The Pimlico Kid

‘No.’

For once, he believes me and I’m not forced to empty my pockets. Instead, he gives me a contemptuous pat on the cheek and bounces off down the street. ‘See ya, windy.’ Before he turns the corner, he snorts again and spits in our direction.

Jojo hurls the squashed ball to the ground, pulls out his guns and fires wildly after Griggsy. And I want to be Audie Murphy, to gallop after him and drag him through the dust at the end of a lasso, before running him out of town.

‘A Comanche if ever I saw one,’ says Michael. He knows no greater insult. Comanches are the lowest of the low; treacherous bastards even attack wagon trains at night.

John gives the remains of our ball a last violent kick down the road and Jojo picks up his soiled cowboy hat.

Michael eases off the wall. ‘Jojo, y’ill need dat disinfectin’. Sure, ye might catch TB, or even vinurial disease.’ Jojo looks at him, then at me, mystified.

Michael strokes the few dark hairs above his lip that he hopes make him look a bit like Richard Boone. ‘Dat bastard deserves a bit of his own Comanche treatment: staked out in de sun, bollick-naked, near an anthill dat I’d be after givin’ a good kickin’.’

I join in. ‘Yeah, balls smeared with honey to get the ants in the mood for something sweet.’

Jojo giggles and our humiliation fades as we imagine ever more painful retribution.

John doesn’t laugh, even when we’re removing Griggsy’s dick with a tomahawk. His revenge isn’t going to be in the Black Hills of Dakota.

Size Matters

‘Go on then,’ says Rooksy, ‘show us.’

Raymond Dunn’s dick was big even when he was a toddler. His nickname is ‘Swole’. It comes from the time he was having a bath with his little cousin who, noticing the difference in sizes, pointed between Raymond’s legs, and said to Mrs Dunn, ‘Look Auntie, it’s all swolled up.’

This remained a private family joke until the day Rooksy saw it during a piss-up-the-wall contest. He claimed it gave Raymond an unfair advantage that should be taken into account when measuring the height of the wet stains. Caught between pride and embarrassment, a flustered Raymond mentioned the story of his cousin in the bath. Rooksy’s growing smile told him that this had been a terrible mistake. Soon, everyone knew about ‘Swole’s snake’, and no one called him Raymond again.

Rooksy, John and I are sitting on Swole’s bed. He’s the only kid we know who has a ‘double’. Swole’s home is an ‘apartment’ rather than a flat. Flats are what we and Peabody tenants live in, although ‘Peabodies’ are posher because they have bathrooms. Our bath is in the kitchen beneath a lift-up board. It doubles as a high table top that we sit around on stools. Inside, the bath is chair-shaped; so there’s no lying back under bubbles as women do in the Camay soap adverts. This is one of three things that would mean luxury to John and me, along with a fridge, so we can drink cold Gold Top milk all year round, and a telephone. We’d like a car most but Dad doesn’t drive.

Swole’s bedroom is above the entrance to the large wood yard that stretches up Morton Hill. We rarely have to call for him by ringing the bell because he sees us first from his window, where he spends a lot of time propped on his elbows and spitting on the timber lorries as they pass through the gates below.

Swole’s bedroom is also his playground. He’s rarely allowed out. His dad doesn’t like him mixing with us because he thinks we’re common. Swole doesn’t have any uncommon friends and he lives in fear of being sent to a boarding school, where he’ll sleep in a dormitory with posh boys and probably have to become a queer.

On the rare occasions his dad isn’t around, Swole invites us in and his mum gives us cold lemonade: the kind you make by adding water to yellow powder.

The shelves beside his bed are stacked high with books and board games but Swole doesn’t read much and he has no brothers or sisters to play games with. His pride and joy is the huge wooden battlefield, painted green and brown, on which battalions of British and German soldiers line up against one another. There are hundreds: running or marching across the uneven terrain, lying down or kneeling to fire from black trenches, or from behind balsa-wood rocks and bushes. Some are frozen in action, arms flung back in the moment of being shot, while others are charging enemy lines with fixed bayonets, led by officers armed only with pistols. Each model is immaculately painted: the British in khaki and the Germans in grey with contoured helmets that are so much smarter than the British pudding bowls. ‘Dad made everything, apart from the soldiers,’ says Swole. He tells us this with pride but little affection.

He was proud enough recently to take me into the separate area of the wood yard adjacent to their home where his dad makes his own stuff. When working here, Swole says that he always wears a full-length white apron instead of his overalls.

‘Take a look at this,’ he said, carefully lifting the sheet from a large cabinet whose delicately shaped doors lay unattached beside it. ‘It’s for keeping trophies in. Look at those joints, they’re called dovetails.’

I ran my finger across the interlocking wooden teeth at the corners and could feel only smooth wood.

‘I said, “look” not “touch”!’ He leaned close to check for incriminating fingerprints before he put the cover back, and tugged it left and right to make it look undisturbed.

‘Let’s go.’

‘Jesus, Swole, what’s the matter?’

‘My dad, he’d kill me if he knew I’d let you in here.’

The look on his face made me as keen to get out of there as he was.

John and I used to play with toy soldiers but Swole deploys armies. Today, John is eyeing them longingly. If he were on his own, he’d happily lead them into battle. Swole regularly rearranges the formations and we would much sooner help him to do this than look at his dick, again. Rooksy, however, is persisting.

‘Come on then Swole, let’s see if it’s got any bigger.’

I hate these moments because they can lead to Rooksy suggesting cock comparisons, which only involve establishing whose is next biggest after Swole’s. I always refuse. Although things are starting to happen for me down there, progress is depressingly slow. Rooksy and Swole have pubic hair. So do I, but unlike them, I know exactly how many I’ve got. We’ve seen Swole’s dick before because he likes showing it. He spends a lot of time in his bedroom, making do with his solitary games of soldiers, reading American comics, playing chess against himself and, we suspect, playing with himself. Rooksy says that it couldn’t have got that big without hours of attention, something that could work for us if we do the same. We’re obviously not devoting enough time to it.

Swole looks like Alfred E. Neuman, the kid on the cover of Mad Magazine; his ears don’t just stick out but are cupped towards you by invisible hands. He’s aware of his less-than-film-star looks but his dick is a consolation and, although his ears turn deep red when others refer to it in front of girls, he’s secretly pleased and fondles it gratefully in most idle moments.

Rooksy gives him a shove. ‘Give it some air Swole or it might stop growing.’

Swole grins. ‘OK, shut the door Billy.’ He unbuttons his trousers. And there it is on his open palm, like Mr Bevan our butcher showing a lamb chop to a customer. Only the greaseproof paper is missing.

‘You lucky bastard,’ says Rooksy, poking at it with a German lieutenant. ‘Can you make it bigger?’

Swole is ahead of him and everything is swelling nicely until we hear his mother coming along the hall. He grabs a comic from the shelf and throws himself face-down on the bed. Rooksy stands bolt upright. John and I whip round to study the soldiers but crash into the battlefield. The resulting earthquake sends the British and German armies bouncing into one another. Mrs Dunn flings open the door to the silence of illicit activity rapidly abandoned.

‘Four nil!’

Mrs Dunn raises an eyebrow. ‘What’s that, Billy? I hope it’s not four nil to the Germans.’

She’s a sharp one is Mrs Dunn, a skinny woman with short, violently permed hair. She purses her lips while her darting, nervous eyes probe the room.

‘Now what are you up to, Raymond?’ she asks, in the way mums do when they really mean everyone present.

‘Nothing, just playing.’ The choked squeak betrays his excitement.

‘Why don’t you go out now and get some fresh air.’

‘OK Mum.’ His voice is closer to normal.

‘Well, up you get then.’

‘In a minute, Mum, I want to finish something off.’

Rooksy snorts. Mrs Dunn’s eyes flash but she says nothing.

‘Quick about it then, Dad’s home you know … and that comic is upside down.’

Very sharp, Mrs Dunn.

Swole won’t be finishing off anything. Mention of his dad has drained the colour from his face. After his mum closes the door, he rolls on to his back, frantically doing up his fly buttons. John starts setting the soldiers in khaki back on their feet to show a British victory. Rooksy looks disappointed enough to ask for his money back.

‘Let’s go,’ says Swole.

In our house, ‘Dad’s home’ means noise and what Mum calls ‘foolery’; at Swole’s, it brings a scary hush. Even when out with us, Swole behaves as if his dad were standing behind him, and whatever he’s about to do, he takes a look around first.

Mr Dunn is a cabinetmaker. He hates running the yard and the business of buying, cutting and selling wood when all he wants to do is work with it. According to Swole, he’s happy only when he’s making his own furniture. But most of the time, he seems to be waiting to get angry and the red marks that we often see on Swole’s face show that he doesn’t wait for long. Sometimes it’s worse: a black eye that Swole swears comes from being bashed up by kids from the other side of Vauxhall Bridge Road. Even if this were true, they would never hit Mrs Dunn. So where does she get her bruises?

It’s not as if other parents don’t hit their kids; some fathers even use their belts. John and I have been spared this. While Mum used to slap out spontaneously at whatever part of us was closest, Dad has never hit us, or threatened to. His own father beat him and Mum says we’re lucky that he’s decided to be different. Not that he doesn’t make his disapproval clear: he can freeze you with a look. But it lasts only long enough to make a point before a tilt of his head and, sometimes, a smile tells us it’s over.

At the foot of the stairs, Swole’s wide-eyed warning brings us to a halt by the open door to the wood yard. On the workbench, Mr Dunn, in his white apron, has the carcass of the trophy cabinet on its back and he’s rubbing it with sandpaper wrapped around a small wooden block. His work-thickened shoulders and Popeye forearms couldn’t be moving more gently. After each pass, he runs his fingers over the smoothed surface and holds them close to his face to examine the white dust as if he’s about to taste it. He wipes it on his apron and rubs again.

He hasn’t looked at us but he knows we’re here. He stops working. We’ve interrupted him and he isn’t going to start again until he’s told us so. He closes his eyes, tilts his head forward and stretches his neck by easing it from side to side. We wait. Swole is shaking. His dad opens his small, dark eyes and his instantly accurate gaze makes me want to run away.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’ His soft, menacing voice makes me forget he’s only our mate’s dad.

‘Just going out for a bit,’ says Swole.

‘No you’re not, upstairs.’

‘But Mum said I …’

‘Now!’ His whisper is more frightening than a shout.

Swole’s head dips to his chest and he climbs the stairs to his room.

Rooksy, John and I stand there, waiting to be dismissed.

‘Well?’ he says and shows us the way out with an angry flick of his eyes.

‘Miserable bastard,’ says Rooksy, once we’re in the street. ‘Do you think Swole’s mum told him what was going on?’

I shake my head. ‘No, she’s scared of him too. He blames her for anything Swole does.’

Rooksy shrugs. ‘Jealous then, Swole’s got a bigger dick.’

Jubblies, Pigeons and Lies

Wooden crates of R Whites and Corona empties are stacked four high on the Big Step outside Plummer’s corner shop. The sun has turned the black-and-white tiles into a chequered hotplate. I’m sitting on its edge holding a Jubbly that was frozen ten minutes ago but is already turning to orange juice in its collapsing tetrahedron carton.

‘Hello Billy.’

Sarah’s slender silhouette stands before me. A gentle fizzing in my chest has me rising to my feet. But a bigger outline moves alongside her and I sit down again. It’s Kenneth ‘Kirk’ Douglas. He’s blond, very blond. Girls like him, giggle when they see him, send him anonymous notes, and the younger ones use his name in their skipping games.

On a mountain stands a lady

Who she is I do not know

All she wants is gold and silver

All she wants is a nice young man

The rope turns faster.

All right Susan, I’ll tell your mother

Kissing Kirk Douglas around the corner

Is it true?

Faster still, to catch the girl’s legs.

Yes, no, yes, no, yes, no, yes, no, yes …

The rope invariably traps their legs on yes.

I listen out for my name but never hear it. When I was little, the girls never caught me in kiss-chase because I didn’t want them to. Even if I’d made myself catchable, they would have rushed past me in pursuit of Kirk, who was a good runner but enjoyed being caught. At the time, it made him a sissy. Not now, it doesn’t.

I didn’t care much about girls at the time but it bothered me that they liked Kirk so much. They still do, especially his ‘lovely long eyelashes’ and his blond hair. What makes him bearable is knowing that he’s not too bright. Not backward or anything, only a little slow on the uptake.

‘Hello Sarah, watcha Kirk.’

His push on my shoulder is heavier than playful. ‘Watcha Billy, hot eh?’

He has this likeable, irritating way of talking without thinking, while I waste time searching for clever things to say that, once said, are rarely worth the effort. Inside Kirk’s head, there’s no space between thinking and speaking and although what he says isn’t funny or that interesting, it’s OK. I can’t stand him.

‘We’re going to have Jubblies too,’ he says.

‘We’re’? Because they’re both going to buy one? Or because they’re boyfriend and girlfriend, and he’s buying? An ache spreads in my stomach as I hold up my Jubbly.

‘Just the job in this heat, it’s … melty hot.’

Melty hot? Melty bloody hot? Thankfully, they don’t seem to be listening. Kirk goes into the shop but Sarah waits outside. He is buying hers and she’s avoiding looking at me.

Kirk emerges with a Jubbly in each hand, tearing along the top strip of one with his teeth to reveal the orange ice. He holds out the other one. ‘Here you are Sarah.’

‘Thanks Kirk.’

It hurts to hear them say each other’s names. And is Kirk standing between us to make it clear she’s his girlfriend?

Sarah squeezes the orange ice out through the edge that Mr Plummer has cut with scissors; girls ask for it to be cut, boys tear it. Kirk sits down, and jostles me to move over, pretending to be friendly but determined to make room between us for Sarah to sit next to him. I’m about to leave when I catch her glance at the space Kirk has made for her and pretend she hasn’t seen it! She walks in front of us to sit down beside me. One in the eye for Kirk, long lashes and all.

She is wonderfully close and her bare arm is touching mine. She stretches out her brown legs on the pavement and, with her free hand, pushes her frock down to her knees. I clutch my Jubbly too hard and orange juice squirts on to the pavement

‘Ha,’ says Kirk, ‘what a waste.’ He leans over, knocking me against Sarah. His bulk doesn’t threaten in the same way that Griggsy’s does but with Sarah next to me, I hate him for being bigger than I am.

‘Kirk, do you mind?’ she says.

‘Looks like he’s peed on the pavement.’

It does.

‘No, it doesn’t,’ she says.

He smirks. I swig long and slow at my Jubbly, trying to think of a clever response. Nothing comes to me and we sit in awkward silence until relief arrives in the shape of Michael, who is toiling towards us, arms straight down like he’s carrying an invisible rucksack. One hand is cupped backwards as if ready to draw a gun; it’s hiding a cigarette.

He flicks the brim of an invisible cowboy hat. ‘Howdy M’am, Kork, and if it isn’t Billy de Kid. Buenos dias, how are ye?’

‘Hello Michael, what’re you up to?’ says Sarah.

‘Not much señorita but I’m just after hearin’ on de wireless that de bandits who robbed that train vamoosed with more than two million pounds. Jesse James would have been proud of ’em.’

‘Oh yeah?’ says Kirk, dropping his jaw to mock him.

Michael spits a shred of tobacco from the tip of his tongue. ‘I’m too late for de Jubbly swallying contest den?’

‘Contest? It’s not a contest,’ says Kirk.

Michael winks at me. ‘Just as well, doesn’t Billy have yiz both well beat?’

Sarah laughs.

Kirk takes the bait. ‘Anyway, he started before us.’

‘Dat’s de way to win muchachos, dat’s de way.’

‘If we’d started at the same time …’

‘Ah Kork, if de moon were made of cheese …’

‘What?’

‘Oh nottn’, just a bit of poetry.’

I suppress a laugh. Michael looks away, eyes narrowed against the sun and prairie dust, like Randolph Scott. He drops what’s left of his cigarette and shreds it with the sole of his shoe. ‘Will yiz be at the hoedown on Sunday?’ He’s referring to our street party that has been held ever since the Coronation, except that it now takes place in the school holidays. We nod. ‘Me ould fellah’s doin’ de announcements. Isn’t he after gettin’ ahold of won of dem loudhailer yokes to help with de organizin’?’

Other Irishmen have difficulty understanding Michael’s dad’s accent and our Cockney neighbours will be taking the mickey as usual. Kirk shakes his head and smirks at me. I refuse to smile. Dad sticks up for Mr O’Rourke because he says it’s better to be a doer than someone who watches doers.

Behind Michael, some pigeons scatter as a Morris Minor burbles by. It’s white, like my aunt’s. I’m about to mention this when Sarah cries out and puts her hands over her eyes.

Michael gasps. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph.’

In the road, a pigeon is flapping, straining to pull itself off the tarmac. Several times the squashed body peels up but can’t break free of its own goo. Small, surprisingly white feathers swirl like snowflakes around the grey body and some settle on the dark red intestines that have wormed out on to the road.

‘Yeuch,’ says Kirk, dropping his head between his knees.

Sarah clutches her hair and turns to put her face against my chest. ‘The poor thing, the poor thing …’

The pigeon rests, then tries again. It must be in agony but its face just looks puzzled. If only it would stop flapping. Its neck writhes up between wings that are scraping the ground like a weird dustpan and brush. Please stop flapping! I ease Sarah away from me and she looks at me like she did when Josie fell over, expecting me to make things OK. My head swirls with pride – and the need to be sick. I stand up and grab a bottle from a crate.

When I reach the pigeon it stops moving. Relieved, I spin round to announce its death when the bloody bird flutters back to life. I raise the bottle to strike, but the bird is still again, watching me with its orange-bead eye.

‘Do it Billy, de poor yoke’s buzzard meat.’

I bring the bottle down but miss the head and make a greater mess of its body.

Sarah screams, ‘No, stop!’

The neck lifts. This time the eye is closed. With the next blow, I crush its head. Jubbly-flavoured vomit rises in my throat.

I wobble back to the Big Step. Michael takes the bottle from me and puts a hand on my shoulder to reassure me as if I’m Roy Rogers and I’ve had to put Trigger out of his misery.

‘How could you? The poor thing,’ says Sarah.

‘T’was for de best Sarah. Sure wasn’t de bird dyin’ in agony?’

I want to say something too, but my head is too full of what I’ve just seen, and done. I sit beside Sarah, breathing hard to stop myself being sick. Until now, I’ve killed only insects and worms, which can’t look you in the face as you’re doing it. I put my hands over my eyes and can still see the pigeon’s writhing neck, and its accusing orange eye. Even when I was bringing down the bottle on its head, I could think only that here was a living creature that would soon not be alive anymore, because I was killing it. I tuck my shaking hands into my armpits, unsure whether I’m proud or disgusted by what I’ve done.

The Corona lorry pulls up at the kerb to screen the corpse from view. Michael holds out a hand to me. ‘Well done compadré, it had to be done.’

We move to sit on the other side of the shop to let the deliverymen load the crates. No one speaks until Michael gets up and squints into the distance, as if checking whether Sioux or Comanches are waiting up ahead for the wagon train. ‘Hasta la vista, muchachos. I have to be gettin’ back to de ould hacienda … chow time.’

Squashed pigeon or not, a meal is not something to be missed.

Kirk looks at Sarah and winks at me. ‘Hasn’t that put you off eating Michael?’

‘Not at all Kork. But aren’t ye looking terrible pale in de face. Was it all a bit much for ye?’

‘What are you talking about? I could have done it if Billy hadn’t.’

‘Not easy when ye are sat der wid your head in your hands. Sure wouldn’t de bird be dead of ould age before he got a belt from ye.’ He grins at me. ‘See ya around Kid.’

He lumbers off at a pace that will get him home before hunger sets in. For me, meals are interruptions to whatever I’m doing; for Michael, they’re vital staging posts in a day that consists of eating, short periods of satisfaction and longer, more difficult, times spent looking forward to eating.

‘What’s Fatty O’Rourke on about?’ says Kirk, who should keep quiet, as it’s the best thing to do when you’ve had the piss taken out of you.

Sarah and I don’t answer.

After a while, she says, ‘Well Billy, what about the round-the-block race on Sunday? Are you running?’

‘I am,’ says Kirk, with a forward one-two shrug of his shoulders.

Well, Kirk, aren’t you the bloody marvel.

The ‘round-the-block’ race is four times round an oblong circuit that takes in our street and the next one. Last year Kirk won it. This year, I think I’ve a chance of winning if I can stay free of asthma. Sarah hasn’t answered him. She’s waiting for my answer!

‘Maybe.’

Maybe? Of course I’m running in the race but I don’t want Kirk to think that it matters that much.

‘Well, may the best man win,’ she says.

‘Yeah,’ says Kirk, ‘hope it’s me … again. Last year, I won two big bottles of Cream Soda.’

That’s where he gets it wrong: boasting is worse than being thick. Sarah misses my modest smile, which is a pity, because it’s like Audie Murphy’s before he beats up bigmouth baddies.

I change the subject. ‘How was your holiday in Somerset?’

‘Oh, marvellous … didn’t want to come home.’

‘At your Nan’s?’

‘Yeah.’

She can see I’m trying to exclude Kirk and decides to be fair, ‘What about you, Kirk? Going hop picking again?’

‘S’pose so.’

I envy Kirk his late summers in the hop fields, when his whole family goes down to Kent to live in wooden dormitories with other Cockney families. They have a great time and, according to Aunt Winnie, it isn’t only the kids who get up to all kinds of mischief. And everyone comes home brown as berries.