Rule of Night

by Trevor Hoyle

  Much of the bravado seems to leave the group after the pubs shut at eleven, though the hard reality of a cold night ahead with nowhere to sleep is disoriented by the beer swimming in their heads: it is an inarticulate fear hovering just out of reach outside the periphery of an alcoholic haze. Down a dark windy backstreet Kenny stops suddenly at the sight of a white plastic sign swinging on creaking hinges. It reads: Liberal Club. Two of the lads run to the street corners to keep an eye out while the others examine the door, studded with iron rivets.

  ‘We’ll never do this,’ one of them says.

  Kenny calls them together. ‘Round the back. Try the windows.’ Eileen goes with Kenny and helps him shin up to a window with a long vertical rectangular fanlight. He stands on her shoulders to reach the ledge, scrabbling in the darkness for a handhold, and grips the lower edge of the fanlight which stands proud of the main window. He feels along it, standing with the toes of his boots on the ledge and his arms outstretched overhead, hoping to find a catch or a projection of some kind which he can use as a point of leverage. There isn’t one. He curses and in a fit of temper pulls at the lower edge of the fanlight, which swings open and upwards without a sound. The abruptness of it, the silence – and the shock – nearly send him off-balance, and for a moment he hovers on the toes of his boots before grabbing the frame of the open window and hauling himself upright.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Eileen says, alarmed at the flurry of movement above her.

  ‘I’ve fucking done it!’ Kenny whispers, ‘get the others.’

  ‘Fucking great!’ Eileen says.

  Kenny wants to shout in jubilation. The bastards can knock him down as much as they want to but Kenny Seddon always has the last laugh. It’s easy to beat the system: a doddle – a meter here, a break-in there, a girlfriend at home and a fast bird away. Why work and sweat when the world lies defenceless before you, begging to be plundered and fucked and made to look a prize tool?

  The first thing the lads do is help themselves to drinks at the bar. The pumps are working and it’s pints all round. Kenny opens the cash-register but it’s too much to hope for that he will find any money; in fact there’s a handful of one and two-pence pieces.

  One of the lads says, ‘Find summat to eat, I’m starving.’

  ‘What is there? Look in that tin.’

  ‘Crisps.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Salted peanuts.’

  ‘Shit, look at all these fags. Kenny!’

  ‘Keep it down, for fucks sake,’ Kenny says. ‘Take what you want but pipe down.’

  They guzzle several pints of beer each and then start on shorts. Glasses are smashed and bodies crash about in the gloomy depths of the hall, footsteps thumping on the bare dusty boards. Somebody puts money into the black meter on the wall and the oblong canopy hanging on grimy chains from the ceiling floods the billiard table in a blaze of vivid green. The lads grab cues from the rack and empty the wooden box of snooker balls onto the table. At first there is an attempt at a sensible, orderly game but before long it’s a free-for-all with everyone cracking away at whatever comes within range. They start acting the fool, hitting the balls harder and harder, until inevitably somebody mis-cues and rips a long ragged gash in the smooth green baize. It makes a sound like somebody farting. Eileen falls against Kenny, laughing helplessly, and the glass of neat rum slips from her fingers and shatters on the floor.

  Kenny too is drunk, but not drunk enough not to know what he wants. The ripping and smashing goes on while he pulls her through a door behind the bar and into a room with crates stacked against the walls and brown cartons of Golden Wonder crisps piled on top of one another: the pale rectangular window gives enough light to make out a row of varnished light switches and a cheap calendar reproduction of Windsor Castle (with the Queen not at home). They stumble about amidst the dim clutter, trying to lend each other support and at the same time hang on.

  ‘Here,’ Eileen says, ‘down here.’

  Kenny thinks she means the cellar but she means down on the floor in the corner where there’s a pile of sacking, discarded packaging and old display cards advertising Babycham. The strong beery smell in the small room is mingled faintly with that of disinfectant; paper and cellophane crackle under their weight as they collapse into it, befuddled, unco-ordinated; and Kenny can’t help laughing at the thought that they’ll both end up smelling like a brewery.

  Eileen’s wet mouth fastens to his and stops both laughter and thought: her coat is open and she wraps her legs round the back of his. There is something desperate in her kisses, a blind insatiable seeking like that of a burrowing creature anxious to hide away from the daylight. Composure has gone: the mask of cool self-possession replaced by shut eyes and hot urging mouth. Kenny is hard and randy, but he wants to pee. The lump is painful in his trousers, part erection and part pissproud. He gropes for her breasts, encounters their soft rise and fall beneath the material of her dress, and Eileen makes a guttural noise which vibrates against his gums. She wrenches her mouth away and reaches below.

  ‘Is it out?’

  ‘What?’ Kenny says, taken aback.

  ‘Get it out… I want it, I want it.’

  Her hands are at his belt, unfastening the buckle and drawing the end through the loops. She unzips him and Kenny feels the rush of cold air between his legs and then the luxurious sense of release as it uncoils itself from its cramped hiding place and stands up at full stretch, giving off heat and a delicate but unmistakable odour.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ Eileen whispers, taking hold.

  Kenny has never been appreciated in this way before; it brings him quickly to the boil so that he wants to get on with the job without further delay. But Eileen is in control of the situation: she is like a greedy little girl who can’t wait to get at the chocolate eclairs but knows the feast will be all the more enjoyable if only she can be patient.

  ‘Isn’t it nice,’ she says in a breath, holding on to him. ‘And big.’

  ‘You’re fantastic,’ Kenny tells her.

  ‘I love it. I love holding it. I bet it feels great sticking up hard. Does it feel great?’

  ‘Yeh.’

  ‘Do you like me holding it? What do you like best: if I hold it or work it up and down like this?’

  ‘I don’t really mind,’ Kenny says breathing in and out slowly. He can’t believe what is happening is actually happening. He’s heard about girls like this but didn’t credit the stories as being true. The tension is too much: he is nearly coming: he says, ‘Go easy, kid. Bloody hell. Jesus. You’re fantastic.’

  Eileen smiles at him in the darkened corner, the weak light from the window shining on her protruding teeth and wet lips. She moves below and encircles him with her mouth, her head moving rhythmically up and down, her hair brushing the insides of his thighs. Kenny lies back amongst the waste paper and cellophane wrappings, lost to the world, the focal point of his existence concentrated on the incredible smooth sliding hotness.

  He is nearly at the point of no return and has to stop her before it is too late. Eileen raises her head and brings her open sticky mouth down on his. They fight each other with their tongues, their lips snarling in silent rage. Eileen frees herself from her clothing and murmurs in his ear, ‘Do it to me. Go on, Kenny, do it.’

  He thinks he understands her but he doesn’t – until she pushes his head lower and lower, past her breasts and the bunched clothing at her waist to the warm furry place which is prickly against his cheeks. Tentatively he pokes about, inhaling the heavy intoxicating smell, caught between the two conflicting emotions that if he doesn’t fuck her right this minute he will have to go for a piss.

  Eileen begins to moan and move her legs, then starts to gasp like a distance runner on the final sprint; her breathing is hoarse, shocked, between ecstasy and a cry for help, and just when Kenny is debating the next move grips him by the hair and one ear and hauls him up to lie full-length on top of her. In a moment – a mad jerking panic – it is all
over. The tension is released, the iron weight in his belly turns into a balloon, and apart from wanting badly to urinate he feels quite peaceful.

  ‘Do you think we’ll get back all right?’ Eileen asks, pulling her tights up.

  ‘We’ll thumb it,’ Kenny says, disentangling his underpants from his boots. ‘I’ve done it before. If we start off early we should be home by teatime.’

  ‘All the lot of us?’

  ‘We’ll split up. You and me together and the rest of them in ones and twos.’

  The cellophane crackles as Eileen stands up and smoothes the wrinkles from her dress. ‘I’m starving.’

  ‘I’m a bit peckish,’ Kenny admits, ‘but first I need a piss.’ He gets up and then goes quite still; he stands listening and waves his hand to stop Eileen rummaging in the waste paper for her shoes.

  ‘What’s up?’ Eileen says, her voice hushed by the way he waits silently in the darkness, the pale light outlining his head and shoulders in an attitude of frozen concentration. She listens also but can hear nothing. It occurs to her that it shouldn’t be this quiet, unless, that is, the others are asleep or have gone away.

  For some reason best known to himself Kenny is moving stealthily towards the door, placing the toe of each boot carefully before the next, and very slowly opens it the merest fraction so that a thin crack of yellow appears: Eileen can hear the low murmur of voices and smiles with relief. For a moment a dozen foolish notions had passed through her mind – the others had gone and left them, or the police had noticed the light and crept in to make an arrest, or…

  Kenny hasn’t moved and is intent on watching something. And then she sees him put his hand in his pocket and take out an object which catches the light.

  • • •

  The reason they hadn’t heard anything was that the others were kettled and didn’t realise what was happening until it was too late. When it had happened they stood blearily with their backs to the billiard table, wondering in their stupor how it was possible for seven people to get into the hall without being seen or heard. Kenny, on all fours behind the bar, his heart thumping in his chest, listens to what is being said. There hasn’t been a fight yet (he would have heard it in the small back room) but it’s shaping up nicely to a barney with what the Luton lads reckon are good odds: seven against five, not counting the girl. Kenny has weighed them up through the crack in the door: two of them are big bastards, six footers at least, a couple of real tough nuts wearing short leather jackets studded in fancy metal scrolls enclosing the names ‘Johnny’ and ‘Sugar’ – topple these two, Kenny knows, and the rest are a bag of shite tied in the middle with string. One of the others is a nig-nog in a blue and white bob-cap, short, stocky, with a squat ugly face and the makings of a scrubby beard; the remaining four are a nondescript ragbag of townies who look as though they couldn’t raise a decent wank between them.

  It’s one of the big lads doing all the talking and Kenny bides his time. He’s not daft enough to stick his neck out before he has to – and in any case the Luton mob will soon start something or one of his own mates will grab a billiard cue and splinter it over the head of one of the leather jackets.

  ‘What are you doing down here then?’ the big lad is saying. He has a terrible complexion. Kenny knows this kind of talk well: it is the gentle deception before the onslaught, the friendly gesture before the fist in the teeth. Answer them back, Kenny thinks, don’t let them scare you.

  ‘Town were playing pathetic Rochdale today,’ says one of the nondescript ragbags.

  ‘Do they play football up there?’ says the big lad. ‘Do they? Well. I thought they didn’t have any grass to play on up there. What do they play in then – clogs and flat caps?’

  ‘We’re not a load of pansies at any rate.’

  The big lad says, ‘Rate?’ twisting his face and pronouncing it the northern way. ‘Raaate. What does raaate mean?’ The others laugh. ‘Why don’t you talk proper instead of talking stupid?’

  ‘They’re not civilised north of Coventry, Johnny.’

  ‘It’s a shame you don’t understand us,’ one of the Rochdale lads says. ‘You big dozy cunt.’

  ‘Take that back,’ the big lad says swiftly, no longer sweetness and light. ‘I said: Take it back.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t know what we were on about. You southern pouf.’

  The odd thing about violence is that it comes so suddenly and happens so quickly that it doesn’t seem real at all: the reality is delayed, like a bomb operated by a time-switch, ticking, deadly, with the devastation yet to come. In the hall with the hooded light it strikes with the swiftness of a venomous snake, happening here and now in front of everyone’s eyes – yet finding them static, unprepared, wetting their pants.

  After that opening incident Kenny lives through a bad moment when his legs won’t seem to move. It’s like a dream when your feet get stuck in treacle and it comes as a surprise when he finds himself on the other side of the bar swinging a bottle and running, actually running, at one of the leather jackets. There are three bodies on the billiard table, each body fighting the other two. Kenny is annoyed and distracted by this and pauses to crack the head that doesn’t seem familiar, and hopes, in the rush, he hasn’t made a mistake. When he goes on the leather jacket he had in mind has disappeared and he has to seek a fresh target: the ugly nig-nog in the bob-cap who is kicking something along the floor, a sack, or a cat, or perhaps a human being.

  ‘Nigger,’ Kenny says into his black ear and as the boy turns – he is about fourteen, Kenny sees, with odd-coloured eyes – smashes the bottle across the bridge of his nose and the bottle does something he has seen in movies but never before in real life: it actually breaks.

  There is an instant mess of splinters and blood, a brilliant gash with the nose laid open to the bone, amid gobs of red stuff flying in all directions. The result is so spectacular that for a moment Kenny is lost in dreadful contemplation, a little awestruck by his own handiwork. He steps back in wonder and is taken hold of by the throat and his spine rammed against the edge of the billiard table, bent backwards at a terrible angle, the light hitting him in the eyes and somewhere on the edge of his vision the smooth brown butt of a billiard cue sliding – or is it swinging? – coming at his head. He twists left and feels the impact rattle the coloured balls and vibrate through the table to his skull. Kenny is amazed. He has never met anyone with the strength to pin him down with one hand and strike with the other.

  He thinks… he is about to think when he sees the butt coming again and three things happen simultaneously: urine runs down his leg and the black meter on the wall clicks and the light goes out. For an instant – it can be no more – everything stops: blackness and silence cover everything, and when it is over Kenny is thankful that he can withdraw the knife blade as silently and unobtrusively as it went in.

  POLICE

  THE BEGINNING OF THE END WAS AT HAND FOR KENNY Seddon. On the 25th of January (a week before his seventeenth birthday) WPC T______, the local Juvenile Liaison Officer, paid a visit to the flat and asked why he hadn’t reported the Friday before to the Rochdale Police headquarters. Kenny told her he had been ill with stomach trouble, and Miss T______ asked who his doctor was.

  ‘I didn’t bother going to the doctor,’ Kenny said. ‘I just stayed in bed. I’ve had it before; it’s nowt serious.’

  ‘Next time get a doctor’s note. You know you can get into serious trouble if you fail to report when you’re supposed to.’

  ‘Yeh,’ Kenny said. ‘I’ll remember that.’ He looked into her face. ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’

  ‘No thank you. Did you hear what I said?’

  ‘Yeh. I’ll remember, don’t worry.’ He tucked his vest into his jeans and flopped down on the settee. He was okay now but it had been a bad moment when he had opened the door and seen her standing there – his heart had lurched and he had felt his face going red. Even as she followed him down the dark staircase he had had the sense of terror that this was
it, had actually expected her opening sentence to contain the words ‘Luton’ and ‘knifing’ and ‘arrest’. But now it was fine: he was relaxed: nothing could touch him.

  Miss T______ said, ‘I’m not worried, Kenneth. It’s up to you, it’s your look-out.’ Her eyes were hard but she couldn’t hold his gaze for long and glanced round the flat at the discarded clothing on the chairs and the empty mug and breakfast plate on the floor. There were crumbs on the settee where Kenny lay sprawled.

  ‘See you,’ Kenny said as she prepared to leave.

  Miss T______ stopped at the door. ‘I thought you were going to try and get a job? Have you done anything about it?’

  ‘I’ve been looking in the Observer,’ Kenny lied smoothly. ‘There is nowt though.’

  ‘You don’t call that really trying, do you?’

  ‘What else can I do?’

  ‘Go to the Youth Employment near the station. Tell them what kind of job you’d like and they’ll send you a postcard if anything comes along that would suit you. You’ve worked in engineering haven’t you?’

  ‘Yeh,’ Kenny said indifferently.

  ‘Well then: put your name down.’

  ‘I don’t really fancy doing that again.’

  ‘What job do you fancy?’

  ‘Millionaire’s pig,’ Kenny said, watching her lazily.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Kenneth,’ Miss T______ said. ‘How do you expect to stay out of trouble if you don’t have a job?’

  ‘There’s nowt I fancy doing. I can’t get a soft touch like yours, you know.’ He lit a cigarette and crossed his arms behind his head; Miss T______ looked at his hairy armpits and quickly turned away, almost imagining she could smell the unwashed sweat.

  ‘I want to hear that you’ve put your name down the next time I see you,’ she said curtly. ‘That’ll be on the 15th of February.’

  ‘I’ll be there,’ Kenny said. ‘You can find your own way out, can’t you?’