When I thought it was safe I crept back to the cul-de-sac to complete my paper round.
Stamford Jackson was waiting for me in the entry two doors down from his house.
‘What you fucking doing here, kid?’ he barked. ‘My dad told you, we don’t want your fucking paper.’
I started to back off but he said, ‘Come here.’
I should probably have done anything but obey his command. I should have flicked him the Vs and legged it. But I went to him. I didn’t know why. Simply because he told me to, perhaps. I walked into the entry, my long legs wobbly on the slippery cobbles, and he took one swing at me, hitting the side of my head. I went straight down with a deafening ringing in my ears and feeling sudden pain from my ankle.
‘Don’t fuck about round here,’ he said while deciding whether to kick me as I lay on the ground catching my breath. After a while he wandered off and I felt my head gingerly to see if it was cut. My fingers came away red and I felt tears pushing at the corners of my eyes. I hated bleeding.
When I’d limped home, I told my mother I’d slipped taking a short cut down one of the entries. She fussed over me, which was nice, and I didn’t feel guilty till I had to lie again about the newspapers. ‘They were over,’ I said of the dozen or so papers still in the bag.
‘You don’t often have any over,’ she said as she pressed a cold butter knife to the rapidly swelling cut on the side of my head.
When my father came home, huge and reassuring in his dark double-breasted suit which smelt of damp wool and cigars, it was my mother who told him what had happened. He looked at me in a particular way he had when he knew there was more going on than he was being told. It was a very direct look which only lasted a moment and I never knew if my mother saw or understood it. I didn’t want to tell them about Stamford Jackson for shame. I felt that my father would have expected me to put up a fight. He would have done so in a similar situation. He’d worked down the pit and in the docks before getting where he was today, which was in fact a bit of a mystery to me. I knew it had something to do with a club and a group of other men. Sometimes they came around and sat in front of the fire in the front room in a huddle of smoke and steaming cloth and I heard them using phrases like ‘venture capital’ and ‘fixed assets’. If my mother saw me listening she shooed me away and closed the lounge door quietly before retreating to the kitchen where she would be preparing a huge plate of sandwiches. The front room smelt for days afterwards. I used to sit in there for as long as possible, thinking it was good training for being grown up.
The next time Stamford Jackson saw me I was coming home from school. It was a cold day and he was wearing a big grey duffel coat. I was just wearing my blazer because I didn’t have a big coat and I didn’t like wearing my anorak to school. For some reason I laughed at Stamford Jackson’s duffel coat. I may have made some remark as well because he was on me in seconds, punching my ears and frog-marching me down the street away from my house. I saw where he was leading me: at the end of the street near the railway was a patch of wet cement. I struggled to get free but there was no question of me having any control. He took me right to the edge of the cement and, grabbing my blazer collar, sent me sprawling in it.
He laughed as I flailed about trying to stand up, but eventually walked away back the way he’d brought me.
I couldn’t say I’d accidentally fallen in wet cement so I told my father when I got in that Stamford Jackson had done it. Calmly he got his hat from the hook by the door and left the house. I ran through to the front room so I could watch him walk up the street, his trilby making his head appear to tilt to one side as it always did. He walked in a relaxed way, not too fast, but he seemed to know exactly where he was going and what he was going to do.
I never found out what he did do. All I know is that Stamford Jackson never bothered me again. Occasionally I’d see him at the end of a street or down an entry but he’d always be the first to look away. My school uniform had to be replaced but I was never blamed or made to contribute to the cost.
Chapter Nine
When I woke up, the Professor and Wolf were in the room with me, both fast asleep, and there was no sign of Giff. Whatever strange place it was I’d fetched up in, I thought I should take full advantage of their lapse in vigilance. Carrying my jacket and boots in one hand I tiptoed to the door. There was an awkward moment when the door seemed to be locked, but it was just stiff. I worked it loose very slowly and carefully and only pulled it to behind me. I didn’t put my boots on until I had reached the ground floor.
My watch had stopped but I could see light streaming in through the cracks in the door to the street. There had been no windows in the room I’d slept in and I wasn’t sure what to expect from outside. I think I imagined the streets awash with light but as empty as the night before so when I pulled open the door and stepped out I got a shock.
It was like penetrating a stream of energy. Like Oxford Street at lunch time. For a couple of minutes I allowed myself to be carried along with the flow and before I knew it I was half a mile from Giff’s safe house. Even if I went back I wouldn’t know which was the right door. I had burned my boats but that was fine because Giff and his colleagues were mad and I had to get back to my car. Annie might have been trying to ring me at the flat. She could be worrying about me. I wanted to let her know I was all right.
I drew back from the procession of folk and rested my back against an official-looking building. A steady stream of people entered the building by a set of double doors on the corner and as many left at an exit ten yards further along. Those leaving carried a small, regular parcel wrapped in brown paper. I wondered what it might contain. On the side was stencilled a capital letter M.
They generally looked slightly different to the people I was used to having around me in London or Manchester. Their features were recognisably European, possibly British, but there was something different about their look: clothes, hair, shoes, bags. The ensemble was all wrong. They looked a bit like the confused people we saw emerging from behind the Berlin Wall or scrambling aboard ferries to Brindisi when the communist governments toppled, as if they’d had a stab at copying western fashions but had followed a bunch of style magazines that were at least ten years out of date. In fact, they looked like they lived in another country — one that had little or no contact with where I was trying to get back to.
I noticed a few suspicious glances coming my way and realised I was standing out — in my white leather jacket, tight jeans and butterfly boots.
I looked around for the nearest side street. Fifty yards away. Head down I covered some ground and slipped out of sight. The crowd continued to press past at the top of the street. On a corner opposite was one of the inset stone bench seats I’d seen the night before. Sitting on it was a man in early middle-age wearing a tight-fitting shiny black suit. He was watching intently the people who passed by under his perch. As I watched, two policemen approached him leading a third man through the stream of passers-by. There was a brief exchange. I noticed with horror that whenever the suspect tried to speak up he was beaten on the legs by one of the two policemen with a stick like the fat end of a billiard cue. The man on the chair eventually made a gesture with his right arm, laying it across his own chest then pointing at the head of the suspect who had started to struggle. A mask of fear had settled on his face. Passers-by looked down at the pavement and hurried on. The policemen led the man away, one either side, and they turned into another street where I saw a black van waiting. The back doors were opened from the inside and the man was bundled in. His face pressed up against the glass as the van drove away.