“At least I get more sense from talkin’ ta a feckin’ wall than talking ta yea pair of bum-bandits,” I hit back to the potting-shed sentries.
“Yah what?” Clarke suddenly raised the stick in his hand, like a baseball player ready to take a strike.
I always made sure to keep a safe distance when getting into confrontations. It was an instinct that had served me well on the streets of Manchester. And I knew these two snide bastards would just as easily have beaten me with their sticks as they would have whacked out at a fly.
“What’s going on?” Woods suddenly opened the shed door and peered out. “Tommy! Come in.” He gestured for me to enter his den.
Tommy? Now I knew he must be after something that he couldn’t get without my help.
“Fuck off you two.”
“But what about Wall Talker?” protested Clarke.
One glare from Woods and they were on their way, muttering under their breaths as they reluctantly pushed their way past me.
Potting-Shed Showdown
Slightly apprehensive, I walked into the musty-smelling shed and watched as Woods closed the door behind us.
“Can’t be too careful,” he said as he slid the inside bolt home, causing me even more apprehension. I was getting the feeling he was about to do something he shouldn’t be doing and obviously didn’t want to get caught doing it.
“No,” I agreed, swallowing nervously as I grinned back at him while quickly scanning the interior of the shed for a handy weapon, just in case he was having any ideas of giving me a good beating. Sweeping the interior of the shed with a quick glance, I felt spoilt for choice at the abundance of rusty garden tools resting up against the shed walls. I especially noted the small pitchfork just off to my left, which was well within easy reach if anything were to kick off.
A small, dust-stained window was the only source of light, filtering in through the layers of old cobwebs hanging off the frame. In one corner, the mummified remains of a giant harvest spider still stood guard over a couple of cocooned, dried-up blue bottles, as if time had suddenly stopped still on them.
“Wanna fag?” Woods pulled away a brick from the wall to reveal a small hidey-hole, from where he pulled out a packet of 10 Woodbines and a box of matches.
“I can’t,” I said, sure he’d detected my sigh of relief to see he hadn’t pulled out something to hurt me with.
“Relax Tommy, Jaysus.” There was that smile again. “Sit down here, I only want to talk to you.” Woods patted the large, rusty cast-iron roller, which used to take two of us to pull back and forwards across the football pitch, until all the divots in the ground had gone from the previous day’s match.
Sitting on the edge of the roller, I watched Woods light the untipped cigarette and suck inwards before swallowing all the smoke and then exhaling it out into the air.
He sat on the rickety old wooden chair, facing me. “Is it because of your health? Or you’ve never done it before?”
“I’ve never done it before.”
“Have a drag?” He offered out the smoking cigarette to me. “There’s always a first time for everything.” He smiled for a third time. I noticed, too, the slight tremble in his hand as he held the cigarette out to me.
Oh bollocks, why not? I knew smoking stunted your growth but there were lots of boys in the school who didn’t smoke and were much smaller than average for their age. Licking my lips, I put the cigarette into my mouth and took a long drag, swallowing the smoke in one gulp, as I had seen Woods do.
The immediate effect was an awful feeling of suffocation, followed by dizziness, followed by spluttering coughs as the smoke came out of my nose and mouth. It was a weird sensation to see everything suddenly spinning around so fast in front of my eyes, and I found it difficult to focus on any single object without it spinning out of my line of vision. I managed to regurgitate and spit out the bits of tobacco in the back of my throat, as I handed the cigarette back to the amused Woods.
“Here.” He offered out the glass bottle of coke, from which I gratefully took a big swig before handing it back.
“Look what you’ve done to my fag,” he suddenly moaned. “You’ve put a d-a on it.”
“What?”
“Duck’s arse. You’ve wet the end of it.” He showed the wet end of the cigarette, where the paper had split, leaving strings of tobacco hanging out from it.
“I’m sorry,” I said, wondering if this was the end of our newfound relationship. But Woods didn’t seem to mind and broke off the damp end of the fag, flicking it into the far corner of the shed before taking another drag. Then, when he began to tell me about himself and his family, I realised the fella was completely nuts.
He spoke about his father, with just a fleeting mention of his mother, who’d apparently run off with a sailor the day after his eighth birthday. His father was a fighter pilot, shot down and killed in 1945 just as WWII was coming to its end – which would have made 13-year-old Woods at least 21 years old. Apparently, his wealthy granny owned a stately home in Birmingham, with acres upon acres of land and a zoo, complete with crocodiles!
“I got this,” he said, pointing to the scar on the side of his face, “when I was feeding them.”
Ah, Jaysus! I was locked in a potting shed with a lunatic.
He went on to tell me he’d been sent to St Vincent’s Approved School because he’d attempted to elope to Gretna Green with his 14-year old cousin, Maggie, after he’d fiddled with her private parts the previous day, getting her up the duff! Luckily for them, her father was a tank commander, so they were able to drive his tank and head in the direction of Scotland and Gretna Green! Alas, the fleeing lovebirds were cornered by the police on the M1 and he was arrested. The lying fecker!
“What about your parents then?” he asked me.
Now, how could I beat that story? “Ta be honest, I never knew my parents that much,” I said. “They went off on one of their usual Polar expeditions to Greenland when I was five and they got lost somewhere in the North Pole. No one has heard from them since.”
“Perhaps they were eaten by grizzly bears.”
“I suppose it’s better than freezing to death,” I said.
As an awkward silence descended, I was conscious of him studying me, which made me feel a little uncomfortable, thinking my blackheads must have been more noticeable than I had originally thought when I’d washed my face that morning.
“I like you,” he said suddenly, taking me by surprise.
“I like you, too,” I lied, hardly able to tell him I hated his guts and would, if I were able to, have kicked 10 tons of shite out of him the minute he turned his back.
“I really like you.”
“I really like you as well.”
“I mean, really, as in really.”
“I mean, really, as in really, too.”
“Really?”
For feck’s sake! What sort of game was the loony playing? “Really,” I repeated, promising to myself, if he said “really” once more, I was getting that pitchfork and showing him just how much I really, really hated him. But then, to my horror, he stood up in front of me and pulled down his trousers and pants, revealing his semi-erect penis, before kneeling up on the rickety chair and sticking his spotty arse out to me.
“You bum me first, and I’ll do you after. Or shall I go first?” he said, peering nonchalantly over his left shoulder at me.
Jaysus, Mary an’ Joseph! What was I going to do? I wasn’t shoving me mickey in that pimply hole for sure! “There’s someone coming,” I said, jumping up off the roller and hurrying the few short steps to the bolted door.
“I never heard anything.” Woods was peering out of the small window while fiddling with himself.
Luckily for me, I’d experienced these situations before and had always managed to get myself out of them without too many problems. So, it
only remained for me to find a way to leave quickly before it was too late. As things turned out, his two idiot sidekicks, Clarke and Robinson, had made their way back into the grotto and were heading in our direction. We could hear them talking as they drew closer to the potting-shed door.
I breathed a heavy sigh of relief when Woods, after struggling to pull his pants and trousers back up, finally opened the shed door. But not before I was forced to give him a peck on the lips and agree to meet up with him in the bathhouse later that night, to continue our little tryst.
“What do yah want to see me about?” asked Dave McGuire. I had found him sitting in one of the two tatty, straw-filled leather armchairs in the recreation room. A small, windowless affair, the room was also furnished with a small dropleaf table and four hard chairs. A built-in cupboard, overflowing with an assortment of board games and jigsaws with their pieces either missing or packed into the wrong broken boxes filled one corner of the room, while a row of five shelves stacked with records and a battered red and cream record player took up the opposite corner.
“Woods,” I replied, above the background noise of the sixties pop band Traffic, with Dave Mason singing about the time he had a hole in his shoe that was letting in water.
“What about the twat?”
Swearing McGuire to secrecy, I told him about what had taken place in the potting shed and the hurriedly arranged rendezvous in the bathhouse planned for that night.
McGuire stayed silent for a short while, as he mulled over the information. “So, he wants to bum you. Why are you telling me?”
“I thought you wanted to get him back for whacking – I mean, when you slipped over that time in the bathhouse. When you went to have a word with him…”
“Keep the gob down,” hissed McGuire, glancing across to the doorway. ‘So, what’s the big plan then? I take it you’ve got a plan?”
“Well, I’ve got a sort of plan.”
Taking Down Woods
I am sitting in the front row of the circus ring. The place is packed with laughing people, as the dwarf clown rides the Penny Farthing around in circles. He throws a bucket full of make-believe water, made from silver paper, at unsuspecting members of the audience, who unwittingly duck out of the way each time.
He looks in my direction and heads across the ring towards me. I am determined I am not going to flinch and make a fool of myself, like the other morons. As he approaches with his bucket at the ready, I sit smiling up at him, before I’m hit, full in the face, with a bucketful of real cold water, which takes my breath away.
The whole place erupts into fits of hysterical laughter. I want the ground to open and swallow me up. But instead of showing any signs of annoyance, I stand up and begin bowing to the audience, letting them think I am part of the clown’s act. I get a standing ovation, which really peeves the clown. I suddenly spot the large catapult underneath my seat and the large marble conveniently loaded into the leather sling. I take aim and fire, hitting the laughing dwarf at the back of the head, and he falls from the bicycle. The whole place is full of laughter and the audience are clapping loudly, waiting for the clown to get up and take a bow. But he doesn’t get up and take the bow. Instead, the Ringmaster, kneeling at the side of the clown, suddenly stands up and pronounces him dead. The audience are now staring accusingly at me.
I am now riding the Penny Farthing up along Stamford Street, pedalling for all my dear life is worth, whilst the baying mob chasing me is getting closer.
At the other end of the street, I can see someone standing under a gas lamp. As I get closer, I see it’s Sister Ignatius. She is levitating a few inches off the ground in her flowing black habit, screaming at me to get off the bicycle.
“Get them dirty pants down! Yah thievin’ little divil yah!” she screams, as her long, thin cane whooshes through the air, catching me a stinging blow across the face. I topple from the Penny-Farthing, and she is above me, the cane held high, in readiness to beat the living daylights out of me. Forgive me, Father. Forgive me, Father. Forgive me…
“Wake up Tommy, wake up!”
I woke with the fear of God inside me, to see Donkey’s hairy face peering down at me! “Jaysus, what’s happened?”
“Ssssh,” he whispered, as my head jerked up off the hard pillow.
Letting my eyes adjust to the dim grey light of the dormitory, I saw the large frame of Bunter Barnes blocking out the light from the window behind him, while Collins stood next to him, looking as excited as a child waiting to unwrap a present.
Speaking in a low, whispery voice, Donkey informed me that Cruickshank was dead to the world and impossible to wake up, while Norman Butler had pissed his bed again, so they wouldn’t be joining us. I wasn’t surprised nor too concerned about this setback, since McGuire had said he was bringing along his own back-up. But I was concerned that Woods might bring along his knuckledusters, which I’d heard he wore in bed. That was the deciding factor in persuading McGuire to get involved.
The plan was for me and Woods to meet, as arranged, by the entrance to the bathhouse and go in together. Once inside, Donkey and his team were to sneak in and overpower him from behind, whilst McGuire and his gang, already hiding in the bathhouse, would attack from the front. I’d been over this plan of action in my head, time and time again, and felt sure nothing could go wrong if we followed it to the letter.
Standing in the open doorway of the dormitory, I watched as Donkey and the others tiptoed off to take up their planned positions. I confess, it was a strange sight to see all three figures silhouetted in the dimly lit corridor, peering in through the small gap into the night watchman’s room before creeping past it.
They met up with McGuire and his lot coming from the opposite direction and I watched as they all turned off along the narrow passageway leading to the toilets and the bathhouse. That was the first part of the plan accomplished.
Some moments later, Woods exited his own dormitory and headed in the direction of the bathhouse. I walked out to meet him, quietly sneaking past the night watchman’s room, where I could hear loud snoring. We didn’t speak to each other as we came face to face, before walking side by side along the windowless passageway with only a dim nightlight to guide us. I could see he wasn’t wearing the knuckledusters and I was able to breathe a sigh of relief.
I don’t know why I glanced over my right shoulder as I turned left towards the bathhouse, walking straight past the four toilet doors. But the sight of Donkey’s body pressing up against the glass pane of a toilet door had my heart in my mouth. Of all the feckin’ places to hide, the lunatic picked the half-glazed door to stand behind, with his face pressed right up against the glass! If Woods were to cotton on, my life wasn’t going to be worth living. Fortunately for me, he didn’t notice the goon and we continued our journey to the bathhouse, where we stood just inside the door in the dark, with only a tiny grey light from the night sky filtering through the small window.
Woods turned to face me and suddenly kissed me full on the lips, before shoving his hand through the gap in my pyjama trousers and groping around for my mickey.
“Touch mine,” he whispered, giving me no choice in the matter as he grabbed my hand and planted it on his stiffy.
“Jaysus!” I was all hot and flushed. Where were those eejits? And where was McGuire and his gang? They should have rushed out of their hiding places by now! I’d been stitched up. Oh Lord. Woods had his lips puckered up, ready to kiss me again. “Faint!” I said to myself, but immediately had second thoughts, thinking he might think I was getting down on the floor, ready for him. I could throw a fit, like my brother Martin used to do. I could drop down and writhe on the ground with froth coming out of my mouth. But would the lunatic Woods be able to see in the dark to know I was having a fit? Or would he just think I’d come over all excited?
I could make a run for it and pay the consequences later. I wasn’t having them big lips to
uching mine again. Ah Jaysus, he kissed me again. Feck this, I decided, I’m going to have the fit. At least with my legs kicking all over the show, he’d have his work cut out to get that mickey of his anywhere near me.
I was saved by Barnes and Collins, who suddenly rushed in behind us. One of them pushed Woods further into the dimly lit bathhouse and I picked myself back up off the cold tiled floor and stood alongside them, to find we were now facing McGuire, King, and Jones, with Woods piggy in the middle. Gone was his usual cocky self-assurance, as he stood with his head bowed, like a guilty prisoner awaiting judgment.
It was a strange feeling seeing someone lose so much power and belief in themselves, just by not having a weapon on them – in his case the knuckledusters. I suppose it could have been likened to Samson, when he’d woken up one morning to find Delilah had scalped him, causing him to lose all his strength with the shock of it all.
I admit I did feel a little guilty seeing Woods standing alone, apprehensive and doing nothing. Oddly, I had no feelings of jubilation. Even if I’d wanted to tell McGuire I’d changed my mind and the plan was off, he wasn’t going to listen to me. And so, walking off quietly, with Collins and Barnes following close behind, I made my way back out of the bathhouse and past the toilet block, where I could still see the form of the big eejit, Donkey, standing behind the toilet door with his face pressed up against the glass. I was tempted to leave him where he was, but Barnes had already tapped on the glass, making him aware we were leaving.
With Donkey lurching after us, we silently sneaked back past the night watchman’s room, which was still filled with his usual loud snores. Donkey couldn’t resist taking another peak in through the gap in the door. Then, to my horror, he quickly tiptoed inside, coming out a few seconds later with a packet of biscuits, which he shared with us as we quietly hurried back to our dormitory. When we got there, I had this sudden thought and hurried back along the corridor to Woods’s dormitory, where, making my way across to his empty bed, I followed my natural instincts and put my hands under his pillow to feel the two knuckledusters lying there. He wouldn’t be needing those any more. I snatched them up and tried them on for size. A snug fit. I turned to leave, bumping into Donkey, who was standing right behind me. The fact that my heart had almost jumped out of my throat had stopped me from screaming with the fear. And, hard as it was, I resisted my instinct to beat Donkey half to death with the knuckledusters.
Boy Number 26 Page 9