Magnificent Joe (7 page)

Ahead of us, I can see the back of a pedestrian as he walks down the street: shopping bag in hand, heavy gait, and slight stoop. It can only be
Joe.

‘Pull over, Barry, I'll walk from here.'

He doesn't argue. ‘Suit yourself.'

‘I will.'

The van stops and we are still some way behind Joe. If I walk slowly at first, Barry will have driven off before I catch up with Joe, and won't see us. I needn't have worried, though. Barry is away the moment I slide the door shut. I set off briskly and draw up with
Joe.

‘All right, Joe?' He turns his head towards me, then looks ahead again. He doesn't stop or slow down. He's on a mission.

‘Hello,' he says. Not without warmth, but he's obviously concentrating on other things.

‘Been running errands?'

‘Aye.'

‘How's that lino?'

‘It's magnificent.'

‘Glad to hear it. Your mam all right?'

‘My mother has a bad back, arthritis, and diabetes. If she turns blue, I've to call an ambulance.'

‘Good plan. What's diabetes?' I can't resist, and anyway, his mother does it too. You have to laugh occasionally or it would be a hard
slog.

‘It's when your body can't digest cake.'

‘That's shite. What does she eat instead?'

‘Weetabix.'

‘Right. It looks the same when it comes out, you know.'

Joe chuckles. Shit jokes: they never
fail.

‘She got stuck on the toilet. I had to wipe her
bum.'

‘Fuck.' I'm genuinely horrified. I stop walking. Joe carries on. I trot back up to him. ‘Can't she get a nurse or something?'

‘The council says she has to sell the house first. She doesn't want
to.'

‘Oh, right.' We're passing the pub. ‘Fancy a pint?'

‘I've got to take the shopping home.'

‘Righto.' We keep walking. ‘Joe, do you remember when I was little?'

‘Aye, I saw you the first day you came home from the hospital.'

‘Really?'

‘Aye, my mam was cooking for your dad while you were getting born. You were a canny little baby.'

‘What else do you remember?'

‘Loads. I've wiped your bum
too.'

‘Oh. Well, I hope I took the opportunity to shit on you while I still could.' Fucking hell – Joe has changed my nappy. No wonder I can't use the urinal with other men next to
me.

‘You're a dirty bugger.' This is said with a vehemence that surprises
me.

‘It's not me, it's society.'

‘That's mumbo-jumbo, that.'

I laugh a little. ‘Well, if I've turned out scum, it's your fault for buying me all that beer when I was a
kid.'

Joe lurches to a halt and turns on me fiercely. ‘Shhh! Don't tell! Don't ever tell them anything! They'll send me to prison!'

Shit. It's been a long time since I've seen Joe have an episode, but I can sense that one is impending. To the unaware, they explode like a bomb blast on a busy street. You have to be firm and sound like you know what you're talking about. I fix him with the best direct look I can muster. His eyes are wide open, and a thick string of saliva, launched from his furious mouth, hangs across his chin. He looks like an angry child in the body of a fifty-something
man.

‘Jesus, Joe! Calm down, man. No one's sending you to prison.' Not quite the calm authority I was aiming
for.

‘They would if they knew.' His eyes bulge and the muscles in his neck stand out; his face is turning
red.

‘No. Joe, look, you don't go to prison for that sort of thing. It's not a serious offence.'

‘It got you into trouble!' Joe breathes hard and stares at me. ‘Big trouble!'

‘That was nothing to do with you. You weren't even there.'

‘You were drunk because of
me.'

‘No, Joe, I wasn't drunk.' We face each other. Joe is close to me and I can smell his breath. It's
bad.

‘You weren't?'

‘No, I wasn't. And nobody cares about that anymore. Come on, mate. Forget about it. You're all right.'

Joe seems to relax, and roughly wipes up the spit with the back of his
hand.

‘You're not lying?' he asks quietly.

‘No, Joe. I can't lie to you.' There's an aching void where my stomach should be and I identify the feeling as guilt.

We're at the point where I would turn off to go home, but I don't. I walk him all the way to the top of the lane that runs behind the terrace.

He stops and says, ‘You coming to the fireworks with me this year?'

‘Course. We always go. What time do they start?'

‘Seven. It says on the poster.'

‘Well then, I'll see you there.'

He grins. ‘Magnificent!'

‘They'd better be: I put a fiver in the collection. G'night, mate.'

I watch him recede into the darkness towards his back yard and then hear him grunt past the old car, but I wait for the sound of the kitchen door closing behind him before I
go.

It's 5 November – it falls on a Friday this year – and some of the blokes are discussing it at lunchtime when Mac looks up from a pot of rhubarb yoghurt and asks us, ‘They still do a display up the Admiral, right?'

‘Aye,' says Geoff. ‘It's not a bad 'un either.'

‘Well, I'll pop along after work, then. Have a few beers. For old times' sake, like.'

‘I won't be around,' says Barry. ‘I'm taking the kids to the big display at the arena.'

Normally, he would say something like that the way a condemned man might say, ‘I'm being shot at dawn,' but right now he sounds quite pleased with himself.

‘Never mind. We'll manage without you, won't we, lads?'

Judging by Mac's smile, he doesn't expect Geoff or me to disagree with him. Cheeky bastard. I'm tempted to tell him I have other plans – just to be awkward – but Geoff gets in first and says, ‘I'm supposed to be going with Laura.'

‘Then bring her along, son. It's ages since I've seen her, and we could do with a bit of eye candy.'

‘Mind how you go,' I say. ‘He gets jealous.'

‘I bloody don't.'

‘Well, he's definitely a lucky man,' says Mac, with a wink. He turns to me. ‘I suppose you're still single?'

‘Yes, I am, thank you,
Mac.'

He takes a big toke on his cigar, leans back in his chair, and through an almighty curtain of smoke utters, ‘
Ploo sa chonge
, son.
Ploo sa chonge
.'

—

Later, I'm changing into a decent shirt in preparation for going down to the pub when there's a knock on the door. Who the hell is that? Then I remember. ‘Shit.' I go down and answer
it.

‘All right,
Joe.'

‘It's Bonfire Night!'

‘I know.'

He stands there and watches me like a dog that thinks it's going for a walk. He's got his wellies
on.

‘Put your coat on. It's cold.'

‘All right, just give us a minute.'

I wrap up and then we walk down to the pub together. I feel a bit anxious about Mac and Geoff. It's not that I'm ashamed to be seen with Joe – although he can be an embarrassment – but it isn't the best mix of personalities. My phone beeps with a new text; apparently, they're already in the pub. Oh well. With any luck, they won't see Joe and me in the crowd, and I can join them inside after the display is over and Joe has
gone.

When we arrive, the bonfire is alight, but the fireworks haven't started yet. People still trickle out of the pub's side door, across the car park, and onto the piece of wasteland where the fire burns. Beyond the wasteland is the old factory, a black hulk of shadows. The firelight licks at it and reveals ripples of crumbling brick, shattered glass and the straight edge of an asbestos roof. Joe doesn't say anything to me. That's the good thing about him: he doesn't need conversation like some people. If you shut up, he will
too.

A few metres away, I see a couple standing together. At first, I think they're strangers – the firelight keeps the shadows mottled and moving on their faces – but then I realize that I know them both from school. They're called Mick and Donna, and I used to fancy her in a distant and thankfully unnoticed way. Geoff fancied her too, but being the ever-hopeful sort, he was far too obvious about it and all her friends ridiculed him. Barry said he had heard she was a slag, so Geoff should just wait for her after school and do her in the bushes. And Barry was the first of us to find a wife. Jesus.

I didn't even know Mick and Donna were an item, but that's the way of things: lives just diverge, even in the same village. I haven't spoken to either of them for years. They happen to look towards me and I give them a smile and a nod, but the gesture just melts away without making the connection. I realize that they don't recognize me. Maybe they've both forgotten entirely the fact of my existence, and I find this possibility a source of perverse optimism.

The flames catch the Guy's feet, but no one really watches; he's not the main event. More people are coming out now, some grip hot dogs, hamburgers, and pints of beer. Wrapped-up kiddies hold little bottles of pop with brightly coloured straws, while teenagers shiver in their tracksuits. A tap on my shoulder. I look round and it's Laura.

‘Oh.'

‘Hello, you,' she
says.

‘Hello.' No sign of Geoff and
Mac.

‘They're indoors,' she tells me. ‘Already well away. They'll be watching through the window at this rate.'

‘Can't say I blame them. It's perishing out here.'

She holds up her hands and wiggles her mitten-clad fingers at me. ‘Mac's still as loud as ever.'

‘Oh, you noticed that, did
you?'

‘It's hard to miss.'

‘He's a sound bloke, he's just…'

‘An enormous gobshite?'

‘…forceful in his personality.'

I don't hear her response to that, because Joe nudges me in the ribs and hisses, ‘Is that your girlfriend?'

‘No. Shut
up.'

She turns to face him. ‘Hello,
Joe.'

‘Oh.' Recognition floods his face. ‘You're Laura, big fat Geoff's wife.'

I step on his foot, but just get the void at the end of his welly.

She laughs. ‘That's right.'

I stand between Joe and Laura, and we wait for the display to start. The crowd is tense now, and expectant. Then, with a sudden whoosh, three rockets score parallel lines of fire and smoke into the sky. They burst hard in the air above us and bloom into great, incandescent carnations.

‘That's magnificent, that.'

‘Aye, Joe, it's magnificent.'

As the light fades, Joe turns and beams at me, and then says, as if the pyrotechnic thrill has just jogged his memory, ‘I'm in the panto!'

Joe takes part in the local pantomime every year, and every year, without exception, he plays the back end of the horse. It was his mother's doing; she could sew costumes and presumably Joe's involvement was part of the bargain. He's been a fixture of the event ever since, and no one has the heart to kick him out
now.

‘That's great, Joe. I'll come and see you.' I even manage to smile at him, but he keeps looking at me like he has something else to say. At that moment, the display begins in earnest and I turn my attention back to the night sky. It's full of gold and red, and the thuds are so loud that I feel them right through the soles of my shoes. I stuff my hands into my pockets and give myself over to the light and sound, but then Joe is saying something that I can't make out. ‘You what?'

He leans close. ‘I said you'd build the
set.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘The set for the panto!'

I skid back into the reality of cold night, acrid smoke, and damp feet. ‘Why the fuck did you do that?'

‘Mr Green had a stroke. He can't even lift a hammer.'

Mr Green. He was my games and geography teacher at school. He retired when I was in third form, but I remember him well – principally for his insistence that we refer to rugby as football, and football as association football, and the fact that he hated small boys. He was also the mainstay of the village pantomime. He built the sets and did most of the hard work, and I imagine that having a stroke has somewhat curtailed
this.

‘You dickhead, Joe. That's the last thing I need.'

‘All right, keep your hair on. Mr Green's still in charge, like. He says you won't have to use your brain, just your muscles.'

‘Thanks. That makes it all better.' Too late I remember Joe's ambivalent relationship with sarcasm.

‘Great. I knew you'd be pleased!'

In front of me, a little girl drops her hot dog and starts to cry. I don't know whether to join her or laugh.

When the display finishes, Joe slopes off, and Laura and I wander into the pub to meet Mac and Geoff. We find them in the deep conversation of men who are already half-way pissed.

‘Here he is!' cries Mac, as we walk
over.

‘What have you been doing with my wife?' asks Geoff.

‘We've been watching the fireworks,' Laura answers for me. ‘You missed them all, you daft buggers.'

‘Never mind about that,' says Mac. ‘We've important drinking to be done, and important matters to discuss.' He brandishes a twenty at me. ‘Get a round in,
son.'

‘Thank you, Your Majesty.'

I take the money and buy drinks. Judging by the head of steam Geoff and Mac have built up, it's going to be a long night.

—

One pint blurs into the next and by nine thirty I have no idea who keeps going to the bar, but beer keeps appearing and I keep pouring it down my throat. I'm hammered, but I'm having fun. Mac might have a big mouth, but drinking with him is a damn sight more entertaining than drinking with Barry. We try to play darts; my aim feels true, but they just won't hit the board. Mac is explaining the game to a teenager with a bottle of blue WKD and a troubled expression.

‘You don't just chuck the dart, right. You stroke it towards the board. Don't chuck, don't flick, stroke! A smooth movement from the chest. Stroke, my son. Stroke!'

The lad slips away while Mac is distracted by lighting a cigar. I find myself dancing with Laura in the space between the pool table and the wall. I haven't danced in years. She laughs at me, but I laugh with her and it's all OK. Then Geoff reels towards us, and I can't work out what the hell he's on about till he holds his phone out to
me.

‘It's Barry,' he shouts.

I put the phone up to my ear. ‘Hello.' Nothing.

‘No, it's a text!'

‘Oh…right.'

I look at the screen:
U lot still down pub? Cd do wiv a pint. C u in a min. B.

Bollocks. Barry's back from his outing, his family are doing his head in, and now we're his least bad option, even with Mac in
tow.

I hand the phone back to Geoff. ‘Shit,' I say. ‘Just when I was starting to enjoy myself.'

Laura leans over Geoff to look at the screen. ‘I don't want that grumpy bastard to come out: he spoils everything.'

Mac comes over and we give him the bad news. He stands for a moment, exaggeratedly stroking his moustache. ‘Well, there's only one thing for
it.'

‘What's that?'

‘We leg
it.'

‘You what?'

‘We leave before he gets here.' He looks at me. ‘All back to yours, son. It's the only
way.'

No one ever comes to my house. No one except Joe. I'm embarrassed for a moment and then relieved when I remember, ‘But I've got nothing to drink.'

‘No problem – the Spar's open till half ten,' says Geoff.

It looks like this is my night for getting myself into things. I shrug. ‘All right, then.'

The four of us sink the last of our drinks and file out of the side door into the car park. We're just crossing it when Mac hisses, ‘Shit!' and ducks behind a parked car. The rest of us follow him and we huddle together in a pool of shadow. ‘I saw him coming round the corner,' whispers
Mac.

Footsteps approach.

Laura starts to giggle. I clamp my hand over her mouth.

The footsteps stop. ‘Fucking kids.' Barry. ‘I'm not scared of you, you know.' Then the footsteps start again, faster than before, until they're swallowed by the sound that spills out from the pub
door.

‘Run,' says Mac, and we
do.

We pelt it down the street, hooted at by the lads in the bus shelter and honked at by passing cars, until we arrive outside the shop laughing and gasping for air. I look around to see everyone. ‘Where's Geoff?'

Geoff is still struggling up the road, listing forward with his right hand clasped to his side. He lifts his feet and swings his free arm as if he were running, but actually moves at the pace of a slow walk. We cheer him as he comes close.

‘Yer bastards,' he pants, bent double. ‘I'm not
fit.'

‘We could've told you that for nowt,' says Laura, and kisses him on the back of the
head.

We go into the shop, buy an excessive amount of beer, and walk back to my house. I'm not used to visitors, but I'm drunk enough not to be embarrassed by my mismatched furniture and the horrible brown carpets. Anyway, they must have known it wasn't going to be palatial. On arrival, Mac goes through my CDs but finds nothing to his satisfaction, so he turns on the radio and tunes it to a local commercial station. It's their Friday-night show: house music. It's cheap, but I'm cheerful and soon we're dancing again.

Mac and Geoff are trying to hold a conversation about some property-development deal Mac is involved in, but they're both so drunk they keep forgetting what they've said and repeating themselves. Geoff starts smoking and I try to tell him to take it outside, but instead I somehow end up smoking myself. Geoff and Mac go upstairs for some reason. The last thing I remember is sitting on the couch with Laura.

I wake up and find myself staring into the side of Geoff's head. He's leaning over the couch and talking to someone, but not to me. There's a heavy weight on my body and a bad taste in my mouth.

‘What's going on?' I
ask.

‘Gotta go home, mate. 'S late.'

My vision clears. The weight on my body is Laura. Geoff shakes
her.

‘C'mon, pet. It's home time.'

‘Let me stay,' she moans.

‘Can't sleep here,' he
says.