Jog On Fat Barry (8 page)

“The fucking herbert got two years, Pauline, and I’ve got no idea what I’m supposed to do. Not with another one on the way. And my bloody nipples! This sodding little bastard won’t be happy until he’s chewed the buggers off!”

Tracy sucked on the cigarette. She looked at me for a moment, and then turned back to Pauline.

“You two going out with each other then?” she asked, but before Pauline could reply Tracy snapped, “I shouldn’t have married him. Mum always said your brother was fucking hopeless. It’s him Ronald Taylor should’ve thrown out that fucking window, not Darren.”

Tracy grabbed hold of the pram and carried on up the lane.

“He’s fucking hopeless!” she called over her shoulder.

We watched her walk away. Raindrops began to beat against the bonnet of the Capri. Pauline ran her hands across her legs. She caught me looking at her knickers. She grinned and opened her legs.

“I bet you’d like to chew my nipples off, wouldn’t you, you dirty sod?”

The church bells of St. Aloysius began to ring. It was six o’clock. Pauline glanced up at a window on the fifth floor of the tower block behind us and slid off the Capri.

“I better be off. Mum hasn’t been the same since… you know, Darren and all that.”

She pulled her skirt down and reached up under her jumper. “Here.”

She tossed a paperback book at me. I caught it and looked at the cover:
A Clockwork Orange
.

“I pinched that out of the second-hand bookshop,” she said.

I flicked through the pages: stopped to read a few lines. When I looked up Pauline had already gone. I glanced across the street and saw her entering the flats. Her brother Darren had been killed three months earlier. Chelsea had been away to Wolves and two boys chucked him out the train window. Raindrops started hitting the book so I slipped it inside my jacket and slid off the bonnet.

Fifty-five years ago there were no high-rise buildings in London. Then in May 1949, a ten-storey council housing block went up in Holborn. Some 2700 tower blocks were to follow. London was building a brighter future on the back of tower blocks in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1972, the Barbican Estate blew its own trumpet to announce the highest tower in Europe. But by the mid-1970s high-rise building had momentarily stopped. And in the 1980s, they began to be demolished. In the 1990s, however, they were back, and in 1993, the first tower block was listed. Mum and Dad never bought their flat because tragedy struck our family twice in 1976 and they bought a cottage at Leigh-on-Sea instead. I never stepped foot on a housing estate again, but I do remember there were fifteen different estates in Somers Town. Our estate had six blocks alone, and although I never knew how many flats there were altogether, I tried counting them all once, but packed it in when I reached 237.

“Dad!” Mum called out for the third time.

I looked up from
A Clockwork Orange
. Granddad was sat in his chair looking out the window. My brother Frank sighed.

“Silly old sod hasn’t got his hearing aid in.”

Mum appeared in the doorway wiping her hands on a teacloth. Raindrops were beating against the windows.

“Doesn’t like his hearing aid,” Mum said.

“What’s the point of him having one then?” Frank asked.

“Come on, Dad.”

Mum prodded Granddad up out of his chair.

“What’s for tea?” he asked.

“It’s Thursday: egg ‘n’ chips,” Mum answered.

“I’m not having egg ‘n’ chips,” Granddad grumbled as he shuffled out of the room after Mum.

“Don’t be silly, Dad,” she said gently prodding him along. “You always have egg ‘n’ chips on Thursdays.”

“I didn’t do my bit in the war so I could eat egg ‘n’ blooming chips every blooming Thursday!”

“Oh, here we go again,” Frank mumbled. “Guns of Navarone.”

Granddad spun around and took a wobbly step back into the room.

“You what,” he said, glaring at Frank.

“You’re lucky to be getting a fucking egg,” Frank said back.

“I heard that,” Granddad snapped.

“Don’t need a fucking hearing aid then,” Frank grinned.

“Look at him,” Granddad barked. “Take a look at all them forms. Fish game’s not bloody good enough for him!”

“Come on,” Mum said, turning Granddad about and leading him back toward the kitchen. “You know Frank can’t stomach the stink.”

“Stinking or not stinking, if it was good enough for me, and it’s good enough for George and Freddie, it ought to be good enough for him too.”

Frank mumbled a few fuck-offs under his breath and shuffled the pages he’d been struggling to complete since his application form arrived in the post two weeks ago. Granddad continued to grumble as he shuffled down the hall toward the kitchen.

“Stinking or not stinking,” Granddad continued, “the world is a blooming oyster in the fish game.”

I sniffed the fingers on my right hand: moments later I sniffed the fingers on my left hand. Frank pursed his lips, blew out a sigh and put his pen on the table. He lit a cigarette and tossed the match into the ashtray. I listened to his jaw click as he blew smoke rings up toward the ceiling. The seconds ticked away on the clock that took pride of place on the mantle above the bar fire. Mum had Radio on 1 in the kitchen with Tom Browne counting down the Top Twenty, and “I Love to Dance” by Tina Charles was number 1 for the third week running.

With the cigarette dangling between his lips, and ignoring the smoke that stung his squinting eyes, Frank ever so slowly folded his application form in half, and then in half again before slipping it into a white envelope.

“That’s me sorted then.”

I glanced up from my book. Frank gestured toward the envelope and sucked on his cigarette.

“No turning back now,” he said.

I could hear Granddad’s knife and fork clink-clanking against his plate in the kitchen. Frank switched on the telly. He checked the channels, but nothing was worth watching so he switched it off again.

“Here, Frank, you ever heard of this bloke called Beethoven?”

Frank flicked ash into the ashtray.

“Nah.”

He picked up the envelope; stared thoughtfully at it for a moment or two. The front door opened and then slammed shut. Frank shot a glance across the room at me and then turned toward the hallway. I heard Mum say, “Be nice, love.”

My dad walked up the hall and stood in the doorway. He glared at Frank. The smell of prawns and smoked mackerel began to fill the room. I went to sniff the fingers on my right hand.

“Don’t do that!” Dad snapped.

He glanced at the envelope Frank was holding. Disappointment and anger lined his face. Frank and my dad stared at each other. Dad looked fierce. Frank was nervous and unsure of himself. He started to turn away but then stopped. A second later the uncertainty in his face vanished. He puffed up his chest and faced Dad head on. The tables had turned. Frank was no longer a boy. He stubbed out his cigarette. My dad shook his head. Then he turned and walked away.

Mum bought Frank a new suit for his interview out of the money she’d been squirreling away for our holiday in Torremolinos because Granddad had died in his sleep and that meant there wasn’t going to be a holiday on the Costa Del Sol this year. Two months later, Frank and I were standing outside Camden Town underground station: him in his new suit and me in my bloodstained apron. Frank held a suitcase in his hand and the sun was shining. He shot a glance across the street. Dad was standing outside the shop watching us. Frank looked at my apron and grimaced.

“Hard to pull a sort stinking like a fishcake,” he said.

I sniffed the fingers of my left hand: a moment later I sniffed the fingers of my right hand.

“Granddad used to say stinking or not stinking, you couldn’t keep the girls off him when he was my age. Said he’d be on the job for hours, with women queuing up for it from all over London, and Camden Council threatening him with litigation because he’d put half the girls in Somers Town in the family way.”

Frank put down the suitcase and lit a cigarette.

“Yeah, well… Granddad said a lot of things,” he said.

A blast of warm air shot out of the tube station. Frank sucked on the cigarette. I listened to his jaw click as he blew smoke rings.

“Do you miss him?” I asked.

“Miss who… Granddad?” Frank asked back.

A 24 bus rumbled past us. Frank watched it slow down and then stop across the road. As people got off and people got on, Frank could remember seeing Granddad knock our gran about even though she was old and frail. The bus pulled away from the curb and Frank spat.

“No,” he said softly. “I never liked the cunt.”

Frank smoked in silence for a minute or two. Every now and then he’d shoot a glance across the street. When Dad wasn’t serving someone, he’d stand at the front of the shop and watch us.

“You got any regrets about joining up, Frank?”

Frank smiled.

“Regrets? No chance. Do you know what the recruitment officer told me during my interview at Scotland Yard?”

“What?” I asked.

“He told me they’d be teaching me how to really handle a motor car, and that I’d be getting taught self-defence by some of the most feared men in Britain. He said they’d make me well hard, train me up proper. Said I’d be learning new skills: learning how to slip away and blend in with the furniture. Said they could teach you how to take on the appearance of a streetlight, or a hat stand, a rechargeable battery, or a telescope, a pair of sunglasses, or a television set. Told me they even had one bloke who could do murals.”

I laughed.

“What about paperbacks by Penguin?” I asked. “Or exceedingly good cakes by Mister Kipling?”

Frank laughed too.

“You could be a Tetley teabag, mate. All the tea in China: the fucking teapot!

“Could I be a Stamford Hill Cowboy, or the rain in Spain? How about a raspberry ripple, a dirty weekend in Blackpool, a front-wheel skid, the number four dog at Walthamstow, a line of charlie, or a Big Mac with large fries and a strawberry milkshake?”

“You could be them all!” Frank answered.

A 31 bus rumbled by without stopping. Frank stopped laughing. I did too. He looked across the street at Dad. The gloomy looking clouds that hovered over our estate had followed Frank and me up the High Street. The sun disappeared behind them, and a moment later it started to drizzle.

“No more stinking like a cod cutlet or selling mince fish to the sheenies for me, Freddie,” he said. “I want more out of life than fish scales behind my ears and up my fucking arsehole.”

Frank glanced at his watch. He dropped his cigarette and then crushed it into the pavement.

“And if things go right, I’ll be buying a villa in Majorca from all the backhanders that you get when you’re in The Met, and I’ll be living like my world really
is
an oyster.”

He reached down for his suitcase and walked into the station. I watched him buy a ticket. When he reached the escalator, he turned and smiled.

“You watch out for me, Freddie.”

He stepped onto the escalator and started to descend.

“I could be that new car parked on our estate,” he called out.

“The Johnny on the end of my nob,” I called back.