Tinky Winky

© 2012 David Jasmin-Green

Richard Price had been employed by Platts Forgings for just over a year, and he hated the place with all his heart and soul. There were several reasons for his discontent, but the main one was the bullying that he had been subjected to since practically the day he started. He had reported the cruel treatment he had to put up with day in and day out to three senior members of staff so far, and with a few minor variations he always received the same reply.

“Don't be so daft, Pricey,” Paul Burton, his shift foreman, told him. “Get back to work, you friggin' pussy. You 'ave a job you ought to be getting on with - for the time being, anyway..... Did you enjoy the two years you spent on the dole before we offered you a job 'ere out of the kindness of our 'earts? Do you miss not 'aving two ha'pennies to rub together to keep you warm in the winter, 'cos if you do I'm sure you remember where the Job centre is. If you don't like it 'ere, clock out and bugger off, nobody's stopping you.”

Walking out wasn't an option for Richard. He had a family to feed, a mortgage to pay and a hefty loan eating away at his finances like an aggressive cancer, though he was doing his best to whittle it down a little every month. Jobs were few and far between, what with the recession, so unless a miracle happened it looked like he was stuck in the factory from hell for the foreseeable future.

Tinky Winky, the other men called Richard (amongst other things) after the Teletubby with the handbag, the one popularly perceived as a gay icon, though the programme's producers always denied that accusation. Richard wasn't a homosexual, but even if he was gay, he thought, surely he had the right to be left alone. The majority of the jokes were whispered behind his back, but a few of his colleagues abused him more openly.

“It's just a bit of fun,” the last manager that Richard complained to said. “You have to put up with a spot of piss-taking in a place like this, it's part of the territory. You probably think the blokes are out and out bastards, but I assure you it's not personal and they don't mean any harm – it's just a little amusement to break the monotony of loading steel billets into furnaces and bashing them into forgings for eight hours a day, five, six, sometimes seven days a week. All the advice I can offer is not to be so sensitive about it, ignore the fuckers, or pay them back with a few insults of your own. What are you a man or a mouse? Bloody well grow up, man.”

Richard didn't want any trouble. People took his docile reactions for timidity, he guessed, but he wasn't a coward. The only time he had answered his aggressors back was by quoting one of his favourite Monty Python sketches. “I'm not gay, my wife's not gay and my children are totally heterosexual,” he said, expecting an explosion of laughter, but his witty reply went over the heads of most of his oppressors because they were too young to remember Monty Python.

The underdog was back fifteen minutes early from his dinner break, something that he did pretty regularly because he couldn't stand sitting in the canteen surrounded by the scum of the earth baying at him like a herd of ravenous hyenas. The canteen was the predators' main stomping ground, it was the only place on the premises where they could gather in force, and the punishment that Richard received in there was unbearable. Shirt-lifter, that was their favourite term right now, that and turd burglar, and the bastards hurled those awful insults at him almost non-stop while he attempted to eat his sandwiches and drink his tea in peace. He had tried sneaking away at break time on a number of occasions, but the monsters were wise to his tricks and they generally tracked him down wherever he chose to hide.

Richard was breaking his neck to load the two furnaces that he was in charge of so that when the crews came back from their break he could switch on the power and vanish into the woodwork like a church mouse for a few minutes until the men were too involved in their jobs to bother him beyond his rapidly shrinking limit. Unfortunately, though, his two main oppressors had sniffed him out; they were plotting to wreak terrible revenge on Richard because he had dared to spoil their highly anticipated lunchtime fun. “You go up the back steps so 'e can't scarper that way as soon as 'e spots me,” Johnny Fletcher whispered to Vic Baines, his partner in crime, “and I'll sneak up on 'im from the front – the pooftah's wearing ear muffs, so there's no way 'e'll hear us.”

“Tinky winky!” Vic yelled a few moments later as he and Johnny's grinning faces appeared at either side of the billet hopper where Richard looked up at them like a trapped rat. “What ya doing in there, shirt-lifter? Is that a vibrator you've just 'idden in your overalls? You dirty little fucker. After a bit o' cock, are you? You 'opin' that some desperate fucker'll sneak in 'ere and treat you to a ten minute 'ide the sausage session while all the decent blokes are still eating lunch?”

“That must be it,” Johnny crooned. “'e must sneak over 'ere for a sly bit o' cock. 'oo's yer secret boyfriend then, Tinky? Is it Paul Burton – like gaffer cock, do ya?”

“Fuck off, Paul's my cousin,” Vic said, “and there are no arse bandits in my family. I reckon it's Smithy, the fat bloke from the die shop, the one with the beer belly 'oo 'ardly says a word to anybody. I bet you like the strong, silent type, don't you, Pricey? Fucking queer.”

“I reckon it's Brindlethorpe, the managing director,” Johnny said. “Tinky does like bone 'ardened gaffer cock, everybody knows that, but 'e knows that your Paul'd stick one on 'im if 'e tried it on so 'e goes straight to the top, no bleedin' messin'. I bet we've missed Brindlethorpe sockin' it to 'im by ooh, a minute, maybe less.”

“Shut the fuck up!” Richard yelled all of a sudden. “I've 'ad enough of you two bastards, I've 'ad it up to friggin' 'ere. This bollocks stops right now, or I swear to God I'll make the pair of you pay – I'll make you pay dearly!”

“Do my ears deceive me, Johnny, or did the pooftah just call you dearie?”

“I think you're right, Vic, 'e did call someone dearie, but I think 'e knows better than to talk to me like that. I reckon 'e was talkin' to you.”

“Naah, the little perv wouldn't dare! 'e was lookin' in your direction, actuall -” That last syllable never made it out of Vic's mouth because a three kilo billet hit him smack in the eye, knocking him backwards over the rail of the raised landing that he was standing on. His head hit the concrete several feet below at an awkward angle. Almost seventeen stone, Vic weighed, which didn't help - the top of his skull caved in and his neck vertebrae sheared off, but Johnny couldn't see his buddy's predicament from where he was standing.

“What ya doin' yer sick fuck?” Johnny said. He was about to add something to that, but he never got the words out because Richard hit him in the face as hard as he could with a pair of steel tongs. Instinctively Johnny flinched, but his recoil wasn't even nearly fast enough. The blow struck home a couple of inches below his nose, severing most of his upper lip, shattering teeth and bone alike and knocking him smartly onto his back. As quick as a flash Richard jumped out of the hopper and held his struggling victim down with one foot like a peregrine pinning down a pigeon.

“Now 'oo's a queer?” Richard screamed, hitting Johnny on the side of the head with the tongs, the impact neatly bifurcating his ear, exposing a glint of shining bone.

“I am!” Johnny spluttered, spitting out a chunk of his upper jaw that still had the broken stumps of a couple of teeth and part of a dental bridge attached to it.

“And 'oo's the daddy?”

“You ish, Rithard, you ish!” he gurgled, a thin slice of his upper lip flapping from side to side ridiculously. Desperately he tried to protect his face with his hands as a series of vicious blows rained down on his skull, but he knew that his struggles were futile. 'Your number's up, mate,' he told himself from a curiously placid island at his core, and then his lights went out.