by Trevor Hoyle
Kenny returns and stuffs two pound notes into Skush’s top pocket. They grin glassily at one another and Kenny leans his elbows on the bar and looks at the small varnished wooden sign which says:
OLD GOLFERS NEVER DIE
THEY JUST LOSE THEIR BALLS
He tips the pint of Tartan into his mouth and feels the cold rush of liquid down his throat: the sensation makes his senses start to slide. The bar becomes a dull noisy blur and he feels a sudden, tremendously strong urge for Janice. If she were here now he could go through it like a hot knife through butter. She was the first girl he had properly had it away with – the first one he didn’t feel awkward or embarrassed with – no clumsy fingers fumbling for the catch on a bra-strap, or struggling to unzip a pair of tight jeans, or trying to unfasten the buttons on the front of a dress which turn out to be solely for the purpose of decoration. In short, he didn’t feel a fool when he was with Janice; they were like two children who together had made an exploration of hidden places – as though they alone had discovered certain secrets and were bound by the knowledge of their discovery.
They stayed at the Pendulum till just after half-past nine and then walked across town (it was freezing cold) to the Bier Keller on Charlotte Street, behind the Piccadilly Plaza Hotel. Down the green steps and into the dark smoky warmth where the Teds are gathered in sullen groups listening to Gene Vincent and Fats Domino and Elvis. They are dressed in drape jackets with velvet collars, close-fitting trousers wrapped tight to their ankles, and wear chunky wedge-like shoes. Their hair is glossy with Brylcreem, rising at the front in a smooth tidal wave and tapering to a DA licked into place and finished off with a neck shave. The three lads don’t respond to this kind of music: to them it seems crude and obvious: Elvis’s whining falsetto trying to reach the high notes on That’s All Right Mama and Gene Vincent hiccuping to Blue Jean Bop. But there’s a ready market and a good sale to be had here for blues and black bombers; the Teds won’t touch acid or grass but rely on lager and pills to give them a charge.
Skush has lost interest in the proceedings and sits in a corner with a totally blank expression. The music reverberates inside his head, several light-years removed from that part of his brain which registers conscious reality. Kenny approaches a tall scowling youth with a boil on the end of his nose and thick sideburns that almost meet under his chin. He negotiates a deal and collects one pound and forty pence in fifty and ten pence pieces.
‘How you doing?’ Andy says when they meet back at the table.
‘They’re a load of twats,’ Kenny says succinctly.
‘Won’t they buy?’
‘They’ll buy anything; we should have mixed aspirin in with them, they’d never know the difference. What’s up with him?’ he says, nodding at Skush.
‘Blocked to the eyeballs. Leave him be.’
‘We’ll have to carry him to the station.’
‘We can get a taxi.’
‘Aye,’ Kenny says, his face slowly lighting up, ‘we can.’
By the time eleven-fifteen comes round the three of them are staggering through the frosty grass in Piccadilly Gardens, tripping each other up and giggling like schoolgirls: they have the mistaken notion that they’re walking to Victoria Station when in fact they’re going in the direction of Albert Square. On Mosley Street a passer by stares just a fraction too closely at their antics and Kenny follows him and grabs the back of his collar and thrusts him bodily against the wall. He’s never felt more in the mood to batter a face in than right now.
He says sneeringly into the face of the man, ‘Did you get a good look or do you want a photograph?’ And then says, ‘Cunt,’ and goes on repeating, ‘Cunt. Cunt.’
Fucking Jesus, he wants to hit the man. Fucking Cunting Christ, the man’s pale frightened face sickens him so much that nothing would feel better than kneeing him in the bollocks and seeing that awful fear he loves and yet despises turn into pain. He can see it in his mind’s eye – the face crumbling as the pain reaches up from the groin and shoots into the brain.
An arm is holding Kenny and he knocks it away. The arm comes across his chest and he knocks it away again. He keeps repeating the one word, ‘Cunt’, over and over, his face inches away from the man’s.
‘Come on,’ says a slurred voice in his ear. Kenny’s large hands are bunching the man’s collar under his chin: the man hasn’t said a word: he is trying to keep his face under control.
‘Ken,’ the slurred voice says in his ear.
‘Cunt,’ Kenny says. He wants the man to struggle, to resist, but the man is like a rag doll. The instinct of self-preservation tells him that Kenny is short only of an excuse; by adopting the line of least resistance he hopes to make himself unworthy of Kenny’s attention, not even worth the effort of duffing up.
‘Listen, cunt—#8217;
‘Kenny, come on,’ Andy says, dragging him along the empty street.
‘Cunt.’
‘Yeh.’
‘Cunt.’
‘Yeh. Come on.’
The city is like a grey dream. Buildings disappearing into the darkness overhead, intersected by rivers of gleaming tarmac. They walk along Princess Street, past the side of the silent Town Hall, into Albert Square. Everything is asleep, lost, dead, forgotten. The beacons at the crossings flicker on and off. Skush stumbles into the gutter and falls against the edge of the kerb. He might as well just lay here and die; it is a fitting end. People will be sorry when they hear of his death, they will wish they had treated him better, taken notice of him. It is all their fault. He knows that he hasn’t yet begun to live and already he is dying. He wishes there was a girl here who could watch him die. The others pick him up and carry him along but he knows he is still in the gutter. They can’t fool him, although they might think they’re pretty smart.
There’s a window in front of him which he knows isn’t really a window at all: it’s the bottom of a deep hole down which he is falling. He sees Kenny’s lips move and the sound takes a long time to travel the distance to his ear and when it arrives it is slowed down in time with his heartbeats.
‘Old golfers never die …’ the words say.
Golfers. The word is irresistibly funny to Skush. He can see mechanical men swinging clockwork sticks – hundreds of them in unison. They are walking stiffly in ranks along the gutter, dropping in row after row down the deep, dark hole. He starts to giggle and the others giggle with him. All three are giggling as they fall towards the glass-bottomed hole.
‘… they just lose their balls.’
Skush holds out his fists straight in front of him and is the first to break through the glass-bottomed hole. It is a new world: bright, glistening, sharp, and filled with ladies’ hats. He knows with part of his mind that Kenny and Andy are moving fast but to him they appear to be moving with the wearying slowness of a dream. Is this death? Is he dead? If he is they must have bells in heaven because – quite distinctly – he can hear them ringing.
‘Fucking come on!’ (Kenny speaking.)
‘Get out of it.’ (Andy.)
‘Get him.’
‘They’re here.’
‘Leave him.’
Three Panda cars are standing at strange angles at the kerb and five policemen pick Skush out of the wreckage, setting him on his feet in the middle of the pavement. One of them looks quickly round the deserted square and slams a fist into his kidneys. Skush goes down into the gutter and slowly gets up again, without assistance. Another of the policemen moves casually to one side and kicks him on the point of the ankle-bone; Skush yelps and goes down on his knees: they set him up again.
‘Where’s your mates?’
‘Golfers,’ Skush says.
A policeman stands directly in front of him and shines a light in his eyes. ‘Why don’t you fight back, laddie?’ He turns to the others and says, ‘Get the van,’ and turning back to Skush clubs him across the ear with the torch.
‘Balls,’ Skush says, shaking his head a little to clear the buzzing noise.
‘Well laddie,’ the policeman says, ‘why don’t you fight back? Eh? Come on, hit me.’
‘I’m only small,’ Skush says (which is true).
‘Come on, laddie,’ the policeman says, and smashes the torch against the other ear. Skush nearly goes down but they save him from falling.
‘Not on the head,’ one of the other policemen says. They are all young, strong and clean-shaven, and giants compared to Skush. The policeman is about to have another go when the van arrives. It has mesh across the windows. They carry Skush to the back of the van and throw him in. A fat policeman in a flat hat with a shiny peak shuts the doors and sits down on the bench-seat. Skush raises his head from the floor and looks at the policeman’s shoes. He notices they have crepe soles.
‘Are you all right?’ the fat policeman asks, supporting him under the arms and lifting him to an upright position; and then before Skush can reply knocks him down again.
VERA
ON NEW YEAR’S EVE – A MONDAY – KENNY HAD HIS TEA AT Janice’s and then with Janice and her mother went on the booze. It was very cold, the real chill of winter holding the town in an icy grip. They caught a bus to the town-centre and got off outside the General Post Office as the Town Hall clock was striking half past eight. Vera was full of revelry, perfumed, talcumed and all dolled up, expansive with the promise of the evening’s festivities to come. Janice was wearing make-up and under her coat had on a multicoloured blouse in silken material and a full-length black skirt; Kenny was wearing a suit. He linked arms with the woman and the girl and they turned the corner to Yates’s Wine Lodge. It seemed to Kenny that half the men in the room looked up and nodded to Vera as they came through the swing-doors: she was popular, all right, which might explain (he thought) why she was never short of money despite not having a job.
‘Hello Vera,’ a man said. ‘Can I buy you a drink?’
‘I’m with me daughter tonight, Harry, and her boyfriend.’
‘Well?’ Harry said. ‘It’s New Year. What are you having?’
This was going to be a good night, Kenny decided.
‘I’ll have a tot,’ Vera said.
‘Oh aye,’ Harry said. ‘Living in hope, eh?’ Nudge-nudge, wink-wink.
‘Brandy,’ Vera said, giving him the smile he expected. ‘What do you two want?’
Kenny had a pint and Janice a sweet sherry and the man brought the round to the table. A couple of old slags were sitting nearby, crouched over their schooners of Australian White Wine, like two crows concealing something unpleasant under their black folded wings. Kenny had only been in Yates’s once or twice before: it was the refuge of the aged and decrepit and of those who would rather spend money on a night’s drink instead of food for the next day; and of course it was the prime picking-up shop for those who weren’t young any more.
‘What do you do?’ Harry said to Kenny.
‘How do you mean?’
‘For a job.’
‘Fuck all,’ Kenny said.
‘Don’t you work?’
‘Not if I can help it.’
The man wasn’t too pleased with this answer. Lancashire folk don’t take kindly to loafers, parasites and shirkers. Vera threw back the brandy with a practised hand and banged the glass down.
‘My round,’ she said.
Kenny didn’t argue, but went to get them, standing in line behind the chest-high wooden barrier which formed the drinkers into a queue so that each customer would be dealt with strictly by rota; it was a bit like queueing for the dole. Yates’s ran a tight ship: drinking was a serious business.
He walked back with the tray across the bare boards, stepping round the groups of people who stood sipping their drinks. The place had an air of tired and somewhat desperate conviviality, as though all the people here were seeking shelter from the cold modern world outside by returning to the nineteenth century. They wouldn’t have been out of place in a sepia photograph.
‘A quiet lass,’ Harry observed of Janice.
‘Takes after me,’ Vera Singleton said, flashing him a brief vivid smile, her bracelets glinting and jangling as she rummaged in her handbag for cigarettes and lighter. Somebody came up and whispered in her ear and she gave a bellow of laughter.
There was a world of experience in her laugh that was completely alien to Kenny, although he had heard that laugh a hundred times from as many women in dozens of public houses. It reminded him – for a reason he couldn’t place immediately – of a cold and lonely time waiting for someone. It reminded him of sitting on a doorstep in short trousers, the dank misty gloom of a November night pressing against his face and bare legs, waiting on the step of number twenty-two Cayley Street, the door locked, for his mother to come click-clacking along the pavement in her stiletto heels, returning from a mysterious night out in the equally mysterious night-time town of Rochdale.
He remembered it clearly now: the old man had gone away, on business so his mother had said, and that one simple fact seemed to have altered the entire pattern of his life. For one thing there never seemed to be any food in the house. He went to the cupboard and looked behind the cups and saucers and plates for anything that was edible. He stood on a chair and looked in the bread-bin and then in the meat-safe at the top of the cellar steps, but all he could ever find were greasy margarine wrappers and bits of what looked like an old pork pie. Another memory stirred: of sitting up in bed, alone in the house, reading the Dandy Annual or Boys Amazing Stories, his eyelids tight and stinging for want of sleep but sticking it out till he heard the key in the lock and the front door scraping over those three lumps in the red and green linoleum.
And before she returned, the silence of the house – silent except for the creaking – silence extending beyond the bedroom door to the steep, dark stairs leading down to the kitchen which was forbidden and frightening territory. He would tiptoe to the bedroom window and look through the leaded panes at the street light shining on the stone setts, rubbing each foot alternately on the other to lessen the chill contact of the lino.
‘I bet Kenneth’s a randy beast,’ Vera Singleton said, a little the worse for the five brandies she had consumed.
Janice reddened and hid behind her glass of sherry; Kenny awoke from his stupor. ‘I know what it’s all about,’ he said in a slurred voice.
‘We’re not letting the New Year in here,’ Vera said.
‘They’ll be shutting before twelve,’ Harry said.
‘That’s what I said. Come on. Drink up.’
‘Where to?’ Harry said in-between swallows.
‘Marlborough Con Club.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Oldham,’ Vera said. ‘You’ve got a car, haven’t you? Well then.’
It was gone eleven when they arrived at the Marlborough Conservative Club on Abbey Hills Road and at first the man on the door wouldn’t let them in. Then he recognised Vera and the four of them sailed into the smoke and noise of a couple of hundred people, many of whom seemed to have brought their children with them. Because of the crush the billiard table had been draped with a brown dust sheet and families sat around it eating sandwiches and cakes off paper plates. Vera disappeared for ten minutes, and when Janice went to the toilet she came across her mother talking to a man outside the ladies’ lavatory.
‘Won’t be a minute, love,’ Vera said. ‘Tell Harry to get some drinks in.’
‘Who’s this?’ asked the man. He was fleshy and middle-aged and wore a ring with a stone that sparkled under the bland fluorescent lighting.
‘Our Janice,’ Vera said, smiling and cuddling Janice’s shoulder under her arm.
‘Well well.’
‘Eyes off, you,’ Vera said. ‘Randy bugger.’ She gently propelled Janice forward a few paces. ‘I won’t be a sec, love,’ she mouthed. ‘Get me a brandy, all right?’
‘What a dump,’ was the first thing Kenny said when she got back to the table.
‘What’s up with it?’ Janice said, edging up to him and leaning her elbow on
the table so that their shoulders touched.
‘Look at them,’ Kenny said; he was flushed and slightly drunk. ‘Guzzling. That’s all they can do. Guzzle.’
‘So are you.’
‘That’s all they’re good for,’ Kenny said, ignoring her. ‘Useless, the lot of them. Neither use nor fucking ornament.’ His foot kicked out in a sudden fit of temper and a chair fell over. Several heads turned.
‘Kenny, not here.’
‘What?’ He narrowed his eyes and peered at her hazily as though through a cloud of smoke. There was a dribble of saliva on his chin.
‘It’s New Year’s Eve.’
‘So fucking what?’
‘Same again?’ Harry said, standing up, his tie hanging on his belly and his belly hanging over the table.
‘Aye,’ Kenny said. ‘Pint.’
‘Me mum wants another brandy,’ Janice said.
‘Where’s she got to?’ Harry wanted to know.
‘In the ladies’,’ Janice said with hardly a flicker of hesitation.
Midnight approached, the funny hats were put on, the coloured paper streamers stockpiled on each table ready for the fray. Kenny refused to join hands when Auld Lang Syne was played and sat staring sullenly at the rows of people swaying to and fro, their beer-glazed faces opening and shutting in what to him was a mindless, pointless exercise. The waste of it all appalled him: what did it mean, what was its purpose – this guzzling, shouting, screaming, endlessly consuming mob hysteria? They were like a pack of animals, with no other desires than to feed their appetites and indulge their bodily sensations. He was sickened. Janice watched him fearfully. It seemed that his only reaction nowadays was instant, savage emotion leading, sooner or later, to violence. She wondered why he couldn’t settle down a bit; she wanted him to. She slipped her hand into his but his own hand remained passive, disinterested; she stroked his palm with her fingertips but there was no response.