Rant Read online

  So this particular Monday I came downstairs feeling that post-day-of-doing-nothing-with-nothing-but-more-of-the-same-to-look-forward-to-today blues kind of feeling. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to shake most of it off until at least my second cup of tea, but the post- bit beckoned. I went and rummaged through the letters stacked on the hall radiator, looking for that much-delayed missive from Kenneth Branagh. Dearest Mike, how are you, you old bugger? Didn’t have your latest address, so the new epic’s been on hold for the last two years…. Please find cheque enclosed (hope it’s enough to be going on with) and feel free to adjust script if you don’t like it/feel you haven’t got enough lines/think Helena Bonham Carter gets too much time on screen generally and someone has to make a stand. Look forward to seeing you at your convenience, dear heart – love K.B.

  It wasn’t there, of course.

  What was there was a bank statement from a week ago that I hadn’t dared look at yet and some nonsense from Readers Digest telling the homeowner they’re a millionaire, if they order the English Civil War Diary Collection – forty-eight volumes at the bargain, never-to-be-repeated price of forty-four pounds and seventy-three pence each. Shite.

  ‘No post,’ said Anna, between gulps of tea.

  ‘Well, thanks for telling me,’ I replied. ‘That’s ruined my morning now; I could have happily spent a few hours working that one out. Now what am I going to do?’

  ‘Eff off,’ came the jolly riposte, which is not to suggest that Anna is unoriginal in her arguments, but as I said, we’ve done this one rather too often for either of us to generate much enthusiasm.

  ‘Ooooh! Get you!’ says me. ‘Someone got out of the wrong side of the calendar this morning.’

  ‘Yes,’ she screamed merrily, ‘me! I seem to have ended up getting out of the side that involves working for a living yet a-effing-gain.’

  ‘Oh, here we go,’ I suggested helpfully, ‘come on, let’s rake all this shit up again. You suffer so much and I just—’

  ‘No,’ said Anna to me, in joyful tones as befitted the new day, ‘you’re the one who effing suffers. You have to wank around here all day in your own sad effing company trying to make sense of the complete waste of space that you are, well I’m sad for you, because you’re not even worth…feeling…sad…at…’

  I tried to find some kind of sense in all of that but we were both a bit tired, so I just asked a perfectly civil question.

  ‘What are you on about?’

  ‘Money,’ she explained. ‘As in, you have none, you better find some, you’re going to pay the bills this month, you’re going to pay the mortgage this month, I’m not subbing you anything this month, so you can fuck off, fuck off, fuck off, fuck off, fuck off!’

  I was sure this last outburst was because she’d forgotten to intersperse her whole sentence with eff-offs, so she had to squeeze them in at the end. But it was unlike her to actually say it, and some dim part of my brain began to fathom that she might actually be really upset. It makes for awkward reading on the page, but it’s quite impressive if you read it aloud to yourself; especially on the bus.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ I whined, in my best Bruce Willis whiny voice, ‘don’t be like that...’

  But Anna had had enough and she strode past me, slamming the front door behind her hard enough to rattle my fillings. (Mind you, some of them are so shit the slightest draught can rattle them.)

  I sat trying to think of some witty line to throw at her but nothing came. Still, that doesn’t usually stop me so I jumped up and flung the door open again.

  ‘You know what you are, don’t you?’ I screamed.

  But I’d left it too long, as usual, and Anna had disappeared down the cut. All that was there was a little old man whose poodle was shitting at the bottom of our drive. He looked a bit shifty and then slipped his hand inside a Marks and Spencer carrier bag to cup under the dog’s bottom as it pooped. The dog looked terribly confused, if not overly unhappy at the arrangement – the old guy just looked as if he was about to throw up his porridge.

  I watched for a few seconds, genuinely fascinated in spite of myself, then harrumphed loudly and slammed the door as hard as I could, hoping Anna was still within hearing distance and would feel terrible remorse that she had lowered me to this.

  As the door slammed there was a crack and a slight tinkle, followed by a shriek and a yelp. Wondering how the art of slamming doors without physical damage has remained a feminine art, I opened the door again sheepishly, but couldn’t see any sign of damage. I was distracted by a yelping sound and looked round to see the old guy shuffling down the street, occasionally looking daggers in my direction, in pursuit of the poodle which looked to have a Marks and Spencer carrier bag sticking out of its arse.

  I slammed the door again, but the moment was gone and my heart really wasn’t in it so it just closed with a bit of a dull thud that nobody except me would really notice; my life in a nutshell.

  I decided to make some tea.

  Then I got to thinking that maybe I should have a shit first.

  Or I could make a cup of tea and sit on the toilet with it – now we’re talking! And what about some toast and that last scrape of Marmite I hid…

  Just then a shadow crossed the hall and the doorbell went. Finding a direction for the day at last I rattled open the door, ready to launch back into it with Anna.

  ‘Ha!’ I shouted triumphantly, if a little unoriginally, and the motorcycle courier on the doorstep hurriedly stepped back and stared at me threateningly.

  After a moment he mumbled something through his helmet at me. It sounded like, ‘Are you Number Six?’

  ‘I am not a number, I am a free man!’ I mumbled back. The little I could see of his face managed to look both confused and pissed-off (perhaps he was a fellow resting thespian, given the range of emotions at his fingertips), so I signed for the proffered package and sent him on his way.

  Bulky parcel, I thought, scripts, by the feel of it. Perhaps my agent had finally pulled her finger out of her bottom (or someone else’s) and got me some work for a change – or should that be for some small change.

  You’ll have to pardon the fact that I didn’t get terribly excited at the prospect, but I knew what kind of work it was likely to be. I’d probably flick through four hundred pages of script to find one line highlighted.

  The crowd murmurs excitedly/angrily/happily (Delete as appropriate) or The crowd laughs, cheers, then moves forward hungrily, menacingly as Tess knocks a coconut from the shy, or, if the Gods are truly smiling, there might even be a speaking part – 16th peasant: Please sir, we are but poor men…

  Amazing how often that one crops up; the seventeenth-, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century equivalent of Can I interest you in a Big Issue, sir, madam?

  I dropped the parcel onto the kitchen table, opting for a bit of deferred gratification. Time for such fripperies later, I kidded myself. Or rather I didn’t.

  In the meantime, I

  made some tea and found there was no milk;

  made some toast and found there was no margarine;

  consumed both on the toilet and then found there was no toilet roll;

  washed myself, and the crockery, in the bathroom sink (yes of course I changed the water in between, what kind of animal do you think I am?) and retreated once more into the kitchen.

  I looked at the parcel and then the clock.

  Then I thought Bollocks, still six hours to ‘Countdown’.

  And I opened it.

  My first response was to laugh. This had to be a joke, and one in fairly poor taste.

  What I’d removed, thinking it was some weirdly formatted script, was in fact a bundle of cash.

  Lots and lots of cash.

  I stared at it, thinking that someone went to a lot of trouble to photocopy this, cut it up and bundle it into an envelope. Not to mention sending it ove
r by courier. But the problem was it looked quite real.

  Very real.

  Big fat healthy bundles of English fifty-pound notes wallowing on the table.

  It had to be a send-up. I emptied out the rest of the contents of the envelope, looking for some kind of explanatory note, but there was only a very large handgun of some description, some bullets, and a map.

  I say “only”, but for some strange reason the sight of these objects caused me to leap from my chair and run out into the garden holding onto my pants like a four-year-old who desperately needs to pee. I became aware of the fact that I was running around in very small circles and hyperventilating. Then I also became aware of an old lady with one of those Zimmer-frame-cum-shopping-trolley things watching me concernedly from the road.

  ‘Alright?’ I said. ‘I...er...I’m alright. Just burned my hand. On the gun—no! On the toaster.’

  She watched for a moment longer and then wandered on her way, muttering something about bloody nutters, wasn’t like that in her day, people had the manners to be mad in their own bloody houses. Or something. Perhaps I was just a bit stressed and projecting.

  Worried at who else might be watching, I strode purposefully up toward the house, tripped, and fell flat on my face. Swearing my way rapidly through the Webster’s Concise Encyclopedia of Rude Sayings and Expletives, I looked down to see what I’d fallen over.

  It was a number two.

  By this I do not mean to suggest that Mr Poodle Molester had been remiss in his poop-collecting duties; it was an actual number two. The actual number two from our front door. The actual number two, which I had heard falling off during my door-slamming extravaganza earlier in the day.

  I looked at the front door. The number six was still there but not the two. My brain clunked and heaved and suddenly everything fell into place as rapidly as I had hit the front path.

  Are you No. 6?

  Of course! Everything was all right with the world. See, I live on one of those weird new estates where there is only one street, and it winds back and forth quite randomly. At the end of the road are Nos. 2 and 4, then there is an unmarked cul-de-sac containing all the houses between No. 4 and our own house, No. 26.

  So the gun and the money were obviously not intended for me but for whichever homicidal maniac lived at No. 6.

  Phew! Maybe I could just pop round there and say I bet you’ve been waiting for this! Do let me know if you need any extra bullets won’t you? No, no problem, happens all the time. Bye!

  Bugger.

  I crept back into the house, half expecting a gunman to have crawled out of the envelope to join his gun, just waiting to blow me out of my unemployed (sorry, resting) socks. Or at least hoping that it might all have disappeared and been a figment of my overheated imagination. But everything was still there, exactly as I’d left it.

  Shite.

  I gingerly picked up the envelope and read the address. Yup. No. 6. No name, surprise, surprise. No name for the courier company either and I was buggered if I could remember any kind of logo on the rider.

  I looked at the pile of money again and the words police, The Bill, bills, mortgage, Anna, lie, violent death, lots of cash, naughty boy, hide, run away, organized crime, very violent death and cup of tea flashed through my head with dizzying speed.

  Cup of tea sifted itself to the top of the pile and I picked up one of the fifty-pound notes and popped round the shop to buy some milk.

  Now, if you think stealing a huge wedge of cash, or contemplating using a handgun in order to somehow earn it, are sinful forms of behaviour, you should try buying a bottle of milk at your local corner shop with a fifty-pound note first thing in the morning. Talk about criminal.

  After every person in the shop and every member of their extended families had scratched, sniffed and squinted at it, the guy behind the counter eventually gave me my change in pound coins and fifty pence pieces, all the while telling me I’d cleared him out of coinage for the day.

  I was still fuming (and limping, from the weight of coins in my left trouser pocket) when I got home, and briefly flirted with the idea of taking the gun out and shooting the shopkeeper, to give him something to really moan about. But there are enough shopkeeper martyrs out there already without making things worse. So I made a cup of tea and sat down, trying to decide what to do.

  Nothing came to me immediately, so after my third cup of tea I decided to count the money. That took a little while, what with all the change from the corner shop, but it eventually came out at fifty thousand pounds.

  Less sixty-four pence for the milk.

  A lot of money for a bottle of milk, sixty-four pence.

  And fifty thousand pounds? Even more money.

  But not my money.

  Whose money?

  Didn’t know.

  Did they know about me?

  Probably not.

  As far as anyone knew at that point the money has been delivered, so the only person with a problem was the guy at No. 6.

  At present, I also lived in a house that had No. 6 on the door.

  Ten minutes later, having fixed the number two back onto my door (see, I’d already started learning to cover my tracks) I was back at the table looking at the map.

  It took a bit of searching through my old atlas to find that it was a map of the Yucatan Peninsula, with a cross drawn on it, apparently in the middle of nowhere. The nearest town of any size is a place called Tizimin, or something. Doesn’t ring any bells? No, didn’t for me either.

  I looked at the money again. All forty-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine pounds and thirty-six pence of it.

  An awful lot of money.

  Why couldn’t it be my money?

  Because it belonged to someone else.

  Well, whose was it?

  Possession being nine-tenths of the law and all that.

  Presumably it belonged, until quite recently, to some Mexican group, hence the map.

  Could they know about me?

  Almost certainly not.

  If they questioned the courier, would he tell them he brought it here?

  Possibly.

  Could be, he’d just say he definitely delivered the package to number six.

  What if they brought him round here and he pointed out the house? Would they believe me if I said What? What package? Be off with you, you varmints, we’ve had no packages here!

  Or maybe, Please sir, we are but poor men…

  I thought not.

  I started to rationalize (which is always the top of the slippery slope for me) that maybe I should have a look at whoever lives at No. 6 before I decided anything. It wasn’t far away and the gardens weren’t too difficult to get into, so maybe a peek through a window or two wouldn’t hurt. Best to wait until nightfall though.

  See? See how easy it is to fall into criminal ways of thinking? Or maybe I’m just too skilled in the dramatic arts. A human chameleon who takes on roles like other people slip into their underpants.

  I’m ashamed to say that it is only at his point in my thinking that the police seriously entered into my considerations, and only then because the thought of breaking and entering and getting caught became a possibility.

  ‘Should I go to the police?’ I thought out loud, frightening myself by talking louder than I’d intended.

  I decided to pass the time until darkness by making a list.

  Point one: Would the police believe my story about the package being wrongly delivered? Or did having a gun and fifty thousand pounds in used notes in the house look just a little suspicious? Would they take me for a sad, dangerous lunatic? I could count on many of my friends to corroborate this, not to mention Mr Poodleman and Ms Zimmerlady, among many others.

  Point two: Would they take me seriously at all? Especially if Mr No. 6 plausibly denied any involvement,
which led me to—

  Point three: Would drawing attention to myself only make me an obvious target for revenge with whoever the money used to belong to i.e. the Faceless, Unidentified, Nameless, Yucatan Group for the Execution of Terror (or the FUNYGETs, for short)?

  Point four: Would I have to pay back the sixty-four pence that I spent on milk? (That’s the kind of petty thing that really puts my back up when you try to play the Good Samaritan – it’s always us honest types that end up worse off than the villains.)

  Point five: What if the police are involved, or are being monitored in some way by the FUNYGETs?

  Point six: I’d really, really, really like to keep this money, and I know that whatever happens the police will take it off me if I give them the faintest inkling that it is here.

  Okay, so I decided wrong.

  So sue me.

  I decided to have a look at Mr No. 6 and see if I could figure out what he was up to. I decided to put the money somewhere safe until I decided what to do. And I decided I didn’t dare tell Anna an effing thing, until I’d decided on the proper course of action.

  As the scat singer might have said, Bad idea, bad idea, oooh bad idea.

  Scene Two

  Oops, I did it Again

  Wednesday May 5th. Early.

  At least my tongue feels better.

  I’ve been driving for a couple of hours now, mulling it all over, without paying much attention to where I’ve been going. Bad idea. I’m a fugitive now and must start paying attention to the little things – like keeping myself alive long enough to exact a hideous revenge and live a life of luxury with my ill-gotten gains.

  Besides, this is how accidents happen – and as if to prove the point, I now find myself approaching Birmingham.

  The still, pre-dawn darkness, combined with the cold and my proximity to Birmingham, depresses me. Never in my life have I felt so humiliated by my own actions, so hunted, so lacking in hope for any kind of worthwhile future. And this from a man who has worked in youth theatre.

  I briefly toy with the idea of spending the rest of my life driving around the stringy bit of phlegm that is Spaghetti Junction, stopping only occasionally for petrol and chilled pasties made from chicken lips and pigs’ bums. No one would ever find me here. And if they did they wouldn’t care. I’d have been punished enough. My latest acquisition, my newest passenger, stares at me balefully from the back seat.