Boracic Lint

by Martin Bryce

alcoholic bog that had once been my brain. Slowly, a gargoyle of a face began to take shape in my mind, a vision of hell. I tried to cut it off, but it persisted, laughing silently, a silence that was hideous as it drifted slowly, immovably closer. And oh God! There was something else, but no, I couldn’t have! Could I? A fishnet stocking on my head!?

  ‘Yes, you and Ruby was right out of order,’ Harry said as he handed me a mug of hot sweet tea. ‘Get that down you and then we can clear off down the pub for an ’air of the dog. Do you the world of good that will.’

  I groaned. ‘Look, I really must call Rowena and apologise, tell her I was drunk.’

  ‘She could see that a mile off last night,’ he said. ‘Anyway, shouldn’t worry ‘bout them two, they ‘ad a whale of a time, a real good giggle. Specially when you and Ruby started all that caper. Nice bird that Rowena. You want to ‘ang onto ‘er, old son.’

  ‘No, I really must call her, Harry.’

  ‘Well, she’s not going to think much of that, is she?’

  ‘Much of what?’

  ‘You callin’ ‘er ‘arry.’ He smiled broadly, but I had no way of knowing why. I looked at him blankly.

  ‘Gawd, you are in a state, aren’t you? Go on, off you go, dog’s in the ‘all.’

  ‘I’ve got her number here,’ I said reaching for my wallet. Out of my pocket I slowly pulled a black fishnet stocking. Frantically and now sobering rapidly, I searched all my other pockets.

  ‘Cleaned you out, ‘as she?’ Harry asked matter of factly. ‘That’s Ruby all over.’

  ‘But you can’t mean she’s…’

  ‘Thieved all your bunce? Stand on me, son, that’s Ruby.’

  ‘But what am I going to do?’

  ‘I wouldn’t do nothin’ if I was you. Like I said, ‘er old man!’ He sucked in his breath sharply and shook his head.

  ‘But how am I going to get home?’

  ‘Leave it to me, I’ll think of somefink,’ he said returning to the kitchen. ‘Fancy a bacon sandwich?’

  I groaned again and staggered after him into the kitchen.

  ‘Look, you couldn’t lend me a fiver, could you?’

  ‘No, but I tell you what,’ he said stuffing the remains of a greasy cold sausage into his mouth and pulling open a drawer. He took out a purse. ‘You can borrow it off me mum. Give it back to me tomorrow and I’ll have it back in her purse before she knows it’s gone.’

  ‘But why can’t you lend it to me?’ I asked as I took the note from him.

  ‘Boracic, aren’t I?’

  ‘But you just said you were going to the pub!’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right, me mates’ll buy the drinks, won’t they?’

  I finished my tea and Harry gave me a couple of Panadol. We walked as far as the pub and then, after making sure that I really didn’t want a drink, he directed me to the station.

  London Transport’s Sunday timetable may make sense to them, but not to the travelling public. A chilly, misty dusk was gathering as I eventually reached Mafeking Avenue. The dull orange glow of the sodium lamps, those that were working anyway, only added to the air of desolation. I was also starving.

  I didn’t have enough money for a meal, not if I was going to have breakfast and travel to work tomorrow. There was nothing for it, I was going to have to ask Mr H to cash a cheque for me. I knocked on the front room door.

  ‘Didn’t you just get paid?’ He asked suspiciously.

  ‘Yes, but it was all stolen last night,’ I told him wearily, ‘and I haven’t eaten all day. Please, just ten pounds.’

  ‘Aye, alright,’ he agreed grudgingly. It’s not going to bounce, is it?’

  ‘Safe as the Bank of England,’ I lied.

  SCENE 16

  I sat in the Chinese takeaway and counted up my wretched life. What had I achieved? Nothing. What did I have that was mine? Nothing. What did the future hold?

  I walked the streets dripping sweet and sour sauce down the front of my coat. The plastic fork had broken, predictably, as I had stabbed the first pork ball and I was eating with my fingers. The mist had turned to drizzle. I sheltered in a shop doorway among the litter that fickle gusts of wind had gathered there. I hunkered down and rolled myself a cigarette as I watched the warm friendly glow from the pub across the street. It was a quiet pub, a place where I always felt at ease, almost like a second home. I needed a drink.

  I sat alone in a corner with a pint of Stella and a large Canadian Club chaser. I sat and drank and thought. I was chain smoking. I bought another drink and this time had a pickled egg in a bag of crisps. As the evening wore on the pieces began to fall into place and the solution to my problems became clear. I would quit the job, quit showbiz, quit London. Damn the store! Damn Christmas! Damn making other people happy! I would disappear quietly, leaving my debts and woes behind. I’d head for Southampton and get casual work on the cross Channel ferries. I had about three hundred and fifty quid in the bank. It wouldn’t last long, but perhaps long enough for me to establish a new life for myself. I would even live rough if necessary for a while.

  To be always ready a man must be able to cut a knot,

  For everything cannot be untied.

  That night, as I lay in my bed a gale sprang up and I was woken, shivering, by the sounds of the windows rattling in their frames. Like the sound of dead men’s bones, I thought. The wind was moaning in the telephone wires and an icy draught cut across the floor disturbing the sheets of newspaper that I’d put down for Cloudesley days earlier. It seemed like some sort of omen, an unwelcome messenger bringing news of nights under cardboard in dark, damp alleys. I couldn’t get back to sleep.

  I got out of bed, switched on my light, dressed, turned on the radio and rolled a cigarette while the kettle boiled. Finally, I settled down with a hot drink and a volume of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories. Thank god for Radio 2, black coffee and Rizla papers.

  I must have fallen asleep for the next thing I knew I was woken by a loud and insistent hammering on my door. I looked at my watch. It was only half past one in the morning; three bells. What did H want at this time of night? Perhaps the house was on fire again, but I could smell no burning. The hammering continued.

  ‘Alright! Alright! I’m coming,’ I said wearily. But I was beginning to sense that something was wrong. Very wrong.

  The room was unnaturally cold and the door handle was icy. So icy, in fact, that it made me start. Then I noticed the ticking of my clock. I noticed it because it had stopped. I took hold of the thing and shook it. The second hand was going round alright, but the clock, which normally sounded like a death-watch beetle in a packing case, was as silent as the grave. Something was very, very wrong. I began to shiver uncontrollably.

  I opened the door nervously. A figure stood outside. It was neither of the Hs, but a larger, more portly, balding man with a big cigar which glowed with an unnatural brightness.

  ‘GGGGoldman?’ I stuttered. ‘What are you doing here?’

  He took the cigar from his mouth, smiled and held out his hands in a gesture of openness. It was definitely Solly Goldman, but different. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but there was something about him and it wasn’t just the way he looked. I stared hard at him and then, with horror, realised that I was actually staring at the Hs’ bedroom door directly behind him. I refocussed on the man, or whatever it was. He, it, was still there. I slammed the door and fell against it. The room was perishingly cold, but I was sweating. It’s the takeaway, I thought. Oh, God! I’ve got food poisoning again! Or perhaps it was the pickled egg, it did look a bit green. I reached toward the bedside table for my tobacco, but the hammering made me fall back against the door.

  ‘What d’you want?’ I shouted. Goldman’s reply was to walk through the door and me, into the room.

  ‘Look,’ he said, flicking cigar ash onto the floor, ‘this isn’t going to work unless you get it right.’

  ‘Ge
t what right?’ I gibbered.

  ‘The script, son, the script! You ought to know it by now,’ he, or it, replied.

  ‘I didn’t know there was a script,’ I said, shaking violently.

  ‘The whole of life’s a script, son, now, let’s try it again from the top.’ He began to walk out of the room again. I held out an arm to stop him and it plunged up to the elbow through his chest.

  ‘Alright,’ he said, ‘at the beginning of Act One you have to invite me into your room of your own free will. I can’t just walk in uninvited, it wouldn’t work.

  ‘But you just did! You just walked right through the door! And me! No, this is ridiculous!’ I closed my eyes and shook my head, but Goldman was still there when I looked again. ‘How did you do that?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m a ghost, you shmuck.’

  ‘But I didn’t know you were a ghost, or even dead at all.’

  ‘Been dead all my life, son,’ he remarked as he passed onto the landing outside again. ‘ Now,’ he shouted, ‘let’s get it right this time.’ The hammering started again.

  I grabbed my tobacco and with wildly shaking hands tried to roll a cigarette, but it was no use, tobacco flew everywhere and I eventually dropped the pouch.

  ‘Come in!’ I shouted.

  ‘No,’ the voice was growing slightly impatient, ‘you have to open the door and let me in.

  ‘But why can’t you just walk through it like you did before?’

  ‘People don’t just walk through doors without opening them, son, do they? You’ve told that to the Stonemason often enough. Now are you going to let me in?’ He hammered again.

  ‘But you just said you’re a ghost,’ I protested feebly.

  ‘Yes, but I’m playing Goldman. I thought you’d prefer it to something covered in a sheet with two holes cut in it for eyes. You don’t think I look like this all the time, do you? No, I do whatever’s available, Moses, Irving Berlin, Yasser Arafat, even did Abraham once.’

  ‘Yasser Arafat?’

  ‘Yes, semitic types generally.’

  ‘But he’s a … and you’re a …’

  ‘Oh, we don’t bother about that sort of thing up here; leave the tribal conflict stuff to you lot. No, I’ll do anything. Even gentiles if there’s nothing better going. Can’t afford to be too proud in this line of work, you know. Only last week, for instance, I did Pope Gregory…’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Does it matter? A Pope’s a Pope, they’re all full of bulls… Never mind, don’t interrupt. Right now I’m negotiating for the entire Spanish Inquisition for a performance in Gibraltar next year. You know what they say.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Three Spaniards, four opinions. All I’ve got to do is be inconsistent.’

  ‘Alright, alright, you’ve made your point! Jesus!’

  ‘Him, too. Although I always get a stand-in for the scourging and crucifixion scenes.’

  ‘Shut up!’ This is going to wake the Hs, I thought.

  ‘It’s alright. They can’t hear us,’ he shouted. ‘Oh, forgot to tell you, I read minds, too,’ he said, as I realised he’d just read my mind.

  I went to the door, grasped the icy handle and closing my eyes, opened it.

  ‘Come in,’ I said.

  ‘That’s better. Oi vay! Calls himself an actor,’ the thing muttered to itself.

  ‘What is it you want?’ I asked, opening one eye.

  ‘You, my boy.’

  ‘But, why?’ I asked, opening the other eye.

  ‘Because you need help, son and fast.’

  ‘But there’s nothing wrong.’

  The Goldthing looked around the room. ‘You call this right! This is what you want for the rest of your life?’

  ‘Well, no, not exactly.’

  ‘That’s why I’m here, then.’

  ‘But what else is there when you can’t get work?’

  ‘My life! The boy wants work already! Look, son,’ he said, pointing at me with the spectral cigar. ‘Oh, have you got a light? This thing’s gone out again.’

  I fumbled with the box