The Ground Remembers
by
Matthew David Scott

The Ground Remembers is a dark, suburban myth about love, jealousy, shame and the things we cannot throw away. When Helen Murray disappeared on her eighteenth
birthday ten years ago,most on the Avenue blamed Edwin and Phillip. Edwin stayed and numbed himself. Phillip ran as far as he could. On the morning of
this tenth anniversary however, Edwin makes a remarkable discovery and with a letter in his hand, and dirt still fresh beneath his fingernails sets out
on a journey to find Phillip and the truth. As Edwin hunts down Philip, his quarry sits and drinks at the same pub seat he has for the last ten years fully
aware that Edwin is coming for him. 

Matthew David Scott was born and raised in Manchester,
England. He now lives in South Wales where he writes fiction
and drama.

PARTMIAM
Parthian
The Old Surgery
Napier Street
Cardigan
SA43 183
First published in 2009
© Matthew David Scott 2009
All Rights Reserved

ISBN 978-1-905762-19-4

Editor: Lucy Llewellyn
Cover design & typesetting by www.lucyllew.com Printed and bound by Gomer, Llandysul

This book is dedicated to Joyce Scott.
Published with the financial support of the Welsh
Books Council.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A cataloguing record for this book is available from
the British Library.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it
shall not by way of trade or otherwise be circulated
without the publisher's prior consent in any form
of binding or cover other than that in which it is
published.

Got a faded picture folded down
For when we're gonna meet ten years from now
'Ten Years' - The Easy Dream


Part One: Benches

EDWIN
'Sandwiches made from the finest Argentinian wheat, cultivated
by Welsh speaking Gauchos, and vacuum packed by workers on
temporary contracts in Lowestoft.'
It's Tony on his final round, pushing his trolley slowly along
the train carriage.
'Fresh spring water, filtered through millennia by the porous
rock of the Pennine hills and Yorkshire Dales, bottled and
carbonated in the tinderbox, race-hate, mill towns of Lancashire.'
All journey he's been at it. I like his style, the way he talks not
laughing at you but laughing with you, forcing you to smile
through it all. Or at least that's what I imagine. Maybe he's
bored out of his skull. Maybe he's just nuts.
Must get boring though, up and down the train, especially
on a journey this long. He's been here since before I got on this

morning. Seems like days ago. Back then it was quite busy - full
of commuters - but now there's a student type with an iPod on
opposite; some old soak with maybe ten empty cans of
Strongbow rolling round on the table where he sleeps....
There's an old woman tidying away her packed lunch. She
got on a few stops after me with an old feller and they sat next
to each other at a table. It made me feel good - how long that
love must have lasted. Then the old man got off a few stops
back and I realised they obviously weren't together at all.
With so few passengers, it hasn't taken Tony long to get to

my table.
And you fair Knights, can we tempt your good selves with
any of this one-hundred-per-cent malevolence disguised as eyecatching
goodness?'
The lad opposite unplugs his ears. He digs into the canvas
knapsack he has resting on the seat next to him and finds his
wallet. He orders a cup of coffee and a Snickers but I wonder why
he's bothering, we must be only ten minutes away from some
actual food, some realish coffee. As he takes his time, counting
out the correct change, Tony shows no sign of impatience.
I look at the iPod on the table. I'm not being nosey I just
don't want to look at Tony. He has a huge birthmark underneath
his left eye and I just can't... It's not a lack of tact or
anything like that, just ever since I was a kid I've been scared
of them - birthmarks that is. There was this programme on
CBBC, one of those ones that was on when Blue Peter wasn't,
and it was about this girl with a birthmark. It was set in the
Victorian age or something in a big old house where this girl
with the birthmark was the only daughter of the family.
Everyone was scared of her and said the birthmark was the
mark of the Devil so she was on her own most of the time,
lonely. Except she had these magical powers and could talk to
ghosts, so she ended up befriending all these dead people.
Now, don't get me wrong, it wasn't that that scared me; it
was the phrase 'the mark of the Devil'. I was already at that
age, eight or nine, when you start to understand what the Devil
might be - long before you even think about whether he exists
or not - and it stuck with me. But no matter how long I stare
at the iPod, Tony still turns his attention to me,
And you Sir, can I get you any rabbits for your mother?'
I look at his tie, his nametag on the regulation shirt, his
hands joined together like an amen,
'No, I'm okay thanks, mate.'
I wait for him to move on but he doesn't.
'Do excuse me in advance, Sir, but I've noticed that all along
the trail this iron horse has carried us, you have yet to avail
yourself of our refreshments.'
'I'm fine, really...'
I look out of the window to avoid him but his reflection
appears on the glass. I make out his smile before he speaks again.
Ah... of course, who needs these woeful wares when we
have such nourishment?'
His hands stretch wide and I can see that he is looking out
of the window with me.
'I would never have had you down as one who appreciates
nature, Sir. No offence intended of course but it seems to me that
a boy born and bred in the city is so much harder to please.
There is something about that light, isn't there? The way that
light falls upon those hills... well... it augments belief doesn't it?'
I stand and squeeze past Tony.
'Sorry, mate.'
I have to escape from him. I steady myself on the plastic bits
that just out of the seats like hot ears and head to the toilet.
'Sir? Sorry. Are you unwell, Sir? If I have said something?'
I've already pressed the button on the toilet door. I look
back, not at him directly but at his shoes and hold up a hand
to pretend everything is alright.
'Sir?'
The door slides shut and I hit the lock. Graffiti is written
on and scratched into the walls - who loves who; phone
numbers; the initials of away fans. It smells rank and there's a
piece of yellow toilet roll at the bottom of the metal bowl. Piss
is splashed around the floor.
A small, metal sink is plumbed into a thin shelf and I grab
it with both hands. The whole thing with Tony has got my
mind swirling. 'Born and bred'; 'It augments belief. How
would he know where I was born or what I believe? I'm
probably being paranoid but with everything that has
happened in the last day or so... things have changed.
Look at the mirror. I'm still there, Edwin Fahey. I'm still
there - same pale skin, same mop of black hair. But things
have changed. At first I couldn't work it out but then I noticed
my eyes were different. Look: The eyelashes are still long, the
irises are still dark but I can see that I am actually looking for
something now. I used to stare forever, the kind of look that
could only exist now, in this time, in this hemisphere, when all
we can actually be bothered to do is feel a little bit scared but
not scared enough to do anything about it. That's the change.
I'm fucking terrified but my eyes are sharp with a purpose
now, fixed on the truth and the search for it.

It began yesterday. Dad was giving me a lift home, he's my boss
at work - I know, bad idea - and he was having a good old
moan about someone saying they'd seen me going for a sneaky
kip in the warehouse. I couldn't be bothered to argue, mainly
because it was true anyway, so I just had him drop me off at the
Hog - my local. Some of the older boys were sat smoking at the
benches outside. There's a beer garden out the back but
smoking on the benches at the front is some small protest for
them since the ban. They think it makes the place look scruffy.
I got a beer in and we chatted about things - the usual stuff.
It was an okay day, dull but no-one really minded sitting
outside. Even though it's summer, the evening came on pretty
quickly and soon it was a toss up whether to go home or just
make a night of it. Most of the others had been there since
finishing work themselves - just putting off going home until
they were tipsy enough to face it or had worked out the
aggression of the working day. I took a sip of lager and looked
at the road that runs in front of the benches.
The she just descended on me. It was like a... I can't really
describe it - a daydream? Whatever, the real world was
disappearing around me. I could feel her arms folded around
my back and her chin on my collarbone, exactly like the first
time I held her. The men and their voices began to disappear
and the sky peeled back like those dark patches on a
nectarine. At first I thought it must have been a flashback,
some echo of the acid I dropped as a late teen bouncing back
and catching up with me, but soon the memory of that day the
first time I held Helen - appeared before me, around me,
live and in colour. But I could feel it all too. I could feel every
emotion I felt on that day, every sensation...
The summer before big school. On our way to the benches me,
Helen and Phillip. Metal on metal. Brilliant! All three of us
loved a good car crash because the drivers often got out
afterwards and had a fight. All three of us rushed around to
check out the damage.
Two long skid marks tracked the path of the car as it had
tried to stop. The driver was staggering about the road and
then he half sat, half collapsed on the benches. He was
shouting about the kid, the kid had come out of nowhere, the
lad had just...
The kid was Brian O'Reilly, fifteen-years-old with a bike
snapped in two electric blue halves - one crushed beneath the
wheels; one flung to the other side of the road.
Men drinking in the Hog began to come out, shouting for
the police and for Jesus, ordering each other to stay calm and
for someone to get Golm, for someone to stop Golm from seeing
this. But nobody was ever going to be able to hold Colm
O'Reilly back. He was a huge man, worked on the motorway
gangs all over the country. Those in his way got skittled as he
ran out to straighten his son. He pulled the blood from Brian's
hair and turned his head the right way round. People talked
about more harm than good. Brown snot streamed from Brian's
nose. But the boy coughed.
'He's alive! Get an ambulance! He's breathing!'
Nobody had actually thought to ring an ambulance. Now
that his son had a chance, Golm was thinking of other things.
The driver was still on the benches in shock, still repeating
the same words 'he came out of nowhere, he came out of
nowhere'. He didn't notice Golm O'Reilly run at him, let alone
punch him. The driver fell to the floor where the steel toes of
Golm's work boots met his jaw and temple. Golm then
straddled the driver and began to pound his head on the floor.
Blood bloomed on the concrete long before anyone managed to
pull Colm away; long before someone shouted to get those
fucking kids out of here. I just held Helen, her arms folded
around my back and her chin on my collarbone.
...The scene disappeared with a snap and I was back with
the men smoking on the benches. Someone had just told a joke
and they were all laughing. I tried to join in, like the daft kid
who didn't really get what the older boys were talking about,
but even though the vision had gone, that feeling remained.
Holding Helen, the touch of her. She was back. And she was
leading me somewhere.

The dirt won't shift. I shake the water off in the metal sink.
I head back to my seat. I'm relieved. Tony has gone. The lad
opposite shifts his feet but I still manage to stand on them. I
apologise but his ears are plugged and he is backhanding a text
message to someone. Maybe someone where he's come from,
maybe someone he's about to meet. could be a loved one. I
make eye contact with him but he doesn't take the headphones
out of his ears, just picks up a notebook he's spent most of the
journey sketching away in. The display on his iPod is some
group I've never heard of. Might not even be a group, could be
one of these geeky white kids that makes a racket on a laptop.
Most songs I know are my Dad's old soul records. Obsessed
with them he is - all old forty-fives and LPs. That's why I'm
called Edwin - he named me after Edwin Starr. I thought it was
some kind of revenge for his old man naming him Humphrey
but I suppose it is a bit of a compliment to be named after
someone's hero. Stood me in good stead too. When you call a
kid Edwin he can go one of three ways: he can be bullied into
submission; he can learn to fight and become one hard bastard;
or he can learn to talk his way in and out of more situations
than he can count. I was something of a natural when it came

to the latter - a gobshite, but I've barely said twenty words
since my vision at the benches yesterday. I have managed this
train journey with no read, no iPod, no phone, no way of
communicating with anyone. Except for the letter.
I take it out of my back pocket. Her handwriting is still
familiar after all these years.
For a while I thought she'd maybe just left but it never felt
right. She wouldn't just leave - not Helen. That's what it was all
about, my fingers raking through the dirt this morning. I wanted
to be sure, wanted to have her bones in my hands but...
There were loads of them - the letters - one for every house
on the Avenue. Mum will have read her letter by now. I can
picture how it happened. She'd have been emptying the
dishwasher, Dad in the front room. He'd have been pretending
not to nosey at the skip outside Helen's house. Mum won't care
about that. She'll be worried that I haven't come home. She
won't listen to him going on about how I always treat the
house like a youth hostel and how he'll have to give me a
written warning - can't have staff think he's treating me any
different to them. But poor Mum will just be wondering why
I've left my keys, worried sick. Then she'll get a letter, like
everyone else on the Avenue.
Who knows, Dad might even be pleased. He always told me
it was unnatural for a boy of twenty-eight to be still at home
with his parents; that he hoped I wasn't holding out for the
house because he for one was planning on hanging on for quite
a while. I can understand his disappointment:
I finished college before I sat my A Levels. They offered to
have me back, taking into account what had gone on but I fucked
it off and signed on. I was never a scholar but I was a tourist.
Glamorous it was, joining that queue on a Tuesday morning.
Where I'm from isn't the leafy suburbs but it isn't the ghetto
either. Most people have jobs so signing on felt a bit rebellious. Or
it did until I saw Paul Campbell at that interview Dad sent me to.
Paul wasn't long out of prison, knuckles white with nerves. I
realised what a dick I had been. I changed my mind about fucking
up the interview on purpose and took the job at the factory.
I work with the pickers, picking orders from the stores in
the warehouse and loading them onto pallets for the forklift
truck drivers to take to the wagons. FLT drivers they call
themselves. Arseholes. Eight-four is my shift. Dad skips about,
running everywhere and keeping things ticking over. It's been
working with him that has allowed me to understand why he is
the way he is, help me understand why I have been such a
disappointment to him. He has to focus on the bullshit little
things just to get through the day. If he looked at life as large
as it is he wouldn't be able to handle it, he would drift into the
same madness that I have been a part of the last ten years.
Not that he's hiding. There would be nothing easier to do
than look at the full largeness of life; nothing more tempting
than to put yourself right at the centre of the vast expanse of
existence and allow its weight to become your excuse. Dad is
strong enough not to look for an excuse. That's why I hate the
job. Not because of my laziness, not the work itself, but
because I realise I might not have that kind of sacrifice in me,
the kind of sacrifice a father makes in giving up his dreams so
that those he loves might be able to dream their own. I always
thought he was a coward but now I realise just how brave the
daft bastard actually is. And how he must think I've wasted
the sacrifices he has made. Dad isn't hiding and I'm not
anymore. Phillip though, he is hiding. And today I'm going find
him - ready or not.
The train begins to slow down for the penultimate stop. An
adenoidal voice mispronounces the name of the station and
urges us not to leave anything behind.
Outside, the hills Tony spoke of earlier are beginning to
litter. He was right, Tony. I had noticed the hills. The light.
And it did 'augment belief - made me think that there has to
be more to it all than just us. Especially when you see what
we've dumped along the way: the shantytowns of industrial
estates; petrol stations; out of town shopping malls; cinemas;
manufactured green-spaces with new-builds; bowling alleys.
Everyone on this train could be anywhere in the western world
if it weren't for the light. Cos it's not the hills; they stand like
the silhouettes of ancient guards, not fearsome or ready or
even proud - just bored, with their chins in their hands and
elbows propped up on the table. But the light...
The train comes to a stop. A gang of kids wait on the
platform, ready to climb on board. You can already see the
trouble coming - the girls huddle around mobile phones
listening to tinny music; the lads spit on the floor, tuck a hand
in the front of their tracksuit bottoms and hit each other.
The doors open, the kids are swearing. Usually this would
piss me off. I reckon it's me getting old. I find myself looking
at kids and wondering where it all went wrong. I'm only
twenty-eight for fuck's sake. But I saw this documentary - one
of those with the doctor and the 'tache - and he said that
during adolescence you lose the ability to empathise with
people; that's why teenagers can be such little shits. When
they've got their phones on playing that fucking music and
you're thinking 'listen, some of us don't want to hear it' they
just don't get it, can't get it. You'll work yourself up into a
temper about it and it's all a waste of time; they simply cannot
understand: It's hormones, chemicals.
It makes you start to think at least they've got science on
their side though, because to be honest it isn't just teenagers is
it? There's no real empathy is there? Not enough to stop us
doing exactly what we want. Whether it's the high-hat leaking
out of those white earphones the lad opposite has on or the
spread of all our shit outside the train window now, we couldn't
really give a toss. And we're the grown ups! We're meant to
know better! Well if we do, well, it's almost fucking malicious
with us, fucking sadistic isn't it? At least kids can blame
biology. But when I look at the dirt beneath my fingernails I
don't see chemicals, hormones, this isn't some bastard genetic
fingerprint - this is stuff that's happened and built up and
stayed. Memories. Reminders that when I was a kid I was in
love and when I lost her I grieved and when he ran I laid blame.
I look at the letter again - her hand, his name. Phillip. Is it
hate? The more I thought about it the more I began to hate but
that hate numbed me until she came back to me as a feeling, a
pure and true sensation that started in my shoulders and spread
like brandy's heat until my soul was warmed and supple again.
Right now I need her more than ever.
Tony makes his way back down the train and I know that
these kids are going to slay him, rip him apart. He must know
too. He must have seen these kids a thousand times getting on
at the same stops in different towns.
The eldest lad stands to block the trolley while one of the
girls screeches about Tony's birthmark.
Arrrraghh! What's that on his face?'
The other girl answers,
"It's acid that, an acid burn.'

"It's hanging.'
The back of the eldest lad blocks my view but I am sure
Tony is smiling. Even when one of the boys says,
"It's what they do to nonces in jail.'
And another,
'You a paedo?'
The kids begin to steal chocolate and crisps from the trolley
and all Tony can do is go into his routine.
'Salted slivers of Raleigh's bounty...'
'Fucking paedo.'
Tony doesn't know what to do. I look at the lad opposite.
'...Fried in the oil Alexander rubbed into his war-weary
shoulders...'
I know he is thinking exactly what I am thinking.
'...Don't look at me! Did you see that? He looked right down
my top.'
I wish I were brave enough to do something.
'Can I get some rabbits for your mother?'
There is a pause in the noise. The older lad grips the sides
of the trolley.
'My mother? Did you just say something about my mother?'
He pushes the trolley to one side and it forces Tony back
down the carriage.
'For her stew.'
Are fucking listening you fucking handicap, did you say
something about my mother?'
He stares him down the corridor, the others shouting once
more and kneeling on their seats to watch.
'Sandwiches made from the finest Argentinian wheat.'
'I'm going to fuck you up.'
The old woman with the lunchbox looks out of the window.
'Fresh spring water, filtered through millennia.'
The lad's shoulders are jerking and he is getting excited. The
cheers get louder.
"I am going to fuck him up.'
'Tinderbox towns.'
The drunk doesn't wake and the lad opposite hides his iPod.
'I'm going to fuck you right up!'
A fist is raised.
'No you're fucking not.'
I hold the boy's fist in my hand and look into his eyes. I
squeeze and he grabs my wrist and reels. The lights of the city
begin to slow outside the windows, corrugated steel shack,
neon, and then dank walls tattooed with graffiti.
'The first thing you're going to do is collect the money for
all the shit you've taxed the old man for.'
'You're breaking my ...'
I look into the boy's eyes again. He can see it. I let go of his fist.
'Take off your hat.' He takes off his baseball cap. 'Now do it.'
He heads back to the table. The others are silent, looking at
him completely puzzled as he collects the money. He places the
cash into the hat and I pass the hat to Tony who thanks me. I
look straight at him, look him in the eye.
'No worries, Tony.'
The train pulls into the final stop.

PHILLIP

I keep things tidy. This is made easier by the fact that I live
alone and mostly eat take-away food. That isn't anything to read
into; it just makes things easier. The easy life is the life I have
decided to live for as long as I can and this should neither be
thought of as sad, lacking in ambition or lonely. It is a choice I
made and one that I stick by. Friends would complicate things.
Hobbies would complicate things. A successful career would
complicate things.
Every weeknight I go to the Dragon. I sit at the end of the
bar on my stool and drink my pint of dark in the company of
the other regulars. At the weekends I might do some overtime
in work or watch a couple of films. I don't visit the cinema but
I am part of an online DVD rental service. If I watch TV at all
it is for the news and for documentaries, not because I am a
snob but because I like to spend the time I am not working
doing things that I enjoy doing. I subscribe to New Scientist
magazine; I don't read any newspapers. It could be said that
I'm a creature of habit, or that I find safety in the familiar. I
would readily admit to both assumptions.
However, the familiarity I find in the Dragon is one
constructed entirely by myself. The place is, if anything,
unfamiliar to me. This is not the city I was born in; the people
who populate the bar sound vowels differently to me, miss
consonants I stress. The drinks are different and the songs that
get played on the jukebox are different too. But when I first
walked into the Dragon I was in the process of building the
man that could live my new easy life, and that man found
comfort there, to him it seemed familiar.
Tonight is Friday night - the one night the unfamiliar has
warrant to visit the Dragon. Usually this fills me with unease,
the worry of discovery. My inner voice sounds nothing like my
outer voice - the person I have invented - and I dread being
found out. I know some people can see into minds - I know this
for fact. These are not clairvoyants but people who can bear
witness to the actual physical reality of the world differently to
most. It is not supernatural, it is in fact a deeper connection with
nature, with the physics of nature, than most. I have yet to meet
one of these people in the Dragon but the more strangers that
arrive there, the more chance one of them will have this gift.
Tonight though, I feel no dread. Not because I believe my
escape to be complete but the very opposite. There is no dread
tonight, for tonight I will be found out. The truth of who I am,
what I have done, and what will become of me... It is a
certainty. To dread would be a waste of energy. I know he is
coming: Edwin. But I know he is not alone. For I feel her too.
There was a fizz in the air this morning. It was like the hum
and prickle of a dozing television. The carpet in work, the coffee
machine - everything I touched buzzed back at me with the
forked flick of an electric tongue. Of course, this is metaphorical.
I know the physics involved: electrostatics. A charge is built up
in an object due to its contact with another but the charge is not
released until the separation of the two objects. It is almost
unnoticeable unless one of the objects involved is resistant, but
the wakening from this quiet linger can destroy whole silos of
grain, clouds of dust exploding like the birthing of galaxies. I
know the physics well, well enough to help me to recognise that
the fizz in the air this morning was a different kind of charge. It
has been there dormant for ten years, my ear growing used to its
buzz until I thought it might have gone but it was always there;
today it just grew louder and stronger.
The invisible sparks are sticking again. I can feel them spit.
From that day she touched my chest, Helen crackled about me;
for the ten years since the last night I saw her, there has been
torpidity. But I awoke today with the feeling back, the feeling
still terrifying and irresistible. The past is like an old balloon.
The air may have escaped but it can be inflated again at any
time, rubbed against a child's head and stuck to the wall for all
to see, for all to wait and watch it fall once more when the
charge runs out. If I think too much about it I may run.
Just go to the pub, Phillip. Do normal things. Think about
normal things. Stop this. Be familiar. Outer voice.
I tug the lip of the Yale lock to check if the front door is
shut properly. My house takes the bend of a crescent of stone
terraces just east of the city. A cigarette is fixed between my
teeth while I fail to thumb a flame from a disposable lighter.
Cheap. I've promised myself a Zippo one day, a silver Zippo. I
leave the TV on. It is an old habit from when my mother would
insist the noise would ward off burglars. It isn't very energy
efficient. The bass notes of a newsreader's voice keep time
inside and I turn into the summer evening.
I always walk like this - shoulders hunched, fists punched
into pockets, my eyes turned away from the sky. The walk to
the Dragon takes me past a Chinese takeaway, a dry cleaner,
and a barbershop. The barbershop is where I get my hair cut
every six weeks. I have my appointments booked in for the
next six months on the computer there. It is a gentlemen's
hairdressers and the barber is very proud of his database.
Plush leather sofas and games consoles take up the space of a
small waiting room, and the barber's sports trophies adorn the
walls. I like the place, it feels like the kind of place the new me
should frequent.
At the very end of the street is a sex-shop called Sexual
Healing. It has always amused me - in fact I have a certain
admiration for the place. This is no euphemistic 'Private Shop'.
Sexual Healing displays its name in hot pink on a neon blue
background; the wares it is legally allowed to display stand PVC
proud on mannequins and in cabinets behind its windows. I

suppose I admire its brazenness. I've never plucked up the
courage to go in though. Instead I stride twenty yards on and
into the Dragon. Be familiar, Phillip. In here you can be familiar.
'Late tonight, aren't we?'
Sally, the barmaid, starts to pour before the door has swung
behind me. She always makes me smile. She sits and pours and
ignores. I know she hears everything we talk about but quite
rightly she refuses to engage with it. I know she is bright.
Much brighter than most of the regulars who will spout off on
any subject. But she never shows off and every now and again
will cut everyone dead with a line that seems to have come
from nowhere. I am never surprised for I know it came from
her huge heart.
The Dragon sits on the shoulder of a famous crawl into town
but those around the bar at this hour will tread water here for
the rest of the evening: Stag from the tattoo parlour, Mitch the
postman - his newspaper quartered to the crossword page. Me.
Or rather the Phillip I have created. It is this Phillip that
replies, the outer voice:
'Overtime, Sally. No rest for the wicked and all that.'
I approach the bar, a ten-pound note folded lengthways for
Sally to swap for my pint of dark.
'Tell me about it, love.'
The dark has little time to settle. I take my change and raise
my eyebrows above the rim of the glass in thanks. After
plucking the beer-mat from the bottom of the glass to shake it
dry, it now takes the weight of a three-quarter-pint. Better.
I begin to ease into the Phillip I have created. I feel at home,
less like a figment of my imagination. The new me is much
sturdier, much more lived-in despite only existing these last ten
years. He fits here, in this room where booths and stools flank
the half-barrelled bar; where the painted colours - yellows,
creams, vermilion - are bloated, stretched and shot through
with worm-like capillaries. The wall to the left frames a cigarette
machine and a jukebox, and a pool table squats in a separate
room to the right. A TV bracketed above the arched entrance
shows silent, subtitled programmes, as it should. To the far left
of the bar is a secluded area where dressed-up lovers will sit for
two drinks at the most before moving on. Beyond this are the
toilets where you can see your breath no matter the weather
and through the Fire Exit, the Smokers Den - a recent addition.
There are strangers: two students playing pool, rolling
cigarettes; a lone girl with just a sip of spit left in her glass,
staring at the change counted out in stacks on the table in front
of her; and a young man I've seen more often lately. I suppose
he is becoming something of a regular. He is always reading a
paperback in a booth as he waits for his skinny girlfriend with
the flat shoes and the thick framed glasses to arrive. Sometimes
I lust over her.
I pinch the froth from my lips confident I've made a note of
everyone who is in. I settle on my stool to the right of the bar
in position to watch the door for any new arrivals. Almost ten
years ago I claimed this seat. I had come to this city to study.
The place had already been decided, the place furthest away
from where I was born. Not that I was running then, I just
knew that whatever the outcome of the events that were tearing toward us, towards me, towards Edwin, towards Helen,
I wasn't going to want to be in a place where I could still see
all the props, the set, the backdrop to the story. I also knew I
would never want to go back.
I applied for an undergraduate degree in Physics and
Astronomy. The University's bars and nightclubs were a place
where neither of my selves felt comfortable. Freshers Week
seemed to consist of being herded into situations where the
ejecting of a bodily fluid of any description was deemed a
success story and I found most of the other students moronic.
Luckily, my Grandmother had left me a small trust fund that
became mine when I turned eighteen. After one semester in
halls of residence, I took a private let on this side of town where
I wouldn't have to run into any of my peers. I swapped courses
before Christmas and eventually dropped out altogether. But I
stayed here and lied to my parents back there.
I took a junior position at the firm I still work for. I collate
data for an insurance company. There was no pressure, no real
career progression and no targets to meet that weren't impossibly
easy. The pay was okay and I still had enough left over from my
trust to help with a deposit to buy the house next door to the
one I was renting. I still live there today and the TV is still on.
Most importantly, I'd not had far to search for an old pub, a
place with a history that I could wrap myself up in and pray
the past had called off its search.
'Still playing Pac-Man for a living?'
It is Stag who breaks the quiet time. He looks every pore the
tattoo artist: painted arms and neck, black t-shirt, jeans and
enormous black boots. He is a tall, wide man, with long, dark
hair and a beard. He would look quite intimidating if it weren't
for the wire-framed glasses he continually pushes back up
toward his animated brow. Like everyone else in the Dragon,
Stag has only ever spoken to this new me.
'Yeah. Disfigured many of the stupid today?'
Stag laughs, coughs, and knocks back some more Guinness.
That exchange is almost ten years old. Using his forearm to
wipe away the Guinness foam, Stag continues.
'Met a feller earlier today. Reminded me of you.'
I sip my dark and pretend to look surprised.
'Yeah? Where?'
He leans back, pulling his jeans above the top of his buttocks.
'In the studio... what did he say he did for living?' Stag
pushes his glasses back. 'Bollocks. It's gone. But every time he
opens his mouth I think "Phillip".'
I know what is coming but ask anyway. An easy life.
'Why's that then, Stag?'
He takes another slurp of his Guinness.
'He was a right miserable cunt.'
I smile, raising my glass to Stag. He smiles too and waves
a hand.
'Only joking, like. Even you aren't as miserable as this lad.
Christ, if it wasn't his mam having some operation or his
girlfriend running off with his mate, it was the War on Terror
or some other depressing shite. I said to him, 'Son, I don't
know who you're after but the Samaritans is back down the
road on the right!"
I shake my head, smiling.
'You ever thought of becoming a counsellor, Stag? You've got
a gift there.' Stag turns himself around to face the rest of the
bar. The other regulars roll eyes at me for inviting what is sure
to be one of Stag's famous lectures. Mitch just continues to
look at his crossword.
'Funny you should say that, Phillip, because my line of work
is a bit like that. None of that sitting at a desk all day, trying to
look past your own reflection on a computer screen. In my job,
you have to have the skills to put people at ease, like. You'd be
surprised how much people open up to their body artist.' He
allows the term 'body artist' waft across the bar. As no one
seems to have taken exception he continues, 'Because the client
has to be at ease, like. They have to be calm and ready. A
tattoo hurts - it's got to, that's the point, because, and no
offence to any of you ladies in here tonight, a tattoo is a proof
of manhood.' Stag looks at Sally but she is entranced by the
silent goings on of Albert Square, her lips moving as she reads
the subtitles. 'It's an ancient rite. The Maoris and that
Polynesian lot did it when one of them became a man - proof
of their warrior status.' At this, Mitch folds down his paper
and begins to listen. 'Only they did it with a shark tooth.
They'd get a brick, not a house brick mind; some stone, a
sacred stone or something, and they'd put it next to the feller
that was having his work done. The shark tooth would be on
the end of a stick and they'd use the sacred stone as a pivot
while they tapped the ink into the warrior's skin like that...'
Stag mimes the art of the ancient Polynesian body artist before
taking a self-important gulp of Guinness. 'Shark tooth.
Imagine. Warriors.'
Mitch goes back to his crossword and I decide to go for a
cigarette in the Smoking Den.

I pass through the Fire Exit, pushing the metal bar down and
out, the verdant sheen of the door much cleaner than the cloth
of the pool table in the other room. The Den looks like a long
bus shelter. Its roof juts out from the wall at the back of the pub
and wooden beams rib the corrugated cover before joining poles
of old scaffold, earthing the whole structure. It provides decent
shelter but the Council are trying to claim that this area too
should be counted as indoors due to the size of the roof, or the
square-footage of ventilation, or some other line in a sub-section
somewhere. The purpose of the den is clearly to act as a shelter
from the elements for we smokers, but according to the law,
facts state otherwise. Standing beneath the den means you are
now indoors. The bare facts have little to do with what actually
happens half the time. If more attention was paid to the
purpose, the reason for the doing, we would find the answers
much more readily than from a tick-list or flow-chart.
The police never asked me why I followed her, just asked if
I did. It was the wrong question. The importance of the right
question cannot be over-estimated. And you must be fearless
in asking.
I take a seat at one of the wooden benches beneath the
shelter. The pub has really spent money on these. If they wished
to continue the 'den' aesthetic, they should have a mob of chairs
that do not match, or cheap garden furniture from a supermarket.
However, they have bought beautiful, new, wooden
benches. Not even a name has been scratched into them.
These benches told me the time was coming. The objects of
my memory were catching up, the tide of the past lapping at my
ankles and the flotsam and jetsam of all that happened just
waiting to be washed up in its wake.
These benches took me straight back to those days outside
the Hog as children, the benches we would sit on drinking pop.
We'd buy the pop from the Spar on the main road before it
even was a Spar. We would sit and talk, and watch the men fall
out into the street.
Best viewing was in the summertime, especially a Saturday
afternoon when those inside had been watching the racing and
chasing gallons, my own father included among their ranks,
myself often sent in to fetch him. Throughout the afternoon the
men would stumble down the steps and appear by those
benches like the characters of a faulty weather-clock. They
would check the road and their watches, a folded tabloid
racing pullout acting as a makeshift visor. If the taxi hadn't
arrived in two minutes flat then they would turn themselves
back in. Edwin, Helen and I just watched.
All three of us lived on the Avenue, a small cul-de-sac of
post-war semis in the northern suburbs of our city. The area
was too far away from town for us to be allowed to go there on
our own. The only places to play were the children's nursery
where the police would earn their keep by trying to apprehend
trespassers; the dingle, which terrified most parents; or back
gardens where they could keep a watchful eye. No one actually
played on the Avenue.
So we passed most time on the benches outside the Hog. We
never went inside, not until much later. Now I sit on the
benches here, neither inside or out.

With my lighter kaput, I take out a box of safety matches. I
hate these. They always break in my hands. It's not like I have
clumsy hands, big hands. My hands are soft, white and thin.
My fingernails are clean and well taken care of. The cigarette
sitting in the crotch of my middle and index fingers is like a
mutant digit of my own. But I break things so easily.

My father would talk about it, how I didn't know my own
strength, how when play-fighting as a toddler I would routinely
draw blood and blacken eyes; pull off door handles that he had
just fitted. In work they can tell when I have stopped to
daydream, for the noise of my fingers striking the computer
keyboard ceases.
I think of Stag, his huge but delicate hands. How he can
trace those intricacies into the flesh. The brutality of it and
the beauty of it, the progress of this art over all those
centuries. I imagine the Polynesian warrior and a shark tooth:
the mark of manhood. I imagine the sewing needle and Indian
ink, the mark of membership to the gang. I imagine the buzz of
the Stag's iron and...
Static rushes along my arm, as if a plaster or piece of tape
has been ripped away. I rub my forearm but the sensation
remains. I look about me, my straight arm extended downward
and held at the wrist by my other hand.
As the static tickles my neck I know without seeing her that
she is here, and that if she is here Edwin is not far too. For this
is not her that I feel but them - the effect of them both. I
realise that the first time I recognised this feeling was not the
day she touched my chest but the day the right question was
asked and asked fearlessly.

There were a gang of kids, five or six years older than us, who
called themselves the Warriors. They were led by two brothers
- Paul and John Campbell and spent most of their nights being
moved from shop front to street corner to nursery grounds,
sharing cans of Breakers and a couple of packets of Lamberts
among their legion.
The Warriors had a fearsome reputation. They were the
subject of much myth and fancy: they'd hung a dog from a
lamppost outside its owner's house because they thought
he'd informed the police about the nursery graffiti; they'd
taken a child's bike and when he asked for it back tied him to
it and dragged him across broken glass in the street. None of
this was true.
We were sat outside the Hog, on the benches, drinking pop.
Brian O'Reilly had been in hospital for a week and was yet to
die from his injuries. He was a Warrior, fifteen years old, tall,
skinny with a wedge haircut. He was only a member of the
Warriors because John and Paul had shown an uncharacteristic
sense of pity for him. Brian was quiet, a little bit stupid - the
one who was the butt of the other Warriors' jokes. How quickly
he became a beatified silence, a memory toasted in pubs when
conversation ran dry.
Helen had been telling one of her stories, a funny one for a
change, when the Warriors approached and one of their
leaders spoke.
'What the fuck are you lot laughing at?'
We kept our heads down, too scared to answer Paul Campbell.
'Well? What's so fucking funny?'
He was almost snarling, his ever-silent brother a shoulder
behind him and the rest of the Warriors scattered further back.
We too remained silent until Edwin answered for us as he
always did.
'Nothing. We were just having a laugh.'
Wrong answer. The rest of the Warriors began to bait Paul.
He took a step closer and leaned over us, his hands gripping
the edge of the bench.
'Just having a laugh eh? Nice. Glad you're enjoying
yourselves. Our Brian's in hospital, in hospital because of
something that happened right here outside this pub and
you're having a laugh?'
He turned to his pack of followers, his tongue pressed up
against his chipped front tooth. And then Helen spoke.
'Is it true he's going to die?'
The right question. Paul stepped away from the benches.
'What?'
'Brian, I heard he was going to die.'
Edwin and I looked at each other, unable to believe she'd
asked that question, the one every child in town had been
asking themselves since the car hit him.
In the aftermath of the accident I couldn't take my eyes off the
scene for one moment. I examined the thick spider web cracked
into the windscreen where Brian O'Reilly's head had broken his
fall. The rest of his young body was twisted into an indefinable
shape across the bonnet and his left leg dangled shoeless. Edwin
just held Helen. Those who were there told of what they saw and
soon half the town were secretly thinking that question, 'Is Brian
O'Reilly going to die?' Helen just asked it.
The Warriors looked at each other, unsure of what to do as
Paul's face tried to pick its emotion. Helen stared straight back
with a look that demanded satisfaction, innocent, curious
satisfaction. Paul blinked quickly and his eyelids dammed tears.
John turned his brother by the shoulder and led the Warriors away.
Neither Edwin nor myself wanted to speak to Helen. I
recognise these emotions now as the first few strands of
adolescence spun between us; virgin tangles of the web one or
all would fall into. I cannot speak for Edwin but I felt
admiration, jealousy, fear - a nascent love when relayed in
hindsight. Love is a bastard emotion begat of many others. And
this love felt like static electricity.

I scratch the lit end of the cigarette dead against the wall and
pitch the butt into the bucket of sand. As I walk back inside,
I'm still rubbing my arms.
'Gone a bit nippy out there has it, Phillip?'
Sally. There's a face to make me smile again.
'Yeah.'
I order another dark and Sally pours.
'No clouds, see. Nothing to trap the heat isn't it?'
'Very true, Sally.'
She tops up the dark and places it on the draining tray
before me. I push three pound coins across to her and she
places her hand on mine.
"It's some choice for God eh?'
I screw my face.
'What?'
'Which weather to give us.'
I sip my dark. I never knew Sally was a religious person.
"I don't think He has much to do with the weather.'
She waves a dismissive hand.
"I don't actually mean God, you pillock. It was just a figure
of speech.' She walks away to wash her hands and flick
through the channels. She half-turns, her face still on the
screen but her words directed to me. "I was just saying it is a
difficult choice. You know, you can be cold and see the stars or
you can be warm and not see them. That's all I was saying.'
Stag seems to ponder. Mitch folds his paper and thinks too.
I take a gulp of my pint and smile. Helen is here. Edwin is
coming. I can feel it.


Avenue

Humphrey & Margaret Fahey, Number 7

Humphrey tried with little success to eat his bacon sandwich.
It was the skip. It distracted him, a wholly unreasonable
imposition on the everyday as far as he was concerned. He stood
at the window of the front room, looking out across the Avenue,
thinking 'who could possibly want to buy that house?' Perhaps
they didn't know the history? No, he was sure that there were
laws today and besides, if they were local they'd know.
Perhaps they were pulling it down out of respect like they'd
done with that Fred West's place? Not that what happened here
was anything like that but... there are ghoulish people out there.
Yeah, pull it down. If it were up to Humphrey, he'd have done it
ten years ago.
Mags joined him in the front room, lured by the waft of bacon
rather than the guilt of staying in bed while her husband got up
to earn a crust. Once downstairs, Mags took her usual perch on
the sofa. She pulled the beige pouf across the carpet, took her
rest, and didn't put on the TV. She would never do that until
he'd left for work. That, she thought, would be rude. She might
even empty the dishwasher as a sign that she too was ready to
keep her side of the bargain but as she eyed her husband's bacon
sandwich she could have no idea that in less than ten minutes it
would be falling from her own hands and bloodying the
driveway with HP sauce.
Humphrey meanwhile admired the quality of the workmanship
of his new double-glazed windows; this between darting
glances at the suggestion of any movement outside on the Avenue.
Mags was always accusing him of being a nosey bastard whereas
he liked to think he was more of the vigilant type. He'd put the
windows in himself, leaded them as well. As he had told Mags
and anyone else who might hear him, no point in getting in some
two-bit cowboys to fleece him when he could do it himself.
It is fair to say that irony is usually lost on Humphrey Fahey. It
would be easy to ridicule him. Most on the Avenue did,
particularly those men who drank in the Hog on a Saturday
afternoon. He wasn't sure what they had against him They
thought he didn't realise that he was the source of much of their
amusement. It takes all sorts, he'd tell himself - a tolerance he
rarely displayed when judging those he felt fell short of his own
exacting standards. But were these standards exacting? Was it
such an ask to hope that people might work for a living? Was it
unreasonable to hope a person might think of others before acting?
Was it out of order to suggest that kiddies needed their dad, that
you should be able go to the shops without being intimidated by
gangs of yobs, that if his taxes had put a roof over someone's head
they didn't try to blow him up in return? Was it wrong to want to
be proud of your offspring and to feel ashamed when they wasted
their lives? Humphrey was a good man, but the gamble he'd taken
on his son having his same drive made him wish he'd just gone
with his heart all those years ago.
He had always wanted to make things. His own father was a
carpenter and could create the most heavenly things from the
most basic materials. This alchemy would often take place in his
father's shed at the end of the garden and little Humphrey would
hold and fetch and look on in awe as his father wove his magic.
Unfortunately, all Humphrey had inherited as far as his father's
carpentry was concerned was an old toolbox full of things he had
no real idea of how to use. The windows were just the latest
piece of evidence in the case against him.
Looking beyond the double glazing, and the Avenue, Humphrey
could still imagine another reality, one where he was still in his
twenties, a master-craftsman, toiling away in his own little
workshop; a turntable in the corner playing rare, soul forty-fives as
he put the finishing touches to the bespoke furniture he would sell
to the cultured types who lived south of the city. He could picture a
good son, a son who would hold, fetch, and look on in awe. The
good son he imagined still had Edwin's face.
"Is lazy arse up yet?' Mags shrugged in answer to her
husband's question. 'Edwin! Edwin!' Humphrey's yelp glanced
off the hallway and stairs before ricocheting into Edwin's room.
Knowing that his own requests were hardly strong enough to
grapple with the immovable object that was his son, Humphrey
instead turned to the irresistible force that was his wife. Every
morning they would argue over who was going to rouse their
only child but always found a disguise for their quarrel. That
morning it was the bacon sandwich.
'Shite, Mags'
'What?'
'This bread you've bought...look at it?'


'What?'
"It's... limp'
Mags raised an eyebrow. Humphrey half-slapped the
sandwich onto a side plate on the window ledge and returned to
the subject of their idle son.
'Go and get our Edwin, Mags.'
Mags responded loudly without moving.
'Edwin!'
Humphrey flinched, frustrated at her noise,
'Bleeding hell, Mags. I've shouted him myself.'
'You could go and get him yourself.'
'But I'm going to work.'
Humphrey stepped back sure that was checkmate. But Mags
had spotted a counter-move,
'Noyou're not.'
'Eh?'
'That sarnie's dribbled all down your cuff.'
Humphrey looked at his right cuff, its crisp white edge
softened by brown sauce.
'Shite.'
Mags had got him. It was essential to Humphrey that his
shirts were stellar white - so important, that he took two shirts
to work: one for before lunch and one for after. It set an example
to those who worked under him. The grime and tidemarks that
life left on his collar and cuffs caused him deep distress. A
splodge of HP was an abomination.
Humphrey took the stairs with his usual swiftness. His own
father insisted he be named Humphrey due to an obsessive love
of Bogart. Humphrey badly wanted a line, a family tradition.
The old toolbox was to become an heirloom and each of the Fahey
men would name their sons after their heroes. Humphrey loved
Edwin Starr's booming voice that seemed to move from rumble to
scream in seismic shifts. Yes, Otis had the pained growl, Marvin
was silky smooth, and Smokey was sweet, but Starr had
something Humphrey admired more than anything: dynamism.
'Edwin.' Electric light halved the room as Humphrey opened
the door, 'Edwin?'
For some reason, Humphrey always spoke in a whisper when
in the bedroom, even his son's.
'Edwin. Son. Get up quick. It's ten to seven. We're leaving in
ten minutes, so if you want a lift, move your arse.'
Humphrey skipped out of Edwin's room and into his own to
grab a fresh shirt from his perfectly ordered wardrobe. He smiled
as he heard his wife shout from downstairs.
'If you don't get down these stairs in ten seconds Edwin I'll...
Edwin! Edwin ?'
The smile sank from Humphrey's lips. Usually, his mother's
threat would be the signal for Edwin to leap from the bed and into
action. His reaction to his parents' requests were attuned to their
particular personal frequencies: for Humphrey, Edwin was slow,
silent and sullen as if tempering his father's crazy perpetual jig;
but for his mother, Edwin whipped himself into a servile frenzy.
Mags may do very little, but Mags made things happen.
Except for this morning. This morning nothing happened. It
was this alone that made Humphrey double check Edwin's
bedroom and when he actually put his head around the door he
saw a bed made so perfectly he almost smiled again.
'He's not there Mags! The little bastard hasn't come home all
night!'
Mags moved, her mass shuddering the floor as she switched
the light on and headed to the hallway. Edwin's keys were on
the hall table.

'What do you mean, he's not there?'
Humphrey began to skip back down the stairs, cursing their
son under his breath all the way back into the front room.
Once there, he switched off the light his wife had just turned
on, only for her to turn it back on again as she re-entered the
room behind him. Humphrey spent most of his spare time
looking out of this window onto the Avenue, but was terrified of
people watching the goings on in his home. He hopped back
across the room and switched the light off once more with a flourish.
'Willyou... we don't want the whole bleeding street to see us!'
'He's not come home.'
'Oh come on Mags, it's not like it's the first time.'
'There's something up.'
'Well there will be if anyone sees us tear-arsing around the
house with that bloody light on.'
'You're the only nosey git on this Avenue. I'm sure they've
heard you bawling away anyway.'
At this, Humphrey struck smugly,
'Ah. Now that's where you're wrong, darling.' He began to move
around the room as he spoke, almost like a TV detective as he
reveals to an astonished drawing room how the who did it. 'Nobody
out there has heard a peep.' He knocked on the leaded window,
'Double-glazed this, Mags. Inhibits both heat-loss and noise.'
Mags shook her head. She was appalled at the lack of concern
Humphrey was showing for their only son. A son they'd tried so
hard to have.
It had taken ten years for Humphrey to impregnate Mags,
through no fault of nature or themselves. After the effort of all that,
Mags decided to try to keep her movements to a minimum but
despite her apparent laziness, she did put all of her energies into
Edwin. She'd spoilt him. She knew she had. Yes he'd done this
before, in fact he was always staying out, sometimes for weeks on
end, but he always took his keys. He always took his keys.
She decided to call Humphrey's bluff by acting nonchalant,
pointing to the bacon sandwich lying on the side-plate on the
window sill.
'Are you going to finish that?'
Humphrey handed her the plate. He couldn't look at her. This
was her fault - she'd ruined the boy.
'I'm bleeding sick of this, Mags. I'm telling you, he's taking
the piss.'
With that, Humphrey whipped his jacket over his arms,
hooked his spare shirt onto his index finger by its wire hanger
and tumbled out of the front door.
He only stopped when he noticed an envelope on the floor of the
porch. The lateness of the post was something he railed against
daily so its presence shocked him. Picking it up he saw that there
was no stamp. Hand delivered, that'd explain it being on time. He
put the letter between his teeth and carried on to the car.
Mags looked on from the living room window. Humphrey
hanged the shirts from the handles in the back of the car and
tossed the letter onto the front seat as he got in.
Revving the Mondeo into life, the pounding rhythm of 'War'
by Edwin Starr marched out of the sound system he had
installed last Easter. It was perfectly audible to his wife inside,
even behind the protection of the double-glazing.
But that wasn't why Mags dropped the sandwich. First, the
music had to stop. Then Humphrey had to get back out of the car
leaving the shirts still suspended in the back. He had to leave the
driver's door open, the warning tone beeping as he staggered

back towards the house. He had to ignore the twitching curtains
on the rest of the Avenue as Mags came out to catch him, the
letter now open in his hand. She had to take the letter from him
as he slid to the floor and sat with his back to the garden wall
Then she had to read the letter. That's when she dropped the
bacon sandwich.

Part Two: Beer Garden

EDWIN

The kids eyed me as they got off the train but none of them said
a word. Tony was all talk. All that stuff was scripted - he had
no chat to fall back on when the shit hit the fan. The whole
spiel was for his own amusement after all. I'm disappointed.
What happened with the kid has taught me one thing though - I
am not all bad after all. I didn't have to stand and help, I didn't
have to put myself on the line for a stranger, but I did. Whether
that makes me a good person is still up for grabs; I did take
pleasure in humiliating the boy; I did buzz a little off crushing
his hand like that. The sensation of Helen has died to a tingle.
The station seems enormous. It's partly underground, just
below street level with a long, letterbox of grey light visible
where the roof just peeps above the pavement and a bit of natural light bleeds in. I look across the foyer. Is that what you
call them in train stations? It is dark in the way that only places
lit artificially can be, having that shimmer that makes it feel like
you are squinting. The streetlamps this morning had the same
quality, the light all diffusing around the middle like gas. The
security light in the beer garden was the same and my hands
looked extra white beneath the dirt from the monument. As I sat
sorting the letters in the beer garden I remembered sitting there
with Helen those countless times with our ankles and fingers
knotted. Sometimes, even when the beer garden was full of kids
running about, or groups of lads on an all-dayer, it still felt like
it was just me and Helen there beneath that mouldy parasol. Me
talking about kids names like you do with your first love, her
refusing to discuss the future in any way.
At the time I felt hurt by that. She and Phillip were obviously
going to be off to a top university; both had scholarships to the
good school in town. I felt like, by refusing to discuss the
future, she was telling me that I had no part in hers, that she
was destined for great things while I was always going to be
forever sat in the Hog's beer garden, talking myself up. This of
course is pretty true. She loved me, there is no doubt about
that, but whether she saw me as the soul she was going to
spend the rest of her life with is hard to say. Like I said, with
that first one you can't help but feel that way. Still, Helen
always had bigger questions on her mind and, if you want me to
be blunt, I think she might have thought she wasn't good
enough for me. Sounds daft, I can't get my head around it,
but... Helen didn't see herself like I saw her. Like we all saw her.
I remember catching her crying beneath the parasol once.
I'd been inside to get some more drinks and when I came back
she was trying to hide her tears with hay fever. I couldn't get
her to admit what it was that was troubling her, but later,
much later, in fact the last night I saw her alive, she told me
she thought she was ugly. We had just made love that first and
only time. Of course, I told her not to be stupid. She pushed
me away and shouted at me.
'You always say you want to know things and then you
never listen.'
I was shocked, as I don't think I had ever heard her raise
her voice before. She told me she didn't feel ugly in the
physical sense, this wasn't some teenage girl feeling the
pressure of the front pages of magazines - she felt ugly in her
head. Her thoughts took her to ugly places and she had to go
there because that's where the stories lived, in the darkest
most slithery places of her consciousness and when she came
back she felt uglier each time.
She took her book from her dressing table, the book she
wrote all of her stories in. As far as I knew, she had never let
anyone see it and for her to give it me there made me feel even
more special than her allowing me to sleep with her. She
opened the pages to a story and said,
'That's how I feel.'
I began to read the story. I can't remember exactly how it
went but it was about a bird that could absorb a person's
shame. The bird would fly from town to town and if someone
had done something they were ashamed of, they would leave
some food on their doorstep or table near the hearth and it
would fly down and collect it. Once there, the person could
whisper their secrets to the bird. The shame would turn one of
the bird's feathers to stone but its plumage was so lush that it
would fly back to its nest, shed the stone feather and wait for a
new one to grow in its place.
Nobody cared if they saw the bird at a neighbour's window or
in their garden, nobody passed judgement, because they knew
that everyone got a visit sometime. Even husbands and wives
would not try to work out what their spouse had whispered to
the bird, there would be no reprisals, and parents would not try
to eavesdrop on their children or beat a confession out of them
once the bird had gone. Shame was something everyone felt at
some time and was nothing to confess. One day however, new
Men came to town.
At first, the locals ignored them, but over time these Men
grew rich and powerful and soon they commanded everyone to
come to them if they had sins to confess and not whisper any
more secrets to the bird. When people confessed to the Men,
they would be scolded and given penance. The Men then made
up lists of new sins that the people had never realised were
sins before and pinned them up on the door of the Town Hall.
Soon people began to judge each other and gossip. They had
seen the heavy penances given out to neighbours and so knew
terrible, shameful things must be going on. It got so bad that
people became afraid of going to confess. Then it was declared
by the Men that to not confess was also a sin.
In the end, people would go and lie to the Men about lesser
sins they had not even committed, hoping for a lighter penance
that would make them look less shameful in the eyes of their
neighbours.
All this time, the bird continued to pay visits in secret.
However, now the people had so much new shame that the
bird's stone feathers grew greater in number and heavier with
the weight of the town's sins. Eventually, the bird carried so
many sins it could not fly at all and within ten years of the
Men coming to town, it became completely petrified and stood
like a small statue in the town square.
People would come and leave food for the stone bird but it
could not eat. People would sit next to it and try to whisper
but shame still felt heavy in their chests as they walked away.
The Men petitioned for the bird to be destroyed so that the
people could no longer be tempted by it. In the streets, those
loyal to the Men walked among the crowds and shouted their
approval. Before long, the rest of the people agreed and a date
was set for the bird to be ceremonially smashed.
However two boys in the Town couldn't believe what they
heard as the people called for the destruction of the bird.
The night before the ceremony, they took a cart and
smuggled the stone bird from the town. They took the bird far
away, to a place on a large hill, and there they left the bird and
prayed that it would get better.
When the two boys returned to the town, a mob was waiting
for them. People screamed lies about what they had heard
them saying and doing, lies about the plans they made and
what they had done with the bird. Some said they had taken
the bird so that they could have power over everyone in the
town, power even over the Men.
The boys were taken away and tortured, made to tell the
Men where the bird had been hidden. They held out as long as
they could until one of them spoke.
When the news of where the bird was concealed came out,
some of the townsfolk went to collect it. They arrived back holding
the bird above their heads and people threw rotten vegetables at
the bird and hit it with the soles of their shoes. A large wooden
stage was built and the petrified bird was placed on a plinth. At
each side, the two boys stood. They had nooses around their necks
and hammers in their hands and both were told to renounce the
bird and destroy it or else face public hanging.
With the ropes itching around their necks, the boys tearfully
smashed the stone bird until there were only pebbles left. The
ropes were removed from their necks and they were given ten
years of heavy penance.
The remains of the stone bird were swept into a box and
buried in a secret place known only to the Men. The Men grew
stronger and richer and the people grew more mistrusting of each
other and unforgiving, and soon the bird was forgotten forever.
Reading the story silenced me for a few minutes. I didn't feel
scared, I just couldn't understand why she would put herself
through that. I told her to stop writing the stories and she didn't
say anything for a while and then held me, apologised, said she
was being stupid and to forget it. It didn't matter.
This, I never told the police. Never told her mother and
father. In fact, I can't remember telling anyone until now.

The tannoy sounds, feet click and the huge metal walkways
shake with people. New places scare me. I'll pretend to be at
ease with a place, cocky even, but inside I'm shitting it. It's all
front. The locals run about me: baguettes, wraps, water bottles,
mobile phones - anything it seems to avoid making eye-contact.
The only people who do are selling credit cards, two young lads
in cheap suits and ties knotted loosely. They hand out flyers;
they ask open questions. I say no with a hand and make my
way over to some stone steps that are arrowed as the way out.
People cram either side of the central banister. I walk on the
left and when I hit the evening it's a Friday night and the
youngest of the crowd are already out and perfumed. The
shops on the main shopping stretch are closed and office
workers have stopped for a couple in bars. My head spins a
bit. This is the crossroads of the weekend. All these people.
An old drunk rolls out of Wetherspoon's, clacking his tongue
and shouting something about Alex Higgins. I can't be bothered
with Wetherspoons', or Hogsheads or Yates's. The chain pubs
are always too rammed full of shirt-boys and soaks. You end up
spending all your time trying to avoid a smack off a pissed up
dickhead or a getting tapped-up by fellers like that old drunk
that has just gone past. But as much as I can't stand chain
pubs, I also hate those bars with prints on the walls and
mixologists. Do my head in. I suppose there's a part of me that
is quite old fashioned. I like the old men, and the old ways. I'm
not saying they are better, or more real or any of that bullshit I
just prefer them. I need to find a pub.
It was this need that drew me to the Hog back home. All those
days sat on the benches, patching together an idea of the inside
by the smells and swearing of the men as they came out, it made
the place seem like the most unholy and exciting thing the world
could offer. Doesn't show much of an imagination that does it?
Most kids go for outer space, or dinosaurs, or musicians, or film
stars, or superheroes - I wanted to go in the local pub. If you
wanted to get all psychological about it, I suppose you could say
it was me trying to better my dad - or at least increase that
distance between us. Back then I thought he was a geek. It seems
like an odd way of putting it but that's what I thought. He didn't
go in the Hog. He didn't go to the pub at all. He'd take mum for
meals every now and again, and he had this real wanker of a mate
called Simon, some estate agent who had a big house on the other
side of town. Sometimes he'd make me go over to Simon's too.
Simon had this girl, Teresa. Moron. Simon and his fat wife
Angela, they would get the girl all dressed up for when I came
over. I'm sure they were trying to betroth us or something. They'd
tell us to go and play in the garden or upstairs and as soon as she
was out of her parents' shadow, Teresa would just flip. Total
nutcase. She'd just make up these outlandish lies about her
netball coach trying to kiss her and... She was only about eleven
when she was coming out with it. She's a doctor now apparently.
Phillip's dad on the other hand, he did drink in the Hog. I'd
see him walking down the Avenue in his jeans and shiny shoes a
racing pullout poking out of his back pocket and his hands in
the front ones thumbs out. If he saw us outside the pub, he'd
pull ten pence pieces from behind our ears. I knew that him and
his mates used to take the piss out of my dad and that just made
me look up to them even more. And if men like that drank in
pubs like the Hog, then pubs like the Hog were the kind of
places I wanted to drink in.
The Rose. I find it on a back street that runs parallel with
the main shopping stretch. It is much smaller than the Hog,
cramped between a tearoom and an outdoor pursuits shop. I
take the door with a straight arm and head in.
I'm still shocked when I walk into pubs like this and smoke
no longer hangs in slashed sheets across the room. Don't get me
wrong, I am happy about it. Smoking was something I never got
into. But still, it seems odd for the smoke to no longer be there.
I roll up to the bar and wait to catch the barmaid's attention.
Even though I'm still not really hungry, I look at the meals
chalked on the board and then at a menu on the bar. As I check
out the mains, the barmaid interrupts me,

'What can I get you?'
Her face funnels down from her temples into her mouth and
she has long brown hair that curls as if it was still wet when
she left the house. Now I feel at home, I have dealt with the
likes of her many times.
'Lager, please. Any except Stella. Does crazy thing to '
Anything else?'
'No. No thanks.'
She doesn't acknowledge me and begins to swirl the glass to
get the lager going. Her arms wobble slightly in her top and her
jeans are tight and tucked into brown boots. She wiggles the
beer tap to put a head on the pint and then brings it over to me.
'Two twenty.'
I hand her a fiver and tell her to take her own but she comes
back from the till with the right change.
"I said take your own, love.'
'I'd rather not. You never know with people nowadays do you?'
I smile, letting her know I don't give a fuck, but a voice
comes booming from the other side of the pub,
'You're wasting your breath, pal.' I turn around. A man is
sat in the corner, sixtyish with white hair and a flat nose. 'You
ask anyone in here, she is one miserable fucking turd.'
I nearly spit my lager across the room and only just manage
to contain the fizz that has worked its way up to my nostrils.
Half smiling I say,
"I don't know if you should be making those kinds of
comments about a lady, mate.'
The barmaid has ignored the whole scene and leans her big
arse on a shelf while thumbing a text message. A few of the
men smirk. The voice booms again,
'Lady? Fucking lady?' The grey-haired man is, I realise, very
big, and fills every inch of the donkey jacket he is wearing. His
eyes are smiling.
'Son, sit down here with me and I'll tell you about that so
called fucking lady.'
I walk over to his table.
The first time I walked into the Hog was pure front. I was
getting frustrated just sitting on the benches or wandering
across the dingle. It was that age: fifteen, sixteen. In school I
had begun to knock about with the lads that stood in the
stairwells, the lads who would hand out beatings to kids who
should have known better than to walk up the wrong stairs. It
never sat easy with me. Neither did the conversation; everything
was underage booze, weed and sex. It's not that I saw
anything wrong with any of it - this wasn't some big moral
conundrum, I was just a bit scared of it all.
It had some benefits though. With Phillip and Helen going to
a different school to me, I could act the big man: brave,
streetwise. The fact was that all of that growing up terrified
me. I didn't let it show though, especially when I complained
and cajoled Phillip and Helen into leaving the benches and
stepping inside the Hog that first time. Phillip was still
murmuring as I approached the bar.
The pub was exactly how I imagined, only a little bit cleaner.
This was the lounge though: wooden bar with brass footrests, a
couple of fruit machines, green placemats on tables. The landlady
was serving, Arthur's wife Moira, and she looked at me and at the
other two sat in the corner and shook her head with a smile.
'You are not old enough to be in here Edwin Fahey.'
'We're not buying booze, Moy.'
'Doesn't matter. All children under fourteen must be
accompanied by an adult - it's there on the sign.' She pointed
to a laminated bit of paper on the wall. 'We could, and should,
be stricter.'
I leaned into the bar,
'Come on, Moy. That's just to stop people using you as a
creche. Besides, we're all over fourteen.'

She looked puzzled.
'You aren't. Are you?' I nodded. 'Jesus, I'd hate to say what
that made me then!'
I smiled.
'Not a day over twenty-five by the looks of it, Moy.'
'Now don't push your bloody luck, lad.'
She smiled and I ordered three glasses of orange juice.
I formed my hands into a triangle to carry the drinks and
took them to a table in the corner where Phillip and Helen sat
against the wall. After placing the drinks down and handing
them out, I went to sit on the stool opposite them. Before I had
time to settle Phillip spoke,
Are you sure you want to sit there?'
I hovered above the stool and looked at him. What the fuck
was he talking about?
'I mean, back to the door. You don't want to sit with your
back to the door - first rule of drinking in a pub where no-one
knows you, Edwin.'
Fuck you, I thought, biting my lip. I stood up. Fuck you! I
didn't want to look like a fool and I definitely didn't want to
give Phillip the satisfaction of outdoing me.
'People do know me in here, Phillip. There's no need to be
scared. I was just having a little chat with Moira there - she
wanted to throw us out but I sorted it.' I sat back and winked
at Helen. She looked at the ceiling. Phillip shot back,
'Funny, she's always let me in when I've come in for my dad.'
I took the orange juice from my lips and looked straight into
his eyes as I spoke.
'Yeah, but we aren't coming in to tell someone their tea is
going cold, are we?'
There was a pause. I stared at the top of Phillip's head as he
looked into the orange juice. I mean, how dare he? The shit
house would have had us sit outside on the benches forever, but
who'd had the balls, who'd had the big fucking balls to actually
step in here first? And who mumbled about it not being a good
idea while he followed; who stepped back and let me go to the
bar? Who the fuck was Phillip to be pulling this shit now? I humiliated him. He deserved it. Helen broke the silence.
'It's sunny out. It'd be nice to sit in the beer garden.'
I was still watching Phillip. He looked up, caught my eye
and looked away before standing.
'Yeah, let's make the most of the sun.' I said and reached to
take Helen's glass of orange for her but she picked it up herself.
"I can manage, Edwin.'
We walked through the pub, the three of us. I let Helen lead
but followed her in front of Phillip.
When we got outside it was like leaving a cinema. Just those
few minutes inside had got our eyes used to darkness and we
all instinctively raised our hands to shield them. It was obvious
Helen was pissed off but at least I'd won. Still, I was sure
Phillip was playing for pity points now, keeping quiet, not
making eye contact, sipping away at his drink like some
fucking victim. We were sat in the centre of the beer garden
and the table was taking every beam the sun could throw.
"I can't sit here, I'll burn.'

I stood and walked to the table in the corner. Our table.
Helen didn't follow until Phillip had. Our table. The same table
I sat at this morning as I sealed the letters.

I sit next to the man in the donkey jacket rather than opposite
him.
'You giving me a lap dance now, pal?'
I sip my beer.
'Sorry, it's just...'
He smiles.
'What's your name?' He is looking at me from beneath huge,
white, bushy eyebrows. His eyes scan me suspiciously but his
tone is friendly. Still, there is that edge that tells me this is not
a man to be fucked with. I lie to him instinctively,
'Phillip, my name's Phillip.'
'You've no need to worry about having your back to these
men here. Not with me here anyway. Now, you fuck off round
the other side of the table. I don't even let my shadow sit this
close to me.' I hold the lip of my pint glass and squeeze onto a
stool at forty-five degrees to him. He holds out his hand,
'Tiger.' I shake it, surprised at how gentle his grip is. He
shovels a tin of tobacco out of his jacket pocket. 'You don't
look much like a Phillip.' I smile.
'You don't look much like a Tiger.'
He laughs. A laugh that seems to shake some dust free in
the bottom of his lungs and makes him cough. He takes out a
white handkerchief to cover his mouth.
'I suppose I don't.'
He arranges his Rizlas, tobacco and filters on the table and
beings to roll a cigarette.
'Phillip? You spell that with two Is or one then?' I'm
flummoxed for a second and almost take out the letter to check.
I guess at two and he nods his head. 'Fine name, Phillip. I've
always been interested in anthroponomy.' I have no idea what
he means. The word seems quite natural coming from his lips,
despite his worn face, his flat nose. I have no idea what he's
talking about.
'What's that?'
He responds quickly, almost excited,
'Good. That's one test passed with flying colours. Nothing
worse than an idiot that sits and nods 'cause they are too
afraid they'll look stupid asking a question. I mean, what could
ever be stupid about asking a question? Wanting to find
something out?'
I'm slightly embarrassed by how much this compliment
pleases me.
'Nothing.'
'Nothing. Dead right. Nothing wrong with not knowing an
answer as long as you then try to get to know the answer.
Anthroponomy is the study of names, where they come from,
what they mean. I read a lot about it at a certain time of my
life and you give me a name I can, for most, tell you what it
means. I think it was being born with such a strange old
handle myself, no?' I nod. 'Well, Phillip. If I'm not mistaken,
Phillip means 'Lover of horses'. Did you know that?' I shake
my head. He licks the edge of the Rizla sheet and pushes the
cigarette into shape. 'You like the gee-gees then?'
I shrug.
'Take them or leave them.'
'Aye. Sport of kings they call it. Boring as fuck is what I say.'
He finishes the cigarette with a pinch sliding from one end
to the other, a delicacy that seems at odds with his bent fingers
and big hands. He doesn't look at me while he speaks.
'That's the thing, pal. You've got your reputation. You
know, the things that people say about you, your roots, your
anthroponomy. And then you've got your truth. Branding they
call it nowadays. Well we're all branded aren't we eh? Whether
we deserve it or not.'
Now standing, he picks up his cigarette and looks at me. I
take a sip of my beer.
'Join me for a smoke?' "I don't smoke.'
'Join me anyway.'
He stands and I follow him out of the pub.

I sat at the back of the Hog with the letters on the table in front
of me, and I thought of Phillip. I was putting the letters in the
correct envelopes and then sealing them up, one by one, careful
not to get the dirt from my hands on the clean, white paper.
Each of the letters had been torn down one side, but the
handwriting itself was neat, leaning slightly to the left as
Helen's writing always had.
I'd hopped the back wall to have somewhere private to carry
out the task. Our table in the beer garden seemed good but then
I came to Phillip's letter. He had invaded this moment too. Just
like all those years ago when, even though it was our table, he
would drag a seat over and sit with us, never leaving us alone
unless his father had sent him to the bookies. I looked at his
fucking name on that envelope. The ghost of Helen's hands
draped over both of my shoulders, her hair dipping into the
ridges of my spine and her breath in my ear. She was there, she
was watching me putting the letters in the envelopes, urging me
on. I don't care what anyone says, she was fucking there.
As I held Phillip's letter I felt her hair lift away from my neck
as if she were standing back. I sat, four fingers of each hand
around the back of the letter, my thumbs folding the top half
away from me so I might catch it in the light of the security
lamp. I read the beginning of the first line but then stopped. I
knew she was looking up in the way she did whenever she didn't
want me to go through with something, whenever she just

wanted me to stop, be quiet. I folded the letter and put it in the
envelope. I turned around to smile, to mirror her, to show I could
learn but of course, she wasn't really there. She can't be, really.

Tiger is though, standing beside me, large as life.
'So, what brings you up here, pal?'
I take another swig of my beer.
'Sorry?'

'Well you sure to fuck aren't local now. And you don't much
look like a tourist.'
'Oh, right. Work. I'm working up here.'
'Where's that then?'
'...shop fitting. I start Monday. I'm... looking for some digs.'
He ignores the fact I haven't answered his question.
'You could always try the local nick.'
He smiles. The cigarette is now the size of a 13Amp fuse
slowly disappearing in his fingers. I think to pull out the letter
and tap the edge of the envelope against my palm before
showing Tiger the address: Phillip's address.
'This place has been recommended.'
Tiger takes the letter and holds it away from him, squinting
at Helen's handwriting.
'Sure, sure. It's just round the corner from the Dragon.'
A pub?'
'No son, a mythical beast.' We laugh and he hands the letter
back to me. 'Tell you what, I'll take you there. But first you've
got to do something for me?'

I take another swig of lager, trying not to look nervous.
'Sure.'

He flicks the cigarette end across the pavement.
'Tell me your real name.'


PHILLIP

There are more strangers in the Dragon. They make the place
hum and vibrate differently. Because of them, the air moves
about the place in a peculiar way and they catch in the corner of
your eye like spectres. But it is we regulars who haunt the place.
We ignore them, the strangers. We are not aggressive, nor do
we look over them or up and down, we just pass right through
them. That is our right. If they engage us in conversation we
can choose whether or not we wish to become fully engaged.
We can even choose to pretend to listen. This is our world after
all and they have let a space here for a short time. I am not
ready for strangers yet.
I think about what Sally said, the choice between the cold stars
and the warm clouds. I would go for the clouds as this brings
warmth, comfort. Once it would have been the stars every time
but now I blame them somewhat. Not in a superstitious or silly
new age fashion - this is not the romantic crossing of stars or
some horoscopic principle. Just, without the stars I doubt whether
man would ever have wondered so wild and big or whether we
would have garnered this blinding capacity for marvel.
It is true that the things of the earth cast out some curious
bait, but the stars, the heavens - that is where wonder truly
lies. Even the horizon of a straight sea seems to end or fall, the
sky dipping behind it and continuing on well past the limits of
our imagination. It is this endlessness, the impossibility of
infinity that draws us in, plucks at our arrogance. We have all
looked at the sky and thought those thoughts that perhaps we
shouldn't. Shouldn't because the answers, the real answers, are
unknowable. This pains us like little else. We will administer
any cure; yield to any relief. It is strange to think of the things
people choose to believe in. It is hardly an original idea, to
suppose that this is a search for validation. This too is true of
how we remember. Our memories allow us to reconstruct the
past, and grant us a wisdom that was never there at the time.
Some believe the act of sleeping is where such repair work is
done. That as we sleep the brain filters all of the knowledge we
have of the world, of ourselves, all of the new learning and
reconciles our memories of events with this new world by
changing them. This is why we can forgive ourselves, why we
are not perpetually ashamed: we-remember. But not me. I have
a photographic memory - it is unchangeable. True, the distance
becomes greater but the shapes don't blur. He's coming for
these memories. Is that what Edwin really wants? To remember
everything? Or perhaps Edwin just wants whatever I have. He
has always been the same. Edwin's hopefulness, enthusiasm,
cockiness - it always belied a deep, unswerving envy and
incontrovertible belief that others had been blessed with all of
the luck.

A particular example of Edwin's covetousness took place when
we were fifteen. The men that my father drank with in the
vault of the Hog had realised that the children who used to sit
outside on the benches had grown up, old enough to sit in the
beer garden and drink orange juice. For months we spent every
Saturday there. The whole summer was like that, the three of
us in our perfect little hideaway, unaware of how wrong each
of our naive beliefs could be.
One afternoon, Edwin and I were summoned to the vault in
the Hog. Edwin was agog, obviously in awe of the place. I
couldn't understand it then, I had been in the vault many
times, usually on my mother's behalf if my father was late for
dinner. Edwin flashed a look of pure hatred toward me as I
turned down the offer of a pint and a seat at the table.
We were to go to the bookmakers around the corner to put
the bets on. Apparently, there was no point in one of the men
doing it with a couple of young fit lads to call on. And if we
did it right, there might be a treat in it for us.
That's when the problems started. The bets confused Edwin.
The tax, the SP, who had put a deuce on the nose, who had
given a flag for a yankee, he just couldn't keep up. But I could.
I was like a machine. Whenever I entered the vault the men
would cheer. Dad would hand me the betting slips and the
variety of notes and coins from each of the men. I would
photograph in my mind what I'd been given, record the audio,
save it cleanly into my memory so that I could recall it
perfectly when I reached the bookmakers. I'd keep track
without writing a thing down and still bring back the correct
change. Soon the men only asked for me.
It had always been my gift - this memory of mine. In school
I was allowed to get on with my own work as I had finished
everything. In my GGSE year I was doing my A-Levels, as well
as retaking some exams I'd already passed in order to contrive
the school's results. Universities up and down the country
were throwing themselves at me but I wanted to wait.
In the vault, I was simply applying my gift to this particular
errand. My genius status in the mind of the men was sealed.
My father was proud of me.
But it wasn't for his acceptance that I carried out the
errands to such a high standard. I must admit that I excelled
mainly to rub Edwin's nose in it. My witnessing him crumble
only spurred me on to humiliate him further, to show the men
how much better I was than Humphrey Fahey's boy as if this
would somehow find its way out into the beer garden where
Helen and Edwin sat together.

The door swings hard and fast and Old John stumbles into the
Dragon smacking his lips.
'Oh shit, here comes Paul Newman, like.'
Stag takes another slurp of Guinness and soaks up the
knowing looks around the bar. Old John's entrance was the cue
for this - another of Stag's catchphrases. I've only just put
another pint of dark to my lips, but I sprinkle a little more
change into Sally's palm,
'Sally, get John a 'Bow.'
Old John skips over to the bar and winks me a thanks. He
never has money for the first pint and so someone always has
to start him on his way. It's usually me.
'Cheers son, I'll get you one later.'
This never happens. Old John never manages to stretch his
pockets that far but I keep up the pretence.
'I'll have a dark when you're ready, John.'
Helping Old John out like this makes me feel good. It's not
something I feel lot of the time. It's probably patronising of
me, perhaps a little condescending treating Old John like
charity but I am past caring about that. I used to think about
whether this is a purely selfish act, about whether Old John's
pleasure is in fact secondary to mine - about whether my
pleasure could exist without his, or even whether the pleasure I
take from the exchange is built upon some terrible desperation
in him, that this was almost an act of sadism or some
accentuated schadenfreude. Such thinking is enough to make a
man miserable. For too long I worked to the system that every
consideration had to be made before any decision could be
reached. I now try to do what I feel is right more and more. It
is a wholly selfish doctrine on the outside but I believe it has
helped me become a better person.
Old John on the other hand lives on his wits. Cider and
wits. His skin looks like cold sausage and he is already
sweating in a suit with shiny knees and elbows, and scuffed,
patent leather brogues.
Downing a quarter of his pint straight off, he sucks the
inside of his teeth and takes a seat in the archway below the
TV. Here he can watch the two students play, work out when to
step in and educate them. He is a good player. It is said he was
great once, but his hustle is poor. He doesn't bother losing
enough games to really raise the stakes, doesn't really think
long term enough to take a huge roll of notes, just the peel of
change in his pocket.
I have analysed him for many years now and the method he
relies on is bipartite: that those around the table will think he's
too drunk to play; and that once they have been beaten they
will be too proud to allow an old drunk to get the better of
them. This is an efficient method, reliant on vanity and pride truly
universal human traits. And it would be a successful one
if he could quieten his excitement and keep his mouth shut.
After watching the students play two or three shots in their
own game, he makes his first move, placing a marker down on
the edge of the table. He begins talking to them. They laugh as
they play, their mockery of Old John clear to all despite how
clever they think they are being at keeping the joke between
them. Even Old John, in fact especially Old John, knows
exactly what they are doing and it's a sign that they are going
to be an easy take. They are already underestimating him.
He's giving them the life story routine. I've heard Old John's
life story hundreds of times, each time with an added chapter,
the facts shifting, names changing, memory repositioning.

"I live alone boys. Aye, it's true, you can't live with them
eh? The wife? Oh, she'd left before you two had had your first
wet dreams! I know what you're thinking, he's a drunk...' Oh
he knows he's a drunk, a pisspot, he's well aware of that. But
it's her fault so he does it to remind her of what she's done. He
could dry out tomorrow. No danger. But this he loves. A game
with the lads - communicating. He doesn't need the money,
nah, made a fortune a few years back in a big property deal.
Pissed a lot of it away admittedly but still got plenty left to live
proper. This get up? Let him tell you something. You catch him
in the afternoon and he'll be dressed smart: nice dickie dirt,
nice pair of strides, blazer. He's usually taking some tart out
for lunch. Not your Wetherspoons' two for one though, none of
them eat all you can buffets - proper lunch in a nice little
Italian or something. Or Indian. But not Chinese. Robbing
bastards they are. Thieves. He'll have met her at the bingo.
You been down the bingo son? Oh, you have to get down there.
Not like you imagined it, not like it used to be. You can get a
nice bit of grub down there too now - decent. And the tarts!
Jucking Fesus! All your blue rinses and that are a thing of the
past, sunshine. Tasty, proper tasty. So he'll have picked one
up, if it's a weekend take her to a show, the casino, hotel never
back to the gaff, if you're going to take one piece of
advice off Old John it's never shit on you own doorstep! No,
no, seriously, he's too much of a gentleman, really. Yeah. Far
too nice. That's his downfall see. (That was a fluke wasn't it?
Give over! Eh, some player on the side you son, some player).
Take the Ex for instance. Met her at school. Childhood
sweetheart. But if there is one lie, one dirty big fuck off lie it's:
'for better and for worse'. Oh, she loved him on the way up.
He grafted son, grafted hard but he always had... what do you
call it... insight. Yeah, he ducked, he dived, you name the game
he's played it, and when he was coining it in - when they had
a nice detached house, two cars, and the kids were getting
everything they wanted for Christmas, no complaints then. No
fucking injunction then. No, he's sorry boys, it's just... Not
seen the kids for... You'll have to excuse him. She stole the
babes from his arms the bitch.
I stand and make my way to the Smoking Den for another
cigarette. Outside, I strike another match and my hands glow
red where I cup the flame. The light fades to orange and yellow
toward my fingertips. It makes them look like Old John's stained
with a life lived. When I blow out the flame, my hands
go back to being....

My father has been a bricklayer his whole life and has hands
calloused and raw. So much so that when we shook hands, the
day I left home, I still felt like a little boy.
He had taken me for a drink with the men in the Hog to
send me off. I no longer saw Edwin even though we still lived
on the Avenue, and Helen was gone. My father and his friends
sat in the vault and talked about horse racing. I knew little
about it other than the mechanics of betting but was old
enough to appreciate listening to the men talk.
For a long time, I'd hated it in there, hated the men, but as I
grew older I realised they were as good as men can be. They
refused to let me buy a drink. Instead they brought pint after
pint back from the bar and shared their cigarettes with me.
And of course, they handed out advice. My father especially.
He told me I wasn't to feel bad about moving away. That
everyone knew it had nothing to do with what had happened
with Helen. That I had to go where the opportunities were and
that he was proud of me. That life was one big shit sandwich
and the more bread you had, the less shit you had to eat.
I was asked to take the men's bets around to the bookmakers one last time. It was treated as the lowering of the flag.
On the way out I noticed two cars parked outside the Hog.
They were packed up with food, and party decorations, both
boots open like panting dogs. I turned left - through the pub
car park and past the new houses that had been built next to
the shops. The shops were a small row consisting of a late
opening Spar, a Chinese chip-shop called the Golden Boar, and
at the end the bookmakers with a hair salon above it. As I
entered the bookmakers, the girl behind the counter spoke.
'You slaving for them lazy bastards again, Phillip?'
'Hello, Lindsey.'
Then the same old joke.
'It's illegal you know? You're underage.'
But this time with a different punchline,
'No, I'm eighteen now...'
She stuck out her bottom lip and raised a razored eye-brow.
'Oh. Right. Big boy now is it?'
Lindsay Collier was a real girl. Twenty-four years old. I was
terrified of her. She counted out the bets, using a finger to play
with a strand of hair that tumbled from the red perm that sat
on her head. Her foundation smudged into the natural colour
of her neck and a large chain with Hebrew lettering rested on
the breasts stretching her uniform. She checked the bets off,
priced them, and then walked to the back of the shop. From
the other side of the glass, she watched me watching her as she
bent over in her beige jodhpurs. I left the bookmakers dizzy.
On my way back to the Hog, I paused on the way in. Two
women, both in their mid-to-late thirties, were rushing about
the cars I'd noticed earlier and loading up their arms. I asked if
they needed a hand and they passed me two trays of sausage
rolls wrapped in tin foil. They led the way inside and I followed.
As they turned to walk all the way through the bar again I
shouted for them to stop, as I knew another entrance. This
time they followed me, over to the toilets and then through a
staff door. I knew the entrance from previous exploration, a
painful event that branded my mind more than most memories.
I led them upstairs and into the wide, square reception room.
'Well if we'd known about this... in and out of that pub like
a pair of bleeding lemons.'
The chairs and tables had been set out around the perimeter
of the room and four wallpaper-pasting tables were stood along
the far edge with paper tablecloths disguising their humble
origins. I placed the trays on the table and took a throatful of
the savoury smell through the foil wrapping. One of the
women, large with shocking orange hair, said I could take one
if I wanted but I declined her offer. The other woman, slighter
with bleached blonde hair, huffed and sat on a stool. She
looked at me a while and asked if I was Steve Fitton's son. I
told her I was and she said I was the spit out of his gob.

I take the cigarette from my lips. The final draw leaves a
millimetre of paper before the cork. I pitch it into the sand
bucket and head back inside.
The smell of outside trails behind me as I take my place
back at the bar. I might need a piss soon but think to hold on
for at least one more pint. Maybe even two. That would equal
my five-pint record. Stag pushes his glasses up his nose.

"I expected a few more in tonight, Phillip.'
I nod.

'Yeah. Is a bit empty for a Friday.'
'Fast Eddie's already at it. Just six-balled the one lad there.'
I look over to the pool table. One of students is stood in the
corner with arms folded. His friend is racking up the balls,
switching the reds and yellows about quickly in order to appear
the practised professional. Old John has just chalked up. His
mouth still flaps and I can see the money has doubled, a pound
on each pocket.

'He needs to lose this one,' I say. 'Then double or quits.'
Stag nods.

'But he won't, like.' I take a grim sip toward the end of my
dark, as Stag continues, 'He'll win this, that's three pints of
cider, and they won't play him again. So don't be building your
hopes up for getting a drink back!' Stag nods at my dark and
laughs. 'You're no better than him, Phillip. Can't see past the
end of your own bloody nose.'
My expression relays my confusion. Stag is famous for his
lectures, infamous for telling people how their lives should be
lived, but with this one I can't see where he is going. This
could mean one of three things: Either Stag has something truly
original and thought-provoking to say; is so far wide of the
mark that it would be impossible to second guess him; or he is
just talking the usual rubbish. He takes my expression as the
cue to explain himself.
'No offence intended, like, but. It's like when you buy him a
drink, Phillip. You are just perpetuating the cycle. You think
you're giving him a hand, but all your doing is putting down
the first move on the board that leads to this here...'
Stag holds out a hand as Old John smashes in two in from
the break. He goes on to pot another two and then leave the
student snookered with all seven of his yellows still on the
table. As the students put their heads together to find a way
out of the snooker, Old John begins to speak again. We all
know what he is saying:
'Cos I used to be a pool champion round here you know? Down
at the Old Rules Club. Used to get them all in - Parrott, White,
Higgins. Ah, the night Higgins came down. It was Jimmy White's
actually; it was his night - exhibition show. He was a real gent.
Played everyone in the room, did trick shots, told some stories
about his days in the clubs and some gossip off the circuit. Told
everyone that clubs like this was where you met real people. We all
drank to that. Anyway, half way through the night he says 'Gents,
if you don't mind, I've brought a good friend of mine along. I hope
you make him as welcome as you've all made me' and there, out
from behind the bar comes Alex Higgins. In a fuck off big fedora!'
The student escapes the snooker but Old John hits back with
a pot that lifts a pair of reds from the cushion. It is going to be
another easy win and just six pounds in the pocket.
'People like Old John are creatures of habit, Phillip.
They live patterns. It might look like a bloody crazy pattern to
us lot but there is a pattern. It's that OCD, like. Certain steps
have to be made before they can go onto the next one. Take
that step out of the way - buying him a pint - and he wouldn't
be doing this.' Old John rolls in the black. 'Think on in future.
Don't buy him a drink, Phillip.'
"I thought...'
'Well you thought wrong, didn't you?'

I was fifteen. It was an ordinary Saturday afternoon. I was
restless after the usual trip to the bookmakers and I decided to
go for a wander around the pub, to explore if you will, to
discover. The walk upstairs was a cautious one, a little nut of
fear being ground in the back of my jaw. I opened the door that
led into the main room and looked around. Sunlight sliding
through the windows lit up the dust that had been kicked
around the night before - party poppers and cigarette butts still
littered the floor. I took a stool from one of the tables by the
window and headed over towards a small raised area that was
used for mobile discos and speeches. Then I sat on the stool
and looked around the empty room.
I thought of the emotions that had soaked into the wallpaper
like tobacco smoke - the love, fear, joy, anger, regret, jealously
grief, loss, and jubilation; the grudges held, and hatchets
buried. I thought of the teenage cousins chasing each other
around the room and being told to stop by their parents; the
old uncles dancing with young nieces balanced on their toes. I
was lost in a world of people but when I opened my eyes the
room was still, and I was alone.
As I headed back towards the stairs I heard someone
approach. The noisy voices of the cleaning staff, ready to prepare
the room for whatever occasion that night held. Unable to go
back the way I came, I panicked and headed for the fire exit. I
pushed the bar on the fire door and, as quietly as I could, closed
it behind me. I was outside at the top of the pub on a metal
staircase that zigzagged down one side. I could see the benches
around the front of the pub where we used to sit. I could see the
flat roofs of the various annexes to the pub downstairs, the roof
of the nursery through the trees to my right wobbling in the heat.
And I could see over into the beer garden where Edwin and
Helen sat at our table beneath the parasol.
While walking down the fire escape I noticed something on
the roof of the small extension around the back of the pub that
housed the kitchens. I carefully clambered over the banister of
the fire escape and lowered myself onto the flat roof. There,
among the stones scattered across the pitch, was a trainer.
I picked the trainer up and examined it. It had mostly rotted
away through its exposure to the elements but I instantly
recognised it. It was Brian O'Reilly's. The one from years before
that had left his left foot bare and dangling after he was run over.
The force of the accident must have tossed it onto the pub roof.
I put the trainer underneath my tee shirt and ran down the
fire escape. I raced around to the front of the pub and the
benches, through the front door, and back through the pub
until I was in the beer garden again.
Wait until Edwin and Helen saw what I had found!
I could see their legs beneath the angled parasol and crept
up to surprise them. I tiptoed over hoping that the cast of my
shadow wouldn't give me away, and lifted the parasol to
present the trainer with a flourish.
Edwin and Helen parted suddenly. They had been kissing.
Edwin seemed embarrassed but hid it well with fury.
'What the fuck is wrong with you Phillip? Are you a fucking
headcase? Are you fucking radio?'
Edwin looked at Helen to check if she was alright. I opened
my mouth to say sorry but nothing would come. I still had the
trainer held out in front of me.
'I thought...'
'Well you thought wrong, didn't you?'

I drain my dark and signal for another to Sally.
And a Guinness, for Stag, please.'
Stag raises his still half-full glass.
'I'm alright thanks Phillip.'
"I know. I'm just trying to curse you too.'

Stag smiles. He looks at me. Then he laughs. I don't. I stare
him down and the crackle around my ears tells me she is here
with me and the heat, the embarrassment, and the fury.
'Fuck me, Phillip. It was just an observation, like.'
Sally passes me a full glass of dark and I gulp it heavily
down to half. Stag waves Sally away from the Guinness pump.
I begin to laugh. I hit my leg. I raise my glass.
'Only winding you up, Stag.'
He smiles too.
Almost had me then you bastard! Lucky I didn't fill you in!'
We laugh together and both know we are lying. Sally begins
to laugh, Mitch too. All the regulars laugh with relief more
than anything. That's what binds we regulars together, the
knowledge that everyone in here has a secret to hide, and a life
outside the pub doors that we try to wipe off on the mat on the
way in.


Avenue

Daniel & Sue Tilt, Number 24

'I told you last night/
'When?'
'Before you went to your meeting.'
'Sue, you know I'm not the best before meetings. I... I'm in
the zone.'
'Did you even read the letter from school?'
'They're fifteen year old boys Sue, it's just what fifteen year
old boys get up to.'
'Murder?'
'What!?'
"I knew it. You had no idea there was a letter did you?'

'Sue. I'm...'
'You're a lazy twat, Daniel. A fat lazy twat.'
Sue Tilt stormed out of the bedroom and into the bathroom to
brush the bad taste from her mouth. It was unreasonable to
expect Daniel to have seen the letter, the letter had only arrived
that morning, but the end of the line was now so close that reason
meant nothing. Guilt was the only thing keeping her there.
The letter was now on top of the cistern in a non-descript
envelope, handwritten and hand-delivered - it was the only way
the school could get anything past the Twins. Sue had recognised
it straight away - she was something of a collector: truancy,
smoking, bullying, swearing at a teacher, vandalism, theft from
the school vending machine, even arson when the Twins set
Spencer from down the road's gnomes on fire. Quite what that
incident had to do with the school was anyone's guess but the
school always still wrote a letter.
'Sue. Come on, Sue...'
Her husband, Daniel was now outside the bathroom door
trying to talk her around. He had tried every trick in the books
he'd read since he was made redundant two and a-halfyears
ago. At the moment, Daniel was flirting with socialism and had
fell in with the local chapter of the Socialist Workers Party. For
Sue, it was nonsense. She'd met a couple of his new party
friends when he'd brought them over for tea one evening. They
were nice enough, talked of social justice, identity cards, and
how the recent ASBO for the Twins was just another example of
the slow march toward a police state. In fact, the politics she had
time for, it was the hypocrisy she couldn't stand. Nobody she'd
met in the Socialist Workers Party had a job.
'...Is it really...?'
Sue shot mouthwash through pursed lips and spat,
'No Daniel. Your sons aren't murderers. Yet.'
In truth, she had no idea what the letter said. She couldn't
face opening the thing. His response was drowned in a blast of
cold water as she wiped her mouth on one of the folded towels.
The champagne bathroom suite had lost its sparkle. Sue had
been talking about redecorating for years but now all that had to
be put on hold until Daniel found another job. In the mirror Sue
saw that it wasn't just the house that was showing signs of wear
and tear. Her yellow hair was looking stiff and thin from years of
bleaching; her blue eyes were ringed with ever deepening lines.
She was still pretty though. Despite everything they'd done to
her, she was still pretty.
'Sue. Sue. I know I should. I know, you think I should be. But
we are a very... Sue. There has to be a greater good issue here.
An almost utilitarian mindset'
Sue opened the bathroom door. She smiled. Daniel smiled.
'Get fucked, Daniel.'
She whipped past him and pounded the stairs as heavily as
her slight frame would allow. He really loved her. Really. If only
she could under stand... there was more to him than being a
team-leader. He wasn't lazy. She thought he was, he knew that
but... he needed to make a difference.
It came to him just after the boys had been born. He insisted
that Sue had a water birth - everything he'd read pointed
toward this being the best way for his sons to be brought into the
world. He'd also asked that they know the sex of the twins,
against Sue's wishes, so that he could prepare properly and
focus his research.
When the day arrived, he took up position behind Sue as she
pushed and swore. She was laying into him for wearing his
Speedos, which he thought was simply the most practical way to go
about this birth-pooling idea. To be honest, he'd gone off the idea in
the last few weeks before the birth and had only gone through with
it because it had taken him three months to persuade Sue.

As she pushed, he spoke to her, ignoring the rants, the oaths,
the occasional bite into the flesh of his arm. This was going to be
the most incredible day of his life, he was going to bear witness
to the life, to the lives he had created being born into the world.
He felt like God. As Sue gave another push, she shat herself.
The nurses ignored it, encouraging her, and surreptitiously
scooping out the offensive material. Daniel couldn't. First there
was the smell. It was foul, fresh shit. What had she been eating?
As Sue began to howl again, one nurse growing more excited as
she could see the first of the heads appear, Daniel turned away to
smile at the other nurse and was confronted with a piece of paper
with his wife's fresh turd marooned along the centre-crease.
Immediately he gagged. He signalled to the midwife to grab his
wife, pointing to his cheeks as if they were full of vomit. The
midwife grabbed Sue and Daniel ran upstairs, vomiting violently
for at least fifteen minutes. He then stayed a while longer,
convinced there was more vomit to come. When he eventually
returned downstairs, the boys were already in their mother's arms.
For months he was depressed, years later still unable to really
engage with the twins. But the more he thought about what had
happened, the more he believed there had to be a message.
One day, just after conducting a back to work interview with
a particularly accident prone temp, it came to him: it was
symbolic. He had missed the birth of his sons because of the
shit that surrounded him, if he could get rid of that shit, he could
be a real father.
The shit, it turned out, was his shit job. He took voluntary
redundancy (although of course as far as Sue was concerned, there
was nothing voluntary about it.) He set about bettering himself. He
knew the boys were a problem but the best example he could set
for them was to re-educate himself, pass that knowledge onto
them, help them become self-aware, self-governing, self-sufficient
human beings. In fact, Daniel winced as his wife screamed,
'Right you two little bleeders, inspection!'
At thirty-three now Sue could still get in the same jeans she
wore at twenty-three. This was a fact she was fiercely proud of
but one she had worked hard for. She'd done it all, aerobics, step
aerobics, boxercise, pilates, power yoga, body pump, but since
she'd had to go full time at the Spar she'd had to put all that on
hold. Luckily for Daniel she'd still managed stay a size ten. If
she gets fat because of all this she's definitely leaving him. For
now though, she had the Twins to worry about.
'Let's have a look at you two then. Carl, tuck that chain in,
never mind 'but mam', it's inappropriate. Yes, I know your dad
told you he smoked it when he was a student but your dad was
only ever on a YTS scheme. I don't care what he's told you about
'68, think about it son - he'd have been minus two. Don't they
teach you any maths at that bleeding school?' Sue turned to the
second of the twins to arrive. Now Connor, smile... with teeth...
get rid of it. Rid! There'll be no gold teeth, fake or not. You're
going to school not to see 50 bastard Cent. Now, tell me, what
have you done this time?'
Carl and Connor looked at each other and shrugged their
shoulders in tandem. For once, they were being honest. They
hadn't done anything since the ASBO. Nothing that they could
have been caught for anyway.
'Ifyou're lying... Right. Come on, I've got to be back for work
at nine.' She shouted over her shoulders, up the stairs to the
bathroom, 'I'm off Daniel. To work.'
'See you love, I'll...' She'd already gone. He was going to tell
her that he might not be in for dinner because he was selling the
paper in the Archer Centre. It was a tough pitch the Archer
Centre; nobody there thought politics affected their lives. How
naOve! But he couldn't save them all. Daniel had realised that
during his brief flirtation with Christianity. Of course, that was
before he'd read what Marx said about religion. Not to say he
wasn't tolerant of all faiths, particularly his oppressed Muslim
brothers in Palestine. Ask anyone; he'd even stood outside Marks
and Spencer protesting for them.
That's where he first saw her. Verity. No, he hadn't done
anything with her! She was only eighteen for God's sake! And
he's married. Happily married with two children he adores.
Come on, he had many faults but he wasn't some kind of pervert
or love rat! Not to say Verity wasn't attractive, in that somewhat
gothic sort of way. He wanted to mentor her, that's all. She was
so full of fire and anger, he wanted to channel that energy into
something constructive. She could be his saving grace, his reason
for living. I mean, not that his family wasn't his reason for living
- he'd do anything for them, even die for them... well... but
when he first saw Verity he could see her turmoil in the black
lipstick and striped tights, the dead icons she wore on those
tight, tight t-shirts - it was a turmoil he could lay his hands on.
He could save her. He turned the shower on.
The twins rode just ahead of their mother on their mountain
bikes. The school was only around the corner so she should be
back in plenty of time. It was one blessing of the new school day.
Since September, the school had begun to start at eight rather
than nine, finishing an hour earlier as well. Apparently the
pupils learnt more in the morning. However, it meant that Carl
and Connor had an extra hour to get into trouble after school
and, about that, Sue wasn't best pleased.
As they walked down the Avenue, Sue noticed a skip outside
the house the Murray's used to live in. The house had been left
untouched for, must be, ten years. Sue didn't know it had even
been put on the market and she likes to keep abreast of
developments in local property. She for one wasn't against the
new flats being built on the old nursery grounds - if anything a
better class of young executive coming to the area would drive up
the prices that were beginning to stall. Their house had trebled.
She used to beam about it. She didn't think on that so had

everyone else's.
Someone was obviously doing up the Murrays. And a good
thing too - nothing worse for a street than a derelict house. And
just like the nosey, interfering sods on this Avenue some cheeky
bastard had already thrown a load of old tools and what looked
like a half-eaten bacon sandwich in the skip. You can't have
anything of your own around here, she thought, be it your
business or a bloody skip.
Sue remembered when the girl, Helen, went missing. The
reports in the local papers said they never found her body, just
her nightdress, torn and muddy by the canal. The young Fahey
lad was the main suspect but Sue was sure it had more to do
with that Steve Fitton's lad - there was just something about him
she could never put her finger on. She was just glad the twins
were too young to remember all that.
Maybe that's what she did wrong, maybe she was too
protective and they were just rebelling? Maybe it was natural
like Daniel said? Was she too melodramatic? Did she overreact?
When they'd just moved onto the Avenue, young newlyweds in
their first family home, a local boy was killed on his bike. She
swore that she'd never let her children have bikes because of it, so
what did the twins do when every birthday and Christmas
request was denied them? Stole bikes from the local kids. Sue
couldn't win.
As they reached the school gates the headmaster was waiting
at the entrance welcoming the children in.
'Connor, Carl, Mrs Tilt. Good to see you.'
'Morning, Mr Ingham. Come on boys, say good morning.'
The Twins shrugged and mumbled a hello before wheeling
their bikes over to the bike sheds. Mr Ingham was the new Head
and had been quite supportive of the boys. He was always
talking about inclusion at their exclusion meetings. Sue just
wanted to get out of there before he mentioned the letter.
But the envelope was still sealed on the cistern when Daniel
got out of the shower. He looked at it as he dried himself off and
thought about whether he should... nah, he'd promised himself he
was going to cut down on that. Instead he approached the letter.
It didn't seem like the others from school. Despite what she
thought, he did see them, just didn't want to open them.
Schools had just become another tool for the oppressor and
considering the culture he was starting to nurture in the house
he could see why the boys would naturally rebel against it. He
was seriously beginning to think about home schooling - if only
he weren't so busy.
He looked at the envelope. It wasn't even brown like the
others. The levels of deception these people would go to! And the
handwriting, almost archaic - not the usual printed sticker or
secretarial best handwriting.
Dan too had never liked school when he went - it was the
institutionalisation - although he was a shining example of the
life-long learner, a man for whom knowledge truly was the aim
of life. Knowledge and truth. So he opened the letter, and it
wasn't from the school after all.

Part Three: Nursery

EDWIN

'Come on then you wee sack of shit, get a bastard move on!'
Tiger stomps on ahead. My belly swings a little inside. We
left the Rose, just after I told him my real name. His name
really is Tiger - Tiger Thomas.
We head down the high-street. Some people double take and
whisper to friends. We pass statues, hotels, drunks and
beggars, before dipping down a steep hill and on and on and
on. We cross at a roundabout that has a war memorial in the
centre. Last year's wreaths still glow red; empty cider bottles
and cans of strong lager collect among the plastic flowers.
The high street is far behind us. No more Boots and HMV;
instead discount stores and launderettes. It sticks in my throat to
say it but at least the high street felt safe. I suddenly feel a lot less
sure of myself, not sure if what I'm doing is the right thing at all.
There is the waft of kebab houses and fresh elephant legs
are on spits. The meat looks grey. Men stand outside bookies
smoking, grey hair gone yellow. They cough and gob on the
pavement.
In the middle of all this we pass a grand theatre - a huge
thing showing some West End show that's touring. I don't get
to stop long enough to see what it is but people are already
milling around in the foyer.
I like the theatre, believe it or not. To look at me, to hear me
speak, you wouldn't say I am a regular theatregoer. Then again,
if we mean regular as in once a week - well I'm not. I loved
drama in school, was in all the school plays. I couldn't sing
much but I was an okay actor. I just loved being part of it, the
pretending. I never got serious like some did, inhabiting a part
and all that bollocks, but when I was on stage I did feel
different. I did feel like something else was in control of me. Or
at the very least, I could feel myself living.

A lot of my life has been lived like that. I have this, I
suppose you could call it, internal commentary going on all the
time. Not like that film with Will Ferrell, more like on a DVD
when you can listen to the director talk about their film and
why they did certain things, chose certain shots, an anecdote
or two about the cast. I do that with my life in my head. Right
now, as I'm walking, I'm doing it. Right here.
I'd always been too scared to ask if anyone else did it in
case I was the only one, in case it was some kind of mental
illness. But I asked Helen once.

We had just been to the cinema together, for once with no
Phillip following us. It was an out of town cinema complex like
anywhere else. The film was The Birdcage, the remake with
Robin Williams in it. It was shite but it was great to have some
time alone with Helen.
Next door to the cinema was a bowling alley. We sat in the
fast food section of the bowling alley and the conversation
stopped. To be honest, it had never started. No thoughts on
the film, no sweet nothings. It was often this way with me and
Helen; we could go hours without saying anything. I'd like to
say it was comfortable but it wasn't always. Sometimes I
would keep trying to fill the empty space but my throat would
close up and the noise I was trying to make would come out
as pure nonsense.
That time in the bowling alley though, it was comfortable. I
was just looking out down the lanes of people bowling and it
all seemed to be going in slow motion: families on a night out;
birthday lanes; young children with foam tubes in the gutters.
I looked at the kids opposite us playing arcade games rougher
groups of boys stood around watching those playing
Street Fighter or something, and asking if they could play for
winner stays on. And then it felt like the scene shifted: a bag
of chips each and a watery Coca-Cola in a tall cup. It was
crystal, as if I were stood by the door of the building just
zooming in on the pair of us.
I told Helen and she laughed. I felt embarrassed and she
reached across the table and apologised, smiling. She told me she
did it too but that she always saw herself from above, far away
from above like it was actually hard to make out whether it was
her or not. But she knew it was. I told her if I was sat in the
passenger seat of a car with the radio on I could see myself there
from the outside the windscreen. I could walk down the street
and there would be a soundtrack and a voice-over. I'd even
explain why I made certain decisions, moments after making
them, just so the people watching could understand. I asked her
'there is nobody watching is there?' And she said no.

Tiger watches me, makes sure I don't fall too far behind him.
He walks with a quick, short strides for a big man, his
shoulders rolled forwards and his head down. I pocket my
hands and try to keep up, having to do a quick skip every now
and again. He shouts back over his shoulder toward me,
'Look at the cut of you! Shite, when I was your age I was
throwing near a thousand punches a fight.'
A boxer. I should have known it. It's in the eyes, not those
huge hands. Tiger was an ex-boxer. I stop and shout after him,
anything for a rest.
'Professional?'
'What?'
'Professional? Did you fight professionally?'
At last he stops. He turns slowly, clenching and unclenching
his fists.
Aye. And sometimes just 'cause I had too.'
He's said that many times. I should tell him it is corny.
Even the clenching of his fists was rehearsed. Tiger sees
himself like I do. Like we all do.

Like this morning. The monument. The earth. My fingers
scratching at hard soil. All of it feels like I witnessed it rather
than lived it. Remembering it now I cannot see it through my
own eyes but only as someone watching my hooded figure
walking up the street toward the nursery, instead of going
home after the pub.
I passed the older houses. The people who live in these
houses fancy themselves a bit. They have names for their
houses instead of numbers - names etched onto hacks of fake
wood, or look-a-like cast-iron. They have plump company cars
on block-paved driveways. I wandered past slowly, daring
somebody notice me, but all that looked back were freshly
painted gates, and newly purchased pot plants scattered around
front patios. Even the security lamps kept their eyes shut.
The back entrance of the nursery was sealed by a temporary
steel gate, a plastic sign tied to the bars with the name
Frontline Security on it. The nursery itself was now closed, the
land it sat on worth more to the Local Authority than the
service it provided, and a developer was getting ready to knock
the place down to put up some apartments for young
professionals. There had been a campaign - the residents of the
local 'gated' community and the weirdoes of the local Socialist
Workers Party finding strange common ground - one group
fighting for the overlooked; one group fighting for their right
not to be overlooked. Fat Daniel from the top of the Avenue
was always outside with a placard whenever surveyors and
architects turned up; housewives from the old houses brought
him coffee and cakes while their husbands were out at work.
Mum told me that his wife came out and gave him a right
bollocking. I hope she's alright, Mum.
It was all useless in the end, the purchase of the nursery
went through, the children ending up in a couple of church
halls, but the bulldozers haven't turned up yet and the place
has become squatted as an unofficial youth club. Ran out of
money apparently, hence Frontline Security.
For me this was a problem. I had to use this path to get to
the dingle. Had to use the dingle to get to the canal, the canal
to the woods and so on... Why? Because of her: Helen. We had
history here.
The problem wasn't scaling the gate it was whether Frontline
Security, fat and criminal, was actually on duty. I peered
through the bars of the gate. It was pointless; the path that led
to the nursery snaked for about two hundred yards and kept
the building well out of sight. I couldn't even make out any
torches dancing around.
I gripped two bars and walked my way up the gate before
clambering over and dropping down the other side. I began to
jog down the path, picking up speed as I went. I closed my
eyes, breathed in Helen.
And here's Edwin Fahey, the fastest man on two wheels,
refusing to give in to the bends and curves of this most death
defying of courses.'
I continued to run down the path until I reached the
nursery. It is a one storey building, all boxed and flat-roofed,
and cheap. The tiles of the roof were raised in areas, guttering
had fallen with help from the hands of the local kids who had
used it to climb.
Peering through the windows, you could see the echoes of
story time and finger-painting. Some of the kids' artwork still
hung on the walls - huge heads and tiny bodies, scratches of
earth and sky with blankness in between where people and
houses and dogs and cats floated. But the tiny tables and chairs
were gone, the beanbags sold off. The rest of the walls were
covered in bad graffiti; used condoms and the roaches of joints
littered the floor. I felt sick at the sight of it. From the broken
climbing frame to the sandpit. Even the games etched onto the
floor had faded: hopscotch and spirals once raised from the
concrete in custard yellow had been chipped and kicked away. It
reminded me of how far I'd fallen. But I was about to put all that
right. In less than an hour I'd be at the monument and digging.


Tiger takes out his tin of tobacco and leans against the shutters
of a closed down greengrocer. He starts to roll another cigarette,
his eyes on the papers and baccy as he speaks.
'You like the boxing then - you're a fight fan?'
To be honest, I don't know much about the game. I'd
watched the Eubank - Benn fights when I was younger, wasted
a wrap of whiz staying up to watch the Bruno - Tyson fight but
I'm not exactly an expert.
'Love it, Tiger. The noble art.'
He smirks.
I lean against the shutters, my eyes skyward. I should have
known - the game obviously hadn't been very fair to Tiger.
Why else would he be tramping the streets and pubs of his city
in a battered old donkey jacket picking fights with a barmaid?

'Were you any good?'
He stops rolling, his eyes drawing mine to his.
'Depends on what you mean. Do you mean did I win many
fights?'
'Yeah. I suppose.'
'Well in that case, no, I wasn't very good...' He pauses for
dramatic effect; once again playing a role he has practiced a
long time, performed for many. '...I was fucking incredible.'
I turn toward him, my right shoulder making the shutters creek.
'Were you famous then?'
Aye. You might say that. Ask anyone around here about the
great Tiger Thomas and they'll be able to tell you a tale or two.
"I remember when he beat Dougie Clancy for the amateur title';
Ah, but were you there when he landed that uppercut on Billy
McCartney? The poor lad's gum-shield landed four rows back!'
Yeah. They'll all have a story to tell.'
I remember watching the lads of the local boxing club doing
their roadwork near us. Just down the road from the Hog was a
metal shack that masqueraded as a gym and some of the local
youth would go there before they got into bouncing and
pretending to keep the grounds of ex-council buildings secure.
That's unfair, some of them went on to bigger things, but nothing
was more impressive than seeing that snorting, sniffing troop
jogging in their sweats, hats and bin-bags. I turn back to Tiger,
'You must have won a few titles then?'
He straightens the cigarette in his lips again.
'You know what a Lonsdale Belt is?' That I do know. 'Well
you are in the company of one of the privileged few who have
not only won The Lonsdale Belt, but had the chance to sell up
when time's called for it'
I don't like the way this conversation is going. Back in the
Rose I could instantly tell he was on my side, but here, here is
a life I don't want to know about; could be more trouble than
it's worth. He lights his cigarette.
'Follow me.'
Tiger and I continue walking, the same shit littering the
streets as did the nursery. If this was really where Phillip has
moved to, it isn't the social leap that his father would brag
about in the Hog, particularly if I was in earshot.
We take an alleyway and I start to put it together in my head: a
broke ex-boxer who had had to sell his prized possessions to get
by, drinking alone, intimidating those who drank near him,
viciously abusing the woman who served him his drink for some
unknown crime against him. What the fuck was I doing following
him into a place like this? Was he going to rob me, kill me, worse?
We reach the back entrance to the yard of a terraced house.
Bin bags spill into the alley and the walls look sweaty. Tiger
hooks his arm over the door and pulls back a bolt.
'Come in.'
What I see shocks me almost as much as what I pulled from
the ground this morning. The whole yard is in bloom. Despite
being about fifteen foot square and completely paved, tubs and
pots of flowers and plants spill about the yard; their smell is
everywhere. I don't know the names of anything but the
colours: cerise, yellow, violet and red.
'You like the garden?'
'It's...'
'Beautiful isn't it?'
It is. It really is. Tiger's little garden fills me with a joy that
starts from my chest and grows outwards. I must be smiling
because now Tiger is smiling too, one of those smiles you know
can only breathe if you share it with someone.
'Come on inside while I grab a few things.'
I walk inside and the house too is nothing like I'd have
imagined. Clean, almost obsessively tidy with a bare,
purposefully minimal look. Two armchairs - no settee. A radio
but no television. Tiger leaves the front room, his footsteps
light as he goes upstairs.
A small doorway leads to a galley kitchen. Stainless steel
meat hooks hang and every piece of furniture is unmatched.
There are fruit and fresh vegetables on display. No bottles of

whisky, no cans.
I go back into the living room and check the walls and
shelves for biographies of boxers, grainy pictures of the old
man in younger days but the only pictures are impressive
compositions of flowers, the city, the alleyway we have just
walked down. The books on the shelves are heavy coffee table
affairs with the names of photographers and artists as foreign
to me as the plants in the yard. There are DVDs though, DVDs
with names I have read about but never seen. A projector
hangs from the plaster rose in the middle of the ceiling instead

of a light-fitting, it's focus fixed on the white chimneybreast.
Before I can explore further there is a flash. Tiger is stood in
the doorway, an old-looking camera in his hands and a satchel
looped over his left shoulder hanging at his left hip. He looks
like he could have worked for some magazine in the sixties, not
spent his time making the weight and beating other men into
unconsciousness.
'I'd offer you a drink but the light is perfect now, we have to go.'
I should ask where, remind him of where I have to be, that
time is tight for me too, but I don't care and leave through the
little yard, following behind him.

Phillip was always behind me on the nursery. We would race
down the path on our bikes, Helen waiting by the climbing
frame to wave an imaginary flag as I sailed past, hands raised
in victory. Phillip never beat me. Not once. He was always
gripping the back brake, too scared to let the momentum take
him with it. Afterwards, I would stand on the climbing frame
as Helen handed out invisible garlands and I shook fantasy
champagne over us all.
Of course, we weren't allowed on the nursery. It was
trespassing and signs reminded us of that at both the front and
rear exits. But we weren't into vandalism, the spray paint and
window smashing of the Warriors. It was just an interesting
space to rush around, a nice place to relax. We laughed a lot
there - it was the place that Phillip lost his trousers.
When I'd managed to shake off the shame that the neglect of
the nursery brought out in me, I went for a look around the
grounds. I walked up the path to the fence by the Dingle. I
could still see us peddling away across the grass, Phillip's
trousers flapping behind. I could see the policemen searching
the pockets of the trousers for clues when all they had to check
was Phillip's name stitched into them.
I smiled as I ran my fingers over the fence. The chicken wire
was still sharp at the ends, the beginnings of the dingle a
meaty purple in the darkness on the other side. But once again
the colours changed as they had outside the pub; the whole
scene seemed to bleed in around me. The light shifted, the air
warmed to that of childhood summers and there by the
climbing frame I saw us, all three, with Helen in the middle
and me and Phillip sat listening. We had no idea that one of
the women who lived in the older houses the nursery backed
onto had called the police, no doubt telling them some young
hoodlums were vandalising the place. I did though. Stood
watching this past scene unfold, I knew that the police had
pulled up silently at the front entrance, creeping out of their
car as if they were after a dangerous escapee rather than three
twelve-year-olds. I tried to call out to them, to us, but in the
scene all were entranced by Helen's story. I wanted to warn us,
give us time but I was watching a moving picture. I was not
really there - I could not, I cannot change what happened.
And then this young Helen stopped telling her story, her
eyes fixed on an object in the distance. Me. She could see me!
Her eyes settled on me for a few brief seconds and I began to
walk towards the image, the walk becoming a run as I reached
out toward the climbing frame thinking maybe, just maybe...
The image disintegrated and I was back on the derelict site.
I tried to conjure up that scene again, tried to remember the
story she told that day but I couldn't. Because the morning
after Helen disappeared it felt like all the details had been
rubbed out and all I was left with was an outline of the girl I
loved. It was wrong, fucking unfair - I could remember hardly
anything she had done, anything she had said, just her
presence there. I know she was incredible. That much I know
for sure, but the incredible things she did and said and
dreamed and planned... for ten years they left me. Some details
have come back since the arms of her ghost wrapped
themselves around me and took me to the monument to find
what I found but there is so much I don't remember, that I no
longer know. All I remembered was the Pike - that was
something I couldn't rid myself of.
Phillip can remember everything though. Any lie, he'd be able
to trip you up on it, any promise made he could call in, and so I
know he can fill in the gaps of Helen. And if he won't, I'll kill him.


PHILLIP

All night I've been trying to catch a glimpse of what the book is,
see if I can use this data to infer a life for him, but the low light
striking the dust jacket obscures the title. It is one of those onesize-fits-all
laminate covers, the kind that cover books from
libraries. He is definitely a student. I saw hundreds like him
during my time there - curly hair grown out a little; goatee;
gaunt; blazer; tee shirt; cords; Converse. There were his sort
and the other sort. His sort annoyed me most because they were
a cliche of non-conformity. To look at me I would seem to be
confirming to every notion you might have about someone with
my background, my education, my job. I am unremarkable
looking - shirts, jeans, jackets and boots. But I know I am much
less normal than this boy with the paperback.
His sort you would see pouring out of the arts building.
Loud and phoney. In the bars, for the brief time I frequented
them, they would toss copies of fashionable books onto tables
like flash mobile phones today. Look at him. The way he walks
over to the bar showing not a bit of self-consciousness, but
secretly dripping with it. This is a dark pub. A bitter pub. Stop
trying to fit in with us, lad - you are one of that sort.
That was how they were. It was how I saw them. And it
dawns on me that he is only doing what I too have done here he's
finding authenticity. My judgement of people is becoming
more and more narrow. For one who does not associate with
the frills and gilding of life, the trends and canon of cool, I
have become extremely image conscious and quick to mistrust
upon a simple look. This is not just my fault - if the only
evidence a person can give me of their make up is their makeup
how can I be blamed? Why should I look past the edges of
people? But I analyse this boy and there is an anomaly: if he is
that sort I would be able to see the book he is reading. He
would make sure of it.
'Phillip. Phillip!' Stag, in some ridiculous stage whisper. He
pushes his glasses up his nose again, this time for exaggerated
inconspicuousness. 'There a problem there, mate?' He has
called me mate. He never calls me mate.
'What?'
He flicks his head back toward the boy with the paperback.
'Student Grant, there. You want to do him?'
'Fucking hell, Stag - no!'
Stag looks hurt. Offended. Quietened. He waits a few
seconds and then
'Well you were staring at him a long time, like.'
I sip my dark.
T wasn't.'
'You were.'
I snap back far too quickly that
'I was not fucking looking at him, Stag.'
Sally has noticed. Mitch has placed his newspaper down to
signal that he too has noticed. But the boy with the paperback
hasn't moved.
I glance over at him again and quickly back to my pint. I
should go over and make sure he hasn't taken offence. I have
been unfair and he has every right to be angry with me. But he
still doesn't move.
Perhaps he didn't notice after all? Old John didn't, and
neither did the girl counting out her change on the table. She is
still doing it, piling up her smash into columns and levelling
them. But then, those two are monomaniacal - they wouldn't
notice. I know how they feel.
I'm almost about to apologise to the boy but then she walks
in. She heads straight for him and he puts his book into a
small, canvas knapsack from which he takes a tin of tobacco.
She kisses his cheek and he moves around the table to let her
sit in the warmth. She takes off her thick-framed glasses and
gives them a wipe with the sleeve of her jumper. It is chewed
and frayed at the cuff and, as she crosses her legs, the flat shoe
on her left foot slips away from the heel. He begins to roll a
cigarette. I sit back down.
She always appears like this. Her face is long and delicate, a
prominent, straight nose and full lips. Her hair is held away
from her face with two hair-clips - short but growing into curls
about her ears.
'Sorry. Sorry, Stag. I've got things on my mind.'
Stag shifts around on his stool and pulls his best avuncular face.
'Well you can talk to me about it, Phillip. I've told you, I'm
a good listener.'
I smile.
'Thanks, Stag.'
'That's what friends are for.'
Friends. It makes me jolt a little. Perhaps they are, these
people, perhaps they are my friends. For so long I have existed
without even contemplating that I might have friends.

Edwin and Helen were my friends. We looked out for each other.
Like the time the Police came for us on the nursery. It was most
peculiar. Helen had been telling one of her stories - The Boy
With A Rose - and she just stopped. We had never heard the
story before so both Edwin and I wanted her to go on, lifting our
heads from the cut grass we rolled in our fingers to look at her in
the eye. She was staring up the nursery track at something,
almost like an animal does as if it can see something that you
cannot. Edwin must have felt as unsettled as I did for he reached
out and touched Helen's shoulder, saying nothing. Helen broke
from her trance and simply said that we were in trouble.
Both Phillip and I stood and began to look about for signs of
"^ At first, we both assumed she meant the Warriors.
Then we saw the Police car beyond
. He shushed his lips
mounting his bike and
We rode quietly back up the path that had been our
racetrack, hoping not to alert the officer that had begun to
make his way in through the front entrance. However, when I looked back over my shoulder and past Helen, the policeman
was just strolling up the path smiling.
When we turned the corner for the rear entrance we realised
why. Another policeman was waiting for us. We were trapped.
Although we hadn't been doing anything especially illegal, no
vandalism or drinking or any of the things we knew went on in
the nursery grounds after dark, at that age, and in our area, a
policeman was still a frightening prospect.
The officers began to make their way toward us from both
sides. They were still a good two hundred meters away but
they could see us, and one of them already had his radio
pressed to his lips.
I looked at Helen and Edwin. I knew we were in real trouble
now, but Edwin seemed to be enjoying it. You could almost see
the adrenaline surge through him as he raised first his own
bike and then mine above his head and threw them over the
chicken-wire fence that separated the nursery grounds from the
fields of the dingle behind. Then he shouted it,
'Come on then you fucking pigs!'
All I could imagine was all of us being taken home to our
houses on the Avenue, the neighbours looking on and our
parents shame-faced. I saw my mother and father arguing about
whose fault it was and my father slamming out of the door to go
to the Hog. I could see my grandmother's face, disappointed.
Edwin turned to Helen, his hands cupped to boost her over
the fence. She stepped into them, launching herself over and
rolling onto the other side. They caught each other's eyes and I
could see she was just as excited as him. Edwin then clasped his
hands for me, but I mirrored, cupping my own hands for him to
step into. To this day I don't know if it was pride, stupidity, or
mistrust that made me do it, but Edwin took the boost and
landed on the other side of the fence with Helen and the bikes.
The police were really closing in now, the possibility of our
escape triggering something of a worried jog that became an
embarrassed sprint. Helen had mounted Edwin's bike, holding
my bike for me as I struggled to climb the fence. I looped one
leg over, using my hands to spare the pain of straddling the
wire, and as I toppled over, one of my trouser legs caught on
the fence and I dangled helplessly.
Edwin began to help to free me, both his and Helen's pleas
punctuated with juvenile laughter. Looking back, I can see the
slapstick hilarity of it but at the time I was simply choosing
between two terrors - the terror of capture and simple
humiliation. Even then I knew that the wrath of my parents,
and the disappointment of my grandmother would only last a
few days but Helen and Edwin would laugh about this for years
to come. Still, the sight of the policemen closing in, now
actually shouting at us, had me act with irrational haste and I
landed on the ground of the dingle trouserless.
Edwin was on my bike so I climbed on behind him riding
pillion and we took off into the dingle. Helen and Edwin
whooped and laughed as I tried to join in.

I look around the bar at my new friends. Stag is smiling. I just
can't do it. I can't be their friend.
Shortening my dark to an inch, I ask Sally for another while
I go to the toilet. The record remains at five.
As soon as I walk into the bathroom the air mists where I
breathe and the light seems unreal. This room is always so cold.
Of course, the more superstitious among the Dragon's clientele
put it down to a haunting and there are many tales of untimely
and gruesome deaths that might have occurred in days gone by
on the grounds; even in the pub itself. I do not believe in ghosts.
I do not believe in the supernatural. I believe that our sensory
limitations mean we do not see everything that is actually here in
this world. That is also how I explain to myself the presence of
Helen in the static that surrounds me and buzzes ever present
like the radiation from the birth of the universe.
Her presence has me shy at the urinal. My penis has
shrivelled against the cold and thinking she can see it leaves
me absurdly embarrassed to the point that I cannot go. I look
at the green perforated mat that sits over the drainage hole and
briefly glimpse my reflection in the sheen of its surface.
My concentration is disturbed by the door opening and the
warm smell of tobacco. It is the boy with the paperback. He
stands to my right and begins to pee. I pretend that I have just
finished and button up before heading to the sink.
As I wash my hands I watch him in the mirror above the
sink, the reflection mottled with splashes of paint from
whenever this room was last decorated. He has the same easy
way he had walking to the bar, a nonchalance that only
heightens my sense of clumsiness. I half expect Stag to follow
in behind him, checking to make sure the boy hasn't followed
me in order to challenge me for staring at him moments ago. It
would be an act of misplaced solidarity on Stag's part and
besides, I know he is out there now gossiping about any
number of imagined scenarios being played out in here.
I shake the excess water from my hands and pull the towel
down from the roller-machine, the wet imprints of other
knuckles dragged back around the roll so I can wipe my hands
on virgin cloth. The tiled walls are damp, never dry.
I leave the bathroom as he buttons up; taking one last glance
at him heading to the sink as the door swings back on its hinges
and the light becomes more real again. I have a choice now - go
back to the bar where another pint will be waiting or head out
into the Smoking Den for another cigarette. The smell of
tobacco on the boy, full and rich in the cold air of the bathroom,
whets my appetite for nicotine more than any physical need. I
turn right, through the Fire Exit doors and out to the den.
Smoking was a stupid thing to start doing. I knew that when
I started. The reason I did start was because when Edwin and I
first tried a cigarette, a shared pass on the nursery grounds, he
coughed and I didn't. It even made him cry. Or at least it made
his eyes water.
I realise I have left my matches back in the bar. I curse, the
cigarette already between my lips. Just as I am about to head
back in and forget about it, the boy with the paperback walks
out and into the den beside me. He takes out his tin, the
cigarette he had rolled in front of his girlfriend nests among the
tobacco and filters. He takes out a Zippo and it comes alive
with a bouquet of paraffin. Without my having to ask he offers
me a light and I duck to take him up on it.
'Thanks.'
'No problem.'
We smoke in silence, the awkwardness much like that as we
stood briefly together at the urinal. He taps ash carefully,
blowing the end of the roll-up after each to make the end glow.
'I'm sorry about earlier.'
It comes from me almost reflexively, my mind seemingly
having no part in the utterance.
'Sorry?'

'Yeah, earlier. You might have thought I was staring at you
but I was just...'
"I didn't notice.'
He smiles and I do too. We go back to smoking. His good
grace has lifted me a little. He must have noticed. Everybody
noticed. But he is choosing to save my embarrassment.
Emboldened, I continue the conversation.
'What was it you were reading?'
He draws long on his roll-up.
'Just some notes.'
'Lecture notes?'
He laughs.
'No. Personal notes.'
I turn away and suck on my own cigarette.
'Sorry, I didn't mean to pry.'
He turns toward me, roll-up in lips and his hands spread to
ten digits as his eyes screw and his head shakes.
'No, no. Shit, Sorry, man. Not personal.'
I breathe out.
'Well, I just wondered. That's all.'
'It's a book of stories. I collect them. I travel around and
when somebody does something interesting or has an
interesting story to tell, I write it down.'
I smile.
'Sounds like an old friend of mine.'
The boy angles his head.
'Was he a writer?'
'No. She... No.'
I look at my cigarette. Still half left.
'You like stories then?'
I shrug.
'Doesn't everyone?'
He presses the roll-up back in on itself to extinguish it.
'When you come back in, have a drink with us. I'd like to
know what you think.'
'Think?'
'Of my collection. I'd be interested to know. You look like an
interesting guy. And I bet you've got a few stories to tell eh?'
I shake my head.
'I'm more of a listener.'
He throws the dead roll-up into the sand bucket.
'Well, the offer's there if you change your mind.'
I thank him and he heads back in as I light another cigarette
from the end of the one I have been smoking.

Helen had a book. In it she would write her stories and
illustrate them. Edwin must have seen this book but what he
doesn't know is that I too have seen it.
I was invited to Helen's room long before he was. Helen was
sixteen when I went to her room. We went to the same school,
an old grammar school much further away from the Avenue
than the local comp where Edwin studied.
In school we would talk, talk much more freely than
whenever Edwin was around. We would take our lunches out to
the fields and she would practise her stories. Edwin had always
thought that she just told them, that when she opened her
mouth the words just formed and her breath gave them such
life that they would become almost real in the air around us.
But she practised, she would agonise over details, worry that
they said too much about the parts of her she didn't want
anyone else to know.
One day, I asked her about the end of The Boy With The
Rose. I reminded her that she never got to tell the end on the
nursery that time because of the Police coming. She looked a
little embarrassed. I asked her what was the matter, whether
the story actually had an ending and she said it did. She said
nothing else.
We sat and ate our sandwiches, watching the boys play
football and the other girls stand by the school fence feigning
interest. Then she said I should go to her house that evening
straight after school, that her mother and father would be out
shopping for groceries and she could tell me the whole story.
On the way home, Edwin would always wait for us by the
benches so we could catch up before dinner.
That night however, we didn't meet him. We cut across the
dingle, over the nursery and round the back of the Avenue so
he wouldn't see us. Helen invited me in and we went straight
to her room. She looked at me,
'I lied.' she said. I was confused.
'Lied about what?
'I'm not going to tell you the story - you can read it. Sit
down.' I sat on the bed and she passed me the book of stories.
The cover was chocolate coloured and made of some kind of
felt. Her name was raised in gold lettering on the front.
Inside, the stories were illustrated with beautifully detailed
drawings - images of giant snarling fish, petrified birds, a blue
box. The rest of the pages were crammed with that handwriting,
joined up like a diagram of some central nervous
system. I arrived at a picture of a rose and there, beneath it,
the story: The Boy With The Rose.
I began to read. It had been polished a little since the first
telling but the essence was still there.

To repeat word for word what she wrote would feel like a
betrayal. It is the reason that I have not told one of her stories
since. A more honest explanation would be that her stories are
the part of her I know I have all to myself. I'm sure the book
itself has been poured over and combed for evidence; Helen's
parents will have probably turned the pages for comfort and
would have found none. But the stories are more than words
on a page for me, they are the physical manifestation of her
thoughts and my memory of them, the vibrations rattling my
ear drum or tingling my optic nerve mean I still have her with
me, under my control, unlike the static that comes and controls
me with a whim all of its own.
The story I read there on Helen's bed was about a boy who
had never had a day off school. Never been ill. When he was a
baby, he never cried, never needed winding. When chicken pox
and whooping cough and mumps were infecting their way
around the infant school he was left untouched.
When he started senior school however, something started to
happen to him. He would often look sad and uncomfortable.
He wasn't being bullied or falling behind in his work, he hadn't
been left off a sports team that he had tried out for or missed
out in auditions for a school drama production. But there was a
constant sadness, a look on his face that seemed as if he was
having difficulty breathing. He wasn't feeling well. But because
he had never felt unwell before, the boy didn't know anything
was wrong. He thought these must just be the growing pains
everyone talked about.
One day, during games, it was his favourite sport - crosscountry
running. Since he had been old enough to, the boy had
run whenever he was given the space. If he were sent to the
shops for bread, he would run there and back timing himself. If
the air were particularly cold, as it was on this day, he would
run out onto the fields and down past the canal. He would
even run through the woods, the cold air cleansing his lungs,
stinging his face and reddening his skin.
As the class approached the iron bridge by the canal, the
boy was out in front, his breathing steady and the first smile in
a long time stretching across his face. However, as he passed
beneath the bridge, on the towpath, the boy felt a pain in his
chest as if a hand had reached in and grabbed hold of his
insides, squeezing all of the air out of his lungs. He fell to the
floor, narrowly missing the canal itself and lay still, completely
still. The boys who were following behind stopped around him,
scared to touch, but sure he was dead.
Eventually the teacher arrived. This was in the days before
mobile telephones, so the teacher sent the second strongest
runner back to school to phone an ambulance, and he carried
the boy himself, over the fields to the industrial estate that was
being built on the other side of the iron bridge before the
woods. Even though many of the buildings still weren't open,
there were roads that linked with the main road into town and
so the teacher thought it best to take him there where the
ambulance would be able to reach him, where the builders
might have some first aid equipment.
By the time they reached the industrial estate, the boy was
very cold - colder than the air around them. The teacher had
wrapped him in his own jacket but still the boy was white,
frozen and lifeless. Some builders brought over jackets of their
own but none knew how to bring the boy back.
When the Ambulance arrived, the teacher gave the
paramedics the boy's name and told them to call the school for
any other details. He had to stay behind and take the rest of
the boys back to school; they had been stood around this
whole time in their gym kits but none had felt the cold.
The teacher began to jog, and blew his whistle. The rest of the
boys joined in behind the teacher and they jogged back to school.
All attempts to revive the boy had been useless and he was
pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. The boy's parents
met with a doctor who said they believed it was just a random
death, the kind of one-in-a-million sudden death that did happen
to people. There would be a full investigation but for now, he
couldn't tell them anything else other than he was very sorry.
During the investigation, the boy's blood was tested and
there was nothing abnormal. A scan was done on his brain and
it seemed fine. Then his body was taken into X-Ray.
It was at this point that Helen had stopped her telling on
the nursery. I read on, knowing that nobody but Helen knew
what I was about to learn.
When the X-Rays came back, a shadow was found on the
boy's heart. It completely enveloped the muscle and only the
arteries and veins leading to and from it gave a clue to the boy
having a heart in his chest at all.
The parents were asked if the hospital had permission to
carry out an autopsy and permission was granted. The body of
the boy was taken to an operating theatre and there his chest
was opened.
None of the surgeons working at the hospital had seen
anything like it. Wrapped around the boy's heart was a rose, a
complete rose, fully bloomed, and its stem was growing around
the organ, the thorns piercing it. It looked like a tattoo.
The head surgeon reached in and began to snip away
carefully at the stem, trying his very best to keep the rose
intact as evidence of what they had found but as soon as the
rose was taken from the heart, the heart began to beat again.
The boy coughed and looked about the room. The medical staff
were dumbfounded. The boy looked at the surgeon holding the
rose and smiled. The smile was so beautiful that the surgeon
dropped the rose and it shattered like glass as it hit the floor.
I put the book down. The smile from the story had found its
way onto my face and Helen leant across and kissed me. She
reached a hand under my shirt and began to feel my own heart
beating in my chest while the other hand unbuttoned it. I
shook the shirt from my shoulders and held her head as we
continued to kiss.
I was then overcome with an immense fear. I shot back
and grabbed my shirt. Helen asked me what was wrong. I
was flushed; my breathing was uneven and I could only say
'I'm sorry.'
I took my shirt and went to the bathroom to put it back on.
I couldn't dress in front of her. I saw in the bathroom mirror
the imprint of her hand on my chest and quickly buttoned up
the shirt hoping that by covering up the mark it would make
the whole thing seem buried deep and dark.
When I left the bathroom, Helen was stood at the foot of the
stairs in her nightdress. She had her back to me. She took the
dress from her shoulders and let it fall to the floor. I walked
down the stairs and I reached out and touched her back then
hurried past her and out of the door to go home.
That night, I stood in front of my bedroom mirror and
looked at the place where her hand had touched. The mark was
still there. It is still there today.


Avenue

Spencer Malarkey, Number 9

Yesterday, Spencer Malarkey stood long at the top of the stairs.
His head leaned slightly to the left as he ducked down to view
the shiny, blue paint of his front door. The brass flap at the back
of the letterbox remained as motionless as Spencer's stare.
Nothing lay on the doormat apart from the word 'Welcome'
spelled out upside-down in black block capitals.
Upon viewing this familiar still life, the hopeful elevation of
Spencer's eyebrows collapsed and the dispersed energy of this
tiny action reverberated down his face. First the eyes drooped
downwards. Then the corners of his mouth wilted. In milliseconds
his whole body had been transformed by this wave of
disappointment. Finally he turned his back on the front door,
and after putting the couple of steps that led up to the landing
behind him, Spencer shrugged to his right and slapped barefoot
across the linoleum floor of the bathroom.
He arrived at the sink and dipped a hand into the ceramic pot
resting between the taps. The pot housed a tube of Sensodyne
toothpaste, a razor and a blue and white toothbrush - its fibres
spread like the centre parting of a cheap toupee.
Spencer held it beneath the grey flow of the hot water tap. Not
that the water was hot. Spencer was prodding the flow intermittently
with his left index finger, careful to make sure the
water was only lukewarm so as to avoid aggravating his oversensitive
teeth. This was not without necessity. If Spencer ever
ate or drank anything too hot or too cold, his gums would become
live with electricity conducting tiny forks of pain along his gums
and bouncing around the back of his jaw, just like the adverts.
This sensation would not simply cause a grimace or hiss of
discomfort; Spencer's teeth would force him into the most
incredible spasms, jutting out his usually weak chin and rolling
his grey eyes into the back of his head. He would let out a long,
reedy moan and whatever was in his mouth at the time would
fizz and bubble and roll down his chin with long strands of
saliva leeching onto whatever covered his drawn ribcage. So
Spencer used lukewarm water when brushing his teeth.

Like the rest of the house, the bathroom had not been decorated for
many years. Spencer's mother died twelve years ago and he could
not remember there being any changes since his father, Leonard,
died ten years before that, on the day of Spencer's birthday.
His father had been ill for ages, his lungs destroyed by a
cancer that had spread throughout Leonard's body and left him
empty and gaunt. His fragility was accentuated by Spencer's
memory of how the man used to be. Throughout Spencer's
childhood and adolescence, his father had been Len Malarkey,
the strong and good-natured maintenance man who could fix
anything, anywhere, anytime. But lying there in bed he
looked... useless.
Spencer remembered the stench in his room. His father
refused to die in hospital or hospice, and so had taken up
residence in Spencer's bedroom, an odd sight - posters of The
Jam, The Who and the Small Faces on the walls, a stack of seven
inch singles and LPs in the corner by a record player, a duvet
branded with a homemade R.A.F roundel Spencer's mother had
stitched for him. Then, underneath that duvet, an old man
dying, the smell of his metallic breath corroding in the air.
Spencer had had to sleep on the settee in the parlour and could
clearly remember how he felt when Doctor Ahmed came
downstairs and told him his father had passed away. 'Yes,' he
thought (a decent night's kip at last'. His mother Bea was
upstairs, sobbing.
The guilt of that reflex echoed through Spencer's life for the
next twelve years. He hardly ever left the house other than to
run errands. He looked after his mother whose grief never
dissipated, even when she received a substantial sum in
compensation due to the discovery that his father had worked for
many years on a site contaminated with asbestos. Spencer's
father also smoked forty a day but the solicitor never really
seemed to be interested in that.
Spencer had sold his records, stripped his room of anything
resembling the life he had before his father died there, ripped up
the carpet, put down some old rugs and whitewashed the walls.
There had been some redecoration after all.
But not in the bathroom where, today, Spencer was constipated.
He would later take some Syrup of Figs and tomorrow would have an arse flowing like an Elizabethan Thames. This in turn would
have him take on some Milk of Magnesia and that particular
prescription would lead him back to where he was today, straining
and tensing. Spencer was constantly stuck in an endless cycle of
constipation and diarrhoea.
After plipping and plopping half a dozen stony stools, Spencer
got up and wiped his arse three times even though there was
only the slightest trace of shit on the first piece of paper. He
flushed the chain and opened the window, washing his hands
quickly in the sink before going back to his bedroom to wait for
the smell to disappear so he could shower.
From his bedroom window Spencer could see the garden.
Weeds had sprouted among the flowerbeds and the grass was
dotted with dandelions. In the corner of the garden was a large,
black patch of earth where the grass no longer grew. Leonard's
shed had stood there for many years - full of tools, rusty blades
and paint pots. Spencer was never allowed in there but once, as
a youngster, he dared peep in through the cobwebbed window
and was so shocked by what he saw that he never tried again.
He gave the contents of the shed to Cliff Dixon just over six
months ago. Cliff had been bugging him about it for years - even
when his mother was alive - but Spencer could never be bothered
getting around to it Besides, he hated Cliff- always had. He was
a fat mess of a man; scruffy, smelly and even with his new falsies
his teeth never seemed clean. As far as Spencer could remember,
Cliff had never been married but he often spoke of his children and
how successful they were in their respective careers, so he must
have been once. He didn't work - he claimed incapacity benefit
after slipping on a wet floor in a supermarket and damaging his
back, but Spencer was highly suspicious of this and if he had been
more malicious might have informed the authorities that it never
stopped Cliff doing odd-jobs for people on the Avenue; never
stopped Cliff using the tools he had stolen from his father.
One Saturday morning, Spencer arrived home from his
nightshift at the local warehouse to find Cliff dismantling the
shed in the garden. Not only Cliff, but also Carl and Connor, the
Twins who had made his life hell since they stepped out onto the
Avenue. Cliff made excuses for his trespassing,
"I did knock, son, but I thought I might as well get it done
while you were out...save me getting in your way. As for the tools
and stuff... right, I wanted to talk to you about that. Now I know
you're not a DIY man yourself- remember I've known you since
you were this high and...well...I saw all the stuff piled up, the
boxes and that and... I thought you'd be glad to be rid. So instead
of paying me and the boys here to dump the shed, I thought I'd
take the tools in payment. Like I said, you really don't want
anyone snooping around some of that stuff in there now do you?'
With that, Spencer went inside and stood in his bedroom
looking out of his window as Cliff ordered Carl and Connor about
the garden and the final remnants of his father's secret place
were shipped out of sight and across the Avenue.

Today, Spencer left his room and turned right down the landing,
back to the bathroom. He took his shower gel and shampoo from
the bathroom cupboard and stood upright in the bath. The bath
was a matching part of the blue bathroom suite, covered on one
side by a yellow shower curtain sprayed with mildew and
hanging precariously from an opaque, off-white rail. Spencer
edged his way around the curtain as he flicked it over the edge of
the bath so its hard, dark skirt licking at his calves wouldn't
bother him. He shuddered at the state of the shower curtain as
he pulled the lever on the taps that switched the flow of water to
the shower attachment. He turned on the cold tap.
Jabbing his fingers under the water at regular intervals, Spencer
slowly turned the hot water tap. When he was satisfied with the
temperature, he fixed the showerhead to the clip on the wall.
He stepped underneath the weak spray and faced the white
tiled wall and began to wash his hair with some unbranded
shampoo from the Spar.
He felt it. The shower curtain had wrapped itself around his
shoulder and stuck to his wet skin. He jerked his shoulder trying
desperately to rid himself of this filthy pelt without having to touch it
with another part of his body. All this time, suds began to sting his
eyes and so he started to grope for a towel while still attempting to
break free of the shower curtain, but this dual motion only ensnared
him further in its grasp. He began to attempt to talk himself down,
'Sugar. Concentrate Spencer. Come on now, you can do this
AAHH!'
Now Spencer's face was wrapped in the shower curtain
and, as he span in wild panic to free himself, he became only
further entangled until the rings began to pop from the curtain
rail and a fully cocooned Spencer tumbled out of the bath,
falling with a tough splat onto the lino. He was beginning to
hyperventilate, thrashing around on the bathroom floor with
thoughts of suffocation, of being found dead in three or four
weeks time by a neighbour who noticed the smell creeping from
the bathroom window.
'Stop it Spencer. Stop it. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.'
Spencer managed to bring his breathing under control and
started to think more clearly about how to get himself out of this
situation. Of all the days for his fears to come true, it had to be
today: The anniversary of his father's death - Spencer's birthday.
A knowing smile crawled stealthily across his face in the
manner only natural to those who live their life on the wrong side
of Sod's Law. Spencer wasn't beaten. In the outer extremities of
his heart, he still had the faintest hope that perhaps this time it
would be different. Perhaps this time just one person, maybe a
member of his distant family had remembered and taken the time
to write and send a card. This hope had him slide easily from the
shower curtain, stand naked but free and wrap himself back in
the clean comfort of his dressing gown.
Yesterday, there were no cards but today, as Spencer
Malarkey again stood long at the top of the stairs, his stare
became a smile as he saw, obscuring the word 'Welcome', an
envelope.

Part Four: Dingle



EDWIN

'Getting nippy now eh, Tiger?' Nothing. 'These old workers'
houses then, Tiger?' Silence. 'Could do with another drink, if
you fancy, Tiger?' Zilch.
Even a 'shut up', or a 'zip it', or a 'give your fucking arse a
chance' would settle my nerves but Tiger just continues
striding on, breathing in slowly through his nose and then out
through his mouth.
I catch up with him at the pelican crossing. I smile but he
stares straight ahead, not a bead of sweat on him. I picture him
boxing, stalking the centre of the ring. I can't imagine him
dancing, only walking onto shots and looking for the right time
to strike. The sense of ease I felt back at his house is now long
behind us. We have walked back down the main drag of kebab
houses and launderettes, and now stand to wait for the traffic
to allow us to cross a wide boulevard. The camera is strapped
across Tiger's back, around his kidneys. The sky is clear and
the air is cold but the lights of the street make the stars hard to
see. I can feel goosebumps on my forearms beneath my hoodie
but, unlike Tiger, I am beginning to dampen with sweat. The
green man lights up and we cross.
We leave the main road near the theatre we passed earlier and
climb over a small fence. The ground is dry but uneven. I have
given up asking questions in an effort to conserve energy. Little
rises and trails worn out by dog walkers change the feel of the
ground. We pick up a trail through the scrub and it feels like the
darkness is getting thicker around us until it is difficult to make
out anything that isn't cut out against the sky. I worry about bogs
and the shape that rises up in the distance - a huge hill. Not
quite the size of the ancient warriors that guarded the city on the
way in, but still taller than anything back home. Tiger stops and
I look at him. He is smiling, willing me to ask.
'We're going up that aren't we?'
He speaks for the first time since we left his house.
'Yep.'
Heading towards the hill, he is silent again. The ground
reminds me of the dingle, a small valley of scrubland behind
the nursery that leads up to the woods and the monument that
looks over the town.
I kept that monument fixed in my sights as I crossed the
dingle, heading to the canal on the other side of the stream. It
is the canal that leads to the woods via the iron bridge, and
from the top of the woods peers the monument. It might have
been yesterday, it might have been the early hours of the
morning. I don't know when dew begins to settle but the grass
was already leaving wet streaks on my trainers that the moon
picked up in sparkles and glimmers. It looked pretty. This was
unusual because for those of us who lived in the surrounding
houses, the dingle had always been a scruffy, useless piece of
land. Nobody really knew who owned it - perhaps the family
that once owned all the land around there - but there was a
small patch still used by a farmer to graze his horses and cows.
A little stream ran through the middle, barely strong enough to
erode the sandbanks that straightened up its sides, dwarfed by
the canal that dug-in, man-made, on the west side. I dipped my
hands into the shallow water and washed my face. The water
was so cold that it hurt my teeth through my lips. I crossed the
stream and began to climb the western bank, remembering the
times I had tumbled down there laughing with Helen and
Phillip. Happy times.
When I reached the summit of the opposite bank I stood and
looked out at the canal. The canal looked like a shiny oil slick,
with the moon casting across it one piece of mirrored light.
The canal has been important for my town. For years it took
the coal to the mills and the cotton to the seas. Where the
cotton was picked, and by who wasn't a concern for most folks.
Neither were the children who scuttled behind looms, crushed if
they weren't quick enough. Years later, the canal was drained,
cleaned; the bridges were tidied up, the locks and the towpaths.
Then they filled it back up with clean water. But that guilt
remained. It had to go somewhere though so even now you can
feel it rising off the water. It's like nuclear waste, shame.
We would run down past the canal on cross-country in school.
I would cheat by crossing at the lock rather than run around it. I
stopped doing that though the day I heard the words:

'In the canal at the back of the dingle there's a pike that
eats children.'

I never forgot that story - those opening words. Those were
the exact words Helen used to start the story and I would look
at my reflection on the surface of the canal and grinning back
would not be my face but that of the pike.
In the canal at the back of the dingle there's a pike that eats
children. Once upon a time, this pike was like any of the others
that had lived in the canal. He watched his brothers and sisters
plucked from the canal and would laugh with his friends that the
fools had fallen for the bait. Then they would cheer, bubbles
floating up to the surface of the water, as their brother or sister
was thrown back in, shame-faced and swimming away from the
laughter. It was what pikes did.
One day, the pike was swimming through the canal and saw a
tasty looking maggot floating in the water. He looked both ways,
sure that this must be a hook waiting to snatch him from his happy
day, but the pike wasn't watching to see if he could spot the shape
of the rod hanging over the water; he was looking for his brothers
and sisters. He didn't mind being caught. Being caught was worth
the risk of such a tasty maggot. All that he was bothered about was
the others laughing at him if he was thrown back in.
Sure that he was the only pike in that part of the canal (there
were a few stickleback but they'd be far too scared of a big
ferocious pike to ever tease him), he swam up to the maggot and
grabbed it in his big teeth. He blinked his eyes at the sharp pain
as the hook sank into his gums, and waited for the tug he'd heard
tales of. Resisting was just going to hurt more, and there'd be
more chance of some of his friends swimming along and seeing
him, so he didn't struggle, and soon was being hoisted out of the
water and into the dry air above.
The pike felt the sun begin to scorch his scales, flapping
toward the edge of the canal, practically throwing himself into
the net to get this whole thing over and done with. But when he
saw the man who had caught him, it didn't look like the men
he'd heard in the stories. These men were smaller, none of them
had hair on their faces and they were loud and jumping around
as he was placed onto the ground. He listened as they spoke to
each other but he didn't understand the language of men and
now he was beginning to feel a little bit dizzy because on land
pike, like all fish, drown.
So the pike flapped a bit, wondering what was going on, when
suddenly there was darkness above him and he felt the foot smash
into his side. He flew into the air and heard a loud noise coming
from the little men. When he hit the ground, he saw the little men
running after him, even noisier than before and he saw the foot
coming towards him again.
Now some people think fish are stupid, that they don't
remember or learn from their mistakes, but fish are far cleverer
than humans. In fact, fish are so clever that they have tricked
humans into believing they are stupid so that they can have an
easier life. If the humans ever thought that fish were as clever as
they are, they would invade the seas, and rivers, and lakes,
canals and oceans and kill all the fish. The fish knew that they
didn't have the kind of weapons humans have, they weren't
really interested in fighting, so they sacrificed a few of their own
to the humans, played this game of biting and then being thrown
back, just for an easy life, because although fish are very clever,
they are also very lazy. The pike was also a clever fish; he knew
what was coming and with all his might he flung himself out of
the way of the foot. The little man went skidding past and landed
on his backside. The noise got louder again as the little man fell
over, but the little man that fell made a different noise to the other
little men. He reached out with his hands and grabbed the pike.
The pike was now exhausted and couldn't manage another leap,
so the little man picked him up quite easily. He held the pike above
his little head like a trophy and the noise began again. Then the
little man lost concentration and his grip on the pike loosened. The
pike fell from his hands and back into the canal.
As soon as he hit the water, the pike felt the life stream back
into him. He swam down as deep as he could go but with the
hook still in his gum, the rod followed him. Looking up he saw
the little men trying to reach the rod, leaning over the water but
then his attention was caught by something else.
From behind the reeds and rubbish thrown in the canal, his
pike Mends appeared. They were laughing so hard at him that
bubbles filled the water and some of the pike even rolled over
onto their backs.
He got angry. The rod floated back up to the surface and he saw
one of the little men reach out to grab it. As the little man reached
out, he reached too far and fell in. The little man's cheeks puffed
out and he flapped in slow motion in the water. The pike, filled
with a rage he had never felt before, swam around the little man,
tying him up with the fishing wire still attached to his gums. The
other little men were shouting above the water, another noise,
different, louder and louder and louder until the little man in the
water stopped moving. Then the others disappeared.
The pike looked at his friends. They were shocked; some of
them were crying. They were saying how the pike had ruined it
for all of them; that the humans would come back now and kill
them all. The pike didn't care. He was angry with them too - for
laughing at him, for watching him take the bait, for almost
killing him.
He swam away, dragging the boy with him for miles until he
reached a dark, distant part of the canal.
And then, he ate the little man.
Back in his own part of the canal, the part where he had lived
and grown up with his friends, the canal was drained and all of
his old pike friends died. It was drained in the hope of finding
the body of a ten-year-old boy. He had fallen in while fishing
with his friends and never been seen again. When nothing was
found, they filled the canal with water once more, but there were
no more pike roaming these new waters.
Except one. To this day, the pike that eats children roams the
canal, the rod still attached to his mouth, and every so often a
child will see the rod and try to take it from the water. The pike
will tantalise the child until it falls in and then drag them away
and... well, you know what happens next. Because fish are
clever. They learn fast. And in the two or three minutes that the
pike was on land, he learned all about men.

'Here we are.'
Tiger has stopped and I almost walk into the back of him.
We have arrived at the top of the hill and I, lost in my
reminiscence, never even realised we had started climbing it.
The night has really drawn in around us now and the city is
lit beneath us. Tiger turns to me.
'What do you reckon to that?'
A spider web of light has replaced the streets and alleyways
we have just hiked through - the shit and graffiti. The haze of
the streetlamps hovers above the black roofs like a sigh, and
above it, all of the stars can be seen. Tiger continues,
'I come up here a lot, you know? When all the shite gets me
down. And I remember that even the city is beautiful. When
you see something like this, it makes you cough up all the
cynical shit that drags you down doesn't it?' He isn't looking
for an answer and if he were, I wouldn't have one for him.
'Now if I'd have said that back in the Rose, you'd have thought
it was a load of bollocks wouldn't you?'
He turns away to take in the view and there is silence again.
He pulls the camera case around to his front and takes the
camera out before taking one quick snap of the view. He doesn't
check the light, or pace about to find the perfect composition of
his shot, just stands and snaps. He speaks again.
'Do you know how many times I've photographed this
scene?' I shake my head. 'Well that's the three thousand six
hundred and forty second time.' Again he looks out across his
view, still. He then begins to put the camera away. 'Every night
for the last ten years I have taken that same photograph. Every
night since I was released from prison.'
The fact that Tiger has spent time in prison surprises me
even less than the news that he was a champion boxer. He
walks over to a bench behind us and sits down. I turn to the
bench. He doesn't offer me a seat beside him and I don't feel I
should take one.
'I used to come up here with my wife and my daughter. I got
married young - eighteen years old - to the only woman I have
ever loved. She was a good woman, a childhood sweetheart you
might say, and we got married with nothing. Registry office, a
few close friends - nothing else.
Eight years we were married before the little girl came along.
I watched the birth - not as common a thing as it nowadays
mind; back then most men would have been pacing up and
down in the hospital waiting room, or in the pub waiting to
crack out the cigars. To be honest, I tried to be, but I couldn't
stay out there wondering so I burst into the maternity ward and
dared any of the fuckers to try and turf me out. Ha, this body of
mine has stood me in good stead, you know? Not always got me
my own way but it has stood me in good stead.' He passes one
arm out in front of him. "I used it to carry the pair of them up
here, the wife and the little girl. The first time, the wife thought
I was mad. It was winter, freezing cold, and the middle of the
night. About five that morning I'd been doing some work to
make the weight for an upcoming fight and when I saw this hill
I thought, ah you fucker, that's what you want is it?
It near killed me getting up here. The ground was solid, icy
and I kept slipping onto my hands. I could just see my
manager's face if I'd have broken a wrist falling up here, but I
had to get to the top - something was telling me I had to get to
the fucking top. When I did I saw this.' Tiger opens both arms
as if he can close them around the whole city. 'It was early
morning so it was still dark and I just thought... shit. You
know? Sounds awful but that's all I could think. Shit.
I stayed up here until the sun came up and I watched the
sunlight burn the whole view away. It was like having your
heart pulled out through your throat, I couldn't believe that
something so beautiful could just be washed away like that.
Back at the house, not the one I have now - the old family
home, I rattled the whole thing off to my wife. She wouldn't
stop laughing, telling me I'd gone soft but I wouldn't let it go
until she promised to come with me and see for herself. She
asked who was going to watch the girl while she did and I told
her the girl had to come too.'
Tiger shakes his head and laughs quietly, his elbows are now
planted on his parted knees and the fingers of his hands join
like a church roof.
'So there we were at the bottom of the hill and of course,
the wife is having none of it. 'How do you expect us to get up
there, Tiger?' And the wee girl, she can't climb that thing. But I
had that same drive, that same fucking incredible drive to get
up there. So I picked them both up, one under each arm and
started to carry them.
The wife was screaming, which set the girl off too, but I
strode on and when we reached the top they both stopped - just
like you did. And I know exactly what they were thinking - shit.'
For a moment he stops talking and looks out across the view
again as if he's lost. I follow his gaze out across the city and
try to imagine how a man might feel up here with the woman
he loves and the child he has made with her. I can't manage it
though. As if sensing this, Tiger begins again.
'Every night I was in prison I thought of this view. Eight years
of my life walking the same exercise yard, eating the same slop,
smelling the same farts from the cellmate that I only escaped
when I was let out. I refused visits from anyone except my
manager - I didn't want loved ones in there. He told me I didn't
have any loved ones left, she'd left me and taken the baby.
To say I was crushed is a little more than an understatement.
But I didn't go mad, didn't smash my cellmate's head in,
didn't attack the screws - none of the things everyone expected
me to do. If anything, I stopped throwing my weight around.
You have to in prison, especially when some of the nastier sorts
want to use you for muscle, fill your head with all kinds of
promises and protection. What kind of protection do I need?
Fucking look at me! But I was defenceless to that kind of hurt,
the kind of wound she inflicted on me. So I stopped talking.
Didn't say another word the whole time I was inside. If
anything, that kept people off my back more than throwing my
weight around did, people would quieten whenever I was
around and I wouldn't hear them again until I caught their
whispers as I left. Got me used to that sound, ready for when I
came out, I can tell you. That's the kind of noise drives a man
mad when he comes out - the whispers, but I was prepared
because I just kept this view in my head and promised myself
that I'd see it again. And the day I was released, I did just
that.' He stands, hands in pockets now in a mirror of me.
'First thing I did was sell my belt - time called for it. I
bought a camera so I could photograph this view, make sure I'd
never have to do without it again. I made the bloke in the
camera shop explain exactly how to use the camera two or
three times. He was shitting it. He didn't need to be - I'd
planned it all inside, studied all the books I could. I came up
here, looked out at the shite and watched the night cleanse the
whole place. It felt perfect, like everything had come full circle
you know? And when it was perfect, I took a photograph.
I took the camera to the halfway house I was staying in and
slept with it like it was treasure. The halfway house was a
room above a pub but I couldn't be tempted to go down. All
night I cradled it, hardly slept a wink for fear of some fucking
thief coming in to nick it, or me rolling on it and crushing the
thing, which was far more likely.
So I watched the clock fairy-step around to half-eight and
then shot out of bed in the same clothes I'd had on since
they'd let me out. I walked back round to the camera shop and
explained in detail exactly how the film should be developed.
The poor old feller was still shitting himself and I was scared
he'd fuck up out of nerves so I said to him 'Don't worry, I know
what you've heard but that wasn't me - I'm not that person
anymore.' Made it worse to be honest with you. He went in the
back to his darkroom shaking like a gypsy's tambourine.
I waited in the shop for him to finish with the developing.
I knew how long it would take, and he told me himself but I
wasn't going anywhere until I had that photograph in my
hands. I'd waited eight years and a day; this wait was going
to be nothing.
He came out the back and handed me a brown envelope. I
almost jumped the counter to hug the old man but I think that
might have finished him off. Instead, I took off back to the
halfway house, ran up the stairs and sat down with the
envelope on my bed, just like I did when she wrote that last
time. I knew what was going to be in this envelope. This black,
black feeling just covered me like a bloody cowl.
When I looked at the photo the scene was the same but
instead of feeling the way I felt when I first discovered the
view, all I could think of was everything I'd lost - my wife,
my girl, my whole fucking life gone like the sun had got to it
and bleached it away. I took out my baccy - that prison has a
fuck of a lot to answer for - and rolled a ciggie before
burning the photo in the metal bin in the corner of my room.
I went down to the pub and drank as much as I could. Then I
tried to kill myself.'
This I am shocked at. Some men, you imagine, could deal
with anything that life throws at them. Suicide is something I
have never, ever been able to get my head around. It's like a
gamble to nothing and I can't imagine a pain great enough to
wish my life away. Even when the police questions and the
rumour mill were at their height just after Helen disappeared,
it never even crossed my mind to end it all. Yet here is Tiger,
this strong, strong man telling me that even after putting up
with eight years in prison, he tried to.
'Don't worry now. I'm no ghost. Like I said, I tried to kill
myself. The doctors said I was dead for a while but I didn't see
any white light or tunnels; there was no overwhelming sense of
well-being - it just went cold and dark.
They kept me in hospital a while, even talked about locking
me away in some nuthouse but as soon as I was given the all
clear to leave I was straight up this hill to try again. And the
next night, and the night after that. But even though seeing the
view made everything seem okay again, the photographs I took
just turned out as bad as the first.
This time though, I wasn't going to give up. I didn't feel
like I had a choice. This was some kind of penance for
something. So, I started the garden in the yard as some way
of proving to myself that it wasn't just shite down there, that
things could be beautiful close up as well. But as beautiful as
my garden is, it just cannot touch this.' He turns back out
toward the view and I turn too. 'I've come up every night,
trying to capture this view and something tells me Edwin,
something tells me that tonight is the night. Something about
you tells me that this is the one.'

PHILLIP

The boy with the book has left, taken his girl with him.
Nobody has taken their place in the booth. It nags at me.
Any chance of crawlers finding their way in is all but lost.
There will be a panic now for the binge-drinkers, a panic to get
into town for the offers. Later they will splash the streets with
Technicolor vomit, blood dripped in perforated lines onto the
concrete. They will awake tomorrow with shame, unable to
remember great patches of time. We in the Dragon will go
home, most of us alone. I will awake unable to forget a second.
Mitch is still doing his crossword puzzle. He leans with his
left hip against the bar, tapping his pen against his chin to will
the words to come. Stag leans across the stool where Mitch's
Post Office bag and coat sit. He eyes the missing letters.
'Just the one to get like?'
Mitch shifts to his right hip but doesn't meet Stag's eyes.
'Yeah. Ten across.'

'Give us a look then.'
Mitch passes the paper to Stag who holds it away from his
glasses to read the clue. His lips move in silence and Mitch
sips his lager. He drinks the strong stuff, the kind of lager that
would put me onto my back in six pints, but it hardly seems to
affect Mitch. He doesn't say much. I like him for this. When he
does speak it is to inform us of a fact, a small moment in the
history of this pub. I listen to these brief tales of his like
parables, often taking them with me to search for hidden
meaning through the hours between here and whenever. He has
drunk here for decades.
Stag continues to stare at the clues, indeterminately agreeing
with those answers already filled in while the rest of us remain
silently aware that he has no idea how cryptic crosswords work.
Stag has never given an answer in all the time I have sat here.
And how are you, young Phillip?'
Mitch has edged his way around to my side of the bar. He
always calls me 'young Phillip'.
'Fine Mitch. Yourself?'
He sips his lager.

'Great, thanks.'
Mitch is always 'great'. I have yet to see him down,
desperate, drowning like the rest of us - like Old John, sat with
an empty pint by the pool table where the students have now

left him alone. Mitch sees him too.
'It's not even true, that story he tells them you know?'
I gulp some dark, a sixth pint in sight, and raise my
eyebrows.
'Isn't it?'
'No. Alex Higgins never stepped foot inside the Old Rules
club that night. He was meant to but he spent the night in here
drinking vodka.' I smile at this, at the idea of Alex Higgins sat
in here. 'He sat over there where the lad you wanted to batter
was sitting with his girlfriend.' He points to the empty booth
and I bristle and feel the need to defend myself once more.
However, Mitch grins and I realise he is only playing with me.
'Yeah. They've probably gone to the student union or something
now eh Mitch? Or gone to occupy some tree or free some
beagles.'
Mitch laughs quietly and takes another sip of lager.
'Where did a young lad like you get so cynical?' I open my
arms to present the Dragon to him and he raises his glass.
'Guilty as charged, young Phillip. Guilty as charged.'

We sit in silence a while longer. Stag is counting out letters
and making a good show of trying to solve the crossword
puzzle. I enjoy talking to Mitch, he is one of the few people
with whom I do value conversation and so I prompt him to
give up a little more of the Dragon's history.
Any more celebrities used to darken the door of the Dragon
then, Mitch?'
He smiles.
'Oh yes, plenty. Not many you'd raise an eyebrow to but
one or two genuine stars.' He closes one eye and looks to the
ceiling with the other as he reels off a list of people I have
never heard of.
'Well, Mitch, you'd expect the paparazzi to be camped outside!'
He smiles again but this time it doesn't ring true. Too quickly,
the look becomes serious, a painful piece of knowledge nudging
him to speak.
'Well, once upon a time, young Phillip, the cameras were
outside here quite a lot. A few journalists even ventured inside
to speak to us - long before half of these were here. In fact, I
might be the only one left from then.'
He goes silent again. You can almost see him flicking
through the faces that have sat here before me. I wait, hoping
he will continue until I become impatient and enter into the
game. No matter how much I tell myself I have stopped playing,
I never really can; I want to learn.
'Who was it?'
Mitch edges closer, almost whispering, his eyes holding mine
utterly.
'Tiger Thomas.'
I sit back. A little disappointed if anything. I was hoping for
someone really famous, another piece of this pub's history to
subsume as my own, but Tiger Thomas?
'Of course, you wouldn't know of Tiger now would you?'
I shake my head. It is a lie.
'No, Mitch. Never heard of him.'
Mitch takes his bag and coat from his stool and drags the
stool around to mine where he sits.
'Tiger Thomas was the British Heavyweight Champion,
Lonsdale Belt Winner back in the 60's. He was some boy huge
- looked like he'd been carved out of rock. He knocked
them out for fun - you name them, he put them down. And a
nice feller with it. Never a bad word to say about anyone, old
Tiger - a real prince. It was said that he would become world

champion one day but he was cut down in his prime.' The
thought takes me but before I can vocalise it, Mitch answers.
'No. He didn't die. If only it were that simple, young Phillip...
Any luck with that clue yet Stag?'
Stag looks up from the paper.
Are you sure the others are right Mitch?'
Mitch smiles and takes the paper from Stag.
'I think so, Stag. Let's have a look.'
I smile, knowing that more than anything I want to make
him speak, force him to tell me the story of Tiger Thomas. I
realise I am back where I was as a child, hungry for knowledge
- forcing Helen to tell me everything, everything! I need a
cigarette. I stand and head out to the Smoking Den.

Out here I wonder how my absence is felt inside. It is the
absence of things that sparks a need for knowledge; we can
only strive to know the things we do not already know. But
what if we think we know the whole story and it still changes?
What if knowledge, the thirst for it, chases us out of comfort?
My absence at the bar now might seem to mean very little to
those inside, far less than it did when the boy with the
paperback followed me to the toilets. But I had to leave. I'm
not sure I can keep all this balanced. I want to not want to
know but if I do not take myself away from the bar, I will make
it happen. All this sits in the empty seat; I cannot truly be
elsewhere, my absence itself tells tales.
It has been discovered that a part of space, inconceivable in
size to most tiny minds, is empty. Of course, it must be made
up of some things, of unseen particles and space-time, but the
large clumps of matter scattered about the rest of the universe
by the Big Bang are absent there. It became a source of
fascination. Was there anything there in the first place and if
so, where has everything gone? One scientist has suggested
that this patch of barren space is in fact evidence of another
universe, its thumbprint pressed up against the membrane of
our own. I like this explanation.
Back home, on the dingle, is a patch of earth much like that,
barren. The reason this patch of earth is barren is because it
was burnt, the things that took up room there were razed back
into carbon. Some societies do this with land to keep it fruitful,
but this patch of earth has remained desolate where it was
once fertile with things, all kind of things, as if it too were
being touched by an unseen reality.
Just as the layers of earth below us, the composition of the sky
above us, the background hum left behind in the universe around
us, just as they all hold clues to determine how we lived, how we
came to be, and where we came from, so the things we discard
and the clutter we collect holds the real information about who
we really are. Our DNA is constant, we can never rid ourselves of
it, we are programmed to pass it on, immortalise it; but the things
we throw away, ignore, hide - they have become so rank with
reminders of what we have done and how we have lived that we
must throw them away, ignore them, hide them. Otherwise, we
would be forever forced to look at what we have become in the
mirror of the things we collect. It explains our newfound comfort
in the indistinguishable: industrial estates, petrol stations, out-of
town strip-malls, supermarkets, cinemas and bowling alleys... But
as vapid as these things are, they will still at some point become
contaminated too, we cannot help but leave our mark. And so, we
will one day have to throw them away too.
We are not just decadent or wasteful, simply the first society
to have so many things that they become unbearable to keep

around us. This is why Wanky Joe's life was reduced to a patch
of barren earth and nobody cried. Almost nobody.
Despite his infamy, Helen, Edwin and I were sixteen years
old when we encountered Wanky Joe for the first and only
time. He lived on the dingle, in a den made from the things he
found discarded around the town. We'd heard about all of the
things he'd done to trespassers of his den, but like most, we
had our suspicions that these were just tales told by adults to
keep their children away from the place, keep them within
sight and away from canals, woods and adventures.
Even though it was summer, it had been raining and the
long grass of the dingle was slippery where it had been trodden
into makeshift trails. Snails appeared from beneath dock-leaves
and crunched where we stepped as birds hovered above, beady
eyes trained for vole or field mouse. You might laugh, but for
us it was like being in the wilds.
When we reached the sandbank that led down to the stream
we all looked at each other. Although we had been there many
times we knew to pay respect to this boundary. The stream was
the boundary of the land of the young-hungry pike, and of
woods whose trees wrapped their branches around necks, and
of the monument where the dark souls of the witches that
perished there centuries ago still shrieked.
Edwin led the way, across the stream and up the wet sand
of the opposite bank. We stopped at the top. Helen was above
me, in between we two boys as ever, and she could see I was
petrified. Edwin poked his head over the top before signalling
us to follow. Helen reached down, took me by the hand and
smiled. 'Don't worry,' she said.
On the other side of the stream was a shack made from bits
of old wood, corrugated iron and various patches of fabric. A
small stove sat outside, recently used, but as far as we could
tell Wanky Joe wasn't home.
We approached cautiously; pulling back a slice of blue
tarpaulin that covered the entrance. Inside were hundreds of
plastic bags filled with rubbish, no chairs, no table, not even a
proper space to sleep, just tons of junk. We walked around
trying to imagine how anyone could exist like this, Edwin
laughing nervously and Helen hitting his arm to silence him.
Edwin laughed again and pulled something from the floor,
'Check this out, Phillip!' He was holding aloft my torn
trousers. 'Still got your name in them and everything. God, do
you remember that?'
Of course I remembered it. I remembered everything. Every

detail.
'We've got to get out,' I said, my hands beginning to shake.
There, hanging from some string, was Brian O'Reilly's trainer the
one I had only the summer before found on the roof of the
Hog's kitchens and thrown out onto the dingle. It was a simple
enough object but it seemed to show up whenever I was to be
faced with some kind of great upheaval. It had become almost
talismanic of trouble for me. Edwin began to ridicule me,
telling me I had no balls, but he was the first to scream when
the tarpaulin was dragged back and there standing before us
was Wanky Joe.
The three of us ran smashing our way through the other side
of the shack where flattened crisp boxes formed a wall. We
didn't look back to see if he was following us or not; fear
deafened me. We tumbled down the sandbanks, the red sand
clinging underneath our fingernails as we scaled the other side.
We didn't stop running until we had reached the Avenue again.
Where we were safe.

I finish my cigarette and head back inside to fill the space I left
behind. The gap hasn't changed, I still fit there. Mitch has the
newspaper but is still sat by my stool. I sit beside him.
'Cigarette break?'
I nod.
'Yeah, Mitch. Really should give up now they've banned it.'
'Making things difficult has never stopped us doing what we
want has it, young Phillip? I'll be surprised if the ban does any
better than anything else.'
I try to sit a while in silence but it is useless.
'So, Mitch.'
'Yes?'
'You were talking about Tiger Thomas.'
'Yes. I was.'
We sit for ten, maybe twenty seconds again. I am now
becoming visibly impatient and I have to work hard to keep the
tone of my question in check,
'So, what happened to him?'
Mitch folds down his newspaper and looks at me.
'That is the problem, young Phillip. Who knows what
really happened to him? Has anyone ever stopped to ask
him? And if they did, did they believe him? Maybe he doesn't
know himself.'
By now I am getting angry at Mitch's obfuscation. I am
beginning to think he is masking a life just as sad as everyone
else's here behind this ridiculous persona of pub sage. It is
cartoonish, sickening. I can see him crumble.
'That doesn't really answer my question, Mitch.'
Then I see he is real. I see for the first time a flicker of anger
in Mitch's eyes.
'Well, perhaps you are asking the wrong question. Perhaps
you are asking the wrong man. Even more likely, perhaps you
don't deserve to know.' I sit back, startled. Mitch continues.
'Have I ever asked you a question about yourself, young
Phillip?' The stress of the modifier is deliberate - he is telling
me to grow up. All these years you have been coming in here,
from the day you first sat there as little more than a kid to
now, not much better. Has anyone ever interrogated you, asked
you just what you were doing here?'
'I'
'I haven't finished. You didn't belong here and yet you
managed to sit for long enough to seem part of the furniture.
Has anyone ever asked you about your past? Anyone probed
those parts of you perhaps you will never give up, but if were
to give up at all, will give up in your own good time?'
I look at my drink.
'No.'
'No, they haven't. Because since you first sat there you
haven't given us anything. You have taken our sanctuary, our
advice, our laughter but you have offered us nothing in return.
To be given the truth, young Phillip, you have to make space
for it. The truth is infinite, but the mind, the soul's capacity
for storing it isn't. Unless you make room by giving away some
of the truths you yourself know, how do you expect to be able
to take more on?'
The eyes of the bar are on me. Is this what they talk about
when I am not here? Is this the tale my absence tells? I take a
gulp of dark and then just say it:
"I killed someone.'
Stag sits back, puffing out and pushing his glasses back up
his nose.

'You don't need to tell us this, Phillip. There are some things
we don't need to know, like.'
'No. Mitch is right. I should tell you.'
Mitch looks on. He says nothing.
I begin to tell them of Wanky Joe, of his den, of the rumours
that surrounded him.

'...people said he was a pervert, that he preyed on children
who went out onto the dingle. There was never any evidence
that he did anything but... the stories stuck.
For years there were plans hatched, that some vigilante was
going to go onto the dingle and confront him, sort him out. But
if it wasn't for me, nothing would have happened.'
All but Old John and the girl counting out coins are now
listening, the same audience that saw me watch the boy with
the paperback.

'There were a gang of kids called the Warriors. Yobs really,
into smashing things up and scaring people. When I was about
sixteen I'd just been to my... well she wasn't my girlfriend but...
I'd been to her room. The thing was, she was meant to be seeing
someone else. My best friend, Edwin. I'd gone home afterwards
and I couldn't think straight, my mind was everywhere, and so I
decided to go for a walk.
When I left the house it was getting dark and I knew the
Warriors would be about. Usually there'd be three of us
together but on my own... I was scared but I had this urge, this
feeling of curiosity was dragging me over to the children's
nursery. We would hang out there sometimes in the holidays
but not at night. At night it was the Warriors' patch.
As I walked down the path to the nursery I could hear the
Warriors, laughing, swearing, but I couldn't stop. I had to go on
- something was happening and I had to know what it was.
When I got there, my friend Edwin was pinned up on the
climbing frame.
The Warriors had surrounded him. I knew straight away
why he had wandered onto the nursery - he had been looking
for Helen and me; wondering why we hadn't met him after
school as usual.
When they saw me coming they didn't need to run to catch
me. I walked over calmly to where they were stood and asked
what they were doing with Edwin. The leader of the Warriors
was called Paul, Paul Campbell. He smiled. 'Come to rescue
your little friend is it?' I can remember how he said the word
'friend', like it was an insult. Edwin was telling me to run,
trying to be brave, but I could see how terrified he was. I just
nodded my head.
Paul walked toward me, smoking a cigarette. 'Tough lad eh?'
he said. I did nothing. 'Your such a good pal of his then,
maybe you can tell us what's he doing on our nursery?'
I answered immediately and clearly, 'Looking for me'.
Paul laughed. And who is looking for you?'
Two of the Warriors grabbed me and pushed me up toward
Edwin. He looked at me as if he knew where I'd been. He
looked betrayed but this was more to do with Helen and I
abandoning him. He must have been to her house but Helen's
parents would have still been out and she wouldn't have
answered the door after what had happened. By that time in
our lives he no longer knocked on my door.
Paul asked if I smoked and I nodded. He passed me a
cigarette and lit it. I began to smoke and, you know the
strangest things come to your mind at times like this, I
remembered the first time Edwin and I had tried a cigarette
and he cried. I could see the tears being fought back now but I

didn't feel happy like I had then. A lot of things had happened,
but I loved him. He was my friend.
Someone grabbed my arm. A couple of other members of the
gang gripped my shoulders and Paul began to guide my hand
with the cigarette towards Edwin. 'Burn him' he said.
I tried to drop the cigarette but Paul's brother, John, had
hold of my fingers squeezing the cigarette there. As it got closer
to Edwin's face I could see him trying to look away but
someone held his jaw. I didn't even think before I spoke:
'Wanky Joe. Wanky Joe has Brian O'Reilly's trainer.' Brian
O'Reilly was a Warrior who had died some years before. He
was run over and the force was so violent it threw the trainer
from his left foot onto the roof of the local pub. The Warriors
had been fiercely loyal to the memory of Brian ever since; it
was somewhat fanatical, stupid. You only had to say his name.
Paul let go of my arm. I could see the same look in his eyes as I
had some years before when our paths had last crossed. He looked
furious but scared. He asked me to repeat myself and I did. I told
him that we had been to Wanky Joe's den and I'd seen Brain's
trainer there. Paul ordered the gang to follow him. I thought he
was going to make Edwin and I join them but thankfully he didn't.
Edwin began to sob and we sat on the grass of the nursery. I
asked him if he was okay and he said nothing. We sat there in
silence for ages until I stood, held out my hand and helped
Edwin up.

We walked back home but from the path you could see right
out over the dingle. We stopped, as in the distance we saw a
fire. It was Wanky Joe. The Warriors had gone to his den, they
had found the trainer. They tied him to his stove and burnt the
den down. Then they burnt him too.'
There is awkwardness; the listeners paused as if the story
hasn't finished. But Mitch was right. I feel relieved to have told
this part of my story, to have shared something with these
people. I can see that Stag is trying to say something and then
Mitch leans over.
'You do know it wasn't your fault, don't you Phillip?'
I shrug.

Avenue



Patricia & Steve Fitton, Number 18

The cemetery gates were only opened a fraction as she arrived.
She squeezed through the gap rather than open them further. At
night they'd be locked up to stop the kids getting in, but reading
the misspelled names added up on the redbrick gateposts, she
realised they'd obviously found another way in.
It had got worse since the nursery was closed. A few years
ago it would be the odd condom, a couple of cans, but now it
seemed that every time Patricia Fitton came to lay fresh flowers
on her mother's grave she would spend the first ten minutes of
her grieving tidying up. The first few times upset her so much
that she had grown angry. How dare people behave with such
little respect for the dead? What is it with people nowadays?
Every time you turn on the news there are dead bodies crushed
beneath buildings, blackened by bombs, dug up by animal rights

132

133



L

r

activists. And they actually show the bodies as long as we are
warned that some of the scenes following might be distressing.
But what about the person gone? Is there a disclaimer for them?
A notice given to say that their lifeless body is to be displayed as
a warning to us, that they are about to become TV stars? Of
course this attitude is going to trickle down from TV news to the
national conscience, of course respect for the dead will become as
archaic a notion as the chivalric code, but they shall not
desecrate her mother's grave because this is all Patricia has left
of her. Now when she visits, Patricia always brings a black bin
bag as well as flowers.
She dipped down and squatted, a hand on one knee as she
collected together the can-bongs, the bottle lungs. She used the
empty chip wrappers to scoop up the shattered MD 20/20
bottles, their stickiness bringing a shudder through her when she
thought of what that stuff clung to on the inside. The pigeons had
already taken most of the bits of chips and chicken but there was
still the odd bit of doner to pick up and soon the bin bag had a
little weight to it.
This weight didn't come from just one grave. Patricia would
clean every grave she came across. Steve would chastise her for
it, tell her that's what the ever-increasing Council Tax they paid
was meant to pay for - but that was just it, it was meant to pay
for it. Left alone these graves would soon become mini-landfill
sites, the bodies beneath the earth just more rotting matter.
Nobody cared anymore. Soon they'd be asking for the dead to be
left outside the house in a coloured plastic box as part of some
recycling drive to prove how prudent and green they were.
Her mother's headstone was fake marble. Grey fake marble.
It looked like the kitchen worktop. The letters were punched out
in fading gold:

HERE LIES BERNADETTE KENNEDY
WHO DIED ON SEPTEMBER 10th 1992
DEVOTED WIFE OF JOHN
BELOVED MOTHER OF PATRICIA
GRANDMOTHER TO PHILLIP.
Grant her peace oh Lord and may
perpetual light shine upon her. R.I.P.

There was no mention other son-in-law Steven on the headstone.
They never got on, from the first time Patricia brought him home
to the house they live in now - the house she has lived in all her
life as daughter, wife and mother - to the moment they put up
her headstone, Bernadette Kennedy hated Steven Fitton. And
Steve hated Bernadette, especially when she left everything to
Phillip. But Patricia loved them both.
Patricia met Steve in town at a glam rock night. He thought he
was Bryan Ferry with his black hair swept back and his huge onyx
ring. He told Patricia he was a hairdresser and for the first six
months of their relationship she believed him. He lied a lot in the
early days. He was from the new estate, had been moved across
when the inner city slums were finally cleared, but he told Patricia
he lived in one of the big semi-detached houses on the main road
into town.

Of course, he couldn't keep these lies up; theirs is a small
anonymous part of the city and they would bump into each other
eventually, so he invented a story about wanting to move onto
the new estate as the money he made from selling the big semi
would fund a trip to India, to find himself. The closest they got
was the Andaz curry house and even then he didn't eat the
Indian food - steak and chips, steak and chips. Still, Patricia
believed every word he said until the day he coloured her hair.
She'd wanted her hair coloured for a long time but couldn't
afford it on her wages. She worked as a shop assistant at a large
department store in town, still did until they made everyone
redundant, put everyone up for sale with the rest of the stock. The
new firm that bought the premises didn't want any of the old
staff, they would rely on part-time staff and short-term contracts
- Patricia and the rest of the girls were too experienced, too good.
It wasn't a high-flying job, nothing like young Phillip has now,
but she loved it, loved the girls. They had lived half a life in that
shop and to see it gutted and its insides discarded so cheaply still
hurts Patricia to this day.
Oh how she talked Steven up to those girls in the store. She'd
had cheap colour done before but it looked like the colour in the old
epic films, painted on, unreal. But Steven was a real hairdresser
and she bragged and crowed about the new professional colour she
was going to have.
Steve brought home a colouring kit. He told her it was the same
stuff they used in the salon, the same salon they couldn't go to
because staff weren't meant to allow their clients to know they were
attached. The tips were bigger if they thought you were single.
He washed her hair in the kitchen sink. Bernadette wouldn't
allow them to go upstairs on their own.
As he massaged the shampoo into her hair she remembers
imagining their life together: a posh house out in the sticks,
probably purpose-built by an architect friend of one of his famous
footballer clients, invites to the best parties at the most
fashionable nightspots in town, discounts at all the most chic
boutiques because Steve cut the hair of the manageress and she
had a bit of a thing for him, and then, when he had his own
salon, a family.
When her scalp began to burn, she knew something had gone

wrong. At first she didn't want to say anything, she'd used
peroxide before but never this professional stuff, maybe that was
the way it was meant to feel. But soon the pain was unbearable
and she screamed for Steve to come in from the back door where
he was smoking a cigarette.
The commotion alerted Patricia's mother. Running into the
kitchen, expecting to see her daughter being molested by this
brute, she shoved Steve out of the way and her face said it all.
Patricia had never seen her so angry. She ordered Steve out of
the house, home. She might have even swore. And then she
grabbed a jug from a cupboard and began to pour cold water
over her daughter's head.
To this day she doesn't know how she stood the pain. Her
mother comforted her, telling her it was okay, but she too had
tears swelling in her eyes. Huge clumps of her daughter's
beautiful hair came out in her hands. Patricia's scalp blistered
and burnt. Steve was sat on the doorstep outside. He had refused
to leave and it was his car they used to get to the hospital.
Perhaps that was his saving grace - he never knew when to
just go. And every now and then he ended up useful.

By the end of her rounds on the graveyard, the bin bag was
heavy. Patricia had to swap hands a couple of times as she
walked back home past the shops, past the Hog. She didn't have
to deal with condoms this time but was saddened to find a
bloodied tissue. Thankfully there wasn't enough blood for the
injury to have been too serious, nothing like the terrible stabbings
and beatings she'd seen on the news recently.
Thank God her boy survived those dangerous years. There
were the near misses though: the fever that nearly took him
when he was ten, and the episode with the girl over the road.
The Murray girl. For a while, Patricia thought the grief might
take him. It was even worse than when Bernadette died.
When his grandmother died, Phillip would constantly see her
wherever he went. It is true that this is a common reaction to
grief. Patricia too could have sworn she'd seen her mother on
more than one occasion, only for her to disappear into the
market and become lost in the crowd. But Phillip swore he saw
his grandmother - and not on the street or in fleeting glances, but
right there in their own living room. He had conversations with
her, she told him things he couldn't possibly know any other
way. The Doctor said that Phillip was a sensitive child and this
was his first meeting with grief and loss - he was at an age
when issues of mortality were beginning to trouble him, all this
was normal. The unexplainable things he knew, he might have
picked up through subconscious eavesdropping, there were
many, many explanations for his behaviour and no, your son is
neither psychic nor going insane. He just needs time. And in
time, he got better. But when the Murray girl went missing he
became silent, even quieter than before.
Steve was frustrated but Phillip had never been the boy Steve
wanted anyway. He wasn't one of the lads no matter how hard
Steve tried to train him. After the girl went missing Steve would
fret that Phillip was drawing attention to himself by his very
inconspicuousness; the boy looked like he had something to hide
and that was all these coppers needed. Patricia knew Phillip knew
something, as a mother would. But she also knew he wasn't a bad
boy, he wouldn't have done anything bad, he just knew more than
he was willing to tell and she could understand that, because
that's what love arms you with more than anything else - the
ability to keep a secret. He wasn't a lad, and he wasn't a bad boy,
but neither was he mummy's boy. He was hers - Helen Murray's.

On the way home, Patricia saw the skip. She'd not noticed it on
the way to the cemetery but now, back on the Avenue, the
thought of the Murray girl made Patricia stop outside the house.
Someone must be moving in, she thought, but no work had
started yet. The skip was quite big. How easy it would be to just
throw the heavy bin bag in there, but Patricia was better than
that. Still, there was other people's rubbish in there already some
people had no shame. It was almost like her mother's grave
but instead of the chip wrappers, the cider bottles, the condoms,
there was an old tool box, some newspapers - SWP ones, must
be that Daniel character up the road. There was a welcome mat,
a shower curtain, even a half-eaten bacon sandwich. And there,
on top of it all, Steve's fishing stuff.
Patricia was so embarrassed. She stormed up toward her
house, slamming the lid of the wheelie bin as she threw the black
bag inside. She slammed the cheap plastic porch, the front door
keys shaking with her shame as she put them in the door. Rage
was vibrating her and her mouth was open to call as the door
was opening.

But she didn't have to call. Steve was sat there on the open
plan stairs, his hands joined over his nose as he always did
when he was upset. There was a letter on the hallway table next
to the telephone. Patricia picked it up.


Part Five: Canal

EDWIN

This letter is burning a hole in my pocket. Tiger said he was taking
me to Phillip but instead we've trekked back down the hill, me
ending up on my arse a few times, much to Tiger's delight, and
now we're sat in his basement darkroom, the red bulb glowing like
the emergency lighting that comes on in disaster films.
He has taken the film out of his camera and is working
whatever magic is used to bring the pictures to life. The
darkroom is exactly how I have always imagined them to
look: a clothesline pegging up prints, trays of solution and
the smell of chemicals. He turns to me sat on a stool,
watching him work,
'Well, that's all we can do for now. Shall we have a drink?'
I nod, trying not to look as impatient as I feel, and follow
him back up the narrow staircase that leads to the front room.
His size fills the space in front of me and I have to tread
carefully. My hands have only just begun to stop stinging from
falling on the hill.

Despite being in the dark for so long, the light in the front
room isn't as harsh as I expected it to be. I think Tiger has
done this on purpose; the lamp in the corner has a yellow bulb.
He doesn't turn on the lights in the kitchen.
'Tea?'
'Yeah, great.'

I sit down on the leather sofa and it creaks beneath me as I
struggle to make myself comfortable. I'm not a fan of leather
sofas. Phillip's family had one in their lounge, beige and far too
big for the room.

Tiger returns from the kitchen with a pot of tea and two
mugs. He places them on the coffee table and then goes back to
the kitchen to bring in a jug of milk and a sugar bowl. It seems
like a lot of fuss for a couple of brews.
'There we go.'

He pours out two mugs of black tea. He takes his straight,
sipping with closed eyes and letting out a sigh as I pour the
milk into my cup, spilling a little.
'So, you're not shopfitter then?'
I stop what I am doing.
'Sorry?'

'Your hands. Like a baby's arse.'
I spill more milk onto Tiger's table.
'Shit, sorry Tiger.' I wipe the mess away with my sleeve.
'Bet you've never set foot on a building site. Got to be an
expert at making tea in the building game.'
I smile. He's got me, but I'd long since given up on trying to
trick him.
'Well?'
'Well what?'
I start to panic a little. What is he asking me: why did you
lie about your name? Why did you lie about your job? Just
what the fuck are you doing here?
'What do you do? You do have a job don't you? You're not
some fucking runaway - that's the last thing I need, some
bloody runaway pitching up on my - '
'No. Don't worry. I'm not a runaway.'
He takes a sip of his tea and watches me.
'I'm an order-picker. I work in a warehouse, a factory
warehouse with my dad.'
He smiles.
'Good for you, son. Good honest work.'
What he means is boring, soul-suffocating, spirit-crushing
work. Then again, perhaps I am just a little spoilt brat who
sees himself too good for honest work.
'Pays the bills.'
I've never paid a bill in my life. What is this shit I'm coming
out with?
'Don't worry son, it's none of my business what you're up
to. I shouldn't have asked. We all deserve our secrets.' And
Tiger slurps again at his tea.
Silence. At first I think he's just being quiet but I realise
that he is giving me space to confess. He will not press me. He
knows what it's like to have secrets, to have people judge him
and whisper about him, so he won't force me to say anything I
don't want to.
'What do you do Tiger?'
'Sorry, son?'
'For a living.'
'Oh, 'course. I'm a postman.'
Again, it fits just right. Just like the boxing, just like the
prison. Of course Tiger is a postman. The way he treats these
streets like they are members of his family.
Aye. Postie. I'm on again at five. Earlies this week. You ever
done night work, Edwin?'
I have. I did one week of nights at the factory. The first few
painful weeks of early mornings made me think I was a night
person. It turned out I was just lazy. Despite this, I lie to him.
There's something about him reminds me of the second copper the
one who always came into the interview room after that nasty
twat with the 'tache when they were questioning me about Helen's
disappearance. I trusted the quiet one even less than the twat.
'Thought about it, Tiger, but it never appealed to me.'
He puts down the cup of tea and leans forward.
T hear that son. It's not natural. You want to see the lads
who do it full time. You seen that film Taxi Driver?'
This time I can tell the truth.
'Yes. It's one of my favourites.'
'Yeah. It's a good movie. But that's what they're all like on
nights, Travis fucking Bickle.'
I laugh and take a sip of my tea. I'm enjoying this now, he
seems to be speaking to me as an equal, again.
'Postie. So are you the type to take money out of Christmas
cards then, and send them on empty?'
Tiger pisses himself laughing.
"Me? No. There are those who do mind, as I'm sure you
know. But me, no. I'm as honest as the day is long. Or the
night, every third week.'

We sit in the quiet a while and drink our tea. I think back to that
solitary week of nights. It was the end of November and I
was
trying to get a bit of extra cash together for some serious
Christmas damage. I'd arrive at eight in the evening in darkness
and leave at six in the morning in darkness. I remember thinking
during the shift that I was trapped; no buses ran through the
night so it felt like there was no escape. If you'd have wanted to
tell the boss to stuff his job up his arse and walk out, you would
be stuck up there until the morning anyway. It would be
embarrassing, like storming out of a room and having to come
back in because you had forgotten your coat.
Some of the regulars on nights would do overtime, work a full twelve hours, and I for the life of me couldn't work out
why they would want to put themselves through that. I realised
by the Friday that they just wanted to leave in the light.
Paul Campbell was one of those who worked the nightshift
at the same time as me. Paul Campbell of the Warriors. We'd
started at the factory around the same time as each other,
actually signed on at the agency that officially employed us
through our probation period on the same afternoon.
Dad made me go through the agency; didn't want to make it
look like he was giving me the job. Of course, he had to make
the request to the agency so as a charade it was a pretty
obvious one.
I remember looking over at Paul in the offices of Peoplepower,
the deep concentration as he filled in his personal details. He
didn't look half as fearsome as he used to. He stopped and
looked about; I presumed he'd reached the section for the
disclosure of a criminal record. He looked right at me and
smiled, and I smiled back.
On the nightshift, he made some attempts to befriend me.
He didn't scare me at all, despite him being a murderer. Well,
not a murderer; he was convicted of manslaughter. And he
didn't inspire any hatred in me, even though he was laughing
at a disabled man who had also come into the office. I knew it
was nerves - I even laughed with him to make him feel a bit
better about it. I felt sorry for him. I suppose that's why, this
morning, when I sat on the patch of earth where Wanky Joe's
den used to be, I didn't have any strong feelings really. Of
course, it's awful what happened to Wanky Joe but I'd already
forgiven Paul - not because he'd shown remorse but just...
well, because he looked like he'd paid his price. And let's be
honest, to have your brother hang himself in a cell on the other
side of the country; hang himself because he was part of
something you had started... shit, I can't even imagine...
Once, I was sat in the pickers' canteen (the forklift truck
drivers had their own) and Paul sat opposite me with some
sandwiches.
'Edwin innit?'
I looked back at him and nodded. I pretended I didn't
recognise him. I figured that he would like that, to think that
someone had seen him and not immediately thought of what he
had done. 'You don't remember me do you?'
I shook my head and he smiled, his front tooth now capped
in sliver that looked more like gunmetal. 'Peoplepower? I used
to live near you - Paul Campbell.'
I put down my brew and pretended to be shocked.
'Paul Campbell!'

'Yeah. Mad innit? Small world and that?'
'Yes it is - ' Before I could continue he stopped me with an
open palm. 'Listen, I'm a different person now. What I used to be
like - fuck, that time on the nursery with your other little pal...'
'Phillip?'
'Yeah, Steve Fitton's lad. Listen, I'm - '
This time it was my turn to stop him.
'Paul. We were kids. Don't worry about it. It was a long
time ago.'
He nodded and sat quietly. It had been a long time - he'd
been sent away for twelve years. I thought of how I'd
tormented myself since Helen had gone. I felt a bit ashamed to
be honest. I knew he was pretending not to know about what
had happened to me. There was a mutual respect. It felt odd.
'How's things then, Edwin?'
'Not bad mate. You?'
'Couldn't be better.'
He smiled again at this. He had the smile of a boy, a small boy.
'Want a sarnie?'
'No thanks, Paul. Can't eat at this time.'
Paul put his sandwich down.
'Yeah. It's weird innit, nights?'
He struggled for a comparison to make but I knew he was
thinking of prison. It's all I thought after Helen had gone,
especially when they found the nightdress and the interviews
became more and more aggressive. I'd read about those people
who had been put away just so someone could be blamed. I
was sure it was going to be me. I looked at Paul Campbell,
pretending to smile. I saw myself in him. Prison never makes
someone. Only breaks them. Whether this be breaking their
spirit, soul, or sense of right and wrong. Prison never makes
someone a better person.

I can see the same look in Tiger as he plays the face on the
other side of the confessional grate. But I'm beginning to
wonder which of us is waiting to be told their penance. I
decide to take the mantle.
'My dad wanted me to be good with my hands.'
Tiger sits back, raises his eyebrows.
'Yeah? What's he do?'
'He's one of the mangers at the factory.'
'Must be hard, working for your dad.'
'It is I suppose. Not like you'd imagine. It just... I always
feel pretty useless around him. Guilty.' Tiger picks up his tea
to make it clear that he wants to hear this; that he is listening.
'His name's Humphrey. After Bogart. He always wanted me to
have some sort of talent with my hands. The only presents he'd
ever buy me were ones to make me build things - Meccano
sets, Lego, radio controlled cars, Airfix models.
One year he bought me this enormous model of a Spitfire. It
was amazing, even the engine parts had to be put together. To
be honest, Tiger, I was far more interested in the picture on the
box. The instructions could have been designs for an alien
spacecraft for all I knew. Dad would come into my room every
night to check how progress was going but the parts stayed laid
out on my desk, attached to their plastic frames for weeks,
until one night, when he decided he was going to help me.
First he laid the parts out in order on the desk and read
through the instructions over and over again. Then he painted
the parts using the little pots of paint he'd bought especially
from the model shop. I just watched. We didn't even speak.
Pretty soon he was going up there to make the thing while I
was out with Phillip and Helen. Every night I'd come home and
the model was a little bit further toward being finished. And
then I came home one night to see the plane on my desk,
done.' Tiger smiles, but it disappears as I carry on with the
story, 'It was awful. The wings sagged; there was glue and
fingerprints everywhere. Even the transfers were creased and
some he'd obviously put back on after he'd done them upside
down first time round. But he made me hang it from the ceiling
with string. He even started going on about doing a
Messerschmit or a Stuka dive-bomber next.
A couple of afternoons later, I came home from school and
found the Spitfire smashed on the floor where even the hooks
he'd used to hang the thing had given way.'
Tiger takes another slurp at his tea.
'It's hard with fathers, son. I know how you feel.'
And I know he does. I'm sure of it. Tiger feels the same
feeling I have now as I look at my hands, my useless hands hands
like my dad's, and the dirt still stuck beneath the
fingernails. For so long, I wanted hands like Phillip's dad, like
Steve Fitton.

Phillip lived about six doors up from me on the Avenue in a
house full of his father's DIY. The white PVC porch seemed to
me like some kind of futuristic greenhouse as I would wait
outside for someone to answer the door. He had one of those
doorbells that was a small rubber button, much more like the
remote for a TV than a doorbell, and from outside the porch
you couldn't tell if the bell had actually rang inside. This meant
you had to wait outside wondering if you should press again or
carry on waiting; and the longer you waited the harder it
became to push the button again in case the door opened as
soon as you pressed it and you looked impatient.
That almost happened to me the day we went fishing. I
probably wasn't waiting that long really, but I was so excited
about going that I almost had to hold my hands behind my
back to save myself from a second ring. Before I did though,
Steve Fitton answered.
'Eddie, lad! Come in. We're almost ready.'
I walked in. The lobby had stairs to the left just like in our
house, but where we had the solid, original staircase, these were
open slats of wood that you could see through, each with a brass
gripper on the front. The phone was in the hallway on a little table.
'I've just got to get the rest of the stuff together, do you
want some squash?'
I shook my head,
'No thanks, Mr Fitton.'
'Waiting for a drop of the harder stuff later eh?' He ruffled
my hair and smiled, his face rough and his dark hair flopping
to his shoulders. 'Go and wait in the front room, Phillip's in
there. And call me Steve.'
I walked into the front room, that huge beige leather sofa
smothering the place, and Phillip almost lost in one of the armchairs.
He shrugged a hello to me and I sat squeakily on the sofa.
Phillip was pissed off. The day before, we had been sat on
the benches with Helen when his dad had come out of the Hog
after what seemed to be a few more than usual. We were
young, nine maybe ten. It was before Brian O'Reilly had been
killed. Another hot summer. Steve had come and sat with us at
the bench, stale smoke invisible around him and his words
smelling like an empty pint pot.
'Hello ladies and gentlemen. Having a nice afternoon?' All
three of us nodded and tried not to look embarrassed for
Phillip who clearly was. And who is this pretty little lady?'
Phillip introduced Helen. 'So you're the famous Helen? I've
heard a lot about you darling. All good. Now no offence Helen
but I've got a little proposition for the two boys here. How
would you two like to come fishing up on the canal tomorrow?'
Phillip was about to umm and ahh so I jumped in and said
I'd love to. Helen looked a little hurt that she hadn't been
invited but I knew that Phillip's dad had meant no harm in it;
it was just going to be a boys' thing, that's all. However I also
knew Phillip hated these father and son days with his dad. I
couldn't understand why - it sounded fantastic. They would sit
by the edge of the canal and Steve would show him how to
pick the best maggots for bait, how to cast the line, and let him
net the fish as he reeled them in. He'd even offer Phillip sips
from his cans of beer in the cooler bag. Why couldn't my dad
do things like that? Why couldn't we go fishing and ratting?
Yes, ratting! Steve even took Phillip ratting but that was
stopped when he accidentally shot Phillip in the shin with the
air rifle. Such adventures! And there I was, ready to join them,
awaiting Steve's return with the tackle.
He came stomping into the front room as my thighs began to

fuse to the sofa.
'I can't believe you've never been fishing, Eddie!' That was
twice now. Nobody ever called me Eddie. 'You haven't lived, lad.
Has he Phil?' Phillip sat and shook his head. 'Okay, we've got
the rods, the bait... the liquid refreshment.' He said this with a
wink before ushering us out of the house and onto the Avenue.
Phillip walked behind me and Steve, sulking. Steve must
have been able to see how much his son hated these little trips
and I couldn't believe how he stayed cheerful in the face of it.
At that age, Steve Fitton seemed like a super-dad to me. He
drank, he went out with his mates; he even had tattoos, green
tattoos fading on his forearms as he helped us over the fence
where Phillip would one day lose his trousers.
As we walked across the dingle he told dirty jokes, pretended
to shoot birds with an imaginary rifle and told us all about his
dad who fought in the war. Phillip's other granddad didn't.
When we settled on the bank by the canal the other anglers
all knew Steve and they shared a few jokes I didn't understand.
Phillip sat away from the edge of the bank holding the net.
Steve had told him he had the most important job, that it was
no good doing any of this if your net-man didn't bag the
goodies. He winked at me when he said that.
'But you've got an important job too, Eddie. You're going to
be my bait-man. You think you can do that?'
He pulled the bait box out of the bag and opened the lid.
Inside, hundreds of maggots writhed about each other. I felt a
little bit sick. They looked like a huge, twitching, alien brain,
off-white and segmented, some with darker patches and fatter.
'Now, pick me a fat one Eddie. Pick me a lucky one.'
I won't pretend I wasn't scared. Phillip had told me about
the maggots and how some of the other fishermen used to keep
them warm in their mouths between catches. It was a hot day,
I couldn't see how putting them in my mouth would do any
good and was sure Steve wouldn't ask me. But if he would
have, I'd have done it. I didn't show my squeamishness as I
pinched a maggot from the box.
'Good lad. That looks like a cracker.' He skewered the
maggot onto his line and cast out into the water. 'I've got a
good feeling about today boys. Phillip, be ready with that net Eddie,
pass us a can.'
We sat there for the whole day and Steve drank eight cans
of lager. We didn't catch anything. Phillip told me later that
they never did.

I thought of that day as I stood on the towpath and looked into
the canal. I was starting to feel warm, almost happy. My
reflection smiled back at me from the black water. There was
no pike. I didn't feel afraid.

I ask Tiger a rushed question in the hope he hasn't noticed my
mind wandering,
'When will you know about the photo?'
Tiger has been rolling another cigarette on the table.
'I know now.'
'Well?'
'Well what?'
'Is it? Is it the one?'
'No.'
He doesn't look that disappointed, instead getting up to
rinse out the cups in the kitchen. I'm gutted. I really wanted
tonight to be special for Tiger, it would make everything seem
alright - like this really was the night when everything would
be sorted out once and for all, but Tiger's failure makes me
fear my own, that everything that has fallen apart will never be
fixed again after all. He returns from the kitchen.
'Better be getting you to that digs eh?'
I nod and get up, Tiger throwing his donkey jacket back on
and lighting his cigarette.
We leave the way we came in, through the back door and
past the flowers. I take their scent in deeply. It's a scent I want
to carry with me, a pure smell that I want to fill my lungs with,
but pretty soon we are back out on the streets and a creaking
bus drops its guts out into the air.
'How far is it?'
'Not far.'
Tiger is quiet again. Walking on ahead. Has he told me too
much? It seems like that, as if he is a little ashamed that he

couldn't keep his gob shut, this stranger who could be anyone,
just anyone.
'I'm not a copper you know, Tiger?'
He stops and turns.
'What?'

'I said I'm not a copper. What you've told me, it wont go
any further.'

Tiger begins to walk towards me. Before I know it he has a
hand around my throat and is lifting me into the air.
'Why? Did I tell you I'd done anything wrong eh? Have I
confessed to some great crime? Should I be thinking about
making sure you stay fucking quiet to save my fucking skin,
eh?' I splutter, trying to reason with him, but lights are forming
in my peripheral vision and although my windpipe is closed I
can feel the blood waiting to be inhaled. At last he throws me to
the ground. 'You want to be ashamed of yourself saying things
like that to a man like me. A man who is going out of his way to
help you, you little shite. Ashamed.'
He begins to walk again and I struggle to get up. My back
and elbow hurt where I hit the wall and I'm coughing coppery
tasting air; my windpipe is slowly finding its shape again like a
crushed bottle of pop. I do all I can to follow but the streets
themselves are crowding me and I feel totally alone.

PHILLIP

Mitch's words hang about me like arms around my shoulders
and I turn to him.

'So then, Tiger Thomas...'

He folds his paper into his bag and orders another strong lager.
'That's his business, really, Phillip.'
This isn't fair. I have done as I was asked.
'But you said I had to... and?'
Mitch smiles.
'It wasn't a trick, Phillip. Do you not feel better now - do
you not feel like you belong?'
I do. But something doesn't feel right. I should feel a sense
of greater solidarity now - have I truly become part of the
gang? Can I now really call these people friends?
Mitch walks toward the bathroom. Sally brings back his
lager and puts it on his mat, her thumb and index finger sliding
up and away from the glass. She smiles at me. I look to Stag.
He isn't smiling at all. He stands and walks over toward the
pool table with his Guinness. Old John makes a face as if to
speak but realises he will have to wait for invitation.
They have never looked like this before - the regulars. True,
they have never seemed the most secure or happy people in the
world; a part of what I liked about them was that I felt they
had pain like mine, pasts to forget, but now they seem sad.
Stag begins tossing the white ball up and down the pool table. He adds spin, making the ball curve into impossible
corner pockets. His Guinness rests on a table beside him and I
stand to go over and talk to him. Mitch returning from the
toilet shouts to me.
'Phillip! No. Not now.'
He stands beside my stool, right hip on the bar.
'Why do I feel like this, Mitch?'
'You just feel like us, Phillip.'
Stag takes a cue. Old John begins to put coins on corner
pockets but Stag takes the coins and puts them back into Old
John's hand without saying anything. He then puts his own

money in the drawer of the pool table and pushes thunder from
inside it. It feels like I have dug up history, like a new pet
dragging the last one from its shallow, garden grave and leaving
it on the kitchen floor.
"I mean, it's '
Mitch raises a hand to suggest he has heard enough tonight.
All of the smiles are gone. I begin to worry that I have changed
things but it all seems so similar. Old John is already beating
Stag. Sally looks way off past the TV. Then I realise that it has
nothing to do with me - this is how they always looked. This
place only lifts them for a few minutes before all are left to
ponder the approaching bell at the bar and the silence in the
hallway at home. That is why I really leave my TV on.
I realise that it was comforting to think I wasn't like these
people, but somewhere I began to believe that to be like them
was all I ever wanted. I feel terrible, like a conflict tourist
visiting a war-torn country to make themselves feel a little
better back home at the breakfast table. But then they have
used me too. All is confused. I don't know.
One thing I am sure of though is that everyone who sits
around this bar is alone. They are only together here for the
briefest of times and afterwards thoughts go back to solitude.
I am not going to settle for that.
By telling my story I have tasted a connection with humanity
again. It has been ten years, ten fucking years since I have
opened up that channel and I will not go back to being alone; I
will not settle for this. This place is purgatory. How lucky am I
to have realised this before it is too late?
If only the boy with the paperback hadn't left! I could have
sat with him and told him about the pike and the Boggart. I
could have filled his book with stories. His girl would have
placed her jaw in her palm and looked at me.
I will not settle for this.
Even the students from the pool table, those arrogant
bastards: they would do. They are probably at a house party
where they can look down on the other students, telling them
of their real adventures in the real part of town; of how they
played a pool champion and how fucking real it all was. And I
would still take them.
I will not settle for this.
I turn to the girl with the coins on the table. She just sits,
piling up the coins and knocking them down. The lick of beer
left in the glass that has sat before her since I arrived earlier
has not been touched. Nothing passes through the pinpricks of
her pupils but the smallness of her world. She is lucky not to
see what is going on around her.
'Do you think we should throw her out, Phillip?'
It is Sally. She points her eyebrows towards the girl with the
coins. I shake my head.
'She's not bothering anyone, Sally. Not like it's packed in
here or anything.'
Sally looks over my shoulder at the girl.
'She makes me uncomfortable. I don't like their lot. No room
in this pub for things like that.'
I am shocked at Sally's lack of sympathy. I have always
believed that Sally had the biggest heart in the pub but the way
she speaks of this girl belies a meanness I have never seen
before. I, however, will not settle for this.
A pint of what that young lady's drinking please, Sally.'
Sally stops.
'She isn't drinking anything Phillip.'
'Well whatever she was drinking then, Sally. Please.'

Sally gives me a look as she pours the pint. Then she looks
away as she hands it over, leaving an empty palm for my
money. I pass her the cash and tell her to keep the change. The
head has run down the side of the glass. She didn't allow it to
drain off, never wiped the glass or even put it on one of the
towels to soak up the excess, instead letting the foam collect in
a puddle on the bar. It is a pathetic attempt at protest. If she is
that bothered she should have just refused to serve me.
Instead, she returns my change and puts it in the puddle. I
head over to the girl's table.
'Excuse me?' Her face stays fixed ahead, locked onto some
perpetually echoing thought. 'I've bought you a drink. You looked
like you...' She continues to stare at the change on the table.
I will not settle for this.
I sit next to her. She has on a pair of jeans, some old
trainers and a blue and red cagoule; her curly hair is stacked
on her head through a bright pink bobble. She is pretty but
worn, no older than nineteen and I wonder how she ended up
like this. Abused? Neglected? Orphaned? Or did this just
happen to her, life shaping away with an unfeasible suddenness?
I am compassionate now - I understand people and how
to connect with them. I know exactly what to say, I know the
words that can reach her. I make a half-turn toward her and
then decide against it. Instead I watch the coins with her,
hoping that she will look up at the same time as me and our
eyes will meet.

'They say coma victims can still hear you if you speak to
them.' Nothing. 'You might not be in a coma but I reckon you can
hear me no matter how well you are ignoring me. You can see the
way everyone in here is looking at you; you've noticed their
whispers even if you are still staring at that seventy-six pence.'
She doesn't respond. Somewhere, the person I was when I
walked in here knows I'm playing out some horribly cliched
movie scene, but the me that has seen the truth of this place at
long last, the new new me does not care.
'I was in a coma once. Well, I don't know if it was a coma as
such. How long do you have to be asleep for it to be called a
coma? I was young, probably not even double figures, and I
came down with a fever while watching the TV with my dad.
Whenever he'd had a good session on a Saturday afternoon
he would head to bed at around half-past six. He wouldn't
resurface until after ten by which point he'd slept for too long
and so spent the night watching some late-night sport. His
favourite was American Football. But when the Superbowl
came around, he always missed it. The Superbowl took place
on a Sunday night, and despite his best intentions, sleep would
always get him midway through the half-time show.
One time he stayed up though. It was the time I stayed up
with him. The Chicago Bears versus the New England Patriots.
The Bears were dad's team and because of that were my team
too. Jim McMahon, Walter Payton, William 'The Fridge' Perry
and their coach Mike Ditka. We had coke, crisps and popcorn
on the living room table and after every flag dad would explain
a rule, after every scrimmage he would guess at whether they
would run or pass, whether a blitz was coming or they were
going to shovel one off to the tight end.
It was great but as the game went on, I felt hot. It was
January but my face was flushed and I was sweating. Dad took
the crisps and popcorn away from me and wet a flannel to put
across my head.
During the half time show I fell asleep. He picked me up
and took me to bed, tucking me under the covers and making
sure I was okay. He put a bowl by the bed in case the crisps
and popcorn came back up. Then he lay on the covers next to
me, switched on my portable TV and watched the whole game
with the sound turned off. He couldn't sleep with worry but
watched the 'Bears crush the 'Patriots 46-10. The first time
he'd managed to last the whole game.
When my parents couldn't wake me up in the morning, they
rushed me up to the children's hospital. I don't know what they
did in between and I didn't dream of anything.
The next thing I knew I woke up to people running around
me, and mum holding my face. I went to speak but my throat
was so dry I croaked and mum told me not to waste my energy.
Dad stood at the back with his hands in an amen over his nose.'
The seventy-six pence on the table still has her full attention.
I have to do this. I will not settle.
'Everyone loved my dad. He was always full of fun, play
fighting after the pub, letting me pick a horse every weekend
and sticking a pound on for me. One week I won sixty pounds:
Scaramouch the horse was called - Scudamore rode it at
Redcar. But we were never close. I sometimes pretended but I
couldn't keep it up. It was the same with mum - it's not that I
didn't love them but I didn't really care.'
She still stares at the pile of coins. She takes out her finger
to knock the pile down and I grab it in frustration.
Are you listening to me? I'm opening up to you! Have you
listened to a fucking word I've said?' She looks at me, the
finger limp in my hand, her eyes still dead. 'Listen to me!'
She lashes out with her other hand and scratches me from
my eye to my chin. Stag, Mitch and even Old John run to help
me. They lift her up into the air on her back and out of the
door as she kicks and screams and curses. Sally comes out
from behind the bar. She lifts my face by my chin I can feel the
blood warm on my cheek.
'Let's get you cleaned up,' she says.
Sally leads me behind the bar and Mitch says he'll take care
of it for her. Stag and Old John have sent the girl with the
change on her way. Sally and I go out the back and I start to
head for the door to the Smoking Den for a cigarette.
'Not yet. We need to sort that out first.'
She points at my cheek and I follow her through the staff
door next to the toilets and up some stairs.
Up here, it looks like an ordinary house, one that hasn't
been decorated for some time. She leads me through a small
hallway and into a brightly lit kitchen.
'Sit yourself down there.'
Sally begins to fill a bowl with hot water and I can smell
that she has taken out some disinfectant.
'Bit worse for wear tonight aren't you eh, Phillip?'

I shrug.
'Not like you this. You can usually handle your ale.'
She is right. I am suddenly feeling quite drunk. Perhaps that
is all it is; I'm pissed.
'Got a lot on my mind, Sally.'
She doesn't turn from the sink and the bowl.

'Yeah. We heard.'
I feel ashamed again. I feel like a naughty little boy.
'I've got so much to say though, Sally. So much I need to

own up to.'
She brings the bowl over to me and squats next to me.
'Well leave it until morning. Maybe you'll decide you want
to keep it to yourself after all.' She begins to dab away at my
cheek and I wince. 'You big baby.'
I smile. And I know that I don't have a choice to wait until
the morning.
As she cleans the scratch on my face, Sally reminds me of my
grandmother. Not that Sally is that old but the care she shows
really gets me. I begin sobbing. Huge hiccups of bawling. Sally
holds me and I feel the tears sting the scratch on my cheek.
'Come on now, Phillip.'
I begin to calm myself down and apologise. It is the first
time I have cried since I was told my grandmother had died.
She was an amazing woman. Until I went to school it was me
and my gran, most of the time. Mum had gone straight back to
work as soon as she could - she had been working at the same
place since she left school, a large department store in town
that has since been closed down .
Not that I resented her for it. I loved spending time with
Gran. She wasn't always right but she was always interesting.
It was my gran that first fostered my need for knowledge. She
would take me to the library and we would read the myths of
Ancient Greece together; books on dinosaurs, and of course space.
For quite a long time I was split between my interests in
ancient history and science. I would devour the histories of the
Romans and the Greeks while at the same time trying to shape
my thoughts into explaining the modern world around me...
'My gran had two pupils in each eye.'
Sally dabs at my cheek again and humours me.
'Really?'
'Yeah. They weren't completely separate but conjoined like
a couple of figure eights. Thing was, she was almost blind.' I
laugh and Sally smiles. 'The logic baffled me, surely two
pupils in each eye were better than one?'
'You'd think so wouldn't you?'
Sally dips the cotton wool into the bowl and carries on
cleaning the cut on my cheek.
Apparently, when she was young, doctors from all over the
world came to take photographs of her eyes. It was an
extremely rare condition.'
Sally nods, 'I've never heard of it.'
'No. But she was also bullied terribly for it; people were
superstitious then. Some suggested it was the devil's mark, a
sign of the evil eye.'
'People still are superstitious Phillip. But it's just nonsense.'
She stands, my face cleaned, and goes back to the sink to
empty the bowl and throw away the cotton wool she has used.
She is right. Even at that young age I knew it was preposterous
- that such things couldn't exist. Besides, my gran was far too
benevolent to be associated with evil.
'When she died, I didn't go to the funeral. My mother and
father didn't think I should go, that I should remember her as
she was.'
'I'm sure they meant well, Phillip.'
The too. It was a kind thing for them to do. But what they
weren't to know was that I would carry on seeing her, even
after she had died.'
At this, Sally stops what she is doing and turns to me.
'That happens when you lose someone, Phillip.'
'No. I don't mean like that. She was actually there in front
of me. It wasn't like she was visiting from a place outside of
the world; it was just like she was still a part of it.'
'You were young, Phillip. I'm sure it - '
'It didn't scare me.'
'Well. You loved her.'
"I did...When I told my mother and father, they took me to the

doctors and he said I was a sensitive child, that perhaps I needed
to be pushed toward activities that took my mind off the grief.'
'He was probably right.'
'But I had no grief! Gran was still there for me, I could even
touch her; sneak a hug while nobody was looking.'
Sally turns back toward the sink. 'Do you want a cup of tea?'
'No thanks.'

Are you sure - I'm having one?'
'Okay. Thanks.'

Sally starts to make the tea. She moves around the small
kitchen, making the occasional sound to signal that she is both
paying attention and not really listening.
'During my studies, years later, I came across a famous
observation where an image was taken of two stars sat on top
of each other - identical in every way. It reminded me of my
gran and her eyes. But the image was a trick of the light. There
were no two stars - just one, but space-time and gravity's
warping of it mean that the light from this one star found us as
two. It comforted me, went some way to me understanding
how I could still see my gran all those years ago.'
Sally says nothing. I hope I haven't scared her. Then again I
am sure she is used to drunken rambling. I wonder how many
people have been up here with her as she talked them down
from such ranting, dosed them with tea and promised to never
mention it again?

My parents did it with my visions. Dosed me. Never mentioned
it. They followed the doctor's advice and my father took me on
my first fishing trip.
His intentions were true, were good. Maybe he wanted to
spare some time for his only son, speak man to boy, pass on
that knowledge - that wisdom painted with the full palette of
his life. Maybe. Or maybe he wanted me to stop being weird,
stop showing him up.
We got up extra early that day, even earlier than I was
allowed for Christmas. My father had made us both a cup of
tea. He passed me a bowl of cereal as he put the finishing
touches to two cold, beef sandwiches with the English mustard
that mum thought was too hot for me.
As I ate my cereal he wrapped the sandwiches in tin foil and
put them in the cooler box with cans of lager and two cartons
of orange juice. The tea was dark and he hadn't stirred the
sugar in properly but I didn't want to hurt his feelings so I
drank it down anyway.
Once I'd finished my cereal we were off. We walked round
the back of the nursery, over the fence and across the dingle to
the canal. He had already opened a can of lager. I remembered
gran telling me how the dew on the grass was the earth's sweat
as it slept beneath the cover of the ground at night.
At the canal, despite the cold and gloominess of the January
morning, others were already out - the proper anglers with
their fold out chairs, special holders for their fishing rods,
wearing sou'westers or floppy hats with old bits of feather and
brightly coloured cotton attached. My father nodded hello to all of them like they were old friends but the truth is he knew
none of them and they looked at him in his work gear, an old
sweatshirt beneath a fluorescent jacket and jogging bottoms,
and knew he wasn't like them.
He took another can of lager out of the cooler box and an
orange juice for me before sitting on the box and taking out the
old rod. It was rubbish, ancient, and still had some tangled line

attached that held us up for another forty-five minutes. I stood
and stamped my feet. It was freezing and after a couple of
hours dad gave me his jacket. It swamped me but I carried on
holding the net as instructed in case we got something.
That's what we did that day. All I caught was the fever that
laid me low the next night. And once I awoke from the fever, I
never saw my gran again. They had cured me.

Sally puts the tea down and asks if I take sugar. I shake my
head and she talks about how sugar helps, how victims of
accidents are given sweet tea to combat shock. I sip the tea
and smile.

'I haven't been in an accident,' I say. 'This isn't an accident.'
And I take out the letter, Edwin's name on the front in her
hand. Helen.

Avenue

Katie Lilly white, Number 20

'Katie. Katie!'
Katie Lillywhite took a few minutes to remember where she
was. Her mouth was dry, those goodnight bongs she shared with
Casper leaving her throat feeling like it had been sandpapered.
Katie! Get up! I've found something.'
Her boyfriend, Casper, was in Katie's parents' bedroom, a
liquorice skinned spliff dangling from his lips and depositing ash
on the salmon carpet He'd barely slept due to the amount of
flake he'd done the night before; the weed far from taking the
edge off it and instead sending him into discoverer mode,
hunting around Katie's parents house for objects of wonder. He'd
also masturbated so much he was walking funny.
Katie wasn't the kind of girl you'd wake up for coke-sex. He'd
realised this at university when she butted him into the kind of
nosebleed that you fear could lead to death when you're wired.
But this was worth waking her up for - a secret, locked away in
a black briefcase.
'Fucking hell. Ka tie!'
Casper stomped back out of her parents' room, flinching
slightly at his raw cock, and stood in the doorway of Katie's
room. He stopped a moment to watch her scramble for some
sense of what the fuck was going on. She slowly refocused. The
shape in the doorway and smiled through dry lips.
Hiya baby... come back to bed.'
She was horny. He couldn't believe the irony of it. Despite the
pain, it was tempting, but he was genuinely intrigued as to what
was in the case.
'Later babes. You We got to come see what I've found.'
He left her room and Katie sat up in bed. She looked down at
herself. Yeah, she was looking fucking good. A strict diet of
narcotics for the last year had done wonders for her figure - all of
her mates had put weight on in the student bars, but not Katie.
That's how she'd met Casper. Drugs. She'd bumped into him
at the freshers' ball. It was obvious he was just another third
year on the hunt but compared to the other idiots at the ball, he
was dignified. Everyone there just reminded her of home but
with more money and posher accents. They were all pissed,
leaning heavily into each other's ears, kissing sloppily with
hands up skirts and thighs in crotches, a few of the boys
throwing their weight around to work out their place in the
pecking order; new invented histories to display in this
embarrassing dance. She looked at them. Christ, she thought,
you tried that where I'm from and you'd get pasted. It was
depressing. As the whole of freshers' week had been - giddy little
girls and boys running round like they were on camp or
something. Spare me, she thought.
In sixth form she couldn't wait to escape, meet interesting
people who didn't just do what everyone around here did. And
what happened? She'd got to university and they were even
worse - much worse, not just because they actually believed they
were smart with it. This was how they thought normal people
behaved.
Somebody had a spliff on the go outside. Not the usual
artificial sweetness of the local sputnik, nor the brain fumigating
funk of the skunk that she would catch wafting from the nursery
at night. This smelled exotic, odd, and when she saw the boy
smoking it she fell in love.
'Casper. You want?'
'What is it?'
'Charas. Kashmiri. Hand-rubbed.'
She took the spliff from him with a look that said she knew
what he was talking about and then a toke. It was the first time
she'd ever tried it. Her hatred of those she found herself growing
up with, a coincidence that she could only fathom was some
bizarre cosmic accident, had her eschew all of their petty delights:
alcopops, weed, whiz, pills, coke, acid, glue, aerosols. This was
different. This was Char as, and the boy who had passed it to her
had on skinny jeans, buckled boots, and a military jacket over his
tin-ribbed, white chest. He also had the face of an angel.
'Good.'
'Not bad.'
'Wellyou know my name, what's yours?'
'Katie...'

'Katie! For God's sake Katie you fucking sloth, you have to see this.'
At last she managed to make it out of bed. In just one night

she had ruined the room her mother kept so tidy for her
infrequent returns from university. Ashtrays, pipes, barely
touched take-aways, skins, baggies - all littered the floor; clothes
hanging from every conceivable part of the room except inside
the fitted wardrobes.
She had moved out of Halls of Residence and in with Casper
so she could stay at uni through the holidays as well as term
time. Her parents were nice enough, it was just that Casper and
his friends were so much more. They watched films from the
French new wave, read Burroughs, Bukowski, and Brautigan;
they were everything she'd imagined about university. They
rolled Kashmiri, snorted Bolivian, drank absinthe, cranked
crystal, dabbed MDMA paste, and bumped ketamine. They
sometimes even smoked crack for the slum chic of it. How could
mum and dad compete?

But here they were, at her mum and dad's. Her mother and
father had gone away for their summer holiday and Casper
thought it would be just so ironic for the two of them to go on
holiday themselves - on holiday in her parents' house. She
wasn't sure, but Casper's friends laughed and hit the arms of
their chairs and talked about how it would so excellent, and such
a subversive thing to do, that she began to laugh with them. And
so she found herself here, at home, her boyfriend rifling through
her paren ts' priva te things.
Katie just hoped he hadn't found their credit cards. One of
Casper's friends had stolen his own parents' credit cards and
they all went shopping with them one Saturday. They laughed
as they tried on outlandishly expensive labels, bought fine wines
and cheeses from the food halls of the department stores, and
then just took out the maximum cash advance possible to buy
shitloads of gear. The boy's parents were so rich that they didn't
even notice the money had gone. But her mum and dad would
notice, and they'd be disappointed.
'What are you doing Casper? Let's go back to bed.'
Casper ran his fingers over the brass combination locks of
the briefcase. At first, Katie had been another naive fresher to
fall into his trap. Not only that, but a fresher who'd gone to
comprehensive school - she was sure to be the filthiest fuck he'd
ever had. But that first night, after the freshers' ball, they didn't
even have sex.
She was a virgin. He couldn't believe it. Where she was from
he was sure she'd be one of the few members of her peer group
without a pregnancy or abortion to their name, but there she
was, this delicate little thing that more than anything needed
protecting. He liked the idea of that. Of protecting her, of opening
her eyes slowly to his world, of educating her, liberating her. He
fell in love with the idea of that.
'Babes. Isn't you father a gasman?'
It was true. Her father was an engineer for British Gas. He
would fix people's boilers, make sure carbon monoxide wasn't
poisoning them. He'd even been to Casper's place to check out
the appliances there. God only knows what his instrument had
picked up.
Casper turned to her,
'Well why does he have a briefcase?'
Katie knew exactly why her father had a briefcase. Exactly
what was in it. Why shouldn't he have a briefcase? He was a
gasman, not a fucking tramp.
"I don't know. Important papers or something I guess.'
'Come on Katie! It's locked. I've tried all the combinations I
can think of- your birthday, the lot, but I can't get in.'
'Well then. Let's leave it. It's obvious he doesn't want anyone
going in there.'
Casper stood. The briefcase clutched in his hands like a shield.
'Which is why we've got to get in!'
He began to jabber on as Katie's eyes glazed over. Theories of
secret government agents, wads of cash from a bank robbery,
bonds, jewels, gold, all washed over her.
'They might be perverts, Katie! They might have all kinds of
torturous sex-toys and illegal porn in here. Right now they could be
holidaying at an S&M club, being buggered by Germans in leather!'
This had gone far enough. Katie snatched the briefcase from
Casper. She was angry. Angry at all the assumptions he had
ever made about her, about her family, the way he treated
coming to stay at her parents house almost like some kind of
safari, spotting the strange beasts that sat on street corners on
their bikes and watching the natives strut around almost naked.
He had no idea who she was, who her family were. How dare he
say those things. They were good people. She was a good person.
'You want to know what's in there? Well have a look.'
She ran up the combination - 151290, her birthday. The idiot
had even got that wrong. She snapped back the clasps and then
emptied the contents of the briefcase on the floor before storming out
and downstairs to make herself a cup of tea. On the way down, she
spotted an envelope on the hall floor. It was addressed to her.
Casper stood and wondered what to do. Should he follow her?
Should he apologise? No. He'd done nothing wrong - he was just
having a bit of fun and to ignore the contents of the briefcase
would just mean she had won.
Picking up the papers from the floor, he sat on the bed.
He leafed through, his eyes drawing what felt like the last
moisture left in his body to his tear ducts and eventually
allowing a fat droplet to fall onto the documents he held shaking
in his hands. Katie's adoption papers.
Slowly, he gathered them together and put them in a neat pile
on the bed. He didn't want to go downstairs and face Katie but he
knew he had to. He knew he had to because he did love her and
wanted to tell her how much he loved her. Tell her he was sorry.
He sat up from the bed and walked downstairs. He could hear
Katie crying and wiped his own tears away so he could be strong
for her. He followed the sobs, the huge asphyxiating sobs that
you shake with as a child, down the hall and toward the living
room. Opening the door to the living room, he found Katie, head
in hands and shoulders shaking. He sat beside her and put a
hand on each of her shoulders.
'It's alright' he said, 'I'm sorry.'
She looked at him.
'Oh fuck off, Casper.'
There was a letter open on the coffee table.

Part Six: Woods

EDWIN

I'm beginning to breathe a little more easily and can soon jog
up to where I can see Tiger from a safe distance. You could ask
why I've continued to follow at all; I'm obviously close so why
don't I just ask a stranger for directions to Phillip's? That
would make sense, but unless you are actually in my shoes it's
hard to explain the feeling. Tiger seems to have some purpose
in mind, it feels like he knows the only route to take and that
he has some kind of connection with all of this. I could ask for
directions, I could find Phillip without Tiger but I would lose
something important by doing that. There was an easier way to
the monument, to what lay beneath the ground, than the one I
took, but I didn't take it. I went to the benches, the nursery,
the dingle, the canal, the woods. There was no reason, just a
feeling: Helen.
Blood is coming from my tongue. I must have bitten it when
he attacked me. This is a relief; the hypochondriac in me
imagined internal bleeding or a crushed windpipe. Tiger's
hands could wring the breath from my lungs, no danger. But it
wasn't that which scared me so much as his eyes. In those few
seconds of rage they flipped, they became wild and bright. It
was almost as if the violence brought him alive.
So, I follow him knowing not only could he kill me with his
bare hands but also he would probably enjoy it. I don't even
know if he's really taking me to Phillip.
It is a wide boulevard. On either side of the road are
enormous granite tenements chopped up into luxury apartments,
office space and private healthcare centres. The streetlamps are
like fizzy orange. Trees line the boulevard and remind me of
some foreign capital city that I have never been to, an alien place
but one so beautiful that you wonder why anyone would want to
live anywhere else. The whole place looks respectful of those
who live in it, like it is there for them and not to keep them
hidden. It is a far cry from the old terraces we have just come
from and I start to think that Phillip might live around here, in
some huge apartment, looking down over everything.
I laugh at the image I have of him - like the villain from
some corny film, stood in his window with a brandy, his tie
loosened around the collar of his expensive shirt, some classical
music playing in the background and that look still in his eyes.
That look stops me smiling. I'd like to think it wasn't always
in him, that look; that it was triggered by some event: catching
Helen and me kissing in the beer garden, losing his trousers on
the fence, the death of his gran, but I think he's always had it in
him. He had that look when we sat on the benches and he had it
as he edged toward my face with a lit cigarette - a look much
like Tiger's as he gripped my neck. A look I can almost feel now.
It makes me shudder so I go back to picturing his life since
he ran - because that its what he did; he ran. As much as
anyone says he was always going, he fucking ran when the heat
got too much. What else am I to think other than that he is
guilty? If he weren't, he would have stayed. I did.
He's a fucking prick, some kind of autistic cunt. I imagine
him finishing work and eating alone in the same restaurant
every night, the Maitre D' long since given up on conversation
with him, the same meal ready for him each night with no
menu offered and the same type of wine brought out to him, a
wine no longer on the wine list and only now bought in for this
their most peculiar, diner.
He is afraid - afraid of the certainty of it, of me. Has been
since he stepped on the train ten years ago.
I see him leaving work and the cab waiting for him outside
at the same time every night, for although he is scared he
keeps this most regular of routines, almost willing himself to be
found, for some sort of redemption. I see him sat at home, the
TV on but being paid no attention, waiting for me. Waiting for
me to redeem him. Well fuck that. And fuck being scared.

The fear left me as soon as I looked at my reflection in the
canal. It was like looking in the mirror of the train toilet this
afternoon - seeing myself and not really being ashamed of what
I saw. I walked beneath the iron bridge, straight along the
towpath and crossed the lock for old times' sake. My trainers
squeaked on the freshly painted lock gate, black, the moon
hitting the creases in the wood, and the white end raised like
the end of some gigantic magic wand.
They've spent millions on the canal. It was part of the same
development as the industrial estate and retail park - a sweetener
for the community. I'm sure the council were well impressed, and
the dog-walkers and fisherman. Little plaques were put up
alongside the towpath giving facts about the effect of the canal on
the price of coal and of how the bargemen had to get their boats
under bridges by walking the tunnel ceilings upside down. To
them the water must have seemed another sky ahead, only the
ripples from their own movement through it spoiling the illusion.
They talk of the canal falling into disrepair and the huge
sums spent on restoring this piece of our heritage. The age of
the old, manky canal would be my heritage in fifty years time the
bits of old bike and shite thrown in. We will start harking
back to the days when the canal was all kind of colours; when
daredevil kids would jump in off the iron bridge. That's how
my generation will look back on the canal. We'll be throwing
shit back in.
Ten years ago scrubland stretched from the canal to the edge
of the woods but since then the retail park had been built.
Huge supply wagons were unloading at the supermarket and
there was the odd car parked up. I wondered who on earth
would do their shopping now? What did they buy? They
couldn't all be stoned fuckers trekking out on a munchie hunt?
But people were buying; money was being spent.
I headed on beyond the supermarket. The lights of the
cinema, bowling alley and pizza parlour were still on, the
golden arches still illuminated and burping light. The tarmac
and kerbstones hemmed the grass like something from a Lego
city, and the shiny new bypass roads and roundabouts were
plastered with every sign and symbol you could imagine. It was
a toy town where everything was wrapped in warnings. But
beyond the crash barriers were the unruly woods.
The roads were clear and I walked it blind, my ears my only
guide as I closed my eyes and tried to imagine scrub beneath
my feet. When my shins reached the crash barrier I stepped
over as if it were a fallen tree and continued walking, my
hands stretched out hitting twigs and thorn bushes and trees.
When I could be sure the road and retail park were out of sight
I opened my eyes again and took in my surroundings.
If the dingle was used to scare the local kids into staying
close to home, the woods held nightmares of their own.
Nobody came up here, haunted as it was by a boggart that
could wrap thick tree branches around necks and leave grown
men hanging. But these woods wouldn't hurt me. I'd been lost
in them once before.

I passed my driving test when I was seventeen and a half. Me
and Helen had been messing around for the last few years but
after leaving school it became serious. I was totally in love with
her, the kind of love that makes it hard to swallow. But Phillip
was always around. We had to sneak off to be alone together
and somehow he always found us.
One day we arranged to go for a picnic. Up by the monument
that overlooks the woods. Dad had bought me a little Micra to
celebrate me passing my test and give me that bit of
independence - help me grow up.
We loaded up the back of the car with sandwiches and some
booze that I'd managed to get served with at the Spar. It was Sue
from up the road who served me, Sue with the mad twins. They
weren't even born yet and she was a real looker. I would flirt with
her whenever I went in the shop and in return she served me
booze despite knowing I had a year to go till it was legal. I
remember her being great after Helen disappeared, saying she
knew I didn't have anything to do with it. I thought about fucking
her. As I slammed the boot shut, Phillip appeared from nowhere.
'Where are you two going?'
I hesitated for a second but Helen told him. That was her
problem - she never knew which stuff to lie about - which
stuff to hide. It was meant to be our day and she could have
said anything, but she didn't.
He didn't ask to come along, just told us to wait and ran back
to his house to collect a bottle of Lamb's Navy Rum. I mean,
what the fuck were we going to do with that? He'd obviously
just nicked it from the drinks cabinet when I knew full well his
dad wouldn't have minded us having a few of his cans.
I opened the passenger door and Helen pulled the seat back
to climb in. I was about to say she should sit with me in the
front but without a word Phillip just climbed in and sat in the
back next to her. I was furious. I wanted to reach in and just
pull him out of there, scream at him, get it into his thick head
that we weren't ten years old anymore and three was now
officially a crowd. He had to let us go. He had to let her go. But
I couldn't do it. I can't really blame Helen; I was just as bad.
As I climbed into the driver's seat I caught that look in the
rear view mirror and it froze me in my seat. It spoke of
something, of a purpose. There was a reason behind Phillip's
actions - he didn't want Helen and I to be together, he wanted
her all to himself. We took off for the monument.
During my driving lessons, the quieter lanes and the country
roads were the ones that scared me the most. The jam and
panic of town traffic was something I was used to but these
narrow quick roads were something else altogether. I found it
difficult to judge how close I was to the edge of the road on the
passenger side and so felt constantly trapped between the fear
of being smashed head on by a car coming the other way or
tipping over into the ditch at the side of the road.
I took a left off the country road and onto the even narrower
tracks that lead up to the monument. The monument was
something of a local tourist attraction but the land around it
was protected so it was still difficult to get to in a car.
It was the view of the town below that people went up for,
just like Tiger. It was something worth making an effort for.
As soon as I'd turned onto the dirt track I knew I'd gone
wrong and Phillip was quick to tell me. Despite knowing he
was right, I couldn't allow him the victory.
It got worse. The track began to get more and more narrow,
tree branches scraping the car, but Helen remained silent,
totally silent, like she had utter faith in me. I remember feeling
that! I remember that feeling and I can almost remember her
face in the rear view mirror. I also remember the car coming to
a slow halt, wedged in by the trees on either side.
There was silence in the car. Even Phillip said nothing and I
knew it was up to me to get us out. No matter how hard I tried
to reverse we were stuck and I knew the only way we were
getting out was if I went for help.
I didn't want to go. Not because I was afraid I would be lost
but because I was sure Phillip had planned this whole thing.
My paranoia had reached a stage where I thought he could
even control events that were uncontrollable; that as soon as I
left the car he would steal Helen from me forever.
The fear grew as I headed further into the woods. I felt like
a louse crawling through matted hair, the strange fungus
bubbling from the trees, the air itself filling my lungs with
deadly puffs. I stopped, sure I would have to head back but I
didn't know which way back was. It was like I could hear the
boggart; I could sense the tree branches begin to feel their way
around my throat. To the far left of my field of vision was a
trail - a tiny trail of bare earth heading further into the trees,
but a trail nonetheless.
As I followed it, it grew wider and wider, more and more
sunlight broke the dark forest floor. The trees cleared and I was
at the foot of the monument.
A kissing couple were having a picnic. I must have only
been gone half an hour but the relief was as if I had been lost
for weeks in the Amazon. They were a bit shocked when they
noticed me but when I told them what had happened the man
began to laugh. He knew exactly where we had gone wrong and
offered to ring for a tow truck to drag us.
He took out his phone and called what I thought was the
truck company. As he laughed and told the person on the other
end of the phone about this young lad who had got himself
stuck in the woods, I watched his girlfriend. I knew who she
was - it was Lyndsey from the bookies. She was a right slapper
and knowing this took the edge off any embarrassment I felt as
the lad on the phone took the piss a little bit too much. She
recognised me too.
'You're Edwin Fahey innit? Phillip's mate?'
I nodded and shook her hand. She smiled and the lad on the
phone finished the call a little more quickly than he had
obviously planned to. He stuck out his hand next.
'Billy, some name that - Edwin?'
I shook his hand and shrugged.
'Certainly is, Willy. Do you mind if I sit?'
Lyndsey moved around on the sheet they had down for a
picnic blanket. I could see the Ikea label sticking out from the
side and thought about the new store that had just opened. I
remember feeling some pride that my dad refused to go there
but we had seen Phillip's mam and dad come back with big
blue bags full of shite the week it had opened.
'Do you want a can?'
I shook my head.
'No thanks, mate. I'm driving.'
'Could have fooled me!'
We all laughed, Lyndsey quietly.
'How long did they say?'
'They'll bell me. They're coming up here but'll have to go in
from the back so you can direct them. Don't worry though, I
can show you exactly where you went wrong. Know this part of
the world like the back of my hand. Come up here all the time,
don't we love?'
Lyndsey gave a look that might have been a blush in other
girls, but she was already choosing to ignore the wedding ring
on his hand so I don't think she was that bothered by his
suggestion that they might do a lot of fucking up there.
Billy turned me around and took a napkin from the plastic
bag that made up their hamper. He placed the napkin on my
back and began to draw. When he finished, I turned around and
he had given me a map of how to get back to the car. A bookies
pen was between his teeth before he slid it back into his pocket.
'Now see here,' he pointed to a section where the road that
led to the monument met another road. 'This stile here is
where they'll meet you with the truck. It's called... well I don't
know what it'll have on the side but it's a tow truck innit you
can't fucking miss it. Anyway, just direct the driver using
this map. And don't claim this on you insurance.'
'Premiums?'
'No - this isn't exactly a legit tow truck. A mate of mine...
one of those people who can get a hold of things, you know
what I mean?'
I smiled. Brilliant. Not only was I going to pull of a daring
rescue but I was going to do it in a hooky truck. I felt like
Robin Hood!
We sat for half and hour or so and I was beginning to worry
about Helen and Phillip again but Billy's phone rang and he
told me the truck was on its way. I said my goodbyes and used
the map to get to the road by the stile.
The truck was already there. It wasn't a tow truck, more of
a tractor. In the front were two men, one with dark hair and
the other with blonde hair in a close crop. The blonde one got
out. He was covered in jewellery, even his teeth were gold
when he smiled.
'Got yourself in a bit of bother?'
I nodded and passed him the map.
'Yeah, but your mate drew this.'
He looked at the map.
'Not bad for that useless cunt. Right, there's not really any
room in here but we won't be going fast so climb up on the side.'
The blonde bloke got back in. I grabbed a bar by the side of
the cab and stood on a small step by the passenger door. We
drove through the lanes, holding up a few impatient drivers
with the blonde bloke switching between a conversation he was
having on his mobile phone and directing the driver using the
map. The driver looked well pissed off but I was smiling, the
steady speed of the tractor jogging me about a little and
blowing my hair a bit.
Soon enough I recognised the terrain. We began to make our
way down the track that I had turned down mistakenly earlier.
The branches of the trees and bushes were scraping quite close to
me and I had to hold myself toward the cab to avoid being cut to
ribbons. In the distance I could see the car and I swung outwards
and began to make the noise of a truck's horn, pumping my arms
and waving. The two blokes in the truck ignored me and soon had
to stop because the track got too narrow. When they stopped, I
climbed down and the blonde bloke got out. He gave me a piece
of towrope, thick and manmade.
'Go and tie yourself on and I'll sort out this end. Beep us
when you're sorted.'
Taking the rope from him I asked how much this was going
to cost and he told me fifty quid. I was a little down heartened
at that - fifty quid was a lot of money. Seeing this, he smiled
and put his hand on my shoulder.
'Don't worry, we can sort out a payment plan. With interest
mind.'
I took the rope to the car and smiled as I knocked the
window where Phillip and Helen were sat. Phillip looked scared
and this made me smile even wider. I tied the towrope onto the
back of the car then opened the driver's door. I leaned into the
back and kissed Helen before beeping my horn to signal that
we were ready to go. By the time I'd paid the fifty quid back, it
was eighty. A small price to pay for such a victory.

When I opened my eyes in the woods this morning, I took out
my wallet. The map was still there, almost falling part, soggy. For
some reason I had kept it all these years, sure it would come in
handy. It wasn't like me to be so forward thinking. I looked at it
and then stuck it to the branch of a tree. I didn't need it because
I had Helen with me, her arms around my shoulders. All I could
think about was what lay beneath the earth at the monument.
The truth concealed beneath the soil and the end of this.
As I stepped further and further into the woods and grew more
and more lost, I knew the trail would find me and lead me to the
monument. As the trees darkened around me I felt calm and ready.

And I do now, even though Tiger has left me. I let the memory of
the trail wash over me, and as it does it becomes her hands
around my shoulders again. I do not jog to catch Tiger because I
know full well that he will be waiting for me. Instead I continue
up the boulevard at my own pace.
I reach the corner of the street Tiger took and I can see no
sign of him. It is a long narrow street of shops with flats above
them. Most of the shops are closed but others - the chip shops,
the off licences, the video shop, and of course the pubs - are
open. I stroll down the road checking each shop window.
One sells second hand bits and bobs. Horrible prints of
paintings are placed in the window at prices of twenty and
thirty quid. It makes me smile - the idea that someone might
buy this shit. I wonder how much the shop-owner paid for it in
the first place - most likely picked up for pennies at car boot
sales or repossession auctions. There are paintings of John
Wayne, Charlie Chaplin, Clint Eastwood; annuals for old
football seasons and books that have been stolen from the local
library. I smile and move on.
I pass a tattoo parlour, the term 'Body Artist' cut out in
gothic lettering on the white fagade.
Further down the road there is a Polish grocer, the strip
lighting still on even though the store seems to be closed. I look
at the sign: 'Polskie Delikatesy'. And there was me believing
Polish is a difficult language to learn?

I turn into a late night Spar and have a wander through the
aisles. Any sense of urgency has left me as I look in the bargain
bin for an out of date packet of crisps. I pick out some chicken
flavour and open them. I haven't eaten all day so begin to eat
them as I wait in the queue. They mostly taste of salt so I grab
a can as well. By the time I get to the counter I offer the empty
packet and it is scanned and processed, my money is handed
over and a receipt is given for an empty packet of crisps and a
full can of coke.
As I drink, I have a look in the video shop, looking at which
DVDs have been taken out rather than the ones still left for
rental. Everyone wants what isn't there. I think of the place as
a relic - these places do not have long left.
Leaving the shop, I take the letter out of my pocket. I hold it
against my chest and close my eyes. When I open my eyes I see
the pub. The Dragon - that mythical beast. The boulevard is
long behind us.
I approach the pub. It is on the corner of a junction that
leads into streets and streets of terraces, a maze like Tiger's
own neighbourhood. I take the door with a straight arm. And
there he is, sitting at the end of the bar.

PHILLIP

Sally listens for so long that when the silence comes it rings. I
have told her everything, how it all came to pass and why I am
here. How Edwin will find me tonight and I must give him this
letter; how tomorrow I may well be gone. I feel like I should
apologize but this would be like wiping dirty shoes on the
quietness. It is not my turn to make noise, not my place to
break this. Her silence isn't difficult or uncomfortable; she is
just taking in all that I have said.

She collects the mugs of tea, mine untouched, and begins to
wash them in the sink. She uses no cloth, no gloves - her
hands used to the scalding heat of the glass-washer in the bar
downstairs. I know nothing about her. I know nothing about
Stag or Mitch. Nothing more than their barber or a taxi driver
giving them a lift home might glean, and I have known them
ten years.
'I've got a son too you know?'
I didn't. I should have detected a mother's care in the way
she cleaned my face.
'Really?'
'Yeah. Michael. He's twelve.'

'Right.'
She turns around, drying her hands on a tea-towel. The
mugs are rinsed on the draining board.
'You're meant to say I don't look old enough!'
She smiles and I do too. Her hair is bobbed and coloured
some strange yellow, the rest of her plump. Her face is heavy
around the eyes and the chin. She looks old enough.

' Sorry.'
'It's alright. I am sixty.'
This genuinely shocks me; I thought she was only in her late

thirties.
'Really?'
'Good - you're learning.' We both laugh. It feels good. 'We
adopted him. We had tried for such a long time to have our
own but it just wasn't meant to be.'
'Are you married?'
"Course I'm married! Do you think these are for show?'
She raises her left hand to show me her wedding and
engagement rings. Those hands had passed dark after dark to
me, taken my money and kept change for her own but still I
had never noticed.
'We adopted him six years ago - he had been in care since
he was a small baby after his mother dosed him with
methadone to keep him quiet.'
'Is that why...'
'Yeah. But I was wrong. I shouldn't be ... like that. You were
right. That's why I brought you up here. I felt like it was my
fault, what happened down there.'
I shake my head.
"I don't know what I was trying to prove anyway, Sally.'
She moves over to the table and takes the seat opposite me.
It is the first time she has sat down since we came up here.
'We want the best for him you know? And he's a clever lad.
But do you know what? No matter how much you try to keep a
boy safe, things still happen.'
She looks at her rings, begins to play with them. I want to
reach out and touch her hand but that would be too much.
'The first we heard about it was a letter from the school.
Michael and his mate had been fighting - could we come up
and see the headmaster. Well, you can imagine. After four years
and no trouble - trouble we were expecting from a kid with
Michael's background - all of a sudden this? We should have
taken it better but... like I said. With his background.'
'Boys fight.'
'When we got up there, it was us and the parents of
Michael's little mate, Kyle. They were trying to blame Michael,
knew about us adopting him and that - tried to make out it
had to be Michael's fault. And you know what? We didn't
defend the lad. We thought it must have been his fault too.
When we got home we grounded him, sent him to his room
no games, no nothing. But when I went up to check on him, he
was there on his computer. I hit the roof! But when I went to
switch the computer off I saw what he was doing. He wasn't
playing a game, wasn't doing his homework - he was watching
some video on the Internet. It was a video of him and Kyle.
They made him fight. Some older kids had got him and his
little mate and made them fight. They filmed it on their mobile
phones and put it on the Internet. I wanted to turn it off but
he made me watch it, the faces of the other kids, the cheering
while these two poor little boys belted seven shades out of each
other. I'd never felt so guilty in my life.'
I don't know what to say. Another silence rings but this time a
less comfortable one. It is broken from a commotion downstairs.
Sally stands and walks to the top of the stairs.
'I don't know. Listen, Phillip I better...'
'I know, Sally. You best get back to work. Do you mind if I
go out the back way. I don't want to face the bar.'
'You come back down, Phillip - you have nothing to be
ashamed of.' Sally takes my hand and stands me. She kisses
my cheek. 'You can come and go as you please as long as I'm
in charge here, love. You do whatever you need to do.'
Sally leaves the kitchen and I look around. I walk over to
the mugs on the draining board and give them a wipe with a
tea towel before putting them away.
The commotion downstairs seems to have died down but I
still can't go in there. I don't know if I will ever sit at that bar
again. Instead, I walk down the stairs and take the staff exit
next to the delivery hatch.

I am outside. I take out a cigarette but decide to save it while I
wait for my Chinese.
As I walk around to the take-away I think of the last story
Helen told me. Edwin, Helen and I had set off for the
monument that overlooks the town with a picnic and a bottle
of rum I had taken from my father's cabinet. It had been there
for years and I'd never seen anyone take a drink from it. In
fact the last time it had been used was when I was making rum
truffles in a home economics lesson and instead of rum essence
I took the bottle into school. Nobody had missed it then, nor
had anyone noticed that it had a little more missing than rum
truffles could explain.
We went in Edwin's new car. To be fair to him, he wasn't like
most seventeen year-olds with a new car. He was nervous in his
driving, reticent and quiet. We were teetering on the far edge of
our mezzanine years; our lungs filled with sighs of uncertainty
that we shot from our chests in both laughter and screams.
Huge signs flanked us on either side of the road advertising
the soon-to-be-built retail park. Land was already cleared, brown
banks of empty earth. The woods beyond were shapeless, black,
even in daylight. It was the kind of dark that almost moved if
you stared long enough, as if the light-starved air itself was
panicking and rushing about. At night, there was no outline; the
sky blended perfectly with the earth, the only giveaway a million
specks of silver and the moon full and strange, its light hazy around its circumference.
It was into these dark, daytime woods that Edwin turned
despite my warnings, turned and carried on rather than admit
he was wrong. I can completely understand why. When we got
stuck he went for help and left Helen and I behind in the car.
After some small talk, I quietened, waiting for the real
reason I crashed the party - Helen. Helen and her stories. For
although now there were real desires, carnal wants, Helen's
stories had the power to bring us back together again without
such thoughts, to take us back to the benches and make us feel
like anything was possible and that we were untouched.
Remembering this, I almost forget the Chinese takeaway. It is
just round the corner from the Dragon on the route home and
looks exactly like they all do: large menu with numbered meals
on the wall, a couple of Chinese calendars and the momentary
peep at the queue from a toddler hiding in the passageway
toward the kitchen. One thing about this takeaway that is
different from most however, is the person behind the counter.
'Beef in black bean please.'
Any rice?'
'Half rice half chips.'
'Drinks?'
'No. Thanks.'
Rather than a Chinese woman speaking the English of cheap,
racist jokes, a British boy in his late teens serves, hair shaved
and shaped, large silver chain and fake diamond in his ear.
'Four pound eighty.'
I count out the exact change - just. The boy serving begins
chatting to his friend who sits astride a mountain bike leaned
on the wall opposite to the menu. He is the very image of what
we are told is youthful threat: tall, body puffed out in layers of
man made fibre, glittering trainers a yard long, dark skinned
and white toothed. Wires hang from his ears and penetrate the
shell of his jacket at odd places. A single glove revs the grip of
the handlebar throughout his conversation.
My eyes - now used to the fluorescent lighting after the dark
of the Dragon - wander around the room, everywhere apart
from at the two boys. This is despite my wanting to stare and
stare. As hard as I try to concentrate on the strange balloon-like

images on the calendars, the cans of pop lonely on a shelf below
a plastic clock, the peeling remnants of some old pattern that
seems to have once been dotted around indiscriminately on the
tiles, I cannot escape the noisy, hideous conversation the boys
are having. It makes me think of Sally, watching that video of
her adopted son as he was made to fight for the crowd. They
are talking quite openly about a local girl the boy on the bike
slept with at a recent house party. Bitch, fuck, tear, suck, tits,
back, clit, dick, all over mate, all over. My cheeks flush with
anger and embarrassment so I decide to wait outside and smoke
the cigarette I have saved.
If I were brave, I'd say something. I'd ask them to mind
their language as I found it offensive. I might even try to
engage them in a conversation, attempt to talk them through
their ignorance. But I'm not brave. Instead I cup the flame of
the safety match and puff resignation into the air.
I watch my shadow, flat and long before me in the square of
light smashed onto the pavement by the takeaway window. I
look to see if my smoke also has a shadow but it doesn't seem to
be able to stand up to the light, much like the stars still fighting
for attention through the night sky above. Smoke and stars. We
fight for attention, all of us. It is our constant fight. I look at the
cigarette and toss it away still burning. I'm going to be brave.
I step back inside the take-away. The boy behind the counter
and the boy with the bike are still talking. I too begin to speak,
'The monument would raise its head above the canopy of
the woods. It was built where once a stake stood. Women
accused of being witches were killed; burnt at this stake.'
They stop talking. Both with mouths open but nothing to
say in response.

'Our town was old, had been peopled for many centuries
and those same men who tried to claw the moon from the
stream that ran through the valley would pass judgement on
those women who seemed different from the rest or had
scorned them in some way. The witch would be tied to the
stake at the top of the highest point in town so that all could
see the burning. In those days the town stood on the other side
of the hill to where it stands today. The woods stretched out
into where the town now spreads and they twisted away for as
far as the eye could see.'
Both are listening. I'm shocked. Although perhaps I
shouldn't be. For this was the story Helen told me as we sat in
Edwin's car, waiting for him to come back with help.
'Our town was a prosperous town, a town where wealthy
merchants lived. The long-since bulldozed landowner's house
sat, fat and proud on a path of affluence leading all the way up
the hill. But not long after the burnings began, things started to
go wrong in the town. Disease would spread, the most fertile of
couples found they could no longer conceive. Slowly, the town
began to die - the merchants' goods would find accident in
transit; the landowner could not find an heir.
One day a woman paid the town a visit. She walked into
town covered in a black cowl, her feet bare and hard with
dried blood. She went straight to the landowner's house,
knocking on the door and walking in. The staff were unable to
stop her as she left gritty marks across the tiled hallway and
warmed her feet on the carpeted corridors. All who saw her
were frozen in her presence and it wasn't until she entered the
landowner's private study that she was challenged by the
landowner himself standing up from behind his desk, taking
courage from the ancestry daubed gloomily on the canvasses
behind him. At this challenge, the woman pulled back the cowl
she wore and the landowner fell back into his chair in terror.
A red stain covered the whole of her face and neck. She
calmed the landowner with a finger pressed to her thin lips and
stood above him. She explained that she had not come to hurt
him, explained how she could save them all.
The woman told the tale of how she herself had been forced
from her town as a young girl due to a tiny birthmark beneath
her eye. At first it was endured but as the years went on, the
birthmark grew, so much so that her parents wouldn't let her
leave the house.
One day, while looking out through her window at the
summer arriving, a young boy saw her face and fled, screaming
to all that he had seen a witch. Within hours a mob had grown
outside her parents house. But her parents would not turn her
out to the crowd and instead, her father smuggled his daughter
out the following morning beneath the sacks of seed that he
loaded onto this cart.
When they reached the edge of town, her father tearfully said
his goodbyes and told his daughter to flee, that he and her
mother would be happier thinking there was a chance she was
living somewhere, happy somewhere, than tied to the stake and
burnt here.
During her travels, the birthmark continued to grow until one
day she reached a town as a burning took place. The crowds
cheered, raised bibles to the sky and swore their fear of God as
she silently stood behind them, their silhouettes ragged and
raging in unison with the curls and flounces of the flames. The
scene struck her as a future echo of her own possible death, an
echo of what could have been her own fate were it not for the
bravery of her parents, and much like a person secretly wishes
to see their own funeral to hear what would be said in eulogy to
them, she couldn't turn from this vision as the fire slurped and
slavered about the poor girl that could have been her.
As she watched, her face began to tingle and pain shot
through her birthmark. She tried to control her screams but
soon the pain was too much. Most of the crowd were too
interested in the burning to notice her but two boys bent to help
her from the heap she had collapsed into and as they helped her
up, the cowl she wore slipped from her face. The horror in their
eyes was something she would never forget. She pleaded with
them that she was just like them, that what they saw was the
hurt of years of wandering and not the mark of some devil.
But she was not like them. The birthmark on her face was
growing as the flames themselves grew higher. She realised
then what her purpose was - to act as conduit for the souls
that died at the stake.
She told the landowner that the misfortune that had come
upon the town was the bitter revenge of those souls they had
burnt. That as revenge rolled down the hill; some was soaked
up and trapped by the woods on the other side but the rest of
this vengeance was allowed to run amok in the town. If the
townsfolk would allow her to stay with them as just another
member of their town, she would soak up this evil for them
and the town would grow prosperous once more.
The landowner called a council of the most important men in
town. They sat and discussed the woman's claims. Many, on the
verge of losing everything they had, agreed to the proposition
that the woman could stay but the landowner still wasn't sure.
The woman was brought before the council and told she could
stay. Notice was sent to the townsfolk that this woman was their
saviour and that she was to be treated with the same respect as
any other member of their town despite her marked face.
Over time the town grew prosperous again; children were once
again born. Even the landowner produced an heir. The birthmark
continued to grow across the woman's face and body but this was
of no concern because as long as it grew the town was safe and
people began to look upon it as a miracle rather than a curse.
The woman planted vegetables in her garden, she walked
among the townsfolk, she smiled and children smiled back at her.
Her mother and father would be so happy that their daughter was
safe, that their bravery had yielded such a rich harvest.
Her happiness lasted ten years.
One day there was a knock at the old woman's door. When
she opened the door, the landowner, the members of the
council and a mob from the town were waiting outside. Before
she could ask what was happening, she was dragged from the
house, her own vegetables ripped from the soil and thrown at
her, terrible words spat at her, ten years of waiting was hurled
upon her. She was dragged, as so many had been, through the
town and to the stake on top of the hill where the landowner
spoke to the crowd:
'This woman came some years ago when the troubles of our
town were at their heights. It is no co-incidence that she
arrived then for she herself was the cause of these troubles.
Knowing that she could not be welcomed by any God-fearing
community due to the devilish marks on her face she allowed
our town to be consumed by an evil that she knew only herself
and the woods beyond could stem. And so for the sake of the
town, we of the council allowed her to stay. But his town
cannot keep evil in its midst. This town can not sanction
witchcraft, cannot side with the devil, and so since she has
been here, a new town has been built, slowly, on the other side
of the woods, a town protected by those woods and so a free
town, a town no longer chained to the power of this witch!'
The crowd cheered, and the woman was dragged up to the
stake. She didn't protest as they stripped her naked, almost
every inch of her flesh red with the evil she had absorbed on
their behalf.
As the flames began to play about her feet, the sky darkened
and an unholy wailing could be heard on the wind. Thunder
crashed and the townsfolk began to run as huge hailstones fell
from the sky. All hid indoors and waited for the flames to die
but the flames began to make their way down the hillside and
into the town. Buildings caught in the blaze were reduced to
ashes in minutes, and people began to gather whatever they
could carry and run towards the woods to escape to the new
town. Within a day the old town was destroyed and to this day,
the only barrier between the new town and complete
destruction are those woods.'
The two boys in the take-away look exactly as I did when
Helen told the story to me. It was just another of Helen's stories
but the way she told it, the look in her eyes of total belief, ran
like static about my neck and shoulders. I knew it wasn't true. I
knew. I knew that nobody had ever been burnt at the stake on
that hill. Witches were killed there but hanged, not burnt. The
burning branded a much deeper fear than the gallows; that was
why as a rumour it was allowed to flourish.

The hatch behind the counter opens and my bag of food is
passed out. The boy behind the counter stands my food upright
in a white plastic bag on the counter ready for collection.
'Thank you.'
I leave the shop, and can feel the eyes of the two boys
watching me as I walk for home. The stars still struggle above
and I swing the bag by my side as I reach my front door.
From the window I can still hear the muted sound of the
television and I smile. I'm ready for this now. It feels like the
right time.

Avenue

To Whom It May Concern, Number 6

Jon was nearly at the end of his first week for Taylor & Taylor.
The estate agency was run by a husband and wife team: Simon
in his mid-fifties, grey, plump and golf handicapped; and Angela,
a similar age and equally idiotic. Jon could imagine them at
swingers' parties or sex resorts in the Caribbean, her old arse
hanging out of some fishnets, his cock shrunk and heart shaking
on cheap coke; suntanned shoulders sweating in half-panic and
vicarious excitement as some black dude ffom the resort staff
pummelled Angela through the crotchless knickers that hid
beneath her rolls of fat. She dripped in gold and he dripped
imminent death and the pair of them made Jon sick.
'Number one! Numero uno in the district Jon. There ain't no
medals for second best son - reach for the stars!'
Simon handed the keys to Jon and slapped him on the back.
He was always touching people, that big old arm of his slapping
backs and crawling around waists. Jon longed to see it pain him
and the fat twat fall to his knees as that big old heart just decided
it was time to fold. It is difficult to wish death on someone you've
known for under a week but that was the measure of this man.
On the other hand, Jon wanted Angela to live for ever, to grow
older and saggier, and more lined, and incontinent until she was
so sapped of pride that she had to lie in her bed hoping to die, the
strength just not there to top herself, her nephews and nieces
counting the milk bottles outside. They got to him, those two.
Still, Jon was out of the office now. Away from the Taylors,
the phones, the timewasters. But also away ffom Keeley. The
receptionist, Keeley, was one reason to go in, to stay on.
Beautiful, gloriously beautiful with a quiet but knowing way.
Much better looking than the daughter, Teresa, that they used to
go on about all the time. Problem was Keeley had a boyfriend.
Jon had seen him drop in every now and again. He'd shaken
Jon's hand, raised his eyebrows and almost nodded. Scared the
shit out of Jon if truth be told. Jon could imagine him being at the
long end of a broken bottle, snarling over the curve of the label as
he jabbed its glassy teeth into your neck.

The lead had come in without a call. The keys had arrived
through the post that morning at the office in a handwritten
envelope. No stamp. It was a strange old do, as Simon had put
it. The property was in one of the suburbs in town, out towards
the edges, near the new retail park. Nice set of post-war semis,
good links to the ring road, sizeable reception rooms, extended
kitchen, front and rear gardens, downstairs loo, bathroom with
shower, off-road parking, three beds and attic space. Couple of
loft conversions on the Avenue already. Respectable little street.
Good enough school up the road and some executive flats about
to be built round the corner. It was a good lead. Jon couldn't
understand why Simon had given it to him and not McQueen.
McQueen was Simon's nephew. That was his actual name,
McQueen Taylor. When Simon had first introduced him, Jon
worked hard to repress the smirk but McQueen saw him.
'Call me Mick.' he had said, a look in his eye that said laugh
all you want, this will be mine one day; as soon as the fat man
turns his toes, all this will be mine'. Poor sod.
'Mick's here, just like the rest of the agents, on merit. I don't
want you to think there's any despotism in Taylor & Taylor.'
Simon had those fat wings outstretched around the pair of them.
'He fights for the leads like everyone else. Not his fault he's a
natural seller. Not his fault some of the old gift of the gab found its
way upstream through the gene pool. That right Auntie Angela?'
'That's right Uncle Simon. He could sell porn to the Taliban.
Right charmer aren'tyou?'
At that, Angela had placed the end of her pen in her mouth,
moistening it with her lips. Jon's stomach lurched. They probably
did... he... fucking hell, where was he working?
Of course, it was all bollocks. The other agents filled Jon in
straight away - His Majesty, as they had dubbed McQueen, got
all the leads worth having, all the commission worth claiming,
and it all went right back into the coffers, never even touched the
sides. The whole thing was one almighty scam and the poor kid
didn't even know the firm was constantly on the edge of
bankruptcy, that all he was going to inherit was a shit credit
rating and some pretty pissed off investors from the south side of
the city. The kind of investors who hadn't always lived on the
south side and wouldn't go to open prison if their deeds were
made public. So why had Jon got this lead? This plum lead?

Pulling into the Avenue, Jon realised the entrance to the
property was blocked by a skip. He had to go to the end of the
road, execute a tight-as-fuck-three-point turn and then reverse
park into the top right hand bend of the cul-de-sac. He got out of
the car, a company Fiesta, smiled and clenched a fist at the
inch-perfect parking. It shamed him to think that this was
always how he reacted, that this was something he was proud
of, but it was. Jon couldn't half park a car well. Sometimes he
even high-Bved himself.
His heels hit the pavement. The cars parked outside the other
houses were nice, nothing flash but a good sign. Jon felt eyes
behind nets watch him as he made his way towards number six.
It was discomforting and a mute, hollow swell surrounded him invisible
and irresistible.
Jon turned into the driveway and squeezed past the skip. He
couldn't believe the cheek of some people. The house had been
empty for ten years and was obviously used as public space for
the rest of the Avenue dwellers. The skip was half full - copies of
the Socialist Worker's Party newspaper, a bin bag, some wigs,
fishing tackle, a pretty decent looking briefcase. He took the keys
from his suit jacket pocket and slid it into the Yale.
It wouldn't budge.
'Come on you bastard,' Jon said under his breath. He could
feel the eyes of the Avenue more than ever as he struggled to turn
the lock free. 'Come on, come to daddy...' The key turned a full
ninety degrees only the lock didn't move. 'Bollocks.' Jon stepped
back and surveyed the damage. The key was bent and ready to
snap, the key ring dangling ffom the door. He thought of Simon
back at the office, of Angela tut-tutting, pen resting on her
salacious bottom lip, McQueen shaking his head, arms folded,
eyes floor-fixed with a smile. He wasn't going to let this beat him.
He couldn't go back without viewing this lead. He couldn't give
up a lead like this no matter how indifferent he was to the job.
Jon slid the remaining keys from the key ring and left the
broken Yale key in the lock. He made his way down the narrow
passage at the side of the house to the back garden.
The garden was a mess as expected. The front was block
paved, nothing a little weeding wouldn't sort out, but the back
was overgrown, grass falling over itself under the weight and
monstrous conifers leaning into the adjacent yards. The pub
behind could be made out through gaps in the foliage.
Jon looked at the back of the house - looking for a way to
break in. The windows at the back were old, wooden, half rotten.
Jon used another key from the bunch to scratch underneath the
window and then took out his wallet. He slipped out a credit
card, one crammed full of his life beyond its means, and slid it
beneath the window. Carefully keeping hold of the bottom edge of
the card, Jon managed to reach the arm of the handle inside.
Slowly he pushed until eventually the frame popped and the
window opened outwards.
'Bonus!'
He got his fingers underneath, his feet upon the outside sill,
and heaved himself up through the open window. It was a
struggle getting through, he'd have to get back in the gym again
soon, but in little under a minute Jon had dropped inside the
dining room and was looking beyond the knock-through, and into
the front room.
The floors were bare, the walls beginning to peel. But there
was no dust. Jon had expected it to hang in the sunshine being
thrown through the bay window but there wasn't even a speck
on the ground. Weird.
He began to measure the rooms, take notes in the Moleskin
notepad his mother had bought him when he got the job. He
knew his parents were disappointed that their son wasn't as
gifted as they were. Jon's parents were academics, lived in a
secluded part of the town where old, large and expensive
houses were tucked away, built by the original rich merchants
that had settled in the place.
His mother was an English professor, his father a palaeontologist.
Jon felt suddenly urged to remember, to look back to his childhood, to
dig up the memories of those weekends with his father collecting]
ammonites. 'Man can lie as much as he wants, son. He can tell all
the tall tales of his greatness, but the ground remembers the truth,
the ground always remembers.'
Jon shook the past from him, stuck to the task. He measured]
up the kitchen, hall stairs and landing, master bedroom, box-room, 
bathroom. He noted the condition of the walls, period]
features, the large attic space.
He walked into the second bedroom. It looked back at him
untouched. A girl's bedroom, immaculate apart from a diary left
on the floor. Jon couldn't ignore it. He picked up the diary and
sat on the carpet, legs crossed. The cover of the diary was some
kind of felt, dark brown like freshly turned soil. Embossed in
gold calligraphy on the front was a name - Helen.
He turned to the first page, the handwriting sloping to the
right and curled. He flicked through the pages, some illustrated
carefully with images of giant snarling fish, stooped women, an
old man in his den, a boy broken on a car with a shoe missing, a
boxer, a Spitfire, a blue box. The rest of the pages were crammed
with handwriting.
Jon began to read. The pages were not filled with the immature
musings, desires and complaints of a teenager but with stories,
story upon story richly told and carefully put down.
As he continued to work his way through the diary he reached
a section where the pages had been torn out. None were left
intact. The last page not to be torn bore a picture of a crowd, the
flames of a bonfire reaching up into the night sky. At the back of
the crowd, the faces of two young men looked back, away from
the flames, one dark-haired and deep-eyed, pale; the other with
blue eyes and red hair. He noticed the silhouette of a body at the
centre of the flames.
Jon was already stepping into his escape. He danced down the
stairs and as he reached the front door saw an envelope on the
carpet. He should have continued, got back to the office and filed
his findings, got home, written his letter of resignation, hid from
the eyes of his parents. But he couldn't. The same swell that
made him remember the ammonites and the words of his father,
the same force that made him open the diary, implored him to
pick the envelope.
On the ffont of the envelope, in the same hand that had filled
the pages of the diary, the same hand that dropped through the
office door this morning with the keys and instructions to sell,
was written To Whom It May Concern, Number Six. He sighed,
pure relief, he'd half expected to see his own name on the front. But
once again he was willed to carry on. He turned the envelope
over and peeled away the lip of paper. As he pulled the contents
free he noticed the ragged edge where the paper had been torn
from its source. He unfolded the letter within and began to read:

Jon was nearly at the end of his first week for Taylor &
Taylor...

Part Seven: Monument

EDWIN

The whole pub is hushed, the kind of hush you get as soon as
an argument has finished. It isn't peace and quiet, more
exhaustion and the fear it might all kick off again. It knocks my
confidence a little; I was feeling good again but not now.
No one moves and no one looks at me as I enter. Instead
all eyes seem to be flitting between pint glasses and the man
at the end of the bar. It is Tiger, his huge frame shrunken on
a stool. He stands to his full height, more than a little bit
over the top in his greeting but not sarcastic. It's more
desperate than that.
'Ah, Edwin! Where have you been pal? Lager is it? Lager
please, Sally, for our visitor.'
The woman behind the counter gives me a look of recognition.
I don't know... it's just that she knows something - it's more
than the usual surprise at the face that fits the name. It's like she
knew all along I was coming.
I take the stool next to Tiger. The drinks come back quickly
and the money exchanges hands in silence. He's not been at it
in here too has he? Barracking the staff?
A silent TV blinks some images of war in the corner. Tiger's
temperament seems to have turned itself inside out and he
doesn't know which way to put it back on. I feel like I'm
probably the closest thing he has to a friend in the whole place.
'Well Edwin pal, cheers.'
We raise our glasses and chink. I think about confronting
him, about pulling him up on the way he has just treated me
but I decide to leave it, that we don't have long left and the
camaraderie he is displaying for this audience is at least
almost comfortable.
Something about the place makes me feel at home - and I
don't mean in the way people usually do. This isn't 'feeling at
home' in the sense of feeling warm and welcomed. This is
'feeling at home' in the sense that most of us feel it recognising
the surroundings, knowing your way about but
never sure of what the mood will be. It's bullshit to say home is
a place of comfort. I haven't had a bad upbringing or anything
but home is just like anywhere else - you never, ever know the
mood of the next person to walk in until they open their mouth;
you can walk into a room full of family and still feel like you
might have done something wrong because the smiles just don't
ring true. All that's the same is the furniture. That's what this
pub feels like. I cant put my finger on it but there is the oddest
sensation of being here before - not deja vu - more than that.
A man looking at his newspaper edges away from us. Tiger's
white eyebrows lift in a silent message. Tiger has been many
things in the few hours I have known him and scared has never
been one of them. But like I said, here he seems unsure of
himself. Prison, the ring - hostile territory is something he has
been used to for a long time so it is more than simply that.
What the fuck is going on in here? I'm not going to press him
though, I will treat him as he did me back at his place - just let
the quiet open him up.
I place my pint on the cigarette machine next to the jukebox
and begin to flick through the selection. It is certainly a
strange mix - some of the usual compilations but a few more
less-likely numbers: post-punk classics, reggae, folk and soul.
In a place like this a jukebox can tell you more about the
crowd than any conversation. I'd expected different - some
heavy rock for the tattoo-clad longhair at the bar; some cheesy
70s numbers for the barmaid; the rest look happy to sway
with whatever they are given.
I'm predictably drawn to the soul classics: Dad's music. Dad
lain full stretch in the front room with his headphones on was
the only time I ever saw him really relaxed. Happy. He would
lie on his back, hands meeting at his heart with his fingers
tapping out a bass line; his lips pursed. If he'd had a really
good day he would ask me to sit with him, not even put the
headphones on, and play me records by The Contours, Epitome
of Sound, Frank Wilson... stirring, melody-driven soul music. I
loved it. Sometimes he might stand and teach me a few of the
basic steps that he would have beaten out on the dancefloors of
all-nighters when him and mum were younger; twirling around
the dancefloor, mum slim like I have seen in the old pictures,
their shoes skidding in the talcum powder across the floor;
their hands meeting in gigantic claps and smiles, those beaming
smiles. Even as a kid I remember him dropping into a splits
once with such grace that the ornaments on the mantelpiece
didn't move an inch.
When dad would put on Edwin Starr, a huge pride would fix
itself around my heart. This was his hero - the man he would
give everything to be - and he'd named me after him. I know
dad loves me, always have, but those moments were like him
actually saying it, telling me that for all the sniping, the
exaggerated disappointment, the ruined hopes, he loved me. He
could do that by putting on a record.
I wonder about mum and dad. The letter will no doubt have
told them that this isn't one of my usual disappearing acts. I
hope they are okay. I think of the other people on the Avenue their
letters, how just as it did ten years ago, that little cul-de
sac will have changed forever when it woke up this morning.
I make my selection and sit back down.
The atmosphere in the pub begins to lift with the noise of
the jukebox filling the silence. Tiger uses this freedom to turn
towards me.
'Didn't think you'd be into all this stuff, Edwin?'
I smile,
'My Dad. I grew up on it.'
He nods, his shoulders hunched.
'Right. 'Course. I'm a country man myself. Aye, Johnny Cash,
Woody Guthrie, Willie Nelson. I used to play 'Ring of Fire'
before I went out to fight. Not as I walked to the ring mind,
none of that bollocks you get today with their 'entrances'. No, I
used to have it on an old Dansette as they taped me up. Every
time the needle hit the run out groove I'd have my old trainer
put it right back to the beginning.'
'You should have said, Tiger. I'd have stuck it on.'
I circle the beer in my glass. He looks across the bar to the
silent TV. It is this pub - it has this power, a power to drag a soul
backwards. I can almost see the images of Tiger's memory project
onto the inside of his eyelids as he closes them, images of a
little girl, of a wife, of a view out from the top of a hill, of the
inside of a prison cell... When he opens his eyes again he looks
straight through me. There is a glint of the old belligerence.
'Let's go in the back. I'm sick of these fuckers pretending
not to look.'

We take our drinks through to the back area of the pub. From
here, no one in the bar can see us. A large table takes up the
whole back wall and we both sit with our backs to it. It is
darker here, like dusk.
'Where did we meet, Edwin?'
'The pub, Tiger.'
'The Rose, Edwin. The Rose in town. And what did you
think of me when you first saw me?'
What am I supposed to say? I thought you were a bully? I
thought you were mad? I thought...
'I thought if there is one man I'd want on my side in here, it
would be you. I didn't like the look of you but I was the only
stranger in there and fancied having you by my side before any
of the other men in there. I thought the way you spoke to the
barmaid was disgusting. And there was something in the way
you spoke to the barmaid I found hilarious. I thought you had
balls.' Tiger looks back. There is nothing. I continue. And I
thought you were lost. Just as lost as me. And I thought you
wanted me to sit next to you, that my troubles would help you
forget yours for a while and I had the feeling that you would
help me find Phillip. You said you'd help me find Phillip.'
Tiger chases down the lager.
'Get a couple more in. Then I'll take you to his door.'
He stands and I ask him where he is going.
'Out the back for a fag! You sure you're not police?'
At last he smiles and I smile back.
'I'll come out with you.'
'You don't smoke.'
'Never stopped you asking me to join you earlier.'
'It was right that you were with me earlier. It's not right in
here. You need to go the bar. I'll be finished by the time you
bring the beers back. Go on then, off you go.'
I take the empties back up to the bar and order another
round. Every eye in the bar is on me. The bloke with the
tattoos raises his glass.
'Evening.'
I raise mine and smile.
The man next to me is doodling into the margins of his
newspaper, one answer still to get on his crossword. I look at
the clue. It's obvious,.
'Warriors' He looks up. 'Combatants start revolution and
take Rio to war. Warriors.'
He smiles and begins to fill in the final answer.
'Bloody hell, how did I not see that. How did you not see
that, Stag?'
The longhair shrugs.
'Woods for the trees innit, like.'
The barmaid passes me the round, that knowing air still
about her.
'Thanks.'
She nods and I head back to the seats in the rear of the pub.
When Tiger returns he is cold and has the smell of outside
on him - much more than the smell of tobacco.
'They say anything?'
'What?'
'When you went to the bar. They say anything about me?'
The way Tiger asks suggests not arrogance or selfcentredness
but a real fear. He has his tobacco tin out and
begins to roll another perfect cigarette.
'You okay, Tiger?'
'Yeah, yeah. Just like to have them stacked up. Hate having
to roll one when you need one.'
It could be nerves but I'm sure he never actually went out
for a cigarette. I'm certain that he just waited outside so I
could spy on the locals.
'So, they said nothing?'
'No. One of them said hello. That's all.'
'Who?'
'The one with the long hair.'
'Right. Feller with the paper. He say anything?'
'Not really. I helped him finish his crossword.'
'You did? Right, now you can come outside with me.'
All of this skulduggery is starting to get on my tits and at
first I don't move.
'I said, you can come outside now.'
'I don't want to now.'
Tiger smiles a smile of annoyance.
Alright. If you insist.' And he steps out toward the bar,
shouting. 'This is my friend Edwin! Edwin, stand up and let
the good people see you.' I am mortified. Sticking in my seat
and unable to move with embarrassment. 'He's come along
way today has Edwin, I don't know exactly how far but far efucking-nough
to expect a little help from good souls like
yourself. Good souls like you eh Mitch? I hear he's already
done you a favour, how about returning one?' He puts a hand
heavily on the shoulder of the man with the newspaper. 'You
see, Edwin here is looking for an old friend. Phillip I believe his
name is. And he lives at... what's the address there, Edwin' I
say nothing. Ah, come on Edwin, this is Mitch's patch on the
rounds. He'll know where it is.' I still say nothing. 'Well.
Phillip. That's the lad's name - although Edwin told me it was
his name at first for some strange reason! And Edwin here is
looking for him so he can... now hang on... I don't even think
he's told me. What are you going to do when you find this old
friend of yours, Edwin?'
They all stare at me, Tiger conducting the whole scene. I
stand and walk towards the back entrance where Tiger went
earlier to pretend to smoke.

Outside I spot the bucket of sand into which these smokers
throw their leftovers. Fucking filthy habit. My mood has
soured to the point of almost hatred for Tiger.
He appears beside me and lights his roll-up. From my
peripheral vision I can see his smug face. Cunt. He had to win
didn't he? And not just win - humiliate me.
'Yeah, I did.' I turn, startled. He can't read my thoughts surely?
'No - I'm not a mind-reader, son. I just empathise well
- I know how people feel. Makes it worse really because I can
really feel how bad and angry you feel and I still do it. Sadistic.
You're right - there was no need for that in there. What can I
say? I'm a cruel bastard when I don't get my own way. I'd
apologise but what difference would that make?'
'Yeah. Well you can fuck off.'
He looks at me. I can feel his eyes on my cheek. I'm shaking
a little but it is pure anger.
'Have a swing if you like, son. But I'll hit you back. I'm long
since finished with justice.'
I don't react. That's what he wants. You can tell because he
doesn't take another puff of his cigarette; he doesn't lean his
head back and wait. I've dented his confidence. I'll let him
explain himself.
"I had to get you out here. I wanted to tell you why we are
here, I wanted to tell you my story but you were going to make
me tell it in there? With the fucking lug-holes on that lot?
Nosey bastards, Edwin. I've had enough of people whispering
and wanting to know my business. You have no idea what '
'What it's like? To have people talk about you? Fuck you,
Tiger. You have no idea. Not a clue what I've been through.
Yeah, you might have been to prison; you might have been
dealt a few duff cards but shit, so have I. I know exactly what
it's like to have those whispers follow you.'
'I died in there, Edwin. You know what that's like too?'
I turn around. He is serious.
'Died?'
'Dead as fuck, son. Don't worry - I'm not a ghost. None of
that bullshit. They brought me back but when they found me
in there, I was gone.'
I think back to what he told me in the house, him trying to
end it all when the photo didn't come out right, him having
spent all that time inside and then this being the thing that
tipped him.
'This was the halfway house?'
'Yep. Not anymore I don't think. I reckon my little bid for
glory put them off having any more in here! Yeah... there's a
little kitchen upstairs - two rooms, a bathroom... why haven't
you asked me yet?'
'What?'
'Why I was inside?'
'None of my business.'
'But that's what you're here for isn't it?'
I'm confused. I screw my face.
'What are you talking about?'
'I saw it when you walked in the Rose, Edwin. You're the
redeemer - you're here to sort this whole mess out. Tell me
you're not?'
"I don't know what I am, Tiger. I just know that Phillip has
the answers.'
He takes me by the shoulders.
'Yes! You'll hear his confession, Edwin. Just like you have to
hear mine. And you... ask me. Just ask me!'
His grip has tightened on my shoulders and I find it hard to
look at him as I ask,
'What did you do, Tiger?'
He drops his arms.
"I killed a man, Edwin.'
There is a few seconds of silence and he is obviously waiting
for me to say something. I have no idea what he was talking
about. Redeemer? He is insane.
'Was it in the ring?'
He turns and snaps,
'I'm not talking about occupational hazards here, son. This
was in the town centre. Some lad who I thought was looking at
me funny. I hit him and then while he was on the ground I
couldn't let it be. I stamped on his head and kicked at him and
there was nobody brave enough to pull me away. I can't just
win, Edwin, I have to annihilate them. So if you were hoping
for some miscarriage of justice tale, I am afraid I have to
disappoint you. You're going to have to find some way to
forgive me. But you can't can you? Nobody can. I'm a killer.'
'No he's not.'
We both turn around and the man with the newspaper is
stood next to us. He too is about to light a cigarette. Tiger is
hunched over, the shock almost making him recoil. The man
with the paper speaks,
'Edwin, is it?'
This is becoming desperate; I try my best to look normal
and remember his name from Tiger's performance inside.
'Yeah. Mitch?'
'It is. Pleased to meet you. I've heard a lot about you.'
'You have?'
'Well, not a lot. But young Phillip has mentioned you.'
This does spark my interest.

'You know Phillip?'
'Course I do. He's one of the regulars. Unlike this fucker
here. He only turns up if there's trouble.'
I look at Tiger and Mitch. Tiger has at least eight or nine
inches on him but their faces are fixed. Tiger smiles and hugs
Mitch. They embrace warmly, like old friends. Tiger is an
entirely different person again. He makes my head spin.
'Mitch, you little bastard. What are you doing out here? I
thought you were giving me the cold shoulder?'
Mitch shakes his head.
'No, Tiger. Some tales aren't for inside. Now what's this
bullshit you've been telling young Edwin here?'
'What bullshit?'
About you being a cold-blooded killer? You still keeping that
one going?' Tiger looks at the ground and says nothing. Mitch
turns to me instead. 'Let me tell you, Edwin. What he's told you
is a load of shit. I was there the night this happened. I've
known Tiger for a very long time - I got him on at the Royal
Mail when he came out. And this kid was hassling him all night.
Now this is back, what, thirty, forty-odd years ago, Edwin. It
isn't like today where these celebrities have their entourage and
bodyguards and all that stuff. And don't you laugh Tiger, you
were a celebrity in the city.'
'What do you mean were!?'
They both laugh but there is a hollowness. Tiger's laugh is
embarrassed and Mitch's only for comfort.
As he was walking out of the bar, this kid was waiting for
him with a knife. All this on the news you know - it's always
been around. Anyway, this kid went for Tiger and - now you
don't mind me saying any of this do you?'
Tiger shakes his head. He looks like a child.
'This kid went for Tiger and smack! One punch. The boy
was out cold. But he hit his head on the way down. And he
never woke up.'
'Is that what happened Tiger?'
Tiger nods.
'Just because it was an accident, Edwin, doesn't mean I am a
good person, that I'm not cruel or sadistic. It doesn't mean I'm
not capable of killing someone.'
'You weren't even capable of killing yourself.' I nearly choke
at Mitch's comment but it instantly silences Tiger. 'They found
him in the bathroom, just there.' Mitch points to just inside
the door. 'He'd taken God knows how many pills and somehow
managed to make his way down to the pub toilet in the middle
of the night. It was another feller living here heard the
commotion and found Tiger. He had no pulse or anything did
you? But they revived him right there on the toilet floor.' Mitch

puts a hand on Tiger's shoulder. He looks like he is going to
cry. 'It's time you gave it away, Tiger. This happened to you as
much as you made it happen. You've got to give it away. Come
inside. Have a drink.'
As they go inside, I shout them to stop.
'Hang on. Wait. Phillip. You're meant to tell me where
Phillip lives.'
Mitch answers.
'You've just missed him.'
'What?'
'That exact seat Tiger took when he came in. Phillip had
been sat there only minutes before. Didn't see him leave. He
must have gone out of the back.'
'Do you know where he lives?'
He smiles.
'Course I do. I deliver his post.'

PHILLIP

The Chinese sits unopened in its bag on the worktop. I watch
from the kitchen doorway that leads back out to the hall. It is
next to the back door, which is open as I smoke a cigarette. The
TV is still on in the front room. The yard is dark and the light
from the kitchen window isn't thrown too far. My kitchen is
tiny, smaller than the one at the Dragon, little more than two
cupboards and a sink along its length; a small channel between
the cooker and fridge-freezer on the other side of its breadth. I
squeeze the end of the cigarette pushing out the dregs of
tobacco onto the floor of the yard before throwing the butt in
my bin. Then I lock the back door.
I open up the fridge and take out a can of beer. Just some stuff
from the off-licence up the road. They know me by name in there
now. It affords you special privileges to be known by name. A few
weeks ago I was in the off-licence and two students came in. Well,
they might have been - they looked like they were. There are more
and more of them moving to this side of town, more and more
getting jobs in the media and following each other across the city
in a caravan of designer glasses and keffiyeh. We are becoming
chic, here. You couldn't tell from the outside but we are. They had
bottles of spirits, wine, obviously a party going on and they spoke
loudly in that accent of theirs - that non-specific, rootless noise
they make - and one of them asked Peter behind the counter if he
had any lemons. Apart from the students, there was only myself
and another man in his mid-thirties in the off licence. We looked at
each other and rolled our eyes. Peter knew what to do.
'Lemons?'
The students looked at each other, unsure if Peter had
misheard or didn't actually know what lemons were. You could
see them scratching through the layers of meaning in Peter's
simple reply to find that correct response. They went with
explanation - describing the purpose for the lemons.
'Yes. Lemons. We want to do tequila slammers and - '
'Oh, right! Sorry I see now. Lemons.'
Pete walked from behind the counter.
'Of course... lovely fresh lemons.'
The students were smiling now, pulling that face of fake
embarrassment with lips turned down, eyes sideways and
eyebrows raised. But as Peter headed for the door to the stock
room, he shouted over his shoulder,
'Lemons. I'll just pop out and see what we've got in the
citrus grove out the back.'
The man with me in the queue began laughing. Peter stopped
by the stock room door, turned slowly shaking his head and
headed back to the counter.
I began to laugh too. The students tried to join in; show that
they could laugh at themselves but they weren't in on the joke.
The joke wasn't theirs to share in and we laughed, and continued
to laugh until they had left the shop. Pete and the man continued
chuckling, wiping fake tears from their eyes but I stopped.

For some weeks Helen and Edwin had been going out on their
own, planning trips without me, keeping their plans secret.
Their relationship had become another entity altogether, a
separate person made of their own thoughts, desires and
memories to which I had no access, and this new person they
formed was slowly pushing me out of the group and into
myself, forming the solitude that I still lived in until today.
Edwin had been strange for a while but ever since we were
stuck in the woods in his car, things had changed irrecoverably.
Before Helen had told me the story of the girl with the
birthmark, we'd spoken about her and Edwin, about what she
saw the future holding for them. She said she didn't know but
she didn't hold out hope; that we were all approaching a part of
our lives that would finish everything we had off for good. She
asked me if I'd ever felt like that and I admitted that for me, it
had already happened; that things were changing so quickly
that our pasts were clinging to us by time's finest threads.
When Edwin returned with help, we both knew that these
were our last days together. I looked at him in the rear view
mirror. I didn't have the words so tried to reach out to him in
that look but I don't think he understood. He could see the fear
in my face and he smiled. He actually smiled.
A few days after the incident in the woods, I sat in my
bedroom at the house looking out onto the Avenue. My bedroom
was bare compared to most teenagers' - no TV, no music. I had a
computer but that was for schoolwork, for studies.
I sat on the edge of my bed for most of the afternoon
watching the comings and goings of the Avenue. The sunlight
in its summer loitering animated a slow shadow across the
windowsill as time rushed to keep up. The Avenue was as it
always was - quiet. There was a silent coaxing rising with the
heat from the tarmac, willing the events that took place behind
the doors of the Avenue to show themselves - but nothing ever
did. Secret lives remained secret - ours was a street not
without rumour but a street without truths, a street where
people kept themselves to themselves and the children born
there felt the instinctive need to escape to where they could
flourish and show. No kids played on the Avenue. We never
had, finding our adventures elsewhere, and it seemed that the
kids that lived in our wake just stayed in their houses or got
into trouble elsewhere too. There were no games of football
between gateposts, no chases of tag or cut knees crying home.
Nothing happened and this nothingness permeated every part
of my consciousness until I too was nothing, a part of the
Avenue indistinguishable from its lines, curves and borders but
with the same feeling of listlessness, the idle need for secrets to
be revealed cursing quietly behind heavy lids.
At around half past seven, with my father sleeping off a half
day session and Mum sitting watching a TV show about home
improvements, I saw Helen's parents leave their house. It was
her eighteenth birthday and the first of hers since we met that
wouldn't be shared between three. I knew Edwin was already
over there. He would climb into her back yard from the Hog's
beer garden sure that I would never see him but unaware that I
too had hidden from him just a few years before and could feel
it, feel his closeness to her in the heat where her hand had
touched my chest. The lights of the front room flickered
through the gaps in the curtains as their shapes moved about
and cast a dance onto the driveway.
I told my mother I was going out and left the house, left the
Avenue, walked around to the Hog.
I took a seat at the end of the bar, watchful of the door.
Even though they knew I wasn't eighteen I was so close that
they had started serving me now, especially as these solitary
trips had become more frequent of late and I was displaying all
the signs of becoming a sound investment for the future. My
father's patronage helped somewhat in vouching for this. It
gave me some small satisfaction that I knew they wouldn't
serve Edwin - he had to go to the Spar.
Helen's parents were sat on the other side of the lounge with
an answer sheet in front of them and Moira's cousin Jimmy
was setting up the microphone to start the quiz. Moira passed
a sheet across to me but I raised a hand in polite refusal. When
the quiz started I would usually go out into the vault so as not
to be disturbed.
After a few pints, I went to the toilet. I had left half a dark
on the bar to signal that I would be returning but on the way
back from the toilet I heard sounds coming from the top room.
They drew me as they always did, the sounds from that place.
That night it was a wedding reception. I made my way
upstairs, unchallenged by the happy faces that nodded hellos
and patted my back as I entered the room. The speeches were
over and the first dance done. I stood at the back of the room,
mindful of nothing.
I watched a while and then decided to go one further and up
onto the roof. I left through the fire escape, no-one noticing as
they hit the bar hard and danced.
The weak night had managed to tire out the day and the sky
slumped into darkness. Lights in the back rooms of the houses
on the avenue could be seen, windows squared with electricity
but my eyes were fixed on one box of light, uncurtained,
directly behind the pub. In it, a girl took her nightdress off
over her head, her back turned to the window. A birthmark
stretched down one side of the back and was soon half-covered
by the naked arm of a boy.
I emptied myself of all the tears that life had in store for me.
I shook myself free of the extremes, of all those emotions that
left room for despair because they permitted ecstasy; I
promised myself that I would never feel, never really feel again.
I walked back down the fire escape and blindly on.
My walking took me past the benches, into the nursery and
over the fence, across the dingle and along the canal. To this
day I don't know how, but I found my way through the woods
and sat beneath the monument.
About a metre from the foot of the monument, what looked
like an open, shallow grave had been dug - a fresh pile of earth
next to it. It was too small for a body but looking made me
contemplate death as never before: the silent forever, the thought
of never again being able to experience the world. I didn't know at
the time that my life would become so close to that state of being,
so close but devoid of the blessing of that final release.
Hours passed beneath the monument, the whole town living
below. I thought of Helen's last story and of all that madness
trapped in the woods. I heard something approaching.
I sat up with a start and looked for somewhere to hide. The
moon would catch my shadow wherever I moved and so I made
my way quickly to some bushes that jutted from the edge of
the woods. I struggled through them until I was sure I was
concealed and waited. I don't know what I was expecting: two
young lovers escaping the watchful eyes of the town, some
woodland animal, the boggart itself? But then, stepping from
the woods and out into the clearing came Helen.
Her nightdress was torn and muddied from her journey. I
was frozen; to this day I have no idea why I just stayed there
and watched. She walked up towards the monument carrying a
box. In the darkness it was difficult to make out the colour of
the box but the moon struck patches of blue across it whenever
Helen escaped the shadow of the monument. She squatted and
placed it in the hole.
After covering the hole with the soil piled beside, she stood
and .walked back toward the woods. Once she was out of sight I
left the bushes and made my way over to where she had buried
the box but no fresh earth could be found. It was as if nothing
had been disturbed, as if the hole had never been there.
Then I went into the woods to follow her.

There is a knock at the door. I pick up my Chinese, finish the
can of beer and head towards the hallway. As I pass the open
door of the front room I see the flex of wire tied into a noose
but I smile as I open the door and see Edwin stood before me,
an envelope in his hand.
'Hello Edwin.'
'Phillip.'
'Do you fancy some Chinese?'

Edwin turns the TV off. We sit in silence for a while. He is
fidgety, hands moving about his legs, the envelope tapping on
his knee.
'Is that for me?'
He looks up. He hasn't changed at all. Still the same wild
dark hair, pale face, faraway eyes.
'Yeah.'
I take the envelope from his hand and place it next to me on
the settee. He looks wounded and asks me if I'm going to open it.
'Not yet.'
He stands and paces the room. I can see his mind working
over regret, violence, and somewhere, somewhere buried deep
beneath it the knowledge that for all our differences we are still
the same two boys who sat at the benches all those years ago.
'It came this morning. Well, didn't come. I found it.'
He stretches both hands out and looks at the back of them. I
look at the envelope again - Helen's handwriting.
'It's been ten years, Phillip. Ten years today.'
I nod and stand up.
'Do you want a drink? I've got some beers in the fridge.'
He looks directly at me, neither of us looking away.
'Go on then.'
I'm not frightened, just curious. I'd half expected him to hit
me as soon as I opened the door. I'd understand. We both lost
Helen but he was actually with her, they were in love. I know
he probably blames me. But he doesn't know that I could have
been in his shoes, that I could have had her too. She could
have been mine and this loss is as great as his, if not greater.
He's come for answers: that's what he has come for.
The two beers are cold; they begin to sting my hands before
I pass one to Edwin. He cracks it and glugs until the can is half
empty. He spots the noose but doesn't press me about it.
'What happened, Phillip? '
Tears form in his eyes. They well in the whites and make
glass. I can see myself wobble out of focus in them as I lean
forward in the chair.
He takes another sip of the can and settles back into his seat.
'I couldn't remember anything about her, Phillip. Only little
glimpses, the odd feeling. I couldn't remember what she said or
how she laughed. And then, yesterday things started to come
back. I could remember holding her, I could remember the, you
know, what we all did. I can even remember some of her
stories. But I can't remember Helen. I don't even know if I
killed her, Phillip. I could have killed her, you know?'
I take a sip of beer then place the can on the floor.
'You didn't kill her Edwin. Nobody killed her.'
Edwin puts his can down and leans in to mirror me. I tell
him everything. How I saw them through the window. I tell him
how I walked our path up to the monument and sat. I tell him
about the grave, the box, the earth. And then I tell him how I
followed her back into the woods.
'I couldn't see her, or hear her, but just like on the way up I
knew exactly where I was going. When I came out of the other
side of the woods she was in the distance, out towards the
canal. I was scared, Edwin, it wasn't real - it didn't feel real
and I didn't want her to see me, the pieces of me. I've only just
worked that out - now, sat here with you. I never knew before
but that's what it was - shame. I hung back, lay low just above
the sandhills and watched her.
She dipped down and put a hand in the canal. It must have
been freezing because she jumped back. She held her hand
with her elbow like she used to do. Do you remember that?'
He nods and smiles but doesn't say anything.
'I crawled closer to see what she was doing but she started
walking back the way we came. You should have seen her,
Edwin - even though her nightdress was all muddy and torn, it
still shone. And then she took it off. She tossed it to the ground
by her feet and carried on walking.'
Edwin stands up and begins to pace again. He wrings his
hands and breathes quickly.
'I didn't touch her, Edwin. It wasn't like that. Even the sight of
her there naked... the thought, thoughts like that never crossed
my mind. If you'd have seen her you'd understand.'
I have to stand up now. The telling of this is different to the
memories that have haunted me. Actual feelings are running
through me, their current restarting my central nervous system.
Edwin's words startle me.
"I was so pissed off with you. We had planned it. Special. We
didn't want to be like everyone else, just fucking anything to get
it out of the way. We planned it Phillip and you turned up and
fucking ruined it. That day we got stuck in the car. That was
meant to be the day, not...'
My head falls into my hands as I sit down again. Edwin sits
too. I can see his memories flooding back. A lifetime of emotions,
each a single frame long, play across his face.
'Her parents let us have the house to ourselves - they must
have known! I remember thinking that when they came around
the next day and asked questions, I remember thinking 'you
know! You fucking know' and... what did you say?'
I start at this. I was expecting him to continue his story.
'Sorry?'
'When her mum and dad came round knocking. I saw you at
the door with your parents. What did you say?'
I pause a second.
"I told them you were the last person to see her.'
Edwin stands again. I can see the rage in him. This could be it.
'But I wasn't! You. You were the last to see her - you fucking
lied!'
I stand too.
And so did you! Did you tell them you'd fucked her the
night before?!'
He stops. He sits back down.
'We didn't fuck. It wasn't like that.'
'Oh, so now you're going to tell me you made love.'
'Fuck you, Phillip. It just wasn't... The feeling I had when we
lay back together afterwards. The feeling I had then was exactly the same as it was the first time I held her when Brian O'Reilly
was killed. And that's a feeling that I've never forgotten. Do you
have any idea how it feels to know I'll never have her there to
share that with me again? That those feelings are only echoes?'
'Yes, Edwin. I do. You weren't the only one who loved her.'
He throws himself back into the chair, his arms tossed up.
'I knew it. I fucking knew it! All that time that was what
you were after wasn't it? All that time '
'Of course it fucking was! Oh... you don't know the half of it.'
'Well tell me then. That's what I'm here for. Fucking tell me
Phillip!'
I can't hide it any longer. I tell him about the night she
invited me up to her room - the night he had been taken
prisoner by the Warriors while searching for us. How I couldn't
accept his gratitude for helping him because I knew it had been
my fault anyway. He looks crushed.
'She?'
'Yes, Edwin. She did. Look.' I open my shirt and show him
the mark on my chest. 'That's where she touched me.'
He lifts his hoodie and shows me his own chest. The mark is
identical to mine.

We sit in silence for a long time sipping at our beers. It's difficult
to process all that has happened, all that has been revealed. But I
know there is more to tell. I just really don't know how to tell
him; how to tell him that I saw her walk back up the canal
toward the iron bridge. How I watched her climb, naked, to the
top of the bridge. How I saw her smile, saw her look so happy as
she stood and looked out down the canal, and how she jumped,
so gracefully, so expertly, that there was hardly a sound when
she hit the water. But I tell him somehow and he doesn't move,
his face shows no acknowledgement of it. I begin to plead,
'I called to her when I saw what she was going to do,
Edwin. Don't think I didn't try. But she was already airborne.
By the time my cry reached her she was already under the
water. I ran across, ran to the big lock but I couldn't see
anything. The water was black. My face trembled in the
reflection but I couldn't see anything beyond that. I thought of
jumping in myself but... I couldn't, Edwin. I couldn't do it. I
sat and waited for her to resurface. I walked as far as I knew
the canal but there was no sign of her. She was gone.'
Edwin smiles and looks at me.
'Maybe the pike got her eh?'
'Maybe.'
He stands and walks across to me. I do not flinch as he reaches
down beside me and picks up the letter. He holds it out to me.
"I think you should read the letter. I've come a long way today.'
'Not yet, Edwin. First you have to read this.'
I hand him his envelope.
'I didn't think I had one.'
'No? Why wouldn't you have one?'
'Because... I don't think I can read this, Phillip.'
I shake my head.
'But you expect me to read mine?'
He opens the envelope. The letter is one of the pages from
her diary. I recognised the paper, the colour when I read it this
morning. I couldn't resist - I had to know what was coming. I
remember every word he reads:
'He wore a hooded sweater and tapped the envelopes against
a dirty palm. The soil was thick beneath his fingernails.'
Edwin stops and looks at me. I nod.
'The letters looked like they had only been written yesterday,
the paper yet to yellow, but he knew that couldn't be right.
The pile of envelopes had been checked many times already a
letter for each house, to a person in each house but there was
no letter for him, no letter for Edwin Fahey.'
He looks up at me and exhales the short start of a laugh
before going back to the letter.
'He folded all but one of the letters into the envelopes. One he
left unsealed for he wasn't sure what he might do with it. It was
different to the others, an address for another city. It had Phillip's
name on the front - Phillip's name in her hand.'
Again he looks at me and then to the envelope on the settee.
He looks remarkably calm considering what he is reading,
considering that this letter spells out in perfect detail exactly
what he did this morning, as if Helen actually held the pen that
wrote both our shared fate.
'It was the middle of the night or the early, early hours. The
dark fed on his shadow, spitting him out in parts whenever he
passed beneath lamplight. Edwin visited each door with the
letters and he thought of the same visitations carried out by my
parents ten years ago. My mother, Pauline Murray, had a
cardigan thrown around her, fastened by folded arms while Mr
Murray, as Edwin had always known Dad, stood just behind,
unable to fix a look on anything at all. Gates swung and steps
quickened - doorbells and letterboxes shook.
Mags invited them in. She made them tea and told them to sit
in the lounge at the rear of the house. Edwin's father remained at
the window in the front room. Only Mum spoke. They hadn't
called the Police yet. They wanted to wait until they had spoken to
my friends. They didn't want Edwin to feel embarrassed,
whatever had happened...
if he knew anything...
they would...
and Mags assured them her boy would tell the truth.
He did, mostly. As the questions came he nodded, and
shrugged, told them I wasn't on drugs, I wasn't pregnant, we
hadn't really argued.
Was it something they had done? Had they been bad parents,
over-protective ?
No, I had only told Edwin last night how much I loved them.
The teacup shook in mum's hand and eventually Humphrey
came through to give Dad a knowing look and assure all it would
be fine. He then apologised and went to work.
Mum put down her tea, unfinished, and thanked Mags.
They should go, ask around the Avenue.
As they reached the door, Mags reiterating her husband's
assurances, Dad spoke for the first time. He spoke of how I
hadn't wanted a big party for my eighteenth. How I just wanted
to cook a nice meal and have Edwin over. How he and Mum had
laughed about it as they sat in the pub for the quiz night. What
was Edwin to say? That just that night before, we had had sex in
the same bedroom that my parents would keep ready for
return for ten long years?
The house is up for sale now. They had moved out, given up
on my return. They were divorced. The place will be sold and the
rooms changed.
Edwin looks up and away from the page. There are tears
trying to form and he tilts his head backwards as if they will
drain back into his skull. But they won't, and a tear falls as he
looks back down at her words.
Edwin opened letterboxes and listened to his deliveries hit
doormats, carpets, tiles and laminate flooring, each making the
sound of a different breath - a sigh of relief or regret; a sharp
suck behind teeth. The Avenue looked neither strange nor
different - none of those things an event like this should conjure
in a mind. Edwin was pleased with that, it made what was
happening feel more truthful. There was no mirage, no
whispering in the dark. The tarmac ran dry and dull to the
closed hand at the top of the cul-de-sac; cobwebs still caught
streetlight in the corners of porch roofs; cars still propped on
kerbsides or squatted on driveways. The dividing walls still
stood and ears would still cup those walls for comfort. Life was
still perfectly semi-detached.
When he passed Phillip's house, Edwin looked at the unsealed
envelope. Who could have known that we happy three that grew
together would eventually choke each other like plants that
bloomed too closely, roots tangled until one had to be plucked
ffom the ground to save the others?
The secrets did come out of course. In notebooks and
interviews the police picked apart that last night Edwin spent
with me, so that no memory could be cleansed of their
examination. He was sure Phillip suffered the same, and
equally sure he had so much less to lose. But for all that Edwin
suffered, for all of the words then printed in the local newspaper
and the looks as he went to the shops, Edwin imagined what
my mother and father must have gone through as I was
broken down into Name Age Description A Recent Photograph A
Strand of Hair from her Hairbrush Evidence of Drug-taking Her
Behaviour up until Her Disappearance. Did they ask if I had a
reason to be scared? Did they ask if I could have been the
victim of abuse? At school? At home? Did they ask my mother if
Dad had ever been violent? Did they ask my father if Mum
obsessed over her daughter being ill? Did they talk of suicide
and ask what music I liked to listen to? Did they bring in my
diary, my book, and read them the stories, show them the
pictures: the children being eaten, the girl consumed in flames,
the stone bird and the ripped ribcage of a boy. Did they ask
them if they had killed me themselves? Were they believed
when they said no?
Were they believed when the nightdress was found next to the
canal? When the national newspapers began to take an interest
as frogmen combed the waters. When clear bags full of videotapes
and magazines were taken ffom the house. Did anyone
believe them then? Did they believe each other then? Could they
believe that their daughter's life, their treasured memories, had
become just a collection of notes, bags and boxes reviewed every
three months, every sixth months, every twelve months; their
own lives just the rank stench of rumour?'
By now Edwin is sobbing, his face red and the ink smudging
where his tears hit the paper. I think of sitting up, of reading it
for him as the words must now be almost illegible through the
wells of his eyes. But he continues.
'A primary school stood opposite Edwin, a row of shops further

along, the now derelict children's nursery to his right, the dingle
beyond with its puny stream. Directly to his left the pub, The Hog
and Spit, with its benches and its beer garden. Edwin looked at
the fire escape that ran up its side. He climbed the fire escape and
vaulted onto the roof. From this vantage point he could see the
shape of the monument where he had dug up the blue box, where
he had lifted the lid and found the letters; the envelopes. The
morning seemed to pull on the thread of night without ever
stripping the sky bare, and Edwin succumbed to sleep.
He was awoken to the sound of chains rattling. A few hours
had passed and the heavens bled indigo. Kneeling on the roof so
as not to be spotted, Edwin saw a skip being delivered to the
Avenue. As a child he'd always loved to see them being collected,
awestruck that such things could be lifted. He would watch in
excited terror, sure the suspended skip would tip the wagon over
-but it never did.
Edwin ran down the fire escape and up the street. He stooped
behind the bent street sign of the Avenue and watched the wagon
pull up. It rolled itself across the road at forty-five degrees,
blocking off the view of the rest of the Avenue. The loose chains
whipped as the vehicle stopped and the hydraulics heaved,
straightening the chains into taut ropes. It was only as the limbs
of the wagon began to guide the skip to ground that he realised
where it was being delivered.
It was the driveway of my house.
He checked Phillip's letter one more time and finally sealed
the envelope. Then he walked to catch the early bus to town;
once in town to the station to catch the train; then to Phillip, to
deliver this.'
He stops, the letter read. He folds it as carefully as I
imagine him folding all those other letters this morning; as
carefully as I held onto his when it arrived on my doormat. He
keeps it in his hand and looks at me.
'Well, there it is Phillip. The final dispatch.'
I look again at my name in her hand.
'Yeah.'
And I open this last envelope.

Phillip Fitton, XX XXXXXX XXXX

When Phillip had finished reading the letter, he warmed up the
Chinese meal and the two men shared it over a couple of cans of
lager. They stayed up all night, chatting, laughing, reminiscing.
They talked of me and how much they missed me. And then
they slept.
The next morning the sun was warm early. Both rose,
showered and had a proper breakfast for the first time in as
long as they could remember. Edwin even managed to wash
the dirt from beneath his fingernails. They went around the
house checking that everything was switched off and then
headed into town.
Saturday shoppers already busied the streets. Kids hung
around the statues with their skateboards and low-slung jeans
while others gathered menacingly in packs outside McDonalds.
Edwin and Phillip took the stone steps down to the railway station
and queued at the kiosk marked 'Tickets for Today's Travel Only'.
Their train was twenty minutes away from leaving so the pair
of them bought a coffee and waited on the cold, metal benches of
the platform, busy with families with suitcases, students going
home for the weekend.
When the train pulled in, Phillip looked at the name of our
hometown illuminated above the driver's window and smiled.
He hadn't been home for ten years. Hadn't felt able to go back
there, but today was different, today life started all over again.
Edwin and Phillip walked the carriages until they found a table.
They sat opposite each other as the other passengers struggled to
find room for their luggage. Edwin and Phillip had none.
As the train started, Phillip watched the city that had been his
hideout become blurs of grey and disintegrate slowly into green
and golden hills. Edwin sat and watched his friend. It was like
they were back on the benches again, tucked away from a world
that they were sure could one day be there for the taking.
Edwin thought of his mother and father, of how he was going
to resign from work and maybe go back to college. He thought of
listening to soul records with his dad and finally doing something
that would make him proud. Make them both proud.
Phillip thought about his family too. These last ten years his
mother had become a remote voice on the phone; his father one
heard only on birthdays and at Christmas. He looked forward to
seeing them again and hoped that maybe they could sit down
and eat together.
As they pulled into each station, both men shared the same
thoughts: "I wonder what it is like to live in that town? I
wonder whether their lives are as strange too? Are people
really all the same?'
Stations came and went.
When the refreshments man got on, Edwin looked disappointed.
It wasn't the same man he'd had on the way up. Phillip smiled and
asked for a coffee for himself and his old friend. The refreshments
man handed over the coffees and change but didn't say a thing.
At the final station on the route, the two men left the train and
headed to the bus depot. Phillip insisted on taking a bus rather
than a taxi, wanting to take in every sense of his return and sit
next to the people who had walked the same streets as he had.
They sat on the top deck for a better view of the journey. Edwin
talked Phillip through each of the new buildings they passed, from
the executive apartments to the shiny new bus depot. They
laughed about how things had changed and how dressing up this
town didn't make it any different underneath. They watched the
regeneration become the old deprivation as they passed the flats
and maisonettes of the districts that lay just north of the city, a
new library here, a refurbished swimming baths there, but still the
same bare-chested boys sat reddening outside the pubs in the sun.
When the bus reached our hometown, they disembarked and
began to walk for home. Behind them lay the shopping centre
and ahead in the distance, looming on the hill just above the
corrugation of the retail park, the monument. They caught each
other looking at it and pretended they hadn't.
Soon, they were close to the Avenue. The strip of shops still
loitered there and Phillip decided to call into the old bookies.
Popping his head round the door he saw Lindsey and walked
across to speak to her. Edwin waited outside. He watched Phillip
talking, relaxed, chin on folded arms resting on the new counter.
Lindsey was back with Paul now. He was out of prison and
making a real go of it, new job; they had a baby on the way.
Phillip was pleased, he was really pleased.
After waiting for his friend to catch up on ten years of news,
Edwin led Phillip over to the benches where they had sat for so
many years. Neither of them would sit now though, in fact they
both ignored the seats as Edwin carried on over to the fire
escape. They made no attempt to stifle the noise as they climbed
up the metal stairs to the roof of the Hog.
On the roof, they both looked over at my house. A window
had been forced around the back but this didn't trouble them as
it might have done once. Both knew there was nothing left in
that house to steal.
Over behind the air conditioning unit that stuck out of the Hog's
roof, Edwin ducked and picked something up. It was the blue box,
the box he had dug from the earth this morning with his bare hands.
Edwin opened the box again, tapped it and Phillip placed his
letter inside. Edwin put his in too.
They walked together around the side of the Hog, each with
one hand on the blue box. Phillip felt nervous for the first time
when he saw the name of the Avenue curved around the old sign.
When they reached the start of the Avenue they saw a line of
people stretching out to the top of the cul-de-sac. Everyone was
out of their houses: Humphrey, Mags, Daniel, Sue, the twins,
Patricia, Steve, Katie, even Spencer was out; everyone who lived
on the Avenue stood waiting. In fact, there was even a stranger
there -Jon the estate agent, who held his letter like everyone else.
Edwin and Phillip walked down the middle of the Avenue and
as they passed each house, their neighbours walked toward them
and each put their own letter in the blue box.
When the boys passed their parents they didn't go to hold
them but treated them like everyone else on the Avenue. Their
parents knew there would be time for all that.
Finally, Edwin and Phillip arrived at my house. Outside was
the skip, full with all those things that, until now, could not be left
behind. Among the clutter was Humphrey's toolbox; Spencer's
shower curtain; Daniel's papers; the briefcase that kept Katie's
secret; Patricia's wigs and her husband's fishing gear.
On top of all this lay my diary - my book. Edwin reached into
the skip and placed the diary in the blue box with its long since
torn contents. Both boys placed the box in the skip and waited.
For a while nobody knew what to do. Should they all go back
inside? Should they set fire to it all? But before long, the sound of
a truck could be heard, the sound of chains beating against each
other as they swung with the truck's turn into the Avenue.
It pulled up outside the house and reversed into position
where Edwin and Phillip took a pair of chains each and attached
them to the skip. The hydraulics hissed and the chains tightened
as the skip was lifted onto the back of the truck. The driver at
the window thanked the boys for their help. Edwin recognised
him, but couldn't say from where.
The driver took the truck to the top of the Avenue and three
point turned in the tight cul-de-sac. Then he drove the truck
down the Avenue, turned left and disappeared, taking with him
all of those things.

The End.

Acknowledgements

This book started out life as 'Time at Moghul Gardens', a durational
theatre piece I made as part of Slung Low. Thanks to Alan
Lane, Lucy Hind, Heather Fenoughty and Dominic Gately with
whom I made that show, and all at Slung Low. See slunglow.org for more info.

Further thanks to: Karl J. Hall and Ian Robinson of The Easy
Dream for the use of Karl's lyrics in the epigraph to this book;
my friends and family; Richard, Lucy, Dom, Lloyd and all
involved at Parthian; Gwen Davies for her invaluable editing
work on the first draft; and Fergus Hynd for his words of wisdom
on any number of drafts.

Special thanks to the Welsh Books Council who commissioned
this work.

And finally, thanks, always, Jo.
Also by Matthew David Scott Playing Mercy
A mighty and moving
hymn to belonging, pride
and growth.
Niall Griffiths

A powerful account of
life on a British estate
and a great introduction
to one of Wales' newest
and most exciting
writers.
Big Issue

PARTMIAM Award-winning Welsh Writing
www. parthianbooks.co.uk
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