Wasted Years (3 page)

“What I want to do,” Prior was saying, “start my life over again, do things right, before it’s too late.”

“Of course, I understand.” Second chances, second lives, they were very much what Peter Hewitt was about. One of the two men killed on board the
Argonaut
had been celebrating his eighteenth birthday that day. No second chances in his life. Hewitt hated the waste, the brave waste.

“Exactly,” he said again. “I do understand.”

Prior looked into his face directly, held his gaze. “Good,” he said several seconds later. “Good. Because too much of my life has been wasted. There are things I want to do while I still have the time.”

Four

Darren knew about prisons. YOIs anyway. Young Offender Institutions. Places like Glen Parva, where, if you didn’t find a way of topping yourself in the first few months, chances were you learned enough to graduate into the big time.

Glen Parva: that’s where he’d met Keith. Walked into his cell, free time, thinking to scrounge a snout and there was Keith, all five-five of him, struggling to loop his towel around one end of the upturned bed.

“What the fuck d’you think you’re up to?” Darren had yelled. One thing for certain, what Keith hadn’t been doing, devoting himself to spring cleaning.

Keith’s only answer had been to hide the towel behind his back and blub: tears like some six-year-old caught offing sweets from the corner shop.

“You don’t want to do that,” Darren had said, sitting on Keith’s bunk. “Give these bastards the satisfaction of cutting you down. How much longer you got to do, anyway?”

“Couple of months.”

“You’ll get through that.”

Keith hung his head. “I won’t.”

Darren looked at him, pathetic little bugger, sticky-out ears and soft skin and hands like a child’s. No wonder they’d been at him again in the showers, gang-banging him most likely, smearing smuggled-in-lipstick round his mouth before making him suck them off.

“S’okay,” Darren had said. “I’ll look out for you. Anyone tries anything, let them know they got to deal with me.”

Keith was looking at him in wonder. “Why d’you want to do that?” he asked.

Darren had seen this film once, staying at his sister’s, Sutton-in-Ashfield, Western it’d been. This soldier, cavalry spurs and saber and yellow stripes, big deal, he saves the life of some Indian chief and after that the Indian follows him everywhere, waiting for the chance to do the same for him. Some kind of crazy blood brothers. Shit! That wasn’t what it was like with Keith and him. Reason Darren hung around with Keith after they were released, nothing to do with that old bollocks. What he put up with Keith for, there wasn’t nothing Keith didn’t know about cars. No car he couldn’t nick.

Crossing towards the parade of shops, lunchtime, Darren looked at his watch: one fifty-four. If Keith was late, he’d take his legs off at the knees. Laughing aloud: poor sod was any shorter he’d be underground.

Keith had cased the multi-story from top to bottom: nice Orion worth making off with, owner obligingly leaving the parking ticket sticking out of the ashtray. All Keith had to do at the exit was hand over a quid—as cars came, this was cheap at the price.

What he hadn’t reckoned on was road works on the ring road, single-lane traffic, and there he was, trapped behind some geriatric in a Morris Minor—nice motor, though, well looked after, likely worth more now than when it was new.

Keith knew full well Darren would be less than happy. No way he was going to make it on time now. Working the horn wasn’t going to make a scrap of difference. Boring, aside from anything else, not even a radio to listen to. Almost the first thing he’d noticed, sizing up the car, some bastard’d already had the radio away, torn wires all over the place, owner too tight to get it replaced.

The road suddenly widened and Keith stood on the accelerator. Too close to two for comfort: Darren wasn’t going to be worth speaking to.

It had been a pizza place last time Darren had been there. Deep dish or thin ’n’ crispy. Hawaiian a speciality. Darren had made the mistake of having one once. Pineapple chunks that stuck in your throat like gobbets of vomit: ground beef and gristle a dog wouldn’t cock its leg to piss on.

Before that, what? A Chinese chippy. Paki sweet shop. When he was a kid, one of them bakers where they sold stale cobs in bags of three, half price, the morning after—cheese and onion or turkey breast or haslet with a touch of Branston pickle.

Across the street the Co-op offices had been bulldozed flat to make way for a spanking new DIY superstore—three floors of wallpaper, fake Formica, and self-assembly kitchen units that fell apart faster than you could screw them together. Darren had got a job there once, sixteen, humping great boxes about the back, ten quid and callouses at the end of the day, no tax, no questions asked. That had been before he had the good fortune to get himself nicked and sent away: before he had learned there were easier ways to make a living.

Now there were signs plastered across the superstore windows—
Everything at Half-Price
—
Must Go
—
Closing Down.
The pizza place was boarded up: fly posters for Soul II Soul and Springsteen and The Fabulous Supremes
LIVE
at Ritzy’s torn and graffitied over. In the doorway, cardboard boxes and a nest of rags: somebody’s home.

Out of the remaining six shops set back from the street, only three were still in business. A newsagent’s with metal grilles at its windows, a sign—
No More Than Two Schoolchildren At Any One Time
—taped to its door. A factory textile shop, direct from the makers to you, cut out the middle man, sold tea towels and shirts with little to tell the difference between them. Between those two, a sub-office of the Amber Valley Building Society, closed for lunch between twelve forty-five and two.

It was now almost a quarter past.

Darren looked across at the door, open sign hanging down; half a mind to go in on his own, get the business done. But then what? Legging it down the main road, sack on his back?

He was flexing the fingers of his right hand when the blue Orion slipped into sight and eased towards the curb, Keith’s face just visible in the lower half of the windscreen.

“What happened to you? Go by McDonald’s for a Big Mac and a chocolate shake?”

“Chicken McNuggets.”

Darren had hold of the front of Keith’s T-shirt, like to choke him, before he realized it was a joke.

“Anyone go in yet?” Keith asked, once Darren had let him go.

Darren shook his head. They had watched the office carefully the past three days; not once had they had a customer between reopening after lunch and twenty minutes past the hour. It was now two seventeen.

“Why don’t I dump the car?” Keith suggested. “Try again tomorrow.”

“Like fuck we will!”

Keith shrugged, not about to argue. He knew that tone in Darren’s voice all too well; had seen him break a glass in a youth’s face once, just for asking him was he sure he didn’t have a light?

“The talking,” Darren said. They were crossing the patch of bricked-off earth in front of the shops, stepping between the dog turds.

“What about it?”

“Leave it to me.”

Keith nodded: as if he needed telling.

Lorna willed herself not to turn her head towards the clock, up there on the wall between the aerial photograph of the High Peak and a poster advertising High-Yield Tessa returns. This was the part of the day that always dragged, right from when she got back after having her packet of Slimma Chicken and Vegetable soup for lunch, two pieces of Swedish crispbread with just a scraping of extra lowfat margarine, from there through to tea, four or four fifteen, Marjorie fretting over the kettle, leaving the tea bag in too long, shaking a tin of custard creams under her nose no matter how many times Lorna pursed her lips and waved them away.

Marjorie back there now with Becca, practically fawning over her, turned Lorna’s stomach, that’s what it did. Becca in her smart little gray suit with its high collar and tapered skirt she wasn’t above sliding up her skinny legs whenever the area manager happened to pop in. Three years of elocution lessons and a polytechnic degree in Modern Languages and they’d made her acting branch manager about as soon as she’d finished her training. Two years older than Lorna, nothing more.

“It’s still confidential, of course, but Mr Spindler says I’ll be moving on to one of the main branches within the year.”

She’d heard her one day, telling Marjorie as if she was doing her a big favor, letting her in on a secret, and Marjorie, all soggy-eyed, “Oh, Becca! How lovely!”

Never mind the way Spindler treated Marjorie herself, patronizing bastard, “Well, Marjorie, keeping these two youngsters in order, are we?” Seventeen years she’d worked there, Marjorie, passed over every chance of promotion there was, all the while pretending that it hadn’t happened.

Not me, Lorna thought, that’s not what’s going to happen to me. Eighteen months tops and I’m putting in for a transfer and if I don’t get it I’m straight off to the Halifax, the Abbey National, the Leeds. And I don’t care who knows it.

Twenty-three minutes past two. There—I looked.

Oh, well.

Lorna eased her back against the padded chair and turned the pages of last week’s
Bella,
which was resting on her knees. In the raised area behind her, she could hear Becca and Marjorie at their desks: Becca going on about her holiday in Orlando; Marjorie retelling the story of her sister’s ovarian cyst, the size of a small baby—Sunday mornings going round car-boot sales for a shawl and a second-hand cot before she realized the truth.

The door opened slowly and Lorna’s eyes flicked back towards the clock. Twenty-five past. Old Mr Foreman in his carpet slippers and his zip not properly fastened, paying in fifteen pounds and withdrawing five—“Did you see such-and-such last night? Bloody tripe! Don’t know why those people get paid.”

She closed her magazine and slid it beneath the ledger.

Darren stood just inside the door, Keith behind him. Already he could feel his heart pumping. Three women, one at the front, behind the only cashier’s window in use, the others farther back, neither of them looking round, paying any attention. The girl at the window, though, round glasses, staring at him through big round glasses, surprised. Well, he’d give her something to be surprised about.

“The door,” he said to Keith, moving forward.

“Uh?”

“Watch the door.”

Lorna sat readying her smile, a new customer, probably nothing more than an inquiry, how d’you go about opening an account?

“Lorna Solomon?” smiled Darren, reading her name off the engraved plate at the side of the window.

He wasn’t bad-looking when he smiled.

“Yes,” she said. “How may I help you?”

Darren laughed, more of a chuckle than a laugh. He opened the front of the loose leather jacket he was wearing and pulled out a bin bag, black. “Here,” he said, passing it through to her. “Fill that.’

Behind the blue-framed glasses, Lorna blinked. It had to be a joke, a wind-up, someone kidding her for a bet, a dare.

“Do it,” Darren said. “Don’t make no fuss. Do it now, eh?”

It wasn’t a dare.

Lorna’s gaze shifted towards the second youth, far shorter, over by the door. Neither of them older than she was herself.

“Don’t keep me waiting,” Darren said, his voice a little louder.

“Miss Solomon,” came Becca’s toffee-nosed voice from behind. “Is something the matter?”

“This gentleman has a query, Miss Astley,” Lorna said, turning her head. “Perhaps you should deal with it yourself.”

“What the fuck’re you playing at?” said Darren, face thrust close against the screen.

“What’s going on?” said Keith, stepping away from the door.

Trim legs on the short flight of steps, Becca saw the plastic bag in Lorna’s hand, read, uncertainly, the expression on her face, saw the movement of the young man behind.

Becca threw poise and elocution to the winds and screamed.

Darren pulled the hammer clear of his coat and smashed it against the center of the screen.

Fumbling with his pass book, trying to free it from its plastic cover, Harry Foreman came through the door, whistling through his half-dozen remaining teeth the theme from “Limelight.” Always one of his favorites. That Mantovani, couldn’t be beat.

“Keith, where the hell did he come from?”

Keith wasn’t certain: about anything.

“Here …” said Harry.

The third time Darren hit the screen, it splintered, top to bottom.

Lorna crouched beneath the counter, shielding her eyes. Becca ran back up the steps, turned, and ran back down.

“Here …” said Harry Foreman, as Keith grabbed hold of his bony arms and pushed him back against the wall.

Marjorie eased her way across the rear of the office towards the telephone.

“Stuff the money in that bag,” yelled Darren, “and quick.”

But Lorna didn’t seem to be listening. Inch by inch, she was sliding her hand towards the alarm.

“Take your hands off of me,” Harry said, ducking his balding head towards Keith’s face. “Don’t think I’m going to be pushed around by the likes of you.”

Darren knocked away a section of screen and vaulted onto the counter. Becca stopped screaming and cried instead. “Hello,” said Marjorie quietly into the receiver she was shielding behind her size-sixteen dress, “I want to talk to the police.”

Lorna squinted up at Darren’s black jeans, the worn soles of his Nike trainers, fear and fury on his face, and pressed her thumb against the button hard.

“Darren!” called Keith. “The alarm!”

“Fucking genius!” Darren said. “That’s you.” He aimed a kick at Lorna’s head and missed, swung wildly with the hammer and liberated several inches of varnished chipboard from the counter top.

Harry Foreman stuck out a leg and Keith half-tripped, staggered wildly before breaking open the skin above his left eye on the corner of the wall beside the door.

“What’s this?” Darren said, jumping down. “Home fucking Guard?”

“Don’t think I’m frightened of you,” Harry said.