Cleaning Up (7 page)

Tommy’s old man had worked for twenty years on the railways, ensconced in the upstairs offices of the substantial, soot covered, Gothic redbrick of the city’s central station. Not that this train was anything like the powerful, belching, lurch, roar and rattle of the steam trains of his boyhood. It was almost silent, high speed with nary a ripple as it bulleted on to its destination. He’d brought some sounds with him
and a decent mag, to read to help fill the time and, this time, he had brought his own butties too. Previously, he’d made the mistake of getting on board hungry and unprepared and Virgin had well and truly burnt a hole in his pocket.

A mixed race woman got on board just as the train was about to pull away from the platform. He glanced at her and she gave him a little smile, which warmed him up almost as much as Donna Edwards had. He let his mind wander over that notion for a while, bit of a non-starter though with the boy and all. A step-dad to a malcontent teenager, surely a busman’s holiday and Donna didn’t seem like the casual, no strings attached type. If he kicked it off with her he would have to commit himself, again.

The journey was over in a twinkle, just over two hours and they were pulling in to Euston. It was just coming up to three o’clock so it was not yet bedlam time on the tube, but it was still pretty busy down there and he was thankful that he was travelling light. That leg of the journey was not quite one of Dante’s Circles of Hell, but five days a week of it would have to be close enough. His body percolated in the humid netherworld as he let his eyes wander around the carriage; students with iPods, a couple of tired looking African blokes and some slightly frazzled mums with mercifully placated children. A young French couple smilingly canoodled with each other, oblivious to their surroundings. He thought of that old Joni Mitchell song as he discreetly watched them, ‘amour mama, not cheap display.’ He changed lines then made his way back up to what passed for fresh air. He rode a few stops on a washed out local train and got off at Deptford, which had been Lee’s home for well over a decade now.

Lee was waiting for him at the station entrance down
on the High Street and they gave each other a hearty bear hug, which lifted Lee onto his toes. He was still as skinny as a lat, but now with a hint of belly under the baggy shirt. His friend had never been big on exercise - making music, playing chess, drinking red wine and a loving indulgence of his extroverted partner, these were the things that rang Lee Murphy’s bell.

They had last caught up at the previous Christmas break, Lee had undertaken his regular, usually solitary, flying visit to the old folks’ home that housed his mum and had crashed on his sofa for a couple of nights before taking his leave to join Bern who was nestled at her parents’ place somewhere down in the Norfolk boondocks.

The two of them chatted happily as they walked back to the couple’s one bedroom gaff, which was located in a nearby warren of council flats.

Lee asked him how Mick was going.

‘Hanging on really Lee,’ he told him.

‘It’s just piss, vinegar and stubbornness that makes the old fart reach for his slippers in the morning.’

Lee had come round to the old man’s for a feed the day after Boxing Day and Tommy had clocked instantly that Mick’s deterioration had been as much of a shock to Lee as it had been to him. Lee had hid it well enough just as he had done the year or so before. Tommy had replayed that dreadful moment many times, Mick answering the door and the shocking, face slap awfulness of the immediate realisation that Mick was already running his last lap.

He’d been away from the UK for over eight years and he hadn’t seen the old man for that length of time. Eight years! His staying away had been a mixture of choice and
circumstances, his friends had tried to prepare him for it; Jimbo telling him more than once that his dad ‘was not quite the same.’ His monthly telephone chats with the old man hadn’t given anything of the decline away. But, his old man was now wizened and frail, a goblin like version of the prime Mick. Tommy had quickly adjusted because, well he had to and because Mick was definitely still Mick, irrespective of the physical decline.

Lee had his own travails to deal with. His mum was in the middle of her own private hell in dealing with Alzheimer’s. Tommy took a lot of comfort from the fact that his old man was fully firing mentally. To him, that was a sizeable mercy.

Bernie was out and about this evening, down at some community women’s thing over in deepest, darkest Greenwich. They settled down in the flat’s small kitchen and, as was their custom, opened up a bottle of red. Lee and Bern had spent a lot of the last couple of months in the recording studio and Lee immediately played Tommy some of their new music. It was the usual wash of swirling guitars and synthetic percussion, underpinning Bern’s soulful voice and occasional freestyle warblings and yelps which always reminded him of a more tuneful version of Yoko. A couple of the tracks had a nice Asian feel to them. Lee, in particular, was eclectic and esoteric in his musical tastes and a mate of theirs had taken the music off in a new direction with some tasty tabla drumming.

They talked cursorily about life up north. Lee had never been that interested about the old crowd. It was yesterday’s chip wrapper as far as he was concerned.

In their youth, Lee hadn’t even been on the fringes of the in-crowd, whereas he had been a face, courtesy of sport
and, in his opinion, a slightly inflated reputation for toughness. They’d been the two brightest boys in the class, right through primary school up until their successful university applications. Both pioneers of further education in their respective families, both of them raised on a pedestal by their kin because of it, and both resented for the fact by some of those same people. They had grown up in a row of two bedroom terraces - their family homes just three doors apart. A love of T-Rex, Bowie and Roxy Music had cemented their filial bonds. The music had offered them glimpses into another much more exotic world. The taste of the promise of the other had helped them through the drudge of those grey, winter days.

On Bern’s return they were heading off to Lewisham to watch a band that a couple of their mates played in. The gig, as another custom had it, would be followed by a probable detour for a curry on the way back to the flat. Deptford had a couple of good Indian restaurants, but Friday night on the High Street could be disconcertingly heavy and if there was one thing that Lee didn’t do it was heavy.

Bernie got back in about eight, a swirl of hastily applied red lipstick topped off tonight with a pill box leopard skin hat. She went for a kind of layered dress sense these days, which did a reasonable job of hiding her growing portliness. Bern shared Lee’s anathema of physical exercise but not his Jack Spratt genes.

It was good to spend time with them, Bern telling him about the various projects that she, Lee and various friends had on the boil. Lee chipping in to correct her at the times whenever she gap-filled with a blatant if innocuous non-fact.

The band that night were a jazz blues combo, the kind of
stuff that Bern particularly liked and they had pulled her up on stage for a version of Strange Fruit. She’d got lost in it, eyes closed, right armed raised, her fingers slowly turning in the shadows beyond the spotlight. Lee looked on at her, a proud, slightly bashful smile playing on his lips. At the end of the band’s set the crowd cleared pronto, as if a stink bomb had been dropped in the room and the band went quickly and quietly about the business of packing up their gear. The guitarist was a dark haired Cornish guy with quick eyes who had been a paramour of Bern’s some time before she and Lee had started doing the twist together. He’d come came over for a brief chat with them, something about the possibility of doing a benefit together next month somewhere down Peckham way.

They had grabbed a takeaway on the way down to the mini-cab office, a couple of pissed blokes gave him the hairy eyeball when they’d walked into the crummy waiting room. Tommy ignored it, engagement with drunken strangers hadn’t rung his bell for a long time and Lee and Bern weren’t really into rolling around on the cobbles. Now if Jimbo had been with him? He shook it off - who cares.

Luckily, the drunks’ cab arrived within thirty seconds of the three of them sitting down. One of the guys had made a point of turning round on the way out and he’d held the gaze until the guy had broken away to make his exit into the sulphur lit night. Lee had clocked him ramping up the testosterone but he didn’t make any comment, Lee knew that part of him too. Bern was miles away, distractedly humming one of their new tunes. She preferred to live her life in a happy bubble, although that was a kind of coping mechanism because, in reality, she never really missed a beat. No more than
a minute passed and it was their turn to catch a ride. A rangy silent guy in a turban drove the three of them back to Deptford.

Bern hit the sack as soon as they got back. She had ladies soccer in the morning. Tommy had seen her play a few times before, she spent most of the game giggling and talking to team mates and opponents alike.

He and Lee stayed up until the small hours. Lee asked him with a diffident dip of the head what his plans for the future were.

‘Don’t know yet Lee,’ he told him, ‘I’ll stay with the old man for as long as it takes.’ His voice trailed off and they remained silent for a moment or two.

‘Not missing it over there then Tommy; the sunshine, the beaches the big expanse, less bullshit, maybe?’

Tommy appraised his friend with a smile, he was a shrewd little bastard our Lee.

‘Yeah I do. But, you know bud, there is nobody that I really care about over there and, for that matter, nobody there who really cares about me.’

‘Sometimes people matter more than the place, eh Tommy?’

Tommy nodded in agreement, but he’d told Lee an approximation of the truth. There was still somebody there that he cared for - more than cared for really.

‘You two never made it to Sydney did yer?’ He said, just for the sake of making some noise.

Lee shook his head ruefully, ‘getting her out of Deptford and Greenwich is hard enough Tom.’

Tommy laughed and they had a refill for the road. Lee dug out the first Roxy Music album, which he found to be
almost unlistenable. Lee supplied some levity with a more than passable impression of Ferry’s affected warble. Fuck, he had once thought the band the epitome of exotic cool. There you go, so much for all our yesterdays! As for Ferry’s voice, he and Lee had cracked up a couple of times, like two teenagers giddily sharing a joint.

All that time had gone, he thought and, tonight, he didn’t mind that fact at all.

Darrin had lucked out so far with the drug op, he’d been hoping for a pair up with Moz or even that stone faced fucker Clarke. But, no, no go, Johno and Jolika were given the nod instead. He’d badgered Sarge Thomas about it but to no fucking avail.

‘Not my decision son, don’t take it personal like. They like to rotate you anyway, sort out the potential diamonds from the turds.’ Thomas laughed loudly at his own mordant wit. There was no gilding the lily with that Taff prick.

‘Anyway PC May, there’s plenty else for you to do in’t there? It’s not the only bloody movie showin’ you know. There’s still plenty of patrol to be done, the desk and bringing me cups of tea…speaking of which, there’s a lad now, you know how I like it.’

And that was it, end of discussion and an outline of his next few weeks in a nutshell. He bitched about it until the crew started to get sick of him. Even good old indulgent Trish started to put a swerve on him and look in the other direction. He took the frustration out on the bags and pads at his old man’s gym - pistoning away at them in a mute fury until he had nothing left.

He’d got a collar towards the end of the week, some scrote
caught nicking from the pound shop and he’s given the guy a quick dig in the kidneys on the way back to the car. Debbie Roach had clocked it but let it go, her silence as they headed back to the station was everything that he needed to know. He saw Mozzer a couple of times at change over, but all was quiet at the moment.

He’d asked Moz how Jolika was going just for the sake of talking about the op.

‘Yeah - good, patient she is, unlike you son, that is for fucking definite. Can’t get her to have a go at the cheese and pickle butties though.’

Darrin laughed and Moz patted him on the shoulder.

‘Don’t worry son, this shit is going nowhere. Heads will roll and new ones will replace them, just like the fucking Medusa it is.’

Crumbs of fucking comfort, he thought. That night he’d got himself trashed and Johno and Clarkey had to pull him away from some civilian who’d made a half-hearted grab of Trish’s arse. With a gentle but persistent persuasion they had shepherded him into a taxi and Johno had climbed in with him to make sure that he had got all the way home.

Big Ged had approached him the next day as he was on his way back from the canteen, deliberately blocking his passage in the narrow corridor. Ged had been in the bar last night but had kept his distance when it had all kicked off.

The big man held his hand up and then leaned into him a little, giving Darrin a whiff of mints and something else that had a lot more fire to it. Keegan didn’t drop his hand when Darrin came to a dead halt in front of him. He kept it up and lightly placed his thick index finger against Darrin’s solar plexus. He could hear Keegan’s breath whistling through his
nose. It was all a bit too close and personal.

‘You need to chill out a bit young Dazzler. Kicking up too much dust you are.’

The big man was smiling but the eyes held no comfort.

‘I heard you’re pissed off about not being asked to climb into a suit. But, well, that’s just fucking tough that is. We all serve our time here son. Team play that’s what we’re about, accepting the status quo. You’re not Wyatt Earp lad. Getting into it with a civilian in a boozer - now that is fucking stupid - right?’

The big man shook his head at him in disgust.

Keegan had slightly increased the pressure on his solar plexus just to underscore his point. His heart was racing but he held the gaze.