43. SUSPECT 6: Bongo Pete

The Thing About Bongo Pete...

The thing about Bongo Pete was that he didn’t even exist until someone invented him. That must make suspicion of him, right? Who is he? Where is he? Why is he? Back in the mists of time, a fella called The Scrim used to come in the Pips. The Scrim had some issues. A wild man drummer in several thrash bands at any given time, he also had the downward curve of the evil eyebrow and the toothy grin of teeth that a lesser writer might compare to headstones on Boot Hill. The Scrim was not unliked, but he was volatile, as was his drumming, and he was grizzly and gnarly and if you weren’t talking about Hüsker Dü or Black Flag then it was very difficult to keep him on a conversation about anything. Not that you wanted to, particularly. Better to have him move on. His eyes were erratic, sometimes the tow of them seeming to operate independently of each other. He had sent some time in the madhouse up past the village, and he was at his most volatile when he’d missed his pills on any given day. The warm embrace of the Pips meant that he drank here often when he was feeling right, until he relaxed so much that he felt top o’ th’ world, dropped his meds, threatened someone with a pen knife or a zippo or something and would be banned. Six months would pass, a stint, probably, more meds, and he’d come back, apologise, and the cycle would start over.

That warm embrace? It was how Bongo Pete was magicked into the air.

What would happen was this: on quiet moments, when Alden had the bit between his teeth - could be a busy night, could be a dead Tuesday - The Scrim would be at the bar and Alden would tell either one of the barflies into it, or maybe even one of his staff, to go to the pay phone on the corner of the street and call the pub. Alden would answer, play the part, look around and shout down the bar, “Scrim, some guy named Bongo Pete on the phone for you.” The Scrim would twitch and shudder - after a few times - first time he was just confused to be getting a call to the pub. He only ever used the phone to call his caseworker or some such. He’d amble to the phone, by which point the line would be dead and everyone would shrug. The game of paranoia.

This went on through the turning of the seasons. Not every time. It never became a tired joke. Always landed. Always did it’s thing with perfect poise. Alden was a master of the wind up.

It took on a life of its own, as they say.

One time, The Scrim was at Glastonbury, as he was every year if he was liberated, and some guy he vaguely recognised passed him by on the top path across from the Pyramid and he yelled “Oh wow, Scrimboy, what are the chances - I just saw Bongo Pete in the cider tent, man, and he’s looking for you.” And the guy was gone, sucked into a crowd. The Scrim was gripped by the sort of confusion that, in a head like his, quickly turns to terror. He brought this story back to him. Alden’s wind up was beginning to look like a work of art.

But then something very strange happened. The Scrim had one flare up too many, and he broke a glass and threatened Rod with it and the police were called and Alden banned him for life and that was that. Nobody ever saw him again. David Scrimfield. R.I.P. Not dead. Just Banned for Life.

Not long after, six months or so, a guy comes in, nice clear weekday afternoon, a few of the boys on stools around the bar, and a few dotted around at tables, and he orders a pint from Alden at the bar and as he’s waiting Alden engages him in small talk as is the way, and the guy says he’s actually just getting a train connection but wanted to Cath a pint in here as a friend recommended it, a friend who has loved this place for many years. His friends name… yes… Bongo Pete.

You’d think Alden would have quizzed the guy on this, but he took it for one of those occasions when the barrel-end of a prank is turned back on the gunslinger and he’d be fucked if he was going to bite. He nodded, said, “Ah yeah, how do you know Pete?” and the guy shrugged and said, “Ah you know Pete; he’s the sort of guy you just know from a round and about.” “Yeah.” “Yeah.” Fuck that, Alden thought. Not getting caught out. “Enjoy your pint.” “Cheers.”

But it slowly began to seep in. Bongo Pete would be mentioned. The Scrim never would be. One day Moses said to Alden, “I never knew Bongo Pete was a real guy when you used to do that thing with the phone…” and Alden snapped at him “He fucking wasn’t fucking real you twat.”

Before long, for the sake of sanity, Bongo Pete was never mentioned again. At least not by those who were around for the prank on The Scrim in its early days.

Now, years after all this we’re talking about in JellyBread, decades after all this has gone and the world has changed entirely, there is an instagram account going by the name Bongo Pete that only ever posts photos of the front of the Pips, and sometimes of a half drunk pint on a table in the Pips, and there’s one of a gloved hand on the bar of the Pips, and this instagram account only follows one other. Yes. The Scrim.