I Predict a Riot

by Bateman, Colin

  Shortly after Wayne Rooney scored another wonder goal for Manchester United, Walter decided that being a rock god wasn’t for him. It was a little late to become a professional footballer, but there was nothing to stop him getting fit. So he sold the keyboard to a gay Christian, losing £300 in the process, and reinvested most of what was left in a year’s membership of an upmarket gym in the Culloden Hotel. Despite all advice to the contrary, Walter went hell-for-leather on every piece of equipment the gym had to offer, squeezing into one weekend what wiser bodies might have slowly built up over months.

  Walter strained every muscle in his body, and could hardly walk for weeks. He never went back to the gym.

  He was aware of all of these things, but seemed helpless to do anything about them. Because there was always the next time: he had learned his lesson, he would take things more easily, he would be patient, he would chill.

  But here he was, marching up to Margaret’s front door carrying flowers, chocolates and a bag of Ormo hamburger baps. This last was a bit of a joke. His crack to Margaret about ‘feeding time at the zoo’ on their first - and only - date had revolved around her prodigious appetite for bread rolls, and had caused considerable embarrassment. This was meant to show that they could laugh about past faux pas.

  He was an eternal optimist, that way.

  The house was semi-detached, with a well-kept garden in front. There was no gate. The drive undulated softly. Gypsy tarmac, thought Walter. They’d probably drunk the spirit level.

  He was wearing a black sports jacket, white shirt, and black jeans. The chocolates were Milk Tray and the flowers were orange lilies.

  Only as he reached the front door did Walter suffer a crisis of confidence. Why had he picked Milk Tray? Margaret was roughly his age, so she would have the same childhood memories of the Cadbury’s TV advert, the mysterious man in black slipping into the beautiful model’s luxury apartment and leaving the chocolates on her pillow, with the catch line, All Because the Lady Loves Milk Tray. The Milk Tray Man was tall, dark and handsome and Walter felt himself to be none of these things. He was wearing his glasses and they were speckled with rain; he felt heavy and vaguely ridiculous.

  Walter stared at the front door. What if he left it until midnight, broke into the house, sneaked into her bedroom and left the chocolates on her pillow? No, Walter. Or he could race back to the shop and exchange them for … what? A Toblerone, so she could break her teeth?

  Relax, relax, it’ll be fine.

  He looked at the flowers. God Almighty! Orange lilies! What was he thinking of!? They were undoubtedly the most beautiful flowers available on the garage forecourt. But what did they say? Hello, beautiful lady, and No Surrender! They were only flowers, but they symbolised so much! He might as well be wearing a sash! And … and … what had he read in the paper, just the other day? That cats who rubbed against lilies, and then licked themselves clean, were dropping dead all over the country, poisoned. What if she accepted the flowers, and they killed her cat?

  My God, if I ditch the Milk Tray and the orange lilies, he thought, I’ll only be left with the hamburger baps. She’ll take one look at me and phone for the men in white coats.

  Settle, Walter, settle! She is a nice woman, she will take it all in the spirit in which it is intended. She will accept your apologies and your gifts, and everything will work out just fine.

  Walter raised his hand to ring the bell. Then he hesitated. He took the bag of hamburger rolls and tossed them over the hedge into the next-door neighbour’s garden.

  Then he rang the bell. He had the Milk Tray in one hand, the flowers in the other. He really needed to clean the spits of rain off his glasses. If only they had miniature windscreen wipers … Walter shook his head, amused, then straightened up, pulled himself together as he heard footsteps on a wooden floor.

  Walter smiled - but not too widely. Didn’t want to look like a grinning idiot.

  The door opened.

  ‘Hi - hope you don’t mind—’ But then he stopped. The man standing opposite him did not look happy.

  ‘I … I …’ Walter gasped. ‘I was … is Margaret in?’

  ‘No, she’s not. I’m her husband. Who the hell are you?’

  From next door, a woman shouted, ‘Did you throw these bloody baps in my garden?’

  9

  By My Own Fair Hand

  At nine o’clock on Monday evening, Margaret and Maeve were still sitting in Morrison’s. What was supposed to be a quick drink after work had turned into a session, for the third Monday in a row. Margaret had tried telling herself that she was only there to show a bit of support for Maeve, whose husband was missing on that bird-watching trip to Colombia, but deep down she knew it wasn’t true. She was there because she was lonely. She liked to think of herself as basically an optimistic person, but lately things just hadn’t been going well. And that farrago with Walter McCoy or North or whatever the hell his name was, hadn’t helped. Now here she was, the week hardly started, and she was already drunk.

  Margaret glanced up from their corner table, and along the bar. It was lined with hopeful men in nice suits. None of them were paying even the occasional compliment of looking in her direction.

  Am I really that bad? she thought, and she looked at Maeve. Maybe it’s not me. She does look kind of scary, like she’s escaped from the Hair Bear Bunch.

  She’d been a security guard for too long. It was supposed to have just got her through the first few months after the breakup with her husband, but somehow it had stretched to two years. She quite enjoyed the work, but it was going nowhere.

  Was this going to be the pattern? Hanging out in bars, looking for true love? She hadn’t exactly exhausted the local dating agencies, but her experience with Walter had put her off trying again, at least for a while. What did that leave? Cruising around Tesco’s, trying to pick up any one of the dozens of single men pushing their trolleys forlornly along the aisles? Or eating burgers in McDonald’s in the hope of bagging a recently divorced father trying to bribe his offspring with a Happy Meal?

  I’m getting old and bitter, she decided. I’ll probably end up drinking Meths in Botanic Gardens. She looked across at Maeve. She’d gone quiet as well. Soon she’d be blubbering about her missing husband. Normally Margaret was sympathetic, but she couldn’t handle it now. She signalled to the quite cute waiter she’d put on a promise of a good tip earlier that they needed another round, then hurried off to the Ladies.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  Margaret had just emerged from the cubicle, and was washing her hands. Her first instinct, which she followed, was to check the back of her dress in case she was trailing a long stretch of toilet roll. She’d managed to do that once before, on another disastrous blind date. The fella hadn’t pointed it out for thirty-seven minutes because he thought it was ‘a good laugh’. No second date there.

  Now there was the tall, blonde, slightly snooty-looking woman she’d seen in the bar earlier, sitting with another stick-thin woman, ordering cocktails, staring at her.

  ‘Uhuh?’ said Margaret, quickly drying her hands and making fists of them. That’s what two years in Primark did for you.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind,’ said the woman, moving closer - within inches of death, since Margaret had had three lessons in unarmed combat - ‘but I couldn’t help but notice your dress.’

  ‘Uhuh?’ said Margaret.

  Oh great, some drunk, stuck-up cow’s going to have a go at my dress.

  At work they were occasionally allowed to rifle through the returns bin and buy whatever they fancied at a staff discount; they also had to discount the smells of BO and the unmistakable evidence of bodily secretions while making their selection. This dress, luckily, hadn’t been too bad. There was just a small rip in the material you would hardly notice.

  ‘Could I be really cheeky and ask where you got it?’

  ‘Primark,’ Margaret replied bluntly.

  The woman laughed suddenly. ‘No - really.’

&nbs
p; Margaret was about to punch her in the throat.

  ‘I just think it’s absolutely beautiful.’ The blonde moved closer still, and this time she reached out to touch the material. ‘The cut of it, the design - it’s gorgeous. I’m Emma Cochrane.’

  Margaret looked blankly at her.

  ‘Emma Cochrane - I own a boutique on the Lisburn Road.’

  ‘Ah. Right.’ She had heard of it. Out of her league. Margaret relaxed, slightly. She wasn’t being assaulted, or insulted.

  Emma Cochrane was all big eyes. ‘I do all the shows,’ she gushed, ‘but I haven’t seen anything as nice as this in a long time. It must have cost you a fortune.’

  £8.99, with the staff discount. ‘Well, you know …’

  ‘Indeed I do. Please. You simply have to tell me the designer.’

  She almost - almost - blabbed it out. But then, from nowhere, she had a sudden moment of clarity, a Road-to-Damascus moment, although if she’d been driving she would have been hauled over.

  ‘Actually, to tell you the truth,’ she began, a sure indication that there was a colossal whopper on the way, ‘I made it myself.’

  ‘You did not.’

  Margaret nodded. ‘I did. I design all my own stuff.’

  ‘You mean there’s others? As good as this?’

  Margaret shrugged. ‘I couldn’t really say.’

  ‘Well, who do you normally sell through?’

  ‘I don’t … I’m just waiting to meet the right people.’

  ‘Oh, my goodness - I’m getting goose bumps. This is so lucky, meeting you like this. I’d kill for this dress, and there are others! Darling, we simply have to talk! Come and join us for a drink. I’m in with my fashion buyer - we’re just over in the corner. Please, promise me you’ll come.’

  ‘I, ah - well, I suppose it couldn’t do any harm.’

  Emma Cochrane clapped her hands together, then surprised Margaret by kissing her on both cheeks. ‘This is going to be so fantastic! Come on.’

  Margaret hesitated. ‘I just need a minute to …’ She nodded at the mirror.

  ‘Of course. I’m sorry. Please - as soon as you can.’

  Margaret nodded, and Emma Cochrane hurried out of the ladies. Margaret hurried back into her cubicle and ripped the Pimark label out of her dress.

  10

  The Tears of a Clown

  Walter did what all normal men do when confronted with the truth. He ran away.

  One moment he was done up like a dog’s dinner, bearing gifts of chocolate, flowers and hamburger baps, hopeful of a reconciliation with a lovely woman; the next he was confronted by her angry husband and flying up the road like Billy Whizz.

  And what hurt more than anything?

  Not the fact that his relationship with Margaret was on the darkest side of doomed.

  Not the fact that she had clearly misled him about her marital state.

  But the fact that her husband screamed up the road after him: ‘That’s right, run, you speccy fat git! I can walk quicker than that. Fat Chops! You come round here again, you four-eyed clown, I’ll break your friggin’ neck.’

  Two references to being fat. Two references to his glasses.

  I walk up to a door like Casanova. I run away like Krusty the Clown.

  Walter adjourned to a pub. He sat in the corner, drinking pint after pint, orange lilies on the chair beside him, the Milk Tray open on his lap.

  I need to turn my life around. I need to get fit. The diet will start. Tomorrow. He slipped an orange creme into his mouth. It tasted good.

  A barman came over and said, ‘You can’t eat chocolates In here.’

  Walter said, with something of a slur, ‘But I’m the Milk Tray Man.’

  The barman rolled his eyes and walked away, muttering under his breath. Walter couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like he said, ‘More like the Michelin Man.’

  Walter glared after him. He moved the chocolate box under the table. His fingers snaked into the second layer.

  Walter was late for work the next day, his head busting with a hangover. Mark got him coffee, then went and stood looking out over the dual carriageway to Newtownards as Walter recounted the harrowing events of the previous evening. He let it all hang out. The rush of adrenaline on approaching Margaret’s house. The last-minute nerves. The sheer horror of confronting her husband. The total embarrassment of charging up the street. The cutting remarks. His glasses. His weight. His storytelling was so compelling that by the time he was finished he had managed to bring himself to the verge of tears.

  Silence hung like a wet blanket over the office. Thirty seconds. A minute. Eventually Walter spoke, his voice small, chastened. ‘So - what do you think?’

  Mark turned from the window. ‘I’m thinking of standing as an MP.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I know - but the Trimble’s gone and the Party’s in disarray; now’s the time to get in.’

  ‘I meant about last night.’

  ‘Oh, for godsake, Walter, you’re so self-centred.’

  ‘What?’

  The country’s going to wrack and ruin and all you’re worried about is your love handles! Go on a diet! Go and get your eyes fixed!’

  Walter glared at him. They had been friends for fifteen years, but they occasionally had bust-ups like this.

  ‘Well, I’m not flippin’ voting for you.’

  ‘You never vote anyway.’

  ‘Well, next time I will. And I’ll vote for someone else. The DUP.’

  They lapsed into a moody silence. Mark went back to his desk and struck his keyboard with even greater fervour than usual. Walter went onto the internet and looked up ‘laser eye-surgery’.

  Eventually Walter said, ‘It says here that ninety-five per cent of laser eye-surgery operations are successful.’

  ‘Does that mean that the other five per cent are catastrophes?’ Mark didn’t look up, but he sounded more like his old self.

  ‘Please don’t. I’m serious about this.’

  Now Mark peered over the top of his monitor. ‘Oh yes, I’ve heard that if the surgeon sneezes or someone nudges his arm, the laser can shoot right through the eye and blow the back of your head off.’

  This didn’t much help Walter’s hangover. He sought refuge in a can of fat Coke and a gravy ring. The diet was now scheduled to start the day after tomorrow. You couldn’t start a diet with a hangover. You needed grease and sugar. Everyone knew that. It probably said it in a book somewhere.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Mark suggested, ‘you could just get one eye done. Then if something goes wrong you’ll only be hideously disfigured on one side of your face.’

  It was time to change the subject.

  ‘Are you really serious about becoming an MP?’ Walter asked. ‘Wouldn’t you have to be selected?’

  ‘Oh, God aye, but the way things stand, Hermann Goering could get signed up. What’s wrong with your glasses anyway?’

  Walter shrugged.

  ‘It’s this bloody Margaret woman, isn’t it?’

  ‘No - she’s dead and gone now.’

  ‘Then what’s the point?’

  ‘I need to change, Mark. Something dramatic.’

  ‘And getting your eyes done counts as dramatic?’

  ‘Well, it’s a start. And you can just go in and have it done, it’s not like piano lessons.’

  Mark blinked at him. ‘You what?’

  ‘I mean, it’s not going to take years to achieve. You just go in and they laser your eyes and you’re done in five minutes, and then the world’s your lobster.’

  ‘Providing nothing goes tragically wrong.’

  ‘I’m going to have it done. I’ve decided.’

  ‘Well, more power to your elbow. Which, by the way, you’ll need to help control the guide dog.’

  ‘They’ll never select you,’ said Walter. ‘They’re desperate, but they’re not that desperate.’

  ‘You just wait and see. Or in your case …’

  Walter was about to snap someth
ing back when a sudden movement along the corridor grabbed his attention. The door to the very mysterious Office 12 was opening and the creepy little man who’d helped him hack into Margaret’s website appeared. He was looking directly up the corridor towards Walter. Walter concentrated his attention on his computer screen, but then he couldn’t help but glance up again, and the man was still there, and now his hand was raised, and his index finger was pointing directly at Walter. The finger slowly curled back towards Office 12, then pointed at Walter again.

  ‘Oh hell,’ said Walter.

  11

  The Eagle Has Been Arrested

  Margaret bounced into Primark the next morning, despite the fact that she had an enormous hangover. She was humming ‘The Only Way Is Up’. Before she clocked on, she yanked three dresses similar to the one she’d rescued from the returns bin off the rails and paid for them, not forgetting to use her staff discount. She immediately took them into the toilets and removed the Primark labels.

  She knew, of course, that this wasn’t quite right, passing off these cheap, mass-market dresses as her own designs, but as far as she was concerned it was only a mild deception. It was her in to the fashion business. She’d been waiting all her life for a break like this, and she wasn’t going to waste it. She would turn up at Emma Cochrane to meet Emma Cochrane and her fashion buyer Louise, sell them the dress she’d worn last night plus the three she’d now bought, for some exorbitant price, and then show them her own designs she’d been working on at home for years. Hopefully Emma and Louise would be just as excited about them. Who knew where it would all lead? Walter had joked about Paris and Milan - and she had put herself down by mentioning Cullybackey. Well, she would soon show him.