Disraeli Avenue

Number 9

Bill and Jude Williams

Green front door

Green garage door

Yellow car

KON 908V

In Search of Adam

Two years, six months and twenty-one days before I was born, my parents moved to New Lymouth. From a block of flats that were as high as a giant. My mother’s house was brand new. It was shiny. Spick and span. There were two new estates being built in New Lymouth. The housing estate that I was to live on and another one. They each had four parallel streets and formed a perfect square on either side of the main road.

On this Coast Road, there were ‘The Shops’. Dewstep Butchers was also New Lymouth Post Office and displayed a smiling pig’s head in the window. New Lymouth Primary School. My primary school. Was a perfect E-shaped grey building with a flat roof. Mrs Hodgson (Number 2) told Rita that many cuckoos were put in nests on that roof. I didn’t understand. New Lymouth Library was on the Coast Road too. It was a rectangle. Like a shoebox. Inside the library there were eighty-seven Mills and Boon novels and three Roald Dahl books. There were signs everywhere. ‘Absolute silence at all times’. The grumpy librarian liked to read her Introducing Machine Knitting magazine. I read the first chapter of Danny, the Champion of the World twenty-seven times. I read all of Matilda and The Twits. Thirteen times each. Brian’s newsagents stretched across 127–135 Coast Road. Inside the shop I heard gossip being tittled and tattled, as I stood looking at the jars of delicious sweets.

Rhubarb and Custard. Chocolate Raisins. White Gems. Aniseed Balls. Coconut Mushrooms. Brown Gems. Cola Cubes. Pear Drops. Cherry Lips. Liquorice Comfits. Toffee Bonbons. Jelly Beans. Edinburgh Rock. Pontefract Cakes. Pineapple Chunks. Sweet Peanuts. Scented Satins. Sherbet Pips. Midget Gems. Sweet Tobacco. Chocolate Peanuts. Toasted Teacakes. Rainbow Crystals. Sour Apples. Lemon Bonbons. Unable to decide. I wished that I had the courage to ask for one from every one of the twenty-five jars.

On the other side of the Coast Road there were five really big houses. My class teacher, Mrs Ellis, and Mrs Hughes the local librarian lived in two of them. I didn’t know who else lived there. The children in those houses didn’t go to New Lymouth Primary School with me. The children in those houses didn’t play foxes and hounds around the estate with us local bairns. I walked down that road on my way to school. I peered into those large houses. I stopped walking to stare in. I tried to look past the fresh flowers in the window and I thought about all the nice smelling things that would live inside.

The Coast Road ran a slope from New Lymouth down to the Lymouth seaside. The estate that I lived on was at the top of the hill. As the road continued up, it travelled through a number of similar estates and villages. Signs warned drivers when they were leaving one village and arriving in another. My father said that the ‘nearer yee lived to the coast, then the richer yee were’. We lived about a ten-minute walk from the coast. I’m not quite sure what that made us. All I know is that, when my mother was alive, my father talked about one day living on the sea front. The houses there were enormous. Five storeys tall. They went up and up and up to the sky. You could stand on the roof and your head would be in the clouds. I thought that really important people lived in those kinds of houses. People like the Queen could live there. A hacky lad in my class at school lived in one, with about twenty other children. His mother and father hadn’t wanted him. They, the twenty other children and the hacky lad, lived in their mansion that looked out over the beautiful Lymouth cove. They were very very lucky. They must have been very very rich. They must have been the richest people in England.

Lymouth Bay was shaped like a banana. There was a pier at each end and three caves lived in the cliff. Just over the left pier. Sat tall on a throne of rocks. There was a lighthouse. The most beautiful. The most elegant. A white lighthouse. Legend had it, that hundreds and thousands of small green men with orange hair lived in it. I never saw them. But. Paul Hodgson (Number 2) had seen one buying a quarter of Toasted Teacakes in Brian’s newsagents.

There were one hundred and twenty steps to climb down. One hundred and twenty steps before touching the grey sand. The sand was unhappy. It looked poorly sick all the time. A green handrail wove next to the steps. I never had the courage to touch it. The paint was covered in carved initials, decorated with lumps of hardened chewing gum and topped with seagull droppings. Yackety yack. Hundreds and thousands of lumps. Hacky yack yack. Paul Hodgson (Number 2) told me that his uncle caught an ‘incurable disease’ from touching that handrail. He said that his ‘uncle’s hand had dropped clean off’. I wasn’t going to risk it.

To me, the Coast Road seemed to go on for ever and ever and ever. I was told that it was a perfectly straight road, which travelled from the seafront and through four villages. You could catch a bus on the Coast Road. The road passed by my school, up the slope, close to my house and then on through village after village into lands that were unknown. Into lands that sounded magical and exciting. North Lymouth. Marsden. Hingleworth. Coastend. Mrs Hodgson (Number 2) told me that Coastend was ‘famous for its cheapness of tricks’. A magical place.

I lived in Disraeli Avenue, in between Gladstone Street and Campbell-Bannerman Road. The neighbours all said it dizz–rah–el–lee (four chunks) Avenue. My mother’s house was a semi-detached on a street with 31 similar-looking houses. They looked identical but I knew that they weren’t.

There were differences. Thirteen had red front doors. Seven had green front doors. Five had blue front doors. Seven had yellow front doors. The garages matched the front doors. Except for Number 17. Mr Lewis had a yellow front door and a green garage. I didn’t know why.

green,

red,

red,

yellow, green, red, red, yellow, yellow, green, red, red, red,

green, blue, blue,

red,

blue,

green,

yellow, red, blue, blue, yellow, green, green, red, red, red,

yellow, red, yellow.

I wanted the numbers to fit better. I wanted the colours to fit better.

It should have been sixteen red front doors. One half. Eight green doors. One quarter. Four blue doors. One eighth. Four yellow doors. One eighth. It was simple. The colours could look really nice. I had worked it all out.

red,

red,

green,

red,

green,

red,

blue,

blue

green, red,

yellow, red, green,

red, yellow, red,

red, green, red,

green, red, blue, blue,

green, red, yellow,

red, green, red,

yellow, red, red.

I wasn’t happy with Mr Lewis (Number 17). His colours didn’t match. Maybe he didn’t realise. I wished that I had the courage to talk to him about it.

There was a little wall in front of the garden. A dwarf wall. A dwarf wall for Snow White’s friends to play on. There was also a drive for my father’s Mini. There was a garden to the front and a slightly larger one to the back. The front lawn was just big enough to squeeze onto it a folded tartan picnic blanket. The soil surrounding the perfect square of grass was always packed with flowers. I watched the flowers. I noted them all in a little lined book. It was green and lived on my windowsill. Thorny rose bushes, coordinating colours and then down to a mixture of blossoms. Depending on the month.

Gaillardia ‘Burgunder’.

Shiny red flower, with light yellow centre.

June–October. 30cm.

Dahlia.

Really orange and red.

June–November. 60cm.

Narcissum ‘Amergate.’

Orange outside with a darker orange in the middle.

March–April. 45cm.

I liked to write things down. In the green notebook that I kept on my windowsill. Flowers. Colours. Number plates. Full names. Times. Routines. All of the first chapter of Danny, the Champion of the World. So I wouldn’t forget.

Number 1

Mr and Mrs North

Green front door

Green garage door

Red car

DFT 678T

Martin North leaves home

I was the first lad from Disraeli Avenue to get into uni. There’d been this lad Paul Hodgson who used to live at Number 2, he went on to study law but they’d moved out of the road by then. So I’m saying that he doesn’t count.

Getting into Liverpool Uni was fucking huge. I managed two As and a B at A level and my mam was beyond happy. She was right chuffed and painted my results on a white sheet, then hung it from the front room window. It was a right sunny day and all the neighbours slowed down to look at what me mam had painted on the sheet. I told me mam that it didn’t really make much sense. So she got another sheet, asked is how to spell university and then wrote ‘Wor bairn Martin is ganin to university’ in fuck off huge red letters. She was practically dancing around the house. I’ve made me mam so proud.

Mam, Dad and me Nana North gave is a lift to Liverpool last week. The car was packed with everything I’d need. Pans, a kettle and a load of food. Me Nana North had baked is pies and scones and stuff. They all wanted to give is a right good start. My going to uni is the most major thing in me mam’s life and I have to try me hardest not to fuck it all up.

I’m sharing a flat with two other lads, Ginger Matt and Charlie. They’re sound lads. We’re right in the centre of Liverpool, just off Mount Pleasant, around the corner from the Everyman Theatre. It’s sound being right central. We can walk everywhere and don’t have to bother with the last bus or with hailing a taxi. Charlie’s a private school lad. He’s right posh and his dad’s mates with Jeffrey Archer. He’s studying French and Spanish. Ginger Matt’s a Manc and so fucking sound. He’s writing a novel and studying English Lit. They’re both a bit off their heads. Charlie has a never-ending supply of pot and is determined to roll the longest joint he can. He reckons he’s going to get in the Guinness Book of Records with it. We’re out every night and I’m spending me money far too fast. The Guild’s a laugh and there are thousands of fit lasses wearing hardly any clothes. I’ve shagged two lasses already and I’ve only been here a week.

Early this morning, I reckon it was just after two. We’d left the Casa before closing and were having a few tins in the kitchen. The kitchen has massive windows and looks out onto Oxford Road. Charlie managed to pull a lass by shouting out to her from the window. The silly tart came up and let him shag her before he chucked her out. We were laughing about that, so I reckon it must have been about three when we heard screams. Charlie was first to see and ran straight out the flat. He’d had first aid training and even though he must have been stoned, he seemed to know what to do. Ginger Matt had some lass straddling him on one of the kitchen chairs. He was on a promise. I stood at the window and saw her lying, curled up on the road and there were already a few people screeching around her.

The taxi driver was out of his car and was looking down on her. I could see that he wasn’t right. He was lighting a fag when he puked all over his shoes. Charlie was on the floor giving the lass mouth to mouth. I could only catch glimpses of him through gaps in the crowd. Another lad, who I kinda recognised from downstairs, was in the phone box, must have been calling for help.

Charlie came back up to the flat with the lass’s blood all over his face and T-shirt. He told us that she was dead and then he went and got himself washed.

It turned out that her name was Laura. Well that’s what a copper said when he came to get statements from us all a bit ago. She was a fresher and studying English Lit, must have been in the same lectures as Ginger Matt. She was pissed after a night in the Casa. She’d been in the phone box calling her boyfriend who was still back home somewhere in Wales. The copper said that she’d been giving the lad shit. The last thing that she’d said to him was ‘fuck off’. Then she’d staggered out from the phone box and straight onto the road. He told us that she’d died on impact, and although Charlie had done his best, well there was nothing that he could have done to save the lass.

And now it’s pissing it down outside. The cars are going up and down the road, over her blood and it’s as if nothing’s happened. I reckon there’ll be flowers by the side of the road at some point and a few people will come and stare at the spot. And maybe that’s a good thing, because at least if there are flowers people will wonder and ask questions and the poor lass won’t have died without anyone noticing. She was eighteen years old and she died after saying ‘fuck off’. I’m not going in to uni today. None of us are. We’re all going out to the Guild to get pissed. I was going to phone me mam and tell her about Laura, but I don’t want her to worry about is. I guess what I’m learning is that life’s too fucking short and that I shouldn’t waste any of it.

Number 2

Mrs Hodgson and Paul

Yellow front door

Yellow garage door

Red car

GYS 606S

The making of Paul Hodgson’s legend

Mam and Sam had met through a dating agency. It’d been advertised in the local Guardian free paper and we’d had a laugh about it. My nana was the one who made my mam fill out the form, because she reckoned that my mam needed a man about the house. My mam had been to see Mrs Curtis from Number 20 for a tarot reading, she was holding out for a ginger bloke, on a horse in a field full of pumpkins. My nana told mam that she was holding out for a pile of crap and that she had to make her own future, that no one got anything by sitting on their arse waiting for the world to come to them. So Mam got the form and, although we took the piss out of her, she filled it out and sent it back with a postal order for £15 (meet your ideal man within six months or get another six months free).

Sam was Mam’s first date. He had no kids and was divorced, because his first wife had shagged his best mate. Sam’s a decent bloke. He’s a teacher at the local college, earns pretty good money and treats my mam like a princess. Nana likes him and I do too. I can’t really fault him as a person, but his dress sense is shit.

We moved in with him three months after Mam met him. He lives on the new estate, in a canny posh detached house with three proper big bedrooms. Mam was a bit stressed about leaving Disraeli Avenue. It was more to do with her independence than anything else and I think that my dad leaving all those years ago made it difficult for her to let go. My nana helped out and gave her a good talking to and then we moved in with Sam. We’d been here just over five weeks when my dad turned up.

Legend has it that my dad left us when I was a toddler. I can’t remember much about him. The story goes that he’d been on jury service when he’d met a lass called Sky Thursday. Two weeks after the end of the jury service, after he’d eaten a plate of egg and chips, my dad had packed his bags, taken a pint of milk and pissed off.

That was the last we heard from him.

My dad didn’t bother with us and I’m not too sure how that’s supposed to make me feel. He was too busy shagging Sky fucking Thursday, selling crystals from a stall in Coastend indoor market and being a dad to the three kids that he’d had with Sky fucking Thursday. He didn’t give my mam any money for me and he never bothered with my birthdays or with Christmas.

I used to care.

Of course I fucking used to care. My dad abandoned me and then went on to be a dad to three other kids. I’d see Karen Johnson with her dad and Jude Williams with hers and I’d feel like shit. I didn’t know what I’d done to make my dad hate me, but he must have. My mam’s been great and my nana made sure that I had as much as she could afford. She’s canny kind. And next week I’m starting university, studying law. How the fuck did that happen? I’m going to Newcastle, so I’ll still live at home with Mam and Sam.

But Dad turned up.

I answered the door and of course I didn’t recognise him. He looked a state in a knitted cardigan covered in wolves and a moon. His hair was long, grey, thin, scraggy and he was wearing flip-flops with trackie bottoms. I thought he was collecting for something. Anyway he started talking and it turns out that he’d heard about my mam and Sam and thought that seeing as my mam had come into money, that we’d all be able to be one big happy fucking family. Apparently my three brothers were waiting around the corner to meet me too. I don’t know why him having three more lads pissed me off quite so much, but I seriously needed to deck the bloke.

It was then that my mam came to the door.

I was standing with my fist clenched leaning forward, my mam was in front of me pushing me back with her huge arse and she was staying canny cool. She looked my dad up and down, then she did her fake laughing thing that she does when she’s actually scared shitless. She told my dad that we’d managed sixteen years without him and that really he should just fuck off. Then she closed the door in my dad’s face.

I used to make up a story for the kids in my primary school class. I’d tell them the legend of hundreds and thousands of small green men with orange hair living in the lighthouse in Lymouth Bay. I even told them that I’d met one when I was buying a quarter of Toasted Teacakes from Brian’s newsagents. Jude Williams and Karen Johnson believed me.

Now for the real legend.

Legend has it that I once had a dad who went on jury service and pissed off with some woman who he’d known for all of three weeks. He left me and his wife of ten years for a fucking weird tart who changed her name from Wendy Jackson to Sky Thursday and made my dad want to live in a council flat and play the didgeridoo. Legend has it, that my dad ate his egg and chips, then packed his bags, took a pint of milk from the fridge and then pissed off. It took him nearly sixteen years to remember me.

Number 3

Mr and Mrs Drake

Red car matches red front door

Red car matches red garage door

EVS 343V

A tarot reading

() indicates the length of pause, in seconds

(.) indicates a pause of less than one second

‘What question would you like to ask of the cards?’

I’m only allowed one question?

(.)

My thoughts are all over the place

(5.0)

I’m sort of thinking that everyone needs a partner.

(.)

For some I guess it’s sexual, for others convenience.

For some I guess that it’s a chance to be eternally mothered, for others something else. I wish I knew what that something else was.

(3.2)

No that’s not my question. That’s not even a question.

(.)

Some people don’t enquire. They accept what they’re given. They say ‘thank you very much’ to the first man or woman who happens upon them. They panic, they grab, they accept. They can relax then. They can mate.

(2.0)

And I’m kind of sure that most people can go through life feeling content. They accept, they embrace; they make do with whoever it was who happened to stumble onto them, into them, beside them.