Hope

1970s

Tony was someone I knew at school. He was not what you may describe as a friend; he was not what you may describe as an enemy or even worse a nonentity. He was someone who was maybe friends of others in the group in which I mixed. He was someone who was always on the edges of what was going on. Tony was a quiet, and quite sensitive boy who mostly struggled in class and so meandered into the lower grades without being good at any of the sports the school concentrated on. He was also not one of the bullies or bullied, in fact he hated fights and violence. He was just Tony.

I cannot remember any conversations I had with him or overheard from back then. I just remember him frequently being around during class breaks, lunch breaks and those times before and after school when we would hang out and just talk, play, eat or generally act like the young did back then and probably do now as we avoided the dramas of playground fights, youthful crushes that inevitably went wrong and such like things. He would even occasionally be around when we went to a fair, event or met outside of school. In short, he was totally unmemorable, which is a terribly unkind thing to say and makes me cringe saying it.

At sixteen after taking GCEO levels, or CSE examinations, we had a choice of staying on and studying A levels if grades permitted, as a few or some did, or leaving and entering a college, like one of the John’s did to study agriculture and farming, taking up an apprenticeship to learn a trade or getting a job. I being lucky enough to have high grades without really putting any effort in stayed on to do A levels as did a few others of our group. Quite why one of the John’s going to college to study agriculture and farming is something that still sticks in my aging mind today is something I cannot explain, but maybe it had something to do with in the middle of London there were no farms and nobody went to be a farmer. Apprenticeships even in those days, were already becoming fewer and harder to get onto, so not many took this route. Most who had CSE’s, got a job, this being the time before unemployment rocketed as the concept of a reserve work force to keep wages down was practiced with a vengeance.

So, I stayed on to do A levels with a vague idea of getting a degree and becoming a pilot. I was naïve in those day and had not ever flown and discovered my utter hatred of flying and the notion that people from my background were not the kind to be pilots had not yet been discovered. I was a dreamer. Tony left school with a few CSEs and I did not know, or no longer remember what his plan was.

*****

1980’s

Several years later, I was having a drink with one or maybe two of our group from back then in school. In truth I cannot remember the name of who, but it was a time when I still occasionally met up with people from school. It may have been when I was working after leaving school at 18 with only a couple of low grade A levels. In fact, the minimum grades needed to enter university or more likely polytechnic to study a degree and get a pittance of a grant. Yes, there were still grants back then.

Anyway, I was having a drink with someone, let’s call him Tom, a nice neutral name. Tom and I were passing the time between drinking, and drinking at a legal age unlike back in the day, and of course we laughed and talked about the memories from school and a little, but not much, about our current lives. It was like that. I being the one out of the knowledge loop was the one asking the questions.

“Whatever happened to Debbie, who wrote that amazing science fiction story in literature class?”

“She is working in a real estate agency as a receptionist. Married, one baby already.”

“Adult life moves on so quickly from all our innocence and freedom. What was her friends name, the one with Ray as boyfriend?”

“Judy? You mean Judy?”

“Yes, that is it. Short dark hair and freckles. An odd combination.”

“Ha, well she is working in a bank. Cashier, I think. Her and Ray finished a while ago. He joined the army.”

“Oh dear.”

“Oh, and Bris’, he has just gone to Jamaica. He still has some family out there.”

“Well, that is a bit more exciting than the news so far. At least it seems nobody has gone bad, so many from around here seem to.”

Tom looked at me, and when I caught his eye looked down, and then back up and sighed.

“You haven’t heard, then?

“Me? I never hear anything. I am out of the loop on everything!”

“Tony? You didn’t hear about Tony?”

“No. Tony? The quiet, shy one Not really any friends?”

“Yes, and maybe the lack of friends was the problem.”

“What happened?”

“Well, my mum saw his mum one day. She was very upset. You know he lived just around the corner from us.”

“Yeah, I remember he was close to where your house was.”

“Flat, mate! We never had a house, just a council flat. Still there. How about you?”

“Oh, I moved out and have a place in Haringey now.”

“You have moved into town then.”

“Yes, it’s close to Manor House tube, so convenient. I like it. Anyway, what his Mum tell your Mum? You got me intrigued, like, and now we are talking about where we live! Boring.”

“Well yeah, my Mum saw his Mum and she was right upset. Look maybe I shouldn’t say anything, it’s a bit sensitive.”

“You started, so you can’t finish.” I spouted the old Mastermind presenter’s saying that we always used.

“It is not really funny, mate.”

“OK. Look you can tell me I ain’t going to say anything and I never see anyone who knows him. I never see anyone from back then.”

Tom looked at me from under his unfashionable floppy brown fringe, his eyes concentrating on my face. I said nothing and just watched him concentrate, his hazel eyes looking uncomfortable, but he held my gaze until I looked away.

“Look, as you know I am a Christian. I go to church every Sunday. I am not sure I should speak bad about people.”

“Yes. Oh OK, I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, let’s forget it.”

He stayed silent and we sat and finished our pints.

“One more?” I said, “I will get it.”

“OK”.

I went to the pub bar and ordered two pints. I am not sure what we were drinking, but it was pints for sure. I returned and we sat for a while not saying much and slowly, very slowly drinking.

“OK, here is the story. I don’t know much, and you cannot tell anyone.”

“OK. Nobody. Not even me Mum or girlfriend.”

He just looked seriously at me.

“Tony is in prison.”

“How? He was not one I had thought that would happen to. He was so quiet and shy.”

“Well, his Mum told mine that he had fallen in with a bad crowd after school, and in that area, there are plenty of people to avoid. He had a job working in a warehouse, not sure where, but he had this Bangladeshi supervisor. It seems the crowd he had fallen in with were National Front or something and Tony didn’t take well to having a Bangladeshi boss.”

“He did not seem anything like that at school. We all used to hang out with Bris’ and other Tony from Jamaica, and Jamal, and there was never a problem.”

“I don’t know. Maybe it was in him then or maybe not, but the lot he was with must have had an effect.”

“So, what happened?”

“His supervisor told him to do something and Tony went mad is what his Mum said. My Mum said she was crying as she told her. His Mum was active in the church community and cared for everyone whatever race.”

“So, what happened.”

“Tony attacked the bloke. Apparently, it was bad. He hurt him badly. Got sent down for more than 15 years for GBH. His Mum heard he could have got life for it. It must have been really bad. I don’t think he had ever been in trouble with the police before.”

I sat there thinking: another one gone bad in this area, and shaking my head,

“Terrible to hear, mate. That is real bad. He deserves the lot,” was all I could manage to say.

We sat drinking silently for a while and then went our separate ways.

*****

2012

It was many, many years later in a different world and a very different place where communications had changed as much as people. The world was a very changed place. I had lost touch with people from school. I had reattached with people from school. The Facebook generation of the middle aged and old had been born at some point, and now devoid of having to rely on, and to spend precious time and effort on landlines or letters, everyone, or everyone who wanted to be, or everyone who could find who they were looking for, was connected and in touch. Welcome to the world of intrusion and visibility.

*****

I would get up in the morning first leaving my wife to sleep a bit longer. As time had passed, as life had passed, I became less and less of a lover of the night and darkness and all it promised, to be a lover of the early morning and the brightening of grey skies to a wonderful blue panorama with white clouds and the sound of birds beginning their songs. The light promising a renewal and reawakening. It became my favourite time and I loved enjoying it alone surrounded by quiet except for the rude interventions by the sound of nature.

During this time, as these promises enthused my waking body, I would then find myself checking messages on my phone before then preparing some fruit as a first breaking of the nightly fast that sleep had brought on.

*****

Friend request… I will look at that later I thought, but today the news was boring. There were no emails from friends or messages and the few contacts from work could wait. Wait until work time. I was old fashioned like that, I guess. So, with little to do it was back to the friend request. No doubt it would be from someone I hardly knew and quickly deleted.

Friend request… Tony… I think it best we leave full names aside, but even with the full name it took me some minutes of thinking that this name rang a bell, but who. Someone I worked with, or used to? Someone from polytechnic? Someone from when I travelled? I don’t remember how long but suddenly a realisation from the mists of time dawned on me as I gazed thinking into the deepening blue of the sky…

*****

Friend request… People you may know; 4 mutual friends… Who were they? No… I went on with other things.

People you may know; 4 mutual friends… Not much to do today, so I looked. Mutual friends were all people from school. I wondered how long they had been friends. I did not want to befriend someone who had been imprisoned for violence and racism.

People you may know; 4 mutual friends… There it was again nagging me. It was not going to go away and I never bothered removing such things. But no.

People you may know; 5 mutual friends… It had gone up one. Who was this? A new one. I clicked to see. Surprising, this was a good friend and someone I remembered as especially kind. Surely, he could not have gone bad, too.

Intrigued now, I began to look at the profile of Tony. Scrolling through on the phone, I saw posts about music interspersed with ones about family, meet ups and music, and then some that did not seem to fit with what I knew. Maybe this was not the Tony I knew at school. But how could that be? Five mutual friends and all from school. And I knew that face even after all this time. It must be.

This needed further investigation. That could wait until I was on the laptop, clear from work and had time.

*****

Laptop

The music was all mod music and there were pictures of Tony with a guitar, recent ones and ones from younger days; in a band with a guitar and wearing a parka from younger days and from more recent ones.

Had Tony been into this when I knew him? He must have been. Then a vague memory from the past of conversations about bands such as the Jam, hit me. Or at least I hoped it was a memory and not something being suggested and reinvented into my past by what I saw. But some had been in bands, and the Jam were popular back then. It fitted and it must be. Tony was being remembered. And it seems the bands and love of that style of music had continued until now. How had that happened with an interlude in jail and events including a crime that caused extreme reactions?

The family was a litany of love, loving comments and care. Pictures of a wife. Pictures of a partner. Pictures of nieces and nephews. Pictures of a brother and sister. Pictures of friends and fellow mods. Pictures of scooters with way too many lights and badges. None of these people did I remember. But the picture it all painted was one of a caring group, a caring family and a mod culture obsessed ring of friends. The comments I began to read matched the pictures Everything was openly expressed love, and with family a modicum of obviously practiced Christianity extending to even Tony who from my memory back at school either held no such active belief or had it on a back shelf somewhere.

It continued like this – memories of music and days gone by. Scanned pictures. Those with shared loves discussing them. It was normal – what was I expecting? I was hooked. How had he come from the shy quiet boy at school, through entering into racist violence and jail for a serious offence, and now was seemingly in a love filled environment?

*****

Over a few days when I had the time, I would go back and pick up where I had left off. Voyeurism was taking over. Each time I would just become more intrigued and want answers. And I did not want to ask those mutual friends, for I did not want them to know.

*****

Tony had been married and divorced to a woman with blonde permed hair and a naturally smiling face, and it was clear that they were still very close in spite of the divorce. It was clear she really cared for him a lot.

Tony was clearly now in a relationship with another man. There was obviously a lot more to Tony than the few pieces of his life I had known before that friend request, and for the first time, I wondered why he had reached out to me.

Bu the biggest shock and the one I found hardest to understand were the posts about his long term and still continuing anti-racist activism.

So many questions… So much complexity…

*****

At some point, a bit later and when realising that my voyeurism was neither good for me, very ethical or what the multiple commentators and indeed Tony himself deserved, I clicked accept on the button that said accept friend request.

*****

2013 to 2017 – Hope

At some point after accepting and maybe liking a few posts. I am not sure on that, but I have a habit of doing it. It expresses humanity I always think, but at some point, I got a direct message on Messenger from Tony. The contents of that will remain between he and I as you have to respect privacy when things are not put in a public domain, but it was little to answer any of the questions I had, just a long message that showed a very caring person in touch with a very old friend after much time had passed.

And so, it continued for a while: I answered, he would respond. We talked of the music of the Jam and similar bands although that was not really my kind of music then or now, but it was what we would write to each other about. We would send each other birthday wishes and like some posts and this continued as it does. After a while, as also things go, the messages we sent each other decreased, became shorter and at some point, stopped. We fell into being social media friends.

And yet through it all, I could not get the nagging questions out of my mind. I wanted to know; I wanted to ask; I knew it was wrong to want to know; I knew it was wrong to ask.

Life settled into its routines of work and not-work and time passed.

*****

2018

I had not heard from Tony in a while. That was maybe not unusual by now, but the year was drawing to a close and Christmas was not far off. I don’t know about you, but Christmas and the New Year is always a time I try and catch up with people and see what is happening or what the plans are.

I scanned through my friends and clicked on a few sending messages, and then I came to Tony.

“You are still in our memories.”

“You are still with us waiting in Heaven.”

“Never forgotten.”

“The room was filled with the music of the Jam as we thought of you”

“I will always love you.”

And pictures, old pictures of Tony. Many pictures from a great and diverse group of all backgrounds.

I scanned a little, until I found the post:

Tony passed away unexpectedly, earlier today…

Hope is a short story by Graham. If you enjoyed Hope, you may enjoy these stories similar to Hope, too:

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