New Welsh Short Stories (5 page)

I goes into the inside pocket of my jacket. I gets out half of one of the bundles I was saving to give to my ex for when I gets put away.

Look, that's more than enough for the bumps in your bonnet, I goes. He's my problem now. I'm gonna take him away, and you can carry on drivin. It's all gonna be safe.

I reaches through the window and presses it into her hand. Her fingers can barely close around it. She looks at me as if I was more mad than Kung Fu. Then she does the window up and slowly edges forward.

Kung Fu, get in my fuckin car, I goes.

I starts my engine. She still hasn't quite driven away enough. The cars behind me starts beeping again. I catches up just as she indicates and pulls in outside a hardware shop. You know she's gonna call the law anyway. I presses my foot down and goes into fourth. We just about makes it through the traffic lights at
Vicky Park.

Fuckin hell, Kung Fu, I goes. You don't half pick your moments.

You are not my carer, he goes.

No, Kung Fu. I ain't your carer.

Jo Collins is my carer.

Yes, Kung Fu. Jo Collins is your carer.

This car, it just too small. Where is my Jo Collins.

I don't know, Kung Fu. You tell me.

Kung Fu gives me the name of a hostel. It's one of those Care in the Community places where he must live. It's just around the corner from the flat where my ex lives with Tasha.

I turns to face him as we gets to the Ely roundabout.

Five minutes, Kung Fu. Five minutes and we'll be there. I'll drop you off and you can go see Jo Collins.

We turns through into Fairwater and starts climbing the hill to Pentrebane. Kung Fu goes through my glove compartment where I keeps all my pocket stuff. He sparks up a smoke and starts inspecting my phone like it was full of clues to something. His questions are non
-
stop. I can't believe the sentences that are coming out of my mouth.

No, Kung Fu. I can't drop you off in Arundel.

No, Kung Fu. That's a cigarette, not a weapon of mass destruction.

No, Kung Fu. If you dial 666 the phone won't be answered by Mephistopheles.

He gets more and more agitated by the small space. And the negative answers ain't really doing it for him either.

Just as we gets to Beechley Drive and the last drag up to the flats, Kung Fu undoes his seatbelt.

Let me out, he goes. I need to find Jo Collins.

You might as well stay in, I goes. Save your legs for the last part up this hill.

I gets to the junction and comes to a stop to let this slow car go first. Just as I'm about to drive off, Kung Fu steps out the car.

Fuckin hell, Kung Fu, I goes. You coulda given me some warnin. I almost took off with half of you still sat down.

But Kung Fu don't notice. He just starts walking back down the hill, away from where his hostel is. I thinks about going and grabbing him, but then I realises that time is running out if I wants to see Tasha. And Kung Fu ain't my problem now. I done my good bit on Cowbridge Road.

I pulls into the residents' car park and leaves a note on the window. I goes into my glove compartment to get my smokes and phone, but they ain't there. Damn, I'm thinking. It's that Kung Fu. He musta taken them. He can be such a fucking goober. But it ain't really his fault. He's one of those people who got no understanding of possession. That's why he's always wearing such mad clothes, cos he just puts other people's on all the time and walks away.

As I gets out the car, I makes a mental note to go find out who Jo Collins is at the hostel. I can go find her after I seen Tasha. But Tasha is more important right now than my phone and smokes.

I gets to the block where they lives, and the front of the buzzer system is all smashed up. I hates it when this happens. It's always kids with nothing else to do or some dickhead with a stupid vendetta against another dickhead in this block, spoiling life for the rest of us. I looks around and there ain't no one else nearby. So I knocks on the nearest window but they doesn't answer. They must be used to this. The people on the ground floor never buzzes anyone in.

Tasha and my ex lives eight floors up. I tries calling out but no one replies. Not even anyone to tell me to shut up.

Fuck, I am thinking. I got to find Kung Fu. If I doesn't find Kung Fu then I doesn't get to see Tasha. I must find him and get my phone. Then Tasha or my ex can buzz me in.

I drives out of the estate and heads back down the hill. I has to get my phone. Ever since Jamo down the line got busted, we all knew it was game over.
And when you hears on the grapevine you got a warrant out on you, sometimes you just wants to say goodbye to the ones you love. Especially when you got a daughter as beautiful and sweet as Tasha. I can't let Kung Fu fuck it all up.

I'm halfway back down the hill, and then I sees him again. Kung Fu is at the side of the road. He's karate
-
chopping this lamppost. He takes a few steps back and does a flying kick. You can hear the hollow banging coming from the lamppost's metal front before you steps out of the car.

For fuck's sake, Kung Fu, I goes. It's only a fuckin lamppost. Leave it the fuck alone before someone calls the fuckin cops.

He turns to look at me.

Look, that God up there. He is speaking to me, electronically. He don't like the grey.

I grabs my face in my hand. It's all I can do to calm down.

Whatever, Kung Fu, I goes. Just give me my phone and my smokes. I got to see my daughter.

He puts his arms by his sides. I know what's going through his mind. Tasha don't mean fuck all to him. There's something grey here and God told him to get rid of it. That's all that matters.

Before I can think of anything else to say, I gets the feeling that I should have been paying more attention in other places. There's a siren going off, and it's getting closer. Someone must have heard Kung Fu having an epi with the lamppost. They must have called the cops.

The police car pulls up across the other side of the road. My vital organs drop somewhere into my pelvis. I still ain't seen Tasha. If they recognises me, then I might not see her. And I was gonna hand myself in. I wasn't gonna run away to Cyprus like the other boys. Maybe my ex will bring Tasha for a visit if I gets a local enough prison.

I'm thinking it's all over when Kung Fu grabs my shoulder. He got that long clinching stare going on and I has to concentrate on the deep blue of his eyes.

Your name is Jo Collins, he goes. Your name is Jo Collins and you are my carer.
You're takin me back to the hostel.

I don't even get a chance to ask what he's on about. The coppers gets out of their car but they leaves the lights on. The younger one is about my age. He keeps his right hand back and on the truncheon attached to his waist. He thinks you doesn't notice this. The older one stays by the car and crosses his arms.

You can tell that they knows who Kung Fu is cos they speaks to me first.

Alright there, mate, the younger one says. Everything OK, I hope.

They always starts like this. That's the thing with the law. You'll never meet anyone as polite as a copper who don't want you to know that he's two minutes away from arresting you.

I can feel my heart trying to escape from my ribcage. I ain't ever seen these two before. But if they works out who I am then they'll have me on lockdown before the end of my next breath.

Something comes back to me. Kung Fu got the answer. My name is Jo Collins. Jo can be a bloke's name too.

It's all good, Officer, I goes. My name is Jo Collins and I work for Taff Housing Association. We were just on our way back to the hostel. He wandered out through the back door when I was on my tea break. No problems at all.

Kung Fu is one of those people who everyone knows. There's at least one Kung Fu in every town. There's a few in each quarter of every city. Be careful. If you can't work out who the Kung Fu is round your way, it might be you.

Let's see some ID, the copper goes.

I pats myself down so I got time to think.

I just run straight out of the hostel, Officer. I must have left it on the desk.

They radios through to find out if a Jo Collins actually exists. I ain't got much time.

Come on, Officer, I tries again. You knows Kung Fu. Everyone knows what he's like. Let me take him back to the hostel. There ain't no damage done. People just gets paranoid. We doesn't need all this bother. You can come and check on him later if you like. I'll give you the address.

He looks at the older copper. There ain't no way of knowing how they communicates but after a few seconds he's shooing us away with one hand.

We gets in my car, does the world's worst eight
-
point turn as the coppers cross their arms and watch, and splutters back towards Pentrebane. I can feel how I needs to wipe the sweat off my forehead.

I ask Kung Fu for my phone and smokes. He puts them in the glove compartment.

You ain't really Jo Collins, he goes.

Yes, Kung Fu. I knows that. I'm your spar Tommo, remember. We'll go find Jo Collins now.

Kung Fu walks away. He don't even wave. He passes a lamppost but he don't even attack it, cos he's gonna see Jo Collins in a second. I starts the engine as he knocks on a window, and I goes to say goodbye.

MR PHILIP

Carys Davies

You could say it began with the pause in my heart, with me standing on the other side of the door with my palm on the fingerplate, listening.

But it would be truer, I think, to say it started when I asked my father, one bright and not too cold Saturday in May, what he'd like to do that afternoon, running through with him the various possibilities: a short walk across Norman Park to the shops on Chatterton Road, a ride into Bromley High Street on the bus, or perhaps just put on our coats and bring out the folding chairs from the garage and sit on the patio in the sunshine and talk? Truer to say that it started when to each of these suggestions he shook his head and said what he'd really like to do was to drive to Moravia, to the shoe museum in Zlín. His cleaning lady had told him about it. They had Smetana's slippers there, he said, and a pair of riding boots that had belonged to King Wenceslas.

He'd always been interested in shoes and very fastidious about his own – for as long as I could remember his London shoes had been for going up to London; his Bromley High Street shoes for going to Bromley High Street; his Chatterton Road shoes for crossing Norman Park to the shops on Chatterton Road; his Upstairs shoes for upstairs; his Downstairs shoes for downstairs.

By the time he asked me to take him to Moravia, he'd had to give up his London shoes because he couldn't see well enough any more to take the train by himself up to Victoria. It was a while too since he'd worn his Bromley High Street shoes – these days he only ever went into Bromley when I came down to see him on a Saturday, and even then it was unusual for him to want to venture that far.

‘Zlín?' I said and he nodded.

‘What shoes would you wear?'

‘I'm not sure yet. I haven't decided.'

I called the paper and begged a week off work and we left the following morning. Three days later we were in Bohemia driving through dark forests and smooth
-
shouldered hills, Dad tucked up beneath a blanket in the passenger seat, Chatterton Road shoes on his neat size 8 feet – not as smart as his Bromley High Street shoes but more comfortable and deemed the best ones in the absence of any special Europe or Holiday or Former Eastern Bloc pair. He was very keen on Smetana and had brought along his CD of
The Bartered Bride
, which we played full
-
blast because even with both hearing aids in he was pretty deaf at this point as well as half
-
blind. During a warm spell between Cheb and Karlov
y
Vary he conducted with his left arm out of the open window. He looked very happy. If he was worrying about my love life, he didn't mention it. He didn't once try and bring up the subject. He had his enormous perspex magnifying glass with him – he was looking forward, he said, to seeing the composer's elastic
-
sided slippers.

It was the guidebook that said the slippers were ‘elastic
-
sided', and as we drove Dad and I wondered about this. ‘Did they even have elastic in those days, do you think?' I said, and he shrugged and said he didn't know – perhaps they had something that wasn't quite elastic as we knew it but
like
elastic, made of something else but performing the same function? It would be interesting to find out when we finally saw them.

The guidebook was full of other information about Zlín, and when we paused along the way I read Dad snippets from it. There was a big section titled SHOE MANUFACTURING IN ZLÍN. Here we discovered that as well as the shoe museum there was a large shoe factory and shop in the town that we could also visit. Under the Communists, it said, shoe consumption in the former Czechoslovakia had been the highest in the world – an average of 4.2 pairs per person per year – all because of Zlín.