by Kevin Brooks
The sudden voice startled me for a moment, and the fear must have shown in my face, because when I looked up and found myself gazing into William Bonney’s clear hazel eyes, the first thing he said was, ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.’
Considering everything that had happened, William seemed remarkably calm and composed. As I jabbered away at him, asking him a dozen disjointed questions, he just stood there smiling at me, waiting for me to finish, then he asked Jake for a cigarette, took his time lighting it, took a long drag, and blew out a stream of smoke with an audible sigh of satisfation.
‘So …’ he said slowly. ‘You got here all right then?’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ I said, trying to hide my impatience. ‘But what about you? Did you get away from them all right?’
‘The skinheads?’
‘Yes, the skinheads.’
He just shrugged. ‘They weren’t up to much.’
‘What do you mean?’
He smiled. ‘I’ve run away from a lot worse than them before.’
‘But why did they go after you in the first place? I mean, what did you say to them to make them so angry?’
He grinned again. ‘I told them I was IRA.’
‘You what?’
‘IRA,’ he repeated. ‘I told them I was in the IRA.’ He laughed quietly. ‘If there’s one thing a skinhead hates more than anything else, it’s a Provo. They can’t stand them.’
I didn’t know what to say for a moment. I just couldn’t believe what he’d done, the risk he’d taken, the danger he’d put himself in, and all for the sake of three people he’d known for less than a day … one of whom had caused all the trouble in the first place.
‘Where is he, anyway?’ William said. ‘Where’s Curtis?’
I was just about to say ‘Who cares?’ when I heard a carefree shout from across the ticket hall:
‘Hey! There he is! There’s my Billy boy!’
And we all turned to see Curtis swaggering across the hall towards us, grinning crazily and waving his hands.
‘Billy!’ he cried, coming up to William and giving him an overzealous hug. ‘My hero … you saved my life, man!’
He wasn’t serious, of course – he couldn’t be serious – he was just trying to make a big joke out of it, as he always did when he didn’t know how to deal with something. But that wasn’t what annoyed me the most. No, what annoyed me the most was how he’d suddenly seemed to have regained his memory about what had happened on the tube train.
‘I owe you one, Billy,’ he was saying now. ‘Really … I mean, Jesus … you’re an honest-to-God fucking hero. Here, have a cigarette …’
‘Thanks,’ William said, taking a cigarette from Curtis’s packet even though he was already smoking one. ‘I’ll save it for Ron,’ he said, smiling and tucking the cigarette behind his ear.
‘Ron who?’ Curtis said.
‘Later Ron.’
Curtis frowned for a moment, then all of sudden he got the joke and began laughing and cackling as if it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. ‘Later Ron … yeah, good one, I like it … later on …’
William just stood there, smiling quietly, like a patient parent putting up with an overexcited child. And that was another thing I was really annoyed about – Curtis’s sudden overexcitement. Which, of course, was the result of whatever he’d taken during his unnecessarily long ‘trip to the toilet’. And whatever it was – and my guess was speed – I was pretty sure that he’d taken a lot of it. His eyes were as big as saucers, his face was drained white, and he was twitching so much it looked like his skin was alive.
‘Yeah, yeah, anyway,’ he said to no one in particular. ‘Yeah … so are we going to this fucking party or what? Jake? Do you know where it is?’
‘I thought you knew.’
‘Yeah … yeah, I know where it is.’ He gazed quickly around the ticket hall, pointed to one exit, then changed his mind and pointed to another. ‘It’s this way, come on …’
I looked at William. ‘Do you want to go? I mean, it’s probably nearly over by now –’
‘Course he wants to go,’ Curtis said, grabbing William by the arm. ‘You want to go, don’t you, Billy?’
William looked down at Curtis’s hand on his arm.
Curtis took the hint, grinned sheepishly, and let go.
William turned to me. ‘Well, I really don’t mind what we do, to be honest. But seeing as we’re already here, and it’s taken most of the night to get here …’ He shrugged his shoulders and smiled. ‘But, like I said, I really don’t mind.’
I looked back at him for a few seconds, deliberately ignoring Curtis, and I was fairly sure that if I told William the truth – that I didn’t want to go to the party, that I just wanted to go home – he’d probably offer to get the tube back with me, and for a moment or two I actually found myself imagining it … sitting on the tube with William, feeling safe and comfortable, the two of us just talking about things, or not talking about anything if we felt like it … and then, when the tube finally got to Hampstead, he’d shyly offer to walk me back home, and I’d just know that there’d be no strings attached, that he wouldn’t be trying anything on, and I might even find myself wishing that he would …
And then a shout rang out from across the ticket hall – ‘Fucking weirdos!’ – and Curtis yelled back – ‘Fuck off!’ – and as I looked at him, and he looked back at me, grinning with idiot pride, I realized, with a silent sigh of resignation, that I wasn’t going home without him.
I couldn’t, could I?
For a thousand different mixed-up reasons …
I just couldn’t.
‘Come on, then,’ I said wearily. ‘Let’s get it over with.’
16
I don’t know how we ever found the studio where the Valentine’s Ball was taking place, because Curtis was the only one who knew where it was – at least, he kept telling us he knew where it was – and all he kept doing was running around the maze of South London side streets, shouting at everyone he came across – ‘Hey, d’you know Andrew Logan? Do you know where Butler’s Wharf is?’ And when that didn’t work – mainly because most people thought he was a lunatic – he just put his hands to his mouth, raised his head to the cold night sky, and started screaming at the top of his voice:
‘HEY, MALCOLM! JOHNNY! WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU?'
Unsurprisingly, this didn’t get us very far either.
Eventually, though, after stumbling around the streets for what seemed like a lifetime, we somehow managed to get close enough to the studio to hear the distant boom of the music blaring out. Even from a distance, you could tell it was incredibly loud. And very raucous. And unmistakably angry.
‘That’s the Pistols,’ Curtis said.
All we had to do then was follow the sound of the music.
It was utter mayhem when we finally got there. The Sex Pistols were still playing, and Johnny Rotten was completely off his head – crawling around on the beer-soaked floor, bug-eyed and rotten-toothed, howling and sneering like a madman – and the rest of the band were pretty much out of it too. The studio itself was all decked out with weird sculptures and mannequins, shop fittings and film scenery, and the place was absolutely jam-packed with a seething crowd of very loud, very drunk, and very stoned people. I recognized quite a few of them. The usual McLaren/Sex Pistols crowd was there, and a bunch of others who I found out later were (or had been, or would be) members of the Clash and/or the Banshees and/or the soon-to-be-defunct London SS. But there were all kinds of other people there too – journalists, film-makers, photographers, artists, oddballs … most of them drinking and posing and doing their best to out-shock one another.
It was a nightmare.
A circus from hell.
Curtis, of course, couldn’t get enough of it. As soon as we got there he started zipping around all over the place like a crazed tornado – talking
to anyone and everyone, waving his hands around, laughing and shouting, chain-smoking cigarettes and guzzling wine from a bottle – and for the first half-hour or so he insisted on dragging me and William around with him.
‘This is Billy,’ he told everyone he came across. ‘Billy the Kid, our new guitar player. He’s a fucking genius. He’s going to make us big. You watch … he’s a fucking star. Hey, Malcolm! Come over here … Malcolm! This is Billy, Billy the Kid …’
And on and on and on …
Throughout all this, William didn’t do or say very much at all, he just kept smiling, nodding his head, shaking hands, occasionally glancing at me … and, as usual, I wasn’t saying or doing anything either. I was just going along with it all – trying not to look too bored, trying not to hate everything too much, trying not to keep looking round to see if Charlie Brown was there …
It was hard work.
And when Johnny Rotten started making a commotion on stage – shouting and swearing, throwing the mike stand around, smashing up the band’s equipment – and everyone in the room was suddenly drawn to his manic behaviour, William and I were both thankful for the opportunity to slope off to the back of the studio and get away from everyone else for a while. As we sat down on the floor and leaned back against the wall, I could hear Malcolm McLaren’s excited voice urging Jordan to take off her clothes. All the music press were there, and I guessed he thought that a naked punk girl would do wonders for the Pistols’ profile.
‘Go on, Jords!’ I heard him yell. ‘Get ’em off!’
‘No …’
‘Go on!’
And then I saw her jumping up on stage – a diminutive figure dressed all in black, with a big blonde beehive haircut and heavily made-up eyes – and Johnny Rotten started tearing her clothes off, and all the photographers and film-makers started rushing to the front to get pictures …
‘Do you know her?’ I heard William say.
I looked at him. He had a cigarette in one hand, a can of lager in the other, and he was watching the spectacle on stage with a look of bemused curiosity on his face.
‘She’s called Jordan,’ I told him. ‘She works at Malcolm McLaren’s shop.’ I glanced over at the stage and saw that Jordan wasn’t alone now. Some of her friends, including Charlie Brown, were showing themselves off for the photographers too – taking their tops off, flashing themselves about, striking outrageous poses. The music press were loving it, as were most of the men – leering, gesturing, shouting, urging the girls on. Curtis was there too, standing with Jake next to Malcolm McLaren, a half-bottle of vodka dangling from his hand. But, unlike the others, Curtis wasn’t shouting or gesturing – he was just watching, silently, his whacked-out eyes fixed intently on Charlie Brown’s now-naked torso.
‘Why are some of them wearing swastikas?’ William asked me, taking a sip of lager.
‘It’s just a punk thing,’ I told him. ‘They like to shock people, to cause offence …’
‘Why?’
I looked at him. ‘I don’t know, really. It’s just …’ I shrugged. ‘It’s just what they do.’
‘Is that why Curtis acts like an idiot sometimes? To cause offence?’
I smiled. ‘Curtis is an idiot sometimes … most times, actually.’ I looked over at the stage again. Curtis was still just standing there, ogling Charlie Brown, and I could tell that he was incredibly drunk now. The top half of his body was wavering, moving loosely in aimless circles, and his head was lolling all over the place. I watched him take a long shuddering slug from the vodka bottle, then I turned back to William.
‘Why did you do it?’ I asked him.
‘Do what?’
‘Why did you go out of your way to save Curtis from getting beaten up?’
William shrugged. ‘Why not?’
‘You could have got hurt.’
He smiled. ‘But I didn’t.’
I looked at him. ‘What’s a Provo?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Earlier on … you said that skinheads hate Provos –’
‘Oh, right … yeah.’ He shrugged again. ‘Provo is just a slang term really … the Provos, you know? The Provisional IRA.’
I nodded, pausing for a moment to glance over at Curtis, and then I looked back at William. ‘You’re not really in the IRA, are you?’
‘Why?’ he asked, smiling. ‘What would you do if I was?’
‘I don’t know …’ I shrugged. ‘Not much, I suppose.’
‘You wouldn’t turn me in?’
For a moment or two, I really wasn’t sure if he was pulling my leg or not. He was still smiling, and I was almost convinced that he was only joking, but there was just something about him – a distant glint of hidden darkness – that made me wonder … what if? What if he really was in the IRA? There’d been a series of shootings and bomb attacks in London over the last few months – Oxford Street, the Hilton Hotel, Green Park underground – and in December there’d been an armed siege at a flat in Marylebone involving four IRA men on the run from the police … so there was no doubt that the IRA had a presence in London at the time. Not that that meant anything, of course. All it meant was that it wasn’t impossible that William was in the IRA. Extremely unlikely, yes. But not impossible. And if he really was a Republican terrorist – a killer, a murderer, a bomber …? How would that make me feel? Would I be scared of him? Would he disgust me? Would I try to understand him? Or, as he’d just suggested, would I simply turn him in?
‘It’s all right,’ he said lightly, touching my arm. ‘I’m only messing about.’
‘I know you are.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah …’ I smiled at him. ‘I mean, you’re far too short to be a terrorist, for a start.’
‘I’m not short.’
‘You’re not tall.’
‘All right,’ he said, grinning. ‘But how do you know that the IRA don’t have a specialist “midget brigade”?’
‘I think I would have heard of such a thing, if it existed.’
‘Not if it was a secret midget brigade.’
‘A secret midget brigade?’
‘Yeah …’
‘Right,’ I said, nodding. ‘And why, exactly, would the IRA need a secret midget brigade?’
‘I can’t tell you that.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s a secret.’
We carried on talking for a while, mainly about Naked – how long we’d been together, how I’d joined, how many gigs we’d played … that kind of thing – and after about twenty minutes or so, I realized that, once again, William wasn’t telling me anything about himself. He was just sitting there, smoking and drinking, perfectly content to listen to me as I prattled away, answering his questions.
But just as I realized this, and just as I was about to start asking him a few questions, he touched my knee and pointed across the room at Curtis. He was still near the front of the stage, but he was sitting on the floor now – cross-legged, his head slumped down on his chest, his eyes almost closed, the half-bottle of vodka in his hand empty. He was on his own, just sitting there, totally wrecked, while the party carried on all around him.
‘God …’ I sighed, shaking my head.
‘It looks like he could do with a bit of help,’ William said.
‘He could do with something,’ I muttered.
‘Maybe we should get him home?’
‘Yeah, I suppose …’ I started looking around the room. ‘Have you seen Jake anywhere?’
‘He left about ten minutes ago.’
‘He left?’
William nodded. ‘He was with a girl.’
‘Which girl?’
‘The short blonde one with the dog collar round her neck.’
I nodded, half-remembering the girl. I didn’t know who she was, but I’d seen Jake talking to her earlier on.
I looked back at Curtis. He had
n’t moved.
‘What time is it?’ I asked William.
He shrugged. ‘One thirty, two o’clock … something like that.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Shit,’ I said. ‘The underground won’t be running now … how the hell are we going to get back?’
‘Night bus?’
‘Where from?’ I looked at him. ‘I don’t even know where we are, let alone where the bus goes from.’
William nodded. ‘We’ll have to get a taxi then.’
‘I haven’t got enough money for a taxi. It’ll cost a fortune at this time of night.’
‘What about Curtis?’
I laughed. ‘Curtis has never got any money. How about you?’
William didn’t say anything, he just looked at me for a moment, then turned away and began gazing around the room as if he was searching for someone in particular. I didn’t have a clue what he was doing, and I was just about to ask him, when his eyes suddenly fixed on someone on the other side of the room.
‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ he said, getting to his feet.
‘Where are you going?’ I asked him.
‘Nowhere,’ he smiled. ‘Just the toilet.’
I watched him as he walked away from me, crossing to the other side of the room, and I watched – increasingly perplexed – as he turned to the left and headed towards a group of people standing by the wall. There were about five or six of them, gathered in a semi-circle, talking animatedly about something. I didn’t know who most of them were, but the one doing most of the talking was Malcolm McLaren.
As William approached the group, his gait began to change. He started staggering a bit, walking unsteadily, as if he was drunk. And then, just before he got to McLaren, I saw him look over his shoulder without stopping, as if someone had called out his name, and when he turned back he was so close to McLaren that he couldn’t help stumbling into him. It looked exactly like a drunken accident – William wrapping his arms round McLaren to steady himself, McLaren spilling his drink and looking annoyed, William letting go of him and stepping back, wiping the spilled drink from his clothes, then holding up his hands in profuse apology …
