***
Micky Archer lives in a three bed–roomed semi down a normal street in the posher part of town. Got three kids — two at univesity, and one just started seniors. His missus, Doreen, she works at the grocers on the corner of the high street. He gets his paper of a Sunday, always pays his bills on time, and he’s always got spare change for the homeless and the needy — especially if they got a dog in tow. He’s a sucker for that old trick, Micky. And he sees his mum every weekend at the nursin home, brings her flowers and chocolates and shit, and entertains all her mates with made–up stories about his life.
No–one would believe he’s the hardest cunt this side of the Blackwall Tunnel and got his name to about a dozen murders. Sliced one geezer in half once with an electric bread knife. I was there. I saw it. It weren’t pleasant, I can fuckin tell you.
I’m goin up his front path, and Wagner’s ‘Die Meistersinger’s’ blarin out from an open top window in the front room.
Doreen opens the door.
“Hello Doreen. Is Micky there, love?”
Doreen gives me a filthy look because she knows I’m on the Firm, and nods towards the closed front room door. She tries to turn her back on the dark side of Micky’s business arrangements. But it must be hard when there’s nasty lookin cunts like me turn up on her doorstep every fuckin minute.
I wait till Wagner comes to a halt, and knock. Don’t do to disturb Micky when he’s havin a Wagner moment.
“Come in, Jay, me old son,” he says.
Must have seen me comin. Most people do. Least Wagner’s put him in a decent mood. I go in, and Micky’s in his dressin gown and slippers, feet up, leanin back in his two grand recliner.
Knows how to live, Micky does.
“Sit down, Jay,” he says. “Take the weight off your feet.”
He sits forward, and peers at me, squintin his eyes. Tells me I look fuckin awful. I take a deep breath, and nod without sayin a word.
“You still up for today?” he says.
I gotta fill the time in, so doin jobs for Micky’s as good a thing as any. And I know he’ll weigh me out a decent wedge at the end of it. Not that it matters much, but it makes part of me feel better about it at least.
“Doreen, love?” Micky says.
Doreen comes in, like she’s been waitin outside the whole time. “Make us a cuppa.”
Micky asks if I want one. I tell him, yeah.
And Doreen leaves to fulfil her wifely duties
Just like that.
“Sugar, Jay?”
“Two, please, Micky.”
Micky calls out to Doreen, tells her I want two sugars. He leans back in his armchair, stretchin his arms by his side. Asks me if I saw the documentary on Shostakovich the other night. Now, I’ve got a lot of time for Shostakovich, especially his fifth symphony and his string quartet number three. Fuckin genius. But I know Micky hates his guts, so I gotta be careful on this one.
“Yeah,” I says. “I caught a bit.”
Truth is, I saw the whole lot. Taped it while I was watchin it, and watched it straight over again when it’d finished. Poor bastard had a hell of a life. What with bein a tortured genius and havin Stalin on his case every fuckin day.
“What you reckon, then?” Micky says. “A load of shit, eh. Bastard couldn’t write a fuckin note in tune. Only cos he was right up Stalin’s arse he got anywhere at all.”
I’m about to have a go back, then Doreen comes in with two teas on a tray.
“Cheers, love,” Micky says.
He can see he’s got me riled, and he’s fuckin lovin it.
Doreen brings me tea over and I say thank you. Always pays to be polite.
“Carry on, Jay,” Micky says, slurpin his tea through a big grin.
I go to put me tea down on the coffee table, cos it’s fuckin hot, when Micky lobs a coaster at me.
“If you please, son,” he says. “Wouldn’t want to have the old lady on me back, know what I mean?”
Fair enough. I pick the coaster off the floor, put it on the table and place me tea square on it.
“All I was gonna say,” I says, “ is that Shostakovich had to say them nice things about Stalin else they’d have fuckin killed him. He had a family, you know. Kids. To be honest, Micky, I’d have done the fuckin same.”
“Would you now,” he says. “Now that is very interesting. I’ll have to remember that.”
I know he’s only kiddin, cos we been mates for years. But it don’t make it no fuckin easier sittin here in his comfortable three bed–roomed semi, drinkin tea out of a china cup and listenin to him bangin on about fuckin Wagner, whilst at the same time he’s beratin the fuckin genius of Shostakovich. I know I’m pushin the boat out a bit here, but I can’t help it. Today was always gonna be a day like this. A bad day. A day where I weren’t never gonna know when to stop.
“Nietzsche was right,” I says, into me tea, sort of under me breath.
Micky’s eyes start to bulge. He puts his cup down.
“What did you say?” he says, leanin forward, squeezin his eyebrows together.
I look straight at Micky, and I’m thinkin of that poor cunt Shostakovich and the grief he got at the hands of them sycophantic communist bastards.
“Nietzsche was right,” I say again, harder this time. “What he said about Wagner makin music sick. It’s just a fuckin racket.”
Micky’s steamin now, holdin all the violence in through gritted teeth. Then he lets go.
“NIETZSCHE IS A CUNT!” he screams, so loud Doreen comes runnin back in. “A FUCKIN CUNT! YOU FUCKIN UNDERSTAND?”
His tea’s gone everywhere.
Doreen gets the gist of what’s goin on, I mean, it ain’t fuckin hard, and goes and stands calmly behind her boilin man.
And before I know it, he’s leapt out of his two grand recliner and fuckin flown at me. In the mood I’m in today, I just ain’t quick enough, and before I’ve got time to put me fuckin tea down, he’s got me in a head–lock, his big strong arms in his fluffy blue dressin gown folded round me throat.
“Say it!” he yells. “Fuckin say it. Nietsche is a cunt!”
Fuck me. The scrapes I get it in.
I ain’t gonna do it. I ain’t gonna do it.
Then I do.
“Nietzsche is a cunt,” I say, though I can hardly fuckin breathe.
“And,” he says, “Shostakovich is a grovelling fuck.”
That’s a bit harder, that one. Even though this is Micky Archer with his dressin–gowned arm round me throat. I mean, Shostakovich couldn’t do nothing else. Waited half his life with a suitcase packed ready for that knock on the door from the fuckin KGB to whip him off in an instant, never to be seen again. He had to say them things. But he got em with his music. They didn’t understand that. Took the piss right out of em, he did. They just didn’t see it. Fuckin courage, that is. Fuckin courage.
“FUCKIN SAY IT!” Micky screams, tightenin his grip.
And I’m thinkin, today is gonna be fuckin hard enough as it is without gettin the life squeezed out of me before lunch by a geezer in a dressin gown.
“All right,” I says, with whatever breath I got left. “Nietzsche is a cunt and Shostakovich is a grovellin fuck.”
And I hate meself for it.
Micky lets go straight away.
“That’s better,” he says, calmin down in a fuckin instant and returnin to his two grand recliner. “Now where was we.”
Fuck me, the geezer’s mental.
He gets a sheet of paper from behind the genuine Victorian clock sittin on the mantelpiece.
“Right,” Micky says. “Eddie Fitch and Reg Tucker, a monkey each. Both on the estate. I’ve got the addresses writ here.”
And he hands over the bit of paper. I turn it over, expectin one more name.
“What about –”
“Don’t think I’d fuckin write his name down in me own handwritin, do you, Jay? You think I’m some sort of cunt?”
“No, Micky,” I says.
/> “Tony Thatcher. Five eleven. Skinhead. Scum. No mistakes, lad.”
Tony Thatcher sells motors off a forecourt out by the industrial estate.
“That’ll teach him for sellin me a fuckin lemon,” Micky says, deadly fuckin serious.
***
As I’m walkin back down Micky’s front path, this bit of paper crumpled in me hand with these geezers’ names writ on it I don’t even know, and another one in me head who don’t know he won’t even make it past tea–time, I hear ‘Die Meistersinger’ start up again. And I’m thinkin how the both of em — my mate Micky Archer and that cunt Wagner — neither one of em’s worth a fuck.
Chapter Three
The day my Sophie was born, fuck me, I never been through nothing like it in me life. We only went in for a blood test. Beth was thirty–eight weeks, so still a few early. I’m waitin outside in the corridor readin a Keates book I’d picked up down the market, when suddenly there’s this noise comes out from the cubicle where Beth is. And there’s scurryin and people runnin about and talkin short and quick. Two seconds later, Beth’s gettin whizzed down the corridor on a trolley. I ask one of the nurses what’s goin on, but they ain’t got no time for me — said someone’ll be along in a minute to fill me in.
So there’s my Beth and my baby on a fuckin trolley doin corners like Stirling fuckin Moss, and no–one sayin a word to me. I weren’t havin this. I caught up with one of the nurses and grab hold of him — a geezer, he was — name of Adrian on his tag. I says to Adrian to tell me what the fuck’s goin on.
Young Adrian, cos he couldn’t have been no more than twenty, he says to me Beth’s blood pressure’s through the roof and they gotta get the baby out quick. But it’s two weeks early, I says. I know, he says, but these things happen, he says, and he takes me to wait in this side room and pisses off again. He could have took me anywhere at that point. All I was thinkin was this weren’t good — Beth and the baby bein rushed off like that.
This blood pressure thing, I’d read about it. Pre–something or other, it’s called. Can’t remember the full name, but I know it ain’t good. So I’m sittin on this chair in this empty white waitin room turnin me brains over thinkin what this pre–thing’s called. But all I got is every fuckin letter of the fuckin alphabet floatin about in me eyes, and I can’t grab hold of any fuckin one of em. But what I did remember was that if you don’t catch this pre–thing in time — it’s more than likely to be your fuckin lot.
There’s a big clock on the wall over the door in the waitin room, and it just keeps tickin.
I start thinkin of when me and Beth first met down at The Bull all them years ago. She was doin a shift behind the bar for her mate who’d come a cropper with a bad batch of Charlie that mornin, and I’d come in for a swift one before meetin Micky up at his club. ‘Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands’ by Bob Dylan was playin on the Jukebox. Dave who ran The Bull at the time — still does – he was a Dylan nut. He’d been done for stalkin him when he was over here on tour in the seventies — the Street Legal tour, I think it was — and then he got done again durin the Love and Theft tour a few years back. Got a restrainin order slapped on him by Columbia, and he ain’t been allowed within a three mile radius of Dylan since. That’s why he has Dylan on in the pub every fuckin minute of the day — closest he can get, you know.
So there was Beth, pourin some geezer a pint, and she looks up at me when I walk in and she smiles at me like she’s been waitin for me all her life. I don’t do small talk, but I like a listen. Before you know it, she’s tellin me her fuckin life story and I’m swimmin in these blue eyes of hers and watchin the way she flicks back her dark hair when she laughs and how all these other punters are standin waitin to be served but she can’t pull herself away from me. I’ve never had that before. Someone wantin just to be with me like that, seein inside me, past all the hurt and the pain and the scars on me face, and seein underneath it all I’m just cryin out for a little love.
There’s this bloke called Rumi. One of them Sufi poets from India hundreds of years ago. He writ this thing:
‘Beyond ideas of right and wrong, there is a place. I’ll meet you there.’
Something like that, anyway.
Fuckin beautiful, that is.
Fuckin beautiful.
And at that moment, in that pub, amidst the swearin and the smoke and the smell of piss comin from the shithouses, me and Beth we was in that place what Rumi said. That place where everything just is.
***
Back in the waitin room, the big clock keeps on tickin, and I still ain’t none the fuckin wiser.
Footstep runnin outside. I wanna go and see what’s goin on, but it’s easier for me to sit back in me chair and know the both of em are dead — Beth and the baby, covered over with the same white sheet. And I’ve got tears burnin down me face cos I’ve convinced meself I’ll never see neither one of em again.
I look at the clock. I been here on me own twenty–five fuckin minutes.
Then the door opens.
Adrian. Fuckin Adrian.
“We’re ready for you now, Mr Dean,” he says.
“Ready?” I says, standin up. “You mean they’re all right?” I says.
“Yes,” he says, smilin. Fuckin smilin. “Just a little hiccup, that’s all.”
And I wanna punch the geezer. I wanna tear his fuckin arms off. But I hold it in, I mean, I’m gonna have a baby and that’s no fuckin example to set, is it.
Adrian takes me in the delivery room where Beth’s layin on this trolley and they’ve got this screen a few inches from her face so she can’t see what’s goin on down below.
But I can. And fuck me, it’s fuckin carnage. I give Beth’s hand a squeeze, and look in her eyes, and I’ve never loved her so fuckin much than in this moment. She’s fuckin out of it with all they’ve dosed her up with, and she can’t feel nothing what they’re doin. Can’t feel the blade goin in and cuttin her in half. Puts me in mind of Micky and his electric bread knife, but that image soon goes when the doctor reaches into Beth’s stomach, and pulls out this baby. And it’s blue. Covered in blood, and blue all over. And Beth’s askin me, all slurred,what’s goin on but all I’m thinkin is my baby’s dead and how I’m gonna tell her. Then they cut the cord wotsit with a pair of scissors, give the littl’un a smack on the arse, and it starts cryin.
So do I.
Big tears gushin down me face coolin the burnin what was there earlier. And I just wanna hold it. My baby.
“It’s a girl,” the doctor says, readin me mind.
A girl. A little girl. My little girl. My Sophie. Was always gonna be Sophie. We never had a boy’s name. That’s why I knew. Babies tell you, see, what they wanna be called. They just put it in your head. You think you’ve thought up the name all yourself, but you ain’t.
That just ain’t how it works.
The doctor gives Sophie to one of the nurses, who wipes her down and wraps her in a towel. Then the nurse hands her to me. I still got tears droppin off my face as I’m holdin this tiny, tiny, little, beautiful girl. And I ain’t even thinkin of handin her over to Beth. All I’m thinkin is I’m goin to give this littl’un everything I never had. Everything I’ve got. And if this world — or anyone in it – is thinkin of doin her any harm, they’re gonna have to come through me first.
The doctor says how about me layin the baby on Beth’s chest. And when I look at Beth, it strikes me, this littl’un is part of us both. Half each. Wouldn’t be here with just the one of us. And suddenly I got back that love again for Beth, and I lay our little girl on her chest like the doctor said. But Beth, she’s still out of it. Says, “That’s nice’, rubs her finger on the littl’un’s nose and closes her eyes and dozes off.
Seems a fuckin lifetime ago now.
***
I look at the bit of paper Micky give me, see where I gotta go. Like I said, I grew up on the estate, so I know it like the back of me hand. Ain’t been there in ages, but I doubt it’s changed much. These places never do. J
ust get tattier, that’s all.
Reg Tucker’s up first. Flat Three, Fourth Floor, Shillingford House. Another one of them poor bastards, I’d imagine, that’s got in lumber and borrowed a wedge from Micky thinkin they’d have all the time in the world to pay it back. But Micky’s got small print comin out his arse. Part of Micky’s enjoyment in life is to order cunts like me to turn up on these poor bastard’s doorsteps – poor bastards like this Reg Tucker — demandin full fuckin payment without no notice while Micky sits back in his nice little house listenin to fuckin Wagner and drinkin tea.
I ain’t done no collectin for Micky for years, and given today, I ain’t really in the fuckin mood to play it heavy. Besides, live and let live, that’s what I say.
Shillingford House is just like all the other dozen or so high–risers on the estate. A stack of poorly assembled second–hand Lego bricks reachin up to the sky.
I go in, knowin the lifts are probably fucked — and they are. The doors have been ripped open with a crow bar, and the smell comin from inside’s a mixture of piss, shit, and weed. In what might laughingly be called the lobby, there’s grafitti over every fuckin available inch of floor, wall, and ceiling. Colourful, but sort of disrespectful, if you know what I mean. I don’t like that. This is where people live, people like Reg Tucker — who I assume from his name’s probably knockin on in years and ain’t ever found no way out of this fuckin shit–hole.
There’s a door, part boarded up where glass used go down the middle, leadin to the stairs. And as I’m climbin the stairs I can’t hardly breathe for the smell of piss. Fuckin animals, some people.
Three floors up, and I’m fucked. Not just the piss took me breath away, I ain’t never been the fittest, if you know what I mean. Strong, yep, but fit, no. I’ve got by with me size, me fists, and by turnin me eyes cold when the situation requires.
I go through another broken glass door onto the third floor landin. All the front doors have got bars in front of em, floor to ceiling, like cell doors. We never had bars like this when I lived on the estate, but times change. People gotta do whatever’s necessary to feel safe in the end, I suppose. Sad, though, to think the world’s got like this. Fuckin sad.
One Day In The Life Of Jason Dean - Ian Ayris Page 2
