Ugly Puggly 62

My phone rang. Dave seemed almost as surprised as me. He thought my phone so ancient  naval flags would operate it. I took my Noika into the lobby to answer it.

‘I need tae get ready to go oot to a meeting,’ I explained to the playboy. The phone still clutched in my hand as evidence when I came back. The thought wearied me, made me curl up inside like a fern. I was dying for a smoke and a drink. Not necessarily in that order. But as wee Jim kept reminding me, I needed a bit of order in my life. And I had to pick him up, anyway.

Dave snorted,‘You’ll no be able to go to yer meetings when we go away’.

I hadn’t thought about that. Wee Jim would be making phone calls. Sending telegrams and teletext messages. Urgent cables crisscrossing between AA meeting houses, overwhelming networks in Clydebank, Great Britain, and interfering with the workings of the Large Hadron Collider and its ability to detect quarks.  Pictures of my face posted on lampposts like a lost dog. With the message: Huv you seen this drunk? ... with a phone number scrawled underneath it with wee Jim’s number attached in pencil. While I’d be sitting in a run-down pub in Bonn, drinking German beer, smoking a fag with a buxom fraulein on my arm. I could leave wee Jim a gift of my van keys and a miniature of Jack Daniels.

‘You’re right, I don’t need tae go. In a way, it’s pointless.’ When I said that, I knew it was true. He glanced at me. And I tried to look like somebody that knew what he was talking about. Somebody like Ugly Puggly that exercised before breakfast, and didn’t suck in his gut. ‘You should get oot,’ I told him. ‘Go back tae yer Ma’s. Naebody’s worried about you. You’ll no be noticed. Yev still got time tae make somethin o yersel. You could go tae college. Smoke dope. Take drugs and sleep around less.’  

‘I don’t think so.’ People on a high horse spoke like him, and we used to get warmed about it. ‘Me and Howard are a committed couple.’

Howard was standing in the lobby, listening, with his mouth open. His moist eyes crinkled up and he smiled. ‘That’s true. One of us has been committed.’ He stepped into the room and the mood lightened. His gaze made Dave his own. And they placed musical chairs until they were sitting on each other’s laps.

‘Fuck off,’ I muttered. ‘I’m gonnae get changed.’

I couldn’t stand all that lovey-dovey stuff. It was like being back at secondary school. I was glad to be going out and sitting among a sour group of cynical drunks who didn’t believe in anything, laughed at everything and hoped for nothing more than to stay sober for another day.

The meeting was in a snooker hall in Clydebank. Some of the older guys would hang about and play a few games. The benefit of being a constant drunk was you were usually good at games that required lots of sitting and smoking. Alex Higgins at snooker. Jocky Wilson at darts. These were our patron saints. Big Bill Werbeniuk, the man who drank Canada dry, claiming a daily allowance of eighteen pints off the taxman for medical reasons to steady his hand, sounded about right.

I licked my lips. I could almost taste the fag smoke blowing from my past.

Dave’s voice rose and if there was a god, he was mocking me. ‘Yesterday,’ he sang in dulcet tones, staring into Ugly Puggly’s eyes, ‘all my troubles seemed so far away’.

I knew the lyrics. And I knew the song. But I didn’t know the playboy could sing like that. If we were at the snooker club, I’d have slapped him on the back and bought him—and me—a double and ordered another round. ‘That was brilliant,’ I told him.

‘Thanks,’ his cheeks pinked with my praise. ‘My mum used to sing it.’

Ugly Puggly shifted his weight so he could sit by himself. ‘We’re the three Musketeers. Remember that?’    

  ‘Aye,’ I shifted my feet. ‘Wan for wan and wan for all.’ I remembered bits from Saturday morning telly. ‘D’Artangan and Porteous struck a chord of sorts. And some other cunt.’ I expected Ugly Puggly to correct me.  

‘Never heard of them,’ said Dave.

‘Dumas,’ said Ugly Puggly, enigmatically.

My voice wavered as tried to remember. ‘They were Cavaliers. They jumped about on horses stabbin cunts.’ The theme music was in my head. ‘Na, na, na, na, na,’ I hummed bits and Ugly Puggly chuckled.

‘Where they real soldiers?’ Dave sat up a little straighter. I suspected he’d a wee think for soldiers. ‘Who were they fightin against?’

I hadn’t paid much attention to history at school. To anything much at school. But I kept my face straight and voice even. ‘Tories. They were fighting against French Tory bastards.’

Dave seemed unsure. He glanced at Ugly Puggly’s face for confirmation. He smirked but nodded agreement. ‘We should maybe go tae France. Claim asylum there.’   

‘Whit you talkin about?’ I asked.

His face stiffened. ‘We need tae go somewhere. When yer no longer safe at home, it’s no longer home. Tens of thousands of refugees are finding that out noo. Global warming used to be the hare chasing the tortoise of weather. Noo, it’s both the hare and the tortoise.  Tens of millions of us in the next few decades will be on the move. Why no cross the Channel, go the other way tae France?’

‘But they speak French,’ I spluttered. ‘Jesus, I cannae grow a French moustache like D’Artangan.’

Even the playboy laughed at me. ‘Yer phone noo. New technology. You can speak into it and it translates for you.’

‘Like on Star Trek,’ said Ugly Puggly. ‘And anyway, we can learn their language.’

‘I cannae even speak my ain.’  I shook my head. ‘I’m no goin. The refugees should be comin tae us. No us tae them.’

‘But we ur refugees noo,’ said Ugly Puggly. ‘Whether you like it, or no.’  

A banging on the door silenced us. I ducked my head and crouched, crawling to the couch. Ugly Puggly tiptoed to the window, and skulked down, while looking outside. The door banged again and the backdoor rattled. A neighbour’s dog started yelping. They would be coming to their windows and looking to see who was making the racket.