by V E Rooney
There were several families who had been moved into the neighbouring maisonettes at roughly the same time, and they had kids of roughly the same age. There was me, Kevin and Jason who lived in the opposite block of maisonettes and Danny who lived round the corner. We quickly became a gang (and me being the sole girl didn’t seem to be a problem – I had already beaten Jason in a fight over some football stickers he had tried to pinch off me but he quickly forgave and forgot) and the jungle became our other playground, our territory, our hideout. In the times that we would forego playing footie, we would all meet up in the jungle to play cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, and jedis and stormtroopers.
It didn’t matter to us that the jungle was covered in shite like weeds and broken glass, burnt rubber tires, empty paint cans, discarded wood and broken bricks. In fact, that made it even better. Even though our homes were just a few metres away, we really did feel like we were in some alien far-away landscape a million miles away from the prefab homes that were just around the corner. No adults ever ventured into it, except to dump their rubbish there. Standing in the centre of the jungle and looking outwards on all sides, the jungle was shielded by rows of trees and large rear garden fences, hiding us from the outside world and making us invisible.
Apart from the usual childhood games, we would sometimes be in a more destructive mood and we would gather up bits of rubbish and make small bonfires. We became experts at determining which rubbish was more flammable. Wood was deemed to be reliable but too boring, and we would scour the jungle for more exotic bits of rubbish or anything which would produce a decent amount of flame - bits of plastic and rubber, paint containers and rubber tyres.
The amount of rubbish chucked into the jungle also afforded us the opportunity to build our own little dens, usually from discarded wood or plastic bathroom panels, old bed sheets or scraps of indeterminable material. We would furnish these dens with piles of newspapers for seats, old blankets for carpets, and bin bags thrown over gaps as makeshift windows and doorways. Sometimes there would be two or three dens in the jungle at the same time belonging to different groups of kids from the estate. Most of the time we grudgingly tolerated each other’s existence but on occasion warfare would break out and respective dens would be demolished. On the whole though, there was an unspoken agreement that the jungle was to be enjoyed by everyone.
So…I was nine years old. It was late afternoon on a hot and sticky summer day, when I noticed that a gang of older lads, maybe around thirteen or fourteen years old, had entered the jungle. They didn’t live on our bit of the estate. I had never seen them before. Me and Jason, Danny and Kevin were already in the jungle but hadn’t spotted them. We were entertaining ourselves by tying an empty paint tin to the end of a broomstick with a rag, and then we shoved a load of newspaper into the still-wet remnants of paint at the bottom of the tin and set it on fire to create a sort of swinging fireball. Kevin thought he would create a more dramatic effect by swinging the broomstick in the style of an Olympic hammer thrower. Only the flaming paint tin flew off the end of the broomstick, through the air and landed about twenty feet away, just in front of the older gang. One of the lads, who had a skinhead, shouted: “Oi, you fucking little prick, you trying to set me on fire?”
Kevin looked at them and then looked at us and then back at them. “It was an accident, I didn’t see you lot there,” he said in an apologetic way. The skinhead stepped forward and his mates followed him. We instinctively drew closer into a huddle as they approached. They stopped about two feet in front of Kevin.
“Trying to fucking set me on fire. Fucking little prick,” the skinhead said, smirking, standing over Kevin who was at least a foot smaller than him.
“It wasn’t on purpose, I didn’t see you,” Kevin said, his voice starting to shake a bit. Yes, they were bigger than us and could most likely kick the shit out of us, but my nine-year-old brain stubbornly rejected the notion that we should be intimidated. This was our jungle and they shouldn’t be here, I thought.
The skinhead looked us up and down. I didn’t like the way his eyes lingered on me. “Well, now you’ve seen us, so fuck off,” he said. Hang on a minute. Was he ordering us out? Cheeky fucking bastard. No fucking way was I having that. I remembered how Mum had dispatched various unwelcome callers at our front door over the years – wannabe boyfriends, cold callers, the rent collector from the council - and attempted to impersonate her.
“And who the fuck are you, gobshite?” I said in my best angry voice. Kevin, Jason and Danny all looked at me as if I had just bared my arse to a starving lion.
Skinhead and his mates burst out laughing. “Fucking hell, state of this one,” Skinhead said, cackling. “Alright girl, you can stay and keep us company,” said one of the other lads. I may have been only nine but I knew exactly what he meant. I’d seen Dallas with my Mum.
“Maybe you can fuck off back where you came from, dickhead,” I countered. As soon as those words left my lips, I felt a flutter of pride for standing up for my gang but then Skinhead stepped forward and punched me full in the face.
I lurched backwards and felt a trickle of warm blood oozing out of my nose before I felt the sharp pain of the impact. My eyes watered and blurred and I could hear Skinhead’s mates laughing.
Before I could stand up properly again, Skinhead had pushed me backwards and I stumbled over, landing flat on my back.
Kevin shouted: “Leave her alone!” while Danny and Jason were frozen to the spot as Skinhead’s mates looked on. Kevin stepped forward but Skinhead’s mates blocked his path. One of Skinhead’s mates started slapping him about the head, saying: “The fuck do you think you are, you little twat?” Kevin cowered as Danny retreated a few steps away.
I tried to haul myself up but Skinhead pushed me back down and straddled me, pinning my arms and legs to the ground, laughing in my face.
“Too bad you haven’t got any tits, girl, but never mind,” he hissed, his spittle going in my eyes as I struggled to break free. “Fancy some sex education, lads?” he said, turning to Kevin, Danny and Jason, while Skinhead’s mates were jeering and goading him to rape me.
“Go on lad, fucking have her.”
“Split her in two, mate. Go on, give it to her.”
I am now in fight or flight mode, running on pure emotion and instinct. And that instinct is telling me that I’m about to feel the worst pain that a female can feel.
My arms and legs are trapped but I’m desperately writhing around underneath Skinhead’s weight, trying to wriggle free. He’s laughing at me. His eyes. His eyes are laughing at me.
“Fight all you want, you little cunt,” he says, his face a millimetre from mine. “One way or another, I’m gonna fuck you until you bleed.”
The panic in my chest is making me hyperventilate, my heart feels like it’s about to burst and my head is frantically twisting from side to side, trying to avoid his stinking breath and his kisses.
Then Skinhead has to let go of my arms so that he can pull my jeans down. Then he fiddles with his own zip. Out it comes.
Oh, I know what’s about to happen now.
The first few seconds.
Normal service has been temporarily suspended.
My brain cannot come up with the words to form the sentences that I want to scream right now.
Stopitstopitstopitstopit…
Leavemealone…leavemealone…
Please don’t…please don’t hurt me…please don’t hurt me…
The pain. The pain.
But then Skinhead has to adjust his body. He lets go of my arms so he can move his jeans down further. As soon as he lets go, I throw my right arm behind me and blindly grab for something, anything I can use as a weapon. Skinhead is too busy pulling his jeans down to see me grab the shard of broken glass lying behind my head. I can feel the edges digging into my hand and the first twinges of pain as I close my fingers around it and tighten my grip.
I swing it forward with all of my strength.
I stab Skinhead on the left side of his head.
In a nanosecond, I hear the soft sound of glass piercing flesh and then the thud as it hits his skull.
Skinhead falls off me and crumples to the ground, writhing and screaming and clutching his head in both hands. The shard of glass is stuck in his head. I look at Skinhead. A slow stream of blood is coming through his fingers. His mates have gone into slow-motion mode, like they can’t decide whether to help or stand back and watch the unexpected end of the show.
Skinhead looks at me, unbelieving, astonished, with a trail of red traversing his fucking ugly face. His fucking ugly face, contorted with shock and anger. He splutters something: “You fucking…”, but before he can get to his feet, I scramble to get up and then I kick him as hard as I can in his gut, my trainer-clad foot sinking into his body, his stomach giving way to make room for it. He falls to the ground again. Skinhead goes to scream but there’s no breath left in his body, he’s bent over double, arms wrapped around his gut, blood pouring down his face and gasping for air.
Kevin, Danny and Jason are rooted to the spot doing goldfish impressions, Skinhead’s mates don’t know whether to come, go or stay still. One of Skinhead’s mates wakes up and states the obvious.
“Fucking hell, look what she’s done!”
Full of rage, fear and pure fucking indignation, I wheel around away from Skinhead and turn on his mate.
“Do you fucking want to have a go as well?” I scream, my jeans down to my knees, blood dripping from my hands, eyes bulging out of my head, heart beating out of my chest.
“Come on, let’s go! Fuck!” Skinhead’s mate says, urging his bloodied mate to get up and flee.
Skinhead’s mates have to pick him up off the ground and drag him away. They don’t need any encouragement to leave.
I watch as they run out of the jungle via the access road. Kevin, Danny and Jason turn to look at me like I’ve just shat gold. “Oh my God,” Kevin says slowly, his face an expression of awe. “That was fucking boss!” Danny says, delighted at this impromptu David and Goliath show.
It’s at this point that, overwhelmed by the excruciating pain in my face and hands and by the shock of what’s just happened, I burst into tears and run back to the maisonettes, manically trying to pull my jeans back up, my legs feeling like they’re operating independently of my body, my feet hitting the ground in rhythm with the frantic pounding of my heart. The boys are calling after me but I can’t hear them because the blood is rushing to my head, to my ears, my skull feeling like a balloon that’s about to pop.
Mum had a right fit when she saw the state of me. I told her I had fallen over but she didn’t believe me and harangued me to tell her what had happened, until I sobbed that some boys had picked on me. No, I didn’t know who they were, no, I didn’t know where they lived. I left out the bit about getting raped. I knew I had been attacked but I didn’t know it was called rape, you see. Anyway, Mum was angry enough and fuck knows what she would’ve done to those cunts if she’d got her hands on them. She cleaned me up and put antiseptic cream on my cuts, put me to bed and brought in a bowl of ice cream and lime jelly.
The next day, Mum took me to the Centre 63 community and youth centre down by St Chad’s church in Kirkby town centre and signed me up for karate classes. I never became a black belt, but I learned the basics, which was enough. Although Kevin, Danny and Jason treated me like some sort of superhero for the way I’d fought off Skinhead, I couldn’t forgive them for the way they just stood there and did nothing. They had proved to be fucking useless. What good was being in a gang if your mates were too shit-scared to stand up for you when you needed them to?
However much your mates give lip service to having your back, when it comes to the moment that the only thing standing between someone’s fist and your face is air, it’s up to you to either get the fuck out of the way or hit them before they can hit you, or worse.
***
For one of the few times during our initial conversation, Reynolds falls silent for a long time, as if she is spent and exhausted from recalling everything in so much detail. I am horrified by her account of being raped, particularly at such a young age. And still, she retains the composure of someone completely detached from these experiences. It’s almost as if she is describing something that happened to someone else.
“And you never reported it to the Police? You never told your mother what had really happened?”
She looks at me with an expression that suggests resignation. “No. With hindsight, of course, yes, I know that I should have done. I didn’t have anything against the Police in those days. But I was petrified that I would get into some kind of trouble, that I would get taken away from Mum for hurting that lad. Sent to borstal or something. I didn’t know any better at that age. And I never saw those cunts again and then after a while I forgot about the whole thing. I put it behind me, picked myself up and carried on. And I don’t want to talk about that stuff anymore, alright?” she says, looking slightly irritated and shifting about in her seat, looking down at the floor.
I know that at some point, I must revisit this subject with her, but for now, I am wary of antagonising her and risking her ending the interview.
“Any other memories of your childhood you want to talk about? Something that influenced your future life?”
***
4. THE FLOWERING STAGE
It’s a good job Mum conceived me when she did, and where she did, because I was born on the cusp of a massive transformation in society, which took full effect at the arse-end of the 1970s and well into the early 1980s. This transformation didn’t just affect Liverpool but the rest of the country as well. I don’t just mean in terms of politics – this transformation encompassed changes in society, culture, music, art, fashion and so many more things. Wanky southern types would call it the zeitgeist. I just enjoyed being a kid at the time and watching it all unfold before me.
But of course, history is ever-present in some ways. Every baby born in Liverpool (as I’m sure you know yourself) learns how to do three things – walk, talk, and find out that the fucking Beatles came from Liverpool. Whenever I heard a Beatles song, I could identify it straight away within the first couple of notes. It’s kind of hard not to when they’re seemingly on a constant loop playing all over the city. There’s even a bloody museum dedicated to them. It wouldn’t surprise me if the council decided to name the fucking airport after them. I would love to know what Lennon would say about that, sarky cunt that he was.
To my young ears, the Beatles sounded old-fashioned, in stark contrast to all the electronic synthesiser music I was hearing all around me. But I have a very clear memory of the day John Lennon died.
Shouts from the neighbours out of the windows into the street. Phones ringing. Knocks on the doors.
Fucking hell, John’s Lennon’s dead…
Oh my God, John Lennon’s been shot by some lunatic in New York…
I just can’t believe it…John Lennon dead?
I bet it was that fucking Jap cunt who shot him, I never liked her…
It was one of the few times I ever saw Mum cry. She and some of the other women on the estate gathered at our place to play Beatles records and get drunk. All the radio stations played Beatles and Lennon tracks non-stop. Even my teachers at school treated it like a state-sanctioned period of mourning. I realised that death would eventually come for us all no matter how rich, privileged or assured you were – and in some cases, like Lennon, the unjust prematurity of it all would make it all the more bitter to take.
Of course, 1981 brought the Toxteth riots. Toxteth is about seven miles away from Kirkby but you would’ve thought it was right on our doorstep. Kids were barred from playing out – not that any of us wanted to because we were enthralled by what we were seeing on telly. Cars being set alight, the busies getting firebombed, people running straight at the busies with bricks, sticks and broken bottles. It was better than any Hollywood blockbuster. A lot of these kids doing the
rioting weren’t much older than we were at the time. I didn’t know what had caused it – Mum said something about the Police beating up black kids – but I was fascinated by what I was seeing and how these kids were utterly fearless and taking the fight to the busies. I didn’t realise the irony of this until many years later, but I won’t get into that now.
The year 1982 was an interesting one, what with the Falklands War. Up until then, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Liverpool was a territory of the Irish Republic. You’d be just as likely to hear an Irish accent on the streets as you would a Scouse one, and if you weren’t half-Irish yourself, chances are you’d have one-quarter, one-fifth or any other fractional permutation of Irish blood residing in you. You only have to look in the phone book and see how many Kellys, O’Briens, O’Dwyers and the like are in there. Combine that with Liverpool’s politically isolated anti-authority ‘fuck you’ attitude towards the rest of the country and it’s easy to imagine us as cut off from the rest of the UK, in our insular bubble, a separate country within a country.
But in time-honoured tradition, all it takes is a war to get us beating our chests in renewed British patriotic vigour. Across the estate, all of a sudden Union Jack bunting appeared across lampposts, flags were hung out of windows and all the grown-ups were going on about the fucking Argies, fucking dago twats and what have you. We cheered on the troops and applauded Maggie when she sunk the Belgrano, but as soon as the war was over, it was straight back to hating the cunt and wanting her dead.