‘You gonna watch the game, Pop?’ I ask.
‘Which one?’
‘Everton and Liverpool.’
He shakes his head.
‘I bought cable so you could see the big derby games.’
He grunts. ‘Man shouldn’t have to pay to watch football. It’s like paying to drink water. I won’t do that.’
‘I’m paying.’
‘Makes no difference.’
The only colour in the room is coming from the screen and it paints a bright square in his eyes.
‘You going out later?’
‘Nah.’
‘I thought you said you had bingo.’
‘Don’t play bingo no more. Them cheating cunts said I couldn’t come back.’
‘Why?’
‘Cos I caught ’em rigging things.’
‘How do you rig bingo?’
‘I’m one bloody number short every fucking time. One number. Cheating cunts!’
I’m still holding a bag of groceries. I take them to the kitchen and offer to fix him something to eat. I’ve bought a tin of ham, baked beans and eggs.
Dirty dishes are stacked in the sink. A cockroach crawls to the top of a cup and looks at me as if I’m trespassing. It scrambles away as I scrape plates into a pedal bin and turn on the tap. The gas water heater rumbles and coughs as a blue flame ignites along the burners.
‘You should never have left the army,’ he shouts. ‘The army treat you like family.’
Yeah, some family!
He launches into a bullshit spiel about mateship and camaraderie, when the truth is he never fought in a war. He missed out on the Falklands because he couldn’t swim.
I smile to myself. It’s not really true. He was medically unfit. He got his hand caught in the breech of a 155 mm cannon and broke most of his fingers. The old bastard is still bitter about it. Fuck knows why. Who in their right mind wanted to fight a war over a few rocks in the South Atlantic?
He’s still whining, yelling over the sound of the TV.
‘That’s the problems with soldiers today. They’re soft. They’re pampered. Feather pillows. Gourmet food…’
I’m frying pieces of ham and breaking eggs into the spaces between the slices. The beans won’t take long to heat in the microwave.
Pop changes the subject. ‘How’s my granddaughter?’
‘Good.’
‘How come you never bring her to see me?’
‘She doesn’t live with me, Pop.’
‘Yeah, but that judge gave you-.’
‘Don’t matter what the judge said. She doesn’t live with me.’
‘But you see her, right? You talk to her.’
‘Yeah. Sure.’ I lie.
‘So why don’t you bring her round? I want to see her.’
I look around the kitchen. ‘She doesn’t want to come.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t know.’
He grunts.
‘I guess she’s at school now.’
‘Yeah.’
‘What school?’
I don’t answer him.
‘Probably some fancy private school like her mother went to. She was always too good for the likes of you. Couldn’t stand her father. Thought his shit didn’t smell. Drove a different car every year.’
‘They were company cars.’
‘Yeah, well, he looked down his nose at you.’
‘No he didn’t.’
‘Fucking did. We weren’t his type. Golf clubs, skiing holidays… He paid for that posh wedding.’ He pauses and gets excited. ‘Maybe you should apply for alimony, you know. Take her to court. Get your share.’
‘I don’t want her money.’
‘Give it to me.’
‘No.’
‘Why not? I deserve something.’
‘I got you this place.’
‘Yeah, a fucking palace!’
He shuffles into the kitchen and sits down. I dish up the food. He smothers everything in brown sauce. Doesn’t say thank you. Doesn’t wait for me.
I wonder when he looks in the mirror if he sees what other people see: a useless bladder of piss and wind. That’s what I see. The man has no right to lecture me. He’s a foul-mouthed, whining, skid-mark on the world and I wish sometimes that he’d just die or at least get even.
I don’t know why I bother coming to visit him. When I remember what he did to me, it’s all I can do not to spit in his face. He won’t remember. He’ll say I’m making it up.
His beltings were never as bad as the long, drawn out prelude to them. I was sent to the stairs, where I had to drop my trousers and put my arms through the railings, crossing them and gripping my wrists. I’d stand there waiting and waiting, with my forehead pressed against the wood.
The first sound I heard was the swishing of the flex as it curled through the air a split-second before it landed. He used an old toaster cord with the plug still attached, which he gripped in his fist.
I’ll tell you the strange thing about them beatings. They taught me how to split my mind in two. I didn’t leave home at sixteen. I left home years earlier when I was hanging on those railings. I left home when that cord whipped through the air and sank into my skin.
I used to fantasise about what I’d do to him when I was big enough and strong enough. I didn’t have much of an imagination back then. I thought of punching him or kicking him in the head. It’s different now. I can imagine a thousand ways to cause him pain. I can imagine him begging to die. He might even think he was already dead. That’s happened to me before. An Algerian terrorist, captured fighting for the Talibs in the mountains north of Gardeyz, asked me if he was in hell.
‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘But it’s going to seem like a holiday camp when you get there.’
Pop pushes his plate away and rubs a hand over his jaw, giving me a quick sly look. A gin bottle appears from the cupboard below the sink. He pours a glass, with the air of a man who is putting something over on the world.
‘You want one?’
‘No.’
I look around, seeking a distraction, an excuse to leave.
‘You got to be somewhere?’ he asks.
‘Yeah.’
‘You only just got here.’
‘There’s a job.’
‘Fixing more locks.’
‘Yeah.’
He snorts in disgust. ‘You must be cock-deep in cash.’
Then he launches into another speech, complaining about his life and telling me I’m useless and selfish and a
