Naked

by Kevin Brooks

  The party didn’t really get going until after the pubs had closed, which back then was at 11 p.m. on Saturdays. I’d spent most of the night with Curtis and Jake in a pub called the Seven Sisters, which was just around the corner from the squat in Broad Lane. There were a bunch of other people there too, most of them from the squat, but Stan and Chief turned up at some point during the night, and they brought some friends with them, and then a bit later on a motley group of punks slouched in, most of whom I recognized vaguely as friends and acquaintances of Curtis and Jake – musicians, poets, artists, designers …

  I didn’t mean to drink very much in the pub, but we were in there for a good few hours, and it was loud and noisy and hot and sweaty, and I was finding it really hard to deal with all the talking and posing, everyone acting like idiots, and the more I drank, the easier it was to ignore everything …

  So by the time the pub closed and we all started walking back to the squat, I was already quite drunk. Curtis wasn’t in too bad a state. He hadn’t had much to drink, but he’d been speeding all day, and he’d been keeping himself topped up with numerous snorts of sulphate in the pub toilets, so he was zipping around all over the place like a hyperactive lunatic, but he was still pretty much in control of himself. Once he started on the drink though – which he always did when he’d been speeding all day – well, that’s when the problems would start.

  But, for now, he was OK.

  In fact, despite his almost exhausting over-exuberance, I was actually having a pretty good time with him.

  ‘You want a ride, Lili?’ he said to me as we headed back to the squat.

  I raised my eyebrows at him.

  He laughed. ‘No, I meant a piggy-back. Here …’ He turned his back to me and bent over. ‘Jump on.’

  I hopped up onto his back and put my arms round his neck, and he grabbed hold of my legs and started running.

  ‘Not so fast!’ I cried out.

  ‘Hold on tight!’

  As he hurtled down the road towards the squat, jiggling me up and down on his back, I closed my eyes and screamed like an excited kid on a rollercoaster. The screams almost turned to real screams as we reached the squat, and I suddenly realized that Curtis was going too fast to stop, and as he tried to turn the corner into the squat he lost his balance and we both toppled over into a hedge and ended up flat on our backs in the front yard. It was a fairly heavy fall, but after a few moments’ silence – which reminded me, there and then, of the silence you hear just after a child has fallen over, just before they start to cry – we both realized that we weren’t hurt, that nothing was broken, and we both sat up, brushed ourselves down, and began to laugh.

  ‘Fuck!’ gasped Curtis.

  ‘Yeah …’

  ‘That was your fault.’

  ‘My fault? I told you not to go so fast –’

  ‘You had the reins.’

  ‘What reins?’

  He grinned at me. ‘The piggy reins.’

  It wasn’t that funny – in fact, it wasn’t really funny at all – but for some reason we both found it hilarious, and for the next minute or so we just sat there on the ground together, laughing ourselves stupid. People were streaming past us now, heading up the path into the squat, and music was blaring out of the house – ‘Beat on the Brat’ by the Ramones – and the night was warm, the still air carrying the music far into the night, and for the first time in ages I briefly felt like a young girl again …

  It was a good moment.

  ‘Come on,’ said Curtis, getting to his feet and offering me his hand. ‘Let’s party.’

  It was hot inside the house. There were hundreds of people milling around, the air was thick with the sweet smell of marijuana, and the front room downstairs was a seething mass of sweaty dancers. There’d been a mini heatwave that week – a portent of the summer to come – and although the temperature now was beginning to cool, it was still, for May, a ludicrously hot night.

  I spent a while with Curtis, just mooching around, drinking wine, saying hello to people, watching people dance. The first Ramones album had recently been released, and that night it was being played almost continuously. The songs were ridiculously short – two or three minutes at most – incredibly fast, and wonderfully simple. But it wasn’t the easiest music to dance to. Pogo-ing had yet to take off, and most people were still trying to work out how to dance to punk music. A dozen or so hardcore punks were just throwing themselves around the floor, not bothering to move to the music at all, just leaping up and down and crashing into each other, but – for the most part – the people who wanted to dance had to wait for something more danceable to come on. Which, more often than not then, was reggae.

  So, as the last snarling ‘Oh yeah …’ of the Ramones’ ‘Judy is a Punk’ faded out, and the first big bass beats of Big Youth’s ‘Screaming Target’ boomed round the room, the dance floor suddenly filled up again.

  ‘You dancing?’ I yelled in Curtis’s ear.

  He smiled at me. ‘You asking?’

  Considering his love of the limelight, and the ease with which he presented himself on stage, Curtis was a surprisingly self-conscious dancer. He also wasn’t all that good at it … and maybe that was why he found it so awkward. He just wasn’t used to not being good at something. But we did sometimes dance together, and that night was one of those times. It didn’t bother me that he wasn’t a great dancer – I wasn’t that hot myself – and, besides, with reggae music you can’t really go wrong. As long as you’ve got at least some sense of rhythm, all you have to do is move. Move anything – your head, your hips, your feet … it doesn’t matter. Just close your eyes, feel the music, and move with it.

  And that’s what we did.

  Just the two of us, alone together in a sea of people, swaying and rolling, not thinking, not talking, just floating along, moving to the music, just dancing …

  And, after a while, even Curtis began to enjoy himself.

  We carried on dancing together for the next few songs – two more reggae tracks from the Big Youth album followed by the Stones’ ‘Hey Negrita’ – and then whoever was in charge of the music at that point, which was basically anyone who wanted to be in charge, put the Ramones album back on again, and although me and Curtis both loved it, neither of us really fancied trying to dance to it.

  ‘I need a wee, anyway,’ I said to Curtis.

  ‘Right,’ he said, looking around the room. ‘Have you seen Jake anywhere? I need to see him about something.’

  ‘Try the kitchen,’ I said. ‘And Curtis?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Don’t go mad, OK?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know what I mean. Just … you know … don’t overdo it, that’s all. For my sake.’

  He smiled at me. ‘OK.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, giving him a kiss.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ he said, kissing me back.

  I watched him walk off towards the kitchen, knowing full well that he was after more drugs, then I went upstairs and joined the long queue for the toilet.

  Twenty minutes later, when I came back down and went into the kitchen, Curtis was nowhere to be seen. I wiped a sheen of sweat from my face, took a cold can of beer from the fridge, and went outside to get some fresh air.

  There was no back garden as such, just a small brick-walled yard of cracked concrete with a tangled border of overgrown weeds and nettles. In a pathetic attempt to build a bonfire, the rotted trunk of a long-dead apple tree had been uprooted from the corner of the yard, doused in petrol, and set alight, and now it lay smouldering – and stinking of petrol – in the middle of the yard. A sad-looking punk with purple hair was standing alone in front of the blackened tree, staring at nothing and idly tapping a length of charred wood against his leg, and two dead-eyed hippies were sitting cross-legged on the ground by the far wall, mumbling incoherently to each other as they shared a b
ottle of wine. Apart from that, the yard seemed empty. I moved away from the smouldering tree to get away from the petrol fumes, and then I just stood there for a while, with my back to the house, breathing in the clear night air and soaking up the relative peace and quiet. A pale white moon hung high in the sky, its outline shimmering with an eerie blue light. There was something about this light, something about the sheer blueness of it, that reminded me – unsettlingly – of my mother’s eyes …

  I sighed, looking down and trying to shake the image from my mind. I didn’t want to think about my mother – it was all too confusing, too complicated – but I couldn’t help wondering what she was doing right now. Was she at home? Was she alone? Was she out somewhere? Was she with someone?

  I sighed again and decided to go back inside.

  Just as I turned to leave, though, I heard a voice calling out softly from behind me – ‘Hey, Lili’ – and when I looked round, I saw William. He was sitting on an upturned milk crate against the wall of a little alleyway that led round the side of the house. There was a half-empty bottle of wine at his feet, and he had a half-smoked joint in his hand.

  ‘William!’ I said, unable to keep an audible exclamation mark from my voice. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Not much, he replied, smiling. ‘Just sitting around, you know …’

  ‘I wasn’t sure you were here,’ I said. ‘At the party, I mean …’

  ‘Yeah, I’m here.’

  I smiled, feeling a bit foolish, not knowing what to say.

  ‘Don’t let me stop you,’ William said. ‘I mean, if you were going back in –’

  ‘No … no, that’s all right. I was just …’

  ‘Looking at the moon?’

  I laughed. ‘Yeah, something like that.’

  He gazed up. ‘It’s a nice one tonight.’

  ‘Yeah, it is.’

  He looked back at me. ‘Do you want to sit down?’

  ‘Yeah, OK,’ I said, walking over to him.

  He pulled up another milk crate, and I sat down next to him. He took a plastic lighter from his pocket, relit the joint, and took a drag on it.

  ‘I thought you didn’t smoke,’ I said, watching him. ‘Dope, I mean … I thought you didn’t use drugs.’

  He shrugged. ‘I asked someone for a cigarette earlier on and they gave me this.’ He looked quizzically at the joint. ‘It’s better than nothing, I suppose …’

  ‘Do you ever buy your own cigarettes?’ I asked.

  He smiled. ‘Are you saying I’m stingy?’

  ‘No …’ I looked at him. ‘Well, yeah, actually. Yeah, I am.’

  He laughed.

  I took a small sip from the can of beer I’d taken from the fridge.

  ‘Do you want some of this?’ William said, offering me the joint.

  I shook my head, swallowing the beer. ‘I’m already a bit stoned from just being in there,’ I told him, indicating the house. ‘That’s partly why I came out here, to clear my head.’

  ‘Yeah, I know what you mean.’

  I took another sip of beer. ‘Did you come on your own?’

  ‘What – out here?’

  I looked at him. ‘How come you always answer a question with another question?’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘You’ve just done it again.’

  ‘Have I?’

  I gave him a stern look.

  ‘All right,’ he said, smiling. ‘What was the question again?’

  ‘I just asked if you came to the party on your own, that’s all.’

  ‘Yeah, I did.’

  ‘You didn’t bring any friends with you or anything?’

  ‘No, I didn’t bring any friends.’

  I smiled. ‘Have you got any friends?’

  ‘One or two.’

  ‘How about a girlfriend?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah, really.’

  ‘I find that hard to believe.’

  He just shrugged.

  ‘Is there someone back home?’ I said. ‘Is that it? You’ve got a girlfriend in Belfast and you’re saving yourself –’

  ‘You ask a lot of questions, don’t you?’ he said.

  ‘I’m just curious, that’s all.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because … I don’t know. It’s just … well, I don’t know anything about you.’

  He looked at me. ‘I don’t know anything about you.’

  ‘Aren’t you curious?’

  He didn’t say anything for a while then, he just looked at me, his eyes almost golden in the moonlight, and I had absolutely no idea what he was thinking. His face was a mask, his heart and soul impenetrable. After what seemed like a minute or two, but was probably only a couple of seconds, I saw his eyes dart to the right, drawn by something in the backyard, and then he smiled at me and said, ‘Just a second,’ and I watched him as he got to his feet and went over to the sad-eyed punk by the smouldering tree. The punk was smoking a cigarette, and I realized that William had just seen him light it, and now he was asking him if he could have one. The punk gave him two. William thanked him, put one behind his ear, lit the other one, and came back over to me.

  ‘All right,’ he said, sitting down. ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You said that you didn’t know anything about me …’

  ‘Yeah …’

  ‘So what do you want to know?’

  ‘Well … anything, really,’ I muttered, taken aback by his sudden candour. ‘You know … whatever you want to tell me about … your family, your home, why you came over here …’

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you as much as I can … but on two conditions.’

  ‘Which are?

  ‘Firstly, that you don’t repeat anything I’m about to tell you to anyone else.’ He gave me a deadly serious look. ‘Not a single word, OK?’

  ‘Yeah, of course.’

  ‘This is strictly between you and me. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, I understand. What’s the second condition?’

  ‘You have to tell me everything about your family too.’

  ‘No problem,’ I said, holding my hand out for him to shake. ‘You’ve got yourself a deal.’

  He looked at me, a trace of sadness in his eyes, and for a moment I thought he was going to change his mind. And I wondered briefly if I was doing the right thing – was I forcing him to do this? was I making him do something he didn’t want to do? – and I began to think that maybe it would be best if he did change his mind. But then he took my hand, gave it a quick shake, and before I had a chance to say anything else, he began telling me his story.

  19

  William was born and brought up in the Falls Road district of west Belfast, a staunchly Republican area. His father, Joseph, was a labourer. His mother, Catherine, worked part-time in a local library. William’s brother, Joseph – known to the family as Little Joe – was three years younger than him.

  ‘We were a fairly normal family really,’ William told me. ‘My parents worked hard, we went to mass every Sunday, and most summers we’d go and stay at my grandparents’ farm near Antrim. I mean, we never had much money or anything, but neither did anyone else, you know? There was always enough to eat, we never really missed out on anything …’ He shrugged. ‘It was kind of hard at times … but you just get on with it, don’t you?’ He paused for a moment, staring thoughtfully at the ground, and then he went on. ‘And I suppose that’s what we were doing when it happened – just getting on with it, trying to live our lives …’

  It was January 1970, and the conflict in Northern Ireland was getting worse all the time. British troops patrolled the streets of Belfast, gunfire rang out almost every night, and there was constant rioting between Republicans and Loyalists. William’s family, like most other families in the neighbourh
ood, did their best to carry on as usual and not get directly involved, but it simply wasn’t possible. They were Catholic, they lived in a close-knit Republican area … they were, by default, targets for Loyalist violence. And it worked the other way round too. Ordinary Protestant families, living in Loyalist neighbourhoods, were the targets of Republican hatred. So every night the battle lines would be drawn – makeshift barriers of corrugated iron and burned-out cars – and streets would be blocked off, and then the rioting would begin. Kids throwing stones and bottles, petrol bombs flying through the air, guns going off, the mobs swelling, the ferocity growing … and then, sometimes, the security forces would arrive – British soldiers or the RUC, the Royal Ulster Constabulary – and sometimes they’d try to take control and calm things down, and sometimes they succeeded, and the rioting would gradually die down, the combatants melting away into the darkened streets, and everything would be quiet again … until the following night.

  But, according to William, there were other times when the security forces had no intention of calming things down.

  ‘I’d seen them do it before,’ William told me. ‘The fucking police … I’d seen them standing by, doing nothing, while a mob of Loyalists broke through a barrier and ransacked a whole fucking street. I mean, they were beating the shit out of people, dragging them out of their own houses … whole families, little kids and everything … and the police just stood there and let it happen.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Why would the police do that?’

  He looked at me. ‘Because that’s how it is … that’s how it’s always been. You’re either this or that – Protestant or Catholic, Rangers or Celtic, punk or skinhead, black or white, orange or green … it doesn’t matter what any of it means, what any of it stands for, all that matters is which side you’re on.’

  ‘And you’re saying that the police in Belfast are on the side of the Loyalists?’

  ‘All I’m saying is what I know, what I’ve seen … what I saw that night.’

  His home was a small terraced house in a narrow street on the north side of the Falls Road. The rioting that night had been particularly violent, and there’d been a series of running battles in the surrounding streets between local residents and rampaging Loyalists.