Blue Collar (7 page)

And I meant it too. We pay out so much money that we don’t have to when we’re skint. Take my place, for example; I bought
it for just over ninety thousand pounds with a ninety-five per cent mortgage five years ago and if I stay alive, healthy and
in work, by the time I finish paying it off in the year 2027, I will have paid back something in the region of a hundred and
eighty grand for it. That’s over twice what the flat cost. I’ve checked the mortgage paperwork and it’s all there in black
and white. Unbelievable, isn’t it? The thieving bastards. Your house is the most expensive thing you’ll ever have to buy and
you have to pay double for it if you don’t have the wherewithal to buy it outright the first time around.

Naturally, Charley’s old man, being a thieving bastard himself, probably worked all this out with one of his chain-linked
pens and saw that plundering his ISAs for his daughter was actually the best way of keeping money in the family anyway. OK,
so Charley now had his… whatever her flat cost – a quarter-of-a-million, I wouldn’t be surprised – but wasn’t she always going
to get it anyway? The moment he popped his clogs the lot would’ve been turned over to her anyway. Charley was his only daughter,
so what difference did it make if she got an advance on her inheritance and put it to good use while he was still around to
enjoy seeing her put it to good use? And actually that’s not true either, come to think of it, Charley wouldn’t have got the
lot because the taxman, an even bigger thieving bastard than Charley’s dad, would’ve had half of it away in death duties before
she could’ve even stuck a black dress on, so if you think about it, it actually made a lot of financial sense just to give
it to her now. If her flat had cost a quarter of a million pounds and if she had done the normal thing and got a mortgage
and then waited for her dad to fall off his perch in order to get her hands on his money, she would’ve had to have paid out
something like three hundred and seventy five grand to the bank and the taxman alternately to be no better off than she was
as things stood right now.

Put like that, who could blame her for letting her dad buy her a flat?

Still, spoilt cow.

‘So your wages, what do you do with them, then? Just chuck ’em in the bank and dip into them when you want a new pair of socks,
or do you blow the lot on taxis and holidays?’ I pried, quite improperly, but the question was crying out to be asked.

‘No, I have bills to pay, just like everybody else,’ she assured me, though she must’ve had radiators in the front garden
and an extension lead running up to Blackpool’s Golden Mile to have made a dent in her fifty-grand-a-year salary, as far as
I could make out. ‘And I have a few investments and a pension to manage,’ she added, and I was almost tempted to ask if she
wanted me to have a whip-round, but I wasn’t sure she’d see the funny side of that if she was already embarrassed about having
been given a flat – in pricey Canonbury.

Did she choose to go it alone or were her expectations so phenomenally high that Romeo himself would’ve had a job getting
her to come along on his plus-one invitations?

In which case, what the hell was I doing shopping on these shelves? I couldn’t afford any of this stuff. Of course I couldn’t. And
sooner or later the store detective was going to rumble me for the undesirable I was.

‘Penny for them,’ she said, when she saw me all pensive. I should’ve held out for more as I knew she could afford it but I
went ahead and took her money anyway.

‘Just wondering what a nice girl like you…’ I started, before she comically interrupted.

‘…is doing in a place like this?’ she suggested, though she would’ve been closer to the mark if she’d tacked on the words
‘with a bozo like you’.

‘No, I mean, why you’re not seeing anyone? Why you haven’t got anyone? I mean, you’re great. You’re pretty, funny, clever,
nice company. I can’t figure it out.’ (I could’ve also added ‘and fucking loaded’ but didn’t.)

‘I don’t know,’ Charley mused. ‘Maybe it’s because I’m a lesbian.’

‘See, you’ve even got that going for you too,’ I said, ticking the last box on my own particular card and calling bingo.

‘I could ask you the same,’ Charley pointed out.

‘Well, I ain’t gay, if that’s what you’re getting at.’

‘What happened to Jo? Your last girlfriend. Why did you split up with her?’

That caught me a little offguard. I’d forgotten Charley knew about Jo and I didn’t feel particularly comfortable talking about
old girlfriends with her. Still, the question had been asked so I told her the truth.

‘She did something that I didn’t like. Something I could never forgive her for.’

‘What?’ Charley asked, suddenly all ears.

‘She moved all of her stuff out of my place and married the manager of my local Safeways,’ I told her. ‘Of course, it’s Morrisons
these days, they took it over, but that doesn’t really have anything to do with the story.’

Charley gasped. ‘Is that true?’

‘Yeah, they’ve changed the signs and everything.’

‘No, I mean about Jo? She left you and married someone else?’

‘Yeah,’ I admitted and shrugged. Well, what else was there to do?

‘I’m sorry, Terry,’ Charley frowned. ‘Were you very upset?’

‘Not really. It had been on the cards for some time in all honesty. We weren’t really getting on and sometimes you can just
tell when a relationship’s run its course.’ I sighed.

Charley reached across the table and laid her hand on mine.

‘One thing did annoy me, though,’ I then confessed.

‘What was that?’

‘I can’t go to bloody Morrisons any more. I’ve got to drive another mile up the road to Sainsbury’s and they don’t do the
same spicy poppadoms I like.’

‘I feel your pain,’ Charley sympathised, and for one brief moment I almost forgot that I didn’t have a hope in hell of hanging
on to the girl who was smiling warmly at me from across the table.

Almost.

7 Idol hands

‘Well, I’ve had a really lovely evening,’ Charley said, giving me a look that filled my mouth with the taste of onions and
chilli sauce. ‘But I guess we should be going. We don’t want to end up like last week.’

What, in bed together? I wondered.

‘You’re right,’ I said, looking about for puddles to lay my coat across. ‘Well, I’ve had a really nice night too. Perhaps
we could go out again another night, maybe in the week again?’

‘Yeah. Or maybe we could go back to my place now,’ she suggested.

‘Yeah, or maybe we could do that,’ I agreed, and followed her out of the pub in a semi-daze.

‘I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about me,’ she said, when we got outside. ‘I’m really not in the habit of doing this
sort of thing.’

Funnily enough, neither was I, which was why it was so fantastic that it was happening now. As for getting the wrong idea
about Charley, I wasn’t sure I’d had a right one yet, so I was more than happy to give my brain the rest of the night off
and let my heart take things from here – with back-up provided by the lads downstairs.

‘That’s OK, I don’t think anything of you, I promise,’ I duly promised, wondering if that had come out right.

‘You’re a fast worker. Most guys save that line for the next morning,’ Charley pointed out.

‘Er, no, that’s not what I mean,’ I fumbled, but Charley assured me it was OK, she knew what I meant.

‘So you’ll respect me in the morning, huh?’ she asked.

‘I’ll worship you in the morning,’ I replied, causing my brain to leap out of bed and come charging downstairs in his slippers
to see just who the fuck was letting my feet have a go on my mouth.

‘From thinking nothing of me to worshipping me? You really are a fast worker.’ Charley smiled, holding my gaze for a moment
before slipping an arm around my waist and giving me a kiss.

I honestly thought she was going to bite my tongue off and scrambled across the room and away from her when she finally let
me go, checking my mouth for blood and the windows for bars.

‘Pain is good,’ she simply smirked.

My lips, mouth and tongue didn’t go anywhere near any part of Jill again and after a quick glass of water I made my excuses
(namely, ‘You’re fucking bananas and I’m out of here’) and ran off into the night. I couldn’t even get anything to eat on
the way home as my tongue hurt so much and it spent the rest of the weekend bathing itself in ice creams and quivering behind
my teeth whenever strange women looked my way.

‘You’ve got a nice kiss,’ I told Charley when we pulled back from each other.

‘Thanks. I should have, I’ve been practising on my hand all afternoon.’

Which again made two of us.

Charley twisted the keys in the lock and I followed her inside.

Her place looked a little different from how I’d remembered it. I think I’d over-romanticized it in my head, like I have a
tendency to do with all things, adding a couple of storeys here and dimmer switches there. It was still nice, certainly a
lot nicer than my place, but it could’ve been nicer still. It had a lot of potential; a bit of decent skirting board, get
rid of that cracked architrave, new tiles in the kitchen, lino in the bathroom, brass fixtures (which were my own personal
favourites) instead of the basic plastic ones the builders had put in and new paint, carpet and doors throughout and Charley
could’ve stuck ten grand on the price just like that.

I remembered the show if not the guy’s name who’d presented it, but disagreed with Charley’s assessment. I wasn’t so much
Llewelyn-Bowen, more one of those blokes in the background with no lines who did all work when the cameras were off and who
silently longed to knock a bucket of bricks on to Laurence’s foppy head whenever he walked past.

‘Still, it could use a builder’s touch,’ Charley said, then took a sip of her drink and added: ‘I think we both could.’

I realised she was right and put away my measuring tape and embraced her passionately.

‘Please be gentle with me,’ I said, sweeping her up in my arms, then putting her straight back down again when she turned
out to be heavier than she looked. Size ten, my arse!

We entwined right there on the sofa and started pinging buttons and pulling zips until we were in such a tangle that we had
to momentarily disengage to shake our trousers off. When we did, I found that Charley had on matching lacy purple underwear
that looked more expensive than my car and I realised it’d probably had more say in me being here than I had.

‘Let’s do it right here on the sofa,’ Charley whispered.

‘For starters,’ I replied, wrestling with her bra strap until admitting defeat and asking for a favour. Charley’s fingers
tweaked her strap and her bra fell away to reveal a beautiful pair of Charleys. ‘Very nice,’ I either thought or said, I can’t
remember which, and a moment later her knickers joined her bra and some more of my socks on the floor.

Being the self-styled gentleman I am, I’ll leave the descriptions at the bedroom door, if you don’t mind too much, even though
I was doing her in the living room. I’ve probably said a bit too much already in all honesty, telling you what colour her
pants were and how many tits she had, so I won’t go on any further. All I’ll say is that she was soft, lithe, delicious and
she didn’t try and bite my fucking tongue off.

And you can’t ask for much more than that.

We lay curled up on the sofa afterwards, kissing gently and tracing our fingers across each other’s bodies as we stared deeply
into each other’s eyes. Mine suddenly felt as heavy as concrete blocks but I pulled out all the stops to keep them open for
as long as possible in an effort to soak up every square mile of this pink and perfect vision of loveliness while it lasted.

‘How long has it been for you?’ Charley asked.

‘What?’

‘Since you last did that,’ she said, clearing up the mystery of whether we’d done it the previous week once and for all. Well,
that or the reason she hadn’t replied to the previous evening’s text.

‘A little while,’ I told her, reluctant to go into specifics.

‘How long’s a little while?’ she pried.

‘A little while’s a little while,’ I sidestepped.

‘More than two weeks?’ she asked, almost making me laugh in her face.

More than two weeks? Of course it was more than two weeks.

‘More than a few weeks,’ I finally replied, though I could’ve elaborated and told her she could’ve bundled those weeks up
into months if she liked and there’d still be quite a few of them too.

‘How many’s a few?’ Charley pressed.

‘A few’s a few,’ I explained, before trying to baffle her with some nonsense. ‘When Winston Churchill said we owed “so much
to so few”, he was talking about five or six hundred RAF pilots, but when my granny told me that she still had “a few good
years” left in her yet, she was talking about anything between six months to three years, so it depends on the context.’

‘I see. And is your granny still alive today?’ Charley fished, sensing a clue in my shpiel.

‘No, unfortunately,’ I said sadly. ‘No, she was shot down on a routine reconnaissance mission over Biggin Hill.’

Charley blinked a couple of times but resisted the temptation to ask me if I was serious.

‘Anyway, what about you?’ I countered. ‘When was the last time you… er…’

‘Got banged?’ Charley finished for me.

‘I wouldn’t have put it quite like that.’

‘Oh yeah, so how would you have put it?’ she asked.

I thought for a moment.

‘Got done,’ was the term I finally plumped for.

‘Nice,’ she said.

‘Yeah, anyway, how long is it since you last got done?’

Charley gave that one some thought, then said that perhaps it was best if we didn’t play this game after all, presumably because
she somehow knew that this was the answer that would rob me of the most nights’ sleep in the weeks to come.

That put a nice little awkward crimp in the conversation and neither of us knew what to say next for a few moments, so instead
we just lay there, gently stroking each other’s skin with our fingers and sinking into the lilac pillows.

After a while, Charley turned one of my hands over in hers and examined it.

‘You have very big hands,’ she said, squeezing my fat fingers and prodding my calluses.

This had been pointed out to me by girls before, usually in a ‘urgh, aren’t your hands rough and horrible’ kind of way, so
it was something I was a tad self-conscious about.

‘Sorry,’ I automatically apologised, worried that she was angry with me for sandpapering her tits for the last twenty minutes.

‘No, don’t apologise, I like them. They’re men’s hands.’ She then went on to tell me about some solicitor bloke she once went
out with who used to have hands spindlier than hers and who used to moisturise three times a day with hand cream.

‘It actually got a bit creepy him touching me. My friends all said he had a handshake like a wet fish.’

I didn’t even know wet fish shook hands, but I liked that Charley liked my hands, though in all honesty they were just the
product of fifteen years of handling bricks. I wasn’t genetically any more manly than her solicitor mate, if that’s what Charley
was getting at, and I’m sure if he ever got a job with us he’d soon sling his hand cream in the bin when he saw the benefits
of having hands your could put your fags out on.

I told Charley about when I’d first started on the sites as a teenager. Back then I’d had kid’s hands, as kids tend to have,
and for the first couple of weeks I went through agonies I can’t even begin to describe as my fingers found themselves a long
way from the classroom. Those first couple of weeks, everything I touched hurt, especially in the evenings after work. I couldn’t
even pick up a cup of tea without shrieking in pain and my old man used to love the nightly spectacle of watching me trying
to eat my dinner without using a knife and fork. Then the next morning it would start all over again. Bricks, blocks, scaffolding
poles and planks, each one feeling like someone had wrapped it in barbed wire overnight.

‘You should’ve just worn gloves,’ Charley said, like this had never occurred to me.

‘You can’t, even a good pair of gloves falls to bits after a week or so, and even when they’re new, grit always finds a way
inside the fingers, especially in the winter when everything’s wet, you can’t avoid it. You might as well go through the agonies
and let them toughen up.’

I wondered why I was telling her this. Was I trying to impress her with more tales of dare-doing, like the scaffolding collapse
adventure from earlier on, or was I simply colouring in a little more of my background for her? Probably a bit of both, if
the truth were to be told, though it’s always nice when people show an interest in your life and the things you’ve done, even
if these things are pretty ordinary.

‘Well, I like your hands,’ Charley said, giving my fat sausage fingers a little kiss. ‘I like them a lot.’

‘That’s good, because my hands like you,’ I replied, returning her kiss.

Before setting my hands to work again.