Friends Like These: My Worldwide Quest to Find My Best Childhood Friends, Knock on Their Doors, and Ask Them to Come Out and Play (10 page)

“The Wimpy’s still there,” I said, and Anil nodded, as amazed as I was.

“Shall we go see your old house?”

So we drove down Forest Road, and up towards Spinney Hill Drive—the road I’d lived on and cycled down for so many years. We
parked outside the house and stared at it. It looked a lot smaller than it used to. They’d put up a basketball net, and a
new window in the roof, but they weren’t fooling anyone—the house had shrunk. They had a car painted one of those weird colors—the
kind of sparkly aquamarine you occasionally see and assume must have been bought after a short-sighted man had purchased an
issue of
AutoTrader
with printing problems.

But it was weird that someone else was living there now. Sleeping in my room. Hanging out in my garden. Eating in my kitchen.

“What was that room, again?” said Anil, pointing at the one closest to us.

“That was my dad’s study,” I said. “And where the computer was.”

My dad’s an academic. A professor of German studies. Our move from Dundee to Loughborough had been from university to university.
Our next moves would be, too.

“I never went in your dad’s study.”

“You
must’ve!
Surely! You must’ve played Way of the Exploding Fist on the computer in there.”

He shook his head, sadly.

“Nope.”

Crikey. He’d never played Way of the Exploding Fist. He’d never played Jet Set Willy. I was beginning to identify serious
holes in Anil’s youth.

The house backed onto university grounds, and growing up, me and my friends had always sneaked on in order to get chased by
the security guards. It was fun. We were tiny kids—they were fat old men in dirty blue vans. In our heads, we were doing the
most daring thing imaginable, stepping out into enemy territory. We’d hide behind trees, or in bushes, to try and avoid the
all-seeing eyes of the bad guys, who were right up there with the KGB and CIA in terms of or ga ni za tion and power. And
when we
were
seen, when those dusty vans awkwardly mounted the curb to give chase across a field, their exhaust pipes rattling and trailing
the ground, there was nothing more exhilarating than the collective cry of “PEG IT!” and the mad rush home.

Suddenly, it was all very tempting again.

“Why don’t we sneak onto the university?” I said. “We might get chased!”

“We’re nearly thirty, Dan. We’re older than the students. The guards will probably think we’re
lecturers.
”

The idea instantly lost some of its appeal. Christ. We were
old.
We were
too old
to look suspicious. How
depressing
to look so
un-suspicious.
What had happened to our youthful menace?

And then we noticed a curtain twitch and a middle-aged lady staring back at us with what looked like real concern in her eyes.

I waved, as if to say “Hi! I used to live here!,” but then realized we were essentially two grown men parked outside her house
staring at her property. And now I was waving at her, as if to say “Hi! Me and my Asian friend are going to rob you!”

“PEG IT!” I shouted, and we did.

Anil lived down by the little row of shops, just next to a small and tatty green we used to play football on. Everything looked
exactly the same. A little greener, with better-tended gardens, but just the same. The newsagent still had the same name above
it—A. MISTRY. I had always hoped that A. MISTRY had solved crimes in his spare time, and that running a small newsagent’s
was his eccentric passion, like Inspector Morse and classical music, but it turned out that he was just a newsagent. Life
is full of little disappointments. Outside, there was a group of kids, swapping stickers and sweets, just as we’d done, right
there, at that age.

“I wonder what stickers they’re swapping,” I said.

“Germany 2006. World Cup stickers,” said Anil, with some degree of authority in his voice.

“The last time
I
did that it was Mexico ’86.”

“Did you complete the album?”

“No,” I said. “I think I needed a Hungarian. I never managed to finish those things. Never managed to finish a hobby.”

“Never?”

“Not when I was a kid. How about you? You used to do karate, didn’t you?”

“Yeah… I kind of stuck with that.”

Anil got his keys out and opened up the door to the family home. And there she was—Mrs. Tailor. She looked exactly the same.
Loughborough must be magic. Or maybe your memories just don’t get old—even when you meet them in the flesh.

“Daniel!” she said. “How are you? Sit down! I saw you on TV recently.”

“Did you?” I said.

“You were a bit odd.”

“Oh.”

“Would you like a drink? I have been making masala dosa! I hope you are ready to eat.”

And then the smell hit me—the glorious smell of Mrs. Tailor’s masala dosa! Instantly, any memories I had of being sick in
a neighbor’s bin were gone. I pointed my finger in the air, to make me look important.

“I am
ready!
” I said.

And with that, Mrs. Tailor sprang into action, darting back into the kitchen where I heard plates clattering and drawers being
opened. Within seconds I was sitting in front of the kind of feast I’d last witnessed twenty years before, with dips, and
chutneys, and spices, and sauces, and the first of the masala dosa… pancakes filled with vegetables prepared in a fresh coconut
sauce. I eagerly tore my dosa apart, while Mrs. Tailor looked on, proudly. I felt so welcome, as I looked around the room.

“I see what you mean about the karate,” I said. When I’d left Loughborough, Anil had only just begun his karate lessons. Apparently,
it had gone quite well after that. We were surrounded by literally hundreds of trophies, and certificates, and medals, and
a picture of the day Anil got his black belt, during which he had decided to sport an unusually wispy mustache. The kind every
teenage boy cultivated the first chance they got. The kind that took between eight and ten months to grow.

“
You
did karate as well, didn’t you?” he said.

“It kind of went the way of my other hobbies,” I said. Hobbies really weren’t my thing. I’d try my hardest, and be
desperate
to stick with them, but after a while boredom would get the better of me and whatever hobby I’d been passionate about a week
before would find its way to the back of another cupboard. I think I managed to collect about eighteen different postcards
of passenger jets before realizing I had no interest whatsoever in large aircraft. My dalliance with autograph-collecting
faded after meeting Barbara Windsor—the last one I got was Emlyn Hughes when I saw him in a shopping center promoting a new
line of Hi-Tec sneakers. They’d run out of proper signed photos and I’d had to make do with a photocopy someone had done in
the back office of Inter-Sport. And at eleven, I’d given up stamp collecting after suddenly realizing one morning that there
was no way I was
ever
going to be able to collect them
all.

But karate, I remember thinking… karate would be
different.
Karate would
last,
and be my lifelong passion. Like every other kid in town, I’d just seen
The Karate Kid II,
and was insisting people call me Daniel-San—just as I’d insisted my dad call me Indy after watching
Raiders of the Lost Ark
for the fourth time. Films of the 1980s had that effect on me; had Loughborough Leisure Center had the insight to offer courses
on Ghostbusting, I’d have been first to sign up. And when it came to the noble art of
ka-ra-teh,
it wasn’t just me and Anil. Michael Amodio also shared the passion.

Each week we’d make our way out to some industrial estate where a man with a handlebar mustache and a maroon Jaguar would
charge us £2 to stand in a bright room with a dozen older kids and punch the air. My first day didn’t go terribly well. The
instructor had told us of the importance of stretching, and so, for twenty minutes, we had all tried to touch our toes, reach
for the skies, and do all manner of other stretches I had never, ever found the need to do. My body became more and more relaxed
as we lay on the floor, arms above us, trying our best to warm up.

“Right! That’ll do!” shouted the instructor, whose name, I have just remembered, was George.

We all started to clamber to our feet. But something happened. Something I just did not see coming. Something
terrible.

I made a small involuntary parping sound.

I froze.

My eyes widened.

My face went hot.

Had anyone heard?

Did anyone know?

“WHO WAS THAT?” shouted George.

Yes, apparently they did.

“THIS ROOM IS A PLACE OF DISCIPLINE!”

I could feel Michael Amodio edging away from me to my right.

“WHO WAS THAT?”

This was awful! It was
clearly
me! Everyone around me knew—and if they didn’t a few moments ago, it was becoming more obvious by the second! But what should
I do? Should I admit to it? This room was a place of discipline, damn it! But it wasn’t my fault! My body just wasn’t used
to such maneuvers!

George stared at us all. He was furious. Absolutely
furious.
Christ—what had I done? I had insulted thousands of years of Japanese heritage! I could keep quiet… but this man… this man
was an
authority figure
… and what if this was some kind of ancient
test?

I slowly put my hand up. My eyes remained on the floor.

George sighed, heavily.

“One of the
new
kids…” he said. “Trust me, you are
not
going to be trouble for long.”

I didn’t
want
to be trouble! The parp was a parp against my will!

“Down and give me twenty.”

And so began the beginning of the end.

I finished off my first masala dosa and looked at Anil.

“My karate career was quite short-lived,” I said.

“What belt are you?”

“White with red tips.”

“Okay. The first belt.”

“How many people reach the first belt?”

“Basically anyone above the age of five.”

I could live with that. At least I’d be able to take a four-year-old in a fight. How many people can say
that?

Suddenly, Mrs. Tailor was there again. She dumped another masala dosa on my plate and then scuttled off to make more.

This was great. This was like being nine again. I was staying over at someone’s mum’s house! For the first time in
years!
I was having a
sleepover!

“I think karate runs in our family, somehow,” said Anil. “My brother’s got his own dojo. He’s the current World Kyokushinkai
Kata Champion.”

“That’s amazing,” I said, although I wasn’t really sure what Kyokushinkai was. It could have been just jumping, for all I
knew. I marveled at the trophies once more. All
I
had to show for my karate career was a small plastic card which showed I was up to date with my £2 payments. Maybe if I’d
stuck with it, like Anil and Sunil,
I’d
be the current World Kyokushinkai Kata Champion. Maybe
I’d
be a world champion at just jumping about.

The problem with
my
karate, I think, was that I was just too imaginative with my moves. George, and indeed the entire karate governing body,
was quite hung up on every move being performed perfectly, just because that was “the way it had been done for thousands of
years.” He didn’t understand that perhaps I was trying to move the genre on a little. My moves were unusual, sometimes improvised,
with flailing limbs and a refusal to be constricted by the boundaries presented by the karate mats. This was
street
karate—the street in question being Sesame Street, where no one was ever in danger of getting hurt.

Well, apart from me.

My final lesson took place one rainy Wednesday night. Michael Amodio had inexplicably failed to turn up. I had no partner
to practice with. So George took his place. He towered above me, as he lined everyone up to face each other.

“This,” he said, turning towards me and measuring the distance between us with his arm, “is what I want you all to do. The
straightforward strike may seem simple, but it is a thing of great power and requires immense discipline and control. Do not
simply hit out. Know your move. Feel it
before
it happens.”

He took a step back and lowered himself, like a tiger about to pounce.

“And then…”

He drew his arm back.

“LIKE THE PYTHON!”

He shot forward with a small scream and punched me straight in the face.

I spun right round, and then fell backwards into the wall.

There was a confused silence.

An embarrassed cough from somewhere.

A forty-year-old man with a handlebar mustache had just started a fight with a small boy.

“Oh,” said George. “We should work on your block.”

I was on the fourth masala dosa and I was feeling it.

The pressure to eat them had been great enough in the 1980s. Now, because so many years had passed, and because I’d come all
the way from London, the pressure was even greater. I didn’t want to let Mrs. Tailor down. But I had just eaten the equivalent
of a month’s worth of curry, and there seemed to be no sign of her letting up. The more I ate, the brighter the fire in her
eyes became. She was becoming addicted to my eating, determined I should continue. I began to feel slightly afraid. What would
snap first? My manners or my belt?

“More on the way!” she shouted from the kitchen. “Keep eating!”

Anil was keen to talk about the old days and what we should do that afternoon. I was finding it harder to talk. Every bite
seemed to fill another area that had never been filled before. I was convinced I now had very fat toes.

“We should take a walk down to the old school,” said Anil, who, as far as I could tell, was still on his first serving. “And
then we could walk up and see that old tree—the
magic
tree!”

Now, I
wanted
to see the magic tree again. Contrary to its name, there had been virtually nothing actually
magic
about it, so far as we could tell. It was just an old tree we used to sit under and read comics. We’d stopped going after
being told that the local bully—a terrifying kid called Tez—had bought some rope and hanged a woman off it. We believed every
word of that story, despite the fact that Tez was only about twelve at the time and no one else had ever heard anything about
it. Either Tez had been an incredibly powerful child with a tight grip on not just the police, but also the local media, or
someone had made the whole thing up. Either option seemed hard to believe, so I guess we’ll never know.