'That's the Faces, Dad,' Ray laughed. He stared thoughtfully at the ceiling for a second. 'Sounds like "That's All You Need". I'll see you around.'
The car was waiting for him on the street, and some children from the neighbourhood were gathered around it, boys and girls alike in flared denims, the hems of their jeans uniformly frayed by the adventure playground and filthy with muck from their
282
283
bikes, all of them keeping a respectful distance from the yellow Lotus Elan, as if it had come down from some other planet.
'Turn it down!' Ray heard his father shout as she opened the passenger door for him, but Ronnie and Rod and the lads just seemed to get even louder. These were the last days of hitching.
Lorry drivers and sales reps who had never heard of Jack Kerouac or On the Road would offer a lift to a young man with no money and his thumb in the air just for the company, or just to perform a good deed in a wicked world.
So it was that Leon was picked up on the North Circular by an oil tanker heading all the way to Aberdeen, and the driver told him that the English were stealing Scottish oil, just as the thieving English bastards always stole what they wanted, they would nick the coins off a dead man's eyes if you let them, and after driving all the way across the great sprawling expanse of north London, he dropped Leon off halfway up the Finchley Road, telling him to mind out for the traffic, and the thieving English bastards.
Leon walked up the hill to Hampstead, through the leafy streets with their huge houses where he had grown up, through the Village and across the Heath, the grass burned yellow by two burning summers in a row, and all of London spread out below him.
The squat would be gone by now. When the bailiffs had cleared the building, they would do what they always did. Rip out the plumbing and smash the toilets. There were other squats, thousands of them, but summer was almost gone and Leon knew that soon the squatters would be freezing their non-conforming arses off, wearing their greatcoats and Afghans inside their sleeping bags, too cold to think. Leon no longer had the heart for it.
So he went to the place where a young man goes when there is nowhere left to go. Across the Heath, over the fence that surrounded the grounds of Kenwood, past the great white house, and then the Suburb, and the clean, quiet streets of home. • He had thrown away his front-door key so he had to knock. His mother answered the door still in her dressing gown. His father was sitting at the big wooden breakfast table, surrounded by broadsheet newspapers, orange juice, coffee, bagels. Cream cheese and smoked salmon. Bach on the hi-fi - 'Sheep May Safely Graze'. Leon could smell real coffee and toasted bread, and it almost made him swoon.
'What happened to you?' his mother said, taking it all in - the fading bruise from last weekend, the cut on his forehead from Junior, the black eye from the porter with HP sauce on his head. 'He was at Lewisham,' his father said proudly. 'Bloody thugs!' 'Let me put something on it,' said his mother.
Over Leon's protests, his mother brought a pack of frozen Birds Eye peas and made him hold it against his wounds. His parents watched with a kind of affectionate amusement as Leon shovelled down bagels and lox with his spare hand. They didn't remember him having such an appetite.
'I haven't been reading your column,' Leon said, wiping crumbs from his mouth with the back of his hand. He gulped down some black coffee. He couldn't remember the last time he had drunk coffee that hadn't been the kind where you just add boiling water. 'What's your take on this Thatcher woman?'
'Never happen,' his father said emphatically. 'In this country? With Benny Hill and Page 3 lovelies and mother-in-law jokes? The British will never vote for a woman.'
'Oh, I don't know,' said his mother. T think it would be rather nice to have a woman Prime Minister.' 'She'll be burning her bra next,' his father laughed.
Leon's parents were still laughing when he undressed and crawled into bed in his old room, out of his mind with exhaustion, the room dancing around him.
It felt both cosy and ridiculous to be between these boyhood walls again, the embarrassing pictures of outgrown passions on the wall - Jaws and Jimmy Page and Jimmy Greaves - and a mad
284
285
library where copies of Jonathan Livingstone Seagull and DasKapital shared space with Anthony Buckeridge's tales of two larky lads called Jennings and Darbishire at Linbury Court Preparatory School - Jennings Goes to School, Jennings and Darbishire, Thanks to Jennings and maybe thirty more - whatever happened to Jennings? Leon had loved Jennings, he had wanted to be Jennings -'That shepherd's pie we've just had was supersonic muck so it's wizard, but this school jam's ghastly so it's ozard… being a new chap's pretty ozard for a bit, but you'll get used to it when you've been here as long as I have.' Silly really, but it didn't matter right at this moment, because - oh, Ruby- the sheets were soft and clean and his parents had taken him back without making him feel bad, without asking any questions, as if he had never been away, as if he had never thrown away his front-door key, and Leon knew it would be like that for as long as they lived, they would never turn him away, and also he could not feel too bad about sleeping under a Jaws duvet because he was so very tired, swamped - swamped… swamped… swamped by tiredness, his eyes closing now - and he knew that sleep would come the moment he laid his head on the pillow. And it did.
So Leon drifted away, a man in a boy's bedroom, the St Christopher around his neck feeling cool against his skin, and many miles to go when he awoke.
286
CODA:
1977 - ANOTHER GIRL. ANOTHER PLANET
SIXTEEN
Terry liked belonging. He saw that now.
Belonging to his paper, belonging to her. It was good. He was glad that he hadn't been sacked. He was happy that they hadn't broken up. Knowing he was getting married next month, knowing he was going to be a father next year - these things did not frighten him. They made him feel as though he belonged to this woman, and to this unborn child, and to this world.
But sometimes The Paper felt like just another job, where someone older than you was always telling you what to do, not so very different from the gin factory, except there was less freedom to run wild. And sometimes Misty really got on his nerves.
The two of them sat facing each other on the Inter-City 125 train, waiting for it to leave, and Misty was reading aloud from a paperback called The Flames of Love that she had just bought at W. H. Smiths. And Terry understood that the opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is irritation.
'Listen to this bit,' she said. 'She came through the French windows and suddenly felt his strong, manly, dirty fingers in her taffeta. Miles the gardener was on his knees before her, imploring with his heavy-lidded eyes.' Misty guffawed. 'She gasped as he kissed the hem of her gown. "Valerie," he said, "do you understand how big this thing is?"'
289
A gaggle of businessmen staggered down the carriage, smelling of smoky bacon crisps and shorts bolted down at the railway bar. They eyed Misty hungrily. Terry glared at them. She didn't notice. She was enjoying her Doris Hardman too much.
'"No one - least of all that cad Sir Timothy - is man enough to do more than kiss your gilded slippers'" She was laughing so hard now that she struggled to get the words out. Misty shook her head, wide-eyed with disbelief. 'Isn't this just fabulous? Don't you love it? I'm going to read everything by her, she's so mad.'