Spirits soared then, and we started singing daft rugby songs with vulgar lyrics. It is astonishing how youthful ignorance can put adversity so easily aside to breed baseless optimism. Older, wiser heads might have embarked on this leg of the journey with a little more caution. But when you are seventeen, with the road powering past beneath you, and the sun shining in your eyes, you never imagine for one moment that things could ever go anything but well.
The road wound through mountain passes, tree-covered escarpments rising steeply from deep, dark lakes reflecting mountains like mirrors. Thirlmere, Windermere. If I hadn’t known better I’d have sworn that the Scottish West Highlands had been transplanted right here in the north-west of England.
It was a stunning day. Chilly still, but without a cloud in the sky. It didn’t take us long to reach the crossroads town of Kendal and then on to the A65 cross-country to Leeds itself.
Chapter six
I
Two things happened on that drive to change our mood. The first was a change in the weather. From that clear, cold, sunny start, the day turned slowly grey. Dark clouds overtook us from the west, low and laden with rain that began to fall around lunchtime. The second was a change of landscape.
From the lakes and mountains of the north-west, we had reached to the rolling farmland and picturesque stone villages of the Yorkshire Dales. But now, as we approached Leeds itself, the darkening sky turned sulphurous yellow, the mills that ringed the city pumping coal smoke into air already thick with it. Stone villages and affluent suburbs gave way to decaying brick terraces. As we drove into it, the city seemed to fold itself around us, drawing us into its crumbling industrial heart.
This was a city in transition, in the process of slum clearance and new build. A city characterized by the chimneys of the mills that pricked the blackening sky, a legacy of nineteenth-century industrialization which, within a quarter of a century, would be decimated by eleven years of Thatcher government. Years that destroyed the industrial base of a nation and sowed the seeds of future financial meltdown.
I had grown up in another industrial city, but Leeds had little of Glasgow’s Victorian grandeur, or the splendid architectural inheritance of the Tobacco Lords. Perhaps it was the rain, and the poisonous sky, but it felt mean as we approached it that afternoon, a city in decline. On another day, in bright sunshine, Leeds might have offered a very different impression of itself. Sunlight so colours our view of the world. But that afternoon it spoke to us only of grim urban deprivation. Our optimism of earlier in the day was crushed by its minacious sky and the creeping return of a brutal sense of reality.
We parked the van in a side street on the south-western edge of the city, bought some cigarettes, and went into a pub crowded with factory workers at the end of their shift. We found seats in an alcove near the back and sent Jeff to get us halves of lager, since he looked older than the rest of us. We sat and smoked, making our own contribution to the pall of pollution that hung in the place, kippering our clothes and stinging our eyes. Maurie used the phone at the bar to call his cousin.
While he was gone, Luke picked up her letter from the table and read it out loud.
Dear Mo,
Wanted you to have my address and number. Just in case. Andy’s not exactly who I thought he was when we met in Glasgow. Funny how you think you know folk when you really don’t. But things are okay. I’m trying to get a job. That would help. I’d like to feel more independent. Anyway, take care. If anything happens, tell my mum and dad I love them, in spite of everything.
Love,
‘Raitch?’ Dave said.
‘Rachel.’ Jeff rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘Lovely-looking girl. Used to fancy her myself.’
‘Before Veronica stole your heart?’ I cocked an eyebrow in his direction.
He gave me a withering look, then flicked his head towards the letter. ‘She doesn’t sound very happy.’
Luke whistled, and we all turned to look at him. His eyes were still fixed on the crumpled sheet of blue notepaper in his hands.
‘Just seen the address.’ He looked up. ‘Quarry Hill Flats.’
I frowned. ‘What, you mean you know it?’
Luke raised his eyes from the letter. ‘It’s pretty famous. Or should I say infamous?’
‘How would you know?’ Dave took a long pull at his beer.
‘We got several classes from Mr Eccleston on twentieth-century social housing. Part of my history of architecture course.’
I pulled a face. ‘You mean, you were actually awake through that stuff?’
Luke smiled. ‘It was interesting. Quarry Hill Flats was the centrepiece of it.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it’s the largest housing estate of its kind in the world. I don’t remember the exact details, but I think they took their inspiration for it from some complex in Vienna. A new kind of approach to social housing, old Mr Eccleston said it was. They cleared an area of inner-city slums in the Quarry Hills area in the thirties, right in the centre of Leeds, and built this...’ he searched perhaps for the word that Mr Eccleston had used, ‘... Stalinesque monstrosity. Almost completely enclosed, with huge archways leading into it. He showed us plans and photographs of it. Massive, seven- and eight-storey blocks, a thousand flats for three thousand people. Sort of teardrop shaped, the whole complex, which is kind of ironic, given the way it’s turned out.’
‘What do you mean?’ I was curious about this social housing experiment where Maurie’s cousin had ended up.
‘Well, it’s become a bit of a nightmare of a place, Jack. Falling apart, really. Physically and socially. Problem families, vandalism, gangs.’
‘Jees,’ Dave said. ‘And that’s where Maurie’s cousin lives?’
Luke nodded. ‘So it seems.’
A troubled-looking Maurie came back and slumped down into his seat. We all turned expectant eyes on him, but he was lost in some glassy-eyed distance.
Jeff couldn’t contain himself. ‘What did she say?’
Maurie came out of his reverie, as if aware of the rest of us for the first time. ‘She said not to come before about ten thirty tonight.’
I leaned forward. ‘And?’
‘And nothing. That’s it. But she did say not to bring the van into the complex.’ He hesitated. ‘She thought it might not be safe.’
Dave laid his hands on the table and spread his fingers. ‘Great!’
Luke said, ‘Why do we have to wait till ten thirty?’
‘She’d rather Andy wasn’t there when we came. She thinks he’ll be out till about midnight.’
‘Aw jobbies,’ Jeff said. ‘That means she’ll want rid of us before then. So much for a roof over our heads. It’ll be another night in the van.’
But my eyes were fixed on Maurie. That sense of troubled preoccupation hadn’t gone away.
‘What’s wrong?’
He glanced up at me, and then away again quickly, reluctant to meet my eye. ‘She says she can lay her hands on some money. But she wants to go with us.’
You could have touched the silence that settled among us, as if it had taken form.
Jeff was the first to voice our misgivings. ‘We can’t take a girl with us, Maurie.’
‘Why not?’ Maurie turned angry eyes on his friend.
‘Because we’re five blokes, and... well, it wouldn’t work, that’s all.’
He looked around the table for support, which was there in our faces, but no one said anything.
‘Why does she want to go with us, Maurie?’ I asked.