Riot Page 5

  “Hello?”

  “It’s me.”

  “Bloody hell ‘Harad,” I say. “It’s Sunday morning. I thought you’d be in church.”

  “Chapel,” she says. “I go to chapel. And it’s nearly dinner time.”

  “Sorry, ‘Harad,” I say. And then I whisper “It’s just that sleeping’s the only time I’m not thinking about you know what.”

  “Two things,” she says. “One, I came on in chapel.”

  “Oh my god, ‘Harad,” I say. “That’s the best news in the fuckin’ world, that is. In chapel as well. Like a fuckin’ miracle or something.”

  “That’s number two,” she says. “This was a sign, this was. A warning. So the second thing is: you’re dumped.”

  “Hang on a minute ‘Harad.”

  But she’s put the phone down. And I’m over the fuckin’ moon, no mistake.

  Got a few weeks to fill, waiting for my exam results. So I get myself a job down Cardiff industrial estate, peeling stickers off detergent bottles. Hundreds of thousands of them in big cardboard boxes. Len the supervisor shows me how to do it. Takes a bottle with one hand and rips the sticker off with the other. Fucking genius.

  “And then you do this,” he says.

  And he rubs the bits that didn’t come off with his thumbnail.

  “Think you can manage that?”

  “I think,” I say.

  “Don’t think,” he says. “Or you’ll be out on your arse.”

  Been a royal wanker to me since I walked through the doors at six this morning, Len has. I’d love to lamp the fucker. Drop my head onto his greasy nose. But I just look at him instead and say fuck all.

  “I’d get started if I were you,” he says. “You’re not in fuckin’ Butlins now.”

  The first couple of days, I’m thinking this is a piece of piss this is. No fucker bothers me. All I see between six and four are two or three forklifts carrying pallets or whatever. That’s about the size of it. At dinner time, I take my snappin’ onto the grass outside. I just sit for an hour, eating and reading. Sometimes I close my eyes. It’s alright. It pisses on college, this does.

  But after a few days, Len starts moithering. Taking me off bottle picking after dinner, putting me on the lines. Just a couple of hours, he says. But I’m stood there all afternoon. Enough to send you over the edge, it is. Cardiff FM turned up to fuck so you can hear it over the machines. Watching thousands of boiling hot plastic bottles rattle down this conveyer belt. Running round like a cunt burning my fingers, making sure none of them fall out of line coz they’ll fuck up the printing screen and sixty quid’ll come out of my wages.

  I come in one morning and Len tells me to fuck it off, peeling the stickers.

  “I can a get fuckin’ chimp to do that,” he says. “I’m not paying a human fuckin’ being five quid an hour for it.”

  So I’m on the lines all day, every day. Too much time to think. Churning all this shit round, over and over. That I’ll never leave Cardiff. Too scared to leave even if I get the chance. It’s ten times as bad as college in here. Because all this lot are men. Grown men. I thought as you got older, things changed. But there’s 30 year-old versions of Bottomly and Fergusson over there. They’re booting a black and white placky 99 at this poor old fucker trying to run for cover. Swerving like fuck the ball is. Bouncing back off the wall behind him so that they get as many cracks at him as they want. And smack, they get him in the ear. Bent double, pissing themselves. This old lad’s ear must be proper stinging. Bright red, he is, from rage or embarrassment or both. And he’s got this stupid grin on him. He doesn’t know what else to do.

  “Hey Jono la, sign him up,” shouts Len. “Got a head on him like Gareth fuckin’ Bale, he has.”

  Finally, he’s at the smoking room door, the old lad. Gives us all the middle finger before shutting himself in.

  I can’t take all this again. I just stop what I’m doing. The bottles back up, start flipping out all over the shop. Standing with my arms by my sides, I am. Watching.

  “What the fuck?” Len says, legging it over. “I can tell you right now that’s sixty quid out your pocket. I don’t even have to check the screen.”

  He hits the stop button and waits for me to say something.

  “What the fuck’s the matter with you?” he says.

  “I’m going home,” I say.

  “What you on about lad. It’s half ten. You’ve only been here five minutes.”

  I haven’t even got the bollocks to do this properly.

  “I’m not feeling well,” I say.

  I walk out through the big double doors.

  “I thought you were working today,” my dad says.

  “I can’t do it any more,” I say.

  “What d’you mean, you can’t do it?”

  “I walked out.”

  And my dad looks at me like the cunt that I am.

  “I’ve worked nearly 20 years in that shithole on the Plas Gwyn Road and I’ve probably got another 20 to go,” he says. “Two minutes you’ve been there, lad. Two minutes. You make me bloody sick, you do.”

  Fuck Manchester. This is the best buzz I’ve had for ages. I just run with it, literally, and put this fuckin’ window through. It was going anyway. All these pairs of Nikes and Adidas stomping like fuck, what’s one extra? More like sheets of metal than glass, shop windows are these days, thanks to safety standards. When they shatter, they stay together and just fold inwards. Quite beautiful really, like a Christmas decoration or something. I just wanted to feel the sensation. Breakdown in law and order, my arse. It’s just human nature. A small split second decision that means fuck all. Not some pre-meditated attack on the establishment or the moral fibre of modern day Britain.

  I knock about with Sasha for the rest of the summer ‘til the results come out. His mam and dad are away to Fuerteventura or some place. Me, him and Fat Rob are sat in their front room with Sasha’s dad’s black bin bag of wank mags out. His dad tells him to dip in whenever he fancies it. Timing ourselves downing pints of Fosters we are as well. Fat Rob’s unbeatable. Just opens his gullet and tips it straight down. Three seconds it takes him. Loving it he is because we give him some of our tinnies just to watch him do it. He’s done six already and it’s only two in the afternoon. Doesn’t touch him.

  Sasha fetches something from the kitchen.

  “Who wants a ride, then,” he says, dangling car keys.

  “I do,” says Fat Rob, flicking through a mag. “From this one here.”

  Got the keys to his dad’s pride and joy, Sasha has. An orange Focus RS. Drives past college in it at dinner time, his dad does. Boots it when he sees any of us, or pulls a handbreak turn and offers us a lift. I said yes once. Went to open the door and the dick drove off on me. Made me look a right tit. Came back for me and did the same routine all over again. I’d rather walk than look like a prick for the third time if it’s all the same to you, I told him.

  Getting in with his dad’s already a step too far. But getting in with this dick who’s only just past his test? Fuck that right off.

  Fat Rob rearranges his tracky bottoms coz he’s got a boner the size of an IKEA pencil and pulls his arse off the settee. Outside, I stand on the drive and watch. He gets in the passenger seat, Fat Rob. Sasha starts it up, rolls down the window and calls me a lady boy.

  I watch as he backs out. I wouldn’t have the first clue how to do that, I’m thinking. Then he just drives off, nice and calm up toward the chippy. Feeling like a prick, I am. Scared of my own shadow.

  When they’ve done a loop, Sasha pulls up to the curb. Rob’s eating cheese and onion Walkers. Looks like he’s been out for a Sunday afternoon drive.

  “Come on, Jonesy la,” Sasha says. “Just get in. Rob’ll get in the back.”

  He gets in the back like the docile dog he is, Rob does. I get in the front. Sasha pu
lls away nice and smooth, like he’s been driving for years. Got his elbow resting on the open window and the other hand on the gear stick. Like my fuckin’ dad or something. Up past the chippy again.

  “Drop us off here,” Fat Rob says.

  “Fuck off,” Sasha tells him.

  He doesn’t argue, Fat Rob. Just looks out the window longing for lard.

  I open the glove box, grab the only CD about and shove it in. ‘Appetite for Destruction’.

  “Like this one, do you, Jonesy la?” Sasha says.

  And he’s got this smirk on.

  “How about this, then?” he says.

  And he puts his foot down. The speedo’s edging up slowly. Thirty-five, forty. We’re dropping down the hill to the playground.

  “Easy, Sasha,” I say.

  “He’s shitting himself,” Sasha says. “Jonesy’s shitting bricks.”

  Flying now. Doing nearly fifty down a road where kids play curby and heads and volleys. Past parked cars. Bouncing to fuck, the Focus is; chassis grinding like a fuckin’ band saw.

  “I’m gonna break your fucking neck,” I shout.

  “I’ll save you a job,” Sasha says.

  We’re almost at the corner and there’s no way we’ll get round it. We’ll plough straight across the grass into the playground. Fuck me, this’ll be horrific. All I do is turn the music up to block it out. Sasha yanks the wheel hard left and the back end slides. We’re juddering. I’m thinking we’re gonna make it after all. But the back end grips and sends us off the road. Sasha pumps the break but there’s fuck all good in that. The front wheels hit the curb. The bang’s like getting lamped in the head when you’re off your guard. Everything’s everywhere. We’re through a hedge. In someone’s garden. And fuck me, here comes the house.

  Everything’s gone white. It’s brick dust. When it settles, we’re inside No. 54. We’ve taken out the front door and most of the wall. There’s framed pictures over the staircase and coats hanging on hooks. I can even see through to the kitchen and out to the back garden. All three of us are alive. Fat Rob’s sprawled in the footwells behind us. He pulls himself up and his face is pissing as much blood as the radiator’s pissing water. It’s the only noise, the radiator.

  “You’re a knob wipe, you are, Sasha,” says Fat Rob, spitting blood. “I’d be eating fish and chips now if it weren’t for you.”

  When everything’s died down a bit, my dad sits me at the kitchen table.

  “Pack your bags,” he says. “You’ve had enough chances.”

  He hates me. He’s scared of what I am. That’s what staying here does. Makes you scared of everything. You’re scared coz you don’t understand.

  A couple of nights later, I’m on the piss in Cardiff in a Fosters, Southern Comfort and Jack Daniels haze. Stumbling about the dance floor of Cosmos like a fourteen year-old at his first disco. I’m either looking for someone to tap off with or fight. I don’t even know myself. It’s rammed to fuck this place. All these twenty and thirty year-olds in shit suits and ties. What the fuck am I doing here? Bored out of my tiny mind.

  I lose my balance. I’m leaning in on someone, trying to right myself. But he pushes me off. I turn round. I can’t even see him properly, but I call him a cunt. I walk back over, put my face in his. There’s this thud that hardly registers and I’m reeling. The strobing disco lights leaving trails in my mind. Stumbling with my head in my hands, I am. Someone’s pulling me, but that’s all I know. And then I see Ollie. It’s Ollie. He’s got me off the dance floor. My nose is pissing blood all over my black Armani shirt.

  Ollie bundles me into the Ladies’.

  “Get in there, you dick,” he tells me. “The bouncers are coming.”

  Two women start clucking over me. Done up to fuck with their tits hanging out their dresses, these women are. Right slappers. No, they’re not. They’re washing my face. Paper towels everywhere. Stroking my back. They’re good women. There’s blood all over the place. I’m in their bogs. They don’t know me from fuckin’ Adam. But they don’t bat an eyelid. Just trying to help me, they are, trying to stop me from hurting. Kind, gentle women. Kind and gentle like I’d give my right bollock to be.

  Where does all this anger come from? All this shit? It makes me cry, it does. To be such an angry fuck is heartbreaking. Honest to God it is. I’m sick in the head. Look at me the wrong way and I’ll make you shit your pants. Wherever you are, whoever you’re with. Out with your kid? I’ll still come after you. I won’t do much. Kick your heels away, say, or walk in front of you a few times. But you don’t know that. Maybe I’ll just keep staring. Yeah, I’ve done that a few times. A couple of years back, me and Angharad are in the new Macky D’s when I clock this couple on another table laughing. When he catches my eye, the lad, he turns away. Coz I’ve got these big saucer eyes on and I’m not gonna take them off the twat. Squirming he is, doesn’t know where the fuck to look. I start clenching my fists as well. Ringing my hands like the nervy fucker I am. Like that Begbie twat or something. He tells his missus they’ve gotta leave. And he tells her why.

  They’re all panicky, gathering their shit. He’s told her not to look, but she can’t help it. I get up from my table. They’re running. Run, you fuckers, run. They haven’t got their coats on properly and they’re running for the door. Then I change course and go for a piss, calm as you like. The fuckin’ buzz of it. Just takes hold of me it does, the rage, like some maniac’s pulling my strings. My brain’s tingling hot and I fuckin’ love it. Like a hard-on of the mind, it is. A beautiful few seconds when I can follow my dreams. And then it’s gone. Like I’ve spunked it all against the wall. Something so violent and consuming. Gone. Like sex. Randy as a dog with two dicks one minute, sticking my fingers up Angharad’s arse, fucking her armpit, sucking the sweaty gusset of her pants. Then I’m through. Spent. A face full of snot and tears. Balled up, I’ll be, nose against the wall. Pissing and shitting in my pants like a newborn. More scared than I’ll ever be able to make you.

  These kind, gentle women have cleaned me up with water and paper towels and all the rest of it. I’m clamping the top of my nose between my finger and thumb, just like they’ve shown me. I know he’s waiting for me outside, the bouncer. I walk out and he gets me in a headlock. I can’t see or breathe. Wah, wah, wah is all I’m hearing. Wah wah wah. Like the teacher in Charlie fuckin’ Brown.

  My feet are dragging down the stairs. And that’s it. I’m out on my arse. Stryd Y Ro at half one in the morning. Not the most uplifting place, especially when you’ve got no chance of getting in anywhere else and your nose feels like it’s been hit with a brick. Can’t even be arsed with a kebab. I’m off down Cardiff Cabs.

  “Can I have a taxi to 54 Hael y Gwyn please?” I say through the grill.

  “Christ alive,” says the old girl. “I hope he looks worser than you do.”

  “Mark Jones,” calls Griffiths from his office.

  I go in and sit in front of the lanky twat’s desk. He looks at my black eyes.

  “Mark Jones,” he says. “When are you gonna grow up, eh, lad? When are the Mark Joneses and the Viv Evanses of this world going to start growing up?”

  He opens a brown envelope and scans the thin sheet of printed paper. Starts nodding his head, he does, raising his eyebrows. He passes me the paper.

  One B and two Cs. I’ve got a place in Manchester.

  “I never thought you had it in you,” says Griffiths.

  Suck my cock you lanky bastard.

  Tonight is about getting fucked. We’re on the wooden tables outside the Railway by three, supping lager and lime, smoking Sean’s dope. Doesn’t bode well this. I get fucked up when I mix.

  We’re flying by the time we move inside. Playing pool, dropping a few quid in the fruity, watching the little telly in the corner. By eight I’m seeing double. I’m fucked if I can get any more beer down me. It’s the kind of place you’d
rather drink bottles anyway, coz I don’t reckon Delwyn cleans his pipes any more than he cleans his teeth. But I can’t even manage bottles. So I get on the shorts. Southern Comfort and lemonade, Archers. I even throw a couple of Baileys into the mix.

  I’m fuckin’ fucked now. Saying all sorts of shit. Being a prick. Taking the piss. Funny. Now it spills into this raging fuckin’ anger from somewhere. Vicious twat. Too much for these poor fuckers.

  These two girls come in. I’ve seen them round. 15, maybe 16 at most. Viv tells them to sit with us and they do. Shuffling their little arses down. Tight little arses. Done up to fuck they are. Earrings, lipstick, rings, gold chains. Becca and Amy or something. Who gives a fuck. They’re talking sex. Who likes what. She’s not shy, the fit one. Says she’s done five lads at the same time.