Once Upon a Time in England

by Helen Walsh

  The front door was wide open. Vincent was sitting on the bottom stair. He was holding a sheet of paper in front of him. She could see his eyes behind his spectacles, blurred with tears. He lowered the letter and she could have cried. It was the most beautiful, rapturous smile she’d ever seen. The only time she’d seen her boy succumb to joy like that, ever.

  Sheila made a decision not to probe Vincent about the Cohen twins, at least not till Christmas was out of the way. The three of them told Robbie his good news over tea. It zapped the yellow drain of last night’s hangover from his face. He was up and out of his seat, swooping on Vincent and lifting him out of his seat. Vincent looked as stunned as his mother. Checking himself, Robbie sat down and checked his delight, before it broke free again and thrashed back, redoubled. He leant across the table, bombarded Vincent with questions, then demanded he get his story and read it out to them. Vincent shot a slow sheepish glance towards his mother. ‘I didn’t have time to copy it out. We’ll have to wait until the anthology comes out, I suppose.’

  Robbie sat back, shaking his head, beaming wildly. ‘Did you do what I said though, lad? Did you write from your heart? Did you write what you know?’

  Vincent nodded self-consciously, his cheeks flaming hot beneath his chocolate hide. Sheila reached over and clutched her husband’s wrist, eyeing him affectionately. The news had drawn a temporary armistice, thawed all bitterness between them. Vincent didn’t know quite where to look. He averted the mawkish green burn of his father’s eyes, unable to return the sheer unconditional blaze of approval.

  ‘So. Does this mean I can have contacts now?’

  On the toilet, the next morning before he left for work, Sheila heard Robbie talking to himself.

  ‘Our Vincent, hey? Would you fucking believe it!’

  The phone rang and Ellie snatched it up without a second’s thought. ‘It’s for you, Deenius,’ she trilled.

  Vincent came to the phone, the corners of his mouth tugged down, eyes still disbelieving. ‘What do they want?’

  Ellie hung by his side, trying to listen in. Vincent mumbled, said ‘mmmm’ once or twice. He broke off, clamped his hand over the receiver and hissed, ‘Mum, it’s the Warrington Guardian!’

  So that was that. Perhaps even more than her husband, Sheila equated the celebrity with achievement – and to her, the Warrington Guardian was The Limelight. Vincent flitted round the house, punching the air, doing little robotic dances on the spot, but his excitement quickly gave way to a sartorial quandary. He raked through his wardrobe, desperate, demented. He yelled down to his mother in the kitchen, ‘Can somebody please help me? I’m having a breakdown up here!’

  When she went up he was flinging different interpretations of the same black jeans/black T-shirt combo onto his bed. ‘I mean, God! How’s a writer s’posed to look?’

  Sheila laughed and pulled him in close to her bosom. She kissed his head. She had a strong sense that whatever had happened in the playground yesterday was already behind him. Not for her though – as difficult as it was, come New Year, she was going to have to pick up that phone and speak with Liza. ‘Oh, Vincent! Just go as you.’

  That seemed to find accord with him. He looked at himself in the mirror and smiled, liking what he saw.

  Twenty-three

  Robbie parked round the corner from the Irish Club and legged it to the paper shop. What a day. What a fucking weird, topsy-turvy day. Summoned to see Cohen. Phoney handshakes and man-to-man stuff and see-how-it-is-for-me stuff, and ‘best all round, in the circumstances’ stuff. But the bottom line was he’d been sacked – and he couldn’t feel better about it. All that shit about downsizing and facing up to economic realities – they’d all seen it coming months ago. Years, really. It was just a matter of hanging on in there for the pay-off, and he had to admit it was generous. Whether he and Sheila made a go of it or not was anybody’s call. More and more, he fancied she was better off without him – and that was when he was sober, when he was thinking straight; thinking for her and the kids, not for himself. They’d just have to see what happened. For now, he had just under two grand in cash in his pocket. He’d be locking all but a tenner in the boot of the car, buying the Warrington Guardian and giving himself an entire selfish night in the Irish Club to salute his gifted son, and be saluted for him.

  Boy, was he going to toast the little weirdo! He felt giddy as he snatched a sly glimpse of the Guardian. He almost crumbled as he handed over his twenty pence to the timid Asian shopkeeper, every fibre of his hand quivering with the onslaught of pride and pure emotion that surged through him. There it was, blazing from the masthead, Vincent’s mugshot – the front frigging page! He could only guess what they were saying about the little genius. He could recognise his son’s name but that was about all, but there were plenty of fucking exclamation marks, that was for sure. He grabbed the newsagent by his slender brown wrist. ‘See him, yeah? That’s my lad, that.’ His eyes welled up as he jabbed a finger at Vincent’s headline. ‘He’s one of you, an’ all!’

  He tucked the paper firmly underneath his arm, and broke into a trot as he fine-tuned his countdown to the big moment. What he was going to do was roll himself a smoke, order himself a pint of Guinness and a Tullimore Dew chaser, then perch at the far end of the bar and take his time over it. He wasn’t going to go tearing through the paper, looking for Vincent’s spread – he’d let it find him. He was going to turn the pages serenely, from front to back, in chronological order – just sit back and wait for his lad to jump out and surprise him – and then he was going to get Helen to read it out to the room. A delicious thought sidled up to him, winking: Cohen’d be reading this now. That’d show the conceited little cunt. He could sack him if he wanted. He could put him on the dole, but he’d never keep him down for long, because Robbie had what his son had, in buckets. Raw talent. He was going to take a few days off, then it was his turn. Robbie Fitzgerald – back with a bang.

  He took his seat at the bar and reflected on how much he and his bookish son had in common. It was round about Vincent’s age that he himself had composed his first song. Unable to transcribe the words onto paper, he’d had to memorise it. He smiled to himself and took a tender sip of his malt as he recalled it, word for word. He raised his glass and toasted himself in the mirror. Who would have thought it, though – him, their Vincent, following in his old man’s footsteps? How often did you get that, hey? Robert and Vincent Fitzgerald. He could reach out to his boy now – guide him along the way. As things stood, he, Robbie Fitzgerald, the great wayfarer, wrote from the heart about his life’s experiences. Vincent, it seemed, wrote to experience them.

  ‘What’s with you, then?’ Helen asked, eyebrows raised in suspicion. He stood there beaming back at her like a simpleton.

  ‘Ah, nowt. Everything and nothing. Do you know?’

  ‘Christ sakes, Fitz! Spill the beans before you give yourself a hernia!’

  Robbie needed little encouragement. He could hold back no longer. Picking up the newspaper, he slapped it down in front of her and pointed to the small picture on the masthead. ‘That’s our Vincent, that. Me lad.’

  Helen snatched up the paper and turned it round to face her. ‘“Local lad wins prestigious …” What? That’s your Vincent? Christ, Robbie. Your lad a writer, an’all! You kept that one quiet didn’t you?’

  Robbie grinned back at her. She’d turned to the middle of the paper, where the main story was laid out. There was already a throng of heads bobbing over Robbie’s shoulder.

  ‘What was that,’ Elen? A writer? Your lad is it, Robbie?’

  Helen found the page and started reading. ‘“Eleven-year-old Vincent Fitzgerald …”’

  Robbie could scarcely contain himself. ‘Come on then,’ Elen! Loud and clear, will you! I’m frigging dying here …’

  She was staring blankly into the paper. All the excitement had bled from her face. She turned to Robbie, perplexed.

  ‘What’s up? What’s the face for?’ Heart swelling
up with some grim, queasy foreboding, he snatched the paper out of her hands. The gaggle of men lapping round him drew in closer for a better look. They were onto it before he was.

  ‘Jesus Christ! Lad’s wearing make-up!’

  Robbie felt his face explode beneath the billows of laughter that blew around him. It hadn’t been visible before, but blown up to half the page, it became apparent. Everything around him faded out. His sole focus of attention was taken up by the boy staring back at him – the wedge of kohl underlining each eye, the hint of lip gloss on his smile and, worst of all, the slicked-down nancy boy’s fringe. He slapped the paper shut, glowered the company to silence and downed the remnants of his malt. He took his Guinness into the snug and tucked himself up in a corner with his back to the bar. Occasional chuckles rang through from the bar beyond. He supped greedily at his pint, trying to mollify the hurt and anger that was starting to devour him. He opened the paper up again, this time sitting back and letting the full impact sear right through him. Helen’s broad hips nudged the brim of his table. She placed a good measure of Talisker down in front of him and signalled with her smile – it was on the house. Robbie snapped the paper shut. He couldn’t bring himself to look up and thank her. She put a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘He’s just a kid, Robbie. Just a lad who’s into his music, hey? Don’t tell me you never dressed up like Bowie when you was a teenager?’

  ‘I was never into Bowie,’ Robbie mumbled.

  ‘OK. Elvis then. Jim Morrison. You name ’em. They all wore eyeliner …’

  But Robbie was on a mission. He wanted to suffer now, and he was willing to spare himself nothing. ‘Bit bevvied,’ Elen love. Will you read it us? Haven’t got me gigs with me.’

  She eyed him carefully. ‘You sure, Rob?’

  ‘Aye. Let’s have it.’

  He left his Guinness on the table. He left the paper, too. Head throbbing and ears ringing – one long, drilling, high-pitched, underwater note – he surged out into the night, dizzy. He turned into the side street where his car was parked and staggered right past it. He carried on walking and walking, choking up with hurt and confusion.

  It was past eleven when he finally came to. He found himself in town, sat on one of the benches in the Golden Square, up by the little enclave of daytime drinkers’ pubs. Men had started stumbling out into the night, momentarily sobered by the slap of cold. Robbie pulled his own coat more tightly around him. He was sober now. His head was clear. And the clarity of his thoughts only made things worse. Perhaps if his son’s writing had not been so beautiful, the truths it yielded up would have been easier to deny. But Vincent’s words had reached inside him and taken a grip of his soul and squeezed the life out of him. His writing was straight from the heart all right – it was straight from the guts. Robbie had got it so wrong about his son being a writer who lived through his imagination; this corrosive, lyrical prose was grounded in a terrible, lived experience. He wrote and told it exactly how it was. Raw. Untrammelled. Unsparing. He wrote without thinking. The fury of his pen was driven on by what he knew. What he’d seen.

  He’d disguised their names, called them the Potters. He’d even made him, Mr Potter, a white-collar worker in a pale attempt at throwing him off the scent. But this imaginary family could only be them. The Fitzgeralds. Vincent was the all-seeing eye, and he had seen everything. That night. Vincent was five. He had to have seen it. The pregnant mother, attacked in her own home by a gang of thugs in boots and jackets which, the way he described them, could only be harrington jackets, the uniform of the racist boot boys that patrolled the estate.

  Robbie curled up on the bench and gave way to the anguish in his heart. He lay back and looked up at the winter stars and bawled out loud like a baby. He opened up his coat to the freeze and wished for the night to slay him dead, to still his heart before he woke. There was no hope. There was nothing left for him.

  Part Three

  Thelwall, Warrington, 1989

  One

  It’s not going to work. From the moment Sheila steps inside the crammed, chaotic bar she knows she won’t be staying long. This isn’t her. She shouldn’t have come.

  In the run-up to Christmas she’s come close to caving a few times, and joining the girls on the work nights out. Last time though, Enid, one of her dearest patients, took a turn for the worse and, as ever, it was Sheila they called first. But they got paid yesterday, and this time there’s been no getting out of it. Dana the receptionist, all cleavage and mascara, had given her one of those piercing looks and sighed, ‘I don’t know, She. It’s like you’re punishing yourself, hiding away there all by yourself. Don’t you want to meet no one?’

  Harmless as the question was meant to be, it had taken Sheila aback. It struck right to the core of her situation. What did she want? Was she punishing herself? Did she blame herself on some subliminal level for pushing Robbie away? In the most basic sense she knew she hadn’t adapted herself to his needs. She knew that, and God how she lamented it sometimes. But what did he expect? What could anyone expect? She’d been raped, for God’s sake. Did she want to try again? Don’t know. Don’t want to think about it. Did she want to meet anyone? Did she? Well, yes, actually. Maybe. Not romance, necessarily, but … she wasn’t sure what. A friend. Someone to talk to, spend time with. She made herself busy with her patients, and that’s why they all adored her so – but they were men and women in their dotage, keener to talk than to listen. More and more, she wanted a pal to confide in, especially now her weekends were so lonely. She was happy Ellie had found nice friends at last, friends from nice families; and she had to be pleased her cosy Saturday nights in with Ellie and a takeaway had, inevitably, been passed over for sleepovers at Jemma’s and Sara’s. But she certainly didn’t want to spend her weekends running Ellie here and there for ever more, waiting for her to phone for a lift home, waiting for Vincent to get in, waiting, waiting.

  And so rather than dart back behind the usual excuses and camouflage, Sheila had found herself smiling back at the brassy receptionist and saying, ‘OK, then. You’re on. Where we going?’

  From what she’d gleaned over the two and a bit years she’d worked at Blackbrook Clinic, the girls enjoyed a good blast on their nights out. One or two of them weren’t too choosy about the men they accepted – the wretches who’d call in at work were testimony to that. By and large, they went out, ten or twelve of them, got smashed, had a dance and a sing-song and, depending on who was left standing, they’d round it all off with a curry. It all sounded innocent enough, actually, just what she was looking for – some fun. They were all big drinkers and Sheila wasn’t completely green: she knew they’d find it funny trying to get her loaded. Her first Christmas at Blackbrook – she’d only been there a month and didn’t feel confident putting her foot down – she’d been woefully sick on Martinis. But so long as she stuck to spritzers this time, she’d be fine. As she got herself ready that night, paying particular attention to her still-devastating eyes and brushing her black mane to a glossy sheet, she was childishly excited about dancing again. With Robbie, they’d never gone out into town at all – too many ‘head the balls’, he always said. She’d been once or twice when she first started at Warrington General all those years ago but, other than that, it had been so long ago.

  Vincent hears the shrill, braying laughter around the corner, and crosses the road. It’s the laughter of a gang of women out on the town, humiliating themselves, throwing down their challenge, their right to party. He keeps his head down and walks quickly in the shadows. It is a mistake, this. Breaking his own rules, coming into town, risking the wrath of strangers – pure stupidity on his part. He’s asking for it. If he gets there in one piece, he’ll steady his nerves with a double, then he’ll be off, and he won’t be back. Fuck the band. All the bands at the Barley Mow are shit. Yet Kenny said he’d be there – and for Kenny, he will risk Warrington on a Friday night.

  It was a mistake coming here. For Sheila, this place is simply terr
ifying. It’s full of kids. Some of them are not much older than Ellie and they’re out of it, up on the tables, up on the bar, their faces gone, their eyes screwed up, their arms in the air. They’re hardly wearing anything at all. Some of the girls have great legs and she can appreciate they want to display them – but those shorts they’re wearing! They’re barely more than lycra knickers, and in this weather! Two girls are leaning back against either side of the big central pillar and there are three, four, five boys molesting them. The girls are letting them. There’s no doubt about it, the girls are willing it, gyrating and writhing as hands disappear down their pants, down their tops. Everybody’s grinning, everybody’s having a time of it. This isn’t her.

  She looks around. Most of the girls from work are by the door, talking to the two bald bouncers. They seem to look up to these men, seem to think they’re important. Robbie never had anything good to say about doormen – ‘plastic gangsters’, he called them – but Robbie, if she’s honest, didn’t really like anybody. She smiles at the memory, but it’s gone in an instant.

  Dana has obviously forgotten her. She went to the bar and hasn’t come back. She might only have been gone minutes, but it feels like an hour. She is totally alone here, and she wants out. The music threatens her. Lately Ellie has begun banging out this selfsame demonic throb from the cloisters of her bedroom, and it drives Sheila to distraction. It’s not that she doesn’t want Ellie finding her own identity, but this stuff just isn’t music! It’s one repetitive driving disco track – no words, no tune, just a weird, synthetic drone. She would never have agreed to come if she’d known the bar played this kind of trash. Dana told her they all got up and danced to Abba and the Bee Gees, all the old Motown classics, but there’s none of that. She looks around now, starting to panic. Every single person is white. And here, at night, at play, it frightens her.