The King Ed-Write

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Johnny Hazzard
CHAPTER THREE
Johnny Hazzard is woken from his sleep by the captain's voice.
"Ladies and gentlemen, British Summer Time is seven thirty A.M., the temperature is fifteen degrees centigrade, and the weather is overcast."
If it's overcast, it must be London. The changeover at George Bush had been relatively painless, but the flight from Houston to London was the usual - too long, too hot and too cramped (despite the plane being only half full). Lydia sleeps on as Johnny stretches in his seat, wipes the gunk from his eyes, and tries to get a look out of the window by the seat in front. The plane has yet to begin its descent. Johnny Hazzard tries hard to remember what his dream was about, but fails and returns to his book.
Following a surprisingly tasty British breakfast of high cholesterol and weak tea, the plane arrives at London Gatwick ten minutes ahead of schedule. After a lengthy queue at passport control, Johnny and Lydia wit around a baggage claim for even longer. They collect their suitcases, Johnny waits for a few more minutes for his skateboard, and they head out to find their dad. Johnny Hazzard finds himself looking forward to seeing the old guy. They last met at Christmastime, when Mr. Hazzard headed out to Austin, alone, and Mrs. Hazzard allowed him to stay in the spare room for a week. The festive season wasn't quite as fa la la la la as it ought to have been, but then it's never going to be easy when a divorced couple are brought together again at precisely the time of year when everyone hopes for happiness, then unwraps to find misery. Johnny respects his parents enormously. Their split was inevitable and undramatic - a conflict of philosophies and ennui. The conflict was the inevitable conclusion to a marriage between a hippie and a quasi-hippie. Mr. Hazzard wanted to branch out and make big bucks, while Mrs. Hazzard thoroughly disapproved. They had married young; both were just twenty and Lydia was born two years later. The family home had always been somewhere in or round Austin, and some of Johnny's earliest memories include front doors left wide open and assorted friends and distant family popping in for cake and shoulder-crying. Music (folk, soft rock, Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson, naturally) was a fixture of the home. Johnny remembers both his parents being very popular and apparently very understanding. He remembers a transvestite couple who used to drop in every Saturday, in full garb, for Mrs Hazzard's delicious low-fat pizza. He also remembers his mother and her mother having long arguments about how best to bring up Johnny and Lydia. Mrs Hazzard always won.
Johnny's early childhood had been colorful and inconsistent, but always happy. His parents ran a restaurant together, until Mr Hazzard wanted more, and they became bored with each other. And so it was that Johnny's father moved to London.
Standing behind a metal barrier, waiting for his children, Mr. Hazzard is wearing his blue dungarees, a bright yellow T-shirt, and flip-flops. Despite this, Johnny and Lydia smile broadly and speed over to hug their dad. Johnny has always thought the airport arrivals catwalk a bit too much of a stage, with people on either side, watching you, some of them clutching signs reading MR BAXTER, MRS GOLDBERG, or PARADISO HOLIDAYS. He doesn't like the feeling of a dozen or more people observing him in a tender moment with his dad.
"You get any taller and I'll start to bang your head down with a hammer," jokes Mr. Hazzard, for the third consecutive year. Johnny laughs. He is pleased to see him. Lydia kissed him on one cheek and Mr. Hazzard offers Johnny his other. Johnny feels self-conscious, but kisses. Mr. Hazzard takes over control of the baggage cart and they head to the parking lot.
The drive to Maida Vale is a long one. Heavy rush-hour traffic isn't helped by a bomb scare at the Great Portland Street underground station, which has resulted in road closures and diversions. Mr. Hazzard puts on a jazz radio station quietly and asks, as ever, to be filled in on the previous six months' events. Lydia kicks things of f with a detailed description of her final months of high school, of graduation, and the prom. Johnny Hazzard feels a little distant this time. He talks, but isn't fully switched on. The sagging clouds impose on the buildings beneath them and on Johnny Hazzard, too. It is the dismal nothingness of overcast weather - neither sunny nor raining, just gray. Johnny is beginning to really miss Olfman Drive. This could have been the summer like in all those growing-up movies - the summer when he and his buddies would go on a camping trip, find a dead body and jump across a leach-infested quagmire into adulth ood. He is happy to see his father, but he tells himself he should have put his foot down and demanded an Austin summer for once.
"I got A's in math, science and history," Johnny reports now, somewhat proudly.
"Well done," says Mr, Hazzard, as enthusiastic as he usually is on th ese long car journeys.
Lydia is the first to ask after Siska. Siska is Mr. Hazzard's new wife. They married three years ago. Johnny and Lydia were best man and bridesmaid, respectively. She is originally from Belgium, but moved to London to teach art at one of the universities, which serves as a neat supplement to the income she makes from selling her paintings. Siska's abstract works sell for four figure sums, despite Johnny having absolutely no idea what any of them mean.
"Sold any more paintings?" Johnny asks. "Another three just this week, to a collector from Ireland," Mr. Hazzard beams. ANd then the car journey is over, and they have arrived at the underground garage beneath the twelve-story-apartment block where Mr. Hazzard and Siska have made their new home.
Mr. Hazzard helps Johnny carry the suitcases to the elevator. Fifth floor. Too many mirrors, thinks Johnny Hazzard, not for the first time. The walls are indeed covered in oblong, overlarge mirrors that make the place look like something out of The Shining rather than a home sweet home. Too many mirrors damage self-confidence.
Johnny Hazzard notices a new couch on the fifth floor, located between flat four and flat five. The hallway is spacious, its carpet fluffy, and, Johnny suspects, probably fun to roll on naked.
Before Lydia has a chance to open the front door, Siska is there, her sky-blue blouse flapping in the breeze against her thin frame, her reading glasses perched on the edge of her nose like a car balanced precariously over a cliff. Her dark blond hair is tied up with a series of hairbands, elastic bands, and clips, so that it sits on her head looking a bit like a wedding cake. She opens her arms wide, her left hand clutching a half-empty bag of tobacco.
"Dah-lings!" she screams, almost unnervingly loud, in what most think is a French accent, but which is in fact pure Brussels.
"Hey, Sisk," says Lydia, hugging her stepmom.
"How's it going, Siska?" asks Johnny Hazzard, joining in the group hug.
"I have missed you, my darlings."
"You should have come to Austin for Christmas," suggests Johnny Hazzard, out of politeness rather than practicality.
"Johnny, dahling, you are crazy. Your mother would burn my hair off."
Johnny Hazzard likes Siska. She makes him laugh. She is very good at diffusing tense situations and turning potential tragedy into comedy. Mrs. Hazzard has never met her, and it's more than likely they'd get along in an uncomfortable sort of way. But still, all present know full well that Johnny's suggestion of a stepfamily yuletide is the stuff of a fairy tale. So Siska's response about hair arson, though a little far-fetched, is just perfect.
She ushers the kids in and insists that Mr. Hazzard deal with the bags. Siska has, for the first time ever, painted a banner across the hallway of the apartment, which reads WELCOME BACK LYDIA AND JOHNNY. Lydia is a little taken aback; Johnny thinks it's very cool. A swirling mixture of dark reds, blues and greens come together to form a vomitlike but heartfelt message.
The Hazzard apartment is as chaotic and disorganized as its two main inhabitants.
There isn't a great deal of floor space in the lounge or dining room: Piles of books and papers litter the floor, unopened mail lines the fruit bowl, stacks of clothes wobble in corners and on chairs. There is a long corridor, decorated with Siska's brightly lit portraits of the Hazzards: Lydia, Johnny, and Mr. Hazzard. It's difficult to make out which painting represents which Hazzard. For a while, last summer, Lydia was convinced she was the portrait that later turned out to be Mr. Hazzard. Siska was recently commissioned to paint the official portrait of the Belgian ambassador to Britain, so she is definitely doing something right.
Off to the left of the corridor are the two kids' rooms - Johnny's contains a lot of books, clothes, magazines, CD's and games. To avoid bickering, Mr. Hazzard equipped both rooms with stereo systems, the same size beds, and TVs. But Johnny has a computer and Lydia does not - there is never true equality between siblings. At the end of the corridor gallery is the open-plan lounge and dining room. Beyond that are the adults' quarters - the master bedroom, a shambles at the best of times, and Siska's studio, a shambles at all times. Various types and colors of paint are strewn across the floor, and pretty much everything else for that matter. Siska's "work wardrobe" hangs on a clay coat hanger behind the studio door: more flowing gowns, blouses, and clothes that are trying hard to be capes. There are three unfinished paintings on the go at any one time. Siska has a tremendous work rate, but rather like a long-distance runner, she knows the end is somewhere, even if she can't work out exactly how far away it is.
Johnny Hazzard has been fond of Siska since he first met her. He and Lydia have accepted her just like they've accepted summers in London. Sure, there are minor flare-ups, but they remember that Mr. Hazzard was alone for three years before Siska came on the scene. He was an unhappy man, and, despite her unpredictability, she has filled a hole in the big man's life and never tried too hard to pass herself off as a second mon. More like a foreign, slightly batty aunt. Johnny respects this enormously. Up until recently, when Johnny considered himself a mere child (all of two years ago at the age of thirteen), Siska had him cackling with her fantastical, quirky stories. She would visit Johnny before bed and, sitting on the floor beside him, weave complex and fascinating tales of alleged Belgian and Dutch folklore. Johnny didn't care whether they were real or not, because they were real enough. Siska's stories were, at times, as abstract as her paintings, yet somehow Johnny found a way to understand. He would fall asleep with the smell of Siska's sweet chewing tobacco in his nostrils, her soft and soothing voice in his ears.
Her fondness for Belgian comic books has rubbed off on Johnny, too. The country's long and fine tradition in comics has been brought to Johnny's attention; in his bedroom there sits a pile of books Siska has brought him over the years. Boule et Bill, Tintin (in English), and Jojo's fantastic tales make up some essential jet-lag reading. There's something reliable about them. Sure, Johnny knows them all inside and out, but it feels very, very comforting to come back to his room every summer and have a journalist with a strawberry-blond quiff, a little boy and his naughty dog, and a mischievous , motherless youngster all patiently waiting for him.
Johnny and Lydia enter the dining room to find a veritable feast has been laid out for them. Finger nibbles, potato chips, the odd can of beer, and several pizzas sit begging to be gobbled on the overpriced glass dining table. Siska asks some polite questions about life in Texas. Lydia gives healthier answers than Johnny, who's content to fill his face with choux pastries, jam tarts, and bruschetta.
"Dahlings, I don't know how you can enjoy forty-degree weather," says Siska, referring to the Texan summer norm, in Celsius degrees.
"You say that every year," says Mr. Hazzard, but then again, he says many things every year. There is something about this repetitive welcome home routine that appeals to Johnny Hazzard. He feels interesting, he feels loved, he feels the attention of two people he's rather fond of. The long, lonely flight is yesterday's news. Johnny Hazzard is content and his stomach is full.

Ch-check out the official Johnny Hazzard website , designed by Sally Woodcock.