“Double ‘L’ in that,” he said, pointing to my notepad.
“I know that, Mr Woolley.” I hated this kind of interview with this type of person.
“I hate it when people spell your name wrong,” he said. “You know, it’s a fact that people tend to do that more nowadays than I’ve ever known ‘em do it in the past. There’s bound to be statistics proving it somewhere. Downright discourteous it is. And I guess that’s a sign of the times too, what with bloody strikes, power cuts and the likes. It’s what happens when you put too much power into someone’s hands, like the bloody unions. Before you know it the country’s gonna be falling way behind America, then what? I’ll tell you what - them Yanks are gonna march right back into the country with their fancy cars and bloody hamburgers and before you know it it’ll be like the war all over again. Yanks everywhere. You go to the toilet and they’ll be coming out of your arse.”
I blinked stupidly while he sniffed, rolled his tongue around his mouth and spat on the concrete at his feet. I cleared my throat. “So you say you discovered the fire around ten o’clock last night?” I tried to reroute his thoughts back onto the main road and off the dirt track it had taken. It seemed his mind was an off-road vehicle.
“Aye, the whole bloody side of the pigeon loft was ablaze,” he pointed out animatedly, letting his hand brush the charred wood of the hut with a tenderness I found quite poignant. “The door too – one sheet of flame, it was. Still, I managed to shove it open, get inside.”
“I guess that was rather dangerous,” I said, jotting down his words, still hoping that I could read the tangled netting of pen scrawls (having failed miserably at mastering shorthand) when I returned to the office to type it up. I knew that was asking a bit much, even as I laboured away with the notepad and pen.
“Dangerous?” he said, giving a brittle laugh. “I dragged corpses out of the rubble during the London Blitz, son. That’s dangerous.”
My mind was struggling to link the burnt out pigeon loft with the Blitz, give the story some kind of edge – any edge. Flames, pigeons, London, bombs… But I was lost for a connection, partly because I’d had a shitty day, and partly because I didn’t like the old man and couldn’t be bothered. I was ready for home.
“It was horrific. Bodies everywhere.” He shook his head slowly, almost majestically, like a sad old lion, I thought, perhaps aware of a tenuous literary connection I might utilise later. His eyes were yawning pits of melancholy.
“I guess it must have been horrific,” I sympathised. “My dad was in the army during the war.”
“I’m not talking about the bloody Blitz, son!” he said, exasperated with me. “I’m on about the bloody loft. Pigeons everywhere, all over the floor, dead, burnt.”
Cooked, I thought. “Have you any idea who’d do this to your birds?”
He leant closer. His breath reeked and ruined the mystery of the moment. “Too bloody good they were, that’s why. Took all the trophies we did. It was sabotage. Now I’ve lost nearly all of ‘em – Sid, Rocket, Clementine. The world will never see the likes of birds like that again. I didn’t call him Rocket for nothing, you know.” He picked at the black wooden slats, yanking a piece off that came away with a dry crackle. He looked over the chunk before tossing it to the floor. “I reckon he hated the yanks, too.” He said.
“Who, Rocket?” I asked, perplexed.
He sighed heavily. “Churchill,” he said, eyeing me like I was some kind of imbecile. “I reckon Churchill hated the yanks as much as I did, but he’d hardly say that would he? He wanted the tanks and planes and things, didn’t he? So that our lads could have a proper crack at Jerry. He’d soon sort out these strikes, he would. No bloody power cuts then, oh no. Punks, that’s the problem. All this Punk-thing.” He waved his hands over his head, imitating, I assumed, a spiky Punk hair-do. “Nazis, the bloody lot of ‘em. I mean, you don’t wear pins in your nose, do you? It’s bloody unhygienic, that’s what it is. That’s why the damn country’s going to ruin. Punks. What’s the Queen gonna have to say about it, eh? It’s her bloody Silver Jubilee, for God’s sake. You don’t want all this anarchy on your bloody Silver Jubilee, do you?”
I turned off, wound up the interview quickly when I realised he’d paused for breath, thanked him politely, stowed my camera into its bag and then cursed my pitiable existence all the way to my bicycle. The headline was already running through my mind: WAR VETERAN PENSIONER IN PIGEON LOFT ARSON DRAMA. It invested the dreary article with an excitement it didn’t really possess, but such banners failed to enliven either the sad, tedious weekly contents of the struggling South Yorkshire Chronicle, or convince me that my so-called career as a journalist had finally taken off and was in full flight. Hell, it could hardly flap its wings, I thought miserably, imagining the albatross trying to get aloft in Disney’s The Rescuers.
I pedalled furiously, because I had another interview to do in the locality concerning preparations for a Silver Jubilee street party that was doomed to failure because of a shortage of appropriate bunting, and every breath I expelled was either a cry of anger or of desperation. It was my first lesson in real life; it doesn’t matter how fired up you are, there’s always a bucket of water to douse your flame. In fact, the Chronicle had played a cold hose over me since the day I started at the newspaper. I guess my expectations of it were a little too high, because in truth youth rarely has any other. But I ought to be grateful, I told myself with little conviction as the narrow saddle chaffed my already sore bottom, because I’d at least progressed up from buying sausage rolls for the office.
I finished school in the summer of 1975 during a terrific heat wave that I held to be a portent of my scorching launch into a world where I would make my mark amongst men and eventually die remembered by millions. So I didn’t have as many GCEs as I’d have liked – five to be precise, and those of a lacklustre quality – but I was me, and everyone liked me, and I was sure I could get everyone else to like me enough to give me a bloody good job with bloody good wages that would give me a bloody good living. All I had to do was turn up for an interview, pour out my numerous talents and personality, then bingo!
Ruby and Max in the meantime had embarked on A-levels at sixth form, which – I was assured by my concerned parents and those relatives closest to me who were pleased to find a wide-necked empty vessel into which they could drip their knowledge of the workings of the world – was a complete and utter waste of time. Education did you no good at all except to distance you from your family and drive you to drugs, drink, various inscrutable diseases that rotted away your private parts and homosexuality. There was, as far as my muddled brain could deduce, no other option. I would throw myself straight into the world without the dubious benefit of further schooling, with a vague notion that I should continually monitor Ruby for signs of drunkenness, addled brain or a sudden attraction to the same sex.
So while Max and Ruby embarked upon what I thought to be pointless exercises on their individual roads to university educations, I signed on at the dole office and scoured the situations vacant. Local papers, I add, did not take much scouring; I soon began to wonder whether they simply recycled the same page of sewing machinists and cleaners week after week, for the identical posts came up with tiresome regularity. And it was then I learned another valuable lesson, though it was slow in the learning; advice often given by those closest to you is not necessarily good advice, and that those people you trusted implicitly to keep you afloat during childhood are often unsuitable - indeed downright dangerous - lifejackets once you’re immersed in the fierce storms of adulthood. In short, I could not get a job, no doubt employers reading all manner of inadequacies into the many blank spaces I left on the application forms that referred to educational qualifications. I soon began to envy Ruby and her business studies. She’d daily relay all the knowledge she’d avidly consumed, and more often than not I could only stare blankly at her as she tried to go over in passionate detail about a Kondratiev Wave, some Malthusian theory or oth
er, or the importance of economies of scale. I should have known that this educational wedge between us was destined to grow larger.
It was following the ignominy of having to ‘sign on’ at the dole office, to queue with some of the other unfortunates who were feeling the pinch of a wider economic depression I was totally unaware of, that I remembered the business card Jimmy King gave me, the reporter who’d splashed my story all over the front page of the South Yorkshire Chronicle, giving me two weeks of fame the entire length of High Street. I found the card out, crumpled but safe in a drawer, under my underpants and socks where I kept all things I considered too personal for my parents to see. The idea of becoming a journalist had been fleeting and forgotten, but seeing his name brought the flush of excitement and anticipation right back. I could be a journalist, I said to myself, taking a few coppers and setting out immediately to the phone box, hardly dwelling upon the fact that I had written nothing longer than a short paragraph or two since leaving school, and those only in answer to job adverts, encompassing all the literary flair of a shopping list.
Unfortunately, I was told over the phone that Jimmy King had legged it to pastures new, but – and this following much hesitation and interspersed with the sounds of swallowed liquid, which just had to be strong black reporters’ coffee – I was told to come over and “have a chat” in a day or so. Chat duly arranged and conducted, something must have clicked because I was told to start the following Monday, part-time initially, which I did, and I got to grips not with typewriter, notepad and telephone, but with the rubbish bins and light bulbs. Oh, and those sausage rolls I mentioned earlier; and cups of sweet tea, which appeared to be a universal staple diet and which I was expected to deliver at the allotted time each day.
It was a baptism of tea and pig meat that initially seemed to have no end. My fantasy soon dissolved when it became plainly apparent that the Chronicle owed more to the juice of sausage rolls and bacon butties, or PG Tips and sugar, than it did to the news it ostensibly reported. But at least I could console myself by thinking I was the provider of this valuable stimulating lubricant; that I had a purpose every bit as significant as the stories lukewarm off the Chronicle press. And I received a whole six pounds a week for the privilege.
By and by I was let loose on an old Adler typewriter and managed to eventually clunk off a few pages that impressed the editor enough for him to let me roam unfettered on the streets hunting down scoops. Desperate for photographers, as the Chronicle always seemed to be, I had a battered Pentax SLR thrust into my hands, given a swift and hazy whistle-stop tour of f-stops and depths of field then told to “go snap ‘em with a smile” – and I was so naïve it was a long time before I cottoned on that he meant it was the subject that had to grin, not me. “Shit, there’s enough depression round these parts without shoving photos of miserable gits in punters’ faces,” Mr Ranklin, the paper’s senior editor, thundered. “An’ if we can’t afford tits an’ bums like the nationals we gotta give ‘em smiles. Big ones.” So right now I was worried that my picture of a grim-faced Mr Woolley might not go down too well, though I hardly thought it reasonable to ask the poor man to grin over the charred remains of his beloved pigeons Sid, Rocket and Clementine.
I pedalled my bicycle tiredly up to the old red brick front of the Chronicle offices. A long time ago the gaunt, emotionless building had been some kind of Victorian warehouse, perched dangerously close to the side of the canal – the very same canal that, ten miles away, had almost claimed my young life – and onto which it had apparently discharged cargos of offal, skins and bones to make Victorian pies, shoes and glue. I guess times had changed, but as far as I could see the offal was still being shipped out, but in a different form.
There wasn’t a day went by without me thinking that the canal was a kind of watery thread that seemed to run through my existence, dogged my every footstep, and now patiently watched me as I put a toe into adulthood. I had to trace its path to reach my place of work, its black, algae-carpeted waters peering up at me, reminding me. But today I wasn’t in a pensive mood. I was hot, aching and smelly. I was growing tired of being sent out on all the local runs in all weathers on my aged and not too willing bicycle. And to make matters worse I recognised the two figures stood by the entrance to the Chronicle building.
I dismounted, self-consciously reaching down and plucking off my bicycle clips, stowing them out of sight in my trouser pockets. “Hi, Ruby,” I said.
She stepped away from the motorcycle – a shiny new Honda, the pristine blue of its metallic paint and the glinting of its macho chrome standing in sharp contrast to the dirt-grimed walls of the old building. The rider, clad in black leather, lifted his helmet and revealed his face, running a hand through dark tousled hair to tease it back into shape. It was Max. Ruby sauntered over to me, planting a warm kiss on my lips.
“Like it?” she said, pointing to the motorcycle. “Max has just given me a lift here. Great stuff!”
“What about your helmet?” I said, horrified.
She waved my concern away. “I’ve got to have a motorbike like this!” she enthused.
I saw Max looking at my company vehicle – my bicycle – and swore I detected humour on his lips. He looked good on his motorcycle, his body filling out his leathers, his legs cockily astride the wide leather seat – even the way he cupped the helmet in his hands served only to make me feel small and inconsequential and dull. My hands gripped the handlebars of my rusty appendage tightly, and I looked away, back to Ruby whose bright features held only wonderment. “What are you doing here?” I said, wheeling the bicycle to the wall where I chained it to a metal hoop embedded in the brick.
“Nothing really,” she said. “We both finished college early and thought we’d go for a ride. Shame to waste the day cooped up reading textbooks. Thought we might hang around here for a while, see if we bumped into you.”
The blue touch paper of my jealousy had been lit. “You’ve been out then, on the motorbike?”
Max nodded. “Miles,” he said, and the word, to me, carried with it more than he said. “She loves it, don’t you, Rube?”
Rube! How dare he, I thought?
“Where’d you get the money from?” I asked. “Must have cost a bit, new bike, new leathers.”
“Partly mine, mostly Bernard’s. I think he’s trying to buy me, but it won’t work. Still, can’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”
“We’re off somewhere this afternoon,” Ruby said with a sprightly tone.
“Where?” I asked shortly, the smouldering flame tearing down the touch paper at quite a pace now.
“We haven’t made our minds up yet,” Max interjected. “It’s amazing just how far you can get when you’ve got one of these,” he said, and I winced at his words. “By the way,” he added, “just thought I’d tell you that mother wants to see you, when you’ve got time.”
“What about?”
He slipped the helmet smoothly back onto his head and gunned the engine. The Honda burst into raucous life, the smell of exhaust fumes thick and metallic. “I’ll let her tell you,” he shouted above the din.
He waved curtly to Ruby who gave me a quick peck on the cheek, her lips sliding down my skin in her haste and leaving a wet trail. She hurriedly deserted me to cock her slim denim-clad leg over the growling machine. The sight had something of the erotic about it, which annoyed me all the more. I was further incensed by the sight of her wrapping her hands around his thick waist and the fervent pressing of her chest against his back; and furthermore I resented the wild look of excitement splashed across her mouth and eyes, because I had not been the one to put it there.
“A helmet!” I cried. “You need a helmet!”
She laughed, but the engine drowned the sound. I caught sight of Max’s eyes framed by the opened visor of his helmet. I read all manner of dreadful things into them, and I thought all manner of dreadful things about him. Ruby waved and then the Honda was off, tearing away and leaving behind a noxious cloud of exh
aust fumes to linger beside me like an acrid memory. I watched till they disappeared from view, and listened intently until I no longer heard the faraway hum of the motorcycle. My flame reached the keg and I exploded, lashing out at the bicycle with my foot, the poor old thing seeming to flinch as I made contact with its rusted spokes, its bell releasing a plaintive ‘ting’ in feeble protest.
I hated Max then as I’d never hated anyone before, for everything he was and for everything I wasn’t. I looked up at the rows of windows set out in neat regimented lines on the building’s side. Some of them still had wide metal bars in place, a relic of Victorian times. Bars, as on prison windows. I frowned at my turbulent thoughts, for I could not make sense of them, and launched myself dispiritedly into the dilapidated maw of the South Yorkshire Chronicle building.
* * * *
16
Gavin Miller
He looked up from the manuscript, surprised to find that dusk had pulled its leaden hue over the garden beyond the French windows, and that a damp, morose silence peculiar to this time of evening hung over everything. It had been raining and the leaves of the willow were dripping. The dark seemed to crowd upon him. On the wall opposite a weak patch of wraith-like luminosity, the weak sun filtered through the thin, swinging bars of the willow, shimmering dully, shifting form. It stroked the corner of a gilt picture frame. Gavin Miller stared at the old Victorian print. Henry Wallis’ ‘Death of Chatterton’ stared back at him like a single brooding eye. Miller envied the corpse on the couch; envied his chalky skin; envied his courage. Chatterton had taken his own life having been ‘found out’. How prophetic of his wife to have bought the print and hung it there.
Somewhere deep into the house he heard the sound of his wife preparing a meal. A sense of regret swamped him, and he thought of her and all the times they’d had together, and how fragile everything was.
He stabbed at a light switch and the spectre on the wall vanished. Sitting back in his chair he set the weighty manuscript on his lap and turned back the pages to find his place. With a deep intake of breath he set about reading again.
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