McCann2

Fresh air in The Jolly Jack was for those locals in long coats with their backs to the door. Barry Ryan sneaked a quick look at he pushed through the frosted-glass. He breathed in the familiar fug of old lager, fag smoke weaved into the rat-runs of the carpet to the bar, and the sharp, chemical tang of Domestos fighting a losing battle in the toilets. It was the smell of every pub in Drumchapel, the smell of his childhood Saturdays waiting for his Da, munching in a packet of cheese-and-onion crisps if he was lucky and now it was the smell of his lunch hour.

 

He found his usual spot in the lee of a plywood partition, a sticky red-vinyl booth with seats bandaged by silver gaffer tape which offered a sliver of a sightline to the door. Not that he expected any of his colleagues to come into a dive like this, but he needed to be ready with a good excuse.  The pint was a comforter. He didn’t need it, of course. Not like his Da. The first mouthful brought an end to the shivers, he was always shaking off. Hoping nobody much would notice, especially his prick of a Senior, Archie McDougall. He was always asking daft questions at mandatory Supervisions about feelings, as if he was a psychiatrist, that Sigmund Freud, not just another Social Worker like him. He probably didn’t have a CQSW certificate, because old guy like him got off Scot free and didn’t even have to go to college, like he did.     

He took a longer sup to wash unpleasant thoughts away.  A cold, bitter sacrament. He banged the pint on the table. A few locals gawking at him. Bubbles rising in the glass. Carbonation a familiar prickle on his tongue that cut through the taste of the morning’s visit that started badly and went to fuck sharply afterwards, so he couldn’t get away quickly enough. The McCann’s kitchen, with its overturned ashtrays, sick on the floor, the sour-sweet reek of unwashed clothes and last week’s chips mashed into the cat-litter tray which was on its side. Not to mention used needles. That would be too much. He’d keep that until last. He placed the glass down, feeling the cool beading of condensation on his fingers, and pulled the folder from his battered leather satchel.

 

McCann, Thomas (39), deceased. McCann, Margaret (38), McCann, Thomas Jnr (15), McCann, Sibohan (13), McCann, Patricia (4).

 

He wasn’t much of a writer. Found it hard to concentrate. Got a bit jittery. His bird did most of the writing work during the CQSW.  She’d went off with some other bird after he’d called her ‘a fat cow’. Turning lesbian to spite him.  Always found it hard to get it right. He didn’t know how to phrase it. The other guy that floated about. Well, more than one, if he was being honest. But that one in particular, Matt. Another junkie, of course. He wondered if he could describe him as a stepfather?  Well, he was probably Patricia’s dad.  Imagining what a judge wanted from a Strathclyde Social Work Report. Not too long and not too short. He’d heard the mythical story banded about during his training of a judge stopping the proceedings and putting the social worker in the dock—and excoriating him for his use of the English language and the brevity of his report. It might not have been true, but felt like it was. What was true was if his report wasn’t ready he’d need to personally appear at Dumbarton Sherriff Court and explain why. That’s why he badly needed a pint. 

   The biro felt thin and brittle in his hand. He started to write, the words coming out in his usual careful, bureaucratic crawl. ‘Home conditions, poor. Evidence of neglect. Children present with unkempt appearance. Stepfather, Matt was gouching and verbally abusive…’

He reached for his fags and had a quick up and downer to settle his stomach. He scored out ‘gouching’.  A judge wouldn’t know what that was. Instead he wrote, ‘intoxicated’. He started at the spelling, wondering if it was right?

He took another drink and the glass was nearly empty in his hand. He looked over at the barmaid serving an old guy with bushy hair.

A shadow fell across the page. It smelled of Brut aftershave, sweat, and the oily musk of a well-varnished pool cue, regularly used.

‘Barry. Barry Ryan. Nipping in for a wee pint and a wee character assassination, ur we?’

Barry’s gut clenched. Tommy McCann loomed over him. The pool cue held across his body like a conductor’s baton. He was a lump of a lad. He didn’t think this was the right time to remind him he was too young to be drinking in a pub.

‘Tommy,’ Barry said, his voice a dry scrape. He closed the folder, his thumb pressing hard on its worn cardboard edge, feeling the individual fibres give under the pressure. ‘I was just thinking about yeh. And up yeh pop, like the bad penny. But I’m sorry tae say, this is a private matter.’

 

Tommy slid into the booth. The vinyl squealed in protest under his weight. He laid the pool cue on the sticky table. It rested between them like a boundary marker. Up close, the smell of him was rank. Brut turning acrid against the underlying reek of a body that considered water optional.

 

‘Private?’ Tommy remarked. He leaned forward and laughed in his face. His big, scarred hand, the knuckles a mess of old calluses, came to rest on the closed folder. His index finger tapped it once, twice. The sound was a dull, heavy knock. Thud. Thud.

Barry felt the vibration through the tabletop, up into his own wrists. ‘Nothin’ private about you mate. Yeh comin’ into oor hoose, pokin’ about. Starin’ at us as if we’re specimens in a jar. You with yer clean shirt and yer wee council car.’

‘I don’t huv a car Tommy. I take the bus, like the rest of us.’

 

Barry stood up. He tried to keep it light and casual. But his mouth was dry. He badly wanted another pint, but he couldn’t offer to buy him one. He could feel the rough serge of his trousers under his palm. ‘I’ve been trying tae help, Tommy. The pre-school’s worried about wee Patricia . She’s coming in hungry and eating other kid’s snacks.’

‘Well, they should fucking feed her then. That’s whit nursery school is for, isn’t it?’

‘And whit about Sibohan? Wae her black eye. A big shiner?’

 

‘Bruises.’ Tommy’s chuckle was a wet, nasty bray. He picked up the pool cue, turning it in his hands. The wood was smooth, Barry could see, polished by years of use, the grain dark and dense. Rangers FC etched into the weighted handle. Tommy ran his thumb over the tip, testing the chalk. ‘Aye, the wee cows aye getting intae fights wae o’er lassies. Don’t blame me. I ne’r fucking touched her.’

Barry’s jaw tightened. He remembered the tenement stair, the concrete edge of the third step, second landing. He remembered the taste of blood and the sting of TCP, his ma’s hand and her ready excuse. He sighed. ‘I’m no blaming you, Tommy.’

Tommy got up slowly. Leaned into him. His rotten washed over Barry’s face, hot and damp. ‘See, the thing is,’ his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper that was more menacing than a cry,  ‘yeh come in wae yer reports. Yer wee pieces of paper. But yeh don’t know hauf of it, dae yeh?’

 

‘Hauf of whit?’

 

‘Hauf of fuck aw and being skint aw the time. And cunts lookin’ at yeh, as if yer know there…Cunts …Like  you.’ Tommy’s eyes bored into his.

A guy with a moustache and drawn grey face came over holding the matching cue. ‘You playing, or whit, Tommy?’  

‘In a fucking minute,’ Tommy growled. His blood-red eyelids closing and squinting at him.

He reached out and gripped Barry’s wrist. The hand was hot, dry, and rough as pumice. The pressure was immediate and precise. A ranging ring of force that compressed bone against the hard Formica of the table. Barry felt the shock of it travel up his arm, a bright flare of pain that made his vision sharpen. He could see the individual pores on Tommy’s nose, the tiny red veins mapping his cheeks.

 

‘I could break this,’ Tommy said as the pool cue clattered to the floor. His thumb finding the delicate hollow between the tendons. ‘Snap yeh like a dry twig. And whit would yeh dae, eh? Write a report on me? Call yer supervisor from the phone box ootside while I finish my pint? Then call the police?’

 

He held Barry’s gaze for a long, stretched second. The pub noises—the clack of balls from the other table, the hiss of the optic pouring a dram, the low murmur of other conversations—seemed to recede into a distant hum. There was only the heat of Tommy’s hand, the grind of bone, and the stale, bitter taste of fear flooding Barry’s mouth.

 

Then Tommy let go and stepped aside.

The pressure released as suddenly as it had been applied. Barry’s wrist throbbed. His skin imprinted with a faint, white-red map of fingers that began to prickle with returning blood. He fought the urge to rub it.

Tommy picked up his cue. Dusting it down.  He stood over Barry, a monolith in a cheap acrylic jumper. ‘Yeh write whit yeh want. Yeh always dae. But you remember this.’ He tapped the cue on the folder.  ‘That’s no my life yeh’ve got there. It’s no a story. It’s no my fault if Sibohn loves the cock. Loves it in every hole. She came tae me. I didnae go to her… I try and protect her as best I can.’  

He turned and walked back towards the pool table, the cue swinging lazily at his side. ‘And if yeh put any of that in yer report, I’ll rape yer sister. See how you like that?’

Barry stood motionless. I’ve no got a sister.’  The cold from his pint had leached away, leaving the glass tepid, a ring of moisture seeping into the wood of the table. He looked at his hand. It was trembling, a fine, uncontrollable tremor. But he was used to that. He slowly, deliberately, opened the folder. The words he’d written stared back at him, neat enough, almost clinical.

‘I’ll rape yer brother.’

‘My wee brother died a long time ago.’

He read the first line. He could still feel the ghost of Tommy’s grip on his wrist. He could smell the Brut and the rot on his breath, see the landscape of his face. The words on the page felt like a lie. Not a lie of fact, but too clean. Too light. Not fucked up, enough

He closed the folder, pushed it into his satchel. He picked up his pint glass, but the taste of the dregs was now thin and metallic. He set it back down, the glass clinking against the ashtray. He sat for a long moment, his eyes fixed on the worn green baize of the pool table where Tommy McCann was leaning over for a shot, the big man’s concentration absolute. Barry looked at his own wrist again. The red marks were fading, turning into a dull, pervasive ache that he knew would deepen to a purple bruise. A souvenir. A small, tangible piece of the McCann file he hadn’t had to write.

He pulled a jangle of change from his pocket. A ten-pence piece. It’s milled edge biting into his thumb. He wandered over to the pool table and left it on the baulk. ‘I’ll play the winner,’ he said.

Tommy looked down his cue and at him sideways. ‘You any good?’

He inclined his head to take in the shot and the pub. ‘Better than you.’