David had mellowed, although his mother would not live to see him mellow, as he grew older. But the transition from a mindless, brutal thug to a more normal human being had been a difficult and tragic one. Gladys had been very lucky with her other children, Janet had married a Doctor and Peter worked for a Merchant Bank and was being groomed as one of its top Directors. Neither of them had ever really given her any serious problems, then came David. Somewhere back in the gene pools of his erstwhile father, David had come into a world where he seemed to literally hate everybody and anything that he did not understand, for no apparent reason. Unfortunately, as a young teenager he had mixed with like-minded youths, who would fuel each other’s smouldering hatred of the latest fashionable thing to hate. Gladys would become despondent when David would come home to their Victorian semi-detached house in White Chapel sporting the latest fashion. Whether he dressed as a skinhead, complete with boots, braces, granddad vest and shaven head, or more amusingly as a Dapper. Although it had been difficult for her to hide her amusement, despite his temper, she had to look twice when he came home sporting a black twenties style overcoat, a trilby hat and black and white spats, and proudly informed her that he was now a Dapper.
If Gladys had known what this latest trend of Dapper was all about, she would have called the Police and had him removed from the house. Curiously, it was during this latest fad as a Dapper that he had told her that he had had enough of everything, and wanted to join the Army. Even more curiously he had been humble, even almost apologetic in his manner when he told her this, which was completely out of character. Gladys had believed that David’s father, who had left the family home when David had not even reached two years old, was partly to blame for the way he behaved. But this could not explain the reasons why he blindly would attack anything he didn’t like, or even understand. She remembered with horror one incident when David was waiting for his friends outside the house, talking to a West Indian neighbour. When the neighbour pointed out that the skinhead uniform was based on a West Indian Reggae group from the sixties named, The Rude Boys, David who was dressed in full skin-head regalia had thrown him over a wall. Even though the subject matter was reasonable and probably true, David had responded typically to his character. Just because the neighbour’s remark did not fit in with the racist, fascist ethos of the skinhead culture, he simply attacked it.
It had been a merciful release for Gladys, David joining the Army and fortunately for both of them she never learned the real reason why? As a skinhead David had followed the usual pastimes of most skinheads, fighting with other skinhead gangs at football matches and generally behaving like a hooligan. But his metamorphosis into a Dapper took a sinister turn and the monster, which it bred could even make, A Clockwork Orange, look tame. Whereas the rival skinhead gangs would fight each other on sight, the Dapper’s soon realised that working together they could organise themselves into a devious and successful crime syndicate. This involved extortion or exorbitant protection money from Indian corner shops and electrical businesses and even armed robbery. This is where it had all gone horribly wrong for David and two other aspiring Dapper’s.
The three of them had unilaterally decided to rob an Indian corner shop that had point blank refused to pay protection money to the Dapper outfit. Because the Police response had been apathetic about complaints from the Indian shop owner, and also because they had not taken this new phenomenon seriously, a terrible tragedy occurred. David, with two accomplices had gone to the shop at midnight, just as the shop owner was about to close. When they demanded the day’s takings from the till and the owner refused and grabbed the phone, David simply shot him dead with a pistol. Only when the gun went off and they noticed the little Indian boy crying over his father who was slumped on the floor, did they realise the gravity of their crime. The face of the little boy looking up at them with tears rolling down his face would haunt David for the rest of his life.
Then in an exercise of sheer buffoonery, they all fled the shop and bundled a terrified woman who was unloading shopping from her car, into the driving seat and ordered her to drive away, with a gun pointed at her head. Only when they had all crammed into the backseat did they notice another startled little boy sitting in the passenger seat.
“Please don’t harm my son,” the woman had pleaded, but all they had really wanted to do now was escape the scene of the crime. The terrified child began to cry and David had shouted at him to shut up, or he would blow his mother’s head off. Despite his fear the boy kept trying to turn around to see the three hijackers. This caused all three of them to go berserk and shout at the boy to look forward, or they would blow his head off too.
Finally they told the woman to pull over and they all jumped out of the car. David had grabbed the keys from the ignition and they all fled. David had glanced back to see if the woman had got out of her car to try and raise the alarm, but she had her head slumped over the steering wheel in relief. Then he realised that the boy had got out of the car and was looking directly at him. He pointed the gun at the boy, but the boy did not even flinch, he just stared at him with his young eyes shining like reflectors in the dark, indicating pure hatred. It was nearly twenty-two years later when an elderly Gladys received a phone call that David had been injured in a bomb blast, while on patrol in Belfast. The voice, who had informed her that he was from the M.o.D., had been formal and almost businesslike in his manner. All he could tell her was that her son’s injuries were quite serious, but he was expected to live. This was of small comfort to a woman who had suffered bad health and stress for years. It was also bad news for David who was about to retire on a full Sergeant’s pension in nine months. He had been putting feelers out for various jobs for when he retired, but who was going to employ him if he was an invalid now.
The bomb had killed two others in the patrol and had been hidden craftily in a vent, which serviced a shop. David had been moving behind four others, directing the standard patrol procedures. Intelligence had told them to beware of car bombs, because that had become the enemy’s main modus operandi for the last few years, as if they didn’t know that already. They had all been checking a line of parked cars as they covered each other, moving and turning to cover each other in a staggered formation. No sign of overload in the boots, no unusually rigged antennas. Just as the first two in the patrol passed the shop, and the other two in front of David were becoming parallel to it the bomb exploded, sending glass and shrapnel everywhere. The force of the blast had been far enough away to only have the effect of throwing him backwards, but the two unfortunate soldiers were blown to pieces. David had hit the railings of a Church with the full weight of his body as if he had been slung by an invisible slingshot. The head injury and broken bones he sustained would put him into an unwanted early retirement. But it was the head injury that had been the worst of his dilemma, because after months of rehabilitation the Army Doctors had decided that he had become slightly mentally unbalanced, which was not true.
The shock had been too much for Gladys and she died after a series of heart attacks, leaving her house and her little savings to David.
When he had eventually recovered from his physical injuries he decided that he had to find work because his meagre pension could not even cover his bills. His luck changed for the better when he joined a reputable security company that was run by an ex Army Officer, who thankfully had plenty of jobs, but not enough staff to fill them.
David knew he had to re-plan and redress the balance in his life. The dislike that his brother and sister had for him was mutual, and they had both quite rightly been angry when Gladys had left the house to him. After all, he did not really give two hoots about her, or anybody else for that matter. He had no real friends from his Army days, because he was generally regarded as a nasty piece of work by men and Officers alike.
The job he had been offered was the perfect post for him and he immediately grabbed it. All he had to do was leave his front door and walk for fifteen minutes virtually in a straight line, into the boundaries of the City of London, and he was at work. Almost too good to be true, almost! The firm of chartered accountants was a big international concern, one of the biggest in the City and David fitted into his new post perfectly, because he was big, heavy set and looked extremely intimidating in his new uniform. The firm had suffered problems with thieves sneaking into the building and stealing handbags. But when one of the male accountants caught a thief red handed and cornered him, resulting in the accountant being viciously attacked, the Directors decided that they needed security. David’s job was simply to sit at the reception desk and monitor who came and went into the building, in a book. Any would be thief had been thwarted. It became clear to staff and Directors when a suspicious looking character said he had come to visit somebody who was not on the staff’s list, and became aggressive when David informed him that he could not enter the building. With the end result of David throwing him into the street that David had become a necessity.
He found himself enjoying the job, and he even enjoyed the walk to work and back. But something had been nagging at his subconscious when he passed a particular Billboard in the morning. One day he stopped to look at it and he realised with great clarity what it was. Demura Designs, the signature of style for the Dapper man. Dapper, that was it, he hated the word Dapper and he knew the reason why.
Over the next two years he got to know the staff, and although some of them treated him like a character that anybody with a degree of sophistication would give short shrift, most of them had been quite congenial with him. David was mellowing into a normal, reasonable man. A man who could actually he liked and like other people in return. Martin, one of the more junior accountants would wait at reception for another accountant named Patel, who worked in a different department and they would both trundle off to dinner together. Martin would occasionally try to strike up conversation with David while he waited for Patel and surprisingly he would ask David questions about himself. Not the questions of a prying nosy parker, but sensitive and sympathetic questions. What struck David most about Martin was his complete openness about himself and everybody he spoke to, or had dealings with. In short, Martin was everything that David was not, a complete opposite. He was also extremely charismatic and everybody that passed him appeared to be struck by an innate desire to just stop and exchange some conversation with him. With his James Dean looks and style and coolness of character, he could easily have passed as a film star.
One day when Martin was waiting at reception, Martin said something that had a profound effect on David. He had been listening intently to David, as David reflected on his time in the Army and the subsequent bomb attack. He was digesting every word that David said, when he remarked as if in pain, - The invisible croupier of life seems to deal us cards, which we cannot see until they are turned over in front of us. –
Mr. Patel was so different in every way to Martin. David was puzzled by their friendship. Patel was nervous, jumpy and spoke so quickly that he appeared to be trying to fire his sentences out like blocks of machine gun fire. And it was common knowledge that Martin was Gay and also common knowledge that Patel was not.
The David of old would never have entertained either Martin or Mr. Patel, but this was a different David. This David could reason and yes, at last see the world from other people’s point of view and perspective, after all these years.
David knew that Patel wasn’t Gay because of the way he would inspect the young and not so young, female members of staff as they came and went. Martin found this highly amusing and would make comments like, - Stand by your beds ladies, Patel wants to inspect you, between the sheets of course. Or, - If he was as good at his job as he is at leering at women, he’d be the Chief executive within a week. David also found Patel’s antics amusing and Martin’s repertoire hilarious. Then one day after a particularly funny bout of banter Martin and Patel invited David to join them for a drink down at Dirty Dicks. David had found and made some friends.
Downstairs in Dirty Dicks it was always packed, particularly at lunchtime and this was Martin and Patel’s favourite haunt. This is where they had been taking David after work, three or four evenings a week, for the past few months. David would marvel at Martin’s ability to be able to blow smoke upwards from his pursed lips, that would take the form of a halo high above his head. He would do this habitually when Patel was reflecting on one of his outrageously funny exploits, usually involving a woman. It was during one of the stories that David and Martin thought that they were both going to die laughing. Patel had been ogling every woman in their immediate area and then said, “Damn it.”
“Damn what?” asked Martin.
“She is, looks just like Petra,” said Patel in a melancholy voice.
“Who’s Petra?”
“Petra, of course, the love of my life! My lost love. She looks just like her.”
Martin and David looked over to a fairly nondescript woman, who was with a man who was so overweight that he was almost bursting out of his suit. Martin took a cigarette in his nicotine stained fingers, lit it and said casually,
“You’ve never mentioned Petra before. Was this the one that got away who you occasionally hint at?”
“You bet she is, but I didn’t want her to get away in such humiliating circumstances.”
“Well, how did she get away in such humiliating circumstances? Tell us.”
“You really don’t want to know, it’s too embarrassing to even think about, let alone discuss. To think I thought I had finally found true love, what a laugh.”
“Well, tell us then! It was you that brought her into the discussion,” said Martin.
“You don’t really want to hear about it, because your opinion of me may change.”
“Don’t be silly, I know you better than you know yourself,” said Martin.
“Well I think it’s something that’s better swept under the carpet and left there.”
“Come on, let’s hear the story, you have no qualms discussing all your other exploits.”
“Oh, very well. I met Petra when I was working for Redburns, across town. It was love at first sight and I thought it was for her to. Everything was going very well until we went on holiday to Majorca. That’s when I got the shock of my life and I’ve never recovered from it. Ha, to think of the money I spent on her, the utter waste.”
“Well, what happened in Majorca?” asked Martin in exasperation.
“What a dreadful sight to behold for a man of my sensibilities. What a blow!”
“Well tell us, what the bloody hell happened to your sensibilities in Majorca?”
“I should never have gone to the beach and left her alone. I should have kept a sharp eye on her and that dirty boy who was watching her by the swimming pool. But I thought that she only had eyes for me. They didn’t expect me to catch ‘em at it, but I did.”
By now Martin and David had become intrigued and listened intently as Patel spoke.
“When I came back from the beach, I went to the pool, thinking that she would still be there, but she wasn’t. So I went to the bar and she wasn’t there either. So I went back to our room opened the door and saw it. What a terrible shock!”
“Tell us what you saw that shocked you so much,” said Martin.
Patel grimaced and looked as though he was trying to quell a foul taste in his mouth.
“Yellow feet, yellow feet! The filthy fellow had yellow feet!”
“What was he, some kind of duck?” asked Martin.
“Yellow feet and a gentleman’s bare bottom, moving erotically.”
“Sounds interesting. Not so sure about the yellow feet though. What was this gentleman’s bare bottom doing in your room, moving erotically?” asked Martin.
“Well, it was between Petra’s legs, moving erratically.”
“Don’t you mean erotically?” said Martin, barely being able to keep a straight face.
“Yes, that to, and hairy. Yellow feet and a gentleman’s hairy bottom, wiggling.”
“Well, what did you do? What did you do about this grotesque spectacle?”
“I grabbed a knife from the kitchen area and stuck it in his bottom, to stop it wiggling.”
“You did what?” asked Martin in amazement.
“I was so angry at this gentleman’s bare bottom, cocking a snoot at me and mocking my dignity, I stabbed it three times to stop it wiggling. The filthy, filthy fellow…”
“How did the incident affect your relationship with Petra?” asked Martin.
“Well it finished there on the spot and I caught a flight home. And she didn’t care, didn’t care one little bit. To think of the humiliation and embarrassment I suffered.”
“Not to mention your temper, which is a new one on me. I’d better make sure there’s no erotic bare bottoms in my house if you come and visit, in case you feel inclined to do an impersonation of a family butcher on the meaty parts,” said Martin.
“It’s not funny,” said Patel.
“No it’s not, it’s not funny. It’s absolutely hilarious!” said Martin.
The laughter that David and Martin had been desperately trying to suppress now exploded and the Petra look alike, and man she was with, turned to see what the commotion was about.
It was a rainy evening and they had all got wet. But even the rain could not interrupt their visits to Dirty Dicks. Patel as always, was in fine fettle and remarked that there weren’t many women in the place this night. Martin listened quietly and said,
“The problem with you is you haven’t got a radar. You’re like a ship lost in the dark, with no lights and no bearings. Chaps like me know our plots and friendly shipping.”
“What do you mean by that?” asked Patel curiously.
“Exactly what I said. For example you spend all of your time ogling every woman who comes near you and jump at every possible opportunity to try and chat them up and get absolutely nowhere, because you can’t hone in on ones who might be interested.
“I still don’t know what you’re getting at. Radar’s, friendly shipping,” said Patel.
Martin just smiled and blew out a thin line of cigarette smoke that formed into a halo, hovering above the three of them. He then casually indicated to six men, who were standing near the bar and said, “See the one in the light grey suit, with the blue and white striped tie.”
“Yes, what about him?” asked David.
“Well, he is like me and I daresay he has made the same observation about me.”
“Do you know him personally then,” asked David and Patel together.
“No, I don’t need to, my radar usually indicates friendly shipping to me.”
Patel still wasn’t convinced and wanted Martin to elaborate on the subject.
“Stop talking in metaphors Martin. How do you know he’s a friendly ship? He may be a submarine that could blow you out of the water if you approached him in a way that wasn’t acceptable to him. Now you’ve got me talking in metaphors.”
Just then the man in a grey suit turned and smiled at Martin, and Martin smiled back.
“I told you so, one friendly ship greeting another as they pass in the night.”
Suddenly there was the noise of heavy boots descending the wooden stairs and about a dozen of the most vicious looking thugs panned out into the room.
“And here comes some very unfriendly shipping. All warships,” said David.
Some of the thugs looked as though they had just been in a fight, judging by their black eyes and swollen cheeks. Some even had blood on their heavy boots and all of them were drunk and boisterous. The bar quickly cleared, leaving only David, Martin and Patel. After some horse play and boasting about the massive brawl they had just had, some of the thugs began to look over towards them. Patel was the first to speak.
“I think we’d better leave. If my calculations are correct, Arsenal and West Ham played today and West Ham lost. And judging by their claret and blue T-shirts and scarves we could be in serious trouble.”
David had sensed the danger immediately. Some of the hooligans had obviously not lost their lust for blood, as they looked over and began to jeer and postulate aggressively. David, with the calm, collective reason of a disciplined soldier said, “Right both or you, slowly head towards the stairs and when you get close, run for your lives and don’t look back. I’ll be following you, but I must try to block ‘em.”
Martin and Patel followed David’s orders like two soldiers being drilled by a drill Sergeant. But the rest of the hooligans were now joining in and David instinctively knew that the attack was now imminent. He barked out his instructions.
“Right, you two run for it, now, move yourselves, move yourselves!”
Martin and Patel obeyed the order like it had been fired from a starting pistol. David followed, grabbing two chairs and throwing them in the path of the now mobile thugs. He managed to clear the stairs but the thugs were young, fit and strong and followed him into the street. The drizzle had now turned into pouring rain and David slipped on the pavement, falling heavily on his back, then rolled into the gutter. Despite this, he managed to jump back up just as the first thug swung a punch at him. David dropped him with a superb jaw-breaking uppercut. The next one was a lot bigger and David had to trade several punches with him before knocking him spark out. But there was too many of them and seeing their two prostrate comrades made them furious. A man, over double their age, was taking them on and had the audacity to beat them to the punch. One of them grabbed a wine bottle from a rubbish bin and broke it over the back of his head, but David was going to inflict as much damage as possible and grabbed the bottle wielding thug and threw him against a lamppost. As the boots and fists rained down on him and the blood from a gaping head wound half blinded him, he saw Martin and Patel running back towards him through the deluge. The knife that pierced his heart was slipped in by stealth, and the thugs realising the gravity of the result, fled.
As he lay dying on the pavement, he saw Patel and Martin looking down on him, crying. His last call to arms had saved them. A blinding light engulfed them and as David looked more closely, their faces turned into the terrified little Indian boy and the boy he had so brutally hijacked many years ago when he was a Dapper. And as their tears fell down on to him with the rain he realised who they both really were.