Jimmy; Expelled From Nursery School...
Balantyne's First Brush With Authority
Over the decades, piecing together Jimmy Balantyne’s infancy has proven beyond difficult, for even the most experienced archivists and historians. They can place him here and they can place him there, but nobody could put those places in the order they came in. Jimmy certainly couldn’t. He’s seen photos of him, his half-wit half-brother, their mother and Jimmy’s father in Canada. He knows not where this photographic evidence is now. Or has been, for the last thirty years. He knows, though, with absolute certainty, that he saw it. In that photo, he was a toddler; his halfwit was three, maybe four years old. He also knew that they’d lived, sans hafwit, in Ireland. That must have been later, as his mother often laughed about his lips turning blue when jumping around in the Atlantic Ocean, which she referred to as the Irish Sea; it must have been later, as even she wouldn’t have allowed a toddler to crawl into the ocean. They had also, he suspected briefly, lived in Bradford. Jimmy had a singular snapshot memory of himself and his dad in a living room. He was on the floor, his father on the sofa. His mum was in the kitchen. The living room was lit only by the light of an (unseen) TV screen. The kitchen was bright, and his mother was visible via a hatch. This was the sole childhood memory Balantyne had of them all being together…
He also knew it was the Atlantic, as years later, while standing on what passed for a beach in Kerry, his father had looked out and uttered wistfully, “Next stop New York, Seamus.” His dad had always referred to him as such. As, by all accounts, that was to have been his name, but his father, busy celebrating, had turned up at the hospital a day late and a dollar short. Only to discover that Dear Mother, motivated by spite, had registered their son as Jimmy. Not even James. Spite was always a major driver for her. Jimmy’s dad had lived in NYC during the sixties, in a place known as Bed-Stuy and for a while there, Jimmy had smoked the fags. They came in a soft-pack, so…
Now, as an old man who’d amassed a considerable fortune, Jimmy had tried various therapists who (supposedly) specialised in summoning dormant memories. While not obsessed with his early childhood, it was fair to say Boy was intrigued by it. None had worked. So, despite being a few hundred quid lighter, Jimmy was still none the wiser…
The money didn’t overly concern him as his property empire was stronger than ever. Some commercial landlords had gone under during and post-pandemic, but Jimmy was not one of them. This was due, in large part, to the founder’s instinctive dislike of modern office buildings, constructed of steel and glass. His first property venture had been Harry’s warehouse in Covent Garden. His next two purchases had been similar structures and, in the same vicinity. Those who’ve read ‘The Language of Nods’ will be aware that Harry’s place was bought on the proceeds of murder. The second two Covent Garden properties, through the proceeds of robberies. That sounds a little more daring than it was, as Jimmy had a few of the drivers out of the Mount Pleasant Sorting Office straightened out. His contact had been Nolte’s uncle, who, as a Shop Steward, knew the runnings there. When it got too hot in EC1, Nolte’s uncle had a word with a union brother over at Hanson Street W1. That was how Jimmy, Nolte and Johnny Marinello came to be holding up Royal Mail vans in the West End of London, at eighteen years of age. Well, the other two were eighteen. Jimmy, seventeen.
Covent Garden had been great for Jimmy, but where he’d made a killing, in this instance, not literally, was in Shoreditch. He’d noticed that both his kids, who were hyper trendy types, had started going to illicit ‘warehouse parties’ down there. That’s when Jimmy, now armed with the funds and access to the bank loans required, began buying entire streets in EC2. Well, he brought one entire street, and that was actually a crescent… The Shoreditch branch of the property tree ensures that, were Jimmy to sell his portfolio, he’d be a billionaire. Selling property, however, is not Jimmy’s bag. Also, while that may sound like a lot, Jimmy had long since stopped comparing himself to kids he’d gone to school with. He put himself up against the likes of the Duke of Westminster, who was in the same game. Against the Duke, Jimmy came up short. In truth, he came up very short indeed. Plans were in motion to set that straight.
Over the last decade, his kids running the business had left Jimmy with time on his hands, and he’d dedicated much of it to his ‘hobby’. It began almost twenty years ago, and as time went by, it became progressively more (and more) refined. The hobby had been sparked by the discovery of the Elizabeth Line running right through the City of London and right under the Bank of England. All he’d needed was a plan, a few bob to cover Xs (now standing at two million), along, of course, with the nerve to see it through. Readers familiar with Boy Balantyne, the eternal outsider, will know, he had all three…
More of all that, though, later. Today’s instalment focuses on Jimmy’s first run-in with ‘authority’. At least, authority outside of his somewhat volatile family environment. It’s believed that the Nursery School in question was located around Swains Lane. This is an area Jimmy would grow to know well as his friend Sim lived in a large house at the foot of Highgate West Hill. All of which would be in Jimmy’s future, but at the time of this tale, he was four years old and didn’t know much about anything.
Other than it was always a rush to get to nursery. That, each morning, Dear Mother would drag him along at a pace he couldn’t possibly maintain and that each evening he’d be the last to leave. That she would arrive, looking flustered and attempting to hide the fact that she’d been running. Unfailingly, Jimmy would be engulfed in guilt over causing her so much trouble. He’d hear the staff talking about her tardiness and took note of who said what. The most critical, the most judgmental voice, was that of the headmistress, and Jimmy hated her with a passion. There was a specific reason for his hatred. While he may not have liked it, he understood the staff’s annoyance at his mother arriving late (almost) every evening. He also understood what had provoked the headmistress’s instinctive smirk when, a few weeks earlier, Dear Mother had entered, wearing dark glasses to hide her blackened eyes. The Wayfarers did their job, but couldn’t mask the swelling that had misshapened his mother’s beautiful visage. Nor could the headmistress hide her glee. It’d been fleeting. So fast that, were you not a hypervigilant four-year-old, you’d have missed it, but Jimmy was, so… Jimmy didn’t.
Our now elderly anti-hero can recall with vivid clarity his dad being taken away by two large coppers, but for the life of him, cannot remember the events that led to his father’s banishment and his beautiful mother’s disfigurement. Maybe some things were too painful to recall, even for a child whose heart knew nought but sorrow…
The nursery was on the first floor and consisted, as best as Jimmy could recall, of one big room. Like a hall. Rows of small beds took up the central space. Each heavy metal bed had a small wooden badge affixed to the headboard. Each bore a picture; his was of a house. The kid in the bed adjacent to his had a cow. It was a black and white one.
There was no playground. Their only access to the outside was a black metal fire escape, which they’d be allowed out on during break. Sometimes, on hot days, they would be allowed to drink their milk out on the escape’s landing. The milk came in an ancient plastic drinking vessel that was sort of rough on your lips. As the kids around him chatted their usual nonsense, Jimmy stared silently at the ground directly below. As ever, the headmistress’s sturdy bicycle, with its basket on the front, stood securely chained to the building’s drainpipe. This, like the rest of the exterior, was painted white. Without fanfare, the young Jimmy slipped his hand into the elasticated waistband of his shorts, flipped out his willie and proceeded to urinate over the bike below. Part of him couldn’t believe how successful his mission was going. He’d presumed that it wouldn’t work. That somehow, it would go wrong, but nothing did. It was a bright, windless day, and Jimmy soon realised that despite the distance, he was able to direct his attack. On moving from the basket to the bike’s leather saddle and seeing his wee bouncing off it. Filled with exuberance, he nudged the kid beside him. It was a girl, smiling, Jimmy glanced down and, as her eyes followed his, her reaction came as a bit of a surprise. Instead of appreciating his aim, she ran off, screaming. Despite knowing what fate was about to befall him, the boy kept pissing. By the time they reached him, he’d redirected operations back, from the saddle, to the handlebars…
His next memory is of being on a bus entering the village of Asfordby. This was another snapshot. The weird part about it was that the bus hadn’t arrived in the usual direction. Buses from Melton entered from the pub’s left. This came from the right. The child had spent many an hour trying to work that one out. Eventually, he twigged that it hadn’t been a bus but rather a coach, and it hadn’t come from Melton but from Leicester. In the snapshot, his eyes were welling, his mum’s looking irritated. He realised he’d brought this, being shipped out, on himself by getting banned from the nursery. How did he already know the direction that buses from Melton came from the opposite direction? He’d lived there previously, but when? As stated at the top, the infancy of Jimmy Balantyne was a mystery, wrapped in a tear-stained sleeve…