There was a ring on the door-bell. Freddie went to answer it and came back followed by Carlton who was wearing a red baseball cap and some kind of thick American-style car-coat. Freddie poured him some tea and Carlton struggled out of his coat, took off his cap and pulled a bright, turtle-neck sweater over his head. Underneath he was wearing another thick sweater.
‘You warm enough?’ Steranko asked.
‘I would be if I could afford a two hundred quid cardigan.’
‘I told you: this guy can get you one for fifty quid.’
‘I can’t even afford fifty quid.’
‘You’ll have to freeze then won’t you?’
‘Yes boss.’
‘C’mon, let’s play some Ludo,’ Freddie said.
Freddie’s living-room was icy cold so we set up the Ludo board on the kitchen table. After half an hour we’d all put about three quid in the kitty — ten pence every time you threw a six or were unable to move — and no one showed any sign of winning. We were all much keener on sending each other back and forming hindering blocks — at one point Carlton had all his four greens piled intransigently on one square — than we were on getting our own tokens home.
After about an hour, following a fluke throw of five sixes, Steranko — blue — was way ahead: he had three counters home and his last was three-quarters of the way round the board. The only person anywhere near him was Freddie who had a red counter nine places behind. He threw a six (‘ten pee in, fuckhead,’ shouted Steranko) and a three, sending Steranko back to base. After that Steranko sunk without trace. Unable to move or throw a six he had to put in ten pence every time he threw the dice. He chucked in two pounds in a matter of minutes while the rest of us were skooting quickly round the board.
‘Oh for fuck sake,’ swore Steranko, rolling his fourth five in succession.
‘Ten pee in,’ said Freddie, ever watchful.
‘Shit, I’ll have to change this,’ he said, pulling out a large coin none of us had seen before.
‘What’s that man? A Krugerrand?’ Carlton asked, wide-eyed.
‘I’ve got a whole load of them at home. They’re quite tricky to get rid of these days. People are a bit sensitive about them,’ Steranko said, chucking the coin into the kitty and pulling out some small change. ‘Jesus, haven’t you lot seen a two pound coin before?’
None of us had.
‘I’ll tell you something else as well,’ Steranko said. ‘The half crown is no longer legal tender: we’ve gone decimal.’
‘C’mon get on with the game,’ I said, throwing a three and thereby forming a pyrrhic block of two yellows.
The game ended up with Freddie and Carlton both needing to throw a one. While they threw a succession of fours, fives and threes Steranko finally succeeded in getting his last counter out and staged a late dash around the board (‘Yes! Two sixes! Three sixes — that’s eighteen — and a one. Shit!’) Eventually Freddie rolled a one and won. The rest of us looked on enviously as he counted his winnings.
‘Fifteen pounds twenty!’ he said with a big grin.
‘What a shit game,’ I said.
‘Superb game,’ Freddie said. ‘Tactical — a game of skill.’
‘Right Freddie,’ Steranko said. ‘Now you can go and look for a shop where you can buy some cake. Then you can have a nice little tea party for your friends.’
‘Nowhere’s open.’
We settled for more tea and digestive biscuits (‘probably the most boring biscuit in the world,’ Freddie conceded) and sat there slurping.
‘God, what an afternoon. The pubs are shut, there’s nothing on at the Ritzy, there’s not even any football on telly,’ said Steranko.
‘Isn’t there a film on TV?’
‘Yes there is,’ said Freddie, consulting the paper. ‘“Carry on up the Congo”: an adaptation of Heart of Darkness with Kenneth Williams as Marlow and Sid James as Kurtz.’
‘Very funny Freddie,’ said Steranko, using his sleeve to wipe clean a patch of the wet, steamy window.
‘Is it still raining?’
‘Pouring. Why the fuck do we live here?’
‘Because we’re English.’
‘I tell you, this country is getting very close to being uninhabitable. The sheer delight people have in saying “no” to things. It’s unbelievable the quality of life you have to put up with sometimes. For at least six months of the year it’s virtually impossible to have a good time. I don’t know how we put up with it.’
‘Nothing else to do,’ said Carlton. ‘When I was working at the bakery a couple of years ago — it was a terrible job but I needed the dough —’
‘I could see that one coming. I was sitting here waving it on.’
‘Anyway, I was pissed off all day long. Then one day I just said to myself “Ah fuck it”. And then I wondered what to do now that I’d said “Ah fuck it”. Nothing. There was nothing to do. It was like having a paralysed leg. In the end you go on and on saying “Ah fuck it” day after day.’
‘Yeah, you’re right man,’ Steranko said, looking out of the window at the rain. ‘Shit. I can’t think of anything I want to do this afternoon.’
‘I just want to stroke my winnings,’ said Freddie. ‘How much did you say those cardigans were Steranko?’
041
I spent the next week working with Carlton, decorating a house near Camberwell. The job took longer than expected and it wasn’t until Friday afternoon as we walked home up Cold Harbour Lane that we found the time to drop in at the dole office to sign on. What with the work and the dole office being open such limited hours we’d both missed our signing days. The woman behind the reinforced plate glass asked me why I was two days late.
‘I had a job interview,’ I said.
‘What about you?’ she said to Carlton.
‘I had a job interview,’ he said. She gave us a warning each, smiling as she did so and not bothering to comment on our paint-splattered clothes. She wrote down our next signing date which was in just under two weeks’ time and that was that.
With the exception of my brief period of above-board employment my dole had been running smoothly for years. Once your money is coming through regularly — housing benefit included — the essential thing is to keep your life in a state of perpetual stasis as far as the DHSS is concerned. Avoid any change of circumstance since even declaring a few days’ work can lead to massive complications. Dealing with that kind of thing makes life more difficult for the people working there so they much prefer you to keep any change in your prospects to yourself. Every now and again I got a visit from someone concerned at the way my career seemed to have made no progress at all in the last two years but I told them I was keeping myself occupied (‘I use the library a great deal’) and not contemplating suicide and they went off reassured. A couple of weeks previously, though, I’d had to attend some kind of interview down in Crystal Palace — failure to attend, said the notice, would result in my benefit being stopped — where an understanding, polite but suspicious-looking woman grilled me about what I was up to, why I’d been sacked from my last job, and what sort of work I wanted. To each question I gave precisely the answer I thought likely to preclude any further questions but she persisted for about twenty minutes. I persisted in resisting her persistence, assuring her that my attitude towards finding a job had improved considerably.
‘I’ve got my mind straight,’ I said. ‘I’ve had some interviews and some very encouraging rejection letters. I really think things have started to move.’ That seemed to satisfy her or at least satisfied the criteria she had to satisfy in order to bring the interview to an end. She gave me some leaflets and wished me luck. I thanked her warmly and left, less pissed off than I might have been in the circumstances.