by Trevor Hoyle
‘Roy, take the windjammer off his head. Get him up and sat on that box.’
Brian Creegan blinked his eyes open. He looked round, his head wobbling slightly, two wet trails from his nostrils caused by his restricted breathing. Gradually his gaze swam back into focus. His head jerked back in fright at the sight of the faces all around him streaked with black and white stripes where the sweat had run down. He said, ‘Jesus Mary Joseph.’
‘Not much the big man now, are we, Creegan?’
Brian Creegan frowned at Jack, shaking his head. ‘Who the hell are you?’
‘The Bogie Man.’
‘You’re a bloke, you,’ Creegan said, realising the others were lads of roughly his own age. He looked at them more closely and recognised Terry. ‘Christ, it’s the Denby lot.’ He bared his teeth and croaked a laugh with no humour in it. ‘You bunch of twats must be crackers. Soon as my gang find out, they’ll come down on you like a ton of bricks and paste the hides off the lot of you. They’ll have your guts for garters—’
‘Watch it,’ Spenner spat at him. ‘That’s our C-in-C you’re talking to.’
‘Your what?’
Jack stood with the cigarette dangling from his lips. ‘I know your type, met ’em all over, the loud-mouth bully, big talk and no balls.’
‘What you on about?’
‘I’m on about you, Creegan. Picking on kids half your size.’
‘Wrong fella. Not me, chum.’
‘You’re forgetting – chum – I was here when you were thumping my nephew, Terry Webb. Dead easy when you’re a big lump and they’re a lot smaller than you. Oh yeh, you’re strong and they’re weak so you think you can trample all over ‘em—’
‘Are you puddled or what?’
Spenner barked, ‘Don’t interrupt the C-in-C.’
‘I don’t like bullies, Creegan. And I don’t bloody well like the look of you. You’re nothing but a fat tub of yellow lard.’
‘I’m not scared of you.’
‘You better be, chum.’
‘Who says?’
‘A tough guy,’ Jack said, wiping his chin, leaving a dark smear. ‘I think we’ve got a tough guy,’ nodding to himself. ‘Another George Raft.’ Jack put his hand in his side pocket and pulled out the Luger. His face and eyes had gone the same, clouded and hard, as in the kitchen in Cayley Street when he’d spoken of what he’d been fighting for. ‘How tough are you really, George?’
‘My name’s Brian.’
‘Shitehawks and corruption,’ a voice whispered. ‘Is that a real gun?’
‘Yeh,’ Terry said under his breath. ‘It is real.’ His lips felt numb.
Jack pulled back the bolt with two hooked fingers, released it and let the oiled mechanism snap forward on its powerful spring. The sound was satisfyingly solid.
‘That’s one in the chamber.’
Brian Creegan wasn’t convinced. ‘Ton of crap. It’s not even loaded. You’ve got no slugs.’
Jack sighted down the barrel at him. ‘I hear you like sticking kids in dustbins and setting a fire going underneath. That’s the kind of bastard you are. I bet you’d even do it to a puppy, wouldn’t you, George? You’re just the fucking type, I can tell. Would you do it to a puppy, George, I think you would. I bet you’d even enjoy it, roasting a little puppy in a dustbin.’ A muscle twitched in Jack’s cheek. His eyes were large, the whites showing. ‘Terry, go and get Champ, bring him here, let’s see what George would do to him. If he’s got the nerve.’
‘I don’t kill puppies,’ Brian Creegan said. ‘My name’s not George.’
Terry was half-prepared to go and fetch Champ. His Uncle Jack had told him to. Should he go and get him? So Brian Creegan could kill him? That didn’t make sense.
Jack aimed down the barrel. ‘If I pull the trigger, nothing will happen. Is that what you’re saying, George? Is that your guess?’
‘You don’t have any bullets, it’s against the law. You’d get arrested.’
Jack fired. The explosion was like a bomb going off. It reverberated inside the concrete walls, back and forth, deafening them. There was the sound of tinkling glass, which was the jamjar with a candle in it that Jack had been aiming at.
‘Jesus Mary Joseph,’ Brian Creegan said from the floor, where he’d gone sprawling on his back. ‘You could fucking kill somebody with that thing.’
Jack stood over him, pointing the Luger. ‘What do you say now, George?’
‘I don’t know, honest I don’t. What do you want me to say?’
Jack pulled the bolt back and reloaded, moving the barrel to within a few inches of Creegan’s forehead. ‘I asked you a question. Tell me.’
‘Tell you about what?’
‘I want to know.’
‘What about?’
‘You’d murder Champ, wouldn’t you? I think you would, you bastard.’
‘Who’s Champ?’
‘I want to know about George Raft.’
‘What about him?’
‘What about him? What about him?’ The gun barrel was touching Creegan’s forehead. ‘You are fucking about him! You fucking evil swine. You’d kill my Champ just for the fun of it, wouldn’t you? Say it! Admit it!’
‘I don’t know any Champ,’ Brian Creegan said. The sweat was pouring off him. ‘Is he your puppy?’ He screwed his eyes shut. ‘Jesus Mary Joesph. Don’t, please. I wouldn’t harm a puppy, ask anybody.’ The circle around him drew back as the smell wafted up in waves, the lad having pissed and crapped himself.
During the Holidays
ON WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON DURING THE HALF-term holiday Terry cycled over to Gowers Street. The day was dry and cold, with a sharpness in the air that made the rims of his ears tingle. He was hoping that Margaret would invite him inside the house. Both her parents were at work, so it seemed a golden opportunity. The fly in the ointment was Margaret’s younger sister Lyn, a precocious eight-year old brat who understood all Terry’s dirty jokes and double meanings even when he took the trouble to make them unintelligible to her.
The jokes led quite naturally to smutty talk and Terry started to boast about what had happened (or supposedly happened) with Laura Parfitt and Sandra Weeks down the Figure 7. He was hoping it would get Margaret going, but all that it aroused was her sister Lyn’s voracious curiosity, so that she asked endless questions about the meaning of such words as ‘having a bit’, ‘dropping them’, ‘groping’ and ‘finger-pie’.
For an eight-year old kid she was intolerable, and Terry had the sneaking suspicion that she already knew what these expressions meant and was just having him on for a giggle. He said to Margaret, ‘Does she always have to hang round? Can’t she stay with her auntie or something?’
‘I’m not going,’ Lyn said defiantly, clenched fists by her side. ‘It’s my house. I’m staying here with Margaret. She’s got to look after me.’
‘What about your own friends?’ Terry said truculently. ‘Why don’t you go and play with kids your own age?’
‘Don’t want to.’
‘What if I give you a penny for some toffees?’
‘Still not going. It’s my house. Can’t make me.’ She smirked at him and stuck her tongue out, knowing he was beaten.
‘She’s a pain in the …’ Terry said under his breath.
‘Arse,’ Lyn said. She turned to Margaret. ‘Arse is your bum, isn’t it? Me dad’s always saying that.’
Even worse, Margaret seemed to find the situation amusing, apparently not a bit bothered whether Lyn stayed or went. This vexed and disappointed Terry, who had coldly planned his campaign to get Margaret in her house during the holidays. He’d had enough of girls thinking him mard and nice, it never got you anywhere, and he’d vowed to become a dirty sod like Shap and Colin Purvis.
The afternoon wore on, kids playing on the pavement with whips and tops and chalking the flags for hopscotch. Housewives came to their front steps to beat doormats against the wall or empty tea leaves down the drain. The life of the street went on around the t
hree of them and they were part of it, and yet separate, in a little closed world of their own. Terry racked his brains for a way to get Margaret inside, away from the interference of Lyn, but the answer to his prayer (if there was an answer) eluded him. At one point a police car followed by a cream-coloured ambulance with a clanking bell shot past on the main road, raising Terry’s hopes that Lyn would run to the end of the street to see what was happening, but no such luck. He even prayed for a thunderstorm, which would drive all of them indoors, but for once the weather let him down.
‘When are you having your bonfire?’ Margaret asked.
‘This Saturday.’ That was three days away. Terry was filled with anticipation and yet he felt sad. It would be his last bonfire in Denby: they were moving after Christmas to Kirkholt Estate. But this one at least was still his to look forward to and enjoy.
‘Do you always follow your big sister?’ he said, a rankling irritability making his voice thin and peevish.
‘She’s my sister,’ Lyn said, sticking her chin out and adopting a pose, hands on hips and head lifted haughtily, a regular little madam. ‘I know what you want.’
‘Do you?’
‘Want to kiss her.’
‘I don’t.’
‘You do.’
‘Don’t,’ he said, digging his thumbs into the rubber handlebar grips.
‘You’ve gone all red.’
‘I haven’t.’
‘You have.’
‘Haven’t.’ Terry said, an even deeper shade of beetroot.
‘She wants to kiss you as well,’ Lyn said.
‘I do not,’ Margaret said, confused, her green eyes shifting.
‘You do, ’cos you wrote it in your diary!’ Lyn said triumphantly. She was the complete mistress of the art of manipulation, wallowing in her power as arch torturer.
Terry gathered up all his patience and even managed a smile. ‘You’re a right little tearaway, aren’t you?’ he said not unkindly.
Lyn kicked the spokes in his front wheel. ‘That’s a swear word,’ she said accusingly.
‘Is it heck,’ Terry said. ‘And stop kicking me spokes, you’ll buckle ’em.’
She kicked them again out of sheer defiance.
‘I said quit it.’
‘What if I don’t, what if I don’t?’ she chanted.
‘Lyn!’ Margaret said, for the first time becoming annoyed. She glanced at Terry, sensing that his patience was wearing thin. ‘I’ve got to do the washing-up. Do you want to come in?’
Terry propped his bike against the window sill.
‘Me too, I’m coming as well—’ Lyn said.
‘No you’re not,’ Margaret said, and locked the front door behind them. Terry followed her through to the kitchen. There was a pile of dirty dishes in the sink. Margaret reached out to turn the geyser on and Terry spun her round and clamped his mouth against hers. She kissed him with tremendous passion: he could feel her sharp fingers through his pullover and shirt. The kiss lasted forever.
‘We’ll have to be quick,’ Margaret said in the breath of a whisper.
‘All right.’
‘Let’s go upstairs.’
Terry nodded.
They went halfway up the narrow staircase and had to stop to kiss again. He got his hand up her jumper and felt her bare back. They stood hard against one another on the worn stair-carpet in the semi-darkness, compressing the blood out of their lips. She moved up a step during the kiss and they broke away. She led him into the sepulchral stillness and quiet of the front bedroom, her parents’ bedroom, with the embroidered pink eiderdown floating like a cloud under the grey light from the leaded window. The sight of that neat embroidered pink eiderdown generated within him such terror that he stopped dead inside the door, avoiding it with his eyes.
‘What’s up?’ Margaret said.
They were strangers to each other now, as awkward and uncomfortable as two people alone together in a railway compartment.
Terry said, ‘What time do they get home from work?’
‘Ages,’ Margaret said. ‘Half-past five at the earliest.’
She looked at him, waiting for him to make the first move. Terry examined the wallpaper, the carving on the handles of the wardrobe, the objects on the dressing-table with unusual interest. He had somehow to take those three steps towards her and push her onto the neat embroidered pink cloud hovering in the corner of his vision. Strategy was everything; passion had fled.
‘We’d better take our shoes off,’ Margaret said.
Thankfully it was something to do. He took his shoes off, unfastening and loosening the laces before removing them. He put his shoes carefully side by side near the wardrobe. Then looking through the window and moving with discrete sideways steps towards her he said: ‘You can see the Arches from here.’
Terry shut his eyes, turned his body blindly, trod on her foot, and kissed her on the chin. They fell onto the bed. The shock of it jarred his gums. He adjusted his lips to hers, simulating an intensity of feeling that in reality had flown away through the grey air and got lost somewhere beyond the Arches.
But her saliva tasted sweet. It brought him back solidly into the here and now to realise that he was on a bed with Margaret Parry in her house. What would Shap and Colin Purvis have to say about that?
He put his hands under her jumper and moved them upwards until his fingers touched what must have been, though he could hardly believe it, a brassiere. He had never unfastened a brassiere in his life. He tried manfully to perform the task.
Margaret said, ‘What are you fidgeting with?’
‘Don’t worry, I’ve done it before,’ he said airily.
‘Well you won’t get it off by breaking it.’
Terry kissed her again to stop her talking. During the kiss he wondered if he could get it off by gnawing through the strap. The bloody trouble was, there didn’t appear to be a catch or a press-stud. And she was lying on his left hand, which meant that his fingers were inoperative; and he was getting pins and needles as well. He tried with his other hand to slide stealthily under the shallow cotton cup, but it was a tight squeeze. Margaret winced and said, ‘Ouch.’
‘What’s up?’
‘You can’t do it like that. It’s cutting me in half.’
The options were disappearing one by one.
Margaret sat up. She reached behind her and unfastened the strap.
‘Haven’t you undone one before?
‘Course,’ Terry said. ‘Loads.’ He conjured up his laziest, most confident smile, lying back on the pink eiderdown; only the smile, when it came, was defective, sitting clumsily on his face.
Margaret lay back, the brassiere loose and ruckled under her jumper, making her chest lumpy and unattractive. She said: ‘We’ll have to be quick, I’ve got the washing-up to do.’
Terry kissed her again, gladly shutting his eyes to the drab daylight, moving his hand very slowly, pretending (both of them pretending) that he wasn’t really moving it at all. It wasn’t really moving, his hand, he wasn’t moving it, and so it moved of its own accord, as it were, by default – not really moving (but moving all the same).
When it encountered the warm shallow rise both of them pressed their lips tighter together. His fingers touched the soft peak, as soft as a deflated marshmallow, and paused; partly in silent reverence and partly because his fingers didn’t know what to do next.
They had to discontinue the kiss in order to breathe.
‘Aren’t they soft,’ Terry said in a reverential murmur.
‘It makes me want to wee when you touch the tip,’ Margaret said.
He pushed the jumper and brassiere out of the way and looked at the first young girl’s nipples he had ever seen in daylight. They were surrounded by goosepimples. He looked at them for a while. His own feelings were dormant. He felt nothing physical.
Margaret lay with her eyes closed, black curls on pink eiderdown, her lips dry and slightly parted so that he could see the shiny whiteness of her teeth insi
de. She breathed as if asleep.
A terrible thought had come to Terry. He could go no further. He had a disfigurement, unlike Taylor. He was prevented from pushing it inside because of the offending flap of skin. He was physically disbarred from proceeding any further. He was finished for life.
Margaret opened her eyes and he quaked.
‘Why do you like looking at them?’ she asked.
‘Dunno.’
‘Aren’t boys funny?’
The bedroom lay around them, quiet, very still, attentive.
Terry wondered what he ought to do next, what he was capable of doing next. He couldn’t remain forever in this state of paralysis. Did she expect him (was it necessary) to proceed further? His scheme for getting Margaret Parry into the house, up the stairs, on the bed, had worked, but he had made no provision for anything further. It had worked, he had done it, now what?
He was conscious of her two nipples staring up at him with inquisitive frankness, supported like two bulging eyes on their small white mounds.
His hand, when he touched them, had the quality of strangeness, as if it were newly created, as though he had never looked at his hand properly before. Touching her breast with his alien hand, he wondered what came next.
‘We’ll have to be quick,’ Margaret said.
‘All right.’
But he was far from all right. He was weary and faintly sick.
‘They’ll be home in an hour.’
An hour. What had he to do in that hour?
‘Shall I take me knickers off?’
‘If you want.’
She took them off and smoothed her skirt back into place. The next move was up to him. At least he could kiss her, which he did.
Aware that the furniture, the wallpaper, the objects on the dressing-table were watching and waiting in silent anticipation, he put his hand on her leg. This move, he was sure, hadn’t escaped the attention of her vigilant nipples – which might have even swivelled downwards to observe the manoeuvre.
‘Why do you keep stopping?’ Margaret asked.
‘It’s better when you do it slow.’
‘Why?’
‘It just is.’
