Top Hard

by Stephen Booth

  I must have got the heating turned up too high in the house. A hot flush had gone through my neck and there was sweat on my forehead. Also I was gripping the phone too tight, like it was someone's neck that I wanted to do some damage too.

  "Cavendish."

  "That's right," she said. "What a coincidence him being on the course, isn't it? But of course he's very interested in heritage. It's in his blood, I suppose."

  "Michael bleedin' Cavendish."

  "It's Michael Holles-Bentinck-Cavendish, can you believe it? All those historic family names still surviving in somebody alive today. Incredible."

  "And I suppose Mr Holles-Bentinck bleedin' Cavendish has just happened to be one of the people you bumped into in the bar at night?"

  "Well, yes. But there have been a group of us usually."

  I didn't like that 'usually' either. It had the same taste as that 'we' earlier. Nasty.

  "Actually," said Lisa. "I'll tell you all about it when I see you tomorrow, but he's asked me to do some work for him."

  "Who has?"

  "Michael. Mr Cavendish."

  "Tell him to stuff it."

  "Stones, are you all right? You send very irritable."

  "Bloody hell, do I?"

  "I know you didn't take to him, but this is business."

  She'd used the magic word, and she knew it. I could hardly object to her having some business of her own. Just so long as it really was business. If I found out otherwise, Mr Four-name Cavendish was going to get his hyphens mangled by a bit of Stones McClure footfall optimisation, right in the crutch.

  * * * *

  When I got to Rolling Meadows, Uncle Willis was already waiting for me. He was sitting in what they call the sun lounge - a sort of greenhouse with chairs. The chairs were the kind they make old people use when they think the poor souls might have forgotten how to sit up without falling over.

  A care assistant flapped away from my uncle as I arrived. She was a bit on the hefty side for me, employed for her brawn, I suppose - handy for lifting old people on and off their beds and other things I'd rather not think about. But Uncle Willis had always liked his women big. My Aunt Mary wasn't exactly a wee lass. I think that's why they called her 'Two Ton'.

  "They won't leave me alone, youth," said Willis, without bothering with a greeting. "They give me no peace in here, you know."

  "I know, Uncle. But you never really wanted peace, did you?"

  "Ah, well. I've had an active life, I suppose."

  I perched on one of the high chairs, examining him for signs of deterioration. Like my dad, he'd been a pitman. But he'd been the older of the brothers by seven years, and he'd got himself a trade, working up to a chargehand electrician at Medensworth pit. So far, at seventy-two, he wasn't looking bad. A bit frailer and slower than he used to be, but otherwise fit. His eye was bright, and he certainly had his faculties about him, which was more than could be said for some of the other poor old souls in here. He always had a sharp brain, my uncle. That, and an ability to get directly to the point.

  "I've made my will, Livingstone."

  "Oh, yes?"

  "At last, you mean."

  "I didn't say that."

  "Ah, but you know that I should have made it a long time ago. I could go at any time, the way they treat me in here. I'm permanently at death's door, I am."

  "Sure."

  He sighed at me. "No, really. It was something I had to do."

  "I don't know what you're trying to tell me, Uncle. But I don't want your money, you know."

  "Of course you don't. Business is good, so you keep telling me."

  He fixed me with a sharp eye. Some folk think all the residents in a place like this are a pickle short of a jar. They'd be making a big mistake in my uncle's case.

  "That's right, it is," I said.

  "Good. I'm really pleased."

  "So?"

  "So I've decided to leave my money - and I do have a little bit put aside, you know, insurance payouts and all that. I've decided to leave the lot to St Asaph's Church. I'm going to set up a fund."

  "Really?"

  "Really. Do you approve?"

  "Of course. Yeah. It's a great idea, Uncle. Well done."

  "What do you think they might use the money for?"

  "A swimming pool at the vicarage? A holiday in the Bahamas for the choir? I dunno."

  "I thought a new youth club. Get some of the kids off the streets, give them something to do. You'd agree with you that, wouldn't you, Livingstone?"

  "Sure."

  "Good. Because I'm making you chief executive of the Trust."

  "Hey, wait a minute, what trust?"

  "The one that will run the McClure Memorial Fund. The trust will build and run the youth club."

  "Hang on, Uncle Willis. I'm much too busy for that sort of thing."

  "Business?"

  "Yeah, right."

  "Well, I think you'll find that it's in your business interests to accept this responsibility."

  In the silence that followed, I glanced around idly, looking cool. Inside, my mind was hurtling. What was my uncle getting at? How much did he know about my business interests? He'd been in Rolling Meadows for so long that he'd only ever seen me at work in my previous life. I thought I'd been suitably vague ever since.

  It was good enough for Lisa and Nuala, and for the Rev. But Willis McClure was my uncle, and therefore not daft. Was he really threatening me here? Would he interfere in my business interests if I didn't agree to this ridiculous trust fund idea? Well, he was my uncle. I reckoned he damn well would.

  "Uncle Willis, if you reckon it's a good idea, I'll think about it, I promise."

  "Well, that'll do for now, I suppose. We'll talk about it again soon."

  "Right."

  "Because I'm not going to do die right now, you understand."

  "That's okay."

  "Do one more thing for me, Livingstone?"

  "Of course, Uncle."

  "On your way out, tell that bonny big girl I need her services again."

  "No problem."

  It's true that there's precious little in Medensworth for the youngsters to do. Everyone lives next door to everyone else here, and we know each others' kids intimately. These are the sort of kids who soon learn to fight, thieve, smash the place up and mug old ladies for their pensions - until eventually they get thrown out of the playgroup. By the time they get to school they're already professionals.

  You'd think with all this talk about regeneration of the mining communities after the pits shut, it might occur to somebody that these kids were the future. Maybe somebody would even think to spend a bit of that European money on them. But it seems there are more important things to think about, like what to do with all the derelict bits of pit left over - how to tart them up and make them look cool and stylish.

  Near the Miners Welfare and the community centre there's a patch of grass. This is notable enough round here. But in the middle of the grass, sunk into a concrete plinth, is the Medensworth Colliery sign. It's about a mile from where the colliery was, you understand. But the sign is Heritage, and therefore sacred.

  Every village round here wants to cling on to a bit of its mining past. It helps to make up for watching the pits go down one by one, like ten green bottles. So a village decides to have an old winding wheel painted up and stuck in a prominent position, or goes for the three wagons and bit of line from an underground coal train like the ones that sit by the road in the middle of Warsop. This is Heritage too.

  As you know, I'm all in favour of history. But there's history and history. It's got to be real and alive, not dead and torn up by its roots like a diseased shrub rose, or replaced with a plastic imitation like a corner of an insurance broker's office. But that's the way the heritage business is going.

  In the town of Worksop, they must have had a bit of a dilemma. When they built the pedestrianisation scheme in Bridge Street, they had a couple of ideas about how they'd decorate it (they probably said
'give it a focal point' or something). One was a modern sculpture of coal miners, very relevant to most folk around there. The other was a series of crests representing the dukes that the Dukeries are named after, all very heraldic and meaningless. The dukes won, of course. You would have thought the days were long gone when the Duke of Newcastle and the Duke of Portland dominated the whole of Worksop, but apparently not. We still have to walk over their family coats of arms to get to Superdrug and Poundstretcher. Me, I try to see them as boot scrapers.

  Uncle Willis was right in a way. Something needed doing for the kids round here. But no matter what good use you found for your money, there would never be enough. It'd be like pissing into the sea at Skegness. You can't put problems right by throwing a bit of dosh at them - not when things have gone on like this for so long. It needs dedication from people - long term. Bear this in mind next time you hear the government or the council or somebody boasting about the latest investment in the area. What sort of investment? A Korean textiles company persuaded to set up a factory by hefty grant hand-outs? A few hundred thousand pounds on a leisure centre? A new school? Like I said - pissing in the sea.

  Soon, somewhere around here, they'll be building a new visitor centre. It'll be designed to bring the Japanese and Americans flocking in. They'll be able to sit in the reconstruction of a 1940s concrete council house, with a two-bar electric fire and an uncut moquette sofa that's been chewed by the dog, where you have to pay extra to sit in the wet patches. It'll be a full sensory adventure, smelling of piss and dirty nappies and old tea bags. There'll be four or five half-naked kids sprawled on the floor, with a telly tuned to a re-run of The Simpsons and turned up too loud.

  Featured prominently in the midst of this setting will be a scruffy bloke with a beer gut and three days' growth of beard slumped in an armchair with half a packet of Senior Service and a can of Mansfield Bitter. If you're lucky with the timing of your visit, you might see him belch and poke at the remote control. Visitors will be able to join the eldest son fiddling about in the electrics of an old Escort as he learns how to hot-wire, or to gaze at a typical mum as she works out how to feed seven people on a tin of stewed steak and a bag of McCain's frozen chips.

  This will be called 'The Unemployment Experience'. It'll thrill 'em in their thousands. Hey, we might even be able to get European funding for it.

  That's what life always comes down to these days - money. When there isn't much of it about, people think of nothing else. When you come to The Unemployment Experience, that's what the exhibits will be thinking about as they light up the next fag or open the bag of chips. So get your purses out and give generously for the postcards and the souvenirs. Let's make it really authentic.

  13

  Rufford Abbey hasn't seen sight or sandal of Cistercian monks for over four hundred years. But it does have a hundred and seventy acres of grounds. Enough to get a few villages in, let alone the gardens, lakes and ice houses that the earls fancied. Earls of Shrewsbury they were originally, and they had big ideas. Not surprising, because one of them was married to old Bess of Hardwick. And the Earl decided to turn this place into a vast country house.

  There is one building here I particularly like. According to Lisa, it was an outdoor bath house back in the eighteenth century, and at one time it must have made your average heated swimming pool in the commuter villages of Surrey look like my granddad's old tin tub in front of the fire. But a hundred years later some other lord or earl, one of the Saviles, decided to build a glass roof over this thing and convert it into an orangery. You know, like you grow your oranges in. You haven't got one? Well, it was all the thing in Nottinghamshire then. Everybody had to have one.

  But then Rufford suffered a disaster. It was sold on by the Savile family and ended up in the gentle hands of the British Army, who used it during the Second World War for storing ammunition and basically let the place fall down. You won't be surprised to hear that Nottinghamshire County Council and English Heritage are planning to finish restoring Rufford Abbey. When they can get the money.

  There's also a permanent sculpture collection here, that Lisa showed me once. Really modern stuff. Interesting. There's a big Easter Island sort of stone head and a woman with no head at all. Then there's something called Iron Equinox, which is an inventive creation combining the contrasting tones and textures of cast iron, steel and lead. Well, all right, it's a lump of metal with bits of wire trailing from it. Interesting, though.

  One of these sculptures is by some bird called Siobhan Coppinger. Basically, it's a bench on a stone base, and it sits in a corner of the orangery. At one end of the bench is a bloke in wellies and a hat, with his coat collar turned up. At the other end is a curly horned sheep, all four hooves on the bench, like it was sitting up ready for a bit of intelligent conversation. Both the bloke and the sheep are made of chicken wire and ferro-concrete, but there's more life in them than there is in some of my neighbours on the Forest Estate. There's also room in between them on the bench for people to sit, so that's what I did. It's the sort of thing that amuses me.

  I sat for a while staring at the sculpture opposite me. It's a bronze thing called the Charioteer, but to me it looks more like a duck falling off a plinth. I haven't figured that one out yet. I'll have to remember to ask Lisa about it.

  When the lad I was meeting arrived, he first clocked me from behind a tree in the arboretum. I saw him stop, gape and dodge back behind the trunk like someone playing cowboys and indians. That irritates me. These idiots have always watched too much telly.

  Finally, it seemed to dawn on him that the other bloke on the bench with me wasn't real, and he sneaked up gradually, pretending I couldn't see him until he was a few feet away. I humoured him. He already looked nervous enough without me startling him with a display of supernatural powers, like being able to see him creeping up on me in full view. Even if I hadn't been looking, I'd have noticed the smell approaching. It was like a mixture of motor oil and chips. You get a lot of it wafting round the Forest Estate and it makes me feel at home.

  The lad still hesitated in the doorway of the orangery, his eyes shifting sideways, taking in the art. Old Siobhan had obviously made an impact. In case he hadn't realised, I pointed out that the bloke in wellies wasn't really with us, not even in spirit.

  "Don't worry, he's made of concrete, so he ain't listening. In fact, he's stone deaf." But the bloke was looking past me at the other occupant of the bench. "Oh, got a thing about sheep, have ewe?"

  "This is weird, man. What's it all mean?"

  "Good question, Trevor. It makes you think, doesn't it?"

  "Er, yeah."

  "Sit down."

  "Is it safe?"

  "What do you think's going to happen - the sheep's going to bite you, or what? But of course you're a city boy, aren't you, Trevor? Nobody's ever explained to you that real sheep aren't made of concrete."

  He eventually sat down next to me on the bench. I might say he looked a bit sheepish, but I won't. I don't know quite how to describe what he did look like in his tattered jeans and army boots, with a filthy, smelly anorak pulled over his t-shirt. That anorak was so shiny with grease it could have deflected the glare from a nuclear explosion. His lank hair wasn't much better. But at least there was life in there among that oily tangle, which is more than could be said for his eyes. He looked as though he was just coming down from a trip, and it had been a bad one, worse than a works outing to Skeggie. When I said I was clutching at straws, I really meant it.

  "They made me pay a quid in the car park," he complained.

  "You've got a car, Trevor? I didn't even know you'd got a licence again."

  "I haven't. But how the hell do you get here from Nottingham on the bleedin' bus?"

  "You telling me you nicked a motor to come here?"

  "That's what everybody does round here, ain't it? Why couldn't we have met somewhere else? What's wrong with a pub? This place gives me the creeps."

  "There are supposed to be a lot of gh
osts here."

  "Eh?"

  "Don't worry about it, Trevor. Just enjoy the sculptures."

  "Is that what they are?"

  "Of course."

  "So why do they call it the orangery then? That's what it said on the sign. Orangery."

  "Bloody hell, did you think they were oranges? You've lived a more sheltered life than I thought. Have all my sheep jokes been wasted then?"

  "You're always bleedin' taking the piss, you are, Stones. I don't know why I bother coming when you shout."

  "Yes you do, Trevor. It's because you love me as the caring human being I am, and want to express your friendship and admiration for me."

  "Piss off."

  "Here. Take a look at this."

  At first, Trevor shied away from the piece of paper I held out to him. He looked as though he might be about to claim he couldn't read, but I knew better than that. He'd been to Nottingham High School and got nine 'O' levels and four 'A' levels, followed by a degree in Sociology. But everyone has to have a role to act out, don't they?

  "What is it?"

  "It's a love letter from me to you, Trevor. I've hidden my feelings for too long. It's time we came out. Why don't you read it and see what it is for yourself, you pillock?"

  While he read it, I admired the scenery in the orangery. An old couple down the far end were reading an interpretation board about the history of Rufford Abbey. I heard the old biddy commenting on one of the sculptures, complaining about the way it had been treated. It wasn't the Charioteer, but a sort of fractured concrete ball, three feet high, that was split wide open at the top. The old girl was outraged that somebody had left their sweet wrappers in it. I hadn't the heart to tell her it was an avant-garde rubbish bin.

  "This is a list of names," said Trevor cautiously.

  "Well done. Your education wasn't wasted."

  "Who are they?"

  "That, old mate, is what I want you to tell me."

  "I've never heard of any of them."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Well, not a hundred per cent," he said. "I'd have to check."