Get Carter (6 page)

Nobody said anything for a while. Then I said:

“You don’t think he might have done it on purpose?”

They looked at me.

“What? You mean, like, killed himself?” said Keith.

I didn’t say anything.

Keith turned his head slightly to one side then looked back at me, a grotesque half smile on his face.

“Naw,” he said. “Frank? Kill himself? You what?”

I carried on looking at him. He looked back at me, incredulous.

“I mean, what for?”

“That’s what I was wondering,” I said.

“Come off,” he said. “I mean, Frank was … was … well … I mean … he wasn’t the bloke to get into a mess or owt, something he couldn’t see the way out of. And he’d no worries, I know. I mean, I would have known. Hell, we worked together every day for the last year. It would have showed.”

“Why would it?”

“Well, it just would. I mean, he was always the same. Always. Never any different.”

“What was he like when you saw him last?”

“Sunday? Just the same. On time. Worked hard. You know.”

Eddie poured himself a large one.

“And there was nothing he did to make you think maybe something was up?”

“Naw, nothing. I tell you, he was just the same.”

“And you don’t suppose something could have happened between when you saw him and when he started getting drunk?”

“Well, I don’t know. I suppose so. But it’d have to be something awful. And what happened that’s awful?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“I mean, you’d know if something had.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

Eddie was pouring another drink. He seemed to have left the conversation a few drinks back.

“Bloody good bloke,” he said. “One of the best.”

“How the fuckin’ hell would you know, you old pissarse,” shrieked Doreen.

She was standing in the doorway, glass in hand. Behind her I could see the bottle I’d left on the sink. It was well down. Tears were streaming down her face. Her coat was undone.

“How would you know?” she shrieked again, this time a little lower pitched. “Or you? Or you? Especially you,” she said to me. “None of you knew. I knew. He was me dad.”

The last word was a terrible scream and as she screamed it she flung the glass in the direction of Eddie although I’m pretty sure she wasn’t aiming at anyone in particular. The glass hit Eddie on his shoulder and whisky went all over his sleeve. He leapt up out of his seat. I moved towards Doreen. Keith stood up, still holding his glass.

“Now, Doreen, love,” I said.

“Get away,” she said. “Get away from me.”

“Look,” I said. “I know how you feel and …”

“No you don’t, no you don’t. If you did you’d leave me alone!” She ran over to the door that led into the hall and pulled it open. “Come on,” she said. “Clear off! Clear off, the lot of you!”

I nodded to the others. They drank up and began to walk out. Eddie was dabbing at his sleeve with his handkerchief.

“Hang about,” I said. “I’ll be out in a sec.”

When they’d gone I was about to say something to Doreen but she rushed away from the door and flung herself down in Frank’s chair, her fist pressed against her lips, her legs drawn up underneath her. She began to cry again.

“Look,” I said, “if I was you I’d go and have a lie down for a bit.”

She didn’t answer.

“I’ve got to go out for an hour,” I said, “but I’ll be back later.”

Nothing.

I looked at her for a minute or two and then went out, closing the door quietly behind me.

They were standing on the pavement, by the gate. Eddie was still dabbing away. They looked at me as I came out.

“Sorry about that,” I said, closing the gate. “She’s taking it bad.”

“Oh, Christ,” said Keith, “don’t worry about it. I mean she’s upset, isn’t she?”

“Yes,” said Eddie, “poor old lass.”

I took a quid out of my wallet.

“Here,” I said. “This is for the dry cleaning.”

“Oh no, Mr. Carter,” he said. “I couldn’t do that.”

But I knew he could and eventually he did.

“Anyway,” I said, “let’s go and have a drink.”

Eddie looked at his watch.

“I can’t very well,” he said. “I’ve got to be at work in twenty minutes.”

“How about you?” I said to Keith.

“I’m all right. I’m not on till six.”

Eddie said: “Well I’ll be off then.”

There was regret in his voice. He was sad about missing the forthcoming whiskies.

I shook hands with him.

“Thanks for coming,” I said. “I appreciate it.”

He became emotional again.

“It’s the least I could have done,” he said. “Frank was a good bloke. One of the best.”

“Yes,” I said.

We all stood there for a minute.

“Anyway,” said Eddie.

He shook my hand again and turned away and began to cross the road, diagonally making for the end of the
street, his hands in his pockets, his jacket unbuttoned and blowing behind him in the breeze.

I turned to Keith.

“Come on,” I said.

We walked along the street in the opposite direction to the way Eddie had gone.

The corner of Jackson Street and Park Street, the street that led back to the High Street was about twenty yards from the railings at the bottom. Keith automatically began to turn the corner but when he saw I was carrying on to the bottom he stopped and wandered down after me.

I stood by the railings and looked across the remains of the grass to where the dyke used to be. A couple of blokes from the engineering works were carrying a packing case into the building. The lathe droned on.

Keith was standing behind me.

“What’s up?” he said.

“Nowt,” I said. “Just having a look.”

On the way to The Cecil I made a phone call. Keith waited outside the box, leaning against the post office wall.

When I got through Audrey’s voice said:

“Hello, Audrey Fletcher speaking.”

That meant Gerald was there.

“I’ll call back,” I said. “Tell Gerald it was a wrong number.”

“I’m sorry, I think you must have the wrong number.”

“You’ve got a lovely pair of titties,” I said.

“That’s quite all right,” she said and put the phone down. We walked into The Cecil.

I’d remembered it very well, considering it must have been twelve years since I’d been inside it.

When I was a kid, when I’d started going in pubs, they’d said you want to keep out of The Cecil, you don’t want to be going there, it’s rough, especially Saturday, it’s the worst pub in town. Somebody had once said they should advertise it as having “Singing till ten, fighting till eleven.” So naturally I started going in there as soon as they’d let me get up to the bar. One of the first times I’d ever been in,
it was a Friday, everything had been all right, nobody seemed to be looking for anything and I’d gone for a slash, and when I’d come out again, there was a great space cleared in front of the bar, all the tables had been pushed back from it, everybody was standing up, some on tables or chairs, all holding their drinks and it was very quiet. In front of the bar in the space that’d been cleared there were eight blokes, standing facing the bar, all holding bottles or broken glasses, and standing on the bar top were the barmen, about a dozen of them, all facing the blokes, all holding bum starters, ready for it.

The main bar was one of the biggest I’ve ever been in. You go in through the double doors that open on to the High Street, and first off all you see are tables, hundreds of round tables, set out in rows going diagonally across the room, stretching as far back as you can see. Beyond the tables, it seems like a hundred yards away, there’s the stage, a long low platform and on it a set of drums, a piano and a Hammond organ with all the attachments. Running down the left hand wall as you look from the entrance is the bar. There are eight sets of pumps. The bar stops flush with the stage. It’s that long.

Between the tables and the entrance there is a strip of carpet about twelve feet wide. It runs along the top end of the room, flush to the bar seats beneath the windows. Against the bar seats are more tables, just one row, five either side of the door, following the carpet from the bar to the right hand wall. These tables are where you sit at dinner time, so that the main mass of tables remain clean and polished for the evening when they have singing and comedians and strippers and fights.

Keith and I walked across the carpet to the bar. There were three barmen on duty. So far we were the only customers.

The nearest barman moved towards us. He looked at Keith and nodded.

“Hello, Keith,” he said.

“Now then,” said Keith.

I took my wallet out.

“Yes, sir,” said the barman.

“What do you want Keith?” I said.

“Pint of bitter, please,” he said.

“Two pints and two large scotches,” I said. “Bell’s if you’ve got it.”

“Right you are, sir,” he said and moved across to the nearest pumps.

“Thanks very much,” said Keith.

“Does he know where you’ve been?” I said, indicating the barman.

“Yes.”

“How is it he didn’t come?”

“He’s only been here a week today. He only met Frank twice.”

“What about any of the others?”

Keith shrugged.

“I dunno. A couple of ’em said they’d try and make it. But what with it being either their time off, or else working, you know.”

He looked a bit embarrassed.

“So Frank wasn’t all that popular,” I said.

“I wouldn’t say that. He kept himself to himself. You know.”

“What did he do, work too hard for their bloody liking?”

Keith shrugged again and frowned and there was a touch of red on his cheeks.

The barman came back with the drinks.

“Anything with the scotch, sir?” he said.

“A ginger ale,” I said. “How much is that?”

“Fifteen and five, sir.”

“Will you have one?”

“Oh well, that’s very kind of you, sir. I’ll have a Mackeson if I might.”

He took for the drinks and we carried them over to a table near the door. I drank the scotch and took a sip of
beer. Keith gave me a fag and we lit up. Beyond the smoked glass traffic droned up and down the High Street. Occasionally the wind rattled the double doors.

“Keith,” I said, “how friendly were you and Frank?”

He scratched the skin between his nostrils and his upper lip.

“Well, you know, like I said. We worked together. I’d known him twelve months. Ever since I worked here.”

“Yes,” I said. “I know. But how well did you know him?”

He frowned.

“Well, we sort of used to talk when it was quiet, you know about football and the general state of affairs in the world, things like that.”

“Did you ever go back home with him?”

“Oh no. This was during working time.”

“You never went drinking with him or owt like that?”

“Naw. Nowt like that. I once bumped into him in The Crown, and had a couple with him, but it was only accidental.”

“Who was he with?”

“His girlfriend, Margaret.”

“Did he ever talk to you about her?”

“No.”

“How is it you know who she is?”

He looked at me, sideways, wondering.

“Well, she’s fairly well known. Round the pubs like.”

I took a drag.

“I’d say she was a whore,” I said. “What would you say?”

He gave me that look again.

“Well, I don’t know.”

“Come off it,” I said.

“Well, yeah, I’d say so.”

“And everybody knew she was a whore, didn’t they?”

“I expect so.”

“You know it,” I said. “Did Frank know it?”

He took a drink.

“I don’t know.”

“And if he didn’t, you didn’t bother to tell him?”

“Well, you can’t, can you? Anyway, he must have known. She doesn’t exactly hide her light under a bushel.”

“Right,” I said. “Right.”

I took a long drink of beer.

“Did Frank ever talk to you about his missus?”

“No.”

“Did you know he had one?”

“Well, I guessed. Because of the kid, like.”

“Did you know Doreen, then?”

“Today was the first time I ever saw her.”

“Frank told you about her?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say about her?”

“Well, you know, he’d tell me what he’d been doing for her. Fixing up her bedroom. Papering the hall because she wanted it brightening up. Things like that. He liked to talk about her.”

“She was all he bloody well had,” I said.

Keith took a long drink of beer, watching me all the time.

“Shall I tell you something?” I said.

Keith said nothing.

“His wife, Frank’s, she was one of those women you see shopping in the street, with her shopping bag and her headscarf and her glasses and her fag on all the time. She was plain as buggery. She even used to look like it before she was married. She looked as if she’d let herself give it to Frank once, on their wedding night, and after that he could whistle. I remember she always wore her glasses and she only needed them for reading. But Frank married her.”

Keith kept on looking at me.

“And do you know what happened? Some wogs moved into the house down the street. Pakistanis. One day Frank gashed his hand on a glass at work and had to go to hospital to get some stitches put in. He called in at home after. Only she wasn’t there. He went out of the house to see if she was coming down the street but there was no signs.
He was just going back in when he saw her coming out of the wogs’ place. He couldn’t grasp it at first until she saw him and started to run off down the street. Then he knew all right. He caught her and dragged her back home and beat the shit out of her. A few days later the wogs left, went to Leeds or somewhere. And she went with them. That was when Doreen was seven.”