Jimbob fished in the back pocket of his bunched-up jeans and said, ‘I got this.’ It was the card from the short fat man. He’d pulled it out of the muck once his father stomped off and thought not much of it. Tina shrugged. ‘We gotta do summat. For the bairn, if nowt else.’
Jimbob had Tina call the number. ‘Up Wether Cote,’ she said. She pulled a face at Jimbob. ‘Aye, a big lad is right.’ She said, ‘I don’t know owt about no cat.’ Then, ‘the market is fine.’
She put down the phone and reached for her clothes. She said, ‘we got us a meeting-up.’
The short fat man took one look at Jimbob and said, ‘aye, he’s a big ‘un right enough.’ He looked at his arms, said, ‘fair reach, too.’
He squinted up. ‘They tell me you tapped out a panther.’
Jimbob shrugged. Tina said, ‘they tell you right.’ The short fat man flicked his eyes. They lingered on her front. He said, ‘how’d you fancy making a bit of brass?’ Tina said, ‘he fancies it, all right.’ The short fat man leered. ‘You too, if you’re inclined.’ Tina steel-stared back. ‘Well, I ain’t. And nor’s this bairn of mine inside me.’
First hit, Jimbob felt a fuzz in his head and a hot mouth of blood. The second stuck in his ribs and knocked the wind right out of him. He stumbled back and the tall guy attacked, flailing fists in Jimbob’s face, knuckles dragging red ribbons over his forehead. Jimbob loped out a wide right hook and the flailing stopped. Blinking back to focus, he saw the tall guy stretched in front, twitching in the dew. The short fat man wore a gold-toothed grin shiny as sheep-dip. Another pair slapped the tall guy back. The short fat man came over, shook Jimbob’s sore hand. He said, ‘we’ll get you fixed up, all right.’
Jimbob and Tina moved in an old caravan round the back of the greyhound track. The short fat man – Lenny – let them have it on tick. It reeked of damp and stale sweat. The linoleum floor stuck to their feet. Woodchip peeled off the inside walls. A stained, sunken mattress was their bed. No electric, no water, no heat. Tina said, ‘I ain’t going nowhere near.’ Lenny pressed a fifty in Tina’s hand. ‘Just needs a bit of smartening up,’ he said. Tina said, ‘bit more than smartening.’ They bought a new mattress, still slept curled up on the Volvo’s back seat while they waited.
On dog days, the mutts whizzed round after the lure and travelling folk queued at the betting booth, hollered on their tickets. Out back, Jimbob took on all-comers, matched the challenger’s bet for winner-takes-all. Lenny put up extra, took half the profits, plus extra for early rent and a likely packet on side-bets. They were bare-fist fights – no clinching or holding, twenty seconds to rise from a knockdown. They fought till one was knocked out or gave up. They seldom lasted long. Jimbob’s looping right hand accounted for most. The old leather-faced men at the front told Len he had a legend on his hands.
Stakes rose and the opponents came from further. They fought stripped to the waist, smeared in each other’s blood. Jimbob broke his nose and his knuckles, cracked a few ribs. He was butted, gouged and wrestled – sometimes the referee overlooked. Once or twice he took a dive. For it, he got a bigger cut of Lenny’s betting, tempted bigger stakes next time out.
Tina never watched him fight. She started showing and stayed in the caravan. Jimbob would bring home cash. There was little left after Lenny took his cut and the rent and food was paid. They sold the Volvo and had the caravan fixed up best they could. They painted it from top to bottom and got the roof fixed. That winter, they hooked up a generator and huddled together round a couple of bar heaters. In the new year, Tina gave birth to a boy. Eight pounds only, but with Jimbob’s long arms and thick black hair. Zack, they called him – he was a sickly baby, hacked out a cough in the caravan’s damp. Tina sat up nights stopping him crying, feeding him up. Jimbob would come home all hours, out from a night with the boys or a fight far away. She’d swaddle his knuckles, dab at his bruises. They’d lie, listen to Zack turning, the wind buffeting the van. Till one night she said, ‘oh Jimbob, we gotta get out of here.’
Jimbob said, ‘got nowhere.’
He turned. She searched his back.
It went on that way till one early morning, Jimbob rolled up home and no hacking or crying met him when he clicked the door. No-one to swaddle his knuckles. He lay down and slept off the beer. Next morning, he found a note. Too ashamed, he tossed it aside. He fingered the spare cash in his pocket, figured maybe his life just got a whole lot simpler.
Where the boys met trouble in town, they called for Jimbob. He seldom had to go so far as to use his fists. They came to respect him. Jimbob came to telling the panther story, how he wrestled it down, beat it out. He had girls huddle round, pinch his muscles, gaze up at his height. He took to taking them back to his caravan, sometimes two at a time. He fucked how he fought. When he’d finished, they’d fall asleep and he’d sit up drinking home-brew till he about passed out. The boys came to get a little jealous of his womanising. They mocked him for how such a big man could get drunk so quick. The taunts got louder the more he fell towards unconscious and his fists fell helpless.
One night, they shaved all the hair from Jimbob’s head and stuck it back on his body, stuck it with paint and strawberry jam. When he woke, Jimbob caught sight and punched holes through the side of his van till his knuckles re-broke. He waded out, still naked, grabbed a plank and took to smashing generators and other van windows. One-night-stands shrieked out the doors, clutching clothes to their chests. Jimbob bellowed. The frightened men bawled, ‘the monkey-boy’s lost it!’ It took four to pin him down. Lenny loomed, took one look at Jimbob’s broken hands. ‘You’re no good to me in this state,’ he said. His breath bit of booze. ‘You fight once more to fix up the damage you caused. Then you get the hell out, you hear me?’
Jimbob nursed his swollen hands and laid low in his battered caravan. The heating broke, he slept nights wrapped tight in dirty blankets. He took to drinking more heavy, ate boiled-up rice packets pushed through the door. From outside, he heard blurred talk of the big fight.
Till one Sabbath morning, a crisp light came up and Lenny fisted the door. ‘You’re on,’ he bellowed. ‘You got an hour.’ Jimbob shook the booze from his brain and reached for jeans-bottoms still bloodied from last time. He winced when he crunched his hands to fists. He glanced in the mirror at his blood-shot eyes and stubble-hair. Felt his bones creak with cold. He peeled back the cardboard he’d stuck over the broken van windows, saw a trail of travelling folk gathering round a makeshift ring, double-bale high. Regular folk from the gypsy camps and market pens, the boys who’d daubed him for the hell of it. Saw Lenny doing deals, wondered who his money was on. Was surprised he’d not been asked to swing nothing – figured either Lenny had lost faith, or else he’d came to assuming what with the state of his hands he was a match for no-one.
Lenny came and pushed Jimbob through the crowd. The crowd mostly jeered and spat insults, depending where their money was at. He pushed aside a bale and clambered in the ring. On the other side, a tall thin man stood struggling to hold back a twisting pit-bull. Lenny studied the surprise in Jimbob’s eyes. He clapped his shoulder, hissed, ‘you got your chance, panther boy.’
Jimbob circled, crouched, felt his heart thump. The dog foamed on its leash. Lenny bawled, ‘fight!’ The thin man clicked the leash, jumped backwards on the bales. The dog shot at Jimbob – he swept a kick, missed, instinctively threw out his forearm. The dog clamped it in its jaws. Jimbob felt a scorch of pain, used all his strength to swing and shake, but the dog held firm. Jimbob swung his second arm round, began fisting the dog’s soft underbelly. Its weight shifted, sending the pair spinning to the muddy grass. Jimbob side-rolled to protect his face. The dog still savaged his arm, tore his shoulder half from its socket. The crowd bawled. Jimbob had the dog on top of him, felt it crunching in his ribs, squeezing out the wind. He worked his spare arm free and poked his fingers in the soft of an eyeball. Wrenched and twisted till the dog’s grip slightly slackened. Jimbob pulled free. The dog recoiled. Ji
mbob worked the other eye and slammed its nose. Each shot sent shards of pain up his arm and into his chest. Caked in blood, he worked up to his feet, began stamping the dog till it limped up and the thin man pushed past. Jimbob held his elbow, reeled out through the bales. Asked for nothing, nor did he get it. Blanked the crowd’s taunts and cheers. Figured on hitching a ride. He reached the road-side, felt a tide of nausea sweep up. He saw the sky spin, and the hills and farms that were in it.
* * * *
Good Oil
Johnny got a tattoo of his girlfriend’s name inside an arrowed heart on his upper left bicep. He said it was to show Carol how much he loved her. Carol took one look and decided she loved the estate agent a whole lot more. So Johnny changed the tattoo himself, using biro ink and a sewing needle, so it said ‘Castrol’, as in the oil. Then he added ‘GTX’. The ‘T’ and the ‘X’ strayed outside the arrowed heart, and even in his own opinion made the thing look messy. Johnny spent a week in hospital with blood poisoning. He said what the hell, it’s good oil.
Carol was waiting to meet him at the hospital gates. ‘No way are you getting me in there,’ she had told Johnny by telephone one day. He had rung to ask her to bring some Kestrel Super Strength.
‘I’m fucking desperate,’ Johnny had pleaded.
‘I was in them places enough times when I were a kid. It’s all death and that. It gives me the creeps.’
At the hospital gates, Carol told Johnny she’d finished with the estate agent, but really the estate agent had finished with her.
‘No-one’s ever done nothing like that for me before,’ she said, slipping her arm through Johnny’s bad one and making him wince. Johnny nuzzled his five-day stubble up against her cheeks. He smelled of Kestrel Super Strength.
‘You got yourself sorted then?’
‘I met a couple of lads having a smoke who helped me out.’
Carol smelled of a different brand of perfume. She asked Johnny if everything was going to be all right.
‘It’s nowt a drink won’t fix,’ Johnny said.
Carol had got a surprise ready for Johnny to try to make up for her running off like that with the estate agent, and what had happened with Johnny’s tattoo.
To get the surprise sorted, she had to get back with the estate agent. She slept with him one more time and as soon as she heard him start snoring she took his set of keys.
She had a new set cut before he woke up.
She went round to the show home the night before Johnny came out of hospital and put some fresh flowers in a vase and a four-pack of Kestrel Super Strength on the kitchen side.
Carol told Johnny all about his surprise on the bus back from the hospital.
‘It’s fully furnished and everything,’ she said.
Johnny said there’d better be an off-licence near by, or it wouldn’t be much of a fucking party.
Johnny refused to go to the show home straight away. He said he did not want to spend the best part of the day in an empty house. So Johnny and Carol sat in the corner seats of the Fox and Rabbit, furthest from the door. A triangle of dust hung in the sunlight. Johnny crumbled the corners off his beer mat, and Carol fingered her empty glass.
Two boys were playing pool. They were swigging their pints like they knew where the next one was coming from. They wore tight tee-shirts which showed off their bare arms and flat bellies. They played in almost silence, playing each shot like something big depended on it. They left angles which allowed for the slope in the bottom left-hand corner where cigarette ash had burned away the baize. The taller boy hit the white ball off two cushions and potted a red he didn’t intend. The shorter one muttered something under his breath and turned to feed the jukebox. ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’ by Phil Collins jangled across the silence.
Carol lit up another cigarette and watched through the smoke as Johnny got up and wandered across. He slapped a two pence piece on the side cushion, almost losing his footing as he did.
‘What the fuck’s that?’ said the taller boy.
‘I’ll play the winner,’ said Johnny, his palm pressed flat against the side wall.
‘With one fucking arm?’ laughed the shorter boy.
‘With no fucking arms if I want,’ said Johnny.
The taller boy won the game and went to the bar.
‘Mine’s a lager,’ said Johnny, reached down to rack up the balls.
‘Fuck off,’ said the taller boy, but he got Johnny a pint of lager anyway. Johnny noticed the thick roll of notes the boy pulled from his pocket.
‘We’re having a party tonight,’ said Johnny. ‘You can come if you bring a bottle, as they say. She knows where it is.’ He motioned across the pub at Carol. The shorter boy walked across and sat down on Johnny’s old stool, and asked Carol to lend him a fag.
The shorter boy leaned over and said, ‘what the fuck’s a sexy girl like you doing with a guy like that?’
Carol took another drag on her cigarette. She said, ‘Have you ever had anybody love you enough to get a tattoo of your name across their arm?’
The boy said, ‘I’ll definitely get yours if you tell me what your name is.’
‘Margaret’.
‘Margaret?’
‘Yeah. So?’
The shorter boy reached under the table and put his hand on Carol’s thigh. They watched the taller boy pot the black. Johnny asked the taller boy for a twenty pence piece for the jukebox. He put on ‘Wind of Change’ by Scorpions. After the first verse, the landlord pushed aside his newspaper and reached over to pull the jukebox plug out of the wall.
‘I want my money back,’ said Johnny.
‘Get to fuck,’ said the landlord.
Bubbles began to foam at the corners of Johnny’s mouth.
‘It’s lucky I’m disabled, or I’d fucking do you,’ he said. He struck a few wobbly kung-fu poses in front of the pool table. The landlord shook his head and picked up his newspaper. The shorter boy slid his hand further up the inside of Carol’s dress until it reached the warmth between her legs. Carol sucked on another Lambert and Butler and gazed into space.
Johnny insisted on doing the driving even though he only had one good arm. The shorter boy tried to pull Carol into the back next to him, but she pushed his hand away and got in the front next to Johnny. Her ankles sunk into old cigarette packets and empty cans. Johnny jolted the car out of its parking space. Carol lit up two Lambert and Butlers at once and reached across to poke one between Johnny’s lips.
‘What did you do to your arm?’ said the shorter boy.
‘Knife fight,’ said Johnny. ‘You should have seen the other guy.’
‘Yeah?’ said the taller boy. In the darkness it was obvious they were trying not to laugh.
Johnny drove slowly. Carol had to help steer through the S-bend at the top of the high street. Johnny smoked his cigarette down to its filter and dropped it in his lap when it burnt his fingers. He swerved onto the kerb when he saw an off-licence, and gave the boys a shopping list.
Following Carol’s directions, Johnny turned into the cul-de-sac without indicating. The show home was easy to find because it was the only one with a flagpole and a lawn. The cul-de-sac was bathed in orange light and no-one was about. The houses snaked around a slight curve with empty driveways. They were little boxes with square black windows and signs saying there were favourable rates for first-time buyers.
The show home smelled of sweat and fresh paint. It was fitted out like it was lived in by the neatest family in the world. The worktops were unmarked and the puffed-up cushions sat at nice angles on the sofa. Carol dragged her fingers along the empty mantelpiece. The taller boy scuffed his feet across the white sheepskin rug. The shorter boy went upstairs. Johnny sunk into the sofa and lit up another Lambert and Butler. He reached for the one of the bottles of vodka the boys had brought, and balanced it between his knees while he unscrewed the cap.
‘To a great party,’ he said, holding the bottle. ‘And new friends.’
He tipped his he
ad back and held the bottle at too steep an angle. The vodka poured down his chin and formed a damp patch at the top of his tee-shirt. The shorter boy shouted down from upstairs that the fucking stupid toilet wouldn’t flush. Carol clicked open a can of Kestrel Super Strength and watched Johnny knock back the vodka until his eyes began to close. He fell asleep and the rest of the vodka drained into the folds of the sofa.
From the bedroom window Carol could see how the cul-de-sac curled into blackness. The shorter boy stood behind her and looped his bare arms inside hers to cup her breasts. She turned to him and saw he was already naked except his boxer shorts. She thought of Johnny lying downstairs. She let the shorter boy to push her gently down on the bed. She lifted her arse slightly as his fingers hooked the tops of her tights. The taller boy watched, then bent over and started to remove his jeans.
Johnny woke a few hours later to the sound of birds and the sunlight chinking in through the thin curtains. He felt the cold patch on his tee-shirt. He saw Carol sitting at the kitchen table, watching him.
‘We’d better go before they come to open up,’ Carol said. She got up, brushed her hands down the sides of her dress and tucked the kitchen stool back under the table.
Carol unclicked the front door. Johnny got to his feet and headed for the stairs.
‘The toilet’s full,’ said Carol. ‘It doesn’t flush, remember.’
Johnny unzipped his trousers and began to piss on the carpet and the sofa. His piss reeked strong of alcohol. When he’d finished, he took a biro from the top of a pile of information leaflets on the sideboard and scrawled ‘piss’ and ‘fuck’ - or maybe ‘pissfuck’ - on the wall above the fireplace. He pressed the biro hard enough to tear the new paint.
Carol lit up a single Lambert and Butler as Johnny jolted the car through a three-point turn. She noticed how the morning dew sparkled on the show home’s lawn. She wondered what it might be like to get up in the morning with a steaming mug of coffee and walk through the wetness barefoot. Johnny looked across at Carol and told her it was the best welcome home party he’d ever had. He told her how much he loved her, and that he was going to get his tattoo changed back to say ‘Carol’, just as soon as his arm was better.
Fryupdale Page 10