Apples

“Now, it may seem like very old hat to anyone else who’s been through it but this is how it seems to me – therefore, this is how it is: the most gorgeous, clever, kind, beautiful, fun, exciting, warm and funniest loveliest girl in the world has ripped herself away from me and it is worse than any ‘teenage angst’ I ever had in that direction for I never had a girlfriend as a teenager, in fact I would count this as my first real relationship and I just cannot understand everything. As seventy-seven falls should be had before you can ride properly And a fall for the first time when everything else is ‘old hat’ is a tragic tumble, I am not as experienced as my contemporaries in ‘love’ or the disdain and minimalisation of the practices thereof. All I know is that I would have loved her to death, had she let me and now I am just another useless sad prick in the world and not the powerhouse forceful ego that her friendship endowed me with in its natural light. I cannot hate her, yet. But I fear seeing her living her life without my constant companionship is going to tear me again, and again until I hate her so much because I loved her and she once loved me, but I just wasn’t worth waiting for.”

It was about twelve years ago that the events about to occur were to happen. Elias Nibb, a handsome young colt of no more than twenty winters was bereaved after his much better titled young lover left through, what some wryly observed as, boredom.

I only knew, only had known, Ely for the duration of his intense love affair and so I found it almost as bizarre as he seemed to that Eileen didn’t care for him any longer. I wanted them to be together - partly because I had a bet on with Dan whether they two were to get married or not and, as Ely had already secretly asked me to be his man should the day come about, I had felt fairly certain that £30 would be coming my way. That there saying though of course, Dan was just as upset as I and spent all of his winnings on getting Ely drunk as all his friends and our circle did for a while. We had loved their happiness and fed from its deep-blue pond and now we needed new occupations for our boredom.

The first one to get better from it all was Elias Nibb himself; he had cried a fortnight, been drunk another month, cried a week, and then become quiet with a strange mawkishness that entranced him so that he seemed quite of another facet of the world and indifferent to any sorrows or joys that could imprison him. It was after a week or so of this strange, dead, calm that Rosin, an Irish belle with eyes wine-bottle green and skin you wanted to nuzzle into came over and introduced herself to us. We happened to be at her table, and she doesn't mind so much as would we mind were she to ask us to make room for her mate and herself? Now her mate, this one in question, was a dudelicious young scrump, rounded so that you could see she was woman, honeyed blonde, and smiling at me - I moved up; not, though, so much that she had too much room. And we continued our laddish drinking.

After twenty minutes of this I felt cheated on, in some way, for Ely was making this Rosin laugh, and giggle, and flirt and I quite abandoned my feeble attempts at pulling her friend - who was quite encouraging my advances - because I wanted to join in with their world. It was not long till the capsule of that globe though had gone away in a taxi because Rosin was too drunk to stay out and the turncoat Ely was too charming to let her away unprotected. I returned to my side of the bargain to find that she was no cheap and I had offended her to another table where some cunt was snogging her face off and fumbling in a most outrageously embarrassing manner with her plump top that I would like to have done. God what a fool.

“How, How!” I greeted my chirpy buddy the next morning. “How, How!” replied his nibbs quite unaware of the change I had noticed in him. His hair was unruly, I liked that. It warmed me to know that people can forget about their hair when they’re happy.

Turns out they were to see each other again, they had even kissed for a while. I asked, “ok?” It seemed so.

Rosin was a likeable young lady in every way, and very soon everyone had forgotten whom Eileen was just to make Rosin feel special and one of us. It is remarkable what discretion rowdy and bawd young men can wrangle form their hearts when they feel it necessary. Rosin was necessary, we knew that and we adored her for it.

I was organizing a party, for my birthday. It was not to be a birthday party or anything – guys can struggle by sans presents and dinners - just a party on my birthday. I had decided, quite contrary to tradition, to provide myself with a modicum of booze for I knew what cheapskate bastards my nearest and dearest were.

Unfortunately I had provided myself with that modicum from lunchtime, through half-past three when Hamish and Dan turned up with four litres of tramp-cider apiece and began drinking a-gusto, and right on through the night, so that when I woke up sitting on a girl’s lap and nuzzling her skin I did not do the right thing and go quietly away…

I lurched my head up, looked into that broken-glass moon and shrieked, once, like a woman - though loud enough to hear it twice. Then getting my bearings, I ran into the wall and woke up in bed to wonder that horrible wonder of “have I done anything wrong?”

Of course that is the time you have woken because Dan knocked and he does it again with a cheery, pompous, “Helloo?” And then I let him in.

He smirked – I said ‘was it good?’ He says, “Ah, hmm,” and does not decide if the wind has changed yet, so he’ll just keep smirking, thank-you. And I said – “have I done anything wrong”, which is not a question, for I fear that I know by now. And Dan whispers ‘Rosin.’ And I say “?” – And then I remember my foolish actions, all of them: The wall, the shriek, the kiss. Dan says, “You comin’ out?” I start to cry and to beat my face with my hands and I realise that Ely is asleep in the bathroom.

“Oh dear,” I say. “Does he know?” Dan shrugs, he has no scooby, so I must come to a decision: Leave the house with Dan and hope that Ely has gone when I return, or, stay in bed to stop him wrecking my things in his impotent rage, and it’s a tough decision for I am a bit of a nervous bugger around my things and I would rather he’d take vengeance on me than my artistry work. But Dan says there is a good cartoon on at the art cinema so this decides it for me and I pause while looking at the drunk incompetent, poor dear beatendown loveless idiot that is curled up in the bathtub with my laundry for pillows and duvets, then I go.

I returned about four hours later and, I think it was while walking up the forgotten steps under the exposed laths and mouldy green plaster shining from the grime-light of the half-covered hall windows, I recalled that Ely would still be there, for I have two deadbolts – not a latch, and my flat is three floors up. Ely doesn’t climb lampposts in my recollection; never has (it’s the cartoon made me think this way.)

I fitted one key in the top lock, the one for the top lock. I fitted the key for the other lock into the other lock. I turned both wrists in one motion, slammed my left paw down on the handle and shoved the door at the bottom with my right toe. And there, tears on his cheeks again, cigarette in the corner of his mouth, and one of my Mickey Mouse socks hanging on his unruly hair over his left ear, was Elias. He punched me. Hard.

He went on down the stairs and I lay there crying for the loss of Eileen, and even, partly, for the loss of my sock. It was terrible, the pair had been destined to go together and then fate had snagged on Ely’s choice of the perfect woman and it had turned out that Eileen had more choice than Ely. And that bitch is the ultimate reason for my sock going off on his head one morning.

Ely came back to me, he said Rosin wasn’t really too special to him and that he’d rather I didn’t get to doing him in like that again, ‘cause he was quite willing to punch me again. Now that punch hurt, and it taught me to avoid things that get me punched and I have never been punched since, touch wood.

***

I was driving along with my grandad, scared as usual, in Leicester town just the other day when Ely crossed at the traffic lights in front of us. I leapt out of the car, which was slowly rolling backwards on the street and hailed him. “Elias Nibb, I vaunted, where the hell have you been?” A few seconds and he recognized my wily face. “Jamie,” he said, “Nice to see you.” “Got a moment?” I asked. “All the time in the world for you, my old tart” said he and we jumped into Grandad’s golden Volvo, which had crashed in slo-motion into the bumper of a rusting city bus behind. And for a few hours more in the life of our times I was able to shelter him from the rain.