Cleaning Up Read online

  He’d been back eighteen months and it looked like the osmosis had been put in reverse. Chilled Tommy was now just another sun-soaked memory.

  He wondered how the boys from the Centre would have viewed the agro at the DVD store. They would have probably eaten it up with a fork and spoon. He pictured Bones laughingly throwing his, ‘be decent not tough’ mantra back in his face.

  Out of the corner of his eye the hawk plummeted and after a few moments in the grass, came back up with a mouse pinned in its talons - the little fella’s back legs cycling away in futile struggle. Instinct, he thought pure bloody instinct. Nature, as Mick would say, red in tooth and claw.

  Tommy picked himself up and made his way back to the car. He went down to the bookies to meet up with Mick. They’d have a short stroll and a couple of pints.

  Darrin had enjoyed the salsa night right enough - it had been a blur of Latin rhythms and a permanently busy dance floor. The dancing was sexy, if, to his eye, a little complex looking. He’d put his hand up for the beginners’ lesson, which kicked off the night. After that he stood around and watched as the instructor, a tasty South American bird, took the intermediates through their paces whilst a little Cuban bloke, who was as loose as a goose and as lithe as a cat, did the same with the advanced mob. Jolika was in the advanced class and when she moved she was as smooth and supple as water running over stones - very tasty.

  She joined him after the class, bringing a tall, good looking dark haired guy over with her. He was advanced class too - and, he had to admit, a pretty good mover.

  She introduced him as Stuart. Stuart slipped his left hand around her waist and then offered him the other, making the statement right enough.

  ‘Hi Darrin, what do you think then, like it?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah I do, very, very er good. How long you two been at it then?’

  Stuart looked down at Jolika.

  ‘Couple of years now eh babe?’

  ‘Almost three for me, I started just before you, remember? I asked you to dance.’

  She tapped him on the chest and both revelled in the memory for a while – so, nothing doing there for our Dazzer.

  He kept the smile on his dial.

  ‘Ah well - that’s great. Maybe I’ll be as good as you guys some day.’

  A new song kicked off, booming out from the speakers that were located with the mixing desk at the far end of the room. Jolika grabbed his hand and insisted that he danced with her.

  Darrin instinctively looked over at Stuart who smiled and jerked his head towards the dance floor. Jolika laughed, ‘come on Northern boy, it’s not the school disco, you don’t need his bloody permission. You’ll be right for this one, a nice slow beat - easy to keep the four-four time.’

  She encouraged him all the way through, counting out the beat for him and, with a little concentration he managed to keep on it, only cocking up when he tried a simple turn. Whenever he went astray Jolika quickly guided him back to the beat again, as patient as a mum with her toddler.

  ‘You’re alright you are PC May - not bad at all - lots of potential.’ She said that with her little chirp of a giggle that made him yearn, again, for Stuart’s absence.

  When the song ended she bowed to him and gave him a little round of applause. Darrin walked off the floor with a Cheshire cat grin and a smiling Stuart gave him a brotherly thumbs up.

  She spent the next two hours dragging her salsa mates over to get him up to dance and he even plucked it up enough to ask the instructor for a whirl.

  He left the gig with Jolika and Stuart just after one in the morning; slightly high, sweat soaked and sober. She’d been right - it was a different world.

  He’d spent the Saturday night at home with his mum, M hadn’t been picking up and Junior was down with some bug. They’d had dinner together and talked about a planned holiday later on in the year. She had friends with a farmhouse down near Seville. Pasquale had been there a few times but he didn’t fancy it all this year and he tentatively suggested that she go alone - after all, he’d be sixteen by then.

  They chatted about Tommy and the literacy tutoring. She was chuffed that he was doing well and asked him a couple of questions about Tommy himself and that made him feel a little uncomfortable. He speculated as if to whether she fancied him, he supposed that was possible. It had been years since he had seen her with a man. He hadn’t warmed to any of them really apart from Kim, who was, as far as he knew, still somewhere in South America. Just the two of them, that was the way it was and the way it always had been. He was straining at the leash though, literacy classes or no literacy classes. He’d even contemplated fucking off to London last year but fear and doubt had stopped him from doing it. He’d told her his plans to go, just to get a reaction and he had seen her fear. He hadn’t mentioned it again, it was all a little too much.

  He drew a blank with M again the next day and Junior was still laid up, so he semi-reluctantly agreed to head over to Ben and Carole’s place for lunch. They were long-term friends of his mum’s and part of the Spain crew. They had a son who was a year or two younger than him, Andy. Andy had cerebral palsy, day after day all twisted up in that electric chair of his, using up masses of energy with that mangled voice of his just to make himself understood. Pasquale liked Andy, he liked his good cheer and his determination and Andy wasn’t above giving his oldies a bit of shit either - playing the poor me card whenever he felt he needed it. Pasquale always found a degree of patience with Andy that he didn’t find with others. Andy didn’t try to hide his affection for him either - he was beyond feigned cool. Spending time with him always made him think about what it would have been like to have a younger brother or even a little sister. Be easier in some ways, he concluded, she might give him more space then, she’d have somebody else to worry about.

  He hadn’t had a smoke all weekend and on the Monday morning, he’d woken up feeling fresh and curiously optimistic. He’d even beaten her down to the kitchen to make his sandwiches and she gave him a little look about that, pleased and kind of curious at the same time. He swung his bag onto his shoulder as he headed out of the door. Tommy then school, he thought - sorted.

  Tommy had spent a fair bit of time with the old man over the weekend and was glad of the break by the time he got back to his flat on the Sunday evening. One good thing though had come from it. He’d persuaded the old fart to have a weekend at the races with the boys from the Crown. His old man loved the nags and Mick was a daily, week in week out student of the form. More importantly, a change of scene would be good for him. The old man had prevaricated and had even become a little pissed off with him when he had pressed it. But he’d eventually listened and Mick had handed over the necessary readies to Paul, the Crown’s landlord, when they’d popped down the pub for the Sunday lunch. Again, the old man had pushed most of the food to the side of his plate. Tommy didn’t comment, he’d badgered him enough this weekend.

  He was now laid out on the sofa watching some telly for a change. It was a documentary on Mallory and the conquering of Everest. He found it to be both compelling and irritating at the same time. The notion of ‘conquering’ a mountain he found laughable and he speculated as to what Bonnie’s family would have thought about that. Probably, just more confirmation for them that white fellas are intrinsically fucked up.

  There was the class thing too. Mallory and his mate were toffs through and through with the raft of assumptions and entitlement that went with it. Tommy had long moved away from class as a primary badge of identification, years away from Britain could do that to you. Those long years away and the seminal experience of being in a relationship with a woman who was from a race of people who, for generations, had suffered the privations of poverty, racism, dispossession, forced relocation and ongoing discrimination. The British working class and its burgeoning underclass would never have to confront that kind of reality. In comparison, they didn’t know what fucking hardship was.

  On the box, a contemporary version of Mallory and Lee
, (the programme adopting a ‘following in their footsteps’ shtick), were being filmed trudging their way to the top of the king of mountains. The climb was a freezing, oxygen deprived, snail paced crawl, which looked about as thrilling and pleasure-filled as dipping your head into a bucket of snot. When they had realised that Mallory wouldn’t be coming back, England’s establishment had given him a huge memorial service in Westminster Abbey. The service was a blue blood gathering of the great and powerful, one of the last hurrahs of the dying empire.

  After it finished Tommy flicked the TV off, he fired up the laptop and had a two hour steamy chat with some bird in Watford who was almost young enough to be his daughter. Fuck it, he thought, sometimes it felt good to take a stroll in the gutter.

  It had been freezing all week in the run up to the spring. An icy eastern wind had taken hold, more than cold enough to help keep the peace around the shops and the estates - everybody was tucked up inside their homes with their three bar heaters on, all was nice and quiet.

  For once, Darrin wasn’t minding the lull too much, although he was still regularly pestering a tolerant Moz about getting a gig on the on-going op, which had seemingly stalled with the meagre pickings that had been garnered from Manning’s arrest. It looked like Moz had been proven right.

  He’d seen Jolika on the change over and told her of his plans to get down to the dance lesson this Thursday. Johno had overheard him and it was all round the fucking station by lunch the next day. They had given him the usual crap about sequins and being a poofter. The numbskulls wouldn’t be saying that if they’d been there last Saturday, it had been wall to wall, tasty tush. He kept that to himself though, he didn’t want it to become a gawping policemans’ ball and he thought that Jolika would be doing likewise, which made him briefly contemplate why she’d invited him in the first place. Nice bloke Stuart, he thought, a damn pity though.

  Mid-week he had tea at his folks’ place, his dad had spent most of the time behind the paper, his mum good naturedly wittering on about his sister’s kids, which, in his opinion, was the best thing to happen to the family for years. The young ‘uns took a little of the rough edge off the old man and they fed his mum’s incessant need to be a mother. He was grateful to get off that particular hook. The old lady certainly had an awful lot of love to give.

  After the meal he chatted briefly with the old man. The old boy was more than a little preoccupied with the future of his gym. The possibility of local authority cut-backs was now being given open slather in the media. His dad had built up a lot of good favour over the last thirty years but, as the old man, said these were ‘different times,’ and he was finding it hard to get the numbers down there.

  Dougy didn’t mind sharing his analyses of the problem with him.

  ‘Fucking lazy this new lot yer know - too much given to ‘em for nowt. Hope there’s not a war in the next few years, cos these fuckers won’t know which way to point the bloody rifle!’

  The old lady had chided him for the profanities and the old man had grunted a reflex, ‘sorry love.’

  The old man had a point though, you’d have to bribe a lot of the kids to get them anywhere near a gym and then probably the only way they would make it through the doors would be with the support of a rake of social workers who were being employed through some fucking community scheme.

  ‘You know what the problem is son. They get their arses wiped and they’ve got next to bugger all to look forward to.’

  That rang a vague echo in his head, something Mick Cochrane had said to him when Darrin had first started drinking in the local boozers. It had been a few years ago now, well before he joined the plod. There had been a long and heated debate at the bar about the state of the nation’s wayward youth. Mick had turned to him and breathed whiskey and Guinness fumes in his face, a fierce glitter in those intense eyes of his. ‘You know what the trouble is with the young people lad? They have nobody to look up to!’

  Darrin shared the memory with his folks, the old man had snapped his paper and given him his industrial strength withering look.

  ‘Well that’s bloody Mick for you, he’d have a political argument about opening a packet of bloody biscuits. Bloody prophet of doom, he is.’

  Darrin looked over at his mum who gave him a little raise of the eyebrows. He made with his excuses and got ready to go. She folded up a pile of his washing that had been sitting on the dining room table and with a few deft movements placed it all in his gym bag.

  His dad asked him if he was popping down the gym tomorrow.

  With a hesitation that he tried but failed to hide Darrin told the old man that he had something else on.

  ‘On the arm are yer then son?’

  ‘Aye, summat like that,’ he replied.

  His mum gave him one of her slightly cow-eyed smiles, no doubt planning the bloody wedding invites. Darrin buried his irritation at the pair of them and made for the door.

  It had been freezing all week and it felt like life outside of school, the Centre and Tommy had contracted to almost nothing. Junior had got in touch late on Thursday to let him know he was back in circulation and that he too hadn’t heard anything from M.

  That evening Pasquale cycled down to M’s place, opened the front gate and wheeled his bike to the scratched up front door. There were no lights on and nobody home, he turned away, taking note of the brimming plastic bag that was propped up at the side of the house full of empties of Special Brew and a cask of wine. As he trudged back to M’s front gate the fat guy from next door was carefully parking his shit-box out in front of M’s house. The man wheezed his way out of the driver’s seat and gave Pasquale a bit of hairy eyeball then a watery smile of recognition.

  ‘After Matthew are yer lad?’

  Fuck, the guy had a loud voice.

  He nodded a yes.

  ‘Not seen him all week - Mum was in there last night, with that new bloke of hers. He’s from down Langford they reckon.’

  ‘Hmm OK - right.’ He mumbled back.

  ‘Got a job apparently!’

  Pasquale looked quickly up at the fat man.

  The guy looked at him and laughed, loudly.

  ‘The bloke lad, not bloody Matthew or his mum - bloody hell!’

  Pasquale grimaced a half smile at the fat fucker’s merriment, the big man chortling happily as he waddled towards his brightly lit home.

  He cycled away and returned straight home, his mum had made a shepherd’s pie and, with a little effort, he pushed M to the back of his mind.

  He called Junior a little later on and told him about his unsuccessful visit, but Junior didn’t offer any comment or speculation. He could picture his friend shrugging his shoulders - one of Junior’s stock ‘what can yer do?’ mannerisms.

  They agreed to go down to the Community Centre tomorrow - no M meant that they’d probably be straight and be straight in too and, besides, he was Tommy’s star pupil. Maybe Stella would be there, she’d been giving him a couple of looks at school and she was well tasty.

  Tommy had finished his part of the Building Communities funding application early Friday morning and dropped it off to Pauline just before lunch.

  ‘What do you reckon to the chances then Pauline?’

  ‘No better than fifty-fifty I’d say Thomas, we have the advantage of the track record but given the bloody voracious Olympics - it’s no better than that I’m afraid.’

  Tommy snorted softly. ‘People do love their circuses don’t they?’

  Pauline nodded, it was an old chestnut of theirs, one that they were happy to regularly trot out and play with. Pauline had lived in Amsterdam for much of her twenties and while she was there she had had been involved in the city’s radical fringe politics. She’d shown him a batch of old photos at last year’s summer get together at her place; Pauline with dyed spiky hair and some fetching, if out there apparel. In most of the pictures she was pictured arm in arm with an intense looking bearded boyfriend who’d been a political prisoner in Chile. Pauline had s
pent almost a decade hanging out with anarchists, living in squats, having regular dust ups with the Amsterdam rozzers and producing a radical newsletter - the Great Leap Forward. She laughed whenever they touched upon it, but her eyes always took on a certain light too. Red until she’s dead our Pauline, he thought, old school radical.

  ‘You down at the ‘rave’ tonight then Pauline?’

  ‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world Thomas, particularly if you promise to get up for Beyonce again.’

  He laughed and coloured slightly.

  ‘Still got it eh Pauline?’

  ‘Well you have something Thomas - that’s for sure.’

  They swapped some cursory info about his dad and he asked her about the grandkids and her daughter in London. She only had the one son, he was a real gone kid with drug induced mental health issues. Apparently, the kid was as bolshie in his personality and politics as his mum and as bright as both his parents but he’d missed out on their inherent stability. The boy had been a long-term struggle that had almost scuppered her marriage. Luckily, Den, Pauline’s old man, was as stolid as Gibraltar and as dependable as the phases of the moon and they had made it through - just.

  Her phone rang, crashing heavily into the conversation. It was one of the local politicians, somebody she courted on a regular basis. He nodded a goodbye and skipped back to his office.

  He had a bit of time to kill, he hadn’t been up to Aziz’s since he’d seen Noora and he could do with a walk. He thought of Noora and she was transmogrified, maybe with a slightly indecent haste, into Donna. Hmmm, he thought, maybe that was a sign of things to come? The kid though, he reminded himself, as wobbly as a shopping trolley wheel and a mummy’s boy under all that street-cred’ posturing. His shoes lying in that vestibule! Tommy thought that despite the growing trust that was developing between the two of them, such a move would be about as welcome to the kid as a dose of mercury poisoning. Still, he rationalised, Pasquale could use such an experience to learn a valuable lesson or two about compromise and sharing and he could take his time finding out what she tasted like under that musky perfume of hers.