“Yeah, Billy,” Tommy said. “I got a little girl.”
“What sort of age is she, Tommy?”
“She'll be nine next birthday.”
“That's nice,” I said. “Nine. Nice age is that.”
“Pretty little thing, she is,” Tommy said. “Golden curly hair. She really loves her terrible old daddy.”
“I bet she does.”
“Don't know what I'd do if anything was to happen to her.”
“I know what you mean.”
I turned to Dave Simmons.
“What about you, Dave?” I said. “You've got a couple, haven't you?”
“That's right, Billy. Twins. Little crackers they are.” He fished a small leather envelope out of his breast pocket. “Did I ever show you the snaps?”
“Don't think you did, Dave,” I said, walking over to him. I stood behind his chair and bent over him.
“That's outside the house with the missus,” Dave said, handing me a photograph. “And this one's at Margate with their Auntie Annie. They had a week there last year.”
“Nice,” I said. “You seen these, Terry?”
Terry joined me behind Dave's chair.
“Charmers,” Terry said. “Aren't they, Billy?”
I looked across at Hopper.
“Just his type, I would have thought,” I said.
“Bit old for him,” said Ray Crompton. “Too much for him to handle.”
“Probably prefers them with nappies on,” said George Hodge.
“Do you like them in nappies?” said Des Walker.
“Lovely feller, really,” said Terry.
“A charmer.”
“Just loves kiddies.”
“Do anything for them.”
“To them.”
“Which bit do you like best? Before or after?”
“Or in between?”
“The bit with the bayonet, I should think.”
“When they're crying for their mummies.”
“They should have given him to the father.”
“They should have cut his fucking balls off.”
“Maybe somebody will.”
Hopper's face had gone the colour of ice cream and his head was flicking from speaker to speaker like the swivel head on a ventriloquist's dummy. Everybody was worked up ready to explode. It was written all over their faces. I was waiting for somebody to trip it so that I could screw the first two knuckles of my fist into Hopper's neck.
While everybody had been calling out, the screw had stood up and put himself between Hopper and the rest of us, but now there was fear on his face because he knew that once we moved there would be absolutely nothing at all that he could do to stop us.
One or two of the boys made movements as if they were about to stand up. The screw said: “Out, Hopper. Back to your cell.”
Hopper stood up as though he was on strings and ran out of the room.
“He's crying,” somebody said. “The rotten little bastard's crying.”
The screw gave us as long a look as he dared and then followed after Hopper.
“Fuck it,” I said, belting the back of Tommy Dugdale's chair.
“Billy, that was a victory,” said Benny Beauty. “No one got nicked. Gordon will be sick about the whole thing.”
“We should have had him,” I said. “We will next time.”
“Once, when I was in Leicester,” said Ray Crompton, “there was a feller called Cliff Reid who was down for it, and so what everybody did was to fill up their mugs from the tea-room boiler and they let him have it that way.”
“Here, that's not half bad,” said Terry. “That's a little beauty.”
“If we were to do that,” I said, “everybody would have to be in on it. Nobody not carrying a mug.”
“What about the lads down on the Twos?” said Ray. “Are they in?”
The Twos were well pleased it wasn't on their plate. You could tell. There was an atmosphere of wary elation about them, like frightened kids in a classroom when only one of them was responsible for putting the tintack on teacher's seat but knowing that they'd all cop for it in the end.
I wandered down to the Twos during the day and the only one who openly committed himself to the plan was Walter, who was a bit of a Twos denizen. I had my own ideas about that one: knowing Walter, he'd sussed that he didn't have to push so hard on the Twos as he would on the Threes. There were more starry eyes downstairs.
“So it's the all off tonight, Billy,” Walter said.
“Yes,” I said. “Coming up are you, Walter?”
“I'll be there,” he said.
“Anybody else?”
“Everybody likes the idea.”
“So?”
“You never know.”
“I do,” I said.
Walter folded up the newspaper he'd been reading and leant forward, looking me in the face. The usual limpness had gone. The skin on his face was stretched tighter over his skull.
“Listen, Billy,” he said. “You know what would be better?”
“Tell me, Walter?”
“Not boiling water: boiling fat,” he said. “It clings.”
He clawed his hands across his face in imitation of the effect his idea would have. He was really living the part.
“Oh, that's lovely, Wally,” I chivvied. “And we'll all end up with another five apiece. It's like saying I haven't got enough bird, please give me some more.”
Walter relaxed again.
“What's the difference?” he said. “We won't exactly get a weekend in Brighton for the water.”
Oh, so you've considered that one, I thought. I wonder if we
will
be seeing you tonight, Walter.
I got up and left him on the Twos.
That night there were no weights. All the Threes men came out holding their mugs like testimonials of intent. Everybody took their places in the TV room and waited. Three-quarters of an hour later and there was no sign of Hopper.
Benny Beauty said: “Maybe he's had the sense to stay behind his door.”
I shook my head.
“Maybe he has but not Moffatt,” I said. “I'm on to him. He's not going to be beat in his first week. He'll have Hopper down here even if he has to parcel him up.”
We waited some more. Nothing happened. Then about eight o'clock Sammy Chopping from off the Twos stuck his head round the TV room door.
“Hopper's on the Twos,” he said. “They've fetched him in there.”
“So why tell us?” I said. “What the fuck are they doing about it down there?”
“I dunno,” said Sammy.
“Fuck all, that's what,” I said, getting up. “I knew those sods would chicken out.”
I could tell everybody was pleased at seeing the ball out of their court and that not one of them wanted to make it down on the Twos so I cleared off down there on my own.
Both TV rooms were situated on the outside corner of the L, one below the other. I walked past the door of the Twos' room. The room was empty except for Hopper and his screw.
I went straight to Walter's cell. There were about five of them in there muttering about it. I stood in the doorway.
“What's happening, then?” I said.
Everybody except for Walter looked a bit sheepish.
Walter said: “We're just working out the best way of approaching it.”
He didn't like it. It was written all over his face. He didn't like the new boy coming down to his floor and embarrassing him in front of his little enclave, making him look a chicken for not being first in with a mug.
“What's to work out?” I said. “You just go in and you do it.”
One of them said: “It's not that easy.”
“Listen,” I said. “None of you cunts offered to come upstairs and help us, did you? Not when you thought you'd get away without being in it. So now it's down here, and it's all yours. Boiling water in the boat.”
“At the same time, Billy,” said Walter, liking it less and less, “I don't see anybody from the Threes funneling down here.”
“What am I then, Walter? A fly on the fucking wall? I'll stand for the rest of them.”
And this was the part that Walter liked least of all. I turned away from the cell door and all of Walter's brood just automatically got up off their backsides and went to get their mugs. Walter had no choice but to follow after them as though the general exodus had got something to do with him.
While the others from Walter's room went to fetch their mugs, I sorted a few more malingerers from out of their cells and went off on my own to the Twos' TV room to wait for them to assemble.
But when I got there the room was empty except for Benny Beauty who was sitting back in his armchair smoking and watching television as though there was nothing on except the TV set.
“Where's Hopper?” I said.
Benny blew out smoke. He didn't take his eyes off the TV.
“I told him to fuck off else he'd get hurt. He's banged himself behind his door.”
“What did you tell him that for?”
“I'm not with you.”
“I mean, you knew what the plan was. For Christ's sake, man. How can we do the ponce now?”
“Oh, that,” he said. “Yeah, well, Billy, but who wants to get nicked for that, eh? I mean, the way you're going about it, you'll get
everybody
nicked. If it's got to be done it's got to be done but it's better this way.”
I was beginning to get it.
“Who says it's better?” I asked.
“Well, Billy, there's only you here, so
everybody
must say it's better.”
Yes, I thought, but they daren't say it to me. Walter's organised this one. Just to trim a bit of weight off me.
Footsteps sounded in the corridor behind me. Just the one pair. Walter's. He appeared next to me in the doorway carrying his mug.
“Where is everybody, then?”
“Don't you know, Walter?” I said.
Walter tut-tutted.
“Everybody dropped out, have they?” he said.
“Everybody but us, Walter,” I said. “That's what it looks like.”
“Pity,” he said. “Still, there'll be another time.”
But there wasn't. The next day Moffatt installed a set on the Fours, just for the use of the sex-cases and no one else. Everybody got steamed up about it, and the new catch phrase was, “The governor does like a sex-case.” But the people who got steamed up were the same people who'd swayed in Walter's wind and left themselves out of actually doing anything about Hopper.
Of course, I never let on to Walter that I'd cracked it. That's what he would have liked. I was just the same as ever. But we both knew what it was all about; it was either him or me. For the time being there was just one consolation as far as I was concerned: that inside Walter's rubber mind he knew who it was going to be in the end.
Sitting at the table next to the window, the street sounds drifting up unheard, my elbows boring into the green dust of the corduroy table-cloth, the pages of my mother's library book brilliant in the window's sunshine. The clock ticks and a fly buzzes and the dust itself hums with silence. The cocoon is complete. The book wrapped round me like a blanket. Till tea time I belong to no one but myself and the book is me till then.
But I'd forgotten Linda.
The door opens and the sound of her voice strives against the rattle of the handle and the crash of the woodwork, the entrance of her tiny body propelled forward on the kitchen sounds behind her.
“Billy billy billy,” she shrieks. “Billy billy billy.”
“Clear off.”
“I want to come in.”
“I'm reading.”
“Read to me, Billy.”
“You wouldn't understand it.”
She runs to the table and cuddles close to me.
“Go on, Billy, read me a story.”
Mam comes into the room to get her cigarettes.
“Go on, Billy, read to your sister.”
I push Linda away.
“Go on, get out of it,” I tell her. Then to Mam: “Dad can read to her when he comes up.”
“Your father'll be too tired. He has a long day.”
Yes, a long day, I think. Half past six in the morning when he opens the shop till nine o'clock at night. Then away to the pub. He doesn't even come up for his dinner any more.
“Is Dad coming up today, Ma?” Linda says. “Is he coming up?”
“He's a very busy man, your father,” she says as she goes back into the kitchen.
I recognise the tone of voice and I recognise her expression. She's going to defend him, to tell us how hard he works, that if it wasn't for Dad we'd be across the road in the Buildings with the rest of them, that he only thinks of us, that she, Mam, has a lot to be thankful for, but although she says the words in the right tone of voice the final effect is different, as though she has been referring to herself, not Dad, and by referring to herself she's having a go at Dad, by letting us know that she's only defending him for our sakes, because that's her duty, as Mum, even though she has a lot to put up with, she puts us first, even though he won't. And yet she's said none of this, but it's all there.
Of course, the final underlining will be the mentioning of the drink. I wonder how she'll work it in today? Yesterday it was easy for her. Dad had asked for some to be brought so she'd asked me to go, given me the jug, trying to hide her distaste but not trying hard enough, so that I'd see in her face what she wanted me to see, how noble she was trying to be secret, how noble in comparison to the man downstairs behind the counter, rocking quietly on his feet staring back in time to the years of his childhood in the heather, becoming more silent as each drink burns down into his stomach.
I wait, staring at the page, while Linda slides her hot arms round my shoulders, pressing close to me and gently rocking, as if she is trying to sway me off my seat without my realising.
“Billy,” she says, “read to me from the book; tell me the story.”
In the kitchen the kettle boils and hot water gurgles into the tea pot. A pause for brewing then two cups are filled and the tea is stirred and Mam says: “Billy, will you take this down to your Dad? He'll be ready for a cup by now.”