by Trevor Hoyle
‘Knock-a-door-run!’ Alec Bland said, as though coming up with a brainwave, and Roy Pickup, the High School boy, said uncharitably, ‘Stick yer ’ead up yer arse, Blandie.’
‘We could allus raid Shap’s pigeon loft,’ said Male.
‘What for?’
‘Dunno,’ Male said. ‘We just could.’
Sandra Weeks, Doreen Hartley and Fat Pat Sidebottom were coming along the street and Kevin Hartley shouted: ‘Where you off to, our kid?’
‘What’s it to you?’ his sister said, flouncing past the group.
‘Oh, bloody Hell,’ Spenner said in a prissy voice, sounding the h. ‘Three tarts without a pair of knickers between ’em.’
Sandra Weeks said, ‘Maybe we haven’t, but at least we don’t smell,’ which was a taunt that hurt because there was some truth in it. Spenner ran after her and thumped her in the back.
‘Bully!’ Doreen Hartley screamed. ‘Bloody big bully!’
Sandra was crying, her cheeks red and wet. She sobbed an insult and Spenner was about to strike her again.
‘Lay off her,’ Kevin Hartley said. ‘You’ve hit her, now leave her alone.’
Terry was intrigued to see what would happen next. Kevin was the same age as Spenner, so he could stand up to him, but Terry had never seen the pair of them fight. Kevin said to the three girls:
‘Go on, get home.’
‘She’s telling her dad,’ Doreen threatened, supporting Sandra. ‘Bloody big bully,’ she added contemptuously.
Spenner turned towards her and there was a murderous look in his eye. Terry was nervous and excited. It was bound to start any second. The tension ticked in the air like an unexploded bomb.
‘You better tell your kid to keep it shut,’ Spenner said to Kevin Hartley.
‘She will keep it shut,’ Kevin said. ‘But don’t you lay a finger on her.’
Spenner’s eyes were bloodshot. His hair formed a red halo round his head in the lamplight. He was blazing mad but he was unsure of Kevin Hartley; and he knew himself to be in a vulnerable position because hitting girls was something that went against the Gang’s code of ethics: lads who hit girls were regarded as weak and unmanly, and nobody liked being labelled a bully.
‘You’d better tell that sister of yours …’ Spenner’s voice was shaking and there were flecks of foam at the corners of his mouth. Terry had never seen him like this. It was frightening to see somebody out of control, obsessed to the point of mindless rage, unable to overcome such a simple thing as the taunting of a young girl.
‘All right,’ Phil Kershaw said, ‘we’re not kids. This is daft, fighting over something trivial.’ This was a word he’d probably picked up at De La Salle College.
‘She’d better not call me that again, that’s all.’
‘You’d better not touch her either.’
‘If she calls me that just once more—’
‘Don’t you touch her at all,’ Kevin said.
‘Are we standing here all night?’ Terry piped up. ‘Let’s go to the army depot or over to Nile Street.’
Spenner wiped the spittle from his mouth and Terry noticed that his fingers were trembling. Kevin had relaxed his stance but he was still watchful. His short fair hair rested flatly on his head like a cap.
‘Come on then, if we’re going,’ Roy Pickup said, and like a tableau coming mechanically to life the lads started to move down the dirt slope towards the Bottom Track, Kevin and Spenner walking on opposite sides of the group, looking straight ahead. Male Smith said in Terry’s ear: ‘Bet Spenner would have pasted him easy.’
‘Do you think so?’ Terry said, and left it at that.
Down past the pens, along the pitch-black Ginnel with its matting of dead slimy leaves underfoot, and up into the sodium-yellow glare of Trafalgar Street, which butted onto the main road. There wasn’t much conversation until they drew level with the telephone kiosk at the corner of Good Shepherd Church, when Roy Pickup said, ‘I’ll show you a great trick.’ He went into the telephone box and the others scrimmaged round the open door. Roy lifted the heavy black receiver and tapped out a sequence of what sounded like morse code on the telephone rest.
‘What you doing?’
‘Listen,’ Roy said, and held up the receiver so that they could hear the phone ringing at the other end. It rang for a while and then a woman’s voice said: ‘4784.’
‘Is that Brown’s the Hundertakers?’ asked Roy in a prim voice.
‘This is 4784,’ the voice said impatiently.
‘I got the wrong number. Sorry. Thank you,’ Roy said, and put the receiver down.
‘You didn’t put any money in,’ Alec Bland said, stating the obvious.
‘Me uncle told me how to do it; he works for’t GPO. The only trouble is you can’t hang about too long because the engineers know where you’re phoning from.’
At that moment a police car went slowly by, a black Wolseley with a radio aerial, and the lads froze in attitudes of cautious panic, their senses alert like animals half prepared for flight. When the police car had gone Danny Travis said ‘Steaming Nora’ with heartfelt relief.
‘You know what we could do,’ Spenner said, always the delinquent schemer, ‘split up and ring each other from different phone boxes. Pass coded messages like secret agents.’
‘We need a password,’ Phil Kershaw said, wanting to play the game properly if it was played at all. He tried to think of a suitable phrase before the others did but the only one he could come up with was ‘Black Mask’.
They roamed along Ramsay Street, dodging into shop doorways to avoid the clinging drizzle and climbed the steep pavement of Copenhagen Street, passing the Ceylon with its dim blue gas globe over the entrance and the tattered posters flapping limply in the wind. In the murky night it was barely possible to make out the title of the big picture showing Thurs, Fri & Sat: Badlands of Dakota. Terry’s Uncle Jack (his mother’s younger brother) used to take him quite regularly when he lived with them on Cayley Street just after the war, but since he moved away Terry only went to the sixpenny rush on Saturday afternoons. His hero at the moment was Roy Rogers and Trigger.
‘What time is it?’ Male said anxiously. ‘It hasn’t gone nine o’clock yet has it?’
Some of the lads made scathing remarks but this didn’t matter to Male: he was more afraid of his mam’s heavy hand than all their scorn put together. Alec Bland decided to leave too, and they went off down Oswald Street, running on the slick pavement under the gaslamps’ wavering beams.
The rest of them congregated round the chewing-gum machine outside a tobacconist’s. Spenner squinted left and right along Yorkshire Street, and then instead of turning the knob slowly anticlockwise as the penny dropped, he jerked it rapidly to and fro and four packets fell out. They put some more money in and accumulated fifteen packets of XL for fourpence.
Finally they decided to split into groups and phone each other from different call boxes. Terry and Danny Travis returned to Trafalgar Street near Good Shepherd Church. All the way back Danny was fretting about how late it was, and the trouble he’d be in, and so Terry was left on his own to await the phone’s ring, leaning against the misted glass watching the red tail-lights of the traffic disappearing towards town. He had no idea of the time, only that it must be getting late.
A few people passed by, couples mostly, wrapped up against the deepening chill of winter. He huddled inside his corduroy windjammer, numbed to the bone, wishing he’d had the sense to wear the woollen balaclava his mother had knitted for him. He could have gone home, there was nothing to prevent it – except of course that the others would think him a soft cock – and he had enough pride and ambition to want to be regarded as a cut above the other boys his age.
Terry looked in the direction of the Arches, whistling a tune and counting the streetlights, and so didn’t see the man crossing the road. The man wasn’t old, thirtyish or thereabouts, though Terry saw him simply as an adult of indeterminate age. He was wearing a raincoat, shabby and
frayed at the edges, with a scarf tied in a big knot under his chin.
‘Hello son,’ the man said. Terry noticed immediately that his shoes were old and worn, with grey knotted string in place of laces. ‘What you doing here?’
‘Waiting.’
‘What for?’
‘Just waiting.’
‘You must be waiting for something.’
‘A phone call,’ Terry said. He was wary but he knew that the man wasn’t a copper. At least he was reasonably certain, because coppers shaved regularly and this man didn’t.
‘Who’s going to ring you?’
‘One of me pals.’
‘At this time of night?’
‘Yeh.’ Terry widened his brown eyes innocently. ‘He’s poorly in hospital and he’s going to ring me to tell me how he is.’
‘Oh aye?’
‘Yeh. Honest.’ But the man didn’t seem to be taken in by Terry’s big brown eyes, because he said nastily:
‘I’ve heard that tale before.’
‘It’s true. Don’t believe me if you don’t want to.’
The man looked up and down Entwisle Road. ‘What have you got in your pockets?’
‘Nowt.’
‘Let’s have a look.’ He ignored the scraps of paper and rubber bands and crumpled packet of XL chewing gum and asked what was in the tin. Terry opened it. ‘Dimps. You’re a smoker, are you? We’ve found a secret smoker, have we?’
He was looking at Terry and almost smiling. ‘We have the odd crafty drag now and then, do we? You can tell me, I don’t mind.’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Would you like a full one?’
‘What?’
‘A full fag. Here, have one. I don’t mind kids smoking. I used to smoke when I was your age.’
‘All right. Thanks.’
‘Are you going to light it?’
‘I go dizzy if I smoke a full one.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Terry Webb.’
‘You’re all right, Terry,’ the man said. ‘I like you.’ There was an oddness about him that Terry couldn’t place. Then the man said: ‘You’re a well-built lad aren’t you? Do you exercise a lot?’
‘I go to the baths.’
‘A swimmer eh? How far can you swim?’
‘I’ve done me six lengths.’
‘Six lengths,’ the man said, and whistled. ‘Wish I could swim.’
‘You can’t swim?’ Terry said. ‘Honest?’
‘Frightened of the water. Always wished I could swim.’
‘It’s easy. Nowt to it.’
‘It is for you, Terry, because you’re strong and well-developed. I bet you’ve got strong legs.’ Terry looked down at his knees covered in bruises. ‘You’re a sturdy lad, aren’t you?’ said the man, gripping his shoulder.
He turned his head to look along the road and the streetlight overhead fell directly on his face so that the knifeblade shadow of his nose ran straight down over his chin. His eyes were hidden: the yellow light made his skin wan and anaemic: he looked back at Terry. ‘Have you no pals, Terry?’
‘Yeh, I’ve got loads of pals.’
‘Where are they tonight then?’
‘They’re going to meet me.’
‘Here?’
Terry nodded.
‘They’re a long time.’
The man grinned suddenly and gave Terry a friendly punch on the shoulder. ‘You’re a grand lad, Terry, will you do me a favour?’
‘What?’
‘I’ll give you another fag.’
‘What is it?’
The man seemed to hesitate. He said, ‘I want to get to Kellett Street. Any idea where it is?’
‘Down there,’ Terry said, pointing behind him. ‘You go down the Ginnel and through the allotments—’
‘Come on then. Show me.’
‘I can’t. Me pals are coming soon.’
‘It won’t take a minute. Show me how to get there and I’ll give you another fag.’ The man was smiling in a very friendly way. ‘Come on!’ he said jovially. So Terry walked with the man along the street by the side of the church and down the dirt slope leading to the Ginnel.
Away from the streetlights it became so dark that Terry couldn’t see his hand in front of his face, and he knew (as he had known all along if he had trusted his instincts) that he shouldn’t be walking in pitch blackness with a man who was a stranger. But nothing seemed to be happening, thankfully, other than they were walking in single file (the Ginnel being narrow and closed in both sides with creosote fencing) with Terry in front, their footsteps deadened by the soggy carpet of decaying leaves, the man humming softly under his breath.
It was all right, Terry thought, it was going to be all right, because once through the allotments the gaslamp at the end of Hovingham Street could be seen, marking the outpost of terraced houses with lights behind their curtains and people inside doing ordinary things like sitting in front of the fire listening to the wireless. The man stopped humming and they walked along in silence, Terry placing one foot in front of the other and conscious of the breath entering and being expelled from his lungs. Behind his back the man said:
‘Do you ever play with girls, Terry?’ And when Terry didn’t answer: ‘I bet you like putting your hand up their dresses, don’t you?’
‘I’ve never done that.’
‘I bet you have.’
Terry said nothing.
‘Girls like you doing things like that, Terry. They like boys putting their hands inside their knickers and having a feel.’
They were nearly at the end of the Ginnel. When they turned the corner there would only be the allotments to get through. Then he would be able to see the gaslamp and the lights of the houses. As long as the man kept talking it would be all right; nothing to worry about, Terry thought, taking a step and another step and another step; nothing to worry about. It would be all right…
‘Has a girl ever felt your dick, Terry?’
He sensed that the man was doing something in the darkness behind him, fiddling with something. The man’s voice had gone low and throaty. The man’s low throaty voice was saying, ‘Has a girl ever played with your dick and made it stiff? I bet she has, hasn’t she, a sturdy lad like you?’
They turned the corner and at last they were in the allotments. Terry knew every pothole, every patch of stunted dog-pee-smelling grass. He could just faintly see the gaslamp at the end of Hovingham Street.
‘Stop,’ the man said. ‘Turn round.’
Terry stopped and turned round and saw that the man was holding something pale. His hand was moving. ‘Do you know any girls who’d like to feel a big man’s dick, Terry? I bet loads of girls have felt your dick, haven’t they, and made it rise …’
Before the man could call him back, imploringly at first, then with fury, he took off at top speed, the gaslamp like a welcoming beacon far ahead of him, pelting towards it and past it and between the houses, not stopping once the entire length of Cayley Street until he reached No. 77 and his mother had opened the front door, alarmed by his face, remarking that he looked as if he’d seen a ghost.
Saturday Morning
TERRY LAY IN THE LUXURY OF WARMTH, listening to the gurgle of the brook at the bottom of the yard: the smell of frying bacon wafted up the narrow stairs and hung in the cold air. He was overcome, overwhelmed by the strangest feelings. He found it astonishing that the actual moment, even as he was thinking it, was existing here and now and that he was part of it, a living breathing body. He looked down at the front of his vest palpitating with life and was staggered by the miracle. He had almost to convince himself that it was happening, it was real, and not just a figment of his own imagination.
He was conscious of the whole world, filled with millions of people, existing even as he thought about it. And the sky he could see outside the window, a pale washed blue, was infinite space going on forever, and all that space was looking down eternally on this world, on England, on Denby, on Cayley
Street, and on him, the one and only Terry Webb. It was frightening.
A song he vaguely recognised drifted up the stairs from his mam’s favourite request show on the Light Programme, a catchy tune with a swaying rhythm, and the intriguing words Rum and Coca-Cola … Working for the Yankee Dollar, sung in close harmony by the Andrews Sisters. In his dreamy nostalgic state it transported Terry back to the time when his mam and Uncle Jack used to sing it together, and in a trice he saw the figure in the army greatcoat with a kit-bag slung over his shoulder marching down Cayley Street while a seven-year old snotty urchin called Terry raced towards him yelling ‘Uncle Jack! Uncle Jack!’ at the top of his lungs.
‘Can I carry it? Can I?’
‘If you want to ruin yourself for life.’
‘What’ve you got in there?’
‘Bully beef, bazookas and Rommel’s cap.’ A broad grin from Jack at the puzzled look on Terry’s face. ‘Pressies – loads of pressies. For your mam and dad and Sylvia and er…’
‘Me?’
‘Oh heck. I’d forgotten about you.’
‘You haven’t really. Have you?’
‘No! I’ve got you three tins of real coffee, two pairs of nylons, a silk scarf, a Hasselblad camera—’
‘Oh,’ Terry was almost blubbing. ‘Is that all?’
Jack picked him up by the waist and swung him round. ‘Bars of milk chocolate with walnuts, sugared almonds, boxes of Turkish Delight, American gum in five flavours …’
‘Smashing Uncle Jack! Are you home for good?’
‘Well, I’m home,’ Jack said. ‘Anyroad.’
Barbara couldn’t hold back the tears when they were all sitting round the table in the front room. It was a very special occasion – as special as Christmas – because they’d lit a fire. ‘We knew you were coming home, Jack. Auntie Polly read it in the tea-leaves.’
‘That woman’s barmy,’ Joe mumbled
‘She did, Joe! Just like she knew the war was going to end six months before it did.’
‘You didn’t need tea-leaves for that. It was on the front page of the Daily Herald.’
‘She told me I was going to be a Spitfire pilot,’ Terry piped up.
