“Yeah, okay.”
“What are you doing with yourself today?” dad asks as I walk into the kitchen.
“Dunno, haven’t really thought about it. I’m going out tonight though.”
“Huh. You’re always going out,” I hear him grumble. “Can’t you spend the day here instead? It’s not like you’ve got work today or anything.”
Christ, I can’t think of anything worse than staying here all day with him. I know he only wants someone to feed him, but I’m his fucking daughter not his wife. Besides, I need to do something interesting otherwise the day will just drag and it’ll seem like forever before I get to the fight.
“I could stay until dinner time, if you like?”
“Well don’t put yourself out on my account.”
I unwrap his sandwiches and take them to him. He lifts up a crust, peers inside to see what’s in them. They must meet his approval because they don’t last long. He burps his appreciation and scratches his balls through a hole in the front of his pyjamas.
“Another cup of tea would go down a treat,” he says, sniffing his finger.
“Right. Well tell you what, you go and get dressed and I’ll make you one, yeah?”
“Can’t,” he says. “I got sick on my clothes last night, and I don’t like the way they smell.”
“Well can’t you put some clean ones on?”
He shakes his head. “Your mum usually gets my clean clothes out for me.”
Oh for fuck’s sake. Nobody’s that fucking useless, he has to be putting it on for attention. “Fine,” I say in a tone that I hope conveys my disgust, “I’ll go and pick some clothes out for you then, shall I?”
“Thanks, Abigail. Don’t know what I’d do without you.”
I clump upstairs and walk into his and mum’s bedroom. It stinks of acrid vomit, with a faint whiff of stale piss and spunk coming from the unmade bed. I draw the curtains and open the bedroom windows to let a bit of air in, but it doesn’t really help much. It’s too muggy outside, and there’s no wind today. With the light from outside I can see it’s not just the crumpled clothes on the floor my dad has been sick on, his duvet is covered in it too.
There’s an empty Special Brew can by the side of the bed. I pick it up and throw it out of the window. It clatters down on something out there and next door’s dog starts to bark. It’s not long before I hear my neighbour yelling at the dog to shut up.
I open the wardrobe door and look at all the empty coat hangers. My dad’s clothes are still in there, but that’s about it. A few old dresses my mum got too fat for years ago are at the end of the rail, but everything else of hers is missing. Along with the old suitcase that only ever used to come out at holiday time when I was little and we still went away once a year. Bollocks, wherever the fuck mum is it looks like she’s gone there prepared for a long stay. I pick out some clothes for dad, knowing in advance that he’ll grumble about them whichever ones I choose, and take them downstairs for him.
“I don’t like those, they pinch too much,” dad says, but I don’t stay around to listen. I go back upstairs to get the dirty washing. I’ll put it in the machine and go down to the gym while I wait for it to wash. Hopefully next door won’t have started a fire by the time I get back so I can peg it out to dry.
I hope mum comes back soon, I shouldn’t have to deal with stuff like this.
6
Saturday night at fucking last, and I’m standing on the corner of Sandalwood Road eating a bag of chips. It’s quite windy tonight, and I wish I’d put a pair of thick tights on under the denim skirt because my legs are fucking freezing. I probably should’ve put a jacket on as well because I’ve got goosebumps on my arms the size of fucking marbles. Oh well, too late now. Maybe Dave will be a fucking gentleman and wrap a coat around me, but I’m not holding my breath on that one. That sort of bollocks only happens in the movies. I’ll be expecting him to sing next.
It’s twenty to eight according to my phone, and there’s still no sign of the cunt. I got here early so I know I haven’t missed him. A car approaches me slowly and pulls up opposite. The tinted passenger-side window rolls down smoothly with a hum, but it’s not Dave inside, it’s some fucking prick in a suit.
“Are you looking for business?” the prick says, leaning across with his arm draped over the back of the empty passenger seat.
“Fuck off,” I yell, and he drives away. Why the fuck do cunts like that always think I’m a prossie?
I finish my chips and ball up the paper, drop-kick it into the street. I rub the goosebumps off my arms and take out my phone, check the time again. If the bastard’s stood me up I’ll fucking kick his head in the next time I see him.
A car horn blares out, one of those old musical ones that plays the Hitler Has Only Got One Ball tune. Fuck knows what its real name is, but I’m sure you know the one I mean, yeah? You don’t tend to hear horns like those much. I don’t know why, they sound fucking cool. I look up the street in the direction of the horn and see a dilapidated-looking grey Cortina parked by the side of the road. It’s got a tinted windscreen, so I can’t see who’s inside but there’s only really one person it could be so I wave and walk toward it.
The passenger door opens and I look inside to check it’s not another fucking sad bastard who needs to pay for a shag. Dave grins out at me, and I get in. There’s two other guys in the back seat, two more skinheads. I’m a bit disappointed to see them, I thought it would be just me and Dave. If I’d known there was going to be other guys I would’ve brought Shaz with me to make up the numbers.
“All right, Abby,” Dave says, grinning at me. “Sorry we’re a bit late, blame Josh back there. He spilt lager down his shirt and he’s a fucking girl so he had to go home and get changed.”
“Fuck off,” one of the skinheads in the back says, and I guess this is Josh. “It were your fault for driving like a fucking nutter. You should’ve warned me you were going to drive off like that, I would’ve waited before I took a swig.”
“Fucking traffic light, weren’t it,” Dave says, “that’s what you’re supposed to do when there’s some cunt on a motorbike trying to cut in front of you.”
“Here you go, darling,” the other skinhead says, and a can of lager is held through the gap between the front seats. I take it and crack it open, take a long drink to rinse the chip grease from my mouth. “I’m Steve,” he adds, and I turn and nod to him.
Dave opens a glove compartment and pulls out some CDs. They’re all home-made copies in plastic sleeves, with hand-written marker pen scrawl on them. He picks one out and rams it into the CD player, tosses the others back in the glove compartment. There’s a can of lager wedged between his legs like a big metal cock, and he takes a sip from it before he grinds the car into gear. Loud guitar feedback blares out from speakers in the back window, followed by fast drumming, crashing guitars. Then a geezer with a rough voice shouts something about ‘your time will come’ but it’s hard to decipher any of the lyrics even with the skinheads at the back of the car shouting along with them.
Dave revs the engine and the car lurches forward with a screech of tyres, pushing me back in my seat with a jolt. I can see how Josh managed to spill his lager. ‘We’re off, here we go,’ the geezer on the CD shouts. This one’s something about London as far as I can make out. Dave looks at me and grins, I check my seatbelt is secure and smile back.
The traffic lights on the edge of town are red, and there’s a couple of cars in front of us when we get there. Dave pulls up behind the second car, leaving a big gap. He grips the steering wheel hard and stares unblinking at the red light. As soon as it changes to amber we jerk forward and I’m pushed back in my seat again. Just as I think we’re going to crash into the back of the car in front Dave wrenches the steering wheel and we lurch to one side, into the lane for oncoming traffic. I grab onto a handrail above the door to stop myself from tumbling onto Dave’s lap. He sounds the musical horn when we zoom past the two cars and narrowly miss an oncoming mot
orcycle. I can actually see the look of sheer fucking terror on the biker’s face just before Dave pulls back onto the right side of the road.
Just outside town we turn left onto a country road. The tyres screech as we take the corner too fast. It’s a sixty mile per hour zone, but it’s not long before we accelerate up to ninety. The engine’s really screaming now, it’s almost loud enough to drown out the music, and the whole car is vibrating like fuck.
When the music ends, Dave ejects the CD with one hand while he grips the steering wheel with the other. He tosses the CD into the glove compartment and pulls out another. He holds it up, studies the writing on the label, and discards it. He reaches inside for a different CD. This one must meet his approval because he pushes it into the CD player. More loud shouty music blares out. At a guess that’s the only type he’s got in there, so I don’t see why he’s so choosy about which one we listen to. I’m treated to another round of shouted karaoke from the back seat, so the two skinheads back there must approve of his new selection.
There’s a thirty miles per hour sign coming up in the distance, but Dave doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to slow down. Homeforth welcomes careful drivers, another sign says. Underneath it says Please check your speed. We’ve passed the thirty sign before Dave slams on the brakes and I’m catapulted forward. The seatbelt digs into my chest. I feel a thud against the back of my seat, probably one of the skinheads not bracing himself in time because it’s soon followed by a string of obscenities aimed at the driver. Dave laughs and tells him to fuck off.
There’s a sharp bend in the road at the entrance to the village, and the car lurches to one side when we take it. We pass a row of boarded up shops, then turn right at a T-junction onto a dirt track. The car bumps up and down over potholes in the road, and I need to grab onto the door handle to steady myself.
There’s high, overgrown hedges on both sides of the road, you can’t see fuck all apart from them and the road. Dave slows down, peering through the window at the hedge on my side. We come to a small gap in the hedge, barely big enough for a car to drive through, and he pulls up alongside it. You would never have guessed it was there from the road unless you knew where to look. Dave does a seven-point turn on the narrow road, lines the car up with the gap in the hedge, and we drive through. Branches slap against the windows on both sides, and we drive into a field with lots of other cars parked in it. He finds a space to park in and switches off the engine, killing the music at the same time.
“You’re gonna fucking love this, Abby,” Dave says. He turns toward me and grins.
Steve and Josh pile out of the back of the car and slam the doors behind them. They walk away. I get out and look around. The field is full of weeds, with deep, muddy tyre tracks leading back onto the road. In the distance there’s a large house with a dilapidated barn at its outskirts, and I see it’s the barn the two skinheads are heading for.
I wait for Dave to lock the car and we follow them across the field. Dave drapes an arm around my shoulder, and it takes him a while to fall into step with me so it’s not bumping up and down against me. I put my arm around his waist and hook my thumb around one of his braces.
There’s a huge, ugly fucker standing by the barn door with a baseball bat in his hand, talking to Steve and Josh. “Who the fuck’s this?” he asks, pointing at me.
“All right, Johnno,” Dave says. “This is my bird Abby, she’s sound.”
The ugly fucker scowls at me. “Not really the place to bring a young girly, Davie-boy. You sure she won’t faint?”
I clench my fists. Baseball bat or not I’ll fucking deck the cheeky bastard for calling me a girly. But Dave moves in front of me before I can take a swing at him.
“Nah, she’s tougher than she looks, Johnno. This time next week she’ll be one of the fighters.”
Johnno looks at me and laughs. “What, a scrawny little bitch like that? Wouldn’t last five fucking seconds.”
Dave must be able to read my mind because he turns and grabs both my hands by the wrists. “Nah, she’s got some serious fucking moves on her,” he says, winking at me. “The best I’ve seen for a long time.”
I can’t help smiling. He hasn’t even seen me fight yet, not properly anyway. Johnno grunts and points toward the barn door with his baseball bat. We all shuffle through the door and there’s another ugly fucker with a baseball bat just inside. I mean seriously, they could be fucking twins or something, yeah?
“All right, Baz,” Dave says, though fuck knows how he can tell them apart.
“All right, Davie-boy,” Baz says, looking at me. “Who’s the bird?”
“This is Abby, she’s sound.”
Ugly Fucker Two looks at me and shrugs. Dave pulls out a wallet and hands him a fistful of tenners. The money disappears into a belt around his waist and he stands to one side to let us through. Steve and Josh are about to follow when he bars their way with the baseball bat.
“Get your money out, lads. He only paid for him and the bird, not you two.”
There’s a bit of grumbling at that, and Josh calls Dave a tight get, but they pay up in the end and get ushered through the door to join us.
You can practically taste the fucking testosterone in this place, the air is so thick with the stink of stale blood and sweat. And the heat! Fuck me, it’s boiling in here. The barn is packed with people, almost all of them men, though I do see the odd rough-looking woman among them. In one corner there’s a table selling something. There’s a lot of money changing hands, but I can’t see what it is people are buying. Another table is selling beer, judging by the people walking away from it with cans in their hands. I wonder if they’ve got any Guinness. That lager I had on the way here tasted like fucking gnat’s piss and I could do with a proper drink to wash the taste away.
Against the far wall of the barn there’s a large cage, about sixteen feet times twelve feet. A crowd mills around it, but the cage itself is empty. Dave grabs my hand and pulls me through the crowd, barging his way toward the cage. We get jostled by sweaty blokes as we squeeze through, and we’re pushed back a few times by people who refuse to make way for us, but we make it to the front eventually. The back of the cage has a door that opens up to the outside of the barn, and there are cameras mounted on the bars, pointing inside. There’s a camera covering each side of the cage, and another mounted on top for an aerial view. The floor of the cage is just bare wooden floorboards, no canvas covering, not even any paint or varnish. Just raw planks of wood nailed onto a make-shift stage that raises the cage a few inches from the ground.
Dave drapes his arm around my shoulder and speaks into my ear, “What do you think of it?”
“It’s a bit different to a boxing ring.”
Dave laughs. But before he can say anything else the cage door opens and a young woman wearing nothing but a pair of red knickers walks through carrying a cardboard placard. She parades around the cage holding the placard above her head. Her tits bounce up and down to loud cheers from the crowd. ‘Big Tone versus The Black Marauder’ the placard says, in large, bold lettering. She holds it in front of one of the cameras for a few seconds, and then flounces back through the door.
A man storms through the door, face like fucking thunder, and struts around spitting through the cage bars into the crowd. He’s stripped to the waist and his overly-muscled body is covered in scars, like he’s been in a knife fight with fucking Wolverine or something. His nose is crooked, and when he snarls in my direction I see he’s hardly got any teeth left, just three tombstones at the top and a couple at the bottom. They’re a fucking weird shape too, more triangular than normal teeth, more like dog’s teeth than anything else. He stamps across to one corner of the cage and beats his chest like a gorilla. The crowd yells abuse at him, he yells back.
Another guy strides through the cage door. This one’s a half-caste so I guess he must be The Black Marauder. Except he’s a lot taller than the gorilla who arrived first, so he could just as easily be Big Tone. This one’s a
lso stripped to the waist, and his arms are like fucking tree trunks. The cage door is slammed behind him, and both men scream abuse at each other.
“What are the rules?” I shout to Dave, but he doesn’t hear me over the roar of the crowd. I’m pressed up against the side of the cage, I can barely move from the pressure behind me as everyone tries to get closer to the action. Fuck it, I’m sure I’ll figure it out once it gets started.
A bell rings somewhere and they fly at each other, their fists a flurry as they lash out. The half-caste ducks down and grabs the white guy around the waist, tries to pull him to the ground. The white guy returns the embrace and brings a knee up into the half-caste’s bollocks. The half-caste must have some sort of protection down there, he doesn’t even flinch. He lets go of the white guy’s waist and pummels his fists down on top his head, like he’s playing the fucking bongos or something. The white guy lowers his head and clamps his teeth over the half-caste’s shoulder. He bites down and draws blood, shakes his head like a dog. The half-caste cries out and kicks him in the shins, grabs hold of his ears to try and prise him off his shoulder.
The sight of blood makes the crowd surge forward, shouting, and I’m crushed against the bars. I can hardly fucking breathe, the pressure is that great. Some sweaty bruiser pushes his way between me and Dave and grabs hold of the cage bars with both hands. He shouts racial abuse at the half-caste. What a fucking charmer. He’s wearing a string vest, and acrid-stinking sweat pours down from his hairy armpits. My face is only inches away from one of his armpits, and it’s making my fucking eyes water but I can’t get away from him.
The two guys in the cage are in another embrace, trying to spin each other around. Their legs dart in and out in an attempt to trip each other over. There’s blood pouring out of a nasty-looking gash in the half-caste’s shoulder. It drips down his arm and onto the floorboards. The white guy roars and surges forward, pushes the half-caste up to the cage bars. The people standing at that side of the cage let go of the bars and try to step back just before the half-caste slams into them, but the crowd behind don’t give them enough room to move. The cage shudders with the impact. You can tell from the look on the half-caste’s face he’s in fucking agony, but he manages to get another kick in when the white guy lets go and swings his fist back. He ducks down to his knees just in time, and the white guy punches the cage bars. There’s a loud crack and he screams out in pain. The half-caste bounces up like a coiled spring and smacks him in the mouth. He stumbles back and the half-caste runs forward, head down, and nuts him in the stomach.
Punk and Skinhead Novels Box Set Page 22