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I didn’t ask Jack what the joke was. His jokes were the sort Bernard Manning would have turned down as too offensive. ‘So how is the printing trade? Any interesting gossip from our local reporters?’
‘Someone’s filling the mines with stuff. Banned toxic stuff so horrible you couldn’t even offload it in fucking Guatemala, and someone’s lobbing it under Dudley. The hospital’s sinking into the ground. Teenage literacy is down, teenage pregnancies are up, and teenagers should be seen and not fucking heard.’
‘The usual, then,’ I said. Jack nodded his head in agreement.
‘I saw Eddie Finch the other week,’ he said.
‘Oh?’
‘Said he’d be in for a drink later. If nothing came up. He has to man the phones in case a story breaks. Pensioner loses cat, cat loses sense of direction, man paying by cheque is killed by everyone else in the supermarket. It must be all fucking go, working on the Herald.’
Eddie Finch worked on the Pensnett Herald, which covered the events in Pensnett. Pensnett was a stretch of road outside Dudley with three shops and a bad reputation. I’d never been there myself, but I knew someone who’d stopped for a newspaper and escaped with stitches and a persistent nervous twitch and was told he was lucky. There was a fun run there once a year, which was like the London Marathon only you ran a lot faster. The Herald was always full of crime reports and obituaries. Like the notices in the local shop windows, it suffered from displaced apostrophes. Eddie covered some of the reporting, most of the horoscopes and all of the frequent letters from ‘Angry of Kingswinford’. He was a minor reporter on a minuscule newspaper. He drank, however, as though he was auditioning for a place in Fleet Street before Fleet Street moved out of Fleet Street. From time to time he’d join us for a drink. Though I didn’t often drink much, if Eddie joined us, I would drink more. More than I could cope with, usually. Then I’d wake up dizzy and lost with a glutinous headache and vague memories of appalling things that, it would turn out, I had done.
‘He said he’d be in by nine,’ said Jack, checking his watch.
‘Is he?’
‘Not unless this is bolloxed. Probably just as well if he doesn’t come in. Lisa doesn’t like him much.’
‘Because he drinks?’
‘Because he’s a journalist. She doesn’t trust them. She says everything you tell them goes in the papers.’
‘I’ve told him lots of things and he hasn’t put any of them in the paper.’
‘You don’t have anything worth printing. Not these days. I think we could have kept him in material when we were young.’
‘I don’t know. Anyway, Lisa’s right. I don’t trust Eddie. Not when he’s drunk.’
‘He’s always fucking drunk.’
‘There you are then.’
I wasn’t sure where I was. The conversation kept heading off somewhere, then turning back before it got there. Jack was on his way to another subject. Perhaps he wanted to talk about Lisa. He usually did. She was his girlfriend. They had met at some sort of convention for body-piercing aficionados. It had been held at Stourbridge town hall. The two of them had noticed each other across a room full of pinned flesh. Chromed instruments curved out of the crowd; by the light of surgical lamps they started to chat, and snapped together like a ring binder. They had met again a day or two later and one thing had led to one more thing. One more thing had gone on for a month, and then Lisa moved in with Jack and Jack decorated several rooms.
It all sounded serious to me. I fell head over heels all the time, but I’d never done any decorating. I watched decorating on the television while I was waiting for a real programme to come on. Decorating happened at a stage of a relationship that I had either missed or never reached. I thought that it would probably be the latter. I could start relationships, but I wasn’t very good at them. It was like starting fights after a few drinks. It made sense at the time, but you ended up with a headache and no money and all of your mates wishing you’d shut up about it.
I hadn’t met Lisa. Jack said she was wonderful, but I wasn’t going to take his word for anything. He was hardly going to say she was an old boiler with a bosom full of rivets. That’s not the sort of thing you say in the first couple of months. If you get through the first six months you can say anything you like. I think. I’ve never got past four.
I must have been picking the wrong girls.
Jack was happy with Lisa. I knew this because he kept telling me so. He told me so more often than I wanted him to, and after he’d had a few more drinks he’d tell me about it non-stop.
He had a few more drinks.
‘She’s lovely,’ he said, ‘she’s a peach. You hear that? She’s a peach.’
‘Round and hairy?’ I asked.
‘None of yours,’ he said, ‘as it happens. None of your business. She’s wonderful. I don’t know what she’s doing with me.’
‘Perhaps she got one of her rings caught in one of yours. What are you going to do? Is there room between the tattoos to fit her name in? Or is it just going to be her initials?’
Jack went several shades darker. ‘That’s you, isn’t it? Always having a go. You’ve never got this far. Know why? Because you’d rather be out there taking the piss. Have you ever been in love?’
‘Yes,’ I said, truthfully. I was forever falling in love. It was easy; like falling off a bike. I was in love right then. I was going steady with a girl, as it happened.
I’ll tell you about her later.
‘Well then,’ he said, ‘well then. This is real. Lisa is different. This is different.’
‘They’re all different. You said that Jo Branigan and Andrea Horton were different. You thought both of them were different at the same time, for a week. Then you decided they were actually the same.’
‘Lisa is different differently.’
He looked at me helplessly, drunk and infatuated.
‘It’s the same,’ I said, not knowing why I was pushing him. It was instinctive. It was easier than falling off a bike.
‘This is different,’ he insisted.
‘Oh yes, you work in a printers so naturally you know more about anything than I do, I’m just the one who went to university.’
‘What do you know about? Books. You wouldn’t know the real world if it smacked you in the face.’
‘If I smacked you in the face you’d know about it.’
I wasn’t sure how the conversation had turned nasty. Beer, probably.
‘How about if you murdered me?’ asked Jack, leaning into the conversation. ‘You’re the history man. You know why? Because you don’t want to remember your own history. You want to go back before that. You want other people’s memories. I remember everything.’ He rolled back his sleeve; swirls and spirals ran up his arm, between swellings and scabs. ‘Look at this,’ he said, ‘I’m receptive. You with me? I’m receptive.’
‘Receptive to hepatitis B, septicaemia, traffic reports …’
That calmed him down. ‘Have it your way then,’ he said. ‘How’s the niece?’
‘Haven’t seen her since I went to university.’
‘Typical student. How old is she now then? Three, four?’
‘Four.’
‘You know she’s never met her Uncle Jack?’
I did know that. I liked it that way.
‘I’ll tell you what, I’m not doing anything Saturday. We’ll pop round and see her. And your brother, we don’t see him much now.’
‘We fell out. Family things.’
‘Oh yes. Right. So I’ll pick you up about eleven then, and we’ll go and see what they’re up to these days.’
Wonderful, I thought. That’d be a smashing day out.
II
The next day I waited for my hangover to leave and Jack to arrive. My money was on Jack getting there first. Eddie Finch had turned up eventually, and he was better at drinking than I was. Reporters are like that because they don’t have to get up and go to work in the mornings. Although I knew I couldn’t out-drink him, it had seemed important to keep up. It was my competitive edge.
I fed the hangover coffee and Nurofen until it calmed down. Jack turned up late, driving his van. He’d had it for years, since we were seventeen. It had been his first car. It looked like it might have been his grandfather’s first car. The last time I’d seen it, it had been blue. He’d sprayed it white.
‘A white van gives you the freedom of the road,’ he explained on the way to my brother’s house. ‘People see a white van, they know it’s going to go all over the shop. White vans have their own rules. Cut people up, park on lawns, run over dogs and children. It’s accepted … What the fuck is she doing?’
‘The speed limit?’
‘Not in this baby, baby,’ he said in what he thought was an American accent.
‘Hasn’t your sister got a baby?’
‘Little boy,’ Jack admitted. ‘Called it Liam.’
‘Nice,’ I said.
‘No it fucking isn’t. Hold on, I can skirt round this lot.’
After a short and frightening trip, he pulled up on the pavement outside my brother’s house. My brother is older than me, and married, and has a child. For those and other reasons he thinks he’s more grown up than I am. He may be right. I never fancied growing up. There didn’t seem to be an alternative, though, unless you killed yourself young.
The last time I’d seen my brother we’d argued. It’s what brothers are for. When we were young we used to quarrel over anything – what colour the curtains were, how high the sky was, anything at all. Ten minutes later it’d be forgotten. We always got over them.
Jack rang the doorbell. I looked at the front garden. Tidy, with children’s toys. A plastic tractor, a deflated ball, a duck on a stick. A wooden one. The door opened and Tony, my brother, stood looking at us, confused.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘Visiting,’ said Jack. ‘Thought I hadn’t seen you for a while. Nor your Caroline. She in, then? And I’ve never even met the sprog. What is she now, two?’
‘Going on five,’ said Tony, giving me a grim look. Perhaps he hadn’t got over our last argument after all. Caroline appeared behind him, carrying a tea towel and a small child endowed with her mother’s blonde hair and her father’s brown eyes.
‘Whassit?’ asked the child, giving us a look. She didn’t seem shy. She looked at Jack.
‘Whassit in his face? Why’s pins in it?’ She reached out a small hand. Jack leaned closer.
‘All right there kiddo,’ he said. ‘I’m your uncle Jack, and this is your uncle Sam, but we won’t worry about him.’
‘Jack!’ cried the child.
‘Sam,’ said her mother, with considerably less enthusiasm. ‘Been a while. Didn’t get your letters. Suppose the post office must have lost them.’
‘Too busy with keeping out of the way,’ said Tony. His expression was easing. ‘Come in then, the house prices’ll drop if you stay outside. Is that your van?’
‘Mine,’ admitted Jack.
‘Good. It’ll piss them right off. They’re all scutters down the road.’
He led us to a small, comfortable lounge. There were fewer chairs than people. To make room Jack sat on the floor, wincing on the way down. At once the little girl toddled over to him and poked at him with a podgy finger.
‘Look!’ she said, tugging at one of his facial rings.
‘Is she okay doing that?’ asked Caroline.
‘Sure,’ said Jack, ‘she could do it for England. Here hold on, trouble, let’s pop one out and you can have a look at it. What’s this one’s name, then?’
‘Samantha,’ her mother said.
‘Named her after your brother-in-law? Lovely gesture.’
‘You must be joking,’ said Tony, brightening. ‘Fine start in life that’d be, named after the ugly one in the family. Named her after someone I used to know, as a matter of fact.’
Caroline gave him a hard little look, which he pretended not to see. The house smelt like a laundry, I noticed. There were drying clothes on all the radiators. Jack unsnapped an eyebrow ring and gave it to Samantha who examined it intensely.
‘Jack!’ she exclaimed, handing it back to him. ‘Another!’
‘I haven’t got that many I can do in polite company, sweetheart,’ he told her. I always felt awkward around children, as though they might vomit on me or ask me something appalling. Jack seemed suited to it. I suppose he was colourful.
Tony disappeared into the kitchen and returned with tea in sad mugs. Mine had faded Muppets on it. I took a sip. It tasted strange. I thought about the pranks on the building sites. Some of those had involved tea with added ingredients.
‘Milk powder,’ explained Caroline. ‘The little monster gets all the real milk.’
‘Not a monster!’ explained Samantha. ‘Jack’s got fings in his face.’
‘Things,’ Tony corrected her. ‘Not fings. And we don’t talk about people.’
‘Do,’ said Samantha. ‘Do too.’ She looked at Jack. ‘Mummy and Daddy talk about Sam,’ she said. ‘Not me. A bad one. Is she here?’
‘I think she might be,’ Jack said, looking at me. I could see him storing that one up for later use.
‘Here, I’ll put the television on,’ said Tony. ‘We like the television, don’t we?’
‘Jack!’ said Samantha, and then forgot she was standing and fell over. ‘Bump,’ she said, ‘ouch.’
Tony and Caroline exchanged a look. It was the sort of look you only get to exchange once you’re a parent. I like children, although I don’t think they fit in with my lifestyle. Being single makes having children difficult, especially for men. Caroline hoisted Samantha up and aimed her at Jack, and Tony ferreted the remote control from under a cushion and turned on the television. It crackled.
‘Growly,’ explained Samantha. ‘Jack? Whassit in the nose?’
Jack began to reach to his face, before being distracted by the television. I looked to see what had caught his interest. It looked like Dudley Castle.
‘Dudley Castle,’ the narrative informed us, ‘has not survived intact.’
‘What’s this?’ asked Tony. ‘Can’t be Time Team, that’s Sundays. And I can’t see anyone in a woolly jumper.’
‘They have a lot of woolly jumpers,’ said Caroline.
