A Waking of Rooks

272

A Waking of Rooks

By

Gordon Parker

Copyright 2011 by Gordon Parker

A WAKING OF ROOKS

A NOVEL BY GORDON PARKER

CHAPTER ONE

I suppose I’d better tell this story. I don’t want to really, but hell if I don’t I might just explode or something. I feel that I could go completely nuts at times - I mean really haywire. Sometimes I feel it coming on - growing inside me. If I had a cork I’d pop, I swear it.

He said it would help but he’s only guessing. I like to keep him guessing. He sits and talks to me - puts that round, baby pink face of his so close to mine that I could bite his goddam nose clean off. Honest, I want to do it. That soft whispering voice coming from those blubber lips. It’s his voice that brings on the pressure. God I can’t breathe at times. All I want to do is bite into that smooth, neat nose and hear him yell. Sometimes I want to do that or take a swing at Goodie-two-shoes with an axe. Just to see the expression on her face. Or give Pater a good hefty kick in the nuts. That would make him move. I’ll bet that would jolt the old bastard’s brain into action. It would work better than all those pills she stuffs into him. She stands back and looks at him as though she’s just switched on the TV and some life is going to light up those watery, vacant eyes. He’s a faker is Pater. He’s a goddam actor. He does it for show. He sits in that lousy chair and dribbles all day just for effect. He’s a pseud. I know. I remember it well.

I should tell this story, really. Every now and then I get this sort of feeling inside of me. I feel like a kind of wise man - you know, you’ve seen them on those TV movies: solemn, mysterious types who drift in and out of the mist spouting clever things and you wonder where in the hell they’ve been and what they’ve done to become such smart-arses. Sometimes I feel like a sort of hero. Somebody who’s come back from a dangerous mission and defied all sorts of hazards. People should look up to me and admire me for taking it all. If only they knew… Sometimes I feel sort of superior: an elder statesman. A creep of that ilk. Know what I mean? The President of the U.S. of A. probably feels the way I do at times. Or the Prime Minister, even. Only everybody knows them. They’re famous people.

His tunic crackles. I can hear the stiff starchiness of it when he gets close. Write it down he whispers in that soft aggravating voice. I swear I’ll bite the prick’s nose clean off. Hardly anybody knows me but I suppose I will tell it all so Tom and all you pseuds out there will understand.

I smile and the fool smiles back, thinking I’m smiling at him. But I’m not. I’m thinking that I’ll tell the goddam story and not tell him. I’ll do it secretly - at night and when he’s not around. He’ll never know. I’ll show him how clever I am. You know something? I think of all the chancers that inhabit this Globe and I could puke - honest I could. Nobody cares anymore - really cares I mean. It’s just all one big act. Everybody’s acting out their misbegotten lives as though everyone else is some big movie director or something. But why? They aren’t going to get picked for some star role in life and get to be millionaires or have herds of screaming worshippers following their every move. See what I mean?

I used to care once. At first I didn’t. Nothing had any value except Tom, a decent pint or a good lusty screw. I could appreciate the value of things like that but nothing else as far as I can remember. There was nothing else worth worrying about or fighting for or hoping for, really. Until I met Julie. Hell, just remembering her name makes me have to fight back the tears. I cared for Julie. But this misbegotten world couldn’t tolerate something as good as our relationship. I know that sounds ridiculous and a load of romantic crap but its true. It was too good to last.

Here he comes again. Crackling coat - old pink face. He doesn’t know the danger his nose is in as he smiles at me. I’m ahead of him though. The paper is under the bed and the pen’s on the table. I smile and the prick grins and pats me on the head like a little dog. I feel the pressure building and my teeth tingling ready to take a snap at his lousy conk. But I control myself. My secret project has me in a good mood, really. He turns and wanders off and I lie for a while and try to count the footsteps until there is silence.

I do still care, really. But not much. Only about Tom, my pal. In a way he’s in the same state as I am. He could have been on that secret mission with me. But Tom ticks different to me. I think he took it harder than me, really. He’s a lot more sensitive than I am. He’s a lot quieter. He suffers in silence. I feel sorry for Tom. I wouldn’t tell him that but I do. It was my brother’s fault. Hes a bigger bastard than our father.

Now that I’ve finally got down to telling this tale I’m wondering if all the jerks that read it will just laugh and take the piss for being such a sentimental prick. I wonder if anyone will really understand. Perhaps it’ll just be a lousy waste of time.

I suck the end of my pen and pick my nose while I think of the right words to slap down on the paper. Hell, it’s not easy. I keep thinking of Julie. She’s dead now. I often think about her - dead I mean. I’m not afraid of dying, it’s just the permanence of the situation that scares the shit out of me. But Julie had no right to die and leave me. I often wonder if there’s anything in this spirit world crap and she’s here with me. She might be right here with me now, looking over my shoulder. But I doubt it somehow. I’d like to believe it but I just can’t. All this heaven stuff is just another con. Hell, the thought of everlasting paradise is as frightening as permanent death, even if you’re as happy as a lark - know what I mean?

I knew a man who was an atheist - I mean a real honest-to-God disbeliever. He would stick two fingers up at a crucifix if he wanted to. I mean what a brave bastard! He died and left strict instructions for his funeral. No service at all. No hymns. No holy words - nothing! Not even a vicar. Jesus! That’s faith for you. Wouldn’t you think he’d have had the religious bit - just in case - I mean, hell…

I don’t know what I am. I’ve prayed a few times, usually to ask Him to make some bird come across with the goodies. I suppose that makes me a believer. On the other hand if there was a God there would still be a Julie. So he can’t exist. He’s a figment of the imagination.

I often wonder just where I fit into the way of things and what the hell I’m doing on this Earth anyway. I wonder what I’m doing in this lousy room. I’ve lost track of time. I don’t know how long I’ve been here or how long I’ll stay. I could go now I suppose. I mean I’m not a prisoner or anything exciting like that. I could go this minute, I know that. I sometimes look out of the window but I get a little frightened. There’s so much space out there. So much room for so many people and their goddam problems. Anyway it’ll be lonely without Julie. I could visit Tom but I wouldn’t know what to say to him. He comes to see me from time to time but y’know I just can’t bring myself to speak to him. Honest I want to but the words just won’t come. I feel so embarrassed I hide my face.

I like it here, really. I feel sort of safe if you know what I mean. This little room of mine is nice. It’s a private room in an exclusive establishment. That’s what Goody-two-shoes told me. I like the colour of the walls. The armchair’s comfortable and the bed’s OK, I suppose. I don’t sleep much. I like the night and I feel sort of protected from the screams and yells in the soft darkness. But hell, it sets off those pictures in my head. They zip across my brain like machine gun bullets, I swear it.

He’s here again. Write it all down he keeps whispering. I take a few practice snaps at his nose but he dodges back. He smiles. He thinks he’s outsmarted me again but I’ll have the last laugh. I’m in the smoking room now. I sit back and light a cigarette and flick the hot match across the room. One of his female friends shouts at me but I just laugh. My secret project has me in a good mood. It’s difficult to know where to start and it scares me to think about dragging up all those memories of Julie. Hell, I must be a sentimental prick after all. I loved Julie. She was the love of my life. Julie was my wife.

It’s dark now. I wonder what’s happened to the daytime. It’s funny where the time goes. I look around and listen. It’s quiet. There’s a smell of antiseptic from somewhere and moonlight coming through the window has the room dusted with silver blue. My B29 is sitting nicely on my little table. It’s a beaut. I built it myself. Its wings are gleaming in the moonlight and it’s tilted at a great angle as though it’s just dropped its bombs on those lousy Japs and is turning and heading for base. It’s a great plane, is the old B29, lit up in the moonlight and all. I think about looking out of the window and up at the moon but I change my mind. The thought of it scares me half to death. I like the shadows. I like to stay in the shadows. I sit for a while and I get a tingle of excitement thinking about my project. Footsteps….they come and go. Quick, clean slapping of shoes on hard, polished lino. Quietly I sneak across the room and switch on my bedside lamp. I get my pen and paper and using my head and my knees I form a kind of tent under the bed sheet. There’s just enough light to see. Yes, I really am going to tell this story. I’m really excited about it now. But I’m not telling him - no sir! Not him or any of his female friends. No, I’ll keep them out of it. I’ll make them think they’re on to a loser. He’ll keep whispering and I’ll keep on trying to get my teeth into his nose. I might tell Tom. Yes, Tom will take it away and read it. He’ll understand. He’ll not think I’m a soft prick for writing it down. He’ll understand because it’s about him as well. Hell, I’m even more excited. I have to put my arm across my mouth to stop a yell coming out. Suddenly my legs start twitching and the sheaf of paper fans out in the bed. There must be a million sheets. God I’m excited! Footsteps! It’s one of his female friends. I just know the footsteps heading away toward some weird gurgling scream. I switch off the light and slide down among the paper. The paper feels cool against my legs and belly and I rub a few of them up and down against my skin while the footsteps come and go. She’s gone now. It’s quiet again. I gather the papers together. I make a neat pile. I like things to be neat. The pen slipped down between my legs but I find it. While my hand’s down there I give my pecker a friendly squeeze. I switch on the light and see some of the paper is crumpled but it doesn’t matter. The pen will still write on it.

This is it! This is the moment! The pen touches the paper and I see the blue mark it makes. Jesus, this is great! This is where I begin….

CHAPTER TWO

I suppose I could start on that Sunday Morning. I know it was a Sunday because those crazy Salvation Army sods woke me up. They were marching to God knows where and the route was past our house. They were blowing hell out of their instruments. I was unconscious until they arrived. Dead to the world. And then their noise kicked its way into my brain. They were playing bum notes and all. I could hear the swish and crunch of their hobnailed boots on the road outside. Even from where I had buried myself under the bedclothes I could hear them - almost see the queer way they march, toting those bloody trumpets and things. Left to right… right to left, in time with the crummy tempo. Spotty faces and puffed red cheeks. Bright eyes polished with some vague conviction. I hated them for it. It seemed like an hour before the racket faded and my brain stopped pounding. I lay still in the warmth of the bed and tried to piece myself back together again. A pain started in my forehead and spread across my eyes. I swallowed trying to get some saliva into the dried up cesspit beneath my nose. Then I became aware of the ache in my groin and the needle sharp pain in my pecker. I was at death’s door I swear it. I lay for a while groaning and thinking about pissing the goddam bed and then faking some weird disease. I knew Goodie -two-shoes would forgive me if I laid it on thick enough.

"John, are you awake," she trilled. Her. Goodie-two-shoes but I didn’t answer. I lifted the bedclothes and tried to peer down at myself without moving my head. I decided I was all there - even my pecker looked intact.

"John, are you awake?" she cooed again.

I didn’t answer. I just forced myself to numb the pain of my bursting bladder. I got muscles working down there that I didn’t know I had. Dear old Goodiekins. I’m such a disappointment to her. She’s proud of that and I love her for it. She kept on shouting and I kept on ignoring, concentrating on defying nature. It was a supreme battle of mind over matter and I lost. God it was close. If the bathroom had been locked it would have been all over the landing, I swear it.

I always drink too much on a Saturday night. There’s something magic about Saturday night. There’s a song about it. It’s magic. I feel as though Monday will never come - or I should say I used to. Now I couldn’t care what day it is. Tom and I really got some ale down us on a Saturday night. It tasted better, even better than Friday night’s session. It was music as it fizzed out of the pumps. And you know what? Tom and I had a gift - a rare talent. We could both pour it down and when we were full, honk it up again and start all over. That’s a real blessing. Usually with the less gifted a puke ends the session without fail.

That Sunday I was really hung over. I mean the plague couldn’t have felt worse. I knew it and so did she. By the time I staggered downstairs and into the kitchen the bacon was burning. The whole damned place was a fog of blue smoke. She did it on purpose, I could tell. She stood poking at it as though it was alive. She was muttering to herself. Her loose pasty cheeks were shivering as she poked and when she saw me she smiled.

"Good morning," she said in that sort of lighthearted sarcastic way that Pater hates.

From that and the angle her mouth took I knew her smile was a load. I sat down at the table without answering and I heard an egg crack then chuckle in the pan. I almost puked over the gingham tablecloth.

"What time was it this morning? she said. Her voice had changed. It always did. It changed to a solemn resignation as though all hope was lost. I knew no matter what I said it would be sniffs and lamentations. She’s sensitive. I like a sensitive woman. The reactions of a sensitive woman are so positive. I mean, you know just how life has regulated their existence. I kept on staring out of the window, fighting the fingers that reached down my throat and kneaded my guts. Well?" she said, positively this time.

I had to answer but I waited a bit while the egg still laughed at me.

"I can’t remember," I muttered. I really couldn’t and I guess she believed me. She slapped a greasy mess in front of my nose and I had to turn away.

"It was nearly three!! "she screeched. The triumph in her voice was lovely - almost poetic in its intensity.

I pushed the plate away. I was out with Tom…y’know…Tom…

"Hah!" was the reaction. More triumph. The woman was having a great morning.

"Tom Rickard! She said his name as though it was a disease. I waited for the symptoms. That…delinquent! John Ridgley, he’s turning you into a common…a common…"

"A common what?" I countered. I knew she didn’t know. I still felt sick but the contest was more satisfying than the earlier one so I forced myself to keep going. A pleb? I said to myself. A common working class fellow? One of the rank and file? A raw, coarse, uncouth, beer swilling yobbo? Dear Goodie-two -shoes if only you could see us, loose- jawed and bleary eyed groping anything in a skirt. My, oh my, what would your fine friends say about that?

"He’s…he’s just not your sort. You could mix with better than that. We spent a fortune on your education and what do you do?"

I knew it would come. The same old hackneyed bullshit. She strode out of the kitchen, head bowed, pinafore up to her nose. I sat for a minute with my head in my hands and tried to remember. It had been a wild night. Adrift in an amber sea of best bitter. We had sidled our way into a retirement party for one of the fitters from Wardley’s. They were mostly grey-headed old pricks with buttoned up shirts and ties with a tiny little tight knot. They sang crappy old songs and when they stopped they talked about the good old days when everybody had rickets and nobody had shoes and you could get pissed out of your skull for a few pence. Still it was worth it. We got free pints for hours and a belt of whiskey from some crabby ancient bitch from the wages department who had BO and dandruff. The rest is pretty hazy but I remember we wound up shoveling gravy-covered bean sprouts into our mouths. The thought of that really made my guts churn.

The car! Where’s the car! Jesus it suddenly came to me. We had all piled into the mini-bus the Wardley mob had hired…

"John, where’s your car?" She was back and I couldn’t remember. Where had we gone with the geriatrics? A prickle of fear ran up my back.

"Your car, she breathed as though I had committed murder, It’s not there! "

The nausea left me, drowned in a sea of panic but I daren’t let it show. The car had to be somewhere - in one of the car parks of one of the pubs where we had initiated the night’s festivities. It’s at Tom’s, I said.

"Tom Rickard," she said again only this time the disease was an epidemic.

"I left it there…I’ll, I’ll be picking it up…. later on my way to the Club…"

" The Club!" she screeched.

She was on the verge of hysteria, I swear it. I covered my eyes with my hands.

"Yes, the Club," I said.

"The Club," she repeated, quietly this time but with all the disgust she could muster.

I just shrugged helplessly. I didn’t want to do that. It was a sort of sign of defeat. I wanted to stand up and look her square in the eye and say something like I’m going to the Club with Tom and his dad for a couple of Sunday pints and a game of poxy bingo. Will that stop the world, you helpless snob? But I didn’t. I just shrugged. She would never understand. She would never bring herself to accept that I had come out of the mold warped, deformed: a throwback, a genetic misfit. Their darling schools had given me the cramps - a breeding ground for queers, pimps and arty-farty snobs. And the friends they had selected for me! Jesus H. Christ, snotty nosed twerps forever prattling on about daddy’s shares and mummy’s exciting Bridge parties and how well their older kinfolk were doing at Oxford or some other emporium of knowledge. It just wasn’t my scene. I don’t know why, it just wasn’t. I didn’t fit. Perhaps I should have been like Roger. I sometimes get a twinge of regret that I wasn’t. Life might have been so much easier. Roger is my brother. He’s Christ on Earth as far as my parents are concerned - or he was anyway.

I can’t recall whether I was mad at her or mad at myself that Sunday morning but I know that I jumped up from the kitchen table and gave her a real mouthful of abuse. There may have been a couple of rude words thrown in the piece for all I know. Anyway she shrieked and threatened me with sudden death when dear old Pater got back from shooting his clay pigeons somewhere out in the wilds. That was the least of my worries. I had to find the car and I had to get to the Club for opening time, otherwise Tom and his dad would have thought I had died in my sleep.

Comrades of the Great War. I often used to look up at that sign above the Club door and wonder just how many of them were still alive and fit enough to stagger into the place for a pint. Comrades of the Great War. It’s a hoot, really. Comrades? Men thrust together on one side with