“What do you like about me most?” he asked.
“It is the fact that you are naive and can be incredibly indiscreet with the people around you,” I replied.
“Is that all? Don’t you find any part of me remotely attractive?”
“I do,” I said, “but what’s the use of having exceptional legs if you don’t use them to your advantage?”
The concrete city, where unruly boys roam, and life moves dangerously fast. The golden boy’s halo slips and falls to the ground like a tin can dropped from the balcony above. It hits the pavement and breaks and the blissful boy becomes the common threat.
Charlie had tried to be clever, I will give him that.
Thomas arrived without ceremony on Saturday afternoon, and he wasn’t what I expected. My preconceptions about him were based entirely on Charlie’s words, but the tall lanky boy who showed up didn’t appear to be the bad person that he’d been made out to be.
He had a pale complexion, unlike Charlie who was dark, and his blonde hair was hidden by a baseball cap. He was slender, with long legs, and I noticed that he had big feet. And he was extremely handsome.
Like Charlie, he spoke excellent English, and shook my hand before giving me a huge hug that caught me by surprise and also thrilled me. “I am so pleased to meet you,” he said, “My brother has told me about you and I think you make a beautiful couple.”
I was caught off guard and stammered. “We aren’t together. We are flatmates, nothing more.”
“I apologise,” he continued, “I had presumed that you were together, but my brother does not tell me everything that he should.”
Charlie spoke in French, which I interpreted as him telling Thomas that he would be sleeping in his room. Thomas nodded and followed Charlie to his bedroom where he threw his rucksack onto the bed. The room was bare, almost like a cheap hotel, and I later discovered that Charlie had boxed up his possessions and deposited everything in the corner of my bedroom.
I had wanted to hate Thomas from the first moment, but his politeness and sincerity made me warm to him. Then I remembered Charlie’s words, “He likes to have plenty of money and will exploit anybody to make sure he gets it.” I had to remain on my guard.
“I like your apartment,” Thomas said, “and thank you for letting me stay.”
Charlie spoke in French again, but Thomas stopped him. “I think that it is only polite for us to speak English in front of our host.” Charlie scowled and didn’t continue the conversation and I took this to mean that he didn’t want me to understand what had been said.
In the afternoon, the three of us sat in spring sunshine outside the coffee shop at the end of the street. Thomas sat opposite me at the table and was very chatty, wanting to know more about me. Charlie was beside me and didn’t say much.
“Enough about me,” I said, “I want to know about your life in Paris.”
“Ah, Paris can be exciting but it can also be a miserable place to live. It is a city of love, hope, and misery.”
“Do you have a girlfriend?” I asked.
“When living in Paris you must live up to its reputation and I work in a bar so there are always plenty of girls available.” He smiled and I saw that he had perfect white teeth. “That probably does not excite you,” he continued, “but there are many available boys as well.” His blue eyes sparkled. “I think you should visit me and I will introduce you to lots of fascinating people.”
Charlie tried to change the subject.
“Maman et papa?”
“They are good, Charlie. They worry and are disappointed that you did not come home for Christmas.”
Charlie had said that he had gone to France to see his family at Christmas and this latest disclosure hit me hard. I looked to see what his reaction would be and he couldn’t look me in the eye. “Maybe I shall visit them at Easter,” he said quietly.
Thomas lit a Gauloises and offered me one. It was rare that I smoked these days but the circumstances dictated that I accept it. We blew smoke into the air and looked at each other, both aware that Charlie had been caught out. I thought that Thomas had meant to do it, but I also sensed that he felt sorry for me and looked sympathetic. I felt his leg touch mine, maybe by mistake, but he didn’t pull away. There was a moment of hesitancy, but I pushed my own against his, expecting him to recoil, but he didn’t, and instead began rubbing his leg gently against mine.
That was when I realised that Charlie had tried to be clever.
He hadn’t wanted Thomas to visit because he was afraid that his secrets would be revealed. He was also aware that I might find Thomas attractive and so had portrayed him as being a no-good person.
I was angry about the deceit, and for the fact that I was no nearer knowing the truth about Charlie. I was also confused, because now I knew that Thomas had presented me with a dilemma.
“Amidst the babble and the cackle,
A voice shouts loudest,
I am Romeo and you must come to me.
And I hear that voice,
I say, Verona, at last I am coming to thee.”
Harry Oldham is writing a novel based on his criminal and sordid past. To do so, he has returned to live at Park Hill, where he grew up, and the place that he once left behind. That was then and this is now, in which the old world collides with the new.
(Parts 1-9 are available to read in the menu)
Part 10
July 2023
Meghan, my agent, had said that I had to send each chapter as they were completed. That way she knew that I was writing and might still make the deadline for completion.
She was understandably nervous when she rang after reading the latest instalment.
“Is all this true, Harry?”
“Every word of it,” I told her.
“Are we going to have to run it by the lawyers before it’s published?”
“That’s up to you,” I said, “but I’m writing it because it’s what you asked for.”
“It’s good,” she said. “It’s bloody good, but I’m not sure I like where this is going?”
“That’s for you to find out.”
“And there’s a danger that they might not publish it.”
July 1982
Stupid woman. If she hadn’t been the obstinate type, things might have gone smoothly. But no, she had to be a brassy bitch, and things went tits up.
We looked conspicuous as we walked from Park Hill. It was a busy Thursday morning, and everyone looked at us as if to say, “they’re up to no good,” and they were right.
Andy had identified a newsagent near the market, and he reckoned that it would be an easy place to steal cigarettes.
“We wait until it’s empty, and then we go straight in. Jack, you stand at the door and don’t let anybody in. I’ll shout and scream to frighten her. Harry, you empty the fags into the bag. Quick as you can. As soon as I say, we leave and head back to mine. Got it?”
We nodded in agreement, but I had misgivings. We normally operated under cover of darkness when there was nobody around, but this was different because there were too many people who might recognise us.
“Trust you to pick the busiest shop,” Jack berated. “We’ll be waiting all day for it to be empty.”
“Shut up, Jack. We’ve got to be patient. There’s only one woman serving so that makes our job easier.”
We waited in the shelter of a doorway outside Castle Market and at last plucked up courage to go for it. We wrapped scarves around our faces until only our eyes could be seen. Then we dashed across the road and entered the shop.
A bell rang as the door opened, and the woman behind the counter looked up. She was our mothers’ age, a bit of a looker, with auburn hair, and dolled up with Avon make-up. I saw her eyes, hard, and uncaring, and they narrowed as we stormed in.
“Fuck me, we’re being robbed by the Boys Brigade! If you’ve come for your comics, they’re not here. Now get the fuck out,”
Jack jammed his foot behind the door to stop anybody coming in.
Andy screamed. “Shut the fuck up! Don’t do or say anything and you’ll not get hurt. Now come out from behind the counter.”
We expected her to burst into tears, or faint, or something like that, but she didn’t. She just stood there and didn’t seem at all frightened.
“Step any nearer and you’ll have Billy Mason after you.”
“Who the fuck’s Billy Mason?” Jack cried.
I knew who Billy Mason was. He was a tough guy from Gleadless Valley, and I’d heard stories about his method of handing out punishment. Billy Mason would ensure that we all had broken arms and legs.
I went behind the counter with the bag and pushed her out of the way. I didn’t expect her to pull the scarf away and neither did I expect her to gouge her long fingernails into my face. She looked into my eyes, daring me, and I knew that she would recognise me again. I felt blood trickling down my left cheek, and all I could think about was Billy Mason.
The next thing I knew, Andy had smashed a full bottle of R Whites lemonade across the back of her head, and she slumped to the floor. The bottle shattered, and its contents mixed with the blood from her cuts.
I opened the bag and scooped cigarette packets into it, most ending up on the floor, and I realised that the bag wasn’t big enough. I tried to zip it up, but it was too full, and had trouble holding the two handles together.
“Let’s go!” Andy cried. “Walk out as if nothing happened and then split up.”
And that’s what we did.
Andy and Jack walked in opposite directions while I headed down to Sheaf Roundabout with the open bag of fags that everybody could see. I tried sprinting but they spilled onto the pavement, and I had to stop to pick them up. All the time I looked nervously behind me, expecting to see somebody running, but there was no one.
I wish I knew what you were thinking? Is it that you don’t like me, and that I’m a complete prick? Or do you like me? I can’t tell. Are you absorbed in something completely different? Like blueberries, or Coca Cola, or playing Fortnite, or watching Homicide: New York? Or maybe even thinking about a girl who you might want to get off with? Or a boy? But your face gives nothing away, it reveals nothing, nada, and because of that I get frustrated and angry, and when I provoke you, there is nothing you can say, and merely shrug your shoulders instead.
“I only glanced fleetingly at him as I passed, I did not really see him. But that uncertain glimpse was sufficient to stir my imagination, and I received and took away with me a vision of beauty… ah, of what beauty.”
Extracted and adapted from Tristan, a 1903 novella by German writer Thomas Mann.
I’m perfectly comfortable watching foreign movies because I find that reading subtitles comes naturally. I can breeze through French, Italian, and Spanish TV series without hesitation but must remind myself that I don’t really understand anything at all.
Charlie is French and comes without subtitles, but he speaks English better than most Englishmen. This morning, he is speaking French on his phone, and I suspect that he is talking to Matis in Lille, and I try to concentrate on what is being said, but the conversation is too fast and animated. I hope that it is Matis because Charlie sounds pissed off with him.
I’m reading Death in Venice by Thomas Mann, and I’m pleasantly surprised that it’s easier to read than people make out.
“Is everything okay?” I ask Charlie when he finishes the call.
“Everything is not okay.”
“What’s the matter?”
“That was my brother, Thomas, and he wants to come and stay with us. I do not want him to come, but he insists.”
Charlie rarely mentions his Parisian family and if he does, he speaks of them as though they were part of another story, one that doesn’t concern me. I haven’t heard him speak about Thomas before and I’m intrigued.
“I didn’t know that you had a brother. Is he older or younger than you?”
“He is two years older than me, but we look very different. He is tall and blonde, but I am shorter and darker.” Charlie brushed a hand through his thick black hair in case I hadn’t noticed. “My grandmother believes he is not my father’s son because he is not like the rest of us. There are no blondes in our family.”
“Your grandmother told you that?”
“She confided in me once.” Charlie slumped on the sofa beside me. “I do not want Thomas to come here.”
“What is he like?”
“Thomas is not artistic like me, in fact the opposite. He is shallow. He likes to have plenty of money and will exploit anybody to make sure he gets it. He is a bad person.”
“What does he do?”
“He has worked in a bar in La Villette since leaving school and has manipulated the owners into letting him manage it. Trust me, he is not a good person.”
“I think it is nice that he wants to come and see his little brother.”
“Putain!” He is jealous and wants to make my life difficult.”
“There is the small problem of where he will stay,” I said, “because there are only three bedrooms, and it will become very overcrowded.”
“He will be here for two weeks, and he must sleep on this sofa.”
“I suppose he could sleep on the floor in your bedroom.”
“That will not do! I do not want to sleep in the same room as my brother.”
Charlie sat brooding and uttered what I presumed were French profanities.
“I suppose we could ask Levi if he wouldn’t mind giving up his room for a couple of weeks and stay with his girlfriend.”
“That would not do either. Why should my friend have to give up his bed for my imbecile brother?”
A few months ago, Charlie hated Levi and made the same type of comments about him that he was making about his brother now. Once Charlie had found out that Levi was straight and didn’t fancy him, he had done his best to be nice, almost as if he wanted to be fancied after all.
“There is another solution,”! I said, “Thomas could share my double bed if he didn’t mind sharing with a stranger.”
Charlie was incredulous. “That is a shocking idea,” he cried, “I have never heard anything so ridiculous. You do not know my brother and yet you are offering to share your bed with him.”
“I’m trying to come up with a compromise because the sofa will be a very uncomfortable place to sleep for two weeks.”
Charlie stretched out and appeared to be fixated on the toes of his feet.
“I have an idea,” he said. “I think it might be better if I give Thomas my bed, and I shall share with you for those two weeks. I’ve slept in your bed once before. Is that satisfactory?”
I didn’t really know what to say, and concentrated on my book again.
“By the way,” he said, “that is a very bad book that you are reading.”
You sit patiently, like a dog awaits its master, and you want to tell me about something that you have done during the day. Like preparing a meal, cleaning the bathroom, painting a wall, or a new book that you think I will like.
He was like a boy playing on the seashore. I asked him what could he see? He said he hoped they were happy, working the beach, just out of reach, but free.
Perfectly Hard and Glamorous 