Magnificent Joe

by James Wheatley

  Barry was propped up next to Jim, insensible with drink. He still had a pint gripped in his hand and looked like he was trying to climb into the glass headfirst.

  ‘It always ends up like this,’ Jim muttered to himself. He thought glumly of the cost of the taxi home, and decided to drink more to take the edge off it. Then he became dimly aware of a tugging at his sleeve.

  Jim looked round and blinked, trying to focus on the face in front of him. He was drunker than he had thought.

  ‘Hello. It’s me.’ It was a girl. She was shouting to be heard over the music.

  ‘What?’ Jim leaned into her so that they were ear to mouth. She smelled of perfume and vodka.

  ‘I spilled your drinks. I’m sorry.’

  Jim squinted at her. He recognized her now and tried to smile. She tried to smile back. She was supporting herself with one hand against the bar. ‘It’s all right,’ he yelled. ‘I’m dry now.’

  She motioned towards the dance floor and took him by the hand.

  —

  Later, Jim would be unable to remember how they got to her house or even what her name was. He woke up at dawn, huddled in a bus stop, with a vague sense that something unpleasant had happened. There was vomit on his jeans that he knew wasn’t his own. He looked at the timetable; he could get a bus home.

  When the bus arrived, the driver looked at Jim sceptically. ‘Rough night?’

  Jim just paid and went and lay down on the back seat. There was hardly anyone else aboard, and the thrum of the engines lulled him back into a drunken doze.

  When he got home, he went straight for a piss and saw himself in the bathroom mirror. There was a mark under his eye. Not quite a bruise, but something or someone had definitely hit him there. Then he remembered the girl throwing him out of the flat.

  ‘Fuck,’ he said, and sat down on the toilet seat. Had they had sex? They must have. Mustn’t they? He remembered seeing her naked. He’d said something funny about her nipples and she’d laughed. But then later, she was angry with him, and Jim couldn’t fit the two scenes together. Somehow he’d screwed it up.

  ‘Fuck,’ he said.

  —

  That Monday morning, Barry and Geoff picked up Jim from the corner as usual. He climbed into the van and sat silently, knowing what was coming. It was Geoff who said it.

  ‘Are you seeing her again?’

  ‘No.’

  They drove on for a few minutes.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Barry. ‘It’s better to have loved and lost than to live with the stupid cunt for the rest of your life. Take it from me: I know.’

  Jim told him nothing.

  —

  That night, Jim was ejected from sleep at about 3 a.m. He stumbled downstairs into the kitchen and smoked at the table, drinking instant coffee. He felt unco-ordinated and numb. His hands shook and it was hard to roll cigarettes. He got tobacco everywhere. He felt like shit, and he couldn’t think of a single good thing.

  ‘There’s got to be more than this,’ he said out loud.

  —

  In the morning, he didn’t go to work, but got dressed and walked through the village and along the lane to Joe’s house. Jim hadn’t been there for years, but the route came automatically to him.

  When he arrived, he went round the back and stopped as he walked into the yard. There was a car there. He recognized it, but it used to be serviceable and parked at the front to be driven occasionally – and inexpertly – by Mrs Joe. Now it was up on blocks and the dark, dry stain on the cobbles said all its oil had long leaked away. There was no one here to maintain it, thought Jim. The last person to do any work on it was probably his own father. Jim slipped past it and knocked on the back door. He felt like someone forcing themselves to step out into space.

  She answered after a while. To Jim, she’d always looked old. Now she looked a bit older than that. She peered at him over the rims of her specs.

  ‘He told me you were back,’ she said.

  ‘He says the place is falling down around your ears.’

  Mrs Joe sighed. ‘You’d better come in.’

  ‌‌6

  October 2004

  We roll onto the site through a thin, damp mist. It’s Monday morning, it’s eight thirty, and I’ve got that cold-start feeling where every joint in my body seems to grate and squeal, and the week hasn’t even started yet. I get out of the van and the cold comes through my sweater immediately. I shiver. I reach back in and grab my boots, then trot over to the cabin. Of course, the door is locked.

  ‘Who’s got the key?’

  ‘I have – hold on.’ Geoff climbs out of the van, followed by Barry. ‘Bollocks, it’s colder now than it was when we left.’

  ‘Stop moaning and bring us the key.’

  Geoff wanders over and rummages in his pocket for the key to the cabin. ‘Fucking bastard.’ He separates it from the crap, gripping it precariously between two fingers. Flakes of old tissue paper float to the ground, and a packet of tobacco almost follows. Eventually, he fumbles the key into the keyhole and lets us in.

  ‘Put the fucking kettle on, then,’ says Barry, and throws himself into one of the plastic seats. He lights a cigarette immediately and sucks in the smoke with relish.

  The cabin is dank from being closed up all weekend, and stinks of the mud that coats the floor. Soon, though, Barry’s cigarette smoke cuts through the damp, dirty smell. Geoff has settled into his own seat and is proceeding to roll himself a fag. I presume, therefore, that the command to put the kettle on was directed at me. I fill the kettle in the filthy sink and brew up as the other two tap fag ash onto the floor.

  ‘Fuck.’ My heart sinks. Last thing I need on a Monday morning.

  ‘What?’ asks Barry.

  ‘There’s no fucking teabags.’

  ‘There was a whole fucking packet of PG Tips on Friday.’

  ‘They were that fitter’s. He took them home.’

  ‘Stingy cunt.’

  We look at each other shiftily. I sigh.

  ‘You’d best go and get some,’ says Barry.

  ‘Money.’ I hold out my hand. The other two reluctantly cough up a quid each.

  ‘Get some milk as well.’

  —

  Fifteen minutes later, I return to the site bearing a plastic bottle of semi-skimmed milk and a box of eighty teabags. As I trudge up the access road, I see a silver 4x4 parked right outside the cabin. It looks quite posh and not very old, and I’ve never seen it here before. I wonder, glumly, if some kind of manager has come down to check up on things, but as I get closer, I hear Geoff’s giggle through the door. Something must have cheered him up.

  As soon as I get inside, I am enveloped by stinking blue cigar smoke, and as I cough, I see something that gives me such a shock I almost choke on my own spit.

  ‘Fucking hell.’

  ‘All right?’ Mac grins at me, grips his cigar in his teeth, and shakes my hand mightily.

  ‘Christ. It’s been a while.’

  ‘Three years. Geoff’s wedding.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Working.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘No, I just travelled two hours for a cup of fucking tea. Yes, really. There’s six of us; the rest’ll be here in a minute.’

  ‘Fucking hell. Well, it’s good to see you again.’

  Barry grunts and lights another cigarette, but Geoff smiles brightly. ‘Aye, it’s going to be just like old times.’ Barry shakes his head and looks out of the window.

  ‘Anyroad, are you lads going to show me the ropes or what?’ Mac takes a long drag on his cigar and pauses expectantly.

  Geoff and Barry look at their cigarettes and continue to smoke without moving from their chairs. Mac keeps looking at us.

  I sigh. ‘All right, Mac, I’ll give you the fucking tour. Just let me get my boots on.’

  ‘Good lad.’

  I sit down to change my shoes. Being called ‘good lad’ by Mac is a bit rum, since he’s only a year
older than me. On the other hand, he’s probably earned the right. He stares down at me from beneath his thick black eyebrows. ‘Been keeping yourself busy?’

  ‘Not really. Just the same old shite.’ I finish lacing my boots. ‘You must be, though, judging by that fancy motor.’

  ‘Aye, business is good. I’ll need a fucking secretary soon.’

  Barry snorts loudly.

  Mac grins. ‘Do you need a tissue, Baz? You should keep one up your sleeve, like your granny used to.’

  ‘All right, Mac,’ I say. ‘Let’s go.’

  We walk out. The mist is gone, but the sky remains grey. I lead Mac over to the jagged building. ‘This isn’t my job, but anyway, there it is.’

  Mac stands with his arms folded and takes in the view. Judged solely by his constituent parts – the timeshare tan, the belly, the moustache, the tremendous eyebrows – Mac should look ridiculous, a Mexican bandit gone to seed – but he doesn’t. He just looks like Mac, and Mac is solid and reassuring.

  ‘Well, let’s see now.’ He strides to the hole in the wall that will one day hold the side door and extends his head into the darkness within.

  ‘The leccy’s just inside, to your left,’ I say, and Mac is swallowed up. I hear the scraping as he swings his foot over the floor, feeling for the distribution box, and a heavy clunk as he connects with it. There is a brief fumbling and the temporary lights flicker on. I follow him in, but he just stands there amid the dust and assorted mess, looking around him quite casually.

  ‘Geoff and Baz were saying this is a fucking shambles.’

  ‘It’s just the usual bollocks – you know, one thing after another. There were four other brickies to begin with, but they fucked off weeks ago. They found some replacements, but they were coming all the way from Wales and buggered off the minute they got something closer to home. Then it rained for a week and the site flooded.’

  ‘Jesus. Well, I’ll soon get it shipshape.’ He gives me a wink.

  ‘Fucking hell, don’t take that attitude with Barry – he’ll kick off.’

  ‘Don’t worry. You stick to your walls, my lads’ll take mine, and I won’t interfere.’

  ‘Good, because you know what he’s like when he thinks he’s got something to complain about.’

  We hear the sound of vehicles drawing onto the site.

  ‘That must be my lads,’ says Mac. ‘I’d better go and let them know the score.’

  We splash through the mud back to the cabin and find it suddenly a lot more crowded. Mac is true to his word – six men – and though there are enough seats for everyone, the seats in question are small, very close to one another, and bolted to the floor. Things look pretty cosy. I slip onto the seat next to Geoff, opposite Barry.

  ‘Full house now, then,’ I say to them.

  ‘Aye.’ Geoff smiles. ‘Mebbes they’ll liven the place up a bit. It’s got to be better than spending all day with you two miserable bastards.’

  I give Geoff the benefit of a laugh, but Barry just snorts again and violently shakes open his newspaper.

  ‘What’s up, Baz?’ Geoff asks.

  ‘Nothing,’ says Barry without looking up from his paper.

  Geoff winks at me and then calls out, ‘Here, Mac, do you remember that motorcycle we did up?’

  Mac looks over from where he’s sitting and smiles broadly. ‘Yes, I bloody do. One of the best summers we ever spent that, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Aye, it were.’

  ‘I remember when Baz went over the handlebars. We thought we’d lost you there, until you got up and started staggering around like a drunk.’ Mac laughs at the memory. Barry shakes his head and pretends to read.

  Barry doesn’t like Mac. There is the inevitable clash of characters, but really it all goes back to the motorcycle. Mac got a couple of weeks’ work one summer, helping out on a local farm. All he did was clean out a big barn – hard labour and not in the least exciting. It was the motorcycle that made it worth doing. Under a tarp he found a wretched old C15. It was ancient even then, and in need of serious attention, but in Mac’s imagination it gleamed and roared. An agreement was reached that when the job was finished, Mac could take the motorcycle.

  It became a shared project, and the four of us worked on it for weeks that summer. Whenever the weather was fine, we’d be in Mac’s back yard puzzling over the repairs and arguing about the best way to do things. Sometimes Mac’s dad would stand in the doorway, drinking tea and smoking. Usually he just laughed at us, but occasionally he offered advice.

  Against the odds, we got the bastard running, and spent the remainder of the summer taking turns to rip around the fields and lanes. Naturally, Mac was the best rider, but at the end of the summer, he sold the bike and took the money.

  That’s when the recriminations started. Geoff and I had always considered it Mac’s bike, and though we were disappointed that he’d got rid of it, we didn’t bear any grudges. Barry, on the other hand, was furious: he felt we had a stake in the bike and deserved some of the money. It was ridiculous – Mac had paid for the rebore, and we’d siphoned all the petrol we used out of his dad’s car – but Barry remained implacable.

  Anyway, by the time I got out of prison, Mac was gone – off in Spain building hotels. ‘Best place for him,’ Barry would say, and from Barry’s point of view, that was true: without Mac around he could finally be the boss. A year or so later, however, Mac came home with new skills and big ideas, and hostilities flared again. He went into business for himself, and not just as a self-employed brickie like Barry and Geoff, but a proper business with a balance sheet and his name on the van. And then his name on the truck. And then his name on the register of company directors. One day, he knocked on Barry’s door and offered us work. Whether Mac did it out of mischief or genuine need I’ll never know, but Barry turned him down flat.

  By then, Mac had married and moved away to the countryside of North Yorkshire, so we saw him less, and then hardly ever. Still, Barry couldn’t forgive him. ‘That fucking John McCluskey, always out for the profit and fuck the rest of us,’ was his constant refrain and judgement of the man. Barry would have done the same, though, if he’d had the wit.

  ‘Could you shift over, mate?’ A man stands over Barry with a mug of tea in one hand and a half-eaten egg and bacon McMuffin in the other. Barry looks up and inspects him slowly. His disgust is palpable; the man has fashionable hair.

  ‘Have you nicked one of our fucking teabags?’

  ‘Fuck’s sake, Baz, let the lad sit down.’ Geoff kicks him under the table, but the man is already lowering himself into the space, leaving Barry with no choice but to move over.

  ‘Cheers, mate,’ says the man. ‘No, I haven’t, actually. We brought our own.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘It’s your milk, though.’

  Barry slaps his newspaper down on the table.

  ‘Only joking.’

  ‘He doesn’t have a sense of humour.’ Mac, from behind. He places his hand on the man’s shoulder. ‘Our Barry is an iron man, aren’t you?’

  Barry just looks out of the window.

  ‘Anyway, lads, this is Lee. He’s my right-hand man.’

  ‘Hiya,’ says Lee. We’re all introducing ourselves when the Irish cunt walks in.

  ‘That’s the site engineer,’ says Geoff in a low voice. ‘He’s a right bastard.’

  ‘You new boys, sign these fucking forms,’ the Irish cunt brandishes a clipboard at the nearest man.

  ‘Have you got a pen?’

  ‘Find your own fucking pen. Which one of you is John McCluskey?’

  ‘Over here,’ says Mac slowly.

  ‘I need to see you in the office to go over the plans.’

  Mac looks at the Irish cunt, takes a drink of tea, swallows, and then carefully places the mug back on the tabletop. ‘I’ll be right there, once I’ve finished my brew.’

  ‘Well, I haven’t got all day.’ With that the Irish cunt turns to us and looks as if he’s about to ask why we
aren’t working when it’s gone ten, but from outside comes the deep growl of a truck engine and the hard beep of a reverse signal. ‘Fucking hell,’ he mutters, and bustles out of the cabin.

  Barry gives Lee a grim smile. ‘Welcome to our world.’

  I don’t think I can listen to any more moaning today. I close my ears and look out of the cabin window. Outside, the Irish cunt is involved in a heated argument with the man who delivers our mortar.

  —

  Van, work, van, home, pub, bed. As Barry pilots us around the long bend that leads into the village, the knowledge that it’s only Monday night squats in my thoughts. We left the site early – the mortar was the wrong mix and everyone was thoroughly fed up – but it’s October now, so it’s already dark. A whole day murdered for nothing, and four more to go. Geoff snoozes in the passenger seat, his left cheek making a wet slap against the window every time we hit a bump. He has farted several times since drifting off, but we are thankful for the fact that he has not started to snore. I’m in the second row of seats, staring at my reflection in the side window. At first, it is solid and lifelike, but is obliterated as we enter the village and the shapes of buildings and parked cars loom up under the streetlights.

  I sense a movement and turn to meet it; Barry is looking at me in the rearview mirror. Our gazes lock, briefly, on the glass.

  ‘What fucking day is it?’ he asks.

  ‘It’s Monday, Barry.’

  ‘Fuck. Four days.’

  I grunt some sort of sympathy, some sort of common feeling. There is a sudden discomfort in the realization that I share thoughts with Barry. Somehow it just makes it worse.

  Ahead of us, I can see the back of a pedestrian as he walks down the street: shopping bag in hand, heavy gait, and slight stoop. It can only be Joe.

  ‘Pull over, Barry, I’ll walk from here.’

  He doesn’t argue. ‘Suit yourself.’

  ‘I will.’

  The van stops and we are still some way behind Joe. If I walk slowly at first, Barry will have driven off before I catch up with Joe, and won’t see us. I needn’t have worried, though. Barry is away the moment I slide the door shut. I set off briskly and draw up with Joe.