me.’
I felt like I’d been punched in the guts, a sucker punch I didn’t see coming. Said, ‘I suppose you think your new man is quite a catch.. Don’t be fooled, Debs.’
‘Gus, he’s not the one facing a murder charge.’
‘ Trumped-up murder charge — that’s the phrase you missed out.’ I felt my pulse quicken, gone in sixty seconds, that’s the hold I have on my temper these days. ‘You don’t seriously believe I could have killed a man, do you?’
A sigh. Loud enough to get that extra inflection in there, one that says ‘Are you for real?’ or, worse, ‘I don’t give a shit’.
‘Gus, I have to go.’ She was curt.
I snapped, ‘Debs, answer the fucking question.’
Another pause.
A deep breath.
She was forcing herself to concentrate on her words, but she was distracted. I wanted to ask if Jonny Come Lately was there with her.
She said, ‘Gus, I don’t know anything any more.’
‘You seriously believe what he’s feeding you…? Fuck me!’ I’d lost the plot. Gone postal. ‘Deborah, I thought you were better than that. Can’t you see he’s an utter cockhead?… He’s a cheesy little shiny-arsed bastard with his nose sniffing the K-ladder to the top office…’ I vented. Full on. Way out of control. ‘Fucking hell, Deborah, I thought you had more sense… falling for such an utter wanker.’
Finished, I waited for a response.
None came.
I looked at the phone. The time and date flashed beside the battery charge level. She’d hung up.
Said, ‘Och, shit.’
I knew I’d blown it. The situation with Debs was worse than I’d thought. I felt panic. If Jonny Johnstone could work such a number on someone like Debs, someone with her head screwed on, someone who actually knew me, someone who shared history with me, then I was seriously up to my neck in the brown stuff.
I put the phone in my pocket. Tipped back my head. The cloud covering the sun had been joined by more. Great black jobs. A wind began to blow. Cold one. The sky was turning purplish at its edges. Threatened rain.
Chapter 22
I knew I should call Debs back, say sorry, but I couldn’t. I scrolled my phone’s contacts and hovered over the green call key again and again but it just wouldn’t happen. Couldn’t happen. It seemed beyond senseless after all we’d been through together. But so much of that was getting to me now. Kept flooding back…
The priest started it, but now everyone’s at it. Seems the whole city knows. Wherever we go people stop, stare, shake heads.
‘What’s your problem?’ I say, but Debs wants none of it. My blood’s curdling, but she looks the other way. Even when the fag dowps are thrown at us in the street and the name-calling starts.
‘Leave it, Gus, just leave it… It’ll be over soon.’
‘No way, Deborah, I’m not having it. What right have they got? We’ve done nothing wrong… we’ve broken no law.’
I wonder, how long will this last? How long will it be before I am locked up for banjoing someone, or worse? But Debs sails high, holds her head up. I’ve never admired another soul more. She floats above all the scorn and hate.
Only one thing, the sight of young children pulled to their mothers, gets to her. Brings tears when she remembers, at night, when we’re alone.
The bigger kids calling out names she handles, even lets me kick the arse of any who are old enough to know better. But then it all gets too much, even for her, when the word DAMNED is scrawled on our doorstep.
‘It’s too much, Gus. It’s all too much,’ she says.
‘It’s just kids messing,’ I say, but she’s buying none of it.
‘No, it’s what they think of us now. We’re nothing; we don’t exist.’ She goes out, gets on her knees. The whole street can see. It’s what they want. She rubs and rubs at the step with her coat sleeve.
‘Stop, Debs. Come away in.’ A crowd forms to watch as her tears fall on the step and get smeared into the jagged letters. ‘Debs, you’re only putting on a show,’ I say.
‘Is that what you think I am now?’ she says. ‘A show?’
‘No, Debs.’ She’s better than all of them; she’s borne the taunts with dignity until now. It’s scalding my heart to see her brought to her knees before them. What have they done to her? She was once so full of life, more full of it than anyone. It strikes me deep to see her this way, but I think no less of her for it, only more. She is worth more than I deserve.
‘You’re ashamed of me as well, aren’t you?’ she says.
‘No. No… Now stop!’ I grab her arm. ‘This is what they want — to see you broken.’
She pulls away. ‘Well, let them look.’ Debs keeps rubbing. Her coat sleeve wears to a hole, her palm bleeds on the step as she forces it back and forth, back and forth. ‘Let them see me broken if that’s what they want. Are they happy?’ She turns to them, yells, ‘Are you happy now?’
I put my arms under her and lift her back indoors. She screams out, ‘No! No!’
‘Debs, it’ll be over soon, like you say.’
‘No. Gus, no… it will never be over,’ she wails. Tears roll over her face and then she buries her head in her bloodied and blackened hands. Her sobbing is silent, like all the noise is located deep inside her, wrapped up in her pain, unable to get out. When she removes her hands and tips back her head I look at her face, smeared in blood and dirt, and wonder what to do. Her mouth’s open, she’s trying to wail but is unable. Her screams stay trapped in her. She seems hollow, like there’s nothing left but the deepest misery inside. And I know it will never leave her.
Chapter 23
I closed my eyes.
Tried to think.
Wasn’t happening.
Then I heard, ‘Dury.’
The last thing you want to see when you’re lying with your head tipped over the back of a park bench is a man with a scarf covering his face. Mirror shades and shoulders wide enough to block out the sky.
I’d trouble adjusting to the picture, he was upside down from my perspective. I spun round, sat upright to front the source of the voice.
‘What in the wide world of-’
The scarf moved as he spoke. ‘Did you expect me to meet you out in the open, in the full glare of the world?’
‘With you, Fitz, I never know what to expect.’
He was dressed head to toe in black. With the shades he looked like Roy Orbison, said, ‘Don’t tell me… you drove all night?’
‘What?’
‘To get to me?’
‘You’re bollix mad, Dury!’
Like I’d give him any argument.
Fitz removed his scarf, sat. He took out some smokes, Lambert amp; Butler. As he sparked up, he looked out
