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| Author: |
Steve Finbow |
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Chris Killen, author of The Bird Room, asks Steve:
Please describe an ‘average day’ in the life of Steve Finbow if Steve Finbow was a cat.
I wake around 6 am & nuzzle my mistress’ thighs. Reon Kadena – for it is she who refreshes my kitty litter – rises, slips on her dressing gown, drops me into the silk holster of her pocket as if I were some furry pistol, & prepares me a breakfast of scrambled eggs, smoked salmon & truffle oil. I prowl around our roof garden in Rio de Janeiro, cruelly dissecting but not eating any small birds stupid enough to land there. While marking my territory, I occasionally sip imported Sapporo Classic from my platinum drinking bowl. Later, I slink up onto the Le Corbusier two-seater sofa & into my mistress’ lap, let her long carmine nails tickle my taut belly. I rub my head on the underside of her black lace bra, sniff the air for the tang of leather from her black knee-length boots & purr, “Just a bit lower, Reon. Bit more.”
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| Submission Date: |
| 06 Dec 2008 |
Category: |
Short story
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In Podcast and Chap-book
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down among the dead - part five
To listen to Steve Finbow reading part five of his story, click the play button  .
I close the cubicle door and sit down. I don’t want to go or anything I just need to get away from those boys for a while. Ach, they’re harmless but they take it too far sometimes and I try to keep my temper but it’s hard. I know they’re only having a jest and I know they’re looking out for me in a way, but it annoys me they know nothing about the past. Not real stuff. They only know what they’ve seen in films and read in books. Well, Joseph, anyway. Doubt Liam’s read a book in his life. I’ll just sit for a while and gather my thoughts, get my wits about me. You’ll see, Joseph’ll be right as rain later, sweetness and light. He’ll ask me to tell his girlfriend – Indian she is – tell her about the old country, tell her about the struggles and the troubles. He’ll want me to make it sound romantic. Not violent stuff, just general, like. And while him and Liam are playing on the fruit machine or that general knowledge thing, I’ll tell – can’t think of her name, right now – what she wants to hear and I’ll buy Nora a packet of pork scratchings – she likes to open the packet herself – and let her drink the last dregs from my Guinness. It’ll all be forgotten by tonight. Probably jealous I was telling them new fellas stuff I hadn’t told them. Twisted as they say in Belfast, full to the gills. I was probably pushing the truth, so I was. Had those young fellas eating out of my hand, I did. All ears, they were. Aye. I look up at the toilet door and someone has written in black marker pen ‘IRA scum’. Someone else has tried to score it out with a key or a coin. And there is ‘Roy Keane is God’ and ‘Bono for president’. On the left side of the wall, in red felt pen, in a hand that looks steady – and I can just imagine a Scouse lad, kecks around his ankles, Liverpool shirt hiked above his beer belly, tongue out in concentration, inscribing:
Outside the Shankly Gates
I heard a Kopite calling
Shankly they have taken you away
But you left a great eleven
Before you went to heaven
Now it’s glory round the Fields of Anfield Road.
I remember my days on the Kop. I fold my paper and leave the cubicle, flushing the toilet for no reason. Wash my hands, dry them with paper and walk back into the bar. Will you be wanting another? I says to Liam. Aye, he says, go on, then, feeling human… nearly. The lad is at the taps before I finish. I sit down and say, Liam, have I told you about the time I lived in Liverpool? Grand city. Grand people. Used to spend Saturday afternoons watching the Reds, so I did. We’d start the day in the Albert on Lark Lane and then jump a taxi to Doctor Duncan’s for a quick game of pool or drop in to Ye Cracke – fuck that hopscotch for a laugh – and then back in a taxi to Cabbage Hall or King Harry’s for a few more bevies. Grab a burger or a sausage on the walk to Anfield. And Liam says, I thought you supported Man U. Feck off, will you, I say. Ach, I was there 1988-1989 – Houghton, Beardsley, Whelan, Aldo, Rushie, Jan Molby fecking Dick – more Scouse than Jimmy Tarbuck. Not forgetting your man John Barnes. Heard of him, like, says Liam, he’s on TV. Black geezer. Talks too fast. Can’t understand a word. Loud suits. You’ve not heard of Peter Beardsley, I say? Go on with you. Great player, says a voice behind me. Before his time, says another voice. Drink, pops? I turn around. Liam finishes his pint and excuses himself. Two of the fellas from last night. I’m OK for now, I say. And what about that Barnesy goal against Brazil, eh? Better than Maradona that. What d’you say, pops? Sure you don’t want another pint of the black stuff? Suffering are we? What brings you back to Kilburn now, lads? Thought you were just passing last night? I say. Passing again, ain’t we? Says the smaller one. Mind if we pull up a pew? The lad is holding two pint glasses and waggling them in front of the Stella tap. Just mineral water for us, mate, says the other fella. Fizzy, ice and a slice. And chuck us a couple a packets a dry-roasted peanuts. Don’t want any more of them pork scratchings. They were rank. Up all night, I was. That’d be that kebab you had, the smaller one says. Chili sauce, innit? I had tahini on mine, says the other fella. The smaller one says, tahini sauce, innit? Here, pops, you won’t remember this, funny, though, you were well gone by then, but Eddie here’s wolfing down the pork scratchings, and Charlie, you know the one with the tatt of the bluebird on his hand, he says, Eddie, they’ve got other types of them scratchings behind the bar, not pork. And Eddie he says, Oh yeah, I’ll go get some, what are they? And Charlie, he says, chicken – chicken itchings, and Eddie only goes and asks for ‘em, don’t he? Don’t ya? He says to Eddie. And he, he says pointing to the lad, only starts looking for ‘em, don’t you? The lad smiles. Then the smaller one turns, holds out his right hand, Michael O’Connor, wasn’t it? S’right, I say. Tony, he says. Tony.
***
I can’t sleep. I never can. If it’s not the memories, it’s the doubts, and if it’s not the doubts, it’s the future, and, if I really think about it, it’s the doubts about future memories. Ach, here we go again. And I lie here in this bed hundreds of miles from home – ach, home – a small flat outside the city proper, no neighbours I know, no pubs to drink in, miles away from the wife and the girl. More bollocks. The sheets are clean and smell vaguely of bleach and the thoughts in my head and the smell of the sheets and the light trickling in through the curtains and the flowers on the table all conspire to keep me awake. I switch on the bedside lamp and reach for my book. I read a sentence, read it again, and realize I am too tired to take anything in. I get up and cross to the curtains, part them with two fingers, and look out onto the pool’s blue shiver and the trees’ intricate twists. Out on the road, I see a man light a cigarette and look up to what must, for him, be a thin line of light on the hotel’s dark façade. He stares up at my window, draws on his cigarette and, for a moment, I can see his face. He extinguishes the match between his thumb and forefinger, takes the cigarette from his mouth, and walks away, a stream of smoke marking his route. What if your man has sent someone to watch me? Watching the watcher. He arrived yesterday and is staying at another hotel and there is someone who arrived the day before watching him and on and on until everyone on this hunk of limestone is watching each other. What if the three who arrive tomorrow are here to watch six who arrive the next day and those six are here to watch twelve who arrive the next until the Rock is swarming with watchers and the watched? Watching. Watched. Watching. Watched. I step into the bathroom and splash cold water on my face. Take a drink. Rub my eyes. Climb back into bed. Turn off the bedside lamp. Pull the covers up to my chin. Close my eyes. I picture the wife at her parents’ home. Her ma fussing over her. Her da all pipe and told you so’s. The girl asleep in the back bedroom. The magical wardrobe straight out of a fairy tale. When we’d visit the wife’s family, the girl would run upstairs – a blur of skinny legs and pompoms – and hide in the wardrobe. We’d follow her up, pretend we couldn’t find her. She’d jump out on us, her tiny heart thumping in her chest, her knees knocking together as she leapt up and down with excitement shouting, Couldn’t find me, Da. Couldn’t find me. I won. I won. And I’d hold her and tell her, You always will, mo chroí. You always will. Ten she’ll be soon. Double figures. We thought it was too late to start a family. We were all set for it to be just the two of us. Ach, I got ribbed something rotten by the lads. Call yourself a Catholic, Mikey-boy? Give Michael a big red hand for keeping down the world’s population. Michael, where’s your sash and drum? Don’t want the Pope to catch you with them condoms, now, Michael. Then visits to the hospital and tests and more tests. The girl born just after my fortieth birthday. A bundle of smiles and jet-black hair. Things would be different. I held the wife’s hand and told her so. Promised. I promised to get out and take the job her da offered me. Promised to stop going to the club, stop running errands for your man. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I told her I had, mind. Trips to the south were business now. I was a salesman. I sold plastic things to engineering companies. Always kept a few in my briefcase. Strange little nubbins of hard plastic, brightly coloured, as intricate and mysterious as seashells. The girl liked playing with them until the wife got the frights she might swallow one and choke on it. Salesman? Ach, bagman, messenger, smuggler and minder. Minder? I needed someone to mind me, so I did. I can understand why the wife went home. I can understand why she took the girl. The fucking Brits kicking our door down. What I can’t understand is why I can’t say no. Why yes? I don’t need it. I don’t need the hassle. I don’t need the sweats. I don’t need my heart drumming. It used to be the rush that saw me through things. No more. This is it. The last time. They owe me that. I turn on my side away from the window. The furniture in the room begins to soften and dissolve into a leaden nothingness. Just before sleep, I can hear my breath quicken in the still air of the room, beat against the walls, ricochet off, never settle. I jump. My feet slip from the edge of the Rock. I’m falling. I sit up and stare into the room. There is nothing, just the known world whispering through the curtains.
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