“I could always dye it blonde,” she said.
Like a lot of these estates, you can easily get lost on the Forest if you don’t know the place. There’s no sign of a way out once you’re in. It’s a bit like a maze — any turning could lead you to a dead end or into a crescent that will just bring you back to where you started from. When you stumble on the little shopping parade in the middle, it’s always a surprise. To a stranger, it must look like an oasis in a desert of Transit vans and Sky TV. Some oasis. Peter Malik at Malik’s Late Night Superstore, Off Licence and Video Hire Centre is always complaining that he spends half his life directing strangers off the estate. It’s best to ask Peter, though, rather than one of the kids on the street — they’ll most likely direct you into someone’s back garden and nick your spare wheel while they’re doing it.
Yes, the kids play on the streets here — at least they do down in Bottom Forest. It’s really because the streets weren’t made for cars, like I said. Once you get cars and vans parked on both sides of the street, the traffic ain’t coming through too fast. If it’s anything wider than a Transit, it ain’t coming through at all. If you have a chip pan fire at the weekend round here, you don’t call the fire brigade, you have to call the next door neighbour to come round with a spare blanket. By the time the fire engine gets through, your whole house could be frying.
On the newer, more open sort of streets up Top Forest, it’s a bit different. This is where the joy riders rule. The county council has put speed humps here to stop them. Traffic calming, it’s called. It took them months to do it, because they couldn’t leave any equipment or materials on site overnight. They had to pack it all up and take it away every night and bring it all back again from the depot next morning. Otherwise it would have been regarded as surplus, and there would have been none of it left within twenty-four hours.
Anyway, they’ve put these little red hillocks in the roadway and bollards either side to narrow the road down to one car’s width. The only people it slows down are folk like me, the ones who are worried about damaging the suspension on their nice new Toyotas. And there’s nothing calming about that. Of course, the chuffin’ joy riders aren’t bothered — it’s not their cars they’re driving, is it? They’re nicked, didn’t you know? In fact, these lads soon found out that if you hit the humps fast enough, you could get airborne. Wowee, new game. Traffic calming? What a load of crap.
So the young kids stay off the street up in Top Forest. You never know when some pillock’s going to come screaming round the corner on two wheels, dead set on killing himself and anybody else who gets in the way. But there are places to play. In two directions, the estate peters out into the edge of heathland to the north of the village. There’s also the car park of the old Miners Welfare. The Welfare’s not a bad place to go, in fact. The beer’s still cheap in there, and the pool tables are free. There just aren’t any miners.
Nuala chatted happily as we drove up the estate. She seemed to be commenting on the choice of curtains in the houses that we passed. Then she started cooing over the fact that someone had attached a bit of trellising to the wall next to their front door and had managed to get a clematis to survive long enough to produce a flower. I thought for a minute she was going to tell me to phone Homes and Gardens with the news.
There weren’t many people about, except at the shops. There were a few blokes hanging around outside the betting shop and the newsagent’s. They weren’t speaking to each other. In fact, they had nothing much to do except kick used crisp packets about on the pavement until they were too wet and shredded to move. Anywhere else, it might have been an aluminium drinks can they were kicking. But those cans are like gold round here. If you drop one, a kid will dash up and grab it before it has chance to hit the floor. Crisp packets don’t make good substitutes — instead of a satisfactory rattling, there’s nothing but a pathetic rustle. That says it all, really.
Malik’s Superstore was open as usual, but the chippie was shut and its steel shutter was firmly down. The hairdresser’s and the motor spares shop didn’t look like they were doing much business. The other two units had been closed and derelict for a long time. A few starlings were perched on the edge of the roof, picking at the weeds growing in the gutters.
This area around the shops is about the only place on the estate where you can find rubbish bins. They’re put there by the council for the empty chip papers. But the bins are red and they look ridiculously like post boxes, so people sometimes get them mixed up. I mean, they drop bits of burning paper into the litter bins to set fire to them, when they really meant to drop them into the post boxes. They also get phone boxes mixed up with public toilets. I blame the teachers, you know. Why don’t they give classes on this sort of thing? What hope have these kids got of landing a job in some high tech computer factory if they can’t figure out whether you speak into a phone or piss on it?
I found two of the blokes I wanted standing with some mates looking into the engine compartment of a Ford Capri. This is a favourite hobby round here, when there’s nothing much on the telly. Engine compartments can be really, really interesting when you’ve been on the dole for a bit.
Jeff and Colin are ex-miners, employed at Medensworth Colliery up to the day it shut. Their dads had worked there as well, and probably their granddads. But their sons never would.
“Hey up, lads.”
“Hey up,” said Jeff cautiously. It was his driveway, so he was the spokesman. The others just nodded at me. Then I saw them all turn and stare at the Subaru behind me at the kerb. I gathered that Nuala was getting out. And I’d specifically told her to stay in the car, no matter what. I could well imagine the bits of her that were showing as she struggled to make it to the pavement in that skirt. They were bits that some of these lads probably hadn’t seen since they retired the pit ponies.
Four pairs of eyes swivelled as Nuala came to stand at my side, hitching up her blouse where it had fallen open a bit more over her lacy bra.
“Hello,” she said. “I’m Nuala.”
She didn’t even get a nod in reply. She might be the most exciting thing they’d seen all month, but she was only a woman.
“I’m a friend of Stones,” she tried again.
This made no impression either, except that one or two of them looked from her to me and quickly back again. You could see their minds making the connections in all the right places.
“Are you friends of Stones too?”
Nothing.
Well, this was really good. Compared to them, I was going to seem really courteous and caring to Nuala from now on. I might be a bit rough and ready, but at least I know how to be polite to a woman.
“Piss off back to the car, you silly tart,” I said. “You’re in the bloody way.”
Nuala sniffed and backed off a bit towards the Subaru. I knew she hadn’t actually got in. I knew this not only because I didn’t hear the car door shut, but also because there were four pairs of eyes angled past me on a course that I reckoned would end at about Nuala’s thigh level. I guessed she was doing her Motor Show pose draped over the bonnet. I tried to act as if this was perfectly normal.
“I’m looking for some help,” I said.
I had their attention a bit now.
“What sort of help?” asked Jeff.
He was looking hopeful suddenly, as if he thought I might need some help with Nuala. Well, I did, but not that sort of help.