by Limmy
When nobody came and nobody made a sound, he began walking through the front door. He walked slowly towards the bar, and looked around. He looked at the seats and tables, he looked at the floor and the walls. He stood still and looked everywhere. There were empty cans and bottles, empty packets of crisps, empty packets of fags. There was writing on the walls, and some of the seats had been slashed. There were pale patches on the walls behind the bar, where things used to hang or be screwed on, but had now been taken away. Towards the front of the pub, on the wall to the left, was a jukebox. The glass at the front of the jukebox had been smashed, and some of the cards that listed the albums had been pulled out and dropped on the floor. Some of them were on the tables, with small rectangles torn out of them.
Under the jukebox was a cushioned bench that ran along the left wall, then along the wall at the front of the pub, underneath where the window had been broken. He looked at the corner of the bench, where the bench on the left wall met the one at the front. He stood there looking at it for a long time. He walked over to it, then stopped. He looked over his shoulder to see if anybody was watching, but nobody was. He faced the bench, then leaned over to touch it. He touched the bottom, then he touched the backs. He stood upright, and smiled for a while, looking at the corner. Then the smile went away.
He turned to look behind him. On the right wall, opposite the bench on the left, were three booths. He looked at the middle booth. His top lip twitched. He blinked a single, slow blink.
He looked down at the bench beside him, at the corner, and sat down.
He closed his eyes for a while. When he opened them, he stood up and looked to the corner of the bench and began to speak.
‘Gillian, what d’you want to drink?’
After he spoke, he looked around the pub to see if anybody was there, but nobody was. He looked back to the corner of the bench and said, ‘One more then up the road?’
He walked towards the bar, smiling at the corner of the bench behind him. He stood on an empty bottle and stumbled. He stopped smiling and kicked the bottle away, smashing it against one of the high stools that were screwed into the floor at the bar.
He ran towards one of the stools and kicked it with the sole of his foot. He bounced back from it and landed on the floor. He got back on his feet and ran up to the stool again, kicking it harder, then again, until he heard something crunch. He walked over to the stool and began pulling it. He walked around the stool and stood between the stool and the bar, then crouched low to place his back against the cushion. He pushed his hands and feet against the bar to push his back against the stool. His teeth were clenched and his face was red with effort. The bolts at the bottom of the stool tore away from the floorboards. The man and the stool fell back against the floor.
He picked up the stool and walked over to the middle booth. He stepped backwards until he was as far back as he could go.
‘Jamieson!’ he shouted. ‘Look!’
He ran towards the middle booth and threw the stool. It banged off the back cushion, leaving a hole in the fabric where somebody’s head would be.
He sat on the floor.
A man appeared from a door behind the bar, wearing a suit and a hard hat. He saw that some drunk guy had broken into the pub, and was sitting on the floor. ‘Here,’ said the man. ‘Here, you. You’re not allowed in here. Get out. Go.’
‘Go where, son?’ said the drunk guy. ‘Go where?’
The Speaker
Neil woke up to the sound of Tina’s music. Her shite music.
He rubbed his eyes and turned to see if she was lying next to him, but he knew she wouldn’t be. She was always up before him. Up for work.
She wasn’t in the bedroom either. But the speaker was. The Bluetooth speaker, playing her music. The portable Bluetooth speaker, which she could easily have lifted and taken with her out the bedroom and into the kitchen or wherever else it was she was sitting. But she left it in the room on the set of drawers next to the bedroom window, which she’d got into the habit of doing these days, ever since Neil got into the habit of having his long lies in bed after his late nights on the computer.
But what did she expect him to do? There was no work, there were no jobs.
The song playing was something by John Lennon. Neil hated John Lennon. He wasn’t that into The Beatles anyway, but he fucking hated John Lennon. Wife-beating cunt. But he wouldn’t lie, that wasn’t the main reason he hated him. It was something else, he didn’t quite know. It was something to do with that effect they put on his voice. An echoey effect. It made him sound like he was singing in a tunnel. Or in a sewer. He sounded like he was singing in a fucking sewer. It was horrible. It was a horrible sound to wake up to.
Did Tina even like it? She used to say she liked John Lennon, years ago. That was back when they used to ask each other what music they were into, back when they first started going out. Back when they asked what music they were into and what films they liked and stuff they liked to take. She said she was into Radiohead and Muse and she mentioned John Lennon, and that was when he told her he hated John Lennon. That’s how he knew that she knew.
It was no coincidence that it was John Lennon coming out that speaker.
He’d told her that he didn’t like Radiohead either. He was alright with Muse somehow, even though he thought they sounded quite like Radiohead. And guess what she had playing not yesterday but the day before?
Radiohead.
She didn’t play Muse, though.
He looked at the speaker. It was a good speaker. It cost a fair bit of money, and it was him that bought it. He bought it back when he could afford to splash out on a speaker that cost 150 quid. There were more expensive ones, bigger ones where you could plug your iPhone in at the top. This was a smaller one, but the sound was amazing. The bass.
He’d taken ages picking it. He’d made a cunt of buying the one they had before. It wasn’t a speaker, it was a DAB radio, and Tina asked him why he bought it. He thought it would be good. It was a Sony, and all the reviews said the sound was good. But it was tinny as fuck. Tina said it wasn’t like him to make a fuck-up like that. But the reviews said it was good.
They put up with it for a while, but it was shite. It wasn’t just the sound that made it shite. It was the feeling it gave you, it was what it reminded you of, it reminded you that you’d bought something shite. It was the sound of putting up with something, that’s what it sounded like. This tinny piece of shite.
He eventually asked himself why he didn’t just use the money he earned and live it up a bit. Why not just buy something good? So he thought he’d buy a Bluetooth speaker. A good one. Bose. For the first time in ages, he’d splash out and buy something good. 150 quid was a lot for him, even when he was working. It was a lot just for a speaker.
And there it was now, playing John Lennon.
He looked at it, as it sat there on the drawers next to the window, and he could see that it had been moved from last night. It had been turned towards the bed. He was pretty sure it had been turned towards the bed again. It was hard to notice, but if you looked out for it, you could see it, you could see that it had been moved.
He first noticed it being moved a couple of weeks ago. The front of the speaker would normally sit in the middle of the drawers, at the front, facing forward. It wouldn’t be turned slightly to the left or right, it would be facing forward. The front of the speaker was always parallel with the front of the drawers.
But recently, in the last couple of weeks, it had started to turn a bit towards the bed, so that the music blared in the direction of whoever was lying in the bed. Not towards the door, not towards the person who always stuck it on this early in the morning and then walked out the door, not towards the door. But towards the bed. And it wasn’t him that turned it.
Every night, after Tina went to bed, he would stay up late, watching Netflix or a few films he’d downloaded. By the time he felt like going to sleep, he would go into the bedroom, and listen to hear if Tina was
sleeping. And before getting into bed, he’d walk over to the drawers next to the window, and make sure the speaker was facing forwards. Directly forwards. He had to do that, because he wasn’t sure if he was imagining it all.
The next morning, he would wake up and the speaker would be playing Tina’s music, and when he looked, the speaker would be turned towards the bed. Tina herself wouldn’t be in bed, she was never in bed when he woke up. She’d be walking around the house getting ready. And yet, the speaker would be pointed towards the bed.
It wouldn’t be completely turned around, it wouldn’t be at a 45-degree angle. It was subtle.
He didn’t want to come right out and accuse her. He could be wrong. He’d been wrong about things like that before, like the time when the remote went missing and he said she was trying to fuck with his head, then he found it in his dressing-gown pocket. He didn’t want to just come right out and accuse her, so he thought of theories that would let her off the hook, so that he didn’t jump to conclusions.
He had a few theories that stopped him from coming right out and pointing the finger.
The first one was that she angled the speaker towards the bed so that she could hear it better herself when she was in bed in the morning. He was used to waking up and seeing her not there, but it could be the case that she liked lying in bed and listening to music for half an hour or so before he even woke up. She might get out of bed in the morning, turn the speaker towards her a bit, switch it on, then go back to bed, pick up the iPad and play her music. Then, when she got up, she just forgot to turn the speaker back to where it was facing. And forgot to switch it off, or take it with her into the kitchen or wherever she was.
But that one didn’t stand up.
He reckoned that if she was getting up and turning the speaker towards the bed to listen to it, it would probably be turned towards the bed even more. There would be no reason to be subtle. Why turn it towards the bed by just one degree when you could turn it all the way around?
The second theory was that it was an accident. He thought that maybe when she switched it on in the morning, the force of her finger pressing down on the power button on the top of the speaker caused the speaker to slide, which caused it to turn. An innocent mistake, nothing more.
But that one didn’t stand up either. He’d put it to the test last Thursday.
When the theory came into his head, he waited until she had left for work. Then he got up and tried it. He put the speaker back to its normal angle, facing directly forwards. Then he pressed the power button. But the speaker didn’t budge an inch.
Even if he pressed the button at an angle, instead of directly down, the speaker didn’t budge. It was to do with the rubber bits at the bottom of the speaker. The rubber stopped the speaker from sliding. It was possible, though, it was possible to push the speaker if you pushed towards the button at a really low angle, like maybe if she was crouched down. She could maybe be crouched down to open one of the drawers.
But!
The power button was on the left hand side of the speaker, and pushing towards it would cause the speaker to turn towards the left. But the bed was to the right. Pushing the button in that way would actually cause the speaker to turn away from the bed. And it most certainly wasn’t turned away.
He had a third and final theory that came to him when he picked up the speaker to look at the rubber bits at the bottom. Maybe she picked the speaker up to switch it on, then she put it back down, and it just so happened to be angled towards the bed every time she put it back on the top of the drawers.
But that would have to be every time.
Every. Single. Time.
The exact same angle, the exact same subtle angle, every, single, time.
Forget it.
He really did hate John Lennon.
He remembered exactly where they were when he told her. They were in a bar on Gibson Street, a bar that isn’t there anymore. It’s still there as a bar, but it’s different now. They were in there, and on came Radiohead. It was ‘No Surprises’ by Radiohead, and that got them talking about what music they were into.
They’d been shagging for a week, and had moved onto getting to know each other. Getting to know the wee things.
She started singing along to it. She just sang the chorus, during a break in their conversation. She sang it quietly while looking at him. But he pulled a face. He didn’t mean to. Although he didn’t like Radiohead, the face was mainly because he didn’t really know what to do when somebody was singing and looking at you, it made him feel shy. So he did the face and she asked if he didn’t like Radiohead, and he said no, not really. And that got them talking, about Radiohead. About Muse. And then he mentioned that he hated John Lennon.
That’s how he knew that she knew.
She asked him what he did like, then. And he told her that he liked pop stuff. Eighties stuff. Stuff like eighties Kylie. She said that she liked eighties Kylie as well, and started singing the chorus to ‘I Should Be So Lucky’. He didn’t sing along, he was too shy. He didn’t want to show it, so he got talking instead, asking her if she liked other Kylie stuff from back then, like ‘Turn It into Love’ and ‘It’s No Secret’. But she wasn’t really sure, she couldn’t remember them or how they went. She asked him how they went, how ‘Turn It into Love’ went. He spoke the lyrics, but she said no, sing it, she wanted to know what the tune was like. He said no way, he knew she was trying to embarrass him, but she laughed and said she wasn’t. Go, sing it. So he sang it. He got three or four words into the chorus, before she pointed and laughed at him singing. She was funny. He fucking knew she was going to do that, he knew she was at it.
And she was at it here.
With this speaker.
But it wasn’t a funny thing. He’d take it as funny, if that’s how it was intended, but it wasn’t. That’s not how she meant it.
The John Lennon song finished, and on came another one, by John Lennon. She was definitely at it.
He had an idea.
He leaned over and picked up the iPad from on top of her bedside cabinet. He went to her music app, tapped on Artists, tapped on K, scrolled through the songs, and tapped on the one he was after. The John Lennon song stopped.
He put down the tablet and quickly lay back in the bed, pulling the covers up to his nose. He’d pretend to be asleep.
It took a few seconds for his song to come on, and then on it came.
‘Turn It into Love’ by Kylie Minogue.
That Stock, Aitken and Waterman sound. People said at the time that it made all the songs sound the same, but that’s what he liked. The bass line, the twinkling melody. It sounded brilliant on the speaker, it sounded better now than it did back then.
He waited for Tina to walk in.
Would she pop her head around the door and smile? Or would she march in and put Lennon back on? Something would happen one way or another. This is what it would take.
Kylie started singing, but there was still no reaction from Tina. No footsteps or creak of the door. He opened his eyes to see if she was standing there at the door. It would be good to see her dancing. It would be better to hear her singing.
He looked, but she wasn’t there.
‘Tina!’ he shouted, but she didn’t come.
He got out of bed and stuck on his boxers. He looked around the house, but she wasn’t there.
He walked back to the bedroom and checked the time on the tablet. It was 10.14 a.m. She was long gone.
He’d get a job. He would. He’d love to get up in the morning and have somewhere to go and something to do.
What would be better would be to wake up and hear Kylie being played. To wake up and hear Kylie, knowing that it wasn’t him that put her on.
But it had been a long time since Kylie had come out of that speaker.
Photography
Eric was out taking pictures with his new camera. He’d been looking for a hobby, looking for something to do, and this hobby was the latest.
He’d been looking around online, looking at things, and he’d come across some nice pictures that people had taken. Pictures of objects, or animals, or people, but they had a look to them that he could never get when taking pictures with his phone. They looked like something you’d see in a film. There would be a picture of a lamp post, but the stuff in the background behind the lamp post would be all blurry. He liked how that looked, and he wanted to know how it was done. He asked around online to find out what app it was, but people told him that it wasn’t taken on a phone, it was taken with a camera. A camera-camera. A ‘DSLR’.
He looked into it all, and it cost an arm and a leg. It wasn’t just the camera that cost the money, but the lenses. In fact, some of the lenses, the big zoom ones, cost more than the cameras themselves. But he was just after the one that made the background blurry, and people told him to get a 50 mm lens. They called it the ‘nifty fifty’, and told him that it was ideal if he was after the blurry background effect, which he learned was called a ‘shallow depth of field’.
He read up on what a shallow depth of field meant. There was so much to learn. But that’s what he wanted, something to get into. Something to throw all his time and money into, something productive and positive to dive right into. Productive and positive.
He’d had the camera for a couple of weeks now, and he didn’t really know what to take pictures of. He took pictures of the sorts of things he saw online, things that other people take pictures of. Pictures of street signs, or pictures of empty beer bottles. His pictures looked good. They looked all arty.
He took a picture of a dandelion, something he’d never really looked at since he was a boy. He’d walked past dandelions before and maybe had a glance, but he’d never seen them like this, with a shallow depth of field, with the dandelion crystal clear, but with everything else all blurry. It was a new way of looking at things. That’s what photography was, he reckoned. It wasn’t about saying, ‘Look, here’s how this thing looks.’ It was about you having an idea of what something looks like, but if you looked closer, or saw it in a different light, or from a different angle, it would be different and new.