Down the Figure 7

by Trevor Hoyle

  ‘Go on what?’ Roy Pickup said.

  ‘Tell us some more.’

  Roy Pickup looked round awkwardly at the circle of interested faces. He said lamely, ‘That’s all there is.’

  ‘Were they thin or fat?’ Terry asked.

  ‘What about their TITS?’ Danny Travis said, contorting his face and lowering his voice to a husky whisper on the crucial word.

  ‘Did they have nipples like stiff fingers pointing different ways?’ Alec Bland wanted to know.

  ‘Some of them had.’ It wasn’t clear whether Roy Pickup was actually remembering this or exercising his imagination. ‘Some had big flat ’uns like saucers.’ He made a circle with his fingers: ‘Big as this.’

  ‘That in’t big for a tit,’ Dougie Milne said scornfully.

  ‘Nipples that big, pie-can.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Bloody Nora …’

  The talk meandered on; the fire dwindled, flaring occasionally into brief life, and as the night advanced the wind changed direction and blew from the ash-tips across the river and moaned through the brick archways. The distant clank-clunk of wagons being shunted could be heard from the marshalling yards high up above Moss Brook. Somebody’s mother called from Kellett Street and it was a signal for the Gang to drift away, kicking the pale dead embers into little flurries of powder, like miniature snowstorms. ‘Not a bad bommie this year,’ Spenner observed, and they all agreed, to a man, that it hadn’t been a bad bommie this year.

  The Birthday Party

  ONLY THE TOP PEOPLE WERE INVITED TO Yvonne Brangham’s birthday party. Specially for the occasion Terry’s mam had bought him a new white shirt and a green tie with black squares. The tie was made in a clever way that Terry was very proud of: instead of tying it you simply slipped it over your head and folded your shirt collar over the elastic band, which held the tie neatly in place. He was dead sure nobody else had a tie like it.

  At the corner of Yorkshire Street and Halifax Road he met Betty Wheatcroft, decked out in all her finery, and they walked together past Heybrook School and up Park Road past the semidetached houses with their own gardens. Some even had garages. Terry was nervous, but he felt very superior and rather honoured to be walking up Park Road with Betty Wheatcroft, conscious of the fact that only a chosen few received an invitation.

  ‘What have you bought her?’ Betty asked. Terry carried a paper bag stuck down with tape.

  ‘Chocolates. What’ve you?’

  Betty held up a pretty package tied with pink ribbon with a big bow on top. ‘Vanity set.’

  Terry nodded. He didn’t know what a vanity set was but supposed it was something girls found a use for. They walked on. Terry was struggling to remember something he had read about what you were expected to say to girls when you took them out or met them at a party. He thought he remembered.

  ‘I like your dress,’ he said studiously, looking straight ahead.

  ‘Thank you,’ Betty said politely. She had her coat on, the dress showing at the bottom, about two inches of it. ‘I like your tie.’

  Terry said, ‘Look at this,’ and pulled the tie away from his collar and let it snap back; he did this twice more.

  ‘I haven’t seen one of them before.’

  ‘No,’ Terry said. ‘It’s brand-new.’

  Yvonne Brangham lived in a large stone house with a bay window, set back a few feet behind green wrought-iron railings that were corroding. The enclosed ‘garden’ was a dozen square feet of damp earth with a couple of weary bushes with drab darkish leaves. The gate was missing, having been removed during the war for scrap metal. Yvonne’s mother was Terry’s idea of what Enid Blyton must look like, smiling, stoutish, smartly dressed in a fawn cardigan with two loops of pearls at her throat, competent but not fussy. She took Betty’s coat, saying, ‘Yvonne’s in the sitting-room.’

  Terry felt rather grand, standing in his best jacket, new shirt and tie in a house that actually had a hallway behind the front door (there was even a tall wooden stand with an oval mirror set in it); he was also slightly uneasy, not knowing what a sitting-room looked like or where you might find one.

  ‘Don’t wait, go on in,’ Mrs Brangham said. What Terry liked about her was that she didn’t pat the top of his head. Feeling grown-up and important, and clutching his quarter-pound chocolate assortment in its paper bag, he followed Betty’s rustling dress and pink satin slippers along the hallway and into a bright sunny room with flowers, pictures on the walls and a piano in the corner.

  He knew them all, thank goodness: Yvonne, Jean Ashmore, Brenda Harrison, Mary Macauly, and of course Betty. There were four boys, all of them in Terry’s class. He presented the chocolates to Yvonne and she accepted them graciously.

  ‘I like your dress,’ he remembered to say, standing quietly and self-consciously just inside the door, and Rod Callaghan and Arthur Halliwell went into a fit of snorting giggles, punching each other’s shoulders.

  ‘Take no notice,’ Yvonne said. ‘They’ve been drinking cider.’

  ‘Where’d you get that tie from, Webbie – Starkey’s?’ Arthur Halliwell said, gawping. (Starkey’s was a rag-and-bone merchant.) Terry could feel his neck getting red but he refused to look at them. He thought: a couple of brainless louts, and nearly blurted out, ‘You two won’t pass for the High School at any rate,’ but held his tongue. He was cleverer than they were, and knew it, and it was enough.

  Mary Macauly was sitting at the piano, tapping out a few notes. She was a shy moon-faced girl who spoke very softly and correctly, and so it came as an even greater shock when she said out of the blue: ‘I’d rather kiss Terry Webb than you two any day of the week.’

  He could hardly believe his ears, and again a hot blush started creeping up from beneath his clean white collar. He jerked his head like a robot to look at her and she was quite calmly tapping out a little tune. He knew he had to get control of himself: this stupid blushing would ruin everything, especially in front of the other boys. He said rashly, ‘I think Jean Ashmore’s smashing,’ and saw Jean look confused and uncomfortable and a shadow of disappointment pass over Yvonne Brangham’s face, and realised he’d said the wrong thing. He knew now why he’d been invited.

  They had their tea in another room (what Mrs Brangham referred to as ‘the living-room’), Terry being very courteous, passing plates of sandwiches before he took one himself, holding his china cup by the handle, and only talking when his mouth was empty. At one point he said something funny and everybody laughed, and he experienced a warm satisfying glow deep within and could hardly keep his face from beaming with happiness. Yvonne kept glancing at him with what he took to be a look of secret admiration, and once or twice he caught the eye of Jean Ashmore before the two of them looked hastily down at their plates. This was when you stopped being a kid, Terry realised, and started growing up: this was getting to know and like other people, and they to know and like you: it was terrific.

  The girls helped Mrs Brangham clear the table, and she said: ‘You boys run along into the sitting-room and amuse yourselves. Think up some games to play.’

  When they were in the other room Arthur Halliwell said, ‘I can think of a few games to play with Betty Wheatcroft,’ and made a gesture with his fist. Terry was vaguely disgusted. They were supposed to be behaving responsibly, not like kids in the infants’ class.

  ‘Which one are you having?’ Derek Cross asked Terry.

  ‘Whichever one’s left,’ Terry said blandly, knowing full well he had the pick of at least two. It seemed to him now that he held some sort of power over the situation, and he had acquired the notion that the others were looking to him to give a lead. Even Arthur Halliwell and snide Rodney Callaghan had stopped throwing out taunts and insults, almost as if they had given way in deference to him. He suggested that they play Postman’s Knock and when the girls came in they agreed.

  It was gone six o’clock and quite dark outside. For a nasty moment Terry and the other lads thought that Mrs Brangham was going to
spoil everything, but she’d only followed the girls in to draw the curtains and put some coal on the fire. The room was warm and cosy, the night shut outside, the firelight winking in the candlestick holders on the piano, and the moquette armchairs deep comfy pools of shadow. Terry had already noted that the carpet went right up to the skirting-board and that there wasn’t a single frayed hole anywhere in it. Mrs Brangham went out, not even saying, ‘Don’t jump on the furniture,’ or ‘Don’t make too much noise,’ and he imagined for a moment, wistfully, what it would be like to have her as a mother.

  Of the five, Terry fancied Jean Ashmore the most, but he had to admit that Yvonne was great at kissing. They played Postman’s Knock and then a simplified version of Truth, Dare, Force or Promise – simplified because the girls didn’t want to get their party dresses crumpled and insisting that the boys didn’t go too far. In paying one forfeit Rodney Callaghan had to kiss all the girls in turn and Terry couldn’t help feeling a sneaking satisfaction at their lack of enthusiasm and the perfunctory way they pecked at his thin straight mouth.

  After the games they switched the light off and settled down: a couple in each armchair, two couples sharing the settee, Derek Cross and Mary Macauly on cushions near the window. Terry had never known a girl’s lips taste so sweet. He had kissed girls before – that is, pressed his mouth against their mouths – but this was the first time he not only enjoyed the sensation but could actually see the point of it. Yvonne’s lips were soft and there was a smell emanating from somewhere that made his senses unsteady. He experimented with both hard and gentle kisses, with long and short ones, and discovered how it was possible to prolong a kiss for ages and breathe at the same time. Now and then he opened his eyes, just to see what she looked like while he kissing her: the firelight wavering on her pale forehead, deep moving shadows in the hollows of her eyes, and glossy ringlets of dark hair burnished by the glow. He decided that kissing girls was all right; it just needed a bit of practice.

  After a while they broke away and Terry didn’t know what to do with his eyes or what to say. He kept squeezing her shoulders for something to do.

  At last he said in a whisper, ‘I like your dress.’

  ‘Are you glad you came?’

  ‘Yeh.’

  ‘You like Jean don’t you?’

  ‘She’s all right.’

  ‘Do you like her better than me?’

  ‘No,’ Terry said. He found that the lie came easily, and it was even possible to look her in the face as he said it.

  Then she disconcerted him by closing her eyes and sighing, lifting her mouth blindly towards his. Terry kissed her, moving his lips up and down, from side to side. It was nice. They were in a private world of contentment, the room dancing with shadows, the huddled bodies passive and mute and lightly breathing, until somebody farted.

  ‘Bloody Nora,’ Derek Cross said from the floor.

  Arthur Halliwell said, ‘Pardon my friend the pig.’

  ‘Shit down and make yourself cum-fart-able,’ Rod Callaghan said.

  Terry was trying not to laugh; he thought it would be undignified and give the wrong impression. Now the genteel atmosphere was shattered, the boys were saying the rudest things they could think of and some of the girls were stifling their giggles. Derek Cross recited:

  ‘I wish I was a caterpillar

  Then life would be a farce,

  I’d climb up to the tallest trees

  And slide down on my hands and knees.’

  Mary Macauly said, ‘Tell them to shut up, Yvonne.’

  ‘I din’t start it,’ Derek Cross protested in the darkness, frightened at being struck off the guest list.

  Yvonne snuggled under Terry’s arm and murmured in his ear that she was glad he wasn’t like the others. Terry replied that so was he, yet felt his conscience rebel at such an untruth. And his pride was hurt too – that she should think him different from the others, incapable of a rude joke; in other words a Mummy’s Boy. It was true that he was different from the others, he knew it in his bones, but he didn’t want to be that different.

  ‘Do you go to the Ceylon on Saturday afternoons?’ Yvonne asked him.

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Are you going next Saturday?’

  ‘Might do.’

  ‘Will you go if I go?’

  ‘All right.’ What else could he say? But he’d much rather go if he knew Jean Ashmore was going.

  ‘I think you’re the best boy in our class,’ Yvonne Brangham said impulsively, aiming suddenly for his mouth and not quite hitting it dead-centre.

  ‘I like you as well,’ Terry said. ‘I like your—’ He nearly said ‘dress’ but reckoned he’d wrung that particular compliment dry.

  ‘My mother likes you,’ Yvonne said. ‘She thinks you’re very nice and quiet and polite.’

  ‘Does she?’ Terry said dully. He had a sudden yearning to break away from her embrace and run into the street and jump in a puddle or kick a tin can or swing from a lamp-post. Girls were all right to kiss (and he hadn’t realised till now how enjoyable kissing could be) but he hoped it wasn’t going to get in the way of messing round with the Gang; he enjoyed dirt-track racing on the Top Track and swaling the moors up Brown Wardle and lots of other things just as much as sitting in a comfy armchair in a firelit room with a girl in a rustling party dress, satin slippers and ringlets.

  The Ginnel

  THE GANG WAITED IMPATIENTLY FOR SNOW, THIS being December and December being winter and in winter the dirty white stuff supposed to fall from the skies. This year, however, it was depressingly damp and foggy, the mist tending to gather in hollows on the Bottom Track like pools of grey water, and hanging in vaporous ribbons close to the surface of the river. So while waiting for the time when they could bring their sledges up from the cellar and grease the runners, they had to find other diversions and amusements. Such as sneaking into the compound at the end of the Ginnel where rows of broken-down camouflage-coloured ex-army vehicles rotted away, their tyres deflated, their innards gone rusty. The idea was to dangle strips of cloth into the petrol tanks, soaking up the last precious drops, set them alight, and run amok like dervishes, whirling them above their heads to mimic helicopter blades on fire.

  Another pursuit, known as the North-West Passage, required skill, cunning and nerve. First you had to climb over the fence into Sam Clegg’s, the coal merchant’s yard, then descend the vertical stone wall, hand under hand, to the hummocks of grass which bordered the river, feeling your way along in the pitch dark so as to avoid the patches of deep green slime which lapped the wall. Then came the section calling for stealth and nerves of steel: the pens and allotments running the full length of Kellett Street down to the river’s edge. Chances were that some old geezer would be pottering about in his shed or greenhouse, and the trick was for ten of you to sneak by undetected in the tall, rustling marsh-grass, virtually under his nose. There was no escape-route – allotments in front, river to their backs – and when they’d negotiated it a surge of exultation swept through them all as they climbed over a couple of broken fences and came out at the end of the Figure 7, back in the world of gaslamps and safety.

  During this time Dougie Milne broke his leg by falling off an air-raid shelter and was out of action for three months. He had been demonstrating how paratroopers land on the balls of their feet without hurting themselves.

  Terry didn’t mind the winter too much because the dark bitter nights brought with them an air of mystery and intrigue to Denby: you could play at spies, convicts or escaped prisoners-of-war, pressed rigidly in the shadows trying not to breathe when anyone passed by, burrowing your face in your windjammer to conceal its tell-tale paleness. And the darkness held a special kind of excitement: away from the brightly-lit main roads (where the rule of law and order prevailed) there was the possibility of escape into another kind of territory, the backstreets and alleyways, the viaducts and railway sidings, the ash-tips and allotments. This was a sub world in which adults, snug in their
terraced blocks of brick, were an alien species. Tomorrow they would regain control but the night belonged to the Gang.

  Sometimes, of course, the adults ventured out. Whenever there was a bob or two to spare they might go to the pictures, queueing with patient yet bright-eyed expectation to see Hollywood’s version of How the War Was Won or the graceful Gainsborough lady with her large feathered hat introducing a home-grown production with stars such as Robert Newton, Patricia Roc, Margaret Lockwood, Dennis Price, Phylis Calvert, and Terry’s mam’s particular favourite, the suavely evil James Mason.

  If there was nothing on at the flicks, then the Cloverdale on Entwisle Road kept a decent pint of mild, or they could try the Trafalgar Hotel on the corner of Ramsay Street; but there wasn’t, for most of them, a great deal to spare for booze, what with winter upon them and coal at 4/1 d a bag. Mostly their evenings were spent listening to Radio Newsreel followed by PC49, or perhaps Valentine Dyall as The Man in Black, and on Saturday nights Variety Bandbox with top of the bill Frankie Howerd, and on Sundays Palm Court.

  At weekends the Carlton was a big attraction (a shilling to go on the floor, sixpence on the balcony) with Emyrs Griffiths and the Carlton Band playing the usual medley of popular tunes in quickstep, foxtrot and waltz time. Under the revolving globe of tiny mirrors throwing its fragments of light along the ceiling, down the walls, across the polished wooden floor, the couples moved in dreamlike formation to a subdued shuffling of feet, the women humming They Didn’t Believe Me or As Time Goes By into their partners’ right shoulders, just above the place where the dusting of face powder smudged the wide pointed lapels and the trace of Californian Poppy lingered.

  On the corner next to Wellens’s shop, with its posters advertising Fynnon Salts and Dollie Blue, several of the Gang were already assembled, kicking a tennis ball about as they debated what to do. Spenner – who was fanatical about anything on wheels – wanted to break into the army vehicle depot and siphon petrol out of the tanks, but the others weren’t too keen, having done this three or four times already.