by Danny King
I twisted in the wind a little longer before realising she wasn’t going to be satisfied with my default ‘don’t know’ answer. ‘I guess… I guess you probably just grew out of him or something.
I mean, people do when they’re that age. It’s just what people do,’ I tried to sympathise with her.
Charley fixed me in her sights and pursed her lips.
‘Domino broke his leg when we fell, the same as I did,’ she said.
‘Only you can’t mend a horse’s leg like you can mend a person’s, so the vet had to put him down.’ Charley now looked away, off into the middle distance and into her past. ‘And it broke my heart when he did. That’s why I never rode again. Not Domino. Not any other horse. I couldn’t ever bring myself to again.’
‘Oh!’ I grimaced.
‘Yes, oh!’ she confirmed, taking me down a dozen more pegs and finally completing my humiliation. ‘I was no bloody good at it anyway. I realised that even before the accident, which is why I was concentrating on my exams, but to suggest that I got rid of him because…’
‘Charley, please, I’m so sorry, honestly, I didn’t know,’ I tried, but I was suddenly having trouble forgiving myself for this one.
‘You didn’t know anything,’ Charley pointed out. ‘About anything. And you never said anything. Why didn’t you talk to me, Terry?’
I stared at her incredulous green eyes and finally crumbled.
‘I don’t know,’ I confessed. ‘I… I guess I was just afraid of losing you.’
Charley cocked her head.
‘You must have a really low opinion of me,’ she said, shaking her head.
‘No,’ I told her, now broken to the point of misery. ‘I think you’re wonderful. I always have.’ I dropped my eyes from her scowl to my boots and told her how it really was. ‘It’s me I have the low opinion of.’
Charley turned back and looked me square in the eye. She didn’t say anything for the longest possible time. Neither of us did. And I was just starting to think we were locked in a staring competition when she finally blinked.
‘I’m not your old ex, Terry. The one who ran off with the shelf-stacker.’
‘Supermarket manager,’ I corrected her. Well, come on, I had some self-esteem left, didn’t I?
‘Supermarket manager,’ she acknowledged. ‘And you’re not my horse, as truly bizarre as that sounds.’
I signalled that I understood with a stamp of the hoof.
‘So I want you to listen to me, and listen carefully, because I’m only going to say this once,’ Charley said in a manner that made what followed even more surprising. ‘You are one of the kindest, warmest and most generous men I’ve ever met. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was to be going out with you. And I loved being with you. I absolutely loved it.’
Charley took a step closer to me and dropped her eyes from mine.
‘You know what, I’ve never had that much luck with men in the past,’ she said, which was frankly a ridiculous notion, something akin to Mr T telling me he’d never found a necklace he liked, but Charley looked for all the world sincere. ‘I’ve had boyfriends and I’ve dated a few guys in my time.’
‘Like Hugo?’
This caught her attention and she narrowed her eyes suspiciously.
‘Yes, like Hugo,’ she confirmed. ‘I only dated him for as long as I did because we were at university together. And that’s what everyone did at uni.’
‘Date Hugo?’
‘No, go out with the first bloke who came along, no matter how much of a prat he turned out to be,’ she said, before a thought occurred to her. ‘In fact, I should get commitment points for sticking with him for as long as I did. Talk about a lost cause.
What was I thinking?’
‘But you still see him, don’t you?’
‘As a friend, Terry. As a friend. Are you threatened by that or something?’
‘No,’ I lied. ‘But all the lads just thought it was a bit odd him still hanging around after all these years.’
Charley almost laughed. Almost. ‘Well, you tell the fucking lads from me that he lives around the corner. Of course I’m going to still see him occasionally.’
‘But why does he live around the corner? Why did he move to Islington after you did?’ I braved… er, on behalf of the lads, who I thought might be curious.
‘Because he’s a trendy little middle-class boy who works in the media. Where else is he going to live, Terry? Catford?’
Which was a fair point.
‘I guess,’ I conceded.
‘Yes, you do, don’t you?’ Charley suddenly seized upon.
‘What?’ I asked, momentarily confused. ‘What d’you mean?’
‘I mean you guess. You don’t ask, you don’t find out, you just guess. Well, guess what else, Terry; before I met you, I’d never been in a relationship that I thought had a future. That I thought was going anywhere. That I even wanted to go anywhere,’ she said, pursing her lips to deliver the killer blow. ‘Until I met you.’
Boy, if it was her intention to poleaxe me, she certainly knew where to land her kicks.
‘I honestly had no idea you were getting ready to dump me. None at all. And you can’t have any idea how miserable you made me when you did. I couldn’t understand it. I couldn’t understand it at all and hated myself for months afterwards trying to work out what I’d done to deserve it.’
‘You didn’t do anything,’ I quickly tried to reassure her.
‘I know that now, you dickhead. I’ve been watching this programme on telly all about my fucking love life, remember?
But back then, I just thought you didn’t like me any more. Or that you’d had enough. Or that you didn’t want to commit. Or that you’d met someone else. Or… or… I don’t know.’
This all really caught me four-square and true.
‘How was I to know you were having some big crisis of confidence about the scary uptight bitch you were going out with? Jesus, Terry, why couldn’t you talk to me? Why did you always have to guess?’
‘I don’t know,’ I simply repeated, and almost left it at that.
But then miracles can occasionally happen, even to thicky brickies, and it finally dawned on me that I wasn’t talking to her again. And that this was exactly how I’d fucked up everything in the first place and how I was almost hosing away my thoroughly undeserved second chance now by not throwing my cards across the table and straining every sinew against an avalanche of honesty.
‘Charley, please…’ I said, grabbing her by the arms, turning her to face me and taking a deep breath. ‘I… like you.’
Well, it was a start.
Charley frowned.
‘No, wait, I mean…’ I then took a really deep breath. ‘I love you.’
Charley failed to respond with a similar declaration, which was somewhat unnerving, and I suddenly realised I was going to have to go for this all guns blazing and lay myself bare without the slightest hint of encouragement.
‘Charley, I’m so so sorry,’ I apologised, figuring it was a good place to start. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you, I really didn’t, and I didn’t think I was. I just thought…’
‘What?’ Charley pressed.
‘I just thought I was saving myself a lot of misery by jumping before I was pushed,’ I finally admitted, chucking in my carefully crafted front and handing Charley the advantage I’d so cravenly clung to for the last eight months. I half expected her to leap on these words and dance a merry jig all over them, until all I could see was her laughing face when I closed my eyes at night. But then I guess that had been the problem all along, hadn’t it, because Charley did no such thing. She just thought for a moment then asked me the obvious question.
‘And did it?’
I sighed, with almost-amusement.
‘No, not really,’ I admitted.
‘As long as it was worth it, then,’ Charley replied, then another thought occurred to her. ‘Also, what was that shit about St Paul’s Cathedral? Why did yo
u pick that place to dump me? Was that some sort of dig about my dad working in the City?’
‘What? No, honestly. I didn’t mean anything by it. I just…’ My mind raced ahead thirty seconds and saw my future self being called a malicious cunt in light of a full and frank explanation, so I decided to save that chestnut for a sunnier day and plumped for a somewhat simpler version. ‘I just thought it was somewhere quiet we could talk. Not a bar, or a pub, or a restaurant. You know?’
‘Nice. You couldn’t have just dumped me by text like normal blokes do? I can’t seem to go into town these days without having to go past that place and it’s like a constant shitty reminder of a really shitty day,’ Charley told me.
‘Er, yeah, sorry about that,’ I cringed, knocking back the full explanation even farther from sunny-day admission to deathbed confession. ‘In fact, I’m sorry about everything. I can’t believe I messed everything up so badly and I’d do anything to be able to turn back the clock. Anything.’
‘Anything except pick up the phone, obviously,’ Charley pointed out.
‘Well, yeah, of course. Up until five minutes ago I still thought I was the one who was getting dumped by you,’ I said, thinking about that for a moment before realising I was suddenly confusing myself.
Charley let out a long sigh and leaned against the bricks.
‘Jesus, Terry, I know psychologists who don’t do half the head-churning you do.’
I agreed and offered up the only explanation I could.
‘It’s a manual job, bricklaying. It gives me a lot of time to think. Sorry,’ I shrugged.
Charley thought about this, then told me she’d buy me a radio.
‘Really? What colour?’
This almost jogged a smirk out of her. But not quite. I wasn’t sure we were quite there yet.
Charley pushed herself off the bricks again and looked around.
‘Terry, do you want to go and get some breakfast with me? I think we’ve got a few things to discuss.’
‘OK. I’d like that,’ I said. ‘Come on, there’s a gap in the fence by the toilets. We should probably slip out that way if we want to avoid all the reporters.’
‘Wow, glamorous. Is this the sort of celebrity lifestyle I can expect from now on with you?’ Charley smirked, following me up a muddy path as I led her to a bank of lopsided Portaloos around the back of the compound.
‘Maybe. If you want to give me a second chance,’ I said. ‘If you think I deserve one.’
‘Do you think you deserve one?’ Charley asked.
‘Jesus, Charley, I never thought I deserved the first one,’ I told her. ‘But if you give me a another, I swear I won’t make the same mistakes I made the first time around. Honest I won’t. I’ll never hold out on you again.’
Obviously, it wasn’t just Charley I was swearing this to, but myself. I’d behaved like a right groundworker for most of our relationship, from the very start in fact, and that was simply no way to behave. From now on, I was going to be straight down the middle with her, about everything, and let the chips fall where they may. I’d seen how badly things could get when I tried to do the thinking for both of us and I couldn’t go down that road again. There was just no future in it.
Which was suddenly what we were talking about – a future. We had a (possible) future together. How had that happened? After everything that had gone before and soured our pot, Charley was here, wading through a water-filled forklift track with me and discussing our future. Unbelievable. Mind you, not as unbelievable as a girl like Charley taking an interest in a bloke like me in the first place. I mean, how unlikely was that? But there you go.
‘Why don’t we talk about this over breakfast?’ Charley suggested, stepping from side to side to avoid the slippery mud ruts.
‘OK,’ I agreed, but then stopped dead when a related thought hit me straight between the eyes.
‘What’s up?’ Charley asked, when she saw that I’d stopped.
‘I don’t like eggs Benedict,’ I told her.
‘What?’ she blinked.
‘I just thought I’d say right off the bat that I don’t like eggs Benedict. I don’t want eggs Benedict for breakfast. So I’ll probably just have a bacon sandwich or something instead, OK, because that eggs Benedict thing isn’t for me, OK? Just letting you know where I stand,’ I told her, bracing myself for her reaction.
Charley let a smile spread across her face and slipped her hand into mine.
‘That’s a start, Terry. That’s a good start.’
30 One year later…
‘Did I ever tell you what happened to my dad?’ old Stan asked me over half a stout in the Lamb the following spring. I told him he hadn’t and pulled up a stool. ‘Well, when he was a young man, younger than you are today, he had a bit of an accident,’ he said.
I nodded cautiously and wondered where this was going. Thoughts of old Stan telling me that this same thing had just happened to him and could I follow him into the toilet flickered through my brain.
‘He used to be a painter for the council, see, back in the early twenties. Outdoor work, it was mostly; park gates, lamp-posts, park benches, that sort of thing,’ old Stan said. ‘Well, anyway, one day he was up this ladder doing some guttering or something, not quite sure, anyway, it’s not important, when the rung he’s standing on breaks right from under him and he falls on to these railings. Gets speared, he does, right through the belly and the legs and the arms and everything. Gawd, dreadful it was,’ he elaborated, with a sad shake of the head.
‘Jesus!’ I exclaimed. ‘Did he die?’
‘What? No, but he was really badly injured. Anyway, he… here, hang on a minute; early twenties? How old d’you think I am, you cheeky git?’
‘Eh? Oh yeah, of course. Sorry about that. Just my maths,’ I apologised.
‘I should think so an’ all,’ old Stan bristled. ‘Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, that was it. So me dad’s all laid up in hospital and at death’s door for weeks, see. Had the last rites and got measured up for his wooden overcoat and everything, he did, before he finally pulled through. But even then he was in a terrible state. Legs gone, back gone, could hardly sit to lean, let alone get up and walk about, so what sort of future did he have?’
‘A bleak one?’ I ventured.
‘You’re not wrong, son. See, it weren’t like it is these days. There weren’t no wages being handed out to people who couldn’t work back then. If you went to the wall in the twenties, you went to the wall,’ old Stan told me, and Tony the landlord, who’d wandered over to join Stan’s stagger back down Memory Lane.
‘Didn’t he get no compensation or nothing, then, your old man?’ Tony asked.
‘I was just coming to that,’ old Stan insisted, irked at having his big story rushed. ‘See, a bloke from the union come down and told me dad that they’d take up his case with the management, see he was paid his due and looked after, right. I mean, it was the council’s fault after all, weren’t it, what with the ladder breaking and everything, so he told him to sit tight and concentrate on getting himself better. But above all else, whatever else he did, he weren’t to sign nothing, not without someone from the union being present,’ he told us, with a knowing nod.
I think I saw where this story was going after old Stan’s twist in the tale practically set off the sprinklers.
‘Sign it all away for a couple of magic beans, did he?’ I guessed.
‘Well, no. I mean, he thought he was doing the right thing at the time, because his governor from the council come down and told him that they’d love to see him all right, but that they simply didn’t have the wherewithal to pay him a big lump of compensation. Told him that if they was held to ransom by the union, then they’d have to lay off half a dozen blokes just to find the money. Well, all them blokes were me dad’s mates and he didn’t want to see ’em out of work on his account, so him and the governor struck a deal; if me dad waived his right to compensation, he’d have a job for life with the council.’
&n
bsp; ‘Was that it?’ Tony asked. ‘Nice deal,’ he guffawed.
‘But you’re judging it by today’s standards, Tony, and it’s not the same. Back then, a job for life was like winning the pools. It meant security, which was unheard of for working men back then, let alone men like me dad who’d been injured and who couldn’t actually work. I mean, you have to remember that the country was full of blokes who’d been injured in the Great War and who couldn’t work and there was precious little support for them, so what chance did a painter who’d fallen off his ladder have? None whatsoever,’ he shrugged. ‘So he signed and gratefully accepted his job for life,’ old Stan told us, though it was clear from his tone that there was more to his story than this.
‘Go on, then, what happened to him?’ I asked, taking my cue to do so from old Stan’s knowing nod.
‘Well, five weeks later they give him the push. He hadn’t even finished convalescing in the hospital when me grandmother came and see him and brought him the letter. Some old flannel about legal responsibilities, limitations and liabilities. It was just a load of double-talk, though, to justify themselves going back on the deal. Me dad said it was the first and only time he’d ever heard me grandmother swear and it was then that he realised what they’d done to him. But what could he do? He couldn’t go back to the union because they’d told him not to sign nothing and he couldn’t go to the law courts because his job had been promised on the strength of a handshake. He was sunk.’
‘He could’ve gone to the papers,’ Tony suggested.
‘What, in a country full of hard-luck stories? This was only seven years after the Somme, remember? Where was the news?
No, that was it, he’d had his chips,’ old Stan said sadly.
‘Stan, is there a moral to this story, because the only one I can make out so far is don’t trust Catford Council and I knew that already, so I’m assuming there must be more to it than this,’ I double-checked.
‘Well, yeah, there is, because it was in the hospital, during all this, that me dad met me mum. Of course, she wasn’t me mum at the time, she was just another nurse treating him, but they grew close over the course of his convalescence and they just sort of fell in love.’