Jack's Return Home by Ted Lewis (Michael Joseph Books 1970)

Thursday

The rain rained.

It hadn't stopped since King's Cross. Inside the train it was close, the kind of closeness that makes your fingernails dirty even when all you're doing is sitting there looking out of the blurring windows. Watching the dirty backs of houses scudding along under the half-light clouds. Just sitting and looking and not even fidgeting.

I was the only one in the compartment. My slip-ons were off. My feet were up. Penthouse was dead. I'd killed the Standard twice. I had three nails left. Doncaster was forty minutes off.

“I looked along the black mohair to my socks. I flexed a toe. The toenail made a sharp ridge in the wool. I'd have to cut them when I got in. I might be doing a lot of footwork over the weekend.

I wondered if I'd have time to get some fags from the buffet at Doncaster before my connexion left.

If it was open at five to five on a Thursday after“noon in mid-October.

I lit up anyway.

It was funny that Frank never smoked. Most barmen do. In between doing things. Even one drag to make it seem as if they're having a break. But Frank never touched them. Not even a Woody just to see what it was like when we were kids down Jackson Street. He'd never wanted to know.

He didn't drink scotch either.

I picked up the flask from off the Standard and unscrewed the cap and took a pull. The train rocked and a bit of scotch went on my shirt, a biggish spot, just below the collar.

But not as much as had been down the front of the shirt Frank had been wearing when they'd found him. Not nearly so much.

They hadn't even bothered to be careful; they hadn't even bothered to be clever.

The Mavericks by Rob Steen (Mainstream Publishing 1994)

Three days later, Rodney was still floating when he took the roadshow back to Loftus Road to face Bournemouth, scoring twice in a 4-0 romp: "It was the only time in my life I've ever played drunk.' If Stock was aware of his condition, it evidently didn't bother him. 'He played so-oo well that night. I sat on the touchline and at one point I asked the referee to keep the game going for another half an hour, just to see what the big fella could do. After the game, the Bournemouth chairman, who also happened to be an FA councillor, comes up to me and says, "That Marsh, he ain't half a lucky player." "That's funny," I said, "but he's just scored his 39th goal of the season and that's more than your lot have scored this season." People can be very bitchy in football. If someone has a good player we are inclined to say "he's not very good but we could do something with him if we had him".'

Grange Hill Rules O.K? by Robert Leeson (Fontana Lions 1980)

Michael Doyle was at ease with the world, modestly proud of the success of his plans A, B and C. If only he could tell his dad. The old man would be proud of him. He sat in the dining-hall lingering over his rice pudding. His sidekicks had left already. He stayed on to think about his next move. Just how to close the trap he had placed around Jenkins. The thought gave him great pleasure.

Suddenly he realized he was not alone. Seated in a row across the table were the strangest assortment of people - Penny Lewis, Trisha Yates, Cathy Hargreaves - what next? - Tucker Jenkins, Benny Green, Alan Humphries. They watched him carefully as he raised his spoon.

'Enjoying your pudding, Michael?' asked Trisha.

He stared at her.

'Is it sweet enough?'

'Yes, thank you.'

'Are you sure?' She reached over to the table behind her and suddenly put a big bowl in front of him. Taking a spoon she quickly spread two big spoonfuls of brown crystals over his pudding.

'Hey, get off!' said Doyle.

'Eat it up, Michael. It's only brown sugar. I thought you had a sweet tooth.'

'How do I know it's brown sugar?'

'What else could it be?' asked Penny. 'Laxative powder mixed with brown sugar, perhaps?'

'No,' said Tucker. Couldn't be. I mean, who'd play a rotten trick like that?'

'That's right, Michael, dear,' said Trisha. 'Eat up your pud like a good little boy.'

'Tell you what,' said Cathy. 'Let's fetch Matron. She may be worried. This sudden loss of appetite.'

Doyle stood up, but Tucker leaned over and pushed him down.

Grange Hill Gone Wild by Robert Leeson (Fontana Lions 1980)

Early Friday evening at Grange Hill, near the end of term on a typical English summer day. All is quiet. The only sound is the rain drumming on the top of the covered ways and the pattering feet of half-starved mice retreating from the school cafeteria. Everyone has gone home, even Tucker Jenkins and Benny Green who have been in detention. The school seems to be empty.

No. A lone figure is loitering in the corridor near the Head's office. Michael Doyle is hanging about waiting for a lift home. His father, Councillor Doyle, chairman of governors no less, is in with the Head, discussing the School Fund.

Michael, bless his heart, is hoping for more than a lift home. He's hoping for a few snippets of information for that active brain of his to get to work on. Michael Doyle's brain is not widely appreciated in Grange Hill, which is a pity. Because Michael had plans for the school, or rather for some of the people in it - like boiling them in oil, or feeding them gently through the waste disposal unit.

He had a list, not on paper, Michael is far too intelligent for that, but in his mind. It included all the people who had annoyed him, or got in his way, or interfered with his perfectly reasonable plans to be Ruler of the Universe. To be quite honest, it was a revenge list, a hit list.

Top of the list came Jenkins and his sidekicks for crimes too numerous to mention. Then Penny Lewis, crusading journalist of the year who brought Doyle's promising career as a school politician to a grinding halt. Trisha Yates, who had nearly poisoned him during that moronic semolina business. And staff, too - Hopwood, a real do-gooder. And Peterson. No woman had a right to push Michael Doyle around.

As he paced quietly up and down, Michael had one of those brainwaves, those strokes of genius which marked him out from lesser folk.

In a flash he saw where he had gone wrong so far. He had tried to pick them off one by one, when he should have been working out the master plan to sink them all without trace. He had been messing about with tactics when he should have gone in for grand strategy.

The Big Man by William McIlvanney (Canongate Books 1985)

Dan felt a liberating affection for his father. Poor, old, hard, honest bastard. Having lashed himself to his principles to survive, he couldn’t be blamed for not being able to move, though the times did. Dan’s love of his mother, never compromised, came back to him. He wished he could speak to them now to reassure them that he wasn’t lost entirely to the past they had believed in, that he hadn’t quite forsaken what they stood for, that he, too, had his pride. It wouldn’t have been an elaborate speech – they never were in his parents’ house. It would have been something gruffly cryptic, in a code they would have understood, something like: ‘Don’t panic, Feyther. Mither, Ah’m still me.’

But he had to admit to himself that his pride, if it was still there, was in a funny place. His parents’ pride had been like a medal they could wear, one they had earned. His own was something he felt was still with him but he couldn’t have pointed to it. The explicitness of their experience had bestowed on them a kind of brute heroism. His experience had been different, still was. If their lives had been as clear-cut as trench-warfare, his was as confusing as espionage, a labyrinth of double-agents.

What did you trust these days? You couldn’t vaguely trust the historical future in which his parents had believed. Part of it was already here and it was unrecognisable as what had been foretold. Better material conditions hadn’t created solidarity but fragmentation. Working-class parvenus were at least as selfish as any other kind. You couldn’t simply vote Labour and trust that Socialism would triumph. The innocence of his parents’ early belief in the purity of Socialism couldn’t be transplanted to the time that followed Socialism’s exercising of power, however spasmodic. In power, Socialism had found it hard to recognise itself, had become neurotic with expediency, had forgotten that it had never merely been a policy but a policy growing from a faith founded in experience. Lose the faith that had been justly earned from the lives of generations of people and Socialism was merely words and words were infinitely flexible. You couldn’t trust the modern generation of those who had formerly been the source at which Socialism had reaffirmed its faith. All around they were reaching private settlements with their society’s materialism in terms that contained no clauses to safeguard others of their own who might be less fortunate.

If you were honest, you couldn’t even trust yourself. He had often enough expressed his contempt for people he had known who, coming from his own background, had succeeded academically or in business and had turned their backs on where they came from. He had heard them at parties and in pubs preaching the worthlessness of their own heritage and he had despised them. But he also knew that you couldn’t trust yourself not to be like them until you had been to a place where the temptations were real, where you too had the opportunity to make a purely private enterprise of your life and the rewards were sufficient to put such principles as you had to the test. He had never been to such a place.

True Confessions . . . by Sue Townsend (Penguin Books 1989)

We retreated back to Moscow. We arrived at 6.30 in the morning. Even at this early hour Russia was on the move; the station was jam-packed full. We passed through a massive waiting room where every plastic chair was occupied, yet nobody spoke. Christopher Hope was much affected by this. It was in complete contrast to the milling, shouting crowds outside with their ungainly luggage and wool-wrapped children in tow. There was one policeman at the door – could he alone have cowed hundreds of people into complete silence?

We went to the Bolshoi and saw the most exquisite dying swan, performed by Ms Larissa, the toast of Moscow, who was reputed to be rushing towards sixty years of age. Her arms vibrated like piano wires, they shimmered, then as the violins soared and swooned she sank to the floor in the final gesture – it was perfect and lovely and I shall always remember it.

I arranged to meet my translator, but he mixed up Tuesday with Thursday so it was not possible. He is translating a diary. As Mr Bennett said, ‘Friday: Got up, went to Sunday school.’

We were invited to Kim Philby’s funeral and said we’d go, but the day was changed and we’d flown to Lvov in the Ukraine. We met more writers and admired the beautiful town and visited the cathedral which was crowded with old women, many on their knees. The sadness was tangible. It was Ascension Day and a kindly old woman began to explain the story of the Ascension to Alan Bennett.

Alan listened as though the story were completely new to him. Then an unkind old woman intervened and ordered him to uncross his legs. She then turned on the kind old woman and berated her for talking to us. Later, strolling round the town, we saw the unkind woman praying at the locked gates of a church. She looked very unhappy. We met the mayor of Lvov, a big, handsome man, very conscious of his duty to preserve and renovate the many lovely buildings with which the town is blessed. Alan Bennett is thinking of retiring to Lvov. We met a dirty, ragged man who told us about the concentration camp which used to be situated to the west of the town. Hundreds of thousands of people died there. I asked our official guide about the old man. ‘He is a fanatic,’ she said. ‘He has spent his life since the war studying the fate of the Jews. He is a Jew himself,’ she added, ‘a professor of history.’ She disapproved of the ragged old man.

The writers of Lvov were particularly kind and hospitable, and we lunched in some style to the sounds of a string quartet – all girls who blushed when we applauded. The conversation at Messrs Raine, Bennett and Bailey’s end of the table had turned to sex. Their laughter attracted the attention of the wife of the chairman of the Lvov Writers’ Union. I said, ‘They are talking about sex.’

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘All say’s, little do’s.’

Quite a devastating remark from such a mild-looking woman.