Back in Pontypridd, Rhys had spent the most miserable Christmas and New Year of his life. He barely saw his friends and passed most of the time staring at the television for hours on end. Not even the hilarious Morecambe and Wise could raise a smile. His mother and father consoled him as best they could and urged him to return to Wales. His father had even had a word with the manager of the cash & carry and been assured that his old job would be waiting for him if he wanted it.
Rhys’s mother had loved Vicki almost as much as Rhys himself and was saddened to hear that they had broken up. She could see in his expression how much her son was hurting and it was killing her to witness him in such a state. But her instinct told her that Vicki was serious and that the relationship was over even if Rhys found it impossible to accept. She just wanted to be close to him, to keep an eye on him and help him through his depression. Rhys had been excited when telling her about the job at the Supreme and she broke into a smile when glimpsing this fleeting moment of happiness on his face. But he couldn’t fool her. The main reason he was excited was that it acted as an excuse to return to London and, as a consequence, to be closer to Vicki. His mother was worried that if he didn’t come to terms with the situation, it could destroy him.
In similar vein, it was not just Rhys’s parents who worried about him for his close friends had also become increasingly concerned. Initially, Ian and Don had tried to cheer him up with clichéd talk of how there were more fish in the sea and how, over the festive season, the many single girls of Pontypridd would be on the hunt for eligible young bachelors like him. Rhys had even hinted at a smile when Ian had reconsidered whether the word ‘eligible’ was appropriate in his case. And they joshed him along with stories of how Megan, Cerys, Siân and Helen had ‘smartened up’ since he saw them last. But they despaired when they could see that his heart was not in it and how he appeared to have aged considerably since the relatively short time they had seen him last. In fact, on two occasions when they had arranged to meet for a drink, Rhys had not turned up as he moped about the house, not even bothering to ring to say that he would not be coming. And this even extended to the traditional New Year’s party at Don’s. The memory of four years ago when he had first met Vicki would have overwhelmed him.
Now, lying on his back staring at the ceiling, the first time he could ever remember not having a hangover on New Year’s Day, he convinced himself he could sort everything out with Vicki back in London. He would squirrel away his wages, after contributing to the rent, so that they could go on a wonderful holiday together in the summer, abroad even, to Torremolinos, the place to be seen, and he vowed to take her out more often and tolerate her friends. His parents had even volunteered to dip into their savings to help him along. He was determined not to take them up on their offer, but he knew that if it was the make or break to pay for a show or a nice meal, he would probably relent, so eager was he to provide Vicki with whatever she wanted. And he was determined to get out of the flat. With him earning, they could probably afford something a little better, or if they moved to somewhere a little less central, they could find a nicer flat for the same money. He resolved to spend all his spare time exploring such a possibility. Yes, these would be his New Year resolutions. He summarised them quickly in his head: new flat, summer holiday, shows, meals, Vicki’s friends, more time together. And the biggest resolution of all: get back with Vicki. In fact, if things went as he planned, he resolved to ask her to marry him during the summer on a beautiful beach on the Costa del Sol. He had it all worked out and, with a happy heart, he jumped out of bed full of hope for a golden sun after a particularly horrible storm.
‘Happy New Year, Mum, Dad,’ Rhys exclaimed as he bounded into the kitchen where he saw his parents sitting at the table through the customary fog of smoke. He took a pace to his mother and kissed her on the cheek. The Daily Mirror was open in front of them.
‘Happy New Year,’ his parents returned in unison. But there was an inherent sadness and trepidation in their voices that reflected the looks on their faces and which Rhys picked up on immediately. In fact, they seemed to be in a state of shock.
‘Why the sad faces? Has someone died?’ Rhys asked, his brow creased.
Neither of his parents replied but Rhys noticed the fleeting glance they traded with each other. He then followed his father’s eyes which were arrowing in on the newspaper on the table. Rhys looked down and picked it up. What he saw made his head feel faint and almost tore his heart free of his chest in shock. His legs turning to rubber, he was forced to sit down, his face taking on a sheet-white pallor. The crushing nausea he had experienced back at the flat and hoped never to experience again overwhelmed him and he put his hand to his mouth to prevent himself from throwing up. What he saw was a picture of Tommy Slater leaving a nightclub with the familiar faces of some of his West Ham teammates behind him. But his arm was around the shoulders of another familiar face who happened to have a gorgeous smile and long, blonde corkscrew hair. And when she was described as Slater’s new girlfriend, Rhys could not hold the vomit in any longer.
April 1975
CHAPTER 12
With great effort, Rhys finally crabbed out of bed. He sat on its edge, stooped over, cradling his throbbing head in his hands. He wished he could just crawl under the sheets again for the rest of the day, as he did virtually every Sunday, his only day off work, but today was different. He had a lunch date in The Falcon pub on Clapham Junction and, despite his lack of energy, he knew he had to be there. He was dying to see her again.
The bed was now a single with a mattress so saggy his back ached every morning. Every possession he owned was in the room for he was now living in a bedsit off Northcote Road, not too far away from his and Vicki’s old flat in Latchmere Road. That flat was now a distant memory as Vicki was happily ensconced in Tommy’s apartment in the Barbican. Rhys’s bedsit made his old flat look like Buckingham Palace for it was barely habitable, but at least it was cheap, or affordable more like, just, to his meagre income.
He had found the bedsit and moved in within three days of his coming back from Wales fifteen months earlier. He had been on tenterhooks during those three days, thinking he was bound to come into contact with Vicki at some stage. The tension would have been unbearable and he would not have known what to say. But, fortunately, their paths never crossed. What he did know was that he would not have been angry with her. Indeed, he would have wished her well and the best of luck despite his pain and anguish for Rhys had always believed that bearing grudges was pathetic and self-destroying. He quickly realised, however, that the reason why their paths never crossed was because Vicki was staying over at Tommy’s. This realisation had ripped his guts to shreds at the time, particularly at night when he reached out to the cold space beside him in the bed, and it was almost merciful when he finally departed.
For her part, it had been well into the New Year before Vicki returned to the flat. She had been beside herself with apprehension when she turned the key in the lock because, for all she knew, Rhys might well have been at home, but, on entering, it was clear straight away that not only was he not there but neither were his possessions. The knowledge that he had moved out had come as a great relief, but despite her happiness at being with Tommy, a Hawaiian-size wave of sadness had swept over her. This really was the end and, in theory, they would never have reason to speak to or see each other again. Her stomach had ached when she observed the empty line of wire clothes-hangers in the cupboard and, to her surprise, a tear had run down her cheek.
As she pottered around the flat for the rest of that day, somewhat in a daze, Vicki at least knew that she was entering a new, exciting phase of her life without complications. Tommy was as keen as the hottest of English mustards and had already invited her to move in with him. Vicki was thrilled to be asked and wary only because things were moving at such a fast pace. After all, they had barely known each other a month. But despite that, they had become close and, on a practical level, she asked herself why
she would want to stay in her dump of a flat alone when she could be living in luxury with Tommy? She was spending most of her time there anyway, so moving in made sense. Accordingly, she gave notice to the agent and a few weeks later the flat was off her hands.
The day she left, Tommy was at her side, helping with her bags and boxes. It was the first and last time he ever saw the flat. He shook his head in disgust at its decrepit state, commenting smugly what a loser Rhys must have been. Vicki grinned sheepishly on hearing the remark, not particularly liking it, but said nothing. After pulling the front door shut behind her for the last time, she followed Tommy down the stairs but couldn’t resist turning round for one final look. A lump seemingly the size of an orange caught in her throat and she had to swallow many times before she could dislodge it.
Moving his hands from his head to the small of his back, Rhys arched himself in an effort to ease some of the ache before standing up and fiddling with his balls. He yawned and stretched his arms up high above his head. His lips were dry and he took a stride to the sink where he poured himself a glass of water. His face screwed up at the taste. If there was one thing he would never get used to in London, it was the hard water compared to that in Wales. Fortunately, the weather was mild though he still put on a sweat shirt. Winter had passed, which was a relief, for the heating in his bedsit was constantly on the blink, not that the landlord ever cared. For months, Rhys had worn a thick white Aran jumper over the sweat shirt and even a bobble hat at times. It was only during the course of the previous week that he had removed the black sticky tape from around the rim of the solitary window, so much freezing air did the gaps leave through. On a number of occasions when it was particularly cold he had even checked whether the air was passing through some invisible holes in the panes themselves. Not even an ancient castle in the highlands of Scotland on the windiest of winter nights could be as draughty and perishing as his bedsit, he thought.
He sat back down on the edge of the bed, for he did not possess a chair, and waited for the bathroom on the landing to become free. He had become accustomed to the sound of the bolting of the bathroom door outside to signify that another tenant in an adjacent bedsit had gone in. He had learnt that it was better to wait for him or her to exit rather than to involve himself in something around the bedsit, for it was often a race to be the next one in.
While sitting there, rubbing his toes against the rough wood of the gouged and splintered floorboards, with gaps between them so wide cockroaches the size of mice regularly surfaced, he looked around his dwelling. ‘Home sweet home,’ he muttered.
He lowered his eyes as he could barely bring himself to contemplate the surrounds. Mouldy black and green patches of damp spread in abundance on every wall and whole chunks of plaster had broken off in various places to reveal the bare brick underneath. The day he moved in, he had it in mind to paper the walls to cover up the unsightly blemishes, but when he placed his palm against them, his hand was so wringing wet that he knew it would be impossible to do so. His wardrobe was, in effect, an old battered and bent metal rail where he hung some clothes and his chests of drawers were the Fyffes banana boxes he had taken from the Supreme and used to transport his things over in the first place.
The landlord’s assertion that the room was furnished amounted to the rotten rancid bed and three-legged bedside table. The fourth leg was a high pile of books. When Rhys had examined them out of curiosity, he saw that they were the property of the local library and so many years past their due date that they would almost certainly carry fines totalling hundreds of pounds if they were ever returned. He was as excited as a new-born puppy, however, when he came across a red-brown ten bob note inside one of them and grabbed it eagerly before realising that, with decimalisation, it was no longer legal tender. He wasn’t sure if a bank would exchange it for him, but then calculated that even if one did, the country’s roaring inflation rate that dominated the news programmes on his tiny black and white television set had probably rendered it worthless in any event. In fact, the economic news was so consistently bad that Rhys was not too unhappy that the picture and sound on the telly were even more fuzzy and inaudible than on the one he had shared with Vicki in the flat. A clearer picture of the economic scene would have only added to his depression. How this useless television set had not packed in yet was a modern-day miracle, he mused.
Whoever was in the bathroom was taking a heck of a long time, Rhys pondered, blowing out his cheeks in frustration. He wondered if it was the Bob Marley lookalike, who was constantly spaced-out, smoking his ganja while taking a crap. It wouldn’t be the first time.
He looked up at the sink and thought it might be easier to wash himself there. Only the Ascot boiler above it made him think twice for it was so similarly erratic to the one in the old flat that Rhys was convinced they must have come off a very dodgy production line together. He stood up and walked over to it. Just his luck, no burn, and so no hot water. He wanted so much to appear his best today that, impatiently, he resigned himself once more to wait for the bathroom to become free. However, he could not control his bladder any longer and so had no option but to piss in the sink like he had done many times before. He hated doing it, for he did have standards, but needs must. Fortunately, there was never any problem with the cold water to rinse it away, but the tap was so ancient that it constantly emitted a drip which, during the night, often drove him to madness. He could now understand why the Chinese had developed it as a means of torture.
He returned to the side of the bed. ‘For fuck’s sake, hurry up, will you?’ Rhys hollered, more to vent his frustration than in any belief he would be heard. It did not help that he now needed to take a crap. Pissing in the sink was one thing, doing the other something completely different.
Unsurprisingly, Rhys did not hear any sound of the bolt being slid across or angry hissing of the flush so he resumed his impatient wait. He looked at the minuscule white fridge in the corner, full of grubby-grey smudge marks, and wondered whether he needed to get in some supplies. He thought not and, even if he did, there would be no room inside as it was already crammed full of cans of lager. The flat top of the fridge acted as his cupboard for it supported five tins of Campbell’s soup, three tins of Heinz baked beans, a bottle of Gordon’s gin, a bottle of Bell’s whisky and a bottle of Smirnoff vodka. As Rhys contemplated them, he thought they made the only attractive splash of colour in the room and that there might actually be something in this Andy Warhol Pop Art malarkey he had read about. Yes, the top of his fridge did brighten the room up and raise his spirits as did his Jimmy Page poster showing the maestro on stage in the coolest pose imaginable with fingers creating seemingly impossible shapes on the guitar frets. Only one other item raised his spirits more, the framed picture of him and Vicki on the bedside table, smiling in utter joy with their arms around each other. Gazing at it, Rhys picked it up and kissed it lightly before setting it back down again.
Mercifully, the throbbing in his head was becoming less intense with every passing minute, as he knew it would, for, over the past fifteen months, this was a daily experience. His splitting up with Vicki had driven him to such despair that booze had become his only crutch and there had not been a single night when he had not demolished a few lagers and glasses of the harder stuff. It was costing him a fortune, but, then again, he never went out anymore to spend money on anything else. But he valued his job and was never late for work and always carried out his tasks effectively. He had come to enjoy working for Christos and his wife, Eleni, who both valued Rhys in turn.
The drink had aged him, nonetheless, of that there was no doubt, and he often slumped in disgust over the sink in the bathroom when he saw the bags under his eyes and lines across his forehead each morning in the mirror. His hair was lank and greying more extensively by the temples and the sparkle had been extinguished from his eyes. And while he always turned out appropriately dressed for work, when he returned to his bedsit he would invariably sling on his old Led Zeppelin T-shir
t or sweat shirt and faded tracksuit bottoms.
For a short period, he had taken his clothes and bed linen to the nearby laundrette on a regular basis, but, to his shame, he had not washed any of them now for almost a year. He chided himself to make the effort but he never did. His only concession to personal hygiene was the occasional wash and bath and rinsing of his work trousers, shirts and underwear in the sink. With Vicki gone, he concluded, what was the point anymore?
His life without her was a living hell. He couldn’t stop thinking about her and recalling all the wonderful times they’d had together. The thought of Tommy Slater escorting her to fabulous places and having fun, making her laugh, kissing her and making love to her was enough to drive him to suicide, which he had contemplated on more than one occasion. He would invariably shed tears while clutching a glass of booze in his stinking bedsit, unable to comprehend how it had all come to this. Without fail, he would grasp the picture frame and take it to bed with him each night, gripping it tightly against his heart. It was the only way he could be with her. And yet, surely she still had feelings for him? How couldn’t she? It was impossible not to, wasn’t it? It was only this belief that kept him alive.
Eventually, and thankfully, Rhys heard the bolt of the bathroom lock slide back. He glanced quickly at his watch. He still had forty-five minutes and The Falcon was only down the road. Plenty of time, he told himself. He jumped from the bed like a cheetah on the chase and shot out of his room, towel in hand. He observed a pale and heavily freckled back and shock of red hair walking away from him down the corridor. It was Paddy then who had been in the bathroom. For an Irishman, Rhys found him very reserved and furtive. He wondered whether he had anything to do with the IRA who were presently very active in their terrorist campaign around London. Rhys often reflected whether Paddy was hoarding guns or making bombs in his bedsit and whether one would ever go off by mistake. The way Rhys felt about Vicki, it would have been an act of mercy if one ever did and brought all his pain and suffering to an end.
Decade Page 15