Down the Figure 7

by Trevor Hoyle

  Spenner thought for a second and then began to play what sounded to be an extremely complicated piece with lots of crashing chords, his fingers running magically up and down the keyboard and crossing his hands over for a particularly clever bit towards the end. Terry asked what it was called and Spenner told him it was his latest exercise by somebody whose name sounded like ‘Show-pang’. Terry wished they had a piano at home: he imagined himself rattling off a medley of popular tunes while (unknown to him) Margaret Parry eavesdropped outside the front door. She had never guessed till now how talented he was, because, of course, he had modestly kept it to himself.

  They went back into the kitchen and Spenner disappeared upstairs for five minutes to scrounge for cigarettes and came back with two reasonably-sized dimps he’d found in his father’s suits in the wardrobe. The two lads lit up and talked about the films they had seen recently: Captain Boycott with Stewart Granger, Landfall with Michael Denison, Ma and Pa Kettle on the Farm, Commanche Territory with McDonald Carey, Battle of Powder River, The Blue Lagoon starring Jean Simmons (they both agreed she was fit as a butcher’s dog), and No Place for Jennifer, a crummy film that had bored Terry stiff and had his mother in tears. Both he and Spenner agreed that Commanche Territory was far and away the best. Terry still went with his mam every Friday night to the Regal or the Rialto, and on the way home they usually stopped at the chip shop on Smith Street for their suppers. But Fred the sailor hadn’t been in since that first time last November.

  Spenner asked Terry if he’d ever read any Biggies books. ‘They’re fantastic stories,’ he said, rummaging in a cupboard and producing a book called Biggies & Co. ‘This one’s about some crooks trying to smuggle gold bars from France and Biggies and his two pals, Algy and Ginger, have to foil them.’

  Spenner said that he could borrow it, and in return Terry promised to lend him Jets, Rockets and Guided Missiles.

  The rain had stopped and was dripping from the guttering as he went through the backyard and walked down the cobbled alleyway. Framed at the far end was the kind of sunset that sometimes follows a thunderstorm: spectacular shooting rays of red and purple and orange forming an irridescent arc in the sky. The rooftops and upper halves of the houses were bathed in a beneficent golden light, illuminating each brick and slate with absolute clarity and in the most exact detail.

  On Cayley Street rainwater was running in streams into the grids, carving channels through the dirt along the edge of the pavement. Terry went into the house and got told off for not telling them he wouldn’t be in for tea. This was another baffling paradox of the adult mind, because how was he supposed to inform them of the fact when he hadn’t known it himself in the first place?

  Behind the Garages

  DURING THE EARLY SUMMER OF 1951 THE RAIN fell on Denby from overcast skies, awakening the ground and bringing forth a profusion of fresh green grass that soon hid the scars of winter. Across the river, swathes of nettles sprang up on the grey ash-tips, while below in the swampy hollows the brown needles of marsh-grass thickened in dense intermittent clusters.

  Before long the unpaved section of Cayley Street became a quagmire so that it was necessary to step circumspectly between the wide sticky pools and over the thick ridges of mud churned up by Sam Clegg’s coal wagon and Teddy Travis’s Norton. Bessie Smith forbade anyone (except the insurance man) to use the front door because of the trail of mud traipsed through the house, while Mrs Heap had to set to and donkey-stone her front step at least three times a week to keep it unblemished and pristine. But Ma Rigall was worst off: with her poor eyesight, thin pointed shoes and tiny hesitant steps, the mudbath of a street must have stretched before her like no-man’s land in the First World War, with the dry solid pavements of Hovingham Street in the remote, unseeable distance.

  Dolly Bland, so the neighbours informed one another, had been out gallivanting as usual – which meant that on Wednesday and Friday nights she was seen trotting down Kellett Street dolled up to the nines, the seams in her 9-denier silk stockings plumb accurate to within a few thousandths and her new suede wedge-heeled shoes with the fancy ankle-straps raising her normal five-feet-two by at least three inches. It was either the Carlton, they told each other, or the Flying Horse, and possibly the Robin Hood, two town centre pubs. But even more scandalous was that she’d been seen, it was whispered, in Yates’s Wine Lodge, brazenly standing at the high polished bar with the men while she supped a port and lemon and the occasional Guinness. There wasn’t much further to fall, unless it was the Grapes on Baillie Street, which had a reputation it was impolite to even mention in mixed company.

  Mrs Pickup, Roy’s mother, contracted pleurisy and the cream-coloured ambulance arrived to take her to Marland Hospital. A small gathering of neighbours watched in silence as the ashen face above the grey blanket was ferried into the cool green interior and whisked away; while on the credit side of the Denby account, Spenner’s dad, also called David, won two hundred pounds on Vernon’s (the first rumour of the windfall had said £2000).

  Real excitement of the stomach-churning variety, however, came towards the end of May when a bullock escaped from a wagon on Entwisle Road and roamed the streets and alleyways, placidly raising its moist black snout over backyard gates and sending Mrs Banaitis, a Lithuanian lady, into hysterics. The Gang stalked the animal, taunting it with shouts and handfuls of gravel, daring each other to get as close as possible, then vanishing like quicksilver the moment it lumbered in their general direction. Spenner, as ever the daredevil, ran right up to the beast and yanked its tail. As it about-turned three times as fast as anyone (including Spenner) could have imagined, he took a running jump, cleared a fence four feet high, and landed perfectly in a pile of horse dung shovelled off the streets by Mr Sims for his allotment.

  Eventually men wearing leather gaiters and hobnailed boots and carrying long poles came along and cornered it between the pens at the entrance to the Ginnel – the Ginnel being too narrow for the bullock to enter – and locked it securely inside the cattle-wagon. But it had been a smashing afternoon and the memory of it lived for a long time and became part of Denby folklore.

  With the lighter evenings the normal summer pastimes were resumed: dirt-track racing round the Top Track and down the Figure 7, swaling the railway embankments, sailing home-made rafts on the river, and later on, as darkness advanced, playing at werewolves and Frankenstein’s monster in the eerie yellow lamplight. One time, racing near the pens, Terry ran through what he thought was a gap in the fence, and a horizontal strut of timber caught him smack across the forehead and knocked him flat on his back. An inch lower and it would have broken his nose and possibly altered his looks for life; Spenner fell down and rolled over, laughing like a drain.

  Barbara came to the bottom of the stairs and shouted, ‘One of your pals is here for you, Terry.’

  From where he lay on the crumpled sheets Terry could see a section of the parapet that topped the Arches: a row of black millstone blocks sharply etched against the evening sky. The brook gurgled on the far side of Ma Rigall’s backyard, trickling through the rusty springs of old bedsteads and over corroding bicycle frames and threadbare tyres green with slime. It wasn’t yet warm enough to ferment the smell, which in summertime would rise in heavy sluggish vapours like the sweetish-sickly stench of gangrenous breath.

  ‘Terry!’ Barbara shouted, her voice near nagging frequency.

  ‘Yeh, all right, I’m coming.’

  ‘Hurry up then. Don’t keep the lad standing here all night.’

  Terry put aside the book he had been reading: The Adventures of Brigadier Gerard. It had been recommended to him by Mrs Butterworth, and it was a smashing story. He pulled his stockings up and went downstairs. Spenner was bouncing a hard rubber ball against the lavatory wall and catching it with alternate hands. His fingernails, Terry couldn’t help noticing, were rimmed with dirt, and on one of the sleeves of his grey pullover there was a streak of something green that looked suspiciously like snot. Spenner said:<
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  ‘Have you got that copy of th’ Eagle?’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘The one I lent you.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘The one I twatting lent you last week.’

  Terry glanced towards the kitchen window in case his father might have overheard the bad language. ‘I’ll have to have a look for it.’ He suspected that Spenner made things up and sometimes told deliberate lies.

  Spenner said, ‘Let’s call for Danny and Male. We can get our bikes and go over to Nile Street.’

  ‘I think I’ll stay in tonight,’ Terry said. ‘I’ve got some homework to do.’

  ‘You don’t do homework.’

  ‘I’ve been given some.’

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘Mrs Butterworth said we had to do some reading at home. I have to read a book before Friday.’ This was a lie too, but only a small one.

  ‘See you then,’ Spenner said, catching the ball and opening the backyard gate.

  ‘See you.’

  Terry had a quick glance in the pigeon cote to see what the young squeakers were up to (offspring of the blue bar hen and dark speckled cock) and went into the house. Barbara was putting plates and cups away in the corner cupboard, and it came as a little shock of surprise to realise how frail and washed-out she looked: the mousy hair and thin neck and hollow cheeks.

  Terry put his arms round her waist; he came up to her shoulder. ‘What time is it?’ he asked – a private joke between them because it was just an excuse for her to look at the Ladies’ Cocktail Watch with 17-jewel Swiss-movement. She lifted her wrist and the cheap imitation stones and gilt surround caught the light from the window and glinted weakly.

  ‘Just gone half-six. It keeps good time.’

  ‘Do you like it?’

  ‘Of course I do. It’s a smashing present, our Terry.’ She hugged him to her in a moment of real affection and ruffled his hair, which when not flattened with water and combed straight grew in a tangled mop. ‘Are you staying in tonight with your old mam?’

  ‘I’m going out on me bike.’

  He went upstairs and put on a clean white shirt, then stood in front of the dressing-table mirror in the front bedroom and tried out a few expressions. When he came downstairs again Joe was yawning and scratching his armpits, his eyes bleary from having that minute woken up in the rocking-chair.

  ‘Where you off to?’

  ‘I’m going out on me bike.’

  ‘I asked where.’

  Terry shrugged. ‘Just riding round,’ and went on casually as if he’d just thought of it, ‘I might ride over to Gowers Street.’

  ‘Don’t forget your lights on the main road.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And don’t be late in. Nine o’clock.’

  ‘Dad—’

  ‘Nine o’clock. You’ve got to get up at seven for your paper round.’

  ‘I always do.’

  ‘Aye,’ Joe said, ‘after your mother’s screamed her head off for ten bloody minutes.’

  Terry got out of the house, wheeling his Raleigh Sport across the buckled flagstones and bumping it down the backyard step. It was like being released from prison: he took a long deep breath and lifted his head: he could scent freedom.

  Gowers Street was silent and deserted. He rode along the cinder track past the garages, a few stray cats and a solitary dog the only signs of life. Still sitting on his bike Terry leaned against the creosoted wall of a garage and lit the dimp of a Woodbine, feeling a slight wave of dizziness pass over him as the first drag entered his lungs. Above him the solid edifice of the Arches seemed to loom larger and blacker as the light drained from the sky.

  A Jowett Javelin lurched and rattled along the track and stopped. A man got out and wedged the garage doors open with house bricks; he didn’t notice Terry in the shadows. When he had locked the garage and gone away Terry cycled slowly back towards Gowers Street. The gaslamps had just come on. The street was part dirt, part paved, the setts extending from the main road as far as the green wrought-iron gates of the Clover Mill. Behind them the millyard was vast and empty, stretching away to the square bulk of the mill itself, absolutely rock-solid on its foundations, five storeys of white-leaded windows rising in perfect symmetrical rows.

  It had always seemed a forbidding place to Terry. He had been inside just once, with Alec Bland (whose mother worked in the canteen) and walked the full length of the basement, which was used mainly as a store. He could only recall an endless succession of huge dim caverns with low concrete ceilings, stacked with dusty bales, splintered crates and broken machinery, and occasionally, through the gap in a wall of crates or behind the greasy innards of a silent loom, glimpsing a solitary workman involved in some mysterious, secretive activity. They were like lost souls to him, these lone people, hidden from the world in gloomy, dusty chambers in the depths of the mill. He had a horrible vision of one of them dying and being forgotten, rotting away to dust in the darkness behind the crates and bales and machinery.

  Terry circled the lamp at the far end of the street and rode slowly back in second gear. Margaret Parry and two other girls were standing talking outside Margaret’s house; he rode onto the pavement and put his foot on the window sill, leaning back in the saddle like a cowpoke after a long trail drive.

  ‘You sit next to Betty Wheatcroft, don’t you?’ Margaret said.

  ‘Yeh,’ Terry said. ‘Why?’

  ‘She likes you,’ Margaret said. ‘She wants to go with you.’

  He was genuinely surprised by this but didn’t show it. He watched her with a kind of lazy indifference.

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘She told me. She said she liked you but you fancied Yvonne Brangham.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘She said you did.’

  ‘Well I don’t.’

  They looked at each other in the gathering dusk. Her hair was short and curly and her eyes dark with thick lashes. Her teeth were incredibly white and she had what Terry considered to be extremely kissable lips, slightly pouting, a ripe cherry-red.

  ‘Do you like Betty?’ Margaret asked.

  ‘She’s all right.’

  ‘Are you going to go with her?’

  Terry didn’t reply immediately, knowing he had to be careful what he said. With a cunning he didn’t know he possessed he asked her what she thought he should do.

  ‘Up to you,’ Margaret said. She raised herself on tiptoe and balanced delicately on the pavement’s edge, looking at her feet with rapt concentration.

  One of the other girls suggested helpfully: ‘You could go with her for a bit and see if you like it.’

  ‘Yeh,’ Terry said dully. Not the right answer.

  Margaret teetered on tiptoe and it was all Terry could manage not to make a sudden grab for her, as he had Doreen Hartley. A prickle of sweat broke out on various parts of his body: he badly wanted to touch her hand or her shoulder: he knew already how soft she would be. But how to set in motion the mysterious process that would transport the two of them to the shadows behind the garages, that was the baffling problem. Above all he didn’t want to be so bloody nice; niceness had to be avoided.

  ‘You’re too nice for Betty Wheatcroft,’ said one of the other girls, and Terry’s confidence drained out through his feet. A frozen sickly smile was clamped to his face like a mask. He took out a full Woodbine and lit it.

  ‘I suppose Shap’s nice too,’ he said bitterly, his stomach deep and empty as a pit. One of the other girls said in a low voice:

  ‘He’s dirty.’

  ‘Oh?’ He thought his face was under control.

  ‘Tries to make you do things,’ said the girl.

  ‘We daren’t tell you what he did to Muriel,’ the other girl said.

  ‘Who’s Muriel?’

  ‘Me,’ the first girl said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Nasty,’ Margaret said, crinkling her pretty nose. ‘Dirty.’ She was looking at Terry in a calculating way. He
r eyes were wonderful. Terry basked in them as in a shaft of pure sunshine. ‘You wouldn’t do anything like that, would you?’ she said.

  Terry was more confused than ever. What did they want him to say? Was it better to be nice or dirty? He was completely flummoxed. He had to consider his reply most carefully, and finally said lamely, ‘Depends.’

  ‘On what?’ the girl who wasn’t called Muriel asked.

  ‘On who it was.’ He had begun to perspire again. This was worse than an interrogation, than torture. He felt to be on a tightrope of question-and-answer, question-and-answer, afraid at any moment he might get it wrong and fall off.

  A woman in a faded pinny and curlers came to his rescue. She poked her head out of the door farther along the street and said, ‘Muriel. Come on, it’s gone eight o’clock.’ Muriel sighed and grumbled and went in.

  The other girl said, ‘I’d better be going in as well.’ Neither Terry nor Margaret made any attempt to dissuade her; nevertheless she lingered for several minutes more, the three of them seeming to draw closer together as the weight of night pressed down. When she had gone they continued to talk in low voices as if afraid someone was listening. Terry was thrilled to the core at the intimacy of their conversation: Margaret told him all about her parents, and her little sister Lyn, and their cat Blackie, and all the while her pale oval face and dark lips hovered in the centre of his consciousness and he felt himself to be drifting, sliding, sinking down and down until he was lost in the depths of her lustrous eyes.

  ‘Are you going to let me have a go?’ Margaret said.

  ‘What? How do you mean?’

  ‘Can I have a go on your bike?’

  ‘Yeh,’ Terry said, getting off, ‘if you want.’

  ‘No,’ Margaret said, ‘I meant on the back. You pedal while I sit on the saddle.’ She tucked her pleated green skirt between her legs and climbed up behind him. Terry pushed away from the window sill and the bike juddered over the kerb and onto the setts; Margaret put her hands on either side of his waist to steady herself and they rode along the street. ‘Down here,’ she said, and he obediently turned onto the track, the tyres crunching through the cinders and bits of broken glass. The places where her hands held him were burning him through his clothing.