by David Belbin
‘How’s the teaching going?’ Nick asked.
‘She’ll be glad to get out for a while,’ Joe said.
‘Get out?’ Nick asked. ‘You mean the Easter holidays?’
Joe didn’t reply. They turned off the ring road.
‘This is where we live now,’ Joe said. They entered a hillside estate of 1920s semis with big back gardens. Nick knew his brother had moved while he was inside, but hadn’t realized his new home was so close to the prison where he had begun his sentence.
‘Nice place,’ Nick said, as Joe parked the car.
‘Still needs painting on the outside,’ his brother told him. ‘You should see what we’ve done inside, though. Come on.’
The house looked like the early eighties had never ended: stripped pine, original Adams tiles on the floor, framed prints, big patchwork cushions, a cheese plant, a rubber plant and pastel colours on the walls.
‘It’s great,’ he told Joe.
‘That’s mostly down to Caroline. She’ll be home in half an hour. Want a beer? We’ve got champagne in, but I thought we’d wait until . . .’
‘I haven’t had a drink in five years. Best take it easy to begin with.’
‘Your liver’ll be in better shape than mine.’ Joe put the kettle on before getting out his gear to roll a spliff.
Nick stood at the window. Massive Magritte clouds rolled across the sky. A young mother was wheeling a pram on the opposite side of the street. Cars passed. Ordinary life going on. Sweet.
‘Here. Let’s have one of these before she gets in.’
Joe passed the joint so that Nick could start it, then poured the tea. Nick hadn’t had a smoke in so long, he almost refused. He liked having a clear head. But he didn’t want to offend Joe. And what was Nick keeping his head clear for? The joint flared into life, giving off a pungent odour. Nick got the buzz before the first draw had left his lungs, a heavy, sweet high. Then the acrid smoke made him cough.
‘Skunk,’ Joe told him. ‘The stuff kept getting stronger while you were away.’
Getting stoned was easier than making conversation. Joe put on a Radiohead album and the two men sank into it: doomy stuff, full of self-pity – it reminded Nick of the prog rock he listened to at fourteen. He was glad when Caroline came in and Joe took the album off.
Nick had always fancied Caroline, with her thick, brown hair and intelligent eyes. Today, however, his sister-in-law looked exhausted. She was only thirty, but had four fine lines beneath each eye. Her stomach was bloated.
‘Open a window, can’t you?’
Joe did as he was told. Nick hugged his pretty sister-in-law with the hennaed hair and ripened boobs. He kissed her on the cheek.
‘You’re looking really good, Nick. A different man.’
‘This is a surprise,’ Nick said, pointing at her belly.
‘We wanted to wait until you were out before saying anything.’
‘Congratulations. I’m sorry I missed the wedding.’
‘You had to miss a lot of things. Has Joe shown you around?’
While Joe made more tea, Caroline took him on the house-and-garden tour, finishing with the newly decorated box room that would be Nick’s base until he found better. Nick enjoyed Caroline’s pride in the house. It might be done up more to her taste than Joe’s, but she worked hard for that privilege.
‘When does your maternity leave start?’ Nick asked, solicitously.
‘From the weekend, effectively. I’m not going back after Easter.’
Nick would have to get a place of his own pretty soon then, but didn’t say so: never make a promise you can’t be sure of keeping, that was one of the maxims he’d adopted inside.
‘You know, I really appreciate . . .’
Caroline gave him a plucky, this-is-what-I-do smile, which humbled him.
‘I’m not feeling very articulate,’ he mumbled.
‘You’re Joe’s brother,’ she said, putting a gentle hand on his upper arm. ‘And you’re stoned. There’s no need to be grateful all the time. But don’t go getting Joe into any trouble, okay?’
‘Okay,’ Nick said.
The following afternoon, Nick decided to look at his stuff. A combination of legal bills and negative equity had cost him his flat in the Park. With it went his white goods and other fixtures and fittings. When Joe visited in prison, Nick had told him to throw away whatever he saw fit to lose. Joe only had a flat at the time, so the best storage available was a friend’s lock-up. Some of Nick’s things were still in that garage, on the edge of some allotments, but Joe had moved the more valuable stuff here when he and Caroline bought the house.
The loft was accessed by a pull-down metal ladder. It covered the full width of the detached house. Nick found his hi-fi tucked into the eaves, wrapped in plastic sheeting: Quad record deck, Mission speakers, NAD amplifier and an early AIWA CD player. Behind them, covered in bubble wrap, was a sweet piece of equipment: his FM/AM tuner – an elegant wooden box with a huge dial that Sony made in the mid-sixties. Andrew Saint had given it to him when he upgraded his in the late 1980s. Underneath the tuner was Nick’s scratched up, matt black AIWA double cassette deck. He’d used this to make endless copies and compilations, what Joe called ‘mix tapes’. Where were his boxes of cassettes? He hoped Joe hadn’t thrown them out. Nick used to have several hundred vinyl LPs. They would have been too heavy to lug up here but should still be in Joe’s friend’s garage.
Here were his CDs. A small selection. He’d only upgraded to CD a few months before being arrested. Nevermind by Nirvana. Led Zeppelin’s third and fourth albums. He’d forgotten he’d bought that new Joni Mitchell, couldn’t remember a thing about it. Pod by the Breeders. Those Van Morrisons he’d picked up because he’d never owned them on vinyl. Sarah took hers away when she moved out. And there was the Beatles box set, shaped like a writing bureau. He’d bought that out of his homegrown money, along with those Atlantic soul CDs. When Nick was inside, Joe offered to bring in some with a CD Walkman, but HMP didn’t allow CDs. The silver discs, so easy to crack, made good weapons. In prison, the cassette was still king. Nick had given his small ghetto blaster to his cellmate, Baz, when they let him out.
Nick’s SLR camera was there, too, tucked into a box which also held old T-shirts and jeans that, since he’d dropped a waist size inside, would no longer fit him. Most of the T-shirts had politically related slogans: People’s March for Jobs, Think Global, Act Local, Bushwhacked! There were more clothes, but Nick’s chest had expanded while his gut declined. Oxfam for them.
Then there were the boxes of books. The English teaching ones were a waste of space. Nick would never be allowed back into the profession. He should have told Joe to dump the politics, too. The densely packed paperbacks ranged from Tony Benn’s diaries to the complete speeches of Lenin. He’d bought half this stuff to keep up with Sarah, but soon found that she had even less patience with political theory than he did. They were idealists, not ideologues. Saving the world was a possibility when they were in their twenties. At thirty-five, Nick had to concentrate on saving himself. He had to put prison behind him and think about his time there as little as possible. Most of all, he needed to find work, any kind of work.
Box after box of books. Why did people collect them when they could visit a library? He could have used some of these inside. Outside, who had the time to read whole books once, never mind a second time? Nick looked in each box anyway. There was his collection of Giles Annuals, most of which used to belong to his father. Two Posy Simmonds books that were his mother’s. At least Mum and Dad had both died before he was sent down. He had been spared that shame. Paperbacks of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen: his, though he was surprised Joe hadn’t nicked them. Graphic novels made ideal late night, stoned reading.
There were lots more comics, stored in individual plastic bags, some of them maybe worth a few quid. Dr Strange. The Silver Surfer. In the big house, Nick used comics to teach reading. The Beano and football comics, anything h
e could find. Half of the men he met were illiterate. They liked the pictures and could be teased into deciphering the words. Nick wrote letters for people, too, but that was a sadder job. When you were inside for years, relationships on the outside faded away. The guys he wrote letters for tried to hang on to relationships that were tenuous before they went down. No chance. Inside, it was hard enough to keep a marriage going.
Friends had fizzled out on Nick, too. There was one former teaching colleague who wrote to him, but she never visited. Two mates did come regularly early on, but not after he was moved from Nottingham prison. Only his brother came then. He’d learned that family counted for more as you got older. Only family had no choice but to stick by you.
What else was up here? Rock posters of dubious historical interest, a framed Picasso print and a few photographs in clip frames: Sarah, Nazia, his parents, Joe on the pitch at Meadow Lane. Last of all, an ancient sheet music case in cracked brown leather, filled with letters and postcards. Nick dipped into the letters, most of them from the 1980s. Nazia’s strained yet poetic syntax, Sarah’s cramped handwriting, every page full of events and ideas. There were postcards from each of his parents. His mother, in a letter written just before her death, talked about how much she missed his father. He put the letter down quickly, before he welled up, then closed the case. It held too many missing people.
‘Joe?’ a voice came from below.
‘No, Nick. You shouldn’t be climbing that.’
Caroline clambered up the narrow ladder to the attic. ‘I’m not an invalid. We thought you were out. How long have you been up here?’
Nick looked at his watch. It was gone ten. ‘Hours.’
‘Joe went out to drive for a while. I saved you some dinner.’
‘That’s good of you, thanks.’
‘I fell asleep after dinner and thought you must be Joe, come back.’
‘It’s okay for me to be up here, isn’t it?’
‘Of course it is. Sifting through memories?’
‘Something like that,’ Nick replied, wondering if she knew what was in the music case in front of him. Had Caroline been through these intimate things? Maybe she had a right to, since they were in her house.
‘You know, I am kind of hungry,’ he said.
‘Come down and I’ll put the lasagne in the microwave,’ she told him. ‘I could do with some company. There might even be a glass of Valpolicella left in the bottle.’
6
In TV shows, when the criminal gets out of prison, he walks into a pub or bar where everybody knows him. There are cheers, pats on the back, followed by wild, boozy celebrations. He’s bought drinks all evening, and goes home with a woman who’s been keeping her bed warm just for him. Maybe it did happen that way for some ex-cons, the ones who belonged to gangs or extended criminal families. Nick had always worked alone. He spent his first few nights of freedom drinking with his brother, schlepping into the garden for a spliff every so often. Tonight, midweek, Caroline was away visiting family and Joe was working until ten. Nick had nowhere to go before then.
In the old days, Nick divided his drinking time between the Limelight, which was the bar attached to Nottingham Playhouse, the Peacock, opposite Radio Nottingham, and Walton’s Hotel at the top of the Park. The crowd at the Limelight had changed and he could no longer afford Walton’s. That left the Peacock, with its mix of political activists and mature students fresh from their evening classes at the Workers’ Educational Association. Nick got there early.
When Nick was sent down, you could still order a drink in the lounge at the Peacock by pressing a button on the wall. He tried it now, but the bell behind the bar didn’t ring. Chris Woods and Des Amos were at the far end of the lounge. He’d been to parties at their house and was always bumping into them at demonstrations. Both glanced round when he came in but neither made a move to greet him. Nick headed towards them, then bottled it and went through to the public bar. This always used to be populated by students from Trent Poly, or Trent University, as it had become just after he was sent down.
In the near corner was Trev Wilcox, a Politics lecturer who Nick had worked with on an anti-cuts campaign in the mid-eighties. Two tables away from him was Pete Tolland, a former stalwart of Notts for nuclear disarmament, and a Labour party branch chairman the last time that Nick had seen him. Nick bought a pint and gravitated towards Trev, whose flat hair was a little shorter than before, burst blood vessels starting to sully his nose. He was with a couple of thirtyish women.
‘Hi, Trev, what’s happening?’
Nick clocked the sideways glance that preceded Trev’s cheery, ‘Nick, good to see you!’ and was followed by a short pause, after which Trev should have introduced him to his friends.
Instead, he said: ‘Actually, we’re in the middle of . . . so if you’d excuse . . .’
‘Sure,’ Nick said. ‘Good to see you.’
He moved on quickly, pretending to be oblivious to the muttering that followed this dismissal. He’d have to get used to being cut. But he’d thought Trev was a mate. Pete, at least, was sitting alone, wearing new, narrow glasses, otherwise unchanged, thin as a whippet and hair jet black. Nick smiled at him as he walked over. Pete stared right through him, then looked down into his drink.
Nick froze. He’d been blanked by several people, slight acquaintances, mostly, since coming out of prison, but this wasn’t an I’m-pretending-I-didn’t-see-you blanking or an I’ve-forgotten-who-you-are Alzheimer’s impression. This was an I-wouldn’t-be-seen-dead-talking-to-you, in your face insult. Pete had been to Nick’s house, smoked his dope, played pool with him after meetings. Now Pete was being joined by a shrewish woman with a stud in her nose, clearly his new partner. Nick’s imagination lip-read their conversation.
Who was that?
An ex-con I used to know before he went bent, probably trying to scrounge a pint.
In a corner, chatting up a short-haired woman half his age, was Tony Bax, who Nick used to play football with on Saturday afternoons. Tony was a city councillor, last Nick knew. He’d fought Nottingham West back in 1987. No chance of becoming the MP. Nick had worked his arse off for him anyway. Tony couldn’t blank him, would give him the bear hug that would validate Nick’s existence to the rest of the pub. But Tony was having an intense conversation. Nick hesitated. Five years was five years. Time dissolved everything. Nick’s pride couldn’t risk his being blanked again. He left the pub, knowing he wouldn’t go back.
Nick had promised to join Joe before last orders. Maybe they’d go clubbing, Joe said. Nick didn’t feel like dancing, trying to pull. But family was family, so he looked for Joe in the crowded Golden Fleece. His brother was with a couple of mates, one pint in front of him, another waiting. Joe saw Nick arrive and spoke gently to the guys he was with, who left at once. They would be football hangers-on. Plenty of people remembered Joe with affection from when he was a talented midfielder for County.
‘Here, get this down you,’ Joe said.
The small white tablet could have been an aspirin.
‘What is it?’
‘A dove.’
Nick borrowed Joe’s pint to wash the pill down.
‘I thought we’d go to Rock City, for old time’s sake.’
‘Why not?’ Nick said.
Rock City was a big venue. Nick had been to more gigs there than he could count. The first time was when he was a student. New Order’s second ever gig. They came on at eleven and played for just forty mesmerising minutes. Then there was R.E.M., with fewer than a hundred people in the audience. The Smiths, early on. Elvis Costello and the Attractions, with The Pogues supporting. Maybe fifty shows since. It would probably be full of students. Nick would feel his age. But at least he wouldn’t meet anyone he knew.
As they walked down the hill, Joe got out a spliff.
‘Better have this now, before the E kicks in.’
Nick watched him light it. ‘Isn’t that a bit . . .’
‘Don’t worry. Everyone’s dea
d relaxed about it these days. All the cops care about are violent drunks, you know?’
He handed the joint to Nick just as they were passing the Peacock.
‘Nick?’ It was Tony Bax, coming out of the pub. Up close, Tony had aged. There was grey in his beard. A paunch showed through his jacket.
‘Nick, good to see you!’ Tony threw his arms around Nick. ‘How are you?’
‘Surviving,’ Nick said, stupidly self conscious about the joint in his hand. Tony had never been a doper.
‘What was it like?’ Tony asked, in a sympathetic voice.
‘I won’t be going back again in a hurry.’
Tony focused pointedly on what was in Nick’s right hand.
‘Then I wouldn’t smoke that a hundred yards from the central police station. You’re on parole, aren’t you?’
‘Yeah,’ Nick admitted. Tony was right. Having the joint was stupid. But the E was starting to kick in and this conversation felt uncomfortable. He tried to say something diplomatic. ‘I . . . eh . . .’
‘Sorry,’ Tony said, ‘Didn’t mean to be rude. I’m sure you know what you’re doing. Look, I’ve got to catch the last bus, but if there’s anything I can do, I’m still in the book, all right? Don’t be a stranger.’
He hurried up the hill to catch the Arnold bus.
‘Who was that old fart?’ Joe asked, as Nick returned the joint.
Nick didn’t reply.
The skunk might be stronger than it was five years before, but the Es weren’t. After they’d got past the queue, checked their coats and bought a drink, Nick took an extra half. Then he and Joe had a snort of speed in the bogs. When the drugs were working properly, he hit the dance floor. He found that E’ed up he liked to dance to the techno numbers best, because it didn’t matter if you knew them, they rocked, whereas the guitar songs sounded stodgy and retro. The last gig he’d been to here was Nirvana, in 1991, just as they were breaking big, and rock didn’t seem to have moved on since then. Tonight, when ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ came on, he felt the old throw-yourself-around-the-room exhilaration, the E, the speed and booze combining to give him a surge of wild energy.
