Jog On Fat Barry

Jog On Fat Barry

Published by

Escargot Books
North Yorkshire, England LS21 2JJ

Copyright © 2012 Kevin Cotter. All rights reserved.

First Edition published in 2006
by Kevin Cotter

Second Edition published in 2012
by Escargot Books

“Bits & Pieces” and “Fat Barry”
Copyright © Kevin Cotter 2006

Kevin Cotter asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this book.

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without prior permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

ISBN 978-1-908191-42-7 (ePub)
ISBN 978-1-908191-43-4 (Kindle)
ISBN 978-1-908191-44-1 (Trade paperback)

Cover design by Betina La Plante

eBook editions by eBooks by Barb for
booknook.biz

Thanks to Uncle Albert,
and a very special thanks to Cathie Hall
without whose constant encouragement
I would never have finished this book.

foreword

bits & pieces

chilly doyle

cross & missal

mutton

cannon fodder

trinkets

mo blake

agnes day

national service

fat barry

Biography

foreword

Uncle Albert always told me what most people knew about the world wouldn’t fill the back of a postage stamp. He was fond of clichés was our Albert, and would say things like: “You’re only young once, but you can be immature your entire life.” Perhaps there are those times when only a cliché will do. Albert said the public take on this & that was forever shifting, and it was fair to say that the thoughts running through most people’s heads were seldom their own. Over his chopping block, Albert would tell customers that life could be a right horrible bastard at times, and you had to keep on your toes if you didn’t want to lose yourself in it. He said there were those who’d done their best to convince him the world was flat, and populated not by millions, but billions who held no entitlement to its riches: the cannon fodder, to be exploited and sacrificed as the good and great saw fit. But blind be the fool who thinks his blood any different, Albert always warned, and take heed at the folly of that fool if he gets it in his mind to try and prove it.

bits & pieces

Nice One stood up, and sat down, and stood up again—not the simplest thing to do when you had no arms, and both of his were missing, if you didn’t count stumps. He looked up at the clock: she was twenty minutes late. The second hand circled its face like it hadn’t a care in the world.

“I don’t even know why she’s coming,” he had told his mum earlier that day.

“She doesn’t need a reason,” his mum had told him back. “It’s what people do.”

Nice One decided to wait another ten minutes, thinking if she hadn’t appeared by then, she probably wouldn’t be appearing at all. He sat down and stared at the pattern on his shabby slippers. Odd patches of sunlight sparkled on the speckled linoleum floor. Miss September poked her head into the room for a moment but didn’t say anything: she was happy to wipe your arse when it needed wiping, but thirty years of nursing had taught her to look the other way when people started feeling sorry for themselves.

Down the hall in Riddle Ward, Tony Green sat on the edge of his hospital bed in underpants fiddling with his colostomy bag because the attachment to his abdomen had worked itself loose and shit was seeping out of the stoma.

“Look at you,” Kenny Dixon said from another hospital bed. “You’ve got shit all over your fingers. Call Miss September. Let her do that. She’ll even play with your cock if you tell her she’s got nice tits.”

Tony Green took no notice of Kenny.

“Fuck you then,” Kenny shrugged. “Get another infection. See if I care.”

Tony had no right hand; his arm had been amputated below the elbow. He also had no right ear, and his right eye was missing; an ugly patchwork of skin grafts covered the eyeless socket. Kenny, on the other hand, had arms, ears, and eyes, but no legs. Both men were the same age, nineteen, and had joined the army one year earlier.

Shit continued to seep out of the stoma.

There was a loud thump at the window. Kenny and Tony turned toward the noise. A sparrow was lying on the outside ledge with its thread-like legs pointing up at the sky.

“Silly fucker flew into the glass,” Kenny said.

Kenny and Tony stared at the bird. It didn’t move. A minute went by and they continued to stare, riveted. Then the sparrow twitched. One of its legs seemed to claw at the sky. Moments later the other leg did too. It flapped a wing, started to roll over.

“It’s trying to stand,” Kenny whispered.

The two men didn’t offer any words of encouragement, or show any outward signs of concern for the bird, but neither stirred until Nice One shuffled into the ward a few moments later. There was a flutter of wings at the window and the sparrow was gone.

“You cunt,” Kenny snarled.

“What’d I do?” Nice One asked.

“It toppled over the ledge,” Kenny said. “You fucking killed it!”

Nice One shuffled over to the window. He pressed his face up against the glass and looked toward the street below. Some schoolboys were kicking a ball about on the small green adjacent to the hospital.

“Who’d I kill?” Nice One asked.

Kenny was about to answer only he noticed Nice One had been crying: tears had left snail-trails glistening on his skin, so Kenny said no more about the bird. Tony had started to fiddle with his colostomy bag again. He looked at his fingers and frowned. He wiped them on the bed cover; got shit on the white sheet; bit down on his lower lip in frustration. He broke the skin. Blood dripped onto his leg. He reached up to wipe his mouth; smeared his lips with his shitty fingers. He retched. His eyes welled. He caught sight of his own reflection in a mirror super-glued to his bedside table and began rocking back and forth. Moments later he started mumbling the three words he’d carved into the laminate just below the mirror.

“That’s not me that’s not me that’s not me that’s not me that’s not me that’s not me that’s not me that’s not me that’s not me that’s not—”

“It fucking is you, you dozy twat!” Kenny yelled. “It is you!”

The day before Nice One joined the Royal Marines, he’d been standing outside HMP Pentonville thinking about his uncle who was on the other side of the walls doing fifteen years. His uncle had been a gifted footballer; apprenticed with West Ham before joining Charlton Athletic, and Nice One would’ve been made up if he’d been given his uncle’s skills. But he hadn’t, so his apprenticeship at Queens Park Rangers ended with the club saying they had no interest in signing him as a professional. And now all he and his uncle could do was dream about what might have been, if one had been a better football player, and the other hadn’t throttled his girlfriend before dumping her body in the canal.

The recruitment officer from the Royal Marines laughed when Nice One told him he was from White City.

“It’s because I’m black, init?”

“We’re all black in the marines, son.”

The same recruitment officer was there when the Vice Admiral pinned the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross on Nice One’s chest.

“You’ve done your country proud, son,” he said.

“You must be having a laugh,” Nice One said, looking down at the medal on his chest, “I’m a nigger from White City with no fucking arms and you’ve given me the
Conspicuous Cross
.”

Now the medal sat on his bedside table in its little black box gathering dust. And if anyone asked Nice One what it was he’d done to get it, he’d say nothing. And whenever he caught Tony or Kenny staring at it, he always wondered which one of them hated it the most, and wished he had told that Vice Admiral to poke it right up his fucking jacksy.

“And how do they expect me to call the lift,” Nice One asked the recruitment officer when the award ceremony was over, “when I’ve got no fingers or thumbs to press the button and live on the seventeenth floor?”

“I wish I could help you, son,” was all the officer had said. “But you’ll need to have a word with the Royal Engineers about something like that. I only do recruitment.”