3. Crap Confessions

Previously: Terry fears his death is close and that it is somehow linked to the impending birth of a Grandson. His father reveals that as a child, Terry had expressed some very adult opinions that were somewhat reminiscent of Terry’s Grandfather’s.

There was a lot going on in my head for days after my outburst at mother’s. I considered what our Sandra had suggested, that I talk to my wife, Mel. I pondered it for hours and hours on end until those hours turned into days. I stayed off work and played snooker. It was good thinking time, which was just as well really because I certainly didn’t pot many balls. In fact, I smoked more fags than I potted balls. To be totally honest, I also probably sank more pints than I did colours too.
If what I had to discuss had been simple, I would have spoken to Mel years ago, probably. Of course it was nothing but simple. It was going to be really difficult to explain. Worse than the complexities of my life though, was the fact that at the time that I tried to explain them, I was as pissed as a fart and twice as smelly
It was a Wednesday night and the pub was busy. The quiz had started and Colin Philpotts had been sniffing around Mel all evening. Colin was a slimy little fucker and I think it’s fair to say that he was treading a fine line between a kick in the bollocks and decapitation.
‘Colin,’ I said to get his attention when he finally managed to drag himself away from my wife’s side. ‘Do me a favour will you, mate,’ I asked him.
‘Sure, Terry,’ he replied apprehensively.
‘Can you bring me some chips on your way back?’ I asked.
Colin looked confused, unsurprisingly. ‘On my way back from where?’ he asked.
‘On your way back from the fucking hospital.’
He got my point, which was just as well because I was far too pissed to give him a kicking.
Jackie and Pakki were asking all sorts of crappy questions in the quiz. At this point in time they had been running the quiz night for about four years and were seriously short of material. Pakki isn’t a Pakistani at all but ironically Jackie is, who as a shouter with terrible microphone technique has an accent that would be incomprehensible even in the New Delhi-icious.
‘Vat vas da name of da vurst man who vas valking on da sorvis of da moon?’
See what I mean?
‘Pakki?’ I shouted across the pub. A few out-of-towners looked at me nervously as if I was about to start a riot.
‘Translate mate will ya,’ I asked.
Jackie understood and submitted the microphone. It wasn’t entirely unusual for the entire pub to enter into syncronised head scratching when Jackie was reading the quiz questions, so having Pakki as a backup had been an essential ingredient in the success of quiz night.
‘What was the name of the first man to walk on the moon?’ he asked, clearly and precisely pronouncing every syllable.
I edged my way through the busy crowd and attracted Pakki’s attention with a pint of lager.
‘Cheers, mate,’ he said.
‘No problem, Pak. Have you got a minute?’ I needed a trusty ear. There were some important things to be said once I had finally gathered the courage to talk with Mel. I needed a dress rehearsal and apart from our Sandra, Pakki was the only person that I trusted.
Once I had dragged Pakki away from the quiz, leaving the contestants with Jackie announcing what sounded more like a curry menu than an actual question, we found a quiet corner and I drew my friend into my dilemma.
‘I’m going to tell Mel about the voice,’ I told him.
He shrugged his shoulders.
‘I told you that you should,’ he replied. ‘But I would have thought that it’s a bit late for that now.’
‘Late? Why?’ I asked.
‘Because she isn’t your wife anymore.’
‘She is,’ I snapped irritably. ‘We are just taking some time apart.’
‘She kicked you out, Tel. She burned your clothes, shredded her photos of you and changed the locks,’ Pakki asserted. ‘I think it’s over mate.’
‘Is it fook!’ screamed the voice. ‘It’s over when I fooking say it’s over!’ I fought the voice off but with difficulty. My grimace clearly upset my friend. He took a step backward and placed his hands palm up as if to emphasise his innocence.
‘You’re right, Pak but the voice doesn’t agree. It gets angry when I give in to her,’ I told him. ‘It’s not about Mel. I don’t need her approval. I need her to understand because of our Kelly.’
‘Why?’ he asked. ‘I don’t get it.’
There was a lot that I had told Pakki and there was a lot that I hadn’t. He was my mate and I trusted him but the voice wasn’t the sort of thing that I discussed willingly. I had been forced by circumstances. I had told him that the voice existed and how it fought to control me but I never told him any more than that.
The thing is that the voice knows when I am trying to disown it. It knows and it interferes. It tries its hardest to deny me the chance to think straight in those moments when I am trying to come clean or confess. Worst of all is what it does when I apologise. The situation that was the reason behind why I confided in Pakki in the first place was complicated enough to explain on its own. The last thing I needed at the time was the voice sticking its fucking nose in. I mean, being caught in bed with my best friend’s wife isn’t the most diplomatic thing that I have ever done. To be honest it wasn’t the least either but like I said, it was a shit sandwich of a problem that could only be made worse with marmite on, yet the voice still managed to make things ten times worse.
The truth was that in all honesty I hadn’t done anything wrong, honest. I had had a row with Mel and gone around to talk things over with a mate. Unfortunately, Pakki hadn’t been in and when I arrived at his house I was already as pissed as a fart. Pakki’s wife, Sandy, otherwise known as Sandy Tandom due to the fact that not only was she the town bike but she also was prone to having her affairs two or three at a time, welcomed me in wearing only a bath towel. Of course I should have known better even though I, as one of the few guys in town who hadn’t had her at some point, still knew all too well that if she wasn’t getting shagged by somebody then she was getting shagged by a couple of nobodies. Nevertheless, she was my mate’s wife and I would have thought that she would have understood the first and only golden rule of mandom, Thou shall’t not nob thy mate’s bird.
Needless to say, she invited me upstairs to chat while she dried her hair. Now generally I’m not known as naïve but in that particular situation I was lured into the trap that had ambush written on it in massive fucking, neon letters.
The first thing that Sandy did was to drop her towel and waft the hairdryer over her pubes like she was innocently fanning her flushed, embarrassed cheeks.
I was sitting on the bed. ‘Oh shit!’ I thought. I lay back with my head in my hands, feeling foolish. However, as I cursed the fact that I had been stupid enough to find myself in such an awkward situation, an alcoholic haze swept over me and I passed out. When I came to, I had been stripped down to my pants and was lying in the bed with Pakki staring angrily at me.
Conscious or not, I knew that there was no way that I fucked Sandy. If I had been capable of doing such a thing then I sure as hell would have been capable of getting the fuck out of there as soon as I was done. It is one thing breaking the best friends code but it’s another thing entirely getting caught doing it. So, I wouldn’t put breaking the code beyond me but there is no way I would get caught. I may be a bastard but I’m not a fucking bastard. Well, OK, so I might be but my point is that I never done anything wrong that night. It was Sandy. She clearly took an opportunity to wind Pakki up. Even to this day I have no idea why, nor do I care. I haven’t ever spoken to her since. The truth is that I wouldn’t piss on her if she was on fire, course I might if she wasn’t.
So anyway, there I was in my best friend’s bed while his wife was poncing around in her pink pyjamas. His face was a picture of disappointment. To be honest, I’m pretty sure that Pakki knew that I would never do such a thing to him. Otherwise he would never have reacted the way he did. He stared at Sandy for a number of seconds then he casually walked toward her. She cowered, probably expecting a smack in the mouth but she never got one. What she got was quite funny really, not that I laughed about it at the time. Pakki sat on the end of the bed and gently caressed her crotch for a few seconds. He then grabbed a fistful of her pubes and led her shuffling out of the room like her ankles were tied together. He guided her screaming down the stairs, showed her out the door and locked her out, starkers. Of course, he then returned to the bedroom and we had a few words.
Almost every atom of my body wanted to plead my innocence and apologise profusely for being stupid enough to be used in such a way. I just wanted to make everything right, not that there was anything that would make my friend feel any better, after all Pakki’s wife was a nymphomaniac who would quite happily take one lover from the front and one up the exhaust while at the same time playing the pink oboe. Nevertheless, part of me wanted to confess that it was all my fault and that I got drunk and seduced her. I knew that it would ruin our friendship forever but I understood the pain that Sandy has caused him over the years, so for some strange selfless reason I was happy to be the bad guy because I just knew that the whole situation would be so much easier for Pakki that way.
‘Fooking bitch!’ shouted the voice. Seconds ticked past before I realised that I had spoken its words.
Pakki stared at me disbelievingly. ‘For fuck’s sake, Terry!’ he yelled. ‘Once in your life take some responsibility for yourself!’
I tried. I tried really hard. I wanted to do the right thing. I wanted to say that I was sorry but the voice was furious. It was screaming in my head.
‘Don’t you fucking dare take the rap for that slut!’
I sobered up real quick. My fists clenched tightly until my nails were cutting into the palms of my hands.
‘Loser!’ said the voice, scornfully. ‘Thar’s a rate fooking loser thee!’
Back then the voice was a daunting power that controlled me. It bullied me and even though I was acting against my own will, I complied like an obedient child. The truth was that I was a loser and I deserved to take a kicking for being such a pathetic puff. I told myself that I couldn’t fight the power that the voice had over me but the truth was that I was scared to try hard in case it was true and all that lay ahead of me was a lifetime being oppressed by an annoying twat.
‘You should have given her a slap!’ the voice made me say. ‘You a fucking puff or summut?’
Seeing the disappointment in Pakki’s eyes was torture. It was like having my nuts in a vice with some psycho lesbian cranking it closed tighter and tighter. I desperately wanted to explain but my every thought was twisted by the voice as it screamed at me.
‘Fookin smack him!’ it shouted. ‘Go on, don’t let him look at you like that!’
But I didn’t hit him. I got up, got dressed and left. I surprised myself. As I remember it, it was the first time that I had denied the voice and that fact made it even angrier.
For weeks afterwards I sat by the phone and tried to call Pakki and make up. Though every time I lifted the receiver the voice shouted me down. It was impossible. That was when I started writing. I discovered that I could write freely without interruption. So, I wrote a long, long letter to my friend and tried to explain. Of course it didn’t work. He just didn’t read my letter and I don’t really blame him either.
In the end the only way I could get Pakki to read what I had written was to wait for him in the pub toilets. I knew that he always went for a crap before he started DJ’ing the Karaoke night on Thursdays. So, I waited in trap one until he got himself comfortable in trap two, his favourite. Then I dragged the one-armed bandit from the bar and barricaded the cubicle door shut and refused to let my friend out until he had read what I had written for him. Even then he just shouted at me. An hour and a half later though he admitted that he knew that I never slept with Sandy.
‘You fucker!’
I was livid. I had been worrying myself sick about how to make up with him and all along he knew that I hadn’t done anything wrong.
‘How?’
Pakki was still sat on the pot. He looked up at me, shrugged his shoulders and for the first time in weeks he smiled.
‘Because Sandy bragged that you had a donkey dick,’ he replied.
‘And?’
‘And my sister Sian, who I happen to know you have shagged, cocks her little finger in the air every time your name is mentioned.’
‘She’s a fucking liar!’ shouted the voice through my mouth.
Pakki laughed and I joined him.
‘You’ve got to read that letter, mate,’ I told him.
‘I have.’
‘So why the hell didn’t you call me?’
‘Because this voice bollocks is just bollocks!’ he explained. ‘It’s an excuse to cover for the fact that you’re a fucking nutter.’
I was a little taken aback. My best friend was reviewing his contract, rereading the small print to see if loyalty beyond reason was stipulated therein.
‘And it has crossed my mind,’ he added, ‘that I might be better off without you as a mate.’
Of course I knew that Pakki was right. Even the voice knew he was right.
‘Coont!’ it snarled.
I held my hands up to Pakki defensively.
‘I didn’t say that, sorry,’ I pleaded.
‘Coont!’ it repeated.
‘No!’ I yelled. ‘You’re the cunt you fucking cunt!’
My fury was broken by Pakki’s laughter.
‘I rest my case,’ he announced. ‘Barking!’
Even then the voice wouldn’t shut the fuck up for a second and allow me a chance to explain things properly. So as I prepared to tell all to Mel, I was apprehensive for obvious reasons. On top of that I was still pissed and of course, I remained a fucking nutter too.
‘In vitch city is the airport vith de initials Zee Dee Gee?’ Jackie had been ploughing on with the quiz in Pakki’s absence.
‘C, D, F, G,’ I shouted over.
‘Vat?’ Jackie called back at me with his hand cupped at his ear.
‘C, D, F, G,’ I repeated. ‘Charles de fucking Gaulle!’ The out of towners gave me that look again. Only this time there was an added annoyance as if they were the only people in the pub who would have got that question right and I might just have cost them the chance of victory.
‘So, Pak?’ I asked, to regain my friend’s attention. ‘How do I tell her?’
‘I dunno Tel,’ he replied. ‘But whatever you do don’t lock her in the crapper and call her a cunt.’
I exaggerated a nod of agreement as if it were a piece of great wisdom that my friend had handed me. Then we laughed briefly before I staggered back across the pub to Mel. As I arrived at her table, Colin Philpotts shot me a nervous look.
‘Don’t forget my chips, Colin,’ I reminded him. He made a swift retreat and I took a seat before I fell over.
‘We need to talk, Mel,’ I said.
Melissa shot me the kind of look that ought to be reserved for sex offenders and serial killers. It was a piercing, I hate you kind of look that I had seen before. In the past of course I had deserved it when she had looked at me that way. But this wasn’t one of those moments and I was surprised by her intensity.
‘We have needed to talk for years Terry,’ she spat. ‘But you don’t do talking. You only do silence and shouting.’
‘Don’t you fookin dare tell her about me!’ threatened the voice.
‘Shut up!’ I snapped.
‘You really are charming sometimes Terry,’ Mel said, sarcastically.
‘No, no, not you,’ I replied, defensively.
Mel looked over each of her shoulders, scanning the room dramatically to emphasise the fact that there wasn’t anyone else within earshot.
‘So, who the hell are you talking to then?’ she asked.
It seemed the opportunity had arisen. She had even asked me directly. I gathered my thoughts momentarily and prepared to tell all.
‘Your Grandad, Eddie?’ she announced, causing my jaw to drop on the table with a thud.
‘What?’ I yelped. My voice was high pitched like a puppy who had had its paw trodden on. I cleared my throat.
‘What?’ I repeated in a somewhat more dignified fashion. Though before I could find out how she knew what she knew, I was stunned further.
‘Or was it Marmaduke?’ she asked.
‘What?’
The anger and the fear in my head subsided. I considered that the voice was probably as shocked as I was but I was wrong. It laughed. It laughed loudly and hysterically and in a way I knew why.
For so many years I had feared for my sanity. For years after, I had run scared from the reality. Yet in all that time I had held my secret. I had been somewhat forced to share my troubles with Pakki and a time had arisen when I had really needed to confide in our Sandra, so I just couldn’t work out how Mel knew about Grandad. I was even more troubled that she knew about Marmaduke.
I needed a fag but my hands were shaking so badly that I just couldn’t get one out of the packet. Worse still was the fact that if I could have done, I was likely to set my nose on fire trying to light it. Mel, angel that she is, read my mind, took a cigarette out of the packet, lit it herself then placed it in my mouth.
‘So why didn’t you tell me?’ she asked, gently.
The fire had subsided from her eyes. I looked into them and all I could see was compassion. I doubt that I would have been able to handle pity at that moment. The voice certainly wouldn’t have.
‘I was afraid,’ I admitted.
‘Afraid?’ The voice suddenly lost its sense of humour. His laughter subsided and normality was restored.
‘Fookin poof!’ it yelled.
Fortunately, having anticipated the voice’s outburst, I had kept my lips tightly sealed.
‘So,’ said Mel. ‘Who the hell is Marmaduke anyway?’
Of course it was a long story and it took me a few moments of thought to consider where to start. However, those thoughts were nipped firmly in the bud by Mel’s next revelation.
‘The funny thing is Terry, that Marmaduke is such an unusual name, yet our Kelly mentioned it yesterday as a possibility for her baby.’

© Copyright 2005, Harry Parry. All rights reserved. No part of this nonsense may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

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Weekend of 15th - 16th October.