Then, because she was cold, she zipped up her jacket, her cherry-red jacket that only just covered her chest. “Ooh, spastic!” Lee said, because it was not the style to fasten your jacket. The whole group began its shuffling, swaying sideways procession down the street; there seemed nothing she could do to hurry them. The girls walked with their arms folded, hugging themselves. Lee, in a spirit of mockery, did the same. A radio played somewhere, it was playing an Elton John song. She remembered that. The kids began to sing. She tried, but her mouth was dry.
COLETTE: So was he—I feel I’m a bit in the dark here—this man who was watching you outside the school: are we talking about Morris? And was he the man with the yellow face?
ALISON: Yes.
COLETTE: The man you saw behind you, through the mirror? The low hairline?
ALISON: His tie not on straight.
Next day, when she came out, he was there again. I’ll go on the aggressive, she thought. She nudged Tahera. “Look at that pervert.”
“Where?”
Alison nodded across the road to where Morris leaned, just as he had the day before. Tahera attracted Nicky Scott’s attention by kicking her lightly on the back of her calf. “Gerroff me, you bloody bhaji!” Nicky bellowed.
“Can you see any pervert?” Tahera asked.
They looked around them. They followed where Alison pointed and then they swivelled their heads from side to side in an exaggerated fashion. Then they turned in circles, crying out, “Where, where?”—except for Catherine, who hadn’t caught on, and just started singing like yesterday. Then they lolled their tongues out and retched, because they confused a perv with a sicko, then they ran off and left her alone in the street.
Morris lurched away from the wall and came limping towards her. He ignored the traffic, and a van must have missed him by inches. He could limp very fast; he seemed to scuttle like some violent crab, and when he reached her he fastened his crab hand onto her arm above the elbow. She flinched and twisted in his grasp, but he held her firmly. Get off me, she was crying, you horrible pervert, but then, as so often, she realized that words were coming out of her mouth but no one could hear them.
After Al’s first meeting with Morris, he waited for her most days. “I’m a gentleman, I am,” he would boast, “and I am here to escort you. A growing girl like you, you don’t want to be out walking the streets on your own. Anything could happen.”
In the early days, he didn’t follow her into the house. He seemed nervous about who might be in there. As they turned at the corner of the street he would say, “Nick bin in?”
She would say no, and he’d say, “Just as well, never know where you are wiv Nick, if you see Nick you walk the other way, you hear? You don’t try any of your tricks round Nick, or he’ll upend you, he’ll slap you on the soles of your feet till your teeth drop out.” Then he would brighten up: “What about Aitkenside, you seen Aitkenside?”
She’d say, “Dunno, what’s his other name? Dunno who you mean.”
He’d say, “Much you don’t, oh, very likely. Pikey Pete been round?”
“I told you,” she said, “I don’t know who your friends are or what they’re called.”
But Morris sneered at this. “Not know Pete? The whole country knows him. Wherever there is dealing in dogs they know Pete.”
“I don’t deal in dogs.” She remembered the grown-up coldness of her voice.
“Oh, pardon me, I’m sure! You don’t deal with any of my mates, is it? You don’t deal with ’em in any way, shape, or form, is it?” He grumbled under his breath. “You’re not your mother’s daughter, I suppose. Not know Pete? Wherever there is dealing in horses, they know Pete.”
When he got to the front gate, he would say, “Emmie not moved that old bath yet?”
She’d say, “Have you known my mum a long time?”
He’d say, “I’ll say I have. Known Emmie Cheetham? I’ll say I have. Know everybody, me. I know Donnie. I know Pete. Emmie Cheetham? I’ll say I have.”
One day she said, “Morris, are you my dad?”
And he said “Dad, me, that’s a good one! Did she say so?”
“I think MacArthur’s my dad.”
“MacArthur!” he said. He stopped. She stopped too, and looked into his face. He had turned grey: greyer than usual. His voice came out wobbly. “You can stand there, and say that name?”
“Why not?”
“Cool as a bloody cucumber,” Morris said. He spoke to the air, as if he were talking to an audience. “Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouf.”
They staggered along the street, a pace or two, Morris’s hand clamped on her arm. She saw Lee and Catherine going by on the other side of the road. She waved to them to rescue her but they made vomity faces at her and walked on. She didn’t know if they could see Morris or not. Under his breath he was muttering.
“MacArthur, she says! Cool as you like.” He stopped and propped himself against the wall with his free hand, his bent fingers spread out. He had a tattoo of a snake running down his arm; now its head, darting across the back of his hand, seemed to gulp, and pulse out its tongue. Morris too made a vomity face and retched.
She was afraid of what might come out of his mouth, so she concentrated on his hand, planted against the brick.
“Speak the name of MacArthur!” He mimicked her voice. “
“How?” she said. “How did I treat him?”
The head pulsed, the snake’s tongue flicked out between his spread fingers. “I’ll tell you something about that bugger,” he said. “I’ll tell you something you don’t know. MacArthur owes me money. And so if I ever see
