Men from the Boys

by Tony Parsons

  And in the bottom part of the box, held by a crimson ribbon and resting on dusty-looking purple velvet, there was the Victoria Cross.

  For Valour, I read. I closed the box and turned away.

  The cop grabbed me by the throat and sent me flying backwards.

  I went over a stack of Blu-Ray DVD players and smashed the back of my head on a home cinema unit. The cop took a fistful of my shirt and pulled me to my feet. He put his face in mine and kept it there as he opened the box. I could feel that Kevlar vest like a brick wall between us. And I saw that he was around my age. He stared at the medal for quite a while and then back at me.

  ‘This belong to you?’ he said.

  I shook my head. ‘To a friend,’ I said.

  ‘Let’s discuss it at the station.’

  Then the door to the bedroom flew open and an old woman with a baseball bat came out screaming.

  She swung at the policeman’s head and he just about got out of the way. The bat shattered the screen of monster TV. Still screaming blue murder, she lifted the bat to swing again.

  The mother of the Old Lads. They loved their old mum.

  Then I got out of there as fast as I could, the medal in my pocket, leaving the cop in his stab-proof vest and the old woman with the baseball bat, grappling with each other among that useless luxury.

  We sat in the half-darkness of the ward at night, the curtains pulled round the bed, and Mick’s voice was soft so as not to disturb the men who were sleeping. Ken was propped up in bed, his hands crossed on his chest. His breathing sounded like the wind.

  ‘You drive out of Melbourne for sixty miles,’ Mick said. ‘At San Remo Bridge you cross to Phillip Island.’

  ‘That’s the fish-and-chip place,’ Ken said.

  Mick nodded. ‘Big fishing fleet at San Remo, Dad. They’ll do you the best fish and chips in the world there.’

  Ken nodded, satisfied. Mick continued.

  ‘On Phillip Island, the penguins only come out after it starts getting dark. Avoiding predators. But then as soon as it’s dark they come bombing out of the sea, masses of them, more penguins than you can believe, Dad, out of the sea and across the beach and into the dunes, into their burrows. Thousands of them, Dad. Thousands of penguins coming out of the sea and parading across Summerland Beach every night of the year.’

  Ken laughed at the thought of it, and then the laughter turned to a cough. I nodded to Pat and we slipped out while Mick helped his father with the oxygen mask. He was getting pretty good at it now. When we were on the other side of the curtains, Pat looked at me, reluctant to leave.

  ‘He’s all right,’ I said. ‘He’s got his son now.’

  Twenty-six

  I drove them to the airport.

  The old man in the passenger seat, immaculate in his blazer, shirt and tie, although the clothes seemed to hang on him now. But his breathing was good and even today, and his face clean-shaven. The smell of Old Spice filled the car. He was all spruced up.

  Now and again he would tap the tin of Old Holborn in his blazer pocket but he made no attempt to light up. I told myself that he was waiting until he got on the plane.

  Mick dozed in the back seat, still jet-lagged from coming the other way. Pat and Singe Rana sat on either side of him, the pair of them craning their necks as we got closer to the airport, and the planes started to fill the sky.

  Qantas had put on a lovely spread for him. Oxygen tank. Wheelchair. A pretty young woman with Melbourne in her voice and sunshine in her hair. Ken waved it all away, although he was frail now, and moved very slowly, that old rolling sailor’s gait long gone, and he could only walk with one arm entwined very tightly in the arm of his son.

  The family were waiting for us at the check-in desk. Ian and Tracey, wreathed in smiles. Their partners, and assorted children and grandchildren, scratching their navel rings and staring blankly at their mobile phones, wanting to be somewhere else, anywhere else. A baby was thrust into Ken’s arms. He admired it for a moment and then handed it back.

  ‘Dad,’ said Tracey, throwing her arms around her father. ‘Oh, Dad!’

  Ken gently pulled himself away, looking at his bent boarding card.

  ‘I almost forgot,’ he said, reaching into the pocket that contained his Old Holborn. He took out the small claret box. We all watched him open it, take one brief final look at his Victoria Cross, and close it again. Then he gave it to Pat.

  ‘Thank you,’ said the boy, and he held the old man’s medal with tender care, as if it was a bird’s nest with eggs in it.

  Tracey stared at my son as though she wanted his heart and liver. When she spoke her voice was trembling with rage.

  ‘You silly old man,’ she said. ‘Do you have any idea of the value of that thing?’

  Ken smiled at her. He didn’t say, ‘Do you?’ But that’s what his look said.

  She was speechless. Just for a moment. ‘You can buy a house with what that would fetch at auction,’ she said, and she glared at Pat, and for a second I thought she might try to wrestle him to the ground.

  ‘But I’ll never sell it,’ Pat said, and he slipped it inside his own blazer pocket.

  Ken shook his head, as if it did not matter what he did with it.

  He just wanted him to have it.

  ‘Come on,’ Tracey said to her gormless tribe. ‘We’re going home.’ She looked back at her father. ‘And I hope you get savaged by a rabid penguin, you silly old git.’

  Ken chuckled as they walked away.

  We walked them to international departures where we could see the long queues of people being processed. Still holding on to Mick, Ken looked down at his boarding card, running his thumb and forefinger across it, although it didn’t really need straightening any more. Singe Rana took out a paper-wrapped parcel and gave it to Ken. I could smell the cayenne pepper and turmeric spice of the Nepalese potato cakes.

  ‘Aloo Chop,’ Ken nodded. ‘Just the job.’

  He did not shake hands with his friend. He did not shake hands with any of us. We stood around awkwardly for a moment or two, not knowing quite what to do or say, listening to the security and immigration guards barking their bored commands in the background, and then Ken moved it along with three little words.

  ‘Time to go,’ he said.

  And so they went.

  We watched them for a while as their queue snaked forward. And we saw Mick helping his father with the laborious rigmarole of modern travel, helping the old man to remove his shoes and belt and watch. Then Ken went through the metal detector and set if off. A young man frowned at him sternly as he fished the tin of Old Holborn from Ken Grimwood’s blazer. Ken went through again, standing unaided now, his hands in the air as if surrendering. And after that we could not see them any more. But the three of us lingered at the airport, Pat and Singe Rana and me, because without talking about it, there was really nowhere we would rather be.

  Two hours later, we were up on the observation deck, the entire airport spread before us beyond the great glass walls.

  Pat turned to me with a grin.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘It’s him.’

  A white plane with a red tail was taxiing towards us. As it headed for the runway I could read the words on the side. Qantas – Spirit of Australia, it said. There was a slash of white on the red tail, and when it got closer it revealed itself as the silhouette of a kangaroo that was as sleek as a greyhound.

  The plane turned, moving parallel to the observation deck for a minute, no more, as it pushed out to join the other planes that were lining up for the runway. And I saw him.

  In a window seat, with his son beside him. Mick turned and said something to his father and the old man seemed to be belatedly buckling up his seat belt.

  I called his name, knowing it was stupid, knowing he would never hear me.

  And then I found myself walking by the glass wall of the observation deck, keeping up with the plane at first, and then seeing it pulling away from me, and starting to run. Just before
I lost him he turned and looked out of his window.

  He did not see me. But I saw the late afternoon sun catch his glasses, and turn them into golden orbs. He was smiling.

  Then just before the plane was gone from my view, when I had reached the end of the glass wall of the observation deck and could follow it no further, I saw the old man lean back and take a breath.

  It was not the kind of breath that I had seen him take all those nights at the hospital – shallow, grasping, desperate. No, it was nothing like that. It was a breath that suggested that he had all the time in the world. I saw him take that breath, and I saw him let it go, his head tilting slightly towards the window, the sun still catching his glasses, the faint smile on his lips.

  I said his name one last time, my hands pressed against the glass.

  And I watched him go.

  I was at my desk when the fireworks began.

  A long, slow crack of the sky, like summer lightning. I looked up at the window of my little room and then I turned back to the script. There was something wrong with it.

  There should not have been anything to complain about, but I was struggling with PC Filth: An Unfair Cop. The money was good, and the ratings were buoyant, and there was no heavy lifting involved. But it made my heart feel like it was made of lead – all these alcoholic cops struggling with their ex-wives and their alienated children.

  Was there no officer at the station who could have just the one glass of Australian Shiraz and then go home to bed with his wife? Was there not one uniformed or plainclothes policeman in the Western world who could just sink a few beers and then go home in time to read his kid a story at bedtime? Could a cop get divorced without becoming an alcoholic? Why was it so difficult to hold on to ordinary goodness?

  The summer lightning again.

  The long slow splitting of sky, followed by an eruption of stars. I heard voices in the street. People were coming out of their houses to look. I went to the window.

  And I saw the sky ablaze with exploding light. Rockets that soared with a melodramatic pheeeeew and then ignited into a storm of falling colours. Trails of fire that seemed to launch with blistering speed, but then in slow motion collapse in beautiful dying lights. High above the City Road, the fireworks filled the summer sky.

  Then I looked down when I heard the diesel rumble of the black cab outside our house, and I saw their shadows in the night. Doors slamming, suitcases being removed, the fare being paid. And the voice of my daughter asking something, and the voice of her mother as she replied. And high above us, the fireworks continued to go off like all the stars in the heavens coming to life for one brief shining perfect moment.

  I ran down the stairs as fast as I could and I reached the ground floor just as Joni appeared in the doorway. We stood there staring at each other.

  My daughter grinned uncertainly and I realised that she had lost her vampire smile. One of her two front teeth had come all the way through, and the other one was almost there. She was growing up.

  ‘Hello, gorgeous,’ I said.

  ‘Have you seen them?’ Joni said excitedly. ‘All the colours? Up in the sky?’

  I nodded, lifting my eyes to what Singe Rana had unleashed on his tea break.

  ‘It’s incredible,’ I said.

  I took her hand and we went to meet my wife as we heard her footsteps at our front gate. Then Cyd was standing before me, putting down her suitcases.

  She gave me half a smile.

  Maybe a bit more than half.

  I took her in my arms and I loved her face, just loved it, and I knew that I would love it always, and I would watch it get older over the years and I would never love it less than I did tonight.

  Our mouths lightly touched.

  They were still a perfect fit.

  She rested her forehead against mine.

  ‘What took you so long?’ I asked her.

  Cyd gently sighed. ‘The Finchley Road was a bitch,’ she said.

  Then our daughter was squirming between us, taking our hands, tugging us towards the door where the sky outside was still exploding with lights, and I could feel her really pulling us with all her strength, as if impatient to show us the wonders of the world.

  Twenty-seven

  On the last day of term I stood in the empty playground looking out at the playing fields of Ramsay Mac.

  The marquee was still standing but as I started towards it, one bone-white wall billowed like a sail and fell gently to the grass. A few workmen appeared where the wall had just been, and I saw the stage, the lectern, and the row upon row of white chairs, all empty but for the few that Pat stretched across at the back.

  He saw me coming and raised a hand in salute.

  My foot kicked something and I saw that there was games equipment scattered all over the playground. Netballs, footballs, cricket bats. And esoteric stuff. A discus, shot putt and a couple of javelins. More equipment spilled out of a shed at the edge of the playground, its door hanging off its hinges. I idly dribbled a football ahead of me, reflecting that you never really lose those silky skills, and I picked it up as I reached the marquee.

  I sat down in the row ahead of Pat and we watched the workmen dismantling the stage, their voices soft in the haze of the late afternoon. They spoke in a language I did not recognise. Another wall came down and we could see the fields, the chalky markings of the running track, and the goalposts beyond.

  ‘Coming back in September?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ he said. ‘September’s a long way away.’

  I inwardly chuckled at that.

  ‘Best days of your life,’ I said, and I watched my son’s slow smile spread across his face. He reached out and took the football from me, clutching it to his stomach like a hot-water bottle.

  There was some female laughter from the playground and we turned to look at a group of girls tossing a netball at each other. They all had their Ramsay Mac ties worn around their foreheads like bandanas. I thought that I recognised one of them, but I wasn’t sure.

  ‘Elizabeth Montgomery?’ I said, and the name still had that old power.

  But Pat smiled gently.

  ‘I talked to her,’ he said. ‘When they were giving out the prizes and making the speeches, some of us were at the back of the fields having a smoke. And I talked to her then.’ He looked at me briefly. ‘She told me about that guy. The one you saw her with at the hotel. She said she liked it that he could understand a wine menu. But she didn’t like it that he needed reading glasses.’

  ‘Women, eh?’ I said. ‘There’s just no pleasing them.’

  We stared at Elizabeth Montgomery and her friends. School was over for all of them, but they lingered on, mucking about with the pilfered sports equipment, reluctant to leave this place and join the grown-ups.

  As the marquee continued to fall on every side, a pair of brown eyes flashed towards us. Elizabeth Montgomery’s black hair swished in the summer sun.

  ‘I might talk to her again,’ Pat said, hugging the ball in his arms, and glancing at me as if he was breaking some prior arrangement.

  ‘Go ahead,’ I said. ‘Don’t let me stop you.’

  I was not here to pick him up or anything. I was just checking that he was all right. But I should have known. He was going to be fine.

  ‘Because that’s the big secret, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘There’s no secret language that you have to learn. There’s no secret language of girls. You can say anything you want.’

  I got up to go. I felt like I was getting in his way. The walls of the marquee had all come down and the workmen had started to stack the chairs. In the playground Elizabeth Montgomery was chasing one of her friends with a netball. She looked up at Pat and then laughed as she looked away, hurling the netball at her shrieking friend.

  Pat cuddled his football.

  ‘You fancy a game?’ he said.

  ‘You’re kidding me,’ I said. ‘Go and get your girl.’

  ‘We’ve got time for one last ga
me,’ he said. ‘Come on.’

  So we stepped out of the dismantled marquee and on to the football field of Ramsay Mac. Pat looked at me and smiled. Then he turned away, facing the nearest goal, and booting the ball as high as he could. We ran off, both crying out as we collided, and as I looked up at the sky the ball seemed to eclipse the sun for a moment, and then start to come down.

  And we went after it, skidding and sliding across the grass in our unsuitable shoes, holding on to each other and pushing each other away, laughing and protesting, our eyes to the heavens, and waiting to see where it would fall.

  By the Same Author

  Man and Boy

  One For My Baby

  Man and Wife

  The Family Way

  Stories We Could Tell

  My Favourite Wife

  Starting Over

  Copyright

  HarperCollinsPublishers

  77-85 Fulham Palace Road, London W6 8JB

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2010

  First Edition

  Copyright © Tony Parsons 2010

  Tony Parsons asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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