31 Falkner Street (6)

Chapter 6 – Paddy

Paddy had lived in the street for 2 years and was firmly embroiled in the culture. He was now a native and a top dog due to Jo’s overkeen and smothering fondness for him. Whether he enjoyed this was not clear, because the option was not available for him to pull away gently from the soap opera of the street and the constant activity. Jo had attached herself to Paddy soon after he had moved in, from Bournemouth with no friends made and willingness to ‘come in for a drink’.

Paddy’s friend Mark had followed him up from down South with his new girlfriend Stacey and her very own tag along Nina who wanted her and wanted Mark to go away. Paddy had imagined a proper lad’s house with Sky Sports, lad’s nights out and for him and Mark to go out on the pull with new lad mates. Now he lived in a house with 3 other people, 2 of whom were hyperactive young girls. The house, including the front door, was painted white with black spots courtesy of Stacey when he and Mark had been in work one day. The landlord was giving him grief about said dalmation walls and door and the rent. The girls weren’t paying anything towards the gas, electricy or Sky bill, and often weren’t paying any rent. Mark was always swerving nights out because he wanted to be with Stacey. He had the smallest room and a wardrobe with no doors. Damp was eating away at the walls and the boiler was broken. Everything felt soggy – his clothes, his bedding. And everything smelt funny. Jo was letting him use her washing machine for a steep price so that he could look smart and clean for work.

He had worked in pubs all his life, apart from a brief period of time after leaving school at 16 with nothing and his stepdad had dragged him into employment as a public toilet cleaner. Now he was a good barman and a hard worker, putting in at least 50 hours a week at the busy town centre bar. But for the past 10 years, he had done the dogs work and had just been made a trainee supervisor. He felt that he was on his way up in the world and was content with his new title and 20p an hour pay rise.

His issue was that he just let things happen, let things wash over him and accepted his life. The fact that Paddy let things happen made it easy for other people to dictate his lifestyle for him. And currently, his lifestyle was being dictated by an obese alcoholic and drug addict who was on the dole and spent her days pulling the strings of the Falkner Street puppet show. His home life was being dictated by two rowdy young girls who worked one or two shifts a week each at various pubs and bars and spent the rest of the week causing trouble or moving all of the furniture out of his room for a laugh. Hence the holes in the bedroom doors upstairs, made when he had returned from a 15 hour shift to find not even a mattress in his room, he had had a bad day anyway after having to speak to his mum on the phone who repeated her life’s chorus of ‘I am so lonely and the world is against me’, and his stepbrother had also called to tell him of his new fad, his plan to become a gay pornstar. So when he punched the MDF doors in temper, leaving fist marks, the girls had started crying and Mark wouldn’t speak to him for a few days.

In a way, Paddy was grateful for the family-like quality of the neighbours and the way that Jo bossed him about like she was a devil mother-figure to him. He didn’t have anything else by way of family in Liverpool, and didn’t speak much to his family from Bournemouth. His twin brother had been too busy to come up and see him since he had moved, with his gigs and holiday park singing work. As had been continually reinforced to Paddy since he and James had been little, James was a Very Talented Singer and his mum had entered him in singing competitions throughout their childhood. Paddy took comfort in the fact that one of his great-aunties had once told him ‘James is everyone elses favourite, but you are my favourite, and you are just as good a singer as James too.’ So now he did put his singing skills to use, in the karoake clubs in town – Smokey Mo’s sometimes – the other drunken revellers loved it, and it helped him pull.

But with all the drinks in Jo’s house that you couldn’t refuse, the after work drinks with the other pub workers, and occasional bit of coke and speed to see the day through with a smile, his lifestyle was taking it’s toll on him and his body. You would wonder if he would experience minor withdrawals should he go a day without a drink, social drinker or not. Should his great aunty have seen him living his life, she would have wanted to pick him up and put him back down in a nice flat with a college course and a nice girlfriend. But he wouldn’t have dreamed of letting his great aunty see him in his natural habitat and didn’t ‘make anything happen' except for casual sex and earning a wage. And I am, he thought to himself often, the man.