My Mate Tel

Ian Ayris

Some people deserve to die. My mate Tel wasn’t one of them.

He was a good lad. Thick as a chopping block, mind, but heart of fucking gold. We grew up together, me and him. Canning Town, Caledonian Street. He was at forty-two and we were right opposite, at thirty-nine. When I say ‘we’, I mean me and Mum. I never knew my dad. Pissed off as soon as he found out mum was expecting. Took up with some tart up Walthamstow way, my Auntie Aggie reckoned. Still, I didn’t need him. I had mum, and I had Tel.

Times was hard in them days, just after the war. Not a lot of dough going round, you know, but we got by. Mum always saw to that. I chipped in where I could of course. I had a paper round, and a few other odds and sods that brought in a couple of pennies. I’d hand it all over to Mum at the end of the week, and she would ruffle my hair and call me her ‘little man’. Then she’d go and grab a couple of Custard Creams from the biscuit tin, and a cup of milk, and I was the happiest boy in the whole fucking world.

Tel had it hard though. He’d come into school, bruises round his face, fag burns on his arms, you know the sort of thing. His dad was a real bastard, 'specially when he had a drink inside him. Tel would be sneaking out of his house all the time, legging it across the road. My Mum would always let him in. She’d sit him down, get him a couple of Fig Rolls, and he’d just start balling his eyes out. A little while later, there’d be a banging at our door, and it would be his dad, half empty whisky bottle in one hand and a fag in the other, wearing the same old army trousers and a dirty string vest. Mum would say that she’d just seen Tel running down the street, towards the bus station or the canal, or something, and Tel would sneak back over to his house a bit later, and shut himself in his room and not come out ‘til morning.

His mum and dad was killed when his house burnt down. Tel come and lived with me and mum after that.