Huts54

Gillian Ambrose said that she’d need to go back into the pub to pee. I needed to pee as well, but didn’t say that, just told her I’d wait for her. I took a quick peek about me, to make sure she was away and nobody else was about, and listened through the muted racket of the pub for any approaching footsteps, then peed, in an absent minded way, on the beer barrels.

There was a chill in the air. I’d only a shirt on, because although I’d a new jacket, it was one of those ones that I’d liked at first, denim, with leather around the collar, but as soon as I’d put the money on the counter and taken the jacket up the road in a bag I knew I’d never wear it. I tucked my arms under my armpits for warmth. But then I sniffed my greasy hands and wished that I hadn’t. I smelt like a dead man.

I looked at the stars to see if they’d moved. I felt as if I’d stood there for three or four millennia. I knew that I shouldn’t have left her, should have gone back into the pub with her, because it was just an excuse to leave me. Gillian was probably, inside the pub, laughing at me, with the Fannylicker. They’d probably worked it out between them, to leave me outside, freezing to death. It was no use. I’d need to go up the road myself. I kicked at one of the aluminium beer barrels, sending in spinning and clattering with more noise than a man with a megaphone. I looked wildly about me ready to run or shout, but there was nothing, only emptiness so resounding that it echoed within me.

I lit up a fag, for a heat, the light and the company. Something luminous among the beer barrels caught my eye. I raised my chin and cleared my throat, to cry out, or because someone has once told me that animals can sense fear, I wasn’t sure. The thing looked like the shell, or carcase, of an alien jobby.

I approached it manfully, without a Geiger counter, covering my throat in case it jumped. I cautiously picked it up to examine it more thoroughly.

‘What are you doing with a used condom in your hand?’ Gillian Ambrose asked peevishly, in her Birmingham accent so that it sounded even louder and somehow more accusing.

‘No,’ I said perplexed, looking about me to see if anyone else had heard. ‘I just seen it lying there and wondered what it was’.

‘You’re weird. You know that?’ said Gillian Ambrose, shaking her head.

‘No, I’m short sighted. I was just trying to find out what it was, that’s all.’ I said trying to explain.

‘No,’ Gillian Ambrose said, having the final say on the subject, ‘you’re just weird’.

We looked at each other. The matter was settled. I was weird.

‘You’re not thinking of washing that out and re-using it are you?’ asked a scowling Gillian Ambrose.

‘No,’ I said resignedly, ‘what do you think I am?’

The way that she looked at me I wasn’t sure.

‘Look,’ I said, trying to sound reasonable, ‘it’s not mine, so I wouldn’t wash it out.’

‘So, if it was your condom, you would?’ snorted Gillian.

‘No,’ I said, trying to think of some way of explaining it. ‘I don’t have any condoms’. I took my fags out of back pocket, took out all my change and my key and put them on top of the nearest bear barrel.

‘Well,’ Gillian said, ‘if you don’t have any condoms, what did you plan to put on when you put your thing inside me?’

‘I didn’t plan to put anything on, because if I’d bought a packet of condoms you’d have thought I wanted sex and you wouldn’t let me.’

I’d maybe said too much.

Gillian walked away shaking her head. ‘You know what,’ she said, ‘men up here are plain weird.’

I caught up with her, grabbing her by the arm. ‘What about James Munn? Is he weird?’ I spat out at her.

‘James Munn is a perfect gentleman,’ she said, daring me to look her in the eye.