Manchester Slingback

by Nicholas Blincoe

  He’d told Green, he didn’t need a chaperone to the hotel. He wasn’t so sick he couldn’t manage his one item of luggage. Green told him it was no bother. Anyway, ever since the Midland Hotel had been refitted, he’d been wondering how the rooms had turned out. This was his first chance to see one. He caught Jake’s look and said: ‘So when am I going to book into a four-star hotel? I fucking live here.’

  *

  The room was exactly like any Holiday Inn room… that’s what it was. Even down to the complimentary tourist book left on his bedside table. Under the words Welcome to Manchester, there was a sci-fi sketch of another tram, a sleek electro-glider bulleting through the Piccadilly terminus. Jake picked up the book and flicked to the timetable, checking out the route map and list of interchanges. Across the top of the page, the old legend What Manchester Does Today… The Rest of the World Does Tomorrow. The book was marginally slicker in its presentation than Green, but it blitzed the same kind of confidence in the city. Maybe the confidence was infectious. Jake just wasn’t the best person to feel it. He wasn’t really Mancunian, not originally, and certainly not anymore. He might experiment with a tram ride, more probably he’d go hire a Hertz. Though it could be time to economize; so far he was spending money like water.

  Green was crouched by the television cabinet, reading the cable guide and trying to program the box to the porn channel. Jake slapped it off.

  ‘I’m not paying for that.’

  ‘Thought you were the last of the big spenders, travelling First Class, staying in swish hotels.’

  Jake was ready to spend what it took to be comfortable, but he couldn’t throw his money away. He didn’t try explaining, though; just opened up his mini-bar and took out a bottle of water to wash the sour aftertaste away. After a two-second exposure to Green’s hangdog face, he let the man choose a miniature Black Label and left him playing with the ice shelf. The sound it made, it could have been a slot machine paying out the jackpot.

  With his head still inside the cabinet, Green said, ‘Seriously, it’s all new to you?’

  Jake hadn’t been back to Manchester at all.

  ‘Because I was going to say you lost your accent.’

  He had, he knew. It was just generic non-Southern now, rather than site-specific. He said, ‘I only had a Manchester accent for the eighteen months I lived here.’

  ‘You’re not from Manchester?’ Green stopped, his head clearing the rim of the fridge-style door. Jake took in the look, it was either genuine surprise or a close approximation.

  Shrugging, he said, ‘I’ve got some relatives here. But, no, I never was true-blue Manchester.’

  ‘Well, it makes sense, now you said it.’ He swirled his drink around the inside of its plastic beaker. ‘So, where are you from?’

  ‘Caldenstall.’

  ‘Yeah? That sheep-shagging burg up in the Pennines. I never knew.’ The way Green sucked at the whisky, the ice cubes rattled off his teeth. ‘I should have guessed, though. You’re such a stroppy git, you had to be a Yorkshireman.’

  ‘It’s only just in Yorkshire, less than four miles from the border.’

  Green nodded. ‘I know. I was up there last month for John Pascal’s golden wedding. I tell you, I never even knew he was married, and once I saw his wife, I realized why he kept her under wraps. If someone told me she was a bloke in a twin-set, I wouldn’t be surprised. She looked like Arthur Scargill. All in all, though, it wasn’t such a bad do. At least Pascal relaxed his teetotal kick for the night and laid on some booze.’

  As Green finished his drink, another whisky miniature appeared in his list. ‘I could never see why he retired up there, though. I mean, I can see that Manchester lost its attractions after Anderton left but what I saw of Caldenstall, it was full of hippies, poets, TV producers and same-sex couples playing house together. I wouldn’t have said it was Pascal’s scene.’

  It was true, Caldenstall had a definite arty-liberal demographic. But the original character of the place hadn’t disappeared entirely. Built as a pack-mule stopover on the Pennines, you only had to kick away the rich topsoil and you’d find the unreconstructed North below, sunk deep in bigotry and cast into the millstone grit of the Pennine moorland. You couldn’t erase something like that… not with a few raffia baskets and a clutch of tie-dye prints.

  Jake said, ‘Pascal didn’t retire there. He always had a house in Caldenstall. He was born there.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Green had his hand back in the ice-tray, he came up with a fistful of cubes and dribbled them into his beaker. ‘I knew he was a Yorkshireman. Anderton recruited him from Bradford after he got the Chief Constable job here.’

  Green used a finger to stir the drink, clinking the fresh ice, stirring up an old story.

  ‘You heard the one about the old Yorkshire fellah, his wife’s dying on him. She’s lying in bed, he’s drawn the curtains, lit a candle and now he’s sitting there waiting for her to go. Well, she’s pretty weak but she starts whispering, “Tha doesn’t have to sit with me, tha knows.” He tells her, “Nay, lass, tha’s been a good wife to me. I’ll not leave thee now.” But she can tell he’s itching to go, so she says again, “I know there’s things wants doing.” He says, “Aye, lass, there’s a kitchen shelf needs fixing but tha’s been a good wife to me. I’ll not leave thee.” Another ten minutes, he’s started fidgeting, so his wife says, “Go down, love. Tha doesn’t have to stay, tha knows.” He’s pulling at his fingers, saying, “Well, someone’s got to see about those taties and I been meaning to fettle that old gate, but tha’s been a good wife to me. I’ll not leave thee now.” It goes on and on, she keeps whispering that he can go, he’s pacing up and down the room but he still refuses to leave her. Eventually he’s hovering at the door; he can’t stand another second. So he says, “All right, lass, tha’s persuaded me. Just promise one thing.” She’s going, “Yes. Yes?”

  ‘“Promise me, when tha feel thaself slipping away, tha’ll just lean over and blow out that candle. I’d not like to see it go to waste.”’

  Green was grinning. A slow gargle at his scotch and he said: ‘How’d you like that?’

  Jake gave a polite smile. The couple would be called Jacob and Sarah, too. Take your pick, it was either a Jewish story rewrapped as a piece of Lancashire-Yorkshire chauvinism or it was an original, aimed at Yorkshire nonconformists, brewing up thrifty new biblical virtues to go with their Old Testament names.

  Jake said, ‘You never believed Pascal was for real, did you?’

  ‘I believed he was a Yorkshire twat.’ Green’s second glass of whisky was drained to the cube. ‘I just didn’t go for the religious shit.’

  Jake said, ‘He was head governor at my school.’

  ‘So what did he do as governor – keep the school on the straight and narrow, make sure no one got a whiff of that new-fangled Darwinian crap, that kind of stuff?’

  What he did, his single piece of weirdness, was take the morning assemblies whenever he could. Seizing his chance to be a lay preacher for at least one day a term; not counting sports days, prize-givings and Christmas services. Christmas wasn’t Christmas unless you had a high-ranking policeman raising hell about the dereliction of the modern age. Jake could have gone into it.

  Instead, he said: ‘You’re closer than you think.’

  ‘And look at you. All that religion and none of it rubbed off.’

  Green had seen everything he wanted. He was ready to go. He scribbled his number on a pad by the hotel bed, and told Jake he’d see him tomorrow…

  ‘Get some shut-eye. I want you on form if you’re going to get anything new out of Halliday.’

  Then, at the door, like it had just come to him: ‘You know, the prison’s close to Caldenstall. Maybe we should drive through, stop for a drink or something. Some of the pubs there, they look all right: kind of olde-worlde and what have you. Going up for Pascal’s golden wedding, I got to thinking. I’d not been that way in years.’ Nodding as he spoke, then a shake of the head. ‘Still, it�
�s not a surprise. Seeing as the last time I was up there, I was putting labels on bits of your pal Johnny. The state we found him, it still gives me the creeps. Anyway, feel better soon…’

  Jake wished he was still holding his bag. One sharp crack to Green’s side, he could smash all the whisky miniatures the man had stuffed in his pocket.

  Chapter Ten

  Johnny got back to the Crescent, stood in the hallway and shouted out: ‘Anyone home?’ Fairy was in the bath, washing his hair, so he probably didn’t hear. But Jake and Sean were in their separate bedrooms and both of them yelled back. The only people they weren’t speaking to were each other.

  A minute later, Johnny came pushing through Jake’s door, asking to know how the geopolitical alliances in the flat were shaping up. Jake told him the Domino incident was still producing fall-out, and he was in internal exile. The last few hours he’d stayed in his room, lying on his bed, reading The Wild Boys.

  Johnny wrinkled his nose. ‘You going to stay in here, you want to think about washing that duvet.’

  ‘You think it smells?’ If the duvet was past obnoxious, Jake hadn’t noticed yet.

  Johnny told him, ‘Like a fucking bumhole.’

  Jake pulled at a comet and took a sniff. He kept his look quizzical, letting realization dawn slowly: ‘Oh, yeah. I know what it is.’ Another sniff. ‘What’s happened, you think its my duvet. But it’s you – you smell like arse. How’s your ring fitting, tart boy?’

  However it was, Johnny wasn’t brimming with joie de la viva. But he was carrying his hold-all with him, so he must have made enough money to pay his video-copying service.

  Jake said, ‘You all set?’

  Johnny nodded. ‘Just freshen up first. Is everyone coming?’

  *

  Nine o’clock, Johnny had got everyone to agree to come on his video-selling trip. One thing he promised, they’d be back by midnight so they could get to the Poly Disco. The only one missing was Kevin Donnelly.

  Fairy was crouched on the staircase, a pair of crimping irons plugged into the landing socket while he burned his way through a thick layer of gel and spray, putting a savage crimp on his hair. With half already done, he looked like he was wearing a small corrugated roof on his head. Before he switched attention to his fringe, he took a pause and asked Johnny if they were going to wait for Kevin. Johnny checked the time and said he didn’t think so. There was something wrong with that lad; he couldn’t stop working.

  Aside from the chemical stench off Fairy’s scorched hair, the atmosphere in the flat had got a whole lot lighter. Sean was still in a sulk but, since Fairy took on the role of the diplomat, Jake’s situation had eased. It was no longer a case of all-way blanket hatred. He could borrow the hair-dryer, eyeliner, whatever… it wouldn’t end in a fight.

  The cab ride to Oldham, though, Fairy had to take the middle of the back seat because Sean refused to sit next to Jake. Maybe Jake should have ridden up front with the driver but Johnny insisted he needed to be there. He was travelling with his bumper bag of porno films between his knees and needed the extra room.

  As they crossed the town boundary, Johnny turned round and asked if any of them knew Oldham, because the cab driver definitely didn’t.

  Fairy said, ‘I do.’

  Jake said, ‘Yeah?’ Making out that he was interested. ‘So how much is it to Old ’em?’

  The house stood at the centre of a stone-built terrace of Victorian villas breasting a hill. As they stood on the pavement, waiting for Johnny to pay the fare, Jake began to get a bad feeling. It wasn’t just that Fairy was giving him the big froideur all over again. Though that was part of it. Slinking last through the gate, between the defensive line of privet, Jake already knew it was going to be one of those painful nights when he was nothing but an invalid bag of clumsiness. There was a holly wreath hanging over the darkened glass of the vestibule door, and when Jake caught his reflection between the leaves and berries, he saw a turkey made up for Christmas.

  A man showed them where to hang their coats. Jake remembered the face and moustache, and recognized the man – the guy was the taller of the two clones he had seen with Johnny last night in Bernard’s Bar. Tonight he was wearing a deep-blue shirt and yellow tie, stripy socks and red Kicker shoes. Clearly the T-shirt and jeans had been his Boys’ Town look; tonight he was modelling his partying-at-home outfit.

  Jake wiped his feet, hung his bunnyman coat where he was told, and followed on down the hall in tense anxiety. He didn’t know why Johnny needed them all to come with him, and he didn’t care. He was just concentrating on keeping it balanced.

  There were another five men cramped in the kitchen at the rear of the house. Sat at the table, grinning down at the remains of their meal, they looked like a cabal of comedy colonels. Paper cracker crowns hid their crew-cuts and the grins they couldn’t wipe off their faces were tufted by five identical moustaches. Like wobbly lines of horsehair.

  The lover of the man who’d met them at the door swayed to his feet, saying: ‘Why don’t we go through, Davey? There’s no room in here.’ Then, turning to them, ‘Wine, beer or brandy?’

  A clutch of wine bottles stood among the debris on the table but there were fresh, foil-tipped bottles waiting by the sink. Given the choice, only Fairy opted for wine over a tin of Carlsberg. Then they retraced their steps, back towards the front door, and the living-room that lay to its right.

  Despite their clothes, the two guys seemed to have tripped on some sense of colour co-ordination when it came to their home. The Christmas tree standing in the bay window was dominant yet restrained, hung with gold baubles and red tinsel and no other colour. The room itself was a shade chintzy but comfortable. The aspidistra on top of the TV set looked too large to be a fixture but Jake guessed its usual place was on a table inside the bay. Come Twelfth Night it would be back in the window, screening out the neighbours.

  Jake took a corner seat as the other men traipsed in from the kitchen. The smaller host was bouncing at the rear, yelling that someone should put the music on. When it started, Jake set his mouth into a line and tried to look neither close nor distant. Between him and the hi-fi speaker, above his head, there was a thick layer of Judy Garland and ‘Someone To Watch Over Me’.

  *

  Later, Fairy caught Jake skulking on the first-floor landing. His fingertips were pressed lightly on a bedroom door, putting on just enough pressure to ease the door open. Inside, it was Laura Ashley decor and stripped-pine furniture. The walls were a swarm of small blue flowers, the matching duvet dropped them in pleats to the floor. Either side of the bed were matching wooden chests: a book, a pair of reading glasses and an alarm clock at one side, a heart-shaped picture frame at the other. The photograph showed the two men standing on a beach with their backs to the camera, side by side and arm in arm, wearing matching butt-cleavers as they grinned over their shoulders.

  Jake, feeling uncomfortable, said, ‘Someone was in the bathroom. I was just waiting.’

  Fairy said, ‘That was me.’ He didn’t see a problem with a little domestic prying. His head was already around the door, mouthing a whoo! as he said, ‘It’s lovely, isn’t it? Have you seen the bathroom? They got these bamboo blinds over the windows and a huge rubber plant over the bath.’ He held his hand out, three feet above the floor. ‘About so big. And what about the kitchen? You see the old cooker thing?’

  ‘The Aga.’

  ‘Yeah. Phil said it heats the water for the whole house. You notice how cosy the kitchen is?’

  Jake thought it was on the close side.

  Fairy had a licence to nose; he was working on first-name accreditation, saying: ‘David and Phil promised to show me around later… you know how many bedrooms they’ve got?’

  Jake nodded. ‘Three.’

  ‘You already had a look around?’

  Jake hadn’t; he just guessed. All these kinds of houses were the same. If he’d seen a staircase leading up to a loft conversion, he would have guessed four instead. H
e was kind of taken aback by Fairy’s enthusiasm, as though it was all entirely new. Though he was a council-estate boy, so it probably was to him.

  Jake made for the vacant bathroom. ‘I’ll see you downstairs.’

  Two things Fairy had forgotten to mention about the bathroom: the signed photograph of Pat Phoenix and the stack of books by the toilet. There was a bumper book of quick crossword puzzles, half completed; a Peanuts collection; and a photo-book of fifties muscle boys, none of them particularly muscular or particularly naked but it was all a part of the heritage. When Jake checked himself in the bathroom, he thought he was looking a whole lot less anxious and clumsy.

  The way the night was shaping, it was just a suburban Christmas with a bent twist. All he had to do was ride it out. Downstairs, he could hear six baritones agreeing that, yeah, the lady is a tramp.

  At the foot of the stairs, he took a sharp left back to the kitchen and the beer supply. He assumed the room was empty. When Sean appeared from behind the door, he tensed, nodded. ‘I just came in for…’

  Sean guessed what he wanted. He passed over a can, his face already blurred and sharpened by drunkenness. ‘Here you are, you cunt.’ A pause, then a sneered grin. ‘What about this place… put it on the front of Ideal Homo, our little “out-of-the-cottage” look?’

  Jake said, ‘Have you seen the bedroom?’

  Sean gave a shriek, keen edges bleeding into alcohol. He’d not only seen the room, he had memorized every detail. If David and Phil ever had to face a Nuremberg tribunal of style crimes, he had the full rap sheet on them. Jake laughed along but didn’t really get the venom. His only problem with the house was that he couldn’t tune himself to its cosiness, and he couldn’t trust his untuned reactions around it. With Sean there seemed to be something close to real pain. Behind the anaesthetic he was fighting an infection.