Mutton-chops man then eyeballed me levelly and said in a hoarse whisper, ‘Does this disgust you?’
‘Should it?’
The man cocked his head, his hair hanging in front of his eyes. Jeremy wor drumming his fingers on my shoulders to some song playing in his head.
The man held up the syringe.
‘Wanna?’
Jeremy’s drumming fingers lost their rhythm for a moment. A smile flickered across t’ man’s lips.
I hesitated, as if mulling it over. Never ever accept or reject an offer out of hand, Mitch had a habit of saying. I glanced over at his mate, who wor out of it. He wor t’ lucky one. My head wor swimming wi’ Jim, the Chinese-dressing-gown man, Dora, wire-haired Jake and even t’ angry car driver – all wor gathered in a huddle in my head and whispering like I wor t’ butt of their private joke. I tried to blot them out by focusing on t’ syringe. The needle glinted in t’ firelight. The room had gone very quiet.
‘Not just now. Ta.’
I tried to sound light, like refusing another drink or summat. The man’s face darkened over. He spat on t’ floor. Jeremy’s fingers lifted from my shoulders. Making a snip-snip motion in t’ air he said, ‘Well, are we or aren’t we?’
‘Oh, yes!’ Gina squealed, jumping to her feet. ‘We must!’
Mutton-chops junkie sniggered, got up and sloped off. T’other bloke wor still out of it, and the woman had fallen asleep on t’ rug wi’ a lit ciggie between her fingers. Jeremy vanished into t’ shadows and returned carrying a kitchen chair.
‘Well then. Let’s be having you, wonder boy. Take off your shirt.’
I peeled my T-shirt over my head. He placed the chair directly beneath t’ hanging lightbulb, facing away from t’ fire and toward t’ pitch dark. The chill brought me out in goosebumps and made my nipples stand up. The junkie woman woke up and relit her roll-up and offered it to Gina, who waved her away.
‘Not now, Julia.’
Jeremy fetched his clippers and then a bowl of warm water and a small, dirty towel.
‘Sit!’ he ordered.
I sat. The bowl of tepid water wor placed on another chair right in front of me.
‘Bend forward!’
Jeremy shampooed my scalp, dried it vigorously wi’ t’ manky hand towel, then started applying the black dye. It ran in ticklish rivulets down my neck and leached into t’ metal bowl at my feet. It had a raw, caustic smell. Without waiting for t’ dye to set, and wi’ one hand clamped on t’ back of my neck, Jeremy began to snip. Clumps of hair fell into my lap, into t’ bowl and around my feet. I steered my mind away from thinking about what wor being done to me and, sugared a little by desire, fantasised mesen as a criminal having my hair shorn.
Jeremy paced about me, slurping from his can of Red Stripe and snipping. Gina just gleamed at me.
‘Relax, will you,’ Jeremy snapped. ‘I’m not going to cut your head off.’
I dropped my shoulders and stared straight ahead. Jeremy thumped me in t’ lower back.
‘I said relax. Not slump!’
I stared straight ahead, focusing on a far point of t’ room. Beyond t’ harsh ring of t’ naked bulb above me, lying on a mattress that I could now make out by t’ far wall, wor someone else. I couldn’t tell if they wor kipping or lying awake. I took it to be another junkie.
‘Who’s that?’ I whispered to Gina.
‘Just Tad, poppet, sleeping off a helluva hangover. HEY, PRICK-FACE, WAKE UP!’
The shape moved, shuffling and stretching, hacking and gobbing onto t’ floor. Then it rose up, a shadow rising up the wall wi’ it.
The shape stepped out of t’ gloom. He wor naked. I glimpsed the dance of his cock as he pulled on some bleached-out drainpipes that lay on t’ floor. The man said, ‘I need a fuckin’ piss.’ He stumbled drowsily toward a door.
‘So how many people live here?’
‘Depends, poppet, depends. People come, people go.’
Jeremy wor slow in his labours. Eventually I wor allowed to view mesen in a large shard of mirror. It wor me, and not me. My hair wor jet-black, teased up and stiffened like oil-soaked beach grasses. My lugs wor visible, and the nape of my neck felt cold and exposed. Gina and Jeremy looked on while I stared at mesen in dumb amazement.
‘Oh, fuck!’
Tad came back from pissing and stood before me, his arms folded across his chest, grinning wolfishly. He had a tattoo of an iron cross above his right nipple and a Union Jack tattoo on his upper right arm.
‘Should have shorn him, Jez.’
‘He doesn’t want to be a skinhead, stupid,’ Gina said, stroking my inner thigh. Her smile wor almost feline. ‘Anyway, poppet, you’re ours now!’
I awoke on a thin mattress in a room wi’ a single, grilled window. The hair dye had left stains on t’ pillow. My mouth tasted like a rat had died in it. Tad wor kipping on another mattress by t’ wall opposite, curled up in t’ foetal position, his backbone ridged up like a wolf’s. T’others wor in other rooms.
I lay still while my eyes grew used to t’ gloom, then got up and padded about. I peered out through t’ window at the rose dawn sky. Tad rolled over, pushing his blanket aside in his sleep. I knelt down, drinking him in. As well as the tattoos I’d clocked earlier, he had a Yorkshire rose on his other arm and a serpent snaking toward his groin. A thin line of sandy hair ran up to his navel. He had an appendix scar and a faint birthmark on his lower abdomen.
I lifted the blanket back over him. He grunted, rolled over and buried his face in t’ pillow. I dressed mesen in t’ cold, greying light and made my way down t’ stairs.
In t’ kitchen on t’ floor below I came across Julia, the junkie woman, asleep in an armchair, her head lolling forward and her hair covering her face. No sign of t’other junkies. I shuftied about for summat to eat, my insides gurgling like one of Dr Jekyll’s potions. The breadbin wor empty. On t’ kitchen stove stood a saucepan of cold stew. I spooned up a mouthful. A smear of cold grease coated my tongue.
‘Yeuchh!’
I gobbed onto t’ floor, threw t’ spoon into t’ pot, slammed on t’ cold tap and sluiced out my mouth. Julia hadn’t stirred. I dropped a knife into t’ sink. She slept on. She must have been totally out of it. I picked up the pan and let it clatter onto t’ flagstone floor. Stew splattered and oozed away like fresh cow shit. Julia didn’t move. Friggin’ junkies. Waking the dead would have been easier. I left Julia to her druggie dreams and cut down t’ stairs and out through t’ steel door, letting it slam shut behind me.
Outside, the breeze wor blowing an early-dawn chill and some ravens wor making a racket. I headed down t’ steep hill toward t’ junction. Just then, all t’ street lights went out.
I’d expected to find ’em all still tucked up. I wor miffed to find Mother seated at the kitchen table in her nightgown. She’d been pasting Green Shield stamps into books. She didn’t lick the stamps, cos Granddad Frank once told her that the glue wor made from boiled horse bones. Rather, she dipped them in a shallow saucer of water. Her jaw wor set, her cheeks pale, her lips colourless.
‘So, the wanderer returns.’
I set my key down on t’ table.
‘You look a sight,’ she said, to my back. I didn’t reply.
I woke late, fuzzy-headed, daylight beaming through t’ ciggie burn in t’ curtains. I lay there a while going over yesterday in my mind, thinking about t’ skinhead, Tad, or whatever he called himsen. Short for what? Tadpole? Not unless that wor a nickname from when he wor a nipper. Outside, I could hear Mitch hammering in t’ garage. Sis wor in her room, hoofing it to Heatwave’s ‘Boogie Nights’ and singing along tunelessly.
I got dressed and took in my new look in t’ wardrobe mirror. My hair had flattened, and it stuck out in all t’ wrong places from where I’d slept on it. I spat into my palms and teased it back into shape.
Downstairs, I found Mother daydreaming out t’ kitchen window. She mustn’t have slept, cos the washing wor done and already flapping on t’ line. I open
ed the bread bin quietly, then slid two slices into t’ toaster.
Mother said, ‘I’ve got Social Services coming round later today to talk about Gran. If they see you looking like that you’ll get sectioned.’
Social Services sent a hard-faced little woman wi’ her hair scraped up in a tight bun. She perched bolt upright on t’ settee, her box jacket still buttoned, her eyes flirting wi’ t’ decor. When she worn’t trying to weigh the dust on t’ picture rail, she wor examining her teacup as if she worn’t sure if it wor clean. Mother kept patting her own hair uneasily. Mistrust hung there between ’em like a pane of glass onto which each exhaled icily.
‘A place has been found for your mother,’ the SS woman said.
I said, ‘Does that mean that I get my old room back?’
Mother eyed me stonily. The SS woman pursed her lips together like she wor sucking on a sour boiled sweet. She said glassily, ‘Yes, I suppose it will.’
Mother’s expression dithered between pleased and mortified. The SS woman rummaged in her bag and muttered summat about formalities. I excused mesen and left them to it.
A week after Gran had gone into t’ nursing home I went wi’ Mother on a visit. The home wor a grim red-brick mansion of turrets and towers, wi’ deep bay windows on t’ ground floor that reflected the trees and the gardens. It reminded me of t’ loony bin.
Mother popped her head into t’ office door by t’ entrance lobby and a perky young girl wi’ a plate of Mr Kipling cakes on her desk told us where we’d find Gran that day. Parked beside t’ desk wor a bearded bloke in a wheelchair. The girl said that his name wor Bobby and that he’d been abandoned there as a child.
Bobby had a book propped before him on a music stand. As he read he turned the pages wi’ a long, thin metal hook that he waggled between his teeth. When he saw us, Bobby’s head wobbled enthusiastically, the hook batoning about. He emitted a strangled ‘Nnnnhhhh.’ The girl reached across and wiped away t’ dribble that ran down his chin.
‘Bobby says hi,’ she said, swallowing some cake.
‘Hello, Bobby,’ Mother said in a tone she usually reserved for owt mildly cute. I nodded my ‘Hello’, and Bobby made another excitable ‘Nnnnnhhhh.’
‘You’ll find Betty in t’ lounge at the end of t’ corridor,’ the girl said.
We clopped along t’ dully-lit corridor of mushroom gloss walls and the sharp tang of bleach over stale piss. Mother blathered on about t’ sour-faced staff and the girl in reception being t’ only cheery one.
‘Nice-looking girl. Don’t you think so?’
‘Uh-huh.’
Mother gave me an assessing look.
We entered a cavernous lounge area, empty save for a semi-circle of armchairs at the far end. Gran wor buried in one, her head bowed forward slightly, and smiling oddly, as if taken up by some pleasant scene on t’ rug before her, such as a frolicking kitten. Except that there wor nowt.
We’d been told that Gran’s mind wor steadily disintegrating, like cabbage boiling down to mush. But as we neared her, we saw that she’d stopped caring for hersen – or being cared for. Her cardie had a dried egg stain on it, her hair wor all matted, and without make-up, her face looked sallow.
Mother crouched alongside Gran’s chair and spoke loudly and slowly.
‘Hello, Mum. How are you today?’
Gran’s head lolled. Mother took a hairbrush from her handbag and began tidying Gran up a bit. I walked over to t’ window. In spite of t’ drought, the lawns wor well watered, the flowerbeds wor flourishing. An exhausted wasp wor crawling along t’ sill. I tried to lift the sash, but it wouldn’t budge. The windows had been nailed shut. Mother came over to t’ window, still holding the hairbrush. Together we took in t’ blooms.
‘They do a nice job on t’ gardens.’
‘Aye,’ I said. ‘On t’ gardens they do.’
Mother’s face twitched. ‘What were we supposed to do?’
‘Did I say owt?’
‘Oh, spare me. We might not have seen eye to eye, and my God your gran could be a troublesome old goat, but that don’t stop the guilt sitting in me like a stone.’ She touched her stomach wi’ t’ back of t’ hairbrush. ‘We couldn’t have cared for her at home, Rick.’ She looked across at Gran wi’ a regretful half-smile. ‘I do wish we’d talked more. Before t’ gate started closing.’
Gran raised her head slowly and her face opened into a wondrous, trusting smile that wor never part of her when she had all of her cups in t’ cupboard. Her fingertips quivered anxiously. Mother went over and crouched beside her. Then Gran’s expression darkened, as if she wor seized by a worrisome thought, and she grabbed Mother’s wrist very tightly.
‘Ow, Mum! Let go. Mum, let go, you’re hurting me!’
But her grip wor so tight that Mother couldn’t wrench hersen free. Gran’s eyes widened, the whites like crazed china, her damp mouth agape as she screamed into Mother’s face, ‘He’ll be t’ death of us, child!’
‘Who? Who will?’ Mother cried, yanking her wrist free. ‘Who?’
‘Him! Frank! Frank, and that man!’
‘What man?’
‘That man! Him! HIM!’
On t’ way home I said, ‘What man?’
Mother flapped a hand. ‘There wor a man who used to go to t’ races wi’ your granddad. Your gran hated him. Wouldn’t have his name breathed across t’ doorstep.’
‘Why?’
‘Search me.’
‘Did you ever meet him?’
She rooted in her shit-brown handbag for a tissue, blew her nose and sorted out her eyes.
‘A couple of times. They once took me to a race meet at Wetherby. I can’t have been more than six or seven …’
‘Granddad always did love the horses.’
Mother chortled. ‘I used to get sent to t’ bookies’ to fetch him home for his dinner. I wouldn’t go in, cos the bookies’ wor like the pub, a smoke-filled den of men where little girls shouldn’t be seen. So I’d wait outside ’til someone noticed me, and then someone else would shout, “Frank! Frank, yer wanted!” and Dad would appear in t’ doorway and tell me to run back home and say he’d be there in a jiffy. It wor what he always said.’
Mother laughed again. ‘At first I used to think a jiffy wor a small car, or a horse-drawn carriage or summat, so I’d wait by t’ window for his jiffy to appear.’
I looked out the bus window at passing suburban houses.
Mother then recollected how Frank’s friend drove a grand old car – well, she remembered it as a grand old car. She recalled the wonderful patterns of t’ jockeys’ shirts and how t’ horses seemed to steam and how far away they seemed when they wor racing and then how near suddenly as they charged into t’ home straight and Granddad and this other man wor screaming crazily for their horse, only she didn’t know which wor their horse, and she’d tingled excitedly as the thundering of t’ hooves grew closer and louder ’til t’ horses blurred past t’ winning post right in front of her, but she felt safe cos Granddad wor holding her hand tightly and then he whisked her up and kissed her on t’ nose and said, ‘We’ve won, did you see, we’ve won!’ and the two men threw their hats in t’ air and their arms around each other and they all went to collect the winnings and Granddad bought her a toffee apple.
She remembered how on t’ way home she wor soothed by t’ measured talk of t’ men, while she sank into t’ rear seat, stroking the ribbed leather, catching the faint whiff of t’ ashtrays in t’ car doors. She wor their shiny little girl, they’d said, and they would take her to t’ races for always and they would always win and throw their hats toward t’ sky and she would smear toffee apple around her lips and suck boiled sweets for evermore.
I smirked. ‘And did you go again?’
‘No. I kicked up a right fuss ’til Gran clipped me around t’ ear and said, “Frank only took you cos I had to visit a sick relative.” But I knew that wor a fib, in the way all children know when their parents fib. Still, I worn’t going to poke that fire aga
in.’
She gave me a long look. I took in t’ scenery outside t’ window. I wor thinking that wor t’ way Mother and I differed. If there wor an ember, I had to poke it into life.
II
Now that I wor not welcome at Blandford Gardens for some reason that might have summat to do wi’ mashing up that little runt in t’ car park, Gay Lib meetings wor t’ only way to meet anyone likeminded. The measly gay pubs – the New Penny, the Wellesley Hotel side bar in Leeds, the Junction in Bradford – didn’t seem to offer up owt much, and I didn’t fancy sitting on my tod waiting to get chatted up by some lecherous old codger.
Thank friggin’ Christ this next Gay Lib meet wor shorter. That butt-clenching politico stuff had been doing my nut. Afterward, in t’ bar downstairs, some baldy, moon-faced boy-lover wor plying me wi’ drinks and rubber-tongued talk. He cooed into my ear, ‘Sadly, your age leaves you on the upper cusp of unsuitability. If only we’d met five years ago.’
‘I wor twelve.’
‘A delicious age.’
I slung mesen into an armchair and took in t’ room. This lot worn’t t’ freshest display of farm produce neither. As for me, it seemed I wor too old for t’ paedo, and jailbait for t’ rest. Even here some old bloke wi’ doughy cheeks and specs wor leering at me like a bladdered uncle at a wedding. Every time I looked his way he wor still eyeballing me. Suddenly he wor bee-lining my way.
‘May I sit here?’
Before I could say owt he’d parked himsen on a buffet stool. He smiled, displaying his crooked, stained gnashers, and set his pint of Guinness on t’ polished copper tabletop. A butt-end waggled off his meaty lower lip when he spoke.
‘Gordon,’ he said, sticking out a hand. The palm wor thick and callused, the finger ends nicotine-stained. I shook it briefly.
‘I think I should start,’ Gordon started, ‘by saying that I realise perfectly well that you are young and handsome as all young men are handsome, and what is more I’m perfectly aware I’m not, that I’m certainly no beauty, indeed it is doubtful in my case that I ever was, although I have had my moments along the way, and that I fully recognise that I haven’t the slightest chance of any carnal relations with you whatsoever, so I have expunged utterly any such notion from my mind. Indeed, that’s not why I chose to come and introduce myself to your good self.’
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