In the end, you’d gone out to see what was up and there the old bastard was, out in the alley. He made you wait while he clamped out his cigarette on the brickwork, spat and wiped his mouth. And you started to shiver. The grease and the sweat and the scrubbing were starting to chill you through while he stood there, wiping his fucking mouth and making you speak.
‘Well? What did you think?’
‘Well, John.’
Slow walking, the slithery kind of grind his boots made on the dirty street.
‘You are John Hughes, aren’t you?’
‘Hh? I, I . . . Tad-cu?’
‘Oh, yes, I recognise you, now you’re stuttering again.’
Then his fist smoothing into your face along the length of those words, as if it was a part of them. And you going down on the pavement and hearing him keep on talking while you tried to breathe and felt the warm stuff on your face, that drowning feeling making it clear that your nose was broken – that bad feeling – even worse because you were almost sure he was going to kick you now.
‘Spoiled. I said you were spoiled and I was right. No one with our name will ever do what you just did. No one. What was it supposed to be? Ha?’
And you’d thought he would like it. For no good reason, but you’d thought it might be something he’d be proud of. You’d been doing a Welshman, for Christsake. Bloody convincingly, too.
‘Never seen anything like it. Never heard anything like it. My own flesh, my grandson, an Uncle Tom, a creature who would sell his own country. And for what? Ha? For what?’
You flinching as the boots walk away, ashamed of being afraid again and almost angry enough to be unafraid, only now you feel sick.
The doorman’s face as you make your way in again, blood on your shirt.
Strange how people assume you will be unable to perform with a broken nose. Strange how they let you go with a sympathetic smile, because you are spoiled and they cannot wait to see that you’ll get better. Generally impatient lot in the theatre, immune to reason, unable to understand what a man like that might do to you.
But you beat him in the end – the man who scared you right off the stage, pushed your whole personality into a bundle of cloth and wires at the end of your arm and slapped you in a booth almost for life. The one who made sure you were spoiled before you were even as old as Robbins, or Annie, or Pat. You beat him, didn’t you? Yes you did. You waited and you did.
God knew, you hadn’t even seen Dudley, not for twenty years, more, and suddenly you felt safe to go back there. Something had lifted from you and it would be safe, you knew, he couldn’t hurt you now.
He wasn’t in the house. The house, the street it stood in, that whole district had been removed. It made you feel slightly less real, yourself, losing something like that.
You walked about between the blocks of new, metal factory units and the nicely curved roads with grass verges and the men in overalls, sitting out to eat their lunch, even in that thick, slightly bitter air. Funny how the air didn’t change, even if the industries had, even if you had.
He wasn’t there.
He didn’t seem to be anywhere except inside your nights with the old dreams and sour air. You had almost begun to relax, to walk the town as if you were allowed there when you thought to check the hospitals and the homes. He might be hiding, still alive.
And you found him. In Ethelfleda House – big Viking influence at work here, you see. Oddly warped sense of history they had, like naming boulevards after Goebbels, but then, why not. Nobody really cared any more, after all, and now there were Viking shopping malls, playparks named after the heathen invaders, all very civilised. Like Ethelfleda House – that was very civilised, too – it presented no problems, not one difficulty. You walked into his room without anyone doing anything other than smiling and nodding hello. It would be possible to stroll by, any time – throttle the life clean from him and skip out again before anyone knew a thing.
‘Hello there.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Who am I? I thought you might know.’
‘Good God.’
‘Isn’t he? Brought me here. Aren’t you going to say you’re glad to see me?’
‘No, I’m not. You can go now, John Hughes. Get out and go.’
‘But I’ve only just got here. I’ve only just begun to see what a pitiful bloody place this is you’ve landed in. Been here long, have you? Expect to get out again? Ever? Feet first job, won’t it be? Eh, Tad-cu?’
‘Bugger off.’
Arrogance never wore off, did it? Maybe because it never did have much to do with reality, capability, only to do with belief – fear and belief, like God.
‘I’ll bugger off in my own good time, thank you. Bury you round here, will they? Far away from the green, green grass of home Dear me. Where wis it you came from? I don’t remember. You were always too busy making me Welsh to say.’
‘I have a button. I can push it and they’ll come.’
So you take his sodding button on its sodding cord and possibly give him a tap on the head, a small knock to get his attention, brace him up.
‘You little bastard. You always were a little bastard. A bastard.’
‘Shut up and stay shut up or I will kill you. I swear, I’ll kill you now. For once in your life, listen to me. I’m moving back home. I’m going to come and see you, every day. You’re on the ground floor here. I could come and watch you in the night – terrible locks, you have here – anyone could climb in and do anything while you slept. Do you sleep well? And did you miss me? I’m the only family you’ve got. Did you miss me, while I was away?’
Well, naturally, it was upsetting – him starting to shake, to whimper. Eventually, you stopped speaking because he obviously couldn’t hear you. Not paying attention in any way. He was just blubbing like anything and shaking his head – odd.
And you had this perverse desire to pat his clawed-up, sepia-stained hand where he’d left it on the arm of the chair – not his old chair, something much more institutional. Nothing of his own furniture seemed to be there, hardly anything personal at all. You didn’t touch him, though, no time left for that.
‘Tad-cu? Tad-cu, before I go I’d just like to say you’re a poor lonely bugger and you’ll stay that way. And in the end, there’ll only be me to carry your memory and you know what I’ll do with it, don’t you? So ta-ta. Nos da, in fact, eh? Nos da.’
He couldn’t even meet your eyes.
Had no intention of seeing him again – on a train within the hour and never been back. Never will be back. Enough to know he could be beaten and that all of it was over with, finished.
Something else to tell Martha, there, of course.
‘Oh, he was taken into care. My work, you see. I couldn’t look after him properly. Well, we separated in a way – didn’t get on – and he died there. In care. In England – buried there, too, which he wouldn’t have liked.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Thanks. Have some more of this. I have a terrible head for drink. Never know what I’ll do. You want to finished the bottle?’
Would she come and see the show again? See him again?
Ridiculous question. When had there ever been anyone came back for more?
Best thing all round would be to go home to the apartment and have a bath because the sweat would half blind you in that booth and you didn’t want to walk about unclean that way. Better to sweat the dirt out and then scrub clean, the way the Romans did.
He walked to the theatre, like always, it wasn’t far and the evenings were good. He could cool his mind and straighten his limbs, get ready to be there.
‘Here we are again then, God. Off to play the Fool, same as ever. It’s all the same game, though, anyway, isn’t it? You and me, thinking things up and then making them alive. No disrespect, it’s a nice game, thank you. You know, I wish it could have been the other way, though. Two more weeks and this will be over, back to the booth and nothing but the booth, and I was hoping for som
ething else because I did alright here, didn’t I? I did alright. People said so. They said I made the show. It isn’t fair, you see, getting a taste of something and then never being able to do it again. For that to happen twice in one life-time, that isn’t fair, is it, God?’
There was a pleasant softness to the sky – birds coming down for the evening, little sparrows. A party of men in red hats was taking photographs – a broad huddle of smiles against another good skyline, this time with a golden angel and a bridge.
‘Maybe if I’d spoken to you from a higher hill. You remember that time? Would you have heard me then? If I’d made the effort to get that bit further up, would you have listened?
‘Because I didn’t get what I asked for, not really, and I do wonder why. Not that there’s any point knowing now, it’s just that I wonder. You understand?’
THE MOUSEBOKS FAMILY DICTIONARY
THE EXTRACT FROM the Mouseboks Family Dictionary which follows is compiled and freely given to the world by Francis L. Mouseboks XIIc ‘That the name of Mouseboks may resound with every dawning in all its manifold glory and delight.’
anticipation: All Mousebokses spend their lives in a constant condition of Anticipation, principally of their own or other’s deaths. As Anticipation of their own demise maintains them perpetually on the brink of Despair while the idea of anyone else’s dying makes their lives extremely pleasing, if not actually worthwhile, Mousebokses may appear to be of rather changeable temperament.
Prolonged financial, sexual or fearful Anticipation is almost always fatal in Mousebokses. This means that all Mousebokses do effectively die of Anticipation, thus vindicating any morbid Anticipations they might have harboured of their own deaths. As all Mousebokses are painfully aware of this family weakness, each and every Mouseboks Family Member is inwardly contorted by strenuous efforts to avoid anticipating even the slightest Anticipation of an Anticipation and so on into a thankfully early grave.
Even very brief Anticipation is certainly always fatal to those inducing it in Mousebokses. See Money, Murder, Sex, Lust, Fear of Psychiatrists, and What you Deserve.
arms:The Mouseboks Family has no particular coat of arms, although all their coats do, naturally, have arms. Unless they are waistcoats, as not worn by Mouseboks Family Uncles/Cousins/Brothers. Also Mouseboks Family members dream very frequently of bearing arms, most often against other Mouseboks Family members.
aunt (old):Like a Savings bank, but more mobile and whimsical.
aunt (young):See Lust.
bad joke:See Life.
Or Bad Jokes are frequently told by Mousebokses at times of extreme stress/family gatherings etc. Comic effect marred only by Mousebokses’ inability to concentrate on human beings beyond themselves, or to remember punchlines.
birth:Whether as onlooker or active participant, something any Mouseboks will always deeply regret. Note all Mousebokses have marked aversion to any system of belief involving reincarnation.
burglar: Like mortuary assistant, slaughterman, murderer, etc. Burglar is one of the Mouseboks’ preferred professions. See Money.
Or a good way of stimulating mental alertness among other Mousebokses may be to feign employment as a Burglar. This course may encourage various disadvantages – see Murder. Imagined and Supernatural Burglars feature often in Nightmares and Fears.
dark: An elongation of terror in closing eyes before Sleep and/or Death.
death: The termination of an inexhaustible source of Despair. A constant breeding-ground of both creeping and seizing Fears. Good subject for meditation – see Night, see also Murder.
despair: A kind of relaxation. Also taken to be a sure sign of intellectual development among Mousebokses.
devil: An excellent subject for Night meditations. See What You Deserve.
Or something a Mouseboks had better know. Hence the phrase ‘Better the Devil you know’ which brings faint but constant comfort to the few surviving Mousebokses afflicted by religious inclinations.
dreams: The perfect medium in which to imagine bearing Arms against Mouseboks Family members.
family: Spending time within the Mouseboks Family might be likened to drifting in an open boat filled with cannibals precisely at tea-time. Their company is always enlivening and their interest in others very sincere, if not deeply alarming.
fears: Life’s constant companions, shapers of our destiny and characters. Their manifestations are infinitely various including: creeping, leaping, looming, seizing, stunting, sweating, paralysing, stupefying, hypnotising and doom-laden. A Fear may be laxative, expectorant, emetic or simply felling. Numbing fears are rarely experienced but frequently wished for.
Note that a combination of elongated Fears may constitute a kind of vocation for many older Mousebokses.
Although Fears may be affected by the presence or absence of daylight, money, certain individuals, etc. they very largely have full and independent lives of their own. The hobbies and gathering places of temporarily absent or inactive Fears would be a major topic of philosophical discussion between Mousebokses, were they not afraid to mention them.
fears of the dark: These particular Fears are of such a rich and varied character among Mousebokses that only their extreme unsociability and Fear of Psychiatrists has prevented them from becoming a celebrated source of Behavioural research.
fear of psychiatrists: Mousebokses pre-empt any fears of Insanity by constantly assuming themselves to be insane. As no mad person truly believes they are mad and Mousebokses all believe they are mad, truly, then all Mousebokses must be sane. Even the mad ones. This removes all Fear of Psychiatrists.
female: A recognisable condition among some Mousebokses. Will not encompass any nurturing, delicate or maternal instincts. Mouseboks Family Womenfolk generally prefer to avoid pregnancy and adopt older children, if not adults, who are preferably resident in distant countries. Homicidal levels of menstrual tension are maintained by Female Mousebokses for five or six weeks of the month. Noted for their quirky sense of humour.
Francis: Traditionally the first name of all Mousebokses, male and female. This has many benefits – all family insults are pleasantly inclusive and neither memory nor imagination need ever be taxed on the pait of parents with regard to child naming or summoning. Convoluted arguments can be started in any assembly of Mousebokses in a matter of seconds, as all comments directed to any Mouseboks by name will quite naturally always be entirely false and entirely true – a good starting-point for many hours of invigorating bare-knuckle repartee.
future:A usefully inexhaustible source of Despair and Fear, terminated only by Death.
God:Mousebokses have a deep and working belief in God which has, for many generations, meant that Mousebokses do not generally pray at all for Fear that God will hear where they are and come to get them.
guilt:An unfamiliar concept.
It has long troubled churchmen and moralists to find that Mousebokses, though constantly racked by nauseous waves of Guilt, continue to commit unspeakable acts of every guilt-inducing shade and variety. This seems a dreadful and shaking denial of Natural Justice.
This disturbance to the spiritual equilibrium of so many devout men is a huge source of satisfaction to all Mousebokses, although tremendous guilt prevents them from celebrating it too openly.
hands:Those things which we hold for each other, while wishing our arms were longer.
insanity:An affliction exclusively confined to others, particularly those in authority. For exceptions, see Fear of Psychiatrists.
last straw: Given the prevalence of Despair and Fear in the Mouseboks Family, any straw will always be the last. Or Mouseboks family members never use straws, this being regarded as a waste of good drinking time and suction.
life: Like an overbearingly scented rubber ice pick, a chocolate pacemaker, or an open tub of chicken giblets cast out to a man besieged by tetchy sharks. That is to say, a gift of very little utility, which draws on lengthy and unpleasant ramifications.
S
ee Bad Joke.
See also What You Deserve.
See also Nightmares (Waking).
lust: A word unfamiliar to Mousebokses, of indefinable meaning, with accusatory overtones. As Mousebokses regard all other Mouseboks Family members, all members of any other family and all animals exceeding 18″ in any direction as insensible subjects for perverse and graphic experiment they have not found it necessary to develop what would essentially be a synonym for Normality.
marriage: A kind of bedroom ceasefire without benefit of UN Peacekeeping Forces. See Fear of Psychiatrists, Money, Murder, Odd Noises, Sex.
masturbation: Another word for Self-Respect. Or substitute for central heating in older Mouseboks homes. See Sex, See Fear of Psychiatrists.
money: Something to light the heart. A family symbol of reliability, warmth, affection self-esteem and dignity. Should be easy to fold. See Mouseboks.
Mouseboks: A curious name, taken by the Mouseboks Family in a never-repeated moment of unanimity brought on by group shock.
Before they developed their new name, the Mousebokses were once gathered together (see Bad Joke, Death, Murder) in the house of an Old Aunt. The Old Aunt was expected to die within the month and slowly all the possibly relevant inheriting Mousebokses had gathered in the Old Aunt’s house for Fear of other Mousebokses beating them to the will, or rather its contents.
It was common knowledge that the Mouseboks’ Aunt kept a huge amount of Money in her attic, carefully locked and multiply-bolted against Burglars and other Mousebokses. On her death, this Money would become free and legally open to her Family.
Perhaps speeded on her way by the presence of so many Family members, the Old Aunt duly died and, as her last breath soaked into the wallpaper, an eager horde of Mousebokses stormed her attic, only hindered by another mob of Mousebokses engaged in removing her furniture.
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