Human Conditioning (4 page)

Aiden hated his father. He had
not grown into a dependable figure in any of their lives. He clearly didn’t
believe in responsibility, and Aiden felt that his whole family had suffered because
of that fact. Duggie hadn’t ever contributed to anything in Aiden’s or his baby
sister’s life, and their mother was too petrified of him to kick up any real
stink about it. For as long as Aiden could remember, his father had sat on his
arse in the same armchair drinking cider and smoking cigars, the only break in
the familiar portrait that tainted their living space being when he was down
the pub.

“You still shaggin’ that
Watson girl...?” Duggie asked snidely before Aiden could leave the room. Duggie
paraded around the kitchen with his stick as if he were the lord of the manor –
which he thought he was, even if he paid sod-all for the privilege. “Ain’t she
bored of you yet?” he pressed.

Aiden didn’t reply, but the
usual overwhelming feeling to beat the crap out of this poor excuse for a man
was present as always. “Why don’t you just go down the pub and drink away some
more money...?” Aiden retorted as he barged passed him. 

“Where’s your keep, eh? And
you have the audacity to call your old man a waster,” Duggie spat sardonically,
shaking his head.

“Fuck off!” Aiden called from
the living room.

“Aiden, that’s enough!” Vivien
scolded.

Aiden stepped back into the
kitchen and scowled at his mother in wonderment. “How can you side with him? He
causes every piece of shit that lands on our doorstep! If you hadn’t married
the useless ponce you might be living with a
real
man, who provides for
his family and pays his fucking way!” 

Duggie chose to ignore this.
He’d heard it all before. He had another agenda. “I see her with Jason Ryan the
other day,” he persisted, intentionally attempting to vex his son over the
movements of his recent lady-friend. 

Vivien went back to her colcannon
and attempted
not to get involved, yet the familiar stir of apprehension from these two
arguing was once again in the pit of her stomach. She did not revel in the
daily quarrels between father and son because she never knew how far either one
would take it. 

Aiden stared at his father
through narrowed lids. “You what?”

“Yeah, saw her
all
over
him, in The Stag... a couple of days ago, it was. I reckon they’re courtin’.”

“You don’t know that, Duggie,”
Vivien intervened nervously, in an attempt to calm the impending situation.

“I don’t really give a flying
fuck. Just stay out of my business, alright!” Aiden retorted.

Duggie pulled a face and
rubbed his beer belly. “Just trying to warn you, son. I told you she’d amount
to whoring, the moment I see you with her...”

“I don’t fucking love her... I
just shag her!”

Vivien’s mouth dropped open.
“Aiden!”

“Well, that’s all
he
does with
you
, ain’t it?” Aiden yelled, pointing a stiff finger at his
father. “And
you
fucking let him!”

Duggie rested his walking
stick against the wall and sat at the kitchen table. Picking up the newspaper that
Vivien had bought him from the local newsagents that morning, he began to flick
through it with a conspicuous smirk on his face. He enjoyed the rage he could
so easily ignite in his son. Mission accomplished. He’d only wanted to cause a
distraction. If Vivien was pissed off with Aiden, it would distract her from
the fact that he had spent that week’s social money at the bookies.

Aiden walked away, back into
the living room, but he knew his mother wouldn’t leave it there. Vivien Foster
was a pushover when it came to the man she had married, but she didn’t take
disrespect from her children. She stormed into the living room as Aiden
switched on the television and slumped himself down on the couch. “You little
bastard!” she screamed. “Don’t you dare bloody talk to me like that! Whether
you respect us or not, Aiden Lance Foster, we are still your parents!”

Aiden’s eyebrows rose in mock
horror. “Yeah, fucking right...” he muttered and sparked up another cigarette.
“You don’t have to worry, anyway... I’ll be out of here soon.”

“Oh, and what you gonna do,
eh? You think you can make a living from thieving cars?” Vivien mocked. “Because
I know that’s what you’ve been getting up to, son, I have ears, and people talk...”

“I don’t really care what you
think, to be honest. Whatever gets me out of this shithole is good enough for
me.”

Vivien’s cat-like eyes glared
down at her son as she attempted to think of something wicked to respond with,
but she was so angry that her mind came up blank, like it so often did when
they quarrelled. Whatever she said to Aiden, he always had an answer for it!

Aiden puffed nonchalantly on
his cigarette and added, finally, “Do you know what, muvver? I reckon you ain’t
got any dignity left in you anymore, so why don’t you just go back to
him
in there and stay out of me face...” 

He then stood and left the
room, grabbing his jacket from the stairs as he went. 

Vivien flinched when the front
door slammed.

Reggie Driscoll was a thirty-eight-year-old, six-foot-five
Rastafarian, with short knotted dreadlocks and a neck as thick as a rugby
player’s. His eyes were bright mint green. He could get away with murder with
those eyes, and he had got away with murder once before. The police had had
their suspicions since the convenient disappearance of Mitchell West the day
after his break-in at the local post office, but they couldn’t prove a thing.
Mitchell had initially walked away with £10K, £5K of which had been owed to
Reggie, although following his ‘disappearance’ the £10K had eventually found
its way into Reggie’s hands.

Reggie was
the
drug
dealer for the Hackney borough; the man you went to see for any type of buzz
from weed to speed to cocaine. He greeted Aiden with a genuine smile when he
opened the door of his flat to see the lad standing on his doorstep. He liked
Aiden Foster, thinking of him as a determined little fucker, and he had inkling
that one day the kid would make something of himself. He had kept in mind to
offer Aiden a job and now that he was legally out of school and inevitably
looking to make some cash, he considered this to be the day to offer him the
gig.

“Come in, son...” Reggie sang,
gesturing towards his living room. Aiden smiled fondly and walked into the
flat. The familiar smell of skunk hit him as he strolled into the room he’d
spent at least an hour a week in since he was twelve years old. Reggie had
always supplied him with what he’d needed to help him relax, to keep him level-headed.
Aiden was no addict, but he’d been a hard user of marijuana for a few years and
had eventually dabbled in speed and bass, and Reggie had always sorted him out,
giving him bits and bobs on tick when Aiden couldn’t find the money to pay. 

Reggie had been good to Aiden,
better than to most of his other customers. Aiden had never really known why
Reggie had taken such a liking to him but he didn’t really give it much
thought. He liked Reggie and he didn’t genuinely like many people.

“Sit down. You’re making the
place look untidy,” Reggie announced, smirking. This was a running joke between
them. Reggie’s flat had always been and always would be a shithole. He didn’t
believe in cleaning up after himself; he left that job to his old mother who
visited once every two weeks with a hoover and mop in hand. Though if you ever
dared to throw a Rizla or brush your tobacco onto his beer and hot rock-marked
carpet, you were in for a hiding.

Reggie lived by a strict set
of rules: be polite, be respectful and pay on time. Anyone who didn’t adhere to
these simple requests got seriously hurt and never made the same mistake twice.
Although he was an aggressive bastard, he wasn’t a naturally malicious man. On
the contrary: get on the right side of Reggie Driscoll and you found that he
was a generous ally who would have your back in any situation.

Aiden had gained Reggie’s
loyalty from day one, and he basked in the big man’s affection. It was good to
talk to someone who didn’t go out of their way to talk you down, which was a
regular occurrence in his own home.

Aiden took a seat on the brown
velvet sofa, subtly brushing away a mixture of crumbs and tobacco onto the
cushion next to him. He peered around the room, and the longing for more
stirred again deep in his gut. His desire to get out of the rut he’d been born
into had grown worse in the past couple of months, since he’d decided to fuck
off his exams. Finally being free from the restraints of the educational
system, he desired to make something of himself before he was lured into the
convenience of a shit but regular wage. 

He wanted more than that. He
had no prospects – that was a given in these parts – but he knew he was
special, that he could handle living without the establishment and living on
the wrong side of the law. If nothing else, he had the balls to make it work,
and he was a fast learner and was willing to start from the bottom if
necessary. So when Reggie announced that he’d like to offer him a job, he was
ecstatic.

“Doing what, like?” he
replied.

Aiden attempted to play it
cool, but Reggie saw the twinkle of excitement in his extraordinary blue eyes.
He smiled fondly at him. “Well, I’ll start you on deliveries, but I don’t see
why you can’t work your way up to collecting debts within a few months. You’re
a big lad; you can handle yourself. But let’s start you off with deliveries,
see how you get on. I want you to learn the ropes, Aiden. Watch, listen and
learn...you do exactly what I tell you to do and you’ll be earning a nice wedge
within the year.”

“Sounds like a plan...”

Reggie held out his large
hand, laden with golden sovereign rings, and Aiden shook it.  “Good. Just one
thing,” Reggie added, pointing a stiff finger. “You steal from me, son, and you
won’t see your seventeenth birthday, got it?”

Aiden nodded then added, on a
different note, “What you got for me?” as he searched his jeans pocket and pulled
out a ten-pound note.

“No need for that, Aiden boy!
You’re one of mine now. You work hard and you won’t have to pay another penny
for a hit, son. Just as long as I know what’s being taken. Don’t get too
fucking greedy. I’m generous, Aiden, but I still expect the job to be done. We
ain’t no layabout junkies, right?”

“Nah, ’course we ain’t,” Aiden
replied, wrinkling his nose in disgust. “I ain’t a mug.”

“Good to hear it. Now...”
Reggie opened up his secret stash that was always kept in a red cake tin in his
mum’s old dresser. “Get a load of this!” He pulled out a large pre-rolled joint
and lit it. Inhaling deeply, he held in the smoke for a few seconds and exhaled
as he passed it to Aiden. “It’s called Afghani. It’s fucking potent!”

Aiden took a drag and had to
stifle down a cough. “Fuck me...”

“It’s the future, my boy!”

“So, when do I start working,
Reg?” Aiden asked with eagerness glowing in his eyes.

“Tomorrow...” Reggie replied,
then passed him a small wrap from his personal stash of Afghani and gave him a
wink. “Take it easy, yeah? I gotta get off...”

That was Aiden’s cue to leave,
and it suddenly dawned on him that Reggie was looking abnormally smart, dressed
in jeans, a floral shirt and shoes. Reggie’s usual attire was sweatpants, a
t-shirt and trainers. “You got a bird on the go, Reg?” Aiden smiled his white-toothed
smile and, rising from the couch, he stuffed the hashish into the back pocket
of his jeans.

“None of your business, you
little bastard. Go on!” Reggie laughed and swatted his large gold-laden hand
towards Aiden’s ear. Aiden expertly ducked out of his way and held up his fists
in a friendly manner. Reggie laughed again. “We’ll get you to fisticuffs
another day.”

Vivien stared out of her kitchen window onto flat stone
roof tops and grey sky as she scrubbed the burned edges of a baking tray with a
scourer. She was in the company of Grant O’Donoghue, who sat in his usual spot at
the kitchen table, casually reading a newspaper.

Grant was an old friend and
was an influential force in the Foster household. A heavily built man of fifty-seven
years, he still had his strength and wits about him to thrive in the East End
of London. He’d had to live in these parts through World War II, and whatever
hardships kids thought they had nowadays, it was fuck-all compared to what he’d
had to live through back then. Times were forever changing, but he’d always
managed to tick over nicely and, nowadays, he merely made his money on East End
soil, living as quiet a life as he could in a large four-bed house in
Hampstead.

Once Duggie’s manager, he had
trained and developed the young Douglas Foster into one of the best bare-knuckle
boxers in the East. Duggie had been looking at a fine and affluent future, but
the night he had tried to fix one of his fights in another man’s favour had
sealed his fate of becoming just another nobody. Yes, Grant had beaten Duggie to
within an inch of his life, damaging his right leg and preventing him from ever
fighting again, and he would have finished the cunt off if it hadn’t been for
the young woman before him.

Duggie had always been a difficult and unreliable sod,
albeit he had talent, and the moment Grant had met Vivien – then Vivien Lee – he
had felt an overwhelming responsibility to make sure she was looked after,
financially and emotionally.

He wasn’t sure what it had
been about Vivien that had made him so adamant to protect her all these years.
Maybe it was because she was the closest he had ever come to a daughter, having
never had a family of his own. Vivien had been far more naive and vulnerable
back then, before she had married Duggie. Time had changed her for sure. She
was harder now, colder, but he had remained her ally up until this day, despite
the fact that Duggie had sworn to loathe him for eternity.