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The Pimlico Kid
Barry Walsh
One boy, one street and one summer he will never forget.A powerful and poignant debut from a compelling and authentic voice in commercial fiction.It’s 1963. Billy Driscoll and his best mate, Peter ‘Rooksy’ Rooker, have the run of their street. Whether it’s ogling sexy mum, Madge, as she pegs out her washing, or avoiding local bully Griggsy, the estates and bombsites of Pimlico have plenty to fire their fertile imagination.Billy is growing up and after years of being the puny one, he’s finally filling out. He is also taking more than a passing interest in Sarah Richards, his pretty neighbour. But he isn’t her only admirer – local heartthrob and rotten cheat, Kenneth ‘Kirk’ Douglas, likes her too – something drastic must be done if Billy is to get his girl.When Rooksy suggests a day out with Sarah and her shy friend, Josie, it seems like the perfect summer outing. Little do they know that it will be a day of declarations and revelations; of secrets and terrifying encounters – and that it will change them all forever…
BARRY WALSH
The Pimlico Kid
For Bronwen
Also for my father, Thomas Walsh and my brother, Terry Walsh. The best men I’ve known are the first men I knew.
In memory of Sarah McCormack (1978–2006), a wonderful Pimlico Kid.
“Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take”
From Burnt Norton, T.S. Eliot
Table of Contents
Title Page (#u97d1c69f-7ce8-533e-b69d-9f6ccad55d5c)
Dedication (#u43d44fcc-794f-5e8d-b88d-e4cd247182ab)
Epigraph (#u42f9d238-6295-553b-a2bb-f5ced3a7338d)
Prologue – October 1975 (#udc0be460-45d1-50a4-a59f-b68fe573c413)
London: August 1963 (#u3d6da37e-c7a3-55d1-8f85-161dc06c4f7d)
Fabulous Flesh (#u350aae61-bf5f-5447-918a-d276effa2b38)
Fish, Fags and Devil Cat (#u680cd33b-f36d-59cf-85c4-1dfb8f1ab798)
Back Seat Dreams (#u9af234de-57b2-5ae2-a07e-b2fc4c4faeb3)
Strength, Thrift and Gigli (#u49cec9f5-6718-5ff2-a91c-b6e9acb39b9e)
Comanche Spite (#u06874564-38bf-549e-8957-a7d810d53dbc)
Size Matters (#ucfce71a1-34bd-5ba2-b715-a920fea767da)
Jubblies, Pigeons and Lies (#uab2d05af-b99c-5d93-87f2-0d52128b8807)
Beach Magic and Sunray Stories (#u0c11bda3-4f07-5218-a71c-396a88e4dd26)
Bikini Close-Up (#litres_trial_promo)
Books, Empires and Dickens (#litres_trial_promo)
Female Company (#litres_trial_promo)
A Man’s Life (#litres_trial_promo)
Indian Camp Raid (#litres_trial_promo)
Front Row Touch-Up (#litres_trial_promo)
Different Dads (#litres_trial_promo)
Kissing Khrushchev (#litres_trial_promo)
Fish Paste and Flaming Turds (#litres_trial_promo)
Race Lessons (#litres_trial_promo)
Drowning and Denying (#litres_trial_promo)
Bodyline Cricket (#litres_trial_promo)
Headlong (#litres_trial_promo)
Truth (#litres_trial_promo)
Promises (#litres_trial_promo)
Teamwork (#litres_trial_promo)
Friends (#litres_trial_promo)
Shaking Hands (#litres_trial_promo)
Revenge Deferred (#litres_trial_promo)
Haircuts and Maltesers (#litres_trial_promo)
Bargains and Casualties (#litres_trial_promo)
Making Audie Proud (#litres_trial_promo)
Blood (#litres_trial_promo)
Aftermath (#litres_trial_promo)
Revelation (#litres_trial_promo)
Forgiveness (#litres_trial_promo)
Losing and Finding (#litres_trial_promo)
Last Request (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue – October 1975 (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
Coming in 2014 from Barry Walsh – Love Me Do (#litres_trial_promo)
W6 Book Café (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue – October 1975
Taunton 20 miles. The road sign slips past and another, listing local villages, glides towards me. One name stands out like my own on a guest list. A door into the past swings open and releases a locked-away ache. The car slows, behind me a horn blares. I pull into a lay-by.
Lower Sinton: part of an address written above two kiss crosses on a sheet of lined paper. I have never been here but I know it from what she told me: narrow lanes of pale yellow cottages; black window boxes crammed with flowers; main street pavements that rose three feet above the road. Her grandmother’s house stood next to the village post office and in the road outside her father’s black Humber gleamed. Beyond the back garden lay the wide meadow and further still there was the river. She spent her holidays here: where the sun always shone. When she returned to London, I marvelled at her golden skin and the extra light that had crept into her hair. It’s what happened in Somerset. It should have been Summerset.
I close my eyes. Back they come. First, as always, her face: bright, elfin, thanks to a short hairstyle, known at the time as Italian Boy. Beside her, my friend is making a circle with thumb and forefinger to tell me that everything is OK. And the other girl, with shining blue eyes, is hiding a smile behind her hand.
Scar reverts to wound. I tell myself, again, that we were children; that we couldn’t have prevented what happened; that when the most we might have been expected to deal with was a first kiss or a dying grandparent, we were undone by love itself, and violence – and that adults betrayed us.
Childhood love can endure but childhood promises are hard to keep.
London
Fabulous Flesh
High summer in Pimlico. After days of fierce sunshine, the meagre lawns of the prefabs in Grimsdyke Street are bleached and balding. A breeze churns the baked urban air and releases a faint, blended odour of street dust and dried dog shit.
In the afternoon heat, even the flying ants are walking. Rooksy and I have stopped moving altogether. We’re draped over the chest-high wall of Madge Smith’s garden, savouring the smell of wet soil in her hosed flowerbeds, and admiring her lush, watered grass.
I rest my head on my arms. It would be easy to fall asleep on the hard-sponge bricks, except that Madge is here. We pretend not to look as she bends to set down the large basket of washing on her terrace, which is an extension of the concrete slab on which the prefab stands. Rooksy props his chin on his hands. Sweat beads down his face in glistening lines. He sucks in air around his clenched teeth, and sighs. ‘Do you think Madge would show us her tits if we asked her nicely?’
‘Jesus, not so loud!’
Rooksy says thrilling things but he has sod-all volume control. Madge hasn’t heard what he’s said but her frown makes it clear that she wouldn’t have liked it. I ignore his question, but it’s got me wondering, again: what is it about tits? Hearing the word said aloud excites in a way that bosoms can’t. Mum has bosoms, so does my Aunt Winnie; hers are enormous and stretch her cream blouses and twin sets with more weight than push. Madge has tits.
How, and at what point, they become bosoms is a bit of a mystery. Perhaps they are tits that are no longer exciting? For now, imagining Madge naked from the waist up makes speech difficult and, not for the first time, Rooksy has conjured up images that I’ll be thinking about later.
He straightens up. ‘You know, I think she might. She must be so proud of them.’
‘Don’t be stupid, Rooksy.’
Madge will be doing no such thing. She’s little Jojo’s mum, and she isn’t much younger than mine.
He closes his eyes. ‘Oh the fabulous flesh.’
‘Rooksy, please!’
I turn away but he puts his arm around my shoulders and steers me back to stand alongside him as if we’re in a urinal. Madge glides to her back door where she lifts a cloth peg bag from its hook and returns to drop it on top of the washing.
Rooksy starts moving up and down against the wall, forcing me lower as he rises and shoving me up as he drops. I resist but after a few upward scrapes against the warm bricks, I’m moving under my own steam. A ‘love it, can’t bear it’ feeling grows in my groin and Rooksy’s tight smile makes him look as if he’s trying to whistle through a Polo mint.
Madge looks across at us and our bobbing figures freeze. Rooksy is down low and I’m at the top of my stretch.
‘What are you two doing?’
‘Whoops,’ says Rooksy.
‘You standing on a biscuit tin Billy? Or are you in a hole Peter Rooker?’
‘If only,’ he whispers.
‘What?’ says Madge.
We return to our proper heights and I speak up to stop Rooksy saying any more. ‘Nothing, Mrs Smith.’
‘You have grown though haven’t you Billy, filling out a bit too. What with those blue eyes, you’ll soon be …’ She winks.
My face burns. Thank you Madge. But soon be what? Please say what what is. I’ve started to grow, at last: a little taller, a bit less skinny. Mum and Aunt Winnie have said as much recently, but to hear this from Madge … who has tits.
Rooksy nudges me. ‘Ooh, I’d watch her.’
‘What’s that?’ says Madge.
‘Four nil,’ I say.
‘What?’ says Rooksy.
‘Four nil.’ I shrug as if it’s obvious. Football scores can divert the attention of those who’ve heard something they shouldn’t have. It hasn’t worked; Madge is frowning again. Please Madge, don’t change your mind about me; you’re my only fan with tits. Her eyes narrow but she relents and gives me the smallest of smiles.
She picks up the basket and carries it to the far end of the clothesline, using the top of one thigh to provide extra lift with every other step. At the far end, furthest from prying eyes, she begins pegging out the family’s underwear. First, her husband’s and Jojo’s Y-Fronts, then her whiter, more slender knickers. Knickers: a word as potent as ‘tits’. Could those she’s hanging out be the kind she’s wearing right now? I swallow hard.
Even fully clothed, Madge looks wonderful. A red headscarf squeezes her dark hair into a ponytail. She’s wearing a sleeveless white frock with buttons all down the front. Each time her suntanned arms reach up, her breasts stretch the fabric either side of the brown V of her chest. When she bends down to the basket, they settle back and her cleavage narrows and darkens.
‘Oh, definitely tits.’
‘Without a doubt Billy,’ says Rooksy.
Blimey, have I really said that out loud?
Rooksy jogs me with his elbow and starts whispering a commentary like the mad woman on telly who jollies ladies through health and beauty exercises.
