Trilogy: The First Three Books in the Amber For Go Series

by Paul Harris

  The door flew open, its handle bludgeoning into the recently plastered wall, and Bird walked in. He handed me another bag of fruit. “Grapes,” he said.

  I peered, somewhat tentatively, into the bag. “It’s just a bag of stalks and pips, oh, and a cigarette end. Thanks, Bird, nice.”

  He shrugged. “Listen, did you think any more about what I said yesterday?”

  I pursed my lips at him and shook my head, sharply. He screwed up his face, inquisitively. Marilyn was still at the window, arranging the flowers in the vase. “Oh, that job thing,” I said, still shaking my head. “I hadn’t given it much thought, really.”

  “Oh, you need a job, though,” chimed in Marilyn, still with her back to us.

  Bird still looked perplexed, so, by way of illuminating him, and, also, changing the subject, I broke the news. “By the way, I’m going to stay with Marilyn for a little while when I get out.”

  Now he started shaking his head at me and mouthing something between scruffy week-old stubble. Marilyn turned around to face us. “Oh, that sounds nice,” he said, feebly.

  “I can’t get all the flowers in the vase,” said Marilyn, “do you think they’ll let me have another one?”

  “Oh, I’m sure they will,” answered Bird, enthusiastically. “Definitely, they will. Just ask at reception, just there.”

  “Back in a minute”, she said, cheerfully.

  Bird closed the door behind her and immediately turned on me. “Are you mad or what? It’s that bang on the head! I knew it!”

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “Okay, she’s hot but so what? Look what happened to Sol.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t you remember me telling you? It is the bump on the head. He got married, dude!”

  I shrugged like a scolded schoolboy. “I know.”

  “And, you hardly know her.”

  I shrugged again. “I know.”

  He shrugged back at me and held it, his bony shoulders tight besides his ears, hands outstretched, willing me to see sense and make a break for it while I still could.

  “I’ve got to try it once,” I suggested.

  He slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand. “You got plenty of time for that. It’s too soon, man. Sew some wild oats. Talking of which…”

  “Which we weren’t,” I hastily interjected.

  “Talking of which,” he repeated, completely unabated, “did you know that your former landlord’s missus is in the family way?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Pregnant, obviously! You know her, don’t you?” he winked, mischievously. “Roger’s missus? Long auburn hair, nice bit of stuff.” He nodded at me, with great confidence. “You definitely know her.”

  And, finally, the penny dropped. This hospital bed, this pain, these plastic pipes all over me; it was nothing to do with rent arrears or the flat or Sol; it was all over women again. It was all about sex, a crappy one night stand with someone whose name I didn’t even know.

  I wasn’t so much discharged as bundled out of the hospital head first. Bird came to pick me up and had a cab waiting outside. We drove to his house where he showed me the stuff that he’d collected from the flat. Two bin-liners full of clothes, most of which didn’t belong to me; one pair of trainers; four empty album covers; one cassette tape; an ashtray; a bottle opener (the bottle opener); and an old copy of the NME from 1980 with The Jam on the cover.

  “That it?” I asked. “You sure?”

  “That’s all he gave me. He wasn’t in the best of moods.”

  “Where’s the rest?”

  “Skipped it, or so I gather.”

  I slumped into one of Bird’s beer-stained armchairs and thumbed through the NME.

  In the afternoon, we took a stroll down to one of our local pubs. It was basically a farewell tour for me. The barmaid was pretending to be sad, saying how much she’d miss me, and that I should call back from time to time. I got a kiss on the cheek but she didn’t offer us a pint on the house. The pub was fairly empty, even for a Tuesday afternoon. It’s funny how watershed moments in life are always so disappointing. A huge moment in one man’s life, a brand new start, the turning of a new chapter, is just another damp Tuesday afternoon to everybody else.

  I stayed the night at Bird’s and, the next day, caught the train up to North London with my bin-liners, and met Marilyn from work.

  It wasn’t what I expected, living with a woman. It was agonisingly claustrophobic. Even after the first couple of weeks, I felt as though I was being suffocated, slowly poisoned, my hopes and ambitions forgotten, the verve drained from my system and replaced by an expert knowledge of soap opera plots. She wanted more all the time; more promises; more commitment; nailing me down so that I could never get away from her.

  I stayed, nevertheless, and the rest is history. My only defence is that I thought I’d learn to love her, and that I would grow into my new role. Instead, we got married and I learnt to hate her.

  Chapter Three

  Itchycoo Park

  When I awoke from my malaise, the Nineties were upon me like a pack of rabid wolves. The initial buzz of being in a serious relationship had fizzled out after the first couple of months. Marilyn and I barely spoke to each other after that, except for when she hurled abuse at me from the kitchen window as I launched one of my daring escape bids from the dungeon of domesticity. But, the need for affordable accommodation for both of us, coupled with the duel novelties of hot home-cooked meals and clean bed sheets, and then, later, the arrival of our first child, kept me manacled to her like a forlorn convict. The meals soon stopped, as did any notion of sexual activity, and the clean bed sheets gave way to nights spent tossing and turning on the settee under a pile of coats.

  I did three years of it and, by the end, I felt as though I’d gone three rounds with Mike Tyson. My fire had been well and truly doused. Despair hung from me like a dark and musty cloak, offensive to all who approached me; an odour of self-defeat so oppressive that I felt as if I’d passed through to another world.

  Moving to North London with Marilyn was the worst mistake that I ever made. In a shamefully long list of mistakes, this one would stand proudly at the top, as number one, forever.

  Eventually, I lost touch with everyone I’d ever known. Even when I ventured south on the underground, those odd weekends when I could get away, and wandered back to my old haunts to look up familiar faces, things had changed. They had all moved on, and I was a virtual stranger now. The Earth had turned on its axis once more and I was in danger of falling overboard.

  I left Marilyn on a bitterly cold morning, tears stinging my face, and my baby boy crying in an upstairs room. I can still hear his confused wailing now, occasionally, when I lie alone in the darkened dead of night. It cuts me like a knife, delivering an unspeakable pain that drives me on to the end of my days.

  I left with a battered blue suitcase and a copy of the Evening Standard, folded open at “properties to rent”, vague circles around the advertisements that I thought I may be able to afford.

  I ended up going through a letting agency and they stuck me in a bedsit for fifty pounds a week. I couldn’t believe the place. The roughly painted wallpaper was peeling at every corner and was mottled with damp and mildew below the ceiling. There was a large brown splash up the wall behind the door, like dried blood, an enduring memorial to a suicide victim who had realised they had hit rock bottom. The lino was rotting away beneath the bed and the bed itself reeked of wet dogs and cat piss.

  “It’s all I’ve got at the moment,” said the man from the agency. He could sense my disappointment. “We’ll have more rooms available shortly,” he said, encouragingly. “Maybe even tomorrow. People are always moving out of these places.” He said it as if that was a positive and as if he totally failed to see that it was actually a poor recommendation to a new client. “Of course, you won’t find many places as inexpensive as this one; not round here, anyway.” He smiled as he handed me
the keys, and then he shook my hand. I watched as he negotiated the crumbling staircase back to the narrow hallway. He shut the front door behind him and I heard the engine of his Audi turn.

  “Robbing bastard!” I muttered, under my breath, as I dropped my suitcase onto the bed, which creaked under the strain. I sat on the wooden chair near the window and lit a cigarette.

  There was a small table next to it covered with a filthy lace tablecloth and home to a nicotine stained ashtray; one of those big chunky glass ones that you don’t see anymore because people kept getting beaten to death with them. The bed was in one corner and a battered old wardrobe stood in the opposing corner, like two over-the-hill wrestlers taunting each other for dominance of the tiny ring. There was little more than twelve inches between them, a gap through which you had to squeeze every time you exited or entered the door. I was missing home already.

  I leant forward to open the window and let some air in, or to let out the stale stench of loneliness. But, the window wouldn’t budge. It had been painted whilst it was closed and the double extra triple coat of paint had dried and set it steadfast shut for ever. “Shithole,” I whispered to myself. I found the shared bathroom, which stunk of decay, and had a shower and a shave. Then, I went looking for a pub.

  As I reached the foot of the stairs, I could hear someone cooking a meal in the kitchen. As I prepared to introduce myself, the kitchen door was kicked shut as I caught sight of an African guy in a yellow boubou, standing over a large boiling pot. The smell of the steam coming off it was nauseating. It permeated the whole building. It was nothing like the smell of Marilyn’s corned beef hash.

  It didn’t take me long at all to stumble across a pub. There was a parade of shops next to the old Victorian house where I now resided, at the end of which, standing aloof on the corner, was a large white-painted pub. This was a bonus that may have made some reparation for the blood stains, the mildew, and the sealed window. The pub seemed quite lively from the outside; the music was good and loud. I turned the brass handle, pushed the door open, and went in.

  “Hi,” said the barmaid in a lazy antipodean slur, “how you doin’? What can I get you?” The exuberance of the staff is always, I think, a good indicator to what you can expect from a public house.

  “All right, I suppose, thanks,” I replied, doubting that I was actually all right. “Yourself?”

  “Yeah,” she smiled manically, “haven’t seen you in here before?”

  “Just moved in today,” I smiled back, “so you’ll probably be seeing a lot more of me. Pint of lager, please.”

  “Which one?”

  “Any.”

  “Good.” She poured it and placed it in front of me. I poured some change into her open palm. “Enjoy,” she enthused.

  I scanned my unfamiliar surroundings. Three lads in their twenties were playing darts at the far end of the bar, one of them marking on an electronic scoreboard. Behind me, a row of men, at varying stages of baldness, were sitting in a line with pint glasses of Worthington’s Best, at varying stages of emptiness, in front of them. They grinned through yellow teeth and gaps, waiting for the pearly gates to open for them. The air was heavy with the clinging smoke of Golden Virginia. The ashtrays overflowed onto the graffiti etched tables and onto the thread-bare, butt-burned carpet.

  As is customary, when you’re standing, all alone, at the bar of a strange pub, the local lunatic soon latched onto me. “Nice haircut,” was his first remark, “Eh? Eh?”

  I had recently had it cropped really short, shorter than usual. I scowled at him, in an attempt to frighten him off. It sometimes worked.

  “Not seen you in here before?” he continued, “Eh? Eh?”

  “No,” I replied, bluntly.

  “You know Newcastle? Eh?”

  “No.”

  “Newcastle on the Tyne?”

  “Leave me alone, mate.”

  He started telling me that he had once played football for Newcastle United when he came back from Burma after the war but he couldn’t have been much more than in his mid-fifties. I turned my shoulder on him and tried to ignore him but he continued, nevertheless, prodding me in the back in between sentences. He was reeling off the names of ancient footballers, one after the other. “Heard of him, haven’t you? Eh? Eh?”

  “No.”

  “What about Jackie Milburn? You’ve heard of him? Played with him, so I did. Wor Jackie.”

  “No.”

  “Heard of me?” he asked, hopefully.

  I shook my head.

  “Not into football, are you?”

  “No.”

  “What are you interested in? Eh? Bugger all, I suppose, just like all you kids nowadays? Drugs and sex? Eh?”

  I perked up a little on hearing this and, reluctantly, broke into a tiny grin. I turned around to face him properly, and to pay him some kind of small courtesy. He had a twitch going on near his left eye and an uncomfortably inquisitive expression on his face, almost intensely pained. He seemed to be seeking answers to questions he had long since forgotten. He wore grey stubble about his chin, but it was neatly trimmed. Indeed, he wasn’t scruffy at all but surprisingly clean, and not poorly clothed. This was a man who, somewhere along life’s treacherous path, had lost his way, and had lost sight of his destiny. “And there, but for the grace of God…” I hadn’t reached his station quite yet but in his tormented eyes, I saw an unsettling reflection. Of all people, who was I to judge?

  “Yeah, drugs and sex,” I agreed, “and music. But, not in that order.” I expected him to dismiss this, with much disdain, and to continue his homage to the 1951 FA Cup final but he didn’t. Instead, he began to regale me with stories, whether completely true or not, of the Northern Soul scene of the sixties. In truth, he told a fairly interesting tale, providing you could overlook his obvious flights of fancy, and we cracked along pretty well after that.

  I nodded along to the rhythm of his voice like a schoolboy in a lecture, feigning concentration, as he told me of his trips to the North and the Midlands, to clubs with names like The Twisted Wheel, The Golden Torch, The Catacombs, and, of course, The Wigan Casino. In due course, I bought him a couple of shots of whisky, and, I suppose, that’s all that the poor bastard really wanted from me.

  We were standing at a large, oval bar, and you could see right through to the other side of the pub. The boys from the dartboard had finished playing, and had settled at a table on the far side. A couple of others had joined them. They all had short hair like me, and were wearing Fred Perry polo shirts and jeans like mine. They were taking it in turns to put money in the jukebox and were mocking each others’ selections. I kept making eye contact with them and it was a little concerning how my gaze was so easily drawn to them. I tried to concentrate on what the old man was saying. I was alone in a strange pub and was becoming unnerved by the way that one or two of them were looking back at me. Then, one of them nodded in my direction. I hoped that it was merely a sign of friendly acknowledgement. Then, his mate got to his feet and came over.

  By now, the old man was talking about golf and I’d stopped listening, but I tried to appear attentive as the younger man approached. He tapped me on the shoulder and I braced myself.

  “New round here?” he asked. He didn’t have his hair shaved like the rest of us but it was combed forward, smartly. A silver sleeper hung from his left ear lobe. My stomach muscles tightened in anticipation of some kind of territorial dispute.

  I nodded. “Yeah, just moved in today. Left my missus.”

  “That’s shit, man.”

  I shrugged, attempting to look casual, and to disguise my anxiety.

  “Wanna join us? Seen you were mouthing along to the sounds. Put some on. Come over.”

  “No, he don’t,” interposed the old man, squeezing himself between me and the newcomer, “He’s talking to me. Ain’t that right, young ‘un?”

  “He don’t want to listen to you all night, you boring old fart. Come on.” He led me around the bar to their table
. “My name’s Bobby,” he said, on the way over, “Yours?”

  His name was Bobby but I, very shortly, learned that everyone knew him by his surname which was Broomhead. “Rodney,” I replied. We sat down and he introduced me to the rest of the crew. They were a pretty good bunch; as hard as nails, and as tight as a drum; but, they seemed to take to me, and I took to them.

  Broomhead was the butt of most of the jokes. He just sat there, smiling and nodding, chipping in with a cutting remark occasionally but it would be so weak that he’d get shot down immediately and without mercy.

  I got the feeling that he was looking to me for support. It was as though he’d got first claim on me because he’d been the first to come over and introduce himself.

  “Well, you going?” one of the others asked of him.

  Broomhead looked at me and nodded. “Jack The Rippers?”

  I shrugged. “Dunno. What’s happening?”

  “Yeah, come on, let’s go.” He grabbed his Harrington jacket, slipped it on, and I followed him to the next corner, down the High Street, and up an alley to another pub. It was a dingy, forbidding place, tucked well away from day to day business.

  We went in, got some drinks, and sat at a table. The place was packed and dance music was thumping out of the speaker system. When the first girl took to the stage there was a polite round of applause and a few wolf whistles. She had bleached blonde hair which hung raggedly down to her shoulders. A rose tattoo was etched into her shoulder amidst far too many thorns. She wore a ring through her naval and kept her knickers on the whole time. Her breasts were veiny and limp and her belly riddled with stretch marks. She looked tired.