Читать книгу Blood Relatives - Stevan Alcock - Страница 10

05/02/1977

The Saturday after Irene Richardson wor done over, we called in on Vanessa as usual. We found her in a bit of a state. The police had been doing door to door. She had hid hersen in t’ kids’ room, wi’ t’ kids, waiting for ’em to leave. Then a reporter came nosing, doing t’ same.

‘She wor here,’ Vanessa said, rocking little Jase on her knee and chain smoking.

‘Who wor?’

‘Irene. Not long before she wor done over, Irene turned up here.’

‘Jeez, Vanessa, you haven’t told the cops?’

‘Tell them owt and they’ll never be off yer doorstep. So don’t you go saying nowt neither, hear me?’

Eric nodded. Vanessa eyeballed me and I nodded also. She stroked Jase’s hair.

‘When I heard a banging at t’ door I knew summat wor up. I rolled over in bed, hoping that whoever it wor would go away. But it wor t’ kind of knocking that has the devil right behind it, if yer know what I mean. Then I heard my name called – or at least the name I use on t’ street – and I wor surprised, cos it wor a woman’s voice. I remember what time it wor cos the alarm clock said it wor after 3 a.m.’

I could picture the alarm clock. I’d spotted it one time through t’ open bedroom door: a kiddies’ clock wi’ Mickey and Minnie Mouse seesawing through time. Vanessa took a long drag on her ciggie.

‘I got up, wrapped mesen in my bathrobe’ (the pink one she often wore) ‘and shouted, “All right, all right, I’m effin’ coming – Jesus bloody Christ!”’

I pictured Vanessa pulling her fingers through her tangled hair as she padded barefoot down t’ corridor lino and unslotted the safety chain to find hersen peering through t’ door crack at a small, dishevelled woman. ‘Only I couldn’t see her proper,’ Vanessa said. ‘Not in that light. But she wor somehow familiar.’

Before she’d been able to say owt Vanessa had been hit by Irene pleading in her Glaswegian accent. ‘Cannae stay … I’m sorry, please … I need somewhere to stay … just a wee while, just for tonight, just one night, it’s so cold, and I won’ be no trouble …’ on and on she’d gabbled, plainly fearing that if she stopped for a moment the door would be closed on her.

‘What could I do?’ Vanessa said, looking at us both. ‘I unhitched the chain and told her she could have t’ sofa. She stood in t’ middle of t’ room in her fake suede coat, this wild look in her eye. I know that look, when someone’s hanging on by their last fingertips. Scared me shitless, I can tell you. Maybe, not far behind, there wor some very angry bloke, a pimp, a punter. I said to her, “Do I know you?” And that’s when she told me her name. Said she’d seen me out working once or twice, and knew where I lived.’

After that Irene had fallen silent, as if suddenly struck dumb by some affliction. She’d stood there, shivering, clutching her bag to her chest. Vanessa offered her a ciggie and she took it, then Vanessa lit one for hersen. Irene’s fingers wor dark and unsteady.

‘I fetched her a blanket, and told her where to find a towel in t’ bathroom, but she said she wor fine. Said she’d been roughing it and tidying hersen up at a public lav. Then she asked me if I’d got kids. Turns out she’d got two an’ all, only hers were in care. She said it wor just for a while, ’til she got back on her feet.’

Vanessa pulled her robe tighter about her. ‘Then she asked if she could see my kids. I held the door open just a little, cos I didn’t want her going in there, but then she wanted to stroke their hair. So I told her I didn’t want ’em woken up.’

For most of t’ night Vanessa had lain awake, anxiously listening through t’ bedroom wall to Irene crashing about like a restless horse in a stall. Across from Vanessa, Barry and Jase slept on, top and tailed on t’ single mattress.

Gradually the noises grew less frequent, then ceased altogether.

The next morning Irene had tried to negotiate another night, but Vanessa had told her bluntly that she couldn’t stay. Irene’s chillingly blank stares and constantly furrowed brow sapped Vanessa’s strength, and she wanted to be shot of her. Vanessa pulled a fiver from her purse – her only punter the previous afternoon.

‘Here,’ she said, holding it out. Irene didn’t hesitate.

‘Vanessa, I swear …’

‘Forget it, luv.’

Irene quickly combed her tangles of thick hair wi’ a hairbrush she’d found lying under a chair, then left without another word.

The next night she booked hersen into a grotty rooming house in Cowper Street. The papers said so. She dumped her bag of meagre belongings on t’ bed, spruced hersen up hurriedly and left, telling someone that she wor headed for Tiffany’s disco in t’ city centre.

A jogger found Irene Richardson’s body on nearby Soldiers Field, not a hammer’s throw from where Wilma McCann wor topped.

When we called on Vanessa the next week she’d gone. Eric pressed his nose up against her window and peered in. I put my hands to t’ sides of my face like a horse’s blinkers and peered in also.

There wor nowt but a mucky sock on t’ bare floor, a sun-faded print of a kitten in a basket of flowers on t’ wall, and a wooden chair wi’ t’ seat missing.

‘She’s scarpered,’ Eric said.

‘Looks like it.’

‘Moved on, like they all do. Best strike her from t’ round-book.’

All in all, I wor relieved that we worn’t having cuppas at Vanessa’s no more. Her teasing and questioning had always made me squirm inside. Like she knew really.

Mid-morning tea break now wor wi’ Lourdes, a big West Indian woman, big, springy hair, big hips, big, unruly breasts. Lourdes wore knee-length striped stockings and played scratchy ska records. I asked Eric why all our breaks were wi’ prozzies. He said prozzies make better tea.

Lourdes flashed her teeth a lot while she blathered, and her tea tasted like wrung-out dishcloth. She danced around t’ room to her ska music, her buttocks shimmying like maggot-filled medicine balls.

‘You dancin’, bwoy?’ She meant me.

‘I can’t dance.’

Lourdes yanked me out of my seat. ‘Mi teaches yuh!’ She took hold of me wi’ both hands. I tried a few unwilling plods on t’ spot and kicked out a leg.

‘Bwoy, you ain’t trying to shift a fridge! Use dem hips!’ She slapped her own buttock.

I shuffled like someone wriggling out of wet jeans. She tossed her head back and laughed.

‘Dat is duh ting!’

Eric wor grinning at me like he wor seeing another story for t’ lads back at the depot.

Lourdes said, ‘You’s like ska and reggae, bwoy?’

‘Punk!’ Eric shouted over t’ pulsating lilt blooping out of Lourdes’ stereo speakers. ‘He’s into all that punk stuff!’

Lourdes’ face crumpled. ‘Punk? Wat dat? Mi nah nuttin’ about punk. How’s I dance dat punk?’

‘You pogo!’ Eric yelled. ‘You jump up and down on t’ spot and gob a lot. Go on, Rick, show Lourdes how to pogo.’

‘Shut it, Eric. I can’t do it wi’ no music, can I?’

‘Music?’ echoed Eric derisively. ‘You call that Sex Pistols shite music?’

‘Spit? Nah, man. Real dance ga like tis.’

Lourdes locked her arms around my waist, pushing my leg between hers. Her clothes smelt of old smoke and school cabbage and she had sweat patches under her armpits.

‘Move like you’s making it wit’ sum girl,’ she gleamed. She put her mouth to my ear. ‘I teaches you, bwoy, mi’s a good teacher.’

She cackled, tossing her head again. I glimpsed two gold caps. She thrust her full hips against my thigh bones, using her weight to shunt me around t’ room. I shut my eyes, trying to concentrate on t’ choppy backbeat. Then, almost unwillingly, I felt t’ two of us flowing together in harmony, while Eric looked on, bemused, at the West Indian prozzie, as wide as a dinner plate, dancing wi’ a young white boy, as thin as a spoon.

I wor dipping into sis’s diary again, amusing mesen over sis and this friggin’ lad having sex in t’ back seat of an abandoned car, when I heard t’ front door slam and sis thundering up the stairs in her platforms. I shut t’ diary and froze, waiting to get nabbed in sis’s room. A prickly crawl travelled like a bushfire up my arms and neck. Oh fuck, fuck and triple fuck!

Luckily she ducked into t’ bathroom. I shoved the diary back under her smalls and scuttled across t’ landing to my own room. Moments later I heard the bathroom door open, then her bedroom door slam and a school bag being flung aside, then a sort of strangled sob. Summat to do wi’ Adam, I reckoned.

I cut into t’ bathroom, opened the cold tap and splashed water over my face and neck and up and down my arms. I let the water run across my wrists as if calming a burn. I inhaled and exhaled, long and slow, waiting for t’ skin demons to retreat. I looked in t’ mirror. My neck wor all blotchy, like I’d fallen into a nettle patch.

Mandy’s sobs had receded into snuffles. She must have heard the tap running. I flushed the chain even though I hadn’t used the loo, and went back to my room. I’d got away wi’ it again, although it had been a close call this time.

I played my new single – The Damned, ‘Neat Neat Neat’ – full blast. When it ended I could hear Mandy screaming at me to turn it off. So I played it again. Then I played every punk record in my meagre collection while I put on my gear. I started wi’ The Ramones ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’, followed by t’ Pistols ‘Anarchy’ and then Buzzcocks ‘Spiral Scratch’. Then I played The Damned again.

Meantime, I hiked mesen into my old paint-splattered keks, yanked on a white T-shirt and then my old school jacket. I’d already rented the sleeves wi’ a Stanley knife and filched some safety pins from Mother’s sewing basket which I’d pinned on randomly. I’d added a few punk badges, pins and buttons to my lapels, including my latest – a small pink triangle. I figured that no one in t’ house knew what that stood for.

I sized mesen up in t’ wardrobe mirror. I forked some vaseline through my hair, trying to make it look punkier. Then I nabbed some of Mum’s hair lacquer and sprayed that on. I stuffed my jacket into a carrier and pulled on t’ slime-green cable sweater Gran had knit me for Christmas last year.

Mother caught me sneaking out.

‘Where are you going looking like that?’

‘Helping a mate mend his dad’s car.’

‘At this hour? Well, at least comb your hair.’

‘No, it’s fine … no, leave it!’

‘Who is this mate anyway?’

‘Just a mate, from school.’

Before she could say owt further I bolted out of t’ house. At the end of t’ road I pulled off my sweater and stuffed it behind a dustbin. Then I put on the jacket and ran full tilt for t’ bus stop.

The Babylon Club wor a reggae hangout in Chapeltown. Maybe Lourdes came here to dance sometimes, but Wednesday nights it opened its doors to punk and became t’ FK Club. It had once been some sort of school. The windows had been boarded up wi’ white plasterboard and there wor two entrances, marked overhead ‘BOYS’ and ‘GIRLS’. The girls’ entrance had been bricked up forever, the boys’ wor now t’ fire escape.

I arrived late. On t’ bus this bitten-looking old couple sitting opposite kept eyeballing me and whispering ’til I gave ’em two fingers. Then t’ bloke blabbed to t’ bus driver who chucked me off t’ bus, so I’d had to walk the final mile or so.

I joined the ragged queue that shuffled forward noisily ’til there wor just two girls in front of me. The one wor a thin waif of a girl and the other wor a bigger girl wi’ long hair and big breasts. The waif girl had on shiny black leggings, a loose white shirt and a thin black leather tie. Her black hair wor cropped. T’other girl wor wearing a tight red miniskirt over fishnet stockings. Flesh gaped through t’ large tears. Their dark lipstick made ’em look as if they’d been gorging on berries.

The doorman let the three us in together, and the waif girl darted a smile at me between her small, gapped teeth. Her friend nudged her and she turned away.

I tagged behind ’em along a corridor of garish striplights toward a barrage of careening guitars and battering drums. I could hear a voice barking tunelessly into a microphone. We pushed through t’ swing doors and into a wall of heat and noise in a room sardined wi’ sweating bodies, all leaping and pogoing furiously.

I edged my way in. Two lads in front of me had stripped to t’ waist already, and their bodies glistened under t’ blue and red strobes. Sweat droplets sprayed off their hair as they each propelled themsens upwards on t’ shoulders of t’other. Beside them, a girl wi’ her eyes shut and her fists clenched wor pummelling the floor wi’ her boots as if she wor a road-stamping machine.

The two girls wor pushing their way toward t’ stage, so I followed them.

The singer on t’ stage – some band called New Trix – barked and screamed and threw t’ mic stand about. He introduced each number wi’ ‘And this one’s called …’ in a thick Liverpudlian accent. Some kid gobbed at him as he dropped to his knees, the mic head half in his mouth. The gob landed on him and trickled slowly down his torso.

I became aware of t’ waif girl alongside me, eyeing me severely. I nodded at her, cos she wor making me uneasy. She said summat, her mouth forming mute, indecipherable words.

‘WHAT!?’

She cupped her mouth to my ear and yelled. I still couldn’t hear owt. She took me by t’ elbow and launched hersen into a dance, flaying around like a rag doll being tossed by an invisible hand. I shuffled about for a short while, then slipped away to watch from t’ margins.

The band’s brief set ground to a halt wi’ t’ drummer kicking over his kit. Some barmpot at the front shook up a beer can and sprayed it over t’ singer, who grabbed the can, took a swig, sprayed it back at the crowd and poured the rest over his own bonce.

‘Fuck you all! Fuck you!’

The waif girl pushed her way through to where I wor propped against t’ wall.

‘Didn’t you like it, then?’

‘Worn’t too bad.’

‘I think they’re ace. The singer’s a bit of all right, don’t you think?’

She wor screwing her hair round one finger. Her posh voice had a mocking edge to it that made me wary. But then, she looked like she belonged at the centre of summat. I glanced over her shoulder at a lad passing behind her.

‘I’m Gina.’

‘Yeah, right. Oh, I’m Ricky.’

‘Ricky? Don’t you mean Rick? Ricky’s a little boy’s name. I’m sure you’re not little.’

I’d meant to say Rick. Fuck knows why I said Ricky. Only Gran called me that. My ears wor popping. I said, ‘I’m taller than you.’

‘Everyone’s taller than me, Rick. Or is it Richard?’

‘I don’t like Richard. Even my mother don’t call me Richard.’

‘You’re not still living at home?’

‘Moving out shortly. Soon as I get my own place. What about yersen?’

She cackled. ‘I don’t live with my mother, if that’s what you mean. God, no.’ She shook her head, laughing. ‘God, no,’ she repeated. Her laughter raged about and then fled.

‘Are you working then, Richard?’ She spoke rapidly and quietly, as if she wor afraid someone might overhear.

‘Nothing great. What about you?’

‘Signing on. I was training to be a nurse but I got fired. Buy me a drink?’

I bought us both cider. She drank hers down in rapid gulps. We had a couple more. Being wi’ her wor like trespassing. She had this way of nibbling her bottom lip and staring into you as if you’d been caught out. She said it wor only her third time at the FK Club, and she didn’t think much of it. Her offhandedness deflated me like a knife in a tyre. So I faked being world-weary and unimpressed. Suddenly she grabbed me by t’ arm. ‘Stay here, don’t move, only I’ve just seen someone I have to talk to.’

She darted off. The DJ played ‘Gloria’ by Patti Smith, then some Burning Spear, then ‘White Riot’ by The Clash. I bought mesen another pint of cider. And another. It wor all finishing up, an t’ place wor emptying rapidly. A long-haired roadie in an Allman Brothers T-shirt wor carting out band equipment. An old woman wor pushing a wide broom across t’ floor, the bristles skidmarking through t’ beer slops.

Then I saw her lolling by a radiator. I wondered if she’d been watching me on t’ sly. I strolled over, all loose-limbed and more than a little khalied.

‘I didn’t think you’d wait,’ she said.

I fired off a so-what smile. ‘I wor just about to head off. Did you find that girl?’

‘Sort of.’

‘That one you arrived wi’?’

‘Her? No, God, no. That was just fat Judy.’

‘She ain’t that fat.’

‘The girl I was looking for was the one I was snogging in the toilets last week.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Only tonight she pissed off without saying a word.’

‘Right.’

‘Are you shocked?’

‘Do you want me to be?’

She shrugged.

Outside, a few folk wor still hanging about. Someone wor touting tickets for a Banshees gig in Doncaster. We pushed through, heading on up the dully lit street ’til we came to a junction. I stopped, one hand on my belly.

‘I think I’m gonna spew up.’

I bent double, and a volley of vomit splattered the pavement.

‘Oh, bloody Nora! Hey, wait!’

I staggered after her, spitting out vomit bits, ’til I caught up. She wor singing some rubbish song in a high-pitched, baby-doll voice, only she couldn’t remember the verses, so she just kept repeating the chorus, emphasising a different word each time. I wiped the back of my hand across my mouth. When we reached the traffic island she said, ‘This is where we part.’

‘You off then?’

‘I have to get home,’ she said, implying some urgent reason. ‘Lift up your shirt.’

She fumbled about in her pockets for a biro. ‘Lift up your shirt,’ she repeated, poking me in t’ chest. I rolled up my T-shirt. It wor damp. She wrote her number across my chest. It tickled and I tried not to squirm.

‘Don’t rub it off before you can remember it.’

Then, before I could say owt more, she wor gone, darting off in t’ direction of t’ town centre.

The next week I tried phoning her. The line wor out of order. She didn’t show at the FK Club neither. So I asked Judy about her.

‘Gina? You a friend of hers?’

‘Sort of.’

‘All her friends are sort of.’

She finally pitched up at the FK Club weeks later. Her hair wor now dyed platinum blonde, she wore a black string vest under a biker’s jacket (no bra), DMs and torn black leggings. I ignored her ’til she placed hersen in front of me, fixing me wi’ a triumphant stare.

‘Didn’t you recognise me, then?’

‘Course I friggin’ did.’

‘Oooooh, Mister Coool!’ She chuckled and turned on her heeled boots.

For t’ rest of t’ night she wor firing off dark glances at me. Downstairs, a small crowd wor watching Patrick Fitzgerald’s acoustic friggin’ punk. Songs about safety pins stuck in hearts. Upstairs, a few stony-faced rastas slunk around t’ pool table and a line of stockingless white girls in tight, spangly dresses perched on bar stools, dragging on their ciggies.

It wor then I clapped eyes on him. The lad from t’ Merrion Centre multi-storey. Jim’s boy.

I sidled closer ’til I wor only a few feet from him. He wor facing slightly away, making out that he hadn’t clocked me, but I knew he had. He wor waiting like a gazelle: nervous, alert, almost quivering.

All of a sudden he slunk away, then glanced back at me. I knew I wor meant to follow.

He led me through t’ fire doors and down t’ rear steps that led to t’ boiler room. In t’ pitch-black hollow of t’ doorway we fell greedily on each other, pulling at each other’s clothes. Behind t’ steel door the boiler hissed like some locked-up beast. I grazed my knuckles against t’ wall. I yanked down his drainpipe keks and dropped to my knees and took his hard-on in my mouth. Moments later he spunked off wi’ a solitary exhalation, rucked up his keks, palmed his hair, mumbled summat and left. I kicked t’ boiler door. ‘Fuck!’ I hadn’t even unzipped, barely got started.

‘Fuck!’

I headed back up the steps. The bugger had shut the fire doors after him. I clambered over a wall and dropped into t’ road. The doorman wouldn’t let me back in unless I paid again cos I didn’t have a pass-out stamp.

I headed home, toward t’ city centre. It wor raining sideways. The road gleamed in t’ wet and the city neon lights blurred at the edges.

Taxi! I saw a taxi beetling along. I stepped out into t’ road, waving at it as its headlights bore down on me. The taxi slowed, then picked up speed again.

‘Fucker!’

The taxi stopped abruptly, slammed into reverse. Oh, fuck, I wor thinking, oh friggin’ hell. The driver wound down t’ window.

‘I ain’t supposed to stop here. Get in, then, before t’ boys in blue clap eyes on us.’

I slumped into a corner of t’ cab, my mouth still tasting salty-sweet from t’ lad’s load.

‘Bin another one,’ the driver wor saying as he swung sharp right down a pitch-black side street. ‘How many’s that now? Of course, it could all be a nasty coincidence, but I’d say it worn’t, I’d say there’s a maniac on t’ loose, wouldn’t you? Want to know what the wife thinks about it all? She thinks it’s someone wi’ t’ clap who’s out for revenge. But then, t’ wife’s full of ideas like that about t’ world. Me, I don’t know what to think. You go up the Carlisle Hotel and you’ll find ’em, strung along t’ bar stools wi’ price tags on t’ backs of their stilettos. Some of ’em you wouldn’t let a dog lift its leg on, know what I mean? Still, no one deserves to get sliced up, right? Picked up a few of their punters in my time. Well, you would, wouldn’t you, in this job? As long as they pay the fare I don’t look none too close. Young’un like you don’t go wi’ slappers like that, do you?’

‘No.’

‘No. At your age you shouldn’t need to. This one wor done in over Bradford way. Murdered in her own bed.’

At the mention of bed I wor overcome by tiredness. I yawned.