A collaboration with Anthea Holland
Tony flicked the coin; heads - he'd go, tails - he'd stay at home and do his usual impression of a couch potato.
He missed the coin and it landed on the floor with a thud followed by a tinkle, which Tony knew meant it had rolled somewhere - probably under a unit or something which meant he'd never find it.
Carefully, he knelt down and groped on the floor near to his feet, his fingers encountering something soft, cold and slimy. So that was where that chip had gone.
He continued feeling his way across the floor in ever-increasing circles but there was no trace of the coin.
Tony cursed. It wasn't as though he could afford to lose the coin, he'd foolishly used one of the new-fangled £2 coins and it meant that if he did eventually venture out into the world tonight, he'd be one drink down.
Then he spotted a half pee coin – encrusted within some old dinner stain on the lino. That wouldn’t get him far, would it? But as he curvetted round like a young horse feeling its legs, he spotted another half pee coin under another potato chip that – despite being out in the open – had evidently escaped the dustpan due to several shadows converging to conceal it. At this rate, he’d have the price of pint easy enough. Because, yes, there was yet another half pee etched like a silhouette in the kitchen light fitment. He simply knew what it was by a method combining elimination and probability. Once you’re on the copper tracks, you either had to hit the buffers hard or simply shunt back and forth on a stationary couch.
Tonight was the buffers.
“Hey! Tone!”
That was Simon - who thought he was one of the lads but was merely another flat-capped drinking crony in the making. Still, Simon was still young, that day. He poked his head through the open window gazing at Tony prancing on all-fours.
Horse-play was bad enough after a few bevies down Lark Lane. But whilst still stone cold sober? Simon was quite bemused at Tony’s antics.
“What you doing?”
“Looking for something I’ve lost,” was the deceptively complex reply. If he were looking for something, odds on that something was already lost. So why the song and dance about making the obvious even more obvious? Simon scratched his head.
"So what exactly is lost?" he asked.
"Bloody two pound coin," Tony said without lifting his head from its close proximity to the linoleum.
"Oh, one of them" Simon said, letting himself in through the door. "Stupid bloody things."
Tony sat back on his haunches.
"Why'd you say that then?"
Simon joined Tony on the floor, shrugging as he did so.
"Dunno, really," he said, "Isn't that what everyone says about them."
Tony resumed his search. "Not me, mate. I'd rather have £2 than any of these piddling things." He indicated the growing pile of half-pees.
Simon grinned. "See what you mean. They're no bloody good."
"Huh? Why not?" Tony looked bemused.
"Where you been, Tone? They're not legal whatsit anymore."
"Tender. You mean tender."
“Tender, then.”
“You mean, Simon, I can’t spend any of these little mites?”
“Nope, Tone.”
Tony gazed, crestfallen, at the pile of half pee pieces he’d amassed ever since looking for the new-fangled two pound coin. Always the last one to hear the latest news … he recalled the day a famous Princess died in a car crash and he’d not known till the evening, when everybody else had heard the news breaking, it seemed, even before it had happened! Now, he crouched on the lino, legs crumpled into a bundle of pins and needles, wondering how he’d not fathomed what everybody else in the country knew about loose change.
He could see the twin fists of the buffers fast speeding towards him…
Tanners, shillings, half-crowns, florins, threepeny bits, all manner of things copper and silver, flew past his mind like hard-core confetti. He’d often had hallucinations like drowning people were supposed to have about their past flashing before them – but with Tony, even the proverbial kitchen sink was included. And he wasn’t even drowning. Was he?
Eventually, with some creaking of bones, his now aching body managed to stretch itself into a standing position and, with his now depleted cash, left the house, with Simon, intent, if nothing else, on drowning at least his sorrows.
His life was like a train journey, Tony thought, but he was always on the wrong train. If he caught a train to London he could guarantee he'd end up in Scotland; if Railtrack announced a new safe train he'd be the one riding the rails with the sleeping driver who missed the station.
"Bummer," he muttered.
"What's that?" Simon asked.
Tony shrugged. "Have you ever wondered, Si, how some people manage to get everything right and sail through life without hitches, while bad luck just seems to conspire against others?"
Simon frowned. Not the brightest of lads, Simon.
"Don't know what you're on about, mate." He said. "I don't have no problems."
"My point exactly. If you lost £2 you'd find a fiver, whereas I can only manage something that's no bloody good anyway."
They lapsed into silence. The damp night air crept around them. Tony turned up the collar on his leather jacket while Simon, seemingly oblivious to the cold, whistled happily beside him.
From out of the darkness a black car with tinted windows pulled up beside them. Inside was a beautiful lady in sparkling jewels. She smiled. And sped on. Towards its own particular shunt, perhaps. Tony and Simon were both in love with her. So much in love they put it down to a dream, or else they’d have gone mad with having let the opportunity slip. No point in lusting after loss.
“Hey, Tone, those half-pees, did you count them?”
“Why? What difference would it have made with all that tender thing?”
“”I just wondered if they’d add up to exactly two quid?”
“Why? “
“Well, I’m not up on these things, Tone, but it may have been a meaning…”
“A meaning?”
“Yes, you know from the stars or from aliens or from…”
“Crap!”
“Oh well. Never mind.” Simon did a hop, skip and jump as they neared the Carriage Horse. They rather resented their local having been given such a godawful name. The Duke’s Head was so much more homely. Pints of Poachers, then, eased down the gullet a treat. Now there was gassier stuff served and numbered tables with huge man-size menu cards. They still saw it as downing a jar at the pub, though, even if the pork scratchings were softened and served up as prawn starters with seeded buns.
It was then both suddenly spotted the earlier black car sliding into the Carriage Horse’s parking area with a swagger that only vehicles with perfect suspension could manage.
Wordlessly, Tony and Simon increased their pace, both intending to open the door for the beautiful vision they had so recently espied.
They were thwarted, however, by the chauffeur in an immaculate grey suit with matching titfa who slid out of the driver's door and opened the car door for his passenger before Tony and Simon had even set foot in the car park.
They stopped and watched as the vision of loveliness eased herself out of the car and, hand on chauffeur's arm, glided into the front door of the ale-house. The reason she glided, as they could now see, was that she was wearing roller-skates.
Tony and Simon glanced at one another, then with unspoken agreement resumed their long walk across the car park.
"She'll be in the lounge," Simon said unnecessarily, for Tony had already worked out that the likes of her wouldn't be seen dead in the public bar. It was then he remembered that the Carriage Horse no longer had a proper bar at all, let alone a public one. It was where they seemed to serve drinks as an afterthought to the food. Still, it was the only one within staggering distance.
Tony was still cursing his lack of funds; he would have so enjoyed buying the beauty a drink, but he only had enough money for a pint for himself.
Simon stepped in front of him and opened the door into the poshest reaches of the Carriage Horse, previously uncharted territory for the pair of them.
Inside, silence fell as the door opened and the eight people already there turned opprobrious gazes on the pair.
"Oops, looks as though we've interrupted something," Tony hissed in Simon's ear.
Simon appeared not to hear and Tony, glancing at his mate, could see that Simon, whose brain only had room for one thought at any one time, was gazing at the roller-skated enchantress.
Not simply roller-skates, but huge castors half-way to the shins. The knees were like armour-plate, with joints that creaked as she walked towards them. The upper legs, mostly hidden upwards from the hem of some horsehair curtain, seemed banded in metal, too, or were metal themselves. Circular tabs of silver and copper acted as necklace-joints, concealing the working parts of her physical logistics but, whatever the intricacies of engineering, these limbs moved with an oily efficiency as she slowly chugged forward.
Whether it was mere craziness or an audit trail of wayward logic, Tony and Simon barely had time to take one glance at each other. They gallopped suicidally towards the beckoning buffers of her bosom. In a race of lust before the rust set in. The sense of it was none too obvious, but young men were ever out for their oats, since time immemorial. No exception today. In for a penny, in for a pound, till the doffing of the final curtain.
