Rule of Night Read online

  The first time this happened, as they were walking, she experienced fear and excitement in the self-same instant. Then they were running from the scene of the incident, Kenny telling her to keep up, their chests hammering, and when they finally stopped, breathless, bursting into giggles because they were safe and together and the thought of the silly old man lying on the pavement with his false teeth in the gutter was irresistibly funny. Kenny hadn’t intended to do it, the notion hadn’t entered his head; but for the old man’s dog yapping at their feet, and Kenny landing a kick up its hind-quarters, and the old man calling him a hooligan, and Kenny asking him to repeat it, and the old man being stupid enough to do so – none of it would have happened. Janice was glad somehow that it had happened. For one thing it made her feel closer to Kenny: it was a secret they shared together, and from now on they could refer to it in the company of others as ‘that night near the cemetery’ and nobody would be any the wiser. She liked the feeling that they, the two of them, were all alone in the world.

  She remembered particularly, thinking back on it, the part when they were running hard up the blue misty road, Kenny’s hand clutching hers and almost dragging her, the sound of their footsteps echoing from the high black wall, and the feeling – for the first time in her life – that she was a separate person who could now do as she pleased. She could choose her own way of life, decide for herself what she wanted to be; she was Janice Singleton; the thought beat in her head in time to the steps, and the feel of his hand in her hand made her aware that it had been Kenny who had been the first one to awaken this reponse. Then they were giggling and gasping in the darkness (it was down a dark rutted track where they finally stopped) and her head was pressing against his hard chest and his heart was thumping in her ear. She was in a wonderful dream. She was aware and proud of her small sprouting breasts and knew that this night was one she would remember always. A mawkish pop tune hummed in her mind … ‘young love, first love, filled with true emotion…’, and for the first time it actually meant something. This was young love, first love, this feel of his shirt scraping her cheek and his real body pressing against hers. She was in love with his strength, his big shoulders and warm solid arms.

  Janice never again thought of the old man in any other connection than with the running, the breathlessness, the fear and excitement, and of Kenny’s heart pounding close to her skull. And she thought about the secret they shared, and that feeling – very strong when they were running – of being closer to a human being than she had ever been before. And not only close, but one, indivisible, as though they were joined together and could never again be separated.

  There was a postscript that proved to Janice the significance of the incident. The following Saturday morning her mother noticed an item in the Rochdale Observer about an old man who had been beaten up: she remarked on it because Sandy Lane was only a few minutes away down Bury Road, adjoining the cemetery. Janice listened with a bland expression, controlling a little smile which kept tugging at the corners of her mouth. It might have been a coincidence that her mother should have spotted this particular news item but Janice didn’t think so. No, it meant that something had conspired to set her and Kenny apart from everyone else. The secret they shared was now even more their secret because what had taken place was common knowledge and yet only the two of them, of all the people in the world, knew the full truth. Sitting at the kitchen table watching her mother – still with the vestiges of last night’s make-up on her face and her blonde hair uncombed – reading from the paper, Janice experienced a warm enveloping glow; her breathing became loose and she suddenly felt that she had to go to the toilet. And she would be seeing him again soon, that very afternoon at the match. A record came on the radio, ‘young love, first love, filled with true emotion…’ and it was as if her life, endlessly circular, had at last assumed a pattern, and all at once it came to her that she was a young woman growing up: that her mother sitting opposite her was, after all, only her mother.

  Kenny’s world became the real world for Janice. It dazzled her, intrigued her, scared her, thrilled her. Whereas before she had lived a kind of half-life, literally half-alive, now it became a strange adventure, dark with mystery. She couldn’t express it in words… it was something she felt… something her body responded to which she herself didn’t properly understand. School became a shadowy interlude through which she drifted in a dream-like state thinking about the night before or the night ahead. Marjorie, Janice’s best friend, knew about Kenny and didn’t think much of him. In her opinion he was a great lummox. Neither did she like it when Janice stopped going to the youth club on Thursday nights and even less when they ceased to visit each other’s homes and play records while they discussed boys, make-up and popstars. As for Janice’s mother, she noticed very little anyway. Maybe Janice wasn’t in the flat as much as she used to be, and when she was seemed to spend most of the time in her room listening to soul records, but apart from that it didn’t strike her that there was anything markedly different in her daughter’s behaviour. Even when Janice started going away every other Saturday to places like Grimsby and Plymouth and Wrexham she took it for granted that this was a natural stage in the development of a fourteen-year-old girl.

  Perhaps if Janice had had the influence of a father (who had died when she was three) she wouldn’t have been allowed to roam where and as she pleased. Questions might have been asked, rules imposed, and a stricter watch kept on the company she sought. However, this is hypothetical: the fact was that never at any time was Janice asked to account for her movements, whom she met and what took place. Mr Casson, her teacher, once became concerned about her welfare and he might have mentioned it at the end-of-term Open Day. But Mrs Singleton hadn’t bothered to turn up; consequently Mr Casson lost interest too.

  One thing that might have made her sit up and take notice: if Janice had become pregnant, but as this possibility was unthinkable it was simply never thought of. Despite being an avid reader of the News of the World Janice’s mother never once entertained the notion that a fate worse than death could ever befall her Janice.

  CHORLEY

  ONE SATURDAY NIGHT A GANG OF THEM MET OUTSIDE THE ABC cinema and couldn’t decide where to go. They clustered round the brightly-lit entrance keeping out of the slanting rain, jostling one another and making rude remarks about the film that was advertised in the illuminated panel: The Four Dimensions of Greta. Inside, in the warmth behind the glass doors, the cashier (an old dear with a hearing-aid) exchanged outraged glances with the woman selling sweets, cigarettes and Butterkist from her cubbyhole barricaded with confectionery.

  Crabby voted for the Pendulum but as usual was shouted down. Skush said, ‘What about the White House?’ – a pub right on top of the moors a few yards from the Lancashire-Yorkshire border. Everybody jeered, ‘What about the White House?’ and Skush turned his back, going red, and continued looking at Greta. He felt dizzy from the pills he had been taking, which so far that evening hadn’t had time to produce the desired effect; he needed a couple of pints to really get them working in his head. What he really needed was a girl. What wouldn’t he have given for a girl.

  After a lot of pushing, laughing, falling about and futile discussion somebody came up with a plan of action: get the diesel to Manchester Victoria and buy a ticket for the next train scheduled to leave, no matter where it was going.

  ‘We could end up in bloody Brighton!’ Arthur said, excited at the idea.

  ‘They don’t go to Brighton from Victoria,’ Kenny said, and twisting his mouth to make the word sound even more scathing: ‘Twat.’

  ‘They could,’ Arthur said, sticking his chin out. ‘They could. All the lines join up so you could get to Brighton from Victoria. Nothing to stop you.’

  ‘Nothing to stop you except they don’t bloody go from Victoria.’

  ‘I didn’t say they did. I said they could. Could!’

  ‘You bloody well said they did.’

  ‘I said they could.�
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  ‘Did, you said.’

  ‘Could.’

  Crabby said, ‘We followed the Dale to Brighton.’

  ‘You didn’t go on the train though,’ Arthur said, behind him on the stairs leading to the upper deck of the bus. There were seven of them and they each took a seat to themselves.

  ‘I didn’t say owt about a train,’ Crabby snarled.

  ‘You went on the coach.’

  ‘I know we went on the coach.’

  ‘Ellen Smith’s.’

  ‘Yelloway,’ Crabby said.

  ‘Was it buggery Yelloway – Yelloway don’t go to Brighton.’

  ‘How do you know when you weren’t there?’

  ‘Yelloway don’t go to Brighton.’

  ‘How do you know when you weren’t there?’

  ‘I’m telling you.’

  ‘How do you know when you weren’t there?’

  ‘It was Ellen Smith’s.’

  ‘How do you know when …’

  This conversation didn’t slacken off and finally tail away until they were on the diesel rattling over the points to Manchester Victoria. It was early for a Saturday night and there weren’t many in the long rocking compartment: just the odd bird dressed to kill who had a boy-friend to meet under the station clock, and the occasional middle-aged couple sitting huddled together in hats, scarves and heavy clothes. Kenny took out the stick of indelible red marker and wrote his name on the back of the seat in scrawling capitals, adding, ‘ASHFIELD RULE OK’.

  ‘Give us it,’ Crabby said, leaning across the aisle.

  ‘Piss off, lavatory face.’ Kenny jabbed at him and left a red mark on Crabby’s chin. The others rolled about shrieking.

  Andy said quietly, ‘Wherever we go let’s find some birds.’

  ‘Yeh, let’s get some birds,’ Skush said. His face was very pale and his watery eyes were staring out of his head. The pupils had shrunk to black dots, the proverbial pissholes in snow.

  Fester, a short, very broad lad with a hanging gut from drinking too much ale, and enormous square hands like a robot’s, took a metal spike out of his pocket (a pulley spindle specially sharpened at work) and pricked his name in the plastic covering; then for a full-stop pushed the spike clean through the seat where it struck Arthur in the back. It made a hole in his best jacket. There was a commotion, some fist-waving and threatening half-blows, but Arthur wasn’t stupid enough to tangle seriously with Fester, who would have broken his spine in three places and wiped the floor, walls and ceiling with the remains.

  Because he wasn’t going to be outdone and because he liked the limelight Kenny stood on the seat and wrote all the dirty four-letter words he knew on the curved panels overhead, the rest of them shouting encouragement and trying to kick his legs from under him.

  Andy, the coloured boy, sat with Skush, not taking any part in the general hilarity and merry-making but biding his time and saving his energy for the birds. He had already shafted three that week and badly needed another one tonight – not as badly as Skush, who had masturbated so much recently that he kept glancing fearfully at the palms of his hands as though expecting to see tufts of hair sprouting. Of course he no longer believed that it sent you blind, but he couldn’t overcome the feeling that it was unhealthy and not at all good for you; there was a rumour that it caused mental illness and even leukaemia. Now that the amphetamines had begun to take hold he was experiencing the curious sensation of being stimulated and depressed at one and the same time. His mouth was dry and his stomach felt hollow; he was alert and yet relaxed, calm and yet excited. He could handle a girl now, he knew he could, no doubt about it: just let him get to grips and he’d sweep her off her feet. He imagined a tall slim cool blonde with nicely-shaped knockers – like that one in Pan’s People – who he could trust himself with and who wouldn’t make fun of him. An understanding girl, that’s what he needed, an understanding girl who was a good fuck. He looked down and realised that he had a respectable erection straining at the zip of his jeans.

  Just then the ticket-collector came swaying towards them down the central aisle, steadying himself on the backs of seats with alternate hands, and the seven of them ceased their various activities to gawp at him, their faces gone stiff and sullen as if challenging him to check them or to make a remark. As he went by Kenny farted, a tight dry one and obviously difficult to produce. Crabby choked with laughter and finally managed to say in a strangulated voice:

  ‘The Phantom Arse strikes again.’

  ‘Jesus Ker-ist!’ Fester said, who happened to be sitting next to Kenny, wafting the air with his robot’s hands and hanging his chin over the edge of the seat in front and pretending to spew.

  ‘Good arse,’ Kenny said with a satisfied smirk.

  ‘What’ve yad for your tea – black peas?’

  ‘Sprouts,’ Kenny said, and became aware that he had strained so hard that a small amount of matter had been released with the wind: he had shit himself.

  At Victoria they raced each other to the barrier and leapt shouting – like wild animals suddenly released – across the main concourse and through the people to the A-G ticket office, which was the first one they came to. The man behind the double glass looked at them down his nose, and in reply to Kenny’s question said, ‘Chorley.’

  ‘Who the fuck wants to go to fucking Chorley?’ Crabby shouted.

  ‘Fucking Chorley cakes.’

  ‘Chorley, fuck me.’

  ‘Where’s fucking Chorley?’

  Fester’s friend Pete (known as Shortarse because he was the smallest in the gang and who, for this reason, could always rely on Fester’s protection) said, ‘We might as well go to Chorley as anywhere. Better than being stuck here all night.’

  ‘Yeh, let’s go,’ Andy said, groping for money.

  They all bought tickets and trooped off to the platform to await the 8.17 to Chorley. It was a diesel, and nearly empty. On the journey they passed the time by telling dirty jokes, writing on the mirror in the lavatory, unscrewing the toilet seat and throwing it through the window, and calling obscenely to two young girls with a poodle who sat petrified at the far end of the coach. Kenny was all for approaching them (and would have done) had Andy not restrained him: there were several people on the train and they might have objected. In fact one of them did have words with the ticket-collector when he came round but by that time the train was pulling into Chorley station and the lads, shouting abuse, disembarked. The ticket-collector put his head through the window to say something and at least three of them spat at him.

  Chorley was deader than a doornail. It was still raining and the colours of the traffic-lights were smeared on the wet tarmacadam. They steered clear of the posh-looking places – the ones with full car parks and table-lamps lighting net curtains in a rosy glow – and sought out the small corner pubs down backstreets with Snug etched on their opaque windows and tap-rooms thick with pipesmoke and public bars in which cackling women with red lips and wrinkled stockings stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the men drinking cream stout in thirsty gulps. The lads crammed through swing doors with brass fingerplates into a long narrow bar with room enough for only a single line of wrought-iron tables stationed against the wall: between the tables and the drinkers standing at the bar on the worn strip of linoleum there was barely enough space to get by: it was one of the few pubs still remaining that had somehow resisted the encroachment of fitted carpets, Musak, and chicken-in-the-basket. And tonight, of all nights, it was a pub with no beer.

  Kenny and the others couldn’t believe it. They ordered seven pints of keg bitter and gazed at the landlord in bewilderment when he told them the bad news. It appeared that the brewery had missed a delivery and all he could offer them was pale ale, stout, and lager in bottles.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Fester said. ‘A pub with no ale.’

  They tanked up on Blue Bass and Newcastle Brown, loitering in an untidy group, obviously set apart from the regulars. At least there was a juke-box (a miniature one fastened
to the wall) but it was mostly top thirty crap with not a single soul record and hardly any Tamla Motown.

  ‘Chaaawley,’ Arthur said in a funeral voice.

  ‘A right dead hole.’

  ‘No deader than Rochdale,’ Shortarse said.

  ‘Come off it.’

  Skush said, ‘Let’s get where there’s some birds.’ His voice was slurred and he couldn’t focus his eyes properly. Kenny said:

  ‘Have you any left?’

  Skush looked at him stupidly. ‘What?’

  ‘Bombers.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Why do you think what for? Give us some.’

  ‘I’ve only got two.’

  ‘Give us one then.’

  Andy was feeling randy and suggested they move on to find a better place. Fester agreed; not for the sake of trapping off but because he wanted a pint of draught beer instead of the bottled muck they were drinking. On a good night he could shift ten pints and had been known to sink fourteen. Kenny prided himself that he could keep up with Fester – and he could – but he was usually sick afterwards, especially when they rounded the night off with beef pudding and peas and a double portion of chips, bread, butter and tea.

  He secretly believed, too, that he could beat Fester in a fight. He had it all worked out: that flabby gut was a prime target for the boot followed by a knee under the chin as he came down gasping, then a double-fist on the back of the neck and a final boot in the cobblers to finish things off. He wouldn’t go for Fester’s little, piggy eyes; no – the gut, the neck, the groin.

  ‘Are we going or are we not?’ Fester asked irritably.