Only Fools and Horsemen

Only Fools and Horsemen

    It was a damn fine day to be homeless. A terrible forty-eight hours to be anything else. Digby and I had walked for miles searching for a street that hadn’t been ravaged already. He was all umming and ahhing “I don’t think this is a good idea Lester”, “What if the coppers get us Lester?” But we hadn’t heard police sirens for days, just ambulances hurtling down the road to fix up some poor sod peppered in shrapnel. Everyone that wasn’t dead had filed out and gone somewhere picturesque to settle down. Disneyland were making the most money they’d seen in years. Go figure.

     Digby’s complaining melted away when we clambered through the window of Number Thirteen. He lobbed his lanky limbs over the ‘sill and slumped onto the floor like a slinky. As I passed him his guitar, he took off his beanie with a grin, letting a ratty mop of brown curls tumble out.

    “My stars and garters Lester, feel that.” He slung his beat-up baby-blue guitar onto his back again.

    “Ain’t it somethin’? They must have forgotten to turn the heating off.”

    It was glorious, enveloping and welcoming like a half-molten marshmallow. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt a heat like that.      

    We shuffled down the dimly-lit corridor. My fingers traced the subtle crackling floral patterns on the wall, when had I last felt subtle fuckin’ floral patterns? We tried to ignore the pictures, shrouded in shadow. Silhouettes of smiling Year 8 portraits, or family trips to the beach, memories we weren’t apart of. I recalled the days me and Digby had spent in Ikea bedrooms, making up stories about the stock model families in the frames.

    I didn’t mean to, but I made eye contact with one of the photographs. A family of four. Dad with a scruffy beard, hippie hair. Mum with a long scarf, short blonde crop. Two kids: brother and sister, pulling silly faces. For the first time, I felt guilty. We weren’t just intruding on a home we were intruding on a life. Digby opened the door to the living room and turned on the lights.

    Black leather sofa. 1970s colourful cushions. Orla Kiely coasters like my nan used to have. Vintage vases galore. A tangerine glow settled over the room. It seemed a nice place to live. A nice place to grow up. A far cry from council estate grey and the bleak dustiness of dead-dad bedroom, mad-mum living room.

    “Digby is this wrong?” I asked. The lad practically leapt onto the sofa once he was safe behind closed curtains.

    “Legally? Yeah.” He responded without much thought.

    “Morally?”

    “No idea.” Digby picked up his guitar and started strumming.

    “I feel like we’re intrudin’ on their lives?”

    “We are intruding Lester.” There was no arguing with that. Soon enough everyone’s lives would be intruded on, and aggressively so. Why not make the most of the present? I won’t tell you how long it had been since I’d showered.

    The warm water cascaded across my shoulders, washing away aches I didn’t know I had. I looked five years younger in the mirror. Hell, I’d even say I looked downright dashing. Digby, however?

    “You’re fucking blonde!?” I yelped as he exited the shower.

    “It’s my darkest secret.”

    “How dirty was your hair mate?”

    Blonde-Digby laughed.

    That night, we lived like kings. Relishing in the warmth. Raiding the cupboards and cooking. The aroma of burnt herbs filled the air. But we had cooked! We sat on the sofa in suit blazers and oversized trousers, courtesy of Scruffy-Beard-Hippie-Hair, whilst Digby plucked aimlessly on the guitar. He started to sing in his shaky, Sheffield tenor.

The papers say it's doomsday

The button has been pressed

We're gonna nuke each other up boys-

“Stop,” I said. “Any song but that one.”

◊◊

    The next morning, we were rudely awakened by the sound of the front door opening. We shot up from the sofa, each clutching a vase from the mantle. This was our house... sort of. And we would defend it. Digby went wide-eyed and darting. His blonde curls bounced as he moved, I still wasn’t used to it. We jumped out of the living room into the corridor, vases raised.

    Scruffy beard and hippie hair. Shit.

    He raised his hands as he saw us, staring at the suit blazers with a sense of recognition.

    “If we don’t move, he can’t see us,” Digby whispered.

    “I can explain?” I offered. Scruffy-Beard swallowed.

    “Did you lot turn the heating on?” he said, baffled, much too scared to say anything else.

    “You never turned it off,” I said apologetically.

    “Bugger, that’s gonna cost us a lot.” He paused. His features dropped when he realised what he had said. “Look,” he continued, “I don’t have a clue who you are. I don’t even want to know. My daughter left her stuffed rabbit upstairs, if I don’t get it for her, she’ll die a very unhappy eight-year-old.” Tears filled his eyes. I gestured at him to walk up the stairs.

    Moments later, he returned with his hands raised, a thoroughly squished-around-the-arms rabbit in his right. He glanced around his home. “If this was any other day...” Scruffy-Beard shook his head, patted the wall, and took the family portrait. “You look better look after this place. Because if a miracle happens, we’re coming back.” He sounded so determined. We couldn’t help but nod.

    Gently, we closed door behind him, still clutching the vases, and listened to him drive away. Digby turned to me.

    “Did he think we had a gun?”

◊◊

    There was an odd silence for hours after Scruffy-Beard-Hippie-Hair appeared. We were ghosts haunting the house. I kept noticing all the little things. Dust on the ornaments. Indents on the carpet. Height-markings on the wall. The way the clock ticked. A little certificate on the fridge that read: “For your Georgie’s excellent participation in our finger-paint challenge.” Plant-pots on the windowsill, recently-watered. I thought about those chalk sketches that detectives do at the crime scene. The way it’s accurate all around the edges, but there’s nothing inside. A person built into the negative space.

    The calamity approaching hadn’t scared me until now. Me and Digby were flies on the wall of life. Our deaths would go un-mourned and unreported, just the way we like it. But this little family? They deserved better than that.

    From the living room, I could hear voices.

    I went in to find Digby laughing triumphantly, illuminated by the light of the television.

   “I found the remote!” He proclaimed, holding it aloft. Nothing good was on. Ain’t that always the way? Just re-runs of Only Fools and Horses. The one where Del-Boy falls through the bar. Always the one where Del-Boy falls through the bar. Digby found it hilarious, laughing like a child. When it was done, we dug into the wine.

    I felt hollow. My body was doing all the revelry. Dancing to Blur CDs that weren’t ours. Digby must’ve seen right through me because he got out the guitar. The sound of the air sirens was growing too loud to ignore.

   “Come on come on,” he said, ushering me to the floor. “Don’t even listen to it.”

   “Sing us a happy song, Digby.”

   He smiled.

   “I don’t think I know any of those, Lester.”

Maybe I'd be better off in Berlin

Or as an artist's muse in London

Drifting from hand to hand

Maybe I was born to be a sailor

Drop my anchors in Antigua

As a travelling fisherman.

    He went on like that for hours. Singing in his shaky, Sheffield tenor. Stopping only when the sounds of rapture got a little too close to this neighbourhood.

    He kept going.

    A top tip for life, always bring a busker to Armageddon.

    The sounds got closer.

    “Love ya Digby,” I said, taking another swig of the wine.

    But he was deep in the song, eye’s closed and golden curls bouncing. I don’t think he could hear me.