THE GANG MET ON THE CORNER OF MILKSTONE ROAD AND Tweedale Street a few yards away from where the old Victory Cinema had once been (the building was now a warehouse); there were eleven of them, including the girls, and they were out for trouble. This part of town was Paki-land, the old grand houses fallen to wrack and ruin and taken over by a whole colony of immigrant families. The windows of what had been corner shops selling sliced bread and floor-polish were now heaped with odd-looking packets bearing indecipherable labels and containing even stranger foodstuffs: greyish-coloured beans, small hard red pellets, curly white things like dried-up slugs, and what appeared to be old brittle grass-cuttings. Long sausage-shapes wrapped in cloth hung from skewers, and in the dim interior cardboard boxes were stacked several deep over most of the floor, squashed on top of one another, with just enough room between them for a beaten path from door to counter. At one end of Tweedale Street the pretty architecture of a Mormon church marked the southern outpost of the territory, while at the other it petered out in a maze of backstreets before the rounded dome of a Catholic church, St John the Baptist, announced the ultimate boundary. Beyond the church lay Drake Street with its pubs, snack bars, furniture stores, men’s outfitters and the offices of the Rochdale Observer.
It was the coldest time of the year – though the snow and hail were yet to come – with a damp blue fog lurking in the alleys and tumbling sluggishly along the gutters. Overhead the lights took on a greenish tinge, and when you looked along the length of Tweedale Street they vanished into an opaque glow, like a row of torchbearers marching steadfastly towards an unknown and mysterious destination. Buses with cloudy windows and sides running with condensation appeared and disappeared, wafting cold air along the pavements in their wake.
Kenny and the others stood in a shop doorway, smoking and scrutinising the faces of passers-by in the gloom. They talked amongst themselves of ‘mugging’ someone – as if the word itself, in classifying the crime so that it fitted an official category, opened up new possibilities. When you mugged someone you did it for a reason and not merely for kicks or out of blind chance. Fester was all for grabbing the first person who came along, thrusting him into a doorway and threatening violence unless he parted with his wallet. Andy said that that wasn’t the way to do it: you had to plan things, like the police did, like crooks did, on TV. Get one of the girls to lure a Paki down an entry and then when you had him on his own in the dark, stick the boot in quick. He wouldn’t have a chance with them all around him; they would scare the shit out of him.
‘Yeh,’ Kenny said, lounging in the shop doorway, ‘that’s right. They go mad for a white girl,’ and saw Andy look at him swiftly.
‘Which one of you two?’ Fester said to the girls.
Crabby said, ‘We could hide and watch them for a bit. See what the Paki does, whether he gets his dick out.’
‘So you can have a wank,’ Arthur said, snorting, which prompted Crabby to thump him, and they wrestled on the edge of the pavement in the glare of passing headlights. Kenny said:
‘Stop farting around. We got to do it without anybody knowing it was us.’ He pulled Janice against him roughly. She snuggled under his arm.
‘It’s a bloody good idea, that,’ Shortarse said. ‘Get Cil or Jan to give them a flash—’
‘Bog off,’ Cil said from the corner of her mouth.
‘What’s up with Virgin Mary?’ said one of the lads.
‘Who hasn’t been inside your knickers?’ asked Arthur rhetorically.
‘Shut up, pig.’
Arthur grabbed her and she tried to kick him in the privates; they spun round on the pavement, Arthur bent at the waist to protect himself, Cil hopping on one foot and kicking with the other. A man and a woman came along, stepping into the road to avoid them. The man muttered something and went on.
‘What was that, squire?’ Fester said.
Crabby said, ‘Are you talking to us or chewing a brick?’
Janice’s arms were under Kenny’s jacket, hugging him for warmth. She could feel the wide rib-cage, the tenseness of his stomach muscles, the vibrations of his heart. She wore a pair of black slacks and a new navy-blue blazer with yellow piping along the edges; Kenny could smell her mother’s perfume. Her young bony face was somewhere below his shoulder, hidden in shadow. He felt strong, protective, invincible. She was his girl, all right, Kenny’s bird. The fact brought comfort to them both. Janice said, ‘Are you coming back tonight?’
‘Do you want me to?’
‘If you want,’ Janice said quietly.
‘But do you want me to?’
‘It’s up to you.’
‘Hey,’ said Kenny suddenly. ‘Come back to my place.’
‘What about your dad?’
‘He’s away working.’
‘What will your mum say?’
Kenny made a disparaging sound and flicked his cigarette away, as though any consideration of his mother’s feelings was beneath contempt. The mist was thickening. He thought: Janice is just like the old lady, really. Dumb. Why were they all so dumb, women? They didn’t know a thing. At least he respected the old man; but there again, she could twist him round her little finger when she wanted to. Kenny would never allow a bird to get the better of him. They were good for one thing but once you’d said that you’d said the lot. This put him in mind of Eileen, the girl on Haberdashery in Woolworth’s, the one he’d never got to grips with. There was nothing to stop him having a stroll round there one afternoon: it was a public place, not much they could say, and if they did he would tell them to stuff it. She had that look about her, Eileen, that look of an older girl who’d been around and knew the score. There wouldn’t be any stink finger with Eileen – straight in, knickers down, and hold that till it spits at you.
‘Are we going or aren’t we?’ Arthur said, banging his forehead against the plate-glass window.
‘Wait your sweat,’ Kenny said. He bit his nails and looked up the street towards the Catholic church which he couldn’t see: the street-lights were now faint and blurred in the fog, like feeble glow-worms in a long blue underwater tunnel. The air was cold and clammy, chilling to the skin, seeping into their clothes. Occasionally shrouded figures came at them out of the gloom and hurried by, mostly couples.
‘Fuck this for a lark,’ Fester complained, pushing into the doorway past Kenny and Janice to get out of the damp.
One of the lads said, ‘What are we hanging round here for?’
‘Shut up, moron,’ Kenny said, immediately incensed.
They all went quiet as four Pakistani youths came along, walking to town, and in spite of the cold wearing thin cotton jackets and open-necked shirts. Crabby sniggered as they passed by, following them for a few paces and copying the way they delicately walked in their thin-soled pointed shoes. He came back, mincing along the pavement in his enormous red boots.
Andy gave Kenny a cigarette. ‘Let’s wait till later on,’ he said. ‘The best time is after the pubs shut when they’re coming back from town. They’ll be pissed then and it’ll be dead easy.’
Kenny hadn’t thought of this but he didn’t want to give the impression that he hadn’t thought of it. He nodded slowly, as if considering the suggestion and weighing it carefully; a random clutter of formless notions shuttled about inside his head, not one of them clearer or more distinct than any other.
‘Trouble is,’ said Andy again, thinking aloud this time, ‘they might have spent up by then. They’ll have nowt left.’
Kenny nodded. He hadn’t thought of this either. ‘Could be,’ he said. He didn’t know what else to say.
Janice shivered against him, her eyes blank and staring out at the fog. With Kenny beside her she was prepared to wait till Doomsday, till Eternity, till The Cows Came Home. But Kenny knew he had to make a decision soon, he had to act. When you were the leader you had to take all the responsibility, and more than that, you had to be prepared to take risks. At the match he had proved to them – and himself – that while others hesitated Kenny Seddon got stuck in. And he was the only one who had to report to the Juvenile Liaison Officer: none of the others had to do that.
Suddenly be felt stifled. It came over him like a wave of weariness, as though the strength in his limbs had turned to water. It all seemed futile, as though there was no point in anything he did. He was in a closed, claustrophobic world of fog and thwarted ambition and stunted opportunity; he imagined it was similar to being trapped inside a strait-jacket, that sense of powerlessness and the inability to take action, either positive or negative, for or against. From the depths of the doorway Fester said:
‘I feel like a bleeding brass monkey.’
There was a chorus of complaint, Crabby whining and Arthur kicking the pavement.
Skush said, ‘Somebody’s coming,’ and silence fell.
Kenny waved them out of sight round the corner and pushed Janice on to the pavement. She turned to look at him, puzzled and uncertain, rather lost on her own in the fog. Kenny stabbed his finger and withdrew into the shadow.
‘Dirty sods, Pakis,’ Fester murmured in his ear, and it was indeed a lone Pakistani who emerged from the dampness and gloom, his head bent forward and his narrow pointed shoulders swathed in a woolly scarf. He hesitated when he saw Janice, paused in his stride, and was about to go on when she said something to him. Kenny couldn’t hear the words but it enraged him that she had thought of something to say and that it was sufficient to make the man stop; it would have been better had she been too timid or had the man dismissed her and gone on his way. But he didn’t, following her round the corner into the sidestreet and into an alley that was in total blackness.
They waited, Kenny and Fester, and then walked as quickly and as quietly as they could along the street and straight into the alley. It was slippery underfoot, the wet millstone setts sloping to a central drainage channel. They advanced a few paces, unafraid, trying to distinguish shapes; somewhere ahead of them were Janice and the Paki, and beyond them, presumably, the others. Kenny and Fester stopped, shoulder to shoulder, almost filling the alley, and there was an unnerving dead silence. Kenny couldn’t hear breathing or the rustle of clothing or a foot scraping the setts or anything. It was as though an error had been made, that perhaps this wasn’t the right alley after all. The Paki had worked magic and spirited her away, and Kenny was standing alone in the darkness listening to the internal sounds behind his eardrums and the deafening hush of silence.
And then a voice said distinctly, inches away it seemed, ‘Please. I’m sorry. Let me go.’
Kenny put out his hand and touched a face.
Somebody started slobbering and moaning, but it was the kind of sound a child would make, not a grown man. Kenny felt for the lapels of a jacket and held them. He said:
‘Give us your money. That’s all we’re after.’
‘Please,’ the man whispered. ‘Please…’
‘Your money,’ Kenny repeated. ‘That’s all we want. Give us your money. We don’t want to hurt you. That’s right,’ he said, feeling the texture of notes. ‘What’s in your pockets?’ The man fumbled, dropped coins on the floor, and Kenny took the rest and put them in his pocket.
‘Please let me go. I am sorry. She asked me to come …’
The words tailed off into a wailing sound that was half crying and half a tuneless prayer, as if the man were looking to his heaven and begging forgiveness for his sins and seeking merciful deliverance.
‘You didn’t know she was my girl,’ Kenny said, ‘did you?’
The wailing went on, a quivering nasal sound that rose and fell with jarring monotony. Interspersed in it were words that Kenny didn’t understand. He had hold of the man’s lapels again.
‘I bet if we hadn’t been here you’d have fucked her,’ he said – the wailing went on – ‘wouldn’t you?’
‘No… no… please. I wouldn’t.’
‘Wouldn’t you?’ Kenny insisted, not letting go.
‘No…’
‘Wouldn’t you?’ Kenny said, and butted the man in the face with the top of his head.
Janice moved away to stand with Cil against the far wall as the lads took turns going in methodically in relay so that everybody had a fair number of kicks apiece. The wailing had stopped. There were sounds – difficult to identify and not really human at all – which were like short, strangled gasps: like somebody with a fit of choking who can’t properly get his breath.
At least this was positive action, Kenny felt, kicking the lump in the darkness. He had made the decision after all; they couldn’t accuse him of not planning it right and carrying it out. He even forgave Janice – she hadn’t actually done anything wrong, he reflected – stepping back to let Fester in. It had all been part of the plan. It had been necessary, her chatting the Paki up, in order to get him into the alley away from the main road. And the little skinny bastard – the bastard! – had actually had the intention of putting his thin brown hands inside her clothing and pulling out his obscene brown dick and very likely making her do something obscene with it. Kenny thought how true it was what they said about them: they really were lower than animals, and on top of that the smell of their cooking made him puke.
• • •
Later – when they had got as far away as they considered safe (and Kenny and Janice had had a cuddle as they walked along) – Fester led the way into the Ship at the end of Milnrow Road. He was beaming across his wide red face, glad to be out of the cold, happy to be near a bar with enough money for a night’s bevvy freely available, and with the loose easy feeling he usually got after a spot of exercise. He looked down at the spattered toe-caps of his boots and rubbed them on the back of his trouser-legs.
The Ship catered for two separate types of clientele: the old never-say-die regulars who sat at scrubbed tables peering at their cards and dominoes through a fog that was thicker inside the taproom than outside in the street; and in the other room with the big bow-window of coloured glass and the old-fashioned jukebox in the corner, a young crowd which consisted mainly of underage scrubbers off the Waithlands Estate (known as Tintown) and a group of boys who looked like left-overs from the Fifties: greasy quiffs, leather jackets, crutch-tight jeans and blackheads. Fester belonged with them somehow. His face and manner had a dated look, as though he’d stepped off a Bill Haley record sleeve. In comparison Kenny and the rest were fresh-faced kids with the bloom of youth still on them, and with an air of reckless naivity, like giddy young colts eager to poke their noses into life.
Kenny bought two rounds with the money and found that he still had three dabs left. He thought of keeping some by for the old lady – he hadn’t given her anything for three consecutive Fridays now – but it remained a thought.
‘We can have us a chippie supper!’ Crabby said excitedly.
‘It’s only nine o’clock,’ Shortarse said. ‘Bags of time.’
‘Drinking time,’ Fester said darkly, keeping up the image of champion boozer.
Kenny was feeling good. His doubts had vanished, he had money in his pocket, the night lay ahead like an unplundered tomb. And he had Janice; he loved her and she loved him.
‘Let’s go to the Lake,’ he said suddenly. Everybody looked at him as if he’d gone crazy. But when he was in the mood to do something Kenny swept all before him. They drank up (Fester muttering something unintelligible), walked to town and caught the Number 8 bus to the terminus near the Fisherman’s Inn. Strangely enough, it was clear up there, the stars like icy pinpricks and the Lake cold and black and silent beneath the frosty air. On the Rakewood Viaduct the motorway traffic buzzed like a quiet yet angry swarm of bees.
‘It’s the highest motorway bridge in England,’ Shortarse said.
‘The longest,’ Arthur said.
‘The fucking highest,’ Shortarse said, ‘twatface.’
Andy said, ‘I didn’t see the Greasers in the cafe.’
‘They’ll be up,’ Kenny said.
‘Where we going to drink up here?’ Fester complained. ‘There’s only the Fisherman’s and the Beach. They won’t let us in.’
Kenny curled his lip at Fester. ‘Here,’ he said to Cil. There was a rosy glow in his stomach and there was nothing that could stop him. He put two pound notes in her hand and told her to go into the Fisherman’s for a half-bottle of Scotch: she was older-looking than Janice and would pass for eighteen: he fancied her at odd moments – like now – but there was an unspoken understanding amongst them that she was Andy’s. He wouldn’t touch a mate’s bird; not, that is, unless it was put before him on a plate.
Across the smooth dead surface of the Lake the lights of the Lakeside Restaurant shone hard and bright in the still air. A car’s headlights flashed briefly over the water and turned a semi-circle to follow the dirt road which wound along the edge of the Lake for half a mile till it changed into tarmacadam. There was nothing moving in the Lake, not a yacht, not a buoy, not a fish.
‘It’s the coldest water in England, this,’ said Shortarse. Arthur scoffed. ‘It is!’ Shortarse said, his voice an octave higher.
‘You’ll be telling us next there’s a village underneath it,’ Kenny said, which was the resident local rumour, handed down over several generations.
‘There bloody is!’ Shortarse said, oblivious to the fact that he was having the piss taken out of him.
‘And you hear the church bells ringing under the water…’
‘You can!’ Shortarse said. ‘I know somebody who’s heard it.’
‘Get away,’ he was told scathingly by several of the others.
Fester said, ‘I didn’t know that about the bell.’ Andy stuck his finger in Kenny’s ribs and they laughed at each other.
A crescent of moon was coming into view, creeping up from behind the dark rounded shapes of the moors. Its steady, unwavering reflection lay in a clear straight line across the Lake. Out of nowhere it occurred to Kenny that the reflection wouldn’t exist if there were nobody there to look at it. For a moment it gave him a strange feeling, as if he were standing a distance away from himself and could see his life as one amongst many others. Several things became clear – for just an instant – and then it was as if the water had shivered and the reflection had been broken and his thoughts fell down again in a muddled heap.
They saw the Greasers arrive on their gleaming machines: a roar of exhausts and their headlamps like big white eyes in single file.
‘Six,’ Andy said, wiping the neck of the bottle and handing it to Kenny.
Janice felt the suffocation in her chest – of fear, exhilaration and the dreadful unknown. She couldn’t understand why she, of all people, should have been chosen to be here in this place at this time. What had she done to deserve such good fortune? Actually to be here at the live happening centre where real events were taking place, and not moping alone in some lost, dead corner where life was a mere grey blur. Her friends at school were like sheltered little bunnies: they would be sitting at home now watching TV, or helping their mothers bake a cake, or if they were lucky, dancing to Gary Glitter at the Church Youth Club. Janice wanted to feel that at last her life had started, that the adventure had begun, and here she was in the middle of an experience.
Crabby said, ‘I bet them Hondas cost a packet.’
‘Who was it, did you notice?’ Arthur asked Kenny.
‘Do you think there’ll be any more coming?’ Shortarse said nervously.
The eleven of them walked along the edge of the road like the platoon of soldiers in a movie Kenny had seen called ‘A Walk In The Sun’. He remembered that he had seen it one Sunday afternoon at Janice’s, the two of them sprawled on the settee, Mrs Singleton sitting in the armchair and blowing out gusts of smoke across the screen.
When they reached the cafe they stood to one side in the darkness and looked in through the open door at the six Greasers innocently drinking coffee and talking with cigarettes in the corners of their mouths. Their lank hair hung down on to their shoulders and at least three of them had skin complaints. The proprietor was standing behind the makeshift counter pretending to be doing something so that he wouldn’t have to leave the cafe unattended. The sound of a television jingle for garden peas could be heard coming from the room at the back.
All but two of the gang outside stationed themselves quietly in the shadow adjacent to the door, while these two – Kenny and Andy – stood in full view and each broke a headlamp by putting the heels of their boots through the glass. It tinkled daintily in the cold air as it fell to the ground. As three of the Greasers stood up slowly, a kind of bewildered astonishment on their faces, and then came out in a rush, Fester and the others stuck out their feet across the doorway to trip them up; anyway, that was the plan, but the plan didn’t work, for none of the three fell down.
The one in front – a tall lad, over six feet – kicked Kenny on the knee-cap and Kenny staggered into the gutter, cursing and almost crying. The pain didn’t seem to last long, because the next thing he knew he was scraping somebody with the broken end of a whisky bottle. There was blood on his forehead (somebody else’s blood: he had felt it spatter) and it seemed that the road was filled with bodies. How could there be so many? Had more Greasers arrived on silent machines, coasting along the Lake road like black leather ghosts? Kenny tried to count the number of bodies but every time he got to four he was interrupted and his concentration was required elsewhere.
It must have been going on for at least a minute before he realised that somebody was screaming, like one of those sounds that by its intensity makes itself inaudible. Kenny saw a bright red gash across somebody’s forehead and a curtain of blood blotting out the features until it reached the O of the open mouth, all the teeth ringed with blood and standing out very white like a row of beads. And then something clouted him really hard on the back of the head and made him mad. He went mindless, forgot the Greasers, forgot the screaming, forgot the blood, lashing out with boots and fists without seeing who or what he was hitting. He did remember, after a while, to use the bottle, but when he looked at the end of his arm it was gone. He looked on the ground for it but could see nothing except shards of broken glass, one of which had ‘Lucas’, embossed in it. His left hand was smarting, and when he brought it to his mouth it seemed that something was wrong with his knuckles – one of them, at any rate, which didn’t appear to be in line with the others: it was raised up like the end of a knobbly walking stick. And shite, he realised, it was beginning to throb like buggery.
Several of the bodies were now lying down; Kenny ran at them in turn and put the boot in before running from the lighted strip of pavement outside the cafe and into the darkness in the direction of Smithy Bridge Road. He sucked his sore knuckle as he ran, scriking.