Nineteen Seventy-Four (21 page)

No answer.

Out the door, a fart in my stride.

The one-armed driver on the road to Fitzwilliam, the radio on low:

Michael John Myshkin leading on the local two o’clock, the IRA Christmas ceasefire on the national.

I glanced at the envelope on the passenger seat and pulled over.

Two minutes later and the one-armed driver was back on the road, the manila sins of Councillor William Shaw hidden beneath the passenger seat.

I checked the rearview mirror.

Almost dark and not yet three.

Newstead View revisited.

Back amongst the ponies and the dogs, the rust and plaggy bags.

I drove slowly along the dark street.

TV lights on in Number 69.

I parked in front of what was left of 54.

The pack had been to the terrace, feasting and fighting, leaving three black eyes where the windows had been.

Hang the Pervert
and
LUFC
were written in dripping white paint above the front window.

A brown front door lay amongst a forest of chopped and charred sticks of furniture, kicked and severed in the middle of a tiny lawn strewn with a family’s tat.

Two dogs chased their arses in and out of the Myshkin family’s home.

I picked my way up the garden path, over the headless lamps and slashed cushions, nervously past a dog wrestling with a giant stuffed panda, and through the splintered doorway.

There was the smell of smoke and the sound of running water.

A metal dustbin sat on a sea of broken glass in the centre of a wrecked front room. There was no television or stereo, just the spaces where they’d been and a plastic Christmas tree bent in two. No presents or cards.

I stepped over a pile of human shit on the bottom step and went up the sodden stairs.

All the taps in the bathroom were on full, the bath over flowing.

The toilet and the sink had both been kicked in and shattered, flooding the blue carpet. There was runny yellow diarrhoea down the outside of the bath and
NF
sprayed in red above it.

I turned off the taps and pushed up the sleeve of my left arm with my bandages. I stuck my left hand into the ice-cold brown water and felt for the plug. My hand brushed against something solid at the bottom of the bath.

There was something in the bath.

My one good hand froze, then quickly I pulled the plug and my hand straight out together.

I stood staring at the draining water, drying my hand on my trousers, a dark shape forming beneath the shitty brown water.

I stuck both hands under my armpits and screwed up my eyes.

There was a blue leather Slazenger sports bag in the bottom of the bath.

It was zipped up and on its side.

Fuck it, leave it, you don’t want to know.

Mouth dry, I crouched down and flicked the bag upright.

The bag felt heavy.

The last of the water ran down the plughole, leaving just a shit-stained sludge, a nail brush, and the blue leather Slazenger bag.

Fuck it, leave it, you don’t want to know.

I used the bandaged hand to steady the bag and began to unzip it with my left.

The zip jammed.

Fuck it.

It jammed again.

Leave it.

The fresh stench of shit.

You don’t want to know.

Fur, I could see fur.

A fat dead tabby cat.

A twisted spine and an open mouth.

A blue collar and a name tag I wouldn’t touch.

Memories of pet funerals, Archie and Socks buried back in the Wesley Street garden.

Fuck it, leave it, but you bloody asked.

Out on the landing, two more doors.

The bigger bedroom, the one on the left with the two twin beds, stank of piss and old smoke. The mattresses had been pulled off and the clothes piled on them. There were scorch marks up the wall.

Again sprayed in red,
Wogs Out, Fuck the Proves
.

I walked across the landing to another cheap plastic plate that said,
Michael’s Room
.

Michael John Myshkin’s room was no bigger than a cell.

The single bed had been tipped on its side, the curtains pulled from their rail, the window cracked by the falling ward robe. Posters torn from the walls, having taken strips of the magnolia wallpaper with them as they went, lay on a floor strewn with American and English comics, sketch pads and crayons.

I picked up a copy of
The Hulk
. The pages were wet and reeked of piss. I let it fall and used my foot to sift through the piles of comics and pieces of paper.

Beneath a book about Kung-Fu, a sketch book looked intact. I bent down and nicked it open.

A full page cover of a comic stared back up at me. It had been hand-drawn in felt-tip pen and crayon:

Rat Man, Prince or Pest?

By Michael J. Myshkin
.

In a childish hand, a giant rat with human hands and feet was sitting on a throne in a crown, surrounded by hundreds of smaller rats.

Rat Man was grinning, saying, “
Men are not our judges. We judge men!
”

Above the Rat Man logo, in biro, was written:

Issue 4, 5p, MJM Comics.

I turned to the first page.

In six panels, the Rat People asked Rat Man, their Prince, to go above ground and save the earth from the humans.

On page two, Rat Man was above ground being chased by soldiers.

By page three, Rat Man had escaped.

He’d sprouted wings.

Fucking swan’s wings.

I stuffed the sketch pad comic inside my jacket and closed the door on Michael’s Room.

I walked down the stairs, banging and children’s voices coming from the front door.

A ten-year-old boy in a green sweater with three yellow stars was stood on a dining room chair, balanced on the front step, hammering a nail into the frame above the door.

His three friends were egging him on, one of them holding a washing-line noose in his dirty little hands.

“What you doing?” said one of the boys as I came down the stairs.

“Yeah, who are you?” said another.

I looked pissed off and official and said, “What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” said the boy with the hammer, jumping from the chair.

The boy with the noose said, “You police?”

“No.”

“We can do what we want then,” said the boy with the hammer.

I took out some coins and said, “Where’s his family?”

“Pissed off,” said one.

“Not coming back and all, if they know what’s good for them,” said the boy with the hammer.

I shook the coins and said, “Father’s a cripple?”

“Yeah,” they laughed, making spastic wheezing noises.

“What about his Mam?”

“She’s a fucking evil witch, she is,” said the boy with the washing-line.

“She work?”

“She’s a cleaner at school.”

“Which one?”

“Fitz Junior on main road.”

I moved the chair out of the doorway and walked down the path, looking at the dark quiet terraces on either side.

“You going to give us some brass?” the youngest boy shouted after me.

“No.”

The boy with the hammer put the chair back, took the line from his friend, stood on the chair, and hung the noose from the nail.

“What’s that for?” I asked, unlocking the Viva.

“Perverts,” shouted one of the boys.

“Here,” laughed the boy with the hammer, standing on the chair. “You best not be one.”

“There’s a dead cat upstairs in the bath,” I said as I got into the car.

“We know,” giggled the youngest boy. “We fucking killed it, didn’t we?”

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, all good children go to heaven.

I sat in my car across the road from Fitzwilliam Junior and Infants.

It was going up to five and the school lights were still on, illuminating walls of Christmas drawings and paintings inside.

There were children playing soccer in the dark playground, chasing after a cheap orange ball in a pack of baggy trousers and dark wool sweaters with those big yellow stars.

I sat freezing in the Viva, my bandages stuffed up into my armpit, thinking of the Holocaust and wondering if Michael John Myshkin had gone to this school.

After ten minutes or so, some of the lights went out and three fat white women came out of the building with a thin man in blue overalls. The women waved goodbye to the man as he walked over to the children and tried to take their ball from them. The women were laughing as they left the school gates.

I got out of the car and jogged across the road after the women.

“Excuse me, ladies?”

The three fat women turned round and stopped.

“Mrs Myshkin?”

“You’re joking?” spat the largest woman.

“Fress are you, love?” smirked the oldest.

I smiled and said, “
Yorkshire Post
.”

“Bit late aren’t you?” said the largest.

“I heard she worked here?”

“Until yesterday, aye,” said the oldest.

“Where’d she go?” I asked the woman with the steel-rimmed spectacles who hadn’t said anything.

“Don’t look at me. I’m new,” she said.

The oldest woman said, “Our Kevin says one of your lot is putting them up in some posh hotel over in Scarborough.”

“That’s not right,” said the new one.

I stood there, thinking fuck, fuck, fuck.

There were shouts from the playground and a charge of monkey boots.

“They’re going to put that bloody window through,” sighed the largest woman.

I said, “You two worked with Mrs Myshkin, yeah?”

“For more than five years, aye,” said the oldest.

“What’s she like then?”

“Had a hard life, she has.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well he’s on Sick because of dust…”

“The husband was a miner?”

“Aye. Worked with our Pat,” said the largest.

“What about Michael?”

The women looked at each other, grimacing.

“He’s not all there,” whispered the new woman.

“How do you mean?”

“Bit slow, I heard.”

“Does he have any mates?”

“Mates?” said two of the women together.

“He plays with some of the young ones on his street, like,” said the oldest woman, shuddering. “But they’re not mates.”

“Ugh, makes you feel sick, doesn’t it?” said the new woman.

“There must be someone?”

“Don’t pall around with anyone much, not that I know.”

The other two women both nodded their heads.

“What about people from work?”

The fattest woman shook her head, saying, “Doesn’t work round here, does he? Castleford way?”

“Aye. Our Kevin said he’s at some photographer’s.”

“Mucky books, I heard,” said the new one.

“You’re having me on?” said the oldest woman.

“What I heard.”

The man in the blue overalls was stood back at the school gates, a padlock and a chain in his hands, shouting at the children.

“Bloody kids these days,” said the largest woman.

“Bloody nuisance they are.”

I said, “Thanks for your time, ladies.”

“You’re welcome, love,” smiled the older one.

“Anytime,” said the largest lady.

The women giggled as they walked away, the new one turning round to wave at me.

“Merry Christmas,” she called.

“Merry Christmas.”

I took out a cigarette and fumbled in my pockets for some matches, finding Paul’s heavy Ronson lighter.

I weighed the lighter in my left hand and then lit the ciga rette, trying to remember when I’d picked it up.

The pack of children ran past me on the pavement, kicking their cheap orange football and swearing at the caretaker.

I walked back to the padlocked school gates.

The caretaker in the blue overalls was walking across the playground, back to the main building.

“Excuse me,” I shouted over the top of the red painted gates.

The man kept walking.

“Excuse me!”

At the door to the school the man turned round and looked straight at me.

I cupped my hands. “Excuse me. Can I have a word?”

The man turned away, unlocked the door, and went inside the black building.

I leant my forehead against the gate.

Someone had tattooed
Fuck
out of the red paint.

Into the night, wheels spinning.

Farewell Fitzwilliam, where the night comes early and nowt feels right, where the kids kill cats and the men kill kids.

I was heading back to the Redbeck, turning left on to the A655, when the lorry came screaming out of the night, slamming its brakes on hard.

I braked, horns blaring, skidding to a stop, the lorry inches from my door.

I stared into the rearview mirror, heart pounding, headlights dancing.

A big bearded man in big black boots jumped down from his cab and walked towards the car. He was carrying a big black fucking bat.

I turned the ignition, slamming my foot down on to the accelerator, thinking Barry, Barry, Barry.

The Golden Fleece, Sandal, just gone six on Thursday 19 December 1974, the longest day in a week of long days.

A pint on the bar, a whisky in my belly, a coin in the box.

“Gaz? It’s Eddie.”

“Where the fuck you sneak off to?”

“Didn’t fancy Press Club, you know.”

“You missed a right bloody show.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, Jack totally fucking lost it, crying…”

“Listen, do you know Donald Foster’s address?”

“What the fuck do you want that for?”

“It’s important, Gaz.”

“This to do with Paul Kelly and their Paula?”

“No. Look, I know it’s Sandal…”

“Yeah, Wood Lane.”

“What number?”

“They don’t have fucking numbers on Wood Lane. It’s called Trinity Towers or something.”

“Cheers, Gaz.”

“Yeah? Just don’t fucking mention my name.”

“I won’t.” I said, hanging up and wondering if he was fucking Kathryn.

Another coin, another call.

“I need to speak to BJ.”

A voice on the other end, mumbling from the other end of the world.

“When will you see him? It’s important.”