Tramp Life

by Tony Telford

  ‘Go on, Hook,’ said Miri.

  ‘Well, she was a very nice lady. Very s-sensitive, you know. Liked poetry and n-n-nature and trees and flowers. And butterflies. She l-loved butterflies. But she wouldn’t catch them, oh no. She c-c-couldn’t understand why people had to pin them to a board.’ He looked at the sky, which had gone all purple now. ‘Well, anyway, she got married to a chap from up n-north somewhere. They were so happy. They were always talking about having children. But then she got sick. I mean really sick. And the n-next thing we knew, she was gone. Dead. She was only thirty-seven.’ He poured more coffee from a tall flask and took a few sips. ‘That was q-quite a time. None of us could believe it, really. Poor Uncle Martin never got over it. Anyway, after she died they f-found a p-p-piece of paper in her coat pocket. She’d written something on it. All it said was, “This w-world is t-too tough for me.” They were the exact words. But I don’t know why I started telling you all that.’

  He drank the rest of his coffee and no one said anything for a while.

  ‘What does that mean, though?’ said Draemon. ‘What does it mean, “this world’s too tough”? Does it mean the world how it’s always been—or how it is, here and now? Big difference, innit? Know what I’m sayin’?’

  ‘Some people don’t seem to realize there is a difference,’ said Miri. ‘They think the way things are now is how they have to be.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Draemon. ‘That’s exactly it. They see all this shit goin’ on—destroyin’ the planet and wipin’ out whole species an’ remote-control killin’ and all the rest of it—an’ they think that’s just how it is, man, so why fight it.’

  ‘Have you heard,’ said Matty. ‘They say there’s gonna be another war in the Middle East.’

  Jean had had enough. ‘Can we change the subject now, please? I mean, what’s the point of talking about it, anyway? Words can’t change anything.’

  Everyone fell silent. It was nearly dark now. The city traffic sounded like the sea. I was still thinking about what Draemon had said—about how things don’t have to be the way they are. Suddenly I found myself remembering a scene from my childhood. It came back to me so clearly. I was playing by myself in a patch of waste ground, throwing my super-bouncy rubber ball against a wall and trying to catch it as it shot off this way and that. It must have been nearly dinnertime. The bricks were glowing orange in the low sunlight and the chilly air was making my bare arms tingle. I could hear the sound of the traffic on the street, and somewhere, yes, somewhere a radio was playing. As I remembered the scene, I could still hear that radio. I can hear it now, actually. All the phoney adverts, just the same as they ever were.

  Someone put their arm through mine. It was Miri. ‘Are you cold? I’m perished.’

  ‘Come on, let’s go home,’ said Matty.

  All the way back to the house Miri and I talked about music. Aretha, Zeppelin, Joni, Beethoven, Robert Johnson, Kanye, Amy, Tom Waits, Arvo Pärt, Jack White, Plan B, Sonny Boy Williamson, The Temptations, Royal Blood… We seemed to like so many of the same people. But then she started telling me about all these singers and musicians I’d never heard of, like Fairuz and Jessie Fuller and Trees and the Incredible String Band and Fanny Mendelssohn and John Gomm. She started learning piano when she was five.

  ‘My parents had this idea I was some kind of child prodigy. It was so ridiculous. I mean, I had talent, but I wasn’t a genius or anything.’ She had to practise for at least three hours every day. ‘I put up with it for years, but in the end I just couldn’t handle it anymore. I said to Dad I wouldn’t touch that keyboard even if he tied me to the stool. He was so angry. I don’t think he ever forgave me, actually.’ It was just as bad when she got into her teens and started listening to different kinds of music. ‘Dad hates any kind of music with a drumbeat. You know, rap and punk and whatever. God, you should have heard it the day he found me listening to The Slim Shady LP. He went bananas. “Would you eat rubbish from the footpath? No! So why are you putting rubbish into your ears?” Honestly, I thought I’d never hear the end of it. “You threw away your talent, and now you’re filling your head with filth!” It went on like that for days. In the end I wasn’t allowed to listen to anything except classical.’

  ‘What, he actually banned you?’

  ‘Yeah.’ She laughed. ‘He said he wouldn’t have that rubbish being played in his house. But that was fine. I just listened out in the shed. I made all sorts of musical discoveries in our old shed. But you know, I was still listening to lots of classical. It was crazy. I’d listen to Bach on Dad’s turntable in the lounge, and then I’d creep out and listen to Royal Blood or something in the shed. He must’ve known what I was doing, though.’

  ‘I like Royal Blood.’

  ‘You’d probably like Soundgarden, then.’

  ‘And who was that Sufi singer you mentioned?’

  ‘Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.’

  ‘And who does that “Four Women” song?’

  8

  One morning about a week after I arrived at Blackbird House, I woke early from a deep, dreamless sleep and lay for ages watching the window-shaped square of sunlight slide down the wall. Apart from my mattress and the old blanket where Boo still lay fast asleep, the big, high-ceilinged room was completely bare. But I didn’t mind. I just felt lucky to have a roof over my head, especially now winter was coming on. There was no gas or electricity, so, apart from the Octagon Room with its huge fireplace, the old house was getting pretty cold at night. But at least we had water. After a few weeks of sleeping rough, it was heaven being able to have a wash every morning, even if the water sometimes had tiny bits of ice floating in it.

  The square of sunshine narrowed to a diamond, then a spear. Somewhere in the distance a thrush kept going over the same two or three songs. Turdus philomelos—that was it. But why was he still around at this time of year? I dozed for a while, then woke to the smell of new bread. Hooky and the others had been restoring the kitchen, and just last night they’d got the old oven going for the first time. Hooky was really chuffed now he could do some baking. They’d all done a lot of work on the place, actually—cleaning, painting, even repairing broken windows.

  At breakfast, Miri showed us some vouchers she’d found in a newspaper. They were for free lunches at a café in the Arcades, a new shopping centre on the other side of town. ‘Why don’t we go there for lunch,’ she said. ‘We’re not doing anything else today, are we?’

  ‘They won’t be too happy seeing the likes of us,’ said Matty.

  ‘Hard lines,’ said Draemon. ‘We’re talking about free food here, man.’

  After breakfast I told the others I’d meet them at the café at lunchtime. Then I headed off with Boo for a long walk across town to the shopping centre.

  The Arcades turned out to be one of those new mega complexes, or whatever you call them, with hundreds of posh shops and cinemas and marble columns and fake gold handrails and all the rest of it. Waiting for the others outside the café, I felt like a shrimp at the bottom of a giant fish tank. On each side of me, the tiers of shops rose towards the glass roof sparkling in the sun high above my head. Opposite me, the biggest video screen I’d ever seen was showing burgers babies gadgets warplanes meerkats pop stars robots puppies spaceships laptops beaches mobiles footballs speedboats watches—something different about every quarter of a second. Just watching it made me feel a bit unhinged.

  Boo kept glancing up at me anxiously. Probably didn’t like all the noise. Strangely, no one took the least bit of notice of her, not even the children. I watched them all as they passed. Dads in football shirts and camouflage gear, tired-looking mums in black leggings, skinny young guys in hoodies and baggy jeans, teenage girls with pink phones, fat kids stuffing their faces with crisps, businesswomen with orange skin and jaws like piranhas. Nobody’s supposed to have any money these days, but the place was heaving.

  A big man approached in flip-flops and an Hawaiian shirt. He looked like a middle-aged Elvis, sunglasses
pushed back over greasy black hair. He was talking in a loud voice on his phone. ‘Yeah, mate, I’ll get back to yer.’ He touched the screen and instantly made another call. ‘Lenny. Howdyer go? What? Ah, for cryin’…I told ’er to ring me when she—what? Come again?’ A few steps behind him there was a little girl, six or seven, very pale and thin, with wispy blonde hair and huge dark eyes that looked at everything with wonder. She had a toy aardvark or something, a tatty old thing with big ears and a pointy nose that she was dragging along by one leg. I watched them as they passed on down the mall, the big guy talking on his mobile and the little figure wandering along in his wake.

  Then an old man came by in a white mac and a blue beret. He looked like a retired colonel, with a brown crinkly face, basset-hound eyes and a neat silver moustache. He was just strolling along nice and easy, hands behind his back, smiling at everybody, except that underneath the mac he was still wearing his stripey pyjamas and plum-coloured slippers. It’s amazing what you can see when you stop and watch the world go by.

  Then I heard someone shouting, and there was Draemon, striding towards me in his orange boiler-suit just ahead of the others. ‘Here they are!’ he hollered. ‘Here they are!’

  Everyone was looking to see what was going on, and Hook Morton had gone bright red. ‘Draemon, you’re causing a disturbance.’

  ‘In a place like this,’ said Draemon, ‘anything would be a disturbance. Here they are!’

  Miri and Jean looked so nice that morning. Jean was wearing a gorgeous cream-coloured woolly coat, and she had all these little yellow flowers in her hair. Miri was wearing her favourite black trilby, purple trousers and the lovely black velvet jacket that she’d found in a charity shop. Behind them came Matty, very lean and pale, his cap pushed back by his wild curly hair. I saw quite a few girls looking at him, but he didn’t seem to notice them at all.

  ‘Pearly!’ Jean ran over and gave me a hug. ‘Oh, look at Boo, she’s going mental!’ It was true. You’d think she’d known them all her life.

  Miri asked if I’d seen the robot mannequin in one of the shop windows.

  ‘God, it’s so creepy,’ said Jean. ‘I thought it was a real person at first.’

  ‘So is it actually moving around?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s walking up and down, just like a fashion model.’ Miri mimed the cat-like movements.

  ‘And it looks so serious,’ said Jean. ‘Why don’t they make it smile?’

  ‘That would be even more creepy,’ said Miri.

  The whole time we chatted, Draemon just stood there glowering at the passing shoppers.

  ‘Hey, Drae,’ said Matty. ‘You up for Slow-mo?’

  ‘Let’s do it, man.’

  ‘What about my free lunch?’ protested Jean.

  ‘Lunch can wait.’

  Miri looked at me a bit sheepishly. ‘Do you want to do Slow-mo?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Just watch,’ said Matty. ‘Come on, Hook. You’re not getting out of it this time.’

  Then the five of them got into a line and started walking very slowly down the mall. I mean very slowly. Like astronauts on the moon, or like a bunch of statues that had just escaped from their pedestals. I joined the back of the line and tried to follow the super-slow rhythm. It felt really weird at first, like dancing underwater or swimming in air. Poor Boo didn’t know what to make of it. She kept running up and down the line in a complete panic. Lots of people were stopping to have a look. Some were even taking pictures. ‘Look at these idiots,’ I heard one man say. ‘Must be council workers,’ replied his friend.

  At one point, as we inched our way down the mall, I glanced round at all the shops and lights and people, and it felt like I was seeing it all for the first time. Why’s everyone in such a hurry, I thought. Hurry, hurry, hurry. It was like they were all trapped inside a Chaplin film.

  Suddenly a woman with a shopping trolley tried to cut between Hooky and me. Hook yelped with pain as the trolley caught his heel. The woman glared at me. ‘Will you please let me through!’ Her painted face was like a tribal mask.

  Next moment, a security guard was standing right in our path. He was dressed a bit like a soldier. He even had a gun in his holster.

  ‘Can you stop that, please,’ he said.

  ‘Stop what?’ asked Matty.

  The guard twitched a smile. ‘Whatever you’re doing.’

  ‘We’re just walking,’ said Jean. ‘Walking slowly.’

  ‘You’re causing a disturbance,’ said the guard. ‘Either stop it or you’ll be removed.’

  Draemon lifted his huge head. ‘Ain’t you heard this is a free country, man?’

  The guard eyed him warily. ‘This is private property in here, buddy. People’ve got the right to go about their business. That’s freedom, too. Anyway,’ he nodded towards Boo. ‘What’s that dog doing in here? Can’t you read the signs?’

  I watched him as he spoke into a microphone on his collar. He was a short, stocky man with a square face and dead eyes. ‘Okay,’ he said to us. ‘I’ll have to ask you to leave the centre.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Miri, astonished. ‘We’ve stopped walking slowly now.’

  He wasn’t interested. ‘I’ll give you two minutes.’

  Draemon took a step towards him, his eyes burning, but Matty put a hand on Drae’s shoulder. ‘Time to go, Drae.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jean in a loud cheerful voice. ‘That’s enough slow walking for today.’

  The guard stood with his arms crossed and watched us all the way to the doors. Looking round, I realized lots of other people were watching us, too. It was like we were criminals or something. Near the doors there was a woman holding a toddler. As our eyes met I shrugged and smiled ruefully, but she just stared at me without expression.

  None of us said another word while we were still in that place. But as soon as we got through those glass doors, we took one look at each other and the next minute we were all running round and shouting and carrying on like we’d escaped from the state penitentiary or something. Matty jumped on Hook Morton’s back and they galloped off across the car park. Draemon picked up an orange traffic cone and pulled it down over his eyes and started doing this kind of funky Egyptian turkey dance. Jean and Miri and I started waltzing round, singing ‘The Blue Danube’ at the top of our lungs. ‘Da-doo-doo Dah-dah, BAP-BAP! BAP-BAP! Da-doo-doo, Dah-Dah, BAP-BAP! BAP-BAP!’ Then poor Hook came staggering back with Matty still clinging to him like an evil monkey. ‘Dance, Hooky, goddamn you!’ shrieked Matty. But when Hooky tried to dance, his shoe got caught in the hem of his trousers and he was hopping all over the place like a kangaroo in a bouncy castle. God knows how he didn’t fall over.

  Then Draemon, still wearing the traffic cone, had the brilliant idea of doing his turkey dance on the bonnet of some one’s big white car. At that very moment, the owner, a little bald guy in a bomber jacket, came out of the shopping centre. He stared at Draemon as if he thought he was dreaming. Then he started going absolutely bananas, screaming and swearing and waving his arms around like he was having a fit. The rest of us scattered, leaving Draemon to his fate. Eventually we met up again down the other end of the car park, but there was no sign of Draemon. It was another five minutes before he strolled up, calm as you like, still wearing the traffic cone.

  ‘What happened, Drae?’

  ‘No worries, man,’ said Draemon. ‘It’s all sorted.’

  ‘But what happened? What did you do?’

  ‘We just had a bit of a talk, man. Then I gave ’im a kiss.’

  ‘You what?’

  Draemon seemed surprised at our reaction. ‘I just gave ’im a kiss, man. He calmed down after that.’

  As we were walking across the car park, I noticed some graffiti on a concrete wall—‘Let the Chagos Islanders go home.’

  ‘Who are the Chagos Islanders?’ I asked Miri

  She just looked at me.

  ‘So much for our free lunch,’ said Matty, kicking an empty can along the gutter.<
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  ‘Don’t mention lunch,’ said Jean. ‘I’m famished. Why don’t we catch the bus ’ome for once?’

  ‘You don’t need a bus, Jeannie,’ said Draemon. ‘You got the Drae Express.’ Before Jean could escape, he scooped her up and dumped her into a shopping trolley. Then they were off, pelting down a long ramp with Jean screaming at the top of her lungs and the rest of us racing along behind them. At the bottom the ramp came out onto a big huge road jammed with traffic going nowhere. Draemon was already halfway across the road, with Jean still in the trolley. As he wove between the vehicles he was doing a sort of James Brown routine, hunching his shoulders and poking out his neck and doing little side-kicks and twirls. ‘Ooo, ooo, ooo, babeeeee—huhl—you’ll never make me cry.’ One driver gave an angry blast on his horn. ‘Okay, man,’ bellowed Draemon. ‘Keep your nappy on.’

  ‘You’re gonna get me killed one of these days, Draemon,’ shouted Jean. But then she took one of the flowers from her hair and wrapped its stalk round someone’s aerial.

  After we crossed the main road we cut down a quieter street with enormous houses and gardens the size of football pitches. The lawns were so perfect they looked like billiard tables, and the shrubs were too neat to be real.

  ‘No trees,’ said Miri, slipping her arm through mine. ‘If I had a garden like that I’d fill it with trees.’

  ‘Me too. Why do some people hate trees?’

  We turned into another street with boutiques and wine bars and a little chapel that had been converted into an art gallery. Halfway down there was a swanky restaurant with just one customer, a suntanned man in a light grey suit, sitting at a table by the window. A waiter stood behind him like a prison guard. As we passed, Jean waved to them from her trolley, but they didn’t seem to notice. Both of them were so still they could almost have been wax dummies.

  ‘Hang on,’ said Drae. He wheeled the trolley up to the window and tapped on the glass. ‘Hey, man, are you okay in there?’ The man in the grey suit stared blankly at him for a second or two, then calmly turned away, for all the world as if Drae and the rest of us didn’t really exist.