I have written a collection of short stories. Most of them need an editor as I probably ramble on a bit.
No matter if you’ve got nothing better to do have a look…you never know you might enjoy.
‘Tales from a hard place’.
A collection of short stories.
Davey Stoker (deceased). The luckiest man alive.
Davey Stoker was not a well-liked man which was dangerous in this, Hard Place.
I don’t necessarily mean he was hated, but he was the kind of guy whose funeral you could guarantee would not be that well attended.
That’s not to say he wouldn’t be missed.
There’s no doubt in my mind that folks would, after a suitable period of Davey Stoker-free time, wonder where the hell he’d gone and upon being told he was dead would say, ‘Oh…shame’.
The thing is, they wouldn’t really care.
His was a personality that you could take or leave. And to be truthful, if you had that kind of choice, you would more than likely, leave, you know what I mean.
And just to continue with the ‘dead’ theme for a moment, if you did happen to find yourself at the cemetery to see him laid to rest then you’d be there out of curiosity and not because you were grieving a whole lot. Actually, and in all truth, you’d be there because you wanted to make sure he would stay down.
In his time Davey Stoker was called many things, stupid being one of the more frequent.
Yet despite this, in our neighbourhood he was somewhat of a living legend.
He had what is sometimes referred to as a, ‘claim to fame’.
Davey was renowned far and wide for his ability to ingest an enormous variety and number of illegal substances, and… remain upright.
One of his other er, ‘qualities’ was his extreme arrogance.
He’d take to roaming the streets of the borough with what can only be called, an air of smug self-satisfaction and an attitude that said out loud,
‘Look at me I’m invincible’.
Now the odd thing is, and it has to be said, no matter what your personal feelings as to Davey Stoker’s right to life, you couldn’t help agreeing that this aggressive self-assessment, ‘Look at me I’m invincible’ did in fact have the ring of truth about it.
If you knew Davey like I knew Davey, then you’d know he actually did appear bombproof, bullet-proof and if I didn’t know better, immune to all diseases known to man.
Davey Stoker was in many ways, a very lucky guy. Which, considering his precarious lifestyle was beyond belief.
Take for starters, his amazing substance consumption.
Toxic substances of various descriptions and prescriptions would be introduced any way possible (or impossible) into his slight frame on a daily basis.
Davey found routes for his drugs that the average addict did not have the imagination to think of. 24/7.
Such were the levels of chemicals in his blood, that I have personally witnessed flies landing on him and keeling over almost immediately.
Herein lies an obvious question.
It would not take a mathematics/chemist (?) professor long to work out that for Davey to remain at his preferred level of toxicity, i.e. high, then he would have to be living off a fair-sized inheritance or have the borrowing capacity of a small third world country.
So how did Davey manage it?
Easy.
Davey Stoker’s World Bank was…
The Morelli Brothers.
Vince and Quince (true) Morelli, bankrolled Davy and his unsavoury habits in return for the odd piece of dirty work.
As the Morelli brothers had their grubby little fingers in most pies, you could be sure that this ‘dirty work’ took the form of anything from the wallpapering of an old lady’s front room to the punishment of said old lady for not paying the fee for the wallpapering of said room.
The Morelli’s were like that.
They saw themselves as a cross between Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham.
They ruled over an area the size of a Religious Parish with an iron fist inside a brass knuckle-duster.
The Morelli’s were the Spawn of Satan minus brains.
Davey Stoker worked for the Morells as ‘Arson Man’.
Everyone knew this as fact.
There were too many occasions when Davey was seen running from the scene of a small explosion with smouldering hair and his pants on fire to think otherwise.
Hence Davey often found himself detained by the police only for one swift visit from the Morelli family lawyer allowing Davey to hold on to his unbroken record of never being charred-sorry-charged.
It was no secret Davey Stoker worked for the Morellis. And it worked well for him.
As the Morellis muscle and main man he had immunity and therefore was a force to be reckoned with. He was a man with dangerous connections.
Ergo. If you had occasion to talk with Davey Stoker, no matter how stupid you knew he was, you laughed at all his pathetic jokes.
Nobody was sure what happened to turn things around.
But turn around they did.
Some say Davey got religion.
Personally, I find that hard to believe, as a few weeks previous Davey had given Father Delaney a severe beating as a reminder that he owed money to the Morelli’s ‘collection’.
Holiness was out of the question.
Whatever it was that had caused the change to Davey Stoker, it was a major surprise. Nay – major shock to everyone.
People pondered.
Had Davy had discovered a new drug?
A bravery drug maybe?
Whatever it was, something gave Davey the push to quit the Morelli camp.
One morning Davey Stoker woke up and just said, no.
No to anything of a dubious nature and perhaps more shockingly, NO to the Morellis.
It goes without saying that from that day forth, things took their inevitable course.
As is the Morelli’s wont, especially when they’re upset, they shot guns at Davey. They missed.
They bombed Davey. He wasn’t in but his mother was. (It was a nice funeral).
They cut the brake cables on Davey’s car. Unfortunately for them, Davey didn’t own a car (that was a nice funeral too). And so on, and so on.
No matter how hard they tried, a catalogue of bungled attempts at ending Davey’s life followed one after another.
All in all, the community lost count of the number of times the mad brothers Morelli tried sending Davey to meet Jesus. None of which were successful. (We could almost hear Jesus breathing a sigh of relief).
If it had not been so serious it would have been funny because so bad were the Morelli brothers at doing their own dirty work, that Vince Morelli lost three fingers off his right hand when a small parcel bomb he was keeping in his jacket pocket, ‘for later’, exploded prematurely.
Quince faired no better, suffering a lapse of memory and drinking a concoction (during a ravenous lunch break), he had prepared earlier to aid Davey’s demise.
Anyway, for Davey Stoker these accidents worked out to be blessings in disguise for Davey.
Vince Morelli’s disfigurement and Quince’s poisonous mishap was the end of it.
For what was probably the only instance in the Morelli’s grisly family history, they gave up on a vendetta and let Davey Stoker walk free.
They never spoke of it again, and apart from spitting on the pavement every time they passed a member of Davey’s household, it seemed like it was really, actually over.
It looked like Davey Stoker could and would live out his remaining years in his normal luck-filled fashion.
Wrong.
It was such a tiny object.
So small to be almost invisible to the naked eye.
It was amazing to think that such a small thing had probably been twice around the Universe and then back again.
That the last time it passed the planet Earth, Jesus was living it up with his mother at a party in Canaan and the time before that my ancestor was chewing at a dinosaur bone.
If only it could talk.
The sights it must have seen.
Round and round, star system to star system.
Light year to light year.
Amazing.
And here it was again, but this time, its long journey was finally over.
Snug and cosy the baby meteorite had found a home, a final resting place.
Embedded three inches into Davey Stoker’s mashed up brain.
And you know, he never felt a thing.
Lucky swine.
Lucky Davey Stoker.
end
The House of Maynard. A short story.
The first dead body I ever saw belonged to Mrs Maynard.
Belonged?
That sounds stupid.
The truth of the matter is that when I saw it, the body that is, it didn’t belong to anyone. Not me. Not you and certainly not to Mrs Maynard who had no further use for it.
No, if it belonged to anyone then it had to be to the tall, thin, miserable looking man in the black suit. The man who had come to take her away.
All these thoughts and more swam through my head as I gazed down on the deceased old lady in the bed, who, to be quite honest I didn’t recognise until I heard someone mention her name.
I was a kid.
I was puzzled, confused and more than a little frightened. And as my mother squirmed at the tightness with which I squeezed her hand, wondered what I was doing here.
Why had my mother brought me to this dark place?
To look at a dead person?
If so, why?
Was this another one of those weird grown-up things?
Was this something about the necessity of facing up to the truth about life…and er…death?
Maybe something to do with the health-giving qualities of not hiding behind statements like, ‘Mrs Maynard’s gone to sleep’.
Or was this about inflicting enough trauma (re the facts of life), upon your innocent child to make him wet himself?
Mother had form in this department.
This was how me and spinach were introduced. Shock treatment. Green and horrible it suddenly appeared on my plate.
Seems to have done the trick. I haven’t touched it since.
Anyway, when I finally realised who the stiff was, I calmed down. I wasn’t frightened anymore, just surprised as to how different she looked in death.
Younger for one thing.
Her face had taken on a smoothness that belied her one hundred and fifty years.
Ok, so I now know that she wasn’t and couldn’t have been one hundred and fifty years old but at the time I was a dumb kid, and kids, dumb or otherwise, live in a world of their own making.
They use their imagination. They fantasise. They exaggerate. They paint the world from a pallet of their own choosing. In short, they tell huge lies.
And that was us. Me, Fat Freddy, Smells Warburton and Four Eyes Phillips.
Me and the guys had decided some time ago that Mrs Maynard was the oldest person in the world.
By our calculations she was somewhere in the region of one hundred and fifty years old.
Let me explain.
Seems ridiculous now, but once we spent a whole afternoon peering through her windows and following her on the street. All in an attempt to count the wrinkles on her face.
This was all down to Fat Freddy who told us in all sincerity that, that was how you determined someone’s age. It did not just apply to trees.
When Smells Warburton lied through his teeth and told us he had counted one hundred and fifty folds of skin, that was it, decision made.
Mrs Maynard was one hundred and fifty years old.
Whatever her real age, we couldn’t have been far wrong because here she was, dead.
And as I related my experience to the boys that evening, we agreed, only very old people die.
It’s a terrible admission to make but there was no sadness in us.
If I remember correctly, a short discussion ensued on whether or not there was life after death but that was all. No pity. No regret. No nothing.
The only other thing I remember about the discussion was Smells insisting that heaven was full of large naked ladies and fat flying babies.
Oh yes, and Four Eyes Phillips declaring with the kind of certainty that I now associate with Christian fundamentalists, that when he arrived in heaven, he wouldn’t have to wear the thick ‘milk-bottle’ lenses that we’d all become familiar with.
One thing in our favour that does needs saying…although we weren’t sorry at her passing we did not rejoice…
well…not totally.
Look. We were kids
We were a million miles away.
And to be totally honest, and in the pursuit of truth, there was a reason why Fat Freddie, Smells Warburton, Four Eyes Phillips and me, were, not totally consumed with grief.
I’ll tell you for why.
What me and the guys were experiencing regarding the passing of Mrs Maynard, is best described as, relief.
You see and believe me when I say I mean no disrespect, Mrs Maynard played a large part in our lives that was now, with her demise, thankfully, gone for ever.
See, what Mrs Maynard did, or to be more precise, used to do that affected our young lives so very much, was…and you may laugh…was…knitting.
This was how it worked.
In those days’ times were hard.
Luxuries, and that includes food and heat, were thin on the ground.
Day to day living was hand to mouth. No-one had any money and if you were lucky enough to find yourself unexpectedly at the correct end of an inheritance, legal or otherwise, you upped sticks and got the hell out of there. The lucky ones left before their dust did and who could blame them?
For us poor bastards that were left behind the struggle continued. The name of the game was survival, and the rules worked, as best as they could, on the ‘something for nothing’ basis.
This, I must make clear, did not include stealing, (mostly). At least not from your own.
If you stole from your neighbour then you were dead meat, no question.
What we did was help each other out.
True. We used our brains and looked to our own for answers to all those questions on the all-important subject of, ‘getting by’.
Recycling for example. (Please note: Recycling is not a new concept). Recycling was a skilful necessity in our neighbourhood, a long time before you rich folks began separating your green and brown wine bottles.
For our poverty-stricken neighbourhood, much was made of discovering and exploiting the human resources and skills that existed within our own community.
If someone had a particular insight into anything that would benefit the neighbourhood, then it was harnessed immediately and used positively for the good of all.
In Mrs Maynard’s case it happened to be knitting.
Which she did, all the time, day in-day out.
Every hour that God sent Mrs Maynard knitted. From the early hours of the morning ‘till late at night, weekends included.
She was knitting when she gave birth to her two sets of twins and she knitted graveside when her husband (Mr Maynard), was laid to rest.
She knitted subconsciously.
She knitted in her sleep, and when nature called, she kept on knitting.
When she walked, she knitted. When she talked, she knitted.
She was even found needles in hand (so they say), when the Grim Reaper made his personal call.
(I have a theory that he only turned up to order a pullover).
Her constant clitter-clatter only ceased when she was utilising her other skill, unravelling.
If there was an Olympic section, Mrs Maynard could have knitted and unravelled for her country.
History has it that when Mrs Maynard’s skills with the needles first came to the attention of the community, family members desperate for warm clothes for their long-suffering children, emerged from the darkest depths of the neighbourhood laden down with sacks of worn out clothing to be unravelled and resurrected.
People, (who if they really loved their kids should have known better), would arrive on her doorstep, pay her the agreed fee and within one calendar month Mrs Maynard would come up with the goods, (usually a pullover. In my case, always a pullover).
In this way it wasn’t long before Mrs Maynard became the stuff of legend and, I hate to admit, a curse on every child’s lips.
You see, us kids, unlike our parents, hated and despised Mrs Maynard’s woollen concoctions.
To put it bluntly, (this was how we kids saw it), forget the money saved, forget the fact that she kept us warm in winter. The point was, (and try telling this to your ma and pa), the point was, Mrs Maynard’s woollen wear made us look stupid. In our neighbourhood, it was a recognised phenomenon that kids who wore the House of Maynard never smiled again.
Unfortunately, me and my friends those who were ‘dressed’ almost exclusively by Mrs Maynard, never wore it well.
We carried the mark of Maynard with shame and disgust.
The pullovers were grey and the wool stiff from overuse and distant genetic memories of having been a sock in a previous life. And that was not all…
Mrs Maynard smoked. And I mean smoked. We’re talking heavyweight inhalation here.
We’re talking near a hundred cigarettes (if she was on form), a day.
While her knurled, nicotine-stained fingers gripped her tools tightly and clicked mercilessly away, a long unfiltered King-size dangled dangerously from her lip, sending a thin stream of blue smoke upward, to filter through and stain her hair yellow for ever.
Now, I’ve been a smoker.
And although I quit some years ago I consider myself lucky enough not to have fallen into the trap of becoming holier-than-thou. If people want to smoke that’s fine by me. And to be quite honest when I see others pulling on the weed, I still feel a distant pang in my chest and a sense of missing out.
What I’m saying is this, I have no problem with those who smoke. Invent me a safe cigarette, reduce the likelihood of me rotting from the inside out and I’ll suck on it with the rest of them. However, I would have to draw the line at Mrs Maynard. She was a definite no-go area.
OK, I’m gonna pause here and suggest that if you are eating finish up quick before moving on.
You finished? Good.
I will resume.
When Mrs Maynard smoked, she coughed.
And when Mrs Maynard coughed, she would empty the contents of her bubbling lungs over mine and my friends’ embryonic pullovers.
This meant, and not wishing to go into too much detail, this meant, er…stuff…mingling with the forming fibres.
The thing is, you never knew what it was you were pulling over your head.
The anguished cry that would echo around the neighbourhood usually about Christmas time was , ‘Mrs Maynard’s pullovers stink’. A statement based not on the particular style of garment, but a literal fact.
When the finished article arrived from Mrs Maynard’s house it was seventy-five percent nicotine. Ten percent an unidentifiable gluttonous substance and fifteen percent recycled wool.
To put it on was akin to dipping your face into a janitor’s bucket full of week old cigarette butts.
It was horrible and vile both at the same time.
It made you feel like you had smoked Mrs Maynard’s total tobacco intake.
It left you with a blinding headache, failing eyesight and a nicotine addiction problem that you would come to regret in later life.
I hated those pullovers with a passion.
The knowledge that another one might be under construction gave me and the juvenile population of our small township, regular nightmares.
So…
As I stood hand in hand with my mother looking down on that lifeless corpse, I have to admit I smiled.
Cruel as it may seem, now with Mrs Maynard dead and gone, life could now take on a much more pleasant hue.
So much so, that I almost didn’t mind wearing a Maynard creation for the funeral.
Almost…
End.
A beacon to us all. A short story.
When the angels opened the box that contained the body parts that would make Jaycee a recognisable human being, they must have been drunk.
Either that or one of them had told a joke of such hilarious proportions that their concentration had wandered from the Conveyor Belt of Life and instead of fitting Jaycee together in an acceptable fashion, they had giggled uncontrollably and thereby botched the job.
Whatever the reason, there was no doubt that with Jaycee, there had been…mistakes.
Let me put it another way.
If there was such a thing as a shop where you could buy a limp of your choice, then Jaycee had without doubt, bought the best one in the store and that’s not all. On the day Jaycee visited they must have had a promotion going, an offer that included free ugliness with every limp purchased.
I’m sorry and all that but someone has to say it and it might as well be me, poor Jaycee was one of the most hideous men I had ever seen.
So alarming was his visage that handsome lessons for life would have been wasted on him.
Jaycee had it bad.
Someone, and I guess I’m talking God here, someone had dealt him from the bottom of the pack.
However, before I’m accused of being nothing more than a cruel and heartless beast, it really ought to be pointed out that Jaycee made no efforts to help himself.
In my defence I’d like to call as my first witnesses…
Jaycee’s clothes.
I’d like to call them, but they couldn’t come…they ‘re real tied up at the moment.
They’re stuck to his body.
This is what I mean about Jaycee not helping himself, Jaycee’s clothes have been with him for so long that they’d taken root and clung to him like a second skin.
On the whole Jaycee was a sorry specimen and like sorry specimens everywhere, he spent most of his waking hours, as the neighbourhood target.
Jaycee was there to be boffed (my word), bashed and abused whenever it took anyone’s fancy.
It was his lot in life and before you raise your hands and your voice in protest, think about it.
Jaycee’s lot had worth…and was not without some historical context.
If this had been sometime in our not too recent past, Jaycee would have worn the mantle…village idiot.
He would have been revered for his ability to remove the stresses and strains from so-called normal life.
Poor harvest?
Punch Jaycee.
Wife gone down with boils.
Put Jaycee (scapegoat) in the stocks.
Let’s face it, before the cat was domesticated enough to kick, the likes of Jaycee were seen as a godsend and were, more than likely, the first ever therapies.
Although, in our PC driven society we would like to push such thoughts to the back of our minds, the truth of the matter is, times haven’t changed that much.
People like Jaycee still exist on the edge of most so-called ‘normal/civilised’ communities and are still abused in that good-old time-honoured manner that we accept and have all become familiar with.
People like Jaycee are allowed to become part of the sights, sounds and smells of whatever it is that passes for everyday life.
They’re allowed to wander around displaying their own particular brand of weirdness for all to see and no-one apparently, gives a damn.
They can dribble, talk to themselves and shout at their invisible companions to their hearts content.
However, working on the basis that you have to draw the line somewhere, what they must not do is…rock the boat.
Now.
Rocking the boat consists of a small number of no-noes. Some of the more serious I will attempt to list.
On no account will Jaycee (or the likes of), take part in…
One…The frightening of small children or horses.
Two…The keeping of unreasonable hours.
Three…The consumption of alcohol in the street.
Four…The opening of trouser zippers…and last but not least;
Five…The leering at women’s breasts.
Stick to these rules and for people of Jaycee’s ilk everything will be hunky-dory.
If the weirdly strange like Jaycee can fulfil their set role with the minimum of fuss and bother, then they’re tolerated and free to come and go more-or-less as they please.
In truth of course, Jaycee serves a purpose. ..i.e…
Everyone Loves A Scapegoat.
Enough. I’m supposed to be telling a story here…so…..
When we were kids, Fat Freddy and me would lean out of his mother’s bedroom window and wait for Jaycee to come stumbling past, which he did at four thirty every single day of the year, never late, never early, always smack on time and heading for God knows where.
Clump…drag….clump…drag. Clump…drag….clump…drag. Clump…drag….clump…drag.
Me and Fat Freddy, upon registering the echoing street acoustics and according to our mood at the time, would run to the window, stick out our heads and yell… ‘Hey…twisted man’ or ‘Look at the freak…look at the freak’.
Thankfully, (if that’s the correct way to put it), ‘Hey twisted man’ and “Look at the freak…look at the freak” was as bad as it got.
At that time in our youth neither Fat Freddy or I had ever heard of Victor Hugo or The Hunchback of Notre Dame, so Jaycee was spared, ‘The bells…the bells’.
In short, Fat Freddy and me…we were evil little bastards.
For what we put Jaycee through both of us should have been birched within an inch of our lives or even worse.
However and I promise you that this is not meant as an excuse, we were not the worst.
What it was with the kids on my street and is with kids everywhere even today, is the big B. Boredom.
Idle hands and all that stuff.
Some say what kids need is a hobby…and boy did they find one in our neighbourhood.
You can forget train spotting or stamp collecting.
For hobby come pleasurable pastime and activity…read Jaycee.
I didn’t see it and neither did Fat Freddy.
What we got was the aftermath.
We both missed the actual dirty deed because our attention was taken by other things.
Fat Freddie was busy studying himself in his mother’s full-length mirror.
He was licking his lips and admiring the way her wedding dress highlighted his curves.
While I looked on in amazement at the deftness, skill and speed with which he made his way around the room wearing six-inch stilettos, (a skill that would serve him well in later life-but that’s another story) and listened to him pleading, ‘It’s a little tight under the arms, don’t you think’? I almost missed the terrifying screams that were filtering up from the street below.
It was four thirty…Jaycee time.
Odd, but on that particular occasion we had no mind to abuse him. He could have passed below that window and we couldn’t have cared less. Even little shits like us needed a break.
It was the unearthly scream that did it…
In our headlong rush to get to the window, Fat Freddie’s skill with women’s shoes inexplicably left him and he fell, losing two teeth to the corner of the bed. In normal circumstances Fat Freddy, who in those days was an out and out wimp, would have yelled the house down.
As it was, something much more terrible was going on and Fat Freddie’s pain paled into insignificance.
We took up our usual positions at the window and were stunned into silence at what we saw below us.
Jaycee was burning. Jaycee was a column of red fire.
I don’t know what was worse, Jaycee aflame or the group of mutant children clutching cans of lighter fuel and hair spray, who fell about laughing a few yards behind him.
Apart from my horror and my helplessness, the other thing that will always stay with me was the smell.
The odour of burning human flesh wafted up to our vantage point, causing me to puke violently over Fat Freddy and perhaps more seriously, his mother’s wedding dress.
To this day I can’t eat barbecued food.
Fat Freddy never said a word.
His and my total attention was fixed on poor flaming Jaycee as he clumped…dragged…clumped down that terrible and wicked street, now seemingly oblivious to what must have been searing pain. The scream had faded and had given way to…motion.
Not panic. Not fear. Just this insane desire to do what he always did.
Clump…drag….clump…drag. Clump…drag….clump…drag. Clump…drag….clump…drag.
What kept him going I don’t know. But whatever it was Jaycee was apparently determined to keep his mystery appointment.
It turns out that the screams we heard were not Jaycee’s.
An unknown woman passing by had witnessed the mayhem, clutched at her ears, drew in enough air to deprive us all of oxygen and made a sound like god knows what, then promptly fainted.
Me too.
When I finally returned to the land of the living, the only thing that remained to remind me of the sheer horror of what little we had actually witnessed, was the impression of Jaycee’s footprints that were melted into the tar at the side of the road.
Anyway, Jaycee didn’t die.
He’s still with us and every now and then, a guilty community remembers that terrible day and gets itself together to raise funds to update his wheelchair.
Jaycee’s motorised now and a beacon to us all.
And it has to be said, I do miss the… Clump…drag….clump…drag. lump…drag…. clump…drag of Jaycee on route to…to…wherever.
End.
The eye of this beholder. A short story.
There was never any doubt in my mind, none at all. In the eye of this beholder, Sheba Lee was the most beautiful woman in the world.
She was a Goddess.
She exhaled gold dust and whatever she touched she consecrated.
Her natural odour made my nose twitch with delight for up to three days after she had passed and I could have made love to her shadow.
I would have paid good money to have her hair woven into cloth and made into the best suit I ever had.
She was the sun, the moon and all the other astronomical stuff you could think of.
Elizabeth Taylor should have been her handmaiden and me the saddle on her bike when she made those long physically exhausting trips to see her ailing mother.
She was everything I ever dreamed of in a woman and much more besides.
And that was it…my point.
I only ever dreamed.
In truth, Sheba Lee was untouchable.
Apart from being twenty years older than me she had eight children and a brick wall of a husband known in the neighbourhood as ‘Beef’ on account of the fact that he was big and worked at the local abattoir.
Beef was a man who could and would, upon hearing one misplaced or spoken-out-loud rogue thought concerning his wife’s heavenly attributes, deliver instant death or at the very least, physical disfigurement, all in the blacking of an eye.
So, to all but the incredibly stupid and those with a death wish, Sheba Lee was best admired from afar.
As time went by it and it became obvious that my passion for Sheba was only increasing. I realised that the only path left to me was to develop a personal strategy that, one, would allow me to physically survive i.e. avoid Beef.
And two, get myself under some sort of control.
So…
My strategy…
…required that any thoughts that I had concerning the divine Ms Lee, were instantly consigned to the safest place possible.
Which was small, damp, dust filled room that was situated way, way, way back in the deep and darkest recesses of my mind.
A room that was specially fitted out and set aside for those exciting yet guilt-inducing times when and where, me and Sheba could get together.
A secret space secured by the best locksmith my imagination could provide and moved (for reasons of security), to a fresh location at the back of my head every week.
In this room and in this way me and Sheba could become very close.
In fact, inseparable.
There were, however, disadvantages.
In those annoying moments (days when I had ‘things to do’), or to put it a better way, when reality encroached on my secret life with Beef’s wife and we were forced apart, I found myself behaving like one of those tiresome but proud, happily married men you sometimes run across on railway station platforms or cafes.
The sort of men who will insist on talking to you just so they have an excuse to pull out a tattered photograph of their wife and kids from a battered old wallet.
What I am confessing to here is the sad fact that I myself inhabited railway platforms and cafes purposefully armed and keen to use this invented life for Sheba and me.
My preparation was meticulous.
And it felt good.
I cut a picture from a magazine and pretended that it was her. Not as pretty as she was in real life, but it served its purpose.
I had everything I needed to present an everlasting and happy relationship plus the fact that my wallet was already battered.
My act was honed, masterful and convincing. My audience although mostly bored was without doubt and in most cases, convinced.
With some pride I can honestly say I put on a damn good show.
So much so, I think the work I put into my ‘love story’ deserved its happy ending. It seems only fair and right.
Sheba was on her way back from visiting her sick mother when the truck driver’s concentration was broken by a tantalising flash of tanned thigh, revealed with the help of the soft breeze that was blowing on that tragic (for some), day.
It was a strange coincidence but a few hours before she took that fateful ride, I had actually visited our room in my head and asked her to be especially careful.
I remember my exact words.
‘The way you ride round on that thing. Too fast. You must be more careful. The roads are full of maniacs, drunks and God knows what’.
I remember my imagination made her laugh at my concern. She threw back her fantastic dark mane of hair and told me that I was like her mother…’a worry wart’…whatever that is.
Eyewitnesses swore that the truck driver wound down his window, wolf-whistled, then swerved directly into the path of an oncoming milk truck, killing both himself and the other driver.
My beautiful Sheba was terribly injured.
I have heard it said that monumental happenings in people’s lives can sometimes bring changes that are, in the long run, for the better.
That, for instance, the aftermath of shall we say, a terrible accident leading to say, unexpected disaster, can bring fresh meaning to a life that might have been an ongoing chore or a painful effort to sustain.
Some say, that in the midst of the most heartfelt misery there can be transformation, rebirth even.
I think I believe that to be true.
After the accident things began to happen.
The door to my secret room was thrown open and the light flooded in. It seemed that the time for secrets was over.
Sheba Lee spent a year and a half in hospital.
When she returned to the neighbourhood there were those who said that she was not the woman she used to be and harsh though that may sound, their words were accurate enough. I knew what they meant.
Sheba Lee had become an invalid.
God. How I hate that word. Invalid. In-Valid.
Sheba didn’t recognise her own children.
She stumbled around the house as beautiful as ever but didn’t know where the hell she was.
She had to be fed.
And changed.
And groomed.
And… and… everything.
Poor Beef tried the best he could and in doing so, shone. Which goes someway to proving the theory I mentioned earlier, that in the midst of misery, people can and do change.
With the kids farmed out to relatives Beef was on call for twenty-four hours a day to that dear woman’s every whim, every need.
Morning, noon and night Beef was there, ready, willing but unfortunately, highly un-able.
As my love’s general appearance and health plummeted, Beef had to face the fact that no-way could he go on accepting total responsibility for his wife’s general well-being. He finally had to admit to himself that he needed outside help.
There was a settlement thank God.
The truck owner’s insurance company paid out a large sum.
A substantial amount of money that enabled Beef to return to the work that he loved down at the abattoir, with enough cash left over to employ a full-time nurse to cater for Sheba’s ever-increasing needs.
But of course, even nurses have to rest.
There are times when even the dedicated health professional has to have the luxury of time for themselves.
Times when a break from such a demanding patient as Sheba had become, was essential.
Someone else was needed to share and shoulder the burden.
An hour or two a day that’s all.
A walk in the park. A breath of fresh air.
Someone to watch over her.
Someone to put Sheba to bed.
I applied as soon as the advertisement appeared.
I got the job.
End
An essay on Street Crime (for beginners).
This may come as a great surprise, but in a neighbourhood like mine the question, ‘Is God dead?’ does not weigh heavy on most folks’ minds.
Having no wish to be disrespectful in any way to anyone of a religious bent or come to think of it, God himself, the major thought bouncing around in most heads on our patch, goes more along the lines of, ‘how the hell do I get through the next twenty-four hours?’
Or to put it another way, ‘how do I earn enough to eat today?’
Whatever way it is put, it all boils down to the same thing…
Turning a coin and earning a crust.
This was the thought that we all woke up with every morning, every day, three hundred and sixty-five times a year.
Walk down any of our streets any time of day, and that whirring sound you hear?
That isn’t traffic noise.
That’s the cogs in the brains of every resident. All working ferociously overtime on the ‘how to put something in the pocket’ problem.
If you have been paying attention and have half a brain, you should realise by now, that my neighbourhood was not…how can I put this? – was not, tree lined suburbia.
Firstly, any trees foolish enough to be discovered growing in the locality, would soon find themselves doing valuable community service and heating an old person’s apartment…and secondly, suburbia?
My neighbours wouldn’t know what suburbia was if it ran up behind them and bit them on the ass. My people were not the kind of people that inhabited, suburbia.
Or to put it in yet another way, my people were more interested in saving themselves than saving the whales, you know what I mean?
Let me be blunt and get to the point.
In order to eat, my people would do most anything.
Call it evil. Call it stupid. Call it a genetic fault (I know some of you would love the opportunity). Go for it. Call it a hiccup in the DNA caused by interbreeding. (Feel better?)
Whatever the initial ’cause’, the truth is/was, when my neighbours were desperate, they were more than willing to engage in a little nefarious outside-of-hours activity.
If it meant feeding the kids with maybe enough left over to break the monotony of starvation or see a break in the dark clouds and experience that thing called ‘hope’, then…Anything goes.
Not wishing to make excuses (for my people), I have learnt over the years, that particularly in times of hardship, most everyone has it in them to sink to levels so low, that they’d slide under the belly of a snake without too much difficulty.
It also has to be said and pointed out, and this is in no way a defense of foolish actions, that many of the schemes’ folks invest in, schemes that are supposedly designed to get the participants rich quickly, tend to end in disaster. And in their wake have without exception, ripped the guts from the very heart of the community, making the poor poorer and the pain greater.
Unfortunately, the unwritten rules of life plastered invisibly all over the walls in neighbourhoods like mine, dictated, nay, demanded, that impossible dreams were, without fail, to be chased.
Born losers were encouraged, to go for it no matter the cost.
Don’t stop.
Knock yourself out.
Chase it to the point of exhaustion.
Kill yourself. Which in many cases was unfortunately, inevitable.
———————————-
There was a time in the neighbourhood when gambling was a very popular if destructive way, of supplementing the income. And for one whole season the sounds of dice bouncing against a wall or cards slapping down on whatever stood in for a table, beat a deep furrow across the already worn fabric of the community.
Things got so desperate one hot and sticky summer, that men on the street were betting on how many flies would settle on a pile of dog shit. It was a bad time.
(The Mark of the Beast is not as many mistakenly think, 666. It is Jack, Queen, King.)
Fortunately, (or not) owing to the nature of the beast and the rather unpleasant way it has of turning men’s heads to the uglier things in life, gambling’s popularity soon waned and young men returned to the more traditional ways of raising cash…i.e. street crime.
Street crime…
…is a past-time, not without its risks both physical and, as I shall go on to explain, financial. If you’re looking for a positive side to this nefarious activity, it does get you out in the fresh (ish) air.
A historical perspective.
Just in case there are some amongst you that through no fault of your own, have developed a romantic notion of the nature of street crime, based purely on the imagination and the number of movies you’ve seen, I think it only right to point out that street crime, has no root connection at all with what was once known as Highway Robbery, and the perpetrators of that particular crime, Highway Men.
Forget any romantic vision you might have concerning Lone Ranger type masks, three corned hats and flintlock pistols. This is total bullshit.
If you need some kind of historic connection before we can move on, then Street Crime is the bastard son of a union between the Footpad and the Cutpurse. It’s nasty, vicious and quick. There is no honour. Especially among Street Crime Thieves.
Apart from not owning a horse, the street criminal is a city guy.
He (for the sake of argument), is hardened by the concrete that surrounds him. He doesn’t have the manners or etiquette of the Highwayman.
He isn’t gonna kiss your hand, Although, and this is something to watch out for, he may cut it off to remove a ring.
NOTE. The street criminal is the lowest of the low and needs his balls ripped off.
However, putting personal opinion aside for a moment, if street crime looks like a good career move for you, then there are one or two considerations that should be taken into account before signing up.
Street crime by its very nature is, swift, uncoordinated and dangerous.
There is never time for careful planning and whatever the nature of the particular incident, usually takes place unexpectedly and on a whim, which is an obvious risk for both Robber and Robbee.
General expenses.
Apart from the initial outlay of the working clothes, (I think here mainly of balaclavas, stockings, sunglasses, false beards, wigs, gloves etc), there’s also the cost of tools to take into consideration.
For tools read weapons. An unfortunate reality but an absolute must in today’s violent society both for attack and defence.
Like it or not, a weapon is an essential item for the well prepared, would-be street bandit. It can range in scope from a large knobbly stick to a sharp implement to a powerful handgun. The last in this list being the Rolls Royce of any successful robber’s tool kit and obviously well above the budget of your average thief.
Even so the point must still be made…
…a good weapon, whether bought into play or not during the execution of the crime, is absolutely necessary if one is to strike fear into a potential victim and gain the psychological edge that is vitally important in street crime.
An edge that enables and is the whole point of the exercise, the handing over of the loot with the minimum of fuss.
Sadly, as stated above, guns do not come cheap, so many exponents of the street crime, (especially those who find sharp objects unsavoury), have to resort for various reasons to the knobbly stick option. An option that in some hardened criminals’ eyes, is pathetic and without doubt a blow to one’s street credibility …
——————————–
The truth is, if you choose to make robbery your life and a successful career, then you must be prepared to go fully and properly equipped or not bother at all. Be prepared. Steal a gun. Or a tank.
An important note. The golden rule.
It has to be understood by all who choose the Street Crime pathway that street crime comes most definitely under the…’not in my backyard’…rule.
Never, never, never, work your own doorstep.
Include your neighbours as your victims and well, if you’re from an area like mine, then you are dead meat.
In short, if it’s robbing that you intend to do, do yourself a favour and damn the expense. Catch a bus or a cab and take the undoubted risks on someone else’s territory.
Whatever you do, do not shit in your own nest.
Here endeth the lesson.
end.
The Devil’s weapon. A short Story.
As a young child and in the company of the nervous Irish woman who was charged to watch over me while my mother went off to work for the wealthy folks on the hill, I made many a reluctant pilgrimage to the cold stone edifice known as St. Mary’s.
It so happens that I was an ungrateful, bitter child who tested the patience of the poor Irish woman to extremes. In fact, so despicable a child was I, that today I often wonder if it was my outrageous and unrelenting misbehaviour, that made her nervous in the first place.
I was unhappy, angry and an ungrateful kid who never smiled.
But all that is beside the point.
This about St Mary’s and the monster that dwelt therein.
Whatever it is that you’re supposed to get from religion, it never rubbed off on me.
And for that I blame without any doubt, Father Way.
Anyway, as I was saying…
….at the start there was reluctance. But as is the case with many of the things that adults do, kids become used to it. They, (adults), are bigger than you for a start and have a lot of influence. Meaning they have control of the things that you may like in life.
So best to grit your teeth and go with the flow. Which I did.
After a while I mastered the skill of entering St Mary’s huge granite arch without cowering, at least too much. Don’t get me wrong. I still couldn’t wait to leave.
This regular trip into God’s refrigerator still provoked a feeling of dread. Especially when my replacement mother disappeared into the square wardrobe that stood in a particularly uninviting, unlit corner of the church.
When I asked her, (I did sometimes speak to her), where she was going, she would mumble and point at a pew.
’Never you mind. Sit there and be quiet’.
Her words echoed then evaporated into the dank air of St. Mary’s as I watched her disappear into the wardrobe, leaving me, my burning curiosity and my aching buttocks to the hard wooden seating.
Ten. Sometimes fifteen minutes would pass before she reappeared.
Her business finished, she would re-enter into the greyness red-faced, sweating and I swear sometimes a tear in her eye. It was always the same.
She would grab hold of my arm, pull me violently from my seat, then head towards the church’s heavy oak doors at high speed, dragging me behind her like an afterthought.
———————————————————–
I would lie awake at night trying to figure out why we walked in and ran out.
One thing I was sure of was, that we couldn’t have been running from God.
From what I’d been told about the guy it was at least at best, highly unlikely. OK, so he did have a what could only be called a violent past. But he also had a very effective son who came to clear up any bad publicity.
Also, God was extremely old and therefore unable to match the furious pace that we set in our race for the exit. No. After one or two bad mistakes usually involving something called ‘smiting’ He was now a reformed character. A good guy. A good guy who I’m glad to report, thanks to the influence of his own son, liked kids.
It was elimination that led me to one other. The bad one. The devil.
That was who we were running from. The devil.
I had evidence. I could prove it.
Once, when no-one was watching, I crawled along the pew, dropped down onto the stone floor and tip-toed towards the box in the corner. Using fingertips, I pried the door slightly open and peered in.
I saw the devil’s hand.
Pink and fleshy, I watched jaw-dropped as it poked through a tiny wooden window and fumbled its way down the front of the nervous Irish woman’s open blouse. No idle hands there.
The game was soon up.
Upon childlike questioning, the last I saw of my Irish mother was a mad stare and a high wind as she pushed past me and into the street. Gone forever.
I later learnt that there was a story. Gossip and innuendo more like it. But a story all the same. A story that answered some question but more importantly brought the grizzly episode to a conclusion.
The story went that my nervous Irish woman had, unbeknown by even those closest to her, been plagued all of her life by an unusually high libido (not that at the time ‘libido’ had any meaning to me. To be honest I thought it was one of those fancy board games).
After the episode that I had witnessed in St Mary’s she was, so the story continues, unable to live with the guilt that the affliction provided.
So she took the drastic step of removing herself from all temptation i.e. society, by joining a particularly ferocious order of silent and usually unseen nuns.
On the advice of the Mother Superior, who it’s said was afraid that the Irish woman’s ‘disease’ might be contagious, my poor put-upon Irish ‘mother’ was moved to a derelict caravan at the bottom of the Convent’s garden. It’s there they say, she lived out her new sex-free existence praying for forgiveness. Something the story goes on to say, she never received.
Why else would she take the plain leather belt that she wore too tightly around her waist, fix it from a door handle to her neck, then hang herself on a cold, dark, winter’s morning?
When I heard this story, true or not. I cried like the baby I no longer was.
It was then that my many memories, (some of them in retrospection, actually quite good), of my Irish replacement mother were rekindled over a fire of curiosity, frustration and guilt.
I found myself burning up with a desire to exact a kind of revenge on her behalf. Her death in my mind was not to go without serious comment.
I decided sometime after her passing, that it was the Confessional box devil who should and would carry the blame for my honorary mother’s early demise. It was he that should pay.
Lucifer as I now came to refer to him), the way I saw it, owed me an explanation.
So I worked up the courage for a re-visit to hell.
As I squeezed myself into what I now know was the Confessional and sat down on the small wooden seat, I trembled in the knowledge that in just a few short moments, I was to renew my loose acquaintance with the Prince of Darkness himself.
A door opened and closed.
Someone farted, then belched.
The screen wobbled slightly, and a wave of not too unpleasant whisky fumes drifted in my direction.
[I can tell you it was quite a relief to find that the devil, like me, enjoyed a drink or two].
A pair of red, watery eyes squinted at me from behind the screen and blinked twice.
There was moment of silence, (maybe even recognition?), before a voice bellowed out and filled the empty church with its fury.
‘All men and I don’t give a rat’s arse who they think they are, are destined to fall in love twice. Postman. Priest. Pope and Painter, it doesn’t matter. Twice. It can’t be helped and there’s no escape.’
Lucifer was Irish. He continued. Fast and furious.
‘And you needn’t think that you’ll get away with it young man because it’s set in celestial concrete. Twice. If it hasn’t happened yet then it’s just a matter of time. It’ll creep up on you and smack you in the gob.
Something else you need to know. It usually happens to mar an occasion. Just when you’re enjoying what you think is the happiest day of your life is the way it usually works. Oh yes it knows a good craic when it sees one. The day of your marriage for instance. What happens? You fall for a bridesmaid that’s what happens. You lust after the mother-in-law’. ‘Or. You suddenly realise you’re as gay as a goose and go for the best man. Whatever. It doesn’t matter’.
It sneaks up behind you, catches you out and fucks up your life forever. Just when you’re bedding down with the only one for you, up it pops and before you can say condom, you find yourself in the arms of someone you barely know, copulating yourself to death and watching any life or future happiness that you might have had, drop down the U bend and drift away for good’.
Even the devil has to take a breath.
It was the silence that bounced off the walls now.
Cue Old Nick.
‘In the end there’s only two things you can do. You can either lie back and enjoy it, going with the flow I think the expression is, or you can take the easy way out. Any questions?’
It had been my plan to take the devil on. I was to ask him if my eyes had deceived me all those years ago and if not, what on earth did he think he was doing with the Irish woman’s breast in his hand?
The screen fell away, and I found myself gazing into the gentlest face I had ever seen.
‘Don’t I know you?’ it puzzled.
A fine spray of whisky droplets settled on my face, and I breathed in deeply. I could smell the peat. I think I must have smiled again.
‘Something funny young man is it? Is it the bollocks you think I’m speaking?’
‘No Father.’
‘You know what I speak is the truth then?’
‘If you say so Father.’
‘Of course I damn well say so. And don’t be so bloody patronising or I’ll thump the living daylights out your head. And don’t think that I’m treating you special either. I warn all my young men’.
‘I tell them all the same thing. Just be careful with the devil’s weapon that swings between your legs and all will be well. Heed my words and watch out. Don’t let it get a hold on you. Tighten your belt and zip or button your fly. Otherwise you’re a dead man. Like me. A dead man.’
‘You Father?’
I must have sounded surprised. He glared at me before launching another broadside.
‘A man will do anything to survive. Even become a Priest. But there’s no escape. When the desire gets you there’s no hope believe me. When the blood starts to pump and you feel the ducks flying up your arse that’s it, you’ve had it.
The poor man smitten will live in a perpetual agony of lust and desire. Of wanting and refusing and wanting again. It’s a bastard believe me. And there’s no respite. Age doesn’t help; it just makes it worse.
A continual state of confusion and pain is the best to be expected.
A veritable veil of tears will descend upon him, and he will not know Monday from Tuesday. Or in my case, Sunday too. In other words my son, you-are-fucked.
The sleeping pills and the razor blades will never be that far away and even the gravel-pitted front of the two-thirty diesel to the main station will look almost inviting. Although, I have to say, personally speaking, death by train has no appeal. I would much prefer the seventh floor of the local multi-storey car park. Not the sixth floor or the eighth-floor mind you, it has to be the seventh. The sixth is too low and could well result in brain damage which is not required and the eighth is too high. Jump from that height and you’ll spread yourself all over the tarmac like so much strawberry jam, which is unfair on those whose work it is to clean up the mess wouldn’t you say? The seventh to be sure.
So far I haven’t found the courage, although I’ve got my parking space booked, and I hope to be using the facility sooner rather than later. ‘
His voice dropped. I recognised despair.
He mumbled. ‘I can’t take much more of this’.
Neither could I. He had hit the spot.
And I panicked.
I can remember slamming the door of the Confessional and the repeating echo as I ran for the exit. It was like old times. The only thing missing was my Irish woman pulling my arm from its socket. The devil priest had scared the living daylights out of me again. Yet. Yet, I knew I would be back. He had caste his net and I had been caught.
Imagine. A priest who told it how it was. Now there’s a turn up for the book.
End
Fat Freddie’s last stand. A short story.
According to the radio reports they found Fat Freddie’s head in Left Luggage.
It was wrapped in a newspaper and stuffed in a cheap leatherette sports bag.
At first, the police (in their wisdom) thought they were dealing with the brutal murder of a woman and put out press releases to that effect, together with a description that not wishing to put too fine a point on it, placed emphasis on the belief that the deceased was a er…a night person, you know…a hooker. This brilliant piece of deduction was based entirely around the fact that Fat Freddie’s face happened to be caked in a heavy layer of bright and gaudy makeup and was wearing a cheap pair of paste earrings.
It wasn’t until they found Freddie’s missing piece in a trunk at lost property that they realised they were dealing with a male victim. Of course by then it was too late.
When the police finally admitted their mistake, there was an immediate outcry from a large number of women’s groups all furious at the police assumptions and the instant judgment bought down on those innocent women who happen to like their makeup applied with a trowel.
The only reason I mention all this brouhaha is because the resulting public pressure led to the immediate dismissal of the detective in charge, who, by strange coincidence was another old friend of mine (and as bad luck would have it, of Fat Freddie’s too), ‘Smells Warburton’.
Poor ‘Smells’, he couldn’t have been wearing his glasses when he examined the head because he knew Fat Freddie as well as I did. Anyway, scratch one copper and one promising career, sacrificed on the altar of political correctness and the public’s desire to see results.
NOTE: As one of the ‘old gang’ who attempted to forsake and eliminate his past life, ‘Smells’, became to us a blatant traitor, a person non grata. His sudden and hopefully painful fall from grace (a cop?) was in our eyes, well deserved, so in remembering our old friend, Fat Freddie, we won’t mention the pig’s name again].
Anyway…
Although I hadn’t seen Fat Freddie for what seemed an age, it was common knowledge that the big city had been ‘good’ to him.
Acquaintances, family members and anyone who had cause to venture away from the neighbourhood and into the metropolis, would regularly send reports of Fat Freddie sightings.
And news of his onward and upward rise into notoriety quickly spread.
I once actually caught a glimpse of ‘Queen Freddie’ as he came to be known, waving from the balcony above his infamous club, called, yeah you guessed it, ‘Freddies’, as though he was born to royalty.
In fact, if my memory serves me right, he was wearing an ermine cloak over a glittering ball gown, topped off with a diamond and ruby tiara. No surprise there…typical Freddie.
It was a publicity stunt of course and was on TV, so much to my regret our eyes didn’t meet, and I didn’t get to return the regal wrist movement.
Fat Freddie done good.
Life was fantastic for him and from what I heard, he felt so pleased with himself that he felt the time was now right to go the whole hog and have… the operation.
Unfortunately, it was not to be, somebody, somewhere, had other ideas. Poor Fat Freddie, his head was not the part he wanted removed.
Moving on…
After the piecing together of the body came the piecing together of a few startling, facts.
Gleaned from tabloid newspaper articles and of course the word on the street, dark secrets concerning Freddie’s life began to emerge and let me tell you, what was revealed was quite a surprise, even to me.
Although most of Freddie’s old friends knew he had the devil in him and at times could be a naughty boy/girl, when the heavy stuff was published it was quite a shock.
It turned out that as well as the club, there was the gambling, there was the prostitution, the protection, the numbers rackets, the drugs and the gun running, etc, etc.
Freddie had more pies than fingers.
Fat Freddie was a very busy man who, apart from being a bona fide Mister Big, was also (and this was the bit I could not swallow), an established and effective hit man.
In other words, my gentle-wouldn’t-say-boo-to-a-goose-faint-at-the-sight-of-blood-or-a spider-in-the-bath-friend, was a killer.
AND, so they say, a very nasty one to boot. My old pal Fat Freddie was an assassin who took great pleasure in his work.
—————————————————-
It seems that over the years Fat Freddie had been responsible in one way or another for the vicious murders of over twenty fellow human beings and was, ‘in the frame’, (a cop expression), for a dozen more.
I have to admit that when I heard all this I refused to accept it. And dismissed it all as jealousy-fuelled bullshit and just another way of bringing a successful man down.
For one thing, I wondered how any person could find the hours in the day to murder all those people, especially with all the other dubious going-ons that were supposedly being engaged in, and besides, I still couldn’t imagine Fat Freddie harming a fly.
I swore I’d reserve judgement until the day I died and then I’d ask him myself. Fat Freddie, an assassin? No way. Not in my book.
In the days that followed the grisly discovery of Fat Freddie’s body parts, our neighbourhood crawled with people from the press, all wanting special insights into Freddie’s past life.
For the price of a meal or a drink they would bribe the likes of me in search of an exclusive, a scoop, a certain something that would allow them a starting point for their lies and fabrications. I could see the headlines…
The neighbourhood that bred a killer.
More where he came from?
We were having none of that.
In our neighbourhood we stick together.
Dead or otherwise Fat Freddie was, and always would be, one of us. We had nothing to say.
In fact, we kicked the pen-pushers out of town. They scuttled off back to their rats’ nests with their tails between their legs, empty-handed and disappointed but, as we were all well aware, safe in the knowledge that they could, and would, print whatever they damn well liked.
By the time the funeral came around a lot more facts about dear old Fat Freddie’s lifestyle had come to light, thanks mainly to the return to the neighbourhood of our own, our very own disgraced policeman, ‘Smells’ Warburton himself.
And my God did he tell us (after some suitable retributions were carried out – the less said about that, the better) some tales.
‘Smells’ was the font of all knowledge, an expert on all things Fat Freddie.
When he began to regale us with the terrible and vivid word pictures of my fat friend’s illegal activities, I knew instantly what it meant when writers write of something being, spine chilling.
So horrible and ghastly (shocking?) were ‘Smells’ accounts of F F’s activities and past times, I do not feel the need to commit them to paper.
One, because I find it all hard to believe and two, I might write a book one day.
Needless to say, there was one chapter in Fat Freddie’s encyclopaedia of Murder and Mayhem that did make me sit up and smile in that sickening and self-satisfied smug manner that I so dislike in others.
An episode that made me clench my fist and punch the air like the football supporter that I’ll never be.
I’ll make it short and… very, very, sweet.
Herman ‘Sticky’ Leach was a successful banker.
He lived in an area of the city where all the successful bankers lived, an area we called in our jealousy, ‘Cashville’.
Encased in a huge house and surrounded by lush lawns, Herman led a very privileged and comfortable life alongside his loving wife and eight children. He was a picture of respectability and living proof that it was possible to find your way in life no matter where it was you started from. And for a guy who started out next door to me, Herman Leach had done very well indeed.
Even in those distant days when we were kids, ’Sticky’ Leach had influence and power.
Before he became a blimp of a banker, Herman was a big boy who used his muscle to his advantage and who can blame him? That was the only real way to survive where we lived.
Inevitably, Herman the thug moved on to greater things and became a gang-member rising swiftly through the ranks to what else but, gang leader.
I’m now going to cut this already shortened story to economy size because it hurts me too much to hold back the facts for any longer than necessary. I’m bursting. I’m dying to tell you…
I’m dying to tell you that Herman Leach was one of those lowlifes who set a torch to Jaycee.
He was one of those who, after serving his time for the said crime, moved on and never came home.
As it was and as far as we know, away from the neighbourhood that Herman’s life took a turn for the better and he began a swift rise up the social ladder, which doesn’t mean he became a window cleaner.
Heaven knows how he made his cash, but it doesn’t seem to have taken him that long to become President of his own bank.
A bank that made a speciality of dealing with the entrepreneur, the guy who had a dream but no cash. Cue Fat Freddie.
It was in the stars. Fat Freddie was a man with a dream…
Fat Freddie’s Holy Grail was to own a place of his own. A place where he could show off. And what better than a night club.
Centre of attraction,
Queen Bee.
He’d wanted that when he was a kid, and it never went away.
Herman Leach’s bank was the doorway. The fulfilment of the dream.
And there was nothing wrong with that. It was (unusually), all above board and legal.
It was Fat Freddie’s recurring nightmare that caused the problems.
No-one knew but every night, (according to ‘Smells’ Warburton’s files on the case), poor Fat Freddie’s sleep pattern would explode into a vivid picture of Jaycee burning like he was in hell.
So awful was the content of this regular nightmare that it drove Fat Freddie to seek professional help, help that was forthcoming but not, unfortunately, successful.
To combat these night terrors and the dreadful and ongoing insomnia that accompanied them, Fat Freddie, not surprisingly, took that well-trodden road to drug and drink dependency. In a relatively short time the bottle and the pill joined forces, stole his identity and left a facsimile in his place.
The Fat Freddie that all of us loved and respected was lost and gone forever.
But, somehow, and God only knows how, Fat Freddie persevered and refused to let go of the one good thing he had left, his night club dream.
Battling against the odds my pal Freddie dug deep and miraculously found the energy and wherewithal to continue to follow his own yellow brick road.
Boy did he want that club.
There was no stopping him. And it wasn’t long before all that was needed was the icing on the cake. A few hundred thousand. Confetti. Dressing, that’s all.
According to ‘Smells’ there are no official records documenting Freddie and Herman’s first meeting, although the man who served the drinks on that fateful day, swears he saw a strange far away look take root in Fat Freddie’s eyes as he pulled up a chair and gazed across the vast expanse of oak desk into Herman’s steely blues.
If Fat Freddie did recognise Herman at that moment, (and I think he did), the memories were not shared.
Herman Leach made no sign that this was a fat face from a past that he would rather forget, far from it, the deal was done in record time and Fat’s got his money and dream.
The club opened and as we now know, went on to become a hugely popular and financial success.
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Two months later as Herman Leach mowed his luscious lawn a car drew level.
A window rolled silently down, and an angry someone threw a container full of a highly flammable liquid in Herman’s direction.
The container found its target and burst, soaking a very surprised Herman Leach to the skin.
Herman Leach stood in his garden for a moment and watched the car disappear into the distance, probably trying to figure out which of his many well-heeled clientele he had pissed off that week.
It would have been a good idea right there and then to go inside the house and phone the police but, Herman Leach for all his acquired softness was not a man who scared easily.
He must have heard the car skid to a halt, turn and begin its return journey.
For reasons best known to himself he chose to stand his ground.
An eyewitness told the police later that Herman Leach actually approached the car as it came to a skidding halt outside his house.
According to ‘Smells’, the eyewitness thought she heard someone call, something on the lines of,
‘…for Jaycee’.
Herman Leach then did something very strange.
He smiled…
…and incredibly, walked towards the car.
He was two, maybe three feet from the vehicle when someone flicked a cigar butt.
Herman ignited immediately and without so much as a murmur, he walked back towards his house, aflame.
‘Like’…in the words of the eyewitness ‘like he was on an afternoon stroll’.
Remind you of someone?
When the emergency services eventually arrived there wasn’t a lot left.
A smouldering corpse.
Tyre marks on the road.
And one cheap paste earring, that lay like a discarded calling card on the scorched grass.
end.