Confessions of a Private Soldier. Timothy Lea
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I say, deciding the time has come to change the subject and demonstrate a bit of concern for the miserable old git.
Dad looks at the bog paper. ‘I think it was the sausages we had last night. I don’t know what they put in them these days.’
‘I didn’t mean that, Dad,’ I say, patiently. ‘Mum was saying your wound had been playing up.’
‘I’ve had a few twinges,’ says Dad, putting on his ‘I fought through Hell and lived’ face.
‘You want to take it easy, Dad.’
Nature’s greatest argument for compulsory patricide looks up sharply.
‘Are you trying to take the mickey?’
‘No, Dad. I—’
‘I do my bit. I always have done. Not like some people. Some people don’t know what I’ve been through. The doctor said he’d never seen anything like it. He didn’t know how I kept it up. “You’re a walking miracle” that’s what he said to me. He’d never met anyone with my willpower, you see. I don’t talk about it much but me and pain are not strangers. Oh, dear me, no. I don’t let on much but–’
‘Yes, Dad,’ I say, trying to halt the flow before he really gets going. ‘You don’t have to tell me.’ Not again, I must have heard it a hundred times.
Luckily Mum announces that tea is up and I am spared any more details of how Dad is going to romp away with the Martyr Of The Year Award. Not that the alternative is all that great. Mum’s Rosie Lee certainly brings out the gypsy in me and what can you say for a woman who cannot even make a decent cup of tea? I can remember when she used to open the tea bags and pour them into the pot. What with one thing and another it does not take me long to get the feeling that 17 Scraggs Lane has not got a lot to recommend it over the nick.
‘Have you got a job lined up?’ asks Dad.
‘Give us a chance, I only got – I only came home this morning. I didn’t call in at the Labour on the way.’
‘You don’t even know where it is,’ says Dad scornfully. ‘I think I’ll buy you a street map so you don’t get lost.’
‘Perhaps Sidney can find something for him,’ says Mum.
I am swift to shake my head. ‘No. I’m going to stand on my own two legs. Nothing Sidney has lined up for me has ever worked out. Not in the long term, anyway.’
‘That’s not all Sidney’s fault,’ says Mum, wagging a finger at me. ‘I have to speak as I find even if blood is thicker than water.’
‘I don’t care if it’s thicker than melted nougat,’ I say. ‘I don’t reckon that it’s an accident that Wonder Sid has cleaned up the ackers while I’ve been cleaning out the “D” Block khasi.’
It is at this propitious moment that there is a quick ‘We are the champions’ on the door bell and I prepare to greet my poxy brother-in-law as Mum goes off to do a recce through the lace curtains.
‘Hello, Timmo!’ says Sid a few moments later. ‘I didn’t know you were coming out today.’
‘Didn’t you get a telegram from Buckingham Palace?’
‘I didn’t bother to read it. I thought it must be another bleeding garden party.’
‘Sidney!’ says Mum, shocked. As far as she is concerned there is nothing to choose between God and the Duke of Edinburgh. Probably not a lot to choose as far as the Duke of Edinburgh is concerned. I am not really taking a lot of notice because I am drinking in Sid’s clobber. He is wearing a black serge safari jacket and matching trousers with a raised seam. It is all very trendy and makes him look a bit of a poofter. Not at all the Sid I remember back in his faded denim days.
‘He’s not looking too bad, is he, Mum?’ says Sid. ‘He needs a bit of your home cooking to fatten him up.’ Sid winks at me and I give him my ‘do us a favour’ look. Mum cooks like she has a pathological hatred of food and is trying to pay it back for some injury it has done her in the past.
‘I’ve got a nice bread pudding planned for this evening,’ she says, proudly, as I wince. I make a better bread pudding when I’m mixing paste to go fishing.
‘How’s the family?’ I ask.
‘Smashing. Rosie should be over with the kids in a few minutes. Tell you what. Why don’t you and I slip out for a couple of jars and then we can look in later. There’s not room for us all in here. You fancy a beer, do you?’
‘Great idea, Sid. Let’s go up The Highwayman.’
‘Don’t go drinking too much,’ warns Mum.
‘There’s no danger of that. Not with those two buying!’ says Dad who is about as tight as a gnome’s foreskin when it comes to lashing out for a round of drinks.
When we get to The Highwayman I hardly recognise the place. There is piped muzak, a snack bar and everything tarted up with the most diabolical wall paper. It quite puts you off your ale. Not that this commodity is very easy to come by anyway, and when I ask for a packet of crisps the geezer behind the bar looks at me as if I have been trying to force my hampton through the slit in the Doctor Barnado box.
‘We don’t do crisps,’ he says witheringly. ‘You can have a toasted sandwich.’ He indicates a fish tank bearing the word ‘Toastimat’, inside which are littered a few melting blobs which remind me of the scene three feet below a vulture’s perch. The sight is not calculated to have me diving into my pocket for 30p.
‘Let’s go in the garden,’ I say.
‘Kiddies only,’ says the barman sharply.
‘But there aren’t any kids here.’
‘That’s the rule. If you don’t like it–’ He keeps looking me up and down as if he is trying to tell me something.
‘The place has changed a bit, hasn’t it?’ I say to Sid. ‘I don’t recognise any of the old faces.’ It is a fact that all the birds look as if they have just had their hair done and the blokes are wearing ties. One or two of them even have suits on.
‘There’s a lot of middle class people around here, now, Timmo,’ says Sid. ‘You get the office workers coming in here for lunch. They even serve coffee.’
I can hardly believe my ears. Coffee! In the boozer?! How disgusting can you get? Still, I know what Sid is on about. A lot of the big houses around the common have been pulled down and in their place are posh blocks of flats catering for dynamic young executives. It is getting so the place is almost fashionable.
‘You’re shooting up the social scale a bit, aren’t you, Sid?’
‘No, not me, mate. I’m working class and proud of it.’ This is a sure sign that Sidney is tucking away a bit of loot. When people are on the make they are always trying to act posher than they really are. Once they get a bit of cash and security they start telling everyone that success has not changed them and go around complaining about the price of brown ale.
‘What are you doing then, Sid?’
Sid narrows his eyes into slits and tries to look like a cross between Charlie Clore and Paul Newman.
‘These days you’ve got to move fast, Timmo. Things change so quickly you’ve got to be in and out. Grab the money while it’s going and then get into something else. You can’t sit back and make long term plans. The public are fickle.’
‘But what exactly do you do, Sid?’
‘Well, Timmo, in a nutshell. I see a new craze coming and I capitalise on it. Do you remember the hula hoop revival?’
‘No, Sid.’
Sid looks disappointed. ‘No, well maybe that’s not a very good example. “Hulava good time.” I think it was a bit subtle. A bit ahead