Confessions from a Luxury Liner

‘That’s not nice,’ says Mum.

I suppress a sigh and tear open the envelope. I do wish Sid would spend a bit more time in his trendy Vauxhall pad with my sister Rosie and his two delightful children, Jason and Dominic. He always said how much he loathed Scraggs Lane when he was forced to live here. Now he never stops hanging about the place.

‘Dear Timmy,’ I read. ‘I hope you are well. I am sorry I am not writing more soon but there is very much happening when I arrive home. I have seen many old faces. One of them is Horst. I do not remember if I tell you around him. He is maybe the reason why I leave home. He has told me that he misses me very much and I think that I miss him, too. At Christmas we become engaged so I will not be coming back to England.’

I let the letter drop to waist level and Sid does not have to go to night school to read my expression. ‘Like I said, eh?’ he says cheerfully. ‘The big elbow. You can’t say I didn’t warn you.’

‘Thanks,’ I say.

‘Is there someone else?’ says Mum. She sounds quite perky, too. Of course, she was never keen on me marrying a daughter of the Third Reich, desperate as she was for me to get spliced to someone.

‘Seems like it,’ I say.

‘Oh well,’ says Mum. ‘I expect it’s for the best. You never met her people, did you?’

‘They were Nazi war criminals,’ I say. ‘I saw her Dad on Colditz the other night.’

I try and entertain myself by imagining a wedding photograph of Mum standing next to a geezer wearing jack boots, monocle, sabre scars and Iron Cross, but the ache still hangs round my stomach like suet round a kidney. I think that you only really care for a bird when she gives you the boot.

‘You wouldn’t have had anything to live on,’ says Mum. ‘There’s that to be thankful for.’

I think I know what Mum means. Sid and I are indeed skint since we parted company with Mission E and the queue at the National Assistance counter grows longer daily.

‘Yes, he’s well out of that, there’s no doubt about it,’ says Sid. ‘She doesn’t know how lucky she is, either. Still, that’s all water that’s been passed under the bridge. We’ve got to turn our minds to thoughts of the future. Talent like ours is too precious to lie mouldering on the shelf.’

‘It’s not easy to get a job these days,’ says Mum. ‘They’re laying off more people than they’re laying on them.’

‘You don’t lay on people, Mum,’ I say.

‘No, but you do,’ says Sid. Sid has what might be described as a very personal sense of humour. He is the only person to laugh at his jokes.

Mum waits for him to finish. ‘Look what happened to your father,’ she sniffs. ‘They nearly made him red - redundant.’

This is indeed true. Dad’s position at the lost property office – slumped over a desk in a posture resembling deep kip – was only preserved by the fact that a lot of people suddenly lost a lot of things and he was able to prove that London would grind to a halt without him. The situation was so desperate that he was actually taking stuff that he had nicked back to the office.

‘They should have kicked him out years ago,’ says Sid. ‘Spongers like him are the reason why this once great country of ours is in the mess it is now. The lazy old git has never done a day’s work in his life and he’s pocketing God knows how much money every week as well as all the stuff he swipes.’

‘That’s not a nice way to talk about your father-in-law,’ says Mum.

‘No, but it’s true,’ says Sid. ‘It makes me sick when I think how I’ve embodied the very spirit of Britain’s merchant greatness and ended up without a penny piece to show for it. Look at the businesses I’ve started, look at the initiative and dynamism I’ve demonstrated, look at the employment I’ve offered.’

‘Look at the wages you haven’t paid,’ I say. ‘I’m your most regular employee and I’ve hardly made a couple of quid in four years.’

‘You’re a chip off the old block and no mistake,’ says Sid. ‘Just like your old Dad. Grasping and ungrateful. You’ve had the opportunity to learn more with me than you would in a dozen business schools, but all you can think about is money. You embody everything that is wrong with this country. Frankly, I’ve had enough. I feel that Britain has betrayed me. There’s no place here any more for a man with ideals, courage and untamable ambition. I’ve thought about it long and hard in the last few days, Timmo, and I’ve decided that there is only one thing to do.’

‘Emigrate, Sid?’ I say.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ says Sid. ‘I don’t want to chuck away the National Health and the assistance – God knows, I’ve earned it. I was thinking of working out of the country for a bit.’

‘The Isle of Wight,’ says Mum. ‘That’s where I’ve always wanted to go. The climate is very like our own. I don’t like it too hot.’

‘Somewhere slightly further afield is what I had in mind,’ says Sid. ‘I was thinking of blazing the ocean’s trails in the merchant marine.’

‘Oh,’ says Mum. ‘That sounds nice. What did you have in mind exactly?’

‘A ship’s steward,’ says Sid. ‘I was talking to somebody the other night and they made it sound a wonderful job. You meet a lot of interesting people and travel all round the world. It would be like a holiday after what we’ve been through lately.’

‘What about Rosie?’ says Mum.

‘She’ll be all right,’ says Sid. ‘She’s got her business interests to look after and – you know what they say – absence makes the heart grow fonder.’

‘Like me and Gretchen,’ I say.

Sid does not savour the flavour of that remark and it is necessary for me to invest in a pint of pig’s at the Nightingale before he starts to get back to something like his normal self. ‘Wouldn’t break you to buy a packet of crisps, would it?’ he says.

‘It would as a matter of fact,’ I say. ‘What do you want?’

‘Cheese and onion,’ he says. ‘And make sure they’re not soggy.’

‘How do you reckon I do that?’ I say. ‘Grind them to powder between my fingers before I cough up the cash?’

‘I’ll leave it to you,’ he says. ‘I just can’t bear it when you can bend them.’

Two minutes later I give him a packet of Oxo flavoured crisps with the explanation that the boozer has run out of cheese and onion.

‘You know I can’t stand those,’ he says. ‘And where’s the packet of salt? They’ve started doing the salt again, you know.’

‘Maybe it’s a different make,’ I say. ‘No, wait a minute, it can’t be. I’ve got three packets in mine.’

‘Typical,’ says Sid. ‘I even miss out when it comes to the bleeding salt.’ He looks at my crisps. ‘Hey! I thought you said they’d run out of cheese and onion.’

‘They have,’ I say. ‘I got the last packet.’

‘That’s disgusting!’ says Sid. ‘Haven’t you got no manners? Your side of the family are so uncouth.’

‘You can’t talk about being uncouth,’ I say. ‘Look at all those little bits of crisp floating on top of your beer. It quite puts me off my food.’

‘Good,’ says Sid. ‘Then you won’t need your crisps.’ And he grabs my packet and shoves half of it down his cakehole.

Fortunately, that half includes two of the packets of salt as the bloke next door soon finds out when Sid spits them into an ashtray and covers his whistle in ash.

‘I don’t know what he was making so much bleeding fuss about,’ says Sid as we hurry through the door. ‘It was a grey suit. A bit of ash is good for them.’

‘Not when it covers up the pin stripe,’ I say. ‘Where are we going to go now, the Highwayman?’

‘No,’ says Sid. ‘I’m nipping up to the Palais. Do you want to come?’

‘The Palais?’ I say. ‘I haven’t been there for years. I didn’t know you were into dancing.’