Paint. The art of scam. (26 page)

Seymour, still in
his underpants, looked through his wardrobe and pulled out his suit. It was the
same one he wore on 'that night' with Polly. It was slightly moth eaten, had a
button missing and was generally well worn, but it still had a feeling that
only an Italian suit can deliver. He'd since had it dry cleaned and patched up
a treat. It was the dry cleaner who had pointed out that it was an Italian
suit. It had no labels, but Mrs. Bruani could tell an Italian suit from 50
paces. From then on it did actually feel better to wear. Despite his anarchic
views, rebellious streak and conclusion that everything in society was fucked
and against him, personally: Seymour liked nothing more than wearing a suit.
Maybe it was an illusion thing. Or a statement on respectability hijacking the
suit for a uniform.

Seymour slipped
on the silk lined trousers with ease and looked down at the turn-ups that
settled perfectly on his feet. As he was putting on the oversized cream silk
shirt he'd bought for two quid at Oxfam, the phone rang.

‘Hello.’

‘Seymour! Look
out the window!’

Carva blew the
impressive sounding horn of the Mercedes twice. Seymour went over to window and
looked down at the street. Polly was waving with one arm and holding the car
phone in the other. Carva too was waving, reluctantly.

‘Come on Seymour,
get dressed, quick! We've got the show! Let's have lunch! Come on!’

Seymour knew that
excited Polly voice well. It was always irresistible.

Bruno’s new beginning.

Over the past few
months, Bruno Costaldi's fortunes were pretty well how they had always been.
Roger had revisited and given him top-up beatings on several occasions; just to
remind him of how annoyed he was with him; as had his father Paolo and any hope
of getting the money back from the robbery had all but disappeared. Bruno had
never heard from Johnny: that bothered him.

There had been
one positive event in his life however. He had been evicted from his bedsitter
for failing to pay the rent and Roger and Paolo couldn't visit him anymore to
renew the massive injuries they had inflicted on him.

He was now living
in the bad end of Brixton, in an old Bedford van, parked at the back of a used
car yard where he worked as car cleaner and odd job man. He was quite happy
with his lot, given that at least now his life wasn't constantly under threat
of termination by extreme violence.

Relatively
speaking, things were on the up and up and his facial injuries were now healed
and the resultant scars actually enhanced his appearance: he now looked rugged
now, rather than disfigured. He had even had sex recently, with Ivan Bovowsky,
a Russian merchant seaman he met one night at The Tradesmen’s Arms near the car
yard. He never really regarded himself as homosexual and certainly wouldn't
admit it, especially to himself, but, as they say, any port in a storm. At
least he knew where he stood with men, they either beat him up or they fucked
him and all women seemed to do was either ignore him or confuse him.

Ivan couldn't
speak a word of English and Bruno couldn't speak a word of Russian but, with
appropriate sign language, Ivan somehow negotiated Bruno into the back of the
van and they both did their deeds. Bruno thought that Ivan wanted to see him
again and Ivor thought that Bruno wanted to see him again. In fact both of them
completely misunderstood each other and parted company with bad feeling after a
confusing argument. But it was OK, Bruno liked his freedom and didn't want to
commit, especially to a sailor, and a Russian one at that.

He had made
token efforts to find Polly after the robbery, but the continually fresh
injuries to his face made him conspicuous and it was therefore difficult to
maintain anonymity in his clumsy investigations. Besides, it wasn't the first
time he had screwed up in his career as a criminal and so the incident at
Hogarth Heavy Engineering was a timely final straw that led him to decide to
try a life on the straight and narrow. It couldn't be that difficult surely.

Bruno Costaldi was
a new man, no more prison, no more crime and no more beatings. He was going to
work hard, become a good citizen and maybe, one day, be able to vote, just like
everyone else. But these were still early days.

Paolo, on the
other hand, wasn't quite so complacent about his misfortunes, as he was the
wrong side of sixty and had little to look forward to, with the exception of
inevitable death. His disappointment with Bruno, his son, haunted him
endlessly. He had no money at all and refused to seek help from social security
for, despite his unscrupulous profession, his pride and principles would never
allow him to become a 'social security sponger.' He survived by petty theft and
gambling, both of which were conducted badly on a small scale and barely
provided him with the resources to survive, but survive, as always, he somehow
did.

He had never been
the best of role models for his son Bruno, but the blind loyalty Italians are
blessed with made Bruno respect his father and to achieve equality with him had
been his lifelong ambition.

But Bruno was on
his own now, which, although a relief, the disgrace of his father's shame of
him, haunted him daily. But then again, his father disowning him removed the
pressure of this loyalty that had seemingly gone on for centuries, and at last
he was now his own man. A free spirit that could blunder along in life, with
nobody to beat him up and only himself to look up to.

He was good at
his job at the car yard and his boss, Henry, an Eastender who boasted that his
best friend's cousin worked for the Kray twins in the fifties, had a soft spot
for him. He didn't pay Bruno much, but gave him perks, like letting him keep
the small change he found under the seats of the cars he cleaned and let him
live in the van at the back rent free, which suited Henry as Bruno could also
double up as night-watchman and therefore protect the cars and himself from the
revenge of several dissatisfied customers.

Once, Henry even
let Bruno take a car out for the night when he had a hot date lined up. He had
to put a stop to that when a client came in early to view the knackered old Ford
Cortina and found a drunk, naked Bruno, crashed out in the back, plugged into a
street boy. But Henry didn't fire him. It's hard to get good staff these days.

One night, Bruno
was out doing a spot of shopping at the local corner store, the huge old lady at
the counter saw him stuffing various packets of instant soup, frozen peas and a
cucumber down his pants, then put various tins in his basket, carefully adding
up the prices; continually referring to the loose change clenched in his fist,
cursing his pledge to go straight, but feeling stronger for it. As he stood
innocently at the counter the old woman rang up the total on the till.

‘That'll be free
Poun' fifty.’

Bruno gave a
filthy look. ‘Nah, that ain't right, I know 'cause I added it up see.’

She smiled, and
looked down at his crotch.

‘I ain't been
able to do that to a bloke since the war.’ she said.

‘What?’ said
Bruno, as he slammed down his loose change and began stuffing the tins into his
jacket.

‘Arfur!’ she
shouted. ‘Come 'ere.’

Bruno looked
across to a door that led to the back of the shop. It slowly opened to reveal
an enormous gorilla like giant of a man dressed in a ketchup stained pair of
overalls, its buttons bursting under the weight of his huge gut.

‘What's up, love?’
he grunted in a single drawn out deep syllable.

‘We got ourselves
a feef.’

‘Oh, yeh?’

Bruno quickly
checked out his odds of escaping: it wasn't good, he would have to negotiate a
lot of obstacles to get to the door. The gorilla was ambling in his direction,
his huge arms swinging like demolition balls.

‘You got
something you shouldn't have sonny?’ said the ape, tomato sauce around his
lips, chewing something. He burped and smiled.

‘What you talkin'
about?’ said Bruno, looking up at Arthur, feeling the cucumber sliding down his
leg and wobble out onto the floor.

The big man
calmly bent down and retrieved it; smiling.

‘Fuck off,’ said
Arthur.

Bruno sneered as
he backed out past the bread stand, stepping into a box of stinking cabbage .

‘Cunt! Bruno
turned and bolted, narrowly missing a crate of milk but tripping over a flimsy
wire display stand. The stand landed on top of him, covering him in packets of
crisps and sickly boiled sweets. By the time he had pushed the stand away,
Bruno felt himself being hauled into the air.

‘What you call
me?’ said the Arthur, about two inches from his face. His feet dangled
helplessly in the air as Bruno closed his eyes and waited for the impact he
expected at times like this.

After a moment he
opened his eyes again. The smell of the Arthur’s breath was putrid, even
overpowered his own stench.

‘I said what you
call me?’

‘Um, nothing.’
whispered Bruno, relieved that his jaw was still intact.

The man
reasserted his grip on Bruno's collar. He wanted an answer.

‘Cunt?’ whispered
Bruno in resignation as he looked down at the ground far below.

‘Look at me,’
said Arthur, shaking him.

Bruno shouldn't
have looked up, but he wasn't in a position to negotiate anything, especially
the movements of his own body.

Boof! Bruno went
blank as Arthur head butted him squarely on the nose and dropped him in a heap
on the pavement. Bruno looked up and through the haze of shock, saw Arthur look
down at him and smile a satisfying smile before ambling back into the shop,
wiping his mouth.

Bruno lay on the
pavement for a while until the fizzy sensation slowly settled into the pumping
pain he was now familiar with. He felt his nose to check it was still there and
not embedded somewhere in his skull where it felt and snorted out a hideous
globule of blood, wiped it on his hand and looked at it.

‘You Ok?’ came a
voice from above him.

Bruno looked up
to see a young couple peering down at him.

‘Yeh, fucking
great.’ said Bruno bravely, as he attempted to stand up. The couple took an arm
each and hoisted him up onto his feet.

‘You want us to
call an ambulance?’ said the smartly dressed young man. ‘Have you been mugged
or something?’

Bruno looked at
the couple, both staring compassionately at him. They looked like the sort of
people he'd seen in adverts on the TV, the ones that have everything that he
and everybody else wanted. Bruno looked down at the pavement and dusted himself
down.

‘Nah, it's ok.
Fanks. I'll be OK.’

The young man
patted Bruno on the shoulder sympathetically, smiled and walked away, his girlfriend
linking her arm in his, whispering something and shaking her head. Bruno
watched them for a moment. He hated them for some reason, he wasn't sure why.
They were smug bastards, he supposed. He looked back into the shop to see the
old woman at the counter watching him, arms crossed. Bruno flicked several 'V'
signs at her and staggered away, victoriously.

Well out of
sight, Bruno slipped into a shoe shop doorway and leant against the wall in an
attempt to gather himself. He could just see the reflection of himself in the
smeared glass of the shop window. Ivan, the Russian sailor, had told him he was
good looking, at least Bruno assumed that's what he'd said, they weren't actually
face to face at the time. Ivan had made him feel good about himself, a major
contribution to Bruno's resolve to rebuild his life and start again, again. In
fact, of late, Bruno had begun to pay a lot of attention to his appearance.
Cleaning cars had made him reasonably fit. He could see his distorted
reflection in the car windows and paintwork as he polished them. He thought he
was looking pretty good. Being around Henry had helped too. Henry was always
dressed immaculately, he set high standards did Henry. ‘Presentation is all,’
he always said, ‘even if it's shit.’

Bruno ran his
hands lightly over his face and gently prodded at the bridge of his nose. It
seemed OK. It had been about a month since his last beating and his nose had
just began to feel normal again, whatever that was. He was hungry. All the tins
he’d legitimately paid for had fallen out of his pockets when he fell and he
considered going back to get them, but the thought of more humiliation stopped
him. Slipping out of the doorway he limped along the pavement to head back to
the yard, staring down at the pavement, his face pumping with pain in time with
his step. His nose started bleeding, he had to stop.

Stumbling into
another shop doorway, he sat down on the cold sticky tiles and threw his head
back. The blood trickled down his throat; its familiar taste made him feel
sick. It reminded him of the last time he had seen Paolo or was it Roger? He
couldn't be sure.

Eventually he could
feel himself calming down; the bleeding eased a little, enabling him to pull
his head forward again.

He looked across
the street. There was a shop with its lights on. There seemed to be a party
going on or something, he could see several people inside. The mumble of
chatting with the occasional cackle of laughter made him feel tragic as he sat
there in the doorway, tired, hungry, alone, in pain, stinking and defeated.