by Laura Marney
He can hear the usual ned noises: laughing, bellowing, swearing, they’re close enough for him to make them out. They’re wearing the uniform, the usual neddy sportswear, trainers and caps. They are typical generic interchangeable neds, four of them, but amongst them there is a tall gangly blond one and a wee red-haired runt. These are the neds. The ones who hang around the close mouth at the door of the sun tanning shop, the ones he squirted the piss-filled Super Soaker at, the ones who, no doubt, by way of retribution, lobbed the blazing shit brick though his window.
‘Heh Doyle!’ he hears the red-haired runt call to the big lanky one.
I knew it, Donnie thinks: a Catholic, a typical dirty bog-trotting Tim. Doyle looks about sixteen, with blond bumfluff on his chin, but he’s a big bastard, big feet and long arms, and young, he’ll be quick on his feet. But it’s a relief to know he’s not a Protestant; Donnie would be uncomfortable killing a Protestant. At this thought Donnie’s legs feel weak and he wonders if he has taken on more than he, one man alone, can achieve.
‘You coming tae Spud’s hoose? He’s got an empty.’
‘Naw,’ says Doyle. ‘Too late, man. I’ve got my work in the morning.’
A ned with a job? Donnie can’t believe it.
‘Aw c’mon,’ says the runt, ‘Sally telt wee Shug she fancied you, you’re in mate!’
‘Aye but I’ve got mah day release and I’ve no done mah homework, ah’ll need tae get up and dae it in the morning.’
A ned who goes to college and turns in homework?
Any kind of coherent discussion peters out after this as the neds revert to their more usual mode of communication: dummy fighting. Donnie’s legs are sore with squatting so long. He’ll have to make his move soon. But they’ll hear him coming, they’ll be ready, there are four of them. They’ll hurt him. Donnie desperately tries to invoke the mad burning rage that drove him here, the fearless fury, but it has run out on him. It has changed to a sickening terror of the damage four pairs of Doc Martin boots might do. He wanted to kill them he wanted them to kill him. He wanted an end to being frightened.
‘Fancy geein’ the wee man a bell?’ says the runt, laughing.
‘Aw man, whit a laugh,’ says Doyle. ‘We’ve been phoning him for months and the cunt never says nothing, he just breathes, hhh hhh hhh, like a fucking paedo in a playground. But the shite bomb cracked it. He’s howling like a wean doon the phone. Doyle affects a nasal whine at this point, ‘There’s shite all over the bed, I need help,’ he says!’
The other neds are laughing.
‘Too right he fucking needs help, needs fucking locked up,’ says Doyle to general agreement.
*
The pub is shutting and Pierce tries to talk Tam into coming to the disco with him. He begins by reassuring him that this is a cost-effective venture.
‘It’s filthy cheap, cheaper than buying pints here. Five pounds to get in on a Monday and the beer’s two pound a bottle. You can sook the same beer all night if you’re careful.’
Despite now being a big time rock star, money is always Tam’s first concern.
‘But we’re not buying any more pints here, the bar’s closed.’
Pierce tries a different angle.
‘They play all yon pop music, all the latest from the hit parade. It’s good research, you need to keep your finger on the pulse, Tam. You need to know what the pop pickers are dancing to.’
‘Your patter’s rotten,’ says Tam, but he laughs anyway.
Even Pierce can see that this is not a convincing argument and in desperation must state the crude, unvarnished obvious.
‘Monday, book ladies’ll be in, the place is hoaching with fanny.’
Tam says nothing; he seems disinterested. Pierce can never understand Tam’s reluctance to accompany him on these Monday night fanny missions.
‘C’mon, live a little, for fuck’s sake. I know loads of women that go on a Monday, they’re gagging for it, I’ll introduce you. You’re guaranteed your hole.’
‘Cheers Pierce, but not on a school night.’
‘School night nothing, you don’t need to get up in the morning. That’s the beauty of us working for ourselves, Tam, we make our own hours.’
‘Yeah and I’ve got things to do tomorrow, I want an early start, busy day.’
‘But it’s not as if you have to, you said you were going to work on that riff, you can do that anytime. We’re artists, man, we work when the muse moves us.’
‘You’re an artist, Pierce. I’m just trying to make a living. No, that’s not right,’
Tam’s voice has risen and his face is getting red.
‘I’m not just trying to make a living, I’m trying to make a career.’
Pierce holds up his hands.
‘Fair play to you, Tam, fair play.’
Tam has never been this strident with Pierce before and they are both surprised and a little embarrassed by it.
‘I’ve got a good chance this time, I could do well at this, I’m good at it, I know I am.’
‘I know you are, mate,’ Pierce agrees, ‘I told you that from the start.’
‘I know you did, and I appreciate it. But my days of sitting in the pub talking about it and lying in my bed dreaming about it are over. I’m not like you, Pierce, I can’t afford to piss about.’
At this Pierce stops indulging Tam’s burgeoning ego.
‘What the fuck d’you mean by that?’
‘I don’t mean anything, I’m just saying …’
‘That I do piss about?’
‘That’s not what I said.’
‘It’s what you meant.’
Pierce expects another hasty denial but Tam only shrugs.
‘Take it any way you like.’
They sit in shocked silence for a few minutes while the pub empties and the barman lifts chairs around them.
‘I know how talented you are, Pierce, you’ve told me often enough.’
Pierce bristles at this, this kind of cheek from a young upstart is intolerable, but Tam’s weak smile indicates that it was meant as a joke.
‘Look, the publisher bird, Daisy or whatever her name is, she knows you’ve got talent. They wouldn’t want to publish you if they didn’t think you were good. They believe in you, maybe it’s time you started believing it yourself.’
*
What seems like a long time later, after the neds have left and he is no longer privy to their boastings of delinquency, acts of delinquency perpetrated against him, and him hiding in the bushes like a prick doing nothing about it, Donnie decides to get up. What’s the point of sitting here? He’s not going to go after them, he’s never going to attack them, he hasn’t the balls, why not just admit it? Why not just accept it: some people have tiny balls. Some people are born beautiful or rich or clever or poor or deformed or Catholic, and some are born without courage.
Donnie would give anything for courage, swap it for a limb, well maybe not a limb, he wouldn’t want to have only one arm or even worse one leg, but he’d swap for an organ, one he had two of, like a an eye or a kidney. He could manage okay with one kidney and he would be no less of a man.
He knows he can’t afford self-loathing, knows it’s dangerous, but sometimes, times like now, it’s the most powerful emotion he has, the only emotion he has. Here he is, hiding in the bushes, letting a bunch of fucking Catholic neds throw shite at him and laugh.
It wasn’t Daphne who phoned. All these months he thought she was still there for him, still keeping the door open. Somebody else, the dirty BMW bastard, is accessing Daphne’s letterbox and she won’t even pick up the phone. What the fuck is he going to do now? Might as well top himself.
Take the coward’s way out; that would be the best solution. He could go home and take all four packets of the antidepressants, wash them down with a few beers, stick the video on and float away. Someone else can clean the shite off the bed and the smoke off the walls. He can snooze while Rangers score and never have to wake up again.
&n
bsp; But what if he did wake up? He doesn’t know enough about it and he’s heard stories about drugs ripping up your guts. He could wake vomiting up his own stomach wall, taking days to die, in agony. Not nice. And he couldn’t face his mum and dad at the bedside saying: why, Donnie?
Sliding off this precipice is another option. With a bit of luck his head would hit a boulder and it would be goodnight Vienna. He wouldn’t feel a thing after that. But maybe he would just get all smashed up, and not knowing for sure, those few seconds before impact… nah. Donnie shivers involuntarily.
There must be easier ways. He could look it up on the Internet, there’s bound to be a site, How to top yourself in three easy steps. Three steps is two steps too many. Donnie hasn’t the resources for more. That’s the irony, he thinks, I would commit the ultimate act of cowardice if I wasn’t fucking paralysed by fear.
So he gets up. Or he tries to, but his legs, having crouched so long, are numb. He punches them and this induces an unbearable sensation of pins and needles. He needs to get out of here.
He puts one leg out in front of him and tentatively balances his weight on the other, which seems to help. He hangs on to the sapling tree and pulls himself up, hand over hand. The tree is a bit shoogly, its roots infirm on this rocky platform. His legs are still dead, he’ll have to stand a while but as he’s transferring his weight, he slips. His legs slide away from him and his body drops. He grabs for the young tree and makes it, holding on tight.
Thank God for that.
Donnie laughs, what a revelation! How weird is that? Within two seconds his perception has completely changed. He doesn’t want to die. He didn’t know that.
He knows it now.
He’ll wait a minute, get his breath back, get the strength back in his legs and climb up out of here. Okay, the house is a mess but it’s not the end of the world, it can be cleaned, things can be sorted. He really, really, doesn’t want to die. He’s not ready.
He’s sobbing now, this ledge is pretty fucking dangerous.
Chapter 30
What a fucking cheek he has, thinks Pierce. Hits the big time and five minutes later he’s telling everyone how to run their lives. Well he’s not going to tell me, I go my own way, Pierce McCormack is his own man. And after all that, after falling out with his best mate over it, the disco was rubbish anyway.
He hates the snooty bitches who won’t return his eye contact, sniggering into their Red Bull and vodka, whispering to their mates. He knows what they’re thinking. They see a guy out on his own on a Monday night, a lone wolf, slightly overweight, slightly too old for this. A sad unemployed loser, that’s what they think.
And the ones who do make eye contact, whose gaze he can hardly escape: the ones who have been dumped. Other men’s rejects who, desperate to prove they can still pull, lower their standards and slum it on a Monday night. He despises them too.
That only leaves the Monday Book Ladies. God love them. He doesn’t have the energy or the semen to go home with one of them tonight, what’s the point? He’ll only get kicked out before the alarm goes off. They have lives to get on with, kids to get ready for school, packed lunches to make. He’s not part of that life, real life.
He’s too drunk for it anyway. Above the noise of the pumping music he speaks to a big-toothed, small-breasted woman. She’s not smiling but she is nodding agreement at what he’s saying so he gently pushes back a lock of her hair and whispers in her ear, letting his lips, softer than a kiss, brush her skin. This wee tenderness is one of his trademarks. He looks into her eyes to register the effect of the intimacy but the girl looks slightly scared. She’s left her big teeth out to dry and forgotten to take them back in again. He must have on his drunken sneery face, he realises. It’s time to go home.
Chapter 31
Donnie’s face is muddy. He would spit the dark mouldy earth out of his mouth but he’s frightened of any movement. He tried a few minutes ago to pull himself up, scrabbling and swimming, and now his legs are dangling over the edge. His hips and the tree are the only things holding him, and his arms are tired. He has to move, he has to try, but he’s scared.
He can’t stay here all night. If he doesn’t move he’ll surely fall. The only thing that will save him now is guts. Balls. Cojones. The lack of which got him here in the first place. If ever there was a time when Donnie had to be a man it was now when his life depends upon it.
The wee tree is not secure. He has experimented, one hand at a time, for something more solid to hold on to but there is nothing. A tumble of earth to fill his open mouth and the disturbance further weakening the tree was all it got him. A taste of things to come, if this goes badly his mouth might be permanently filled with earth.
The tree is loosening. Clean white roots, like bones, are visible now at the bottom of the tree. The weight of Donnie’s body is pulling it out as he slides. He tries to use his ribcage as a brake, burning as it scrapes the rocky ledge.
It’s too late to try. Whatever he does now will only hasten his fall. He wants another minute, another second, before the pain.
Chapter 32
As Pierce makes his way home he reflects on what Tam said. Every word, every nonchalant shrug is imprinted on Pierce’s brain and he recalls and scrutinises them one by one. After a fair and through analysis he concludes that Tam is an arse. He thinks about what he now considers his book deal, and knows he must knuckle down. This is a good chance, the best opportunity he’s ever had. But the days of sitting in the pub talking about it and lying in bed dreaming about it have to be over.
Although he’s a bit tired and more than a wee bit drunk he could make a start tonight. He pictures himself at the computer, his fingers a blur on the keyboard, smoke rising from the overloaded machine due to the complexity and profundity of his ideas and the rapidity with which he records them. It’s like a movie with the ashtray filling, the manuscript becoming a tower of paper and the sun slowly creeping into the sky. He sees himself type the words ‘the end’. These visions suddenly give tremendous urgency to his mission and he rushes home to make a start.
Chapter 33
The tree is now only loosely attached to the ground. It begins to slide. It is a hopeless equation. The looser it becomes, the further off the ledge Donnie slides, putting more weight on the tree, making it looser. A downward spiral, but finite. For the first time in his life Donnie questions gravity, why must things fall down? Who made up that rule? Could it not, just this once, work the other way around?
Another inch, another couple of inches, Donnie accepts it. What else can he do? He wishes he’d taken more Valium before he’d left the house, all of it. Every second is a bonus, one in which he might be rescued, one in which he is not dead, his guts are not splattered on the sharp river rocks.
Please God don’t let it hurt, he prays, don’t make it sore, don’t let my eyes pop out the sockets or anything gross like that. Don’t let my body buckle, my leg twist round my neck, no ugliness, no bones sticking out, please God, please. But he knows it’s got to hurt. Anticipation of the pain weakens his remaining strength.
Now the tree has lost its hold on the earth, and so will Donnie. He knows it’s pointless but Donnie continues to hold fast to the slim trunk, he needs to hold on to something. The young tree, so green and fresh, full of life, so full of the future, slides with him, slowly, slowly, into the gorge.
Chapter 34
It is at this very moment that something slides out of Daphne.
Slides is not the word Daphne would use, implying as it does, ease. Her teeth are still gritted, her jaw locked, her face purple, her muscles juddering. A long time has passed since she first hugged the tree, the full moon has climbed up and across the sky, time enough for her to pass out at least three or four times, she doesn’t know for how long. Time enough for her to be wakened by the torture of her body being ripped in two, for her to change position, sometimes squatting sometimes kneeling, but always holding tight to the tree. Earlier on she did let go of it but only to pull
her wet and bloodied jogging pants off and make a little nest beneath her clenched bum.
The nest is filthy now, bloodied by the mess of organic stuff she has voided but there is more to come. Another dump, but this time it passes easier, it is not so solid as the last one. As it flops on top of the earlier load she sees that it is a big, dark, red, jelly thing, which could be her liver. But Daphne knows it is not her liver. With the bark biting into her face she passes out again.
Chapter 35
Right, he thinks, computer, check. Paper, check. Ashtray and fags, check. Chocolate Digestives, check. Having gathered the accoutrements, Pierce has to gather his thoughts. The answering machine is blinking. Should he find out who it is?
No, ignore it and concentrate on the work. It’s probably Tam phoning to apologise. Well fuck him, he can wait, in fact, he’s not going to see or speak to Tam now until the book’s finished. See how he likes them apples.
But what if it’s Sean? If it is Sean it’ll only be to tell him that now he’s fully recovered from the hypothermia, he’s planning suicide again. Pierce thinks now, after the event, that it was perhaps wrong to stop Sean leaving with Bernie. He would be much happier dead. Pierce should never have intervened. If Sean says he’s going to top himself it’s going to give Pierce a bit of a moral dilemma and he’s got a book to finish. He can’t speak to him either.
It could be a burd. Pierce checks his watch, the disco is coming out now, maybe one of the girls hasn’t pulled anyone else and is calling him in as back up. It wouldn’t be the first time. The fourth emergency (shagging) service. Pierce’s baws are temporarily empty but anyway, he’s sick of being used by women. Fuck them too, he thinks, or rather, don’t fuck them.