Short Stories

by Leicester Author Clive Collins

[Novels by Clive Collins]

The Sea, The Beautiful Sea

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It was the same every year. You'd go into Wilson's for a 'Tarzan' comic and a Bounty Bar, and you'd just be on your way out of the shop when old Mr. Wilson would remember that Mam's copy of Dalton's Weekly had come in. It was a weekly, but Mam only ever put in the one order, the second week of February, every year. When you got home she'd take the paper off of you and put it underneath the cushion on the chair where she sat at night and she wouldn't say anything except that you'd to go back to Wilson's with the money because she didn't want people talking about her owing anybody anything. There were just the two chairs then, Mam's and Dad's, one on either side of the fire. The rest of us sat where we could, on the hearthrug, at the table - under the table in my case so I could play with my toy soldiers and not have them trodden on.

After we'd had our tea, our Sally and Noreen would do the dishes, and then me and Noreen would be sent round to Cooper's for Mam and Dad's beer. Usually it was two pints of mixed, but on Saturdays Dad drank stout and Mam would have a bottle of pale ale. We got Vimto and a packet of crisps on Saturdays, although our Sally, if she was in that night, which she wasn't very often, would get a Babycham or else a miniature bottle of egg flip she'd mix up with the lemonade that came from the Corona man every week.

When we got back the radio would be on, and we'd settle down for the evening to listen to Radio Luxemburg if it was the weekend. Dad would open the beer and pour out a glass for Mam and then one for himself. I liked it if he had stout because he used to make a face in the froth on the top of the glass. He used to say that when you drank the beer, one of the eyes would wink at you but I don't remember that it ever did.

About eight o'clock Mam always went out into the kitchen again to cut up some sandwiches. On Sunday nights they'd be cold beef and dripping, but the rest of the week it was either cheese and onion, or else egg and onion. I liked putting crisps inside the bread if it was cheese and onion, though I used to get a clip off of Mam if she saw me doing it. The big plate of sandwiches was always set on the hearth, and if there was a fire, which there usually was, the edges of the bread would start to curl up because of the heat. I remember our Noreen saying once that the sandwiches were probably the warmest thing in the house, but that was a long time afterwards, when Mam and Dad were gone, and the house was gone, and we were all grown and married with our own families. It was only ever when the big plate was empty that Mam would fetch the paper out from under her cushion. Most nights it was the Leicester Mercury, but every year, one night in February, it would be Dalton's Weekly, and Mam would start reading it, looking for somewhere we could go for a fortnight in the summer.

She'd sit there with a pencil, putting a mark against something that sounded all right. Sometimes she'd ask Dad what he thought about this place or that place. Dad never said much, usually. We said nothing at all, because we were never asked. The fact that we were all going away for the August fortnight wasn't something that was open to question for any of us, including Dad. It was understood. It was also understood that Mam was responsible for deciding about wherever it was we would end up going away to even though in the past she'd landed us in some right holes.

We usually went to the East Coast, to places like Mablethorpe, or Ingoldmelis or Clacton. We never went to Skeggy, well, not for holidays anyway, although we did sometimes go for daytrips. Our Sally reckoned she got headaches in Skegness. I didn't like Skeggy because the sea was such a long way out.

I think about it now, when I take my family to Italy, the States, Morocco we went to two years ago, and Mam�s little excursions seem like nothing. At the time, though, they were very serious undertakings. When I was small, going to the Evington Park was a journey to another country to me. Getting everything ready for the big holiday: getting all our clothes washed and ironed and packed, and the house closed up; stopping the papers and the milk, the laundry and the delivery from the Corona man; cancelling the order for the meat at the butcher's; me and Dad getting our haircuts on a Friday night instead of a Saturday afternoon; our Sally sulking because she had to come with us; our Noreen sulking because our Sally had to come with us; then getting to the bus station and making sure we were on the right bus and our luggage was on the right bus and we hadn't put the thermos and the sandwiches Mam had cut up the night before in the bag that had gone in the back of the bus with the cases - well, that all seemed like going to another world.

Nobody slept much the night before, because of fights or worry or excitement; and then you were got up early and there was just a cup of tea and a bit of toast to eat; and there were fights again with our Sally and Noreen about who could get to the sink in the kitchen to have a wash first; and there were fights with our Sally and Noreen about Dad sitting out in the lavatory smoking; and fights about who had whose nylons; and then there was Mr. Bodicoate from the next street at the door with his car. I remember it all. I remember feeling cold and hungry and tired, and I remember how the new clothes Mam had bought me for going away were itchy and smelt the way that new clothes used to smell then. Somehow though we'd get on the bus, all of us, and the bus would pull away, out of the garage, out of the town, and we'd always be just coming into the country with the fields and the trees and the smell of manure and Mam would say to Dad, �Oh bleeding hell, Pat, I've left the address on the table.� Dad would say, �What address do you mean?' and then Mam would say, �The address of the bleeding digs, what bleeding address do you think I mean?� We were off on our holidays.

The bus ride seemed to last for ever then. I'd sit there, next to Mam, and I'd start to get hot in my new clothes, and I'd want to stretch. If I moved at all though, I got a clip from Mam for fidgeting, so I watched the fields to one side, or I watched Mam emptying her bag out on the other, looking for the address of the place where we were supposed to be staying.

At some point the bus would pull up at a transport caf� and everyone got out for a stretch, a pee, a cup of coffee or tea at this strange building in the middle of nowhere, with a couple of petrol pumps, and a few apple trees, and garage and caf� smells, you know, petrol and oil and coffee and bacon frying in a pan. Mam usually made us come straight back to the bus after we'd been to the lavatory, because she couldn't see the sense in spending money on food and drink when she'd gone to the trouble of bringing sandwiches and flasks of hot tea. I didn't mind. I liked the way the tea tasted out of the flask, and I liked the little bottle Mam used for the milk, with a bit of greaseproof paper stuck in the top with the cork so the milk didn't leak. I liked the sugar, in a twist of blue paper from the sugar packet at home. I allways thought it looked like a giant version of the salt in a packet of crisps.

Our Sally and Noreen weren't keen though. I suppose it was because they were that much older than me. Sally was old enough not to want to be on holiday with the rest of us in the first place, and Noreen was old enough not to want to be sat out in the bus eating egg and onion sandwiches, when everybody else was inside having a proper meal.

Just once, I remember, we didn't stay on the bus. That was the year we found Uncle Francis and Auntie Eileen and their Molly and Peter already on the bus when we got to the garage. Well, Mam never had much time for Uncle Francis or Auntie Eileen, and as for their Molly, who was a student at the art college when she could have been at work and earning good money, well, Mam was beyond words. We had to sit near them, of course, otherwise it wouldn't have looked polite, and then, when we stopped and they trooped off with everybody else to go into the caf�, well, we couldn't help but follow, or, at least, that's what Mam said afterwards when she was talking to Dad.

I was glad that Uncle Francis and Auntie Eileen were there because I liked them, and I liked going into the caf� instead of sitting in the bus, and I liked eating the big bacon sandwich Dad had to cut in half for me because the taste of the hot bacon and the melted butter mixed itself up in a nice way with the milky coffee I had for a change instead of Vimto or Tizer. Most of all I liked watching my cousin Molly, with her long black hair and her big red sweater and the funny black trousers she had on that didn't come much past her knees. She put some money into a juke-box and a record called �Freight Train� started to play, and Molly danced in front of the juke-box all alone. I thought she was beautiful, and I fell in love for the first time, just looking at her.

Mam usually found the address of where we were going to stay just when the collection for the driver came round. She used to have money ready, and she would make me put it in the hat. It was always a sixpence on the top, and then coppers underneath, so that it sounded like a lot when you put it in, but wasn't really. Mam always said the driver got enough for driving the bus, that we'd paid before we got on the bus, so she couldn't see why we had to pay again before we got off. It was a bus, she said, it wasn't a church.

Mam liked to tidy herself up a bit before we arrived, and in my memory all the journeys I took sitting next to her end in the same way. The fields beyond the glass begin to change: caravans appear, and then buildings. The road seems streaked with sand, and then the town is all around me again but not the way the town where I live is all around. This town is different. I don't know why it is different, but it is. Perhaps the difference has to do with the sand in the streets. Perhaps it has to do with where the sand comes from, blown by the wind. Perhaps it has to do with that, but more, perhaps it has to do with what is still beyond my senses to see or hear or smell, but which I know is there, somewhere, lending this town, these streets and buildings, their difference: the sea. Then I think that I can smell it, smell that sea smell, but I turn and it's the little towels moistened with cologne Mam is using. She keeps them in her handbag with the bottle of sal volatile she has in case somebody has a funny turn on the bus, and her powder compact, and the chalky white medicine she gets from the doctor for her stomach. I look at Mam, but the sea is all I can think of.

The sea is all I can think of, but Mam has the address for where we're going to stay, and suddenly the journey ends. We're here. We get out and stand about, and we're strangers, smelling the smells we've smelt before, petrol and oil, the hot engine of the bus, but that smell different now. The cases come out of the back of the bus. Ours are always the last. Mam gets hold of them and we all follow her out of the garage, Dad and our Sally and Noreen and me, and there are boys with pushcarts waiting for us. Mam chooses one, puts the cases in his cart, shows him the address, and then we set off again, a line of us, explorers in Africa, following our guide.

There's a photograph. I don't know who took it, perhaps it was one of those men that used to walk up and down the sea front with a camera, taking pictures and then more or less forcing you to buy the one he'd taken of you, plus an enlargement. Whoever it was took this picture, it wasn't one of us. It couldn't have been because we're all in it, Mam and Dad, me, our Sally and Noreen. We're walking along a road, Mam's holding my hand, then comes our Noreen, looking miserable, then Dad, struggling along with his sticks. He looks miserable as well. Our Sally is lagging so far behind you wouldn't think she was with the rest of us, and, from the photograph, you wouldn't even know it was our Sally, because you can't see her face. I imagine though, that she looks as miserable as the rest of them, Mam, Dad, Noreen, do. Mind you, you'd think we were all out for a walk in mid-December rather than the start of the August Bank Holiday fortnight. We've all got our heavy raincoats on, scarves, umbrellas. Perhaps we were just cold. The only way you'd know we were on holiday is the boy with the pushcart right at the front of the photograph. He's just in his khaki shorts and sandals, and short-sleeved shirt, but he looks as happy as Larry. I hated those boys.

I hated those boys because they made me feel uncomfortable. They irritated me, like my new clothes. They weren't any older than me for a start, and yet, there they were, running these little businesses and earning more money than I thought I'd ever see as long as I lived. Then, they had these funny ways of talking, and it made them seem older than me, and better than me. They were cheeky as well, cheeky to Mam. I mean, if I'd have talked to Mam the way those boys did, I'd have ended up sitting in the gutter with my head spinning. Looking at that picture again, I think I look miserable as well.

I don't know where or when that photograph was taken. Our Noreen reckons it was one year when we went a bit further than usual. We went to a place called Littlehampton. I remember going there, but whether or not that's where the photograph was taken, I don't know. Our Noreen swears it was. Our Sally swears it wasn't. Still, I do remember going to Littlehampton. I remember because it was when Mam and Dad had a row. The row was about where we were staying.

I remember it all looked wrong when the boy who was carrying the cases took us along this sort of canal. I thought there were snakes in the water, but it was just a funny sort of seaweed. We finally fetched up in front of one of those gates that factories and garages used to have, you know, there's a big gate, with a little door in it so you can go in and out and not have to open the big gate all the time. I remember Mam asking the boy if he was sure he had the right place, and, when he'd gone, I remember Dad telling Mam that she'd really picked a beauty this time. Our Noreen started to cry and our Sally said she wasn't stopping. Mam fetched our Noreen one across the back of her head so as she'd have something to cry about, and she told our Sally to shut up as well or else she'd get something to think about herself.

We went in through the little gate and we were in a sort of yard, with cobblestones. If you looked up at the sky, all you could see were the gas-works. The lady that owned the house where we were to stay was called Mrs. Cottrell. She was very old, and she was dirty as well.

Usually, when you arrived at your digs, the lady took you into the front room, but Mrs. Cottrell took us straight into the kitchen. There was a funny smell in there and at the time I didn't know what it was because we didn't have a cat. Mam couldn't abide cats in a house. There were a lot of cats in this house. They were all over the place: on the chairs, on the window-ledge, at the side of the sink. There were three big ones on the kitchen table where Mrs. Cottrell was getting somebody's tea ready, in fact it was our tea, and there was another watching a saucepan boil on the cooker.

I don't remember much more about that holiday except the row Mam and Dad had on the first night in their bedroom. I had to sleep in a little bed next to theirs so I heard what was said, even though they were whispering. The bedrooms weren't in the house where Mrs. Cottrell lived, they were across the yard and you had to climb what she called the steps but what was really more like a ladder than steps, and of course Dad could hardly manage it because of his sticks and his big boots. Dad had been a boy soldier in the Great War and he'd been wounded very badly and crippled. I think it was having to get up and down that ladder that made him have the row with Mam. They didn't have a lot of rows, mainly because Dad was a very patient man. This time, because I had to lie in bed and listen to them, I got really frightened. That night I had a dream about falling into the canal with the snakes, and when I woke up I found that I'd wet the bed. Mam said she was going to give me a hiding, but Dad said she wasn't and they had another row about that.

That wasn't the only time I wet the bed when we were on holiday. I did it on the very last holiday we all had together. I'd remember that holiday anyway, because it was the last one we all of us went on together, wetting the bed again just makes it that bit easier to remember. It was a disaster from start to finish, that holiday was. The thing is, I can't remember where we actually went to. I think it might have been Cromer. I remember the name of the lady where we stayed, Mrs. Lake. I remember her name because it seems to fit with everything else that happened that year.

Mrs. Lake was what Mam used to call very good living. What Mam meant by that was that she went to church and she didn't hold with drinking, smoking, swearing or gambling. In her front room there were some very old pictures showing what happened to people who did any of the things that she didn't hold with. There was also a picture of a sailor, and it had a black ribbon tied around it that our Sally said was morbid, but Mam told her to shut up again or she'd clip her one, big as she was.

Mrs. Lake had a lot of rules about what you mustn't do if you stayed in her house. It wasn't just that you mustn't drink, smoke, swear or gamble. You couldn't do any of those things, of course, in the house; in fact, you couldn't do them outside either really, because she said that she didn't want people coming in with the smell of alcohol or tobacco on them, and she didn't want people bringing in things that they might have won on games of chance at the fun-fair near the beach. I remember she called that fun-fair �the Devil's playground.�

There were lots of other things you had to remember not to do as well. For a start, Mrs. Lake didn't want lights on in the house after ten at night. Then, there was no washing of clothes allowed. In fact, there wasn't a lot of washing of any sort allowed. There was a bathroom upstairs, but it wasn't for guests. Guests had a jug and bowl provided, and the gentleman, she meant Dad, would find a kettle of water for him to shave with outside the door at six-thirty. The lavatory was in the bathroom, and as it was the only one in the house, we were told we could use it, but that was all. Mam had to promise we wouldn't use the water in the bathroom under any circumstances, and she had to promise to take me when I wanted to go, in case I had an accident and wet the seat.

Mam and Dad smoked. Well, I mean, everybody did then. Our Sally did. Dad smoked a lot, in fact, you seldom saw him without a cigarette going. He used to smoke at night as well, when everyone else was asleep. He used to wake up all the time; I suppose it was the pain he was always in, or else dreams about the war. Well, he used to smoke, sitting on the edge of the bed in the dark.

Both Mam and Dad had to have a cigarette when they got up to the room, but Mam opened the window as soon as we got in and they both more or less stood leaning out so that the smell wouldn't stay in the room. I suppose Dad remembered that. In the night he must have got up to have a smoke and lit the cigarette by the open window. The trouble was he didn't think to move the net curtain, so when he went to put his head out of the window the tip of his fag went straight through the net; then he dropped it, and by the time he'd got the thing put out, he'd woken Mam up and he'd woken me up and there were three or four burn holes in the curtain.

Mam took the net down and put it up back-to-front so that the heavy curtain more or less hid the damage, and then she had to go out and buy another pair to put up instead. The trouble was the new ones were that white it was obvious they shouldn't have been there. They had to go up though, even if they didn't look right, because Mam couldn't think of anything else she could do. Then, that night, Dad had another accident.

At home we just had a lavatory out in the yard, so there was a chamber pot under each of the beds for the night. Mam and Dad had one each. Dad used to use his a lot. You always knew his when it was out on the stairs with Mam's, waiting to be emptied, because it had cigarette-ends floating in it. Mam's didn't. Well, that night, Dad must have reached under the bed from sheer force of habit and found what he thought was the jerry. In fact it was one of his boots. He didn't realize what he'd done until the next morning when he'd got dressed and he went to put his boots on. Then he found that one was wet. He even found a couple of soggy fag-ends inside it.

The worst thing, of course, was that the carpet was sodden because the pee hadn't stayed in the boot. So, Mam had to try and dry it out. She had to use her spare underwear because she daren't use Mrs. Lake's towels, and then she had to bundle what she'd used up ready to take out of the house with her when we left after breakfast. She said she'd have to take them to a laundry. Even then, after she'd tried to dry the carpet with her vest and knickers, it was still wet, so she moved the bed and turned the carpet back and put sheets of newspaper she fetched out of the drawers underneath. Then she sprinkled Yardley's lavender water everywhere in case there was a smell. She shouldn't have bothered. That night there was another accident and she had it all to do again.

It wasn't Dad's fault this time. It was Mam's. Mam used to go a bit funny when we went on holiday. Usually, she was very careful about money. Well, she had to be because there were five of us, and only Dad's wages coming into the house. Our Sally worked of course, but she only paid her board and she couldn't afford very much of that. Still, Mam used to go a bit daft with money on holidays. She had this weakness for new things. One year she got Dad Brylcream in a tube. Usually, he just bought a little jar of it from Stan Bonsor's when we went for our haircuts the Friday night before we went on holiday. Mam said the tube was better.

Dad didn't argue with her, he almost never did, and he was more or less coming round to the idea of having his Brylcream in a tube when he got mixed up one morning and he cleaned his teeth with it instead of the toothpaste. He threw it straight out of the window after that, and he wouldn't leave the house until our Noreen had been sent out to get him ajar like he was used to from the chemists.

The new thing that year, the year we were staying at Mrs. Lake's, was beer in tins. It was called Long Life, and again, Dad wasn't very keen on the idea; it was Mam. They both of them liked a drink in the evening, but they only ever went to pubs on holidays. Even then, they wouldn't actually go into the pub, they'd find one with a children's room so that we could all go in, or else, if the weather wasn't too bad, we'd sit out in the yard if there were tables there. I liked it. I had Vimto to drink every night, and crisps every night, and sometimes I'd have a saucer of hot peas or a cheese cob as well. Mam and Dad would have eels, or a bag of boiled shrimps, or a plate of cockles or whelks.

The year we stayed with Mrs. Lake though, they daren't go into a pub even to sit in the children's room or in the yard. Mrs. Lake was very choosey about who she let have a front-door key, or so she said to Mam the day we arrived when Mam went down to ask for one. Mrs. Lake only reckoned to give out keys to regular guests, people who came from one year to the next. She didn't actually say Mam couldn't have a key, she just pointed out that this was the first time we'd made a booking with her. After that Mam just came back up the stairs.

What this meant was that when we got back at night we had to knock for Mrs. Lake to let us in the house. Well, even if they'd done what Dad wanted and sucked on a mouthful of violet cashous to hide the smell of the drink, Mrs. Lake would still have smelt the cigarettes. Mam and Dad had tried to cut right down, but sitting in a room in a pub, everyone else would have been smoking and the smell would have been there on our clothes. This was why Mam bought the tins of Long Life. She said that they would go in her bag better than bottles of beer, and they wouldn't clink the way bottles did. She showed Dad and he had to agree she was right, about that, anyway.

The man in the off-licence had given Mam a special opener for the tins, but she couldn't find it sitting in the dark. It was usually late when we came back, and Mrs. Lake made quite a to-do about turning off the lights in the hallway and on the stairs and the landing when the clock she had downstairs chimed for ten. The first night Mam and Dad had put their light off, but our Sally and Noreen kept theirs on, and Mrs. Lake stood out on the landing clearing her throat until Mam went and turned the light off in the girls' room herself. Mam had bought a little torch from Woolworth's, but it wasn't much use really. In the end, they just used to sit in the dark, talking about what a miserable place they'd come to.

When Mam couldn't find the opener for the tins of beer she made Dad give her his penknife, and she used it to punch a hole in the first tin. I can still remember exactly what happened next even though it was all over, well the first bit was all over, in a few seconds. I can still remember because even though it happened so fast, when I remember everything it happens very, very slowly, like in a film or in a dream when you try to run and you can't make your legs go. What happened was that the beer sprayed out of the tin; it sprayed out of the tin with such force Mam dropped the tin. The tin went onto the floor then, and started spinning round and round, like a firework, spraying beer all over the place, all over the carpet, all over the walls, all over the beds, over Mam, and Dad and me.

It was dark of course, just the light from the little torch we'd got from Woolies was all we had to see by. It was dark, but in my memory it isn't dark at all. There's a sort of golden light coming from that tin, and it's as if it's this golden light that is spraying round the room, not beer. It's like a firework, like a Catherine wheel on Guy Fawkes' night, except that it isn't sparks that are lighting everything up, it's this mysterious golden liquid spreading itself all over the room, all over everything.

It couldn't have lasted much more than a minute, but the place was soaking again. Mam was down on her hands and knees trying to get the worst of it up before it went into the carpet. Dad was trying as best he could to get the blankets off the beds so he could sponge them a bit with what water there was left in the jug. Our Sally and Noreen came in because they'd heard the noise when the tin went off, and then they'd heard Mam and Dad carrying on. Our Sally put the light on. Then, of course, Mrs. Lake was at the door, wanting to know what was going on, and our Sally said, �It's all right. It's all right. It's only me little brother. He has fits. He'll be all right, only we've got to keep the light on for a bit.� I could only have been seven or eight, but I could have killed our Sally for saying that.

The room smelt really badly of beer the next morning. Even we could smell it, and we'd been in there all night long. Mam had had the windows open all night, and she'd put sheets and blankets and pillows out on the window ledge to try and get them a bit dry. It had been really cold that night and we'd had to sleep in our coats on the bare mattresses. I remember Mam saying to Dad that she didn't know what to do, and she didn't. In the end it was our Sally that did something. She went down to Mrs. Lake and said that she was terribly sorry, but that her brother had been poorly on the carpet and she'd have to ask for a bucket of hot water and some strong disinfectant and a bit of newspaper.

Well, Mrs. Lake didn't come up to see what it was I was supposed to have done because she could imagine it, and when we went down to breakfast that morning, after our Sally and Mam had finished, the room smelt like the inside of a bottle of Jeyes' Fluid. Mam was ever so pleased with our Sally, and perhaps it was this that gave our Sally the courage to tell Mam that she was going home that afternoon.

She said it was because of her headaches. It was the air pressure that was doing it, she said, just like at Skeggy. She'd been moping about the place ever since we arrived, fighting with our Noreen, fighting with Mam. It was Dad who said she could go. I think he'd just had about all he could stand. He said she could go the next morning, and she did. Of course, after she went our Noreen started playing up.

Dad always used to say that if our Sally had one thing, then our Noreen would want two of the same. He was right. They're still like that. Then though, Noreen just kept going on and on about our Sally being let do whatever she wanted, and nothing said. When Dad asked what she meant, our Noreen said about the dances.

She meant the dances on the pier. There was a dance hall there, and the second night our Sally had said she was going and Mam had said she was if she was going with Noreen. There was a row about that. Afterwards Noreen wanted to go again, but Mam said she couldn't go on her own, she'd have to ask Sally. Sally wouldn't go. She said it was because the place was no good, but now I suppose it was just to spite our Noreen. Well, with Sally gone, Noreen went on and on about being let go to the dances. Mam said no, but again, Dad, in the end, said yes, just to put a stop to the rows. Mam said that our Noreen was only sixteen and that was why she couldn't go, but Dad said that sixteen was old enough if she was in by a quarter-to-ten, and she was.

One of the funny things about that last holiday was that we hardly saw the sea. The weather was bad. It was cold. It was raining. The second day that we were there, these very strong winds started blowing. It wasn't that you didn't want to sit on the beach, you couldn't. We dragged around the town most of the time. For a bit of a change we started going to this hotel where they had a palm court, with a little orchestra, and you could have morning coffee. After we found it, we went there nearly every day.

We'd tried sitting in one of the shelters on the front, and Mam had fetched jugs of tea and coffee, but in the end the weather got so bad the stall selling refreshments shut and so we started going to the hotel. None of us liked it. It was expensive for a start, and you had to put on quite decent clothes or else the waiter who took you to your table gave you a nasty look, or so Mam said. I hated the place. I had to sit still all the time, and the chairs used to hurt my legs. I wasn't even allowed to eat the biscuits you got the way I wanted. They had a picture of a coffee cup on them, those biscuits did, and I used to like to eat them by biting round the shape of the coffee cup. Mam made me stop because she said people were looking.

The only good thing about the weather on that holiday was that I got bought lots of toys. I always got things, toys, I mean, when we went on holiday, but that year I got more than I'd ever had. Well, we were in and out of the shops all the time, especially the toy shops. I got soldiers, and a gun, and a cowboy suit. I was supposed to go and have my picture taken in that cowboy suit, but when we got to the shop I wouldn't go in.

I remember our Noreen saying that I was a spoilt little sod because of all the things I'd been bought on that holiday, and Mam clipped her one right there and then. We were in the restaurant where we went to have our dinner everyday. We went there because they did very nice fish and chips, with as much bread and butter and as many pots of tea as you wanted, all for the one price. There's another photograph, taken just after we'd come out of that restaurant. We're walking through an amusement arcade, me and Mam, and our Noreen, and Dad. Mam's got hold of my hand and her face looks like thunder. Our Noreen's face looks like thunder as well, but that was because she's just had Mam's hand across it. Dad looks like he always does in holiday photographs, fed up. I suppose it was one of those men from the sea-front who took the picture again. I suppose he'd been driven inside by the bad weather just like we had.

Still the sun did shine, in the end. It was the day before we were to go home. I remember waking up and thinking something was different. It was something about the way the room smelt, and it was something about the way the room looked. It was the sun, is what it was. The room looked different because the sun was shining into it, and was lighting everything up, the wallpaper and the wardrobes and the chest of drawers and the picture of 'The Gleaners' over Mam and Dad's bed. It was the sun, and it was the sea.

We still kept the windows open, even though it rained all the time; we kept them open because Mam swore she could smell the beer coming up through the Jeyes' Fluid, and Dad swore he could smell something else - he meant what he'd done in his boot - coming up through the Jeyes' fluid and the beer. This morning I could smell something else again: I could smell the sea. I could smell the sea, but the funny thing was, I couldn't hear it.

We went down on the beach first thing. The sand was so clean. It looked like somebody had got up early and washed it. The sun was hot. There was no wind. The sea - the sea was flat and still and bluer than any sea I'd seen before, and the sunlight that came off it was golden, just as if it had come straight from the sun itself, so that you had to squint wherever you looked.

It was wonderful that day. We had cheese cobs for our dinner instead of fish and chips, and we didn't even think about going to that hotel for a cup of coffee. In fact, Mam fetched a big jug of coffee at half-past ten, and when she came back with it, she had some little packets of those biscuits with the coffee cup on them with her. She gave me a packet for myself, and with every one I bit out the coffee cup and Mam never said anything. Then the Salvation Army came round collecting, and I remember that I was lying on my tummy and the lady tickled my foot and when I squealed, she said that showed I'd been born at home. Mam was so impressed by this, because I had been born at home, she put two shillings in the collecting tin.

It was the best day of the holiday, and when it was time to go I went down to the sea because we were going home early in the morning the next day and I shouldn't see it again. I went down to the sea, and I stood right at the edge. It was so calm, so still, the water almost didn't break against the sand even, and I could stay there and not get my feet wet. I stood there, I remember, I stood there and I thought I had never seen anything as beautiful as this, not even my cousin Molly, when she'd danced by herself to that record in the caf� all that time before. Until then, I'd thought Molly was the most beautiful thing in the world, but I knew now she wasn't beautiful the way this sea was beautiful.

We had to go back to Mrs. Lake's that night because Mam had to put my swimming trunks out to dry so she could pack them for the morning. She had to put some calamine lotion on me as well but I was so happy I didn't mind, and I didn't mind when it was dry and we went out again and I had that funny shivering feeling you get when you've had calamine lotion put on and then you go out with your best clothes on at night.

I think we were all happy, Mam, Dad, even our Noreen. She didn't go dancing that last night. She came with us to play bingo. Mam and Dad had stayed away from the pubs, but they'd had to do something in the evenings and so they'd taken to playing bingo at the fair, what Mrs. Lake called �the Devil's playground.�

Mam had been quite lucky, and had usually managed to get at least one win most nights, but she hadn't taken a prize yet because on this stall you got points for every win and you could save up these points towards one of the big prizes they had on display in the middle of the stall, where the man stood when he called out the numbers. Mam wanted the canteen of cutlery. She only needed one more win and she could get it, but that night it was our Noreen that won, not Mam.

When Noreen shouted 'House!' Mam got her coupons out ready to ask for the canteen of cutlery, but she wasn't quick enough because Noreen got hold of them and she said to the man, �We'll have the teddy bear, the big one,� and even though Mam clipped her again, that's what we got. Of course, to make things worse, that night I had a dream that I was swimming in the sea, all calm and flat. The next morning I found I'd wet the bed again. This time there was no hiding things from Mrs. Lake, and Mam had to go down and apologize and get the sheets and blankets washed. We nearly missed the bus back home.

Coming back from holiday was always the same. There was this feeling of relief that you were back home, and yet the house always seemed different. It was as if it wasn't your house, as if you'd come back to one that was like your house, very like it, but this house hadn't just been empty for a fortnight, it had been empty for years. I used to like to go straight out into the yard when we got back, while Mam was getting the cases unpacked and Dad or Noreen or Sally was off round to the fish and chip shop to get our supper. I used to like to go out and walk in the grass and look at the plants and the trees. We had a couple of apple trees in the backyard and the fruit was always so much bigger on them than it had been before we went away. It was the same with the grass; it was always so long.

In the backyard, even more than in the house itself, you could imagine that you were the first person to stand where you were standing for years and years and years. The time we came back from Mrs. Lake's, it was a bit different because Sally had been in the house, so there wasn't that cold smell that houses get when they're left empty, even for a little while, but she hadn't touched the garden and I went out and stood there, the way I always did. That night, when I went up to bed, a Jacky Longlegs ran across my pillow and I wouldn't lie down. I slept with Mam and Dad again, just like I'd done all through the holiday.

It wasn't just all the things that happened on that holiday that make me remember it so well; in fact, I sometimes wonder if all those things did happen on that one holiday or if perhaps I'm remembering things that happened at different times and in different places and I'm mixing them all up. It's like the sea being so calm that day. I mean, I don't really see how it could have been, not so soon after all the bad weather we had, but, then again, it was. I suppose anything's possible really, and they do say as how the mind can play tricks on you. Still, I don't think I am mixing things up, and I know that I'm not when it comes to what happened afterwards because what happened afterwards changed everything, and, as I said, we never went on holiday together again.

I was too young to understand what did happen, to understand it properly, I mean. I know now, of course, but then, well, I was just a little boy. What I remember are the rows that started around the Christmas time. I remember one, it was actually on Christmas Day, and I remember Mam shouting at our Sally. She shouted �Done nothing? Done nothing? Who do you think you are, the bleeding Virgin Mary?�

Well, of course, what had happened was that our Sally had been seeing this fellow on the quiet, and she'd come back to be with him, and having the house to herself, she'd had him in to stay, of course, and, well, she was going to have a baby. She did have a baby. It was born just after she came back from honeymoon, because, in those days, you had to get married, if you could; it was either that or the baby was adopted. That's what happened to our Noreen's baby. She was pregnant as well, you see. It was some man in the band that had played for the dances on the pier. Mam went back and found him, but he was married, so there was nothing for it but to give the baby up for adoption.

You can understand it, well, I can. In those days, like I say, you got married if you could, and if you couldn't, well, you couldn't keep the baby, not in the sort of neighbourhood where we lived, not being the sort of people we were. Noreen never understood though. She came back home one Friday and said she wanted to go into the WRNS. She had her medical, got her forms, everything, in a week. It was Dad who signed her forms. When she went away she told Mam she wouldn't ever come back and, apart from Dad's funeral, she never did. She didn't come back when Mam died and we buried her, and she didn't come back when me and our Sally cleared out the house afterwards.

I remember that night, the night when we'd more or less done it all, all the packing. It was in August and for me it was just like the nights when we'd be getting ready to go away. Well, that's what we were doing, except this time I knew we would never be coming back. I went out into the yard on my own because I wanted to be there on my own for this last time. Mam had been gone for about a month then and, of course, nobody had looked after the garden. We'd been too busy. The grass was long, and the apple trees were there with all the fruit on them, and as I stood there it seemed as if two things were coming together at the same time, as if I was back from a holiday I hadn't been on yet.

I was out there for a long time. I watched the sun set and still I stood there. Our Sally came out in the end and asked me what I was doing. I told her. I said I was remembering. Well, that more or less shut Sally up because she doesn't like talking about the past. I can understand it really. I remember though. I remember a lot. Sometimes I think I remember so much because my two sisters don't, or won't or can't. That night, the last night I ever stood in Mam and Dad's house, the last night I ever went out into their backyard, that night I remembered a lot. I remembered a lot, and that night it really did start to get all mixed up, but what stood clear of everything else was the fortnight at Mrs. Lake's.

I stood there in the dark and I thought about Dad peeing in his boot, and me peeing in the bed, and the beer spraying round the room, and the curtains burning and then that day when the weather turned so hot and the sunlight came off the sea and how beautiful it made the sea and everything else look.

I remembered as well that Mam took me to see our Noreen in the hospital, just like she'd taken me to see our Sally. She never told me our Noreen had had a baby as well, of course. I thought she was just ill. Our Noreen had the big pink teddy bear she'd won with Mam's points on the bingo in the hospital with her. I thought about that when I stood out in the back yard all on my own. I thought about that, and I thought about how everything had flowed that sum mer. Everything, pee and beer and disinfectant and water and, even though I'd been too young to know it, the seed of the men that had been with our Sally and our Noreen. That had flowed as well. It had burst and sprayed and flowed inside my sisters just like that beer had inside Mam and Dad's room. Long Life that beer was called.

The one thing that was still the day I saw it was the sea. They do say all life comes from the sea, don't they? Perhaps that day the sea knew what we didn't, me and Mam and Dad, even our Sally and Noreen, because they couldn't have known either. Just the sea, it knew and because of that it knew something else as well: the sea knew that there'd been enough flowing and so, that day, it could he still, it could be almost still.

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Spell on You

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Stevie Macnamara called himself Stevie long before ever Little Stevie Wonder or Stevie Winwood come out, so it were hardly right to say, like some did, that this were affectation on Stevie's part because it weren't.  Stevie always were just a little bit different, and that plus the fact he were such a liar, which even I have to say he were, accounted for him never having many friends, though I liked him.

Definitely different though, Stevie.  In 1963, when everybody else tried hard to look like George Harrison or Brian Jones, Stevie went and had his head cropped.  He kept it that way all one year, but the following summer, at just about the same time Ron's on the Tower give up clippers for scissors, and the town Mods what went there was all asking for short cuts again, Stevie let his sides get long, then slicked the buggers back. Some of them at school started calling him Grease when they seen this development, though it weren't Brylcream he used, nor Sylvikrin neither, because they wouldn't do the job.  It were Imperial Leather pomade Stevie put on his hair.  I should know.  I went into Boots with him often enough to fetch it.  Bloody terrible stuff and all, the smell alone having the strength to empty the top deck of a 53 bus. You always knew Stevie's whereabouts in them days. 

So there were how he done his hair, and then there were his taste in music.  Them days, lads never felt properly dressed unless they had a twelve-inch LP in one hand when they went out the door.  It were important what LP it were and all.  Ote by the Rolling Stones were all right, some Beatles.  Hard Day's Night were acceptable, so were Rubber Soul, but not Beatles for Sale. Well, Stevie used to carry records around the place with him same as the rest, only his would be by people nobody had ever heard of like Lefty.

Frizzell or the Louvin Brothers.  Stevie's record collection were more or less entirely made up of a job lot of country and western LPs he got cheap off a stall in the market, which I always reckoned were the principal attraction as far as Stevie were concerned, though he used to go on about how country and western were one of the last sources of authentic music, authentic being a big word with Stevie then.  It were what he judged things by, and not just music, but all sorts, although he used it to talk about music perhaps more than ote else.  I remember Stevie having a right barney with Col Birchenall one time when the Stones come out with Little Red Rooster.  Things got that heated, I thought Col might land him one and moved in a bit close, just in case, though it never come to ote in the end.  I'm glad it never, because Col were a big bastard who played prop forward for the school First Fifteen even then.

Col wanted to know just who Stevie thought he were handing out judgements on records - he meant pop records - when he, Stevie that is, never bought any himself, never read Melody Maker, or ote like that, NME, ote like that, and, to be fair to Col, he had a point because as far as I knew Stevie had only ever bought two pop records in his life.  One were a version of Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Da by Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, and the other were this single by the Mojos called No No No No No.  Neither done much in the charts, but that were perhaps why Stevie cottoned to them, lack of success carrying considerable weight in any discussion as to whether or not something were authentic.  I heard No No No No No on the radio just the other day, and that must have been what set me off thinking about Stevie again.  It weren't the song so much as the name of the group, the Mojos.

We had mojos on the brain in them days, the music then being full of hoodoo and voodoo, hoochy-coochy men, zombies, and all such sorts of business.  It weren't just the music neither, because there was the James Bond books, and then the Denis Wheatley books and all, and there were a lot of voodoo in some of them.  Still, there were none of us could have said what, exactly, a mojo were when it were at home, what one looked like or how it were supposed to do what it were supposed to do, so there were no need for them such as What? Tyler and his pals to go on about Stevie's being a liar the way they done when he come to school with what he reckoned were a mojo in his pocket.  I mean, I knew it weren't no more than a lump of off-cut he'd picked up out the gutter in front of Walker's timber yard on the East Park Road, done a bit of carving to with his sheath-knife, polished up with a dab of Kiwi and glued a few feathers on from off an old hat of his mam's he'd fetched out the back of their glory hole, but no bugger else did, so who were Tyler and his pals to say ote?           

I've said not many at our school ever took to Stevie, and the truth is I never neither, not in the very beginning, though we did fetch up mates eventually and stopped that way all through until Stevie went off to university.  Tyler, though, he really hated Stevie, hated him right from the word go, and seemed to make it the main purpose in his life to see that Stevie's were miserable.  It were Tyler come up with the various names Stevie were known by in the school, the first of which were Pinhead, and that by no means the cruellest.  Another were C***struck, a name which come about when Stevie were fourteen or so, and had once or twice been clocked talking to some tart on the Tower, one a good two or three years older than he were, and a bit nice with it and all. 

The fact is, it weren't just some tart Stevie'd been stood there with.  Her name were Sue Roberts, and she lived down Stevie's street.  She went to America when quite young to live with her sister Val, who'd married a Yank off the base at Bruntingthorpe, but found she couldn't stick it over there and so come home again. Sometimes she travelled up town on the same bus as Stevie in the mornings, and seeing they knew each other, and had done for years, naturally enough they sat together on the bus, and then walked part-way through the market together and all, which were where they was seen, in fact, not the Tower.  That were Tyler trying to make Sue seem cheap.  Had it been credible, he'd have had them in front of The Blue Moon in bloody Horsefair Street.

I said to Stevie then it weren't note but jealousy because Sue were such a looker, and none of them calling him C***struck would have stood a chance of getting anywhere near her, nor known how to go on afterwards if they had.  In a way, that business over him being seen talking to Sue weren't greatly different from what went on about the mojos.  I told Stevie not to bother himself with it; such things - I meant name-calling and that - never lasted long, and I were right.  It weren't six or seven weeks before they'd forgot they'd ever called him C***struck, and took to calling him Homo instead.

It were a cruel business Tyler proceeded in against Stevie then.  Every time there were no teachers about it started, with Tyler himself shouting, What d'you think of MacNamara?, just like he were down Leicester City on a Saturday afternoon going, What d'you think of Leeds? or whoever were playing.  Then, instead of shouting back, Shit! Shit! Shit!, the way they would have at the football, Tyler's pals would go, Ho-ho-mo!  Homo! Homo! Ho-ho-mo! Homo! Homo! Ho-ho-mo! 

They done it whenever there were no teacher near to hear what were going on, though, to say the truth, how it happened no teacher ever did hear what were going on, I never fathomed, but none did.  So it went on morning, noon and all but night time too. Tyler and his gang got so they'd start things even on the bus going up the games field, and that definitely were a case of authority turning a deaf ear.  It couldn't have been ote else, not with teachers sat downstairs on the same bus.

Again I said to Stevie, it weren't note but jealousy, as it had been over him and Sue Roberts.  This time it were the mojos, for not long after Stevie had first showed us his, and all the piss-taking finished, a couple of lads, Col Birchenall for one, said could Stevie fix them up with something similar?  This after Stevie's indicated he don't want to part with the one he's got.  He said straight out he'd made his himself.  He never lied about it.  He asked just what the two lads wanted, and Col said his were to go on a bit of leather or something similar so he could hang it round his neck.  Col were a big bugger, as I've said, who passed easily for eighteen or even twenty, and he used to go dancing down the County Arms on Friday nights at a time when most of us still reckoned getting in the pictures to see an X-certificate a desperate and daring deed.  Col said he thought one of Stevie's mojos might help him pull a bird, which, aside from playing rugby for the county youth team, constituted his major ambition in life.  Once he'd got his orders, Stevie set to and delivered the goods the next week, after which he pocketed half-a-dollar off each lad for his time, trouble and materials.

The Monday following, Col Birchenall come up to Stevie and shoved another half-a-dollar in his pocket, the reason behind this unlooked for generosity being Col had clicked with a staff nurse from the Royal that Friday night.  He'd seen her again on the Saturday, and after they'd had coffees in Kenco and she'd done a bit of shopping, she took him back for the rest of the afternoon and evening to this little flat she had just off the London Road, during which time, Col said, he cracked it.  He stopped with her Saturday night, and he'd have been there Sunday night and all, except she had to go back on duty.  Of course, he got a pasting off his dad, Col did, when he finally rolled up at his own house, big as he were, for he were only fifteen and the bogies had been out looking for him since the Saturday teatime.  Still, Col reckoned the pasting well worthwhile, considering.  The extra half-dollar he slipped in Stevie's pocket come as payment for services more than satisfactorily rendered, seeing it had been Stevie's mojo got the whole thing started just the way Col had hoped it would.

A story like that can get round a lads' school faster than a fart from a greyhound's arsehole, and Stevie subsequently found himself and his mojos to be greatly in demand.  He had that many orders he couldn't manage with what bits of wood he might scavenge from Walker's gateway any more, so he nipped inside one night and took home a sack filled with off-cuts a bloke what worked there give him.  He were more or less set after that, Stevie were, and I have to say, with practice, his mojos definitely improved, definitely got a lot more professional.  He started getting real character into the faces, because he were doing them with faces, and, depending on what the order were, he painted some and put polish on others.  The supply of feathers off his mam's hat soon finished, but he got another load from the fish and poultry shop down what used to be the ottom end of Charny.  They let him help himself from the bin of chicken feathers they kept out the back.  Yes, after a week or two of mojo-making, Stevie were definitely turning out a consistently improving product.  He were coining it and all, which were no doubt what fetched Tyler and his oppos round again.

They started on Stevie in the classroom straight after the dinner-break this one day, when we sat waiting for a teacher to come.  Tyler goes on about how what Stevie were making were crap, and all that sort of thing; how Stevie had been chucked out of woodwork at the end of the First Year and all that sort of thing, which were true but so what?  Well, Stevie give back as good as he were getting, and he says to Tyler it's not just the woodworking, it's the other stuff that goes into the making what counts.  Tyler goes, What you talking about, the other stuff?  Do you mean a coat of shoe polish and some feathers?  Stevie goes, No, I mean the magic, I mean the hoo-doo.  Tyler goes, F *** off, MacNamara, all the magic you know you could stick up your arse and shit none the less well for.  Stevie goes, Oh ah?  Tyler goes, Oh ah?  Then Tyler looks round at his pals and goes, Mojos me arse!  Homos is more like it!  You and that  prat Reeves.  Well, when that come out it were only the teacher sauntering in the room stopped me from shoving Tyler's bollocks in his gob to shut him up, me being Reeves, and had it been any teacher who come in just then I still might have, only it weren't, it were Dave Begley, and everybody in the school were frit of him, so that were that, or it were until the end of the class, when Tyler and his mates starts the chanting about Stevie, Homo! Homo! Ho-ho-mo!

I reckon it had just been Stevie talking when he'd said to Tyler about the magic business with his mojos, but he got very serious on the subject straight way after, and him and me went round the Central Library when we come out the school that afternoon.  Stevie found this book called Black Magic, White Magic, and took it out.  From then on, he were involved with magic in a very big way.  So much so, he recalled all the mojos he'd made up to that time so he could, as he put it, upgrade their performance, and he never charged note neither.  The only lad not to take up Stevie's offer of a supernatural rebore were Col Birchenall.  He said he didn't need ote doing to his mojo, it were his legs he wanted seeing to.  He'd been on the bed with his nurse that much recently, he reckoned, all the strength had more or less gone out of them, with dire consequences for his performances on the playing field.  Stevie told Col to let him have a pair of his rugby socks then, and he'd see what he could do.  Not long after getting the socks back, Col were named as prop in the county youth side against Warwickshire. 

He played a blinder, Col did.  Me and Stevie went to watch him.  His nurse were there and all, cheering him on, and Col introduced us at half-time.  Bloody smashing, she were.  He reckoned she more or less shagged him senseless once she got him back to her place after the game, but, having seen her, nobody in their right mind would have thought that ote to grieve over. Not that Col were moaning about it neither, not really, but he did cop another pasting off his dad because of being stopped out again all night, and when Col seen Stevie he asked if ote could be done to about it, meaning the pastings.  Stevie said the easiest way to stop what Col were getting off his dad would be to cut down on what Col were getting off his nurse, seeing as how the one were the cause of the other, but were this what Col had in mind?  Well, Col had to go away and ponder that one. 

After all of this, Col Birchenall's clicking with a nurse, and then getting in the county youth side, plus one or two more little items other lads who'd equipped themselves with Stevie's wares reported, the mojos could only be judged a major success.  Stevie had every reason to feel proud of himself, but he never let what had happened go to his head or ote like that.  One reason he never might have been the constant bloody cries of  Homo! Homo! he had to put up with from Tyler and friends.  There didn't seem ote much him or his mojos could do about that.

And still Stevie kept renewing the loan on the book of magic.  He carried it round with him the way other lads did records, the way he did records before he'd found the bloody thing.  He read it, time and time again.  It seemed to fascinate him, and a good part of the fascination were to do with what it had to say magic really were, which were ... a power often the resource of the physically weak in primitive societies.  Something along them lines.  Well, that were more or less Stevie; he were weak and he lived in a primitive society, our school.  I mean, the reason I palled up with him when we first come to the school were because he were weak. He were quite little for his age, and some of the bigger lads, Tyler among them, used to pick on him. 

Like I said, I never cottoned to Stevie, not  straight off I never, because quite early on he tried to feed me some of his old guff, claiming he'd watched Leicester City play Wolves this one Saturday.  Well, I said, Oh ah? when I heard him because I had been to the match and, I don't know why, but it come to me somehow that Stevie hadn't, and he were just talking to seem big, which in fact is what he were doing.  So, I asked him about the strips, which he knew, but that proved note.  I mean, everybody knew the Wolves' strip because they was such a big club then, particularly round where we lived, and City weren't called the Blues owing to the fact they turned out in red every home game.  So then I asked him where he'd stood, and which ends the goals had gone in, and it were obvious he were lying, only he still wouldn't admit it.  I pushed off not long after, because so far as I were concerned I'd proved me point, but some of the others, What? Tyler included, kept on at him and, in the end, Tyler started shoving Stevie about, which were my cue to get back in on things.  I told Tyler he could lay off, and when he wouldn't I dabbed him one, which meant he were more or less set against me for the rest of the time we was at the school, and against Stevie and all, of course, and Stevie and me ended up keeping company even though I weren't too keen on him, not seeing as how he'd said he'd been down the City when he hadn't. 

To start with, Stevie used to come up to me with biscuits and such like in the breaks, because he wanted me around him for protection when we was out in the yard, and, to start with, I let him because he were always there handy with a Penguin or a Kit-Kat, or something a bit similar at just the time my guts started to grumble.  In the finish though, I did like him, and it had note to do with his keeping me in chocolate biscuits.  I found he were interesting to talk to, and funny and all, and even though a lot of what he used to come out with were, well, it were a load of cobbler's really, I didn't much care any more.  We'd ended up pals, even if we hadn't set out to be such, and you'll tolerate more or less ote at all in a pal. 

Any road, Stevie's lying were largely to do with him being so feeble.  I soon twigged that.  More or less all Stevie had going for him in life were the stories he could tell.  He were like a - I don't know what he were like really -  but he could talk the hind leg of a donkey, or himself out of a walloping, half the time.  I suppose there weren't a lot to choose really between his lying and him discovering magic.  I mean, it were all only a load of words when you come down to it really, and it were the one lot - him saying to Tyler about his mojos and what made them special - had led to the other.  They both got him a place in the school, so, in that sense, you could say his magic worked.  But again, the one thing he couldn't do were get Tyler off his back, and I couldn't do it for him neither.  As I told him times, if he wanted Tyler's gob stopped, he'd have to see to it himself.    

I said about Dave Begley, the teacher we was all frit of.  Spanish Dave we called him, or else Dago because, though he took us for French, he taught Spanish in the sixth form.  He were a right hard face, and the reason we got him were because the bloke we'd had the year before turned out weak as water, so, the world turning how it does, we'd more or less pissed all over him, and not just us neither, every one of his classes served him the same.  So much so, the poor bugger had some sort of a breakdown and left. 

Well, Spanish Dave come in his place, and just to let us know who were to be boss right from the word go, he walks in that first day and sets about knocking the chops off a little lad called Jimmy Phillips.  Jim were harmless, which were probably why it were him got selected and not some big sod like Col Birchenall or Tyler, or me.  You know, not even the innocent shall be spared sort of thing.  Any road, Spanish Dave drops Jim back in his chair more or less half-conscious, and he says, Right, gents, now I've got your attention, and if you're all sitting comfortably, then we'll begin.  We bloody did and all.

A bastard is what Spanish Dave were.  In one of his merrier moments, and he did have them, he told us how he were dead set on proving all his professors wrong about what he called the power of negative reinforcement.  A lad at the back of the class, Johnny Cox, shoved his hand up and said what were that when it were at home? so Spanish Dave obliged him with a demonstration.  He says for Johnny to take out his ruler, a pencil and a bit of paper.  Then he gets Ray Price, the lad sat at the next desk, to tie his scarf round Johnny's eyes.  When that were done, Spanish Dave tells Johnny to draw a straight line two inches long on the bit of paper.  Johnny goes, Don't be daft, sir, I can't see.  Well, I were expecting John to cop a strong dose of hate for that, but Spanish Dave just says for him to try.  Johnny does.  Spanish Dave says, A shade too long, son. Try again.  Johnny does.  Spanish Dave says, A shade too short, me old flower, me old beauty.  Try again.  Johnny does. 

Well, they carries on in this fashion until, after, I don't know, twenty tries maybe, Johnny gets it right -  he draws a line exactly two inches long.  Spanish Dave holds up the bit of paper and goes, Taa-daa! That, gents, is called positive reinforcement.  We all clapped and cheered, and otherwise indicated general approbation because, first off, it had definitely been a touch amazing what we'd just seen, and second, it were better than doing French.

There were more to come.  Spanish Dave shuts us up, and then he says that for his next trick he'll show us what negative reinforcement is.  Again, he tells Johnny Cox, who's still got the scarf over his face, to draw a line, only this time it has to be four inches long.  Johnny does it, well he draws a line, except it weren't four inches long, but still he sits there after he's finished with a grin on him like our cat had the day it found it could piss milk and shit cods' heads, and continued in this fashion until Spanish Dave says, No, too long, and fetches him a real crack across the ear hole.  Then Spanish Dave says for Johnny to draw the line again. 

It took Johnny six goes to get it right, and he were roaring before he done it because each of the five times previous he took a clip off Spanish Dave, but we all had to agree being walloped made what Spanish Dave called the learning process a sight faster drawing a line four inches long than it had been  using kindness to do the one two inches shorter.  That were negative reinforcement, and it were how Spanish Dave taught us French.  Pain, he used to say, and the fear of pain, are memory's helpmates.  And he were dead keen for us to remember things.  We had tests every lesson.  Get more than two things wrong and you got clipped for every extra mistake.  We had written homework to hand in every lesson.  More than two mistakes and you got clipped for each one extra you made the next time he seen you. 

Spanish Dave used to say, I never ask the impossible, gents.  I don't expect you to understand all I tell you. I do expect you to remember it though, and show you remember it by repeating what you've remembered.  My f***ing parrot can do that.  If it can't, I knock it off its perch until it can.  The same goes for you. I don't know if he had a parrot really, but if he did I bet it were good at saying, Pretty Polly.

That's just how the Dago used to carry on.  The time he got Johnny Cox on drawing them lines, he reckoned he'd chose the measurements special because the average length of our p***ks fully extended, as he put it, were probably somewhere in between the two.  He knew we wouldn't report him for talking that way, same as he knew we wouldn't report him for knocking us about.  He knew we was all too frit of him, that were why, and he weren't frit of nobody, that were why and all. 

He weren't frit of nobody neither, not even the gaffer.  I remember one time, it were near the end of the term, and Spanish Dave were doing his reports.  Well, the gaffer's kid, poor little bugger, went to our school.  The gaffer's kid!  I mean, you can imagine the hammerings he used to take, though I always felt sorry for him because it weren't his fault he were the gaffer's kid, same as it weren't his fault he'd had to come to is dad's school.  Any road up, the gaffer's kid were at our school and he were in one of Spanish Dave's classes.  So, the Dago's doing his reports, and we're all working away, trying to ensure the continuation of our moral and physical, particularly physical, well-being by learning a new set of tenses or whatever it were, when he stops, Spanish Dave does, and he looks all thoughtful, and he goes, Watkins, Leo.  And it's all done like he's not got us lot there in front of him, but he's sat on his own thinking out loud to himself.  Watkins, Leo, he goes, meaning the gaffer's kid,  Watkins, Leo. What can we say about Watkins, Leo?  Then there's another pause, like he's thinking again, and then he goes, Ah yes, I know, Lacks parental guidance.  And he bloody well wrote it down and all.  The lads sat at the front seen him do it.  And it were in ink.  Lacks parental bloody guidance!  Frit of no bugger Spanish Dave weren't.

That were one of the Dago's merrier moments.  It went off all right that one did, but things could get quite dangerous when he were in one of them moods.  Most of the time, you knew where you stood with him.  It were a bit like going round the barbers' when you was a kid, frightening to start with but eventually you knew the form, you knew what were going to happen and you knew how much it were going to cost and all like that.  I remember it frit the life out of me the first time I ever seen a bloke having the hairs in his ear holes singed,  but after a couple of visits I knew what were going on, I knew I weren't going to have my ears set light to, so everything were all right.  That's how it were with Spanish Dave.  He were alarming to start with, bloody alarming really, but you come to know what he wanted and how he'd carry on if he didn't get it.  He had his methods, and they worked.  The dangerous times were when you didn't know how he'd carry on, which were mainly in his merrier moments.  It were dangerous then because he never knew how he'd carry on himself.

Stevie managed all right in that class, surprisingly enough.  It weren't that he were outstanding at French or ote of that sort because he weren't.  Any road, being outstanding were no safeguard against a sudden onset of violence because the best kid in the class, who were a kid called Mick Bassett, got a thumping once for the simple reason he'd never had one before.  Spanish Dave reckoned it were to stop the lad getting overconfident.  Stevie took a few cuffs, same as everybody else, but, I don't know, he never had that many and it were perhaps because early on he fell into what passed for the Dago's good books. 

He forgot his homework one time, Stevie did.  Normally, that meant going home damaged.  Spanish Dave would say to the lad who'd come up short, Right son, you know what happens next, only before it does, let's have the story, the excuse, and, for your own sake, son, don't try insulting my intelligence by trotting out one of the same old chestnuts again.  Entertain me.  Astonish me even.  But don't patronise me.  Understand?  Yes?  Well then, you have sixty seconds until I beat your clock.  Then he'd listen, he'd laugh, and he'd hit you.  Only with Stevie that time, he never.  He listened.  He laughed, and then he told Stevie to sit down and he'd sort him out later, which we all assumed, Stevie included, meant Spanish Dave were intent on stopping just about the right side of murder and preferred to perform the act with no witnesses present in case police proceedings followed. 

Well, we was all wrong because note happened at all, only Stevie being directed to bring the work in the next morning first thing.  Everybody were amazed, but, when I thought about it, the story Stevie'd come out with by way of an excuse were - well, it were a bloody work of art really, and I think it got to the Dago, which were why he never touched Stevie, no that time any road.  On another occasion, he did touch Stevie.  It were in one of the merrier moments, which, like I say, were when Spanish Dave were at his most dangerous.

He used to go on a lot about the length of lads' hair, the Dago did.  He'd go up to a lad, Ray Price were a real favourite for this treatment, take a ruler off the desk and then start wrapping the lad's hair round and round it so the lad had to slowly stand up or else risk losing a good piece of his thatch.  While this were going on Spanish Dave'd be doing a Kenneth Wolstenholme.  He'd go, Look at the length of this bugger.  Look at it!  I know women who'd give you a feel of their right tit for hair like this.  I know women who'd give you their right tit for hair like this. 

He could get through half a lesson engaged in antics of this sort some days, if he were in a good mood.  He'd twist lads' hair up on a ruler, or hold it up with his fingers and measure the length, and all the time he'd be passing remarks such as, In certain primitive societies the amount of hair on a man's head is taken as an indication of his sexual potency and prowess.  If you gents had cocks to match your hair, and powers of performance to match your cocks, there'd be a queue of women a mile long outside this school.  On and on like this he'd go, until eventually he'd end up in front of Stevie and his modified brush cut, and he'd say, But then we come to MacNamara.  And he'd stand there, and stand there, and Stevie, who knew what were expected, just done what he were supposed to, which were grin back at Spanish Dave like a prat, and we'd all laugh, and then Spanish Dave would go over to the window, look outside, where naturally enough there was not huge numbers of females congregating by the school railings, come back to Stevie and say, Well, at least MacNamara knows his limitations.  Isn't that right, MacNamara?  And Stevie would go, Yes, sir.

That were the general way of things during Spanish Dave's merrier moments, but, like I say, it always were unpredictable and this one time the Dago starts on about lads' hair again, only instead of measuring it or twisting it, he gets going on the subject of long hair being a fire risk.  It all had to do with these stories in the papers then about young girls at bus-stops going up in flames when somebody in the queue lit a fag near their hairdos. It were supposed to be all the lacquer they used. 

Well, there was a few lads in that class then used hair lacquer and all.  I did, for one.  It were called Cossack, but that were only to make them such as me feel less like nancies for buying it.  What were in the tin were no different from what me sister sprayed on her hair.  That day, Spanish Dave, who seemed in a particularly jolly frame of mind, went strolling round the room with his Ronson, flicking it on and off to see if any of us would catch light.  Nobody did, but then he goes and stands in front of Stevie, same as usual when a merrier moment were ending, and he says, right out the blue, Spanish Dave does, Let's have a brush fire.  He puts the lighter to Stevie's head, and Stevie's hair, what there were of it, went whoosh.  I suppose this sudden and, even on Spanish Dave's part, unexpected  conflagration had to do with all the bloody Imperial Leather pomade Stevie rubbed in each and every morning.  Not washing his hair too regular, things had built up to where the vapours coming off it had reached a particularly low flash point.

It were over in a second, a bit like Christmas at our house when me Dad tries to set the pudding on fire: you know, not worth shutting the lights off for; and the truth is there weren't much damage done and what there were weren't perma nent, but the fact that his hair had caught shook Stevie, and I reckon, from how he carried on after, it shook Spanish Dave and all.  I mean, he even brushed some of the burnt bits off Stevie's head, so he must have been concerned, and then, at the end of the lesson like, he says for Stevie to see to himself properly in the cloakroom before the next class.  In fact, I went with Stevie and stood there while he give his hair a quick rinse in the sink, and it were then bloody Tyler and his mates come up and started on Stevie again. 

Stevie gets his head out the sink, and he goes, Why don't you do yourself and everybody else a favour, Tyler, and just disappear?  Which weren't like Stevie at all, and went to show how rattled he must have been by his hair going on fire like that. Tyler says, What? What? and Stevie goes, That's right, What? What? What? Tyler. Are you deaf, daft, just plain stupid or a combination of all three?  I said, Disappear!

Tyler, who hated being called What? about the same as Stevie hated being called Pinhead or C***struck or Homo, finally got the message and went, Why don't you make me, Homo? Stevie goes back to soaking his crew cut, but he says, as much to the sink as to Tyler, I might, one of these days, so you should watch yourself. Tyler heard him and goes, You might what, Homo?  You have trouble making turds disappear down the bog according to them that goes in after you, you dirty Irish homo bastard. 

He says this and then he gives the grin to his mates, waiting for the applause to start, only before it does, Ray Price, who were stood combing his hair in front of the mirror at the next sink, says to Stevie, Bugger Tyler, why don't you do everybody a favour and vanish Spanish Dave?  Which were more or less the end of things, because the bell went for the next lesson and the whole bloody lot of us was late.

Only it weren't the end for Stevie.  He milked a few laughs explaining to Ramblin' Lew Rablin why he were late, but he went off at four o'clock dead set on the idea he could make anybody disappear he felt like making disappear.  He'd get his mojos working and put a spell on them, and he'd start with Spanish Dave and then progress to his chief oppressor, What? Tyler.  Piecing bits together from how things went on after, I reckon when Stevie got in home that night he settled down to his tea in front of the telly same as usual, only instead of watching the programmes and doing his homework, he set to reading the book on magic again, the one he'd got out from the library that time, renewed I don't know how often, and had two reminders put through the letterbox to bring back because somebody else wanted a go at it.

Things cooled off then, or they did for two or three weeks.  Even Spanish Dave seemed subdued and content to perform at several degrees below his usual level of malevolence.  I don't mean to say he let the hate go by the board entirely, because he never.  It were just that he went a bit quiet. And Stevie were very quiet then and all, though I thought that were because the Homo! Homo! business had started to get him down a lot more than it ever had before.

It got near Easter, and we had revising to do for tests. One Friday night, I were sat in the Evington cinema with Stevie and two or three other lads waiting for the big picture to start.  We was still a bit young for picking up tarts then, the spirit were definitely willing but the flesh wouldn't pass muster, and if we'd have tried ote on any of them old enough to interest us, they'd just have laughed and gone back to licking their Mivis; which were why we sat there moaning about what were happening at school, the tests and that, and in particular this right bastard Spanish Dave had promised us.  One lad, Tom Hutchins, says how he could kill Spanish Dave, and how the Dago'd be handing out hard knocks instead of eggs for Easter.  And load us with bleeding home work over the holidays and all, somebody else shoves in.  Then Stevie, who'd more or less just sat there all night, says, Don't worry lads.  

There won't be no French test, not this term there won't, and I can guarantee you, you've had the last of  your troubles with Spanish Dave.  We looked at him gone out, but he wouldn't say ote else, and any road, the film were beginning.  Spartacus it were. The next afternoon me and Stevie went to see City play, and after, on the bus going home, I asked him what he'd meant the night previous concerning the French test and Spanish Dave?  That were when he told me he were dead set on making magic, voodoo, and that he were going to put a spell on the Dago.  Then he says, And I'll see to Tyler and all while I'm about it. 

I never took him serious, not then I never because in some ways Stevie were always a bit childish.  I mean, I give my toy soldiers away to our Pauline's kids soon as I heard I'd passed for the grammar school, but Stevie kept his, and I knew he still played with them right up to that time because he never hid the fact.  He'd build little forts and such in his mam's garden, and when that series about the First World War come on telly, Stevie made a model of the trenches on the Western Front under one of the lilac trees, and he kept it soaked with water so it were all muddy just like the real thing. 

Like I say, he never tried to hide the fact of his playing with soldiers still, and sometimes on a Saturday morning if I went down his house he'd get me involved and all.  The way he used to talk you through what he were doing, well, it were highly convincing and he'd have me completely forgetting I were a fifteen year-old, with better things to do in life than stand ankle-deep in muck re-enacting the battle of the Somme.  I mean at that time I were expending much of my energy on trying to talk Thelma Jackson, who I'd sat next to right the way through Bridge Road school, infants and junior, into going up the stairs with me for twenty minutes some Sunday if her mam went out.  Any road, what I mean to say is, I thought all this talk about spells and such like, voodoo and that, were on a par with his playing soldiers, only I were wrong because it weren't. 

We went round Stevie's and he showed me in the book where it said about making an effigy, and what could happen if you done it right.  To tell the truth, it frit me just reading the bugger, and I said as much.  I told Stevie he should leave it alone, but he reckoned it were too late for leaving it alone, and then he showed me what he'd already done. 

He took me into the back-garden, and fetched an old shoe box from out behind the lilac tree.  Inside there were this sort of a doll he'd made.  Of a high degree of grisliness it were and all, the body being fashioned from mud, with bits of feather and what might have been hair mixed in it, and the smell of the whole definitely not such as to prompt exclamations of delight from the Bisto Kids, should they have been numbered among any onlookers.  When I asked him about it, he reckoned the mixture were three parts muck he'd fetched out the Welford Road cemetery, plus the remains of an inattentive pigeon a car had gone over in the street.  He said he'd put hair and fingernails in for seasoning, and these had come from, as he phrased it, his victims.  I didn't believe that any more than I did the bit about his having fetched muck out the Welford Road cemetery and such - well, there might have been a bit of compressed pigeon involved somewhere or other, but I could see a significant area of the Somme battlefield had not long been shovelled up, so I knew the odds was that at least some of it had gone towards making up the contents of that shoe-box.  Still, I said then to Stevie he were getting into the business far too deep, and I said so because the body, if such it were, weren't the worst part. 

On top of what you might want to say was the shoulders, there was not one, but two heads, or any road, two of what could have started out as off-cuts from Walkers, and perhaps progressed to prototype mojos before they'd ended up topping off that concoction of mud and what the cat wouldn't have bothered bringing in, which, by itself and from a distance might otherwise have give the distinct impression of being not a lot more sinister than the deposits of some well-nourished Alsatian.  It were them two blank bits of wood lent the thing such evil aspect, especially when they stopped being blank, as come about after Stevie put his hand in his trouser pocket and fetched out two faces, Spanish Dave's and What? Tyler's.   When I asked him where he'd got them from, he said he'd cut up the previous October's school photo.  He laid one on each bit of wood, and he said that, when he were good and ready, he were going to slice his thumb and use the blood to paste the buggers on permanent.  Daft like, I says, Ready for what? and Stevie goes, Revenge.

I definitely never wanted note more to do with it after that, and I told him so.  I went home, had me tea, watched the telly and went to bed.  I lay there that night and tried thinking about what Thelma Jackson were keeping all to herself inside her Prova underwear.  This weren't entirely for reasons of erotic self-stimulation neither; it were more so I didn't have to think about what Stevie MacNamara had stored away in that shoe-box he were hiding behind his mam's lilac tree. 

It never worked, me thinking about Thelma Jackson never, and when I did finally get to sleep, I had horrible dreams.  It were just the same on the Sunday night, worse if anything because in the afternoon Thelma, after what I'd took for a certain amount of initial encouragement on her part, had said no again, so I added a broken heart, not to mention a very painful case of the blue balls, to being haunted by Stevie's schemes for the undoing of Spanish Dave Begley, and each twinge of me testicles served notice that that were what Stevie were set on.

I collared Stevie as soon as I seen him on the Monday, and I said for him to pack it in right then and there.  I didn't need to go into the details; he knew what I were talking about.  I really did get hold of him that time and all, and if it would have done any good to either of us I'd have give him one, only it were too late for that because he said he'd done it - whatever it were he'd had to do.  He meant needles and that, I suppose, or nails.  I didn't want to know.  Well, there were no use of anything any more so I just let him go.

Word of what had been said in the pictures had got round, and as far as Tyler and his mates went it were just another bullet to fire at Stevie.  On top of all the usual business, they now sat there singing, I'll put a spell on you, and running their hands across the desk-lids like they was all fully paid-up members of the Alan Price Set, because you're mine.  Then, when they come to the bit about not lying, they stopped the song and went, Liar! Liar! Liar, liar, liar! Homo! Homo! Liar, liar, liar! Homo! Homo! Liar, liar, liar!  Stevie never so much as blinked.

The night before Spanish Dave's test, Stevie and me went to the Evo again.  I can't remember what we went to see.  Watching a film weren't the real object of the exercise.  For Stevie, going out that particular evening instead of stopping in home to revise for the test were an act of faith in his ability to completely contradict logic and the laws of science.  My going along and all were a gesture of solidarity with a mate, though I have to admit I were awake until nearly three after I got up the top of our stairs, making sure I could conjugate the subjunctive tense of every bloody verb we'd ever done.  This were because, first, memorising French verbs kept me mind off of zombies and such like a lot more effectively than all that wishful thinking about Thelma Jackson's twat had.  Second, I thought studying up for Spanish Dave's test might nudge his chances of survival along a bit by acting as a vote of confidence in such an outcome, if you follow me.  As things turned out, this strategy proved right in the end, but only up to a point.

We never had the test.  We should've done it second period in the morning, but first off, Spanish Dave don't show up, and then another teacher wanders in, says Mr Begley has had an accident, and we've to get on with private studying for the rest of the period.  I looked at Stevie, and he looked at me, and, well, I still don't know about his expression; I mean, whether it were triumph, relief or disappointment in the final outcome of his endeavours.  It's a personal failing this; when I were little I could never spot the differences between the Fry's Five Boys, not even on the wrapper, and any road, at that particular moment in time, I were confused as to just what I felt then, never mind any bugger else.

I say we never had the test, but what I mean is, we never had it that day.  It come eventually, when Spanish Dave limped back into our lives, his right leg in plaster, his right wrist in plaster, his face most grisly to behold because of the bruising, and bearing, in my eyes any road, a strong likeness to what had been revealed when the lid come off Stevie's shoe-box. All these injuries the Dago had sustained when the bus on which he were then travelling into town braked sudden as it turned into Humberstone Gate.  Spanish Dave, who listed smoking among his no doubt several vices, had been, at the moment the bus pulled up, on the point of negotiating the stairs down from the top deck.  Well, he'd come down onto the platform a sight bleeding quicker than ever he thought he would and finished up in the Royal, where, by coincidence, he received care at the hands of Col Birchenall's staff nurse.  It were her filled us in on the details of what happened. 

Col's nurse looking after the Dago weren't the only coincidence neither, because there were somebody else missing from the classroom that day.  That somebody were one of Tyler's crew, a fat lad named Brian Banks, although, for obvious reasons, Gordon were what he more usually answered to.  Gordon always sat next to Tyler, a dubious honour given some of Tyler's personal habits, and it had been him who'd caused the bus carrying Spanish Dave to pull up so sharp because  the daft prat had tried to go across the Tower against the lights.  Nor were this the end of things as far as Gordon were concerned, for besides interrupting Spanish Dave's journey to school, he had to share the ambulance ride to hospital with him and all.  This owing to the fact that, though the bus had come to a halt before flattening Gordon more or less the same as some car had that pigeon Stevie reckoned he'd scraped up off the street, it only managed it within a hair's breadth of Gordon's red and green striped tie, which caused the lad to spill most of his breakfast down his blazer, and also drop a load in his trousers. 

When we heard of these goings on from Col's nurse, all she said were that Gordon had been sick and shit himself at more or less the same time, so he'd had to go to hospital along with the Dago just in case, though the ambulance blokes reckoned he played hell about it.  That's Gordon who played up, not the Dago, and you don't need much imagination to understand why neither. 

After Stevie got done with the story - well, he'd more or less fashioned a five-act play out of what might have been said in the back of that ambulance on the way to the Royal, and he had Gordon gobbing a three-course meal out in the middle of the roadway, the constituents of which was all readily identifiable: a bowl of Ready-Brek here, two slices of buttered toast liberally spread with CWS marmalade over there, a cup of Typhoo, milk and three sugars, a tangerine, seedless, peeled, an apple, not neither.  All of this plus the Milky Way and half a roll of Toffos Stevie said Gordon were scoffing while he shuffled towards his appointment with fate, or, as it happened, Spanish Dave's bus, though by the time Stevie were entertaining us in such fashion, Gordon were more generally known as Both-Ends Banksie. And Stevie?  Well, certain benefits fell Stevie's way due to what we all acknowledged was the effects of his supernatural manipulations, though some of these weren't immediately apparent. 

First off, his mojo business went through the roof, or it did until that particular obsession give way before a new craze not so easily satisfied with bits of off-cut, a knife, a bag of feathers and a tin of shoe polish.  He had by this time, however, established himself in the school as a man not to be meddled with, which done him good in every possible way.  He grew sidies when he could, took to carrying an umbrella, and wore a yellow waistcoat he picked up second-hand off the same stall in the market where he'd earlier equipped himself with both a record collection and an attitude to music, not to mention life itself.  Towards the end of his school career he gained yet more celebrity by telling the gaffer where to shove his offer of being a prefect.  And all of the above undertaken in a spirit far removed from that which had driven his idiosyncrasies in times previous.

Spanish Dave would have been proud, though that last little escapade with the gaffer come some time after the Dago had left the school to work in a Borstal, or so it was said, this embellishment coming, of course, from Stevie.  By that time, I also had gone to face life in a different arena, and me and Stevie was no longer so close as we once had been. In the months left to Spanish Dave as our teacher though, Stevie's relationship with him underwent certain changes, and these come to light a lot sooner than the ones I've just mentioned between Stevie and me.  Like I said, we did do the Dago's test in the end, and because it were late in coming we never got the results until the next term.  None of us done well, not even Mick Bassett, but Stevie really distinguished himself by getting note.  Normally such an outcome would have meant we all went home disabled, some more severely than others; but the fact is, Spanish Dave never put so much as a finger on any of us, not then he never, the same as he never put so much as a finger on Stevie neither, not then or ever after in his case.  In fact, Spanish Dave seemed to make a point of excusing Stevie's performance because when he give him back his paper he says, Not your day, MacNamara, was it?  Stevie never so much as opened his mouth. 

Of course, the cessation of violence on the part of Spanish Dave weren't permanent.  After the plaster and other wrappings all come off he did start clipping lads again, but it were merely a shadow of how it once had been because the hate weren't there no more, and what blows did fall come from the left hand, not the right.  Some said this were owing to continuing weakness in that wrist, though healed.  I held firm in the belief the weakness, its location and its cause might all be found elsewhere, and stood ready to argue the toss, but who really knew, and after Spanish Dave had passed into legend, which happened soon enough, who really cared, except perhaps for Stevie, and except perhaps for me?

The Homo! Homo! business from Tyler were another thing to finish not long after Spanish Dave took his fall.  This though were definitely not caused by mojos or ote else even remotely to do with the powers of darkness.  It were me.  I done what I'd said to Stevie I wouldn't do, and give What? Tyler a pasting.  I let him know he'd be due another and all if he didn't leave Stevie alone.  He got the message. Come to think of it, perhaps the fact that I did do the big prat after saying I wouldn't were magic of a sort.  The way I done him definitely were.  I mean to say, it felt like magic to me, or it did in the little while I were about it.    

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The Weather That Christmas

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The weather that Christmas, the Christmas Stevie Mac last saw Stella Oliver! So cold and dry to begin with, then snow, and afterwards black ice on the roads, fog.  He was back at home again of course, but only because their Carmel had made him come, paying his fare and packing him onto the bus, just the way she had at the end of the summer. Things were difficult at home.  His mother was being funny, not with him so much, although there was that, but with their Carmel, which was on account of that business in the summer when Carmel had answered her back, stuck up for Stevie.  And then there was what came afterwards.  They were speaking, his mother and his sister, but only when they had to and with a frostiness in everything.  His mother didn't know he'd been stopping with Carmel.  At least, he thought she didn't.  For what she knew, he'd been where he'd told her he would be: in London with his pal, the one she was none too fond of.

He had been in London.  It was just that he'd not stayed for as long as he'd said he would.  Instead, he got a bus from Victoria to Ipswich, where their Carmel was living then, and turned up on her doorstep unannounced.  "You might have rung," was the greeting he had off her, and, "we've people coming, you know, for the Christmas." She wouldn't turn her youngest out of her room for him, as she had in the summer when he was there, so he'd to make do with the sitting-room sofa.  The second night he couldn't sleep for the aching in his neck and sometime early in the morning he was sick into the wastepaper bin.  That day, because she could see he was poorly, Carmel allowed him upstairs to bed, although he was down on the sofa again that night, and two more after that, he was on the bus going home.  It was bitter cold.  The trees were stripped stark, and fields he'd seen furrowed in the autumn were frozen, brown and empty.

There was nothing for him to do at home besides sit over the fire with a book, and he'd not the money to go much about the town.  He'd thought to earn thirty or forty pounds in London working for the GPO the two weeks before Christmas, which would have seen him through the holidays handsome for a change.  The only thing was, he slept in one morning and when he got to the sorting office they finished him there and then, so he ended up with less than twenty. Fifteen of that went to his mother not long after he got inside the house. 

He had work to do for the university over the holidays, but it was difficult with his mother fussing all the time, talking to him.  Even though it was only two days before Christmas he took himself off to the Reference Library in the town, which was where he'd done the majority of his studying the last two years he was at school.  He got there not long after it opened. About the middle of the day, when he began to feel the want of something to eat, he walked across Town Hall Square to the cafe in the Corn Exchange, the one the market people used. The food there was cheap, there was a lot of it, and the coffee came boiling hot in big mugs.  For himself, he would rather have sat with a quarter-pounder and a salad at Kenco's in Granby Street. The first time Carmel was back from the States, when she'd stood him that meal in Kenco's, she said it was just like in America.  The menu read quarter-pounder instead of hamburger, and French-fries for chips.  The salads all had names that were unusual then: "garden salad" was one, and "green salad" was another.  It was just how they did things in the States, Carmel reckoned, except for the coffee.  They served the coffee black in Kenco's, in those little glass cups, and it cost about the same as a dinner at the other place.

On Christmas Eve, he studied in the library through the morning, took himself over to the Corn Exchange at midday, then went back to the library for another couple of hours.  At half-past three he put his stuff away.  He'd less than four pounds and some change in his pocket but had nothing yet for his mam's Christmas box.  No matter how things stood between them this Christmas, it was still Christmas.  He couldn't not give her something, though he'd no idea what four pounds might get, nor how he'd manage for the rest of the time once he'd got whatever it was.  He had hopes his own present that year might be cash, and not gloves or a pair of socks. 

The day was well gathered when he was out in it again, and cold enough to make him wish he'd a longer coat on him than he had, for the chill went right through his jeans.  He went back across Town Hall Square and along the little passage where the public lavatories were, to the top side of the market.  He thought he might find something on one of the knickknack stalls, or else a record she might want, second-hand.  She liked Jim Reeves, but when he looked there was nothing by him there. In the end, he decided on trying the "Irish". The Irish Linen and Men's Wear Company, in the Silver Arcade, in Leicester was where he'd looked every night when he was on his way home from school.  It was mainly men's wear they did, of course, which was why he'd spent so much time gazing in their windows. He'd seldom had money to buy anything until his last year, when he'd done the Saturday job, and then the year between school and university he was at Bolton's.

The shop still carried linen in a small way:  hankies, table cloths, serviettes.  He knew the lads serving, who were younger now than he was, would snigger when he asked, but it was getting on for five o'clock.  Some of the stalls in the market were already packing up, and the town shops would not, tonight, stop open beyond half-past.  He went straight in and came out again not much after with thirty shillings' worth of fancy handkerchiefs, wrapped up for Christmas with emerald-green tissue paper and ribbon. It was when he was outside and held in the crush, thinking would he go home on the bus or would he walk it, that someone spoke his name.  He didn't have to look to know it was Stella.

"Mr MacNamara", she called him, and her voice with such seeming mockery in it, he thought they might have a row there in the crowd.  When he answered her and she spoke again though, they did not.  "Just fancy," she said, "just fancy seeing you." She was close enough to him that he could lean forward with a kiss, which he always had done on meeting her and  which she allowed.  Her eyes seemed very bright and he hoped it was the cold and the lights from the shop windows made them so.  He hoped it was not tears.  He'd had enough of those, and, anyway, he knew he could not bear for her to cry, not in the street, not again.

She was in company with friends, the two girls from her school she'd come to work at Bolton's with the Easter he was there and had first met her.  He tried to remember their names and couldn't, so he smiled at them instead. They both looked straight through him. "Look," one of them began to Stella, "if you - you know -  we could meet you later.  Only Lewis's will shut soon." Stella sent them on, saying she would catch them up soon in the store or, failing that, ring them later.  After the briefest of leave-takings, she turned back to him.  Except for the crowd pushing all about them, he was alone with her for the first time in three months.

"Well," she said, and would have gone on except that she was jostled enough not to be able to. "Should we go somewhere?  To sit down, I mean.  We can't stand here." "No, we can't, can we?  I shall be knocked off my feet in a minute else, which is a poor second to being swept off them, wouldn't you say?  Where?" He'd enough left to manage the bill even should she want the full tea at Simpkin and James, though he hoped she wouldn't because that would leave him so short for the rest of the holidays.  Still, he turned the choice back to her, saying,  "You decide."

She smiled at him then, smiled properly, for the first time since she'd called to him and for the first time since a lot longer before that.  She said, "Well, there's such a choice, isn't there?  I mean, really?" He wondered was she being sarcastic, given where they were, the little town they'd both grown up in and were now, both of them, thoroughly grown out of.  He hoped it wasn't that.  He hoped it was what he thought it was: that they were standing so close to so many places where they'd been happy together.  They were jostled again.  It was the same every Christmas, the season of goodwill.

He said, "We should go - somewhere." And then he recklessly offered her the cafeteria at Simpkin and James, but added without thinking, without thinking of his pocket anyway, though he did add, "Or we could try the Jitty."  "Oh," she said, with the smile on her still, "I should love to go into the Jitty again.  I haven't, you know, not since - Will it be open, do you think?  Will they have a fire?" 

They turned and squeezed through the crowd together.  In Cank Street, where the passage was easier, she let him draw level with her and slipped her arm through his that he might better escort her the rest of the way.  There'd been no girl on his arm since the last time she had been the girl. The place they were going to was a little wine and spirits shop, with wooden booths and an open fire.  Properly, it was the Jetty Wine Lodge because it stood at the top end of the market place on a little passage called The Jetty, but everyone that knew it, knew it as The Jitty.  He'd never been in before the Christmas Eve he was working at Bolton's, when the shoe warehouse was still in the town.  He went with Shimmo and one of the old biddies they worked with then.  It had been her last day and Shimmo had thought to do something for her because no one else had, which was Shimmo all over.  She took them to the Jitty in preference to any of the town pubs. They were that filled, the drunks were falling out the doors and onto the pavement. 

Then, because he was studying German at night-school that year and was up the town late on Tuesdays, he started calling in at the Jitty with one or two others from the class before they got their buses home.  It was a quiet and cosy place, filled with old men and women early in the evening, more or less deserted later on.  He took Stella there the first time they went out together and although they weren't so very often there afterwards, it was somewhere they came to think of as special to them.  The two Christmases they had had together, they'd gone into the Jitty on Christmas Eve after shopping in the town, even though this Christmas Eve was the first time he would take her and she could, legally, drink.

It was open, and there was a fire, although that had been so well banked with wet slack it seemed to steam as much as it smoked, and it smoked more than it burned.  Stella went straight to where she had sat the first time with him, and where they sat then whenever they went in, on one of the settles by the fireplace.  When he asked her what she should like to drink, she said a ginger wine.  He brought it to her, with a glass of Jameson's for himself.  It was what he affected to drink then, although he had no real liking for the taste. The idea of himself drinking the stuff was what pleased him.

"Cheers then, Stevie!  Happy Christmas!" she said, toasting him, and then, when she'd sipped from her glass and swallowed the little she'd taken, she went on, "You know, I can't quite get over this.  Bumping into you, I mean.  You, of all people.  I assumed you'd be spending Christmas up in London with Michael and Sophie.  I only came home myself yesterday.  Whenever I was in Oxford Street, or round by Knightsbridge - not often on my grant, I can tell you - I looked out for you.  Did you get a start on the post up there?"

She called him Stevie, but he had begun to prefer Stephen. He told her about his start on the post in London, and about his finish on it as well, the morning he slept in.  It was only twenty minutes that he was late, but by the time he got to the sorting office they'd put another student on his round.  He was paid off well shy of what he'd been expecting, and the money he got was consequently lighter.

When he ended his story, Stella looked at her drink, then at her purse, and said, "Oh - Stevie, let me."  But he would not. She said, "Was that why you came home, then?  Because you were short of money?  You must miss London.  And that house Michael's parents have now - well, I mean.  But, pardon my saying so, didn't you find it awkward, I mean - "  She blushed, "I was going to say, did you not find it embarrassing, at times, being the gooseberry with Michael and Sophie?  Then, this is none of my business of course, not now, but then I suddenly thought perhaps you weren't the gooseberry, that perhaps you might have had somebody with you.  Someone else, I mean."

When he would not answer her, she blushed again and apologised for her presumption. "I just meant," she said, "well - I should have kept my thoughts to myself.  You know me though, Stevie. She took a  sip of her drink, �Blimey, that's strong!  You didn't slip a Mickey in here by any chance did you? " He began to be annoyed with her.  She was prying, and clowning to hide her embarrassment because she'd been inept about it.  It was what she did.  She was right in her first guessing though, because he had been the gooseberry.   He'd not had anyone with him in London, although for all of the time he was there had wished things otherwise.  He had the feeling for another now that once he'd thought he could only ever have for Stella.  There was a girl at the university he thought he might be in love with and who he thought, hoped, dreamed, might be in love with him.  It was the girl he'd been writing to on sheets of fancy paper that summer past, when he was breaking up with Stella without knowing that was what he was doing.

"How have you been, Stevie?" He thought she asked the question as if it was years since she'd seen him.  It was weeks.  He'd come back home in the September, all rushed and unwilling, to find a letter from Stella waiting for him.  There were some books of his she wanted to return, she said.  Perhaps they could meet, she said.  Perhaps he would telephone her. 

So he telephoned, using the same call-box he always used.  They met where they always met: at the corner of London Road and Evington Road, across from the big gates of the park, right next to where the old man stood selling the Mercury.   It was a glorious day, hot, more like midsummer than the end of September.  She wore the white dress he'd always liked her in.  They�d gone on into the town and had the full tea upstairs in Simpkins and James.  Afterwards, in the early evening, he walked her home, and left her house late without the books he'd been meant to collect.  The week following, she went up to London to begin her course at LAMDA; two or three days after that, he returned to university. 

It was weeks, not years.  His annoyance warmed, but he answered her anyway, ignoring the sense he had himself that his first courting of this girl had been an age ago and his parting from her, somehow, longer.  "I've been all right," he said.  He sipped from his own drink then, so as to avoid asking how she had been. "How is Michael?  He must enjoy being right in the middle of things after living out at - where was it?" "Barking." "That's it.  Barking.  Just like that song - do you remember? - The Belle of Barking Creek."

He remembered, but said nothing.  It made no difference to Stella. "Do you remember when we went to see him?  Oh God, your mother was so annoyed because we were going to London for the day.  I don't know what she thought we had in mind, what we might get up to.  Goodness!  So there was a right send off for you, wasn't there?  And then you had that big bag of books you wanted Michael to take back to the university for you.  You lugged it all the way along St Peter's Road to the station because it was early on a Sunday morning and there were no buses running.  Do you remember?  Then, when we got to London!  Do you remember?"

Of course he remembered.  It had been a disaster.  He'd only been in London a few times before: once, the first time, perhaps, when he was a very little boy, and then, a long while afterwards, with the school for trips to the theatre, museums, that sort of thing.  He'd dragged the books, and Stella, down into the Underground and got on the first train they saw. "We kept passing the same stations, didn't we?" She was laughing, "Because we were on the Circle Line." He hadn't realised there was more than one line.  He'd simply known it was possible to reach Barking by Tube. "Then, when we got the right train, it took hours and hours, or it seemed as if it did, and your face was set so grim because - "

Because he thought they would never get to Barking, or if they got there, would never get back in time to catch their train home.  Another thing he'd not known was that they could have taken an overgrown train, and got there in a quarter of the time it took the Tube. "And then -" she was laughing again, "when we did get there, and found the house, there was nobody at home!" She stopped laughing and instead smiled the smile he didn't want to think was lovely any more. "We were such innocents, weren't we?  So young, the pair of us.  Innocents abroad, really. Oh, it all seems an age ago really, doesn't it, Stevie?"

An age ago, she had been sixteen, just turned, and he had been a full four years older, come home again from his first term at university.  Now she was nineteen, just turned, he was in his final year and thinking he would try somewhere a lot farther off than London.  He might have said as much, but only asked her would she like another ginger wine. She started on about the Socialist Christian youth conference in Nottingham and seemed pleased when he said he was going.  She was going herself.  She said,  "I wouldn't miss it for anything?  Are you staying over the two days?"

He was not, and neither was Stella.  "I thought I might because it would be a chance to get to know people.  I know no one really, except you, and Michael, of course.  I don't know him very well.  I have met some of the people involved locally since I joined, but I've only just met them what with being based in London now.  In the end, I thought it was silly to stay because Nottingham is so close.  Anyway, I don't like leaving Mum by herself when I've not been back at home five minutes."

"You should have gone to meetings in London,� he said, almost accusingly.  �You know you would've been welcome.  Philip and Molly said they had expected to see you when I was staying with them.  Why didn't you?" "I don't know Michael's parents, for one thing, and I haven't had the time, really I haven't.  Honestly, this first term has been hectic.  I did think about it, but, well, you know, Stevie, how it is."

It came time for them to go.  He followed her out into the passageway.  In the dark, in the narrow space, they stood awkwardly.  He wanted to say that he would see her again sometime perhaps, by way of parting, but he could not. He would see her at the conference.  Neither did she speak. So they stood, without a word between them, and the first flakes of snow began to fall. One, two, they came, then faster, fast enough for him to see them settle on the shoulders of Stella's coat and on her hair.  She tilted her face towards the dark sky and the falling snow, and when she looked back at him there was snow on her cheeks, already melting.  She was smiling again. "Walk me home, Stevie," she said.  "Please?"

They both knew there was only one way for them to go: along the Walk, the tree-lined avenue that ran from the edge of the town to Victoria Park.  It was how they'd gone back to Stella's home the first time they went been out together.  Then, the leaves of the chestnut trees that lined the Walk had been spread out above them, so green in the light of the street lamps and the April evening.  Halfway along, as they went by the museum, his hand had brushed hers and, though he would have brought it back towards him, she caught him by his fingers.  She had held him so tightly, her touch made him brave enough to return the pressure.  There was a time then when it seemed they never would let each other go, not ever.  But that Christmas Eve spring and green leaves were a memory just.  Stella had taken his arm again as they came out of the Jetty, but she let him go to pass between the bollards at the top of the Ride, and he kept his distance from her after that.

The snow fell thickly all the while they were walking and it was still falling when Stella unlatched the gate to the little garden that fronted her mother's house.  He hung back, not wanting to follow her further. "Won't you come in, Stevie?" she said.  "You know Mum would like to see you." "No, I - I should be getting home.  It's Christmas Eve and - well, you know how things are." "Yes, but -"

Stella knew.  The first Christmas they were together, she had stayed with his mother and him through the holiday.  He called for her at seven o'clock on the Christmas Eve, and they left for his house a little before nine.  Her own mother was alone until the day after Boxing Day and, although everything had been agreed beforehand, there was a scene when Stella got home.  Yet she had endured the shouting, and her own sadness at having left her mother lonely. Then, it was the following autumn perhaps, when she had fallen into the way of visiting his mother on Saturday afternoons whilst he was away at the university, there had been another visitor to the house, a friend of Mrs Mac's.  They sat together talking, the old women, with Stella quiet between them, when his mother started on about the Christmas and how she had sat alone on Christmas Eve.  "All on me little owney-o" she said.  "'All by myself in the moonlight'" 

"- Mum would love to see you. She would really.  Please, Stevie?" He followed her down the path.  In the garden, the rose bushes wore caps of snow; the little lawn was all but vanished underneath all that whiteness. Stella opened the door with her key. Inside the familiar hallway, she shouted, "Mum, I've a snowman out here would like a word with you!"

He helped her off with her coat, and she turned to face him. They'd used to kiss in the dark there in that hall.  Of all the spaces where they'd loved each other, it had been the most private they could find and the kindest.  He couldn't forget, and for a moment he nearly let himself hold her to him again.  But the door to the sitting-room opened, the ceiling light came on, and Stella's mother was there with them, as she had never thought to be before, acting out as if she was giving him what for because he'd stopped away so long, though not for the hurt he had done to her daughter.  He was ungrateful for the consideration.  He couldn't think beyond his having let Stella bring him home with her again.

On the sofa, in front of the fire, it was all as if nothing had changed, except for what he had inside himself, shut away from warming things.  Certainly Stella carried on as if nothing was any different.  She sat close to him.  She touched him on his arm, his hand, his knee. She tousled his hair.  He knew what she was thinking and why: she thought he could be hers again, because it was Christmas Eve, because of the snow.  He knew that as much as he knew he never would be.

His lateness was left unexplained when he got home and he said not a word about his having fixed to travel to the Nottingham conference with Stella the day after Boxing Day.  All he told his mother was that the snow had stopped, but what had fallen seemed likely to freeze and lie. In the summer previous, his mother had supposed that Stella was in trouble, and that, when she came to speak to their Carmel about it, was what caused the row between them.  Carmel's children had been staying with their grandmother for a week, and Carmel had come for a few days as well, before taking them back to Ipswich.

Stevie was in London then, having found no work at home in the three weeks he'd stayed to look.  The decision to go was made after his pal Michael's father sent word that he could get something for him there.  Stella agreed.  She agreed she should come to see him from time to time, but he hadn't been gone a fortnight when she telephoned to say she'd had enough and wanted to end things between them.

He told no one, only Carmel, and so, when his mother started on about Stella and the certain reason for her not coming to the house in so long a while, Carmel said that was all a nonsense, and anyway, it was all finished between Stella and her brother. "It's finished," she said, "and you've no cause to worry neither." But still her mother went on, "All the studying he's done. If she's got my boy into difficulties - " Carmel said again it was finished.  She shouted it even, and that for the first time in her life. The days remaining for his sister at home passed easily enough, or so she thought.  When she and the children left, nothing was said.  The week following, a parcel of the children's clothes came in the post, things that had wanted laundered, and with it was a note saying her mother was all set to do away with herself.

Then there was such a to-do.  Carmel straightway telephoned to May Louise, the eldest sister, and the one who lived the closest to their mam.  She telephoned their mam�s doctor.  She telephoned the police.  She telephoned Stevie in London and said for him to go home at once.  He would not go.  When he did, at the end of the summer, not long before he was due back at the university, he went by way of Ipswich.  He wanted to see Carmel, to try to end the sourness between them.  Of course, his mother was waiting for him at home, as if nothing had ever happened.

He travelled to Nottingham with Stella by car.  There were local people she knew going to the conference, and two of them, a young married couple, had offered her a lift.  She telephoned them on Christmas Eve to see about another seat. It was a new car and rather luxurious, although Stevie took little comfort from any of that during the journey.  Stella talked the whole of the way, and it was all "Stevie and I" and "Didn't we though, Stevie?" and, once or twice even, "Won't we, Stevie?".

They got to the hall where the conference was and he straightway abandoned her,  going to the front row of chairs where Michael and Sophie and Michael's parents were.  was left at the back somewhere.  He didn't meet with Stella again until the lunch-break, ehen she set herself among the group he was with in the foyer.  Michael's parents asked would she not join them for something to eat and after she said, yes, that would be lovely, she took hold of his arm on the way to the restaurant.  The quizzing looks Stevie got from Michael and from Michael�s mother he met blank-faced.

And in the afternoon, the fog that had hung about the hedgerows all through that morning's journey, rolled out across the icy roads.  Stella's friends, when they saw how the weather had turned, apologised but said the drive back in such conditions would be too much.  They found a hotel room for themselves.  They offered one for Stella, and for her friend as well, if it was wanted.  It wasn�t. "We'll get a train," she said. "Won't we, Stevie?" He hoped he had enough for the fare. 

At six o'clock, when the last session of the day was ended, they went together to the station through thick fog.  The train was almost empty, and they used the compartment they had to themselves to quarrel in. He said their love, though he never used the word, had just been something between them when they were young.  It was finished now.  Why couldn't she accept the situation?  Why was she trying to change the way things stood between them?  She was crying when she told him.

"The way things stand between us isn't right, and you know it.  I want us to be together again.  I want you to love me again.  I want you to say you love me again because I know you do.  You only have to say it.  It's stubbornness that you don't.  And pride." She kept going on, just sometimes giving way to her feelings altogether.  Once or twice, when the guard or another traveller went by them, she lowered her face so as not to show that she was distressed. In the end, he got rid of what had been inside him all the while since the summer. He said, "You finished with me, remember?"

There was only the train's noise after that, and their reflections, across from each other, in the poor mirrors the carriage windows made, as if the train was running through a long, long tunnel.  He thought of all the other times they had made this journey home, when they had sat together, not apart, but he strangled the memories. The train slowed almost to a stop as it approached the London Road station in Leicester. When Stella stood to button her coat, she said, "You're right. I did tell you we were finished.  It was what you wanted to tell me, only you hadn't the guts."

Outside the station the fog was that thick they could see barely a yard in front of them.  There were few cars on the road and, though they waited, no buses appeared.  He knew Stella would not ask what she had asked when the first flakes of snow had fallen on them three days before, but a part of their two ways home lay in the same direction and so they set off together.  They could have gone along the Walk, as they had on Christmas Eve and so often before that, but not this night. This night they followed the main road that ran parallel with it, and when they came to the park, the one thing clear to them both was that they would take their parting there. 

He could never remember afterwards what she said to him then, other than that she said goodbye.  What he said was that he would not go to Nottingham for the second day of the conference.  He told her it was the cost of the train fare.  If she thought he was lying, she didn�t say anything about it. She didn�t say anything at all.  They stood together without talking for some little while longer before Stella turned to go.  He watched her disappear into the fog.  He listened to the sound of her shoes on the treacherous pavement and felt little for her leaving beyond a sense of somehow having been let off lightly for something - some misdeed or other that he could no longer well remember.  That was all.  When the last sound of her going away had faded he set off to walk his own road home.         

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The Lost World

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Tim had a feeling it was going to be a special year for Leicester City from well before the season started, and although they didn't do much in the first game there was still something about the way they knocked the ball around even when they were losing two-nothing that said this was not how things would be for very long.  It was like a promise made him by the shine of the new grass out on the pitch or the way the chalk-dust puffed up off the by-line and floated in the sunlight of the September afternoon that time Fludie went round the opposition's big left-back. 

When Tim got in home that night after saying traa to their Tony, everything he looked at in the house seemed different, though he knew it couldn't be.  His mam was stood in the kitchen seeing to the tea just the same as usual on a Saturday, and the tea she was seeing to was more or less what they always had then: a good tea with hazlet and a pork pie and cheese, and a nice  bit of cake from a shop up town to follow.  Yet when Tim brought his mam's evening paper through from the front, he looked and it was as if he'd never seen the table laid that way before, with his grandma Nolan's best linen cloth on it, and the good china and that set of knives and forks his mam had got at the seaside two summers previous when she came up on the bingo.  And then, when his mam said what she always said whenever he got back from a match, which  was, Well, how did they get on?  Tim told her they'd lost, but what he didn't say, what he kept all to himself, was that this time losing didn't matter.

It didn't matter.  It didn't matter because the next game, which was away to Fulham, City won, and then they won their next home match as well.  That was on a Wednesday night only Tim wasn't let go because he'd not long started at the grammar school and there was home work to do at night now.  He had to content himself with reading about the match in the Chronicle the next day, but then as well, Tony and Cath always came round for a bath on a Thursday night, so Tim got what details the paper had left out from his brother. 

The next three matches were all draws, and then there was a home game lost to Tottenham four-three, after the City had been two-nothing up at half-time.  Thrown away, Tony said on the bus going home, and he was right, though this only made Tim surer that it was going to be a special year because the City had thrown the game away.  Tottenham hadn't so much won the match as had it given to them by a side that, in the first half, had made the Spurs look ordinary and then, after the break,  more or less decided to stop playing. 

There were more defeats after Tottenham, and a lot of the men who regularly stood round Tim and his brother on the Popular side of the ground started grumbling about how it was the same old story with City season after season.  How they never had been any good, and never would be, never would be.  Tim listened to this kind of talk because being just a lad he couldn't do otherwise, but he didn't believe it.  What Tim believed were the signs, and the signs were good as far as he was concerned.   

A lot of things had changed for Tim since he'd passed his eleven-plus, and he felt himself changed as well.  Those last weeks of the summer holiday before he started his new school, he'd fetched most of his toys from the cubby-hole under the stairs where they were kept and either put them out for the binmen or given them away because he had reasoned that it was the right time for him to do something like that.  Another thing was that he'd got his mam to cancel all his comics. 

There'd been a different comic for him every day of the week except Saturdays and Sundays ever since he'd been little, but now he said he wanted just the one, Conqueror.  It came out on a Monday and was a lot more grown-up than what he'd been used to because it didn't have pictures, or not many.  There was a free gift inside the first copy Tim ordered, a set of cards giving the names and insignia of all the clubs in the English football league, as well as tables for the four divisions.  The idea was to slot the club cards into the league tables every week and so follow the progress or otherwise of each team.  Somehow or other, when Tim had opened the comic to see what was what that first week, there was the card for the City stuck in the slot right at the top of the First Division, with Manchester second and Preston third.  That was the first sign. 

The second came about a week afterwards when Tim went into Cole's Candy Cabin all set on treating himself to some Blackjacks but came out with a packet of bubble gum he'd bought instead because of what it said on the wrapper: Free Inside Every Packet - A Full-Colour Photograph Of One Of Football's Favourite Teams.  When he'd got the packet undone, Tim had stared in disbelief for there they were again, Leicester City, only this time it was the players themselves, staring straight back at him from the picture and,  underneath, were all the familiar names: Back row - A. Gee, K. Gammidge, C. Desborough, R. Flude, R. Watson, M. Prime, L. Giddings.  Front row - P. Chalmers (coach), T. Smith, S. Crewe, D. Green, L. Wragg, Mr J. H. Robertson (manager). 

On the back of the card, under the heading Hard Luck Heroes, it said, Known as the Blues to their fans, the club was founded in 1884 and joined the Football League three years later.  They have been Division II champions four times.  In the 1930-31 season the Blues missed the League Championship by just one point.  They have reached the Cup Final on three occasions, losing each time by a single goal.

Underneath this, at the bottom of the card, there was a drawing of a referee with a bubble coming out his mouth, as if he was talking.  Inside the bubble it said, Watch this team. They could be the surprise of the season.  Well, it was only the old men called City the Blues any more. Tim called them the City just the same as Tony did, but apart from that the card had everything straight - surprise of the season.

The last Saturday in November City were at home to Aston Villa. Games against the Villa were always good because, both being Midland's teams, there was all the excitement of local rivalry and it was sharpened this season by the fact that Villa had ended a promising run in the FA Cup for the City the year previous when they'd beaten them by a single goal, a disputed penalty, in the sixth round. 

All through that Saturday morning, whenever Tim thought about the match he got a funny feeling in his stomach.  It was the same feeling he got when he had to see the dentist.  It was the sort of feeling he'd had all the first week he went to his new school.  It was there because Tim knew, he just knew, that today would be the day the signs would be proved right or wrong.  He couldn't say how he knew this, he just did and the feeling got stronger every time he looked at his Conqueror league table for Division One.  The Villa were in fifth place in the League, with City six places and nine points below them.

All the talk at the last home match, which had been another draw, was that City had no chance against the Villa, especially since the Birmingham club had not long signed a new inside forward from Aberdeen, a little fellow by the name of Malcolm, who the papers were already calling The Cheeky Chappie.  He'd only played three games in England so far, but had scored in every one and he'd got a hat-trick mid-week against Blackpool.  The men who stood around Tim and his brother kept going on and on about how the result of the game against Aston Villa wasn't so much a matter of who would win, but more how many the Villa would win by.  Tim said nothing as usual, but he thought differently because he still kept faith with the signs.

There was another reason for Tim's nervousness that Saturday,  which had nothing to do with the outcome of the game against Villa.  He was going to watch it all by himself, or he was going to make the journey to the ground all by himself.  Once he got there he was meeting up with some of his new pals from school and they were all going into the Spion Kop end to stand behind the goal.  Usually, of course, when Tim went to watch City, he went with Tony.  Tony would collect him from their mam's straight from work, and then the two brothers walked up the street and round the corner to Findlay's Garage.  Mr. Findlay put a coach on every Saturday for City's games, home or away, and for home games the cost of the journey was no more than it would have been on the corporation bus.

Today though, Tim had to get the bus into town and walk from there to the City's ground.  He could still have gone with Tony as far as the turnstiles but he didn't want to.  He thought the world of his brother, but for some reason he couldn't properly understand, he didn't want his friends from the grammar school to see Tony. He wanted to turn up on his own.  It had been very hard for his mam to understand that, but Tony had understood and that was what persuaded their mam in the end.  Tony had even slipped Tim the extra shilling it would cost him to get in, and Tim had nearly cried when he'd done that but thought all the same that it was just Tony all over.

The game against Villa finished up a draw, three all.  But what a match!  Villa were ahead by two goals at half-time and it could have been more because they'd run rings round the City right from the kick-off.  Malcolm, the little Scotch inside-forward, got the second goal from a corner, and Tim had never seen anything like it because the fellow had been standing with his back to the net when the ball came over to him and instead of turning to head it, which would have been difficult enough in itself, he'd somehow or other done a backwards somersault, volleyed the ball with his right foot when he was upside down in the air and scored.  Rob Watson, the City's goalie, had just stood there looking gone out.

At half-time, Tim heard a young chap about Tony's age say to his mates how he'd read in Football Monthly that what Malcolm had done when he scored was called a bicycle kick, and it was a trick the Italians and the South Americans were fond of.  Then somebody else, somebody older, commented that if such was the case then Malcolm should go off to play with the Eyeties the same as John Charles had, because that sort of thing wasn't wanted in English football.  There was quite an altercation then, and Tim wished he was with his brother because the younger man and his mates were dressed like Teds so Tim thought there might be trouble, though in the end there wasn't.

City scored about five minutes after the game got going again.  This goal came from a corner as well, when Wraggie, the City centre-half and captain, headed in from Prime's cross.  For the next fifteen minutes, City were all over the Villa.  There were three more corners, and twice the ball hit the crossbar from shots by Green and big Desi Desborough, City's centre-forward.  The crowd went mad, and Tim's pals started shouting and jumping up and down and going as mad as everybody else. It seemed it was just Tim who stood quietly there, and he was quiet because he was thinking about what was written in the bubble that came out of the ref's mouth on the card he had in his trouser pocket: Watch this team. They could be the surprise of the season.  Oh yes, Tim thought, they could indeed.

Then, right against the run of things, Malcolm, the Villa inside-forward, the one the papers were calling The Cheeky Chappie, got another goal and it was as brilliant in its own way as the one he'd scored before.  He took the ball off Smith in his own half, went past Gee, left Giddings sitting on his backside in the muck, and when Watson came tearing out of his goal, stopped as if to have a little think about things.  When he was done, he lifted the ball, as calm as calm could be, straight over Watson's head, so high it looked like it could never go in the net, not in a million years, but it did. 

Three-one, and with most teams that would have been it.  With City, most weeks, that would have been it, but not this week.  The crowd thought it was finished, and a good few  even started to leave, pushing their way through to the exits.  Some of the City's players thought it was finished as well, Tim could tell by the way they dropped their heads, but Wraggie was one who didn't.  He fetched the ball out of the net for the re-start, and then he gave Smithie a right mouthful for having lost it in the first place.  When he got to the centre-circle he started on the forwards, particularly Desborough and Gammidge, and he slapped the ball down on the spot for the kick-off.  Tim didn't know what was being said out there on the pitch, but whatever it was it worked because Desborough tapped the ball to Gammidge, Gammidge hit a long pass more or less square to Flude, Fludie went hell for leather along the touch-line for the corner flag, turned inside past two Villa defenders, put the ball through to Desborough and Desi smashed it straight past the goalie into the net. 

When City scored that goal the young fellow who'd been talking earlier about bicycle kicks turned to his mates and drew his finger through the air to make the shape of a heart pierced by an arrow.  Desi-Flude Production, he said in a Yank accent, just like on television at the end of I Love Lucy. But it was too soon for that in a way because it wasn't the end of the game.  The goal had really put the City players' tails up, not to mention their heads.  Tony said that the next afternoon when him and Cath came round for their teas, and he was right.  The City were doing all the attacking now and Tim felt sure they would score again, which they did.  Wraggie hit one of his specials from just inside the Villa half.  Nine times out of ten nothing would have come of it, but that afternoon, after the City had scored that second goal, they could do no wrong.  They knew it, the crowd knew it and so did the Villa players.  The ball from Wraggie flew up the field straight into Villa's penalty area. 

The goalie started for it, but he must have thought his centre-half would take care of things because he pulled up sharp about a yard off his line.  The centre-half had been going for the ball, but seeing the 'keeper move he obviously had second thoughts himself and the result was a hole in the Villa defense that Wraggie's shot went all the way through.  It hit the ground once, bounced, and flew from the bounce straight into the back of the net.  Of course, the crowd started going mad again and shouting for a winner, but less than a minute after the game had re-started, the referee blew for time. On the way back into town some of Tim's pals were saying how disappointed they were City hadn't managed both points, but Tim knew the promise of the autumn had been fulfilled and knowing that was worth more than the extra point any day of the week.

Tim talked that much and that well about the Villa game the next time he was having his hair cut, Gordon, the barber him and Tony went to, turned down the sound on Saturday Bandbox so he could listen properly.  He turned it back up when Tony got in the chair, and Tim was glad he did.  There was a commentary on the second half of a match just starting on the wireless, West Ham against Burnley, and Tim had his face in The Daily Mirror as well, but all the same, he could still manage to take in everything Tony was saying to Gordon about him, about how he'd behaved since their dad had passed away.   What Tony said was,  I don't know how Mam would have managed without him since Dad went, because he's been a real little brick for her he has, a real little brick. Tim's eyes started pricking him then nearly as bad as the back of his neck, and he was ever so glad Gordon pulled his leg about charging him the full price next time because it meant he could laugh when Tony laughed, and the laughing helped him get out of the shop without spoiling everything.

The weather turned really bitter that winter [The winter of 62-63]. There was a sprinkling of snow the Saturday Tim nearly cried in the barbers, and then again the following Monday.  In the second week of December it snowed heavily two or three times and then froze so that there was snow still lying on the streets at Christmas, though what was left was so dirty by then it was hardly right to go on about it being a white Christmas as some did.  Tim and his mam went round to Tony and Cath's for their dinner that year, and stopped Christmas night and Boxing Day as well.  Tim's mam said what a lovely little home Cath had made for Tony, and she kept on at Tony about how lucky he was to have found such a lovely girl.  All Tony would do was go, I know, I know,  but then he'd look at Cath as much as if to say that yes, he really did know and wasn't just talking to please his mother. 

On the Boxing Day afternoon the brothers went off to see City play, leaving Cath and their mam settled in front of a roaring fire, with a box of chocolates and a bottle of sherry for them to share while they chatted and sewed and listened to the wireless.  Tony and Cath had not long been married, and Tony only finished his National Service just before the wedding, so although they did have a nice little house, two streets away from where Tony's mam lived with Tim, they couldn't run to things like television sets just yet.  The wireless was a little portable Cath had saved up for and bought when Tony was in the army.  She always said she'd got got it so as to have a bit of company in the evenings while Tony was away. 

The terraces were very cold that day, and although Tim had been disappointed when he unwrapped his big Christmas present to find the duffle-coat his mam had got him off a stall in the market, he was glad enough of it then and watched the game with the hood up to stop his ears getting chapped.  City won the game, and won the next one away as well.  In fact, they hadn't lost a match since the draw against Aston Villa, and the full set of points they got from the holiday fixtures meant that, once Tim got back in his own house and sorted out his Conqueror league table, he was able to put the City into sixth place in the First Division, while Villa dropped two places below them.

It continued nasty right through January and February, so much so Tim's mam kept a paraffin lamp going day and night in the lavatory out the back to stop the pipes freezing up. The lamp made things quite cosy, and if Tim had memory work set for French or for Latin the next day he took to doing it in the lavvy because he could see to read in the lamplight, and he didn't have the distraction of the telly to contend with.  It was still cold, but not so cold as his bedroom, and not that much colder than the living-room what with the little fires they had then.  Coal had become nigh impossible to get hold of because the tips were frozen solid, and Ben Chapel, the man Tim's mam ordered from, wouldn't risk his horse on the roads in such conditions for the few sacks he did have to sell. 

One Sunday, Tim and Tony were out in their mam's coal-place from morning till night, riddling slack and then mixing up a slurry of coal-dust, wood shavings and flour paste to make briquettes.  The next weekend, Tony was able to let his mam have half of a load of wood he'd got his hands on from somewhere or other, and it burnt quite well mixed with the briquettes, though there was still nowhere near the heat that came from a proper fire. The days Tim's mam went out to her little job there was no fire lit at all, not until she got in home again at four, and the room never seemed to get warm afterwards.  When Tim came home for his dinner then, he'd eat it standing in the kitchen, with his duffle-coat on and the gas ring kept burning.  Once he went back to school without shutting off the gas and got what-for from his mam that night.  She said in future he would have to make do with a cold dinner two days a week, but Tony must have heard about it and told Cath, because she insisted Tim go round to her for a proper hot meal on Wednesdays and Fridays. 

It was just Tim and Cath at the table then because Tony couldn't get home from his work at midday.  He was a turner at Price and Taylor's, and the firm had not that long before put everybody on piece rate.  A lot of the older men did still go home at dinner-time, but young chaps like Tony preferred to keep their lathes running and make do with a sandwich and  swigs of tea from a flask. Tim thought the world of Cath, just the same as he did of Tony, or nearly the same.  It was different in some ways what he felt about Cath.  Sometimes, Tim didn't know why, but sometimes, if Cath spoke to him or looked at him, he'd start to feel himself going all red in front of her, not because what she'd said or how she'd looked at him wasn't nice, Cath was never anything other than nice, but just because.  She did tease him occasionally.  She'd tell him his ears were burning, which he didn't need telling, and then she'd say someone must be talking about him. right's your mother, left's your lover, she'd go and make him blush all the more.

Once, Tim had been up town to the pictures on his own with Cath.  Tony was to have gone with them only he had to work overtime at the last minute.  He dashed home on his bike to let Cath know just before her and Tim were ready to set off.  They'd been wondering where Tony had got to.  In fact, Cath had said she was getting quite worried in case something had happened.  Then, when Tony did come, she stopped worrying about him, but Tim could see she was ever so disappointed.  Tony told her how sorry he was and Cath said that, really, it was a bit too much.  Tony had started kissing Cath when she said that, acting soft so as to get round her, even though Tim was there.  Cath told Tony to stop it because he was in his work clothes and he smelt all oily, but she didn't sound angry or anything like that and they all went out the front door together in the end. Tony left Cath and Tim waiting to get the bus up town, and Cath did seem a bit happier than she had done when Tony first said he couldn't go with them, but later on, after the film, when Tim and her were having a bit of supper in Manzoni's, Cath had been talking about how her and Tony used to always end up there when they were courting, after the pictures or before going on to a dance at the Pally.  She'd been talking to Tim quite all right, and then, all of a sudden, the tears had started rolling down her cheeks and she'd had to excuse herself while she ran off to the Ladies

It was after this that Tim started feeling uncomfortable being on his own with Cath, and blushing sometimes when she spoke to him.  That winter when it was so cold and he went round to her for his dinner on Wednesdays and Fridays,  he sometimes couldn't manage what was put in front of him because he felt that shy and awkward, though still he thought the world of her. The bad weather meant a lot more than frozen pipes and poor fires.  It meant match after match in the Football League being called off because the pitches were that hard it would have been dangerous to play on them.  Some Saturdays there were less than a dozen fixtures went ahead in the whole of England and it was even worse up in Scotland, where, according to the newspapers, they had arctic conditions.  One team that did manage to keep playing, or managed it when they were at home, were City.  The club had laid out a lot of money the year before on special equipment to protect the pitch from bad weather, money that some, including Laurie Andrews, the sportswriter for the Chronicle, said would have been better used buying new players. 

Tim didn't properly understand how this equipment worked, but that winter it proved worth its weight in gold because City played every one of their home games, and won every one as well.  They even won on the few occasions they were able to travel to matches at other grounds.  The papers, not just the Chronicle but big papers like the Mirror and the Express, were full of the City, though even Tim had to admit it was partly because not many other clubs were playing.  Tim started cutting out the match reports from the Sunday papers, which had headlines such as Wraggie's Winter Wizards or Snow Or No, City Win Again, and Tony let him have a story from the Sketch all about how City's approach to the game, on and off the pitch, was something other clubs ought to be thinking about because it was modern and go-ahead.  The story said City would win something that year, or they would if there was any justice in the world, and they would go on to play in Europe the next season as worthy representatives of a modern, go-ahead Britain.         

Everybody thought Leicester would win something that year, not just the writer in the Sketch.  Because they were playing a lot more than the other clubs, they were winning, and because they were winning they were piling up the points.  They went to the top of the First Division in the first week of February, and they were still there in late March when the weather at last began to turn milder.  Of course, the clubs below them had games in hand, but these were matches still to be won whereas the City's points were already taken. The pressure was all on the other teams, and Tony reckoned the League Championship was already more or less settled.  There was even talk about a League and FA Cup "double" for City because they'd cruised through the third, fourth and fifth rounds of the competition.  It was true they had to play Bolton in the sixth round and Bolton were a very good side, but City were at home again and they hadn't dropped so much as point at home since the draw against Aston Villa back in November.  In the end, City went through to the semi-finals quite easily, knocking in three goals without reply in the first half, and would have scored more in the second except the Bolton goalie came out after the break and played a blinder. 

The draw for the semi-finals was broadcast on the wireless and Tim's mam let him listen to it when he got in home for his dinner that day.  Ordinarily, she liked to watch Lunchbox when she could during the week, because she was big fan of Noelle Gordon's, but she knew how much the football meant to Tim so she didn't mind missing the start of her programme for once if it made him happy.  But perhaps happy was not quite the right word for Tim as he sat and listened, particularly so as the weakest team left in the competition came out of the bag first and City's name was not the one called next.  Tim had no need to be told what that meant; it meant West Ham.  He said to his mam she could turn the wireless off as soon as he heard the first pairing, and he was that quiet eating his dinner she felt certain he must be sickening for something again.  She wondered what it would be this time. 

In fact, it was not because he felt poorly that Tim was so quiet, but an altogether other sort of a feeling. Right the way through the Cup run, ever since the Third Round back in January, Tim had waited for the draw each time wondering two things: who the City would play and where.  As it happened  City had been very fortunate because they'd been at home in each round, and Tim had shared in that fortune because every game he'd been there to watch.  With the semi-finals though, there were no home games.  The matches had to be played on neutral grounds and all four teams had to travel. 

Tim never had seen the City play away from home, not even in an ordinary league game.  It cost a lot to travel down to London or to somewhere up north, but money was only part of the reason Tim always stopped at home on alternate Saturday afternoons in the season, or else sat round at Gordon's having his hair trimmed.  When Tim started watching the City, when he was little, he went with his dad and his dad worked on Saturday mornings.  After his dad passed away and Tim began going with Tony, it was more or less the same thing because Tony had to work on Saturday mornings as well.  Of course, Tim went to games with his pals now, and some of them had been talking about travelling to the semi-final before they even knew who the City would play or where.  The one thing Tim knew was that he would never be let go, never, not with his pals, so his quietness that Monday had to do with the fact that he knew, no matter who City played, he would not be able to see the game, and it would be just the same for the Final, when they got there.

When was the word as far as Tim was concerned, because he kept hold on what he had believed about City that year ever since the first home game back in the autumn.  The "double" was still just about on, although City did seem to have lost their way in the League a little bit since the weather had warmed up.  Tim didn't know if his team could win both competitions because no team ever had before, but he did know they would win something.  He was as sure about that as he was about anything, as he was about his mam being his mam, or his brother being his brother, though as happened, it was his brother who proved Tim wrong in one of his beliefs at least.

The Thursday night before the semi-final match, when Tony and Cath came round for their baths, Tony had a surprise for Tim.  He gave him a ticket for the game, saying it was a present from one of the gaffers at work who was on the City's board of directors.  Tony said how this Mr Lukin had sent word round that the shop would shut for the half-day on the Saturday of the semi-final, and there were fifty match tickets ready and waiting in the Wages Office for any of the men as might want them, one ticket to a man, first come first served.  Their mam's immediate concern was for the money Tony would lose through not working that Saturday morning, but Tony said he'd enquired, of course he had, all the men had, and apparently nobody would find their packets light come next payday.

Tim heard none of this, and none of how Tony came by another ticket so that the brothers could go to the match together, nor that they would go with three pals of Tony's, in a car, not on the bus or on the train.  Tim was deaf, and he was dumb and he was as good as blind as well because it was as much as he could do to take in just what the ticket he held so tightly in his hand meant. Tony kept on talking to his mam.  She wanted to know just who these pals they were going with might be, and which one of them would be driving, and where would a lad of that age get a car from, never mind know how to drive one.  Cath came out from the kitchen after she'd finished having her bath and Tony and his mam were still talking away.  Tim just sat there on the rug in front of the fire holding his ticket for the football, and Cath went to sit by him to dry her hair. 

Tim was very uncomfortable in the car going to the match because he had to sit on a cushion on the floor in between Tony's legs.  So he was glad when they stopped at a transport cafe, less for what they had to eat and drink there than the fact that he could get out to stretch his legs, and he was gladder still when he could get out of the car and stay out of it for the rest of the afternoon.  Tim didn't like the car, and he didn't like the idea of having to go home in it again after the match because it was so cramped for him, but more than that because he didn't like being in the car with Tony's pals.

He knew Aidie Fernwood and didn't like him, but Jacko, who was the driver, and the other one, Pog, weren't from round Tim's way at all.  Tony had palled up with them at work.  They were different from Tony's army mates, the soldiers who'd come for the wedding and slept on the upstairs' landing some of them, and in the front room on the settee or in the big armchairs.  These three looked like real Teds what with their Tony Curtis hairstyles and their drainies. The one called Jacko had on a red drape coat with a velvet collar as well, and Tim knew his mam never would have let him go had she seen who he was going with.  She'd never liked Aidie Fernwood, and Tim remembered her saying when Tony went in the army that, if nothing else, the eighteen months away from home would be eighteen months away from Fernwood as well.  But his mam hadn't seen who Tim was going with, because Tony had come round to collect him, and then they'd stood up at the top of Wood Hill waiting for the car. 

Tim started going on to Tony as they walked from where the car was parked to the game about why couldn't they go home on the train afterwards, just the two of them. Tony told him to be quiet, and one of these new pals of Tony's, it was Jacko, chipped in by saying he'd thought Tony was bringing his little brother along not his baby sister.  Tim did shut up then, though he hated Tony's pal for speaking about him that way.  He hated him for what he'd said, and how he'd said it, and he hated him and the other two for calling Tony 'Nolls' instead of Tony or else Nolan, like the soldiers had.  He even hated Tony a little bit for having brought him in such company, and for not sticking up for him more when similar comments had been passed earlier on in the day. 

It was better once they got inside the ground.  Tony's pals wanted to stand right at the back, but Tim had no view at all from there so Tony took him down to the front and put him up on the wall with a lot of other kids.  Though Tony didn't seem very happy, Tim was glad to be on his own with his brother again, and that, together with the size and strangeness of the ground, the excitement of all the people in the stands and out on the terraces, the band marching back and forth across the middle of the field, more or less worked to make him forget the memory of the journey there and the prospect of the journey home.  More or less, though not altogether. The West Ham supporters were singing I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles, and although when the army band was facing him, Tim could hardly hear the song, each time the soldiers turned away towards the other side of the ground the words would come rolling across the pitch, just like waves washing over a sandcastle when the tide turned at the end of day's outing to the seaside and it was time for home. 

Tim wished there was a song for the City crowd to sing but there wasn't, there was just the call, City! City! City, City, City!, some of the regulars in the Spion Kop had started not long after Christmas when the team had really begun to look as if they might do something.  He could hear it now, very faint beneath the music and the singing from the West Ham crowd.  The chant sounded stupid this afternoon so that Tim wished whoever was doing it would just stop because having to listen to it made him feel embarrassed.  It was embarrassing, and Tim wondered if the way he felt about the City supporters trying to outdo the London fans was anything like Tony was feeling having carted his little brother along on a day out with his pals.

The game was good once it got going, there was that much to say, but it was not so good it stopped Tim wishing he hadn't come to see it.  Not even Desborough's goal for the City, the only goal of the match and the one that meant City were through to the Final at Wembley, could do that. After the whistle for full-time, when Tim had to turn round to his brother again, his face must have shown some of this because Tony asked him straight away if the one goal hadn't been enough for him, and then, because Tim wouldn't answer, and sounding a bit concerned now whereas before he'd given the impression he was trying to be sarcastic, Tony said, that is it then?  Are you feeling poorly ?  Tim just said he was all right, and for Tony not to fuss him.

They met up with the other three again without much difficulty once they got outside the ground, which wasn't anything to please Tim, not the way they were carrying on about City's win. Jacko and Fernwood were singing I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles at the tops of their voices, but then, whenever they got to the word bubbles, Pog would shove his finger into his mouth to make a popping noise.  Or that's what they were doing when Tim and Tony came up. More or less straight away afterwards, Jacko started taking the mickey again saying, hell, look who's here, it's the Brothers Grimm. Aidie Fernwood reckoned it was the Brothers Four, more like, but Jacko gave him such a look, as much as if to say how could it be the Brothers Four when there were just two of them?  Pog settled things in the end.  He reckoned Tony was Johnny Ray, which meant Tim must be The Little White Cloud That Cried. 

They were carrying on more or less all the way to the car, and took up that much of the pavement the people wanting to get by had to step into the road.  Tim wished Tony would say something, but he didn't.  He never opened his mouth, and Tim's cheeks burnt red for shame as he followed along because of what everybody must have been thinking.  In the end a bobby came over and had a word, which quietened things down but only until the bobby had been left a good way behind.  Then Aidie Fernwood got started on some stupid nonsense that began, Standing on the corner swinging my chain.  The last part was about cutting the bobby's throat with a razor blade, and Jacko and Pog joined in then, trying to harmonize.  They went from that straight into Tom Dooley, but putting in the name of the West Ham goalie instead of Tom Dooley. 

Although he'd spent all the afternoon thinking otherwise, Tim was actually glad to get in the car again because at least then such nonsense was out of the way of other people.  Anyway, as Tim saw it, the sooner they got going, the sooner he'd be back in home with his mam.  The clocks had all been altered the week-end before, so Tim thought he'd be there well before it got dark, but he was wrong about that. They hadn't been driving all that long before Jacko started to say about pulling up somewhere on the way back for a drink Tim hoped and hoped they wouldn't.  He hoped Tony would say something against the idea, but Tony kept quiet, and it wasn't long before Jacko was turning into the car park of a pub. Tim followed on with the others into the bar, but when Tony asked about the children's room the licensee said it was closed up until the summer, so Tim had to go back and sit in the car by himself. Tony brought out a cheese cob and a Tizer after a little while, and Tim thought his brother might stop with him in the car, but no. He went straight back to his pals as soon as he'd finished his delivery, and Tim was on his own again, with nothing and nobody to keep him company save what he could get on the portable wireless Cath had saved up for while Tony was in the Forces.

Tony wasn't a drinker, not in the ordinary way of things.  Tim remembered seeing him take a whiskey with their dad sometimes, particularly near Christmas, and there'd been a little party for him the night before he went into the army when everybody had drunk beer and such, even Cath.  Yet when Tony came out to the car a second time, Tim smelt the drink off him as soon as he opened the door, and when Tony said for Tim to give over the plate and the empty mineral bottle, and to make sure and go to the lavatory before they got back on the road, the way he spoke was just like Mr Geoghegan three doors up did after the Railwaymen's Club shut on a Sunday.  Tim didn't like to hear his brother talking that way because he'd never heard him do it before and he was frightened.   

He was frightened as well when he went into the pub toilets because Tony's pals were in there.  Pog and Jacko were in front of the urinal, while Tim could hear Aidie Fernwood from inside the one cubicle, shouting out samples of what was written on the walls to his mates.  here we are, here we are,  he was going. Here's a good one here if you're listening,  All last night, I spent kissin,' Your left tit 'cause the right one's missing.  That's a good one that is.  I'll remember that one.  Can you hear me all right, Jacko?  Pog?� Jacko said they could probably hear him in Russia, but Fernwood couldn't have caught what Jacko said because he went, you what? You what?� Tim went to the sink, trying to make out he was only wanting to rinse his hands because he didn't know what else to do.  He could never stand in between Jacko and Pog while he relieved himself, and Fernwood was inside the one place where there might be a bit of privacy. Jacko had seen Tim coming in though, and he said, I wouldn't bother with that if I were you, me duck.  The tap's not connected.  Then he told Pog to move over. 

Make room for a little one, Jacko said.  Pog asked him who he was saying had a little one, and the pair of them started shoving each other with their shoulders until Pog shouted that Jacko had made him splash himself, right down his trouser leg and all over his shoes. Bloody new on this morning them buggers, Pog went.  Bloody new on this morning.  From Saxone's and all, them buggers.� Fernwood shouted from behind the cubby door, Who's that come in then?  Nolls is it?  When Jacko told him it was Tim, Fernwood said, Oh, him. You mean Cheerful Charlie Chester. Then he said, How about this?  Here I sit, sad and glum, I've wanked so much, me - wait a minute, wait a minute - pe - nil - penile shaft is completely bereft of sensitivity.  I don't quite get that one.� Tim walked out and stood in the shadows while he waited for Jacko, Pog and Fernwood to finish.  Then he went back again, got inside the cubicle and snibbed the door shut, and tried all the time he was in there not to breathe. 

There was a lot more talk in the car after the pub than there had been before, and most of it wasn't very nice, Tim thought. Tony still sat very quiet though, and Tim, down in the dark at his brother's feet, said nothing at all.  Aidie Fernwood was fretting about them not getting back in time for Cheyenne, until, finally, Jacko told him to bite it. Jacko went, City go through to Wembley and you can't think of ought else better to do by way of celebrating except get home to your mam and Chey-f***ing-enne on the box. You're pathetic you are, Fernwood.�  Fernwood started to say that he liked Cheyenne and once he'd seen it he'd be off out, of course he would, only he wanted to watch his programme first.  Tony cut in on him though, and while Fernwood did get to the end of what he'd wanted to say, Tony talked right over him in a loud voice, telling Jacko to pack up swearing because of Tim. He don't know what it means, Jacko said.  I never meself, not when I were his age.� Tony wasn't having that though, and he said again to pack it in.  They all went quiet after that, and in the quiet, Tim felt surer of his brother than he had done all day. 

What Jacko said about Tim not knowing wasn't quite right.  If he didn't know in precise detail the meaning of the word that had been used he knew enough not to want to hear it said again by Tony's pals, and knew enough, as well, to know it would be.  With his own friends, at school, down the match, out playing football on the Pastures, once it had been said by somebody, anybody, it seemed as if it was more or less like turning on a tap. It was, because in spite of Tony's telling him not to, Jacko soon got started again. It was more as if what Tony had said, far from shutting him up, had just shifted him in his thinking to something else connected with swearing, a little story for him to tell while he was driving along... 

Tony said nothing at all, and it was Aidie Fernwood who spoke up for the back seat, but only to ask Jacko if he intended taking his wife for a drink at The Cedars to celebrate City's victory. F*** off  Jacko said.  I�d rather sit at home watching Cheyenne than be seen out with her. He said, no, Fernie, me old mate, since you ask, I'll tell you how I'm planning my celebrations.  When I get in home, I'll shove some tea down me, have a wash and a shave, get me new suit on, me grey Italian points, and then I'll be off out.  With a little bit of luck I won't have to set eyes on any bugger at home again until I roll in on Sunday morning, shagged-out and shitless, with the papers and a box of Black Magic under me arm to calm the troubled waters while I eat me dinner in peace and have a kip upstairs afterwards.� 

Where are you going then? Fernwood wanted to know.  The Pally?  I've never had no luck with the tarts what go dancing there.� Pog got the sniggers along with Jacko at that, but eventually he said, No more will you, me duck.  Them Pally tarts'll let you pour gin and orange in their gobs all night long, and then, if you're lucky, you might manage a quick feel of one at the bus stop, but that's it.  You want to come down the Rondo with me and Jacko - satisfaction guaranteed plus a threepenny refund on every bottle of Vimto.  Your knees'll be trembling good and proper by the time you get back in home, if you go home that is, and it won't be from dancing neither.   Plus the whole evening's entertainment shouldn't set you back much more than a bag of chips once you've paid your money to get in.�

Tony said nothing, and Tim thought his brother must be sleeping he was that quiet, but he was not sleeping and Aidie Fernwood, sitting next to Tony, knew he was not sleeping because he said, Tell, me and Nolls here should come with you then.  How about it, Jacko?  Me and Nolls and you and Pog?  The Four Preps!  What d'you think?� What I think, Jacko said, is that with you along, Fernwood, it'd be more like the Four Prats and anyroad, Tony wouldn't be interested, not with his little Catherine waiting at home all ready, willing and able.  I mean, I wouldn't be bothered going out after it myself if I had waiting for me in my house what he's got in his.  I mean, f*** it - and if she'd let me I would.�

Pog started singing, Katarine, Kataariiiine and Jacko took it up as well, except that he turned the song into I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen, changing the name to Cath's and the words as well because he sang, I'll give you one tonight, Catherine, As soon as I get through the door.  As he sang, he took one hand off of the steering wheel and reached behind him, stretching out to grab Tony between the legs.  The car swerved when he did it, so that Pog shouted and Jacko had to grip the wheel quickly with both hands again.  He caught Tim about the head as he pulled his hand back from pilling Tony.  Tim felt where something hard on Jacko's fingers had scratched him, a ring probably or else a long nail, and he thought he might cry if it didn't stop soon, the car and the talking and what the talking was all about, and what Jacko had just done to Tony.  Tim had the peculiar feeling in his chest and behind his eyes that he got when he was going to cry, and he knew it was there because of what was being done and said in front of him, especially the talk about Cath, especially that. 

He knew the way Tony's pals were talking was the way men talked sometimes.  He knew that.  Even one or two of his own pals did the same.  Only there shouldn't have been that talk joined to Cath's name.  That was ever so wrong.  Ever so.  Why didn't Tony, why wouldn't Tony stop it, that dirty talk and such, especially with his young brother in the car and especially when it was about Cath? All of a sudden, Tony did start talking, and once he'd got started Tim wished he hadn't because he said, What a lot you know, any of you.  She won't let me come anywhere near her, not unless it's to try starting a family.  I don't want a  family.  I've said to her times.  The only reason I married her were because she went round and told me mam and me dad she were in trouble.  We'd only done it the bloody once so I couldn't see how she could be, but that - that were what she said.  Course, after she's wed it turns out it were a false alarm but by then it's too late, or it well was for me.  She won't let you near her, not with a rubber johnny on she won't.  She starts saying about how she don't like things like that and how she wants to have a baby.  F*** having a baby.  I had enough of babies with me brother here.  I still do.  I don't want no more of that carry-on and I've told her so times.  I've got so there's times I wish they was all dead, the whole lot of them, me wife, me mam, me brother. The whole lot. Dead.  Or I was.  Because I - I've had enough, I have." 

They had to stop the car not long afterwards so Tony could be sick, and though the sweet night air of the hedgerow cooled Tim's face for him, it could not soothe sorrow such as  he had inside. Once Tony was done and was back in the car, the journey  began again, the last little part that was left of it. The town lights had already been visible from where Jacko had pulled up onto the grassy verge.  They went quite quietly.  Fernwood had started up, reciting some of what he remembered from out of the pub toilet, but Jacko told him to shut it, which Fernwood did because he was scared of Jacko.  Tim, down in the darkness, did his best to sit so as not to have to touch his brother, but, if the truth were told, he wasn't always able to manage it.

The brothers were let out of the car at the top of Wood Hill, where they'd got in in the morning.  There were shouts of Traa and See you then, but it was all to Tony not to Tim.  Tim thought it was more or less as if he hadn't been there.  Then he thought that was what had been wished right from the word go probably, and more so now, after all he'd seen and after all he'd heard. Tony didn't speak as they went along, but when they came to the corner of the street where their mam's house was, he stopped Tim and tried to give him some money, tried to put five shillings in Tim's pocket and while he was about that, with Tim doing his best to stop him and telling him, I don't want it! I don't want it! Tony said, in a proper drunk's voice, Don't you say anything!  Don't you say a word!  Then he fell over, Tony did.  He fell over and he just stayed like that, on all fours like a dog.  Tim ran from him, not even hearing what Tony said next, which was, Don't you tell our mam.

As things turned out in the end, City did nothing that season after all.  They fell away that badly in the League following their semi-final victory they finished fourth, and they were well beaten at Wembley.  Desborough didn't play in the Final, although he'd scored in every one of the previous rounds.  Mr Robertson, the manager, had bought some young Scottish player nobody had ever heard of, trying to mimic what Villa had done in signing Malcolm, some said, though the Cheeky Chappie hadn't lasted that long as a favourite of the Villa fans himself.  He'd been sold to the Italians just after Christmas.  The new lad played instead of Desi and he was useless. On top of that, early on in the second half of the Final, Wraggie was taken off with a broken leg.  Not that it made a lot of difference to the result because City were already two goals down when it happened, but Wraggie was never the same player again and he retired a year or two later to take on a little tobacconist, newsagent and confectionery not far from Tim's school.  Tim never went inside the shop, though a lot of his pals did just to have Wraggie serve them.

By that time Tim had lost all interest in City anyway.  He'd lost all interest in football.  He'd lost it right after City played West Ham in their semi-final.  His pals at school couldn't understand, no more could his mam.  When Tim got in the night he'd been to the big game with Tony, she was sat waiting for him by the fire, the tea all ready on the table, and she'd said what she always said, which was, Well, how did they get on?  Tim had said nothing.  He hardly touched his tea.  He had no interest in what was on telly.  He went to bed just after nine, and though he was asleep when his mam went to have a look at him, she could have sworn she'd heard him sobbing up in his bedroom not a minute before, which was what had fetched her up the stairs. 

The next day, Sunday, Tim had gone up to his bedroom again straightway after his breakfast, which he ate no more of than he had his tea the night before.  He wouldn't say a word as to what he was about, but when he came down he was carrying all his football things, his league tables and pictures of the City he'd cut out from the papers, and he fire-backed the lot.  Afterwards, he never spoke of the City again, nor football neither.  

He turned into a very quiet, very studious boy, almost never going out, except to the pictures with Cath sometimes, or else he'd go round to sit with her the nights Tony was off out with mates such as Jacko and Aidie Fernwood.  The night before Tim left to go to university, he was round sitting with Cath.  He told his mam he'd rather that than the party she'd offered to lay on for him, the same as she had for Tony the night before he'd gone into the army all those years previous. Then the next day, Tim went to the station with just his mam to wave him goodbye.  She wanted him to stop round at his brother's first, but he wouldn't.  He told her there wasn't time, and that, anyway, he'd said goodbye to the one he wanted to say goodbye to in that house the night before. 

And that was the mystery as far as Tim's mam was concerned: whatever could have happened to drive such a seeming wedge between her two sons?  She'd asked Tim times what the matter was but he always said it wasn't anything he could tell her about and she should ask their Tony if she was that interested.  When she did ask Tony he wouldn't say anything either.  Once Tim started his studies at the university she never really got another chance to ask him because he was hardly ever at home again.    

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[Novels by Clive Collins]

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