Bebo

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	Chapter Eleven
	Wednesday 12:34 pm. Monday was not fun. It ranks as one of my top three worst days at work, and I’ve had some bad days. I arrived at seven straight from Wild Thing’s. No sleep, still wearing the clothes I left Stevie’s in on Christmas day, mashed to fuck but starting to come down like a bastard. I made my way to the locker room, feeling the vicious wind lacerate me to my bones, not sure if my chattering teeth were due to jaw rattle or the cold. I couldn’t figure out if the boiler suits I was trying on were fitting me or not. I struggled into one only to find that I’d taken it from the pile which hadn’t been in the dryer yet and it was soaking wet. It took me ages to get my boots, hairnet and helmet on. I went through to the toilet and locked myself in a cubicle. After an age of pocket raking, just when I’d decided I’d left it in the car, I find my Kinder Egg. I saved two pills to see me through the day. The plan was to neck them in halves, or even quarters, just to keep me alive. But without even thinking about it, without realising what I was doing, I swallowed a whole one. It was twenty past seven before I clocked in. Heart Attack Paddy bollocked me for being late. I just walked through to the burger department without acknowledging him. I noticed him staring after me with narrowed eyes. I noticed a few people looking at me that way during the course of the day. Hardly surprising considering the state of me. Despite the fact the factory is refrigerated I was dripping sweat. I had to keep my teeth firmly clenched to stop my jaw from rattling. I think I kept rolling my eyes too. I just kept my head down, talked to no one. People kept asking me if I was all right. I just nodded. It was a lie. The first couple of hours were ok. Then I started to feel worse, and worse, and worse. I was convinced I was going to faint. My heart was hammering an irregular beat in my chest. At lunchtime I bought a bottle of Lucozade. The woman behind the canteen counter looked at me in disgust as I dropped my change all over the floor. I necked half of the other pill at lunch and half in the afternoon break. A couple of times during the afternoon I burped up a mouthful of bile and had to swallow it again. And once my vision kind of whited out, like those little points of fairy light you see if you stand up too quickly. Like that, but it was my whole field of vision. It only lasted for a second, leaving a thumping in my head and a strange pressure behind my face, like my head was an over-inflated tyre. I stuck it out though, and we got away for half past three. The burgers we are making at the moment are not for order. They go straight into the freezer to build up the stock for when business picks up again in spring. I clocked out and slung my overalls into the laundry wheelie bin. I walked numbly to my car and drove away. It was only when I was halfway home that I realised that I still had my helmet and hairnet on. I fumbled them off and flung them into the back seat. I didn’t even bother to take my clothes off when I got home, just sank down onto my bed and slipped into a dream-demented sleep, thick and dark as treacle. Tuesday was almost as bad but for different reasons. I woke up in my stinking clothes at seven thirty. I’d slept for sixteen and a half hours solid. I’d also forgotten to set my alarm clock. I shouted a string of obscenities and dived into the shower. I pulled on a set of clean clothes and hurried downstairs to my car. I floored it to the factory, but even so, I didn’t clock in till eight twenty five. Heart Attack paddy grabbed me by the arm as I rushed at full tilt out of the air lock. His voice was hissing and venomous. “Are you taking the fucking piss or what?” “No,” I mumbled. “My alarm didn’t go off.” I didn’t need this. I did not need this at all. “Right then, you’re being docked half a day’s wages. That’s for being late yesterday as well as today.” I nodded miserably, anything to get him to leave me alone. I turned to go but he jerked me back. “Where d’you think you’re going? I haven’t finished with you yet!” I felt small and weak, like I was about to start crying. I felt like a child being chastised by a monstrous parent. He came closer to me till I could smell his bad breath, feel its moisture on my face. “I’ve got my eye on you. You’re a fucking troublemaker, and I don’t want troublemakers in my factory, understand? As far as I’m concerned, the sooner you’re out of here the better.” He released my arm and took a step back, pointing at me. “Your card’s marked, and don’t you fuckin forget it!” With that he disappeared through the plastic strips and was gone. I could hear that the burger machine wasn’t running. When I squeeze through the plastic strips into the burger department I see a side panel has been removed from the machine and there is an engineer kneeling beside it. Everyone is clustered in a knot at the end of the belt. When they see me walk in all conversation abruptly ceases. They look around embarrassed. Ian starts an over bright, brittle conversation with the GFB who just grunts. I say nothing, just go to the cupboard and fetch a pair of gloves. The engineer has rebolted the panel by the time I come back and the line are moving back to their positions. Except Davie is at the end of the belt where I should be. “Shift!” I say to him, jerking a thumb towards his normal position. “Hold on a minute,” the GFB says. “David’s doing that job today, you’re traying burgers. “But,” I bleat. “That’s my job!” “Well maybe if you’d been here on time you’d still have it then, wouldn’t you?” With a feeling of utter dejection and resignation I move up beside the belt. Davie gives me a look of triumph and a smug smile. “Start of batch three,” the GFB says and hits the green button. I spent the rest of the morning traying burgers, casting the occasional dirty look at Davie. In my position, doing my job. I realised at lunchtime that I hadn’t eaten anything for almost two days. Suddenly I was ravenous. Eat a horse faster than a school of starved piranhas ravenous. Then I remembered that I hadn’t brought any food with me. Or any money. Fuck. Fortunately Malky lent me three quid to get some chips. I have been meeting Malky for lunch in the canteen every day since he started back. I spent the rest of the day making a bad job of arranging hamburgers on polystyrene trays. We finished at four and I drove straight home, spent an hour stuffing my face. Then I had a bath and went to bed, too tired even to turn on Championship Manager and try to arrest what has now become an epic losing streak. I clock out and walk across the tarmac towards the canteen, boots crunching in the snow. I get my sandwiches (peanut butter) from the locker room and sit down at a table near the window. Malky comes in five minutes later. His right hand is covered with a black leather driving glove, but I can see from here that the first three fingers hang limp and empty. Malky is coming straight from the packing department. Straight from clocking out. Malky never used to clock out. He used to have this scam going whereby if he didn’t clock out at lunchtime or breaktime he would get five extra hours in his pay packet. Of course Paddy was wise to this. Every time he got caught he would stop doing it for a month, until Paddy stopped checking his clock card, then start all over again. Every time he would return from Heinrich’s office laughing and saying, fuck em if they can’t take a joke. He never used to come straight to the canteen or the smoking hut either. Every break time he would disappear to his car for a joint. He does neither of these things anymore. He sits down and I smile wanly at him. “Alright, how’s it going?” I ask, trying to inject some cheerfulness into my voice. “Not bad,” he says. “Pretty busy morning.” Malky has been given a job in packing and despatch, slightly better pay and no heavy lifting. Pen and clipboard work, co-ordinating orders coming through from the packing department to be sent out by dispatch. The boys in despatch resent the little bit of authority the company has given him. I’ve overheard them talking. They think he’s been promoted ahead of them, which of course he has. Brown-nosing cunt, was the term I heard one of the packing boys use. You can tell that Malky is aware of this and that it cuts him deeply. All his working life he has been one of the boys. On the us side of the them/us divide. He is now caught in no man’s land, a halfway house between the two camps. On the one hand he still wants to be one of the boys, on the other he thinks he has to keep his nose clean, keep in with the bosses, terrified of giving them any reason to sack him. Malky has the country work ethic ingrained so deeply that being unemployed, useless, is worse than being dead. The terrible thing is that Malky has changed. I can see the reasoning behind the change and understand why it has taken place, but slowly, day by day, we are finding less and less to say to each other. Ours was a friendship of circumstance, and the circumstances have changed. We are in different boats now. We small talk our way through lunch. Each racking their brain for something to say to fill the inevitable silences. I understand the change in Malky and I can’t blame him for it, but I miss my friend all the same. I never realised how much I relied on him before, how much we relied on each other. The days are longer and miserable. I have lost my only friend in this daily prison. When we have eaten we go out to the smoking hut. I watch Malky trying to light a fag and my heart feels like it’s on the point of breaking. I clock in at the end of lunchtime and go back through to the burger department. I get a pair of gloves and a stack of polystyrene trays from the cupboard. With bad grace I take my place beside the belt. I am the last one back, they have been waiting for me. That seems to be happening all the time lately. I’m back last and they’re waiting, looking at me like they’ve just stopped discussing me. I feel like a microbe at the wrong end of a microscope. There has been a shift in the balance of power on the line. It shows itself in lots of ways. Me being shunted onto poly-tray duty is only one. I’m pretty sure that Davie has instigated all this. From the way the GFB is cold shouldering me I reckon he’s been saying things about me behind my back. Ian is the only one who makes any effort at conversation with me. But it’s Davie and the GFB who I really notice it with. Annie, timid mouse that she is, has never been much of a conversationalist, and Frank the Serial Killer, well, as far as I’m concerned, the less that cunt talks to me the better. No, the change has definitely taken place with Davie and the GFB. She does little more than bark and glare at me, and Davie struts around all day looking like the cat that burgled the cream factory. In losing Malky from the line I not only lost a friend, I also lost an ally. Davie is behind it all right. I see it in the self-satisfied glances he keeps giving me when he thinks I’m not looking. He’s getting me back. Getting me back because I pinned him up against the wall in the toilets. Getting me back because for all those years me and Malky made him feel powerless because he wanted to have authority over us, perhaps even thought he did, and we took no notice of his spiteful whinging. Getting me back because without Malky I am vulnerable. Maybe he’s just trying to make my life miserable because he can. There is, of course, another possibility. That this is all in my head. That all this is just paranoid psychosis, something my badly wired brain has cooked up from the flimsiest of evidence. Possible, but I don’t think so. I get home about four forty five. There were tailbacks on the main road into town. Bad car smash. Flashing blue lights turning the snowscape into something alien. I have a shower and attempt to make The World’s Greatest Sandwich, but find there is no mango chutney so give it up as a bad job and have an omelette instead. Dan doesn’t get home until about half past six. The sports centre closes at five but I’d assumed he’d been playing rugby. If I’d actually bothered to think about this I would have dismissed the idea immediately. It’s about fifty below and there is a foot of snow on the ground. I hear the door slam and the stamping of wellies in the hall and lowered voices. Dan comes in, looking decidedly sheepish. With him is a large ginger girl with the face of a boxer who is no good at keeping his guard up. “This is, eh, this is Celia,” he says. I grin and extend my hand which she shakes and almost crushes. “Hello Celia,” I say. We make some ungainly small talk and then they disappear into Dan’s room, provoking in my mind a mental image which is neither palatable nor easy to ignore. “Well,” I say to the world at large. “She was a fucking bog beast.” It occurs to me as I say it that the world really has gone back to normal. By some amazing coincidence I look out the window a little over half an hour later and see Cally walking down the road hand in hand with Chris fucking Fisher. I was just getting all ready to feel sorry for Dan too. A previously unthinkable experience. I was even thinking of having the, are you alright/plenty more fish in the sea, talk with him. Losing someone like Cally could crush a man. It doesn’t seem to have fazed Dan though, he went right out and found himself a replacement. At the Circus. This whole thing seems to have worked out for everybody, I think. Cally has her celebrity footballer, Dan has the thing from beyond the stars. The only person I am left feeling sorry for is me, which in turn makes me angry with myself for being such a sad self-pitying cunt. I go through to the kitchen and try to forget about it all by drinking two pints of water in a vein attempt to flush out my kidneys. My kidneys have been needling me badly all week. Sharp stabbing little pains in the small of my back. The doorbell goes. It’s Mike and he’s in a considerable state of excitement. I usher him through to the living room, jabbering breathlessly. “So I was just sitting there doing work for college,” he begins (a lie of staggering proportions). “And I thought to myself, I know, I’ll go and see fuckhead, when you’re feeling down someone else’s sad life always cheers you up.” I frown, mildly insulted, and wonder where this is going. “So, I’m walking down the road and I pass Maggie’s house, you know, the big one on Commercial road with the brad new Merc outside, and there are fucking pig cars everywhere!” It takes a moment for what he is telling me to sink in. “What are you saying, he’s been raided?” Mike nods his head. “That’s what it looked like to me. There were coppers coming and going out of the house and three cars and a van that I counted. I stood and tried to have a nosy, you know, find out what was going on, but one of the pigs came over and told me to fuck off.” “Jesus,” I breathe. “So Maggie’s been busted.” So Maggie’s been busted. Well, can’t say it was unexpected. Although, no matter how much you tell yourself that you expect something to happen, you never really expect it to happen. When your bad-shit predictions come true, privately at least, they still come as a shock. Mike and I sit for an hour or so speculating with very little evidence about what has happened, what will happen, and what it means. What has happened we can, as I said, only speculate about. We are jumping to conclusions. Maggie may not have been busted at all. The coppers may be swarming over his house for a completely unrelated reason. Maybe one of his parents is mixed up in creative accounting at one of their respective well-paid jobs, something like that. However, if we take it that we are right, that he has in fact been busted, than several important factors come into play. Did they get him with anything, and if so, how much? He may not have had anything in the house, he may not get his weekly supply until Thursday. If this is the case then he is pretty much all right. On the other hand, if they caught him with the numbers of pills he is usually flashing about, then he is in shit so deep he may drown. What this means for us is that, if what we fear is true, then we will have to get pills for Hogmanay off of someone else. A whole deal more fucking around. We realise of course that whichever of these sets of realities may or may not emerge as the truth, we are not going to ascertain anything by sitting around here gossiping like a couple of fishwives. We decide that the only thing to be done is for us to go up there and see if we can find anything for ourselves. I grab my coat and scarf and, feeling slightly vulture like, we hurry out into the snow. There is, of course, nothing going on. The windows are dark, nothing to see. We stand at the end of Maggie’s driveway and smoke a fag, jigging absently up and down to keep warm. “So what’s the plan for Hogmanay then?” Mike asks. “Dunno, Starski’s I suppose, party afterwards.” “Hmmm,” He says. “Yeah I know, tell me about it.” “We should have made the effort to get out of this shit-hole for at least one night of the year.” “Yeah but we didn’t. We never do, do we?” Mike shrugs and says nothing, then after a moment he speaks again. “Who the fuck are we going to get pills off now? “Fuck knows, shouldn’t be too hard though. You know what this place is like, every second person is punting pills.” “New Year though, large demand, everybody gets them in in advance. Could be harder than you think. Hogmanay is only,” he does a bit of quick mental arithmetic. “Three days away.” “True.” “Tell you what, I’ll get on the case tomorrow. There’s this boy in my college class who reckons he’s big mates with some dealer from Town (the city of Aberdeen is habitually referred to as town by the people who live in the satellite towns which surround it). I don’t know whether to believe him or not though, posy skater cunt, you know the type. Can’t do any harm to ask though, eh?” “No,” I agree. “Suppose it can’t.” We finish our fags and go our separate ways. The wind is getting up as I walk down the road and I pull my coat tight around me. As I am walking I realise that I am very hungry. A detour to the chipper on the way home is in order. I walk past the end of my street and down through the square. I look up at the clear night sky. No clouds, doesn’t look like it’s going to snow again any time soon. The last snowfall is still lying, icing everything like a world sized cake. Except on the pavements and roads where feet and wheels have churned the snow into a foul brown slush. With this thought I realise that my trainers are extremely wet. I arrive at the chipper at nine forty-eight, only to find that it closed three minutes ago. I hold up hands to the ugly girl I can see through the oily front window in a, c’mon people are hungry out here, gesture. She smiles sarcastically and taps the green plastic sign which displays the opening and closing times. I smile sarcastically back and give her the fingers. She scowls. I turn to go and notice someone coming down the street towards from the other direction. It’s Cally. Obviously on her way back from Chris fucking Fisher’s house, I think. Before I have time to mentally cast some sort of plague on Chris Fisher, another thought follows hard on its heels. Oh God, I hope she didn’t see you abusing the poor chipper girl. Run, my brain shouts, there may still be time! “No,” I hiss, “I can’t do that, if she’s already seen me it’ll look ten times worse!” Fuck, I think, now she’s probably seen you talking to yourself too! Great! She comes home from her nice boyfriend’s house to find you hanging around in the street haranguing people and gibbering to yourself, that’s just perfect! I stay put and watch her approach. I give her a little wave, and she peers at me, not recognising me at first then breaks into a smile. “Hiya,” she says. “What are you doing hanging about out here? It's freezing!” “I was just going to get some chips,” I say, pointing to the chipper and hoping that the chipper girl is not making the wanker sign behind my back. “But it’s closed.” She continues to walk, her body language inviting me to walk with her. I notice that she’s shivering, only wearing a light jacket. “You could be dressed a bit better for the cold,” I say. “I know,” she says, hugging herself. “My mum was on at me to wrap up warm when I left the house. Wish I’d listened to her now.” We have come to a halt at the end of my road. “Listen, do you want to come up to mine for a cup of tea? I ask. “Get warmed up a bit?” She looks up at the flat, biting her lower lip. Dan’s light is shining through his curtains. “Is Dan in?” She asks. “Yeah,” I say. “I don’t think that would be such a good idea then. Might be a bit awkward.” Nice get out, I think. “That’s true,” I say and turn to go. “Well, see you around then.” “Hey,” she says. “Wait. You could come back to mine for a cup of tea, if you wanted.” I turn back to her. “Yeah ok, that’d be nice,” I say, wondering just what in the fuck I think I’m doing. Cally’s house is a small semi-detached number with a bit of frozen garden out the front. There is a wooden ramp leading up to the front door. It is iced up and I nearly slip on it. The ramp registers in the back of my mind as being a bit odd, but what it means is not picked up by my conscious brain. She opens the front door and leads me through to a small well lit kitchen. “Hi mum, I’m home,” she says. Cally’s mother is a tall middle aged woman with the same dark hair and brown eyes. “Hello,” she says and turns to Cally. “Really Caledonia, what are you like? Aren’t you going to introduce your friend?” Cally introduces me and I say hello. “Mum!” She says blushing prettily. “You know I hate being called that.” “Ok dear, I’m just teasing. Your father’s in bed, and that’s where I’m going after my bath, so don’t be too late now will you?” Without waiting for a reply she turns to me and says. “Well, it’s nice to have met you.” “Yeah, you too,” I say feeling a little nervous and out of my depth. When she’s gone I look at Cally. She notices me grinning at her. “What,” she says. “Caledonia?” “Mmm-hmm,” she says trying to be all haughty. “And what is your name short for prey tell?” I tell her. “Your honour, the defence rests,” she says taking three mugs from the cupboard and switching on the kettle. She plonks them down on the worktop and goes to a connecting door which leads to the living room. “Ang darlin’, you want a cup of tea?” “Mmm, that would be nice,” says a voice. Cally motions me to come through. There is a girl sitting on the sofa reading a magazine and half watching the TV. Again there is the family resemblance. She looks a little older that Cally. I notice there is something strange about her legs. They’re a bit too thin looking. At first I can’t place it, then I clock the wheelchair sitting next to the sofa. She’s paralysed from the waist down by the looks of it. Tough break I think, real fucking shame. “This is my big sister, Angie,” She says and introduces me again. The girl on the sofa gives me a wide friendly smile and puts her magazine down. “Really,” she says at the mention of my name. “I was wondering when I’d finally get to meet you.” Cally goes to make the tea. Angie turns to me and gives another big grin with an awful lot of mischief in it. “Well, I’m glad my little sister finally brought you round, she goes on about you all the time.” I begin to feel a bit bewildered. Being the focus of this girl’s attention is a little like being a rabbit crouched in the headlights of an oncoming logging truck. “I’m glad to meet you too,” I blurt out. “Good,” she says, still smiling. “Then we’re all pleased!” When she smiles her nose wrinkles just like Cally. “And what is it you do with yourself? Apart, that is, from getting my little sister pissed on Sunday afternoons. “I…” I begin and she winks to show that she is joking. “I work in a meat processing factory. Benzies, just out the road a bit.” “Really? Poor you, that must be shit!” I am taken aback by her directness. I would have probably bridled at that coming from someone else. But she isn’t saying it to take the piss, or to be condescending, or anything like that. She is being genuinely sympathetic. I am surprised to find myself laughing. “Yes,” I say. “It is, complete shite. I hate it.” I am still laughing. Angie looks at me for a second, blinking at this sudden outpouring of mirth, then joins in anyway. She tells me that she’s in her third year of a computer science degree at Uni. She tells me that the commuting is a bastard but she has a little white Astra (called Derek) with thumb throttle and break, because for obvious reasons she can’t work the peddles. She says when she graduates she’s going to work for Bill Gates and earn a huge pile of cash. I can not believe that when I walked in here I was on the point of feeling pity for this girl just because she’s in a fucking wheelchair. She has the world by the balls. If there’s any pity flying about here it should be from her to me for wasting my life away in a fucking meat factory. Cally brings the tea through and puts the mugs down on the table. She goes back through to the kitchen and returns with a couple of slices of buttered toast. She hands the plate to me. “You said you were hungry,” she explains. “You didn’t get any chips remember?” “Yeah, I’m starving actually, thanks,” I say. Angie makes a tutting noise and rolls her eyes. “She never makes me any toast,” she sniffs. I leave about half-past eleven. It begins to snow as I walk down the road. Snow flakes whirl high above my head, and my thoughts whirl with them. It has stopped snowing by the time I set off for work in the morning. There is only a light dusting of new powder on top of the hard packed snow from the last fall, frozen and entrenched for the duration. The anti-freeze is beginning to do its job. I light up as I pass the shop on the left. The one with, BARY IS A BIG GAY CUNT, spray painted across its steel shutters in blue letters a foot high. I morosely smoke the first fag of the day and flick it into the ditch by the road. I blat my horn at the bored looking horse in a mean spirited attempt to scare him, but he only looks at me with a tired contempt which says he has seen it all before. I get to the factory, suit up, and clock in. The time is six fifty-eight exactly. At about half eight or so Heart Attack Paddy comes through and asks The GFB if she can spare anyone to come down to the Game Department. She nods in my direction. “Aye,” she says. Paddy beckons me to follow him with a nasty smile. I strip off my gloves and follow him. I say nothing. What’s the point? When we get to the punishment shed there is no one there. “Where is everyone?” I ask. “Through the house doing the New Year bird orders.” “Then what am I doing here?” He points to the twin plucking machines, standing silently side by side. I notice for the first time that the housings have been removed and the working parts are lying stripped on the floor. “Right. I want you to clean and oil the housings and all the parts.” He points, indicating a pile of rags and a can of two-stroke oil lying on the floor. “Then,” he says with a smile I don’t like the look of. “You’re to empty and clean out the feather bags.” He hands me a roll of black bags and a plastic scraper. My heart sinks. After cleaning out the drains this is the worst, the most filthy, the most disgusting job they can possibly give you. Both are annual jobs. Once a year some unlucky fucker gets to clean a year’s worth of feathers out of the plucking machines or clear a year’s worth of congealed fat and rotting meat from the drains under the factory. “They just clip off the at the back. Stick all the feathers in bin bags and put them out in the skip. Then use the scraper to clean out the insides of the sacks. It’s easy enough.” He turns to go. “Aye, right,” I mumble. I can’t help but think that the fact that it is suddenly my turn to be shunted onto such an unpopular job is no coincidence. He pauses in the door. “And I want it done properly. I’ll be back to check.” I sit down, cross legged, on the floor and begin to clean and oil the parts, trying to string it out for as long as possible, trying to delay the inevitable. I have done the first set of parts by break time, and almost finished the second by lunchtime. Paddy sticks his head round the door just as I’m doing the last cog and goes mental. “Is that all you’ve fuckin done? I hope you know you’re not leaving here tonight until that’s finished!” I look at him with a deep and pure hatred. “If I find you’ve fuckin disappeared with out finishing those sacks, to my satisfaction mind, you can forget about getting paid today!” I consider doing it. Consider just saying, Fuck you Paddy, and Fuck your job! Then just simply getting up and walking out, walking away. Several simultaneous thoughts stop me from actually doing this. The foremost and most audible among these is the fact that I am fairly sure I have spent my rent money for this month. I say nothing, look at the floor and buff the piece of machinery in my hand with an oily rag. Eventually he goes away. I go for lunch, resolving to tackle the feather bags when I return. I look at them. Mottled brown with darker brown stains. Bloated and stinking like the egg sacs of a monstrous spider. They are indeed held on by two clips at the back. Gingerly, I reach round the first machine and unclip one. There is a short pipe which protrudes from the back of the machine. This carries the feathers, sucked through the machine, into the sacks. It operates on the same principle as a lawn mower. I drag the sack to the centre of the room and undo the piece of cord which keeps the neck of the bag closed. I almost vomit from the smell which comes roaring out as the bag falls open. “Mbmpf,” I say covering my mouth with my hand and backing away quickly. “Jesus Christ!” The smell is indescribable. Have you ever smelt burning feathers? Well imagine rotting feathers. I stand looking at the bag for a moment, considering. Then I go up to the office. I return five minutes later with a dust-mask, a roll of selotape and a pair of thick rubber gloves. I sit down on the floor with a couple of black bags and get to work. Ten minutes later I have made a black plastic jumper to go over my boiler suit, which is in reality a bin bag with holes cut for my head and arms. I have also constructed a pair of bin bag sleeves which I have taped firmly around my elbows and upper arms. There is also a swathe of tape around my wrists securing the gloves to the sleeves, making sure there is no gap. I am going to have to shift this shit armload by armload into bin bags then out to the skip. I intend to get as little of it on me as possible. I don my dust-mask and square up to the bag. It was a wire frame which means it will keep its shape, which will at least mean the bag will not collapse on top of me as I lean into it. Should make it a little easier, I think. I begin. I have finished the first one by afternoon break. I sit in the smoking hut, covered in black slime and chunks of stinking brown shit. No one will sit near me because of the smell. They hold their noses and crack jokes, none of which I find very funny. At least the burger crew aren’t here. I purposefully took my break fifteen minutes before them. By four o’clock I have emptied all of the feathers and start on the encrusted matter which coats the inside of the bags. I use the plastic tool Paddy gave me, similar to one of those things for removing wall paper, to scrape it away and ladle it into bin bags. Paddy appears at five thirty just as I am finishing up with the second bag. “Almost done,” I tell him. He shakes his head. “No you’re not,” he says. “When they’re scraped out go and get the power hose and hose them down with hot water. Then you can clean this place down. Then you’re finished.” I finish scraping, trying not to think about the fact that in summer these bags supposedly crawl with maggots, so quite a lot of this black slime is probably their decayed remains. I fetch the power hose from the Burger Department and lug it back down to the punishment shed. The burger crew had long since finished, the department and the machine cleaned down, wiped and sparkling, ready for tomorrow. I briefly consider putting a big black hand print on the side of the machine but decide against it. What would have been the point? They would have known exactly who was responsible. I hose the bags with steaming water, watching it turn black as it swirls down the drain in the centre of the room. When I am finished I put the bags against the wall to dry. I hose down the floor and then drag the hose back up to the Burger Department and put it in the cupboard. I take a couple of bin bags to spread on the seat of my car to stop the foul smelling shit, which has soaked through my boiler suit to my trousers, getting all over them. I clock out. It is six twenty. As soon as I get home I strip off my clothes and throw them in a sixty-degree wash. “What on earth is that smell?” asks Dan, holding his nose. “Don’t ask,” I say dejectedly. I have a bath. Then a shower. Then another bath. The phone rings as I am in the kitchen pouring boiling water into a pot noodle. Dan answers it and after a moment, and a mumbled half-conversation, shouts that it’s for me. My first thought, irrational and rearing up from nowhere, is that it’s Cally. “Hello?” I say. “Fuckhead!” “Alright Mike,” I sigh. “How’s it going?” “Not bad. I’ve got news,” he says. “Hold on a second,” I say. I take my pot noodle and the phone, stretching the cable so it goes under the door, into my bedroom. “Right,” I say. “What’s up?” “Well, I knocked off college early today, got the bus home about one and went for a couple of pints in the Wanchor. You know that guy Wayne Bryant? Well, I got talking to him and I got the whole Maggie story.” “Mike,” I say. “I don’t know if you should believe everything Wayne says.” “I know, I know, but I was speaking to Danny Nicholson as well, you know, that mate of Maggie’s, and he told me the same story.” That sounds a bit more plausible, I think. Wayne is a bit prone to over enthusiastic exaggeration, in the attempt to give you the impression that he is party to everything that goes on in this town. Danny on the other hand, although I don’t know him that well, and despite him being a mate of Maggie’s, I’m more inclined to trust. “Ok, ok,” I say. “So what happened?” “Alright, so the pigs raid Maggie’s house last night.” “Yeah.” “And they get him with four hundred pills.” “Holy Fuck!” “Yeah, holy fuck is about right,” Mike says. “The coppers are searching the house and his mum’s giving it death about how she’s going to have the police on about ten different things, you know how she’s a solicitor, and they go into his bedside table and pull out a big bag of Bacardi’s, right in front of his parents. Sitting right in his bedroom drawer. Silly cunt didn’t even have the brains to stash them. So, he just bursts into tears and the cops cuff him and drag him out the front door and into the riot van.” Shit, I think, poor Maggie. As much as I think he’s a twat, and as much as he asked for it to happen, I feel sorry for him. No one deserves this. A thought suddenly strikes me. “How does that Danny guy know all this?” I ask. “Because he saw him today. He’s out.” “He’s out? How the fuck did that happen? ” “That’s what I’m getting to. Maggie did a deal with the coppers. Or rather the coppers got him in a little room and scared the shit out of him. Told him he was going to be on remand until his case came up, and told him he was looking at fifteen years unless he gave them the names of everybody he bought from and everybody he’d been selling puntable amounts to.” “So he told them?” I said already knowing the answer to that. “Yup. He grassed on everyone. Stuck in everybody he’d ever bought from and everybody he’d ever sold more than fifty pills to. About ten different people got busted today.” A chill is suddenly running down my spine. “So what are you telling me here Mike? That he stuck us in?” “I don’t think so. He knows we don’t sell any of the pills we buy from him.” “Mike you do.” “Aye, the odd one or two but he doesn’t know that.” “He might have given our names anyway, just to try and dig himself out of the hole.” “Maybe but I think it’s unlikely.” My bad feeling is getting steadily worse. “Mike where are you going with this.” “From what the people I spoke to in the pub today told me no one can get pills now. The pigs busted most of the people who were selling pills and all the ones they missed will be keeping theirs for their mates.” And worse, and worse. “So what are you saying?” “Remember that guy in my college class I was telling you about?” “Oh fucking Jesus Mike! No!” “You don’t even know what I’m going to ask you yet!” “Yes I fucking do, and the answer’s no!” “This guy’s mate will sell us but he says he’ll only sell them in bulk, two hundred minimum.” “No!” “I can cover half but he won’t lay me on because he doesn’t know me so I need someone to come in for the other half.” “No!” “I’ve got to phone him back within half an hour if I want them.” “No!” “We’d get them sold quickly and easily, no hassle, everybody’s looking for pills. Plus, it’s probably the only way we’ll get any for New Year. At least think about it.” I hang up, promising to think about it and phone him back. I think about it. There are about a thousand reasons why this is a bad idea, and only two reasons why it is a good idea. Reason A, I have just about enough money to either, pay my rent for this month, or go out over New Year, but not both. If everything goes according to plan I could make enough money to do both. Reason B, Mike is right, this is the only way we’ll be sure of getting pills for new year. To my horror I realise that I am about to phone him back and agree to his plan. I am in Mike’s car fifteen minutes later when the paranoia begins to bite. We are sitting outside my flat. Mike is talking on the phone. He has not violated our anti mobile pact, he has in fact stolen his dad’s phone. We will need it if we are going to get these pills shifted in two days. “Yeah,” Mike is saying. “I know the place. Half an hour? Yeah, ok, no problem.” He hangs up and turns to me. “Car park in Tyrebagger woods in half an hour,” he says. I know the place. A great big area of woodlands out in the middle of nowhere. It has loads of country walks all radiating like a spider web from a big car park in the middle. This is where we are to meet this guy. We stop at a cash machine and I empty my account, leaving me a grand total of five pounds and thirty-seven pence in credit. I hope this works, I think, because I’m in a world of shit if it doesn’t. Mike’s phone keeps ringing. The caller id says HOME. “Don’t worry about it,” Mike says. “It’s just my dad phoning it to try and find out where it is.” “What’re you going to do with it?” I ask. Mike shrugs. “I’ll have to chuck it away. I can’t just stick it down the sofa for him to find can I? He’ll have cunts phoning every five minutes asking for pills.” “Fair point,” I say. We lapse into silence as we accelerate out of the town. Mike drives, I brood. Punting pills in the middle of what looks like a police crack down is not the worlds brightest idea. I think of what happened to Maggie and shudder internally. There are so many opportunities for disaster in this equation. I absolutely cannot afford to lose this money, if we get bumped or busted I am homeless and broke. What if this cunt sells us shite? Two hundred E’s which are as harmless as junior disprin. What if he just flat out rips us off? Grabs our cash and disappears into the night. What if we get busted? All it would take would be one small piece of bad luck. One grassing bastard or one person looking in our direction at the wrong moment. What if we are stepping on someone’s toes? Some nutter who didn’t get busted or who had the same idea as us and thinks he’s cornered the market finds that two sketchy small time losers have got there before him. Not exactly going to be happy is he? My brain rolls on and on, like a Catherine wheel. Throwing up endless bad possibilities. I feel like someone clinging to a church steeple in a gathering storm, just waiting for the lightning to strike. The only way to deal with this, to deal with the paranoia, is just to swallow your fears and do it anyway. Think about it too much and you’ll make yourself a gibbering wreck. Easy to say, hard to do. I slot Mike’s Orbital tape into the deck and light a cigarette to try and take my mind off things. The woods are eerie and beautiful. Pine trees hung with snow, silhouettes of night hanging silently between the boles. Frost, crisp and indifferent, has settled over every branch and cone. Our breath suspends itself above our heads and mingles with the chilly mist. Ours are the only fresh tyre tracks in the car park. No one has been here in a week. We wait, standing beside the car straining our ears, cigarettes between our lips. Eventually we hear an engine in the distance. Then headlights through the trees, getting closer. This is the kind of thing I dreamed about when I was fifteen. Back when I still thought drug dealers were cool. I thought that moments like this I would remember for the rest of my life. And I will. And what I will remember is being scared. Drug dealing isn’t cool, it’s nerve-wracking. Nerve-wracking and desperate. A car approaches and pulls into the car park, looming up out of the darkness and blinding us with its headlights. It pulls up beside us and a figure gets out of the passenger side door. “Mike mate, that you?” “Aye, it’s me.” The driver switches off the ignition and the lights die. I can see again. “This is Pete,” Mike says. He’s wearing a Boxfresh fleece and has a crap goatee and stupid spiky hair. He talks in an English accent and has that really annoying habit of calling people mate all the time. He comes around the car and shakes my slightly unwilling hand. “Alright mate how’s it going?” This cunt is obviously a Maggie type. The other boy, who looks like he knows what he’s doing, has rolled down the driver’s side window. “Got the money?” he asks Mike. “Aye,” Mike says not moving. “Got the pills?” He produces a plastic bag. They exchange pills for bag and the boy begins to count the money. Unfortunately we can’t do the same. If we tipped the pills out onto the back seat and started counting them we’d be here all night. Mike fishes one out and licks the edge gently, just letting it touch his tongue and no more. He hands it to me and I do the same. Tastes like the real thing but beyond that I can’t tell much. I’m pretty sure it’s ecstasy (although realistically it could be almost any other bitter tasting chemical) but there is no way to tell the quality of pills by the way they taste. They could still turn out to be total shite. The boy finishes counting the money. “Right, that’s us then. Give me us a bell if you want any more.” “Yeah,” his sidekick says. “Sorted, pleasure doing business with you!” Everyone present looks at him. The guy in the driver’s seat has the grace to look slightly embarrassed. They pull away up the road. A fading smudge of red brake lights. We give it two minutes and then follow them. Now that the pills are actually in our possession the paranoia is off the leash. I sit with the bag in my lap, window half, open ready to sling them if a set of blue flashers light up in our rear view mirror. We turn left and back onto the main road back towards our town, fully expecting to get pulled at any moment. “Get on the phone to Andy and Wild Thing, see if they want pills,” Mike says. I take the phone from the dashboard and dial. We are now playing hot potato. Trying to offload these drugs, get them out of our hands and into someone else’s as fast as possible. Shift the guilt and convert our investment back into cash as quickly as we can. I pick up Mike’s stolen phone and get on it. Our first stop is at Andy’s, who buys twenty. Then at Wild Thing’s, who buys twenty as well. We look in at the Wanchor for a quick pint and end up selling fifteen in there to three boys we hardly know. Mike gives them his mobile number and they promise to get back to us tomorrow. When Mike drops me home I feel relief, after all, he has the hot potato now. But there is just a drip of optimism too. We have sold fifty-five right off the bat. If you add that to the ten a piece reserved for Mike, Stevie, and myself, it makes eighty-five. Almost half way there. I envision a Blue Peter totaliser in my head, cheap light bulbs flashing at eighty-five, the magic two hundred figure picked out in little white tablets glued onto a cardboard background daubed with red poster paint. My alarm goes at half five. I crawl my way, bleary eyed and cloth mouthed, to the kitchen. I make my sandwiches (cheese and salad cream), boil the kettle and stick some bread in the toaster. I eat my breakfast in the bath and pull the plug out at six fifteen exactly. I am out the door, in the car and on my way by six thirty five. I park and suit up, stuffing my bag into my locker. I walk across the tarmac under a graphite grey sky. Heart Attack Paddy is waiting for me by the clock in machine. “Ah, just the person,” he says. He holds up a plastic bucket and a number of steel rods. “Now then,” he says, “the drains.”
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