THE TALE OF THE ANCIENT MARINA.

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The tale of the ancient Marina.

By Aaron David.

The characters and events depicted in this novel are fictitious. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead

is purely coincidental.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this eBook may be reproduced, duplicated, given away, transmitted

or resold in any form without written prior permission from the author.

©Aaron David 2007

Chapter 1.

The Sun was beating down on the main street of Bridlington Gulch, Texas, or "Blood City", as the locals knew this God forsaken Hellhole.

As Brian, "The Dude", McLintock moseyed down the street, the glorious weather didn’t reflect his mood, although the temperature did.

Six long months had passed since the "Damned" McDann brothers had brutally raped and murdered his pretty, young Apache wife.

Then they’d senselessly tortured and murdered his three-year-old triplet sons.

Then his parents and his grandparents.

Those lousy sons-of-bitches had then continued their bloodlust fest and killed his brothers, sisters, cousins, anybody with a similar surname and anyone who looked as though they could, at a pinch, be in some way related to Brian.

And their pets.

Brian, "The Dude" McLintock had reached the end of his tether and decided enough was enough. He was a tolerant man, but he was also a cat lover.

So ended the first page of probably the worst book Mike had ever begun to read, and he’d read some stinkers. He couldn’t help thinking that ninety-nine pence was a lot to pay for rough toilet paper, but continued to read it anyway. There’s not much else to do on an Inter-City from Milltown to London. There’s a limit to the entertainment value of reading a metal label warning of the inadvisability of sticking your head out of the window and getting it chopped off.

The "sticky" smell emanating from the noisy kids across the aisle, the overpowering whiff of the expensive after shave dripping off the chins of the fat, sweaty business man sitting opposite him and, least bearable of all, the slurping, smacking sounds of the couple snogging on the back-to-back seat behind him all combined to make this journey as comfortable as a fatal heart attack.

He was three weeks into a five-hour journey with about a year to go.

Mike didn’t like rail travel. He didn’t like any kind of travel except driving. He loved to drive and had a passion for old, classic cars. That, at least was his excuse for driving a clapped out, yellow, 1979 Morris Marina. The thudding, crashing sound from the suspension whenever it rolled over a matchstick, he argued, was all part of it’s charm. But with the best will in the world he wasn’t going to chance it on a four hundred mile round trip. Apart from anything else, the oil needed topping up every twenty miles or so and he’d guessed there weren’t that many services on the M1, so he’d plumped for the torturous train journey option.

The reason he was going to London was the same reason that had made him do anything he’d done in his life up to this point. Happenstance. A chance meeting brought him the opportunity of an opportunity.

He’d been out with a few mates, in a few pubs, having a few drinks and not for the first time, got completely shit-faced.

The following morning he’d woken up in what he called, ‘the lounge’, of his bedsit. "The lounge" comprised a sofa/bed and occasional table. Of course ‘the lounge’ was also the kitchen, dining room, bedroom, hallway, study, utility room and shed, and he’d never worked out when he was supposed to use the occasional table. What was odd about this morning was that the sofa/bed was still being a sofa as opposed to being a bed.

This prompted two thoughts in Mike’s head where there was precious little room for any. Firstly, he must have been too drunk to do anything once he’d got home.

"Anything" included getting undressed, being bothered about the numerous unusual stains on his jeans, releasing the kebab from his right hand, which was now firmly welded there with congealed grease, or trying to dispose of the flashing traffic beacon secreted under his jacket, relentlessly signaling it’s presence to the world through the fabric.

The second thought was how the hell did he get home?

He remembered nothing of the previous night after twenty to eleven, which was when he’d started on the "Psycho-Killers", and announced that from then on, "The ice is on me". Before that the night had been unremarkable so after that must have been a hoot.

Yet he remembered nothing, despite the stains and the "visible heartbeat" effect. Even more yet, he had found his way home. He wondered if he had some sort of "alcoholic-stupor-guardian-angel".

In his life he had been completely plastered on many occasions and for many reasons. Drinking because he was happy, drinking because he was sad, celebrating his birthday, celebrating it not being his birthday, the third anniversary of the family dog’s vasectomy, being alive, wishing he was dead. But every time, no matter how mentally or physically incapable he had become, he had always wound up at home. Not only this home. He had lived in four completely different, equally crappy dumps before this one and had always, somehow, woken up at home. Not always alone as he was this time.

"Thank God I’m alone". He thought, remembering some experiences that proved the quarantine laws didn’t work.

Anyway, on this particular night he must have had a conversation with someone regarding a job because, in the pocket of his oddly stained jeans was a ripped beer mat with the words, "Jim-work", and a phone number. He took a wild guess that he was to phone the number and ask for Jim regarding some work. As it turned out, he’d guessed right and after some more phone calls an appointment was made to see some bloke in an office in London.

Having survived the life-threatening smells of the train journey he negotiated his way out of Euston station and had a bit of a mooch. He formed three opinions about London.

#1. It’s big and dirty. No, actually, ludicrously big and obscenely dirty. Milltown had it’s fair share of grime thanks to the remnants of the industrial revolution, but at least it didn’t turn your snot black.

#2. Nobody spoke to him.

#3. He was glad nobody spoke to him. He’d overheard snippets of conversation between these southerners and understood about one word in twelve.

Like a subatomic particle, not interacting with anyone around him, Mike walked the streets of London for two hours until he found the B and B he’d booked for two days. It would have been twenty minutes if he’d asked for directions, ten if he’d taken the tube. If only he spoke "Southern".

He stood outside an old, terraced house. Modest in size from the outside, dirty, red brick with nothing to distinguish it from the other abodes save for a laminated A4 sign in the front window, boldly stating, "Vacancies".

He walked up the worn, stone steps and pressed the ancient bell push, set in the brickwork. Nothing happened. He knocked on the glass panel of the door. Nothing happened. He knocked on the wooden panel and, you’ve guessed it. He banged as hard as he could on the wood without breaking it. Ditto. He turned the ancient handle, making an alarming, grating sound, and walked in. There was an overwhelming smell of ‘Old’. Mike stood uncomfortably in the musty hall until an elderly gentleman came in through the front door and said, "Are you being looked after".

As luck would have it, he was a Geordie and, alien though that accent is, Mike understood.

"Jerry. I think you’ve got a guest". The man called toward the back of the house. A man appeared who could only be described as ‘insignificant ‘.

"Can I help you sir"? He smarmed in a Dickensian voice.

"Yes. Hargreaves. Booked in for two days".

The small man thought for half a minute and then reached under the counter producing a hardly used diary.

"Michael is it".

Mike winced slightly, "Mike, yes".

"Hmmm. Yes. You’re in room 5. Shall I carry your bag up?"

"S’O. K. I’ll take it". Mike replied, trying not cause offence. The poor, old bugger probably couldn’t lift it, never mind take it upstairs.

The man gave Mike his key and he went to room number five.

Basic. That was the word that leapt into Mike’s mind as he entered the room. Few things could make him homesick for his little hovel, but this was one. All it needed was a bomb shelter in the back garden to make it authentically, ’forties’. The carpet and furniture, formerly vibrant red and lush green were now dust-coloured with a hint of dingy red and muddy green. The curtains were of such a strange hue that you could wipe your bottom and your nose on them and not see a difference.

Mike unpacked. OK, he threw his bag into the wardrobe. He went to the communal bathroom on the landing to freshen up. As he opened the door the smell hit him hard, full in the face. He reeled backward slightly.

"I’ll freshen up later". Mike thought. "Friday. Maybe".

He checked his pockets. Money, change, keys, scrap of paper. The scrap of paper was important as it bore the address where the interview was to be held.

(Big) Tony.

23a Regency Plaza.

                              Between 2 and 6.

Lean on bell.

Sounded classy. His directions were to find the football ground of an unknown football club, look for Canary Wharf on the skyline, walk towards it for five minutes then ask for directions. He did just that and finding himself on Oxford Road, a very busy road with prestigious looking offices everywhere, he walked around, scanning street names, rather than speaking to anyone. Eventually he relented and tried to establish contact.

"Excuse me, could….."

"Pardon me, would you mind…..?"

"Hello, do you…..?"

It was as if he was invisible. There was nothing else for it. He would have to abandon every principle he held dear and speak to a traffic warden.

"Excuse me." Mike tentatively offered.

"Certainly." Replied the compact, shaven-headed man.

"Do you know where this place is?"

"Ah yes." Said the man with a smile.

"See that side street?"

"Yep."

"Straight down it, third block."

"Cheers. Much appreciated."

"No problem. Anytime at all. Take care now."

"What a nice bloke!" Mike couldn’t believe he was thinking. He followed the directions, down the dirty side street, crossed the road into another, slightly dirtier side street, crossed the cobbled road, into an even dirtier side street and looked around.

The cobbled road was populated by garages, mainly Cut’n’shut shops.

The dirty side street was the kind of place Superman would stop a mugging or Jack the Ripper would indulge in his hobbies, or perhaps certain celebrities might get there kicks.

"You’ve gotta be fucking joking." Mike said out-loud, as he saw the manky street sign.

"R e cy P az." It tried to boast.

"Ah well!" He thought. "In for a penny…"

He found 23a, well, an intercom labelled 23a, and leaned on the button, as instructed.

After a couple of eternities a distant sounding voice crackled through the antique apparatus.

"Oozat?"

"Name’s Mike, Mike Hargreaves."

"Come on up Mike, we been expectin' ya."

"BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT!" Shouted the door and Mike entered.

Climbing the stairs he was aware of an altercation going on in his head.

"Urine!" Exclaimed his right nostril.

"Stale cannabis!" Argued his left.

"Stop arguing, you two." Mike’s brain ordered.

Mike reached the top of the stairs and stood in front of a half-glassed door which had an old but expensive looking plaque Araldited in it’s centre.

"British Tank-Tops Inc." It proudly stated. This office hadn’t been in use for some time. Obviously this wasn’t the place he was after but there was a light on inside so maybe they could direct him. Before he could knock the door swung open. A large man with a half-golden smile grabbed Mike’s shoulder and said, "Come on in my son."

Though not in the way a priest would, more the way a friend of the Krays would.

"Sit yourself down and let’s talk."

"Are you Tony?" Mike said, trying not to sound quite as terrified as he was.

"Friends just call me ‘Big’, so you can call me ‘Big’."

"Thanks T… er Big." Mike fumbled.

‘Big’, by an amazing coincidence was not just his name but also his description. A very expensive suit barely contained his massive bulk. Muscle upon muscle upon muscle rippled under the fabric. He had muscles in places where the rest of us don’t have places. Steel toe cap-shaped muscles, both sides of his neck, spanned down to his shoulders.

"What on Earth does he use those for?" Mike wondered, rubbing around his neck and finding only sinew.

‘Big’ was garnished with chunky, gold jewellery here and there, heavy, gold rings on every one of his banana-like fingers, and those teeth! About half of his front teeth, more on the left than the right, were solid gold. "When this man dies," Mike thought, "They won’t bury him, they’ll weigh him in."

"Well!" Said Big. "I suppose you’re wondering what this job involves."

"Yes. Delivering…. stuff." As the words left Mike’s mouth he realised what he’d got himself into. What would a shady bastard like this be delivering? Toys? Camping equipment? Specialised supplies for the incontinent?

"Dolls." Said Big.

"Dolls!" Said Mike, surprised.

"Yeah. My Mum collects them and runs a business importing and exporting them. Course, one or two might have a little something inside them, if you know what I mean."

Mike knew exactly what he meant. ‘Little something’ spelt; ‘F-I-F-T-E-E-N- Y-E-A-R-S’. ‘Little something spelt; ‘C-U-S-T-O-M-S-O-F-F-I-C-E-R-S-H-A-N-D-U-P-A-R-S-E’.

Big outlined the operation, as far as Mike’s involvement went, and at the end Mike agreed to meet his contact that evening in a local Irish pub. A tatty piece of paper found it’s way into Mike’s pocket with the words, "Jimmy the Bread knife at The Shiggin Pit, 7.30".

Mike shook hands, or rather had his hand crushed by Big, and left the building. Stepping out into the cool, smoggy air he made himself a promise. Whatever else he did for the rest of his life, he would never go within a mile of The Shiggin Pit.

Armed with his Special-Super-Saver-Intercity-Return-Whenever-You-Like-As-Long-As-It’s-Wednesday-Between-6.00-And-8.00AM rail ticket and having paid for two days board at the B and B, he decided to see the sights.

He bought a tourist map of the capital and blacked out a circle, two miles across. At the circle’s centre was a certain Irish pub, which was one sight he didn’t much fancy. The next day he would be a tourist but tonight he thought he might go for a drink.

 

Chapter 2.

"What is it with Irish pubs?" Thought Mike, "And why do all the bar-staff have Australian accents?"

He’d spent the first hour of his first night out in England’s capital trying to find an English pub. A ‘proper’ English pub. Not an Olde English pub or a ‘Fun’ pub (tonight’s theme, carry a pig under your arm or wear your clothes backwards).

Eventually he found one; ‘The Dog and Duck’. The barmaid winked at him coquettishly as she poured his pint of gas and water or ‘bitter’, as they claimed it to be.

"I wonder where the duck is." Thought Mike as he wandered over to the pool table and placed a ‘Knock’ on the side.

In the north of England, placing a coin or ‘Knock’ on the side of a pool table whilst there was a game in progress meant that you would play the winner. He waited for the game to end and when it did a big, fat bloke with greasy hair came along and put some money into the table. Mike watched incredulously as the greasy haired bloke set up the balls. He looked around, perplexed to see that nobody seemed to see anything odd. Stretching to his full height he strode over to the table, looking the now standing greasy haired bloke squarely in the chin.

"I believe this is my game." Said Mike in his deepest, moodiest Clint Eastwood (with a northern accent).

"Didn’t see your name on it."

A disbelieving but still cool smile crept on to Mike’s face.

"And just where would I put my name?" He said, nodding towards his ‘Knock’.

"Up there." Said Greasy, pointing to a small blackboard bearing the chalked initials, ’W.P.’

"Aah!" Was all he could manage to force out of his mouth as his face struggled to decide which expression to form. It finally settled on ‘Stupid’.

"Sorry." He mumbled, his face now heading through ‘Apologetic’ towards ‘Friendly’.

"It’s just that we do things a bit differently where I come from."

"Welcome to Earth, when are you going back?"

Mike looked suitably put down and said, "What are you drinking?"

"Jackie Daniels."

Mike turned to go to the bar.

"Triple." Greasy called after him.

Having broken, smashed the ice rather badly Mike and Warren, as it turned out was ‘Greasy’s’ name, played some pool and got talking. Warren was a good player, as was Mike, although he lost the first couple of frames, partly because he wasn’t au fait with the local rules and partly because he didn’t want to rile the big man.

It turned out that Warren was a writer, no Stephen King but, as he put it, he wasn’t starving.

"That’s obvious." Said Mike without really thinking.

As Warren’s huge face slowly turned towards him Mike started thinking, quite a lot.

But as the scowl split into a beaming, Humpty Dumpty smile and then a loud laugh, the two men seemed to make a connection.

The night wore on, more beer was consumed and Mike and Warren spent most of the time laughing. They went on to some more of Warren’s local pubs where occasionally someone would ask Warren for his autograph.

He was obviously a bit of a somebody locally, as people with any degree of success tend to be in their hometown. There had been a couple of people from Milltown who had made it on to television briefly but ask anyone from anywhere else if they’d heard of Bob Smith, the comedian with the guitar and they would politely pretend to remember then change the subject. Warren didn’t look like a ‘Media Darling’. He was no tramp but he was no dandy either. Casual and conservative, he wore a pair of neatly pressed jeans and a black sweater over a blue shirt. The sweater bore some sort of emblem on the breast but in Mike’s inebriated state it could have been anything; the Tesco logo, the vasectomy club badge, a gravy stain, an unborn twin finally emerging from his chest cavity, anything.

Pushing closing time, Warren was autographing a book for someone.

"What kind of person brings a book into a pub?" Thought Mike. A quick scan around the place provided the answer in a stack of identical volumes behind the bar. Above them was a green, cardboard flash bearing the announcement, "A timely history of briefs £9.99."

This was clearly a regular haunt of Warren’s. Mike peered absently over Warren’s shoulder while he wrote, "To my good friend Jason, best wishes. Warren Peace."

Warren Peace!

Warren Bloody Peace!

Mike had spent most of the night laughing and drinking with someone called Warren Peace?

As Jason disappeared Mike stared Warren full in the face.

"Warren Peace?" Said Mike, just this side of exasperation. "That’s your name?"

"It’s a pseudonym."

"I should bloody hope so." Said Mike. "How can anybody take you seriously with a name like that?"

"I’m not meant to be taken seriously." Said Warren. "I’m a humorist. I’m not Jeffrey Archer."

"So what’s your real name?"

"Geoffrey Archer, with a G."

"Jeffrey Garcher?"

"No, Geoffrey Archer."

"I see the reason for the change. I’d rather be Warren Peace than Geoffrey Archer with a G."

"Come to that I’d rather be ‘Dick Head’ than Geoffrey Archer with a G."

A couple of drinks later Mike suggested they should try ‘Psycho-Killers’.

A ‘Psycho-Killer’ was a popular drink among Manchester students. ‘Southern Comfort’ and ‘Cherry Brandy’ mixed together, far from being as vile as it sounded, was the most delightful but expensive way Mike knew of getting comatose. The fact that he’d suggested drinking them set alarm bells off in his head because it signalled that he was about to get ‘silly’. You know, buying ice, traffic beacons Etc. He normally ignored these alarm bells but he wasn’t sure how to get back to the B and B sober and his guardian angel couldn’t be relied upon this far south. He forced down a couple of ‘Psycho-Killers’ and tried to go with the flow. When he got the familiar, salty taste in his mouth he knew it was time to go. He wasn’t sure about etiquette in this part of the world but he was fairly sure that being sick on your companions would have been frowned upon. With super-human concentration he raised himself from his seat and, looking convincingly tired rather than drunk, he made his apologies and left.

Outside the pub, swamped by the cool night air, he lurched into a shop doorway and disimbibed most of the night’s liquid entertainment.

Thankfully, the ‘Guardian Angel’ must have been with him, put him in a black cab, told the driver the address of the B and B, paid the triple-normal-rate fare and put him to bed.

The following morning Mike was up and dressed, bright and early, at the break of lunchtime. He arrived in reception to be greeted by Jerry informing him that they stopped serving ’B’ at 9.30 A.M.

"Pity." Mike replied, "I’ve always wanted to try powdered egg and bread with dripping."

Stepping out into the bright sunshine, Mike, though relieved to have missed ‘B’ was decidedly peckish. He reluctantly bought a sandwich from a newsagent’s shop, which he reluctantly paid nearly a fiver for, which he reluctantly ate half of, which he not so reluctantly threw away. The sandwich probably shared his birthday.

Mike bought a one-day pass for the Underground and proceeded to be a tourist.

He saw the B.T. tower and thought, "Christ, that’s big!"

He caught a distant glimpse of Big Ben down a side street and thought, "THAT IS BIG!"

He spotted Tower Bridge and thought, "This is boring."

He could fully appreciate that the architecture was fascinating to an Architect and the buildings magnificent to a Builder, but Mike was a sparky and to him, London was just too big and too crowded. He was toying with the idea of paying the extra supplement and returning home early. After all, he had no particular reason for staying other than as a tourist and he’d had enough of that already. He persevered with his quest to be impressed but the only thing he found genuinely interesting was the British Science Museum, with it’s bits of space junk and various technical wot-nots.

While he spent two or three hours wandering around there, he arrived at a decision. He left the museum, grabbed a Big Mac for tea, jumped on a tube train back to his local station, gave his one day pass to a beggar and went back to the B and B. He’d decided to pack up, spend the night watching T.V. and go home in the morning. On the small flickery, crackly, portable, black and white T.V. a terribly dull but terribly typical item on a local news program was finishing when there was a knock on the door. Assuming it to be Jerry, probably asking for his ration book, he opened the door with a polite but false smile on his face.

"You not ready yet!" Asked Warren, his huge Humpty Dumpty smile illuminating the dingy room.

Mike was completely taken aback. He couldn’t remember arranging to see Warren, or giving him the address, or even knowing the address the previous night. Then again he’d been on the ‘Psycho Killers’. He elected to roll with it and see what, if anything, he could remember.

"Alright Woz!" He did remember nicknaming Warren, ‘Wozza’, which Wozza seemed to like.

"So what’s the plan?" Mike asked.

"Don’t you remember?" Said Woz. "We said we’d go and see a live sex show."

"Did we?"

"Yeah, we discussed it while you were having your arse tattooed."

"WHAT?"

The giant, Humpty Dumpty smile again.

"Naw. But we did say we’d go and see the sex show."

"Really?" Said Mike, pawing his hindquarters just to be sure.

Mike had never seen a sex show, or a stripper, or even a real porno film. He’d seen strippagrams, foreign films and those bloody awful ‘confessions of a’ films on television, but nothing overtly pornographic. He’d never really seen the point. He appreciated the female form as much as anyone but the way he saw it was, if you’re hungry you don’t watch someone eating a five-course meal. If you’re choking for a cigarette you don’t sit next to a chain smoker. If you’ve not been active in that way for some time, watching someone else enjoying it only serves to remind you how awful your own life is.

"Hello. Anyone home?" Sang Wozza.

Mike emerged from his thoughts with a start. "Yeah, let’s go."

Out they trotted into the mild evening. They climbed into the back of what appeared to be some kind of delivery van, Mike first then Wozza. The whole cargo area lurched drunkenly as Woz heaved his huge bulk into it. The sickening smell of rotting meat and festering fat drilled a hole through Mike’s sense of smell, permeating through to his other senses. Ever touched a smell?

Either this was a butcher’s van or Wozza needed to change his after-shave. The van juddered to life and bands of yellow streetlight scanned across the translucent, fibreglass roof like a super-market bar-code scanner. Just why they were bouncing around in the back of a butcher’s van with six other men, all in their twenties, was a complete mystery. You would think a man of Wozza’s means could at least manage a mini-cab, but Nige, Ben, Matt, Pete, Jim and Gavin all seemed to see this as a regular thing. The troop were just getting their sea legs and wandering around when the van pulled sharply to a halt, sending all eight crashing in a pile against the front wall of the van. Ben had the misfortune to have Wozza land on top of him. Mike landed on top of Gavin, which seemed to please Gavin. Mike thought he would keep a safe distance from Gavin.

A throbbing bass beat pounded through the chassis of the van.

"Sounds like a disco." Thought Mike.

"Wahay! It’s a disco." Said Matt.

"I hate discos." Said Woz.

"Is it a disco then?" Said Ben, still dazed.

As they stumbled into the pub Jim was first to the bar. Jim seemed to be the ‘quiet’ one of the group. Quite a small man but muscular in a wiry kind of way, with very close cropped, ginger hair, very thin on top and piercing, blue eyes. He wouldn’t have looked out of place building a conservatory, or digging up the road. He hadn’t spoken a word in the van and whatever he said to the barman was inaudible. Anyway, he got the drink he seemed happy with and merged into the background.

Ben had emerged from his asphyxiated state and was being the nice one, offering to buy the first drink for everyone.

Matt was obviously the ‘ladies man’, smiling and winking the whole time.

Pete was working out the probabilities of the one armed bandit payout on his watch-calculator.

Nige was showing his watch-calculator to the barman. Mike couldn’t make out the whole dialogue, but he definitely heard Nige say, "Discount for two dozen."

Gavin wasn’t talking to anyone, just leaning on the bar, elegantly sipping his pink gin.

Warren was indulging in his two favourite activities, namely laughing and drinking.

The pub got fuller and fuller and the group nodded and gesticulated to each other that it was time to move on. Via mini-conversations with everyone, except Gavin, Mike had learned that this was what happened every Tuesday night. Nige would do a deal with some poor sod whereby they had to chauffeur him and his friends around for the night. In the past they’d ridden in a London bus, an ice cream van, an Argentine tank and one of those mobile staircase things they use for boarding aeroplanes.

So now they were moving on. Mike needed some air, his eyes were jiving together and standing up was proving a problem. They moved on a couple of hundred yards on foot, the van had disappeared, into an equally full, sweaty, noisy pub with exactly the same square inchage per person as the last. But as Jim pointed out, quietly, this one was green. That explanation seemed to justify staying and everyone continued doing what they’d been doing in the previous place. Matt had stayed behind, having found an untapped vein of women. As he’d pointed out to Woz, "By law of averages I should at least get my leg over, if not a threesome."

Mike was seriously considering going teetotal at this point. He was too hot, claustrophobic and, quite frankly, bored. He was about to disappear to the bog for some fresh air when the stage lit up accompanied by the customary feedback whistle from the mike.

"Hello dere! Welcome to shillelagh noight at de pit." Said the man with the false, Irish accent.

"We’re goin’ to haave sum fun tonoight."

Mike hadn’t even noticed that it was an ‘Oirish’ pub and was, pretty much, past caring. Jim appeared next to him.

"This is my favourite pub." Said the chatterbox. "You always get a better class of fight in here."

Even in his drunk, bored state Mike picked up Jim’s Scottish accent for the first time. He leaned close to Jim to make himself heard.

"Jum!"

"Sorry?" Said Jim.

"Jum! That’s how your name’s pronounced isn’t it?"

Oh dear! Mike never meant to cause offence, but after a few beers he did overstep the mark on occasion. Jim just smiled. As Mike pulled away he spotted something glinting in Jim’s pocket.

"What’s that?" Mike asked, loudly into Jim’s ear.

"What’s what?"

"That shiny thing in your jacket."

"Bread knife." Jim promptly answered.

"Oh!"

He couldn’t think of anything to say. He thought he’d cheer things up a bit by taking the piss out of ‘Jum’s accent again when light dawned. Jim, with a bread knife! The false Irish bloke called the pub ‘The Pit’.

‘Jimmy the Bread knife’ in the ‘Shiggin Pit’.

"Oh fuck!" Thought Mike.

"Oh fuck!" Again. His brain was stuck in gear.

"Oh fuck!" He suddenly sobered up.

"Oh fuck!" was all he could think.

"You O.K?" Asked Wozza, concerned. "You look a bit moby."

"OH FUCK! I’m gonna be sick!" Mike improvised to affect an escape.

Wozza guided Mike through the crowd to the toilet, shoved him into a cubicle and guarded the unlockable door. Mike made some convincing, retching noises while Woz kept saying, "You O.K?" Unnecessarily.

Mike spat on some bits of toilet tissue and stuck them, half in and half out of his mouth, to look like quite realistic vomit. He poked his head, slowly, out of the door.

"You go back and enjoy your night out. Don’t worry about me, I must have had a bad pint."

"You sure?" Said Woz, obviously worried.

"Yes Mum."

The ‘Humpty Dumpty’ smile again.

"See you in a bit then. Psycho-Killer?"

"BLOOAAARGH!" Replied Mike.

When he was sure he was alone, Mike scrambled out of the window. It was a good eight feet drop, but his landing was cushioned by the copious quantity of alcohol in his blood. He got a cab back to the B and B and started to pack.

 

 

Chapter 3.

Brian ‘The Dude’ McLintock was still moseying around town, looking for the McDann brothers who were cleverly avoiding him by, ingeniously, hiding. By now he’d met his obligatory love interest, Miss Polly or Dolly or something. Mike was reading this book without absorbing any details whatsoever, which wasn’t such a bad thing. ’A Bad Day in a Bad Town’, by Nigel Timkins-Perkins-Pettigrew really was terrible. According to the blurb on the jacket, it was Mr. Timkins-Perkins-Pettigrew’s impressive debut novel. Mike guessed that it was also his impressive last. He also guessed that Mr. T.P.P. had never left Berkshire, let alone travelled to the ‘wild west’.

"Violently exciting."- Home and Garden Magazine.

"Raw and edgy, yet with a fluffy side."- Middle Class Weekly.

"I couldn’t put it down."- Pig Farming Today.

"I couldn’t put it down fast enough." Mike mumbled to himself.

He was on the Inter-City, heading homewards. He wondered if the characters on the train were railway employees. Every long train journey he’d ever been on seemed to be populated by these same people. Was that the same, fat sweaty businessman who’d sat opposite him on the way down? The unruly kids over the aisle seemed strangely familiar and what was that noise from the seat behind him? Snoggers!

The theme from ‘The Twilight Zone’ started playing in his mind.

"Picture this." Rod Serling began, "An ordinary man, on an ordinary train."

Images of clocks and doll’s heads floating around.

"He may not realise it yet, but…"

"TICKETS PLEASE!" Called the conductor, very loudly into Mike’s ear for the fourth time. The interruption in his daydream actually made him fart. His whole head turned red with embarrassment as he fumbled through his pockets. He handed his ticket over to the world-weary conductor, his head becoming it’s usual colour except for his ears, which glowed like Belisha Beacons.

As the conductor moved down the train everyone went back to what they were doing, including Mike. His own imagination was infinitely more entertaining than Mr. Timkins-Perkins-Pettigrew’s inane ramblings.

He wondered what was going through the businessman’s mind.

"That young chap looks familiar, and those kids and the snoggers."

Mike tried to imagine what he looked like to others. He was very much the worse for wear thanks to the previous night. He was unshaven although for a dark haired person he wasn’t very hairy. He couldn’t grow a full beard, not that he would ever want to. The best his chin could muster up was a patchy, sort of half-beard. As if someone had turned his head upside down and dropped a blob of ink on it, thin streams of black trickling towards his ears and nose. He was still wearing the same clothes, a fairly smart ‘T’ shirt and jeans, although they didn’t look too smart anymore. He looked as if someone suffering from a very nasty virus had used him as a handkerchief.

His eyes had that ‘morning after’ look, red and unfocused and he’d been in too much of a hurry to find a comb.

He was really going to miss ‘the lads’, but especially Wozza. Although they had only spent two nights drinking together, he felt he’d made a good friend.

He’d left a note for him at the B and B, explaining how he’d started to get severe, stomach-cramps, at the toilets in ‘The Shiggin Pit’, scrambled out of the place, and got a black cab to take him to A and E. There, he’d been diagnosed with appendicitis, given a bunch of tablets, and had headed for home overnight. He was sorry not to have explained in person but you know how it is.

He’d thought about leaving his phone number for Warren, but that would leave a possibility of meeting Jim again, or more importantly, meeting his bread knife again. He chose not to.

So Mike was Milltown bound. Not the most glamorous place in the world but… Well! That was about the best you could say about it, really. Not even the most glamorous place, called Milltown, in the world.

Milltown, as it’s name implies, was formerly a cotton-producing town, heavily industrialised, with lots of mills and soot and dirt and cobbled streets.

In recent years, however, investment had been thrown at it from all directions, to turn it into a ‘nice’ place to live, and even to visit.

The main, shopping centre had been completely revamped to actively encourage tourism. A few attractions had been built, which Mike thought was a good thing, except for the names.

The Market Hall had been overhauled and expanded. They had kept the original structure and built on an extension to accommodate a couple of department stores and a few dozen gift shops and franchise outlets, Etc. The American ‘Mall’ was the inspiration and it worked, brilliantly. The building was renamed ‘The Market Place’. Great! No problem at all. Then, they built an ‘Aqua-recreational-facility’. You know, a swimming pool with wave machines, water chutes and what have you. Again, absolutely wonderful! So what did they call it? ‘The Water Place’. Build something people will travel miles to visit and give it a name that implies Milltownians can’t pronounce the word ‘pool’.

After that, the rot set in. Jewellers changing their names to ‘The Diamond Place’, shoe shops, ‘The Shoe Place’, fishmongers, ‘The Plaice Place’. Thankfully, no gynaecologists jumped on the bandwagon.

The fourteen feet long word, ‘Milltown’ entered Mike’s peripheral vision, snapping him out of his daydreams. Amidst all of the squealing and shushing noises made by the train coming a halt, at the platform, was the jabbering and hubbub of about a thousand people gathering their belongings together and trying to be the first to the door.

"They mustn’t know where they’ve arrived at." Thought Mike.

He stayed in his seat. He didn’t want to be caught in the crush. He knew what was outside. He let the crowd make their way out and heaved himself and his suitcase, wearily out of his seat. He paced through the, now empty, carriage, peering out through the windows at platform 4 of Milltown station. Milltown station only had two platforms but to make it seem more impressive, they were called ‘Platform 4’ and ‘Platform 7’.

Stepping onto the platform, the familiar smell of Milltown greeted his nostrils. Smoke, oil, tar and curry. "Welcome home." Said the smell.

"Glad to be back". Thought Mike.

He walked through the antique turnstile, in it’s setting of original, Victorian, wrought-ironwork and ornate masonry, straight into the new, modern interchange (Doesn’t the word ‘modern’ sound old-fashioned?). The mass of steel, glass and plastic clashed violently with the old station building.

He wended his way through the back-packers, commuters and winos to find his bus stop. A seemingly simple task, but the interchange was like a maze, not complicated, but very ‘samey’. Five, identical tunnels, each containing twenty, individual bus stops, not one discernable from another. Firstly he had to find the right tunnel, then the right numbers, then the A, B, C, D, E options, all going to the same destination via different routes.

"Bloody public transport!" Thought Mike, and that was what he kept thinking all the way home.

Walking in to the lobby of the boarding house he called home, amongst other names, he checked for post. There wasn’t any. He trod the well-worn stairs to number 5 and entered ‘Chez Mike’. He opened both of the windows to flush out the musty smell, locked up again and ran downstairs to his trusty, old. O.K. rusty, old Morris Marina and went for a completely pointless drive. He was alive again. Free to go wherever and whenever he wanted, provided he stopped every now and then to top up the oil. Free from bureaucratically imposed delays and inaccurate timetables. Free from unhelpful porters and rude counter-staff. Free to enjoy driving through Milltown’s glorious countryside scenery. Not the contradiction it may sound. Although Milltown was literally a ‘mill town’, it was blessed with a very generous green belt. Whichever dirty, built up, polluted part of Milltown you were in, you were never more than three miles, in any direction, away from ‘the moors’. Within walking distance there were quarries, forests, sheep, wildernesses, lakes, sheep, peaks where you could see a distance of three towns, end-to-end. You could even see the North Sea, though it was over twenty miles away, not to mention the sheep. Life in Milltown had it’s faults but the moors seemed to cancel it all out.

Mike drove aimlessly for two hours and when he arrived home he still had half a container of oil remaining. A good drive and no mistake! He treated himself to a hearty meal of cheese on toast and got ready to go out to the pub.

‘The ‘Old, Original, Queen Victoria’ was Mike’s local, so called because there was a pub about a mile up the road called, ‘The Queen Victoria’, known as ‘The Vic, and another pub, about half a mile up the road called, ‘The Old Queen Victoria’, known as ‘The Old Vic. The brewery that owned the ‘O.O.V.’ claimed it to have been there first. It was a moderately busy pub but had a nucleus of regulars who seemed to spend the greater part of their lives there. At the weekend there was ‘karaoke’ and a disco, so the place would be packed with lots of people, mainly teenagers, who didn’t know each other. On those nights the regulars would converge around the pool table because it was partitioned off and afforded some relief from the noise, swearing and fighting. Tonight, being Wednesday was ‘pool knock out night’. Normally fairly quiet and conducive to a pleasant evening, drinking, joking, backslapping and of course, playing pool.

Mike arrived in the pub at about eight-ish and ordered a pint

"Alright, Mike!" Said Nobby, the barman, cheerily. "Ow’s it goin?"

"Not too bad." Said Mike, "Ready for some proper beer though."

"Oh yeah! You bin down dat London an’t yer?" Said Nobby. "Ne’mind. Get dis down yer neck."

Mike did as the biermeister bade.

Nobby was a competent bar man and a nice bloke, but he was, in his own words, ‘a bit fick’. The curious thing about Nobby was that, although his name was on the plate above the front door (not Nobby, his real name, Philip Nurse), he wasn’t actually the landlord, or the tenant, or even the manager. It was obvious that he didn’t have the money or the intelligence to ‘earn’ the pub, as people normally have to. Also, he was single, usually contrary to the criteria laid down by all of the major breweries, and yet he ran it. Nobody quizzed him too intensely over the matter because he got on very well with everyone, was reasonably good at his job and he wasn’t overly strict about closing time. The other reason nobody quizzed him was because when asked for details about acquiring his licence, he’d start waffling about ‘dis fing’ and ‘dat fing’ and pretty soon no-one knew one ‘fing’ from anuvver. Sorry, another.

"Ow wurr it den?" Enquired Nobby.

"Fantastic!" Said Mike, draining the glass and slamming it down on the bar.

"Same again."

Nobby started to recharge the spent vessel

"Din’t mean der beer." Nobby pursued. "London. Ow wurr it?"

"Oh, it was O.K. Big, dirty, crowded. Quite a bit warmer than here."

"Aye, A’ve urrd dat." Said Nobby, "S’pose dat explains der warm beer."

Mike smiled in agreement.

"Didja get der job den?"

Mike was trying to forget about that. If anyone asked he would say he’d just not turned up for the interview and leave it at that. He would staunchly deny knowing anything about ‘the firm’, which was true, anyone with the surname ‘Breadknife, and any Irish pubs whatsoever.

"No." He said and walked over to the pool table. He placed his ‘knock’ on the table and grunted acknowledgment to Steve and Tony, who were playing pool, completely dialogue-less. Pub games are like that. They allow men to socialise, but in a manly sort of way. When women get together they talk about their lives, their feelings, their innermost thoughts. Men think feelings are what French people have in tooth cavities. When men get together they play games and if they do talk, it’s about football, or beer, or cars or the jobs they’re going to do on their houses. None of that emotional business.

Steve and Tony had been on autopilot when Mike had put his ‘knock’ on the table. Stephen Pugh and Tony Watt were Mike’s mates, at least in the context of the pub. Mike didn’t really know anything about them, nor they him. He knew the basics. Steve was married, was a builder or a joiner or something and had children. Mike didn’t know how many or if they were boys or girls. Tony was a bit more enigmatic, kept himself to himself. He was also in the building trade but Mike knew no more about him than that. He knew a lot of people didn’t care for Tony. Mention his name to most people in the pub and they would shudder, make ‘warding off’ hand gestures and say. "Don’t get involved with him. He’s trouble."

But Mike had always found him perfectly amiable. Mike had a general rule for dealing with people and that rule was simply this: If you treat people well they will treat you well. The reverse is also true. He knew there was something in The Bible about ‘doing unto others’, but he didn’t want go around quoting The Bible. Of course, there are exceptions, as with every rule but it seemed to have served him pretty well and whatever anyone thought of Tony, he was O.K. with Mike. He’d even passed the odd bit of work Mike’s way without asking for a kickback.

‘A good bloke’ thought Mike as Tony potted the black and Steve put his cue to rest. While Mike proceeded to set up the balls Steve put some coins into the jukebox and made some selections. The loudspeakers dotted around the pub sprang to life, pounding out the computer-syntho-techno-euro-racket of Billie Sugar’s latest single.

Billie Sugar was a former glamour model who’d launched a singing career with her backing singers, ‘The P.M.Teasers’. She’d become mega-successful with her catchy songs, powerful singing voice, plush production and huge, highly mobile breasts, but mainly the latter. Her first single, ‘Mouthful Of Love’ had gone straight into the chart at number one. Surely nothing to do with the accompanying, almost pornographic video. Would people really spend their hard-earned cash on a single, just because the image of a scantily clad model with huge breasts, chomping on an enormous, German sausage was shown with it on the telly? They just might. Her first single was quickly followed by the album, ‘Fishy When Wet’. The load of rubbish currently polluting the air in the ‘O.O.V. was her second single, ‘Roger Me Stupid’.

Mike tried to close his ears and broke off.

 

Chapter 4.

At precisely 8.32 the front door of the pub swung open violently. A man rushed in and shouted frantically, "Quick somebody. Call for an ambience."

Without turning, everyone said, "Hi Ken."

At precisely 8.32 on typically two nights a week, midweek, this phenomenon occurred. The first time, about a year before, half of the people in the pub got the joke but didn’t find it funny. The other half rushed outside, expecting a scene of horrendous carnage. Not quite the result Ken had hoped for but he’d tried it every night he’d been to the pub since, in the hope of getting a laugh.

Getting a laugh was paramount to Ken. It made him feel part of the group, one of the boys, but he knew deep down that he wasn’t. He just didn’t quite fit in with the pub culture because they saw him as boring. He was happily married, a doting father of three, educated, financially secure with a high up job in the listening, caring, sharing, cuddly bank.

You know that voice? The one in your head. The one you hear when you’re reading or thinking something through. That vague, characterless voice that you could never describe because it’s so…well…nondescript. That was Ken’s voice. If Ken spoke to someone they couldn’t be sure if they’d heard it or just thought it. Having a conversation with Ken was the closest thing to telepathy.

Ken smiled at everyone in the pub and they all smiled back, except Tony. Ken didn’t like Tony although he would never admit it. Tony didn’t like Ken, although he didn’t like anyone much and didn’t care who knew it. Ken felt uneasy in his presence. There was an air of danger about him and he swore a lot without any regard for who might be listening. They’d bumped into each other in the shopping centre once. Ken with his family, Tony alone. Tony’s greeting had been rather coarse so Ken had asked him, quietly and politely, to mind his language in front of the children. Tony’s reaction had been extraordinary. "I’ll fucking say what I fucking want to say, whenever and wherever I want to fucking say it and no cunt’s going to fucking stop me!"

Ken had just walked away, trying to explain to his kids why they shouldn’t talk that way. Ever since that day their relationship had been an awkward one. Ken always tried to be civil towards him. Tony always referred to Ken as "That boring, old fucker", swearing to emphasize the insult.

Ken sat at the bar and, as always, perused the drinks list for a full minute before ordering a half of bitter in a pint glass. This was another comic ritual he went through every time he came in but it was completely wasted on Nobby.

He always had a half because three pints was his limit, but in a pint glass so as not to look out of place or ‘like a Nancy’, as the lads would say. He walked over to the pool table and placed his two pence coin down as his ‘knock’. It was literally ‘his’ two pence coin because he’d written his name on a small square of paper and taped it onto the coin, to avoid any confusion. There had been one occasion when he’d put the correct change down and someone had used it and taken his turn. He’d learned his lesson.

"Evening chaps!" He said, chirpily.

"Alright Ken." Said Mike. Tony said nothing, although to be fair, he was cueing up at the time.

"How was London?"

"Thankfully distant." Said Mike. Ken laughed politely.

"Did you get the job?"

Mike concentrated deeply on the shot in hand, padding thoughtfully around the table, examining every angle and imperfection in the baize.

"No." He said and got down to his shot, hoping that would be enough to end the inquisition. It was.

"See the Ramblers on telly last night?" Said Tony.

"Yeah. Bloody abysmal, as usual." Said Mike.

Ken knew he wasn’t included in this conversation because he knew nothing about and had no interest in football. Not even the local team, ‘The Milltown Ramblers’, a team with a pathological aversion to success. He wandered over to the jukebox, dropped in some money and made his selections.

‘Since You’ve Been Gone’, by Rainbow set the building bouncing and all of the men stopped what they were doing and started playing ‘air guitar’ and singing along to lyrics nobody knew.

"Say what you like about Ken, he’s got taste." Said Mike.

Tony grudgingly nodded agreement. "Definitely no Billie Sugar."

When Tony won the game Mike handed his cue over to Ken and went over to the bar. While Ken and Tony played their game, neither saying a word except, "Two to you." When they had committed a foul, Nobby enthusiastically showed Mike the improvements he’d made, while he’d been in London.

The ‘improvements’ consisted of a poster, designed and hand-drawn in felt tipped pen by Nobby. He’d had the thing photo-copied and eight facsimiles were Blutacked to the walls of the pub, in strategic positions. Nobby was bursting with pride, justifiably, as Mike surveyed the artistry of the cartoon. It showed a section of the bar with a caricature of Nobby serving beer to caricatures of The Queen, The Pope, Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln and Billie Sugar. The caption underneath read. ‘At the O.O.V. All our customers are Very Important Persons’.

"Clever." Said Mike. "You have a real talent for drawing."

"Ta!" Said Bashy nobfully. Sorry, Nobby bashfully.

"But not for spelling."

"Eh?"

"You’ve got signs all around the pub saying, "All our customers are very impotent persons"."

"Oh, Bloody ‘ell!" Nobby replied, appropriately.

After some discussion it was decided to leave them in place. After enough alcohol they’d make as much sense to the punters as they had done to Nobby, and besides, most of the customers probably were impotent anyway.

The rest of the night wore on pretty much as normal with one small high point, when ‘Jimmy’ Patel came in at around ten O’clock to celebrate the birth of his seventh child. Of course ‘Jimmy’ wasn’t his real name but that began with ‘Z’ and nobody could pronounce it.

Mike left at around midnight, bought a kebab, ate it on the way home and fell asleep watching some Open University program.

At about eleven O’clock Thursday morning Mike awoke feeling rough. His tongue was bonded to the roof of his mouth, his foul stinking breath found it’s way directly into his nostrils and his right forearm was caked in congealed kebab grease. He would wake up in this state about three or four mornings, or afternoons, per week. Each time he promised himself would be the last but as he sobered up through the day, he always found a way of convincing himself that it wasn’t that bad.

He stumbled into the bathroom, which he shared with the residents of the three other bedsits on his floor. He looked in the mirror. "Dad!" He exclaimed at the ravaged countenance looking back at him. Some serious maintenance was required. He set about cleaning himself up, shaving, dressing, Etc. About ten minutes work in all which took him about an hour. He brushed his teeth then spent two minutes trying to remember what to do next. He scraped his tongue with an expired video library card then spent two minutes trying to remember what to do next. He squeezed a blackhead and spent two minutes… you get the idea.

The job finished, an at least fifty percent more human-looking Mike emerged into the back yard. It was a beautiful summer day, not a cloud in the sky. The midday sun beating down, the intoxicating scent of freshly mown grass and low-level ozone reminding him that he actually quite liked being alive. He had no work on so decided to do some car maintenance, a job that was never finished.

The clutch had been playing up for some time and on the previous day’s drive on the moors, he’d had trouble getting it into first a couple of times. By releasing the clutch pedal and stamping down on it, the fault was temporarily cured but it was obviously lacking pressure. He popped the bonnet and checked the fluid reservoir. It was very low. His mate, B.J., who worked at the scrap yard, had told him some time ago, that when having hydraulic problems there was a simple rule. If it’s losing fluid the slave cylinder is at fault, if it’s not losing fluid it must be the master cylinder. He dismantled the slave cylinder and found the problem almost immediately, a perished ring seal. The once perfect circle of rubber now resembled a doily. He walked down to the scrap yard and picked up a replacement for fifty pence. While he was fitting it Ken pulled up in his Volvo.

"Having problems?" Ken asked, winding down his window.

"No." Mike replied, "Just the usual pain in the arse routine of owning an old shed."

"You in the pub tonight?" Said Ken.

"Yeah, s’pect so. You?"

"I might just drop in and give you another thrashing at pool." Ken joked.

Mike laughed. "See you then."

Ken couldn’t play pool. He knew the rules and the theory; he just wasn’t gifted in the art.

Once Mike had reassembled the clutch the hydraulic system needed to be bled to expel any air bubbles. It was really a two man job, one sitting in the driving seat pumping the clutch pedal and the other under the bonnet, releasing and tightening the bleed screw as the air bubbled out. Mike had found that he could do the job alone. Opening the door wide he would rest his left foot on the clutch pedal and contort his body so his hip rested on the lip of the wing above the door hinge and from that uncomfortable position his right hand could just reach under the bonnet to the bleed screw. He could only do this for spells of thirty seconds or so because it was very awkward and painful. Being tall and thin helped. Anyone of ‘normal’ build would have been unable to perform the task. Even so, it hurt like hell and having released himself from the position he would have to stand against a wall, wheezing for a few minutes before attempting another thirty-second stint.

Eventually he finished the job, tested the clutch and happy with the job went back up to his bedsit to get ready to go out.

Fastened to the inside of Mike’s wardrobe door was a three feet by one foot mirror. Both of the bottom corners had been broken off long ago and it was speckled with age. The tale it told was a sorry one. A man blemished with oil, grease, brake fluid and general scrap yard muck, cut and bruised from the afternoon’s encounters with metallic monsters. He surveyed the damage and set about cleaning his carcase. He filled a bucket with hot water from his ‘kitchen’ sink; he couldn’t use the bathroom because he would have to occupy it for at least an hour, firstly cleaning himself then cleaning the resultant mess. At least in his bedsit he could leave the mess until morning. Special cleaning agents are available in the shops for removing industrial strength cack. Mike preferred his home made preparation; washing powder mixed with washing up liquid. There was no scientific research behind this formula, just each time he’d got dirty he’d tried a different concoction of kitchen chemicals and had arrived at this one a couple of years ago. The stuff got warm and stank of ammonia as he mixed it in the palms of his hands. It could well have been explosive but he always added water before anything dangerous happened. The stuff got rid of most of the grime save for the odd bit ingrained in his fingerprints and any lesions in his hands. He’d found a way of removing even these residuals. It was vinegar, but on balance he preferred being a bit dirty to being in agony.

He got dressed in a clean, white T-shirt and jeans and walked down to the pub.

"Alright, Mike?" Said Nobby.

" Not too bad." Said Mike. "And yourself?"

"Cheers, I’ll ‘ave a pint."

"No, I meant… Oh! Never mind."

Sharon, the barmaid was serving round the other side of the bar, which implied something was going on. Normally, midweek, Nobby could handle the bar on his own. Sharon only did Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights, sometimes Sunday and bank holiday afternoons. Sharon was pretty, with ‘big’, black, wavy hair and a permanent, inviting smile, just a little overweight but with a disproportionately large bosom. Once men had had a couple of pints they would talk to her chest. "Pint of bitter." They’d say to the left. "And one for yourself." To the right.

She was fully aware of this and bore it with great dignity, ignoring their lecherous drooling and treating them as if she liked their company.

Barry Matty was sitting at the bar, watching a documentary on satellite T.V.

"Alright, Baz?" Said Mike, also acknowledging Tony, who was next to Baz, ogling Sharon.

"Aye." Said Baz. "Just watching a thing about an au pair."

"What au pair?" asked Mike.

"That’s just what I was thinking." Said Tony, staring at Sharon’s cleavage.

"Ah hyah hyah hyaaah!" Said Syd James’ghost.

Mike went around to the other side of the bar where Sharon was now cleaning glasses.

"Does that not bother you?" He whispered.

"What?" Said Sharon, inattentively.

Mike started gesturing towards Tony, with his eyebrows. Sharon wasn’t looking. After about ten seconds of eyebrow twitching, she finally looked up. His eyebrows where thoroughly exhausted but they continued to point accusingly at Tony. Sharon’s eyes followed the trajectory they were indicating and she twigged.

"Oh! The salivation army." She said. "No. It goes with the job."

"Yes but Nobby does the same job and so does that old biddy who helps out sometimes. They don’t have to put up with it."

"By ‘old biddy’, you mean my mum."

"Please, somebody kill me." Said Mike’s face.

"I get paid double rate." Sharon explained. "I think I should get triple, one wage for me and one for each of these."

"You’re pretty cool." Said Mike.

Sharon couldn’t help noticing that although he was on her side in the sexism war, he still sneaked a peek when he thought she wasn’t looking.

"Poor bugger." She thought. "Men wouldn’t be quite so pathetic, if only they weren’t men."

"You’re pretty cool." Had been a parting remark and while Sharon was swimming in her own thoughts, Mike had gone back to the games room and was standing with Nobby, watching the pool.

"So, why’s Sharon serving tonight?" Mike enquired.

"Well." Said Nobby, turning to Mike and also addressing the population of the pub.

"I’m goin’ to a do. Dat’s why I’m all dressed up an’ you’re all invited."

Nobby was wearing black. Just black. Black shirt, black tie, black belt, black trousers, black socks, black shoes, and even black underpants. He’d once worn this outfit when he was a teenager, when it had been briefly fashionable, and got lucky with a giggly, pretty girl who’d told him he looked like ‘one of Kraftwerk’. Since then ‘all black’ was what he considered dressing up. The look had been in and out of fashion several times since but Nobby neither knew nor cared. In Nobby’s mind looking like ‘one of Kraftwerk’ was still cool.

The only flaw in the look was the shirt. The rest had stood the test of time pretty well, only being worn four or five times a year. But the shirt had faded. It was more ‘greeny-black’ now or even ‘blacky-green’ and the corners of the cuffs and collar had faded, showing the white lining beneath. His remedy was to colour them in with a black felt tip.

"What is it? A funeral?" Said Tony.

"No. We’re ‘avin’ a piss-up at der brewery."

"Who’s organising it?" Said Mike.

"Me." Said Nobby. Suddenly the atmosphere in the games room became decidedly vacuous.

"Well, I’m just out for a quiet pint." Said Mike.

"I’ve got to go and wash my hair." Said Baz. "In fact, both of them."

"Sounds shite." Said Tony, with his usual candour.

Suddenly the front door of the pub swung violently open. A man rushed in and shouted, urgently. "Quick. Somebody call for an ambience."

8.32.

"Hiya, Ken." Went the drone of the few punters who could be bothered.

"Ken!" Nobby called out, enthusiastically. "Fancy cummin’ to a do?"

"You know my rule." Said Ken. "This is the only inn I frequent with regularity."

"Yeh, but you can cum on a do wiv me, can’t yer?"

"I don’t go anywhere else." Ken elaborated.

"Why din’t yer say dat?"

Nobby abandoned the idea of going to the brewery.

Ken only came to the O.O.V. so if there was a problem at home Judith, his wife, always knew where he was.

Ken asked Mike to join him at one of the small, round tables for a ‘bit of a chat’. Mike finished his conversation with Tony and sat with Ken.

"You’re an electrician, aren’t you?" Ken began.

"Yeah, a sparky." Mike replied.

He never called himself an electrician because, strictly speaking, he wasn’t qualified. Or insured. Or even, officially self-employed.

Actually he was on the dole or supplementary or jobseekers or spongers or whatever they were calling it at the time.

"It’s just that we could do with some more sockets in the kitchen."

"Twenty quid per." Said Mike, quick as a flash. "Provided you don’t mind surface mounted."

"What does that mean?" Ken asked.

"Well, surface mounted means there’s a plastic back plate fixed on to the surface of the plaster so the socket stands about two inches proud of the wall. If you want me to start hacking out the plaster to make them flush we’re going to have to double the price."

"Why’s that?" Ken quizzed.

"Surface mounted, the job is lifting a couple of floorboards, drilling a couple of holes, and that’s it. Flush fixing is the same job but involves a lot more time and an awful lot more mess. Plaster dust everywhere and you’d have to get a plasterer in afterwards to patch up. D’you want to open the box or take the money?"

"I’ll take the money." Ken replied.

"Surface mounted it is then."

"When can you do it?"

"I’m booked up ‘til tomorrow."

"I’ll see you in the morning then. I can stay home because I’ve got a bit of annual leave to use up." Said Ken.

At this point they both became aware that they were not alone. How could they be? There were two of them. They’d been joined by Tony and Baz and fell into socialising mode.

"Alright Baz? Alright Tone?" Mike greeted the guests.

"Alright Baz?" Ken said.

"Did you get that job for the old lady?" Mike enquired of Tony.

"Oh aye!" Tony said, his raised eyebrows begging further questions.

"What happened?" Mike asked, obligingly, his curiosity pricked.

"Well!" Tony began. "I did the job, she paid me cash. Then she says, "Can I offer you anything else?""

"Go on." Baz said, expecting a mucky story.

"Hang on." Mike interrupted. "This is an old lady."

"Not that old." Tone parried. "Only sixty one."

"Go on." Mike encouraged, uncomfortably.

"Well, as you say she’s no spring chicken so I had my doubts. Then she says," I can be pretty kinky." Well! That did it. I thought, "What the hell, go for it.""

"So what happened?" Baz voiced everyone’s thoughts.

Tony took a breath. "To cut a long story short, she sucked my cock then I buggered her."

It was as if he’d rehearsed the line for comic effect; he had.

He thought it would get a laugh or a cheer, lots of blokish backslapping; it didn’t.

A dark, silent cloud of disbelief and disgust hung heavily over the table.

Mike broke the silence. "You dirty bastard." Nobody contradicted. "You fucking dirty bastard."

"What?" Tony said defensively.

"Did she ask you to?" Baz asked, unnecessarily.

"No, but she didn’t say, "No"."

"Are you sure?" Ken contributed.

"Yes. She never said, "No." She cried a bit but she never said, "No.""

"You’re a sick man, Tony." Ken commented, accurately.

"Oh yeah? Says you!" Tony foamed slightly. "I’d rather be sick than sad. Mr. Bloody happily married, Mr. Bloody two point four children, Mr. Bloody "I quite like the Eurovision, actually." I bet you’ve never done anything for yourself in your life. I bet you don’t know what it’s like to have a decent shag. Christ knows how you produced those kids of yours. You probably used a chemistry set. I had a few minutes of intense pleasure that you don’t have the imagination to dream about because you’re sad. Dull, boring and sad."

Ken felt uncomfortable. He wanted to be somewhere else. Anywhere. But not here, not now.

He walked away silently and started playing on one of the bandits. He didn’t understand these machines at all but wanted to be doing something. Anything to busy his mind and hands. If he didn’t, he may have given in to his feelings. Wasting money in a machine he couldn’t fathom, pressing buttons with symbols he didn’t recognise, watching flashing lights which meant nothing to him, he was trembling with anger. Ken always went for the quiet life, avoided confrontation.

He couldn’t believe what had just happened at the table. Tony had confessed, boasted even, to committing a vile, depraved act on an old lady. Greeted with the hostility and disapproval he obviously deserved, he’d turned the tables and attacked Ken. What Ken should have done was grab Tony by the collar and thrown him across the room, beaten him to death with his bare hands, smashed a table over his head, John Wayne would have. But he didn’t and nobody expected him to. Not Ken. Not nice, boring Ken.

The rest of the group had disbanded, none of them on friendly terms with Tony. Baz arrived at the bar and was greeted by a smiling Nobby, who hadn’t heard any of the fracas.

"Same again, Baz?"

"Aye." Baz grunted. "That Tony makes me puke. Fucking dirty sodomite."

Nobby looked puzzled as he poured Baz’s pint. Of course Nobby always looked puzzled.

"’As ‘e bought one den?" Nobby asked as he passed the full, dripping glass over the bar.

"Bought one what?"

"Triumph Sodomite. Me uncle ‘ad one. It were a crackin’ lickle motor."

Barry wanted to hit Nobby in the face but it wouldn’t have stopped him being so infuriatingly thick. He thought about explaining what a sodomite was but thought better of it.

"Tell you wot makes me puke." Nobby added. "Too much beer. Works every time."

Ken had thrown away nearly ten pounds in the bandit by the time he’d calmed down, but calm down he did and went to find someone to chat with. He spotted Mike talking to Jimmy Patel, just being joined by Steve. As Ken merged into the conversational traffic it was obvious they had been talking about the Tony situation, which had led onto a more light-hearted subject. Mike was complaining about the seating arrangements in a Ford Escort.

"Ken!" Mike roped him in as quickly and comfortably as possible. "You’ve been with Judith some years. Where’s the most unusual place you’ve ever had sex?"

Ken pondered for a moment. "Rhyl." He finally answered; stopping the conversation dead in it’s tracks.

"Did you get your car sorted out?" Asked Ken.

Mike delved into his pocket and produced a small, black, rubber circle, tatty around the edge.

"Yep." Said Mike, "Worn ring seal." The group surveyed the item.

"Ooh!" Ken winced. "That looks horribly familiar."

Mike looked at him, confused. "Why?"

"Time plays it’s practical jokes on the human body just the same as it does on car parts. I have something similar to that which is rather difficult to replace."

"Eeuurgh!" Said Mike and Steve in unison. Jimmy said nothing. He was in his forties and this wasn’t news to him.

"It’s just life." Ken continued. "You just have to accept it. Last week I found my first grey hair."

"Let’s have a look." Mike said, his eyes searching Ken’s head.

"It wasn’t on my head." Ken pointed out.

"Actually, it wasn’t grey, it was white. I spotted it in the shower, in the morning. A long, white, thick one. Naturally I was horrified so I tugged and tugged at it but it wouldn’t budge. I left it and went to work. When I got home I told Jude about it and she said, the same as you, "let’s have a look." I showed her where it had been but it wasn’t. It had completely disappeared."

"Maybe it ran away." Steve suggested.

"No." Ken contradicted. "I think it committed suicide. Haven’t you noticed how they seem to get depressed and leap to their death in the toilet pan?"

"They just get pissed off I suppose." Mike offered.

An appreciative chuckle rippled through the group.

"Mike! You’re on." A voice called from the poolroom.

"I’m on!" Mike mimicked heading for the bar to pick up his cue.

Setting up the balls he noticed quite a crowd around the table.

"Hello!" He thought. "Looks like Nobby’s running a book."

The expression on Nobby’s face suggested he was doing quite well.

If there were a few good pool players in the pub, Nobby would encourage them to play each other. Build up grudges, start rumours, anything that would get players to play and non-players to gamble on the result. Mike was always a good bet, provided he didn’t know there was money on him to win. Nobby had learned that lesson the hard way.

One night during one of these knockouts, he’d tapped Mike on the shoulder, just before he’d started his game and said, "If you win this, I’ll make two grand and you’re getting pissed for free. If you lose, I’ll lose two ‘undred. Good luck."

Mike lost, pathetically, didn’t like the pressure.

"Good luck, Mike." Said Nobby with a wink.

Mike put the gambling out of his mind and dealt with the game as a friendly, not too difficult as his opponent was a friend, namely Steve. The two men shook hands before starting the game. Nobby positioned himself behind the elected referee, the referee being anyone close by, not saying "No" quickly enough. On these occasions, Nobby would do a running commentary, not that he’d been asked to, and Ken would stand next to him, translating.

"’E perverted an apostrophe durr!"

"Averted a catastrophe."

"Dat wurr a bit of a daft squid!"

"Damp squib."

Mike won and Nobby quickly drew up a knockout league chart on the scoreboard, chalking in the first box, ’Steve V Mike’, crossing out Steve. He then chalked in ten other names in pairs into the other five boxes in the column and wrote at the top, ‘Round one’. He got a clean, pint glass from behind the bar and collected a pound from each of the twelve entrants, most of who didn’t know they’d entered but paid up anyway. The first round games were all played and five more names were added below Mike’s. In the second round Mike played a short, bald man called Bob and beat him with ease. Then Jimmy Patel played some stranger but the third match looked interesting. Tony versus Barry. Barry had spent the last hour telling anyone who would listen what a git Tony was. He hadn’t told anyone of Tony’s confession, that would have been crass, but he had to vent his disdain somehow. He criticised everything else about the man. His morality, his dress sense, his taste in music, his taste in women. Every person Barry spoke to shared the same thought. "He’s so wrong!" everyone knew Tony wasn’t the most pleasant of people but Baz’s arguments just didn’t stand up. Tony was a handsome man by any standards. Six feet two with jet-black hair, which always looked good. Greasy, clean, combed, dishevelled, full of brick dust. It just, somehow, always looked good. He had that ‘Mediterranean’ look, brown, almost black eyes, with dark skin and a clear complexion. He couldn’t have been unattractive if he’d tried.

"Poor Baz!" They thought. "He must be jealous."

If only they knew.

Jimmy won in a very close ‘black ball game’.

Tony came to the table and chalked his cue, calling "Heads!" to the ref as he tossed a coin. As Barry was nowhere to be seen, everyone sat and waited. The balls set up, the cues chalked, the beer going flat. Barry arrived after a few minutes, disrespectfully late. Tony held out his hand expecting Barry to grip and shake it.

"Your break." He said.

Barry ignored the gesture, turned and walked over to his pint. Tony waited patiently with a faint, pleasant smile on his face. He bore no malice to Barry but of course he hadn’t heard what Baz had been saying about him.

The game got underway, Barry being as ignorant as he could. Not speaking, not making eye contact with Tony. Tony completely thrashed him with six balls left on. Barry allowed his cue to slip through his fingers, making a satisfying bang as it hit the hard, cold, concrete floor. He walked away, looking triumphant. At least that was how he thought he looked.

"Consider yourself well and truly dissed!" He thought.

"What a Pratt!" Thought everyone else.

Tony wore the same smile he’d worn throughout the game.

The knockout was to be decided via a ‘round robin’. Where player one played player two, player two played player three and player three played player one. Whoever lost with the most remaining balls was dropped and the final was between the remaining two players. Jimmy was dropped leaving Tony versus Mike. Mike went to the bar for a refill and spotted a face he hadn’t seen for some time.

 

 

Chapter 5.

Mike didn’t set out to fall in love that night.

Handy then that he didn’t, what he did do was to see a face from his past. A girl he went to school with. They were in the same year but different classes. What was her name?

They’d only ever spoken once when he’d needed to borrow two pence for a small ninety-nine from the ice-cream van, which used to park illegally on the school car park.

What was her name?

They’d never really noticed each other. She'd just existed. They’d had no feelings for each other, good or bad. But tonight, maybe ten years after the last time he’d seen her and she was… a woman. A very pretty woman. Not particularly glamorous, no heavy make-up or designer togs. Just very, very pretty.

But what was her name?

The boys used to call her something, a corruption of her real name. You know the way schoolboys do. Hairy Monster? Hairy Cornflake? No! Hairy Bollocks! That was it! What sounds like ‘Hairy Bollocks’? Mary. It was Mary something. Mary Bollocks? Unlikely.

Mary Horrocks! That was it! Mary Horrocks.

He walked toward her just to say that he remembered her, and her name. He was really quite proud that after six pints, he’d achieved a feat of breathtaking sobriety. She was standing, talking to a female friend and there was no sign of a husband or boyfriend, no chance of a ‘You chatting up my bird?’ confrontation. He really rather fancied her but didn’t want to appear so, didn’t want to look too desperate.

"Don’t screw this up!" He commanded himself, sternly.

"Mary!" He said, smiling pleasantly as he approached. She looked him up and down apprehensively.

"Mary!" He said again. Got to look cool. Be nice.

"Mary Bollocks!"

"Is it Mike?" She responded. She remembered him. Joy of joys, she remembered him.

"I didn’t think you’d remember me." Mike replied, honestly.

"Mike Hargreaves isn’t it?"

"Yeah. Well, who’d have thought after all these years, eh? Little Mary Bollocks, all grown up."

"It’s Clare."

"What is?"

"My name. It’s Clare Horrocks, not Mary Bollocks." Mike’s face turned hammered-thumb red.

"Where’s a freak bolt of lightning when you need one?"

Mary laughed and so did her friend. Mike hadn’t really looked at the friend. Funny, isn’t it? The way two women out together, always seem to be opposites. As if they were optimising their combined pulling power. Something for everyone. You want tall? We got tall. You want demure? We got demure. You want a cheap, sleazy one-night stand? No. Not these two. These were ladies in every sense of the word. Except the lavatorial one obviously. Clare was petite, smartly dressed in beige, all tailored and crisp. Her friend looked like a ‘Tamara Something-Something’. Very posh, tall and willowy with very long, very straight, very blonde, immaculately conditioned hair. Vidal Sassoon had created a monster and its name was indeed Tamara. Although, slightly disappointingly, her surname was Smith. Just Smith. Not Smith-Something, or Something-Smith, or even Smyth or Smythe. Just plain Tamara Smith. She was all in white with bits of pink here and there, very, very ‘Cosmo’.

"Mike!" Shouted Nobby, impatiently. Mike looked over to see him pointing frantically toward the pool table, pound signs in his eyes.

"I think I’m wanted." Said Mike. "Back in two minutes."

Nobby was wringing his hands when Mike arrived at the table.

"Frash ‘im, Mike! You can do it."

Nobby was on for a killing if Mike won, but Mike didn’t have time for winning. Traditionally the winner would get two thirds of the kitty and the runner up would get one third. In addition Nobby would match it in beer, pint per pound, so the winner would get eight pounds and eight pints and the. Oh you get the idea.

Mike wasn’t interested in getting drunk, or a few quid pocket money. He had his eyes on a far greater prize, something more significant than a few drinks, a kebab and a sordid liaison in a back garden. Maybe this was it, maybe she was the one, maybe he was finally going to fall in love, maybe…

"Your break Mike." His cue was thrust into his hand bringing him down to reality with a jolt. He broke off, a forceful, assured wallop, potting the red stripe and spreading the balls nicely for a clearance. Mike could have won the game easily in one visit, but he couldn’t spare the time. He surveyed the table and made his selection. He placed his feet at the optimum distance for stability, clamped his hand to the baize, rock solid. He cued up the shot slowly, accurately, allowing no margin for error. He struck the cue ball with perfect weight. It glanced off the object ball, which it should have potted, cannoning across to the opposite corner, hitting the black, full ball and potting it cleanly, thus instantly losing him the game.

"Suffered!" Groaned the crowd as one. Mike looked utterly broken by disappointment. One by one the onlookers walked past him and patted his shoulder, saying, "Unlucky, mate!"

Tony reached out his hand in consolation. Mike gripped it firmly.

"Suffered Mike. I wanted to win but not like that."

"Say lavvy." Mike replied, philosophically and collected his winnings, or losings, and headed back to Clare and Tamara.

"You look pleased." Said Tamara. "Did you win?"

"Nope!" Mike replied, grinning. "I lost, with the best shot I’ve ever played in my life."

Tamara seemed to disappear leaving Mike and Clare to talk non-stop for the rest of the night. Clare worked in the chemist’s shop up the road, a couple of doors up from the Original Victoria. In fact the O.V. was her local. She was only in the O.O.V. because Tamara fancied someone who she knew would be there tonight. She’d obviously found him. Mike and Clare spent the last hour before ‘chucking-out’ time reminiscing about school, catching up on what had happened in their lives, Etc. they were the last people out of the pub and left as a couple, holding hands. They bought a bag of chips to share as they walked a mile up the road to Clare’s house. This would mean that Mike would have to walk a mile back, living just around the corner from the pub, but Mike didn’t mind in the least. Not only did he fancy this woman but he liked her as well. He’d never experienced it before. He’d lusted after women but not cared what they had to say and got on well with girls he didn’t fancy, but this was totally new.

They arrived at her front door and that awkward moment happened. Should he kiss her? Shake hands? Bow and take his leave? He strained his hearing. No violins.

"Well, it’s late." Clare said.

"Any chance of a coffee?" Said Mike, optimistically.

She looked him up and down. "I don’t think so."

Mike turned to leave.

"We’ll see what time we finish having sex, then we’ll think about coffee."