Chapter Two

There were only four at the meeting and I only knew one of them, Frankie Balliter and he had changed a lot since I last saw him. He had shaved his head and had two jewels in his ears apart from his earings which looked like pearls. I asked Frankie what he was up to lately and his reply was a quick up and down jerk of his wrist and I knew that meant that he had plenty of sex, but with Frankie it could have been a man or a woman or even a camel. You learnt not to ask for details, but sometimes with the look on Frankie’s face you could get a good idea if what he did have was satisfactory or not. He grunted something to me which meant that he would be in the pub later that evening after the meeting. You see, with the gang... sign language was very important and we would often use that when the police ever questioned us. It was either ‘NO COMMMENT’ or absolute silence... Not even an expression of guilt or innocence. Let the buggers decided for themselves... The police never ever made a mistake... or so they have so often told us. I went to the pub that evening and I was pleased to see that we had more guys in the gang than I had ever seen before and what was even more interesting was the sight of not only one girl, but THREE... One of them called herself SHEBA and I thought that was a funny name for anyone. Perhaps she considered herself to be a queen of some sort, but she was at least eighteen stone in weight, with an arse like an elephant and tits down to her naval, with a tattoo on her arm that looked like a figure 7, but she was as coarse and as brazen as she appeared with Pongo, one of the leaders of the gang approached her at the bar and asked her what she could give him as he touched her bottom and the reply she gave him made us all think that she would be capable of doing anything that Pongo asked her.

“A punch up yer fuckin’ froat,” she said and wiped her nose with the end of her right forefinger. I knew then that she was a ‘lady’ who knew what she wanted and nobody was going to fuck her about.

One of the other females was about six inches off being called a dwarf, but she dressed like a man with a collar and tie on her shirt and I thought it was hardly the dress we, as the gang or me just waiting to be accepted as a candidate expected a female to dress in and the last of the three was a young blonde girl hardly sixteen I would have thought and she kept chewing something as she threw her head back and forward. Two of the ‘ladies’ had a fight as they went up to the bar as the prices they were offered for the drinks they wanted were different to what they thought they should be and verbal abuse was shouted out at the top of their voices, but I didn’t have much to do with females and their drinking problems up until this moment, nevertheless all the men stood by and watched the fight with avid curiosity. Beer was fuckin’ shit at the prices suggested by the barman and whisky or similar drink was regarded as fuckin’ immoral and ‘not worth a bleedin’ wank’... as hair was pulled out all round at the roots and bar furniture went ‘for a burton’ somewhere.

The blonde tart who called herself, Ady, she tells me that really means ADORABLE... and she keeps looking at me as if she was smelling some shit or other as she asked me if I was a Jew. She thought it was because of my name being Felix, but I told her I didn’t know what I was as I didn’t believe in religions, but she kept on sniffing until I moved off into the gents... but when I came out, she was waiting for me and I could see a strange movement in her eyes as she ran her fingers across her hips.

“You can come up to my place any time, big boy,” she said and I ignored her invitation telling her she was not my type, but she glared at me when I said that.

“Do you prefer a young boy then, instead of a young girl?” she snapped and I said I preferred young girls, but I liked them YOUNG and not middle aged and she reached out and hit me across the face.

At that moment another one of the gang came across and smiled at me but I had never seen him before and his face was not one that I could recognise, but he moved his head to the right a little and by the way he looked at me, I felt there was something he wanted to tell me and then he introduced himself as Travis.

“HI Felix. I’ve just been talking to Charlie but he’s a funny sort of guy, isn’t he. .. I wanted him to do something for me; something that needed TWO of us and he grunted and pointed over to you and when I asked Greg who you were, he told me your name.

“What is it you want, Travis? I asked and Travis pushed me into a corner and started to whisper in my ear. He needed someone to help him teach his brother in law a lesson as his sister was complainin’ that her bloke was knockin’ her about a bit and she didn’t like that about him. Travis also felt sure that his sister’s bloke was having it off with some other bird and she didn’t like that either, so Travis wanted to do something to teach this bloke a lesson and he needed help... was I interested? Well, of course I was interested. I was always interested in teaching some other bloke a lesson whatever he did as I liked to beat someone else around the bleedin’ ‘ead or kick ‘im up the arse. That was somethin’ that really got me fired up and I nodded to Travis and he grabbed me by the arm.

“Let’s go then,” he said and we marched off together to a local pub and waited outside for this geezer to show his bloody face.

“Would you know him Travis? “ I asked as anybody could have come out of the pub at that time in the evening, but Travis assured me that he knew his brother-in-law well and he would recognise him immediately.

We didn’t have to wait long before this bloke came staggering out towards us and Travis gave me the O.K. so we hit the geezer over the head and knocked him to the ground and then we kicked the shit out of him before we belted off around the corner without waiting to find out any more of what we had done or what had happened, but it was with great regret that when we made our way to Travis’s sister’s flat, who should come to the door to meet us? None other than the geezer we thought we had beaten up and then we realized that we had got the wrong bastard and didn’t know what else to do. I looked at Travis and he shook his head and he stuttered badly.

“I’m not worried about that old bugger lying out on the street by the pub, but Angus will have our guts for doin’ somethin’ that we shouldn’t have done. He will knock shit out of me, so I need you to stand up for me, Felix. Tell Angus that it was your idea, will you... and then he will go easier on both of us as you aint officially in the gang yet, are you?”

“Who is Angus?! I asked and Travis tried to look away as if he didn’t want to answer my question, but I asked again, “Who is this Angus guy?” but again, Travis tried to avoid my question until I took him by the shoulders and shook him violently “Angus is the guy who leads this gang, but he won’t be mucked about. You have to be straight with him or he’ll knock shit out of you. He is not like one of us. You won’t see him wearing jeans or anything like that. The best of West End clobber only for Angus and he wears perfume behind his ears with pearl earings sticking out of his bleedin’ lug oles... ”

I decided I would have to meet this Angus bloke, but I didn’t know what answer I could give him if he asked me who had knocked buggery out of the bloke at the pub, but Travis told me just to tell him that I had done it, as he would go easier with me as I wasn’t a gang member but that he would not be at all tolerant with any member of the gang. Travis told me to come Along to the ‘Angel;’ pub the following evening at 7.30 and I would be able to see Angus there at that time, and although that was O.K. for Travis as I gathered he had a place to stay for the night, I had to wander off to the nearest park bench and pulled my knees up round my arse to keep warm. I knew this was the best way to keep warm as I had done it so many times before. Nobody ever looked at you twice if you were sleeping on a park bench or if you were tucked under an old coat in a shop doorway. It was becoming quite a custom in Glasgow as the housing was a problem with most people now that you had to have a mortgage and everything else and it was worse when you were a ‘bastard’ and had no connections anywhere.