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

by Paul Harris

  The waitress approaches his table and hands him a newspaper before taking his order. Buffalo is aghast. “I didn’t know you could do that!” he grumbles. “I didn’t know they did table service!”

  Lola is focused solely on the destruction of his breakfast and pays Buffalo absolutely no attention whatsoever. The man, who also pays Buffalo no attention whatsoever, begins to peruse the sport, and only the sport, on the back of the tabloid newspaper that he is holding in his hands.

  “How come he gets given a newspaper?” complains Buffalo.

  “Get one out of the rack by the counter if you want one,” says Lola, almost inaudibly, through a mouthful of chips. A stream of tomato sauce is meandering across his chin.

  “I don’t want one! I just want to know why he gets one brought to his table. And why his order gets taken at his table. And how you’ve managed to get bean juice all over your face, all over your shirt, and all over our table.”

  The waitress returns to the man’s table and opens a bottle of San Miguel for him, before pouring it into a glass.

  “And beer!” exclaims Buffalo. “They haven’t even got a license!”

  “Yeah,” grunts Lola, “they have.”

  The waitress blows more hair out of her face and smiles as the man chats to her. He hands her a slip of paper and she blushes coyly before secreting the paper in her apron pocket and returning, once more, to the kitchen. The man is in his late thirties and has a small scar above his left eye from an old truncheon wound. He is dressed in a tartan Lyle & Scott polo shirt, and where his right sleeve ends, the feet of a Tottenham cockerel can be seen balancing on a faded blue inked ball.

  Idly gazing up from his newspaper, he notices that the swirling patterns in the Artex ceiling are shaded in different tones of orange depending on their proximity to the kitchen door. A poster advertising Pukka Pies is taped to the side of a glass-fronted refrigerator full of pop bottles. The pie in the picture looks far prettier than any pie that he has actually seen with his naked eye. He watches the waitress wriggle past his table with a plateful of sausages that are rolling around uncontrollably. She is beckoned by two men who are sitting at a table near the window. The larger of the two asks for a napkin so that he can mop up the beans that he has spilled.

  “You know,” announces Lola, wiping his face with the napkin, “I was talking to this geezer once and he was giving me directions. I can’t remember where to now.” He pauses as he attempts to recall where he was going and what he was talking about.

  Buffalo glares at him with a furrowed brow, and shrugs. “So?”

  “The thing is, instead of using pubs, like turn left at the Pig & Whistle, then chuck a right at the Red Lion, and so on, like normal people do, he used the names of cafés. ‘You know Dave’s Café? Well, do a right there, then a left at the Greedy Pig.’ I didn’t have a fucking clue where I was going.”

  “Was he fat? I bet he was fat?”

  “He was, as it happens.”

  “They always are, mate. All fat blokes give directions using cafés instead of boozers.”

  “I don’t,” objects Lola meekly.

  “No, you don’t. Obviously, you don’t. But, you’re a pisshead, ain’t you?” compliments Buffalo. “Some of these people spend half their lives in cafés. And they wonder why they’re so bloody fat. No wonder the boozers are dying on their feet. There are too many people too busy eating instead of getting on the lash.” Having concluded his verbal attack on the evils of eating as opposed to getting drunk, Buffalo runs his finger along the windowsill and begins to bemoan the amount of dust that he manages to gather with just one stroke.

  A woman enters the café and spies her friend sitting alone chatting to her handbag. She removes the bag from the chair so that she can sit down opposite her. The first lady, the large gold cross still dangling from a fine chain around her neck, seems slightly disappointed by this turn of events. Nevertheless, without any preamble at all, they huddle together and begin to rattle like churchyard gates. They talk rapidly in low murmurs and behind cupped hands, distributing surreptitious glances this way and that, as if they imagine anybody else is interested in a conversation regarding Gus’s kidney stones. The woman from behind the counter brings two cups of tea over for the ladies and momentarily joins their chat.

  A jug sits on the counter and the odour of curdling milk is becoming vaguely discernible through the atmosphere of burning fat that clings to the throat, creating nausea, and destroying once burgeoning appetites. Next to it is a jar of brightly coloured lollipops that has stood in exactly the same place for as long as the Fulham football team have. The jar is still full to the brim, its contents fused together, and a thick coating of dust and grease covers the lid. An extractor fan hums frantically as it sucks thick heavy smoke out of the kitchen and into the street.

  In one corner, sits another man, surveying his fellow customers with an intimidating stare. He is notable by the way his completely shaven head sits directly on the collar of his shirt and seems to mechanically swivel like the gun turret of a tank. He is chewing chicken legs and gripping them with a tightly clenched fist. His arms are swathed in tattoos: a bulldog that appears to be chewing on a wasp is cloaked in a union flag. Scrawled above this fierce looking beast is simply the word, “English”. Below, in faded blue lettering is the extremely agreeable enquiry, “Who Wants to Know?”

  Two Staffordshire Bull Terriers lounge heavily beneath the table, stirring only to growl menacingly at the waitress as she hurriedly passes by with a frightened skip. Occasionally, the man drops a portion of chicken onto the floor between the dogs and they begin to fight over it. They slash and tear, and snarl and bark, and the sound of shuffling chairs can be heard scraping against the linoleum floor as people anxiously edge slightly further away from that particular corner.

  More by sheer luck than any exhibition of judgement on their part, Lola and Buffalo are already as far away from that particular corner as they possibly can be without leaving the café altogether. As fortune would have it, Buffalo is setting out his plans with regard to penal reform, and is growing increasingly irritated by Lola’s apparent lack of interest.

  “You’re not listening, are you!” he asserts as if the matter has been suddenly drawn to his attention.

  “I’m just not interested,” moans Lola. “I don’t really believe in the criminal justice system anymore.”

  Buffalo is astonished. “What are you talking about? How can you not believe in the criminal justice system? It’s the glue that holds the very fabric of our society together.”

  “Well, how can it be considered a crime to accidentally break your wife’s phone? How can you get locked up for that? What kind of world are we living in?”

  “You threw it at her head!”

  “It wasn’t my fault it broke though. I didn’t know she was going to duck.”

  “Nothing’s ever your fault, is it? You’re like Phillip fucking Green!”

  “Who?”

  “Never mind.” Buffalo runs his hands through his hair in exasperation and continues to gaze into Lola’s defiant face.

  “Well, stop staring at me. It’s making me feel uncomfortable.”

  “How was your omelette, anyway?”

  “Very salty if I’m perfectly honest,” says Lola, smacking his tongue against his gums and pulling a face like a kangaroo.

  They stare out of the window at the dull, gunmetal grey sky and the unrelenting drizzle that is steadily falling from it. Colourful puddles are beginning to form in the gutters and an elderly lady towing a shopping trolley fumbles clumsily for her umbrella. A double-decker bus speeds past and splashes her before she has time to open it. Her dignity destroyed, she stands despondently, filthy rainwater dripping from her hair, and her ears, and her nose, and from the plastic bangle that she wears around her wrist. She shudders and raises the open brolly above her head before continuing her journey that will shortly terminate at her bus stop in the High Street.

  A man hurries al
ong on the opposite side of the road. He is wearing a dark designer suit and is carrying a folded newspaper tucked under his arm. The newspaper is rapidly turning to mush. His highly polished black shoes sparkle through the natural lenses of raindrops. He darts into the shelter of the bookmaker’s doorway and a man in a woolly hat asks him for a light.

  “So, what we doing now?” asks Lola.

  Buffalo makes a peculiar farting sound with his lips and appears at a loss for a reply.

  “We can’t sit here all day.”

  “In that case, we’ll have to get wet.”

  “Why don’t we get a cab?”

  “Where to?”

  “I don’t know. Where do you want to go?”

  “I don’t know.”

  They peer through the window again whilst they silently formulate a plan between them. The man in the suit is still sheltering in the betting shop doorway and the man in the woolly hat is now holding out his open hand and tapping him up for some loose change.

  “What about the Pig & Whistle?” suggests Lola.

  “What an idea! Why didn’t I think of that?” There may be a vague hint of sarcasm in Buffalo’s voice but, then again, there may not be.

  Across the street, the man in the suit has decided that ploughing on through the rain and wind is preferable to being ransacked by the beggar in the woolly hat.

  “Shall we then?” prompts Lola as he wipes the last of the sauce from his chin. They push back their chairs simultaneously and stand up. The scraping of the chair legs against the pale yellow linoleum flooring arouses the attention of the two bull terriers in the far corner by the fruit machine. Their ears are erect and they are up on their haunches. In their eagerness to identify the source of the sound, they knock the legs of the table with their heads and a mug of coffee is destabilised and tumbles into their owner’s lap. He curses furiously and scans for the cause of the disturbance. He jumps to his feet, knocking the fruit machine with his elbow as he draws it back, and glares with a look of loathing at Buffalo and Lola. The theme tune from “Only Fools and Horses” bursts from the machine behind him and he sits down again, still glaring, and still spitting curses into his scolded groin.

  In an effort to avoid eye contact with the ferocious little man with the dogs, Lola makes a pretence of examining the walls of the café, and for the first time ever, he notices the picture of the Fulham football team. His examination proceeds in every direction except for that of the fruit machine.

  “Look!” exclaims Lola. “I didn’t know Rod was in here. I didn’t see him go past.”

  “Where?”

  “Over there, tucked away behind the coat rack.”

  The lady with the golden crucifix excuses herself sheepishly and squeezes past the two of them as they stand in the centre of the café, staring at Rodney Peddle and his companion, and blocking all possible access.

  “Who’s that bird he’s talking to?” asks Lola.

  “I don’t know but I ain’t asking for an intro. He doesn’t seem to be in one of his more sociable moods today.”

  “That’s unusual, isn’t it, these days?”

  “No.”

  “I was being sarcastic.”

  “You do realise, that’s the lowest form of wit?”

  “So they say.” Lola wipes some sweat off his head with a napkin and begins to move towards the door.

  As they pass the table next to the fruit machine, which is still occupied by the angry bald man along with his two dogs, Buffalo, for some inexplicable reason, elects to offer him some unsolicited neighbourly advice. The expression of apoplexy on the bald man’s shrivelled face is such to suggest that Buffalo’s advice is less than welcome.

  “You’re not supposed to give chicken bones to dogs, you know.”

  The bald man seems to be breathing very deeply, as if he is having a cardiac arrest, or is about to fly into a rage.

  “Just saying,” smiles Buffalo.

  Bo gathers himself. The veins in his temples are visibly throbbing. “You’ve got baked beans all down your trousers, you fucking clown!”

  “I haven’t even had baked beans, mate,” retorts Buffalo smugly, before glancing down at said trousers and then casting a malevolent look in Lola’s direction.

  Murmur

  “I’ve been threatened in pubs the length and breadth of this old town, but I never felt as vulnerable as I did after that fall. Every muscle ached. There were holes randomly distributed over my flesh. My head pounded for months. I couldn’t walk for three days. It was then that I suddenly realised that I was getting old. It came from nowhere. It was the point where everything changed.”

  She swallowed hard and seemed sad. “You should have called me.”

  “I didn’t have your number and, anyway, what would you have done about it? You’re not a doctor.”

  She shrugged but didn’t answer the question. “You need to take more care.”

  “I know.”

  “Does it still hurt? Your eye’s still swollen.”

  “My head hurts sometimes. Throbs. And my knees and elbows. I think my eye will always be swollen. It won’t go down. It’s all spongy. Feel.”

  She recoiled. “No thanks. Did you go to A&E?”

  “No, I thought I’d be okay. I gave it a couple of days, and then went to the doctors’. He checked me out good and proper and sent me on my way.”

  “What did the doctor say to you?”

  “He told me to take it easy.”

  “And will you?”

  “Of course not. What’s the point of being here if you have to take it easy.”

  She screwed her face up into a ball and made a strange sound, somewhere between a grunt and a sigh. “So at least he gave you the all clear, then.”

  “Kind of.”

  An uncomfortable silence passed between us. She placed her tea cup down on the saucer and looked me squarely in the face. “What do you mean, kind of?”

  “They said that I’ve got a heart condition.” I paused to see what her response would be. She fidgeted with her cup and, although it was empty, raised it to her lips again. “I don’t know how they found that out.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they were supposed to be checking for broken bones and bruised internal organs and things like that.”

  “I mean, why have you got a heart condition?”

  “Good living, I guess.”

  “You know what I mean. Why do they think that you’ve got a heart condition?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve got to go to the hospital for tests.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t know that either. The appointment hasn’t come through yet.”

  She stood up and began to button her jacket up. “Well, let me know when you’ve got to go. I’ll come with you.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I know I don’t. But, I will. Thanks for the tea.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Take it steady, Rod.” And she left, taking the long way around to avoid a prostrate bull terrier.

  Chapter Six

  A Night on the Somme

  In Amiens, Cak Lazlo and Jarni Bosko stopped. They stopped to see the sights. They stopped to catch their breath. They stopped to breathe the air. The air was clean and fresh, and smelled of the river and the trees and the flowers and of freshly mown grass. Although Cak surely did have friends in the town and although they were, indeed, very much like Cak and were, clearly, his people, Jarni did not feel that they were his people. They were unlike the people he knew at home and they were most unlike the people he had expected to meet on his journey. He had set forth with the fanciful notion that he would meet great artists and philosophers and raconteurs. Cak’s people were none of these things.

  They lived in what was little more than a shack on the outskirts of the city, down on the river bank. They claimed that the neighbouring boatyard, which was only a very small concern, lay partly, at least, under their ownership. Jarni susp
ected that this was not completely true and that it was more likely that the tight collective of East European immigrants who lived in the shack merely intimidated and stole from the real boatyard owner and his family.

  Jarni had grown troubled during the few short days of his travels. His eyes had been opened to a wider world. He had grown suspicious of everybody, uncomfortable in the company of strangers, and trusted nothing that was said to him. Cak had destroyed his love for the world. The innocence of his University days now seemed a lifetime away. He felt jaded and tired, and the light that had once shone brightly at the end of the figurative tunnel now flickered dimly. He longed to be free of his travelling companion; to be free to enjoy the fruits of his experiences without the bitter after-taste of cynicism always being evident, spoiling and tainting and nauseating.

  One evening, the two of them strolled through the centre of town, side by side, as if they were handcuffed together. Cak was picking up fruit and bread and other items of food from outside the shops and from untended market stalls and concealing them in his jacket pockets. Jarni, meanwhile, was pretending not to notice his partner’s intermittent pilfering. He rolled his eyes up towards the sky and bit his lip in consternation. As they strolled wearily past the medieval garden, they came across three young men ambling up the hill towards them. Cak noticed them first and nudged Jarni in the stomach to draw his attention. This made Jarni feel sick.

  “See them?” said Cak, turning away from the approaching men and surreptitiously gesturing with his eyes towards them as they passed by.

  “What of them?” shrugged Jarni.

  Cak narrowed his eyes and followed them as they walked toward the tourist information office in the main square. One of the men was wearing sandals and shorts but the evening, although mild, was far too cool for such attire. “English,” he said authoritatively. “Did you ever see Englishmen before?” Cak altered his course slightly and began to follow the three young men.