Byker Books

 

 

Probably I don't remember it correctly - probably I’m attaching things to it, making more of it than it was, as if I needed to do that. All the same, they seemed to be common thoughts I was having around that time, and they’re a good place to start, so I’ll say them. I walked along to the club - fifteen minutes away from where I lived, with the evening already dark as the year rounded itself off - thinking to myself, let’s get through tonight without any major bad news.

Minor bad news, it goes without saying, would be impossible to avoid, I knew that. There was no shortage of people who didn’t understand you shouldn’t come to the club to have a moan. You were meant to come with jokes, funny stories, or serious stuff you could have an engrossing conversation about. You could put the world to rights - you had to do that, or you’d go mad - but you didn’t come to bellyache about something trivial like the council behaving like fools. That’s what your family was for.

 

The major bad news, of course, was there to be shared, and we would share it. I was just hoping we could go a night, a Thursday night, so still fairly quiet, without things being said that preyed on your mind. At my age, things tended to get lodged in there, like when you’re young, scraps of songs do. I was worried, though. It’d been a while since the last big one (Mark’s lad attempting suicide - depression, they reckoned), and it was like Malcolm, who used to be a fireman, said - if you go too long between fires, the next one that comes along makes up for it.

But you can’t sit at home every night either, so I got in. No one else was there yet. I had my first pint, which always went down pretty fast. Then I would slow down for a while, and then pick up speed again towards the end of the night. The second pint was halfway down before they started coming in. I was getting antisocial anyway in my old age, but I remember thinking, the fewer people there are, the less likely the bad news will be. 
 

Ray was first, full of the trip to Scotland he was having with his wife, not this weekend but the weekend after. Then there was Jack, full of hell - but in a funny way - about the troubles he was having getting to grips with his computer and the printer. Alan, from round the corner, was also full of hell, in a much quieter way, about his neighbour, a young lass with it was hard to say how many kids. The noise through the day was one thing, but at night, Alan could hear her in bed with a procession of fellas, even above the racket from the wireless. This was starting to count as major bad news, since to me he looked to be getting thinner, frailer, fainter, you could say. The council had him compiling a ‘dossier’ on her. He’d have been better off braining her with it.

 

Our advice was to exaggerate here and there, but he was fearful of the council, Alan, wouldn’t even consider it.

 

He got the latest bother off his chest anyway - a big bust-up she had with her sister, and a reconciliation that was even worse - and I thought that might be it, we might be able to settle down for a decent night. Then Young Phil turned up, looking terrible. He looked right through us (I’d never appreciated the meaning of that phrase till then) and stood at the bar, knocking back the spirits. He sometimes did that, he’d always liked a drink, but he’d never done it as steadily as he did then, and not with his back turned to everyone in the place.

He was in his mid-thirties now, and usually sat with his us for half an hour or so, because his dad, Old Phil, had been one of our gang. Young Phil had never bothered with us while his dad was alive, and when he first started coming over we expected it to be a short-lived thing, but it’d been going on for about eighteen months now.

 
We all commented on it, him drinking like that. His wife was known to be a bit of a handful, and he had two young laddies, so who could begrudge him wanting to get out the house and have a bit peace for a couple of hours? That’s what we all assumed it would be, or that’s what we said it would be, anyway. We left him alone if he wanted to be left alone, that was the decision.

 

Once the barmaid started flashing us looks, we had to think again. We could tell by looking at him, the way people’s shoulders get, that he was waiting for one wrong word before he kicked someone all the way to Hexham. I knew I would get the job, right from the off. I always got the job in these situations. That’s what comes of being a prison officer for thirty years. I knew all the holds for immobilising people, even if they were half my age. I was in need of another pint anyway.

“Aal reet there, Phil?” I asked, standing next to him, arms on the bar, leaning forward. It only took a nod to the barmaid for another pint to come.
 

He rolled his head round and up, if you see what I mean, to see who it was. There was no great joy in seeing me, but he did at least make an effort to be civil. “Not really, nah, Col,” he said.

 

“Whey, that’s nee good man,” I said. “Owt four owld sods can help y’ with?”

 

“Doubt it, to be honest,” he said.

 

I hadn’t been one of those ‘screws’ the men felt they could talk to, and made no effort to be. I had no kind of bedside manner or anything like that. Still, I persevered. “Trouble at hyem, it’ll be, is it?” I asked, in a quiet voice.

 

“Pretty much like, pretty much.”

 

“Stewin here on ya own winnit help,” I told him. “Come an have a siddoon.” That sentence trailed off a bit when I realised it looked like I’d only said it to get him with the others, so they could take over.
He ignored it anyway. Talking to one old man might be preferable to talking to four, since talking to one old man is the next step up from talking to yourself.

“Gets home the day,” he said. “From the garage, reet?”

 

I nodded. Old Phil had built up a garage, and after some humming and hahhing, Young Phil had carried it on.

 

“One of the lads there, couldn’t come in. He was playin five-a-side last neet like, an he went an broke his fuckin leg, didn’t he? So I was talkin aboot aal that w’ the missus like when I gets in.”

 

“Aye.”

“Wor Darren was at the table an all.”

Darren was their five year old.

“The wife, aalways reading magazines an stuff like that, she says she read once that when y’ break a bone, it heals back like stronger in the place where it was broke. That was it really. Cannit remember what we were taalkin aboot after that.

 

“We were deein the dishes, an there was this screamin from upstairs aal of a sudden. Never heard a noise like it in me life. Hev to say an aal,” he nearly laughed, “women put men to shame in that kind of situation.”

“Can imagine,” I said.

 

“She was halfway up the stairs when ah was still standin there holdin the tea towel.”

I shook my head now, since this was going to be it.

 

“It was Darren, with the bairn. Little Rob, y’knaa.”

 

This was their one year old.

 

“He’d broken both his arms. Said we’d said it would make him stronger. He’d have strong arms when he grew up, and nee bullies would gan near him. He prob’ly would’ve done the legs an all if she hadn’t got there in time. Mebbes the fuckin neck. The screamin didn’t even put him off.”

“Christ,” I said. “Jesus Christ almighty.” I wouldn’t have been able to think of anything else to say if I’d had a month.

 

“Ah knaa, ah knaa. Fuckin ... what d’y’dee? Anyways, just back from the hospital. The police wanted gettin involved an all. Everyone’s fuckin drip white man, tellin y’.”

 

I said he should come and sit with us for a while, but he wasn’t in the mood for any of that. He kept saying he was all right, kept thanking me all the same. I took my pint, which I’d hardly touched, and sat down with it.

 

They knew I had a tale to tell, but I kept it to as few words as possible. No one really knew what to say, but I expect a few of them were thinking what the police had thought, and there’d be plenty more of that doing the rounds as well.

Young Phil probably would’ve known that as well, and that was why he got himself into a fight before much longer. It’d always been on the cards. One of the daft young lads knocked into him, purely by accident, and that was the end of that.

 

I took myself off home not long after, an hour before closing time. It felt like a long walk, long and dark and cold, and I didn’t want to look in anyone’s windows on the way. It gave the wife a surprise when I let myself in. She wanted to know what I was doing back so early, but I just shrugged, said I hadn’t been in the mood for it.

 

She heard the story at the shops the next day of course, and that I’d been the first person to hear about it. She looked at me funny when she got back. Well, I could put up with that all right.