‘You were going to Wembley, correct?’ I asked.
Still nothing.
‘Those men you were with, and the children. They were taking you somewhere safe. You have to stay with them, not the other ones. You know that, don’t you?’
Her eyes drooped, but still she said nothing.
‘You have to get back to those men. The green ones, they’re the army. They’ll keep you safe. A home or something. Maybe … maybe new parents.’
She took a little breath, then reached inside her coat and pulled something from her pocket. Without taking her eyes from the fire, she lay it on the floor beside her. I picked it up. It was a photograph, faded and out of focus, of something that looked like a farm or an old country house. There was a hill in the background, streams, rivers, sheep, all that countryside business, and a woman at the gate wearing boots and work clothes, carrying a stick. I could see other people in the background, a few children and adults carrying things. Beyond them was a white tent, and others on the hill behind.
I turned the photograph. On the back were written the words:
Gorndale, Bistlethorpe, Yorks.
Magda. x
It was something she had found, perhaps, or something from her time before. Maybe it had belonged to her parents. I set it back on the carpet and she took it, eyes still trained on the fire.
‘You must get back to those men,’ I said.
I left her with Lineker and went back to tinker with Bertha.
When I returned it was dark and the girl had found a place on the floor next to the three-bar, where she huddled next to Lineker. Open upon her knees was a book which, with fury, I recognised as my photograph album. I leaped forward and snatched it from her hands.
‘How dare you!’ I yelled. ‘How dare you look at this!’
She flinched and looked up at me, eyes wide.
‘This is mine! Nobody is to touch this, do you hear? Nobody!’
My hands were shaking. My blood thundered. I looked down at the open page awash with overexposed, badly focussed memories dotted with red eyes and spots of age. Me, my brother, my mother, a whole array of faces I barely remembered.
And her. Of course, her.
Half of one page was taken up with a group photograph. It was our corner table in the Wheatsheaf, full of leers, grins, cigarette smoke and headlocks. There was my brother, rabbit-ear fingers hidden behind one of his friends. There was me at the end nursing a half-pint of something weak, trying my best to smile for the camera.
And there at the other end, eyes in mid-turn towards me, was her. We had kept this photograph – not because of the people in it, but because it was the evening it happened. Almost the moment, in fact: 4th July 1990.
I once heard someone say that we’re all born a natural age, and when we reach that age, that’s the time in our life when we’re the happiest. Some are just waiting for the time their old souls feel happy in their skins whereas others carry the glow of their twenties throughout their lives, or never stop being children. I don’t know if that’s true, but there’s definitely a part of me that still lives in that summer.
I was twenty-one but far from happy. Although my life was supposed to be just beginning – I had just finished my electrician’s apprenticeship; a momentous occasion that brought everyone on the street to offer their congratulations – I felt like I was watching it slip away. I had wanted to be an engineer, but a profession like that required a university education, which was out of the question. There were no savings or second jobs or ‘we’ll make do somehow’ promises; it simply was not up for discussion. The mention of a degree brought only laughter and tuts from my mother. So the dream slid back in its box, I smiled at the endless back slaps and took the path that was offered.
Neil said nothing, but those arm jabs of his, which I had endured since learning to walk, were harder than usual. I realised that all they ever had been was tacit encouragement; his only means of fathering me, in place of a real dad. Mum was proud but I’m sure those carefully hidden tears peeling spuds at the sink were just as much of relief. She had raised her boys and now they could look after themselves, and those expensive dreams of further education were now firmly in the past.
They were happy days for everyone, so I buried my thoughts and smiled at the smiles. Even if I had not, nobody would have noticed, for there were much more important things afoot than a young man’s future.
Italia ’90. The World Cup. England flags, pizza and Pavarotti everywhere. Heaven for football fans, but not so much for me. Neil had tried his best to get me into the sport as a boy, dragging me out to those dreary West Ham matches. The beautiful game, he called it, but for the life of me I could see nothing beautiful in spending an afternoon chewing cold pies and cheering on millionaires.
The tournament was nearing its conclusion, and it seemed that the whole country was preparing itself for an important match.
‘Come on, Reggie,’ said Neil. ‘You need to get yourself out of the house for a change. You’ll never meet any birds stuck up in your room. Stop moping.’
‘I am not moping.’
‘Well, come on then! It’s fucking England, Reg; England and West Germany! The semi-finals! Why would you want to miss that?’
I capitulated, as I always did. The best I could hope for was that Neil and his friends would get drunk so quickly that they would not notice me slipping out halfway through the first half. I certainly was not expecting to meet my future wife.
It was mid-afternoon on a Wednesday and the whole of South London, it seemed, had either taken the day off or left work early. The pubs were full and car horns honked as I traipsed through the streets after Neil. At the Wheatsheaf, we pushed our way through the crowd and made for a table in the corner, which his friends had managed to keep since starting drinking two hours before.
‘The match doesn’t start until seven,’ I said.
‘What?’ said Neil. ‘Speak up!’
‘I said it doesn’t start till seven, why are we here so early?’
He cuffed me, with a don’t be daft look on his face. ‘To get a few in, of course! What do you want?’
‘I don’t know, shandy I suppose.’
‘Shut up, you muppet, you’re having a pint. Keith, what you havin’ mate?’
I never really got the hang of pubs. Couldn’t see the draw – all that squashing and shouting and trying to have a good time. It all felt forced. Right then, as Neil got the orders and I tried to find a space amongst all those booming, beer-breathed hooligans, all I wanted to do was slip out and go home. I was considering doing just this, when I heard a voice.
‘There’s a seat here, if you want?’
I looked down and there she was. Bangles, curly hair, dungarees and a tight white vest that I made a mental note not to stare at. Girls can see you looking, I had read, even when you think they cannot, so you should always keep your eyes at a respectable altitude.
She smiled and patted the battered chair next to her. ‘My friend was sitting there, but I don’t think she’s coming back.’
She nodded at the end of the bar, where a girl with long black hair was engaged in a canoodling embrace with a plumber I knew called Mark.
‘I won’t bite,’ said the girl beside me.
‘Thank you,’ I said, sitting down.
‘I’m Keith’s cousin, Sandra. What’s your name?’
‘Reginald Hardy,’ I said. ‘But everyone calls me Reg.’
She sucked on her straw and her eyes danced over my face. ‘I like Reginald,’ she said at last. ‘I think I’ll call you that.’
That’s what love is, in my book – calling someone by their real name.
Neil brought my drink, which I nursed for an hour, much to his consternation and Sandra’s delight. Things settled down a bit and Mildred, the landlady, wheeled a small portable television into one corner. This drew a small crowd who argued over the best way to tune it in properly. Mildred danced about in the space behind the television, holding the aeria
l aloft with a look of mystical awe, like a medium trying to contact the dead.
Neil stood up and weighed in with his own advice. I watched with a modicum of amusement, the watery lager having achieved a certain lubrication of my spirits. I noticed Sandra smirking at the spectacle too.
‘Put it on the window, love,’ Neil shouted. ‘Up there. Oi! I said up on the fucking … Christ, you can’t hear yourself think in this place, know what I mean?’
‘You can hear your name,’ I said.
‘You what?’ said Neil, landing heavily on his seat and scooping his pint.
‘I said you can hear your own name. It’s called the Cocktail Party Effect.’
Neil frowned at me, glass halfway to his lips. ‘What you fucking on about? Jesus, ’ere boys, Reggie wants a fucking cocktail!’
The table jeered and returned to lobbing volleys of advice at poor Mildred. I looked down into the yellow froth of my beer, but I could feel eyes still watching me. ‘What do you mean?’
I looked up at Sandra, who had her head cocked to one side and her hands folded neatly on the table. ‘Oh, nothing,’ I said. ‘Just ignore me.’
‘No, tell me, what’s the Cocktail Effect?’
‘The Cocktail Party Effect,’ I corrected. ‘It is an auditory phenomenon. Your brain is able to pick out meaning in a mass of sound. For example, if you are in a noisy room, like a cocktail party or a pub like this, the sound of a hundred people talking makes no sense, but if you hear something related to you, like your name, it leaps out. Sorry, I read a lot. I’m not very interesting.’
Her eyes, which had been watching me intently, seemed suddenly to pine. She straightened her back. ‘Don’t say that,’ she commanded. ‘Don’t ever say that again. I think you’re extremely interesting, Reginald Hardy, extremely interesting indeed.’
With that, she stood up and faced the television. ‘Mildred O’Connor!’ she shouted, and Mildred’s haunted face snapped towards her. ‘Up on the window ledge, love!’
Mildred raised a finger and nodded, then swept the aerial up onto the window ledge. The television crackled and fizzed and a great cheer filled the pub as the screen lit up green.
Sandra sat down with a wink.
‘It’s still very busy in here,’ she said.
‘Would you like to move nearer the front?’
‘No. To tell you the truth I’m not that much into football.’
‘That makes two of us.’
She drained her drink and fiddled with the straw as if something was occurring to her. ‘Reginald?’ she said, setting the empty glass down.
‘Yes?’
‘I do hope you don’t think me too forward, but would you like to walk me home?’
I hesitated. ‘What, now?’
‘Yes. I thought perhaps we could watch the game together in my flat. Even though we don’t like football that much. What do you think?’
‘I—’
‘It’s all right, I understand if—’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think I would like that very much.’
We snuck out onto the hot streets, eerily quiet now that the game was about to begin. After picking up some beer and a takeaway curry, she led me to her flat in a block a few estates north of our street. She stopped at her blue battered door and turned. I realized we were the same height.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.
‘Nothing. It’s just that I’ve never … you know, never been invited back to a girl’s place before. Not that I’m suggesting it’s anything like, I mean, I know it’s just to watch the football, but …’
‘Are you nervous?’
I paused, then shook my head. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I know I sound it, but I’m not. I’m happy.’
‘Why are you happy?’
‘Because I’m not in that place any more, I’m here with you.’
Her eyes fluttered, and she put her hand on my cheek. ‘Reginald, you don’t have to let the world eat you up, you know. Some people like to lose themselves in crowds; others need their own space. Staying in’s all right.’
Then she opened the door, took my hand and led me inside.
It was a studio flat with a kitchenette. A wardrobe and a single bed took up one wall beneath a cracked mirror and an open window fluttering with curtains and evening sun. She switched on her telly and we sat on her sofa, tucking into the poppadoms and cracking open our beers. We talked and talked, losing ourselves in long and winding conversations I cannot recall; the memories seem off-limits, as if they belong only to those two young versions of ourselves, right then and right there in that room. As the match went on we found ourselves cheering in celebration, or holding our heads in frustration. Though we both did not like football.
With every passing minute the gap between us on that sagging sofa diminished, until we found our knees touching, and then our hands, and then our lips, and by the time those penalties played out we were rolling together, one before becoming an after, and we watched England’s hopes fall, naked in each others arms, from the joy and safety of her bed.
I slammed the album shut and looked down upon the girl. She had produced her photograph again, and others with it, all torn and yellowed and held up for me to see as if they were the only truth she knew. Carefully, she pointed first at them, and then at my album. Her finger hung quivering in the air, willing me to understand.
You have those in there, she seemed to say. And I have these.
We watched each other with Lineker between us, and the three of us remained still and silent until, finally, I took a breath. ‘You cannot stay here,’ I said. ‘You may sleep here tonight, but you must go in the morning. You can sleep on the sofa.’
She made no reply, so I left and went to bed.
I lay awake for some time, clutching the album to my chest and wondering in that cold, dark room what on earth I was supposed to do.
I know what she would have said. ‘Protect her, Reginald. Look after her and take her where she needs to go. She’s just a child; she needs your care.’
That’s what she would have said.
But what does that matter? She is dead.
Consequences
REGINALD HARDY’S JOURNAL
10TH DECEMBER 2021
The sun was already up when I woke. I dressed and went through, groggy with sleep but glad of it.
‘Now,’ I said. ‘I shall pack you some food – light stuff so you can carry it – and water. I shall also provide you with a map marked with a route so you can find your way to the base. You can do it in stages, but you should be able to make it in a day or two if …’
I looked around the flat. Lineker lay on the sofa, thumping his tail, but the girl was nowhere to be seen. The door of the flat was open.
‘Where d’she go?’ I said. Lineker responded with a yawning growl.
I ran to the window and pressed my face and hands against it, looking down. Lineker sprang up and joined me.
‘There,’ I said. ‘There she is, what the devil is she … ?
She was halfway up the street, standing a few feet from the body of the boy that had been shot. She looked at it sideways, hands raised from her sides as if the sight of him had caught her unawares.
‘Hey!’ I shouted. ‘What are you doing?’
I banged on the glass. The sound of it must have reached her, because her head twitched and she turned back to the road. She continued on, picking her way over the rubble and creepers with her hands still out.
‘Silly girl.’
I pulled on the balcony door but the handle was jammed. I shook it, Lineker now on full alert, barking encouragement up at me. Eventually it gave way and I burst out into the cold air of the overgrown balcony. Lineker bolted past and jumped up against the ledge, launching into a whinnying howl that echoed along the street.
I leaned over the edge and cupped my hands. ‘Where are you going?’ I shouted. ‘You have no map, or food, or …’
The girl stumbled on a rock, kept her balance and kept on walking.
‘Can you hear me?’ I yelled. ‘Oh, hell’s bells …’
I ran downstairs with Lineker at my heels. She was almost at the corner when we burst out onto the street.
‘Hey!’ I shouted, and walked after her. I glanced at the body of the boy, and Lineker gave it a sniff. He had swollen in the few days he’d been lying there.
The girl was at the junction looking left and right, trying to decide which way to go. I stopped behind her.
‘Look,’ I said. ‘Come back inside. You can have some more food, water, I shall give you a map and …’ I sighed. ‘Maybe I could … maybe could even get you as far as …’
The girl made a wary grunting sound.
‘What is it? What’s wrong now?’
She was pointing north up the main road. I joined her at the junction and followed the line of her finger. On the road, next to a bank of shops, was a purple truck. A door banged and the engine started. Lineker growled.
‘Come with me,’ I said. ‘Now. Come on.’
She was rooted to the spot.
‘Whatever is the matter with you? Come on!’
She gave a furious shake of her head. Lineker growled again, louder this time. The truck pulled out and started slowly towards us. Instinctively I reached to pull her away, but my fingers shrivelled into a terrified claw before they could make contact.
‘For heaven’s sake,’ I said instead. ‘Come on or you’ll get us both killed! Shut up, Lineker!’
Lineker’s growl had risen into a full-on, head-down bark, with his snout pointed directly at the approaching truck. I did not know if they could see us from that distance, but I was sure they could hear him.
‘Please,’ I said to the girl. ‘Please, come with me. Those ones, they are the bad ones, do you understand? Bad ones. Because they are Purple, yes? Understand? Purple means bad, so you have to come with me, please, now.’
I held out my hand. It was still curled and shaking as if it had been crushed in a vice, not simply moved in the direction of a young girl’s shoulder. I stared at it, grimacing, willing it to do its job. Lineker’s barks filled the air and the truck’s speed picked up. I could see the windscreen now, and the face of the driver set on the road.
The Last Dog on Earth Page 9
