Down the Figure 7

  DOWN THE FIGURE 7

  Trevor Hoyle

  First published in Great Britain in 2009 by Pomona Books

  This ebook edition published in 2014 by

  Quercus Editions Ltd

  55 Baker Street

  7th Floor, South Block

  London

  W1U 8EW

  Copyright © 2009 by Trevor Hoyle

  The moral right of Trevor Hoyle to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 84866 925 3

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  You can find this and many other great books at:

  www.quercusbooks.co.uk

  This book, which is dedicated to the Denby gang,

  is a work of fiction. While some of the streets and places

  are real, the characters and situations are imaginary

  and exist only in the mind of the author.

  *

  Also dedicated to the memory of my friend,

  another Rochdale lad and a fine writer:

  Mike Stott

  1944–2009

  †

  Parts of this fictional memoir have been published in magazines,

  broadcast on BBC Radio 4, and dramatised by the author

  in the BBC radio play “Conflagration”.

  The chapter “Down the Figure 7” was the winning British entry

  in the Transatlantic Review short story competition.

  The book won the Ray Mort Northern Novel prize.

  *

  I should like to thank the following people

  for their generous help and advice in locating

  and supplying photographs and images for this book:

  Julian Jefferson, Arts & Heritage Manager,

  David Pugh, Museum Officer,

  Andrew Moore, Collections Manager,

  Joan Hinds and Lorraine Ashworth,

  Arts & Heritage Service, Rochdale.

  Chris Lloyd, Assistant Editor, and Katie Fitzpatrick

  of the Rochdale Observer.

  And Julie Stevens-Smith.

  CONTENTS

  Part 1

  The Denby Gang

  Simple Annie

  Scrounging for Bommie

  Friday at the Flicks

  Bonfire Night

  The Birthday Party

  The Ginnel

  Saturday Morning

  Christmas up Syke

  Part 2

  On the Embankment

  The Engine Room

  After Dinner

  Odds and Sods

  Dead Sunday

  Behind the Garages

  VE Day

  A Walk to the Lake

  King Kong

  Down the Figure 7

  Part 3

  First Term

  At the Baths

  Ambush

  A Blazing Row

  Just a Black Eye

  Under Attack

  C-in-C

  Raid on South Street

  During the Holidays

  Part 1

  The Denby Gang

  WHEN THE MISTY BLUE NOVEMBER NIGHTS came on there was always that extra-special magic in the air because the weeks of collecting bommie wood now seemed worthwhile, what with the 5th only days away.

  The Gang had been scrounging for wood since the first week in October, storing it in backyards next to outside lavatories and in the damp gloomy interiors of concrete air-raid shelters. The shelters had never served their true purpose, even at the height of the bombing, because the town was some distance from the nearest prime target, the Old Trafford docks; only a single stick had fallen in the vicinity, obliterating two houses in Sudden, when the raiders had been seeking the Dunlop Tyre factory and overshot by a couple of miles. Now the shelters were used as military headquarters when the gang played at war, the British v. the Jerries – or, if they got bored with that, the Yanks v. the Nips.

  This small area of sooty terraced houses, streets, alleyways, pens and allotments known as Denby (though no one knew why) comprised the battleground, with each army leaving two men on guard at HQ and stalking the enemy in raiding parties of three or four, lurking in shadowed doorways, signalling with candles in jam-jars, planning top secret rendezvous on corners where the gaslamps fluffed and stuttered.

  During the hours of daylight the streets belonged to grownups: workers on their way to the Clover and Croft mills; delivery vans bringing supplies of Brasso and Ovaltine, Fynon’s Liver Salts and Reckitt’s Dolly Blue to Wellens’s corner shop; housewives with their hair in curlers over which they wore lumpy printed scarves knotted under their chins, setting out for the evening shift, 7 – 9.30, at Oswald & Duncan’s. But afterwards (when the mist curled from the river and hung in streamers above the slate rooftops and the stone setts gleamed under the lamps) Denby became a deadly battlefield whose silence and darkness were rent by bursts of adenoidal machine-gun fire and the blood-curdling shriek of yet another adolescent Hun on his way to the Fatherland in the sky. No quarter was sought, none given; few prisoners were taken; bloody annihilation was preferred to a mere flesh wound, spectacular instant death to tame surrender.

  This world was circumscribed by the geography of streets, alleys and ginnels, by the joys of unbounded imagination when an old worn cotton bobbin became, in the right hands, a polished high-precision weapon capable of wiping out an entire platoon, and the Bottom Track after dark the haunt of the undead where at any moment Frankenstein’s monster might stumble mechanically from the shadows or Count Dracula rise up like an undertaker’s shroud from the long grass, eyes bloodshot, fangs all agleam, nails curved into talons and twitching with lust for warm human flesh. Phantoms of the night were as palpable as the woman who kept the corner shop or the coalman humping bags of nutty slack from the horse and cart to the cellar grate outside the front door. You believed, at ten years old, that the world was infinitely beautiful, mysterious, terrifying; a place of dark wonder, cruelty, and boredom.

  By nine o’clock most of the gang had decided it was time to go in or were being called by their mothers from the back step. They departed reluctantly, dawdling for a moment under the gaslamps, until the group had dwindled to the usual hardcore who huddled against the corroding wall of the Good Shepherd Church telling ghost stories or loitered in the doorway of the empty shop on the corner of Hovingham Street, swapping dirty jokes and speculating in random fashion on the procreation of the species. Being older, Dave Spencer, who everybody called Spenner, seemed to know a lot about the subject, and Terry Webb and Alec Bland wanted to stay and learn more. But already they’d heard the call: they would have to contain their curiosity and wait for another night to discover whether babies appeared from the navel or by way of some other orifice.

  Terry’s mam was baking, leaning over the scrubbed kitchen table with flour up to her elbows, kneading and twisting the dough; the covering of flour camouflaged her red veined hands. His father was asleep in the rocking-chair in front of the black-leaded grate, bare feet stuck into worn slippers, stomach rising and falling, soft grunted snores making his lower lip shudder. Terry prised off his boots and threw them under the square
pot sink with the curly cast-iron legs. His mother said, ‘Don’t wake your father, you know what he’s like.’ Her mousy brown hair was piled on top of her head, wisps of it trailing on her neck.

  ‘Anything to eat?’ Terry said. He was a good-looking lad, and well aware of the fact, though not too big for his age.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘What have we got?’

  ‘Shredded Wheat,’ his mother said, opening the cupboard door with her elbow and reaching down the packet. Terry took his bowl to the stool in the corner by the sink, avoiding leaning against the bare plaster wall which was wet with condensation. He scooped up the Shredded Wheat and milk, being careful to leave the dissolved sugar in the bottom of the bowl till last. His large brown eyes stared unseeingly into the glowing coals, the spoon moving from bowl to mouth. He was thinking about the discussion they had been having in the shop doorway. Of course he knew (though found it hard to credit) how women got babies, but somebody had said that to get the baby out they had to … no, he couldn’t believe it. How could you cut someone with a knife from their belly-button to their bottom, extract an awkward thing like a baby and sew the split up again?

  He glanced covertly at his mother’s pelvic region, slightly distended beneath the faded cotton pinny, and knew that it couldn’t be so. For one thing, what stopped all their insides falling out?

  The galvanised bath on the wall in the small backyard clanked against the brickwork as the wind swooped low over the grey slate roofs: some kind of bird squawked in the distance as it circled the ash-tips across the black river: a spatter of rain hit the window pane like bits of gravel.

  ‘It’s half-past nine,’ his mother said without looking up, trimming a frayed circle of pastry from the edge of the dish.

  ‘I want to read.’

  ‘You know what your father will say, Terry.’

  She was a small, round-shouldered, frail-looking woman with the eyes, nose and chin that Terry had inherited, though her frailness was deceiving. She had borne almost four children, one of which, the first, had died of diptheria at the age of eighteen months, and one that didn’t count: a miscarriage at five months. She had once been pretty, with sharp striking features, but now at the age of thirty-seven the daily grind of work and bringing up kids and making ends meet had begun to show on her face: the sparkle still twinkled occasionally in her eyes but the face was now tired, dispirited, dimmed by the kind of life that washed the best out of you before you were forty. Why, there had been times in her twenties when Barbara Webb had danced all night at the Carlton – she had been a good dancer too, and so had Joe, before his stomach sagged and his young man’s muscles ran to fat. You had your young fun and spent the rest of your life paying for it.

  ‘Where’s our kid?’

  ‘Where do you think; in bed.’

  ‘Can I read for a bit?’

  ‘Go on then.’ His mother was stacking the baking utensils in the sink. ‘Ten minutes. You know your father gets aeriated if you stay up late.’ She wiped her hands on the towel hanging on the wooden rail behind the back door, then ruffled his hair. ‘Do you want a drink, love?’

  Terry said, ‘Give over, mam,’ hunching his shoulders to avoid her hand. He rummaged under the cushion looking for the Rover; he was halfway through reading a ‘Tough of the Track’ story, with Terry’s favourite hero, Alf Tupper.

  ‘Too big for a bit of love and affection, are we?’

  ‘I don’t like to be marded.’

  ‘Go on, our Terry. I can remember when you used to sit on me knee for hours at a time. “In’t he lovely, Mrs Webb. What big brown eyes! He’ll break a few hearts when he grows up.”’ She laughed at the expression on his face and set the kettle on the gas-ring.

  Joe Webb grumbled a little in his sleep and came slowly awake, his belly heaving underneath his pants and vest. He was a year younger than Barbara but already his hair was receding and there were flecks of grey at the temples. He was a taciturn man, not given much to jollity, and in his younger days had knocked about the local amateur boxing rings. His arms were huge, running to flab, and there was a pale scar on his right bicep where the ropes had burned it. The first thing he said was:

  ‘You still up?’

  ‘I’m just making him a drink, Joe.’

  Terry’s head was buried in the Rover. His father had nothing more to say to him and he had nothing to say to his father. The nearest they ever came to communication was when his dad helped Terry with his pigeons: he had lifted the makeshift pigeon cote (two bobbin crates nailed together) onto the roof of the lavatory single-handed and held it in position while Terry nailed it to the battens. And before he went to work in the mornings he let the half-dozen birds out and fed them: from the back bedroom window Terry had actually seen him holding out his heavy blunt hands filled with corn and black peas and calling softly to the dark fluttering shapes in the grey morning air.

  ‘Right then,’ Joe said, leaning back and scratching under his arms, ‘don’t be all night.’ The rocking-chair creaked with his weight.

  Terry sipped his cocoa and didn’t look up. He wouldn’t meet his father’s eyes.

  His mother said, ‘I saw Mrs Pickup in Wellens’s today; she says their Roy’s doing really well at the High School. He does look smart in his uniform.’

  ‘What did that lot cost?’ Joe said. ‘Not a farthing under ten quid I bet. Course, they can afford it, they’ve only got the one lad.’

  ‘He’s got his chance, though, hasn’t he?’ Barbara said, picking up her knitting. She put her hand to the back of her neck. ‘There in’t half a draught from that cellar door, Joe. Can’t you nail a bit of sacking round it or something?’

  ‘He’s got a real leather satchel,’ Terry said.

  ‘Another three quids’ worth,’ his father said, firmly entrenched in his favourite topic. ‘I hope you don’t pass for yon bloody place, otherwise we won’t have two ha’pennies to rub together.’

  ‘Joe, what a thing to say to the lad.’ Barbara Webb’s expression was hurt, resentful. She wanted the best for their Terry, even if it did mean sacrifices. When Sylvia was old enough she intended getting a part-time job at Cowling’s, the confectioner’s on Entwisle Road, or going along with Bessie Smith to the housewives’ shift at Oswald & Duncan’s. If you couldn’t give your kids a proper start in life what was the point of anything – all this scratching and scrimping and making every penny stretch that little bit farther? But Joe didn’t see it that way. He was like a man floundering in a quicksand: the harder he struggled the deeper he sank. His life was oppressed as if by a great weight – a millstone – gradually forcing him down, down; and all his vast strength seemed powerless to prevent it; it was wasted strength, futile, impotent.

  The wind rattled the window frame and the bath clanked in the backyard. Terry folded his comic and put his empty beaker in the sink. He opened the stairs door and was about to say goodnight when Joe said:

  ‘Aren’t you having a wash?’

  ‘I’ll have one in the morning.’

  ‘Not much good in the morning, is it, when you’ve been sleeping in your muck all night.’

  ‘Leave him be, Joe, leave him,’ his mother said. She looked tired and rather old, the mousy hair held up by pins with strands of it falling across her forehead. The day was long enough without bickering.

  Terry went up the narrow dark stairs, feeling his way round the bend, and tiptoed across the lino into the back bedroom in his stocking feet. The room was cold. He daren’t switch the light on in case it woke Sylvia (then his mother would be onto him too) but undressed quickly in the dark, down to his vest, and laid himself flat on the square of carpet in a prone position. With his hands spreadeagled under his chest he straightened his arms and did twenty press-ups, feeling the muscles tensing and slackening in his shoulders and stomach. He had started with ten, increased it to fifteen, and was now up to twenty; next week twenty-five.

  Panting very slightly Terry got into the single bed between the free
zing sheets and curled up into a ball. He remembered something: got out of bed and as slowly and quietly as he could removed the top right-hand drawer from the dresser. His fingers moved along the dusty ledge until, right at the back, they encountered a small packet. He took it to the window, opened the curtains a crack, and counted the four-and-a-half Woodbines. He thought for a moment of smoking the dimp but then decided it was too risky, and besides, he hadn’t any matches. Back in bed, the covers pulled over his head, he snuggled himself into the smallest possible area and waited for the slow warmth of sleep to take the numbness from his bones. On the other side of the room Sylvia’s breathing came in short wheezing gasps: she had trouble with her adenoids and slept with her mouth open. He hoped she wasn’t going to start grinding her teeth. The wheezing he could put up with but the grinding got on his nerves.

  Tiredness began to press down on him. He could hear the dim murmur of voices from the kitchen below. The same bird cried out across the dirty, slow-moving stream of the river, rolling onwards past the ash-tips and the paint depot and the Yelloway coach station until it disappeared into the tunnel under the town centre. In his dwindling mind’s eye he saw Spenner’s face with its ragged fringe of red hair and row of yellow teeth. Spenner was two and a bit years older than Terry and if anybody knew how babies were born it was surely him. He remembered when Syl had been born, in the front bedroom, and a vision of his mother’s pale damp face came to his mind: she had looked sapped of all strength, washed out, and he recalled thinking at the time how glad he was not to be a woman and have to go through all that.

  Terry fell asleep, his breath steaming gently in the cold air, his last conscious image of babies popping out from everywhere: navels, arseholes, ears, mouths …

  Simple Annie

  TERRY HAD GONE THROUGH A ‘RELIGIOUS’ PHASE the year before, going to church three times on a Sunday. This was for two reasons: first, he was a member of the Church Lads’ Brigade, and in order to qualify for your cap, tunic and belt you had to have a good record of church attendance; second, there were a couple of girls Terry fancied – Jean Ashmore and Betty Wheatcroft – who sat together like two sweet-smelling primroses on the third pew from the front, left-hand aisle. They were both in his class at school, and twice he had been dinner monitor with Betty but hadn’t had the nerve to ask her to go with him. Jean was the better looking of the two, with a round face, dark sparkling eyes and a delicate bloom in her cheeks. He had tried to kiss her once in the schoolyard, missed her mouth completely and smeared her chin instead with spit. He hadn’t been able to look at her for three days after that without going red.