Dirty Old Man (A True Story) (21 page)

     “This makes you some kind of paedo then doesn’t Bernie?” shouted one of his friends from the doorway. “You fucking nonce.”

     “Fuck off,” he retaliated as he bundled me into the car, “get in the fucking car Anne before they come out and kick your head in.”

     “It’s your fault for saying she was seventeen Bernie, going on what you first told everyone, she should be twenty now.”

     “Give it a rest will you Anne, you’re getting on my nerves now. If you don’t shut up then you’ll be walking back okay?”

     We drove to a nearby petrol station, and Bernie got me a bottle of water and a coffee.

     “You’ve got to sober up Moll, the whole town is swarming with police tonight.
If we get pulled over and they see the state you’re in, you’ll get locked up for taking drugs. Can you see how serious this is?”

I didn’t say much but I spat the hot coffee ou
t all over the walnut trimmed dashboard.

     “Sober up Moll!”

     “Fuck off dipshit!” I yelled at him.

     “Don’t talk to my brother like that you fucking whore, who the fuck do you think you are?”

Anne reached her led across and kicked the back of my chair, spilling the scalding coffee over my legs.

     “You’re a fucking liability Moll,” said Bernie, and he made his way towards the A47.

     “I need a piss,” said Anne, “stop the car.”

     “I’m not stopping until
we're back in Peterborough,” said Bernie, “You’ll have to wait, in case you didn’t notice, we passed a police car back there.”

     “If you don’t pull over then I’ll piss on the seat you wanker,” her voice was deafening and she kicked the back of Bernie’s seat. She had turned into a crazed animal.

    “Fuck off you crazy bitch, I’ll give you a smack in the mouth if you don’t quit it.”

Anne unfastened her seatbelt and opened the rear passenger door. The breeze chilled me to the bone as it circulated the car. The sound of the open road scared the shit out of me as I thought she was going to jump out.

     “Get that fucking door shut now!” yelled Bernie.

     “No, I won’t.” she sobbed, and opened it as far as it would go. She stretched out her leg to keep it open as Bernie desperately tried to reach into the back and grab the handle.

   I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the vanity mirror, red and blue lights lit up my face, closely followed by the wailing sirens.

     “Anne,” he said desperately, “If you’ve
got any pills, then throw them in the foot well now. Anne, are you fucking listening to me?”

Through her hysterical tears, she pulled a bag from her pocket. It was full of the tablets she’d given me at the house.

     “Moll, I need you to reach into that back without looking obvious, and pick them up.”

I sunk low into my seat and grabbed at the bag on the floor, slowly bringing my arm back into the front.

     “Now I need you to take this,” he pulled out a small sealed bag with a lump of cannabis inside. “Put it down your top. They won’t check you because you’re so young.”

I didn’t think anything of it and stuffed the drugs into my bra.

Bernie pulled over in a layby and got out to greet the officers. The back door was still wide open and I listened as he spoke about Anne.

He told them that she suffered from a mental illness and had drank a little too much that evening, that he was taking her home to rest.

They breathalysed him, as he hadn’t been drinking that evening, the results were negative.

I composed myself as an officer walked around the car until he was
standing right next to my window. He shone his torch on the tax disc and briefly on me but that was all.

Anne received a warning from them and we continued the journey home in silence.

     “You stupid bitch Anne,” said Bernie, “you almost got us all in trouble. I suggest you sort your fucking life out or you get out of mine.”

We dropped her off outside her grotty flat, and I never saw her again after that.

Chapter Twenty Two.

     We managed to get away on holiday eventually. It wouldn’t be France but I’d been put off that idea anyway. Michelle had left the club after me and her went on a night out. We were both quite drunk and we ended up scrapping. I got thrown out of the nightclub, and she lost two teeth. She was eight years older than me so I decided she got what she deserved and I saw nothing of her after that.

     I started to spend much more time with Celine, she made me laugh until my stomach ached, and all the good she did almost outweighed the bad. Though she was twenty eight, she lived at home with her parents as she wasn’t quite ready to move out.

We’d go shopping together and I’d meet her by the big clock that stood inside the Queensgate Centre opposite New Look. Bernie constantly refused me money so I didn’t have a penny to spend on our shopping trips unlike Celine; we had a lot of laughs regardless.

She unknowingly provided the normality I so desperately craved.

     It was a relief to get out of the caravan, and Celine’s eyes lit up when she saw me approach her near the clock. You could pick her out of a crowd easily. We headed to the department store where we sprayed each other with the worse smelling perfumes we could find.     She’d bought a pair of tickets for a fashion show, and begged me to go along with her. I knew nothing about fashion but I went along for the company. When we were there, we danced like lunatics to ‘Absolutely Everybody’ by Vanessa Amorosi as the models walked up and down the catwalk. People were too busy pointing and laughing at us, than paying attention to the atrocities on stage in front of us.

After that, we headed to her favourite shop – Monsoon.

She picked out a pink mandarin style dress which she tried on. She loved the dress so much, that she swore she’d get married in it one day.

We walked through the lingerie section afterwards and used the larger sized bras to catapult things at each other from opposite sides of the shop.

    Afterwards, we went back to her
parents’ house and danced around the living room to ‘Music’ by Madonna. Whenever she used to greet me, she’d say ‘Hey Mr. DJ’ because she loved the song. I became DJ Moll. Then she climbed on her parents’ coffee table and danced to ‘Silence’ by Delerium. It was her favourite song. Her parents were in bed so most of our laughter was of the silent tear streaming variety. She had a shirtless photo of Jackie Chan as her desktop wallpaper and I teased her about it. She put on a song by Air called ‘Sexy Boy’ and we giggled about it.

     She opened an email program on her computer.

     “Look, I’ve met this really nice bloke online. His name is Robbie”

     “Where is he?” I asked her, “you have to be careful talking to people online, you don’t know who’s on the other side of the computer.”

“He’s in Brisbane, don’t worry, he isn’t a weirdo, we’ve been talking for months now. I’m saving up for a ticket to go over and meet him.” She looked excited as her crescent shaped eyes lit up with adventure.

I smiled for her but on the inside I was concerned that she was going to travel to the other side of the world, to meet someone she didn’t know really well. On a more personal, selfish level, I didn’t want my best friend to leave me.

    “It won’t be happening for a long time yet though,” she reassured me. “It’s going to take me ages to save up for a return ticket.”

I breathed a sigh of relief; I had time to convince her otherwise.

     Celine would come to the Leicester class with us on Fridays, I loved having her there and everybody liked her. Even though she was pleasant to Bernie, she didn’t hang on his every word like the others did. It almost seemed as though she was just there to be my friend.

After the pub, she’d sit in the car with me whilst Bernie paid his weekly visit to Barbara for an hour. She never mentioned the odd situation and we just talked the time away.

     I employed her as an assistant instructor for my junior kickboxing classes, being fairly new, she wasn’t able to teach but she would help me to keep an eye on them to avoid any fire extinguisher incidents happening. The children loved Celine and the feeling was mutual, she was fantastic with them.

I finally felt as though life was giving me a little something back, that I’d been through so much grief to get to where I was. My only problem now was Bernie, but even he had been leaving me to get on with things. It was as though Celine had somehow made me stronger.

     We took a holiday to Lyndhurst in The New Forest, Bernie had been accepted as an Instructor into a well known kung fu association, and I’d been offered the opportunity to be accepted onto the national Wushu squad. It would mean travelling all over the world if I’d be accepted and it was something Bernie had always wanted for himself (except he was too old).

     The
association’s headquarters were in Southampton so we camped nearby. Celine came with us, as did George; a young student of Bernie’s from Peterborough. He was fourteen years old and had studied Taekwondo for a couple of years. He really looked up to Bernie and idolised him. Me and Celine went for a walk around the new forest whilst Bernie and George went over the syllabus as George was preparing for his next grading, he idolised Bernie.

    The forest was almost magical as we watched the ponies wandering about freely. I couldn’t get over how much space there was among the trees.

We found an old bicycle and it became our mode of transport. I would croggy Celine about on it and we’d use it to take trips to the local shop. It was funny because the thing was falling apart.

     “You’re acting like a fucking kid, will you stop it?” said Bernie as he pulled me to one side.

     “I am a fucking kid.” I reminded him.

He turned all his attention to George, taking him through the green belt syllabus.

      That night, Bernie rolled himself a spliff. George was a little shocked when he saw him do it, he was from a well to do family and he really idolised Bernie.

Me and Celine shared a spliff for fun. Celine was from a very respectable family but she sometimes liked to let her hair down and live by her own rules for a while. She coughed continuously before deciding that it wasn’t for her.

     “At least I can say I’ve tried it.” She giggled.

George wanted to try some but Bernie wouldn’t let him smoke. Instead, he took some of the resin and crumbled it into a pan of milk he was warming on the camping stove. He gave it to George to drink.

Me and Celine lay on the car bonnet and looked up at the stars. I pointed out the constellations to her. She was quite into astrology though I’d never really given it much thought apart from noticing that all my closest friends in the past, (including Celine); were Aquarius’s. George fell asleep by the campfire and Bernie shouted me into the tent. I told him I had to make sure George made it into bed okay because he was passed out by the fire, but Bernie was having none of it. It hated him because of it, George was only 13 years old and he’d given him drugs and left him to sleep under the stars. It just wasn’t acceptable.

     He attacked me again that night; I tried to be silent through my muffles as he held his hand over my face. I didn’t want anybody to hear the shame of what I regularly went through.  I couldn’t sleep, my whole body hurt and felt dirty and I crawled out of the tent to take a walk to the shower block. It was starting to get light and George was still passed out in front of where the fire had been burning. Celine had made it back to the tent I guessed; I knew the spliff had affected her also. George almost looked dead as he lay on the grass. His skin was pale and the morning frost began to settle upon his clothing. I gave him a nudge just to make sure he was okay.

     “George, wake up. You fell asleep outside last night. Get yourself into your
sleeping bag otherwise you’re going to get sick and catch your death out here.”

He grunted to acknowledge me, and he crawled into his tent.

     After I’d showered, Celine was waiting outside for me.

     “There’s something I want to tell you Moll.” She said.

My heart sank, the last time somebody wanted to tell me something, it was Stacey; that didn’t end well at all. I never did go back to school after that evening.

We walked back to our tents and Celine tried to communicate the best she could.

     “When I was at school, I was molested by my P.E. teacher. I couldn’t say anything to anybody because I was scared at the time. Looking back as an adult, I wish I’d just told somebody and got him reported, stop him doing it to somebody else.”

I could see exactly the point she was trying to make, she had heard what Bernie had done the night before.

I tried to shrug it off and ignore the comment before my face burned with shame.

     “At least you got away in the end Celine.” I said, and I patted her affectionately on the shoulder. My situation was more complicated than that, I had no way out,
nowhere to go and nobody to turn to that could help me.