Down the Figure 7

by Trevor Hoyle

  A bus came down from the terminus, rattling the vestibule door, and Harry said, ‘Is that the last one?’ They finished running early on Christmas Day and Harry had booked a taxi for nine o’clock.

  ‘Twenty-past-eight,’ Reg said. ‘It will be.’

  Terry was fascinated by one of his presents, a puzzle which comprised three interlocking pieces of bent metal. He preferred games of skill to those of pure chance. Finally he managed to do it and challenged Uncle Jimmy to a contest to see who could solve it the quickest. Uncle Jimmy beat him twice in a row.

  ‘Are you going to be a pilot when you grow up?’ Uncle Jimmy asked.

  ‘Yeh. A jet pilot.’

  ‘You have to be brainy, good at sums.’

  ‘Do you?’ Terry said, dismayed. Arithmetic was next to his weakest subject, after history. He tried to imagine what use sums would be to a jet pilot: if you could read the dials and work the joystick what good were division and multiplication?

  Sylvia was leaning sideways on the hearth-rug, her eyelids drooping slowly shut and blinking open again. It came as a faint shock to Terry to realise that he couldn’t have been much older than Syl – six, seven at the most – when he, Alec and Male had played doctors and nurses with Sandra Weeks, Doreen Hartley and Fat Pat Sidebottom.

  It had started quite innocently: the six of them crawling through the broken fence at the end of Arthington Street and sneaking into the lavatories at the back of Good Shepherd Sunday School, a ramshackle construction of whitewashed brick split into cubicles with a corrugated asbestos roof. Somebody suggested they play this game, taking it in turns to examine each other. In his private consulting room (the middle cubicle) Terry politely asked Sandra Weeks to remove her knickers so that he could carry out a thorough examination. Sandra did so and stood there patiently while he squatted in front of her, not knowing what he was supposed to be looking for or whereabouts it was located. He prodded and poked, sighing loudly and shaking his head, occasionally muttering to himself.

  ‘It looks very sore to me,’ Terry told her, upon completing the examination. He made Sandra turn round and pressed himself against her small cold buttocks; he hadn’t gained a great deal from the experience, certainly nothing pleasurable, and couldn’t even explain to himself why he had done it. For her part, Sandra remained compliant and completely passive all the while.

  Terry recalled how puzzed he had been afterwards: to hear the big lads gabbing on about it you’d think that taking a girl’s knickers down was better than rafting across the river or swaling the moors up Blackstone Edge.

  ‘Joe,’ Barbara said. ‘Look at our Sylvia.’ The little girl was fast asleep on the rug, snoring softly, curled up in that position of perfect peace and relaxation that only cats and small children can achieve. Terry felt weary too but wouldn’t give in.

  ‘I’ll make a drink before you go,’ Martha said. ‘I bet Terry would like some orange squash and a mince pie.’

  ‘Oh no Martha,’ Barbara said, ‘sit down. You’ve been on your feet all day.’ But this didn’t prevent Martha from going into the kitchen and putting the kettle on.

  ‘Well, it soon comes,’ said Reg, ‘and it soon goes.’

  ‘Aye, over for another year,’ Joe said.

  Cyril had fallen asleep with a smouldering cigarette in his mouth.

  ‘That sounds like our taxi,’ Ivy said. ‘Harry, put Valerie’s presents in that carrier-bag.’ She called out: ‘Don’t brew for us, Martha, the taxi’s here.’ They found their hats, coats and scarves and stood by the vestibule door saying goodnight. Terry wished that he was going home in a taxi instead of having to walk.

  ‘See you all again soon,’ Ivy said, which she knew wasn’t true. They lived on the new Kirkholt Estate on the other side of town and it might be next Christmas before the rest of the family saw them again. ‘Take care now. Look after yourselves. Happy New Year. Give our love to Mother and Daddy—’

  ‘—Sam,’ Emily said, waving.

  Terry went to the door to watch the taxi drive away, its tail-lights burning fiercely in the sharp clear air. Valerie’s face appeared for a moment in the oval rear window, unsmiling; she didn’t even bother to wave. He had never liked her, soppy little sod.

  Martha brought in cups of tea and a plate of mince pies. Cyril started in his chair and an inch of cigarette ash fell intact and lodged in his waistcoat. Barbara said, ‘Thanks for having us, Martha, we’ve really enjoyed it. Lovely meal. I’ve never seen our Terry eat so much. It’s a wonder he wasn’t sick.’ As she said this Terry did begin to feel slightly sick but he finished his mince pie all the same.

  ‘Back to the grind on Monday, Joe,’ Reg said.

  ‘Aye,’ Joe said. He didn’t sound particularly upset; it was a fact of life that you had to work; you could moan about it, fair enough, but it still had to be done.

  ‘Are you sure you won’t stop?’ Martha said anxiously. ‘We could put Sylvia and Terry in the back bedroom and you could sleep with me, Barbara, and—’

  ‘No, we’ll get down,’ Joe said. ‘Brisk walk will do us good.’

  Buggeration, Terry thought. His eyelids were stinging with tiredness. He got to his feet and struggled into his coat. Sylvia was fast asleep. Joe picked her up and cradled her in his arms.

  ‘Kiss everybody goodnight,’ Terry’s mam said, meaning his aunties. He kissed Auntie Martha and Auntie Emily and steeled himself to kiss Auntie Polly, closing his eyes so as to avoid seeing her bristly chin. Her lips were like cardboard, hard and stiff and tasteless. He wondered if Uncle Reg ever had to kiss her properly.

  Everyone came to the door to wave them off, a wedge of light imprinted on the cold black pavement. Joe carried Sylvia, and Terry walked in-between, holding his mother’s hand. Already his knees were freezing. ‘All the best,’ Jimmy called after them, and the last sound Terry heard was the door closing.

  Rugby Road was long and dark, the gaslamps diminishing in the distance, the farthest away no bigger than a match’s glow. Terry put one foot in front of the other like a sleepwalker, not thinking, just listening to the sound of footsteps and his father’s harsh breathing. Nobody said anything all the way home.

  Across Yorkshire Street, down Oswald Street, under the Arches, and then they were turning into Cayley Street. The house was cold; but in the kitchen His Bike gleamed and shone redly. It stayed with him, this image, until he had pulled off his clothes and got between the sheets and then it snapped off as quick as a light-switch the instant his head touched the pillow.

  Part 2

  On the Embankment

  TERRY DIPPED HIS HEAD IN THE BOWL OF WATER, shook himself like a dog and combed his hair into a huge glossy quiff. His bike leaned against the backyard gate waiting to take him to adventure. He looked past the mirror’s rust-coloured spots into the depths of his own eyes, trying to see what others might see, what impression he would make, whether he possessed that mysterious something that girls found attractive.

  Barbara came down the stairs with her arms full of bedding. She dumped it on the kitchen table and the castors squeaked. ‘Are you still at that mirror?’ Irritation and tiredness dragged at her features. ‘Hurry up, I want some hot water.’

  Terry pulled the comb along both sides, squeezing out water so that it dripped warmly inside the open collar of his shirt. He hadn’t decided yet where to go; that was the terrific part of having a bike. He might ride over to Gowers Street and see if Margaret Parry was knocking about. Or he could hang around Heybrook schoolyard where Yvonne Brangham, Jean Ashmore and Betty Wheatcroft played.

  ‘Don’t be late,’ his mam said. ‘Nine o’clock. Think on. And if you go on the main road make sure your lights are switched on.’

  ‘Yeh,’ Terry said, not listening. He had just this minute remembered, with a slight tug of conscience, that the practice exams for the eleven-plus started next week and his teacher had advised them all to do some extra work at home.

  He took a last look at himself in the mirror and ran through the backy
ard. A pigeon – his blue bar hen – was coming in to land, a fluttering ball of feathers poised above the lavatory roof. He cooed to it softly, holding out his hand, though he knew it wouldn’t come to him, and the hen strutted on the grey slates, its neck jerking forward with each stride, its white-rimmed eyes cautiously spying out the lie of the land.

  Doreen Hartley was skipping in the back-entry with Fat Pat Sidebottom. Terry swung onto his Raleigh and wolf-whistled as he went by; as he turned the corner the two girls began to sing:

  ‘Georgie Porgie pudden ’n’ pie

  Kissed the girls and made them cry

  When the boys came out to play

  Georgie Porgie ran away.’

  Mr Heap was coming home from work as Terry cycled along Cayley Street. There hadn’t been any snow since Christmas, though they’d be lucky to escape February without a blizzard or two. The ground was rock-hard under the tyres. He could smell fog in the air and already the waning light seemed to give everything the quality of a pencil sketch: colourless houses in varying tones of greys.

  There was nobody about; he decided to try Gowers Street.

  On the cinder track behind the garages he spotted Shap and two of his pals standing outside Shap’s pigeon cote looking at something on the ground. Terry propped his bike against the hut, which was covered in tarpaulin and painted in black and white stripes.

  ‘What’s up?’ Terry said, joining the group.

  Shap laughed. ‘Just screwed a piddie.’

  On the ground was a headless pigeon staggering about in its own blood. The head lay a few feet away.

  One of the lads said, ‘You missed the best part. You should have seen it. Splashed blood that far’ – indicating a spatter of dark spots on the white stripe of the hut.

  The other lad said, ‘It was squirting out like a fountain.’ He performed a swishing noise with spit to represent the sound it had made.

  ‘You wouldn’t think they had that much blood in them,’ said the first lad. ‘Look, it’s still coming out.’ The pigeon had fallen on its side and the blood had oozed to a trickle. Even now its legs were twitching.

  ‘I’m going to screw another,’ Shap said. He opened the door of the hut. For some reason he seemed highly pleased with himself.

  ‘Why do you have to?’ Terry said.

  ‘They’re my piddies,’ Shap said from inside the hut.

  ‘I’m not saying they’re not your piddies. What do you have to screw them for? Are you going to eat them?’

  ‘I had pigeon pie once,’ one of the others said. ‘Yuck!’

  Shap came down the steps of the hut holding another pigeon, a hen with dark bars on its wings and flight feathers. He held it correctly, the body resting snugly in the palm of his hand with the legs trapped gently between his fingers.

  ‘Are you going to screw that one?’ Terry said. ‘It’s a nice bird.’

  ‘I’ve got eighteen,’ Shap said. He laughed. ‘Seventeen.’ His mother ran the Post Office on Entwisle Road and his dad was a manager at Fletcher Bolton and so he could afford to buy and kill as many as he liked.

  ‘Do you want to sell it?’

  ‘How much for?’

  ‘How much do you want?’

  Shap thought for a moment. ‘No, it’s not worth owt. It came in as a strag.’ He pretended to throw the bird up into the air so that it thought it was being released, but kept hold of its legs. The wings fanned the air and then settled back into place.

  Terry said, ‘I’ll give you five bob.’

  ‘Have you got it on you?’

  Terry took out his money and counted it: he had fivepence ha’penny. He offered it to Shap. ‘I’ll give you the rest on Saturday when I get me spence.’ In actual fact he only got half-a-crown in spence, but he could ask his mam to lend him the extra.

  Shap sniffed and shook his head. He gave a sudden laugh, his large flat teeth flashing in the dusk. He didn’t need the five bob. If he’d felt like it he could have given the pigeon away for nothing. But he wanted to screw it: there was nothing to stop him: it was his. ‘If you don’t want to watch you’d better get lost,’ he said, ‘because blood’s going to spatter.’

  Terry didn’t want to watch but he wasn’t going to let them scare him off and then snigger behind his back. He stood his ground.

  ‘Is he soft or something?’ one of the lads asked Shap.

  ‘Mard-arse Webbie,’ Shap said, and still grinning took the pigeon’s head in his fist and used it as a handle to spin the body as you would a football rattle. The body came off and landed several feet away in the dirt.

  As he rode along the cinder track between the garages Terry heard Shap and the other two screaming at one another that this time the blood had spurted even farther, a good ten feet at least, as far as the rotten tree stump.

  He rode round aimlessly for a while, turning this way and that, following the streets haphazardly; at one point he saw Betty Wheatcroft and waved to her, but she was carrying a shopping-bag on her way to the Co-op. The gaslamps were lit as he came into Oswald Street. There was a grocer’s on the corner and it occurred to him that he still had the money in his pocket: he went in and bought two sticks of liquorice, a packet of sherbert dip and a Mars bar, and when he came out his bike had gone. There was nobody in the street.

  He looked wildly up and down, knowing they couldn’t have ridden far. What a bloody daft thing to do; he should have put the padlock and chain on as his dad was always telling him. A choking self-pity descended from nowhere and large perfect tears formed in his eyes. The light from the lamps was streaky and fragmented, and he could hardly breathe for the pain in his chest.

  Behind the grocer’s shop the railway embankment rose steeply, separated from the street by a fence of upright railway sleepers with pointed tops. And somebody’s laugh came from beyond it – a laugh full of confidence and boastful strength, not a fear in the world – and when he went to look Terry saw Colin Purvis riding his Raleigh Sport over the sandpits and tussocks of grass. Colin Purvis’s dad owned a butcher’s shop and he was a tall lad, a year or maybe eighteen months older than Terry, but even so very big and powerful for his age, thanks probably to all the free steak and liver he consumed.

  There were three others watching him, a girl of about thirteen, and two boys. Terry knew the girl by sight (she lived near Margaret Parry on Gowers Street) but didn’t know her name. The two lads he had never seen before. He shouted over the fence: ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘What’s it to you?’ one of the lads said, whose hair looked as though it had been cropped under a pudding basin. Both boys were about the same age as Colin Purvis, twelve or thirteen, and rough-looking.

  ‘That’s my bike.’

  ‘Come and get it.’

  Terry climbed over the fence.

  The lad with the pudding basin haircut came straight to him but Colin Purvis said, ‘I know him, it’s Terry Webb,’ and the lad halted a few feet away. He had thick eyebrows with no space between them and a pugnacious expression.

  ‘Don’t wreck the gears,’ Terry shouted to Colin Purvis. ‘It’s brand-new. If you break anything I’ll get skinned.’

  Colin Purvis rode the bike into a sandpit and nearly fell off. He wrenched it out, stamping on the pedals, and said, ‘Who says it’s yours anyway?’

  ‘You know it’s mine. It was outside the shop.’

  ‘Finder’s keepers,’ said the lad standing in front of Terry, staring him in the face.

  ‘I’ve got a big brother,’ Terry said unconvincingly.

  ‘So what?’

  ‘I’ll go and fetch him.’

  ‘Fetch him then.’

  Terry tried to get past the lad with the short haircut and was punched on the arm. It wasn’t a hard blow but the threat of what it might mean made his insides shrivel up. He ran on and tried to intercept Colin Purvis, begging him to be careful and not damage anything. It was becoming too dark to see clearly, the pitted grass at the bottom of the embankment illuminated only f
aintly by a single lamp. Colin Purvis evaded him, skidding the back wheel through 180 degrees and laughing when Terry went stumbling in the wrong direction.

  ‘Come on, Colin, please,’ Terry said, detecting in his own voice a thin whine of fear and abject pleading. He didn’t know what else he could do except run vainly about in the darkness, lunging after the shadowy bulk of the boy and the bicycle; and even if he managed to grab the handlebars there was nothing he could do to make Colin Purvis get off. Terry could only hope that sooner or later he’d get fed-up with his silly clowning and let him go in peace.

  The girl said in a bored voice, ‘Give the kid his bike back and let’s go.’

  ‘He can’t prove it’s his,’ the lad with the thick eyebrows and pudding basin haircut said.

  ‘You bloody know it’s mine!’ Terry said, balanced precariously between anger and tears. He hated them all: the two lads and the girl and Colin Purvis most of all. He was a big dumb fat bloody sod.

  ‘Here you are then, mardie,’ Colin Purvis said at last, throwing the bicycle on the grass. Terry ran up to get it and Colin Purvis grabbed him and pinned both his arms behind his back. Terry yelped and struggled to get free and Colin Purvis held him tighter.

  ‘He’s our prisoner,’ said one of the other lads, who had some sort of impediment in his speech. In the darkness it was difficult to make out who was who, except for the girl, who had long fair hair. In the dim lamplight it looked like straw.

  ‘What we going to do with him?’

  ‘Scrag him.’

  ‘He’s only weedy,’ said the lad with the impediment. He sounded as though his nose was blocked and his mouth full of phlegm.

  ‘Let him go,’ the girl said boredly. ‘He’s just a kid.’

  ‘A cheeky kid,’ the lad with the pudding basin haircut said, and in a little fit of spite kicked at the frame of the bike. Terry tried to move but his wrists were held firmly in Colin Purvis’s meaty grip.