uncovering oneself (3)

The downstairs bar shut. I bought a bottle of Buckie from the Off Sales. It was more expensive than usual, but I was more flush than usual. Speculating about what Jane would say when I got home I remembered she wouldn’t be in and didn’t give a fuck. She’d be still working. Cracking the seal of the bottle I took a swig, just one, as I walked and muttered to myself, what I’d need to say to her about responsible parenthood. One for the road.  It wasn’t that far, the white houses at Salisbury, but far enough away that I’d finished the bottle by the time I was climbing the first set of stairs and reached the thin alleyways. Household rubbish crunched under my feet and burnt-out wheelie-bins dotted the place every few yards like beggarly daleks waiting to trap me.  

The beat of acid-house music was coming from one of the houses above our sublet. I fumbled for the key. The house was colder inside than out. The light switch in the hall didn’t work. We were out of electricity. I’d a hazy remembrance before my legs buckled and I fell into bed that I’d the leccy-key in my back pocket and Jane had given me twenty quid to top it up. 

The inside of my head felt as if it was filled with shavings of cardboard and my mouth was a floppy sandal. I’d slept with my clothes on - a confusion of dreams and nightmares, a voice crying and calling out - for minutes or hours, I wasn’t sure. Jane wasn’t lying beside me. I struggled out of bed and half walked and half ran to the toilet before throwing up in the toilet pan. It was still dark outside. I flicked the electricity switch. It was still dark inside.

Tickly throat, I needed something to drink. I jerked my foot back from the puddle at the bottom of the ancient fridge. I leaned over to look inside. Rancid milk in bloom and a packet of square-sliced sausages turning from pink to blue. Jane had bought them for me. She didn’t like sausages, and joked that she’d seen enough limp ones at work. But they’re square sliced I’d said. I slammed the fridge door sealing the rancid smell inside. Something in the air made me sneeze and wheeze.

I sloped through to the living room to catch my breath. An old-fashioned puce coloured settee and chair were drawn up in front of the telly, a table with an ashtray full of douts as a footstool. Facing the door was a chest of drawers with a can of lager stuck between photos of people we didn’t know. I coughed, beat my chest to move the phlegm and help me breath and lifted the can. It was half full. Couldn’t remember leaving it, had a quick spill. The lager was flat, better than nothing, but I’d need a more substantial breakfast. I checked my pockets. Still had a couple of quid left. Checked what time it was on my Nokia. The Off Sales at the bottom of Mountblow Road didn’t sell drink until eleven, but the Paki shop at the top of the hill could be persuaded with an extra quid or two to sell it that bit earlier. I stuck my jacket on. Checked my phone again. One missed call from Jane: 2.23 am. Halfway out the door I flicked to voicemail and almost dropped the phone.

‘For God sake help me! Help me!’ the message from Jane said. And a terrible scream. Then silence. 

I rang her. No answer. Went onto her answerphone. I stood half in and half out of the front door, not sure what to do. A sparrow pecked at the rubbish in the alley.  I rang her again and left a message. ‘It’s me. You alright? Phone me back right away.’ 

I did what I usually do. I got so drunk on White Lightning and Buckie I couldn’t remember what day it was.

‘Time you were away,’ Archie said.

Archie was pushing me on my shoulder to waken me. He lived in the high flat that overlooked the golf course. It was one of the games he planned to take up. Exercise and fresh air. Those were the boys that would sort out his life. He’d a collection of golf balls ready to start him off. All he needed was a child sized set of nibs and clubs. One of those golf trolley would have been good because he walked with a limp and he used a nebuliser, but not all the time. He wasn’t at that stage- yet. If he could just stay off the fags he’d be ok. The problem, as he saw it, waving a lit fag about in front of my face, wasn’t the fags. It was the drink. If he didn’t drink he wouldn’t smoke. He’d give them up in a jiffy. He’s snap his fingers when he said that. Sometime I had to remind him not to smoke and use the nebuliser at the same time. One being a volatile gas and the other a simple cancerogenic. His legs would go from under him and he’d remind me whose house it was.   

‘Whit time is it?’ Rain was battering against the tenth storey window, but it was light outside, which was a start. Archie was soberish, which meant it was morning and the couch that I’d sunk into stunk like a cat’s litter tray, without feline companionship.

‘It’s about wan.’ The sclera in Archie’s eyes were piss yellow. ‘I need to get a sleep.’

He dunted my leg with the rubber tip of his walking stick.

‘Gee me a minute.’ I shook my head to see if that helped. ‘Whit day is it?’

‘Thursday.’

‘Fuck. Whit happened to Wednesday? I was meant to go to the Job Club and sign on.’ There was panic in my voice. ‘They’ll have stopped my money.’

Archie head dropped into his chest and he coughed for a minute or two before he spoke. ‘That’s the least of your worries. Those Curly boys will be looking for you now. Wantin their money back, or a body part as part payment.’ He sniggered ‘you’ll probably be dead before me’, but he was bent over again by another bout of coughing so that he windmilled his arms about to show what he meant.   

‘Did I get any messages? Phone calls from Jane?’

He held his hand up to show that he’d speak in a minute. ‘Nah, son. Her telling you nothing, tells you something.’

I heard him croaking with laughter as I squeezed the front door shut behind me. I think it was laughter.