part of t’ main gang. Craner pushed his glasses further up his nose and seeing me smirking, shouted in his favoured mocking tone, ‘Still here, Mr Thorpe?’
I unhinged the bonnet support strut and let the bonnet crash down. Craner flinched.
‘Good as gone, Mr Craner, good as, just waiting for Eric.’ I nodded toward t’ toilets. ‘He’s just taking a dump.’
I climbed into t’ cab to wait on Eric. In truth, I wor wary of Craner. Craner and Mitch went way back. I gobbed out onto some sawdust by t’ van wheel. It brassed me off, being in Mitch’s grip, but I also knew that Craner owed Mitch for summat. A little back-scratching, a little palm-greasing, and here I wor, my first proper job. Most times Craner wor holed up in his depot fiefdom, so it worn’t as if he could come check up on me. Although wi’ Craner you never knew, Craner seemed to have his spies everywhere.
‘Boo!’
‘Jeeeesus fuck, Eric!’
‘Ready?’
‘MIS–TER FAW–LEY!’
‘Craner wants you, Eric.’
‘The four-eyed fart. BE RIGHT WI’ YOU, MR CRANER!’
Eric scuttled over to Craner, flattening his hair wi’ one hand and tucking in his shirt-tail wi’ t’other. Craner liked to make you feel t’ wrath of God wor about to fall on your head, then deliver some quiet little aside about owt and nowt. Craner’s way. Eric wor playin’ out the game. He picked up the round-book and the float, and turned to grin at me, swinging t’ van keys round his forefinger.
‘Ready, Mr Thorpe?’
‘Ready, Mr Fawley.’
We wor done by late afternoon, so I got Eric to drop me off in town. I waited for t’ van to turn at the lights, then hurried on up Woodhouse Lane.
To see t’ Matterhorn Man.
I’d first met the Matterhorn Man that summer, just shy of my sixteenth birthday. He lived at 5 Blandford Gardens, a short cul-de-sac Victorian terrace. Almost no one in t’ Corona round-book had a proper name; most wor identified by some peculiar or particular feature: fist knocker, fishing gnome, third blue door, rabid mutt, buck teeth woman.
I’d been idly peering through t’ front bay of 5 Blandford Gardens when I spotted a mural covering one entire wall, a photo of a mountain, rising snowcapped against a blue block of sky. Same as I’d seen on a calendar in our local Indian takeaway.
So I scrawled in t’ round-book: ‘Matterhorn Man’.
Matterhorn Man wor a thin, gimlet-eyed Scot wi’ a small, dark moustache and sideburns. One bottle of Coke and a bottle of tonic water every week.
Most weeks our van would reach Blandford Gardens in t’ early afternoon. Often as not the Matterhorn Man would open t’ door in his cordless dressing gown, holdin’ it together wi’ one hand while he fished in a small velvet drawstring pouch for change. Then one day he said, ‘Come in a wee mo’, won’t you?’
Not wanting to appear rude or owt, I stepped into his hallway. Onto t’ hallway runner wi’ t’ wear hole. He skedaddled into t’ kitchen out back and came back wi’ t’ change and an empty. His dressing gown fell open. He had a lean, hirsute torso and thin, dark legs. His underpants wor a washed-out mauve.
Every week he held me up, rummaging for change, proffering up titbits about himsen. So I learnt that his name wor Jim, that he wor twenty-six year old, the sixth of eight brothers and sisters, all t’ rest of ’em still up in Scotland save for t’ one, who’d emigrated to Canada. That he worked the graveyard shift in a bikkie factory, ‘putting the hearts in Jammie Dodgers’, and that’s why I always caught him half-dressed, or in his dressing gown, and that he used to have a lodger, but they’d argued over t’ rent and so Jim lived alone now.
As Jim wor placing a florin into my grubby palm, he murmured quickly, ‘Why don’t you drop by a wee bit later on?’
‘What?’
The question took me unawares, surfacing all of a sudden like a shark from t’ depths. I felt t’ blood whooshing to my cheeks. In Jim’s face I saw t’ horror of a man who’d misread a situation. The door wor beginning to close.
‘No, wait. But I can’t say when I finish. It might be a bit late.’
‘I start work at seven.’
I nodded. ‘If we make good time, I can be here before then.’
Jim scuttled about t’ living room, tidying up, while I looked on nervously, wondering to mesen if I should have come at all. Then he went to t’ kitchen to brew up tea. While I waited on him I let my thoughts wander. I sat on t’ sofa edge at the foot of t’ Matterhorn mural like I wor in a photographer’s waiting room. I imagined mesen being photographed in front of it – ‘Mr Thorpe, over ’ere …’ the flashbulbs blitzing, the world’s press thrusting forward, all jostling for my attention: ‘Richard Thorpe! Over here, Mr Thorpe!’ ‘Richard! Richard, just one more photo for … for … the World News.’ Click. Flash. Flash. Click. ‘Richard Thorpe, how does it feel to be the first man to conquer the Matterhorn single-handed and without a rope?’
‘Hey, be careful there, you’ll knock your tea over.’
‘Oh, sorry, I wor just …’
I flushed furiously. Jim beamed his easy smile and sat beside me. He took a sip from his tea and set it down on t’ flecked brown-and-orange rug. We stared straight ahead like an old couple on a park bench. I caught t’ strong whiff of his aftershave, which he must have splashed on for my benefit while he wor out in t’ kitchen. A woman passed by t’ bay window, a blur of raincoat and headscarf, a brief shadow across t’ room.
‘Ta for t’ tea.’
‘You’re most welcome.’
Silence mushroomed. I wor missing Doctor Who. I’d be late for dinner.
I picked up my tea, took a sip, put it down, picked it up again, sipped, set it down. I feigned interest in t’ row of scraggy paperbacks propped between two wooden bookends: Valley of the Dolls, In Youth is Pleasure, Myra Breckinridge.
‘I can’t stay long,’ I murmured, my head still cocked toward t’ book titles.
I felt a hand settle on my leg, as if it had fluttered down to rest. Giovanni’s Room, The Persian Boy, The Plays of Tennessee Williams … my head wor being gently yet firmly turned away from t’ books by a man’s palm. My face wor too close to his to focus. I knew at once that I wor about to be kissed. I leaned toward him, allowing it, wanting it.
The kiss felt strange. The neat moustache brushed against my mouth, the lips moist, the tongue wor warm wi’ … I pulled away.
‘No sugar!’
‘Sorry?’
‘You don’t have sugar in yer tea!’
‘Sugar? Aye, I don’t. Shall I rinse out my mouth?’
I glanced uncertainly out the window.
‘Nope, it’s fine.’
‘Aye, well, if you’re sure now?’
‘Certain.’
And as if to show him that I wor, I kissed him again, a long, slow and exploratory kiss, while reaching down to place my hand on Matterhorn Man’s evident stiffy.
‘Shall we go upstairs a wee while?’
‘Upstairs?’
And so it started. The Saturday afternoons after work. The curtains drawn against t’ fading day. Lying naked on purple nylon sheets.
The name, I wor to discover, wor apt, cos the Matterhorn Man’s erect cock had a kink in it, a bit like t’ mountain itsen.