Tubthumping, by Tom Andes
Certain people, Healy knew, had no sense of irony. They couldn’t see themselves in the lyrics of a song, not even when the song was about blokes like them, not even when they were being made fun of, and that was Stanhope all over, bobbing his head, singing off-key at the top of his lungs to Chumbawumba’s “Tubthumping” where they sat at a beer-sticky table in the back of their local, the Spotted Cow in Littlehampton. “He drinks a lager drink,” Stanhope sang, “he drinks a cider drink,” and he grinned, showing the gap between his front teeth, the guy two-fisting a pint of Stella Artois and one of Strongbow. Why couldn’t he see that he was being made fun of, the song about regular lads like Stanhope, lager louts in their football jerseys and trainers out on the piss on a Saturday night?
He was also Healy’s best friend, his pill and hash connection, and just at the moment, they were waiting for Stanhope’s supplier, a white South African named Colin who lived on a council estate in East London, and who took the train down every couple of weeks to visit his sister, who was a nurse over at War Memorial Hospital in Bognor Regis, not at all in the life, respectable, and therefore off-limits to the likes of Healy and Stanhope. They’d been warned. A raspy-voiced gangster who looked as chewed up as Ronnie Wood from the Rolling Stones, and who moved through worlds Healy had never imagined himself being part of, Colin scared the shite out of Healy.
Place was the pits, so it was funny that they spent every Saturday night there, and quite a few other nights, too. Hell, they’d pissed away the odd Sunday afternoon, getting legless before Healy went home to his missus, his brats, and his roast. Place smelled of spilled lager, every surface sticky with beer and God knew what else. A bloke could catch a venereal disease from the benches in back, and someone got glassed before last orders every Saturday.
“The bird was gagging for it.” Stanhope leaned across the table, taking Healy into his confidence, and what was he on about? Oh Jesus no. He’d been half-listening, but Healy had a cold feeling like water dripping off an ancient rock—a what did a person call it, stalactite? —filling him with icy dread. Stanhope was talking about Marta, Colin’s sister. He was boffing her.
“Oh, fer fuck’s sake, Bobby, no—.”
“Fucking hell.” Stanhope downed half a pint, wiping his lips with a big, callused, tradesman’s hand, looking well chuffed with himself, like the cat that lived in the alley behind their flat licking its chops after it made off with a rasher of bacon. “She probably hasn’t had a good shag in years, mate. Colin should be grateful I knocked the dust off her fanny.”
Funny part was that Healy had seen the sister. Christ’s sakes, she was 42, ten years older than they were, which was almost old enough to be their mum, or anyway, old enough to have seen the Sex Pistols play when she and Colin had first come from Johannesburg, or so she’d told them, so this wasn’t about Stanhope wanting to get his rocks off. No, this was about power: he wanted to have something on Colin.
Healy should have left, abandoning his friend to his fate. But Stanhope had been his best mate since grammar school, the two of them having grown up in the council flats down Arundel Road. Besides which, their nights down the pub were the only thing that kept Healy’s life from being a dreary procession back and forth between his job as a printer’s apprentice and those brats—three of them, and he swore sometimes he couldn’t remember their names or keep straight which was which, except of course for the one—he’d gotten on his missus’s loins.
“Bobby.” In spite of himself, he was impressed by his friend’s what did a fellow call it, audacity? He was laughing, and it was just like old times, Bobby Stanhope pulling a tidy one, the guy like a dog with two dicks, except in this case the sister wasn’t so tidy, and as Healy’s missus always said, they weren’t eighteen anymore: You’re not kids anymore, you useless, bloody tossers. And Healy felt a growing horror as he grasped the implications of what Stanhope had done, an awareness seeping into his brain like the smell of a juicy fart spreading across a room. “You’re going to get us killed.”
Didn’t have time to say else because the door opened, and Colin appeared in his trainers, his leather jacket, carrying his duffel; and with him was the sister, smoking a fag, one of her Golden Virginia roll-ies, with her spiky gray hair, the two of them silhouetted by the seacoast evening light as the door swung shut. She followed him across the room like a dog at heel, like she was up the duff, and they were going to have a shotgun wedding. And Stanhope, the nutter, he winked at Healy across the table, like Be cool. And yeah, just at the moment, the bloke was still Healy’s hero. The stones on you, bastard.
“All right, Col?” Stanhope asked, by way of saying hello. It was shaping up to be one of his finest performances, even if it might be his last. “Oh, hiya, Marta,” he said, like he hadn’t seen her come in the door and walk across the room with his own two eyes, just like Healy had. “I didn’t know you were coming along. Alright, love?”
“Hello, Bobby.” Marta took another drag of her roll-ie. She looked bored. What was the word, the one that meant tickled, like a person thought something was funny, but not quite? Not amused but bemused. That same track was still playing, “Tubthumping,” and the high-pitched voice came in, the bird singing, “Pissing the night away.”
“Move.” Colin hadn’t raised his voice, but somehow, he’d made the tone different, the firmness implying a threat. The geezer might’ve been a hotshot London gangster, but he still dressed like he belonged in a council flat, like the pikey he was, so maybe Stanhope was right, and Colin was a wanker. Still and all, Healy was bricking it, so though he knew Stanhope would be disappointed in him for not standing his ground, he got up, and on legs that were unsteady with more than drink, he hustled out of the booth and around the table to sit next to Stanhope.
“Yeah, sure, no problem, Colin,” he said.
“Whoa.” Stanhope made a big production out of it, and he did it at Healy’s expense. “What’s next, Peter, you’re gonna put your hand on my knee? Haven’t turned into a bender on me, have ya, mate? Haven’t gone soft and turned into a poof?” As if there wasn’t room for two of them on that side of the booth. And as Marta and Colin slid onto the bench on the other side of the table, Colin putting the duffel between them, Healy felt angry at his friend not just for that small betrayal, but for creating this situation in the first place. They’d had a laugh when Colin had told them Marta was off limits, sure, as if either of them had been after that old slapper, and that was the entire reason Stanhope had gotten off with her, because he’d been told not to, like it was a dare, which mattered to him more than Marta’s feelings or for that matter Healy’s life.
Colin reached in his pocket and took out a crumpled tenner and a handful of pound coins, throwing them on the table, ten, fifteen quid, in all. The coins glinted a dull gold in a sticky puddle of last night’s beer.
“Go get us another round,” he told Healy, in that voice that rasped like he’d smoked a bowl of crack for breakfast. “And get us ten Benson and Hedges from the machine, as well.”
Healy could feel Stanhope tense beside him, but he didn’t dare look at his friend. He’d only feel ashamed by the look Stanhope would give him for doing Colin’s bidding, but Healy wasn’t a punter like Stanhope.
“Whatcha drinking, Col?” Healy scraped the wet, sticky coins into his palm and took the tenner, like Colin was his bleeding da, sending him down the corner shop for his Guinness and his packet of Player’s Navy Cut.
“Get us a half of bitter. Cheers.”
“You?” Healy asked the sister, who gave him a look like she thought the whole thing was bollocks, the three of them a bunch of plonkers, her brother, Stanhope, and Healy, too. And for the first time Healy could see the attraction, such as it was. He’d always thought Marta was kind of a minger, those old punks never aging well, especially not the birds, all that speed no good for the skin or the teeth, but at the knowing look in her eyes, he felt a stirring, and he might’ve understood Marta or even what was the word, empathized with her.
“Get us a half of lager shandy, please, will you, love? Ta. I’ve got work in the morning.”
Why had Colin brought her, anyway? And wasn’t this his fault, the knobber inviting his sister along for his drug deals, so they could make out like the whole thing was a family outing?
That same track was still playing, and here they reached one of the verses, the bloke rapping, “He sings the songs that remind him of the good times, he sings the songs that remind him of the better times.” And wasn’t that all Healy and Stanhope had ever wanted, all those nights on the piss, whatever else they’d done? Healy had only ever asked for a bit of a laugh, something to break the tedium of those days going to his jobs in his white panel van and the sense the rest of his life was mapped out for him, even those parts that were supposed to be what was the word, spontaneous, from the family holidays in Ibiza with the missus and the brats to tea every afternoon at half-three to the grave.
“Yeah, sure.” He got a pack of ten Benson and Hedges from the machine by the loo. At the bar, he ordered their drinks, pints of Stella for Stanhope and himself. He had to make two trips, and when he got back, a set of car keys was next to the ashtray.
“Skin up.” Colin tossed Healy a bit of gear: a lump of hash, a lighter, and a packet of Zig-Zag rolling papers. “We’re going for a drive.”
And so, he did it. Right under the nose of the barman, Healy broke apart one of Colin’s Benson and Hedges, made a pile of the tobacco, and crumbled the hash onto the joint, the gummy brown stuff sticking to the loops and the whorls in his thumb. Tucked it into that packet of Benson and Hedges and passed it back to Colin, like all right, mate, maybe we could be friends, after all, and cheers. Maybe they’d all have a drink and a bit of smoke, sing should auld acquaintances be forgot, and call it a night.
“Down the hatch.” Colin raised his half of bitter.
“Yeah, cheers, Petey. Gesondheid. Kubabaza.” The sister—Marta—speaking South African, Healy guessed, clinked glasses with Healy, Healy feeling like a traitor, like he’d ended up in the enemy camp.
“Ta for the drink, Col.” Healy sipped Stella off the top of his pint. Maybe they could salvage the situation, after all. Maybe they could resolve this peaceably and all go home friends at the end of the night. Beside him Stanhope downed his glass in a single quaff.
“Where are we driving to?” Bleary-eyed, Stanhope burped, and he set his glass down hard on the table.
“I’ve got your gear in the boot of Marta’s car,” Colin said. “And you and I need to have a little talk, just a bit of a chat.”
Right. And if this was the part when Stanhope might’ve wised up and played along, or maybe just refused to get in that car, well, when had Bobby Stanhope ever done the safe or the smart thing?
“What’ve you got in the duffel, Col?” Stanhope asked. “Your bleeding laundry?”
And he laughed, but too loudly. And ordinarily, Healy might’ve laughed along with him, but Healy was about fed up with all of it, with Stanhope and his loutish ways, but also with certain niggling suspicions he’d long entertained about Stanhope and his own missus, her inside, who had after all been pushing a pram up High Street since she was old enough to be served in a pub and had in darker moments expressed a certain affection for, if not to say an attraction to Stanhope: Well, I wouldn’t kick him out of bed for farting under the covers, she’d once said, though to be reasonable that had been in the middle of a fight, and hadn’t Healy long wondered about their middle child and where he’d gotten those fair features, the lad looking not at all like Healy, who was dark-complected like a gypsy or a traveler, though in truth he was only Welsh?
“Drink up.” Colin finished his half of bitter. “You’re driving,” he told Healy, “mate.”
###
A quarter of an hour later they were driving out the A259 and making the turn onto Church Lane and Ford Road, heading toward Arundel, Healy piloting the sister’s Peugeot with the sister riding up front and Stanhope and Colin sitting in the back. The sister had the Levellers on the tape deck, that folkie, left-wing shite she liked, but all the old punks went that way, the handful who didn’t become Nazis, or overdose and die. Healy hadn’t ever been much for politics himself, but his da and Stanhope both had defected from Labour and voted for Thatcher, so Healy had gone along like always, even if most of the Tories he knew were poncy twats and probably pedos, as well.
“Make a left up here.” Across from St. Mary’s Episcopal in Clymping, Colin leaned up between the seats, and they turned onto the road that would take them out to Rudford Industrial Estate and the old Ford Airfield, where they had those boot sales on Sundays that Healy’s missus was always getting on him about. As they wound out between the auto body places, Healy’s stomach dropped. This was as good a place to dump a body as any, and Healy wondered whether Colin was going to ice them both, or whether he’d kill Stanhope and spare Healy. And though he felt badly for thinking it, he found himself wishing for the latter, good riddance to Bobby Stanhope.
“We’re not supposed to be out here, Col.” By now, it was dark, Marta’s face silhouetted by the glow fading over the South Downs, bluish on her cheeks, and so help him, she really was a munter, a chewed up old slag who’d probably given it up to half the freaks with safety pins through their noggins on King’s Road in London back in her prime, which must’ve been like twenty years ago, so what the hell had Stanhope been thinking, giving her the old rumpy pumpy? Was it possible that Bobby Stanhope fancied the bird, that he loved her, even? At the thought, Healy burst out laughing.
“What’s so funny?” Stanhope asked from in back, and Healy bit his lip to keep from cracking up, or maybe to keep from crying out, from shaking in fear, but of course that made it worse. Would he see his missus, would he see those darling dark-haired brats and that one blond again? He felt like he was on the edge of something, hurtling toward a destination, a place he didn’t want to arrive, like a spaceship launched into the center of the sun.
“Nothing.” But once he’d started, he couldn’t help himself. Tears blurred his eyes, another spasm of laughter stabbing his stomach. Get it together, mate. “Not a thing, Bobby. I was just thinking’s all.”
“Pull over up here.” Colin tapped Healy on the shoulder, and he parked in front of a loading dock on the edge of the industrial estate. In the distance, lights burned on Yapton Road, the houses in the new subdivisions on the outskirts of the village twinkling on the edge of the darkness, the national forest beyond, and when he killed the ignition, the car ticked in a silence was absolute, deafening, and horrible, like nothing Healy had experienced. Never been a church-going man, that auld Church of England and the Episcopalism a scheme for Henry the Eighth to knock off his wives, warn’t it, and who didn’t know that? But Healy might’ve whispered a prayer to his maker, and the substance of that prayer would’ve been please, Lord, God, Jehovah, Jesu, Allah or whatever You wanted to be called, Ye Beardy Old Man in the Clouds, take Bobby, not me.
“Everybody out.” Behind Healy, Colin was rattling the seat, and whether it was nerves or a rush to get the whole thing over with, Healy tripped climbing out of the Peugeot, dropping the keys before he leaned down to pick them up and then slide the seat forward and let Colin out the back of the car, which was when he saw the gun in Colin’s hand, a snub-nosed pistol glinting in the moon- and the starlight, the barrel half-covered by the sleeve of his leather jacket. Healy just about dropped a load in his drawers.
They walked out the tarmac under one of those too-huge summer skies all dotted with stars, so many Healy forgot they existed, since you couldn’t see them with the lights in town. Not that Littlehampton was a big city, even the people who lived there talking it down. “The end of the line,” they called it, since it was the last stop on the Arun Valley train from London Victoria, the whole place full of chavs like Healy and Stanhope in their track suits, but it was still a town, and it was anyway the only home Healy had known.
They’d walked out to the middle of the airfield, where the two landing strips crossed like X marks the spot when Marta spoke up. “I think this has gone far enough, Col.” With trembling hands, she twisted another roll-ie, the flame from the lighter showing off her face, the freckles on her pale cheeks. And Christ, about time she put a stop to this, wasn’t it? Here was her brother defending her honor like she was the Virgin Queen when she’d probably shagged the Sex Pistols, the Clash, and the Gang of Four, too.
“You’re being a right cunt, Col,” Stanhope said, and best mates all their lives or not, Healy could’ve kicked his friend in the bollocks or put a bullet in his head, himself.
“Shut up, Bobby,” Healy blurted, his voice gone high-pitched with fear, and if he hadn’t gone over to Colin’s side back at the Spotted Cow, he had now. Stanhope rolled his eyes, that same disgusted look on his face as when Healy ducked out of a brawl on a Saturday night, and Healy felt again the way he had when his missus had said that about Bobby, like even she recognized Bobby Stanhope was the man Healy only wished he could be.
Colin threw the duffel at Healy’s feet. “Pick that up.”
And though it was sheer madness, the whole episode, though he should’ve run screaming and disappeared among those distant, twinkling village lights, Healy did as he was told. The bag weighed two, maybe two and a half stone, and it clinked when he lifted it. Couldn’t deny a certain satisfaction that Stanhope was going to get his comeuppance, could he?
“Fuck’s sake, Colin, I’m 42, and I’m going to naai who I want to naai, aren’t I?” When the sister took a puff of her fag, the flare from the cherry lit her eyebrows, showing the nicotine stains on her fingers. And what she’d said brought Healy up short, for well did he remember his missus saying the same thing to him during one of their kerfluffles: If I want to go out on the pull and find a bloke and get stuffed, Peter, I can just as easily do that, can’t I?
“You think this is about you?” Still watching Stanhope, Colin was sneering at his sister, the bloke talking in that slow, deliberate way of the village drunk, like that boring old sod who’d yack your ear off on a barstool at the Spotted Cow, yammering about how he drove a lorry back and forth to Cardiff. Well, right then, Healy would’ve let that old sod talk a blue streak. Hell, Healy would’ve taken notes. “No, he’s done this because he’s been getting ideas about himself. He’s been putting on airs, getting too big for his britches, hasn’t he?”
Said that last part as if to Marta, but he was addressing Stanhope.
“What’re you on about?” Marta spit tobacco off the end of her tongue, blowing smoke while she folded her arms across her chest. She was in a blue jumper, the wind cutting across the South Downs from the River Arun chilling Healy’s bones. “He’s always done this, ever since we were kids. Punched my first boyfriend in the eye, and he’s never let up since, have you, Col?”
“I drew a line in the sand.” Colin stepped forward, and with a quickness that surprised Healy, cracked Stanhope across the face with his free hand, so Stanhope fell to one knee. “If I let him get away with this, what’s next?”
Marta sounded knackered. “It’s not up to you to tell anybody I’m off limits.”
“He’s using you.” Colin took a step back, Stanhope still down on one knee, and why didn’t the bloke get up and charge Colin? The geezer was still waving that pistol about, but if Healy might’ve taken advantage of his being distracted by his sister and cracked him on the head with whatever was in that duffel, he’d missed his chance.
“It’s up to me if I want to get used, isn’t it?” At the sadness in Marta’s voice, Healy felt something give inside him. Hell, at least the old minger knew her place, but was she so desperate for a shag she’d let Stanhope walk all over her? Stanhope, who would never leave his own long-suffering missus? And wasn’t she just like Healy, staying with his old lady, who’d always been a bit of a toe rag?
Only the distant hum of the cars on the A259 and the lorries passing on Burndell Road broke the silence, but somehow the whole scene might’ve been set to that song from the pub, “Tubthumping.” Funny part was that the blokes who sang it weren’t lager louts like Stanhope and Healy but a bunch of dirty anarchists from Leeds. Still and all, that song told the story of their lives, so that when Stanhope stood and stared down the barrel of Colin’s pistol, Healy could’ve sworn he sang a line from the chorus, and his friend was briefly to him again a hero: “I get knocked down, but I get up again.”
“Guess you’re going to have to shoot me, Col,” Stanhope said, and to the surprise of none but Stanhope himself, Colin did. A flat crack echoed in the cavern of the night, like ripples spreading across a black pool and washing up against the South Downs in one direction and all the way out to the Channel in the other. In the muzzle flare, the bones in Stanhope’s leg showed white and splintered as he fell. Gripping the duffel, his palms sweaty, Healy felt giddy, sick with glee. Fucking kneecapped him. He might’ve danced, started clapping. The sister screamed.
“Open that bag.” Colin spoke in that same slow way, like he knew he didn’t need to wave the gun or make threats to get Healy to do his bidding. Not with Stanhope rolling around, holding his knee, and groaning at his feet, and not either because in his friend’s face, half-shrouded as it was in darkness, showed those fair features of Healy’s middle child, who’d just last week sprained his ankle and rolled around in much the same way on the football pitch. Healy unzipped the canvas duffel, reached in, and came up with a pair of bolt cutters long as his arm.
“You might want to ring for the ambulance, love.” Colin tossed the sister his mobile.
“He shot me,” Stanhope said.
Healy puked. Skipped dinner, so the three pints of lager and the biscuits he’d had with tea came up and splashed the tarmac. The sister was punching buttons on the face of Colin’s mobile. She turned away from them as she spoke, sheltering the mouthpiece with her hand.
“Well, you only asked him to,” Healy said, “didn’t you, Bobby?”
Healy felt gutted, empty, sick inside. But once he’d let himself see the truth about Stanhope and that old trouble and strife, he couldn’t unsee it.
He stood over Stanhope with the bolt cutters. Stanhope was white with shock. But his voice was steady, threatening, and he was calmer than Healy, like Stanhope was made of sterner stuff. “Peter, mate, the hell are you doing?”
“Petey, no.” The sister was still holding Colin’s mobile, her voice gone high with alarm.
“How many times.” Healy wiped tears from his cheek. “How many times did you get off with my missus?” And the look on Stanhope’s face told him all he needed to know. First, he saw bewilderment, then the corner of Stanhope’s mouth curled, like the guy was satisfied with himself. Did Colin know? Did Marta? Hell, everyone at the Spotted Cow knew, the lot of them sniggering behind Healy’s back, knowing full well he was raising Stanhope’s kid because Stanhope’d had his missus, Healy coming home to a buttered bun, another spoon in the porridge.
“Take the pinky.” Colin stood on Stanhope’s wrist, so Bobby’s hand opened, white under the stars and the moon on that old airfield, where greater men than Healy and Stanhope, the men of Healy’s da’s generation, had launched the planes that fought off the krauts, defending Mother England. And Healy’s da was right about that much: they were bitter disappointments to their mothers, Healy and Stanhope both, their whole generation a lot of pissheads who’d rather waste their lives down the pub than do an honest day’s work. A right bunch of yobs they were, and that was God’s honest. “That way he’ll remember this every time he has a wank.”
On knees turned to jelly, Healy stood over his friend. His own hands shaking, Healy held the bolt cutters steady, caught Stanhope’s finger between the blades.
“You shouldn’t have done it, Bobby. But you always had to take more than you were given, didn’t you?”
“He should take your willie.” Colin leaned down. “He should chop off your knob, and we should feed you your own bell end, for what you done sticking your custard launcher in my sister.”
Coward that he was, Healy closed his eyes when he squeezed the handles together, but he couldn’t close his ears to the sound of the sister gasping, nor to the snick the bolt cutters made, then the thunk as they cut through the bone in Stanhope’s finger like lopping off the end of a parsnip. And just as he hadn’t been able to close his ears to the boy wailing on the football pitch, Healy couldn’t close his ears to his friend’s howling, either. And if that would end those Saturday nights on the piss, which were the stuff of local legend and the only exciting thing in Healy’s life, well, fine. For there was no coming back, no way Stanhope and Healy were going to be best mates after this.
Hands trembling, Healy kept his eyes closed. A cool wind blew across his face, and it smelled of cow shit and hay. The tears were drying on his cheeks. From somewhere far away came the sound of traffic, cars moving between those quiet, seaside towns where people like Stanhope and Healy dreamed their lives away. But on that airstrip, the night was quiet and still, and they seemed bigger than they were, but also smaller, insignificant.
“Bobby, love, like, are you all right?” The sister was kneeling, taking care of Stanhope. She had the guy’s head in her lap, and she’d torn off a piece of her skirt and was binding the wound on his knee, fashioning the strip of cloth into a tourniquet.
“Come on.” Colin grabbed her arm, but she belted him.
“You bloody wanker, Col.” She swung overhanded, hitting him with the insides of her fists, and Colin was defenseless, turning away from her, so the blows rained down on his back. He shielded the gun, protecting it from her.
But she must’ve known what she was worth to Stanhope, because as the sirens sounded in the distance, those red lights flashing against the black horizon as the rescue vehicles drove up from the Channel, she bent down and ran her fingers through Stanhope’s hair.
“I’m sorry, love,” she said. “I really appreciate the shag, and I did need the old pipes cleaned. But I hope you understand that I can’t stick around for this.” And she followed Colin back to the car. The Peugeot peeled out, Marta shouting something out the window about keeping the wound elevated before leaving them alone on the tarmac, Peter Healy and Bobby Stanhope, who’d once been best mates.
Stanhope was only grinning at him, wasn’t he?
Blood was on Stanhope’s face, the stump of his finger black with it. He raised himself up on one leg, struggling to keep his balance as he grabbed the bolt cutters, using them as a crutch.
Like an earworm, like something a bloke couldn’t get out of his head, Stanhope was singing that song: “I get knocked down, but I get up again.” And he climbed to one foot like a zombie, hopping toward Healy as Healy ran.
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