Stories We Could Tell (33 page)

‘You lot make me laugh,’ Junior said, still gripping Leon’s ears. ‘All you middle-class wankers at
The Paper
. REBELS WITHOUT A COCK, is it? So I don’t have a cock, is that what you reckon?’

‘I was speaking metaphorically,’ Leon gasped. The pain, the incredible expanding pain, made it difficult to think straight.

Junior seemed unconvinced.

‘You think you can say what you like and there’s no comeback. You think you’re in some kind of student debating society. You think – ’

A high-pitched voice cut in from out of nowhere. ‘That your car, mate?’

Junior turned to look at the speaker, not relinquishing his grip on Leon’s ears. It was the biggest Ted that Leon had ever seen. Leon’s mouth dropped open, stunned with recognition. It was Titch himself, the giant among Teds.

Titch was surrounded by a dozen of his greasy-quiffed tribe, young Teds in their violent prime, all of them weighing up the Dagenham Dogs.

‘What?’ Junior said, his train of thought interrupted.

Titch had a surprisingly gentle voice. Like Elvis singing one of his devotional hymns, Leon thought. ‘There Will Be Peace in the Valley’, perhaps.

‘I said – is that your car, mate?’

Still very reasonable, but indicating the windscreen of the gold Buick. Leon’s head had left a smear of bloody grime on the glass.

Junior shook his head. ‘I got the bus,’ he said. ‘It’s not my car.’

The mountain of a Ted nodded, seemingly satisfied with the answer. Titch turned to look at his friends, sharing a chilled smile before once again facing Junior.

‘I know it’s not your car, you tattooed tit,’ Titch said. ‘BECAUSE IT’S MY FUCKING CAR!’

Then Titch swung a meaty right hook and it sent Junior flying, and then sprawling. Like George Foreman smacking Joe Frazier, Leon thought, the blow that lifted Smokin’ Joe right off his feet in the hot Jamaican night. Junior let go of Leon’s ears.

Titch stared down at Junior’s prone form for a moment, as if examining something he had stepped in, and then brought down the sole of a size-thirteen brothel creeper. Junior howled, his eyes bulging.

The Teds were first to attack, sweeping into the Dogs with the practised fury of their warrior tribe and driving the Dogs back into the road, forcing a milk float to swerve and a crate of gold-top to fall off the back and shatter. But the Dogs quickly rallied, all those away matches on the terraces behind them, accustomed to scrapping on uneven ground, soon finding their footing on the spilt milk and broken glass beneath their boots.

Leon crawled away on his hands and knees, surrounded by flying DMs and brothel creepers, through the puddles of blood and milk and glass, with Mrs Thatcher’s bossy, ingratiating voice still ringing in his ears.

‘…swamped…swamped…swamped by people with a different culture…’

Up and on his feet, he jumped on the platform of a passing bus, the pole almost ripping his arm out of its socket. Ignoring the protests of the conductor he went upstairs, staring out of the rear window, dabbing at the cut above his eyebrow, looking back at the gang fight that had now sprawled right across the road receding behind him.

The Dogs had staged an impressive comeback, but the superior fighting ability of the Teds was proving decisive. Titch had two of the Dagenham Dogs by the scruff of the neck, and Leon watched him bang their heads together as if they were cymbals. Junior was crawling away, now with real tears on his face. He disappeared under a pack of Teds. Then the bus took a left on to Blackfriars Bridge and the fight was gone.

The bus crossed the river and Leon stared at the dome of St Paul’s without seeing it. He was pale-faced and shaking with an emotion that threatened to overwhelm him.

‘Swamped…swamped…swamped…we are not in politics to ignore people’s worries
…we
are in politics to deal with them.’

Shaking because he had just narrowly escaped a good hiding.

And because he had just seen the future.

There was no real traffic.

A young man at the wheel of a Ford Capri could get up a real head of steam as he headed south to the river – barrelling down the long sweep of Regent Street, taking a sharp left round Eros at Piccadilly Circus, then down Haymarket, and almost one long straight run all the way to the Embankment.

‘Can you slow down a bit?’ Misty said.

Terry swerved to miss a Lotus Elan. ‘Had enough excitement for one night?’

He increased his speed, zipping through a red light. There was a rage inside him. In a way it would have been a lot easier if Misty and Dag had been fucking their brains out. Then it would have been simple. Then it would have been over.

But what do you do when your girlfriend has spent the night talking about Nietzsche, Byron and the first Doors album with another man? Terry didn’t know quite what to do. Increasingly, he felt that way – life was more complicated than he had ever imagined, and he was struggling to keep up.

‘Will you
slow down,’
she said, with that cold edge of steel that she could always summon up at will. ‘This is not even
your car.’

‘What’s your old man going to do? Sue me?’

‘Terry,’ she said. Oh, Terry.’ A long sigh. ‘You really don’t get it,
do you?’ So she said it very slowly, as if she was light years ahead of him. ‘I’m having a baby.’

He stared at her, wondering if this was a joke, or a trick, or a lie, but she was looking straight ahead through the windscreen of her daddy’s car, and in an instant it all made sense.

He remembered the pills on the first night. The pills she could no longer take, and he remembered their cavalier attitude to contraception, the blithe disregard of a pair of rutting youngsters.

They had briefly contemplated condoms, but packets of three seemed so ridiculously Fifties that they had ended up laughing at the very idea. Condoms went out with banana rations, Billy Fury and the hula-hoop.

They had been banging away for months, and because nothing happened they had believed that it never would. And then it did. And now it had. A baby He hadn’t even thought about it. The possibility had never crossed his mind. It seemed like the stuff of some other, grown-up life. A
baby
.

She screamed just then and Terry turned his head in time to see a police car stopping to let an old lady in a Morris Minor out of a side road. He slammed on the brakes, and then practically stood on them, almost rising out of the seat, and the cop car was hurtling towards them in a rush of shrieking rubber and Misty shouting. Terry held his breath, waiting for the mangling of metal and glass, tears in his eyes.

A baby, he thought. A little baby.

The crash never came. The Ford Capri screamed to a halt inches from the bumper of the law. The tyres howling, the two cops already turning in their seats to see what kind of maniac had almost driven up their backsides.

Terry sat the wheel, gasping for breath, trying to take it all in – a
baby –
and watching the policemen get out of their car and start walking towards him. He knew he was going to be stopped and
searched. And he knew there was no time to hide the drugs he was carrying. He looked at Misty and laughed. A
baby
. A cop stuck his head in Terry’s window. There was an old one and a young one, just like at the airport.

They made him get out of the car. Then they breathalysed him, telling him to blow harder, to blow properly. It was neutral. Then they made him empty his pockets, and one of them read his driving licence while the other patted him down. The cellophane bag of amphetamine sulphate was in the ticket pocket of his dead man’s jacket. And they missed it.

‘Sir,’ said the younger one, ‘may I ask why you are driving like such a fucking cunt?’

Terry shook his head. The world seemed to have changed. He couldn’t put it into words, but it seemed like the world had changed for ever. Or at least his little part of it.

‘I just found out I’m going to be a dad,’ he said. He let the words settle, fill the space between them. The cops looked at each other. ‘I took my eyes off the road – took my eyes off the road for a few seconds there.’

The two cops dipped their heads to take a look at Misty, all demure and blonde in the passenger seat, and then they looked back at Terry.

‘She’s a lovely lass,’ said the older cop, holding out his hand. ‘Congratulations.’

The younger cop slapped Terry on the back. ‘I remember when my missus told me about our first,’ he laughed, as the old cop crushed Terry’s fingers. ‘I nearly choked on me Rice Krispies.’

Then both of the policemen were smiling and laughing and patting Terry on the back, and they went off feeling slightly better about the world, or maybe young people. As if, Terry thought, they had just learned that the younger generation were really no different to all those who had gone before, despite their strange hair and clothes from Oxfam. And maybe they were right.

But Terry watched Misty’s impassive face with a sinking feeling, as something occurred to him for the first time. What if she didn’t want this baby?

They parked up on a side street and sat by Cleopatra’s Needle, watching the boats on the river, the tower block containing
The Paper
the tallest building on the skyline.

‘We’re young,’ she said. ‘Young to have a baby.’

‘That’s true,’ he said. There was no bad feeling between them now. There was only this bond, this incredible bond between them, as though they were more than lovers, and more than friends. As though they could never be this close to anyone else.

‘It’s a big responsibility,’ she said.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘It’s a huge responsibility. A baby. Jesus.’

Misty bristled. ‘And I’m not going to be one of those mothers who stays home making jam or whatever the fuck they do all day.’

He laughed with genuine amusement. ‘That’s for sure.’

Misty relaxed. ‘But it doesn’t have to change anything,’ she said, excited now, and it allowed Terry to be excited too. ‘And what a great experience – to bring another human life into the world.’

They were laughing together now. ‘Imagine what it will look like, Misty. A little bit of you, and a little bit of me. All mixed up.’

Then she was suddenly all serious again. ‘I don’t want to get rid of it, Terry. I don’t want an abortion. Of course I’m pro a woman’s right to choose and everything, but I just don’t want to get rid of it.’

He shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘no, that would be awful.’ He already loved their baby.

Then they were both quiet for a while. Something magical had settled on the day, and they sat there by the river, feeling it, trying to understand what it all meant. Their baby.

‘It doesn’t have to change anything at all,’ Misty said, trying to
work out how things would be. ‘We can take it with us. When we work. When we go to gigs.’

Terry thought about it, furrowing his brow. Concentrating. Trying to be a responsible dad. ‘Maybe we should put some cotton wool in its little ears. To protect them while they’re still, you know, growing.’

Misty nodded thoughtfully. That’s a really good idea. Cotton wool for its ears.’ She laughed, and her face seemed to light up. ‘What if it’s a
girl?’

Terry laughed too, and he took Misty’s hands and kissed them. ‘What if it’s a
boy?’

Then they were both silent for the longest while, letting it all sink in, watching the boats on the river without really seeing them, and feeling the heat of the sun as it came up on their adult lives.

Leon held the second bacon sandwich in his hands, savouring the moment.

Against all odds, he had somehow contrived to meet the girl of his dreams, review the band of his nightmares, and avoid the kicking of a lifetime.

Not a bad night, all in all.

After fleeing the battle between the Teddy Boys and the Dagenham Dogs, he had jumped off the bus at London Wall in the heart of the financial district, which was already filling up with men in suits and their young female helpers. Leon walked among them, thinking – what was it that Engels said about the relationship of men and women in the nuclear family? Something about man being the bourgeois and his wife the proletariat. Well, Friedrich, my old mate, Leon thought, it’s exactly the same in the City of London.

Unable to face eating a bacon sandwich so close to the heart of capitalism, Leon walked east to Charterhouse Street and the Smithfield meat market, deciding that he would prefer to eat his
breakfast in a café full of real workers, not a bunch of chinless paper pushers sipping their weak tea and nibbling their cheese-and-Branston toasties.

Terry had taken him here once, when he was trying to borrow money from his father, and Leon had been much taken by the place.

Almost in the shadow of the Bank of England and the Stock Exchange, a market of sweating, shouting men toiled through the night with animal carcasses as big as they were, and then went off to sink pints of beer and nosh enormous fry-ups in the countless greasy spoons and smoky pubs surrounding Smithfield before staggering off home to collapse in bed. That’s the place to be, Leon thought, trying not to touch the bloody scab on his forehead.

The market was winding down now, and the small café Leon chose was full of porters in filthy white coats tucking into plates piled high with fried eggs, bacon, beans, sausages and toast.

Good, honest working men at the end of their labours, Leon thought warmly – real people! – although of course he deplored the way they leered over young women displaying their pert young breasts in the tabloid newspapers. He paused with the sandwich halfway to his lips, as his eyes drifted to the paper of the man next to him, and the girlish smile above the womanly body of Mandy, sixteen, from Kent. It made him remember the heartbreaking springiness of Ruby’s body inside the sleeping bag, and he felt himself stir with love and longing.

He wondered if he would see her at the weekend.

He wondered if he would ever see her again.

He wondered if he could compete with Steve.

Leon put the bacon sandwich back on its plate and murmured an apology as he reached across an elderly porter for the HP sauce. He pulled back the top layer of bread on his sandwich and considered the bacon, fried to a crispy brown, nestling on butter that had already melted into the thick slice of Mother’s Pride. His tummy
rumbled, ravenous after the exertions of the night, and his mouth flooded with saliva and hunger.