Director's Cut (2 page)

The Gallery with its strange side-wall finished quickly with shades of grey pebble-dash and with its small
flat above hadn't always been an end of terrace. Before the shadowy town planners had decided a new
road was necessary to link the High Road to the growing Richmond Park council estate, Mrs Meacham's
small shop that sold wool and lace and dress-making patterns had been on the end of the row. It all
seemed so long ago that now he could barely summon the old days or the old girl. Even so, he might have
been her last customer, he thought, remembering the lace antimacassars he’d purchased from her closing
down sale.

During the afternoon he would watch gangs of youths walk past his shop swinging their high-strength
bottles, followed a few moments later by tottering slappers as they tracked the trail of testosterone.
As the day wore on the gangs became louder and more abusive and shoppers moved out of their way,
shop-keepers took in their pavement displays and a few more cowardly or wise, pulled down their steel
shutters. And while the trouble brewed – and there was always trouble – the police were not about. They
were too busy form-filling and using their speed-guns on speeding motorists and their CS spray on
pensioners; easy targets to enhance the crime figures for the government to manipulate.
And in the road the brewing went on until, at one end or the other, a small argument would start and that
would do it. Nothing much. It was, after all, only an excuse.

And then the darkness fell.

And a cosy routine fell with it.

And with his shop bolted and as secure as it could be in this part of town, he made his slow way to The
British.

Out of the inky night the illuminations threw a jaundiced glow of Christmas message.
Along the High Road the bare trees crackled beneath the rushing clouds and the last withering leaves
scampered, a mad palette of neon stained the wet surfaces and the early evening pavements thronged.
Oh, how he hated Christmas with its false friendships and packed pavements and its queues and its
once-a-year drinkers blocking the bars. He sighed heavily and under the weight of the festive season he
shuffled on his way.

The British were about old things. Old wood in particular. In The British the only brick was about two
huge fireplaces that, winter or summer, were piled with smouldering logs that spat at you as you passed.
The seating was in narrow alcoves opposite the long bar, some said the longest bar in Britain. It reminded
him of an old British Rail platform where the trains smoked and doors slammed and a blue-uniformed
guard blew his whistle.

The British was staffed by Roger, the owner, who had once rowed in a boat race, perhaps the
boat race
, a
no-nonsense stocky owner in his late thirties who was always losing weight but never seemed to lose it,
and half a dozen young serving staff wearing tight black pub skirts.

Roger kept the older women in the back, nuking the pies and cutting the sandwiches.

Roger's wife was upstairs looking after their baby.

Mr. Lawrence had been surprised to find that Roger had a wife, never mind that she had been pregnant all
these months.

They had called her Erin.

An Irish name.

And she was beautiful. He had seen her moving pictures on Roger’s mobile. Technology was quite
wonderful. In looks she took after his wife which was a good thing.

Roger was the man that Japan and Germany dreamt about. He had to have the latest in TVs and DVDs
and sound systems. And he could think of nothing finer than trawling the HMV shops for the 3-for-£20
DVDs. And sooner or later he was going to hang a giant half-inch thick plasma on to The British wall. It
would show Sky Sports and Sky News and a Sky slant on the world.

e
short-lived. Reality was only a short pause for the pub's heavy doors shut it out. That's why they came, the
same familiar booze-smacked faces, day after day, to live in pickled suspension, utterly free from
interference.

Albert was there, a tall man, his body hidden by a navy-blue coat. The jeweller, incognito, except that
everyone knew him and what he was. He was fifty and probably dangerous. He wasn't interested in the
girls. The only thing that interested Albert was measured in carats.

“Good evening, Albert.”

“Good evening to you, Mr Lawrence,” he said and his black eyes sparkled like two of his precious stones.
“Did you hear the bang?

Quite a bang, it was.”

The colonel was there. Most of him was always there. The bits of him that were not were in the sands of
El Alamein. A short, squat man with stiff shoulders, at attention even while at ease “Good evening,
Colonel.”

“Good evening,” he muttered absently over his gin and tonic with a slice of lemon. No lime for the
juniper in Roger’s boozer. The colonel’s mind was on other things. “The EU could be a problem.
The krauts and the frogs could be a problem.” He shook his preoccupied head. His thin rheumatoid
fingers gripped the glass and carried it to his thin lips. The old eyes that had once looked out over the
wavering desert and had seen the sun glint on Rommel’s halftracks and Panzers, shifted from Mr
Lawrence to Roger. At length he said, “They blew up the allotments, you know?”

“The allotments? The French? The Germans?”

“No, not the frogs or the krauts. A shed on the allotments. Probably the Greens. Somebody doesn't like
their greens.”

Rasher was there. A fly-by-night sort, Rasher, granted the handle because his father was from Denmark.
He was thick-bodied and blue-eyed and covered in gold: earrings, chains, medallions, rings, watch,
name-plate. He looked like a wealthy gypsy. His mother had been a fortune-teller from Hackney who
somehow, only God knows how, got mixed up with a cold wood-cutting Scandinavian. His clothes were
beautifully cut and his shoes were hand-stitched. He wore waistcoats and red braces. He gripped the bar,
hands either side of a glass of strong ale. He spent his day in the same position, until closing when his
minders helped him out. Only his grip tightened as the day wore on. He had been there for nine months,
ever since his pregnant wife had left him. There were photographs of her to remind him, in the bus
shelters and in shop windows. Missing, they said. Have you seen this woman, they asked. People who
knew Rasher wondered whether his mother had predicted his bad fortune.

“Good evening, Rasher.”

Rasher nodded thoughtfully. Perhaps it was a good evening, perhaps it was.

There was a safety in The British reminiscent of the bomb shelters during the war and in there were the
same weary expressions, pale in the gloom, in the manufactured wattage. Yellow faces in the yellow light
bouncing off the nicotine yellow ceiling. And not a Chinese in sight. Chinese didn’t use the boozers; too
many old soldiers in the boozers who would mistake them for Japanese.

Albert frowned as a younger, much shorter man – more of a boy, really – told him, “Got out Wednesday,
didn't I?”

“On Wednesday you got out. Strange. That you expect me to know.

How would I know? From Adam, I don't know you, so how should I know when you got out?”
Puzzlement crossed the youngster’s pale brow and narrowed his blue-grey eyes and he uttered, “Come
again?”

“Come again? Come where, again?”

“What are you talking about?”

“A question you asked me. How would I know that you got out on Wednesday? I didn't know that you'd
been in.” Albert looked down at the younger man. He bent forward, as tall men often do.
“Just told you, didn't I?”

“Did you? Did you?” Albert nodded and drank some beer then said, “So, you went away for eighteen
months and on Wednesday you came back. Miss you, I didn't. Like I said, I didn't even know you'd gone.
Did you miss him, Colonel?”

The colonel offered a critical glance and said disapprovingly, “A.W.L., eh? Don't approve. Jankers, my
lad, for you.”

Albert sighed. “AWOL, I think it is. There you are, an old soldier even, mistakes can make. Rasher, what
do you think? Rasher?”

Rasher didn't move.

“Well, Rasher?”

From the corner of Rasher's mouth came, “Don'tgiveafuck!” And that was true. There was only one thing
that Rasher cared about and she was so distant now that in the dark he forgot what she looked like.
Albert nodded slyly and his gaze fell on Mr Lawrence. He thought better of asking his opinion and turned
back to the young man who, standing on one leg with the other wrapped around his calf, was waiting
patiently.

“So, on Wednesday you got out. For what did you go in?”

“Stitched up, wasn't I?”

“Were you? How did I know that?”

“Filth put a bag of tools in my hand and threw me in a car. A police car. They punched my head in so that
I didn't hit my head on the…the door, the door, like…?”

“Frame?”

“Yeah, that's good, the door frame. Is that what it's called on a car?”

Albert pulled up his eyebrows and for a moment they hid the deep lines on his forehead.
“Took me down to the nick and put the boot in. Kept booting till I signed up for twelve months. Well,
eighteen months actually. Got six off for good behaviour.”

“And now?”

“Straight, innI? Learned my lesson. Mustn't accept gifts from the filth.”

With a huge hand Albert patted the young man's back.

“That's good. Good, that is,” he said. “Two lives we should live, one for rehearsal. Then sorry we
wouldn't keep saying. Still, you are young enough to start again but, unfortunately, not old enough to
learn by your mistakes. Some people never learn, no matter how old they get.” He glanced across at Mr
Lawrence.

Roger noticed that in his profundity Albert had stopped sounding Jewish.

Albert went on, “Where are you living now?”

“That's the problem, innit?” The young man's face dropped.

“Squattin' down Avenue Road, know it?”

Albert blew out his cheeks. His whiskers separated, stood out as though they'd been shot with static and,
only slowly gathered together again. “Avenue Road, Ticker Harrison runs.” The Jew had returned.
“Squatting on his manor is not healthy. No sir, not to be recommended. Ticker Harrison is a dangerous
man. More than that, even, he's a fucking dangerous man.”

Roger interrupted, “I told you I don’t want any fucking in this boozer. I’ve got a wife and daughter
upstairs. Blair’s bringing in a fucking law to outlaw bad language along with smoking. He’s going to put
me out of business but does he care? The only thing he cares about is Bush, and I’m not talking about
Cherie’s bush either. I’m not surprised the bastard’s turning Catholic. For what he’s done for this country
he’ll need to spend the rest of his life in the confessional box.”

Albert shook his head and sent dandruff flying. He looked at the youngster out of calculating eyes and
said, “I was saying, Ticker Harrison is a dangerous man.”

“That's it, innit? The kids in there, makes me feel old, half of them out of their heads. Sniffin', snortin'. At
their age. I ask you? In trouble, innI?”

“Problems. I know just what you mean. Children and wives you need, ethnic parentage, an asylum seeker
you need to be or, you need to have capital with which to bribe the housing authorities. Then all right
you'd be. I fear it's Cardboard City for you, my son. Written all over you, it is. On your face is the
address. Capital letters. Cardboard City.” Albert's huge hand gripped the young man's shoulder before he
went on, “Now, if by chance you should happen on a few trinkets, things that sparkle in the night, then
into instant readies I could turn them. Then Cardboard City would remain a distant place. Now, to
welcome you back, a drink I will buy you.” He caught the cold eye of a girl in a tight black skirt. “Miss,”
he said firmly. “Put a half a pint into this young man's pint pot.”

The youngster watched the girl bend to pull his drink and fixed his gaze on the curve of her cleavage.
He'd been inside too long, forgotten

the subtleties of light and shade, of big and bigger.

Albert said, “Strapped across that, you would like to get, I bet.”

The young man nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, I would.”

“Find the trinkets, my son. Girls like that, barmaids in particular, like men with bulging pockets.”
At pub closing time the local restaurants filled up quickly. Chinese and Indian were three doors apart and
midway between The British and the Gallery. Squeezed between the Hong Kong House and the Spice of
India were a launderette, a DVD rental shop and a pet shop.

The Indian glowed red through white net and the air outside was filled with the farts the diners left
behind. Candles on the window tables shimmered like beacons in a red mist.

The Chinese was brighter. Perhaps it had less to hide, thought Mr Lawrence, but then he remembered the
salt used in the cooking and the dark alley, a narrow gap between the restaurant and the shop next door.
Dangerous places, alleys, where cats screamed and the air was soaked with piss.

Mr Lawrence had set his mind on Madras but a bunch of youths blocked the pavement so he ducked into
the Chinese.

He was settled with 7, 14 and 21, when the young man entered. Albert or the colonel must have
mentioned where Mr Lawrence dined. The young man who had just got out had come in to make a
beeline for his table. On his face was a look of surprise, the coincidence of meeting him again, and the
softer look of friendship.

Out of the darkness a copper's cheap lighter flared and in an icy wind sparks shot away.
The JPS felt heavy in Rick Cole's chest. He breathed white into the night and coughed a smoker's cough.
River water slapped impatiently against concrete and in the distance flames leapt from steel drums and
threw a pale glow on the lonely figures surrounding them.

A villain's voice came out of the darkness. “A bit Pearl Harbour, boy. A nip in the air. Thank Gawd for
global warming otherwise it might be really chilly.”

“Forget the Nips. I’ll lay odds there’s a bunch of skags clocking us.”