Off Minor

One

He sat across the bar from Raymond, staring, daring him to walk over and say something: the youth who had stabbed him, the one with the knife.

Six weeks back it had been, Saturday night like this one, but colder, Raymond’s breath on the air as he turned down past the Royal, heading for the square. No reason to notice them then, no more than any others, four young men in shirt sleeves, nineteen or twenty, out on the town; white shirts and new ties bought that morning at River Island or Top Man, hands punched down into pockets of trousers that were dark and loose at the hip. Loud. Voices raised at girls who scuttled past and laughed, short skirts or shorts, rattle of high heels.

“Hey, you!”

“What?”

“You!”

“Yeh?”

Raymond had bumped into one of them, hardly that, shoulder no more than brushing his shirt as he swiveled past, close to the glass of Debenham’s window.

“Watch where you’re fucking going!”

“Okay, I didn’t …”

The four of them closing round him, no room for explanations.

“Look …” A gesture of pacification, Raymond raising both hands, palms outwards: a mistake.

The nearest one struck him, more a push than a punch, enough to drive him back against the cold flat of the glass; the jolt of fear across his eyes enough to draw them on.

“Bastard!”

All of them, then; punches he hardly felt, except that he was down on his knees and one of them, swaying back, kicked out his polished shoe, causing Raymond to cry out and that, of course, they loved. The four of them wanting some piece of him, a good kicking while the rest of the city veered round them, a few more pints, a few more laughs, the night not half over and everyone wanting some fun.

Raymond clung to a leg and hung on. A heel stomped down on his calf and he closed his teeth around the trousered thigh and bit hard.

“Jesus! You bastard!”

“Cunt!”

A hand grabbed at his shirt, hauling him onto the punch. A face wide with anger. Pain. Stumbling back towards the window, Raymond saw the blade, the knife. Then it was out of sight inside the pocket and they were gone, a cocky strut across the street which broke into a run.

Raymond was looking at the same face now, brown eyes, dark beginnings of a mustache; his attacker sitting at a table with three others, heads close together as a girl with purple bites and penned black hair struggled to finish her joke without cracking up. But the youth that Raymond had recognized was not really listening, knowing who Raymond was now, remembering; with a swagger he got to his feet and walked towards the counter, empty glass in hand. Ordering another pint of lager, Heineken draught, paying for it, waiting to receive his change, scarcely shifting his eyes the whole time from Raymond’s face. Smiling with those eyes now as he straightened, mouth set tight. Come on, you ponce, you shirtlifting piece of shit, what are you going to do about it?

What Raymond had done, that evening weeks before, was ease himself into a sitting position, leaning back against the window while people stepped over the spread of his legs, over or around. He was frightened at first to feel where the blow had landed, the soft flesh above his hip where the knife had cut. Unsteady on his feet, pausing every dozen paces, he had passed the circle of shrubs festooned with someone’s discarded knickers, mushy peas and pizza crust, containers from Kentucky Fried Chicken and Burger King, on past the toilets to the taxi rank at the bottom of the square.

“Queens,” he said, wincing as he eased himself into the seat.

“Which entrance?”

“Casualty.”

A conga line in fancy dress danced over the pedestrian crossing in front of them-Minnie Mouse, Maid Marian, Madonna-somebody’s hen night in raucous celebration.

When they arrived at the hospital the driver cursed Raymond for leaking blood on to his seat and tried to charge him double fare. The receptionist had to ask him to spell his name three times and each time Raymond spelled it differently because he wasn’t about to give her his real name, was he? They cleaned him up enough to apply a temporary dressing, gave him some paracetamol and sat him in a corridor to wait. After almost an hour, he got fed up hanging around, picked up another taxi on the upper level and went home.

The first few days, each time he went to the bathroom, he would prise back the plaster he’d used to keep the dressing down and check for any sign of infection, without really knowing what that might be. All he saw was a darkening scab, no more than an inch, inch and a half across, round it a bruise that was changing color even as it began to fade.

Raymond went back to work and, except when he stretched or lifted something heavy like a side of beef, came close to forgetting what had happened. Except for that face, fast against his when the blade sank home. Raymond wasn’t about to forget that-especially when it was no more than twenty feet away from him, like now, the youth sitting back with his friends, but still the eyes flicking back to Raymond every once in a while. What? You still here? All right. The last thing Raymond wanted him to think, that he was in any sense afraid. He made himself count to ten under his breath, set down his glass, one to ten again and stand, wait until the youth was looking right across at him and hold his gaze-there-then walk directly out of the bar as if he didn’t care about a thing.

Only once Raymond was out in the corridor, instead of turning left towards the street, he went the other way and ducked down the stairs towards the Gents; one man in there in a short-sleeved check shirt, arm extended against the wall, leaning forward to take a blissful piss. Raymond tried the first cubicle, no lock, let himself into the second and quickly slid the bolt across. He unzipped the front of his leather jacket-forty pounds at the stall close alongside the fish market and unlikely to be repeated-and reached into the inside pocket. The cross-hatch pattern of the Stanley knife handle was comforting against his fingers, the palm of his hand. The thumbnail with which he flicked up the blade had been bitten low, almost to the quick. Outside in the urinals someone was singing “Scotland the Brave”; next door somebody was trying to be sick. Raymond slid the blade deftly up and back, up and back. With the point he carved his initials into the wall below the cistern, finally altering the R into a B, the C into a D.

As the knife scored the paint, he thought of coming face to face with his attacker, somewhere crowded, or quiet, that didn’t matter: all that did was that when Raymond cut him, he knew who it was. “Raymond Cooke.” The way he would say it. No need to shout, the lightest of whispers. “Raymond Cooke. Remember?”

Back in the front bar, busier now, it was several moments before Raymond realized the youth had gone.