I Watson: Director's cut

“Good evening,” he muttered absently over his gin and tonic with a slice of lemon. No lime for the juniper in Roger’s boozer. The colonel’s mind was on other things. “The EU could be a problem. The krauts and the frogs could be a problem.” He shook his preoccupied head. His thin rheumatoid fingers gripped the glass and carried it to his thin lips. The old eyes that had once looked out over the wavering desert and had seen the sun glint on Rommel’s halftracks and Panzers, shifted from Mr Lawrence to Roger. At length he said, “They blew up the allotments, you know?”

“The allotments? The French? The Germans?”

“No, not the frogs or the krauts. A shed on the allotments. Probably the Greens. Somebody doesn't like their greens.”

Rasher was there. A fly-by-night sort, Rasher, granted the handle because his father was from Denmark. He was thick-bodied and blue-eyed and covered in gold: earrings, chains, medallions, rings, watch, name-plate. He looked like a wealthy gypsy. His mother had been a fortune-teller from Hackney who somehow, only God knows how, got mixed up with a cold wood-cutting Scandinavian. His clothes were beautifully cut and his shoes were hand-stitched. He wore waistcoats and red braces. He gripped the bar, hands either side of a glass of strong ale. He spent his day in the same position, until closing when his minders helped him out. Only his grip tightened as the day wore on. He had been there for nine months, ever since his pregnant wife had left him. There were photographs of her to remind him, in the bus shelters and in shop windows. Missing, they said. Have you seen this woman, they asked. People who knew Rasher wondered whether his mother had predicted his bad fortune.

“Good evening, Rasher.”

Rasher nodded thoughtfully. Perhaps it was a good evening, perhaps it was.

There was a safety in The British reminiscent of the bomb shelters during the war and in there were the same weary expressions, pale in the gloom, in the manufactured wattage. Yellow faces in the yellow light bouncing off the nicotine yellow ceiling. And not a Chinese in sight. Chinese didn’t use the boozers; too many old soldiers in the boozers who would mistake them for Japanese.

Albert frowned as a younger, much shorter man – more of a boy, really – told him, “Got out Wednesday, didn't I?”

“On Wednesday you got out. Strange. That you expect me to know.

How would I know? From Adam, I don't know you, so how should I know when you got out?” Puzzlement crossed the youngster’s pale brow and narrowed his blue-grey eyes and he uttered, “Come again?”

“Come again? Come where, again?”

“What are you talking about?”

“A question you asked me. How would I know that you got out on Wednesday? I didn't know that you'd been in.” Albert looked down at the younger man. He bent forward, as tall men often do. “Just told you, didn't I?”

“Did you? Did you?” Albert nodded and drank some beer then said, “So, you went away for eighteen months and on Wednesday you came back. Miss you, I didn't. Like I said, I didn't even know you'd gone. Did you miss him, Colonel?”

The colonel offered a critical glance and said disapprovingly, “A.W.L., eh? Don't approve. Jankers, my lad, for you.”

Albert sighed. “AWOL, I think it is. There you are, an old soldier even, mistakes can make. Rasher, what do you think? Rasher?”

Rasher didn't move.

“Well, Rasher?”

From the corner of Rasher's mouth came, “Don'tgiveafuck!” And that was true. There was only one thing that Rasher cared about and she was so distant now that in the dark he forgot what she looked like. Albert nodded slyly and his gaze fell on Mr Lawrence. He thought better of asking his opinion and turned back to the young man who, standing on one leg with the other wrapped around his calf, was waiting patiently.

“So, on Wednesday you got out. For what did you go in?”

“Stitched up, wasn't I?”

“Were you? How did I know that?”

“Filth put a bag of tools in my hand and threw me in a car. A police car. They punched my head in so that I didn't hit my head on the…the door, the door, like…?”

“Frame?”

“Yeah, that's good, the door frame. Is that what it's called on a car?”

Albert pulled up his eyebrows and for a moment they hid the deep lines on his forehead. “Took me down to the nick and put the boot in. Kept booting till I signed up for twelve months. Well, eighteen months actually. Got six off for good behaviour.”

“And now?”

“Straight, innI? Learned my lesson. Mustn't accept gifts from the filth.”

With a huge hand Albert patted the young man's back.

“That's good. Good, that is,” he said. “Two lives we should live, one for rehearsal. Then sorry we wouldn't keep saying. Still, you are young enough to start again but, unfortunately, not old enough to learn by your mistakes. Some people never learn, no matter how old they get.” He glanced across at Mr Lawrence.

Roger noticed that in his profundity Albert had stopped sounding Jewish.

Albert went on, “Where are you living now?”

“That's the problem, innit?” The young man's face dropped.

“Squattin' down Avenue Road, know it?”

Albert blew out his cheeks. His whiskers separated, stood out as though they'd been shot with static and, only slowly gathered together again. “Avenue Road, Ticker Harrison runs.” The Jew had returned. “Squatting on his manor is not healthy. No sir, not to be recommended. Ticker Harrison is a dangerous man. More than that, even, he's a fucking dangerous man.”

Roger interrupted, “I told you I don’t want any fucking in this boozer. I’ve got a wife and daughter upstairs. Blair’s bringing in a fucking law to outlaw bad language along with smoking. He’s going to put me out of business but does he care? The only thing he cares about is Bush, and I’m not talking about Cherie’s bush either. I’m not surprised the bastard’s turning Catholic. For what he’s done for this country he’ll need to spend the rest of his life in the confessional box.”

Albert shook his head and sent dandruff flying. He looked at the youngster out of calculating eyes and said, “I was saying, Ticker Harrison is a dangerous man.”

“That's it, innit? The kids in there, makes me feel old, half of them out of their heads. Sniffin', snortin'. At their age. I ask you? In trouble, innI?”

“Problems. I know just what you mean. Children and wives you need, ethnic parentage, an asylum seeker you need to be or, you need to have capital with which to bribe the housing authorities. Then all right you'd be. I fear it's Cardboard City for you, my son. Written all over you, it is. On your face is the address. Capital letters. Cardboard City.” Albert's huge hand gripped the young man's shoulder before he went on, “Now, if by chance you should happen on a few trinkets, things that sparkle in the night, then into instant readies I could turn them. Then Cardboard City would remain a distant place. Now, to welcome you back, a drink I will buy you.” He caught the cold eye of a girl in a tight black skirt. “Miss,” he said firmly. “Put a half a pint into this young man's pint pot.”

The youngster watched the girl bend to pull his drink and fixed his gaze on the curve of her cleavage. He'd been inside too long, forgotten the subtleties of light and shade, of big and bigger.

Albert said, “Strapped across that, you would like to get, I bet.”

The young man nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, I would.”

“Find the trinkets, my son. Girls like that, barmaids in particular, like men with bulging pockets.” At pub closing time the local restaurants filled up quickly. Chinese and Indian were three doors apart and midway between The British and the Gallery. Squeezed between the Hong Kong House and the Spice of India were a launderette, a DVD rental shop and a pet shop.