by Paul Harris
The shopkeeper was not the only one who was being put to some small inconvenience by his indecisive customer. The owners of the two bicycles that were, by then, lying in the street outside the shop were also waiting for her to make her mind up and to vacate the premises. They were rummaging through boxes of out-of-date Space Raiders and childishly hurling the packets at one another, catching them, and throwing them back.
Outside, a man in his forties tentatively stepped over the bicycles, cupped his hands against the plate glass window, and peered through the glass at the two young men as they indulged in horseplay. He had followed them on foot all the way along the High Street but as their bicycles had sped amongst the stationary traffic at the lights, he had lost them behind a convoy of buses. Now, they were his again. He stepped away from the window and pressed some buttons on his mobile phone. He wore long straggly hair, a scruffy beard, and a frayed Batman t-shirt. He watched them with an intensity of which they were completely unaware.
Finally, the woman, after adding another packet of Maltesers to her shopping, was satisfied with her purchases and allowed the shopkeeper to tally up her bill. She eventually departed the store with two full bags of chocolate and had a more than agreeable afternoon ahead of her. The man in the Batman shirt yawned, and stretched nonchalantly, to maintain his cover, as she passed close by him. She sniffed as he raised his arms and detected a musty odour that went well beyond the couple of days wear that is the very limit of any man’s t-shirt. He watched her carry her bags down the street and began to tap more keys on his phone. She peeked over her shoulder at him and he turned away and yawned again.
The two young men inside the shop, meanwhile, seized their opportunity. They approached the counter together. The shopkeeper’s smile, although still clinging to his face, had just a touch of anxiety about it now, perhaps even suspicion. They fidgeted with the chocolate bars that the woman had discarded as they thought of something to say. One of them rearranged the plastic rimmed glasses on his face and tapped his fingers on the counter as if he were waiting for the other to remember his lines. And then his brother said, “Can you tell me the difference between these, please?”
The shopkeeper looked confused. He narrowed his eyes and his smile disappeared. “Between what?”
“Well, they’re different prices but they look the same. I wondered what the difference is.”
The shopkeeper sighed. He’d been in the family business all his life and he knew perfectly well when he was being set up. “What do you want?”
“These. See?” The young man pointed to the front of the shop and proceeded to lead the shopkeeper past the magazine racks on the wall.
His accomplice watched as his brother led the shopkeeper into a blind spot. He didn’t however, through the thick lenses of his spectacles, see the shabby middle-aged man in the Batman t-shirt filming him through the window with his camera phone. He leant over the counter and grabbed a one litre bottle of Honey Jack Daniels. The shopkeeper, not quite the fool that they had taken him for, had one eye on the closed circuit television monitor above the door and the other on a cricket bat that wholly constituted his sporting goods display. He grabbed the bat and swung it at the thief who was nearest to him.
The man in the Batman t-shirt was standing on his tiptoes and leaning against the window so that he could get a good view of the action as it unfolded. The shop door swung open as the two scrawny-looking shoplifters burst from it. He whipped his phone from in front of his face and hid it in his pocket. The two fugitives were in far too much of a hurry to properly plan their escape and, forgetting where they had left their bicycles, tripped over them as they fled. They regained their balance and sprinted off, side by side, towards the anonymity of the crowded High Street. The shopkeeper followed them through the door, still swinging the bat above his head, and uttering curses in Punjabi, but resisted the temptation to join them in a race through the streets.
“Lenny!” called the younger of the two robbers as they rounded a corner. “He’s not chasing!”
Lenny looked back over his shoulder at his younger brother, and slowed the pace to a steady trot, and then a jog, and then an inconspicuous stroll. “You look like one of them Kenyan marathon runners,” said Lenny, “completely undernourished.”
“And you don’t?” retorted Finn.
“Up here.” They turned into an alleyway that stood between a takeaway shop and an Italian restaurant. “Let’s get out of the way for a bit. Catch our breath.”
“What we gonna do about the bikes?”
“Well we’ll have to go back and get them won’t we?” snapped Lenny. “But not just now. Obviously, innit?”
“They won’t still be there.”
“Who’s gonna pinch them?”
“The shopkeeper, for his stuff. An exchange.”
“Don’t talk stupid! What’s he want with bikes?”
“Give us a swig then.”
Lenny took the bottle from inside his tracksuit top where he’d been hiding it. He twisted the cap but couldn’t break the seal. “Here, let me try,” insisted Finn.
“I can do it.”
But Finn had his doubts as he watched Lenny’s spotty face turn a very nasty tone of crimson and his cheeks inflate to a size far beyond that of their usual sunken appearance. “Your glasses are steaming up. Let me try.”
Lenny ignored him and looked around the yard for something that would give him a tighter grip on the cap. There was an overbearing stench of rotting meat and stale urine. Football graffiti had been spray painted onto one of the walls and had been there for as long as he could remember; since before Ian Wright. “It’s no good,” he said, and tucked the bottle back inside his jacket. “Come on.” They cautiously eased themselves between the stained brickwork and crumbling mortar back onto the main street. There was nobody in pursuit. They began to laugh and cavort, pushing each other into disgruntled passers-by.
Lenny and Finn were dressed in smart but casual designer sportswear that had never, since its day of manufacture in a far-eastern sweat shop, ever seen a checkout till at all. They were on the move; going up in the world. Gone were the days when they rode their bikes around the common dressed in rags, scrounging cigarettes off old men and stealing pocket money off boys who were smaller than them. Things had changed now. Their mother was gone, just as she had always threatened. They were men of the world; kings of the streets, moulded by the penal system and befriended by psychiatrists. They could get anything that they wanted to now. All they had to do was take it.
Lenny held the neck of the bottle between his fingers and swung it as they walked along the road. “We’ll sell this,” he said.
“Why?” asked Finn. “Because you can’t open it?”
“No!” Lenny was quite appalled by his brother’s suggestion. “Because we can. We’ll sell it easy to the drunks in the Pig.”
“But I want to try it.”
“We’ll get another.”
“Not the same place though.”
“Of course not the same place. Not unless you fancy a cricket bat wrapped ’round your canister!”
When they walked into the Pig & Whistle, everybody turned to look at them. This made Finn hesitate and he remained rooted to the spot by the door. Lenny approached the bar where three likely looking customers were arguing about the price of beer. He smiled at the publican who was leaning on the bar and looking at him with a less than welcoming expression on his face.
“What do you want?” the publican asked.
“Nothing,” replied Lenny.
“We don’t sell nothing.”
The three customers had paused their conversation and were looking at Lenny who began to address himself to them. “See, I have this bottle to sell. Cheap, see.” He held it up so that they could examine it. “Still sealed. Look.”
One of the men wiped some sweat off his bald head with his hand and seemed to be reaching for his wallet with his other hand. Lenny glanced over his shoulder at Finn as if to say, �
�I told you it’d be easy.” Lenny eyed the bald man with anticipation and waited for him to enquire as to the price of the bottle. The man was overweight and moved as if he was trapped in a slow-motion replay. However, before the transaction could proceed any further, the landlord had descended and was shepherding the brothers from his premises. Lenny heard the bunch of keys jangling that were hanging from a loop on the publican’s trousers and then felt his hand on his shoulder. “Now fuck off out of it!” he said, before slamming the door behind them with a complete lack of hospitality.
“We’ll sell it easy,” mocked Finn as they shuffled away from the Pig & Whistle with their tails between their legs.
Lenny dismissed Finn’s scorn with a shrug of his shoulders. “We can always try the Volunteer,” he suggested.
“That’s an even worse plan. There’s some right stuck up pricks in there! Let’s just take it home and drink it.”
“Oh yeah, and what if the old lady suddenly decides to come home and catches us?”
Finn looked at him and sighed. “You know she ain’t never coming back, Len.”
They walked slowly on into Bridge Road, the bottle firmly lodged back inside Lenny’s tracksuit top, and disappeared into the Underground station where they could lose themselves in the crowds and possibly indulge in some opportunistic pick-pocketry.
Chapter Five
Chains around the Charity Bottle/Hands around the World
After all these years, in the café on the corner of Ambrose Street, a photograph of Fulham’s 1975 FA Cup final team still hangs from the wall and is still framed by grease-stained wallpaper. The team’s once white shirts are a dirty yellow now, as are the net curtains that hang in the window beside them like giant abandoned cobwebs. Alec Stock and his boys have seen far better days and so has the café and most of its customers who, wearing vacant expressions, are whiling away the hours and watching the old plastic clock and the last of their time tick away.
A black and white portable television set sits atop a chest freezer showing horse racing in silence. The picture is fuzzy and distorted. Nobody is watching; nobody cares. Above it, an electric fly killer crackles as it dispatches another hapless victim. A plastic jug sits on a shelf. It is full of cold baked beans awaiting their fate at the hands of the microwave oven.
Buffalo presses his face against the opaque glass of the outside window and peers inside before he and Lola make their entrance and join the short queue at the counter. An elderly lady with a golden crucifix hanging proudly from her neck fumbles in her purse for loose change. Eventually, she hands over the correct amount and takes a table to await her order. She deposits her huge handbag on the chair opposite hers and begins to talk to it in secretive whispers.
Lola inspects the refrigerated display cabinet besides the counter but it contains nothing but a couple of slices of cheddar that appear tired and are turning up at the corners. “I don’t know what I fancy,” he whispers in Buffalo’s ear.
“Don’t tell me you’re not hungry!”
Lola notices a mouse trap besides the display cabinet. “Not that much, to be honest.”
The woman behind the counter may well have hung the photograph in ‘75. She has worked here for years and she looks as though she hasn’t had a break in all that time, or a wash for that matter. She looks fatigued and jaded and as if she would rather be at home watching Jeremy Kyle and Under the Hammer. Her long grey hair hangs in unruly clumps and occasionally sheds into the mugs and cups that are stacked in front of her. She wears no makeup and has no need for it. Her face is pale and haggard and seems to be pulled into a knot around her mouth.
Lola stoops forward and whispers into Buffalo’s ear once more. “Look at that scruff!”
“Shush! Whisper quieter.”
“Well, I just hope she’s not cooking my grub.”
“I thought you weren’t having anything?”
“A man’s got to eat, ain’t he?”
They reach the front of the queue and Buffalo places his order. She writes it down and gives him a ticket with a number on it. Buffalo drops his change into a large charity bottle full of coins destined for a good cause but currently chained and padlocked to a large steel bracket on the wall. The woman looks up at Lola but, before he can place his order, she hands him a napkin.
“What’s that for?” he asks.
“You’re shirt,” she replies without expression. “You’ve spilt something down it.”
Lola looks down at his rather substantial beer belly. “Oh no, you’re alright, love. That was already there. I had a balti pie before I came out.”
Lola places his order and notices that the woman is shaking her head at him and smiling a lop-sided smile.
“Urgh!” he exclaims. “She’s got brown teeth!”
“Too loud!” snaps Buffalo and retreats to a table near to the window as spots of rain begin to distort the already compromised view through the carbon monoxide stained glass.
Lola follows him and, above the gentle sound of rain pattering down on the street outside, believes that he hears the woman mutter, “Scruffy bleeder!” under her breath behind his back.
Once seated the two friends sit in silence for a few moments listening to the rain and fidgeting with the salt and pepper pots until Buffalo strikes up a conversation by saying, “The bosses from Costa must be hanging around outside rubbing their hands together.”
“What? Why? What are you talking about? Did you hear her call me scruffy?”
“Well, these can’t go on for another twelve months only charging fifty pence for a cup of tea. Look at the place; it’s on its last legs!”
“It’s one pound twenty for a cup of tea in here. Where you been?”
“The robbing bastards! I thought my change was light.”
“When was the last time you were in here? I bet everything was still in black and white last time you bought a cup of tea, weren’t it?”
“It still is in here! Look at the telly! It was on Antiques Roadshow on Sunday night.”
They both stared at the television set. “That ain’t digital, is it?”
“Nah, that ain’t digital, Bruv.”
Not far from the freezer, which currently acts as a makeshift stand for the TV set, sits a woman. She has tribal tattoos extending from her shoulders down her arms. The name of the tribe escapes her now as does the reasoning behind the tattoo, although she clearly remembers the tattooist boring her with the details. Her large forehead shines beneath the strip lighting as she sucks in her stomach and pushes her huge mass of exposed cleavage together every time somebody walks past her table. She has a chocolate gateau on a plate in front of her which has been cut into four identical slices by the lady at the counter. She draws a hair from the cake and examines it. Shaking her head and then theatrically discarding the hair, she begins to assault the gateau with a fork.
Temporarily exhausted of things to talk about, Lola and Buffalo have been carefully scrutinising the young woman with the large breasts and stomach with a startling degree of curiosity. They both have questions that they urgently need to ask of one another but, as that lady tucks into her chocolate cake, they defer for just a few moments more.
Unable to contain himself any longer, Lola leans towards Buffalo. “Look at that cake!” he blurts out, in what is supposed to be a whisper. “Do you think she’s expecting company? Tell me she is.”
“No, I just think she’s proper greedy.”
She peers across the café at them and Buffalo’s heart pounds as he wonders if she’s overheard them. She puffs out her chest, looks away again, and defiantly rams another forkful into her open mouth.
Just then, a young waitress bounds from the kitchen with their order, blowing wisps of hair out of her face. She springs across to their table and continues to blow even when there is no hair in her face. She places a saucer and a mug of tea in front of each of them. Lola raises the mug of tea and then sits it back on the saucer. He repeats the operation a couple of more times before turn
ing to the waitress. “Why doesn’t the cup fit on the saucer properly?”
The girl blows some imaginary hair out of her face and shrugs.
“It’s really unstable. Look! I might spill it.”
She pretends not to hear him and returns to the kitchen for two plates of food.
“I thought you weren’t hungry?” remarks Buffalo when she places a great pile of food in front of Lola who is already clutching his knife and fork between his fingers and exhibiting an expression of excited anticipation.
Lola does not furnish his friend with a response, as his mouth is already full of baked beans.
Buffalo takes a bite from his bacon sandwich. “You dropped a bean down your shirt.” He continues to watch Lola devouring his omelette, chips, and beans with something akin to awe. “Two, actually.”
Lola is oblivious to any spillages or to any of Buffalo’s remarks. He slices through his Spanish omelette, scooping beans and chips onto it, before plunging in his fork and guiding it carefully, but rapidly, into his mouth. As his ravenous hunger is momentarily sated, beads of perspiration begin to form on his shiny scalp. Mischievously, they begin to roll down his brow and, as he stoops towards his omelette in order to reduce the distance it has to travel to his mouth, droplets begin to fall onto his plate.
Buffalo watches as the steady trickle becomes a deluge and starts to dilute the tomato sauce on Lola’s plate. Buffalo takes another bite of his bacon sandwich, chews it with a pained look on his face, and then pushes what remains of it to one side. “You’re an animal,” he mutters and, as Lola drags his arm through a heap of beans and leaves an orange trail across the tablecloth, he sees a man enter the café and sit down without ordering.