Absolute Beginners Read Online Free PDF Page B

it’s compulsory. If it was voluntary, yes, perhaps, but not if you’re just sent.’
    ‘The war,’ said Vern, ‘was Britain’s finest hour.’
    ‘What war? You mean Cyprus, boy? Or Suez? Or Korea?’
    ‘No, stupid. I mean the real war, you don’t remember.’
    ‘Well, Vernon,’ I said, ‘please believe me, I’m glad I don’t. All of you oldies certainly seem to try to keep it well in mind, because every time I open a newspaper, or pick up a paperback, or go to the Odeon, I hear nothing but war, war, war. You pensioners certainly seem to love that old, old struggle.’
    ‘You’re just ignorant,’ said Vern.
    ‘Well, if I am, Vern, that’s quite okay by me. Because I tell you: not being a mug, exactly, I’ve no intention of playing soldiers for the simple reasons, first of all, that big armies obviously are no longer necessary, what with the atomic, and secondly, no one is going to tell me to do anything I don’t want to, no, or try to blackmail me with that crazy old mixture of threats and congratulations that a pronk like you falls for because you’re a born form-filler, taxpayer and cannon fodder … well, boy, just take a look in the mirror at yourself.’
    That left him silent for a while. ‘Come on, now,’ I said. ‘Be a good half-brother, and let me get on with my work. Why have you moved in this room, anyway?’
    ‘You’re wrong!’ he cried. ‘You’ll have to do it!’
    ‘That subject’s exhausted. We’ve been into it thoroughly. Do forget it.’
    ‘What we done, you gotta do.’
    ‘Vernon,’ I said, ‘I hate to tell you this, but you really don’t speak very good English.’
    ‘You’ll see!’
    ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’ll see.’
    I was trying, as you’ll have realised, to drive him out of the room, but the boy is sensitive as the end of a truck, and just flopped back on his bed again, worn out by the mental effort of our conversation. So I put him out of my mind and worked on at my snaps in silence, till Dad knocked on the door with two cups of char; and standing there in the dark, with only the red light burning, we both ignored that moron, not bothering to wonder if hewas awake and eavesdropping, or dreaming of winning six Victoria Crosses.
    Dad asked me for the news.
    Now, this always embarrasses me, because whatever news I tell Dad, he always comes back again to his two theme songs of, number one, what a much better time I have than he had in the 1930s, and, number two, why don’t I come back ‘home’ again – which is what Dad really seems to believe this high-grade brothel that he lives in means to me.
    ‘You’ve found that he’s moved in,’ said Dad, pointing in the direction of the bed. ‘I tried to stop it, but I couldn’t. The room’s still yours, though, I’ve always insisted on that all the way along.’
    I imagined poor Dad insisting to my Mum.
    ‘What’s she put him here for, anyway?’ I asked.
    ‘He’s been quarrelling with the lodgers,’ Dad said. ‘There’s one of them in particular, doesn’t get on with him at all.’
    I didn’t like to ask him which or why. So, ‘And how’s the book going?’ I asked my poor old ancestor. Which is a reference to a History of Pimlico Dad’s said to be composing, but nobody’s ever seen it, though it gives him the excuse for getting out of the house, and chatting to people, and visiting public libraries, and reading books.
    ‘I’ve reached Chapter Twenty-Three,’ he said.
    ‘When does that take us up to?’ I asked him, already guessing the answer.
    ‘The beginning of the 1930s,’ he replied.
    I gulped a bit of tea. ‘I bet, Dad,’ I said, ‘you give those poor old 1930s of yours a bit of a bashing.’
    I could feel Dad quivering with indignation. ‘I certainly do, son!’ he shouted in a whisper. ‘You’ve simply no idea what that pre-war period was like. Poverty, unemployment, fascism and disaster and, worst of all, no chance, no opportunity, no sunlight at the end of the corridor,