Magnificent Joe

by James Wheatley

  I check everywhere and see that I was right: every light in every room is on, even the lamps. But Joe isn’t here. I sit down at the bottom of the staircase, on the second-to-last step. The coat hooks are on the wall in front of me and Joe’s big, dirty duffel doesn’t hang from any of them. I could stay here until he gets back, but when will that be?

  I go out to the car and turn in the lane. It’s narrow and I have to inch the car round, lock to lock several times, but eventually I face the right way. I can only hope that he hasn’t taken the footpaths and bridleways – that even he wouldn’t go out there in the pitch black. He must be in the village somewhere. I set off. In the rearview mirror the lights of Joe’s house still blaze away. Fuck it. That’s the least of my worries.

  Back in the village, I make a pass up and down the main road, but I don’t see him plodding along, just some kids hanging out in the bus shelter. One of them almost runs out in front of the car. I brake hard and blow the horn, which invites muffled jeers and a thump on the rear wing as I go past. They’re good kids, really. No, they’re twats. Abortion should be compulsory.

  I pass the pub, but he won’t be in there. I crawl by the churchyard, but he’s not among the gravestones or sitting on the bench. In truth, he’s probably nowhere in particular: he doesn’t like to stop, he likes to keep walking. I can’t drive along every street in the village. The estates alone would take ages. Then there are all the terraces, and you can’t even get a vehicle down the back lanes. Maybe I should just return to the house and wait for him to come home, but he doesn’t have anything to come home to.

  The park comes up on my right. Joe always thought the equipment was ‘magnificent’, but it was impressed upon him that it’s unseemly for a man of his age to hang around a kiddies’ playground, sitting on the swings and striking up conversations with five-year-olds. Still, under current circumstances it might be understandable if he were there now, trying to fit his fat arse down the slide. Simple pleasures and all that. He really liked the old park too, before it was ripped up and eventually replaced with one that met modern safety standards. I remember him pushing me on the roundabout once. He was stronger then, hadn’t yet run to fat, and he pushed so hard and fast I thought I was going to fly off. Each time he gripped the bars and gave another heave I felt the surge deep in my insides. At first I liked it and the sensation gave me an erection. Then I started to feel sick, dizzy, and scared, but Joe had a big grin on his face and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings by shouting to stop, so I just clung on. He kept going for ages. Eventually, someone’s mum came over and told him to bugger off and let the other kids have a go.

  I pull over and get out.

  I can’t see it from here, but the playground is in the middle of the park on a square of that special bouncy tarmac that will scuff your knees but won’t break your skull. The night is moonless, and I’m in the glow of a streetlamp, so the open space behind the road is just a big black blank. I stuff my hands in my pockets and walk in what should be roughly the direction of the climbing frames.

  After a minute or so, I hear voices to my left and slightly behind. I turn towards the sound and see the silhouette of the slide. I realize that I somehow veered away from and walked past the playground. I can’t see the people, or hear exactly what they’re saying, but ten to one it’s a group of teenagers and no doubt they’ll give me some cheek or other. There is a small flash and a bubble of light floats in the air for a couple of seconds, then disappears. I squint and can just detect the glow of the cigarette tip wavering at the edge of perception like the very faint stars you can see only when you don’t look directly at them.

  This is a waste of time. Even if Joe was here earlier, he won’t be now; he finds groups of adolescents threatening, for obvious reasons. For my own part, I don’t want them to realize that I’m out here, stalking around. That kind of attention is the last thing I need, so I turn back.

  ‘Hold him!’

  I stop. They’re shouting now, excited. Then a huge bellow erupts.

  ‘Joe!’ I turn on my heel and run in the direction of the sound. My feet slip and slide under me and I almost fall, but the shapes of the playground loom up and then there are figures. ‘Joe!’

  I burst among them – three, four, maybe five, I’m not sure – and they scatter. Almost too late, I see Joe below me on his hands and knees, and I skid to a halt just before I crash into him. ‘Joe. Fuck. What’s going on?’

  His face is a pool of shadows, and his voice is desperate. ‘I’m the horse. Moo! Moo! I’m the horsey!’

  ‘Joe, what are you doing?’

  ‘They made me.’

  Then someone’s behind me, shouting into the back of my head. ‘Don’t fucking barge into me!’

  I turn on them and we’re face to face. ‘What have you done to my friend?’

  ‘Nothing. He’s a mentalist.’

  ‘What have you done to him?’

  ‘He’s a right fucking spastic; he was just swinging on the fucking swing talking to himself.’

  ‘That’s his business. Leave him alone.’

  ‘Is he your bum-chum or what?’

  I bring my face right into his; our foreheads touch. ‘You might think you’re Jack the Lad, but I’m Jack the Man and I’ll rip your fucking bollocks off, son.’

  He takes a step backwards and I shove him the rest of the way. I turn to Joe – ‘Get up’ – and offer him my hand. He pulls himself to his feet, snivelling and mumbling under his breath.

  ‘He’s a fucking paedo.’ Another voice from the darkness. ‘He hangs out in the village hall with all the little kiddies.’

  ‘I’m the horse!’ shouts out Joe.

  ‘Shut up, Joe,’ I say. Then to the voice, ‘I hear anything like that again, I’ll take your fucking head off.’

  ‘Fuck off, you fucking homo.’ But they don’t come any closer.

  I grip Joe by the upper arm and steer him towards the road. I feel them follow us, but I don’t stop.

  ‘Is he your gay lover? Do you do fisting?’

  I ignore them; I just want to get Joe away from here. Eventually, they give up and slink away. I put Joe in the passenger seat of the car, and when I get in myself, I turn the interior light on and look at him. There’s a livid red spot just above his left eye.

  ‘They stuck a cigarette on me,’ he says.

  ‘Aye, I can see that. Let’s get you home.’

  —

  Joe sits at the kitchen table and forks beans on toast into his mouth. He isn’t crying anymore, but his hand shakes, and droplets of tomato sauce spatter onto the tabletop and down his sweater. I let him get on with it. I can’t sit there and feed him like a baby.

  ‘They won’t come here,’ he sloshes.

  ‘No, they won’t. You shouldn’t draw attention to yourself.’

  Slosh. Chomp. He wouldn’t eat like that if his mother was at the table.

  ‘You can’t go around acting like a nutter.’

  He lowers his head over his plate and keeps eating.

  ‘Is there any cream for that burn?’

  ‘Dunno. It hurts.’

  He fumbles with his fork and it hits the edge of the table, rebounds in a somersault that launches beans into his face, and then falls to the floor. He ducks down after it and almost slides off his chair as he goes. I get up and take a clean fork from the cutlery drawer and swap it for his. He grunts a ‘thank you’ and goes back to his dinner. He concentrates very hard on eating – wolfing it, hunched like a soldier whose mess tin contains hot food for the first time in days.

  He finishes and looks up at me. ‘Any more?’

  ‘That was the whole can. If you have any more beans, you won’t sleep for your farts.’

  ‘Pudding?’

  ‘I don’t know, mate. There’s naff all food in here. When did you last do the shopping?’

  ‘Last Tuesday.’

  I look in the cupboards and find a canned sponge pudding, from Heinz. ‘I’ve never made one of these before.’
I read the label. ‘It microwaves.’

  ‘They’re magnificent, them. Can I have custard?’

  ‘With last Tuesday’s milk? You’ll be lucky.’

  ‘Don’t want it, then.’

  ‘Good.’ I put the can away. ‘Did they do anything else to you?’

  ‘They kicked me leg. It didn’t hurt, though. And they were making fun of me.’

  ‘I’m sure they were. How did you get on to the subject of the fucking pantomime horse, though?’

  He looks around the kitchen, as if the answer to the question might be hiding behind the fridge, then shrugs. ‘I can’t remember. They were all around me. They had nasty faces. I tried to talk to them, but it just made them worse. They told me to moo like the horse.’

  ‘Horses don’t even moo.’

  ‘That’s what I said! Then he kicked me.’

  ‘Why were you out there?’

  ‘Wanted to go on a walk.’ He folds his arms.

  I can see I’m not going to get far tonight. He hasn’t even mentioned his mother. Even if he did, there’s nothing I could say or do to make it better. The pure fuckery of it all settles on my shoulders like great coils of heavy chain. ‘You should get some sleep. You’re all jumbled up.’

  ‘They won’t come here,’ he says again.

  ‘No, they won’t. And if they do, they’ll find me waiting for them. I’ll sleep on the couch, all right?’

  ‘I’m tired.’

  ‘Then go to bed.’

  ‌28

  It’s still dark when I wake, but I check my watch and I’m glad I did; it’s almost six. If I’m to get to this job anything like on time, I need to leave now. I wonder if I should go and tell Joe that I’m away, but he’s better off asleep, so I pull on my trainers and slip out without waking him. I drive home, feeling queasy. I make some sandwiches and get my stuff together, and I’m on the road by six thirty. I stop at the Spar for a large box of ibuprofen and then drive out of the village.

  Years of the three of us getting lost in that van – stewing in our farts and bad tempers – has left me with a deep distrust of other people’s directions, but Lee’s turn out to be accurate. Each turning is exactly in the place he said it would be and is signposted in exactly the way he said it was. When I miss one, it’s my own fault for going too fast. I arrive at my destination with hardly a swearword uttered.

  I park on the verge of a private lane with a hardcore surface that looks like it was only recently put down. No one else seems to have arrived yet; apart from a mini-excavator bearing hire-company stickers, mine is the only vehicle here. I’m too early. The sky is still a night blue, but the horizon glows red and against it stands a group of agricultural buildings. I switch off the radio and the latest atrocities drop away in the silence of the morning. For something to do, I strap up my bad wrist with the bandage they gave me in hospital and swallow double the recommended dose of painkillers. Then I sit and watch as the light in the east infuses the furls of cloud. I begin to hope that nobody comes and that I could just wait here until I didn’t want to anymore and then turn round and drive home.

  Fat chance. A car crunches up the track behind me, sweeps past, and parks up near the buildings. A man in a woolly hat gets out, stands and looks at me for a few moments, and then disappears into the shadows pooled around a stone barn. After a while, I hear the reluctant chut-chut-chut of a cold diesel engine being cranked before it coughs and spins into life. Shortly after this, a rectangle of light appears on the darkest wall of the barn – the one facing me – and I see the man cross the doorway, then cross back. I decide to stay where I am until Lee turns up.

  When Lee said ‘bright and early’, it seems the emphasis was on the ‘bright’ rather than the ‘early’ because by the time he gets here it’s broad daylight and getting on for nine o’clock. I am still in the car, half asleep, when he knocks on the window. I wind it down.

  ‘You’re sleeping on the job,’ he says in mock horror.

  ‘I’ve been waiting for over an hour.’

  ‘Sorry, mate – bit of a hangover situation.’

  ‘It’ll get you nowhere, the boozing game.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah…Let’s have a cup of tea and I’ll show you the ropes.’

  ‘Sounds good to me.’ I get out of the car and follow him down the lane to the buildings. Woolly Hat Man’s car is still there, but I don’t see any sign of him.

  ‘We’ve only been here a couple of days,’ Lee says as we walk.

  ‘Who’s “we”?’ I ask.

  ‘Me and Rupert.’

  ‘You and who?’

  ‘Rupert.’

  ‘Who the fuck is Rupert?’

  ‘You know – short bloke, black hair, face like a Rottweiler.’

  I vaguely remember a man fitting that description who worked in Mac’s gang. I never spoke to him, and he never made any attempt to speak to me. ‘And his name’s fucking Rupert?’

  ‘Aye,’ says Lee with a smile.

  ‘Fucking hell, no wonder he kept himself to himself.’

  Lee goes into the barn I saw Woolly Hat Man enter earlier and I go in after him. The inside is bright, lit by fluorescent tubes fixed to the beams. Judging by the noise, the generator must be just on the other side of the back wall. Otherwise the barn is empty, except for a battered old sideboard where the tea-making paraphernalia sits. Lee goes over to it and sloshes the kettle.

  ‘So where is Rupert, anyway?’ I ask.

  ‘He’s here. He came in with me, but he ran straight off to answer a call of nature. You look fucking horrible, by the way.’

  ‘Thanks. No one’s mentioned that yet; I thought I’d got away with it.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I fell.’

  ‘I’ll bet you did, but who punched you first?’

  ‘Are you making that tea or what?’

  He grins to himself while he fills the kettle from a bottle of water.

  ‘Here, I saw a bloke in a woolly hat poking around earlier.’

  ‘That’ll be the owner, Jethro.’

  ‘Jethro?’

  ‘Yip.’

  ‘Fuck me. That’s even worse than Rupert.’

  ‘Careful, mate. He can’t be far away.’

  Involuntarily, I look around, but we’re still the only people in here.

  Lee shrugs. ‘He’s all right really.’

  ‘Tea ready?’ Rupert appears in the doorway.

  ‘Just a minute,’ says Lee without turning round to him. ‘You two’ve met, right?’

  Rupert gives me a nod and a grunt and seems to be satisfied with that, so I just nod back. The three of us stand around in awkward silence for a few moments until I ask, ‘So what are we on with, then?’

  ‘Fucking loads, mate,’ and as Lee prepares the tea, he reels out a long list of jobs that include gutting the buildings, demolishing one entirely, digging out the floors, taking roofs off, cutting trenches. My eyes glaze over; all I wanted to know was what we’re doing today. ‘In other words, we’ve got our fucking work cut out,’ he concludes – with a wide grin that reminds me a little of Mac – and then hands round the tea.

  I hold my mug up to my face and let the steam condense on my chin. For now, Lee seems to have exhausted his repertoire of motivational banter, so we settle back into silence as we drink. I’m aware of the hands on my wristwatch ticking past nine o’clock and I begin to feel anxious to get to work. There’s a flap of wings from above and I look up into the rafters but don’t see the bird.

  ‘Are you going to get anything done today?’ A different voice.

  Lee speaks up. ‘Aye, we’re just giving the new man his, uh…orientation, Jethro.’

  I don’t turn round to see him; I’m afraid I’ll laugh.

  ‘Well, you’ve got the list.’

  ‘Yes, we do. It’s all in hand.’

  Lee waits until Jethro has gone and then turns to Rupert and me. ‘Right. I suppose we’d better get to it, then.’

  —

  I thi
nk I expected more ceremony, or some sense of occasion. This is the first time in my adult life I’ve ever worked without Barry and Geoff. As it happens, we just troop over to the other barn, climb into its loft, and begin ripping up the floorboards in preparation for removing the timbers that support it. We start at the wall and work back towards the ladder, discarding the boards by dropping them through the gap we’ve created and wearing masks so we don’t inhale the dust thrown up by years of crusty dirt and bird shit. Soon I’m filthy, but it makes me feel cleaner.

  Rupert is shorter than me, but strong, and working side by side, we fall into a rhythm disrupted only when one of us has to stop to tease out a tricky nail. My wrist seems to hold up pretty well, and I just ignore the stiffness in the rest of my body. Rupert and I make good progress, and it becomes apparent that Lee can’t keep up with us.

  ‘Fucking hell, lads,’ he says at last. ‘Don’t get too keen. You’re just making a rod for your own backs.’

  ‘You could have done without them last few pints, mate,’ says Rupert, without stopping work.

  Eventually, Lee gives up and climbs down the ladder to concentrate on dragging the old timber out to the skip.

  Rupert looks at me. ‘He was still pissed when he picked us up this morning. I was shitting meself. All over the road, we were.’ I’m relieved to hear that Rupert’s voice is nowhere as posh as his name.

  ‘He looked mostly all right to me.’

  Rupert shrugs and carries on working. Either he’s exaggerating or I’m far too used to spending time with heavy drinkers. I jam my crowbar in the gap between two planks and lever one up, and we fall back into the rhythm of work.

  Even at our speed, it’s going to take us all day and probably some of tomorrow to entirely remove this floor. We break for lunch and go back into the other barn, and I eat my sandwiches while sitting on a fold-out deckchair. We don’t talk much, just chew in satisfied silence, and I’m happy with that. The morning’s labour has improved my state of mind, and for the first time in years I feel relaxed at work. It’s a novelty; I hadn’t realized until now just how tense Barry’s constant whingeing made me. Once I’ve finished my food, I make my excuses and go outside to find somewhere to have a slash.