whisky with Reggie

When I arrive at mum’s, she is out somewhere with Jenny. Reggie is in the lounge, watching TV with the sound down. He has his legs up on a padded footstool and a large glass of whisky in one hand. A half-full bottle of Glen Fiddich is on the table, the cap beside it.

Grandad looks really startled when I enter the room. I think he was half asleep, and I guess I must look a bit like dad. Grandad seems puzzled for a moment. He peers up at me with the gummy eyes of a sick cat. Then his old brain finally works it out.

“Newton,” he says, relieved that I am not actually a ghost.

“All right Reggie?” I say, and plonk myself down on the sofa beside him.

Grandad sits forward stiffly. He winces and groans as he reaches out for the cap of the whisky. His hand shakes as he tries to screw it back on the bottle. But it is too much for his swollen fingers.

“Would you, Newton?”

As I tighten the cap, Reggie slowly raises his right hand, and stretches his arthritic fingers.

“Bloody thing. It’s all right in the morning,” he says. “But if I sit here in the evening for too long, it’s bloody useless.” He looks like he is going to cry. “I don’t know Newton. There’s your dad up there. And I’m here like this. I’d be happy to take his place.” He raises his trembling hand. “I really bloody would.”

“Don’t say that,” I say. “It’s good you’re here. I never got a chance to say. But you were great after what happened to dad and everything. I know Max did all the arrangements. But you’re the one who was here for Jenny and mum. You kept it all together. I mean, I admire that. You saw what I was like. I wish I could have been half as strong as you.”

Actually, to tell the truth, I didn’t say all that. I thought it. But I got about as far as ‘Don’t say that’ before I dried up.

We share a brief moment of suspended animation before Grandad suddenly says, “I’m sorry son. Do you want a glass?”

He points to the bottle. It is an empty gesture, as Reggie never gives his whisky away and I never ever say yes. But, on this occasion, I really need one.

“Just a small one,” I say.

Reggie looks simultaneously disappointed and pleased.

“I’ll get a glass,” I say. I turn at the door and grin. “Don’t worry I won’t drink it all.”

Grandad gazes despondently at the telly.

I return with a tumbler, put a tiny splash of whisky in it and top up grandad’s glass.

“Whoa! Steady!” he says. I’m not sure if he is referring to my glass or his. He returns his gaze to the telly.

“Do you watch this?” he asks. I look at the screen. Two actors are walking across a hill in suits. I vaguely recognise one of them, but not the show.

“I’m not sure.”

“It’s bloody good. It’s got that whathisname in it. You know the chap from the detective thing. You know. There’s two of them.”

I nod, “Oh yea,” as if I have half-a-clue what he’s taking about.

We sit and watch for a bit. The scene cuts to a guy in a room full of old mainframe computers, working in semi-darkness with a torch and little screwdrivers. He looks anxiously at his watch as he frantically attaches some electrical box to a spaghetti of coloured wires. I expect if I knew the plot, and we had the sound on it might be mildly exciting. But to me, the man just looks like an electrician with diarrhoea.

“Hey,” I say to grandad. “I’ve got something to show you. For the second time that evening, I unzip my jacket, take my arm out of my sleeve and peel back the Kleenex swab.

“You had an accident?” asks Reggie. “You want to get that seen to.” I laugh and shake my head.

“I’m serious,” he says. “They can go septic them. What happened? Come off you bike?”

“It’s a tattoo,” I say. “I just had it done.”

“A what?”

“A tattoo. A kind of skull and cross bones thing.”

He screws up his gluey eyes, and squints at my arm.

“What’s it for then? You ain’t in one of them gangs?”

I guess he’s been watching LA Police videos on Sky again.

“It’s just a tattoo,” I say. “Like the one you’ve got.”

He looks at me like I’ve just compared painting-by-numbers to Picasso, even though his mermaid looks more like a mackerel, and her tits are like muppets’ eyes.

“What you trying to do to your mother? Don’t you think she’s already upset enough?”

I down the whisky, and go to the bathroom. I take off my blue top, peel off the Kleenex and throw it in the loo, sellotape and all. I run the cold tap and rinse the gunk off my arm, then look in the cupboard for a clean towel to pat it dry.

One of the slatted shelves has been cleared, and my dad’s shaving stuff, toiletries and toothbrush are laid out in a neat row. I stand staring at them for a second, picture him whisking up his archaic pot of shaving cream with his old bristle brush, the one he’d stopped using after I’d had a go at him about badgers.

I sit on the loo and dissolve into sobs, clenching my fists and digging my fingernails into my palms. I feel this pressure start to build and build, until finally I explode and punch the mirror on the front of the cabinet above the sink.

My hand goes straight through the mirror and the thin wooden panel behind it. Shards of glass go everywhere. I hear mum and Jenny coming in through the front door.

I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand, tug my top on, and start to scurry around the bathroom collecting broken fragments. Miraculously, the frame of the cupboard door is still intact. So, I push out what remains of the smashed panel, and use the towel to make a parcel of broken wood and glass.

“Hello,” I said jovially as I emerge from the bathroom and go into the lounge, where my sister is sat beside Reggie.

She looks at my impromptu towel carrier bag. Blood starts to seep from the back of my hand.

“Newton! What have you done?”

“I had a bit of an accident,” I say with a nervous grin

“I thought I heard a crash,” says Grandad.

“Yea, I was climbing on the bath to get a towel and it must have been slightly wet. My foot slipped and my arm caught the cupboard door as I came down. Made a bit of a mess I’m afraid.”

“Oh Newton, you haven’t broken all my stuff.” Jenny gets up and hurries to the bathroom to check her collection of make-up, lotions and hair sprays. “My God Newton,” I hear her say. “Muummm! he’s trashed the cupboard!”

Mum enters the lounge. She looks pale but calm.

“Don’t worry, I haven’t trashed anything,” I tell her. “I just slipped on the edge of the bath, trying to get a towel.”

We traipse down the corridor to survey the remains of the cabinet door. I move it back and forth (though not too vigorously as the cabinet is starting to fall off the wall). “See it’s fine. All it needs is a new bit of glass with some wood behind it. You’ll never know the difference. I’ll measure it up before I go.”

Reggie has hobbled through to join us. “I’ve got a tape measure somewhere,” he says, and hobbles off again to rummage through his things, wheezing like he’s just run a marathon.

“What were you doing on the bath anyway?” says Jenny.

“It’s a long story.” They look expectantly at me.

“Well, basically, I’ve just had a tattoo done, and I wanted a fresh towel to pat it dry after I’d washed it.”

“Yea right,” says Jenny.

For the third time, I remove my arm from my sleeve.

“God Newton. That is gross,” says Jenny.

“Yea everyone else loves it too,” I mutter.

I brace myself for a further onslaught as mum stares at my arm.

“It’s a Jolly Roger,” she says, and smiles distantly. “Would anyone like tea?”

“That would be very nice,” I say, relieved that I have at last found someone who doesn’t immediately hate my skull and crossbones...mind you, she is on three different types of tranquillisers.

reconciliation

Usually, I worry like mad after having an argument with someone. I have to speak to them as soon as possible and try and iron things out, because if I don’t, I can’t stop thinking about it. I analyse every little nuance of what’s been said, over and over and over again. And I can’t sleep until the whole thing’s been settled. But, as I sat in mum’s lounge, sipping tea - a piece of paper scrunched in my pocket, scribbled with measurements for the glass for the broken cabinet - I never gave Sophie a second thought.

It’s strange, sometimes it feels like my head is being pulled apart by hundreds of huge hands tearing at my brain. I have these mind storms where my thoughts are crashing up and down like little fishing boats on huge waves of emotion. But that evening I felt totally becalmed, adrift with no wind in my sails at all. I just went home and slept without dreaming.

Next morning, Sophie comes looking for me in the warehouse. She is wearing lots of make-up, and her hair is piled up on top of her head like a Greek goddess. A couple of the guys whistle. I just stand there with a sheepish grin, my heart thumping like a foundry hammer. I gesture for her to follow me down an aisle of slow moving stock, where our meeting will be less public.

“I just wanted to see if you were all right,” she says. “You never came back last night and your phone was switched off.”

“I went over to see my grandad.”

“I thought you’d just gone outside.”

“I’m sorry.” I say. “Are you all right? I didn’t mean to worry you.”

I reach out and touch her arm.

“Well I was very worried,” she says. She pouts like a little girl.

“I’ll make it up to you,” I say.

“You better,” she says.

I give her a furtive hug.

“See you later?” I ask, nervously.

She nods and smiles.

We wander back over to the main part of the warehouse, and I watch her walk to the stairwell. As she disappears through the door, she turns to blow me a kiss. She is beautiful.

Colin comes up to me.

“You jammy bastard,” he says, grinning. “Now get back in that fucking cage.”

a practical joke

As spring becomes summer, the warehouse gets hotter and hotter. There is supposed to be air conditioning, but of course it doesn’t work properly, and what with all that glass, it’s like being inside a greenhouse.

One particularly hot afternoon, I am having a breather with Clem, Andy and Nutter when Brett suddenly bursts through the double doors that lead to the stairwell. He marches over to us.

“Right, you four upstairs with me.”

We all just stand and stare at him.

“Come on,” he says. “Get moving.”

He turns round and walks back towards the stairs. As he reaches the double doors, he looks back over his shoulder. His face fills with anger as he sees we haven’t moved an inch.

“Come on,” he bawls. He is like some overweight P.E. teacher shouting from the touchline at a junior rugby team.

“What the fuck’s he on about?” says Andy.

“I reckon the sun’s gone to his head,” says Clem.

“He’s such an arsehole,” I say.

Brett comes marching back over to us doing this swishy salesman thing with the edge of his blazer.

“I don’t know how that cunt manages to wear a suit in this heat,” says Nutter.

I nod. We are all in T-shirts, sweating buckets.

When Brett reaches us, he stands with his back to me, Clem and Andy.

“Right, where’s Colin?” he asks Nutter.

“Ain’t a fucking clue,” says Nutter. He isn’t the kind of guy you have a go at. He has a bald head that merges with his neck. His arms are like legs and he has nearly as many tattoos as the leopard man. It’s rumoured that he provides some part-time ‘security’ for the local ‘firm’. Even Brett isn’t arrogant enough to think he can push him around. Brett slinks off, and returns ten minutes later, deep in conversation with Colin.

“Right,” says Colin. He is bright red in the face. “I understand you’ve refused to go and help Mr Brisedale.” Mr Brisedale is the Operations Manager of Bakers and Macey, the guy who controls everything.

We all stare blankly at Colin.

“You were asked to go upstairs and assist Mr Brisedale and Mr Brenner with moving the counters for the new swim wear department, which is meant to be opening this week, and you said no.”

“What you on about, man?” says Clem.

Andy points at Brett. “He just fucking come in here and...”

Colin raises his hand to silence Andy.

“I don’t want to hear it,” he says. “I’ve just had Mr Brisedale bending my ear for ten minutes about the quality of my warehouse staff.”

“Bollocks,” mutters Andy.

“I’ve just spent ten minutes convincing him we shouldn’t terminate all the temporary contracts. But, you can all consider yourself on one official warning.”

“Hang on a moment,” I say.

“Don’t look at me like that Driftwood. I know you’re at the centre of this.”

“What?”

Brett smirks.

God knows what pile of shit he’s been telling Colin and Mr Brisedale. But there isn’t much we can do but walk out or meekly follow Brett upstairs. Not even Nutter has any other choice. When it comes down to it, the criminals for whom Nutter provides a bit of part-time security are in cahoots with the directors of Bakers and Macey. They all play golf at St Clements and drink together at the Conservative Club. They all live in Chalbury in the million pound mansions that back onto the river West, and they all drive Mercedes from Harrisons. It doesn’t matter it they have old money, new money, clean money, dirty money. They’re all the fucking same.

You can tell Brett is slightly uncomfortable as the five of us travel up in the lift to the second floor. But he knows he has us by the bollocks. The truth is, you can’t fight their system, and Brett’s so much a part of it, you can’t fight him either. He’s such a fucking footsoldier, I wish I could think of a way to kill him, without getting caught. But I guess all I can really do is stay in my little boat and keep on riding the rapids.

When we get to the sports department, there are two girls helping to set up the new summer swimwear section - Fiona and Fran. Fiona pretends to be posh, but her tan is more sunbed than San Tropez. Her raison d’etre is to sell extortionately priced sunglasses and exercise machines to podgy women with ‘elite’ cards.

Elite cards are basically upmarket store cards. They are handed out by Bakers and Macey at the ‘manager’s discretion’. In other words, you only get one if you are as rich as fuck, live in Chalbury and are deemed to be an ‘appropriate customer.’ The elite cards brings special privileges; entry to a private reception area, which serves ‘free’ tea and biscuits, and a ‘free’ personal shopper to help you loosen the clasp on your Prada purse.

Cardholders enjoy similar treatment all around Westing. Flash your Bakers and Macey elite card, and you instantly get the best tables in restaurants, you jump the waiting list at the nursery school and the health club. In fact, you can go virtually anywhere in Westing - dentists, garages, the council, the police station - and if you have the card, nine times out of ten, they sort you out straight away.

I guess that’s why Fiona looks at us in such a dismissive way. There is no way any of us are going to get her an elite card, not even if we won a million on the lottery. She’s undoubtedly set her heart on some lawyer called Jeremy, who she probably met at the South Westingshire Hunt ball, some dull but eligible twat with an SLK, whose pitiful excuse for a cock she’ll gratefully slide up and down on to squirm her way into the card-holding aristocracy.

Well, I’ve got news for you Fiona. It ain’t going to happen. Sure, Jeremy might take you out to dinner a couple of times at Maison Vert or for a boat trip down the River West on his dad’s motor cruiser. He’ll pour you champagne and fuck you up the arse on the river bank. But he ain’t going to marry you. You will never be one of the family.

Let’s face it Fiona, what you’re really going to end up with is some cunt like Brett, who’ll never quite make it, but will try desperately to act like he has - bolshily shoving his way to the front of queues and refusing to make way for oncoming traffic. Or else (if you’re lucky) you’ll marry some pleasant, unassuming guy who you can spend the next thirty years blaming for your lack of social status. The one thing you will never do, Fiona, is get involved with someone like Clem or Nutter or me for that matter. You can sense our contempt for all that shit. You just couldn’t cope with someone who’d shatter your illusions on a daily basis with scruffiness, cynicism and badly drawn body art.

I feel sad. Sophie isn’t quite the same as Fiona. But I know, deep down, she’d really like that elite card too.

Probably, I’d be better off with someone like Fran, the other lady who is helping out with the swimwear. She always wears tracky bottoms and a loose T-shirt and works at the sharp end of the Sports Department selling squash rackets and football boots. You can just tell she understands the offside rule, plays competitive netball three nights a week and likes to buy her toiletries on special offer.

But, I bet, beneath all that navy polyester and airtex lurks a tightly limbed sexual athlete, bursting with strength, stamina and more than a healthy appetite. I can just imagine us going out for training runs or a game of squash of a Sunday morning, returning for pasta salad and a vigorous shag, before settling down to watch live coverage of the athletics from Gateshead, with a shared can of own-brand lager. I could happily handle that for years. But life is not that simple. I am in love with Sophie. And I’m pretty sure she loves me.

“Isaac!” The battering voice of Brett breaks through my musings.

“Yea?” I say.

He hands me a pile of bikinis. “You can help the girls with these. Go on. Over there.” He points to some gleaming new clothes racks beneath a plaster figurehead on a plinth. I shrug and roll up my sleeves to show off my skull and cross bones on a tanned shoulder made broad by swimming and box lifting.

“Aye, aye, Cap’n,” I salute, as Nutter, Andy and Clem start to shift the new counters - all MDF, chipboard and mahogany-style veneer. “I’m free,” I call to the girls, and mince over. Clem chortles.

“This ain’t ‘kin Grace Brothers,” shouts Andy.

“Language,” says Brett. “You’re not downstairs now.”

I plonk the bikinis down by the rack, pull a fluorescent green thong from the pile and hold it up over my bottom. I glance back over my shoulder at Brett, as if gazing at myself in a changing room mirror. “Does my bum look big in this?”

Fiona pulls a face like she’s just been forced to sit in a second class carriage with a family of Scousers in shell suits. Fran grins.

“Get on with it,” says Brett. “You’ve already had your warning.”

I pull a face of camp outrage, like an offended Frank Spencer.

Fran laughs amiably. I guess, she doesn’t want to be doing this any more than I do. But we get on with it anyway. When we’ve finished hanging the swimwear on the rack. Fiona, comes over, tutting and wincing, and starts to rearrange everything. We just stand back and watch.

“Well, this is exciting isn’t it,” I say.

“Very,” nods Fran with a healthy dose of sarcasm.

“I can certainly think of things I’d rather be doing.”

Fran raises her eyebrows.

“I meant stacking boxes downstairs.”

Fran blushes. She is rather cute. Christ. Here I am happily in love and my fanny magnetism has gone haywire. But it’s probably just the heat.

“You would have thought, they’d have got all this lot in months ago,” I say, “before the summer started.”

“It was meant to be done after Easter,” says Fran. “But the first lot of counters was the wrong colour or something. So they decided to use a different supplier and get us to fit it all.”

“Typical Bakers and Macey,” I say. “They’ll probably have it ready for Christmas.”

Fran laughs again, as if I’d just cracked some hilarious joke. I smile indulgently.

Brett suddenly looms over us.

“Have you finished those bikinis?”

“Yea,” I say, “twice. What’s next?”

“You might as well go back downstairs,” he says.

“I can stay and help out the other lads,” I say, looking across to where they are shifting a large wood-effect rack against the wall.

“Naaa, I don’t think so somehow,” says Brett. “Off you go.” He actually shoos me away.

I give Fran a wink and mince out to the lifts. A few months earlier, I would have been infuriated by Brett’s attempts to make me look a fool. But now I don’t give a shit. In fact, I think it’s hilarious. I am still grinning to myself when I got back down to the warehouse. But my smile doesn’t last for long.

“Hey,” I say. “Where’s my bike?” I stride over to where my padlock hangs from a spare piece of racking by the security cabin.

I begin to panic.

“Hey,” I shout across to Martin, who is stacking boxes into the cage. “Has someone moved my bike?”

He shrugs.

“Search me.”

I go across to him, my heart pounding.

“Has anyone been in here?”

“I don’t know,” says Martin vaguely.

I start to hunt for the bike everywhere, running up and down the aisles of racking, and through the delivery area. I jog past a couple of idling lorries and up the curved tunnel that leads out onto the road behind the warehouse. The tarmac shimmers in the heat. There is no sign of my bike anywhere. I jog back into the building and over to the security cabin, and poke my head in. Len is leafing through a copy of the Daily Star, while Don looks lazily at the security screens.

“Hey have you guys seen anything suspicious in the last few minutes?” I say. Sweat pours off me.

“No,” says Don, continuing to look up at the screens. “Apart from you scurrying about like a headless bloody chicken. What you up to?”

“Someone’s taken my bike.”

“Where did you leave it?” asks Len, looking up casually from the racing pages.

“You know, where I always do, on that bit of empty racking just out there.” I gesture outside the door, then gaze up at the blue-grey fuzz of images on the bank of security monitors in front of Don. The screen flickers and switches to a view of the cage, which Martin is still piling high with boxes. “Look,” I point to the screen, “It was just to the left of the cage there.”

Don shrugs.

“Come on, you must have seen something,” I insist.

“Naa,” says Don. “Did you Len?”

“Naa,” he says and grins slightly.

“Look this isn’t fucking funny,” I say. “That’s my grandad’s bike. It can’t just be gone.”

Don shrugs again.

“Come on,” I say, “No one could walk off with a bike just like that. Can’t you rewind the tape or something?”

“We’ll look later on,” says Len.

“Can’t you do it now?”

“Sorry,” says Len.

“Fuck.”

I have a growing suspicion that this is no ordinary theft, and I have a sneaky feeling that Brett might know something about it. I am heading for the stairs when Colin appears.

“Oi, where do you think you’re you off to?”

I drag myself over to Colin, and wipe my face with my T-shirt, soaking up the trickles of sweat that are starting to sting my eyes.

“Someone’s nicked my bike.”

“Your what?”

“My bike. You know. I keep it locked up on the racking behind the security cabin. The chain’s still there, but the fucking bike’s gone.”

“Well you’re not going to find it up there,” he says.

“I bet I would,” I say. “I’ve checked with Len and Don and they never saw anything. Martin didn’t either. I reckon that cunt Brett’s done it. He’s the only one who’s been down here.”

“Hey, hey,” says Colin.

“Well you know what he’s like,” I say. “That was a pack of shit he told you earlier on. He never said anything about Mr Brisedale or helping out in the sports department. He just suddenly appeared and started shouting at us.”

“Well,” said Colin. “He is a manager, and, as it happens, he did clear it with me.”

“He’s a cunt, and he’s got it in for me,” I say.

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” says Colin. “Now, we’ve got a load of stuff to be stacked up at the top there.” He points over to where Martin is still filling the cage with boxes. “You take it up and I’ll ring round and see if anyone knows anything about this bike.”

My shoulders droop. “It’ll be miles gone by the time I’ve finished all that lot.”

“Just do it,” says Colin sternly, “And I’ll go and call, OK?”

“Yea, OK,” I say. “Thanks.” I give him a small smile and wander dejectedly over to the cage.

“What’s all this shit?” I ask Martin. I’d never seen the cage so full, piled floor to ceiling with boxes.

“Don’t know,” he says. “Just some stuff they want stacking up at the top.”

I get into the cage, fasten the door, and sit down on the plastic seat, careful not to catch my black jeans in the split plastic where Nutter stood on it one afternoon. I flick the control panel on. A greetings message flick up on the screen - Welcome to Storequest 3.2.13.

Great, I think, another upgrade - wonder how many hours I’ll be stuck up here this time! I push the standby button and then pick up the hand control. I manoeuvre the cage up and sideways slightly until it clicks automatically into ‘elevator mode’, and then begin to ascend up to the top of the racking. I feel close to tears.

As the cage climbs, I look down at Martin and the security cabin shrinking beneath me. I wave forlornly to Nutter, Clem and Andy who have just reappeared below me and I scan the rest of the warehouse hoping to miraculously catch a glimpse of my bike, but it is nowhere to be seen.

Eighty feet up in the air, I bring the cage to a shuddering halt. I check the shelving number on the Storequest screen and then lock the cage into position. I open the door and start to lift the boxes out onto the wire mesh of the shelf, stacking them in rows of three, leaving a small gangway beside the safety barrier.

Oh well, at least they’re not heavy, I think. I’ve done about a dozen boxes before I realise just how light they are. I notice some of the boxes aren’t even sealed. Confused, I peek into one. It is full of old packing chips. I push my hand in and feel around like a kid doing the lucky dip. Nothing. I open another box. It is empty too. Weird, I think, what are they keeping all these old boxes for?

As I continue to lift the boxes from the cage, I notice something underneath them. It looks like a red metal rod. What the hell? I shift a couple more boxes and see the cross bar of a bike. I move more boxes, and there it is - Grandad’s racer. My eyes well up with tears of relief. I wipe them away with the back of my hand, glad that no one can see me all the way up here. I wade through cardboard to the back of the cage and look down.

Martin, Nutter, Clem, Andy and Colin are stood beside Don, Len and even a couple of guys from the loading bay. The whole fucking lot of them are looking up and pissing themselves.

“You fucking bastards,” I shout down, my voice reverberating around the roof girders. “You total fucking bastards.” But, at that moment, I could kiss them all.

All fiction on this site is © Copyright Roger Frederick 2005 All Rights Reserved