Rule of Night Read online

  Jimmy sits dozing in front of the fire, his feet bare, the flesh scorched a mottled pink. He grunts and slobbers in deep sunken sleep and comes sluggishly awake, eyes like peeled grapes, as Doll says, ‘Look who’s here you drunken sod,’ and wrestles with his shoulder, the muscle run to fat. She even says this with a smile.

  ‘Hey up,’ Kenny says, setting a pint bottle of Blue Bass in the hearth.

  ‘Ken,’ Jimmy says, blinking foolishly, the eyes permanently out of focus. ‘Ken.’ He makes a slurping noise to take the taste away and then yawns cavernously. Kenny turns his face to the wall to avoid the sight as much as the smell. ‘Where’s me tea?’

  ‘You’ve had your tea. It’s half-past eight.’

  ‘Get some glasses,’ Kenny says.

  The man and the boy drink thirstily, the pale golden Bass sliding into their mouths. They talk about football, in which neither one is interested, while Doll moves to and fro in a parody of normal domestic activity. Although she spends, on average, an hour a day cleaning the house, the rooms never lose that appearance of shabbiness and untidiness which characterises certain working class homes. There are always crumbs on the table, newspapers on the floor and pieces of coal in the hearth, and the pattern on the wallpaper has been worn away in a faint streak where the backs of chairs have rubbed against it. When things get broken they stay broken until they’re eventually thrown out, because Jimmy hasn’t lifted a finger in the household for the last fifteen years.

  ‘Dale went down again.’

  ‘Yeh.’

  ‘Did you go, then?’

  ‘Yeh.’

  ‘Good game?’

  ‘Not bad.’

  ‘Big crowd?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Who scored?’

  Kenny doesn’t know. He was groping Janice behind the Sandy Lane stand when they scored. He shifts awkwardly on the lumpy chair in his groin-tight trousers, trying to quell the memory. She’s all right, Janice: a good laugh and a good grope, though he hasn’t plonked it yet. He could plonk it right now though; if she was here, Christ could he plonk it.

  ‘How’s your mam?’ Doll asks, smiling. (She would smile, Doll, were the heavens to erupt in chaos and the hydrogen bomb to fall on number 18 Rudyard Grove.)

  Kenny can’t be bothered to reply to this question. He up-ends the bottle into his glass and blinks once: that’s the only answer she’s going to get. He likes Doll but she’s a woman and therefore of no account.

  Jimmy puts the empty glass in the cracked hearth and asks what time is it? The pubs shut at half-past ten on Sundays which means less time to sleep off the afternoon binge before preparing for the final mind-blinding bevvy – all that separates him from the chilling black vacuum of Monday morning with its raw air and stiff greasy overalls scraping the skin and the upper deck choking on Park Drive. If he didn’t have to work what a fine life Jimmy Mangan would have. As it is, he exists from pint to pint, hopeless, cheerful, indefatigably defeated: a human sponge with glassy eyes and a good body gone to pot.

  ‘And where do you think you’re going?’ Doll asks. Jimmy is staggering about the kitchen looking for shoes and socks, tucking his collarless shirt into his trousers with one hand while supporting himself with the other. He cracks his toes on the leg of a chair and comes out with a mouthful. His previous good humour vanishes and he snarls and curses, pushing things out of his way, knocking stuff onto the floor. The house is a prison now; he gets into a blind rage and hates Doll and wants to harm her physically. She retreats into a corner, adopting a defensive posture (the smile gone for the moment) as Jimmy swings around the kitchen, colliding with the furniture. Once he attacked her with the bread knife and she retaliated by breaking his collarbone with a chair.

  Kenny sits drinking his Bass, not unduly perturbed. He hasn’t many illusions so far as people are concerned and very little they do surprises or alarms him. His own mother and father have a barney at least once a week, usually on a Friday night; it’s the way folk live.

  • • •

  Jimmy is wonderful at the bar of the Dicken Green. The ale makes him quick-witted and hilarious, standing there unshaven in his collarless working shirt with a jacket draped across his shoulders. Andy, a mate of Kenny’s, comes through the tables in the L-shaped tap-room. A wreath of smoke hugs the ceiling, slow streamers of it trickling down the walls. Although Kenny can’t stand coloureds in general and Pakis at any price he doesn’t mind Andy, who is West Indian.

  ‘Hey up,’ says Kenny.

  Jimmy Mangan stops. Then he stares. Then before tipping the pint into his mouth he says, ‘I always call a Spade a Spade’, to the crowd clustering the bar, who respond appreciatively, digging each other in the ribs and laughing because they think Jimmy is genuinely funny and because if they don’t he might throw something.

  ‘Where you bin?’ Kenny asks in an aside.

  ‘Seven Stars.’

  ‘Back early.’

  ‘Dead.’

  ‘Seen Crabby?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Bin to town?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What you drinking?’

  ‘Pint.’

  Kenny orders three pints and tells the barmaid she’s got a tight little bum, like two hardboiled eggs in a navvy’s hanky. She pulls her face in a kind of leering smile, undecided as to whether she should be flattered by the attentions of this strongly-built youth with the sloppy mouth and the tattooed knuckles. Kenny rests his meaty forearms on the bar and looks directly at her breasts.

  ‘Do you want a photo?’

  ‘What of?’ Kenny responds, letting his jaw go slack and his mouth droop open in a dumb show of calculated insolence. His heavy-lidded eyes peruse the outlines of her black bra through her pale yellow blouse. He puts out his lower lip and continues to watch her sullenly as she lines up the pints in front of him.

  ‘I dreamt about you last night.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘No, you wouldn’t let—’

  A car screeches outside and everybody rushes to the doors to see a blue Ford Cortina sticking out of a lamp-post. There is glass all over Queensway and a man gets out with blood running down his face, which looks like black treacle in the anaemic light. Everybody watches to see whether he’ll fall down or merely come into the pub to use the phone. Some people at the bus stop escort him across the road and sit him down on the pavement. The car doesn’t burn. Kenny goes back to where Jimmy is halfway through somebody else’s pint.

  ‘Did he get the chop?’ Jimmy asks between gulps. Kenny lights a Number 6 and shakes his head as he blows smoke out.

  Andy says, ‘They’re ringing for an ambulance.’

  ‘Bloody Spade,’ Jimmy says, standing there unsteadily at the slopping bar, his coat hanging half off his shoulders and the sleeve of his shirt wringing wet.

  ‘It’s all right now,’ Kenny says.

  ‘What did he say?’ Andy says. He’s a biggish lad too, with a broad handsome face and a thick sensitive mouth. He has a razor-blade in his pocket with a strip of adhesive plaster down one side. Kenny grips the wrist of the hand that goes in the pocket in a gesture that is partly restraining, partly conciliatory.

  ‘Go easy, he’s had a skinful.’

  ‘Listen, dad—’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Kenny mouths.

  ‘What’s he on about?’ Andy says.

  ‘Nowt. He’s bevvied.’

  ‘Spades.’ Jimmy emits a gust of air to signify what he thinks of Spades. The movement almost sends him reeling and he has to grab the bar, blinking with surprise, his head wobbling on springs.

  ‘Now listen—’

  ‘It’s all right, he’s me uncle.’

  ‘Well then,’ Andy says, ‘you’d better tell him,’ and staggers back, his hand nearly out of his pocket, as Jimmy slaps him on the shoulder in what is meant to be a friendly pat but is in actual fact a forcible blow.

  ‘No fence, codger, me yold son, me yold son, me yold …’

  Jimmy tries to make
his left hand (the right still clutching the bar) express what his tongue can’t, waving it to and fro with a cigarette very nearly scorching his index finger. Andy looks at this beer-sodden wreck and decides it isn’t worth it. But Jimmy Mangan has only to say ‘Spades’ one more time and he’ll have a razor in his gullet. ‘We’d better shoot off,’ Kenny says, giving Andy his pint.

  ‘Th’all know me, th’all know me,’ Jimmy insists. ‘No fence to no man.’ He rifts deeply and the stench is putrescent. ‘Evry man his own, no matter what religion, colour, creed. Ask anybody here. Anybody. Th’all know me. Ask them about Jim-iny Magnan – Manginum. He’ll tell you, he’ll tell you – this lad. Ken. Myyyyyyyyyy nefu. Neff-yoo. One of the bezt. He doesn’t like Spades either.’

  ‘Oh fucking hell,’ Andy says.

  There’s going to be a barney, only Kenny doesn’t like fighting with relations. Jimmy is a pain in the arse but when all’s said and done he’s a harmless old fart; and occasionally he slips Kenny half-a-bar which Kenny forgets to return and Jimmy simply forgets.

  The gathering of old faithfuls round the bar looks on happily, awaiting with interest the next development. Jimmy is too bevvied to fight, of course, but he could put up a struggle that might be worth watching. Even seeing him fall on his arse would be good for laugh.

  ‘Tell him, Ken; for fuck’s sake,’ Andy says with a pained expression.

  ‘Look … cool it.’

  ‘Don’t tell me – tell him!’

  ‘He’s old, he’s past it, he’s pissed.’

  ‘Then he should know better. I’m not going to take it, whether he’s your uncle or not.’

  ‘He’s just a useless old drunk.’

  ‘Tell him then. And make him shut up.’

  Kenny sighs; the world is on top of him. ‘Come on now, Jimmy, you’ve had enough. Doll will be waiting up for you.’

  ‘My neff-yoo.’

  ‘Aye, your nephew.’ He takes Jimmy by the arm and half-drags, half-carries him to the door. ‘I’ll see him across the road,’ Kenny says to Andy. ‘Get us a pint in.’

  ‘Good neet, Jimmy!’

  ‘Don’t do owt I wouldn’t do!’

  ‘Watch yon bugger, he’ll have you under a bus!’

  ‘Don’t knock any lamp-posts over on your way home!’

  Kenny comes back a few minutes later and picks up his pint with the weariness of somebody returning from a Siberian labour camp. It’s nearly time for last orders so he drinks the pint in one long gulping swallow and orders two more, wiping his mouth. Tomorrow it’s work again: getting out of a warm bed and putting on overalls stiff with grease, shivering in the pre-dawn gloom of approaching winter as he walks through the Estate to catch the Deeplish bus on Milkstone Road. The walk is like the taste of iron in his mouth, with the Estate looking grey and unwashed in the dim glow of the wall-lights set in frosted globes. The bus is foul at this hour of the morning, thick with cigarette smoke from the close-packed seats, the smell of diesel oil dense in the nostrils, and the continual sound of hawking coughs and throat-clearings. There is hardly any talk as he sits there, cramped between the streaming window and somebody’s arm holding the Sun, aware only that his bones feel like brittle sticks as the bus jolts over the humped canal bridge past the Kwik-Save supermarket on Well’ith Lane. Monday is always the worst morning of all, Tuesday is slightly better, and by Wednesday he is looking forward to the week-end.

  Andy has made contact with the barmaid. She’s thrown the towel over the pumps and stands with her hard round breasts resting on the bar. Kenny wasn’t there to see the initial overtures and innuendos and he wonders for the umpteenth time how it is that Andy can never go wrong with the birds; he must have a great technique – unless it’s simply because they fancy a bit of black for a change. He’s talking to her in a low confidential voice, the two of them isolated amidst the noise and movement in a private cocoon of soft phrases and small intimacies.

  The lights are flashing and the landlord calls, ‘All right, gentlemen, let’s have you. Come along now. Your glasses please.’

  The barmaid looks straight at Andy and nods once. She mouths something with an exaggerated motion of her red lips, the lipstick faded at the corners, and goes to get her coat.

  ‘What you doing?’ Kenny asks.

  ‘I’m okay.’ Andy drags on his cigarette and stubs it out in the ashtray.

  ‘Have you trapped?’

  ‘Could be,’ Andy says, never one to over-commit himself.

  ‘Two’s up.’

  ‘You must be joking.’

  ‘I’ll push off.’

  ‘See you Ken.’

  ‘Yeh,’ Kenny says.

  Queensway is humming with late-night traffic as he walks back to the Estate. He could do very badly with Janice tonight but it looks – as usual – as though he’s going to have to settle for a hand gallop.

  Rochdale Observer, 16 February 1974

  BOROUGH MAGISTRATES

  WEDNESDAY

  PROBATION FOR YOUTH – A youth told police that as he and his companion were passing a grocer’s shop in Oldham Road they saw a window was broken and decided to take goods. D______ A______ C______, aged 17, of Rhodes Crescent, Kirkholt, was put on probation for three years when he admitted stealing food valued at £7.04 from James Duckworth Ltd. Sergeant B Edmondson said two policemen on crime patrol saw C______ and another youth carrying objects under their coats. They ran, dropping a quantity of foodstuffs in the road. C______ told the court he had nothing to say.

  WORK

  THE WORKPLACE IS A LONG HIGH ROOM WITH DUSTY METAL beams overhead, piles of dust, metal shavings, waste, etc underfoot and the steady roar of oiled machinery. In winter in the late afternoons the sloping skylight above the metal beams reflects the shop floor as through huge inky-black mirrors: foreshortened people stride about hanging to the upside-down floor by their feet. At dinner time Kenny and some of the other men go to the chip shop on the corner for pie, chips and peas covered in lumpy curry sauce, and afterwards they kick a ball about in the cobbled street which separates Haigh’s from Tomlinson’s. Kenny is a nifty footballer, even in hobnailed boots; he puts more energy and enthusiasm into the midday kickabout than into anything that counts as work.

  ‘You could have been a pro,’ Jack says. He’s about thirty but could pass for forty-five. The hair is going and he carries a beer belly like a man hoisting a sack of potatoes.

  ‘But for me knee.’

  ‘Cartilage?’

  ‘Yeh. I was playing for the Dicken Green and it went.’

  ‘What did you play?’

  ‘Inside-right.’

  Jack isn’t so bad; at least you can talk to him. But he’s dead thick. On his first day at Haigh’s he’d asked Kenny where the brewing-up place was and without batting an eyelid Kenny had pointed across to Tomlinson’s and said with a straight face, ‘We get a brew over there,’ and Jack had trundled off into the other works looking for an urn of hot water. He’d brewed-up at Tomlinson’s the best part of a week before somebody there thought his face looked unfamiliar and asked him what game he was on.

  The hooter goes and they troop in through the sliding corrugated door. Immediately the whine of machinery starts up, the pulleys blur into motion and the leather belts slap about overhead. The foreman walks down the line, the pockets of his brown smock dark with grease. He stops at Kenny’s lathe and shouts above the noise.

  ‘Another lot when you’ve finished them.’

  ‘I haven’t finished these yet.’

  ‘I can see that. Another lot when you have.’

  Kenny manufactures a sugary smile which he switches off in mid-beam, turning his back on the foreman.

  ‘Don’t be clever with me, laddie.’ Kenny pretends not to hear. The foreman taps him on the shoulder and jerks his thumb at the door. He shouts close to Kenny’s ear, ‘Save yer yumour for when you get outside. Yer mates might appreciate it. I don’t.’

  ‘You what?’ Kenny says, screwing up his face.

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nbsp; For a moment they stare at one another, the loud machinery hammering the air, locked eye to eye with nothing passing between; just a hard blank empty stare. The foreman’s tough now all right, Kenny thinks, but out on the dark prowling streets a quick boot in the bollocks and it’d be a different story. Personally he always went for the eyes; he got quite excited when he knew he’d got somebody in the eyes. They were soft, naked, vulnerable, the eyes, and as he thinks about this he has to swallow to contain his nervous response. For the next half-hour he dreams about the foreman’s eyes and how he’d like to kick them in: him, Crabby, Andy and Arthur.