Rule of Night (9 page)

‘Is Brian going with you?' Kenny said. His body filled the narrow bed, stretched out amongst the chocolate wrappings. He crossed his legs and propped his wrinkled socks on the brown varnished tailboard.

‘We're meeting Bill and Irene in the Dicken Green,' his mother said. She made a face. ‘Kenny, your feet do smell. When did you change your socks?'

‘Your nose is too near your arse,' Kenny said.

His mother checked her reply. She hadn't time. ‘See Kat gets to bed.'

‘I might be going out.'

‘Well lock the door and don't be late back,' she said, suddenly irritable. ‘You're bloody hopeless to get out of bed on a Monday morning.' She sniffed the perfume on her wrist and went out.

‘Margaret,' Kenny said.

‘I'm going to be late. What is it?'

‘I've no money.'

‘Well?'

‘Lend us a quid.'

‘I gave you some money the other night – Friday.' Her voice had started to rise and Kenny prepared himself for a lecture.
‘I can't keep on giving it to you. What do you do with it all? It wouldn't be so bad if you paid me back. What about that money from last week?'

‘You'll gerrit, you'll gerrit.'

‘When?'

‘Friday.'

‘I've heard that before.'

‘I'm skint.'

‘Well you'll have to stay skint.'

‘Miserable old cow,' Kenny said under his breath, but loud enough for her to hear. Margaret came back into the room and lowered her voice. ‘If your father hears you talking like that you'll be for it. Here.' She fumbled in her purse and threw a fifty-pence piece on the bed. Her face was pulled into an expression that was half-furious, half-conciliatory. She had never been pretty: her features were too coarse and ill-defined: her skin had a mottled look about it that came from poor food or too much make-up, or a combination of both. And it had always seemed natural to Kenny that he should bite his nails because his mother had bitten hers for as long as he could remember. He made no move to pick up the fifty-pence piece, but lay watching her almost with contempt, his slightly protruding eyes taking her in, summing her up, writing her off.

‘Not enough,' Kenny said.

‘It'll bloody have to be enough,' Margaret said, her voice thickening, ‘that's all you're getting.' She pointed at him and several rings flashed weakly in the room's failing light: ‘And I want it back on Friday when you get paid. And what you owe me from Friday. And from last week. Think on.'

Kenny mouthed ‘fuck off' to her back as she went out and vee-signed the door several times with both hands. He sat up and without making a sound screamed every word of abuse he could
think of, the words filled to bursting in his throat, their sounds in his head feeding his anger. At such moments he could have harmed her physically, he could have put the boot in, he could have stamped on her fat, dull, stupid face. She thought she knew everything, the old cow; if she only knew how thick she was. Kenny hated her for being so mean and petty: it was his own money he was asking for, his own money that he brought in every week, without fail, putting the pound notes on the kitchen table. And the miserable stingy old boot objected to lending him a measly quid. He picked up the fifty-pence piece and flung it as hard as he could across the room, where it struck the wardrobe door leaving a pale indentation in the walnut veneer.

•    •    •

When he comes out, still seething, Kat is in the living-room watching the television. She has fine fair hair tied up in bunches that stick out on either side of her head, like two clumps of straw. Her face hasn't been washed and she sits in the depths of an armchair scooping Rice Krispies from a bowl. Some of the milk has dribbled down the front of her dress.

‘I'm going out.'

‘Awright.' Scoop. Munch.

‘Don't lock the door, else I can't get in.'

‘Awright.' Scoop. Munch.

Kenny stops suddenly in the middle of the room. ‘Have you any money?' he asks.

Kat continues to munch the Rice Krispies but the motion of her jaws slows perceptibly. She shakes her head.

‘You bloody have,' Kenny says.

‘I haven't.'

‘You fucking have. Where is it?'

‘
Yav
-n't.' Scoop. Munch.

He stands his ground watching the TV unseeingly, trying to remember where Kat keeps her money. Kids hide it in all sorts of daft places. There's a tea-chest full of toys in her room but he can't waste all night sorting through that lot. ‘Are you going to tell me?'

‘Haven't got none. Honest.' Kat fills her mouth with Rice Krispies. She won't look at him; her eyes remain fixed on the screen. She's a crafty little bastard.

‘Lend it us and I'll give you back twice as much tomorrow,' Kenny wheedles.

There's a momentary hesitation and he thinks she's going to give herself away. ‘Haven't got none. If I had I'd lend it you. Honest.' She scoops up the Rice Krispies.

Kenny slams out of the flat having knocked the bowl onto the floor leaving her wailing.

•    •    •

Janice doesn't think it matters that he has no money; they can always go for a walk. ‘Walk?' Kenny says. ‘Where are we going to bloody walk to?'

‘Walk. Just walk.'

‘Have you any money?'

‘Thirteen pence,' Janice says, offering it to him. She doesn't drink a lot, only halves of mild, so Kenny calculates that with his fifty pence he can afford three pints at least. Good job he's got enough fags to last him. They go in the Forester's near the junction of Bury Road and Mellor Street.

‘Why didn't you come up today?' Janice says, settling back in the corner and looking up at him, her arm through his. She can feel his shoulder muscle working against her cheek as he puts the cigarette to his mouth.

‘I'd no bloody money, had I?' Kenny says with infinite patience, as if communicating with a mental defective.

‘You could have walked up.'

Kenny pulls away to look down at her, sideways. ‘What's all this crap about walking?' he says. ‘Walking? I shouldn't have to bloody walk. What've you been reading,
Health and Strength?'

‘It's only ten minutes.'

‘Fifteen.'

‘Fifteen then.'

‘I shouldn't have to bloody walk. They don't walk.
She
doesn't walk anywhere' – the same bitter gall rising in his throat as he thinks back. He can see her dolled up in all her finery, sailing out to a club and leaving him with fifty-bleeding-pence. She wouldn't care if he had nothing: the mingy tight-arse.

‘Who?'

‘The old lady,' Kenny snarls. And then: ‘Forget it,' swallowing half his pint before remembering that he has to take it easy. He bangs the glass down. He can't even have a drink without thinking about it. Money never really troubled him until he was without it. He had never visualised himself as having a lot of money, it was too far out of reach. He had never desired it even, as long as he had enough to get by. And now there was the job to plague him – or rather the lack of a job. Tomorrow he would have to start looking for one. Didn't matter what it was: anything would do to keep the old man off his back.

As if reading his thoughts Janice says: ‘Have you got a job yet?'

‘Give us chance.'

‘What did your dad say?'

‘He didn't say anything because he doesn't bloody know.'

Janice snuggles against his arm. ‘You'll get a job easy. There's some advertised in the
Observer
. Engineers, fitters, loads of jobs. I bet you have a job by this time tomorrow.'

‘Yeh,' Kenny says, far from certain. Then more brightly, ‘Yeh, there's loads of jobs.' He picks up his glass and looks into it. In the end it all comes down to money. If he had money he wouldn't be bothered about a thing. He wouldn't have to creep about the flat like somebody scared of their own shadow. Even his own sister wouldn't help him out when he needed a few bob, and she always had money, given to her by Auntie Doll or by the woman next door for running errands; he'd even seen the insurance man slip her something just for standing there simpering, a jam butty stuck in her gob. He wouldn't half give it her tomorrow, he'd make her life a misery.

‘Are we going to Wrexham next Saturday?' Janice asks, tipping her glass and drinking half a mouthful of mild.

‘What with? Washers?'

‘Me mum'll give me some.'

‘She won't give you enough for both of us, though, will she? I'm not going to have enough by next Saturday, am I? Supposing I get a job tomorrow I'm not going to get paid till next week, a week on Friday. They always work a week in hand.'

‘Won't Crabby lend it you?' Janice says. To her, Kenny and the gang are an indivisible, tightly-knit force standing against the world. In her mind she pictures them as a band of dare-devil marauders, all for one and one for all, and still finds it difficult to believe that they're willing to accept her – Janice Singleton – as a member of their mysterious sect and let her share their secrets.

Kenny laughs. ‘Oh aye, Crabby'll lend it me. He's rolling in it, Crabby.' The sarcasm is laid on in great thick slabs, but even so Janice accepts the words at face-value. If he were to tell her that he couldn't make her pregnant because he was suffering from cancer it's probable that she would believe him.

She clutches his arm tightly and her upturned face catches the dim light from the red globes set in the ceiling. Kenny senses the
quickening tempo, transmitted through her slim sharp fingers: she has beautifully white fragile hands which when resting in his are like pale leaves on a background of reddish sandstone. His hands are twice the size of hers, ungainly and heavy and blunt-fingered. His voice becomes low and thick:

‘Is your mother in?'

‘She was earlier on.'

‘Isn't she going out?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Have you got a key?'

‘Yeh.'

‘We're all right then.'

‘What if she's in?'

‘What if she is?'

Janice smiles a slow, impish smile, at once coy and yet full of guile. She is a fledgling temptress fluttering scared little wings and daring to fly close to the flame. Kenny puts his mouth to her ear and whispers sweet obscenities.

‘Is she under-age?' the landlord says, leaning over them with both hands gripping the edge of the table.

‘What you on about?'

‘How old are you?' the landlord asks Janice, ignoring Kenny.

‘Come off it,' Kenny says, ‘don't be so thick. She's been in here before—'

‘I'm talking to her,' the landlord says, not taking his eyes off Janice. ‘If you're under-age – out. I'm not being fined for you.'

The blood is starting to rush in Kenny's neck. ‘I've told you, she's been in here before. Loads of times—'

‘That's a school blouse she's got on.'

‘Is it fuck a school blouse.'

‘It's a school blouse.'

Kenny grips one of the landlord's wrists and says quickly and quietly: ‘Listen you poxy-faced gett. I've just told you. Are you
deaf? She was in here with me last week. You never said owt then.'

The landlord straightens up. ‘All right,' he says crisply. ‘Out.'

Kenny pushes the table-leg with his foot so that the glasses rock about and slop beer. He half-stands, the hand with the knuckles labelled H.A.T.E. outstretched in a gesture that is both a warning and a threat.

‘Kenny,' Janice says in a whisper, ‘let's go.'

‘Any of that and you're for it,' the landlord says, standing there and watching the large, raw-boned lad carefully but without fear. He's a fairly hefty bloke himself and he's dealt with bigger ones than Kenny. ‘Outside. Now. Let's have you.'

‘Kenny!' Janice says, tugging his sleeve.

Kenny picks up the glass and empties the beer on to the floor. He puts the glass down and with Janice trailing after him goes past the bar in the direction of the swing-doors. He doesn't use his hands but kicks his way through them. ‘You're barred from here from now on,' he hears the landlord call in the hush.

‘Go and stuff yourself.'

‘Sort ‘em out, Ted,' a voice says.

‘Bloody vandals,' the landlord's voice says faintly, the noise starting up again.

Kenny fumes his way up Bury Road. He can't stop his hands shaking. They reach the cemetery where Janice, not having dared to speak, succeeds in putting her hand in his, trotting along anxiously beside him. It frightens her that she doesn't know how to placate his anger: he is totally alone, face closed and eyes blank, in a mindless inner turmoil of rage and impotence. He doesn't even curse, which is the most frightening thing of all; she is expecting him to attack something, anything, an inanimate object like a lamp-post or a parked car or somebody's garden-gate. In the shadow of the garages down the rutted track Janice puts her arms round his waist and lays her head on his chest. Kenny leans against the garage, banging the heel of his boot like an impatient heartbeat on
the creosoted timber, his arms hanging straight down at his sides and his fists clenching and unclenching as though to the rhythm of a pulse.

‘Kenny,' Janice says softly. ‘Kenny.' She can't see his face in the darkness; the moon is hidden in cloud, occasionally glimpsed through wispy streamers, here and there patches of sky dense with stars. Traffic hums distantly on the main road.

‘Kenny,' Janice says, looking up, trying to tempt him into a kiss or at least an embrace.

‘What?' There is no give in his voice, no slackness.

Janice breathes deeply and evenly. ‘Come on.' She tightens her hold on his body, which is hard beneath her hands. At first he doesn't respond. Then his arms encircle her shoulders, the weight almost crushing her. The two of them remain like this for a while, passively holding one another, not speaking, each responding to the other's warmth and seeming as if to drift gently away from the world.