Authors: Ross Gilfillan
‘Look,’ I say. ‘I don’t know what it is that I’m supposed to have done, but I just want you to understand that I’m very sorry, okay?’
I realise that I’m as close to Ros as I will probably ever get and that it’s now or never.
‘I don’t know what is going on here,’ I say. ‘But you might as well know that I respect you, Rosalind.’ I don’t notice that the hubbub of conversation has suddenly died. ‘In fact, I think you are the most wonderful girl in the school.’ I’m not really registering the barely-suppressed giggling and one or two ironical Aaahs. I blunder on. ‘I admire you for the depth of your reading, your brilliant mind, the way you dress, the way you walk and probably the way you talk, too. Whether or not you want me,
Rosalind, I’m telling you here and now that I LOVE YOU.’
And now I can hear the noise around me, the almighty cheer, the clapping, the wolf-whistles and the coarse and suggestive comments from Dave Fletcher and his dumb mates. I stand there, awaiting Rosalind’s response. It’s like waiting to hear my fate.
I stand there what seems like an hour, but is probably ten seconds. The noise has subsided, like everyone else is awaiting her answer too. But amazingly, Rosalind Chandler is oblivious not only to my presence but to that of everyone else on The Grassy Knoll, to everyone else in the world, for all I know. She just sits there, with her knees pulled up a little tighter, maybe, and stares towards the track, where the lone runner is nowhere to be seen, not, that is, until she appears directly in front of me, a red faced, freely perspiring and very angry Teresa Davenport, who is saying, ‘How could you do this, after everything I told you about Ros? How could you?’ And she’s helping Ros to her feet and Ros is still saying nothing as Teresa, dressed fetchingly, I’m ashamed to notice, in a sweat-dampened track top and tight blue shorts, helps Ros down from The Knoll and towards the Brian Johnson-free zone of the school itself.
You can imagine how I am feeling. Actually, no, you really can’t.
Teresa Davenport stops play – again. I think about her close relationship with Ros as I follow the pair back to school, bathed in humiliation. What is it with her? Why is it TD who gets to spend so much time with Ros and not me? It’s not natural, I think, then the thought flashes through my mind that maybe I have a rival. Maybe Ros is mistaking Teresa’s attentions as friendship when Teresa has something very much more personal in mind. Teresa doesn’t look like a lesbian, at least not like the ones I’ve Googled, but who knows? Maybe you get pretty ones too?
The end of term exams are over.
Most of mine seemed to go okay, but I’ve said that before,
when I produced results which had my Dad ranting and raving and tearing out his remaining hair. The terrible thing is, you never know, with exams. Chance and fate always seem to be involved somehow. But they are over at last and though we still have to go into school, part of the time, anyway, it’s all much more relaxed. People are bunking off on the flimsiest pretexts and there’s no real teaching going on, not for us, at least. Everyone’s thoughts are turned towards what they’ll do with the imminent summer holidays, like which festivals they’re getting tickets for, where they’re going on holiday and what summer jobs they’ll be taking to fund their various recreational and shopping habits.
Dad is planning to take Mum off for a few days in Edgebaston, but there’s to be no party at mine. Not after The Party to End All Parties. In fact it doesn’t look like we’ll be having a party anywhere. Diesel’s is right out, now that he’s steaming towards a wife and 2.4 children, poor bugger. Faruk’s family’s flat is always so crowded with friends and relatives that a party would get lost amongst them all. And Roger won’t hear of it, despite it being his idea and him being so desperate for Clive to ‘dip his wick’, which he is so certain will immediately cure his son of any untoward tendencies.
Roger won’t have it at his because he and Clive have finally got the bungalow’s interior just the way they want it. It is spectacular, I have to say, with linen blinds and potted palms offering a sultry, tropical vibe in Roger’s bedroom and a new ethnic thing going on in Clive’s. The scrap business has obviously been doing well, as Roger has upgraded the floor coverings in several rooms and Clive’s latest choice of designer knick-knacks looks on the expensive side. But it’s not, I can understand, a place where either of them would want a lot of chodes in dirty boots dancing on the Persian rugs and doing the other party stuff in the boutique bedrooms and smart bathroom.
So instead of a party, we’re going to have a weekend away,
somewhere there’s something going on. And because Roger is a mate, sort of, and because he looks like he just might be a dangerous mate, we’ll have to try and get Clive laid. After we’ve got ourselves laid, ideally. I’m not sure which is the more unlikely eventuality, but all sounds good right now. Cornwall could be a rocking venue: there’s ravers and surf girls at Newquay, or posh kids with money down at Rock. We thought about Brighton, but getting Clive laid in the nation’s gay capital might be making work for ourselves. The point is that we’ll go somewhere, have a brilliant time and I’ll be able to avoid thinking about Nana for a while, and also about how I have, apparently, completely distressed Rosalind, the one and only love of my life.
On days like this I think my top-end mobile phone has been worth every pound of the money Mum paid for it. It’s got the usual roster of features I’ll never use, plus a touch-screen, multi-mega pixel camera and an unusually detailed call log, which for today lists the following activity:
Friday. Outgoing calls
8.25 am. Violet Johnson: I call Mum from my bed, tell her I’m not feeling well and ask her to phone me in sick at school. I also tell her I’m quite hungry and could do a bacon sandwich, if there is one in the offing and hang up before Mum can reply.
8.45 am. St Saviour’s School: I ring in sick, citing suspected appendicitis. Miss Eliot in the office says she’d tell my form teacher, Mr Lodge and hopes I’ll get better soon.
8.25 am. Diesel: I call the Big D to ask if he’s doing anything Saturday. Tell him Faruk is otherwise engaged. Diesel says he’ll come over mine early on Saturday and we’ll have some fun.
Incoming calls
8.27 am. Violet Johnson: Mum calls to tell me that if I am going to skive school I can do the phoning in for myself. She also enquires what my last servant died of.
9.05 am. Bernard Lodge: My form teacher calls to tell me that
according to his records, I had my appendix removed last summer holidays. He remembers it well, he says, as my recovery extended three days into the new term. He wishes me a miraculous recovery and says that he is very much looking forward to seeing me tomorrow.
11.17 am. Faruk: FA reminds me that he won’t be around on Saturday as he’s been roped into a five-a-side with his mates from the mosque.
11.49 am. Diesel: Says he can’t make Saturday after all as he’s already booked for another shopping expedition with Lauren. Wants to know if I knew the price of cots and strollers these days?
And then:
Voicemail from: Teresa Davenport
Hello, Brian? Listen, Ros is not so good, She’s in her room, refusing to see anyone. Don’t worry, it’s not your fault. Not all of it. But we need to do something. (Pause.) Look, you may act like a cretin sometimes, but I know you care about her, like I do. So call me. We need to talk.
Saturday. Outgoing texts, late pm:
To: Teresa Davenport.
Sorry, only picked up your message today. Phone lost in sofa. How is Ros? Would have called or come over but it all kicked off at Clive’s. Will explain when I see you. Talk very soon.
C
HAPTER
15
Please Mr Postman
There was a time, Clive says, when Roger Dyson, or Nutter Dyson, as he answered to then, would spend his Saturday afternoons with his friends, Frank Mad Dog Pemble, Hammer Harry Piercey and Les Stanley McGregor, in and around the leafy suburb of Peckham, South London. This, I’m told, is necessary background if I’m to understand what caused the disturbance at 13, Laurel Gardens earlier this afternoon. The one which resulted in two lost teeth, one fractured pelvis and a broken nose; the destruction of various pieces of quite expensive designer furniture, and one of Roger’s Rottweilers shitting itself in fright all over the Persian rug.
In South London, Roger was a keen supporter of Millwall F.C. and liked to take his three pals down The Shed, where they would meet other like-minded pals, and, on a good day, watch his favourite team trounce the visiting side. Many of Roger’s friends weren’t actually Millwall supporters. They didn’t much like football, even. They wore the Millwall shirts and scarves the way an army wears a uniform, to differentiate between friend and foe in the confusion of battle.
Because what Roger’s friends liked more than anything, was a good scrap. A big set-to, with iron bars, broken bottles and knuckle-dusters was their idea of healthy, vigorous exercise. In the periods just before and after the match itself, pockets of enemy fans might be lured into secluded dead-end streets and taught that trespassing on Millwall turf was a dangerous idea. Not that Roger and his mates actually wanted to deter the other supporters from coming. Without them, Saturdays would have been very much duller.
But after a few years of this, Roger’s mates started to grow up,
have kids, get jobs – good jobs, some of them. You couldn’t spend your weekdays as a City trader and your Saturdays trying to beat the living shit out of Chelsea supporters. Their numbers dropped off and simultaneously, the whole ethos of the game changed. The clubs themselves changed. There was seating in the stands, where a safe family atmosphere was promoted and good old boys with lumps of wood were looked upon as dinosaurs rather than heroes. And now, when Roger and his much diminished crew did find a rumble, they were often outnumbered and, Roger told his son, ‘given a proper kicking’.
The time had come to move on. Roger tried to wind things down; better to watch the footie and go for a pint. But other firms still came mob-handed, looking to settle old scores and take scalps like Roger’s. And the police still regarded him as a menace and circulated his details to pubs and football clubs, and to border agencies whenever there was a fixture on the Continent. And on top of that, Erica Dyson, Clive’s mum, was giving him a right old earful every time he got into trouble. Things were getting too warm for Nutter. The opportunity to move up North and take on his Great Auntie Ethel’s bungalow could hardly have come at a better time.
The lads were sorry to see him go, of course, and he had a memorable send off in a pub down the Old Kent Road, with a lock-in and a finger buffet. Everyone ‘got ratted’ and the whole affair ended with a huge bar fight for old times’ sake – and with Roger extending an open invitation to any Southern jesses who wanted to experience the man’s life of the North, first hand. It was a little joke which had gone down very well but one which had been loaded with unforeseen consequences.
I knew nothing about all this. I didn’t know that Roger had been a notorious football hooligan, or that he had three friends who would, after these intervening years, look exactly like the three suspicious characters who tossed a tin of Tennent’s over our front garden hedge at 2.20 this afternoon. From my bedroom
window I’d seen a big shaven-headed bloke wearing a camel Crombie, a small, fat man in denim jacket, denim jeans and brown Doc Marten’s and a middling-sized man with a scarred cheek who wore thick-framed glasses and an ill-fitting suit and looked like Michael Caine with a bad haircut. These were the descriptions I was going to supply to the police, should anyone’s house get turned over that afternoon.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Earlier that day, according to Clive, he and Roger had donned matching blue fleeces and had gone to an antiques fair to put in a spot of practise for a projected appearance on TV’s mid-day antiques game,
Bargain Search
. The fleeces were worn partly to get into character and partly to get over the shock of having to appear in such unfashionable items of apparel on TV. Because by this time, Clive had extended his father’s interest in life’s finer things to his wardrobe and Roger was rarely seen without his Armani jeans and his Prada lightweight nylon jacket, funded, like the interior makeover, by the deceased ancient relative who hadn’t set eyes on him since he was a ‘darling little boy’ in shorts. Roger had had a fit when Clive told him that he’d signed them both up as contestants on
Bargain Search
. ‘I’m not wearing a fucking fleece,’ he’d told his son. ‘End of.’
But Clive had been very persuasive. Clive said he’d be bound to land a bird if they saw him on the show. He didn’t say that being on telly might sell his dad too. By Clive’s reckoning, there must be thousands of single women sitting on their sofas in the middle of the day just waiting for someone like Roger to give them a purpose in life (like doing the cooking and cleaning and providing a gossipy female friend for Clive himself). But the application had been made months ago and though they both were looking forward to it as a bit of a laugh, Clive had since been visited by an idea for sorting out his dad which was much more certain of success.
This morning, Clive tells me, after a successful visit to the
antiques fair, where Roger had bought a Victorian swordstick and Clive had bagged a Lalique bowl, they had returned home to find a large envelope bearing an illegible foreign postmark waiting on the doorstep. Still wearing their matching blue fleeces, they had thrown themselves down on their bright new Conran sofa, torn open the packet and begun to devour the pages of the July issue of Asian Bride magazine.
It was several weeks since he had first mooted the idea to his father.
‘Do wot?’ Roger had said. ‘A fooking mail order bride?’
By then, Roger had got a handle on the Northern tongue. You had to, if you used the boozers he did. Fooking, not fackin’, bath as in Kath (not sarth, like in Sarth London). Grass rhymed with ass, but arse was the same north and south of the Watford Gap. Not that nuances of the English language were uppermost in his mind just then.
‘What are you suggesting? That I get one off Amazon or leave a bid on eBay? Or maybe wait ‘til the new Argos catalogue comes out and choose one from there? Fuck me, Clive, have you thought this through? Who are these people you’ve been writing to without my say so? I don’t even know what these birds are like.’
Clive noticed that at no point did he reject the idea out of hand and proceeded to explain to his father the benefits, as he saw them, of using the simple expedient of ordering his next wife online or through a catalogue. ‘I’m not sure about this, Cly,’ Roger had said at first. ‘Is it like ordering other mail order goods? I mean, can I send her back if she doesn’t fit? If she isn’t fit for purpose, I mean?’ Roger had a thousand and one questions. How would he know she’d make a good wife? How would he know if she was good in bed? Could he try her on approval? Would she speak English? Would she know how to cook a decent meat and potato pie? Would she be able to drive, at least as far as his local boozer? Would she appreciate all that
he, as a connoisseur of fine living, had to offer?
Clive outlined the system, explaining that by the time he met her, he’d already know his intended well enough through letters and emails. He reminded Roger that none of his pub pick-ups had lasted more than a few weeks and usually were one-night stands. He pointed out that neither Roger nor himself had time to do the cooking and the cleaning any more – what with a busy scrap business to run and high-standard décor to maintain – and that if this were a restaurant, health inspectors would close down the kitchen and several streets around it as a public health hazard. The kitchen wasn’t Clive’s thing at all.
And these being Asian girls, they’d be all right about doing a bit of work around the house, unlike British birds, who preferred to divide their time between nail bars and the ones in pubs. And Asian birds were lookers, as far as Clive could tell. It wasn’t long before Roger was persuaded and had started exchanging letters and photographs with a tall, slim and very striking Malaysian girl, called Pao-Pei.
Clive and Roger had spent the early part of this afternoon talking about Pao-Pei, whose name Roger still struggled with, and how she would fit into their lives. ‘Pom Pei will love it here,’ Roger assured Clive, mooning over her slender neck, her very un-British white teeth and her eyes, which seemed to look deeply into his. ‘She won’t have to eat all that foreign muck for one thing. And she’ll be able to watch proper TV, without subtitles.’
‘Course, she’ll love it here,’ Clive said. ‘Look at all the shops Sheffield’s got.’
‘It says here she likes football too,’ Roger said. ‘She’s a hardworking, twenty-two-year-old student of home economics whose interests include cooking, housekeeping and – fuck me – soccer! And with looks like that, son, pardon me, but she’s got to like a bit of how’s-your-father too. Doesn’t get any better than that, believe me.’
Clive read out her details for himself. ‘Pao-Pei is looking for a
kind English husband who will help her perfect her English, broaden her understanding of Western culture and widen her sphere of interests.’
‘Widen her what?’ Roger said.
‘Her sphere of interests,’ Clive said.
‘I think I have something which will widen that,’ Roger said.
He wrote to Asian Brides, who forwarded his introductory letter, together with a photograph of Roger Dyson looking every inch the prosperous English gentleman, to their client in a village by the sea in Malaysia. When at last they received a reply, Roger and Clive were most impressed with the standard of Pao-Pei’s written English. It was better than theirs. She said how delighted she was with Roger’s letter and that she thought he was a very handsome man. She was fascinated to hear about Roger’s exotic life in that far-away land and said how much she would like very much to see it for herself.
She told him something about her own home life, about her parents and her sisters and her brothers and how keen they were that she followed her dream and found herself a new and satisfying life in the West. Roger wrote back and then, discovering that she had a computer, they exchanged increasingly amorous emails and Pao-Pei sent photographs of herself wearing sarongs in several vivid colours. Roger hinted delicately that she might like to send him a photograph of her without the sarongs, but clearly Pao-Pei was a highly decorous girl as in her next mail, she made no mention of his suggestion, but she did ask him when they could be together. As soon as she liked, Roger thought and proposed to her there and then.
After paying a generous fee to Asian Brides, he set to with a will, dealing with all the red tape which had to be sorted out before he could send Pao-Pei a one-way air ticket and finally meet his bride-to-be in person. Clive was almost as excited as his father. It was just like Faruk’s arranged marriage, he told his friend, though Faruk didn’t really see it that way. While he
waited for permissions to be granted, Roger spent his days making sure everything in the house was ready for her reception.
He did everything that Clive said had to be done: he cleared out a drawer for her smalls, installed a new wardrobe for her things, bought scented soaps, candles for the bathroom and an air-freshener for the toilet. And then, much to the consternation of my own father (‘He’s up to something, Violet’), Roger set about clearing his garden, shifting the huge heaps of metal and compacting the scraps, fencing off untidy areas and then, under Clive’s direction, rescuing and restoring the greenery. When at last they had done, the bungalow featured a pleasant little garden with flowerbeds, a shrubbery and a winding gravel path which led the eye to a freshly-painted bungalow with roses around the front door. If it also had its own scrap yard around the side, then it was, as Mum observed, the tidiest, and perhaps even the prettiest scrap yard in South Yorkshire.
And now Roger had only days to go until the day he would drive down to London Heathrow and meet the gorgeous Pao-Pei off her plane. He made lots of last minute preparations, arranging to have flowers delivered to the house on the day of her arrival, bought a new bottle of mouthwash and some flavoured condoms and crossed off the days on the calendar. The mood in the house was infectious: Clive was as feverish as his father. He couldn’t wait to meet Poon-Tang, as his dad was already calling her, and take her out shopping in Sheffield.
If I’d known Clive had visitors I wouldn’t have dropped round, but Clive had insisted I come in all the same. Now I’m sitting in the corner, my right hand recovering its shape after the mangling Frank gave it when Roger made the introductions. No one looks comfortable. Frank has done his best, draping his Crombie on a chair and then dropping himself onto the new sofa and then his big boots onto the new coffee table. He sits there waiting for someone to say something. No one has taken a blind bit of notice
of Clive’s own notice, which hangs by the back door: Whether you live in palace or mews/ it’s always polite/to take off your shoes.
Behind Frank, Harry and Les look still less at ease, sitting rigidly erect on a pair of straight-backed, reproduction Rennie Mackintosh chairs. Harry sits with his pork-pie hat on his knees, while Les is taking quick glances at everything, like a chicken pecking for corn. They’re just a little intimidated by the colours, the fussy newness of everything, by the wotsit? The design. Roger stands by the window, screening a group of fragile figurines and looking little more at home than his unexpected guests. He must be seeing his gaff through their eyes and wondering what they’re thinking. When they used to roll up at his old drum on Peckham High Street, as Roger told Clive, it was the sort of place you could happily flop down wherever you liked, bang on the telly, crack open the beers, pass out the fags and put your feet up. And it’s Frank’s feet, or rather Frank’s boots, still resting on the coffee table, which are the focus of all attention now. Even Les and Harry can’t take their eyes off them. Finally, Frank catches on, removes the boots, coughs loudly and crosses his legs.