The Bricks That Built the Houses (27 page)

A HAMMER

Dale is massive; his features are twice the size of Pete’s. When they are introduced, Pete feels he is in the presence of some ancient behemoth, trapped in a pair of designer jeans. Graceless, slack-jawed, unsmiling, loud. His skin dirtied with pockmarks and scars. But Pete has spent a lifetime playing sidekick to boys like this and he knows that they are sweet deep down. Pete can’t understand how this man could have sprung from David.

‘Nice to meet you, mate,’ Pete says as they shake hands in the hallway, Dale looks him up and down. He looks to Pete like he could lift the whole house up with his hands. It’s meant to be a relaxed evening, but it feels to Pete like a chaperoned blind date. Miriam clasps her hands in front of her stomach and walks busily out from the kitchen, smiling at them.

Dale eats fast and without chewing his food. He doesn’t listen and speaks constantly. Pete eats slowly and watches the
room with the same derisory attentiveness as always. David seems happy, as usual. But behind those calm and eager eyes Pete can see a deep-seated panic, a dread that, at any minute now, it’s all going to go horribly wrong. This makes him warm to David. He can trust eyes like that.

The dinner is long and full of dead ends and Pete can’t work out what’s expected from him and Dale. Are they meant to be forming a brotherly bond?

‘Pete likes bands, don’t you, Pete?’ Miriam tells the table.

‘Yeah, I like bands,’ Pete says.

‘Dale likes bands too,’ David says, more to Miriam than to anyone else.

‘Oh right, what kind of bands do you like, Dale?’ Pete asks, bored of his question before he’s finished asking it.

Dale looks up from his steak. ‘Once I went to an all-you-can-eat steak buffet.’

‘Steak buffet? I like them too.’ Pete speaks to his knife and fork.

‘Mate of mine told me about it,’ Dale continues, shifting his weight in his chair. The chair creaks beneath him.

‘Right?’ Pete signifies he is listening, although he doesn’t need to, Dale doesn’t need his participation to feel that what he’s saying is interesting.

‘Imagine that,’ Dale says, wide-eyed. ‘All-you-can-eat
steak
buffet.’ He leaves a pause. Looks at the steak on his plate for effect. Looks back to the table. ‘Cooked fresh, you know! You go in, and the waiter comes over, and you order
whatever
you want. But the only thing is, if you don’t finish it, you have to pay for what you don’t eat. If you
do
finish though, it’s only £12 and you can have like, £100 worth of meat.’ He nods, eyebrows raised. ‘I ate about four steaks just sat there, and took the rest home in my pockets! I was eating ribeye out a tissue for the next three days!’ He points at them all, nodding.

‘Ha. That was very clever of you, Dale.’ David chews his steak thoughtfully. ‘Very economic.’

Silence approaches the table like an overeager waiter. Hovers around making everyone feel looked at.

‘You know, my father was a butcher. I always liked watching him cutting steaks.’ Miriam’s eyes seem to glaze slightly as she journeys back towards that bustling shop. Her brothers on their tea breaks. The smell of fresh meat and soap. ‘But even with that in my family, we still fell into the habit, didn’t we, David, of buying from Tesco’s like everyone else.’ She smiles at him.

David catches her smile and pins it to his chest like a Year 6 swimming badge. ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘but after all that horse meat stuff, we thought better to buy locally, you know, off someone we can trust.’ His voice sounds like it’s being funnelled through a decaying log; there’s a phlegmy, damp quality to it. ‘And, it’s actually worked out cheaper this way’ – Pete shudders as David’s voice ascends the nasal cavity – ‘because we only buy what we need.’ Everybody nods.

Miriam places her knife and fork on the edge of her plate, looks wistfully towards the window, punctuating her sentence by floating her hands towards the ceiling. ‘It seems such a shame. I remember when you could go into a shop, and you knew the person who owned it, and you wanted whatever it was you wanted, and you knew it would be of a certain quality, you could
trust
that it was what you thought it was. Those days are gone now, when you could trust anything to be what it purported to be. It’s just plastic packets on shelves now. They could have anything inside.’

David reaches for her hand and strokes her knuckles.

Dale looks up from his plate, picks something out of his teeth with his knife. ‘I don’t see what all the fuss is for,’ he says, shrugging. ‘Horse is a delicacy, ain’t it? Some places? Two for the price of one, if you ask me.’ Miriam nods, smiles at Dale. ‘Paying for beef,’ he tells her, ‘and you end up with beef,
and
horse.’

She nods. ‘I hadn’t thought of it that way.’

‘Would anyone like another beer?’ Pete asks the table, getting up to go to the fridge.

‘There was no room in there,’ David pipes up. ‘They’re in a bucket outside the front door keeping cold.’ Pete looks wearily at David, and heads down the hall to the front door.

Miriam leans in and whispers urgently. ‘It’s his birthday next week.’ David leans in too, excited. ‘His sister’s organised
a party. Dale, will you come? You must come? We’re going, and all the family. And friends too. But it’s a
surprise
though, so not a peep, OK?’

‘Sure, yeah, I’ll come,’ Dale says loudly. ‘I love a good party.’

‘Do either of you boys fancy watching a movie or something?’ David says. ‘We could see what’s on the telly, couldn’t we? Watch a bit of telly together?’

Pete can feel it in the room. Maybe Dale doesn’t have any mates, or maybe Miriam is worried about him not having any mates. Or whatever it is, he can feel it. Something urgent and hopeful and sticky in the air.

‘I tell you what,’ Pete says. ‘It’s getting late, and I’m sure you guys will be thinking about getting to bed soon. Why don’t I take Dale out for a pint on our way home and let you guys relax?’

Miriam’s eyes light up. ‘That’s a lovely idea, son.’

‘I’m up for that, Pete.’ Dale slaps his hands down on the table and pushes himself to standing. ‘Come on then, no strippers though, eh? Not on the first date!’ Chuckle chuckle all round.
Happy families
.

At the door, David shakes Pete’s hand and clasps him warmly by the shoulder.
Is this a hug coming?
Pete stands awkwardly receiving David’s affection.
Can’t be . . . no, wait . . . Shit . . . It is
. Standing there, in the nervous arms of David, Pete feels suddenly close to his father. As much as he can’t stand his old
man, at least he doesn’t swaddle him in steaky embraces at the door.

They find a pub near the station. Neither of them have drunk in here before. They push through the doors and Dale nods at the barman. He wears long shorts with pockets in the side and a polo shirt with a sports club logo on it. He jokes with the regulars, the barmaid rolls her eyes. They busily own their space. Pete looks around,
Live music! Tonight! Mitch!
says the blackboard above the bar. To the left, in the corner of the room, a man in his late fifties, wearing a Jack Daniels T-shirt and black jeans, is playing electric guitar. He triggers a backing track from a tiny laptop taped to a music stand and plays to a bedroom recording of drums, bass and his own voice doing backing vocals. He’s playing a medley of Beach Boys songs. Two old men stand in the corner watching him, singing along under their breath. A younger man, long-haired and leather-jacketed, is swaying out of time at the bar. Beside him his two mates, in brightly coloured shirts and short-back-and-sides haircuts, tell each other stories they’ve already heard. Four middle-aged women sit on high bar stools tapping their feet, clapping on the one. Their hair is perfectly cloudlike and their earrings are sparkling. At a table by the back door that leads out to a smoking yard, a group of younger women in pretty tops and tight jeans gossip and drink red wine.

Mitch finishes the medley and speaks into the mic. ‘Well, that was some songs about surfing, and if the lovely lady at the bar wants to surf some beer up this way that would be much appreciated!’ He grins into feedback and silence. ‘Let’s get some more surf action from the bar, shall we, ladies and gents?’ he says enthusiastically.

The peril of a microphone
. Pete is fascinated.
Why does it make people say such strange things?
Mitch is ignored by the punters and the barmaid looks at him, confused.

‘Are you asking for a beer, Mitch?’ she says.

‘Oh, that look she’s giving me!’ says Mitch, speaking to the room, although the room’s ignoring him. ‘I get that look at home.’

He is desperate for applause, laughter, justification. He has been singing these same songs in these same pubs for thirty long years. The silence is not enough to deter him. He pulls his trousers up over his belly, smooths his hair down on both sides and enters into a psychedelic, vaguely tango version of ‘Black Magic Woman’. On the wall behind him is a close-up picture of a frowning gorilla with the caption
SOD OFF
. On the other wall is a picture of a sentence written in broken nails.
WHEN ALL YOU’VE GOT IS A HAMMER, EVERYTHING LOOKS LIKE NAILS
.

The barmaid has a kind face, massive dangly earrings and a piercing in her lip. She’s wearing jogging bottoms and a short vest that stops before her belly button. She has tattoos across the inside of her arms and a word in Celtic script on either hip.

Mitch finishes his song. No one claps. Suddenly everyone’s conversations are too loud and everyone stops talking.

‘Thank you, ladies and gentlemen!’ A couple of the older people clap politely.

Dale and Pete sit opposite each other with pints of lager and double whiskies, and begin the challenge of keeping a conversation going. They start with the usual preliminaries – football, Dale’s work, weather. Work in general. Football. Pete’s lack of work.

‘Oh yeah,’ Dale agrees with him. ‘I’ll tell you what it is, mate – it’s a fucking trap is what it is. Get on the dole to keep you going, but then you can’t afford to get off it. You take a job, part-time or whatever – you’re worse off than you are getting your JSA.’ Dale speaks loudly, fast.

‘Tell me about it.’ Pete stares into his pint. Shaking his head. ‘It’s fucking outrageous.’

‘They just want to keep everybody down.’ Dale knocks his whisky back, maintaining eye contact. He doesn’t flinch as he swallows it. Slams the glass down. ‘That’s the thing. Better for the government, innit, if we’re all skint and miserable and feeling like we can’t even get a day’s work. If we can’t feel good about the work of our own fucking hands, how we gonna rise up, make trouble?’

‘True. When you put it like that.’ Pete has his elbows on the table, leaning over them, head down.

‘You heard about the toothpaste?’ Dale asks him, sitting upright, square in his chair.

‘What do you mean?’ Pete looks up at him, right hand round his beer glass, swirling his pint a little.

‘The fluoride. In the toothpaste?’ Dale’s hands are on his thighs, elbows poking out.

‘What about the fluoride?’ Pete picks himself up so that he’s not so low down any more. Straightens his back. Frowns as he listens.

‘Well, it’s been scientifically proven that there’s no
use
for fluoride at all. Fluoride
has no benefit to cleaning teeth
.’ Dale leans forwards, nodding.

‘So why’s it in all the toothpaste? And the tap water?’ Pete asks him.

Dale looks at him, raises a finger, points at him. ‘Keep us passive.’

‘Does fluoride make you passive?’ Pete drinks his whisky, winces.

‘Yep.’ Dale scratches the nape of his neck, runs his hand over his head. ‘Fucked up, eh? You know about the pineal gland?’ he asks, speaking low.

‘No,’ says Pete, dropping his eyebrows. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s your Third Eye,’ Dale whispers, tapping the space in the middle of his forehead. ‘A gland in the brain, in exactly the spot the Third Eye is in. It’s the part where visions and higher understanding are stored. It’s how you access higher truth.’ Dale nods, his fingertip paused at his forehead.

‘Right,’ says Pete, nodding.

‘Fluoride . . .’ Dale pauses for effect, ‘calcifies the pineal gland. Blocks it.’ His eyes are wide, his voice a desperate whisper. ‘Stops it from being able to see beyond the here and now, to access the deeper worlds.’ Dale closes his eyes and takes a deep breath in. His forehead creased and troubled. He calms himself, opens his eyes and stares at Pete. ‘You need to smoke DMT or something, man. You need to access.’ He taps his forehead again.

Pete nods slowly. A pause settles as they mull it over. They each take deep swigs, the beer clings to their chops. They wipe their faces with the backs of their hands. Dale looks at him right in the eyes. ‘Do you toot?’

‘What?’ Pete puts his pint down.

‘Fancy a line?’

‘Yeah, go on then.’

They place beer mats on top of their glasses, leave their pints on the table, and Pete follows Dale into the toilets while Mitch presses play on his laptop.

‘This one’s by Neil Young, and here we go.’

Straight in
, Pete notices.
True showman
.

The cubicle’s small and Dale is massive. Pete stands drunkenly against the tiled wall and nods along with interest as Dale talks and digs around for his wrap.

‘There was this guy, right, I saw it on
Vice
, I think – he drank controlled doses of snake venom every day of his life for like twenty-five years or something.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘Yeah. He has all these pet snakes, fucking beasts, you know, hundred foot long or whatever, fucking three foot wide. I’m exaggerating, but, you know what I’m getting at?’

‘Yeah. What? How did he take the venom? He let them bite him?’

‘No no, he would just kind of squeeze their heads so that venom come shooting out by their fangs, and collect it in test tubes, and then just, like, neck it.’

‘Drink it?’

‘Yeah – that might have been more for the cameras, like – but what he would do, right, is . . .’ He finds the wrap and opens it out on the closed toilet lid. Hunches over.
Huge man
. Pete watches him.
Foetal like that
. He wipes his nose in anticipation.