Theo Mallier: Growing Pains

1992

In 1992, The Maastricht Treaty was signed, which founded the European Union. It also saw the Los Angeles riots, Hurricane Andrew, Black Wednesday, and the Roman Catholic Church admitted that Galileo Galilei had been right all along about heliocentricity. Alex Haley, Isaac Asimov, Albert Pierrepoint and Gert Bastian also left the world.

It was also the year that Theo Mallier became a teenager.

Now that he was in transition from boy to man, George’s interest in him intensified. He believed that these years were the most formative, when naivety turned to idealism, and the real spring of life spewed forth from within.

He had summoned enough money together to splash out £100 on a 1973 Triumph Toledo. Suspensions on cars had been invented, but they were the privilege of the elite, not for 1973 Triumph Toledo owners; this bone-shaking car was the only one that could turn milk into butter on a twenty-mile trip.

George didn’t trust the car enough to make it back from a twenty-mile trip, so took Theo out on a drive to St. Mary’s Lighthouse in WhitleyBay; a middle-class seaside town that had moved through its history without blemish or concern. The lighthouse had been defunct for years, and its only functions now were denoting the start of the bay and being one of the town’s tourist attractions.

Whitley Bay was like another world to Theo. He had heard about The Spanish City fairground from school friends, and about the Ice Rink that had hosted some musical super groups in the past. As he had passed the richer, outwardly untroubled houses along The Links heading away from the lighthouse, he suspected this was probably not the world that would ever be troubling with the likes of him, and hoped that dad’s ‘new’ car would not be troubling them on the way out.

They passed through Tynemouth heading back towards Shields and the comfort of home, when George spotted something down a back street while he lazily drove on co-pilot. Something felt amiss, and he took the next right turn to enter the back street from the other end.

As they drove down the back street, Theo could see what his father had seen. Four teenage boys, about fifteen years old, were crowded round two younger, black girls. The 1990 World Cup football the two girls had been playing kerbs with had settled on one of the kerbs, discarded as the girls feared for what was going to happen to them. George stopped the car in the street, behind the boys, and got out.

As he approached them from behind, unheeded, he could hear that they were saying to the girls: ‘Go back to where you came from!’

When George got nearer, he could see the girls had started to cry, and the thought of his daughters ever being in a similar situation got inside his head. ‘Leave them alone!’

All four of the boys turned to look at him. They had been caught, but by only one man, on his own. One of the boys glanced at Theo in the car and Theo thought for a second about helping his dad out. The thought dissipated as the boy stared him down, making Theo look away. The boy then looked back at George. ‘Who the fuck are you? You’re not me dad!’

George got closer to the boy and stood over him, and the other boys stepped back a little - it was one thing to fight against people of your own age, or to pick on young girls, but it was another to take on a fully grown man, even with your three mates. ‘If I was your dad, you wouldn’t be picking on little girls. You’d be fighting me.’

The boy looked up at him, defiant; hoping that if he took this man on, his friends would help him. His friends had already decided they weren’t going to, and in their young, forming, minds, they were going to think seriously about ever helping their bullying friend again; they even felt a relief that the bully was being bullied, and backed away farther.