‘How can you drive a car with no arms, Jed?’
‘Huh?’
‘Haven’t you been listening to me?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I said how can you drive a car if you’ve got no arms?’
‘Dunno. With your knees?’
Abbie asked Felix if he would slide the stool under her feet, then she sat holding a cushion to her stomach. Could she have another glass of water? Jed went for a smoke at the back door, then came back. Maxine drank more wine. They talked about perfume, about sunglasses, about wedding photographs, about a stag night that Jed had been invited to at the weekend. There was a spare place on the coach if Felix wanted to go. Felix said he wouldn’t know anyone. Abbie said go on, he should do, it was OK with her if he wanted to, so long as she got the full story when he came home. They talked about Jed’s stag party at Doncaster races, and a game that Jed and Maxine played sometimes called St Leger. According to Jed, the races were one of the few places in the world where toffs and scruffs mingled together. To play St Leger you had to think of things the upper classes and the working classes had in common, something the middle classes didn’t do. Like swearing. Like debt.
‘Give us an example,’ said Abbie.
‘Flat caps,’ said Maxine. ‘The blokes in the taproom wear them and so do the horsy people.’
‘I thought they wore red underpants,’ said Jed. It was one of the few things he said all night.
‘I get it,’ said Abbie.
‘Go on, then, your turn.’
‘BMWs.’
‘Do you think?’
‘Yes. Posh people have them and so do drug dealers. And gypsies. Felix worked with some gypsies in those caravans parked behind the railway station and he told me they all had BMWs. Didn’t they, Felix?’
‘Huh?’
‘What’s the matter with you two tonight? You’re like Gloomy and Doomy. I’m telling Maxine about how those gypsies all had BMWs.’
‘Travellers, you mean.’
‘Whatever.’
‘I think one of them did. It wasn’t new.’
‘All right, it’s your turn now, Felix,’ said Marine, pouring herself what was left of the wine.
‘My turn for what?’
The pizza arrived. Three pizzas in fact, and bread. Not all of it was eaten. At about half past nine Abbie stood up and said she needed to go next door for something. Felix asked if she wanted him to come with her. Abbie said no but brushed his hand as she went past him. Maxine was a little bit drunk and was feeding long, rubbery strands of cheese to Smutty. Jed told Felix about the stag do, how it was a guy at work who was getting married to a woman from Thailand. He was welcome to come and the bus was picking them all up outside the Man with No Name at ten o’clock.
‘That’s a late start,’ said Felix.
‘Ten in the morning.’
The phone rang and Maxine answered it.
‘It’s Abbie, she wants you to go home,’ she said to Felix.
Felix got up to go. He could feel his heart bumping inside his chest and didn’t say goodbye in case his voice started to shake. As he passed Jed, he looked quickly into his face, but Jed was leaning forward in his chair, his head down, stroking the dog.
There was a light on upstairs, on the landing. As he turned the corner at the top of the banister, Abbie was standing in the bathroom door. In her hand was what appeared at first to be a white toothbrush. She was staring at it, peering into the little window. Felix waited in front of her until she looked up from behind her fringe.
It was an hour later when he came back downstairs, closing the bedroom door quietly behind him and padding softly into the kitchen. He boiled the kettle and poured the water, then watched as the tea bag became fuzzy and blurred inside the teapot, emitting its inky brown dye. He went to the back door and looked through the glass panel. With his right hand he flicked the switch that lit up the carriage lamp on the outside wall. It glowed with energy. It illuminated the yard and the driveway next door. It was a signal. It was the signal that told Jed that Abbie was not pregnant. It was prearranged. Felix took a sip of tea, then pulled down a bottle of whisky from the cupboard above the microwave. He took a few slugs from the neck and rested his head on the table. He might easily have fallen asleep, but after a few minutes he heard music coming through the wall. From next door. Not loud music, but music all the same on an otherwise quiet night, and also the sound of singing.
The Stag Night
They are apparitions. The first half a dozen of them seem to evolve out of the morning mist, noticeable only by the light of their cigarettes, the sound of their coughing and the occasional bout of laughter. Then a small hatchback arrives, driven by a girlfriend or wife, and another five are delivered, four of them clambering out of the front passenger door and one emerging from the boot. Three more come in a taxi. Others have walked. Soon there are twenty, then thirty of them, coughing and smoking and laughing and waiting outside the Man with No Name. It is five to ten on Saturday morning. The dress code is smart-casual No jeans or trainers but no suits or jackets. They could be on their way to a court hearing, lager louts charged with a breach of the peace, or a firm of football hooligans pleading not guilty to a more serious public order offence such as criminal damage or affray.
Just after ten, a light comes on in the frosted glass panel above the big, scuff-marked door and the noise from inside is that of a bolt sliding out of its keep, then the rattling of a chain, then the turning of a key and the snapping of a lock. A small cheer goes up as the thirty men push into the pub and the last of them closes the door behind him. The curtains are drawn. Inside it is murky apart from the fairy lights around the optics and the glow of the beer pumps along the bar and the triangle of rich, yellow light that angles down on to the green baize of the pool table. The stink of smoke still hasn’t cleared from the night before. The landlord, in football shirt, shorts and slippers, leans behind a table to plug in the jukebox and the cigarette dispenser. When he switches on the slot machine it jobs into life, fluttering its lights and spinning its reels and piping out ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’ at twice the normal speed. Back behind the bar he points the remote at a large TV bolted to the wall and scrolls through the programmes until he finds a man in a brown trilby talking about horses and money.
The first round comes to forty-eight pounds and ninety-three pence, fifty for cash, and. is paid for by the groom, Stevo, who already has a condom stapled to the back of his shirt. The second round comes to the same price and is paid for by the best man, Bez, who is running a sweepstake on the first person to vomit. A lean, well-scrubbed man in silver glasses and a yellow Pringk jumper, known as Virgil, is favourite, followed by a man known as Sickbreath, who is diabetic. No one has a proper name. There is Muppetman, Caddy, Robbo, Rollo, Tupps, Bloodbath, Jenks, Jackpot, Big Ted, Little Ted, China, Rabbit, Sox… and so on. They sit in a circle, apart from a dwarf, standing on tiptoe playing the fruit machine. His name is Keith. At half past ten a tray of warm pork pies arrives from the kitchen and is left on the bar, along with a large pan of mushy peas, a dish of jellied mint sauce and a bottle of Lea and Perrins. They have all had three pints, apart from the groom, Stevo, who has also consumed a double vodka, although he is not aware of the fact, vodka being pretty much undetectable in taste and smell when mixed with a pint of Mansfield Smoothflow bitter. At eleven o’clock a horn sounds outside, the signal to sup up and leave. The coach is parked on the road with its engine running, and as the last man leaves the pub he hears the door close behind him and the sliding of bolts and the rattling of chains.
First stop is a karting circuit on an industrial estate on the edge of town. There is no bar and, as the large sign in reception points out, any person believed to be under the influence of alcohol will be asked to leave the premises without the return of his deposit. Nevertheless the occasional hip flask is passed among the thirty men milling about in the pit lane in the brightening sun, although the whiff of brandy or whisky is masked by the st
ench of petrol fumes and burning rubber. In leather jackets and crash helmets, the men race eight laps of the circuit, five karts at a time, until a member of staff leans over the tyre wall and waves a chequered flag. Some karts are obviously quicker than others, and the groom, Stevo, sulks, sitting alone and reading the paper after being allocated a vehicle with a dodgy exhaust and finishing last in his heat. One race has only four drivers because Keith cannot reach the pedals. Virgil is rammed in the back by Little Ted and retires, hobbling to the grandstand like someone suffering from the after-effects of a lumbar puncture. China and Muppetman lock wheels on the first corner and slide off into a bale of hay. Bez is taking bets on the result. Sickbreath has brought his own driving gloves and, despite being identified as a rank outsider, finishes with the fastest time and claims pole position for the final When the black and white flag is flourished for the last time, he crosses the line with a leatherette fist above a raised arm, and licks the froth from his face as the rest of the men stand around the base of the podium, showering him with Pomagne.
The coach makes two unscheduled stops, one at the Wren’s Nest for more beer and one at the Whacky Warehouse, just off the motorway slip road, where parents protect their children in their arms until the last of the stag party has quit the toilets and vacated the premises. Stevo and Bez, though, are unable to resist the brightly coloured climbing apparatus and are chased from the play room by the duty manager after belly-splashing into the butt pool from the top of the rope ladder.
At Megakill, bespattered boiler suits are handed out by the man behind the counter, who then gives a practical but perfunctory demonstration of the automatic paint-gun, illustrating his talk with anecdotes of skull fractures and burst eyeballs before handing out the weapons. One team will shoot red pellets, the other team blue. Even before battle has commenced, Big Ted has accidentally triggered a pellet of blood-coloured paint against the ceiling panel of the reception hut, and Tupps has blasted Muppetman in the thigh at point-blank range, causing an indigo stain that spreads from his hip to his knee. Outside on the bulldozed landscape of hillocks and dunes, the men run and jump and roll, firing their weapons as often as possible, until excitement and adrenalin give way to tiredness and cruelty, making for a more strategic and tactically fought battle. Jackpot sits in a treehouse picking off anyone who emerges into the open ground in front of the hawthorn bushes or makes a run for it along the sniper’s alley between the wicker fence and the pond. Although the wooden slats of his tree-top den are splattered with blue paint, he is uncoloured by war. When Little Ted tries to climb the ladder beneath him, he simply points his gun through the trap door and fires a shot which in real life would have entered Little Ted’s skull at the crown of his head and exited through his scrotum. For the blue team, Stevo and Bez have fortified their position at the top end of the battlefield with a row of oil drums and two sheets of plastic. Their resistance lasts a good twenty minutes until China, Bloodbath and Caddy perform a well-thought-out pincer movement and overrun the groom and his best man. Dispossessed of his weapon, Stevo is frogmarched to enemy headquarters and tied to a chair with a length of dirty rope. He sulks, and when he is finally unbound, Bez has to step in to dissuade his brother-in-arms from engaging in actual hand-to-hand combat. Elsewhere, as retaliation for the capture of their leader, four men from the red army have ambushed Keith, the dwarf, blindfolded him with a sock and positioned him against the outer wall of the reception hut. He is informed of his guilt. One of the soldiers asks Keith for any final request, but there is no reply. The firing squad lift their weapons to eye level, take aim and the execution is complete. Keith falls to the ground. Then, in a scene of almost filmic intensity, one of the soldiers strides towards the body, reloads and, from a distance of no more than six inches, discharges a single shot against the head of the man on the floor. ‘To make sure.’ Even through his safety helmet the blow must be painful. His body flinches in the din.
When all ammo is finally spent, a truce is declared. Both sets of infantry meet in no man’s land, shake hands and amble back towards the shower block, some making accusations of foul play, some revelling in their best kills or showing off their wounds, and others keeping quiet about actual contusions to their flesh and bruises to their pride. No one will admit to targeting Virgil in the groin, but he follows the other combatants away from the theatre of war like the victim of some ritual and frantic dismemberment, so profuse is the redness. Showered and dressed, they are all heroes and friends. The bus is waiting with its engine running and there is just enough time for a pint or three in the Cobbler’s Arms before kick-off.
Third Division football is made for stag parties. Of course, to the 2,000 or so die-hard fans, many of them serial masochists with season tickets, the result is important. And to the hopelessly insane band of travelling supporters huddled together in an open terrace designed for maximum exposure to verbal abuse, violent incursion and wind chill, the possibility of an away win is the only hope in an otherwise empty and Godless universe. But the future of Third Division football rests not with the loyal fan of questionable sanity. It rests with the drunken tourists for whom there is no tomorrow. It lies not with the dwindling bunch of disciples whose disposable incomes extend no further than one replica shirt per season and a meat pie at half-time, but with groups of young, inebriated men on pre-nuptial spending sprees. It depends not on football at oil, but on weddings, on the likes of Stevo et al., who have forked out seventy-five pounds each for an afternoon which has little to do with sport and everything to do with alcohol and companionship. At least five of the party have never been to a football match in their life, and Sickbreath has to be told which colour his local team will appear in. The party are warmly received in the staff car park and escorted through the offices under the grandstand. They make a quick tour of the trophy room, which contains an astonishing array of cups and medals for a team whose one claim to fame is its complete lack of success. The pennants and flags of visiting teams make up the bulk of the decorations. It could be the committee room of some now defunct trade union, hung with the banners of its many guilds and branches, proud of its affiliations with comrades in the struggle. A flight of temporary iron stairs finally brings them to their accommodation for the afternoon, a ‘box’, which is little more than its name suggests, even though it is referred to in the sales brochure as an executive suite. The floor is laid with beige lino and dotted with flattened grey blobs of chewing gum. Three of the walls are panelled out in wood-effect hardboard, and the ceiling is fitted with two electric heaters and three fluorescent striplights, one of which flickers on and off. The front wall is made of toughened glass, and it is from behind this window, shielded from the weather and inoculated against the moans and groans of the crowd, that the game can be viewed. Bez has opened a sweepstake on the first person to score and has extracted a fiver from each member of the party, even from Virgil, who has drawn the substitute goalkeeper of the visiting team. Down on the pitch, a mascot in the shape of a ten-foot badger galumphs along the touchline, and a boy with leukaemia gets to take a penalty into an open goal. The supporter of the month, a woman in lumber jacket and snow-washed jeans, collects her award in the centre circle and has her photograph taken with the manager. Then the teams are announced over the PA system, the away side to some half-hearted booing, the home team to some lacklustre cheering, except for the blond, frizzy-haired centre forward with the headband, whose name is greeted with laughter. The match gets under way almost unnoticed. The stag party are served with a selection of sandwiches and crinkle-cut chips and have access to a free bar, the only limit to their drinking being the speed at which Reg, their allocated waiter for the afternoon, can make his way up and down the metal stairway with their order and the amount of beer he manages to spill on each journey. At half-time, an official from the club comes into the box and makes a brief speech about their valued custom. In his grey suit and pink tie, he also says a little something about the long and proud history of the club, and, as he
leaves, very much hopes they are enjoying the football. This comment is made with something of an ironic smile, since the score is nil-nil, just as it is at the end of the match, by which time half of the stag party are involved in a game of cards and three others have gone outside to admire the mid-range Mercs and Beamers in the players’ car park. By four thirty, most of the men are happily drunk. Sickbreath denies the allegation of vomiting put to him by Bez, pointing out that his most recent and prolonged visit to the toilets was necessitated by his desire for privacy during the intravenous administering of insulin. Bez counters this alibi with the statement, ‘That’s bollox ’cos Jackpot heard yer ralphin’ and anyways yer’ve getten puke down yer bib, yer fuckin’ lightweight.’ An argument is avoided when the door opens and the club official in the pink tie thanks them again for their patronage and reminds Stevo that it is his privilege, as groom, to nominate the man of the match. Putting down his hand of cards, Stevo nominates the blond-haired striker with the headband, and is adamant about his choice, even when it is pointed out to him that the same player had missed a penalty and been booked for throwing the ball at the linesman. It is now almost five o’clock, and the stag party decline the guided tour of the dressing-room area and the pitch in favour of a burger on the way back to town, before the real drinking begins. The bus is waiting for them. A coach carrying the entire contingent of away support pulls up alongside them at the traffic lights and a dialogue of body language takes place, beginning with fingers and concluding with several bare arses squashed, against ass on both sides of the divide.
After this, things become hazy. Three of the party get chatting to a couple of girls in the drive-through McDonald’s and do not get back on the bus. Five more are refused entrance to a pub because they are too drunk or not wearing the right clothes, but two of them manage to climb in through the toilet window. The three who missed the bus turn up again in the queue for the nightclub. The party fragments, then recombines. Splinter groups go in search of cashpoints and are lost, then are found again and brought back into the fold. Virgil hangs off the back of the pack, then sidesteps into an arcade and runs away in search of a taxi home. Sickbreath, insensate with drink, confesses to chundering in the toilets of the football stadium, at which point Bez pays the winner of the first-to-puke sweepstake with his profit from his first-to-score sweepstake and orders another round of drinks. Most of the men are now drinking alcopops or shorts, apart from Bez, who seems inhumanly unaffected by the strength, gassiness or volume of premium continental lager, and continues to down pints of it. Little Ted has picked up a bloody nose somewhere along the route, caused by a handbag. Stevo is overheard talking to his bride-to-be on his mobile phone, telling her he is sober, telling her he loves her and won’t do anything stupid, letting her they are going to a club but only for a nightcap, only because it’s expected of him, and no, it won’t be Cinderella’s, and even if it is, there won’t be any strippers, and even if there are, he won’t watch. And he loves her. On the way to Cinderella’s they stop for a kebab and a roll call. They are twenty by now, the hard core. Others have faded, fallen asleep in the comer, sneaked off home, or have been left in the gutter. But the hard core remain.
The White Stuff Page 16
