by Paul Harris
The guy just stood there, grinning foolishly at Moke; no apology; not so much as a by your leave. Frank and Oscar were pushing their way through the crowd towards us. The flying guy must have seen them coming because he began to back away and, as he did so, Moke elbowed him in the stomach. He struck out at her, instinctively, shoving her to the ground. Fluff shrieked. I grabbed his arm and span him around. He stood there facing me with his fists clenched and his cheeks twitching. My head was full of a high pitched buzzing and hundreds of voices all speaking at the same time but saying nothing. I stepped towards him. I could sense Frank close behind me. Broomhead had appeared behind Joanne but couldn’t squeeze through the crowd to get to me. He was shaking his head. Marriott was at my side, whispering in my ear, urging me on. And then everything became silent.
I flung my fist at his face and it connected just as a glass shattered on the wooden floor behind me. Everybody was pushing and shoving in different directions. Broomhead was wading through the crush in order to get me away. But, I was getting pushed from behind, pushed on and on.
I could hear Bangla’s voice above all the others but couldn’t make sense of what he was saying. As the flier staggered towards me, with an expression of loathing written into his face, I managed to land two more punches on him before he got too near to the floor for me to reach. Broomhead grabbed my collar just as the guy passed out in a pool of beer and splintered glass.
“Bloody hell, Rod!”
“Watch the threads, man,” I said, brushing his hand away from my shirt. He was staring into my face and I stared back, trying to collect myself and stop the violence coursing through me. I was ready to lash out at Broomhead; at anyone. Frank was standing at my side. Joanne wore a look of horror that seemed to be threatening to descend into tears. “Sorry,” I shrugged, “that’s what I do.”
“You’re mad!” laughed Frank.
“I know!” I looked over at Moke. “Sorry.” She was smiling back at me as if she was immensely impressed. I beckoned her to come over and she came and put her arms around me. “Sorry about that,” I whispered in her ear.
“You were brilliant,” she whispered back.
“There was nothing brilliant about that; it was lunacy; ask Broomhead.”
“Broomhead? You mean dickhead.”
“No, he’s a good guy.” I looked at him and smiled, solemnly. He looked back, sheepishly, with the same smile. I felt as though I’d let him down.
“We better get out of here,” said Frank, and we all traipsed out in single file.
We found another place near the underground station that was open late. It was a complete dive. Moke wanted to go back to my place with me. I’d have fancied the idea if my new bedsit hadn’t been such a disgrace. I would have felt embarrassed to take any woman back to a place like that; even one of Moke’s ilk.
It emerged later in the evening that Broomhead had a place of his own and had a sofa-bed downstairs where various members of the gang were accustomed to crashing out. Following this revelation, I went looking for him but couldn’t find him anywhere.
“He’ll be asleep somewhere,” said Frank.
I laughed. “Like where?”
“He’ll have found some corner, got comfortable, and got his head down.”
“He might have met a girl,” I suggested.
Joanne spluttered. “You don’t know him that well, do you?”
“Is it so unlikely?”
“It’s ridiculous!” said Frank, “Preposterous!” he reasserted in a posh mickey-taking voice, and laughed.
We drunk our last drinks at half past three in the morning and Broomhead still hadn’t turned up. Nobody, except for me, seemed particularly concerned. Perhaps Joanne was right and it was because I didn’t know him that well. As we left, Frank and I went to the toilet, and there he was, sound asleep in the trough, with some dirty bastard pissing all over him. Frank was livid. “What the fuck are you doing?”
The geezer stopped pissing and zipped his trousers up. “What?”
“What do you mean, “what?”?”
“So, what,” he shrugged, “he’s asleep; he don’t know nothing; who cares?”
Frank caught him, crisply, right on the jaw with his fist, and he legged it. We lifted Broomhead out of the urinal, and the stench was unbearable. I felt sick, and the look on Frank’s face, strongly suggested that he did too. We dragged him outside to the street where the girls greeted him with feminine concern and began to mother him, until Frank explained to them where we’d found him, and then they all disappeared, all of them, leaving him with me and Moke. After receiving garbled directions for Broomhead’s house, we all got cabs in various directions and agreed to meet up the next day in what had, in record time, become my new local pub.
It felt strange, searching through Broomhead’s urine soaked trouser pockets for his door keys, and then letting myself into his house. He had roused himself slightly during the ride over but was still incapable of walking properly. I carried him in like a sack of coal, and sat him down on his settee.
“Is it okay if me and Moke stay here the night?” I asked him.
“Sure,” he murmured, resting his head on the arm of the settee. “Make me a coffee?”
“I’ll do it,” said Moke who had been waiting rather awkwardly for something to do.
“No sugar,” instructed Broomhead as she went in search of the kitchen, and then he said to me, “What’s wrong with your own place?”
“It’s a shithole,” I replied.
“That bad?”
“Crap.”
He propped himself up with his hand. “You need somewhere else?”
“Yeah, I suppose. I can’t take Moke back to the place I got now, it’s awful.”
“Don’t worry,” he said, reassuringly, before burying his head in the upholstery once more, “we’ll sort something out tomorrow, first thing.”
“It’s Sunday tomorrow,” I reminded him, “Well today, technically.”
“Everyday’s like Sunday,” he retorted, blankly, and then fell asleep just as Moke reappeared with a tray of coffee mugs.
I tried to wake him but he drowsily pushed me away.
“What are you doing now?” asked Moke.
“Trying to wake him up, obviously.”
“Why?”
“So we can put him to bed. Look at the state of him. I need to get him into some clean clothes, at least.”
“Sod that!” she screeched. “We’ll leave him here and we’ll have his bed. It’s got to be more comfortable.”
“That really doesn’t seem right to me,” I protested.
She sighed, grabbed my hand, and dragged me up the stairs behind her.
“What about the coffee?”
Chapter Four
The Ghost of Swiss Cottage
“Love Will Tear Us Apart” was coming over strong on the jukebox. Broomhead walked in, carrying a newspaper, and sat down next to me at the bar. It wasn’t tomorrow at all, but months had passed and I was still living in the crumby bedsit.
“I found somewhere.”
“Yeah?” I asked, disinterestedly. I was miles away, lost, swimming with the sound. “Joy Division. Ian Curtis. Dead.”
“Strange name, innit, Joy Division?”
“I think they named it after the concentration camps where the Nazis picked out the best looking Jewish birds and kept them for themselves.”
He seemed uncomfortable with my explanation. “Anyway, I found you a place.” He put his newspaper down and ordered himself a pint. I tapped my empty glass on the bar, and he doubled the order. “On the same estate as Frank and Bangla.”
“Estate? Flats, yeah?”
“No, you know where they live; over the fields at the back. It’s all houses. They’re nice. I think you’ll like it. Moke’ll like it.”
“Forget Moke!” I snapped, taking a large mouthful of freshly poured Kronenbourg.
Broomhead sighed. “Fighting again?”
I ignored his question.
After finishing our drinks, we took a leisurely stroll around to Frank’s estate to see the house. It wasn’t too far from the pub, which was a bonus. You had to cut through the narrow passageway beside the new Sainsbury’s, and across the carpark. Broomhead pushed a dilapidated gate open and we crossed the field. There was, even yet, the merest suggestion of a frost underfoot as we side-stepped the rough path to avoid puddles and patches of mud.
On the allotments at the back of the housing estate, an old man was thrusting a rusty spade into the frozen earth. There was nothing growing apart from patches of ragged looking grass. A run-down tool shed leant, ominously, toward him. Broomhead knew him and we stopped to pass the time of day. “Need a hand, old ‘un?” he asked, cheerily.
“Ain’t nothing you can do that I can’t do.” The old man looked at his watch. “Drinking already?”
“Nah,” said Broomhead, “never on the Sabbath.”
“It’s thick on your breaths, the pair of you. Sending me giddy, it is.” He slammed his spade into the ground again. As it hit a large stone, it sprang out of his hands. “Never invited me for one, did you? I’d have come,” he winked as I picked his spade up off the ground.
He was a pleasant old boy who had submitted, completely, to the onset of old age. He sighed after every sentence as if it may very possibly be his last ever breath. He talked passionately about football and displayed a wealth of knowledge that went entirely over my head. I watched his jaws grinding as he spoke and his thin pointed chin, the skin wrapped tightly around it, jumping in fits and starts. His patchy white stubble shone as he perspired under the bright winter sun.
He told us of his days in the army; he eulogised about the men he had served with, and remembered many of them by name. He listed campaigns: “Burma, Singapore, Korea, Suez; twenty-five years’ service, man and boy, to king (and queen) and country.” He complained of the scant reward that his pension provided him.
As he spoke, I sliced repetitively through the rock hard soil with the spade and turned it in tiny mounds for him. “We’re, obviously, not going to be introduced,” he said, looking at Broomhead, whilst prodding me on my elbow. “The name’s Ginger.” He offered me his hand which I shook cautiously, fearful of crushing his brittle fingers.
“Although you wouldn’t know it now,” he said, whisking his flat cap from his bald head with a flourish, “I once had hair. Flame red, it was.” He chuckled to himself. “I suppose the flames burnt out years ago.”
I smiled. “I’m sure it was a very handsome head of hair,” I said, before realising how patronising I sounded.
Broomhead glanced at me. “The place is just over there.” He gestured towards the red-brick houses, beyond the allotments. “Once you’ve moved in, you can come here every day and help Ginger bury the dead, or whatever it is he does out here all year round.”
I handed Ginger his spade. “Home grown veg,” he said, with an air of pride, “can’t beat it.”
“Looks like a bumper harvest,” sneered Broomhead.
“Well, maybe I’ll come give you a hand sometime,” I said.
“I’ll hold you to that, son,” smiled Ginger.
“I ain’t promising.”
Once we were out of earshot, Broomhead began to mimic the old man. He bent his back forward slightly and ground out his words between his teeth. “Burma, Singapore, twenty-five years, man and boy.”
“Oh, come on,” I protested, “give him a break. He’s an old man; he’s done his time.”
“Burma, my arse! He’s only fifty-seven! Work that out!”
“Well, he looks a lot older than that.”
Broomhead stopped walking and looked me in the eye. “You want to know about him?” he began to rant, “You want to know why he looks like that; all twisted up and beat? He done seventeen years for stabbing a copper to death while he was robbing a post office. Well, I don’t know what your opinion of the old bill is, but still, you know, that’s proper bad shit, man. He ain’t no sweet old man.”
“I guess it was all a long time ago,” I muttered, but Broomhead was in no mood to consider clemency.
“Bangla thinks the sun shines out of the old man’s back-side. He’s into that, see; befriending a notorious cop-killer. Bangla hates everybody, including the police. Ginger’s his hero. Bangla’s only a pathetic wannabe bad boy but he’s still a nasty bastard.”
“I know that.”
“Do you?” Broomhead shot me an earnest glance; the sort that pierces the façade of mere chit-chat. “Watch your back, Rod, you sometimes say too much.”
I squinted at him in bafflement.
“In the wrong company, you know. You can be too open with your opinions.” He nodded as if to drive the point home.
I was confused but he looked at me as though he expected me to understand what he was talking about. We walked in silence between the remainder of the allotments.
To be honest, I was expecting the worst. I knew that when you were desperate, you were at the mercy of the kind of jackals who would rent out their outside toilet and shit in the flower bed if it made them thirty quid a week better off. But, I had to admit, that the housing estate that Broomhead took me to was quite nice. It was a development from the late sixties or early seventies with winding avenues and quiet cul-de-sacs; two-storey red-brick houses, some of which had been rendered white, and smart maisonettes; there was not a tower block in sight.
Broomhead led me up a garden path, just as so many had done before him. The garden was neglected, the lawn overgrown and the bushes stooping like a battalion of exhausted scarecrows, all pointing this way and that, and trembling in the light breeze. It had potential, though; a potential that would never be realised during any tenancy of mine.
We walked along the side of the building to the back door where a rather portly bespectacled man was waiting at the steps which led up to the first floor maisonette. He was pacing up and down, puffing like a steam train, and habitually glancing at his watch. “You’re here then?” he confirmed, sarcastically, glancing once more at his watch.
“Looks like it, Rory,” replied Broomhead.
Rory bit his lip, uneasily. The sun was steadily rising and it was becoming a remarkably temperate day for the time of year. He was wearing an old donkey jacket with plastic panels over the shoulders. I could discern the round collar of a heavy green pull-over beneath; the type they sell at the Army & Navy Stores, with the epaulettes on the shoulders. There were beads of sweat being squeezed out between the pores of his ample forehead, and spilling over his plastic-rimmed glasses, blurring his vision. At regular intervals, he would remove his glasses and wipe the lenses with a sodden handkerchief. I never, ever saw him without his donkey jacket on his back, even at the height of the following summer. Sometimes he loosened the top button, but very seldom; and I never saw him without trails of sweat running down his face.
“This him?” he asked of Broomhead.
Broomhead nodded. “Rodney, meet Rory, your new landlord.”
“He all right?” asked Rory, warily looking me up and down.
I looked back at him as if to say, “Who do you think you’re talking about?”
“Sound,” said Broomhead, “Sound, sound.”
Rory gestured up the stairs and we followed him. He unlocked the door, turned the light on, and we all walked in.
“Bloody hell!” I exclaimed.
“What?” asked Rory, seemingly taking great offence to my reaction. “What?”
We were almost nose to nose. “It’s not what I expected,” I smiled, uneasily.
“Why?” he bellowed, “What’s wrong with it?” his podgy face flushing up bright red.
“No, no, no, nothing,” I stammered, reassuringly, “it’s bloody good, mate. Much better than I expected.”
“Oh, okay.” Now, slightly mollified he stepped away from his confrontational stance, but then looked at me, inquisitorially, as if another thought had struck him. “So, why were you expecting it to be shit? What’
s been said?”
I was fast-approaching the end of my tether, but I really liked the flat so I sucked it up, and continued to attempt to pacify him. “Nothing. Not at all. It’s just that all the other places I’ve seen are shit.”
Rory smiled for the first time. Perhaps, the first time ever. Perhaps, the last time ever. He glanced at his watch, and then wiped his glasses with his dirty handkerchief, before mopping his brow with it, and then returning it to his jacket pocket. “I suppose you want to have a look around?” he asked, checking the time again, and before I could answer him, he marched me off to the bedroom.
It was huge; parquet floor; smart black furniture (okay, only that knock together shit from MFI, but smart all the same); venetian blinds; and a king-size bed. “Is the furniture staying?” I asked, hopefully.
Rory took his handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose on it, then screwed it into a ball and shoved it back in his pocket. “Afraid so. I got nowhere else to store it, see.”
“No, no, that’s fine. I love it.”
Next, he showed me into the lounge. Broomhead was already in there, flat out on the floor, with his eyes closed. The television was booming away next to him.
“Not asleep, surely?” I whispered.
“Oh, yeah,” confirmed Rory, “always the same. You haven’t known him long then?” He leant over him and turned the television off; then glanced at his watch. “You want to see the kitchen? Bathroom?”
“No, it’s okay,” I replied, “You’re in a hurry anyway.”
“No hurry. Not at all. What makes you say that?” he asked, anxiously glancing at his watch. “What do you think? Small, I know, but that’s it; all I have to offer.”
“Fine, fine,” I nodded, enthusiastically. “What about the telly, video, fridge, and all that?”
“Stays; everything stays. But, any damage and, you know, you pay. You’ll pay for any damage? Right?”