What is it with buying new notebooks? I see one that I like and end up putting it on the growing pile of unused ones, and I tell myself that one day I will put down all my thoughts and ideas until it is full, and resist the urge to start a new one. But it will never happen because there is something therapeutic about starting a new notebook. Those seductive pages that urge you to write something brilliant, but never actually get around to it.
A crowded city bar. Night.
ALEX, a tall dark guy, drinks beer and sits opposite MARK, who is absorbed with his mobile phone. MARK drinks from a bottle of vodka.
*****
ALEX: Why are you always on your phone whenever we go out together?
MARK: It is because you make me drink too much and I get drunk.
ALEX: That doesn’t explain why you ignore me.
MARK: That is not technically true.
ALEX: But you are on your phone now and the only reason that you’re talking to me is because I’ve asked you a question.
MARK: Was I ignoring you earlier in the evening?
ALEX: No, you were good fun then. But now it seems that I’m boring you.
MARK: That was before it got dark.
ALEX: You’re not making any sense.
MARK: It is simple. I spend days in the sun thinking about what to write and getting nowhere. The moon rises over the horizon and I become evil and inspirational. A few minutes is all it takes.
ALEX: I don’t understand.
MARK: I’m a writer who writes best at night.
ALEX: Then spare me the embarrassment of sitting in silence.
MARK: You are an extremely important part of the process, but you don’t realise that.
ALEX: What are you writing on your phone?
MARK: Something amazing.
ALEX: Would you care to show me?
MARK: No, I can’t do that. I need time to rewrite and edit it, and I can only do that in the daytime. Otherwise, people will think I’m a bad writer.
ALEX: I give up.
MARK: Keep talking. I’m listening. I call my notes the Penis Monologues but somebody already used that title.
ALEX: Penis Monologues?
MARK: My phone is full of notes. Observations. Conversations. Ideas. I turn them into something wonderful. Right now I have a menace energy that comes when I drink vodka by itself. I get so drunk and the craziest thoughts bounce between my ears and then I write brilliant things… over and over again. Vodka is my best friend.
ALEX: Where do I come into it?
MARK: This conversation. It might end up in a book, a short story, or maybe an entry in my secret diary. I don’t ignore you, because you are an important part of the Penis Monologues.
I woke up in the middle of the night and the light boy was dancing around my bed. He comes often. No name. No face. A swirl of sparkly lights that moves from one side to the other. The electric boy blue who wants to be loved.
Jaymz had been missing for weeks. One minute he was there, and the next he wasn’t. People hadn’t noticed, at least not to start with, but after a couple of days the void was unavoidable. It was then that people began to speculate.
Emily, with her spotty face, was the first to realise, because she was secretly in love with him, and thought that he might have taken up with a girl. Bradley, the boy who claimed to have the biggest dick, claimed that Jaymz had been arrested. Then there was sweet and innocent Olivia, who worried that he might be lying injured in a hospital bed. Dav, which was short for Davion, pulled himself away from his iPhone, and said that Jaymz was dead in a ditch. Conor reckoned that he was delirious with pneumonia. I didn’t say anything.
It was a credit to Jaymz that people came up with such outlandish reasons for his disappearance.
The last time anybody saw him was on a freezing cold Wednesday night. He climbed the railings beside the Lagon and stared at the twinkly lights on the other side. Then he turned around and told us about the time he jumped fully clothed into the blackness of the river. There hadn’t been a reason to do so but had seemed like a good thing to do.
We got into the back of Conor’s old Bedford Dormobile and drove up to Belfast Castle with spectacular views over the city. We sat on a wall drinking cheap cider until it started to snow, and Conor worried that the camper van might not make it back down the winding slope. Jaymz laughed and said that anything would get to the bottom of the hill in snow. It might not get down in one piece, but it would certainly get there.
The snow got heavier and while Bradley and Dav made snowballs, we huddled in the cold. Emily told Jaymz that she loved the way he spelt his name, which was exactly what he wanted to hear. That’s me, cool by nature, he’d swaggered, forgetting that he’d once told me that his granda had chosen the name after an obscure disco singer. Emily, with her black greasy hair and spots, almost wet her knickers because Jaymz had spoken to her.
Jaymz was plastered, but always able to make everyone else seem drunker than he was. A casual observer might not notice the difference between the extrovert and the booze fighter, but at times like this he could be unpredictable. Like the time he was drunk and climbed a tall oak tree to swing from its branches before jumping twenty feet to the ground. He should have broken a leg or something, but he didn’t. And when he scaled tall scaffolding on Agincourt Avenue and hung upside down by the legs, he might easily have slipped to his death. But nothing bad ever happened to him.
Despite his background, Jaymz was an enigma, larger than life, happy, and oozing confidence. He was never one for words, had little knowledge about anything, but what he lacked from his pitiful upbringing, he made up with composure that gave him film star appeal. There were plenty who said it was arrogance, and the police hated him for it, but it wasn’t hard to see why we adored him, and as you’ve probably guessed, worshipped the ground that he walked on.
But on that chilly night, he did something quite extraordinary. To our astonishment, he took off all his clothes and stood bollock naked. There were no inhibitions, the embarrassment was ours, and then he slowly fell backwards into the snow, and stared at the sky. He turned milky white, whiter than the snow around him, goose pimples on his arms and legs, and shivered uncontrollably. With a defiant look on his face, Jaymz said nothing at all.
We laughed and cheered, not at him, because whatever he did was okay with us. And then, after laying in the snow for ten minutes, he stood up like he was rising from the dead, his body dripping wet. Bradley, who now had every right to claim the world’s biggest dick, collected Jaymz’ sodden clothes and helped him dress. Jaymz didn’t say a word, but smirked, and looked like he’d fallen into a trance. Maybe he did catch pneumonia that night, because after he slipped away into the darkness, none of us had seen him since.
Days turned into weeks and when Jaymz didn’t appear, Dav and Olivia went to his house at Cliftonville to find him. Dav looked worried when he reported back. His parents hadn’t seen Jaymz either, or weren’t the least bit concerned about his disappearance. The old man had swigged from a can of beer and cussed Jaymz for not looking after his XL Bully. His mother had shrugged her shoulders and carried on watching The Chase, something lost on Dav because she wasn’t the brightest, and he believed that Jaymz’ level of thickness came from her.
I remembered a note that Jaymz once wrote and was shocked to see that the scrawl belonged to that of a small child. “The soul has beem givem its owm ears to hear thigs the mimd does not umderstamd.”
His slip into obscurity wasn’t surprising to me. There were clues on social media that the others hadn’t noticed. While their own accounts contained dozens of photos of Jaymz and his misdemeanours, they failed to realise that he posted very little himself. His Facebook page only contained a couple of images. There was nothing on Instagram, X, or Tik Tok, and for somebody as extroverted as Jaymz this was strange.
I picked up on this anomaly during the summer and spent weeks looking for reasons why this might be. That was how I was. If I saw something that intrigued me then I’d go to great lengths to find out more. It was an obsession that made me think that I might have a form of OCD.
At first, I tried to find out whether Jaymz had secret accounts, but that got me nowhere. Then I set up fake accounts in case he was blocking people that knew him. I suspected that he’d cottoned on to my sleuthing because for a while he seemed overly friendly, as if he was testing me, but I put that down to my paranoia.
With no success, I started following Jaymz like a stalker. Except that I didn’t see myself as one. He had no idea, and it wasn’t my intention to make him feel uncomfortable. If I had, then Jaymz would have punched me hard in the face.
Whenever Jaymz said that he was going home, I made excuses and said that I was going home too. With this pretence I would walk in the opposite direction and double back after him. The first few times I lost him, and this was because he wasn’t going home at all. I discovered this after almost bumping into him as he walked back into the city.
He sloped along Wellington Place before disappearing in the streets. It was always the same story. I followed him several times, but he gave me the slip.
Sometimes I asked questions to find out what it was that he wasn’t telling us, and hoped that he might let something slip, but he never did. He would laugh and give the same cretinous responses. What do you want to know? I like Fontaines D.C. I have a tattoo on my arse. I once shagged a donkey. I piss the bed when I’m drunk. I’m a Catholic bastard. Haha! Always a joke.
This consuming passion stopped when I realised that I had become his stalker after all. What had I been hoping to achieve? If there was a hidden side to him then maybe it was because I had created it.
After that night, Jaymz never reappeared and melted away with the snow. Emily often talked about him and couldn’t bear the thought of not seeing him again. Conor told her to forget him. He’d shown everyone that he had a small dick and had always been a waste. She looked like she might cry.
Life was dull, as if a light had been switched off, but nobody reported him missing. Not his parents. Not his older brother who was in prison. Not his big sister with ten screaming kids. I thought about him occasionally, believing that if I did, then he would think about us too. But whether he thought about us or not, it didn’t matter, because nothing happened, he had gone.
Dav repeated his comment about Jaymz being dead in a ditch, and I thought it might be true. There were those who didn’t like his cockiness, a need to be centre of attention, and he might have rubbed them up the wrong way. Especially the kids around the Waterworks who weren’t afraid to inflict the severest form of punishment. Every time they pulled a body from the Lagon I waited to see if it was Jaymz, but it never was.
Eventually, we decided that Dav was right, that Jaymz was dead, and chose to remember him as we did that night, naked in the snow, never growing old. And then, in years to come, with bad eyes, poor hearing, and stumbling with walking sticks, we’d still be able to laugh about him.
The grey gloom of a rainy afternoon and the empty alleyway is depressing. Only the yellowish headlamp of an ancient Vespa ridden by Salvo the old greengrocer suggests that colour exists in monochrome surroundings. He drives through puddles and looks at us suspiciously.
Marco stands on the step and stares at nothing, because there is nothing there, but his face suggests something different.
“What do you see?”
“What do YOU see?” he challenges. I shrug my shoulders.
“I see sunshine and shadows,” he says. “The heat of a lazy afternoon. Tables and chairs. Miniature olive trees in pots. Young men and women sitting and talking.” He moves his gaze to the crumbling stucco wall. “There is a woman wearing sunglasses who holds a pen in her right hand with a notebook in front of her. There is something in the bag at her feet that holds a dark secret. But she doesn’t want to tell me anything. I want to tell her that from where I stand she is now dead.”
“What else can you see?” I ask.
“The woman opposite her, an old lady now, is reading the Memoirs of Jacques Casanova. The men wear sports jackets and baggy trousers and talk amongst themselves about football and fast cars – Alfa Romeos and Lancias – and the women they want to flirt with.
“Salvo the greengrocer is a young man, and he leans back on his chair, a Corriere della Sera sticking out of his pocket, and he is talking to a slender woman with long black hair and stiletto heels. She is ignoring him because she senses something but doesn’t know what it is.”
“Who is she?”
“This is your great grandmother and she is looking towards where you stand, but you are invisible to her because you haven’t been born. But she is troubled because something lies in wait that will cause distress to her family. She doesn’t know it yet, but your great grandfather, who sits before her, a philosopher amongst friends, with a violent temper, will kill the man he is talking to. Just like you did, Nido – her great grandson. It is the curse of your family. The curse of the Lombardos.”
“People will look and see nothing. I will be an insignificant black and white photograph. But there will be a day when somebody sees me and is wonderstruck. They will want to know who that smirking boy with sleek black hair and Jewish nose was. I care not who that person might be, or what their motivation is, but I will know, my spirit will burst forth, and I will offer a skeletal hand in gratitude. That person will know that I cared nothing about wealth and good fortune, and that I only ever wanted to follow my dreams. They will find out if I succeeded, and be able to differentiate between the truth and the lies that might have been written.”
Roger Wolfe Kahn (1907-1962), American jazz and popular musician, composer, bandleader and aviator. Sometimes I am captivated by a photograph and must find out more. I would like to think that the skeletal hand of gratitude was being offered… but, alas, this is a work of fiction.
Felix came into the room at the same time as the music switched from Jacques Brel to an obscure eighties disco beat. He turned his nose up and the eyes showed disapproval behind round spectacles. His father cut the music, passed me a generous glass of brandy, and slumped down on the sofa. Our conversation would have to wait for another time. Felix sat in the leather armchair by the fireplace and opened the book that he’d been carrying. It was Hilaire Belloc’s The Path to Rome, published in 1902, and further deepened the mystery of this young man. There was an uncomfortable silence, and the crackle of flames intensified the moment. Felix had purposely interrupted. I studied his face in the half light and watched this strangely handsome boy frowning and mouthing words of the sentence that he was making a pretence of reading. Aware that we were staring, he sighed and closed the book. “Did you know that I am being groomed by algorithms? Spotify has created a playlist for me called 30s Vintage Hollywood Wednesday Late Night.”
Harry Oldham is writing a novel based on his criminal and sordid past. To do so, he has returned to live at Park Hill, where he grew up, and the place that he once left behind. That was then and this is now, in which the old world collides with the new. (Parts 1 to 16 are available to read in the menu)
Part 17
September 1983
The room is dark, and men are lurking in every corner. A spotlight clicks on, and we are blinded by light. The focus is on us, naked and vulnerable, and those hungry eyes that think we are the most beautiful boys in the world. Music starts. David Grant’s ‘Watching You, Watching Me.’ The track has become our signature tune, and we know when to start dancing together. Our bodies touch and we feel every part of each other. Swirling, swaying, dipping, gliding, grinding, twisting. “I’ve been watching you, watching me. I’ve been liking your baby liking me.” The men know that this is the appetiser. Soon, floppy boys will become hard boys and do unthinkable things to one another. I look at Paolo, and for the first time I see that he is enjoying it. He sticks his tongue inside my mouth, and I know that it isn’t an act anymore. “I’ve been watching you, watching me. I’ve been liking your baby liking me.” I imagine Andy and Jack are sitting with the men, disgusted with us… no, only me… and when I get outside, they will beat the shit out of me. “But I’ll tell them, “I earn fifty quid, and men adore me, and I get to do it with someone who loves me.”
*****
There was a moment last night when everything seemed… well, perfectly hard and glamorous. It was when things were going so well that you didn’t expect it to come crashing down. But that’s exactly what happened. The music was so loud that I hadn’t heard the splintering wood. I hadn’t noticed the shadows who spilled into the room. And I was drunk enough not to realise that there was danger. The music cut and there were shouts of protest. Paolo froze. Then the lights came on to reveal the chaos. The men who lurked in corners were handcuffed and dragged out by police officers. Amidst all this, we were naked. I grabbed Paolo and quickly pulled him through another door. “I thought you’d both exit stage left,” said Frank Smith who stood in the next room. He threw a couple of blankets at us. “Cover yourselves up sluts, there’s a car waiting outside.”
*****
My first thought in the back of that unmarked Ford Escort was the money that I would lose. Two hundred quid a month on top of my dole money meant that I was never without. Nobody questioned my newfound wealth. New clothes, beer money, and cash to spare. Then I worried about the hellish time that lay ahead. The copper in front didn’t say anything. We drove along Ecclesall Road and took a turn into a side street, where he parked outside the one house that still had a downstairs light on. He opened the door and gestured for us to follow. The door opened and a dumpy woman looked on in amusement as we walked barefoot into the hallway. The copper disappeared and she closed the door. “Go through to the kitchen lads.” She wouldn’t have looked out of place on Park Hill, but spoke kindly, and her house was nicely decorated. We sat at the table with only blankets covering our modesty. “Do you want anything to eat? A cup of tea?” We shook our heads. “Well, I suggest you both take a shower, and I’ll show you where you can sleep. I’ll fix you some clothes for the morning.” This was the first time that we met June, but it wouldn’t be the last.
******
“At least you were spared the disgusting final act.” Neither of us had slept and were grateful when June brought us mugs of hot tea in the morning. She’d prepared a fry up, and now sat listening as Frank Smith paced up and down with a cigarette. “I told you to be patient, but with the names you gave us, and the fact that we had a spy in the camp, we’ve got enough to take these buggers down.” I was tired and jittery. “What’s going to happen to us?” “Nothing. I need you for the next part of the plan. I told you that we’re pitching bad guys against each other, and as far as the others are concerned, we’ve busted their rivals. The thing is, they think that they’ve got coppers on their side… but that’s not how it’s going to play out. They’ll be keen to get hold of you, and I’m not exactly going to stand in their way.” Paolo looked worried. “Will we have to go to court?” “Nah, that would ruin everything. I’ve got ways of keeping you out of it. I need you to go home as if nothing happened and wait for them to get in touch. When they do, play hard ball, demand more money because you’ve got a reputation now.” Frank laughed. “I think you’ve enjoyed yourselves, so why not make good money at the same time. And Harry, one good turn deserves another. We’re dropping the robbery charges against your mates. I didn’t trust that cow in the shop anyway, she’s got a record longer than your arm, and I’ve told Billy Mason that if anything happens to any of you, I’ll be coming down on him. The trouble is, I can’t trust him.”
When we left June’s house, she gave us both a peck on the cheek. “Take care boys. Frank can be a bastard, but he’s got your best interests at heart.” I wasn’t convinced. “It’s going to mean promotion for him, and then he’ll fuck us off.” She smiled. “I’ve known him a long time, and he’s brought a lot of kids through this door. He’s explained everything. You’re both very brave and I know what you’re doing seems wrong but think of all the kids that you’ll be saving in the future.” Paolo whispered in her ear. “I’m scared.” She patted his curly hair. “Don’t be afraid to come around anytime you want.”
A cobbled square with pigeons. A fountain casts shadows in the sunlight and there are shuttered buildings, silent in the heat of the afternoon. A boy in black trousers and a clean white shirt plays the violin in the shade of an archway. I think that these moments are incredibly beautiful. A car drives noisily into the piazza and stops. Mint green with a red stripe. I relax because a killer won’t be seen in a Fiat Cinquecento. The engine stops, and calm is restored. The boy plays something sorrowful as though he knows what comes next. The driver’s window slides down. A .22 revolver, black, shiny, and pointing at me. Bang! Bang! Bang! Blackness. But I can still hear the violinist – Corelli – Violin Sonata in D minor, Opus 5 – No. 12 La Folia.
I open an eye and see a light bulb on the ceiling. I open the other and see that the ceiling is dirty yellow. I can hear people talking. “He was supposed to die,” somebody says. “He probably will,” says another, “but we shall do our best.” I know that they are referring to me, and I’m frightened because I’m not dead, and that would have been the better option. My chest hurts, and so does my leg. I’m in excruciating pain but nobody seems to care. Perhaps they think I am a lost cause.
The door opens and a man with blue eyes stands over me. He shows concern but when he sees that I am conscious he relaxes. “He is still alive.” I try to tell him that I might be better off dead, but I can barely raise a whisper and the man doesn’t understand. I’m tired and must sleep, but I can hear someone singing. Raffaella Cara appears at my feet. “Rumore, Rumore.” She laughs and I try to give a thumbs up, but more blackness descends.
When I wake, there are three people in the room.
To the right of the bed is Mateo Pincerna, who wears a dark suit and sunglasses. “Rest,” he says, “I swear that I will get whoever did this to you.” I want to tell him that I’m exhausted, and that the killings have achieved nothing. We will always be at war, and I want to walk away from it. I also want to tell him that he is looking old and frail. My throat is bone dry and I say nothing.
I see mama sitting at the end of the bed, and I want to crawl into her lap like I did when I was a small boy. She would stroke my hair and tell me stories and I remember liking ‘The man who only came out at night’. Mama is dead, and she is weeping like the day that papa got killed in Scampia. She reaches out and says a prayer, and I want to confess that I’m lost to the church.
Pasolini is to my left. “I know what it is like to die a horrible death,” he says. “But you must not die because I need you to tell everyone that they got it wrong. They would not give me Salò back, and that was why I was killed.” He looks like he did in photographs, but in the fog, I realise he must be over one hundred years old. “He knows the truth!” he shouts, pointing accusingly at Mateo Pincerna who cannot see or hear him. “You must tell the truth!”
The door opens, and the child whose face I never wanted to see again, is holding the hand of his grandfather. The boy is four and has the face of an angel. His grandfather whispers something and the boy looks at me. I know what the old man has said. “This is the man who shot you. This is the man who murdered you.” I need to apologise and say that it was a mistake, but I cannot speak. The shot was intended for Federico but I aimed badly and killed the small boy instead. Mama clutches her rosary beads that I thought were in a small box at the bottom of my wardrobe. Pasolini shakes his head in disbelief.
“Who are you looking at?” Mateo Pincerna asks. His eyes search the room but there is nobody there. “You are delirious,” he says.
This should not have happened. I never wanted to be a bad person but needed to feel that I belonged. I’ve committed crimes that I wasn’t destined to commit. And now, in these last moments, I wish I’d stayed with my books and music and been like mama wanted me to be. But it is too late now.
It is getting dark, and my eyes heavier, but I try to keep them open because I know that when I close them, it will mean it is the end.
“I am here,” says a young man, who stands behind mama and gently puts his hand on her shoulder. “I have come for your son.” Mama looks up at him and her face softens. “What is your name?” “I am Michele,” he says. “God bless you,” mama gasps. “I am grateful that you are so understanding.” I try to tell Michele that he is handsome and that I’m sorry he died young, but he holds up a hand and stops me. “It is time to go.”
I shut my eyes and the pain subsides. I hear Mateo Pincerna splutter something. “An eye for an eye.” I submit, and sink deep into the mattress, but something happens… there is light, the brightest light I’ve ever seen, and Michele holds my hand, one that belongs to an assassin, and he speaks beautifully. “Come with me,” he says, “Your mama and papa are waiting.”
Perfectly Hard and Glamorous 