Men from the Boys

by Tony Parsons

  In a dream I drifted up those few steps to the front door, and Jim put an arm around me, drawing me into their group embrace.

  ‘Harry,’ he said, all choked. ‘Cyd’s been so great. Ever since we found out. She’s been there for me. We’re working out how to tell Peggy. She doesn’t know a thing. She’s going to be…’

  He shook his head, gulping it down, overwhelmed.

  ‘She’ll deal with it,’ Cyd said. ‘Peggy’s strong and smart.’ I could see her making the physical effort to keep the tears at bay. ‘I’ll tell her. It will be okay. Everything will be okay.’

  Then I took half a step back, and it sort of broke up the group hug. The three of them kept their arms around each other, but I was out of it.

  I looked at Liberty, not understanding anything. How she became this nice middle-aged lady, how they could look at me with total innocence, how the time can slip away when we are not even looking.

  ‘Jim’s got Parkinson’s,’ Cyd said flatly. ‘Diagnosed – ’ She looked at her ex-husband for confirmation. ‘A month back?’ Then she looked at me.

  ‘Parkinson’s disease,’ I said, pointlessly, taking another half a step back and almost falling backwards down the steps. Which was not what the moment needed. Cyd took my arm, preventing me from falling. ‘I don’t really know…’ I began.

  Jim was staring at his hands. ‘It’s the nervous system,’ he said. ‘Affects the brain and the spinal cord. Nobody knows how it will progress. Your mobility, your speech…’

  Liberty hung her head.

  Cyd took a fistful of his shirt and shook it. ‘That’s right – nobody knows how it’s going to progress,’ she said. ‘Not even the doctors. So stop imagining the worst, okay?’

  Jim looked at me. ‘It’s the work, Harry – you understand? The idea that it could stop me working.’ His voice choked, broke. ‘You know?’

  I knew.

  And when Cyd and I walked away, I put my arm around her and she neither pushed me away nor encouraged me to carry on holding her. She just kept walking. My arm fell away. It seemed only natural, that falling away.

  ‘Poor Jim,’ I said. ‘I thought…’

  She shook her head. ‘I know exactly what you thought,’ she said evenly. ‘You thought I was coming here to have sex with him.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No, no, no.’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes, yes,’ she said. ‘My ex-husband! I don’t even know how a mind can think such a thing. Or how you can think such a thing of me. And what about Liberty? What was she doing while all this was going on? Filming it? Joining in? While dressed as a nurse?’

  Well.

  The thought had crossed my mind.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I said. ‘That’s what I don’t get, Cyd. Just tell me. What are we? Husband and wife? Or room mates?’

  She laughed bitterly. ‘I didn’t tell you because I know how much you have on your plate,’ she said. ‘Because I know how hard it is for you right now. Because I thought I could deal with it. I didn’t want to worry you. I thought I was doing a good thing.’

  And I loved her. All of her. I had never loved her more than I did at that moment.

  I loved the thin white scar just above her eyebrow, a reminder of a childhood accident with a baseball bat, kept like a secret under the black veil of hair. I loved her faraway brown eyes and her decency and her bravery. I loved the fact that she could keep love in her heart even after love had gone. And I loved the fact that she was not fucking another man. I may have laughed out loud. Did I really do that, or did I just smile? I don’t know. But whatever I did, it was definitely a mistake.

  She stopped and stared at me.

  ‘You act as though it’s good news, Harry,’ she said. ‘The father of my child is diagnosed with this terrible disease and you stand there acting as if you just won the Lottery.’

  ‘No,’ I said, and she started walking but I stopped her and I held her hands, wanting her to understand. ‘It’s just that – I love you, that’s all.’

  ‘You’re happy,’ she said. ‘I can tell. Look at you. How can you be happy?’

  My wife looked at me as if we had never met.

  Seventeen

  I was at the production company when my phone began to vibrate. GRIMWOOD CALLING, it said. I stared at the name for a moment, and then I pressed IGNORE. I slid my phone back in my jeans. Not even feeling guilty. As far as I was concerned, I had done my bit.

  I was in a holding area, drinking bad macchiato from a vending machine and waiting for my interview to start, feeling the sting of rejection before it had even happened.

  The office was open plan, so everywhere I could see busy young people with their All Saints sweaters and cocaine hangovers, scuttling around importantly. Ten years ago I would have known their names. But ten years ago this lot were in school, and the busy boys and girls of my time had been shipped off to uncool careers outside Soho or to families in the suburbs.

  A slip of a girl stood in front of me, giving me her professional PA smile.

  ‘Harry…Sliver?’ she said, squinting at a clipboard.

  ‘Close,’ I said, happy to put down the rotten coffee and stand up. ‘It’s Harry Silver, actually.’

  And I’ve got a fucking BAFTA! And a glass earhole! And a pigeon! Or at least I did have until I smashed them all to bits.

  She wasn’t embarrassed. Who cared if it was Silver or Sliver? We both knew they were going to give the job to a twenty-one-year-old who would work for peanuts.

  I followed her down corridors lined with posters of PC Filth: An Unfair Cop. I stared at the faces of all those RADA graduates trying to look well hard, and my mind went blank. There was the young female cop who used to be a lap dancer and the cop with the booze problem and the cop who got shot…what were they called again? And among those beautiful faces, only one shone out, the most beautiful of them all. Jim Mason looked down at me, looking glamorously tortured.

  My phone began to vibrate and I ignored it. Because the PA had stopped outside an open door, where a thin woman in glasses was showing out a kid with uncombed hair and jeans hanging down the crack of his skinny little bum.

  My rival.

  ‘Fantastic to meet you, Jake,’ the thin woman in glasses was saying. ‘I loved your shorts.’

  His shorts? I glanced dumbly at my rival’s baggy jeans. And then the euro dropped. Oh, his shorts! His short films! I was still grinning inanely as the woman in glasses buttered up the departing Jake, watching me from a wary corner of her eye.

  ‘And I loved your vision for PC Filth: An Unfair Cop, Jake. We will definitely be in touch.’

  I should have just turned round and walked away. But I stood there, the shadow of my inane grin still playing meaninglessly around my mouth as the woman in glasses looked at me with slightly less warmth than she’d summoned for Jake and his impressive shorts, and she led me into her office, sneaking a quick glance at her watch. She settled herself behind a desk that was empty of everything apart from five BAFTAs and a BlackBerry.

  ‘Sara,’ she said. ‘No H.’

  I nodded. ‘Harry,’ I said. ‘No job.’

  She grimaced, as if in physical pain. Oh well.

  I swallowed hard and looked at the posters for inspiration – PC Dobbs? PC Dibbs? What the fuck was Jim’s character called? I lowered my eyes but had to instantly raise them again to peer up at Sara, for her chair was considerably higher than mine.

  Ah, that old trick, designed to make me feel small. It was working.

  ‘Okay, Larry,’ she said. ‘PC Filth: An Unfair Cop. Series six.’ She leaned forward, squinting behind the specs. ‘Thoughts?’

  ‘Well,’ I said, and my phone began to vibrate. Why couldn’t he just leave me alone? ‘Clearly, the inciting incident has to be the shooting at the end of the last series.’ The phone felt warm against my thigh. I took a breath. ‘The tragic shooting of…PC…Tibbs?’

  A flash of irritation behind those glasses. ‘PC Dibbs,’ she said. She laughed and it chille
d me to the marrow. ‘There is no PC Tibbs as yet.’

  ‘Of course not,’ I babbled, the first beads of sweat breaking out on my brow as the phone vibrated again. Could she hear it? Was it too late to take it out and turn it off? ‘The major editorial question is…’

  We smiled in perfect harmony, and it was a real smile from her this time.

  ‘Does he live?’ we said together. Then she nodded curtly. ‘We are still in negotiations with the actor’s agency,’ she said. ‘So nothing has been signed.’

  ‘Kill him off,’ I said. A bold move, I know. ‘Then the entire series can be about the aftermath. The hunt for vengeance. The search for the killer. The impact of his death on the team. I am thinking – complete mayhem. Cross-dressing coppers! Back on the booze! Beating up hoodies in the cells!’ I took a chance. ‘DCI Rooney back with the wife but she doesn’t understand how these mean streets can tear out a man’s guts…and make a good cop go bad.’

  ‘What about K-9?’

  K-9? Of course! The police dog!

  ‘I loved that episode, “A Bent Cop’s Best Friend”,’ I said.

  Sara smiled.

  Yes! Back of the net!

  Then she looked thoughtful.

  ‘I was thinking of bumping off the mutt,’ she mused. ‘A hit-and-run accident? Stopping a bullet as he throws himself in front of DCI Rooney?’ She scrunched up her mouth. ‘Too corny?’

  ‘We could always get another dog,’ I suggested. ‘Son of K-9…K-10?’

  ‘Brilliant, darling,’ she said.

  I was on a roll.

  Then a little red light began to wink on her BlackBerry. She picked it up and sighed. ‘I have to take this,’ she said. ‘It’s my nanny.’ Hand over the BlackBerry, confiding in me. ‘At least, she calls herself a nanny. She’s more like a fucking lobotomised au pair.’ She smiled thinly. ‘Yes, Milena, what’s the problem now?’ She listened for a bit, tapping her fingers on her empty desk, staring at her BAFTAs. Then she held up a hand. ‘What do you mean, Lukey refuses to eat his vegetables? You know the modus operandi, darling, when Lukey refuses to eat his fucking vegetables. Didn’t we discuss this only yesterday? No, shut up, darling, and listen to me. You may learn something. When Lukey refuses to eat his vegetables then we remove his privileges. Threaten to take away his Wii Sports Resort and he will soon be necking the organic carrots, believe me.’

  While she was chewing out the nanny I sneaked a look at my phone.

  TEN MISSED CALLS, it told me.

  Jesus Christ, it must be serious.

  I licked my lips and slipped the phone back inside my jeans. Sara was talking to me and she was smiling but I wasn’t hearing her. And I remembered my father on the last night of his life. Scared and shot full of morphine and eaten up by the cancer that was about to kill him.

  And left to die alone.

  We didn’t mean to let him die alone, my mother and I. We had just come home to get a change of clothes and to shower and to catch our breath. And to get out of that hospital, and that cancer ward, for a few hours. And that is when he died, and I would regret not being there for the rest of my life.

  Then she had stopped smiling.

  And she was waiting.

  ‘I said – what about WPC Chang?’

  I opened my mouth and nothing came out. Ten missed calls? Even if I left now, would I even be in time? Was I going to let everyone I cared about die alone? Was that the kind of man I had become?

  I looked up at the posters on the wall. WPC Chang? What one was she? Was she a new character or an old character? There was no obvious WPC Chang in the posters. And I felt the panic flying, as I rose to my feet.

  ‘WPC Chang?’ I said. ‘What about her?’

  Sara leaned back in her chair, looking up at me now. ‘What about her?’ she said. ‘Is that the question? Well, obviously – what about her abortion in series three? Should she still be bearing the psychological scars?’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Look, Sara – I really don’t know, to be honest. In my experience – I mean, in real life rather than in PC Filth: An Unfair Cop – nobody ever gets over that kind of thing. Not really.’ I looked up at the posters. I didn’t want to be rude. I needed a job. But – ten missed calls! – I had to go. ‘I only really started watching the show a few days ago, to tell you the truth. I may have missed WPC Chang’s abortion.’ I was heading towards the door, already getting out my phone. ‘I could do this job. I know I could. I know you’ll go for some kid who knows every episode inside out and will work for a pocketful of pistachio nuts.’ I shook my head, and nodded at the awards on her desk. ‘But I have two things that he doesn’t have. A BAFTA and some grey hair.’

  ‘Give him time,’ she said.

  I smiled sadly. She was hard but she was good. I could see that. I would have loved to work with her. But the world was not like that any more.

  ‘I see you’re a mother,’ I said. ‘So I hope you understand. Domestic emergency.’

  At the death, she was surprisingly sympathetic. Before my very eyes, I saw something inside her melt.

  ‘Lukey is seven,’ she said, smiling as she nodded at the phone in my hand. ‘How old is this one?’

  I had to think about it for a second.

  ‘Eighty-two,’ I said.

  I was back out on Old Compton Street, lunchtime Soho swirling all around as I desperately called Ken’s number. It just kept ringing until it went to voicemail.

  So I checked my phone and swore under my breath because the old man never left messages. I hailed a black cab and headed north to the Angel, wound tight with the anxiety and fury that you feel when your child is suddenly and unexpectedly out of sight, and you know with total certainty that the very worst is about to happen.

  Singe Rana opened the door. Ken was sitting in front of the racing on Channel 4, a mug of tea by his side and today’s Racing Post on his lap.

  ‘Got a red-hot tip for you,’ he said. ‘Chinese Rocks in the three thirty at Goodwood tomorrow.’

  I stared at him.

  ‘A horse?’ I said. ‘You’ve been bombing me with calls because of…a horse?’

  He frowned at me. ‘Doing you a favour, mate,’ he said. ‘It’s Chinese Rocks in the three thirty at Goodwood tomorrow and it’s a dead cert.’ He looked at Singe Rana as the old Gurkha eased himself into his favourite chair. ‘What are the odds?’

  The smooth golden face turned to me with quiet satisfaction. ‘Twenty-five to one,’ he said, and Ken cackled with triumph.

  ‘Put everything you’ve got on it,’ he advised. ‘Bloke in the bookies gave us the nod. Didn’t he, Singe?’

  ‘You called me ten times in the middle of a job interview,’ I said, still trying to understand. ‘Why didn’t you pick up when I called back?’

  ‘Probably a bit mutton,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Mutt and Jeff. Deaf.’

  ‘Can you speak English?’ I said. ‘All those calls – about some stupid horse…’

  He bristled at that. ‘It’s not some stupid horse, sunshine,’ he said. ‘It’s Chinese Rocks in the three thirty at Goodwood. And if you don’t get on it, then it’s your loss.’

  Then he shook his Racing Post, and he narrowed his eyes at me with exactly the same amused contempt that I sometimes saw on the face of my father, a look that said he knew exactly how this world worked, while I was still looking for the user’s manual.

  The cinema was half-empty on a wet Monday night. I shook my head and irascibly munched my popcorn. I couldn’t believe it.

  A new print of Seven Samurai and all it attracts is a few hard-core Kurosawa fans and a bunch of courting couples who could be necking to some rom-com corn? As the seven Samurai clashed with the bandits who were terrorising the villagers, I could see the glow of mobiles in the darkness. Unbelievable.

  As I left the cinema, I wondered what Pat would have made of it. He would probably have said that it wasn’t a patch on The Magnificent Seven, and I would have said that was a barmy positi
on to take, as the Yul Brynner-Steve McQueen western was only a Hollywood remake of the Japanese original. And then Pat would have got a sly little smile and said, sure, but Kurosawa’s film was conceived as an homage to John Ford in the first place.

  But Pat wasn’t there.

  I stood outside the cinema, shivering in the night and feeling my stomach rumble. If I went home then I would have to rummage among sashimi and shellfish in the new fridge when all I really wanted was cheese on toast. So I walked across to the pizza place on the far side of Islington Green where I paused outside, held by a familiar face.

  Peter was in the window of the pizza joint with a woman and two kids. No, three kids, because the woman had a new baby in her arms.

  She looked like Gina’s plain younger sister.

  Tall, highlights, but without the glow that Gina had. I watched her soothing the baby with one hand as she ate a piece of garlic bread with the other. The two bigger children seemed very well behaved. They were eating their mini pizzas, their legs swinging above the floor. Their father was raising a bottle of Peroni beer to his lips. He stopped when he saw me, his mouth half-open, the bottle not quite there.

  He turned back to his family. He took a swig.

  And I stood there staring at him because I wanted him to know that I saw it all, and I wanted him to squirm.

  Even now there was a part of me that felt Gina was under my protection. Ludicrous, I know. I kept on staring until the woman looked at me – the loon with his nose pressed up against the glass at Pizza Palace – and then I turned away.

  I was still hungry, but I walked the length of Upper Street without finding anywhere to eat. There was every kind of food imaginable. Thai, Mexican, Chinese – you name it. But everywhere seemed to be full of families and couples. I walked all the way home with my stomach growling in protest, feeling like I should just walk into the next restaurant.