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

by Paul Harris

  I was staring out of the window, watching a little Indian man waving his big green flag. I found it compelling that in an age of total computerisation; and in an age where technology is rammed down our throats on a daily basis; in an age where you can get Teletext on your TV screen, and can even book a holiday on it; and in an age where there are machines that can sell you a chocolate bar on nearly every railway platform in the country; the railway network is still operated by men in ill-fitting uniforms, waving flags above their crooked caps. The possibility occurred to me that this may have more to do with the unionisation of the public sector than any lack of imagination or forethought.

  A man in a pinstriped suit slid the door open and came into our compartment. Our compartment! He smiled very graciously and sat down opposite us. He was tall with just a hint of greying hair. He took a pair of spectacles from a case in his jacket pocket, unfolded a copy of the Financial Times, and proceeded to read it. I felt as though my privacy had been violated. It’s peculiar how very territorial we humans are.

  The train lurched; it didn’t take off smoothly like they do in the adverts; it lurched drunkenly out of Southend Central, and we were on our way. We watched the scenery rushing by outside. It was bleak, and we’d seen it all before on the way down from London.

  “Want to play I-spy?” asked Moke.

  We’d played it on the journey out, but we’d been alone then and it had helped to pass the time, albeit, in an extremely monotonous fashion. I lowered my hand down her spine to the belt of her jeans. She shuffled backwards and squeezed my fingers as hard as she could against the seat. I scanned the compartment. The seats were barely their former colour; they wore but a shadow, a mere parody, of their original upholstery. They were worn and tatty, and slashed in places, with the stuffing spewing out. The wood panelling was etched with names and swearwords and immoral propositions. Some idiot had spray-painted a crude resemblance of a naked woman on the window, legs akimbo, and unfeasibly large breasts sticking up like Kilimanjaro above low cloud.

  “Not really,” I declined.

  A pair of reading glasses were peering at us from over the Dow Jones Index. I threw him, what I intended to be, a threatening look. Moke sighed and released my hand from between her back and the seat, and then she suddenly sat bolt upright. “The ticket inspector!” she whispered urgently, “I can hear him next door.” Then, she started fumbling, purposelessly, with her bag.

  I could hear him too, inspecting tickets in the next compartment. The businessman folded his newspaper and produced his rail pass. He took off his reading glasses and looked at me, condescendingly, because he knew.

  He looked like Ray Davies; an older version, maybe; although, Ray was probably that old anyway, by now. I wondered if he’d looked like Ray Davies back in sixty-four. How cool would that be?

  My train of thought was broken by Moke stamping, violently, on my foot. The compartment door slid open as we pulled into Romford Station.

  “Tickets, please!” My God, he was a big old unit! He had thin, grey hair and a bit of a stoop, but was stocky with a bashed up face.

  The businessman showed him his pass and they exchanged some brief pleasantries. Moke opened the train door. “Tickets, please!” growled the inspector, with grand authority. She froze, but he was looking at me, not her.

  “Er…” I stammered, playing for time. Moke slid out of the train. I patted my jeans pockets. “It’s here somewhere.”

  The ticket inspector folded his arms. “No ticket, Sir?” The tension rose, as we were both caught in a moment in time, staring at each other, sweating, afraid to blink. “Name?” he finally demanded of me. The door was still swinging open and Moke was calling me from the platform. I jumped to my feet, punched the ticket inspector square in the face, snatched the newspaper from the hands of the Ray Davies lookalike, and clattered through the door onto the platform edge.

  I grabbed Moke and we ran, like Bonny and Clyde, through the station building and into the street, tearing up the Financial Times and scattering it in all directions. We didn’t stop running until Moke spotted a black cab and hailed it. We clambered in, wheezing and panting like a couple of chain smoking layabouts who had recently absconded from a train without paying the fare.

  “London!” I said, “And, step on it!”

  “Which part?” he asked sarcastically, but quite reasonably.

  “Any part!”

  “What you been up to, you pair?”

  “Kilburn Station,” I told him and then slammed the dividing window shut.

  Moke was leant against her door with her head resting, awkwardly, on the glass. “Why do you have to go so far?”

  “What do you mean?” I shrugged, and shuffled across the seat to be nearer to her. She turned her shoulder on me.

  “Fare dodging’s fare dodging. Don’t matter. Everybody does it. But, that’s not good enough for you, is it? You have to add assault and battery to it!”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I grinned.

  “What do you mean, don’t worry? They could be after us as we speak.” We drove down a slip road onto a dual carriageway. She gazed out of the back window into the darkness. There was no sign of flashing blue lights or police helicopters in hot pursuit. “They could still be after us,” she whined.

  “Don’t worry, we’re long gone.”

  “Get away from me. Get over your own side.” She squeezed herself further into her corner. “I don’t want you near me!”

  I shuffled back over the seat, away from her. “Well, we’ve got to do it again shortly.”

  “No!” she cried. Her lip was trembling. “I’ve had enough.” There was silence for a couple of minutes, during which, I noticed the driver looking, nervously, into his rear-view mirror at us, as if we really were Bonny and Clyde.

  “Well,” I eventually asked her, “have you got any money left?”

  She shook her head.

  “Nor me,” I said.

  “You never had any to start with!”

  I looked at the driver. He was youngish, about thirty-three; but he was quite small; small enough for me. I looked at Moke and grinned, mischievously.

  “No!” she pleaded.

  Chapter Six

  Mister Bonkers

  I was lying silently, dead still, listening to my son weeping, traumatised over something that only a pre-speech child can comprehend. He sounded so distant, so isolated and forsaken. I felt chained and helpless; useless to him as a father; inadequate and ineffectual.

  “Marilyn!” I called out. “Marilyn, the baby’s crying!” The dark dungeon walls closed in around me. I shuddered with guilt and apprehension, gasping for air. I coughed, and my entire body gave an involuntary start. I rolled over onto my side and opened my eyes.

  Moke was lying beside me with a solitary tear trickling down her cheek. It was absorbed into the pillow beneath her head.

  “I think I was having a nightmare,” I murmured, my eyes slowly adjusting to the light beaming through the gap in the curtains.

  “You were, I know,” she whispered, “Another one.”

  “Sorry.” I wasn’t sure why I was apologising; it just seemed appropriate.

  She lethargically climbed out of bed. “You dream about her a lot, still.”

  “No, it’s not like that. I worry about my little man, that’s all.”

  “You call her name,” she sighed, forlornly, and then opened the door. “I’ll put the kettle on.”

  As I sat at the kitchen table sipping coffee and tearing strips off a slice of toast, Moke bent down and kissed me on the back of the neck. It was Sunday morning and she was still in her dressing gown. She always looked at her best after showering; kind of raw and dishevelled. She would never cut it as a glamour girl; but, as some kind of wild mythical creature; an unkempt beast with a sexual slant, she was second to none. I started feeling horny again.

  She began to nibble my ear. I could feel her hard nipples pressing against my shoulders as I reached behind and slid a han
d inside her robe. “You going to the pub today?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Aren’t you?”

  “I thought we might do something different.”

  “Like what?” I was perplexed.

  She shrugged, and then gently rested her chin on my shoulder. “Are you really all that bothered about me?” she asked quietly, “Really?”

  I turned and squinted at her somewhat disconcertedly, then emphatically replied, “Yes!”

  “But, you don’t show it. You have dreams about her. You don’t have dreams about me. You don’t even want me here sometimes.”

  “That’s just the way I am. Take no notice. And, they’re not dreams, they’re nightmares. And, I do want you here. You feeling insecure or something?”

  “Yes!”

  I stood up and took her cold, clammy hands in mine, then looked her in the eye and smiled reassuringly. “Well don’t be. You’re the best thing in my life right now. The best thing since bread came sliced.”

  Meanwhile, thirty-one doors away (Broomhead had counted them), Bangla was in bed with his new girlfriend, Jaqueline. His former girlfriend, Samantha, was on the phone to him again. Strangely, for a complete and utter tosser, he never seemed to have any trouble in that department; the getting hold of crumpet department.

  “What do you want now?” he bellowed down the phone.

  “Don’t be like that,” she was saying.

  “Well, what do you want?”

  Sam was silent. Jak began to wriggle impatiently beneath the quilt. Bangla thought he could hear Samantha sobbing on the other end of the line. He felt embarrassed, guilty even, but only for a couple of seconds.

  He murmured, contentedly as Jak began to caress his body. “Look, I’ve got to go.”

  “Are you okay?” asked Sam, “You sound strange.”

  “I’ve got to go!” he snapped, and then put the receiver down as Jak dragged him beneath the bed clothes.

  Bangla was a man without compassion. He read from a different script to the rest of us. He didn’t give a damn in a style that was far more resolute than mere common or garden contempt. He drank on a monumental scale; wine from pint glasses and whiskey from the bottle; but, he always found some poor girl or other to get him up for work in the morning; that is, if he wanted to go.

  Most of the guys made it down to the Red Cow later that day. Sunday afternoon was, traditionally, the main session of the week. By the time Moke and I got there, Jaqueline was beginning to sober up; and Bangla, in the not so flattering shroud of a hangover, was losing his appeal to her. In short, she was becoming aware of just what she’d got herself into. He was sitting opposite her; his dark malevolent features sagging, indolently. She caught him leering, most unattractively, at her, not once or twice, but on several occasions as she nervously crossed and uncrossed her legs.

  “Oi, Rod! Chelsea lost again!” shouted Bangla as he saw me making my way around the bar. He knew that I didn’t care but, because I’d spent some time down that way, we had to have the same performance every week; every week that Chelsea lost, that is. “North London, son!” he winked, “Spurs won. Again!”

  “So?” I shrugged, clearly exhibiting my indifference.

  “Yeah, so?” asked Frank, pointedly, of Bangla. Frank was Chelsea, so was Broomhead. They were a long way from their manor, but I figured they chose their teams based on image and politics rather than on any geographical concerns.

  “Just saying,” sniffed Bangla.

  “Well don’t!”

  “Yeah,” joined Broomhead, discerning an opportunity to strike, “shut it!” He only ever spoke to Bangla in that fashion when Frank was close at hand. Bangla glared at him but swallowed anyway.

  “So, are Tottenham going to win something?” asked Jaqueline, innocently.

  “Shut up!” snapped Bangla, “What do you know, anyway?” She recoiled and retreated, quietly, to a more defensive spot next to Moke.

  “Well, are they?” reiterated Frank, raising the stakes. Bangla failed to reply. “Well, are they?”

  “Of course they’re not!” he, finally, retorted.

  It was all lost on me. I placed a hand on Moke’s knee. She pushed it off again. I glanced at her; she looked away and began to talk pleasantly to Jaqueline about clothes. I sighed, walked over to Broomhead, and began talking about clothes too.

  “Very nice, Rod,” he said, interrupting me in mid-sentence, “but Friday’s for clothes, Saturday’s for girls, and Sunday is, as you know, for football.”

  I gave up and went to the bar for a round of drinks. When I came back with them, I got the predictable derision from Bangla.

  “About time, Rodney!”

  “Don’t push it,” I growled under my breath.

  “What?” he demanded, “What did you say?”

  “Don’t push it!” I said it loud and clear this time.

  “Oi!” interrupted Frank, “The geezer’s been out of work, right?”

  He was sticking up for me but it didn’t make me feel any better. Moke’s indifference was beginning to aggravate me. For a fleeting and foolish moment, I turned on Frank. “I stand my round!”

  For a second, there was something there between us, eye to eye. It was never spoken, but we both knew that this was the start of the end.

  Frank smiled. “True! That’s true, Rod.”

  I held my hands up as deferentially as I could and sat back down next to Moke. She shuffled away, ever so slightly, but enough to confirm to me that she’d got the hump. I hated days like this, with everybody digging at each other, pushing one another as far as they could. I would rather have stayed in, or gone somewhere else, like Moke wanted to; but these Sunday sessions weren’t optional; they were more or less compulsory and sometimes they were brilliant.

  After a little more bickering amongst ourselves, we all made a move for the area around the pool tables. It soon got so crowded around there that you could scarcely take a shot. Bangla held centre stage; yelling and heckling at whoever was playing; already lining up pints for the last bell. Jak was sidling, further and further, to the edge of it all, until she reached the point where she could cut loose completely. After a couple of abortive attempts, she went to the toilet and never came back.

  “Must have fallen down it,” screamed Bangla, making even more of a prat of himself. But, he knew she was going; we all did; the look of disgust on her face when he tried to touch her, told us that. “Not my type, anyway,” he reasoned, “Blondes? Thick as shit!”

  Then, he beckoned me over, “Hey, Rod!”

  “Yeah,” I responded, wearily.

  He started quietly slurring in my ear. “She’s a good girl, that Jak. Say the right things and she’ll do anything for you. You should have a go. Only thing is, next day she’ll do it all for someone else. You got to live with that; it’s the way of the world these days. Couldn’t do it, could you? You’re too straight, man” He smiled, deviously. “Too soft!” he hissed, spraying saliva all over the side of my face. I pushed him away.

  I knew exactly what he was like because he tells everybody everything; every sordid little detail. I’ve got no time for people like that. As I tried to ignore him by gazing nonchalantly around the pub, I caught sight of Oscar and Fluff entering at the far door. Even from there, they could hear Bangla shouting and bawling. I saw Fluff shake her head, and they left again. I longed to chase after them and go with them to wherever it was they were going. I longed for Broomhead to stop talking about football and, instead, talk about clothes or music or haircuts or scooters or fighting or sex or anything besides bloody football. I looked at Moke; she had her back deliberately turned to me. She had forced her finger through a cigarette burn in one of the bar stools and was excavating the foam within. She looked anxious as she stood and chatted to Joanne. I felt isolated and alone; the lone northerner down and out in the big bad smoke. I often felt like that. It made me paranoid and defensive. It was the way I felt for a year when I first came down.

  Two younger lads, probably from
the college, came over and inquired, very politely, whether one of the two pool tables was free. Strangers usually kept away from us on Sundays because Bangla intimidated them with his ridiculous banshee wails.

  “No, it’s not!” he screamed at them.

  Frank asserted his authority and waved them on. “Yeah, go on, lads; take no notice of this idiot.”

  They went over to the table, picking coins out of their pockets, and Bangla followed, already beginning to abuse them. They could see that we were all together, so they just swallowed it all. It annoyed him more when they didn’t react to his taunts. They carried on playing, with the balls rolling haphazardly around the table as Bangla nudged and kicked it. “What does it take to provoke these fools?” he was shouting.

  Most of us were getting utterly fed up with him but, as usual, nobody said it. He was an embarrassment to all of us but some of them were actually amused by his outlandish antics. He was lifting one end of the table up and then bouncing it on the ground. The two students were just standing there, looking at each other, shaking their heads, dumbfounded, and lost.

  “What you shaking your heads for? Eh? Eh?”

  Then, he lifted the table up on its end; right up on its end, and left it standing there, balancing precariously. The balls bounced on the carpet, then down the steps of the poolroom, and across the wooden floor of the public bar. You never heard balls make so much noise before! A couple of the girls were giggling; the rest of us were rooted to the spot, in silence; like stone statues, waiting for the fallout.

  “Roll it back to me then!” Bangla was prancing around like a triumphant Roman gladiator. The two guys who’d been playing were open-mouthed. The old folks in the bar were beginning to pay attention to us. They were accustomed to a lot of noise on a Sunday afternoon but when the cue ball went skidding across the floor of their bar and wrapped an old lady’s walking stick around her ankles, there was a low, but angry, murmur of antipathy.