by Gerald Wixey
My old man stared at Jack and then said what he always said in moments like this. ‘Fucking hell.’
‘His wife’s just got home with the new baby as well.’
‘Fu…’ Dad spotted me, pointed a gnarled finger at the dog, gestured with his great block of a head in the direction of the fields. ‘Off you go, then. The dog’s desperate.’
I said, ‘Is someone dead?’
With all these questions Jack sighed and said, ‘Yes.’
‘I heard something…’
But they had both turned away from me. Membership into the exclusive club called ‘the adult world’ took years to achieve and I wasn’t even close. I shrugged and whistled the dog, all the time wondering if the mechanic saw the bus’s descent onto his unprotected skull. He must have done, why else would he scream like that? And surely the passer-by would have heard what was an extremely noisy death?
***
I did what I did every morning after breakfast, traipsed after my old man and wandered into the bar. Every morning, my old man had Shirley to himself and just like every other man in town, he fancied her. This never bothered mum, but it did me. Shirley and my old man were just too close, despite him being a short, bald man who shouted a lot. He made her laugh, a lot, and then there was Kenny. I’d only ever seen dad being nice to Shirley and Kenny, letting him read my comics in the bar and buying gin for her. I always believed that something was going on between them, despite apparently being the only person to make this connection. It had become as unshakeable as a commandment to a curate.
It was irrational, especially when most of his affection went on the bar. Maybe because the bar belonged to him and he depended on it, that made him cherish and adore it, his money tree. He became a sensitive shepherd with a nervous border collie. Dad was affable; delicate strokes and touches and encouraging asides. Most mornings I followed him in and watched as he cast his eyes protectively around his fiefdom, greeted by the smell of stale tobacco and the tang of beer so sour you could taste it. He took a deep breath – ah, marvellous.
Not smells to salute the senses after a long, relaxed breakfast, you’d think, but he just loved beer and fags. Everything about them, from the full ashtrays to the sticky rings of beer attached to most horizontal surfaces was a source of comfort to him. The windows in the bar faced east, and when he opened the heavy curtains on a bright morning, the corridors of brilliant morning sunshine streamed in, refracting violently as they crashed into the ash-laden atmosphere. My old man looked positively biblical, framed by heavy curtains and bright sunshine – a burning bush or a blasphemous Moses; viewing the Promised Land.
Every morning he unlocked the front door, stood back and looked at his watch. As the second hand reached top dead centre, the door opened and Shirley came in. Dad nodded at her and went back behind the bar, nominally to bottle up, but he spent most of the next hour watching his hard-working cleaner. His face expressed the same question every morning, the same one he asked his cronies every evening – before Ron came, in that is – do you think she wears a girdle?
Normally they’d banter away for a few minutes before the work began. But dad couldn’t have failed to notice her red eyes, the normally immaculately applied make-up missing. He never said anything and I made the assumption we’d all make – Ron had been up to his tricks again. Shirley dragged her cleaning equipment to the farthest corner of the bar and started polishing.
Dad said, ‘Have you heard?’
Shirley never answered, just polished. Dad never said anything else; he watched and soon the bar had lost its staleness, replaced by Mansion Polish and Shirley’s liberally applied perfume. Tables shined, the floor polished, the bar spotless, windows cleaned – good girl. Shirley got paid for three hours; dad thought that overgenerous, but then again, watching her arse while she polished probably compensated for mum’s benevolence.
I watched my old man watch Shirley as Wyn came through and joined him. I watched them watch Shirley instead. Identical from the behind, Wyn put his arm around dad and Shirley’s audience had doubled. Even from behind, I could see the palpable sag of his jaw. My old man, embarrassed by a sibling’s arm around his shoulders, twisted away and then noticed me.
Dad pointed at me. ‘What you doing here?’
As I turned to go, Shirley said, ‘Hang on, Stuart.’
She leant on her mop. I noticed her red eyes dwell on Wyn as they swung my way. An enforced stop and she affected surprise. ‘God I’ve got an audience this morning.’
Like Shirley hadn’t noticed Wyn, like she hadn’t felt his eyes on her. Her antenna was more sensitive than any missile early warning system, Shirley had this trick whenever a pair of eyes trained her way. She’d suddenly turn and bend over a table, usually one she’d already polished, and clean it again. A bit like a sunflower always locates the sun, her cleavage always faced the lecher. Shirley always told mum about the creeps, then they always laughed for some reason.
She stared at Wyn and a frown developed. ‘What do you want?’ I’d never heard her sound abrupt like this before. She glared at Wyn, had a good look? I didn’t think that Shirley hated anyone – apart from Ron, of course. ‘Why don’t you just stay out of my way?’
I couldn’t see Wyn’s face. He said nothing but I think he was smiling. Shirley took a deep sighing breath and her eyes moved away from Wyn and landed on me. As easily as turning a tap on, the smile reappeared. ‘Kenny asked me if you’d take the comics down tonight. Is that all right lover?’
Kenny, like Ron, frightened me with his long silences and threatening stares. I hated running my comics down there, but Shirley had asked for something and the answer was always yes of course, right away. Shirley and Wyn had different techniques, the outcome was always the same whenever they asked for a favour; it became like the massed start of the Grand National, everybody jockeying for position and the chance to say, no problem, I’ll do that.
Although Shirley’s latest request might take a few reminders.
Dad frowned and shook his head, turned smartly away and went down his second favourite place in the world. He disappeared down the cellar steps, singing some Dean Martin on the way.
Wyn walked alongside Shirley, slid his arm around her shoulder and said, ‘You’re upset. Is everything all right?’
Shirley twisted away and her head dropped. The slender shoulders began to tremble and huge racking sobs came out, echoing around the empty bar. Wyn put his arm around her and guided her towards a chair. ‘Sit down, shall I make you a coffee?’
In amongst the sobbing, Shirley nodded and then fumbled around in her handbag for a cigarette. For a minute, I thought of Wyn as some kind of wizard; as if by magic he had his expensive lighter lit and under the cigarette within the blink of an eye.
Shirley managed to say a mumbled ‘thank you’ and I scuttled away. It seemed that even at my tender age, I had developed my old man’s aversion to a crying woman.
***
That evening, dad stood in front of me and stared down, a pile of my comics under his arm, a frown on his face and with an onerous task for me.
‘Why didn’t you take them down when I asked you?’ My old man’s ‘why didn’t you’, translated to ‘you’d better do it right now!’
I know Shirley had asked me earlier, but I tried to avoid Kenny and I found it embarrassing to take a month’s supply of comics down for him to read. I never worked out whether Kenny welcomed the comics or felt deeply humiliated by my old man’s benevolence. I mean, second-hand comics – how embarrassing is that?
‘Leave them on the doorstep if you must.’
Tommy stared over dad’s shoulder, brought his lips back and hissed in dad’s ear, ‘Comics for that little fucker Kenny?’
A divergence of opinion between the two: my old man felt more than a little sympathy for Kenny. He said it often enough; ‘poor little sod, it ain’t much fun for him.’ On the other hand, Kenny had become yet another person in the world for Tommy to ra
nt about.
Tommy said, ‘I don’t know why you give them to him, especially after what he did to him,’ nodding down at me and shaking his head.
Here we go again; another of Tommy’s hobbyhorses about to be saddled up. The best of it was that I couldn’t even recall much about it; but it had fuelled Tommy’s loathing of Kenny for years. What could I remember? Amorphous images; me sat under the scaffolding, in the shade with the dog, listening to the incessant arguments from above, between the bricklayers and the one they called the hod. What can you recollect with any accuracy at that age? Most of it has become a reconstruction, a patchwork of other people’s perceptions of what happened; memories tempered by hindsight and how others perceived the situation developing.
Nobody saw what happened, just a collective and jaundiced view of events, probably caused by their mutual aversion to the central character. They might be right – but I wasn’t so sure.
I tended to agree with Jack, a judicious voice in a choppy sea of intolerance when he said, ‘You only talk that way because you don’t like him.’
Tommy’s eyebrows came up and he pointed Jack’s way. ‘I saw what happened. He might not have dragged the little bastard up the ladder, but…’
Jack stood his ground. ‘The trouble is, you’re tainted by the almighty bollocking you got off Harry – you then wander off and try to find someone else to blame.’
‘I never bollocked anyone.’ My dad’s customary defensive wall was as solid as ever, but no one believed him, he gave the builders, Tommy included, a fearful chewing off. You left those ladders up against the scaffolding – bunch of fucking tosspots. Tommy’s face told a similar story. Never one to contradict my old man, his features powerfully demonstrated his vivid memory of that afternoon and its aftermath. He impressively said everything by saying nothing and staring mournfully down at his dusty boots.
Jack turned to me and said, ‘What do you remember?’
They accepted me now, and apart from the absent Ron, I liked them all. One or two of them even thought my opinions worth listening to. Perhaps being my father’s son frightened them into liking me.
I tried to remember; sitting in the shade, under the scaffolding, the dog resting his muzzle on my thigh; my old man tutted away, shook his head, bewildered that a six-month-old dog had become so attached to a child – does he follow that dog around, or does the dog follow the boy? But even that’s a trick of the memory – my first recollection of him saying that, wasa good few years later. Perhaps he did say it at the time, but it only entered my consciousness much later.
I gave up. How could I remember? I think most of it is just Tommy and my old man’s drunken reminiscing. But there can be no doubt how much it affected my old man; even now whenever the subject came up, he clutched his chest and groaned, ‘Oh my god! I thought my heart was going to burst.’
Tommy stared at my old man, then back into his beer and shook his head. ‘I can’t believe what Kenny did.’ He brought his glass up, drank and carried on, shaking his head at the same time.
I tried again. What could I actually commit to memory? Children filing home from school, noisy, animated and happy; Dudley and me watching them. Minutes later, Kenny walked past, spotted me and he wandered into the car park. He stood on the dog’s foot and pinched my arm. The dog yelped and I may have cried. Mum said he looked furtive, sneaky and highly excitable, but even this is hindsight. I’m sure she noticed him with me. She always had the alert systems running and I always felt her eyes watching me – eyes like a shithouse rat, Declan said. A compliment she really appreciated when he told her. She noticed Kenny, but whether she noticed him being sneaky is another thing.
He said, ‘I’m a Spitfire.’
Kenny told me he could fly and proceeded to bank and dive around the car park, arms out horizontally by his side as he swooped past me. The Rolls Royce Merlin engine worked hard as it climbed, revs dropping at the apex of the climb. Then he dived and banked again, looking for a place to land, eventually taxiing close to me, cutting his engine and saying. ‘I can fly – do you want to fly?’
Yes – I would do anything to be a Spitfire. The thought made me laugh, and I jumped up and down and clapped my hands.
This is where it gets really vague; Tommy is convinced Kenny persuaded me to climb the ladder and use the scaffolding twenty feet up as a runway. Would a soon-to-be four year old climb a ladder unprompted? Tommy had convinced himself that Kenny made me, somehow coerced me into making the climb. My old man was for once unsure; but Tommy had stumbled upon a conspiracy and he firmly believed that Kenny did get me to climb the ladder and then coax me into jumping off.
Tommy’s relentless pursuit in this belief became his obsession and he reminded Jack, ‘He’s a sneaky little bastard. Course he told the little fucker to climb the ladder.’ Tommy fired a challenging stare across at Jack, who sensibly looked away and down into his glass.
I wasn’t so sure, Kenny did say, ‘Do you want to fly?’
The next thing I remember is walking along the scaffolding, thinking that it was higher than my bedroom window and the sun appeared to be at eye level. It was a brilliant, cloudless September afternoon and the air had that pure feel that comes after August humidity. I leant against a scaffold pole, looking at the world below and saw Kenny waving at me, holding his arms out – flying. But the most brilliantly clear recollection was a voice, Tommy’s voice, so deep and loud and urgent, that I froze.
‘Stand still. Don’t move – Harry, Harrryyyyy!’ I suppose I heard the weighty tread of his heavy boots on the ladder. I assumed I saw his thick, black, dust coated hair come over the top and then this high-cheekboned man, shouting as he came up to me. I have no recollection of his expression, but now, I have assembled a perfect mental image of Tommy’s wide-eyed, alarmed expression.
‘Stand still little you little fucker – please don’t fucken move.’
He picked me up roughly, threw me over a shoulder – fireman’s lift my old man called it later – and going down the ladder, I was actually flying. I remember Tommy shouting at me as we went down the ladder ‘stop fucken wriggling’ and I just laughed as I flew, nothing between me and the car park, looking down seeing the tops of mum and dad’s heads, losing height and coming alongside their worried faces looking up at me. Tommy put me gently on the floor, only for me to be snatched up by my old man and crushed in his grip.
I felt my old man trembling as he said, ‘Tommy – thank fuck.’ Then he put me on the ground and called me, for the first and certainly not the last time, ‘You little fucker.’
Kenny never told me to go up – did he?
I honestly can’t recall. It’s just something the others would expect him to say, but mum and good old Tommy are sure; in fact Tommy was so sure, he chased Kenny down the hill, shaking his cottage-loaf sized fist and shouting, ‘Fuck off, you little turd.’
Dad brought me back to the here and now with a shout; ‘Take the comics down now, don’t make him wait anymore.’
I looked at the pile of comics and then along the line of faces at the bar before I brought my eyes back to my old man. Then I sent an exaggerated roll of my eyes in Tommy’s direction.
It produced the desired effect in Tommy. He frowned and massaged his chin between finger and thumb and said, ‘Don’t take ‘em. Tell your old man to fuck off.’
Not today, but one day I would. In the meantime, I took hold of the comics and shouted for the dog. It was a warm day and I kicked my shoes off and ripped my top off, shouted, ‘C’mon,’ and we galloped down the road, hurtling around the back of Elms Cottages, and spotted Kenny sat on his doorstep.
All little groups require an ogre and Kenny fulfilled that vital need in ours. He had frightened us for years; our very own tyrant, he pinched arms and kicked legs with impunity. Hit everyone and validated nothing, girls or boys, gender wasn’t the issue as long as they cried. Dead legs were the best, a good connection in the right spot, then stand back and watch the v
ictim writhing on the ground, usually crying.
Wary of my old man and dependent on me for his supply of comics, he tended to leave me alone. But the threat was implicitly directed my way nonetheless; maybe suppressed at the moment. But the glares Kenny shot my way convinced me that it bubbled away inside him, the third Reich awaiting unlikely provocation from an emasculated Poland.
Ironically, Kenny told a good story – when he wasn’t hitting us that is – and we often gathered around him and listened to the older boy’s tales, transfixed. Accounts of his dad, a spitfire pilot, a Battle of Britain hero, who shot down Germans by the score. He had a leg shot off, and got a tin one – he can still run and ride a bike; you’d never know, unless you hit it with something hard, then it clanged like a bell. We were too frightened of Kenny to do anything but believe him.
Now we knew different. Ron was just a private in the Bucks and Oxon regiment, a prisoner of war and best of all, not even Kenny’s dad. Worse than that, Kenny knew that we knew.
As I approached, Kenny threw a well-rounded pebble, hitting a cat sat sunning itself in the comfortable evening sunshine bang in the ribs. It shrieked, jumped and scuttled away, all in one fluid movement. All the time its eyes blazed at Kenny.
I interrupted Kenny’s contented demeanour with my small edgy voice, ‘That was a good shot.’
He jumped, turned sharply and saw me standing close by.
‘What do you want, fuckwit?’ he snapped my way.
‘I’ve brought you the comics.’
Kenny stared hard at me, dressed in just my shorts, no socks and no shoes, dust streaked with a snotty nose. The dog leaning against me, apparently fused to my hip and with the usual stream of flob hanging in strands from his manhole-sized mouth.
Kenny stood up, grabbed the comics and sat down on the back door step. ‘You’ve got no shoes on.’ He said this with his eyes glued to the front page of a four-week-old Beano.