Authors: Niall Griffiths
—Aye … Darren is slurring. —Could do with some gack … bit friggin wrecked ere likes …
—Come ed, well, Alastair says, standing up. —Get summin to cut through the bevvy, yeh? We’re both knackered. Been a hard coupla days, lar, annit?
—’Sright.
Darren tries to stand then falls back into his chair again. Alastair helps him up and once upright he flings off Alastair’s arms and snarls and clutching the rucksack leaves the pub at a reeling pace. Alastair follows, one quick look and nod at Robbo and Freddy. They nod back.
Darren staggers across the station’s concourse cavernous and cold, the smooth marble floor awash with light and reflecting the long hands of the huge clock on the wall. He bursts through a line of back-packed and suitcased people at the ticket office, flailing his arms and shouting and bisecting the line, sending each half shrinking into itself. Alastair follows him, scanning nervously for police and seeing none. Darren is extremely drunk. The two neds might not even be needed here; Darren might just pass out. Ally could then give him a kicking himself and make off with all the swag and blame it on some non-existent baghead. God, what he could do with four thousand pounds. How, at least for a while, he could live. Not a life-changing amount but Jesus Christ how he could live.
Out of the station, through the automatic doors
which
Darren attempts to open even as they are sliding apart so he bellows at them. Through a taxi rank and out into the drizzle, Alastair remaining several paces behind the floundering Darren, up past the side of the Empire Theatre and on to Lord Nelson Street where the thin drizzle drifts and Darren now turns to face Alastair who can see further up the street the sign for Ma Egerton’s pub and its hanging baskets. And Robbo and Freddy jogging across the road on the diagonal, each holding half of a pool cue in arms bent back over their heads.
—Urry the fuck up, will yeh, Alastair … am needin a fuckin –
Without breaking pace Robbo or it might be Freddy one of them anyway with full swing whacks the cue-half into the back of Darren’s skull. Alastair hears the THUNK bounce off brick and concrete and Darren collapses in an instant as if shot, all animation removed in less than a second. He is given a couple more whacks and then rolled over so that the rucksack can be accessed.
—Nice one, lads. Good effort.
Only a feeling in Alastair of embarkation. Not of any revenge or redemption but only a notion of a beginning. A step towards a place that may glow and may satisfy.
The two boys are peering into the sack. Blood matts Darren’s hair and deltas the pavement feathering in the greasy rain and Alastair looks down at the crumpled figure and feels no pang, no pain.
—Fuckin ell, Robbo. Fuck me stiff, lar. The divvy was right. We’re fuckin brewstered.
—Ton an a half each, lads, that’s what we sorted. Eeyar, giz the sack.
Alastair’s hand held out palm up expectant above the fallen Darren. Cold and oily rain spotting his open hand and the tip of his nose as it drip-drips off the peak of his cap. The tip of his nose all that extrudes beyond that peak until the fat end of a pool cue drives that nose inwards towards the face and on its way down slams the descending skull two, three times, blows cushioned by the cloth of the cap but still with impact sufficient to bring on blackout.
The two of them now on the wet pavement perpendicular: this T. They are unconscious for a few minutes and in that time, on this wet side street, only three people pass: one, rushing through the rain for a taxi, steps over them, believing them dressed as they are to be victims of each other, of a fight among themselves; another, a visitor to the city on business taking a short cut to Lime Street to catch his train home, believes them to be victims of drink and/or drugs and ignores them accordingly; and the third, a quasi-feral dipso on his way to the cheap London Road pubs doesn’t care why they are unconscious in the gutter and rifles their accessible pockets but flees when the bigger of the two begins to groan and writhe. This is, of course, Darren, who awakes to rage. And then pain. Alastair awakes to pain too and a mouth that is screaming in his face, all he can see is this wet purple hole lined with worn teeth and his initial waking wish is to be unconscious again, insensible to all this, the rain, the pain, the roaring mouth, oblivious to what is here now and what must surely lie ahead. And behind.
O
THERS
VISITOR
DEAR GOD, HOW
I hate and detest having to come to this terrible, terrible city. I wouldn’t bother, if it wasn’t for the firm having an office here too, I mean I’d just stay in Manchester if I could but I can’t, so … Seedy, that’s the word for this place; seedy. And run-down? Oh yes undoubtedly but that’s no excuse; I mean my work takes me to a lot of cities up and down the country, a lot of rough and run-down cities like parts of London or Newcastle or Bristol, even sections of Manchester itself, but none of them are like this place and the difference is in the people, the general populace; forget what you’ve heard about the Scouse humour, the salt-of-the-earth people, they’re extensions of their city, big and loud and vulgar and full of dark dirty little alleyways … That’s the thing, y’see; they exult in their own seediness and shabbiness, they seem to celebrate the fact that everything here is down-at-heel. There’s no shame, no sense of embarrassment; it’s like Wales or Scotland – you go into those provinces and the prevailing attitude is ‘we’re-all-screwed-up-and-we-don’t-care’. They should
do
something with themselves, try to better themselves, find some way of escaping the mess around them, instead of just … But oh no; I mean look at these two here, for example,
here
in the gutter, too drunk or drugged or both to even stand, lying across each other on the wet pavement … absolutely no shame. Although, knowing these people, it’s probably a trap; I’ll step over them and they’ll reach up and grab my legs and pull me down and beat me up and take my wallet and briefcase … that’s what this is, it’s a trap …
No it isn’t; these two idiots are too out of it to even move. Totally dead to the world, they are. And at the corner of the street I see a shaking old alcoholic eyeing them up, no doubt waiting for the coast to clear so he can go and rifle their pockets, get some change for his next bottle of Buckfast or whatever. I tell you; the problem here is the attitude. It’s not loss of industry or negligible governmental investment or trickle-down Thatcherite economics or any of the other favoured and convenient scapegoats, no, the problem entirely is the
attitude
… the fecklessness. Spinelessness. That’s why there’s so much theft in this city, because its inhabitants are all so idle and unmotivated; they seem to believe that they deserve something for nothing, that they’re
owed
something. It’s an attitude I personally can’t stand. It’s pathetic. It’s risible. No wonder the city’s falling down. Oh yes there’s investment - Urban Splash and Concert Square and all that – but it won’t last. And it won’t last because it won’t be appreciated. Mark my words, I’ve seen it happen before, many times. And City of Culture! Do they
really
expect to win? Might as well nominate Gaza. Jennifer and I
did
laugh when we read the shortlist. Can you imagine it?
Sshperny oddzzsh, larr? Fordy capla khultcha, likh
.
The big clock in Lime Street tells me I’m ten minutes early for the Piccadilly train although it’s probably broken like everything else in this city but thank God I’ve not missed it; it’s another hour ’til the next one and an extra unnecessary
minute
in this city would surely kill me. Soon be back in Didders with Jennifer and the girls and I’ll be away from this godforsaken pit of a place for another week. Seven days. Seven blissful days at home.
I buy an Americano from Coffee Republic and am accosted by another of this place’s denizens, his filthy palm held out expectantly, asking me for spare change in that grating, whining accent. I just ignore him, turn my back on him (which he flings abuse at; no surprise there), and go and find a seat on the waiting train. A window seat, so I can watch the city as it recedes, as I leave it. And good bloody riddance too. At least until next week.
Forty minutes between this place and my home and it might as well be a continent. Might as well be a world. I hate having to come here each week. I
hate
it.
ALKY
Aw fuckin junkies man … lowest of the low thee ar … scumbags, toerags … callin
me
bad n useless cos I liker bevvy juster fuckin jakey all that shite but fuck that man it’s them friggin junkies bringin this city down … won’t friggin catch
me
lyin inner gutter inner fuckin rain like no lie … no way man … fuckin cunts yerrah bastards could av yez fuckin all callin me
useless
an a, anner fuckin, me, lar,
me
, what the fuckinnn …
Smart cunt inner suit an a briefy over deer, wait for that get to pass lar … knob’ed don’t fuckin reelise like I was im once,
like
im … adder suit n house n car n missis an it can all fall apart in one week, man, one friggin week’s all’s it took an deer’s me, fuckin nowt … job goes, house goes, car goes, friggin missis goes, goes off with some fuckin I.T. consultant from fuckin Knotty Ash … it’s the terror, man, the terror … iss bastard in iz suit, fuckin kite on im all stuck-up fuckin gobshite like tell ee thinks he’s fuckin
it
but it can fall all apart easy for im as it did for fuckin me, no lie … knows NOWT, that cunt, NOWT … g’wahn, getcher fuckin train ome yer twat an I hope yiz never avter go through what I av … woulden wish it on me werst enemy, man, which is now that fuckin I.T. consultant from fuckin Diddyland … cunt … wish leprosy on that get or fuckin Aids but not what I’ve fuckin got now lar which is sweet fuckin all …
Over the road, me, straight into deer fuckin pockets, no messin round. Too good an opportunity to pass, knowmean? But softarse, me; as
if
junkies as out of it as these two are gunner av any fuckin odds left … juster few pence like, birrer shrapnel, fuck all but lint anner big bastard, he starts movin an groanin an wakin up an I think about wellyin im one in thee ed, knock im fuckin sparko again like but nah fuck that, man, av got some bleedin self-respect still, oh aye … oh yeh … these cunts think I avn’t but I know I fuckin well av … might be down inner friggin gutter like
but
some of us av still got what counts … birrer friggin self-respect, man … birrer friggin dignity like, knowmean? … that’s all that matters won’t welly this no-mark baghead cunt’s suffrin imself what would be the … the …
An anyways am not all tabbed out yet inner Globe. So that’s me, that’s me first step. Globe. No messin round. Gerrouter this fuckin rain n all.
DRIZZLE
This is not the time of cumulus, colossal drifting cauliflowers, or of cirrus like high white slashes sharply across the bright blue, sunlight permitted through their thinness. It is the time of stratus, so much so that the sky appears one cloud only, simply a grey and murky ceiling spread from horizon to horizon over the city entire from the brown lappings of the Dee and the Mersey and out to the vast thick splat of the Celtic Sea as featureless and monochrome as the sky itself so that the city could be wedged in an envelope or between two mirrors reflecting each other’s emptinesses. Tarmac-coloured ceiling very low, so low indeed that it grounds planes at Speke, covers the stranded and marooned and frustrated with no shadow and no difference just this single spread and lightless tarpaulin turning all similar, robbed of depth.
The precipitation is orographic, that decocted in air forced to rise when landform barriers lie across the paths of winds in this case the bulwarks of Eryri unseeable from this citified coastal plain yet sensed somehow as a creeping mass rising flinging shadow and felt
certainly
in their climactic effects as here in this forced air ascent and the resulting rainfall of drops with diameter smaller than 0.02 of an inch and descending very close together this thin drizzle defined. Slowly upwards the air moves, launched from the vast ramps of the nearby mountains carrying with it the condensed cloud droplets which have little time to grow before they become too heavy for the weak air currents to support and they fall softly, appearing rather to drift and float than fall, making a kind of moist air, a hanging sail of damp. Clean they begin but gather grease as they descend drifting through smog and thus glutinous some gather into larger drops and one of these forms in the thermals above the city’s main rail terminus made sticky it is by the viscous vapours from kitchen and exhaust and the many rising methanes of the hurrying inhabitants with scalp-stuck hair and it drifts slower than the billion others, its trajectory earthwards straightening as it gathers mass until above a side street adjacent to the station it begins to fall vertical, passing soot-fluffed chimneys and rain-run skylights and gleaming slates and gutterings choked with weed and birdshit and then it passes perching pigeons with heads wing-pitted and then windows then window boxes and the limp growths in them and then a lintel and the door beneath and then it passes below the cap-peak of a laid-low man his face turned up towards the leaking sky and this droplet lands and bursts with a tiny ‘pop’ in the tear duct of his left eye, the one remaining unswollen and undiscoloured by the blunt-instrument trauma recently visited on this face. It bursts clammy and humid and
the
eye flickers blinking open unlike its twin which cannot, damaged as it is, cannot twitch open and regard the high unbothered sky, the huge and complete shrug uncoloured, unconcerned. This one eye gazes out and up at the world then attempts to slide shut again as if too great is the exertion to take this in. As if the mere act of blinking is too much here, in this small water from far away, as hissingly insubstantial as all human plan.
A voice:
—YOU FUCKING CUNT, ALASTAIR! FUCKIN FUCKIN FUCKIN –
TOMMY: HIS CHILDHOOD
See the squat boy in the corner of the school playground. Thickset, fat some would say. See his black pumps burst at the toe joint to reveal his grubby grey socks that gather around his ankles beneath his grazed and grass-stained knees. See the much smaller boy below him cowering against the chain-link fence that separates the playground from the bomb site, the nettle-clogged heaps of rubble that were a storage depot for ack-ack guns in the not-too-distant-war. See the fence shake as the smaller boy is shoved repeatedly back against it. See the bigger boy ask yet again for money, see the smaller boy shake his weepy, snotty face, see the fence clatter and shudder yet again. Hear the sound of fist on face and then a high-pitched wailing.