By Liz Frost
The street Pete had chosen was generously lined with identical terraced houses on either side and
small leafy trees getting ready for summer. Today had been fruitful so far and he adopted a confident
swagger, loosening his collar and looking this way and that, sniffing in the mild afternoon air like
cocaine. He was invincible. The next place he had his eye on was number 7. His lucky number.
On the Roman road, the market traders were packing up for the day and as he’d turned down the side
street, the traces of newspapers, squashed fruit and discarded chip bags gradually faded away, as
did the bustle and chatter. There was some twitching of the net curtains as he rapped confidently on
the door with his gold sovereign ring and then he could hear some shuffling down the hallway. Usually
they peeped through the gap between the door and a hefty chain but the pillar-box red door opened
to reveal a tiny lady standing in a floral hallway. She was very old, sporting a blue rinse and inch thick
glasses in NHS frames which dangled from a chord around her neck. She’d opened the door boldly,
taking him by surprise a little. Still, he opened his jacket to reveal his fake ID with a friendly smile,
explaining that he was here to read her meter.
Instead of donning her spectacles and examining his ID, she simply looked him up and down with a
smile and stepped aside saying “fancy a cup of tea?” He couldn’t believe his luck.
As he sat in the flowery lounge with his tea in a bone china cup and a fruit scone filled with strawberry
jam, he scoped out the room. There were cabinets filled with expensive china, flanked by antiques
and silverware. The mantelpiece was adorned with elegant figurines, some of them very rare. The
smell of Estee Lauder and biscuits hung in the air.
When he was younger, Pete and his mate Kev used to sell drugs. Hash, grass, nothing hard, out of
the back of an old dusty antique shop. Merv who owned the shop was as crooked as hell and used to
let him and other dealers use the place as a front to do their ‘business’ in exchange for a cut of the
takings. Merv knew his stuff as far as antiques went and in quiet periods Pete had watched him
examining articles. He’d learnt a fair bit about what was valuable and what wasn’t. He was only 17
then and now, at 35, his experience was proving useful for his new ‘business’. Looking around the
lounge, he knew instinctively that most of this stuff was worth a packet. Actually, he was quite sure
that was an original painting there above the fireplace. He tore his eyes away from the painting and
cast them on the old lady in front of him. She was saying something to him in her raspy voice.
“Had a busy day?” she repeated, slurping a mouthful of tea from the dainty cup and leaving a smear of
bright pink lipstick round the rim. He noticed she was wearing full make up, blue eyeshadow,
mascara, the lot. She was smiling at him through her pink mouth and revealing her lipstick covered
dentures.
“Oh yes, no rest for the wicked” he smiled sweetly, taking a sip from his own delicate tea cup and
wondering where she kept her jewellery.
After a silence, “Lived here long?” he ventured, trying to engage the old dear in polite conversation.
He listened patiently as she talked about the war.
Instead of evacuating to the countryside, her family had decided to stay put, in this very house. She
gestured with her mangled hands to places down the road which hadn’t survived and recalled how one
morning she had woken up to discover the house right next door had been completely demolished by
a bomb. Her neighbours, a whole family of five, wiped out overnight.
“This house stood firm though” she said proudly, adjusting the pearls which rested among the flaps of
skin loosely hanging around her neck. As she spoke, her voice was thick and wobbly but her cloudy
eyes sparkled as if she’d been transported back in time.
She pulled out a dusty photo album and showed him pictures of her during the war, a beautiful shapely
blonde, like Marilyn Monroe, making bricks in a factory to rebuild the houses which had been bombed
by the Germans. One captured her sitting in a yard with a headscarf tied around her head,
surrounded by bricks and laughing girls all drinking beer like men. Another showed her straddling a
motorbike with her arms around a man who looked a little like James Dean.
“That’s Alfie” she said, looking up at him “My husband”. And with a shaky, bent up finger, she stroked
the page. “He’s dead now. Heart attack.”
Pete was getting restless. He couldn’t quite place the feeling. Perhaps it was indigestion. He was hot
and uncomfortable. He wanted to get this over with and get out of there.
Turning the pages further there were pictures of her in her thirties. The war was over and there were
photographs of her at great street parties, smiling with friends and then with a little boy on her knee.
“Who’s the kid?” he asked.
“He’s my son” she said smiling “he’s a doctor” she added proudly looking up at Pete and then shutting
the book firmly on her lap.
“Now, how about another cup of tea?” she said after a while.
“Actually, do you mind if I use your bathroom?”, he said apologetically, “I had a can of coke before I
left and it’s gone straight through me”
“Of course dear, up the stairs on the left.” She pointed an arthritic finger skyward and went back to
drinking her tea.
Pete’s mood had sagged. What interest did he have in the stupid old lady’s photographs of her
‘doctor’ son? As he thought the word ‘doctor’, he mouthed it sarcastically and made a chatterbox
gesture with his hand. It was the look of pride that got him most. A far away look in her eye like she
worshiped her son as a hero. Pete was nobody’s hero. He looked after himself and he liked it that
way. He tried not to feel sad at that thought.
He supposed he attributed the way he’d turned out, to his father who had left him when he was ten
years old. He didn’t remember much about him because he had blocked him from his memory, but
the man he did remember was a perfectionist. He was a Lawyer who always played by the rules and
he made Pete and his mother play by the rules too. Everything they ever did had to be 100% correct
or it just wasn’t good enough. Pete was transported back to one day when he and his father were
outside playing football. His father hadn’t changed out of his work suit yet, so he stood with his shirt
sleeves rolled up and his tie slung over his shoulder with a look of serious determination on his face.
Pete was in goal and his father was the striker. The hard leather ball came at him fast and powerful,
knocking him over and stinging his hands. It hit him again and again in the stomach and ribs, and then
on the forehead. But Pete was made to continue until he got it right. When it was time for dinner, he
was aching all over and his hands were red and painful. Despite trying, he still hadn’t pleased his
father and caught the ball so he was sent to bed without any dinner.
“He’s got to learn, Vera!” he could hear his dad shouting at his mother in the kitchen. “He’s got to
learn!”
Later on, his mother had sneaked up some milk and biscuits for him, her only child, and she sat on
the edge of his bed crying and stroking his hair until he went to sleep.
After a while his father had started to drink. Just a glass of brandy in the evening before bedtime to
begin with, but the more frustrated he became with Pete’s ‘failures’ the more he would delve into the
shiny wooden drinks cabinet. The drinking got worse and Pete’s mother would cry herself to sleep
some nights, he could hear her. So when his dad left, Pete broke every rule he could. He disobeyed
his mother, who didn’t have the strength or the heart to discipline him. When he went to school, he
disobeyed the teachers. He never passed an exam because he refused to take them and so he never
found a job. When his despairing mother finally passed away from stomach cancer, he turned to
Merv, a father figure who didn’t mind him breaking the rules. Merv was a far cry from a real father,
operating in the underground drugs racket and mixing with various dealers, but without Merv, Pete
would have ended up on the streets.
On his ascent up the stairs, he noticed more expensive looking original artwork. Such a decadent
interior struck him as strange considering its simple outer shell and the modest East End street it was
built on. At the top of the stairs stood a cabinet full of tiny elaborate ornaments. All of them cats.
Briefly distracted, he turned his attention to a door to his right.
Despite the mild afternoon, the room felt cold enough to make his breath visible in front of him. It
smelled of a combination of bad breath - the sort of breath old businessmen have on the train on the
way home from a day at the office - and feet. He pulled his collars up around his neck and crept
further, listening at the door for the sound of the old girl climbing the stairs. He’d be able to hear her
slow ascent and remove himself from the room way before she’d even got half way up the stairs.
Edie was in fact looking through some more of her old photo albums. She’d dug out an old Frank
Sinatra classic album and was putting it on the record player. Sometimes she’d do that. Just get out
a record and dance around the room pretending it was her wedding day and her and Alfie were
parading in front of everyone for their first dance. It made her smile but also made her sad at the
same time. She pictured herself in he long satin gown with her family, her two sisters, mother and
father, all of them gone now, watching from their table at the front. What they didn’t know at the time
was that she’d had to have the beautiful white gown taken out in order to make room for what was
becoming a slight bump containing her little baby boy. It was frowned upon in those days and had
anyone known, it would have put her and her family to shame. Still, what made that day even more
special for her was the secret smile her and Alfie shared.
Upstairs, a far cry from the Laura Ashley décor of the rest of the place, the room Pete had entered
was peeling and brown, desolate. On the far wall stood a floor-to-ceiling cabinet filled completely with
china dolls with staring eyes. It freaked him out. Breathing shallowly with his eyes fixed on the staring
dolls, he ventured further, tiptoeing over creaking floorboards to the other side of the room, where he
could see a box which he was sure contained jewellery.
The room had the creakiest floorboards he’d ever encountered. They sounded like a hive of mice
were living beneath them with the chorus of squeaks they emitted, making him wince with every step.
As he approached the box, he allowed himself to shakily exhale. He lifted the lid slowly and bent down
to get a closer look. Inside was a jumble of jewellery of varying degrees of taste and expense. He
pulled at it with his fingers. Pearls, silver and gold necklaces, entwined with ornate lockets and
chokers, all bound together in an unruly mess. Underneath it all was a broche almost exactly the same
as one his mother used to wear. A red stone in the middle with a flower shape around the outside
made from silver. He could picture here now wearing it the night they had all gone out to the local pub
for a meal. Him, his mum and his dad. It was her birthday and she was all dressed up and smelled of
lipstick and perfume. He was 9 and happy to be allowed to eat fish fingers and chips followed by a
huge chocolate sundae. His dad reached over and scruffed his hair. Pete smiled back with his mouth
covered in chocolate and marshmallow powder. Pete wondered what would have happened if things
had stayed that good.
Just then he thought he saw something in the far corner of the room behind the door which made him
jump. When he turned there was nothing there, it was just his nerves. He almost laughed at himself,
but his heart was still beating so fast that he could hear it in his ears and feel it rattling in his chest.
He went back to the task in hand but somehow he just couldn’t concentrate. He sat down on the floor
and put his head in his hands for a moment. He thought about being a kid with his dad and following
rules. Then he thought about Merv and his drug den antiques shop. How he’d looked up to him and
watched his every move.
Pete met Merv on a Sunday in June. He was 16 and out in the woods drinking vodka he’d stolen from
his mother’s drinks cabinet.
“Hey kid” Merv had said from where he was perched on the edge of a chopped down tree trunk
smoking a spliff. He blew some smoke from the corner of his mouth “What cha doin’?”
Pete was suddenly shy. He kicked a coke can at a tree and said “nuffin’’”
“C’mere” Merv had said, lifting his head in a short jerky motion to beckon him over and holding out the
spliff to him. Pete went and sat by him, taking the spliff between his fingers and cautiously taking a
slug, choking and spluttering his guts up all over the place.
Merv was laughing and slapping him on the back. “alright mate?” he said.
They sat on the trunk talking about life, about their parents, about everything, until the sky started to
go dark and the moon appeared. There saw the start of their friendship. A friendship that was born of
teen rebellion. A friendship that would take Pete’s life a step further in the wrong direction.
He could hear the old lady shuffling about downstairs and the faint sound of some crackly old crooner
record. Suddenly he lost his bottle. He hurriedly shoved the jewellery jumble back in it’s box, carefully
placing the broche underneath it all where he’d found it.
Suddenly he had to get out of there. He ran down the stairs, pausing briefly to see Edie dancing
around the room with her imaginary suitor, and then silently crept out of the door. As he walked down
the road, his thoughts tormented him like tiny spiders tingling in the back of his neck and crawling up
into his scalp.
Something was wrong with him. He felt sick and empty inside. Merv would be waiting back at the flat
now, smoking pot and reading the papers in his dressing gown, not caring whether he came home or
not. He pictured the hovel they shared above the antiques shop in Bethenal Green, all dirty and cold,
scattered with rubbish and old washing up. Maybe this game wasn’t for him. Nobody looked up to
him. Not like he had done Merv all those years ago. Nobody ever had done. The fact was though, he
didn’t look up to Merv anymore, he had begun to think he was a bit sad, ripping endless streams of
people off and using the profits to buy drugs. He could be better than that. Maybe he’d try a different
trade. He could try his hand at plumbing, or become a labourer. An honest trade where he could feel
proud of himself. He felt lighter already as he rounded the corner to Mile End Station.
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