BJ turn to Steve: ‘Payback time?’
He shrugs and gets up off mattress, tracing sevens on walls and sevens on door, sevens on ceiling and sevens on floor -
All them pretty little sevens, dressed up in red, dressed up in gold and green:
Them two sevens -
Joe stagger-dancing out door, his voice of thunder still chanting: ‘War in the East, war in the West; War in the North, war in the South; Crazy Joe get them out…’
Steve: ‘Heavy Manners.’
Heavy fucking Manners -
COMING DOWN.
Three young men sitting in a stolen Cortina:
(Down we slide, further) -
Steve Barton, Joe Rose, and BJ -
(On Satan’s side) -
Edgy with cause/edgy with reason -
(Treacherous times) -
BJ look at BJ’s watch:
Seven twenty-five, nineteen seventy-seven.
BJ nod.
Everybody gets out of car.
Everybody walk across Gledhill Road, Morley.
Everybody pull on their masks.
BJ knock on back door.
Everybody wait -
Wait, wait, wait:
The key turns.
The door opens.
Steve kicks it straight back in bloke’s face.
Bloke goes down on other side of door (like a sack of fucking spuds):
His hair in his face, his teeth all covered in blood -
Everybody step over him -
Steve giving him a kick (just to make sure he’s going to be a good boy).
‘What the -’
Granny coming down stairs -
Steve straight across room to give her a slap, hard.
He bungs a bag over her head, ties her arms behind her, pretends to suck her tit:
‘Please, please -’
Bound, gagged and bagged.
Steve back on his feet and through into Post Office, pointing Joe upstairs -
Joe saying: ‘Upstairs?’
Steve turning and nodding, finger to his mask.
BJ stand in back with old bloke still out for count, his wife crying in a pool of her own piss.
Steve is back with a bag of cash.
Joe coming down stairs, empty-handed and shrugging his shoulders.
BJ walk over to Steve. BJ peer into bag:
NOT ENOUGH -
Not a grand, nowhere near.
Nowhere near and BJ tell him so: ‘Someone’s fucked up here.’
‘Shut up, man,’ hisses Steve. ‘Deal with it later, not here.’
BJ shake BJ’s head.
BJ walk out back door.
They follow.
Everybody leave -
Leave them lying in their little pools on floor of their little Post Office:
He will need thirty-five stitches in his head and in six months she’ll be dead.
Everybody take their masks off.
Everybody get in Cortina.
Everybody drive back into Leeds, old sun already behind new clouds -
Steve laughing as he drives, shouting: ‘Payback!’
Joe chanting to himself: ‘War in the East, war in the West; War in the North…’
Old sun already behind new clouds, shadows across car -
BJ say: ‘We’ve fucked up.’
Joe counting cash: ‘Still be more than seven hundred here, man.’
‘We’ve fucked up,’ BJ say again. ‘It was a set-up.’
‘No set-up,’ Steve is saying, shaking his locks. ‘Just pure fucking payback.’
BJ nodding, knowing -
(The never-never, can’t go on forever) -
Knowing what’s coming -
(Close my eyes but he will not go away) -
COMING -
(But I have the will to survive) -
COMING -
(I will cheat and I will win) -
COMING -
(You think I’m a raving idiot, just off the boat) -
COMING -
(But I’ll be round the back of your house in the dead of the night) -
COMING -
(Watch you sleeping in your bed) -
COMING -
(When the bloody heavens clash) -
COMING DOWN -
(The Two Sevens).
Chapter 34
Saturday 25 March 1972 -
‘You wake up some morning as unhappy as you’ve ever been…’
I lie alone in our double bed, listening to the sound of things getting worse:
‘Protests mount over direct rule in Northern Ireland after the Government’s agreement yesterday that Ulster is to be ruled direct from Westminster for a year ran into opposition immediately with both wings of the IRA saying they would fight on and militant Protestants demanding widespread strike action despite calls from Mr Faulkner for calm.
‘Meanwhile Mr William Whitelaw, the new Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, yesterday described the task ahead of him as, “Terrifying, difficult, and awesome.”’
I lie alone in the double bed, listening to the sound of things getting worse as my family dress for a wedding -
‘Mr & Mrs William Molloy gratefully request the presence of Mr & Mrs Maurice Jobson & family at the marriage of their daughter Louise Ann to Mr Robert Fraser.’
A celebration.
‘Paul!’ the wife shouts up the stairs. ‘Paul, hurry up, love, will you? We’re all waiting.’
My wife, my daughter and I stood at the front door -
My wife looking up the stairs, my daughter in the mirror, me at my watch.
The Simon and Garfunkel abruptly stops and down he comes.
‘I’ll get the car out,’ I say and open the door.
‘I’ll lock up,’ nods the wife, pushing the children towards the door.
I go out. I open up the garage. I drive the car out, the family car -
The Triumph Estate.
I get back out. I lock the garage door.
‘It’s open,’ I tell the wife and kids as they stand around the car wishing we were all somewhere else -
Someone else -
Other people.
We get in the family car.
Clare asks me to put the radio on.
‘We haven’t got one,’ I reply.
She slouches down in the back. Paul whispers something to her. They both smile.
They are fifteen and thirteen and they hate me.
I glance in the rearview mirror. I say: ‘Leeds have got Arsenal today, haven’t they?’
Paul shrugs. Clare whispers something to him. They both smile again.
They are fifteen and thirteen and I hate them and I love them.
My wife Judith says: ‘Hope they get a bit of sun for the photos.’
And her -
I hate her -
Hate her in her hat too big for the car.
Ossett Parish Church has the tallest steeple in Yorkshire, so they say. It stands black and tall for all to see, across the golf courses and the fields of rape and rhubarb.
We park in its shadow on Church Street, Ossett -
The whole road lined with cars in both directions.
‘Big wedding,’ says Judith.
No-one says a word.
We get out and walk down the road and into the churchyard where groups of coppers are gathered around their cigarettes in their court suits -
Girlfriends and wives all off to the side, battling to keep their hats on in the wind, talking to the older folk, ignoring their kids.
‘He invite the whole force, did he?’ laughs Judith.
I lead the way through the men and their greetings, dragging the wife and kids along -
‘Sir,’ says one.
‘Inspector,’ says another.
‘Mr Jobson.’