by Sean Thomas
— Why did you marry her, Dad?
— Fantastic arse yer mam
— Please!
The Dying Father is smiling. The Surviving Son is shaking his head, and smiling, and listening to his dad as his dad breathes. The rattle of Patrick’s dad’s breath chimes with the rattle of the tubes which chimes with the rattle of the door opening. A black nurse pushing a trolley has entered. The black nurse looks at them both; Patrick’s dad winks at Patrick as the nurse says to the room:
— How’re we, David? You filled in your lunch form now?
David Skivington dad looks at Patrick; and smiles; the father looks at the nurse and says:
— Yes nurse thank you nurse I’ll have a dry sherry
Patch turns to the nurse and says nothing; Patch turns to his dad and mouths dry sherry?
His dad smiles and says:
— They let us have sherry don’t you Nurse Wilson?
— You filled in the form David? Have you? Have you filled it in?
— I can hear you nurse yes has that old git next door snuffed it yet?
— Don’t talk like that David we gonna move you outside in the rain …
— Give me some fags you old trollop
— The doctor is coming any moment
With another rattle the nurse leaves and Patrick says:
— Stop winding them up! God!
— What little pleasure I have. Other than trifle …
— What about the sherry?
— Sweet British sherry oh it’s great, and perhaps some cribbage. What a hoot
— It really is a bit of a knees-up in here isn’t it?
— How’s that club? You making any money, son?
— Mmmnn
— Well? Areya?
Patrick shrugs, looks at a figure silhouetted in the frosted-glass pane of the door, a doctorly white-coated figure; Patrick shrugs again, says:
— mnnnnn
— Make money, Patrick: that’s the only way
— Like you you mean?
Patrick knows by his dad’s face that his father is about to get more sarcastic, more cynical, maybe even angry and hectoring, but his dad’s usual moody spiel is instantly interrupted by the doctor coming in and wordlessly and summarily pulling down the bedclothes of his dad’s bed: to check the stigmata of hospitalisation; the catheter wounds, the intentional vaginas. A silence reigns as Patrick watches this: the embarrassing horrible awkward physical underwear-soiling reality of his father’s hospitalisation and impending death. Instinctively Patrick averts his face: he stares at the floor, the carpet. At the wall, the floor, the doctor’s expensive shoes. Nice shoes. Then Patrick raises his eyes and looks at the doctor as the doctor turns to Patrick and says:
— Don’t tire him out too much
— No no of course, Doctor
— He’s easily tired now
— No I’m not you silly bastard
— All right, Mister Skivington, I’ll be back in shortly
— Go and kill someone else you stethoscoped fuckwit
Patrick snorts a laugh; suppresses it. Patrick tries to look serious and says:
— Why do they let you stay here, Dad?
But the doctor is laughing anyway, the doctor is laughing and saying:
— I’ll be back THIS EVENING – Turning to Patch – Nice to meet you And so the doctor goes, the door swings, the door shuts; a kind of silence comes over. Patrick thinks of his father, his father’s health. He thinks of haemorrhoids. Then he thinks of the God of Haemorrhoids.
Then he says:
— Do you believe in God, Dad?
His dad makes a scoffing noise:
— That miserable cunt? Nah
Patrick’s dad looks like he wants to scoff some more, to go on, but instead he has started on a cough, a long cough, a long, rolling saga of a cough that Patrick tries not to listen to; to listen to; to listen to. Listening to his dad cough, and then sigh, and then recover, sort of, Patrick thinks on God, on how if God existed, which He doesn’t, but if He existed, which He doesn’t, but if He did, if He existed …
Patrick thinks how God, if He existed, would be like a doctor, a doctor who takes pity on the fact that you are seven years old and nervous and puts a fatherly arm around your little shoulders and says Come in come in sit down … and then, when you are inside, when you are sitting in the big chair in the surgery with your short trousers, and your battered satchel on your lap and your feet hardly touching the floor, then the doctor turns and smiles and says Oh I’m terribly sorry but we’ve had the results and you are going to die …
And then just as you are about to start crying the doctor grins and says, Oh yes and your mum’s going to die, and your dad, and your sister and all your friends at school, and that nice teacher who does Art, and the girl down the road, and the entire Leeds United squad, they’re all going to die, to die, to DIE!
— Dad???
The coughing has done it. His dad’s fallen asleep. Or at least into a morphined stupor akin to sleep. Scraping the chair, Patrick stands, and looks over. Then he goes over and looks closer at his now sleeping, now dying dad. The last time? Is this the last time?
His eyes CS gassed again, by the Italian riot police in his head, Patrick wipes a stupid wetness from his eye, and stoops very close to his dad’s face. From this far away Patch can smell the chemicals, the preservatives; at this proximity he can sniff the bromides and linctus and TCP and bandagey stuff. A very different smell to what Patrick remembers. No more the Jameson’s and the fags, the whiskey and tweed. No more. It is as if his dad is fading away, even olfactorily …
Patrick leans over his father’s barely breathingness, his pitifully belittled form. Patrick’s eyes are filled with the wetness of that holiday in Wales, the boat that never went properly, his dad laughing in the pub with a Scotch, his dad saying ‘see my nipple and fear me’; here and now Patrick gulps back the gulfingness and he kisses his dad in the face and says:
— Bye, Dad
And then, before he can get done over by the nasty cops, with their baton blows of sadness, their rubber bullets of regret, Patrick pushes the swing door of the room and paces inappropriately fast down the corridor past the kiddyish lower-case signs saying exit and way out and the bourne from which no traveller returns and by the time Patch has reached the sunny, warm, flowery, lovingly tended Macmillan Hospice car park Patrick has convinced himself he’s not crying even though his cheeks are red and wet, he has convinced himself there is no Holocaust, even though he’s seen the chimneys and the gas chambers, he has convinced himself he does not love his dad, never loved his dad, didn’t feel for his dad so much, even though Patrick feels already an emptiness inside him like a huge black steel box that must never be opened, ever.
21
— So that’s it I’m afraid Patrick the club is pretty much kaput
— Right
— The council’s intervention was the last straw
— OK …
— If they hadn’t intervened in the noise abatement proceedings well then there was a chance that you could get by on bar sales, but the revoking of your late licence, wellll …
Patrick looks at the lawyer. Patrick looks at the lawyer’s butter-fattened features, the cool open shirt collar: this shirt collar so lacking a tie. Square behind the insultingly tie-less lawyer is an open window. Through this comes taxi-door arguments, scooter noise, French tourist-kid chatter: evidence of the cruelly vibrant, cruelly sunlit world that goes on, outside, that goes on despite the crashing and burning, the looting and despoiling of Patrick’s dreams, herein …
The first lawyer’s colleague, another tie-less lawyer, is talking now:
— Best option is actually therefore to sell up the club, maybe convert to flats, that way you might just cover your most pressing debts and the bank might not foreclose
— Buh
— And of course you’ll have to sell off the back catalogue
— But I
— Then you can go back to the
bank and maybe they will extend the loan until you can get out the office and
— You know my dad died last week?
The lawyer closes his open mouth. Says nothing. Then says:
— Sorry?
— Of cancer
— You … er um – The lawyers are exchanging looks – Er
— Look – Says Patrick – Listen. See that? – Patrick is waving at the shelfload of CDs to his left, to their right. The lawyers look blankly yet expectantly back at Patrick, as he goes on – That’s what we do. Music. We do music and clubs. What do you suggest we do if not that? – Widening his eyes – What else? What should we do? Make rubber bands? Chocolate euros?
The first lawyer, his gelled hair shining silver in the sun, does a firm nod and says:
— Patch I see what you’re driving at but you see we’re not suggesting you shut up shop completely – The lawyer looks sidelong at the other lawyer, who looks affirmingly back; the first lawyer turns to Patrick and says – It’s simply a case of … reining things in, of doing … not a lot … for a while …
— Not a lot?
— Not a lot. At the moment
The pencil tight in Patrick’s hand, Patrick says:
— But we will have to sell the labels, the back catalogues, fucking everything?
Unabashed, the other lawyer comes in:
— Well. No … Not everything
— You mean we can keep the pencil sharpener …?
— Patch, listen …
Not listening, not wanting to hear, Patch feels the prickle of sweat, and panic, and despair. He despairs: and wonders. So is this it? Is this what it comes to? Is this all I get? A bathetic, sad, unobserved death behind the lines? A stupid fall off the duckboards of solvency, into the drowning mud of bankruptcy?
The lawyers are chuntering on. From his desk, Patrick pretends to nod sagely at them, to absorb the good advice they’re still giving, to understand how crap and sad his life is going to be from here on in. But instead Patrick opts to click into his computer. Instead of listening to the lawyers do their lawyering, Patch ducks behind his screen and clicks into the Net, clicks into History, clicks into a website.
Ah yes. The comfort of the Web. Yens. Looking up briefly at the lawyers and smiling at them Patrick turns his face back to the screen they cannot see, and mouse-clicks … Patrick waits. Patrick sees. Patrick half listens. Self-assessment. Chancery. Vine Street Magistrates … Tokyo Puppies … Noise Abatement. Hackney Council Magistrates Record … Schoolgirl Panty.
Ahp! Startled, Patrick realises the lawyer has suddenly moved: so that he is standing on Patrick’s left. The lawyer is leaning over Patrick’s shoulder like a teacher checking coursework and is staring at Patrick’s computer screen. Onscreen is a wide image of a buxom Japanese schoolgirl being spanked on her arse by a ponytailed Bavarian sous chef.
— Cool!
Says the lawyer, laughing. Patrick grips his pencil so hard it snaps.
— Helps me concentrate …
The lawyer laughs, again. Moments pass. Patrick glares hard at the tie-less lawyer until he gets the message: looking uncomfortable, the lawyer retreats around the desk and rejoins his colleague.
Once the brace of lawyers are sat on their giant toadstool, looking neat in their little lederhosen, Patrick sighs enormously and says:
— OK. Would you mind if I thought about this overnight?
— Of course not … no probs
The lawyers rise, say goodbye, go; but Patrick has already turned away. He is already thinking about the Net again, he is already thinking of losing himself in the Web, of finding some solace there, of maybe searching out some images … of … nude … Taiwanese … sixth formers … being shagged from behind by their big negro games teachers.
— So, Mister … Blackburn
Joe nods; Joe nervously glances at the public gallery of the courtroom, at the spectators Patch cannot see. Then Joe nearly looks at Patrick but instead looks at the prosecuting counsel.
The defence counsel, Robert Stefan, is cross-examining:
— Tell us about that afternoon …
— The time in May?
— Yes, May fifteen
— Well – Joe says. Patrick wonders how Joe feels; how torn; how does it feel to be giving evidence in your best friend’s rape trial? – Well – Joe says again, looking pretty uncomfortable in what is obviously a borrowed suit – I could see he …
— He?
— Patrick, I could see Patrick was … very agitated, you know, that morning
— Why?
— Well you know I mean he’d just lost his club and – Joe blushes, fingers a borrowed collar – His dad had died and he and Rebecca were arguing and well … anyway I went into the office that morning and he’d had the lawyers in and he’d been drinking and
The judge:
— Slower, please, Mister Blackburn – Smiling in a soft way – This is important
— Joe?
Joe is stood at the door of Patrick’s soon-to-be-someone-else’s office. At Patrick’s welcoming wave, Joe comes over and puts a flat hand on Patch’s desk, and stares around Patrick, at Patrick’s computer screen. Joe looks at the computer screen, at the image of a mammacious Japanese schoolgirl being vaginally examined by a presumably lesbian doctor. Joe grins:
— Hootermania?
— White Socks dot com
— Uh-huh – Stood back now Joe puts hands on hips as he appraises the image, then Joe says – Nice wombats!
Lifting his beer can Patch toasts the computer image. Then Patrick burps and uses his unbeer-canned hand to click the mouse and make the computer image larger: thus to enlarge the view of the petite, white-toothed adolescent.
— Yeah – says Patrick, wiping the beer wetness from his lips with a side of the hand.
Joe nods at the beer can:
— Drinking already?
— Why not?
— It’s ten to eleven
— Don’t grief me out, Joe, I’ve had the lawyers up my arse all morning
— REALLY nice tits
Says Joe. Patrick turns from his own problems to once again contemplate the sweet Nipponese girl on his monitor. Joe is stroking a sagacious chin; Joe goes on:
— Ten-inch woofers
Patrick:
— Nice tweeters too
Joe strokes:
— She’s the spit of Rebecca
Patrick:
— Naturally. Who else?
— Why do you do it?
Patrick says, distractedly:
— What?
— You’re shagging Rebecca. She’s lush. Why do you surf the Net for porn as well?
Patrick thinks. Says:
— I like wanking as well
— You’re a perv – Says Joe, leaning to scrutinise the image – Actually, the tits are a bit different
Now Patrick does the swivel chair thing:
— What?
— The girl, on the screen … her … buffalo mozzarellas – Joe is shrugging – Much better than Rebecca’s
The ensuing silence lasts long enough for them both to hear someone’s mobile phone beeping the arrival of a text message, in the sunny Soho street outside.
Patrick:
— Rebecca’s got the best tits. Ever
— Yeah.
— She fucking well has you shipbroking Geordie budgie fucker
— Sure …
— She has, really
A smile, a shrug, an annoyingly dismissive wave. Then Joe stops smiling and says:
— Hey. I’m … really sorry about your old man …
— Fuck my dad
— Patch …?
— You don’t believe Rebecca’s got the best tits in London?
— Patch
— I’ll jolly well show them to you
* * *
Robert Stefan does the usual pause, the standard gown-lapel clutch, the obligatory melodramatic smile; then he says:
— And this was unusual?
But before Joe can reply, Gregory interrupts:
— My Lord …
The judge turns to Gregory:
— Yes
— M’Lord … I’m just wondering where this is going?
The Judge. The Defender. The Prosecutor.
Robert Stefan says:
— As we discussed, M’Lord …?
The judge looks at Stefan. Stefan looks at the judge. The judge lets Patrick’s heart beat once, twice, thrice, then nods and says:
— You can continue, Mister Stefan
The two of them are walking down the office stairs, past the office looker behind her desk:
— See you later, Trish!
— Bye, Patch!
Patrick hiccups as they walk out into the Soho sunshine; into the early summer smells of Soho. Joe sniffs these smells, spilt beer and Thai curry. Then, together and as one, the two old friends look long and appreciatively at the sweetly hotpanted arse of a teenie girl sashaying past. Patrick whistles:
— Goodness me
Joe exhales, agreeingly:
— Amazing – Joe looks across at his friend and says – Patch I believe you, I believe you about her tits
— I’m sorry. You’ve still got to see them
— No, please, drop it
— No? You mean you don’t want to?
— Well yes, of course I do, but – Joe tsses through his teeth, says – It’s just … You’re pissed, you’re having problems with Becs, you’ve lost the club, and your … – Joe puts a palm towards Patrick’s face – Can’t you just leave me out?
Mid-pavement, Patrick stops. Patrick says:
— You are still my best friend?
Joe:
— That’s unfair
— But you are? Yes?
— Course yam but
— Then do this. For me. Please?
Joe looks unhappy. Patrick goes on, more emphatically still
— Please Joe? Just do that? Just check out her headlamps just once for me no I haven’t got any FUCKING change
The two of them step gingerly over the junkie, and his filthy sleeping bag. Then Joe says:
— What are you on, Patch? Really? We all like a wank on the Net now and again but … wanking on the Net for five hours a day it’s … bonkers
Patrick shrugs. Patrick walks on up to Oxford Street. Turning to look at a homeless girl with bleached spiky hair and a surprisingly pretty face, Patrick says to Joe, as Joe catches up:
