affectionately, with all the love you are capable of.
Not that Tony speaks to himself like this.
He won’t, so we are having to do it for him.
He knows, though. That there is a way out. That he could stop trying so desperately hard.
Here he comes now, walking out of his office towards the minicab that’s waiting for him, his face tight with tension. So tight he’s waggling his jaw and gurning like a gargoyle. Not such a poster boy now, eh Tony?
Never say never, but he never, never will.
Tony’s whole life has hinged on him being the hinge. The centre of attraction. And, yes, Tony is as vain as that. But there is more to this than vanity; or, if that’s what you insist on calling it, then there is more to his vanity than mere self-regard.
Tony wants, craves, he is addicted to being the point of articulation between people; but the further point is, many of them really would have remained inarticulate if he hadn’t performed
for them. If he didn’t perform on their behalf. And he knows this. After so many years with their eyes turned towards him and their breath on his face, how could he not?
Like a drunk with a story to tell. Another drink, another story, and they really are good, his stories, Tony Skance will keep coming back. The odds are impossible: one man against a whole architecture of small mindedness, and here's Tony (Heeeeeere’s Tony!), trying to construct the shared experience that will hold our lives together. That will hold us together in our lives. That will stop us all spilling out into...nothing much.
Desperate, desperate man.
(12) The sort of man Tony’s doing it for
Bloody fool’s getting in the wrong car. ‘Here, mate.
Over here’.
The minicab driver is 60-something, West Indian with a grey moustache and a button of
silver hair underneath his lower lip, in the style of soul singer Rufus Thomas. He’s laughing because his fare has stepped out of one of those towering office blocks and tried to get into the car nearest the main entrance – some poor bloke who just happened to be waiting there – because he thought it was his cab.
The (wrong) driver had his doors locked, so the fare didn’t get very far. Now the real minicab driver, name of Lenny, is calling him over, thinking: this is a fancy-looking guy, spends time on his appearance but he doesn’t get it quite right.
Lenny’s still cracking up over it when Tony – for it is he – climbs into the back of the passenger vehicle, licensed for private hire, pre-booked only, etc, etc. ‘You should have seen his face, man,’ Lenny cackles. ‘Must have thought he was being car-jacked.’ Others might have been put out by the laughing cabbie. My good man, I’m the fool who’s paying your wages (not those words nowadays, yet that kind of snooty, snotty attitude); but straightaway Tony warms to Lenny’s good humour.
‘You’re right’, he concurs. ‘If he’d had a gun he might have blown me away.’
Where to? Tony gives Pete’s home address in Lewisham. Sad sod lives south of the river.
South of the River. Margaret Thatcher once said, show me a man over 30 who lives South of the River, and I will show you a failure. Well, no – she didn’t; but she should have. Anyway, thinks Tony, I’m not struggling out there on the DLR and then having to walk who knows where
through the back streets of an evening, flashing my iPad2 with the Google maps on it so that all the local youth can see. So of course I asked Les to get me a car. And what turns up is the jovial personage of laughing Lenny, my new friend.
Nice in here. Reggae on the stereo. Bit of bass in it, not too much. Definitely Reggae, not Bluebeat or Ska, but made in the days before Dub and before it got heavy. Hea-vy.
There’s a smell; every minicab, always a smell. If a man sits in a confined space for eight to 10 hours, at least five days a week, he’s going to leave something of himself behind. How could he not?
But this ain’t bad. Like a borrowed leather jacket; not your own but it fits OK.
Yeah, I like it in here, thinks Tony. And I like the driver. I could tell in an instant he’s not the sort to wind me up. Perhaps I’ll ask him to come and live with me. Like to see the look on his face.
‘So, come on, then – Lenny, is it? Just saw the name on your license – apart from weird people trying to get into the wrong car, what’s the craziest ride you’ve ever had, in your considerable experience?’
And Lenny explains how his Control is on contract to the education department in one of the London boroughs, and he has to take all kinds of kids to school, to foster homes, all sorts.
And the worst is when it’s his gig to take kids to the special school.
A boarding school where they go to give their parents a rest. And sometimes there’s
nobody else in the car with them, just the kid and me, Lenny, the driver.
‘And you’re driving along and suddenly, smack, the kid’s taken a swipe at the back of
your head, or chopped you on the neck, and it’s not because he’s a real nasty piece of work, but they can’t communicate and they get frustrated and the first you know about it is: Bang! And you have to hold on tight to the steering wheel because sometimes it really hurts.
‘As well’, Lenny continues, ‘there are the pimps and the thieves, and you just sit in the car waiting while they are in the shop and then they come out running with a big television, and what are you supposed to do? How are you to know until they’ve gone and done it? But
somehow with those people you sort of do know, you can smell it on them, or something, when they’re going to do something.
But the special needs kids, man, there is just no telling. Smack! That’s the first you know about it.’
He’s a lovely man, thinks Tony. These youngsters who’ve hurt him, put his life in danger (and their own) – he talks about them sympathetically, without a trace of bitterness. Not towards them. But plenty of bile directed at the construction company he used to work for.
‘Twenty years I worked for that lot. Started on the motorways in the Midlands, staying in bed and breakfast with no heating in the bedroom. Imagine that, you came off the site when it got dark and you still couldn’t get warm, not unless you went to the pub. After 20 years of that I couldn’t stand the cold no more, so I asked for my cards and you know how much they gave me?
Three months’ pay. Three months – that was it, after 20 years. They want shooting, these people.
I would pull the trigger myself, and I’ve seen a man die from gunshot wounds, so I know what it means. But I’d do it to them, any day.’
‘Just pass the ammunition, eh Lenny?’ Tony chimes in, not wanting to disagree with this fine old man, of an age when he should be at home in his dressing gown, feet up on the table, a can of Red Stripe whenever he wants one. Or else safely bedded down with a plump Princess for him to pamper, hair in curlers or straighteners or whatever, and her rubbing Embeco on his sore elbows and creaking knees. But instead he’s out all hours, a small packet of sheer humanity weaving through the nondescript streets of south-east London with a succession of little people in the back of his clapped-out cab.
He’s the one to do it for, Tony tells himself. If London can’t get it on, doesn’t get it up for the Olympic Games, it’ll say to Lenny that he was wrong to come here in the first place.
Should have tried for the States, instead; gone for a Green Card.
Or even stayed in the Windies. Should never have come here. But if London comes
together, it’ll mean he made the right choice. All those years ago, Lenny chose well. And the 50
years of working, with next to nothing to show for it, will have been the right thing to do, all along. So do it for him, Brother Tony. Believe me, it’s not just for yourself. No need to feel sick at the size of your own vanity. This is for the small people, too, to make them feel bigger.
By this time, Lenny’s pulling up outside Pete’s front door. Offers to write a receipt but Tony says no, this isn’t business, it�
��s strictly personal.
Hands Lenny the fare and a fiver on top, then waves him farewell as he drives off.
(13) Rupa’s easy exit
Christ, it’s a raid.
Bright lights on in the street outside, and rat-tat-tat on the door. Gotta be the police.
Dinky is already in the bathroom, flushing. Shame to lose that dynamite grass, genetically enhanced to reach all the right places in the shortest possible time. (If you’re a baby-boomer who last smoked dope in the seventies, you don’t know what you’re missing.) But what else can he do? Of course anyone can always say ‘only personal use, officer’, but there’s no telling who’ll get away with it and who won’t.
Meanwhile Rupa has put her knickers back on; now she’s reaching for her baggiest
jumper. Down to her knees. Another knock: wham, bam. Hold on, mate, she’s coming. Half-way downstairs, already.
Instinctively she ties her hair up as she walks the six, seven feet from the bottom step along the hall to the front door. ‘Who is it?’, she calls out.
Pointless, really: only the authorities knock on doors in that peremptory manner.
‘Rupa, I’ve come back for you’, comes back the oh-so-familiar voice of her talent show mentor. ‘Please open the door...I couldn’t bear to leave here without you.’
Can it, could it be? With one hand she’s opening the door, the other hand already half-over her mouth, perfectly positioned to perform a gasp of surprise.
It is, it is, it is. Was never going to be the police, was it? Not without Boris Johnson (or will it be Ken going out with them on raids?). And anyway, they come at dawn not in the middle of the night.
Camera’s onto her immediately. Lapping up her bare legs. Beatnik jumper: breasts
curving and pointing through all that shapelessness. TV lighting brings out the best. Thank God she pulled her hair up on the way downstairs. Looks like she’s straight out of bed. With her boyfriend, but only if you want to think of her that way.
‘Rupa, you’re my wild card. I’d like you to come back to the show.’ Her mentor’s arms
are outstretched, ready for the required embrace. Not before the camera has caught Rupa, scrunched-up face crumbling with happiness, speechless (no need to say
‘gobsmacked’ nowadays), nodding absolute assent.
Then they fall into each others’ arms and Rupa's mentor whispers instructions into her ear:
‘Get in the car just as you are. You can come back for your stuff later, or we’ll send someone.’
Out of shot, the director’s already waving them towards the limousine. They’re arm-in-
arm, bosom buddies, friends forever – or until Rupa’s knocked out of the competition again.
Bare feet, she’s careful what she’s walking on out there. At the car door, held open by a chauffeur, Rupa turns back to see Dinky, framed in the doorway. She guesses he hasn’t been seen on camera, though, so doesn’t blow him a kiss or anything that would specify their boy-girl relationship. Just a brief wave, a wave in general, then she bows her head, bends at the knee
(knickers not showing – good girl), and she’s in.
Into the cream leather interior. And exiting from all that Dinkyness. Surely for the best.
Going to see my parents, I said to him, let them make a fuss of me. Blah blah blah. But this, all this, is a much better way out.
Part 3. Fear and Self-Loathing in East London
(1) Tony the blackmailer
Tony Skance is standing outside the South London home of his long lost friend Pete
Fercoughsey. He’s just the rung the bell. You may recall, Dear Reader, that Pete and Tony played in a band together, years ago – so long ago that Pete’s wife, Carol, has never even met Tony before. Bound to be Carol
She is slim, with boyishly short hair and high cheekbones. Her face is apple-round, not angular.
Sharp tongue, though.
‘You must be Tony,’ Carol declares. Her smile becomes her, and she uses it confidently.
‘Sorry to turn up on the doorstep like this, Carol.’
Tony’s dead straight with her; no David Nivenism –
one look and he knows she’d have no truck with it.
‘I’d like to speak to Pete for a minute, if that’s all right.’
They share the love of a fairly good man, these two, but they’ve never had sight of each other until now.
Can’t help but eye each other up.
Carol waves Tony into the hall so she can shut the front door behind him. Meanwhile
Tony is careful to wipe his feet, quite keen to be seen wiping his feet carefully before stepping onto the polished, parquet floor.
Paintings, lots of them, in the hall and up the stairs. All originals: oil, some watercolour, and line drawings. Not a reproduction in sight. These’ll be hers, Tony guesses (correctly).
‘Yours?’ he ventures, but Carol doesn’t reply. That is, she says something to him but it’s not an answer:
‘Pete’s in his study. Up the stairs, straight ahead at the landing. It’s at the back of the house. Please go up and I’ll bring you some coffee, or a drink.’
‘Thanks, but I’m fine for now. This won’t take long, though. Just a few minutes to sort something out with Pete. Then perhaps we could all have a drink together.’
Their eyes have already met: Carol’s drilling into Tony, wanting to know what he wants from Pete; Tony seeing so much of what Pete sees in her (if she stopped to think about this she would start feeling uncomfortable, but she’s not going to let that happen).
Lingering for a moment at the top of the stairs, it crosses Tony’s mind not to mention any of the things he came to say.
Make small talk. You could even make it meaningful, if you like. Tell Pete that your
night out together has brought home how much you mean to each other. No, too strong. How much we have in common. It,s true, so why not say it and leave all the other stuff out of it?
Tony steals silently into the room. He sees books, more books and more paintings
(Christ, she’s everywhere), and Pete at his desk, facing the window, back to the door.
‘Good evening, headmaster,’ Tony intones. Pete swivels round on his office chair, ready to growl at one of his children for fooling around. Seeing it’s Tony, his face breaks into a broad grin, which gets broader to make up for Carol being cool with him (her winning smile but thin-lipped underneath: Pete pictures it easily).
‘Come in, come in.’ Pete gets up to embrace Tony, who lets him. Then Pete stands back
as if to appraise the visitor. ‘Wow! Twice in two weeks, has something come over you?’ This is rhetorical: he’s not expecting an answer. ‘Please, sit down’. Pete’s waving Tony to a small settee, while he returns to the office chair. Deftly closing his laptop (no need for Tony to see that he was looking at the Human Resources page of a Chinese university), he swivels half-way round to face his guest.
Pete doesn’t seem to know what to do with his arms until – can’t think of anything else –
he folds them in front of him.
So, Pete thinks, here you are in my house
- just like that. All that time when you were the old friend Daddy doesn,t like talking about. Can it be forgotten, just like that? Maybe so. There could be lazy Sunday afternoons when you come round for lunch. You might even teach Lily to sing. Christ, it would be so good if the separate episodes in my life could finally fit together.
Pete’s looking tired, thinks Tony. He thrives on the teaching, I bet; it’ll be all the other stuff that’s dragging him down. Compliance, box ticking, whatever you call it at your end. Well, sorry, old buddy, there’s nothing I’m going to say that will lighten your load.
‘Shan’t keep you from your globetrotting, Pete’.
He clocked it, then. But of course; also, that Pete doesn’t want to dwell on it. Like a good guest, Tony accedes to the wishes of his host, and moves swiftly on: ‘Just need your assurance on something.’
>
This by way of setting up the topic. Now he takes the first line, proper:
‘I have come to ask for your assurance that whatever happens to me, whatever you hear
people saying about me, you won’t go to the police? You won’t cooperate with them. Is that clear?’
Pete’s eyebrows rise like circumflex accents; or the convex roofs of two, adjacent houses.
Yet aside from his exaggerated face-making, he is genuinely concerned for his friend.
‘What is it Tony? What have you got caught up in?
Has somebody got their claws into you?
‘My dearest friend.’ Tony’s fingers are fidgeting.
Looking for a fobwatch, perhaps, or a waistcoat pocket to plant themselves in. Anyhow, he’s going all Dickensian. ‘Great expectations, Pete, are my birthright. And I have embarked on a course of action to remove the possibility of a small but significant disappointment in my life.’
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