Utterly Monkey. Nick Laird
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the other. Some of the above.’
Danny had forgotten this, how Geordie spoke. It struck Danny now that maybe it was because he felt awkward. He sounded like a client squirming, mixing bonhomie with avoiding your eye. Danny waited.
‘Well, I’m officially an unemployed labourer.’
‘That what your business card says?’
‘It’s what my dole form says. I wish to labour. But no suitable labour’s available. Suitable’s the key. You wouldn’t believe what they’ve made me go on. I’ve been apprentice, trainee, new-starter, jobseeker.’
‘So you just living off the bru?’
‘Off the bru and on the…’ Geordie lifted his pint and nodded towards it, ‘brew.’ He then laughed too loudly, a little hysterical.
Danny eyed him quizzically. ‘You’re still a funnyman. Funny peculiar.’
‘Sorry mate, I’m a wee bit caned. I had a smoke in that park at the end of the road before I came to see you. What have I been doing? Well…’ Geordie puffed his cheeks and blew breath out for a second. Danny felt the heat of it and moved slightly back. I was doing a bit of cab work with Tommy Vaughan’s Taxis. Driving the old biddies to and from the Bingo. Leaving them over to their friends’ houses for tea and chat or up to the church on a Sunday.’
Danny was reminded of what he’d wanted to ask him when he’d been at the bar.
‘How did you know where I lived anyway?’
‘Just phoned your mum and mentioned I was coming over and she told me. Got your phone number as well but thought I’d just call round, surprise you.’
Damn sure you did. Otherwise I’d have produced a bulletproof excuse. Danny also suddenly realized why his mum had called him at work that morning when he’d been on a conference call: an e-mail from Jill, his secretary, had popped up on his screen asking him to ring her back. He’d forgotten, as usual, but this seemed a disproportionate and cruel punishment.
‘Yeah…You look well. It’s good to see you. How long are you here for? What are you doing here? You know, in London?’
Geordie moved nothing in his face now except his lips.
‘Not sure yet. See how things pan out.’
They drank fast, and let drink do the unpeeling for them. After setting down each new round on the table there was a moment when they waited for the pints to finish settling. It is difficult to get going on a Guinness. There is nothing aesthetic about other refreshments. Lager and cider just slop in their glasses, fizzing at you to get at it, to raise it and down it. Guinness is complete in itself. The first sip is like cutting a wedding cake. After the measured pouring, then the storm in a pint glass, the spindrift apartheid of grains and galaxies settling. And the Guinness was working. Danny began to feel a kind of warmth for this hard-bitten short-arse in front of him. It was good to see him. There was the other thing, of course, that Geordie brought back: guilt. But for the moment that could be disguised with drink, with smoke and mirrors which, indeed, the pub had in abundance. Danny had some knowledge he’d been chewing on for the last hour. It was time to spit it out. He cleared his throat and started, ‘I heard you had some bother a while back.’
The bother was a bullet in the back of each of Geordie’s calves.
‘Ach, you know the way it goes. I wasn’t really up to anything. I was seeing…’
He looks up, expecting an interjection. None comes.
‘Budgie Johnson’s sister. Just for a wee bit of action, nothing serious, and he took it hard. You ever see her? Something else altogether.’
‘Which one is she?’
Janice. With a wonky eye and great fat tits.’
They were grinning. Geordie knew that Danny probably didn’t usually have this sort of chat. Danny knew that Geordie knew.
‘Works in Martin’s Chemists?’
That’s the one.’
‘What happened?’
Greer walked in on me and her. Getting to the pitch. On his sofa.’
‘You’re joking?’
‘No joke. I didn’t know whether to come or shit myself.’
Budgie, also known as Greer, was the eldest of the Johnson brothers. There were two others, Chicken and Brewster, and two younger sisters, Janice and Malandra. Chicken was called Chicken because Budgie was called Budgie, though why Budgie was called Budgie was nobody’s business and anyone’s guess. He probably bit the head off one. Budgie was an animal. He’d knocked over every premises in Ballyglass at least three times. A big lean man like a knife. He looked the part. Shaven headed, serious. You didn’t fuck with Budgie. He ran several things – drugs, local racketeering, a rash of potsheen stills up between The Loup and Cooperstown – but there was some confusion as to how far his fingers went, and into which pies exactly.
‘You weren’t done just for that?’
‘That was the real reason.’
‘Well, what did they say you were done for?’
‘Nicking cars…’
Danny eyed him with a level twenty-twenty.
‘Tha’ wee bit of dealing maybe.’
‘What sort?’
‘Puff mostly. A few pills. Coke at Christmas.’
‘You twat.’
‘They all do it.’
‘So they’re not going to want you cutting in.’
They supped. Geordie removed his fags from the front pouch of his hooded top, and leaned back to squirm the lighter out of his jeans.
‘When did it happen?’
‘I’ve told this thing a million times.’
‘So tell it again. You’re still one whiny bastard. You should be glad of the attention.’
Geordie lit his fag and blew smoke out. Once, twice. He took a sip and wiped the froth away with the back of his hand. Everyone prepares their body before they tell a story.
‘It was around one in the morning, on a Tuesday night. Five months ago or thereabouts. I’d been playing pool in the new pool hall. You won’t know it, it’s down behind the carpet warehouse. Then I’d gone to the Gleneally for a few pints with Den Spratt. You remember him?’
‘Rat-face Spratt.’
‘The very same. More like a chipmunk now. More meat to his cheeks.’
‘Come on.’
‘I was lying in bed, bit pissed, dozing. Mum’s staying at her sister’s in Bangor. Dad’s flat out snoring. There’s a bang of some sort and it wakes me. I figure it’s a car door banging just outside. So I look out the window. My bed’s still beneath the sill. There’s two cunts in the fucking garden in balaclavas. The streetlights are giving off good light and I know them. Not just to see, I know their fucking names. And they’re standing back. Not even keeping a lookout but watching the porch, so I know that there’s others and they’re at the fucking door. And I figure that bang was my fucking door going in.’
He stops and fingers a Regal out from its box. Danny realizes that the story, for Geordie, has slipped from urgency into theatrics. Danny lifts the pack and raises his brows. Geordie nods as he lights his own. Danny draws one out for himself and is struck by how clean and neat it is. Perfect. He looks over at Geordie’s fag, smouldering, spoiled. Geordie’s nails were bitten down so badly that the tops of the fingers puffed out baldly over the remains of the nail. Numerous hangnails hung from their pink tiny divots. Danny bends his head to the flame Geordie’s