UPSTART

Frankie worked for Upstart, a small chain of petrol stations based in south Wales. He worked for the Llanelli road branch of Upstart, a half an hour bus ride from where he lived in Swansea. Frankie worked rotating shifts; one week nights, the next mornings, the third afternoons, then back to nights. He had two days off each week, which also rotated, allowing all staff one weekend day free each three-weekly rotation.

Frankie wasn't Welsh. Nor did he speak very good English, having been brought up since the age of eight in the Dominican Republic, where they spoke a kind of patois Spanish, but being of native Bangladeshi birth and family. Frankie had come to Swansea three days after his twenty-first birthday. His mother had been working overtime cleaning at the hotel, saving a little money here, a little there, in order to afford her eldest son chance to go to the UK and make his mark in the world. His family had happily paid a hefty registration and signed him to the Upstart International Scheme, promising a UK working visa, job and training. He had, however, no particular career path in mind, only an end to his job at the plastics plant where his father worked. Frankie had worked there for five years after leaving school, but being of rather lazy and unambitious character, had never been promoted from the menial assembly line.

Frankie worked hard at Upstart, however. He had not fully appreciated his life in the Dominican Republic, the ease of pace, the palm trees and warmth of his family, until spending the year in Swansea. The winter had been grim, the wind icy cold and damp, the rain incessant. Although he had been relentlessly bullied by the black and Hispanic children throughout his teens for being the only Asian child in school, he missed them; he would recall their names and their shouting as he went to sleep at night in his bed-sit lodgings in an old damp three-storey house near the sea front. Here in Wales, Frankie had once again found himself an outsider. Indeed, he was practically alone; the meagre Asian community didn't welcome unaccompanied young men, and he displayed no religious orientation with which to familiarize himself.

Therefore, Frankie worked hard for Upstart, partly because it was really the only thing he had to do in Wales, but also because he sincerely wished to save enough money for a flight back to the Dominican Republic, to the town and the sandy beaches, and to his mother whom he missed terribly.

Frankie spent his time away from the Llanelli road Upstart in his bed-sit, learning English from the tapes and books Upstart had given him on his arrival. There was also a section on remedial Welsh, which he had not yet attempted to complete. This, however, did little to improve his communication skills; he found the Welsh accent practically incomprehensible and his progress was slow. Instead of spending money on classes, which could have improved his English and introduced him to other immigrants like himself, he preferred to send half his meagre income (he was on three pounds sixty at Upstart, with full tax) back to his mother and father, knowing they would spend it on the education of his five younger siblings, all of whom were now in school. The rest of Frankie's money, what he wasn't saving in an envelope under his mattress, he spent on his only other pass-time, his only real pleasure during that year and three months he had by now lived in Swansea.

I had said Frankie was practically alone, as he had made one friend in all this time. Frankie had met Dean the first time he went to Mecca. Frankie and Dean both enjoyed their hours in the bingo hall. Dean was a little older than Frankie (he said twenty-six but Frankie was sure he was closer to 30), rather overweight with longish, greasy hair. Dean listened to Country and Western music and still lived with his mum in Townhill.

The Swansea Mecca was located close to the train station on High Street, from where Frankie's bus dropped him off and he walked home each day. Frankie had first encountered bingo when passing the building one evening and, seeing a queue forming, had entered the large golden looking doors assuming Mecca to be something religious, or perhaps a cinema. Frankie had paid the entrance fee, and taken a seat towards the back right of the large hall. This happened to be seat G14, next to G13, which happened to be Dean's lucky seat. When Dean realised the lad next to him obviously had no idea how to play bingo (Frankie had almost got a full house and not even noticed), he took the opportunity to impart his great bingo knowledge to the young foreigner. For Frankie, this was the first time anyone had bothered to say more than a few words to him since he had arrived in the country, and he would happily sit and listen to Dean and, although not understanding every turn of phrase, took each meeting as a chance of practising his Welsh accent comprehension.

As Frankie was the only person other than Dean's mother that could abide more than five minutes of his incessant bingo conversation, a rather prosperous relationship had grown between the two young men. A strange kind of symbiosis kept their meetings regulated to three nights a week, depending on Frankie's shifts. As Frankie was given his hours from Upstart well in advance, they didn't need to ring each other, but arranged a schedule consistently running two weeks ahead of time.

Their system had only failed them once, and they both rather blamed each other. It seems it was actually Dean who had got the wrong night, although he blamed Frankie for not remembering he said he couldn't make that Thursday as his aunt was visiting. The whole incident had caused a severe rift in their relationship. It had been previously almost a year of unbroken meetings.

Frankie had waited for over an hour that night for Dean to show up. After that, he did what he had not done since that first night at the Mecca, and used his own initiative to enter the building alone. This time, heaven knows what had got into him that Thursday, the spring air perhaps, or the slight head cold Dean was sure he had had, Frankie chose not to sit in his usual seat of G14, but chose to move towards the centre left of the hall, close to the rose perm who was also a regular, but not within talking distance.

By some odd stroke of fate, he chose to sit in seat D23, which happened to be the lucky seat of a Miss Carla Drew. Carla was not only a regular of the bingo hall, but also the casino, the Ladbrokes on the Kingsway, the dogs and Cefn Coyd, the mental institute on the hill. Carla had initially kicked up an immediate and dramatic fuss about the seat and, with all the shouting, security had come and escorted them both out of the building. Despite mutual attempts made to explain matters, the Mecca bouncers had assumed they were an arguing couple and refused re-entry.

At this point, Carla, on one of her more romantic whims, had decided the whole incident was simply ‘meant-to-be', and that Frankie had been delivered to her via seat D23, indeed may well have been the reason incarnate for D23 having been her lucky seat in the first place. On that particular Thursday that thought pleased Carla immensely, and she set about pursuing Frankie, her exotic prey, predicting the schedule between Dean and Frankie remarkably well, in an attempt not to miss an opportunity of seeing her new love again.

Dean was not amused. No longer was he able to enjoy an evening's bingo with only the silently accepting company of Frankie, but invariably he would find Carla already waiting in G15, next to where she knew Frankie would sit. It wasn't so much that Dean disliked female company, what he objected to most of all was her persistent jabbering – he could hardly get a word in edgeways – and her habit of shrieking loudly each time one of her numbers was called. Not only that, but Carla's attention was solely directed towards Frankie, thus completely disturbing the balance of what had previously been almost a years peaceful friendship akin to those enjoyed by men who fly-fish in company.

Unfortunately, Frankie's poor English meant that Carla was also often misunderstood, impelling her to over-animate and repeat herself loudly. Dean was forced to overhear her cooing, and although Frankie was anything but inviting – he was not at all used to female attention – he likewise had still not gotten rid of her. Frankie actually quite enjoyed seeing Carla. She brought a welcome break from the monotony of Dean's voice, not that Frankie would have told him that. He also quite enjoyed the thought that a woman found him attractive, and although Carla's nose was a little large, she was actually quite pretty, her frantic curls bobbing all over her face, and despite being quite obviously mad, Frankie would sometimes let her slip into his mind during quiet night shifts at Upstart, allowing himself a little fantasy of her grasping him the way she had done that one drunken Tuesday in Mecca, and then forcing him to caress her then imagined instantaneously naked body… However, Frankie's shyness and lack of conversational competence had kept their relationship confined for almost a month to the three nights a week in the Mecca.

Events were due to culminate, aggravated by the aforementioned evening when Carla had become uncontrollably drunk in part due to a change in the dosage of her medication, and thrown herself at Frankie. She had soon after vomited, which had resulted in her sharing Frankie's taxi home, and thereby his inadvertently telling her where he worked. Despite Carla's drunken state, a plan had begun to formulate in the deeper regions of her multi-personaed brain, and she had remembered it into the next day. Carla schemed to anticipate Frankie's rota according to the schedule kept between Dean and Frankie, and approach him after a night shift, when she knew he would be tired and, after buying him a full English, lure him into the intimacy of her Uplands flat.

Two weeks later, early on a Tuesday morning, Carla arrived at Upstart at 7.30am, rightly assuming Frankie's shift would finish at 8. She pulled her car up to one of the pumps, put five pounds of Upstart Unleaded into the tank, and turned her head towards the office to see if Frankie had recognised her. He had, and was rather flusteredly tidying the checkout and smoothing his hair straight.

Carla walked through the door, acting surprised, and whilst paying for the petrol and a packet of twenty Superking menthols and asking what time he finished, offered him a lift back into Swansea, as that was where she was heading after staying the night with her sister in Llanelli. This was, of course, a complete lie, but she managed to convince Frankie and her plan thus far worked perfectly, as an hour later they were sat over the table in a booth at the Uplands Café overlooking the street.

By an odd stroke of fate, it was this Tuesday morning that Dean chose to take an early visit to the comics shop just round the corner from the Uplands Café, thereby seeing Carla and Frankie over breakfast. Frankie, moments earlier, at Carla's bequest, had begun to describe the Dominican Republic, which he relished as it was one of the first opportunities he had had to relate to someone his background and talk about the place he loved. He told her of his early years in Bangladesh, of the bustling city streets, and of the move to Santa Domingo, the amazing fruits one could find there, how he shared a room with his five younger siblings, how he would spend his evenings walking the long silver beaches until he could almost see the Haitian border. At the moment Dean saw them, Frankie had just begun a detailed description of his mother's cooking, and his favourite dish - coconut rice with dates - that had made him smile a little too contentedly.

Instantly Dean had come to the worst of conclusions, and made up his mind that Carla and Frankie had been seeing each other secretly behind his back all this time, and had been making him endure hours of feigned awkwardness at the Mecca for their own pleasure. Dean was furious, and whilst not usually an angry man, he found himself incensed, and stormed off back to his mum's house to plan his revenge over elevenses.

If only he had waited, he would have seen the events that followed, and might never have been driven to do what he did. Shortly after Frankie's description of the coconut rice, Carla had started to doze off (she had been up early) causing her arm to sweep across the table knocking over the bottle of brown sauce. Had the nozzle not been blocked, Frankie would not have minutes previously been forced to unscrew the cap, which he had not yet re-tightened. Brown sauce was thus splattered into Frankie's shirt and lap, covering his Upstart uniform from chest to knees.

Despite Carla's protestations that she lived closer and could help him clean himself up, Frankie was terribly embarrassed, and chose to hurry home to his room and wash his uniform for the next night's shift. Carla accepted failure and likewise skulked home, consoling herself that Frankie had at last, for the first time, proffered what nights this week he would be meeting Dean at Mecca; Friday and Saturday, and a few games before the start of Frankie's night shift that very day.

It was, then, that fated Tuesday evening which brought Frankie, Carla and Dean together at Mecca for the last time. Frankie waited by the door for Dean, and was joined after a while by Carla. After 15 minutes waiting in the cold, they decided to go on in and wait at the table; it had been starting to rain after all.

Although Dean was hardly ever late, Frankie really thought nothing of it, Carla encouraging him to tell her more about his home in between listening to hear if her numbers were called, and the intermittent shrieks when they were. She actually found herself to be a good listener that evening, and paid attention with genuine interest to Frankie's stories, enjoying them and giggling at appropriate intervals.

All this Dean observed from behind one of the heavy red velvet curtains at the back right of the hall. Dean had constructed what was, to him, a work of genius; a kind of firework which would explode beneath seats G14 and G15, knocking the couple out of their seats with a loud bang; a good pay back for their treachery. He had calculated a dose that he thought large enough to shake them up, but not enough to cause any real damage.

Indeed, causing harm was not really in Dean's vocabulary of thoughts, being of a genuinely simple nature, and had it not been for Dean's improved dry storage of his gunpowder in some of his mum's Tupperware, making it unusually potent, things might have worked out differently, and Dean's prank might have gone according to plan. He had, unfortunately, also failed to take into consideration the short fuse wire and the highly flammable nature of the 70's décor in the Mecca.

Just as ‘legs eleven' was called, Dean lit the fuse, causing an immediate spread of flame across the carpet, causing the homemade bomb to explode with added veracity. This coincided with Carla getting a full house and the shouts from the first people to see the fire.

The blast was magnificent. Carla, having stood up in response to her full house, was luckily unhurt, leaving Frankie to bear the full force of the old theatre seat exploding into his rear.

‘Molten seat springs through the vital organs' was given as cause of death by the coroner, and Frankie made front page of the Herald and the Evening Post, as well as a later double page spread in Weird But True.

Strangely enough, it was Carla who mourned Frankie's death most, feeling herself somehow responsible. After fanatically following the court proceedings at Dean's manslaughter trial, and several cry-for-help rohypnol suicide attempts, she was finally knocked down in the street whilst drunk by a taxi, and died later that week in hospital.

Dean was sent to Swansea jail, which really little affected his life, as he had never been fond of fresh air, found prison food agreeable, enjoyed the bi-weekly bingo sessions held there, and was still visited by his mother every couple of days after twelve years.

Frankie's mother had initially wept for three weeks upon receiving news of her son's death, but had been given a new lease of life after receiving the life insurance payment from Upstart that Frankie had signed up to along with his job. Along with the royalties from Weird But True, she could afford to put her other five children through school and college, and buy a small hotel on the beach, which she and Frankie's father run to this day.

By Megan Eve George

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