Church Group

by Michael Brightside

  * * *

  We walked back out into the brightness of the pier and the welcome of another bar, situated halfway down the wooden length, with panoramic views over the sea and of Carlton itself. The beer inside was perfectly cold, and we had another couple each while we discussed the fish we’d just seen. Al put a fiver in the fruit machine and got a fiver back out, then we had one last drink before we left to get the bus.

  I dug around in my pocket for the bus fare for the pair of us. Seeing as I’d dragged Al with me it was only fair I paid. Not even enough for a pint, let alone two bus tickets.

  “Fuck mate. How much money have you got?”

  “A couple of quid,” Al said. “Not enough even if we put our money together.”

  “Fuck. How are we gonna get back?”

  “You’ll have to take the tape-pack back Lu.”

  Bollocks. That was the only way we were going to get the bus fare together, but that was also the only reason we’d come out. All that effort I’d put into leaving the house hung-over and spending the whole day wandering around and I was still going to go home empty handed.

  “I haven’t even listened to it yet Al. I only want one fucking tape out of it, why can’t they sell them individually so they wouldn’t cost so much?”

  “Just take out the tape you want and replace it with the one out of your Walkman, the bloke probably won’t even check,” Al suggested.

  “That’s a good idea mate,” I laughed. “But if he does check then I’m fucked, I’ll have to go to Canchester from now on to get my tape-packs.”

  I thought about it for a moment.

  “Follow me Al, I’ve got an idea.”

  I took the tape out of my Walkman and the DJ Sy tape I wanted from the tape-pack, and led Al into Dixons. Carefully looking around to make sure we weren’t being watched, I put the pair of them into one of the stereos on display and hit high speed dubbing. Then we went to the nearest off-license and spent the last of the money we had on two cans of Stella and the biggest bags of beef crisps they sold. An hour later we came back to Dixons and I collected the two copies of the tape I now had.

  When I went back to the clothes shop for a refund I tried not to make it too obvious that I’d spent all my bus money on beer. I could tell he knew though. What he also thought he knew was that I’d be back the following week to buy that same tape-pack. Unbeknownst to him I already had the tape I really wanted.

  Truth is he was still right. I needed the original tape, and the others that I didn’t really want, and the case with the picture on that matched the flyer I had at home. All I was doing was delaying the transaction.

  Now with enough money to get both of us home and still have a tenner spare, we sensibly made our way back to the bar on the pier. By this point it was six o’clock, nearly drinking time for a Saturday, when most people would be thinking about leaving the house. I was actually beginning to contemplate going home to bed. Regardless we made our way past the still open but now empty amusements, to find we no longer had the bar to ourselves.

  Four big shifty looking blokes stood and ordered drinks; three in serious black leather jackets and one in brown, and all with serious faces.

  “Bit dodgy looking them Al don’t you think?”

  He drunkenly glanced at them, then back at me, before laughing, “Just a bit. Maybe find somewhere to sit over the other side of the bar.”

  I got us both another pint, then once the four blokes had sat down, followed Al to the opposite side of the bar to sit by the pool tables.

  “Fancy a game Lu?”

  “Yeah go for it mate,” I replied, knowing full well he would kick my arse.

  We set the balls up, tossed a coin, and Al broke, potting a red. Before he’d even had a chance to line up the second shot one of the blokes came over and put a fifty pence coin on the table.

  “Winner stays on lads. Yeah,” he asked us in a statement.

  “Er....yeah,” Al replied.

  When I finally got my first shot I made sure to pot one of Al’s balls. There was no way I was going to play against them. Al continued to do what he always did when he played pool. Look like someone who’d never played before, tripping over his own feet, and bashing the cue against the table, right up until the point he struck the ball, when it would move as if commanded by some higher force to go exactly where he wanted it to. Having only gotten one ball down by the time Al was one red away from being on the black, I practically threw the towel in and started just knocking my yellows about.

  With me put out of my misery Al nodded to the table the others were sitting on. All four of them got up.

  “You can have the table if you want,” Al said to the one who’d approached us before. “We were only going to have one game.”

  “That’s not how it works. Winner stays on, those are gentlemen’s rules,” the shiftiest looking one of them said. “But I’ll tell you what, Gaz you play him, if he doesn’t want to stay at the table you’ll soon get him on his way.”

  “Alright Gaz, I’m Al,” Al said, shaking his hand. The rest of us then exchanged names; Lu; Tel; Jon; Gaz; Al and Steve. I remembered who Gaz was because he had a cue in his hand, and I remembered Jon because he was the only one of them to have hair. The other two I quickly mixed up.

  As previous winner, Al broke, potting a red straight away like last time.

  “Make the most of that Al,” Gaz quipped, rolling up his sleeves to reveal both arms were completely covered with green faded tattoos. “You won’t be getting any more of them.”

  Al smiled.

  “Get a round in will you Steve?” Jon said.

  “In a minute Jon. Me and Tel are just going off for a bit,” Steve replied.

  “Fuck’s sake. Lu, that’s your name isn’t it?” Jon said. “You get the drinks in, we’ll get the next lot.”

  “Er....” I was still trying to work out how I was going to buy drinks for six people, when he shoved thirty quid in my hand. “No probs.”

  The leggy young barmaid reappeared from out the back. “What are you having?”

  I turned back to the group minus two. “What are you all drinking?”

  “Just get us all a beer,” Jon replied.

  “Six beers please.”

  “What sort of beers?”

  “What sort of beers?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, fucking IPAs.”

  “Four IPAs and- “

  “I don’t drink IPA, I drink lager,” Gaz called out from the pool table.

  “Three IPAs and a....” I looked over at Gaz. “Stella?”

  “Yeah Stella,” he nodded.

  “Three IPA’s and three St-”

  “Whoa hold on, Tel drinks lager sometimes,” Gaz said. “He won’t drink Stella though, makes him angry. He’s angry enough without it.”

  “Am I going to have to do this my fucking self?” Jon was looking angry now too, so angry he started walking towards the bar. “Right. A Stella for Gaz, I’ll have an IPA, what did Tel have last time?”

  “I don’t know who Tel is,” the barmaid replied.

  “What did the other two have last time?! It doesn’t matter who had what. It was a Stella, an IPA, and then what?”

  “I don’t know, I didn’t serve you.”

  “For fuck’s sake. Is it really that hard?”

  I looked over at Al, he was totally engrossed in the game. As much as like me he didn’t want to have to spend any more time with this lot than he had to, he also didn’t want to lose. He was two balls ahead. Gaz was sat down at the table with a somewhat bemused look on his face, probably because he was losing to a kid. Opposite him were two near empty pints of IPA. I took a deep breath.

  “Steve and Tel both had IPA,” I said. Jon looked at me funny. “Their glasses are still at the table.” I gestured in their direction with my head. “So it’s three pints of IPA and three pints of Stella. Please.”

  “Finally, someone’s got their fucking head screwed on. You Gaz are as much use as a chocolate fu
cking teapot.” Jon leaned over the counter towards the barmaid. “And six Sambucas please love. And do us all a favour, remember what you’ve served us.”

  For a moment it looked as though the barmaid was going to remind him that it hadn’t actually been her who served them last time, then reconsidered and got on with her job.

  Steve and Tel came back, a tell-tale white powder ring surrounding one of Steve’s nostrils. He wiped it away when Jon pointed it out to him.

  “Have that!” I heard Al only half shout from the table, in an obviously more subtle celebration than normal. Gaz’s last two yellow balls lay forgotten on the baize.

  “You haven’t let one of these kids beat you have you Gaz?” Steve asked.

  “He’s not bad him.”

  “No? Rack them up for me and I’ll show you how it’s done,” Jon said.

  Al broke again as I sat down with my new mates; Steve, Tel and Gaz. It was only when I’d filled the spare chair at the table with the three of them that I truly realised how menacing looking they were. All three of them had tattoos; Gaz by far had the most with his pair of sleeves, Steve just had a few on his arms and Tel, now he’d taken his coat off so I could see them, had a pair of swallows on either side of his neck and a matching one on each hand. Tel looked like a doorman, a big fat bloke with one of those heads that doesn’t require a neck. The other two were just big blokes. Gaz especially, with solid arms and vast shoulders that hung his tight fitting grey v-neck top.

  “Did that ponce pay you back that monkey in the end then?” Steve asked.

  “Yeah.” Gaz held out the back of his right hand so we could see his knuckles were red raw. “Once I’d asked nicely.”

  The three of them then laughed.

  I gulped down a big chunk of my beer and contemplated leaving the table and running away. Looking up at the pool table, Al and Jon had only just started. I’d have to wait a little bit longer. Unless of course one of them asked me nicely to get them a beer. If that happened I was off.

  “Are you from Carlton?” Tel asked me.

  “Nah mate. Kirk-Leigh.”

  “Kirk-Leigh? What the fuck do you do in Kirk-Leigh?”

  “Fuck all,” I replied, “that’s why we’re out in Carlton.”

  “What about your mate Al. Is he from there as well?”

  “Al? Yeah, poor bastard was born there. I didn’t move there till I was fourteen, he’s always lived there”

  “So do you work in Kirk-Leigh?”

  I laughed, “Nah mate. If you don’t work in the post office or either of the pubs then you have to work somewhere else.”

  “Why? Is that all there is there?”

  “There’s a church,” I said. “But you don’t need me to tell you I’m not the vicar.”

  The three of them laughed and I felt a little more comfortable.

  “I work in Carlton, at Precisional Electronics,” I said.

  “What that place that makes all those electrical things?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I bet that does your swede in, doing that all week,” Tel said. “No wonder you need a fucking drink at the end of the week.”

  The three of them let out a kind of sympathetic sigh on my behalf.

  “Oi Jon!” Tel shouted. “Guess where this one works?”

  “Hold on Tel I need to concentrate, he’s only fucking beating me,” Jon replied. “Go on, where?”

  “Precisional Electronics.”

  “What that factory that makes all that electrical shit?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Fuck that, I bet that does your head in.”

  Tel laughed, “Yeah that’s what I said. Fuck that.”

  “What about you Tel? What do you do?” I asked.

  “Buying and selling,” he replied, without giving much away.

  “Buying and selling what?” I pressed him. Suddenly I felt Steve and Gaz’s eyes on me.

  “A bit of this and a bit of that.”

  “So are you all from Carlton?” I swiftly changed the subject when I realised what Tel was getting at, in doing so I think they all realised I knew what Tel was getting at.

  “All of us apart from Steve,” Gaz said.

  “I’m from the east end of London,” Steve said.

  “How do you know this lot then?”

  “I’m Jon’s cousin. Why?”

  I began to feel very uncomfortable again, hoping we’d get out of here sooner rather than later. “No reason.”

  “Oh right.”

  Time seemed to stand still as I realised I wasn’t welcome at the table any more. They all knew each other and I was the stranger sitting in the fourth chair. I prayed for a distraction.

  “Have that!” Again came from the pool table. Two-nil Al, well done, cheers mate, that’s us stuck here even longer. It had been too long already.

  “Did he beat you as well?” Gaz asked.

  “Yeah, it was fucking close though. We were both on the black. We both fucking missed it once as well. You can’t let Al have a second go on a ball though, he never misses twice.”

  “At least I’m not playing shit then,” Gaz said.

  Jon turned to me. “Does he beat you every time you play?”

  “Not every time, but pretty much. I’ve beaten him a couple of times, normally when he pots the black and white at the end; it doesn’t happen often though,” I replied.

  “So what? Are we all gonna take it in turns to play Al?” Tel asked, bemused.

  “Like you said....” Al paused for a moment. “Winner stays on, those are gentlemen’s rules.”

  Jon smiled at Al and I, “I like you two lads. Tel come with me for a minute. Lu while I’m gone get us all another drink, you’re the only one here I can trust to get it right.”

  “Pint each?” I asked.

  “Yeah like last time, and Sambucas again.” He pushed a couple of notes into my hand. “Oh and don’t forget my fucking change.”

  Once I’d got the drinks in we carried on chatting about nothing. I made sure not to ask any questions from now on that might sound prying. I mainly let them tell stories, about fights or drinking or run-ins with the police. In every story someone else seemed to be to blame. They were actually really nice blokes to talk to; but you wouldn’t under any circumstances want to be on the wrong side of them.

  I watched on as Al added Steve to his list of defeated opponents. Then finally Tel, during a brief period when he wasn’t in the toilets with one of the others. At four-nil it seemed like the point they would have thrown in the towel and given up, so I wasn’t surprised when they did, having already spent enough time being shown the proper way to play pool. Unfortunately for us we couldn’t leave, having unintentionally become part of their group; and on top of that neither Al nor I had bought a round yet or were in a position to do so. The safest bet was probably to stay put and not bring that to their attention.

  “So what are we going to do now?” Jon asked. “We only come here for the pool table.”

  “Londoner’s Parade?” Steve suggested.

  “We do that every weekend,” Jon said. “I want to do something different. Where were you two going?”

  “We didn’t really have anything planned Jon,” Al said.

  “Well what do you normally do on a Saturday night?”

  I looked at Al.

  “We normally go to the White Hart in Hemford if we’re not going out to a club,” Al said.

  Great, I thought. They knew where to find us now if we accidently pissed one of them off and had to do a runner.

  “Looks like we’re going to the White Hart then boys,” Jon said.

  Tel smiled, “Anyone need the bog before we go?”

  “We can do it when we get to the car can’t we?” Steve said.

  The rest of them gave Steve a dirty look.

  “You don’t need to hide anything from us,” I said. “I’ve been watching you go to the toilets in pairs all the time I’ve been here. I assume that’s what you were doing, unless there�
�s something else men do together in the toilets.”

  The four of them laughed when they realised they could so easily have been mistaken for shirt-lifters.

  “Do you two?-” Steve asked.

  “We have been known to partake,” Al interrupted him.

  “Right then, let’s go find where we parked the fucking car so we can all get on the same wavelength and then go and see this local of yours,” Jon said, before we all walked out into the cold April dark.