British Winters Read online

  Chapter Eight

  Wrong Room, Right Fit

  The George is neither quiet nor busy, like every night. Kevin has spent most of my shift in his office so thankfully the sexual harassment has been down to a minimum, only a brief mention of duelling trouser snakes as he passes the bar.

  The address of the self-help group is in my back pocket. Stuff that goes into the back pocket goes there to be forgotten, only to be found after a weekly wash; an unidentifiable paper misshape. My forgetfulness, normally being one of my strongest attributes, is now absent. The address ticks over in my mind and every few seconds my hand ends up resting in my back pocket; my fingers toying with the corner of the folded scrap of paper.

  ‘You don’t want to get better.’ That’s what she thinks; she thinks I like feeling this way? No, what she thinks is that I have let this become me, that I’m addicted to the self-hate. She’s right, getting past the hate means I have to accept a life of change; the self-hate is fence-sitting. I get to kick and scream about the state of things whilst simultaneously wallowing in the status quo.

  Benny asks for another drink, a snakebite - a concoction equal parts cider and lager. The transaction ends with Benny taking his change, leaving me with a yellow post-it in the palm of my hand. How did this happen?

  “Snakebite, Noel.”

  “Certainly, Benny.” Half a pint of cider, half a pint of lager.

  “Two, forty-eight mate.” He gives me a fiver and eight pence in loose change; I open the till, place the fiver in the tray and drop the coppers in their place. Two sixty is the needed change; two gold coins, two silver.

  “There you go, Benny.”

  “Ta, Noel.” Benny takes the money from my hand revealing the yellow post-it lying there. It unfolds slowly, opening like a flower: the address in navy blue biro; the time underlined; the title, ‘The Touch Group’. I shudder.

  “Hello, Mr Winters.” It’s Nails, saviour of the working man.

  “Just the man I wanted to see. You know that favour you owe me?”

  “No, I know about the one you owe me.”

  “Same one. How about double or nothing?”

  “And how’s that meant to work?”

  “Ah… how about you watch the bar for a couple of hours and…”

  “You’ll owe me yet another favour.”

  “I did say double or nothing.”

  “So you’ll double the favour you owe me or...?”

  “I’ll repay none of them.” Nails’ face changes; a happy thought has drifted upon him.

  “You cover January first.”

  “Fuck me, I’ll only be gone for a few hours.”

  “And my back is still killing me from lifting all those PCs.” Oh no, a worried pause, Nails has seen the fine print to this agreement: “Wait, is Kev still here?”

  Shit, Nails has noticed the light creeping under Kev’s office door.

  “Yes, but he hasn’t been out all night.”

  “Meaning the moment you leave he’ll be out here stroking his balls and groping at mine. No thanks, deal’s off.”

  “How about if I can guarantee he won’t come out?”

  “Guarantee how?”

  “Trade secret.”

  “Tell you what, if you know a way of keeping the beast of the colonies at bay we can call it even.”

  “Deal.”

  “You need to prove it works and then spill the secret, and then it’s a deal.”

  “And after that we’re all straight?”

  “Plus the night’s tips.”

  “Take ‘em now: a twenty pence piece; a five pence from the eighties and an odd looking coin from somewhere that now uses the Euro.”

  “Oh, that’s last night’s tips. I’ll leave it.”

  “So I’ll end up either owing you two favours or none, right?”

  “Yep.”

  “So it is double or nothing?”

  The yellow post-it that my family doctor, I mean my family’s doctor, had scribbled the address on is in my hand and I am on a bus. St Jude’s Christian Centre is the address. It is only a twenty-minute walk from the pub but sod it, the bus goes right by the place. St Jude? That’s the patron saint of lost causes. That’s a tad ominous for a help centre.

  As the title implies the place is an old Christian church back in the day when every town had at least five fully working churches and some villages had more. Now like every other house of God it has to come up with a new trade. To opt out of being divvied up into flats the Presbyterian Church has decided to pimp this place of worship out as a community centre. Family orientated stuff in the day time and self-help group saddoes like me in the evening. I guess the bonus with this is if the whole Christian fad kicks off in a big way again, the church can just throw out all the mums and toddlers groups along with all the saddoes, and get right back to making folks feel bad about the stuff they enjoy doing.

  “Touch Group?” The heading written above the address; I realise that the group is using a play on words - getting in touch with your feelings, getting in touch with each other. However, I read it as though someone is going to be indecent with me and then ask me not to tell my parents.

  The building’s hallways are a shade of yellow known only to council run or funded buildings and its woodwork is an aqua blue. Chequerboard carpet tiles are at my feet, red and a slightly lighter red, burgundy and mauve. The interior decorator’s ability to match colours is akin to the ability of a child with Tourettes to be tight-lipped. Seeing the open door to the help group on the right, I cut to my left and duck into the toilets, giving myself the final chance to back out.

  Splashing a little cold water on my face for no known reason I see the same Gents’ room graffiti I have come to expect, with the king of pranksters having drawn a cock on the mirror with a black marker that makes the viewer appear a literal ‘Dickhead’. After giving my reflection a ‘fair cop, guv’ look I then spy ‘NOEL WOZ ERE’ in green biro above the hand dryer. Whipping out my trusty ballpoint, I amend it.

  “Noel was not here and never bloody will be.” I mutter under my breath.

  I also correct the perpetrator’s spelling. I would have left there and then. This isn’t me; I’m not going to open up to these people, I’m going to listen to their woes and feel worse than I did before getting here, which is hard to conceive because I sat in gum on the bus so my mood is at an all time low.

  Then on my way out I notice, as I pass the room in the other direction, a table… free tea and cakes. Some things are just not within your control when you are British, like my inability to turn down the opportunity of free tea and cakes.

  “Firstly, I’d like to thank you all for coming and would like to welcome any newcomers,” said Ted, a man with a sticky label that read ‘TED’ in uppercase letters stuck to the left pocket of his mustard coloured shirt. Maybe it’s not his name, maybe he’s a boffin from the TED conferences. I wonder what the acronym is? The Egghead Debates, or To Evade… Dickheads? The Ted that is welcoming me, along with the other boo hoo Betties, is a slender man who looks older than his days. The bags under his eyes tell a tale of never knowing a good night’s sleep, and the lines at the sides of his mouth denote a person who has spent more time sad than smiling.

  As Ted rambles on, my eyes and attention span are drawn to two banners hanging on the dirty, cream, woodchip, wallpapered walls of the room. They both have Christian messages on them. The first one, a shiny orange fabric says: “Trust Him for all that is to come”; him being God because no one likes to worship a non-gender specific deity. The second one on the same kind of fabric, only this time in green, says: “Praise Him for all that has passed”. I wonder if, as these two slogans were lovingly stitched into the space age wonder cloth of the seventies, any thought had gone out to all those women pregnant with rape babies; rape babies that the church believes are still not a good enough reason for abortion. Praise God for your rape and trust him to in no way help you with the raising of a child that shares fi
fty per cent of its D.N.A. with a man who raped you.

  “Please feel free to get a drink or a biscuit at any point,” Ted is still doing the intro, “and for the newcomers you’ll see some of us have name tags. The labels and pens are on the drinks table but it’s totally optional. Remember, you are in the circle of trust now.”

  Yeah, I trust that anything I say to these zombies will be regurgitated back up in to my face when I accidentally bump into them with my mother. I trust a hobo with a bottle of Scrumpy Jack more, I ain’t saying a word.

  “Does anyone feel like starting us off?” No, Ted, everyone in here feels like bailing and getting pissed, isn’t that right, Sandra? Sandra is another name tag wearer; she sits to Ted’s right and I’d place her in her early forties but don’t hold me to that, as I’m awful at guessing ages. There’s young, middle and old as far as I’m concerned; the individual years just blur together like being too close to a Monet painting. Sandra has an odd expression on her face; it looks like her emotions are teetering - she seems happy, happy to be here among friends, yet a quivering on her bottom lip shows itself now and then and her eyes glaze over. She wipes before a tear can escape and smiles through it, happily smiling on the edge of a ravine of despair; this certainly isn’t the beginners’ class.

  “I’ll go, Ted.” An unlabelled man rises up out of his seat.

  “Hi, my name is Barry and I am an alcoholic.” What? My eyes shoot to the door. No sign; is this an AA group? Why are there no signs? I know it’s Alcoholics Anonymous, but without a sign how do these pissheads know they’re in the right room?

  “I know why she left and that’s my doing, but she tells my boys things, awful things, things I’ve done. I see it in their eyes.” Shit, Barry is unloading. “Little Aaron is always asking ‘What are you drinking, Daddy?’ It’s just water, son, just water.”

  “Sorry, can I interrupt?” Fuck, I just cut into a story about a kid giving his dad a breathalyser. “I’m not in the right room. Sorry Barry.”

  “We all get that feeling the first time, friend.”

  “No, it isn’t that… I’m not a drunk. I think I’m supposed to be in the room down the hall.” I jump up out of my seat and slowly back away from a shocked group of alcoholics as they bitterly chew on the fact someone just referred to them as drunks; shaking their heads and mumbling the word ‘no’ in an almost chant like way.

  “We can’t make you stay, but we can tell you that we’re here for you when you are ready to be here.”

  “I really…. Thanks.” I exit the room my eyes never leaving the group. Sandra’s lip quivers and she lets a tear escape, catching it before it reaches the jaw line.

  I’m back in the sickly yellow hallway where I hear someone wailing down at the far end of the corridor; it draws me to it, the sound likened to a burly man who has recently been smacked in the mouth with a large fish. The sign on the door says ‘Touch Group’, the very words written on the scrunched up post-it, now stuffed into that weird small, inner pocket that jeans have; that purposeless pocket. The door to the room is open just wide enough for me to spy the burly man, now not looking so burly and I see no fish in sight. This is the right room? This room where a man in a salmon pink polo shirt sobs into the arm of another man in the same shirt, only its banana yellow? This room, where the rest of the group nod with painted on smiles, to show their approval of the weeper’s overwhelming strength in shedding his tears for the whole world to see? This is my room?

  So, here I am, standing amongst my group ready to share.

  “My name is Leonard Richmond and I am an alcoholic.” That’s right, my group is the drunks, a group with weary emotions not exploding emotions. The AA group says, ‘Hello’ and Barry, Sandra and the Ted give me looks I imagine parents might give when they’ve successfully taught their child to ride a bicycle.

  “We’re all glad to have you, Leonard. Would you like to share or just listen today?”

  “I’d like to share. Do I say how long I’ve been dry for or what?”

  “We’re not competing here. We’re here to let each other know that we’re not alone, through the stories we share.”

  “Ok, erm… I drink to shut down my brain.” The group nod, like they know; the connection feels good - I like it.

  “I wake up wishing I hadn’t and all my thoughts and fears come flooding in like someone turned on a tap.” They get me. They’re not shocked by my words. Of course, drunks drink the world away and that’s what I’m depicting. No, that’s what I’m doing.

  “It’s like I can’t get away from myself, away from who I am and the drinking makes me someone else.” Oh God, am I a drunk? I don’t drink every day but I do drink more often than I used to and when I do it’s to great excess.

  “Drink it all away,” calls out Sandra.

  “Yeah, drink it all away, friends, family...” I’m back in my seat as the word family rolls off my tongue.

  “How about we take a little tea, coffee, cake time?” asks Ted and gestures to the drinks table. The group moves as one. Ted and Barry come and sit by me, later joined by Sandra who has kindly made me a tea and has gotten me a cake, a fairy cake with lemon icing.

  They compliment me and speak of my bravery. I don’t feel brave; I feel weak, as I spoke to the group, I feel a father’s curse being passed to the son. Sandra tells me of how she’s been sober for two years and how it’s still the first thing she thinks of when she wakes up. Barry once again talks of the shame he feels every time he looks into the eyes of his two boys and Ted just nods.

  Walking back to my obligations, I play back the events in my mind. Was this helpful or did I highlight my fears and get a room full of failure experts to agree with me.

  “Yep, you are fucked up, just like us. Welcome.”

  I’m in no rush to get back to work so I forgo the bus ride, a decision I regret four yards up the road. Whilst journeying through the streets of the real world I like to plug into a world of my own choosing. I do this by popping my earphones in and letting the music become my protective bubble away from the world. Eerily lit empty streets become a harmonious setting to enjoy any Pink Floyd song, though personally I have to say Pigs on the Wing is a real winner. Having to walk past a gang of teenage thugs becomes a fearless strut whilst listening to Search and Destroy by the Stooges. And walking through the British drizzle just doesn’t seem as bad when you’re listening to Mother Nature’s Son by the Beatles or absolutely anything by the Kinks.

  “Oi, giz us a light!”

  Tonight I don’t have my bubble. Tonight I face the world’s own musical score in full stereo. I have to listen to a barely attached exhaust pipe of a candy green Corsa scrape down the pothole infested road; I have to listen to an abusive father berate his promiscuous teenage daughter in the privacy of his own home and I have to listen to this guy:

  “Hey, dickhead, I need a light.” The street goon, his girl by his side, gives his lighter another try and the flint sparks; his cigarette is lit.

  “Oh, got it. You can fuck off now.” How nice and after he’d so graciously talked me into coming to his aid.

  “Don’t worry about him, he ain’t gonna do fuck all, mate.” Why’s the girlfriend getting involved?

  “Fuck, I won’t, I’ll kick his arse.” Fucking idiot girls, idiot guys are all talk until the idiot girlfriend starts yapping.

  “Don’t listen to it, guy. He couldn’t beat up a granny.”

  “Bitch. Oi, nobhead, come here.”

  “You’re ok, this is between you two really.” There I go talking sense and there he goes throwing some fists. The world flashes white and I have to listen to the sound of some idiot bitch telling a barely conscious man that he should have kept his mouth shut; I have to listen to the sound of my skull hitting the concrete. I miss my bubble.

  Consciousness returns as a vibration left of my cock. My phone beeps and shakes me into an upright position.

  “Hello?”

  “Where the fuck are you?” asks Na
ils, calling from the bar.

  “I’m on my way.”

  “On your way? You’ve been gone for three hours. Get back now! I’m not locking up for you, Noel.” I see the blurry shape of public transport.

  “The bus is here now, see ya in five.”

  Ten minutes later I’m back in the bar and it’s half as busy as it was when I left; three patrons and a bartender.

  “Shit, your face.”

  “Bad? I haven’t seen it yet.”

  “What am I covering for? Are you fucking Sonny Corleone’s daughter?”

  “No, your mother. Can I get a drink?”

  “My mother’s sixty-two, but hey, if it’s love I’ll step aside, Papa.”

  Nails puts a whiskey in front of me. I don’t want it. I guess the meetings do work.

  “Why did you pour me a whiskey?”

  “Sorry, you asked for a drink. Did you mean a cup of Ovaltine?”

  “Can I get a coffee, black two sugars… and then put some milk in it?”

  My head drops into my hands. The area around my eye stings then pulsates; the vision is a little fuzzy like the moments before sleep. Why’s the world so shit where a guy gets punched out over the lighting of a cigarette? A world where that guy can’t fully feel sorry for himself, because he knows that this shitty act of violence is a needle in a stack of swords in this shitty world of open war with hidden agendas and hidden wars with public agendas, headlines full of obesity and countries full of famine? Noel Winters is not a casualty. He is not drifting battered and bloody through the rubble of what used to be his home and the homes of his neighbours. Noel Winters is not an innocent caught between feuding gods auguring over guardianship of the people. Orphanages burned on the night that Noel Winters held in the pain of a black eye and the shame of him being born a white westerner makes him tip his whiskey into his freshly made black coffee, with milk.

  “So, what really happened?”

  “The short version is that a guy asked for a light and by the time I turned around he didn’t need that light anymore.”

  “So he punched you in the face?”

  “Some people just can’t stand awkward silences.”

  “You said something, didn’t you?”

  “I may have told him that his Burberry hat was too small.” I wish I was that cool.

  “You’re a fucking idiot, you know that? Did you throw a few punches or just piss in your pants?”

  “Funny you should mention that, my pants do feel a tad damp. So I kind of hope I did piss myself or I’m thinking...”

  “He pissed on you?”

  “Or a dog.”

  “A dog doesn’t make it any better.”

  “Hey, I’ll take a dog pissing on me, over me pissing myself because some guy knocked me out or worse still that the guy who knocked me out then decided to piss on me.”

  “The best out of three turds is still a turd.”

  The guy’s William Blake incarnate, he also coined the phrase ‘Two girls in the bush is worth one in the ass’.

  “So, did Kev ever come out of the dungeon?”

  “No, how did you keep him in there? Starting to think you’ve got him all tied up in a gimp suit.”

  “Good guess, but no.”

  “So spill it, that’s the deal.”

  “And we’re still even?”

  “Well, as you taking three hours was not your fault, yes.”

  “I told him Gladys was out here drinking with some old sergeant major looking bloke.”

  “And that works why?”

  “Because Kev’s wife has warned him that if he so much as looks at Gladys in a way that she feels is offensive then she’ll cut him across the taint. His words not mine.”

  “So he’ll just hide himself away in there whenever she comes in?”

  “Yep, and as far as Kev knows she’s in most nights that I am working.”

  I allow Nails to exit the place before letting the sex pest out of his den of sin; in fact I let everyone go before releasing him. I wait until closing. I wait until I put up the stools; collect all the glasses and bag up the till before freeing the beast of the colonies.

  “Do you know what that smell is, Noel?” are the words Kev barks at me as I enter his office.

  “Smell?”

  “Yes, smell; the smell of… Jesus, your eye?”

  “Ah yes.”

  “You didn’t have that when you started work.”

  “I… did it changing one of the optics. A bottle slipped and cracked me in the eye.”

  “Did you write it in the accident book?”

  “No.”

  “Good man, we don’t want those health and safety Nazis all up in our business.”

  “The smell, Kev?”

  “Ah yes, urine, Noel, urine.”

  “Sorry? Oh shit, yeah, I didn’t have any spare pants and it’s so close to closing.”

  “And it smells of urine in here because, wait... what?”

  “Nothing, why does it smell like urine?”

  “Cos I had to pee in an empty lemonade bottle.” My eyes dart to the bottle on Kev’s desk; its contents darker than what the label claims it to be. I know I’m a hypocrite, standing there in my pissy pants, now dry, but still pissy. But it’s Kev’s piss eww... and I can see the condensation building up into droplets around the neck of the bottle every now and then gaining enough mass to dribble back to the yellow lake below.

  “Actually, it wasn’t empty I had a third of a bottle left. Do you know the psychological torment a man goes through when he has to glug down a large amount of fluid when his bladder wants to explode?”

  “Why didn’t you just go to the toilet?”

  “Because Gladys was in the bar all night or at least I hope so, because if not why are you only just coming in here to tell me the coast is clear?”

  “No, that’s right she just left, but still if you needed to pee take a chance, Kev.”

  “Oh, and what if I’d bumped into her, Noel?”

  “You tell her you can’t talk, you need to PEE!”

  “Oh great, and then she tells Julie that she saw me and I went on about my pee parties with my penis.”

  “Don’t mention your penis.”

  “That’s where the pee comes from, Noel.”

  “I know, but...”

  “You know I know, but I don’t want my wife to know that it was me who let Gladys know. She will take my balls, Noel, my balls.”

  “You just can’t hold it in can you?”

  “I think the bottle speaks volumes.”

  The man’s a prisoner to himself; the thing that makes him most happy is socially crippling. The sexual innuendo tourettes prevents him from going into nice restaurants or meeting his wife’s parents. He can’t eat a hotdog without felating its protrusive pink end and he doesn’t have the willpower to stop himself from picking up a dachshund and holding it to his crotch whilst shouting: “Look at my wiener… dog!”

  Hold the phone; it wasn’t my phone that woke me up, it was a car speeding by. It splashed me, it splashed my jeans, and then I noticed my phone vibrating. It’s not urine, it’s not dog pee, it’s not my pee and more importantly it’s not some other guy’s pee. It’s just dirty street water, which I know may not be as sterile as urine but it sure as hell didn’t come shooting hot and steaming out of some other guy’s penis and that’s a win to me.