eight

January, 1982

I’d been pleased when I’d come home to another bike propped up beneath the kitchen window. ‘Robert’s brought a friend home,’ said Kathryn. ‘From school.’

I could hear the boys’ laughter leaking down the stairs. Kathryn lifted a chop onto a plate. ‘They’re having theirs upstairs. I said they could.’ She spooned out four slightly soggy potatoes, letting a small pool of water settle around them, then sat down to her cheese sandwich.

‘That’s all right with you.’ She chewed her Red Leicester.

I wasn’t sure if it was a question. ‘Yes, of course,’ I said. I sawed into the meat and watched the fat swirl into the potatoes, then thought to add, ‘Just this once.’

Every night after that, a boy called Paul came. Paul’s neck was already speckled with pimples. His fair hair was short on top but too long at the back, and often stuck out like a stiff brush where it met his collar. They played the same records over and over. Tainted love, woah yeah. The words to that one got stuck in my head.

Paul always seemed to be in my house. His bike (a racer, twelve gears) propped up beneath my kitchen window sill. His jacket (light grey, elasticated waist) slung over my banister. His shoes (white plimsolls, a star on each side) on the mat in my hallway. I thought I could smell his socks, see the sweaty imprint they were leaving on my stair carpet as he followed Robert up the stairs.

Within a month, it seemed, Robert had acquired the same jacket, the same shoes, and similar jeans to Paul’s. I didn’t tackle Kathryn about it, although I knew she must be supplying him with all these new items. Instead, I told her that I thought I could smell Paul in the house. A sharp, chemical smell. It reminded me of the smell in the turbine hall. She looked at me with a little smile. ‘That must be Robert you can smell, Howard,’ she said. ‘I bought him some shower gel. Aqua Fresh, or something.’

‘What’s wrong with soap?’ I asked.

‘Nothing,’ she shrugged. ‘He just asked me to buy him this instead.’

We’d promised him a trip to London for his twelfth birthday.

I’d been to London once, with Kathryn, before Robert was born. I’d wanted to take her somewhere glamorous, buy her something to wear, maybe take in a show. But I didn’t know where anything was. I only knew the words Carnaby Street.

I thought if we could just find Carnaby Street, we’d be bound to have a good time. We could do all the things I wanted to do there: the sun would be shining on the polished glass of the shop windows, and we’d stop somewhere for a coffee (which would be Italian, and would make a lot of noise as the waitress wrestled with the steaming machine). I didn’t like coffee much, but in London it would taste different. We’d sit in a café window and watch the other young couples glide by. Pop music – something by Dusty Springfield, or even a black singer like Sam Cooke – would be playing somewhere. And Kathryn would sip her coffee and look at me, and I’d squeeze her knee under the table.

But when we got there – after a three-hour bus journey – I couldn’t work out where we were. It was all so loud, so grey, and so wet. The traffic splashed mud up Kathryn’s new coat, and I felt every lump in the pavement through the thin soles of my best shoes.

In the end, we did find Carnaby Street. What I couldn’t believe was that it was so short. Just one little street with a few shops on. There was a coffee bar, but it was crowded; we had to stand up, and the sugar shaker was sticky from all the greasy fingers that had been there before mine. There was a lump of crusty sugar stuck inside the nozzle, so the crystals couldn’t shake out freely. I shook and shook, and all I got were a few yellow crumbs around my saucer.

Condensation ran down the windows, and everyone smoked. It wasn’t Dusty Springfield or Sam Cooke on the radio, but the Rolling Stones. I’ve never liked them.

But Kathryn drank a coffee, and as she sipped at her foam, she slipped a damp hand into my pocket, and we stood at the counter together, steaming.

So I thought I must plan this trip for Robert’s birthday with the greatest precision. I decided we’d splash out and catch the train. No three-hour coach journey via Sandhill, Wallingford and Henley-on-Thames for us – as diverting as those places may be. No stumbling off the coach feeling slightly sick, the streets swaying with the remembered rhythm of the coach. No. We’d sit back, Kathryn and Robert on one side, me on the other, and we’d relax as the countryside slid by; Sandhill, Wallingford and Henley-on-Thames would be nothing more than church spires in the distance.

Then Robert asked if Paul could come too.

I hadn’t included Paul in my image of the train journey, hadn’t pictured him walking next to Robert as we approached Madame Tussaud’s, hadn’t heard his voice in the Berni Inn restaurant I’d located. I’d seen only the three of us, Robert walking between Kathryn and me as we introduced him to the wondrous waxworks.

He was almost at my shoulder then; the year before, he’d suddenly sprouted. It was like he’d been elongated; everything about him was shooting up towards the sky. His arms and legs had extended.

‘It’s his birthday, Howard,’ Kathryn said. ‘It would be good for him to have a friend there.’

So Paul came.

His father dropped him off. He had a blue Rover that was so wide I thought he’d never get it in our drive.

Paul stepped out of the car and slammed the door. ‘Hello, Mr Hall.’

Paul was always very polite. Mr Hall this, Mr Hall that. He didn’t seem at all afraid of me, not in the way I remember being afraid of other boys’ fathers. And how are you Mr Hall? he’d ask, as if he was an adult too. And how’s your wife? That always seemed like a strangely intimate question for a young boy to ask a man.

‘Hello, Paul.’

‘How’s your wife?’

‘She’s fine, thank you.’

I walked past him and over to the car. Resting one hand on the roof, I peered into the driver’s window. Mr Kearney sucked on a cigarette. He wound down the window.

‘He’ll be safe with us,’ I said.

Mr Kearney frowned as the smoke hit his eyes. ‘Good stuff,’ he said, starting the engine.

I managed to pat the roof of the Rover before he pulled away.

I successfully manoeuvred us through Paddington Station. Out on the street, we had to shout to make ourselves heard over the clatter of traffic and the chaos of bodies.

‘We’re going to McDonald’s,’ Robert announced. His eyes were on Paul, who was walking several paces in front of our group. I suddenly noticed how short Robert’s jacket was. And his jeans looked much too tight.

‘There’s one just round the corner,’ Paul shouted back at us.

‘He’s been there loads of times,’ yelled Robert.

The two boys strode ahead, and I thought the better of protesting.

A man with a gold chain round his neck bumped into my shoulder and I had to step into the road to keep from falling.

Kathryn and I had to jog to keep up with the boys as they wound through the crowds, their heads bobbing together.

‘Where is he, Howard?’ Kathryn kept asking me. ‘I’ve lost him again.’

‘He’s just ahead. Don’t worry.’

‘Where?’

I looked and for a moment didn’t see anything but a wave of the wrong heads, ginger curls, blue hats, blonde wisps, black frizz – but then his wiry brown hair came into view, the back of his head a little flat, like mine. A swirl at the crown. His cockatoo touch.

Robert and Paul took a left through some bright red and yellow doors. I followed them with relief; it would be good to sit down and concentrate on a menu.

But inside was just as noisy as out. A great sound rose up from the floor of the restaurant. People yelled orders, gobbled food and shouted at each other; a kind of music – mostly a beat – blared over the tannoy.

At the far end was a long counter with photographs glowing behind it. It was like the meat counter at Tesco’s, only not as ordered, because there was nowhere to take a ticket. And no one seemed to be in charge. The people behind the counter were dressed like garage mechanics, in brown dungarees and caps. There appeared to be no waitress. There was no queue, and nowhere to hang your coat.

Robert and Paul were already pushing into the throng of bodies around the counter. Kathryn stood on tiptoe and shouted in my ear, ‘Why don’t you let the boys do the ordering? We can find somewhere to sit.’

‘Boys!’ I called. Paul looked back at me, but Robert stared ahead at the counter. ‘Boys!’ I tried again, but Robert still did not turn around.

‘Order whatever you want!’ I shouted into the throng.

There was a long queue outside Madame Tussaud’s. Loud foreign voices surrounded us. A group of Italian boys were in front, and they didn’t stop talking for a second. They all seemed so excited, despite the fact that it had begun to spit with rain, and the entrance to the waxworks was still not in sight.

‘Put this on.’ I handed Robert the bright red fold-up waterproof we’d bought for him the year before. The hood had toggles and poppers at the chin. Kathryn opened her umbrella. I pulled my own blue waterproof over my head.

When I’d zipped my raincoat up to the neck, Robert still hadn’t got any further than putting his arms in. He was punching the air before him, and marching with stiff legs for Paul’s amusement.

‘Prince Charming! Prince Charming!’ trilled Robert, and Paul laughed.

The rain came down harder.

‘You’ll get wet,’ I warned.

Robert stamped one foot and then the other on the pavement and fixed me with a stare. A couple of the Italian boys looked round at him.

‘Prince Charming!’ He marched towards me with a flourish. His eyes were bright and slightly bulging. His bared teeth flashed. His nose was long and straight now; it had lost its early fleshiness.

‘Ah-woah!’ hollered Paul, joining in with the stomping dance as if he was a member of some primitive tribe.

When they’d finished, the two boys leant back together and laughed.

The Italians began to applaud.

I looked at Kathryn. She was smiling at them both. ‘They’re really very good at that, Howard.’

The first waxwork I remember was Sleeping Beauty. You suddenly noticed, after long minutes of admiring her, that her chest rose and fell, rose and fell. It was oddly reassuring to realise that she was really only asleep.

But it was the Chamber of Horrors the boys loved – particularly the alley of famous murderers. Robert insisted on reading out highlights of information about each terrible scene, mouthing the worst of the words exaggeratedly to Paul.

‘He AXED his wife to death… filled the bath full of ACID… DISSECTED his victims with a Stanley knife… STUFFED the bodies inside the wall cavities … ’

It went on and on, the both of them laughing as Robert widened his eyes at the horrors.

I didn’t find the waxworks lifelike in the least. Their hair was too thick, too low on the forehead, or else their noses were too large, or their hands bent at slightly odd angles. It was the settings that disturbed me: how these murders seemed to happen on ordinary streets, in living rooms like ours. The cosy wallpaper that covered up the cracks where the bodies were stuffed; the bath full of acid with the rusty taps and blackened overflow. I was sure we had the same bath mat as Christie.

‘Which one’s your favourite, Dad?’ Robert asked.

‘Sleeping Beauty,’ I replied.