The Generation Game (24 page)

‘So, Joe, what do you do at the polytechnic? Is it English like Philippa?’ asks Mrs Raby, in her pleased-to-meet-you voice.

‘No, Social Policy.’

‘Oh… that must be interesting.’

Mr Raby looks up from his copy of
The Sun
and says, ‘I hope they’re not teaching you any of that Commie filth.’

Mrs Raby is standing in her apron, arms folded, looking down on Joe and I, perched side by side on the grubby couch which is at an awkward angle to Mr Raby, sitting in his chair by the window
with its glorious view of Pompey laid out before him (where you can see what a mess has been made by a succession of town planners trying to clear up after the Luftwaffe). I have to call on all my
psychic powers to try to stop Joe responding in his usual way.

‘No, Mr Raby,’ he says cricking his neck to try and make some sort of eye contact. ‘They offer a balanced curriculum.’

Mr Raby is unsure of this answer, suspecting a subversive message in there somewhere. He suspects Joe could quite possibly be the enemy within. He suspects – quite rightly – he has a
Trot in his home. A Trot in league with the devil himself, aka Arthur Scargill, leader of the National Union of Mineworkers. But there is nothing he can do without entering into a full-scale
confrontation and Mr Raby would rather go back to the television page. He likes to highlight all the programmes he and Mrs Raby could have watched during the day but were too busy watching other
ones instead. A man after Wink’s heart if ever there was one.

‘Have a sausage roll,’ offers Mrs Raby.

‘No thanks,’ says Joe. ‘I’ve just eaten my tea.’

‘I’m sure you could manage one, a big lad like you,’ she says, amazed at Joe’s restraint.

And Joe is restrained. He could’ve informed Mrs Raby that meat is murder but it will be a few months yet before we hear Morrissey sing these words at the Guildhall. Thus he spares Mrs
Raby’s feelings and avoids a conflict which normally he’d thrive on.

Joe is most definitely becoming my best friend. It takes a special someone to know when to speak out and when to shut up. But what I like most about him is his humanity which is somehow more
profound than his political persuasions. When he paints statements onto placards to hold up on marches, feeling like a soldier with his banner riding into battle, he believes in COAL NOT DOLE and
THATCHER STOLE THEIR MILK NOW SHE’S STEALING THEIR BREAD. He believes in every heckle he shouts from the back of the hall during union meetings. Joe even believes in every last word of Billy
Bragg’s protest songs. But it is more than words. Actions do speak a lot louder as far as he is concerned.

This becomes clear to me one day when we are sitting in the Union. He is reading the
Morning Star
when he comes across a photograph of a boy, the same age or thereabouts as his little
brother Michael who is a sixer in his local cub pack and likes to collect first day covers.

‘Look at this,’ he says, nudging me out of the depths of
Middlemarch
. ‘Can you see what this kid has been forced into by this government?’

I look at the picture and can see that this boy has other things on his mind than woggles and stamps. Other things that he has to do. He is crouching on a tip, sifting coal through the grill of
a shopping basket to take home to his mum to put on the fire, to do his bit to help keep his family warm through the long, hard winter ahead, with a dad out on strike and a community struggling to
hold itself together.

‘I’m gonna do something, Phil,’ he says.

And he does. He gets up early one morning the following week to drive to south Wales in a comrade’s truck, the back of it filled up with food donated by fellow students and activists.

I love him for doing this. And I love him even more for not asking me to go with him – because he doesn’t want to hear me say no. Though I do give him a tin of baked beans and the
fiver I won from my latest pool contest. I want to do my bit but I am sort of fed up with always being expected to help elsewhere. Looking round Portsmouth, I think quite a bit of help is actually
needed right here. It isn’t called the northern town of the south for nothing.

Joe likes to think of himself as a man of the people, but he has more affinity with the miners of South Wales than with the locals; he dislikes the way they apparently cling to the glories of
the Falklands. (It isn’t their fault there’s a whacking great naval base on their doorstep.) If it weren’t for Mr and Mrs Raby, Joe could pass most of his time at the Poly without
interacting with any genuine Pompey inhabitants apart from those who shout abuse at him as he shakes a bucket outside their pub.

Joe’s heart always seems to lie elsewhere. But he does have a heart and that is what I love about him. When the bomb goes off in the Grand Hotel further along the south coast, he
isn’t pleased or impressed by this action, as one might’ve wrongly assumed he would be. Being a pacifist, he is full of horror at the idea of people wanting to kill other people. Even
Margaret Thatcher.

But he doesn’t have long to dwell on this. Soon after, he is round at mine, the Raby’s out for the evening at the working men’s club. A quiet evening watching telly, eating
biscuits, when the news comes on. We are not prepared for what we see. If I’d have been warned, I might’ve switched off the television and taken Joe to the club to experience a true
Pompey night out with the Raby’s. We could’ve gone to the pub, the Union, gone anywhere except the place where Michael Buerk transports us. A country in Africa… a country I
remember from school… Abyssinia… Haile Selassie and Rastafarians. We are taken to Ethiopia where a famine of biblical proportions is desiccating the nation while we sit in our comfy
chairs, an empty packet of Hobnobs on the table, watching in silence the sickening images… tiny starving children clinging to their dying mothers… the skeletons of cattle lying in the
dust… brown, dead earth.…

Big Joe is in tears and that starts me off. I grab one of Mrs Raby’s tissues and offer the box to Joe but he waves it away, sniffs, and demands some paper.

‘Paper?’

‘I’ve got to write a letter, Phil. I’ve got to do something.’

So he writes to Mrs Thatcher, still no doubt reeling from the shock of the bomb. A short-and-to-the-point letter which he leaves me in the front room to go and post in the box round the corner,
possibly even before Bob Geldof has got off the phone to Midge Ure.

Joe is no fool. He knows words will not be enough. And he knows he will not ever be able to collect enough tins to feed the world. But this doesn’t stop him trying.

‘We’ve got to do something, Philippa,’ he says. ‘We’ve got to do something.’

It is a mantra of his I will hear many times during our friendship over the years. My Jiminy Cricket nudging me to get off my arse and stop reading about the plight of downtrodden Victorian
women. And do something.

Term ends all too quickly and I go home to a Christmas that is the first in living memory without Andy. In honour of my return, Bob and Wink kill the fatted calf (which would
horrify Joe). They also stockpile a sickening amount of presents under the tree which makes me feel even worse for the famine victims who won’t be getting so much as a bowl of rice or a cup
of fresh water. Who won’t even know it is Christmas.

Still, it is lovely to be back, to help out in the shop, filling the sweetie jars and stacking the stationery shelves, to sit with Wink in front of the telly and watch all the Christmas
specials, to share a box of Quality Street and argue over who gets the last green triangle, to throw the travel rug over Captain’s cage as he has decided to grow old disgracefully. But I
worry about her. She is smaller than I remember. More frail. Her eyesight so bad she has to sit closer to the screen and ask me to tell her what is going on every few minutes.

‘You got yourself a boyfriend yet?’ she interrogates me one evening. Wink won’t be happy till she knows I have a man to look after me as Bob can’t do it forever.

‘No,’ I say. ‘I’m too busy.’

She almost chokes on her tea.

‘You? Busy? Busy drinking cheap beer, I suppose.’

I feel an almighty blush coming on and for once am thankful her eyesight is not refined enough to see it.

I get three Christmas cards in the post. The first from Cheryl, apologising for not coming home for Christmas. She’s chucked Doug and moved in with a final year medical
student in Fishponds. The second is from my mother who this year is at least honest and signs it with love from Helena, Orville and Wesley. The third is from Mr and Mrs Raby, apologising for not
being in the flat on my return as they’ll be off on a cruise on the proceeds of a five horse accumulator at William Hill’s. Will I be all right on my own? And will I water Mr
Raby’s assortment of African violets? Plus will I buy the
Radio
and
TV Times
every week – so they know what they’ll have missed on their return. There is some money
in a jam jar in the boiler cupboard.

At last. Independence.

On the eve of my return, I wander out into the backyard of the shop. If I were a proper student I’d be puffing on a roll-up but I have no desire to smoke as smoking has
far too many associations for me. Lugsy, however, has no such worries and gets through as many fags per hour as Helena, though she probably wouldn’t be too impressed by the liquorice
Rizlas.

‘So, is it like being in
The Young Ones
, where you live?’ he asks.

I don’t like to let him down, so I skim over Mr and Mrs Raby and their plated-up meals.

‘Yeah, it could be based on my life.’

I am not completely lying. I get an image of Joe and his donkey jacket and Docs and try not to compare him to Rik Mayall.

When Lugsy goes back into the shop, I notice the slight stoop to his shoulders.

‘She’ll say yes, one day,’ I call after him.

He turns back and shrugs.

‘I don’t think so. But what can you do?’

It seems that everyone is asking themselves this exact same question. Only some of us are more prepared to try than others.

I stay outside a little while longer. The new rose bush has established itself, Andy’s bones feeding it well. I don’t have time to get melancholy because Lugsy has reappeared.

‘Phone,’ he calls from the door. ‘It’s your mate, Joe.’

I’ve been trying to get hold of him for days. As has his poor mother.

‘Where’ve you been?’ I demand.

‘Up in London.’

‘What, to see the Queen?’

‘Organising my passport,’ he says sombrely, not nipping at the bait. ‘I’ve got onto VSO. I’m going to Africa.’

‘But I thought they only needed doctors and nurses.’

‘They need truck drivers too. Someone’s got to get the food there.’

So Joe is going away. Far away. Not for the day, with a carload of beans. But for as long as it takes. My third best friend, snatched away from me. Only this time, as much as I want to, I
can’t complain.

Bob drives me back to the Raby’s after Christmas. He helps me unpack and gives me a bag of fifty pence pieces for the meter. He makes me a cup of tea, the latest in a
long line that he’s brewed me over the years, the first still being the most memorable – the tinkle of glass on the shop floor and little Margot Fonteyn trotting down the road after her
mother.

‘Have you seen Auntie Sheila?’ I’ve been meaning to ask that all Christmas but I’ve been waiting for Bob to mention her name first. The very fact he’s kept quiet
fills me with worry for him.

‘Yes, I have, funnily enough,’ he says.

I am not surprised. I knew she’d be back once she heard about the departure of Linda. But I am surprised it has taken her this long. Poor old Bernie. I am actually beginning to feel sorry
for him. And there is someone else of course that springs to mind.

‘And Toni and T-J? What’s the latest with them?’

‘Oh, well, Toni’s moved in with some chap from her office, some estate agent or other… Anthony… Aidan… I can’t remember.’

‘What’s he like, this bloke?’

‘Sheila’s none too keen. And Bernie hates the sight of him apparently.’

No-one will ever be good enough for his Toni.

‘And T-J?’ I have to prompt Bob to continue with his news update because he’s got distracted, hunting for the watering can in order to see to the drying-out African
violets.

‘Oh, Terry, ah… let me see… he’s somehow managed to get himself a girlfriend. Swedish or Danish or is it Norwegian? Tall and blonde by all accounts. Very attractive.
Works for a travel magazine… something trendy like that… gets all these free flights and things. Sheila can’t quite believe he’s landed on his feet. Bernie certainly
can’t.’

It is quite a struggle to control the tornado of jealousy twisting about inside me right at that moment but I must have managed it somehow because Bob is quite oblivious to my stormy
emotions.

‘Have they got any Baby Bio?’ he asks, searching in the cupboard under the sink, giving me a bird’s eye view of his pink scalp. ‘By the way,’ he says, straightening
up and clutching the bottle of plant food in his hand, ‘he’s not called T-J anymore.’

‘Has he gone back to Terry?’

‘No, he’s using his other initial, the J.’

‘What does that stand for? I’ve often wondered.’

‘Justin.’ Bob notices a look of surprise on my face. ‘I know,’ he says. ‘He doesn’t really seem like a Justin, does he? But he’s gone all London now. An
estate agent living with a leggy Swede in Camden Town. Who’d’ve thought it?’

Not Bernie that’s for sure. Not me either.

‘Why’s he gone and changed his name again?’

‘Something to do with Captain Kirk apparently.’

‘Captain Kirk?’

‘You know, the Starship Enterprise.’

‘Sorry, you’ve lost me.’

‘Well, not Captain Kirk exactly. William Whatsit, who plays him.’

‘William Shatner?’

‘Yes, that’s it.’

‘Why doesn’t he want to be associated with William Shatner?’

‘It’s his other programme, the one where he’s a police officer or a private detective, that sort of thing.’

‘Do you mean T-J Hooker?’

‘Oh, you know it?’