Rule of Night (23 page)

One of the Liverpool lads nudged Kenny and said in a murmur, ‘There's a bloke over there looking at you,' and when Kenny glanced up saw Skush at a table near the window raising and lowering his eyebrows. He looked fatter and there was colour in his cheeks; neither were his eyes the same staring watery brown.

The first night was the worst. Kenny and the other three were each locked in a tiny cubicle with a bed and a wooden chair. It was explained to them that tomorrow they would be given a bed in one of the dormitories but tonight they had to sleep alone. At eight o'clock the doors were locked and the light switched off and from the window all that could be seen were dark, unfamiliar shapes on a background of blackest night. Kenny lay in the darkness, the stiff laundered sheets against his skin, his feet confined by the regulation folded bedclothes; it was very quiet, no motorway traffic, no chiming Town Hall clock, none of that grating metallic sound of garage doors sliding shut. He had been brave all day, preoccupied with the newness and strangeness of everything, but now his bravery had ebbed away and he began to feel very small inside, like a child almost. He wasn't going to cry, he would resist crying with all his might. He was a grown-up lad in a Detention Centre; one amongst a hundred other grown-up lads; locks and doors and fences separated them from the outside world. In fact he could hardly believe
that the real outside world still existed. Were there people in pubs at this moment? Were Andy, Fester, Crabby and the rest of them pinting it somewhere right now? It seemed as though the rest of the world had stopped dead, vanished, ceased to exist, and he, Kenny, was alone in the darkness with the sound of his own heartbeats and the scrape of the sheets on his skin. He wasn't going to cry, though, he would make sure of that.

He tried not to think of Janice. But in trying not to think about her she had entered his mind and he couldn't stop himself thinking about her. He would have been strong inside – stronger, anyway – if he could be assured that she still loved him. Vera had been to blame for telling the police, she had given evidence against him, but because he hadn't been allowed to see Janice (or she hadn't been allowed to see him) it wasn't clear in his mind whether she was equally to blame or had been forced to tell on him. She must have been forced, she must have been … she must still love him … there was nothing else he could think. Her mother had wormed the truth out of her, that's how it must have happened. Vera – Christ, that woman! – the hate in her, the nastiness, the spite! What had he done to deserve such hatred? It took his breath away even now, here, away from everything, to recall that look on her face.

Margaret had stood by him: thank God for her and bless her, the old lady had stuck up for him. She had been near crying herself, but she had kept it bottled up inside. He had actually felt proud of her, they had hugged each other, and he'd felt all the suppressed movements in her chest battering against him. It showed at times like these who really cared and who didn't. She was still his mother and he was still her son: they were a family and there would always be some love for him there. He pictured her at home with Kat, not many miles away on the other side of town, the two of them watching TV. He conjured up the warm peaceful flat in his mind, the stairs leading down to the passage, his door on the left and behind
it his room and inside it his bed, empty now of course and unslept in: a huge sob came up from the depths of his stomach and he had to let it all out.

•    •    •

Four meals a day: Kenny hadn't eaten so well in a long time. He was put in the same dormitory as Skush, who had done a month and, subject to a satisfactory report, was about to move from Grade I to Grade II.

‘Have you put on weight since you've been here?' Kenny asked.

‘Yeh, you either put it on or take it off. The screws have a joke. They say if the police caught you before you came in they won't catch you after you get out.'

‘What have you got left to do?'

‘Another month if I get full remission. You'll have two months to do if you keep your nose clean.' He used the jargon unselfconsciously. Kenny had always liked Skush but never admired him before; but this was an old lag speaking.

He said, ‘Does anyone ever try to make a break for it?'

‘A few do. A few Scousers, but it's pointless because if you get caught you lose your remission. Watch out for the psychos.'

‘Who are them?' Kenny said, worrying his thumbnail.

‘Some of the blokes in here are real nutters.' He screwed his finger into his head. ‘They should be locked away. If they catch you looking at them they go for you. One of the lads nearly got knifed last week.'

‘Knifed?' Kenny said. The word made him shiver and brought cold sweat to his forehead. But in a peculiar way he felt safer in here than he had outside: they couldn't pick him up for that now, he was off the streets, out of the reckoning.

‘What are the screws like?'

Skush shrugged. ‘Not bad. Play fair with them and they play fair with you. It's not them you have to bother about, it's some of the head cases they've stuck in here because they don't know where else to put them.'

Kenny was about to ask for a few names to avoid when an officer came in and they both stood to attention.

‘What you lot doing?'

‘Come to fetch my gym-kit, sir,' Skush said.

‘Who are you?'

‘Seddon.'

‘Sir.'

‘Seddon, sir.'

‘Number?'

‘437…' Kenny's face was convulsed. ‘437… 972.'

‘What are you doing here?'

‘Mopping the floor. Sir.'

‘Don't take all day. Carry on.'

•    •    •

In the evenings after tea there were classes in a dozen subjects, including English for those who literacy age was under seven; over the two months they were inside it was hoped to raise their standard to twelve plus. Kenny scraped through the compulsory English test and was able to choose the subjects he wanted. He decided on Art, Woodwork and Interior Decoration. Each lecture was complete in itself because with a class which gained a few and lost a few every week it was impossible to maintain any continuity. The teachers were part-time, from nearby schools, or local tradesmen who came in two or three evenings a week.

The days seemed interminably long at first and the nights were even worse: but after a week, what with the never-ending round of
cleaning duties, PE, parades, meals, evening classes and an hour spent playing cards or, at the weekend, watching television, the hours lost their dragging inertia and merged into a passing blur and before you knew it it was time for bed, lights out, and a sound heavy sleep induced by a day spent in the fresh air and continual activity. For when you weren't working you were exercising, and when not exercising, eating, and when not eating, studying, and when not studying, sleeping…

Still the worse time, though, was before sleep came, lying in the silent breathing dormitory with the occasional rustle of sheets as someone relieved his sexual urge and invariably the voice of a Scouser trying by turns to antagonise the other lads or make them laugh. One of the lads in Kenny's dormitory who everyone treated as a simpleton – an enormous bloke with broad shoulders who went by the name of Desperate Dan – always waited till lights out and would then say in a loud Scouse voice:

‘Who'd like to look at my big toe?'

This set off a chain-reaction of wisecracks which mainly had to do with bum boys, giant pricks and kissing the Pope's ring. Skush had warned Kenny to be on the look-out for queers but so far he hadn't been approached or noticed anything suspicious going on. He couldn't believe that Desperate Dan was a pouf, though the thought that he might be scared him to death.

He had never written a letter in his life – except for forging sick-notes at school – so he didn't bother writing to Margaret; he thought once of writing to Janice but couldn't think what to say, or rather what he wanted to say couldn't be put in a letter. He would wait for Margaret's first visit and ask her to pass a message to Jan, or better still get Jan to visit him, which is what he wanted most of all. He still wouldn't accept that she had deserted him: it was Vera, it had to be, who had turned her daughter against him. He wasn't resentful or even mildly annoyed that Jan had got off
with a warning. The police hadn't been too hard on her, probably because she didn't have a record: the general consensus had been that Kenny had corrupted her and led her astray. That was how things worked in the world and Kenny was the last one to be dismayed or even surprised.

His report after two weeks was favourable, which meant that in another two weeks, all being well, he would be Grade II. The days settled down into a set routine, eating, working, studying, sleeping, and for this reason anything out of the ordinary was even more noticeable – such as the time when the bloke with four kids went berserk.

It happened in the recreation room one evening when everyone was peaceably reading, playing cards or just talking. As might be expected he was a Scouser, a thin nervous lad with a prominent Adam's apple and tattoos on his skinny arms. Without warning and for no apparent reason he ran into the wall and started screaming. A couple of the lads tried to restrain him but he was demented and wouldn't be held; he shook them off, pushed his fist through the window and turned his wrist against the jagged glass. The walls were sprayed with blood and a pack of cards on a nearby table was ruined; spots of blood were later found on the television screen in the far corner of the room. Kenny stood and watched as two officers picked him up off the floor and, without waiting for a stretcher, ran with him to the hospital ward.

‘Psycho,' somebody said.

‘What's up with him?' Kenny asked.

‘He's married with four kids. His wife's been doing a bit on the side and he wants to get released quick and sort her out.'

‘It hits married fellas the hardest,' Desperate Dan said. ‘That's why you want to steer clear of women,' leering vacantly in Kenny's direction.

‘Will he get out?'

‘He'll be shoved in hospital,' somebody said, ‘and then he'll be back. They're not that stupid.'

‘What about his wife?'

‘What about her?'

It costs between £25 – £30 a week to keep a boy in a Detention Centre, though the cost would be very much greater if the place wasn't to some extent self-sufficient: cleaning, maintenance and general repairs are done by the boys themselves with guidance from trades officers and workmen. The workshops, where Grade II detainees spend one month, produce concrete kerb and paving stones which are sent to other Borstals and Detention Centres to make roadworks and repair existing ones – which is why such establishments are always well looked after, neat and shipshape to the point of obsessiveness. Another workshop makes moulded rubber wheels under contract to a manufacturer of hand-trucks and trolleys. The farm supplies milk, cheese and eggs to the kitchens and any surplus is taken by local farmers. After two months the boys on six-month sentences are allowed outside in small working parties, either to the farm or helping Rochdale Corporation Works Department maintain roadworks in the district.

Behind the main building is the sports field, surrounded by a wire-mesh fence with barbed-wire along the top, and the Centre has a football team in a northern amateur league; all games are played at home. On Sundays the Chaplain (C of E) holds a service, and there is a mass for Catholics, which those who profess to be atheists can opt out of but which most of the detainees, who've never been near a church since their twelfth birthdays, if at all, attend without objection.

Kenny gradually found his feet in Buckley Hall and after the trauma of Margaret's first visit it slowly began to dawn on him that compared with some of the other lads (excluding the illiterates) he didn't have much of a clue: he had always reckoned himself to be
pretty smart but there were some blokes – one in particular – who had really got it all weighed up. Over a game of cards in the recreation room Kenny happened to mention that he had worked at Haigh's and Woolworth's and a few other places; Barry Keesig pulled a sour expression and called him a pillock to his face. Work was out, a mug's game.

‘What did you get at Haigh's?' Barry Keesig asked, dealing a hand of crib.

‘Just over eleven,' Kenny said.

‘Clear?'

‘No, nine pounds-summat clear.'

‘Nine quid for a week's work.' Barry Keesig smiled in his snarling way and shook his head. He had a long flat contemptuous face with a rectangular jaw and eyes like slits. He was the kind of bloke whose opinion everyone respects, though he never went out of his way to gain that respect and didn't seem bothered one way or another. ‘I could make double that in an afternoon.'

‘Doing what?'

‘Using this,' – tapping his head.

‘Yeh but doing what though?'

‘Not robbing fucking meters for a start,' somebody said.

‘Who asked you?' Kenny said, suddenly angry. He was willing to learn but he wasn't prepared to let any of them put him down. They had all been caught, hadn't they, no matter how clever they might have been?

‘Most of them in here are bums,' Barry Keesig said. ‘Deadbeats. If you're going to make it pay you've got to get organised. And it's no good going for a few measly quid – it's got to be real money.'

‘The cars is a good number,' somebody said.

‘For that you've got to have the gear. Workshop. Spraying equipment. Log books. Number plates. And it means driving them
down south somewhere. Hard cash, that's the only way, no frigging about. Straight in, lift it, and out again.'

‘Post offices,' Kenny said, coming up with a positive thought.

‘Yeh,' Barry Keesig said. ‘Or better still, factories. There's always loads of cash in factories. Three or four of you, say, in overalls; get in at dinner time with the rest of them and have a shuftie round. Wages office. Canteen. Cloakrooms. Christ, you can't go wrong.'