to pretend he knew her.

  ‘Darling, I’ll just get eggs.’

  ‘We’ve got eggs,’ the woman chirped. ‘Listen, do you want to go out to the car? You look stressed. You can listen to your tape.’

>   Where We Left Off

  AT 12.30 EVERY weekday he visited HMV and stood in the same place for exactly four minutes. Because that’s where he last saw her, eleven years, three months and two days ago. The F section of rock and pop. Blue denim jacket, red jumper, red bag.

  He hadn’t seen her since. So today, when she appeared in different clothes and a much-altered hairstyle, he was at first unsure if it was her.

  But it was. He knew exactly what he was going to say, had rehearsed it every day in front of a mirror, but suddenly his mouth was dry and the words tumbled out as an incoherent squawk. She just stared at him then stalked out of the shop.

  He would continue his mission. The faint expression of disdain that had crossed her face all those years ago when she came across that CD by The Fall was unforgivable.

  You Know, Quiet

  THE ROOM HE was given had seven wardrobes. Seven. At night the wardrobes oppressed him. Dark brooding figures shuffling closer to his bed, faces glowering out from the whorls of polished grain. The landlord wouldn’t let him get rid of them. They were classic. Solid. So he had to think of a way to use them. The TV fitted into one, hi-fi in another, cooking equipment in a third, and various bits and bobs in the rest. But he couldn’t think of anything to do with the last one. Then one night he dragged his duvet into it and had the best night’s sleep ever.

  He decided to stay in the wardrobe. He would move in a radio, and would eat there too. Eventually he would get six more people to live in the other wardrobes. Because he was the last person to keep himself to himself.

  Uchafu

  I WATCHED HER face, listening closely, just like it said in the book. But loud laughter from the kitchen made it difficult to concentrate.

  ‘Your bill,’ the waiter said through a leery grin, ‘Mr Dirty Bastard.’

  I looked at him.

  ‘The word on your T-shirt.’

  The T-Shirt was from a trendy city centre shop — be casual, be modern, the book said. I’d assumed the inscription on the back was just a random collection of letters.

  ‘Uchafu. It’s Swahili. Means “dirty bastard”,’ the waiter chuckled, ‘or literally, “he who pimps for a slave owner”.’

  On the way back I made light of it. ‘Somewhere in Africa, there’s a T-shirt with “knobhead” on the back.’ But she didn’t laugh. Do not enter the next phase unless the mood is right, the book said, so I took her straight home. She would talk to the agency about me, I knew it.

  What You Know is There

  IF HE WAS serious about finding someone to share his life he should take up some pastime. ‘And one,’ his therapist added sternly, ‘that a woman might share,’ referring, unfairly he thought, to his collection of electric and manual drills.

  The card was in Chorlton post-office. A new therapy for a new age. Registered practitioner.

  ‘It’s a mixture of dance and acupuncture,’ the lady on the phone told him. ‘We call it dance-upuncture. The tutor is very very intelligent, very very sensitive, very in the moment, very evolved; more than her linear years.’

  ‘Sounds like a laugh,’ he said. ‘Book me in.’

  The police made him draw a picture. The girl poised delicately in an arabesque, the trip on the stool, the collision, the fall, the blood. But he couldn’t draw the needles. Always draw what you see, the police artist kept saying. Not what you know is there.

  Pets

  THEY HAD PICKED up the guinea pigs from the Bitch-on-Wheels and were on their way back when the snow started to really hammer down. Ray’s dad said that the road — a single tracker — would definitely get clogged-up, so he stopped and swung the car on to what turned out to be a frozen pond. There was a loud crack and they tilted forward. Water gushed in through the front and under the doors.

  His dad shouted, ‘Get on to the roof! Climb out through the window — I’ll go for help!’

  The car lurched and swayed under him and Ray watched his dad’s back running back to the Bitch-on-Wheels. He closed his eyes against the stabbing cold.

  The icy water at his ears roused him and there was his dad and the Bitch-on-Wheels — kissing. Ray couldn’t understand why they weren’t running for help.

  Killer Lines

  IF THAT’S A triangle, my arse is a dodecahedron. Ray had lots of lines like that, killer lines, lines he appeared to have invented on the spot but had really spent ages preparing. That’s why his friends considered him hilarious, going so far as to say he could make it as a stand-up. He would wait months for the right circumstances to use a killer line. On national Take-Your-Kids-To-Work-Day, a killer line came into his head involving a famous secure hospital for paedophiles. But the name of the institution wouldn’t come, so he waited a year till the day came round again.

  But today it fell apart. Marketing-Alison waved a tea bag saying what shape is this, and he was about to deliver when Sales-Mark burst in with a pyramid quip. Ray had a competitor. But worse, the undetonated killer line was still inside him — what damage could it do?

  Click

  PHILLIP READ THE note again. “Bang, bang you’re dead”. The building was eerily silent. The other tenants never seemed to make any sounds. If they were seabirds, and their tiny rooms cliff ledges, they would shriek out to let each other know they were there. Even confined prisoners communicated by beating tattoos on the walls and pipes. In films, anyway. He imagined the outer wall stripped away, its miserable inhabitants exposed, crouched alone in the same positions, like waxworks.

  He lit a fag, sucked it in and looked out of the window, down into a dark yard. Then he folded the note and went out into the hall. The doorknob, letterbox and spyhole on his neighbour’s door formed an inscrutable face. He pushed the note inside. In a few moments the door would be flung open — it usually was — and when that happened Phillip would be ready.

  Into the World

  STOP. REWIND. PLAY. A camera nosing through purple velour curtains. A mucky window, the rhomboid prints of a miskicked football and the crushed corpse of a fly clinging to the glass with congealed gut. A hand print showed where the peeper had steadied herself. A line of digits whirred away. Then the focus lengthened and Derek saw his own car creep up his own drive and stop. Derek, dressed in overalls, emerged, hobbled round to the boot, and dipped in and dragged out his tool bag. He hauled out another and bundled them into the house.

  ‘You sponging bastard,’ a voice close to the camera hissed. ‘Got you!’

  Lines of static forked across, the speaker whooshed.

  The video came with a letter. “Benefit Integrity Project. Claim Suspended”. Derek looked out of the window at his mother’s house, at the purple velour curtains, the curtains she had chosen before he left.

  Heavy Java Guy

  LEARN THE JARGON and you can get any job. ‘Quick question, out of the gate,’ the technogeek says. ‘What have you done Unix-wise? It all seems to be,’ he glanced down at my CV, ‘shell scripting, some stuff on the thread management side. I’m wondering how I match you up with our environment. Aren’t you the heavy Java guy, done a lot of clusters?’

  I saluted. ‘That’s me.’

  ‘Thing is, I don’t hear anyone screaming “I know Solaris down to the bones”.’

  ‘Call me X-Ray.’

  He slumped back and spread his arms. ‘Come to me, baby.’

  But I didn’t take it. The next day I had an interview for a music therapy job and they have gorgeous language; string-washes, brass-stabs, sobbing bass. I never take the jobs, it’s the words I like, the sound of them nudging against each other, and the gawping faces of a panel hungry to listen.

  She’s Really Alt-Country

  I SPOTTED HER at The Be Good Tanyas, moving her head to the music in a dreamy circling motion as if she were drawing a figure of eight in the air with her nose.

  When I got home I wrote her a song, all about a country singer who hitches up with
a fifteen-year-old girl. It goes

  We called it love

  The Judge called it assault

  But they used to call it Country

  And now they call it Alt

  and after a Jesse Mallin gig, I handed her the cassette.

  For a moment we were both holding the same piece of plastic, then I remembered that on the tape you could make out my mother bawling, ‘Geordie, your Pop-Tarts are cremated,’ and me saying, ‘Shut up, you old bag,’ in a pathetic hissy whisper.

  So I snatched it back and mumbled that I’d see her at Calexico next week.

  Smells Like

  GORDON’S LIP CURLED into a sneer when he saw me applying roll-on deodorant. ‘What you putting that stuff on for?’

  ‘There’s a lot of attractive women at our place,’ I explained. ‘I like to smell nice.’

  ‘You have no idea, mate,’ Gordon said. ‘Those pretty whiffs won’t get their engines running. Women are turned on by the real smell of a man. Sour sweat, rotting skin cells. It’s a mainline into the bits of the brain that control desire.’ He put his hands behind his head and looked at the ceiling. ‘I use no artificial scents of any kind and I have never — except for that time in Asda — been turned down by a reasonable woman.’

  So I haven’t used any fragrances for two weeks now and I think it’s making a difference. Women keep asking me if I live alone, and that’s always a good sign.