A few minutes later he arrived at number seventy-three Westminster road. Home. Reality. It was a three storey terraced house and utterly dilapidated. The last remnants of burgundy paint still clung in flakes to the wooden – and in several cases, rotting – window frames, the glass of which rattled noisily in the slightest breeze and allowed rain to enter unfettered when subjected to anything stronger than a light shower; testament to the lack of investment by the landlord, Gerald Grimman.
Alfie lived in an insipid two bedroom flat on the second floor. He trudged upstairs, the timeworn strip of carpet shifting under his feet, to the tangerine door, turned the key and went inside.
‘Kenny,’ he called buoyantly. ‘Come on, Kenny. I’ve some fish you can share.’
Alfie took a couple of steps along the incapacious corridor and turned left into the kitchen to unwrap his tea. He dumped the carrier bag in the pedal bin underneath the counter – essentially a piece of Formica supported by a steel pole - and deposited a generous dollop of tomato ketchup next to the chips. Then, he picked up the meal by the corners of the paper and walked through the connecting door into the living room and plonked himself with a jaded sigh in the chair opposite the television.
‘Ah, there you are.’ Alfie said, as Kenny, his black, white and orange cat, sidled into view from the window ledge behind the curtain. ‘Here, try this.’
Alfie broke off a small piece of fish and tossed it towards the cat who jumped down onto the carpet, eyed the morsel suspiciously, sniffed it tentatively and devoured it in a couple of hungry bites before looking up at Alfie expectantly.
Ignoring his pet, Alfie aimed the remote control at the small colour portable television and pressed a button; the set remained lifeless. Sighing querulously, he shook the device and tried again, to no effect. Finally, perturbed, he whacked the remote against the arm of the chair and jabbed it pertinaciously towards the television, prodding the power button repeatedly with a greasy thumb until the screen flickered into life.
The fish and chips finished, he crumpled the wrapping paper then dropped it on the floor at the side of the chair before licking the grease and salt from his fingers and wiping them off on his trousers. He let out a satisfied belch and settled back in the chair.
‘Well Kenny,’ Alfie said, tickling the cat’s head while it pawed the fish and chip paper, ‘another day done. There can’t have been more than thirty people in all day today. What about you, anything interesting happen?’
The cat ignored him and continued to forage in the papers below.
‘There was an old advert for a fairground in Rodney’s,’ Alfie said as much to himself as to the cat. ‘One of them travelling jobs. I like a decent fairground, Frank did too. It’s a shame we missed it, there won’t be any now ‘til the start of next season.’ Alfie looked at his cat and sighed. ‘I do miss him,’ Alfie said quietly, referring to his brother.
The cat tore a strip from the wrapper and rolled onto its back with the paper gripped firmly between its front paws.
‘When I was a small boy,’ Alfie began, smiling at the memory which now played in his head, ‘I went on holiday to the seaside. My mum and dad would pack everything into our car and drive to a little guest house on the coast. Of course, this was before Frank died, like, before all the fuss.’
Alfie paused, reflecting. His grip on the arms of the chair tightened, just for a moment, before he released the breath he’d been holding, relaxed and continued.
‘I remember,’ and now Alfie chuckled. ‘We were in this fairground once, me and our Frank, Skegness I think it was. I’d been on the Helter Skelter, red hot day it was, cracking the flags. I wanted to go on the bumpy slide and ran all the way up to the top of the stairs. A hundred and fifteen steps there were. I still remember that, a hundred and fifteen. I can’t have been more than six or seven then.’
Kenny had a scrap of paper hanging from his mouth and was furiously shaking his head in an attempt to dislodge it, utterly disinterested in Alfie’s story.
‘I remember we raced each other down the slide two or three times. Big multi-coloured affair it was with six narrow lanes and if you hit the bumps just right, you could fly. We sat on those horsehair mats, the ones with the pocket at the end for your feet and rope handles either side. This particular day we’d arranged to meet mum and dad in a café on the prom but I knew Frank wanted to go on the big dipper, I did too. They had one of those boards shaped like a cowboy what with it being a western themed fairground, only it was a dog, a cowboy dog. You had to be taller that the board to go on the roller coaster.’
Kenny had managed to get hold of the offending piece of chip wrapper and had tugged it from his mouth. But the fish odour of the paper was too much for a greedy cat to resist and so he began to lick his way around the various shreds, pausing intermittently to look up at his owner who was still droning on about something Kenny did not understand or care to know about.
‘Frank was teasing me, saying he wasn’t sure I was tall enough but he didn’t want to go on without me so he said I could on with him in the end. I was so excited, Kenny, my first ride on a proper roller coaster. He made me promise not to tell mum and dad, il nostro segreto, our secret.’
Alfie, like his brother, was essentially bilingual; fluent in Italian owing to the efforts of his Italian mother. She had given up a lot to be with Mr Gorman, Alfie’s father. They had met while Mr Gorman was travelling through Italy, fallen in love and eventually, following a long distance, protracted courtship, she had moved to England and they had married. But that short Italian phrase – il nostro segreto – had become one of Alfie’s favourites and was the most used between the brothers.
‘I could see the whole fairground from the top of the roller coaster, the slide, the Noah’s Ark, the dodgems, even folk on the promenade and then…’ Alfie gestured with his hand causing Kenny to bounce to his feet in case his owner had some sort of game in mind. ‘Whoosh! Down the hill. Brilliant.’ Alfie’s face was alight with joy, fond memories of a childhood not yet tainted by loss, hurt and anger.
‘Still,’ said Alfie with resignation. ‘That’s all a long time ago and Frank’s gone. Best not to dwell on it, put on a happy face and all that.’
He reached down and seized the bundle of paper and went to throw it in the bin before switching on the kettle. It would be a good time to move on, he thought, before the following season. It would allow him the chance to find a summer job in a new town. Besides, Morecambe was deserted, not like when he’d been here as a child.
Before he went to bed that evening Alfie, who was feeling particularly atrabilious, crouched on his hands and knees and peered underneath the bed. He pulled out his photo album, a reminder of happier times which now seemed almost evanescent; ephemeral childhood memories when he’d been part of a family, before everything had changed so suddenly.
As Alfie lay back on his creaking double bed and leafed through the photos, a part of him admitted for perhaps the hundredth time that he was wasting his time. Traipsing around any number of seaside towns in an attempt to recapture the magic of his childhood was, at best, folly, at worst, an unhealthy unwillingness to accept that his brother was gone.
But Alfie had long since learned to ignore that voice, the sensible voice, bogged down in fact and reality. No, Alfie knew what had happened and adulthood had brought with it the perspicacity that his parents had always known the truth about Frank, and they had opted to lie to Alfie because, presumably, it seemed like the only thing to do, to protect him. He abhorred them for it, hated his brother for causing so much hurt to them all and felt embittered and resentful that they didn’t love or trust him enough to share the truth with him.
Therapy and counselling had, for a time, managed to convince him that there was no blame to be apportioned, but he knew better now, each passing year the belief had grown stronger within him. After leaving home Alfie had sent a postcard disclosing his intentions to his parents; that he was going to look for work, be independent. He’d sent tha
t postcard almost thirty years ago and Morecambe was the latest seaside town on a list of more than twenty since he’d begun this transient, impermanent odyssey.
Alfie placed the album beside him on the bed and closed his eyes, his heart heavy with sorrow and regret, the hope shrinking a little more as it tended to when he felt this way. He’d been aware for a long time that he was merely existing, not living, and had almost wholly resigned himself to his fate; almost. One of the last sounds he heard as he strayed into a discomposed sleep was that of Kenny, his singular consort for seven of the last thirty years, jumping up onto the window ledge to keep watch over the darkened street below.
After a night choked with dreams about his childhood, holidays to the seaside and visits to the funfair, Alfie was awakened by Kenny meowing at the foot of the bed.
‘Breakfast time is it Kenny?’ Alfie asked, sitting up and rubbing the sleep from his eyes. ‘Fair enough then, I’ll stick the kettle on.’
Alfie stood and stretched. Despite his troubled sleep he was in a good mood this morning. He almost always was first thing because he took pleasure in his work at the park and the people he met there. It was the memory of his ruptured childhood that haunted him like a spectre and, occasionally, as it had six days earlier when he’d come close to suicide in the bath, it got the better of Alfie, sending him to a dark place where giving up seemed like the expedient option.
When he arrived in the small kitchen, the rapacious cat was waiting impatiently by his bowl, eyeing Alfie demandingly. He retrieved an already open tin of cat food from the inconsiderable yellowing fridge and scooped the remaining contents into Kenny’s bowl with a fork that protruded from the tin. Kenny sniffed the offering guardedly, circled it a few times, looked up at Alfie with an expression that said, ‘Well, it’ll just have to do I suppose’ and began to eat.
After flicking on the kettle, Alfie shuffled to the bathroom for a quick wash and was back in the kitchen before the water had boiled. He took the milk from the fridge, dropped a tea bag into his mug and was waiting with teaspoon held aloft when the kettle switched itself off. Kenny, who had lost interest in his breakfast, sauntered into the living room to spy out of the window.
Twenty minutes later Alfie put out the cat and left for another day as Park Keeper at Happy Mount Park. This was the latest in a long list of impermanent, often seasonal and humdrum jobs he’d held since choosing the life of a nomad. Wandering from town to town, subsisting on an exiguous budget, dipping a toe beneath the surface of a town and invariably finding nothing to make it worth wading in any deeper before packing up his suitcase and trying somewhere else.
Even after so many years, Alfie was still able to muster a certain degree of incredulity when he considered how his once promising life had panned out. He’d begun auspiciously enough, a bright, gregarious child, inquisitive, with an ebullient enthusiasm to learn and to have fun. But then the wheels had come off, the change had come. Frank had gone and that had seen the beginning of the distortion, altered what was important.
Of course, for a small boy who loses all interest in education and his existence, his place in the world comes into question. For boys like this an English school is a great place to disappear – only the especially advanced or dangerously unruly warrant attention, anything in between is gratefully ignored. Don’t encourage, don’t chastise, just let them be, forgotten.
As a child Alfie dreamed of working in a funfair. Either that or becoming a doctor, as far as Alfie was concerned both professions provided a service, filled a need, helped people feel better. He would’ve mattered, made a difference to people, accomplished something. As it was, Alfie felt he was like the loose change down the side of the sofa cushion, a mantle of dust on top of the picture frame. Alfie didn’t matter; he went unconsidered and was entirely insignificant.
His only abiding interests, his sole remaining passions, were for the seaside and the fairground – the only places he could remember happiness. So, after passing through school like a droplet of water in a river – a part of the mass, indistinguishable from the rest – Alfie simply couldn’t see any point in remaining at home and left; finding summer work as a hot dog vendor in front of the fairground at Filey.
2 The Affairs of Tania Streatham
Tania Streatham, aged 16 ¾, walked through the gates of Happy Mount Park and meandered towards the Cipriani’s ice cream van parked on the main pathway. She wore an immodest denim micro skirt, a denim jacket over a bandeau top and a pair of Reebok Classics, an outfit indecent and ridiculous in equal measure,
She couldn’t be bothered this morning, really could not be arsed, standing all day in the back of a cramped van. It was September and despite today being pleasantly warm, the only people in the park would be the usual procession of old folk, a couple of imbecilic unemployed locals walking their dogs and chatting her up, and a scattering of mothers with pushchairs in the afternoon if it stayed fine.
Still, it was better than being at school. Tania was being paid the princely minimum wage of £3.68 an hour and her shifts in the van left ample time for the Aromatherapy and Massage course she was taking at the college. The thing was, this morning; Tania was enervated and, given the option, would have stayed in bed until she felt ready to face the world.
The previous evening Tania had split up with her boyfriend, Kuldeep, whose family owned Modhubon, the foremost curry house in town. Tania felt that she was putting all the effort into their relationship and that Kuldeep wasn’t overly bothered about her one way or the other. Her friends disliked him, labelled him weird, and this made her life difficult.
Tania had become aware of Kuldeep simply because they attended the same school, although Kuldeep hadn’t joined until the third year. But she moved in a completely different social circle to his. Always popular and well liked, Tania’s appeal to the opposite sex had developed almost as swiftly as her spectacular chest at the age of fourteen. From then on, amidst a whirlpool of hormones and excitement, Tania had flitted from one boy to the next, each a carbon copy of the last; bold, athletic, a member of either the football or rugby team. She was aware of, but opted to ignore, the reputation that accompanied her looks and popularity.
The beginning of a change to this pattern occurred one afternoon in the school library. Far from being a brainless tart with nothing on her mind but fitting in, Tania was keen to work and earn money as early as possible and was astute enough to realise that some academic exertion was required. As she pulled a book from the shelf and turned to leave she quite literally found herself face to face with Kuldeep Bhumbra.
And what a face it was; framed by a shaggy mass of thick black hair, his brown skin was spotlessly smooth and his large piercing black eyes shone with what Tania initially mistook for confidence, the surety of someone who does not care in the slightest what anybody may say or think about him. Kuldeep also appeared to be completely disinterested in Tania.
‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘didn’t see you there.’
Kuldeep merely shrugged and moved past her, unflustered, not embarrassed, not bothered at all.
From then on, despite frequent doubts voiced by her friends, Tania made it her mission to gain Kuldeep’s interest and claim him for herself. Finally, after much pursuing and cajoling, he agreed to go out with her and she’d been happy, very happy. Except now, in a fit of temper and tiredness, she split up with him.
The previous evening Kuldeep had fetched up at Tania’s house with a bag of take-away from the family restaurant and she’d broken the bad news to him. Unfortunately Kuldeep hadn’t taken it at all well, emptying the contents of the silver trays all over her dad’s car before beating his fists on the front door until Tania’s mother threatened to call the police. Kuldeep had then bombarded Tania’s mobile phone with calls and text messages until she switched it off in desperation. Kuldeep then began assaulting the land line with calls until Mrs Streatham again threatened to summon the police. Finally, at half past two in the morning, a tormented Tania had been awakened by Ku
ldeep tapping on her second floor bedroom window. The desperate teenager had broken into the garage, taken Mr Streatham’s ladders and demanded Tania explain why she no longer wanted to see him, that she gave him one more chance.
Unfortunately, Tania’s father heard the racket and charged into his daughter’s room. Fearing for the safety of his daughter Mr Streatham jettisoned Kuldeep from the window, causing the ladder to tip backwards, depositing the boy, unconscious, in the middle of the Spotted Laurel by the fence. An ambulance was called, and finally the much threatened police. Kuldeep was taken away; the whole family were questioned at length and, when Tania finally managed to slump, drained as much mentally as physically, into bed, she’d only an hour until her alarm clock went off. So, the very last thing she felt like doing this morning was standing in a van selling ice cream cones and lollies to the elderly and the unemployed.
If nothing else the events of the previous evening had answered Tania’s doubts over Kuldeep’s feelings toward her. Now, in the cold light of day, she was left wondering just how wise she’d been to end her relationship with Kuldeep, especially given her current alternative who just happened to be her employer.
* * * *
Lee Etchman, joint owner of Cipriani’s ice creams, was sitting in the driver’s seat of the van and felt a shift in his groin as he watched the tall, lithe, teenage temptress that was Tania Streatham gliding towards him. He gawked as her protracted, smooth legs, displayed almost in their entirety in a mini skirt, carried her slight, yet flourishing body towards him, the blonde highlights in her lengthy russet hair resplendent in the morning sunshine.
‘Alright darlin’?’ Etchman asked when she stepped into the van, his south coast accent a distinct contrast to Tania’s sharper north-west inflection.
‘Hiya Lee.’ Tania replied, trying to be affable despite the confined conditions and her weariness.
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