Nobody Loves a Ginger Baby (21 page)

The neds have started harassing him again. They threw a brick through his bedroom window a week ago, he could have been killed but he was out at the shops at the time. That’s why they threw it then. Neds prefer guerrilla tactics, they’re too scared he’ll catch them doing it and come after them. They must have known he was out, they must be watching him. He’s phoned the factor three times a day every day but no one has come to fix the window yet. The factor, or rather the fucking ditzy receptionist at the factor’s office, because that’s the only person he ever gets to speak to there, doesn’t seem to understand the risk a broken window poses to his personal security. The alarm and the triple locks on the front door do not offer sufficient protection. He’s only one floor up; they could get a big ladder. So he has foiled their plans.

He has made a fortress of the flat. Yesterday he mixed Polyfilla and spread it across the external window ledges. He wrapped six milk bottles in a newspaper and smashed them with a hammer. He bought seventeen packets of razor blades from the 99p shop and made an attractive design,
a mosaic of menace
as he likes to think of it, by placing the blades and the sharp shards of glass in the drying cement.

The sun glints on the shiny steel and glass, reflecting light into the room, he’s pleased with his creation; it looks like one of these arty-farty art installations Daphne used to drag him along to. But his at least serves a practical purpose, it’s cheaper than a window box, less maintenance and with a bit of luck it might even kill any bastard ned who tries to gain entry. Let them get past that.

He wishes they would try. It would be good if the neds got hold of a big window cleaner’s ladder and, on a moonless night when they can’t see, reach into the window. He’d watch as they slashed their puny ned arms to rashers of streaky bacon. He’d laugh. And then he’d push the ladder away. Only protecting his property, nothing wrong in that. He could pour boiling oil on them too, he could easy enough buy a can of Castrol but that might be construed as assault.

But they won’t climb the ladder. Unfortunately they know the hazard’s there. Or two of them do, the big skinny blond one and the wee runt, the two he got with the Super Soaker, they were standing in the street, watching him, as he went about his legitimate home improvements. They won’t be long in telling their ned pals. The two looked up and sniggered and mouthed things, no doubt obscenities, and Donnie whistled while he worked. There’s
nothing
they can do; he is unassailable but he still doesn’t feel secure.

He has never spent this amount of time in the flat before, and the walls are closing in on him. After Bertha left him the first time, he bought this flat but it wasn’t long before he met Daphne and spent most of his time at her place. Hers was a much better flat in a much better area, not as good as the home he had shared with Bertha but still, a lot better than this shithole. Bertha’s new place was even better, nice neighbourhood, nice neighbours. Why did it all go wrong with Bertha? Again? Had he not learned his lesson the first time? Obviously not, that’s why he was back on his own in this dump. What a fucking stupid fucking prick.

Donnie has a constant background level of self-loathing which he can just about accommodate, but a few times a day the needle swings violently across the scale and he would like to punch
himself
hard in the face. At other times, when he realises that no one is going to get him out of here now, panic electrocutes him. His nerves jump, his muscles shake, his skeleton dances.

But he knows why he had to end it with Bertha. Apart from the fact that the fat old cow Gertie had made his life a living hell, apart from the fact that at some point during the Egypt fiasco he realised that he didn’t love Bertha after all, apart from all that, he realised that he was also partly to blame. He was just too greedy.

It’s not his fault, as a child, when other people at school had new football boots he had none. He asked his mum and dad for them but they said there wasn’t the money. There was always the money for fags and drink but not for boots. His was a childhood of austerity. He swore as an adult he would never go without. Semper apparatus. If he needs football boots, he buys them. Daphne
accused
him of being selfish and materialistic and perhaps he is but she doesn’t know how it felt to be the only one in class whose parents obviously didn’t love him.

But maybe she was right. Maybe this obsessive acquisitiveness has led him to make a dreadful mistake. Whoever made up that cheesy expression a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush got it absolutely spot on. He had been happy with Daphne, what did it matter that Bertha had once been his wife and they had lived a luxurious lifestyle? It wasn’t bricks and mortar that made you happy.

The bricks and mortar of his flat are making him miserable, particularly in comparison to the comforts of Daphne’s flat. Donnie remembers how cosy it was, how lovely she was, how warm and welcoming her thighs were, how he was her ginger baby, how much she loved him, how much he loved her.

When she opens the door she hardly recognises him, so dishevelled is he. He’s unshaven and the orange twizzley hair that grows up the back of his neck is poking out of his T-shirt.

‘Hello,’ he says, fatalistic and pathetic.

‘Hello Donnie.’

She doesn’t immediately let him in.

‘Can I talk to you?’

‘What about?’

‘Not here.’

‘Come in then.’

Within a few weeks his shoulders have sagged even further. His shoulders are now so rounded that his jackets hangs out wide of his waist. His head is sinking into his neck as if being sucked there by the vacuum created by his emergent humph. This combined with the tuft of twizzley hair that runs down his spine makes him look like some kind of medieval goblin. She won’t be surprised if he soon begins to drag his leg. He is not aging well. Despite having several years on him, she looks a lot fresher and she knows it.

She has taken the precaution of closing off the kitchen door before answering the front door. Bertha sees Donnie’s eyes flit
towards
the kitchen and knows what he’s thinking. Let him think. She would offer him a cup of tea but that would mean opening the kitchen door and anyway, she doesn’t want him to get too comfortable.

‘Can I sit down?’ he says. He says it jokingly as if of course he can sit down, things haven’t come to that, but perhaps they have, thinks Bertha.

‘Help yourself.’

There is a long silence. Bertha is not sure whether he is gathering his thoughts or waiting for her to start. She’s not going to start; he’s the one who came round here. The silence lasts so long that Bertha gives in.

‘What is it you want, Donnie?’

‘Just to see you.’

‘What for?’

‘And to apologise.’

‘There’s nothing to apologise for.’

‘No, I was a complete nightmare on holiday, I know I was, and after all the money you paid …’

‘Forget it, Donnie.’

‘Oh Bertha!’ sighs Donnie, ‘I’ve fucked everything up!’

Bertha says nothing to this.

‘I’m a total fuck-up.’

Clara her therapist, her mum and all her friends have told Bertha how damaging it is to have these negative thoughts about yourself. Clara has started her on something called
cognitive therapy
where Bertha must prove through the assessment of evidence the validity of what she is feeling. This appeals to her scientific mind and has been a great help. Clara says that she sees no real need for Bertha to continue with the antidepressants.

Of course she will have to be weaned off, her dosage stepped down gradually, but although she was initially terrified of the idea, she’s working it through with cognitive therapy. She’s thinking about it from every angle, thinking about panic and why she feels it, about where the panic comes from, about how she can positively address it. She’s filled in all the columns for and against, what are hard facts and what is perceived, what is the negative way of
looking
at it and what is the positive, what is the best course of action for her. Bertha is looking forward to coming off them.

In Donnie’s case, given the disastrous holiday and the more damning evidence of his subsequent refusal to talk to her, it would be reasonable to conclude that he has indeed fucked everything up, he is indeed a total fuck-up. In Donnie’s case perhaps
self-loathing
is justified.

‘Can you forgive me, Bertha?’

He doesn’t look at her when he says it. But she wants him to look at her. She says nothing until he raises his eyes to her and then when she speaks she holds his eye contact, to let him understand that this is for real.

‘There’s nothing to forgive,’ she says gently. ‘Everybody make mistakes, we’re no different. We mistook who we used to be for who we are now. As for myself I was lonely and frightened. It’s understandable that I would seek the comfort of the familiar.’

As well as her cognitive therapy, Bertha’s mum has helped her come to this conclusion. Mum had been great. Although she had never liked Donnie and could not hide her distaste of them
getting
back together again, she accepted it as what Bertha wanted. She was as supportive as any mum could be. She was big-hearted enough to welcome Donnie into the family for the second time despite the acrimony of the divorce.

When everything fell apart Mum didn’t judge or blame. Even when Bertha told her, through hiccupping tears, the way he
behaved
in Egypt, she didn’t say anything. Her face was red and she tutted a lot but that was indignation on Bertha’s behalf for the humiliations he’d forced her beloved daughter to endure, there was nothing personal against Donnie. The first time they split up Mum said she’d punch his face if she could get a hold of him and Bertha was grateful for her fierce loyalty. This time and the last there was never a word of reproach for Bertha, only support, and Bertha thanked God she had Mum.

Cognitive therapy had helped with that too. She had come to realise that Donnie probably didn’t hate Mum at all, what was there to hate? More likely his insecurity, jealous of the close mother and daughter bond, drove him to demonise Mum. And even if he did, that was his problem; she could not take responsibility for the way he felt. It didn’t mean that Mum was bad or even that Donnie was bad.

‘Bertha, can I come back?’

There is a crashing noise in the kitchen and Donnie looks to Bertha for explanation. She is disinclined to explain, reeling from
the upfront cheek of him asking to get back, after Egypt, after ignoring her phone calls for weeks, after everything she’s just said.

‘You’ve got someone in the kitchen, haven’t you Bertha?’

‘Yes.’

Another long silence and this time Bertha waits him out.

‘Can I come back?’

Bertha has already workshopped this scenario in her head. She has worked out clearly what she feels and has no hesitation.

‘I’m sorry, Donnie.’

She will not change her mind again.

‘Okay,’ he says and tries a smile.

As she is seeing him out there is another loud crash from the kitchen but he doesn’t ask, he is too beaten. At the door the hug is brief and final.

‘It’s okay Dave, you can come out now,’ says Bertha as she opens the kitchen door.

Dave rushes towards her, delighted to see her, his tail wagging and his sweet little puppy-dog ears flapping.

Pierce is now registered at all six sperm banks and is making regular donations. This is giving him a very healthy bank balance but a sore nob. Well, if not a sore one then a very tired one. He’s lost all interest in recreational masturbation; it’s just no fun anymore. He’s getting run down. And now his old war wound, the broken arm he received while attempting to keep Daphne from topping herself, is playing him up. In this warm humid weather he can hardly sleep at night and wakes up with his arm throbbing.

He has decided that after today he’s going to have to give it a rest. Every time he goes he expects them to tell him that his sperm count has nose-dived but they still seem happy enough. Superspunk that he is, even he has his limits.

How did he, with all the promise he showed at university, end up doing this? People he knew at uni, people with shit grades
compared to his, have good jobs. They have offices and secretaries; they have cars and property and pensions, wives and children. He never wanted any of that but the glamour of being a professional wanker is wearing thin.

So, no more. The monkey-spanking has to stop, at least for a wee while. He’ll have a few days off, stock up on steak and milk and get to bed at a reasonable hour. This will be his last professional engagement this week and then he can relax.

Iris, the receptionist, greets Pierce warmly as he picks up his specimen bottle and brown paper bag and is allocated a room. He quite fancies Iris, or he would if she didn’t keep mentioning her fiancé with depressing regularity.

The clinics range in their facilities from top rank to piss poor. Top of the range have home cinema and 3D porn movies so real they nearly poke your eye out. You can rewind and freeze-frame any scene you want. He saw a good one the other day. A demure looking woman shoe shop assistant working alone in the shop goes up a ladder to get shoes for the only customer in the shop. Pierce knows what must come next and porn rules dictate that she must have prosthetic tits, he must be hung like a whale. On the ladder, whoops! She nearly loses her balance and the guy, a gentleman of course, catches her and then holds the ladder steady while she climbs. From beneath he can see up her skirt. She’s wearing black stockings and suspenders, what did Pierce expect? Granny pants? The well-hung guy begins immediately to feel up the hot sexy bitch. She’s moaning and before you can say Humpty Dumpty, they’re at it. If only real life was like that.

Pierce replays one particular scene. It’s not the bit where the guy is giving her it doggie style or the cum shot at the end where he unloads a glass and a half of full cream custard on her face. These scenarios have their charms of course, but his favourite is at the beginning, before any of the malarkey, when she nearly falls off the ladder. The guy’s lightning reaction rescues the woman from a nasty fall. Then she trusts him to hold the ladder steady. The initial act is not one of lust but one of gallantry. Pierce likes this bit the best.

Sadly this particular clinic doesn’t have 3D porn. All they have are dog-eared well-thumbed sticky-paged spank mags. The donors keep stealing the good ones, Iris says, by way of an apology. Once the door is securely locked behind him Pierce sets to flicking through the mags looking for an image that will engage him. With his other hand he unzips his jeans and gets out The Monster, as he has come to call it. He finds that giving it a job description and impressive job title helps their working relationship. The Monster is slow to respond and although Pierce is putting a lot of effort in, The Monster isn’t even trying.

He has found a picture that is of some interest to The Monster. Weirdly it is a reader’s wife. Approximately eighteen stone of sheer blubber is spilling out of a peephole bra and pants. The bra and pants are a vivid puce colour and both Pierce, and The Monster, find this captivating.

Perhaps he is greedy. He is after all, here to do a job of work but Pierce usually likes to take The Monster to the tickly bit at least two or three times before allowing him to gush. The build up of a tease, even if it’s only himself, still makes for a better cum.

The first tickly bit comes quite soon, almost as soon as he sets eyes on the puce playmate, but The Monster is lagging so he gives him time to catch up. This is shortly revealed to have been a mistake.

Pierce has always given free reign to his creative right brain and has been rewarded with the ability to turn on something akin to a computer-aided design programme in his head. This he presses into service by revolving a fully-fleshed 3D image of the
eighteen-stone
stunner, posing her in many quite undignified positions, the more undignified the better. Then he tries the more pervy stuff: bagpiping, felching, frogging, tromboning, he slaps her wobbling arse and rides the waves, but he rides alone. The Monster is not with him. He should have milked the bastard the first time and got the hell out of here.

Try as he might he cannot produce any love juice, his pips are dry.

Luckily Iris is on the phone, no doubt to her fiancé, as he
approaches
the front desk. Everybody has off days, he imagines her
saying in a sympathetic tone. She gives him a preoccupied smile as he leaves the empty bottle in the brown paper bag on her desk and skulks out.

Antsy, that’s the best word to describe it, thinks Daphne. Ants in her pants: bored and angry and anxious, all at the same time. She can’t sit down. Every time she sits down she has to stand up again, she has to pace around the living room, she’s wearing a path in the carpet. She looks out the window, looking for something in the street, she doesn’t know what, just something.

For some weird reason she can hardly breathe and keeps taking big gulps of air and sighing. It’s as though there isn’t enough space in her lungs. This air swallowing will not help her delicate
digestive
system. Her tummy has been giving her gyp all day. She took two paracetamol tablets earlier, something Daphne has for the last few months studiously avoided, but they made little impact on her bellyache. She’s been constipated for days and has drunk so much sweet black weak tea that she has to go to the toilet every fifteen minutes or so. At this stage she’s peeing clear water. She knows this because, alarmed at the volume she was producing, she investigated by holding a whisky glass under it. Not only does it lack colour, it doesn’t smell of anything either. This is surprising, she thinks, Daphne thought that pee always smelled.

And she’s sweating, bucketloads. It is a warm night but surely this isn’t normal. This state of mental and physical turbulence is making Daphne cry. For no good reason she can think of, she is very weepy. Daphne is losing moisture from every pore and orifice. She can’t keep this up; she’ll fall on the carpet a
desiccated
husk, she’ll turn to dust like a vampire and be blown out the window.

This is not a bad option. Considering the things that she
obsessively
tries not to think about, her past, present and future, this might be the ideal solution. It’s the future that’s the scariest of all.

Daphne drank the last of the whisky hours ago. There was only three fingers worth left in the bottle. That’s what comes of being an excellent hostess, she thinks, that bastard Pierce has drunk all my good whisky and now I’ve none left. This strikes her as bitterly unfair and sets her off crying again.

After all these months of shunning everyone Daphne suddenly feels very alone. She craves company, she wishes her mum was here and not on the other side of the planet. Mum would help, she’d know what to do, why has she not spoken to Mum before now?

Donnie is vaguely aware of something having woken him.