He had slept in there once before and imagined that it would be unnerving as he had suspected it would bring back bad memories. He had also assumed it would upset Aiden’s mum but apparently it had been her idea. She had said ‘If we hide from her life then we will forget her’. He remembered her saying it at the funeral, that and ‘We were so lucky to have her for as long as we did’, but it always felt like she was trying to convince herself not others.
The pictures on the walls though were all of happy times, many of them of her and Aiden giggling and chuckling as they grew up. It was more a celebration of her life than a mausoleum that ambushed you with pain as soon as you stepped inside and he had slept fine.
17
They arrived at the Dunton Arms in the town centre at six o’clock and the place was overflowing. Two girls with garishly applied lipstick and dressed in scanty elf costumes came staggering out arm-in-arm as they approached.
‘Fuck you prick,’ one of them bellowed at the doorman.
‘Merry Christmas Ladies,’ he laughed.
The other one staggered over to Carl and gave him a wet kiss on the cheek and said, ‘Merry Christmas cutie pie.’ The pair burst into laughter and rolled off down the street.
‘Bad Elves,’ Aiden sniggered.
‘Good elves,’ Carl corrected, with a look on his face that he could go home now and not have been disappointed with the evening. The trio were grinning as they pushed through the double doors into the pub.
The Dunton was a new breed of Wetherspoon’s pub. A huge open place with a twenty five metre long bar. There were chairs and low tables at the sides, stools and high tables closer to the bar and then a big expanse of floor space in front of the bar. Not that you could see the floor tonight as the place was jammed. It used to be a library and many features remained, including the high ceilings, giving it a cool vibe. That combined with the reasonably priced beverages meant it was the place to be and the phrase ‘Drunken in the Dunton’ was a popular one.
Will loved early Christmas Eve drinking. Everyone was in great spirits, work was finished, all had just been paid and there was the promise of good times ahead. Family and old friends came to stay and old mates were back from university, jobs elsewhere and travelling. Factories and offices had kicked out early and last minute Christmas shopping challenges had been completed. Now they were all uniting in the usual British celebration technique. Will was not disappointed with the view in front of him. He would not have been surprised had a troop of monkeys been swinging from the lamps, chased by a crash of rhinos, so manic was the scene.
It seemed like someone had walked into the street and shouted ‘Free beer’, so frenzied was the crowd. The noise was deafening. No music, just talk, shouting, laughing and cheering. Stinging smoke hung heavy in the air, condensation pouring down the steamed up windows. Perfect, Will concluded.
They barged their way through the crowd, past scores of red faces from cold and drink. This was usually Aiden’s finest hour and he stepped up to the task. He ploughed through the throng like an icebreaker crunching through the arctic. His best Clint Eastwood ‘Dirty Harry’ sneer on his face.
Many who were jostled turned round to argue, but melted away when confronted by such a huge presence. His usual technique when faced with a bunch of lads was to growl ‘Security’ and steam forward grimly looking over their heads. Carl and Will following tucked up behind in his slipstream, like pilot fish hugging to their shark. A space opened up at the bar as they arrived and Aiden docked into it.
They ordered two pints each so they wouldn’t have to return to the melee at the bar for a while and finally managed to settle next to a fireplace in the corner.
‘Darren would have loved this,’ Will shouted above the cacophony.
‘He would have had a fight, a snog and be helping behind the bar by now,’ said Aiden fondly.
‘I had a letter from him waiting at home for me.’ Carl said as he presented it with a flourish.
‘Read it,’ Will encouraged, only slightly put out that he always used to get Darren’s post. ‘I’ve not heard from Darren for ages.’
‘Dear boys,
You are dicks.
Merry Christmas to everyone. Sorry I can’t be there to see you all, you know I would love to be. Me pulling all the best girls and you lot fighting for the scraps as usual. I heard you were meeting up again after I rang Aiden’s and spoke to his mum. She sounded pissed and it wasn’t even lunchtime, ha ha.
Thanks for the shed-loads of mail you have sent me over the years, however I have read both of them now, so please feel free to put pen to paper once more.
Work is pretty boring at the moment. Typical. I’m all ready to go and it’s a world love-in! I joined the departmental boxing team to burn some free time and kicked some ass, but sadly I was ejected. Apparently there are some rules around elbow use.
I’m getting a mobile phone soon. You know how I like to be on it, like a car bonnet. Then you can ring me, you bunch of lazy bastards. D.’
They all stood in silence for a while, clearly thinking of Darren. Will wondered if the others felt guilty for the lack of contact like he did. He could feel a dark weight of glumness move over them like a big black cloud threatening rain on a spring day so he quickly changed the subject.
‘So Carl, tell me about these posh rich sorts at Cambridge. Have you got them eating out of your grubby Peterborough paws?’
‘I was going to come here and say it’s fantastic, I’ve got a girl on the go and a great social life et cetera but now I’ve seen you, I can’t.’ Carl looked nothing short of despondent. ‘I’m lonely guys. I feel like an outsider. They are nearly all rich, foreign, or both. They all seem to know each other or if they don’t their upbringings are all the same. They don’t bully as such, just leave me out. It’s like I am not even there in the room and in some ways that’s worse. I had a year out at an accountant’s in London, Andersens, who are keen for me to return and that was better, but basically I’ve got five months to go and I can’t wait for it all to be over.’
‘Can you do the work?’ Aiden queried.
Carl looked at him and gave a downbeat smile. ‘Well I won’t bore you with the details, but I don’t find it difficult. Some of it takes a while, but its maths, so there is always an answer.’ Will caught Aiden’s despondent face after that exchange and filed it for later.
‘No birds then?’ he asked.
‘There was a girl, for a while. A Chinese girl.’ Carl looked momentarily happy as he remembered. ‘I used to call her Mileena like in Mortal Kombat. She loved that, used to like me to say it when she gave me a BJ which was a little odd, but a man in my position makes hay while the sun shines and I made a lot of hay that way. I think her real name was, Ming-Hao. It meant something like tomorrow’s flower. Apt really as every time I got ready for big business with the big boss, so-to-speak, she said tomorrow.’
‘What happened?’ Aiden laughed.
‘She got sectioned and went back to China.’
Will and Aiden cracked up and Aiden slapped Carl’s back causing him to spill his pint. They carried on talking about sport and politics but mostly reminisced about school. Carl though was still a bit down. He kept taking his glasses off, cleaning them with his shirt, taking a big sniff and putting them back on again. Will found himself counting how many times he was doing it.
‘Seriously though guys, I really miss everything. I feel adrift when I’m there but it’s like I can’t do anything about it. I couldn’t wait to come back and see you lot tonight. I’ve got some good news too, my grandad is ill, so my parents have gone to see him and won’t be back until tomorrow evening so we can go back to mine. I sneaked some beer and wine in too and I’ve got a boot leg copy of that Seven movie.’
‘Cool,’ Will smiled. ‘Well not about your grandad, but about the other stuff.’
Twenty-one years old and sneaking drink in was a little amusing. He had already seen Seven that weekend with the girl whose name was currently evad
ing him, but didn’t want to steal Carl’s thunder. Besides, maybe two drunken viewings equalled a normal one.
He decided to tell them his life wasn’t going great either.
‘My social life is ok, but work sucks. Insurance Administration. I did not see that coming. I keep thinking something good is going to happen, but how can it, short of winning the lottery? I need to do something about it but what. There has to be more to life.’ To get off his own depressing mundane existence he turned to Aiden, but sensing something he stopped.
Aiden finished his second pint and handed his glass to Carl. ‘Here you go Carlos, how about you get the Big Boss to the big bar?’
Carl looked over to the bar which could reasonably be described as a mosh pit, took a deep breath, squared his shoulders and uttering ‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more’ and reluctantly set off.
‘What is it mate?’ Will said, searching Aiden’s face for answers.
‘I’m not happy either. Uni sucked. I knew my place here, but I couldn’t seem to get any purchase there. My course was a mystery as well. They gave me a mentor as they knew I might struggle and they wanted me to play rugby with my free time. He more or less did my work for me in the end. He said it was quicker than trying to drive it into my thick skull. You can imagine the confidence boost that gave me. Obviously I fucked the exams up. Three years down the pan. I might as well have stayed on the deli counter at Tesco. At least I liked the cheese.’
Will suddenly realised that Aiden must have finished his course six months ago and felt guilty about his lack of contact all over again. He had drifted away and as his ex, Sara, used to say ‘Not tended the garden’. Although he had thought she had been referring to shaving her lady parts, it seemed to apply in this case too.
‘Surely the rugby was going well?’ he suggested.
Aiden puffed his cheeks and exhaled deeply. ‘I lost it, whatever I had, I lost it. The anger seeped out of me and all of a sudden I was just another twenty stone meathead. I was still good, in the team and stuff but I was not great anymore and my heart wasn’t in it. So I came home and spent time with my mum. This dad thing has really hit her. You’ve still got your family Will, don’t think you have nothing.’
Will hung his head, but all he could think of was what a tool his brother was.
‘Here you are lads,’ a clearly happy Carl shouted as he returned much quicker than they expected. ‘Look who I bumped into.’ Will looked behind him at the wistful face of his ex, Sara. She came up to him and pecked him on the cheek.
‘Hello Will, remember me?’
He had a flashback to a tearful goodbye at the railway station. Her tears not his. A promise of letters and visits thrown at the shutting door as the guard blew his whistle. He had forgotten all about it by the time he had got back in the car to go home. Someone up there he thought, was really trying to ruin his night.
‘You remember Alice don’t you?’ Sara said pointing at a tall, thin, boring-looking girl with a severe bob. She did look familiar, possibly in his French class, although he was pretty sure he had called her Lisa whilst she was at school. He gave her a big welcoming grin, as Sara pointed at a third girl. She was small with messy mousey hair and poorly applied make up. She was attired in a horrific tie dyed dress. There was a strong hint of the undergrowth about her too, like a vole or an otter and not a particularly clean one.
‘I’m Deidre, and I’m from Liverpool,’ she gushed in an irritating ‘Come-on-down, The Price Is Right’ manner, hugging him like he was Bruce Forsyth. He looked at Carl over her head ready to roll his eyes, but Carl was looking at her like Cleopatra had just been wheeled in on her finest chariot. Not for the first time did Will wonder where Carl got his penchant for woodland animals from. ‘Come on you,’ she screeched at Carl, ‘Let’s go and put some songs on.’
As she dragged him off to what Will was sure was a non-existent juke box, he overheard Alice telling Aiden she had loved watching him play rugby as she squeezed a beefy bicep. Aiden too seemed to have perked up, Will reflected. Sara was looking at him and he pondered apologising but realised he couldn’t be arsed.
‘How are you enjoying college?’ he said.
‘You cheeky twat,’ she retorted. ‘That’s it? Why didn’t you write?’
‘Why didn’t you?’
She seemed flummoxed for a few seconds. Someone else had clearly been in the pub a while too. Pressing his advantage to escape any heat he added, ‘You were starting a new life, miles away. I know what university life is like. I wondered whether you would write, but you didn’t.’
She mellowed quickly and as she droned on about how amazing it was and how great everyone there was, he reflected on how she had changed. She had lost weight, grown her hair long and even though it was pulled into a simple pony tail it accentuated her prominent cheek bones and caring green eyes. She only had a touch of lipstick on, but her lips were full and Will remembered the many enjoyable hours he had spent locked to them. He just managed to stop a grin hitting his face as he looked at her aquiline nose, recalling Darren asking if he had managed to bang Julius Caesar yet. She too had a tie dyed top and long flowing skirt on. Will had never appreciated the wacky student look but he saw Aiden snogging Alice out the corner of his eye and realised he may as well enter into the spirit of things as he would no doubt be taking one for the team regardless.
A couple of hours seemed to evaporate as they do when you are having a good time. Around nine o’clock a breathless Deidre and a doe eyed Carl returned from one of their many wanders and declared in ecstatic unison that it was time to go to Carl’s, as though the carriages had arrived and they were going to the Ambassadors ball. As they shuffled through the now thinning crowd Will felt Sara squeeze his hand. He smiled at her and felt a familiar stirring down below and looking at her realised that base two could well be reached and breached tonight. Things were looking up.
He half focused on those they passed as they got to the door. Clearly anyone with half a brain had realised it was time to go unless they wanted to spend the big day hanging out of their arses. With a melancholy sigh he noticed the majority who were left looked to him as though tomorrow held no aces and this was as good as it was going to get.
18
As Carl opened the front door of his parents’ house Will remembered he hadn’t been inside since the time Carl’s dad had freaked them out by turning the television off. He almost tiptoed into the house like a mouse expecting the cat to leap out on him at any moment. As Carl took drink orders Deidre declared it was party time and brought out what Will suspected was a big lump of cannabis resin. He looked at Carl for a response but he was away with the fairies and Will resigned himself to it.
He wasn’t a big marijuana fan. He had endured a particularly unpleasant experience only a few weeks back where he had partaken of a few spliffs of infamous white widow bought to him by a now departed hippy colleague called Ronald Belling. Ron, as he preferred to be called, had been to Amsterdam. This in itself was very odd as he rarely spoke to the guy. He was a little bit strange, although many were in the I.T department. He also seemed intent on convincing Will that he wasn’t a ‘Corporate weasel’. In fact the only meaningful connection he could remember was after he had left the toilets in an extremely foul state at work one Monday morning after a boozy Sunday. Ron and he had crossed paths as he left the scene of the crime and he asked ‘Which trap have you used?’ Assuming he was talking about the fact there were six toilets, like in a greyhound race, he had said ‘That’s for you to find out my friend, roll the dice’. When the guy had come out they had both raised their hands in unison and nasty for poor old Ron, they both displayed the number three. For the following week as they had smoked outside the building together, Will had amused them by calling him ‘Hot Pot Ron.’ He had given him the present a few weeks later as a leaving gift even though it was Ron who was leaving.
He had sparked up ostensibly to remember Ron, but had ended up watching Goldeneye on an extremely go
od quality pirate video copy his house mate had acquired.
The film had been brilliant and as the munchies had taken hold he had realised he was ill prepared for such over powering urges. He had then savagely unwrapped the present he had bought for the departmental secretary for staying late to do some work for him a few days prior. So engrossed was he in considering how great he would be as 007, that he managed to destroy an entire four hundred gram box of wine gums. After passing out, the next morning he woke on the couch and began to fart so violently that he had begun to worry that his ring-piece would shatter.
He had to ring in sick the next day as he was too spaced out to contemplate going to the shop to replace the item, never mind to make an appearance at work. He had ended up getting her a nice box of chocolates, causing her to wink and flirt at him ever since, which was exactly what he had been hoping to avoid by getting her such a shit present in the first place. He had not seen teeth that dirty since he had last watched ‘The Return of the Living Dead’.
However there was going to be no escaping the demon weed and Sara fired up the joint in the living room. This surprised Will and elevated her in his warped opinion. She had been such a brown-noser at school, it was quite exciting seeing her be the naughty little one and he felt that stirring again. She passed the joint to him and he took a long deep pull, forgetting his lightweight nature with the enclosed product due to the beers he had consumed. He passed it to Aiden who had a few mini puffs on it, prompting immediate shouts of ‘You bender’ from the others. Alice took it next and immediately accused Aiden of bum sucking it, which caused Will and Sara to collapse into giggles. Good times, Will concluded through already narrow eyes. Sara and Lisa declared they were going to the toilet and left the boys to it.
Aiden was slumped in the armchair, a big smile on his face.
Lazy Blood: a powerful page-turning thriller Page 11
