‘How did you get hold of this?’ he asked Torrance.
‘I’ve earned my privileges.’
Parfitt didn’t understand.
Once the bus was rolling with Torrance at the wheel, the ladies moved from seat to seat and for the first time that evening, one of them talked to him. She was thin, too thin really, and her streaked hair hung in greasy strands below her shoulders. She smelled of the perfume and creams that MMP made from the oils rendered from the Chosen. It didn’t smell bad exactly, but it reminded him of work and he didn’t like that. She sat beside him, oppressively close.
‘I haven’t seen you before.’
Her voice was low; smoke and crushed glass.
‘First time we’ve been to Dino’s,’ he said.
There was no point lying.
‘What do you do?’
‘I milk the cows.’ He gestured behind to his friends. ‘We all do.’
‘No gore and guts, then. No chop and slice.’
‘Not our department.’
‘Ha. Very good. I think I like you…’
‘James.’
‘I’ll call you Jimmy. Does your mother call you Jimmy?’
Parfitt shrugged but didn’t answer. His mother was long dead.
‘You must like working in the dairy. Seeing all those titties all day long.’
It was like ice in his brain. He sobered immediately, all suspicion. Was Torrance testing them? Was that what this evening was all about?
‘That’s blasphemous,’ he said. ‘They’re udders. I wonder what your Parson would say if he knew you spoke of the Chosen this way.’
She didn’t look frightened at the thought that he might tell someone, but it did stop her stupid chattering.
‘It was just a joke, Jimmy.’
For a while they sat in silence but she didn’t pull away from him. The bus lumbered over the broken roads and she fell against him often. He liked it but tried to concentrate on working out where they were going. It was tough; he’d already lost his bearings. It seemed like they were heading for the Derelict Quarter.
Someone had brought a bottle of vodka and it was passing from row to row. The woman took a big swallow and grabbed Parfitt to kiss him. As she did, she let the vodka dribble from her mouth into his. The kiss made him drunker and the moment of alert watchfulness passed. She handed the bottle forward to Torrance who took a swig and passed it back. She gave Parfitt another vodka kiss before passing the bottle back again. He heard laughter and raucous cooing behind him. Some of the lads were getting lucky with the other ladies and some weren’t. There weren’t enough to go around.
When the bus stopped, no one wanted to disembark. It was warm and comfortable; the perfect place to continue their embraces. Torrance had to shout at them, even his crew. They staggered from the bus onto a dark, cracked pavement. There were no streetlights this far from the town centre. Parfitt could barely see his feet until Torrance brought out a gas lamp.
‘This way.’
They followed, some arm in arm, others alone. Parfitt’s woman – she still hadn’t told him her name – stumbled and he held on to her easily. She weighed very little and, as he’d discovered on the bus, she had tiny ‘titties’. He suspected jealousy had prompted her comment about the cows’ udders and not some signal from Torrance to sound him out. He didn’t care what her tits were like though. She was warm-bodied and willing and he hoped that by the end of the evening she would provide something more than alcoholic kisses and clothed explorations of her wiry body.
Torrance led them over a rubble-strewn pathway between derelict buildings and high-rise blocks. The ground was black and nothing grew, neither grass nor weed. They came to an opening in the concrete with a broken wall on three of its sides. Torrance held his lamp forward: steps descended into blackness.
Intrigued, Parfitt didn’t hesitate to follow. The woman’s grip tightened on him not because of the steepness of the steps, he felt, but because she was excited, anticipating something. Her heels clicked and echoed on the concrete stairs. They seemed very loud out there in all the silent blackness.
Parfitt became aware of muffled voices ahead. It could have been roaring. Torrance stopped, seemingly at a wall, and kicked it three times quickly and twice slowly. Huge sliding steel doors had been painted to look like concrete. Slowly but silently, the doors rolled open on well-greased runners. Sound rushed out at them. Cheering, jeering, drunken laughter. The sounds at Dino’s had been sounds of pure merriment and release, these sound were different, they had an edge of illicit expectation. Torrance spoke to the men guarding the door but Parfitt couldn’t hear what was said over the noise of the crowd. The guards parted and all of them stepped in.
The corridor reminded Parfitt of the chutes and crushes used for guiding the Chosen in the slaughterhouse. As they progressed the noise grew. A yellowy light from many gas lamps lit an opening at the far end. They passed into a vast rectangular space, a subterranean stadium. It must have held almost a thousand people but it wasn’t full. Even so, the noise of shouting spectators was overpowering. Torrance took them to a row of stalls at the very front. People looked at him and made space immediately.
The woman squeezed next to Parfitt on the splintery wooden bench and put her arm round him. He ignored her. In the centre of the stadium was an arena upon which all the lamps were concentrated. The shouts of the audience reached a crescendo. On the ground in the centre of the arena were two bulls but Parfitt had never seen them like this. On their wrists and ankles they wore heavy cloth bands that sparkled – resin-tacky hemp dipped into broken glass. The bulls had been fighting each other; that was obvious from the amount of blood on each of them and still glistening on the concrete floor. As they could not hold weapons, these ankle and wristbands must have been the next best thing. They had no protection.
One bull, as big as any he’d seen in the plant, lay on the floor on its back. It was trying to get up but didn’t have the strength. The other bull stood over it, lungs pumping like bellows. Its pale skin was slick with sweat and blood from hundreds of scratches and deeper incisions. Parfitt wished the two bulls could roar and scream at each other but, like all the Chosen, they could not even speak. Their hissing was inaudible over the taunts of the crowd.
With nothing further to fear from its downed opponent, the dominant bull looked up and around at the faces that watched him from the safety of the tiers of stalls. Parfitt couldn’t bear the look in the creature’s eyes as it faced its next challenge. The crowd wanted blood and it had given them that. Now they wanted death. Their chanting found a rhythm. It was easy to make out the simple, brutal words.
‘Kill it, kill it, kill it…’
Some silent acknowledgement passed between the bulls, Parfitt was sure of it, before the winner stepped behind the bested bull’s head and raised its right foot. Parfitt couldn’t comprehend how it could succeed in killing its rival unless –
The bull brought its heel down on the other’s forehead, lifted it and brought it down again. The sound made Parfitt queasy – bone on bone against concrete. The beaten bull was still alive, still breathing, its eyes were still open. Again the stomp. And again. And finally the knocking of heel bone on skull became a splitting and a crushing and the supine bull breathed no longer. A cheer went up, the people in the crowd lost all control, shaking their fists, punching the air, turning to embrace each other and jump up and down in the cramped stalls.
The winning bull held up its triumphant arms. Parfitt could see it did so because it knew that was what the crowd wanted, not because it felt the glory of its achievement. It turned slowly on the spot to receive the adoration and hysteria of the spectators. Blood dripped from cuts, ran from its mouth and nose. Its legs trembled. Four handlers came out with hotshots and nooses but the bull made no attempt to evade them. It was led from the arena. Another team of men dragged out the body of the defeated by the ankles. The corpse left a wide smear of fresh blood and brain tissue as they hauled it away.