How I Killed Margaret Thatcher (11 page)

I doh know, I say.

Well, they knowed yowers. Put their thumbs up.

I pretend I'm trying to remember. There's no point pretending. I could tell from Johnny's face that he knew who it was.

Is it Steve? I say. And Paulie and Yvette. They had a dog, a whippet.

Oh, right, Johnny says.

They looked well, my dad says. Skinheads. Wenches an all, with their hair shaved off. He says this as my grandad comes in the room.

What, them skinheads? Yow stay away from them. Doh get mixed up wi them. My grandad points the potato peeler at Johnny. He has been peeling potatoes for my nan. And doh get him mixed up wi em. We want yow to keep yer hair on, doh we, Sean, eh?

All right, they ay really me mates, Johnny says.

Doh get mixed up wi em, I'm telling yer. My grandad keeps the potato peeler aimed at him.

All right, Johnny says. I am twenty years old, though. Iss up to me who me mates am.

I'm tellin yer. My grandad keeps staring at him.

Later, Johnny talks to my dad quietly at the kitchen table. He keeps looking up to check my grandad isn't listening. My dad nods his head then he gets up to pour a drink and pats Johnny on the shoulder, tells him not to worry about it.

They were beautiful; Johnny's drawings, paintings. He'd draw all the time, in soft pencil in the first place, in the sketchbooks he kept on the go: cobwebs, the castle, the line of factory roofs. He didn't do people very often, apart from those pictures of Natalie, and the portrait he did of my mum. On Sundays or on light nights when he was back from work in time he'd do watercolours, flowers or the shed, a row of cabbages over the fence in the allotments, the clouds floating over us. At the caravan he'd sit with his back to the sea wall and paint green-black seaweed and orange starfish or the light falling on the hills.

He tried to show me sometimes. We'd sit together at the kitchen table and I'd try to copy the lines he made on the page but I couldn't even do that. It was about a way of looking at things. I had my books. I could see things in my own head. I thought about how he looked at things, though, tried to see some of the magic.

I think of them now, Johnny's drawings, with the cable-cars moving in an arc across the town, cobwebs threading between geraniums. He still draws, I know that. There are piles of sketchbooks in the corner of his bedroom. The rest are in the loft. I never ask him about it. I did once, when we first started doing food. I asked him about putting some up, seeing if people would buy them. He nodded and said yes, but didn't offer anything. I think of Jermaine's face when I asked him that time and his son, yeah, piss artist, and I think of the pile of exercise books I used to have, up in smoke, the plans for an assassination, a revolution. I'm glad they're ash. Whereas, Johnny's sketchbooks: I should ask him again.

About the time I went to work for Diane, the Richardson brothers published plans to build the world's tallest tower at Merry Hill, next to the new shopping centre. We could have looked out to sea from the top. Each day, the pub would have been in its shadow for a while. It was ridiculous, but by that point anything was possible. It never got built, but the idea itself was enough. I've put copies of the drawings up in an alcove by the bar and Lubetkin's animal houses up over where the old fireplace was. I'd like Johnny's cable-cars up there, somewhere, his cobwebs too, if only I could ask him properly.

The Sunday after that walk with my dad, he and Johnny went out together. That afternoon the camera was sitting on the kitchen table.

I knew it'd turn up eventually, my grandad said.

I found it at the back of the cupboard, Johnny said.

Johnny took me to the park one night that week and we saw Steve walking down Watson's Green Road towards us. He had a black eye, crossed the road when he saw us coming.

You should fight fire with fire.

Yvette, Steve's old girlfriend, comes in the pub sometimes with her husband. She works at an old people's home in Blackheath. She worked for a while with Michelle at the day centre; Michelle says she's a lovely woman. Yvette's hair is permed now.

Kids all right? she asks. They am gerrin big. I doh know where the time gos, Sean, I doh.

People lived in the caves until the fifties, not underground, but in the rock houses down at Kinver Edge. The Edge is what's left of a desert, millions of years old. We'd visit sometimes on quiet afternoons, and me and Ronnie would scramble up and down in the forest, climbing the cliff and the trees, our hands red with sandstone. There were ashes in some of the caves from recent fires, shapes cut into the walls for what had been shelves, graffiti scored into the soft stone. This is where we'll live, I thought, as we ran up and down, pretending to be Robin Hood; this is where we'll come to disappear.

My mum cries at the kitchen table. John Lennon has been shot. He was in The Beatles. My mum sings their songs to me sometimes. She sits at the kitchen table crying. I'm not sure if it's only John Lennon she's crying about. I heard the door slam this morning in the pitch black, my dad off to work. Usually he's really quiet. Sometimes he even lets the handbrake off the car and rolls down the slope of the drive before he starts the engine along the street but this morning there was loads of noise, shouting, but I couldn't hear what they were saying apart from my mum hissing, Well, you do that then.

Don't cry, Mum, I say.

It's very sad, sweetheart.

Don't cry, Mum, I say, don't cry, and I realize when I say it that it does no good, even though she turns and gives me a hug and goes to warm up some milk in the saucepan for me to have on my Weetabix because it's cold outside. She has red eyes from crying when I get back that night and John Lennon is still playing on the radio and my dad is still at work.

While she's mashing potatoes my mum goes and gets a bottle of gin from the cupboard. She pours a glass and tips some of my orange squash into it. She doesn't normally do this. In fact, when they all have a drink on a Sunday, my mum has Britvic juice. That's not a drink. When you say you have a drink it means beer or wine or whisky or another drink you get in a pub. Sometimes my dad will let me have a sip of his beer or pour some in a glass with lemonade for shandy. I want to say something to her, as she looks at the glass and takes a big drink of it and then pulls a face. I want to make things better, but I can't think what to say and so she pours some more gin and squash.

All right, darling, come and have this while it's hot, and she puts my sausages and mash on the table. She smiles. I can't do anything about John Lennon getting shot. I can't do anything to make my dad come back from work. I can't do anything about my mum being sad.

It's not an excuse. What happened to my mum in the end, I could have done more, I could. Worse than that, I was part of the cause. That was the start of it, then. I can't blame Margaret Thatcher for that, for my own failure; though I did, I still do.

Christmas morning and my mum and dad are happy. I've got a tape recorder and a Subbuteo set. When we get to my nan and grandad's, everyone's smiling and laughing. They give me Wolves and Villa teams and I lay the pitch and the players out in the front room. I start a league: Wolves, Villa, Liverpool, Ipswich. When Ronnie comes back from visiting his nan and grandad in Kidderminster we'll play the FA Cup. He wants Man United as one of his presents. His dad, Natalie and the baby have stayed at home, next door.

Why ay yer all gooin, Ronnie? my nan asks him.

There ay no room in Kidderminster.

No room at the inn. My nan laughs.

I hear her whispering about it later with my mum.

It ay right, though, is it? Splitting a family up at Christmas.

Ronnie says he doesn't mind, he'll be back in a few days. It's like having two Christmases.

A poor clearance from George Berry … unusual for him … lets in Souness … Souness inside to Sammy Lee … nudged on to Dalglish … turns … Oh, what a goal! Dalglish into the far corner. Bradshaw had no chance there. Three–one to Liverpool, there doesn't look any way back for Wolves now. They will need to find some form for when they play Man United in the cup in the new year.

I am really fair and don't let the Wolves win and I record the commentaries on my new tape recorder and make a programme called
Soccer Special
. I discuss the big cup game, Wolves against Manchester United, in between the commentaries, so I can play it to Ronnie when he gets back. Johnny is drunk and comes on the programme to be interviewed. He pretends to be Brian Clough.

Now, listen, young man, he says, the only teams in red worth talking about are Nottingham Forest and the Soviet Union, no more talk of Liverpool and Manchester United, please.

I'm allowed to stay up on New Year's Eve and wait for midnight. We open the front door to let the New Year in and to shake hands with Harry, who feeds Natalie's baby with a bottle and staggers drunk up the entry. We open the back door to let the old year out. It is black and silent across the allotments and all the works. My grandad shivers and pours himself and my dad another whisky when we go back into the kitchen. Johnny is back from the pub and fetches a glass from the cupboard.

Happy New Year, he says.

Yow've had enough, son.

Yer doh know how much I've had.

I can tell the way yome looking at me.

I ay had no more than yow.

I said yow've had enough.

My grandad screws the top back on the whisky and puts it on the table. He wears a gold paper crown that has slipped almost over his eyes. He looks out at Johnny from underneath his crown until Johnny looks away. They both fall asleep in the chairs. Johnny wakes up after a few minutes and walks over to the table and pours himself a glass of whisky and tops my dad up. I am meant to be in bed, asleep.

The Wolves: if I'd known what was going to happen to them I'd have let them win everything while they could.

Later, people would ask if I was related to Steve Bull when they saw my name. At first I'd say no. We're not, as far as I know. Then I started mumbling some answer about him maybe being my cousin's cousin's cousin. Maybe he is. It was a useful thing to say when I bought the pub and was serving behind the bar. There are pictures of him up at either end of the bar; one of him banging a goal in for Wolves, one when he came on and scored for England against Scotland. He came in once; we got him to sign the pictures. There's a photo of him with Johnny and Josh pinned up next to the optics. The camera that my dad got back for us sits behind the till. I found it again, tucked in a drawer, bought some of the old film off the internet.

Ronnie isn't coming back. His dad sits at the kitchen table, talking to my nan. None of them are coming back. Ronnie's mum has left with a man who sells beer for the brewery. They weren't even in Kidderminster. The man is moving to a new job on the south coast, miles away, past London, and they are all going with him, Ronnie and his sisters and his mum. They are never coming back. My nan tells me to go upstairs while she talks to Harry. She puts a cup of tea down for him. My grandad tips some whisky into it.

Natalie stayed with her dad and the baby, Leah. Natalie never saw her mum again, couldn't forgive her. Leah died ten years ago, just before her twenty-first birthday. They found her in one of the boarded up houses on Cromwell Green; heroin.

Ronnie and I never got to play the Man United game. In the little ground I'd made around the Subbuteo pitch I'd done a board saying
NEXT FIXTURE: MANCHESTER UNITED FA CUP
. I left it there for ages; it made me think of the clock at Old Trafford that's stopped at the time of the Munich crash. I got a postcard from Ronnie once, from Brighton, where they'd go on day trips from the little town where they lived. Ronnie couldn't write that well but he said everything was okay and that he liked living by the sea, but he missed all of us, and Dudley. I wrote a long letter to him, but never got anything back. They moved around a lot. The brewery rep left them and Vanessa moved on to someone else.

I'd have her back, Lil, course I would, like a shot, tomorrow, I hear Harry say to my nan, sitting at the kitchen table. I'm trying to feed Albert the tortoise some lettuce through the fence. I can't get him to eat like Ronnie could. He used to pretend to talk to him in a tortoise language.

I doh think her's coming back, Ron.

I miss the kids. I miss her, he says. He's crying, a big man crying, and he isn't even drunk. My nan is standing up rubbing his back.

What am I gonna do, Lily? he says.

Iss all right, Harry, come on, my nan says. Come on, iss all right.

A man shoots Ronald Reagan. He walks up to him and shoots. Bang, bang, bang, and the bodyguards jump on the man with the gun and on Ronald Reagan. I wonder if the man's a Russian agent. They show it on the news. Ronald Reagan doesn't die, though.

Iss like bloody voodoo, Johnny says when he sees it, and then the newsreader comes on to say that Ronald Reagan is fine and can carry on being president. I think Johnny thinks it would have been better if he'd been killed.

I know what voodoo is. There is a country called Haiti, where there is a ruler called Baby Doc Duvalier. His dad's name was Papa Doc Duvalier. I saw a picture in the
Daily Mirror
and a clip on the news. The people in Haiti are poor and miserable but they can't get rid of Baby Doc, or Papa Doc before him, because the Duvaliers have got their own police, like the SAS, called the Tonton Macoute and they have magical voodoo powers, because Baby Doc made a deal with the devil. This means that you can try to kill Baby Doc but he won't die. He'll probably rule Haiti for ever and the people will stay poor and miserable and frightened for ever unless someone can undo the magic. You can't undo it by shooting Baby Doc.

My grandad is angry all the time now. He is angry at the telly and even angrier at Johnny. My mum and dad are angry too, but only at each other.

There are riots in London, in Brixton. All the black men run around smashing windows and looting and throwing petrol bombs. A riot is when a group of you get together and go wild. Looting is when you take things that you might want but can't afford, like a new television set, from out of a shop after you've had the riot. A petrol bomb is a milk bottle with petrol in and a rag dipped in it and sticking out of the top. You set light to the rag and then throw it at the police. Johnny tells me how to make them. He laughs as the black men throw the bricks and petrol bombs at the police in Brixton. My grandad is angry with them and with Johnny.

They'm fighting back, Dad.

Fighting back at what?

This government. Yow ought to be grateful that somebody's got the spine to say enough's enough.

They ay fighting the government. They doh know who's in the government. They just wanna go wild and tek things that ay theers.

Well, have yer thought they might wanna take things cos they look around and see that other people have got things and they see how unfair it is? Yow've said yerself iss unfair. Yer tode me how unfair it is. From each according to his ability to each according to his need. Yow taught me that.

Here yam then, my grandad says, waving the newspaper apart in front of his face. Here yam. David Banks, sentenced to two years, receipt of stolen goods. The Woodhouses and the Bankses, they'm the people fighting our corner? I doh think so. Fightin their own corner. Givin everybody else a bad name.

The Woodhouses, some of Ronnie's uncles, and the Banks families are the two names you always hear to do with crime round by us. They are ‘notorious criminal families' it says in the paper when they have the trial about robbing the post office.

It ay the same.

What dyer mean it ay the same? Crime's crime. This ay political.

Yow sound like bloody her now.

He means Margaret Thatcher.

I doh sound like nobody. Iss plain hooliganism. They ay political. Or if it is political, it ay nothing to do with my politics. The politics of I'll just take what I want even if doh belong to me, is what it is. The politics of I've never done a day's work in me life an I doh intend to if I can get away with thieving off everybody else. They got more in common with the Tories than wi me.

Yow ay mekkin sense now.

They should arrest em. And deport em.

What?

If they doh like it they can leave.

What dyer mean?

Well, if they've come from somewhere else then they can allus goo back theer.

I've heard it all now.

I mean it. They come here but it must be better than Jamaica or wherever because they've come here in the fust place. I know they've got it hard. Course they've got it hard, but it just meks it wuss for everybody else, rampaging around and not respecting the law. They'm theer own wust enemies. They am. Yer see it round here. It ay right. It ay. Yow cor tell me iss right. That policeman who got injured, he's got a wife and family. They'll bloody kill somebody next and then where ull we be?

Have you heard this? Johnny's eyes have gone wide and he's waving his arm towards my mum. He sounds like Enoch Powell.

There's no need for that, Dad. It doh matter what colour they am. My mum usually doesn't take sides. Usually she thinks what Johnny says is stupid. She looks angry with my grandad. He doesn't care, though.

Well, if thass true how come they'm all black? I doh see em rioting in Neath or Newcastle or rahnd here for that matter.

Yow wait, Johnny mutters.

Yer need to calm down, all on yer, my nan says. And doh start ropin her into yer argument, she says, pointing at my mum. Her's a married woman with a son. Her's got her own problems. Yer'd think we'd got enough to worry abaht without all this carry-on a hundred miles away. Let em riot if they want. It ay nothing to do with we.

Look, my grandad says slowly, putting the newspaper down on the table and his hand on Johnny's arm. All I'm saying is that they'm doin more harm than good. If yome serious about gerrin rid of the government then, yeah, protest, demonstrate all yer want, but yer doh have to break the law, tek other people's stuff, hurt people, not like that. There's a proper process. We have elections. If yer doh like the government then yer can vote to get rid of em. Thass how we do things.

And a fine mess thass got us in.

My grandad shrugs.

What if yome outside the process?

What dyer mean?

Well, if yer cor see that there's anybody representing your voice.

This is the blacks now, is it?

Well, yeah.

Well, tek Solomon Abrahams at our work, he voted Tory.

Thass it then, now. On the strength of one black man, they'm all Tories.

No, I ay sayin that. All I'm sayin is they've got a right to vote, same as anybody else. Solomon's a fool if he thinks voting Tory's gonna do him any favours but he's got every right to do so. I bet none of them voted. I bet none of them doing the rioting am even registered to vote.

Thass my point.

No, thass my point. They ay got a leg to stand on. Black, white, pink with yeller spots. They ay doin nobody any favours except theerselves. They should round em all up.

This tops the lot, this does.

They ay rioting to cause a revolution, son, they'm rioting so they can nick some tellies!

Right, thass it, yome finishing it now. I doh want to hear no more about it. No more, no more, no more.

My nan bangs the kitchen table each time she says No more. My grandad and uncle look shocked.