Rule of Night

by Trevor Hoyle

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  WHILE IT LASTED THE JOB IN THE STOCKROOM AT Woolworth’s on Yorkshire Street was all right; it didn’t last long, however, three weeks to the day, because during the Saturday rush Mr Irwin, the store manager, caught Kenny sitting in the boiler room in front of the cold boiler he was supposed to be stoking, eating a half-pound slab of fruit cake and smoking cigarettes. As a job it had its perks: there were loads of birds floating around, and in the stockroom above the sales floor the racks of shelves reaching to the ceiling – ‘bins’ – formed a labyrinth into which it was easy to slip away unnoticed for half-an-hour at a time. There was plenty to nick too: a box carelessly off-loaded from a trolley would split its corners and spill bars of chocolate or packets of crisps or slabs of fruit cake, several of which could be hidden in the tiny room above the lift shaft which housed the winding gear, to be consumed later that day in a moment of relaxation. Harold Marsh, the bloke in charge of the stockroom and Kenny’s immediate boss (and not much older than Kenny), said Easter was always a good time because Easter eggs were that fragile and you only had to look at one of the brown cartons containing a gross to break half-a-dozen inside it; and smashed Easter eggs were no use to anybody, were they?

  The part that Kenny didn’t like was the humping – sacks of potatoes, crates of hardware, trays of potted plants, barrels of pottery, tea-chests of stationery, and endless brown paper packages which he seemed to spend all his days picking up, carrying, and putting down. Miss Crabtree, the woman who came up from the office to check the daily inventory, was a bit of a bastard too. She was a short, dumpy woman somewhere in her fifties who always wore the same two-piece grey suit and sensible low-heeled black shoes: she reminded him of the Israeli Prime Minister, and she would insist – though Kenny couldn’t understand why – on his checking every item in every package to see that it tallied with the delivery note.

  ‘What’s the use of the note if I’ve got to check the stuff anyway?’ Kenny asked her, and it took Miss Crabtree all her time to explain to him:

  ‘That’s what it’s for, so you can check everything is in the package as it says.’ It annoyed her that he required an explanation at all; he was there to do a job, not to ask questions; anyone would think the system had sprung up without any thought, planning, or the most careful consideration.

  It was the kind of job as well (which again niggled Kenny) that you never got to the end of: there were never any results, never anything to show for the work that had been put in. The area of scarred and pitted wooden floor from the lift-gates to the small corner office, with the rows of bins running off it, was never once completely clear during all the three weeks that he worked there. On Monday morning at about nine-thirty British Rail made its first delivery, and the area was filled with crates, boxes, cartons and packages piled ten deep, all of which had to be unpacked, sorted, checked, and the goods trundled off to be stacked on shelves in the dark maze of bins. Two hours later, say, having just begun to make a slight impression on the mountain of cardboard, wood and paper, the lift-bell would shrill and this time it was BRS with another jolly consignment that, for want of space, Harold and Kenny piled on top of the previous one. Thus the mountain grew.

  By Thursday afternoon – Friday at the latest – the mountain had become an Everest, but by now they were making real inroads, undisturbed by fresh deliveries, and were able to reduce the mountain to a manageable hill, the vision of a bare space empty of packages now a definite possibility and not merely a foolish daydream. Then, on Saturday morning, their goal in sight, the potted plants and shrubs arrived: a full lorry-load that had to be shifted one crate at a time to avoid breakages. By lunchtime they had finished off-loading and – with the help of the girl in charge of the horticulture counter – had stacked the trays of plants against the wall of the cool damp cellar at the base of the lift-shaft, which left the afternoon to concentrate their attack on clearing the stockroom floor; but on Saturday afternoon it was one of Kenny’s jobs to take the broom with the yard-wide head and sweep the sales floor, a job he detested because of the legs and prams and dogs that got in the way. This proved to him how stupid people could be. Even when they saw him with his broom, hugging the side of the counter, they wouldn’t budge (the bastards), so he kept his eyes down and went through the lot, regardless of age, sex, colour or creed.

  Harold battled on in the stockroom for an hour or so during the afternoon, tunnelling away at what remained of the mountain, but at about three o’clock he usually disappeared – either to eat slab cake in the machine-room above the lift, or to chat up the manageress in the staff canteen, or he sneaked out for a crafty stroll round the indoor market. Kenny never found out where he got to: the crates and cartons and packages and boxes remained unopened: the mountain – or what was left of it – was never ultimately conquered, and on Monday morning at half-past nine the lift-bell shrilled to warn them that British Rail was parked in the street, loaded to the gunnels with the first bad news of the week.

  But perhaps the worst job of all, and the one that Kenny hated more than any other, was having to tend the boiler, and – the last straw – whenever it went out, rake the dead coke from the firebox and relight it. He came up from the boiler-room looking like a miner after a ten-hour shift, cokedust in his nostrils and stuck to his lips, his face grey and his eyes smarting. Mr Irwin got mad when the boiler went out because it meant that the store was without heat and hot water, but Kenny didn’t give a toss for Mr Irwin: he never went near the boiler-room if he could possibly avoid it, and twice when he should have been shovelling coke went on the skive, sitting on the parapet at the edge of the flat roof, shivering in his brown smock and watching the heads of the shoppers in Yorkshire Street.

  On the credit side there was Eileen. He had encountered her several times in the gloomy wooden passage which linked the stockroom with the canteen: a tall, thin, slightly gawpy girl who carried her body carelessly and who always had a blatant expression on her face. She was the kind that Kenny could stare at and she stared straight back. They never actually got to grips (Kenny being the puritan that he was) but once or twice came close enough in the dim cobwebbed light to confront each other with lecherous glances. Eileen worked on Haberdashery, and there was usually a conflict of emotions whenever Harold told Kenny to load up the skip and wheel it the length of the sales floor to Eileen’s counter: on the one hand he was quite keen to have the chance of chatting her up, but on the other he went a deep shade of mottled scarlet because the items he had to deliver were STs – sanitary towels – or ‘manhole covers’ as Harold called them. Grinding down in the lift Kenny turned all the packets over so that the labels were hidden, then charged past Hardware, Horticulture, Confectionery and Tinned Fruit looking neither to right nor left, and wouldn’t even meet Eileen’s eye until the offensive packets had been thrown under the counter out of sight.

  On the Saturday that was to be his last day there, everything that could go wrong did go wrong: when he arrived late at twenty past eight, instead of Harold waiting for him with a brew he found Mr Irwin pacing up and down the stockroom with a thunderous brow: Harold had rung in to say he was sick, which meant that Kenny would have to take charge. Kenny knew that Mr Irwin was bursting to say something about his being late, but under the circumstances had decided to restrain the impulse. Ten minutes later the lift-bell drilled a hole in the morning calm when it announced the arrival of thirty-two hundredweight sacks of King Edwards, Lincolns and Jerseys. Kenny helped the driver unload, and was humping the very last sack along the alley at the side of the store when Miss Crabtree stuck her scowling face out of the door and said that Household Goods had been waiting half an hour for some lampshades to be checked off and would he get a move on. It was Kenny’s turn to restrain an impulse.

  He said, ‘I haven’t had me break yet.’

  ‘No time for that now,’ Miss Crabtree said tartly. ‘The shop comes first, then you can have your break.’

  Kenny thought longingly of breaking her nec
k and went up to unpack the lampshades. The middle-aged woman who looked after Household Goods was waiting in the stockroom office with her arms folded and her foot tapping.

  ‘I’ve got three customers down there,’ she said. Kenny turned his back. He slashed open the large brown carton with a Stanley knife, and lampshades – pink, blue, turquoise and gold (all with matching tasselled fringes) – rolled across the floor. ‘Be careful!’ the woman said.

  Kenny controlled his breathing. ‘Do you want these… lampshades or don’t you?’ he asked. The lift-bell rang.

  ‘Give me three of each,’ the woman said.

  ‘I’ve got to check them off first,’ Kenny said.

  The woman stamped her foot. ‘I’ve got customers waiting.’

  ‘I’ve got to check them off first,’ Kenny said, unmoved. The lift-bell rang: three long impatient bursts. Miss Crabtree came up the stairs followed by Mr Irwin.

  ‘Mrs Thomas,’ Miss Crabtree said, ‘haven’t those shades gone down yet?’

  ‘He won’t let me take them, Miss Crabtree,’ Mrs Thomas complained.

  ‘Kenny,’ Mr Irwin said, ‘I don’t suppose you’ve been to look at the boiler this morning?’

  ‘We can’t wait all day,’ Miss Crabtree said.

  ‘I’ve got to check them off first,’ Kenny said. ‘You told me to check everything off first.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter now,’ Miss Crabtree said. ‘There’s customers waiting.’

  ‘I’ve asked him to let me have three of each,’ Mrs Thomas said, ‘but he won’t.’

  ‘You told me to check everything off,’ Kenny said.

  ‘You can do it after,’ Miss Crabtree said.

  Kenny said, ‘But you told me—’

  ‘It’s out,’ Mr Irwin said. The lift-bell started ringing and this time wouldn’t stop. Mr Irwin said: ‘Can’t somebody answer that bell?’

  ‘Can we have three of each?’ Miss Crabtree said, ‘please–’

  ‘Don’t answer it just yet,’ Mr Irwin said. ‘See to the boiler first.’

  ‘Isn’t he going to do these shades?’ Mrs Thomas said.

  ‘Where do you think you’re off to?’ Mr Irwin said.

  ‘For me break,’ Kenny said, walking to the stairs.

  ‘Come on, be reasonable,’ Mr Irwin said. ‘First things first.’

  ‘I’ve already told him,’ said Miss Crabtree, ‘the shop comes first; then he can have his break.’

  Kenny went down the stairs. ‘If I were you,’ he said, ‘I’d answer that fucking bell.’

  • • •

  Brian strides into the living-room, slight, spare, not an ounce of excess flesh on him, and lifts Kenny out of the chair by his shirt collar.

  ‘You’ve been at it again,’ Brian says. ‘Own up.’

  Kenny blusters guiltily. ‘Own up to what? What have I done now? It’s always me.’

  ‘Our Kat wouldn’t have done it,’ Brian says, still holding Kenny, who’s now on his feet, and bigger and broader than his dad.

  ‘What? What have I done? Why pick on me?’

  ‘Brian,’ Margaret says from the door. ‘We don’t know for certain. Let him have his say.’ She looks at Kenny with a pained, appealing expression on her face: her son wouldn’t wilfully lie or steal, she knows that.

  ‘I bloody know it’s him,’ Brian says, picking up his cigarettes off the mantelpiece. ‘I can tell with the look on his face. Where did he get the money from to go out last night? You haven’t been giving him any, have you?

  ‘Have you?’ Brian says when Margaret’s reply is delayed. He holds the match an inch a way from his cigarette and looks at her.

  Margaret says quietly, ‘Only a bob or two.’ She comes into the room, softly biting her lower lip, wishing now that she hadn’t mentioned it.

  ‘Where is it? Have you spent it?’ Brian stands with his back to the artificial glowing coals, balanced on his toes like a dancer or a featherweight: sharp as a whippet and twice as spunky.

  ‘What?’ Kenny says. ‘Spent what?’ He gapes from one to the other, his eyes bulging in a dumb show of bewildered innocence. The performance is just that little bit too convincing; yet still Margaret has her doubts.

  ‘You bloody know,’ Brian says. ‘The insurance money. You’ve spent it, haven’t you? It was on the table in the hallway last night – one pound and ten pence – and now it’s fucking gone. Katrina wouldn’t touch it and I haven’t touched it and your mother put it there, so that leaves you.’ He points the two fingers holding the cigarette at Kenny:

  ‘You’ll tell me, me-laddo, I’ll have it out of you.’

  ‘Why is it always me?’ Kenny says, feeling genuinely aggrieved. ‘Whenever there’s owt missing it’s always me gets the blame.’ His eyelids start to quiver and tears prick the corners of his eyes.

  ‘Why?’ Brian says. ‘Why? Because you’re such a clog-head, that’s why. A bloody pie-can. Who else could it be? Did you ever stop to think of that when you took it – who else it could be but you?’ He blows out a sigh that is full of smoke and turns away in disgust.

  ‘You should have come to me, love,’ Margaret says. ‘I could have spared you enough for a couple of pints.’

  ‘I never said it was me,’ Kenny says. He throws himself down in the chair, almost weeping.

  ‘And you’ll stop this cadging off your mother,’ Brian says, resuming the attack. ‘If it isn’t beer-money it’s fags. You lie around the house all day and then expect to go off boozing at night.’

  Kenny sulks in the chair. ‘Not my fault I can’t get a job.’

  ‘Leave the lad alone,’ Margaret says.

  ‘No,’ Brian says with a flash of coldness, ‘I won’t.’ He’s about to say that it’s as much her fault as Kenny’s – for being so soft with him – but he doesn’t feel like embarking on a family feud. The thing that annoys him even more than the money being stolen is Kenny’s stupidity: it’s like an insult, a personal affront, to be reminded that whenever the Seddons stepped outside the law they did it as bumbling amateurs, almost wilfully inviting disaster to befall them. And he remembers too the night they picked him up, his hands cut to ribbons from trying to scramble through the broken window and dripping all over the floor of the Black Maria.

  ‘I could have been mistaken,’ Margaret says, flopping down into a chair. She tucks her red mottled legs underneath her large rump and pulls her skirt down, stained from the cafe. Her streaky blonde hair hovers like an indefinite halo above her head.

  ‘Don’t bloody insult me, woman,’ Brian says, raising his voice. Anger suddenly runs in his blood and he strikes Kenny on the side of the head with the back of his hand.

  The word ‘Liar’ is spoken – shouted – but is sucked in by the carpet and soft furnishings, muffled by the lightweight internal partitions of compressed fibreboard. There is a flurry of movement as Kenny tries to make a break for it; Brian thumps him again, then restrains him, and Margaret gets between them. The next thing that happens is that Kenny’s nose is bleeding and Brian and Margaret are engaged in an awkward dance in front of the uniform flames of the simulated fire-effect. The hearth rug wraps itself round their feet as they stumble a few steps together.

  ‘Go and put a cold flannel on your nose,’ Margaret says over her shoulder.

  Kenny hangs his head in the stainless steel sink and watches the red swirl away down the plug-hole. He moves his head from side to side, making a pattern of dissolving dots, and then experiments with a few drips over the dirty crockery in the plastic bowl.

  ‘Oh give over Brian,’ he hears Margaret’s voice say scathingly from the living-room. Kenny knows from her tone that she is confronting him with his own past, dredging up every domestic misdemeanour and marital infidelity and all the falls from grace since they were married. She’ll next remind him that he has no claim on purity and innocence…

  ‘Were you never a lad?’

  Kenny nods. Or were you never a lad…

  ‘Your mother’s told me enough about you
.’

  Kenny grins. Or that. It was always, or usually always, the same. Brian’s voice over-rides his mother’s continual, pounding barrage with a firmly stated: ‘He’s a liar, that lad; he’s bloody lied to me.’

  ‘All right then, he’s lied, he’s lied – have you never lied?’

  Kenny smiles into the sink.

  There follows a long and involved dialogue concerning the unemployment situation nationally, and why he’s been fired from four jobs in twelve months, and what the hell has the Common Market got to do with it, and who’s to buy the food week after week to feed a human dustbin, and already he’s been in trouble with the police, and now it’s the fucking Juvenile Liaison Officer (language!) he’s got to go and see every third Friday in the month, and where does he get to every other week when his bed hasn’t been slept in for nights at a time, and only turning up to cadge this and borrow that and steal the other.

  ‘Brian-Bloody-Know-All!’ Margaret says with a thin sneer of scorn in her voice.

  Brian knows that he can’t possibly win at this game: everything he says will be deflected, turned inside-out, upside-down, and redirected at his own head. Every word he utters is like a boomerang that sooner or later will come whizzing back at twice the speed it left his lips. He has two alternatives – either to explode into uncontrollable fury and yell her into submission or to pick up his jacket, slam the door, and shoot off to the Weavers.