I found the Wreck in a side-street. A couple of cops and soldiers were loitering there. I got in and tried, ineffectually, to start it up. Just as it was beginning to chug into some semblance of life, a soldier sauntered over, his rifle slung across his pelvis in a carefree fashion.
I wound down my window and put on my I-don't-mindbeing-questioned-by-the-security-forces-I-know-you-haveto-do-it face. It was a pretty complicated expression.
The young soldier leaned down to my open window. His face was adolescent and his accent was Lancashire prole. `This your car?' The inevitable start to the litany of enquiry.
`Yes.'
'This your only car?'
`Yes' My voice was untesty. It might have been a tense day for these guys with all the ordnance going round town. I reached for the glove compartment to get some papers to prove that the Wreck was indeed mine.
The soldier snorted briefly. `No, no, that's all right, mate. It's just we thought you were driving it for a bet.'
I didn't need to laugh since he laughed so hard he laughed for both of us. I could hear his colleagues pissing themselves across the street. The soldier bent double and squeezed some feeble words of apology between the whinnies of his laughter. The Wreck, showing rare form, started amidst all the mockery and I drove off.
A couple of hours later, I was at home, making chase with my cat. He'd peed in the bath again and the sight of that little yellow pool around my plughole had sent me spare. It was so yellow. Somehow, you didn't expect it to be yellow. Like it was almost human. Unlike the cat itself. I'd chased him down the stairs, under the chairs, over the tables and so on. He was fucking quick, my cat.
I suppose that being pissed at my cat just because I was already blue wasn't fair. Mary, Sarah, my job: none of it was his fault. But he was unlucky enough to come near the end of a story he wasn't really part of. So, I ran after him with murder in my heart.
I'd got home depressed. Mary had left me making no mistake. When I got back there were a couple of messages. I had nearly wept at all this human contact, even though one had been from Marty Allen, telling me what an asshole I if I didn't know already. Chuckie had called too. He sounded jugged again. Apparently, he'd just had a big date with his American girl. She'd agreed to go out with him again. But apparently she wanted a double date with her flatmate. That was where I came in. Chuckle had happily volunteered me to field the friend. Next Thursday, the message said.
I would think about that later. But for now the important thing was to catch my cat and kill him. I'd nearly cornered him between a bookshelf and a sofa when my doorbell rang loudly. I froze. I thought the Pet Protection League were on my case. I looked at the big clock on my wall. It was after midnight. Belfast isn't the best town for those after-midnight social calls and, as I walked to my front door, I had the familiar fifteen-second feeling that there were two men in bomber jackets and balaclavas with Browning automatics standing at my door with some sincere political objectives. I shucked through it, as I always did, and opened up.
A policeman stood there, his hand raised to the bellpush. I sighed with a mixture of guilt and relief. I spent most of my life thinking that I should be arrested so cops made me uneasy. I wondered if I was going to get grief for hitting Crab. A complaint to the cops wasn't his style, but Marty Allen might have done it just for fun.
`Yes?' I asked.
The cop narrowed his eyes and asked me in a shaky voice, which surprised me, whether my name was my name. What now? I thought, as I answered that, yes, my name was indeed my name.
The bang on my chops seemed to happen all by itself. I'd seen no arm, no hand. The blow knocked me back against my open door and he followed up with the other glove across my mouth.
Imagine my surprise!
He'd come in on me now and swung me round onto the staircase and I felt the stairs bang into my spine. After he'd cracked me in the balls and headbutted me a couple of times, I began to understand I was in a fight there. I was upset, naturally, and it was beginning to hurt as well. I was wondering what to do when he started giving me some elbow to the side of the head.
In my experience, sudden fights had always been like this. When somebody really surprised you, it was really surprising. In the movies, tough guys always handled surprise fights with lightning reflexes, immediate escalation. Us real-life tough guys needed time to get used to the idea, we needed written invitations, consultations, legal advice.
I was getting messed up rapidly by the time I'd summoned the verve to consider a response but by that time the cop himself was puffed out. He stepped back to catch a breath. Then I realized that something was missing. Where were his colleagues? How come the others were missing all this fun?
I sat on the stairs and waited for the next instalment. His hat had come off and I got a good look at him. He was probably about my age, but that clean-shaven, short-haired cop look made him seem like a kid. He looked at me, too, and all his steam was blown. I guessed it was over and raised my hand in a vaguely pacific gesture just to make sure.
'Jesus, take it easy there,' I said placidly.
I think the guy was amazed by my moderate tone. He looked like he didn't know what to do next. He bent to pick up his hat and glanced up the hall. He frowned at something. I turned to see my wide-eyed cat peeking round a doorway. I nearly laughed.
The policeman turned to me again. I was calming down. I wasn't too badly hammered. Despite the neat elbow work, the guy wasn't much good at fighting. I'd worked out that this was private business, that there was nothing official about this brand of violence. I was also beginning to guess who he was. As he stood there, unsure what to do, I felt like giving him some help.
`You stay away from Mary. Hear me?' He tried to hiss the words. The threat was pallid under the circumstances.
'I hear you.' I figured this was the best way of getting rid of him. I don't think she'd told him everything he needed to know. His anger was too shambling to be cuckolded anger. He was being too reasonable about this. He'd seen us earlier and Mary had obviously told him I was hassling her and no more.
`You'd better,' he said. He looked at my cat again. His confusion intensified. Maybe he thought there should be something more. But he decided there wasn't so he turned and walked out.
I closed the door behind him, close to laughter again. I did a systems check at the bathroom mirror.There wasn't much damage beyond blood and puffiness. My nose and mouth felt hot with the unmistakable heat of fightmarks but all the teeth were intact and my jaw did all the things it should do. He was a weed, this cop, this Paul.
But it still hurt. Fighting had certainly become much harder since I'd given up fighting. But it could have been much worse. He could have brought his copper chums with him. The whole squad could have helped him out there. They could have banged me about down the station. Jesus, the way things went in this country he could have had me serving seventeen years for knowing the first three lines of the Hail Mary. It was nice that it was all just fair in love for a change. I found myself admiring his self-control.
My cat padded to the open doorway of the bathroom. Unusually silent, he looked up at me. I looked down at him. Maybe it all looked like justice to him because, if I hadn't known it to be impossible, I'd have sworn that the furry little shit cocked an eyebrow at me.
The Thursday evening of the next week. It had been the first sunshiny day of the year. Clocks forward, sky wide, the mood good, I drove home from work. I'd found a new job already - I was humping bricks on a hotel refit down the town. The day was late and the sun was low and orange with age; the city looked so light that you could have blown it away.The multiple windows of Belfast's dwarf skyscrapers turned red in pairs like there was a fire inside. Between the trees dogs reddened in the sudden blush of sun.
It was the night on which Chuckle had arranged our double date. My heart much misgave me. I showered. I changed out of my work gear and into my blue suit. Double-cuff white shirt, old gold ladies' cufflinks and black oxfords that shone like a
wet street. So, I was a fop. All the really working-class guys I knew were fops. Whenever I'd worked in shitty jobs (wasn't that always?), I'd generally made a point of dressing well after my day's work. It was a kind of nineteen-fifties Northern England fiction thing. It made me feel better.
It didn't quite make me look better. My face was pretty unrepaired after the previous week and all its fun. Bruises, shiner and a swelling on my right jaw that gave me something of the air of a damaged hamster. I didn't mind. I wasn't the vain type.
In my nearby supermarket I bought all the mushrooms I could buy and cooked them in a single pot. With my mushrooms and a baguette, I filled my face while the cat ate his usual double tin. I was conscious of the unpleasantness of having to play the beard on Chuckie's double date but even that prospect didn't dent my mood. I'd noticed that the big OTG across the road had been joined by a smaller, less typographic one. The mystery increased. I ignored it. I read some Erasmus and then I took my cat for a walk while the sun went down.
I stopped at the top of my long, long street. My cat circled my legs as I stood there.The trees were weren't any blossoms exactly but there was an attempt. I was lonely still but I was happy to be around. My mood had ~rnproved. I was glad to be me. It had been a while. Sarah had soon tired of me being me and Mary had taken only a very temporary dose. I'd paid heed to those votes of no confidence.
I looked down at my cat. He looked up at me. Startlingly, my cat was a comfort. My cat hadn't left me. I couldn't really say he liked me but he stayed around, he hung on.
Walking home, cat and cigarette, I prosed on to myself for a while about how good I felt and why. But it was simple. In the supermarket where I'd bought my mushrooms, there was a seventeen-year-old girl who was cracked on me. She was dying for me. I'd noticed her a few days before. She had gone all clumsy when she served me, her blush was minute-long and her smile painful. I knew she liked my bachelor thing, my suits, my cufflinks and my vegetables. Despite the bruises, my life obviously looked liveable to her. I felt old enough to be her daddy's daddy but she didn't care.
That was me all over. A schoolgirl with a crush on me and suddenly life felt worth living.That was the big secret about me. I was so shallow.
It was one of those things I liked about myself.
Well, that wasn't entirely true. I had other reasons for feeling good. It had taken me more than a week but I had finally managed it. I'd had to sell my stereo, my television and my video. I'd had about eight hundred set by and I cadged a couple of hundred from Chuckie. A few other sales, a bit more cadging and I had enough money. It took me a day to find a company that sold them. It took me a morning out there, going through their catalogues, trying to recognize the right one. It took me an hour to persuade the fuckers to knock a couple of hundred off the price and another hour to make them deliver it within the week but in the end it all came right.
I'd called the company before I went mushroom-buying. They had delivered it that morning. When I asked how the Johnsons had reacted when they got their new bed, the guy on the phone said that they'd been confused. They couldn't work out who'd sent it.The delivery guys had told them it was a surprise just like I'd asked them.
`I'll call them tomorrow,' I told the guy. `They're always like that.You know what parents are like.'
I was glad I'd done it. I'd needed to do it. But I hadn't started feeling better yet.
I drove the Wreck to the riverside bar where I'd arranged to meet Chuckie. It was a new place, an old lock house converted to a yuppie paradise. People who looked like they went yachting frequented it. I didn't like it.
Chuckie bought me a drink and we went out into the Biergarten. Biergarten, Jesus. We sat on wooden chairs and looked blankly at the river. They were still dredging it. Some riverside corporation was beautifying the riverside. (Belfast had discovered these frivolities as all the other cities in Britain had decided, expensively, that they didn't work.) There were millions going down round there. All it seemed to be producing so far were waterlogged tractors and a bad smell. I gave Chuckie a bit of disaffected lip about all this.
`I like it,' he said.
I brought my beer bottle to my lips and nearly choked on the lime some twat had stuck in it. Chuckie patted my back mildly. It was progress, he said. Belfast had to swing with the times. He liked all the new stuff. I couldn't see the point of a lime in the neck of a Harp bottle but I kept mum.
It had to be said that Chuckie was cheesed off that my face was still a bit wrecked. He'd hoped that I could occupy Max's flatmate that night and he thought my chances were impaired by my unbeauty. I tried to quiz him again about what the friend was like but he was vague. He hadn't even told me her name. He couldn't remember it, he said, though he blushed when he said it. I knew there was something dodgy going on and I wondered how much anxiety I was going to have to get through.
`Relax,' said Chuckie. `She's nice.'
'I'm keeping my fucking trousers on, Chuckie. I hope you understand that.'
Chuckie chucked his shoulders. `Have I asked you to remove them?' He changed the rapidly. `How's work?'
'A constant delight,' I said. 'I'm always conscious of how lucky I am.What do you think, Chuckie? I'm a labourer. It's the same as always.'
Chuckie smiled blandly. `My name is Charles, you know.'
I choked again. Serious this time. me again. Some yuppies looked round and frowned. Blow it out your ass, I thought.
`Could you run that by me one more time, Chuckie?'
Chuckie frowned, unselfconsciously. 'Well, I'm thirty now. I'm getting tired of being called Chuckie. I It's not very dignified, is it?'
I'd known Chuckie for fifteen years and I swear to God that it was only as I looked closely at him then that I noticed he was wearing a suit and tie for the first time since I'd known him. `Shit, Chuckie. I dig the duds.'
He surveyed himself complacently. He smiled happily.'Good, huh. Bought it all today. Took a leaf out of your book.'
I rubbed the cuff of the suit. Classic English cut, double weave wool.'Not cheap,' I suggested.
He looked at me with rare sincerity.'Quality never is.'
I gulped some beer and asked him where he was getting that kind of money.
'My boat came in.'
'What?'
His voice became hushed, conspiratorial.'You remember my dildo?'
I laughed.'Bet you say that to all the boys, Chuckie, sorry - Charles'
Chuckie didn't laugh. Then he stopped me laughing. 'I got four thousand three hundred and twenty-six letters.That's four thousand three hundred and twenty-six cheques for nine ninety-nine. So far, one hundred and eighteen people have cashed their refund cheques. That was under twelve hundred pounds. Seventy-five quid on envelopes and eight hundred and twenty on stamps.'
He drank his drink. He fished inside his jacket and handed me a slip of paper. It was a balance slip from a cash machine.
'441,138.98,' it said.
'Fuck me,' I replied.
We drank up. We drove off. Chuckie, newly mindful of his wardrobe, looked unhappy about sitting in the Wreck. His fat ass shuddered at the grimy touch of my Wreckseats. I ignored him. I switched on the radio.The news told us that a taxi-driver had been shot in Abyssinia Street and that the Tile Shop had been blown up again. I switched it off.
'Tell me more about this girl,' I asked, trying to rid myself of the envy of Chuckle's new wealth.
'Max says she's nice. That's all.'
'What does that mean?'
'Look, everything I know, you know.' He glanced at me. 'Except how to make money and how not to get hit.'
Laugh? I nearly started. 'You're so funny, it'll hurt,' I wanted him.
He smiled. `Behave yourself and she might even shag you.'
I stopped at some traffic lights. All around me unmodel citizens screeched on by. `You better marry this American, Chuckie. I wouldn't do this for anybody.'
`Relax. She'll be great.You need some love in your life. After all that Sarah bollocks, you haven
't distinguished yourself. And that wee waitress wasn't exactly a great move.'
The lights changed and I fingered my face. The bruising wasn't desperately disfiguring and in the rear-view mirror, my shiner looked almost raffish. In my experience, girls didn't mind if I looked beat-up. In my experience, some girls quite liked it.
The restaurant was near the bar where Mary worked and I was briefly tempted to sail in there with that attractively damaged, unkissed kisser of mine. I knew Chuckie wouldn't swing for it, though, so we headed into the swish eaterie he had selected.
The girls were waiting for us there. In the tangle of being shown to our table, of sitting down and smiling, of figuring out which girl was which, I had enough time to be surprised and impressed by Chuckie's girl. Tall but shapely, she had that healthy American hair and those Yank teeth that glittered like jewels. She looked like how you knew you should live.
`Good to meet you,' she said. `Chuck often speaks of you.'
Chuck? It was getting complicated in Lurgan Land.
`I'm Max and this she turned to the dark-haired girl who sat beside her.
.'She made a noise like someone choking.
`Would you like some water?' I said politely.
She looked at me like I'd pissed in her pockets.
`What?'
`I said, would you like some water?,
The girls exchanged looks. Chuckie frowned at me. `That's her name,' he said.
'What is?' I asked, perplexed.
The girl made the choking noise again.
'That,' said Chuckle.
It took ten minutes and they ended up borrowing a pen from a waiter and writing it down on a napkin but in the end I determined that the girl was called Aoirghe. It was Irish. And the thing about people with those kinds of names was that they didn't enjoy lexical comedy at their expense. It still sounded like a cough to me.
It got worse.