My name is "Mobi"; I'm an alcoholic

Sorry Folks! Mobi is a bit off colour today…

04 Mar 2012 1 Comment

by mobidark in Uncategorized

1year, 2 months, still sober.

Mobi-Babble

Well, despite my physical ails, I suppose I’m feeling more upbeat.

Are you like me? When whenever I rush to take a pee, or get distracted by something in the middle of watching a football match on TV, I invariably miss a crucial goal being scored. Or whenever I complain that something never happens, or something always happens, that the opposite occurs just to make me look like a proper twit.

And so it proved with my car sale. The ink was barely dry on last Wednesday’s blog, where I complained  that my car sale was forever jinxed, when a cash customer came along and within 24 hours I had a bag full of Baht in my grubby mits. I admit that it was way below the price I was hoping for when I first put the car up for sale last October, but there has been much water under the bridge, (and around Thailand), since then, including another 10K kms on the clock and its ‘transformation’ from a 3 year to a 4 year old car. Anyway, I was very relieved to finally do a deal and at least it was one worry off my mind.

So I took delivery of my Triton last Friday and am very satisfied with my choice of vehicle. For those who are not motor enthusiasts, I will just say that the Triton has a state of the art 2.5 litre diesel engine which goes like the proverbial shite, and purrs along so quietly, that even at140 kms/hr, you can almost hear a pin drop. In fact I will go so far as to say that there is not much difference in acceleration and general performance between the Triton and my beloved BMW

Of course it is a much bigger vehicle, but on Thailand’s roads, that is generally a plus. The ride is much higher, and the Triton takes all the road cracks and potholes in its stride – unlike the BM, and I no longer have to be constantly on the look-out for road hazards that might do some nasty damage to the beamer.

Sure, the ride was smoother, (but not a lot), when driving the BM on Bangkok’s roads and on some of the motorways, but frankly, there is little, if any difference in the rides of the two vehicles on a vast majority of Thailand’s roads, including most major highways, and of course all of Pattaya’s bumpy, potholed, patched up roads.  

I have already had a parking ‘sensor’ installed, as it can be quite problematic to park  pickups in restricted spaces, and I have also arranged the installation of a very neat ‘lid’ to cover the open back and enhance further the appearance of my new, white, gleaming Triton pickup.

So all that activity has been quite positive and has helped to lift my spirits; but on the minus side, I have to report that my health problems seem to be getting worse. My evening walks are leaving me so exhausted that it takes several hours to recover, and I have now come down with a very painful sore throat, chest infection and fever. Last night, my chest was so congested, I could hardly breathe, so this morning Noo popped out to get me some meds which will hopefully alleviate my condition.

Anyway, with any luck I will be feeling a bit better in a couple of days and I can get back to my novel and my regular bogging, but I think I have to drastically curtail my walking activities until I have seen the heart docs in a week or so.

Right now I’m going to sort out a few pics from my collection to titillate your Sunday reading matter and then I will go and lie down and watch a bit of TV and have a snooze.

BUTT…BUTT…BUTT… I couldn’t give a hoot!…

 

A Lustful Gent; Part Three (‘Toby’) – Chapters V & VI

26 Feb 2012 Comments Off

by mobidark in Uncategorized

 

Sorry folks, but I’m taking a holiday from my regular Sunday blog. I’ve completed 4 new chapters of my novel this week – some 20,000 odd words, and feel a little weary. I admit that much of the material published this week was taken from previously worked texts but there have been a lot of re-writes and a fair bit of new stuff added, and it probably takes almost as long to edit and re-write than it does to write completely new copy.

I have now reached the end of previously worked novel text, so everything from now on will be completely fresh. This is quite a relief, as for me, it is much easier to create new stuff than to work through old stuff and re-write it.

Anyway I hope you won’t be too disappointed. To be honest, I have no idea how many of my regular blog readers are also reading my novel, or whether most are simply ignoring it and just reading my blog –i.e my semi-weekly take on world events etc, and, of course,  admiring the pics I publish.

But to all those naughty photo –lovers out there, I have managed to come up with a nice little ‘Sunday picture brunch’, which hopefully, will hit your spot.

In the meantime, here are two more chapters of my novel.

A Lustful Gentleman

 

PART THREE – TOBY

CHAPTER V

 

-

It was 1955; three years since Toby’s father had created such a storm at school after the unsuspecting Miss Evans had the effrontery to suggest that Toby might be a little ‘dopey’. During the intervening years, Toby had shown every indication that his father, for once, had been proved right, and the infant school teachers were wrong. He had now been at school for five years; two years in the infants school followed by three at ‘junior’ school.

Junior school classes were ‘streamed’ according to ability, with the ‘A’ steam containing the brightest, right on down to the ‘E’ stream which contained those with the greatest learning difficulties. Toby had been spared the personal shame and unmitigated fury of his father by being placed in either the ‘D’ or ‘E’ streams, but the infants school head mistress, the redoubtable Mrs Butler, still didn’t believe him to be very bright and recommended that he was put in the ‘C’ stream for his first year of junior school.

Although he was spared the shame of being placed in the ‘D’ or ‘E’ streams, he was still subjected to endless hectoring from his father for being so ‘stupid’, and on top of this, he had to endure non- stop ribbing from his brother for failing to do better at school. Danny was the bright one; he had gone right through his Junior school years in the ‘A’ stream and had now passed his ’11-plus’ examination and was  awarded a place in the prestigious local grammar school. Even his elder sister, who was not known for her intellectual prowess had produced solid results in the ‘B’ stream, but poor Toby, seemingly the ‘runt of the litter’, was destined for a life of mediocrity and failure.

He had stoically accepted what appeared to be his lot in life but enjoyed school and slowly started to respond to the challenges of primary school education – the proverbial three ‘R’s’- reading writing and arithmetic. At infants’ school, many of his classmates could already read when they started school as they had been tutored by their parents at home and it took a while for Toby to catch up. But by his first year of junior school he was one of the most advanced readers in his class and he was also becoming quite adept with sums – adding and subtracting. By the end of his first ‘junior’ year in the ‘C’ stream, it became obvious to everyone that he was much brighter than his infants school teachers had suggested and he was promoted to the ‘B’ stream for his second junior year.

Toby continued to forge ahead and halfway through the second year, he was singled out for special praise by the school headmaster, who came to his class to congratulate Toby on a wonderful story he had written in class. Toby’ teacher had been so impressed with his composition – a story about the life of a purse which went from owner to owner – that she had taken it to the headmaster who was similarly impressed. So it came as no surprise to anyone, when at the end of junior year two, he was once again promoted, this time to the ‘A’ stream for his third year.

His father barely uttered a word of congratulations when Toby had proudly announced that he would be going into the ‘A’ stream for the new term, snarling back at his son: ‘It’s about bloody time too! If it hadn’t been for that stupid, fucking Miss Evans,’ you would have been there two years ago!’

Nothing much changed on the home front, and he still had to endure the domineering influence of his father with his daily temper tantrums. Many were the days when Toby would arrive at school in a distressed state following the latest upset at home. Occasionally, in rare moments of openness, he would mention to his closest friends what had been going on, but for the most part, he kept it all to himself; his domestic ordeals remaining in his own, private little hell. He tried to pretend that he was a normal boy with a normal family having a normal life at home and at school. When he was enjoying himself at school, away from the influence of his intimidating father; he  almost believed it was true.

 

*

 

It was the last day of term and Toby’s 3^rd year class teacher, Mr Leach, had called him over to his desk for a quiet chat.

‘Toby,’ his teacher said to him, ‘How are things at home?’

‘Home, sir?’

‘Yes, I noticed that you seemed upset and distracted when you arrived at school this morning. Did you have a problem with your father again?

‘My father, sir? What about my father?’ Toby was worried that he was in some kind of trouble.

‘Yes, your father, Toby. Did he ‘do’ anything to you this morning?’

‘I don’t understand, sir.’

‘Toby, we know about your father. We know what he does to you and your family. We are worried about you’.

‘You know sir? How can you know?’

Mr Leach didn’t tell Toby that the school had known about Toby’s abusive father for several years. The first time the school had been made aware that things weren’t quite as they should be was when his father had come to the school and made some threats against Danny’s teacher. After that, there was the incident with Miss Evans and the headmistress about him being called dopey. Then there were the reports of shouting and abuse they had received from Toby’s neighbours, whose children also attended the school, and last but not least there were the occasional accounts from Toby’s classmates, some of whom had passed on the stories that Toby had told them on the few occasions when he had opened up to them

‘Toby, it doesn’t matter how I know. Tell me, are you all right?’

‘All right sir? Yes, sir I’m all right. It’s not as bad as you think sir, please don’t worry about me.’

He was terrified that someone from the school might go and talk to his father. That would be a disaster and his teacher sensed the reason why the young, frightened boy was holding back.

‘Toby, don’t worry, nobody is going to go your home or say anything to your father. We know how he treats you and we just want you to know that you are all right.’

Toby looked at the kindly man and he relaxed – instinct told him that this man would not do anything to harm him or make matters worse.

‘This morning, Toby, what did your father do?’

‘He – he shouted at me sir,’

‘Did he hit you?’

‘No, sir.’

The truth was that his father had slapped him across the face that morning in a terrible rage, but Toby wasn’t about to report this part of the incident to his teacher.

‘Are you quite sure?’ he pressed the boy, unconvinced, looking at a nasty red weal on the left side if the boy’s cheek.

‘Yes sir.’

‘Toby, I want you to know that if you ever have a problem and can’t stand it any more, then you can come and tell me, or any of the teachers and we’ll try to help you.’

‘Thank you sir, I will.’

He looked at his teacher and for some unaccountable reason, tears started to flow down his cheeks. Mr Leach saw what was happening and put his hand round Toby’s shoulders and led him from the class room. They stood outside in the corridor while Toby cried, the teacher gently patting his shoulders to comfort him. After a few minutes he pulled himself together and Mr Leach lent him a large clean handkerchief to wipe his face before leading him back into class.

‘Don’t forget, Toby, we are here to help if you need it.’

Toby returned to his seat in class and if his classmates had any inkling of what had been going on, they showed no sign of it.

 

*

 

Mr Leach then addressed his class to give them his little ‘end of term’ speech.

‘Next term, you will all be going into class 4 ‘A’ where you will be taking your ‘eleven-plus’ examinations. I know you are all worried about Mr Kempson, your new class teacher,’ he began.

They were indeed. In fact they were in fear and dread of this legendary despot, a tarter extraordinaire. He held an unrivalled reputation as a man who would brook no insubordination and demanded nothing but total obedience and the very best of behaviour from every member of his class. Any miscreant would be very harshly dealt with.  He had been in charge of the fourth year ‘A’ stream class for longer than anyone could remember and he had achieved an astonishing record of getting his entire class through the ‘eleven-plus’: year, after year, after year. No other primary school in the whole of the London area could come close to matching his record.

Mr Leach tried to reassure the worried class that Mr Kempson’s ‘bark was worse than his bite’, and that deep down, he was a good man who only wanted the best for them,’ but they remained unconvinced.

But Toby couldn’t imagine any teacher being as frightening as the man he had to live with at home, so he was probably the only new fourth year student for whom the legendary Mr Kempson held no fear.

 

 

 

***

 

 

And so it proved. Mr Kempson was indeed fierce in appearance and stalked the classroom, cane in hand, whacking it on empty desks – purely for effect – and snarling commands at his shaking students. But Toby soon saw it for what it was – an act to keep his entire class totally concentrated on the only task in hand – the need to pass their 11- plus examination, some nine months hence.

Everything that happened during that year was subordinate to the need for Toby and all his classmates to pass the 11-plus. If he passed the examination, he would be sent to a grammar school; where he would be given a much superior education, and from which all state school entrants to the universities would be drawn.

So a single examination at the age of eleven would determine the future direction in life for Toby and hundreds of thousands of  kids like him.

Toby was very aware of the situation and he knew that this was partly the reason why his father had been so angry, both with the school and also with him when he was put into the ‘C’ stream. He understood that most kids in the ‘A’ stream, and even a few of the brighter ones in the ‘B’ stream would have a good chance of going to one of the coveted grammar schools, but the rest would be condemned to a distinctly second rate education at a ‘Secondary Modern’ school, with little or no prospects of either making it to college or having a decent career.

So when Toby arrived each day, he would find a range of ‘I.Q’. tests awaiting him, and the rest of the class on the blackboard. The tests had been categorised according to ‘type’ and Kempson would grind into his students’ minds the secret of how to recognise each ‘type’ of I.Q. test, and how work through a simple step by step routine in order to arrive at the correct solutions.

Toby would soon cotton onto to the way to solve these tests and within weeks he could do most of them in his sleep. But for some of his less bright class mates, they would have to practice – week in, week out, – for months on end before they could start to master these self-same methods. Mathematics was tackled in a similar manner and for English, every day Toby would be given five new words to remember, comprehend and spell. Then the following week, he would be set tests to see how many of the new words he had remembered and whether he could put them into sentences and spell them correctly. All these exercises were crucial to improving his English comprehension and composition writing abilities, and Toby lapped it up.

These and others were the tricks of trade used by the indomitable Mr Kempson to ensure that Toby and every single one of his classmates earned a place in one of the local grammar schools. Kempson wasn’t interested in a 90%, 95%, or even 99% pass rate. It had to be 100%. Every single one of his precious charges had to be made to pass.

Toby breezed through the year and loved every moment of it. He found the work easy and was not taken in by a wonderful teacher who, to him, held no fears. The developing ten year old, unable to assert himself in his home environment, started to ‘flex his muscles’ and test the resolve of his new master. He continually ’bent’ or broke the silly rules that ‘Kempo’ had imposed and while he was sometimes able to get away with it, on other occasions he was caught re- handed.

Even though he was never scared of him, Toby soon learned that he crossed the indomitable ‘Kempo’ at his peril. Fury and punishment would descend on him from a great height for even for the slightest indiscretion; a quick whisper to the cute little girl sitting next to him, flicking ink onto the floor, or heaven help him if he was caught, as he was – several times - carving his initials into his desk.

‘Stark! Stand with your face to the wall!’

‘Stark! Stand up and put your hands above your head!’

‘Stark! Leave the room and report your transgressions to the headmaster!’

‘Stark! Go and stand outside the classroom for the rest of the morning.

‘Stark! Another week of school-break punishment for talking in class!

And even the dreaded: ‘Stark, fetch my cane!’

But Kempo never, ever, hit Toby – or anyone with his cane; he just delighted in whacking it on his desk and wall close to an offending, trembling student with the intention of frightening the hell out of him, and he usually succeeded.

One afternoon, an irate female teacher from another class room, dragged a boy into Mr Kempson’s classroom, demanding that he immediately give the poor boy ‘six of the best’. The lad’s heinous crime had been to pinch a girl who had been sitting next to him. Toby watched with amusement and not a little gruesome anticipation, as Kempo huffed and puffed, swung his cane with such force near the poor boy’s head that they could hear the ‘swoosh’ of it at the back of the classroom.

Then, when the trembling kid was in total fear of his life, he was told to hold out his hand. The kid fully expected his hand to be hit smartly with the cane, but astonishingly, instead of striking it, Kempo inspected his hand very closely before unleashing a riot of invective at what he termed as: ‘The most grubby, miserable mit he had ever had the misfortune to set his countenance upon!’ whereupon he sent the lad to the bathroom to give it a good scrubbing.

Upon his return to the front of Mr Kempson’s classroom, the terrified kid showed his now, gleaming pink hand to his would-be -punisher. Kempson inspected it slowly, huffed and puffed and harrumphed for a few, seemingly endless minutes, almost as though he knew not what to do next. The silent class watched on, in fascination. Finally and suddenly, Kempson ordered the boy to return to his own class room and to report back to his class teacher. He was to tell her that his hand was now spotlessly clean and he had been properly prepared for whatever punishment she should see fit to administer.

Without further ado, the still terrified, but relieved kid fled from Mr Kempson’s presence and Toby never saw him again and never knew what punishment finally befell him – if any.

Toby soon came to realise that his fierce school master, unlike the monster at home, was no fan of corporal punishment, and Toby seriously doubted if he had ever used his cane during his long and distinguished teaching career. Mr Kempson was really an old ‘softy’, and as Mr Leach had told them, ‘His bark was infinitely worse than his bite’. But to all, save those who had the privilege of being taught by him, he was the very devil incarnate, to be held in fear and dread by all who crossed his path.

For that entire year, Toby was never once allowed to go out and play at break time – he always had ‘punishment chores’ to do – like scraping ink from the floor with a blunt knife, or weeding his teacher’s flowerbed at the rear of the school, or more often than not,  just sitting at his desk doing extra punishment school-work.

But Toby didn’t mind. He was rather proud of his growing reputation as an intrepid student who knew no fear and deep down, he knew that the formidable Kempo was not really what he seemed to be. He had seen the long line of former students who would come and visit their ex-teacher on Friday afternoons before the end of each school term – almost unheard of in primary schools – and he could see the smiles of gratitude in their eyes which was slyly returned by the stern, enigmatic Kempo.

Toby was particularly amused by the way that Kempo would insist upon calling all his ex-students by their surnames only, even though some of them had already graduated from university and had grown up and had embarked on successful careers. To Kempo, they were still his ten year old students and were to be addressed as such until the day that they, or he, died. But it was obvious that much mutual love and respect existed between them. Kempson was playing a game – of the like Toby was never to witness again.

Toby’s class had been promised an end of year school trip to Windsor Castle, which was a long bus ride to the other side of London, but  naughty Toby was told that he was banned from going, due to his ‘execrable conduct’ record. Toby wasn’t too bothered, as by now he reckoned to have the measure of his revered master and felt sure that that there would be some kind of last minute reprieve.

 

*

 

In the meantime, Toby duly took his dreaded ‘eleven-plus’ examinations in the adjacent ‘secondary modern’ high school and awaited his results with much trepidation. He needn’t have worried. It was probably the first time that Toby had ever seen Kempo with the merest wisp of a smile on the corner of his lips when he announced to the class that they had all passed, including two or three who had been distinctly ‘border-line’. The incredibly determined school master had ensured their 100% success rate by individually tutoring the ‘weak’ ones for hours and hours every evening.

As a special reward for the entire class having passed, Toby’s earlier punishment of being excluded from the annual school trip was rescinded and he was free to go. The only one who wasn’t surprised about this was Toby himself.

Despite the class already having sat and passed their eleven-plus examinations, the school still required them to do their end of year class examinations.  These tests, in conjunction with the students’ overall academic records during their final year at junior school, would determine their final class positions.

Toby could hardly believe it when he opened his end of year school report and saw that in every subject, he was graded in either first, second or third place, on the class list and in his report summary, his overall grades and year’s school work had elevated him to the very top of the top of his class. He was in essence, the top student of his school for the year of 1957.

The look on the faces of his rivals, many of whom had hoped to be number one at the end of their primary school career, was a perverse joy to behold for the young boy who had carried such a weight on his young shoulders. Some of the very bright kids, who had  been singled out by Kempo for special coaching and had subsequently succeeded in being awarded scholarships to prestigious fee paying schools had now been beaten to the top spot by this delinquent ‘johnnie come lately’. In the previous end- of- term class results, Toby had not even been placed in the top ten of his class, so his unexpected elevation to this enviable summit had come as a huge surprise to everyone, not least, to Toby himself.

In many ways it was an incredible achievement for someone, who, only a few years earlier had been described as ‘dopey’ and had been mistakenly graded with the ‘academic no-hopers’ in the ‘C’ stream.

 

*

 

Throughout Toby’s primary school years, despite suffering from the mental and physical mistreatment from his dominating and abusive father, he had tried to lead as ‘normal’ an existence as possible. Few knew of the incessant torments he suffered from having to live with a violent, unstable father or of the primitive conditions in which he lived or the sparsity of good nutrition in his daily diet.

In spite of all this, the youngster still managed to pursue a number of extra-curricular activities outside of his school and away from the control of his father. His first love was football. He would play football after school and every Saturday morning with his friends in the local park. He loved the game and never tired of kicking a ball around with his equally football-mad friends. He had aspirations to play for his school, but the closest he ever got to this was one Saturday when he was made second reserve following a rash of sickness that had wiped out half the team. He didn’t even get a game that day and that was the end of his budding football career.

Having to play with his brother’s ancient, heavy leather boots, which were so big that he had to stuff newspaper in the toes to stop them from falling off when he kicked the ball didn’t exactly help his ambitions.

His second love was music. There was no doubt that Toby was very musical and had an excellent ear for music. His father had acquired an old upright piano for free from a ‘contact’ who had been planning to throw it out until it was rescued by Toby’s father. Instead of being sent to the rubbish dump, the old piano found itself being  delivered to Toby’s house, along with some ancient sheet music and a pre-war ‘teach yourself’ piano tutor book. Toby knew that his father would never pay for him to have lessons so he set about teaching himself how to play.

He soon picked it up and within months he was playing literally dozens of popular songs that he had learned ‘by ear’ and even added simple, self-taught ‘left hand’ accompaniments. Once he knew the melody, he could usually pick it out on his piano within a few minutes, often at the first attempt. His father was always collecting discarded items from his occasional acquaintances – people who he would befriend for a while before inevitably falling out with them – and over time he would bring home other musical instruments, such as an ancient accordion (squeeze box), a violin, a ukulele, a tin whistle and of course, the ubiquitous harmonica for his son to amuse himself with. And Toby did just that. He taught himself to play any instrument that his father brought home for him; but lacking anything approaching professional direction, his musical abilities and playing techniques remained primitive, at best.

The school had also recognised Toby’s musical abilities when he was quite young and he took a leading role in the school recorder ‘orchestra’ where he played all the larger instruments in the recorder family while the rest of the students had to satisfy themselves with playing the standard recorder.

Toby also had a good treble singing voice and one of his football mad friends, who also sang quite well, persuaded him to go to the local Church of England choir rehearsal session one day and try out as a chorister. The Choir master listened to Toby sing for barely ten seconds before quickly enrolling him into the choir. His voice was very powerful, very sweet and he could sing in perfect pitch. From the age of nine until he was almost eleven, Toby was active in the choir, singing at the three Sunday church services, performing solos at weddings on Saturdays (for which he was paid the princely sum of two shillings per wedding) and going on choir outings to cathedrals and other places where mass choirs performed.

He was probably at the height of his powers and was just coming into his own as a sought after boy-soloist, when he decided to give it all up. Quite why he did this, was never clear – least of all to Toby himself. It all started over a minor dispute with the choir master who had withheld a ‘wedding fee’ following some  prank he had got up to at a Sunday church service, but in the end, the choir master had relented and gave Toby his money.

But Toby refused to go back, not even when the choir master visited his home and amazingly managed to charm his father and begged him to persuade Toby to return to the choir. Toby’s father had surprised everyone by allowing his son to pursue his church choir activities, which was a far cry from the time when Toby was much younger and he had adamantly turned down a request for him to attend ‘Sunday School’. Maybe this time around, he had permitted Toby’s ‘Christian’ activities so that he could bask in the reflected glory of a son who was a solo singer. But when Toby stated his determination not to go back to the choir, his father made little effort to persuade him to do otherwise.

Like his ‘football career’, Toby’s singing career was nipped in the bud, by of all people, Toby himself. His voice would have broken anyway when he was about fourteen years of age, but he was barely eleven when he decided to quit the choir and he still had at least three good years of solo singing in front of him, which, without any apparent rhyme or reason, he had thrown away on a childish whim.

His musical talents did lead to the somewhat comical episode of Toby forming his own ‘skiffle group’,  jazz-blues inspired music, played mainly on improvised instruments – all the rage at the time. He roped in some of his school friends to join him in this venture. They made their own instruments from old fashioned washboards (rhythm) and tea chests (double bases) and of course he put into service his own, motley collection of real instruments. The boys would ‘jam’ in a shed in Toby’s garden and never had the neighbours heard such an unmitigated cacophony in their entire lives.

If Toby had been born a decade or two later, into a family who didn’t have to scratch around to put food on their table, he might have formed a proper pop or rock group; but it was 1956, he was only ten years old and he had no money and no parental encouragement, so like so many endeavours in his life, in the end, it all came to naught.

Toby’s third love, which was developing fast during primary school years, was his love of books and reading. He had become an avid bookworm and there were never enough books around to satisfy his voracious craving to read.

Along with his insatiable appetite for books was an equally strong desire to write. He still basked in the glory of the original story had wrote at school few years back which the headmaster himself had singled out for special praise. At another time in another age, the writing of that story might have been the making of Toby, but in those far off, post war days, when England was still struggling to get back on its feet, not much notice was taken of a budding, nine year old, creative writer.

The success of his first story inspired Toby to write a play, and when his friends enthusiasm for playing in his ‘skiffle group’ began to wane, (along with a corresponding increase in his neighbours protestations over the noise), he roped in the self-same gang to join his little ‘drama group’ and in so doing, he had a ready-made troupe of players to rehearse his very first play.

He would write the play, scene by scene and then he would get his friends to act the scenes out, week by week as they were written. In the event, the play was only partially completed by the time the ‘11- plus’ examinations came along and all thoughts of drama groups were suddenly forgotten and Toby’s play became yet another failed dream. Although all these early shows of promise in several diversified fields might have been fostered and developed in another era or in a different home background, for Toby, these fledgling talents became compromised by his sheer struggle to survive the incredibly dominating influence of his father.

But despite all these early sporting and creative initiatives being nipped in the bud, no one could take away from Toby his extraordinary and unexpected achievement at the age of eleven of attaining first place in his class and indeed the whole school. It was by far and away the high point of Toby’s academic career and of his early life. He knew he owed a great debt to that superbly eccentric, magnificently dedicated, fourth year junior school teacher, -the venerable Mr Kempson -who had so inspired him to such a great achievement. Like thousands of other students who passed through his class, Dear old Kempo was a man he would never forget.

 

 

***

 

 

 

Toby woke briefly. He was still lying in the middle of the prison floor and his body was still racked with pain. His hunger pangs seemed to have left him, so at least he was grateful for that, but his brief sleep had not stopped his heart from racing and his head from spinning and throbbing. He tried to open his eyes, but couldn’t see anything as his lids seemed to be stuck together. After a few seconds he gave up and lay there with his eyes closed, desperately praying for sleep to return so that his dire predicament could be blanked out from his consciousness. Ah sleep, blessed sleep…. What had he been dreaming about?  Flashes of his dreams returned; his father and mother, both long dead, his brother, his sister and his early school days in Ilford, so long ago….. and his teacher…. Mr Kempson…. What on earth had happened to Kempo?

He started to recall the very last time he had seen that wonderful, crazy old man. It must have been a good thirty years after he had left Kempo’s class. Toby had just moved back to England after living abroad for much of his adult life and he came across the old man, near to where he was living, out in East Essex.  His appearance, although much aged and changed, was still instantly recognisable. Toby had always meant to go back and say ‘hello’, just like those who he used to watch at the end of each school term, but somehow, he had never got round to it. Now he saw his long forgotten and much beloved mentor at the end of his life, but Toby didn’t know what to do or say.

He knew that there was no way that  Kempo could possibly remember him from all those years ago – how many thousands of kids must have passed through his class during his forty odd years at that school? The old man limped slowly along the pavement, eyes to the ground, obviously in pain and possibly suffering from early dementia. What could Toby say? In the end he ‘chickened out’. He opted to say nothing. It was just too long ago and there was just too much ‘water under the bridge’ since he and Mr Kempson had last come face to face.

So he passed the old man without saying a word, but just as he was almost out of earshot, he heard the old man’s unforgettable bark.

‘Afternoon – Stark!’ he snapped, as he hobbled along the pavement and turned the corner, out of view and out of Toby’s life, this time forever.

 

 

 INTERMISSION

 

 

 END OF INTERMISSION

PART THREE – TOBY

CHAPTER VI

-

 

Na had awoken at eleven after barely five hours of sleep. She had to be back at work by noon and still had no money to feed her family. She felt quite sick due to lack of sleep and also depressed when she thought about the precarious state of her finances. She quickly washed and dressed, trying to blank out the sounds of her mother’s hungry rants that were ringing in her ears.

‘Yes, Mama, I know you and the children haven’t eaten yet; I know!’ She shouted as she slipped her shoes on and opened the front door of their room.

‘Na!’ he mother shouted, ‘Where are you going?’

‘I’m going to find some money so you can eat, Mama,’ she replied, as she hurried along the outside walkway of the modest, one storey residential block, to a room at the far end of building where she banged frantically on the door.

After several minutes of non-stop banging, it was finally opened by a middle-aged lady in a long, flowing nightdress who still looked half asleep.  She peered out at Na, her face screwed up in anger.

‘What are doing? What’s all this noise about? I was fast asleep.’

‘Jaeb, it’s me Na.’

‘What do you want? I’m trying to sleep.’

Jeab, jaa, please , I’m desperate. My family hasn’t eaten since yesterday. Can you lend me five hundred Baht? I promise I’ll pay you back tonight.’

‘Five hundred Baht! I’ve only got about eight hundred myself.’

‘Please Jaeb, I’ll pay you tonight. I will get enough Ladies drinks money from work to pay you back and if I don’t earn enough, I’ll take my fridge to the pawn shop. Please, I beg you…’

Jaeb looked sleepily at Na, and then disappeared inside her room, returning a minute later with her purse. She counted out some money.

‘Here’s four hundred, that’s all I can give you – I need the rest myself to eat and get to work.’

Na took the four hundred gratefully and returned to the room and handed it all over to her mother. She still hadn’t eaten since the previous evening but she had no time to do that now. She had to get to work before her salary was docked for being late. Once she had clocked in, she would be able to sneak away, borrow a few Baht from a fellow worker and grab a quick bite to eat.

Outside in the small soi, she hailed a motorcycle taxi driver and told him to take her down town to Kismet, her place of employment. She was on good terms with the motorbike owner, who was always stationed outside her apartment block and she knew that she could pay him for the taxi ride when she returned home that evening.

It was just on the stroke of twelve when they parked up outside Kismet, where she was alarmed to find that the building which housed the Gentleman’s Club was swarming with cops. Her heart sank and she feared the worst. She tried to go inside but was stopped by a policeman guarding the entrance.

‘Sorry, Miss; no one’s allowed inside.’

‘But…but I work here…’

‘Sorry, boss’s orders. No-one inside.’

‘What’s going on? What happened?’

‘Can’t say’, he snapped back.

‘Can’t or won’t?’ she thought under her breath, as saw three of her workmates suddenly appear from the inside of the building.

‘Jen! Ice! What’s going on?’ she called out to her friends.

They walked over and informed her that their farang boss had been arrested and the club was being shut down.

‘Arrested? Arrested for what?’

‘You’ve been around in Pattaya long enough to know how these things work, Na’, replied Jen, the older of the two girls, ‘he’s been done for running an illegal brothel and working without a work permit; all the usual bullshit. Truth of the matter is, he didn’t come up with the extra ‘bung’ the fucking cops were trying to extort from him, so they did what they always do – shut him down and force him to sell the place onto to a new mug who is more flush than he is.’

Na knew that much of this information was pure speculation, but she also knew that most of it was probably close to the truth. Business had not been too good of late and she assumed that her boss had tried to resist the demands of the  money hungry constabulary, and this was the predictable result.

‘Why it it’, she wondered, ‘that every farang bar owner seems to think he is something special and that he has ‘connections’ and can get away with messing the police around – refusing their demands?’ She knew only too well that you crossed the Pattaya cops at your peril – especially if you are a farang, who always got their comeuppance – and, not infrequently, ended up dead.

Na was despondent. What on earth was she to do now? She was broke and had a starving family to feed. She took out her phone and scrolled through her contacts to see if there were any of her old farang customers who she might be able to touch up for a small loan, or maybe even find someone who would be interested in a private visit to their home. She made few calls, drawing a blank each time.

Then there was the  final nail in the coffin when she was interrupted by the sounds and sight of her boss being led out of the bar in handcuffs, looking very sorry for himself and not a little scared. ‘Now the bastard won’t even pay me the salary he owes me,’ she thought bitterly to herself.

Back to her phone, she continued to scroll and had nearly reached the end of her ‘contacts’. She was at the letter ‘T’ and stopped at the name of ‘Toby’. She thought for a moment. What was the point? Toby was in jail, so there’s no chance there. Or was there? He was in jail and he had asked her for help. She had screamed at him, but now she was starting to regret her outburst. Surely Toby still had some money? Maybe he could help her if she tried to help him?  This seemed like a good plan – maybe the only plan – so she called his number, but it was unobtainable. She guessed his battery was dead and considered the situation for few moments before deciding to call over her friendly motorbike driver, who had been parked at the side of the road, watching the on-going drama with much interest.

The bike dropped her at the police station car park and she made her way up the steps to the entrance of the two storey building and went inside to see if she could track down her potential benefactor; an old drunken farang by the name of Toby.

She looked around to locate the enquiry desk or a maybe a free cop who she could ask about Toby’s whereabouts. It was clearly a bad time and the large room was buzzing with activity. At the long counter, she observed a couple of farangs – a man and woman, with blood stained clothes – clearly in some distress. They were trying to tell one of the station officers in broken English that they had been mugged by a gang of lady boys and the lady’s handbag had been stolen. The young officer could barely understand what he was being told and seemed uninterested in their story.

Further along the front desk there was an odd looking farang, of indeterminate nationality, who was dressed in some kind of quasi-military uniform. He was a member of the volunteer tourist police force, but was unable to help or translate for the distressed couple as he had his hands full dealing with a couple of drunken young thugs. They were clearly Brits, judging from the union Jack tattoos that had been etched on the top of their shaven skulls. They were shouting and screaming abusive threats at each other and were being held apart by two uniformed patrolmen.

Na discerned that the source of the argument seemed to be a young Thai lady who was sitting on a chair behind them. They kept pointing at her and Na gave her a closer look. She was a pretty young thing, wearing the skimpiest of white micro shorts, and flaunting a flat, bare midriff, which was particularly notable for the vivid purple and black image of a tattooed heart with a spear running through it. She was wearing a matching white halter that revealed more of her well-endowed breasts than it succeeded in covering and Na was in no doubt that the girl was a prostitute and that the two crazy Brits were fighting over her; God knows she had seen the types so often in her life. For a few moments, she became mesmerized with this little domestic dispute, but with some effort, she took her eyes off them and back to the station desk where the third and last police official was dealing with a queue of Thais, who had come to report lost driving licences, ID cards and other similar matters.

She looked around the room and apart from a mishmash of Thais and a couple of farangs sitting around, presumably waiting for all the kerfuffle to die down, she couldn’t see anyone who she could ask about Toby. She had just decided that she had better join the queue of Thais waiting to see the third police official when she spotted an older, more senior officer, enter the public area from the back office. For a moment she thought that she recognised him – but the moment passed.

The officer stopped on his way to the long counter to survey the manic scene, and Na decided that this was her opportunity to jump the queue, and she quickly hurried over to him to cut off his exit. ‘Excuse me, Officer! Can you help me please?’

The elderly policeman looked at Na and frowned. She was an attractive young lady, for sure, but what she doing bothering him? Didn’t she know that she should queue up and speak to one of his station officers?

Angrily, he addressed her.

‘What you want?’

‘I’m… I’m enquiring about my friend. He had an accident early this morning and I think he was arrested.’

‘Arrested? Why?’

‘He was drunk – he had an accident,’ Na repeated.

The officer looked at Na with irritation. Police Colonel Chamlong wasn’t in the mood to deal with a bar girl looking for her farang ‘meal ticket’. He had just spent a very long night out at one of Pattaya’s illegal gambling dens and  had lost a great deal of money, hence his bad humour -  all this on top of feeling extremely hungry. He had left his inner sanctum to go out to his favourite rice shop, just along the Beach road and have some breakfast. The last thing he needed was to be delayed by some fucking bar girl. But she was quite pretty and she looked as though she wouldn’t be easily brushed off, so short of pushing her physically out of his path, he had little choice but to try and quickly deal with his problem. He walked over to where the young, uniformed officer was dealing with the queue of Thais and asked him for a file. The officer pulled a file from a drawer and handed it to his superior.

‘Your friend’, what’s his name?’ the Colonel brusquely enquired.

‘His name is Toby.’

Toby! Toby who?’

‘I – I don’t know. I’m afraid I don’t know his family name, he never told me.’

‘He didn’t tell you his surname? Are you really his girlfriend’?

‘No… I’m not his girlfriend … just a friend… Is he here?’

The cop glowered at Na, a vague hint of recognition entering his brain, but that was nothing unusual; how many women had crossed his path, one way or another, over the past twenty odd years? He looked at the file once more, perfunctorily perusing the list of names.

‘Toby… Toby… Toby… No! No Toby here!’ he barked.

‘What? Are you certain? I know he was brought here…’

‘I tell you – Your friend is not here – I looked at the list – no Toby! He must have gone home already!’

‘The bastard!’ Na thought to herself, ‘he must have paid his way out of here. So he must have money, but why doesn’t he answer his fucking phone?’

‘Home?’ Are you sure?’ she asked the officer.

‘Yes! I am sure! Now go away!’ With that, the officer slammed the file down on the desk, walked around into the main waiting area and left Na staring at him as he left the building in search of some desperately needed sustenance. Now that the officer had disappeared from view, Na suddenly realised that she knew who he was. But that was all a long time ago – a period of her life that she long since blocked out of her mind.

She wandered back towards the station exit, trying to think what to do next. How could she get some money before this evening? If she could get hold of Toby, maybe he would help, but if not, it was either pawning her fridge, which would be a humiliating disaster, or go to the dreaded money lenders, which would have even worse long term consequences. She was so preoccupied that she hardly looked where she was going, and as she opened the front door of the station she walked straight into a beautiful, well dressed  lady, who was hurrying in the opposite direction. They glanced at each other as they brushed themselves down – two beautiful women ‘sizing each other up’, but there was no hint of recognition.

 

 

***

 

Ying had awoken at noon. She felt refreshed after about seven hours of sleep and climbed out of her huge, four-poster bed and stumbled sleepily into the adjacent en suite bathroom. The hot power shower had helped to clear the hangover cobwebs from her brain and the events of yesterday started to flood back into her mind. Her shop assistant was ill and the salon would remain closed until she made it there to open up. Yet again, she wondered how many of her customers would go elsewhere when they turned up at her place only to find it closed, with not even a note to say when it would re-open.

She decided to skip breakfast and hurry down to the shop and see what she could salvage from her unscheduled closure. As she drove around the lake towards her shop, she recalled the early morning call from Pattaya Police station. ‘That fucking Toby,’ she thought to herself, ‘When in God’s name are we going to be free of each other? I wonder what the hell he has got himself into now.’ She was nearing her shop when she recalled what the cop had told her. He had said that Toby might die if she didn’t come down to the police station. What had she said him in reply? She struggled to remember; she had been half asleep. It came back to her slowly; she had told him that she didn’t care what the fuck happened to Toby. Then suddenly she remembered exactly what she had said: ‘Let him fucking die!’ ‘Oh my God!’ she thought, ‘Why on earth did I say that?’

Memories of Don came flooding back. Don, her  handsome young Thai lover, who had taken her on all those sexual adventures, journeys of ecstasy that had never since been equalled; Don, the wild criminal who was so full of fun and daring. Don, the crazy risk taker who had disintegrated into a sad and desperate heroin addict; Don the lover who had hanged himself in their kitchen, after she had threatened to leave him…

And now here was Toby. Was history repeating itself? Surely not, but could she ever live with herself if yet another one of her men died?  Her heart was starting to race as she fearfully contemplated what might have happened. She reached her shop, parked up and pulled the keys from her bag to open up, but her mind was on Toby and what might be going on in the down-town nick. He was old and sick and he couldn’t control his drinking. What had he done? Had he been involved in another accident? Was he hurt? Did he hurt anyone? She unlocked the shop door but her mind was buzzing with many unanswered questions; if Toby died what then? She would inherit the house – that was for sure, but maybe it would be her fault that he died – her fault yet again.

Suddenly she made a decision. She picked up a pad from a table near the door and scribbled a note in Thai, then found some tape and stuck it on the front window; ‘Closed due to family bereavement’. Locking up again, she jumped back into her car and headed off for the twenty minute journey to downtown Pattaya.

 

*

 

It was one thirty in the afternoon when Ying parked up in the car park and made her way into the police station. As she opened the door, she bumped into an attractive looking lady on her way out. Ying, always appreciative of pretty young ladies, gave the girl an admiring glance before continuing on her way into the station building.

The station was still busy and Ying looked around for someone to talk to. She saw a young, uniformed officer come out of a back room and head for the front door. He was carrying a regulation police crash helmet under his arm and she assumed he was going out on patrol. She smiled her winning smile and stopped the man in his tracks.

‘Excuse me, officer; I am looking for Lieutenant Somkid. Can you tell me where I can find him?’ During her journey into Pattaya, Ying had thankfully recalled the name of the officer who had called her at home early that morning.

 ‘Lieutenant Somkid?’ the young policeman replied, ‘He’s not here. He hasn’t come on duty yet. He won’t be here until the evening shift starts.’

‘Oh dear,’ the smile on Ying’s face starting to evaporate, ‘Lieutenant Somkid – he called me last night – something has happened to my husband. Is there anyone who can help me?’

The policemen looked at the very attractive young lady in front of him, he wanted to help. ‘What is your husband’s name, I will check for you.’

‘Toby – his name is Toby. Toby Stark.’

‘Toby? He’s a farang?

‘Yes, he’s a farang. Can you find out if he is here?

The officer wasn’t too happy to discover that what had appeared to be a respectable young lady was, in all likelihood, a prostitute; but he had already said he would help, so he tersely repeated, ‘Toby, you say?’

‘Yes, Toby.’

He walked over to the desk where the officer was still dealing with the line of Thais and asked him for the day’s incident file.

‘Why?’ the station officer asked, ‘Why do you want it?’

‘I want to check on a name.’

‘Name! What name?’

‘Toby. Is anyone called Toby in the log? Maybe he was arrested.’

‘Toby!’ the officer retorted angrily, ‘You are the second person this morning to ask about a fucking Toby! What is it with this Toby? No! There’s no fucking Toby in the log. He’s not here!’

‘All right all right,’ the patrol-man replied in a placating tone. Keep your hair on; I was only asking. Thanks anyway.’

He returned to where Ying was standing. ‘ There is no one by the name of Toby in the police log and therefore he is not in the station.’

Before she could enquire further he walked off and out of the station to start his afternoon shift. Ying wasn’t sure what to do. ‘Well if he’s not here, and there is no record of him, then maybe everything is all right. Maybe I overreacted’ she reasoned. She was starting to convince herself that Toby was fine and that it had all been a storm in a teacup.

She remembered that she hadn’t eaten since the previous evening and suddenly she felt very hungry. Her stomach was starting to rumble and she was starting to feel distinctly queasy, so without further ado, she hurried back out of the station and along Beach Road to a nearby rice shop where she ordered one of her favourite dishes. At the next table she noticed an elderly, uniformed policeman, hungrily devouring his second bowl of rice. ‘He’s slumming it, she mused, ‘His insignia looks like he’s a pretty high ranking cop; I wonder why he comes to a place like this to eat?’

Then her mind reverted to her apparently wasted journey. ‘Fuck Toby!’ she said out aloud, ‘making me drive all the way down here on a wild goose chase.’

 

 

***

 

 

 

Toby knew that he was going downhill fast, and was  painfully unaware of the fruitless enquires that had just been made on his behalf not fifty meters from where he was lying, face down on the cell floor.  He was so weak that he was unable to even lift his head from the hard concrete to see what was going on around him. He had no idea how many prisoners were now crammed into the cell, although he vaguely recalled much clanking and rattling of the cell doors as yet more miscreants were dumped inside. It had become insufferably hot and humid but Toby no longer noticed. His lack of food, dangerously high blood sugar levels, elevated blood pressure and his festering, untreated accident injuries were fast taking him to the point of no return and he knew it.

He drifted in and out of consciousness. Sometimes his mind seemed as clear as a bell and he felt that he still had hold of his mental faculties, despite the fact that his  physical state was literally disintegrating as he lay there; but there were also long periods when he became dissociated from reality; his mind wandered and he knew not where he was, nor why he was there. There were times when he seemed to be truly losing his mind.

He fell into a disturbed sleep when all of a sudden he felt a dull thud in his stomach. He opened his eyes but could not work out what was happening. The thuds in his stomach continued, but he barely felt them. He tried to open his eyes to see what was going on but soon gave up the struggle. As conciousness returned, he realised that someone was kicking him and shouting at him in Thai. He had no idea what they were saying and didn’t care. The kicks had little effect on him as he was simply too far gone to care. After a while the kicks  stopped and he vaguely realised that he was being dragged across the floor of the cell and then dumped unceremoniously against one of the walls. He grimly deduced that the cell must be filling up to overflowing and that his body had been in the way. Hopefully, now he was against the wall, they would leave him alone. Leave him alone to sleep. He knew his time was up and he knew that soon he would die.

Once again, his mind jumped back to his childhood. ‘Is that what happens when you are near to death?’ he asked himself, ‘you start to regress and your past life comes back to haunt you?’ His thoughts once more turned to his childhood and his domineering, terrifying father. He recalled again his years at St Andrews junior school and the wonderful Mr Kempo, and how he had left the school at top of the class, to everyone’s amazement and not a few jealous remarks.

Then what? – Five long, mainly miserable years at grammar school. ‘School days are supposed to be the best years of your life’, Toby pondered as he lay prostrate on the cell floor, in an increasingly catatonic state. ‘So why don’t I have any happy memories? It wasn’t all bad… was it?’

POSTSCRIPT

 

A Lustful Gent; Part Three (‘Toby’) – Chapters III & IV

24 Feb 2012 Comments Off

by mobidark in Uncategorized

Here are a couple more chapters of my novel. There may be more this week – I’ll see how things go, as I am still working my way through previously written material, although there is still quite a bit of new stuff as well.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it….

A Lustful Gentleman

PART THREE – TOBY

CHAPTER III

Toby was playing in the back yard. He was digging a hole in the hard earth with a rusty old trowel. On the ground next to him was a half rotten potato with some shrivelled up roots. Mummy had told him that if he dug deep enough and put the potato at the very bottom of the hole, it would grow during the winter and by next spring, the family would have a loads of new, delicious potatoes to eat. He looked up at his mother who was sitting on a chair by the open window that overlooked the back garden.

‘Mummy!’ Toby called out, ‘Is it deep enough?’

It was impossible for Toby’s mother to see the bottom of the hole from her position in the first floor kitchen window, but she smiled lovingly at her four year old son and said: ‘Yes, darling, that will do very nicely. Pop it in then.’

Toby did as he was told and placed the rotten potato in the hole. Then, recalling that his mother did something similar with a spade when she had planted some bulbs in their small patch of garden a few days earlier, he stood up and kicked some earth into the hole with his foot. The potato disappeared under the falling earth and he stamped down on it, just to make sure it was firmly in its place. He smiled up at his mother for approval.

‘You’re such a clever little boy! Now go and get your little bucket and water it.’

Toby wandered down the garden path towards the house and found his rusty, toy bucket next to the dilapidated garden shed. He picked it up and walked across the yard, then along the side of the house to where the water tap was located; next to an old, battered, iron rubbish bin. It was mid-Autumn, but they were enjoying an ‘Indian Summer’. The weather was hot and humid and the flies were everywhere – especially in the area near the bin, which was half full of putrid rubbish and only partly covered by the dented bin lid, which long ago had ceased to fit properly. The flies buzzed around his head and a large bluebottle settled momentarily on his face which he instinctively swatted away.

His mummy had told him to keep away from the flies because they were dirty and would make him very ill. She said that if he wasn’t careful he would get very sick like little Barry next doors. He hadn’t seen Barry all summer as he had been confined to his bed with something called ‘Scarlet Fever’. Mummy said that Barry might die.

So he filled up his little bucket and ran quickly back to the flower bed as the water leaked out of a small hole in the bottom of the bucket, leaving a moist trail in the dusty earth behind him. The bucket was barely a third full by the time he reached his potato patch and he quickly emptied the remainder into the earth, smiling with pleasure in anticipation of the feast of potatoes that the family would be able to eat next year.

He looked up to the window where his mother had been sitting, but she was no longer there. She had disappeared from view. He started to panic, but after a brief moment, he was able to make out voices coming from the open window. He felt reassured and walked back towards the house, carrying his little bucket to collect some more water. He had just turned the tap back on to refill his bucket when suddenly, the oh-so familiar, tummy-wrenching sound of a loud, deep voice ripped through the air; destroying the peace and tranquillity of the hot September afternoon. It was coming from the upstairs kitchen and even the flies took flight at the sudden ferocity of the noise.

Toby took his cue from the flies. He dropped his bucket, scattering the water over his legs and ground as he raced away from the house to the far end of the garden and into the shed in an effort to get away from the noise. But even at that distance he could still hear his father raging at his mother and could even make out the ominous sounds that he recalled from previous occasions; the sickening sound of his father slapping his mother mercilessly across her face.

He crouched down inside the shed with his hands to his ears, in a futile attempt to shut out the noise. He could still hear his father shouting and swearing at the top of his voice, then pause for a few seconds, presumably to gather his breath, before resuming, louder than ever. Through it all, Toby could make out the tell-tale smacking noise of his mummy being beaten. He wondered if Mummy would die. He wondered what it would be like to die. He thought about Barry, lying sick in bed next door. Everyone had said that he might die, too.

‘What is all this stuff about dying?’ he thought to himself, ‘Maybe it’s good to die; If I’m dead, I won’t have to hear Daddy shouting any more – or watch mummy being beaten.’

‘Yes, maybe it is better if I’m dead. Then I can go to that place mummy is always talking about.  I can go to heaven.’

 

 

***

 

 

It was a gloomy, bitterly cold, January afternoon.  Toby was outside, playing alone in the alley behind the house .The weather was so cold that his tiny hands had become numb and he could barely feel his own fingertips; but despite the temperature and the bleak, ever darkening sky, he was more content to be out there in the alley, left to his own devices, than to stay indoors and have to endure the incessant temper tantrums from his obdurate, intimidating parent. Indeed, his father had screamed at him to ‘go out and play!’ several hours ago and he needed no second bidding to remove himself from his father’s forbidding presence.

In any event, the interior of the large, sprawling, nineteenth century terraced house – the only home that Toby had ever known – wasn’t much warmer than being out in the back yard, fully exposed to the elements. The home had no proper heating, and in much of the house, ice had already started to form on the insides of the ancient Victorian casements that were riveted to their frozen window frames. The only heat in the entire house was in the first floor kitchen/diner, overlooking the back yard, where a pathetically small coal fire was smouldering away in the tiny hearth. His father had forbidden Mummy to light any fire during the daylight hours and although it was only 5’oclock in the afternoon, the early winter night had already cast its dark envelope across the skies of East London.

Ever since darkness had fallen, Toby’s mother had been trying to cajole the coal-fire in the kitchen hearth into life with some old sheets of newspaper and some sparse kindling wood. She used all her skills to try and coax some flames from the few meagre lumps of coal that she had emptied out from the nearby coal scuttle. But the dirty, black surfaces had yet to emit that warm, orange glow that would eventually arrest the ever plummeting temperature in the sprawling, draft-ridden, family kitchen.

As luck would have it, today was Sunday night and that meant that a large tin tub, half filled with ice-cold water was being heated up on the ancient gas range, with no less than three gas burners running at full pelt under the rusting metal tub; so at least the heat from the gas stove was temporarily augmenting the pitiful efforts emanating from the hearth.  Once the water was deemed hot enough, the tub would be gingerly carried into the bathroom by both parents and then overturned into the stained, galvanised enamel bath. Cold water would be added from the bath tap until the ambient temperature had been cooled sufficiently for the entire family to take their weekly bath.

The first person to partake in the dubious pleasure of bathing in the relatively untarnished water was always Toby’s mother and she quickly stripped off her clothes and spent a few precious minutes soothing her fatigued, world-weary, and grimy body. Jeanette, Toby’s older sister, would be next and then it would be the turn of the two boys, Toby and his older brother, Danny. By the time the boys got their turn, the water would have already turned to a decidedly unpleasant greyish- brown colour and the temperature would be barely lukewarm.

The gas burners had been turned off, no longer contributing to the ever deepening chill in the kitchen, and Danny, who had already stripped down to his underwear was shivering from the cold, but Toby was nowhere to be seen.

‘Danny, where’s Toby?’ Danny mother asked.

‘I don’t know Mummy, maybe he’s playing upstairs in the bedroom.’

She walked to the stairwell and called out her youngest son’s name, but there was no response.

Danny’s shivers were becoming more vehement so his mother told him to get in the bath to warm up. But where was Toby? Surely he wasn’t still outside at this time of evening in the dark? She went to the kitchen window and struggled to open it as the frame was half frozen and the frayed sash cords caught on the pulleys.

Her husband, who had his head buried in a week old newspaper at the kitchen table, looked up.

‘What the hell are you doing, woman! Isn’t it cold enough without you letting that freezing air in?’

‘I…I can’ find Toby…maybe he is still outside, playing in the alley…’

‘Outside! At this time of night! What the hell is going on round here? Why can’t you keep your eyes on your fucking children?’ he screamed at her.

The tall, burly man walked over to the window, which  his wife had succeeded in opening barely an inch or so, and gave it an almighty heave, whereupon it shot up on its sash cords letting a shocking blast of wintry air into the room. He put his head out of the window and yelled at the top of his voice.

‘Toby! Toby! You wretched little brat! Come home, this minute!’

Toby was still playing in the alley. He was almost frozen stiff but he had put the cold state of his body to the back of his mind, as he played in his own little world. He was pretending he was at school with his older brother and sister. They had told him so much about the school he would be starting in the summer when he was five years old and he couldn’t wait to join them. He was doing his ‘a-b-c’ with his imaginary teacher when the sound of his father’s screams invaded the tranquillity of his little game.

At first, he was glad that he was well away from his father’s latest tirade, but after a few moments, he realised that he – Toby – was the focus of his father’s screams. Daddy was shouting his name and a shiver of fright passed through him. He was much more concerned with his father’s anger than with the cold he was enduring in the bleak night air, so his immediate inclination was to find a corner of the alley to hide from his terrifying parent. But the shouting continued and he soon lost the will to ignore his enraged parent and he ran quickly back into the garden where he saw his father, still standing and shouting at him from the open kitchen window.

His father peered out into the black night and spotted his youngest son in the glimmer of light from the kitchen scampering towards the house.

‘Toby! You get back indoors this minute before I give you the hiding of your life!’

Toby rushed upstairs where thankfully his mother was waiting for him. She grabbed hold of him before his father could do anything and cuddled him to her bosom.

‘My goodness Toby – you are freezing cold! Quickly, get undressed and into the bath tub with Danny. The water will warm you up.’

He was led into the kitchen, where the half-frozen child immediately noticed  that the air was a little warmer, even if nobody else did. His mother quickly stripped him down and carried him into the bathroom where he was deposited into the now tepid water, facing his elder brother who by this time had more or less completed his Sunday night ablutions.

The water thawed out Toby’s emaciated frame and he felt a warm, tingling glow run through him as his body temperature adapted to its new surroundings. By this time, the water was very dirty and rapidly cooling so Danny decided he had had enough and jumped out of the bath and wrapped himself up in a threadbare towel.

The elder brother looked at Toby and started mocking him in a sing song tone: ‘Toby’s in trouble…Toby’s in trouble…’ He grinned at the still shivering Toby, ‘Just wait till Daddy gets hold of you – you’ll be for it, you see.’

But Toby wasn’t really listening. He was still luxuriating in the bath water and was busy trying to wash his tangled, dirty hair with a hard block of soap that was stubbornly refusing to generate any soap suds, no matter how vigorously he rubbed it. He could hear the sounds of his angry father, through the bathroom wall; shouting sat his mother for some unfathomable indiscretion. He wasn’t too bothered; he was too preoccupied with completing his wash before the water was too cold to stay in any longer. In any case, his father’s tantrums were so much of a daily event that as long as he personally wasn’t the object of his father’s anger, he usually managed to shut it out of his mind.

But Danny suddenly ceased his singing and Toby was roused from his reveries by the unexpected sound of their mother’s raised voice. Her normal habit was to suffer her husband’s tantrums in silence, but on this occasion, she sounded more upset than usual, and Toby heard Mummy say his name – Toby – ‘poor little Toby’. This was immediately followed the familiar, sickening sound of his mother being slapped hard across the face. Then the kitchen door slammed and Toby held his breath – terrified that his father would come into the bathroom; but mercifully, he heard him stomping down the stairs and out of the house. Through the wall he could hear the sound of his mother sobbing. He listened, hoping that she would stop. But she didn’t, she kept on and on, sobbing her heart out. Toby looked at his brother, who had also become engrossed in the disturbing events that they had heard unfolding in the kitchen.

The water was cold, but Toby sat in the bath, listening to his mother crying. He looked at his brother and could see tears at the corner of Danny’s eyes. ‘Why was Danny crying?’ he wondered. He had never seen Danny cry before; Danny had always been the strong, brave one. He sat still, transfixed in the chill water and listened to the sounds of his mother crying and watched the tears roll down Danny’s cheeks.

It was all too much for the four year old and he suddenly felt his own eyes well up and as much as tried to stop them, within a few seconds his own tears were streaming down his face and he watched, as they dripped, one after the other, onto to the dirty scum, which was now forming on the surface of the ice-cold bath water.

 

 

***

 

 

 

It was early April and a late spring had suddenly burst in upon a gloomy East London and had somehow lifted the depressing effects of the long, cold winter. Toby was back in the garden with his mummy who was weeding her tiny flower bed. Some white crocuses and a few scrawny, yellow daffodils had made a belated but welcome appearance in the Stark family’s back yard.

A small boy and girl, of similar age to Toby trotted into the garden from the alley beyond. They were Norman and Janice, who lived a few houses ‘down the alley’.

‘Excuse me, Mrs Stark,’ the elder boy asked in his politest voice, ‘Can Toby come to our house to play for a few hours?’

Toby loved going to play there. There were a number of reasons for this, not least of which was the prospect of getting away from his father’s all-pervading  influence for a couple of hours.

‘Oh yes, please Mummy, please let me go.’

His mother looked worried and a little fearful as she knew that her husband didn’t approve of these neighbours – as indeed he rarely approved of anyone or anything in this world. But she knew that Toby enjoyed himself so much and her love for her children was greater than her fear of her husband.

She said, ‘All right Toby, hurry along, but make sure you are  back in time for tea at five o’clock, or your father will be very angry.’

Toby needed no second bidding and scampered off with his little friends, although quite how he would know when it was time to go home was somewhat problematic, particularly as he was yet to learn how to tell the time.

The three young children hurried off along the alley and into the back garden of Norman and Janice’s home. Norman’s father was a large, bluff Irishman and his mother was a warm, friendly little Greek lady, who Norman’s Dad had ‘met in the war’. They were clearly much better off than Toby’s family; Norman’s Dad was a pharmacist and he ran the chemist shop that faced out onto the East London high Street. His family, like Toby’s family, lived above the shop.

But there the similarity ended. A shiny new family car was parked in the alleyway outside the house, and inside, the house was full of all the ‘mod cons’ of the day. There was a well equipped kitchen; modern, comfortable furniture in the lounge and the rooms were beautifully decorated with fashionable wallpaper in every room. The ‘Pièce de résistance’, was a recently acquired black and white television, which sat in pride of place, on an ornate table in the middle of his friends’ sitting room.

As ever, as soon as the children entered the house, Norman’s mother was fussing around them and Toby was fascinated yet again to hear the mother and her two children yapping away with each other in fluent Greek, a language they had learned as soon as they were able to speak. Both children were completely bilingual. Norman’s mother hugged Toby and welcomed him into her home before leading him into the kitchen and offering him all manner of sweets, biscuits and cakes.

‘Oh you poor leetle babby. You are soooo, how you say – skinny…. Come on, eat up, before you fall down from starving…’

Norman’s Mum had taken a real shine to the skinny kid from down the alley and always insisted on ‘filling up his stomach’ – from the moment he arrived at her home to the moment that he left.

After Toby had somewhat assuaged his perpetual hunger, the three children moved into the living room and parked themselves on the large, plush sofa. Norman’s mummy followed them in and walked over to the table in the centre of the room and pushed a button. Toby sat transfixed. Within a few seconds the dark screen lit up and a picture of a man appeared. The children’s mother played with the box and within seconds they could see and hear a man talking – just like the man Toby had heard occasionally on Daddy’s wireless.

Then, suddenly, bliss descended. The familiar music emitted from the television and the three children knew what was coming. Toby had only seen the programme a few times but already he could recite the opening preamble.

First, those familiar horns: ‘Dah – de da – de dah de dah de dah!’

Then: ‘A fiery horse with a speed of light, a cloud of dust and a – hearty Hi-o Silver!  The Lone Ranger!’

The kids were in seventh heaven and they sat enthralled, watching the latest adventure of their hero.

 

*

 

If it hadn’t been for the sensible Norman, Toby would never have moved himself from his seat in front of the television. He couldn’t get enough of it, but Norman remembered Toby’s mother telling him to be back home by five and as he could tell the time, he reminded Toby that he had better get going as it was already gone half past four.

A jolt of panic went through Toby’s stomach as he too, belatedly recalled his mother’s warning. Thanking his friend for his thoughtful reminder, Toby reluctantly hauled himself up from the comfortable sofa and ran back down the alley to his own back garden. He was home well in time for tea, but was dismayed to hear his father’s voice, yelling once again from somewhere inside the house. At first he thought that his father was angry at him being late home, but as he approached the side door to the house he could hear that the shouting was coming from within the shop, where his father worked.

He ran upstairs to the kitchen where the family were getting the table set for ‘tea’ – their evening meal of the day. From the look on their faces, especially his mother, he could tell that they were listening to the shouting going on downstairs in the shop and his older brother and sister were sitting in dread, awaiting the inevitable  appearance of their angry father.

Tea was ready and everyone sat down at their allotted places, patiently waiting. After another five minutes of shouting, the noise finally stopped and a few seconds later they could hear the angry man stomping up the stairs, with a loud, heavy thump on every approaching step. The door flew open; he took in the family scene and without a word took his place at the head of the table.

‘Eat!’ he said loudly and started to pile up food onto his own plate. The family followed suit.

His wife timidly enquired: ‘Everything all right David?’

Anyone would have thought that the poor woman had just uttered some terrible curse at her husband.

‘Everything all right?’ he screamed, ‘what the fucking hell do you mean? Everything all right? Couldn’t you fucking hear me downstairs in the shop? Did it sound like everything’s all right?’

‘Well, no… I supposed not…’ stuttered the terrified woman.

‘No! Everything is NOT all right!’ screamed Toby’ father, his face reddening with rage.

With that, the big man stood up, grabbed his plateful of food in his two fists and threw it across the kitchen, the china plate smashing into pieces and the food scattering all over the wall and floor. Not content with destroying his own meal, he then swept his large hands across the table, sending all the plates and food scattering and smashing onto the floor around the table.

He walked to the door and then turned to look at his cowering family who were trembling with fear at what their crazed father might to next.

‘No, Carol’. He screamed at his wife, ‘Nothing is right. I just quit my fucking job. I will not work one more day for that bunch stupid bunch of arseholes. They are all fucking idiots and I told them so. They can go and take a running jump and find another mug to run their fucking shop for them!’

Toby’s mother stared at her husband. ‘But what will we do?  Where will we live?’ she plaintively asked him, for after all, their home ‘came with the job’.

He looked at her for a few seconds, his temper rising once again.

‘I don’t fucking know and I don’t fucking care!’ he screamed before stomping back down the stairs and out of the house.

‘David! David! How will we live? How will we eat? She screamed.

But David was gone and didn’t hear a word.

The children were still sitting at the table, staring at their mother; hungry and badly affected by what had just happened. Toby’s mother sat down at the table and put her head in her hands, sobbing quietly to herself.

Toby’s sister, Jeanette, also broke out in tears and her mother got up and walked over to her, putting her arms around her young daughter’s shoulders and tried to comfort her. Toby and Danny watched the two females hugging each other from the other side of the table. Toby glanced at Danny to see if he was crying but on this occasion, he could not detect any tears lurking in Danny’s eyes.

‘Well if Danny’s not crying, then neither will I’, Toby said to himself. The truth was, he wasn’t feeling very brave and he didn’t know how long he could hold on, but he was determined to keep his eyes dry. He sat there, his tiny, anxious face staring straight in front him while he gripped the sides of his chair so hard that his knuckles turned white.

-

***

 

 

Danny had told Toby that he overheard Daddy telling Mummy one night that they had been allowed to stay at their ‘home over the shop’ because the new shop manager didn’t want to live there and nobody else had wanted to either. Even in the bleak post war period, nobody wanted to live in a dilapidated house that was in such a bad state of repair that it had mould growing on the walls, had no hot water and was so cold in the winter that ice would regularly form on the inside of the windows. Danny had heard his father relate this ‘comforting news’ to his mother one night, a few weeks after he had stormed out of his job at the downstairs shop in that terrible rage.

Since then, his father had been going out early every morning to a new job he had found, working with an acquaintance in a nearby London suburb, so the family had been blissfully spared his intimidating, daytime presence for most of the week. But on Sundays, the day of the week when the whole country came to a halt, Toby’s father would be home all day.

It was mid-July and Toby sat perched on top of a brick wall at the end of the alley, not far from his back yard. The high brick wall ran right across the alley; it was a dead end – a cul-de-sac – and on the other side of the wall was the local Baptist Church. Toby was fascinated by all the activities that went on in the church grounds and inside the  church buildings. Sometimes, in the late afternoons, he would see dozens of kids running around in the church grounds, all wearing exciting and colourful uniforms. Some evenings it was the wolf cubs, with their green jerseys and striped caps, the next day, brownies, in their little brown dresses, the next day the Boys Brigade in their smart soldier’s uniforms and on yet another day, sea cadets.

But it was the Sunday afternoons that captivated him the most. Toby would usually find something to do on most days, when he could play with his friends, Norman and Janice in the back alley and watch their television; but on Sundays he was all alone. He hated Sundays. His elder siblings would disappear with their own friends, but Toby’s friends from the alley never came out to play on Sundays. They had told him they were Catholics – whatever that meant – and spent the whole day involved in various church activities. Indeed, in the 1950’s, most families living in the neighbourhood went to one church or another on Sundays, and many of the children also went to ‘Sunday schools’ in the afternoons.

On Sundays, he would see children of all ages, dressed in their ‘Sunday best’; the girls in their colourful little dresses and bonnets, the boys in their smart shorts, neatly pressed  white shirts, bow ties and little jackets, all running around, playing games in the grounds before disappearing inside the church hall, laughing and playing as they went. Once inside, he could hear the joyful voices, singing Sunday school songs to the accompaniment of a piano.

Toby dearly yearned to be part of those happy, laughing groups of children, playing games, singing songs and generally having a good time. So one Sunday, he decided to take his life in his hands and ask his father if he too might attend the nearby Sunday school. His father was snoozing in the upstairs living room.

‘Daddy, Daddy, are you awake?’

His father stirred, opened his eyes and looked at his son.

‘What are you doing inside the house? I told you to go outside and play! Get out!’

‘B-but Daddy, I want to ask you something…’

‘Ask me something? What?’ he demanded harshly

‘I w-want to go to S-Sunday school…’

‘Sunday school! Sunday school!’ his father had shouted, ‘No son of mine is going to get involved in all that religious claptrap. Over my dead body! No! Never! Get out of here!’

Toby walked slowly back outside, climbed onto the wall and  sat there alone, watching and listening to the children enjoying their afternoon at Sunday school, wondering what he had done to have such a dreadful father. Even at such a young age he realised that he hated his father and try as he might, he couldn’t blank out the terrible thoughts that kept creeping into his mind.

He wished that Daddy would suddenly die and that Mummy would find a new Daddy. He wished that he had a new Daddy who would be kind and jolly, just like all his friends’ Daddies. He wanted a Daddy who wouldn’t shout at him and his brother and sister every day; a Daddy who would let him go to Sunday school and let him do other things that all his friends were allowed to do; but most of all, he wanted a Daddy who wouldn’t keep hitting his Mummy and making her cry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

PART THREE – CHAPTER IV

 

 

 

It was early September. Danny and Jeanette were accompanying Toby for his very first day at school. It was a good twenty minutes’ walk along the residential road, lined on either side by large, terraced Victorian houses. The road originated at the top of Toby’s alley and snaked deep into the heart of the East London suburb, where the nineteenth century school building was located. It was St Andrews Infants and Junior mixed school, which was to be Toby’s place of education for the next six years. Toby was excited. He had been bursting to go to school for over a year and had never tired of hearing school stories from his brother and sister. He had turned five the previous June and just couldn’t wait to get started.

Unfortunately, Toby’s first day at school didn’t turn out quite how he had imagined, during all those long months of waiting. He was dropped off by his older siblings at the headmistress’s office for the very briefest of introductions, before being sent out to play with a bunch of kids who had never seen before. Most of them were bigger than him and he felt quite intimidated, so it was a relief when the school bell was rung and his name was called out. The teacher took him by the arm into a class-room for his very first day at school.

He soon withdrew within himself. The other children seemed unfriendly, even hostile. The ones who spoke to him were so much smarter – most of them could already read and write; something that Toby had been unable to achieve during his pre-school years, due to the lack of books and anyone to find the time to tutor him, let alone any pre-school playgroups or kindergartens. At the mid-morning school break, Toby hid himself behind a wall at the end of the school playground. He was so unhappy and couldn’t wait for the break to end so that he could return to the relative safety of his classroom.

Things got worse. His mother had paid for him to have a school dinner and he was taken by some of his older class mates into the school hall where tables had been set up for the children to have their lunch. He followed the line and queued up for his food. He looked at the food being ladled onto the empty plates. It not only looked disgusting but also smelt disgusting. It was some sort of meat gruel in thick, dark-brown gravy accompanied by Toby’s most detested vegetable – cabbage. He couldn’t stand it and such was his abhorrence of the foul vegetable, which even his domineering father had not made him eat, once he had convinced his family that cabbage really did disagree with his delicate digestive system. He hated the smell of it and he hated the taste even more. Just to smell the foul, boiled vegetable made him want to retch.

The dinner lady insisted on piling the stinking vegetable on his plate and he was led back to his place at the dinner table by a couple of his new classmates. He nibbled at the gruel. It tasted awful but he managed to force a couple of forkfuls down, making sure that he kept his fork well away from the cabbage which covered over half his plate.  After five minutes, he gave up the unequal struggle and decided he couldn’t eat any more of the foul tasting lunch and placed his knife and fork neatly on one side of the plate. He was still hungry but decided he would have to wait until he got home and had his tea before his hunger could be at least partially assuaged. He would rather starve than have to force down that horrible cabbage.

One of the duty teachers approached Toby’s table and immediately saw that the young boy had barely touched his lunch.

‘You – boy!’ the teacher shouted, ‘What’s your name?’

Toby looked up at the woman. ‘T-Toby, Toby Stark.’

‘Toby! Why haven’t you eaten your lunch?’

‘I – don’t like it…’

‘Don’t like it! Don’t like it! You don’t have to like it young man, you just have to eat it. You haven’t even touched your cabbage. Eat it up right now or you’ll be in serious trouble.’

Toby looked at the woman and knew that she meant business, but it would take more than a stern teacher to make him put that poison in his mouth.

‘I can’t eat it. I can’t,’ he bleated plaintively.’

‘Can’t or won’t?’ she barked at him, before taking a spoon from his plate, piling up with cabbage and holding to his mouth.

‘Open your mouth and eat! It’s good for you.’

She held his forehead with her left hand and pushed the spoon onto his lips with her right hand, trying to force his mouth open. Toby was terrified and his lips parted, whereupon he felt the dreaded cabbage filling up his mouth.

‘Now eat! Chew it!’

He did as he was bid and made a great effort to swallow the unwholesome mess.

‘There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?’ asked the teacher, as she started to follow up with another spoonful.

She was once more holding the spoon to his lips when Toby’s stomach heaved, his mouth opened involuntarily and a huge mass of vomit suddenly spewed forth from his mouth, covering everything in sight; his shirt, his plate, his chair, the table, and the hands and arms of the teacher who had been unable to remove the spoon in time to avoid being thoroughly soaked in the foul smelling bile. She was enraged, but quickly pulled herself together and lifted the boy up with one hand under his puny waist and hauled him underarm into the bathroom where she attempted to clean-up both Toby and her own, stinking hands and arms.

At length, Toby was carried back to his classroom where he was dumped unceremoniously in the corner of the room and left to wait out the remainder of the lunch time in quiet solitude. No further attempts were made to ‘force feed’ him and that was the last school dinner he ever had to face during his primary school years.

The afternoon of Toby’s first day of school turned out to be even worse than the morning. His clothes stunk of vomit and the teacher made him sit at the back of the class in the corner, but even from there, the smell continued to permeate the classroom and the children lost no time in telling the new boy just what they thought of him.

At long last, it was time to go home and Toby rushed out of the playground into the nearby street to look for his brother and sister. He waited there for more than ten minutes but there was no sign of his siblings. After fifteen minutes, he assumed that they must have forgotten about him and he decided to take the twenty minute walk back home, on his own. He was sure he knew the way and hurried along the road to the nearby crossroads, where he stopped in his tracks and thought for a moment.

‘Do I go straight on, or do I turn right?’ he asked himself.

After a moment’s consideration, he decided that he hadn’t taken any turns on his way to school so the way home must be straight on. Within half an hour he was totally lost. He realised he must have gone the wrong way and tried to retrace his steps, but by this time he had already taken several turns in a desperate attempt to find a familiar road and he could no more find his way back to school than he could find the way home. But he walked and walked, forever in the hope that by some miracle, the familiar alley would magically appear in front of him.

He lost track of time. Late afternoon gave way to evening and night was rapidly descending. He was tired and hungry and didn’t know what to do. He stopped walking and sat on a nearby garden wall to consider his situation. Two middle aged men came into view, saw him sitting there and walked over to see what he was doing there, all alone in the dark.

‘Hello little boy, what are you doing here, in the dark, all alone? You’re not one of the local lads from around here, are you?

‘I was on my way home from my school, but I lost my way.’

The two men looked at him, trying to decide what to do.

‘Where do you live? Do you know your address?’

Toby did, and told them the address, including the information that he lived ‘above Dr Scholar’s Foot Shop.’

‘Dr Scholar’s Foot Shop? I know that place, it’s about halfway down the high road, not far from the train station,’ the second man said to his friend.

‘You are a bit off course, aren’t you?’ the first man remarked to Toby, ‘Come on, we’ll show you the way’.

They led Toby along the road, past a number of cross roads, sometimes turning right, sometimes left and he soon realised that he would never be able to remember which way he was going. If the men had been up to no good, he wouldn’t have been any the wiser, but he was lucky, and after half an hour of walking, they reached a road that Toby thought looked familiar.

‘I know this road – this leads to my alley, doesn’t it?’ He asked the strangers.

‘Alley? What alley?’ the first man asked

‘The alley – behind my house.’

Again, the second man knew what Toby was referring to.

‘Yes, I do believe there is an alley that runs at the back of the high Road. I’ve seen it when I’ve walked home from the train station. That’s right, little lad, this road goes straight to your alley.’

With that, Toby broke away from the two men and shot off into the darkness.

‘Hey, Toby, wait a minute will you,’ shouted one of the men, but Toby was long gone before they had a chance to stop him.

After running for a few minutes, Toby became tired and slowed down to a walk. He knew he was on the right road now and he knew he would soon be home. He was tired and hungry and not a little frightened as he started to worry about what his Dad might say – and do to him – when he got home. His father had recently found a new job and most of the time he was out at work all day; but he always got home before it was dark and Toby was becoming extremely anxious at what kind of trouble he might be in for.

At long last, the top of the alley was in sight and once again, Toby broke into a run. As he approached the alley, he saw two tall figures standing there in the darkness. One was wearing the distinctive blue uniform of a policeman, and the other, equally tall, was the unmistakably menacing figure of his father. Toby stopped in his tracks, wondering whether he could hide from them. It was too late. His father had spotted him and shouted out.

‘Toby! Come here, now!’

He walked wearily towards the two men; hungry, terrified and dismayed at how calamitous his first day of school had been.

And he knew with a dreadful certainly that it was far from over yet……

 

 

***

-

After a few weeks, Toby had settled in at school and was slowly coming out of his ‘shell’ in the new, strange environment. He had solved his school dinner problem by making the 15 minute journey home each lunch time, to be quickly fed by his waiting mother. Within a very short while, he could make the journey blindfolded and never again would he suffer the wrath and severe beating by his father for losing his way home.

But within a year, Toby was once more in trouble.  His second year class teacher, Miss Evans, had told Mummy that he was a bit ‘dopey’. Without thinking through the repercussions, his mother had passed this comment onto her husband a few days later, with predictable results.

It had been almost a year since Toby’s father had arrived home one day to announce to his wife that he had a major disagreement with his new, ‘brainless’ business partner and that once more he was out of work. A long period of unemployment had ensued until one day he managed to pick up some free-lance work as a barber, but money had become tighter than ever and for most of the time he stayed at home, brooding on how the world was full of idiots and how everyone, except himself, was to blame for all his misfortunes.

So when Toby’s father had heard that a teacher had the temerity to call his youngest son stupid, he had flown into a violent rage and the next day, he dragged his son to school to ‘have it out’ with the offending teacher. Toby was terrified at what might happen, with good cause as it transpired.

He stood behind his father, outside his classroom in the main hall, while his irate parent cross-examined the timid teacher.

‘Why did you call my son dopey?’ he asked in his loud, menacing voice.

Miss Evans felt slightly fearful of this large, intimidating man, but nevertheless felt safe within the confines of the school and had no hesitation in telling him her reasons.

‘I said that, Mr Stark, because there is definitely something not quite right with your son. Toby doesn’t seem to join in and play with the other boys. Maybe ‘dopey’ was the wrong word to use, but most of the time, he sits by himself and seems to have no interest in their games. Even when they queue up to go in the classroom, Toby never tries to get to the front of the queue like the other children, he just walks to the back of the line and waits alone. He has very little interaction with the other children.  It’s just not normal for a young boy of his age. He doesn’t seem to have any spirit.’

His father wouldn’t have it.

‘He goes to the back of the line? He doesn’t have any spirit? What are you talking about woman? He’s not dopey – he’s using his bloody common sense. Why should he join in fighting with the other boys? Why should he fight to get to the front of the line? Toby’s not dopey – he is very clever!’

Toby’s heart warmed a little to hear his father defending him like this, but he dreaded what his father would say when they got back home. He was only six years old, but he knew that his father was only defending him because he was being criticised by someone outside the family. How dare anyone criticise his son!

The teacher tried to elaborate on her viewpoint, but Toby’s father was having none of it. He started shouting at the poor lady who soon became concerned with the threatening nature of the confrontation. The noise soon attracted the attention of other teachers and within a few seconds a large group had gathered. One of the older women walked over and introduced herself.

‘Mr Stark, I am Mrs Butler, the Head Mistress. Would you mind coming to my office please? I can’t have all this noise going on in the main hallway. The children will be very disturbed.’

‘Disturbed! I’ll give you disturbed!’ he erupted. ‘What about me being disturbed by this idiotic, incompetent teacher?’ he shouted, pointing his finger menacingly at the poor Miss Evans.

‘Mr Stark, will you come to my office please?’ the Head Mistress repeated.

‘No, I won’t. I will stay here for as long as I choose!’ he shouted back.

There was a silence while Mrs Butler considered what to do with this clearly unstable, ferocious looking man. Whatever she was, she most certainly wasn’t a coward and in any event, she had her pupils’ welfare to think about.

‘Very well then Mr Stark. If you won’t come to my office, then so be it. But this school is Ministry property, and I am in charge here. I must ask you to vacate these premises forthwith or I will have no choice but to call the police and have you evicted.’

It seemed for a minute or so that Toby’s father had finally met his match as he was stunned into silence by someone who had the courage to stand up to him. But quickly recovering, he glowered at the older woman before shouting a torrent of abuse at her.

‘You stupid, fucking bitch! I will leave this school when I am good and ready and you can call out the ‘fucking British army’ for all I care!’

‘Mr Stark, you are a nasty, violent man and I will not stay here for another moment. I am going to call the police and I warn you to be gone before they arrive. Also, with the deepest regret, I must advise you that if you don’t leave this school immediately, then I will have to seriously consider removing your children from this school. I simply cannot have my staff and the other children subjected to such outrageous, abusive behaviour by a parent.’

With that she stomped off and the other teachers who had gathered around, including Toby’s teacher, also made themselves scarce, leaving father and son standing alone in the hallway. Toby’s father looked at the retreating figures and then down at his son.

Suddenly, he shouted: ‘Toby, go to your class! I’ll be dealing with you when you get home.’

He walked briskly out of the building and back to his ramshackle home. Toby, traumatised by what had just transpired between his father and the school teachers, walked slowly into his classroom, dreading what might await him when he got home that night. That day, he was completely unable to concentrate on his school work.

 

 

***

-

 

He had never been more terrified in his life; Toby, along with Danny and Danny’s friend, Chris, were all squatting in a narrow, pitch black tunnel and they were completely lost. They had been exploring the ruins of the bombed out ‘Super Cinema’ one afternoon when they had found a large metal hatchway which led into a long, mysterious tunnel. They had decided to explore it after first taking some candles and matches from Chris’s house to light up the tunnel as they reconnoitred.

It had been another hot summer and Toby had been spending the summer school holidays, playing in the alley; sometimes with friends who lived nearby, and occasionally with his brother and his friends; but mainly alone, generally bored out of his mind. There was little to do and his parents never took him out anywhere. His school friends would go away for 2 weeks or longer to the seaside or maybe to a cottage in the countryside, but not Toby. He was stuck for six weeks in the alley behind his house; there was no television, no cinema, nothing.

The only days when he had a whiff of excitement was when Danny took him along when he went to visit a friend who lived nearby, opposite the entrance to the alley. Danny’s friend, Chris, was even older than Danny but as ‘needs be’, the three of them would have a great time playing in Chris’s house. But there was even more fun to be had at the back of Chris’s garden. A brick wall separated the back of the garden from the huge, cordoned-off area beyond which contained a massive old cinema, that had been bombed beyond repair during the recent 2^nd World War. It was called the ‘Super Cinema’ and although in a grim state, much of the structure was still standing and it became a wonderful but highly dangerous playground for kids who had nothing else to occupy their long, hot summer holidays. It was a simple matter for the agile young boys to scale the wall and jump down into the strictly forbidden area.

Luckily for them, on the fateful afternoon when they went exploring the tunnel, Chris’s older brother, Scott, had decided to come with them when he heard what they were planning.

In reality, the tunnel that they had entered was part of a vast, intricate network of ventilation shafts that ran through the ruins of the huge building and as the four boys turned left, then right, then left again, coming across an even larger tunnel, which they scurried along for five minutes, before going ever deeper into the bowels of the ruined cinema. Eventually, they entered a very narrow tunnel which finally came to a dead end, the way ahead, blocked by falling concrete. They tried to retrace their steps, but soon became hopelessly lost. Their dwindling supplies of candles were fast burning out and they were becoming ever more fearful of their hopeless plight.

Scott, being the eldest boy in the group, decided that he better do something. He had been in these tunnels before and thought that he might be able to find his way out by locating one of the metal hatchways. He thought that he had better go alone as most of these exit hatchways were situated high up in the building so it would be very difficult for the younger boys to climb back down to safety, even if they managed to find one. It was agreed that Scott would take the last remaining candle with him and see if he could get out and go and ask for help.

The three sat in the low, dark tunnel, miserable, hungry and very frightened, for a very long time, wondering if Scott had managed had to find a way out and if they would ever be rescued. How long would it be before they were missed? Would anyone ever think of looking for them in this bombed out building which was out of bounds to all but the most intrepid?

It was over five hours and late evening before the cold, dirty and despairing kids heard some distant shouting and immediately shouted back, in a desperate attempt to guide their rescuers to where they were sitting. It was a scary and frustrating time, for although the rescuers and the boys could hear each other, they were in different ventilation shafts and the rescuers could not find their way through to where the boys were located. The boys panicked when the shouts of the men faded away and they thought that the rescuers had given up and that they had been left there to die. But half an hour later, they heard the shouts once again and at long last they saw the torch lights in the distance and realised that their ordeal was finally coming to an end.

Their rescuers were three uniformed policemen and once Toby and the two other boys had recovered from their fear of ending their short lives in the tunnel, they learnt that Scott, Chris’s brother had managed to find a way out but had broken his leg when he had tried to jump down to the ground from the hatchway, high up in the building’s superstructure.  Eventually he had managed to hobble out to the main road and shout for help; he was now in hospital, getting strapped up.

At long last, Toby was on his way home, but his feeling of relief from the fear of dying in that tunnel was being replaced by his dread of what his father would do when the policemen delivered the tired, starving boys at the back-door of their home.

He was right to be fearful. Not for the first time and by no means the last time in their lives, Toby and Danny were subjected to a beating, so ferocious, that Toby was not to forget it for a very long time. They were both forbidden from leaving the area of the alley for the remainder of their summer holidays.

 

*

 

Boredom once again set in for the two brothers; Danny’s friend, Chris, would still come to see him in the alley and after two or three visits, when memories of his father’s beating started to fade,  Danny decided to chance his arm by going to play with Chris at his friend’s house. Toby tried to persuade him not to go.

‘Danny, please don’t go. You know what will happen if Dad finds out.’

But Danny refused to be cowered by his father’s rule and insisted on taking a calculated risk to go and have a bit of fun with his friend.

‘Don’t worry, Toby. Dad never comes out to see what we are up to. I will be back in plenty of time for tea, so nobody will know.’

Toby felt distinctly uneasy as his brother chased up the alley with his older friend and disappeared into the distance.

Teatime came and went and no sign of Danny. Toby stayed away from his house as he was terrified of his father finding out what had happened. In the end, his father appeared at the entrance to the alley, shouting for Danny and Toby to come in for their tea.

‘Where’s Danny?’ he father asked, angrily.

‘I – I don’t know?’

‘Don’t know? Of course you know. Don’t lie to me! Where is he?’

‘He – he went to play with Chris.’

‘Didn’t I tell you kids not to go out of the alley?’ his father screamed at him.

‘Yes’.

‘Then why did you disobey me? Come here this very minute!’

Toby knew he was in for another beating. ‘B-but Dad, I didn’t go,’ he protested.

‘Why didn’t you stop him? And why didn’t you come and tell me?’ his father screamed at him.

In a fit of uncontrollable rage, Toby’s father punished Toby severely for his brother’s indiscretion, on his well-established principal that if he couldn’t punish the perpetrator, then the brother of the perpetrator would do perfectly well – as if by inflicting fear and pain on anyone, he could somehow assuage his terrible temper.

Danny eventually came home several hours later, once again escorted by a policeman. This time he hadn’t been rescued, he had been arrested. The two boys had been caught running around on the roof of the Super Cinema, throwing stones onto the railway line beyond. Someone had seen them and reported them to the police and Danny had been taken to the local police station, where he had been given a good ‘talking to’.

Toby watched from the corner of the room while the policeman sat down with Danny and his father and told them both that if Danny was caught breaking the law again; he would go to court and put into a remand home. He also told Danny’s father that this time around, his son had already been ‘sufficiently punished’. They had put the ‘fear of God into him’ at the local ‘nick’ and had given him a sharp ‘clip round the ear’.

He spoke very strongly to the angry father. ‘So no further punishment is necessary, Mr Stark.  I know that you like to punish your boys when they get out of line, but this time I want you to lay off – is that clear?’

‘What I do with my own family is my business…’

‘Mr Stark – I repeat – is that clear? If it ever comes to my attention that you have touched your son over this incident, then you, me and my station sergeant will have a big problem.’

David Stark looked at the beefy policeman and said ‘Yes, constable, that is very clear.’

The officer took his leave and Toby was waiting for his father to explode again. But he didn’t; for once his father had taken heed of what someone had told him and Daniel didn’t receive any additional punishment.

 

*

 

Under ‘pain of death’, the two brothers never left the alley during the remainder of their school holidays. Toby became increasingly bored and frustrated and couldn’t wait for the new school term to begin. As if they needed any validation of their unfortunate plight, one long, tedious day, they were playing in the alley behind their home, when two, well-dressed strangers came to visit their father. It was so hot that the two lads had taken their shirts off, revealing lily-white, almost emaciated bodies with their ribs cages showing through so sharply that you could literally count every rib. He would never forget the look on the visitor’s face when she exclaimed: ‘Oh you poor, poor boys – you are so thin! It’s a wonder you can even stand up!’

Toby looked at himself and looked at his brother. It was true – they were so thin that their legs looked like matchsticks. Their daily repast was so meagre that their fast growing body-frames, starved of proper nourishment, had turned them into something akin to ‘third world’ skeletons, or God forbid, like the photographs they had seen in the newspapers of survivors of the Nazi concentration camps who the world had discovered, barely ten years previously.

Most of Toby’s friends seemed to be so much better off than he was. All of them had televisions in their homes and many of them had post war luxuries such as telephones and even cars. During school term time, he would delight in spending occasional weekend afternoons and evenings at his friends’ houses, where he would revel in the generosity and kindness of  the parents. All too briefly, he would enjoy the simple luxuries that his friends took for granted; such as children’s comics, television and warm rooms, with hot water in their bathrooms.

The grown-ups would give Toby delicious sweets, biscuits and crisps to eat –in addition to hot, nourishing meals that were so much tastier and more filling than those he was given to eat back home.

 

*

-

A few weeks later, when Danny’s latest adventure with the police was starting to fade into memory, he confided in Toby that he had begged the policeman to talk to his father and to persuade him not to beat his son. The policeman had said that he would ‘Do what he could’.

Toby reflected ironically on how unfair it was that he had been punished for something he didn’t do, yet his brother – the perpetrator – had escaped more or less scot free. But even at his tender age, he realised that life under the control of an unstable, violent man was never going to be very fair.

 

 

A Lustful Gent: Part 3 – ‘Toby’ (Chapters I & II)

17 Feb 2012 2 Comments

by mobidark in Uncategorized

 

I am moving on apace with my novel and now publish Chapters I and II of Part Three – ‘Toby’, below.

To those of you who read my original chapters last year, you will know that much of this material is a re-hash  from what was previously written; but at least this enables me to speed up novel progress for  a while, until I get back into ‘virgin’ territory in a few weeks time.

But I am confident that the latest re-write is better than my earlier output, so I do hope you enjoy it.

A Lustful Gentleman

PART THREE – TOBY

CHAPTER I

 

 

Na looked on transfixed as the smoke and dust started to clear from the scene of the accident and the full extent of the carnage became clearer.

The BMW had careered into two parked cars which looked as though they had been ripped open by a giant can opener and the third vehicle, a converted passenger- carrying pickup truck, was lying on its side; with the roof of the driver’s cab partly caved in. She could see that the driver was still at the wheel, but it was impossible to know for sure if he was alive or dead. She then turned her attention to the ‘BM’. The front end and nearside was so badly mangled that it was difficult to imagine that it could ever be brought back to its former glory, but the remainder of the car was relatively unscathed.

It seemed to Na that the eerie silence had lasted for ages, whereas in fact it was only a few seconds. The one -way the traffic behind the scene of the accident had come to a halt so most of the drivers had cut their engines and were climbing out of their vehicles to get a closer look at the horrific scene ahead. But suddenly, the uneasy peace was broken by one of the injured passengers from the pick-up, who suddenly let out an agonising screech of pain. It was coming from a young lady who was lying on her back in the middle of the road – her legs spayed out at an unusual, almost grotesque  angle. But it was her head that drew the onlookers’ compulsive attention. It was dripping with blood from a nasty gash on the side of her forehead; the poor girl was clearly in a very bad state.

It was as though the poor lady’s screams of pain were a signal for a general commotion to begin. Other passengers –those who weren’t too injured to care – started to join in an unholy chorus of the wailing wounded. Countless people streamed out of the bars, shops, restaurants and from the backed up vehicles, to surround the scene of the accident and see what could be done to help the injured.

Na joined her fellow Thais in trying to do what she little she could for the victims; trying to make them more comfortable, covering them with jackets and makeshift sheets that the people living and working nearby had quickly rustled up. She had forgotten that she was hungry. The shock of what had happened had jolted her to her very core, especially as she was almost certain that she knew the identity of the person who had caused this terrible mess.

Two men, both motorcycle taxi drivers, tried to open the front doors of the BMW, without success. Both doors were locked and wouldn’t budge. Na left off from helping the injured and joined the two men to peer inside the heavily darkened widow. She could just make out the figure of a farang inside, his head lying at an odd angle against a now partly deflated air bag. He was clearly unconscious, and as she looked closer, she confirmed her suspicions.

 

*

 

One of the men tried smashing the side window with a brick he found on the kerbside, but it didn’t even crack. By now, something akin to a lynch mob had surrounded the car and they were all trying, in different ways, to smash their way in, but the doughty ‘BM’ was having none of it.

Inside the car, Toby was slowly regaining consciousness. At first, he didn’t know where he was; he just felt some sharp stabs of pain in his legs, arms and face; but as he came to, he opened his eyes, looked at the airbag and realised that he was in his car and that he had been in bad accident. But he had no recollection of what had happened. Through his pain, he tried to think back. His memory gradually started to function. The last thing he remembered was walking along Beach Road, very drunk, looking for a friendly whore to take home with him. ‘What was he doing in his car? How had he got there? How had he managed to have an accident? He couldn’t remember a thing after that drunken stagger along the beach. Where the fuck was he?’

Then he looked up at the screaming Thais who had surrounded his car and were shouting and gesticulating at him. What were they shouting? He couldn’t make it out. He closed his eyes momentarily in a futile effort to force his brain to work a bit better. But nothing was coming, and to make matters worse, he was still very drunk – that was the only fact his alcohol-addled brain was able to register – that he was still mightily pissed, and that being pissed in charge of a car in an accident meant big trouble.

Then he opened his eyes again. ‘They don’t look very friendly’, he thought to himself. He finally realised they were screaming at him to unlock the door and  so he reached out to release the door lock before quickly thinking better of it. ‘This might not be a very good idea,’ he told himself. ‘Those people look like they want to string me up!’

He removed his hand from the side of the door and sank back down into his seat, which provoked an even louder hullabaloo from the angry crowd outside. His aches and pains were suddenly forgotten and he almost jumped out of his seat in panic when he saw some of the crowd yet again trying to break the windscreen with large lumps of concrete they had found nearby.

‘Jesus fucking Christ! They really mean to have me!’ he said under his breath.

He was on the point of literally ‘shitting’ himself when he caught the sight of two Thai men in police uniform, who were trying to force their way through the angry crowd to the side of the car. Never in his life had Toby been so happy to see the sight of two Thai cops. He watched as the two men came up alongside the driver’s window, and angrily gestured to him to unlock the door.

‘Will I be safe?’ he asked himself.

He soon realised that if he didn’t do as he was asked, sooner or later they would succeed in breaking in, so with much apprehension, he flipped the lock and the door was immediately swung wide open.

The pains from his injuries returned with a vengeance, as the two cops dragged him unceremoniously out of the car. Somehow, he managed to stand upright and for some unaccountable reason, the crowd backed away – staring at this farang who had caused all this ‘death and destruction’.

Toby looked a mess. Streaks of his long, thinning, blood-caked hair had stuck to his face and there was a nasty gash on his temple. He had several days’ growth of a stubbly beard on his chin and his dirty, beer-stained, white shirt was splattered with his own blood. The shirt was partly unbuttoned, revealing a sweaty, potbellied stomach and on the lower half of his body, he wore a pair of filthy, wrinkled jeans, which looked as though they had been slept in for the past week. To complete the picture, he had a single ‘flip-flop’ attached to his left foot, but his right foot was bare, rvealing a dirty foot with black, broken toe nails.

He looked at the scene in front of him. Despite the fact that he was still very drunk, the terrible realisation of what he must have done, started to dawn on him. He looked around , blinking his eyes in disbelief as he took in the sight of the four wrecked vehicles and the plight of the wounded and dying who were scattered all over the road.

‘My God!’ he muttered, ‘Holy fucking God! What the fuck have I done?’

The sound of a siren pierced the air. Two Sawang Boriboon ambulances were fast approaching the scene of the accident, driving the ‘wrong way’ along the one way road. It was the only way to get through, as by now, the road behind the accident had backed up for several kilometres, but in front, the road was virtually empty, except for these two ambulances that had by now arrived and were parking up alongside a police truck which had arrived moments earlier.

Toby watched as the two ambulances parked up and the drivers and medics ran over to the scene. He knew how these freelance rescue teams operated. The ambulances were little more than glorified ‘pick-ups’ and were privately owned by an organisation who received ‘commissions’ from local hospitals for bringing the sick and injured to their doors for treatment. The more expensive the hospital, the greater the commission, but they had to make sure that the ‘victims’ had the ability to pay, or they would be refused admission and the rescue workers would get nothing for their trouble.

The medics from one of the ambulances immediately started treating the injured passengers from the pick-up truck and two men from the second ambulance approached Toby to see what they could do. They had seen the BMW with its farang driver and immediately surmised that there would be an excellent commission in this if they could get him to the expensive Bangkok -Pattaya hospital.

Toby breathed a sigh of relief as soon as he saw the medics approaching him.

‘This is a stroke of luck,’ he thought.

Despite the presence of the two policemen, Toby knew that there was still an increasing danger of the situation becoming out of control. Many people from the crowd were looking at him in a hostile manner and he spoke enough Thai to know that they were very angry with him. It was by no means impossible that they would attack him and even kill him. It had happened before.

He wondered if he could persuade the medics to take him to one of the cheaper hospitals – for he knew he couldn’t afford the Bangkok- Pattaya – he was pretty much broke. He was starting to suspect that his injuries were more serious than they looked and it was thanks to the fact that he was still only partially awake and still very drunk, that he was able tolerate the pain.  He had to get out of there and into the emergency department of a hospital as soon as possible; these medics were the very people who could whisk him away and forestall any notions the crowd might have to turn into a lynch mob.

But the decision was taken out of his hands, as the two policemen, who were now holding onto Toby to stop him from collapsing, were having none of it. As far as they were concerned, they had arrested the drunken perpetrator of this criminal act and they were going to take him to Pattaya police station, just around the corner, so that he could be formerly charged and locked up. It would be up to their boss to decide whether to send him to hospital later.

Toby tried to object, but the cops didn’t care one iota about his injuries and told the ambulance men to go and attend to the remaining Thais lying on the road, who were still awaiting treatment.

Toby tried again, in drunken, bad Thai to persuade his captors to let him go in the ambulance, when Na, who was standing nearby and watching the proceedings with interest, decided to intercede. She pushed forward, towards the policemen. Toby looked at her, recognition dawning. He smiled a weak smile of relief at the familiar face, even though he vaguely recollected that the last time they had met, they had departed on very bad terms. But, he thought, ‘any straw in the wind’.

He decided that the arrival of Na must be a lucky break. Yes, his luck was definitely in, now he would have someone to help him. He tried to listen as Na, spoke to the police is fast, angry Thai, but he couldn’t make out what she was saying, so he interrupted, in desperation: ‘Na, thank God you are here. Please tell these cops to let me go to hospital in one of the ambulances. Look at me, I am badly injured – I need to see a doctor. I won’t run away. I promise…..’

Toby fumbled in his pocket and produced a plastic, laminated copy of his passport.  ‘Here give them this.’

Na looked at Toby’s pathetic, drunken face and the plastic card that he held out to her. She took it, gave it a cursory glance and threw it onto the ground in front of him.

‘Help you?’ Why the fuck should I help you?’ she snarled at him. ‘You weren’t very nice to me – were you – you drunken bastard! And now look at what you’ve done!’ she shouted, waving her arms at the scene in front of them.

‘You can’t get away it, not this time, Toby. I’ve told the cops to put you in cook and throw away the key. I hope you fucking die!!’

Toby was completely bewildered as Na’ stinging remarks sunk into his alcohol-sodden brain. ‘Why would she do that?  I was very good to her, before… before it all went wrong…’ he thought to himself.

The two policemen wasted no time in dragging Toby to the waiting police pick-up truck where they half carried and half threw him into the back. He lay there, in agony, knowing without doubt that he was in the worst trouble of his life. How the fuck was he going to get of this? He was left lying in his own blood for a few minutes while the police took notes and chatted to yet more police who had now arrived at the scene.

He was in serious shit and he was wondering  who in hell was going to get him out of this when he heard a voice, shouting at him in English. His heart missed a beat; that sounded like a farang. He tried to lift his head from the floor of the pick-up and looked outside, and saw two, middle aged, bald headed farangs staring at him.

Hey geezer! One of them shouted, are you the driver of that Beamer?’

Yes, I am! Thank God you’re here. Look, I’ve had a bad accident – I’m injured, but these fucking cops won’t let me go to hospital to get fixed up. I’m in serious trouble. They’re taking me to the police station – it’s only just round the corner.  Can you go round and meet me there? Maybe you can get hold of my wife for me? Anyway mate, can you help out a fellow Brit and see what you can do, please?

‘Meet you there? See what I can do? Mate? You must be fucking crazy! You just caused a mega accident and killed fuck-knows how many Thais and you want us to help you? Look at you! You’re a fucking piss-head… and … look what you’ve done! I hope you rot in jail, you stupid, drunken motherfucker….!’

The man spat into the road in front of him in disgust, and the pair stormed off into the crowd. Toby’s last chance of help faded away into the darkness of the early morning.

 

 

 

PART THREE – CHAPTER II

 

It had been a slow night in the Pattaya nick for Police Lieutenant Somkid and Station Sergeant Thongbow. There had been a few drunken, violent  farangs who had been picked up earlier on and who had generously made some kind ‘donations’ to the police benevolent funds, but since then, almost nothing.

Just the slow drip feed of tips, ranging from two to four hundred Baht, that had been obtained from farangs and Thais alike, who had been caught at the various police traps set up throughout the city to extract ‘fines’ from unsuspecting motorcyclists. Anything from failure to wear a crash helmet, to failure to produce required vehicle documents, or, when all else failed, failure to drive their bikes in accordance with Thai road traffic regulations would result in a small, off-the-record fine.  But this paltry, unofficial police income had to be shared between the entire Pattaya police force, and even on a good night, it barely provided each cop with the price of a decent meal, let alone assist them in making the monthly finance payments on their cars or bikes, or fund a good night out at one of the local karaoke bars.

Occasionally, drugs would be found in the belongings of a motorcyclist and this would double, treble, or in the case of a farang, produce ten-times the normal contribution to the police benevolent fund. Indeed, on a slow nights, the cops weren’t even averse to planting the odd yaba tablet – especially on farangs, to augment their meagre night’s takings, but in all cases involving drugs, they had to tread a fine line, as they didn’t want to upset their own ‘police-approved’ drug dealers who were allowed to trade in the city with immunity.

The Police Lieutenant was thinking dejectedly about the  seemingly never ending drop in police ‘income’ from ‘Walking Street’, the long pedestrian thoroughfare, jam- packed with go-go bars, massage parlours and other sex establishments located  in  the very heart of Pattaya’s red light district. There had been so many events in recent years which had played their part in  reducing the numbers of  sex-tourists in Pattaya.

The violent political conflicts , the world recession, the strengthening of the Thai baht, the Thai floods and goodness know what else had discouraged many tourists from coming. Sure there were plenty of Russians and other East Europeans, to say nothing of the large increase in Asian tourists, but the hard core sex tourists from Western Europe, Australia and The USA – the ones that keep all the seedy bars and bar girls in business, were becoming an ever rarer commodity. It would seem that all but the most hardened of farang sex- tourists had decided to stay at home or find cheaper, safer places to indulge their perverted pleasures. All this was bad news for the ‘boys in brown’ who relied on ‘gouging’ the bar owners and their customers to keep themselves in the style to which they had become accustomed.

Even the income from a hitherto inexhaustible supply of naive, farang bar owners was slowing up, as many of them had run out of money. They had either sold up or disappeared, leaving Thais in their place, who had little or no money to pay off the cops for perceived breeches of the law, such as illegal late closing or employing underage girls – or boys.

Then, to top it all, the fucking Bangkok cops had ‘invaded their turf’. They had descended on Walking Street and the surrounding sois, closing down everything in sight; extracting ‘on the spot fines’ from anyone who looked as though they could afford to pay: bar owners, bar staff, tourists, anyone.

This massive raid had occurred the previous weekend and had upset the delicate balance of the semi-lawless community; from the tourists to the bar owners to the shopkeepers to the hotel owners and of course, the local police. The police co-existed with the local community with a tacit understanding on how each party would behave , what laws could be broken and how much had to be paid in order to be ‘left alone’. Now this uneasy co-existence in the finances of the community had been upset by the fucking bastards from Bangkok. As a direct result of this raid, the bar owners had no money left to pay the Pattaya police and the police had no money to finance their lifestyles.

Somkid’s boss, the soon-to-retire Police Major Chamlong and the ‘big’ boss, the ambitious Police Colonel Aroon, had been furious and had vowed revenge on the bastards from Bangkok. But he knew that the police forces throughout Thailand were hurting. In normal circumstances the Bangkok cops would never have dared to muscle in on Pattaya’s turf. They were clearly desperate – as was the handsome young lieutenant Somkid, whose debts were mounting by the day.

These thoughts were still running though his mind as he spotted one of his police vehicles drive in and park up in the station car park, just off Beach Road. He watched as two of his constables climbed out and walked round to the back of the vehicle where they were now trying to drag a half conscious farang out of the vehicle and into the police station. His sergeant had told him half an hour earlier that there had been a nasty pile up on the adjacent second road, just behind the police station, so he had dispatched a couple of police trucks out to get the road cleared. At this late hour, he had assumed that the accident would have involved purely Thai drivers and he hadn’t expected much in the way of tea-money from it.

But here they were, dragging an injured, elderly farang into the station and his interest suddenly picked up. Maybe this farang had some money – maybe a lot of money. There was a twinkle in his eye and the makings of a smile on his lips as his two constables succeeded in getting the farang into the station where they dumped him into a chair, opposite the long counter where the eager Lieutenant was now sitting.

 

***

 

Toby was in agony. The shock of what had been happening was rapidly sobering him up, and the pain from his injuries was becoming ever more pronounced. The journey in the police truck had been mercifully short, but long enough to shake him and send him flying onto one side of the truck when the driver had taken the left turn into Beach Road at speed. When they had arrived, he couldn’t move and the two officers had to lift him out of the back where his legs dropped onto the ground, jarring his injuries yet again. They then dragged him with his face facing downwards and his toes and tops of his feet rubbing along the ground, scraping off his skin as they went along. He was grateful to be at long last in a chair where he could rest his badly injured body.

The two constables quickly briefed the Police Lieutenant on the background of the accident, and although Toby could only understand a little of what was being said, he did catch the words ‘BM’ and saw a smile appear on the face of the Lieutenant. When the three had stopped conversing, Somkid looked at Toby, and spoke to him in English.

‘You! Passport!

Toby replied in Thai. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t have my passport with me – it’s at home.’

He rifled in his pocket for the small, laminated copy he always carried with him. Then he remembered. He had given it to Na but she had thrown it on the ground.

‘My God! What do I do now?’ he wondered.

He was trying to explain to the officer that someone had thrown his ID away, when one of the constables put his hand in his back pocket and produced the missing piece of plastic and handed it over to his superior.

‘I found it on the ground next to him.’ He said in Thai. ‘He must have been too drunk to know he had thrown it away,’ he added, laughing.

Toby breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of his ‘ID’ and made a grab for it, but Somkid was having none of it.’

‘No! I keep this!’ he snapped at Toby in English.

He looked at Toby, trying to assess the man and determine how much he might be worth.

Driving licence!’ he shouted.

‘I – I haven’t got it. I lost it a few months ago.’ He replied, now speaking in English.

In truth, Toby had lost it one drunken night over a year ago and he wasn’t even sure if it was still valid. He had told himself over and over again to sort it out and get a replacement, but his drinking always took precedence and he hadn’t yet managed to get round to it.

‘Toby! You in big trouble!’

He knew that.

‘You drunk! You have bad accident! You kill Thai people! You go to jail for long time – very long time…..’

Toby looked at the officer. He didn’t know what to say.

After a few moments of silence, the officer continued.

‘Toby! You married? You have Thai wife?’

‘Yes, I have Thai wife,’ he replied.

‘OK, you call her. Tell her to come here. I want talk with her.’

Toby felt in jeans pocket and breathed a sigh of relief when he found his mobile phone. He pulled it out and it was still switched on with one bar of battery life remaining. He was on the point of calling Ying, when he thought better of it. He looked at the officer.

‘I – I’m sorry. We not live together. She – she won’t answer my call. I know she won’t.’

‘Why? Why she not answer?

‘Because she hates me’ She won’t come here – I am sure!’

Somkid thought for a few moments. He would never tell a farang that he wanted money, a bribe. It had to be done through a third person – a Thai. He knew how to speak to a Thai – using certain ‘code words’ that indicated that money might solve a particular problem, without completely incriminating himself. It was the way it was always done. If Toby was a Thai, he could talk the ‘coded’ talk, but to a farang, in English?  Never. He had to talk to his wife or to a Thai go-between. He looked back at Toby.

‘This man must have money’, he thought, ‘He was driving a BM, wasn’t he?’

He leaned across to Toby. ‘Your phone; give me your phone!’

Toby did as he was bid.

‘Your wife name? What her name?’

‘Ying.’

And number?

Toby told him Ying’s number, one of the few that he knew by heart, but with little hope that his wife would answer a call from his number.

Somkid dialled the number, waited a moment and then nodded to Toby and spoke into his phone.

The conversation was in Thai, but Toby got the gist of it. The cop was telling Ying that if she didn’t come down to the police station, Toby would be locked up, and he might even die.

Toby wondered what Ying’s reaction would be to this startling piece of news.

Somkid closed the phone and put it on the table in front of him.

There was a long silence.

‘Is she coming? Is my wife coming?’

On the spur of the moment, the financially distressed lieutenant looked at Toby and decided to break a rule of a lifetime.

‘Toby! You have money?’

‘Money? Why? What about my wife?’

‘Your wife say: ‘Fuck You!’ She not come! I want money –  now! – or you go cook!’

Toby started to shake in fear, he couldn’t stop himself, he was truly petrified.

‘I – I no have money…’ I’m broke!’ he muttered, in English.

‘No money? You drive BM and you no have money! You gohock!’

‘No, I not gohock – I’m not lying. It’s… it’s complicated…. But there’s no money in my bank….’

Somkid was becoming angry. He wasn’t going to get any money from this fucking farang. He stood up, suddenly becoming bored with the whole, miserable affair.

‘OK, Toby! You drunk, you no have driving licence, you have accident, you no have money! You – farang – go to cook!!’ he screamed in English at Toby and immediately barked orders to his sergeant and the two constables to take Toby away.

Toby knew that the Thai word for jail was cook, and at the repeated sound of the dreaded word , his heart, which was already beating at the rate of knots, suddenly felt that it was about to explode.

‘No! No! No!’ he screamed at the Lieutenant who was now towering, angrily over him from the other side of the counter.

‘You have money?’ he asked, for the final time.

‘No…but….’

Somkid looked at the grovelling, filthy, dishevelled, drunken, pot-bellied ‘dead-beat’ in front of him and he grimly concluded that despite the fact that he was at the wheel of a BMW, that maybe he was speaking the truth – maybe he had no money. He certainly didn’t look as though he had any.

‘Take him away’, he shouted to his men, ‘And make sure this shitting farang isn’t given any help in there. He is a fucking drunk killer and I want him to suffer!’

With that, Somkid picked up Toby’s phone from the table, dropped it into his pocket and strode away in disgust, effectively washing his hands of the whole sordid business.

The three non-commissioned officers grabbed hold of Toby – two at his shoulders and one at his feet – lifted him off the chair and manhandled him up the stair-case to the second floor, where the Pattaya holding cell was located. Once back on level ground they dropped his feet onto the floor and dragged him across to the waiting cell, and threw him inside.

The whole incident, including the rough handling he had just received, was too much for Toby’s injured sick body and when his head hit the hard, concrete prison floor with a dull thud, he completely lost consciousness.

 

***

 

When he slowly came to, he didn’t know how long he had been lying there and within seconds, the tortuous pains from all parts of his body returned with a vengeance. He opened his blood -caked eyes and looked around. He could see a heavily barred window on the opposite side of the large cell, through which the sun was now shining. He was in the shade, but there was no fan and he immediately felt the humid heat permeating his weary body; the cell was rapidly becoming stiflingly hot. He looked around and discovered that that floor space next to three of the four cell walls was occupied by maybe eight or nine Thai prisoners; either sitting against the wall or lying down; but strangely, in the vicinity of the fourth wall, he could only make out a single, well dressed, middle aged man, who was the sole occupant of the entire area.

Despite his injuries, Toby felt the need to sit up and lean against a wall. He decided to drag himself over to the wall that only had one occupant, as he had also noticed that for some unaccountable reason, the floor space near to that wall was also a lot cleaner.  The remainder of the floor area was littered with refuse and stunk to high heaven, but the area next to the well-dressed man was spotless by comparison. As he inched himself towards the ‘empty wall’, he was suddenly assailed on all sides by his fellow inmates who angrily screamed at him, not to go there. He stopped and looked at them.

‘What’s wrong? What have I done? He croaked at them in Thai.

‘You can’t go there!’ They shouted at him. ‘That area is reserved for special prisoners, not dirty, filthy farangs like you. Stay away from there or you will be sorry…’

They told him in no uncertain terms that the clean floor space and the entire far wall was reserved for ‘police friends’, a code word for people with money and influence – almost invariably drug dealers – and that if he tried to go near there again he would get beaten up. He was still feeling groggy, but the message got through. The clean wall on the far side of the cell was a ‘no-go’ area.

He looked for a small space against one of the other walls amongst the filth and mess, but every time he tried to manoeuvre himself into a gap, he was kicked and slapped and he had move away again. Eventually, he gave up. He didn’t have the strength to try any longer and he just sunk back down again onto the hard, unforgiving concrete in the middle of the cell.

He closed his eyes, trying to blank out the pains that were racking his tired, injured body. He felt his heart; it was racing along at well over 100 beats to the minute. It had been more than twenty-four hours since he had taken his beta blockers and other heart meds that usually kept his heart rate under control. He was so tired and sleepy, despite the fact that he must have slept for several hours when he was first thrown in the cell, and he knew that this was at least partly due to his high blood sugars. He was a diabetic and was supposed to inject insulin four times daily to keep his blood sugars at normal levels, but all his medical stuff was in his bag, presumably buried in the wreckage of his car.

His car; he remembered seeing it before he was thrown into the back of the police truck. It was a terrible mess, as were the vehicles he had hit. He was suddenly seized by another panic. If he couldn’t produce his driving licence, his insurance company would refuse to pay; the Thai insurers had become very strict on this. He was in very bad shit. If the insurer wouldn’t pay, he would be held personally liable, but he had no money – it was all gone. His last remaining asset was his car – and now that was probably worthless.

Toby was slowly sobering up and the awful realisation of his dire plight began to sink in. In spite of his injuries, abnormal blood pressure and high blood sugars, he was starting to feel a bit peckish. He hadn’t eaten for at least twenty four hours, certainly not since he had started his drunken binge a day or so back. But he knew he had little or no chance of getting anything palatable to eat in this God forsaken police cell.

He had suffered from severe stomach upsets for years – one of his many chronic medical problems – but he was still able to eat Thai food, provided it wasn’t too spicy and had been properly prepared.  But he knew that after all the problems with his digestive system, no doubt brought on by a lifetime of alcohol abuse, he would never be able to keep down the unhygienic Thai gruel that they would offer him in while he was in custody, if indeed they offered him anything at all. He had heard many stories of prisoners in Thai jails starving, if they had no money to buy decent food.

What a fucking mess! He realised with a blinding certainty that with his severe health problems and his weak, medically untreated condition, he wouldn’t last more than a few days if he wasn’t released from custody. He was staring death in the face. Why? Why had it come to this? –  lying on the hard, concrete floor of a police cell in thirty six degree heat and unbearably high humidity;  He was a criminal, with no money and no family or friends to rescue him or even ease his plight. He knew he deserved to die – but like this?

He closed his eyes and his mind began to wander – a long way back, to the time when he was a child – a child of post-war, dour, economically depressed England – a ‘baby boomer’ who had grown up during the longest period of sustained peace that the world had ever known. Such a long time ago – such a different world…