Now or Never 8

Nothing had changed. Why should it have?
An elderly woman with deep, scarred facial lines drove a buggy into the door so I opened it for her. As I smiled down at the little boy in the buggy, I noticed that he looked tense and nervous, as if a bomb was about to go off in his buggy.
She drove him off to a man playing pool, who came over to kiss the boy with his stubble, only to return to his game, shouting to the wall, ‘I’ll be back in half an hour, Mum.’
I knew, as he did, that he was lying through his teeth.
I ordered a pint of Knonenbourg and sat in the garden to call a friend for some weed. After that, I called a sister to tell her what had happened and asked if I could stay at Mum’s flat. She agreed, guardedly. I drank another pint very quickly and then took a bus to meet my smoke-buddy for a pint and a score’s worth.
I told him about what happened and he told me about a run-in he’d had with a neighbour who accused him of playing around with his wife.
My pal told him that it was just gossip. He tried to tell him he didn’t even know his wife, but the neighbour wouldn’t listen and threatened to make my pal’s life a misery on the estate. The next day, he hit my pal so he hit him back in self-defence and cut the bloke’s face open.
Police came and another neighbour told them that my pal was a dealer. The incident passed but then the police turned up at his door. Luckily, he had nothing there. We agreed that his estate was no better than an open prison, and left it at that.
Back in the real world, I noticed how aggressive people’s movements were on the busy streets. Facial expressions were taut, almost frozen, with eyes intent on their destination.
I wondered what was more sane an environment. This or treatment?
Someone asked me for directions so I stopped and parked my bag next to me, but then his phone went and he answered it. I waited for half a minute and then wondered off. He was obviously a very busy man indeed.
At the train station, I bought a one-way ticket to my desired destination and boarded the train. Wanting to roll a joint for the other end, I looked up at the ceiling of the carriage for cameras. There were plenty enough for my liking so I read one of the hundred Standards that lay dormant on almost every seat.
I laughed when I saw a cartoon of Nick Clegg as a schoolboy in the absent PM’s office, twiddling his thumbs.
Every article smelt like a dog’s dinner.
Stories of brilliantly mismanaged quango upsets were being hastily corrected by officials, we were told, but would cost millions to put right. The government could no longer afford to use speed cameras and Stephen Hawkins decided that God had no say in the big bang. The BP oil-leak had been successfully plugged and scientists had discovered that aspirin was good for eyelashes. Oh, and Paris Hilton wore a red top last night.
Just as dogs regurgitate purely for the enjoyment of eating, when it came to the regurgitated news of the paper, people read purely for the sake of reading.
I changed at one station and quickly joined the next train. On this one, I rolled a joint in the toilet.
There were some young folk on board, about eighteen years old, with two very young children in cheap, tatty buggies.
The younger child, perhaps four or five months old, had a large red bump the size of a semi-circular table-tennis ball on his head. The mother moved aggressively, jolting the baby’s head with every manoeuvre. I wanted to say something but what was the point? He’d have only been punished for showing her up.
I took a few moments to pray for the baby to be OK and then remembered how resilient children are, but dark thoughts of abuse that may befall these children were close behind.
The train arrived so I got off, lit up the joint outside the station and then walked through town. Passing by the taxi rank, I suddenly realised that I’d made up my mind to go to another pub.
It was August 19th, when revellers line the streets, snaking in groups to yet another pub, celebrating their exam-results and commiserating the dire lack of decent university places with cheap poison.
Short skirts and skimpy tops, three-quarter length slacks and tight t-shirts, aquiline and nubile bodies spilling out of bars, smoking, laughing and playfully taunting one another.
With the reward-section of their brains positively screaming for attention, joyful youth was in full flow. I felt completely detached from them, like a hazardous ghost walking through a street-party.
When I got to the pub, I plonked down my bag at the foot of a fruit-machine, ordered a pint and then went for a roll-up outside.
A pair of lads stood breast to breast talking about violence.
‘Hit him in the face, kneed him in the groin, tripped him up when he ran off, kicked him in the face, then I let him go’ was bettered by his friend’s more gruesome lashings of mindless violence. A medley of beatings was explored, so I asked them how they selected their victims.
‘They select themselves, mate,’ one said. ‘Know what I mean?’
‘I know what you mean to me. Now go fuck your mother, you little prick!’ I said back at him.
No, I didn’t say that at all. I walked away.
At the fruit-machine, I disposed of fifty pounds in the space of about ten to fifteen minutes, and then ordered a half for the road, the dejected loser. I went outside for another roll-up and thought of a new storyline. Knowing I’d forget it before long, I wrote down the bare bones on the inner-lip of my tobacco pouch and then went back inside.
It read, ‘Drunk man sees man hide bag in shrubs in park. What does he find and what does he do with it?’
Finishing the half, I couldn’t help thinking about the treatment centre and feeling ashamed.
I looked in the mirror at the back of the bar and saw quite a healthy looking man. Twenty-three days of sobriety does that.
But why had I been discharged? Was it my attitude? Probably. Could they have helped me more if they’d tried? Probably. Was I so paranoid? Probably. Although I couldn’t help thinking they’d made a serious boo-boo, I was surprised to find that I held few resentments towards the counsellors.
It has to be said that I hadn’t made one half-decent friend during my stay.
I’d felt alienated, or maybe I’d alienated myself.
Either way, I was out of it. With four or five pints down me, I dragged the bag off but missed the last bus so I took a taxi with my second-last tenner.
Once in, I slobbered like an oaf over a ready-made meal and watched Brit Cops: Zero Tolerance, smoking skunk and drinking my sister’s leftover red wine. I noticed that my thoughts had swearwords in them. The aggressive booze and the needy weed were in my blood again.
I went to bed at about midnight but woke up at three or so with the all too familiar headache.
I’d had one awful headache in my sleep in treatment, but it went after a walk downstairs and I was permitted to sleep again.
This would be a different thing altogether, because the booze was in me.
I forced myself to pace up and down the flat, swearing under my breath. Once the pounding had subsided enough, I grabbed a tea-towel from the kitchen and soaked it in cold water. Then I stomped back to bed.
After twenty minutes of low-level wailing, the headache, aided by the cool towel on my forehead, lapsed and I returned to sleep.
At fiveish, I woke up again with a much worse headache. I did the walking around thing, but then my stomach could take no more of it, wishing it out, so I threw up the ready-made and garlic bread into the loo.
After brushing my teeth in a gesture of decontamination to the self, I went back to bed, quite sure that I’d be better off after my little sortie.
How wrong I was. The headache wouldn’t let me go back to sleep and I couldn’t even muster the strength to re-water the towel, so I just lay there, tossing and turning, fighting the pain in my head.
After twenty-three days with no booze, my body had begun to enjoy life again. This was its way of telling me what a twat I was to go back to it.
At sevenish, I remembered that I had some paracetamol and got two down me. Twenty minutes later, I was asleep.
Dragging myself out of bed at eleven, my care manager immediately sprung to mind.
I felt awful. Another day lost.
I’d let everyone down and lost everything that I’d fought for.
I called and left a message but she didn’t call back and Friday’s gone now, so I’ll have to wait till Monday.
God knows what she’ll tell me. I’ve probably screwed up my chances now. I wonder if she’s spoken to the treatment centre and been advised that I’m too mouthy for rehab? Will she wash her hands of me and drop me like a slivery seal into a pool of whales?
My sister’s bringing my car up from her place tonight and she’ll probably lend me some money for gas. There’s a job or two to see in London.
But why do I have to make the same mistakes all the time? Do I have to die to find peace?
I can’t rely on care managers and sisters to get my life together. I have to do it for myself, but how?
It’s now Sunday afternoon. My sister came over and gave me the car and fifty quid. I’ve spent that. The skunk’s almost gone and I’m on my last bit of tobacco. There’s nothing in the fridge and I seem to have become numb to my predicament.
When I tried to explain what happened in treatment to my middle sister, she couldn’t believe what she was hearing and stopped me telling her. It all seemed too strange, she reckoned, like out of a book.
Strange or not, it’s over now.
‘German face’, ‘African tribesman’ and a ‘bunch of women’ were the words that I would now be bound to own forever.