Ugly Puggly 90

Molly didn’t get up and say she was an alcoholic. She seemed content just to blend in and listen. She was no longer an AA virgin. I remembered the next time always being easier. Then it became part of the routine, like putting a jacket on before you went out. Boring, as a church meeting, in other words. I kept an eye on her, when we had tea and biscuits. There was a corridor off with a room attached running parallel with the main hall and near the kitchen. Laura and her chatted away, both of them holding a mug of tea going cold and a plate with a single biscuit.  Most of our members already knew she was my wife and didn’t ask any questions.

Molly took my arm as we went down the stairs outside the hall. She told me something, but I wasn’t really listening. I was trying to figure out when I was treated like an old cripple. But there was a shakiness in my arms and legs which worried me. I tried to make light of it. ‘I’ll drive.’

I took a step towards the driver’s side, but she tugged me back onto the pavement as an Audi with tinted windows swept past us, rap music booming out. I didn’t know how I could have missed it.

‘Ur you alright?’ Molly studied me.

‘Aye,’ I tell her. ‘I’ve never been better.’ But then I start coughing, bent over spitting up sputum. And if there was anything in my stomach, I’d have spewed.

Wee Jim and others crowd in. I recognised him by his shiny shoes. He waved them away and crouched down to coach me. ‘Take slow deep breaths. Relax, ya stupid cunt. Breathe in through yer big nose.’ He gripped my elbow. ‘Yeh want me tae help yeh up?’ But he didn’t wait for an answer.

My body gradually stopped trembling, but I shivered with the cold.

‘I’ll get yeh hame.’ Molly darted around to the driver’s side. Our luck was in, because the Bongo started first time.  

Wee Jim stood at my back to make sure I didn’t fall backwards into the street as I got up into the passenger seat. He sat in the back, staring over my shoulder. I could hear him breathing.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he told me. ‘It happens tae the best of us.’

Molly took her hand off the gearstick and patted my hand. ‘Ur yeh in pain?’

I stared at the flashing red light on the sign that told you to keep it down to thirty-miles-per hour. ‘I’m fine.’

Wee Jim wasn’t much of a talker, but got high after meetings, and usually it was about meetings. He rattled on filling in the silences as we rocked from side to side on the hill and bend. ‘You know whit Buddha said. Don’t be a stupid cunt. You ur no yer thoughts. The devil can make me yeh feel unworthy and alone. I wiz just saying tae that wee lassie Laura. Leading yeh back tae the drink or drug. If yeh could watch these thoughts…pay witness tae these thoughts…the crazy and the god-like. Yeh’ll know there’s a spirit on the inside that watches those thoughts wae yeh.’ He searched for the right words. ‘That gies yeh freedom. Freedom to choose. No tae drink.’

‘Fuck sake, Jim,’ I muttered. ‘Shut up.’

He was equally quick to apologise. Slapping my shoulder before he got out the Bongo at the Crescent Stairs. ‘I’ll phone yeh later.’ He laughed, ‘about a meeting’. He nodded at Molly, pursing his lips before he spoke to her. ‘Yer welcome tae.’

I made a joke of it as we watched his head and shoulders disappearing down the stairs. ‘That man can talk some shite.’

Her voice remained neutral. ‘Aye, he can. But sometimes—we’. She flung the van to a sharp right and into the driveway, jostling us both.

‘I’m gonnae huv a long bath,’ she sucked in her breath. ‘Do yeh know whit yeh put us through?’

‘Nah.’  

‘Probably for the best.’ She rushed ahead on me. ‘I’m burstin.’

I sat on the settee and kicked off my shoes. My first thought was to get a drink. The strange thing was, I remembered what wee Jim had spoken about. And I relaxed into the thought. Watched and listened for it wandering about. And recognised something in me had changed. Perhaps not permanently, but in the meantime.

I flicked on the telly to see what was on. Cheeky chappie, Bradley Walsh on every channel. He’d even got his son involved. I thought, no wonder so many actors were out of work. The Walsh family were coining it in. Cradle to grave. I tried to remember if Bradley was an alcoholic, but that might have been the other Bradley, the singer. I couldn’t remember his second name. Mad Dog Madly Manilow or something. Then I remembered, Bradly was also a singer.

‘Whit you watchin?’ Molly tilted her head to have a look. ‘Is that Bradley Walsh?’

‘Nah, jist somebody that looks like im.’

‘He’s great inntae?’

‘Aye,’ I mouthed. ‘I love im.’  

‘You don’t love anybody. No even Bradley Walsh.’

‘I dae. I love im as much as the Queen.’

She snorted before sweeping away into the back bedroom. ‘Yer jist stubborn.’

I tried turning the telly over. But it was the same thing on every channel. I wondered what Ugly Puggly would have made of it. He’d have got a bit of paper out and drawn diagrams. And explained to me that before Bradley there was somebody just like an unregulated Bradley. It might have been Bob Monkhouse or Bruce Forsyth. Or somebody else whose name stated with the letter B. He’d explain these things happened by chance and random variation. The cult of the B, was not the cult of Boris squared or even prime-time entertainers like Boris cubed. But a knowing wink at common sense. God saves us from the stupid Bs that was all the rest of us.

Wee Jim might have had a point. Thinking about Ugly Puggly brought him home to me. I might be stubborn, but I did want him to come home. I owed him that.