by Max Frick
now, my friend, is can you deliver?’
He pushed his chair back from the desk, flung his left ankle up onto his right knee, and Tony found himself caught in the glare of an uber-smug, no-nonsense, super-serious, business-like stare.
There was no doubt about it, he should have upped and walked away.
6
All Tony was saying was:
‘What’s the point of buyin a house like that when you can get one with the same amount of rooms, in the same area, for a fuckin quarter of the price?’
‘They’re nicer,’ argued Billy.
‘Nicer! You’d pay four times the price for nicer?’
‘Why not? If you can afford it.’
‘But that’s my whole fuckin point!’ asserted Tony heatedly. ‘They don’t build these houses for cunts that can afford them. They build them for cunts that’ll happily mortgage themselves up to the fuckin eyeballs for the rest of their natural lives, just so they can act all fuckin la-dee-da and pretend to be livin whatever hoity-fuckin-toity “lifestyle” it is they’ve seen advertised on the telly!’
Billy shrugged.
‘They keep buildin them,’ he said. ‘So people must keep buyin them.’
‘Oh, they keep fuckin buyin them all right! I’m not sayin they don’t buy them. I’m sayin they can’t fuckin afford them. Half the cunts livin here are probably payin their mortgages with money they get from rentin out their ex-council houses at twice the normal rent. I’m tellin you, man, any cunt that can comfortably afford to live in one of these houses‘ll be away livin beyond their means in some nicer fuckin area!’
They were down by the river en-route to Pabs’s. A service bridge that they were passing led over to a cluster of privately owned detached houses, recently built on the site of an old factory and tucked neatly into the belly of an s-bend. Their red-tiled gable roofs were all that could be seen of them over the tall hedges and high wooden fence that served to reinforce their seclusion. Tony was piqued at the sight of yet another 'exclusive' development, but it was Billy’s stubborn refusal to acquiesce in his condemnation of it that was really beginning to rile him.
For Billy's part, his uncharacteristic obstinacy stemmed not from any great strength of feeling on the subject but was largely attributable to an incident that had occurred earlier, just as they were about to leave the flat. Through a carelessly opened front door (carelessly opened by Tony) Dooly had escaped, and evading grabbing hands (Billy’s) had fled down the stairs and been let out of the main door by an incoming neighbour. Tony had watched mirthfully from the kitchen window as Dooly galloped along the path below, with Billy, silently fuming, in tepid pursuit. He, Dooly, had not been difficult to locate, pining – surprise, surprise – at his own front door. But it was Tony’s unrepentant ‘not my dog’ attitude that had led to Billy’s current mood, not the fact that he’d allowed him to escape in the first place, and definitely nothing to do with any new houses.
‘I don’t see anythin wrong with them,’ shrugged Billy.
‘I don’t see anythin wrong with them,’ mocked Tony. ‘No, you fuckin wouldn’t, would you!’
They were walking along a footpath that closely followed the windings of the river on a narrow tract of greenbelt land. Tree roots, like swollen veins, bulged beneath the soft tarmac. The river at its widest was no more than the skim of a stone from bank to bank and at its calmer parts the trees seemed to cast their quivering reflections deep into the water, but in truth they lay flat on its surface and nothing but their colour distinguished them from mere shadows. Tony was brooding in front at a pace befitting his temper; Billy, despite himself, lengthened his stride to keep up; while Dooly, sniffing curiously here and there at the edges of the grass, padded amiably alongside them on his lead, his shoulder blades alternately rising and falling and the tip of his up-curled tail autonomously flicking the air.
‘Can you not let him off the lead down here?’ asked Tony irritably.
‘Nope,’ said Billy.
‘So what the fuck did we come this way for, then?’
‘To take him for a walk. There’s too many other dogs around. He might start fightin.’
‘Aye, right!’
‘What?’
‘Fightin.’
‘What?’
‘It’s because he’ll run away again and you don’t know how to control him.’
It was a pleasant enough spot, the river, but it was no countryside ramble. Up where they had just come from, the foremost rows of the district’s row-housing stood sunning their roughcast facades in a long broken line that rose and fell with the undulations of the land. And behind those foremost rows the rooftops of the next few rows were visible. And behind those next few rows countless other rows of houses and flats can be seen, from some higher vantage point, ranging back in a maze-like formation, row after row, facing this way and that, one close beside the next and each much the same, if not exactly the same, as its neighbour; to where, in the middle distance, the square factories and tall chimneys of the industrial estate, starkly outlined against the vague blue hills, encroach upon the approach roads of the smaller outlying towns and villages. A higher vantage point still, would reveal this district to be no more than the northeast quarter in a vast suburban panorama, almost symmetrically sectioned by the river flowing from west to east and a north bound/south bound dual carriageway. A typical new town landscape, then, and a typical new town: ahistoric (of course) and wholly devoid of distinguishing characteristics, except for maybe its excessively high crime and suicide rates and the Asda, Europe’s largest supermarket.
Ahead of them stood the prosaic concrete and steel structure of the dual carriageway bridge with its grey pillars and girders, and the monotonous sound of motors motoring to and from it, invisible but clearly audible atop the steep banking at the other side of the river, all but drowned out any birdsong or frog chorus and the leisurely flowing of the river itself.
They were about to enter the picnic area (a quaint wooden signpost would have informed them of this had it not been burned to a charcoal stump by vandals shortly after its erection). A patch of grass roughly the size of a school football pitch, the picnic area was liberally sprinkled with daisies, dandelions and - today, at least - people. Above the discordant medley of chattering voices, the barking of dogs and the ‘sharps and trebles’ of excited children the mawkish strains of the latest chart topping pop song drifted to Tony’s eardrums and darkened his mood still further.
‘Who the fuck’s inflictin this shite on us?’ he growled, casting around for its source.
In the first third of the park a game of five-a-sides (using, of course, jumpers for goalposts) had either finished or reached half-time, and the players, mostly of school age, were sitting around on the grass, breathing heavily and passing among themselves two or three bottles of water, from which, invariably, they drank a bit and poured some over their heads. Baseball hats were removed and became fans, and football tops, peeled off, were utilised as towels to wipe the sweat from their faces.
‘That’s some fuckin size of a dog you’ve got there!’ shouted an older man, perhaps the father of one of the players, alone standing among the rest. ‘Does he want a game? We could use him as the goals, ha ha!’
And he glanced around the group for approval.
Tony stopped, the opportunity having presented itself for a spot of good natured badinage; an exchange of drolleries; a light-hearted rally, perfectly in keeping with the weather, that would instil in both parties a feeling of camaraderie and earn them as well the respectful admiration of the boys.
‘Who the fuck are you talkin to? Ya fuckin prick!’ he retorted, causing acute embarrassment, mingled with fear, to constrict the heart, wither the muscles and burn the skin of the man, who, nevertheless, still stood there laughing.
Billy promptly came to his rescue and hustled Tony along.
‘Come on, man,' he reasoned. 'The guy was only jokin!’
In the rest of the park people sat around wooden picnic t
ables (those that had not yet been burned to the ground) drinking and smoking and keeping their wayward children from straying too near the river by repeatedly NOT FUCKING TELLING THEM AGAIN. Dotted around on the grass colourful sunbathers lay or sat on towels or blankets, sometimes neither, listening to personal stereos or idly flicking the glaring pages of glossy magazines, sometimes both. And while the braver among them dared to bare their feet, or allow a tantalising glimpse of milk-white shins beneath rolled up trouser legs, most were content to swelter fully clothed, unwilling to reveal an ounce more flesh than was necessary for a facial tan, lest it be construed, by their neighbour or whoever, as a superfluous ounce, falling outwith accepted standards; standards decreed by the very magazines that they were currently reading.
Billy sought to lighten Tony’s mood by directing his attention towards the back of the park. There, a corpulent fifty-something, having unashamedly shed all but her big knickers (off-white and slightly darker in hue than her livid skin), sat with ten-to-two feet and her legs outstretched, leaning back resting on her palms. Her large loose face was raised towards the sun, while almost everything else, from her puckered wattles down to her fleshly maw, tended in the other direction.
Tony couldn’t but relent.
‘Fuck me!’ he exclaimed. ‘A waist is a terrible thing to mind, right enough, eh?’
And he was on
