Turning Thirty (5 page)

Birmingham, like most industry-based cities, was undergoing a face-lift but its metamorphosis had been rapid and forced – I barely recognised it. It was as if its citizens had tired of it being a national joke and told it to smarten up its act. But despite its near-comic status among the rest of the nation I'd always been proud of coming from Birmingham, precisely because it was so funny. It's hard to take yourself too seriously when the whole nation thinks you're there to amuse them.

This was especially the case during my five years in London. The moment anyone there heard me speak they assumed I was bordering on clinical stupidity and would therefore speak v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y or expected me to act like some sort of latterday court jester: they would goad me into saying words like ‘actually' (
ack-chur-lie
) ‘going' (
gewin
‘) and ‘Birmingham' (
Bhuuuuur-ming-gum
), thus revealing my accent in its fullest sing-song glory. It got to the stage where I felt I had to justify to everyone I met
why
I came from Birmingham, as if it was some sort of handicap, curse or practical joke taken a step too far. But I didn't care. This was where I was from and there would always be a part of me that would love the city as long as I lived.

‘Excuse me, mate,' said the cabbie, interrupting my reverie, ‘but is your name Matt Beckford?'

‘Yeah,' I replied cautiously. ‘It is.'

‘I knew it,' he said. ‘Ever since I picked you up I've been trying to work out where I know you from.'

‘And where do you know me from?'

‘You won't remember me,' he said, turning down the radio, ‘but I went to the same secondary school as you, King's Heath Comprehensive.' He turned and offered his hand.'Tony Goddard.'

The name rang a bell. ‘Dave Goddard's little brother?'

‘That's the one.'

‘Dave Goddard,' I mused. ‘Now, there's a name I haven't heard in years.' Back in my schooldays Dave Goddard had always been the boy most likely to become a brain surgeon. ‘What's he doing now?'

‘He's in Canada,' said the cabbie. ‘Toronto, to be exact. Met a girl there on holiday and moved out about five years ago. He's got three kids and a massive house. He's really living the life.'

I couldn't help myself. ‘Is he a brain surgeon, then? He was so smart we always reckoned that's what he'd do.'

The cabbie laughed. ‘I know what you mean. He was miles smarter than anyone in our family. But no, he's not. He's a lawyer. Specialises in commercial law.'

‘And you're his little brother?'

‘I was only twelve when you were at King's Heath. You and my brother were at the top end of the school and I was at the bottom.' He chuckled to himself. ‘I tell you what, though.'

‘What?'

‘You were cool in those days, you know. There were some great stories about you.'

‘I doubt it,' I said, embarrassed.

To prove his case he cited some of the legendary events in which I'd supposedly been involved in my schooldays, starting with the time I staged a roof-top protest over the inedible state of our school dinners (true: I got suspended for a fortnight), moved on to the time I streaked naked across the school playing-fields for a dare (false: an urban myth) and concluded with when I organised a policewoman kiss-o-gram for Mr Frederick, my form teacher, to celebrate his fortieth birthday (semi-true: I organised it but the school secretary twigged what she was up to and wouldn't let her in). It was weird hearing him describe these events with the sort of reverent tones usually reserved for the first man on the moon or the fall of the Berlin Wall. But I suppose when you're only twelve the kind of once-in-a-lifetime events that you're actually interested in are the ones that involve sex, nudity and roof-top protests.

‘They certainly were good days,' I confided, ‘probably the best. But I wasn't the most popular kid at school, that's for sure. I was just like everyone else, keeping my head down, trying to survive.'

We talked about the old days, sharing as much as we had in common. I told him about my life and what I'd been up to. He told me about his life and what he'd been up to, and then he told me about a few of the kids from my year at school that he'd heard about through the ex-King's Heath Comprehensive grapevine. The names he mentioned were ones that I had long forgotten. People like Peter Whittacker (then, the boy most likely to become a professional athlete) was now a sales administrator for a double-glazing firm; Gemma Piper (then, the girl most likely to go to Oxford and become the new Kenneth Branagh) had been spotted in a TV ad for washing powder; Lucy Dunn (then, the girl most likely to remain ‘nice but dull' all her life), was now a radio producer at BBC Pebble Mill; and Chris Adams (then, the boy who always smelt of wee) was now the manager of a health-food shop.

That was the news.

‘Here it is,' I said, as we pulled into my parents' road. ‘It's the one with the immaculate, manicured lawn.' He pulled to a halt. ‘How much?'

He clicked off his timer. ‘Nothing.'

‘You can't do that,' I said. It was a nice gesture but I wouldn't have felt comfortable accepting it. I guessed the fare was somewhere around ten pounds so I took a note out of my wallet and handed it to him.

‘I can't take that,' he said. ‘No way.'

‘Well, thanks a lot,' I replied. ‘It was a nice way to be welcomed home.'

He insisted on helping me out with my bags, then we shook hands. As he drove off he beeped his horn and waved.

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed the net curtains of both my parents' neighbours twitching like mad. Unlike London where everyone jumps in and out of black cabs all the time, my parents' road was inhabited by people who only ever used them to go to or from the airport before or after a package holiday. My arrival in one when my parents lived so close to the number 50 bus route, the most frequent bus service in Europe no less, was a clear sign of wanton decadence.

Verily, the prodigal son had returned.

As I stood on the doorstep, my finger hovering over the doorbell, it occurred to me that perhaps I should have called my parents to let them know I was coming home for a visit. And not just a little visit but one that would last some three months. I'd thought about telling them when I'd first had the idea but I just couldn't bring myself to do it because it would involve me admitting that Elaine and I were over, the knock-on effect of that news being that their eldest son would not be providing them with any grandchildren in the foreseeable future.

I rang the doorbell and waited. Even through the frosted-glass panel of the porch door I could tell that the figure approaching was that of my dad.

‘All right, Dad?' I said brightly, as he opened the door. ‘I'm back!'

Standing on the step in his red tartan slippers, holding a small gardening fork, my dad looked me up and down suspiciously. I could see it in his face that my presence here was causing him some consternation. ‘Matt's here at home,' his face was saying. ‘Why?'

‘Matthew?' said my dad eventually, as if checking I wasn't a random impostor.

‘Dad?' I replied, mimicking his tone.

‘What are you doing here?'

I wasn't too concerned about the abrupt nature of my father's greeting. He was a man who liked to get to the point and work backwards.

‘I'm delivering milk,' I replied, and gave him a wink. ‘Heard you'd run out. Thought I'd come all the way from America to bring you two pints of semi-skimmed.'

My dad laughed and shook my hand firmly. He wasn't a hugger, not even with women, but he did like to shake hands. Still standing on the doorstep he muttered, ‘You've got bags with you.'

I nodded.

‘Are you staying for a while, then?'

I nodded again.

There then followed a long pause as we took each other in. I hadn't seen my dad since the previous May when he and my mum had flown to New York to stay with me and Elaine. It was one of the strangest experiences I'd ever had. My mum insisted on putting on her posh accent for the entire time they were there, and my dad asked my permission every time he wanted to turn on the TV. It was as if they were both on their best behaviour trying to impress not just Elaine but me too.

‘Are you going to let me in or what?'

‘Of course. Of course.' He stepped outside, still in his slippers – a cardinal sin in my mother's eyes – and picked up one of my bags.

‘No Elaine, then?' he said.

He said this not as a proper question, because I was quite sure that he didn't think Elaine was going to drop out of the sky, but more as a statement of fact. My dad wasn't the sort of man to put two and two together unless he really had to. He much preferred to point out a two, then another two, and wait for me to say, ‘Bloody hell, Dad, four!' which is what I usually did. But I didn't do it this time. It would be easier on both of us in the long term, I reasoned, if we left it just a little while longer.

‘She did send her love, though,' I told him.

Which was true. Elaine thought my parents were fantastic. ‘They're so
real
,' she'd say, ‘unlike mine who are sooooooo
fake
.' Elaine's dad worked in construction and her mum worked in a bank. They lived in New Jersey and we didn't see much of them, not even in the holidays. At Christmas even though we'd split up, Elaine and I spent the whole day alone together in our apartment. Christmas dinner was left-over Chinese and sixteen bottles of Budweiser.

‘That's good,' said my dad, visibly cheered. ‘She's a good girl, Elaine.'

‘Yeah, Dad, she is,' I replied, and we exchanged smiles. ‘Now, is there any chance that I can come in?'

As my mum wasn't home yet I was spared having to explain Elaine's absence so I took my bags up to my old bedroom while my dad rustled up a cup of tea. Over that and a chocolate digestive my dad and I summed up what was going on in our lives in exactly four sentences:

Sentence one: How are you?

Sentence two: Not too bad.

Sentence three: And yourself?

Sentence four: Can't complain.

Pleasantries out of the way, the conversation after that centred on the weather, the state of the nation, recent developments in English football and the rest of the Beckford family. At twenty-nine I was the oldest of my siblings. After me were Yvonne and Tony, known in these parts as ‘the twins', who were twenty-seven. Yvonne was doing her second degree at Edinburgh University, having decided after five years of medical school that she didn't want to be a doctor after all. Tony was living in Nottingham, cultivating a borderline alcohol problem while occasionally drumming in a band called Left Bank. The baby of the family was Ed. He was twenty-two, taking a year out after university to travel around Thailand before committing himself to the world of work. As a family we weren't exactly close – in the sense that we were all terrible at keeping in regular touch with each other – but we always knew that if any of us ever needed help or support it would be there without question.

‘You should've told me you were coming.'

These were the first words my mum said to me when she arrived home mid-afternoon from the supermarket. Not ‘Hello'. Not ‘How are you?' But ‘You should've told me you were coming.' Like my dad, my mum liked to do her share of pointing out the obvious, no matter how annoying. I nodded and smiled because I knew that in her own way this was her biggest, fattest, sloppiest ‘I've missed you, son.'

‘I know, Mum,' I said remorsefully, and kissed her cheek. ‘You're right, I should've told you I was coming.'

‘I didn't get any extra food in,' she said indignantly.

I glanced at the four huge shopping-bags on the floor at her feet with a wry smile. ‘It's okay, Mum,' I reassured her. ‘I don't eat much, these days.'

‘
And
I haven't cleaned your room,' she protested.

‘The bedroom's spotless, Mum.'

‘I suppose it is,' she conceded, secretly pleased. ‘Elaine will think we live in a pig-sty.'

‘No, she won't, Mum,' I said quietly, ‘because she's not here.'

‘Where is she?'

‘She couldn't make it,' I explained. ‘She would've loved to come but she couldn't get the time off.'

‘You should be with Elaine,' she said. ‘What if she needs you?'

‘She'll be fine,' I said. Despite her protests, I could tell mum was over the moon at having her first-born back. She just wanted to make it clear that she liked things done in a certain order.

‘How long are you home for?'

This was a tricky one. Unlike my dad, my mum was blessed with an inquisitive, tenacious mind. Having said that, the tenacious side probably held more sway than the inquisitive, but either meant that I wouldn't be able to get by with a shrug or ‘Dunno.' I was going to have to tell her something. I took a deep breath then let it go. ‘Quite a while?' I posed it as a question to make the whole idea more palatable.

‘How long's quite a while?' she asked suspiciously.

‘More than a month, less than . . .' My sentence fizzled out as her stern look made it clear that she'd already had enough of chasing me around. ‘Three months,' I said finally.

‘Three months?' she echoed.

‘Give or take,' I replied, adding a small shrug.

‘Give or take what?'

‘I dunno . . . a few days probably.'

‘What about Elaine?'