by Guy Johnson
But the details I gave, the words that left my mouth, made him slow to a stop.
He turned, looked at me. He looked quite shocked, like I’d said something he couldn’t believe.
‘Say that again?’
And so I did, slowly, suddenly a little apprehensive of what was coming out.
‘When Shirley White sat next to Mum on the bench,’ I repeated.
He just stared at me, not moving and this eventually drew Della’s attention.
‘What’s going on between you two?’ she asked, for once speaking in a plain manner. ‘What?’
Ian took a breath, still glaring at me, trying to read what was going on behind my eyes, and he spoke.
‘I was just saying we needed to be mindful of the traffic,’ he said.
It was obvious he was lying. Della knew that straight off. But the way he said it, the words he used to make that clumsy, unlikely sentence, stopped her questioning him further.
‘Okay,’ she offered instead, drawing the word out in a doubtful manner; oh-kayyy. ‘Let’s get this over with then.’
And so, with the road almost free of any cars, we crossed and entered the crematorium gates. All the while, as we made further progress to our destination, I let my mind drift back to that day in the park with Justin. The day things between the two of us changed.
After we’d been to the top, looking down over the whole park and noting the disappearance of Clint and his pal, Justin wanted to head off to the sweet shop tucked away just outside Jubilee Park.
‘You got some money left, then?’ I asked him, certain he’d already spent his lot, but he didn’t answer me.
‘Come on,’ he said instead, and I followed him, glad we were friends, grateful that the business with Red Nanny hadn’t ruined what I otherwise saw as a good friendship.
The shop was called Jennifer’s Jellies, although it didn’t sell Jellies, as far as I could see. But it did have every variety of sweet you could imagine. On the front counter all the tubes were lined up: Fruit Gums, Fruit Pastels, Fruit Polos, Mint Polos, Pacers, Opal Fruits, Refreshers, Spangles, Chewits, Smarties, Rolos, Munchies. There was a section for chocolate bars too: Dairy Milk, Bourbon, Milky Bar, Texan Bar, Mars Bar, Marathon, Twix, Aero – milk, mint and orange flavours. Behind the counter they kept the big jars of sweets: Rhubarb and Custards, Acid Drops, Pear Drops, Mint Imperials, Space Dust, Flying Saucers, Black Jacks, Fruit Salads, Chocolate Limes.
‘A quarter of Winter Mix,’ I remembered Mum ordering, always to my disappointment. I hated Winter Mix, hard lumps that tasted worse than medicine.
As well as sweets, the shop sold a whole range of newspapers, comics and cigarettes.
‘How much are your cigarettes?’ Justin asked, a pointless question, which made the lady behind the counter raise her eyebrows at him.
‘Ask me again when you’re old enough to buy some,’ she told him, sniffing, as if we were a bad smell. Which we soon were, because Justin had secretly brought something along with him that would cause a stink.
I knew Justin didn’t like the lady who worked there. She had a fat, powdery face and fat hands and fingers, as if she had eaten too many of the products she sold. She also had warts on her fingers, with black bits in, which was a bit off-putting. But that wasn’t why Justin didn’t like her.
Whenever we went in, she would watch him, her eyes following him around the shop. I’m watching you, young man, she had said to him once, as if he was going to nick something. So, after a while, whenever we went in there, he started acting up on purpose, making a little trouble, but not enough for her to do anything about it. Once, he’d taken Stevie-the-little-shit in with him and his younger brother had knocked over a whole stand of comics, before making a run for it.
On this particular occasion, I’d thought Justin was going to nick something, on account of him having no money left. But he didn’t. After the wart-lady refused to give him the price of her cigarettes, he shrugged and went to leave. But, at the last minute, I saw him drop a little capsule out of his right hand and gently crush it with his right heel. Almost instantly, a sulphurous stench hit the air.
‘Oh, Jesus!’ wart-lady cried, sussing instantly what had happened, coming out from behind the counter after us. ‘You little buggers!’
But we were off: Justin laughing his wicked little head off, me in tow, torn between finding it all funny and fearing that we’d get into serious trouble.
‘Come on,’ he told me, running back into the park, heading towards the public toilets. ‘Let’s hide in there. She won’t dare follow us.’
‘What if she sends in the park keeper?’
‘She won’t. Come on.’
So I followed him, thinking it was a place of refuge, a place to hide away from trouble. But it wasn’t – trouble followed us in there and we were cornered.
There was someone in the toilets when we entered – in one of the cubicles. It was the old man we had seen earlier, sitting on the bench in his cream mac. Old Mac. When he flushed and came out, Justin stared at him, with a big smirk on his face, but the man didn’t seem to notice at all. He simply shuffled over to wash his hands. The toilets had those steel, combination hand washer-driers: you pressed the top button for soap, a second to get some water, then a third button to set the drier going.
‘Alright Mac!’ Justin said in an exaggerated voice that caused the old man to jump whilst he was at the water stage, accidentally splashing some on his clothes.
The man turned, scowled at Justin, turned back to his cleaning task and pressed the third button for hot air. Once he was finished, Justin simply stared at him, as he shuffled out, no doubt back to his place on the bench near the cricket pitch.
‘What you do that for?’ I asked, perplexed by Justin’s behaviour, surprised that old Mac had let him get away with it.
‘He knows Crinky Crunkle,’ was his answer. ‘One of his weird mates.’
With that, Justin took himself off to a urinal in the corner. Next his zip was down, followed by a trickling sound. I didn’t need the loo, but it felt odd just standing there in the toilets. What if someone else came in? What would they think? That we were up to no good, without a doubt. So, I took myself into one of the cubicles, shut the door, put the lid down and sat on it, drawing my knees to my chest, so my feet were off the floor.
Seated there, I found myself looking around, reading some of the graffiti that had been daubed on the walls and door.
Suzie Green is a slag.
Debbie Salter sucks her brother’s cock.
Darren Barnes is a bender.
Meet me here for bum fun at 7:30 on a Friday.
Call 789923 for a good time.
Barry Jackson takes it up the shitter.
There were drawings too – explicit depictions of men and women’s wosnames in black marker pen, many accompanied by phone numbers or a time and a place. I wondered what would happen if you rang one of the numbers – was someone simply waiting for your call? I thought about mentioning it to Justin, but he would have gone ahead with it, dragged me to the red telephone box in the park and made some calls.
He liked doing that – him and Stevie-the-little-shit had a track-record of making hoax phone calls from the telephone box opposite their house. Ringing up neighbours or the operator and using a silly voice. They called a fire crew and ambulance out once. Justin and Stevie were off school for a week after that with severe colds, according to Chrissie. But everyone knew that Adrian had beaten them black and blue after the incident and they were out of sight, in case their social worker got wind of their punishment.
The other thing about public toilet cubicles that fascinated me were the holes people made in the partitions. I didn’t understand why they did that. Maybe it was for passing through spare toilet paper when your neighbour ran out?
‘It’s called a glory hole,’ Justin reckoned, when I ventured to mention it to him. ‘People watch each other doing it through the gap.’
I just shuddered, disgusted. I di
dn’t really believe him, though: why would anyone want to watch you having a poo?
The cubicle I was in had holes all over it, but someone had done their best to patch them up: the door had three patches of wood nailed onto it; the partition wall on my left had two small ones, both filled with hardened chewing gum; the one on the right had a fist-sized hole, like someone had smashed through it with their hand. It gave you a good view of the next-door toilet and also of the urinals, as the adjacent cubicle door was wide open. I could see Justin, having his piss.
‘What you doing in here?’ a voice cried out, just as I was reading up on what Sean Taylor’s mum was happy to provide for a tenner a time.
The voice didn’t belong to Justin: it was from one of the older lads we’d seen earlier. The one who was hanging out with Roy Fallick’s soon-to-be step-brother, Clint.
I felt myself shrink back, pulling my knees up closer to my chest, making myself smaller, less visible. I shifted on the toilet seat, moving further away from the hole in the wall, taking myself as much out of view as possible.
I could still see Justin. His head was turned, facing the direction of the voice.
‘Having a slash,’ he replied, but he said it straight. There was no cheek, no cockiness in his tone. That told me something immediately: Justin sensed what I sensed. And I sensed trouble and felt fear.
The older boy moved in a bit closer. Through the hole in the cubicle wall, I could just glimpse the edge of him: a slither of his right arm, the chunky chain on his wrist, the white sleeve of his t-shirt, part of his denim-clad right leg.
‘You know what this place is, don’t you?’ he asked.
His voice was neutral. There wasn’t a threat in it, but it wasn’t friendly either.
Justin didn’t answer and two things happened: footsteps indicated that someone else had entered and the first boy moved further into view. I could see him head to toe: he had a shaved head and big black boots. Bovver-boots, Dad called them.
‘I asked you a question, Blondie,’ he continued, addressing Justin, edging closer towards him. ‘I said, you know what this place is, don’t you?’
‘It’s a toilet,’ Justin replied, but his voice was sullen, and thick, as if he was struggling to say it.
‘Is it?’ the older boy asked, and then he moved forward, closer to Justin. ‘Let’s see, shall we?’
I wondered if he was going to hit Justin or kick him behind the knees, like the older boys at school used to do, to make you get wee all down your trousers. However, he simply stood next to Justin. I heard his zip go, indicating he too was having a pee. But I didn’t hear him go.
When Justin had finished, he zipped his fly up and prepared to go, turning towards the exit.
‘You didn’t wash your hands.’
This came from another voice, one I vaguely recognised. It came to me quickly – he was one of the boys who had laid into Ian that day at the crematorium. He was out of view.
And the other one, the one next to Justin at the urinals, Clint’s mate from earlier. He had also been at the crematorium that day. Both these older boys had been Ian’s attackers.
‘Go and wash your hands, you dirty sod.’
‘You don’t tell me what to do.’
‘I just did, now go and wash your hands.’
‘Better do as he tells you.’
‘I don’t have to do what you say.’
‘Yes you do. Fucking wash your hands.’
‘Do as Rory is telling you, queer-boy. Wash those dirty little hands.’
‘You can’t make me.’
‘You ain’t leaving.’
I couldn’t see much, as Justin and the one called Rory had moved over to the exit. But there was a build-up in their exchange. At each sentence, the words were coming out quicker, the volume louder, the tone harder. I couldn’t tell if Justin was scared – I’d seen him in arguments and scraps before. He usually had back-up – his brother Stevie or sister Sharon, both of whom would get stuck into a fight, defending the Tankard name. But on that day, I was his back-up and at that moment in time I was petrified. I could only think of myself. I kept as still as was possible, kept my breathing slow and quiet and hoped I would go unnoticed.
‘He was looking at my dick.’
‘Wasn’t.’
‘Fucking were. Pretending to piss, but staring at my cock.’
‘I fucking wa-.’
‘Fucking, dirty poof.’
‘I wasn’t, it was you with your-.’
‘You still need to wash your hands, queer.’
‘Fuck off.’
‘I said wash your hands, queer-boy.’
‘I said, fuck off.’
‘Do as he says; wash the piss off your dirty hands.’
‘Fucking make me.’
‘Fucking make him, he says, Rory.’
‘We can make him, Jim.’
Jim. Rory and Jim – I clocked their names.
I still couldn’t see them, but it was clear what was going on from the scuffle and cries from Justin: they were doing exactly as they had promised. They pulled him over to the hand-drier and had set it going. Only it wasn’t his hands they submitted to a wash – it was his head.
‘Fuck off!’ I heard a muffled scream from Justin, as they forced his head into the machine, pressing the buttons for soap and then water. ‘Fucking get off me.’
When the hum of the drier finished, they let him go and he came back into view. I could see his face: it was swollen from the heat and from the bashing it had received. His eyes were wild with hatred, but he didn’t look afraid at all. Just angry.
For a moment, nothing happened. There was a stand-off, as if the combined heat from Justin’s face and anger had created a barrier, a force-field the bullies could not cross. Then, it started up again. Yet, this time, they dispensed with the verbal build up and simply went in with their fists: punching his face, kicking his legs, pummelling into his stomach. Whilst Rory held Justin up, forcing his back against the urinal wall, Jim took a fist and ground it again and again into Justin’s crutch, his face collapsing in agony at each punch. When Jim appeared to finish, Rory let Justin go and he slid against the porcelain behind him. At that moment, the urinal began to flush, hissing water out of the cistern, getting Justin wet down his back.
The older boys both laughed at this. Jim gave Justin one final whack in the balls, taking a moment to consider his aim, as if he was taking a free kick at football. Then he left. At first, I thought the other boy – Rory – had gone with him. From the hole in my cubicle wall, I could only see Justin: wet, bloody, slumped in front of the urinal. Then, Rory came back into view.
What he did next was the worst of it. It was quiet. Almost silent, if not for one inescapable sound. But it was a deadly act. No one died on that day, but it acted as a catalyst. A long, slow trigger, letting off a bullet that was equally slow, prepared to bide its time.
‘Don’t forget to pass on this message to your brother,’ Rory had said, coming back into view. He was stood over Justin, with his legs apart and, as I watched from my hidey-hole, I saw a hot stream of urine shoot down between those legs, aiming at Justin. When he had finished, he simply zipped up, said a few parting words and left.
I continued to stare out at the scene. Justin was sopping wet. From head to toe. The piss had soaked his trousers and his coat, and it was dripping in his hair, dripping off his face. He just lay there. Staring; staring right back at me.
There was no mistaking what Rory had said, just before he left. We had both heard – Justin’s intense stare told me that. And they made things worse – the final words he spoke, with the sound of him zipping up just behind them, like a soundtrack. You see, all their taunts about Justin washing his hands and being a queer – it wasn’t what they really thought. It wasn’t why they attacked him. It was just an excuse, a way to get things going, a way to start the violence. What Rory said, just before he left, revealed the real reason behind the attack. Their true purpose.
I stay
ed where I was for a few minutes longer – still terrified that the boys were simply waiting for me to come out and that I would finally get a beating as well. All the while, Justin continued to stare at me. When I eventually got off the toilet seat, unlocked the door and stepped out, Justin had hauled himself off the floor and used a coat sleeve to wipe his face clear of Rory’s piss.
We looked at each other and said nothing.
I wanted to say sorry, that I knew I had let him down, that despite what he did at Nan Buckley’s I should have stepped in and protected him. Helped him fight back. But I didn’t say anything. It would have been pointless and it was far too late.
For a moment, I wondered if he would say something to me. One of the typical bitchy, dramatic outbursts he saved for his foes. Or maybe he would hit out at me – just one slap or punch, just so that I felt some of his agony too. But he said and did nothing.
Once he was on his feet, he did exactly what his bullies had originally asked of him: he washed his hands. He also washed his face and attempted to rinse out his hair, but it wasn’t really possible. The washer-drier on the wall wasn’t designed for it.
Then, making himself as presentable as he could, he left.
I followed him, but I kept my distance, like he did the day Roy Fallick hit me with the branch. I stayed in his shadow all the way out of town, until we reached the top of Victoria Avenue. Then I headed off for my own house, and Justin headed for his.
We never talked about the incident. We didn’t talk about what the older boys did to him. And we didn’t talk about the fact that I was there, hidden, and did nothing.
But it didn’t go away. It just waited. When the boy called Rory unzipped his fly, something was triggered.
And there was something else. In those words Rory had said. His parting gift.
‘Don’t forget to pass this message onto your brother,’ he had said, unzipping, pissing, zipping up again, adding the final touches with: ‘Tell Ian we still want that money.’