Manchester Slingback

by Manchester Slingback (retail) (epub)

  ‘What the fuck do you think they’re trying to achieve? Fucking bon-homie-sexuals, doing Judy Garland like it’s a rugby-club song and cuddling up under Laura fucking-flora Ashley.’

  Jake clicked the top off his can, fitted his lips to the keyhole and tried to remember if he’d ever seen Sean so drunk. And with Sean you could bet he wasn’t gorging because the drink was free… that was something else that wasn’t his style.

  ‘It’s like a fucking sitcom. Gay Bloke at home in Sub-bubbly-burbia.’

  ‘What’s your problem?’

  ‘I’m a fag. I’m not a fucking joke.’

  It was certain, Sean was nothing to laugh at. Fighting drunk now as he slopped wine into a glass and across the kitchen range. Spilled wine steamed off the hobs, cooking up as it vaporized in the air.

  Sean sniffed and checked the label: ‘Fucking Lambrusco.’

  He dumped the bottle end-up in the sink. The washing-up froth turned blood red.

  There was a back door to the kitchen, leading out to a narrow garden. Jake tried the handle; the door opened with a breath of winter.

  ‘You want to step outside? Get some air?’

  Sean walked over, peered out at the dark. ‘If I find any gnomes, those fuckers are crockery.’

  Jake banged on a light switch. The garden lit up as a weeded-bare corridor back-dropped by a line of skeletal trees, everything tenderly wrapped to hold together through the winter and wait for a spring release.

  Sean staggered out, saying: ‘Got it wrong: should be Homos and Gardeners.’

  The night air raised bumps on Jake’s arms. He left Sean to wander alone outside while he stayed within the door-frame. He was still there when Fairy came up behind him, asking what was wrong with Sean.

  ‘He’s overcome.’

  ‘He wants to come through to the lounge…’ Fairy gave the vowels an extra luxurious stress ‘Everyone’s dancing. He could show us one of his dances.’

  Jake moved away from the cold, keeping step up the passageway to the sound of six men chanting: ‘We are D-I-S-C-O. We are D-I-S-C-O.’ Through the door, he found David and Phil’s party guests all standing in a circle and stabbing their fingers at the ceiling as they rose to an all-male disco crescendo.

  Johnny was stood apart by the television, wrapping up his empty hold-all now that business was over. On the muted screen, a video of two men going at each other in dumb lust: one naked but for an astronaut helmet, the other naked but for socks. There was no doubt, pom was made for men by men, and once the sticky business of opening female motivations up to the camera stopped being a problem, the films spun out in wilder directions. With straight pornography Jake could always feel the discomfort: the pornographer pushed into a brutish corner. Filming men on men had to be a relief and a release. With men, you could do what you wanted… you never had to worry about it. Jake was gazing at the screen, zoning out the sound of the hi-fi as he stared in straight-faced concentration.

  Johnny looked up, ‘Jake… you okay, mate?’

  Jake snapped out of it. ‘Yeah… I was somewhere else.’

  Johnny jerked a thumb over to the screen. ‘You should have seen one earlier. A paperboy goes to get his Christmas tip and the man’s standing there in his dressing-gown saying, “How about that?” He mimed opening up the front of a dressing-gown, his eyes cast down to his crotch and one eyebrow raised for comic effect.

  ‘How many did you sell?’

  ‘All of them. The ones the two guys ordered, and a load more to their friends. I think they’re going to be this year’s Christmas presents. This is a winner. They can’t get them anywhere else.’ He had his empty bag rolled under his arm, now, ready to think about his next step. ‘Next time I got to get more of these American ones. The German ones, everyone looks like they’re following a schedule. The Yank tapes look more fun.’

  Good hard fun. The kind of fun you really had to have the stomach for before you could get into it. Fun without any transcendental aim and with no end. The kind Iggy Pop sang about in ‘Funhouse’, in ‘Funtime’, in ‘No Fun’, even. If you had to name the major Iggy preoccupation, this was it: looking hard for hard-looking fun, always sung in sunk block caps — FUN. In a world without end, amen.

  Jake said, ‘We done here?’

  Johnny nodded, he guessed so. ‘What about Sean and Fairy?’

  ‘They’re out the back, shall I call a minicab?’

  Jake was replacing the receiver when Johnny returned from the direction of the kitchen.

  Jake said, ‘The cab’s going to be two minutes. Are Sean and Fairy ready?’

  Johnny shook his head. ‘Fairy wants to stay on. It’s just the two of us.’

  ‘What about Sean?’

  ‘He was out in the garden. Fairy said the two of them could get a cab together.’

  Jake paused. ‘Did you speak to Sean?’

  ‘No, but Fairy says he’ll get him home okay.’

  Jake looked down the hallway, Fairy was stood at the kitchen end, waving them off. He was smiling now but just wait until Sean found out he’d been abandoned.

  Jake said, ‘Shall we wait outside?’

  *

  On the cab ride back to Manchester, Jake was already fixed on the speed he was going to buy once they were back in the Village. Johnny sat beside him, about the weirdos he’d run into earlier that afternoon. He was shaking his head. ‘A guy whose breath smelled of rotten fish. I asked him about it, he said he always made a week’s worth of fish-paste sandwiches on Sunday evenings. That way he didn’t have to worry about his lunch for the next week.’

  Jake was listening enough to say ‘Jesus’ at the appropriate moment.

  ‘Yeah, well, where he had his head, at least I didn’t have to worry about smelling him.’

  ‘You remember to wash up after?’

  ‘Too right. Hey, what about their lav…?’ He jerked his head towards the back window, and Oldham disappearing behind the cab. ‘It had half a fucking jungle in it.’

  As they rounded the Express building, Johnny asked what he made of Kevin Donnelly. The kid was still working when Johnny left the Bus Station with enough money to pay for the video-copying services.

  Jake shrugged. A sad kid. ‘Why didn’t he come tonight with us?’

  Johnny shrugged. ‘He can’t think out of his rut. I don’t know, maybe he didn’t believe I was serious about asking him. Maybe he just likes to earn money.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Jake was wondering how much Johnny had earned on the video deal. All he had was a tenner and change, but he didn’t want that to hinder his funtime.

  ‘Kevin said he bumped into a guy he knows who needs to get some tapes copied.’

  ‘What guy?’

  ‘I don’t know… a friend or a regular or something. I told him I could get it done, give him a price.’

  ‘You sure it’s nothing dodgy?’

  ‘Well, it’s not going to be Bambi, is it?’

  ‘Snow White and the Seven Sex Dwarfs.’

  ‘One Hundred and One Fellations.’

  The cab was skimming across the top of Piccadilly Gardens, the terminus for every night-bus in Manchester. It was almost twelve but the buses were sailing out half empty. Catching a ride home, just because the pubs were closing, was unserious behaviour. Friday night was pack night: move in packs, pack a toothbrush.

  The crowds of straights barrelling through the sunken gardens were all heading in the same direction: towards Rotters Discotheque on Oxford Road. These were the Rottie-dogs, facing winter in shirtsleeves or stockingless legs. Only a skinful between them and hypothermia. They had the right urge, they were just applying it in the wrong direction. Jake checked the colours of the Rottie girls’ legs as the cab waited for a break to turn left: red, white and blue beneath the glaze of the fake tans. There were so many of them, the cab driver had to crawl through the herd with his hand pressed to the horn. Ahead, Chorlton Street Bus Station rose above the street. Another second and they were back inside the Village at the doors
to Good-Day’s.

  Johnny took the bar; Jake snuffled towards the back of the room, asking around for a dealer. A boy he knew sent him outside; he’d seen Paulo to someone outside the fish-and-chip shop. Jake waved a hand at Johnny, mouthing Two minutes, and started out the door.

  The chippie opposite the Bus Station was full, a queue running along the counter and doubling back towards the door. Along the ledge of the front window, a row of rentboys chatted over their grease-soaked bags. Kevin Donnelly was sat towards the end, his hand dipping from the bag to his lips like a grab-crane in an amusement arcade. He looked up when he heard Jake asking down the line if anyone had seen Paulo. Jake nodded at him.

  A red-haired boy said Paulo would be back in a minute. Jake decided to wait. As he took a perch next to Kevin Donnelly, the boy whispered, ‘Someone was looking for you.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘That copper’ – a pause – ‘you know, from last night.’

  ‘Oh, Christ.’ Jake raised his eyes, ran them over the rooftops opposite. ‘What did he want?’

  ‘Said “Keep him on his toes”.’ The words came out flat, a verbatim report. ‘Has he got it in for you?’

  Jake shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’

  At the end of the street, he caught a glimpse of Paulo coming threading past the Birmingham-bound coach, wobbling on stilettos. Jake stood up.

  ‘Funtime.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing, I’ll see you later… back at the flat if you want somewhere to stay again.’

  Kevin Donnelly had craned another mouthful to his lips. As he mumbled a ‘Yeah, thanks,’ the fluffy white innards of his chips showed up like cottonwool teeth dipped in matzo oil. Jake was glad he wouldn’t be eating tonight.

  He ran across the road, shouting, ‘Hey, Paulo. Wait up.’

  Chapter Eleven

  Jake slept through most of the afternoon. At five, he washed away the last of his sickness under the shower. After a call to the casino to tell them he was on holiday, and another to his flat to hear the empty ring of his answer-phone, he dressed and left. Heading out to the Village. One thing he was missing: he forgot to pack his hair-wax. But he wasn’t supposed to be out to impress anyone.

  He could have entered the Village head-on, maybe cut through Chinatown. Instead, he looped through a network of alleyways like a regular backdoor trouper. The streets were narrow, foreshortened by the Victorian warehouses that lined the way. The buildings could have been empty or derelict, they showed so few signs of life. What it seemed like, the New Manchester Deal didn’t extend as far as the backs of the buildings. Jake couldn’t see that the area had changed much in fifteen years.

  Then the alley peeled back and Chorlton Street Bus Station sprang up, and it was exactly like he’d never been away. The same dingy piano bar and nightclub set into the corner of the multi-storey, the same National Express coaches pulling round into Sackville Street.

  And, opposite the Bus Station, the same row of farmyard-style cottages, whitewashed in grey: a gay porn shop, a gay pub, a Chinese takeaway where the chip shop once stood. A few whores, male and female, were standing on the pavement, grabbing something to eat in a pause from the after-work rush-hour business.

  Back in 1981, it seemed Kevin Donnelly lived on chips. Usually he ate them out of a funnel with salt and vinegar. For variety, maybe off a tray with a curry sauce. That was past history, but there were a few lookalikes out tonight. One boy especially, the way he held his mouth open as he chewed his chips, he could have been Donnelly Mk II. Even his complexion matched, the colour co-ordinated with the curry sauce.

  Jake stood there, kerbside, staring out at a street scene that looked so real it could be a TV documentary. The only element out of place was Jake himself. If anyone saw him, they could walk up and pass their hand right through him. Down here he was a ghost. The exact date he stopped belonging: 2 February 1982. Johnny had been dead for almost seven weeks then, and Jake had spent the entire time so alone and useless the only thing he did was buy the Evening News, always hoping for an update.

  And when the story finally broke – it was something else entirely.

  The way it happened, Jake was in town early. He picked up the first edition from the kiosk by the Piccadilly Plaza. The front page led with a story about two men, one a teacher and the other a head nurse. Following their trial, all reporting restrictions had been lifted and among the other background snippets, Jake read that the teacher hadn’t worked since Christmas. With the jury returned and the guilty verdict marked down, the man’s dismissal was a confirmed fact. The nurse took the resignation route but the way the report stressed the word ‘voluntary’, it was clear his letter was expected, even overdue. In the photograph, taken outside the court, both men were trying to mask their faces. They were wasting their time because the newspaper already had a personal photograph, and ran it alongside: the two of them standing on a beach, wearing matching pouches and holding hands. They had similar crewcuts and moustaches, they had their names printed beneath the picture: David Corner and Philip Thomas. David and Phil… turn to page three for an account of the pornography found in their possession.

  Jake stood under the awning outside Piccadilly Records, creased open the page and read on. According to Inspector John Pascal, the police raid came as the culmination of a successful collaboration between his own task force and the Oldham branch of Manchester Metropolitan CID. Quote: the officers had discovered videos of ‘unimagined depravity’. The report, right down to its syntax-lite style, was routine press-conference stuff, but Jake recognized authentic chunks of John Pascal inside the copy – something Jake had heard in school assemblies and at the Caldenstall Congregational Chapel. Let Pascal loose in front of an audience, he was ready to hijack it and turn it over to the Word, via his own words.

  The Evening News had a sidebar of Pascal’s thoughts on the counterfeit relation between the two men: a pretence that sullies the institution of Christian marriage. A separate heading for Pascal’s thoughts on the horror of allowing an avowed homosexualist to mould the minds of the young. The report stressed that many of the videos were explicit enactments along paedophile themes. Jake assumed Pascal was referring to the video of the paperboy looking for his Christmas tip. Jake had watched all of Johnny’s Berlin collection and he agreed the paperboy was young-looking – but only for a man in his mid-twenties.

  After Jake finished the story and binned the paper, he didn’t even bother going back to his flat. He just walked the two blocks to the station and jumped the first train to London.

  It was just like Green promised it would be. If Jake sold someone out, he got to save himself. Maybe it wasn’t quite the way Green had meant it, but Jake took the chance and saved himself anyway. He hardly even remembered giving Green the names of the two men, at least not until the report of their trial refreshed his memory. The fact was, those past seven weeks, he hadn’t thought about anything. Like he told his mother when he finally spoke to her, he was thoughtless. The whole of Christmas, he’d been shivering in his flat, so blind and cold in his fear he never got to hear the greatest irony: his own mother was convinced he was dead.

  Johnny’s body had been dumped at the edge of Caldenstall village and, though she never knew he was a friend of Jake’s, she let his murder play on her imagination. By the time Jake thought to call home, it was summer and he was working at an amusement arcade off Piccadilly Circus. One giant leap, Piccadilly Manchester to Piccadilly London. His mother was crying so hard she barely heard his apology. Maybe he should have listened more carefully because he only spoke to her another dozen times, maximum, before she died in ’93.

  Jake took a side-step, turning his back on the Bus Station and heading for the canal. There was no plan, only that he wanted to catch a breath and thought he could do that down by the water, so long as he ignored the smell. What he found there was coffee tables resting on a piazza outside a starkly clean modern bar, disco lights blaring out of the two storeys of glass front
age and skidding across the shallow surface of the canal. The canal itself, that was unbelievable. It had been flushed through and turned into a beauty spot. There was even a cutesy Japanese-style bridge leading over to a new waterside cafe. It was still early but Jake felt like he was stepping aboard a carousel; there was so much heat, light, noise. So many people, too, all wearing their fairground best.

  Jake checked, left and right, deciding whether to start with the Union, which was old but looked like it had had a revival, or whether to take a punt on one of the new bars. He decided to try the lot.

  The third bar along his trail was the Rembrandt, and it was unrecognizable. The close-brick walls had been pulled down and replaced with glass panels in concertina folds. Jake stood with his back to the bar; he had a view down to Canal Street and back towards the Bus Station. He could even see Good-Day’s if he leant out thirty degrees. He had a cold beer, he was listening to Handbag House, he couldn’t say he was uncomfortable. For the first time in as long as ten minutes, he got cruised.

  ‘You on your own?’

  Jake turned, found himself looking at a man maybe four to six years younger than him. Very nice neat hair, a soft Irish accent.

  Jake said, ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘It’s deliberate?’

  Jake nodded. ‘Sorry.’

  The man smiled and moved off. Jake repositioned himself. By looking between two pillars, he had a semi-restricted view of Good-Day’s. The place wasn’t as drastically changed as the Rembrandt but there was a new sign and the windows were no longer blacked out. He couldn’t decide what time he should step over there. He didn’t know if he should aim for the floor-show or not, always assuming that Lady Good-Day was still running entertainment evenings.

  Over another Beck’s, he began thinking: was the opposite of seedy seedless? The Rembrandt was so fresh and clean, you could bus in a coachload of Yorkshire pensioners, they’d think they’d found a very nice little brasserie café. Maybe they would complain that the juke-box was tuned a little loud, then a waiter could step over and suggest they adjust their hearing aids.