The Devil Rides Out (10 page)

Running into the kitchen I salvaged what was left of
The Women
, brushed the cat litter off it and took it down to where the carnage lay, pinning it back on the wall.

‘Chris’ll be livid when he’s seen what he’s done,’ Billy sighed, leaning over the banister to take a look. ‘Those posters have had it. Oh well, serves him right. Put them in the bin, Sadie, and let’s have a cup of tea.’

Taking myself off to the Brook Street Bureau, an employment agency with branches all over London to see if they had anything exciting on their books, I ended up working for them as one of their ‘jobfinders’. After a short induction course on how to sell jobs to unwitting secretaries and office clerks in search of a change of career, I found myself sat behind a desk in the Fleet Street branch, painfully aware that I was totally out of my depth. It was all about selling and meeting quotas, and it was obvious that I was the worst salesperson ever to flip through a card index as I declared unconvincingly to the hapless victim before me that ‘I might have the perfect position for you.’ I quit before they unmasked me as the inept fraud that I was, taking with me the details of a job in a pub on the river. I was better off behind a bar than a desk, that I was sure of.

The Samuel Pepys was a pub restaurant in what is now a building called Globe Wharf. The customers were mainly City types, it was a pleasant atmosphere to work in and the guv’nor was a decent chap. In the end I stayed there for over three months, even managing to get a promotion from barman to wine waiter in the restaurant. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t a clue about wines apart from those Yates’s had sold as the Pepys could hardly be accused of having an extensive wine list, and if asked by a diner to recommend a wine I’d suggest the ones that I could pronounce.

I thought she was ‘frightfully posh’ as she ‘spoke nice’ and lived in a beautiful old house in Hampton Court with her lovely family. I couldn’t help wondering what the hell an extremely intelligent, articulate, brilliant girl with so much potential was doing wasting time waiting tables.

‘I’m treading water, just biding my time,’ she explained, waving a Camel about in the air. (The ciggy, not the animal.) ‘Just waiting for the boyfriend to whisk me off to Seville and marry me.’

I rechristened her Fudge, God knows why. The name just seemed to suit her and anyway she was delighted with it.

Fudge drove me up to Birkenhead for a few days in her little car. She was desperate to photograph Liverpool’s waterfront and explore the art galleries and museums, while I was desperate to get away from Chris and Billy, who seemed to think that even though I was paying a fiver a week rent they were entitled to use me as their very own domestic servant. Admittedly I was allergic to the household chores but their constant demands were worthy of Cinderella’s stepsisters and I had frequent rows and spats with them, Billy in particular.

At night as I lay on the living-room floor in my makeshift bed I’d harbour dark thoughts, fantasizing about the great day when I would eventually snap and wring his bloody neck.

As soon as we got to Birkenhead I realized that I wanted to stay. Fudge was having none of it and tried to reason with me.

‘Look at what you have in London and then look at what you have up here.’

I did and decided that up here was the better option. The bitter realization was this: nothing was going to happen for me in London, it would be a life of bar jobs and sleeping on people’s floors. I was kidding myself if I ever thought I’d make a decent living down there and as for saving enough money to rent my own flat, well, dream on, kid. Plus, if I was really honest with myself I was lonely in London. I only knew a handful of people there, yet up here in Birkenhead and Liverpool I had my family and loads of mates. No, best quit while you’re ahead, I told myself, and come home. Now all I had to do was get round my ma.

Since I’d left home my mother had discovered a new lease of life. She’d joined St Joseph’s Union of Catholic Mothers, made a whole new circle of friends she went on outings and coach trips with to the various shrines that the Virgin Mary had reputedly appeared at, spent her weekends with her grandchildren and, although she still mourned my father, as she explained to Tawny she was slowly discovering that life as a single gal was not without its advantages.

‘I’m not at anyone’s beck and call, can come and go as I please and I don’t have the worry of lying in bed waiting for this big article to get home from a night tomcatting it over in Liverpool till all hours. Now would you like another little sandwich, Tony?’ she asked, getting up from the sofa.

‘Oh is it? That’s a very unusual name. Did your mother like owls then, love?’

We drove back to London on the Wednesday morning, and while I put up what I considered a good pretence of looking forward to getting back, inside I was screaming, ‘Turn the car round, I want to go home.’ We arrived in London and pulled up outside Formosa Street around four thirty in the afternoon: good timing as it meant Chris and Billy wouldn’t be home from work yet. Perfect. I’d just enough time to get in the flat and grab what few items of clothing I’d left without any nasty confrontation. There was a little matter of two weeks’ rent being overdue, not that I had it. I had just about enough for a single ticket on the coach. Be easier to leave a note and send the rent on when I found myself in funds again – whenever that might be.

‘Are you OK, Paul?’ Fudge asked, leaving the engine running as she waited for me to get out of the car. ‘You’ve seemed very distracted the entire journey.’

‘I’m going back to Birkenhead,’ I blurted out. ‘I’ve made up my mind, I can’t stay here.’

‘You mean you’ve driven all the way down with me only to turn round and go straight back up again? You’re crazy, certifiably insane,’ she said, turning the ignition off and folding her arms.

‘Yup,’ I replied, feeling like the biggest fool in Christendom.

We sat in the car in silence, uncomfortable in each other’s company after my sudden and drastic change of heart.

‘Well, I suppose that’s that then,’ she sighed, breaking the silence and turning the ignition back on. ‘If I can’t get you to change your mind I’d be grateful if you’d hop it before I start blubbing.’

Standing on the pavement watching her pull out from the kerb I felt a hard ball of misery forming in the back of my throat, making it impossible to swallow without producing strange gulping noises. I was never much of a hero when it came to saying goodbye.

‘Turn again, Whittington, three times Lord Mayor of London!’ she shouted out through the open car window as she sped round the corner and out of my life. I never saw her again. She married her Spaniard and went to live in Seville, we exchanged letters for a while and then as so often happens we simply lost touch. So if you read this, Fudge, give us a call.

‘Course I can, my pearwents are away for the west of the week on holiday. Tell you what, pop down to the office and I’ll give you my keys.’

Ron was rhotacistic (couldn’t pronounce his ‘R’s) and worked for a theatrical agency. He was very theatrical himself, tall with matinee idol good looks and known somewhat incongruously to his close chums as Trixie Delight. I dutifully popped down, my numerous carrier bags bursting at the seams, and gratefully collected his house keys.

Ron lived in an area that was unexplored territory up till then and I asked the bus conductor if he would mind giving me a shout when it came to my stop. You could still do things like that then. Nowadays, if such an obsolete curio as a bus conductor could still be found, your request would probably be met with a stony silence or a curt ‘dunno’.

‘So c’mon, what’s happened? Tell your aunty Twixie all about it,’ Ron said through mouthfuls of beans on toast as we sat at the kitchen table eating our tea. ‘I had Chris on the phone this afternoon wanting to know if I’d heard from you. He said you’d just packed up and gone. You’re not in any twouble, are you?’

‘Jesus, Ron, you sound like my mother. No I’m not in any trouble apart from being skint, jobless and homeless. I don’t know what to do.’ We sat in silence, listening to Bob Greaves on
Granada Reports
talking about the birth of a baby llama at Knowsley Safari Park from the telly in the front room.