off then?’
‘I have to get home,’ she said, implying some urgent reason. ‘Lift up your shirt.’
She fumbled about in her pockets for a biro. ‘Lift up your shirt,’ she repeated, poking me in t’ chest. I rolled up my T-shirt. It wor damp. She wrote her number across my chest. It tickled and I tried not to squirm.
‘Don’t rub it off before you can remember it.’
Then, before I could say owt more, she wor gone, darting off in t’ direction of t’ town centre.
The next week I tried phoning her. The line wor out of order. She didn’t show at the FK Club neither. So I asked Judy about her.
‘Gina? You a friend of hers?’
‘Sort of.’
‘All her friends are sort of.’
She finally pitched up at the FK Club weeks later. Her hair wor now dyed platinum blonde, she wore a black string vest under a biker’s jacket (no bra), DMs and torn black leggings. I ignored her ’til she placed hersen in front of me, fixing me wi’ a triumphant stare.
‘Didn’t you recognise me, then?’
‘Course I friggin’ did.’
‘Oooooh, Mister Coool!’ She chuckled and turned on her heeled boots.
For t’ rest of t’ night she wor firing off dark glances at me. Downstairs, a small crowd wor watching Patrick Fitzgerald’s acoustic friggin’ punk. Songs about safety pins stuck in hearts. Upstairs, a few stony-faced rastas slunk around t’ pool table and a line of stockingless white girls in tight, spangly dresses perched on bar stools, dragging on their ciggies.
It wor then I clapped eyes on him. The lad from t’ Merrion Centre multi-storey. Jim’s boy.
I sidled closer ’til I wor only a few feet from him. He wor facing slightly away, making out that he hadn’t clocked me, but I knew he had. He wor waiting like a gazelle: nervous, alert, almost quivering.
All of a sudden he slunk away, then glanced back at me. I knew I wor meant to follow.
He led me through t’ fire doors and down t’ rear steps that led to t’ boiler room. In t’ pitch-black hollow of t’ doorway we fell greedily on each other, pulling at each other’s clothes. Behind t’ steel door the boiler hissed like some locked-up beast. I grazed my knuckles against t’ wall. I yanked down his drainpipe keks and dropped to my knees and took his hard-on in my mouth. Moments later he spunked off wi’ a solitary exhalation, rucked up his keks, palmed his hair, mumbled summat and left. I kicked t’ boiler door. ‘Fuck!’ I hadn’t even unzipped, barely got started.
‘Fuck!’
I headed back up the steps. The bugger had shut the fire doors after him. I clambered over a wall and dropped into t’ road. The doorman wouldn’t let me back in unless I paid again cos I didn’t have a pass-out stamp.
I headed home, toward t’ city centre. It wor raining sideways. The road gleamed in t’ wet and the city neon lights blurred at the edges.
Taxi! I saw a taxi beetling along. I stepped out into t’ road, waving at it as its headlights bore down on me. The taxi slowed, then picked up speed again.
‘Fucker!’
The taxi stopped abruptly, slammed into reverse. Oh, fuck, I wor thinking, oh friggin’ hell. The driver wound down t’ window.
‘I ain’t supposed to stop here. Get in, then, before t’ boys in blue clap eyes on us.’
I slumped into a corner of t’ cab, my mouth still tasting salty-sweet from t’ lad’s load.
‘Bin another one,’ the driver wor saying as he swung sharp right down a pitch-black side street. ‘How many’s that now? Of course, it could all be a nasty coincidence, but I’d say it worn’t, I’d say there’s a maniac on t’ loose, wouldn’t you? Want to know what the wife thinks about it all? She thinks it’s someone wi’ t’ clap who’s out for revenge. But then, t’ wife’s full of ideas like that about t’ world. Me, I don’t know what to think. You go up the Carlisle Hotel and you’ll find ’em, strung along t’ bar stools wi’ price tags on t’ backs of their stilettos. Some of ’em you wouldn’t let a dog lift its leg on, know what I mean? Still, no one deserves to get sliced up, right? Picked up a few of their punters in my time. Well, you would, wouldn’t you, in this job? As long as they pay the fare I don’t look none too close. Young’un like you don’t go wi’ slappers like that, do you?’
‘No.’
‘No. At your age you shouldn’t need to. This one wor done in over Bradford way. Murdered in her own bed.’
At the mention of bed I wor overcome by tiredness. I yawned.
23/04/1977
Mitch’s job wor driving a refrigerated lorry, delivering raw meat and canned food to works and school canteens around South Yorkshire. He had to deliver some pig carcasses to a coalmine, and asked me if I wanted to go wi’ him.
While Mitch worked Monday to Friday, I always worked the weekend, and had two free days in between. It wor siling it down outside, so I wor grouching about t’ house, getting under Mother’s feet or playing my punk records in my room or tugging mesen off at similar speed, so when t’ chance wor offered to get out I grabbed it wi’ both free hands.
Mitch’s lorry cab wor decked out in country-and-western/Southern US stuff, wi’ Texas Lone Stars and stick-on cacti, US dollar bills and dolly-bird pin-ups in Confederate flag bikinis, and Leeds Utd and Elvis stickers. To Mitch, Elvis wor some sort of god. Even though he had a bald patch, Mitch still combed his few strands into a greaser style and squeezed into his winklepickers on t’ rare times he took Mother out for some country-and-western hoofing.
The mine wor out Castleford way. We drove along a bumpy track between moonscape mounds of slack and scree. The air wor flecked wi’ coal dust like swarms of tiny black flies. We heard a bell ring, and then up ahead we saw t’ pit wheel turning, taking men under or bringing ’em back up top.
Mitch backed the van up to t’ loading bay of a low red-brick building that wor t’ kitchens and canteen. A large woman looked on, leaning against t’ doorframe, her thick arms folded over her apron. She wore a liquid-blue hygiene bag over her tight black curls.
We unbolted the doors and clambered up into t’ refrigerated air. There wor four carcasses on hooks: pale, headless, limbless, wrapped in orange meshing. They wor still swaying gently.
Mitch said, ‘Help us get ’em down, then.’
The carcasses wor smooth and cold to t’ touch, and the orange mesh made ’em hard to grip. It took the both of us to lift each one off its hook and heave it onto a pallet. By t’ time we’d unhooked the third we wor sweating heavily.
I pondered the pile of pigs on t’ pallet. Hard to think that not so long back they’d been snuffling happily
