Ugly Puggly 5

‘Dave’s on the phone,’ Molly made that exasperated face that showed she didn’t know who it was and wondered why I hadn’t answered it. She handed me the phone. We propped it up against the side of the couch. I hadn’t heard it ringing. I’d had a few pints and a few cans and managed to sleep my way through most of Match of the Day.

I shrugged her off, but she stood in the doorway, skulking. Her greying hair was in a ponytail. She was petite rather than small and retained much of her angular beauty.

On the telly, Ian Wright was explaining with diagrams how the Arsenal defence didn’t work. The remote sat on the windowsill. I reached up and turned the sound down. ‘Hallo,’ I shouted into the phone.

‘It’s Dave.’  

Ian Wright’s explanation was better without the sound. But my benumbed mind wasn’t up to speed. ‘Dave?’

‘Aye, David.’

I shrugged my shoulders and puckered my lips. Molly wandered away and through to the kitchen. ‘Oh, aye,’ I said.

Something about the hesitation gave the game away.

‘David from Partick,’ a slight pause. ‘You dropped us off—‘member?’

‘Oh, aye,’ I began coughing and leaned forward to see if there was another can at my feet. I picked up the tin of Pale Ale and gave it a shake, it was mostly full and I took a swing. ‘How you gettin’ on?’

‘That’s what I was phoning about.’

I took another up and downer and burped. Watched the beginning of the next match. Crystal Palace. He’d wittered on more in the last few minutes than he had in our whole journey. He sounded polite enough to be English.

‘It’s just your friend…’

I gripped the receiver harder. Suddenly, he was my friend and not his. ‘Whit’s he done?’

‘Well,’ and then he took a deep breath, and I wondered if the gulping sound was him crying. ‘He fixed the washing machine. Then he fixed the telly. Made good the limescale on the bathroom tiles. Painted my bedroom a pale green colour. Let’s call it lilac, but then he tried to fix my mother.’

I spluttered into my can. ‘Put him on.’ I knew he’d be there, skulking about.

A pause and background mumbling, while Wilfried Zaha, Crystal Palace scored a goal. A breathy whisper. ‘He doesn’t want to talk to you.’

‘Right, that’s fine. I don’t want to talk to him either.’ I perched the phone between shoulder and collarbone, angled my head, and propped it against my ear. Turned the telly up a notch. ‘So, whit dae yeh want me to dae about it?’ Another silence. I yawned, but was quick to interject. ‘I’m no picking you up.’    

‘It’s no me,’ he said. ‘It’s my mum.’

‘I’m no picking her up either.’

‘He called her an ignoramus and we can’t stay here anymore.’  

I laughed, but held the receiver away. 'He said homosexuality was not an illness like the characters in Brigadoon that appeared every 100 years, and disappeared after they’d been caught in flagrante in a public toilet. But that at least ten-percent of the population was homosexual. And in Britain that was the equivalent of the population of Scotland. You better look in the mirror. Look at your husband, he told her. Not that you’ve got one.’

‘That sounds like him,’ I muttered. ‘But I didn’t know he was a—’and I was going to say poof—‘homosexual.’

David cleared his throat. ‘I’m not sure he is. He said he loves me, but—’   

‘Don’t tell me any sordid details,’ I watched Chelsea rip apart the Palace defence. Took another swig of my can.

‘That’s the whole problem. There aren’t any sordid details. We sleep in the same room, in the same bed—not that he sleeps, and—’

‘Stop,’ I cried. ‘I don’t want to know.’

‘Jesus, you’re just as homophobic as my mum.’

‘I’m no. I’m jist Ugly Puggly aphobic.’

‘Who’s Ugly Puggly,’ there was a note of outrage in his voice. ‘You mean Howard!’

‘Aye and no.’

‘I thought you were his friend—his only friend.’

Molly looked back into the living room before she went up the stairs. I waved her towards me. ‘Look, put him on. I know what he’s like, when he’s got a bee in his bonnet. He can speak to Molly. He likes Molly, in far as he can like anybody.’

Our ginger tabby followed in at her heels. ‘Who is it?’ she asked.

I put the hand over the receiver. ‘Ugly Puggly.’  

‘What does he want?’

‘Fuck know.’ And I pointed at the telly and handed her the receiver. ‘And I’m tryin’ tae watch the fitba.’

She smirked, and the tabby did circles around her feet, batting her legs with its tail. Sitting down in the chair across from me, she ummed and ahhed and laughed a few times. I could hear Ugly Puggly’s monotone voice, but not what he was saying. I finished my can and tried to concentrate on the football. A relegation battle, but gave up and went through to the kitchen to check if there were any more cans in the back of the fridge.

I cracked open the bottle of Glayva tucked in at the bottom of the units beside the chip pan, the kind of shitey liqueur that would make you turn to drink. Her sister-in-law had given us it. It was better than nothing. I’d just put the mug to my lips when she flounced in, the cat behind her.

‘Whit?’ I asked. She’d got me on the defensive. I swallowed it down in a oner and sucked in my breath as if I’d smelled something rank.

‘I’m going to bed,’ her nostrils flared but she kept her voice steady. ‘You sleep in the other room.’

The bottle knocked against the mug as I poured myself a large one. ‘Fine.’ I knew I’d probably fall asleep in the chair, and stumble up the stairs having finished the bottle. I was a greedy bastard that way.

She hovered at the door. ‘He said he wants his house keys.’

I took another sip and made a face. I wasn’t going to dive into the drink with her watching me. ‘Who?’

‘Howard.’

It took a few seconds for my synapses to join the dots. ‘You mean Ugly Buggly?’ I frowned. ‘I’ve no got his house keys.’

‘He said he’d given you a spare set.’

I  scrunched my eyes, sucked in a breath, and exhaled noisly. ‘Aye, fuck, so he has.’ I put the mug down on the work surface. I had to think  about where I’d left them. ‘When’s he comin’ to pick them up?’

‘The night,’ she said.

‘Fuck off, I’m busy.’

‘Doin’ what, exactly?’ She closed the door quietly and the cat’s tail swished as it followed her up the stairs.