Down the Figure 7

by Trevor Hoyle

  SUNDAY WAS TIME OUT OF TIME, A VACUOUS HOLE of a day without shape or pattern. When he’d been a member of the Church Lads’ Brigade there had been early-morning parades followed by an hour in church, and, though tiresome, this had at least got the day started and under way; now, too lazy to make the effort, Terry felt the day drag wearily from minute to minute, a limbo of dead time hanging in perpetual suspension. He got up late, round about ten-thirty, made his own breakfast, which usually consisted of toast and jam, and mooched about the house listening to Billy Cotton’s Bandshow or a programme from a log cabin in which various cowboys showed up with guitars and banjos to sing about life on the prairie. In between, Terry lay indolently on the settee reading the Hotspur and Champion, the latter being his least favourite comic; his father kept the People and especially the News of the World well out of harm’s way and Terry’s reach.

  In deference to the Sabbath, Joe wore a shirt over his vest and socks as well as slippers, though he didn’t bother to shave. By midday he and Terry were like two lone survivors during the final lingering moments of an ill-fated submarine trapped on the ocean bed, both suffering from claustrophobia and fighting over the last gasp of oxygen.

  ‘Why don’t you clean your bike? The rims are filthy.’

  ‘I’ll clean it tomorrow.’

  ‘Do it now.’

  ‘I might be going out on it later on.’

  ‘Put some newspapers down. That bike cost fifteen pound. It’s going rusty.’

  ‘It’ll soon come off.’

  ‘You’ll soon bloody come off if you don’t get it cleaned.’

  ‘It’s Sunday,’ Terry said. ‘Can’t I have a bit of a rest?’

  ‘Rest?’ Joe said. ‘Rest? You do nowt as it is.’

  From bitter past experience Terry knew there was no point in defending himself. Only one thing to do: he got his shoes from under the sink, his windjammer from behind the back door, and went out. He called for Danny Travis, who wasn’t in (visiting his grandma for the day), then went further up Cayley Street to Spenner’s house where he found Dave helping his father to point the wall of the outside lavatory. This kind of co-operative activity always made Terry envious and, for a reason he couldn’t define, vaguely sad. He watched father and son for a while, going to fetch water when Spenner’s dad asked for it, mixing the water with sand and cement and blending it in with a stick. When one side of the wall was finished Mr Spencer gave Dave two bob and Terry a shilling. Wellens’s corner shop was closed on a Sunday so they went to the off-licence on Ramsay Street and each bought a bar of Cadbury’s chocolate and a quarter-pound of sweets.

  Without a definite plan in mind or consciously making any decision they walked in the direction of the town centre. As they were passing the Municipal Baths, Terry asked in a casual fashion how Spenner got on with his dad.

  ‘Do you ever have a laugh with him? You know, a joke?’

  ‘Yeh, sometimes. Why, what’s up?’

  ‘Nowt. Do you ever have rows?’

  ‘He gets on at me if I forget to turn the lights off or if I let the fire go out.’

  ‘I suppose they’re all like that.’ Terry said, feeling a mite more cheerful.

  The town centre was an expanse of tarmac, bare as a military parade ground, just the blue-and-cream buses lined up one behind the other outside the glass shelters. The town hall clock in its fake Gothic tower was striking one o’clock as they paused for a minute outside the Regal to look at the tinted photographs advertising the coming week’s attraction: Mr Drake’s Duck starring Douglas Fairbanks Jnr and Yolande Donlan. Neither of them fancied it. They dawdled past the granite-based banks and building societies, to where the Packer Spout fountain spluttered into a pool containing three or four murky goldfish; there was nothing much to see and even less to do. Sunday was a real dead hole of a day.

  ‘Hey,’ Spenner said suddenly. ‘Mellor Street Depot.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘On bleedin’ Mellor Street, where do you think?’

  ‘What’s there?’

  ‘Wagons,’ Spenner said, his face lighting up. Even his hair seemed to blaze a fiercer shade of red when he got excited. ‘We can sneak in and drive ’em. They don’t have keys. You just switch the ignition on and start ’em by pressing a button.’

  It took them ten minutes to walk to the Mellor Street Depot, an area of waste ground backing on to a steep sandstone cliff in which birds had tunnelled to make nests. A high wire fence with strands of barbed-wire along the top separated it from the main road. At one end of the compound stood a decrepit three-storey building with dirty windows, and, Terry noted, a fire-escape covered in red rust. There didn’t seem to be anyone about – at least there was no watchman’s hut. The wagons stood in rows three deep, their radiator grilles emblazoned with the names Ley land and Albion and Foden. Some were fully loaded, though most were empty.

  Terry felt a familiar movement deep within his bowels, compounded of thrilling anticipation, excitement, fear. Half-hoping that Spenner wouldn’t know the answer, he said: ‘How do we get in?’

  But Spenner did. ‘Round the back and shin down the cliff, or …’ and looked meaningfully towards the bottom rung of the fire-escape, about six feet above their heads.

  ‘We’ll be seen,’ Terry said in a dreadful whisper.

  Spenner said in a normal voice, ‘Who by? There’s nobody about. I’ll give you a leg-up. Nowt to it.’

  This they did, withdrawing the ladder to its usual position once Spenner had climbed it, going quick and silent as cats up the rusty iron treads. The warehouse (for that’s what it was) unsettled Terry with its gloomy echoing interior, though it was far from empty. Wooden pallets were stacked from floor to ceiling, loaded with huge flat packages as big as billiard tables which, when Spenner ripped one open, contained nothing more interesting than hundreds of sheets of greaseproof paper. They wandered along the centre aisle, amusing themselves by switching the labels on the pallets so that the consignment marked for Swindon would go to Peterborough, the one for Galashiels to St Helens.

  ‘Do you think anyone comes here on Sundays?’ Terry asked.

  ‘Why should they,’ Spenner said, unconcerned. ‘What’s up, are you chicken?’

  ‘Who says I am?’

  The rear of the building was the loading area, with several adjacent bays like little dry wharves deserted by the sea. Spenner jumped down and slid open a small panel in the big sliding door and stepped outside into the watery sunshine. Terry ducked through after him and they ran swiftly across the open compound to the back row of vehicles whose tailboards butted up to the base of the cliff; two more rows of lorries in front hid them from the main road.

  ‘How do you start ’em up?’ Terry asked Spenner, who had clambered up into the cab of a Seddon, his grimy freckled hands with the black-rimmed nails holding the enormous steering-wheel which sprouted out of the floor on a metal post. The handbrake was as huge and as cumbersome as a points lever in a signals box. Spenner went through the procedure, showing him where the ignition switch was and telling him to wait for the light to come on before thumbing the big red button behind the driver’s right elbow. ‘Then you press the clutch down, put it in first, take the handbrake off and you’re away.’ He was in his element.

  There was a Leyland three vehicles along whose door wasn’t locked. Terry climbed up into the cab, feeling like a dwarf with the enormous steering-wheel in front of him and the expanse of glass as wide as a shop window: the ground seemed far below. One of the first problems he encountered was that his feet dangled uselessly several inches above the floor. To reach the clutch pedal he had to slide off the seat and stand on it with both feet. The handbrake required all his strength to release it, clicking over the ratchet, until both his arms were fully extended.

  A roar that almost made him crap his pants reverberated across the compound as Spenner’s lorry started up. The noise was enough to wake the dead, and if this wasn’t enough the clouds of blue smoke billowing out must
have been visible the length of Mellor Street. Looking through the passenger side window, Terry saw Spenner give a wild triumphant grin accompanied by a thumbs-up sign. Terry nervously watched the road through the gaps in the row of vehicles in front, expecting to see a black Wolseley with a POLICE sign on the roof appear any second. There were no immediate escape routes except a vertical one – straight up the sandstone cliff.

  All afternoon they played in the lorries, starting them up, revving the engines, driving imaginary journeys to Liverpool and Cardiff, stopping at transport cafes for baked beans on toast, then clocking-off after the day’s shift. When a black Wolseley with a POLICE sign didn’t arrive – and didn’t look like arriving – Terry began to enjoy himself: swaggering up into the cab, slamming the door and nonchalantly stabbing the red button which brought the big vibrating engine to life. He wasn’t as ambitious as Spenner, who actually drove his wagon a few yards, stopping it behind the tailboard of the lorry in front and then reversing back into position against the cliff.

  Later on the clouds thickened overhead and the sky grew black. A premature theatrical dusk descended on the compound and large globules of water clunked on the roof and smeared themselves down the windscreen. Terry ran across to Spenner’s lorry and climbed up into the passenger seat; soon the rain was pelting down, obscuring the road and the lorries in front, and with the unreal darkness a cannonade of thunder rolled across the sky, working itself up to a dramatic climax that crashed directly above them.

  ‘Shit and corruption,’ Terry said. ‘It’s pissin’ down.’

  Spenner switched on the wipers and they staggered and whirred across the glass.

  ‘Are you going to be a lorry driver when you grow up?’ Terry asked. It seemed a good time to talk, sitting here dry and warm, watching the shifting broken images as the rain washed them down the windscreen.

  ‘Think I’ll join the Forces. Me dad was a sergeant in’t Fusiliers.’

  ‘There’s nobody to fight any more.’

  ‘They still need soldiers though.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘To train.’

  ‘Train what for?’

  ‘So they can be in th’army. Pillock.’

  The thought of joining the army in peace-time had never occurred to Terry. He said, ‘What do you do when you’ve trained then?’

  ‘You go on manoeuvres with tanks and guns. They send you all over’t world. You’ve heard Forces Favourites haven’t you? They have soldiers everywhere. Germany. France. Hong Kong …’ He couldn’t think of any more places.

  ‘America?’

  ‘Yeh, America. Timbuktu.’

  ‘I thought that were in Africa?’

  ‘It is in bleedin’ Africa. I’m just saying, Timbuktu as well as America. Me dad went all over the place. He even went to Burma. Brought loads of stuff back: flags, a Jap bayonet, a grenade – no pin in it – American chocolate, chewing gum.’

  ‘Me Uncle Jack brought some spoons back with swastikas on them.’

  ‘Spoons?’ Spenner said, gawping.

  ‘He said he captured them from a machine-gun post.’

  ‘I bet.’

  ‘He did,’ Terry insisted. ‘He was in the desert during the war with Monty and the Desert Rats. Nearly got taken prisoner.’ This last was a bit of embroidery to make the story more convincing.

  ‘Did he get the Victoria Cross?’ Spenner asked, twisting his mouth into a funny shape. He started flicking the headlights on and off.

  ‘I’m not sure. He might have. He’s got one medal, a big ‘un, with a ribbon.’

  ‘He didn’t get the Victoria Cross.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘He’d be famous. He’d be a hero.’

  ‘He might have been a hero.’

  ‘He couldn’t have been ’cos it wasn’t in the papers.’

  ‘Might have been.’

  Spenner shook his head dismissivley, which really annoyed Terry. ‘What’s his last name anyhow?’

  Terry had to think. Then he realised that of course Jack was his mam’s brother so they’d share the same name his mam had before she was married.

  ‘Marsh.’

  ‘It would have been in the Observer then. “Jack Marsh, VC”.’

  Terry could see no way of refuting this assertion, and this annoyed him even more. He wished, right now, this very moment, that he could produce a newspaper cutting from his pocket with a photo of his Uncle Jack wearing a medal, and above it the bold black headline: JACK MARSH, VC.

  Spenner said, ‘Wish I had some fags.’

  ‘I left me dimps at home,’ Terry said.

  The windscreen wipers ticked in front of them.

  ‘We’re going to get pissed wet through in this,’ Terry said, staring out.

  ‘Wait till it stops,’ said Spenner, yawning.

  They waited, but the rain showed no sign of slackening.

  ‘Have you got your results yet?’ Spenner said after a while.

  ‘Few more weeks.’

  ‘Do you think you’ve passed?’

  ‘Haven’t a clue,’ Terry said, which wasn’t strictly true. On some days he felt certain that he must have passed while on others he had doubts. He very much wanted to pass for the High School, though he wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone, not even a close pal like Spenner. He knew he was brainy, and as Mr Buckley, the headmaster, had told 4A: ‘Only the cream of the cream go to the High School.’ Just as he didn’t like being beaten in an argument, perhaps for the same reason he couldn’t accept second-best in the exam results.

  ‘Your mother told my mother you’d passed.’

  ‘She’s always telling folk that,’ Terry said with real exasperation. ‘I don’t know what’s up with her.’

  ‘Who wants to go to the bleedin’ High School anyway?’

  Terry chose not to respond to this remark, suspecting that if Dave Spencer had been offered the chance he’d have gone like a shot; but having failed the eleven-plus two years before, this was just sour grapes.

  Spenner sat forward in the driver’s seat.

  ‘I can see a light.’

  They both tensed.

  Through the wavering patterns on the glass a splintered star of light was approaching, swaying to and fro as though coming from a torch or lantern being carried by somebody. Somebody, say, like a watchman. They opened the doors and jumped simultaneously. The teeming rain struck Terry in the face. He turned and ran straight at the cliff. The sand clogged under his heels and his legs moved ridiculously fast without getting anywhere. There were no handholds in the smooth damp wall of sand. To his left Spenner was clawing at the weedy plants that grew along a fissure, moving steadily upwards one hand at a time. Terry followed his example and scrambled through a thick patch of stinging nettles. Sand and small pebbles slid under his feet. He got near the top and started slipping backwards. Spenner held out his hand and hauled him over the edge, the two of them collapsing on the thin layer of grass which rested like a hairpiece on the flat clifftop. They crawled back to the rim and looked over. Through the driving rain they saw the light below and the foreshortened figure of a man in a raincoat reaching almost to the ground.

  ‘Bleedin’ close ’un,’ Spenner said, and shouted down: ‘Can’t catch me for a penny cup of tea.’

  ‘Bloody shut up,’ Terry said breathlessly. ‘He might send for the rozzers.’

  Spenner threw a clod of sand, which splattered with a dull thud on the flat wet boards of one of the lorries.

  Terry stood up, soaked to the skin, and felt a burning sensation in his knees. He looked down and saw that they were covered in small white blisters.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘Je-zuzz.’

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Look at me legs.’

  Bloody Nora, they were on fire.

  ‘Stinging nettles.’

  ‘Oh swinin’ hell,’ Terry said. ‘Oh. Oh. Oh shit and corruption.’

  They walked through the unceasing rain back to town and Spenner ha
d just enough to pay their fares to Copenhagen Street. They cut through the Ginnel, along the Bottom Track, and went down the alleyway and into Spenner’s kitchen. His parents were out. Terry was suffering: he sat with his bloated legs stuck out in front of him, unable to bend them. Spenner boiled the kettle and bathed them in warm water and afterwards dabbed them with a pad of cotton wool soaked in Dettol. This stung like fury, but in a while the pain seemed to go numb and he was able to stand up and walk about.

  Then Spenner opened a tin of baked beans and emptied it into a saucepan while Terry toasted some barm cakes in front of the fire. They sat at the table covered with oilcloth and ate the baked beans on toast, followed by half a Swiss Roll between them and a beaker of tea each. Spenner switched the wireless on but there was only somebody sawing away on a screeching violin (the announcer called it the Palm Court or something), so he switched it off.

  ‘I bet that watchman’s mad,’ Spenner said, puffing away on a Woodbine.

  ‘Yeh,’ Terry agreed, relaxed and happy now that the adventure was over and they were safe in Spenner’s kitchen, warm and full-bellied, the rain streaming down outside. The pain in his knees had nearly gone, leaving a faint prickly sensation.

  ‘I nearly hit him when I cobbed that sand down,’ Spenner said, chest shaking, red in the face. He was laughing so much he started choking.

  ‘That bloody raincoat he had on,’ Terry said, gasping for breath, ‘touched the floor.’

  ‘Can’t catch me for a penny cup of tea—’

  ‘Hey – them big packages in that warehouse. They’ll be going all over’t shop—’

  ‘Liverpool.’

  ‘Glasgow,’ Terry said, holding his stomach.

  ‘John O’Groats!’

  ‘Land’s End!’

  They fell on the floor. They were helpless for several minutes. When they had calmed down, still whimpering, they went into the front room and Spenner sat down at the rosewood piano and began to play a medley of popular tunes: Don’t Fence Me In, You Are My Sunshine, Maisie Doats and Doasie Doats and Little Brown Jug. Terry was filled with admiration and envy; he had no hidden talents that he could think of.

  ‘Do you know any others?’