Coughlan thought about his neighbors, the born fighters. “I’ll go down and get you one cut in the morning,” he replied.
“Sorted,” said Pete.
The new arrangement suited them both fine. But then Coughlan found that he was just waiting in for Pete to arrive, and not getting out and about as much as he would have liked. He let this go on for some time, until one afternoon, as he was looking out the window, the clouds above the estate parted, the solid shapes of the buildings started to soften around the edges, and he realized that he was just being ridiculous and decided to go out for a walk. Pulling on his jacket, he left the estate and headed down Castle Road toward the center of Camden Town, past the boarded-up pubs, the shops that sold little more than international phone cards, and the cafés with names in languages that he did not even recognize let alone understand. As he walked, he saw a number of walls and bridges littered with both the castle and YBT graffiti, the castle artwork faded and peeling while the YBT letters shone with a brittle freshness. It did not cross his mind for one second that perhaps Pete had been one of the artists.
At the junction in front of Camden Town tube station there was a traffic island, a triangular slice of concrete and paving stones that for as long as Coughlan could remember had been known as Penguin Island. In the street behind the tube station, there was a Catholic church that back in the ’50s had been frequented in the main by the Irish families who lived in the immediate area. After the regular Sunday morning Mass had finished at 11:30, the men would gather on the traffic island to wait for the pubs to open at noon, while the women would go home to prepare lunch. Standing there in their uniform black suits and white shirts, with their hands in their pockets, shuffling around on impatient feet, the men had resembled nothing so much as a squadron of penguins stranded in the middle of a sea of traffic.
Coughlan smiled at the remembrance, but then another more potent image appeared beside the first one: Coughlan himself walking back from the church with his wife at his side, wanting to be on the island but not having the courage to tell his wife that that was what he wanted. It had been the tale of his life, and he wondered if he would ever now get to Penguin Island. He pushed his hands deeper into his pockets and walked on.
When he returned to the flat an hour later, Coughlan was surprised to hear voices coming from the living room. At first he thought that Pete had arrived and turned on the TV to amuse himself while he waited, something that he had done before, but when he stepped through into the living room, he found Pete and another boy standing in front of the mantelpiece.
At the sight of Coughlan, Pete cast a quick glance toward his friend and then turned to look at Coughlan again, his mouth open in a mask of timid shock. The friend caught the apprehension in Pete’s face and pushed back his shoulders and looked over toward Coughlan with a slow grin on his face.
“Yeah, this is... this is Keith,” stammered Pete. “It’s all right for me to let him come in and watch TV with me?”
“Well, I suppose so,” replied Coughlan, distracted.
Coughlan looked across at Keith, took in the knowing look and the stance that told him that he was just as comfortable, if not more so, in Coughlan’s home than the old man himself.
“Hello, Keith,” said Coughlan, nodding.
Keith said nothing, just kept up the grin in response.
“I’ve put the shopping away,” said Pete. “And I got you another one of those pork-and-pickle pies you like.”
“Thanks, Pete.”
“It was reduced so you might have to eat it today.”
“Yes, thanks, Pete,” muttered Coughlan again, embarrassed at discussing the state of his finances in front of a stranger. “Anyway... look, Pete, I don’t mind you bringing your friends round here. But in the future, can you ask me first?”
“I’m sorry, I thought you’d be in,” replied Pete.
“That’s all right, no harm done this time,” said Coughlan.
Pete kept a low profile for a short time after that, but when Coughlan came home late one afternoon a week later — to appear less needful he had taken to being out sometimes when Pete was due to call with his shopping — he found that Pete had not one but several friends with him. When Coughlan poked his head through the door, curious at the noise, there was a group of four or five lads sitting around the living room. One of them looked to be about the same age as Pete, but the others appeared to be about two or three years older, tufts of soft hair coloring their chins and their long limbs barely under control. Pete was sitting in the middle of the sofa and looked to be more at ease than he had been the time before, staring at the TV. He did not seem to have noticed Coughlan, but then none of them appeared to have noticed him, and Coughlan felt a tumble of emotions pass through him. On one hand, he felt that he should pull Pete out of the room and ask him to ask the others to leave, but then he did not want to embarrass the lad in front of his friends again. Without waiting to see if he had been spotted, Coughlan made a gesture as if he had forgotten something, and then turned and left the flat.
He walked up to Parliament Hill, through the park past the athletics track, and back down to Camden Town, his mind adrift on children and the past. When he reached home again, Pete and his friends had gone, but the smell of cigarettes and something else still hung in the air. Coughlan opened the top windows to clear the room and then closed the door tight and headed for bed.
Later that night, stretched out on his bed, unable to sleep because of the noise coming through the wall from his neighbors, Coughlan felt himself returning to the thoughts that had been troubling him during his walk earlier. He and his wife had not been able to have children of their own, and so he was not sure how he should have handled the situation with Pete. Instinct told him that he had done the right thing, but he wished to God that he had more than instinct on which to base his reactions.
In 1945, a short time before Coughlan had started courting his wife — he had known her since junior school, and in their teens the pair had lived just three streets apart — she had had a brief but intense affair with a married American soldier stationed in London. When the American had broken off the affair to return to his wife and home in West Virginia, she had just shrugged it off as if he had meant no more to her than a pair of old shoes. But then two months later she had fallen into a deep depression and not ventured out of the house for another three weeks. When at last she came out again, she had been a different person, as quiet in her new skin as she had been the life and soul in her old skin. And she had also then had some time for Coughlan, too, the quiet and dependable kid in the corner of the neighborhood. Of course, there had been rumors that it was not depression that had kept her in the house all that time, the strongest of which was that following the American’s departure she had undergone a backstreet abortion that went wrong and left her barren. Coughlan had ignored all the rumors at the time, grateful for her attention, and had maintained a closed ear even when she had failed to become pregnant throughout their long marriage. Even now, more than a decade after her death, he still refused to believe that the rumors were something other than malicious gossip, putting their childlessness down as something that was just meant to be.
The following afternoon there was a group of boys in his flat again, but this time Pete was not with them. There were just the three of them, smoking and watching The Jerry Springer Show.
“What are you doing here?” asked Coughlan, doing his best to sound indignant but finding a touch of fear holding him back.