by Paul Harris
It wasn’t the wrong Saturday for Amos, it was the wrong Saturday for Timmy. Les wouldn’t go to the Trumpet because there were some genuinely wealthy individuals drinking in there who made him look the fool that he undeniably was.
Pacing backwards and forwards in a six foot by six foot grease stained kitchenette whilst the sun was beating down outside seemed an awful waste of a day, so I slipped my trainers on and went for a walk. I’d never understood the principle of just going for a walk. I knew all about walking somewhere; walking from one place to another to get where you needed or wanted to be; but not just going for a walk, where the walk itself is the sole object of the exercise. But, in the absence of any obvious alternative that didn’t involve drinking alcohol, I decided to give it a go anyway.
I walked a circuitous route that steered me away from the main roads and the lure of the public houses. It took me along an avenue lined with trees that were already beginning to shed their blossom, through an alley between two houses, across some waste land that was now used for bmx racing, and along the path that ran along the boundary of the old pickle factory. It was more of an improvised trail that acted as a short cut between Acacia Avenue and Ambrose Street. The earth had been beaten down over many years until it formed a solid, permanent, well-trodden path. Faded beer cans were also beaten down into the earth and a trail of litter lined the entirety of the pickle factory hoarding. I kicked a Lilt can and the remainder of its contents spat back at me, staining my right trainer. Used condoms hung from the undergrowth near to my ankles and the tell-tale signs of scorched Bacofoil were secreted at the base of a tree stump.
I gasped, as if for clean air, when I arrived at Ambrose Street and turned left towards the park. The street was quiet and felt idyllically suburban. Hardly a car went by and I was the only pedestrian as far as I could see. The air was warm and the sunshine bright and it still seemed to me to be an awful waste of a day when I could have been sitting in a beer garden somewhere pouring bottles of Peroni into my mouth.
Even the park was quiet. Several small children were playing on the swings and the roundabout and the see-saw and slide. I could hear their cries of joy and excitement, and occasionally pain, although their small enclosure was far away from the route I traversed. Their mothers, and some fathers, were dotted on benches and grass banks, waiting impatiently for their children to tire so that they could retreat home for their tv dinners. Some though chatted cheerily and welcomed the great outdoors and its colourful and fragrant splendour.
An ice cream van sat in anticipation outside each of the park gates like birds of prey waiting patiently, knowing with absolute certainty that their defenceless quarry will return to this spot and walk willingly into their clutches. I removed my t-shirt and tucked it into the waistband of my jeans. My skin seemed pale and almost translucent with only the ugly blemishes, scabs and scars lending it any character at all. I resisted the temptation to purchase a white Magnum and headed, like David Bellamy, into the great green wilderness.
A match was underway on the immaculately tended bowling green next to the ornate pavilion on the far side of the park. Elderly men in pressed white trousers strode majestically after their woods. Younger men ambled, more awkwardly in jeans and t-shirts from end to end and back again. Occasionally, a gentle ripple of applause circulated the pavilion as the small gathering of spectators and fellow enthusiasts displayed their appreciation of a ball bowled with deft precision.
I took a seat on a bench upon which already sat an elderly lady who was reading a book. She seemed engrossed, even to the point where the bowls match was passing her by. I glanced surreptitiously through the corner of my eye to see what she was reading. I wasn’t surreptitious enough as she caught me intrusively peering at the cover of her book as I nodded my approval. She removed her reading spectacles and returned my look, wiping the lenses on her pale blue cardigan.
“How’s Nicola Six doing?” I asked her.
“Fine, just fine,” she smiled.
“I won’t spoil it for you.”
She replaced her glasses and resumed reading.
I stretched out my legs and reclined slightly on the bench, gazing up into the deep blue sky and shielding my eyes from the sun. Trails of aircraft vapour criss-crossed the South London sky and dandelion seeds leapt and floated in the barely perceptible breeze. This was heaven. Going for a walk was indeed the finest of experiences and the most relaxing enterprise ever.
I squinted at the bowling green. It appeared that the previous match had finished and another was about to break out. A man in white trousers shook hands with a man in blue jeans and as the man in jeans skulked off, the man in white trousers shook his head slightly as if to remark, “Scruffy so-and-so!”
A doubles match was about to commence but only one of the participants was dressed in trousers and bowling shoes. He was tall with a full flash of white hair and had something of a military aspect about his mannerisms. His partner was shorter, rapidly balding, and wore shorts and a vest. They were of a similar age but their appearances could not have been in greater contrast
The other team was younger but as equally focussed. It was a mixed pairing of a man in his forties adorned with an untrimmed beard and an unwashed AC/DC t-shirt, and a woman in her early twenties. She wore jeans and a white long-sleeved t-shirt and although not an obvious beauty, she caught my eye and seemed to promise much in the way of a quite demure sex appeal.
I watched her intently as her eyes narrowed behind her glasses, her tongue gripped tightly between her lips, as she delivered her first effort. Her ball ricocheted off the bald man’s and dumped it into the ditch before coming to a stop not ten inches from the bright yellow jack. There ensued a polite round of applause in which I felt compelled to participate. She nibbled her upper lip self-consciously and wound a handful of her long blonde hair around her fingers, at all times strenuously avoiding eye contact with her sparse but enthusiastic audience.
By the time she visited the mat again, little had changed and she was still closest to the jack. She pushed her spectacles back over her ears and drew a wisp of her hair from in front of her eyes. With her tongue, once more, protruding slightly from between her moistened lips and a look of strained concentration etched across her furrowed brow, she delivered her ball with a force that seemed beyond her femininity. It arced across the carpet-like green, slowly, slowly, edging towards the jack.
I shook my head, disappointedly, because I knew that her ball wasn’t carrying enough pace to make the distance. And yet; and yet; it rolled on and on with a peculiar determination of its own and an apparent sense of destiny. She was still crouched in her bowling stance, frozen in time, not a blink of an eye nor a flicker of expression crossed her face, watching after her ball, and willing it on, forcing it forward like some perverse Canute. With a crashing sense of inevitability, the ball kissed her previous delivery and pushed it onto the jack; and there stood the jack looking beaten, bowed and embarrassed between two extremely rotund and overbearing black-clad guards as if he were being escorted to the gallows.
She placed the palms of her hands on her knees and slowly straightened her stance. An enthusiastic round of applause rippled around the green. I clapped with all my might until my hands were sore. A wonderfully engaging smile played across the entirety of her face and outshone even the beating afternoon sunshine. I had to remind myself not to fall in love so easily.
The heat was making me thirsty and I began to plot a route back to the corner shop that would bypass all possible avenues toward alcohol. I put my shirt back on, mainly to hide my somewhat inadequate torso and to regain a little dignity. It stuck to the sweat on my shoulders as I pulled it over my head and I had to wriggle into it, yanking it across the drenched skin of my back.
I wanted to ask the bowls girl if she fancied joining me for a drink or even an ice cream but she seemed too shy and self-conscious to be the sort who would say yes at the first time of asking, and I wasn’t the sort to ask a second time. Then
I remembered that I was supposed to be meeting Brie shortly anyway and that she probably wouldn’t be overly impressed if I turned up with the bowls girl in tow, three being a crowd and all that. I tried to catch her eye before I left, just to cast her a smile that I may have been able to build on in the future but her phone was in her hand and she was gazing at the screen, lost in a world of text and acronyms.
I followed the path to the park gate. Two boys on bicycles sped past, kicking up grit and dust with their chunky mountain bike tyres. They were giggling manically whilst each attempted to knock the other off his bike. One of them wore a police woman’s hat on his head and the other had a purple handbag slung over his shoulder which led me to, the possibly inaccurate, conclusion that they were the worst kind of thieves.
One of them kicked an ice cream out of the hand of a small child as they cycled through the gates, dodging between pedestrians at high speed, and on to the Old Park Road. I followed them through the gates and bought a can of Sprite from the incredibly hirsute ice cream vendor.
“Got any cold ones?”
“That’s the coldest I’ve got. They’re selling before I’ve got chance to put them in the fridge.”
“Don’t knock it, Zac, it’ll probably piss down tomorrow.”
“Ain’t that the truth!”
As I wrestled with the ring pull on my warm can of pop, I mused that it probably wasn’t the truth at all but merely idle speculation with its basis founded on anything but the truth. I walked along the Old Park Road and stopped at Costcutters to stock up on chilled fluids of any description. A purple handbag lay on the pavement outside. I picked it up and handed it to the woman at the counter. She didn’t seem to know what to do about it. There certainly weren’t any signs of gratitude or of admiration for a civic duty nobly executed. I stocked up on cigarettes too while I had the opportunity.
I headed home along Bridge Road as a car came speeding towards me. It was handling erratically, swerving from one side of the road to the other, its white paintwork shining brightly in the sun. I thought it would crash at any moment and that, perhaps, the driver had had a heart attack. But the driver was young and so was the man in the passenger seat. I stopped walking and followed its progress with my eyes. As it skidded around the corner into the High Street, I thought I saw a girl in a maroon leather jacket smiling at me dolefully through the tinted glass of the rear window.
I walked past the charity shops and the bookmakers’ on the corner of Ambrose Street, pondering whether to go inside and chance my arm on a randomly selected horse or pick a golfer for the impending Open. I peered inside. A man with no teeth and a lop-sided face was playing on a roulette machine. After every turn, he slammed his hand down on the screen in desperate frustration and reminded me why I no longer gambled.
As I loitered in the doorway with my increasingly cumbersome bag of fruit juices, I heard a familiar voice agitatedly calling out behind me. “Move!” As I turned around, he barged past me, and before I could identify him, he had ran into Ambrose Street like a startled hare. A group of younger men were chasing him and were gaining on him quickly. For a second, I toyed with the idea of joining the pursuit but my heavy shopping refused to countenance the idea. I peeked around the corner and they’d disappeared behind the hoarding of the derelict pickle factory.
Date Night
At eight o’clock sharp, I was back on the corner of Ambrose Street and the toothless man was still playing the roulette machine. His posture had changed and was slightly more bent. He appeared in some way smaller. His eyes were fierce and his hands were shaking and he’d lost it all.
This was the meeting place that Brie had designated as it was close to her bus stop. I assumed that we’d be heading for the Trumpet on the opposite side of the road. I’d polished my loafers and for the first time since my release, I’d ironed a shirt. I even found some socks without holes in them and had dug my best pair of pants out from the bottom of my underwear draw.
Brie stepped from the bus like royalty stepping from a limousine. She was wearing a figure-hugging sky blue dress just above the knee and was clutching a bright red handbag which clashed dreadfully with her ensemble. Of course, I had the decency not to point this out to her.
“You look stunning!”
“Whatever.”
“We going in the Trumpet?”
“Oh, no,” she replied with a look of disappointment on her face.
“Okay, where do you want to go?”
We spent the best part of ten minutes mulling our options over before heading to the Trumpet on the opposite side of the road and she still seemed disappointed which, in turn, made me feel customarily inadequate. But, as we passed the outside tables and approached the entrance she refused like a horse at Beecher’s Brook.
“Let’s go somewhere else.”
“Like where?”
“I don’t know. You’re supposed to be taking me out. I don’t want to go to a pub.”
We stood outside for another ten minutes while I racked my over-worked brain. “Cinema?”
“No!”
“Ten-pin bowling?”
“No!”
“We could just go back to mine and watch Match of the Day,” I ventured.
Her response was emphatic.
We walked down the High Street and dived into Pizza Express just as the rain came. We took a table by the window so that we could watch people, ill-prepared for the sudden downpour, scurry past with newspapers and bags held over their heads. I noticed a billboard on one of the bus stops on the opposite side of the High Street announcing a new reality television show called “Find My Twin”.
“The mind boggles,” I muttered contemptuously.
Brie looked at me questioningly.
I smiled and pushed a menu towards her across the table. I could hear its edge scrape across a lump of dried tomato puree which was stuck to the table. A waitress in a blue t-shirt and red apron approached us. The restaurant’s logo was emblazoned across her clothing. She adjusted her spectacles and looked at the menu in my hands as though she’d never seen one before. When she spoke, it was clear that she was no career waitress, but more likely a student courageously attempting to pay her way through college or university. Her pronunciation was as clear as a bell and her vowels were rounded and almost infinitely so.
“Are you ready to order, Sir.”
“Not yet!” Brie snapped back at her.
I squirmed a little. “Can we order some drinks while we decide?”
She smiled pleasantly and I thought I even detected a semblance of sincerity as she stood poised with her notebook and her biro. “Of course. What would you like?”
“I’ll have a Coke,” I replied. “A Diet Coke.”
Brie sniffed, somewhat derisively, I thought. “And a bottle of Pinot Grigio.”
“A bottle?” I spluttered and she shot me a look that had the effect of immediately sealing my lips and directing my eyes back towards the menu.
When the waitress returned with the drinks, she brought two wine glasses with her and asked me if I wanted to taste the wine before she poured it. I looked up at her meekly and mouthed the word “No” before pushing the wine glass that she’d placed in front of me back towards her. She poured some wine into Brie’s glass and handed me my Coke. Brie ordered an American Hot and I had a Fiorentina. We decided on garlic bread as a starter.
“How can you eat a pizza with an egg on it?” demanded Brie with some measure of disgust.
The waitress smiled uneasily and bounded off towards the kitchen with the empty drinks tray, leaving my empty wine glass still sitting upturned on the table.
“And why did she ask you if you wanted to taste the wine and not me?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“That’s sexist, that is.”
“She’s a girl; how can it be sexist?”
“It is!” She folded her arms and glared after the waitress and in so doing gave me the distinct impression that it was going to be a
long drawn out evening. But, as she got amongst the wine in her glass and unreservedly kept it replenished, the mood lightened and she became far more affable. The pizzas were delivered in good time and the waitress offered to shower them with ground pepper. I declined but Brie took some and smiled insincerely at the waitress as she tried to lick a lump of melted cheese off her upper lip which had disengaged itself from her garlic bread.
“Why an egg?” she persisted.
“It’s different and variety’s the spice of life. Anyway, it’s nice. I’ve had it before.”
“And why Diet Coke?”
“I’m not really much of a drinker.”
She laughed. “Whatever! You on a diet?”
“Just like to look after myself, that’s all.” I took a slice of pizza and fed it into my mouth. I could feel some egg yolk dribbling down my chin and saw the look of disgust on her face.
“You like to look after yourself? Really?”
I nodded but said nothing as my mouth was still full of spinach and mozzarella.
“I didn’t know you were a fitness fanatic, babe. We should go to the gym together sometime.”
I stopped chewing and a sense of panic swept over me. I swallowed far more in one go than I ought to have done and wiped the egg yolk from my chin as I resisted choking. “I don’t belong to a gym. I prefer a brisk walk in the park.”
“That’s okay, you can come to my gym. I’ll put you through your paces.” She was scanning me, testing me, watching for a reaction.
I tried to disguise my revulsion at the thought of it. “Great.”
“What evening are you free?”
“What? This week?” This week! I could feel beads of perspiration forming on my forehead already. I eyed the ice cubes floating in my glass of cola and tried to wish it into a bottle of Peroni.
“Shall we say Wednesday at seven?”