Six Stories

by Matt Wesolowski

  Let’s go back to Brian’s recording for a moment:

  —So what I started doing, right, was doing other people’s homework for them. I just sort of copied their style and wrote my own stories in their books. I had new notebooks now. But I kept them secret from everyone.

  Brian Mings’ secret notebooks were his refuge. By the time he joined [name of school removed] High in year seven, he was already being picked on. Friendless and ostracised, I cannot imagine the outpourings of rejection and anger that filled the pages.

  —Mum ended up on these tablets, for her sleep. She would take them after tea and get all dozy. She never really understood what was going on with me. I’d tell her what was happening; show her my bruises; my specs that had been broken again; and she’d just say, ‘Whaaaa’ in this fucking stupid way. Like she was retarded or something. So I used to play away on the piano, loud as I could, scales and songs. And I used to ask her why she never tuned it, how I was ever going to get my grade three if it was all out of tune. Bing, bang bong, and she would say, ‘Whaaaa?’ like a zombie.

  From the interviews with Derek Bickers and the others in the previous episodes of Six Stories, it is more or less clear that this secret life of Brian’s mother was not known – that she managed to hide it from her peers. It is either this or else clever editing on Brian’s part, assuming that Brian is, indeed, the creator of Six Stories.

  I can’t help feeling sorrow for the poor little boy left playing away on the piano, trying to please his mother. There appear to have been a few concerns about Brian at school; Mrs Mings was called to several meetings. Yet nothing was followed up. It is a tragedy that someone like Brian was allowed to slip through the net so easily.

  Before we start condemning the district’s overworked and underappreciated children’s services, we need to remember that Brian Mings lived in a nice house in a well-to-do area. Brian was never violent – at least not in reality – and there were no outward signs of neglect. And you can also understand Mrs Mings’ adeptness at concealing things, the shame of her husband hanging over her at every step. It is hard enough for our services to intervene in the families of the most needy, the most deprived. It is easy to see how the Mings may have been overlooked.

  It seems that things really began to get bad during Brian’s years at secondary school. Brian discusses this next.

  —By the time I was in year eight, oh man, I was getting kicked to shit most days. I lost my glasses in the end. Keiran Thompson stamped on them in the changing rooms. They were held together with sellotape, anyway, and this time they just … well, I didn’t wear them anymore, let’s put it that way. Mum didn’t even notice … I think she forgot I even had to wear them. She was taking lots of those pills by then and sometimes just stayed in bed all day.

  Then something happened to Dad; he just … he wasn’t there anymore. Sometimes I’d sneak in the back door of The Swan and he would buy me a bag of crisps; him and his mate at the back carrying on, smoking their fags and laughing. I don’t know where he got the money from.

  Then one day he just wasn’t there and his mate – that Mick with the smashed teeth and the blue spiderweb on his cheek – he says that some lads were chasing him, chucking bangers at him, and well … he was in the Falklands, my dad was, and I think … well, I know now about stuff like PTSD. I didn’t then…

  Ladies and gents, it’s not for me to point out the obvious here, but I think we finally have a motive.

  It’s an unexpected one. And, just like every revelatory fact has done so far in this series, this new piece of information has created more questions than it’s answered. Notably, how on earth did no one know that it was Stanley Mings, a traumatised war veteran, who Tom Jeffries and his friends terrorised, and drove away from where he slept, with fireworks?

  I have a theory.

  First, the focus was not on Stanley himself, who, as I am led to believe, suffered no lasting physical injury as a result of Jeffries’ attack. Second, the media coverage at the time was limited to the local press. What Jeffries and his friends did was not seen as particularly newsworthy. The Eurostar had made its maiden train journey through the Channel Tunnel that very same day, and what was seen by many as a simple prank pulled by some wayward teenage boys in a predominantly middle-class area, with no fatality or even a good third-degree burn to take a photograph of, was quickly dismissed.

  With the problems the Mings family had, it is not clear how Brian’s father’s state was not seen as a bit of a local scandal. How Derek Bickers and the rest of the adults didn’t know about it is a mystery. And if they did know, why didn’t they offer to help?

  Stanley Mings seems to have disappeared off the radar after that. A cynic might argue that, secretly, behind the closed doors of the middle classes, some were glad to see the back of him. Tom Jeffries had performed a welcome service.

  Just like I’ve always done, however, I draw no concrete conclusions; I only make my listeners aware of the possibilities.

  One person who did know, though – about everything – was Brian himself.

  —Dad never came back. He was like a witch or a monster from an old story – driven from the village by flames and pitchforks. We all knew who’d done it, everyone at school, but no one dared say anything. Tom Jeffries knocked about with Jonny Wagstaff: You looking at me or chewing a brick? Either way you’ll lose your teeth! So no one said nothing.

  I kept out of Jeffries’ way. I kept my head down because if he knew it was my dad, things would just get worse. I used to have this little fantasy, just before I went to sleep: I imagined I was in assembly, and it’s that weird silence when the head stands up there and he stares out and you feel yourself sort of shrivel inside cos you’re hoping his eyes don’t land on you. But I’ve got no reason to be scared, because I know he’s going to say my name and I’m going to be called up there in front of everyone. I’m going to get a medal for bravery, cos I saved him. I saved my dad from Tom Jeffries and Jonny Wagstaff. I ‘laid my life on the line’. And everyone will be clapping and cheering and they’ll be waving their scarves and Miss McCluskey will hold me tight to her…

  ‘Well done, son,’ she’ll say. ‘Well done. You’re a hero. You’re my hero.’ And she’ll hold me and she’ll be wearing that silky white shirt she wears; the one where you can see her bra.

  I never wrote that story down, never. It was too delicate, too sacred. It would change every time as well. Sometimes I’d be waiting under the bridge, just hanging up in the arches like batman, and I’d swoop down on them: Wagstaff and Jeffries and them.

  Sometimes I’d be a sniper; waiting for days, for weeks, hidden away, my scope focussed on the back of their heads. I’d pull the trigger gently gently, and watch, pfft, as their heads would explode in a sea of skull and brains and blood.

  Sometimes I’d find dad wounded by the river; sometimes he’d die in my arms and I would swear vengeance, the camera panning away from us and up into the moonlight. Sometimes we would stagger back to Mum’s, his arm around my shoulders and his voice a dying breath: ‘Thank you son, thank you.’

  All fantasy; all of it. Even the simple little dreams I had. After I walked home from school in the autumn dark, the wind biting through my blazer and the stink of rotten leaves and rain, when I opened the front door, I used to close my eyes, praying that he’d be there, that he’d be standing in the kitchen, sipping a cup of tea.

  ‘C’mere son,’ he’d say and I’d run to him, a little boy again. ‘I’m sorry,’ he’d say, ‘for leaving, for doing it all wrong. But I’m back. I’m back to be your dad now.’

  Of course, that never happened.

  After school, the house was as cold as the street; sometimes it felt colder. Mum would be tucked up under the duvet, dribble in her hair. I’d turn the heating on, get the oven going, fingers frozen, radio on loud, stories whirring around my head, blocking out the day.

  It’s difficult to follow Brian’s timeline. I can only assume he’s talking generally about life before
he joined Rangers. It is clear he has a vivid imagination. It is also clear that life at home with his mother was not particularly happy.

  That’s an understatement.

  However, I do have my doubts. Mrs Mings’ addiction was either hidden, or gone by the time he joined Rangers. Or else imagined completely. Maybe it’s the cynic in me that thinks Brian is perhaps exaggerating just how bad things were. I wish there was some way of knowing. Mrs Mings seemed compos mentis enough to have sought out the Rangers group for her son, and was able to see that he was having trouble with his peers at school. But what does this say about how things really were? Perhaps we’ll never know.

  Derek Bickers, in episode one, said that Mrs Mings would drop Brian off on a Wednesday night at the church hall for the meetings. That’s all we have to go on.

  Let’s hear more from Brian.

  —It all got a little better when I joined Rangers. That lot gave me hope. Charlie, Eva, Anyu – they were the best friends I ever had; they were the best people I ever knew. I’d never seen people like that before. They seemed aeons older than me – like adults, like proper people. That’s when I knew I’d found my tribe, people like me. Especially Charlie. In him, I saw a potential best friend; someone I could tell about Mum, about what happened with Dad.

  This part ties a knot in my throat. A part of me wants to phone Charlie Armstrong again; play him those last few sentences down the phone. But really, what good would that do? What would it change?

  —That’s when I started buying my clothes from the army shop; one of those big parkas with a furry hood like Anyu’s; some of those boots like Charlie’s. It took a while, because they didn’t like me at first. Charlie used to call me a ‘Thing’, but none of that hurt anymore; I could take it easy. I just kept going, just kept on until they liked me. That’s what you have to do when you’re someone like me.

  Right here, I’m starting to feel a lot of sympathy for Brian Mings. Shunned by his peers at school, lonely at home, Brian would have taken anything from Charlie and the others, so long as they accepted him. And by now, Brian appears to have found a way to cut himself off. He’d built a shell to protect himself. So the treatment he received at the hands of the other Rangers presumably did not even contend with what he had already endured.

  —But then the day came when he arrived. Him, there, in the church hall with my friends, my people. I wanted to get up that second, to shout; to tell all of them what he was, what he had done. But … I just couldn’t.

  At first I thought they’d see what he was. I was looking forward to Charlie tripping Tom up – giving him a dead leg and calling him a ‘Thing’ instead of me. I couldn’t sleep the next Tuesday night, and all Wednesday my stomach was jittering away just waiting for it. Maybe Charlie would get his fingers in that finger-lock he got mine in sometimes. I’d got it to the point where he could bend them back almost to the back of my hand and I didn’t cry out. I forced all the pain down into my boots. ‘Look at this! Look at this!’ Charlie would say to the others. And they’d all say, ‘That’s sick; that’s mint.’ I couldn’t wait for him to do that to Tom.

  But that night, for some reason it all just went wrong somehow. It was my fault; I arrived way too early and I’d worn my new coat – the one with the straps; the one that I knew Charlie wanted, that he’d been looking at in that magazine. I’d asked him if I could borrow it, just to read about some of the bands – Cannibal Corpse, Obituary, Morbid Angel. I liked them, too; I liked them cos Charlie had got me into them. That’s what I told everyone.

  So I wore the coat and I arrived early. Derek wasn’t there yet and I stood around outside for a bit. I was scared in case I saw anyone from school. In my heart, I knew Tom would tell everyone anyway about what he did to my dad; that next week he’d probably break Jonny Wagstaff out of that young offenders unit and bring him along. But, still, I wanted Charlie to see my coat; I wanted Anyu to see I wasn’t being a ‘Thing’ anymore. Darren Michaels had ripped the hood half off my parka anyway at school, called me a ‘fucking hippy queer’. Now the hood hung down my back like a dead thing.

  And then I saw they were all smoking round the back.

  With Tom.

  I went inside with all this sadness running through me, and I thought Anyu might have seen me; that she might come in after me and ask what was wrong, and I’d say:

  ‘Why the fuck’s Charlie friends with Tom Jeffries all of a sudden?’

  And then I’d tell her about him. I’d tell her how at school he went round writing his name all over everything with his pen; that he called people ‘hippy cunts’ and threw fireworks at people. That he tried to set fire to them and everyone just thought it was funny. I’d tell her about how mum slept with all dribble down her chin and that my dad was still missing; that my dad still hadn’t come back and it was his fault. I’d say there was no way he was going to fit in here; that we should get rid of him. And she’d understand and she’d tell Charlie and everything would just go back to the way it was.

  But no one came in. I was just stood there on my own.

  Then they all filled the doorway, started laughing at something he said and I felt this fucking weight in my stomach, like a fucking landslide, a wave of shattered slate just pouring inwards. And I knew then that I should have turned and run and never come back. But Tom and Charlie were all over me, and I let them take the straps of the coat and tie me up with them – because it was just a laugh, just a joke, and I wasn’t being a ‘Thing’, was I? If I let them look at my coat they’d see that that I was my own person, and Charlie would ask if he could borrow it and I’d say I’d think about it. And he’d get Tom in that finger-lock and make him scream this time.

  But it wasn’t happening, they were still just standing around me, and it was like I was frozen, just waiting. I couldn’t even speak.

  I looked down and saw Tom was wearing that stupid cap of his and a little light feeling began in my stomach, because this was it; this was when the tide turned. I kept looking at them and willing Charlie to just start – to start calling Tom a charver. He always used to tell me about the charvers with their Spliffy jeans and their NafNaf jackets and how he used to fight them if they called him ‘hippy’.

  I remembered when Tom had called us lot hippies and no one did anything.

  Sometimes, when we were smoking behind the church hall, I used to tell Charlie about the charvers in my school, too. And those moments, when me and Charlie were laughing at the charvers with their shaved heads and their NafNaf jackets, those moments were the fucking best. Those were the moments of us nearly being friends. But, right then, that night, Charlie said nothing about Tom’s jeans; he just started tying me up with the straps from my coat. And then my boots were out the window, and Charlie was calling me a ‘Thing’, and they were all laughing.

  I realised then that everything was different, that if only Anyu Kekkonen had followed me into the hall, and I had told her about Tom Jeffries, maybe then things wouldn’t be like this now. But that hadn’t happened. Instead I was outside round the back, all the fag butts like little orange shotgun shells in the soil. It stank out there – like leaves and mud and night, and my cheeks were burning hot and my toes were wet and my boots were hanging half in and half out of a rose bush. And I wondered, if dad was there, too, what he would think if he saw me here, blubbing away like a little girl, crying round the back of a church hall when he’d fought for his country.

  And then I saw him, hiding down there under the rosebushes. His face black as mud and his breath like the smell of Tom Jeffries’ Regal King Size.

  ‘C’mere son,’ he said, and I bent down and knelt in the mud. Dad’s face was all thorns, and he told me that I didn’t have to take this anymore, that if I wanted him to come back, I had to stop being such a sissy and stand up for myself.

  That’s when we came up with the plan. Me and Dad sat down there, under the rosebushes, with wet jeans and the straps of my coat hanging around us like garlands. That’s when we came up with the pl
an.

  This incident with the coat has been mentioned by a few of the others and it is interesting and distressing to hear Brian’s take on it. To me, it seems a defining moment for Brian Mings. For want of a less flippant phrase, possibly it was the moment he ‘snapped’.

  Next, Brian moves on to the summer visit to Scarclaw in 1995, when Tom was not present. From what he now says, it seems his psychosis was now in full flight. Either that or, a bit like Haris Novak, he is reimagining what happened.

  We’ll never know.

  —Me and Dad finalised the plan not long after we’d been up to Scarclaw doing the insulation. It was only going to be me, Anyu, Charlie and Eva. It was a good to get away from home.

  Charlie and me had been smoking together in the mineshaft. He’d given me a cigarette. I remember taking it, hoping my fingers weren’t going to shake, thinking that I was going to blow the smoke out through my nose. That’s what I was going to do.

  ‘Let’s take one draw each then throw it away,’ he said, and we did.

  That’s why I thought we must be friends by now. He was talking properly to me that weekend, like I wasn’t a ‘Thing’, that, even with my boots that were just like his, and my Walkman full of tapes like Cannibal Corpse and Morbid Angel, that I was his friend. We spent an afternoon, just me and Charlie, listening to ‘Where the Slime Live’ and ‘Lord of Emptiness’ until the batteries on his little radio ran down. We melted candles from the centre into the walls and smoked more of the cigarettes he’d nicked from his mum. Dad was there, too, hidden in the back of the cave, his eyes glowing red like the ends of our fags, and he was nodding saying, ‘Go on son, that’s right.’