‘So you’re a communist now?’

‘They’re even worse. You’ve just gotta recognise this place,’ as he looked around the hall, ‘for what it is. The savage brute that makes me cry for dread.’

He pocketed the eleven and fourteen and smiled. ‘Now it begins.’

The pair on the adjacent table were part-truckie, part-bogan. Each had a paunch emerging from a holey T-shirt—white, purple-veined and hairy, covering the front of too-low pants with arse crack. Thongs and ankle freezers; turkey giblet arms (although they couldn’t have been more than forty) and double and triple chins.

I loved the place. Musty carpet, and forty years of tobacco in the curtains someone had hung to try and give the place a bit of class. The besser block walls, covered in graffiti, a songline of stubby cocks and canyon vaginas for all the kids to see. Yes, kids. Cos we’d been brought here earlier in the year for PE. Taught the rules, then marched to the top of North East Road, led in—to the amusement of the Damned—and given a table. They’d watched us, these dark men, and laughed, and made comments loud enough for us to hear. Come on, boys, watch where you put them cues. Our pool hall sport lessons had been our favourite. Coke and more hot chips, as the teachers sat in the corner with a ciggie.

We’d popped our hot dogs, and settled in with milkshakes. Shared a stolen smoke, before beginning.

‘I saw him coming, swift and savage …’

But this time the fatter of the two beside us looked over.

Curtis noticed, but you had to ignore it. We’d seen the broken pool cues. We’d heard how it happened. He whispered, ‘Dante … he was a poet.’

The same man kept watching.

‘Would you like to join us?’ Curtis whispered.

‘Ssh,’ I said.

Low ceilings, of course, so you wouldn’t think about the day you’d abandoned. Maybe it was best you didn’t know. Eternity was a long time.

‘To be honest, it’s all a bit depressing,’ I said.

‘Yeah.’

Sport lessons were one thing, but choosing to wait at the gate? And if you didn’t start hating the place at one point, you’d become part of it. The pale faces, like plants left to grow in a cupboard.

‘John’d fit in,’ Curtis said. ‘Place’s full of people he could look up to.’ He studied the lesser fat man’s technique.

‘You should bring him.’

‘I keep my distance.’

‘What’s he been up to?’

‘Gettin’ ready to start work. Two weeks, tops. He’ll either punch someone or steal something. He can’t help himself. He’s a born criminal. Trash.’

The fatter man looked over.

‘I see what you mean, Whelan. We gotta move on, don’t we?’