Rule of Night (12 page)

On the credit side there was Eileen. He had encountered her several times in the gloomy wooden passage which linked the stockroom with the canteen: a tall, thin, slightly gawpy girl who carried her body carelessly and who always had a blatant expression on her face. She was the kind that Kenny could stare at and she stared straight back. They never actually got to grips (Kenny being the puritan that he was) but once or twice came close enough in the dim cobwebbed light to confront each other with lecherous glances. Eileen worked on Haberdashery, and there was usually a conflict of emotions whenever Harold told Kenny to load up the skip and wheel it the length of the sales floor to Eileen's counter: on the one hand he was quite keen to have the chance of chatting her up, but on the other he went a deep shade of mottled scarlet because the items he had to deliver were STs – sanitary towels – or ‘manhole covers' as Harold called them. Grinding down in the lift Kenny turned all the packets over so that the labels were hidden, then charged past Hardware, Horticulture, Confectionery and Tinned Fruit looking neither to right nor left, and wouldn't even meet Eileen's eye until the offensive packets had been thrown under the counter out of sight.

On the Saturday that was to be his last day there, everything that could go wrong did go wrong: when he arrived late at twenty past eight, instead of Harold waiting for him with a brew he found Mr Irwin pacing up and down the stockroom with a thunderous brow: Harold had rung in to say he was sick, which meant that
Kenny would have to take charge. Kenny knew that Mr Irwin was bursting to say something about his being late, but under the circumstances had decided to restrain the impulse. Ten minutes later the lift-bell drilled a hole in the morning calm when it announced the arrival of thirty-two hundredweight sacks of King Edwards, Lincolns and Jerseys. Kenny helped the driver unload, and was humping the very last sack along the alley at the side of the store when Miss Crabtree stuck her scowling face out of the door and said that Household Goods had been waiting half an hour for some lampshades to be checked off and would he get a move on. It was Kenny's turn to restrain an impulse.

He said, ‘I haven't had me break yet.'

‘No time for that now,' Miss Crabtree said tartly. ‘The shop comes first, then you can have your break.'

Kenny thought longingly of breaking her neck and went up to unpack the lampshades. The middle-aged woman who looked after Household Goods was waiting in the stockroom office with her arms folded and her foot tapping.

‘I've got three customers down there,' she said. Kenny turned his back. He slashed open the large brown carton with a Stanley knife, and lampshades – pink, blue, turquoise and gold (all with matching tasselled fringes) – rolled across the floor. ‘Be careful!' the woman said.

Kenny controlled his breathing. ‘Do you want these… lampshades or don't you?' he asked. The lift-bell rang.

‘Give me three of each,' the woman said.

‘I've got to check them off first,' Kenny said.

The woman stamped her foot. ‘I've got customers waiting.'

‘I've got to check them off first,' Kenny said, unmoved. The lift-bell rang: three long impatient bursts. Miss Crabtree came up the stairs followed by Mr Irwin.

‘Mrs Thomas,' Miss Crabtree said, ‘haven't those shades gone down yet?'

‘He won't let me take them, Miss Crabtree,' Mrs Thomas complained.

‘Kenny,' Mr Irwin said, ‘I don't suppose you've been to look at the boiler this morning?'

‘We can't wait all day,' Miss Crabtree said.

‘I've got to check them off first,' Kenny said. ‘You told me to check everything off first.'

‘That doesn't matter now,' Miss Crabtree said. ‘There's customers waiting.'

‘I've asked him to let me have three of each,' Mrs Thomas said, ‘but he won't.'

‘You told me to check everything off,' Kenny said.

‘You can do it after,' Miss Crabtree said.

Kenny said, ‘But you
told
me—'

‘It's out,' Mr Irwin said. The lift-bell started ringing and this time wouldn't stop. Mr Irwin said: ‘Can't somebody answer that bell?'

‘Can we have three of each?' Miss Crabtree said,
‘please–'

‘Don't answer it just yet,' Mr Irwin said. ‘See to the boiler first.'

‘Isn't he going to do these shades?' Mrs Thomas said.

‘Where do you think you're off to?' Mr Irwin said.

‘For me break,' Kenny said, walking to the stairs.

‘Come on, be reasonable,' Mr Irwin said. ‘First things first.'

‘I've already told him,' said Miss Crabtree, ‘the shop comes first; then he can have his break.'

Kenny went down the stairs. ‘If I were you,' he said, ‘I'd answer that fucking bell.'

•    •    •

Brian strides into the living-room, slight, spare, not an ounce of excess flesh on him, and lifts Kenny out of the chair by his shirt collar.

‘You've been at it again,' Brian says. ‘Own up.'

Kenny blusters guiltily. ‘Own up to what? What have I done now? It's always me.'

‘Our Kat wouldn't have done it,' Brian says, still holding Kenny, who's now on his feet, and bigger and broader than his dad.

‘What? What have I done? Why pick on me?'

‘Brian,'
Margaret says from the door. ‘We don't know for certain. Let him have his say.' She looks at Kenny with a pained, appealing expression on her face: her son wouldn't wilfully lie or steal, she knows that.

‘I bloody know it's him,' Brian says, picking up his cigarettes off the mantelpiece. ‘I can tell with the look on his face. Where did he get the money from to go out last night? You haven't been giving him any, have you?

‘Have you?' Brian says when Margaret's reply is delayed. He holds the match an inch a way from his cigarette and looks at her.

Margaret says quietly, ‘Only a bob or two.' She comes into the room, softly biting her lower lip, wishing now that she hadn't mentioned it.

‘Where is it? Have you spent it?' Brian stands with his back to the artificial glowing coals, balanced on his toes like a dancer or a featherweight: sharp as a whippet and twice as spunky.

‘What?'
Kenny says. ‘Spent
what
?' He gapes from one to the other, his eyes bulging in a dumb show of bewildered innocence. The performance is just that little bit too convincing; yet still Margaret has her doubts.

‘You bloody know,' Brian says. ‘The insurance money. You've spent it, haven't you? It was on the table in the hallway last night – one pound and ten pence – and now it's fucking gone. Katrina wouldn't touch it and I haven't touched it and your mother put it
there, so that leaves you.' He points the two fingers holding the cigarette at Kenny:

‘You'll tell me, me-laddo, I'll have it out of you.'

‘Why is it always me?' Kenny says, feeling genuinely aggrieved. ‘Whenever there's owt missing it's always me gets the blame.' His eyelids start to quiver and tears prick the corners of his eyes.

‘Why?' Brian says. ‘Why? Because you're such a clog-head, that's why. A bloody pie-can. Who else could it be? Did you ever stop to think of that when you took it – who else it could be but you?' He blows out a sigh that is full of smoke and turns away in disgust.

‘You should have come to me, love,' Margaret says. ‘I could have spared you enough for a couple of pints.'

‘I never said it
was
me,' Kenny says. He throws himself down in the chair, almost weeping.

‘And you'll stop this cadging off your mother,' Brian says, resuming the attack. ‘If it isn't beer-money it's fags. You lie around the house all day and then expect to go off boozing at night.'

Kenny sulks in the chair. ‘Not my fault I can't get a job.'

‘Leave the lad alone,' Margaret says.

‘No,' Brian says with a flash of coldness, ‘I won't.' He's about to say that it's as much her fault as Kenny's – for being so soft with him – but he doesn't feel like embarking on a family feud. The thing that annoys him even more than the money being stolen is Kenny's stupidity: it's like an insult, a personal affront, to be reminded that whenever the Seddons stepped outside the law they did it as bumbling amateurs, almost wilfully inviting disaster to befall them. And he remembers too the night they picked him up, his hands cut to ribbons from trying to scramble through the broken window and dripping all over the floor of the Black Maria.

‘I could have been mistaken,' Margaret says, flopping down into a chair. She tucks her red mottled legs underneath her large
rump and pulls her skirt down, stained from the cafe. Her streaky blonde hair hovers like an indefinite halo above her head.

‘Don't bloody insult me, woman,' Brian says, raising his voice. Anger suddenly runs in his blood and he strikes Kenny on the side of the head with the back of his hand.

The word ‘Liar' is spoken – shouted – but is sucked in by the carpet and soft furnishings, muffled by the lightweight internal partitions of compressed fibreboard. There is a flurry of movement as Kenny tries to make a break for it; Brian thumps him again, then restrains him, and Margaret gets between them. The next thing that happens is that Kenny's nose is bleeding and Brian and Margaret are engaged in an awkward dance in front of the uniform flames of the simulated fire-effect. The hearth rug wraps itself round their feet as they stumble a few steps together.

‘Go and put a cold flannel on your nose,' Margaret says over her shoulder.

Kenny hangs his head in the stainless steel sink and watches the red swirl away down the plug-hole. He moves his head from side to side, making a pattern of dissolving dots, and then experiments with a few drips over the dirty crockery in the plastic bowl.

‘Oh give over Brian,' he hears Margaret's voice say scathingly from the living-room. Kenny knows from her tone that she is confronting him with his own past, dredging up every domestic misdemeanour and marital infidelity and all the falls from grace since they were married. She'll next remind him that he has no claim on purity and innocence…

‘Were you never a lad?'

Kenny nods. Or were you never a lad…

‘Your mother's told me enough about
you
.'

Kenny grins. Or that. It was always, or usually always, the same. Brian's voice over-rides his mother's continual, pounding barrage with a firmly stated: ‘He's a liar, that lad; he's bloody lied to me.'

‘All right then, he's lied, he's lied – have you never lied?'

Kenny smiles into the sink.

There follows a long and involved dialogue concerning the unemployment situation nationally, and why he's been fired from four jobs in twelve months, and what the hell has the Common Market got to do with it, and who's to buy the food week after week to feed a human dustbin, and already he's been in trouble with the police, and now it's the fucking Juvenile Liaison Officer (language!) he's got to go and see every third Friday in the month, and where does he get to every other week when his bed hasn't been slept in for nights at a time, and only turning up to cadge this and borrow that and
steal
the other.

‘Brian-Bloody-Know-All!' Margaret says with a thin sneer of scorn in her voice.

Brian knows that he can't possibly win at this game: everything he says will be deflected, turned inside-out, upside-down, and redirected at his own head. Every word he utters is like a boomerang that sooner or later will come whizzing back at twice the speed it left his lips. He has two alternatives – either to explode into uncontrollable fury and yell her into submission or to pick up his jacket, slam the door, and shoot off to the Weavers.

Whatever happens, Kenny is safe; for the umpteenth time disaster has been averted. He will get a roasting from Margaret but he can handle her by the simple method of taking not a blind bit of notice of anything she says. And anyway, it's too late now: the insurance money (a measly quid and ten pence) has gone for good. They can't dock it from his wages because he doesn't have any wages. They're thick, the pair of them. Brian doesn't even know he's been staying at Janice's; Margaret knows, because she asked him and he told her, but she won't dare tell Brian – unless there's a big bust-up one Friday night, the two of them sozzled on bitter and brown ale, and in a raging temper Brian insists on knowing what goes on behind his back, and why everybody in his own
family is so bloody secretive, and if that lad doesn't start shaping soon there'll be trouble.

When his mother comes into the kitchen Kenny is sitting at the table reading the
Daily Mirror
and eating biscuits out of the tin.

‘One of these days you'll be the death of me,' Margaret says.

‘I should be so lucky,' Kenny says, munching away.

Rochdale Observer, 12 December 1973

SOCCER MOB RUNS WILD

ONE FAN'S FACE SLASHED

HOUSES AND SHOPS STONED

ONE FAN
slashed across the face with a razor … a couple injured by flying glass … four windows broken … toilets smashed … a flag stolen … and a director's box invaded.

This is the tally of trouble in and around the Rochdale Football Club ground at Spotland on Saturday during and after the game against Blackburn Rovers.

The summary of incidents collated by police read:

Mohammed Khan, an 18-year-old Blackburn fan, slashed across the face with a cut-throat razor. Hospital treatment required, 26 stitches in the wound.

Club flag lowered by some Rovers supporters. Flag recovered by police outside the ground.

Home directors' box besieged by about 80 fans at halftime. Two climbed in among the directors.