Men from the Boys

by Tony Parsons

  They waltzed around the factory forecourt, grunting and sweating, William Fly’s hold unbreakable around Pat’s neck, but unable to get him down.

  I looked at Ken, wanting him to do something. But he just watched the boys, and he did nothing.

  I went to his side. ‘What’s happening?’ I said.

  ‘Grappling,’ the old man said. ‘We didn’t do grappling.’

  ‘What do you mean, you didn’t do grappling?’ I said.

  Pat went down. One brute movement and William Fly swung him from his feet to his back. One move. And then Fly was on top of him, straddling him, his knees on Pat’s arms, the tattoo of his fists pummelling Pat’s face.

  It went on. Nobody said a thing. Not the boys. Not the men. I looked at Ken. He was staring at the ground, still tugging at his ridiculous towel.

  ‘Enough,’ I said, and took a step towards them but Singe Rana was there first, his arms wrapped around William Fly’s shoulders, pulling him away.

  Pat lay there for a moment and then sat up, blinking as if he had just awoken from a dream. He touched his head. I had thought there would be nothing left of his beautiful face. But somehow he just looked a bit bedraggled.

  Ken helped him up. ‘It’s over,’ he said, and Pat stood uncertainly on the legs of a newborn deer. ‘It’s over now, son.’

  Singe Rana still had hold of William Fly but lightly now, and my heart fell away when I saw that he was not going to be punished any more.

  ‘Shake hands, you two,’ Ken said, but his authority seemed to have melted away, and William Fly just laughed and stuck up two fingers. Singe Rana let go of him.

  ‘Shake hands?’ William Fly said. ‘Shake hands? Who are you? The Marquess of effing Queensbury? I’ll shake his scrawny neck.’

  But he made no move towards Pat.

  And then suddenly William Fly realised that he was free to go. The gates of the factory were open. There was nothing and nobody stopping him.

  Pat was standing unsupported, although his legs were still jelly, and now I could see that there was a small deep cut under one eye from a ring. His eye seemed to swell and discolour as I watched it. The beating was just starting to show.

  Ken looked at me.

  ‘You should give the boy a lift,’ he said, and it took me a dumbfounded moment to understand that he was talking about William Fly.

  ‘What?’ Fly said. ‘In his boot?’ He dabbed at his bloodied nose, and patted his pockets for a mobile phone. ‘I’m going to call my dad.’

  Then he was gone.

  Singe Rana took out his parcel of Aloo Chop. I watched Ken slap Pat once on the back and turn away. There was a thermos flask and a copy of the Racing Post by a kit bag. The old man began packing his things away. It was over. And I looked at my son, swaying in the breeze, his face looking more battered and swollen with every passing second, and then at the old man.

  ‘That’s it?’ I said with disbelief. ‘That’s our revenge?’

  ‘That’s it,’ he said, putting his belongings away. ‘And I never promised you revenge.’

  ‘It went very well,’ I said. ‘Don’t you think it went really fucking well?’

  Finally he looked at me.

  ‘You don’t get it, do you?’ he said. He glanced over at Pat, who had decided to sit down for a while. The boy was holding a spicy potato cake, but seemed to have no idea what to do with it. ‘It’s not about winning,’ Ken said.

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ I said. ‘It’s the taking part that counts.’

  ‘No,’ the old man said. ‘It’s the standing up for yourself that counts.’ He zipped up his kit bag. ‘Being a man. It’s the being a man that counts.’

  I felt like laughing in his face. Because I felt like I had been hearing this stuff all my life. Walk tall. Be hard. Be a man, little boy. And this is where the philosophy of my fathers had got us – to a beating in the forecourt of a fireworks factory.

  ‘Can we go home now?’ Pat asked.

  Cyd got up when she heard us.

  We were in the bathroom, Pat sitting on the edge of the bath as I swabbed at the blood under his swollen eye. The cut from the ring was deep and neat.

  Cyd stood in the doorway, fastening her dressing gown, staring at Pat’s face without expression.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ she said, and I let her.

  She said nothing as she cleaned him up. First she got off the caked blood, and then she dabbed at the cuts with TCP.

  The sound of crying from down the hall.

  Joni, calling out in her sleep.

  ‘I’ve got it,’ I said, and before Cyd had a chance to reply I went down to Joni’s bedroom. She was sitting up, rubbing her eyes. I sat on the bed and took her in my arms.

  ‘An asteroid,’ she sobbed. ‘An asteroid is going to hit our planet.’

  Her body was so warm. I touched her forehead, checking for fever.

  ‘No, it’s okay,’ I said. ‘An asteroid’s not going to hit our planet.’

  She was suddenly furious.

  ‘An asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs,’ my daughter insisted. ‘Rulers of Earth for a hundred and sixty million…’ a pause to choke down a sob ‘…years. Dead. Gone. In seven days. Wiped out by a giant asteroid.’

  She simmered down. I patted her back, kissed the top of her head. She got back under her duvet.

  ‘That’s the dinosaurs,’ I said. ‘That’s not us, Joni.’

  ‘But the average gap,’ she said, although she was fading fast. ‘Average gap between giant asteroids striking Earth.’

  ‘Average gap?’ I said, not following.

  ‘Every hundred million years,’ she said, taking a deep breath and as she let it out, she seemed to slide deeper into sleep. ‘A giant…asteroid…hits Earth…every hundred million…years…’ I patted her head as she buried it into the pillow. ‘Dinosaurs…sixty-five million years ago…so…’

  She yawned.

  I completed the math for her, stroking her hair.

  ‘So that means we’re due for another asteroid in thirty-five million years,’ I said. ‘Little darling, let’s worry about it in the morning.’

  When I was sure that she was sleeping, I went back to the bathroom. Pat’s eye seemed to be closing by the second and yet somehow he looked a bit better now that Cyd had removed the dried blood. Or maybe it was just being cared for that made him look a bit better. As though he was safe now.

  ‘All right?’ she said.

  ‘All right,’ he said.

  When she had finished, the floor of the bathroom was covered with white towels that were stained a strange rusty brown. Then she made him open his mouth and inspected his teeth.

  Then she smiled. A private smile, something between the pair of them.

  ‘You’ll live,’ she said.

  But she told him to go down to the freezer, find a pack of frozen peas and hold it against his eye for as long as he could stand.

  ‘Okay,’ Pat said. ‘Thanks, Cyd.’

  He left us.

  ‘That poor kid,’ she said. ‘What did you do to him now?’

  I reached for her as she brushed past me. I said her name, softly because I did not want to wake Joni, but she just kept going. I watched her enter the darkness of our bedroom.

  ‘Sorry, Harry,’ she said. ‘I’m just too tired for you now.’

  After a few moments I followed her. I got undressed and slipped under the covers, our bodies not touching, a few inches and several light years apart. I lay there for a long time without sleep coming. I did not turn on the light.

  And I must have slept at some point, because I woke up to the sounds of them leaving.

  The bags being lugged downstairs, the diesel engine of the taxi in the street, and the excited chatter of Joni deciding what books she would take.

  I got out of bed and went to the window. Cyd was watching the driver hefting a suitcase into the cab. I came downstairs and found Joni kneeling beside another suitcase, and stuffing a tattered copy of Jacqueline Wilson’s Sleepovers into
her pink rucksack.

  ‘We’re going on holiday,’ my daughter told me, her eyes shining. ‘We’re going to have a bit of a break.’

  Cyd came inside and looked at me.

  ‘Peggy’s going to stay on with her dad for a while,’ she said. ‘I think it will be good for both of them.’

  I shook my head and held out my hands.

  ‘I hope Pat’s all right,’ she said. ‘That cut is the worst of it.’

  She reached for the suitcase but I picked it up. Not because I wanted to help her but because I wanted to stop her.

  ‘Where are you going?’ I wanted to know.

  ‘And I hope your friend doesn’t suffer too much,’ she said. ‘The old gentleman.’

  ‘He’s not my friend,’ I said. ‘He’s my father’s friend.’

  ‘I think he’s your friend, too,’ Cyd said.

  I shook my head. ‘When are you coming back?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just need to catch my breath. I need to see where I am. Do you ever feel that way, Harry? I feel that way all the time.’

  She reached for the suitcase but I held it away from her. Our daughter stood in the doorway, her pink rucksack turned towards us, looking at the cab.

  ‘Don’t stop loving me,’ I said to my wife.

  ‘I’m trying,’ she said. ‘It’s just a bit harder than it used to be, okay?’

  I nodded. And when she reached for the suitcase for a third time, I let her have it. Then I picked up my daughter and I kissed her although she squirmed in my arms because kissing was gross. I put her down and she ran laughing to the cab. And I felt that if I lost her then it would be the end of my world.

  I followed them to the kerb and I told our daughter to mind her fingers as I closed the door. Then I watched them go. The taxi’s brake lights flashed red twice in farewell as they reached the end of our road, and then they were gone.

  I looked up at the sky, checking for asteroids, and then I went back inside the house, closing the door quietly because my son was still sleeping upstairs. He had no school today.

  He had no school on any day.

  Twenty-three

  We stopped at the top of the stone steps and the stadium laid spread out before us.

  The expanse of green like a secret garden in the heart of the city. The track of wet sand. The six traps waiting, open. The old men in flat caps and the young men in trainers. Everybody smoking, coughing, studying form, then looking up to watch the greyhounds being walked by their handlers.

  Pat sucked on his cigarette and narrowed his eyes.

  He was wearing his school uniform but it looked like something a pirate had plundered from a dead midshipman. Buttons missing or dangling by a thread on his Ramsay MacDonald blazer. The Ramsay Mac tie rakishly tucked inside his shirt, like a David Niven cravat. The top two buttons undone on his white shirt. Bunking off had turned into a way of life. I knew he wouldn’t go back.

  ‘You’ll stop one day,’ I said, looking at him with his cigarette. ‘Right? The smoking thing. It can’t go on forever.’

  He nodded, toking hard. ‘When I’m thirty,’ he said, and I could tell he honestly believed that he would never be thirty, not in a million years. ‘Don’t worry. I want to live.’ Then his face lit up. ‘There they are!’ he said.

  The old men had parked themselves down by the winning post. As we approached, they raised their ancient faces. Ken from the Racing Post, Singe Rana from the programme.

  ‘Going to miss this old place,’ Ken said, and we all looked at the condemned dog track. ‘Online poker. Internet bookies. E-casinos. What a load of old bollocks.’

  They were tearing Badham Cross dog track down. This was the last BAGS meeting ever, but even free admission had not tempted many punters through the gates. Only the young men with no jobs to go to and the old men who had nowhere else to go. And the boy who should have been in school.

  They stood in the first sunlight of summer, watching the dogs.

  ‘That one,’ Ken said, getting out his tin of Old Holborn. ‘Number six. He smells the blood.’

  We watched the greyhounds approach, as sleek as panthers. The dog in black-and-white stripes with the red number six had his nose in the air, his eyes black and gleaming. He was a very light brown, the colour of a beach at the end of the day.

  Ken coughed as he rolled his snout. ‘Don’t tell me that mutt’s been training with some tin bunny,’ he said to Singe Rana, who just shrugged at him. ‘Look at him,’ Ken insisted. ‘He’s had more live rabbit than you’ve had Aloo Chop, sunshine.’ Ken looked at Pat. ‘He’s already had a couple of winners, the jammy git.’ Then back at his thoughtful friend. ‘When’s your lucky streak going to end?’

  Singe Rana didn’t look up from his Racing Post. ‘It is not a lucky streak,’ he said. ‘It’s an era.’

  Ken licked the Rizla on his roll-up as the dogs came past us, heading for the traps. ‘Only Boy,’ he sighed, and it took me a moment to realise he was talking about number six.

  Pat studied form. ‘Only Boy is a long shot,’ he said doubtfully. ‘Beaten every time in thirteen starts.’ He nodded at the red numbers flickering on the tote betting board. ‘The smart money’s all on Vigorous Fella.’

  ‘But Only Boy smells the blood,’ Ken insisted.

  He drew deeply on his roll-up and then embarked on a coughing fit. When it had stopped he blinked at us from behind his glasses, his eyes wet from the effort. ‘You can’t stop them when they smell the blood,’ he pointed out, taking one last suck on his snout before he tossed it away. It tumbled down the old stone steps, sparks flying. ‘Get on it,’ he whispered to me.

  I nodded. Pat and I went down the steps to the rails where the line of bookies were waiting, and he put our bet on: £25. First place or nothing.

  ‘A pony to win on Only Boy for the young scholar,’ the bookie said, and his assistant wrote it down. ‘Good luck, son.’

  The noise was rising when we came back. It was that giddy, fleeting moment when everyone in the place still believed, when everyone still had a chance. The dogs were in the traps.

  The metal rabbit came rattling by on its ludicrous run.

  Pat offered Ken a cigarette and he shook his head. The old man smiled at the boy. The pair of them looked back at the traps. The dogs came bursting out with a metal clack and then there was the pounding of their paws on the sand, and the sound of their panting. Their tongues hung out like strange pink lizards and the cries of the men and the boys drowned out the metal clatter of the rabbit.

  Only Boy had come out of the traps as if he was late for dinner. Vigorous Fella hung on to his tail but he was always falling away and by the final bend Only Boy was a length ahead. Pat and Ken jumped up and down, clinging on to each other, and in the final straight Singe Rana just smiled and shook his head with disbelief.

  ‘He smells the blood!’ Ken shouted. ‘He smells the blood! I told you!’

  Only Boy came past the finish line and Ken turned away, his fists full of Pat’s Ramsay Mac blazer, his face shining with triumph.

  Then some cloud seemed to pass across his eye and as all around us the men threw away their losing tickets, I watched the life seem to just seep out of him. Pat was still laughing, and Singe Rana slapping him on the back, the pair of them staring at the track where the greyhounds had reached the rabbit. It was still now, and the dogs were bashing their muzzled mouths against it.

  But I saw Ken Grimwood reach for the breath that did not come, and I saw his hands fall away from my son’s school blazer, and I caught him as he fell.

  Much later I read about the Victoria Cross he had won at Monte Cassino. For some reason – a lack of imagination on my part – it had never before crossed my mind to find out how he had won it, just as I had never wanted to talk to my father until the day that it was too late to ever talk to him again.

  And so I discovered that on Valentine’s Day 1944 Ken Grimwood had single-handedly attacked an enemy machinegun post in the rubble of the bombed monastery. Despite
suffering from multiple wounds in his legs, and with all his comrades dead or wounded, he had used his Bren gun and hand grenades to kill the crew. Then he directed fire at enemy positions until he was relieved by New Zealand troops. He had done these things when he was just a few years older than my teenage son.

  He had taken the lives of men, and he had saved the lives of other men. He had come very close to dying for the freedom of generations yet unborn – and he would have laughed in my face if you had put it like that. Then he would have told you that he fought for his friends, and that he fought for his survival. That’s what he would have told you, and it would have been true, but it would not have been the entire story.

  You would not have looked twice or even once at this old man if you had seen him standing at a bus stop. But he had lived a life that mattered, a life of weight and importance. And that was strange.

  Because when I held him in my arms on the day they closed down the old dog track, and I smelled the Old Holborn and Old Spice on him for the very last time, it felt like he weighed nothing at all.

  After midnight, Pat and I stood at the vending machine sipping scalding-hot hospital tea that we did not want.

  I looked at my son and I remembered taking him to see my father just before the end. Was he four or five years old? He must have been five because he had started school. But it had been a mistake.

  They had worshipped each other, my son and my father, and because of some misplaced sentiment on my part I thought that they should have a chance to say goodbye. But Pat was too young and my father was too sick. It was brutal for both of them.

  ‘Ten years ago you were full of questions,’ I said, moving the plastic cup from one hand to the other to prevent third-degree burns. ‘What happens when we die? Do we really go to heaven or is it just an endless sleep? If God really exists, then why does he allow all this suffering?’ I nodded, both hands burning. ‘That’s what you asked me after we came to see your granddad. All the big stuff. All the big questions.’

  He laughed. ‘I remember,’ he said.