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FICTION
doughboy
corned beef sandwich friendly kid: poppy friendly
kid: rude friendly kid: horror friendly
kid: mark
how to be successful with the
ladies
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FRIENDLY KID...
 Horror
Here we are on April 6th 2006 and I’m on my way back to England to sort out my youngest son. The problem with him, the problem with the other three, is they don’t know who I am. Their bones are full of my Horrorshow marrow and it does them no kind of good. They need special care. They have been brought up to be good and they’re not good at it. They want to be bad and they’re terrible. They fail at badness like they fail at boring and ordinary. They’re the sort of kids that get caught shoplifting things they don’t need, they can’t sell, that shopkeepers’d give them if they only bothered to ask. Dogfood, clothes pegs, last year’s diaries.
They’re adults now but I still think of them as kids. I’m a man in my fifties, the oldest is thirty-whatever, I’ve kept out of their way all their lives. And it hasn’t done them any harm. It hasn’t done them good to have no father but how bad would they be if they had me infecting them with my wrong ideas.
These days I try and keep away from my own brain, run my bar in Pattaya, chitter-chatter with the solo blokes, smile and dance with the little ladies. I try not to do any deep thinking or come up with any big ideas. Keep it simple, take it day to day, don’t do arguing and cause no aggravation. Everyone’s happy at The Scarlet Woman. All the ladies have red hair and all the gentlemen have a smile on their face.
But there I am at Bangkok airport, having to leave it all behind. In the departure lounge with a selection of moody perfumes in the carrier at my feet, looking the part of the businessman in my handmade woollen suit. A letter in my pocket telling me what a rotter my youngest son Mark has turned out to be. He’s got his name down to do a job that he could not possibly do. Working for people that are not going to look kindly on his failure and in the meantime he is causing bother for the rest of his siblings and half-relatives. Throwing his weight around like a fat kid at nursery school. He thinks he knows it all, but but he hasn’t learnt anything. Inside his head he’s clever, in the world he’s extremely stupid.
So Horatio Horowitz is slumped on a row of metal chairs in the departure lounge of Bangkok airport, half trying to sleep, half watching tv with no sound, half not wanting to think about anything, half a head full of ideas about what I’m gonna have to do. Suffering from the latest poor-excuse flight delay.
The goggle box broadcasting the news like a loop of sad memories. Dark haired women fleeing from a disaster. They’ve been bombed because they’re terrorists or terrorists have bombed them for reasons they don’t understand. Or it’s an earthquake, volcano, plane crash. America at war. Women in headscarves who you have to guess are going to be Muslim, who might be Jewish, South Americans, refugees from Dubrovnik. There’s no men, just suntanned women with children, running and crying from broken buildings. I’m waiting for sport but it doesn’t look like sport is important enough today.
The letter in my pocket tells me words about how a white van is going to drive into the centre of the city, where my children all live, on April 13th at 6 a.m. It tells me how one of my children is going to be driving it. How five hours later, at peak shopping time, how the white van will be parked outside Marks and Spencer. People walking past, a traffic warden giving it a ticket, buskers, tramps, shoplifters and ladies with red hair. That’ll be when the city gets itself onto the worldwide news loop.
longer extract available in pdf form->
Download PDF… coming soon...
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