Blood Relatives Read online

  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, marked overhead ‘BOYS’ and ‘GIRLS’. The girls’ entrance had been bricked up forever, the boys’ wor now t’ fire escape.

  I arrived late. On t’ bus this bitten-looking old couple sitting opposite kept eyeballing me and whispering ’til I gave ’em two fingers. Then t’ bloke blabbed to t’ bus driver who chucked me off t’ bus, so I’d had to walk the final mile or so.

  I joined the ragged queue that shuffled forward noisily ’til there wor just two girls in front of me. The one wor a thin waif of a girl and the other wor a bigger girl wi’ long hair and big breasts. The waif girl had on shiny black leggings, a loose white shirt and a thin black leather tie. Her black hair wor cropped. T’other girl wor wearing a tight red miniskirt over fishnet stockings. Flesh gaped through t’ large tears. Their dark lipstick made ’em look as if they’d been gorging on berries.

  The doorman let the three us in together, and the waif girl darted a smile at me between her small, gapped teeth. Her friend nudged her and she turned away.

  I tagged behind ’em along a corridor of garish striplights toward a barrage of careening guitars and battering drums. I could hear a voice barking tunelessly into a microphone. We pushed through t’ swing doors and into a wall of heat and noise in a room sardined wi’ sweating bodies, all leaping and pogoing furiously.

  I edged my way in. Two lads in front of me had stripped to t’ waist already, and their bodies glistened under t’ blue and red strobes. Sweat droplets sprayed off their hair as they each propelled themsens upwards on t’ shoulders of t’other. Beside them, a girl wi’ her eyes shut and her fists clenched wor pummelling the floor wi’ her boots as if she wor a road-stamping machine.

  The two girls wor pushing their way toward t’ stage, so I followed them.

  The singer on t’ stage – some band called New Trix – barked and screamed and threw t’ mic stand about. He introduced each number wi’ ‘And this one’s called …’ in a thick Liverpudlian accent. Some kid gobbed at him as he dropped to his knees, the mic head half in his mouth. The gob landed on him and trickled slowly down his torso.

  I became aware of t’ waif girl alongside me, eyeing me severely. I nodded at her, cos she wor making me uneasy. She said summat, her mouth forming mute, indecipherable words.

  ‘WHAT!?’

  She cupped her mouth to my ear and yelled. I still couldn’t hear owt. She took me by t’ elbow and launched hersen into a dance, flaying around like a rag doll being tossed by an invisible hand. I shuffled about for a short while, then slipped away to watch from t’ margins.

  The band’s brief set ground to a halt wi’ t’ drummer kicking over his kit. Some barmpot at the front shook up a beer can and sprayed it over t’ singer, who grabbed the can, took a swig, sprayed it back at the crowd and poured the rest over his own bonce.

  ‘Fuck you all! Fuck you!’

  The waif girl pushed her way through to where I wor propped against t’ wall.

  ‘Didn’t you like it, then?’

  ‘Worn’t too bad.’

  ‘I think they’re ace. The singer’s a bit of all right, don’t you think?’

  She wor screwing her hair round one finger. Her posh voice had a mocking edge to it that made me wary. But then, she looked like she belonged at the centre of summat. I glanced over her shoulder at a lad passing behind her.

  ‘I’m Gina.’

  ‘Yeah, right. Oh, I’m Ricky.’

  ‘Ricky? Don’t you mean Rick? Ricky’s a little boy’s name. I’m sure you’re not little.’

  I’d meant to say Rick. Fuck knows why I said Ricky. Only Gran called me that. My ears wor popping. I said, ‘I’m taller than you.’

  ‘Everyone’s taller than me, Rick. Or is it Richard?’

  ‘I don’t like Richard. Even my mother don’t call me Richard.’

  ‘You’re not still living at home?’

  ‘Moving out shortly. Soon as I get my own place. What about yersen?’

  She cackled. ‘I don’t live with my mother, if that’s what you mean. God, no.’ She shook her head, laughing. ‘God, no,’ she repeated. Her laughter raged about and then fled.

  ‘Are you working then, Richard?’ She spoke rapidly and quietly, as if she wor afraid someone might overhear.

  ‘Nothing great. What about you?’

  ‘Signing on. I was training to be a nurse but I got fired. Buy me a drink?’

  I bought us both cider. She drank hers down in rapid gulps. We had a couple more. Being wi’ her wor like trespassing. She had this way of nibbling her bottom lip and staring into you as if you’d been caught out. She said it was only her third time at the FK Club, and she didn’t think much of it. Her offhandedness deflated me like a knife in a tyre. So I faked being world-weary and unimpressed. Suddenly she grabbed me by t’ arm. ‘Stay here, don’t move, only I’ve just seen someone I have to talk to.’

  She darted off. The DJ played ‘Gloria’ by Patti Smith, then some Burning Spear, then ‘White Riot’ by The Clash. I bought mesen another pint of cider. And another. It wor all finishing up, an t’ place wor emptying rapidly. A long-haired roadie in an Allman Brothers T-shirt wor carting out band equipment. An old woman wor pushing a wide broom across t’ floor, the bristles skidmarking through t’ beer slops.

  Then I saw her lolling by a radiator. I wondered if she’d been watching me on t’ sly. I strolled over, all loose-limbed and more than a little khalied.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d wait,’ she said.

  I fired off a so-what smile. ‘I wor just about to head off. Did you find that girl?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘That one you arrived wi’?’

  ‘Her? No, God, no. That was just fat Judy.’

  ‘She ain’t that fat.’

  ‘The girl I was looking for was the one I was snogging in the toilets last week.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Only tonight she pissed off without saying a word.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Are you shocked?’

  ‘Do you want me to be?’

  She shrugged.

  Outside, a few folk wor still hanging about. Someone wor touting tickets for a Banshees gig in Doncaster. We pushed through, heading on up the dully lit street ’til we came to a junction. I stopped, one hand on my belly.

  ‘I think I’m gonna spew up.’

  I bent double, and a volley of vomit splattered the pavement.

  ‘Oh, bloody Nora! Hey, wait!’

  I staggered after her, spitting out vomit bits, ’til I caught up. She wor singing some rubbish song in a high-pitched, baby-doll voice, only she couldn’t remember the verses, so she just kept repeating the chorus, emphasising a different word each time. I wiped the back of my hand across my mouth. When we reached the traffic island she said, ‘This is where we part.’

  ‘You 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.

  Patricia ‘Tina’ Atkinson

  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 about, jostling wi’ other contented little piglets over t’ sow’s teats. Fattened up ’til they all squealed their last in t’ abattoir. I’d heard it said that pigs are bright buggers and know their fate, that pigs know death.

  I went to pick up t’ final carcass.

  ‘Leave that one,’ said Mitch, a little sharply.

  ‘But I thought …’

  ‘Well, you thought wrong.’

  We lowered the pallet onto a trolley. The woman smacked each carcass like a newborn’s backside, then took a clipboard from under her armpit.

  A group of miners passed by, freshly back up top, hard hats in their hands, white circles where their goggles had been. I watched ’em as they headed for t’ outdoor showers. Some wor already stripping off. The woman wi’ t’ meaty arms passed Mitch a docket to sign. Over her shoulder I glimpsed the pale arse of a miner as he nipped between t’ shower blocks.

  Mitch jabbed me in t’ ribs. ‘Stop gawping. There’s a pile of boxes under that tarpaulin in t’ back of t’ van. Bring me five of ’em.’

  I lifted the blue tarpaulin. Underneath wor about fifty boxes of hair rollers. What wor we doing wi’ hair rollers in a refrigerated lorry? At a coalmine?

  I handed the boxes to Mitch, who passed ’em down to t’ woman wi’ t’ docket. She handed us a pink copy wi’ a number 4 signed for, and kept a white one wi’ a 3 signed for. The last pig rode home wi’ us.

  We�
�d just driven by two ravens that wor pecking at a road kill, when Mitch said, ‘You keep shtumm about this, you hear?’

  ‘What are you going to do wi’ t’ pig?’

  ‘Let’s just say it fell off t’ back of a lorry.’

  ‘Or didn’t!’

  We both burst out laughing.

  ‘I’ll sell it on tomorrow to this bloke I know over Shipley way. When we get home I want you to keep your mother occupied while I stash the rest of them there hair rollers in t’ garage. You hear me?’

  ‘I hear you.’

  Mitch curled his bottom lip approvingly. I sat wi’ both feet up on t’ dashboard, feeling that all wor right wi’ t’ world, listening to Mitch singing Elvis songs tunelessly ’til he’d had enough of it. We wor stop-starting through inner-city traffic lights.

  Mitch said, ‘How you getting on at Corona?’

  ‘Better than that last job you got me.’

  ‘Aye, well that’s as may be. And Craner? How’s our Mr Craner?’

  ‘Craner’s all right, I suppose.’

  Mitch grunted, seemingly satisfied. He turned on t’ radio, which wor good cos it meant we didn’t have to sing or talk and there worn’t silence neither.

  That last ‘proper job’ Mitch got me wor in a loony bin. Work experience he called it. I lasted all of three days. They didn’t know what to do wi’ me, so I just mooched about like one of t’ inmates.

  I wor hanging about t’ corridor when suddenly there wor a friggin’ commotion and this woman screaming her lungs blue cos she wor being dragged along by t’ hair by two men in white coats. One of ’em eyeballed me and shouted, ‘Who the fuck are you?’

  The next day it wor suggested I could look after some men out in t’ gardens. Get out in t’ fresh air. I wor happy about this, cos inside it smelt of piss and bleach. So I wor sent out into t’ grounds wi’ five grown men to play cowboys and injuns.