by Paul Harris
“No you’re not,” he reiterated, with yet greater emphasis, “I don’t want a daddy, just a mummy!”
I leant towards him with my arms outstretched, hoping for an improbable embrace. He kicked me, with great force, in my knee, and ran off to the kitchen, and to the familiar sanctuary of his mother.
I straightened my stance, and stood in Marilyn’s hallway knowing not what to do; not this night, or any other night, apart from to seek a suitable tree and a length of rope. I stepped back across the threshold, and Marilyn reappeared.
“Sorry, Rod, it’ll take time; it’s been too long; he doesn’t know; I’ll speak to him and then maybe next time he’ll be more receptive.”
“It’s okay,” I smiled, trying to hold back my tears. “It’s okay; it’s too out of the blue. It’s my fault. Sorry.”
“Perhaps we should all go for a meal sometime or something?”
“Maybe.” I stepped away.
“Rod! Do you ever feel alone?”
“You’re never alone when you’ve got kids, apparently. I heard someone say that on the television.”
“Well, it’s not true. I feel alone all the time.”
She looked so beautiful, she looked like my wife; my family. It hadn’t worked before, so although things had changed so much, what evidence was there to suggest that it would now? She smiled, sadly, as if she could read my thoughts. I returned her smile, solemnly shaking my head. “I’m so sorry for everything,” I whispered, and then I walked away, ever so slowly; and I walked, and I walked, for miles upon miles with tears rolling down my cheeks. I began to sob, uncontrollably, and I wept. I wept for years. I wept for a lifetime.
The End
SOLITARY GUNSHOT
Chapter One
Twenty-Twenty Vision
Back in the days of twenty-twenty vision, a time I barely remember, I had many, many friends. They would come and they would go. But as you get older, they just go. They move away, or they get married, settle down and have kids, or they just run out of energy. All that are left are the drunks and the wasters. But as you get older, being alone doesn’t equate to being lonely, it’s just being alone, and I’m okay with that. These thoughts and many more besides went spinning through my mind as I ran.
I was running again, running hard, but not nearly as quickly as I once had. This time they were going to catch me; everything catches up with you in the end. It smothers you and claws at your lungs. The past blocks your throat and forces you to gag on your own misdemeanours. I plunged from the main road into a side street in the hope that I’d be able to reach the park and that I would be able to lose my pursuers among the dark shadows of the trees.
I was sprinting past the peeling blue paint of the wooden hoarding that lined the boundary of the former pickle factory. It had been earmarked for re-development for years. Plans for a new shopping centre; artists’ impressions and architects’ drawings; were continually being published in the local newspaper but there was no cash. Nobody wanted to take the risk. So the site lay derelict and rat-infested, a dumping ground, a playground, a hiding place; and the clinging reek of concentrated vinegar still hung in the air above heaps of bricks and rubble.
I leapt at the hoarding like a comic book superhero and managed to hook my hands around the top of the wooden panel. I began to pull myself up, knowing that they wouldn’t go to the trouble of following me into the wasteland because I just wasn‘t worth it. But, as I heaved with all my might, nothing happened, except that my elbows began to click and my ribs began to hurt. One of my wrists made a grinding sound and I hung helplessly as I heard the steady approach of their footsteps.
I dropped to the ground and they began to circle me. I knelt at their feet, a pathetic mess, a mere shadow of the man I once was, puffing like an LMS locomotive on a very steep incline; and, just as I was trying to imagine a more embarrassing scenario, they began to laugh at me. Instead of random blows being struck, they just stood there laughing, not one of them breathing heavily, and not a bead of sweat between them.
One of them leant over me, right in my face. “Alright, Grandad?” he sneered, and followed it with a snort of a nature somewhere between mirth and derision. How do you explain that it wasn’t always like this; that ten years ago he and his pals would have been dancing to a different tune? Well you can’t because it has no relevance.
I was gasping for oxygen. My clothes were torn and drenched with mud and sweat. My lungs hurt as I breathed and my legs ached. But I’d have preferred a good beating to this vile humiliation. I had never been considered too old to take it before. This was the dawning of a new chapter in my life; one that I had never particularly looked forward to.
He lit a cigarette and, as I staggered to my feet, he blew a mouthful of smoke in my face. “In future just behave yourself, you old bastard!” The three of them turned and walked off.
The truth is that I could never behave myself.
I followed a winding route home, limping, and stopping frequently to gather my thoughts and adjust my dishevelled clothing. I avoided the shop windows lest I not like the images that their reflections presented nor did I catch the eye of people who passed me by and stared at me in the street. I kept my head bowed and marched as rapidly as my legs could bear to carry me. I lit a cigarette but after only one drag on it, I doubled up in a coughing fit, watching the blood-stained phlegm forming small mounds on the pavement at my feet.
I felt extreme relief when I eventually inserted my key into the lock of my front door and pushed it open. It felt like sanctuary. Home had never felt more like home before. I stripped off, throwing my dirty clothes into a heap in the corner. Staggering to the bathroom, I ran a sink-full of cold water and immersed my aching head into it. A moth fussed around the shade-less lightbulb above me. I dabbed the water from my face with a frayed towel and climbed into bed, where I remained for a full three hours, tossing, turning, and occasionally dozing.
I have always had the strangest dreams.
Like being bullied by children and being unable to escape them. That wouldn’t sound so odd but I don’t mean as a child, I mean now, as an adult; it’s totally irrational. I wake up trembling with fear and anxiety, and a vague recollection of nine year old hooligans chasing me around an imaginary shopping mall.
Sometimes, I dream within dreams, and dream that my dreams are portents to events that will actually happen. They aren’t though; otherwise I’d be a very wealthy man, but I’d be living in a terrifying fear of dark places.
Just lately, I’ve been having similar dreams over and again. They always happen in pubs and involve strangers buying me beer. Not so far-fetched perhaps but these dreams always leave me feeling overwhelmed and excited, as if no one has ever bought me a pint before. I wake up with my heart pounding and I’m trembling from head to toe.
When I eventually awoke, it was still only ten to eight. Saturday night was still young and offered many more surprises. I crawled from beneath my duvet, had a shower and put some clean clothes on. There were bruises taking deep colour on my thighs and arms but my joints, at least, had ceased rattling.
The moth had gone from around the bathroom light. I opened the window, stuck my head through it, and lit a cigarette. I never could bare the smell of stale tobacco indoors. The air outside felt bitterly cold and the wind slapped and beat about my unshaven face. “June as well,” I mused. “Crappy British weather!” I spat more blood into the sink.
New Street Station
They let me out right near the start of the twenty-first century. I missed the big millennium party but didn’t really care too much about that. I missed a lot of stuff. The whole time I was in there, I only ever had one visitor. An old acquaintance called Bangla made the long trek up to Birmingham two or three times. There was plenty of history between us but we’d managed to consign it all to the past and had developed a mutual respect, bordering on great friendship.
The last time I’d seen him on the outside, he’d been at rock-bottom; completely messed
up. He could barely talk; not just because of the alcohol and drugs but also because of the fact that he was no longer in possession of a tongue. He’d been dirty and dressed in rags, unshaven with his long hair matted together, begging for money and booze. He’d given up on it, lost sight of hope, and was just waiting to die.
And then, eighteen months later and right out of the blue, I’d received a wedding invitation from him. When I RSVP’d to the effect that I was otherwise engaged at Her Majesty’s pleasure, he’d shot straight up to Euston and brought me a carton of cigarettes. He was smart again; clean and healthy looking; a stark contrast to his previous appearance. It wasn’t clear to me whether he’d tidied himself up before meeting his fiancé or if she’d been the inspiration for his resurrection. Either way, she had a startling and wonderfully positive influence on his life.
He had sat before me and looked like a man who was completely at peace with the world. The crazy eyes had disappeared. The false swagger and infuriating prejudices were gone; all replaced by a confident smile and a polite disposition. We had shaken hands and I’d promised to visit him and his new wife when I got out. And, now I was out.
He had left me a mobile phone number scribbled on the back of a cigarette packet and I called him from New Street Station on my way back to London. We arranged to meet the following weekend, and for him to introduce me to his lady, in a tiny little pub off the Strand called the Nell Gwynne. Before I had disembarked my train at Euston, however, he was dead; stabbed to death by some low-life in a mugging in Archway. The irony wasn’t lost on anybody. Bangla had been odds on for a violent end for years, and had probably once deserved it; but, now? Now that he’d cleaned himself up and turned into a nice guy? He’d ducked and dived and lied and cheated and always come up smelling of roses. And, now that he was on the up and up, he was laid out on a mortuary slab with multiple puncture wounds.
Henshaw House
Henshaw House wasn’t like the rest of us; he was well-spoken and read a newspaper every day. He had a weird haircut, a ridiculous nose, and a preposterous name, but none of this mattered. Money brought him all the things that the rest of us have to lie and cheat to make ours. If Henshaw House expressed an interest in a girl, the rest of us walked away. We offered them Pizza Hut and he offered them Zilli’s; you just had to let them go. He got what he wanted and who he wanted because the only personal attribute that matters anymore is cash.
He folded his newspaper in half, and squinted over the rims of his reading glasses, at a scene that was unfolding on the opposite side of the road. A man was being chased along the street by three youths. The older man appeared to be reasonably athletic for his age and well versed in dodging pedestrian traffic and street furniture, but his reddening face and heavy breathing betrayed his flagging stamina. As he swung around a parking metre, took a right, and sprinted towards the derelict factory site in Ambrose Street, Henshaw thought that he vaguely recognised him.
This is what he enjoyed about sitting outside, underneath the parasols, even on a summers day as crisp as this one: the street life; the traders peddling their wares and blagging the gullible; the road-ragers shaking their fists, slamming car doors, and posturing ridiculously in the middle of the road; and the nutters chasing each other up and down deserted side-streets.
As he rolled his newspaper up and prepared to deposit it in his brown leather satchel, another man approached from the other side of the road. He looked agitated and brow-beaten. “Seen Ringlet?” he asked.
“Why would I?” replied Henshaw, rather sharply, “It’s been a long while since I had anything to do with her.”
“Just asking! She reckons she seen someone down the Job Centre; someone who ain’t been around for a long time. I wanted to talk to her. You ain’t seen her then?”
“I told you, Sol, no.”
“You coming inside?”
“I don’t have much time.”
Timmy Cubberley was already standing at the bar, ordering his second drink of the day. He was alone and was chatting, cheerily, to the staff. Henshaw wasn’t keen on Cubberley. He didn’t understand him. He was confused by his lack of intellect. The confusion was mutual. They shook hands anyway.
“When did you sneak by?” asked Henshaw, with fake camaraderie.
“About half an hour ago. You was hiding behind one of them big newspapers. Didn’t wanna disturb you.”
“Seen Ringlet?” asked Sol.
“I wish.”
“Is that a no?” Sol pursued, irritably.
“I ain’t seen her, no. Why? You looking for her?”
Sol rolled his eyes and bit his lip.
Timmy went on. “Why you looking for her?”
“I’m trying to avoid someone. Wish I’d avoided you too, to be honest.”
“Who you trying to avoid?”
“It don’t matter. You wouldn’t know him anyways.”
Timmy Cubberley was one of those characters who had been moulded by the coming of the digital age. Not because he’d made a million out of the dotcom boom, but because it had provided him with the means by which he could completely immerse himself in pornography. “What else is the internet for?” he would muse, defensively. His crowning glory was being banned from every Asda supermarket in the UK for playing with himself at the checkout while the girl was scanning his groceries. They caught him on camera and the security guard dragged him right out of there and administered him with a lifetime ban while his hands were still down his jogging bottoms. People looked on, shaking their heads in disgust as he protested his innocence. He later contested to us that, in actual fact, he’d been adjusting his undergarments. But, of course, it’s far more amusing to run with the more humiliating version of events. Just ask the tabloids.
“How do you know I don’t know the geezer if you won’t tell me who he is?”
Henshaw glanced, eagerly at his watch, adjusted the shoulder strap of his satchel, left some cash on the bar to cover his round, and then left. “Ciao!” he waved, with unnecessary pretentiousness.
“Knob!” muttered Sol under his breath.
“You’re right there,” Cubberley agreed.
Sol peered down at him. “I meant you.”
Chapter Two
An Old Acquaintance and a Familiar Greeting
“A public service announcement followed me home the other day” sang the jukebox, but the words drifted in and out under the vociferous proclamations of Buffalo as he held court at the bar of the Pig & Whistle. I don’t think I ever heard him say anything that I hadn’t already heard him say before, and he never cut a story short if he could make it last indefinitely. He had an opinion about anything and everything, and constantly felt the need to share it with the rest of us as his opinion was, without doubt, far more insightful than anybody else’s, living or dead.
He was expounding the virtues of Warburtons Extra Thick Sliced bread to no one in particular, as no one in particular was particularly listening to him. Nevertheless, you had to admire his passionate approach to the subject in hand, and the way in which that passion and his depth and breadth of knowledge could be instantly applied to any topic, even those that he knew nothing about. He ran a couple of contemplative fingers through his goatee beard, pursing his lips as if he was about to make an announcement of great genius. “Having said that, Kingsmill 50/50’s not bad either.”
“I’m more of a Hovis man really,” I remarked wearily, and walked off. He followed me, listing his objections to Hovis’s Best of Both.
Timmy Cubberley and Lola were arguing about who had the biggest and most eclectic collection of pornography. Never had I seen two grown men with such glowing pride in their deviancy. They were bragging about how many times their laptops had been closed down by rogue viruses, and debating the best solution for each type. Lola said that he had once heard of someone who had taken his laptop down to the local police station rather than pay the one hundred pound fee the hackers were demanding to unlock his computer. He giggled to himself as he worked hi
s way through the story. His glasses were steaming up and his bald head was sweating.
“What did the old bill say?” we asked as one.
“They pissed themselves laughing! The geezer still had half a roll of Andrex poking out of his dressing gown pocket.”
We all laughed except for Timmy who grunted and folded his arms across his chest. “That was me! I don’t see what’s so funny about it. If no one ever goes to the police, the scammers’ll keep getting away with it. That’s what my mum said anyway.”
We were trying to hold back the laughter. “Suppose your mum has a good point,” I forced out from between clenched teeth.
“And it’s not even true about the toilet roll!” he protested.
“You mean, it weren’t Andrex?” I asked him.
He looked as though he was going to cry.
“Charmin Ultra?” enquired Buffalo. “In point of fact, it’s far superior to Andrex.”
The police had not yet caught Bangla’s killer, and they never would. No one on the street knew the new and improved Bangla. No one cared about him now that he had slipped from public view. There was some localised grieving, but his contemporaries were all too old, too married, or too safe to be effective where it mattered. I never heard from any of the old crowd after Bangla’s death, apart from one extremely brief voicemail that I recovered from a former mutual friend called Moke. She phoned me with the date of the funeral and said that she hoped to see me there. I hoped that I wouldn’t see her there, but knew that I had to attend.