by Trevor Hoyle
Doreen stepped back as he slid stealthily off the table and put both feet on the floor. It must have been that movement or the look in his eye that made her say, ‘What do you want?’
‘You.’
‘Me?’ Doreen said. ‘What you on about?’ – but she was getting the gist of the idea quite rapidly as he advanced towards her and she noted, for the first time, the expression on his face. In an instant she was terrified and thrilled, and like those cartoon faces in a children’s comic which when turned upside down reveal another totally different person, she suddenly saw him in a new light. It was still Terry Webb but now a Terry Webb with a glazed look in his brown eyes and a deliberate purposefulness in his movements. She said in a fierce whisper, ‘Terry – don’t,’ as he wedged her body against the back door and tried to force his lips on hers.
‘What’s up?’ Terry said under his breath. ‘Come on, Doreen, come on.’
‘Terry, me mam—’
He stopped her mouth with a kiss placed inexpertly off-centre, his hands all over the blue dress like ferrets. She fought him off and he released her mouth, panting, whispering urgently, ‘Let us have a feel, Doreen, come on, a quick feel—’
‘No, I don’t want.’
‘Come on.’
‘No.’
A silent deadly struggle ensued in which he pulled her away from the back door and got her down on the floor. His hands plucked at the buttons on the dress, trying to unfasten them, until he realised they were purely for decoration and in his frustration tore at the neck of the dress.
‘Terry,’ Doreen said, ‘if you don’t let – me – go—’ frightened now by the intensity and purpose in his face. He was an animal and there was no way she could control the animal or turn it back into the familiar Terry Webb who lived next door.
There was a hand squeezing her breast and another inside the neck of her dress. She had this feeling of being held down and overpowered by a dead burdomsome weight. ‘Terry,’ she managed to say, and pulled him by the hair-roots till he yelped like an animal and rolled off her, his knees inflamed where they had been rubbing on the lino.
Terry sat up massaging his scalp. ‘Bloody hell, Doreen.’
Doreen was on her feet moving towards the back door and watching him, pulling the hem of the blue dress down below her knees. Strands of crinkly hair adhered damply to her forehead. She said with a little scared laugh, ‘What were you trying to do?’
Terry wouldn’t look at her. ‘Bit of fun,’ he said emptily; the blood had cooled, his eyes were back to normal, and he felt daft sitting on the floor in the middle of Doreen Hartley’s kitchen with red knees. As he rose to his feet she put her hand on the latch, prepared for flight, and said, ‘Go out the front way, Terry.’
‘Don’t be silly, I’m not going to touch you.’ But he knew that if he got within grabbing distance he wouldn’t be able to resist the tantalising buttons on the front of the blue dress and the warm mounds residing ever so slyly beneath the thin material. Doreen stood palpitating by the back door.
She said, all humour gone, ‘Are you going to go, Terry, or do I have to tell your mam?’
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Wait your sweat.’
He moved towards the back door and Doreen scuttled away and stood with the kitchen table between them. Points of colour burned in her cheeks. His throat was dry with disappointment. How was it that somebody like Colin Purvis or Shap knew the secret, and he didn’t? What could he, should he, have murmured in Doreen’s ear to make her lie down quietly with him on the kitchen floor? He wouldn’t have hurt her, that was the last thing he wanted to do.
As he went across the yard he heard the door slam and the hollow rattle of the bolt. Under the leaden sky it was the most desolate sound Terry had ever heard, the sound of being shut out, and he really had to check himself in case the tears started to flow.
Odds and Sods
ON TUESDAY AFTERNOONS MR REAGAN TOOK the boys of 4A and 4B up to the playing fields behind Howarth Cross School. On the timetable this was known officially as ‘Games’, though the only game played was football. There were enough boys in the two classes to make up two teams of eleven, with a dozen or so left over as the ‘odds and sods’ who kicked a football about in lackadaisical fashion in a parody of a match. The odds and sods didn’t have enough skill to be considered for a team place, and Terry was one of these. He resented this, though laughed it off whenever Arthur Halliwell or Vic Crabtree asked sneeringly what it was like to be one of the deadlegs. ‘So what?’ Terry said. ‘You lot only get muddy.’ And went on smiling grimly all the time he was kicking the scarred leather ball about in the corner of the field where the grass grew ankle-high.
What irked him all the more was that his two best pals, Alec and Male, were both selected to play for the proper teams. He refused to believe they were that good, or, conversely, that he was that bad. He put it down to Mr Reagan not liking him because he was good at art and had played the main part last term in the school play.
The afternoon dragged on. The days were becoming longer now, so that it was possible to see the ball even at four o’clock. The final whistle blew and the boys straggled tiredly into the dressing-room – a draughty shelter with a concrete roof and wooden benches along the dank brick walls. There were no baths or showers, and most of the boys simply pulled their clothes over the top of their football strip, one or two of them not even bothering to change their boots.
‘How many did Stanley Matthews score?’ Vic Crabtree shouted to Terry, which provoked laughter from the lads sitting close-packed on the benches. The smell was overpoweringly of sweat and damp cotton, with a taint of trampled grass-seed. Clods of mud littered the floor.
Terry said, ‘Shut your gob, rat-face.’
‘Or what will you do Webbie?’
‘Boys, boys,’ Mr Reagan said mildly. ‘Don’t be spiteful. We can’t all be good at football.’ Terry felt his face go hot. He bent down and pretended to be having trouble with the laces on his boots.
Mr Reagan went on, ‘Perhaps if Terry Webb tried a bit harder he’d get on the team.’
‘We don’t want any invalids, sir,’ Arthur Halliwell said.
‘Don’t be disrespectful,’ Mr Reagan said. ‘You shouldn’t talk about invalids in that way. They can’t help how they are.’
‘Brought your crutches with you, Terry?’ a voice called from the end of the dressing-room.
‘He doesn’t need crutches,’ Rod Callaghan said, ‘he’s got a wheelchair.’
There was more laughter and then a sudden lull during which Terry’s muffled voice was heard to say distinctly, by everyone including Mr Reagan: ‘I wouldn’t be on your shitty team if you paid me.’
He was still bent over, blinded by tears, unable to see the laces he was supposed to be untying.
‘Who said that?’ Mr Reagan said, knowing very well who it was.
‘It was the Invalid, sir,’ Derek Cross said, snorting.
‘Be quiet,’ Mr Reagan said. ‘Was that you, Terry Webb, who used that disgusting word? Stand up.’
The laces were fastened in a hard wet knot. Terry picked at them hopelessly. His neck, cheeks and ears were on fire.
‘He’s gone all red, sir.’
‘Shut up, Halliwell,’ Mr Reagan said. ‘Did you hear me? I said stand up.’
Had he considered the matter more rationally Terry might have obeyed. But he had no respect for Mr Reagan, and besides he wasn’t really Terry’s teacher, he only took them for Games. He also suspected that Mr Reagan had a disdain for clever kids who came top in the classroom and were hopeless on the football field. It was an opportunity Mr Reagan couldn’t let slip by, and he didn’t, lifting Terry by the short hairs at the back of the neck and making him stand up.
‘Get outside,’ Mr Reagan said, an unreasoning spite making his voice sharper than he had intended. Terry stepped over legs and discarded boots to reach the open air and waited on the edge of the pitch where the corner flag flapped in the stiffish cold bree
ze. He thought that he had never hated anyone as much in all his life, not even his dad.
Alec and Male hung about waiting for him at the junction of Albert Royds Street and Halifax Road, pirouetting to make their boots swing round their necks and strangle themselves with the knotted laces. The three of them walked in the direction of Heybrook, and after a while Male said:
‘He’s a pigging sod, that Reagan.’
Terry was very calm. With an insight beyond his years he said, ‘He’s jealous, that’s all. Teacher of a B class in a dump like Heybrook, what a life.’
They walked on in silence for a while, until Alec Bland said, ‘Have you heard this one?
Mrs Brown went to town
To buy some macaroni,
She had a fart behind a cart
And paralysed a pony.’
They were passing a newsagents-cum-sweetshop and Terry asked the other two if they had any money on them. Alec had threepence, Male didn’t have any.
Terry said to Alec, ‘When we go in, take your time deciding what you want. Then ask for summat on one of the shelves.’
‘What if I don’t like anything on the shelves?’
Terry and Male looked helplessly at each other.
‘Dun’t matter,’ Terry said slowly and patiently. ‘Ask for anything. We’ll get you summat you do like.’
Alec got it. He looked happy, then nervous.
They went in and luckily there was another customer who couldn’t decide what colour of writing paper she liked. While she dithered Terry and Male idled near the sweets counter, the banked array of chocolate bars, wine gums, gobstoppers, lollipops, liquorice sticks, peppermint and coltsfoot rock set before them like a feast before a king. As the owner of the shop ducked below the counter to rummage for yet another shade of writing paper, Terry dipped into the treasure and slid a bar of peanut brittle into his trouser pocket, maintaining an expression of bored innocence when the owner reappeared with a brown cardboard box.
‘Pink,’ the woman said. ‘I don’t know about pink.’
‘What can I get you lads?’ the owner said over her head.
Alec’s voice was a squeak. ‘Chewing gum.’
‘Spearmint or PK?’ the owner said. As he came round to the side counter Terry saw that the chewing gum was near the front of the display, behind the glass panel in its shiny metal frame. He said quickly:
‘Don’t get chewing gum, Alec. Get summat else.’
‘What?’ Alec said, his eyes bulging.
‘Get some … liquorice torpedoes,’ indicating the jar behind the man’s head.
‘Fourpence a quarter,’ the man said, reaching down the jar, and by the time he turned back Terry had a twopenny bar of Fry’s Five Boys chocolate and a packet of sherbert dip concealed about his person. Male had been at the treasure too.
‘You’d better get two ounces,’ Terry said when he saw the owner weighing out a quarter-pound. ‘You’ve only got thru-pence.’
‘T-t-two ounces please,’ Alec said.
‘I’ve settled on the blue,’ the woman said from the other counter.
‘Won’t be a tick,’ the man said, sliding the sweets into a triangular bag. He put the jar back on the shelf and Terry took a Mars bar and – rashly – a crinkly packet of Butterkist. He coughed to camouflage the noise.
The three lads walked some distance along Halifax Road before sharing the spoils; it was a pretty good haul. As they turned the corner into Entwisle Road the streetlights came on and they strolled past the Cloverdale Hotel, its name spelled out in big golden letters standing in relief against the dirty cream-coloured façade of the building. In his days as an amateur boxer Terry’s dad had trained there in one of the upstairs rooms.
‘PC49 tonight,’ Terry said happily. Ever since Dick Barton Special Agent had finished, this was his favourite programme, with The Man in Black a close second.
‘I’ll miss it,’ Alec said. ‘It’s the Brigade tonight.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Mr Skeels has got us making model aeroplanes.’
Terry said, interested, ‘What kind?’
‘Spitfires.’
‘Are you making one each?’
‘Yeh. Ten of us.’
‘I might join again.’
‘You’re too late,’ Alec said. ‘We’ve already cut the frame out and we’re on to the wings.’
‘Who wants to join the bloody Brigade?’ Male said. ‘All they do is shout at you to line up, stand to attention, stand easy, stand on yer arse … and you’ve got to go to Church twice on Sundays.’
‘You don’t.’ Alec said.
‘You do.’
‘Don’t.’
‘You do,’ Terry said, ‘otherwise you can’t have a drum. I missed one parade and Skeelsie said I couldn’t be in the band.’
This shut Alec up and Terry was appeased. But as they approached the hoardings near the Arches his heart contracted into a small painful lump in his chest: he was scared and wanted to urinate. Colin Purvis, Eddie, Shaz and Carol were coming towards them on the opposite side of the road. They hadn’t seen him, Terry believed. They were walking past. Then at the last moment they crossed over and blocked the pavement.
‘What you lot eating?’ Colin Purvis asked. Under the streetlights Terry could clearly see the blackheads on his bulbous nose.
‘Toffee,’ Male said. If there was any fear in him Terry couldn’t detect it.
‘Give us some.’
Alec Bland offered his bag of liquorice torpedoes.
‘Bin playing footie?’ Shaz said, ignoring the other two and looking directly at Terry.
‘Yeh.’ Terry kept his face impassive. A sixth sense told him it would be fatal to show fear. Anyway, they were on the main road. They wouldn’t try anything on the main road. He hoped.
Then Carol said, ‘You’re the mard kid, aren’t you?’
Terry shrugged. He felt himself colouring.
‘Yes, it’s you,’ Carol said aggressively. She thrust her breasts out assertively. He had thought, mistakenly it seemed, that she would respect him for not wishing to treat her like a tart; he really thought he’d done the right thing that night on the embankment by trying to behave decently towards her. He was utterly at sea so far as girls were concerned, not knowing what they wanted, or how to treat them, or what went on in their heads. It was bewildering.
‘Shall we lock him in the midden again?’ Colin Purvis said silkily, putting his broad heavy hand on Terry’s shoulder.
‘Still got your bike?’ Eddie said, and the sound of his hollow nasal voice brought the nightmare back in all its fear-crawling intensity. He wanted to run, now, fast, away, yet it would mean running through the cordon and it was certain he wouldn’t get ten paces.
‘How old are you lot?’ Shaz asked, staring from beneath the single thick eyebrow that went across his forehead like the mark of a crayon.
‘Eleven,’ Alec said.
‘Eleven,’ Male said.
Two answers, one true, one false, trembled on Terry’s lips. He opened his mouth and heard himself say, ‘Ten,’ actually believing in the moment he said it that it would save him, this tiny insignificant lie, from further punishment: the truth was that he had been eleven for two full weeks now.
‘Are you lads from Denby as well?’ Eddie asked.
‘Yeh,’ said Male. ‘Where you from?’
‘What’s it to you, shortarse?’ Shaz snarled.
They were moving closer and closer, crowding them into a crushed group against the hoardings. ‘Are all the lot of them soft as pigshit round here?’ Eddie asked Colin Purvis. Shaz trod slowly and deliberately on Alec’s foot, adjusting his stance to increase the pressure and grinding down. It was horrible to be so close to safety – so near the Common, a few yards away – and not able to reach it, like one of those technicolor dreams where you’re being chased by a monster and can’t move because your feet are stuck in treacle.
Eddie said to Terry, ‘Give us your wrist,’ and twisted i
t behind Terry’s back until his elbow was bent double. He obviously derived some pleasure from doing this because his mouth opened in an empty black hole of a grin.
‘I bet he starts crying,’ Carol said. She was looking at Terry with the utmost loathing.
‘I bloodywell won’t,’ Terry said, but he was forced to yell out when Eddie jerked his wrist even higher, turning the joint.
‘Go on, make him bawl!’ Carol said.
Colin Purvis made Male empty his pockets. He put the sweets in his own pocket, crammed the half-eaten bar of chocolate into his mouth.
‘You wouldn’t like it if I told your dad,’ Male said.
‘You do what?’ Colin Purvis gaped at him incredulously. His mouth stopped moving; there was chocolate stuck to his thick lips. He hit Male in the stomach with his fist and Male slid down the poster advertising Dinneford’s Milk of Magnesia to sit on the pavement. Terry wished with all his might that Spenner would magically, miraculously appear, as he had at Shap’s bonfire, but it didn’t seem to be the kind of day for magic or miracles.
Shaz said, ‘What shall we do with ’em?’ But before Colin Purvis could reply Alec said, ‘There’s your mam.’ His voice was shaking with relief.
Everybody turned to look, except Male, who was staring groggily at the pavement, and there, marching under the Arches with a shopping-bag over her arm was Bessie Smith, on her way to the UCP tripe shop. She was a vision, the most beautiful sight Terry had ever seen.
‘Whose mam?’ Shaz said quickly.
Colin Purvis moved off, the others followed, pretending to take their time but hurrying all the same. ‘Mard-arse,’ Carol said under her breath.
Terry helped Male to his feet and Male said, ‘I’m going to tell his dad over him, the pigging swine.’ His eyes were brimming with tears, not so much from the pain as the monstrous injustice of it all. ‘I bloody am and all,’ Male said vehemently. I’m going to tell his dad.’ But Terry wasn’t listening. He was thinking of Carol and how he would never understand girls if he lived for a million years.
Dead Sunday
