by Ted Lewis
Ronnie’s tongue clicked against the back of his teeth.
“Don’t get me wrong, Billy,” he said. “But there’d be problems.”
“It’s done all the time,” I said.
“Yeah, I know. But not at one of Walter’s places. Not unless Walter says so.”
“You run them, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I run them. And there’s plenty of other geezers as’d like to as well. All working for Walter. There wouldn’t exactly be a shortage of grasses if I started pulling strokes like that. I’d rather give you the money. It’s not me, you understand. It’s not me I’m looking out for. It’s Doreen and the kids. You know what Wally’s like. He’d put his heavies straight on to them. They like that sort of thing.”
I didn’t say anything.
“You know what I mean, don’t you?” Ronnie said.
I took a drink.
“Well, don’t you?”
I nodded.
“I’d do it if it wasn’t Walter. I really would.”
I nodded again.
“I can lend you some. Let me lend it to you.”
“No,” I said. “I can’t take your money. Besides . . .”
“Besides?”
“You couldn’t lend me enough. I’d need at least a grand on top of what I’ve got. Maybe two.”
“Jesus. I thought you meant half a grand tops.”
“When I go I want to go right. And that’s expensive.”
Ronnie didn’t say anything.
“Well, as I said, I can help you out a bit. Just let me know if you change your mind. And of course, if you change your mind about going on a tickle. You’d certainly raise it that way.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”
I took Ronnie’s glass again and filled us both up.
“Anyway,” I said, “I’ve only been out five minutes. Plenty of time to fix something up.”
“Sure there is.”
“Didn’t bring you here just to pull you for that. This is meant to be a celebration. Born Free and all that.”
“Yeah. Let’s sink some.”
“We’ll do that.”
Three o’clock on a warm Sunday afternoon.
I looked out of the window and down into the street. Bright sunlight lightened the shop windows and leftover drunks from the lunch time sessions stood in the shop doorways. Kids with nowhere to go slouched along the pavement. I turned away from the window and sat down in an armchair and picked a newspaper up off the floor. It was no use waiting by the window to watch for Sheila and Timmy coming back from the park. It was like standing by a stove waiting for a kettle to boil. Besides, they’d only been gone an hour. And the afternoon was warm and bright. Why should they hurry back?
I found an item in the paper I hadn’t already read but after the first couple of paragraphs I lost interest. I got up out of my chair and turned on the television. The station was showing an old movie with Greer Garson and Ronald Colman. I stood five minutes of it and then I switched over to the other side. Football. That was better. I settled down to enjoy it but the commentator began saying there were only a few minutes to go, they were in the dying seconds of the game and all that crap. Then the whistle went and the adverts came on. I stood up again and switched the set off.
In any case, watching television on a Sunday afternoon had reminded me of the nick. That dead period between dinner and tea, the time when the thoughts of outside were hard to keep out of your mind.
I went over to the window again. A bus rolled by, almost empty up top. One of the passengers was a blank-faced man in his fifties with a check scarf round his neck and the collar of his mac turned up. We stared into each other’s eyes as the bus jolted by. He probably wouldn’t have changed his expression if he’d known who he was looking at.
But at least he was going somewhere. I wondered where someone like him was going on a warm Sunday at three o’clock in the afternoon.
Ronnie phoned up one Wednesday evening and asked if he could come round and discuss something with me.
He got there about half an hour after he’d phoned.
“I’ve been hearing things I think you ought to know about,” he said.
I got him a drink and sat him down.
“What things?” I said.
“To do with Walter.”
“Oh yes?”
“He’s after getting you sent back.”
I smiled.
“What else would he be doing? You know Walter.”
“Sure, but he’s really coming it strong. He’s got Tobin working on it.”
“Tobin!” Sheila said. “Jesus.”
“Tobin’s still on the force then,” I said.
“He was lucky. It worked out perfect for him, Walter going down when he did. Now Tobin gets his cake and eats it. He’s still on the payroll and the geezer that foots the bill is inside on a thirty stretch.”
“And now he’s being paid to turn me over.”
“Right,” Ronnie said. “He’s appearing nightly. He’s been through every grass south of the Shell building. He’s even put pressure on a couple of geezers who are paying in a century apiece each into West End Central so you can tell how dedicated he is.”
“Who were the geezers?”
“Maurice and Alec.”
“How did they react?”
“They gave him the elbow and reminded him about a couple of deals they could drop him in over, no trouble. But that’s beside the point. He’s working at it. I thought you should know in the light of any movements you or Sheila might be thinking of making.”
“Has he been to see you?” I said.
“Yeah, he’s had a word with me.”
“Has he any idea of what you laid on for me?”
“If he had I wouldn’t be here now. And Walter wouldn’t care, either. He’d trample me to death to get at you. But nobody knows anything. I arranged everything by remote control.”
After Ronnie had gone Sheila said:
“What do you think? Move on now or sit it out?”
“Sit it out. Tobin won’t get anywhere because nobody but Ronnie knows anything. If we move we give him the kind of chance he’s looking for.”
Sheila came and sat on the floor by my chair and leant against my legs.
“So now it’s both of us,” she said. “I’ll have to do my shopping next door, once a week.”
“I expected this would happen,” I said, just to make her feel better. “I’m only surprised it didn’t happen sooner.”
The next day I awoke at half past five. My eyes snapped open and my brain was working straight away, as if I’d been awake for hours.
I lay in bed, listening. I was listening even before I was fully aware of what I was doing. A reflex. Ronnie’s message must have really stirred me up.
I could hear nothing out of the ordinary. The fridge was humming away in the kitchen. A bus rattled by outside. The ticking of the alarm. Next to me, Sheila’s breathing. Nothing out of the ordinary.
I got out of bed and went into the living room and over to the window that looked out on to the street. I parted the curtains ever so slightly.
The street was empty.
No big removal van was parked twenty-five yards down the road. That was the way they always did it. They always came in a big removal van, or something like it. They’d sit inside and talk into their handsets until it was time to move and then they’d pile out and surround their objectives. And they always made their move before eight o’clock. Nobody had ever been picked up after eight in the morning. If you got past eight o’clock you could fairly bank on being safe for at least the rest of the day.
I went into the kitchen and lit the gas and filled the kettle and put it on the stove to boil. I stood b
y the stove and looked at my reflection. I saw the kitchen door swing open. Sheila was standing there. I turned to face her.
“Just making a cup of tea.”
She nodded and pushed a strand of hair from her eyes. Then she sat down at the kitchen table and lit a cigarette. The kettle boiled and I poured the hot water into the tea pot. When the tea had mashed I poured us two cups and took them over to the table and sat down. I lit one of Sheila’s cigarettes and looked at the clock on the cooker. It was five past six. I wondered if Tobin was at home, tucked up in his bed. And if he was, I wondered what he was dreaming about.
“It’s no good,” I said. “I’ve got to get out.”
“Billy, you mustn’t. Not yet. Not with Tobin on the lookout.”
“That was a month ago. In any case, he can’t be everywhere at once.”
“But knowing our luck . . .”
“Our luck,” I said. “Listen, living this way I may as well be back in Aston.”
“Up there you’d have me and Timmy, would you?”
“Look, Sheil, you know what I mean. I’m going out of my skull. It’s been two months. Over two months. I just have to go out. Even if it’s only for an hour.”
Sheila sat down and lit a cigarette.
“Where do you want go?” she said.
“I don’t know. Anywhere.”
“Round here?”
“Well you don’t think I’d hop on a bus and make straight for the Skinners Arms do you?”
“I don’t know what you’d do.”
I knelt down next to her.
“Look, all I want to do is go out for an hour. Just walk around a bit. I’d be careful. You know that.”
She didn’t say anything.
“I mean, you’ve been out.”
“Yes, I’ve been out, but if I’m nicked it’s not exactly the same. is it? I’d be out in six months. I mean, you do see the difference, don’t you?”
“There’s no need for that . . .”
“Yes there is. There is if you’re thinking of going out. Risking it all just for an hour outside.”
“Sheila, you don’t know what it’s like . . .”
“I do, Billy. I do. I know how you must feel. But you’ve got to stick it out. Just for another month or so. Then when Tobin’s eased off, well, maybe then. But not now. You know I’m right.”
I stood up and went over to the window. She was right. I knew that. It would be madness to go out.
I looked down into the street and watched the people move in their enviably aimless directions.
“I shan’t be long,” Sheila said. “But I’m going to the launderette so if I’m held up a bit, don’t worry.”
“I won’t,” I said. “You could bring me some paperbacks if you’ve time.”
“Anything in particular?”
“James Hadley Chase, something like that.”
“I’ll find something.”
Sheila took Timmy’s hand and manoeuvred the fold-up pushchair and the laundry bag out of the door.
“Say, ‘Bye-Bye, Daddy,’ Timmy,” Sheila said.
Timmy beamed up at me.
“Bye-Bye, Daddy,” he said.
He began waving his arm
“Bye-Bye, Timmy,” I said. “See you later.”
“Seelater,” he said.
Sheila ushered Timmy out on to the landing.
“And some lemonade,” I said. “Get us some lemonade.”
“You and your bleeding lemonade,” Sheila said, closing the door behind her.
I listened to the pushchair being bumped downstairs. Then I walked over to the window and waited to see Sheila and Timmy emerge on to the pavement below. I watched Sheila unfold the pushchair and negotiate Timmy into it. Then she balanced the laundry bag on the back of the pushchair and started walking towards the zebra crossing twenty yards down the road. I watched as she waited for the traffic to thin out, looking right and left, just another mother with her kid on her way to the launderette. Then she moved forward on to the crossing. A minute later and I couldn’t see her any more.
I walked away from the window and into the bedroom and took my overcoat out of the wardrobe. I stood in front of the mirror on the wardrobe door and put the coat on. It was the first time I’d worn it in three years. The coat felt strange and heavy. I went over to the chest of drawers and took out a dark blue scarf and wound it round my neck. Then I took my black leather gloves from the same drawer and slipped them on. I turned and looked in the mirror again. I felt like a tailor’s dummy, unreal, with the bleached hair and the waxy complexion and the stiff overcoat and the shiny gloves.
I bent my arms and flexed my shoulders and tried to shrug some life into my reflection but it didn’t seem to make any difference. The only answer was to turn away from the mirror and ignore the reflection.
I walked into the lounge and opened the door into the passage but before I closed it I checked that I’d got the spare key. Then I closed the door behind me. The Yale lock clicked shut.
I walked the few feet to the top of the stairs and looked down. Daylight from the street doorway flooded the grubby hallway below and illuminated the shiny green paintwork. I lowered a foot on to the top step. A part of my mind kept telling me how crazy I was but the light at the bottom of the stairs drew me downwards. Halfway down I became aware of the draught from the street. The traffic noises got louder and then I could hear the sound of voices in the street. And then I was at the bottom of the stairs, looking straight ahead of me into the light.
People and traffic hurried past the doorway. I moved forward. A woman glanced in as she went by, glanced away again before she was even out of sight. Now the dusty outside air was on my face, and I was standing in the doorway itself. There was nothing else between me and outside. I stepped out on to the pavement. I felt much lighter, almost as if I needed some kind of anchor. I looked into the faces of the passing crowd. Nobody was taking any notice of me. I hesitated for a moment, then I turned left in the opposite direction to the one Sheila had taken and began to walk. The pavement felt hard beneath my feet. I imagined that my footsteps were louder than everybody elses. I imagined that my walk was different, and my clothes. But nobody took any notice.
I got off the main road as soon as I could and weaved my way through back streets of warehouses and scrapyards and run-down offices and small shops. There was hardly anyone about. As I walked I’d sometimes look up beyond the skylines of the buildings, just to watch the clouds drift across the sky.
I walked for over twenty minutes. Turning into a new street I saw that at the end of it there was another main road. I stopped and looked around. Behind me there was a street narrower than the others. Halfway down this street was a pub. I looked at my watch. It was quarter past eleven. The idea of having a drink in a pub appealed to me. After all, it’d been over two years. And I was in an area where no one knew me. If the landlord had an arrangement with the law he’d only be on to the local villains. Again the warning voices filled my head but I began to move towards the pub. I’d just have one, I told myself. Just one drink, at a bar.
I pushed open the door.
There were no customers in the pub. Once it had been split into two or three bars, but the brewery had done it up and now the pub was all one bar, circular, with a pink laminated plastic top and plastic wrought iron work making pointless divisions.
A woman was standing behind the bar. The till had No Sale rung up on it and she was looking thoughtfully into the cash drawer. On the counter a freshly lit cigarette was burning away on the edge of an ashtray. The woman didn’t turn her head until I reached the bar. Then she turned abruptly, released from her thoughts by my presence.
“Yes, dear,” she said. “What would you like?”
I cleared my throat.
“I’d like
a lemonade shandy,” I said.
“Half or a pint, dear?”
“A pint, please. I’ll have a pint.”
“Pint of lemonade shandy,” she said, already holding the pint mug underneath the beer-tap.
The woman was getting on for fifty, but she’d taken care of herself. Her platinum hair and Ruth Roman lips were immaculate.
“There we are, dear. Seventeen p.”
I took a handful of silver out of my pocket and gave her two two-bob bits.
“Ta, dear.”
She rang up the till and came back to the bar.
“Three p change, dear.”
“Thanks.”
The woman turned back to the till and began writing something on a pad.
I took a drink and sat down on one of the bar stools. There was a folded copy of the Express on the bar. I picked it up and opened it out and pretended to read it. But instead of reading I just sat there savouring the atmosphere of the pub.
A few minutes later the woman finished what she was doing at the till and came and leant on the bar near where I was sitting. I turned a couple of pages of the paper.
“Nothing worth reading in there,” she said.
I looked at her.
“I say there’s nothing in the paper today.”
I shook my head.
“Never is these days. Only gloom and despondency.”
“That’s right,” I said.
The conversation lapsed. I carried on pretending to read the paper. But inside I felt human again. I’d talked to another human being and that was what I’d needed: outside contact, to prove I was real.
I drained my drink and left the pub.
I got back five minutes before Sheila. I was sitting in the chair reading when she and Timmy came through the door. Timmy ran towards me and threw his arms round me.
“Timmy back, Daddy. Timmy back.”
I kissed him and picked him up and whirled him round at arms’ length above my head.
“So I see,” I said. “And has Timmy been a good little boy for his ma?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
