a twenty sixth story...'babylon'

Duane worked as a football steward.  He was a big man of unequal proportions – his heavy soled black boots, baggy black trousers and day glo green jacket didn’t flatter him. 

He had been working as a football steward for twenty one years.  The football fans he kept a benign watch over every other Saturday belonged to XXXXXXXX.  They were committed, and occasionally violent.  They also preferred to stand rather than sit – Duane found this out what you might call ‘the hard way’. 

On perhaps his second or third occasion stewarding at XXXXXXXX he had asked the home fans, in his soft, rolling Anglo-Caribbean accent to please be seated, only to find a banana skin thrown in his direction.  Duane understood.  He was a black man living in Babylon, aka XXXXXXXX, the British Isles.

Thereafter, and for almost every Saturday afternoon during the following twenty one years, Duane sat in a great, loaming silence, his back to the play, his large, sorrowful eyes gazing at the crowd: a mixture of young skinheads, and old men with slick, grey hair and pale yellow complexions.  And yet on this particular day, Duane was in fact completely elsewhere – the white sands, and aquamarine seas of an Antiguan beach, the bustling verve and colour of a Barbadian market stall.  He could almost block out the snarls and whistles all around and hear the sound of steel drums coming to him like music down a windy street.  Duane smiled a broad, toothy smile.

~

Thud!  The ball clattered into the advertising hoarding a few yards away from where he was sitting.  The advertising hoarding displayed the name of a local business Duane was familiar with: ROY’s Tyres and Car Repairs.  The word ROY’s was in large capital letters to emblazon the name into the mass memory of the hundreds of football fans at the ground in the hope they would come and have their cars serviced by ROY, the owner, and his mechanics, and make money for ROY.  Duane had worked at ROY’s for a while, but was fired on the spot when the desperate wife of ROY, the owner, groped him in the forecourt after hours and reported the incident to her husband as harassment.  Duane had to go to court, and although he was acquitted, two weeks later his car, a rattling old Fiesta with no second gear, was set on fire with petrol.  It was a write off.  Whenever Duane remembered the incident, which was after all every other Saturday afternoon as a steward at XXXXXXXX in front of the advertising hoarding ROY had paid for, he shrugged and thought of one thing – Babylon.

At the time this short story is supposed to be taking place Duane had a weekday job for the local council.  Every morning at half past five he would leave his apartment and line up outside the council offices, a series of interconnected concrete blocks built in the early sixties, where he was given a ‘claw’.  For between eight and ten hours he spent his time doing the following - picking up other people’s litter.  It sure was dull, but Duane made the hours pass by inventing a number game to do with the pieces of other people’s litter.  If he picked up an empty packet of cigarettes, for example, he awarded himself five points, if he picked up a chocolate wrapper, it counted as two points, if he picked up a ten pound note, he pocketed it and bestowed on himself one thousand points.  This points allocation was, as you will notice, in line with Decimal Coin, first introduced into the British Isles, or Babylon in 1968.

Council workers in Babylon (or rather white collar civil servants, to differentiate them from simple litter pickers) Duane had observed, were one or two of three things: so busy running around the local area providing for their constituents they never seemed to be at their desks, on ‘flexi time’ (i.e. they got up whenever they chose and shuffled into the office in their slippers for an extended lunch break), or on holiday.  Duane’s second and third observations may also be considered one or two of three things: cynical, bordering on the truth, or bang on!

~

‘NOoooooo!!’.  One of the home players had just missed a sitter, and the home fans groaned with displeasure.  A ‘sitter’ is the kind of the scoring opportunity in football most adult men of a certain age think they can score without any problem whatsoever.  This is something of a misconception that ignores the complete lack of footballing ability or athletic propensity of over 80% of the adult male population in Babylon, as well as the pig headed, confidence boosting effect of a few pre-match pints of beer.  Duane licked his fat, pink lips.  He was back in the Barbadian market stall, sampling a traditional Bajan fish curry.

Indeed, as the football match between XXXXXXXX and their Saturday Afternoon opponents wore on, Duane’s imagination continued to be filled with images of the Caribbean, images which his mind would then unfairly juxtapose with images of Babylon.  When XXXXXXXX did what they barely ever succeeded in, such was the ineptitude of the team, and scored a winning goal albeit late on, Duane barely noticed the home fans – the young skinheads, and old men with pale, yellow complexions – climbing over the advertising hoardings (including ROY’s) and streaming onto the pitch to the pathetic and, needless to say, unheralded civic pleas of the Tannoy announcer.

Unfortunately for Duane the curse of Babylon struck again that afternoon.  A seven year old child was crushed to death in the throng, and when club officials, two of whom worked in a ‘flexi time’ capacity with the local council, replayed video footage of the incident, it was seen to be Duane who had failed to prevent this child - this minor, too young to be at a football match of this kind in the first place - making his way onto the pitch before being swallowed in the stampede of steel toe caps and pumping legs, never to come out alive.

~

On a dreary, wet Monday morning, when had he been fortunate, Duane would have been out picking up other people’s litter for between eight and ten hours a time, he found himself in front of the judge once more.  The hearing took less than fifteen minutes and Duane was dismissed for gross misconduct from his Saturday afternoon job that he had held for twenty one years stewarding at the football ground.  Two weeks later he was barred from ever working for the council again, and a week later still, his apartment was repossessed.          

Duane continues to pick up other people’s litter, but now only in the hope it will contain a morsel of leftover food.

Three cheers for Babylon!