Chapter Two

When the bell signalled the end of lunch break, Ken dusted down his charcoal trousers after having performed a spectacular last-ditch sliding tackle to maintain the eight-seven victory that his team had hard-fought largely in his absence. He may have consistently held the title for the shortest boy in the year at five-feet-four, but he was stronger than he looked and stored a ferocious ability to defend within his repertoire. This attribute did often get him into trouble with his mother however, who had the unenviable task of removing the green and umber stains from his school uniform.

I’m not going to have the chance to enjoy my Friday evening, he had thought as he dallied upon question nine in the Maths textbook. So why should my afternoon be sacrificed too? 

At the end of the school day, Chris Horns and Ken walked home together. Chris was in fact, a regular at Canton Kitchen as he only lived a five minutes’ walk away and his visits were usually the highlight of Ken’s tedious evenings. They just didn’t happen as often as he would have liked.

As they strolled, blazers slung over shoulders, down the tranquil roads bookending cute parks which were lined with boutique cafes, the two teenagers conversed about the lunchtime match and Ed Strattucino’s glaring miss. Ed may have been Italian, but his footballing skills made him more suited to being Maltese. 

It would be a long weekend – a bank holiday in fact. Ken had forgotten, after all he never benefitted from these supposed holidays like his peers did.

‘What are you up to then?’ he asked Chris, just to be polite.

He frowned and replied, ‘Not sure. My Dad wants to play golf tomorrow up in Scotland, but I usually go to The Valley on Saturday.’

Chris with his blonde, styled hair and blue eyes embraced the opposite end of the male-grooming spectrum to Ken, who hardly cared for his appearance – after all, putting a crown on a tramp didn’t make one a king, as the Chinese proverb went.

‘Scotland for a bit of golf?’ Ken asked, pulling a face.

‘Yeah, we have a cottage up there which we tend to visit quite a lot when the weather improves. Usually for the longer school breaks rather than bank holidays though.’

‘Golf or football… which are you swinging towards?’

‘Nice pun,’ Chris remarked before adding, ‘probably Charlton – it’s a big game tomorrow.’

A trip to Scotland or watching his favourite football team compete… what a choice to make, Ken thought enviously. 

‘It sounds like you’re pretty close to your Dad.’

‘Yeah,’ Chris replied. He sounded surprised. ‘Why? Are you not?’ he asked.

‘Hardly.’

‘How comes?’

Ken shrugged and muttered, ‘I just find him really annoying. His lectures… oh jeez once he pops, he just won’t stop.’

Chris laughed.

‘I’m being serious.’

‘What does he lecture you on?’

‘Life. Education. What doesn’t he lecture me on? The problem I have is that he’s hardly the perfect role model; he’s a gambler who works in a takeaway and relies on his family to help him. Not any family though – his wife and child we’re talking about.’ Ken angrily poked the pocket of air in front of him.

‘I’m sure he does it for a reason. He seems really nice whenever I come to the takeaway.’

‘Well of course he’d be nice to you, Chris; he sees you as a customer. Why can’t he be like your Dad? Get a proper job and look after his family the right way.’

‘Do you know what you need to do?’

‘What?’

‘Tell him how you feel. Say it to him straight, shout it if you need to, to get your point across. Try it next time. How do you think my Dad and I get on so well? I can just be open and honest with him. He respects my opinion and I respect his.’

Ken shook his head and said, ‘It doesn’t work like that with my Dad.’

‘You get perks I don’t get though.’

‘Like what?’

‘You get to eat Chinese takeout every night, that’s dreamy.’

‘I’m sick of it; the work and the food. Trust me; you would get sick of rice if you ate it every goddamn night! I need to find a way out of that place.’

‘So, are you working the whole weekend?’

‘All bloody bank holiday,’ replied Ken with a heavy sigh. He really was the working-class pauper at his school.

‘That sucks.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘Well seeing as you’ll be busy, fancy popping in for some FIFA before you start?’

Ken checked his watch and replied: ‘Why not?’

#

Today was a Friday, and Fridays were the busiest days of the week. That’s what really bothered Ken; the fact that he had endured an arduous school week and whilst his schoolmates were heading home to put their feet up for the weekend, he was slaving away more than ever. And for what? His family would never earn enough money to buy an Arsenal season ticket, let alone a cottage in Scotland. He could not afford a PlayStation – but even if he could, when would he get the time to play it?

Ken returned to the takeaway half an hour before the shop opened. His mother was preparing buckets of fried rice whilst his father was standing by the chopping board. 

‘Hi son, could you wrap these up please?’ asked his mother.

He dumped his schoolbag down and removed a few sandwich bags from their packaging. Prawn crackers were the cheapest item on the menu at a pound a bag and quite often tossed into orders for free. But just as he began portioning them up, there was a banging on the door. 

Along with the freakish coincidence that customers always appeared whenever he ate or drank anything, turning up before the takeaway was officially open, was an equal transgression. Now begged the query: had his father heard?

Ken scuttled to the door and opened it in an unwelcoming manner, leaving a foot strategically positioned behind the door to prevent it from being forced open. 

‘Hi, can I place an order?’ said a lady.

Ken recognised her as Kat, a middle-aged Irish lady whose breath always boasted the scent of lager. What made it all the more frustrating was that Kat was a regular, so she knew what time opening hours were. 

Ken made a point of looking back at the chrome bordered clock on the wall. ‘We’re not open until five. Sorry,’ he said, pointing to the sign suctioned to the glass door.

‘Oh, I see.’

Yes, out you go now, he thought.

‘Hello, please come in!’ a voice said suddenly and if by magic, the lights above the counter glowed a deathly white that burned through his soul.

‘Ah thank you, Frank,’ she said barging her way in as if Ken had vanished into thin-air.

Ken sighed. This was his worst nightmare. The shop-floor was now open, and it wasn’t even five o’clock.

Although the following customer did not show until after six-thirty, which meant that Ken had managed to portion a whole crate of prawn crackers and ensure all foil containers were stocked to good numbers, the ensuing three hours were relentless. At one point, there was a line-up of ten orders crucified to the hooks, flapping from the breeze of the ventilator fans. But it was outside in the counter that could have benefited most from ventilation, with tensions soaring.

‘Come on, how much longer for my chicken chow mein?’ shouted one customer.

‘And for my order. I placed it thirty minutes ago,’ another yelled.

‘I’m sorry, it’s just my Mum and Dad cooking in there -’

‘I don’t care. It’s my food which I’ve paid for. It shouldn’t take nearly fifteen minutes for a chicken chow mein! Christ! If you can’t satisfy a service, don’t provide one!’

And yet you come every Friday when you know it’s this busy, thought Ken. ‘Let me check for you,’ he said glumly.

‘What’s going on out there?’ his father asked.

‘Customers are getting angry at the waiting times. Particularly the chicken chow mein guy.’ Then under his breath, Ken whispered: ‘make sure you spit in his food.’

‘Let’s cook the chicken chow mein next then.’

Just two hours ago, his father had moaned about how quiet it was. Never use the Q word – that was an unwritten rule in the takeaway business. But his father had jinxed it – most likely deliberately. He was now completely at fault for this chaos.

It’s easy for you, Dad; you’re hiding away inside the kitchen, whilst I’m the one bearing the brunt of the customers.

The teenager took a seat outside, after updating each of the impatient customers with their respective waiting times before replacing the phone handset on the receiver. He had secretly left it unhooked for the past half an hour – it was simply that busy. But if his father had found out, he would have been in deep trouble and even though the queue of orders was never-ending, his father always seemed to notice when the phone had not rung for any period of time, no matter how brief.

By the time the customer assault was over, it was almost ten o’clock. Not only was Ken unable to eat dinner tonight, he didn’t even have the chance to rustle it up. 

When his father eventually asked him what he wanted to eat, he replied bluntly, ‘I’m not eating. I’m not hungry.’

‘You must eat something, son,’ said his mother. 

‘I’m not hungry,’ snapped Ken. All he wanted to do now was to curl up into a ball and sleep. How was he ever going to leave this horrible life?

The concept of opening on bank holidays never really made sense to Ken – after all they were hardly busier than any other standard Monday but it was due to his father’s pathetic hope that everybody else – every normal person who was at home enjoying their bank holiday, would be too lazy to cook and thus order from Canton Kitchen instead. Frank Jin may have been intent on serving up the best food at the expense of optimising profits, but it did not halt his hunger for custom and desire to earn every penny available in the vicinity.

The end of the bank holiday signalled the start of Tuesday – Ken Jin’s favourite day of the week. Chinese takeaways tended to shut on Tuesdays, not because they coincided with most school Parents’ Evenings, but because they were through no evidence-based data, the least busy day of the week. Yet no matter how painful Parents’ Evenings were, Ken still preferred them over being a mere servant to ungrateful customers all night.

‘Good evening, Mr Jin,’ said Mr Percival. He was Ken’s Maths teacher.

This was an important evening because it was realistically the ultimate chance for teachers to engage with parents before the GCSEs, which now loomed intimidatingly on the horizon.

‘Good evening, Sir.’ 

‘Please, it’s fine to call me Henry, Mr Jin.’

Ken only ever attended with his father as his mother could not speak English. There had simply been no opportunity to learn; for nearly two decades, Ken’s mother had been stowed away behind those cowboy doors preparing and cooking food for thirteen hours a day, seven days a week. For the Jin family, closing on Tuesdays was a recent exercise.

‘Then do call me Frank.’

‘Of course.’ 

If he did not have a slight hunchback, the bald Mr Percival would have reached nearly six feet in height. He always smiled when he spoke, but he never grinned and he always wore the same reluctant expression, whether he was offering positive or negative feedback – as was about to be the case. 

‘How is my son doing?’

‘Where do I begin? Ken clearly is a very intelligent boy, Frank. He could be an excellent mathematician.’

His father sought clarification. ‘Could be?’

Ken bowed his head. Here goes…

‘Ken needs to learn to take responsibility for his schoolwork, his direction in life. Let me explain… take last Friday’s homework for example,’ Mr Percival began. He paused to locate the teenager’s exercise book from a neatly arranged pile. A pen had been used as a bookmark, directing the teacher immediately to the page he wished to refer to. ‘It wasn’t finished.’

A painful silence led Ken to try and divert his thoughts back to Ed Strattucino’s wild miskick.

‘I see…’ his father mumbled.

‘He only did half of what was set. But I do also want to point out – credit where it’s due – that Ken got all the questions that he did attempt, correct. If only he tried harder with his work, he would have what it takes to succeed.’

‘Well, thank you for the feedback,’ replied Ken’s father. ‘I think I’ve heard enough.’ They shook hands and off the father-and-son duo went to the next desk.

Mr Percival’s assessment of Ken was a recurrent theme amongst all his teachers and by the end of the evening, Ken was as sick of hearing the words potential and if only, as much as he was sick of Chinese food. 

In Ken’s opinion, perhaps the harshest of views came from his form tutor and History teacher Mr Varls, who claimed that, ‘Ken needs to spend some time to think about what he actually enjoys doing because it often feels like he’s not interested in anything.’ The statement was categorically incorrect; Ken was very interested… in football.

What did his teachers know? They didn’t understand the difficult life he led. The drive back to the takeaway was even more torturous given he couldn’t just open the door and walk away from the shouting – not without risking his life in front of a passing car. He did frequently wonder though, if that would be the only way to put a halt to all of this.

His father was still midway through telling him off when the door to Canton Kitchen opened. 

‘How many times? How many times have I told you to just do your homework? Your exams are in a few months’ time and still you act like you don’t have a care in the world!’

Ken was aware that arguing with his father was a futile process because of that one single phrase which would always be used against him… but this time he felt his own anger mounting to untenable levels.

His father slammed the door of the counter against the wall, causing his mother to frantically rush out.

‘What’s going on?’ she asked.

His father wagged a finger at him but was too livid to speak. The counter lights were off but even in the darkness, he was sure he saw steam spewing from his father’s ears and his cheeks flushing with an iron rage.

‘Son?’

Ken was almost too embarrassed to reply to his mother, but his father answered on his behalf, ‘If only he would listen to his teachers. Every single one; the same thing: not trying, not doing his homework.’

‘But why?’

That was enough. He could not contain himself any longer. ‘Why?’ he said, ‘I’ll tell you why; because six days a week I finish school and come straight here then work until midnight. I mop the floor, sweep the floor take the bins out and sleep at one in the morning then wake up again at seven to get to school! What sort of a life is that? How am I supposed to enjoy my life? Ignore that actually, how am I supposed to even do my homework when I have a customer interrupting me every five minutes?’

‘Ken Jin. How dare you,’ yelled his father, ‘and what about your mother? What about me? We work every day just to give you the opportunity to study and become an educated man! This is how you repay us?’

‘I didn’t ask for this chance! I didn’t ask for you to send me to private school! Why couldn’t you have just chucked me into a state school, saved the money, bought some flats and become landlords so I could have a normal life? So that we all could have better lives! Why should I have to repay anything?’

Ken’s father threw a ladle across the kitchen. 

That actually made Ken jump inside.

‘Frank, calm down,’ pleaded his mother. But her words were lost within the deafening clatter. The ladle crashed against the white wall tiles leaving a blackened chip and a brief stream of debris.

Then came the same old line – that single phrase. Ken had started to wonder when it would be utilised against him.

‘If it wasn’t for us, you wouldn’t have a roof over your head. If you’re so clever, why don’t you go out there and get lost in the world. Then see how long you would last for on your own!’

‘If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have been born into this rubbish life! You considered sending me away to Hong Kong, anyway, didn’t you?’ He turned around and stormed upstairs.

As a young child, Ken frequently found himself the victim of the bamboo cane. Such Draconian measures for misbehaving had been phased out over time to make way for mere verbal ammunition but tonight felt very close to travelling back in time. This had been Ken’s sole evening off and albeit for very different reasons, he was not going to be having dinner again.