Deck boy, p.2
Deck Boy, page 2
OCEAN VIEW, whose only glimpse of the sea was a tiny triangle of blue from the bathroom window, was a guest house set several streets back from the beach.
Charlie followed me into the brown, cabbage-smelling hall. An array of notices announced:
Smoking strictly prohibited.
Front door will be locked at 10.30pm.
Departing guests must quit their rooms by 10.00am.
Breakfast served between 8.00am and 9.00am only.
PRIVATE : for attention ring the bell.
A doorway beside the Private notice was covered by a clicking bead curtain. Seconds after we arrived it was swished back and the landlady emerged from her hidden quarters. Vera Stringbaum (Mrs), as she was named on various documents, was a suspicious-looking woman of middle age. The first thing I noticed about her was her hair which was dyed an unnatural shade sometimes called ox-blood. In tight curls, like dark red snails, it clung about her bony head. Everything about her was thin: her nose, her lips, her chest, her legs. She wore a limp black dress and carpet slippers.
“Oh, it’s you.” Mrs Stringbaum’s voice was as sharp as the matching red pencil line of her eyebrows.
“I, er– ”
“We don’t encourage guests to come and go at all hours. Do we, Mr Stringbaum?” She called through the curtain but there was no reply. “This isn’t a hotel. I did tell you.”
“Well, I only – ”
“If you want to be in and out all day, you should have put up at the Grand.” She surveyed Charlie, from the ring in his brown ear to the chain round his throat, the rings on his fingers and his striped jeans. Her nostrils flared. “You didn’t tell me you had friends in Westport.” She pointed to yet another notice: No Visitors.
I didn’t know what to say.
“Go on then, if you want to fetch something from your room. He can wait down here. But I hope you’re not planning to make a habit of it.” She turned back through the clicking beads. “Your meal will be on the table at five-thirty as arranged.”
“What the hell are you staying here for?” Charlie said when the coast was clear.
“It looked all right from the outside.”
“Miserable old bag.”
“Sorry.” I was embarrassed. “Will you wait while I – ”
“Course, that’s what we come for. Not going to see my old mate stuck in a dump like this.” He grinned. “Reckon you’re up to telling her you’ve changed your mind?”
I made a face. “Dunno.”
“If I was in your place I’d do a runner.”
“What?”
“Nick off without paying. Mean-minded old cow.”
“I can’t, I’ve got my rucksack upstairs. All my spare clothes an’ that are in it.”
“Well, fetch it down an’ just walk out.”
“She’d see me. There’d be a terrific row.”
“So what, you’re bigger than she is. Anyway, there’s two of us.”
“What about Mr Stringbean?”
“Probably give us a hand – if he exists. Imagine being married to her.” Charlie thought for a moment. “Is your room at the front?”
“I think so.” I tried to remember.
“Well, chuck your bag out the window,” Charlie said. “I’ll go outside an’ catch it. Then you come downstairs with a scarf or somethin’ an’ we just walk away.”
“She’s got my name in that book.” I pointed to the register on the hall table. “And my auntie’s address. I had to fill it in when I arrived.”
“No prob.” Charlie examined the book, ripped out the top sheet and crumpled it into his pocket. “OK now?” He grinned. “Go on, I’ll wait on the pavement.”
I was appalled and stared at him, then ran upstairs and let myself into my room. My pyjamas lay on the bed, toothbrush by the washbasin. Hastily I stuffed everything into my rucksack and pushed open the window. A smallish front garden lay beneath: red gravel, flowerbeds and a green iron railing.
Charlie beckoned from the pavement. “Come on, mate. Bombs away!”
It was the moment of no return. I took a deep breath. Leaning far out, I tossed the rucksack towards him.
It was a bad throw. I couldn’t get a swing and one of the straps caught my thumb. With a crash it landed in a shrub well short of the pavement. Branches broke off, berries scattered.
Charlie swung his leg over the railing and retrieved it from the flowerbed. But somewhere beneath me there was a shriek. Mrs Stringbaum had spotted him through the net curtain. A door banged and she came leaping down the front steps.
“Stop!” Her skinny knees pumped beneath the black dress. “Stop! Give that ‘ere.” She sprinted across the gravel.
A strap tangled in the twigs. Charlie tugged it free, but before he could escape Mrs Stringbaum seized the strap that trailed behind. Charlie and the furious woman faced each other across the damaged bush, the rucksack tight between them.
“Let go!” Mrs Stringbaum gave a heave.
Charlie heaved back, dragging the landlady clear off her feet into the leaves and berries.
“Let go!” she screamed again, refusing to loosen her claw-like grip. “Runnin’ off without payin’! I’ll ’ave the police on the pair of you.”
With an almighty wrench, Charlie tugged the rucksack free and scrambled back over the fence.
“Help! Police!” Mrs Stringbaum regained her feet and pushed down the dress to cover her shredded tights. “Vandal! Thief!”
But by this time Charlie was racing away, my rucksack trailing from his hand. Two gardens along he stopped.
Realising she had lost him, Mrs Stringbaum turned and stared up at the window where I stood frozen with horror. “I’ve got one of you anyway!” she cried vindictively. “You’ll not escape that easy.” On goat-like legs she ran back to the house.
I’d left my escape too late, she would confront me in the hallway. And to make matters worse, a skinny old man in a vest and braces had emerged at the top of the steps. I guessed this was Mr Stringbaum.
“What’s going on, Vera?”
She screeched a reply.
In a panic I ran to the bedroom door. Where was the key? I couldn’t see it. Feet came racing up the stairs. I grabbed the bed and shoved it against the door.
Next moment the handle turned. Somebody pushed. The bed shifted.
“Let me in!” Mrs Stringbaum hammered on the panels. “This instant! Do you hear me!”
Nothing could have made me open that door. I pushed the bed up hard and ran back to the window. Beneath me was a drop of five metres. I could jump – but what if I twisted an ankle? Then just to one side I spotted a drainpipe.
There were voices on the landing. The bed scraped back. I pulled a chair to the window and next moment was out through the gap, standing on the sill.
The door opened wide enough for Mrs Stringbaum to squeeze through. Uttering a hawk-like cry, she ran across the carpet.
I reached for the bracket that fastened the drainpipe to the guttering and swung my weight across. To my relief the bracket held. Bracing my feet against the wall, I began to descend.
“Come ’ere!” Mrs Stringbaum leaned from the window and grabbed for my jacket. “Rotten teenagers!”
She couldn’t hold me. I was halfway down and made a jump for the gravel.
Charlie had returned. “Come on, mate.”
I looked up at the window. Mrs Stringbaum had gone and Mr Stringbaum stood in her place. He was clutching a plate from the chest of drawers. Baring his false teeth, he flung it after me. It shattered on one of the rocks that surrounded the flowerbeds. He threw a jug.
My head was in a whirl. I scrambled over the wrought-iron railing to join Charlie and we ran off down the pavement. After fifty yards we paused to look back.
Mr Stringbaum was shouting from the window.
Mrs Stringbaum emerged from the gate. In one hand she brandished a flapping umbrella. “Bloody kids! Don’t think you’re getting away with this. I’ve got your address in my visitor’s book remember.”
Charlie looked at me and grinned. “What an exciting life you lead.”
“Me!”
“Come on, let’s go and see mum.”
I took my rucksack and we jogged on through the autumn leaves.
Black Sunrise
“ARE YOU listening, our Charlie?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Never mind yeah, yeah. I mean it. You’re to be back in this house by eleven-thirty.”
The Sunderlands lived in a council house, or rather two semi’s knocked into one. The front door was freshly painted, the garden was tidy, a punctured football belonging to a playful Rottweiler lay on the lawn.
To my surprise I knew Mrs Sunderland, Charlie’s mum. She had been one of the dinner ladies at Westport High, the school I attended before my gran died. She was popular, and now I saw her at home she was one of the nicest women I’d ever met – fat, funny, loving and sensible. Surprisingly, too, having Charlie for a son, she was white.
Seventeen years earlier, with four boys and a girl of their own, the Sunderlands had adopted Charlie when he was a baby in need of a home. After much thought they had christened him Charles Mohammed, so that if he wished to have an Asian name or become a Moslem when he grew up, there would be no need to change his birth certificate. But the easygoing Charlie, surrounded by his family, never gave it a thought and Charlie Sunderland he had remained.
Only his brother Frank remained at home, the rest had moved away: Bill a soldier in Yorkshire, Philip a journalist in London, Danny a student in Manchester, and Penny still in Westport, married to a painter and decorator with a little girl of two and another baby on the way. Mr Sunderland, newly retired from the railways, was a small man who spent most of his time in the back garden with his cages of free-flying budgies, parakeets and African parrots. They were a sprawling, happy family, very different from me in my famous school, with no brothers or sisters, my mum run off, gran dead, dad away at sea, and a single unmarried auntie in Oxford whose passion in life was bridge, but saw it as her duty to give me a home during the school holidays.
“You can stay out until all hours yourself, Charlie,” his mother continued, “I don’t mind that. Goodness knows what you get up to when you’re away on those ships – I don’t even want to think about it. But Ben here’s only fourteen and I want you back by eleven-thirty, not a minute later.”
“I hear you.”
“Yes, but are you listening? And stay away from those bars, you’re not even eighteen yourself yet. All right?”
“OK! OK!” Charlie rolled his eyes then turned to examine himself in the hall mirror.
“Off to the disco then?” Mrs Sunderland straightened my collar. “That Black Sunrise place? Can’t say I like the look of it myself, all those pictures of skeletons and witches outside. Still, I’m not a teenager any more. You look very nice, love. Unlike some I could mention with their perms and earrings.”
“Ah, you’re just jealous you didn’t meet me when you were seventeen.”
“With hair like that! You fancy yourself, don’t you?”
“Certainly do, Mum.” Charlie kissed her on the cheek.
“Bye, love.”
“Bye, Mrs Sunderland,” I said. “Thanks for the tea and that.”
She squeezed my arm. “You go off and enjoy yourself, love. Don’t let that one lead you astray.”
I crouched to pat Doctor Death, the huge soft Rottweiler, who licked my face with a sloppy tongue.
“Doc’s taken to you,” Mrs Sunderland said as I scrubbed my lips with a sleeve. “Haven’t you, you big daft lump.” She pulled the dog roughly by his collar and Doctor Death rolled on his back in ecstasy. She rubbed his chest. “And don’t you forget, our Charlie. Half past eleven. I’ll be waiting up. And I’ll be cross if you’re late.”
I trotted down the front steps and Charlie pulled the door shut. Daylight was almost gone. As we walked through the orange-lit estate, I tugged up my collar. The wind was colder and a thin drizzle blew from the sea. By the time we reached the main road it had turned to rain. Cars swept past, spray whirling in their wakes.
I looked for a bus stop.
“Let’s take a taxi.” Charlie ran out into the road with his arm raised. Cars swerved round him. A taxi sped past. The second taxi pulled in to the kerb.
“St Steven’s,” Charlie said as we climbed in.
“Off Lady Road? That new disco place, Black Sabbat or something?”
“That’s it.” Charlie rubbed the raindrops from his face.
It was a black city taxi and smelled of cigarettes. “Do you often do this?” I asked.
“Take a taxi? Not in Westport, all the time at sea though.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, you’ve maybe only got a couple of nights ashore, don’t want to waste them finding your way around. ’Sides, it’s safer. Some of these places you could end up in an alley with your wallet gone an’ a knife in your back. Go with your shipmates. Share the cost, bit of company, have a laugh.”
I looked out at the wet pavements.
“That reminds me.” Charlie dug in his pocket. “Dad said to give you this.”
It was a ten pound note.
“Ah, no.” I tried not to take it. “Look, I’ve got – ”
Charlie pushed the note into my hand. “Too late now. ’Sides, he’d be black affronted. Tell you what, you pay the taxi, I’ll get the disco.”
St Steven’s Church, no longer a place of worship, stood in a side-street near the city centre. It was surrounded by a tremendous wrought-iron fence. Open gates led to a broad flight of steps that mounted to the heavy doors. Phosphorescent images of skulls, open coffins, witches and the undead shone in the light of street lamps. Twelve demons, cavorting in neon flames, spelled out the name ‘Black Sunrise’.
It was the newest and most popular disco in the city. No alcohol was served which meant it attracted all those teenagers who could not pass for eighteen.
We joined the queue halfway up the steps. Girls held bags and coats above their heads to ward off the rain. It wasn’t enough. By the time they reached the entrance their hair hung in rats’ tails and mascara made tracks down their cheeks. With shrieks of merriment and dismay, they hurried to the toilets to repair the damage.
I shook my head and saw the water fly off. Raindrops sparkled in Charlie’s curls as he paid the entrance money. Perched on the end of a table, a girl with black lipstick, black eye-shadow and bitten black nails stamped the back of our hands.
“I thought you only did that if we go out,” Charlie said.
“Whatever,” she said in a bored voice and rolled her gum.
I examined the smeary stamp, a devil’s head and the date. “This says the sixth.” I checked my watch. “It’s the thirteenth.”
The girl sighed and looked away.
We gave our jackets to a man in the cloakroom and wandered into the vast open space of the disco.
The worshippers at St Steven’s, which had ceased to be a church only three years earlier, could never have imagined such a scene. Strobe lights, high on the ancient walls, flickered across the darkness. Coloured beams criss-crossed the vaulted roof. Spotlit in the old organ loft, the disc jockey looked down on the swaying mass of teenagers. The throb of drums and raging chants of Take my Love, the current Number Two hit, were so loud you’d think the stained-glass windows must explode into the street:
Take my love and leave me never,
Hold me and you’ll live forever,
Aaaaaahhhhhh !
Five hundred heads shook wildly, five hundred mouths opened wide, five hundred voices united in the final scream.
Charlie put his mouth to my ear: “Fancy a Coke?”
I nodded and we made our way towards the altar end of the church where there was a crush of small tables. The noise there was a bit less and we joined the queue by the vestry door.
“Hey! Charlie boy!”
I looked round. A gangly youth about the same age as Charlie, tanned and gap-toothed, waved a can to attract his attention.
“It’s Joey Bennett,” Charlie said. “Hey, Joey!”
He beckoned and Joey pushed through the crowd, a girl clinging to his arm.
Joey Bennett
HE WAS tall and skinny with his head shaved at the sides and a fantastic Mohican. Bright blue and orange, it jutted from his forehead and ran to the back of his neck. With his prominent nose, rubbery lips and an Adam’s apple the size of Ben Nevis, it gave him a pleasant, slightly comical appearance. His clothes were tight to accentuate his thinness: a painted-on tropical shirt and black jeans hung with silver chains. He looked a bit like a giraffe with a cockatoo on its head.
He had slopped his can when he waved and sucked the back of his hand.
“Hi there, Joey boy!” Charlie punched him lightly on the chest. “Love the hair. When’d you get home?”
Joey sniffed. He had a cold. “Signed off the old China Rose three weeks back.” He drew the girl forward. “This is Fizz.”
She was nice. Ginger hair cut in spikes and a cartload of make-up. Smashing little figure.
“This here’s Charlie.” Joey shouted above the music. “Old pal from sea school.”
She held out a hand. “Pleased to meet you.”
“My mate Ben.” Charlie introduced me.
“I’ll get y’ a drink,” Joey shouted. “See if you can grab a table.”
I followed Charlie to the altar area, magnificent stonework from three metres up, thronging teenagers below. All the tables were taken. Then a group rose from one against the wall.
“Charlie, over here.” I pushed forward and reached it seconds ahead of two other boys.
“That’s ours.” The boy in front grabbed my shirt.
I resisted. “First come, first – ”
“You deaf?” He tried to push past. “ I said we – ”
“Tony, leave it.” His companion, a fair-haired boy a year or so younger, tried to intervene. “He was here first.”
“Ah, shut it, Phil!” said my attacker. “Don’t be a wimp all your life.” His face was inches from mine: dark curls and high colouring, red lips, a spoiled expression. Aged seventeen or eighteen. I’d met boys like him at Frankie’s: rich parents, public school accents, bullies. “Got it, butt-face? This is our table.”
Charlie followed me into the brown, cabbage-smelling hall. An array of notices announced:
Smoking strictly prohibited.
Front door will be locked at 10.30pm.
Departing guests must quit their rooms by 10.00am.
Breakfast served between 8.00am and 9.00am only.
PRIVATE : for attention ring the bell.
A doorway beside the Private notice was covered by a clicking bead curtain. Seconds after we arrived it was swished back and the landlady emerged from her hidden quarters. Vera Stringbaum (Mrs), as she was named on various documents, was a suspicious-looking woman of middle age. The first thing I noticed about her was her hair which was dyed an unnatural shade sometimes called ox-blood. In tight curls, like dark red snails, it clung about her bony head. Everything about her was thin: her nose, her lips, her chest, her legs. She wore a limp black dress and carpet slippers.
“Oh, it’s you.” Mrs Stringbaum’s voice was as sharp as the matching red pencil line of her eyebrows.
“I, er– ”
“We don’t encourage guests to come and go at all hours. Do we, Mr Stringbaum?” She called through the curtain but there was no reply. “This isn’t a hotel. I did tell you.”
“Well, I only – ”
“If you want to be in and out all day, you should have put up at the Grand.” She surveyed Charlie, from the ring in his brown ear to the chain round his throat, the rings on his fingers and his striped jeans. Her nostrils flared. “You didn’t tell me you had friends in Westport.” She pointed to yet another notice: No Visitors.
I didn’t know what to say.
“Go on then, if you want to fetch something from your room. He can wait down here. But I hope you’re not planning to make a habit of it.” She turned back through the clicking beads. “Your meal will be on the table at five-thirty as arranged.”
“What the hell are you staying here for?” Charlie said when the coast was clear.
“It looked all right from the outside.”
“Miserable old bag.”
“Sorry.” I was embarrassed. “Will you wait while I – ”
“Course, that’s what we come for. Not going to see my old mate stuck in a dump like this.” He grinned. “Reckon you’re up to telling her you’ve changed your mind?”
I made a face. “Dunno.”
“If I was in your place I’d do a runner.”
“What?”
“Nick off without paying. Mean-minded old cow.”
“I can’t, I’ve got my rucksack upstairs. All my spare clothes an’ that are in it.”
“Well, fetch it down an’ just walk out.”
“She’d see me. There’d be a terrific row.”
“So what, you’re bigger than she is. Anyway, there’s two of us.”
“What about Mr Stringbean?”
“Probably give us a hand – if he exists. Imagine being married to her.” Charlie thought for a moment. “Is your room at the front?”
“I think so.” I tried to remember.
“Well, chuck your bag out the window,” Charlie said. “I’ll go outside an’ catch it. Then you come downstairs with a scarf or somethin’ an’ we just walk away.”
“She’s got my name in that book.” I pointed to the register on the hall table. “And my auntie’s address. I had to fill it in when I arrived.”
“No prob.” Charlie examined the book, ripped out the top sheet and crumpled it into his pocket. “OK now?” He grinned. “Go on, I’ll wait on the pavement.”
I was appalled and stared at him, then ran upstairs and let myself into my room. My pyjamas lay on the bed, toothbrush by the washbasin. Hastily I stuffed everything into my rucksack and pushed open the window. A smallish front garden lay beneath: red gravel, flowerbeds and a green iron railing.
Charlie beckoned from the pavement. “Come on, mate. Bombs away!”
It was the moment of no return. I took a deep breath. Leaning far out, I tossed the rucksack towards him.
It was a bad throw. I couldn’t get a swing and one of the straps caught my thumb. With a crash it landed in a shrub well short of the pavement. Branches broke off, berries scattered.
Charlie swung his leg over the railing and retrieved it from the flowerbed. But somewhere beneath me there was a shriek. Mrs Stringbaum had spotted him through the net curtain. A door banged and she came leaping down the front steps.
“Stop!” Her skinny knees pumped beneath the black dress. “Stop! Give that ‘ere.” She sprinted across the gravel.
A strap tangled in the twigs. Charlie tugged it free, but before he could escape Mrs Stringbaum seized the strap that trailed behind. Charlie and the furious woman faced each other across the damaged bush, the rucksack tight between them.
“Let go!” Mrs Stringbaum gave a heave.
Charlie heaved back, dragging the landlady clear off her feet into the leaves and berries.
“Let go!” she screamed again, refusing to loosen her claw-like grip. “Runnin’ off without payin’! I’ll ’ave the police on the pair of you.”
With an almighty wrench, Charlie tugged the rucksack free and scrambled back over the fence.
“Help! Police!” Mrs Stringbaum regained her feet and pushed down the dress to cover her shredded tights. “Vandal! Thief!”
But by this time Charlie was racing away, my rucksack trailing from his hand. Two gardens along he stopped.
Realising she had lost him, Mrs Stringbaum turned and stared up at the window where I stood frozen with horror. “I’ve got one of you anyway!” she cried vindictively. “You’ll not escape that easy.” On goat-like legs she ran back to the house.
I’d left my escape too late, she would confront me in the hallway. And to make matters worse, a skinny old man in a vest and braces had emerged at the top of the steps. I guessed this was Mr Stringbaum.
“What’s going on, Vera?”
She screeched a reply.
In a panic I ran to the bedroom door. Where was the key? I couldn’t see it. Feet came racing up the stairs. I grabbed the bed and shoved it against the door.
Next moment the handle turned. Somebody pushed. The bed shifted.
“Let me in!” Mrs Stringbaum hammered on the panels. “This instant! Do you hear me!”
Nothing could have made me open that door. I pushed the bed up hard and ran back to the window. Beneath me was a drop of five metres. I could jump – but what if I twisted an ankle? Then just to one side I spotted a drainpipe.
There were voices on the landing. The bed scraped back. I pulled a chair to the window and next moment was out through the gap, standing on the sill.
The door opened wide enough for Mrs Stringbaum to squeeze through. Uttering a hawk-like cry, she ran across the carpet.
I reached for the bracket that fastened the drainpipe to the guttering and swung my weight across. To my relief the bracket held. Bracing my feet against the wall, I began to descend.
“Come ’ere!” Mrs Stringbaum leaned from the window and grabbed for my jacket. “Rotten teenagers!”
She couldn’t hold me. I was halfway down and made a jump for the gravel.
Charlie had returned. “Come on, mate.”
I looked up at the window. Mrs Stringbaum had gone and Mr Stringbaum stood in her place. He was clutching a plate from the chest of drawers. Baring his false teeth, he flung it after me. It shattered on one of the rocks that surrounded the flowerbeds. He threw a jug.
My head was in a whirl. I scrambled over the wrought-iron railing to join Charlie and we ran off down the pavement. After fifty yards we paused to look back.
Mr Stringbaum was shouting from the window.
Mrs Stringbaum emerged from the gate. In one hand she brandished a flapping umbrella. “Bloody kids! Don’t think you’re getting away with this. I’ve got your address in my visitor’s book remember.”
Charlie looked at me and grinned. “What an exciting life you lead.”
“Me!”
“Come on, let’s go and see mum.”
I took my rucksack and we jogged on through the autumn leaves.
Black Sunrise
“ARE YOU listening, our Charlie?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Never mind yeah, yeah. I mean it. You’re to be back in this house by eleven-thirty.”
The Sunderlands lived in a council house, or rather two semi’s knocked into one. The front door was freshly painted, the garden was tidy, a punctured football belonging to a playful Rottweiler lay on the lawn.
To my surprise I knew Mrs Sunderland, Charlie’s mum. She had been one of the dinner ladies at Westport High, the school I attended before my gran died. She was popular, and now I saw her at home she was one of the nicest women I’d ever met – fat, funny, loving and sensible. Surprisingly, too, having Charlie for a son, she was white.
Seventeen years earlier, with four boys and a girl of their own, the Sunderlands had adopted Charlie when he was a baby in need of a home. After much thought they had christened him Charles Mohammed, so that if he wished to have an Asian name or become a Moslem when he grew up, there would be no need to change his birth certificate. But the easygoing Charlie, surrounded by his family, never gave it a thought and Charlie Sunderland he had remained.
Only his brother Frank remained at home, the rest had moved away: Bill a soldier in Yorkshire, Philip a journalist in London, Danny a student in Manchester, and Penny still in Westport, married to a painter and decorator with a little girl of two and another baby on the way. Mr Sunderland, newly retired from the railways, was a small man who spent most of his time in the back garden with his cages of free-flying budgies, parakeets and African parrots. They were a sprawling, happy family, very different from me in my famous school, with no brothers or sisters, my mum run off, gran dead, dad away at sea, and a single unmarried auntie in Oxford whose passion in life was bridge, but saw it as her duty to give me a home during the school holidays.
“You can stay out until all hours yourself, Charlie,” his mother continued, “I don’t mind that. Goodness knows what you get up to when you’re away on those ships – I don’t even want to think about it. But Ben here’s only fourteen and I want you back by eleven-thirty, not a minute later.”
“I hear you.”
“Yes, but are you listening? And stay away from those bars, you’re not even eighteen yourself yet. All right?”
“OK! OK!” Charlie rolled his eyes then turned to examine himself in the hall mirror.
“Off to the disco then?” Mrs Sunderland straightened my collar. “That Black Sunrise place? Can’t say I like the look of it myself, all those pictures of skeletons and witches outside. Still, I’m not a teenager any more. You look very nice, love. Unlike some I could mention with their perms and earrings.”
“Ah, you’re just jealous you didn’t meet me when you were seventeen.”
“With hair like that! You fancy yourself, don’t you?”
“Certainly do, Mum.” Charlie kissed her on the cheek.
“Bye, love.”
“Bye, Mrs Sunderland,” I said. “Thanks for the tea and that.”
She squeezed my arm. “You go off and enjoy yourself, love. Don’t let that one lead you astray.”
I crouched to pat Doctor Death, the huge soft Rottweiler, who licked my face with a sloppy tongue.
“Doc’s taken to you,” Mrs Sunderland said as I scrubbed my lips with a sleeve. “Haven’t you, you big daft lump.” She pulled the dog roughly by his collar and Doctor Death rolled on his back in ecstasy. She rubbed his chest. “And don’t you forget, our Charlie. Half past eleven. I’ll be waiting up. And I’ll be cross if you’re late.”
I trotted down the front steps and Charlie pulled the door shut. Daylight was almost gone. As we walked through the orange-lit estate, I tugged up my collar. The wind was colder and a thin drizzle blew from the sea. By the time we reached the main road it had turned to rain. Cars swept past, spray whirling in their wakes.
I looked for a bus stop.
“Let’s take a taxi.” Charlie ran out into the road with his arm raised. Cars swerved round him. A taxi sped past. The second taxi pulled in to the kerb.
“St Steven’s,” Charlie said as we climbed in.
“Off Lady Road? That new disco place, Black Sabbat or something?”
“That’s it.” Charlie rubbed the raindrops from his face.
It was a black city taxi and smelled of cigarettes. “Do you often do this?” I asked.
“Take a taxi? Not in Westport, all the time at sea though.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, you’ve maybe only got a couple of nights ashore, don’t want to waste them finding your way around. ’Sides, it’s safer. Some of these places you could end up in an alley with your wallet gone an’ a knife in your back. Go with your shipmates. Share the cost, bit of company, have a laugh.”
I looked out at the wet pavements.
“That reminds me.” Charlie dug in his pocket. “Dad said to give you this.”
It was a ten pound note.
“Ah, no.” I tried not to take it. “Look, I’ve got – ”
Charlie pushed the note into my hand. “Too late now. ’Sides, he’d be black affronted. Tell you what, you pay the taxi, I’ll get the disco.”
St Steven’s Church, no longer a place of worship, stood in a side-street near the city centre. It was surrounded by a tremendous wrought-iron fence. Open gates led to a broad flight of steps that mounted to the heavy doors. Phosphorescent images of skulls, open coffins, witches and the undead shone in the light of street lamps. Twelve demons, cavorting in neon flames, spelled out the name ‘Black Sunrise’.
It was the newest and most popular disco in the city. No alcohol was served which meant it attracted all those teenagers who could not pass for eighteen.
We joined the queue halfway up the steps. Girls held bags and coats above their heads to ward off the rain. It wasn’t enough. By the time they reached the entrance their hair hung in rats’ tails and mascara made tracks down their cheeks. With shrieks of merriment and dismay, they hurried to the toilets to repair the damage.
I shook my head and saw the water fly off. Raindrops sparkled in Charlie’s curls as he paid the entrance money. Perched on the end of a table, a girl with black lipstick, black eye-shadow and bitten black nails stamped the back of our hands.
“I thought you only did that if we go out,” Charlie said.
“Whatever,” she said in a bored voice and rolled her gum.
I examined the smeary stamp, a devil’s head and the date. “This says the sixth.” I checked my watch. “It’s the thirteenth.”
The girl sighed and looked away.
We gave our jackets to a man in the cloakroom and wandered into the vast open space of the disco.
The worshippers at St Steven’s, which had ceased to be a church only three years earlier, could never have imagined such a scene. Strobe lights, high on the ancient walls, flickered across the darkness. Coloured beams criss-crossed the vaulted roof. Spotlit in the old organ loft, the disc jockey looked down on the swaying mass of teenagers. The throb of drums and raging chants of Take my Love, the current Number Two hit, were so loud you’d think the stained-glass windows must explode into the street:
Take my love and leave me never,
Hold me and you’ll live forever,
Aaaaaahhhhhh !
Five hundred heads shook wildly, five hundred mouths opened wide, five hundred voices united in the final scream.
Charlie put his mouth to my ear: “Fancy a Coke?”
I nodded and we made our way towards the altar end of the church where there was a crush of small tables. The noise there was a bit less and we joined the queue by the vestry door.
“Hey! Charlie boy!”
I looked round. A gangly youth about the same age as Charlie, tanned and gap-toothed, waved a can to attract his attention.
“It’s Joey Bennett,” Charlie said. “Hey, Joey!”
He beckoned and Joey pushed through the crowd, a girl clinging to his arm.
Joey Bennett
HE WAS tall and skinny with his head shaved at the sides and a fantastic Mohican. Bright blue and orange, it jutted from his forehead and ran to the back of his neck. With his prominent nose, rubbery lips and an Adam’s apple the size of Ben Nevis, it gave him a pleasant, slightly comical appearance. His clothes were tight to accentuate his thinness: a painted-on tropical shirt and black jeans hung with silver chains. He looked a bit like a giraffe with a cockatoo on its head.
He had slopped his can when he waved and sucked the back of his hand.
“Hi there, Joey boy!” Charlie punched him lightly on the chest. “Love the hair. When’d you get home?”
Joey sniffed. He had a cold. “Signed off the old China Rose three weeks back.” He drew the girl forward. “This is Fizz.”
She was nice. Ginger hair cut in spikes and a cartload of make-up. Smashing little figure.
“This here’s Charlie.” Joey shouted above the music. “Old pal from sea school.”
She held out a hand. “Pleased to meet you.”
“My mate Ben.” Charlie introduced me.
“I’ll get y’ a drink,” Joey shouted. “See if you can grab a table.”
I followed Charlie to the altar area, magnificent stonework from three metres up, thronging teenagers below. All the tables were taken. Then a group rose from one against the wall.
“Charlie, over here.” I pushed forward and reached it seconds ahead of two other boys.
“That’s ours.” The boy in front grabbed my shirt.
I resisted. “First come, first – ”
“You deaf?” He tried to push past. “ I said we – ”
“Tony, leave it.” His companion, a fair-haired boy a year or so younger, tried to intervene. “He was here first.”
“Ah, shut it, Phil!” said my attacker. “Don’t be a wimp all your life.” His face was inches from mine: dark curls and high colouring, red lips, a spoiled expression. Aged seventeen or eighteen. I’d met boys like him at Frankie’s: rich parents, public school accents, bullies. “Got it, butt-face? This is our table.”
