Toff Chav

by Miles Hadley

  Deano gave an angry tick. Suddenly he roared at Gary and charged him with all of his might. They fought; they scrapped. It was no longer the light-hearted playfight of their childhood. It was something else. Something that, for Deano, had a meaning, and yet for Gary it was without meaning. Gary could feel Deano fighting with a desperate rage; a fear of losing, not just the fight, but Gary and the yesteryear days of the Downtown Posse. Gary was fighting for something else – not to retain the past, but to move on and to use the past to his advantage.

  Gary felt Deano’s angry fists pound him, but Deano slipped and fell to the floor. He had thrust forward too eagerly and too desperately. Gary gained the upper hand and struck Deano a left hook as he tried to pick himself up off the floor. Deano went down again and Gary punched him again for good measure, sending him reeling back, momentarily dazed.

  Gary picked up his rucksack and ran. He hoped that Deano would lie there for some time and not follow him. He ran down the alleyway and eventually arrived at Bollard’s door, breathing heavily.

  The door opened. ‘Young man,’ Bollard said. ‘You seem out of breath. Come on in, come on in. Christine! The lad’s back... now, where were we last time?’

  ‘Lutheranism, Fidei Defensor. Wolsey, Legate a latere. Then the divorce with Catherine of Aragon, the split from Rome, and Henry VIII develops gout. Mid-Tudor period.’

  ‘Ah, yes. So we were.’ Bollard gave a knowing smile.

  He indicated for Gary to take a seat. ‘Well, one thing we need to remember... is that, although Henry VIII was exceedingly well educated and so on, he was not one to be brushed aside when his need for a male heir came under threat. You must appreciate that, back then, to be a King in England meant to be a King in England and, therefore, it meant one must be male – therefore, the theory of primogeniture was absolute. However, for some reason, other than Arthur, who died very young, there was only the weak Edward to succeed. Catherine had Mary – who, incidentally, went on to be known as “Bloody Mary” due to her apparent devoutness to Catholicism and was, one could argue, a religionist. But a daughter was not enough for Henry, who needed a son. He broke from Rome in order to be granted a divorce without the consent of the Papacy. Conveniently, he added the financial benefits of confiscating Church monastic property.’

  Bollard paused and looked towards the kitchen. ‘How are we doing, Christine? She says it’s time for a cup of tea. I’ll just go and help the good lady wife.’

  Gary sat there and absorbed all that Bollard had said as best he could. He even took some notes. Bollard returned with the tray of tea and biscuits.

  Gary was just about to ask a question, when there was a frantic banging on the front door.

  ‘Hang on, young man,’ said Bollard. ‘I’ll just see who it is.’

  Gary looked at Bollard. ‘Don’t open it!’

  Bollard looked at him, but ignored him. Gary protested. ‘I said – don’t fucking – open it!’

  The door opened. It was Deano. Gary watched from behind Bollard as Deano looked at them both.

  ‘What the fuck is going on here?’ shouted Deano. ‘What the fuck are you doing with this paedo?’

  ‘He ain’t no fucking paedo, Deano,’ Gary shouted back.

  Bollard smiled. ‘Christine... we have another guest. Would you like a cup of tea, young man?’

  Gary tried to stop him, but Deano shoved Bollard backwards, almost causing him to fall.

  ‘No, I would not like a fucking cup of tea, you shit fucking pervert,’ said Deano. ‘Gaz, what the fuck is going on here?’

  Bollard was taken aback. ‘Young man... my wife and I would like you to leave.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ said Deano. ‘Well, that ain’t going to happen.’ Deano stepped up close to Bollard’s face. ‘By the way, paedo... where the fuck is your wife?’

  ‘My wife? She’s in the kitchen…’

  Deano stormed through to the little kitchen and gave a loud cruel and bitter laugh. Gary followed him through and saw, in the corner of the kitchen, a chair. On it sat a mannequin with a brown wig and a dress. The face of the mannequin had a blown-up photograph of Christine’s face held on with pins.

  Deano looked angrily at Gary and then at Bollard. He laughed cruelly again. ‘So, this is your wife, Christine, is it? You twisted fucker! You twisted fucker!’

  ‘Young man, get out of my house,’ Bollard said.

  Gary watched as Deano picked up the mannequin and threw it to the floor.

  ‘No!’ Bollard screamed. ‘No! Christine!’ He went down on his hands and knees and hugged the mannequin desperately close to him. ‘Get out!’ he yelled. ‘The both of you! Get out of our house! Get out, now!’

  Gary was shocked. He did not know what to do or say. He was speechless. A strange kind of fear had engulfed him. He watched as Deano pointed into Bollard’s face and laugh cruelly again.

  ‘You twisted fucker!’ he yelled. ‘You sad, sad old man!’

  Deano then turned to Gary and laughed. ‘That ain’t his wife. That’s a fucking doll! Come on, Gaz – we’re going.’ He grabbed Gary’s arm, but Gary was frozen in shock. He eventually turned and left with Deano.

  ‘Get out!’ screamed Bollard, tears rolling down his cheeks. ‘Get out of our house, the both of you!’ He hugged the mannequin and sobbed into it. ‘Oh, Christine!’

  An inner turmoil engulfed Gary. He began to panic and ran with Deano, but then he let Deano run ahead and took a sharp left to get away from him. He hated Deano now, but he did not know what to think of Bollard anymore. He wanted to go back to Bollard and explain to him what he felt, but could not – would not – do it.

  A strange, emotional fear had taken hold of Gary’s entire body, preventing him from wanting to return. He didn’t know where to go all of a sudden. He didn’t want to go back home to Sheila, because he knew that Deano would probably come knocking. He instead went to the spot that he had always gone to when he didn’t know where else to go. To the concrete overpass, where he sat, as he so often did, watching the commuters pass by in the trains.

  At first, he felt sick in the stomach. He realised that, in all that time he had been to Bollard’s house, he had never ventured into the kitchen. In a way, he was glad that he hadn’t, because it would have ruined the bond that the two of them had developed.

  But it had now all been wrecked by the stupidity of Deano. Gary no longer wanted Deano’s company. He wanted to learn history. All of a sudden, that was all that Gary wanted to do. He needed to break out of this place, to scream at the world, ‘I’m one too! I’m a great, too! I read, too, and when I read, I can fucking lead!’

  He no longer wanted to live in the arse-hole of Britain, taking the shit that was given to his people, the estate people. The sickness turned into an overwhelming emotion. It welled up in him and was completely unexpected. It was a huge sadness that caused a lump in his throat and nearly make him choke.

  His eyes welled with tears, but that was not his way to release tears. He suppressed them into the hardness that was him. The hard, raw environment of the estate, that made up the reality that was his life.

  Steely, tough and ‘well ’ard’. That’s what he was meant to be like, with those frequented disability rails of the McDonald’s car park.

  ‘Fuck McDonald’s!’ he shouted. ‘Fuck my life! Fuck Deano! Fuck Jamal! Fuck Crystal! Fuck Bollard’s fucking financial advisor! Fuck Christine for dying! And while we’re about it, fuck Mum for dying, too! Fuck old Bollard, you bastard, for talking to a fucking doll!’

  He gave a sick and cruel laugh. ‘Fuck everything!’ This time, he directed his rant at himself. ‘What the fuck have I got to live for? To just exist? Be a fucking condemned chav? Never to know what they have? Never to go away? But just get shit all day... Fuck, fuck, fuck!’

  He screamed into the grey and foreboding sky. A train passed and he yelled at it. ‘And fuck you, for your
cosy little lives – fucking cunts!’ He no longer had the strength to yell and scream; instead, he thought of his mum and sobbed.

  That evening, Gary did return to his home, but he went straight upstairs to his room. He heard Sheila call out to him.

  ‘That you, Gaz?’

  ‘Fuck off!’ he yelled and slammed the door behind him. He went to his bed, looked up at Rose or Paulette, and wept.

  31

  Archie sat his parents down in the Risely drawing room by the fire. Above the fireplace, his grandpapa stared from a gilt-framed oil portrait. Smidgeon and Bella lay by the hearth, evidently enjoying the heat.

  ‘I want to marry Polly Raynard.’

  ‘What, now?’ asked his father.

  ‘No, not this instant, Pa. I mean, next May.’

  ‘That isn’t what I meant, Archie,’ said Mr Hodgkin-Smith. ‘Do you mean to say you want to marry her while you are both so young?’

  ‘Ever since we first spoke properly, I’ve been in love with her,’ said Archie.

  ‘Are you sure about this, Archie?’ his father said. ‘Are you sure that you think that you are mature enough to be married?’

  ‘Of course I am, Pa.’

  ‘Who is this Polly girl again?’ his father asked.

  ‘She’s a Raynard. Razza’s sister.’

  ‘Don’t you remember her, darling?’ Mrs Hodgkin-Smith said softly from the faded Napoleonic sofa. ‘She was at the shoot.’

  Iain Hodgkin-Smith paused thoughtfully for a moment. ‘No. Which one was she?’

  ‘Darling!’ Archie’s mother exclaimed. ‘You must have noticed her! She was at the dinner!’

  ‘No. Not really.’

  ‘Probably too tipsy to remember,’ Archie laughed. His mother laughed, too.

  ‘Now that’s enough, Archie!’ his father said gruffly. ‘Honestly, you two have a habit of ganging up on me, sometimes.’

  Archie’s mother gave a sound in protest. ‘But darling. You know who the Raynards are.’

  ‘I have to confess I don’t know much about them. Pass me the Debrett’s.’

  ‘Oh, darling. They might not be in there... times are changing. Look at that Middleton girl.’

  ‘What? Doors to windows?’ Iain laughed. ‘Gosh, how the mighty are falling.’

  ‘It’s “have fallen”, darling.’

  ‘I know, darling, but I’ve adapted it...’ He began to leaf through the book. ‘So... Raynard... They do seem to crop up once or twice. Looks like the father, Piers Raynard, had a mother who was an Honourable. Now, by descent, she was the grand-daughter of the Earl of Kildarnoch in Scotland. So not a bad pedigree. But not amazing, either.’ Iain Hodgkin-Smith looked at Archie as if telling him he could do better.

  ‘Pa,’ said Archie. ‘Times have changed. Nobody reads Debrett’s anymore, unless they’re a social-climbing saddo. It’s the sort of stuff the nouveau do to get in amongst us. Cat among the pigeons. That sort of thing.’

  ‘And how old, precisely, is the Raynard money?’

  ‘God knows. They own a lot of London freeholds.’

  ‘Going back how far?’

  ‘Oh, darling,’ said Archie’s mother. ‘Leave him alone. The boy’s in love.’

  ‘Darling,’ replied Iain, ‘I’m checking to make sure he hasn’t caught some common-as-muck trollop who will sell us down the pan.’

  ‘Thanks, Pa, for your ringing endorsement of my judgement,’ said Archie.

  ‘Oh, Archie, that’s not what your father is trying to say,’ said his mother. ‘It’s just that, over the centuries, there have been many a Hodgkin – or, indeed, Smith – who have almost come a cropper due to... bad form from their wife.’

  ‘Like who?’

  ‘Well. Your great-great-great-uncle for a start,’ said Iain. ‘Married some sort of Yank. Tried to grab everything after a messy divorce. But luckily for us, she married the wrong one.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, she didn’t marry his elder brother – your great-great-great grandfather. Although they did date beforehand. If they had married, she might have ended up flogging off Risely.’

  ‘But, the point is, Pa...’ said Archie. ‘I want you to say that it’s okay for me to marry Polly Raynard.’

  ‘Raynards...’ replied his father. ‘Well, I must confess, Razza is one of your better choices of friends, despite that god-awful nickname. Raynards, Raynards, Raynards. They do a bit for charity, don’t they?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, that’s certainly not something to sniff at.’

  Fenny, the housekeeper, tapped lightly at the door and walked in. ‘Shall I bring some tea in, Mrs H? It’s almost eleven.’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Fenny,’ said Mrs Hodgkin-Smith. ‘That would be lovely.’

  Once Fenny had left, Archie’s mother continued. ‘Well, I must say, that I was impressed by the Raynard girl at the shoot. She is a beauty and seemed to fit in with everybody rather well.’

  ‘Are you telling me that you approve of her, Ma?’ said Archie.

  His mother surprised him and broke into a smile. ‘Yes, I suppose I am.’

  Archie became a bit overwhelmed and did something he hadn’t done in years. He rushed over to the sofa that his mother was sitting on, prompting the sleepy dogs to raise their heads from the floor, and gave her a big hug and a kiss. His mother was rather taken aback; surprised, but she couldn’t help but smile at her son and chuckle.

  ‘Archie,’ she said, ‘just promise me that you’ll be a good husband, as well as a good custodian of the place when your time comes.’ Archie nodded and said that he would, looking straight into his mother’s eyes as if he were her babe in arms again. He looked then at his father across the drawing room, where he was sitting in his favourite wing-backed chair. Archie desperately wanted his approval.

  Archie noticed something as he watched him. His father was desperately trying to suppress a smile.

  ‘Pa?’ Archie asked. Finally, Mr Hodgkin-Smith relaxed and smiled.

  ‘Well, all right,’ he said. ‘I like Razza very much. If he is anything to go by, I am sure his sister will be okay. As long as you are sure about this, Archie, I see no problem.’

  Archie rushed over to his father, prompting him to get up out of his winged-back chair. They shook hands and hugged, ever so slightly, but not so much that they lost their reserve to each other.

  ‘Well done, son,’ said Mr Hodgkin-Smith, for once looking his son straight in the eyes with some sort of apparent pride. ‘You’ll have to chat with their vicar if you want to get married as soon as May.’

  Archie looked at Fenny as she entered the room again. This time with a tea tray. His father laughed and explained to her.

  ‘Fenny, Archie is engaged to a rather delightful girl. I think this calls for something a little stronger. Perhaps some of the good stuff from the cellar. You’re to be included in our little gathering.’

  ‘Oh!’ exclaimed Fenny, nearly dropping the tea tray. Archie heard those familiar earthy country tones. ‘What wonderful news! Congratulations! Which bottle would you like, Mr H?’

  ‘One of the best, near the top right as you go in,’ came Mr Hodgkin-Smith’s response. ‘I have a particular one in mind. Actually, I’ll come down and help you find it.’

  32

  Gary knocked. He knocked again, but there was no answer. He tried the door handle of the front door. The handle turned and the door opened.

  ‘Hello?’ Gary said, walking towards the kitchen. ‘I... I came to say sorry... about Deano.’

  Gary let out a gasp. He rushed in quickly and knelt down beside the body of Bollard on the floor. Bollard’s body, already in the early stages of rigor mortis, was splayed out, still clutching the mannequin. There was an opened bottle of bleach on the floor next to his body. His face lay in a pool of vomit. Gary felt Bollar
d’s face. It was cold, the life having drained from it.

  Gary noticed a large envelope clutched in one of Bollard’s hands. On it, in beautiful handwriting, was the name ‘Gary’. Gary took the envelope and looked inside. There were three documents, all of which had a handwritten title page. The first read ‘Instructions for my funeral’, the second read ‘Contact list (For my funeral)’, while the last document was entitled ‘Last Will and Testament of Mr Terrance Septimus Oliver Bollard’.

  The letter went as follows:

  * * *

  Dear Gary,

  Young man, now that I am dead, I hope that you realise that it is simply because I needed to be with my good lady wife, Christine. I have missed her terribly over the years. She took her own life after a breakdown following that dastardly endowment mortgage fiasco. Things could have been so much better for us. We could have tried to rebuild our lives, but, alas, things just spiralled for both of us. I snapped at school and lost my job. Christine couldn’t take what happened and we were both emotional wrecks.

  How I missed my dear wife. I hated being alone, so I imagined that she was still there with me until all that I imagined blurred into reality. She was there in the kitchen, always talking to me, and we interacted as husband and wife with the sort of conversations that we had always had.

  When your friend arrived, I hope you understand that it was not his fault. But for me, the spell was broken. My Christine in our world was shattered and I had no option but try my best to go and join her properly, instead of simply meeting her halfway. I’m not sure if I will get to meet her. I’m almost ashamed to say that I’m an agnostic. My decision to try and follow her was not taken lightly.

  The modern age has become so tiresome for me that I have always retreated into the past in an effort to understand the present. I still read the newspapers to get an idea of the present, too, but I cannot understand how a supposedly ‘United’ Kingdom is quite so divided. I read of homelessness on our streets, the oligarchy and the super-rich evading taxes, the rise of nationalism and bigotry and, crucially, the increasingly socially disparate place in which we live. It is just so Orwellian!