by Max Frick
empty beer bottle that he had snatched up from the floor at the last minute. Even Billy managed to suppress his natural apathy to strum furiously at his low-slung guitar, as though he were trying to file to the quick his fingernails across all six of its strings. And insofar as they intended to produce a sound shorn of all unnecessary embellishment, wherein the naked truth took centre stage, they achieved what they set out to do. But the sound they did produce was so bare, so raw, that it was flayed in fact to the bone, and if its heart was in the right place, and there for all to see, it would also be exposed to the elements - the bitter cold of big business, the howling winds of change - and in such a pitiful condition it could not survive for long; at least not without a good deal more care and attention than any modern day music mogul would likely be willing to give it.
Tony, in the moment, hurled the bottle at the wall, Billy threw down his guitar in protest and Pabs clattered the hanging high-hat, setting it swinging wildly on its long string.
‘Right,’ said Tony, pressing the stop button on the tape deck, ‘that’s a wrap. I’ll do up half-a-dozen copies and send them out to record companies. With my name behind this thing somebody should get back to us before too long. Then, boys, as they say in the biz, the sky is the fuckin limit!’
The first of the rejection letters he haughtily dismissed; and the second; though by the third he was a little less haughty; the fourth simply angered him, while the fifth took the wind out of even that sail, so that by the time the sixth and final envelope dropped through the letterbox onto the carpet at the foot of the front door he was already more or less resigned to his fate. Nevertheless, mastering his emotions, concealing his highest hopes and his worst fears, conducting himself as he would if someone else were watching, Tony calmly picked up the envelope, calmly sat himself down, calmly opened it, calmly took out the letter within, calmly read the letter, calmly tore it to pieces and calmly threw the pieces on the floor; he then calmly walked up to Pabs’s, calmly purchased a large quantity of drugs in a variety of types and calmly walked home again; he calmly sat himself down, calmly laid out the drugs on the table in front of him and calmly, very calmly, began swallowing pill after pill, imbibing line after line, swallowing pill after line and imbibing line after pill like there was no tomorrow.
23
And for Tony, alas, there was no tomorrow. But, by all accounts, it took considerably more than the drugs to kill him.
It was the downstairs neighbour, a Mr Grieves, who first suspected that something was amiss.
The day in question had begun like any other...
When the sweetness of his dreams had receded irretrievably, and the bitterness of existence could no longer be postponed, Mr Grieves reluctantly blinked open his eyes: semi-darkness. He dragged his head out from under the pillow and squinted moodily at the half-light – neither brightening nor darkening – in the room: bloody dismal! Rain again, no doubt. Pulling the cotton wool an inch or two from his ears he trained his ailing senses, as well as his age would allow, on the bedroom ceiling, searching for any noises from upstairs. Quiet, for now. Good. At least he might manage his morning cuppa before the usual bloody racket started up again and set the cup rattling around on its saucer like a pigging whatchamacallit. He tucked the yellowed cotton wool bits back under the pillow – waste not, want not – and lying supine beneath the blankets took a minute to get his bearings and gather his wits about him.
Pigging music! Blaring into the wee hours as usual! It was worse again now than ever it was. It’s a wonder he managed any sleep at all. If you could even call it music. It was just bloody noise. And him up there howling along like a bloody banshee. Day in, day pigging out it went on, screeching and bloody bawling. Like a pigging punk rock soundtrack to his life. He didn’t mind a wee bit country ‘n’ western, and he was even quite fond of yon Lulu, but this was bloody ridiculous! Whether he was watering his plants, or pottering about in the scullery, or just trying to get a read at the bloody paper there was never a minute’s peace. Half the time these days he didn’t even need to switch on his hearing aid because he had to have the telly so pigging loud that you could make out every word without it. Not that there was anything on worth watching nowadays, mind you. It was all that bloody reality TV. It looked bugger all like any reality he had ever encountered. They should bring their cameras round here sometime. He would show them pigging reality. It was getting so you were scared to leave the house. Bloody teenagers hanging about in gangs outside the shops. Drinking that bloody Buckfast. It was like running the pigging gauntlet whenever you needed a loaf. And the language! Always effing and blinding. The lassies were worse than the laddies. They should bring back national service. That’s what they should do. Teach the buggers some discipline. Do them the bloody world of good. That said, mind you, you could hardly blame them. The modern world doesn’t have much to offer for the young ones. How can you expect a young man to get excited about spending the best days of his life sitting in one of yon call centres? Phoning up pensioners like him all day bloody every day and trying to sell them stuff they don’t need. That phone was never pigging done ringing. And that’s if they’re lucky. Jobs these days don’t last a crack. Places opening and shutting all the time. Getting shunted from pillar to post. Never knowing from one day to the next what’s in store for you. It must all seem a bit pointless. At least in his day they had hope, what with the war effort. One great goal. Everybody mucking in. Nowadays it was every man for his-self. He blamed the Tories. But yon New Labour shower weren’t much better. Aye, it was maybe neither wonder that they were up there every night battering their brains out with drugs and loud music. Christ knows, he might even have been inclined to do the same himself, if he’d known back when he was their ages that this was all he’d have to look forward to. And on that low note he heaved himself up out of bed.
‘Still and all,’ he muttered, ‘there’s no excuse for inconsideration.’
Routinely, he slid one foot then the other into his baffies by the bedside, righting, as he did so, the bumfled legs of his jammie bottoms, and lifted his dressing gown down from off the wardrobe door. Donning it over his semmit, he drew it tightly around himself to keep in the heat – a penny saved is a penny earned – and, knotting its belt at the waist, shuffled gloomily, via the bathroom, through by to the sitting room.
So began another weary day.
It must have been gey near teatime – because he had just finished watching that gardening programme with yon whatsisname in the fancy jumpers, and it was usually shortly after that finished that he would go and fry himself up a sausage or two in the skillet, or sometimes some fish fingers with a few new potatoes before settling down for the night. And maybe some peas or beans as well depending on how hungry he was: his appetite wasn’t what it used to be, you see – so, aye, it must have been gey near teatime when it suddenly occurred to him that still not a sound had been heard from upstairs.
Now, you’d be forgiven for thinking that he’d be grateful for the peace and quiet – Christ knows, it was long overdue – but in actual fact he began to feel a wee bit uneasy. All he could remember thinking was that the last time there was any sort of a lasting peace and quiet round here was just after that poor laddie was murdered up there. So he turned down the telly and switched on his hearing aid and listened for any sign of life. He even tentatively tapped once or twice with his brush handle on the ceiling to try and provoke a response – is-there-anybody-there? Certainly, nobody seemed to be, and, letting old-fashioned curiosity easily get the better of him, he set off upstairs to investigate further.
Well, it’s a bloody good job he did! For if the sight that met his eyes, while he was peering through the letter box, would have been enough to turn his hair white, if it wasn’t white already, it was the smell that reached his nostrils that put the fear of bloody death into him.
The squalling police car came tearing around the bend in the road like an over-excited child, skidded hard right into the cul-de-sac and screeched to a halt be
fore the gate to the drying-green. Upon stopping, its siren was muted, leaving only the spinning blue lights, and the sirens of the other emergency services en route – ambulance and fire brigade – could be heard in the distance, still quite a good way away.
The residents by now had evacuated the building and anxious and animated were gathered on the grass verge opposite, out of harm’s way. They were huddled together under a scattering of umbrellas that despite their panic some had stubbornly insisted on bringing.
The passenger door swung open and a fresh faced young constable stepped urgently into the rain. He had ample time however to fetch his waterproof overcoat from off the back seat, put it on and button it up before the driver’s door was opened and the driver – a seasoned, more experienced officer – himself deigned to emerge, with all the practised poise of a film star at a premiere, to the frantic clamour of the crowd.
‘About bloody time!’
‘Aye, it’s a wonder the buildin’s still standin!’
‘We could’ve all been blown to smithereens by now!’
‘Or dead in our bloody beds!’
‘Any bloody
