Gilbert's Birthday. Part three: 30th by Suzanne Hudson

You hope that after seven years inside, people might forget, but not around here. I was barely out when the taunting started.  People staring in the street, fingers pointing, whispers and jeers. Mothers holding their children to them, as I passed, as though I might harm them just by looking at them. Shopkeepers ignoring me, until I stopped going in and had to drive two miles just to get bread and milk.

    The people at AA understood.  Barry had been through it and Dervla. They said keep your head down, keep sober, time is a great healer and people will see that you’ve changed. Bernie has always served me at the chip shop though. I don’t usually go in on a Friday night, but it’s my 30th birthday today and even though no one knows or cares, I want to mark the occasion somehow. Just as Bernie is about to take my order, the local kingpin Jez and three of his cronies stumble in, beer cans in their hands, push me to one side and begin shouting their orders at Bernie. His chubby face breaks into a grin, but he’s no pushover.

    “Hang on a minute lads,” he says amicably. “I think Gilbert here was next.”

    Jez turns to look at me with pure hate. “That scumbag?”

    “Come on now, Jezzie boy. Look, let me just get Gilbert served and then we’ll sort you boys out with some fodder.” A queue is now beginning to form behind me and the people in it watch the goings on with unease.

    Please, I think. Please just let him get me my food so I can get out of here.

    “So you’d rather serve a drink driving child murderer than me and my buddies?” Jez shouts, grabbing Bernie’s neck across the counter, so that the blubbery skin under Bernie’s chin balloons out over his shirt collar, like a huge blister about to burst. I deserve it, but not Bernie, the only guy around here who tolerates me.

    I launch myself at Jez and as he lets go of Bernie, his punch hits me hard on my right cheek and I feel myself crashing into some of the customers at tables, sending their fish and chips flying. No one comes to my rescue. There is a shocked silence, then a muted cheer and some cackling from the young girls in the queue. Jez’s mates hold him back as I pick myself up off the floor and stumble out of The Fat Frier.

    I slope home like a wounded dog, reeking of vinegar, keeping to the shadows. I wish Jez and his pals had dragged me outside and finished off the job properly, dumping my body around the back of the shops with the bins.

    Triple locked inside my shabby little flat, I begin to make a plan.

*** *** ***

    I drive for an hour to reach the forest. I want to be far away from all of them. I don’t want any of them to find me. They would love it. They would still be mocking me, even in death. The thick rope sits curled in the Spar carrier bag on the passenger seat, a magic serpent that will take me away from all of this forever.

    I pull up at an isolated parking area with two empty cars. Dog walkers no doubt, gone for hours.   As I lock up and walk into the thick forest I catch myself mentally getting my bearings so that I can find my way back to the car, and then realise with a jolt that there is no need, because I won’t be coming back.

    I tried to make a fresh start, got a job in a warehouse in Sackville Road on the outskirts of town, where the mainly Pakistani workforce didn’t know my history. Eight years sober, I kept myself to myself, taking one day at a time, like they’d told me at AA. Those guys at the weekly meetings had saved me. Without them I would have been back on the drink, probably back in prison. But I still see her face all the time, her smile turning to a look of horror just before I hit her. And I still see her little body bouncing off my bonnet. She will never leave me and I can’t stand it a minute longer.

    As I follow a path through the forest I hear voices nearby. There is a turn in the path and up ahead I can see a clearing, with some wooden climbing equipment. A young boy, about two or three years old, is kicking a football to his mother, who keeps missing it and has to run to retrieve it.

    I keep my head down, trying not act normally, like a guy out for a stroll. As I walk through the play area the little boy runs up, holding his ball out towards me. I freeze. His mother comes over, trying to grab his hand.

    “Peter!” she laughs, and then turns to me. “I’m sorry, I hope he’s not pestering you. It’s just he misses kicking a ball around, since his Dad…”

    “It’s fine,” I find myself saying, recognising the pain behind her eyes and realising this stranger is the first person who has looked at me without hate or pity for as long as I can remember.

    The boy puts down his ball and kicks it to me. The ball lies at my feet and the boy looks up at me, expectantly waiting. The woman looks at me too, smiling in gratitude already. For a moment, I see myself in their eyes, a kind stranger, willing to make a little lad happy. I put down my carrier bag and I kick the ball back to the boy.