Thick As Thieves Adam George 1 1. At The Edge September 1997 ‘You’ve got to live it fast, Steve my old son. There’s no fucking point otherwise, is there?’ Stumpy took a long pull on his pint and stared at me, eyes glazed and speech slurred. ‘I’ve had enough of all this bollocks,’ he said. ‘People just take the piss, you know what I mean?’ His voice wavered and I was alarmed to see tears forming in the corners of his eyes. In embarrassment I turned away and looked for a bit of light relief. Some of the boys had been drinking all day and were beginning to look a bit worse for wear. Scouse was slumped at the bar, amusing himself by lobbing peanuts at the barmaid Tracey. Tommy Peters was next to him, fast asleep with his head in an ashtray and The Beast sat in the far corner of the pub, mumbling to himself as he rolled spliffs on a filthy table. Harry Johnson was drunkenly trying to feed pound coins into the juke box, while at the same time chatting up a bird who looked as though she’d consumed the pubs entire stock of Bacardi Breezers. They stood there, swaying and slurring at each other and it was a toss up between who was gonna pass out first. Normal geezers on a normal night out, causing mischief and having a laugh. And I was sitting in a twilight world with my best mate, trying to think of something to say to make it alright. I’ll be the first to admit that Stumpy’s had it rough the last couple of years. I mean, no one can go through that kind of shit without it having some sort of effect. He’d changed, and not for the better. I hadn’t seen him for ages, but he’d turned up on my doorstep earlier that evening and asked me if I wanted to go for a pint. For a while it had been great, just like old times. Back when we were eighteen and still new to the Fox and Hounds and a world filled with lager and laughs. Except that now we were on the wrong side of thirty, and the innocence and naivety that defined us then had long since faded and died. ‘You get one chance in this world,’ said Stumpy, his eyes dry and his voice firm once more, ‘and I’m gonna take it. Beer, women and football, that’s all I ever used to think about. But they ain’t enough Steve, there’s got to be more.’ He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a tiny square of paper, with a miniature heart stamped in its centre. ‘Acid, Steve, that’s what it’s all about. Takes you away from all this shit.’ He opened his mouth, placed the tab on his tongue and washed it down with a huge mouthful of lager. ‘Look, mate’, I said, ‘you’ve got to try and take it easy. I thought you were going to stop taking that stuff. Things can’t be that bad, surely.’ Stumpy looked at me in disgust. ‘You ain’t got a clue, Steve, how bad things are. Not a fucking clue.’ And with that he turned away to stare out of the window at the rain filled night. I sat there for a minute or two, then I shrugged my shoulders, walked away and joined the lads at the bar. ‘What’s up with him?’ asked Scouse. ‘Don’t ask,’ I replied. ‘I can’t work him out these days. As far as I can tell he spends most of his time tripping.’ 2 ‘He’s lost it if you ask me. Geezer’s heading for trouble. Want a pint?’ ‘Cheers,’ I said as Scouse leaned across the bar to holler at Tracey. ‘Lager! Now!’ Tracey sighed and grabbed a couple of glasses off the shelf. ‘You want to learn some manners,’ she said, half-heartedly. ‘Bollocks,’ said Scouse, throwing some loose change onto the bar. We stood there with our pints, looking round the pub in silence. To my amazement, Harry had managed to pull and was attempting to negotiate his way to the door with his arm round the Bacardi bird. Tommy was snoring gently on the bar, oblivious to the juke box that had kicked into action with ‘A Town Called Malice’. The Beast looked over at Stumpy, then back at me, and I knew what he was thinking. But right at that moment I just couldn’t be bothered. A couple of large whiskeys later and I’d shaken off my bad mood. Stumpy was big enough and ugly enough to look after himself. Or so I thought. 2. Stumpy Malloy It was in September 1979 that Stumpy Malloy turned up at the start of our third year at a dodgy Comprehensive in Basingstoke - a tough time to join a new school where kids had already found their place in the system. I’d learnt by then that people don’t like change and anything that might muck up their routine ain’t welcome, and that goes for pupils and teachers alike. So when Stumpy arrived wearing these horrible brown trousers instead of the regulation black, and got into a scrap on his second day because someone took the piss out of him he was bound to stand out. He got noticed by everybody, marked down as a trouble maker by the teachers who couldn’t be bothered to get to know him, and as someone to be a bit wary of by the kids. That puts pressure on from the start. But it never seemed to faze him. He settled in like he’d always been there and that impressed me. By the time he joined our school Stumpy’s face already looked years older than thirteen. His nose had been broken a couple of times and was bent out of shape, a scar winding its way down the side from bridge to nostril. He had a lump above his right eye, the result of a fall as a nipper that for some reason had never gone away and one of his front teeth had been chipped during a 3 fight. He had no concept of style in any shape or form, he didn’t give a toss about fashion and his dull brown hair hung in a lank bundle over his head. Even at that age he was big and ugly, unafraid of what the world threw at him, unconcerned with his own appearance. His real name wasn’t Stumpy, of course, but he was a big fucker so that’s what we nicknamed him, and it was one of those names that stuck. Even his old man ended up calling him Stumpy after a while. Me and Jimmy Taylor had been mates forever, growing up in the same street, kicking a ball against the nearest garage door from the time we could walk and running as wild as we dared at every opportunity. We took Stumpy under our wing immediately, despite the fact he supported Arsenal and we were West Ham. He was one of us, a right laugh and well up for mischief so he fitted in perfect. Even though he acted the hard man and pretended he didn’t need anyone, every kid needs mates, no matter what, and he started knocking about with me and Jimmy pretty much from the moment he arrived. We didn’t know it back then, but from the day Stumpy joined our school our lives were changed forever. Stumpy lived alone with his old man in Popley, a council estate on the edge of town, all box houses and dirty alleyways. No one knew what happened to his mum: Stumpy never talked about her so no one asked. He wasn’t the only kid from a single parent family so it wasn’t really anything unusual, and anyway, there were far more important things to talk about like football, music and girls. Me and Jimmy loved going round Stumpy’s house, cos his old man let us do whatever we wanted as long as it didn’t involve damaging the small vegetable patch at the end of his tiny garden. That was his pride and joy, and he used to spend hours tending it. Stumpy said that what he really wanted was his own allotment, but he could never afford it so he made do growing potatoes, tomatoes, beans and stuff at home. I remember watching him once, out of Stumpy’s bedroom window, seeing him hunched over this old bit of dirt, carefully pulling out weeds, digging little holes and planting bulbs, lost in his own world. I couldn’t understand it myself but I knew how much it meant to him. The only time I really remember him losing his rag when we were kids was once when the three of us were mucking about, and Stumpy pushed me backwards into his vegetable patch. Jack looked at of the kitchen window and saw me sprawled in the dirt, lying on top of his precious potato plants, and I saw the anger spread across his face. Stumpy panicked. ‘Leg it!’ he shouted, pushing us towards the back gate. ‘What about you?’ I asked, ‘ain’t you coming?’ ‘I can’t run away for ever, can I? Might as well get it over with now.’ Me and Jimmy ran through the gate and into the alley just as Jack came out the back door, and we heard a muffled cry as he got hold of Stumpy.