New place in town

 

“There ain’t nothing like a clean pair of pants, when yer put ‘em on yer feel like you could do anything. Ain’t that right, Sparky? Yer never know where yer might end up.”

“When you say ‘anything’ yer mean you can put yer jeans and socks on and leave the changing room?”

“Yeah, somein like that, Sparky, somein like that.” He winked and smiled warmly.“But yer know what I mean don’t yer, especially after the grafting days we ‘ave. Us builders sure pick up the grime after a day’s graft.”

Every Friday evening Mark and Dennis, better known as Sparky and Dennis, would get together with their better halves and do a spot of exercise in the gym at the local sports centre. This had become routine since Mark had bought him three months free membership for his 50^th birthday not long after he’d suffered a mild heart attack when his mother died. They all knew he would need some encouragement so decided a weekly meet up may be the answer. However, getting Dennis off the weight machines pumping iron and doing cardio, had always proved problematic.

A shower, a drink and a take-away Chinese would invariably cap the evening off, back home by ten, bit of television then bed. But tonight Dennis had other ideas. He’d heard of a new place just out of town that might be worth checking out and, as they’d just completed a brand new double extension that week, figured a spin down there may be in order for a celebratory drink or two.

“What ‘bout the girls, Den, they’ll wanna head ‘ome, yer know what they’re like?”

“ ’Ave faith, Sparky boy, leave this one to me.” Dennis nodded, buckling the belt extra hard on his jeans with a grimace.

Dennis did as he said and weaved his magic and it wasn’t long before all of them had squeezed into Dennis’s wife’s Vauxhall Corsa and headed off. Both Dennis and Mark were big guys, ‘big boned’, Dennis said, and the girls weren’t far behind, but occasionally, after being driven by a lager or two, Dennis would joke that the girls’ bones weren’t the only thing that were big. This always got Mark’s back up as he didn’t mind him talking about his own wife like that but not his own. Yet he never quite had the balls to share this with him.

A quarter of an hour later and they’d parked up and were heading in.

“Looks a bit seedy, Den. Where you brought us, eh, a lap dancing place?” Piped Jan, craning her neck to look up at all the dim lighting. Dennis’s wife, Kath, squinted into the distance, trying to discern any recognisable shapes amid the subdued atmosphere.

Jan looped her arm through Kath’s and then whispered, “I don’t like this one bit, Kath. What is this place?”

Three drinks later and their eyes had adjusted to nothing more than the darkness. Young topless girls circled the tables in sparkling knickers serving drinks and men in tuxedos patrolled all four corners of the venue, occasionally dashing off talking aggressively into their headsets.

The girls were looking increasingly unhappy and Dennis who’d been gone for a while by this stage didn’t help this. Finally though he returned.

At first they thought he’d just had a few too many, he sat there staring, didn’t say a word. His shoulders were slumped, his jaw had dropped, and his skin was loose and pasty. Eventually he took a swig of his beer, blinked for the first time in two minutes, and yanked Mark towards him by grabbing underneath his armpit.

“Sparky, I’ve just seen something…I’ve…” He hesitated, glanced around at the staff, swallowed, and then continued. “I’ve just seen a girl gettin’ attacked, raped, by one of those fuckers with the tuxedo. I don’t think he saw me but…Jesus!”

“Fuck me, Den, what did yer do?” He dropped his head down.

“Don’t tell the girls, fa Christ’s sake, just don’t.”

“But, Den, they know somefinks up, you were gone for ages and you look like shit.”

“Just tell ‘em I’m a bit pissed,” he replied, squeezing Mark by the forearm firmly, as if reiterating the point.

Mark rolled his eyes, sighed, paused, and then nodded. Whenever he gazed over he caught a glimpse of him slightly rocking in his chair, tearing a beer coaster into minute pieces with surgical precision and searching around with his eyes, his head unmoving. This was the first time he’d seen him like this, not once in the last twenty years had he witnessed him behaving in this way. Dennis was a front-foot man, dealing with everything head on, sweeping his path clear before it had a chance to fester and ruminate. This wasn’t the man he knew.

Dennis had grown up on a tough estate in Lewisham, South London, had been a child of divorce. His dad had walked out and only returned with hatred for his mother. Later on the streets had given him an identity, a purpose, a home. He’d climbed up the pecking order through doing and saying what others didn’t do and say. Then fortunately he met Kath, one her over with his charm and she gave him stability. She saw something in him his dad didn’t ever see and he worked hard and provided for her, tattooed her name and face all over his arms, called her Treacle and never once forgot their anniversary.

Now all he could remember was the young girl’s face, the girl who only an hour ago they’d seen queueing up to get in in front of them, all chirpy on buy-one-get-one-free cocktails from a bar two doors down. He’d been in the cubicle, heard a muffled yell, then nothing. Leaving the toilets he caught sight of a member of staff laughing as her underwear was ripped off in an adjacent room, the door had swung open somehow. He then hid half of his frame round the corner, looked on and froze. Paralysed to act he just stood there watching the scene unfold, like some voyeuristic punter, motionless as if he’d suddenly embodied a sufferer of locked-in syndrome.

The energy his dead body was saving him by its inaction bitterly served to fuel his darker memories, when as a child he was often awoken to his mother’s screams, continually punctuated by the word ‘don’t’. Stiffly perched at the top of the stairs he heard his father having his own way until a silence fell. Scampering to bed he would hear the front door slam, then tears, his own and his mother’s.

Three years ago one Christmas Mark had heard this story, £1 shots and double whiskeys lengthened the day, lubricating the hinges to mental steel doors and hidden worlds.

Now Mark, deep in thought, looked down into his pint with one eye and gazed across peripherally at the girls with the other, acting like a chameleon who can see in two different directions at once. He wanted to be swallowed up by that glass, disappear and wake up tomorrow in his bed with the breakfast tray on his lap and his beautiful smiling wife next to him. Instead the girls were looking fixedly at Dennis whose eyes were exploring the floor with pure emptiness.

Kath beckoned Mark over with her hand. He reluctantly bent his head towards hers.

“What’s ‘appened? He looks like hiz seen a ghost.” She shouted through the music.”

“Oh, he’s feeling bit under the weather, Kath, hill be ok.”

“Sure?”

He nodded, although it was barely noticeable.

On turning round, Dennis had upped and left. Jan tapped his leg, pointed and shook her hand in the direction of the toilets as if to urge Mark to go and find him.

Within minutes he’d tracked him down by opening all of the cubicle doors and eventually found him in the last one. He was not prepared for what he was about to see. Dennis was sitting on the toilet, bloodied, with his head bowed, shaking from side to side.

“Fuck! What yer done! Den, what yer done?”

Dennis shook his head harder like a dog coming out of the water.

“I ‘ad ta, Spark. Fucking ‘ad ta. You shoulda seen her Sparky, the poor fing, lying there, helpless, struggling, yer shoulda…Poor cow.”

He punched the side of the cubicle with his bloodied fist before finishing.

“Spark, I just stood there. Let it ‘appen. Legs was like lead, couldn’t fuckin’ move, mate, couldn’t fuckin’ move.”

Mark knelt down, grabbed the back of his hot sweaty head and pulled it into his chest. Nothing was then said until the police arrived.

Mark and the girls all testified in court but with their hands firmly tied. As hard as it was they’d sworn to Dennis that they wouldn’t bring up anything about his wife-beating dad on account of not wanting it made public, he was too proud. They protested and pleaded with him to change his mind, said it would damage his case and increase his sentence. He didn’t want any sympathy. Instead the jury heard about his crooked past before he met Kath, the fact that he’d served time before and had not learned his lesson after taking the law into his own hands again.

Three weeks into his sentence Mark visited Dennis at Belmarsh prison. Dennis didn’t speak much that day but what he did say would stay with Mark forever.

When Mark left that day Dennis put two fingers in the air and said:

“There’re two dead men now, Sparky, two dead men. One’s dead in me ‘ead, the other in real life. They both deserved it  and I feel a peace, a real peace.”