by Tony Parsons
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ he said. ‘Okay?’
I nodded, my eyes on the road. ‘Okay, kiddo.’
‘And stop calling me kiddo,’ he said.
When I looked at him he was staring at his hands with something like wonder, his fingertips lightly brushing the knuckles, scuffed raw and bloody from the missing layer of skin.
We slept differently at the start.
Before marriage, before Joni – at the start of our ten years – we wrapped ourselves up in each other, and we found that we fit. Face to face. Knee to knee. Mouth to mouth. You name it. We fit together. In those first nights I woke up with her limbs curled around me, and it was the best thing in the world.
But somewhere along the line – after the wedding photographs had started to gather dust, after the baby came along and the nights were split and sleep was suddenly like gold dust – we found that we both just slept better with our backs pressed together.
Still touching – always touching – from the soles of her feet to the delicate wings of her shoulder blades. And touching in the other way – the strokes and the pats just before sleeping or waking that said the same unsayable thing.
I am still me.
You are still you.
We are still here.
Nothing has changed.
But now our sleep seemed to have reached a third and final act. Now our backs turned to each other, but without touching, as if some barrier had built that neither of us could breach.
It was like sleeping in a single bed.
It was like sleeping alone.
‘Do you ever feel that you are too old to start again?’ Cyd said in the darkness, not turning towards me, her voice so soft and low she could have been talking to herself. I heard her sigh. ‘To go through all that business – meeting someone, and seeing if it works, and wondering if what you feel is enough to live with all the baggage they bring? You ever feel like that, Harry?’
I lifted my head. I wanted to put my arm around her. Or just lightly touch her to send the old message. It is still me. But there was that barrier, you see, and I could not cross it.
‘Cyd,’ I said. ‘Are we breaking up?’
‘I feel that way sometimes,’ she said, answering her question and not mine. ‘Just too old and tired to try starting again.’ I felt her pull her legs up and hug them. I wanted to hold her then, but I didn’t. ‘But then sometimes I feel too young to settle for what we’ve got,’ she said. Then she laughed. ‘It’s a bit of a bugger,’ she said, an American dedicated to keeping alive those old English aphorisms.
After that she said nothing.
And I must have slept for a bit because I saw my parents in a dream, in the living room of the house where I grew up and where they grew old, and it seemed so real, and so shockingly normal. As though everything was as it had been. But when I awoke with a start it was still dark with not even the first sign of morning showing at the bedroom windows. And my parents were long gone.
And as I lay there I believed that I could actually hear our children sleeping. The three of them. The boy. The two girls. All of them sleeping in their rooms, the sound of their breathing soft and, even in the night, like ribbons of solid air.
And I knew it was the only thing holding our home together.
The car stopped outside the twenty-four-hour supermarket.
‘Can I have champagne?’ Peggy said from the back seat. ‘Just one glass of champagne? If I promise not to run amok? Or become an alcoholic?’
In the passenger seat, her mother turned to look at her.
‘One glass,’ she said. ‘Then bed.’
Peggy clapped her hands. We had been to see an end-of-term production of Guys and Dolls. Peggy had stolen the show in the Jean Simmons role – the buttoned-up Bible-basher who lets her hair down when she falls for a charismatic bad boy.
Not all those kids were going to be stars of stage and screen. But when I watched my daughter – and I never thought of her as my stepdaughter, we had been together too long for that – when I watched her singing, ‘If I Were a Bell’ and ‘I’ve Never Been in Love Before’ and ‘A Woman In Love’, I believed that she might. And it wasn’t just parental pride. I had known her since she was five years old, and she had always made life look easy.
Cyd stayed in the car as Peggy and I went inside the supermarket. ‘And some bread and milk, Harry,’ my wife called. ‘Not just champagne, okay?’
‘Can it be rosé?’ Peggy asked me.
I laughed. ‘It can be whatever colour you want.’
‘You get the boring stuff,’ she said. ‘I’ll get the champagne.’
I grabbed a basket and went off to find the boring stuff. I heard the bell on the door go, and the low rumble of laughter. I looked up, but I could see nothing. More laughter. I grabbed a loaf of Hovis, found the refrigerator and threw in a couple of pints. Then I went looking for my daughter.
She was by the wine shelves and the two boys were on either side of her. She was holding a bottle of champagne but she was not smiling now. Spud Face was holding a six-pack of beer and cackling as William Fly leaned his bluebeard face in close, whispering in her ear. My daughter averted her face, her eyes closed, but rooted to the spot.
‘What’s happening here?’ I said. ‘What are you doing to her?’
The three of them looked at me.
‘Just talking, Daddy,’ William Fly said, and Spud Face got a rise out of that.
I took Peggy by the arm.
‘Let’s go,’ I said, and we paid and we left.
‘What’s wrong?’ Cyd said when we were in the car.
Peggy shook her head.
‘Nothing,’ I said.
We went home and we drank our champagne. And I put on the original soundtrack of Guys and Dolls and we smiled at Marlon Brando getting to sing the best song in the production, ‘Luck Be a Lady’, when his co-star was Frank Sinatra. So that was good, getting a smile before bedtime.
But when the two of them had gone upstairs and I was certain that they were sleeping, I went out and got in my car and drove to the fireworks factory on the City Road.
Nobody stopped me as I walked through the gates. I shook my head. It was lucky there wasn’t a gang of hardened sparkler thieves working in the area.
I found them in the warehouse, surrounded by the dusty boxes of roman candles, Catherine wheels, bangers, rockets and jumping jacks. Singe Rana watched the old man and the boy as they went through the routines again and again and again.
‘Don’t stick your elbow out when you throw those punches,’ Ken said. ‘Tuck up neat. Nice and neat. Double up on that jab. Faster. Snappier. Where’s the snap? Chin down. And don’t be a statue. Up on the balls of your feet. Dance, Pat, dance!’
And my son danced. A different kind of dancing to his sister.
The old man held up the pads and called out combinations and the boy did exactly what he was told. And when they had a break, the pair of them soaked in sweat, I took the old man to one side.
‘Is he ready?’ I said.
Ken looked at me as if there was something that I still did not quite understand.
‘Nobody is ever ready,’ the old man told me.
Pat stood patiently, his gloves still on, clumsily cradling a bottle of water, lifting his face with his eyes closed tight as Singe Rana wiped away the sweat with a grubby towel.
‘Bit soon to be back at work,’ I said, nodding at the elderly Gurkha. ‘He was in hospital five minutes ago.’
Ken looked at me as if I never ceased to surprise.
‘What would you prefer him to do?’ the old man asked me. ‘Crawl away and die?’
Twenty-two
I sat in the car park across from the bar.
Beyond a red velvet rope at the end of a tatty strip of red carpet, a forty-year-old skinhead in a Crombie stood guard next to a girl with a clipboard, the pair of them trying to pretend that it was Hollywood not Holloway.
And as drunks reeled in and out, I though
t about moving away. I thought that maybe we could start again. All of us. Clean slates. New house. New school.
Australia sounded nice.
And as I saw them coming out of the bar, I knew it was too late for all that. Not enough time. And too much already on our slates. You get to a point when you know – this is it.
The skinhead in a Crombie lifted the rope so that William Fly and Spud Face could make their messy exit. There was a stray supermarket trolley parked in the road and Spud Face reclined in it as William Fly wheeled him across the street towards me.
I sank down in the car. William Fly launched the trolley containing Spud Face across the near-empty car park. He was a big strong boy. It spun around a few times and tipped over. When they had laughed about that for a while, William Fly scraped up his friend and they had a little chat. I looked at the bar across the street. The skinhead in a Crombie was looking down at the girl with the clipboard, his huge face shining with lust. And when I looked back, Spud Face was staggering out of the far side of the car park, heading towards the market that leads to the main drag.
And William Fly was weaving his way towards me, his car keys jingle-jangling in his hand.
He had a nice car. Its lights blinked an orangey welcome. He leaned against it, trying to decide if he wanted to be sick or not before he drove home. And when he looked up, I was standing there.
No recognition. Not a flicker. How quickly they forget. But his eyes lit up with malice.
‘Who you looking at, faggot?’ he slurred, turning to face me, even drunker than he looked.
‘What did he ever do to you?’ I said. My voice came out very soft. There was a group of girls falling out of the bar across the street, and I did not want any attention. But he still didn’t get it. ‘My son, you rotten bastard,’ I said.
He squinted at me. Then he laughed, truly amused. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Sick Note’s daddy. Of course.’ Then he was in my face, so fast that I almost fell backwards. I could smell the Red Bull and vodka on his breath. ‘And?’ he said, and I was afraid for the first time. But I needed to know.
‘Why Pat?’ I said, and something changed when I said his name out loud. It seemed to take something away from the youth in front of me. He took a step back and snickered.
‘Just a bit of a laugh,’ William Fly told me, looking at me sideways, as if I might see the funny side.
I shook my head and sighed. ‘Somehow I knew you were going to say that,’ I said. ‘Just a bit of a laugh, innit? It’s the, I was just obeying orders of our time. You pathetic, overgrown piece of crap.’
Then he was suddenly tired of me.
‘What you going to do about it, old man?’ the big ugly bastard said. ‘Give me a good hiding?’
He shrugged the stiffness out of his shoulders. I think he was planning to stick one on me and go home. Just that – a straight right to the chin and maybe a kick in the head when I was down. Then mirror-signal-manoeuvre all the way home, driving with the due care that only a drunken driver can muster.
‘Not me,’ I said. ‘My son.’
He stared at me for a moment. And he didn’t stop laughing until Singe Rana stepped out of the shadows with the blade in his hand.
William Fly and I both stared at the knife. It was an impressive sight. The kukri’s curved blade seemed to fatten and bend in the moonlight. I realised I had stopped breathing. For a long time there was no sound at all apart from the distant boom-boom of the music in the bar and the much closer sound of William Fly wetting his Diesel jeans.
‘He’s got a sword,’ William Fly said.
‘He’s got a kukri, you ignorant ape,’ I said. ‘It’s better than a sword.’
After a while I realised that Singe Rana was looking at me. It was time to go.
William Fly tore his eyes from the kukri and looked at me with pure hatred.
‘What’s this?’ he said. ‘Dad’s Army?’
‘Exactly,’ I said.
We walked him over to my car. I opened the boot and gestured for William Fly to get inside.
‘You have got to be fucking shitting me,’ he said, and I saw him look around and think about making a break for it. And now I stepped into his space, and now I was breathing in his face, my heart pounding, and wondering if we were all going to jail.
‘Do I look like I’m joking?’ I said. ‘Do I look like I’m just having a bit of a laugh?’
He looked at the kukri and got into the boot. I had cleared everything out but it was still a tight fit.
‘My dad is going to sue the pair of you,’ said William Fly, curling up like a six-foot foetus. ‘I have my human rights, you fuckers.’
Somehow that made it all a lot easier. The threat of legal action, the mention of human rights – that was the world this brute came from. Where everything you do unto others is forgiven by just being a bit of a laugh, and everything that might be done unto you is protected by your human rights. I slammed down the boot as hard as I could.
‘It’s not far,’ I said, slapping it twice. Then Singe Rana seemed to slowly deflate in front of my eyes, and I put my arm around him as he sagged against the car.
‘Just a sit down,’ he said, through short gasps of breath. ‘Then I am well.’
I sat him in the passenger seat, leaving the door open so he could get some air. The kukri had been slipped inside a worn leather scabbard and was hidden now under his nylon anorak. We could hear some metallic rattling in the boot, like a washing machine with a full load, and some coins left in a pair of jeans.
Singe Rana raised his smooth face and considered the supermarket car park as if it was one of the great sights of London.
He took a small paper-wrapped parcel from his anorak. Before he had unwrapped it I could smell the Aloo Chop. They smelled of ginger and onions. He offered me the spicy potato cakes and I took one.
‘At the end of the war we had a choice,’ he said. ‘Gurkha troops could join the Indian army, the Pakistani army, or remain with the British.’ He selected a potato cake and broke off a small piece. ‘We stayed with the British and they sent us to Malaya. Rebels make trouble.’ He chewed for a bit and waited until his mouth was empty before continuing. He had impeccable manners. ‘There was a lottery for some of us to go to Britain. I was fortunate enough to be among those selected.’ He glanced towards the sound coming from the boot. Under his calm brown eyes, the noise suddenly stopped. ‘We saw Whipsnade Zoo, the Ford Motor works and Buckingham Palace, although we were not permitted inside. Then we went back to Malaya to hunt rebels.’ He chewed thoughtfully for a while. ‘In the end we got back to Nepal in 1956. Then Hong Kong. Then Britain…’ He began to wrap the remainder of his Aloo Chop. It was time to go.
They were waiting for us just inside the gates of the fireworks factory.
Pat was in tracksuit bottoms and a school vest. Ken had a towel around his neck, and he was smoothing Pat’s bare arms with long, slow strokes. I guessed that he was trying to relax his muscles, but it looked like something else. It looked like a gesture of love.
I popped the boot, and William Fly sat up like something unspeakable rising from its grave.
‘Remember what I told you,’ Ken said. ‘Double up on that jab. Dance. And don’t be a statue.’
Pat nodded, lifting his fists to his face as William Fly got out of the boot, looking around the fireworks factory, and then at Pat.
And then he smiled.
‘Let’s be having you,’ Ken barked, and we all jumped.
William Fly swaggered towards Pat, stiff from the boot and still rat-faced from the bar.
My son met him halfway, Ken with one of his arms around Pat’s shoulders, still smoothing his muscles with the other.
Singe Rana and I stood either side of William Fly, as if we were his seconds.
‘Rules,’ Ken said.
William Fly guffawed with contempt. ‘Rules, old man?’ he said. ‘There are no rules.’
Ken’s eyes got very small behind his glasses. ‘There have to be rules,�
�� he said. He patted Pat’s belly, and then William Fly’s. ‘Everything above here is all right. No gouging, no weapons, no kicking.’
William Fly took a step back and aimed a winkle picker at Pat’s groin. I pulled him back by the scruff of his neck.
‘You kick him in his wedding tackle,’ Ken promised, nodding at Singe Rana, ‘and this man here will cut yours off. Got it?’
William Fly laughed, shook his head. Although they were around the same height, Fly’s bulk made it seem as if he towered over Pat. The difference between them was the gap between a man and a boy. I have no doubt that Fly thought he would kill him.
Then Pat nodded. ‘Let’s just do it, shall we?’
They stepped apart. Above them the dirty neon of the factory’s sign shone down like a dying moon. Then they came together.
William Fly rushed in, fists flailing, wanting to get it over with quick, and thinking he would, but Pat snapped his head back with a stiff jab. It was as if he hardly did anything – just stuck out his right southpaw lead and let William Fly’s weight and movement do the rest as he walked straight into it.
Pat’s fist came out again and again, the way he had been shown, as if he was catching flies. Jab, jab, jab. Every time his fist came out, William Fly’s head snapped back. I saw the shock in Fly’s eyes. I saw the first black spot of blood on his upper lip.
Pat bounced around in front of him, up on the balls of his feet, his guard high, his chin tucked into his shoulder. William Fly, flat-footed and bloody, took a step back. He touched the wet spot on his upper lip and cursed.
‘It’s a sideways sport and you’re standing face on,’ Ken shouted at Pat, his hands nervously tugging the ends of the towel around his neck.
Pat adjusted his stance, turning his body so that he was at a slanted angle to the larger boy. There was nothing for William Fly to hit.
He took half a step forward and Pat’s fist snapped out, blacking an eye.
Then William Fly rushed him.
He took another light jab flush in the face, but this time he kept coming, his meaty arms wrapping themselves around Pat’s neck. He tried to throw him over his hip but Pat stayed on his feet.
