Rule of Night

by Trevor Hoyle

  Whatever happens, Kenny is safe; for the umpteenth time disaster has been averted. He will get a roasting from Margaret but he can handle her by the simple method of taking not a blind bit of notice of anything she says. And anyway, it’s too late now: the insurance money (a measly quid and ten pence) has gone for good. They can’t dock it from his wages because he doesn’t have any wages. They’re thick, the pair of them. Brian doesn’t even know he’s been staying at Janice’s; Margaret knows, because she asked him and he told her, but she won’t dare tell Brian – unless there’s a big bust-up one Friday night, the two of them sozzled on bitter and brown ale, and in a raging temper Brian insists on knowing what goes on behind his back, and why everybody in his own family is so bloody secretive, and if that lad doesn’t start shaping soon there’ll be trouble.

  When his mother comes into the kitchen Kenny is sitting at the table reading the Daily Mirror and eating biscuits out of the tin.

  ‘One of these days you’ll be the death of me,’ Margaret says.

  ‘I should be so lucky,’ Kenny says, munching away.

  Rochdale Observer, 12 December 1973

  SOCCER MOB RUNS WILD

  ONE FAN’S FACE SLASHED

  HOUSES AND SHOPS STONED

  ONE FAN slashed across the face with a razor … a couple injured by flying glass … four windows broken … toilets smashed … a flag stolen … and a director’s box invaded.

  This is the tally of trouble in and around the Rochdale Football Club ground at Spotland on Saturday during and after the game against Blackburn Rovers.

  The summary of incidents collated by police read:

  Mohammed Khan, an 18-year-old Blackburn fan, slashed across the face with a cut-throat razor. Hospital treatment required, 26 stitches in the wound.

  Club flag lowered by some Rovers supporters. Flag recovered by police outside the ground.

  Home directors’ box besieged by about 80 fans at halftime. Two climbed in among the directors.

  Fusillade of stones rained at the houses 2 and 4 Willbutts Lane. Windows broken. Mr and Mrs Brian Fielden, in the front room at No 2 injured by flying glass.

  Stones hurled through shop windows at 64 and 184 Spotland Road.

  Toilets wrecked at the Spotland Filling Station, Mellor Street.

  Gangs of youths charged through shops in Cheetham Street and Yorkshire Street.

  At the end of the day the police had made nine arrests. Alleged offences ranged from wounding to using threatening behaviour.

  And one police officer said: ‘We have had tough crowds to deal with in the past, but this lot from Blackburn is the worst in my experience.’

  It was as a mob of about 100 Rovers supporters charged down Willbutts Lane towards the town after the match, that the windows of two houses were broken.

  Mr Brian Fielden, aged 40, secretary of the Rochdale Amateur League, had decided to stay at his home, No 2, because he ‘feared the worst’.

  Mr Fielden told the Observer: ‘I heard the next door window crash. There was a mob of about a hundred outside. Two stones came through our window and there was flying glass all over the front room. My wife was hit in the eye by a fragment. I had my hand cut. Believe me, it was frightening.’

  Mr Fielden and his wife, Pauline, aged 38, both went to hospital to have their injuries treated.

  The spectators who got into the directors’ box attempted to manhandle Mr Leonard Hilton, a Rochdale FC director.

  A police sergeant averted what had all the makings of a riot by coolly restraining a ringleader and easing him out of the box with the minimum of force.

  The Rochdale players also had to run a gauntlet of spittle, cinders and abuse when they returned to the field at the start of the second half. At the end of the match the referee was escorted off the pitch by the police.

  Mr F S Ratcliffe, the Rochdale chairman, said of the behaviour he saw: ‘I think it was disgusting. Some fans even jumped into the directors’ box but there was no violence. I think the idea was to get down into the tunnel that way to get to the referee. It was terrible the way people reacted.’

  GANG

  THE GANG MET ON THE CORNER OF MILKSTONE ROAD AND Tweedale Street a few yards away from where the old Victory Cinema had once been (the building was now a warehouse); there were eleven of them, including the girls, and they were out for trouble. This part of town was Paki-land, the old grand houses fallen to wrack and ruin and taken over by a whole colony of immigrant families. The windows of what had been corner shops selling sliced bread and floor-polish were now heaped with odd-looking packets bearing indecipherable labels and containing even stranger foodstuffs: greyish-coloured beans, small hard red pellets, curly white things like dried-up slugs, and what appeared to be old brittle grass-cuttings. Long sausage-shapes wrapped in cloth hung from skewers, and in the dim interior cardboard boxes were stacked several deep over most of the floor, squashed on top of one another, with just enough room between them for a beaten path from door to counter. At one end of Tweedale Street the pretty architecture of a Mormon church marked the southern outpost of the territory, while at the other it petered out in a maze of backstreets before the rounded dome of a Catholic church, St John the Baptist, announced the ultimate boundary. Beyond the church lay Drake Street with its pubs, snack bars, furniture stores, men’s outfitters and the offices of the Rochdale Observer.

  It was the coldest time of the year – though the snow and hail were yet to come – with a damp blue fog lurking in the alleys and tumbling sluggishly along the gutters. Overhead the lights took on a greenish tinge, and when you looked along the length of Tweedale Street they vanished into an opaque glow, like a row of torchbearers marching steadfastly towards an unknown and mysterious destination. Buses with cloudy windows and sides running with condensation appeared and disappeared, wafting cold air along the pavements in their wake.

  Kenny and the others stood in a shop doorway, smoking and scrutinising the faces of passers-by in the gloom. They talked amongst themselves of ‘mugging’ someone – as if the word itself, in classifying the crime so that it fitted an official category, opened up new possibilities. When you mugged someone you did it for a reason and not merely for kicks or out of blind chance. Fester was all for grabbing the first person who came along, thrusting him into a doorway and threatening violence unless he parted with his wallet. Andy said that that wasn’t the way to do it: you had to plan things, like the police did, like crooks did, on TV. Get one of the girls to lure a Paki down an entry and then when you had him on his own in the dark, stick the boot in quick. He wouldn’t have a chance with them all around him; they would scare the shit out of him.

  ‘Yeh,’ Kenny said, lounging in the shop doorway, ‘that’s right. They go mad for a white girl,’ and saw Andy look at him swiftly.

  ‘Which one of you two?’ Fester said to the girls.

  Crabby said, ‘We could hide and watch them for a bit. See what the Paki does, whether he gets his dick out.’

  ‘So you can have a wank,’ Arthur said, snorting, which prompted Crabby to thump him, and they wrestled on the edge of the pavement in the glare of passing headlights. Kenny said:

  ‘Stop farting around. We got to do it without anybody knowing it was us.’ He pulled Janice against him roughly. She snuggled under his arm.

  ‘It’s a bloody good idea, that,’ Shortarse said. ‘Get Cil or Jan to give them a flash—’

  ‘Bog off,’ Cil said from the corner of her mouth.

  ‘What’s up with Virgin Mary?’ said one of the lads.

  ‘Who hasn’t been inside your knickers?’ asked Arthur rhetorically.

  ‘Shut up, pig.’

  Arthur grabbed her and she tried to kick him in the privates; they spun round on the pavement, Arthur bent at the waist to protect himself, Cil hopping on one foot and kicking with the other. A man and a woman came along, stepping into the road to avoid them. The man muttered something and went on.

  ‘What was that, squire?’ Fester said.
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br />   Crabby said, ‘Are you talking to us or chewing a brick?’

  Janice’s arms were under Kenny’s jacket, hugging him for warmth. She could feel the wide rib-cage, the tenseness of his stomach muscles, the vibrations of his heart. She wore a pair of black slacks and a new navy-blue blazer with yellow piping along the edges; Kenny could smell her mother’s perfume. Her young bony face was somewhere below his shoulder, hidden in shadow. He felt strong, protective, invincible. She was his girl, all right, Kenny’s bird. The fact brought comfort to them both. Janice said, ‘Are you coming back tonight?’

  ‘Do you want me to?’

  ‘If you want,’ Janice said quietly.

  ‘But do you want me to?’

  ‘It’s up to you.’

  ‘Hey,’ said Kenny suddenly. ‘Come back to my place.’

  ‘What about your dad?’

  ‘He’s away working.’

  ‘What will your mum say?’

  Kenny made a disparaging sound and flicked his cigarette away, as though any consideration of his mother’s feelings was beneath contempt. The mist was thickening. He thought: Janice is just like the old lady, really. Dumb. Why were they all so dumb, women? They didn’t know a thing. At least he respected the old man; but there again, she could twist him round her little finger when she wanted to. Kenny would never allow a bird to get the better of him. They were good for one thing but once you’d said that you’d said the lot. This put him in mind of Eileen, the girl on Haberdashery in Woolworth’s, the one he’d never got to grips with. There was nothing to stop him having a stroll round there one afternoon: it was a public place, not much they could say, and if they did he would tell them to stuff it. She had that look about her, Eileen, that look of an older girl who’d been around and knew the score. There wouldn’t be any stink finger with Eileen – straight in, knickers down, and hold that till it spits at you.

  ‘Are we going or aren’t we?’ Arthur said, banging his forehead against the plate-glass window.

  ‘Wait your sweat,’ Kenny said. He bit his nails and looked up the street towards the Catholic church which he couldn’t see: the street-lights were now faint and blurred in the fog, like feeble glow-worms in a long blue underwater tunnel. The air was cold and clammy, chilling to the skin, seeping into their clothes. Occasionally shrouded figures came at them out of the gloom and hurried by, mostly couples.

  ‘Fuck this for a lark,’ Fester complained, pushing into the doorway past Kenny and Janice to get out of the damp.

  One of the lads said, ‘What are we hanging round here for?’

  ‘Shut up, moron,’ Kenny said, immediately incensed.

  They all went quiet as four Pakistani youths came along, walking to town, and in spite of the cold wearing thin cotton jackets and open-necked shirts. Crabby sniggered as they passed by, following them for a few paces and copying the way they delicately walked in their thin-soled pointed shoes. He came back, mincing along the pavement in his enormous red boots.

  Andy gave Kenny a cigarette. ‘Let’s wait till later on,’ he said. ‘The best time is after the pubs shut when they’re coming back from town. They’ll be pissed then and it’ll be dead easy.’

  Kenny hadn’t thought of this but he didn’t want to give the impression that he hadn’t thought of it. He nodded slowly, as if considering the suggestion and weighing it carefully; a random clutter of formless notions shuttled about inside his head, not one of them clearer or more distinct than any other.

  ‘Trouble is,’ said Andy again, thinking aloud this time, ‘they might have spent up by then. They’ll have nowt left.’

  Kenny nodded. He hadn’t thought of this either. ‘Could be,’ he said. He didn’t know what else to say.

  Janice shivered against him, her eyes blank and staring out at the fog. With Kenny beside her she was prepared to wait till Doomsday, till Eternity, till The Cows Came Home. But Kenny knew he had to make a decision soon, he had to act. When you were the leader you had to take all the responsibility, and more than that, you had to be prepared to take risks. At the match he had proved to them – and himself – that while others hesitated Kenny Seddon got stuck in. And he was the only one who had to report to the Juvenile Liaison Officer: none of the others had to do that.

  Suddenly be felt stifled. It came over him like a wave of weariness, as though the strength in his limbs had turned to water. It all seemed futile, as though there was no point in anything he did. He was in a closed, claustrophobic world of fog and thwarted ambition and stunted opportunity; he imagined it was similar to being trapped inside a strait-jacket, that sense of powerlessness and the inability to take action, either positive or negative, for or against. From the depths of the doorway Fester said:

  ‘I feel like a bleeding brass monkey.’

  There was a chorus of complaint, Crabby whining and Arthur kicking the pavement.

  Skush said, ‘Somebody’s coming,’ and silence fell.

  Kenny waved them out of sight round the corner and pushed Janice on to the pavement. She turned to look at him, puzzled and uncertain, rather lost on her own in the fog. Kenny stabbed his finger and withdrew into the shadow.

  ‘Dirty sods, Pakis,’ Fester murmured in his ear, and it was indeed a lone Pakistani who emerged from the dampness and gloom, his head bent forward and his narrow pointed shoulders swathed in a woolly scarf. He hesitated when he saw Janice, paused in his stride, and was about to go on when she said something to him. Kenny couldn’t hear the words but it enraged him that she had thought of something to say and that it was sufficient to make the man stop; it would have been better had she been too timid or had the man dismissed her and gone on his way. But he didn’t, following her round the corner into the sidestreet and into an alley that was in total blackness.

  They waited, Kenny and Fester, and then walked as quickly and as quietly as they could along the street and straight into the alley. It was slippery underfoot, the wet millstone setts sloping to a central drainage channel. They advanced a few paces, unafraid, trying to distinguish shapes; somewhere ahead of them were Janice and the Paki, and beyond them, presumably, the others. Kenny and Fester stopped, shoulder to shoulder, almost filling the alley, and there was an unnerving dead silence. Kenny couldn’t hear breathing or the rustle of clothing or a foot scraping the setts or anything. It was as though an error had been made, that perhaps this wasn’t the right alley after all. The Paki had worked magic and spirited her away, and Kenny was standing alone in the darkness listening to the internal sounds behind his eardrums and the deafening hush of silence.

  And then a voice said distinctly, inches away it seemed, ‘Please. I’m sorry. Let me go.’

  Kenny put out his hand and touched a face.

  Somebody started slobbering and moaning, but it was the kind of sound a child would make, not a grown man. Kenny felt for the lapels of a jacket and held them. He said:

  ‘Give us your money. That’s all we’re after.’

  ‘Please,’ the man whispered. ‘Please…’

  ‘Your money,’ Kenny repeated. ‘That’s all we want. Give us your money. We don’t want to hurt you. That’s right,’ he said, feeling the texture of notes. ‘What’s in your pockets?’ The man fumbled, dropped coins on the floor, and Kenny took the rest and put them in his pocket.

  ‘Please let me go. I am sorry. She asked me to come …’

  The words tailed off into a wailing sound that was half crying and half a tuneless prayer, as if the man were looking to his heaven and begging forgiveness for his sins and seeking merciful deliverance.

  ‘You didn’t know she was my girl,’ Kenny said, ‘did you?’

  The wailing went on, a quivering nasal sound that rose and fell with jarring monotony. Interspersed in it were words that Kenny didn’t understand. He had hold of the man’s lapels again.

  ‘I bet if we hadn’t been here you’d have fucked her,’ he said – the wailing went on – ‘wouldn’t you?’

  ‘No… no… please. I wouldn’t.’
r />   ‘Wouldn’t you?’ Kenny insisted, not letting go.

  ‘No…’

  ‘Wouldn’t you?’ Kenny said, and butted the man in the face with the top of his head.

  Janice moved away to stand with Cil against the far wall as the lads took turns going in methodically in relay so that everybody had a fair number of kicks apiece. The wailing had stopped. There were sounds – difficult to identify and not really human at all – which were like short, strangled gasps: like somebody with a fit of choking who can’t properly get his breath.

  At least this was positive action, Kenny felt, kicking the lump in the darkness. He had made the decision after all; they couldn’t accuse him of not planning it right and carrying it out. He even forgave Janice – she hadn’t actually done anything wrong, he reflected – stepping back to let Fester in. It had all been part of the plan. It had been necessary, her chatting the Paki up, in order to get him into the alley away from the main road. And the little skinny bastard – the bastard! – had actually had the intention of putting his thin brown hands inside her clothing and pulling out his obscene brown dick and very likely making her do something obscene with it. Kenny thought how true it was what they said about them: they really were lower than animals, and on top of that the smell of their cooking made him puke.

  • • •

  Later – when they had got as far away as they considered safe (and Kenny and Janice had had a cuddle as they walked along) – Fester led the way into the Ship at the end of Milnrow Road. He was beaming across his wide red face, glad to be out of the cold, happy to be near a bar with enough money for a night’s bevvy freely available, and with the loose easy feeling he usually got after a spot of exercise. He looked down at the spattered toe-caps of his boots and rubbed them on the back of his trouser-legs.

  The Ship catered for two separate types of clientele: the old never-say-die regulars who sat at scrubbed tables peering at their cards and dominoes through a fog that was thicker inside the taproom than outside in the street; and in the other room with the big bow-window of coloured glass and the old-fashioned jukebox in the corner, a young crowd which consisted mainly of underage scrubbers off the Waithlands Estate (known as Tintown) and a group of boys who looked like left-overs from the Fifties: greasy quiffs, leather jackets, crutch-tight jeans and blackheads. Fester belonged with them somehow. His face and manner had a dated look, as though he’d stepped off a Bill Haley record sleeve. In comparison Kenny and the rest were fresh-faced kids with the bloom of youth still on them, and with an air of reckless naivity, like giddy young colts eager to poke their noses into life.