The Tied Man

by McGowan, Tabitha

  ‘At least your mother had the sense to get paid for it. All mine ever got was half a ton of gold-plated jewellery and recurrent herpes. Mind you, give the woman her due: she did provide me with a fine succession of uncles.’ He raised his glass to ghosts.

  I was watching him drink the entire second pint in one go when I realised. ‘That’s where it began. It was one of them,’ I stated, and Finn fumbled and dropped the lighter that he had been turning in his fingers. ‘Oops. Sorry. That was a bit of full-on.’

  ‘S’all right. I’m getting used to you.’ He recovered the Zippo from the carpet and lit his next smoke. ‘And anyway, you’re right. Just what every twelve-year old wants from his favourite uncle for Christmas – a good buggerin’ across his ma’s bed, while she sleeps off a turkey microwave-meal and a gallon of Special Brew.’ He downed his whiskey chaser and slammed the glass down. ‘Ah, fuck it, I’m not wasting tonight on this shit. D’you play pool?’

  I shook my head. ‘Never tried it.’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re missing. Right, come on. I’ll teach you. But I’m warning you, I take no prisoners.’

  ‘We need another drink first,’ I declared.

  ‘Good idea. Go and get ‘em in then, woman. Same again, if I’m playing catch-up.’

  ‘I need crisps. To soak up the alcohol.’ I stopped mid-journey and frowned. ‘You want some?’

  ‘Sounds good.’

  ‘What d’you want?’

  Finn suddenly gave me an glorious drunken smile. ‘Any. Long as they’re not spunk flavour.’

  My last mouthful of vodka erupted from my nose and I had to grab the nearest table as the landlord glared at my laughter. I stuck out my tongue in suitably mature response.

  Finn

  ‘Cow.’ Lilith potted her third consecutive yellow ball of the first game. ‘You sure you’ve never done this before?’

  ‘Never. Honest. But it’s about lines, isn’t it? Lines and angles and logic. I can do that.’

  ‘No, it’s an art,’ I argued through a mouthful of prawn cocktail crisps: Lilith’s joke. ‘A beautiful, noble art. Played by pissheads.’

  ‘Oh. Well in that case I can do that as well.’ Lilith leant over the table to line up her next shot. She was so tiny that she had to stand on the very tips of her toes to reach halfway across the baize. She had discarded the sweater of Henry’s she’d been burrowed into, and now I caught a glimpse of shell-pink, lace trimmed bra under her white vest top. Her tongue was caught between her teeth as she concentrated on finding that crucial angle, and a strand of midnight-black hair had broken free of its tie and draped itself across her forehead. She was no longer my fantasy mermaid, but no less beautiful.

  ‘What are you looking at? Have I grown a bloody tail or something?’ she drawled, upper-class pissed, as yet another ball slammed into a pocket.

  ‘Yeah. N’whiksers. I mean whiskers,’ I grinned. I suddenly wondered how twisted it made me that I was happier at this moment than I had been in years.

  I remembered reading an article in one of Henry’s magazines about ‘Living in the Now’ – seizing the moment, appreciating the power of the present and various other gems of utter psycho-bollocks. I was a world expert.

  *****

  I won that first game by a particularly pathetic three balls.

  ‘How long have we got?’ Lilith asked, before I even had time to gloat.

  I glanced up at the clock over the bar. After another four pints to follow the two I’d started with, and with attendant chasers, I needed to shut one eye and squint before the numbers would fall into focus. ‘Half n’hour before Henry picks us up.’

  ‘Good. Time for another game then. See if I can beat you now I know what I’m doing.’

  ‘In your dreams.’ I sounded more confident than I felt.

  I was just about to break when the door to the bar-room shuddered open under the weight of a boot and the night went tits-up for the second time.

  Lawson, Philly and Damo were Coyle’s three closest comrades. If he wasn’t with them it meant that he was screwing one of the chambermaids from the holiday village, but it looked as though they’d been drinking at his filthy flat for most of the day as they staggered to the bar.

  ‘Do you want to leave?’ Lilith asked.

  Part of me wanted to vanish like the Cheshire Cat, leaving nothing but a contented smile hovering over the pool table. ‘Do you want to leave? They’re going to be arseholes. Especially Lawson there – likes to think he’s Coyle’s lieutenant.’

  Lilith glared at them, then turned to me. ‘To hell with that. I’m not wasting forty pence on those genetically-challenged bastards. Still your break, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I grinned. ‘Still my break.’

  *****

  It started the second I went to play the first shot. Philly, considered to be the ladies’ man of the three, left his little huddle by the bar and deliberately stepped over the invisible boundary and into our territory.

  ‘Assumin’ the position already, fag?’

  I ignored him and glanced at Lilith, who merely rolled her eyes, and for the next ten minutes we endured a barrage of schoolboy obscenity.

  The landlord stood scratching his arse and pretending that nothing untoward was happening, allowing himself an occasional smirk at the more crass comments.

  Lawson was next. ‘Hey, gorgeous – I got fifty pence here: you want to fuck Philly for me? He’s right up for a bit of man-love. You can keep the change.’

  Lilith kept her head down and played pool as if our tormentors were nothing more than a particularly tedious hallucination, and all the while I wanted to kill the fuckers.

  An hour and a half was all I’d wanted – ninety poxy minutes with a woman who was content to share my company without leaving the kind of souvenir that required medical attention, and those three bastards were shitting all over it. I could do nothing, and they knew it. As long as it was just me and not a guest on the receiving end of the abuse I would have to take it in the same way I took every other shafting.

  I had just resigned myself to yet another night flushed down the great pan of creation when the unthinkable happened: fate smiled on me.

  It began when Lilith staggered off to the toilets. Philly and Lawson continued their sport with me – loudly blowing kisses across the room and howling at their own comedic brilliance – but Damo decided to have a go at Lilith.

  ‘That your new girlfriend, arse bandit?’ he drawled, once she was out of the room. ‘’Fancied pretendin’ to be a real man for the night, eh?’ His two companions took a step back, and Lawson, the only one with any intelligence to speak of, pulled at Damo to bring him back into their fold. Either he didn’t notice or didn’t care – he was about to have his moment in the spotlight. ‘Mind you, size of her tits, it’d be like screwin’ another bloke anyway – ‘specially if you take her up the arse.’ He mimed the appropriate action in case I didn’t quite get the point.

  He was so pleased with his performance that he closed his eyes in mock ecstasy and began to add sound effects, then must have wondered why his mates were no longer laughing, because he froze mid-thrust and opened one eye to see Lilith standing right behind him.

  ‘Oh dear. Have you just insulted Blaine’s guest, Damo?’ I asked him.

  That rattled him. ‘Nah – I mean, I was just havin’ a laugh. Didn’t mean anythin’ by it, know what I mean?’ Damo blustered, as Lilith stood there and stared at him in measured disgust.

  ‘Has this nasty little scrote just insulted you, Lilith?’ I asked, willing her to give me the answer I craved.

  ‘Most definitely.’

  That was all it needed.

  Lilith

  Finn flashed me a smile of intense gratitude then hit Damo with a perfect haymaker to the chin. He staggered backwards and fell onto a table stacked with empty and half-finished glasses that simply caved in under his bulk, before struggling back to his feet, soaked in stale beer, at which point Finn hit him for a second
time – a powerhouse upper cut with his left that sent the man’s eyes rolling back in his head – and then dived on top of him, pummelling him as though he were an overstuffed punch bag. The landlord shouted something unintelligible above the noise of shattering glass and wood, but was loathe to leave the safe zone behind his bar.

  For once I was happy to leave someone else to do the fighting, and my drinking partner was thoroughly enjoying himself. Damo managed to land a few stray, desperate punches, and I saw the spray of blood as Finn’s nose took a direct hit, but he fought with an instinctive grace that suggested he’d done this kind of thing more than once before.

  Lawson stepped nervously forward, and I thought he was going to do the sensible thing and drag his beaten friend out of the fray, until I saw his hand slide into the pocket of his leather jacket. The soft, solid click warned me, even before he brought out the flick knife intended for Finn’s exposed back.

  ‘Fucking coward!’ I howled, as Lawson prepared to make his move. He was still laughing at my impotent protest when I broke a pool cue in two across the back of his head. He gave a surprised grunt of protest and sprawled out cold across the pool table, the knife falling from his grip and clattering onto the floor next to Damo.

  ‘Nice shot.’ Finn gave an appreciative nod.

  Philly was now their last man standing, and he looked decidedly worried. He was clearly not a fighter – his gelled and preened hair and carefully trimmed moustache told me that this was a man who valued his face. Honour, however, demanded that he made some kind of effort, so he rushed forward with a drunken roar that was his attempt at a battle cry, and swung his right arm in a clumsy arc to where Finn was just getting to his feet. Sheer momentum meant that his gold sovereign-decorated fist missed Finn by a mile, and instead smacked me full in the mouth.

  I felt my teeth pierce my bottom lip as my blood and saliva created a tribute to Jackson Pollock across the wooden floor, and Philly stood clutching his fist to his chest, still in shock at actually managing to hit something. I recovered enough to plant a decent right jab on my assailant’s jaw, then Finn thumped him so hard in the stomach that all his breath was pushed out in one wheeze and he slumped back on the banquette. He made one last attempt to push himself out of his seat, but Finn simply reached over and slapped him hard on the back of his head so that he hit the table face-first. There was an audible crunching noise as his front teeth crumbled against the solid surface, and Philly stopped fighting.

  ‘I’ll have you fucking murdered for this!’ the landlord yelled, finally finding the courage to do something other than cower behind his counter. ‘Look at the state of my bloody bar!’

  I looked around at the wreckage. ‘I’d say we’ve caused at least three grand’s worth of improvements.’

  Finn laughed, and the landlord glowered at him. ‘Yeah, it’s funny now, isn’t it, you cocky little bugger? See how much you bloody well laugh when I tell her Ladyship.’

  ‘See if it’s any louder than you laugh when I tell her you stood there like a spare prick at an orgy whilst three of her staff assaulted her houseguest,’ Finn retorted.

  That worried the man. He looked at me properly for the first time, and his face paled at the thought of Blaine’s wrath. ‘Just get out. The pair of you. And don’t bloody well come back ‘til you learn some manners.’

  ‘We were just leaving anyway.’ I gathered up my sweater and Finn’s hoodie. ‘I hate having one too many on a school night.’ I stepped unsteadily over Damo, and walked triumphantly out into the night.

  Finn staggered out after me. Blood dripped from his nose and soaked his t-shirt, but he was grinning like a madman.

  I took his arm. ‘That was amazing! Where’d you learn to fight like that?’

  Finn gave a bashful shrug. ‘Ah, you know . Here and there. Care home, first up – turnin’ up on my first night with a face like a girl. Then the odd bit of bare-knuckle stuff round and about the city. What about you? You were pretty handy with that pool cue. Like fuckin’ Bruce Lee or something. And that punch...’

  ‘Secondary school. Turning up on my first day with an accent like Princess Anne. I gate-crashed the local Catholic boys’ boxing club on the second day and demanded lessons off the nice priest that ran it. ’

  ‘Ah. Right you are.’

  ‘You might want to do something about that.’ Huge drops of blood fell from his nose and spattered onto the slate pavement.

  ‘Oh.’ Finn took his hoodie from me and used it to stem the flow of blood, then sniffed. ‘Y’know, I could fuckin’ kill a bag of chips.’

  ‘Wow. Crisps and chips all in one night. You’ll turn into a real fat bastard if you’re not careful. So, is there a takeaway in the village?’

  ‘Yeah...’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But I’m not allowed to use it, am I? Guests only.’

  I frowned. ‘I’m a guest, aren’t I, technically? Apart from the ‘not allowed to leave’ bit. I mean, that’s why you had to defend my honour and everything.’

  ‘Yeah...’

  ‘Then I’ll buy the chips.’

  Finn looked me up and down. ‘Uh, you’re a bit of a mess, y’know? Your lip and all that…’

  ‘And is there a dress code at this fucking takeaway?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘Then I’ll buy the chips.’

  Finn

  Lilith winced and put the chip back in the bag. ‘Ow. Salt and vinegar and open wounds. Not a good combination. You can finish them.’

  We sat on the bench on the lakeshore and ate hot chips as protection against the cooling night while we waited for Henry to pick us up. I was just gathering up the last grains of salt with my finger when the distinctive cough of the tiny boat’s engine drifted over the water.

  I gave a resigned sigh. ‘This is it, then.’

  ‘This is it. Shame.’ Just as Lilith was about to add something else, Henry yelled out for me to grab the rope to pull him to the quay and she thought better of it. I grudgingly headed towards the water.

  ‘Finn?’ she called.

  I turned back. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Spunk flavour,’ Lilith mouthed, and we both shuddered with shared, secretive laughter as a horrified Henry caught sight of our bruised and battered faces.

  *****

  A brisk wind whipped the surface of the lake into white-tipped waves that became as solid as cobblestones against the prow of the boat. Half way back to the island a wild gust caught us and rocked the little launch from side to side, and Lilith tumbled into me. I instinctively reached out to catch her and my left hand accidentally landed on a small, firm breast. ‘Shit, I’m sorry!’

  ‘S’all right,’ she smiled drunkenly, and settled back on the seat. Then, so gently that at first I thought it might only be my imagination, she leant into me so that the entire arc of her spine rested against my chest. I didn’t dare move, partly because I didn’t want Henry to see, but mainly because I didn’t want to lose the warmth of the woman currently using me as a backrest.

  A journey that I wanted to last forever took a little under five minutes, and all too soon the wooden skeleton of the island’s jetty loomed out of the darkness.

  ‘Next stop, Albermarle Hall,’ Henry called out with forced cheeriness, as the boat bumped against the tyres that hung off the little pier. Lilith reluctantly moved from my arms, and coldness filled the space that she left.

  I went to follow her out of the boat, but Henry beckoned me back. ‘We need to talk, lad,’ he said quietly, and the sadness in his voice only compounded that sudden chill.

  *****

  I sat sullenly at the kitchen table and deliberately blew as much smoke as I could in Henry’s direction as he brewed strong coffee. Whatever he was about to say was carving worry-lines into his forehead as he thought about the words, and I didn’t want to have to do reality tonight. I wanted to do as Lilith had done, to stumble off to bed and try to sleep and capture just some of the good stuff, instead of being made to sit at the t
able whilst my nose and fists throbbed from the fight.

  I was sick of waiting for Henry to find the right place to start. ‘So what’s all this about, little man? You want a freebie or something?’

  ‘Don’t ever say that!’ Henry snapped.

  I held my hands up. ‘Joke. Sorry. But you’re clearly building up to something fairly fuckin’ mammoth, and I wouldn’t mind getting my head down some time before dawn.’

  Henry sat across from me and frowned into his coffee as if a script was about to appear on its surface. Finally he spoke. ‘You need to be careful.’

  ‘Half an hour of moping around the kitchen like a wet fart to come up with that? What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘You know what it means, Finn. You and Lilith.’

  I had a sudden urge to hit him just for mentioning her name. I sat on my hands until it passed. ‘There is no ‘me and Lilith’. We haven’t broken any rules, Henry.’

  He shook his head. ‘I think we both know it’s not that simple. Do you know what’s so awful? In any other circumstance except this, that girl would be the best thing that’s ever happened to you. I don’t think you ever laughed before she arrived.’

  ‘Don’t be so bloody melodramatic, you stupid old queen. Course I laughed.’

  ‘Well if you did, I never heard you. And it makes you terribly vulnerable. Nights like tonight just compound that vulnerability.’

  I hated him talking about it. ‘God, Henry, just for a while back there it was great, you know? Just sitting and drinking with this beautiful girl, with no agenda – no wondering what she had planned for later. It was like I had a life!’

  ‘I know, I know. But in a couple of months she’ll be gone, and we’ll need to get back to how things used to be.’ He took a deep breath. ‘And that means the less of this... kind of thing there is, the easier it’ll be for you. Sometimes the more you have, the more you’ll miss it when it’s gone.’