PB again.

(Another Port Brokeferry piece. The second of Wednesday's. My wife visited a primary school and read them some of my children's book. They were thrilled to pieces, completely gripped and wanting more. So we have given the school four copies for their library.)

KELSO GOING IN CIRCLES

There’s a man at the far end of the village. He is young and dressed in jeans and a thick sweater that is worn at the elbows. His hair is uncombed and falls across his eyes. He leans against a truck, mindless of the dirt that transfers to his clothes. He is smoking a hand-rolled cigarette, thin as thin and held between the oily nip of finger and thumb. He stares up the street towards the centre of the village, like he is looking for someone or something. He checks his watch and looks again.

His name is Kelso. He is with the fair. Fourth year he has been with them. He hates it. Always has, right from the first. The smell of it – oil and candyfloss and cooked meat all mixed together and caught in his clothes and his hair. The noise of it – the same brash music playing over and over, and screams and squeals, and the whistles blowing and the klaxons hooting, and the generators roaring into the darkness that should be quiet and should be dark. Kelso hates it.

There’s people, looking in from the outside, seeing the life he has and they think it somehow glamorous. He did once. The girls so excited and so drunk that they ask to go back to his trailer with him. Drop their pants as soon as the door closes. Never notice the dirt and the unmade bed, and never remember his name, just as he hardly ever remembers theirs. He could be anyone. Afterwards they leave without asking anything more from him. And then he leaves with the fair and it all starts over again in a new place.

Kelso remembers Port Brokeferry. Two weeks by the sea. The place so small you can walk from one end to the other and see all there is to see in about a half hour. Never so busy here, and that’s nice, he thinks. Like a holiday from the rest of the places they stop in.

There’s a girl here he remembers too. That is who he is looking for. Wallace who runs the dodgems said that last night there was a girl standing back from the green and just watching. Said she was behind the school kids that had gathered and were calling to them from the road. She was not with them. Just on her own and waiting. Kelso wonders if it was her, the one he remembers.

He drops his cigarette end on the grass and grinds it into the ground with the ball of his foot. He brushes his hair back from his face. Looks again up the street. He sees the mad one, recognises the red of his kilt and him searching the wastepaper baskets on the street. Kelso thinks his name is Martin. The policeman is with him. The rest of the street is empty.

Kelso shrugs and walks back to his trailer. Four years, he says to himself. He doesn't really know why he has stayed so long. It was an escape at first, a way out of where he was. Now it feels just as much a trap. Going round and round in circles and never getting anywhere. Kelso spits onto the grass and climbs the three steps up to his trailer. He closes his door behind him.