Col sidled up to Ulysses and whispered, How much d’you think he won, then?
A bloody fortune, said Ulysses, just to piss him off.
How much Old Cress had won became the stuff of legend and would be talked about long after the pub had gone. No one knew, not really, though speculators were many. Cress bought himself a pair of desert shorts off a veteran in the market, big baggy sandy things that he wore with a jacket and tie and sometimes a sleeveless sweater, and as far as anyone could tell, they were his sole purchase after the Big Win. Everyone wondered what had happened to the rest. Those who’d cheered him on months before soon succumbed to derision. Human nature, right?
Of course, Tubby knew the amount. Tubby felt the pain of that loss every waking hour and one day someone would have to pay. Tubs sent a man out with a magic key to snoop about Cressy’s gaff, but Cress always knew because he could see air that had been disturbed by a stranger.
Cress didn’t know why he’d got all that money at his time of life. In truth, he thought it was too late for him to make the changes a younger man might have made. But he sat under his tree and listened. He admired his legs sticking out of his shorts and he knew they were his best feature because they were his mother’s legs. Thoughts of his mother made him cry.
1950 and the turn of the decade was welcomed. Fuck off the Forties, what have you ever done for us? Col lit the last of the fireworks that were to usher in a decade of hope. I mean, how bad can it be? he said, imploring the exploding heavens. Yeah. Just you wait.
British national service conscripts were soon sent off to Korea and absence and heartbreak were back on the menu. Ulysses joined Piano Pete to march against the war and got drunk in a Soho pub afterwards in a wordless show of grief. Kid’d turned into a chatty little thing, with a mouth full of American teeth and she called Ulysses Ulysses, and he called her kid. Peg got promoted from the typing pool and she played it cool, but Ulysses could see that she was jazzed. Even one rung up the ladder, the air smelt fresher, the view wider. Cressy helped Ginny grow carrots and potatoes in the yard at the back of the pub and she gave the first crop to Mrs Kaur who had the convenience shop simply because she liked her and the colour of her skin. Piano Pete cut a lucky break in a West End show. A small but noticeable part, he played a frontier pianist with a drink problem. Only appearing in the first act meant he could still honour his obligations to the pub. The beginners’ tap class, though, could go fuck itself. Col swapped Denise for Elaine but, in the end, she didn’t last long. Set his sights instead on a 1930s ambulance because he’d always wanted one. Ever since the day he’d watched his mother driven away in one. Jeez, said Peg. I only asked.
Heat grew that first summer of the decade. Made the oldies wobbly and the dogs mad. Queues for the swimming pool extended along Whiston Street, but down by the canal kids were bombing in as kids do, getting a gutful of rat piss, but it was worth it, if only to feel a slight breeze on wet skin.
Peg called out to Ulysses. He looked up and waved. She clacked down the steps and joined him on the bench. They watched the kids in their undies, skinny arms and legs flailing in the air, squealing and daring one another, and cascades of water splashed across the towpath onto their legs and shoes, but they didn’t flinch or care.
We did that, he said, adjusting his hat.
Not that long ago, he said.
Peg sighed.
Another world, he said.
As teenagers, they’d made out in the bushes to their left, oblivious to the stink of dog shit and the discarded French letters. She was his first, he wasn’t hers but all of them had borrowed one another to get good at it and to feel good. Pale skin in the moonlight. Peg was the keeper of their history. She knew the names of those long dead and who had done what and who had loved who.
Not a care in the world, said Ulysses.
What a strange thing to say, thought Peg. She’d never been without a care in the world. Not at that age, not at this age. A whirling dynamo of tension she was, and always had been, propelling bloods and lipids along a never-ending godforsaken circuit. She remembered him as a boy. Stocky and small with the brightest eyes, constantly polishing a silver lining. She used to give him blowjobs just to see his gratitude. Over time, he filled out. Got forearms all the girls went wild over. And his eyes got more blue, and his parents died, and he made globes and spun them on his middle finger. And he said, I want to be somebody someday, Peg. What d’ya say?
But what could she say? Someday was too far away.
She bent down and adjusted her shoe. She said, I’ve met someone.