"Blakey on Tour - Part 12"

(An ongoing story. Part one here)

'I'll grant you a tab but there's an upper limit of five pound, which you've now reached. You wants further service from this here bar, you pays cash.'

I'd been in the Paul Pry a while now, maybe ten minutes. Once upon a time I'd have told you all about going in that place and breaking the ice with Nathan the barman and what other punters is in there and all that other shite, but I can't be arsed. Nathan ain't worth the breath, in my opinion. And neither is the Paul Pry, which were getting to be a dump lately. For starters, it smelt of earth. And I don't mean earth as in the planet, I mean the stuff you gets in the ground when you digs it. Far as knowed, the planet just smelt of manure, and this weren't that. Then there was the new rules.

'I've reached me limit?' I says, necking half of the pint he'd just put afore us. 'This is only me fuckin' second. How can I reach a five fuckin' quid limit after two fuckin' pints?'

'Mind yer language,' says Nathan, 'ladies being—'

'Fuck my fuckin' language – I'm talkin' about human fuckin' rights here. How much is a pint? And I don't see no ladies, by the fucking way.'

'Don't mean they ain't present. One pint o' lager comes to two pound.'

'Two fuckin'...? For fuck sake, Nathe, no wonder you got no ladies in here. No wonder you got no decent punters at all down here.'

I looked around at what punters there was. You had old Mr Fillery, Gromer (the miserable cunt from the offy down Cutler Road), Margaret Hurge (who were looking a bit like a bloke these days and easily mistaken to be one, I thought) and some cunt I didn't recognise, although he didn't look no more decent than the ones I already mentioned. I didn't see Alvin nowhere. He'd be in the bogs, like as not, hiding from us. I'd go for a piss in a minute and give him the slap he had coming.

'You're free to go elsewhere,' says Nathan. 'Far as I knows, we're still the most reasonable place in town fer lager. And we're second on peanuts, after the Volley.'

I weren't harking him now. I were doing some sums, counting me fingers and finding there to be ten of em including the fat ones on the end. But I don't think that's what I were meant to be adding up.

'Four pound is your answer,' says Nathan, polishing a tankard. 'Two pints cometh to four pound, leaving you with one pound. I can do you a half, if you must.'

'I ain't drinkin' halves.'

'Thass your prerogative.'

'I don't give a toss what you calls it, I just ain't drinkin' em. They'm fuckin' tiny.' I rummaged in me pocket, finding the two quid bonus from Jock and putting on the bartop. 'Right,' I says, fixing Nathan with a look that told he were dealing with a different breed of businessman here, 'how much can I get now?'

'One and half.'

'Fuck sake...' I looked at me fingers again, but I didn't have no half ones so there were no point. 'Alright,' I says, draining me drink, 'giz one and half pints o' lager. But I wants it in the one glass, right?'

Nathan matched my stare for a few seconds, then reached under the bartop and pulled out an unusually large glass. 'You never came in here to quibble on beer prices,' he says, filling her up. 'I'd wager you never even came in here in pursuit of Alvin, although that were your front. No, I reckon you had another thing on your mind when you broke yer exile after all these months and came back in my pub.'

He put the full glass before me. I picked it up and went to down it in one, but got stuck about two thirds down, for some reason. 'Fuck's you on about?' I says, my words chased out by a lot of burp gas.

'What I'm on about, Royston Blake, is that van you've parked in my car park up there. And the outsider inside it.'

I'd forgot about that. Nathan knowing every fucking thing that came to pass in the Mangel area, I mean. You might have gathered that it had been a while since I'd been down the Paul Pry, and things slip your mind when they ain't under your hooter every day. Especially things you don't want to think about, like Nathan and his ways. 'Aye, alright,' I says, draining the dregs, 'so I got a dead Scottish bloke up there and I'm lending his motor off him for the minute. So fuckin' what? No one's perfect, is they?'

'How'd you know he's dead?'

I shook me swede slow, like I were a schoolteacher and he were a young lad who didn't know the ways of the world yet, although he had a dense tash and very hairy arms. 'Nathe, I think I'd know, don't you? I mean, for fuck's—'

'The name's Nathan,' he says. 'And I'd encourage you to go up there and check his pulse, cos I do believe he's still tickin' over.'

'But how—?'

'Cos I can hear his heart beatin'.'

I scratched me swede.

'I find it deafening, Blakey. It's all I can hear just now, the thumpin' of that outsider's heart and the madness that propels it. It will bring chaos to this town, that man's heart will. He will worry at the roots of our tree until all the leaves dries up and falls off. He is the one of which they spake, Royston. One from outside will come into our midst and do all this, they said. And no one will be able to stop him, because he is invested with a power that none of us can equal. Only one man, perhaps. If the stars is lined up right, and the wind blows a direct west and the moon rises gibbous over the Deblin Hills, perhaps that man might be able to do summat. But there can be only one.'

It were odd, the next bit. It were like I fell akip and got dreaming, traipsing through a misty land and not recognising it, although I could see the hills over there in the distance where they was meant to be. But then I noticed that them hills was right next to us, and that they was miniature versions of the actual Deblin ones.

And then I looked down, and I saw.

It were Mangel, the whole town like it had always been, right down to the prison over here and them factories down there, and the River Clunge slicing through the middle of it all like a weeping blister. Plus you had new bits like the Porter Centre, which looked quite nice from the sky, I had to say. Cos I were a giant, weren't I? I were like that one in Gulliver's Travels, although I can't recall his name just now. But then it all disappeared, and I found meself in the car park behind the Paul Pry, not knowing how I'd got there. Fucking typical – the very moment you realises what's going on in a dream, and you're about to plant your massive boot down in the middle of town and crush hundreds of little bastards like ants, it all ends.

But I weren't empty-handed.

Or empty-sweded, I should say. I had summat up there that I hadn't had before, a bit of info that changed everything and made the future look rosy and exciting. It were from what Nathan had said, I think, but it had took my time up in the clouds to make it come clear. I opened the door of the burger van.

Jock were sat up, holding a rag to his forehead and smoking a fag. He did seem to be alive, just like Nathan had suggested. But he couldn't not be, could he? Not with the thing I'd found out about him.

'Jock,' I says, hardly able to keep the excitement of me face. 'I just found summat out, and it's—'

'Was this you, ye we cunt?' he says, holding the bloody rag out to me. 'Did youse cut mah heed?'

'Don't worry about your fuckin' cut,' I says. Cos he were immortal, weren't he? No amount of cuts to the heed could cark him.

There can be only one.

'I ain't hundred percent pos, right,' I says, 'but I'm pretty fuckin' sure you're the Highlander.'


(Come back tomorrow for more...)