inkbites authors: Peter Clayfield

DOG DAY DIMP: NOVEL

EXTRACT

At Fifty-two years of age Father John James had encountered more crises of faith than Don King had had bad hair days. And he was having another one of them now. As he knelt at the side of the bed he closed his eyes and murmurred: ‘Father forgive me for I know now what I do.’ He sighed lightly and concluded with a 'Pater et fillius, et spiritu sancti...amen', before heaving himself to his feet, pulling back the duvet - and slipping into the hot and ample arms of Agnes, his faithful housekeeper.

Several hours - and if not a Cardinal sin, then at least a Bishop sin - later, he opened his eyes to a gentle sunbeam that dripped through the slightly drawn curtains, slid across the darkened room and disappeared into the gaping mouth of a snoring Agnes.

'Forgive me father for I have sinned', he murmured devoutly, looking into the abyss.
Breakfast, as usual after his increasingly regular tumbles from grace, was a somewhat strained affair. Agnes, recognising his mea culpa mood kept her own council – apart from offering a muted ‘good morning’ as he slid into his seat at the breakfast table.

Later, and heavy with the guilt that always resulted from his capitulation to carnal cravings he stumbled through the day, his mind only partly in gear. There was a visit to Clayton Drop-In Centre where he halfheartedly discussed the setting up of a bingo session for local pensioners. He then called on a terminally ill parishioner to offer hollow words of comfort and in the early afternoon, he dropped in at the neighbouring St Annes, in Ancoats, where he went through the weekly ritual of tea and arrowroot biscuits with the borderline senile Father O'Malley. An apparently aimless conversation that covered - among the usual trips down an assortment of memory lanes - the rights and wrongs of contraception, Manchester City’s perennial plight, women Bishops in the Chuch of England and the efficacy (or lack of it) of Guinness brewed in England as opposed to its spiritual home in Ireland, finally concluded at four o’clock.

Ritual complete, he said his farewells and after mouthing the usual ‘see you next week’ at the vestry door, he climbed into his car, pulled the door shut, sighed heavily, started up the engine and pulled off.

He turned left onto Every Street with the intention of taking the second right onto Ashton New Road, but instead and almost of its own volition, his right hand pulled down on the steering wheel and the car slid into the first right, dipping down onto Russell Street and a little oasis of green. There, he braked, switched off the engine and climbed out.

This was the area where he had spent much of his childhood. He had passed it many times during the last couple of years as he had driven to and from his visits with Father O’Malley and, because his mind had usually been occupied with matters parochial, he had not given it much more than a fleeting thought or two. Today, a slowly blossoming bud of nostalgia, perhaps fuelled by the old priest’s innocent vocal meanderings, had begun to insinuate itself into the dark undergrowth of his troubled mind.

The area, bordered by Every Street on one side and the River Medlock on another, had once been a little bustling island of life. There were the two hundred-yard long three storey flats of Ledge Avenue and Star Avenue. There were Tetlow Street, cobbled Taunton Street and Taunton Street flats, Broxstead Street and Morris Road. There was Titley's Corner Shop and Barnett's Chip Shop where as a kid he used to queue for six pennoth of chips and a buttered barmcake for his dinner on his way home from St Anne’s boys school at just gone noon. There were three green-clad two-armed gas lampposts stiffly to attention, sentinels against the night and nighttime fears. There was Russell Street playground with its rickety swings and creaking roundabouts. And there was the cinder croft, legacy of a German bomb, where he and the other kids had stripped off coats or jerseys to use as goal posts and played football for hours on end until dusk descended about their sweating heads. And now? Now there was nothing. Not a cobble...not a slate... not a brick... not a nail... Nothing. It was as if several generations had sunk beneath the coarse grass to lie dreaming for all eternity beneath a blanket of indifference.

He smiled thinly then sighed again. All those houses, he thought. All those houses, all those people tucked into such a tight little space. And when he thought of the people he thought of the girls. He thought of Charmaine Stewart, Margaret Hampson, Hannah Crowther, Maureen Jones, Elsie Cunningham and Hazel Bather. The brief relationships, between the ages of seven and 17, marked by degrees of intensity, from the pre-hormonal platonic to the heavy breathing clumsy fumbling not quite so innocent. They were all still there in his memory banks, their girlish forms and sweet faces frozen in time. Each one of them had, he realised, contributed a silver or gold thread that was permanently woven into the plainer fabric of his distant youth. Odd, he thought, how I remember them so well, while the boys I knew are mostly just blurred images in black and white. Then again, he added mentally, perhaps its not so odd at all. Perhaps the attraction to the female of the species had always been there.

With a slight sense of shock he realised that he could have ended up loving any one of them and if any one of those embryonic relationships had developed into a full-blown romance he almost certainly would not have set foot upon the path that had ultimately led to Church and God. It was there all the time, he thought. Why did I deny it? Why did I push it aside? Why did I choose the Seminary instead of the local Palais? He shook his head to dislodge the insidious thoughts and drag himself back to the here and now. ‘When was I here last?’ He muttered. ‘Ah yes’: The last time he had been here was what, some five years ago. At a time when his faith still held firm, when the seeds of doubt were many seasons away from germination. He had pulled up to witness the demolition of Taunton Street. He had sat quietly in his car and watched as they killed his little piece of Ancoats. Their metal monster, impatient for the carnage, had roared and panted, polluting the crisp clean autumn air with the stench of its blue-black breath. Unleashed, it had trundled forward to pounce upon its victim.

Yes, he remembered now. The terraced row had sat forlorn, neglected, dejected. He saw again the steel ball, heavy, thick, uncaring as it hovered above the head of Number 1. He remembered he had winced as it came crashing down. The metal monster had then coughed and wheezed as it retrieved its bludgeon for another blow. He had half expected to see gouts of warm red blood spurt from the savage wound. Instead, just broken splintered ribs and a weary groan. The house was dead.

The monster had pounced again and again, chuckling with each crushing blow. The victim's insides were now laid bare for all to see. Obscene, unnatural, for it was not meant to be. Faded flowered wallpaper, layers thick, flapping in the breeze. Nervous twitch of something newly dead.

From the cocoon that was his car he had watched for most of the day. Watched in isolation as the metal beast bit, crushed, tore and gobbled up a hundred years of life. He had seen the crown-topped Victorian chimneypots tumble with slow dignity beneath the New Elizabethan hammer. He had watched until it had come the turn of Number 33 - the last house in the street. The house that nestled next to the high brick wall that separated it from a twenty-foot drop to the turgid foam-flecked litter-choked waters of the River Medlock. The house that was most important to him.

It was the house where he had spent some early years, his Nana's house. A house always ringing to the shouts and laughter of many cousins, grown now and scattered like dandelion seeds to the four winds. A house that had been a home while his father worked away and his mother held down a full time job at Stevenson’s Box Works then later at Ferranti’s - where a heavy knock against a piece of plant had kick started breast cancer that later spread.

He had shut his eyes and once again had seen the patterned cracks on the flaking plaster of his bedroom ceiling dancing in the flickering glow cast by the gently sighing gaslamp that stood guard outside his window. He heard again the heavy official knocking in the dead of night. His father's calm voice muted from below, accepting the news from Ancoats Hospital. His mam had gone. Crushing, even though half expected. He heard the slow heavy footsteps on the stairs. He saw the shadowy figure at the foot of his bed, heard the soft words ‘your mam’s gone’; then heard again his own reply of ‘yes, I know.’

Then, five years or so ago, he had turned around and left, left a little part of who he was lying in the dust. Now he turned around, climbed back behind the wheel and left, left behind nothing - for he realised that who he was then all those many years gone by bore very little or no relation to who he was now.

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Prologue
Mancspeak
Chapter 1