All to Play For Read Online Free PDF

would remark after every opening night.
    “So how come he’s married with two kids?” was Nicky’s usual reply.
    “Don’t mean a thing, son. Believe me, I’ve seen it all.” Nicky would shrug and accept his father’s experienced world-view. He liked Steve and had never seen anything to support Les’ theory except larking about, and perhaps touching people more often than most men did – but then again, in the theatre, everyone did. It was a different way of behaving altogether. Nicky understood the rules both inside and outside the theatre, and was equally at ease with either. He was confident and self-possessed; he was liked, and he knew what he wanted. These were enviable qualities in his neighbourhood.
    The truth was he had never seriously considered trying to become an actor or anything similar. He knew he had no special talent for it, and feared the prospect of financial insecurity. He had no intention of being gay either. He accepted Les’ view that gay men were second-rate, that real men were big, strong and hairy, with rugged faces and stern frowns. No self-respecting man would ever take it like a woman, and women came even lower down the social scale than gay men.
    “Look at film stars today,” Les liked to point out. “Since they legalised homosexuality they’re completely different. They’re pretty boys, not proper men.” Doreen agreed. She found the likes of Kirk Douglas far more attractive than Tom Cruise. Nicky went along with them, he was content to live and let live, as long as no-one put him on the spot – in which case he would assert himself with his fists. By Ilford standards, he was very easygoing. If ever he felt a twinge of teenage attraction for another man, he dispelled it. A gay boy he would not be.
    A couple of weeks before Nicky’s interview at the police college in Hendon, he came home one afternoon to find his parents clinging together on the sofa. His father was weeping, but he stopped when Nicky appeared and blew his nose.
    “Is it Nan?” asked Nicky, sitting on the edge of the armchair.
    “No darling,” said his mum. “She’s fine. Everyone’s fine. Your dad’s had a nasty shock, that’s all.” She patted Les’ thigh and sighed.
    Nicky leaned back in his chair, and waited for them to tell him what had happened. They seemed reluctant. “Don’t tell me if you don’t want to,” he said, trying to sound mature, but failing to keep a hint of sulkiness from colouring his remark. Les looked at him for a moment and dropped his red-eyed gaze to the floor.
    “Shall I tell him?” Doreen asked gently. Les nodded and his face creased up as despair overwhelmed him again, his head dropping into his hands. “Your dad’s been suspended from work, along with four other officers. He’s being investigated.”
    “What for?”
    “Corruption!” Doreen’s anger was apparent. “Can you credit it? Twenty-eight years’ impeccable service, and they’ve got the nerve to accuse him of something like that.” Her lips sealed tight and she hugged Les the way she used to hug Nicky when he had been thumped by another boy.
    Nicky took a deep breath and blew his cheeks out. He gazed at the pair of them, completely gob-smacked. No-one spoke, and in the silence they heard a distant police siren amid the gentle whoosh of traffic pouring round the North Circular Road.
    “Shall I make a cup of tea?”
    “Yes please Nicky, that would be just the thing.”
    Nicky went in the kitchen in a daze. As he waited for the kettle to boil he pondered. There were two absolute constants in his scheme of things: the integrity of his father, and the integrity of the police force. Suddenly, both had been called into question. Either his father or the force was in the wrong. It couldn’t be his father. That meant it was the force. It must have made a mistake. But how could it get everything so wrong as to betray one of its own most loyal members?
    He took the mugs into the living room and set them on