Bebo

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	Chapter Seven
	Wednesday 4:45pm. I park in the same place I always do, in a tree screened patch of wasteland just off the road. Mike’s car is already here. I pull in and park beside it, wheels bumping over the uneven ground. I haul on the handbrake and rummage in my workbag for my hat, gloves and Tesco carrier bag. I lock the door, more out of habit than anything else, there aren’t many car thieves in the middle of nowhere. “Same old, same old,” I mutter, looking around. The only thing which has changed in the six years I have been coming here is the condition of the old washing machine which someone dumped here many, many moons ago. When I first parked here, two weeks before I actually passed my driving test, it was in good nick. In fact, I remember Mike joking that he would stick it in the boot of his car and give it to his Mum for Christmas. At yearly intervals we have watched its rusty decay. I pat it like an old friend, a rusting old man slumped amid a lonely patch of nettles. I look up at the sky, light is a precious commodity. There can only be an hour’s picking time left. Mike and Stevie will be up there already. I told them I would meet them here, come straight from work when I could. I cast a final look back at Mike’s car. I notice that since the last time I saw it the aerial has been ripped off and been replaced, in time honored fashion, with a bent wire coat hanger. I pull on my hat and cross the road, looking this way and that to make sure the farmer isn’t about. No tractors, nothing moving apart from the heads of the windblown trees. I gingerly scale a barbed wire fence, the lines of wire popping and snarling as they take my weight, and jump down into the muddy field on the other side. The field contains nothing more than three inches of wet stubble. It makes, vwipp, vwipp, noises against my trainers as I tramp through the mud. At the other end of the field I can make out the green and brown mottled patches of grass and gorse which make up Mushie-land. On its slopes I imagine I can make out two moving dots. Wind whips cold and wet across the fields like a damp towel. I shiver and tuck my hands deeper into my pockets. I walk with my head down, concentrating on my feet. I note that my trainers are now almost soaked through. I pause halfway to get my breath and look back the way I have come, back along the field to the road winding through countryside like a sullen river, to the stand of trees where my car is parked. I let my gaze drift, looking for my town, no more than an indistinct grayness in the distance. “Always forget how fucking big this field is,” I pant to myself. I light a cigarette, which probably won’t help, and plod on towards Mushie-land. Mushie-land is a forty acre piece of hilly moorland in the middle of nowhere, bordered on all sides by barley fields. Most of its area is made up of trees and gorse bushes but in between these are large patches of grassland. It is these that bring us here. In the grassland are the most fertile magic mushroom patches I have ever seen. We have been coming up here since we were sixteen years old. We found this place while we were still at school, during one of our October mushie binges. Round where we live the October holidays are known as the tattie holidays, because years ago the school kids would spend their two week break tattie picking on the local farms. To us though, they were always the mushie holidays. We were an annual sight about town, wandering play parks, golf courses, grass verges, and anywhere else anything even vaguely fungus-like might grow. Eyes downcast, with plastic bags and expressions of near terminal determination. The problem was parkies and green keepers were wise to the fact that mushies grew on their land and kept spraying and mowing them, therefore making them hard to find. It was Mike who eventually solved our problem by finding this place. Years ago, Mike’s dad was mad keen on rambling. This was when Mike’s dad was lighter, before he got his promotion, when he still thought about things other than work. Sometimes at weekends he would drag Mike and his brothers off into the countryside. Mike said he hated it, but when he speaks about it now you get the impression he wants those days back. Anyway, one Sunday in late September Combat Mike’s dad takes his sons for a pleasant stroll in the country, across the fields and through this big patch of gorse moorland. Mike said he was just walking along, grumbling quietly to himself, when he looked down and almost choked. There were mushrooms as far as the eye could see. I always imagine the scene in his head at that moment as being kind of like a fruit machine, but instead of a line of lemons or bells signifying a jackpot, it’s a line of mushrooms. I still smile when I imagine flashing lights and bells going off in his brain. I bet that’s what he was thinking at that exact moment, jackpot! For the rest of the afternoon the three other members of the family kept giving him weird looks because he was humming contentedly to himself. The problem, however, was that Mike couldn’t remember where this naturally occurring mushie farm was, because he’d seen it in the middle of a long walk that crisscrossed, literally, miles of nowhere. We spent the next three weekends tramping around the countryside trying to locate this promised land of free drugs. In our minds it took on a mythic quality, like King Solomon’s mines or the cities of gold. We were on the point of giving up, desperate at the thought (which tormented Mike particularly) that this place was out there and we just couldn’t find it, when Mike suddenly yelped and half tumbled over the front seat of my car, pointing at a distant patch of green. We had found it, and we have been coming here ever since. As far as I know Combat, Dead and I, are the only three people in the world who know of its existence. I flick my cigarette away and pick my way over the rusty barbed wire fence which marks the boundaries of Mushie-land. I look around, nothing has changed since the first time. Time is frozen here, or at least that’s the way it seems. I set off in search of Stevie and Mike. Every landmark I pass seems to have a memory attached to it. We used to come up picking while tripping out of our boxes, so some of the memories are a little strange. We were once chased along the trail I am walking down by an irate woman on a horse, who had discovered us picking. I pass a bush on the left where we hid when we saw some guy walking up the field towards us. He proceeded to produce a shotgun from over his shoulder and we spent the best part of an hour sprawled flat on the ground in terror while he blasted pheasants out of the air not five feet above our heads. The stand of tall pine trees away to my left are the ones we sprinted towards for refuge when we thought the rumble made by a low flying plane was a cattle stampede. There are other, equally bizarre memories, too many to recount. I spot Stevie and Mike crawling on their hands and knees in a clearing ahead. I call out to them and they wave in acknowledgement. It takes longer than I thought to get to them, like it always does when you try to estimate the time it will take to walk between two points across uneven ground. They watch my progress, screening their eyes against the sun, low in the west. I am slightly out of breath when I reach them. “Alright?” I say. Stevie holds out an envelope with my name on it. “Happy birthday,” he says looking sheepish. “Yeah, happy birthday,” Mike adds. There is, I must admit, a lump in my throat. It’s the first time anyone has said this to me today. “Aw, thanks boys,” I croak. I open the envelope, there is a card inside with a rude poem, inside wrapped in cling film and sellotaped to the card, are five pills. “Cheers, nice one,” I say, trying for enthusiasm I don’t really feel. There’s just no escape, is there? The trick to mushie picking is not to stare at one area of grass. You have to relax your eyes and walk forward slowly, scanning the ground evenly. Eventually you catch a dab of beige in the green. I go down on my knees and pluck the scrap of fungus between thumb and forefinger, making sure to get all of the stem. Someone once told me that’s where all the hallucinogen is. Where there’s one there are usually more, and sure enough I seem to have found a patch. I pick until I have a handful then transfer them to the bag. Mike and Stevie’s bag is already half full. We pick until the light gives out. Mike and I pass the time by slagging Stevie’s new trainers. He has got rid of the red Adidas monstrosities and replaced them with an equally hideous pair of electric blue Puma’s. “Honestly Deadboy, I’ve met clowns with better taste in shoes than you,” smirks Mike. Stevie stands and fixes Mike with a stern look. “Combat,” he says. “Sook ma fuckin root.” “Sook ma root?” Says Mike aghast. “Where the fuck did you get that expression from?” Stevie just smiles, shrugs, and goes back to his picking. By six the last of the light has gone completely and we pack up and head for the cars. We head back to Stevie’s to set the mushies out to dry. Stevie’s mum is in the kitchen and Stevie kisses her on the cheek. “Hi mum,” he says. He does it so completely unselfconsciously that it brings a rush of tender sentiment for him, for them both. We go up to Stevie’s room and lay the mushies out on a couple of sheets of newspaper which Stevie has prepared already. Stevie says they’ll be alright here, his mum never comes up. Mrs D makes us tea, mince and tatties, with custard and tinned peaches for pudding. It’s really nice sitting down to eat at a table with three other people for once, instead of only the television and Neighbors for company. When I get home there is a parcel and two cards waiting for me. Dan has put them in my room. He is in the living room. “Is it your birthday?” He asks. “Yeah,” I say. “Oh,” he says, polishing his glasses and looking embarrassed. “Why didn’t you say?” Why do you care? Were you going to organize a fucking surprise party or something? “Oh, you know, didn’t want to make a fuss.” “Mmpf,” He says and nods as if this explains everything. He goes back to watching, a question of sport, a sign that our social interaction for the evening is over. The first card says, happy birthday, love from Dad, and contains three twenty pound notes. The second says, happy birthday, from Mum and auntie Gladys xxx, and contains a tenner. The package is also from my mum. I rip open the wrapping paper. It’s a jumper, two pairs of socks, and a bobble-hat so awful it makes me wince. I turn on the computer and load up Championship Manager wearing my new jumper, which I have to admit, is not as terrible as it could be, although it is obviously too terrible to ever be worn outside the house. Actually, I’m quite glad about Dan talking to me like that. Since I woke up on Sunday afternoon I have been trying to figure out whether Cally has told Dan about me kissing her. I have come to the tentative conclusion that she hasn’t. At first I thought that Dan had given me the black eye and fat lip, although I have to admit that doing something like that is definitely not his style. I cowered in my room, a shivering mass of paranoia, listening for him to go out, before I scuttled out to have a shower and something to eat. I eventually saw him on Monday night when I got in from work, and while he wasn’t actually friendly, he didn’t start shouting at me, so I didn’t know what to think. He hasn’t said anything, and him being almost apologetic about not knowing about my birthday, has finally convinced me that he doesn’t know. Just because she hasn’t told him, however, doesn’t mean she won’t. When I woke up there was a blissful five minutes before I remembered the events of the previous night and pulled myself into a cringing ball under the duvet. I remembered kissing Cally, I remembered waking up in the garden covered is piss and puke, but that was all. Every time I have left the flat since I have been looking over my shoulder. The paranoia, the not knowing what I might have been doing, is driving up the wall. “Fuck,” I mutter under my breath. I sit with my head in my hands for half an hour until the phone rings. It’s my Mum. She wishes me happy birthday, then goes on for ages, like mums do. I never phone her, why not, don’t I think I could do better than working in a factory, and so on, and so on. Eventually she invites me to go and stay with her and auntie Gladys for Christmas, and I say I’ll think about it. Then she rings off. I go back to Championship Manager and lose successive games against Rangers and Motherwell before the phone goes again. This time it’s my Dad. He wishes me happy birthday and we have a tense ungainly conversation, which ends with him inviting me to stay with him for Christmas, and I say I’ll think about it. After I have put the phone down I go through to my room, sit in my chair, and stare into space. It was good to hear from them but it has made me feel acutely sad and lonely in a way I can’t even describe. A wistful longing ache in the centre of my chest. I go and make my sandwiches for tomorrow and have a shower. Then I lie in my bed, and without even knowing I am doing it, think about Cally. I can see her face in the dark, her eyes and her hair on the roof of my bedroom. Close my eyes and I can see her smile in the darkness behind my eyelids. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, I’ve been thinking about her like this all week, for a lot longer if I’m honest about it. “Jesus fucking Christ!” I mutter pulling my pillow over my head. It appears that love is not only blind, it is also stupid and has a shite sense of humor. I can’t get her out of my head, she’s everywhere I go, a mental image, it’s like being haunted by a beautiful ghost. I feel like I have no control over my emotions anymore, it is as if I have gone to sleep and woken up in a fucking Westlife song. At any moment the wind is likely to start sighing her name. I pull the pillow resolutely over my ears and spend the next hour mentally torturing myself. What fucking business have you got falling for a girl you have zero chance with anyway? A girl with a boyfriend, not only that a boyfriend who happens to live with you. You had her friendship, wasn’t that enough? No, you had to go and fuck it all up. She was so upset by what her friend said to you, and you went and proved her exactly right, didn’t you, you useless fuckwit? She’s very likely hates you right now, and with good reason. At very best she thinks you’re a sad pathetic weirdo, and she’s amazed that she had anything to do with you in the first place. Eventually I fall asleep, and although I can’t remember it in the morning, I am sure she will be in my dreams. Malky is in the changing room, struggling into a boiler suit which is two sizes too big. He flashes me a broad grin. “Twenty one and a wake up!” he shouts. The sudden noise gets a glare from this old lady from packing, who pauses in putting on her wellies to tut grumpily. Malky doesn’t care though. Twenty-one is the amount of days he’s got left. He’s been counting them down since the beginning of the month, in the style of American GI’s in Vietnam who were nearing the end of their tour. He struts around the factory annoying everyone by constantly referring to himself as ‘short’. Of course, I am the only one who actually knows what he means. It has evolved into a kind of code between us. I wish I was short. M.I.A, however, seems more likely. The GFB informs us that we are making steak burgers today, so we begin to set the machine up accordingly. Then Heart Attack Paddy comes through and informs us that there is no mix made up. Willie is off sick apparently. Drunk more like, the G.F.B. mutters under her breath. He points at me and tells me to get to it. “Why me?” I groan. “Cause I fucking say so, that’s why!” he snaps. I realize the futility of argument and muttering a string of curses, go through to the cold store and start dragging boxes of meat through to the mincer. The only difference between Benzie’s Aberdeen Angus steak burgers and the ordinary burgers, is that they are twice the size and sell for six times the price, they are both made from exactly the same low grade Brazilian meat. I weigh out the correct amount and dump the foul smelling gray-brown mass into the mincer. I hunt through the store cupboard and grab a box of flavoring sachets, the pail of coloring, and a plastic measuring jug for the water. I add the contents of a flavoring sachet and two scoops of coloring, taking pains not to get any on my hands. Next I go to the tap, and measuring out the appropriate amount of water, pour it in. I close the lid, hit the green button and listen as the mincer churns into life. As it works through its cycle I go and hunt for white tubs to put the finished mix in. When I return with a stack of tubs the mix is ready, I pull the topmost tub off, and holding it ready, hit the second green button, and watch as the mix worms its way out of the mincer in thick pink ropes. When it is done I slide the tub over to the burger machine and begin the process all over again. I do this for the rest of the morning, prepare meals to feed the ever-hungry machine. I quickly come to the conclusion that it’s not such a bad job. The line is going slow as fuck with one member missing and the fault with the machine appears to be getting worse, every five minutes Malky has to scoop a handful of leaked mix out from under the moving plates, slowing things down even more, so there’s no pressure. When the mincer is running its cycle there is really nothing to do, so I stand where I can hear the radio and think. Want to take a guess what I think about? When, She’s the one, by Robbie Williams comes on the radio, I cringe. This is nothing new, I always cringe when I hear, She’s the one, but this time I cringe because I find relevance in the words. I go and stand near the mincer, whose noise drowns out the rest of the song. When shitty metaphors in crap pop songs start to mean something you know you’re really in trouble. At lunchtime, I sit in the canteen with Malky eating my sandwiches. Malky sits with a plate of chips, fiddling with the ring pull on a can of Coke and being relentlessly cheerful. The knowledge that he will be gone at the end of the month has given him a kind of manic fizzing energy, like a bottle of juice that has been shaken. He seems determined to enjoy the drudgery he will no longer have to endure. To get it fixed in his mind as a negative point of comparison which will serve him well for years to come. No matter where he goes or what he does, he will always be able to say to himself; at least it’s not as bad as the shit-hole I used to work in. After lunch, I am back on the line. We are making ordinary burgers again and because we fucked about for so long with the steak burgers, we now have our whole day’s quota to fill in one afternoon. I prepare myself a great big stack of red trays, and draw the appropriate number of circles on an upturned polystyrene tray. As the machine starts up I slip away into The Zone, with only my beautiful ghost for company. We don’t get finished until seven. I get home around twenty-five past. I am fucking exhausted by the time I get in. I have a quick shower and a hasty supper of beans on toast and then flop down on my chair in front of the computer. Stevie phones just as the striker I have signed to arrest my team’s slide into mid-table obscurity is put out for nine months with crucite ligament damage. He is phoning to tell me that he has just spoken to Andy and he’s having a party on Saturday night. “Good stuff,” I mumble. Sleep, rather than Saturday night parties, is uppermost in my mind. Ten minutes later the phone goes again. It’s probably Mike, I think. I pick up the receiver. “Hello?” “Hello, can I speak to Dan please.” There is a sudden nervous shock, like electricity, which crawls upwards from my stomach. It’s Cally, her voice is cold, impersonal. The voice of a stranger. I can feel my face reddening. “Yeah, I’ll just get him.” I knock on his door. “Phone,” I say, then go back to my bedroom and hide. When I hear Dan hang up and he doesn’t burst into my room, I know I’m off the hook again, at least as far as Dan is concerned. But Cally is a different matter. I climb wearily into bed and think about the hostile tone of her voice when I answered the phone. I was expecting this, so I don’t know why it should upset me so much. The truth is, that no matter how certain you are that your paranoid fears are true, having them confirmed is always a nasty shock. They move outside the boundaries of your head and become hard reality. I close my eyes in the dark and try to think positive thoughts to cheer myself up. It’s Friday tomorrow, I think, at least that’s something to be thankful for.
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