by John King
When the shit music finally starts, I tell Dave I’m going outside for a few minutes, for some fresh air, seeing as I’m sweating my bollocks off.
–Looks like Tracy Mercer’s on her own, he shouts. Might walk over and give it a go.
I sit on the steps and watch the police talking to the bouncers and some other bloke, who must be in charge. The Jeffersons are long gone, and one of the bar staff is sweeping up broken glass. Debbie comes over and sits next to me.
–The music’s not very good tonight.
I haven’t seen her for a while. She’s looking pretty.
–I heard about Smiles, she says. Do you think he’ll be alright?
He’s fine, heard a few hours ago, and she leans forward and kisses me. Her tongue darts out and before I know it she’s got her hand down the front of my trousers. She tastes of rum, her mouth sweet, mixed with smoke. I look sideways but nobody’s watching. We’re in the corner here, light blocked out by a tin roof. Debbie’s careful as well. Moves her hand slowly, tells me no when I try and slip my hand in between her legs.
–Someone will see, she says. Just let me wank you off.
There’s not much I can say, and I suppose sitting there with your skirt up round your waist, legs wide open and knickers in your handbag is asking for trouble. I’m only a kid and can feel the spunk bubbling up, and all the tension is in there, groaning as I fill the front of my Y-fronts. Debbie smiles, well pleased with herself, watching my face like I’m something off a wildlife programme, and there’s gallons of the stuff, can feel it soaking my trousers. It’s got to be the best one ever. My brain is firing all over the place and I wish I had my own place so we could go there now and be together. But it doesn’t work like that.
–Come on Joe, Dave shouts, and I jump forward and sit up. We’re going down the van for some food.
–Hurry up, you wanker, Chris calls. I’m fucking starving.
‘Hi Ho Silver Lining’ starts playing, bouncers and coppers standing together by the door, laughing now. It’s the last song, party music. They always play it to round off the night. Everyone will be coming out in a minute. I tell Debbie I’ll walk her home if she wants, but she says no, she’s come with her mates and can’t leave without them. Girls have to stick together. She kisses me on the cheek, dips inside her bag and takes out a hanky, wipes her hand and goes inside. Usually you’re wanking two or three times a day, really banging away every chance you get, sex on the brain every second of the day, but I haven’t bothered for nearly a week and it’s wet and messy down there, same as the last wet dream I had when I was twelve. Didn’t used to be like this. When I was a kid everything was a lot easier. No girls to chase or records to buy. Everyone’s at it as well, wanking their lives away, and any boy who says he isn’t is talking out of his arse.
–I need some food, Chris says. I’m splashing out on a hot dog tonight. Special occasion. I’m doing it for Smiles.
We walk down the street, minding our own business, having a laugh, pushing each other off the pavement into the road. I stop for a piss, go in a corner and clean up the glue best I can, catch up with the others, Dave gobbing at me, a great big greeny landing on my right boot, a ten-eye DM smeared with snot. They need a clean, but he’s not getting away with it, and I run after Dave, get him behind a car and rub it on his leg, and we end up on the ground, wrestling around in the dirt, going off the kerb into the gutter. Neither of us is going to let the other one win, and even though we’re only mucking about, it starts to get more serious, it’s not a proper bundle but you can’t let one of your mates take the piss, and we both know this and roll right into the road, with the oil slicks and fag ends, the concrete hot on my skin, and our grips get tighter, and it’s going to turn nasty. I can smell the tarmac roasted nearby, inside some cones that Chris is busy kicking over as he goes, picking up a blinking light and lobbing it at us, the bulb smashing.
–Come on you two. Stop fucking about. How old are you? We’ll get down the van first if we hurry, before the rest of them turn up. If we don’t we’ll have to wait ages.
It’s a good reason to stop, equal with each other, and we dust ourselves down, brush the dirt off our clothes, and I look at my boots and they’re dull from working in the orchard and not being cleaned. I’ll polish them tomorrow. I’m going to have the day off, not bother going in, get the others and go down the hospital. We’re sweating, and when Dave wipes the sweat off his face it smudges with dirt. I tell him, so he doesn’t walk around looking like a part, and we follow Chris, who’s miles away now.
–Get your finger out, will you, Chris shouts, worried he’s going to have to wait for his hot dog.
Chef is ready for us, leaning forward, his frilly apron and Noddy hat washed and ironed, the van spick and span. We have a hot dog each and a cup of tea, watch the onions sizzling away, sit on the wall stuffing our faces. Other people arrive and line up, and all of a sudden Chef is busy, rushing back and forwards, cracking jokes that nobody understands, the laughter ringing out. I watch him serve and he’s a friendly bloke, can’t see him chopping people up, even if it was a war. I don’t know what sort of person does that, but I don’t think he’s one of them.
We hang around longer than normal, mainly because Smiles isn’t with us. Tony and Stalin must be well happy tonight, even more than we are, and I wonder if the Major has heard about Smiles, think about going round to tell him, but it’s late and his mum will only give me stick. I’ll do it in the morning. I remember what Dave told his old girl and wonder if she’s said anything more about that donkey porn. He laughs and starts telling Chris all about it, and I start counting, see how many seconds it takes for the skinny cunt to start creasing up.
We have a party for Smiles when he leaves hospital, two weeks after he comes out of his coma. Stalin goes to get him, and when Smiles comes in we’re waiting in the living room, his auntie making us shout SURPRISE, the table covered with a pile of food. Stalin’s made us do ourselves up in these paper hats he’s kept from last Christmas, and Smiles laughs his head off when he sees us. It’s not a brilliant party in the normal way, because Stalin sets it up, buys the grub and spends a bomb on his son’s favourites, everything from jam tarts to Scotch eggs and a Fray Bentos steak-and-kidney pie, the crust cooked just right by this woman across the road, the ham-paste sandwiches stacked high. There’s bowls of crisps and peanuts, and his auntie has made some butterfly cakes and brought them down on the train. It’s the sort of spread that gets you going when you’re six or seven, when you’re more interested in chocolate than girls.
It’s not the sort of party we’re used to these days, sniffing around the one or two decent girls then making do with the giant tins of bitter, searching for a screwdriver and hammer, the usual aggro over what music to play, the girls running things because they love a dance and nobody wants them to leave, whoever’s party it is preferring the soft option to getting the place turned over. It usually ends with everyone pissed and bored, the girls upstairs with the ponces who don’t mind dancing to shit music and talking bollocks. It’s always the ponces who do well with women. Then someone gets sick, or there’s a bundle, or someone puts a window through. And the ponces stroll back in the room grinning ear to ear, go and pull out a can of lager they stashed earlier.
There’s no supermarket bitter today, no Ramones singles or Clash albums, no Bowie or Mott The Hoople, not even a Woolworths compilation, but it doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter at all. It’s the best party we’ve ever been to, and we’re back to being six- and seven-year-olds, stuffing our faces, no cares in the world, not bothered that we look like a bunch of wallies in the paper hats, going back to the days when the only thing that mattered at a party was getting your share of fizzy drinks and crisps. Smiles is back from the brink, sipping lemonade and cutting the pie, Stalin fussing, treating his son like a king. I can remember being in this room when we were kids, before Smiles’s mum died, and we played pass the parcel with her sitting on the same couch, Stalin doing the music, lov
ing every second, same as he is now.
Stalin glides around the room, topping up our cups, chatting like he’s our best mate when for years all you got out of him was a grunt and frown, tells us to call him Arthur. He’s had a shock, another shock, and it’s made him realise Smiles is important, that it’s not just his dead wife who matters. I half expect him to make us sit in a circle and pull out a parcel, get the record player going, and Tony stands by the table with the paper plates in his hands, watching his dad, and Stalin goes over and puts his arm around Tony’s shoulders to show him he’s not forgotten. Tony goes bright red having his dad hug him, but at the same time I can see he’s chuffed. Stalin’s come out of his own coma, and that’s what it was, like he said, feeling too much, making himself feel nothing. He was marching to work doing his duty, bringing home the bacon. His eyes are bright, shining inside his head, and he pushes Smiles’s auntie over to meet us, a quiet woman who looks a lot like her sister.
Stalin’s taken the day off work, and this is a first, seeing it’s Saturday and he gets time and a half. He’s a grafter, same as my old man, same as all the family men round here. You don’t get anything if you don’t work for it. And it’s a new beginning, Stalin’s invited everyone he can think of—family, friends, neighbours, passers-by, stray dogs. People have been stopping by to wish him and Tony well, people he didn’t know because he was always walking around with his head down. I don’t blame him, feel sorry for the man, after what he said and everything. Smiles is bubbling, the happiest I ever seen him. It isn’t hard to forgive, specially family. You can’t hold grudges for too long. Least I can’t. After a while Smiles comes over and we tell him about last Friday and how the music is getting better down there, and soon as he’s fit we’ll have a good night out.
–We’ll go up to London, Chris says. But I’m keeping away from all that foreign muck this time. Go see a band. I missed it last time, didn’t I.
Still don’t know the name of the band we saw. Me and Dave look at each other. Bad memories crowding out the good.
–We’re going on holiday next week, Smiles says. Dad’s rented a caravan. Tony’s coming as well. It’s where we went when we were kids. We’ll go out when I get back.
It doesn’t take him long to get tired and he goes for a sleep. The rest of us hang around, Chris loading his plate for the third time. After a while Stalin opens a bottle of champagne. He stands in the middle of the living room, easing the cork forward, fires it into the ceiling. He must’ve shaken the bottle because it sprays everywhere, but he doesn’t care. It must’ve cost a bit, and the carpet’s soaked, but Stalin just laughs. He knows the carpet’s nothing special, when his boys spilt a drink it was just something to moan about. Tony opens another bottle, and we have some in plastic cups. I sip it and it tastes like shit, pour it into Dave’s cup. I go upstairs for a piss and when I come out sit with Smiles on the top step, under the hatch leading into the loft.
–One of the nurses said Elvis died, he says.
He died last week. Mum was crying and playing his records all day. I know he got a lot of stick, the papers slagging him off for being fat, and the punks for being rich, but I always liked him. Elvis was the king. Can’t be denied. You didn’t have to be a Teddy boy to listen to Elvis. He was an ordinary bloke, a truck driver who loved his mum and lost his twin brother. He made a record for her and got rich, wanted to sit around eating peanut-butter-and-jam sandwiches when he got older. So they made jokes about him.
–It’s a shame. Elvis was alright.
Elvis is right there in everyone’s head, a big character who comes through the telly in all those films you watch even though most of them are shit. He’s on the jukebox in pubs, and always gets a play. He was a person like anyone else, and I think of Mum playing ‘Always On My Mind’, telling me about his stillborn twin, how he always thought about his dead brother, and something like that is going to stay with you for the rest of your life. Don’t care what anyone says.
–You know what, I don’t even remember going in the canal, Smiles says. The last thing was getting the badge nicked off me, holding my nose and going down on the ground. Next thing I was waking up in hospital. Nothing else.
I take the badge out of my pocket and give it to him.
–No, you keep it. Dad said you saved my life. You have it.
The pin is bent and hard to open, but I get it on to my shirt.
–Dad’s like he used to be, Smiles says, thinking to himself.
I tell him what he said, about working so he didn’t have to think.
–Mum was in the bath right over there. Maybe it’s even harder if you’re older. She must’ve been very unhappy.
The bath is a couple of feet away, the door open.
–All her stuff is in there.
I look up at the loft.
–I’ll go through it one day.
Stalin comes up the stairs for a piss, and I go back down, stay till people start drifting off, say thanks to Stalin and Tony, Smiles asleep, walk some of the way with the others. I leave them and go to the corner where I said I’d meet Debbie. I sit on a wall, kicking the bricks. She’s late and I think about going home. She’s probably forgot.
–Sorry I’m late, she says, and she’s looking good, wearing her rock ’n’ roll dress special for the Elvis memorial night down the social club.
We walk together, her arm in mine, and I tell her about Smiles and the food.
–I’ll buy you a drink, she says, going to the bar when we get in.
Her dad’s given her a fiver as a treat, so she can toast the king.
–Have lager if you want. Come on.
When she’s been served I follow her to this table, realising that the racket coming from the bloke on the microphone is ‘Jailhouse Rock’, the only instrument a keyboard. I sit down and look around me, wonder what I’ve walked into.
–It was good about your mate, Katie says. I’m glad he didn’t die.
I’m opposite her, and she’s one of Debbie’s best friends, a big girl who’s got a low top on and a healthy pair of knockers, tight-fitting jeans that she somehow looks good in, and here I am stuck on a table with five Teddy boys listening to Elvis Presley songs that sound more like Des O’Connor. They’re pissed and sad, and worse than that they’re massive blokes in their twenties, the biggest the most harmless-looking, says his name’s Stan and he comes from Langley. He’s got NHS glasses he swears make him look like Buddy Holly. Dad’s got a couple of Buddy Holly records and he was a skinny bloke while Stan is at least fifteen stone, nearer Elvis size than Buddy. The music is shit and when I look around there’s a lot of other people down here, drinking, listening, and the thing is, the music might be bad but I’m not saying anything. They’re talking to each other and I quickly raise my hand, take off the badge and shove it in my pocket.
–Joe’s a punk, Debbie says.
It’s like she’s kicked me in the balls and there’s nothing I can say. She doesn’t mean anything by it, but every one of them stops drinking and looks at me, except for the bloke chatting up Katie, he’s more interested in her tits.
–I got dragged down the King’s Road by some of those cunts last Saturday, Stan says, leaning in so I can smell the light and bitter.
–Wankers stuck a chain round my neck and pulled me along in the gutter, gave me a kicking till the rest of the lads came out of the pub and sorted them out.
–I got one of them with this, another Ted says.
He opens his drape jacket and lifts a Bowie knife out of an inside pocket, holds it inside the fold so nobody else in the club gets a look. Must be seven or eight inches long, and I want to call him Davy Crockett and ask where he’s dumped his beaver skins, but I don’t. I might be a bit stupid sometimes, but I’m not brain-dead, so I nod and wait for him to bury it in my gut. Luckily the knife is still in the holder, and when I think about it I can’t really see him stabbing me in front of all these people. He smiles and closes his coat.
–I got this toe-rag punk
down in Brighton a month back, he says. Slashed him right across the cheek after he tried to stick a bottle in my face. I fucking hate those bastards. No offence, mate.
None taken. Whatever he thinks is fine by me. I’m shitting it, and even though I know he’s talking about the fancy-dress punks rather than your everyday kid who likes the music, I wish I’d never bothered coming down here. Debbie asked me, and now she’s getting chatted up by someone else. It seemed like something I should do, see Elvis out in style, but the music is mangled together so you can’t hear the words. Sounds more like church music than rock ’n’ roll. The slasher closes his jacket and offers me a fag as he shifts the subject and starts talking about the coons and wogs fucking up the nation, the way they go round tooled-up the whole time, selling dope and fucking white women. That’s what really does his head in. He hates them shagging white birds. It’s not natural and any girl who does that sort of thing is a fucking slag.