Charlotte Street

by Danny Wallace

  ‘Just a few gigs. It’s hard to get gigs. But the response has been good. Well, from nearly everyone.’

  ‘Tough crowds?’

  ‘The crowds have been good. Polite, anyway. No, I mean Paul.’

  ‘Puppeteer Paul? What about Puppeteer Paul?’

  ‘Puppeteer Paul wasn’t quite as keen. Said we had to decide who the creative one was. Says it never works out when there are two people trying to crack the same world.’

  ‘He’s a puppeteer! ’

  She broke into a smile, and put her hand to her cheek.

  ‘Actually, he’d prefer it if you refer to him as a political puppeteer.’

  ‘Where was he tonight, then? The UN? Or did they parachute him into Gaza with a sock and two ping pong balls?’

  Her smile fell, but only very slightly, and only for a second.

  ‘We’re not together any more, Paul and me. If you could say we were ever together, I don’t know.’

  Oh, God. This was my fault. That review – my little gift – had kickstarted this. The catalyst that enraged a political puppeteer. I should say sorry. I knew that. I should apologise unreservedly for a relationship ruined.

  But then I remembered that night at Scala. The disparaging remarks. The cynicism masquerading as wit. The way he seemed to be with her. My childish mental report card (Yes, Mr and Mrs Anderson, from my notes this term, it appears that Paul is a knob).

  ‘Why did you go out with him in the first place, Ab?’ I said, like I was a disappointed older brother, or something.

  ‘I dunno. Structure? I know he liked his puppets, but he was the most organised person I knew, puppets or not. And I think I thought, well, you need limits, don’t you? You need rules. I feel like I’m just wafting along most of the time, it was nice to feel there was only so far I could waft. Though the thing is … I think I really like wafting.’

  A pause.

  ‘People don’t use the word “waft” enough, do they?’ she said.

  ‘Sod that political puppeteer,’ I said. ‘Sod all political puppeteers. May their puppets rise up against them in fury.’

  Abbey laughed.

  ‘Sod him,’ she said.

  I raised my glass.

  ‘To making it happen,’ I said.

  ‘You’re using that phrase a lot at the moment.’ She smiled.

  I blushed. I was.

  ‘How’s Dev?’ she said, lightly.

  ‘Haven’t really seen him much,’ I said. ‘I seem to have developed a habit for not seeing people much.’

  She tapped the table and took a sip of her drink.

  ‘When I first met you,’ she said, ‘do you know what I thought?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘I thought, he’s like me.’

  ‘A small girl who hangs around with bands?’

  ‘No. A bit broken.’

  ‘Bruised, you said.’

  ‘But fixable, maybe. I’m trying to fix things, and yes, it’s kind of thanks to your idiotics, so thank you, I guess. And when we were hanging out, it seemed like, more and more, you were, too.’

  She clinked my glass.

  ‘Don’t stop,’ she said.

  We sat together for a second, just two mates in a pub. I noticed her guitar again.

  ‘Listen, I might be able to waft a gig your way, if you’re interested?’

  The next morning. Friday. The day Mrs Woollacombe had been dreading. The one Mr Willis had prepared a short straw for, probably cursing Gary Dodd and Ladbrokes as he did so.

  I pulled out the document I’d found in my boxes that night. I’d read it on the train home last night to remind myself, to see if it still stood up, but I’d suddenly found myself furiously rewriting it, reworking it, renaming it.

  Making It Happen! it read. A Mr Priestley Assembly!

  The others had all but jumped with glee when I’d said I’d be happy to take that week’s assembly. They tried to give me outs – said supply teachers weren’t expected to pile in with the others, said they could always cancel and just have a study period instead. But I said no, I’d be grateful for the chance. ‘Be good to connect with the kids!’

  Everyone had looked at me like I was mental.

  It wasn’t just that they wanted to avoid a ten-minute speech. It wasn’t just that they didn’t fancy the prep, or the angst, or the listless feeling they’d get halfway through when they realised their words were falling on permanently disinterested ears.

  ‘There’s an inspector in,’ Mrs Woollacombe had told me, finally, as we’d walked towards the hall. ‘They’ll be inspecting!’

  She made a sorry-I-should-have-mentioned-it face, but I waved it away. I’d been looking forward to this, by and large. The thought excited me. Maybe I need this, I thought. Get back on the horse. Do it properly. Do it right. Inspector or not. And all thanks to Matt.

  I glanced up from my little red plastic chair on the stage. Mrs Abercrombie, the new head, was waxing lyrical about the importance of covering textbooks in brown paper, and if you didn’t have brown paper, you could use wallpaper, or just wrapping paper, but ideally brown paper or sticky back plastic. She had been making this point for quite some time. The kids were glassy-eyed, their skin dull, the room just a yawn, early morning hair gel yet to set, a bored sea of tiny ties and scuffed-up Golas. I could see Michael Baxter in the second row, his collar upturned, chewing and snapping his gum, loudly, a ten-pack of fags and a lighter outlined in his too-tight-trousers. Teresa May had snuck her phone in, and little Tony couldn’t stop scratching.

  ‘… which actually brings us to the theme of today’s assembly,’ said Mrs Abercrombie, suddenly, and I jolted. Michael Baxter noticed and smirked.

  ‘So, Mr Priestley …?’

  I stood.

  ‘Thanks, Mrs Abercrombie,’ I said, looking out at my audience, my kids, my young minds to mould.

  Somewhere, someone burped.

  ‘Making It Happen,’ I started, and my eyes scanned the room, for someone, anyone, who had about them the look of a Matthew Fowler. Because if I saw one, I would do this, and do it properly, and crucially, I would do it for them. ‘How do you “make it happen”? And what does “making it happen” even mean?’

  Another burp, this one followed by a giggle.

  But I ignored it. Because actually, I had stuff to say.

  And so I went for it.

  I talked, and I talked, and I talked some more. I made some jokes, and two of them got small laughs, and as I looked around the room, between the bored faces, the glum faces, the distant faces, I saw the odd, all-but-imperceptible pocket of something. Small sparks of interest; the odd head tilt. Maybe only two, three kids. But two, three kids nevertheless.

  It felt good. I felt different.

  And as I turned the pages, and moved closer to my final point – about dreams, and about how dreams are supposed to be unrealistic, but about how some dreams can come true – I felt like I was the inspirational teacher in the closing scenes of a Disney movie. I never once thought I’d have that. I’d never once had it before. This was not my ideal job. I was not overly brilliant at it. But then, I would not be here forever. I knew that, because I intended to be true to my word and Make It Happen, so that out there, in this school hall, I would not disappoint any budding Matthew Fowlers when they watched me do precisely nothing for five more years. That was teaching. Showing. And that was my plan, vague and small and naive as it was.

  And then something strange happened.

  The woman who works in the head’s office – Sheila? – pushes through the double doors at the back of the hall and then holds her hands up apologetically. I look at the head, and the head raises her eyebrows at Sheila, and Sheila makes a phonecall mime. So Mrs Abercrombie stands up, but that’s not what Sheila meant; she points at me.

  Me? I now mime.

  Yes, she mimes back. And then: Quickly.

  ‘Jason?’ said the voice. A female voice with a heavy accent.

  Sheila was hovering around, full o
f concern, popping her hand on my shoulder and patting me a lot, but I was pretty sure I knew who this was.

  ‘Um … Svetlana?’ I said back. ‘This is not really the best time to be talking about pies and crying. I was on stage, inspiring the youth of today.’

  I rolled my eyes at Sheila in a what-can-you-do? kind of way, and she stopped patting me.

  Silence on the other end of the line.

  ‘Abbey?’ I said.

  ‘It is not Abbey. This is Pamela,’ said the voice.

  Pamela?

  She sounded fraught, shocked, frightened.

  Instantly I was afraid. Amazing how you can catch a fear before you know what to be afraid of.

  ‘Please, Jason. You come now!’

  ‘What? Where? What’s going on?’

  ‘It’s Dev.’

  Shit.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I said, a low panic rising in my voice. ‘What about Dev?’

  TWENTY-THREE

  Or ‘Do What You Want, Be What You Are’

  Devdatta Ranjit Sandananda Patel was a hero.

  A hero among men.

  A hero facing down robots, and Nazis, and aliens.

  A man who knew his way around a gun, around nunchucks, around a Hadouken punch.

  A man who’d saved damsels, freed animals, bumped off end-of-level baddie after end-of-level baddie, and always, always lived to tell the tale.

  But in real life, Devdatta Patel had never done anything heroic.

  That’s what had bothered him more than anything.

  ‘We’ve never done anything,’ he’d tell me, on another lunchtime in Postman’s Park. ‘What have we ever done?’

  I remember one time in particular. We were standing, staring at the tile that said:

  William Freer Lucas

  MRCS LLD, at Middlesex Hospital

  Risked poison for himself rather than lessen any chance of saving a child’s life and died.

  Oct 8th 1893

  This one, more than almost any other, had always been Dev’s favourite.

  ‘It’s a legacy!’ he’d say. ‘He did something, and here we are, a hundred and whatever years later, and maybe it’s just you and me, but we know the name William Freer Lucas. We’re on this planet for the blink of an eye but some of us live longer, even when they die young.’

  That was all I could think about in the taxi. Staring out of the window at the grey shops and streets and malls, noticing every siren, every ambulance that screamed by.

  So no. Dev had never been a hero.

  Until today.

  The taxi ride had been sickening.

  I knew nothing. Just that he’d been rushed to hospital, that from the catch and the fear in Pamela’s voice it sounded bad. Maybe very bad.

  She’d been jittery at the end of the call, right when I’d said I’d be there as soon as I could, like she’d passed the news on and could allow herself a brief emotional collapse.

  Christ, Dev, what did you do? Are you okay?

  I leaned against the window of the cab, my fists tight, and for the first time in my life I prayed for my friend.

  ‘We were going to the place,’ said Pamela, gripping her tea.

  ‘Which place?’ I said. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Hilton Hotel,’ she said. ‘In Mayfair.’

  Oh, no. Of course. The Golden Joysticks. That was today.

  That was my big surprise. My olive branch. Zoe had had to make a few phonecalls, but two tickets to the videogames bash of the year had been secured.

  He’d been excited in his text: Thank you thank you thank you! The Golden Joysticks! A reference to its early days as part of the GamesMaster franchise! Guess who I’ll ask … you never know! x

  ‘We were walking to the tube station,’ said Pamela, her eyes on mine, ‘and Dev, he saw a girl, maybe fourteen years, she cycles on her bike, but she was … um …’

  She gestured with her hands.

  ‘Swaying?’ I tried.

  ‘One way then the other,’ she said, nodding. ‘She was swaying, she had bags on her bicycle, from shops …’

  I sat her down on two blue plastic chairs. I could feel her arms shaking.

  ‘And she fell, bad fall, I heard her bell ring when she fall, and she made a noise,’ she said. ‘And her bags go everywhere but her leg is under her bike and she … um …’

  ‘Panics?’

  She nodded, and I was starting to sweat, feeling the pressure of the moment.

  ‘And a car comes, quickly, very quickly, and I grab Dev’s arm, but he starts to run … he pulls her away from her bicycle, but the car, it comes quick, and Dev is there and …’

  She clipped her hands together.

  ‘He spins,’ she said. ‘Hit! His leg is rip open, Jason, a lot blood, I saw the bone and it—’

  She couldn’t find the words, but her hands did the work. I think she wanted to say ‘twist’ or ‘twists’; his bone, the femur or the tibula or the shin, twisted in amongst flaps of skin and blood and car and jeans, ligaments stretched and torn, and he’d lain there, my Dev, a bloodied and useless, desperate heap.

  She looked at me, full of disbelief, that this could happen, that a car could hit a man she knew.

  ‘How is he?’ I said, my hand now shaking.

  There are moments in life – days, even – that can block out the others in an instant. They’re like pinpricks. Sharp and painful and dominating, turning the moments either side into a pointless haze.

  I’d never considered what it might be like to lose a friend. To lose Dev. That it could be possible at all seemed unreal, impossible. Or it did until today.

  Dev was alive, I knew that. But what sliver of chance would it have taken to change that? A mile-per-hour more, a split-second later on the brakes, an inch or two to the right or left? But the overriding thought and the feeling I just couldn’t get away from … was admiration.

  ‘He’s lost blood,’ said the doctor, about my age but worn and beaten and not up for a role in Holby City any time soon. ‘It was a nasty hit.’

  How nasty? I wanted to say, but he wasn’t finished and in situations like this you want to delay the bad news as much as you can. Let the doctor say his piece: he’s done this before; he knows what he’s doing.

  ‘His leg pretty much buckled,’ he said. ‘There are lacerations, multiple fractures, some muscle damage …’

  I began to feel ill. The doctor’s voice was soft even as the words became harder.

  ‘His hamstring has torn, I’m afraid. We had to—’

  I began to feel faint.

  Enough.

  ‘Is he okay?’ I said. ‘Is Dev okay?’

  Four hours later. Pamela had popped out to get KFC but I couldn’t touch mine. Too many bones. Too much loose fat, so warm and oily.

  Pamela sucked at the bones until she caught sight of me, as grey as the tea in my hand.

  Then the bang of the door.

  ‘Wise Fwom Your Gwaaave!’ was the first thing I heard as Dev was wheeled into the room by a man he proudly told us was Charles, his new best friend. I could see from Charles’s badge his name was Phil.

  Dev’s leg was in plaster, his face swollen and bloodied, but he seemed strangely happy.

  ‘I’ve got a very badly broken leg!’ he said, waving his keyring about. ‘And some other stuff.’

  ‘Dev,’ I said. ‘Do you know what you did?’

  ‘If you can’t save a little life once in a while, what can you do?’

  ‘But you did!’ I said. ‘You saved a life! You’re a hero!’

  ‘I would not use that word,’ he said, graciously, ‘but you must always feel free to. Hello, Pamela.’

  ‘Dev,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

  We didn’t quite know what she was thanking him for but we went along with it, because it sounded pretty positive.

  ‘Bloody car,’ he said. ‘A Vectra! Bloke was on his phone. Didn’t see me ‘til the last second. He managed to swerve, but he caught me right on the … um. The … um—’


  ‘The leg,’ said Pamela, helpfully.

  ‘Yes. The leg. This one.’

  He pointed at his plaster.

  ‘And we missed the bloody Golden Joysticks,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘That’s the tragedy no one here is talking about. The nurses don’t seem to care. Bloody NHS.’

  ‘We’ll go next year,’ I said.

  ‘Could probably still hit the afterparty?’

  ‘You’ve broken your leg, mate,’ I said. ‘And I’m pretty sure you’re on quite a lot of morphine.’

  ‘I am, actually!’ he said, nodding. ‘It’s given me a remarkable sense of wellbeing. We should get some for the flat. Abbey could make omelettes out of it. I wonder what’s number one in the charts.’

  I weighed up the situation.

  ‘I should probably let you rest,’ I said, and Charles nodded, like I was a medical genius and could expect my PhD by special delivery in the morning. ‘Do you need a lift anywhere, Pamela?’

  ‘I stay,’ she said, and Dev tried to give me a subtle wink, which was so very subtle I’m fairly sure people in Germany saw it.

  At the door, exhausted, happy, relieved, I turned.

  ‘Do you know what this means, Dev?’

  ‘I do, sir. I will need round-the-clock care!’

  ‘It means you did something, Dev.’

  He cocked his head.

  ‘There was a moment, and you used it.’

  I got home that night shattered. I could’ve lost Dev, was all I could think.

  The people around you are you. They share your history. They can even write it with you. And when you lose one, there’s no doubt you lose some of yourself, however they’re lost.

  So I sat down at my computer. I tried to work out an email. I tried to put into words what I was feeling. I wanted to say sorry, unreservedly sorry, sorry for everything, and make promises, and just be cool again, and have her back in my life even just as a pal.

  But there was too much to say.

  So I thought for a second, then went to Facebook, where I sent Sarah a friend request.

  And those two words, I hoped, said it all.

  ‘The cook does not have to be a beautiful woman.’

  - Traditional Shona Tribe proverb, Zimbabwe

  Your comments have been very funny.

  I know I don’t tell you very much. Place names, events, yes; names not so much. And I’m sorry I can’t tell you yet what my big plan is.