Friends
Chalk and cheese, sunshine and rain, night
and day. No doubt about it, no doubt at all; Mitchell (Mitch) King and Matthew
Kelly were as different as different gets, and yet they were inseparable
friends almost from the time they were born until, well until a long, long
time after that.
Both born within hours of each other in the
Middlesex Hospital, they were taken home two days later to the block of
flats in The Seven Sisters road, North London; Mitch to a cold and empty
flat, destined to be a sole child of a drunken mother and unknown father,
and Matthew to the flat directly opposite. Matthew joined his three brothers
and two sisters in the bedlam that he was to call home. As the two babies
grew into toddlers a friendship grew across the landing that often stank
of the urine from both animals and humans. Matthew's father worked 'on the
bins' for the local council and provided as best he could for his growing
family, whilst Mitch's mother survived. Day to day. Despite the difference
in circumstances, both mothers were also on friendly terms and it was the
taking care of each other's offspring (although Matthew's mother only ever
left him in her care when she was really desperate), that
slowly forged the friendship between the two boys.
Once the boys started their first school, it
did not take long for the school bullies to learn about the 'new boys'.
Whilst Matthew was quiet and studious, almost to the point of apppearing
withdrawn, Mitch was the athelete. Matthew quickly decided that sport and
'things physical' were not for him whilst it was the young Mitch who climbed
the ropes in the gymnasium faster than any boy had ever done before. It
was Mitch who Captained the school football team and the cricket
team, and it was Mitch who swam two lengths under water upon joining the
first year at the Secondary Modern, with Matthew. It was also Mitch who
always managed to always be there, whenever the bullies struck. There were
three of them that felt, generally speaking, that they ran the school- certainly
in the playgrounnd and outside of the great red brick and green painted
Victorian eddifice.
They cornered Matthew, just once, in the alleyway
that led to the short cut over the railway bridge to the school. "Come on
paddy ! Let's see what you got in yer bag then !" shouted one of them as
he tore the school bag from Matthew's grasp, breaking the thin strap. Tipping
out the contents he threw the now empty bag over the back garden wall of
a house they were passing. Out of the alley now, they ran off over the bridge
with Matthew in persuit. One more street to school. 'Why did Mitch have to
be late today of all days' thought Matthew gloomily, 'If only his mum had
got him up in time. Where is he ?'
"Books ? Is that all you got then ? Where's yer
dinner money then, paddy wack ?" said the boy who had taken the bag, grabbing
hold of Matthew as he caught up with the laughing trio.
"I only have enough for my dinner" said Matthew nervously.
"Give us it then."
"But, but it's all I have", he stammered.
"Well if you won't give us it, we'll 'ave to take it. Won't we ?" said
Matthew's tormentor, nodding to his cronies.
A foot landed in Matthew's stomach and he doubled
over, hurt and winded. It was the only blow he was to ever receive during
the five years he spent at Tottenham Secondary Modern. As Matthew slowly
and painfully straightened up from the viscious blow, the feintest trickle
of a tear in the corner of his eye, he saw the boy who had landed the kick
stagger backards into a rose bush, blood pouring from his nose. The owner
of the house in whose front garden the rose bush grew came angrily out of
the front door, dragged the boy back out of the bush by gabbing an ear, and
told the whole lot of them to "Bugger off!". As the door was opening the
second boy dropped to the gutter nursing an eye that would be purple in the
morning whilst the third turned his head just in time for Mitch's fist to
catch his ear, before running off just as fast as his feet would carry him.
During the first two years at the school, the
odd chancer would, from time to time, try his luck with Mitch. At first
Mitch would try to talk them out of it but inevitably a punch would be thrown,
and Mitch would once more be the one left standing. In many ways it was just
like the fabled old gun fighter, always waiting for a faster gun to catch
up with him, except in Mitch's case they never did. Other times there would
be two or three of them, waiting in ambush for Mitch when he left school late
after football training, or a late session in the gym. The next day the would
be amushers would display their battle scars, whilst Mitch would say nothing.
Looking back on those first and second years, the violence of the school
was no better and no worse than many inner London establishments, but at
Tottenham Secondary it seemed to centre around one boy. Until it stopped.
When Mitch and Matthew started their third
year, five brave souls of the upper fourth decided it was time to teach Mitch
a lesson, once and for all. The beating that Mitch took was so severe that
the Police were involved, but Mitch left hospital a week later and was unable
to identify any of his assailants. It took him another three weeks to get
back to his old self. Then, during the following three weeks, one
at a time, five boys at the school received a beating that they would never,
ever, forget. After that, violence pretty much stopped at the school and
the Headmaster was taken to boasting of his "so well run school with its so
well behaved pupils - a credit to his team".
But, as the boys progressed through school
they were also growing into men. Both knew that things were going to change
for ever, and neither wanted them to. For Mitch his destiny was long laid
down and at sixteen he joined the Army Cadets. Matthew's interests of course
lay in a different direction and he found himself spending the nights that
Mitch charged around Epping Forest in camoflague kit, talking with the priest
of St.Peter's. A year later Mitch's mother finally drank herself to death
and for Mitch it was time to find a new home. This he did, joining the Army
and leaving North London far behind. He swore that he would keep in touch
with Matthew and told his friend that he would always be there for him. when
they parted at the railway station, for the first and only time, Matthew
saw his friend, Mitchell King, shed a tear.
True to his word, Mitch kept in touch, a letter
arriving om Matthew's doormat every month or so. After only three months
he got his first leave and came straight back to see Matthew. By then Matthew
had made up his mind and his destiny was now set also. Matthew attended
Cambridge University - the first pupil from Tottenham Secondary to do so.
It was a hard struggle; his family could spare him no money so he worked
all the time he could to raise funds for each term, suffering the jeers and
insults of some of the better heeled students (albeit far more ignorant).
From Cambridge Matthew entered the priesthood. The letters from Mitch had
slowed by now to maybe one every six months, and then it would be just a few
lines. Eventually the letters became postcards with cryptic messages such
as,
"Dear Matthew, just to let you know I am ok and
I hope you are too. Can't tell you what I am up to. Sorry mate. Hope we can
meet up sometime - when I get back to Blighty. Mitch.
Matthew would have been very proud to know that as he watched
the storming of the Iranian Embassy in London, on television, the black suited
man that swung down that first rope and into the front window, side arm
cutting down the terrorists, was Sargeant Mitchell King.
By the time the crisis in Yugoslavia had grabbed
world attention, even the postcards had stopped coming, but Matthew still
prayed for his childhood friend and, though he never knew it, Mitch often
looked out on a foreign landscape and thought of him and of the block of
flats in Seven Sisters Road.
Matthew was now working for an aid group under
the protection of the United Nations. He had gone out to Bosnia, armed with
a new kind of courage, courage that his faith provided him. Oh true, he
would never have that magnificent courage that Mitch possesed; the courage
that made a man like Mitch stand up and run acoss a barren field on the
Falkland Islands, knowing it is mined, the enemy trying to cut down
the zig-zagging figure with their entrenched machine gun, only to die as
the grenades he hurled explode in death all around, BUT he had the courage
of the Lord. Matthew would have walked across that same battlefield to see
if there were any survivors that he could comfort - theirs or ours.
So it was in Bosnia. Matthew helped search
under the rubble of shelled out towns for the living, for the miracles that
had hung on to their life. He had no fear of losing his own now, only of
losing it before his work was done. When he was asked if he would
like to accompany a team of three journalists who were to tour the area Matthew
was eager to go. They boarded a UN Land Rover along with two UN soldiers
and set off along the cratered road for the port of Split. They had been
drving an hour before the Land Rover drove over the land mine. The two soldiers
and one journalist were killed instantly. Matthew, sitting at the very back
of the vehicle was thrown clear of the road and into the coarse undergrowth.
The other two surviving journalists crawled away from the tangle remains
of Solihull's pride.
One had lost the bottom part of a leg and was bleeding
to death, which he did ten minutes later. The other, the only woman among
the group, was relatively unmarked.
"Over here ! Come over here " Matthew called out
to her, now hiding in the ditch that kept the undergrowth from the road.
She got to her feet unsteadily, and staggered acosss
to him, dropping down into the ditch. Her eyes were dazed, shocked. Other
ears had heard Matthew's cry, other eyes had watched the Land Rover tear
itself appart. As Matthew stood up to try and help the other dying man, the
watchers appeared. Mitch had been unable to stop the Land Rover as he too
watched from his hideaway. He had been all but buried in the ditch for three
days now, waiting for the merciless killers that were now closing on the
wreckage. There were four of them, and the leader was the butcher that Mitch
had persued for five long months. As the four walked on, now laughing and
joking amongst themselves, Mitch took a bead on the leader. By the time he
hit the ground, the other three had each been hit with just one, deadly round
each. Then Mitch broke cover and went to help the casualties from the Land
Rover, and to meet his buddy Mathew, once more.
(c) Mike Houghton 2005
|