Half-Sick of Shadows (20 page)

‘Give that man a free pint!’

Cheers all round.

‘And the next question is for all you footie fans. Who won the final FA Cup of the twentieth century?’

Trick question, thought I; it hadn’t yet been played.

Or had it? The pints of beer in Ruse Bay were the kind that made one forget one’s decade.

To my left, Alf applied his considerable powers of recall by first holding his forehead in a palm, then knuckling it while repeating, ‘Think. Think. Think.’ His skull might have thought better without the pummelling. He glanced at me. However, when it came to football, or indeed anything sporty, I was as much use as a keyboard with the vowels missing.

Someone called, ‘Blackburn Rovers’, which even I thought unlikely. To my knowledge, no team called Blackburn had ever won anything – although I recalled an animated future memory of a radio presenter called Tony Blackburn taking part in a televised game show.

‘Wrong,’ said the quizmaster. ‘Blackburn were the third winners of the premiership title, in the 94/95 season.’

Really? Well done the Rovers! I supped some beer.

Some punters were somewhat drunk, and others were very drunk. A sober competitor would have rifled out Manchester United Liverpool Arsenal Chelsea and stood every chance of being correct. ‘Liverpool,’ Alf said, desiring that I should affirm it to be so. ‘Or Barcelona,’ said I, and burped. Meanwhile, other pub quizzers knuckled their heads also. The fellow with the microphone repeated the question, this time in slow motion.

‘Liverpool!’ called Alf simultaneously with one of our competitors
who
called, ‘Man United.’

‘Is the right answer!’

I could tell that Man United won the final FA Cup of the twentieth century by Alf’s despair and the delight of our competitors. The quizmaster must have pointed at them.

Unfortunately for us, our competitors took to taunting Alf, who, having purchased a blue and white scarf with a lion sewn on earlier that evening – to keep out the chill as and when, and if, we walked to the station to catch the last train back to campus – had made of himself a Chelsea supporter. We were likely to miss the last train, having consumed more beer than made sense when in training for a pub quiz.

Man U. Man U. Man U. They chanted in unison while jabbing their fingers in our direction. ‘Come on you blues,’ responded Alf – undoubtedly unwisely – while waving his scarf over his head.

Man U. Man U. Man U.

Alf, blunt-brained: ‘Bobby Charlton shags girls!’

I was shocked. Was Alf possessed by a demon? Alf never spoke like a common fellow. Never!

Bobby Charlton went a long way back. I remembered a photograph of him in the encyclopedia. I wondered if Mr Charlton had since died; I wondered what happened to the encyclopedia. Personally, I saw nothing wrong with him shagging girls. I would have been happy to shag girls. There were plenty on campus, but none had spoken to me. My confidence was low. A girl would have to speak to me before I could shag her. Unless she was mute. I’d stand a better chance of a shag if she was blind too. And not particularly fussy.

Man U. Man U. Man U.

‘Next question.’ The game master tried to restore order.

Man U. Man U. Man U.

Alf, perhaps realizing that he’d inadvertently raised Mr Charlton’s street credibility, picked on someone closer to his own age. ‘Wayne Rooney fucks chickens.’ I knew of a diminutive American actor
called
Mickey Rooney, but no one called Wayne Rooney. Batman was a Wayne something. The Man U chanters took exception to the suggestion that Mr Rooney fucked chickens. The chorus of Man U chanted still, but quieter.

Cried Alf, ‘Imran Troope has only one ball!’

The pointing fingers sagged. Near silence.

‘Who?’ I asked.

‘What year is this?’

‘Nineteen …’

‘Later than that, surely! Sorry. Sorry. I’m getting ahead of myself.’ He turned back to the Man U supporters. ‘Fergie’s gay!’

Alf went too far. I knew all about Fergie: she married Prince Andrew. What she had to do with football, I knew not.

‘Language, please,’ said the quizmaster, largely unheard.

‘Nobby Stiles is a trannie!’

Alf had lost it. I was out of my league. He might happily challenge the entire mob to fisticuffs. If so, although present and his friend, I would have to look away – if not run away. I had my blood to think of. I preferred it on the inside.

‘Don’t agitate them any more,’ I advised.

Collectively: Man U. Man U. Man U.

Alf waved his scarf and sang in classic football supporter rhythm: a spondee followed by an iamb followed by another iamb.

‘Geordie Best has shit for brains.’

The chanting and finger-jabbing stopped. One fellow – a skinhead, wearing a Manchester United scarf – stood … stood all of six foot five. Another got to his feet. Alf might have been drunk, but he wasn’t suicidal. I, keen to avoid death by association, sidled to the exit. ‘Arseholes,’ I foolishly cried, and hoped the mob, if they heard, misheard it as aerosols.

But, woe! The Red Devils’ supporters – four of them now on their feet – heard each syllable of my pre-departure request for calmness and reconciliation. Did the cry really come from my
lips
? My mouth moved, so it must have: ‘Sarah Ferguson has VD!’

Now, upon noticing several Man U supporters looking at each other, I admit to the fear that I had erred. Alf looked at me too.

KILL THEM!

And then we were off!

Oh Lord! The last time I sprinted, years ago, my head and feet began level, but my head soon took the lead and opened a formidable gap before landing on the ground nose first. I rarely trotted unless to get out of the rain. How I kept pace with Alf I’ll never know. Fear, perhaps. They were after us: the mob. No need to see it; I heard it. Kill the fuckers and suchlike.

I rebounded off cars. I collided with walls. Where we were going, no one but Alf knew – and even he knew no safe destination. He led. I followed, except when he tripped on broken flagstones and for a second or two I took the lead. Someone behind us threw something, a bottle or a beer glass, that hit the ground ahead of me and smashed. We ran downhill, down Main Street. Our pursuers, as drunk as we were, were no faster. They were locals, unlike us. They worked for a living. They cared not one quark whether everything was made of atoms.

Alf skipped down dangerous steps that led to the seaside. One of our pursuers, the one in front, overtook us on the grass, but thankfully head over heels. He lay there groaning as we overtook him.

The tide was in, and crashed over rocks where sea met sand. The path we ran upon, next to the sea, had no rail, but the drop of several feet could result in a broken ankle or worse. I for one wished to avoid being caught by the mob, bloodied and thrown in. Alas, I realized, grinding to a halt, breathless, it might come to that – for I’d burned all my coal and had run out of steam. Alf too gave up the escape. He turned to face our doom. But they were wearier than us. Three of them remained. They had dropped some distance back, but approached still, panting, wheezing. One of them, near dead with exhaustion, paused to light a cigarette.

Three of them against Alf and me. Three against one!

No more than ten metres separated them from us. None of us had the lungs to curse or engage in last-moment diplomacy. However, a grunt came from Alf as he staggered forward for the fight. The grunt sounded warlike to me, behind him and feeling decidedly unwell. He grunted again, and, with all his might, threw a gallon or two of regurgitated beer at our enemies.

Cheese and onion crisps, a couple of boiled eggs. A cucumber was in there too. Our enemies reeled sideways and back at the stench and power of Alf’s fearful ejaculation. Steeled by his example, I followed it, thrusting myself forward until he was behind me. I too let go. I could do nothing else. Beer came up, sewage, my guts. Our enemies, with cries of Oh God and Jesus, toppled backwards, jumping to avoid splashes at their feet. They milled around, as did Alf and I. A lake of undigested chicken skin, diced carrot and beer formed a barrier between us and them. They moaned. They complained. They muttered curses. One of them threw up. A second heaved. Unwilling to cross the steaming reservoir – two of them bent double and unable to attempt it – they retreated to either pick up their fallen comrade or be sick on him. Alf and I gathered ourselves, or what of us remained inside our bodies, and staggered in the opposite direction to … somewhere else. A taxi? A sand dune? A hospital?

A taxi, as it happened, thanks to Alf who had some money left. Were it up to me, the dunes would have sufficed. The rain would have come on overnight, and I would have caught pneumonia and died.

By unspoken agreement, and as a consequence of necessity, we missed Lindsay Hall next day.

The first thing that struck me when I woke, apart from sunlight, coldness, shivering and pain, was the image of a cheeseburger. I could almost taste its fattiness, the bland chewiness of its bun and the plasticity of its processed cheese. My tongue and gums were a cocktail of tastes, my molars were mortars awaiting a pestle. Whether
I
ate a cheeseburger last night or in my dreams, only Alf might know. I would ask him when he woke – and if.

Deeply and honestly regretting my imbibition, needing to urinate, but lying on in the hope that it would all go away, did nothing to make the suffering stop. I sat on the edge of the bed – and might well have groaned while doing it – and peed into the urinal-shaped Paul Masson wine bottle retained for that purpose. Alf, lying on his stomach with an arm over the edge of his bed, the pillow drooled upon, his face turned towards me across the gap, opened and closed his solitary visible eye.

The drunken sober up with unnatural speed in books. They can do it within a page or two, and sometimes in the space of a paragraph. In real life, however, sobering up can take chapters. My goal was to make sobriety happen as soon as possible. To that end, I placed my head upside down in the sink, my mouth over the tap’s opening, turned it on and filled up like a bath. In the meantime, Alf’s eye had reopened. He said something that sounded as if he was chewing his pillow at the same time. Returning to the edge of my bed, I asked, ‘Did I eat a cheeseburger last night?’

He chewed some more pillow. The initial sounds made no sense, but he concluded with, ‘I’m a shit muse.’

The door burst open. A Chinese fellow said, ‘Is Edvod Vike he?’

‘I’m Edvod Vike.’

Someone at the door wanted me.

I fell downstairs to discover who. And why.

‘Hi!’ beamed a pretty girl with the whitest teeth I’d ever seen. I’d shag her, given half a chance, when fully recovered and in the mood. ‘Are you Edward Pike?’ I thought she was a student, but she turned out to be an office worker. The main office had received an urgent phone call from a Mr Barry. He wanted to speak to me.

I knew something was wrong at home, but tried not to speculate – impossible – as the pretty secretary and I walked a quarter mile or more to the building that housed the main office.

‘There’s a pay phone in your house for making and receiving private calls,’ she explained, smiling, chatty, keen to help, and obviously mistaking me for a real student. ‘It’s a good idea to give the number to your friends, although most people just use their mobiles.’ A mobile phone? Me? Mr Lowtec? I made a mental note to buy one. ‘You can tell your friends to send mail direct to your accommodation, but who uses snail mail these days?’

Me, I thought, and stopped to vomit at the roadside – there went my chance of a shag.

Farmer Barry probably had a mobile phone. He had left a number that I called from the office. The pretty girl left me to it and went about her business. The phone only rang twice. Farmer Barry answered with a rustic shout that reached up north. ‘Hello?’

‘This is Edward. Is something wrong?’

He made a noise, as if he wished I’d asked an easier question.

‘Here’s your mother.’

I listened as Mother took the phone. She breathed into it, dry swallowed, and made a false start. ‘What’s wrong, Mother?’ I asked. I heard Farmer Barry, in the background, telling her to take her time.

‘I murdered your father.’

After several seconds, during which my mind scampered around trying to catch a thought, Farmer Barry came back on the line. He had never been a great one with words, but he did exceptionally well this time. ‘She didn’t murder him, lad. She tried to put him out of his misery, but it didn’t work. I advised her against bothering you, but she insisted. There’s no need for you to come home, son. You’ve work to do and I can take care of everything at this end.’

‘Did you say she tried to put him out of his misery?’

‘That’s right. I …’

‘What do you mean, out of his misery? What misery?’

‘That’s the thing. You weren’t to know. February, it was. He took poorly. We think he had another stroke. It’s fairly bad this time. Your
mother
thought he had picked up something, a virus or the like. A couple of days went by before I knew about it.’

‘Was he hospitalized and I didn’t even know?’

‘No. Your mother didn’t want all that fuss. When you have a stroke you need seen to sharpish. It was too late by then.’

‘What sort of state’s he in?’

‘Bad, if the truth be told. It’s all but over for him, I’m afraid. But don’t worry, your mother will be all right.’

‘What happened? I mean, how is he? What did she do?’

‘It was an act of mercy. Your mother tried to end his suffering with a pillow. Listen, lad. No one need know. You wouldn’t even have known if she hadn’t needed to get it off her chest.’

‘How did you find out about it?’

‘She got it off her chest to me first.’

‘What about Sophia?’

‘Why would your mother try to murder her?’

‘I mean, does she know?’

‘Oh, aye. No. I don’t know. Yes. Because she supplied the phone number that’s this one here we rang. Your father’s right as rain. I mean, he isn’t dead. He probably thinks he had a bad dream or something. Hard to tell what he thinks.’

‘I’ll come straight home.’