by Paul Harris
“Lively around here,” Bird remarked.
A couple of men in their sixties were wrestling each other outside Kentucky Fried Chicken. “You’re not wrong,” I replied. One of the men wore a filthy pale blue string vest and a tattered brown trilby. His chest hung, limply, out of the arm-holes of his vest; and his skin was ridged like a contour map of Wales. He had the other man in a headlock and was straining to keep him there.
The traffic braked ahead of us as the lights changed to red again, and we watched them with great amusement. The man in the headlock burst free and span around several times, exhausted and confused, his stained brown suit flapping raggedly behind him. He raised his fists and bellowed angrily at his antagonist. Shoppers bustled by, ignoring them. Younger men smiled disparagingly and nudged one another, teasing and provoking, and stirring their passions further. Three elderly ladies, with matching tartan shopping trolleys, stood at a nearby bus stop and stared blankly, shaking their heads in disgust.
“A typical Saturday afternoon in Cricklewood,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“Oh, yeah, everyone’s nuts up here.”
“You used to live this side of town, right?”
I looked at him through the corner of my eye and wondered if he was having a clandestine dig. “Not far,” I replied, shuddering slightly.
“Where’s your old local?”
“Why? We going there for lunch?”
“Could pop in later,” said Bird, “once we’re rid of old Sinn Fein here. Would it bother you, going back?”
I thought of Bangla and what I’d done to him when, in hindsight, he’d probably done me a favour. I thought about how I’d stitched Rory up and how uncompromising he would be if he ever saw me again. I thought about Broomhead and the way that he’d betrayed me. “I don’t know,” I mused, “I suppose it might be interesting.” I didn’t want anybody to be there. I didn’t want trouble with Bangla or Broomhead or Rory; I didn’t want to listen to Frank’s incessant bragging and gloating, and Joanne’s fawning adoration. I wanted it to all remain in the past; but, curiosity has a strange logic all of its own. “Okay, then.”
A policeman was standing between the two old men now, but they were still trying to throw punches around him. His helmet slipped down over his face in the melee and, as he struggled fruitlessly with the chin strap to raise it again, he was bundled into the chicken shop by a surge of shoppers disembarking a number 266 bus. Bird laughed raucously. The old Ealing Studios couldn’t have come up with a better piece of slap-stick. The traffic was moving again. “What a place!” exclaimed Bird, with manifest enthusiasm. “I love it up here; I love these nutters!”
We crawled to the Maida Vale end of Kilburn High Road. Pedestrians sped past us on either side for the duration of the journey. O’Leary had gone quiet and had closed his eyes, possibly due to a lack of oxygen in the cab. I hoped that he’d last the journey, and began to wonder if Bird’s insurance would cover such a contingency.
“I feel sick,” I grumbled, as I steered the waggon off the High Road and onto a residential tree-lined avenue.
“No worries! We’ll be in the pub soon; with all your old mates.” I thought I detected a note of sarcasm or irony or jealousy in Bird’s voice, and peered around O’Leary at him as we pulled up outside a three storey Victorian terraced house. “Your real friends,” he winked at me mischievously, “Eh?”
“Shut up!” I snapped. “Idiot!”
Bird checked the address that O’Leary had written down for him. “This is the place. Let’s get him out of here before he croaks it. I turned off the ignition and, while Bird dragged O’Leary out of the cab, I opened the tailgate. O’Leary stood on the footpath, swaying like a jack-in-the-box, and began unbuttoning his shirt. It was dripping with sweat. He wrenched it violently from his body and hurled it to the ground. He was bright red, from his head to his beer belly; the colour of a pillar box. There was a war-torn tricolour tattooed on his chest.
“Thank the Lord for that!” he groaned, stretching his legs and arching his back with his fists jammed into his ribs. “Never again, boys.”
He rang the doorbell as Bird and I began taking boxes from the van and placing them on an old-fashioned chest freezer that was standing neglected on the garden path. An extremely large middle-aged woman opened the door and flung her arms around O’Leary’s neck.
“Oh, Pat, Pat, Patrick,” she uttered, “you look terrible! What have they done to you?” She scowled at me, quite accusatorily.
“The damned heat!” he complained, “Any beer in the fridge?”
“Of course! There’s some nice cold cans of Guiness I got especially for you.”
“Lovely,” he said, “By the way, these are my friends; they helped me move.”
“Oh, boys, thank you,” she smiled, and, in the blink of an eye, her scowl transformed into a look of genuine gratitude.
“Hello,” I said.
“Hi,” said Bird.
“This fine lady is Aunty O’Leary,” beamed O’Leary, with a proud glint in his eye.
“Hello,” I said again, gently shaking her hand.
“Hi,” said Bird.
“And a drink for you boys?” she asked.
“I don’t really like Guiness,” I replied, “Sorry, no offence.”
“Well, I’ve a little Whisky left over from Christmas; will that do you? With a bit of ice? A dash of lemonade, perhaps?”
I glanced at Bird and he smiled back. “That’ll be fine,” he said, “but my friend, here, is driving.”
“Of course,” she said, and disappeared back into the house.
“Don’t worry about the lemonade!” Bird called after her.
When she’d gone, I turned to O’Leary, who was putting his shirt back on and fumbling with the buttons. “Not being funny, Mr O, but she doesn’t look old enough to be your aunty.”
“My sister,” he replied.
As he began wiping the sweat from his bald head with his jacket, Bird nudged me in the back and whispered in my ear. “Why does he call her Aunty then?”
“How should I know?” I whispered back, impatiently.
“That’s strange, dude.”
We started carrying the boxes up two flights of stairs and stowing them in a small box room. Judging by O’Leary’s frantic instructions, and subsequent disappointment, he seemed to expect them to be placed in some sort of alphabetical or chronological order; but, Bird and I were in a hurry to get out of there, so we placed them anywhere there was enough space.
As we dropped the last of the boxes and traipsed back down the stairs, exhausted, Aunty returned with a chilled can of Guiness, a quarter of a bottle of Jameson’s, one tumbler of ice, and a cup of PG Tips for yours truly. “Thank you,” I said from behind clenched teeth. I drank it as quickly as I could, without making myself sick, and we bid farewell to O’Leary and his sister. She bid farewell to a quarter of a bottle of whisky. O’Leary put his big broad arm around her shoulder, and the pair of them smiled contentedly as she gently pushed the front door to.
“I’m very grateful for your help, lads,” called O’Leary, “If you’re ever around these parts…” and they were gone.
Bird pulled down the tailgate and we climbed into the cab. “Where to?” I asked.
“I thought that you were going to show me your old local.”
I started the engine and found first gear. The van shuddered as I forced it through a three-point turn and headed back up Kilburn High Road. “May as well,” I said, “since you’re in such a good mood.”
“Good mood? It must be the whisky, it has that effect on me; makes me very loving.”
I glanced at him, quizzically, as we slowed for the lights outside Biddy Mulligan’s.
“Well, you know,” he pondered, “it was a pleasant job, all told; a little strenuous, but…” He leant forward and tapped the glove box with his index finger, then looked up into my face with an emphatic frown, “but, enjoyable. You need jobs like that sometimes to bring you b
ack to Planet Earth.”
“You must have really enjoyed it,” I laughed, “I’ve never known you do anything like that before.”
He stopped tapping and sat back. “Like what?”
“You know, freebies, and all that.”
He turned to me with a start. A thought seemed to cross his mind and trigger an instant physical reaction.
“I thought not charging that old couple was a really nice gesture; you normally bleed the punters dry, no matter who they are.”
“Shit!” he screamed, as a look of horror crossed his face, “Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!” He slammed the palm of his hand down on the dashboard like an irate driving instructor. “Stop!”
“What’s up?”
“Turn around; we’ve got to go back!”
“I can’t turn around here.” I laughed. “Besides, we can’t go back now and ask for it after she’s given you the whisky and all. It wouldn’t be right. We’ll just have to swallow it, pal.” I gave him a pat on the back and we turned into Cricklewood Lane.
“Oh, my giddy aunt,” he sighed, wearily.
“What?” I sniggered, loudly and joyously. “What’s that you said?”
He ignored me, and sat in silence, glaring viciously, through the open window at complete strangers, for the remainder of the journey.
By the time I got him to the Red Cow, he was over the worst of it and had started sipping whisky from the bottle that had been dangling between his fingers. “At least I got something out of the bastards,” he gloated unconvincingly.
“I liked them; I thought you did too.”
He snorted. “Tight bastards!”
The Cow was dead. We sat at the bar and I ordered two pints of lager. “I don’t know if I can face this crap,” commented Bird, “not after the whisky.”
“Well, I’ll get you a whisky; I’ll drink yours.”
“Now, steady on there!” he remonstrated, “Two’s your limit. I’m not having you driving my van while you’re half cut.”
“You drive it then,” I suggested.
He shook his head. “Not gonna happen!”
A drunkard staggered towards us; unshaven, long unkempt hair, and an ugly stoop; skin rinsed with nicotine and grease. He nudged me in the ribs with his fist. I caught a mouthful of his stale breath in my nostrils and could feel vomit creeping along my gullet. He raised his head and drew back the curtains of his fringe. “Rodney?” he hissed, spraying the stench of decay into the already corrupted atmosphere. My jaw dropped and I was frozen in time, unable to move or respond. Bird seemed alarmed by my response and stood up, pushing his stool away.
“Rodney?” repeated the man, in a slightly more urgent tone of voice.
“What the hell’s happened to you?”
“What? What’s happened to me?” he repeated, distantly. He had to strain in order to force the words out of his mouth and they arrived misshapen and deformed. He shrugged and must have detected the look of disgust on my face because he went on in a slightly more defensive vein. “What’s happened to me? What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with you? It’s me!” He poked a thumb into his chest as if to prove that it was, indeed, him. “Me, Rodney! Me!”
“I know it’s you, but it ain’t you. It ain’t you. What happened?”
“Things change.”
“You’re so wrecked!”
“I was always wrecked!” he snarled.
“But smart and tidy; we were always smart and tidy and clean, all of us, always.”
He shrugged again; a lazy, indifferent shrug.
“You can’t even speak properly.”
He smiled and, as he did so, his face bristled and contorted; deep grooves leapt across his skin. “I can’t speak properly?” He emphasised the word, “properly”, as if to mock me. “No, no, I can’t speak properly. I know that.” He glared desperately into my eyes as if he was seeking an answer. He smiled inanely through broken teeth. His bloodshot eyes were moistening. “You know why?” His voice was rising angrily. “You know why? You know why?”
I stepped away from him and braced myself. Bird clasped the neck of the Jameson’s bottle, ready to use it in self-defence.
“Take it easy, Bangla,” I whispered to the drunk.
He slapped himself on the forehead in a show of submission. “I had to have half my tongue cut out; surgically removed. You bastard!”
A lump formed in my throat and my hand was trembling as I held it out to him. A bitter tear ran down his face but, all the same, he took my hand. He groaned like a grieving widow. “Why’d you do it?” he wept, laying his head on my shoulder.
In time, he calmed down and stopped blubbering all over me. “I don’t know what I can say, Bangla. I wish I could turn the clock back.”
“There’s nothing, is there? You could buy me a drink.”
I bought him one and introduced him to Bird. As Bangla finished the dregs of the Jameson’s from the bottle, Bird examined him with a mixture of astonishment, curiosity, and amusement.
“So, where is everybody?” I asked, “It’s quiet for a Saturday.”
He shrugged again; the same indolent shrug of defeat, repeated over and over. “Who?”
“Everybody; the gang?”
“Oscar’s moved away to some place far; so’s Fluff.”
“Yeah, I know that,” I said, attempting to shield my irritability, “they went while I was still here.”
He seemed to drift off. “Yeah, they’re gone, gone, gone.”
I tapped his shoulder in attempt to break his reverie. “And the others?”
“Others?” He licked his lips and gazed straight through me. “Broomhead? Not seen them since then; not seen him since you; scared of getting his tongue ripped out, I shouldn’t wonder; surgically removed. Can’t speak properly now. Bad sort: not worth a tongue; proper wrong ’un.”
I sniffed my contempt, but the wound had healed and it didn’t hurt anymore. Still, I gave nothing away to Bird, who was standing behind Bangla, trying to catch my eye. Whenever he was successful, he pointed animatedly at his own mouth and mouthed the words, “What happened to his tongue?” I ignored him, and continued to coax information out of Bangla.
“What about Frank?”
“Mike’s inside; doing time; in the big house; football, football, football; stabbed someone; or ran them over; or was that Chaps? Might have been Chaps. Chaps is inside; doing time…”
“Yeah, I know,” I interrupted, failing to conceal my impatience, “in the big house; I know. What about Frank?”
He paused for a moment as if he’d forgotten who Frank was. He rubbed his chin, contemplatively. I tried to jog his memory. “Frank? You remember Frank?”
He sprang at me, as if from nowhere, right into my face. “Of course I remember Frank! You think I’m some kind of idiot?” He stepped back and sank between his shoulders just as suddenly as he’d burst forth from them.
“Where is he? Still around?” I asked, as soothingly as I possibly could.
“Who?”
Bird laughed, sarcastically, and I could see that his nerves were becoming as frayed as mine were, but I persevered. “Frank?”
“Yeah, yeah, Frank, yeah,” he paused, and took a drink. I offered him a cigarette, he took one, and I lit if for him. “Frank and Jo are still around; just got wed; got married, they did. Jo’s expecting; a baby, it is. Probably, that’s why they got married. I suppose so; probably; suppose so. They never come out no more; not never. See Jo shopping at Sainsbury’s when I’m hanging outside; when I’m collecting things. She says hello, that’s all; that’s it. They never come out no more; not never. Never see Frank no more; no, not never. He don’t drink, see; not no more. I do; we’re different, see.”
“He still live at the same place?” I asked him.
“You know, don’t you, how much he loves his gaff? You think he would ever give it up? No, he’ll never sell that.”
“I’ll call him and see if he’ll come out for one.”
“Haven’t got
the number, Rodney, lost it ages ago.”
“I think I can remember it, just about. Worth a try.”
“Wasting your time. Frank won’t come out. He never comes out, no more. No chance. He never comes out with me.”
Bird smiled, and shook his head with belittling amusement. “You don’t say?”
Bangla narrowed his eyes and glared at him, enquiringly. “I do say, Aussie man.”
“I think I’ll give it a try anyway,” I said.
Bird passed a fresh pint to Bangla, and the fool dropped it. It hurtled towards the floor and, as Bangla tried, somewhat ridiculously, to catch it before it made impact, Bird spluttered lager all over the bar. The glass shattered on the carpet and its contents spilled out over our trainers. I went to the payphone to call Frank, and turned my back on the sorrowful scene.
My call was answered. “Hello?” a young woman said. I wasn’t sure what to say after all this time, and I paused for too long. “Hello?” she said, “Is anybody there? Can I help you?”
“Joanne?”
“No.”
“Ah,” I said, still struggling to find my words, “this may be a wrong number but, there again, it might not be. They may have moved.” I gave her Frank’s address.
“Not this address; wrong number, I’m afraid,” she said, and instantly cut me off.
I juggled the digits a little, and dialled the same number in a different sequence. This time, Frank answered. “Yeah?”
“Frank?”
“Yeah.”
The line crackled and I thought that I’d missed something. “What did you say?” I asked.
“Who is that?” he said, abruptly.
“Rod.” I waited, anticipating some kind of reaction, maybe a touch of excitement in his voice.