LUTON IS 163 MILES FROM ROCHDALE WHICH MEANS THAT the coach has to leave the town-centre by eleven o’clock at the latest. The day is wet and miserable, with the coach whipping up a funnel of spray in its wake as it heads south down the M6. In the front seats sit the staunch, respectable, middle-aged supporters who follow Rochdale’s ailing progress in the Third Division out of a kind of stoic self-denial: they feel themselves to be martyrs whose redemption will come through sacrifice to a lost cause. In the back sit the rowdies. They see the country as divided into battle-lines – a number of isolated feudal kingdoms constantly at war with one another which send out rival bands of marauders to plunder and pillage and spread alarm amongst the citizenry. They are the spearhead of attack, infiltrating behind enemy lines, with memories of past victories to sustain them and the promise of fresh glories to come. Their scarves flap damply out of the windows and empty beer cans roll about under the seats.
Eileen sits in the corner window seat next to Kenny; the bumpy coach ride is making him randy and once or twice he has clumsily attempted to put his hand on her knee but Eileen has rebuffed him with an ease that is almost patronising. She seems to possess a vast amount of knowledge about life which unsettles Kenny and somehow makes him feel inadequate. Janice he can handle – no problem – and the lads don’t worry him either (with them it’s a matter of bluff and double-bluff, beating them down with a word, a look, a gesture) but with Eileen he gets the impression that she can see right through him and has the uncomfortable feeling that she might even be laughing at him. She has what he considers to be a very sexy mouth: her teeth are large and protrude slightly, making her lips permanently moist and available. Her flat open stare takes everything in, cool, withdrawn and yet watchful, as if the world passing before her eyes contains nothing that would surprise or alarm her. She has it all weighed up, Kenny decides, and he doesn’t know whether he likes it.
‘What about your girlfriend?’
‘Who says she’s my girlfriend?’ Kenny says predictably. He will never admit to anything, especially the truth.
‘You were with her that night.’
‘Yeh. Well…’ he shrugs unconvincingly, ‘…she’s just a bird, that’s all.’ And then adds mysteriously: ‘She was useful to me.’
Eileen turns away from the window to look at him. Spray fans out like steam and the tyres make a sucking noise on the tarmac. ‘How do you mean?’
‘We pulled a job together,’ Kenny says, feeling the need to impress her, show her that he can play the game as well as anybody. At the same time he’s alarmed at his own rashness; if you talk too much you never know where it might lead …
‘You mean you stole something?’
‘Yeh, sort of.’ He has to go on now that he’s gone this far, and tells her the story of the break-in: four meters in one night: clean away without a smell of the law.
Eileen is impressed. He has her full undivided attention.
‘It’s better than working,’ Kenny boasts.
‘How much did you get?’
‘A few dabs.’
‘How much though?’
‘Seventeen quid.’
‘Seventy?’
‘Seventeen.’
‘Out of four meters?’
‘We’d have got more,’ Kenny says quickly, ‘only they’d just been emptied. Still, it was better than nowt.’
‘Didn’t the police ask any questions?’
‘The cops,’ Kenny says as though she’d made a small joke. ‘Yeh, they asked Janice and her mother but her mother was away for the weekend and Janice said the place must have been broken into Sunday afternoon because everything was all right till then.’
‘I thought you said Friday night.’
‘We did the meters on Friday night,’ Kenny says, lowering his voice, ‘but Jan told the police it was Sunday because that’s when the new lodger was due to arrive. What we did was to break in the other three flats – except his – so they’d think it was him. We opened his door with the key and just did the meter. On the others we broke the locks as well.’
Eileen thinks this out and says admiringly, ‘You planned it all.’
‘Yeh, course I did,’ Kenny says, lighting a cigarette and sinking back in the seat.
‘They suspected the lodger instead of you.’
‘Right.’
‘So they got him instead.’
‘No,’ Kenny says. ‘He never showed up. He’s still in Shrewsbury.’
• • •
After the match – which the visiting team lose 2-1 – Kenny and some of the Rochdale supporters go on a tiny rampage through the streets of Luton. It has to be tiny: there are only eight of them, Eileen and another girl included. At one point they are chased by a dozen-or-so Luton supporters and lose their way, and by the time they get back to the ground the car park is deserted: the coach has gone. It is dark and cold, although the rain has stopped.
Kenny, unblooded so far that day, leads the way to the nearest pub and they sit among the early drinkers feeding themselves with crisps, cheese snacks and cold meat pies. One of the lads says, ‘What are we going to do now?’
‘No use moaning,’ Kenny says. ‘We’ve missed it and that’s that.’
‘I’m not moaning; I’m just saying what are we going to do now? We’ve nowhere to kip.’
‘For Christ’s sake stop worrying. You get on my bleeding nerves.’
‘I’m not worrying. I just said—’
‘All right. Forget it.’
‘How are we going to get back?’ Eileen says. She asks the question out of interest, not in the least anxious or perturbed, and Kenny admires her for it.
‘Thumb it.’
‘Tonight?’
‘No, tomorrow.’
‘But what about tonight?’
‘We’ll be all right,’ Kenny says, holding her eyes with his own. She meets his look openly, on equal terms, without a trace of archness. He wonders what it is going to be like when his mouth is pressing against her open wet lips, his tongue working away behind her protruding teeth – anticipating the experience with a kind of scared lust.
Fortunately, between the eight of them, there is enough money to buy beer for the evening and by eight-thirty they are all merry and slightly bored. They are in a strange town, among people who speak with an unfamiliar accent, and the possibilities are endless: it is simply a matter of deciding on a course of action which promises the most thrills. Even roaming the streets is exhilarating because every corner brings a new and unexpected landscape; everything is so different from their northern industrial experience that the air itself seems charged with mystery and danger.
They try several pubs, working their way towards the centre of town. Kenny can’t get used to the beer, which seems thick and dark and slightly sweet-tasting: northern beer is lighter with a sharper edge to it. He walks with his arm around Eileen’s waist and hers around his, now and then catching a passing whiff of her smell whose strangeness and unfamiliarity makes him conscious that beneath her clothes is an unknown body, with its dark recesses and secret places.
‘I hope they don’t catch you,’ Eileen says.
‘Who’s that?’
‘The police.’
He gives her a sidelong glance. ‘Do you reckon they will?’
‘I don’t know,’ Eileen says. ‘Anyway, you can always say you were with me.’
This is one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to Kenny. That – and the beer – fills his stomach with a rosy warmth. He hugs her to him as they walk along and then says in a low voice so the others can’t hear, ‘I fancied you a lot when I worked at Woolies.’
‘You never said owt.’
‘We don’t where I come from.’
‘I fancied you,’ Eileen says after a slight pause.
This is Kenny’s cue to slip his hand inside her coat and squeeze her breast. She makes a sound, a moan that is almost inaudible, which thrills Kenny down to his boots. He feels the tug of a gathering erection.
Much of the bravado seems to leave the group after the pubs shut at eleven, though the hard reality of a cold night ahead with nowhere to sleep is disoriented by the beer swimming in their heads: it is an inarticulate fear hovering just out of reach outside the periphery of an alcoholic haze. Down a dark windy backstreet Kenny stops suddenly at the sight of a white plastic sign swinging on creaking hinges. It reads: Liberal Club. Two of the lads run to the street corners to keep an eye out while the others examine the door, studded with iron rivets.
‘We’ll never do this,’ one of them says.
Kenny calls them together. ‘Round the back. Try the windows.’ Eileen goes with Kenny and helps him shin up to a window with a long vertical rectangular fanlight. He stands on her shoulders to reach the ledge, scrabbling in the darkness for a handhold, and grips the lower edge of the fanlight which stands proud of the main window. He feels along it, standing with the toes of his boots on the ledge and his arms outstretched overhead, hoping to find a catch or a projection of some kind which he can use as a point of leverage. There isn’t one. He curses and in a fit of temper pulls at the lower edge of the fanlight, which swings open and upwards without a sound. The abruptness of it, the silence – and the shock – nearly send him off-balance, and for a moment he hovers on the toes of his boots before grabbing the frame of the open window and hauling himself upright.
‘What’s wrong?’ Eileen says, alarmed at the flurry of movement above her.
‘I’ve fucking done it!’ Kenny whispers, ‘get the others.’
‘Fucking great!’ Eileen says.
Kenny wants to shout in jubilation. The bastards can knock him down as much as they want to but Kenny Seddon always has the last laugh. It’s easy to beat the system: a doddle – a meter here, a break-in there, a girlfriend at home and a fast bird away. Why work and sweat when the world lies defenceless before you, begging to be plundered and fucked and made to look a prize tool?
The first thing the lads do is help themselves to drinks at the bar. The pumps are working and it’s pints all round. Kenny opens the cash-register but it’s too much to hope for that he will find any money; in fact there’s a handful of one and two-pence pieces.
One of the lads says, ‘Find summat to eat, I’m starving.’
‘What is there? Look in that tin.’
‘Crisps.’
‘Salted peanuts.’
‘Shit, look at all these fags. Kenny!’
‘Keep it down, for fucks sake,’ Kenny says. ‘Take what you want but pipe down.’
They guzzle several pints of beer each and then start on shorts. Glasses are smashed and bodies crash about in the gloomy depths of the hall, footsteps thumping on the bare dusty boards. Somebody puts money into the black meter on the wall and the oblong canopy hanging on grimy chains from the ceiling floods the billiard table in a blaze of vivid green. The lads grab cues from the rack and empty the wooden box of snooker balls onto the table. At first there is an attempt at a sensible, orderly game but before long it’s a free-for-all with everyone cracking away at whatever comes within range. They start acting the fool, hitting the balls harder and harder, until inevitably somebody mis-cues and rips a long ragged gash in the smooth green baize. It makes a sound like somebody farting. Eileen falls against Kenny, laughing helplessly, and the glass of neat rum slips from her fingers and shatters on the floor.
Kenny too is drunk, but not drunk enough not to know what he wants. The ripping and smashing goes on while he pulls her through a door behind the bar and into a room with crates stacked against the walls and brown cartons of Golden Wonder crisps piled on top of one another: the pale rectangular window gives enough light to make out a row of varnished light switches and a cheap calendar reproduction of Windsor Castle (with the Queen not at home). They stumble about amidst the dim clutter, trying to lend each other support and at the same time hang on.
‘Here,’ Eileen says, ‘down here.’
Kenny thinks she means the cellar but she means down on the floor in the corner where there’s a pile of sacking, discarded packaging and old display cards advertising Babycham. The strong beery smell in the small room is mingled faintly with that of disinfectant; paper and cellophane crackle under their weight as they collapse into it, befuddled, unco-ordinated; and Kenny can’t help laughing at the thought that they’ll both end up smelling like a brewery.
Eileen’s wet mouth fastens to his and stops both laughter and thought: her coat is open and she wraps her legs round the back of his. There is something desperate in her kisses, a blind insatiable seeking like that of a burrowing creature anxious to hide away from the daylight. Composure has gone: the mask of cool self-possession replaced by shut eyes and hot urging mouth. Kenny is hard and randy, but he wants to pee. The lump is painful in his trousers, part erection and part pissproud. He gropes for her breasts, encounters their soft rise and fall beneath the material of her dress, and Eileen makes a guttural noise which vibrates against his gums. She wrenches her mouth away and reaches below.
‘Is it out?’
‘What?’ Kenny says, taken aback.
‘Get it out… I want it, I want it.’
Her hands are at his belt, unfastening the buckle and drawing the end through the loops. She unzips him and Kenny feels the rush of cold air between his legs and then the luxurious sense of release as it uncoils itself from its cramped hiding place and stands up at full stretch, giving off heat and a delicate but unmistakable odour.
‘Fucking hell,’ Eileen whispers, taking hold.
Kenny has never been appreciated in this way before; it brings him quickly to the boil so that he wants to get on with the job without further delay. But Eileen is in control of the situation: she is like a greedy little girl who can’t wait to get at the chocolate eclairs but knows the feast will be all the more enjoyable if only she can be patient.
‘Isn’t it nice,’ she says in a breath, holding on to him. ‘And big.’
‘You’re fantastic,’ Kenny tells her.
‘I love it. I love holding it. I bet it feels great sticking up hard. Does it feel great?’
‘Yeh.’
‘Do you like me holding it? What do you like best: if I hold it or work it up and down like this?’
‘I don’t really mind,’ Kenny says breathing in and out slowly. He can’t believe what is happening is actually happening. He’s heard about girls like this but didn’t credit the stories as being true. The tension is too much: he is nearly coming: he says, ‘Go easy, kid. Bloody hell. Jesus. You’re fantastic.’
Eileen smiles at him in the darkened corner, the weak light from the window shining on her protruding teeth and wet lips. She moves below and encircles him with her mouth, her head moving rhythmically up and down, her hair brushing the insides of his thighs. Kenny lies back amongst the waste paper and cellophane wrappings, lost to the world, the focal point of his existence concentrated on the incredible smooth sliding hotness.
He is nearly at the point of no return and has to stop her before it is too late. Eileen raises her head and brings her open sticky mouth down on his. They fight each other with their tongues, their lips snarling in silent rage. Eileen frees herself from her clothing and murmurs in his ear, ‘Do it to me. Go on, Kenny, do it.’
He thinks he understands her but he doesn’t – until she pushes his head lower and lower, past her breasts and the bunched clothing at her waist to the warm furry place which is prickly against his cheeks. Tentatively he pokes about, inhaling the heavy intoxicating smell, caught between the two conflicting emotions that if he doesn’t fuck her right this minute he will have to go for a piss.
Eileen begins to moan and move her legs, then starts to gasp like a distance runner on the final sprint; her breathing is hoarse, shocked, between ecstasy and a cry for help, and just when Kenny is debating the next move grips him by the hair and one ear and hauls him up to lie full-length on top of her. In a moment – a mad jerking panic – it is all over. The tension is released, the iron weight in his belly turns into a balloon, and apart from wanting badly to urinate he feels quite peaceful.
‘Do you think we’ll get back all right?’ Eileen asks, pulling her tights up.
‘We’ll thumb it,’ Kenny says, disentangling his underpants from his boots. ‘I’ve done it before. If we start off early we should be home by teatime.’
‘All the lot of us?’
‘We’ll split up. You and me together and the rest of them in ones and twos.’
The cellophane crackles as Eileen stands up and smoothes the wrinkles from her dress. ‘I’m starving.’
‘I’m a bit peckish,’ Kenny admits, ‘but first I need a piss.’ He gets up and then goes quite still; he stands listening and waves his hand to stop Eileen rummaging in the waste paper for her shoes.
‘What’s up?’ Eileen says, her voice hushed by the way he waits silently in the darkness, the pale light outlining his head and shoulders in an attitude of frozen concentration. She listens also but can hear nothing. It occurs to her that it shouldn’t be this quiet, unless, that is, the others are asleep or have gone away.
For some reason best known to himself Kenny is moving stealthily towards the door, placing the toe of each boot carefully before the next, and very slowly opens it the merest fraction so that a thin crack of yellow appears: Eileen can hear the low murmur of voices and smiles with relief. For a moment a dozen foolish notions had passed through her mind – the others had gone and left them, or the police had noticed the light and crept in to make an arrest, or…
Kenny hasn’t moved and is intent on watching something. And then she sees him put his hand in his pocket and take out an object which catches the light.
• • •
The reason they hadn’t heard anything was that the others were kettled and didn’t realise what was happening until it was too late. When it had happened they stood blearily with their backs to the billiard table, wondering in their stupor how it was possible for seven people to get into the hall without being seen or heard. Kenny, on all fours behind the bar, his heart thumping in his chest, listens to what is being said. There hasn’t been a fight yet (he would have heard it in the small back room) but it’s shaping up nicely to a barney with what the Luton lads reckon are good odds: seven against five, not counting the girl. Kenny has weighed them up through the crack in the door: two of them are big bastards, six footers at least, a couple of real tough nuts wearing short leather jackets studded in fancy metal scrolls enclosing the names ‘Johnny’ and ‘Sugar’ – topple these two, Kenny knows, and the rest are a bag of shite tied in the middle with string. One of the others is a nig-nog in a blue and white bob-cap, short, stocky, with a squat ugly face and the makings of a scrubby beard; the remaining four are a nondescript ragbag of townies who look as though they couldn’t raise a decent wank between them.
It’s one of the big lads doing all the talking and Kenny bides his time. He’s not daft enough to stick his neck out before he has to – and in any case the Luton mob will soon start something or one of his own mates will grab a billiard cue and splinter it over the head of one of the leather jackets.
‘What are you doing down here then?’ the big lad is saying. He has a terrible complexion. Kenny knows this kind of talk well: it is the gentle deception before the onslaught, the friendly gesture before the fist in the teeth. Answer them back, Kenny thinks, don’t let them scare you.
‘Town were playing pathetic Rochdale today,’ says one of the nondescript ragbags.
‘Do they play football up there?’ says the big lad. ‘Do they? Well. I thought they didn’t have any grass to play on up there. What do they play in then – clogs and flat caps?’
‘We’re not a load of pansies at any rate.’
The big lad says, ‘Rate?’ twisting his face and pronouncing it the northern way. ‘Raaate. What does raaate mean?’ The others laugh. ‘Why don’t you talk proper instead of talking stupid?’
‘They’re not civilised north of Coventry, Johnny.’
‘It’s a shame you don’t understand us,’ one of the Rochdale lads says. ‘You big dozy cunt.’
‘Take that back,’ the big lad says swiftly, no longer sweetness and light. ‘I said: Take it back.’
‘I thought you didn’t know what we were on about. You southern pouf.’
The odd thing about violence is that it comes so suddenly and happens so quickly that it doesn’t seem real at all: the reality is delayed, like a bomb operated by a time-switch, ticking, deadly, with the devastation yet to come. In the hall with the hooded light it strikes with the swiftness of a venomous snake, happening here and now in front of everyone’s eyes – yet finding them static, unprepared, wetting their pants.
After that opening incident Kenny lives through a bad moment when his legs won’t seem to move. It’s like a dream when your feet get stuck in treacle and it comes as a surprise when he finds himself on the other side of the bar swinging a bottle and running, actually running, at one of the leather jackets. There are three bodies on the billiard table, each body fighting the other two. Kenny is annoyed and distracted by this and pauses to crack the head that doesn’t seem familiar, and hopes, in the rush, he hasn’t made a mistake. When he goes on the leather jacket he had in mind has disappeared and he has to seek a fresh target: the ugly nig-nog in the bob-cap who is kicking something along the floor, a sack, or a cat, or perhaps a human being.
‘Nigger,’ Kenny says into his black ear and as the boy turns – he is about fourteen, Kenny sees, with odd-coloured eyes – smashes the bottle across the bridge of his nose and the bottle does something he has seen in movies but never before in real life: it actually breaks.
There is an instant mess of splinters and blood, a brilliant gash with the nose laid open to the bone, amid gobs of red stuff flying in all directions. The result is so spectacular that for a moment Kenny is lost in dreadful contemplation, a little awestruck by his own handiwork. He steps back in wonder and is taken hold of by the throat and his spine rammed against the edge of the billiard table, bent backwards at a terrible angle, the light hitting him in the eyes and somewhere on the edge of his vision the smooth brown butt of a billiard cue sliding – or is it swinging? – coming at his head. He twists left and feels the impact rattle the coloured balls and vibrate through the table to his skull. Kenny is amazed. He has never met anyone with the strength to pin him down with one hand and strike with the other.
He thinks… he is about to think when he sees the butt coming again and three things happen simultaneously: urine runs down his leg and the black meter on the wall clicks and the light goes out. For an instant – it can be no more – everything stops: blackness and silence cover everything, and when it is over Kenny is thankful that he can withdraw the knife blade as silently and unobtrusively as it went in.