Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
Friday 17th August, 1979
The service lift stunk of farts and old men’s BO, and Chris Davis puffed heavily on his roll-up in an attempt to mask the stench. After what seemed like an age, the light for the 26th floor flashed up and with a dull ping the doors creaked open. Thank fuck for that, he thought as he pushed the heavy mail trolley out into the corridor. Chris threw the dog-end behind him and brushed some tiny flecks of tobacco off his arm. This was the top deck, the executive level; he had to look his best – not to suck up to these snobby bastards but just to show them how a good suit should be worn. Even at work he was immaculate, his camel-hair whistle from Johnson’s was barely out of the box and his button-down shirt was so crisp it was scraping a line across the back of his neck. He straightened his back and pushed the trolley through the swing doors into the light.
Chris had been working at the Shell Centre since he had left school. He did not have many qualifications beyond O level woodwork but his sharp appearance and self-confidence had got him through the door. It was not a bad job in the mail room, overtime was plentiful and he needed plenty to fund his taste in schmutter and keep his Vespa PX in good nick. Going out was another expense and in the past six months there were clubs popping up all over town and something meaningful happening almost every night. His old Mum used to complain that he never left his bedroom and now she was bending his ear that he was never at home. The truth was that since becoming a Mod, there were far better things to do than stay in at night ‘Barclaying’ over old copies of Fiesta. He had to be out and see what was about. Every night at home was a missed opportunity, and he hated that dull thud of disappointment he felt when his mates recounted any eventful evening that he had missed. The job was a necessary evil and although he spent a good part of the day in the bowels of the building, delivering the mail took him all over the towering office block giving him time to catch breath-taking views of the Thames and get an eyeful of the some of the tasty crumpet that populated the building. Grown up women in stockings who smelt like the perfume stall in a posh department store…all out of his league. For now. But not forever.
The bright August sun glared through the huge windows of the top floor and even from the corridor he could catch glimpses of the whole of the city spread out around him. His city. London.
As he approached the floor’s main reception, Chris felt a familiar twinge in his trousers. Lurking behind a large oak desk was Maureen Philips, a thirty-something brass with breasts like a dead heat in a Zeppelin race
‘Morning Christopher,’ she purred as she looked straight into his eyes. ‘Have you got a package for me?’
Her tone was pure Carry On, and she had used that line endlessly but it still gave Chris a jolt to his John Thomas. He breathed in quietly and attempted to compose himself. He didn’t want to appear flustered by her saucy inflection.
‘Yes, I have Maureen,’ he said with a smile and as he handed over a bundle of letters his eyes were drawn to her heaving bosom. Some of the geezers downstairs claimed that they had heard she always chose a top two sizes too small just to showcase her outstanding assets, but Chris thought that was bollocks. Her curvy body couldn’t be contained in anything, and he was sure she would look good even in a bin bag. In truth, she was not really conventionally pretty but she made the best of what she had and the clobber she wore was always part-business, part page three.
Chris heard a husky ‘ahem’ behind him and his attention snapped away from Maureen’s glorious stackers. It was one of the executives, a tall streak of public school piss in a Savile Row suit.
The lanky nob did not even look at Chris as he spoke.
‘Did that brief from Goldman’s arrive, Miss Philips?’
‘Yes Mister Cavendish,’ piped Maureen in a clipped tone as she rustled through the mail Chris had handed over. She looked at him and delivered a curt ‘That’s fine, thank you’ which really translated as ‘You can fuck off now.’ Chris sneered and pushed his trolley off with a jolt. The tart.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ roared Alec Norton as Chris pushed his empty trolley into the mailroom. Norton was the mail room manager, a bad-tempered jock who sweated like James Brown and seemed to delight in being a pain in Chris’s khyber. Chris ignored him and began to reload for his next delivery.
‘Hey Ted, I’m talking to you,’ continued Norton.
‘I’m not a Ted, I’m a Mod,’ said Chris with resignation.
‘Ted, Mod, whatever you are... It’s all a lot of shite anyway. That was a forty-minute delivery and you’ve dragged it out to an hour and a half.’
‘The service lift was running slow and I had to wait for a few signatures,’ Chris shrugged without looking round.
‘Bollocks,’ barked his red-faced boss. ‘You were eyeing up the birds and puffing away at those fags. You reek of Old Holborn.’
Chris said nothing and finished loading his trolley. He hated this job at times but he hated Norton more. The beer-bellied twat in the ill-fitting whistle was always on his case. They’d got off to a bad start on Chris’s first day at work when Norton seemed alarmed to see this smart dressed upstart introduced to his department. The rest of the new starts were the usual teenage oiks jammed uncomfortably into ill-fitting slacks and the shirts they usually only wore to weddings and funerals. Kids whose idea of music began and ended with Judas fucking Priest or occasionally the Lurkers. But Chris was sharp and he knew it, and it seemed to make Norton massively ill at ease. The fact that Chris had been noticed and his appearance complimented on by some of Norton’s superiors was also a kick to the nuts that made the sweaty Jock even more resentful.
‘This next delivery should only take you half an hour so you can take these as well.’ Norton threw a pile of parcels on top of Chris’s trolley.
‘Whoa,’ exclaimed Chris as he looked at the parcels and then his watch. ‘These are for the Downstream building. That’s miles away. I’m finishing at two.’
‘Well you had better get a fucking move on then,’ the Scotsman sneered with a grin.
Chris was about to retort but he held back. Over an hour’s work to do and only half an hour left on his shift. He pushed the trolley determinedly through the swing doors. He would do it with time to spare so fuck Norton, fuck Shell and fuck Maureen Philips’s enormous knockers. The weekend was almost here and his real life was about to begin.
***
