Pinprick (7 page)

For instance, she couldn’t confess her undying love for Fat Matt Willis at school. Everyone took the piss out of him because he was about five stone overweight. Even though he had the size and bulk to kick most people’s heads in, he never spoke up for himself. He rarely said much, especially to girls, but was content to keep to his handful of close male friends.

Matt had the sweetest smile and the kindest eyes. She took Art with him and since none of their friends chose the subject they sat on the loners table together. At first he had been hellishly shy, especially at the start of their lessons; shy to talk to someone he hadn’t really spoken to before, but even more so to a member of the opposite sex.

Over the weeks they started speaking more, mostly to complement each other’s work. Recently, they had to do a series of six pieces depicting their favourite books, films, musicians or anything hobby based. Matt had done some wonderfully gruesome work in pencil, pastels and charcoal. Her favourite of his six was inspired by horror books and metal cd covers. It depicted a little wooden boat on a very rocky, rough sea. A solitary lantern hung above a single golden bell, its light illuminating enough of a tall black-robed figure that stood on deck. The figure had a huge scythe in one hand and a skeletal finger pointed with the other. Above written in swirls as if the wind was blowing sea spray was the question, ‘What is this that stands before me?’

When she asked him about it his freckled cheeks flushed with colour.

“It’s a Black Sabbath lyric,” he mumbled.

“Well I love it,” she told him, “But I don’t have a clue who Black Sabbath are.”

“Their original singer was Ozzy Osbourne. You must’ve heard of him? He’s like rock royalty.”

His face lit up when she told him she knew him from the programme
The Osbournes
but she didn’t pay it much attention apart from when his kids, particularly Jack, were on.

That was when they started talking on a regular basis, she discovered that even though he was shy and was obviously uncomfortable about the possibility of bullying, he was very witty and a really nice person. They started swapping mix CDs of their favourite songs after a few weeks. He hadn’t really converted her into liking metal music but she did like a lot of the punk stuff he’d put on the CDs.

He also introduced her to horror books. She’d never really read any particular genre but after seeing another of his art pieces she was intrigued. Fat Matt Willis’ second piece in the class project was a painting of a red fuzzy haired clown holding a bunch of balloons. The clown had a leering, sinister smile on its painted face and it’s eyes were sparkling silver ball bearings. There was a glint of pointed teeth in its smiling mouth. Each of the balloons were claret red and dripped as if filled with blood, faces half revealed in the light’s reflection on their shiny surface. A few drops of blood dripped from the bouquet of balloons, staining the clown’s otherwise pristine white gloved hand. Written as if in bloody smears were the words “We all float”. It was her first introduction to horror, one of the world’s famous horror authors and one of the author’s infamous characters.

She kept all of this inside, hidden like the box in the attic; not forgotten, but kept safe for when she was alone to examine their contents. One of the reasons she was so desperate to get back up to the attic was so she could retrieve Uncle Shane’s story. She wanted to show Matt when they went back to school. She had a feeling he would think it was really cool and appreciate it as much as she did.

Jennifer picked up the large bundle of exercise books that contained Shane’s
Finding Heaven
. They were bound together with elastic bands and were in remarkable condition considering they were twenty years old. She dropped them on the landing, climbed down after them as quickly as she could, gathered them up again and closed her bedroom door behind her.

Chapter Six

4th September 1986

I keep having dreams about my friends, some are nightmares, and some aren’t. I think the ones that aren’t are the worst. It’s like my mind is torturing me for something I might or might not have done and I’m beginning to hope I never find out the truth.

Last night’s dream was about Malcolm. The first time I met Malcolm properly was on my first day at Cordell’s Meat Packing. It was a shit job, boring, smelly and repetitive with zero chance of promotion but the pay wasn’t too bad and it took school leavers and pretty much anyone with a pair of hands. All I ever did was load cuts of beef, pork, lamb and chicken into polystyrene trays after they had been butchered, ready for wrapping. After three hours of watching pieces of dead animal ride up a conveyor belt I was relieved to have a break. Just to get out of the factory floor and the smell of raw meat and blood. When the break whistle blew most of the guys went to the greasy spoon cafe round the corner or risked food poisoning in the staff canteen. I just needed fresh air to try and flush the coppery smell of blood from my nose.

When I got outside I headed for a mound of grass at the back of the factory. I saw a bloke sat hunched over on a bench set against the red bricked factory wall. I didn’t pay him any attention until he looked up at me and a wave of mutual recognition passed between us.

“I know you, don’t I?” he said and took a long drag off a cigarette he had pinched between his thumb and index finger like a dart.

He did look very familiar. He had long brown hair which was cut shorter at the fringe than the rest of it and a beak-like nose that made him look like Burgess Meredith’s Penguin from
Batman
. Even though I thought I recognized him I couldn’t put my finger on where from. I told him my name and he told me his. The fact we both came from the same village meant that he was most likely the brother of someone I knew at school or something.

Malcolm told me that he’d been in the same year as Catherine and that she had thwarted all his persistent advances. I asked him what methods he had tried and sat down beside him.

“I dunno, just asked her if she fancied coming out for a drink or two, to watch the footie.” There was a twinkle in his eyes and a twitch to his mouth.

I laughed, “Are you sure it was my sister you were trying to ask out?”

“Yeah!” He nodded and ground his fag butt with a brown boot heel, “I tried everything else, but she weren’t interested. Must be me conk.”

I laughed again, “Nah I’m sure she could see past that!”

“I doubt it,” he said stony faced, “I have enough trouble seeing past it myself!”

Laughed hard at that one, I did. Well, that was when we first met; he told me all about his passion for the Blues and how he was getting their logo tattooed over his heart by a friend of his at the weekend. I wasn’t interested in football and he was the first man I’d met who didn’t look at me like a queer piece of shit for saying so. He had said that he wasn’t surprised, what with my Mohican and Sex Pistols t-shirt.

Anyway, we got talking and asked me if I wanted to go to his mate’s for a beer and to watch him get tattooed at the weekend. I was curious so I agreed.

Freddy

Even though Freddy worked at the same place as us our shifts rarely coincided, so the first time I actually met him was when Malcolm had his tattoo. Freddy was the one doing the tattooing. My first impression of Freddy wasn’t too good. He was a lanky, scrawny git walking around with his top off, with a fag constantly in his mouth, grunting like a Neanderthal. He had loads of crude, badly inked tattoos all over him. An assortment of stick men, swastikas, inverted crosses, daggers, serpents and skulls covered his arms and stomach; pretty much anywhere he could reach himself.

He seemed quiet and moody, which kind of went with his skinhead persona. When I first heard him speak I thought he was putting on a silly voice, like something out of
The Young Ones
or a
Monty Python
sketch and made the huge mistake of sniggering. When I saw the expression on his face I thought he was gonna punch me. He was looking at me face on and I realised he had a slight harelip. The nick in the left side of his top lip made him look like a crazy bald Elvis.

Luckily, Malcolm interjected and prevented anything from getting nasty. He was always cracking jokes about how ugly he was but if anyone else did apart from his mates, all hell would break lose.

I watched whilst Freddy went to work with the ink and needle, even though just watching him do it made me feel queasy. It seemed to take him hours to do it. When I left he wasn’t even half way done but when Malcolm showed me the finished thing when I saw him at work, I was well impressed.

Johnny

I don’t know why I’m writing about the guys like this. Maybe it’s so I remember them. Not that I’d ever forget them but when you’ve had the kind of memory loss I’ve had, you don’t hold a lot of faith in your own mind.

One thing I’ve noticed is, the more I get away from the deathly quiet of the village, the less noticeable the ringing is. Going to Ipswich today was a blissful respite from the whistling torment. The hustle and bustle of the town made things so much more peaceful inside my head. It was the first time I had been in the town centre on my own since my accident. I wandered around the usual places and flipped through LPs in the music shops and checked out the book stores.

I automatically went into Starchild’s Sci-fi, a regular haunt for me and Johnny. If you didn’t guess from its name it was a shop that specialised in science fiction and we would go in there a few times a month. I pushed the door and the bell above it jingled. I paused by the Airfix and eyed up the new model kits, trying to decide whether I was too old for them.

Then, through a beaded curtain came the Starchild herself, Daria. Daria is the owner’s daughter. She reckons the shop is named after her and that her middle name is Starchild. But I know from reading it, and from her Dad telling me, that it was a reference from Clarke’s
2001: A Space Odyssey
. I thought it was cool to be named after something from a cool book. Anyway, Daria is painfully skinny and very tall for a girl with brunette hair and glasses.

She had the most amazing light grey eyes that were a weird contrast to her dark brown hair. She was really pretty. She stood behind the service counter with her arms folded across her non-existent breasts.

“What the fuck are you doing in here?”

Daria had been Johnny’s girlfriend. I didn’t know how to respond other than honestly.

“I’m always in here; I– I wanted to see if the new Somerfield is out?” I said, referring to my favourite sci-fi author Mark Somerfield.

“How dare you come here after what happened.” Her face was flushed with rage.

I sighed.

“How many more times do I have to tell people it wasn’t my fault?” I could feel my eyes watering.

“Oh”, she said her eyes wide with fake surprise, “you remember what happened now?”

I shook my head.

“So how do you know it wasn’t your fault?”

“What happened to innocent until proven guilty?”

“You got hit by a car when you were running away from whatever it was you did!”

Everyone had their theories on what had happened that night apart from me, most of them ended with me as the culprit. I would love to know what my family really think. I’m sure Dad thinks I’m responsible somehow and that I’m a liar. I’m pretty certain Catherine believes me when I say I can’t remember; as for Mum who knows?

A bulky man with a ponytail parted the bead curtain and poked his head through. It was Daria’s dad Alan, the owner of Starchild’s Sci-fi. His eyes flitted from me to Daria.

“Everything alright D?”

“I don’t want him coming in here anymore Dad, not after what happened.”

Alan simply nodded a little sympathetically and turned his eyes to me.

“You heard what she said Shane, you’re not welcome here anymore.”

I was devastated; I loved that place so much! I loved the stuff they sold and standing around for hours talking with Alan, Daria and Johnny, but that’s the thing now, there is no Johnny.

I wanted to scream and shout that he had been my friend since the first day at primary school. I wanted to shout that I loved him like a brother. I wanted to yell at them about how it was me who introduced Johnny to her, me who took him in the shop for the first time when we were thirteen and she was just a little twelve year old girl. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I just left the shop rubbing the tears from my eyes before they had a chance to bubble and bloom and run down my cheeks.

Johnny… There was no more Johnny. He was my biggest loss.

I met Johnny on the first day at Brooklands Primary School. There were weepy mothers standing around, waving goodbye to their children who were about to spend their first few hours away from their apron strings.

Standing amongst them was Johnny. He was hard to miss in his huge bright orange raincoat, with a pair of aqua coloured wellington boots that sticking from under it. His little ratty face peered out from under the hood. I remember our mums were chatting beneath a tartan umbrella. They introduced us and then we walked into the classroom together. I sat beside Johnny even though I’d only just met him. It was an obvious attempt to grasp at something vaguely familiar amid a strange and unknown situation but we talked easily.

The first thing he ever said to me was: “My name’s Johnny and I’ve been to space in a rocket!”

Funny the things you remember.

Various events and highlights from our school years will always be firmly embedded in my memory banks.

Like the time when he fainted in Miss Burton’s class and was hanging off his chair in what looked like an impression of Superman flying upside down. That was the day I went to his house for dinner and our first sleepover.

Then there was that time we found a stash of porn mags in the roof of the bus shelter and grossed each other out looking at the pictures.

We shared endless memories of our endless summer holidays. When we were very young we spent all our time riding bikes and playing with toy cars and water guns. Over time our pastimes matured until we found ourselves content to hang out in each other’s rooms, listening to punk rock music and reading trashy sci-fi books.

It was always me and Johnny. Whatever happened to him I hope it wasn’t painful. Maybe he went back to space in his rocket. That’d be nice.

Karl

Karl always made me think of the gormless friendly giant in Steinbeck’s
Of Mice and Men
, George, or was it Lennie? Yeah, Lennie.

He was a giant of a man and could hurl 50kg sacks of spuds like they weighed nothing. Apart from being a tad on the simple side there wasn’t anything wrong with him. He was a lovely bloke.

I don’t remember the first time I spoke to Karl but I can remember him at primary school, in the class for the special kids. Even back then, he was the biggest person I knew.

We weren’t friends back then, but when you live in the same village most people were familiar faces.

So anyway, I was about fourteen when I first spoke to Karl. It was Boxing Day and the whole village was buried under an alluring four feet of undisturbed snow. We’d had to spend the previous day or so cooped up with our families so we were both stir crazy and wanted out.

Christmas always seems to go on for so long, and even though I love it to bits, there’s only so many times you can fake enthusiasm for yet another matching socks and mug set from Aunty Ivy, or endure the chinking noises of Uncle Bertie’s false teeth as he makes eating custard sound like chewing marbles. Our relatives visit about often as Santa to exchange cards and gifts. They stay long enough to drink a cup of tea and eat a homemade mince pie, then they pull their coats on again and everyone makes the same solemn vow to visit each other more than we did the previous year.

Dad always falls asleep with a belly full of food and wine, just like he does every Sunday afternoon, except this time he’s pulled a Christmas cracker and has a paper hat on.

Washing up,

Gift wrap,

Quality Streets,

The Queen’s Crap.

So after another virtually identical Christmas me and Johnny went out for an adventure in winter wonderland.

We decided to go down to the Decoy Pond to see if it was frozen. We talked about the usual post-Christmas day bollocks like our best and worst presents, what we had eaten and how much. We decided we’d have to endure the leftover remains of our Christmas dinners for the next month. The ostrich-sized turkeys our mothers had cooked in their ovens made them seem like Doctor Who’s Tardis.

Johnny asked what I thought about the latest episode of
Top of the Pops
. I told him how utterly shite I thought Rene and Renata were and then we laughed at how much of a wanker Jimmy Saville was.