Southsiders (10 page)

“He can read English?”

“Read English? Listen mate, he could save your life if you were knocked over by a bus. He’s a qualified doctor. Imagine him having to clean carpets for a living when he should be performing open-heart surgery or curing cancer patients or something. Talk about a come down.”

“Don’t suppose you need any other help?” It seemed worth asking.

“Sorry. No can do.”

Jesse rapped his knuckles on the counter. Hard.

“You want to watch that temper, sunshine,” Lurch said, but Jesse wasn’t interested. What he needed was to get out before he screamed the place down. So that he could release some of the pain that was burning in his hand. He turned on his heels, sucked in his cheeks and stomped out into the cold fresh air.

––––––––

T
hursday night. Home-made lasagne and baked potatoes. Delicious. Could only have been improved by defrosting the atmosphere around the table.

Cliff didn't look up from his food once it was set in front of him. His brows knitted together every time his wife spoke and he cringed as if her words were grating his skin and shredding his nerves.

The prick.

Izzy had stopped trying. She had the sense to make sure she only opened her mouth when she was putting food in it, which wasn't very often. Less than halfway through her meal and she'd pretty much ground to a halt. Had moved past bothering to shift the pasta round her plate and just sat there, throwing the occasional false smile over at Ray.

Ray knew about meals like this. It's why he and Paula had given up on sitting together to eat and on the rare occasions that they did, it was always in front of the television. If they got peckish early, they'd heat something up in time for
Pointless
. Later, and they'd be there for the soaps. After the soaps and they'd pop out to the chippy on the way to the pub or pick up a few packets of crisps to go with their beer.

Rose was stirring in her basinet, twitching her legs underneath her pink blanket. Maybe she'd picked up on the atmosphere.

“What's for afters?” Cliff asked. If it had been up to Ray, it would have been a custard pie rammed hard into his face.

“Ice cream.” Izzy stood and picked up Cliff's plate.

“Fuck's sake,” Cliff said, slapping the edge of the table. “Ice fucking cream. Third night in a row.” He seemed to be looking at Ray, as if he might provide back-up if called upon. “Did having a baby completely wreck your imagination, woman?”

Izzy had turned away and was scraping food from her plate into the bin. Probably holding back tears and trying to compose herself. Trying to keep everything calm. It was a good move. Answering back would have only made things worse.

It was like being a fly on the wall for Ray. He got to watch the life of another family as they went, slowly, down the tubes. He also got to understand what it might be like for an insect that might get swatted and crushed against the paintwork at any moment.

The lasagne felt heavy on his stomach. He needed to diffuse the tension somehow.

“I could pop out. Get us something from the corner shop.” Pick up a packet of tobacco at the same time and smoke the life out of it.

“You kidding, Ray? Let's leave that kind of thing to the womenfolk, shall we?”

It wasn't a question that required an answer, but Ray had one in mind. A physical one. Not that he was going to make any moves with Izzy around. “Should I get the bowls?” he asked.

Izzy didn't have an answer either. She took the ice cream from the freezer and some bowls from the cupboard, managing to keep her back to the table all the while. She conjured up a tin of mandarin segments to brighten up her husband's meal.

She looked frail again. Always seemed smaller when Cliff was around. Ray couldn't be sure, but he thought he saw her hands tremble as they worked.

It was like watching himself in his other life, skulking around the Edinburgh flat waiting for Paula's next jibe, demand or put-down.

His insides began to shake in sympathy and his heels bounced up and down on the floor under the table. He felt himself shrink a little and hated himself for that. To kick back at his own pathetic being, he reached out and took the knife from the butter in the middle of the table. It was like he was Arthur removing the sword from the stone, strengthened by the act of having a weapon in his hand. He rolled it round in his fingers and sat up straight in his seat.

Rose picked that moment to wake up. Her eyes opened and she stuck her hand into her mouth and sucked it. It didn't take long for her to realise that her fingers weren't going to satisfy her hunger. When she did, she crinkled her face and gave out a muffled cry.

She was like one of those hand-turned air-raid warnings from the war. Started off with a feeble whinge, gathered momentum and morphed into a high-pitched wave that ended up as a full-blown scream which could be heard all over town.

Cliff didn't wait for the second or third phases. He barked at his wife. “Sort her out, for Christ's sake.”

The knife in Ray's hand twitched. Seemed to call out to him to shut the miserable sod at the end of the table up once and for all. Ray found himself standing.

Izzy's response distracted him. She ran over as instructed. Scooped up Rose and jiggled her up and down. Popped a dummy in the baby's mouth and averted the storm.

Ray stabbed the knife back into the butter. Took his leather jacket from the back of his seat and headed for the door. “I'm off to pick up some chocolate,” he said. “I may be some time.”

*

F
ive lads in hoodies were hanging around outside the corner shop. Soon as he saw them, Ray stood taller. Put a little swing into his shoulders. Clenched his fists and unclenched them a few times to loosen them up. Hoped the kids had seen him and got the message: DO NOT MESS, even though part of him wanted them to mess.

As he got closer, he saw that the kids were barely older than Jesse. Probably weren't even shaving yet. He lowered his shoulders a little, but not all the way. Teenagers, especially teenage boys in a pack, could do a lot of damage. It was ever thus.

“Excuse me mister,” the biggest one called over as Ray crossed the road without looking right or left. “Are you going into Ali's?” The kid had a camouflage buff around his neck and a mop of hair that looked like it hadn't been brushed for months and had probably taken hours of attention to get it to appear that way.

“Yeah.” One word was enough for now. Why waste any more?

“Thing is, we need something to keep the cold out.”

“Four cans of Special Brew usually work,” another of the pack said. He was the smallest, but his eyes were close together and his nose was flattened into his face as if it had already taken more than its fair share of hard knocks. Made him look tougher than all the rest by a country mile.

It wasn't right, Ray knew, encouraging kids to drink. But what else were they going to do? Play Scrabble with their grans?

He'd buy booze for Jesse when the time came, so doing it for these lads just made sense. “Sure,” he said.

The little one with the nose handed over a fiver. Looked around quickly as if to make sure there were no prying eyes and stared back at Ray.

“Keep the change.” The kid smirked and the boys turned back together to form a tight circle as if nothing had happened. Slick.

The bell rang on the door when Ray went in. It wasn't exactly as he'd imagined. The entire stock and the counter were behind huge Perspex screens. Someone must have tried to get through at some point as the screen to the left of him was cracked from the bottom corner to the top right and then clumsily taped up on the other side. Whoever it had been hadn't made it, so Ray supposed that the protection may have been worth the investment.

There wasn't a hint of Christmas to be seen inside. Not a bauble or a card or any of that false powdery snow.

Behind the screen sat a man in a turban, his beard neatly tucked away into a net that looked like a chin-strap. He looked up from his newspaper and nodded. His left eye was missing. There was no patch to hide it and no glass ball to make it look more attractive, just a mess of scar tissue and a hollow from hell.

An Alsatian dog sat at the man's side, head nuzzling into his owner's side. It was an old dog, going grey and getting fat down there by the till. Funny thing was its right eye was missing. Same deal as the man in the turban – no patch, no glass. Talk about dogs looking like their owners. Ray almost laughed. Instead, he got straight down to business trying to look the man in his good eye and avoid everything else.

“A small pack of Golden Virginia, a packet of liquorice papers and a box of filters, please.”

A young lad appeared, wearing short trousers and in bare feet. He set about collecting the goods for Ray without being asked.

“And I'll take eight of your finest Special Brew.” The kid was over at the beer without having to think. Took off a fluorescent green star that had £4.99 written on it in black pen, picked up the cans, and replaced the star. Ray understood the smirk of the boy outside now. Keep the change, indeed. The lad out there would make a fine comedian one day.

It was an old-fashioned cash register they were using. The kind where the numbers were punched in hard and you could practically hear the mechanics of it performing the calculation. The total appeared in big plastic numbers at the top that were impossible to ignore.

Nobody spoke. Ray passed a twenty through the gap between the counter and the window. The man took it and put it in the till. The kid in the shorts fished out the change and dumped it into the metal box on his side of the glass, next to the beer and the smokes. Pushed the box so that it ended up on Ray's side. Ray reached in, filled his pockets, picked up the four-packs and his new smoking kit, nodded and left.

The gang of boys outside turned towards Ray, expectant looks on their faces. Ray passed one of the four-packs to the tallest lad then fished around in his pocket for a moment. When he took his hand out, there was a penny in it. He held it out to the little bruiser, inches from his face.

The kid didn't flinch. “Like I said, keep the change, mate. And don't go spending it all at once.” He gave Ray a wink. It was a wink from the Cliff school of charm. Made Ray feel like he owed them something. Thankfully, he didn't get to find out what that might be. The gang turned all at the same time and dragged their feet off into the night, like a pack of lions dragging their kill to a private space to be consumed.

Ray didn't waste any time on killing his cravings.

Soon as they'd gone, he put the remaining beers down on the window ledge and took out his baccy. He still had the hard-wiring to roll the perfect ciggie without thinking about it, and his fingers still worked, even on a cold night like this. Tobacco packed in and rolled tight, but not too tight, the filter finding its place at the end. He enjoyed the sweet taste of the paper when he licked it into place and salivated at the prospect of the taste of the smoke.

He was all set. Reached into his pockets for a light and found nothing but lining.

“Idiot.”

There was no way he was going back into the shop for matches. Didn't want to see those scars again as long as he lived.

He picked up the brews. Pulled one from the plastic rings and cracked it open. He took a sip, let the power of it kick his tongue into touch and the set off after the boys. “Hey, hang on,” he shouted after them and skipped off with his hands full, trying to catch them before they disappeared off the face of the earth.

––––––––

T
he school bell rang on the last day and the place was empty within minutes.

Jess pelted on home, flying on his board and giving the butterflies in his stomach no time to settle. There were too many hours left until the P7 party and there wasn’t that much to do to fill them.

He opened the door to the flat, took off his shoes and coat, hung up his bag and went to lie down on the sofa. He looked around the room, admiring his attempt to jolly up the place. The new tinsel really made all the difference. Cards had arrived for him and his mum and dad in increasingly large piles on the doormat over the previous days and Jesse had hung them all onto pieces of wool that he’d stretched across the room like washing lines. He reached over and clicked on the switch to the new fairy lights that were taped around the mantelpiece and added the finishing touches. All in all, he’d done a pretty good job, even if he still had the feeling something was missing. The flat looked like a home should at this time of year. Better than his parents ever managed. The only thing the decorations didn’t offer was the comfort he usually felt at Christmas.

What was missing was company. People. His dad. His mum too. And the way the place looked now was the way it was going to look for the next fortnight, unless he could come up with something.

Usually Jesse enjoyed the holidays as if they were like islands of paradise, but this time it looked like they were going to be more like the one Robinson Crusoe hung round on – isolated and lonely.

The buzz of happiness he’d felt all the way back home froze solid. Like a lump of ice in his belly.

Tears welled in his eyes and he picked up a cushion to give it a cuddle. He closed his eyes and waited for the sadness to pass.

*

W
hen he woke up an hour later, the world seemed right again. His body had regrouped and topped itself up with energy, as if by magic.

There were only four hours until he had to pick up Bonnie Bird and he had plenty to do before then.

The music for his afternoon came via the soundtrack of
American Graffiti
. It had everything he needed to get through a day like this one. There were the harmonies, the beats and the tearjerkers all in the one place. Better still, there was Wolfman Jack taking him from one song to another. Jesse felt like he knew the Wolfman. He’d seen the film a couple of times with his dad and loved every minute, even the grown-up bits he didn’t really understand. The cars were boss, the hairstyles cool and the girls were gorgeous. Wolfman was just the icing on the cake and, while he played the four sides of the records in turn, it felt like he had a friend right there in the speakers.