Men from the Boys (24 page)

‘Don’t talk,’ she said. ‘Don’t try to say anything smart, Harry. Not right now, okay?’

‘Okay.’

‘And don’t do your Barry White voice.’

‘I wasn’t even going to do my Barry White voice,’ I said, a bit offended.

And she kissed me some more, but saner kissing now, less feverish, less desperate, and when a nurse walked past and said, laughing, ‘Oh, get a room, you two,’ Cyd took a step away from me.

I stood there looking at her.

‘Are you coming home?’ I said, touching her arm. She let me do that. ‘Are you? Come home. Come home, okay?’

She looked at the ground. ‘I’ll see you, okay?’ she said.

‘Is Joni all right?’ I said. ‘She’s not worried about an asteroid hitting Earth?’

‘She hasn’t mentioned the asteroid,’ she said. ‘I think she’s more concerned about global warming. Climate change, that’s the big fear now. And the Weeping Angels from
Doctor Who.’

‘Those bastards,’ I said, with feeling.

‘The asteroid – she’s over the asteroid.’ Cyd took a breath. ‘But she misses you.’

‘And I miss her,’ I said. ‘And I miss you. And whatever problems there are, we can work them out. Because I’m lost without you.’ I shook my head. ‘And I will always be lost without you.’

It was true. It would always be true. So I reached for her. I thought maybe one more go at the kissing could win her round.

But she backed off, arms folding protectively.

‘I’m going now,’ she said.

I nodded. I could read the signs. With her arms folded, I could see there was no more kissing to be done right now.

And nothing else to say.

‘All right,’ I said, and then I felt the panic as she turned away. She was really leaving. But this time I did not follow her.

‘See you then,’ I said, just for something to say, but she did not turn around. She just raised her left hand in farewell, and the way she held it there for a moment longer than strictly necessary made it seem as though the gesture meant something more.
I hear you, I love you, but I am going now.
That is what I saw in her gesture, although I could have been kidding myself.

But I noticed that on the third finger of her left hand, Cyd still wore her wedding band.

And that had to mean something, didn’t it?

The way she walked away, the way she waved goodbye
without turning round – it was straight from the end of
Cabaret,
one of my wife’s favourite films, when Sally Bowles leaves the man she has loved and goes back to her life. Except that old Sally Bowles wasn’t wearing a wedding ring when she walked away.

And in my experience, a ring makes all the difference when you are trying to walk away.

The ring, and the children.

I wandered the empty house.

There were traces of the family we had been, archaeological clues to a previous lifetime. A pink scooter in the hall that Joni had grown out of. A paperback called
Love Sucks
that Peggy had finished with on the garden table, a sensitive vampire boy looking mean, moody and undead on the front cover. And, everywhere, the traces of my wife.

Her winter clothes. Her CDs by Enya and Macy Gray, original cast versions of
Oklahoma!
and
West Side Story
and
Singin’ in the Rain.
Old copies of
Grazia
and
Red.
The books of films she had loved.
Chocolat
and
The English Patient
and
The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
And especially in the kitchen – her workplace, her domain – things that she had bought because she needed them, or because she thought they were nice. All these jolting moments that brought the reality of her home to me in a way that I had never felt when she was still here.

I found a T-shirt in the bottom of the laundry basket and I buried my face in it. It said Juicy on the front and it was threadbare and comfortable. And I could smell her on it and it made me reel with the longing for her. I missed my wife. I missed my daughter. I wanted my family back.

And the old question from years ago gnawed at me now, as I wondered if Pat and I were still a family. Did we qualify? If there was just the two of us, then could we still call ourselves a family? Or was that just a bit too grand for our two-man band?

I wanted to believe that we were still a family. But I don’t think you are a family if there are just the two of you left.

I think that you want to be, you really do.

But if I am honest, I think you are just trying.

Pat was sleeping when I got to the hospital.

It was the middle of the day, and the ward was full of the clanking of the lunch trolley, and the smell of inedible food, but Pat lay slumped in his chair with his head lolling forward, totally exhausted.

I looked at Ken. I could hear his breathing snagging deep inside his chest, but he looked better. Perhaps it was the shave, but he looked more like himself.

Pat stirred and opened his eyes.

‘Come home for a bit,’ I told him. ‘Get your head down in your own bed. Have a kip.’

Have a kip.
That was another one. The language of my father’s generation. Soon it would be gone forever. Pat stood up and stretched, looking at Ken.

‘Just a smoke,’ he said, and so we left the cancer ward because my boy was gasping for a cigarette. Outside the glass doors, Pat blinked in the first sunlight he had seen for a while.

‘He had a good night,’ Pat said, lighting up. ‘I only had to use the mask once. One of the nurses told me that it sometimes gets better before the end.’ He squinted at me through a haze of smoke. ‘Do you think that’s true?’

I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It goes up and down, I guess. He might be better than he was a while ago. But it’s always getting worse.’

‘He said his wife was there,’ Pat said. ‘Dot?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Dot.’

‘That freaked me out. He was so certain she was there. What’s all that about? Is that some kind of hallucination because of the drugs? Or is it something else?’

I thought about it.

‘I would like to think it’s something else,’ I said.

We said nothing for a while, thinking about the dreams of the dead, and when Pat had finished his cigarette, we went back inside.

There was a middle-aged man sitting in the chair that Pat had occupied for days, watching Ken’s sleeping face. He stood up when we came into the room, and he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. Short, muscular, tanned. I knew who he was before he opened his mouth.

‘Mick Grimwood,’ he said, and he shook our hands, and from his accent you would never have guessed that he had grown up in this city, and in this country.

‘From Melbourne,’ I said. ‘Your dad talked about you a lot.’

We all looked at the old man.

The weight had fallen off him. I saw that now. Mick’s face was a mirror image of Ken as a younger man, and with him at the bedside I saw how much weight his father had lost.

‘Does he have a passport?’ Mick said.

I was stunned. ‘A passport?’

I thought of when I had looked through the drawers of his home, and when I had seen the ransacked contents of those drawers strewn across the floor of the tiny flat.

Had I seen a passport among the remains of a lifetime?

I could not remember.

‘I don’t know, Mick,’ I said. Pat and I exchanged a look. The guy was clearly out of his mind with jet lag and grief. I wanted to be gentle with him. ‘But he’s really sick,’ I said. ‘Your dad is really sick.’

He lifted his chin with impatience, and suddenly he was every inch his father’s son.

‘I know how sick he is,’ he said, ‘and that’s why I want to know if he’s got a passport.’ Ken stirred in his sleep and his son’s hands clenched and unclenched with frustration. ‘I told him to always keep his passport up to date. I bloody told him, I did.’

‘He’s better,’ Pat blurted, and I tried to silence him with something in my eyes, the way I always used to. It didn’t
work any more. ‘But he is though,’ my boy insisted. ‘A little bit better. You said so yourself.’

I wanted to stop this madness.

‘Mick,’ I said. ‘You really think he’s up to making a trip?’

‘This would be one way,’ Mick said.

And then I finally got it.

Ken going to Australia at last.

Not to live.

But to die.

The police were raiding the flats.

Blue lights swirled on the four sides of Nelson Mansions and gave the proceedings a jolly, festive air. Children rode their bikes up and down their walkways, shouting with delight at being up way past their bedtime. Residents came out to watch officers in Kevlar stab-proof vests streaming up the stairs. Some were already on the top floor, shouting orders to open up. They were directly above Ken’s flat. They had come for the Old Lads.

In the courtyard there were three cop cars and one van, all with their disco lights twirling, all parked where they felt like parking. I got out of the car and Tyson came up to me, thoughtfully sniffing my leg, as if remembering the good times. His thick leather lead with silver spikes was trailing on the ground. I patted him on the head and looked up at the flats where the cops had started to swing a battering ram.

‘Let’s look for it and go,’ I told Pat.

He followed me up to Ken’s flat, with Tyson trailing behind. More people were coming out of their homes. I had never seen such a feeling of community at Nelson Mansions. Perhaps it was always like this for police raids. Above us we could hear a door caving in. Screams, shouts, curses. And a ripple of polite applause from the spectators on their walkways. And cheering, as though justice was being done at last. I slipped the unfamiliar key in the lock.

I searched the living room. Pat and Tyson took the bedroom. It was not a big flat but it felt like Ken had never
thrown away a piece of paper in his life. My fingers tore through offers of home delivery sushi, double-glazing solutions, pizzas he would never eat, cleaners he would never employ, limousine services he would never need. Bills for gas, water, electricity. A stack of postcards from Australia, curling with age, from a time when people still sent postcards. And then a photo of Dot. And then a tattered envelope – a strange colour somewhere between blue and green – the colour of the sea.

CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE if said on the front and his name, and rank, and number. And inside it was stuffed with yellowing paper. The actual Certificate of Service. My eyes ran over it, catching on details. Where born – village –
Deptford.
Where born – county –
Kent.
Trade brought up to –
Metal machinist.
Period volunteered for
– for the period of the present emergency.
Marks, wounds and scars –
scars on knees.
Wife –
Dorothy Maud Lillian GRIMWOOD.

A square piece of blue paper fell to the floor and I picked it up. Buckingham Palace, it said.
Admit one to witness Investiture.
Signed by the Lord Chamberlain. Dot’s ticket to see Ken meet the King.

Pat appeared in the bedroom doorway. ‘Got it,’ he said, waving a passport. Tyson bobbed excitedly at his feet, sensing the mood. Blue lights danced across the walls. The sounds of violence seemed to be directly above our heads.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ I said, and the dog bounded ahead of us.

They were taking the Old Lads down. We stopped at the end of the walkway and watched them go. Those giant hard-boiled-egg heads lowered with defeat and loathing. Hands behind their backs, the fight knocked out of them. The cops in their Kevlar vests keen to be on their way.

‘You go,’ I told Pat. ‘Get in the car and lock all the doors. I’ll only be a minute.’

He looked at me for a moment and then started down, the dog panting at his feet. In the courtyard the back doors of the van were open. One of the Old Lads banged his enormous
shaven head hard against the roof as he was stuffed inside. The spectators laughed appreciatively.

I ran up one flight. The walkway was empty. A ribbon of blue police tape fluttered across the smashed door. DO NOT CROSS, it said, and I slipped under it and went inside.

Flat screen TVs lined the hall. Consoles for video games. Rubbish sacks full of handbags and gladrags with designer labels. Fancy phones and poncy palm-held devices. I opened a door and it was the bathroom. The tub was full of more shiny black rubbish bags. I opened one of them. It was full of credit cards. The place was a treasure trove of stolen goods, an Aladdin’s cave of bent gear.

I looked over my shoulder. Through the open door I could see the blue lights had gone. Doors were being closed. Voices were fading. The children were being packed off to bed.

I went deeper into the flat.

It became more jumbled back here. Treasure shaded into junk, or at least items that were not easily disposed of. A wallet that contained nothing but the photo of a smiling child. A big gold Rolex watch where the second hand moved at a stuttering gait, marking it as a fake. And on top of a dustbin overflowing with plastic handbags and watches with rubber straps and an outmoded video player the size of a suitcase, I saw the box I was looking for.

Claret, edged with gold.

Small enough to hold in one hand.

I picked it up. I pressed the clasp and it opened. On the top half of the box there was ancient white silk and in small black letters it said,
By Appointment,
above the lion and the unicorn. Below that there was a name and address:
J.R
.
Gaunt & Son, Ltd, 60 Conduit Street, London.

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.’