Brian gave the can a quick shake before handing it back to Colin. “It’s still a fucking horse. That’s why it’s called Colt 45. Colt is another name for a horse.”
“Nah, a Colt 45 is a gun. Like a pistol. And a Sex Pistol is a cock as well, so it must be a punk with a big cock. Stands to reason, doesn’t it?”
Brian shook his head and sighed. “Yeah, whatever.”
“Crack it then, Col,” Twiglet said. “I want to see what this Cock 45 stuff tastes like.”
“Nah, I’m saving it for the bus. I’ve still got this to drink, yet.”
“Best hurry up then,” Brian said, picking up his beer. “Last bus goes in about twenty minutes.”
* * *
Mandy rang the bell hanging over the bar of The Black Bull for the third time. Nobody took any notice. She walked over to the jukebox and switched it off at the mains, silencing the new Blitz single mid-song. Don groaned and told her to put it back on again.
“Can you drink up now, please?” Mandy shouted. She returned to the bar and rang the bell again. “Hello? It’s time to go home.”
“All right Mandy, keep your knickers on,” Ian said. “We’ve not finished our beer yet.”
“Well hurry up then. I want to go home even if you don’t.” Mandy walked over to the skinheads and stood before them, hands on hips.
“Can’t we have a lock-in?” Don asked.
Mandy shook her head. “Not tonight, I’ve got other plans.” She looked at Trog and caught his eye. “Trog, can you give me a hand to close up?”
Trog drained the last of his lager and nodded. “Yeah, no worries, Mandy.” He put the empty glass down and rose to his feet. “Right, you cunts. You heard Mandy. It’s time to get fucked off home.”
A few grumbled about the lack of a proper ten minute drinking up time, but they all soon finished off their drinks and shuffled toward the door. Trog helped Mandy collect the empty glasses and put them down on the bar.
“Night then, Mandy,” he said, and turned to leave. Don was waiting for him by the door. The others were outside, larking about and taking the piss out of passing trendies.
“Wait a minute, Trog,” Mandy called out. “Give us a minute to lock up and you can walk me home if you like?”
Trog turned and looked at Mandy. She smiled and winked.
“Get in there, you jammy fucking bastard,” Don said, nudging Trog in the ribs.
Trog grinned at Mandy. “I’ll see you cunts on Saturday then.”
“Give her one for me,” Don said as he left. Mandy closed the door behind him and bolted it.
“I thought you wanted me to walk you home?” Trog asked.
Mandy smiled and ran her finger tips down Trog’s braces, then took one in each hand and pulled him closer. “You can do that later,” she said.
2 Bored Teenagers
Colin felt something wet slithering across his face. He groaned and turned away, pulled the bedcovers over his head. Something pounced on him, dug at the covers and pulled them down. The wet thing was back, leaving trails of slime on Colin’s cheek.
Colin’s eyes fluttered open. Bright sunlight streamed through a gap between the bedroom curtains and made him squint. His head throbbed, and his mouth felt like someone had fitted a shag-pile carpet in there while he slept. The dog licked him again.
“Fucking hell Prince, get off me,” he groaned, and pushed the brown mongrel dog off his bed. He rolled over to go back to sleep. The dog jumped back onto the bed and licked him again.
“Fuck off, you mutt!”
Colin pushed the dog’s head away from his face. The dog grabbed Colin’s pyjama shirt sleeve and shook it, growling. Colin pulled back. The dog squatted down on its hind legs to tug harder.
“All right, fucking hell. I’ll get up.”
Colin threw back the covers and sat up, then looked at a clock on the bedside table. It wasn’t even ten o’clock yet, far too early to be awake. Colin groaned and stood up. The dog bounded around his feet, jumping up to lick his face. Colin sidestepped the dog and darted into the bathroom for a piss.
“That you Colin?”
Colin heard the faint voice from the living room over the sound of a blaring TV set as he descended the stairs. The dog followed close behind.
“No, it’s a burglar,” Colin shouted back.
“Make us a cup of tea and a sarnie then.”
“Okay, Gran.”
Colin went into the kitchen and made two bread and dripping sandwiches and two mugs of tea. He put one sandwich on a plate and stuffed half the other one into his mouth and ate it while he waited for the tea to brew. He finished off the rest, then carried the plate and two mugs into the living room.
Colin put the plate down on the arm of his grandmother’s chair, then balanced a mug next to it. He took the other mug and sat down on the settee with a sigh. The dog bounded up next to him.
“So what time did you roll in last night then?” his grandmother asked, without looking away from the television. A coloured man wearing spandex leapt around on the screen, encouraging viewers to join him for their morning exercise.
“Don’t know,” Colin said. “Probably late.”
He could dimly remember being sick on the bus, and both he and Brian being thrown off by the irate bus driver, but the long walk home was still a blur. He had a distant recollection of climbing over the park fence and lying on his back on the roundabout while Brian spun him around, but wasn’t sure if that was a dream or not. It seemed a daft thing to do when the world would already be spinning out of control due to excess alcohol, but it probably made sense at the time.
“What’s happened to your face?”
Colin looked up, saw his grandmother peering at him. He shrugged and looked away. “Been dancing,” he mumbled. “Caught a few elbows in the face.”
She grunted, then laughed and shook her head. “I don’t know, you punk rockers you’re all as daft as brushes.” She picked up her sandwich and bit into it. “Of course, we had proper dancing in my day,” she said.
“Yes Gran,” Colin said, and tuned out while his grandmother related one of her stories about her youthful exploits. He had already heard them all countless times. How you could buy just about anything you wanted with an empty jam jar or pop bottle, how nice and polite everyone was in the old days, and how much better everything used to be.
Colin had lived with his grandmother for as long as he could remember. His father left soon after he was born, saying he couldn’t handle the responsibility of another mouth to feed. His mother left a year later, when one of her boyfriends gave her an ultimatum – him or the kid. She chose the boyfriend, so Colin was dumped on his grandmother and he never saw her again. Colin was too young to know anything about all this, of course, and didn’t remember either of his parents, but this was what his grandmother told him had happened, and he had no reason to doubt her.
Colin drank his tea and pushed the dog from his lap. “I’m going back to bed,” he said.
His grandmother looked up sharply. “What? You’ve only just got up.”
“Yeah, I don’t feel too good. Must’ve had a bad pint or something. I’m gonna go and lie down for a bit.”
Upstairs, Colin shut the bedroom door before the dog had a chance to dart through it. The dog whined and scratched at the door for a few minutes, then gave up. Colin spread his wet cigarettes out along the windowsill and got back into bed. He closed his eyes and relived the events of the previous night. He didn’t understand why the skinhead had attacked him. If it had been a trendy it would make sense, trendies were always keen on punk bashing. But a skinhead? They weren’t vastly different from punks themselves, they even liked the same type of music. It just didn’t make sense.
* * *
“I’m off out now Gran, see you later,” Colin shouted from the hallway. He picked up his leather jacket from the banister and shuffled into it. The sleeves were still a bit damp from the previous night, but nothing he couldn’t put up with.
; It was half-past one, a much more civilised time to be up and about. Colin’s hangover was almost gone, thanks to a fry-up and several more mugs of tea, and he was sure he’d be able to shrug the rest of it off once he got outside. His hair was standing proud and erect once again, and he wore a fresh set of clothes. It was an Exploited and tiger-print trousers day, he felt it as soon as he woke up for the second time that day.
“Bye Colin,” his grandmother called out from the living room. “Don’t forget it’s your Granddad’s birthday tomorrow, you said you would take me to see him.”
Colin had forgotten, but he didn’t let on. “I will,” he shouted, and closed the door behind him.
To Colin, Granddad was just an old black and white photograph on the living room sideboard. A photograph Colin was never allowed to touch without being yelled at to leave it alone. His grandfather died less than a year after he came home from the war, just before Colin’s mother was born. He was trapped in a cave-in down the local coal mine, and it took his co-workers three days to dig him out. By then he had suffocated to death.
Colin knew he had died a long time ago, but didn’t find out the circumstances of his death until the day his grandmother caught him filling in an application form for the National Coal Board, soon after he left school. “You’re not working there,” his grandmother said when she saw the form, and tore it up in front of him.
Colin caught a bus into town and headed into the shopping centre. He found Brian sitting on a bench outside Woolworths, reading Sounds.
“About fucking time,” Brian said, looking up from the newspaper. “Have a good lie in, did you?”
Colin shrugged, then sat down next to him. “Felt a bit rough so I went back to bed. Why, how long you been here?”
“Fucking ages. I went to sign on this morning, didn’t I?”
“Anything interesting this week?” Colin asked, nodding at Brian’s newspaper.
Brian turned back a few pages and held it up. “There’s a Beki Bondage interview, it says they’ve got a new album coming out soon.”
“Yeah? I’ll have to start saving up then. What’s Pressbutton up to this week?”
“Dunno, I haven’t got that far yet. I was reading the gig reviews, there’s one for Cockney Upstarts in Camden.”
“It say anything about pigs’ heads?”
Brian laughed. “Nah, does it fuck.” He closed the newspaper, then folded it up and balanced it on his knee while he took out his cigarettes.
Colin reached out for the newspaper and turned to the back pages to read the cartoons. He laughed. “Fucking hell, it gets madder. There’s a woman with light bulbs for tits. I don’t know what that Curt Vile is on, but I wouldn’t mind having some.” He folded the newspaper up with the comic strip on top and handed it back to Brian.
“Nah, drugs are for fucking hippies,” Brian said. He smiled and shook his head while he read the comic strip. After he finished he rolled the paper up and stuffed it into the inside pocket of his leather jacket.
A three-year-old girl skipped past, then turned and stared at Colin and Brian. She pointed excitedly. “Look, mummy! Mummy, look! Look at the funny men!”
Colin pulled a face at the child, then raised his arms and roared. She stepped back and squealed in delight. A woman grabbed the girl’s arm and shook her. “That’s naughty,” she said, “don’t point at strange men.” The girl looked back over her shoulder as she was pulled away. Colin poked out his tongue at her.
“So what are we doing today then?” Colin asked.
Brian shrugged. “Dunno. Just hang out here, I guess. Not much else to do.”
* * *
Later, Colin and Brian were in a record shop on the first floor, looking in the bargain bin for anything interesting among the ex-chart singles. Two punk girls flicked through albums on a rack nearby. One kept looking over her shoulder, but every time Colin caught her eye she looked away.
“Nothing here worth having,” Brian said.
“Speak for yourself,” Colin said. He nodded at the two girls.
Brian looked and smiled, then walked up to them. “All right?”
The girls looked around and nodded to Brian, then looked at each other and smirked. One pulled out a punk compilation album and flipped it over. Colin walked over and peered over her shoulder at the band names printed on it.
“Looks pretty good,” he said. “You buying it then?”
“Nah,” the girl said. “Can’t afford it.” She put the album back in the rack and turned to Colin. “So what happened to your face then?”
Colin felt his cheeks burn, and subconsciously touched the still-tender lump on his forehead. He thought about telling her the truth, then changed his mind. She’d probably think he was a wuss.
“Got it while I were dancing.”
Brian snorted, but didn’t contradict him. The girl’s eyes widened. “What, you got all that from dancing?”
Brian nodded. “Yeah, he’s quite the dancer. You should see him in action some time.”
“Nah, you’re all right.” She turned to leave. “Come on, Becky.”
“Beki?” Colin asked. “What, like as in Beki Bondage?”
Becky smiled. “No, as in Rebecca.”
“What’s your mate’s name then, Becky?” Brian asked.
“Kaz.”
“Bye then, Kaz,” Brian said, waving. “See you, Becky.” As they left he shouted after them. “I’m Brian. The ugly guy is called Colin.”
“Fuck you,” Colin said, grinning. He turned to the album rack and flicked through them while Brian went to have a look at new single releases.
When they left the record shop Becky and Kaz were leaning over the balcony outside, pointing and laughing at shoppers below. Brian sang the opening lines to Last Rockers as he and Colin walked past them. Becky looked around and smiled.
Colin and Brian wandered around the upper level of the shopping centre without any specific destination in mind. Brian paused outside a hifi shop and looked through the window. Colin knew neither of them could afford any of the prices being asked, but that didn’t stop Brian pointing out which ones he was planning to buy in the near future. Colin leaned his back against the shop window and sighed. He was about to take out his cigarettes when he saw Becky and Kaz dart into a nearby shop. As he continued watching, Becky peered out from the shop doorway and ducked back out of sight. Colin smiled to himself and turned to look in the hifi shop window.
“I think them birds are following us,” he said.
Brian turned and looked. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Let’s go and talk to them.”
Brian shook his head. “Nah, I’ve got a better idea.”
Colin and Brian walked on. They kept an eye on reflections in shop windows to make sure they were still being followed, and veered off into Woolworths. They passed aisles of children’s clothes, then toys, and rode down the escalator to ground level.
A fat security guard glared at them from the kitchenware area, then ducked down to hide behind some boxes. Colin waved to him, he scowled back. Colin knew they would be carefully watched until they left Woolworths, with the security guard trying to hide his massive bulk behind whatever was to hand every time they turned around. Normally they would have some fun with him, at least until one of the other security guards showed up and they were escorted off the premises, but Brian seemed to have other ideas.
Colin looked up, saw Becky and Kaz duck out of sight at the top of the escalator. He shrugged to himself and followed Brian to the music section near the ground floor exit. Through strategically placed anti-shoplifter mirrors he saw the security guard limping after him.
Brian stood by a life-size cardboard cut-out of Abba advertising a forthcoming greatest hits compilation. “Hurry up, get behind here,” he said when Colin approached.
“What for?”
“You’ll see.”
Colin glanced over his shoulder. The security guard dodged into a shopping aisle and peered out from its edge. Colin joined B
rian behind the Abba cut-out and crouched down beside him.
“You know he’s already seen us?”
“Who?” Brian asked.
“Fucking Sergeant Hoppalong, he’s been following us since we came downstairs.”
Brian placed a finger over his mouth and cocked his head to one side. Colin heard Becky and Kaz talking nearby.
“They must have gone out,” one said.
“Yeah well, they can’t have gone far,” the other replied.
Brian nodded to Colin. “Now,” he mouthed silently, and leaped out from behind Abba with a roar. The girls jumped and squealed, spun around to face him. Colin walked out and stood beside Brian.
“You looking for us?” Brian asked.
“As if,” Kaz said with a shrug.
“Yeah,” Becky said. “We were wondering if you were going to The Juggler’s Rest on Friday? There’s a band on this week.”
“Who’s on?” Colin asked.
“The Astronauts?”
“Never heard of them, are they any good?”
Brian elbowed Colin in the ribs. “Does it matter? Yeah, of course we’ll be going.”
Becky smiled. “Might see you there, then,” she said, and they both turned and walked away.
Colin watched them pass the security guard on their way to the exit. The man seemed torn between following the girls or resuming his vigil of Colin and Brian.
“You got any money?” Colin asked.
Brian shrugged. “Not much, why?”
“I’m fucking starving. Let’s go back upstairs and get a Criss-Cross and a pot of tea.”
* * *
“Fucking hell, look at the state of that cunt.”
Colin swivelled in his bucket seat to see what Brian was pointing at. Stiggy lurched between the tables in the Woolworths café, heading in the direction of the toilets. His ripped Discharge T-shirt clung to his chest, his baggy green camouflage trousers were caked in mud. Water dripped from his uncombed mass of hair.
“All right, Stiggy?” Colin called out.
Stiggy looked in their direction, nodded, then veered toward their table. He took up a seat next to Brian, who wrinkled his nose at the strong chemical solvent odour on Stiggy’s breath.
Punk and Skinhead Novels Box Set Page 3
