Blood Relatives

‘Shut it, Eric. I can’t do it wi’ no music, can I?’

‘Music?’ echoed Eric derisively. ‘You call that Sex Pistols shite music?’

‘Spit? Nah, man. Real dance ga like tis.’

Lourdes locked her arms around my waist, pushing my leg between hers. Her clothes smelt of old smoke and school cabbage and she had sweat patches under her armpits.

‘Move like you’s making it wit’ sum girl,’ she gleamed. She put her mouth to my ear. ‘I teaches you, bwoy, mi’s a good teacher.’

She cackled, tossing her head again. I glimpsed two gold caps. She thrust her full hips against my thigh bones, using her weight to shunt me around t’ room. I shut my eyes, trying to concentrate on t’ choppy backbeat. Then, almost unwillingly, I felt t’ two of us flowing together in harmony, while Eric looked on, bemused, at the West Indian prozzie, as wide as a dinner plate, dancing wi’ a young white boy, as thin as a spoon.

I wor dipping into sis’s diary again, amusing mesen over sis and this friggin’ lad having sex in t’ back seat of an abandoned car, when I heard t’ front door slam and sis thundering up the stairs in her platforms. I shut t’ diary and froze, waiting to get nabbed in sis’s room. A prickly crawl travelled like a bushfire up my arms and neck. Oh fuck, fuck and triple fuck!

Luckily she ducked into t’ bathroom. I shoved the diary back under her smalls and scuttled across t’ landing to my own room. Moments later I heard the bathroom door open, then her bedroom door slam and a school bag being flung aside, then a sort of strangled sob. Summat to do wi’ Adam, I reckoned.

I cut into t’ bathroom, opened the cold tap and splashed water over my face and neck and up and down my arms. I let the water run across my wrists as if calming a burn. I inhaled and exhaled, long and slow, waiting for t’ skin demons to retreat. I looked in t’ mirror. My neck wor all blotchy, like I’d fallen into a nettle patch.

Mandy’s sobs had receded into snuffles. She must have heard the tap running. I flushed the chain even though I hadn’t used the loo, and went back to my room. I’d got away wi’ it again, although it had been a close call this time.

I played my new single – The Damned, ‘Neat Neat Neat’ – full blast. When it ended I could hear Mandy screaming at me to turn it off. So I played it again. Then I played every punk record in my meagre collection while I put on my gear. I started wi’ The Ramones ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’, followed by t’ Pistols ‘Anarchy’ and then Buzzcocks ‘Spiral Scratch’. Then I played The Damned again.

Meantime, I hiked mesen into my old paint-splattered keks, yanked on a white T-shirt and then my old school jacket. I’d already rented the sleeves wi’ a Stanley knife and filched some safety pins from Mother’s sewing basket which I’d pinned on randomly. I’d added a few punk badges, pins and buttons to my lapels, including my latest – a small pink triangle. I figured that no one in t’ house knew what that stood for.

I sized mesen up in t’ wardrobe mirror. I forked some vaseline through my hair, trying to make it look punkier. Then I nabbed some of Mum’s hair lacquer and sprayed that on. I stuffed my jacket into a carrier and pulled on t’ slime-green cable sweater Gran had knit me for Christmas last year.

Mother caught me sneaking out.

‘Where are you going looking like that?’

‘Helping a mate mend his dad’s car.’

‘At this hour? Well, at least comb your hair.’

‘No, it’s fine … no, leave it!’

‘Who is this mate anyway?’

‘Just a mate, from school.’

Before she could say owt further I bolted out of t’ house. At the end of t’ road I pulled off my sweater and stuffed it behind a dustbin. Then I put on the jacket and ran full tilt for t’ bus stop.

The Babylon Club wor a reggae hangout in Chapeltown. Maybe Lourdes came here to dance sometimes, but Wednesday nights it opened its doors to punk and became t’ FK Club. It had once been some sort of school. The windows had been boarded up wi’ white plasterboard and there wor two entrances, marked overhead ‘BOYS’ and ‘GIRLS’. The girls’ entrance had been bricked up forever, the boys’ wor now t’ fire escape.

I arrived late. On t’ bus this bitten-looking old couple sitting opposite kept eyeballing me and whispering ’til I gave ’em two fingers. Then t’ bloke blabbed to t’ bus driver who chucked me off t’ bus, so I’d had to walk the final mile or so.

I joined the ragged queue that shuffled forward noisily ’til there wor just two girls in front of me. The one wor a thin waif of a girl and the other wor a bigger girl wi’ long hair and big breasts. The waif girl had on shiny black leggings, a loose white shirt and a thin black leather tie. Her black hair wor cropped. T’other girl wor wearing a tight red miniskirt over fishnet stockings. Flesh gaped through t’ large tears. Their dark lipstick made ’em look as if they’d been gorging on berries.

The doorman let the three us in together, and the waif girl darted a smile at me between her small, gapped teeth. Her friend nudged her and she turned away.

I tagged behind ’em along a corridor of garish striplights toward a barrage of careening guitars and battering drums. I could hear a voice barking tunelessly into a microphone. We pushed through t’ swing doors and into a wall of heat and noise in a room sardined wi’ sweating bodies, all leaping and pogoing furiously.

I edged my way in. Two lads in front of me had stripped to t’ waist already, and their bodies glistened under t’ blue and red strobes. Sweat droplets sprayed off their hair as they each propelled themsens upwards on t’ shoulders of t’other. Beside them, a girl wi’ her eyes shut and her fists clenched wor pummelling the floor wi’ her boots as if she wor a road-stamping machine.

The two girls wor pushing their way toward t’ stage, so I followed them.

The singer on t’ stage – some band called New Trix – barked and screamed and threw t’ mic stand about. He introduced each number wi’ ‘And this one’s called …’ in a thick Liverpudlian accent. Some kid gobbed at him as he dropped to his knees, the mic head half in his mouth. The gob landed on him and trickled slowly down his torso.

I became aware of t’ waif girl alongside me, eyeing me severely. I nodded at her, cos she wor making me uneasy. She said summat, her mouth forming mute, indecipherable words.

‘WHAT!?’

She cupped her mouth to my ear and yelled. I still couldn’t hear owt. She took me by t’ elbow and launched hersen into a dance, flaying around like a rag doll being tossed by an invisible hand. I shuffled about for a short while, then slipped away to watch from t’ margins.

The band’s brief set ground to a halt wi’ t’ drummer kicking over his kit. Some barmpot at the front shook up a beer can and sprayed it over t’ singer, who grabbed the can, took a swig, sprayed it back at the crowd and poured the rest over his own bonce.

‘Fuck you all! Fuck you!’

The waif girl pushed her way through to where I wor propped against t’ wall.

‘Didn’t you like it, then?’

‘Worn’t too bad.’

‘I think they’re ace. The singer’s a bit of all right, don’t you think?’

She wor screwing her hair round one finger. Her posh voice had a mocking edge to it that made me wary. But then, she looked like she belonged at the centre of summat. I glanced over her shoulder at a lad passing behind her.

‘I’m Gina.’

‘Yeah, right. Oh, I’m Ricky.’

‘Ricky? Don’t you mean Rick? Ricky’s a little boy’s name. I’m sure you’re not little.’

I’d meant to say Rick. Fuck knows why I said Ricky. Only Gran called me that. My ears wor popping. I said, ‘I’m taller than you.’

‘Everyone’s taller than me, Rick. Or is it Richard?’

‘I don’t like Richard. Even my mother don’t call me Richard.’

‘You’re not still living at home?’

‘Moving out shortly. Soon as I get my own place. What about yersen?’

She cackled. ‘I don’t live with my mother, if that’s what you mean. God, no.’ She shook her head, laughing. ‘God, no,’ she repeated. Her laughter raged about and then fled.

‘Are you working then, Richard?’ She spoke rapidly and quietly, as if she wor afraid someone might overhear.

‘Nothing great. What about you?’