Down the Figure 7

by Trevor Hoyle

  ‘Who says?’

  When he seemed stuck for an answer she said, ‘Touch it, Terry. Go on.’

  He touched it, this warm fatty purse, without a nerve in his body. It was devoid of blemish, until his fingers, by misadventure, stumbled upon the mouth of the purse, so slyly hidden and secretive; he put the tips of two fingers inside, thinking: This is where she wees. I’ve got my fingers up Margaret Parry’s fanny.

  With this thought in mind at last there was a gentle uplifting of excitement and the kiss between them became imperative. At last he was able to feel something, a dormouse stirring from its winter sleep, uncurling from its snug little nest. Margaret said close to his ear:

  ‘I’ve never let anybody touch it before.’

  ‘Nobody at all?’ Terry said, keeping his voice low so that the objects on the dressing-table wouldn’t overhear.

  (Yes he could feel a response, something was definitely moving, he wasn’t dead or a robot after all. But the knowledge of his shameful deformity wouldn’t go away. He knew what to do, but what good was that to him? He might just as well not have had one.)

  ‘It tickles,’ Margaret said drowsily.

  ‘Is it nice?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  He could feel her heart beating against his chest. Perhaps she wasn’t disappointed in him after all. Perhaps he was even capable of—

  ‘Margaret!’ Lyn’s voice piped from the street. She was hammering on the front door with her fists. ‘It’s starting to rain! Let me in or I’ll tell me mam!’

  Margaret brushed his hands out of the way and stood up. She pulled on her navy-blue knickers and wriggled into them. She did this quite unashamedly, as though he wasn’t there, and said, ‘You won’t brag to anyone, will you?’

  Terry said seriously, ‘We’re going together; I won’t say nothing to nobody.’

  ‘I’ll have to let her in,’ Margaret said, putting on her shoes. ‘Hurry up or she’ll tell me mam on us.’

  Terry put his shoes on and followed her down the stairs as if returning from the mountain-top, lord and master of all he surveyed, and offered to help with the washing-up.

  Terry left the house with twenty minutes to spare before Margaret’s mum and dad got home from work. He rode back whistling along the main road, wondering what there was for tea, bouncing over the cobbles into Cayley Street, where he stopped and got off his bike, thinking he’d ridden into a street party like the one they’d had just after the war, with trestletables and balloons and bunting and flags.

  There weren’t any tables or flags today, though all the doors were open. Dozens of people were standing on their front steps or on the pavement, even in the street itself. Terry wheeled his bike through them, mystified by all the commotion. He heard someone say, ‘nervous breakdown I heard’ just as he saw the ambulance standing outside No. 77 with its doors open. His heart constricted painfully in his chest, as if someone had squeezed it. His first thought was that his mam had collapsed. There was only so much the human mind could take. The strain of living with Joe had finally snapped her sanity, as it was bound to do in the end.

  Terry tried to urge himself forward but his guts felt hollow. His hands were welded to his bike and he might have fallen over without it. Then he saw the police car in front of the ambulance, a black Wolseley with a radio aerial. This altered the story in his head to the possibilty that Joe had throttled Barbara. They’d had another of their flaming rows, his mam had gone for the breadknife and Joe had gone for her throat with his square workman’s hands.

  A policeman in a peaked cap on duty outside the front door moved aside to let a stretcher out with a body under a grey blanket, fastened down with leather straps. People in the street shuffled forward, craning to see, as the attendants struggled to lift the stretcher into the ambulance, needing the policeman’s help. Terry heard a woman say, ‘Apparently there was blood everywhere, all over the bedspread and headboard.’ The man with her said, ‘Funny, I didn’t hear a dickey-bird, did you? No bang or anything.’ Another voice said, ‘Blew his brains out, poor bugger. What a way to go.’ A woman turned to her companion: ‘What was he doing with a gun in the house? It’s illegal,’ and her companion said, ‘He was one of Monty’s lads, so I’ve heard. They say he couldn’t settle –’ before a woman noticed Terry nearby and shushed her friend with a nudge, mouthing Shurrup this is their lad.

  Cayley Street being a dead end, the cream-coloured ambulance had to reverse all the way down to Hovingham Street. The police car reversed after it. They backed onto the cobbled street and waited several moments, blue exhausts chugging, while one of the policeman went to talk to the driver of the ambulance. The policeman did some pointing and got back in the black Wolseley.

  In just a few minutes it had become dark, as if a curtain had abruptly fallen. The gaslamp on the corner of Cayley Street spluttered into its orange glow, and as the police car and the ambulance went slowly by and disappeared in the direction of Entwisle Road, the gaslamp on the corner brought a memory to life, as vivid in Terry’s eyes as a picture on a cinema screen. What he sees is a dark-haired broad-shouldered man in a khaki uniform striding past the gaslamp into the street carrying a kit-bag on his shoulder. And he sees a snotty-nosed urchin in short trousers pelting over the ruts and potholes towards the handsome browneyed soldier, feet barely touching the ground, yelling at the top of his lungs Uncle Jack, Uncle Jack, yelling over and over again, ‘Uncle Jack! Uncle Jack!’.