‘Not here, Frank,’ Roger’s saying, casting a rueful glance about him. ‘We’ll finish this outside.’ But though Faruk’s flung open the French windows, Frank, Harry and Les are going nowhere – until Frank takes a fatal step forward – which is when Clive stuns everyone by making the first move. He picks up something from a side table and throws it – it’s his prized Lalique glass bowl. It misses whoever he might have been aiming at but smashes expensively against a wall.
But his father’s face lights up. ‘Nice one, my son!’ he growls. Taking advantage of the moment, he helps himself to a big handful of Harry’s denim jacket and – shaking him like he’s plumping a big blue cushion – he sends him crashing heavily into Frank. it’s cushions that Clive’s brandishing now as he swipes repeatedly at Les’s surprised face. Whatever Les was expecting, it clearly isn’t a pair of burgundy scatter cushions, which distract him just long enough for Roger’s Burberry boot to connect forcefully with his balls. I can feel his pain as he drops his knife and doubles up on the floor.
Whether the cavalry is needed or not, this is when it turns up, in the forms of Jalil and Zahid, the remaining members of Faruk’s five-a-side team, who have apparently stopped off to buy packets of crisps and big bottles of Coke. They’re still wearing their football boots for some reason. These two are much bigger and older than Faruk and the others and visibly fitter than anyone present. Jalil is known as The Taj, ‘because he’s built like the fucking Taj Mahal’. They’ve sized up the situation in a flash and while Zahid plays cat and denim mouse with Harry, the enormous Jalil pursues Frank around the sofa, totally oblivious to Roger, who’s chasing them both, screaming, ‘Not in your football boots, for fuck’s sake! Not on this fucking floor!’
The French windows being open, everything spills into Clive’s garden. I follow, but not being a fighting man, there’s nothing much I can do but spectate. It’s total chaos – Neighbourhood Watch, if they’re watching, must be having heart attacks – and it’s noisy, too; 13, Laurel Gardens is sounding like Wembley after a disputed goal by Germany. I wonder if Dad has heard the shouting and is now peering from his lookout on the stairs landing. If he is, he’ll see several blokes in football strips dodging and weaving about with no actual football in sight. He’ll see Roger chasing after someone who’s holding a camel coat but doesn’t appear to have the ball either. And it’ll look like this game of invisible football is getting out of hand, because now a couple of the players are swapping punches, and there’s no sign of the ref.
And then they’re all at it and I wouldn’t like to be the little bloke in the broken glasses or the fat one in the denim with the crushed pork pie hat. I’m dodging here and there, undecided whether I’m looking for an easy piece of the action, so I can claim to have got stuck in, or for a safe way through the melee to the garden gate – which I see swinging open now to admit a familiar figure. Predictably, it’s my dad – afternoon in deckchair with Alan Titchmarsh on Desert Island Discs ruined, he’s storming up the garden path to complain about the racket from over the fence. As soon as he sees Roger, his hand shoots up like a referee with a yellow card. He was very probably about to say, ‘Hoi, you! Dyson! Just what is the meaning of this?’
But at the moment his hand shoots up, Frank is in the wrong place as he swerves to dodge Roger’s boot. He catches Dad’s fist full in the face and topples over like a sack of spuds. Dad springs back as if he’s been attacked himself, then Roger’s all over Frank before he can recover himself and together with Rashid and Jalil, he teaches Frank that trespassing on Dyson turf can be a very dangerous business. It’s not at all nice.
They think it’s all over: Rashid catches Harry a neat swipe to the shins, wonderful footwork, I think, and Zahid disarms Les of a lump of scrap iron, while Sadik put him out of play with a studded football boot to the kneecap: teamwork. Harry tries to scale the fence between our house and theirs but it’s too high for the little man and he’s dragged down by Faruk and Clive. Roger and Frank are rolling about on the lawn. Frank looks like he’s missing a tooth or two and I can see that Roger’s designer chinos are absolutely ruined. Five minutes later, Faruk’s two defenders, Khalid and Sadik, are sitting on Harry, who is still managing to splutter obscenities with a mouth full of earth and grass. But with Les being minded by Clive, who has unsheathed Roger’s new swordstick, we think it’s all over. Then someone notices that Frank has disappeared.
Roger and Faruk don’t have to search long because Frank’s South London whine is quite recognisable, especially when it’s in the grip of mortal fear – and the grinding mechanism of Roger’s compactor. In the new fenced-off scrap yard, Frank’s chosen the wrong place to hide from The Taj, who now has one huge hand grasping Frank’s tattooed throat while the other appears to be stretching out for the start button. I have that sick-in-the-stomach feeling you get when you think you’re about to witness something really awful. ‘For fuck’s sake,’ Frank is bleating, looking in my direction. ‘Get this maniac off me!’
The Taj, too, looks our way but it seems like all he wants from us is a thumbs-down to turn Frank into a messy bale of bits. Instead, I am relieved to see, he just gives Frank a resounding slap on his bald head and releases him into the care of the rest of Faruk’s five-a side team, who are ready to escort Frank Pemble from premises for the second time that day.
All is confusion. The last time I saw it, the front room of Clive’s place looked like it’d been hit by a rocket. Out here, I can see odd shoes and torn off pockets and somewhere in the grass there must be two incisors rightly belonging to Frank Pemble. The participants of the Battle of Laurel Gardens look equally fucked. Dad is staggering up the garden path, supported by Roger, of all people, who is clapping him on the back and saying, loudly, ‘Well played, nice one, mate,’ as he guides him into the house. I stand in a flowerbed amazed, not least by my dad apparently talking amicably with Roger Dyson. The five-a-siders and Faruk are already swapping stories about their parts in the action and Clive is wandering about the garden with a worried face, tutting at trampled flowerbeds and looking like he’s going to have to use up the last of his courage to enter the house. A few minutes later, I see Peckham’s finest staggering off in the direction of the Midland station, turning towards us every so often to let us know what’ll happen if we ever find ourselves anywhere near South London.
‘So that’ — I wind up my story to Teresa — ‘is why I couldn’t get back to you right away.’
‘Is this true?’ Teresa asks. I must have a liar’s face, or something.
‘Of course it’s true. Do you want to see my bruises?’ I may have exaggerated my part in all this.
‘And you want to be a writer?’ she says.
‘As a matter of fact, I do,’ I say modestly, proud that my storytelling potential is being recognised.
‘Well, you’re going to have to work at it,’ she says.
We’re sitting by the fountains in the Peace Gardens, off the City Centre, watching kids and drunken teenagers run through the eighty-nine jets of spray and around the cascading water features. The air is cool and wet and the July sun is dipping slowly from its apex in a cloudless sky. Teresa is wearing a light cotton shirt, which is partly see-through when she’s against the light, and her frizzy brown hair is, I don’t know, shiny and nice. She’s wearing a cotton skirt and looks very cool and relaxed, sitting there with me, brown legs drawn up beneath her, sucking on a blade of grass. Only her expression betrays her concerns for her friend.
‘So how is she, really?’ I want to know.
‘That’s the thing, Brian, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. She’s fine now. In fact she’s up. Laughing and buzzing like she’s on something. No, don’t worry, she’s not. Nothing apart from her prescribed medication, anyway.’
‘I’m sorry?’ I say. ‘Have I missed something? Rosalind has a condition?’
For which I am rewarded with the kind of tired smile usually reserved for idiots and little children.
‘You mi
ssed everything I told you, didn’t you?’
‘It was so noisy. And I had something else on my mind,’ I say. I think it was the colour of Teresa’s knickers, but I’m way too smart to say that now.
‘Well, it’s not good, Brian. They’re not sure, but it looks like Ros may be bi-polar or something. Massive mood swings. One day she’s okay, chatty, optimistic about the future even. The next she’s somewhere else entirely, off in some private place of her own where no one can get through to her. She knows what’s happening and that’s why she has the headphones in all day. Better to have people think you’re into your music than you’re lost in some black place you can’t see your way out of.’
‘I had no idea.’
‘Why should you? You’ve hardly even talked to her. Ros has been some kind of dream figure for you and I tell you this, Brian, whatever idea of Ros you’ve dreamed up, there is no way she’s going to be able to live up to your expectations.’
‘I’m not so sure,’ I say. Because at this moment I couldn’t be sure of my home address. This is too much too soon. Ros has a condition. I could handle that, learn to become whatever support I’m capable of being. But Teresa being so certain I’m on the wrong track is hard to handle. ‘Isn’t there something I can do?’
‘I don’t know, Brian. It rather depends on Ros and how she feels about you. Which, given your recent record, isn’t guaranteed to be positively. But hey, don’t look so glum. I’ve met bigger idiots than you. Just make sure that your watchwords when dealing with Ros are subtlety and tact, okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘And if she does like you and wants to go out with you, then you won’t just have a girlfriend, Brian, you’ll have a big responsibility. Do you think you’re ready for that?’
I have to think about that.
‘I don’t know,’ I say, when I have. ‘Not for sure, anyway. I don’t think I know myself that well yet. But I know I’d do everything I could to be a help to her.’
‘You’re sounding almost mature, BJ. I can call you BJ, can’t I?’
‘It’s what my best friends call me.’
‘So listen up, BJ, for I have a cunning plan. One which will give you your best chance to find out once and for all if Ros is for you and you are for Ros. Come closer and I’ll tell you what it is.’
And there in the concrete gardens with the fountains playing and the children laughing, I feel Teresa’s hot breath in my ear as she tells me about a place where Ros feels more at home and more at ease with herself than anywhere else. And if me and my friends can possibly scrape up the cash, we might all go to this place together. After our exams, it will be a well-earned break for us all. If Rosalind Chandler is ever going to be receptive to a declaration of undying love from yours truly, then this, Teresa assures me, will be that time.
CHAPTER 16
Changes
Earlier this week I had been gobsmacked by a dramatic lift in the spirits of the family Johnson, a freakish development I first became aware of when I arrived home knackered, after a very long afternoon spent with Diesel, traipsing around Mothercare, of all places. He’d shown me everything expectant parents had to have. We assessed the merits of various cots, mattresses, bedding, baby baths, changing mats, baby monitors, sterilising kits, strollers and travel cots. And then all the stuff Lauren herself will need: maternity leggings even more capacious than her present ones, (very) big knickers, nipple cream and breast pads, support cushions and hospital bags. I wasn’t sure why he was showing me the instruments of his own torture and have been concerned that it might have been some kind of cry for help.
But anyway, arriving home after this, I hear laughter coming from the living room. Unusual enough, but odder still is that it’s Dad’s. I sometimes hear a burst of the more maniacal kind from my mother, when she’s doing the ironing and watching reruns of One Foot in The Grave on telly, but Dad’s laugh usually has something of the ironical about it. Not today though, as he’s laughing like a drain, if you’ve ever heard one of those being vastly amused. But a bigger surprise is waiting me as I pop my head around the door – to say hello, I’m back, once again I’ve braved the mean streets without being either attacked and molested or abducted – to see Roger, sprawled in Dad’s armchair, with a tin of Dad’s Christmas beer in his hands. No one looks up as Roger approaches the punch line of his joke.
‘But this bird, she says, “No, thanks – I’ll smoke it later”!’
Roger’s howling like an escaped lunatic on a full moon while Dad’s chuckling like a major arterial waterway in the town drainage system. Mum, well, I haven’t seen anything like it: she’s got tears streaming down her face. I never noticed before, but she looks sort of pretty when she’s happy.
‘No, I’ve another one,’ Roger is saying, but then he sees me and grins. ‘I just came round to thank your dad for getting stuck in like he did yesterday,’ he says. ‘You should be proud of him, Brian. Regular hero, he was!’
I know I want to be a writer but I’m still learning and right now there is no way on earth that I could begin to describe Dad’s expression. Proud comes into it somewhere, though. Pleased, well pleased, somewhere else. He sits there, puffed up, trying and failing to be modest and just like Violet, hanging on his new friend’s every word. And now Roger’s up off the chair and, putting down his tin of beer, is showing just how Dad strode boldly up the garden path and right into the melee. ‘He didn’t give a toss about his own personal safety,’ Roger’s saying. ‘He was driven by a fearless sense of what’s right, your dad was.’
More likely intense annoyance at missing Alan Titchmarsh on Desert Island Discs, I think.
‘And here comes your dad’ — Roger’s showing me — ‘like a Roman gladiator into the arena.’ He strides around the room like a gladiator about to despatch lions and tigers at the same time and stops. ‘Oi, Violet, can you see me as Russell Crowe in that Gladiator? I looked just like him, when I had hair! So here comes your old man, Vi, looking for the action. And he knows what he’s doing, does old Charlie here. Goes straight for the head man, the ringleader, Frank Pemble. “Mad Dog”, they call him down at Peckham nick, he’s got a record as long as Bohemian Rhapsody. And what does Charlie here do?’
We wait for Roger to show us. He swings his huge fist at an imaginary opponent.
‘He floors him with one punch. One punch! Fuck me, Violet, excuse my French, but Mike Tyson had better not show up at Laurel Gardens!’
Dad’s watching Mum as she laps up everything his new friend has to say. Whatever he’s seeing seems to please him. And while they’re all laughing like various items on a plumber’s shopping list, I close the door and retire to my bedroom to put this new twist of fate into some sort of perspective. Roger, here? Drinking Dad’s beer? Dad bigged up as a hero? Dad and Roger, friends? I pinch myself and try to remember my every movement of the night before, just in case I can recall some skank slipping something hallucinogenic into my Smirnoff Ice.
‘You can misjudge people, Brian,’ Dad says.
I nod my head. I had been reading about the Hanratty case in Mum’s Ghastly Murders magazine. Mum has a fascination with the dark and the dangerous. She likes the real crime mags, she’s Crimewatch’s Number One fan and there’s not much she doesn’t know about the Brinks Mat bullion raid. James Hanratty was misjudged all right – he was hanged for a murder he probably didn’t do.
We’re sitting at the kitchen table, just Dad and me. Talking, man to man. Mum is in her sewing room, with the door closed, but every so often, we stop talking to listen. She’s laughing, up there, talking to herself, or Russell, rather, and laughing.
‘She’s not mad, you know,’ Dad’s saying.
‘I know that, Dad.’
Dad sighs and then he looks me over, like he’s deciding whether to tell me something or not.
‘It’s just that your mum and me, we’ve had our problems. The fact is, Brian, that I’ve come to realise that I’ve not been all she might have wanted in a husband.’
> I say nothing. To be talking for any length of time to my dad at all is weird enough, but to be talking about his marriage is not just weird, it’s a bit of a nightmare, actually. Dad looks about him, at the neat kitchen with its little feminine touches, which include a posy of flowers on the sill of the window which gives onto his own strictly-ordered garden.
‘I’ve given her no fun, Brian. Weekends at Headingly. What did she want with them? There’s been no joy in this house, save for what you’ve brought into the place. Roger next door’s given her more fun this last few days than I’ve given her in years. I’ve reduced her life to one of dull routine. She cleans the house, I do the gardening. Never any surprises for us, same old thing, day in, day out. And do you know why?’
‘No,’ I say.
‘Because it’s safer that way, Brian. If I can remove all possible threat, if I can timetable my day and bring order to nature, even, then I have created a semblance, or an illusion, if you like, of order. And with order comes reassurance, Brian. I know I have misjudged Roger Dyson. Now I’ve seen his house I can see the scale of that misjudgement. He’s not a bad chap at all, you know, and a good father too. But I’m not the hero he’s saying I am, Brian. You know that. I was frightened of him. Not of Roger, the man, but of the chaos he was creating, which seemed to be creeping ever closer, ready to engulf us all. Does that sound ridiculous?’
‘Well…’
‘Of course it does. And it’s taken an outburst of violence right here in Laurel Gardens for me to realise it. We’re having this talk because there are going to be changes around here, changes that are long overdue. There will be big changes for us all, Brian, but I know now that you are ready for these changes. In fact, I know that we all are.’
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