Manchester Slingback

by Nicholas Blincoe

  So he said, ‘Why don’t you just say it? You brought me back because you want me to find Gary Halliday?’

  ‘Kevin Donnelly’s old housemaster? Why would I want you to find him? I know exactly where he is.’

  Jake’s stomach was turning, his knuckles were burning white on the handle of his bag. ‘But you want me to go see him, in that place?’

  Green looked confused. ‘What place? Colchester Hall?’

  Jake nodded, Where else?

  ‘He’s not there. We closed that place down weeks ago. He’s on remand, awaiting trial.’ Then, like he was thinking of it for the first time. ‘But since you mention it, you could go visit him… I’ve booked you in for the morning. How does that sound?’

  Chapter Eight

  Johnny was waiting for him on the landing. Jake edged round the door of his bedroom, his jeans in his hand.

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Eleven-thirty,’ Johnny said. ‘So get a move on, you slapper. You don’t want to be around when Sean wakes.’

  Jake knew it, working hard at unravelling his trousers for a quick getaway. Sean had an evil temper – the fact he kept it wrapped most of the time only made it more scary. Call it cowardice, call it betrayal, or call it like it is: Jake’s best move was to skip out early and leave Domino to face the music. As of this moment, Domino was still sleeping. If the boy had any sense, he would run the moment he realized Jake had slipped the sheets and disappeared.

  Johnny said, ‘I tell you, you owe me the fucking moon for this.’

  Jake nodded, peering over the stair-rail to check for life or movement downstairs. ‘Who’s here?’

  ‘You don’t need to worry,’ Johnny said. ‘Rebecca left last night, which is another thing you got to thank me for. The state I was in last night, you think I wanted to kick a crying girl out of the flat, then spend another hour listening to Sean and Fairy going on about what a git you are – all that plus the crazy kid you picked up last night and dumped on me.’

  ‘So everyone hates me?’

  ‘They always did, mate. I tell you, I wouldn’t have anything to do with you if I didn’t need your help. So get a fucking move on.’

  Downstairs, Fairy was still sleeping inside his makeshift blanket tent. Kevin Donnelly was awake, though, sitting among the kitchen debris and drinking a cup of tea. There they were, the two of them working on a vanishing act, and Donnelly was asking if they wanted a brew.

  Johnny put a finger to his lip, telling him to hush.

  ‘Anyone asks, you haven’t seen us.’

  Then he grabbed his kitbag and nudged Jake ahead, out of the door and into the Manchester morning.

  They were stepping out of the shadows of the undercroft beneath the Crescents when Johnny said, ‘So, how was Domino? Was he worth the aggravation?’

  All he was doing was trying to needle Jake. Johnny knew Jake never talked about sex. At least, not in detail. He preferred to stick to the abstract level. That way it was guaranteed to sail right by Johnny.

  This time Jake just shook his head. Then tried for a diversion: ‘So why did you wake me? What am I supposed to be helping you with?’

  ‘The three Ps: piracy, pornography and peddling smut.’ Johnny held the neck of his kitbag open and let Jake see inside. It was full of German porn videos.

  ‘There’s a guy I know, he’s got the equipment to copy these… then, tonight, we go out and flog them.’

  ‘What guy?’

  ‘A loony, you’ll see. He lives in Elmin Walk over there.’ Johnny pointed to the low-rise blocks marking the end of the Hulme estate.

  Then, a few paces later: ‘You were saying, what position does Domino play? Catcher… hitter, or what?’

  Jake said, ‘You ever heard of the Marquis de Sade?’

  Johnny’s eyes swivelled, ‘Yeah? You gave him a spanking? I didn’t hear it.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know. You’re the one brought it up. Day Sade, the sadist geezer, right?’

  ‘I asked if you’d heard of him. It was a general-knowledge question. Congratulations, you passed.’

  The story Jake was thinking of was biographical, not something de Sade wrote, unless it came from one of his letters. Apparently de Sade paid his valet to bugger him first thing every morning. There was no mention of whether the valet enjoyed it or not, or even anything to suggest it was an unusual demand. De Sade believed it set him up for the day, so from that point of view it was nothing but a daily exercise routine. Neither de Sade or, as far as Jake knew, his valet were specifically homo. Maybe the old guy had a prostate problem and figured that was one way of dealing with it, The story set up so many spin-off suggestions, it was the kind of thing that once you knew, you never forgot. But the reason Jake thought of it now was he couldn’t begin to understand how anyone could launch their day with a bout of buggery. When Johnny came creeping into the room to wake him, Jake took one look at the boy lying beside him and just wanted to get the fuck out of the duvet.

  Johnny said, ‘I was only asking, ’cause I thought old Dommo was all right, the time I gave him one.’

  Jake burst out laughing, ‘And you were calling me a twat.’

  ‘The difference is, I was suave about it. Sean didn’t know a thing about it. And Domino was up for it. What could I do?’

  ‘What can we do? Everyone in Manchester wants to shag us.’

  Johnny had to say: ‘It’s not easy.’

  No, but they were. And most of the time, it felt incredible. Not the sex, admittedly. But the feeling that there was no one who didn’t want to sleep with them.

  *

  They crossed the road by the Sir Henry Royce, past the wired-in five-a-side pitch, and headed for the entrance to Elmin Walk. For some reason, these flats had always been considered a shade more respectable than the Crescents. Walking up to the first floor, Jake said he’d always wondered how the other half lived. When Johnny stopped, it was outside a maisonette flat that looked more cheerful, all round, than Jake’s place. The outside was faced with wood, a little like a Blackpool chalet.

  Johnny re-reminded him that the guy was a nutter; tread carefully. ‘He’s called Junk.’

  ‘Junk? The guy’s a scag-head?’ Jake didn’t like the sound of that. Somewhere, perhaps, there was a sphere for glamorous heroin addicts, an exclusive club where William Burroughs swapped junk lore with Johnny Thunders. But the only junkies Jake ever met were lousy poets and musicians. A suspicious side-note: he had never heard of a heroin addict who enjoyed dancing, a fact that had to deserve a government research grant.

  Jake said, ‘He’s not a junkie. His name’s John Quay. You know, like the Fall song: “No Xmas For John Quay”.’

  Maybe he wasn’t a junkie, but it was a racing cert the man who opened the door had problems. He was six foot of unsupported bone, headless behind a sheet of greasy hair. He didn’t say a word, just turned around and let them follow him up the stairs of his flat. As Jake reached the first floor, the guy was already heading for the back bedroom.

  Johnny, one pace behind on the steps, prodded him forward: ‘Keep going.’

  The room was filled with TV monitors, mounted on bolt-together Dexion shelving units. There were no windows and the only light came off the screens, a haze of unstable colours, all dissolving into each other. The man Junk sat down in front of a home-made control panel, his mixing desk, with his eyes straight ahead. The general impression, here’s a guy who doesn’t break his work schedule for anyone, but Jake couldn’t tell what he was doing or even if he could see, the way his hair covered his face.

  When he spoke, it came out in a flat Manchester accent: ‘Leave the vids with me. You want to come round tomorrow, they’ll be ready.’ That kind of voice always carried a promise: the user wasn’t about to begin caring for anything. With Junk, perhaps, you could take it as it sounded. At least, Jake couldn’t see what the guy was living for.

  Johnny slung his bag onto the mixing desk, saying: ‘Sorry, change of
schedule. I got customers set up for tonight. How about it?’

  Junk looked through the bag, counting the number of tapes. His mouth moved but he didn’t actually speak aloud until he asked: ‘How many copies again?’

  Johnny pulled a pencil-scratched list out of his back pocket, smoothing it out before handing it over. Junk took it and held it to the light of the nearest monitor. As he brushed away his hair to read it, Jake saw a raw puckered hole where the man’s eye should be.

  Something like that, coming so early in the morning, Jake couldn’t help himself. He turned away, saying, ‘Jesus Fuck.’

  Even as it was leaving his mouth, he was already backing away, scared what this freak’s reaction might be.

  All Junk did was mumble ‘Sorry’ and reach for an eye-patch that lay at the end of his desk. When he pulled the elastic over his head, he did it over his hair so the crown now lay tight to his skull and the rest flared out like a dirt-black mop.

  After a few seconds, mouthing a roll of sums, he said, ‘Okay, eight-thirty. But I can’t do all these Betamax today. I don’t have enough blank tapes.’

  Johnny nodded. ‘Fucking krauts, all they got is VHS. They don’t get that Betamax is the future.’

  Junk agreed.

  ‘But you can do the rest?’

  ‘Yeah… I got to say, though, I can’t see you shifting many in the Video 2000 format.’

  Johnny said he’d already got a buyer. As they left, he said, ‘Eight-thirty.’ And to Jake, as they slithered down the stairs, ‘Let’s hope I got the money to pay for it by then.’

  *

  The Arndale Shopping Centre was decorated for Christmas: strips of twisted ribbon slung across the tiers, stars swinging from thirty-foot wires to hover over the main concourse, strings of fairy-lights giving the escalators a little twinkle. There was no single theme or colour; the shiny marble floors amplified the Christmas overload. Jake had split up with Johnny outside, on Market Street, and had to deal with effects alone.

  He rode the escalator past W H Smith’s, underneath a computerized sign that spelled out Merry Xmas in flashing techno-green. A few years ago that lettering had been used on almost everything, but particularly on seven-inch singles: Kraftwerk and Gary Numan, obviously, but also groups with less programmed identities looking for a timely futurist spin, like the Police or the Tubes. Now, the sign already looked outdated. This was going to be a past-perfect Christmas: post-futurist like it was post-punk, post-new-wave, post-mod and ska. Post-everything. Post early for Xmas.

  Another escalator took him to the door of a clothes shop called Venus. The shop was slotted into an architectural overspill on the lower ground floor, which made it practically impossible to pass by accidentally. It was almost as if the mall chiefs had analysed the circulation-flow for the whole site, realized too late they had a piece left over and thought, sod it, we can’t make it work. Their failure was compounded by the Christmas decorators; the glitz thinned out noticeably in this area: a spot of Xmas alopecia alongside the hairy sights everywhere else. The odd thing, Venus was camp as Christmas, anyway. Though that wasn’t the main attraction for Jake. He was always happy shopping for clothes. He was even happier that Johnny had decided to do his Christmas purse-snatching alone.

  The shop assistant, a girl called Clare, called out the moment he walked through the doors. ‘Are you on your own?’

  She sounded as though she was surprised. Jake told her, ‘Yes,’ but didn’t tell her what Johnny was doing. ‘He should drop by later, I don’t know. Maybe he’ll get detained.’ Johnny had wanted Jake to help him: work up-front as a decoy while he rifled through their bags from behind. Jake told him, ‘It’s really tempting. Let me think.’ Then he told Johnny to fuck off. Johnny said, ‘Why do you think I got you up, this morning? I should have left you; see how you coped sandwiched between Sean and Domino.’

  Clare was perched on a high stool at the counter, behind the glass-fronted case filled with belts, heavy-metal bangles and crucifixes. Jake knew her fairly well. She worked in Venus most weekdays, on her own during the boss’s lunch hour. The high stool was her favourite position. Sat there, she could see the whole store and still reach the tape machine. Just now it was ticking into the beginning of a Soft Cell song.

  As she turned to adjust the volume one notch higher, she asked, ‘You going down Pips, tomorrow?’

  Jake nodded. The last week, a DJ had played a few old punk singles and Jake fancied the idea of a punk look: a kilt, a muslin shirt with over-long sleeves, maybe bondage pants and new boots. He was thinking monkey boots rather than DMs, because they looked younger and cuter. What he didn’t want was anything that smacked of Oi fans, Exploited punks, all that crusty, metal-studded Barmy Army brigade. He wanted credit for his style; he didn’t want anyone mistaking it for an entire lifestyle. He swayed down the length of the store, trailing a hand through the racks, but couldn’t see what he was looking for. The shop seemed to be betting on glam, besides the usual witchy Siouxsie stuff most of the girls wore. Clare was modelling a black fake-patent lace-up top and a ragged purple skirt. Her hair was the same shade, pulled into spikes.

  She said, ‘Are you and Johnny still living together?’

  Jake said, ‘Yes.’ Then wondered why she’d asked. ‘You want to know if we’re inseparable?’

  He put an arch spin onto the question and thought he saw her blush. It was hard to tell; she was wearing inch-thick white foundation.

  There was a pair of gold lamé hipsters hanging by the counter, similar to the ones Iggy Pop wore on the Raw Power album sleeve. Jake walked over and picked them out. He tried them against his waist first, smoothing them flat to his legs as he looked in a mirror.

  ‘How about these?’

  Clare, said ‘Yeah, they’ll suit you… What size are they?’

  Jake checked the tag. ‘Twenty-eight. I’ll try them on.’ Walking to the dressing-room, he said: ‘Hey, Clare, you got any Iggy records you could put on?’

  Clare turned and skimmed a finger across the tapes on the shelf above the counter: ‘The Idiot?’

  Jake shook his head, ‘No. Something earlier.’

  Her long black fingernails clicking across the ridges of the tape boxes. ‘No. What about TV Eye?’

  ‘You got that? Yeah, put on “Dirt”.’ It was a live album with a deeply muddied sound that put some people off, though it was one of Jake’s favourites – it sounded so desperate. An uncomfortable fact: David Bowie played keyboards throughout, although there was nothing markedly Bowie-ized about them. A few weeks ago, Jake had got drunk and conceded that Bowie might be talented; perhaps as a musician, although more likely as an arranger. It was only when he had to arrange to drop his own vocals over the top of a record that something usually went wrong.

  Clare FF-ed through, looking for the beginning of the track. Jake stripped in the curtained cubicle, worked the tight strides up his legs and zipped the fly. By the time the song started, he was backing out of the changing-room, shirtless and twisting his thin white body around before the mirror… ostensibly to see how the trousers fitted round the back but really to throw a few Iggy-style contortions.

  Clare said, ‘Oh, yeah, they look good.’

  Iggy said, ‘I been dirt and I don’t care.’ It was the voice that Jake was tuned to, the way it managed to give such an authoritative spin to desperation. Like something out of Patton or Henry V. Maybe the word was stoical, as though Iggy was always gearing himself up to push deeper into his unholy groove. Jake strutted round, arching his back to throw out his chest in the Iggy bantam walk.

  He said, ‘What do you think? Better without a shirt?’

  ‘You’d go to Pips like that?’

  ‘Well, I never tried near-nudity before. How’d you think it would go down?’

  ‘Depends who you’re trying to impress.’

  The answer was: everyone. He said, ‘What about you?’

  She pursed her lips, her head thrown back slightly, the kind of pose where the foot would be
tapping up and down if this was a cartoon. She wasn’t too easy to fool, which was why Jake liked her.

  He said, ‘I’m not sure. I’ll take them off.’

  While he was dressing, he shouted his punk idea through the curtain. Clare reinterpreted him.

  ‘You want to keep it really sharp and clean, like a mod attitude but a punk style?’

  Thinking about it, maybe that was it. Clare suggested he try the Roxy. She’d heard they had some old BOY designs stored in the back somewhere.

  Jake uh-huh’ed. ‘I’ll maybe try later. I have to wait for Johnny.‘

  Clare said, ‘He’s here.’

  He heard Johnny shouting ‘Hiya’ down the length of the store, Clare saying ‘Hiya’ back.

  ‘You alright?’

  Pretty soon, Johnny was pulling back the curtain on Jake’s cubicle, asking: ‘You indecent enough?’ He gave a wink, holding open a plastic Woolworths bag so only Jake could see inside it. There were about five purses lying in the bottom.

  Jake was stunned but managed to keep his voice to a hiss. ‘Are you crazy? You want to get caught with all those?’

  Johnny hissed back, ‘Give us a chance. That’s why I’m here, to sort them out in the privacy of the changing-room.’

  ‘Why didn’t you use the public lavvies like every other bag-snatcher?’

  ‘That way I would get caught, doing it the same as everyone else. Budge over.’

  Johnny would have got in the cubicle with him, but Clare shouted out, ‘No carrier bags in the changing-rooms.’

  Jake swished out through the curtain, ‘It’s okay. I’m done.’ He had the gold trousers slung over his shoulder.

  ‘What’s he doing in there, with a plastic bag and no clothes.’