Bully (24 page)

‘Can I have one of my safe-keeping cigarettes now please?’ I asked.

Twinnie made this face as though he was umming and ahhing over some great universal subject like life or death. He sucked his thin jaw one way and then the other, pursing his cat’s arse lips.

‘Well,’ he said, finally. ‘I’m not really sure what I can say to that, Gary. After all, the whole rationing situation was re-assessed when you proposed that you were going to do yourself in. You can’t very well expect me to go through the whole paperwork, the whole red-tape of beaurocracy, just so’s you now fancy a cigarette rather than killing yourself. What’s it going to be next, eh? You gonna ask me if you can have a go on my camp-bed and then claim it as your own? Is that your game?

‘No game,’ I said wearily. ‘Just thought we could have a nice talk that’s all. And it’s better to talk when you have a ciggie on the go.’

Twinnie chucked over the remaining third of the Dorchester and Grey which had been hanging out of his mouth ever since I’d made my return to the farmhouse. It landed on my arm, fiercely burning the hairs on the wrist.

‘There you go, soldier boy,’ he smiled. ‘Don’t say I never give you nothing.’

‘Okay Twinnie,’ I said, through a cloud of smoke. ‘I wondered what your plan is. If you even have a plan. Because I’ve just seen – well, felt – you know who right behind me in the barn and he told me that there’s something we need to do.’

Twinnie started evil-laughing again: ‘You telling me that you know who has come and saved you
again?
That you’ve miraculously survived death twice because of the fair hand of the very thing that is trying to kill us?’

‘How do you know he’s trying to kill us?’

‘You told me he was…’

‘No; how do you
know
that he’s trying to kill us. You seemed to know that before Dick and me got up here. Lion seemed to know it too. Now I’d like to know exactly what happened when you saw him?’

Twinnie sighed, sparked up another of my cigarettes and rolled over on the camp-bed. For a while I thought he wasn’t going to say anything, but slowly, and in this pathetic-sounding voice that I thought I remembered from a long, long time ago, he started to recount the tale.

I’m not saying that I’m sure or anything, but it was Lion that first said something. And you know how mad he can get. Could get. Fuck; I keep forgetting. Anyway, I tried to meet him a couple of times, in the pub, like. Tried to get things back to the ay they used to be. I missed the big bastard, I really did. And I’m not saying I don’t like my own company, but sometimes I just need someone to bounce off. You know what I mean?

Like I can get these great ideas in my head when I’m on the bus going nowhere in particular and I’ll suddenly think of some great joke about the bird that’s sat in front or the spak that’s had to be wedged in by the luggage rack. And I’ll turn around, you know, like I expect someone to be there. And then they ain’t there and I have to stop smirking at what’s going on in my suede or people will start thinking I’m a loon.

It was all right inside. It really was. Whenever I thought of something to say, I could just kick the bottom of old Shuffty’s bunk – that was who I was sharing with – and he’d grunt and then I could just go on and on about whatever it was that I fancied going on about. Could be something important, could be something about why the chips from the canteen always stunk so bad when you shat them out in the can.

So when I got out that second time, I wanted someone around that I could bounce off. Not because I was lonely, just because… Well, I thought people might benefit from hearing what I had to say. And I tried meeting up with Dick for a while, but the daft fucker was so unreliable. Sometimes he’d never show up. Sometimes he’d show up and he was
itching,
literally itching for some more of that shite that he enjoys pumping in his veins. Other times, he
had
that shite in his blood and you just couldn’t get on a level with him; know what I mean? Sometimes, I’d try and drink, like, a whole bottle of whisky or something, but it was like one of them platform computer games and our levels never seemed to match exactly. Like he’d be Sonic on some rising platform and I’d be Tails and I’d be sinking down, man. Do you know what I mean?

Then Dick told me that he’d started seeing Lion round and about the town again. Apparently he’d been inside too, but a looney bin for him, not the slammer. Anyway, so I kept going out round the pubs looking for him. Tried the Choke, the Three Legs, the Shire, the Bucket of Frogs.
Loads
of them, I tried, but the people in there always told me that Lion had just moved on. Funny thing was, there were a couple of times when I swore I saw him legging it out to the bogs just as I walked in, but then, if that was the way he wanted to play it, then fucking let him. I wouldn’t go chasing the big bastard.

First time I saw him when there was no way he was getting away was up at that offie on main street. ‘Member the one? The one where they had that bird from a couple of years above us – well, a few years above us – and she always just gave us booze so we’d stop pestering her.

So I was walking down the aisle and there was nowhere he could hide unless he dived into one of the fridges, and you know what he says to me:

‘All right Twinnie, I been looking for you.’

Well, I couldn’t believe that. The fat fucker was clearly lying, and I could see that he was scared of me by that shifty look that he got in his eyes. So I tried to calm him down by jabbing him a few rabbit punches right on his flabby arm. But he didn’t like that one bit. In the end, I calmed him down by shouting him a couple of cans of the old Spesh Brew and sitting on a bench on the prom on main street with him. I did ask him if he wanted to come to the pub, but he kept muttering something about ‘enclosed spaces’ or shit like that.

So we sat on the prom and talked like old times. Well, I did. And we drank a couple of Spesh Brews together and we even had a bit of a laugh. After an hour or so of that I told him I had somewhere better to be, but I told him where I’d be that next day, and of course he never showed up.

So it went on like that for a while; the near-misses, the oh-so-closes, the ‘he’s just popped-outs.’ And then I bumped into him again. Pure chance. Right outside his gaff, or where some fucker or other told me his gaff was. At first, like last time, he looked like he was shitting bricks. Tried to blend in with the wheelie bins or whatever. But I soon coaxed him out with booze.

‘Why you scared of me?’ I asked him.

And he went all sheepish white and that. Could hardly speak for a while.

And then he said something which, well, it fucked me over for a bit, to be honest with you. Daft fat bastard said that every time he’d seen me, and I mean
every
time, I’d not been alone. He said that there was another ‘presence’ – that’s what he said presence – at my shoulder. Said it was a big dock-off feller, but that he smelled a lot, you know. And he also said that the smell was unmistakable. Told me that I’d had fucking you know who sat on my goddamn shoulder for the best part of six weeks.

Course I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

I asked him: ‘Is he there now?’

And Lion just nodded, all sheepish again and then said that he had to go back inside as he was expecting his social worker round at any time.

When Twinnie finished his story he was quiet for a long time. For a while, I wasn’t sure whether he’d fallen asleep he was that quiet. There was no lighting up my cigarettes, no cruel laughter, no knives thrown. And I worried that I’d pushed him too far by making him tell me the story. I worried that the memories might mess with his head too much and stop me from achieving the next part of the plan.

I needn’t have worried. Twinnie turned back over on the camp-bed eventually, looking, if anything more purple than ever and let out a revolting burp.

‘I fancy some scran, Bulls-eye,’ he said. ‘Fancy cooking up some scran for us?’

And I knew beyond a doubt that he was all right, or as right as he’d ever be. The story he’d told could have been about anyone, I supposed. To him, it was just a story. He could always seem to put barriers in the way of him and whatever was worrying or threatening him. This was the essence of him. It was what made him what he was, for better or worse. When I was younger, I’d have termed the whole psychological mess of him as ‘loose cannon’; now, I suppose, with the benefit of age, I suppose I pretty much accepted that it was in his nature to be so changeable, so divided. So hungry to make up for the part of him that he felt was missing since his twin brother died. And it was this that I hoped to play on if my plan was to pay off.

‘What have we got in?’ I asked.

Twinnie gestured over towards a couple of discarded rabbit carcasses in the corner; the remains of something bigger which was pretty much unidentifiable; dozens of empty crisp packets. I was struck, suddenly, by how much that corner of the room, behind his camp-bed, resembled the lair of some carnivorous beast. It was starting to smell like one. I wondered if Twinnie performed the cardinal sin of shitting where he ate.

‘Told you rations were running low,’ he said, by way of explanation, as though I was responsible for gnawing at the bones of the carcasses. I’d not eaten anything since… since… Well, I couldn’t remember. But I supposed that nothing was better than eating the uncooked, unhygienic crap that Twinnie had shovelled down his cat’s arse of a mouth. No wonder he never seemed to leave the confines of the farmhouse kitchen; he was probably too ill to do so.

I was reminded of watching a documentary once, about a bunch of eight or nine year old lads who’d been left to their own devices in a house for a week. It had taken them little over a day to turn feral; scavenging for food in bins and scrapping for scraps with their best friends of the day before. There was plenty of food in the cupboards, but the lads simply did not know what to do with it unless it was pre-packaged between two buns and came in burger form. They’d eschewed the vegetables in the tray in the fridge; chucking most of them out in fact so they could fit in more cans of fizzy pop.

Most had been unable to understand what a tin-opener was. And even if they had, they wouldn’t have known what to do with the tins of chopped tomatoes, red kidney beans, sweet corn and the like. In the end, the documentary-makers had to suspend filming after four days, when one of the boys had attempted to stab another with a fork after being accused of stealing the last cheese straw. And the families had complained; said there would be a lasting impact on their sons. Probably, I reflected, the little fuckers would have forgotten the whole thing as soon as they walked through the door to their bedrooms and booted up the games console.

‘We could order a takeaway,’ I giggled.

‘Fuck yeah,’ said Twinnie.

‘And if this is to be our last meal - our last supper – we should push the boat out. Go for something proper extravagant. I fancy a couple of nice juicy steaks. Some chips perhaps. Maybe a little bit of garnish, but no bloody peas.’

‘Not just one steak, eh, soldier boy?’ asked Twinnie, but not unkindly. He was playing along for once.

‘Nah mate, I could eat a horse now,’ I said.

Yeah, a horse in the national. The one with the number three on it; just like you, Twinnie. Just like you.

‘Know what I’d have,’ grinned Twinnie. ‘Pizza. Pizza every time.’

We both laughed. Whenever we discussed food when we were younger, we’d always start talking about pizza. Generally this was in order to make Dick feel as bad as possible about his world-renowned pizza-face.

Laughing with Twinnie again, and I mean really laughing, with no… well, little hidden agenda felt good. It felt like coming home.

If that home was like the home for the nine year old boys…

‘What would you really have? Honest to goodness if it
was
your last meal?’ I asked.

‘We did talk about it in the slammer once, me and Shuffty. I think it must have been around the time they fried this English boy on death row in some state in America. ‘Member that, Gaz? Round that time everyone was talking like
what would you do if it was your last day,
or
who would you do – or do in- if you got one last chance
. Think I might’ve said good old Shepherd’s Pie first time, but now, when we might… you know… one of us actually might… I’d go for Christmas Dinner. All the trimmings. Like we had when we were kids and we just ate and ate and ate.’

‘Not sure about the trimmings, but there’s gotta be some chickens or turkeys round here somewhere,’ I said, trying to keep the tone light and chatty, ‘up in one of the neighbouring farms or something. How’s about you give me the shotgun for a while and I’ll go on the hunt?’

Almost imperceptibly, the mood in the farmhouse kitchen changed. Twinnie edged along the camp-bed so his feet were blocking my view of the gun. But he still carried on like we were laughing and joking, like a minute ago.

‘Tells you what,’ he said, ‘I know I’m not feeling the best at the moment, but I reckon I’d still be better than you. Why don’t you let me go out on the hunt and you go see if there’s any vegetables out front in that garden of theirs?’

I waited for him to add
like a good little woman
but he didn’t. This game was being played for high stakes now and both of us knew it. Thing is, Twinnie had absolutely no idea that he’d just stepped right into the trap that I’d laid for him. Hell, he couldn’t have been more caught had he stepped on one of those old rusted metal things that he’d scattered around the kitchen.

I watched his stand to his feet. He did it gingerly, as though he was worried that his legs would give way beneath him. I caught the wince on his face before he hid it behind his customary sneer. He was in a bad way; we were all in a bad way now. Weak beyond all recognition, just waiting to be picked off by Tommy. But at least I wasn’t number three, and that gave me some room for manoeuvre.