Stephen, pale with anger, took one long stride towards Gibson’s party and stood watching until Gibson, alerted by the expressions on his friends’ faces, turned back to face him. There was a murmur from one of his group of “Come on, Pat. Fair do’s.”
“Fair do’s?” jeered Gibson, openly derisive.
“You’re on your own, Pat,” said the man who had found the remark a little too much to stomach. “I’m not going along with that kind of thing.” And he emptied his glass and went quietly out of the door. Another of the group looked uncomfortably at Stephen, round at the other groups of drinkers, all of whom had suspended operations to watch the long-awaited confrontation, and finally back at Gibson. “There’s a limit,” he said quietly. “And you’re over it. I’m dissociating myself from what you just heard,” he said in a louder voice, looking along the bar at Stephen. Stephen nodded. The man followed the other one out.
“I think I heard you making accusations against me, Gibson,” said Stephen in a soft, dead voice.
“I made a remark to my friends,” said Gibson cheerily. “I don’t expect to have my personal conversations eavesdropped on. We’ve always imagined we were among gentlemen here. Still…” — he let the pause draw out for the maximum effect — “if the cap fits, no doubt you’ll wear it.” Stephen hesitated briefly, fighting the rage that threatened to boil over. He was aware that if he lost his temper he was doomed. “I take it you’re aware,” he said at length, speaking still in a soft, deadly tone, “that what you said was a slander, of the vilest kind I can imagine. There are enough witnesses here to make it stick in court, as I’m sure you can see for yourself. Even two of your own mates are too squeamish to stand by while you accuse me of that kind of thing.” He waited, staring levelly at Gibson, hoping that the pounding of his heart wasn’t visible through his shirt. It felt as if it was trying to beat its way out of his body altogether.
Gibson, temporarily disconcerted by the unexpected defection of two of his own spear-carriers, and a little impressed despite himself by Stephen’s icy bearing, debated with himself what to do. Pride won. “You know what I think about your kind of freak,” he said, speaking as if he had a mouthful of lemon. “As far as I’m concerned any one of you’s quite capable of that assault. You’re diseased, and you oughtn’t to be allowed to circulate among decent people. And looking at your little fancy piece there, you seem to have a taste for fifteen-year-old schoolboys. Maybe you like em younger than that as well. I don’t know. All I know is that this used to be a pub where gentlemen could meet for a civilised drink, and now you can hardly move for shit-stabbers and arsehole bandits.” He stared at Stephen for a moment longer, with utter contempt all over his face, then turned back and started talking to his cronies. Some of them were grinning broadly, pleased by his outspokenness. Others, however, were looking increasingly uncomfortable.
Stephen stood in thought for a moment. His mind worked overtime, running faster and faster, like a plane on a war film, hit, burning and careering out of control with an ever-intensifying scream of engines as it plunged to its fiery end. Finally, his anger became unbearable. It flared and boiled until his mind could no longer contain it. Whole systems of fuses blew in his mind. Then the whole lot went up in a single blast.
He walked very slowly, a pace at a time, along the bar towards Gibson. He, for his part, was carried away by his access of self-righteous outrage. By the time he realised that he was in physical danger, he was a very long way too late.
Stephen came to a halt a pace from the older man. He towered over him by several inches, and although Gibson was considerably the bulkier and heavier, for the first time a fleeting hint of fear flickered in his eyes. But he had been a loud-mouth for a very long time, too used to dominating his party of cronies, and the brief flicker vanished. He glared exophthalmically up at Stephen’s face and resumed his normal weapon of bluster. “Go away, my little man,” he sneered. “Haven’t you got it into your head yet that I feel unclean with someone like you within ten yards?”
Stephen breathed deeply, and felt the blood draining from his face. “Has it ever crossed your mind,” he said at last, speaking very softly, between teeth that he was clenching so hard that they made a faint grating sound inside his own head, “that I’m a fair bit bigger than you?” He waited, watching the man’s face like a cat. When he saw no reaction he went on. “I expect you have. Most of the people who get a kick out of being unpleasant to other people are little short-arses, aren’t they? Probably why so many dictators have been little bastards, like you, wouldn’t you think? Little fuckers getting a hard-on from shoving bigger blokes around, right? Is that what’s underneath all this, little man? You get a nice big boner on when you have a normal-sized man in front of you and kick some arse, eh? Well, it’s backfired this time and no mistake.”
Gibson gazed at him, seeing clearly now the dangerous frame of mind he had created. But he was conscious of being a fully-grown man, while his youthful oppponent was still only a lithe, willowy boy. He bridled visibly, and balled a heavy fist.
“Don’t,” said Stephen, speaking even more softly, almost whispering, in a voice that was dark and reeking of menace. “Don’t do that. Don’t even think it.” This time Gibson obeyed, unclenching his fist, without even realising that was what it amounted to. The almost palpable aura of menace that now surrounded Stephen like a miasma, and even more the subtle undertones of madness in his voice and face, were enough to compel his instant compliance. It had dawned on him at last that he might come to owe a great deal to the most rigid restraint.
“If you lay a finger-nail on me,” went on Stephen, whispering coldly into the man’s face, “I’ll drop you in your tracks. Right where you stand. And then…” He stopped and waited, watching the deep flush ebbing from Gibson’s face. He watched while he turned from purple to red to pinkish to a boiled, fish-belly white, still himself wearing the same ghastly, vampirish travesty of a smile. He felt a bolt of pure power flush through him. In that moment he felt capable of anything. His lips drew back still further from his gums, leaving him with a feral snarl on his face that was pure evil, and wholly mindless. Gibson flinched. Stephen smiled, and he flinched again. “The door’s behind you. Use it. Don’t trouble to return,” Stephen said, and then, realising that this was as fine an exit point as he would get, turned silently and went back to where he had been standing with Richard.
Gibson, to Stephen’s chagrin, lost his appearance of paralysis immediately the spell was broken. “I don’t mind being barred,” he said reflectively. “I’ve been wondering when you’d manage to scrounge up the pluck. And of course it’ll be a pleasure to be able to drink in a normal place again. There’s just one thing to be said. I’m not going to be thrown out by one of your kind and take it lying down. I’ll leave you with something to remember me by, at least.” He took a short and leisurely stroll along the bar to Stephen, raised his glass slowly over his head, and slowly and deliberately emptied the three-quarters of a pint of bitter remaining in it over Stephen’s head. “Try that to begin with,” he said in easy, matey tones. He then reached out, took Stephen’s own pint of lager off the bar and repeated the performance. He was still standing poised with the empty glass above Stephen’s head when Richard, the Major and half a dozen others arrived, caught him by the arms and whisked him to the door.
12
“That’s that,” said Stephen. He pulled a handkerchief from his jeans and dabbed at the beer streaming down his face, then walked across to where the Major, Alfie Brett and one or two others were comforting Richard. He found a dry area of his shirt, used it to wipe beer from his hand, and ruffled Richard’s hair, grinning at him affectionately. “I reckon I could do with a shower,” he said softly. “Want to come up and talk, or would you rather stay here, Rich? I’ll only be a few minutes.”
Richard hesitated for a moment. Then he gave the Major and the others a damp smile and went quickly through the door into the residential part of the hotel, followed more slowly by
Stephen. A buzz of conversation broke out in the bar the moment he shut the door behind them.
Stephen sat in the tub and used the hand shower to clean himself off, while Richard perched on the lavatory seat watching him in silence. Neither spoke until Stephen had finished operations with the shampoo to wash the sticky mess of beer out of his shaggy mop of hair. It was only when he got out and began towelling himself vigorously that Richard broke the silence.
“Something like that was bound to happen,” he said.
“Course it was,” said Stephen. “I’ve been wondering for weeks when that cunt would find it all too much of a strain. The only thing that surprises me is that it took so long for him to burst his boiler. I s’pose he didn’t like the idea of having to go seven or eight miles every time he wanted a pint, but even so, knowing what a bigoted prat he is, I was surprised. Still…” he mused, “it’s out of the way now, and the air’s cleared. We shan’t have any more trouble, I don’t reckon.”
Richard still looked unhappy. “I think you’re wrong about that,” he said. “I think there’s going to be more, not less.”
Stephen swivelled round and looked at Richard. “Why d’you think that, love?” he asked carefully, propping his bottom against the side of the bathtub and towelling his hair absently.
“I dunno,” muttered Richard. “I’ve just got a feeling, that’s all… that this affair’s not over yet. That Gibson deserved all he got, no doubt about that. But he’s a vicious bastard, as well as an idiot. I reckon he’ll try to make trouble for you — and me, as an incidental. Actually,” he continued, suddenly struck by an afterthought, “I’ve got a feeling he disliked me more than you. Think what he said about me just now.”
“If you ask me,” said Stephen thoughtfully, “asking Pat Gibson which of us two he disliked most would be like asking him if he’d rather be drowned in pond water or ditch water, don’t you think?” He said it so gravely that Richard promptly dissolved into peals of laughter, washing his wretched expression and his gloomy forbodings away in their healthy passage. Stephen caught it, and jumped naked on his friend. They fell onto the bed and dismissed Pat Gibson and all his works from their minds, romping like the children they almost were.
* * *
Before long, though, it was Richard’s gloomier apprehensions that turned out to be justified rather than Stephen’s cheery optimism. The national newspapers and the television companies lost interest in the attack on the boy; but the local paper and radio station kept up heavy pressure on the police, whose vast and laborious efforts produced not a single lead in over a month.
From time to time a detective would slip quietly into the bar, talk softly to Tom, or to Stephen or Richard, and slip out as unobtrusively as he had arrived. But occasionally also they began to receive unscheduled visits from organised groups of uniformed officers, usually made up of an inspector or a sergeant with two to four PCs. “Isn’t it strange,” murmured Major Sealey to Richard on one such visit, “how the words ‘burst through the door’ always come to mind? They never seem just to come through the door, or walk through it, or enter the room. They always ‘burst in’, somehow, haven’t you noticed? I suppose that’s why the newspapers never fail to use the cliché.” Richard nodded glumly.
So in they would clump. They would stare round, then disperse among the groups of drinkers, eyeballing for the most part, occasionally asking a few questions about nothing in particular. The leader would summon Tom or Stephen with an imperious crooking of a gloved finger, and a civil but ostentatiously official little chat would be held across the bar. “Just making routine checks on licensing law observation,” the inspector or sergeant would say, in a tone which clearly indicated that he didn’t have to make any kind of explanation if he didn’t want to, and was only doing so out of the goodness of his heart, as Stephen observed sourly after one such visit. “Yeah,” said someone else. “Routine checks on gay pubs, I’d bet all the money I wish I’d got.” Richard directed a swift glance at the speaker and observed that it was one of the local customers, who had never hitherto been heard to say anything hostile.
Sometimes it lasted two minutes, sometimes ten, and then they would go out again. There was never any trouble as such, but the visitations always had an unsettling effect on the drinkers, many of whom would suddenly decide they’d had enough, drain their glasses and disappear the moment the unwelcome visitors had driven noisily off. On a couple of occasions the move backfired on the departing drinkers, who found themselves pulled over by the waiting raiding party just down the lane. They then found out, too late, that they had in fact had a shade more than enough.
Mutterings began to be heard, even among those parts of the clientele who had never been overtly hostile to Stephen and Richard themselves, to the effect that if it hadn’t been for the sudden new-found popularity of the pub among the gay community from Worthing and Brighton, old so-and-so wouldn’t be about to lose his licence, and so on.
And still the new faces came, often now in parties, sometimes noisy and frolicsome, sometimes slightly tipsy, and very occasionally quarrelsome and seeming to be looking for an argument with the locals. After one such evening Stephen spoke urgently with Tom when the last patrons had been half-urged, half-pushed out into the car park. The result was that from that night onwards anyone arriving less than stone-cold sober, by however microscopic a degree, was refused drinks, which in turn provoked raised voices, protest meetings half-way in and half-way out of the doors, and further mutterings of complaint from the regular clientele, less subdued now, and beginning to get a little pointed.
One evening there happened to be more than usual of their new customers from Brighton, celebrating someone’s birthday. Things were beginning to get a little rowdy, a lot of drink was being sloshed onto Tom’s carpets, and he, the boys and the few of the regulars who had resolutely stayed on were becoming very anxious, when there was a sudden thunder of engines outside. The merrymakers heard, and the pub suddenly became very quiet. A few moments later a group of about fifteen leathered bikers came stamping through the doors, making a noise like a panzer division in their cleated boots, ranged themselves along the fully-occupied bar by the simple expedient of elbowing aside anyone who hadn’t had the sense to vacate it anyway. Tom took one look at the row of brawny, tattooed forearms resting on elbows along the bar, suspended his dress code on the spot, and began serving pints of Guinness and quad rum and coke chasers. Within minutes armwrestling contests were going on along the mirror-like bar surface. Stephen, Richard and the handful of locals looked first at each other, then at the suddenly sober birthday party, in dismay. At the same moment the bikies started looking about them with interest.
“Well, well, well,” chuckled one of the the largest, hairiest, oiliest and most terrifying of them suddenly. He hadn’t spoken very loud; but in the silence that had gradually settled over everyone present except the bikies, the remark had the effect of a bomb going off, or a sudden, explosive fart at the most intense moment of a memorial service. “How d’you fancy scrumming down with Two Para’s rugby team?” murmured Stephen, sotto voce, in Richard’s ear. Richard, his nerves strung out to breaking point, emitted a slightly hysterical giggle. He suppressed it instantly, but he wasn’t quite quick enough.
“Well,” said another gruff voice cheerfully, “nice to hear someone’s got a sense of humour, an ain’t lost his voice.” The speaker, another enormous fellow with a huge black lumberjack’s beard and long hair tied in a greasy pony-tail half-way down his back, stared round, as if trying to identify the source of the giggle. On the way his eyes lit on numerous gaudily attired young men, most of them trying to look inconspicuous. The bearded giant grinned and nudged his neighbour. They held a brief whispered conference, then the henchman detached himself, elbowed his way through the press, and returned after a moment with the biggest man he could find among the birthday-partying crowd. The hapless man — who was, though well over six feet tall and heavily built, in reality little more than a boy, a
bout Stephen’s age, looked greenish and terrified as the lieutenant thrust him up to the bar beside the giant.
“Hi, hi, hi there, brother,” said the bikie cheerfully. “You and me’re gonna have us a little game, righty-right? How you feel about that?”
“I… I… wh…what k-kind of game?” stammered the boy. “You choose, why doncha?” murmured the biker. He leaned easily on the bar, his pint mug almost engulfed in his huge, grimy paw. His square, yellow fingernails were the size of postage stamps, ridged, split and blue-black with grimed-in oil and dirt. He took a gargantuan pull at his glass, emptying three-quarters of a pint down his thick, corded throat. He banged it down and summoned Tom with a jerk of his head, meanwhile picking up his rum chaser and tipping that down after the beer. He never took his eyes off the frightened boy, grinning at him in an apparently friendly fashion. He had laughter lines etched deeply round the corners of his eyes. When the boy had remained silent for a very long half a minute the bikie laughed. “Nothin to say, my man?” he said conversationally. “Well, say I choose the game, eh? How’s that?”
“Look,” said the boy. He was trying very hard to keep his voice level, but it still hovered perilously close to cracking.
“He can talk,” marvelled the giant. “Carry on, my man.”
“I… we… I don’t want any trouble with you…”
“Oh, really?” said the giant. “Well, ain’t life full a surprises? But what makes you think I want any trouble with you, man?” The youth looked nonplussed for a moment. Then, deciding he’d got nothing to lose, he went on, in a rush, “Look, if you’re trying to get me to play any kind of fighting game, or trials of strength with you, or anything like that, you can see for yourself, you’d tear me in half one-handed. I wouldn’t be any competition for you at all, would I?”
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