The Redemption Factory

by Sam Millar

  In the kitchen, Kennedy found a bunch of bananas in a fruit bowl on the dining table. They were dull yellow, with large brown spots the size of thumbs. Tiny fruit flies hovered above them quietly, drifting back and forth above the shine of the table. Aimlessly, he sliced through a banana, dicing it before mixing it with her bran, the horribly disgusting bran she used to clear her plumbing.

  With all of the darkness lifted, the light in the hallway seemed more intense, spotlighting his every movement as he entered her room without knocking. She didn’t like him not knocking. Good.

  A faded illumination escaped from a neck of a tiny bedside lamp, competing against the bluish glow of the ever-present television screen flashing on Cathleen’s sagging, alabaster belly. Flicker, flicker, flicker. Her left leg was wrapped in plaster, a remnant from an accident two weeks ago.

  The television murmured softly in the background, showing highlights from a food programme in some faraway, rain-drenched place.

  Catherine’s turret-shaped eyes never left her husband’s movements. She was first to speak. “Didn’t sleep …”

  a wink last night, he finished in his head.

  “… a wink last night,” she sighed.

  “Have you been taking your sleeping pills?” he asked, not giving a damn.

  “This pain is terrible. It seems to be getting sharper. My bedsores are …

  … becoming unbearable.

  “… becoming unbearable.” A moan escaped her large mouth. “This morning, I was depressed for no conceivable reason whatsoever. Imagine that. Why on earth would I be depressed?” The derision in her voice was sharp.

  “The dosage. Doctor Moore should increase the dosage, for you,” replied Kennedy, instinctively.

  Cathleen had been instructed to take insulin three times a day and to keep an eye on her blood sugar. Three of her toes had been amputated over the last six months and Moore had warned her, constantly, that her health would rapidly deteriorate if she didn’t watch what she consumed. But Cathleen had more interest in a slab of cake, a box of Quality Street, all washed down with a nice hot mug of chocolate, than she did for any annoying needles and vegetable diets.

  “I keep asking God what I’ve done …”

  … for Him to place this terrible cross on my shoulders.

  “… for Him to place this terrible cross on my shoulders.”

  In his head, Philip pictured Cathleen nailed to a cross. The nails were covered in rust from the smelly sweat oozing from her. He was at her feet, in the garb of a Roman soldier, spear at the ready to finish the job. She was asking for water. He smiled before shoving the bedpan in her face, his mind playing out every delicious detail in slow motion.

  Catherine sniffed suspiciously. “You’ve been drinking.”

  “And you’ve been pissing,” retorted Kennedy his eyes flashing at the overflowing bedpan. “How you can smell alcohol over the stench of your own piss, is beyond me.”

  “You’re a king bastard,” hissed Catherine. “You put me in this situation. Helpless, depending on you.”

  Kennedy smirked. “You put yourself in that sickbed, not me – you and your nose.”

  “Make sure you open up early today. It’s Friday,” replied Catherine, quickly ignoring the innuendo. “The bastards always have money on Friday. Don’t be soft on them, like you were with Biddy Black, last week.”

  Biddy was the weekly housekeeper. Kennedy had allowed the unfortunate woman to regain possession of her dead husband’s wedding ring without the added interest, never realising he had been set up by Cathleen who had suspected him of going soft. Even though her sickness was slowly eating her ability, being stationery did not retard her power one iota.

  What a fool he had been, never suspecting that bastard Biddy Black had been on Cathleen’s payroll. But he remained silent, keeping his expression neutral; knowing the flaw of most arguments is the inability to anticipate the rebuttal.

  Placing the breakfast on a side table, he turned to leave the room, ignoring the dishes from last night.

  “Maybe I should hire a food taster?” she said, her face a spider’s web of suspicion as she glanced at the greasy contents resting on the tray. “Perhaps it’s only my imagination, but there seems to be a bitter taste to the food you’ve been cooking me, lately.”

  “Perhaps the bitterness isn’t in the food …”

  “Perhaps you didn’t cause me to fall, either, almost breaking my neck?” Her wrinkles fell into angry ellipses framing the centre of her face.

  Kennedy shook his head. “Not this nonsense, again? I warned you about that loose carpet at the top of the stairs, months ago. Told you to be careful. Thank God your weight cushioned the fall …”

  “Bastard,” she hissed.

  “You shouldn’t talk about God like that. It’s disrespectful.”

  “You think you’re so smart, don’t you? Think no one will believe that it was you who pushed me, tried to kill me?”

  “Kill? Don’t be so dramatic. You were embarrassed by your fall. It was your weight and carelessness that caused it. A loose nail, an upturned corner of carpet. Everyone knows that,” Kennedy smiled. “You really must stop watching those old Agatha Christie movies. They’re feeding your imagination. Why on earth would I harm you?”

  “You know damn well …”

  “Do I? Tell me.”

  “Stop playing games! You think I have something; something belonging to you …”

  Kennedy’s face tightened, slightly. “Do you?”

  Catherine looked away from his eyes. “No …”

  “Good. That’s that sorted. Nothing to worry about, then? Now, eat your breakfast. I done your pancakes just the way you like them.”

  Catherine shuddered slightly. “I’m not hungry.”

  “Nonsense. We need you to get your strength back as quickly as possible. The shop is a disaster without you. Also, you’ll be able to help me search for an item I seem to have … misplaced. You know how annoying that can be, believing you’ve placed it someplace only to find it gone when you check. Maybe my old memory is no longer as reliable as it used to be? Anyway, that’s why I need you to help me search for it, when you get better …” He removed a knife from the tray, and expertly sliced a pancake into four parts. “Open wide.”

  Reluctantly, Catherine’s mouth opened partially. Kennedy squeezed a pancake patch in.

  “Close and chew. It’s important to always chew your food. We don’t want you choking. Do we?”

  The chime of the shop’s bell echoed up the stairs.

  “Must go,” said Kennedy, leaving the remainder of the pancake resting on a plate. “I’ll bring your lunch up, later. I’m making your favourite. Chicken soup. Yum yum. That’ll soon have you on your feet …” Kennedy smiled and winked, then closed the door behind him, gently.

  Catherine quickly reached for the bucket beneath the bed and spilt her guts into it …

  CHAPTER THREE

  LUCKY

  “Tell me thy company, and I’ll tell thee what thou art.”

  Cervantes, Don Quixote

  “Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.”

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  PAUL HAD REACHED the entrance to the Tin Hut – the local snooker and drinking hall – just as the familiar voice asked, “What the hell are you doing with a brush shaft? This is a snooker hall, lad. Not the abattoir’s annual sweeping contest.”

  Paul didn’t want to think about the abattoir. He would be back in that place in less than 30 hours. Like a prisoner on parole, he dreaded the thought, but knew he had no other choice. He had been out of work for almost a year – his longest stint of unemployment – and the abattoir seemed the best opportunity to rectify that. He hated the thought of getting the job but, paradoxically, knew he was lucky to have secured it. His financial situation left him in no doubt about that, not to mention his mother who never failed to tell him that he should be married by now, giving her grandchildren. Of course, that was a lo
ad of nonsense. The last thing his mother wanted was to be in close proximity of people less than two feet tall with rubbery faces. She didn’t hate kids: simply could no longer tolerate them, their shitty smell and non-stop mouths, as if the one child in her life had drained her forever.

  “Funny you should mention the abattoir, Lucky, because by the time I’m finished with you and the rest of the would-be challengers in there, it will be a slaughter house. Make no mistake about that. And that lucky charm of yours won’t help, either.”

  Lucky raised his wrist and kissed the gold bracelet dangling from it. There’s only one Lucky it proudly proclaimed.

  “The day you beat me at snooker, is the day I give this to you.”

  They both grinned and entered the Tin Hut.

  Once inside, Lucky volunteered to buy a drink.

  “Performing a miracle, Lucky? Where the hell would you get the money for two pints?” smiled Paul.

  “Well, the way it works is that you’re suppose to stop me, preventing my hand – which is strategically placed in my pocket – from coming out, saying – demanding that under no circumstances will I, Paul Goodman, allow a drink to be bought by my best friend, Lucky Short, tonight, because of the wonderful news that on Monday I, Paul Goodman, start my new job at the slaughterhouse.”

  “I see. But what if your best friend has no money until payday, next week? What then?”

  “Credit, me old bucko. Terry Browne knows you now have a job and will be more than willing to put a couple of pints on the slate.”

  Paul laughed. “You better hope I don’t get fired on my first day, my best friend, because it’ll be those dancing legs of yours that’ll be getting smashed by Terry, not mine. Now make yourself useful. Go over and put our names down for the middle table. I’ll get the pints.”

  While Paul waited for the pints to be pulled, he glanced back at Lucky, who was arguing with someone about being next for the best table in the place, the middle one. It had few rips in it and was almost perfectly balanced, with little or no sliding to the side.

  “Suckered in for a free drink from that lazy pissy whore, Paul?” said the owner, Terry Browne, a one-time boxer and trainer. People Terry didn’t like, were pissy whores. Nearly everyone in the hall had been a pissy whore, at one time or another. Only yesterday, Paul had been a pissy whore. Now, with a potential job, he was Paul, a customer with credit.

  “He’s okay, Terry. Just never had too many breaks in his life,” replied Paul, smiling.

  “Breaks? The only breaks that pissy whore is interested in are the snooker breaks he makes – and even those are crap.” Terry shook his head. “Does he still go to the Boom Boom Rooms for those dancing lessons? Still thinks he’s the next Fred Astaire?”

  Paul nodded.

  “I’d like to give him a good kick up a stair, the pissy whore. I blame him on you no longer having any interest in boxing. You had a lot of potential. A lot of potential.”

  “Lucky didn’t stop me. I just lost interest in getting my head knocked off every time I entered the ring – all of ten seconds,” laughed Paul, wishing the pints of Guinness would hurry up and settle. Terry believed that pulling a pint of Guinness was an art, a slow and delicate art, and god help the person who asked him to hurry it up, destroy his masterpiece.

  “Don’t be daft,” said Terry, crossly. “You had potential. Always. Don’t let any of these pissy whores tell you any thing different, especially that pissy whore Lucky Short. What the hell you ever saw in that walking failure, I’ll never know …”

  Paul just smiled. There was little point in even contemplating a disagreement with Terry whose middle name was Opinionated. Instead, he watched the beautiful creamy white of Guinness harden, transforming itself into a vicar’s collar, while his mind strolled back to yesteryear, and the first meeting he ever had of Lucky Short …

  Imagine having the nickname Willie Short, of having to carry it with you as a young boy through school years, through the pimply, squeaky voice of adolescence? Can you imagine a worse fate?

  Try this.

  What if the nickname wasn’t a nickname but your real name?

  Willie – Willie Short – couldn’t fight to save his life let alone defend a name he despised. Fortunately, he possessed exceptional fortitude, comfortable with the probability of humiliation at all times. Even some of the girls in the street used to beat him up – usually on a Thursday night after being hyped to the gills by Emma Peel in The Avengers. “Is your willie short, Willie Short?” they would tease mercilessly, as only girls can tease.

  Paul Goodman was Willie’s best friend. Actually, Paul was Willie’s only friend and ended up fighting most of his fights for him, as friends tend to do for friends. Not a week went by when Paul couldn’t be seen minus a black eye or busted lip, or some other war wound meant for Willie, whose war cry was: I’m getting Paul Goodman for ya! He’s a famous boxer, ya know! Won a silver medal at the Olympic Games … beat the shit out of Mangler Delaney …

  It made no difference that Paul had never fought at the Olympics and that the only meeting between the notorious Mangler and Paul ended up with Paul having a new identity done to his face that lasted two weeks.

  Paul and Willie had met quite by accident, and depending which friend you listened to, each had a different rendering of the occasion.

  One Friday night, Paul had just had his face and spirit battered by Mangler who seemed driven by the hatred of Paul’s handsome face, wishing to make it as ugly as his own.

  Delaney was an evil-looking young lad who would grow up to become the local undertaker. Years later, Paul often reflected that perhaps the boxing was only Delaney’s apprenticeship, whetting his appetite for what really was his calling: burying the dead.

  His face covered in a family of forget-me-not bruises tattooed firmly to his skin, Paul called in to the local café. He wasn’t really hungry, but his spirits needed a bit of a lift. Afterwards, he would head home, just in time for his favourite sports show, 147. He had never missed the show, where snooker players tried to reach the magical break of 147, immortalise their names and have a holiday – all expenses paid – thrown in for good measure.

  Snooker was his real passion, not boxing. Boxing was an ordeal inflicted upon him by his mother who kindly enrolled him at the local boxing club in the misguided belief that it would somehow make a man out of him. He was twelve. What young boy wants to be a man at twelve? All Paul wanted to be was a kid.

  Paul figured at least fifteen people were in front of him in the queue, and quickly tried to calculate how long it would take before he reached the counter. He prayed he didn’t get Annie Parson. She was at least 100 years old and had an old battered hearing-pieces in both ears forcing you to scream at the top of your voice. Tiny brown lumps of earwax covered the pieces, making the chance of hearing nil minus zero.

  Annie was an extremely ugly old woman whose nasal hairs dangled like spiders legs and her foul breath always smelt of tobacco and mints. An army of moles littered what little skin she had and it was said that if you joined all the moles together – like ‘join the dots’ – they would mutate into an image of Elvis Presley. People said she was good at reading lips as well as tealeaves. Paul believed neither, only that she turned his stomach.

  As he eased closer to the counter, he prayed to God to give him a break, just like the break he wanted for Alex ‘Stormy’ Jennings, his favourite snooker player, who hoped for the magical number tonight.

  Don’t let Annie serve me, God. Please, show some mercy …

  But there’d be no mercy tonight. Not at the boxing. Not at the café.

  “You’ll have to speak up, ya little bugger! I can’t hear a word you’re saying!” boomed Annie, her midget frame perched atop a milk crate barely reaching the lip of the shop’s wooden counter top.

  Ah, fuck. She’s no teeth in. I’m gonna throw up. There’s juice on the tip of her nose. It must be snot. Oh, fuck …

  “Speak up, ya little bugger!”

  �
��I said a fish suppers!” screamed Paul, right back at her hairy face. “No salt or vinegar.”

  “Vulgar! Who’re ya calling vulgar, ya little bugger! I’ve a good mind to call our Anthony! He’ll show ya, ya little bugger!” Annie’s brother Anthony, the owner of the cafe, was about 90 years old, aided by two walking sticks. He wore clothes two sizes too big and squeaky shoes. You heard him before you saw him.

  “No! I just said no salt or vinegar!” Someone started giggling behind Paul. Within seconds, the giggle was contagious. They were all at it.

  “Give her a kiss, Paul. Stick your tongue in her mouth,” someone shouted, making the laughter louder.

  Paul glared back at the crowd, hoping to catch the owner of the smart mouth.

  Five minutes later, Annie handed him the steaming package, but not before drowning it in salt and vinegar. The vinegar was seeping heavily through the thin paper. It felt disgusting, like a baby’s soiled nappy, and was probably unfit for human consumption.

  “In future, you watch your language, ya little bugger! Coming in here with your face dripping blood all over the place. We run a respectable establishment here. The next time, you’ll not be served! I can read lips, ya know!”

  Paul quickly grabbed the package from Annie’s withered fingers. “There’ll be no next time, you old witch! I’m going to Harry Bunts, in future.”

  “Anthony! Anthoooonnnyyy!” screamed Annie. “The little bugger said I had a hairy cunt! Anthony! Anthoooonnnyyy!”

  The place went into uproar while Paul made good his escape.

  Resigned that 147 was gone for another week, Paul rested his tired back against the café wall, and opened up the package. The steam rose to his face, the aroma making his stomach growl with anticipation. Like a starving wolf, quickly he devoured the contents and waited.

  “That was you who shouted for me to stick my tongue in Annie’s mouth. Wasn’t it? Don’t lie, it’ll only make matters worse for you,” said Paul, grabbing a boy as he emerged from the café.