Romany and Tom by Ben Watt Page A

then you wanted to be back at it by late morning. It was a drug.’
     
    We stood just above the foreshore at the Ship Inn, the sun melting behind the silhouettes of the trees on Dukes Meadows on the far side of the river. My dad seemed in a good mood. I was allowed a second Coke. He picked up an empty plastic bleach bottle from the flotsam washed up along the tideline, shook out the water, and placed it on the corner of the brick embankment over to our left. Then he bent down and picked up a handful of pebbles and stones.
    ‘Hit it from ten paces and I’ll give you a quid,’ he said.
    A quid, I thought. He never gave me a quid; he must be in a good mood. I pictured my favourite toyshop in East Sheen and imagined what I could buy with it: some Subbuteo accessories maybe; a new yo-yo.
    He was throwing one of the pebbles up into the air and catching it repeatedly in the palm of his hand.
    I marked out ten paces and took a pebble from him. ‘Best of three?’ I said.
    He took out a cigarette, rapped the end of it three times on the box and perched it on his lower lip. ‘If you like,’ he said out of the corner of his mouth, half smiling. He took out his Ronson cigarette lighter. I liked his lighter a lot. It felt nice in the hand: the leather grip and the chrome burner. Sometimes he’d let me top it up from a small yellow gas cylinder, which hissed as you pushed down on the red spout, and spilled clear fluid that evaporated from your fingers. He lit his cigarette, still looking at me. I sensed he was weighing me up.
    I took another two pebbles and lined up the first shot. A riverboat cruised through my eye-line, its lights reflecting in the black steel water. I heard the gentle wash as the river slooshed on to the shore. I pulled back my shoulder, closed one eye, focused on the bottle, opened my eye again and threw the pebble hard. It missed by some distance. I heard it land with a soft pock into the mud.
    My dad smiled wryly. ‘One down . . .’ he said.
    ‘Yes, I know,’ I jumped in. ‘Two to go.’
    I took the second pebble, was about to throw, then switched it for the other one in my hand, then switched back again. The second throw missed. I felt a hot flash in my chest. ‘Don’t say anything,’ I said quickly.
    My dad stood there quietly, a low smile on his lips, half affectionate, half entertained. His hair was immaculately parted, a small badger’s streak appearing in the swept-back low quiff. He had one hand in his pocket. The other held the cigarette. He took a drag, briefly letting go of it. The orange tip intensified in the fading light like embers caught in a draught. Then he took it again between his fingers and moved it down to his side, and blew the smoke out in a long feathery plume from the corner of his mouth.
    The third pebble I just threw quickly. I didn’t want to line it up, and make it even worse than it was surely going to be by even trying to get it right. I just wanted to get rid of it.
    The pebble sailed through the air and to my astonishment grazed the side of the bottle. For a moment I thought it would fall. I took in a sharp breath. The bottle rocked on the stone wall for what seemed like for ever but then righted itself and didn’t fall.
    ‘I hit it. I hit it!’
    ‘So you did. The quid’s yours.’ He hadn’t moved, still the same smile on his lips. ‘Tell you what, if I can hit it, I’ll double it.’
    I gasped. Two quid. Two quid. I thought of the pencils in a row on the gate-leg table and my mum with the tray of tea; it must be good news, whatever it is, I thought. I opened my eyes wide and gazed at him.
    He bent over and scooped up a stone. He was two or three paces behind me; that made it at least twelve or thirteen from the bottle. I stepped back. He stubbed out the final third of his cigarette, smearing it into the path with the sole of his shoe. I heard the gravel grind. Then he pulled back his arm. For a moment he didn’t look athletic at all. In fact, he looked