Nine Foot Tall Page 6

  Terry Lonnegan is about thirty. He’s the “quiet one”. Apparently he’s got a protection racket going. In France. He goes to France once a month on the ferry and gets protection money from some shopkeepers and bar owners. Apparently.

  Gaz Lonnegan, short for Gareth, not Gary. That’s what he always says to people who call him Gary. He’s about twenty-eight and he’s got a burnt face. Looks scary, man. They say it was his father who burnt him, poured a boiling pan of gravy over his face when he was about fifteen. Don’t know what for. And I’m not gonna ask him either. He’s just got out of the shovel this week. That’s the reason they’re all out, celebrating. He was doing two years for GBH, but he ended up doing nearly four. The reason he got the extra time was this… His girlfriend had gone to visit him and he was giving her a hard time, accusing her of having affairs and all that kind of shite that nutters do when they’re in jail. He was getting madder and madder with her, when he jumped up, put his great big hands around her head, his big sausage thumbs across her eyes, and pushed her eyes in. Pushed her eyes right inside her head. I think she finished with him after that.

  Baz Lonnegan, now he is a strange creature. All the rest of the Lonnegans are white with brown hair. Their parents are both white. But Baz isn’t, he’s black. Not proper black, he’s kinda mixed race looking; looks a bit like Will Smith but with ginger hair. A big ginger afro. Mad. The others always tell him he’s a throwback, that they must have had black relatives or ancestors or something. But the rumour goes that Old Ma’ Lonnegan was having it away with some Jamaican bus driver during the ’70s. It’s only a rumour though. I don’t know if he had ginger hair. And I’m definitely not asking them that.

  Last, but certainly by no means least, there’s Finbar. Freaky Finbar. He’s the youngest. About twenty-one, I think. But being the youngest makes him think that he’s got something to prove, that he’s got to be madder than the rest of them. That he’s got to be madder than anyone. He will stab you as soon as look at you. It seems like he was born to hate. He is always paranoid, always thinks that everyone’s talking about him, when they’re not – they’re probably talking about Baz and his crazy ginger afro. He has committed so many acts of mindless violence that I don’t even know where to begin. I’ll just give you a little idea of what he’s like, if you haven’t already started to imagine. He was in a pub in town once, Fat Sally’s, with a few of his friends. I was DJing in there at the time, up on the stage where I could see everything that went on. Anyway, the place was packed to the rafters, everyone was getting rat-arsed, and Finbar and his troop were being extremely noisy and obnoxious, banging in to people on purpose and shit like that.

  ‘Who the fuck are you lookin at?’ Finbar had just chosen some little guy at random to direct his hate at. The poor bloke had only glanced at him whilst looking around the bar. He didn’t answer Finbar, just looked away and carried on with his drink. Freaky Finbar flew over to him, grabbed him by the throat and screamed in his face, ‘I said, who the fuck do you think you’re fucking looking at? You cunt.’

  The little guy was petrified. All his friends were petrified too as Finbar’s troop gathered around.

  ‘N-n-nobody, m-m-mate. I’m not looking at nobody.’

  ‘So you’re calling me a nobody, are you? Well fuck you, cunt. Nobody calls me a nobody and gets away with it. Nobody.’

  At this he jerked his head forward and clasped his teeth around the poor guy’s chin and bit it off, then his nose. He would have had his ear off too if the bouncers hadn’t got over and slung him out. There was claret everywhere, man. The moral of that story has surely got to be that if you are ever in the company of Finbar Lonnegan, don’t speak to him and don’t look at him. But then he might accuse you of ignoring him, and go mental. You never know.

  As it happens, we haven’t got a beef with them, they’re okay with us, we get on alright with them, it’s all hunky dory. But we’re still wary of them all the same.

  You just know that something bad will happen when they are there. They walk in to a place, and ten minutes later the place is nearly empty. Everyone fucks off. Somewhere safe. Well, that’s what normally happens.

  Today, everyone except me and Steve seems oblivious to the Lonnegans. All six of ’em.

  We try not to catch their attention. Our plan is to get a drink or two then fuck off.

  They don’t seem as though they’re in a bad mood, as it happens; they’re laughing and dancing about. They might be alright today after all. We’ll still stay inside though. Just in case.

  So that’s exactly what we did. The crack was good, we drunk a few brandies, sung Irish songs with the pikeys, even though the music on the jukebox was reggae, ate some drugs and laughed like monkeys, and then… the heavens opened.

  Bleedin’ bouncing it down. Fucked up, mess your lovely hair up, kinda rain.

  Everyone who had been in the beer garden, dancing in the sun, all ran inside for cover.

  Including the Lonnegans. All six of ’em.

  It got full in the bar very quickly, everyone piss wet through, shaking their hair and the like.

  There was this one black guy, sitting all by himself, about my age he was, minding his own business, bobbing his head to the music, drinking his bottle of beer and reading a Sunday paper. I remember looking at him and thinking that I knew him from somewhere. He had a hairlip. It really stood out too. Looked pretty freaky it did. I’d only ever seen one black guy with a hairlip in my whole life. Fuck! It was him. King. Or was it Kong? Doesn’t matter, it was one of the cunts anyway.

  I told Steve what had happened to me all those years ago at Tiffany’s, the full story. He was pissing himself laughing. He thought it was great fun. Then I told him that one of the cunts who made me smear shit all up my own back was sitting in the corner. He stopped laughing.

  He walked over to the hairlip guy, snatched his paper from him, rolled it up tight and cracked him around the face with it. Then came the famous Steve line:

  ‘Oy. Cunt. Are you havin’ a nice time?’

  Before Steve could even finish his sentence, Hair Lip upturned the table toward him, beer and ashtray crap everywhere, and he leapt up at Steve. There was a brief scuffle. The place was packed solid now, everyone soaked through with beer and rain. I flew over to Steve’s aid. But just as I got there, Hair Lip pulled out what I thought was a knife and lunged at Steve, screaming ‘Bumbo Clart!’ or some other form of gibberish. Steve moved to one side and the “knife” went right into Frankie Lonnegan’s cheekbone. Blood? It fuckin’ pissed out, man.

  That was it.

  Steve didn’t have to say or do another damn thing. Nor did I.

  But the Lonnegans did. All six of ’em.

  They all waded into poor King, or was it Kong, old Hair Lip.

  There was chaos. Everyone moved, made way for the ferocious onslaught that was the Lonnegans.

  He’d stabbed Frankie in the face. He had to pay. And pay he did.

  They stamped and stamped and stamped on his head. The sounds were sickening, crunching sounds. They booted and booted and hit him with chairs and tables, cast-iron tables. They smashed bottles and ashtrays over his head. Relentlessly they did this, with not a soul going to Hair Lip’s rescue. He was unconscious almost instantly, but still they punished him. Finbar, Freaky Finbar, was foaming at the mouth and screaming, ‘Die, cunt!’ It was like he was having some kind of an epileptic fit or summat, man.

  Hair Lip’s limp, lifeless body was being jumped on over and over. That black blood was pouring from his ears, brain blood. They each took a penalty kick at his head, one after the other. I swear I thought his head was gonna come off with the force of the boots. Then, after what seemed an eternity, they stopped. Finbar turned and sneered at the crowd. Nobody looked at him though, everyone turning away and not catching his gaze. Just in case. In a final act of menace and pure evil, Freaky Finbar pulled out his knob and started to pi
ss on what looked like a dead Hair Lip, laughing like a nutter shouting, ‘The Piss of Death!’ Even the other Lonnegans found this a sight too crazy to bear, so Frankie grabbed Finbar and pulled him by the arm as he was still pissing.

  They didn’t hang about this time though. They didn’t wait for the police so they could fight them. No. They were off. They knew they had done some damage. Big jail time damage.

  They liked jail. But they didn’t want to be there forever. So they fucked off.

  All six of ’em.

  The chaos continued in the bar, all kinds of other little fights starting, women fighting and pikeys fighting and whoever else fancied their self. So we fucked off too.

  On the way out, Steve picked up the “knife” that Hair Lip had lunged at him with. It was on the floor, with Frankie Lonnegan’s blood on it. It wasn’t a knife. It was a potato peeler. You know the type? With the V-shaped blade?

  To think, Frankie Lonnegan is walking around in Hull, or wherever he’s from, with a V-shaped scar in his cheek.

  Could have been a V-shaped scar in Steve’s heart if he hadn’t have moved.

  But then again, if I’d have kept quiet about Tiffany’s and getting shit up my back when I was a young ’un, nothing would have happened at all. I felt a little bit sorry for Hair Lip.

  Oh well.

  What goes around comes around.

  Driving home I was fairly quiet. It had shocked me seeing such a savage, merciless beating.

  It made me thank God that it wasn’t me. Good job I went to Mass this morning.

  Steve was quiet too, staring blankly at the road ahead.

  I was concerned for him when he was quiet.

  ‘What you thinking about, Stevie boy?’

  He whispered…

  ‘I like stone cladding. It’s nice. I might get some.’

  Chapter Five

  -

  Bald

  IT’S THE SECOND MOUSE THAT GETS THE CHEESE

  Proverb of unknown origin –

  thought to be mid 18th century

  August 1983– Aged 16

  Having an intelligent conversation wasn’t really one of the things that we aspired to at sixteen years of age. In fact, the more bollocks that was uttered, the better. The bollocks that we spoke was usually in the confines of my bedroom. The only place to be, if we weren’t at the local disco, or at Tiffany’s, or trying unsuccessfully to get into pubs.

  My bedroom, you see, had it all. A big sofa, fake leather, on which we could lounge about, two beds on which we could lounge about, a great big brown velvet beanbag, on which we could lounge about, and a huge furry looking rug, on which we could… well, lounge about.

  There was a desk in the corner where I used to do my homework. No more homework now though. On the desk was my pride and joy. The stereo. A ghetto blaster to be precise. It played tapes and it had a radio, which meant that I, like everyone else in the country, could tape the top forty charts on a Sunday instead of buying the singles in town. This was a method which I had to perfect, as you would frequently get the voice of some inane DJ twittering over the final verse of your favourite tune. Also on the desk was a small portable television, which I only watched on a Thursday at seven, as did all the country, because that’s when Top of the Pops was on. It was Thursday today. Ace. So there we had it – the comfy surroundings, in which to lounge about, and the music, there always had to be music. My walls were littered with the usual teenage boy kind of crap, posters of Debbie Harry from Blondie and such, but I also had a penchant for the weird and outlandish too. There would be slightly devil worshippy kind of things looking down at me. Pictures of skulls and witches. An actual sheep skull was on the desk. A black candle always burning beside it.

  I always had joss sticks burning as well. They only cost a few pence and they’d disguise the smell of the cigarettes that we would smoke. Normal ones or otherwise.

  The best thing about my room being the meeting place was that my parents were cush.

  They let me take all and sundry up there, no questions asked. Once up there they would rarely interfere with us. My mates’ parents hardly let you into the house, let alone the bedrooms.

  We loved it. It was our own mini club.

  We would pool our money together to buy cigarettes and alcohol. The cigarettes, ten, or if we had a little more cash, twenty, would go into a small vase on the desk, for us to share, pulling them out whenever we wanted. To make the cigs appear to go further we would often share one between three or four of us. This could prove to be quite a trial in itself. Everyone would always want the first part of the cigarette, followed by shouts of ‘two’s up’ for the second part, ‘three’s up’ for the third and so on. However, if you weren’t first in line you would be smoking a wet-ended, awful tasting excuse for a cig. It was always soaking wet on the tip. It made you feel sick. A Jew’s arse we called it. I have absolutely no idea why. But we still said it. ‘Don’t strain the fucker’ was another of the cries you would usually hear as each person sucked it as though they were trying to pull a football through a straw. There have been occasions when I’ve seen twelve people share one cigarette. It fucks it up, man. Nasty. Then the last person to have a go, the smallest guy usually, would have to smoke the filter. You would hear almost tearful cries of ‘I’m not smokin’ the brown bit.’ I had to smoke the brown bit once, the filter; it’s filled with cotton wool so doesn’t make for a very satisfying smoke, I can tell you. All this black shit went in my mouth. Like I said, nasty.

  The alcohol was more important than the cigs to us. We were allowed to smoke, so that was no big deal. But we weren’t allowed to drink yet. So that made it more fun.

  Buying it sometimes proved to be tricky, but we always found a way. Nature always finds a way. We would scour the area looking for shops that didn’t know how old we were, in the hope of buying some ourselves. If that failed we would just wait outside for a man to walk in and we’d ask him to assist us in our plight. ‘Get us some cider, mister. We’ll give you a cig.’ This method worked quite well until one day we gave our money to some fucker who just took it and then told us to get fucked and ran off. Bastard.

  Most of the time we’d get one of our older mates to buy it for us. It was easier. It might cost us a can of ale but it didn’t matter, it was worth it.

  Cider was the main drink. Cheap and nasty and got you pissed quickly. If we were flush though we might pool together to buy some whisky or Pernod as well. Today we were flush, Mel had just got some birthday money, so today we had twenty cigs, four litres of cider and a litre of Pernod. We had to celebrate Mel’s birthday in style, didn’t we?

  We’d already decided not to even try to get into a pub tonight; getting knocked back is such a showing up. No, we’ll all stay at mine and party in my room. Party Hearty Marty.

  There were four of us that night: my good gorgeous self, his Melness, whose sixteenth birthday we were celebrating, Ricko and Young Mark. We’d invited some girls to join us but they were coming later, at seven-ish, in time for Top of the Pops. It was only quarter past five now.

  We’d started to discuss the virtues of alcohol and the ways in which we get could absolutely steam faced drunk before the girls arrived.

  ‘Just guzzle as much down as you can, as fast as you can, man,’ was my bright idea.

  ‘Fuck that, Gaz…’ Mel shook his head furiously, ‘that’ll just make us all sick, not stink faced. What we gotta do is just drink normally but flick us ash off us cigs intut cider; ash makes you pissed quicker.’

  Young Mark nearly freaks out. ‘I’m not drinkin’ ash! That will make me sick.’

  ‘He’s right, Mel…’Ricko pipes in, ‘all that “ash makes you steamin’” shite is just that – shite, man. I say we go wi’ Gaz’s idea and just drink as much as we can, right fast an’ that.’

  Mel’s not convinced.

  ‘Look, you lot do w
hat you want, but it’s my birthday and I’m putting ash in me beer, okay? I wanna be well nutted when the lasses get ’ere, boys.’

  Cries of ‘sound’ and ‘sorted’ and ‘cush’ and ‘cheers’ echo around the room, Mr David Bowie on the radio belting out his latest hit, Let’s Dance. Awesome song. We loved David Bowie.

  So there we were, throwing cider down our gullets, smoking our heads off, laughing and joking, talking gibberish, but mostly taking the piss out of Young Mark.

  ‘When were’t last time you ’ad a shag, Mark?’ Mel knew that Mark had never had a shag when he asked this, y’know, just to embarrass him into telling us some sort of lie that we could all laugh at.

  ‘Erm… let me think…’ Mark tapped his chin as if trying to remember. This action caused uproarious laughter from the rest of us. ‘Why are y’all laughing? I have had a shag, y’know.’

  ‘Yeh? When…?’ I laughed at his “I’ll convince them” sort of tone. ‘And what’s more, who with? Who did you shag? Eh? Eh? Come on, man, spill the beans.’

  Still tapping his chin, ‘Erm… I know, on holiday, yeah, that’s when?’ He didn’t sound very convincing.

  Ricko’s turn for a bit of mockery. ‘Fuck off on holiday. When?’

  ‘When I went to Brid. I stayed in a caravan wi’ me nana and shagged a bird then. She were called… Erm… Claire. Yeh, Claire, that’s it. Lovely she were. It were ace, man. It were right lovely. She said she loved me.’

  My turn, still laughing, ‘Go bollocks, man, everyone who’s never had a shag always says they ’ad one on ’oliday. That way no-one can prove you wrong. Or no-one can go straight up to the bird and ask her, and then embarrass the fuck out of you when she says “Did he fuck shag me”. You know you’re lying, Mark, just admit it, man. Don’t be ashamed of yourself for not being able to get a bird. Ever.’