I was procrastinating with HWTWIQ as there is a scene I'm trying to fix which is annoying me, so I ended up turning to this fic and actually getting a bit more done (irritatingly the later chapters are easier in both fics, so I've got both endings written and scenes still to go in the middle). But anyway, a bit of a filler and a bit of Joey's perspective before we get into some more intense stuff.
This one starts off a bit miserable, but it's going to get significantly more lighthearted once Joey has a bit of sense knocked into him.
As usual, I don't own Bread, original Joey in mind (but currently with the mindset of grumpy series 7 Joey). This sort of follows a few of the threads going on in Series 7 as well, including Aveline's near-miss with her baby. To me some of those things didn't seem fully resolved, just seemed to be rushed out the way to get the show finished. They're going to be lightly touched on, mainly through the lens of Joey's detachment from his family.
2
The isolation of Joey Boswell
'I'm not asking a lot, Joey. They've held you back. They've got in the way of us. For this to work, Joey, I need to know you're committed to me. I mean – really – committed to me.'
'I've always been committed to you, Roxy! And you know that!'
'And while you're committin' to me with one hand, with the other you're clutching yer Mam's pinny strings, Joey. It's always the same. If we're gonna properly do this, I need to know it's me first in your life.'
'If it wasn't, Roxy, why would we be here now? Why would I 'ave asked you to marry me…brought you up here…if I didn't want that? But askin' me to cut them off…they might demand too much of me time, and I might get fed up and I know it needs to be toned down so you and me can have a good chance… but I can't just turn me back on them, Roxy. Not for good. Not like that.'
'Forget it, Joey. I'm going home. I don't know why I thought this would ever work.'
'They're about to start, Roxy – you can't just walk out of our weddin' like this—'
'When you're ready to be a grown man, Joey, and not a perpetual little boy, give me a call.'
That conversation replayed in his head on repeat, a sinister broken record that haunted Joey's waking and sleeping thoughts. He'd been left by Roxy before. Dozens of times, each one worse than the last, over and over and over again. He should be desensitised to it by now, but somehow the pain was just as piercing each time as if it were the first time.
This time, though, had hit harder, cut deeper than before. Joey had been struggling for longer than he cared to let on to his family – struggling desperately to hold onto his own sanity while dealing with the family's woes and then turning around to find Roxy storming away from him simply because he couldn't be spread any thinner than he already was. He had almost reached the point of no return – and marrying Roxy now, finally getting what he wanted, was supposed to hit a reset button, restore a sense of balance to his life. A sense of happiness.
And instead he'd been hit with a pain so intense it blurred the edges of his vision, razored his insides. Seeing Roxy walk out of their wedding – particularly after he'd unleashed all his anger at his family to get to said wedding in the first place – was such an earth-shattering blow Joey didn't know if he'd be able to recover.
It was just his luck he'd wound up staying at the same hotel as his brother as well. It had been hard enough explaining his presence here – let alone the fact that he'd just been left at the altar – to his happily-married younger brother. He'd sat through an excruciating dinner with Adrian and Irenee, full of newlywed bliss, from which he'd had to excuse himself early and retreat to his room to let his tears out in private. And he'd spent the better part of the weekend trying to avoid Adrian, ignoring his knocks at the door and entreaties to talk.
He was back again, standing over Joey's bed, no doubt ready to offer sympathy Joey didn't particularly want.
Joey shut his eyes, feigning sleep, but this action merely re-burned the image of Roxy storming out of their ceremony in her best dress onto the back of his eyelids, and he snapped them open again.
He could see Adrian out the corner of his eye. He pretended he hadn't noticed.
'Er… we're heading home now, Joey, do you want to follow behind?'
Joey didn't want to look up, but when he did, the sight of them made his stomach roil. Adrian and Irenee were holding hands, soppy grins on both of their faces. Well, bully for them. Joey supposed he should be happy for them, that Adrian's plan of eloping had actually worked. He wasn't. He could feel nothing but bitter jealousy when he gazed up at his brother, grinning at his brand-new wife, having done something truly meaningful with his life. That should have been him and Roxy as well. It should have been him and Roxy a long time ago, years ago, but then she'd left him, leaving a nasty message for Billy to relay, because he loved his family too much. Then she'd got pregnant by someone she didn't even remember, then she'd got married, then she'd mucked him about for more years on end. And in between he'd run about after his family, waiting on them hand and foot, taking questionable jobs to keep them fed, starting a bloody organic business to pay his dad back because of the tax debts that he'd incurred because of taking questionable jobs to feed his family.
All of it was supposed to change, both sides of it. Roxy was driving him mad, not being there enough. His family were driving him mad, being there all the time. It was like being in a tug-o-war, feeling pulled so viciously in two directions he felt his arms might come out their sockets. He was supposed to be resolving it all for good. Marrying the woman of his dreams. Breaking away, just for a time, from having to scoop everyone else's messes off the floor.
His own, angry words floated through his head.
Now you may not have noticed but I am a human being too. I have my own dreams and aspirations somewhere in the back of my head. But they never get to the front because I'm too busy sorting you lot out. I'm sick of worrying by night and quarrelling by day. If it's not your marriage or your love affairs, it's your differences. Well, I'll tell yer, I have had it up to my eyebrows. And from now on, the burning passion of mine is to get a fragment of peace and tranquillity before I finally—and thankfully—snuff it.
He couldn't go home. Not tailing behind the success story of Adrian and Irenee, having ripped into his family, possibly irreparably, to try and achieve the same with Roxy and failing miserably.
'No.'
'Come off it, Joey,' Adrian said gently, though he knew his brother too well, and there was a hint of irritation in there. Adrian never did like people spoiling his idyllic moments. 'You can't stay here forever.'
Joey didn't even bother to reply.
'We need you, Joey,' his brother had changed tack now. 'Especially now – Dad's still missing and now Jack's gone and I'm gonna be gone, Mam might need –'
He tried desperately to tune Adrian out. This was exactly what he didn't want to hear. He couldn't go back to the way things were. He didn't even know what sort of welcome he could expect if he did go back, after his outburst.
'I'll come home when I'm ready to, Adrian,' he said weakly.
His brother, either sensing he was fighting a losing battle or eager to leave, one way or another, to flaunt his successful romantic escapade, finally left the room.
And that was the last Joey had seen of anyone in the flesh for a few weeks.
Oswald didn't know the Boswells all that well, but one thing had become abundantly clear in the past couple of weeks – they simply could not manage without Joey.
His wife was still upstairs, mercifully recovered from her nasty scare, the baby alive and well, and while he waited for her strength to return enough to transport her home, unwilling to leave her, he had ended up spending an inordinate amount of time at Number Thirty, Kelsall Street, in the company of his in-laws. And what he had learned, after observing them in their natural habitat, surprised him. They truly were a strange group.
It was a bit like being in some strange sideshow, or some sort of comic farce. Freddie Boswell had appeared after spending the better part of a year Heaven knew where, and the explosion from Nellie upon finding him sitting nonchalantly on the sofa as if he'd never been away could have brought down the building. As could the explosion from Nellie when Adrian returned home from his elopement, which had seen the poet of the family quaking and apologising repeatedly and everyone in the vicinity doing their utmost to calm her down until she forgave him (Oswald himself had pitched in on that one). Aveline, mended enough to start throwing in her own demands, had started whinging about how much time she got in the bathroom, Jack lumbered in for meals and then lumbered out to a woman Nellie couldn't stand, whom he had impregnated, Grandad grumbled down the phone about his food and guilt-tripped everyone that he would be dead one day, and in the midst of it all, Billy and his new girlfriend chased each other around the house cackling and putting on inappropriate displays of affection wherever and whenever they felt like it. The missing piece in the puzzle was clearly the eldest brother – Joey had seemingly shouldered the burden of keeping everyone in line all on his own and without him they were simply running wild.
Oswald had never known a simple family household could be so chaotic, and the fond stories Aveline had always told him about happy family meals now seemed to have been heavily censored. They were nothing like reality.
'DON'T YOU DARE TAKE THAT HUSSY INTO YOUR BEDROOM!'
Oswald grimaced as the shriek sounded from upstairs. A couple of seconds later, Billy and Connie were thundering down, howling with laughter. Connie snogged Billy ferociously, snorted and danced out of the house just as Nellie reached the foot of the staircase, all but breathing fire.
'That little trollop is corrupting you!' she bellowed at Billy. 'I will not have you engaging in that behaviour with that…with that…that loudmouth little Lilo Lil!'
'Aw, 'ey, Connie's my –'
'Strutting around on those legs…' Nellie was still going on, 'tarting around the place…mark my words, she's going to grow up one of those women who flounces into someone's house and steals their husband!'
'Well, I don't mind being stolen,' Billy said, seemingly missing the point. 'I'm not a husband anymore, am I? Julie didn't think I was satisfactory enough, did she? Connie thinks I'm great.'
He was looking far too happy to take in a word of Nellie's wrath as he ambled out the front door after his girlfriend.
Nellie glared after them, and then sank down into her chair at the table, defeated.
'I told them, Oswald – I told them they weren't to behave that way in this house! Cavorting around upstairs – what will the neighbours think?! Oh, Heavenly Father, I shudder to think.'
Nellie Crossed herself. Oswald, not sure how he was supposed to respond to his mother-in-law's tirade, merely nodded cautiously. Ever since Joey and Adrian's disappearance to Scotland, Adrian's shameful return after his elopement and the bigger shock that Joey had been left at the altar and had dropped completely off the map, Oswald had found himself taking the strange position of Nellie's default confidant.
'I don't know what that Billy thinks he's doing, consorting with that girl, with her wayward legs,' Nellie Boswell had, Oswald noticed, a way of making body parts such as legs or chest sound like the most horrific of all taboos. 'You're a man of God…well, a sort of God…'
Oswald resisted the urge to roll his eyes.
'Surely you don't approve of such…of such…' she was clearly searching for a dramatic enough word, 'debauchery?!' And bingo.
'Er – no, no…'
Nellie suddenly softened. She had a habit of doing that, Oswald had begun to notice, flying into hysterics when something shattered her perfect family idyll, then running out of steam rather quickly and reflecting mournfully on the mysteries of life instead.
'You'll understand when your children are older. You have such high hopes for your family. For their futures. Then one by one you watch them fall. Our Jack living in sin with that…that posh trollop…our Adrian eloping without any consideration for his family, Billy getting divorced at twenty years old and then flinging himself into the web of that Connie's limbs…'
Oswald could sense what was coming.
'My daughter, my little girl, abandoning her faith…'
He knew only too well the virtue of patience, featuring it prominently in his sermons quite regularly, but he was finding his own patience tried and tested hearing things like that, he really was.
He kept his tone light. 'She's not abandoning…'
'And Joey. My pride and joy, such a wonderful young man, full of joy and life and love…I don't know where it all went wrong…'
Nellie's head dropped to her hands, a few small sniffling noises ensuing from behind her fingers, and Oswald's annoyance at being insulted fell away again.
'Look, Mrs. Boswell…I know it's not my place to interfere, but…have you considered just phoning Joey and discussing all this with him?'
'It's no use. He won't speak to us. He just hangs up. Only Adrian's been able to get through, and then only for a few minutes before Joey rang off again. I don't know what we did to drive him away.'
'You didn't drive him away,' Oswald said gently. 'Joey just needed…to try and find some independence, that's all. He's seen everyone else in his family establish themselves with loving partners…'
Nellie snorted loudly. Oswald thought it politer if he pretended not to notice that.
'He just wanted what his brothers and sister had. And now, with that not working…why, he's probably too ashamed to admit things didn't go the way he'd planned.'
'His shop, Oswald. His shop's going to go under! What with that Freddie Boswell gallivanting off with the gypsies and Joey not here, no-one's been running it for weeks! Even now I doubt my husband's going to get it back under control. When he does come home he'll starve to death!'
Oswald felt there wasn't much point in mentioning that wasn't likely.
'Well, then…I'm sure the others can all pitch in, keep it going until Joey returns.' Something odd came over him; perhaps he was spending too much time here. 'As long as I'm here keeping an eye on Aveline, I'm more than happy to offer a hand here and there.'
He felt a grateful hand clasp his own.
'You know,' Nellie was thoughtful, 'you're a good lad, Oswald.'
Oswald staggered back slightly, touched. They had been growing closer, it was true, but gaining Nellie Boswell's elusive acceptance, even if she was doing her best to mask it, warmed his heart just a little.
And then that slightly vicious air about her had returned.
'If you weren't a Protestant, you'd be quite a good sort of man.'
The days blended into each other until Joey couldn't tell how much time had passed. He barely left his room, except to inform the front desk he was extending his stay every few days. They hadn't been particularly happy about it at first, but he'd brought enough cash to flash that they had gladly taken him up on it and more or less left him alone. He slept for most of the day, because being awake meant thinking about Roxy, thinking about his family, and wondering what on earth he was supposed to do now.
He still answered his phone. He had to, even if he didn't want to hear from anyone ever again. Aveline had been in trouble, at risk of losing her baby, and until he knew for certain she was okay, he would continue to let them check in, keep very distant tabs on them. His marriage to Roxy had…well, it hadn't even broken down, had it, it hadn't bloody well taken place, because of his family, and on the flip side he'd hurt his family for the sake of a marriage that hadn't happened, and he wasn't in the mood, ashamed as he was, to talk to any of them…but all the same, he wanted to make sure from his safe little bubble that they were okay.
Annoying thing was, nearly every other call was bloody Martina, demanding to know why he hadn't turned up at the DSS yet. He didn't know how she'd managed to get hold of his phone number, but now she had found a way to torment him from afar, she was doing it relentlessly – and it was doing his head in. He suspected it was her now; she was about due a pester.
He answered it anyway, just in case.
'Hello, yes?'
'Good morning, Mister Boswell.' Nobody but Martina could make a good morning sound dangerous.
'Get it over with, little DSS lady.' He knew calling her that enraged her; he almost got a kick out of imagining her cross little mouth disappearing as she pursed her lips. 'What are you plannin' to do to me today, then? Feed me to the pirahnas you've got stored under the DSS? Send in the Social Security firin' squad to finish me off?'
'You are skating on very thin ice, you know, Mister Boswell.'
'Then I'll just have to get meself sturdier skates, won't I?'
He actually heard her frustrated in-breath down the phone.
'That does it. I'm warning you, Mister Boswell, if you are not here tomorrow morning – at my counter, pen in hand, ready to put your signature to my form – I will come up there myself and drag you back here.'
Her voice was threatening, would have been terrifying had he ever been scared of her. She sounded dead serious, though Joey knew she couldn't have been. She knew where he was; she couldn't make good on her threat.
'Given the circumstances I think I'll call your bluff, sunshine. I'm hours away. What are you gonna do, Martina, come all the way up to Scotland?'
He'd been doing it every time she rang, but he still got a good deal of relish from hanging up on her.
Martina had had enough now.
Her small amount of pity for Joey Boswell (and that small part of her that was ashamedly smug he hadn't wound up married) were fast being eclipsed by outright fury.
How dare Joey Boswell speak to her in this manner. How dare he insult her repeatedly, how dare he flat-out refuse to do what he was told, to obey the rules and report to her at his allocated time.
Her colleagues in the benefit office were beginning to demand she account for his absence, and the fact that she had not been able to produce any updated information for his file (she couldn't bring herself to simply report him or cancel his allowance for reasons she couldn't explain), and something would have to give sooner or later, or she might end up in hot water herself. She should just tell them the truth and let him face the music. He'd made his bed; he could lie in it, get into trouble, get his benefits taken off him if that was what he wanted. It had nothing to do with her. And as for her resolution to get him one day, this would actually serve her well.
Except for that little rebellious part of her that wouldn't let this happen. The was years ago, she'd tried to insist to herself over and over, before she'd realised what a scoundrel Joey Boswell was, that she'd ever even considered him in any other context, that she'd ever thought…
She forced the thoughts away. They'd only resurfaced, an echo of past feelings, because she'd been surprised to hear of his upcoming marriage. They had no place in her head now, in the post-Shifty life she was living, which had seen her learn some hard lessons and decide ultimately she was better off on her own for the time being. She couldn't quite force away the determination to make Joey come back though, to not step back and let him destroy his own life and his chances of remaining in the system and receiving a regular giro. This could be laxity on her part, although it could be that her anger at his stubbornness was beginning to make her determined like never before to force him into compliance.
Problem was, nothing was getting through to Joey Boswell. She'd threatened to suspend his allowance ('suspend it, then,'), report him ('go on, report me, then,'), get the police involved ('you do that, sweetheart. You do that,') her frustration increasing tenfold every time he simply threw her warning back in her face as though he couldn't care less and hung up the phone. His lack of concern was unprecedented, as was his outright rudeness to her, and every time she upped the ante with her threats, delivered a warning she was sure he would bow to, he only dug his heels in further. Their last conversation, however, was what had driven her completely over the edge.
Martina was seething now. Given the circumstances, I think I'll call your bluff, sunshine. Arrogant little bastard. If that's all he thought this was – a harmless bluff – he had another thing coming. Martina was in trouble for not having done anything about him. He, as far as she was concerned, was in trouble and all, for his continual refusal to do what was required of him, and would pay dearly for it when she had him back here – and if she had to take a hard line with him to force him to behave himself, she would.
Which was how she found herself standing here now, at the station, having just enquired after a train ticket to Gretna Green.
This was possibly the daftest idea she'd ever had. She couldn't just nose her way into her claimants' lives; that as stepping far beyond what was professional. Not to mention it would be wasting her time, her Saturday, her money. She didn't even know where he was staying (she could have weaselled it out of Adrian, she thought in hindsight. Then again, she hadn't exactly planned this out; she'd woken up this morning and a reckless impulse had simply taken over her body and propelled her here).
What was she even thinking? This was ridiculous. She was going home. She couldn't believe she'd gone even this far.
What are you gonna do, Martina, come all the way up to Scotland?
His taunt echoed through her head, making her see red again, cementing her determination to go through with it. She slapped her money down on the counter and took the ticket.
You think I'm bluffing, Mister Boswell? Just you wait.
