Time For Bait

This story emerged out of a chapter from an abandoned novel. The novel centred on the relationship between Michael and his severely disabled older brother, Tommy. Michael is about eighteen or nineteen years old and lives with his father and brother on their small and rather remote family farm. The conflict of the story emerges when the local authority closes the day centre to which Tommy goes, leaving Michael and his father to look after Tommy full time. I'd imagined their mother to have died when Michael was about sixteen. Because of his brother's disability, Michael has little choice but to stay at home to look after his ageing father and his brother. But to do this he has to take a poorly paid and rather menial job at the local chicken processing factory. He is in love with Mary, the bar maid at the pub, who is featured in this story. He is torn by conflicts of loyalty, love and dreams of a better life.I'd not intended the novel to include the scene described in this short story, which involves a crime. But one section seemed to work as a story if I 'topped and tailed it' with the first and last sentences, which made it function as a police confession.Many stories are written that feature young people leading difficult lives in urban environments. But young people grow up in the countryside too, which to most urban people is, I feel, still a largely unknown and misunderstood environment. I myself grew up on a farm, and know what it is like to to be young and to believe you have no prospects of anything much outside the village. I confess it owes something to the brilliant presentation of Ed Grundy in The Archers.The novel is also about the problems of caring for someone with severe disabilities, something I have seen often in my research work (see my Research pages).This story was first published in Birmingham Words http://www.birminghamwords.co.uk/ in 2004. It was also featured as Story of the Week on the BBC's  Get Writing site.Maybe I should take another look at that idea for a novel...

 


             You want to know what happened? This is my statement? In my own words? All right. But I want to tell it like it was. I want my say.

            All right. It was on the night shift at the plant, you know, McClusky’s chickens, the processing factory, just outside the village.  Bill had given us a signal, like he was knocking back a pint, and I wasn’t gonna wait. I grabbed my old bag with my sarnies in and legged it for the den. I wasn’t the first, Bob and Micky were there already. The others would follow quick enough.

             I remember Micky looked up as I walked in. ‘Michael!’ he said. ‘You all right, boy?’ It was the first time we’d spoken that shift. 

            ‘Oh yeah’ I said, and we settled into quiet as we ate our sarnies. Fred came in, and Wayne, then one or two of the girls. Bob read The Sun and Micky the Mirror. Me, I had a book with me. It was a horror, Dead by Dawn. It was ok, this bloke gets caught up with this weird religious group, who try to brainwash him into killing his family as some kind of initiation. They’re all respectable on the outside, but they’re really into some kind of vampire type thing, like they drink each other’s blood and have these weird parties where everyone gets slashed. It was all right. 

           Anyway, Micky piped up, not looking at me, but saying it to me, like. He said, ‘I heard you had a bit of a tumble with a fella,’  

           ‘Where d’you hear that then?’ I said. Everyone was now all eyes and ears on me and Micky. Some of them was smiling.

            ‘They was talking about it down the Plough.’ He said. Now, I hadn’t said anything to anyone, except to Bob, so it had to be him. Thanks mate! What I didn’t want was for it to get around so as you lot got to hear. I’ve been on probation nine months now, and I’ve been trying to keep my nose clean. 

           So I just said, ‘You don’t want to believe everything you’re told’. 

           But Micky said, ‘Ah, but,’ Like he had a point to make. He knew what it was all about. He’d been there himself, probation and all that. What I didn’t know was whether he was winding me up, or if he meant something else by it. He could be trouble, Micky, if he’d a mind. ‘Ah, but,’ he says, ‘You was seen!’ 

           ‘Seen?’ 

           ‘Ah, seen. From what I hear, half the village seen you’

            Now that couldn’t be true. Still, I didn’t know what it was he knew. 

           ‘Half the village, eh? What did they see then, Micky?’ I said, and I thought, I’ll see you mate. But nothing violent. Not then. 

           He says, ‘They see you go up to this bloke and give him a right old smack! Says he went down right enough, and he didn’t get up, neither, not for a while. Just wondered what it was all about? Must have been summat?” 

           So that was it. The penny dropped. Word had got round, but not how it was. Still, I admit I sort of liked the idea Micky’d got in his head. I’d had trouble with some of the blokes before, ribbing me, making fun of my brother, cos he’s disabled, calling me stupid. They take it out on me. Maybe this would get them to leave off a bit, I thought.

             Anyway, some more blokes came in, then some of the girls. They all sat down and started eating their bait sharpish.  Half an hour is all you get. Micky was tucking in to his sandwiches, all the while paying attention to me, like he was leading me on.

             I said, ‘He was just being a bit silly’.

            That started him off. He thought it was great. ‘I should have thought you was the one that was silly, Michael,’ he said. I hate it when Micky starts being all big brotherly, like I’d asked him to be, which I hadn’t. He can be funny, one minute all friendly, and the next… 

           I made to leave. I didn’t want no trouble, but wasn’t going to be talked down to like that. 

            ‘Whoa, whoa!’ he said, like he was hanging on to a blooming horse. ‘Don’t get in a strop. I was just asking. People are talking. They say you did him some real damage. Who was he anyway?’ 

           Honest to God, I had no idea. The last I’d seen of him, this bloke, he was in a ditch. He was moving, so he can’t have been too bad. Anyway, I didn’t hit him, only gave him a shove.  But it was true I hadn’t hung around to find out. As far as I was concerned, it was enough he didn’t know what had hit him.

             But Micky kept on. ‘Oh Michael, Michael’ he said, laughing. ‘What have you done?’ And he made to give me a thump. I just got up. I really didn’t want trouble. He’d only make something of it. I reckoned he probably had already. If Micky knew, then everyone knew. I could tell from the way the blokes were looking at me, sort of laughing to themselves, they knew. Micky reckoned he was some sort of mate of mine, but he wasn’t really. He thought that by acting friendly now and then and coming round to see me he’d got the right to take the piss out of me at work. As far as I was concerned he just got in the way.

            Still, I was worried. I thought, what if the bloke had been hurt?  The last thing I needed was more trouble with the police. And if he’d been spreading rumours, how would I ever know? For all I knew, this bloke, he had been hurt bad. But how bad? Jesus, it was only a shove! He was just annoying me, that’s all.

            Then the hooter went, and we all packed up our bait and went out. I didn’t see Micky for the rest of the shift. He worked in the killing shed, dipping the birds into water where they were stunned, and I was on the forklift, unloading and stacking. Of course, what he’d said, it wouldn’t go out of my mind. I kept picking at it, trying to remember what had happened. Trouble was, I was pissed at the time, and couldn’t recall too clearly.            I knew I had followed him out of the pub. But that was later. I had gone in on my own, hoping to see Mary. Not that there had been much chance. Saturday nights she worked behind the bar and it was heaving. There was a band playing, and it was pretty loud. I stood at the bar drinking snakebite. There was a few people I knew, but I wasn’t in the mood for company. So I just hung around, half an eye on the band, half an eye on Mary. She was in her green dress. It’s short and velvety, and you can see her tits just lovely. God knows how often I’d imagined taking it off her. It always slid off her, like another skin. And she just smiling at me. What with the booze and the band and me being on my own and pretty fed up with everything I guess I was up for something. So I stays at the bar, getting pushed about by blokes coming up for drinks, but not minding, see, ‘cos I’m in the corner and pretty hard to push out of the way. And I notice this bloke, he kept coming back, and I see Mary making a point of serving him first, like she ignores other blokes that had been waiting longer. He wasn’t from here, I didn’t recognise him. Skinny bloke, but dressed nice. Must have come from off, they do sometimes if there’s a good band on. I couldn’t see who he was with. Mostly they come in crowds; sometimes they hire a mini bus. This one seemed to be on his own. I remember thinking, ‘Oh no you don’t, matey. I see you’re game.’ I’d had a few by then, and I probably wasn’t thinking straight. But I wasn’t that far off. He was all pleased with himself, you could see he knew she was serving him over the other blokes, and he got to hanging around the bar like me, only she pays attention to him more than the others. More than she did to me, at any rate. Well, she would, wouldn’t she? Reckon I smell of work sometimes. It’s got to put a girl off. I can see that. But that don’t mean I’m having some little bugger come strolling in on his own like he owns the place. You could see he had money, and you could see Mary reckoned it too. You can’t blame them. They do. Women. You can’t blame them. It’s obvious. Anyway, I stand at the bar and I watch them, and I start to see there’s something going on. It’s too crowded to hear what they’re saying, but there’s definitely something between them, I can see from the way she is smiling at him. And I see he hands her a note, and she puts it down her front, there between her tits. And that’s it, I think. Time to do something. And then he makes to leave, and I thought, yes! My lucky day. I’m going to sort you out. So I follow him out, and he walks a bit down the road, ‘cos he’s parked his car down past the church. And the road’s all full of cars, and he walks along in the middle of the road under the street lights, me keeping well behind him on the verge so as not to be seen. ‘Cos I have a plan. Further on, I know there’s no lights and I reckons this is where he’s parked up. And as he keeps on walking, and I thinks again, yes! This is all going great, like it’s meant to be. There’s a bit of the road further on where it’s dark, and there’s a ditch close by. It’s none too clean, and all overgrown. A bit of a dip won’t hurt him, I reckon. Nothing too nasty. No trouble. So I follows him, and as he turns the corner, I reckon there’s no-one about. So I walks up fast behind him, so he won’t know what’s hit him! And just as I get up close, I get it in my head to make sure he gets the message. Like I’m his avenging angel. So I puts my arm around his neck in a strangle hold and twists his arm behind his back and I whispers in his ear, ‘Don’t you go playing with things that ain’t yours,’ or something like that. And I gives him one hell of a shove. I didn’t hit him. But he cries out as he falls in the water, and I can hear a bit of splashing about, but not much, and him groaning. It’s all over in a second, and of course I legs it. It never was my plan to hang around. Just give him a warning, like he’d not forget. He had no idea, I’m certain of it. And I don’t reckon any one could have seen, ‘cos there was no-one about. Though, it was close to chucking out time, and there just could have been someone there, like me, in the dark, walking home, that I hadn’t noticed. I wasn’t paying that much attention. They might have seen something, though maybe not too much. I couldn’t be sure. 

            Anyway, that’s the way it was. But now that Micky had got hold of the story it could be anything. I could have killed the bloke. Even though I hadn’t, he could have made out I had, and that would be enough. Once you’ve been in trouble they don’t leave you alone. I had to do something. I didn’t want him messing it up.

            So I waited till the end of the shift, till we was washing down, and I went up to him, like I had to this other bloke. I went up to him from behind, and I said, ‘You’d better watch what you’re saying, mate.’ I said it like I had to that other bloke. I reckoned it had worked before. But this time I was dead scared, cos Micky can be funny sometimes. I just wanted to sound a bit, well, hard. Stop him. I didn’t mean nothing.

            Micky just turned around and he got me pinned down on the floor, just like that! He sent a bench flying. He was eye to eye with me, his hands round my throat, one knee down here, like, in the pit of my stomach, and the other on my arm. He’s little, is Micky, but he’s fast. And he’s strong. He don’t look it, but he is. And he don’t care, not once he’s all fired up. I’d seen what he did once to some mate of his. And now he was pushing on my throat and I couldn’t breathe. I kept trying to get him off, but I couldn’t shift him. He just kept swearing at me, you fucker, you useless, well you know. He was pushing down on me all the while, like he’s trying to kill me, staring at me, as close as this, his eyes all red, like he’d got, what do they call it, the red mist, when something takes over you. That’s Micky. He wasn’t himself. Or rather he was. I don’t know how long it was, but it felt like ages. And now I’m getting pretty desperate. I’m panicking, cos I can’t breathe, and he won’t let go. I starts struggling harder and I begins to feel him shift. I guess it’s my weight; end of the day I suppose I’m bigger than him. Or maybe he’s getting tired. Anyway, the way I fell, somehow I’d got one hand behind my back. It hurt and I could feel this hard thing digging into me. First I wanted to get off it. But then, I dunno, I got the idea I might use it. I don’t know what it was. Sergeant said it was a spanner. I dunno. I must of got hold of it and rolled just enough to get my arm out. Yeah, I hit him. I didn’t mean to. I thought he was threatening me back then and I didn’t want him talking the piss out of me again. He can be trouble, Micky. You don’t want to mess with him. No, I know, he’s no trouble now. I’m sorry. No really. I wish it hadn’t happened. But what was I supposed to do? 

            What do you think will happen to me? 

 

  © Nick Le Mesurier 2004

=========================================