Once Upon a Time in England

by Helen Walsh

  From the little knoll the only evidence of that other, man-made world were the tower blocks that studded the horizon. When he’d first arrived in the suburbs, Robbie had found those bleak grey silos oddly reassuring, a reminder that all he knew and loved was a bus ride away. Now, he chose not to see these sedentary giants, as though his mind and its windows were closed to that chapter of his past. Sometimes, like now, he was able to think back on it without regret – the night that Dickie Vaughan came to town. He’d had to make a decision and, by and large, he was satisfied with it. How could he not be out here, out in the elements with his plucky little dreamer? Would he have had this if he’d been away on tour somewhere, off being a star? No, he wouldn’t. Robbie Fitzgerald was glad of the sacrifice he’d made.

  He stood back, inhaled hard, dragging the distant vista inside of him and holding it down. Once, not so long ago, this had been him and her – Robbie and Sheila. Now it was father and daughter, and he couldn’t quite fathom how, or why, or when. It was happening, though. It was happening all around him and somehow, today, it no longer daunted him. Breathing in the sights and scents of the awakening earth, Robbie felt inspired. This, right now, was how freedom tasted.

  The sun finally burnt off the cloud, sending the new day smashing down on them, at last. The fields flickered silver and the air reverberated with the lowing of cattle and birds singing their swansong to summer. They stopped at a hollow for their final treat – sweet, baked chestnuts, and a hand-rolled cigarette for Robbie. He winked at his small girl as he fixed the papers and tamped down the tobacco. Ellie picked up a short twig, pretending to light it so she, too, could end the morning with a smoke. She lay back in the hollow and turned towards Robbie, twig poised carefully between two fingers, her face glowing with the absolute certainty that only she was privy to this furtive pocket of his universe.

  Every Sunday lunchtime Sheila cooked Robbie his favourite dish of mixed grill – or London grill, as Jean Bishop from next door had corrected her. To Sheila the sizzling platter of egg, tomatoes, mushrooms and the various meats looked pretty much like the standard British fry-up, but Jean had been good enough to enlighten her. ‘It’s all about quality and aspiration,’ she’d smiled. ‘If you want it to be a fry-up, a fry-up it shall be. If you want it to be any old mixed grill – fine. But if, like the head chef at the Savoy, you aspire to serve the perfect London grill… well. For starters, never source your meats from the Co-op. Ideally, you should only use a master butcher for your sausages, gammons and so on. I mean look at …’ Unable to finish the sentence she’d jerked her head towards the Andersons next door and fluttered her eyelids in disdain. ‘Everything’s pre-packed or out of a can. Honestly!’

  Sheila had blinked and nodded, but nothing was sinking in. She was staring at the whisker springing from the mole on Jean’s chin.

  ‘Are you listening to me, Sheila? Never overwhelm the plate … plenty of space between the meats … give them their own identity within the blend … use a bigger plate if necessary … that way each component gets its own say. Your palate is drawn to them as discrete culinary entities, it tackles them as distinctive flavours yet each pulls its weight towards the overall, unified ideal of the London grill sensation. It’s all the rage in Didsbury.’

  Sheila’s head had spun as she tried to process these rapid bullets of information. She’d left the Bishops bewildered, but with a beginner’s grasp of the rudiments of London grilling nonetheless, and in truth, she liked the sound of it. She brought out the biggest plates they had – only ever used for Christmas dinner previously, but whose appearance was welcomed by Robbie for the dual stroke of deriving extra value for money from their additional use, while simultaneously allowing more room for more meat. She elaborated by adding black pudding, pig’s livers and special jumbo frankfurter sausages sourced from Loke’s, the venerable butcher’s shop in Latchford village. She’d serve it all up with oven-hot cob bread and a fry-up of onions, mushrooms and diced potatoes.

  Robbie had beamed with real pleasure the first time she presented him with her new discovery. He loved it, and quickly made clear that this would now be a Sunday fixture. Indeed, the only thing he couldn’t quite come to terms with was the fancy new name she’d bestowed upon it. ‘London Grill!’ The nose had wrinkled up in snarling disapproval as he spat the words out. ‘Where d’you get that one from?’

  ‘Don’t be shooting the messenger,’ Sheila had protested, turning away from him and ducking back down to the grill to avoid the stab of his sarcastic gaze. She’d spooned up the remainder of the splitting, bubbling grilled tomatoes, sprinkled a little chopped parsley on top and brought them to his plate. She could tell from his face he was sorry. He hated hurting her. She’d taken a breath and given it another go. ‘That’s just what they’re calling it at the Savoy, that’s all.’ She looked up, melting big brown eyes pleading with him to come round, agree, see what everyone could see. ‘It’s all the rage in Didsbury.’

  A pregnant pause had followed, and with it she knew she’d lost. Far from joining in with the bright, mobile folk of Hayes Close, Robbie was slamming the shutters closed, blinking angrily, cross at his wife’s gullibility, her innocence, her willingness to like these people and give them credence and space in her life. Willing him to let it go, turn his attention to the succulent gammon and hissing sausage, she’d rattled the grill pan, turned over imaginary slices of bacon, her shoulder blades clenched together in anticipation of Robbie’s new attack.

  ‘That’s what they’re calling it where? Who’s they, She? Hey? When I can meet them? Cos they must be a pretty clever bunch, changing an old classic like mixed grill into … what d’you call it? Savoy Sizzle? Didsbury Dip? By God, Sheila …’

  And she had realised that, far from being intimidated by him it was she who was angry. She’d put time and love and plenty of planning into that meal and he hadn’t even taken a mouthful. She’d banged the grill door shut and, jutting out her jaw, she’d turned to him, ready to fight back. But she couldn’t. Seeing that wrinkled, furious nose and the reddening face she hadn’t so much feared him as pitied him. And without being able to compute it or articulate it, she’d been able to work out the nature of his contempt and, in a way, empathise with it. In simplest terms, she’d sensed her husband was scared. Sheila had raised a neat, puckish eyebrow and, as she did often now when she needed to combat his ire, she’d humoured him. ‘Call it what you want, darling. Whatever’s easiest to swallow.’

  Mixed grill, London grill, Fitzgerald fry-up – Vincent and Ellie came to relish the Sunday treat as much as their father (even if they did obliterate it with ketchup). But for her own part, Sheila might as well have been chomping on cardboard. Her palate still remained impervious to the charms of English cuisine. Its blandness, quite frankly, depressed her. But aside from fretting about her own palate, Sheila was starting to worry for her family’s health. Since she’d moved to this country she’d endured three fillings, two abscesses and at least four bouts of flu. Her hair was starting to lose its newspun glossy sheen and, if she left it unpampered for more than a day or two, her skin would dry as scaly as a snake’s. Back home in Malaysia she’d been taught to gauge her health from the residue on her tongue. Amah made them scrape regularly, in front of her: a transparent and slender deposit usually denoted good health, while anything too white or gluey saw you hauled off to the local bomoh. Since moving to England her tongue had told its own story, and she became more and more convinced that diet was to blame. Vincent’s entire childhood had been blighted by poor health – eczema, asthma, hay fever, colds, tonsillitis, glandular fever. Every bug and virus saw him poleaxed. She was no dietician, but she felt certain that a little chilli, a pinch of garlic and a sprinkling of ginger formed a better barrier to lurgies than chips, tinned sausage and those beans they had to have with everything, livid vermillion and tasting of nothing but sugar. But Robbie’s palate had become so frigid of late that he could now smoke out even the pinch of chilli she sneaked into the bolognaise.
He seemed determined to reject anything remotely exotic and, given that he’d even begun prodding at his plum tomatoes with suspicion last Sunday, exotic was a broad church indeed.

  The more Sheila had to tailor the family meal to suit Robbie, the more she craved the kick and rush of spice. She was like a heroin addict, publicly abasing herself to feed her cravings. And it was an addiction – the more spice she consumed, the more she needed to slake her hunger. There was no rationale to it, no pattern. A craving could overcome her as she was doing the dishes, walking Vincent to school, brushing her teeth. Her attacks were so invasive, so all-consuming that she carried around with her a bottle of West Indian pepper sauce. On the top deck of the bus, she’d dip into her bag, eyes darting around her, stealthily unscrew the cap, trace the rim of the bottle with her trembling finger and, head hung low for secrecy and out of the sheer shame of it, she’d bring the smarting fix to her already tingling lips. The high was instantaneous, supreme – and all too brief.

  Today, though – today she would try. She’d prepare the mother of all grills for the whole family, for today was a landmark day, a very big day indeed in their developing life as the Fitzgeralds of Hayes Close, Thelwall. Today, Robbie and Ellie would be coming home from town in a car. Careful not to spoil the surprise, she hadn’t pushed him too hard on the basic information. So long as it started first time, didn’t guzzle the petrol and wasn’t too dull in colour, Sheila was happy. A nice Vauxhall Nova would be close to her dream car or, if they could push the boat out, the big Citroën family saloon like the Gibbs’ would be perfect. This, as far as Sheila could discern, was the key prerequisite: it had to be a saloon car. To her heart and mind, that beguiling word summed up everything one could desire in a vehicle – space, comfort, reliability, economy. Soon they too would own a saloon. She could hardly stop giggling at the thought of it. Wait till Jean Bishop saw their new car – she wouldn’t be able to hide her envy!

  Two

  Robbie and Ellie returned from their walk, retrieved his bike from the shed and took from beneath the tool box a brown envelope packed with notes. Robbie was giddy as they set off towards town to purchase his first car. He’d passed his test easily, first time. Unlike his pals and fellow apprentices though, Robbie could never quite bring himself to pay good money for a boxish old banger; if he couldn’t afford to put some romance, some beauty into his choice of wheels he’d rather not bother at all. If he couldn’t have a Jag, he’d have a BSA, or a Triumph motorbike instead. And if he hadn’t made that choice, then he’d never have won Sheila’s heart. It was that simple, and he smiled at the thought.

  He’d spotted it on his way back from work last week, gleaming nobly, if rather tucked away in the furthest corner of the dealer’s forecourt. Surely it couldn’t be? Not for that price! He checked there were no predatory salesmen around and freewheeled over to the car – a beautiful, regal, pebble-grey XJ6. It was love at first sight, a magnificent, pristine, feline 1970 Jag with a sumptuous, red leather interior and a mahogany finish. He’d always fantasised that one day he’d find himself cruising through the Dingle Peninsular in the racing-green E-Type the royalties from his chart-topping record had afforded, roof down, the damp and peaty air thrashing through his tousled hair. But the longer the holidays between that particular daydream, the more remote his chances seemed of ever laying his hands on a Jag. He’d given up on it, more or less, and had never even considered the more practical XJ6 as a possible compromise – until he found himself gazing upon a pebble-grey Series One with red leather interior! She really was the answer to all his prayers. With her spacious interior, low-slung bumper and rare manual overdrive gearbox she was a family car as much as she was a wayfarer’s plaything. She was roomy, comfortable yet elegant, mature but with a hint of the family’s bohemian bloodline. And she was nine hundred quid – money he could just about lay his hands on.

  Ellie rode on her cushion, strapped to the crossbar with a tie. In spite of his general good cheer, Robbie pre-empted the stares from the straggle of passing cars with his customary glower. Drivers and passengers always reacted in the same way. Before they could check themselves, there was always that moment of stark, unstinting honesty as their aesthetic sensibilities were thrown into revolt. They could never quite decide what was confronting them – deformity, or exquisite beauty. The combination of Robbie’s shock-white skin and vermilion hair snagged the eyeline like a flare in the sky. It seized their attention for a split, instinctive second then let it go in a flash, too. But alongside his little girl, Robbie became a spectacle. The pair of them, side by side, held people transfixed. Next to her father, Ellie’s fudge skin seemed to darken deeper brown, and Robbie’s alabaster face blanched yet whiter still. They clashed viciously, but their crude physicality soldered them together, as though they’d been hewn by the same sculptor and painted by different artists. Both had the same heart-shaped face, the same small upturned nose spattered with freckles. They shared the same wide mouth that tugged down at the corners and, at close quarters, Ellie had a weaker version of her father’s light-proof pupil that didn’t dilate. Caught in a certain light, it looked like a glass eye. Robbie and Ellie looked nothing like each other – yet they could only be father and daughter.

  From nowhere, the rain began to fall in large, single, heavy drops, bouncing off the road. Lorries thundered past, spraying cold water up Ellie’s dangling limbs. She tightened her grip around the handlebars, the colour draining from her rain-dappled knuckles. She could see the wet shanks of her father’s denim-clad thighs pummelling down on the slippery pedals, and the streaky slick tarmac made her feel sick as it raced by below. Another lorry thrashed past, ripping the air from her lungs. Passing windscreen wipers slashed water at her. People swerved and beeped, but still her dad ploughed on.

  The rain seemed to get warmer, splashing up and smattering their faces with the muddy fomentation of the overflowing gutters. They passed a scruffy sprawl of travellers’ caravans banked up by Victoria Park, and as the carriageway peeled left and the showroom loomed ahead, Robbie was once again dizzy with excitement. The thought that he’d be driving away in a Jaguar, a Jaguar for Christ’s sake, filled him with a boyish frisson. He eased up on the pedals, patted the wad of notes in his breast pocket and grinned into the grey scrim of Saturday morning traffic.

  But as they pulled into the showroom and he dragged out his foot to help slow the bike, he had his first misgivings. The accent for Sheila had been all about ‘modern’ and ‘new’ and right now she imagined he’d be at Howarth’s, haggling for a new Vauxhall. Since moving to Thelwall, Sheila began to pride herself on her possessions, cleverly managing the HP repayments on all their mod cons – the fridge, the washing machine, the Hoover, the Moulinex mixer. All Robbie had to do was hand her the money each week, and Sheila would make it last for ever.

  He’d done everything for Sheila and the kids since Orford days. He’d given up on his own dreams and taken every bit of overtime the factory could throw at him instead. He’d got them this house in an avenue he could never call home, full of people he could never like, and furnished it, top to bottom, with brand new furniture and brand new ‘things’. He’d even bunged Sheila money for new clothes and he’d bitten back his dismay when she’d come back from her shopping spree with only a pair of Gloria Vanderbilt jeans to show for the fifty quid he’d coughed up. Surely, surely she wouldn’t begrudge him this one thing? Once she saw this beauty, once she came to understand the prestige of owning a Jag of whatever age, she’d be as bowled over as him, would she not? And if he didn’t indulge himself in this passion, then what would be the point of it all? Where would be the sense in the six, often seven shifts he did each week? It would just be purgatory. He was buying himself a Jag. End of story.

  ‘Amah! Amah!’ Vincent ran into the kitchen, beaming. ‘They’re back!’

  A reflexive panic that made her pull out the grill pan hurriedly and begin laying out slices of gammon and steak gave way to a splinter of excitement. ‘Have t
hey got it?’ she said.

  Vincent craned his neck at the window. Sheila peered around him. There was no new car, just Robbie and Ellie, dismounting from his bike. An instinctive torrent of anger surged through her at the sight of their soaked and filthy clothes, but was extinguished as Ellie burst in and flung herself into her mother’s arms. ‘We’ve got a new car!’ she shouted, wriggling free and running over to Vincent.

  Sheila looked to Robbie. ‘So?’

  ‘Monday,’ said Robbie. ‘Pick it up Monday.’

  His lips were pressed in a thin, indecipherable smile. She knew her husband. He was holding back. Something was wrong here. She barely dared ask. Refusing to believe anything bad could have come of this, she forced her most radiant smile and put her arms around him. ‘Come on! Tell me about it. Tell me all about our new car!’

  Again he flashed the humbled grin and shrugged. ‘What’s to say? It’s …’ Suddenly his eyelids began to flicker, his face twitched. Sheila went to him, but he turned and went back out, wheeling his bike round to the shed. Sheila dropped to a crouch and took Ellie’s face in her hands.

  ‘Ellie? Did something bad happen?’

  Something very bad had happened. Even now, hours after the shattering realisation that the showroom manager had thought that, Robbie couldn’t stop thinking about it, every nuance of it, from that first moment they’d freewheeled into the garage forecourt. The cloudburst had ended and in its place the sun came out again, high and strong. As Robbie dismounted, gently lifting his excitable daughter to the floor, steam was starting to rise from the gleaming roofs and bonnets of all the pristine sports cars on display. He wheeled his bike towards reception, Ellie in tow. From behind the big display window, two eyes locked on Robbie. He felt it, somehow, felt the presence and squinted through the misty haze to see who was there. The sun glanced off the glittering window, blinding Robbie for a second, and then the manager, or at least someone in a suit, was standing in front of him. Robbie leant his bike as gently as possible against the window then, thinking better of it, laid it flat down on the floor.