Minority Report part 2

Read Part 1
 

K felt seen. The next night he avoided The Duck, and the one after that. He found himself a new boozer, insalubrious, down by the old docks, The Blue Peter. This evening, the third, he had got royally drunk there and returned to his lodgings in quite a state, tumbling into his bed. But now he was awake, wanting to retch, the room spinning. What time was it? Sweating, too much pop always made him fizz, K pulled down the sheet and looked for his watch on the night table. It was in Scarborough when P had first caught him with another man. Supposed to be visiting her mother. Something wrong with the trains. A mix up with the dates. He said it wouldn’t happen again even as Glynne, the lad who helped out at Bonny’s Cafe, had been hoicking up his underpants. Bloody perverted bugger! She had been furious then calmed down when K made up something about an agent from London who’d rung, interested in her legs. You could be big! Where was his watch? He felt lost without it, out of time. Standing carefully, the room still spinning, K caught his reflection in the long mirror and, in shame, sucked in his gut. That helped a bit. And hadn’t he look dapper in his suit earlier? Better than in this birthday suit. Perhaps a bit of sun would do him good. He’d heard that up the beach you could walk around in the nuddy. But, Jesus, who would want to see him like that these days? P had told him he was beautiful once. They had gone to Blackpool on their first trip away, spent the whole weekend in bed, only going down for their half-board, breakfast and supper, eaten under the supercilious eyes of the landlady. She’s just jealous, P said. Come on tiger, let’s get back to it. Blackpool was where their daughter was conceived. Nine months later it was all sleepless nights, nappies, shit and their sex life gone to pot. Ah, there was his watch. Must have knocked it onto the floor, or dropped it there on his return. There was a reason he had got so drunk. After that night’s show the manager had been waiting for him in the wings. Terribly sorry and all that. We’ve got to cut your stint short. It’s ticket sales. Times are changing. These days people want to sit at home with their teles and when they do go out it’s singers they want to see. Cilla Black. The Beatles. Not the actual ones but versions of them. You know what I mean?

    P had been expecting when they married, the bump showing under her dress, her father stiff in the front row, barely containing himself. After the wedding K had stood in a phone box pleased as punch, wanting to phone his mother, tell her the news. Surely she’d forgive him now. She still brought up Fred, the milkman. If I’d wanted extra cream I’d have ordered extra fucking cream. His mother had a mouth on her. In the phone box were cards. Men and women offering services. Fish nets and whips. Sex toys.

    Going over to the partition K pressed his ear against it. No noise. But it was torture to think that at any minute it might start up again. K couldn’t cope with that. Not tonight. Pulling on his suit from where he’d discarded it on the floor he let himself out of his room, made his way carefully down the stairs, and went out into the night. 
 

The wind through the trees. The tap tap tap of a man making his way slowly with a cane. K stepped aside, waited for him to pass. I will never amount to much. Too late now anyway. Under his foot a snail shell crushed. Then another. He examined his sole. A meniscus of slime, like snot. Kids’ noses running. A face pressed against a window, disappeared. The moon glared. He had loved once. Been loved. P. And that milkman. A father figure. Morning delivery! Early bird catches the worm. He’d been found hung in the end down at the depot. The milkman. Foul play was suspected but nothing proved. Rumours of blackmail circulated in the Laughing Prince, a fresh-faced lad on the darts team suddenly flush for a round or two and then locked in the outside toilet sobbing. He’d made K ache, Fred. First with his presence and then with his absence. P the same. Is that what all love is? Or life? He’d wanted to die on his honeymoon because he could see this future even then.

    Pebbles, stones, under his feet. The crunch of the beach. A dog nodded to him and he nodded back. All dogs made him think of Winnie. P cried when he died. They’d even had a little funeral. K had said a few words. He had the patter. Had to because of his act. Put people at ease, find things out, make them think that they knew you or you knew them more to the point.

    Let’s sit down here. Stones cold and sharp under his behind but bearable, the sharp press, the dampening. But what next? What was he doing here? Forget about the bloody past for God’s sake. Clifford from The Mousetrap Club in Burnley had said there was always room for him on the list. Beggars couldn’t be choosers and there were worse places than Burnley. Middlesbrough for a start. He’d been whacked there twice, thrown out of his lodgings when he’d promised he’d have the money by the end of the week. No, he wouldn’t go back to Middlesbrough. Maybe rest up here a bit? Keep Burnley on the back burner. Assess his options. Take stock. Except he had no stock. That was the problem. Fifty-three wasn’t old but it felt old and in this game it was all youth these days, what’s new. Or people that looked like Frank Sinatra, Cilla Black, sung like them too. It was ridiculous to think P’d take him back and yet she’d got older too. What’s that?

    Startled by footsteps above the swoosh of the sea K looked up. A shape at the water’s edge, close enough to spit at. The sound of pissing. Oiiii! Sorry mate. Didn’t see you there. Just using the facilities what God gave us. Good day to you. K took it as a sign. Time to heave ho. Pebbles crunching under foot once more. He considered picking one up, skimming it across the sea, plop plop plop, but he had never been an agile man, fornication in broken-doored toilets at out of the way stations was the best he could bend himself to, ha! But he’d always loved P, that was the truth, her nightly company, going out for a bacon sarnie in a greasy cafe, she wearing his trench coat wrapped around her so he could smell her the next time he put it on. He ached. Twenty years they’d had and that had to count for something. Knowledge is love. History is love. Love is love. Some kid was night fishing up on the pier, his rod out erect and twitching. If only he knew. Johnnie graveyard it was under his feet, like a shoal of rubber fish struck down by some disease. K knew. He knew dark places like that to his eternal shame.

    Back in the town proper a bill sticker was stuck on the door of the chip shop. The Jam. Coming to town. A date. But he would be gone by then. Too depressing to stay after all. He’d give Clifford a ring and then, cardboard case packed, loaded with his loaded cards, his best suit, a bottle of hair tonic, pants, socks, the lot, except not a lot to show for this sorry life, he’d be away from this candyfloss place, with its Kiss Me Quick hats, arcades, lads looking for trouble on a Friday night. Yet what to do with P? Should he? Knock on the door. Hello love. It’s me. K. Their last parting, a scene in Bethnal Green. Thrown his belongings from their fifth floor flat window. Read my mind she had screamed. You’re a cunting cunt cunt. The bakery door was open. Wafts of baked bread, spilt sugar on the cheap linoleum, a paper menu, corner ripped off. Oh we’re not serving yet love. This is the night bake. But if you come back in the morning you can take your pick. Look like you need feeding, you.

    He slipped down side streets, bins with bust lids, circling cats with arched backs, empty milk bottles on door steps, railings with sharp points. He saw a figure in front of him, wide shoulders, narrow black legs, a pert arse. And what was that? Carrying a coffin? The ventriloquist! Bit unsteady on your feet, aren’t you? Catching up he pats him chummily on the back. Too many in The Duck? They had a lock in. Couldn’t say no, but the thing about being so drunk is that it gets my pecker up, the opposite of brewer’s droop for me. What do you say? You’ll keep schtum, won’t you? K’s stomach churned. Schtum? For what? He had a vision then of Reach thrusting into P, the sharpest vision he’d had for some time, and he ached for her all the more, that experience. She is the mother of my only child. Yes. One final dip in the pond. Give her the chance at least. Too old to start again again the pair of them and Reach was no man.

    Outside Dolly’s Reach hung onto the railings, put his fingers to his lips before carefully descending the steps to the basement. What? Where is he off to now? There’s nothing down there but bins. Ah, here he comes, back again. Without the coffin. Reach grinned slyly. What I said in The Duck. First I must pay a visit. Spartans. You know how it is? And he was crossing the road to the door between the columns. The club had a buzzer. K had heard the fizz of it often enough late at night as he was lying in his bed. But the crackle of it now was lost in the sudden buzz of bottle-blue mopeds. Four. A significant number. Like the horsemen of the apocalypse but here horses replaced by wheeled machines, horse-riders by pale muscular youths with pinched angry faces. Mate. Mate. Or should we call you poofter? Oi! Reach, almost comical, twisting and raising his fists in the manner of a boxer to the four lads now off their steeds. It all happened quickly. Shouts. Thuds. Whacks. One of the mopeds toppling over, caught in the push and pull of the melee, and as it toppled the flash of something sharp, air exhaling or inhaling, phissh, a collective gasp and then the puff of engines starting, the toppled bike quickly righted and Reach lying there on the ground not right at all, a sharp thing, or the blunt end of a sharp thing, protruding from his stomach. Yak, Yak, Yak!  Help me! Yak! And he, so-called Yak, stumbled across the road himself. Don’t worry old chap. Help is coming. But was it? Hadn’t K foreseen all this in his dream? Yak? Yak, yes that’s me, and K got down on the floor next to the body, lifted the head onto his lap. He pushed back the hair gently and Reach’s eyes flickered. Yak? Yak? The pain. Yak? Can you stop this pain? What was she like, my wife, K said softly, did you love her, did you love her a bit? Did you? He let his hand rove down the body across the chest to the handle of the dagger, rather fine really, scrimshaw design, like one used for gutting fish. K couldn’t remember. Do you leave the blade in or pull it out? Reach let out a whimper. A layer of moisture had formed on his forehead, the top lip. You’re a goner, you know? said K. You see, I saw it. Sorry about that. Should have said that time in the pub. Warned you. But not my fault. You chose. You chose to cross that road. Not go to where she was waiting. We all choose. That’s the thing. And K, Yak, closed his eyes, not sure if this here now was the vision he’d had or the thing itself. If any of this was real. The man on his lap. The blood. The dagger. Then, across the road, a light came on, third floor, and P was there, at the window, leaning out. Yes, she said. Yes. Yes? And K, now K, not Yak, responded. It’s me. I’ve come home. Can I come home?