Broken Ghost

by Niall Griffiths

  The people disembark. Most of the faces are boiled-looking, peeled raw by the summer. A young woman with a backpack and blonde dreads in a headband is looking worriedly back over her shoulder as she leaves the train and Adam sees why and would’ve done so even without Browne’s alerting elbow to his ribs; two insanely inked guys are getting off, one with his face vertically divided by Maori-style tattoos from his hairline to his thrapple and the other, topless, with a red dragon rampant on his skinny torso with the snarling face drilled into his own face and curled around onto the scalp above the ear so that his own eye, leaden and tunnellish, works as the dragon’s eye too. Adam hears Browne mutter Jaysus fucken Chroist behind him and hopes that those boys haven’t heard it too, but they just give him a bit of a glare and move off, down the platform. All the heads snapping towards them then instantly snapping away again. One little girl stands staring at them as they go abroad into the town, the two of them, to move anywhere, to do anything.

  Adam and Browne step up into the train, the swelter and whiff of it in the long tin. The Formica of the tables sweats. The first two aboard, Adam and Browne find a table with a window seat and already Adam can feel a stinky ick glooping into a pool behind his balls and in each little jungle of armpit. There’s a nasty couple of hours ahead.

  —See them two? says Browne, his green eyes both big. —Who in their right mind … Crazy mixed-up kids.

  —Aye, yeh. But it’s relative, man.

  —Is it?

  —Course it is, yeh. And Adam takes in Browne, the oddness of the man across the table, the cicatrice cables raw in the stubble on his skull, the Indian-ink tats on the fingers, and, especially, the interesting railway-track scars up the inside of his left leg revealed by the clam-digger kex, where once he’d had his entire femoral artery removed after toxic clot occlusion. Strangely proud of this, Browne seems to be, showing it off like a trophy; it had been the first thing he’d drawn Adam’s attention to when they first met in the pub two nights ago. With the accent, and then the mentions of the Shantallow Estate and RAAD and Buncrana not being far enough away from the Rah and the 32 County Sovereignty Committee, Adam had supposed a kneecapping but no, only the chalk in the skag had resulted in the operation. Just abscess, and, before that, the entirely predictable poison of hopelessness. Long-limbed enough to leap a sea.

  Browne’s mouth lolls open to reply and then curls into a kind of grin – an event of jaundiced, jostling teeth. Adam thinks, again, that Browne’s already ingested something this morning, with the unique energies coming out of him, and this steers him towards his own needs, beginning to clamour as they are. He rubs at the window with the sleeve of his shirt but all the muck is on the outside.

  —That’s privatisation for ye, Browne says. —Privatisation so it is. Can’t be fucked to clean. Fine in principle, the oul privatisation, but see if there’s no competition? They can offer the worst fucken service and they can get away with it. Cos there’s no fucken choice. Ye’ve got to use it. Cunts, man, Arriva. German-owned as well, d’ye know that? Bet the bog’s already overflowing with shite. And where’s the fuckin air con? Sweating cobs so I am. Cattle car, that’s what this is.

  He pulls the collar of his top away from his neck and Adam does the same. It cost over twenty fucking quid for the day return which was the cheapest ticket on offer. But Browne paid.

  —We should’ve got the coach.

  Browne shakes his head. —Takes twice as long. An A wanna get this over with quick as A can. Sooner it’s done an the gear’s on me person the sooner A can take it easy. Get me jollies booked – a summer in Shag-a-luf, that’ll do me, aye it will, two months on the piss and the pull. That’ll do me.

  People get on. Hipster students with beards of daft luxury; overweight male middle-agers in shorts and flip-flops (shameless, says Adam, just pure shameless). A beautiful black woman in a blue dress makes to take the table seat across the gangway but then she sees Adam and Browne, the state of them with the scars and whatever flickers in their eyes and she moves away, further down the carriage. Adam and Browne raise their eyebrows at each other but nothing is said. A lad lumbers past with his cumbersome rucksack, holding it out in front of him like a battering ram, talking into his earpiece loudly:

  —Fings happen for a reason, dude, member I told you dat? Member? So what did she say after you revealed all? She fucking. Did. Not. She did? No way. You know you’ve got to get rid, now, don’t ya? Member what I told you? Allow it, man, just allow it.

  He and his bag move down the coach. Browne and Adam watch him go, see the number 20 on the back of his football shirt.

  —Him, Adam says. —That prick. Fuckin wanker. That shirt must be fuckin minging by now.

  —Ah, the oul 20, is it? They’ve overtaken youse now, haven’t they? Oul green-eyed monster coming out, there, son.

  —Shite. Utter shite. Sooner be a losing Liverpool fan than a victorious Manc one any-fuckin-day. I hate them cos they’re just horrible, that’s why. I’d hate them if they never won anything. I’d hate them if they didn’t exist.

  —Alright, man, calm down. Touched a nerve there aye? This is why ye should support someone like Cliftonville. No fuss around them like. It’s a job to even get hold of the results, Browne says.

  —‘No fuss’? Except when thee play Linfield. Plenty of fuss then.

  —Aye but that’s different.

  —It’s the same. It’s exactly the fuckin same.

  —How is it the same? How is it?

  And Browne says something, some words, a lot of words but Adam’s a little distance away, because someone behind him has dropped something on a tabletop – a handful of coins, perhaps – and the rhythmic clink has taken him backwards across years and miles to a dark and smoke-layered dock-road pub where his grandad is playing the spoons, rippling them off his thighs, knees, grinning gummily down at him from his stool at the bar, running the spoons down the ladder of his stiffened and spread fingers, astounding to the little boy how such music can be coaxed from two bits of mere metal, the magic that lives in what he eats his Rice Krispies with each morning. He’s back there, for a few seconds, Adam is. Looking up at his grandfather amid the smells of smoke and spirits.

  Browne kicks his shin, not hard, beneath the table. Adam looks at Browne.

  —Ye listening to me?

  —Nah not really. I was miles away.

  Browne takes a breath to fuel some more words but then his eyes focus on a place over Adam’s shoulder. —Ah now. Here we go.

  A man takes the table across the gangway. Sleeveless band t-shirt and the scrawled tats on his puny arms. The can of Spesh already on the go and the guy plonks stuff on the table; a plastic bag of clunking cans and a small portable cassette player. He looks at Adam and Browne looking at him and gives a nod and then sits down and takes a slurp at the Spesh. Adam licks his lips and swallows and Browne points a finger and says: – What’s this?

  —Cassette player, the guy says. —Eight pound from Craft. Just bought it now before I got on. Haven’t seen one in ages. Back dahn sahf see now so I don’t wanna get bored. Only fing is, tho, there was only two tapes cos who wants tapes these days? Well, I do. Old school, that’s me. Can’t beat it. Cassettes, man.

  He takes a tape out of his rucksack. Browne watches him do this.

  —They had the Pistols and the Insane Clown Posse but I grew out of the Pistols years ago.

  —So, what, you bought the Posse one?

  The guy puts the tape into the machine. Browne goes on:

  —You grew out of the Sex Pistols and into the Insane Clown Posse, is that what you’re telling me? You’ve got that all back-arsewards, haven’t ye?

  The guy presses play and there is a half-second of sound before Browne leans over across the gangway and presses stop. Adam looks on and he is amused. This is a distracting little playlet and he’s watching with intrigue.

  —Oi!

  —Not gunner happen, son. See if I wanted sounds on this journey I would’ve brought me o
wn. I am not gunner be forced to listen to yours. Now either sit there quiet like a good lad or fuck off to another carriage.

  The guy looks at Browne, hears his blowtorch accent, sees the raised and naked ropes on the skull and the scar laddering up his leg like the track of a giant centipede. Everything about him that is a loud warning.

  —Thought you looked a decent feller, that’s all. Thought you’d know the score. Bit of entertainment on the journey, that’s all. Fucking boring without. I must be the only one on this fucking train with a bit of fucking life to em, knowmean?

  Browne and Adam laugh. Browne jerks a thumb down the carriage and shakes his head. —Get along with ye now. An put a scud on, aye?

  With a mutter and a clink the guy does. There is a hiss and a swoosh as he goes through the door into the next car and then the recorded voice comes over the tannoy: Welcome aboard …, and then the list of stations. It is a female voice, metallic, like that of a lady robot, a woman automaton culled from spare parts: Adam thinks of scurf curls for eyelashes, a fanbelt coloured scarlet and bent into an 8-shape for a mouth.

  There is a shunt and a jerk in the world and the train groans into motion. The windows are turned into dust-streaked TV screens and the hanging thickness of the snared air is swirled into movement by a faint draught and some small level of coolness is released and it is a relief. The retail park slides past. The police station, the rugby field. On top of the hill to the left the big grey buildings castellate the sky; the national library and the university.

  The journey is underway at last and a sigh of some sort seems apposite and so Browne takes out his vape. He takes a suck and passes it over to Browne who takes it with gratitude.

  —Yick. What flavour is that?

  —Think it’s supposed to be apple.

  —Tastes like fuckin shampoo.

  But Adam draws again and some need is satisfied. Yet beneath that there is a zigzag crack a-widening: a breaking need. Adam forces his focus onto the strange chemical taste on his tongue and hands the pipe back.

  —Thank Christ for vapes, man, eh?

  Browne nods, sucking at the thing, the mist leaving his nostrils and the two sides of his mouth.

  —True that. Used to have a crafty one in the jacks, me. Wet some bog roll, stick it up against the smoke detector so I did. Don’t need to anymore tho. Brilliant things these are.

  But there is always someone who must tut and stare, and such a one rises now above the seatbacks, scoping for the source of the vapour.

  —It’s a vape, Browne says to the upright man. —Totally fuckin legal son. Catch yerself on.

  The man makes a noise and sits back down again. Adam laughs. —Hear that? Man actually harrumphed. Don’t think I’ve ever heard that before, an actual harrumph.

  —Ah sure there’s always one begrudger so there is. Browne takes a lot of rapid little sucks at the mouthpiece without inhaling, builds up a fogbank in his face, and releases a great big rolling muffler of vapour down the carriage. One of those rollers they have in carwashes – it’s like that, but made of fumes. A few seats away there’s a theatrical cough under its tumble but nothing more.

  Hills pass. There are sheep on them and houses and some of those hills have been baked bald on their crowns. Everything looks, is, parched. Adam sees three rabbits in a field on their hind legs observing the train as it blasts past. They stare, lollopy-eared and twitchy. What if it never rains again: these hills dunes of tan talcum and bestrewn with animals’ bones. The water-courses dry and split, the angled shapes of their craquelure, something in them of the patterns on the unbelievable beasts that once towered on the grasslands and were called giraffes.

  They pass a big field. Adam studies it for as long as he can because in it is one rock only and on that rock is a duck. And then they pass a building site; holes in the ground, men in yellow hats, diggers and bulldozer blades. Browne gives it a nod.

  —Used to be a hospital, that did. Mental hospital, like. Sanatorium or whatever it is that it’s called. Like that one on Queen’s Road; that’s been knocked down n all so it has. Got to wonder what they’re hiding, man, don’t ye? Why they see the need to knock it all down. Must be something going on.

  Adam barks a laugh. —Hiding something? Lad, you’ve got that all wrong. It’s the opposite of hiding – it’s a fuckin declaration. It’s out in the open, for everyone to see – this is what we think of your needs. We don’t fuckin care, and we’re saying so publicly.

  —Ah, now. So much cynicism in one so young.

  Adam laughs again, not as loud. —Call it that if yeh like, he says, and wants to say something about it all being as merciless as birth but he doesn’t. Feels the need to speak a few words about unrelieved alone-ness, but he pulls that need back into his skull with a hard sniff. —Rhos’ll be going the same way soon. Believe me. Or if they don’t demolish it it’ll be sold off. Some cunt’s second home. Holiday flats or something.

  —Aye and what a loss cos it fuckin worked, didn’t it? A mean look at yerself. Fine example. Clean and serene, isn’t that what you twelve-steppin boys say?

  Adam’s eyes harden. —Aye well. Something happened.

  —What happened?

  —Just something unexpected. You don’t need to know. But it worked brilliantly for a bit, Rhos did. An, an, an anyway; I’m only using the booze, aren’t I? Not touching anything else.

  —Yeer not telling me that was only the drink inside ye the other night in the pub there.

  —I am, yeh. That’s exactly what I’m saying. I was just rat-arsed.

  —Well it must’ve been some special fuckin bevvy, then, cos ye were pure buzzing so ye were. On another planet, sor.

  Adam cannot wholly, nor clearly, recollect, but he can imagine; how it gets the human, that need, how it remains mightier than the attempts at relief. More: how the insane energies of it can concoct a stimulant from a depressant. The power of it, sometimes, the awful, awesome power.

  Adam says: – An what about yehself? I must’ve missed that one of the twelve steps that tells yeh to goan score a loader beak off some gangsta in Wolverhampton.

  —Whisht! Keep yeer fuckin voice down son! Browne zips his fingers across his lips and lowers his own voice. —Never know who’s listening in so ye fuckin don’t. An it’s not for me own usage anyways.

  —What isn’t?

  —The, the what you just called it, the stuff. Never touch it no more. But capital must be made.

  —Thought you just said you were going to Magaluf on the proceeds?

  —With some of it, aye. Rest of it, I’ll be setting meself up in business.

  —Business?

  —Usury.

  —Whatery?

  —Usury. Moneylending, to the brainless and inattentive novice like yaself. Loan-sharking.

  —Yeh not serious.

  —Suren A fuckin am. An, c’mere and listen to me. Browne leans forwards over the table and beckons with his fingers for Adam to do the same but Adam keeps his back pressed to the seat.

  —They were telling me about it, Marc and Griff an them pikeys who live by the south beach. Them head-the-balls. Ikey’s buddies. Know Ikey?

  —No. Heard of him but don’t know him.

  —Everyone’s heard of oul Isaac. He’s in Swansea nick now anyway but this is what ye do. This is what they told me. For one thing, see, it only carries a max twenty-four-month sentence so it’s a safer option than dealing, and ye don’t have to put up with junkies all the time and there’ll be no temptation floating around ye. Just act like a bit of a bully, that’s all you have to do. Even if yeer not one, all ye’ve got to do is pretend that ye are. Ye with me? Ye target them ones with no back-up – which, by the way, is exactly what the fuckin DWP are doing – and all’s ye need is threats an, an, intimidation. Griff said he’s never had to give out the digs once and he’s been at it for years and he’s fuckin rolling in it. Build up a hard rep and that’s enough. I lend ye a hundred quid and then next week it’s ‘Where’s that 200 quid y
e owe me?’ Ye see? Turn up at the house with a baseball bat and a big fuckin dog and guaranteed they’ll pay up. Griff’s made enough, d’ye know what he’s doing with his profits? He’s buying a house in Aberporth so’s he can set up a weed farm. Why Aberporth, yeer thinking, aren’t ye? Cos it’s next door to the MOD place, so it is. Copper-choppers can’t use the airspace so he’ll be safe from the heat sensors. Browne taps his own temple, hard enough to make a noise. —Switched on, that mahn. He’s been fuckin thinking, that he has.

  And Adam is thinking too; trying to reconcile the two forces in the embattled man opposite him. It is not easy.

  —So what d’ye say, son? Ye in?

  —What?

  —Am gunner need a right-hand man sure enough. Trustworthy feller like. Always more effective when two’s up. Come in with me.

  —Nah. It’s not my thing, mate. I’m not the hurting kind.

  —What have Ah just said? Ye don’t fuckin have to be. Just got to look as if ye are. Sure isn’t that what yeer gonna be doing today? Don’t tell me I’ve invited the wrong mahn, here.

  —It’s different.

  —How? How is it?

  —I can scowl an snarl at some beak dealer but I can’t do it to a, a single mother who’s lost her benefits cos she was a minute late for her Jobsearch interview. Just couldn’t do it. Just not in me, man.

  —Aah, well. Browne sits back in his seat. —Ye need to toughen yeerself up, son. All’s ye’ve got to do is act the part. Just fuckin pretend. Don’t have to give anyone a dunt. Got to get yeerself hard for our bright new Brexit Britain. Ye’d better not let me down today, Ah’ll tell ye that.