Confessions of a Private Soldier. Timothy Lea
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That does not surprise me. Sidney’s business ventures are seldom of the long-term variety. Either bankruptcy or the police – or sometimes both in a muck sweat, dead heat – always seem to catch up with him.
‘And Rosie and the kids?’
‘They’re very well. Rosie is going to dancing classes.’
‘She’s left it a bit late, hasn’t she?’
‘Not ordinary kind of dancing. This is all about finding the Zen or something.’
‘What was that, Mum?’
‘It’s no good talking to me. You’ll have to ask her. She should be here later.’
Sister Rosie has been becoming more and more of a handful since she started reading the colour supplements and watching BBC2 and I am not surprised to hear that she is into some new kind of self-exploration kick.
‘Every Thursday, down at the British Legion Hall. They get a very nice class of person there. They’ve all got little French cars.’
I can imagine. It is always the ones who should know better who get tired of pottery classes first. Before you know where you are they are doing ‘O’ level French and knitting red, white and blue mittens for the laundry man. After that it’s anything goes and the privet eaten down to navel level by the milkman’s horse.
Rosie was always a bit of a raver but in the old days she had the decency to feel guilty about the way she was carrying on. Now she reckons that she has the same right to get her end away as a bloke. Disgusting, isn’t it? I feel a lot of sympathy for Sidney. In fact I think it is one of the things that keeps us together. I mean, if us blokes don’t stand shoulder to shoulder and stick up for our rights we could find ourselves in the same situation as the Yanks: millions of big-mouthed women trampling all over us.
‘Where are they living, now?’ I ask.
‘Vauxhall. Rosie wanted to be near the West End. They bought an old house and gutted it. Must have cost them a fortune.’
I feel like pointing out that it cost Sidney a fortune but I do not pursue the matter. Deep down, where no one in his right mind would dream of looking, I know that Mum is a woman, and they are basically all the same.
‘I told them they were fools,’ says Mum. ‘Do you remember when they had that lovely place at Streatham? I never knew why they gave that up.’
‘Because Sidney was skint at the time. He goes up and down like a blooming yo-yo. You don’t want to worry about Vauxhall, Mum, it’s very fashionable at the moment. It’s going up.’
‘Most of what I’ve seen is coming down,’ sniffs Mum. Poor old thing. She doesn’t understand that all the nobs are fighting to live in places that the people who live there are fighting to get out of. She would reckon she had moved into Westminster Abbey if you offered her a flat in Wimbledon. She does not realise that people want to be near the art galleries and theatres and all the other places they never go to because there is something on the telly.
‘The kids all right, are they?’
Mum’s face assumes the expression of doting joy that is always reserved for her disgusting grandchildren.
‘Jason is doing ballet now.’
‘Blimey. Is Rosie trying to turn him into a poofter? They haven’t given up hopes of having a girl, have they?’
‘He’s got a natural bent, that child,’ says Mum, reproachfully.
‘That’s what’s worrying me. I haven’t forgotten him on that diabolical telly programme.’
‘I don’t want to hear a word against little Jason.’ Mum gives a tell-tale sniff. ‘At least he hasn’t broken his mother’s heart yet.’
‘Yes, yes,’ I say hurriedly. ‘And talking of heartbreak, how’s Dad? Hard at it as usual, I suppose?’
‘No need to be sarcastical,’ chides Mum. ‘Your father hasn’t been very well lately. One of his old war wounds has been playing up.’
Quite what my father did in the war has always been something of a mystery to me. Fire watching has been mentioned but I think it was mainly the one burning in the grate of 17 Scraggs Lane. Certainly I don’t think he ever traded bullets with the enemy. Cigarette cards, maybe, but not bullets.
‘What injury, Mum? Writer’s cramp from trying to get his post war credits?’
‘Don’t mock,’ says Mum, coldly. ‘You’re in no position to point the finger. You haven’t exactly brought lustre to the family name.’
‘Lustre’ is a most unusual word for my mother to use and I can only assume that she lifted it from a furniture polish advert on the box. I got my education that way.
‘I know, Mum,’ I say, humbly. ‘I’m going to try and make amends.’
I mean it too. I know I have been a disappointment to my parents since I first got done for nicking lead, diabolical decision though it was. I saw three fellows loading lead on to a lorry and they asked me if I would give them a hand. Said they were collecting for the church roof. Trouble was that they were stripping the lead off the church hall. Not knowing the religious landscape of the parish – and being a bit of a twit into the bargain – I was the mug who landed up in the South Western Magistrates’ Court.
I am about to enquire after Dad’s whereabouts when the man himself appears as Mum makes a discreet exit. He emerges from the kitchen clutching the carved up copies of the TV Times which serve as bog paper in the Lea mansion. I think it advisable to point out that Dad has been doing his stuff in the outside throne room beyond the kitchen and not – no, you could never have thought that, could you? Still, I suppose if you knew Dad as well as – no, it doesn’t matter. Anyway, there he is: five foot ten and a half inches of temporarily relieved depression centred over South West London. He looks down at my legs as if he expects to find a ball and chain around one of them and tosses his head contemptuously. I wonder if he is going to make his joke about ‘the return of the prod-it-all son’ but he restrains himself.
‘So you’re back, are you?’ Is this all he can manage?
‘I think you said that last time, Dad.’
‘What do you expect? The bleeding poet lariat reading an address of welcome?’ Dad shakes his head bitterly. ‘I suppose you’ve come back to bring more shame about our heads.’
‘I don’t know about “our heads”, Dad,’ I hear myself saying. ‘It’s certainly a shame about your head. The rest of you isn’t so good either.’ The minute I close my mouth I know that I have spoken foolishly but, somehow, with Dad, I don’t seem to be able to restrain myself. He really does know how to get up my bracket to beyond the hair line.
‘You cheeky little basket!’ he snarls. ‘No sooner inside the door than you’re at it. I don’t know how you have the gall to come back here. This isn’t the Prisoners’ Aid Society.’
‘I’m sorry, Dad,’ I say, controlling myself with difficulty. ‘I don’t know what came over me. I didn’t mean to be rude. The words just jumped into my mouth.’
‘Well, next time, swallow them before they jump out again. If you’re going to stay around here you’d better learn a bit of respect.’
‘Yes, Dad.’
‘You nearly broke your old mother’s heart, you know.’
‘Yes, Dad. She was hinting at it.’
‘She was a blooming sight more than hinting at it to me, I can tell you. I had to put up with her day and night. It nearly drove me round the bend.’
‘Yes, Dad.’
‘Talk about paying a debt to society. I reckon I footed your bill while you were in there. My taxes subsidised you. All that