Toff Chav

by Miles Hadley

  ‘Such crude skanks,’ Archie said to himself. He was even sure that he saw Razza mouth the words ‘Good riddance’ to Henry and Charlie, who burst into hysterics. He laughed as Razza proceeded to imitate Donna’s pout, pretending to chew gum at the same time. Once more, they descended into hysterical, drunken laughter. So cruel – and yet, Archie believed, kind, for he felt that they would never be one of them – ever.

  Eventually, Archie and Polly were bundled into a taxi by Razza, Henry and his new, leggy blonde. Charlie and Izzy were left to have a drunken argument about why Charlie wanted to go to Sandhurst.

  In the taxi, Archie looked at Polly. Polly and fucking me! he screamed in his head. For they were definitely now in love. He could feel it. Not just down his trousers, but in his stomach, too – it was that queasy feeling he rarely got with people. Yet, he was careful to behave in the taxi. After all, he didn’t want to be all over her in front of her brother. Polly, Polly, Polly!

  Archie listened as Razza invited everyone to kip at his Chelsea pad, after a brief argument with Henry, who wanted them all to go to his Richmond family place. Archie had suggested the Hodgkin-Smith Chelsea residence, but Henry had said, ‘Fuck off, your place stinks.’

  Archie was briefly affronted. ‘What of?’

  Henry and Razza replied, laughing in unison, ‘Mouldy books!’

  Archie had to concede that it actually did stink and that it was his great-grandpapa’s fault. For he was an avid book collector and they did have rather a lot of them in Chelsea.

  Razza laughed. ‘Not to mention your BO!’

  ‘Fuck off,’ Archie laughed. ‘I got rid of that years ago.’

  ‘Do you remember at school we used to call you Archie Hodgkin-Stink! Ha! Ha! Ha!’ laughed Henry, who tried to kick Archie, but went back to snogging his gorgeous blonde, whose name Archie had not yet caught.

  Archie looked slightly ashen faced at Polly. She looked back at him with a twinkle in her eye and proceeded to give that lovely laugh with a snort.

  Thank God for that, thought Archie. I’m still in with the beaut. Their legs were now touching.

  Upon arrival at the Raynard town house, Archie now had his arm around Polly and observed as Razza immediately stumbled up the sweeping Georgian staircase to his room.

  ‘Night all.’ Razza gave them each a hug and a kiss. He even gave Henry’s new blonde a big kiss, too.

  ‘Steady on,’ exclaimed Henry. ‘Unless you fancy a ménage à trois?’

  Razza burst into hysterics. Good old Razza; he was pretty much a gonner at that stage. Archie could smell Polly’s gorgeous perfume A hint of roses like the rose walk at Risely. Archie knew that Razza and Henry had shared rather a long line of cocaine at Steals while in the gents.

  Archie and Polly eventually left Henry and the blonde to carry on with proceedings in the drawing room. They went arm-in-arm to the kitchen and put some music on the sound system. It was a rather cheesy tune called ‘Fine Corinthian Leather’ by Charlie Hunter. As they danced slowly, Archie watched Polly as she backed into the temperature-controlled champagne cabinet and opened it, whipping out a rather good bottle of champagne.

  Slick move, Archie thought to himself. Polly gave the bottle to him and he sent the cork flying with a loud pop, causing her to squeal with delight. The couple carried on dancing slowly around the kitchen, swigging from the bottle and laughing. Polly, with that endearing post-laugh snort.

  ***

  Razza was the first to get up the next morning. He came through to one of the spare bedrooms, replete with modern artworks ranging from Freud to Gormley, where Archie was sleeping beneath some ancient quilts. Razza sat down on the edge of the bed and prodded his side.

  Archie woke up like a shot.

  ‘Ow, what was that for?’

  He smiled sleepily as Razza looked at him with a somewhat smug grin on his face.

  ‘Mate. You had better not have had your way with my sister.’ The sister in question was still apparently sleeping like a log in another room.

  Archie blushed and groaned. Things had the potential to get rather tricky between Razza and him over this one. Archie also had a very sore head from last night’s champagne and wine.

  ‘No, mate,’ Archie said. ‘I have not had my way with your sister.’

  ‘You like her though, don’t you?’

  Archie paused for a moment. ‘Oh, what the hell,’ he replied. ‘Yes mate, I do.’

  ‘Well, are you going to do the decent thing and ask her out?’ said Razza.

  ‘I...’ Archie hesitated. ‘What if she says no?’

  ‘Mate, let me put it this way,’ said Razza. ‘I have known both of you for most of my life, and I think that I would know if there was going to be a problem on that front.’ He grinned. ‘So, are you going to ask her out?’

  ‘Yes,’ Archie smiled back.

  Razza ruffled his hair. ‘Good on you, mate. But on one condition…’ Razza looked into Archie’s eyes with gravity. ‘That you stick with her and you stop your messing around with all the others. I don’t want her or myself hurt – understood?’

  Archie looked at him with the most convincing mix of shock and horror that he could muster with a stinking hangover. ‘Mate,’ he said. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Good,’ came the stern reply with a smile. ‘Tea or coffee?’

  ‘Tea please,’ Archie replied. They smiled with an old familiarity at each other.

  Eventually, Archie observed that the sister alluded to in their conversation had woken up. She came through, still wearing the dress from the night before. Her make-up was smudged and she yawned and rubbed a hand in one eye.

  ‘Morning,’ she said sleepily.

  Archie could not get over how lovely she looked. Her face seemed to perk up when she saw Archie looking at her.

  Razza entered the bedroom again and greeted her. ‘Morning, Sis,’ he said, plonking a mug of tea somewhat unceremoniously in her hand. He passed another to Archie. ‘Right, I’m just going to pop out to get a paper and some croissants. Do either of you want anything else?’

  Archie and Polly shook their heads and smiled at him as he left. Polly came and sat down on the bed where Razza had been.

  ‘Hello,’ she said.

  ‘Hello,’ Archie replied smiling. They both kissed. Archie was immediately enveloped in some sort of paradise-like ecstasy. God, she was hot. The kiss lasted about three minutes. Afterwards, he finally plucked up the courage and asked her out.

  ‘Yes,’ replied Polly, and Archie breathed a huge sigh of relief inside. Polly then looked at him with a look that was not unlike her brother’s. ‘As long as you...’

  ‘I know... I will... stop messing around.’

  6

  The weather was grey and foreboding, matching the brutality of the surrounding grey architecture, only serving to bring Gary’s mood lower. Gary decided to go to Khan’s, the local grocers, to get something to eat. The shop was heavily fortified to stop racists and vandals from smashing its windows and stealing its stock. On one of the exterior walls, somebody had recently sprayed the words ‘Paki’.

  ‘All right?’ he said to Mr Khan. Mr Khan looked incredibly stressed and nodded his head in acknowledgement. His wife was sitting next to him behind the heavy mesh of the cash register area. Gary got the impression that she had not slept recently. He knew that there had been two attempted robberies on their shop in the last three months; one had almost certainly been carried out by the Death Squad.

  Gary walked over to the refrigerated food section, where he opted for a Cornish pasty and a can of Coke. He noticed that old Bollard was in the shop, too, bending down to get a newspaper. Gary knew there were lots of rumours on the web about Bollard being into kids. As he walked past Bollard to pay, Gary looked at him grimly. He wore thick-rimmed glasses and Gary thought he probably was a paedo.

  ‘K
eep your kids safe,’ Gary muttered deliberately under his breath.

  He walked out of the shop and past the mentally ill Maggie Bains, who went around with a shopping trolley full of plastic carrier bags, muttering things into the sky.

  ‘I don’t know, Derek,’ she was saying. ‘I just don’t know.’

  ‘Fucking nut job,’ said Gary and pulled out one of his few remaining cigarettes, lit it and inhaled the tarry fumes. He inhaled a bit too quickly and he started to cough and splutter at first. Gradually, the cigarette disappeared towards its stubby embers, which were promptly thrown onto the pavement. He bit into his Cornish pasty. He liked eating them cold. He looked thoughtfully out over the nearby railway track and watched the trains go past, full of smartly dressed commuters. He wondered where they were going, what they did and if he could ever be one of them.

  Gary decided to catch a double-decker bus into central London. He boarded the first one that came along and looked around at the other passengers after paying. He watched two elderly cockney ladies who were chatting to a younger woman about her twin babies in a pram. He climbed the winding steps of the bus and briefly glanced at two hipster students, who seemed to be speaking every sentence with a ‘Like’ at the beginning. He walked past two smartly dressed people, whom he presumed were office workers, and sat at the back of the bus, observing the London streets.

  London was all that Gary had known. He thought about when his mum had been alive; she used to treat him and Sheila to trips on the bus around London. They would always sit at the top and try and get the front seats for the best views. He remembered them passing St Paul’s Cathedral and his mum mentioning that this was where Charles and Diana had got married.

  His mum had loved the royals, which Gary had always felt was strange, because he had always heard her say that she was left wing. She would talk about how much she hated Thatcher for what she had done to the unions. She used to say, ‘That woman didn’t realise why unions were there in the first place – to improve working conditions for the common men and women.’ She would tell Gary that her great aunt Flo had died from inhaling toxins while working in a matchbox factory in the East End. She would say, ‘Thirty-one years old – God bless her. If it wasn’t for the unions, people would still be slaves.’

  Gary reminisced about his mum saying these things, as he looked out through the window as the bus passed St Paul’s. He smiled to himself as he remembered her saying how cheeky he was and she would pull on his cheeks.

  As the bus wound its way through the City, he observed the many suited businessmen and women. He suddenly thought about what he was wearing. He would love to wear stuff like that, but couldn’t. He wouldn’t survive ten minutes on the estate if he did. He noticed that some of the women looked incredibly sexy and he keenly observed their strutting, glamorous forms. Perhaps, in amongst them, was a Rose or a Paulette, with their sexy voices and intelligent conversations.

  ***

  Dusk was beginning to settle when Gary arrived back at the estate. His phone buzzed and he met up with the rest of the Downtown Posse. They ambled down Morris Road together, talking.

  Gary briefly turned his head as a police car appeared and tailed them as they walked along the pavement.

  ‘Looks like company, lads. Jamal – you’re it,’ he laughed. ‘Everyone clean?’

  Deano and Jamal nodded their heads.

  ‘Oh man,’ said Jamal. ‘When are they going to give up chasing the black man? They should know we’re all related, anyway.’

  Gary chuckled grimly. ‘They only see things in black and white, Jamal. You should know that about the pigs. There ain’t no grey area. That’s why their hats have those chequers.’

  Eventually, the patrol car drew to a halt and two officers climbed out, gently closing the car doors behind them. Gary looked at them as they approached.

  ‘All right, lads?’ said one police officer.

  ‘All right,’ the boys replied, hands in pockets, shoulders hunched.

  Gary watched as the predictable happened. An officer approached Jamal. ‘Would you mind standing with your arms up against the wall, please?’

  Jamal shrugged his shoulders. The other police officer stood by Jamal, hands on hips, showing his authority, while the other patted Jamal down.

  ‘This is racism, pure and simple,’ Jamal muttered.

  The officer with his hands on his hips responded. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘There’s no need to be sorry,’ said Jamal sarcastically.

  As the other officer patted him down, Jamal let out a loud fart. The Downtown Posse burst out laughing. It was too much for the officers to take.

  ‘Backup, please,’ said the second officer into his radio. ‘Just carrying out a routine stop and search with a suspect. Suspect starting to appear aggravated.’

  ‘Well, wouldn’t you?’ Jamal said angrily. ‘This is the third time in the last two months.’

  ‘Look, son,’ said the police officer. ‘You can either cooperate with us, or get arrested. It’s up to you.’

  ‘I am fucking cooperating,’ Jamal replied.

  ‘Cut the language, please,’ second the officer who had patted him down. ‘There’s only one gang around these parts with any power, and that is the Metropolitan Police.’

  ‘La dee fucking da,’ Deano muttered, prompting Gary and him to start laughing.

  ‘Right, against the wall, both of you!’ the officer commanded.

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ Gary cackled, putting his hands against the wall. ‘I ain’t the black man!’

  ‘I don’t like your inference,’ said the other officer, who began to pat him down.

  A police van soon arrived with three more officers. Gary watched and started laughing.

  ‘Why don’t you call the fucking cavalry as well?’ he said. Deano and Jamal grinned.

  The new officers assisted in the stop and search. Gary laughed again.

  ‘Found anything yet?’ he asked.

  A female police officer was beginning to get a bit peeved. ‘Any more cheek and we’ll lock you up. Have you got that?’ she shouted.

  The Downtown Posse remained silent. Gary heard the female officer repeat her threat. ‘Have you got that?’

  There was silence until Jamal gave out a loud fart again. The policewoman saw the funny side and tried to suppress a smirk.

  Eventually, one of the officers said, ‘Nothing on them, sarge.’

  The policewoman looked disappointed. Gary noticed and smiled to himself. As they left, Gary yelled, ‘Gutted!’ at them as they got back into their vehicles.

  ‘Bloody pigs,’ he muttered. He looked at Jamal and chuckled. ‘That was classic, man! Jamal... were you brewing those specially?’

  Deano burst into hysterics. ‘They fucking stank as well!’ Gary watched as Deano playfully hit Jamal on the arm. ‘Fucking nutter!’

  Gary noticed that Jamal was looking smug. ‘Well, what are the pigs going to do? Arrest me for something I ate?’

  Gary and Deano laughed.

  ‘Classic!’ said Deano.

  They rounded a corner and saw Crystal and Michelle. Gary went up to Crystal and gave her a kiss. Gary noticed Deano eye up Michelle with evident shyness.

  ‘All right?’ Deano said gruffly to her.

  Well, that’s a fucking start, Gary thought to himself. He could never work out Deano’s shyness with girls that he liked.

  ‘What you fellas been up to, then?’ Crystal asked.

  ‘We just had fucking PC Plod breathing down our fucking necks,’ said Gary.

  ‘What? Again?’ Crystal said. ‘You ought to fucking complain about them.’

  ‘Naturally, it was only Jamal who they first stopped and searched.’

  Deano laughed. ‘Ah, it was fucking classic, Crys. You should have seen it! Just as old ploddy was giving the old pat down on Jamal’s legs, he
lets rip the biggest fart you have ever heard.’

  ‘OH – MY – FUCKING – GOD!’ the two girls exclaimed in unison, laughing loudly. ‘Really?’

  ‘He did it twice, as well,’ Gary laughed. ‘And they fucking stank! Fucking reeked. Fucking hell, you’d have smelt them a mile off.’

  ‘And heard ’em,’ Deano laughed.

  ‘That is fucking hilarious!’ Crystal said. ‘Seriously, though, it takes the fucking piss! Good on yer, Jamal. You should do a fart every fucking time. Every fucking time! Fucking fascist cunts!’

  ‘Did they do you for anything?’ Michelle asked.

  ‘No, we were clean as fuck,’ Gary replied. ‘Clean as F – U – C – K! Isn’t that right, lads?’

  ‘Aye!’ Deano and Jamal answered. They all high-fived each other and laughed.

  7

  ‘Dreams! Dreams! Dreams!’ There she was – Polly, in some sort of amalgamation of John William Waterhouse’s The Lady of Shalott. Her beautiful figure, with flowing Pre-Raphaelite hair, gliding amongst the lilies in a wooden boat. Archie had grabbed the boat and it had landed upon the banks of a beautiful meadow, where a picnic was waiting. Polly hopped off the boat and into his arms. She was wearing a terribly thin linen dress, which seemed to be slipping in various stages of ‘décolleté’, as Beaton would have said.

  ‘Archie!’

  The scene was suddenly ruined. For Archie, it would have made the most perfect series of photographs. In fact, the dream got him thinking… Would Polly be willing to pose for him like that?

  He woke from his sleep with a jolt and great annoyance at hearing his name being shouted out.

  A small tent had been made in his bedsheets. He groaned again, squinted his eyes and attempted to bury his head beneath the downy pillow.

  ‘Darling!’ came his mother’s voice. ‘Your father wants a word. Will you please go down and have your breakfast and then see him in the study.’

  Archie groaned. ‘Okay,’ he replied.

  His mother did not hear what he said. ‘What?’ she asked.

  ‘I said okay!’ His emphasis was on the ‘Okay’. It was most annoying to be woken up at such a crucial part of what would otherwise have been a very satisfying dream. He had no idea what Polly’s naked form was like, but would have at least have liked to hazard a guess. The least sort of image he wanted in his head was his blessed mother yelling for him – rare as such occasions were.