Playfair

by Jamie Tuck

Down by the river, and the distant bang of a hammer on sheet metal and the release of gas signify at least one pair of human hands at work.

  ‘Man, this place is fuckin lush,’ Berry says.

  The Romans chose their spot well, the site of the ancient fort overhead would have been high up on the hill with a view up and down river and across its banks to the south - everywhere in reach of their crossbows. The concrete shipyard a late arrival, built down below 1500 years later.

  ‘Where's all the blokes?’ Smithy says.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘The ship workers and that?’

  ‘Fuck knows,’ Berry says. ‘Maybe it’s their summer holidays too.’

  Massive orange pipes stretch out across the concrete like desert cannon, stacked in pyramids under a big red crane. Big cable spools that once fed fat wire by the metre into ships lie discarded across the concrete plain. The scattered detritus of a dying industry.

  Concrete spreads left and right for what seems like miles. And the ghosts of busy men silently go about their trades.

  A voice comes as if from the other side of the river.

  ‘Wankers!’

  It’s Wedge, sounding like a tannoy announcement in a train station.

  ‘Cock suckers!’

  He’s invisible.

  ‘Where the fuck?’

  ‘Wankers!’

  ‘Where’s he?’ Smithy says.

  Wedge appears at the far end of one of the massive tubes like a blonde fuse.

  ‘Oi wankers! Over here.’

  Berry dives into the next pipe.

  ‘Ha heh heh.’

  It's dark and cool inside the metal tunnel as he races along on his hands and knees towards the light at the far end. The dank cold and smooth metal cave a welcome break from the sun.

  ‘BELL,’ he shouts. ‘END.’

  The two words bounce against each other like two drunks falling down a well.

  ‘Bellius endius!’ Berry shouts. ‘Ha heh heh. Ha heh heh.’

  He falls out and lands chest first on the concrete, his knees and arms covered in orange dust.

  ‘Woo hoo!’

  Clang clang clang.

  Wedge is banging a third tube with an iron bar.

  ‘GAY BOY,’ he shouts.

  Clang clang.

  ‘COCK SUCKER!’

  Clang clang.

  ‘STRETCHED ANUS!’

  Smithy flops out into the sun and knocks Wedge back against another fat brown tube.

  ‘Fuckin dick,’ Smithy says. ‘That’s really loud!’

  Wedge regains his balance, clutching the pipe.

  ‘Watch it, fuck boy. I’ll stick this up y’arse.’

  Smithy brushes the orange dust from his legs.

  ‘Though,’ Wedge adds. ‘You’d probably like that, wouldn’t ya?’

  Berry sits in the mouth of the pipe.

  ‘You two want some time alone?’

  ‘I need a piss,’ Smithy says.

  He walks away.

  Wedge has a cigarette at his lips, he lights it.

  ‘Must be a bender,’ Wedge says, watching Smithy walk away.

  ‘Maybes that’s why y’like him so much.’

  ‘He’s a knob. Fuckin borin. Givin his real name to the checkies and that. Wanker.’

  Wedge pulls out his inhaler, shakes it and blasts magic gas into his dodgy lungs.

  He puts it back in his pocket, and the cigarette back to his lips.

  Berry shakes his head.

  ‘Idiot.’

  Berry looks up at the hot sky, it’s like it’s attached to his face. His forearms feel as if they've been dipped in ants.

  ‘Ow, shit man.’

  They’re bright pink.

  ‘Fuck this man,’ he says.

  He steps out across the roasting grey concrete to the shade cast by a red crane. It’s a monster; bigger, neater, less complicated than the rest. It takes a good twist of the neck to see the top, this one like a metal spider holding a fishing rod. Its hook open and scratched free of rust. Used recently, possibly stacking the brown pipes.

  Berry sits on a cable spool, tipped face down. It’s like a giant thread bobbin made from two wooden discs, rusted bolts holding them to a central barrel. Three other cable spools sit discarded in the shadow of the crane.

  Smithy sits at the river’s edge staring up at the sun with his shirt off, his crab ladder had long since crawled up his belly and seeded his chest with thick black hair. He looks up at the sky like a sunbathing turtle.

  ‘Fuckin Roman,’ Berry says.

  Smithy’s hairless father is the double of Elma Fudd. But Ginelli’s ice cream van was often parked near the Smith house, empty – a queue of hopeful kids waiting for ice cream man’s return.

  ‘Alfonso?’ Berry wonders.

  ‘Yeeeaaaa!’

  Berry spins his head to the noise.

  ‘What the fuck’s he doin now?’

  Wedge is rolling a cable spool taller than he is, pushing it towards the river like a Roman wagon wheel. He disappears between its outer rims each time he gives a heavy push at its inner hub.

  He's rolling it – blind - towards where Smithy sunbathes.

  ‘Fuck?’

  He’s closing in fast, Wedge blinded by the tall wood of the spinning wheel, Smithy celebrating the sun.

  ‘Smithy!’ Berry shouts. ‘Get out the fuckin way.’

  Smithy turns, sees the fast approaching cable bobbin. He jumps to his feet, leans left then right like an indecisive goalkeeper.

  ‘Get out the fuckin way!’

  Wedge heaves a final time then lets the bobbin go, stumbling forward as it leaves his hands.

  The goally finally chooses a post – he dives left.

  A good choice.

  The spool spins the final few yards to the river’s edge and disappears.

  There's half a second's silence.

  Kerrrrrr shplooshh.

  Wedge walks to the lip and watches the bobbin float down river.

  ‘Woo hoo!’ he screams. ‘Woo fuckin hoo!’

  Berry leaps to his feet and looks at the three cable spools under the crane. He chooses the biggest - and heaves. It really is a big bastard, a good two feet taller than he is.

  He pushes it with his shoulder.

  Nothing happens.

  ‘Fuck’s sakes . . . move y’fuck . . . n . . . BASTARD!’

  Nothing happens.

  ‘Fuckin. . . Aaaagh!’

  He heaves like a galley slave but the thing still resists its natural inclination to roll.

  ‘Aaaaaagh!’ he heaves again and, this time, it shifts slightly from its long settled place on the pitted concrete.

  It creaks.

  ‘H’ware . . y’fuckin . . bastard!’

  The joins in the slats start to turn with the satisfying crunch of heavy wood on a hard surface.

  ‘Nyaaagh!’

  Berry grunts and pumps, putting hand under hand between the wooden slats, making the wagon wheel inch forward then accelerate.

  ‘Yaaagh y’bastard!’

  Soon the slats spin through his hands like fruit in a slot machine.

  ‘Yaaaaagh!’ he screams. ‘Ha haaaaagh!’

  The blood thumps through his ears, chasing the thrill through his body.

  ‘Bez!’

  His hands punch speed into the wheel.

  ‘BEZ!’ closer

  His ears tune in.

  ‘Nyeeeagh!’

  ‘BERRY!’

  It's enough to slow him a fraction.

  ‘Wha?’

  Crunch!

  The bobbin smashes into something solid and jolts, throwing him back, jarring his wrists and stabbing a thick spelk into the palm of his right hand.

  ‘AGH! FUCK!’

  The wheel disappears and Berry falls hard to the floor, taking skin from his knees. Grit pierces his palms like buckshot.

  There's a double blood beat paradiddle in his ears before. . .

  Kerrrr dumf!

>   It sounds like a car being crushed at the scrapyard.

  Not wet at all.

  Berry lifts his head.

  One side of the bobbin was shorter than the other and it had rolled to the left around the top of the pyramid of carefully stacked pipes. Then smashed through a rusted, busted, waist-high yellow fence.

  ‘What the fuck?’

  He peers down a cliff face carved from the riverside and lined with concrete.

  ‘Fuckinhell!’

  One of the ship yard’s dry docks.

  It’s a long way down.

  Health and Safety haven’t been around here in a while. The broken piece of fence swings out over the void like a shrub in a Roadrunner cartoon.

  The cable spool crashed through the fence, into a boat’s mast, bounced, then smashed into three pieces on the concrete, 40-odd feet below.

  ‘Man, oh man!’

  Wedge falls to his side. Their slapped pink faces looking over the edge of the coffee stained man made cliff.

  ‘Man,’ Wedge says, struggling for breath.‘That’s a big fuckin hole.’

  He shakes his Ventalin inhaler, and takes two blasts of gas.

  ‘Aye,’ Berry says, he points his spelked hand down. ‘But look what I hit.’

  ‘Fuck?’ Wedge says. ‘Good shot.’

  Smithy’s sweating face falls between them.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s a dry dock,’ Berry says.

  ‘I know that, you twat,’ he says, pointing down. ‘That.’

  A quarter of a mile away, and Billy ‘Hash’ Brown has lost control of his car, hands locked tight to the wheel.

  ‘Jesus! Fuckin!’

  The battered Vauxhall Chevette rams up the kerb and onto the path. He jabs his feet at clutch and brake.

  ‘Ayaaaaaz! Man! Fuckin! Ayaz! Ayaz man!’

  And it stops outside number 11 Avon Road.

  Which is handy, as that’s where he was headed.

  Foggy’s house.

  ‘Ayaaaaaaz! Man!’

  It was, technically, possible to park closer to Foggy’s front door, but it would have meant smashing through his front yard wall.

  Hash rests his head on the steering wheel.

  Beeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

  ‘Ayaz, man,’ he sobs, gently. ‘Ayaz.’

  Beeeeeeeeeeeeep.

  He really shouldn’t be driving – not in his condition.

  His foot relaxes off the clutch and the car judders forward.

  Stalls.

  Jerking his head from the horn.

  ‘Agh! Uagh-ha-ha! Aaaagh!’

  His ruined skin whips like a wet towel, independent of the meat below.

  Back.

  ‘Ayaz man!’

  Forward.

  ‘Ayaaaaaz! Man!’

  Back.

  The car finally stops moving.

  Hash sits back and closes his eyes, folding everything in and keeping it still for three whole minutes.

  ‘Ayaz, man.’

  The pain ebbs away, leaving a dull throb in its place.

  ‘Need a spliff,’ he chants his mantra. ‘Need a spliff.’

  He opens his eyes.

  A man fresh from the Bible looks back at him from inside the rearview mirror.

  ‘Jesus fuckin!’ he says.

  The skin is bubbling up towards the white flop rim of his hat in fat little puss volcanoes. Red veins push blood across the whites of his eyes.

  He reaches for the door, determined.

  ‘Spliff!’

  Hesitates.

  The enemy is out there, up in the sky with God. Omnipotent in the day. Her yellow, nuclear veil swathed across the rows of red brick houses that is the Meadow Well estate. There’s neither a meadow nor a well anywhere nearby. Never has been. A council dullard with a powerful pencil actually believed giving the refurbished council estate a sedate name would make it a sedate place.

  Wanker.

  ‘Fuck. Me.’

  Hash stares at the scorched, chipped path to Foggy’s door like it’s the Outback. It’s a 13 foot walk to the doorbell.

  That’s a long fucking way, for Billy ‘Hash’ Brown.

  ‘Spliff!’

  He pushes the car door until it clicks and locks, open. He turns his body to the right and lifts his feet out into the sunshine.

  It really is a lovely day.

  ‘Jesus fuckin,’ he breathes. ‘Fuck. Me.’

  And pushes himself up.

  ‘Ayaaaaaaaz man!’

  He’s vertical. He pushes the car door closed and turns, he puts the key in the door and locks it. Flips the handle.

  He moves.

  Slowly.

  A tarred and feathered, humiliated man hobbling for home.

  He lifts his feet up a small kerb where a gate should swing. His feet take him up the path.

  And he’s there.

  Piece of piss.

  ‘Jesus fuckin.’

  He presses the bell.

  Silence.

  ‘Jesus fuckin fuck.’

  He taps on the piece of plywood that fills the hole where a pane of glass should be, it throbs softly against its tacks but doesn’t make much of a sound.

  ‘Foggy?’ he croaks. ‘Foggy?’

  He clears his throat. It doesn’t help. He still sounds like he’s swallowed sand.

  ‘Foggy?’

  He taps the wood again.

  ‘Foggy?’

  He rests his forehead against the door.

  ‘Please. Please be in.’

  He taps, this time with a fingernail.

  And Foggy’s dog goes batshit - insane – hurtling towards the door from his bed in the kitchen.

  ‘Arf! Arf! Arf!’

  ‘Oh fuck, Nigel! Shh Arf. Shhhh. Nigel! Shhh. Calm down boy.’

  Bang. Scratch. Scrape. Bang.

  The pitbull jumps up at the other side of the door, hammering and scratching at the wood like a new species – a genetic leap – a Shark of the Land. With almost as many teeth and exactly the same number of brain cells.

  Scratch. Bang. Scratch.

  There's the tap tap of stockinged feet behind the door, coming down unstable stairs.

  ‘Who’s it?’ a sleepy, female voice.

  ‘Mel? It’s Hash. Fuck’s sake. Don’t let Nigel out!’

  Scratch. Scrape. Bang.

  ‘Arf! Arf! Arf!’

  The chains loosen.

  ‘Arf!’

  Scratch. Bang. Scratch.

  The door opens.

  ‘No Mel, Mel! No! Fuckin NO!’

  Hash lifts his hands.

  ‘Fuck!’

  ‘Arf! Arf! Arf!’

  Nigel leaps at his belly, paws flaying the burnt skin of his chest and thighs in happy welcome for Billy ‘Hash’ Brown - his bestest friend in the whole wide world.

  The pitbull terrier has had a bad press, this one anyway - Nigel is soft as clarts. A slobbering lover not a fighter.

  ‘Ayaaaaz! Ayaaaaz man! Mel! Mel! Get him fuckin off me man! Ayaaaaz!’

  Mel grabs Nigel’s bullet studded collar.

  The teenage girl’s lashes are crusted with eye snot.

  ‘Arf! Arf! Arf!’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Billy. What the fuck’s up wi you? Nigel loves ya man.’

  He stands on the path like a melting candle.

  ‘Ayaz, man,’ he moans, gently. ‘Ayaz.’

  She turns and drags wimpering Nigel through a wallpaper jungle of embossed trees, peeling in patches.

  Hash follows like a mauled gazelle.

  The walls have absorbed enough smoke in their twenty years to fill a cancer ward. The house has the organic, musty smell of abject disregard.

  Mel opens the door to the back yard from the kitchen and pushes Nigel out.

  ‘Arf! Arf! Arf!’

  He barks and scratches, fights the door. Cries.

  ‘Tea?’

  ‘Tea?’ Hash replies, ‘Fuck no. Water. Just water. Got any ice?’

  Nigel whin
es.

  ‘Y’can take y’jacket off Billy, and y’hat. Make y’self at home and that.’

  ‘Nah, I’m alright Melanie. Don’t worry.’

  She's wearing a man's white t-shirt which falls to her mid thigh, neck stretched down to her cleavage, a black Nike tick sits under her right tit.

  A single flash frame of a small pink fanny and a downy knot of pubic hair flashes into Hash’s mind.

  ‘But, it’s boilin man,’ she begins.

  She rubs the yellow crust from her eyes.

  ‘It must be a hundred deg . .’

  And finally, they sharpen.

  ‘Jesus, what the fuck happened to you?’

  ‘Nothin. Just the, y’know, the sun and that,’ he points to the brown ceiling. ‘The sun.’

  She looks up - needlessly, even for Melanie Cole.

  ‘The sun? Fuck me Billy. Y’shouldn’t be sunbathin in this weather. It’s like that bloody Swahili dessert out there man.’

  ‘Desert,’ Hash says. ‘Sahara des-ert, not dessert.’

  ‘Wha?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ he sighs.

  ‘Hash?’ a male version of Mel’s sleepy voice.

  Hash shuffles back under the door frame and looks up the stairs.

  ‘Ayaaaz! For fuck’s sake man!’

  His eyes follow a set of hairy toes up monkey legs to a tight pair of purple y'fronts; wisps of coconut hair have unfurled from the damp sides. Foggy’s chafed eyes peer down either side of the twin holes of his nose and through the thin ladder of hair up his belly. His right nipple is pierced.

  ‘Fuck me, it’s The Invisible Man,’ Foggy snorts at the man in jacket and hat in his hallway. ‘Y’got any?’

  ‘Nah man, I told ya this mornin man. There’s none. Have you?’

  ‘Me? I sold out a week ago man.’

  ‘But? But? I need a spliff man!’

  ‘So do I mate, so do I.’

  He heads back to his pillow and Hash aches back into the kitchen; he sits down at the table.

  ‘Let me just shift these for y’Billy Brown.’

  Mel fusses about, moving festering cups and plates around the table but accomplishing little.

  There's a flash of saggy washed out cloth at the cleft of her legs, more grey than white. His eyes drift up passed the Nike tick then back down again.

  They pause.

  There’s a lard coloured splatter at the crotch end of the t-shirt. Quite possibly a spunk stain.

  Hash closes his eyes.

  She clicks around the stack of dishes in the sink with the kettle's base and opens the tap, it complains like a skinned rat’s trying to crawl through the pipes.

  ‘He's skint again,’ she says.

  Water finally bursts into the kettle.

  ‘Got nothin Mel, nothin.’

  There's a new, assertive tap on the front door’s chipboard window.

  Nigel starts to headbutt a hole in the back door, angry this time.

  ‘RRRRRRarf! Arf! Rrrrrrarf!’

  ‘Mel,’ Foggy shouts from his duvet. ‘Answer the fuckin door.’

  ‘Get it y’self,’ she says, halfway back through the wallpaper Amazon. ‘Y'lazy bastard

  ‘Who’s it?’ she squeals.

  ‘Foggy in?’ the breaking voice of a teenage boy.

  ‘Who’s it?’

  ‘Crosby,’ he says through his nose. ‘Sean Crosby.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Crosby,’ the voice cracks. ‘I want some blow. Got any gear yet?’

  ‘Cock,’ she rasps, opening the unlocked door. ‘Don’t say that in the street, y’fuckin idiot.’

  The door opens.

  ‘Karl,’ she screeches.

  ‘What man?’

  ‘It’s one of y’bairns.’

  A greased down head of black hair enters with the spilled sunlight. Two gold hoops pat against the bad skin of his cheeks. There’s downy black fluff across his top lip, a crap Indian woman’s moustache.

  ‘Wait there,’ she tells the teenage boy.

  Mel comes back into the kitchen.

  ‘Fuckin bairns,’ she says.

  Melanie Cole only left school herself last year.

  Foggy's feet patter down the stairs as Mel opens a cupboard above the sink. She pulls out a cream coloured earthenware jar with 'COFFEE' formed across it in fat brown letters.

  ‘Got any blow?’ the boy asks Foggy

  ‘What y'after?’

  ‘Teenth.’

  ‘Wait there.’

  Foggy patters into the kitchen, scratching at his purple crotch. His hair is tussled up from his forehead like a breaking wave, there's a duvet line down one red cheek.

  He starts to laugh.

  ‘What?’ Hash says, as Mel hands Foggy the jar.

  ‘Looker the state o’ ya,’ Foggy says. ‘Fuckin Twat in a Hat.’

  He walks back up the hall, puts his hand in the jar and pulls it out again, handing the kid a lump.

  ‘Seven fifty.’

  The kid lays two green pound notes into Foggy’s hand then starts counting out coins, all tens and bronze.

  ‘Fuckin hell man,’ Foggy says. ‘Shrapnel? You busted y’fuckin piggy bank or what?’

  ‘S’all I’ve got.’

  The boy leaves.

  Foggy comes back up the passage.

  ‘I thought y’had none?’ Hash says. ‘Man, skin up. I need a fuckin spliff!’

  ‘I haven't.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘That's snide shit,’ Foggy explains, handing Mel the tin. ‘Nay good. I've had it for ages. Never been able to sell the fucker.’

  Mel opens the lid to check he'd put in the money.

  He hadn’t.

  She stares at him until he holds out his hand. She pours in the coins. Stares at him again. He sighs and pulls the notes out of his underwear. She puts the coffee jar back on the shelf.

  ‘Y’sellin that to everyone?’

  ‘No cunt would buy that shit stuff man, they’d suss it straight away. It’s for clueless little cocks like him,’ he nods to the door. ‘He shouldn't come knockin at me fuckin door first thing in the mornin.’

  The red clock embedded in the cooker says 1:13pm.

  ‘I’ve got me reputation to think of and that.’

  ‘Richard fuckin Branson there.’

  Foggy sits down at the table.

  ‘Any tea or what?’

  ‘The fuckin kettle's boilin,’ Mel says, pushing down the cold kettle’s orange button.

  She starts fishing around the piled up dishes in search of mugs.

  ‘Poo,’ Mel says. ‘What’s that smell?’

  Hash looks at her, turns slowly to Foggy.

  Desperate.

  ‘Let’s try some of that gear anyway?’

  ‘It’s made of fuckin rubber mate. There’s nay blow in it at all. Total shit. I got ripped with it years ago, in Byker.’

  ‘But, I NEED a fuckin spliff man! I’m dyin!’

  ‘There’s none, man. Nowhere. Nobody’s got any. Nobody.’

  ‘Need a spliff!’

  ‘Nobody’s got any.’

  ‘I. NEED. A. Fuckin. Spliff!’

  ‘Fuck. Me! I. Heard. Ya. The fuckin first time. I’ve got fuck all man.’

  ‘What about Kelly?’

  Foggy's head shakes.

  ‘Barry? Bazza’s got some, surely?’

  Another head shake.

  ‘Oily?’

  ‘Nah.’

  ‘Rod?’

  ‘Nope. Jane and fuckin Freddie have got fuckall either. Y’psycho father-in-law supplies every cunt, man.’

  ‘What about in toon?’

  ‘Cunts. The lot of em,’ Foggy says. ‘Last time I got some was in Byker.’

  Hash's face fills with fresh hope, chair creaking – ‘Ayaz man’ - forward a notch.

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘Aye. I just fuckin told ya,’ Hash says, nodding to the door. ‘It was rubber. Ask that little prick.’

  Mel plops a cream mug with
scummed up sides under Hash's nose, steam rising off the barely tanned pool of liquid. Foggy puts his own mug to his mouth and sucks.

  She looks at Hash, quizzically. Her nose twitches.

  ‘What?’ he says. ‘What’ve I done now?’

  ‘Y’need a bath Billy Brown,’ she says. ‘Y’bloody stink man.’