Rule of Night (14 page)

‘I bet if we hadn't been here you'd have fucked her,' he said – the wailing went on – ‘wouldn't you?'

‘No… no… please. I wouldn't.'

‘Wouldn't you?' Kenny insisted, not letting go.

‘No…'

‘Wouldn't you?' Kenny said, and butted the man in the face with the top of his head.

Janice moved away to stand with Cil against the far wall as the lads took turns going in methodically in relay so that everybody had a fair number of kicks apiece. The wailing had stopped. There were sounds – difficult to identify and not really human at all – which were like short, strangled gasps: like somebody with a fit of choking who can't properly get his breath.

At least this was positive action, Kenny felt, kicking the lump in the darkness. He had made the decision after all; they couldn't accuse him of not planning it right and carrying it out. He even forgave Janice – she hadn't actually done anything wrong, he
reflected – stepping back to let Fester in. It had all been part of the plan. It had been necessary, her chatting the Paki up, in order to get him into the alley away from the main road. And the little skinny bastard – the bastard! – had actually had the intention of putting his thin brown hands inside her clothing and pulling out his obscene brown dick and very likely making her do something obscene with it. Kenny thought how true it was what they said about them: they really were lower than animals, and on top of that the smell of their cooking made him puke.

•    •    •

Later – when they had got as far away as they considered safe (and Kenny and Janice had had a cuddle as they walked along) – Fester led the way into the Ship at the end of Milnrow Road. He was beaming across his wide red face, glad to be out of the cold, happy to be near a bar with enough money for a night's bevvy freely available, and with the loose easy feeling he usually got after a spot of exercise. He looked down at the spattered toe-caps of his boots and rubbed them on the back of his trouser-legs.

The Ship catered for two separate types of clientele: the old never-say-die regulars who sat at scrubbed tables peering at their cards and dominoes through a fog that was thicker inside the taproom than outside in the street; and in the other room with the big bow-window of coloured glass and the old-fashioned jukebox in the corner, a young crowd which consisted mainly of underage scrubbers off the Waithlands Estate (known as Tintown) and a group of boys who looked like left-overs from the Fifties: greasy quiffs, leather jackets, crutch-tight jeans and blackheads. Fester belonged with them somehow. His face and manner had a dated look, as though he'd stepped off a Bill Haley record sleeve. In comparison Kenny and the rest were fresh-faced kids with the bloom
of youth still on them, and with an air of reckless naivity, like giddy young colts eager to poke their noses into life.

Kenny bought two rounds with the money and found that he still had three dabs left. He thought of keeping some by for the old lady – he hadn't given her anything for three consecutive Fridays now – but it remained a thought.

‘We can have us a chippie supper!' Crabby said excitedly.

‘It's only nine o'clock,' Shortarse said. ‘Bags of time.'

‘Drinking time,' Fester said darkly, keeping up the image of champion boozer.

Kenny was feeling good. His doubts had vanished, he had money in his pocket, the night lay ahead like an unplundered tomb. And he had Janice; he loved her and she loved him.

‘Let's go to the Lake,' he said suddenly. Everybody looked at him as if he'd gone crazy. But when he was in the mood to do something Kenny swept all before him. They drank up (Fester muttering something unintelligible), walked to town and caught the Number 8 bus to the terminus near the Fisherman's Inn. Strangely enough, it was clear up there, the stars like icy pinpricks and the Lake cold and black and silent beneath the frosty air. On the Rakewood Viaduct the motorway traffic buzzed like a quiet yet angry swarm of bees.

‘It's the highest motorway bridge in England,' Shortarse said.

‘The longest,' Arthur said.

‘The fucking highest,' Shortarse said, ‘twatface.'

Andy said, ‘I didn't see the Greasers in the cafe.'

‘They'll be up,' Kenny said.

‘Where we going to drink up here?' Fester complained. ‘There's only the Fisherman's and the Beach. They won't let us in.'

Kenny curled his lip at Fester. ‘Here,' he said to Cil. There was a rosy glow in his stomach and there was nothing that could stop him. He put two pound notes in her hand and told her to go into
the Fisherman's for a half-bottle of Scotch: she was older-looking than Janice and would pass for eighteen: he fancied her at odd moments – like now – but there was an unspoken understanding amongst them that she was Andy's. He wouldn't touch a mate's bird; not, that is, unless it was put before him on a plate.

Across the smooth dead surface of the Lake the lights of the Lakeside Restaurant shone hard and bright in the still air. A car's headlights flashed briefly over the water and turned a semi-circle to follow the dirt road which wound along the edge of the Lake for half a mile till it changed into tarmacadam. There was nothing moving in the Lake, not a yacht, not a buoy, not a fish.

‘It's the coldest water in England, this,' said Shortarse. Arthur scoffed. ‘It is!' Shortarse said, his voice an octave higher.

‘You'll be telling us next there's a village underneath it,' Kenny said, which was the resident local rumour, handed down over several generations.

‘There bloody is!' Shortarse said, oblivious to the fact that he was having the piss taken out of him.

‘And you hear the church bells ringing under the water…'

‘You can!' Shortarse said. ‘I know somebody who's heard it.'

‘Get away,' he was told scathingly by several of the others.

Fester said, ‘I didn't know that about the bell.' Andy stuck his finger in Kenny's ribs and they laughed at each other.

A crescent of moon was coming into view, creeping up from behind the dark rounded shapes of the moors. Its steady, unwavering reflection lay in a clear straight line across the Lake. Out of nowhere it occurred to Kenny that the reflection wouldn't exist if there were nobody there to look at it. For a moment it gave him a strange feeling, as if he were standing a distance away from himself and could see his life as one amongst many others. Several things became clear – for just an instant – and then it was as if the water had shivered and the reflection had been broken and his thoughts fell down again in a muddled heap.

They saw the Greasers arrive on their gleaming machines: a roar of exhausts and their headlamps like big white eyes in single file.

‘Six,' Andy said, wiping the neck of the bottle and handing it to Kenny.

Janice felt the suffocation in her chest – of fear, exhilaration and the dreadful unknown. She couldn't understand why she, of all people, should have been chosen to be here in this place at this time. What had she done to deserve such good fortune? Actually to be here at the live happening centre where real events were taking place, and not moping alone in some lost, dead corner where life was a mere grey blur. Her friends at school were like sheltered little bunnies: they would be sitting at home now watching TV, or helping their mothers bake a cake, or if they were lucky, dancing to Gary Glitter at the Church Youth Club. Janice wanted to feel that at last her life had started, that the adventure had begun, and here she was in the middle of an experience.

Crabby said, ‘I bet them Hondas cost a packet.'

‘Who was it, did you notice?' Arthur asked Kenny.

‘Do you think there'll be any more coming?' Shortarse said nervously.

The eleven of them walked along the edge of the road like the platoon of soldiers in a movie Kenny had seen called ‘A Walk In The Sun'. He remembered that he had seen it one Sunday afternoon at Janice's, the two of them sprawled on the settee, Mrs Singleton sitting in the armchair and blowing out gusts of smoke across the screen.

When they reached the cafe they stood to one side in the darkness and looked in through the open door at the six Greasers innocently drinking coffee and talking with cigarettes in the corners of their mouths. Their lank hair hung down on to their shoulders and at least three of them had skin complaints. The proprietor was standing behind the makeshift counter pretending to be doing something so that he wouldn't have to leave the cafe
unattended. The sound of a television jingle for garden peas could be heard coming from the room at the back.

All but two of the gang outside stationed themselves quietly in the shadow adjacent to the door, while these two – Kenny and Andy – stood in full view and each broke a headlamp by putting the heels of their boots through the glass. It tinkled daintily in the cold air as it fell to the ground. As three of the Greasers stood up slowly, a kind of bewildered astonishment on their faces, and then came out in a rush, Fester and the others stuck out their feet across the doorway to trip them up; anyway, that was the plan, but the plan didn't work, for none of the three fell down.

The one in front – a tall lad, over six feet – kicked Kenny on the knee-cap and Kenny staggered into the gutter, cursing and almost crying. The pain didn't seem to last long, because the next thing he knew he was scraping somebody with the broken end of a whisky bottle. There was blood on his forehead (somebody else's blood: he had felt it spatter) and it seemed that the road was filled with bodies. How could there be so many? Had more Greasers arrived on silent machines, coasting along the Lake road like black leather ghosts? Kenny tried to count the number of bodies but every time he got to four he was interrupted and his concentration was required elsewhere.

It must have been going on for at least a minute before he realised that somebody was screaming, like one of those sounds that by its intensity makes itself inaudible. Kenny saw a bright red gash across somebody's forehead and a curtain of blood blotting out the features until it reached the O of the open mouth, all the teeth ringed with blood and standing out very white like a row of beads. And then something clouted him really hard on the back of the head and made him mad. He went mindless, forgot the Greasers, forgot the screaming, forgot the blood, lashing out with boots and fists without seeing who or what he was hitting. He did remember,
after a while, to use the bottle, but when he looked at the end of his arm it was gone. He looked on the ground for it but could see nothing except shards of broken glass, one of which had ‘Lucas', embossed in it. His left hand was smarting, and when he brought it to his mouth it seemed that something was wrong with his knuckles – one of them, at any rate, which didn't appear to be in line with the others: it was raised up like the end of a knobbly walking stick. And shite, he realised, it was beginning to throb like buggery.

Several of the bodies were now lying down; Kenny ran at them in turn and put the boot in before running from the lighted strip of pavement outside the cafe and into the darkness in the direction of Smithy Bridge Road. He sucked his sore knuckle as he ran, scriking.

FOR SEVERAL MONTHS SKUSH HAD BEEN BREAKING INTO
and stealing drugs from chemists' shops in and around Rochdale. He had a habit he couldn't break and there was nobody – no girl-friend – to haul him back from the brink. The situation was tragic and paradoxical: he took drugs because he didn't have a girlfriend, while the taking of drugs reinforced his isolation and increased his desperation; and had he
had
a girlfriend to help him overcome his dependence on blues, black bombers and sleepers, it is likely that she wouldn't have been required for that purpose, because he wouldn't have needed to take them. His head was in a mess and his life was in poor shape – like Kenny he had had umpteen jobs and couldn't hold any of them down for longer than a few months: the drug problem meant that he soon got fired, while his being out of work and therefore short of cash led to further black depressions which only drugs could alleviate; and having acquired the habit it reduced his chances of finding a job and earning money – which meant that for several months he had been breaking into and stealing drugs from chemists' shops in and around Rochdale.

In the week before Christmas (which was mild, damp and depressing) Skush was admitted to Birch Hill Hospital suffering from an overdose of barbiturates. On the second day, after spending two nights in Roch 3 Ward, he was taken to see Dr F______, the resident psychiatrist. Skush explained that it had been a mistake, an accident, that he hadn't meant to take an overdose, only get a good night's sleep. Why had he needed to get a good night's sleep? the psychiatrist had asked. Because he hadn't been sleeping, Skush had replied. Why hadn't he been sleeping? the psychiatrist asked.
Because he'd been worrying, Skush answered. What had he been worrying about? the psychiatrist asked. About not sleeping, Skush said. I see, the psychiatrist said, and in the same breath: Where did you get the tablets from? From me mam, Skush said instantly. (Part of this was true, anyway; his mother did take sleeping tablets from time to time, but when Skush had tried them they had had no effect at all.) After being kept under observation for one more day he was released, Dr F______ asking him if he wouldn't mind keeping in touch, particularly if he felt the need coming on to take regular doses of drugs to make him sleep.

That night – the day of his release – Skush broke into a chemist's in Castleton and got away with several dozen each of Durophet, Ritalin and Drinamyl tablets in their small white plain cardboard boxes. They were impossible to trace, he knew; if the police didn't connect him with the break-in he was safe, and he made sure of that by taking every possible care and precaution: fear and an intense form of controlled panic had bred in him cunning and deceit. The plotting and planning to get what he needed and the actual physical activity involved had for the moment displaced the full extent of the depression which he carried round with him, and from which he couldn't escape. Skush felt it hovering there, like a large black heavy bird, waiting to settle on his shoulders and dig its claws into his neck.