Magnificent Joe (3 page)

Gary got closer to the water's edge. Jim closed his eyes.

‘Here, Martin, the fucking beck is full of lager.'

‘Look, just fuck off, will you.' Mac burst to his feet and began to stride towards Gary, but Martin stuck out his leg. Mac tripped and fell headlong.

‘Watch where you're walking, mate,' said Martin casually.

‘Look at this.' Gary was walking back towards them, with a dripping can of lager clenched in his fist.

Mac pushed himself up onto one knee and looked Gary in the eye. ‘Get off 'em, you cunt.'

‘What did you call me?'

‘You fucking heard,' hissed Mac, and got to his feet.

‘OK,' said Gary with a smile. ‘I'll get off 'em.' Then he brought up his arm, twisted his body, and threw the full can of lager straight into Mac's face.

The can exploded in a shower of foam and Mac's head flicked back on his shoulders. He weaved for a moment, then his legs went and he fell to his hands and knees. Blood poured down his face.

There was silence.

‘Fucking hell, Gary,' Martin breathed.

Jim glanced at the other two. Barry was looking away; Geoff was plain rigid with fear. Jim stood up.

‘Do you want some?' said Gary.

Jim cocked his head as if he were considering this and then said to Martin, ‘Is your mate offering me a blowjob? I didn't realize he was that way inclined.'

‘You little fucker.' And Gary rushed at him.

Jim ducked and slipped under Gary's reach. Gary skidded into a turn and Jim danced backwards and away. He felt bright and fast. ‘Come on, sweetheart,' he cooed. ‘If you catch me, you can bum me.'

Now Gary roared out loud and came on like a bull. Jim dodged him again. Gary just managed to stop himself from running into the beck; his feet skittered dust and stones into the water. Gary turned, but this time Jim didn't skip away. He was waiting with his best straight right – the one he'd seen in all the western saloon brawls – and he unwound it straight into Gary's head.

Gary splashed down hard on his back in the shallow water and there was a loud crack from somewhere. Jim was shouting now, ‘Have that! Have that, you fucker!' He walked into the water and stood over Gary, and saw the smoky cloud of blood gather around Gary's head. It billowed and ribboned out down the stream. Gary shuddered and twitched, and finally someone was shouting, ‘Get an ambulance! Get an ambulance!'

I step out of my door. The day is clear but cold. I need a coat. I lay my tool bag on the step and go back inside. In the kitchen, the light is murky, diffused through the blinds I haven't opened. I can't see my jacket slung over the back of any chairs or lying on the floor, so I pick my way to the cupboard under the stairs and fumble inside for the light switch. The light comes on, uncomfortably bright, and as my vision returns, I see my jacket hanging limply on its hook. I grab it, slap off the light switch with the flat of my hand, and leave the house.

Standing on the step, I pull on the jacket and heft up my battered and over-full tool bag. For the job in hand, I don't need all this stuff, but it's better to be prepared in case you discover some problem, or fuck up and have to repair your own mistake. And there's always plenty to do at Mrs Joe's house. I didn't enlist for this responsibility, and I don't do it out of the goodness of my heart. I inherited it from my father. Carrying on the good work is the only thing I can do for him
now.

At the kerb, I stop by the car. The wing mirror is askew; probably some drunk walked into it on his way home last night. I consider twisting it back into position, but am overcome by the futility of the gesture. Anyway, I decide to
walk.

We call this place a village, but it could just as easily be a small town. The main road cuts right through from west to east and the village follows it, long and thin, as two parallel lines of redbrick houses broken here and there with convenience stores, newsagents, and takeaways. There is no real centre, but the library and the post office are next door to each other, so I suppose that counts as one. If you were driving through on your way to somewhere else, that's pretty much all you would see, except for the
park.

Behind the road, on either side, there are terraced rows of old tied housing, built a century ago for the men who worked the now long-gone mine. Those streets are narrow, and when you walk down them, the houses loom in and you feel almost as if you are underground. We all grew up in these terraces – Geoff and Mac next door to each other, and Barry and me on the two streets either side of theirs – but none of us lives there now. Mac doesn't even live in the village anymore. We never see him these
days.

Then there are the two council estates, one on either side of the village. I live in the one to the south. They were built in the 1960s, when the local factories and engineering firms were still in business. A good one-third of these houses are boarded up now, sheets of metal over the windows and doors. The council estates and the terraces blend into each other at the edges, but the modern developments – of which there are three or four – stand apart by design. They're turned in on themselves – all closes and cul-de-sacs – as enclaves of relative wealth for people like Barry and Geoff who have trades, and the others who do God knows what desk jobs in Teesside, Sunderland, and Newcastle. Maybe I would live in one of those houses now, if it hadn't been for the conviction. More likely, though, I would be miles from
here.

But here I am, and there's a quality in the light today. Every object seems precisely defined as if embossed on the world: mountain ash, rhododendron, iron railings, paving slabs, chip trays, dog shit. I tramp past it all, out of the estate and along the main road, where cars glide past me, breaking up the morning sun and throwing it back in glints of silver. A bus thunders by, leaving me and a gap-toothed parade of shops in its sooty wake. Twice I have to veer round pools of last night's vomit, splattered on the flags.

I fork off at the lane, into relative peace. Some modern houses back onto it with their panel fences, but it is a half-hearted encroachment, and after a while they stop abruptly where the scrubby grazing begins. A pair of stocky horses stand quite still. The lane bends, bridging a beck to run parallel to the old train line. A hedge shadows the road, so here and there the potholes still have a sugar-pane of ice. My arm aches from carrying the tool
bag.

Mrs Joe's house is at the end of an isolated terrace of railway cottages. Of course, there was once a station nearby, but this is now nothing more than some suggestive bumps in a field where sheep graze. The houses are Victorian, well built, and must be worth quite a bit. I'm sure Mrs Joe knows this, but I'm equally sure that she doesn't
care.

I go round the back and knock. There's a shuffling from within. After some time, during which I studiously avoid noticing that the wall is water-damaged and needs repointing, Mrs Joe opens
up.

‘Morning. I've come to fix that lino for
you.'

‘Come in, son.' Mrs Joe smiles tiredly.

There are breakfast smells in her kitchen, but the evidence has been cleared away. There is no sign of neglect in her housekeeping. The offending linoleum curls up in the corner of the room. I hope that no damp has spread under the rest of
it.

‘Would you like a cup of
tea?'

‘Not yet. I'll get to work first.' I kneel and begin to peel back the lino, which comes away with unhappy ease. Clearly it is completely fucked and there's barely any point in trying to stick it down again. ‘How are you?' I ask Mrs
Joe.

‘Oh, fine apart from the usual complaints.'

‘Joe not here?'

‘He's gone out walking.'

It was a pointless question: Joe plods the local footpaths for hours every day. Maybe he has a plan – a timetable of routes that he follows – but it's not one I've ever fathomed. He just appears here, there, or anywhere – shoulders hunched, hands thrust into coat pockets. He has been this way for as long as I can remember. Once, people would recognize him and give him the odd wave or very occasional jeer, but these days, nobody knows him. Perhaps they assume he's a tramp.

I fold the loose lino all the way over on itself and weigh it down with my tool bag. Mrs Joe stands at the other side of the room, watching me. ‘Is it
bad?'

‘Aye. We'll just have to do our best.'

‘You sound like your father. “Do our best.” That's what he always said.'

I rummage in my tool bag for a scraper with which to remove some of the old adhesive.

‘He used to do bits for me too, you know, after my Johnny died.'

‘Aye, I know.'

‘That's right, you came with him sometimes.'

‘I did,' I say, and feel as if I've been shown a photograph of myself that I don't remember posing for. ‘It was a long time
ago.'

‘It only seems that way to you.' She stands there, one claw-like hand resting on the work surface, and looks down at me. She probably remembers a lot of things.

Mrs Joe was almost a surrogate mother to my father. He had no parents of his own, or any other family. He grew up in a children's home, and when that was over, he got a job as a trainee welder, where Johnny – Mrs Joe's husband – was his foreman. One day, Johnny cottoned on that my dad had no tea to go home to and brought him here. It was because of this relationship that my dad eventually moved to the village, where he met my mother. I suppose I have Mrs Joe's cooking to thank for my existence.

Of course, this was back in the 1960s, before Johnny died, when Mrs Joe was just Mrs Sally Briggs. Before there was nothing left to define her life but her idiot
son.

I turn back to my work, but the scraper proves ineffectual. I need solvent. It doesn't really matter. The lino, like almost everything else in this house, is well past it. There is no point in sticking it down again, but there's equally no point in replacing it. Mrs Joe is old, can't afford it, and in a couple of years this house will be occupied by some Audi driver who will put tiles down anyway. Best bodge it, then. I am prepared for this eventuality – I pull out a tube of strong glue I nicked from work a few weeks ago and hack off the nozzle with my knife.

‘Is that special lino glue?'

‘Er…not really, Mrs Joe. It's…all purpose.'

‘Is it going to work?'

Of course it's going to work. I pity the poor bastard who has to scrape this shite
off.

‘Aye, there's no doubt about that. You sometimes have to be a bit creative when you're dealing with the older houses.' I try to sound like I know my stuff as I ram the tube into my caulk gun with authority.

‘Not everything in here's shagged out,
son.'

I feel the tight heat of a smile like the first crease across dried-out Monday-morning boot leather. ‘Oh, aye, there's plenty of life in the old place
yet.'

‘Don't you forget
it.'

‘No danger of that, Mrs
Joe.'

I twist to face her again; she looks less tired now. She smiles back at me. ‘Well, you're better mannered than he was, despite it
all.'

‘Who?'

‘Your
dad.'

‘Oh.'

‘You look like
him.'

‘What?'

‘You
do.'

Her eyes are focused elsewhere. I realize that she is seeing something in the past as if there were nothing between then and now. I have to turn away from her and stare at the exposed floor. A white slug lands right in front of me with a faint
putt
. Glue. I glance at the caulk gun in my right hand. I must have squeezed the handle; the stuff oozes from the nozzle like thick, plastic toothpaste. The spot on the floor resolves itself into a shallow dome the size of a tuppence and I feel stupid.

‘Yeah, I know.'

She is quiet now. In my hand, a longing stirs at the fingers and ripples up my arm, in one of those strange urges for a cigarette that suddenly come from nowhere even though I gave up two years ago. It was the best thing I ever
did.

—

After her moment of reverie, Mrs Joe went and sat in the living room while I stuck down the lino. In the end, it didn't take me very long, but when I looked in on her, she was asleep. So much for my cup of tea. There was no sign of Joe and I left quietly, but I didn't want to go home, so I left my bag just inside the gate and set off the wrong
way.

I tramp over the fields. This path is familiar to me, but it must be years since I last walked along it. I'm not a big walker, and I don't have any of the other reasons – a dog, someone to walk with, or a place at the other end where I need to be – so I've never really been out here again. When we were kids, though, me, Geoff, Barry, and Mac used to play out here all the time. At least, that's the way I remember
it.

The field is pasture and a little boggy, so I can see footprints on the path. I didn't come looking for solitude, or even expect it, but the evidence of human activity hauls me into the present. The cold wind blusters around my face and cuts through my jeans. Two fields ahead of me looms a large stand of trees, and I see that although I set off with no particular destination in mind, I am walking to the ponds. I stop. From horizon to horizon unbroken grey cloud flows across the sky, but I feel that it will not rain, so instead of turning back, I carry
on.

It doesn't take me long to cover the distance to the copse. I follow the path through the trees and then I'm there. The surface of the water is covered in dead leaves; sycamore and oak spread out flat and slick in an oily yellow skin. Even with this wind the place smells strongly of their decay. Surrounded by bare trees, all the omens are of death, but I know that really the pond is alive; I used to come here as a kid to collect frogspawn.

Through a break in the leaves, I see that there is something in the water: a bicycle. I can't understand how or why anyone brought a bike out here. Any way you come you'd have to lift it over stiles, ride across broken ground; it would be quicker to walk. I move the leaves away with a stick. It's a child's bike and the story becomes obvious: nicked from a smaller kid and dumped when it wasn't funny anymore. I wonder if I could get it out of there and I stretch out further with the stick, but I can't quite reach
it.

‘What are you doing?'

Words from behind me. I almost lose my balance and plunge into the water, but manage to drop the stick and flap my arms until I can stand up straight. I turn round and it's Laura, Geoff's wife, with her ash-blonde hair whipping in the
wind.

‘Uh…there's a bike in the water.'

‘It's been there for ages.'

‘Oh. Really?'

‘I see it every time I come down here. God knows what else is in there. It's kids, isn't it?' She shrugs and looks at me with her head cocked to one side. I notice that she's properly dressed – stout shoes, fleece jacket – and quite clearly came out for the specific purpose of ‘taking a walk'.

‘Is Geoff with
you?'

‘It's Saturday morning. He's on the sofa watching cartoons and nursing his hangover.'

‘Oh. OK. You're just having a walk?'

‘Yep.'

‘Your usual route?'

‘Well, it's the closest thing to a beauty spot there is around here. Are you going to interrogate me all morning?'

‘No, sorry. Just surprised to see anyone, that's all.' In the distance I hear the faint crack of an air rifle – probably someone after rabbits. ‘Sounds like we're not the only ones, though.'

She starts to walk along the path and passes me – closely – as if she expects me to fall into step beside her. Without thinking I do just that and we amble alongside the edge of the pond. It's not a big body of water, but it's big enough to take a few minutes to get round, and she's walking slowly.

‘What's your excuse, anyway?'

‘What?'

‘For being out here. Geoff says you don't do anything except read and go to the
pub.'