John

John by SJ Butler

The sea was green; then grey; quickly turning murky and there was England.

Six miles away, he could just make out the Liver Building and the high cranes of the docks as Liverpool loomed impressive, yet dirty and depressing. There were more gulls than when he’d left Dublin – bigger, better fed, he thought breathing in a new air which seemed thicker than it had back home.

‘Another poor soul looking for work?’ said the old man with the Kerry accent pulling on the strap of his tool bag in which a five-foot, orange spirit level poked precariously out like a sprung carrot from a muddy crop. ‘Salmon?’ asked the man offering him a cigarette, ‘it’s what the cockneys down south call them - salmon and trout: snout.’

‘Right,’ replied John taking it.

‘So, what is it: on the run or work?’

‘Finding my head.’

‘Oh, that,’ he laughed, ‘you’ll never find it over there,’ he said pointing towards what was known over there as the mainland.

‘Heading to London,’ John said changing the subject, ‘hoping to get some youth work.’

The man vacantly nodded his head making it obvious that a follow-up comment was hardly worth his while and that John was definitely heading to England for the wrong reasons.

‘A lot of money in block laying,’ the man announced after a minute’s reflection and then saying that he had to go and locate his ride – he quickly left.

John knew exactly why the man was in such a hurry as he walked off the ferry and onto the tarmac, where groups of mainly men, climbed aboard many of the assorted lorries slowly disembarking the boat. Every truck seemed taken. Spying a strip of discarded carboard, he quickly scooped it up and with urgency wrote London in large scathing capital letters and held it up to the last departing drivers.

Unlike his brother, sisters and cousins, he hadn’t gone travelling, had no interest in the whole Australia trekking thing or the New York, Boston bar work adventure, he just wanted to find himself and not travel too far to do it and London seemed the best option. His friends had said it was a freer society. On the downside, he had no real plan, only naively thinking that the drinking culture back home was surly worse than where he was headed. He’d be the first to admit that he was escaping just that, though he’d hardly turned over a new leaf having already downed two cans on the ferry.

‘You’ve an addictive personality,’ his best friend Kevin had said passing him a joint ‘and you should probably stay away from this shit too – especially over there where there’s more of it.’

In a reality which at the best of times was hazy he didn’t think for one moment that where he might be heading could be somehow detrimental to his overall wellbeing.

‘Hey! Jump in son – I’m heading south.’ Small, strong and wiry, the man waved him into the cab with urgency. ‘Come on I won’t hurt yer,’ he growled playfully.

Alex McFarland made it his business to inform John from the start that he was Scottish and not a Geordie, which he’d been mistaken for a few times too many. ‘Like you, I’m oppressed,’ he said with conviction when he realised he had an Irishman on board.

The ensuing Brit-bashing had become both boring and laborious by the time they hit the midlands. And there was something about Alex, not just his innate hatred and hopeless, misplaced nationalism, but a nastiness which he’d never come across before.

‘Here, take one of these,’ he insisted handing John a plastic medicine bottle. ‘Uppers: to keep you high and alive – all the truckers use them.’

‘No thanks – I’m trying to keep away from things,’ said John shaking his head.

‘Go on – take one!’ Alex insisted almost aggressively. ‘I won’t take no for an answer!’ he half joked.

The rest of the journey was a bit of a blur, in fact a dark insidious blank.

Snippets of conversation buzzed around his confused head. Many more uppers poured forth into his palm as Alex cackled like a hyena, demanding with more force and mad abandon that his passenger oblige and swallow.

‘God, you’re weak.’ A comment heard, but was it real at all?

Everything Alex uttered was horrible, but somehow jokily leading you to a paranoid sense of not being sure of where you stood in the company of a pill popping, heinous psycho.

Cold; scared; clutching his sleeping bag tight, surrounded by the contents of his rucksack strewn around him: socks; underpants; vests; items which had been neatly folded by his concerned mother before he left – now littering the wasteland in which he sat shivering, waiting for the dawn which was showing no signs of making an appearance fast. His empty wallet on his lap mocking him, he turned his cheek to the only light in the darkness: the moon, big, full, mad and bright.

He must have been there for hours as the sun eventually rose and the dawn chorus at last began. The wasteland was a near empty truck stop. Only a few trucks for company, their ghostly presence foreboding, making you feel that if you approached them they’d awake and hiss like serpents woken from slumber.

Packing his belongings, which surprisingly all seemed to be there, it was clear that Alex had only been interested in the hundred pounds his mother had given him.

‘You’re going to need it,’ she had lovingly insisted as he made an attempt to refuse and remain resolutely independent, a battle only a mother could win.

Thinking of her now he wanted to cry.

And then there was his open passport staring up at him where Alex had scrawled Weak across the photograph. Luckily it was only felt-tip and could easily be rubbed away.

Hearing the odd car and lorry trundle past he was relieved that the morning had at last decided to make an entrance. Spying a café in the distance, he’d picked up his rucksack and headed for the warm glow in the distance of the cold morning light. Pleased he’d stashed a tenner in his jeans he entered, the welcoming smell of frying bacon making him think of and wishing he was home. Ordering tea and a toasted bacon sandwich, he sat alone and forlorn by the steamed-up window as people now began to come and go, most of them ordering takeaways, but some sitting like himself, nursing teas and coffees as if they were creamy pints of Guinness up at the bar.

‘There you go, luv.’

He’d never heard a cockney accent in person before – only on TV. It was sing-song, accompanied by an honest warmth he couldn’t explain, but felt, nonetheless.

‘Can you tell me where I am?’ he asked.

‘Seriously?’ she laughed revealing the girl-like dimples around her mouth which danced merrily with the sound of her voice.

‘Yeah; I’ve no idea.’

‘You really don’t know – do you?’ she said this slowly and sympathetically.

He felt stupid as he dumbly shook his head, pulling a face to lighten the mood.

‘Watford – Watford Gap – nice, innit?’ she now joked, setting the glorious sandwich in front of him.

‘Is that near London?’

‘Not far, luv,’ she stated placing her hand on her hip and pushing it to one side, ‘don’t worry you’ll get there soon enough.’

‘You wouldn’t know anyone who’s going there, who’s, (he hesitated) who’s OK?’

Just then the door opened and a tall man in a long dark overcoat, wearing fingerless gloves, Doctor Martin boots, rolled up jeans and the widest of smiles walked in. He resembled a large, hooded crow. If you could see it at all, he had an aura of goodness – a soul which exuded human warmth and dignity; a big bird, you instantly felt safe in the company of.

‘Hey Chris!’ she called out. ‘This one needs a friendly hand.’

‘He’s Ok,’ she whispered cupping her hand, ‘he’s a good guy.’

‘I’m Chris – well, you probably already know that’ he said as he took off his coat, neatly folded it and sat down.

‘I’m John.’

‘Pleased to meet you, John.’

‘Do I know you?’ He had to asked because it had been bothering him since he’d walked in.

Chris didn’t answer at first. Slowly rolling a cigarette he tossed it in John’s direction who remarkably caught it considering all the drugs which were still circulating his body like the Circle Line at rush hour.

‘I heard you shouting in the desert,’ he said at last gesturing towards the truck stop.

‘Oh, that.’

A gap – a long one; not awkward, but welcome; a distant feeling of belonging, like they’d always known each other, they merely sat, comfortable in each other’s company.

Holding up the cigarette and briefly turning it between his fingers John smiled for the first time upon entering the country. ‘Salmon and trout,’ he said, which sounded strange when he said it.