Blue Collar (11 page)

‘Get it a lot, do you?’

‘Just once or twice a conversation,’ he reckoned.

‘So what did happen to him?’ I asked again, not one to be deterred by a well-trodden line of enquiry.

‘I don’t know,’ he shrugged. ‘Most people think he owed a lot of money in gambling debts and took off rather than pay it back.
I’m sure he’s probably living in Venezuela or Vietnam or somewhere tropical these days, drinking himself to death and buggering
the houseboy every Friday.’

‘Well, it is the start of the weekend,’ I pointed out. ‘So do you know any famous people these days? Actors and that?’

‘Lis is an actress,’ CT told me, directing me towards a pretty little brunette on the sofa opposite.

‘What’s that?’ Lis asked, turning around and catching me in mid-gawp.

‘This is Terry,’ CT told her, before making me freeze when he described me as ‘Charley’s boyfriend’.

I hadn’t thought of myself as Charley’s ‘boyfriend’ before and I certainly hadn’t ever described myself as such, particularly
in front of Charley, so it was a bit of a shock to the system hearing these words for the first time.

I had a quick feel next door to see if Charley had likewise turned to stone and found that she was still pleasantly soft and
babbling away ten to the dozen to her trendy mate with the glasses, two arses along, so I unclenched my jaw and confirmed
I was indeed ‘Terry’. Though I left it at that.

‘Hi,’ Lis said, giving me a nod, then the rim of her glass a quick suck.

‘I was just telling Terry that you were an actress,’ CT explained a little further.

‘Fair enough,’ I said, not wishing to press her for details. Not if it was boring.

We stared at each other in silence for a bit before I finally realised I should probably tell her something about my line
of work if she didn’t like talking about her own.

‘I’m a bricky,’ I told her, and backed up this revelation with the news that most blokes down the pub called me Tel the trowel.

Lis looked around Signed For! accordingly. ‘No, no, God, no, not this pub. No, my local, down in Catford. The Catford Lamb.
Do you know Catford at all?’

Lis didn’t.

‘Oh well, you should check it out some time. It’s a nice place.

Honest.’

This seemed to confuse Lis even further and she looked to CT for the subtitles. CT just bypassed my babble, though, and asked
Lis if she was working at the moment. Lis immediately perked up.

‘Florence Nightingale, huh?’ CT ventured.

‘Yes,’ Lis confirmed.

‘Who do you play?’ I asked.

Lis asked me who I thought she’d play in a one-woman play about Florence Nightingale. Her fucking lamp?

‘Well, I don’t know, do I?’ I said in my defence.

‘I finally saw that advert you were in the other day,’ CT then mentioned.

‘Really? You were in an advert?’ I asked, my interest stoked by the mention of proper acting. ‘What was it for?’

‘Oh, it’s embarrassing,’ Lis cringed, hanging her head to demonstrate.

‘Fair enough,’ I said, once again reluctant to press her for details. Not if it was embarrassing for her.

This time around, though, Lis didn’t wait to be prompted by CT, eager no doubt to head off more stories about Catford, and
told me how she’d been the young mum pushing the trolley with the little kid in it in the recent Morrisons advert. I couldn’t
quite place that one. Mind you, that was no surprise as I never really paid attention to adverts at the best of times, and
I had a particular mental block where Morrisons were concerned after one of their managers had run off with my girlfriend.

‘I’ll look out for it, though,’ I promised her, then decided to test the water and see if she was finally in the mood to talk
about her job by asking her what else she’d been in.

‘OK,’ I nodded anyway.

‘And I had two stints with the Reduced Dickens Company and a summer season at the Swan in Stratford-upon-Avon,’ she added.

‘Yes, I remember your notices,’ CT applauded.

‘What, from your landlord?’ I suggested. ‘No, seriously, though, what about telly?’

‘I played a prostitute who’d been beaten up by her pimp,’ she told me.

‘You wanna sleep with me, Sergeant Carter? You wanna take me upstairs and have your way with me? Well, why not, everyone else
does. But it’s gonna cost you, darling, just like it costs everyone else. Forty quid and you can have whatever you like. Seventy
and I’ll even have my friend join us.’

I still couldn’t remember the episode, but it sounded like a good ’un. I was just about to ask Lis how Sergeant Carter got
on when I noticed the rest of the sofa had gone quiet and were now watching Lis grinding her tits at me. Including Charley.
I figured an explanation was called for.

‘Well, make sure you get a receipt because seventy quid sounds a bit steep to me, fella,’ Charley’s mate with the glasses
guffawed.

Charley laughed at that, as did half the people crowded around the two sofas, but I wasn’t one of them. It seemed a bit too
piss-takey for my liking, and as I didn’t know anyone else here, I felt a little bit singled out. Actually, that’s not true.
I knew Charley among this lot but she was already back gassing with old cunty Four Eyes while I was sat here in the middle
of a load of posho strangers suddenly feeling stupid.

And I don’t know why I should’ve felt stupid either, because it wasn’t really a dig aimed at me. Or was it? I wasn’t sure.
All I knew was that someone had scored a big clever laugh off the back of something I’d said and then left me to stew on it
while he had his back slapped by all his cock-smoker mates.

I looked across at Lis to see how she’d taken it, but all she’d taken was the opportunity to slip away from the new bloke
and she was now deep in conversation with some rugby shirt who was perched on the back of the sofa just behind us.

Only CT remained. Sipping his wine and nodding along slowly to the beat of the pub rhubarb.

I contemplated using up a little more of the evening by asking him if he’d ever thought about doing a reality show on bricklayers,
but I wasn’t sure just how much I wanted to sell him on the idea.

I mean, yeah, it was probably a laugh for about half a day or so, having some documentary crew hanging around and filming
your arse-crack, but months on end of the bastards getting under your feet while you were trying to work and pointing the
cameras at you whenever you opened your gob to share your thoughts on old fatty jobsworth in the office or vanish a cheese
sandwich? It had to get a bit much after a while. And what about the people who eventually bought our houses? I wasn’t sure
how much they’d appreciate stumping up their licence fees to watch a succession of tea-bloated brickies filling the very corners
of their living rooms in which their tellies now stood with steam and gasps of relief. No, perhaps that reality would be a
little too real for most folks to stomach of an evening.

Still, that said, it would probably be worth it if there were a few quid in it. Even if it was just cutting the odd ribbon
at supermarket openings every now and again whenever the mayor couldn’t make it. I’m sure there had to be a few grand in that
sort of thing for Z-list celebs like myself and Colin. Definitely something to consider.

Whatever else I eventually decided to do, I’d almost finished my pint and didn’t really fancy pitching CT my show with an
empty glass in my hand, so I asked him if he was ready for another, then touched Charley’s leg a few times to get her attention.

‘Drink?’

‘Oh, no, wait, surely it’s my round, isn’t it? Take my purse and get them out of that,’ Charley said, trying to force her
purse into my hand, but I resisted at all costs.

‘No, it’s OK, I’ll get them,’ I insisted, adamant that I wasn’t going to be remembered as Charley’s rough-and-ready date who
couldn’t keep his hands out of her purse all night long.

I made my way up to the bar and waited my turn again. After a few minutes Lis appeared next to me, so I asked her if she fancied
a drink.

‘No, it’s OK, I’m getting a bottle of wine for the table, but thanks all the same,’ she told me.

When I looked back at where we’d been sitting I noticed that most people were in fact drinking wine. As it happened, neither
Charley nor CT had needed a drink as they were quite happily tucking into the bottles of red and white in front of them, so
I wondered if I should buy one too. Not that I was going to drink any myself, you understand. I just thought I’d better make
a show of a contribution. But then it occurred to me, if everyone was just buying a bottle and plonking them on the table,
who was ever going to get me a pint back? I figured I had to keep either buying my own all night long or try and gatecrash
a round.

About the only bloke drinking beer who’d I’d even come close to talking to was Charley’s four-eyed mate with the big gob.
I decided to swallow my pride and ask him if he wanted a pint anyway, figuring even if he didn’t, it might get me into their
conversation so that I could steal Charley back for myself the next time he took more than two seconds to ponder absolutely
anything.

‘Here, what’s old matey’s name? The bloke with the glasses?

The one talking to Charley?’ I asked Lis.

‘Huh? Oh, that’s Hugo.’

‘Hugo? Really? People are really called Hugo? Get away.’

I called across to him anyway, feeling weirdly embarrassed to be shouting the name ‘Hugo’ out loud across a pub, and Hugo
looked up after a while when he heard me, with no outward signs of shame.

‘Do you want a pint, Hugo?’ I shouted at him.

‘Yeah, top man. Geezer. Geezer,’ he replied, giving me the thumbs-up and shedding light on why he hadn’t looked too upset
about having his name shouted out loud in public.

‘We all went to uni together,’ she explained.

‘Oh,’ I replied, and I should’ve probably left it at that, but at the last moment I stupidly noted, ‘They seem to get on well
together, don’t they? Old Charley and Hugo?’

Lis nodded then replied all matter of fact:

‘Well, it’s not surprising really. They did go out with each other for almost two years.’

12 Specs

It’s all chipboard and dry-lining, plasterboard partitioning and plastic pipes. Even half the bricks we use today smash like
china tea pots if you drop them from any sort of height. Not like the old Victorian bricks. Oh no, they knew how to build
houses in those days.

Then again, I guess, back in Victorian times it was really only your rich Victorians who could afford to buy anywhere for
themselves. Everyone else had to make do with two rooms and a bucket and a twenty per cent stakeholding in a big old brass
bed (‘Oi, you in the middle, after you with the bucket. And let’s try and be a bit careful with it tonight for once, shall
we? It’s full to the fucking brim again’). Which is probably the chief reason why it’s all the old well-to-do houses that
are still standing these days rather than the slums, now that I come to think of it. That extra half-yard of quality that
was meant to ensure these big old houses survived to be passed on from one generation to the next actually ensured they survived
the old social order altogether, to a time when the descendants of the very people who used to serve upstairs and downstairs
in them would come to actually own them. At least, they’d come to own a single laminated floor of them.

These days, however, the vast majority of new houses built are purpose built for normal working folk – and we all know what
suckers they are. So building firms fit out the houses with the cheapest possible materials and pass on the savings to their
pockets.

Like I said, there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the houses we build today and all of the materials come up to spec.

But spec means minimum requirement. ‘No shonkier than that, please. You can scrimp and scrape all you like but this is the
very least we expect to see in there.’

And most building firms are only too happy to oblige to the letter.

Which is fair enough, I guess. They are in it to make money, but then are you really sure you’d feel the same way about that
brand spanking new house you’d just hocked yourself up to the eyeballs for if you were to discover that all the materials
used inside were the cheapest the builder thought he could get away with? I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure I’d ever
be able to look at the place in the same light again.

And this was suddenly how I felt about my relationship with Charley.

Meeting Hugo was like drilling into the wall and finding newspaper and spit where solid brickwork should’ve been. He was a
real eye-opener.

‘How’s that, my old sunbeam? My old china. Sorted, geezer!

Geezer!’

Well, first and foremost because Hugo had spent his formative years in a private school in Surrey, and not dipping pockets
in Petticoat Lane, so I had to assume that the lingo and incessant finger-snapping were learned some time after he’d jumped
naked off a stone bridge holding cocks with two other boys in silly fucking boaters. Which meant his whole demeanour was something
of a put-on. But it was clearly the sort of put-on that Charley enjoyed. They looked right at home with each other, nattering,
giggling and gossiping like the best of friends rather than the worst of scenarios, which is what I would’ve called Jo and
that fucking arsehole from Morrisons had they walked into the pub and sat down next to me while I was trying to have a quiet
drink with my new bird.

But Charley didn’t show any signs of feeling uncomfortable about having Hugo around. Or, more to the point, about having me
around. And she even made a point of pairing us off together a little later in the evening so that we could get to know each
other. Just what I came out for!

Predictably, the first thing Hugo wanted to know was what team I supported. I tried to explain that I wasn’t all that fussed
about football but I’m not sure Hugo heard me over his own thoughts and observations about Arsenal and their domination over
all forms of life on earth.

‘…’cos those fucking Spurs cunts are getting far too lippy. I mean, where were they when we were playing in the Champions
League year after year?’ Hugo wanted to know. I couldn’t tell him where Spurs were but personally speaking I was down Blockbusters
most evenings because there was nothing but fucking football on telly. ‘So, get down to Palace much, then, do you, geezer?
I’ve got a season ticket, I have.’

It was that sort of conversation.

Whatever else you could say about Hugo, he was a friendly enough bloke. So friendly in fact that he offered me a ‘line of
chop’ when I bumped into him in the bog a few pints later. I declined on the grounds that I wasn’t really one of life’s choppers.
Something Hugo clearly was.

I don’t know, though, he was a bit odd in all departments, and I got the distinct impression that he was either trying to
impress or compete with me as the night wore on. And this behaviour increasingly pointed my thoughts back to Charley.

If she liked Hugo, liked his Mockney mannerisms and his Jack the Twat act, was that what she liked about me? Not that I was
a twat (discuss), but my working-class credentials? I mean, we were clearly fascinating creatures, weren’t we? CT had built
a career out of filming us, Hugo couldn’t stop climbing all over the furniture mimicking us and Charley liked to bring us
down the pub for everyone to sniff at, so there was clearly something to us.

I don’t know, perhaps it was just the beer doing my thinking for me, but that’s how things started to shape up in my head.
And I had met Charley down at the dogs, when she’d been on her little ironic tour, after all, so there was yet more grist
to my mill, whatever that meant.

No, the more I thought about it the more I came to wonder if I wasn’t just some sort of rough-trade trophy bloke she could
hawk around in front of her over-educated mates for kicks and kudos, as that’s what some posh birds did.

At least, that’s what Jason reckoned.

That said, I had to take my hat off to Charley if that was the case because she was playing it all the way.

‘Morning,’ she sighed, looping an arm across my chest and curling up to me for a sleepy Sunday snog.

‘Morning,’ I replied, a little less sleepily, though that was hardly surprising seeing as I’d been wide awake for the last
three hours.

‘Did you have fun last night?’ Charley asked.

‘Yes, it was… very nice.’

‘My friends are fun, aren’t they? Did you like them?’ she prompted, rubbing her leg against mine and kissing my neck.

‘Yes, they were all… very nice,’ I assured her, wondering if I should ask her about Hugo. Charley had never mentioned him
to me before. Not even during our ‘so when and who was your last?’ conversation on our second date. What exactly I could take
from that to beat myself over the head with all week long, I wasn’t sure. I didn’t sweat on it, though, as I was confident
I’d be able to find something.

‘CT said he liked you,’ Charley said.

‘Did he?’ I mulled.

‘What were you talking to him about?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. This and that,’ I elaborated. ‘Anyway, what about you?’

I rolled over on to my side, rolling Charley on to her back at the same time so that I was looking down at her.

‘What about me?’ She grinned cheekily, her green eyes focused on mine.

‘Hey? What about me?’ Charley pressed, bringing all four of her limbs into play to try and squeeze a few answers out of me.

‘Yes,’ I finally agreed. ‘What about you?’

I quickly gave her a kiss before she was able to point out that she’d just said that and ordered my brain to take the rest
of the morning off. It wasn’t going to be needed for the next few hours and, besides, it deserved it.

Particularly in light of all the overtime it had been doing just lately.