Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Ricky stumbles drunkenly along the pavement, which is too narrow to contain his swaying movement; every few steps he crashes into the hedge or trips out onto the road. A Mercedes with its headlights on full beam sounds it horn as he careers into its path. As the car swerves past him, he spins around, intending to present his middle finger to its disappearing tail lights. He immediately falls over, and ends up flat on his back. He has managed the finger, though, and lies there for a little while, insulting the sky. A solitary star twinkles through a gap in the thinning clouds. ‘Fuck off, star,’ he says.

He drags himself back onto his feet and stands there for a moment, trying to remember where he is going. ‘Ah,’ he says, suddenly, ‘the Reccy.’ Then he tries to remember why he is going there, but this is beyond him. Shrugging theatrically, he continues to stagger up Dunnis Road.

Earlier this evening he went to see his son, Jacob, the fruit of his failed marriage. He met Ruth, Jacob’s mother, in the White Swan, on a Friday night in midsummer. She was on a work colleague’s hen night. That night, when he saw her for the first time, he thought she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. Now he thinks she is a shallow bitch. At rare, quiet times, he is thankful that he has no feelings for her now. At least there is that.

It was agreed, when the divorce was settled, that he could spend every other weekend with Jacob. Last weekend was Ricky’s weekend; he had stayed practically sober and taken him fishing at Carr’s Brook, on the outskirts of the town. Jacob soon caught a small perch – beginner’s luck – but the stupid fish had swallowed the hook and Ricky couldn’t get it out. He stripped a slender piece of twig off a nearby tree and tried to work the hook out with that, but it was too far in, practically in the fish’s stomach. The perch began to gag, and blood came. With one eye on his son’s anxious face, Ricky cut the line and released the fish back into the water. It neither floated nor sank, but drifted listlessly away, until the current found it and swept it downstream.

‘It’s just a bit stressed by being out of the water for so long,’ Ricky said. ‘It’ll be fine.’ 

Jacob just looked out at the water.

‘In a day or so, the skin will shrivel around the hook, and it’ll release itself,’ said Ricky.

‘I want to go home now,’ said Jacob.

Ricky arrives at the recreation ground and sits down on one of the
four benches next to the play area. He gazes through the darkness at the silhouettes of the two sets of swings, the roundabout, the climbing frame, and the tall metal slide. Except for the spongy rubber matting that now lies beneath the swings and the climbing frame, things are just as they were when he himself was young.

As a child, Ricky spent many hours here, initially under his mother’s anxious supervision, and later, with the freedom of age, playing with his friends. When they outgrew the play equipment he and his friends turned to football. Regular meetings were organised on Saturday afternoons, when Ricky and his team would take on the boys from the estate. The boys from the estate were a mixed, but efficient, bunch – a combination of unhoned aggression and indisputable skill. One of them, Pete Frazer, went on to play for Derby County and was destined for the big time until a car accident took his legs from under him. Everyone in the town felt the shock of it, but those boys that had played against him on those weekend afternoons felt it most. Ricky still feels it now. 

The clouds have dissipated, an almost full moon is peering down, and the polished aluminium of the slide is reflecting its light. It looks like a huge, surreal, silver spoon. Ricky decides that in a moment, when the clouds in his head have also parted, he will climb up that silver spoon, the wrong way. He will hoist himself up, hanging on to the safety rails on either side, like he did when he was younger.

He shouldn’t have gone to see Jacob today, on this, Ruth’s, weekend. It hadn’t been his intention, it just happened.

He had gone to The Alma for a quick lunchtime drink, and had stayed in there until half past six. The Alma was stuck in some kind of time warp, and, despite the fact that the nearest ocean was a hundred miles away, it retained the fishermen’s theme that it had had since the sixties, when his mother used to work behind the bar. An enormous rope net was draped along one wall, dusty oil lamps were perched up on corner shelves, a lifebuoy took pride of place on the back wall, the words “The Alma” fading, but visible, on its surface. Grainy paintings of galleons and whaling boats hung in every available space. All the fishing references made Ricky think of the week before, the perch that had swallowed the hook, his son’s refusal to swallow his lie about the fish surviving its ordeal.

Ricky talked with the other punters, with Julie the barmaid, about the weather, about football, about the man from the chip shop being arrested and nobody knowing what for. Soon enough the conversation turned to the shoe factory shutting down.

‘You work there, don’t you?’ said Julie.

‘Not for much longer,’ said Ricky. ‘Four weeks.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Find something else.’

‘Not around here, you won’t.’

‘Jesus,’ said Ricky, ‘I thought you barmaids were supposed to cheer us punters up. I thought that was your job.’

‘Sorry.’

Ricky smiled, bitterly. ‘Don’t worry about it. Just get us another pint of the same, eh?’

As Julie crossed to the other side of the bar to get his beer, Ricky’s smile faded. He couldn’t stop thinking about Jacob and the dead fish. He kept seeing the look on Jacob’s face – that look of quiet disbelief, of disappointment and acceptance. Things were wrong, and Ricky wanted to make them right again. He decided to go and visit his son. After he’d finished this next pint.

It was a twenty-minute bus journey but it seemed much longer. The afternoon’s drinking had caught up with him and the dull motion of the bus made him want to heave. As he gazed listlessly out of the window, seeing the houses giving way to open fields, then the fields giving way to houses again, he realised that he didn’t know what he was going to say, what he was going to do, when he arrived at the house. He wondered if Ruth’s new husband would be there, and hoped he wouldn’t. Then it occurred to him that Jacob might not be there. There might, even, be no one there at all.

He lurched off the bus, walked a short way down the street, and caught his reflection in a chemist’s window. Stopping to take a closer look, he noticed a large stain on the front of his shirt. He gathered the fabric up to his nose and sniffed. He imagined the pleasure that Ruth would take in silently, but deliberately, noticing the stain. She could affect one of those tight, mocking little smiles that she seemed to specialise in these days, perhaps throwing a knowing glance at Husband Number Two. He zipped up his fleece, bringing the two halves of the collar together around his neck, covering the stain.

When Ruth opened the door her initial reaction was one of surprise, quickly succeeded by something else, when she realised Ricky was drunk. Husband Number Two’s voice came from further inside the house. ‘Who is it?’ he called.

‘No one,’ she said.

Ricky looked at Ruth for a moment, concentrating on not swaying too much, then he said, ‘I want to see Jacob.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he’s my son.’

‘Don’t mess me about, Ricky, you know what I mean. It’s not your weekend.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘What do you mean, it doesn’t matter? It matters to me.’

‘Well, Jacob will want to see me, so what’s the problem?’

‘The problem, as we’ve discussed before, is that we have an
arrangement, an arrangement that works. For all of us.’

‘Not for me.’

‘That’s only because you’re drunk, Ricky.’

‘I am not drunk!’ said Ricky, more loudly than he intended.

Husband Number Two’s face appeared over Ruth’s shoulder.    

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘it’s you. What do you want?’

‘I’ve come to see Jacob.’

‘It’s not your –’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ said Ricky, ‘don’t you start. I’m his father.’

 ‘Not this weekend.’

 ‘What did you just say?’

‘You heard.’

Ricky looked straight into Husband Number Two’s hardened eyes. Then his gaze lowered, and he took in the crisp, clean look of his freshly ironed shirt. He was suddenly aware of the stain on his own shirt, hidden beneath his jacket. He could feel it on his skin, like a tattoo.

‘I think you should go,’ said Ruth.

‘Not until he explains what he means,’ said Ricky. ‘What?’

‘Didn’t you hear him? He said I’m not Jacob’s father this weekend.’

‘That’s not what he meant.’

‘I’m Jacob’s father all the time,’ said Ricky. ‘Every second of the day. That’s why I’m here.’ His voice started to get louder. ‘Don’t you see? I’m his father and I want to see my son and you can’t stop me. You can’t do it!’

He looked pleadingly into his ex-wife’s face and for the briefest of
moments he thought he caught a glimmer of understanding. But all she said was, ‘You must go now, Ricky.’

And he turned on his heels, and went.

    He climbs the silver spoon, but there’s no joy in it. The metal is so
cold that the palms of his hands stick to it if he doesn’t keep them moving. So he keeps them moving, and his legs too; he shuffles up on his knees, the soles of his trainers push on the sides of the gully. He slips frequently, but makes gradual progress until he is able to reach up to the bars at the top. Then he hoists himself up and squats on the icy platform. He is higher now than the hedge that surrounds the field, and the lights of the town glimmer in the distance. There are so many lives in this small town.
    He thinks about all those lives, and then he thinks about his own. Hethinks about Ruth, the only girl he ever loved. He thinks about Jacob, tucked away behind plush curtains, hearing his father’s pleas and choosing not to come out. He thinks about the lads from the factory, all of them looking for a job, friendships dissolving into competition. He thinks about Pete Frazer’s useless legs, dreams coming to nothing. He thinks about the dying perch, carried so easily away. It occurs to him that if he were to unbuckle his belt right now and hang himself from these frozen gallows, he would barely be missed.