Free Stories We Could Tell by Tony Parsons Page A

driver from Hackney, Leon thought. It always came back to my father’s father. The old man didn’t know how fucking lucky he was – all he had to compete with was a taxi driver from Hackney who never quite lost his Polish accent. And what did Leon have to compete with? Leon had to compete with
him
.
    One of the girls in the sleeping bag stirred, opened her eyes and went back to sleep.
    ‘You shouldn’t have come here, Dad,’ Leon said.
    ‘I came because your mother’s frantic,’ the old man said, and Leon flinched at the feeling in his voice. ‘She’s worried sick. Where’s your compassion for
her
, Leon?’ His father looked around wildly. ‘You think whoever owns this place is going to let this last for ever? One night soon someone is going to kick you out – and kick you bloody hard, my son.’
    Leon narrowed his eyes. ‘We’ll be ready for them.’
    His father threw his hands in the air. Leon had seen that exasperated gesture so many times. It said
the things I have to put up with!
    ‘Oh, grow up, Leon. You think these people are going to change the world? Take a good whiff. They have trouble changing their socks.’
    ‘They’re committed to something bigger than themselves. They care.’
    ‘They
carel
his father echoed. ‘One day you’ll see that the people who care, the people who profess love for the masses, are the most heartless bastards in the world.’ Then his voice was almost begging. ‘Look – I was like you. Thought I knew it all. You’ve got so much time, Leon. You don’t realise how much time you have.’
    Round and round. Never ending. It had been just like this in the last days of home, Leon thought. Bossing him around, dressing it up as reasoned debate. Until one of them – always Leon, now he thought about it – slammed away from the dinner table and went to his room. But he wasn’t living at home any more. His father did not understand. That was all over.
    ‘You just want me to be what I was, Dad – a good little student you can boast about to all your friends.’
    His father shook his head, and Leon felt a flicker of fear – he looked like he was in some kind of pain. ‘No – I just want you to have a happy life. Dropping out – that’s not the way, that can never be the way.’
    Happiness! Now Leon had heard everything.
    ‘Life’s not just about happiness, is it? I can’t go back to my old life, Dad. I can’t sit around with a bunch of privileged middle-class kids when there are people sleeping on the street, when there are racists beating up Pakistani shopkeepers, when they are marching through the streets making their Nazi salutes. I can’t pretend it’s not happening.’
    ‘Come home,’ his father said.
    That’s what it came down to in the end. Never hearing a word he said. Wanting things to be the way they were, when they could never be that way again.
    Leon shrugged. ‘I am home.’
    ‘Oh, you stupid little boy,’ his father said, and Leon was shocked to see him filling up with tears, turning his face away, staring out the window at nothing.
    Leon couldn’t stand it. He couldn’t stand to see the old man so upset. He felt like putting his arms around him, but just as he was about to do so a couple of the French guys appeared in the doorway and stood there with their arms folded, making it clear that this man was unwanted in this place.
    Leon’s father felt their presence, glanced at them waiting in the doorway and nodded, as if he understood.
    The old man hugged him and pulled away quickly. Leon felt like patting him, or saying something to reassure him, or telling him it had to be this way, but he didn’t know where to start.
    Leon walked his father to the door in silence. They shook hands, as formal as strangers who had not really had a chance to talk, and Leon watched the old man turn up the collar of his Humphrey Bogart raincoat and carefully cross the muddy moat.
    You were meant to keep the front door shut and locked, but Leon watched his dad