Fresh Fields (21 page)

The youth left the courtyard and went out through the building to the street. Instead of crossing to the park he turned right and went around the corner and towards the pushbike leaning against the railing. He had decided to steal it if he could. As he walked towards it he saw there was a small side door to the museum. That was why the bike was there. Its owner had gone in that door. Drawing level with the doorway, the youth tried to glimpse inside but could only see the street reflected in the glass. Another couple of paces and he was at the railings, next to the bike. He paused and pretended to be adjusting the shoulder strap of his bag. As he did so he looked through the railings at the kiosk. The kiosk lady was now leaning with her back to the counter, holding the newspaper up in front of her. The youth glanced down at the bike. It was not chained to the railing. He took hold of the handlebars and began walking the bike away. After a few paces, when he saw that it wheeled freely, he swung onto the seat and began to pedal. The footpath ran quite steeply downhill and the bike got up speed while he was trying to get the feel and balance of it. His bag began to slip round to his side and he took his left hand off the handlebar to adjust it. This made the bike wobble. He tried to steady it but brushed against a wall, putting him more off balance. He saw he was approaching an intersection and tried to brake with the pedals, but found there was no foot-brake. He fumbled for the hand-brake and squeezed it and the bike began to slow a little, but not enough. He tried to slow some more by dragging his feet on the ground. He hit the metal pole of the traffic lights at the intersection. The bike at last skewed to a stop.

For a few moments he didn't feel any pain. He was too concerned with whether someone might be chasing him. He looked behind. There was no-one. People in the cars at the lights were looking at him. A girl leant from the passenger side of one of them and asked if he was okay. The youth nodded yes. He lifted the bike and began to walk it away along the footpath. He found he could not hold the handlebars properly with his right hand and that his right arm and shoulder were full of dull pain. He walked for three blocks, the pain getting worse all the time. When he felt safe enough to stop he leant the bike against a bus-stop seat and sat down and tried to massage his shoulder, but that only made it hurt more. For half an hour he sat quite still and tried to think himself away from the pain. He still felt afraid that any moment he'd hear a yell of accusation and feel himself grabbed.

He got up and tried to keep walking briskly but his arm and shoulder were stiffening and there were such throbs of pain in them that he could hardly hold the bike upright or guide it properly. He shuffled along with painful slowness, the bike veering crookedly all over the footpath. At one point he let it overbalance and fall, and as he made a grab for it he lost his own balance and went sprawling. He was on his uninjured side, but the jar of the fall sent such pain through his hurt arm and shoulder that he groaned aloud. A young chap was walking past and asked him if he was alright and began to help him up. Just then a police paddy-wagon approached and the youth thought he was gone for sure. But the paddy-wagon cruised by and there was just the nice young chap being friendly and helpful.

“Haven't quite got the hang of it yet, eh?” he said, indicating the bike.

“No,” replied the youth, forcing himself to smile. “I haven't had it long.”

 

HE HAD THOUGHT
, at the moment he'd decided to steal the bike, that he could sell it and get money. Now he had to think how. In one of the streets that ran off Telford Square there were three pawnshops close together. The youth had often stopped to look in their windows and had seen pushbikes there. He thought of the signs:
SECOND-HAND GOODS BOUGHT AND SOLD AND MONEY LENT.
He might be able to sell the bike at one of those places. Or maybe he could pawn it. He didn't know what pawning involved, exactly, but he could play it by ear.

It took a long time to walk the bike to Telford Square and he was very tired and sore by the time he reached the pawnshops. He would have bought a cool drink if he'd had the money. He approached the front of one of the pawnshops, then lost his nerve and went on past. The second one was a bit further on. He got to it but again did not feel braced enough to stop and enter. The third pawnshop was across the street, but he could not face the ordeal of crossing through the traffic, so he turned and wheeled the bike back past the other two again. Then he turned and passed them a third time. This was ridiculous, he told himself. He was just making himself conspicuous. The pawnshop people would be seeing him through their front windows and thinking he was acting suspiciously. He had to brace himself and then do it.

He went straight to the nearest of the pawnshops and leant the bike carefully against the front window. There was a sign above the door saying: ready money, with a badly painted picture of a big hand holding a wad of notes. The youth went in. There were two men sitting on kitchen chairs amidst the second-hand goods. They were talking about football. One was saying that Ronnie Robson was overrated, and the other was replying that, on his day, and pound for pound, Ronnie was still the best player in the world.

“Nah, mate,” said the first, shaking his head.

“I'm sayin'
on his day
, mate,
on his day
!”

“Ah well, yeah,
on his day
,” the other conceded.

“And
pound for pound
,” said the first one. “That's what I'm saying:
pound for pound
!”

“Ah well, yeah,
pound for pound
.”

The youth was standing near the counter, looking around at the merchandise.

“And what can I do
you
for?” asked the man who believed Ronnie Robson was still the greatest on his day and pound for pound.

The youth was taken by surprise.

“Um, I've got a bike . . .” he began to say.

“Let's have a squint then,” the man said.

The youth went out and got the bike and manhandled it awkwardly through the door, his arm and shoulder throbbing from the exertion. The man came over and put his hand on the seat of the bike and ran his eyes over the wheels and frame and chain. He flicked the gears and squeezed the hand-brake. Then he lifted the bike slightly off the ground and let it drop down. It made a solid clunk of a sound.

“Yeah, I'll give you somethin' on it,” said the man. “How much were you lookin' for?”

“I'm not quite sure . . .”

“I'll go three quid. How's that?”

“Good.”

The man went behind the counter and began filling in a form.

“Got some ID there?” he asked, putting his hand out.

The youth shook his head.

“I need
somethin
',” the man said. “Anythin' with a name on it will do.” He had stopped filling in the form.

The youth had a sinking feeling. Then he remembered the wallet.

“Just a sec,” he said. “My wallet's in my bag.”

He rummaged in the bag and found the wallet and removed it carefully so as not to accidentally pull anything else out with it—like a bra, maybe. The man saw how he was having trouble with his arm and shoulder.

“Got a crook arm, mate?”

The youth said he had.

“Playin' footy, was it?”

The youth said it was.

He fished in the wallet and took out the doctor's appointment note for Tony Lee and handed it over. The man wrote Tony Lee's name and address down on his form. Then he asked for the youth's signature. The youth wrote “Tony Lee” as carefully as he could, but with his sore arm it was hard not to have it scrawling all over the paper.

“You'd play for, what, Under 16s?” the man asked.

“Yeah,” said the youth.

The man tore the top copy off the pad and handed it over with the money.

As the youth turned to go the other man spoke.

“Ask
him
what he reckons. Go on. He plays footy.”

“Alright,” said the man at the counter. “Listen. He reckons Ronnie Robson's overrated, whereas I reckon that, on his day and pound for pound, Ronnie's still the best there is. What's your angle on it?”

The youth was starting to feel a bit more at ease, because of the bike thing having gone so well. He tried to look like someone who ponders long and deeply on football matters.

“Well,” he said, “the thing about Ronnie Robson is that he'll give you a hundred and ten per cent and then some.”

“Yeah, that's right,” said the man at the counter, pleased.

“And he's tuned like a Swiss watch,” the youth added.

As he turned and went out he heard the two men starting to discuss what he'd said, as though it was quite profound.

He only began to shake when he'd got well away. Then he felt pleased at how well he'd done. Forcing himself to stop shilly-shallying and just barge in and do it had been the key. It had been a lesson. Fortune favours the bold, he reflected.

The youth went back to Telford Square. As he passed the newsstand he noticed a photo of Ronnie Robson on the front of the paper. He bought a copy and went to Don Di's coffee shop and ordered a hamburger with all the trimmings, and a milkshake, and read the item about Ronnie having signed a new contract for his football club for a record amount. That must have been why the two men at the pawnshop were discussing whether Ronnie was still as great as ever. “It isn't about money,” a club spokesman was quoted as saying. “It's about letting Ronnie know he's appreciated.” How wise a thing to say, the youth thought. He reflected again that there was much wisdom in football. It was about “finding your values.” That was a phrase of Ronnie's. The youth had read it in one of his magazines, in an article about sports heroes who do good work for charities. There'd been a photo of Ronnie visiting an institution for boys who'd got in trouble with the law. The picture showed a crowd of them gathered round Ronnie and him holding up a football, and underneath was a caption: “
Finding your values is the key,
”
footy star tells delinquent
s. The article said that Ronnie had been in trouble himself when he was fifteen. He'd come from a broken home in a little coalmining town and had stolen a car for a joy-ride and been put on a good-behaviour bond. “
I found my values in football
,” he told the boys, “
and I know each of you young blokes can find your values in some field of endeavour
.”

The youth felt the tears welling. He wanted to find his values, he really did. He gazed at the photo of Ronnie and Ronnie seemed to return his gaze and to understand what he was feeling.

Di brought the hamburger with all the trimmings. The youth wiped his eyes and took up the knife and fork and found he could not work his hurt arm well enough. So he picked the hamburger up with his good hand and tried to eat it that way. But it was so stuffed with trimmings that bits of meat and onion and tomato and blobs of sauce fell onto the plate and onto the table and into his lap. He felt embarrassed and left the hamburger and sipped the milkshake instead. He had started to think he'd go back to the Astro and pay a week's rent. But the pawnshop money had only just been enough for that. Now, because of the hamburger and the milkshake, he'd left himself short. Why didn't he stop to think before lashing out like this? It had been the sheer relief of it going so easily at the pawnshop. That was it. He'd been too relieved to think straight, but now he realised how little he'd really got for the bike. It hardly met his needs. He would be homeless anyway, for all his trouble.

Two policemen came in and stood at the counter talking to Don. One of them turned his head towards the youth and gave him a long look. Then they went out. The youth sat for a long time trying to get calm. Di came over and asked him if he wanted anything else and saw the mess he'd made with his hamburger. The youth glanced again at the front of the paper and there was a sneer in Ronnie's expression that he hadn't noticed before.

It was late afternoon and he wanted to lie down someplace quiet and doze and forget himself for a while. He went along the street towards the Astro and approached the doorway cautiously. An angry voice came from inside. It was the Owner's and he was arguing with a tenant in the hallway, the same tenant who'd been there that morning, the one with the smoker's cough. The Owner kept shoving his face aggressively at the tenant's face, then backing away when the tenant hacked out a cough. That's how it looked, anyway. The youth only got a brief sight of them in the hallway before the Owner noticed him outside and started shouting, “Hey! Hey!” and waving him in. The youth stayed where he was. The Owner started to push his way past the tenant towards the youth, but the tenant wasn't finished arguing and wouldn't let him by. They began to scuffle, the Owner barking out words in his foreign language and the tenant hacking and coughing as they grappled.

The youth walked on quickly, his heart banging. He kept looking behind him. He saw the Owner emerge into the street and he started to run. When he looked back again the Owner and the tenant were grappling on the footpath and the Pale Watcher was there too, making gestures of distress with his hands but keeping well out of the fight.

When he'd got several blocks away the youth stopped to catch his breath and let the throb in his arm and shoulder subside. He saw a park and went to a seat and sat down. He stayed there until night came on. He had no thought of where to go or what to do. He was thinking of those few things back in the room at the Astro: his woolly jumper and some magazines in the wardrobe, and most of all his bedside lamp. He thought of the times, back in the room, when he'd leant a picture of Sweetheart against the base of the lamp, and alongside it his copy of
Year of Decision
, and so had made a little shrine in the circle of light, a shrine to Beauty and Love and Bravery and Death.