Authors: Niall Griffiths
Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.
And seven bleeding sacks of shite on the deck who’ll never treat
anyone
like a divvy ever,
ever
again.
See
ya.
Darren sits on a bench in Williamson Square and lights a cigarette. Pigeons strut muckily around him and burble until they realise he has no food to offer them at which point they drift away again, through and around and scattered flapping by the legs of people out early for the night, blotchy white feet in strappy heels, polished shoes and trainers and boots. Darren blows smoke and thinks anger at them all, pigeons included because they can fly. He turns his mobile on and rings Alastair again for about the seventeenth time in the past two hours or so and this time he receives a strange, lifeless tone as if he’s called Mars. He turns his phone off again, replaces it again in his jacket pocket. Dribbles smoke at the floor, the sooty paving slabs dull-sequinned with colourless coins of flattened gum.
Where oh where will Alastair be? Where will he go to spend that money? Too stupid to leave town where will he go? Too brain-dead even to hide for a while, lay low for a while he will
not
go to his granny’s house for shelter or maybe he will because he is
that
thick. Or:
Pub. Or:
Knocking shop. Or:
Where else where else where will his appetites take him … With the ready cash to assuage his hungers where will he drift to where will he go, around this city Darren can see him wandering in his skinny inadequacy in that antwacky shelly and that perpetual
frigging
baseball cap and that gob hanging open never-shut, drool on his pimply chin and the stained white socks tucked into his antwacky trainees and the way he walks all drippy and feeble and ineffectual just bumbles through the world brain-dead get that he is, breakable little arsewipe with a body susceptible to so much pain and pain it will suffer oh how it will split and bleed that face flattening under Darren’s fist and feet Jesus the rage in him the fury in his head pushing at the bone, pounding at the bone such a sharp throbbing in his head against the inside of the skull pound pound pound the bone which is going to surely –
Crack
.
That’s it.
That’s
that bastard’s luxury.
That’s
that bastard’s Spanish villa.
Darren crushes the end of his cigarette and leaves the square and walks to the gyratory and boards the next bus that will take him to Liverpool 8, bound as it is for the Dingle and St Michael’s and areas beyond. He buys a ticket and finds a seat upstairs among the bright people going out and their chatter and invisible perfume clouds and he peers through the window at the passing city, the night’s illumination beginning to burn. He disembarks on Upper Parliament Street and cuts through the estate behind the Coronation Buildings, the corporation houses all identical and the music behind their windows either techno or reggae, always techno or reggae. Beyond this estate lies some old terracing cross-hatched around patches of waste ground that once held buildings either obliterated by
Luftwaffe
bombs or razed in the riots and never built
on
again, left fallow for dandelion and nettle or as dumping grounds for unwanted household appliances or old mattresses or on occasion burnt-out cars sinking into mud and bracken like mastodons. Darren enters one of these terraced streets and halts at a house whose lower windows and door have been covered with sheet metal, three big sheets riveted to frame and jamb. From an upper window a faint light pulses. The number 18 is painted in red on the steel.
Darren presses the intercom button at the side of the door. On certain streets like this one in appearance in other areas the net curtains would be twitching up and down the street on each side like some prolix secret signal, some abstruse and coded conversation conducted via flap and jerk of cloth. In some areas, along some streets net curtains
do
twitch. Eyes
do
pry. But not here, not unless they check for police. Only ever police.
The intercom crackles. A voice all drawly answers:
—Yeeeeee-aaaaahhh? Oo dissssss?
—Darren, lad.
—Hoooo?
—Darren. Darren
Taylor
.
—Know none Dah-
ron
Tee-looorrrrr. Bye-bye.
—Darren fuckin
Taylor
, yeh fuckin fool. I’m
known
ere, lar. Ask Herbie, if he’s there. An then just fuckin lerruz in.
Faint voices through the intercom system kind of robotic, mechanical. Like sentient machines concocting a plot. Then:
—Hoooo-
kay
Mistah Tee-looorrr. You go rount
back
.
Darren does, down the urinous ginnel between ashpiles of burnt clothing and through a gate into a garden where three pit bulls tied to metal stakes driven into the bare-soil lawn burst into instant violent insanity at the sight of him until a black guy in a deckchair smoking a cigar the size of a rolling pin waves a rolling pin at them and tells them to shut the fuck up.
—Y’alright, Darren? What’s happenin, kidder?
—Y’alright, Jegsy? Guard duty tonight is it yeh?
—Someone’s gorrer do it, lar, avn’t thee?
—Is right. Catch yiz later.
—Nice one.
Darren pushes the back door open and enters the kitchen empty of every appliance except the electric cooker on which all four rings burn fiercely to heat up the saucepan on each in which water boils around small glass jars. One man, tall and skinny with a woolly hat and goatee beard, attends at once to them all, raising each jar to check and gently shake, his hands describing fast jerks and circles over the hot hob like some kind of legerdemain. Some magician this and indeed something of the alchemical to this scene and the very process itself carries or is surrounded by such an aura. The honed focus on this man and his deep desire to intensify and improve. Purify, depollute. Unclear he is as to which salts separate and why and which new ones are formed or why but knowing only that they will if his quick hands and assessing eyes are inspired. Knowing only that they
will
.
One small, cracking sound behind the burbling bubbles. The man raises a jar and regards it and smiles
at
the small chalky rock decocted from liquid and hisses ‘yesssssss’. Darren goes into the gloom of the adjoining room and scans the wall-bound faces as his eyes adjust to the lack of light and sees no Alastair. No Alastair, only ten or so people like him both male and female assessing Darren in turn with a gaze communal and focused strange. Faces both white and brown and shades in between lining this room like variegated flowers lit hydroponically by the huge throbbing TV screen showing
The Matrix
.
Another man in a woolly hat rises smiling and approaches Darren. They clasp hands and punch fists knuckle to knuckle.
—Darren, man.
—Herbie. Seen Alastair?
—Alastair? Herbie rolls the word around in his mouth as if tasting it. —Don’t know that name, my friend.
—Aye, Herbie, yeh do. Dozy get always wears a basey? He’s been here with me before. Few times, like.
Herbie nods. —Oh yeh. Haven’t seen him, no. Not for weeks. Last time was … He drifts off, thinking, then slips into some kind of trance in which his dark eyes become as glass for a few seconds and which is broken abruptly by a gold-toothed grin. —Anyway. Have a smoke with me, lar. Seein as yer here, like, yeh?
—Aye, alright.
They move to a corner and sit and Darren takes his place among these people with their eyes boring at the TV screen like awls and small glass pipes being put to lips and billows of smoke lightly rising. Little
conversation
except that on the television unless tongues and burning rocks could be said to converse which maybe they can in a language comprised of bubbling and of breath. Seated figures in gloom as if placed to await in some ante-room admission or rejection from a different world or anticipating some judgement, as if this is the Day when the souls have risen and these here arranged about have no allotted place. As if whatever power has called them forth does not know what to do with them unplaceable as they are and malleable to no proscribed system extant of punishment and reward. And in their withdrawal and stance isolate and willed can be seen the horror of a glimpsed nothingness and a splinter of knowledge empirically earned of what it might be like to live for ever in darkness and alone.
Herbie produces a makeshift pipe from somewhere, built out of a Buxton water bottle and a Biro tube and some tinfoil. Like something a child might make. Like some plaything featured on
Blue Peter
or at school. He loads it with a stone and smokes it then loads it again and hands it to Darren who smokes too, Herbie regarding him with the odd glassine focus of the crack-high as Darren’s own eyes achieve that sheen and focus also. The smoke in the bottle trapped in plastic like a little captured cloud. Some miasma gone maverick and of necessity snared. Darren returns the pipe.
—Nice one, Herb. Ta, lar.
—Norra problem, Dar.
—Herb … fuckin top name for you, that, innit?
Herb
. Appropriate, like.
Herbie grins. —Is right. An yer not gunner believe the name of the musher I bought the bugle off.
Interrogative eyebrows on Darren.
—Doctor Rock.
—Go ’way. Yeh kiddin.
—Nah, straight up. Doctor fuckin Rock. He’s a proper doctor an evrythin, gorra practice in Huyton.
—What, an he deals gack on the side?
—Aye, yeh. Dead easy for him to get hold of, innit?
—How’s that, well?
—Every fuckin ozzy’s gorra supply of charlie, Dar. Skag n all. Best fuckin painkillers goin, lar.
—Yeh?
—Oh aye yeh. Y’know on charlie, when yeh snort it like an yer face goes all numb? That’s the anaesthetic kickin in, man. That’s the –
—I
know
that, Herbie. I’m not fuckin stupid, lad.
—Never said yeh were, mate, never said yeh were. Just explainin to yiz, like, why there’s always a good supply of beak in thee ozzy.
Even in this gloom and through the chemical obfuscation Herbie can discern the faint yet fierce flickering in Darren’s sharpened eyes. Can see the blaring TV screen reflected wee in each pupil and the tiny figures wearing shades and long leather coats fighting there as of Darren’s eternal inner fury given form, as if it has assumed this shape of fighting figures whirling, flying, gravity-defying as if the force and extent of his always-anger can be seen only as such impossible acrobatics, as movements that the human body can never really make.
Yes.
Plus
Darren’s been known to slash people’s faces with knives. Herbie’s seen him do it. There is
that
as well.
—Don’t talk to me as if am a bleedin knobend well.
—I
wasn’t
, mate, I was just sayin –
A stocky cross-legged man sitting close to the television screen turns his head, swivels it on his bulky shoulders.
—Ey, can’t youse two keep it down? Tryna watch
this
. Good fuckin movie, lar.
Herbie sees Darren’s face begin to swell as he glares at the cross-legged man and soon the high will flop and deflate and it must be cherished before it does not spoiled no not spoiled which is a thing about to happen. Bad words are amassing in Darren’s throat like an army. Herbie nudges him gently.
—Ey. See them fuckin towers come down, lar?
Darren grunts. Eyes blazing into the back of the cross-legged man’s head.
—Yeh, couldn’t fuckin believe it, man, Herbie goes on. —Like a friggin movie or summin, did yeh see it? I was in a boozer in Chester with Dean, barman puts the box on like an –
—Dean?
—Aye, yeh.
—
Wrexham
Dean?
Darren staring at Herbie. His head like a building ablaze and the eyes like windows about to shatter.
—Aye, Deano, lives in Wrexham. You know him.
—Dean wasn’t in Chester, man. He was in fuckin New York when the towers came down. He watched the planes fly in. He
told
me.
—Nah, man, he was in a pub in Chester, I was with him. Barman flicks the telly on like and –
—Fuck off, Herbie. Dean was in New York. Don’t lie to me, lad.
Something wrong here. The lean on Darren and the gritting of his teeth his breath leaving his nostrils like a horse’s and the purple bruises black in the half-light and Herbie recalls Dean’s rapt face as he watched the televised towers topple and the replayed planes and the flames and the tiny people falling through such vast space kicking their tiny arms and legs and the explosions and Dean’s softly muttered ‘Jesus
Christ
’ several times over as if robbed of all speech except that name that plea but Darren’s leaning here and his teeth are bared and his breathing is quickening change the subject Herbie change it quick:
—So, this erm, this Alastair one. Why yeh lookin for
him?
Darren’s breath slows to nearly normal. His expression softens: —Wha?
—Before like. Yeh asked me if I’d seen Alastair.
—Did I?
—Aye, yeh, yeh did. Soon as yeh came in. Don’t seem like yeh wanner give him some good news either, if yeh don’t mind me sayin. Got summin to do with them bruises, has it?
Herbie nods at Darren’s face. Darren stares down at his knees. —That mudderfucker Alastair. That
bastard
.
Oh Jesus. —Is he?
—
Fuck
yeh.
—Why? What’s he done?
And what story follows told by Darren so it follows that betrayal is the theme. Of a one-armed absconder somewhere in Wales and of a fruitless quest to find him undermined by Alastair’s innate stupidity and then of a post office cased by Darren for weeks and the
stubborn
old lady proprietor who had to be given a belt before she’d open the safe and all that fucking money and then Deano’s party in Wrexham cos he’d just come back from New fuckin York Herbie not friggin Chester and then the Lime Street Station bar and being jumped from behind by two little scally bastards who skanked all the money and then Lenny, ambushed again, and Tommy and their names are Robbo and Freddy know them? And it turns out that that Alastair cunt is behind it, believe that shite, that betraying fuckin bastard can’t believe he’s done this thought he was a bleedin mate can’t trust
no
bastard these days man and how they’re gunner fuckin bleed when –