Utterly Monkey. Nick Laird

please,’ said Geordie, a little stunned.

      He crossed the road to the Kilkenny Arms, received his Guinness from the bleached Australian barman, who actually said ‘G’day’, and sat at an empty table. His ears were burning. He felt somehow embarrassed. This was the capital of his country and he felt a million miles from home. This was London, home of Big Ben, unfailingly chiming on the news every night, home of the Houses of Parliament and Churchill and the Union Jack and all the unchangeable symbols the orange banners displayed. Geordie realized he hadn’t seen a flag all day.

      Mooning over his Guinness, Geordie thought about Ulster, that little patch of scorched earth. It had stayed loyal to England and now England didn’t want it. England was completely indifferent to it now. Geordie remembered Jenny McClure, this girl he’d known at primary school, who was tall and blonde and posh, which meant that her family lived outside the town and owned two cars and her dad played golf. She was clean and prim and perfect. And all through P6 and P7 he’d asked her to the cinema and made her little Valentine cards and warned the other boys off and waited after school just to walk ten paces behind her to the gates where her pert and pretty mother waited. And all that time she either ignored Geordie, or got her friends to tell him to leave her alone. Geordie remembered the lunchtime when, in an empty classroom, he’d poured the jar of dirty paintbrush water into her school bag. One day you wake up and hate.

      At the Orange parades the police would stand on the fringes, attentive and static, like curious strangers who’ve stopped to watch a wedding party leave the church. Geordie remembered sitting on tarmac in fierce bare sunlight watching old Andy MacLean, a friend of his da’s, unwrap the Lambeg from the oilskins with a deft patience. He remembered the clipped neatness of his white rolled shirtsleeves. The snap and flutter of the tendons in his forearms. And how his thin wrists arched as the drumsticks twirled like spokes in front of him, and under his jutted chin how the ordinal drum had pounded and pounded and swung. He remembered how the lodge’s banners had advertised their faithfulness, as if faithfulness was all that mattered. But how could one stay devoted to someone who wants to leave you? Well, they wanted us once, Geordie thought. He stayed on in the pub for an idle hour, opposite a toothless old timer, folded into himself, dressed like Geordie’s dead grandfather, grey suit, flat cap, reading the Irish News. When he stood up to slope past him, the old guy raised his tumbler of whiskey to eyelevel, as if he was toasting the two of them.

      Outside the pub a tattered newspaper was lying against the curb and the wind was freeing it sheet by sheet. Some pages blew about restlessly further up the pavement. One had managed to wrap itself around a lamppost and was flapping gently like a drunkard trying to hail a taxi. Geordie stopped to watch an African man, in a brown lounge suit and a piano keyboard tie, across the road. He was preaching about Jesus and reminded Geordie of the McNulty brothers, who, on a Friday night when he was shuttling from pub to pub on Ballyglass main street, would be standing out in suits they were too young to need for work, beseeching the sinners to repent. Geordie wandered back up the High Street and turned left past the school into Sofia Road. The playground was filled with kids shouting and running and taking everything very seriously. Kids don’t really have senses of humour, Geordie thought. Everything seems so important. One little boy, Arabic looking, was standing in uniform by the wire fence looking particularly grave. Geordie looked back, just as level and serious. The kid sneered, casually flipped him the middle finger, and walked off.

      In the house Geordie slumped down on the sofa and turned his phone on. He’d two texts, both from Janice. BUDGIE KNOWS UVE CASH said one. RING ME said the other. Geordie needed to piss. He jumped up and went into the bathroom. He was jittery. It was always going to happen, he reasoned, but he didn’t realize it would happen so quickly. He’d need to think. There was no way Budgie would know where he was. It wasn’t like he was still in danger. He zipped up, flushed the toilet, and then checked his voicemails. One from Janice. She’d been crying. He’d probably slapped her about. The second voicemail was from Ian McAleece. Something about a drink. He wasn’t in the mood for that. As he was setting the phone down on the table it rang. He answered it, knowing he shouldn’t, but angry suddenly. ‘Geordie? It’s Ian here. From the boat.’

      At eight o’clock that morning, just as Danny was rising soberly from bed, and the sleeping Geordie was making the repetitive gurgling sound of a broken cistern, Ian McAleece was sitting on the side of his sagging single bed in Kilburn Park’s sad little Lord Gregory Hotel. He was intently jabbing his mobile phone buttons with his stubby index finger. In Ballyglass Budgie Johnson woke suddenly and hoarsely answered his little silver Motorola: ‘Hello?’

      

      Yes, it is a small small world. And Ulster but a button on its coat.

      

      ‘Budge, listen mate. Get a pen. I need you to get the cash to Mervyn. He’s bringing it across tonight. He needs to get it left in to this hotel. You got a pen?’

      ‘Okay, okay. What’s the address?’

      Seven minutes later, Budgie Johnson went to the makeshift cupboard and found that the cupboard was bare. Wearing his boxer shorts patterned with the prison arrows of Christmas trees, he had locked the bathroom door, knelt on the damp bathmat and slipped his house key in the crack between the wall and bath to lever the panel off. He’d pulled out the green metal box, flipped its lid and gaped. After very slowly mouthing fuck several times, he put the panel back in place, set the box on his bed and banged on Malandra’s door.

      ‘’Landra, open the door. Ah need ta ask you something.’ Budgie was not yet angry. He was so terrified he felt like he was floating.

      A scrape and a click and a tousled, dark, pretty Malandra, in a Bart Simpson nightshirt bearing 1986’s legendary injunction Don’t Have a Cow Man, appeared, holding a mug of tea.

      ‘What?’ Voices from the portable in her room came into the hall and were chanting Four. Three. Two…in some competition on breakfast television.

      ‘I had a box under the bath. There was stuff in it. And now there’s not. You know anything about it?’

      ‘What sort of stuff? Drugs?’

      Either she was very sly or knew nothing. Budgie spun round and knocked sharply on Janice’s door.

      ‘Jan, open the door.’ Malandra waited, interested and leaning against the door jamb, with one leg arched neatly so the heel of her foot rested against her other ankle. She looked poised to execute some daring entrechat or pirouette.

      ‘What? What is it?” came a voice from the bedroom, unmistakably issuing out from a head on its side with one cheek pressed into a pillow.

      ‘Open the fucking door Janice.’ Budgie was no longer floating. His thoughts were beginning to settle: he was up to his neck here. His stomach contracted. His fists were itching. He punched the door once, and again. Hard.

      ‘Okay, okay. Hold on.’

      A ratchety noise and the door inched open.

      ‘What is it? Greer, this is my day off.’ Her tone suggested that her brother didn’t have any days on. Budgie smacked the door fully open with the palm of his left hand and Janice was shoved backwards. He strode into the room and grabbed a fistful of her hair.

      ‘Where the fuck is it you wee bitch?’

      Janice was only aware of Budgie’s breath, his stinking morning breath, on her face, and the sharp pain in her scalp. Her hair was lifting her up onto her tiptoes. Then she registered Malandra screaming as her terrified face appeared over Budgie’s naked shoulder, her arms pulling at Budgie’s neck. She noticed how hairy Budgie’s shoulders had got. And then she started to scream as well. Budgie spun round and in doing so pushed her onto the bed. He launched Malandra into the hall and shut the door and pushed the bolt across.

      ‘I think you’ve something to tell me.’

      ‘Greer, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Who the fuck…I was asleep and you just force yourself in here and…you’ve no fucking right…’