Jack flashed ahead a year to Scot’s off hand prophecy. Waking up with a nail embedded in his cheek on a supposed friend’s carpet, face shredded and back drunk shamed with graffiti. By the time he crawled back home photos and braying Facebook posts had already been shared, dripping with smug victory, secure the assault wouldn’t be reported, despite the incriminating evidence on the attacker’s own phones supplanting their lies. “Sounds like I may not have a choice then.”
“Well, look at the timeline. The name-calling was in your face, you bit back, and it moved to behind your back. Now, after you’ve got a kicking, it’s in your face again. What happens next?”
“Is that a rhetorical question?”
“Do you want it to be?”
“Is that a rhetorical question?”
“Bullying is repetition,” said Scot. “It can be a series of in your face screams so loud common sense is drowned out, or it can be poisonous little whispers just out of earshot dripping steadily from a tap. But, say they’re fluffy bunny cute to everyone, only you they target. Only you, the broke drunk freak, the easy mark to hit. How long before their fantasy bubble gets pricked again? Who to blame? The one they get away with hurting? The one too drunk to put up a fight so was publicly beaten to great amusement?”
Jack looked around, and tentatively raised his hand, fingering his yet unscarred cheek as he did so. “This may be a long shot, but…”
Scot continued. “They need a whipping boy, they know how to spin lies to get their hate on, because that’s who they are, that’s their world. That’s how they raise their children.”
Metropolitans. They decided the classics were better than the painfully punned inventions of the bar, and it was too late to move onto another letter of the alphabet.
Scot raised his glass. “Oh, blessed be those too blinded by self brilliance to see who they really are. Licking their fingers in the sandpit, forgetting they already took a dump in it.”
“Did we use to be this cynical at college?” Jack laughed. “Bullies don’t have to stay that way and brats can grow up. If there really was no hope people can change we’d all just stick our head in a hole waiting for the end.”
“Actually, we were probably a lot worse at college, but I worry all the time about the slurry my sons may have to wade through in life, so when I see a spark I picture the fire. My wife and I can teach them right and wrong so they don’t blindly join the mob, be empathetic enough not to bully, but we won’t know if they’re strong enough to take the sticks they’ll be beaten with after we’re gone. Because at some point everyone gets beaten. And what do you really think you’ve been doing for the last ten years if it hasn’t been sticking your head in a hole?”
Jack smiled. That was the crux of it. He nodded. “It’s been difficult, that’s all. Life doesn’t always turn out the way we… expect.”
“Life never turns out the way we expect. Do you remember Kenny with his life planner up on his wall? Twenty years mapped out in six month blocks.”
“Yeah, things may not have gone the way I planned, but I can’t imagine anything following that tight a plan.”
“Plans change. Hell, life is change. Think of the movie we just watched. Don’t know about you, but I’d have given my eye teeth to be an astronaut when I was a kid. Couldn’t think of anything more pointless and… lonely right now. Most of the time I’m just trying to get my family through the week intact, and that’s enough exploring the unknown for me.”
“I wanted to be an astronaut too. Every kid did. But I spent half that movie wondering how the guy next to you eating noodles heated them up. And why he thought that was okay to do in the cinema.”
“Thermos flask. Or he bought a cup of tea from the kiosk without the bag in and used the hot water. And he did it because he could. Wow, you really do go off on tangents don’t you? Maybe that’s why you don’t see what’s passing you by.”
“There must be things you still want to do though. That you haven’t managed yet.”
“Sure there are, but I still believe when the time is right, the chances will still be there, if I still want them.”
“But what if the moment passed and won’t return?”
“The opportunities are there, even in our dotage. Just not the way you imagined, take a bit more effort to spot, maybe make the… adjustments we need to make them work. Maybe we all need a kick in the pants once in a while.”
“Just the pants?”
“Like it or not, that Caledonian cousin has done you a favour, just like you did him a favour. Riding you probably meant he could climb onto his mongo wife later that night.”
“I’m a very generous man.”
“Yeah, heard that about you, but I don’t listen to gossip. Look, think of this as a watershed moment. Some people our age buy a Porsche. I’ve got my eye on a Morgan. Shallow status symbols to prove how great our lives are. You, being the lower end of the scale, make do with a kicking – physically, socially, mentally – to convince you to start living yours again. You’ve spent so long martyring yourself you’d apologise if a thief stole your wallet. You do remember that mantra? Your little deathbed precis?”
“I’m surprised you do.”
Scot laughed. “Believe it or not, time to time, I use it to check myself.”
“Yeah well, I guess it still holds true.”
“How does it go again?”
Jack sighed, and smiled. “That after a long life the strongest man will lose his strength, his muscles will fade, his eyes will blur. Those that have lived their lives covering themselves with lies and false glories will lose those too, and when stripped down to their kernel they are nothing but a small, black, rotten thing, because their life has been venal and false, and they die knowing deep down how truly ugly they are. However…”
The mixologist leaned in.
“Those that have been honest, no matter how many times they’ve been cheated or besmirched, how many times they’ve been beaten down, when stripped down to their seed they are still as strong and decent and true as when they were young. They’ll still lose their muscles, and their eyes, and their body will be just as weak as the liars and cheats, but they can die smiling knowing who they are, because they are glad of what they’re not.”
They drank on, moving back to beer when the cocktails got too much and wandered the Southbank drinking in the London night lights. Eventually, they staggered off for their respective last trains promising to meet again in the New Year.
Scot got home by midnight and slumped onto the downstairs sofa. He chose not to wake his loved ones by attempting the stairs. He smiled as he slumbered off, content that it was a warrior’s role to help those who stumbled pick themselves up, lest they be gnawed too deeply by the weasels.
Standing on Lewes station platform at two in the morning, after engineering works had extended his journey into the wee small hours, Jack started laughing.
He laughed at the irony of being attacked by his accuser and saved by his aggressor; he laughed at apologising for not defending himself; he laughed at the loudest voices saying the least and at darts thrown by the thinnest skins; he laughed at the contradictory gossip spread by those finishing a story without knowing the beginning. His ribs sang from laughing at the muck slung at his back, and rubbed in his face, and he felt cleaner for laughing.
He was a coward who didn’t flee, a fighter without a punch, a kind abuser, a witty grump, a sober drunk, a generous scrounger, an industrious slacker, a modest egotist, a thief who’d never stolen, a liar who told the truth.
He was all of those things; he was none of those things.
He was free.
THE END
THE ORIGINAL DRAFT OF THIS STORY WAS PUBLISHED JANUARY 2015 ON NOW DEFUNCT BLOG MCBEALES.WORDPRESS.COM
Hove Press 