Once Upon a Time in England

by Helen Walsh

  As the morning slithered on, his thoughts veered away from his own sad plight to the wrecked, broken face of his wife. Ashamed of everything he’d thought and done, he excused himself from the line and called her from the payphone outside the canteen. A lump pushed up against his throat. He felt utterly, utterly wretched – yet even then, as he dialled home, he still felt a residue of resentment towards her smiling haplessness. He was disgusted at himself for pulling her up for her innocent mispronunciations, but kowtowing to the Cohens? Now that was unforgivable.

  She wasn’t in – or she didn’t pick up, at least – and by the time lunch came round things didn’t seem half as raw. He knew Sheila well enough to be sure that it would all be forgotten by the time he got in from work. She might cling on to a silent and dignified sense of injury for a few hours more, just to let him know he’d done wrong, but she’d never bring it up again and that suited Robbie just fine. All he wanted now was to forget the whole thing and move on. If only Vernon Cohen would let him.

  Robbie saw him cutting across the works’ canteen, but he was already too late. Vernon always ate his lunch with the men – or among them – but, a creature of habit, it was easy enough to swerve him if you timed your run late enough. The siren sounded at 12.30 and at 12.45 Vernon Cohen would walk in with his chip-shop dinner, sit himself down on the nearest bench to the door and spread the Daily Mirror out as he munched. He was respectful in that he never forced himself upon anybody, didn’t even make eye contact – yet his very presence, however well-meant, was an affront to the men. But today was unlike every other day. It was almost one o’clock and Vernon was still not seated. He was scanning the room, looking for someone and Robbie knew that somebody was him. It was futile pretending he hadn’t seen him so Robbie mitigated the damage by heading back outside, thinking that, at worst, there’d be fewer witnesses to his pow-wow with The Boss. Vernon followed.

  ‘Robbie, mate – you got a mo?’

  Robbie cringed. His tone was so jaunty. He found himself succumbing to anger once more. Why him? What was this? Why couldn’t he just be left alone to do his job, for fuck’s sake? He lengthened his stride across the quadrangle, putting distance between them briefly, but Cohen went into a trot to keep up with him, his stout legs working overtime. He got within a pace of Robbie and, satisfied he had his ear, went into his spiel.

  ‘Just wanted to run something by you, like …’ He was panting as he speed-walked, and his shortness of breath made him speak louder, in gasps. ‘Thing is … dunno if Sheila’s told you … but Liza and I are fanatical curry fans. Love our tuck, we do …’ He rested a moment, bent double, the flats of his hands glued to his ample thighs. He started after Robbie again. ‘The thing is, Rob … our lot still think Italian’s exotic. Couldn’t sell a curry to our brood for love nor money.’

  Robbie slowed himself, vexed at Vernon making free and easy about curry. The very word made him recoil. And here was Vernon Cohen tossing it about like it was just another meal.

  ‘So, how’s about it, yeah? How’s about a curry night round at ours?’

  Robbie felt himself coming apart at the seams. What the fuck was going on here? He was being harassed by his fucking boss! He stopped dead in the middle of the quadrangle, turned to his obliging employer and stopped him in his tracks with a glower. ‘What?’

  Cohen backed off, holding up the flat of a palm. ‘Not to worry, mate. Some other time.’

  One or two workmates passed, stopping to see what was going on.

  Keen to show his understanding ‘of the way things are’, Cohen raised his voice, as though chiding Robbie. ‘Put yourself in my shoes – how can I pay you overtime if you keep forgetting to clock off? Think about it, Fitz.’ Pleased with himself, he winked at Robbie and bustled away. He couldn’t have made it any more obvious if he’d been reading aloud from Cole’s Notes on Hamming It. Robbie felt his face burning up. He didn’t need to turn round to see what his workmates had made of it. It would be all round the plant by now. Fitzgerald was going to Cohen’s for a curry night.

  No worse sight could have greeted Vincent as he entered the hothouse. His bag, his blazer and all their contents had been emptied out all over the floor. Scattered on top of them were several dozen blistered playing cards with fading nudes. Nudged on by Simon Blake, Isobel Cohen swallowed hard and threw herself into character. Scuffing at the nudie cards with the sole of her shoe, she circled Vincent, her face twisted in contempt. ‘What d’you call this, you freak? You fucking pervert!’

  Suddenly, a thunderball flew past her, throwing itself into Vincent’s chest and driving him to the floor. He blinked and gasped for air. Sat on top of him, reddened by fury, was Victoria Cohen, the quieter sister. She pinned Vincent’s weedy arms back and let a glob of spittle drop onto his face. He wriggled this way and that, trying to get some purchase on her, when a splintering pain caught him in the ribs. Isobel was leering over him.

  ‘Spazzy ’ead!’ She kicked him again. This one didn’t hurt so much. ‘Crappy hair!’ Kick. ‘Shit, crappy hair pervert!’

  Victoria jumped up, threw herself back down onto Vincent and set about him, peppering his face with angry digs and smacks. ‘Spaz-hair sicko!’ She punched him, full, flinty knuckles this time, right in the mouth.

  ‘Ow!’ A feeble reaction, but he couldn’t stop himself. He put his hand to his mouth to check for blood.

  ‘Go Vicky! Go Vicky!’

  A crowd gathered around them. Throughout the din, the fury and the pain, Vincent was aware of Tim Butcher, the class dunce, trudging in, confused, as ever, by everything. As though the moment were being slowed down for his own benefit and his higher education, Vincent heard every word of the exchange.

  ‘Who’s getting it?’

  ‘Some lad with a shit haircut.’

  ‘It’s Gaylord. The Paki lad.’

  ‘What’s he done?’

  ‘He’s a pervert.’

  ‘With crap hair.’

  Izzy slammed her foot into his face. A string of bloody snot shot out as his nose burst. Vincent passed out, not through the pain or the blow itself, but at the sight of his own blood. When he came to, there was a teacher on the scene, holding one of the girls by the wrist. The other girl picked up a fistful of playing cards and held them up to the teacher. ‘He had these, miss! He was making us look. He’s a sicko!’

  ‘Yeah! He’s a pervert, miss!’

  For Vincent, it wasn’t the physical beating that hurt. It wasn’t the fact that it was two girls who’d attacked him, nor that the whole class had stood around and cheered them on. It wasn’t the shouts of pervert or sicko – though he could scarcely see how one boy’s crowing machismo made him cool while another’s stab at sexual integration made him sick. No, a whole hour after the blood flow had been staunched and the braying, stomping catcalls fled his inner ear, the one pitiful remnant of their attack that hung around to haunt him was the spite they’d reserved for one specific aspect of his being. His hair. He sat in the secretary’s office, reinvented for the occasion as an ad hoc sick bay, still trying to quell the occasional sob. What could be so awful about his hair? He was more than familiar with the anti-Paki drill, and greasy hair was up there with lime-green flares and fuck-off collars and smelling of curry … but the sisters hadn’t mentioned anything about grease or dirt. It was his actual hair they hated. Something about the styling, the lack of style, some offensive thing about the way his hair made him look had driven them over the edge. There was much more to their onslaught than common-or-garden bullying. They’d wanted him to really suffer out there. He stared directly at his reflection, trying not to blink. True enough, his hair was thick and somewhat shapeless. More lenient observers might call it a genius cut. Perhaps it did give him a know-it-all, somewhat smarmy look.

  Vincent took a step closer to the mirror and made his mind up. The visiting nurse had said he should go home. As soon as the secretary came back with her cup of tea he would tell her he’d managed to reach his mother and she was on he
r way to collect him now. Another child, and they’d probably make him wait inside. Intuitively though, he knew the secretary would have no objection to him waiting for his Amah at the school gates. So he’d slip away, take himself down to Les’s and let him do what he was always begging to.

  Self-conscious about his split lip and the fact he wasn’t in school, Vincent drew himself up, strode into Les’s and asked for a skinhead. Part of it was he wanted to look hard – or harder, anyway, as hard as a diminutive, bespectacled Paki lad can look. But it went beyond that. Skinheads fascinated him. The look, the aura – something about all that excited him. But camp, fussy Les was having none of it.

  ‘A thkin-head!’ he lisped, eyes wide with horror, hand clamped to his mouth. ‘Don’t you dare ask me to butcher this beautiful little face with a thug’s cut!’

  Beautiful! Had he really just said that? It was the first time anyone other than his mother had complimented him. Shocked, then immediately flattered, Vincent’s eyes met Les’s in the mirror. He felt a vague and gentle throb of affection for the world-weary hairdresser with the peroxide mop. ‘Well – I don’t know. I just hate my hair. What can I do with it?’ It was a straightforward question, but it had the effect of hurling Les into inexplicable delirium.

  ‘You leave this to me, gorgeous,’ he exclaimed.

  Vincent swooned. He’d never been called gorgeous before – and whether Les meant it or not, it didn’t really matter. He felt high.

  Les set to work, hips banging into Vincent as scissors of various shapes and sizes clipped, trimmed, thinned and layered, flurrying and nipping away at his tousled thatch, graduating it into a slick, precipitous fringe that fell away right across his face, occluding one eye altogether. And when he showed him what he’d done at the back, it was nothing less than genius. Again, with intricately stepped gradients, he’d built a staggered wedge, bulbous at the skull and dropping away to nothing as it tapered into the neck.

  ‘There! David Thylvian eat your heart out!’

  Vincent knew his father would kill him, but he loved it straight away. He couldn’t stop staring at himself, beaming and flirting into the mirror as though it were a complete stranger looking back at him. Les laid one gentle hand on his shoulder, pleased with his work and even happier at the effect it was having on his young client.

  ‘You look thtunning, Vinthent – even if I do thay-thow methelf!’

  He ran outside in a staccato burst of joy, a sudden hunger for life. But where to go? He still had an hour and a half until home time. Then it came to him. Matt. Matt from the library. He’d only really found the courage to start responding to his gentle prompts and suggestions those last couple of weeks of the holidays, but already he saw Matt as a soulmate. To Vincent it was a definite plus that Matt was as softly spoken and as introverted as he was. Although they’d spent pretty much the entire summer nodding awkwardly then scurrying off to opposite corners of the library, bit by bit – and in the most unobtrusive way possible – Matt had gradually struck up a nice, understated kinship with the bookish young boy. Vincent loved having someone to show off to. Matt approved of the books he loved, and pointed him in the direction of other similar things he might ‘get’. That’s what Vincent loved best of all – when Matt would look him the eye, pat him on the shoulder sometimes and say, ‘You’ll get it, Vin. You’ll definitely get it.’

  He couldn’t say which was more of a thrill – his being deemed worthy of Matt’s personal tip-sheet, or his bestowing of a nickname upon him. Only rarely had he ever felt the cosy swoon of inclusion that a ‘Vinnie’ or a ‘Vin’ could bring. And though Matt was sparing with his endearments, each new familiarity brought a fulsome flush of pleasure with it.

  He ran, head down out of habit, clutching his blazer shut as always as he loped his awkward, leggy gait towards the library, eating up the yards with his long, silly strides. There he was. Perched on the wall outside, always in black whatever the weather, idling in the sunshine. He stopped for a second. A brief flash of panic and fear and, yes – jealousy. Matt was larking about, grinning and chortling with a friend. From the top of the street, Vincent could pick out the man’s hennaed hair, a purplish nimbus hovering above him. A bloodrush of inadequacy, a cloying sense of threat that this new guy was so … weird-looking, so radical and challenging in his otherness. Yet, for all his sudden feelings of smallness, Vincent wanted to see more – and to be seen. As he got closer, he quashed his mild hurt at seeing a cigarette dangling from his mentor’s hand, concentrating instead on suppressing the grin he could feel radiating out from within him as the two men became conscious of his approach. On seeing him, Matt did a Disney-style double take, tossed his half-smoked rollie to the floor and came bounding towards him. ‘Wow!’ he purred. ‘Look at you! You’ve got yourself a Romantic’s cut.’

  Vincent almost fainted at the word.

  ‘Jim! This is my book buddy, Vincent. Vin – this is James.’

  Vincent was still tingling from Matt’s initial declaration: a Romantic’s cut. It sounded impossibly glamorous. And now, to cap it all, Jim or James was gently appraising him. He had a similar hairstyle himself, though his brown fringe was less jagged, and flecked with reddish splinters. He stepped forward, hand held out to shake. Gingerly, Vincent allowed his hand to be taken, pumped and squeezed, rather than offering any shaking motion himself. He just stared up at James. Dressed in black shirt, tight black Levis and black, school-style pumps, he looked slick and stylish.

  ‘Top swede,’ he said, nodding at Vincent’s hair and sending little electric currents probing his tummy. Vincent took a deep breath and held it down. He didn’t have to do anything – just stand there, being appreciated. Being cool. It felt delicious.

  *

  Robbie could not go home. He drove aimlessly through the town, turning this way and that, one vague plan nestling in his subconscious only to be supplanted by another. The sun was a huge glowering disc in the sky. It hovered above the factory rooftops before slipping off into the beyond. Robbie put his lights on half-beam. The petrol gauge nudged red. He drove on. It was growing dark. He pulled up at a phone box. Vincent answered, sounding curiously upbeat.

  ‘Put your mum on will you, love?’

  Sheila came to the phone. ‘Robbie. Is everything OK? I was starting to get worried. Ellie’s driving us up the wall asking when you’ll be back.’ Her voice was cracked and tiny. ‘Are you OK? Is everything OK?’

  He couldn’t say. What could he say? ‘Yeah. I’m fine. I’ll be back a bit later.’ He hung up and got back in his car, happier. He had an idea.

  It was dark now as Robbie drove through the sodium-studded streets of his boyhood. He was gripped by a blistering nostalgia, rootless but overpowering. He lingered outside the terraced red-brick of his birth, dimly recalling the noises, the smells. He started choking, hit the accelerator and pushed away, past the wind-chafed wastelands, past the watchful tower blocks where he’d smoked his first fag, past the meagre corpse of an old Capri where Orford’s eager lasses had lain down under the cover of the night. How he wished he hadn’t dragged poor Sheila into all this. How much harder he had to try, to make things right for her – and how little difference it made. Any pretty Orford girl – and he could have taken his pick – they would be delirious, just to be married to Robbie Fitz. There’d be none of this overtime. None of this constant strife and struggle and heavy churning of the soul.

  He came to, looked up, and blinked to clear the sting from his eyes. He was right by the Irish Club – the last landmark in the elegy of his youth. Smiling now, feeling something warm and generous and curiously fatalistic wash over him, he pulled over. He shut down the engine.

  The walls had been given a lick of paint. The torn upholstery had been stitched back up. The heady waft of a simmering stew hit him as he walked through the door. He stopped, took a deep breath, and just stood there a while, taking it all in. A few old men were stooped into a well-stoked fire. A couple of youths were setting up the pool table. A TV
simmered above their tender Dublin brogue. Some of the faces had changed, but it was the same old place. He padded across to the bar, pulled up a stool and ordered a pint of Guinness, his eyes stinging as he remembered how much he loved this place and what a big part of his heart it owned. An old fella at the end of the bar called over without so much as looking up. ‘Fitz? Bluegrass singer from the thirties?’

  Robbie looked back at the old man, thin lips stained blue at the corner where he’d been sucking his biro as he tackled the crossword. Robbie was momentarily shocked – not just at hearing his name but the casual, almost throwaway manner in which it was uttered, as though he’d never been away from there – and for a moment the drudgery of his world was suspended.

  ‘Come on well, Robbie. If you can’t get it, no bastard can. Had a hit with “Song of the Sierras”. You know him, so you do! First name begins with a J. Second name ends with a Y.’

  Robbie smiled and lifted his pint to his lips as though mulling the question over. He knew it, knew it off by heart, but he wanted to tease out the moment. ‘Jimmy Wakely,’ he said.

  The old man nodded, pushed his glasses back up his nose and filled in the answer, perfectly content for their intercourse to end forthwith. Robbie signalled to the barmaid.