Men from the Boys. Tony Parsons

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СКАЧАТЬ forever. I got the impression that eating was something the pair of them had largely given up years ago.

      ‘Keep some of this Aloo Chop for your tea,’ Ken told Singe Rana. ‘When you’re at work.’

      I must have looked surprised.

      ‘Got a little job, haven’t you?’ Ken said to his friend, and Singe Rana confirmed his employment with a curt nod. ‘Security job,’ Ken elaborated. ‘Night watchman. At that firework factory on the City Road.’ He turned to me. ‘Know it, do you?’

      I nodded, vaguely remembering some ugly concrete block surrounded by council flats around Old Street. What I remembered most were the faded images on its windowless walls. Cheery cartoons of rockets, roman candles, sparklers, jumping jacks and bangers, all joyfully exploding, and all so worn away by time that they looked as though they had been painted there by cavemen.

      Ken grinned at Singe Rana with boundless amusement. ‘Keeps him off the streets,’ he cackled. ‘Keeps him out of trouble.’

      ‘Gurkha people,’ said Singe Rana seriously. ‘Always trusted for security position.’

      ‘You don’t want to nick a packet of sparklers when he’s on guard duty,’ Ken chortled. ‘He’ll slit your throat soon as look at you!’ Then he looked at his friend with affection. ‘And the money comes in handy. Minimum wage. But it helps when you’re having a flutter. And we do like a little flutter, don’t we, Singe Rana?’

      While we ate the Aloo Chop they consulted the racing pages of their newspapers, and when we had finished they were ready to go to the betting shop.

       Ken Grimwood lived at the sharp end of the Angel, where Islington fell away to the borders of King’s Cross. We walked slowly past a sad little strip of shops. Everywhere was crowded, everything was worn out. Nail parlours and junk food and mobile phones. Cheap neon on a grey day, some of the lights burned out, as glaring as missing teeth.

      Then suddenly the women with pushchairs crowded with children and shopping were jumping out of the way. Something was stampeding towards us – big kids on small bikes, as multi-racial as a Benetton marketing campaign, whooping with joy as the crowd scattered.

      I quickly stepped into the gutter, with that easy middle-class cowardice that comes so naturally these days.

      But Ken Grimwood dipped his right shoulder, tucked in his chin and stood his ground. They hurtled towards him and it seemed certain they would run him down. He did not budge. And as the lead cyclist reached the old man it was as if he leaned into him, putting the full weight of his short, broad body into the boy on the bike.

      It didn’t seem like much, but the kid went sprawling.

      I stooped to help him up, anxious to avoid an unpleasant scene, and he bared his fangs, backing me off.

      His friends had pulled up and they stared at Ken Grimwood in disbelief. We all stared at him. Only Singe Rana looked unimpressed, as though he had seen it all a thousand times before.

      ‘Fool!’ shrieked the biggest one. ‘Who you think you are, old man?’

      And Ken Grimwood just smiled to himself, as though his mind was somewhere far away, with his mob in the sunshine off the coast of Africa, and the flying fish falling into the landing craft.

      

      Gina and I walked out of Soho, turned south down the Charing Cross Road, strolled along the Strand for a bit, and then turned right to the Victoria Embankment and the river.

      There was stuff to sort out. In the end, it always comes down to practicalities with children. Times for pick-ups and drop-offs. Homework assignments and meal requirements. The endless vigilance of the search for nits. That sort of thing.

      We were being nice to each other. For the sake of our son. We were trying to be mature grown-ups and keep the party polite.

      If you had glanced at us on the street, then you would have taken us for a couple. But it was as if there was somebody walking between us, keeping us almost ludicrously apart, making accidental physical contact impossible.

      For we walked the way that old lovers do.

      ‘It’s so beautiful, this city,’ she said, smiling at the gypsy glamour of the barges and the tugs on the Thames. ‘You forget how beautiful. Why is that? Why do we forget? I walked down here with Pat last weekend. And he got it. A lot of boys his age – they wouldn’t get it, would they? But he definitely got it.’

      I was used to the way she looked now. I had got my head around it. It wasn’t complicated. She was a good-looking woman in her forties and everything we had lost was so long ago that it hardly even hurt. It wasn’t pain any more. It was more like a memory of pain. I was relieved that we would never have to go through it again.

      Besides, when she had suggested meeting, I had been expecting this kind of stuff. The forgotten beauty of our city. The remembered beauty of our son. Philosophical Gina, who had somehow achieved enlightenment while she was working as a translator in Tokyo. That is what I had been expecting. Reflective Gina – sighing at the tugs and the barges and something our son had said.

      Maybe even an apology or two. Why not? That would be nice, I thought. For the years wasted on useless men and pointless jobs and faraway places with strange-sounding names. An apology on behalf of her – and all absent parents just like her – for the time when their child wasn’t top of the list. It was a good job I wasn’t bitter.

      But she surprised me. She could do that now, because we no longer really knew each other. It wasn’t like when we were married and you pretty much knew what was coming next.

      ‘I don’t like him taking this medication,’ she said. ‘It’s not right. A teenage boy taking pills every day of his life.’

      ‘Thyroxine,’ I said. And I actually laughed. ‘You make it sound as though he’s raiding the medicine cabinet. You make it sound as though the kid lives for chemical kicks.’

      She frowned at me. ‘No need to get excited,’ she said, with a disapproving pout of her lips. Did she used to do that? I didn’t remember that move. Someone had taught her that gesture. It was nothing to do with me.

      I took a breath. I could do this thing. I could get through this conversation without my head exploding. Probably. We were mature grown-ups. If we were any more mature, we would be fossilised.

      ‘Pat was sick, Gina,’ I said quietly. ‘As soon as he started big school. He was flattened by – whatever it was. Just exhausted.’

      ‘We spoke, remember?’ she said coldly. ‘I knew all about it.’

      ‘But you didn’t really,’ I said. ‘Because you weren’t here. You were in Tokyo. You were busy with your new job or the new guy in Shibuya.’

      ‘You can’t argue, can you?’ she said, turning to face me. She had forgotten about the beauty of the eternal river. ‘You never learned to argue in a civilised fashion. And it was Shinjuku not Shibuya. And it wasn’t some new guy – it was exactly the same useless bastard that I was with in London.’

      ‘My apologies,’ I said. And then I was quiet, because I thought about the school year slipping away as Pat stayed in his room, only emerging to haul himself into a cab to see yet another doctor or paediatrician. СКАЧАТЬ