by Gerald Wixey
‘He was just doing his job.’ Stuart spoke for me, ‘I wonder who the father was.’
I tried to hide my smile in my pint glass; Stuart knew how to get the rise out of him. Don took the piss, but didn’t like it coming back his way.
I’m an important man, show some respect.
Harry burst through the door, smiled my way and snarled at Don.
‘What do you want?’ Harry’s jowls bristling like an aged Bulldog looking for one last fight. His square forehead slowly lowered, the impression that it was finding the right position and range, ready to shove it into Don’s face. ‘Why don’t you do some work instead of sponging free pints in here?’
Good old Harry, coming up to sixty and still fighting. I breathed easier, lit a cigarette to celebrate this and watched the cabaret begin.
Don’s eyebrows came up and he pointed at Stuart. ‘I am working – where is he?’
Stuart shrugged, a gesture that his uncle had perfected years earlier and passed onto the next generation. Stuart had refined it enough to get right up Don’s nose, evolution in action is a wonderful thing. Stuart leaned forward and in a level voice said. ‘I don’t know who you’re talking about?’
All said with a smile that indicated the opposite. Don’s breath rasped out, he immediately tried to drag it back into his wide deep chest. Went close to the bar and started to jab his finger Stuart’s way.
‘Don’t get smart with me.’
Stuart’s smile widened, as Don glanced down at his watch, gave a great big heaving sigh, before saying to Harry. ‘Can I pop through and have a word with Shirley before I go?’ Then the smugness, the impression he wanted to give.
Me and Shirley.
Harry just ignored the implication sent his way and shook his great big head, ‘She’s out the back with Peggy, not to be disturbed she told me.’
Don frowned back Harry’s way, swung his head in Stuart’s direction. ‘I’ll talk to you when your bodyguards not around – let’s see how brave you are then.’
He turned and did his John Wayne walk out of the bar, I pushed my empty glass Stuart’s way and we all waited for the door to shut. We watched as Don’s head went across the window and disappeared. We gave it a few minutes grace, I stared at the head of my fresh pint, Harry offered me a cigarette, closely followed by his lighter. I dragged deep and said, ‘We need to sit down, with Wyn and Shirley – something’s happened.’
Harry ignored me, went up close to his son and shouted, ‘Where is he – you’re a stupid fucker. Stay out all night, Kathy’s worried, kids are worried, your Mum’s worried.’
I smiled to myself, of course Harry would never admit to being worried himself. He just choked on his cigarette, smoke coming out of nose and mouth as he coughed and tried to point at the same time. Stuart carried on in an even voice, ‘I wasn’t lying, I haven’t got a clue where he is… now.’
‘Well we all know which country he’s in.’ I stated the obvious, one of my less redeeming qualities according to Harry. ‘You know he was seen in her room that morning?’
Stuart dragged a stool across, scrapping the feet along the flagstone floor. Harry rolled his eyes.
Lift it, don’t drag it.
Stuart smiled at me, he knew what he was doing. He’d had years of practice perfecting and twisting his father’s spring steel of a short temper into tight little knots. He sat and leant forward, elbows on the counter – just like his father.
‘I gave him a lift – anyone would do that for a mate.’ He stared at Harry, ‘How many times have you baled Tommy out?’
Harry glanced across at me and shook his head, as the living room squeaked open, Shirley’s head craned slowly around. She whispered our way, ‘Has he gone?’
She answered her own question by walking into our little huddle. Gestured to Stuart with her icy blue eyes and as if by magic, Stuart placed a Gin and Tonic in front of her. She slid the stool over and climbed up onto it, brushed her skirt a couple of times. I offered her a cigarette, which Harry lit for her. Shirley took a heavy sip and then dragged deep on her cigarette. Stared at Stuart and she said, ‘What’s the gossip then?’
He shook his head and looked across at the dartboard, stared at it and frowned. As if the numbers had suddenly been shuffled around the perimeter and double twenty now sat in the double eight bed. Shirley glanced at Harry and then across to me, graveyard silence enveloped our little huddle.
‘Oh I see.’ Shirley frowned, tapped her cigarette three times into the ashtray. ‘Nothing for Shirley’s ears then?’
‘I’ve got something that will shake you up.’ I hadn’t forgotten about Teddy Lewis, how could I ever? Talking about his daughter just made me make the inevitable comparisons. Disturbed daughter of a disturbed father. Nothing new there. Was madness hereditary? I needed to know how he had influenced her. Sleeping with her mother’s lover and making sure they’d be caught, why? My mind slid back Teddy’s way, I couldn’t work out who frightened me more, him or Harry? I emptied my glass, gestured around the others. Glasses replenished, I gestured for the attention of the others.
‘When you realise who the father is, perhaps it’s not surprising that she turned out as disturbed as she did.’
A single word from Shirley, ‘Who?’
‘The St Mary’s girl.’ I answered, sipped some beer and raised my hand. ‘I saw her father in court this morning. You’re not going to believe this, but there can be no doubt. Teddy Lewis, alive and kicking his way back into our lives.’
Then more silence, until Shirley’s glass smashed into the floor and her mouth formed a perfect circle. ‘It was him; he drove past me, in town. Someone shouted at me from a big black car.’
Harry’s breathing took on that of a sprinting racehorse in the winner’s enclosure. His fingers drummed a tattoo on the counter. He whispered… fucking hell I think.
Stuart frowned and said. ‘Who’s Teddy Lewis?’
Teddy - 1980
Teddy stared at the coroner.
The fat bastard.
He wanted to shut the noise out. All those words.
On and bloody on.
Lung and kidney damage, fractured skull, drugs still in her body.
Sex just before… evidence of anal…
The coroner lists all of this shit.
On and bloody on.
Who does he think he is?
Teddy had to stop his hands from covering his ears.
Anal intercourse? He’d never done that. Not with a woman anyway.
On and bloody on.
Pregnant!
Pregnant?
He never asked questions anymore, in fact the question became more important than the answer. The question to Celia, better off never asking it and he didn’t, his mind went off at tangents. Tangents went off at tangents to tangents, what is real? He thought about it for a while, eventually decided that luck or chance was the only reality.
He thought about the dream that woke him this morning, somewhere he couldn’t recognise, but a safe place. He walked on now, looking for this safe place. Of course he didn’t know the town and all of its streets, but no matter where he stood the feeling of being lost swept over him. Lost in a small town and lost inside himself. He tried not to think, becoming just an unthinking camera brought him a degree of calm. He saw but stopped thinking and a solitary calm, an empty tranquillity came alongside him.
Everything had changed within seconds it seemed.
He walked out of the courtroom, into a blustery wind that he thought had honed itself just for him. Walking became the key, just by following the flow of his body all places turned into a blurred equality; he floated on with the reassuring sensation that he was nowhere. He remembered whenever anyone asked him how Celia was, he told them that she had always wanted to go to boarding school anyway. They weren’t really his friends however and they knew he lied.
Fucking bitch.
The day she did it, he wanted to be dead. Now, while he was certainly not glad to be alive, but a
live he was and Teddy thought that it was marginally better than being dead – but only just. He walked on, eyes down and ears closed to the sound of rain beating on parked cars. He had a craving now, a hunger that only a special kind of food could satisfy. He didn’t plan on stopping eating until he became bloated on its singular qualities.
Geography teacher for a start.
Questions, questions, what was she doing in a police car? Why did he start following her? Should he have followed her?
He drove the car around the small market square. His wife couldn’t drive, too much Valium floating around inside her. He could fuck her now and she wouldn’t feel a thing.
Not that he wanted to touch her again… ever.
Fucking pedestrians, get out of the fucki…
His head span away like a multi-coloured top.
It couldn’t be?
It was.
Seeing her again in this poxy little town. As if he wasn’t confused enough as it was, fat bastard coroner, gloomy little courtroom with all of those eyes staring into the back of his head.
Well they can all fuck off.
There she was. The belted raincoat, high heels and the blonde hair. He recognised her immediately, braking the car and staring after her.
I wonder if she still shaves her chuff?
Oblivious to the car horns behind.
His wife shouting. ‘What’s up with you? Why have you stopped in the middle of the road?’
As soon as they got home, he rushed up to his dark room, unfolded the letter.
My dear, darling Teddy. I love you so much and I always will. I have to go away, I almost mis…
*****
Much later, he walked on and tried not to think about her, but he thought about her anyway. Wondered if she had a son or a daughter? Wondered what a man of thirty odd did? Wondered what his name was? Thought about his own life and when he stopped being real? If he lived at all, it was through this imaginary person he had become. A walker that didn’t see, a listener that couldn’t hear, oh well he thought, everything that could happen to him had happened and this thought made him surprisingly composed.
He’s got a son out there somewhere.
I bet he doesn’t wake every day like me, re-born every morning. A baby when the alarm clock clatters away. Growing rapidly, ageing so that by lunch time I’m a teenager. When I’m my father’s age, it must be tea time. By midnight I die and hope that by morning I won’t be born again.
He shook his head and stared at the faithful few filing into church, if he stared long enough they disappeared, he could make things invisible.
He said, ‘No one else can do that.’
The people vanished, but he could see his words, arc out from his mouth like a cartoon caption and then they died and vanished as well.
‘I had a father once… and a mother.’
He watched the words float over the small redbrick wall of the Catholic Church.
‘Bernie – I’m so sorry, how are you?’
He shook his head again, his mother-in-law came into sharp focus, why did she call him Bernie?
She wrapped herself around him, he stifled within the smell of Woodbines, fried eggs and her hounding personality.
‘Poor Bernie, all you’ve had to put up with and now this… poor Bernie.’
Who the fucks Bernie?
Where’s my baby?
Where’s Celia?
Where’s Shirley?
‘What did you say – speak up, stop mumbling. I can’t hear you. Who’s Shirley?’
11
Jack -1945
Harry caught him early, not with a punch though, Harry’s forehead crunched into his opponent just below the left eye. I think if it hadn’t been the first round, the referee would have thrown Harry out of the ring. Or, more likely, Teddy’s threats had the referee mind focused on one thing.
You make sure that fight lasts until the sixth!
It wasn’t the effect of the butt, it didn’t scramble the man’s brains, and he didn’t need to hold on for his life. But the eye began to close, by the end of the first round it had shut completely.
The referee was called over during the interval, much waving and pointing towards Harry’s corner. The referee’s face strained and pale despite the exertion. I thought he was about to disqualify Harry. I glanced across at Wyn who had stood by now and his face looked on the point of a serious explosion. A burst blood vessel at the least.
He shouted advice at the referee, ‘Let them fight, let them get on with it – it’s a man’s game.’
I didn’t think Harry heard a word. He stared at the corner opposite, watched an ice pack being pressed onto a badly swollen eye. Never saw the finger being waved under his own nose.
Ten feet away and I heard it, ‘One more and you’re out – behave understand?’
His opponent couldn’t see properly, perspective that was the problem and Harry kept throwing right hooks, loads of them. It became a massacre and I think that he had forgotten his lines. We needed a sixth round KO to pocket all the money, at the end of the round, Wyn was up again and round the corner.
‘What are you doing? Ease up … remember for God’s sake.’
Harry tried, held his opponent up for a couple of rounds. Cuddled a lot, pushed and shoved a bit. Never landed a worthwhile shot. Until just before the end of the fifth, then another right hook crashed onto the temple. Harry claimed later that he meant to hit just that bit high. Any lower, cheekbone or jaw and it would have been curtains – the man wouldn’t have woke up for a week. Just enough to scramble his brains for most of the minute while his seconds worked frantically. I worried that they might pull him out, his head was down on his chest, exhaustion or oblivion just one punch away.
The bell sounded and for a split second I thought he was going to remain on his stool. But I guessed he was pretty aware that not only Teddy, but most of his thug mates had their shirts, houses – everything including their dinners on him winning in this round. I supposed he thought Harry would have been reading from the same song sheet. He pulled himself onto unsteady legs and his corner men pushed him out to finish the job and pocket some extra from a grateful Teddy.
He walked out to be greeted by a flurry of wild hooks, he grabbed Harry, he wondered why… I half expected him to say – c’mon it’s my turn. Harry ripped uppercuts onto the chin then drilled a couple into the solar plexus. The gloves came down and three, four, five hooks flew onto an unprotected chin. Down, eyes shut before he hit the canvas. The referee never bothered to start a count, raised Harry’s right hand and he ducked out of the ring.
We had it all worked out, never even went back to the changing rooms. Wyn had already put Harry’s clothes in the boot of the car. I walked up the aisle with them. Straight out into the cold night air, into Wyn’s car. What a sight, Harry with the gloves still on. His boxer’s robe carried by Wyn and me hurrying alongside. Wyn fired up the engine and we left into the night and back the short distance to Soho.
It was a tense gathering, only Harry, still high as a kite wanted to drink and sing and dance. Wyn and me sat there and said nothing.
We expected the wrath of Cain to descend at any moment, we said nothing, sometimes silence speaks a thousand words and I looked from one to the other and sighed. ‘I’ve had enough of this.’
Wyn brought a pot of coffee over and a bottle for me, I wanted to fall onto the table and sleep like that. I’d placed bets all over London the previous day. Thousands of pounds loaded onto Harry’s broad back. In a few hours’ time, we would have to venture out and collect. I had started to, no – I did inhabit a dangerous world and despite everything, I rather enjoyed it all.
‘You’re going to stop here the night?’ Wyn touched my hand as he spoke.
I nodded, despite me finding this new life exciting, the short walk to Poland Street too much of a good thing.
I said, ‘Tomorrow’s going to be tricky.’
He nodded, ‘We’ll collect the money, stay tight together
and hope for the best. I wonder what the bookies made of it all?’
For days before the money went on Teddy’s man. Some bookies closed the book on him. That’s when we started putting it down on Harry winning in the same round as his opponent.
What did they make of it all?
I wonder if Teddy was made aware as to the situation? Probably not, but Wyn took no chances anyway. The changing room became a dangerous place, no security, no one about – a place to avoid.
‘How much did we make?’
‘Thousands.’ Wyn spoke through a wide grin. ‘Enough to get away somewhere safer.’
There … he’d said something sane at last.
Then the collective feeling amongst us.
When are they coming?
Wyn poured coffee, sat back and looked at me.
I tried to smile, but the thought of the doormen stood around oblivious to the danger they were in. Tethered like two sacrificial goats, their foot on the ladder of the low level criminal. Doing a bit of door work. It’s that or thieving, that’s the usual attitude around here, who wants a proper job that pays fuck all? I popped out periodically and had a word with them. Nice boys, big and no age. Pleased to have a job for the night – longer than that they were told. Brothers and I’m sure their mum was proud of them. Clean shaven and smart looking, polite and wary at the same time. The dimly lit street casting menacing shadows across their faces.
‘Would you like a coffee later?’
They both nodded, one said ‘I just want something sweet.’ I knew what he meant, a bar of chocolate, the smell of rain on cut grass, a woman maybe? That was the last I saw of them.
I went back inside and glanced around at the usual scene. The degenerate, the debauched with the occasional pervert loitering around the edges. Two attractive young men sat at a table opposite. Both leaning forward – their heads close together over the centre of the small table. One of them squinted at the rising fog of smoke from the cigarette clamped between his lips. I sighed at the same time as a pair of warm hands came around my neck.