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,
