Ugly Puggly 80

I took a spoonful of lentil soup, tepid at best, but at least the caterers got the orangey colour right. It left my lips greasy and stained like a clown’s. Bread, cut into triangles to encourage me to be middle-class, and responsible for things like etiquette and the natural order of sandwiches. A dollop of margarine and I could have made a piece and scampered, but I didn’t have the legs. Haemorrhoids. I could hardly make it to the toilet without buckling. Making it downstairs even with the lift and through the door-doors and into daylight was impossible. Had I been just myself, I would have tipped the bowl to my mouth and drank it like a quarter-gill and tried to get a bit of sleep. I was suddenly ravenous, haven’t not eaten for two days or more.  

The QC was an older man, but not very old. He must also have been a detective. The hospital had moved me about from room to room and department to department like a pawn that had fallen off the board. I didn’t know what was wrong, or worse, what was right with me. What worried me more was I no longer had a police escort watching over me and was no longer handcuffed to the bed. Any man in his right mind would know it was because they knew I was dying, but wanted to let me suffer more by waiting until I asked.

He cracked his knuckles and a pigeon sunning on the window sill took flight. He had long, very white fingers as if he sat in his room counting money, but his suit was off-the-peg and black. The kind of thing worn to a funeral or its distant relation, a wedding. He glanced at the door, perhaps checking if he’d already left before turning back to gaze at me.  

‘I was up before,’ he whispered. His voice leapt octaves and took on an accusatory tone as if I was already in the dock. ‘You were indisposed.’ Thick eyebrows jutted into his forehead. His broad face took on the expression of a man that needed to press a hanky soaked in perfume against his Roman nose and thin lips.

‘Aye, I was sick.’

‘You were unwell? Now, you are better?’

‘Nah, I was sick and noo I’m no better. My arse is still killin me. And I cannae dae a shite without my insides popping oot and stabbing me tae death.’

‘A word of advice.’ He breathed through his mouth and checked no one else had surreptitiously entered the room.  ‘Take a shower.’

‘That’s mair than wan word.’  

‘You’re free to go.’ His tone was that of the gavel falling.

My stomach was restless as a gale blowing over Loch Lomond. ‘Whit dae you mean I’m free tae go? Ur yeh a doctor noo, as well?’

He waved his arm towards the window, as if I too was ready to take flight. ‘What I mean is all charges have been dropped and we’re suing the constabulary for wrongful arrest.’ His eyes flickered over me like a cheap date found wanting. ‘But they’ll settle out of court.’

‘How dae yeh know aw that?’

He leaned forward in his chair and smirked. ‘I know all that as you so quaintly put it because I play golf with the Chief Constable.’

‘Aw, so yer aw master masons together?’

He launched into a long and airy lecture about the history of masons and how it had no relationship to the law, which proved it did have a relationship to the law, in the same way that bordellos had a relationship to sex and marriage didn’t.

But I’d no time to listen. I launched myself out of the bed and into the toilet, trailing a bleeding arse. My tendency to faint meant I was scratching air for the emergency pull cord, but by then it was too late.

When I came round he seemed no more substantial than the stink of a bad dream, and Molly was sitting beside my bed reading a magazine.

‘You awake?’ she asked.

I puckered my lips. ‘No sure, I hink I’d a dream about a lawyer being here and saying I was good to go?’

‘Mr Miller,’ she pushed her spectacles from the pound shop onto the top of her head. ‘Dave hired him.’ She corrected herself. ‘Dave gave me the money and I hired him.’

‘Fuck sake. That’s like cheatin. Couldn’t you let me rot in the system for a couple of years? Then make a Podcast and television programme. And that’d be me set for life, instead of daeing life?’

She put her magazine on top of the cabinet and poured herself a glass of water from the plastic beaker before sipping it and answering. ‘Suppose I couldhuv. But it saved me a lot o visitin time. Jails are always far away and closed.’

I shuffled up the bed. ‘You’ve probably noticed, I’ve lost a bit of weight.’

‘Aye,’ she shrugged.

‘You jealous?’

She smiled into her glass. ‘No if yev got cancer.’

‘Huv I got cancer? I squealed.

‘Don’t be so stupid. It’s a simple matter of plumbin. Yer arse is to near yer mouth. It’s—

She leaned over and patted my shoulder. I was sobbing. ‘I’ve always loved yeh.’

‘Don’t be daft.’

‘I huv.’

She cried a little too. ‘I’ve always love yeh too, ya daft bugger.’

I glanced over her shoulder at an attractive wee nurse with dark-coloured hair standing in the door, smiling a benediction. My mind was empty as a Tory Foodbank as we cuddled together on my bed. Things were picking up. I’d the beginning of a hard-on and where there was an erection was hope.

‘I want tae come hame?’

She rubbed at my back under the gown and pulled away. ‘You will, when yeh get better.’

‘How did yeh get that lawyer?’

She pursed her lips and listened to the endless hum of something going on somewhere else, the clack of feet and shouting of a disconsolate voice. ‘Dave has become a media sensation. His agent knew somebody that knew somebody. And it was jist a matter o—’

‘Aye,’ I cut in. ‘The playboy’s good for somethin, but any mair world o Ugly Puggly?’

 ‘Aye, we’ve hud sightings.’ She shook her head to mean yes and no.

‘Nothin then?’

‘Aye, nothin.’

‘Poor bastard,’ I cried.

She patted my leg and got up to leave. ‘Jist get yersel better, first.’ Her kiss against the side of my head it the kind you’d give to an ageing relative you didn’t much like. She circled the bed, touching tugging, straightening the blanket, slightly round shouldered. Stepping back to inspect her work before leaving.