Deadfolk by Charlie Williams

has.’
    ‘Oh aye? Nice one, Legsy. I knowed I could rely on you.’
    He sparked another one up. ‘I reckons you oughta stand up to the fuckers.’
    I played it over in my head a couple of times before replying, just to be sure he’d said what I thought he’d said. ‘You what?’
    ‘Face up to em. Only thing a bully understands, that is. Soon as they sees you ain’t a soft touch they’ll leave you alone. Ain’t worth their bother doin’ nuthin’ else.’
    I scratched the back of my neck and took a long swig. ‘Well, ta, Legs.’
    ‘S’all right.’ His hand were already reaching for the remote. ‘Any time. Can’t help out a mate, who can you help? S’what I says.’
    We watched summat for a bit, then I says, ‘Only I reckons it ain’t as simple as all that.’
    ‘What ain’t?’
    ‘Me standing up to the Muntons.’
    ‘Why ain’t it? Worst you can get is a beatin’. Had one o’ them before, ain’t you?’
    ‘Like I says, ain’t that simple.’
    ‘Why the fuck not?’
    ‘Cos I…’ I swirled the beer around in the can, searching for the right words. But I knew in my heart there were only one way of putting it. ‘Cos I lost me bottle. Thass why.’
    Legs looked at us. I couldn’t meet his eye. I were ashamed to, and were glad the light were low and he couldn’t see us turning beetroot. But all the same I had a feeling a little smirk were hovering round his lips. ‘You?’ he says. ‘Royston Blake, head doorman of Hoppers? Lost yer fuckin’ bottle?’ He made a farting noise as if to rubbish such a barmy idea. But then the smell reached us and I realised it were a real one.
    ‘Fuckin’ hell, Legs,’ I says, wafting it away.
    ‘Aye, soz. Pies, ennit.’
    ‘I ain’t joshin’ around here. I lost me bottle. Simple as that.’
    There were a bit of silence. Weren’t the silence that a couple of mates can sit in and not worry about talking. More a silence filled with turmoil and fart gas. Then Legs stood up. He walked over to the window and looked out of it. There weren’t much to see out that window during daylight. Couple of brick walls and a few chimneys, some pigeons if you was lucky. And at night there were even less of a view. But he looked out anyhow. ‘You ain’t lost yer bottle,’ he says. ‘You just been lettin’ it all get to you.’
    I thought about that. I knew it were wrong. I’d lost me bottle, plain and simple. But I thought about his words anyhow. Letting it all get to us he’d said. Maybe that were part of it.
    He stepped back away from the window and started walking the room, hands behind back, fag in gob. When he spoke again it were in that voice of his that you had no choice but to listen to. ‘You know, with some men, their reputations is all they’s got. Proud men. Men of honour. Them’s the sort always been bred in Mangel. In the old days, leastways. And when someone takes that reputation away from em…well, like takin’ their life away, ennit?’
    He passed the fag from one hand to the other to drive his point home. Then he walked around a bit more, thinking out his next bit.
    ‘Now you can set us straight if I’m wrong on this, but I reckons you’re a man o’ that sort, Blake. Man o’ reputation.’
    I stared into space for a moment. Man of reputation. I hadn’t thought of meself in such terms for a long while. Sounded about right, mind.
    ‘And now you’re hurtin’, cos that reputation o’ yours has taken a few knocks. When it goes down, you goes down. And them Muntons goes up. That the way iss gonna be, Blake? Happy about you goin’ down and them up, is you?’
    It took us a while before I noticed I were shaking my head. And then I shook it harder. ‘No it fuckin’ ain’t.’
    ‘What you gonna do about it then?’
    ‘Dunno.’ I put tin to teeth and chugged. It were empty. I lit a fag instead. But no matter how hard I puffed, it just didn’t do the same job as lager. ‘Bit of a mess, ennit?’
    ‘Not such a mess as you can’t fix it.