by Ray Banks
She pushes open the door and I try to move under some bubbles. She stands there with a weird look on her face.
‘Jesus, Donna, what’d I say?’
‘It’s my flat and you’re being a fucking baby. Now can you really not move?’
My voice cracks. ‘You think I’d make this up?’
She grabs a large blue towel from the rail and throws it into the bath. ‘Cover yourself up. I’ll help you out.’
It’s a tough job; I’m a dead weight. But we manage, me holding the towel to my waist, her with her hands under my arms. It’s the most she’s ever touched me, and I feel like asking for dinner and dancing first, but neither look possible with my legs fucked. Thinking that makes my throat hurt and I have to fight back the urge to cry. It’s not manly.
We make it to the couch and I drop and adjust myself. I’m still wet from the bath, the couch cover sticking to me. We both let out a long breath at the same time.
‘You really can’t move,’ she says.
“I really can’t move.’
She looks me up and down, then leaves the room. I can hear her on the phone, her muffled voice urgent. Thank Christ this happened here. If it had happened on the road, I’d be dead right now.
When she comes back in, she goes into the kitchen and pours us both a stiff drink. She hands me the glass and says, ‘Doctor should be here soon.’
I take a drink. ‘Thanks, Donna.’
‘He says it’s probably just temporary, but he wants to take a look himself.’
‘Christ…’
‘Hey,’ she says. ‘How about you drink up? No sense in feeling sorry for yourself.’
‘Look, Donna ‘
‘Save it,’ she says. And takes her drink into another room.
The doctor looks like he should be on the front cover of a Mills amp; Boon novel, an honest-to-goodness clean-cut poster boy, Dr Kildare without the latent homosexuality. When he walks into the living room, he’s in the middle of a conversation with Donna. He stops talking when he sees me sitting on her couch wearing nothing but a towel. I’m glad; this doctor has the plummy voice of another class way higher than mine.
When he smiles, he shows the same American teeth Donna does, but they look false. A pair of expensive-looking specs sit on the end of his nose. It’s an affectation, I’m sure.
‘Callum, right?’ he says.
‘Yeah.’
‘Richard.’ He extends his hand. I shake it. He looks back at Donna.
‘The waist down, Doctor,’ she says.
‘Ah.’
He’s too gentle to be a bona ride doctor, but he talks like one. I need X-rays. I need to see a specialist. An MRI is mentioned. So are the words ‘fracture’, ‘chiropractor’ and ‘h ck brace’. It’s enough to put the fear of God, the Devil and 11 the Nolan sisters into me.
‘I’m not saying all this will happen, but you’ll need to get checked out thoroughly. We don’t take chances with the spine. It could be that you’re just bruised and your muscles have just seized up. Or it could be that you’ve suffered severe spinal damage and you might never walk again.’
‘Oh, cheers.’
‘I’m just saying “might”, Cal. It’s not paralysis, I don’t think. Not yet. And I don’t want to treat this lightly.’
‘I don’t want you to treat this lightly.’
‘You’ll need bed rest,’ he says, then turns to Donna. She nods and sips her third drink since he walked through the door. ‘But you’ll also need to take some light exercise. Go for a walk. Don’t overdo it.’
‘Ah, right. Let me get my trainers on and I’ll be out of here,’
I say.
He writes a script and reads the drugs off as he’s writing them.
Ibuprofen, codeine if the pain gets worse. Diazepam. And he peers at me over his glasses as he writes the last one: ‘And from what Donna’s already told me, you’ll need some antidepressants.’
‘Cheers, Doc’
‘You’ll be alright with him?’ Dr Dick asks Donna.
‘I’ll be fine,’ she says.
‘Then I’ll leave you to it.’
She follows the doctor out into the hall and there’s more muffled conversation. At one point, I think I can hear her saying, ‘I’ll be fine, Richard, okay? Just let me handle this.’
The front door closes with a clatter. When Donna reappears in the doorway, her lips are tight.
‘Sorry,’ I say.
You okay?’ She drains her glass, sets it on the coffee table and avoids my eye.
‘I’ll be okay, yeah.’
‘I’ll pick up your scripts.’
Donna’s gone for about an hour. I know, because I watch the clock on the video until she comes back. I’ve made this drink last because I’ve had to. The bottle on the coffee table cries out for me to up-end the bugger into my glass, but I can’t reach it. Donna must have left it there on purpose.
Doctor Dick. Yeah, he wasn’t a doctor. He looked like one, but he didn’t act like one. I’m grateful for the prescriptions, but if he’s NHS, I’ll eat my socks. And Donna doesn’t strike me as the kind of woman who’d have private healthcare. Nah, Dr Dick is a friend of the family, maybe more. The more I think about it, the more it burns me up. I need to get out of here, but I can’t bloody move, and that burns me up even more.
I really want a drink. I try to move on the couch, but the towel starts slipping. The last thing I need is to be found face down on her carpet with my arse bared. No, I can wait.
I’m not paralysed. I’ve just seized up. But Doctor Dick can’t be sure. Christ knows what I’d do if I end up paralysed.
Yeah, it worked for Ironside, but I’m not Raymond Burr. I don’t have his courage. And he could walk – he was just a lazy bastard.
Shut up, Innes.
I hear the front door open and hope that it’s not a burglar.
‘Donna?’
‘Yeah,’ she says. The clinking sound of bottles. She sounds tired. ‘I got your prescription.’
‘Just take the cash out of my wallet,’ I say.
‘Don’t worry, I will. And I know you shouldn’t drink with the pills, but I want one.’
‘That’s fine with me.’
I drink with the pills anyway. Donna doesn’t stop me. After a couple, though, I’m ready to pass out. We make it to the bedroom before I lose consciousness. And just before I go, I’m sure I can feel her hand brush my forehead. My foot twitches as the bed sinks around me.
Maybe there’s hope after all.
When I open my eyes, I have to blink against the daylight. I had bad dreams, violent, full of those screeching choirs and the heart-thumping fear of being recalled to Strangeways. If I slept, it was in thirty-minute stretches at most. A quick look around the room with blurred vision, and Donna’s nowhere to be seen. I rub the crusted drool from the corner of my mouth and swing my legs out of bed before I realise what I’ve done.
Praise be and thank fuck for Doctor Richard. I’m shaky, but I can stand. Pain in my right leg, but I can limp. Which is better than wheeling myself around. I take a breather against the wardrobe, grab a dressing gown and slip it on.
‘Jesus Christ.’
I look up and Donna’s in the doorway. I smile at her. ‘Nah, but aren’t miracles grand?’
‘You scared the shit out of me.’
‘Sorry.’
You want a drink?’
‘What time is it?’
‘Noon.’
Six hours’ worth of waking up and dropping out. That’s the closest I’ve come to a good night’s sleep in a long time and I still feel like I’ve been dragged through a rusty fence. ‘And the bar’s open?’
‘Early doors.’
She helps me through to the living room and I ease myself onto the couch. A mournful song on the CD player, a piano and an alcoholic’s voice. Donna brings me a glass and fills it from a half-empty bottle on the table.
“I washed your clothes,’ she says.
I sip my drink. Swee
t with no burn, another single malt.
‘Thanks. I thought I’d have to chuck them.’
‘You still should. How you feeling?’
“I can walk, so that’s a start. Doctor Dick did wonders.
How do you know him? He can’t be your GP, not with that kind of service.’
‘He’s a friend.’
‘Uh-huh. Close by the sounds of it’
‘He’s helped me in the past.’
‘What with?’
“I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘Okay,’ I say. Another drink and there’s a dribble at the bottom of the glass. I swallow it and struggle to my feet.
‘Thanks again, Donna. I should be going, though. Stuff to do.’
She doesn’t answer me as I limp back into the bedroom.
What am I supposed to do? I can’t thank her again, and I don’t know what else to say to her. It’s like we’re trying this on for size and it fits neither of us, this relationship hanging dead around our necks. And who am I kidding? What fucking relationship? I grab my jeans off an easy chair, slump into it as I pull them on.
Thanks for picking me up, thanks for getting the doctor, thanks for the booze and the bed. Thanks for clamming up.
Thanks for making me feel like a shithead because I’ve got other more important things on my mind.
This isn’t the time to get involved, even if it was possible.
Even if she didn’t put up this front every time I open my mouth. Every time she looks at me, she sees what? A drunk woman picking up rough trade in a pub?
I’m pulling on my shirt when I feel her presence in the room. The clink of ice cubes in her glass gives her away.
‘You didn’t tell me what happened,’ she says.
‘You wouldn’t believe it.’
‘I picked you up. You owe me.’
‘I got knocked down by a car,’ I say. ‘And then they chucked me in the boot, drove me out to a lay-by and worked me over, left me for dead.’
‘You know who it was?’
‘Yeah.’
‘So what’re you going to do?’
‘I’m going to fuck them up. What else can I do?’
‘You could quit,’ she says. ‘Next time they might make sure you’re dead before they leave you.’
‘I’m not about to do that, Donna.’
‘Why not?’
‘Difficult to explain.’
‘Try.’
I do. Start right at the beginning; fill her in so far. The job, the journey, George, Stokes, Alison, the fight, the supposed flight, the man in the black leather jacket. We take it back into the living room, and I spill the story over another couple of drinks. I let her know that these people, they’re amateurs. I made plenty of mistakes, mind, and I admit that too. Trusting George, trusting Alison. Playing saviour when I should have been watching my own back.
‘But I’ll make up for it,’ I say. ‘They should have dug that fuckin’ grave and dropped me in it.’
Donna sits in her chair, staring at me. Stella ambles into the room and hops up onto the arm of the chair. For a moment, I think Donna’s eyes have glazed over and she’s not listened to a ^ord I said. Then she pipes up. ‘So they’ll have gone by now.’
‘You what?’
This Stokes guy, Alison. They’ll have skipped town by now. If they know you’re after them.’
‘Yeah.’
‘So what’s the point in carrying on?’ she says. ‘You’ve got nowhere to go.’
‘I’ve got George.’
‘Give it up, Cal.’
‘I can’t.’ I take another drink, ice knocking my teeth. “I can’t do it. I let this go now and they’ve won.’
‘You let this go now and you get to live, Cal. Look at yourself. You’re a bloody wreck. It’s only the booze that’s holding you together right now. You go out there and cause trouble, you’re asking for a casket.’
I check my pockets, pull out a pack of Embassy and open it up. There’s not one of them that hasn’t been mangled beyond repair. So I say: ‘What the fuck do you care?’
It slipped out before I got a chance to think.
Donna sits back in her chair and disgust flickers across her face. ‘You know what, Cal? You’re right. What the fuck do I care? What the fuck do I care if you go off and get yourself killed when I could have stopped it.’
‘That’s not what I ‘
‘If you’d just bloody listen to yourself, Cal, you’d know why I’d fuckin’ care. You’re a mess. You’re in no state to think straight and you haven’t been from the moment you came up to Newcastle, by the sounds of it. So you’re looking to blame anyone you can get your hands on because you can’t hack the truth of it.’
“I don’t need this.’
‘Nah, you probably don’t. But you’re not right in the head.
A guy in a black leather jacket following you? You have any idea how mental that sounds?’
‘He’s following me,’ I say. ‘It’s not Donkey, but it’s someone.
Probably Stokes. I don’t know.’
‘You’re paranoid,’ she says. ‘You’re delusional.’
‘And you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.
You don’t know the kind of world I live in.’
‘Aw, stop the PI bullshit for just a second. I’ve seen kittens tougher than you. Just because you can take a beating, it doesn’t make you a prizefighter. And I don’t want to be the one who sees you hurt.’
‘You won’t have to. You made that clear,’ I say.
‘You don’t get it, do you?’
“I get it. You’re happy with me when you’re pissed, but anything more than that and the doubts set in.’
‘You know that’s not true.’
‘Why’d you pick me up in the first place, Donna? Doctor Dick knock you back and you were out for a pity fuck?’
Her blue eyes flash once, then go dead. She raises the glass to her lips, but it’s empty. When she speaks, it’s like someone shut off the electricity. ‘Forget it, Cal. You do what you want to do. Go beat the crap out of the rest of the world if it makes you feel better. Just do me a favour and don’t ring me the next time you’re scared. I’ve got enough problems in my life without having to worry about yours.’
‘I’m sure you do.’ I head to the front door, cigarette still on the go. Then come back and grab the prescription pills off the table. ‘Thanks for washing my trousers, Donna. I appreciate it.’
I leave the door open as I head out into the hallway. If I go to close it, I’ll end up slamming the bastard in the frame. And once I get outside I realise I’ve no idea where I am. After an hour of painful hobbling, on and off, I find a Metro station, hop aboard a train and head into town.
And I’m burning up inside, but it’s got nothing to do with Stokes.
FORTY-FIVE
I get off the Metro at the Monument stop. I’ve got a few errands to run before I pick up my car, and the city centre’s the only place I can run them. I’m blinded by sunlight as I step out of the station onto Northumberland Street, and the moment my eyes adjust, my heart sinks.
Sunday afternoon, a shopping extravanganza. Like the Arndale Centre, but more people packed into a smaller space and pissed off about it. The street is jammed and most of the crowd have no peripheral vision. Pushchairs and screaming kids, old women who think they’ve got the right of way, young hoodlums and scally lasses hanging around with gimlet eyes and too much saliva in their mouths.
I visit a couple of sports shops, but they seem to be selling clothes and nothing else. It’s summer, it’s the height of the season, but I can’t find what I’m looking for. A parade of children with name badges and attitude problems give me nothing but cock-eyed stares. I end up sweating through my shirt, my lips dry and my patience frayed.
I yawn, bone-shattered.
God bless the Index catalogue shop, that’s what I say.
Air-conditioned, kept at a temperature somewhere between freezing and
frostbite, it’s like heaven compared to the hell outside. I wander up to one of the catalogues and leaf through it until I find what I’m looking for. Sporting goods. I can’t smile because my face feels swollen, but inside I’m beaming.
That’s the bastard right there.
I fill out a wee form with a chewed pen and take it up to the counter. Spend the next ten minutes waiting for my number to come up, gasping for a cigarette. My skin feels itchy, and I wish I hadn’t talked to Donna like that. Fuck’s sake, she was only looking out for me. But I’m in no mood to be civil.
Things to do.
I have a plan, but it’s blurred around the edges. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it revenge, but it’s a way of evening the score a little.
When my number fizzes up onto the screen, I go to the counter and’pay. Then I tuck the package under my arm and brave the sun again. Only for a second, stocking up on cigarettes and Lucozade. I get short-changed, but I don’t care. Outside, I light up, take a few puffs to get enough nicotine slammed into my brain, and then I’m back across the road and checking out the mobile phones.
I don’t want anything too expensive. If Stokes shows up again, he might get as stamp-happy as he was the last time. So I scan the shelves for the cheapest phone there is. As I’m doing so, a guy built like a jockey’s whip ambles over. He stands behind me, but I can catch a whiff of Cool Water.
‘The new Motorola’s a doozy,’ he says.
‘I’m after something cheap,’ I say. I try to enunciate. It makes me sound like I have learning difficulties.
‘Ah. You want contract or pay-as-you-go?’
‘Whichever’s cheapest.’
‘And what extras were you thinking about?’
I finally turn round and get a decent look at him. The lad’s riddled with acne, sports a tuft of blonde hair under his cracked bottom lip and looks like he’d fall over if I breathed too heavily. But then, he probably doesn’t think I’m much of a looker, either.
‘I want a fuckin’ phone, mate,’ I say. “I don’t care if it comes with a Jacuzzi and a wet bar. I want something I can make a phone call on that isn’t two soup cans and a piece of string. Something cheap, something durable and something that I can press a number on without having to use a fingernail, alright?’
