ONE SATURDAY NIGHT A GANG OF THEM MET OUTSIDE THE ABC cinema and couldn’t decide where to go. They clustered round the brightly-lit entrance keeping out of the slanting rain, jostling one another and making rude remarks about the film that was advertised in the illuminated panel: The Four Dimensions of Greta. Inside, in the warmth behind the glass doors, the cashier (an old dear with a hearing-aid) exchanged outraged glances with the woman selling sweets, cigarettes and Butterkist from her cubbyhole barricaded with confectionery.
Crabby voted for the Pendulum but as usual was shouted down. Skush said, ‘What about the White House?’ – a pub right on top of the moors a few yards from the Lancashire-Yorkshire border. Everybody jeered, ‘What about the White House?’ and Skush turned his back, going red, and continued looking at Greta. He felt dizzy from the pills he had been taking, which so far that evening hadn’t had time to produce the desired effect; he needed a couple of pints to really get them working in his head. What he really needed was a girl. What wouldn’t he have given for a girl.
After a lot of pushing, laughing, falling about and futile discussion somebody came up with a plan of action: get the diesel to Manchester Victoria and buy a ticket for the next train scheduled to leave, no matter where it was going.
‘We could end up in bloody Brighton!’ Arthur said, excited at the idea.
‘They don’t go to Brighton from Victoria,’ Kenny said, and twisting his mouth to make the word sound even more scathing: ‘Twat.’
‘They could,’ Arthur said, sticking his chin out. ‘They could. All the lines join up so you could get to Brighton from Victoria. Nothing to stop you.’
‘Nothing to stop you except they don’t bloody go from Victoria.’
‘I didn’t say they did. I said they could. Could!’
‘You bloody well said they did.’
‘I said they could.’
‘Did, you said.’
‘Could.’
Crabby said, ‘We followed the Dale to Brighton.’
‘You didn’t go on the train though,’ Arthur said, behind him on the stairs leading to the upper deck of the bus. There were seven of them and they each took a seat to themselves.
‘I didn’t say owt about a train,’ Crabby snarled.
‘You went on the coach.’
‘I know we went on the coach.’
‘Ellen Smith’s.’
‘Yelloway,’ Crabby said.
‘Was it buggery Yelloway – Yelloway don’t go to Brighton.’
‘How do you know when you weren’t there?’
‘Yelloway don’t go to Brighton.’
‘How do you know when you weren’t there?’
‘I’m telling you.’
‘How do you know when you weren’t there?’
‘It was Ellen Smith’s.’
‘How do you know when …’
This conversation didn’t slacken off and finally tail away until they were on the diesel rattling over the points to Manchester Victoria. It was early for a Saturday night and there weren’t many in the long rocking compartment: just the odd bird dressed to kill who had a boy-friend to meet under the station clock, and the occasional middle-aged couple sitting huddled together in hats, scarves and heavy clothes. Kenny took out the stick of indelible red marker and wrote his name on the back of the seat in scrawling capitals, adding, ‘ASHFIELD RULE OK’.
‘Give us it,’ Crabby said, leaning across the aisle.
‘Piss off, lavatory face.’ Kenny jabbed at him and left a red mark on Crabby’s chin. The others rolled about shrieking.
Andy said quietly, ‘Wherever we go let’s find some birds.’
‘Yeh, let’s get some birds,’ Skush said. His face was very pale and his watery eyes were staring out of his head. The pupils had shrunk to black dots, the proverbial pissholes in snow.
Fester, a short, very broad lad with a hanging gut from drinking too much ale, and enormous square hands like a robot’s, took a metal spike out of his pocket (a pulley spindle specially sharpened at work) and pricked his name in the plastic covering; then for a full-stop pushed the spike clean through the seat where it struck Arthur in the back. It made a hole in his best jacket. There was a commotion, some fist-waving and threatening half-blows, but Arthur wasn’t stupid enough to tangle seriously with Fester, who would have broken his spine in three places and wiped the floor, walls and ceiling with the remains.
Because he wasn’t going to be outdone and because he liked the limelight Kenny stood on the seat and wrote all the dirty four-letter words he knew on the curved panels overhead, the rest of them shouting encouragement and trying to kick his legs from under him.
Andy, the coloured boy, sat with Skush, not taking any part in the general hilarity and merry-making but biding his time and saving his energy for the birds. He had already shafted three that week and badly needed another one tonight – not as badly as Skush, who had masturbated so much recently that he kept glancing fearfully at the palms of his hands as though expecting to see tufts of hair sprouting. Of course he no longer believed that it sent you blind, but he couldn’t overcome the feeling that it was unhealthy and not at all good for you; there was a rumour that it caused mental illness and even leukaemia. Now that the amphetamines had begun to take hold he was experiencing the curious sensation of being stimulated and depressed at one and the same time. His mouth was dry and his stomach felt hollow; he was alert and yet relaxed, calm and yet excited. He could handle a girl now, he knew he could, no doubt about it: just let him get to grips and he’d sweep her off her feet. He imagined a tall slim cool blonde with nicely-shaped knockers – like that one in Pan’s People – who he could trust himself with and who wouldn’t make fun of him. An understanding girl, that’s what he needed, an understanding girl who was a good fuck. He looked down and realised that he had a respectable erection straining at the zip of his jeans.
Just then the ticket-collector came swaying towards them down the central aisle, steadying himself on the backs of seats with alternate hands, and the seven of them ceased their various activities to gawp at him, their faces gone stiff and sullen as if challenging him to check them or to make a remark. As he went by Kenny farted, a tight dry one and obviously difficult to produce. Crabby choked with laughter and finally managed to say in a strangulated voice:
‘The Phantom Arse strikes again.’
‘Jesus Ker-ist!’ Fester said, who happened to be sitting next to Kenny, wafting the air with his robot’s hands and hanging his chin over the edge of the seat in front and pretending to spew.
‘Good arse,’ Kenny said with a satisfied smirk.
‘What’ve yad for your tea – black peas?’
‘Sprouts,’ Kenny said, and became aware that he had strained so hard that a small amount of matter had been released with the wind: he had shit himself.
At Victoria they raced each other to the barrier and leapt shouting – like wild animals suddenly released – across the main concourse and through the people to the A-G ticket office, which was the first one they came to. The man behind the double glass looked at them down his nose, and in reply to Kenny’s question said, ‘Chorley.’
‘Who the fuck wants to go to fucking Chorley?’ Crabby shouted.
‘Fucking Chorley cakes.’
‘Chorley, fuck me.’
‘Where’s fucking Chorley?’
Fester’s friend Pete (known as Shortarse because he was the smallest in the gang and who, for this reason, could always rely on Fester’s protection) said, ‘We might as well go to Chorley as anywhere. Better than being stuck here all night.’
‘Yeh, let’s go,’ Andy said, groping for money.
They all bought tickets and trooped off to the platform to await the 8.17 to Chorley. It was a diesel, and nearly empty. On the journey they passed the time by telling dirty jokes, writing on the mirror in the lavatory, unscrewing the toilet seat and throwing it through the window, and calling obscenely to two young girls with a poodle who sat petrified at the far end of the coach. Kenny was all for approaching them (and would have done) had Andy not restrained him: there were several people on the train and they might have objected. In fact one of them did have words with the ticket-collector when he came round but by that time the train was pulling into Chorley station and the lads, shouting abuse, disembarked. The ticket-collector put his head through the window to say something and at least three of them spat at him.
Chorley was deader than a doornail. It was still raining and the colours of the traffic-lights were smeared on the wet tarmacadam. They steered clear of the posh-looking places – the ones with full car parks and table-lamps lighting net curtains in a rosy glow – and sought out the small corner pubs down backstreets with Snug etched on their opaque windows and tap-rooms thick with pipesmoke and public bars in which cackling women with red lips and wrinkled stockings stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the men drinking cream stout in thirsty gulps. The lads crammed through swing doors with brass fingerplates into a long narrow bar with room enough for only a single line of wrought-iron tables stationed against the wall: between the tables and the drinkers standing at the bar on the worn strip of linoleum there was barely enough space to get by: it was one of the few pubs still remaining that had somehow resisted the encroachment of fitted carpets, Musak, and chicken-in-the-basket. And tonight, of all nights, it was a pub with no beer.
Kenny and the others couldn’t believe it. They ordered seven pints of keg bitter and gazed at the landlord in bewilderment when he told them the bad news. It appeared that the brewery had missed a delivery and all he could offer them was pale ale, stout, and lager in bottles.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Fester said. ‘A pub with no ale.’
They tanked up on Blue Bass and Newcastle Brown, loitering in an untidy group, obviously set apart from the regulars. At least there was a juke-box (a miniature one fastened to the wall) but it was mostly top thirty crap with not a single soul record and hardly any Tamla Motown.
‘Chaaawley,’ Arthur said in a funeral voice.
‘A right dead hole.’
‘No deader than Rochdale,’ Shortarse said.
‘Come off it.’
Skush said, ‘Let’s get where there’s some birds.’ His voice was slurred and he couldn’t focus his eyes properly. Kenny said:
‘Have you any left?’
Skush looked at him stupidly. ‘What?’
‘Bombers.’
‘What for?’
‘Why do you think what for? Give us some.’
‘Give us one then.’
Andy was feeling randy and suggested they move on to find a better place. Fester agreed; not for the sake of trapping off but because he wanted a pint of draught beer instead of the bottled muck they were drinking. On a good night he could shift ten pints and had been known to sink fourteen. Kenny prided himself that he could keep up with Fester – and he could – but he was usually sick afterwards, especially when they rounded the night off with beef pudding and peas and a double portion of chips, bread, butter and tea.
He secretly believed, too, that he could beat Fester in a fight. He had it all worked out: that flabby gut was a prime target for the boot followed by a knee under the chin as he came down gasping, then a double-fist on the back of the neck and a final boot in the cobblers to finish things off. He wouldn’t go for Fester’s little, piggy eyes; no – the gut, the neck, the groin.
‘Are we going or are we not?’ Fester asked irritably.
‘Chaaawley,’ Arthur said again, doing his best to establish it as a catchphrase.
‘Well?’ Fester said, beginning to get on Kenny’s wick.
‘Yeh, come on,’ Shortarse said, backing up his mate.
Kenny wasn’t going to be hurried by anybody, least of all by Fester. ‘Hang about,’ he said, ‘let’s have another,’ wiping his mouth and taking out a pound note.
‘For fuck’s sake—’
‘You go if you want to.’
‘We’re all going,’ Arthur said.
‘Come on then,’ Crabby said.
‘Who wants another?’ Kenny offered, moving to the bar. He was the tallest of them all, and the broadest next to Fester, who was broad but fat with it.
‘Me,’ Andy said, who really wanted to move on but in the event of conflict always sided with Kenny. They stuck close together these two, an unlikely alliance considering that Kenny hated foreigners, and in particular Spades, Pakis and nig-nogs. One reason why he disliked them so much was the horrible stink of their cooking which seeped out of Number 468, two doors away from where he lived, and whose heavy sickly odour stuck in his nostrils every time he passed by. If they’d eat that stuff they’d eat shit.
‘I’ll have a Newcastle,’ Skush said, rapidly losing his sense of time and space. He felt peaceful and at one with the world, despite the shrill buzzing in his ears, and was content to drift along in a muffled cocoon of blithe indifference. He knew there was a girl waiting for him somewhere … somewhere there was a girl waiting for him … somewhere …
Fester capitulated with bad grace. Kenny bought another round and they stood drinking in temporary silence, Fester throwing it back in three swallows. There was an exodus to the lavatory where they stood in line at the stones, having to relieve themselves in two shifts. On the contraceptive dispenser it said:
Approved to British Standard BS 3704
And underneath in felt-tip someone had written:
SO WAS THE TITANIC
It took Crabby several moments to get the point; when he did he laughed hoarsely, splashing urine over his shoes. The others laughed too, and it dissipated the ugly spite that had begun to erode the evening.
Chorley appeared to consist of nothing but a main road – the A6 – with several dark streets leading off it at right-angles. There was a cinema, a couple of Chinese restaurants, a coffee bar (closed), some shops and department stores at the junction where the traffic-lights flashed, and, so it seemed, more than its share of illuminated signs giving directions to Manchester, Bolton, Preston, Southport and the M6.
Kenny thought it a real dumb-hick town. Anybody who lived here must be dead thick. For some reason it annoyed him to think of people actually being stupid enough to stay here, work here, breed here, die here. Probably they saw nothing wrong with it; probably the kids who lived here reckoned it was an OK place. They wouldn’t know any better. He came from a big town where everybody knew the score – but here, Chorley! – for Christ’s sake, it didn’t even have a league football team. They probably thought of themselves as smooth townies and yet they were nothing, washouts, zeroes. He became restless with the need to show them just how pathetic they really were, how this hole in the middle of nowhere didn’t rate when compared with a Big Town.
‘What a dump,’ Crabby moaned.
‘Chaawley,’ Arthur had to say.
They cruised around looking for signs of life and had to admit, eventually, that they’d been lumbered. Or rather they’d lumbered themselves. By this time, however, they were well on the way to becoming kalied and so it didn’t really matter where they were. There were pubs, and pubs sold beer, and beer got you slatted, and getting slatted was what Saturday night was all about.
In the fourth or fifth pub things started to get nasty. Of course they were always on the lookout for trouble – at the back of their minds seeking it, ferreting it out – but this came out of the blue: when a bloke with long greasy hair and a leather jacket with studs passed a remark about Andy. Andy confronted the lad who had made the remark but Kenny stepped between them. He had only been waiting for the opportunity, and now his patience was rewarded.
There was the usual terse dialogue spoken in an undertone consisting of ‘what did you say?’ and ‘I was talking to him,’ and ‘what’s it to you?’ and ‘if you want to pick a fight pick it with me’, and ‘don’t come it’, and ‘none of your business’, and ‘don’t get smart with me’, and ‘say that one more time’, and ‘I wasn’t talking to you’, and ‘when you insult him you insult me’, and ‘keep your nose out of it’, and ‘let’s see if you’re as tough as your talk’ and ‘who do you think you’re pushing?’ and ‘let’s have you outside’, and ‘you and whose army?’, and in no time at all a space has cleared around them and they are alone in a circle and the rest of the pub has gone quiet and the barmaid has run through to the tap-room to fetch the landlord.
Kenny and the lad with the greasy hair stare at each other, their eyes inches apart, pushing the other in the chest, at first gently and then with increasing force. On the fringe of the clearing the others stand shoulder to shoulder facing their opposite numbers across the worn carpet, several of them slipping their hands casually into their pockets. It has the makings of a right old barney.
‘Outside,’ the landlord says crisply, grasping their elbows and pushing them towards the door. Kenny and the lad with greasy hair half-resist, still staring hard at each other, still murmuring threats under their breaths, being propelled reluctantly to the cold outer air and the slick-wet pavement and the lights gleaming through the haze of drizzle.
Fester closes in behind Kenny’s back; Kenny’s eyes don’t betray a flicker as the transfer of the sharpened spindle takes place from hand to hand. He already has the broken half of a hacksaw blade in the back pocket of his Levis but he’s not averse to consolidating his armoury. Also he has the boots with the reinforced toecaps and the chunky steel washers that fit snugly on to the fingers of his right hand. His shoulder bangs against the door, there’s a glint of reflection from the massed bottles behind the bar, a shaft of cold air touches his legs, the door-hinges creak, and the two of them are thrust into outer darkness.
The other’s eyes are hidden in shadow but Kenny can remember them: blue slits beneath eyebrows that bridge the nose and meet in the middle: a naked animal hatred coming at him through the holes in the skull. Kenny slips his fingers through the washers; the spindle is partly concealed behind his back in the folds of his jacket. They tentatively circle round like two dogs sniffing each other before a fight.
‘You called my mate a nigger,’ Kenny says. It is important not to let the cause of the dispute be forgotten. There has to be a reason; it must be spelled out and made to bear the weight of their mutual hatred. It must generate anger.
‘I said it to him, not you.’
‘Now you’ve got me.’
‘What’s up, is he chicken?’
‘You’ve got me,’ Kenny repeats. ‘So you’ll never know, will you?’
‘Thinks he’s a tough nut,’ calls one of the lad’s mates.
‘You’re next,’ Kenny says.
‘Have him, Neil.’
‘I’ll fucking have him,’ Neil says.
‘Come on then,’ Kenny goads him. ‘Fucking come on then.’
‘Right.’
‘Right then.’
‘They’re here,’ a woman’s voice says, and quick as magic a Panda car is at the kerb and three policemen are thrusting through the crowd, pushing bodies aside and reaching out. Kenny hits the lad with the greasy hair in the face with the row of washers, and runs. His collar is grabbed and he lashes out blindly with his boot, meeting no resistance. A blow from what seems a sledge-hammer lands on his ear and he feels himself going down, off-balance, failing sideways, the hand still holding his collar. He’s on the pavement amongst a lot of legs, squirming, and goes on all-fours through them, somebody or something heavy landing on his back; then off his knees and on to his feet and almost running into the wall before finding his bearings and clomping full-pelt towards the main road.
• • •
‘You could have taken him,’ said Fester, propping his feet on the seat opposite. For the sake of expediency they had decided to catch the first train back to Manchester.
‘I could have taken him but for the rozzers,’ Kenny said. ‘He was thick as pigshit.’
‘You got him a good one,’ Arthur said, grinning, showing the gaps in his teeth.
‘Who?’
‘The greaser.’
‘Yeh.’ Kenny put his hand to his left ear, which felt as though it was encased in rubber. And so tender he could hardly bear to touch it. ‘I could have taken that fucking copper as well,’ he said intensely.
‘He was a big bastard,’ Crabby said. ‘Broad.’
‘On his own I could have taken him.’
‘What a dump though,’ Crabby said, wiping the condensation off the window and trying to look out at the dark rushing countryside.
‘Chaaawley,’ Arthur said.
‘What was the name of that place?’
‘What?’
‘That pub.’
‘Dunno.’
‘Royal Oak or summat,’ Shortarse said.
‘No, that was the big place we passed. Didn’t go in.’
Fester raised himself off the seat and released a long, slow, full-bodied fart, his eyes closed and his lips compressed in a small beatific smile. The ensuing laughter was mingled with complaints and obscene abuse. Then Arthur let one go – a rasper – and they were all at it, and soon it was a contest, the idea being to see who could release the most in a given period. After the first round, Crabby, Fester, Shortarse and Kenny were leading, all managing to produce ten or more, and the others dropped out. In the second round Crabby’s energy and wind failed him and he could barely achieve three, and pathetic squeaks they were; Fester started well but fizzled out towards the end of the thirty-second period, and so it was up to Kenny and Shortarse to compete against each other in the final round to decide who deserved the title of ‘King Arse’. Arthur announced the start of the thirty seconds and the chant began as the two finalists twisted and strained and contorted themselves to extract the maximum emissions from the dwindling supply.
‘… seven … eight… nine… ten … eleven …’
It was neck and neck, fart for fart, and the total rose to fifteen … sixteen … seventeen … where it stopped in apparent stalemate, the two contestants bending and doubling-up in a frantic effort to produce the winner. With seven seconds to go Shortarse managed yet one more.
‘Eighteen!’ went the chant.
His face nearly blue, Kenny equalised, knowing his underpants were caked but refusing to be beaten. Arthur counted off the remaining seconds. Shortarse was done for, and it looked as if the contest would result in a dead-heat, until with a last desperate contortion Kenny released a low-pitched bubbling sound which was generally acknowledged to be legitimate and allowable.
Kenny flopped back on to the seat, triumphant but physically uncomfortable. The other passengers in the coach sat facing the front, their faces expressionless, their feet positioned carefully together so that they wouldn’t obtrude into the aisle.
Rochdale Observer, 6 March 1974
JEALOUSY MOTIVE
OF ‘CLOCKWORK
ORANGE’ ATTACK
A TEENAGE JEALOUSY led to a Rochdale schoolboy being lured to spare ground where he was beaten with chains and hit on the head by a bottle, magistrates heard yesterday.
Two boys, both aged fifteen, were put under supervision for two years by Rochdale Juvenile Court, and a third boy, also fifteen, was remanded to the care of the local authority for twenty-one days until he can be placed in a remand home.
The boy’s mother told magistrates his behaviour at home was terrible.
She added: ‘He thinks nothing of hitting me or the other children. I can’t cope with him any more.
‘I have an awful time when he is in the house and I am glad when he is out. He has also hit his grandma who is an old woman.’
The father of one boy said he had not noticed the vicious streak in his son before, and the father of the other boy said he could not understand this ‘Clockwork Orange-type of thing’.
All three boys admitted wounding a boy, who, said Inspector Frank Jones, prosecuting, had left home with a friend to go to a dance.
They were met from the bus by the three youths who chatted with them.
Suddenly, the three boys pulled out metal chains and started to hit the boy on the head and body.
He tried to run away but one of the boys picked up a glass bottle and hurled it at his bead. He was wounded by the bottle which broke on impact.
His friend tried to intervene and he was also attacked with the chains.
One of the attackers told police that the boy they had first attacked had been going out with a girl his friend wanted to go out with. The attack had been planned.