Read by Susan Crothers
One. Mark is pissed on by a dog.
A dog has been running around the scrubby grass of Leicester Square Gardens since Mark and his friends arrived. At first, it tried to eat the scraps of their burger king burgers before turning its attention to other a group of tourists. Mark’s teenage girlfriend watches as it hungrily takes ice cream cones from their hands. A couple of shirtless labourers, soaking up hazy rays, taunt the dog when it tries to eat their sandwiches. None of Marks’ friends notice when the dog trots up to Mark, sniffs his back and cocks its leg. They hear the piss hitting his bomber jacket before he feels it soaking through. His reaction – jumping up and swearing – is slightly delayed, and the reaction of his friends – laughing loud schoolgirl laughs – doesn’t happen immediately either.
If you would like to read the rest of this story, please check out London Lies, the Arachne Press anthology in which it, and many other London-based stories from the League archives, appears.
Two. Mark is pissed off by a dog.
‘Fuck!’ Mark shouts. ‘Fuck.’ He shouts again. The schoolgirls continue to laugh.
He looks around for the dog to kick it but it has already dashed out of the gardens. He struggles out of his sodden jacket and throws it to the ground. Its highly flammable interior has done little to absorb any of the liquid. There is a large wet patch on his t-shirt which he cranes his neck over his shoulder to see.
‘Fuck!’ He shouts again.
His friends remain seated on the grass, looking up at him, disgusted, as if it were his fault that a dog decided to piss on him rather than the leg of a bench or the base of a tree.
Three. Where can you buy a t-shirt in Leicester Square?
They all go to a tourist stall selling shot glasses with tube station branding. Sun faded postcards - of Lady Di and of breasts with mice drawn on them – are displayed tidily. The stall owner closely observes the gaggle of five girls and Mark.
‘Have you got…’ one girl asks the stallholder as she looks at the t-shirts on display. ‘Have you got one that says “I went to London and got pissed on by a dog and this was the only lousy t-shirt I could buy”?’
Three. At his girlfriend’s house later the same day.
‘I really like your t-shirt, Mark,’ says the girl’s mum. ‘Are you quite new to London?’
‘Not really,’ Mark replies. ‘I ran away from my family in Wales several years ago.’
‘Oh,’ says the mum. ‘Would you like some Tizer?’
Four. Mark gets a flat.
Mark doesn’t like to spend too much time in his flat. He can feel the chill of the concrete beneath the thin wooden floors. The magnolia walls are bare and the lighting is dim in some rooms and fluorescent in others. There is a lot of space for just him. Cans of beans sit forgotten in kitchen cupboards.
Mark only sleeps in the flat when there is no other option: when the doorways are too cold or when there is enough Special Brew in his system to make him pass out on his bed.
If he is awake in the day, Mark prefers to get off the itchy settee and go outside. He wanders around the local area, catching up with a few people here and there, looking for a bit of cash in hand work.
Five. Mark carries a scaffolding pole along a South London street.
Mark is no longer going out with the teenage girl. She dumped him when she started her ‘A’ levels. One day, when he is carrying a scaffolding pole from one end of the street to the other to earn some cash, Mark bumps into one of her friends. Mark notices that she’s grown up a lot since he last saw her.
‘What you doing these days?’ She asks.
Mark is still holding the scaffolding pole. ‘Not much,’ he replies. ‘How’s Katy?’
‘She got fat. Really fat. She drives to the bus stop to go to college.’
‘Oh,’ Mark replies.
He continues his journey up the road.
Six. Mark remembers his first kiss.
Mark was fourteen. She was in a polka dot dress and had curly hair and a singsong Welsh accent that was rarely heard on Mark’s estate.
‘Can I walk you to the bus stop?’ He asked.
They walked hand in hand. Mark was quite short, shorter than her.
‘There won’t be a bus for fifteen minutes,’ she said. ‘Shall we wait under that tree?’
It was a big tree. Mark imagined himself pushing her against it and kissing her. She imagined the same and got there first. He didn’t mind because standing on the slope around the bottom of the tree made him taller than her.
He shut his eyes and enjoyed the kiss. It went on for a while and they moved around in their embrace. As he breathed through his nose he caught an unpleasant smell that was unmistakable. The vinegary shit of dogs fed on cheap food. She smelt it too and scrunched up her nose.
‘Ugh,’ she said, pulling away from him.
She ran off down the hill to the bus stop.
Mark dragged his feet home.
Seven. Mark goes to a children’s party.
Mark is a child. He is nine. He has been invited to Joanne Edwards’ birthday party. The year before, as an iced gem craze swept the school, Joanne’s mum had impressed her classmates by buying bags and bags of the miniature biscuits with colourful icing. With plenty to go around, the children ignored the crisps, jelly and sandwiches as they stuffed handful after handful of iced gems into their mouths. One girl was sick in her own Wellington boots. Joanne’s ninth party was very much looked forward to, even by the boys who said she smelt and the girls who pulled her hair.
Mark lives across the road from Joanne. On the day of her party, he watches through the window as the other children began to arrive.
‘Can I go to Joanne’s now?’ He calls to his mum who always insists on seeing him across the street. As usual, she is in no hurry to get changed out of her dressing gown. She is sitting in the garden, smoking.
‘Don’t know why you’re in such a rush to get over there,’ she shouts back. ‘Whole bloody family smells of piss.’
She smokes another cigarette and slowly gets dressed. Still wearing her slippers, she walks him across the road. At the front gate she gives him a kiss and whispers ‘hold your nose.’
Inside, he follows Joanne’s mum into the kitchen. As he adds his gift to the pile, Joanne’s Gran tells the other adults sitting in a haze of cigarette smoke that Mark is Joanne’s boyfriend. They laugh. Mark blushes and shakes his head. They laugh again. A kitten eats ice cream out of a tub on the table. Joanne comes into the kitchen, holding out a red plastic bowl and asking for more jelly and ice cream.
Mark goes into the other room.
‘Have an iced gem,’ the other children say.
‘Eat one at the same time as some pineapple and cheese,’ one suggests.
‘Or a twiglet.’
Mark picks out a violet frosted biscuit. It is slightly damp and he thinks of the kitten in the kitchen. He decides that he doesn’t want anything else to eat in Joanne Edwards’ house. He looks out of the window and can see into his own living room. It glows with the television and he imagines his mum, back in her dressing gown, chuckling away at a Saturday quiz show. It will be two hours before she will be back to collect him.
Eight. Mark gets a job in Toys R Us.
Mark works at the Toys R Us on the Old Kent Road. The name badge machine is broken, so he wears one left behind by an employee who was caught cutting the paws off teddy bears. The staff call Mark Derek. He stacks stuffed dogs and dolls made in China.
Kids come to the store to browse after school. They steal more than they buy. One rainy October Tuesday, a group of eleven year olds show up. They knock down a display of Buzz Lightyears and laugh at Mark when he picks them up.
‘Look,’ one of them says, pointing at Mark. ‘Look, it’s Geoffrey.’
They all laugh.
‘Oi, Geoffrey.’ They all shout at him. ‘Sing the song to us, Geoffrey. Oi, Geoffrey.’
Mark stands up and chases them onto the Old Kent Road. ‘My name is not fucking Geoffrey,’ he shouts after them. ‘It’s Mark.’
© Laura Williams, 2008
Mark's Fortunes: A Story in Eight Parts by Laura Williams was read by Susan Crothers at the Liars' League Fame & Fortune event on 10 June 2008.
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