She just scowled at me. And she tutted very loudly and said, ‘You’re holding up the queue, you are.’
‘I’m sorry about that,’ I said, ‘I didn’t mean to hold up the queue,’ I said. ‘I was just making an enquiry apropos the Spicy Bean Burger and its apparent non-availability on a Saturday or Sunday.’
She sighed then and dropped her chip-scoop. And all slit-eyed and huffy she said, ‘We don’t offer the Spicy Bean Burger on a Saturday or a Sunday because the Spicy bleedin’ Bean Burger is not a concept that’s considered compatible with the appropriate ambience of the weekend leisure environment!’
We stared at each other.
‘Have y’ got that?’ she said. ‘Have y’ got it or do y’ want me to write it down for y’?’
I just shrugged. It was patently apparent that she was not the kind of person who’d read and taken heed of the Citizen’s Charter.
I said, ‘I’ll just have chips then. On a bun.’
She said, ‘You can’t.’
I said, ‘Why?’
She said, ‘Because the Burger Banquet Experience does not recognise the concept of chips.’
I pointed up at the pictorial display. I said, ‘Well, what are them up there?’
She said, ‘Frits! They’re the Frits.’
I looked up at the picture again. I said, ‘They look like chips!’
‘Well, they’re not!’ she said, leaning forward and glaring at me. ‘They’re Fried Frits, not chips.’
‘All right then,’ I said, ‘I’ll have the Fried Frits.’ She blew out a long sigh and reached for her chip-scoop. And I said, ‘Just a small portion please.’
She stopped and cocked her head to one side and stared at me with a warning glint in her eye. And pointing her chip-scoop at the hideously lurid pictorial display she said, ‘Can you see the word “small” anywhere up there?’
She glared at me again and I shook my head.
‘No, that’s right!’ she said. ‘And why do y’ think that is?’
I just shook my head again.
And with a hint of triumphant corporate pride in her tone she said, ‘Because “small” … small is not a concept that is acknowledged within the Burger Banquet Experience! We offer the Modest Frit, the Medium Frit, the Major Frit and the MajorMega Frit.’
Somewhat defeated now by the Burger Banquet’s pedantic semantics, I dutifully uttered the appropriate word and watched as she half-filled the chip-scoop and deposited my Modest Fried Frits into a waxed cardboard container. Then I ordered a Cautious Cappuccino and found myself a moulded plastic seat at a moulded plastic table where I sat eating my moulded plastic chips and looking around at all the other unfortunate souls who were undergoing a weekend leisure experience courtesy of the Burger Banquet.
Then a man in a knitted cardigan came up to the table where I was sat. And he said to his wife, ‘Go on, you get in there where you’ll be out the way.’
And she did as she was bid, his wife, and dutifully slid into the inside seat where she suspiciously picked at her portion of Fried Frits as her husband got to grips with his Double Topper Cheesey Whopper.
And then he suddenly looked up and asked me whose fault I thought it was.
‘Whose fault was what?’ I said.
He said, ‘Halifax.’
‘I don’t know that it’s anyone’s fault,’ I said. ‘It’s probably just one of them things like the San Andreas fault and nowt can be done about it.’
But he told me I was wrong there and started going on about how Halifax and the whole of Yorkshire used to be a real community but now it was on its knees and everyone was depressed on account of how the government had closed all the mills and the mines and how the colliers can’t collect coal no more. I didn’t say nowt but from what I’ve seen of them, I can’t imagine that people from Halifax went dancing in the streets even when the bastard mills and mines were still open. But it was pointless saying owt to him. Because he was one of those persons who never listens to nobody but himself. I looked at his wife who was just sat there, silently staring down at her frits. And she looked like a person who’d been taken hostage many many years earlier and had given up all chance of rescue now, or escape. And you could tell that she’d been crushed out of being by the weight of her opinionated and terminally boring husband who was no doubt something of a star on the local radio phone-ins where he’d probably talk for hours about all the graffiti these days and how there was never no graffiti when he was young and nobody never had to lock their doors because everybody was good and kind and swapping bowls of sugar in the olden days when they all wore clogs and shawls and there were no murderers or paedophiles or psychopathic serial killers because people were brought up to show respect and children knew right from wrong and they didn’t have shoes to wear or videos to watch or pizzas to eat because they ate dripping-on-bread and gristle soup and succulent feet of pigs and were all the better for it and obeyed the rules in the schools where hymns were sung and poems recited and everybody knew how to read and do algebra by the time they were seven and loved it when they got a good six hard strokes of the cane because they knew it was doing them good and helping them to grow up to be the kind of decent, virtuous, moral-minded, community-spirited, sugar-swapping, shawl-wearing, saintly Samaritans that everybody was a few years ago in that world which is so fondly and so accurately remembered by so much of the sincere citizenship that is so compelled to share its profound and compelling insights via the local radio network.
I just sat there, staring into my coffee and thinking about my Gran. Because my Gran was the only old person I ever knew who said that all the stuff about the olden days was just a load of bollocks and bunkum. My Gran used to say the old days was just sentimental slop dreamed up by people who’d got scared of the nowadays.
But my Gran always said she loved the nowadays and wished that she’d been a girl in the nowadays because she would have burnt all her bras and gone on marches with Germaine Greer and lived in London in her own apartment where she and her friends would eat nouvelle cuisine, experiment with recreational drugs and talk about Simone de Beauvoir and things that mattered.
And I’d always say to my Gran, ‘Well, perhaps you’ll still do all that, Gran.’
But she’d just pat me on the head and tell me that time tricked everybody in the end. And she said, although she wished nothing but goodness for all the young folks with their lovely skin and their shiny hair, it probably was a bit late, at her time of life, to start going in for body-piercing and doing Ecstasy.
‘But believe me, son,’ she said, ‘if I was a girl, nowadays, I wouldn’t make the same mistakes that I did. I wouldn’t have put up with him for a start. I wouldn’t have married him, the fun-loving, philandering bastard that he was!’
My Gran hated my Grandad. Even after he’d died she still wouldn’t show no sympathy for him. She said the lecherous old bastard fully deserved the dark demise that his lustful leanings had led him to: my Grandad had fell off the roof trying to fit a satellite dish so that he could watch lewd films and pornographic game shows beamed in from the continent. Everyone had said as how he shouldn’t try and fit it himself, that he should get a qualified fitter on the job. But the earliest an aerial fitter could do it was the following Tuesday and my Grandad’s libidinous longing to look at continental pornography made him far too impatient for that and against all advice he decided to indulge in a bit of DIY. And he did manage to get the dish fitted onto the chimney. But as he did, he became so excited by lascivious thoughts of the European erotica that would soon be beaming down the dish, he missed his footing, fell off the roof and broke his neck. He’d done a good job with the satellite dish though; my Gran was sat there in the front room watching a Belgian documentary on food and sado-masochism under the impression that it was Welsh Channel 4. When my Grandad fell screaming from the roof, my Gran just ignored it, thinking it was from the soundtrack of the film where a feller was flagellating himself with a Jerusalem artichoke. By the time my Gran s
witched off, having learned a few tricks with chilli peppers and courgettes that Delia Smith never dreamed of, my Grandad was just a crapped-out cadaver on the patio.
‘He lived by lust, he died by lust!’ my Gran always said. ‘You’re too young to understand that now, Raymond,’ she said, ‘but you will do one day.’
I did understand though because when I’d been in the last year of the infants’ school my Grandad had suddenly offered to walk me to school every day. My Mam thought he was just being nice in his old age and trying to get to know his grandchild. But he only did it because he wanted an excuse to get to know the lollipop lady who worked on the dual carriageway. He always stopped and talked to her and it always made me late for assembly. He was always cracking jokes with the lollipop lady, telling her that what she needed was a real lollipop and that he had just the very thing for her. In those days I was too young to know what a metaphor was. But I knew what a pigging lollipop was! I used to get dead embarrassed. Then after a bit the lollipop jokes stopped and whenever we got to the crossing point the two of them would just gaze longingly into each other’s eyes. And instead of holding my hand to cross the road, the lollipop lady held my Grandad’s hand instead and I had to find my own way through the bleeding traffic. Then one day we got to the crossing and instead of the lollipop lady gazing lovingly into my Grandad’s eyes, she lifted up her lollipop and battered shite out of him. It seems that someone had apprised her of the fact that my Grandad was also sharing his lollipop with the bisexual dinner lady from St Bernadette of Perpetual Succour’s Comprehensive. Me and my Grandad always had to walk up the hill and cross at the pelican lights after that. And then he fell off the roof and the vicar said to my Gran it was a tragedy.
But my Gran said, ‘Tragedy, my arse!’ she said. ‘When he hit that patio it was the start of my life and my only regret is that we didn’t have satellite television thirty bloody years earlier!’
The vicar blinked and said that perhaps they should move on and discuss which hymns my Gran would like to have at the funeral. My Gran said, ‘Oh Happy Day’ and ‘Glad That I Live Am I’.
The vicar coughed and quietly said something about grief affecting people in peculiar ways. Then he told my Gran he had to be getting along now but before he did he wanted to know if my Gran would like to have my Grandad buried or cremated. My Gran said she’d prefer to have him quicklimed. The vicar looked confused and coughed again and hurried off.
‘They don’t understand, y’ see, Raymond,’ she said after she’d shown the vicar out. ‘They don’t understand what I’ve had to put up with for all these years. Tragic? I could tell that bloody vicar about tragedy. You know my tragedy, don’t you, Raymond?’
‘Yes, Gran,’ I said. ‘Your tragedy is that you were never a mediocre woman, but you were forced to lead a mediocre life.’
‘That’s right, Raymond,’ she said, ‘that’s right. I lived a mediocre life. And all because of him. I met him, didn’t I, I married him. Him, with his fun. “Let’s go to Blackpool, Vera. Let’s go to Blackpool and have fun.” He loved fun. He always loved having fun. But I hated bleeding fun. I hated candy floss and Arthur Askey and the hoola-hoop and bastard bleeding Butlin’s and balloons and pratfalls and Charlie chuffin’ Chaplin and singalongs on charabancs and the hokey-sodding-cokey. Fun? I never wanted fun. I wanted joy! But he couldn’t see it. And do you know, Raymond, son? Do you know when I first found out about his fornicating and philandering, when I found out what he was up to with that Comptometer operator from Cheadle, do you know what he said to me? Do you know what he said when I asked him why? He said, “She’s good fun, Vera. She likes a bit of fun. And you’re no fun at all any more.” ’
My Gran carried on looking away into the distance for a moment. Then she stubbed her fag out and started collecting up the dishes from the table. ‘You know what Thomas Hardy said, don’t you, Raymond,’ my Gran asked me. ‘You know what Thomas Hardy said about Tess of the d’Urbervilles, don’t y’?’
I did know but I said I didn’t because I knew that my Gran liked to recite it so much.
‘“She was a victim of the most common tragedy of all,” ’ my Gran declared. ‘ “She married the wrong man!”’
My Gran stood there nodding solemnly with the dishes in her hand. ‘And when he wrote those words, Raymond,’ she said, ‘Thomas Hardy could just as easily have been talking about me!’
I picked up the cups and saucers and followed my Gran through to the kitchen.
‘You know who I should have married, don’t you, Raymond?’ she said as she ran the water into the washing-up bowl.
‘Yes, Gran,’ I said, ‘you should have married Jean-Paul Sartre.’
‘That’s right,’ my Gran said, ‘that’s right. Jean-Paul Sartre, that’s who I should have married. I could never read his books but y’ could tell from his picture, there was nothing frivolous about Jean-Paul Sartre.’
My Gran started washing up the dishes and I got the tea towel and started drying.
‘And I’ve always said, Raymond, I’ve always said, son, that you’re a bit like Jean-Paul Sartre yourself. There’s not a lot of frivolity about either one of you. That’s why you understand me, son, that’s why I can talk to you.’
And my Gran was right; I did understand her and I loved talking to her even though it was her who did all the talking.
My Gran doesn’t talk at all any more. It was my Uncle Bastard Jason and my Aunty Pigging Paula; they wanted to get their hands on the satellite dish, and they wanted my Gran’s house. And that’s why they had my Gran put away, in the Stalybridge Sanctuary for Seasoned Citizens. It was all their fault. And none of it would have happened if I’d been able to keep on talking with my Gran; I never would have got into as much trouble and been such a worry to my Mam. My Gran always understood me. And she’d never let nobody say nothing bad about me. Even after what happened at the canal.
So most of it wouldn’t have happened if my Gran had still been here.
I wouldn’t be going to gruesome gobbing Grimsby if my Gran was still here.
It was thinking about Grimsby that made me look up and I saw that I was still sat there in the bleeding Burger Banquet. I must have been sat there ages. The man with the knitted cardigan had gone and taken his hostage wife back to captivity. And I realised that I’d have to get gone and all. I promised my Mam that I’d phone her tonight and tell her I’d got there safely. But it’s nearly one o’clock now and I’m still stranded in Halifax. And that’s why I’ve decided to take the chance. I feel nervous really, because normally I’d never do what I’m about to do now. But I’ve got to get to Grimsby.
Wish me luck, Morrissey, wish me luck.
Yours sincerely,
Raymond Marks
Station Master’s Office,
Halifax Railway Station,
W. Yorks
Dear Morrissey,
It didn’t work, Morrissey. As you can see from the above address, I’ve been somewhat detained.
I know now that I was a fool. I know that I should never have done it.
I thought I’d be clever and buy a platform ticket so that at least I’d have legitimate cause to be there on the platform. But when I went up to the window and asked for a platform ticket it was the same sodding ticket clerk as before. He looked at me all dead suspicious.
‘I hope you realise,’ he said, ‘that boarding a train without a valid ticket is a serious offence.’
I said, ‘I’ve got no intention of boarding a train.’
He said, ‘So how come you wanted a ticket to Grimsby before?’
‘I didn’t want a ticket to Grimsby,’ I said. ‘I just wanted to know how much it’d be if I ever did want to go to Grimsby.’
He looked all dubious. ‘So you’re just going on the platform to meet someone, are y’?’ he said.
‘No,’ I said. And I held up my lyric book. ‘I’m a train-spotter!’
He looked at me and suddenly laughed. ‘Well, that fuckin’ explains everything,�
� he said as he took the 10p and threw the platform ticket at me.
I picked it up and walked towards the barrier, somewhat depressed now at the thought that I could convincingly be taken for a train-spotter.
I started to get all nervous when I got onto the platform. I just stood there looking at the train and the sticker on the window that said Leeds. It seemed as if everyone else on the platform was staring at me, that they all knew what I was about to do. I’d started perspiring and it was coming through my tee shirt so that the picture of Edith Sitwell looked like it had started growing a beard. I felt dead guilty and I’d not even done nowt yet! I thought about my Mam and how I’d promised her that I wouldn’t get into no trouble. And there I was just about to commit a minor misdemeanour by availing myself of public transport without being in possession of a valid ticket. But then I thought about how much more worried my Mam’d be if I wasn’t able to phone her tonight to tell her I’d got there. I looked all around me. And none of the legitimate commuters seemed to be staring at me no more. So I quickly pulled the carriage door open, threw my stuff on board and climbed in after it. I’d planned to lock myself in the toilet. But I tried the door and it was locked and there was a big yellow sticker on it, saying ‘out of order’. I turned towards the toilet on the other side of the corridor but a young executive type got to the door ahead of me and locked it behind him. Then out of the window I saw two railway guards coming towards the train. And then I saw that the ticket clerk was with them and that he was pointing at the train and I knew then, I knew that he hadn’t really taken me for a train-spotter and it must have just been a ploy so that he could catch me doing something wrong. I began to panic then and started legging it along the carriage towards the other set of toilets at the far end. But the carriage was packed and my guitar slung over my back kept banging and bonging on the seats and everyone was looking up at me. And then my guitar bonged against someone’s head as he tried to get out of his seat. I turned around and said I was sorry. But then I saw it was the person with the number-one haircut who’d said he’d gladly garrotte me.
The Wrong Boy Page 4
