flockers

 Nobody expected Charlie Dean to be a success. Big teeth that flashed like butcher’s knives, he had the kind of bully-boy laugh that made you want to duck your head down and pretend you weren’t with him. For his fourteenth birthday he got a Chipper of a Chopper bike. The same saddle and gimmicky gearbox as a Chopper. The same cow-horn handlebars. The equivalent of training shoes that had four white flashes instead of three. We all wore them.  They made your feet boil. Charlie always had it snug. IQ was the size of his flat feet.  He dropped his spanking new bike over the waterfall in Dalmuir Park and told his mum it had been stolen. Next day he was acing around the grass triangle in front of our house on a new Chopper bought out of Tausney’s. King of the universe.

The subpoena to appear at the High Court in Glasgow was a surprise. I’d followed the case in the Daily Record, but it confused me. I hadn’t seen Charlie for thirty years. Wasn’t sure what I could add. Wasn’t sure if I was a friend of the defence or the prosecution. Only one sure way to find out.

The High Court was built to intimidate, an exclusion zone where traffic wardens roamed. Gothic architecture, stone steps splashing down onto the pavement. High ceilings and disinfected marble floors inside swallowed me up, left me beetling about lost inside wearing my best shirt and tie clobber. Spat me into a plastic seat closest to the door in the waiting room outside Court 1. It was already full when I got there. Quick glances from the regulars. Suits assessing me. Huddled conversations. That air of menace before normal service of nipping out for a fag or a stretch of twenty years was resumed.      

I didn’t see her at first. Myra was always good at that kind of thing. Quiet. Blending in. It was more difficult when she was younger, cause everyone with a penis wanted to fuck her. Maybe that was just wistful thinking. I had it worse than bad. She lived next door and when she sunbathed in her two-piece the sun shone. While everybody else was munching through ice cream cones I was sure I had an erection for the whole of 1976, and I must have stunted my growth because I never grew any taller. I also shaved about three or four inches off my cock, not by masturbation, but by trying to fold it away like an empty hanky.

Her getting pregnant was enough to give sex a bad name. It wasn’t so much what she had done. Jesus, I got that. It was who she had done it with. If she’d got pregnant to some thirty-year old douchebag called Ronnie with a motorbike and leather jacket that was always hanging, drooling about her, and lived up the street with his old mum that would have been acceptable. Getting pregnant to Charlie Dean. That was an astronaut dropping his wick on the wrong planet. But at least I could understand why she was here in the waiting room.  

‘Hi,’ I said. Leaned over, she had already spotted me. Raised my hand in a flap. Her answering smile could no longer make my stomach flip like a burgher but was enough to make me charge over beside her and squeeze into the seat next to her. She was stringy, her face drawn. Hair silver with age rather than glorious blonde. The cheap orient of over-the-counter perfumes had drifted in time, leaving a scent drabber than a burst couch. Not haggard exactly. I guess that was all that religion. I’d heard she’s joined the Jehovah’s. Did that much praying and disseminating tracts she hobbled about the streets like a pigeon with its knees locked together. She dressed conservatively, blouse over what had once been her glorious breasts and long purple skirt with a thick plastic belt and gold buckle. We sat facing each other, heads bowed, in confab, waiting for inspiration.

‘How you gettin’ on?’ she asked   

‘Great. And you?’

She dipped her shoulders and her head poked out a dash. ‘Fine.’ Her lips scrunched and she took a few seconds before asking, ‘What you doing with yourself now Jim?’

I laughed. Glad to be on solid ground. ‘Still the same. Working as a brickie.’

She cleared her throat like the stop on a church organ. ‘Guess it’s hard, working outside in all weathers.’ Prim smile.

‘Och no. I’m a fat bastard.’ I patted my belly. ‘Teach the kids at the college how to put up a straight line. I’ve been building the same wall for about twenty years.’ I chuckled. ‘Not finished it yet. I wouldn’t last five minutes on a proper building site now.’

She nodded and something in us thawed. Heavy set guy in the corner of the room voice was raised and he called the balding man huddled tight with him ‘a cunt’. Darting eyes challenging you to look away. The way Charlie used to play it.  For a second I thought it was all going to kick off. But they lowered their heads again and went back to whispered brooding. A skinny plook of a guy in an ill-fitting suit accidently nudged my foot as he hurried outside the waiting room.

‘Any idea why we’re here?’ I asked Myra.

‘No,’ she said.   

  ‘I guess we’re the past. Character witnesses to how fine and upstanding he was.’ I nudged her arm and felt a renewed prickle of interest. ‘Jesus remember when he thought he was Uri Gellar and would have us sitting for hours while he tried to bend spoons and get old watches working. He was such an arsehole.’

‘He cheated.’ She held her hand over her mouth as she giggled, which was somehow girlish.

‘Of course he cheated. He was the worst Uri Gellar ever. Worse even than Uri Gellar.’ I looked at her out of the side of my eye. ‘Even a five-year old could have did a better job of switching spoons. And we were all meant to be so agog when he pulled it off. Whit an arsehole.’

She spluttered with laughter, clutched onto my arm and said ‘I’m going to pee myself. Stop. Stop.’

A man came in, lawyer type, expensive suit, short dark hair, suntan in December, holding some documents. His gaze travelled the room and settled on us.