England and Other Stories

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CHARLIE YATES IS a small compact man with the look such men can have of inhabiting well their own modest proportions. He’d been less at ease, once, with his name. Charles Yates, the proper version, the name he had to write on forms, was a toff’s name, a joke name. What had his parents been thinking? But Charlie was a joke name too, a joker’s name. A right Charlie. Still, he couldn’t wriggle out of it. Charlie Yates. No one else seemed to mind.

He’s fifty-seven now. He’s not quite sure how it’s happened. He was born in Wapping in 1951. The Wapping he can remember from back then was still pretty much the Wapping that Hitler had flattened. Look at it now.

He can look at it now because more than twenty years ago he and Brenda moved to Blackheath. Not very far as the crow flies, but in other ways a different country. They’d made the move because they could. They’d gone up in the world. And Don Abbot and Marion had made the same move at the same time. Don and Charlie were old pals and business partners. Bren and Marion got on with each other too.

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