Folk'd Read online

  A distinct air of medical professionalism descended on proceedings.

  “Yes, Doctor?”

  "Dim the lights."

  The dimmer switch was rotated. Another flake of white paint broke loose from the knob and floated gently to the carpet. Danny pretended not to see it.

  "Lights dimmed."

  “Teddy bear?”

  “Teddy bear.”

  Gar-gah was inserted. He had been a hippo at some point in the distant past. Eight months of parts of him being industriously chewed and showered in lakes of baby drool meant Gar-gah now looked like Jeff Goldblum did about fifteen minutes from the end of The Fly.

  “Rattle?”

  “Rattle.”

  They waited a few moments. The happy squeals and babbling continued unabated, and actually increased in volume.

  “Doctor, he’s going hyper…”

  Danny wiped his brow dramatically. “The mobile, dammit! The mobile! Now!”

  Ellie wound it up.

  "Clear!"

  Jungle animals suspended eighteen inches above Luke began to rotate slowly. The strains of Brahms lullaby creaked out. Danny and Ellie sat in the dimly lit room, two silhouettes on the end of the bed. Luke's gaze went from the animals to them, to the animals, to them...

  The lullaby wound down. Luke’s gurgles and burbles wound up and were joined midway through by a distinct waaaaa!, precursor to the full-on wail that would follow.

  “Again, dammit! Hit him again!” Danny said.

  As she reached over to re-wind the mobile’s clockwork, Ellie looked at him with what could charitably be described as a quizzical expression.

  “I’m banning you from watching any more hospital dramas,” she said matter-of-factly.

  Moments later, they watched in hardly-daring-to-breathe triumph as little eyes drooped… opened…drooped…and finally closed.

  Ellie and Danny breathed a simultaneous sigh of relief. Danny slipped an object into the pocket of his bed shorts and then, gingerly, making no sudden movements lest they disturb a creaky floorboard or other such hitherto unknown hazard, they got into bed. Kissing ensued.

  “Oh I almost forgot,” Ellie said, breaking away from Danny. “We got another notice today from the Risra…”

  “The Risra?”

  “The Regent Street Residents Association. R-S-R-A,” she explained, with infinite patience.

  “Oh. How foolish do I feel not getting that,” Danny rolled his eyes. “So what do the Risra want this time? Death squads? Sniper turret? Probably a robot operated one with a targeting computer programmed to shoot to kill anyone wearing Burberry or who's under the age of sixty. I told you we were the only young people in this street, didn’t I?”

  “Ach don’t start.”

  Danny sat up in bed, not a trace of a smile on his face. “It’s true. This place is like the Antiques Roadshow sponsored by Ho Chi Minh.”

  “Anyway…apparently the couple at number 42 had their back windows broken. And the really old pair at the end house…”

  “Davros and the Fat Controller?”

  “…their windows are out too. Eight houses in the last fortnight,” Ellie paused, curiosity having settled upon her lovely features like snow, “which one’s which?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Davros and the fat controller. Which is which?”

  Danny looked at her incredulously. “Which one of them’s in the wheelchair?” he said.

  “Wee Agnes, of course. She gets some speed up in that thing. I seen her chasin after the postman last month and I swear she overtook a kid on a bike.”

  “Right,” Danny said. He looked at Ellie. The curious expression had not abated. “And…” he said, prompting everso gently, “…that doesn’t give you a clue?”

  “Should it?”

  “D’you even know who Davros is?”

  Ellie, sensing there was an ammonia-like whiff of piss-taking in the air, immediately retracted her arms and legs back into her defensive shell. “The magician…?” she said, cautiously.

  Danny’s mouth moved silently for a second or two, as if decoding something. A facial tic was all that betrayed the fact he was having to keep a lid on a huge laugh. “Davros,” he said, slowly and painstakingly, “megalomaniacal creator of the Daleks. Not Bobby Davro, creator of a second-rate impersonation of Victor Meldrew.”

  Ellie didn’t miss a beat. “Oh right,” she shrugged. “So who’s the Fat Controller?”

  “Agnes’ husband, obviously!” Danny exploded. “Fuck me, by the process of elimination he fuckin’ well has to be doesn’t he?! Who else would it be! The fuckin’ cat?!”

  “Well I guessed that!” Ellie snapped back. “I mean who is the Fat Controller!”

  This was too much. “The fuckin fat cunt off Thomas the Tank Engine, name of fuck! You have caused confusion and delay!”

  “Well sorry! Only askin!”

  “No that’s what he says!” Danny said, genuinely beginning to believe he was going to spend the rest of his life having this argument.

  Silence descended. Ellie stared at the ceiling as Danny went over the last few minutes of conversation in his mind as if checking for himself that, yes, they were real. He forced himself to calm down slightly, and rather than asking the question he really wanted to ask which was ‘if you didn’t know who either of the two characters were why in the name of CHRIST did it matter who was who?’, he instead searched his memory for how they’d gotten sidetracked in the first place.

  “I’ve told you and I’ll tell them,” he offered, “it’s that fucking alleyway. Some group of wee hoods must have a key to one of the gates and they’re goin in there at night to fuck about. And no, before you say it, it’s not rats.”

  “It is rats,” she replied evenly. There was a distinctive smidge of sulk in her voice.

  “Ah fer fucks sake Ellie. Where do we live? Chernobyl? How d'you explain the broken windows then? Constructing some sort of rudimentary catapult are they?”

  “Well, you can tell that to the next meeting of the Risra!”

  “My hole!” Danny spluttered. “I’m not goin anywhere near them geriatrics! Especially Chairwoman Mystic fuckin’ Meg herself. Jesus. You know she gives me the willies. When Satan was a wee boy he probably had his Da check under the bed in case she was under there.”

  Ellie dissolved into laughter. Danny tried not to glory in it and then gave in and gloried to his heart's content. Making Ellie laugh was how he'd won her in the first place, after all. She'd been well out of his league back then.

  She still is.

  Luke stirred and moaned softly in his sleep, causing Ellie to quickly muffle her mirth. She affected a mask of disapproval and poked Danny in the shoulder, causing him to simulate a wounded expression in reprisal.

  “Ach now c’mon. Just cos you don’t like her cat. Wee Bee’s a lovely woman. She was asking to do my tea leaves the other day when she saw me in the Spar.”

  “She was asking to do yer what? What’d you tell her?” Danny asked. The thought repulsed him, far more than it had any real right to.

  Ellie shrugged. "I says aye, why not. Sure it might be a laugh."

  Danny rolled his eyes. "Gettin’ your tea leaves read? A laugh? Serious? What part of the physics degree did they teach that in? Idiot Particles 101?"

  Ellie's good humour vanished. Her eyes flashed. And just like that, Danny knew, instantly, he'd made a mistake.

  "I didn't mean you were an..."

  "Well we'll never know, will we."

  He should have left it there. He didn't. "It's not my fault you didn't finish it," he said. "I didn't finish my degree either, in case you didn't fuckin’ notice. I had to get that wanker of a job. There's not a lot of applications out there that say we'll let ya in with half a degree."

  Ellie looked away, her jaw jutting out. He thought of it as her anti-smile; just as the smile melted him, this expression never failed to irk him.

  "You had to get that job?” she said. “You
didn't have to do anything."

  "Yeah? Well you didn't have to get fuckin’ pregnant, did ye?"

  As soon as the words were out he wanted to pluck them from the air, crumple them into a ball, burn them, bury the ashes and salt the earth on which they lay. Ellie didn't even react, which told him how bad it was. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck, why did it always come down to this?

  The silence was all-encompassing. He found himself willing Luke to wake up, to fill the air with comfortingly familiar stressful noises, to put them both into the autopilot of parental routine into which he might be able to slip an olive branch. But his son was flat out and snoring gently, and nothing would wake him, and the silence just kept on stretching.

  Why should you apologise?

  He could see the argument stretching out in front of him. You should have used something. So should you. Well we didn't, so there's point in crying about it. Oh, so you want to cry? So it's a bad thing? No, it's not a fuckin’ bad thing, but don't blame me for you not finishing your degree and I'll not blame you for me doing the same. Oh that's real fuckin’ decent of you, thanks so much for that, what a brilliant basis for a relationship. On and on and on, the same old dance, the same words.

  And then she'd drop the nuke.

  Why are you here? For me? For him? Or because you're too scared to be called a bastard for not being here?

  All of that lay before him. And so Danny Morrigan, descended from the bloodline of ancient gods, protector of Ireland, destined to combat the forces of evil, said nothing and lay down and stared at the fucking wall.

  The words came to him, unbidden, as they always did at times like this.

  And I’m glad I did.

  Her hand dropped on his shoulder some time later. His foot curled backward to rest against her leg. They fell asleep like that.

  ***

  Light crept back into the forests of the world, illuminating Belfast street by street, dog turd by dog turd. In a house in Regent Street, in a bedroom smelling faintly of words unspoken and night-vintage baby wee, an alarm clock displayed 6:29am.

  The bedroom was still and silent. All three occupants dozed peacefully, Luke with a heroically sized puddle of baby drool beside his pudgy little cheeks. Gar-gah was clutched in a deathgrip headlock. The once-a-hippo's eyes pleaded silently for a quick death that would never come.

  6:30am. No alarm sounded. A very low noise, however, as if a pneumatic drill had been switched on several streets away, began to rumble. Danny’s face twitched. As the low noise continued, his nose wrinkled. His eyes struggled open. He grunted in alarm and roused Ellie, who greeted the world with the grace of a bluejay bursting into song.

  "Wha?” she huffed. “Whadayawan?”

  Danny's eyes were wild and sleep-drunk. “Somethin’ got me! Somethin’s in bed! Eatin’ me!”

  This seemed to blow away the cobwebs on his beloved. “It's your phone."

  After much uncoordinated rummaging beneath the covers, Danny succeeded in fishing out his mobile phone, vibrating like crazy. He looked at it in much the same way as his baby son might have examined a nuclear fission reactor instruction manual written in Mandarin.

  Ellie rolled over. "Dickhead," he heard her mutter.

  He stabbed buttons until this angry buzzy thing stopped being angry. Memories swam back to him, including his name, the name and purpose of objects and concepts associated with them. The Equation of Life assembled itself in his mind. It went something like phone = alarm = work = money = existence = ???

  And last night. Oh yes, he remembered last night alright.

  Danny struggled out of bed, eyes open only as slits. He staggered towards the wardrobe. Compared to the general shittiness of the rest of the room, it was fairly impressive - one of those tall double-tiered jobs with a large double-door compartment below a smaller one. His clothes hung very clearly and very visibly indeed on the handle of the upper compartment.

  Danny failed to see this. He opened the lower doors…they pushed the clothes hanging from the upper door handles out…the hangars fell off the handle-

  A shirt, tie, and pair of trousers fell on his head with a clatter...whump.

  “Find your clothes?” Ellie’s voice came from the depths of the mattress.

  Luckily, Danny’s reply was muffled.

  A short time later, a washed dressed and combed Danny poked his head back into the bedroom. Luke was having one of his rare sleep-ins, and he expected to find Ellie still turned resolutely away from him. She wasn't. She was sitting up in bed, and she was looking directly at him. He found this confounding of his expectations to be a little unfair.

  He sat on the bed and met her eyes. "I'm sorry about last night."

  She nodded. Didn't say anything else, just nodded. "Don't forget about tonight."

  He blinked. "Tonight...?”

  “Dinner with my Mum and Dad?”

  “Oh,” said Danny in the Leaden Tones Of Doom, “God, I nearly forgot. Well…today at work can’t fly in quickly enough to get me back here for that.”

  It was a risky approach. But while the Baby-Making Incident and its associated topics and sub-topics were strictly off-limits when it came to Big Conversations, and indeed Tomfoolery, her parents were safe targets. She smiled and he felt that big bag of tension unloosen itself from around his shoulders somewhat.

  “Mmm. I’ll bet. C’mere.”

  Danny moved to her. They kissed. As always, her lips tasted of purple.

  "I promise, it’ll go fine. It'll be fun.”

  “Mmm. I’ll bet,” he replied.

  She snuggled back under the covers. He was envious in a way, but he knew that a ticking timebomb of feeds and changes and bottle-making lay in the cot beside them. He leant inside the cot and brushed as substantial a kiss as he dared across his son's cheek, knowing that if he stirred the little boy from slumber he'd leave for work via the unusual route of through the upstairs window, courtesy of the deceptively slight girl lying in bed.

  Pulling the front door gently shut behind him, Danny heard the snib clack into the locked position. He glanced up the street. Maybe it wasn't about the tea leaves. Maybe it was about finding some company during the daylight hours from someone who had bladder control.

  Davros and the Fat Controller walked past his gate. He tipped his head. They gave him A Look.

  If that is what she's after, we're living in the wrong street.

  ***

  Danny walked through desk after desk of PC-fixated people, headpieces attached to each one of them like some insanely successful alien symbiote invader. Fingers chattered busily across keyboards. Voices droned. You never knew what a background hum was, not really, not down to the very depths of your soul, until you worked in a call centre. Danny had always flashed it as brown in colour, which was apt in several ways.

  A huge banner set up across the office emblazoned a reminder, as if anyone needed it, that there were only [2] DAYS TO GO LIVE!!! And as if that weren’t de-motivational enough, below it in a heavily-researched and statistics-show-it’s-perceived-as-a-”fun” font, they’d added GAME FACES ON, PEOPLE!!!