Barry Walsh - The Pimlico Kid

For Bronwen

Also for my father, Thomas Walsh and my brother, Terry Walsh. The best men I’ve known are the first men I knew.

In memory of Sarah McCormack (1978–2006), a wonderful Pimlico Kid.

“Footfalls echo in the memory

Down the passage which we did not take”

From Burnt Norton, T.S. Eliot

Table of Contents

Title Page BARRY WALSH The Pimlico Kid

Dedication For Bronwen Also for my father, Thomas Walsh and my brother, Terry Walsh. The best men I’ve known are the first men I knew. In memory of Sarah McCormack (1978–2006), a wonderful Pimlico Kid.

Epigraph “Footfalls echo in the memory Down the passage which we did not take” From Burnt Norton, T.S. Eliot

Prologue – October 1975 Prologue – October 1975 Taunton 20 miles. The road sign slips past and another, listing local villages, glides towards me. One name stands out like my own on a guest list. A door into the past swings open and releases a locked-away ache. The car slows, behind me a horn blares. I pull into a lay-by. Lower Sinton: part of an address written above two kiss crosses on a sheet of lined paper. I have never been here but I know it from what she told me: narrow lanes of pale yellow cottages; black window boxes crammed with flowers; main street pavements that rose three feet above the road. Her grandmother’s house stood next to the village post office and in the road outside her father’s black Humber gleamed. Beyond the back garden lay the wide meadow and further still there was the river. She spent her holidays here: where the sun always shone. When she returned to London, I marvelled at her golden skin and the extra light that had crept into her hair. It’s what happened in Somerset. It should have been Summerset. I close my eyes. Back they come. First, as always, her face: bright, elfin, thanks to a short hairstyle, known at the time as Italian Boy . Beside her, my friend is making a circle with thumb and forefinger to tell me that everything is OK. And the other girl, with shining blue eyes, is hiding a smile behind her hand. Scar reverts to wound. I tell myself, again, that we were children; that we couldn’t have prevented what happened; that when the most we might have been expected to deal with was a first kiss or a dying grandparent, we were undone by love itself, and violence – and that adults betrayed us. Childhood love can endure but childhood promises are hard to keep.

London: August 1963 London

Fabulous Flesh

Fish, Fags and Devil Cat

Back Seat Dreams

Strength, Thrift and Gigli

Comanche Spite

Size Matters

Jubblies, Pigeons and Lies

Beach Magic and Sunray Stories

Bikini Close-Up

Books, Empires and Dickens

Female Company

A Man’s Life

Indian Camp Raid

Front Row Touch-Up

Different Dads

Kissing Khrushchev

Fish Paste and Flaming Turds

Race Lessons

Drowning and Denying

Bodyline Cricket

Headlong

Truth

Promises

Teamwork

Friends

Shaking Hands

Revenge Deferred

Haircuts and Maltesers

Bargains and Casualties

Making Audie Proud

Blood

Aftermath

Revelation

Forgiveness

Losing and Finding

Last Request

Epilogue – October 1975

Acknowledgements

Coming in 2014 from Barry Walsh – Love Me Do

W6 Book Café

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Taunton 20 miles. The road sign slips past and another, listing local villages, glides towards me. One name stands out like my own on a guest list. A door into the past swings open and releases a locked-away ache. The car slows, behind me a horn blares. I pull into a lay-by.

Lower Sinton: part of an address written above two kiss crosses on a sheet of lined paper. I have never been here but I know it from what she told me: narrow lanes of pale yellow cottages; black window boxes crammed with flowers; main street pavements that rose three feet above the road. Her grandmother’s house stood next to the village post office and in the road outside her father’s black Humber gleamed. Beyond the back garden lay the wide meadow and further still there was the river. She spent her holidays here: where the sun always shone. When she returned to London, I marvelled at her golden skin and the extra light that had crept into her hair. It’s what happened in Somerset. It should have been Summerset.

I close my eyes. Back they come. First, as always, her face: bright, elfin, thanks to a short hairstyle, known at the time as Italian Boy . Beside her, my friend is making a circle with thumb and forefinger to tell me that everything is OK. And the other girl, with shining blue eyes, is hiding a smile behind her hand.

Scar reverts to wound. I tell myself, again, that we were children; that we couldn’t have prevented what happened; that when the most we might have been expected to deal with was a first kiss or a dying grandparent, we were undone by love itself, and violence – and that adults betrayed us.

Childhood love can endure but childhood promises are hard to keep.

High summer in Pimlico. After days of fierce sunshine, the meagre lawns of the prefabs in Grimsdyke Street are bleached and balding. A breeze churns the baked urban air and releases a faint, blended odour of street dust and dried dog shit.

In the afternoon heat, even the flying ants are walking. Rooksy and I have stopped moving altogether. We’re draped over the chest-high wall of Madge Smith’s garden, savouring the smell of wet soil in her hosed flowerbeds, and admiring her lush, watered grass.

I rest my head on my arms. It would be easy to fall asleep on the hard-sponge bricks, except that Madge is here. We pretend not to look as she bends to set down the large basket of washing on her terrace, which is an extension of the concrete slab on which the prefab stands. Rooksy props his chin on his hands. Sweat beads down his face in glistening lines. He sucks in air around his clenched teeth, and sighs. ‘Do you think Madge would show us her tits if we asked her nicely?’

‘Jesus, not so loud!’

Rooksy says thrilling things but he has sod-all volume control. Madge hasn’t heard what he’s said but her frown makes it clear that she wouldn’t have liked it. I ignore his question, but it’s got me wondering, again: what is it about tits? Hearing the word said aloud excites in a way that bosoms can’t. Mum has bosoms, so does my Aunt Winnie; hers are enormous and stretch her cream blouses and twin sets with more weight than push. Madge has tits.

How, and at what point, they become bosoms is a bit of a mystery. Perhaps they are tits that are no longer exciting? For now, imagining Madge naked from the waist up makes speech difficult and, not for the first time, Rooksy has conjured up images that I’ll be thinking about later.

He straightens up. ‘You know, I think she might. She must be so proud of them.’

‘Don’t be stupid, Rooksy.’

Madge will be doing no such thing. She’s little Jojo’s mum, and she isn’t much younger than mine.

He closes his eyes. ‘Oh the fabulous flesh.’

‘Rooksy, please!’

I turn away but he puts his arm around my shoulders and steers me back to stand alongside him as if we’re in a urinal. Madge glides to her back door where she lifts a cloth peg bag from its hook and returns to drop it on top of the washing.

Rooksy starts moving up and down against the wall, forcing me lower as he rises and shoving me up as he drops. I resist but after a few upward scrapes against the warm bricks, I’m moving under my own steam. A ‘love it, can’t bear it’ feeling grows in my groin and Rooksy’s tight smile makes him look as if he’s trying to whistle through a Polo mint.