Every One a Winner
When Harry Met Barry, Volume 1
Johnny Parker
Published by Johnny Parker, 2017.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
EVERY ONE A WINNER
First edition. November 4, 2017.
Copyright © 2017 Johnny Parker.
Written by Johnny Parker.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
About the Author
To Andrea
For letting me be who I need to be.
One
Harry rearranged the crap on the sales table for the tenth time.
"Who am I trying to kid, I can shuffle the teapots, knitting books, photo frames, back scratchers and all this other shite till the cows come home, no-one is going to buy it."
He picked up a magnifying shaving mirror and checked his nose for blackheads in the hope he might find one to squeeze. The Town Market was supposed to be a step up from the usual round of car boot sales.
“I’m in the middle of a busy shopping centre, I thought. I’ll be beating customers off with a stick I thought. Fifteen quid this pitch cost, three times the usual fee and I haven’t made one sale,” Harry muttered to himself.
He threw the mirror into a cardboard box behind the counter. The scraps of newspaper, with which he wrapped the fragile, stuff broke its fall and saved him from another seven years bad luck.
People drifted through the stalls like zombies in a post-apocalyptic retail wasteland. Their eyes wanted to buy stuff but their pockets said no. The woman who ran the second-hand bookstall across from Harry rearranged her thrillers and gave him a look as if to say, "Yeah, loser."
"Fuck it, I'm not freezing my nads off here any longer." Harry picked up a teacup bearing the regal mugs of Charles and Diana and stooped to get a bit of newspaper to wrap it.
“How much is this mate?”
Harry jumped in surprise, the adrenaline of a possible sale flowing like Niagara in spate. Then he saw who it was. The archangel of meanness who seemed to stalk him at every boot sale, held up a Royal Albert china cup and saucer.
“A fiver,” said Harry firmly.
His potential customer spat on the cup and wiped it on his sleeve, “give you 50p.”
“Get lost.”
“That’s not a nice way to talk to your customers.”
“That’s because you’re not a nice customer. You want everything for nothing. You and all the other tossers.”
Harry snatched the cup and saucer from his wheelchair-bound antagonist. Bookstall Woman stopped filing cosy mysteries and watched the real-life drama with interest.
“It’s not even worth 50p,” Wheelchair wasn’t going to give in.
“It’s worth a fiver because I paid three quid for it.”
“You was robbed then. Give you 70p.”
Harry handed the cup and saucer towards Wheelchair Man. As his tattooed knuckles eagerly reached for it, Harry let it drop. The fragile china exploded on the concrete floor.
“Now do one.”
“You’re mental,” Wheelchair Man pushed his chair backwards with one slippered foot as Harry reached for the royal mug.
“Have this one too,” Harry threw the mug after the rapidly retreating shopper shattering the royal couple into unhappy pieces.
Bookstall Woman’s mouth was gaping in astonishment; “I’ve wanted to throw something at that tight arsed scum bag for ages. He’s loaded you know, claims all sorts of disability, the chair is a scam.”
“I’ve had it with this.” Harry picked up a box of books and gave it to the woman. “This life isn’t for me.”
He turned his back on the stall and walked away.
“What about your stuff?” she called after him.
“You have it,” he said without looking back.
Harry left the market and cut through the shopping precinct. The car boot sale monkey was finally off his back. But then he remembered he had to go home to his girlfriend Peggy, whose first words would be ‘how did you get on?' Words pregnant with some kind of monetary expectation, an expectation he couldn't fulfil.
She'd been brilliant with him for the last two years. They were a second chance romance. Two middle-aged divorcees looking for love. Meeting at a Salsa club, it was love at first Lambada. She had walked in between her two mates from work and it was like a spotlight suddenly shone on her, lighting her up and casting the rest of the room into shadow. Peggy spotted him too, and so had her mates, and not just because the disco lights reflected off his bald head.
“He’s fit,” said Jane, the older of her friends.
“I hope he asks me to dance,” said Jackie the younger one.
Peggy said nothing. She knew he was hers. It was that simple. She was right, six months later Harry had sold his flat and moved in with her. Now, two years later, their relationship was still happy and solid, but the tension had been growing lately.
Harry was the wrong side of fifty and had quit his job as an IT Contractor just before he met Peggy. Thirty-two years working at jobs that paid the bills but not the soul had burnt him out. Divorce and bankruptcy had left him a directionless train wreck. His two kids Billy and Lilly - he was a fan of rhyme - must have wondered what the fuck he was doing, but they were grown up now and focussed on their own worlds.
Nothing ever stays the same and the wheel of life turned back in Harry’s favour. Salsa salvation was at hand, Peggy and Harry's guardian angels had conspired with Cupid and his arrow pinned them together like cheese and pineapple on a cocktail stick.
Harry had found love, but the rest of his life was still a mess. Before he met Peggy he'd already sold his flat and booked a mid-life crisis around the world trip. Since he'd come back he'd struggled to get work. He couldn't look at a spreadsheet without feeling sick, he needed to try something else. While away he'd discovered writing. A creative writing course revealed the joys of screenwriting. His first attempt had been a hit, winning best short film at a local film festival. He thought he'd try a new career in the movie business but after being a low/no paid tea boy on three feature films he decided that pandering to prima donna actors wasn't the answer.
The next shiny thing to divert his attention was eBay, but getting more returns than sales soon burst that get rich quick bubble. Sliding down the snake of desperation with no money and no ideas the eBay stock ended up on car boot pasting tables. The spiral of decline had hit rock bottom with Wheelchair Guy, who was the straw that broke the back of Harry's reality avoidance. Peggy's sturdy patience was being rolled thin by Harry's lack of success. She'd given him a long length of rope and he'd finally hung himself.
He couldn't go home and admit his last chance saloon had gone tits up. Wending his way through the town centre shopping precinct, Harry was so absorbed in his own misery he didn't notice the bent and shuffling shape of an old man pushing his three-wheeled invalid walker out of BarryBet betting shop. Nobby was muttering to himself about the unfairness of gambling and didn't see Harry.
It was a slow-motion collision, two dark clouds bumping softly together in the shopping precinct heavens.
“Fucking hell dick head, watch where you’re going, get off me,” spat Nobby.
Harry suddenly realised he was on top of the old longhaired scarecrow. A six foot two and sixteen stone heavyweight squashing the featherweight minger. Nobby the Jobby’s roadkill B.O. hit Harry like smelling salts and he jumped up, suddenly back in the real world.
“Sorry mate,” he offered a hand to Nobby and im
mediately regretted it when he saw the black overgrown fingernails. Now he knew what it felt like to touch a real zombie.
"Could have broken me bloody hip," moaned the old fella straightening a tweed jacket dustier than Tutankhamen's bandages.
Harry picked up Nobby the Jobby’s trike and apologetically set it in front of the old moaner.
“Don’t even think of putting in a claim,” a Sherman Tank in a dress with a voice like Tom Waits gargling acid, stood on the BarryBet threshold.
“Oh yeah thanks Marge, knew you’d be on his side.”
“Take no notice of Nobby love,” Big Marge winked at Harry, “I’ve been wanting to knock him out for years.”
“There’s plenty of other bookies you know.”
“Be my guest.”
“I’m really sorry,” said Harry, feeling like he’d unwittingly become the catalyst that brought a simmering feud to the boil.
“Don’t worry love, he’ll be back tomorrow, no one else will have him.”
“You don’t care, that’s your problem,” muttered Nobby, aligning his trike in the direction of the pub.
“I do care and that is my problem. See ya tomorrow.”
“Fuck off,” was Nobby’s parting shot.
“See what I have to put up with,” Big Marge turned to go back in the shop then stopped, “were you coming in?”
“Er no,” over Marge’s shoulder Harry spotted a notice in the window printed in large type on a sheet of A4, ‘Need a Job? Apply Within.’
In a microsecond, Harry made his mind up.
“I mean yes, I’ve come about the job,” Harry pointed at the sign.
Marge looked him up and down. If he'd been a second-hand car she'd have kicked his tyres.
“You ever been in a betting shop?” Big Marge eyed him up and down like a farmer about to buy a horse, luckily for Harry she stopped short of sticking her fat fingers in his mouth to examine his teeth.
“Yeah, I like racing. Grand National, never miss it.”
“You’ll wish you did if you work here.”
He looked a bit taken aback.
“Sorry babe, take no notice of me, I’ve been here too long. Come on, she’s in the back.”
“She?”
“Area Manager.”
Harry hesitated as if his snap decision might actually come to something, something he might have to commit to. It had been a few years since he'd had a ‘proper job’ and a Pavlov's dog reaction twisted his gut with sudden trepidation.
“Don’t worry she won’t bite, I’m the only guard dog in this junkyard,” Marge sensed his hesitancy.
‘That’ll be a bulldog then,’ thought Harry as he followed her into the shop. The woman had a magnetic quality despite her outward rough shell.
Harry felt a little like Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars bar. In true Wild West Saloon tradition, everybody in the shop turned to look at him.
“What are you lot looking at,” Big Marge growled at the punters who all suddenly had betting slips to write, form to study and TV monitors to watch, “anyone would think you’d never seen a normal person.”
Marge let herself into the back office with a bunch of keys that would grace a prison warden. She slipped a piece of paper under the glass partition.
“You can sit over there,” said Marge, “the test won't take long, for you.”
Harry looked at the paper, it didn't seem to have too much on it, name and address, last three jobs, then a maths test. Harry couldn't believe how easy it was, simple addition, simple subtraction, easy multiplication, times table stuff.
‘It doesn't take much to be a cashier,' thought Harry, but then he looked around and two other people were sitting a little bit further along the table from him, chewing the ends of their short bookie's biros and agonizing over 7 times 8 and 46 - 10. He handed the paper back to Marge.
“Take a seat or put a bet on if you want to, it won't take long.”
Harry was halfway through the runners for the 2:30 at Epsom when a door opened and a middle-aged lady in a smart black suit waved him through to the back office. She sat Harry down and looked at his paper.
“MBA in Technology Management, are you sure you want to work in a bookies?”
"I'm kind of having a break," he said, "I'm trying to write a screenplay and I want to have a part-time job to help with the bills, you know, where I don't have to think too much."
“I wouldn't say you won't have to think,” she said, “our customers are not as stupid as they look. Many of them will try to con you if they can. You have to be careful. You don't seem to have too much retail experience.”
“I didn't put it on my CV but I did have a couple of Saturday jobs when I was fifteen, in a bookshop then selling menswear. I was a bit naive, I used to think cavalry twill trousers were navy blue with a yellow stripe down the outside of the leg.”
The Area Manager laughed. Harry had always been able to make people laugh. In school, it got him the cane a couple of times, but that somehow didn't teach him when humour was not appropriate. Jokes in interviews were a risk but this time he had pulled it off.
“I'd like to think I'm not quite so gullible now,” he smiled and she smiled back.
“Well you seem smart enough, we will have to see if you’re street smart enough. Can you start tomorrow?”
Harry thought for a moment and then remembered it was usually best to go with your gut feeling. The guts said yes.
“No problem.”
She offered her hand and he shook it, “Welcome to BarryBet.”
On his way out, Harry gave Big Marge the thumbs up, "See you tomorrow.”
“Half eight sharp, I don’t do late,” Big Marge winked at him, “you'll be alright love.”
Harry was in a daze as he walked home. He’d come out to do a market stall and gone home a bookies cashier.
“Shit, I’m back on the hamster wheel.”
Two
Harry was sweeping the drive when Peggy came home. Their road was a quiet oasis of big old Victorian houses. The town had peaked in the 1800’s and declined steadily ever since. Now the surrounding area could have been the inspiration for the Walking Dead. Harry’s daughter Lilly always locked the car door whenever she drove into the area. The upside was that Peggy had been able to buy a five-bedroom semi with a big basement and garden for a pittance. A massive sycamore tree, a sapling when Napoleon was getting his short arse kicked at Waterloo, poured nature shite on to the drive all year round. Harry earned his keep by doing the yard work, odd jobs, Hoovering, shopping and cooking. That wasn’t what he wanted for his life but it partly paid the debt of guilt for not having a breadwinner's job, a man’s job.
“How’s your day been?” was Peggy’s first question, as always, followed by a kiss.
“Shite,” he replied leaning on his brush, “I didn't make any money at all on the stall, ended up fifteen quid down.”
The look on her face told him everything he needed to know. Before she could ask the question ‘well what are you going to do now?’ he blurted it out.
“I've got a job.”
Her face brightened as if he'd won the lottery. “That’s fab, did you get a call from an agency?”
"Not exactly, I'm a bookies cashier," he stooped to sweep a collection of sycamore seeds into his dustpan. He picked one out and tossed it in the air, hoping it might be a distraction as it helicoptered back to the dustpan, but it wasn't.
Peggy’s face dropped from being a lottery winner to having a turd in her pocket as she tried to take in this ‘wonderful’ news.
"I could only get part-time," he offered, digging his loser hole a little deeper, "but at least it will be some regular money to help with the bills."
Her silence continued as she bottled up her feelings and tried to work out a response that didn’t involve snatching the yard brush from him and inserting it where the sun didn’t shine.
“I'll try to get my script finished, if I can sell it to Hollywood will be rich. You will never have t
o work again,” Harry qualified his optimism with a wry smile.
She remained mute, immobile as a silver-painted street statue, only the blue eyes conveyed disappointment. There was no greater punishment for a man than to endure the disapproval of his woman. In the time they had been together there had never been an argument, never a crossed word, this was new territory and Harry didn't like it.
“Let's go out for tea my treat,” he put the brush down and took her hand, “well actually, your treat I won't get paid till next week.”
“Okay, but I need a wee first,” she gave him her handbag to hold.
He watched her disappear into the house.
“God I love that woman.”
Three
The next morning Harry rooted out a white shirt and black pants from the depths of his wardrobe. The wardrobe was a walnut veneered relic from a bygone age, a bit like himself. It had the internal space of Mary Poppins’ bag. His shorts, t-shirt and trainers, which had been his uniform for the last couple of years, lay abandoned on the box at the foot of the bed. He looked at them wistfully.
Peggy was brushing her teeth at the sink in the corner of their bedroom in just her knickers and bra. In her late forties she still had a figure like Wonder Woman, he often marvelled at how four kids had failed to leave a mark on her. Even with toothpaste all over her face he still thought she was gorgeous. Every morning she would have a wardrobe moment, trying to choose an outfit that matched her mood, so she picked up quickly on Harry’s hesitance.
“Don’t they give you a uniform?” she said with a mouthful of toothpaste.
“They didn’t have an extra large, should get one delivered today. They’ve probably run out, they’re all what you might call, big boned.”
“Not big and muscled like my hunky man?” she looked Harry up and down and raised an eyebrow in appreciation, “not bad, for your age.”
"Yeah, thanks for qualifying that. I hope you are frothing at the mouth with toothpaste and not lust, I don't want to be late for work now do I?"
Every One a WInner Page 1