Part 2

Tonight, I walked up the old-cobbled street from Sheffield Station. It passed over the railway line and was probably once lined with slum terrace houses. They vanished long before I was born. In my lifetime, this lost street has always fallen under the shadow of Park Hill.

It was dark and raining and the new streetlights made the wet stones sparkle. I saw three lads balancing on the old white railings at the top. They watched me approach. I slipped a hand in my pocket and felt for the tactical torch.

“Wrap the strap around your wrist, grab the torch like a dagger, and hit them on the side of the head with the jagged edge, remembering to twist it at the same time.”

I remembered these words from the man who gave it to me in London. It was after I’d been robbed of my phone in Bethnal Green. That was four years ago, still handy with my fists, but no match for the knife that stuck in my arm.

Park Hill might have become trendy, but some things never changed.

The lads said nothing, and I knew that silence could be dangerous. Three minds, three trains of thought, three different outcomes. I knew from experience.

I considered the time forty years ago when I’d sat in the same spot with Andy and Jack. Teenagers. Geisha Boys. Hard boys from the flats.

The lad had walked up this same street. We recognised him from Hyde Park, and he was walking into our territory. We stared him out, but this lad turned out to be more stupid than brave.

“What’s tha looking at bum boys?” he’d said.

We didn’t reply.

Andy was the first. He’d punched him in the face, blood splattering down the lad’s parka coat. Jack had kicked him in the stomach, and the lad fell to the floor. I reached for a half house brick and smashed it down on the back of his head.

There it was. Three minds, three trains of thought, three different outcomes.

All these years later, I thought that karma came around.

These three lads were different. One was White, one was Black, the other was Asian. Teenagers.

I recalled the words of the man who gave me the tactical torch.

“Be warned. You might end up killing somebody!”

“Have you got a smoke?” I think I took them by surprise.

The White lad produced a cigarette from nowhere and the Black lad gave me a cheap purple lighter. I lit it and took a drag.

“Thanks guys. I appreciate it.”

The Asian lad nodded. The White lad looked at the floor. “It’s ok bro’,” said the Black lad.

I smoked the cigarette as I walked towards the apartments. I didn’t look back until I reached the communal door. The three lads were still there, deep in conversation, and no threat to me.  

What if that Hyde Park lad had done the same? Might things have been different? He had been called Brian and two years after we beat him up, he fell from the tenth floor of Hyde Park flats.

I have been back in Sheffield a month now and have yet to start writing my fourth novel. But tonight, I thought about these three young lads, and they reminded me of the Geisha Boys. And I thought about all the memories that have resurfaced these past weeks, and I accepted that Megan, my agent, might be right.

I sat down at my laptop and wrote the following words: –

“I was making a coffee at the time, staring out of the window, looking at a world that used to be marvellously different.”

*****

I was born in the sixties, and I didn’t know anything about Park Hill. It was years later, when writing an article for The Guardian, that I learned about the place I grew up.

It was allegedly based on Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation In Marseilles but this was too bizarre for us to understand.

I was born in 1966, the last time England won the World Cup, and Sheffield Wednesday lost a cup final to Everton. Park Hill was home. It was the only place I knew. We lived in the sky and looked down at the rest of the world. And for all I can remember, my first five years were spent within four walls and on a balcony as wide as a street. My earliest memory is the milk cart, as big as a car, that delivered every morning.

My family were called Oldham. It was an unusual surname, but my dad liked it because every Christian name went well with it. He was Peter Oldham, my mum was Pat Oldham, I was called Harry Oldham, and my younger brother became Adam Oldham. And there were lots of cousins across Sheffield.

Mum and dad moved to Park Hill in 1962 when it was still new. They were rehoused after their old back-to-back house at Netherthorpe was bulldozed. He was a cutlery worker, she was a wages clerk, and they were relatively poor.

But Park Hill promised clean and modern surroundings in which to raise a decent family. That dream eventually died, and the respectability of the Oldham family was often placed in doubt by Harry Oldham… me.

I hated my name. Harry was the name for an old man. When I was growing up there was nobody called Harry. But life goes full circle and at last, at the age of 56, I have a fashionable name and happy to be Harry.

Before lockdown, I was invited to see a play at the Crucible Theatre called Standing at the Sky’s Edge. I visited Sheffield with my partner, Scott, who had never been before. The account began in 1961 and told the story of three families over sixty years living in Park Hill.  Scott loved it, but I came away feeling sad because it aroused memories of a life I thought was behind me. It might have been written about my family, my friends, and me.

I went back to London and wrote a third novel, and when that flopped, I realised that I wasn’t clever enough to be a crime writer.

Now I am back here. At Park Hill. I am writing another novel, one where I will not have to do any research and spend weeks scripting the storyline. The plot is already in my head. It has already happened. The story is real.

Yet, as I write, I realise that it is not so much a novel but is a collection of reminiscences.

Part 1

There is a song by the Pet Shop Boys. It starts like this, “When I look back on my life, it’s always with a sense of shame, I’ve always been the one to blame.” I heard it on the radio the other day, and I knew all the lyrics. I was making a coffee at the time, staring out of the window, looking at a world that used to be marvellously different.

It was the same city, bathed in sunshine, and brighter than the one I remembered. The skyline had changed. Now there were swish tower blocks, lots of cranes, and flatness where industry once thrived.

I look at this landscape every day, and each time I feel sadness, and remember something from the eighties.

The three of us were sat on a wall at Duke Street, smoking fags, and passing a can of Kestrel lager back and forth. An old man struggled along the other side of the road, relying on his walking stick. Suddenly, he fell forward, the stick flying into the road and almost getting run over by a passing bus. For a second or two, he was motionless, then made feeble attempts to lift himself off the ground.

We sat and watched with childish amusement. And then, with compassion or guilt, we crossed the road to help him. Andy and Jack grabbed an arm each and lifted him upright while I retrieved his battered old stick. “Up you get, Grandad.”

The old man composed himself and eyed us guardedly.

“Don’t try it on with me lads. I took a bullet in the leg, and I’m ready to shoot some bastard for it.”

“Calm down Grandad,” said Jack, “We’re only trying to help.”

The old man pointed his stick at us. “Aye, that might be son. But I must be on my guard around here.”

“Fancy a swig of lager?” Andy gave him the can and the old man took a mouthful before stuffing it in his coat pocket.

“You lot with the Mooneys?”

“Never heard of them,” I said. “Who the fuck are the Mooneys?”

The old man stared at us and rested both hands on the walking stick. Then he looked up and down the street and seemed satisfied that we weren’t a menace. Slowly he made towards the wall and sat down.

“If you’re not with the Mooneys, then who are you with? You’re not with the Park lads because I’ve never seen you before.”

“We’re the Geisha Boys,” Jack said proudly. “That’s what our mates call us.”

It was true. The lads on the flats had called us ‘Geisha Boys’ because we’d once been in a fight with some posh boy at Crazy Daisy in town. We were sixteen and had slipped past the bouncer and drank as much lager as we could steal off people’s tables. A lad, wearing a dazzling white tee-shirt with ‘Geisha’ across the front, had clocked us and offered us all out. Jack chucked a pint of lager at him, and the lad had responded by smashing a pint glass and threatening us with it. We piled in, throwing wild punches, and kicking him, until he was a bloody mess on the floor. It had happened so quickly that by the time we ran up the stairs and into the street the bouncer hadn’t realised something was amiss. Afterwards, we were famous on Park Hill, known as Geisha Boys, which we liked because we thought it made us sound tough.

The old man shook his head. “Never heard of you. Do you know Sam Garvin?” It was our turn to shake our heads. “He’ll have all three of you if you’re not careful.”

“Nobody fucks with the Geisha boys,” I said. “Tell him we’ll take him on anytime.”

“See that over there?” The old man pointed towards the flats. “That’s the alleyway where Spud Murphy shot me from. Got it in the leg. Sam showed him that nobody messed with the Park Brigade. He cut him with a knife, and he’ll do the same to you.”

There was no alleyway, only the block of shops beneath the flats. Jack caught our attention and circled his finger around his ear, and we knew that the old man was cuckoo.

 “I’ve got a gun in my pocket,” said the old man. But he pulled out the can of Kestrel and had another swig.

And that was how we had left it that summer day in 1982. The old man had limped up Duke Street and disappeared into the New Inn. Only afterwards, did I realise that Andy had lifted his wallet.

Now I am back where it began.

There is a lot of concrete, and I can’t remember this much. It’s been thirty years, and London has been the place I’ve lived the longest.

“I’ve found the most fabulous place for you to live,” said Megan. “Near the city centre, near the station, and the apartments are retro modern.”

I knew straight away, as only a Sheffielder would, that she was talking about Park Hill.

When we lived here, it was on its knees. Not quite. But eventually it would be. The people moved out and it stood empty for years. For better or worse, it’s listed status allowed it to survive.

It was February when she called me at my Kensington flat.

“How are you?” asked Megan.

“Not good, but thanks for asking.”

She hesitated and seemed to choose her words carefully.

“Have you seen him?”

“No, and I don’t want to.”

Megan was referring to Scott, my lover of ten years, now my ex-lover.

Good looking Scott. The best thing that happened to me. Reliable Scott. I was lucky to have him.

But there turned out to be another side to him.

Cheating Scott. The one I discovered had been sleeping around for years, and that was the end of it all.

“I hate to bring this up but writing magazine articles isn’t the way forward. Remember you have a book deal.”

Megan was right. I had to write novels. The first couple flew off the shelves, the third bombed, and Megan, as my agent, had been the one to pick up the pieces with the publisher.

“You need to score with the next one. Write about your time growing up, your family, the people you met, your adventures. But for Christ’s sake, make it good.”

And that is the reason why I came back, and it’s all very different, but the past remembers me.

Last night the ghosts crawled out of the walls and interrupted my sleep. Embedded into Park Hill are the memories of my parents, hard-working servants of the city, sent into early submission. And my younger brother, Adam, who’s still around, but living somewhere in Scotland.

And my best mates – Andy and Jack – came too.

Everybody came last night, exactly as they used to be, and it was only me who had changed. And when I woke, I realised I’d changed a lot.