Booze and Burn

by Charlie Williams

  ‘Now come on, mate—’ But that were me lot far as preliminaries went.

  I should have seen it coming. Me of all folks. I mean, come on, when it came to headbutting I ruled the fucking roost. And there I were, breaking the first rule of good headbutting:

  Don’t let the other cunt nut you first.

  I were pondering on this as I lay on me back, watching the ceiling. Summat were wrong with me nose. I couldn’t feel much but it were getting warm around there. Frankenstein’s head appeared above us, nary a fret furrowing his big smooth brow. He were looking at me gob. Then me nose.

  ‘Fuck,’ he says dribbling some flob on us. ‘Missed.’

  I saw his arm move a bit.

  I were thrashing me arms, trying to get the bastards off. All over us they was, picking and poking and prodding. Don’t sound that bad to you, like as not, but it were the thought of what they’d do next that had us struggling. It had started with only looking, see. They’d been looking at us from far off. Then from near off. Then…

  I opened me eyes.

  ‘Blake?’ Rache were bending over us, long hair brushing me face and sticking to it. She peeled it away, grimacing. ‘Ugh…Blake, are you all right? Can you hear us?’

  ‘Course I can fuckin’ hear.’ But I weren’t all right. My gob felt all wrong. I poked me tongue around it. ‘Where the fuck’s me gnashers gone?’

  ‘Oh, Blake, don’t try to get up.’ She were holding a damp white cloth turned pink from blood. ‘I’ll call the ambulance…’

  ‘Ambulance? Fuck off. Get off us. Piss off.’

  Me pins didn’t feel too bad once I were back on em. Bore us up all right anyhow. But when I clocked me reflection in the door window…

  Fucking hell.

  ‘What…?’ I started to say. But I knew what soon as I started asking it. The big feller, that’s what. I’d had a fight with him. He’d nutted us and I’d got up and…

  Ah, fuck. I hadn’t got up at all, had I? I’d been lying here in the doorway ever since.

  ‘How long I been out?’

  Rache shrugged. But she knew well enough how long and I told her as much. ‘Twenty minutes?’ she says, hugging herself. It were cold out and getting late. ‘Half an hour?’

  ‘How many folks seen us like this?’

  She leaned away from us. ‘Blake…don’t…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Here.’ She wiped off the blood I’d just dripped on her cleavage then handed us the damp cloth. ‘You’d best get down the hospital.’

  ‘Fuck that.’ I took a deep one and went inside. There were nothing else for it. Most of em had seen the mug damage already, like as not. And if I kept me swede down and moved fast I’d reach the bog without em seeing much more. I got halfway there before I noticed summat odd.

  No one were there. It were only about half nine and not one fucking punter were in the place. And then there were that strange sound underfoot. I looked down.

  Broken glass.

  Fucking tons of it—all over the floor, across the bar and behind it, on the tables and chairs and sofas and that, all along the back corridor, scattered right across the stage, where…

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You knows who.’

  ‘I don’t, honest. Who?’

  ‘Sal, for fuck.’

  ‘Sal? But you don’t…’

  ‘Never mind what I don’t. Where is she?’

  ‘I dunno. She were up there doing her…Blake, I’ve thought about it and I might as well tell you now—I ain’t workin’ no place they got strippers…Ow, get off. All right all right—I’ll tell you. She were up there, and I reckon by then you was unconscious by the door, and then they started up with them bottles. Flyin’ everywhere they was. Smashin’ on the walls and—’

  ‘Who? Who were lobbin’ em?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  Me fists was clenching. I held one up. ‘Tell us or I’ll…’

  ‘Oh aye? Or you’ll what?’

  I put me paw down. I wouldn’t get nowhere with that tack, and Rache were only being Rache. ‘All right, what’d they look like?’

  ‘Kids. Skinny little uns. About fourteen, fifteen.’

  ‘How many? Seen em before?’

  ‘There was loads, Blake. They was everywhere. I dunno…maybe I seen a couple of em somewhere in town.’

  ‘Where? Come on.’

  ‘Calm down, Blake. Woss that road down by the…’

  ‘The what? The Forager’s? The Why Not? The Green Feller?’

  ‘Frotfield Way.’

  ‘Frot…Fuckin’ bastards.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Bitch.’

  ‘I’ve told you, Blake, don’t you talk to us like—’

  ‘Not you. Fat Sandra from the arky. Fuckin’ Fat fuckin’…fuck…’

  ‘Blake? Where you off? What about all this…’

  I saw sense just as I were pulling into Frotfield Way. Instead of stopping I drove on past the arky, clocking a good gander of it. Even through the locked doors I knew they was all in there, whooping it up and getting rid of the free tokens Fat San would have gave em. But there were no point me going in, not with my face like it were. I drove home, tonguing the holes where me front teeth used to be.

  I remembered Sal when I were halfway there and made a detour for her flat. Weren’t so bad when you thought about it in the cold light of a battered face. So what if fellers had got a look at her? Seen her before, hadn’t they, when she’d been stripping for proper? Course they fucking had. And it weren’t like they was getting the best of her now. Like I says, she’d let herself go a bit of late. That’s what comes from sitting on your arse all day. But if fellers reckoned she were still worth a look, who were I to naysay em? And she’d be bringing a few quid in for a change.

  But instead of taking the exit into her estate I pulled a U and went home. I couldn’t be arsed. She’d be all right anyhow. I’d have heard about it if she’d got hurt.

  There were no sign of Fin when I got in. In his room, like as not, watching his little telly or wanking over them mags he kept under his pit. I went upstairs and stripped and cleaned meself up a bit. Face weren’t so bad once you washed off the dried blood. Hooter had been bust every which way over the years so there weren’t much left of him besides gristle and snot. Top lip were a bit swelled up, and the empty gums was bleeding. So I’d lost a couple of ivories. So fucking what? Life’s a bit shite now and then. But I were still standing, unlike Finney. I still had me facilities. And me brain were still sound despite everything.

  I went down the cellar and got stuck into Nathan’s tinnies. Gums was still bleeding a fair bit, and lager were the best thing to rinse em out with, I reckoned. I must have rinsed em out long and hard cos when I woke on the stone floor next morning they was all right, although the rest of me gob tasted like cack. And there were a banging in my head. And it weren’t morning no more really—it were half two in the afty. And that banging weren’t in me swede, it were the front door. I dragged my weary arse up there and opened it. To Doug the shopkeeper.

  He weren’t happy.

  7

  A MOTHER SPEAKS

  Steve Dowie, Crime Editor

  I approach the street from the West. The autumn sun dips behind me. Darkness looms ahead. It has not rained for hours but the pavement remains slick. The door opens on the third ring.

  A woman of middling years stands in dressing gown and slippers, eyes red-rimmed and shadowed. The woman is Mrs X. ‘You’d better come in,’ she says.

  You probably know Mrs X. You walk past her in the market, sit next to her on the bus. She is the mother of Boy X, one of the two teenagers convicted of robbing Gromer Wines.

  She is every mother in Mangel.

  I ask her how she is coping, now that her son is serving a six-month jail term. ‘I don’t know what to do with myself,’ she says, pouring tea from a chipped brown pot. ‘He’s never been away from home before. I hope he’s changing his pants of
a morn. Hey, do you think he is?’

  I tell her that he probably is, then ask her of her son’s character.

  ‘Well,’ she says, pulling her threadbare dressing gown tight around her generous bosom, ‘he were always such a sensible lad. An old man in short trousers, you might say, except he never wore short trousers much. But lately he got…well…’

  I reach out across the cramped living room and pat Mrs X gently on the knee. There there. In your own time.

  ‘He’s been behaving so odd of late, sleeping till noon and staying out till I don’t know when. It’s the friends he keeps. It’s them who’s the cause of it, you know. He won’t wash himself proper neither. Smells like a dead cat, he do. And he’s been looking so sick. Tried getting him down the doctor’s, but oh no, he’s off down that arcade. I brung him up proper, mind.’

  I reassure her that nobody is questioning her parenting skills. Quite the contrary—such a fine figure of a woman as she could hardly fail as a mother.

  ‘Oh, ta,’ she says, leaning towards me, letting her dressing gown fall open slightly. ‘Do you really think so?’

  I ask her about the ‘sweets’ found in his possession. Had she herself noticed strange items of confectionery about his person?

  ‘Oh,’ she says, pressing her hand against mine, which is still on her knee. ‘Oh, it’s been so long since our Ivor passed away. You don’t know what it’s like for a widow. I’ve got needs, you know. Needs.’

  I try to steer Mrs X back to the sweets, but the thread is gone. I make my excuses and leave.

  The sky is black. It is raining once again. A whiff of burning leaves taints the air with a sense of impending doom.

  ‘…made it worse…all night long, she has. With that feller no doubt…trusted you…lager and cigarettes…little girl, she is…bastard.’

  I knows this is about as clear as a boarded-up window, but that’s just how it were coming across to ute t#8217;d just woke up, for fuck sake. And think about the punishment I’d took the night prior. Doug’s voice were tuning in and out like a bluebottle after earwax. But I got the upshot of it.

  He stopped for a bit, then says: ‘What happened to yer face?’

  ‘What? Oh…’ I let him come in, being as he were shouting and spectators was lining up in the street. ‘Pitfalls of the trade, ennit,’ I says, grinning at him.

  He frowned. ‘You’ll have to get dressed. I’ll not stand for the way things is right now.’

  ‘And what way is they?’

  ‘Told you, didn’t I? She’s not come home. Ain’t seen her since yesterday mornin’. Never done this before, she ain’t. Summat’s happened, I knows it. That feller of hers is holdin’ her against her will.’

  ‘Now hold up, how old is she again?’

  ‘Fourteen last December.’

  ‘Fourteen?’

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘Doug, she’s old enough to stay out at night. Fuck sake, she’s old enough to go out and fuck half the fellers in Mangel if it so pleases her.’

  I were just wondering if this weren’t the cleverest thing to say when Doug lamped us one right on the nose. Now, I’ve already said how there weren’t much a feller can trouble me hooter with, it being long since defeated from every angle, but that didn’t mean it didn’t sting. Stinging fit to blind us, it were. I doubled over and held me face.

  ‘Perhaps that’ll learn you a thing or two about treatin’ folks proper, Royston Blake. And perhaps you’ll kindly scrub yerself up and report at my shop in five minutes sharp. You’re bringin’ my daughter home, you are.’

  I didn’t have the will to argue, else I would have boxed his ears flat and sent him arse-first onto the hard stuff. I went upstairs instead and brushed what were left of me teeth. By habit I’d get straight into me bouncing togs after kipping this late, but they stank of fags and dried blood and I couldn’t face em right now. I put on some jeans and a green shirt instead, which made us feel a bit better though half the buttons was missing on the shirt and the jeans hummed a bit. I bundled up the bouncing gear and went down to the kitchen. There was a couple of things in there I knew would make us feel better—two hundred-odd tins of the one and eight packs of t’other. If only I could find em.

  But I couldn’t.

  I went down the cellar—maybe I’d lugged em all down there last night when I got in. But they wasn’t there neither. I went all over the house looking for em, until I found meself standing outside the only place they fairly could be.

  I held me breath a full half minute, struggling to keep from kicking the door down. The fucking thieving little cunt—having away with my lager and fags after all I’d done for him, putting him up in me own front room and looking after him and that. I opened the door.

  He weren’t there. Nor were my gear. I looked under the bed and in the wardrobe and behind the door: fuck all.

  No empties neither.

  Where the fuck were he? Finney weren’t meant to go out. He were a fucking cripple, for fuck sake. What reason had he to go out? I scratched my head for a bit, then shrugged and went off to Doug’s corner shop.

  ‘You can have em back when I gets me little girl back.’

  I were puffing hard on me last fag. ‘Come on, Doug…just crash us a couple o’ packs for now, eh.’

  ‘You heard. Do yer job and you’ll get paid. I trusted you with half now, half on completion, and you let us down.’

  ‘I fuckin’ never. Been workin’ on it, I has. Even spoke to her yes’dy.’

  ‘Oh aye? Go on.’

  ‘Well, I had a word, like. With your girl. In the arky.’

  ‘What for? I never asked you to have a word with her. I’ll be havin’ all the words with her that needs havin’, ta very much. Asked you to have a word with him, I did. And a bit more besides.’

  ‘I know, I know, I been workin’ on it. Like I says.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘An’…well, he ain’t easy to get hold of, is he?’

  ‘That’s why I flippin’ hired you.’

  ‘All right, fuckin’ don’t shout, whatever you does. Me fuckin’ swede—’

  ‘I don’t care two figs about your head—I wants my daughter back before summat happens to her. And I wants that feller beaten and drove out o’ town. An’ I’ll tell you what, Royston Blake—if anyone—anyone—has so much as bruised her arm, you’re answerin’ fer it.’ He slammed the door on us.

  I dunno how I came to be back out on the street, but back on the street I were. And me fag were gone out.

  It started raining.

  I didn’t go straight downtown. I knew what were up with Mona, see. She were only with her boyfriend, weren’t she? And I couldn’t blame her. I’d be with her boyfriend and all if I had Doug at home. I’d find her later. Then I’d get me lager and fags back. But first I went round Sal’s.

  I were feeling low, see. You’d be feeling low and all if you’d had what I’d had. And the best thing for lowness, I’ve found, is a shag.

  ‘What.’

  ‘It’s me, ennit?’

  ‘Who.’

  ‘Fuck off. Let us in.’

  There were silence for a bit. And, do you know, the thought cross me mind that she might not let us in. She’d never not let us in before, not once during all the highs and lows of our time together. No matter how bad it got she always came through with a buzz and a click.

  ‘Sal? Open the fuckin’ door, eh. Pissin’ it down out here, it is.’

  She couldn’t help herself. Why leave him down there when you can bring him upstairs and bawl his ears out? But it were more than that. She just couldn’t resist us. No woman ever could, when you came down to it. Except the barmy ones. But Sal weren’t barmy, she were just a bit thick at times. And you can’t blame a woman for that.

  ‘Fuck sake, Sal…you gonna open this door or what?’

  ‘I dunno.’

  ‘What? Fuckin’ buzz us up, will you.’

  ‘I dunno if I wants to, Blake.’ She were getting us a bit
worried. Her voice were different. She sounded knackered, like she couldn’t be arsed with the effort no more. And that weren’t like our Sal.

  ‘All right, love. Let us up an’ we’ll sort it out.’ I went to get a fag then remembered I didn’t have none. I flobbed on the floor instead, but even that were soon lost in the rain. I wished I’d stayed in bed. Or the sofa down the cellar, which is where I’d kipped. ‘Fuck sake, Sal.’

  She buzzed us up.

  I parked meself on the white leather sofa that I’d gave her a couple of birthdays ago. Feller down Hoppers had cleared out a posh house and had it going spare. Too white for my place, it were—I’d only mess it up with food and lager and fag burns. But Sal knew how to look after nice furniture, so she had it. I could hear her in the kitchen making a drink. I knew it wouldn’t be a cup of tea, mind, which is what I could have done with right then, believe it or no.

  She came out holding a glass of vod. Might have been water, I suppose. But you’d gamble your house on it being voddy if you knew our Sal and the way she were back then. In the other hand a fag were burning low. She were barefoot and clad in a pink dressing gown that had seen better days, though I knew she hadn’t had it so long. That’s the thing about dressing gowns: they ain’t built for general usage. What Sal needed were a pair of overalls to do her lying around and drinking and smoking in. With a leather patch for her arse, considering all the telly time she put in.

  Aye, Sal were a rough sight them days if I’m honest. As I rule I tried not to look at her face if I came round too early. Last night were the first time I’d seen her in slap for yonks. Normally took us ten pints before her head stopped looking like an upturned radish with mucky roots sticking out the top. Weren’t even noon yet and I hadn’t touched a drop, but summat told us to have a gander at her face. I screwed up me peepers and went for it.

  And I’ll tell you what, mate—I fucking wished I hadn’t of. Did I say Sal were getting rough? Sailed past the rough stage overnight, she had, and turned jaggedy. Face were sliced down one cheek and up the other, with a little slanty bit across her forehead. It were all stitched up and that, but needlework never had made a face less ugly, and it weren’t doing here.