Goodnight, John-boy: Chapter 30
‘I’ve got something in the boot of my car for you, Maudling. Death is waiting and watching for you. D’you hear me, you fuck pig? You are both fucking dead.’
Welcome to Book Two of my dark comedy thriller series, Read Em And Weep.
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If you’re new to the Read Em And Weep series, start with Book One: Serial Killer.
DAVE WAS STILL BASKING in the warmth of Scott’s words when he returned to The Hole. Not even working on the belated Laarf! Olympic Special and Tom Morecambe’s hideous laugh, echoing through the long empty, miserable corridors of Mirth Row, could depress him, he decided.
And then he discovered Ron’s secret.
All those months he’d been locked in his office, “drowning his sorrows”, he had actually been secretly preparing a new comic, which was launched just two weeks after Aaagh! was banned.
War Picture Weekly was a huge hit with the readers because, uniquely, it showed combat as it really was, with the barest minimum of censorship. It was written and drawn by servicemen who had experienced World War Two. Not portrayed with the idiocy of the Caning Commando or the equally questionable ‘War is Hell but it’s still pretty cool’ style of baby-boomers like Greg.
The lead story, Ron’s War, was a fictional version of Ron’s wartime exploits beginning with the teenage soldier’s role in the D-Day landings on Sword Beach. Normally, comics would have covered the D-Day landing in just a single episode. Instead, Ron outdid the legendary war movie The Longest Day by taking an entire 12-episode serial over the first day of the landings alone. He brought out a humanity in the characters, which, aside from Aaagh!, had been lacking in comics. The death of Ron’s best friend, Ginger, in the first wave of young soldiers hitting the beaches was particularly moving and had many readers in tears.
It was drawn by ex-serviceman Joe Callaghan who, for the first time in a lifetime of working for Fleetpit, had something worthwhile to draw, and put his heart and soul into it. There was a passion and conviction in his characterisation; a truth to the mesmerising detail in his graphic images of the fighting, which not even The Longest Day could compete with. Readers preferred it to the film. They would remember Joe’s incredible pages all their lives.
They finally had their working-class hero: Ron.
Other stories, like The Red Devil, about a World War Two airborne soldier, and Borstal Boys, kids growing up in the Blitz, were also written and drawn in a similar hard-hitting vein. The latter revealed darker aspects of the war not generally known. Soldiers throwing away their rifles on returning from Dunkirk. Looting. The King and Queen booed by starving East Enders. The tube stations that were originally locked so people couldn’t shelter there during air raids. A priest, Father John Groser, breaking into a food depot when the authorities refused to feed his homeless neighbours. A kid sent to borstal for stealing a few lumps of coal to keep his family warm. The comic was refreshingly free of officer heroes. The war veterans, a writer and artist creative ‘League of Gentlemen’, had finally told it like it really was, and their audience responded accordingly.
It had taken the challenge of working under a German publisher, to kickstart Ron back into life. To throw caution to the wind and reanimate him and veteran artists and writers desperate to have genuine challenges. War Picture Weekly was a sensation.
The only one of Ron’s ‘rat pack’ who was missing seemed to be the Major. This was surprising, as the Major had been a Japanese prisoner of war and had written the shockingly racist, banned ‘Bumzai!’ episode of The Caning Commando, where the teacher fights a cane-wielding Samurai and was awarded a ‘purple arse’ medal by the Americans for ‘giving the Japanese a taste of their own divine wind’.
Ron’s success only made Dave slide deeper into his slough of despond. He and Greg had both expected to rule the roost at Fleetpit and they had both thought Ron was washed-up.
They saw him as they returned to The Hole one lunchtime. He gave no sign of his victory, but there was just the slightest curl to his lip and he walked that bit taller, that bit prouder.
And his look said, ‘I’ve cut you two hotshots down to size.’
Dave and Greg’s days as the whizz kids, the golden boys of Fleetpit, were over. There would be no escape from The Hole. They were the ones who were washed up. They were lifers.
‘Hey,’ said Greg, looking up from game-testing the Laarf! Olympic game. ‘Maybe Ron would be interested in my French resistance story? It’s about a British kid, Billy Chief.’
‘Billy Chief, eh? That’s an unusual surname, Greg. And you say he’s a British kid in a French resistance story?
‘You see, you must always have a British hero,’ said Greg.
‘For reader identification. So we have to lead the Russians, the Americans, or the French in the war. ’Cos they’re not really cool.’
‘Apart from Germans. They’re cool?’
‘Germans are always cool, Dave. So Billy leads a Paris street gang of French apaches who fight the Nazis using their savage kickboxing skills.’
‘Naturally Billy Chief is so much better at the French martial art than the apaches?’
‘Oh, naturally. He’s British. That’s why he leads them. I’ve got a great title for it.’
‘I have an uneasy feeling I know where this is going. Don’t, Greg. Please. Spare me.’
‘You guessed the title?’
‘I’m afraid I have, Greg. But, don’t tell me. I’m already about to phone Cross Line.’
‘I’m going to call it … Chief of the Indians.’
‘Yes. Yes, that’s what I feared, Greg.’
‘What do you think?’
‘I think you need to return to your game-testing.’
Dave had devised an Olympic board game for the centre pages of the Special.
So he could inflict his pain on the readers once more. And on Greg, which was a significant bonus.
He insisted Greg, as his assistant, game-tested it. This involved doing squat thrusts, press-ups, and running on the spot every time the player was caught by ‘The Trainer’. ‘Oh, shit, this is agony,’ said Greg after doing 10 press-ups. ‘Got to take a fag break.’
Dave enjoyed his discomfort. That’ll teach him to try and get me sacked, he thought.
‘Anyway,’ said Greg, inhaling deeply. ‘Once the dust’s settled, Leni thinks I could still be made managing editor. Or she might make me editor of LBD. And then I’m out of this hell-hole.’ He grinned. ‘It’s all yours, mate.’
‘I doubt it,’ said Dave. ‘She’s been promising you that for months now. She’s just using you, mate.’
Greg shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. I mean a lot to Leni. We have a very special relationship.’
‘That’s good to know,’ said Dave. ‘So you think it could be serious?’
‘Oh, yeah.’ Greg said cockily. ‘We’ll probably get engaged.’
‘Fantastic,’ Dave leered. ‘Am I right in thinking she’s really into Roger Daltrey?’
‘Yes,’ said Greg defensively. ‘How did you know?’
‘And what’s that song of his she likes? Let me see. Oh, yes. “My Generation”.’
‘What?’ Greg went white. ‘What did you say?’
‘My G-G-G-G-G-G-G-G-G…’
‘Shut up!’ said Greg.
‘G-G-G-G-G-G-G-G-G-G-G-G…’
‘Shut up!’
‘G-G-G-G-G-G-Generation, baby.’
Dave drank in his pain. It tasted sweet. Under stress, Greg had graduated from pen-clicking to spinning his pen in the air and expertly catching it. He spun it endless times now.
Then he retaliated. ‘You know Joy is dating the manager of her shop?’
‘Nice try, Greg. But you got that wrong,’ said Dave confidently. ‘She said he was a creep.’
‘That’s true. But she also said he had an excellent business brain, and that’s what really matters to her. Profits at Time Machine have doubled since he took over.’
‘But she liked me because I make her laugh.’
‘Not enough I’m afraid, Dave. She also told me he reminded her of her dad: Lawrence of Fitzrovia.’
‘Whereas you, Dave…’ Greg raised an arm and scratched under his arm, making grunting, gorilla noises.
Dave went white and Greg drank in his pain. It tasted sweet. Dave returned to the Special. All the Laarf! characters, Andy’s Anorak, Billy Blower, Gambling Madd and Dirty Barry, took part in the Olympics Special and it was the most unfunny yet.
Dave gloomily wondered just how much worse his day could get.
The phone rang and Dave answered it. It was the switchboard. ‘The Major for you, Dave.’
‘Hi, Major. How’s it going?’ asked Dave.
‘This isn’t the Major,’ hissed the menacing voice at the other end.
‘Who is this?’
‘The man who left the message in the photocopier. I know you did it, Maudling. You and the Major.’
‘You know what?’
‘The Caning Commando? Your murderous ideas for killing adults. Congratulations. They paid off. Someone very close to me died, thanks to you two.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I’ve got something in the boot of my car for you, Maudling. Death is waiting and watching for you. D’you hear me, you fuck pig? You are both fucking dead.’
Then the line went dead. The operator came back on. ‘Were you cut off, Dave?’
‘Yeah. Do you know who that was?’
‘I thought it was the Major?’
‘No.’
‘Oh. Well, it was an internal call.’
Whoever the mystery caller was, he was inside the building.
Goodnight, John-boy is the second book in the Read Em And Weep series and you can buy it digitally or as a paperback.