The Boy Next Door

by Emlyn Rees

  Ever since I’d first come here when I’d been thirteen, I’d lived for the holidays when I’d be back home. Now that Mickey was my girlfriend, this longing had become more intense still. I wanted her back, beside me, for real. I wanted so much more than her voice at the end of a telephone, or the scent of her perfume on a letter.

  I received at least one letter from Mickey each week. Her envelopes came in strange shapes and sizes and colours and patterns. She’d adorn them with stickers and drawings, or write on them with metallic inks in lurid greens and purples and silvers and golds. Sometimes she’d send small parcels, enclosing taped copies of the new albums she’d bought, as well as trinkets and sweets and flattened cigarettes.

  At the start of summer term 1985, the term I was to take my O-level examinations, rereading her words in the dormitory at night, I grew first to recognise and then silently to glory in the fact that somewhere over the last few months I’d fallen in love.

  Mickey’s communications served another purpose, too. Through a news service that would have rivalled Reuters, Mickey Maloney brought the real world back into my life. There was nothing, I think, that went on in Rushton in the first five months of that year that I didn’t get to know about.

  Miles’s sporadic visits home, for example, had ceased abruptly at the end of the Easter holidays when I’d gone back to Greenaway. Mum had started holding Christian Fellowship meetings on Wednesday evenings and had tried (and failed) on several occasions to cajole Mickey into attending. Miss McKilroy (she of the blotchy, blubbery boobs) had become pregnant and Sam Johnson, the purported father, had put his house in Rushton up for sale and moved to North Wales. Dave had been suspended from Bowley Comprehensive for pulling a moony out of the back of the school bus at a passing Rolls-Royce (the driver of which had been a humourless High Court judge). Mickey’s older brother, Scott, had achieved even greater notoriety by dumping Alison Rawling on the night of her seventeenth birthday, thereby causing her to scratch his initials into her forearm with a penknife in a fit of Gothic pique (‘an example to us all of why we should put our faith in Jesus and not our fellow man,’ according to Mum; and, ‘an example of the tragic effect of listening to too many of Scott’s Cure records,’ according to Mickey).

  Some news, though, you couldn’t communicate in letters. Some news you had to see to believe.

  ‘Our father . . .’

  ‘Pass it on …’ Rob Oldfield hissed into my ear.

  ‘Who art in heaven …’

  ‘Check out the spiv with the ponytail and the cheesy grin,’ Oldfield hissed again.

  ‘Hallowed be thy name . . .’

  I nudged Luke Davidson, the boy on my left, and hissed, ‘Pass it on …’

  ‘Thy kingdom come . . .’

  I looked across the flagstoned aisle of the school chapel at the block of wooden pews opposite, which was reserved for parents. It was the second Sunday of term and, as a result of some mad Victorian educator’s weaning theory, it had been deigned the first day that the boys’ parents should be allowed to visit them. Mum was meant to have been coming, but she’d gone down with an unseasonable dose of flu a few days before, and Miles had never come, not once in the two and half years I’d been here. I’d therefore resigned myself to a day of wandering the school grounds alone, while the rest of my year disappeared off for lunch. Anything right now was a welcome distraction from this miserable thought and I scanned the faces for the ponytailed spiv.

  ‘Thy will be done …’

  And saw him sitting two rows back.

  ‘On earth as it is in heaven . . .’

  Grinning like the winner of a Bee Gees look-a-like contest.

  ‘Give us this day our daily bread . . .’

  Directly at me.

  ‘And forgive us our trespasses . . .’

  With a mahogany tan and white eye sockets from wearing shades in the sun.

  ‘As we forgive those who trespass against us . . .’

  Dressed in a bright red shirt and a shiny grey suit.

  ‘And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil . . .’

  With a fat gold Rolex on one wrist.

  ‘For thine is the kingdom . . .’

  And a fat copper bangle on the other.

  ‘The power and the glory . . .’

  ‘Pass what on?’ Luke asked, following my stare.

  ‘For ever and ever . . .’

  ‘Nothing,’ I replied.

  ‘Amen.’

  ‘I bet you a million he’s wearing white socks and grey slip-ons,’ Oldfield whispered from my right as the chaplain began on some announcements.

  ‘What?’ I mumbled, still staring across the aisle.

  ‘Pikey grey slip-ons,’ Oldfield reiterated a little too loudly for the chaplain’s liking, causing him to glance irritably in our direction. Oldfield fell silent for a couple of seconds, before whispering again, ‘What do you think his name is?’

  ‘The chaplain?’

  ‘No, you arse, the spiv.’

  I considered this for a moment, before whispering back, ‘Miles.’

  Oldfield sniggered. ‘Miles is good. I was going to say Trevor or Warren, or something really naff like Randy, but Miles really is rather good –’

  ‘No,’ I said, twisting my neck round to look straight into Oldfield’s bespectacled eyes. ‘I mean his name is Miles.’ I set my face into what I hoped was a vague approximation of the expression Clint Eastwood had employed in the graveyard shootout scene at the end of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and then I spat it out, knowing that it was only a matter of time before the genetic connection became apparent. ‘He’s my father.’

  Oldfield’s jaw dropped, leaving his mouth an O of disbelief. He said nothing for a second and glanced from me to Miles. Then he played Lee Van Cleef to my Eastwood, staring as hard into my eyes as I had into his, waiting for me to crack. But I didn’t, because what I’d told him had been the truth: the man with the tan was indeed my father. Oldfield’s mouth clamped shut and I watched as, slowly but surely, his face turned from pink to red. Then his shoulders shuddered and great bubbles of snot burst from his nostrils on to his upper lip.

  Luke jabbed me in the ribs and mouthed, ‘What’s up with him?’

  I didn’t reply and instead stared down between my shoes at the wooden base of the pew. I pictured Miles and wished him dead. What was he doing here? Why had he come? Then I remembered my mother and where I was, and hurriedly apologised to God for the death wish and merely wished Miles elsewhere instead. After all, he was meant to be somewhere else. In Malaga, to be precise, with his secretary, Janine, looking for a site for a new nightclub to invest in. That’s what Mum had told me, anyway.

  ‘It’s Roper’s …’ I heard Oldfield gasp to whoever sat to his right, his shoulders still shaking uncontrollably. ‘The spiv. It’s Roper’s father … the spiv’s his dad …’

  Oldfield twisted round to face me, his eyes slick with laughter and, in that instant, my embarrassment died and in its place burnt anger. Who the hell did Oldfield think he was? Or any of these people, come to think of it? So what if Miles dressed like a spiv? What did that mean to me? I hadn’t even known what a spiv was before I’d come to this school.

  I’d been taught it, just the same as I’d been taught about plebs and proles and Kevs and Sharons and white socks and pikey accents and all the other delineators of class that I didn’t care about, but which seemed so important to most people here.

  And – what? – Oldfield and all the rest of them, their parents looked better, did they, in their boring middle-aged tweeds and scarves and old school ties? Not to me, they didn’t. I thought of Mickey and Mum and Pippa and Dave, and everyone else back home whom Oldfield probably considered beneath him. I glared deep into the whites of his eyes and told him, ‘Go to hell, you stuck-up twat!’

  The effect was immediate. Oldfield’s silent hysteria vanished as instantly as it had arrived. His mouth reverted to a stunned O. He gaped. He gawked. He hardly seemed to b
reathe. Never before had I seen someone so affected by the power of language.

  It was then that a strange prickle of electricity began to shiver down my neck and spine. I didn’t move. Instead, I listened: nothing. Then I heard it, faint but unmistakable: the dying echo of my voice reverberating through the weighty chapel air. When I looked up, my bowels turned to water. Every single face in the congregation was directed towards mine and each mirrored the slack-jawed amazement of Oldfield’s. Then, like a crowd at a Wimbledon tennis final following a well-struck ball, they turned in unison and stared down the aisle towards the pulpit.

  The chaplain, a formidable Scotsman in his late forties, had eyes the colour of wet slate. His forearms were the size of Sunday roasts and one rumour had it that he’d won prizes in his youth at the Highland Games for tossing the caber, while another claimed he trawled the local village pubs at weekends, seeking out atheists and alcoholics to pick fights with.

  Whether there was any truth in either of these rumours became instantly irrelevant to me, as I realised that the only thing he was currently considering throwing anywhere, or picking a fight with, was me. His surplice ruffled up around his arms as he reared forward and his hooked nose drew level with the beak of the lectern’s carved wooden eagle. ‘Frederick Roper!’ he barked, his flashing eyes offering up the promise of certain doom and eternal hellfire. ‘See me in the cloister after the service.’

  Miles was waiting for me outside, leaning against the side of his white Porsche 928, his slick jacket flapping in the breeze, its sleeves rolled up over his shirt to his elbows like someone out of Miami Vice. It’s an image of him which remains perfectly clear in my mind to this day. I don’t know what film he imagined he was acting in, but looking back now, I suspect it probably co-starred Burt Reynolds and featured a plot involving drinking, driving and rescuing topless girls from corrupt Texan cops.

  I started my walk towards him. My explanation for my swearing hadn’t washed with the chaplain and, on top of a half-hour lecture on the Nature of Sin, I’d been instructed to pay penance by spending two hours before breakfast on Monday morning picking weeds from the chapel flowerbeds. Miles flicked his cigarette away when I was a few feet from him and I watched it land and cartwheel across the tarmac.

  He gripped my hand and shook it, staring over at the chaplain who was watching us from the crypt doorway. Up close, Miles looked rough. It wasn’t that he was unshaven or anything as superficial as that. His roughness ran deeper. It was in his eyes, in the dark folds of his skin. They spoke of sleepless nights and worries and fears. He reminded me of the new boys who arrived at school each September, the ones who wore brave faces all day, only to wet their beds and cry themselves to sleep at night. His voice, however, belied all this. It remained as cocky as ever. ‘What did the frock have to say?’ he asked.

  ‘Why are you here?’ I replied. ‘Mum said you were looking for a new site …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A new site. In Spain. She said –’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ he mumbled, ‘that. It didn’t work out. Come on,’ he went on, opening the car door, ‘let’s go and get a drink.’

  I didn’t talk to Miles as the Porsche purred down the long school drive. Instead, I gazed out of the passenger window at the woods, the bright sunlight occasionally picking out various temples and other long-since abandoned architectural follies which lay scattered about the school grounds.

  We drove to a pub about ten miles away from Greenaway and Miles deposited me in the beer garden, out of the landlord’s sight, while he went inside to get us both a pint. There were plenty of kids my age, I’m sure, who would have loved to have had a father like Miles, someone who’d break the law for them like this, but I wasn’t one of them. Miles’s bonding moments made me awkward. They contained an underlying shallowness. Any childhood illusions I’d still entertained about him being a loving family man had finally been dispelled for good when I’d worked for him during the Easter holiday as a way of saving up some cash.

  I’d visited Clan before, of course, but always during the daytime, when Mum had been otherwise occupied and Miles had been forced into looking after me. On these days his nightclub had always struck me as a depressing place, as disconnected from life and laughter as a tomb. Miles would disappear and talk business upstairs, leaving me to my own devices down in the ghostly twilight of the deserted club floor. Over the years I’d watched a succession of sallow-skinned cleaners sweeping the floors free of cigarette butts and broken glass, and mopping the beer stains off the bar. I’d wondered what all the fuss had been about and had tried to imagine the small dance floor packed with glamorous couples, their moods and movements orchestrated by singers and bands.

  The first few nights I worked there blew my mind. It was everything that photo of Miles and the models from a few years previously had hinted at, but which I’d always denied to myself. Miles was that man in the newspaper. The Miles from home, the one who lay in bed late, or slouched by the new pool in the summer, endlessly smoking cigarettes and shouting at people down the phone, fitted in here. It was where he’d been moulded and it was where he belonged. Home, I quickly realised, wasn’t the centre of his universe; this was. So where did that leave me?

  Miles had given me the job partly because I was tall for my age and partly because he worried that being away at school might somehow have been making me soft. He’d shoved Mum’s objections roughly aside. ‘You keep saying I should show more interest in him,’ I’d heard him telling her. ‘So let me. It’s not like he’s going to be working at the bar or anything, just collecting glasses …’

  Mum had fallen silent and Miles had read this as her giving her assent.

  ‘I’ll get Tony to keep him on the straight and narrow,’ he’d added by way of a sweetener.

  Tony Hall, or Tony the Crony, as I’d always secretly thought of him, had been with Miles for ten years or more. Five years younger than Miles, he was a silent and brooding figure, with a neck like a bull and alert blue eyes, which never missed a trick. I’d known him from as far back as I could remember, but in all this time he’d rarely spoken to me, always preferring to acknowledge me with a nod, rather than ask me how I was. He scared me a little, to be truthful. He seemed to be perpetually waiting for something bad to happen, knowing that he was the man to sort it out when it did. Miles trusted him implicitly. They’d always been together whenever I’d visited Clan, inseparable, the brains and brawn behind the club.

  Miles had been in the business since he’d been a teenager and the sooner I got stuck in myself, he felt, the better. It was my business too, he’d told me. His old partner, Carl, had never returned from his trip abroad four years before and Miles had readjusted his opinion that Carl was in a rehab clinic somewhere to saying that he’d probably got mixed up with someone even nastier than him who’d sorted him out for good. Wherever Carl was, though, Miles didn’t care. The ownership of Clan had long since successfully been transferred into Miles’s name and, one day, he’d implied before in public, it would be handed on to me.

  Miles worked the door himself every night for a couple of hours after Clan opened. He’d meet the guests and shake their hands, and guide anyone famous, or – in the case of women – good-looking, over to tables near his at the left-hand side of the stage. He and Tony would join them at around nine and sit there, Tony evenly surveying the dance floor, with Miles next to him, smoking and joking and getting drunk.

  I met a lot of people the first few nights I worked there. Many of their names meant nothing to me, but there were footballers, and the occasional rock star and television personality as well, and it was exciting to be close to them, to observe Miles with them, knowing that he was my father and that he commanded their respect – not that I’d ever have given him the pleasure of letting him know that this was how I felt. Instead, I found myself visualising Mum in Rushton, waiting in disapproval for me to get home, climb out of the cab and step back into her world. Showing Miles that I liked working for him woul
d only, I felt, have been a betrayal of her. And perhaps myself, too. I just didn’t know.

  The truth was that Miles’s attitude towards me confused me. In public, he always grinned when he introduced me to people, as if I were the most important person in his life. Yet in private we hardly communicated at all and, on the rare occasions when we did, he didn’t seem remotely interested in what I had to say. Maybe he was trying to hurt Mum. That was the one possible explanation for his ambivalent attitude towards me. Maybe having me here, away from her, gave him some kind of a kick. Or perhaps having me around just made him feel less guilty.

  One night – the last night, as it turned out, that I’d ever work for Miles – I went up to his office at the end of my shift to find the door locked. This in itself was nothing unusual. Miles conducted clandestine meetings up there most nights, with various men whose names I didn’t know and to whom he had never introduced me. They were hard-looking men, invariably well-dressed and accompanied by men even bigger than Tony. That night, though, as I reached out to knock on Miles’s door, it wasn’t the sound of men talking that I was clearly able to hear. Instead, I heard a woman panting and crying out in pleasure, then Miles, speaking to her in a low voice, telling her what he wanted to do to her next.

  The first job I ever quit was the one my own father had given me. I told him by phone the next day, but I never told him why, or ever set foot in Clan again.

  Now, sitting out in the beer garden of the pub near school, I watched Miles walking towards me, a fresh cigarette in his mouth and a pint glass of frothy beer in either hand. He sat down opposite me, pulled his pack of cigarettes from his pocket and shoved them across the table at me.

  ‘I don’t,’ I said, lying, but not wanting to give him the pleasure of seeing me light up, when he knew that it would upset Mum if she knew. It would be one more secret between us, one more reason for him to count on me as his.