Game gone wrong

GAME GONE WRONG                         

By Richard Banks

It should have been the best booze-up ever and on the Friday before the wedding we were determined to give John a send-off that, alcohol permitting, he would remember for the rest of his life.

         There were four of us, the Fab Four we called ourselves. Before that it had been the Three Musketeers, then Paul joined us at Salfleet Comprehensive, halfway through the second year. As no one knew much about the Musketeers our transition to the Fab Four was definitely an improvement, especially as we already had a John, and Joey’s second name was George. All we needed was a Ringo but short of me changing my name by deed poll there was no way that was going to happen; nevertheless, I did the next best thing and acquired a signet ring from Ratner's that cost me most of the cash I earned from my Saturday job at Woolworths.

         As mates went, we were the best, the closest, and nothing and no one was going to come between us. Did we believe that after the break-up of the Beatles? Probably not. By then we had left school and were a year or two into our first jobs. We were still pretty naive but the reality was beginning to take root; if Yoko Ono could tear apart the greatest rock band in history it was only a matter of time before some other Yoko did the same to us.

         Cynthia Parker was the first to try. To give her her due she was a better-looking bird than Yoko but when she suggested to Joey that they go to the cinema one Saturday instead of to the football he at last, came to his senses and brought a season ticket. After Cynthia there was Debby whose attraction disappeared the day she covered her long legs with a maxi skirt and Paul’s attention shifted to a face he didn’t much like. Then there was Rose who smelled of Woodbines and Bridget whose mad brother threatened to duff up John for some indiscretion committed in the back row of the Rialto. By the time temptation came to me I was well warned and when Sonya made me buy her a vodka and Pernod in the august surroundings of the country club I cut my losses and abandoned her mid-date for the public bar of the Nags Head.

         Having repelled the initial onslaught we closed ranks and dedicated our lives to football and the excessive consumption of alcohol. While we did not explicitly exclude women from our midst only those who passed the six-pint test and supported the Rovers had any chance with us. But of course, there is always someone who won’t abide by the rules and on a fateful day in April when the Rovers were relegated to Division Four, our very own Yoko arrived in the person of Tamsin.

         Having set her sights on John – who else – she took advantage of his despair by convincing him that a better life was to be had in the town’s shopping mall and the Arts Club coffee bar. When he was seen in the High Street wearing a cravat we knew he was lost forever and that nothing short of an exorcism was going to bring him back to us. Three months later he was engaged and six after that an envelope dropped through my letterbox containing an invitation to the wedding. In truth I was surprised to be sent one but when I met up with Joey and Paul and found that they also had been invited we resolved, as previously stated, to give John a stag night second to none.

         Tamsin was bound to try and stop us but when we put it to John he needed little persuading. Indeed in his confused, besotted state of mind, the stag night took on a significance almost equal to that of the wedding, a rite of passage comparable to the condemned prisoner’s last meal. Quite what he said about this to Tamsin I don’t know. What she said to him was audible to everyone within a half-mile radius and John was dismissed from her presence with an ultimatum that it was either her or us. As John wasn’t planning on marrying any of us he couldn’t quite see what the problem was but on surmising that it might have something to do with Tamsin’s aversion to pubs, beer and drunkenness he reopened negotiations by promising to drink no more than six pints and to be in his bed by half-past eleven. When Tamsin added the proviso that her brother Crispin come along, a deal was struck that gave the go-ahead for both stag do and wedding.

        

         So, we make a plan and on the night itself the four of us, plus Crispin, meet up at the Nags and commence operations with a pint of bitter and a whisky chaser. Crispin pulls out a notebook and when we ask him what he’s up to he says that he’s counting John’s drinks which he says are two and that he’s only allowed another four. This we tell him is not so because John’s agreement with Tamsin only refers to pints so therefore spirits don’t count. This he says isn’t fair but next round we lace the half-pint he’s drinking with a double Grappa and his conception of fair is lost in a confusion of brain that defeats his ability to stay upright. We leave him face down on the sawdust floor of the Nags and move on to the George when the stripper-gram we ordered arrives in the character of Little Bo Beep who having previously lost her sheep compounds her misfortune by losing her crook and everything she is wearing. The landlady’s none too amused and tells us to leave, which we were going to do anyway, so we pile into Paul’s car and drive out to the Wheatsheaf which is in the country and keeps open to three or four in the morning. When we tell John this he reminds us, somewhat pathetically, that he’s supposed to be home by 11.30 and we assure him that by 11.30 the next morning he will be.

         At 4am we stagger out and John thanks us for the best night out he’s ever had, but it’s not over yet and halfway back to town we stop the car, strip him down to his boxers and leave him to walk the four miles back to town. However, we’re only kidding so half a mile on we pull over to the side of the road and wait for him to catch up. When he doesn’t, we drive back. We find him lying face down, battered lifeless by the car that hit him.

         It isn’t our fault we tell ourselves but Tamsin doesn’t see it that way. To her, we are as guilty as the hit and run driver that scythed him down. Other people think the same, and deep down so do we. Paul takes it worse than any of us and a month later his body is found at the bottom of a cliff only a hundred yards from where John died. It was no accident, but the Coroner takes pity on John’s mother and returns the open verdict that triggers payment of the assurance policy she took out on him when he first started school.

         The stupid, sunshine days of our youth had turned tonight. We were cursed. When Joey stumbled off a crowded platform in front of an incoming train it was clear that I would be the next to die. It’s fate. There’s nothing to be done but seek the absolution that only one person can provide.

         And so it was that I went unannounced to Tamsin’s flat to say sorry and throw myself on her mercy. I feared she would slam the door in my face but she allows me in and lets me rattle on with my wild talk of fate and punishment. And as I talk her face reveals the emotion welling up inside. There is, she snaps, no such thing as fate, only the helping hands of those who see what must be done and make it happen. Her hands, not fate had pushed Paul and Joey to their deaths; her hands had sent them to a place she hoped was hell.

         She gets up from the settee where she had been sitting and walks resolutely to the kitchen. I should be running but by the time she returns I am no more than on my feet and turning for the door. I didn’t see the knife that sliced me, that sent me crashing to my knees but as I reach out for the handle the door opens as if my thoughts had made it happen. A woman screams, a man roars and a blow is struck that sends Tamsin thudding to the floor. I am safe; saved by the arrival of Tamsin’s flatmate and her boyfriend.

         But life can never be the same. My body heals, but fear still rules, and so does guilt. Familiar sights and faces only make it worse. I cut and run to a job and lodgings far from home and the asylum where Tamsin still plots my death. Her life, like mine, is a game gone wrong, no length of time will make it right.

Copyright Richard Banks