The Tryst

‘It’s on the corner, isn’t it?’ Steve replied with a touch of irritation.

‘Which corner? By the park?’

‘No, the other end. Grafton Avenue. But look, it’s no good. He won’t let us in.’

‘If you ring that special way …’

‘He’s frightened of strangers — ’

‘We’re not strangers!’ Tracy shouted angrily. ‘We’re friends, aren’t we? Friends of yours.’

Steve fell silent. He just couldn’t get across to her the impossibility of what she was proposing. Tracy had another drink and offered him the bottle, but Steve shook his head, which felt quite muddled enough already. The girl thrust the bottle in his face.

‘Goon!’

It was more a threat than an offer. Steve raised the bottle to his lips, but kept them closed to prevent any of the liquid entering his mouth. Tracy snuggled down beside him, her left hand ruffling his hair. Steve lay there as stiff as a corpse. Something that could only be the girl’s other hand was prowling about on his jeans, smoothing and squeezing the material over his penis.

‘We could just go,’ she murmured in his ear. ‘You and me. He wouldn’t be frightened of me, would he? Not of a girl.’

For the first time, Steve began to think that maybe there was some point to what the stotters got up to in the evening. If it felt anything like this, that would explain a lot, even the stories in the lavatory. He had often done it to himself, of course, what Tracy was doing to him, but he’d never realized the difference when someone else did it to you. He wondered what he could do to her in return, to make her feel what he was feeling.

‘What number is it?’

Her voice seemed to come from very far away. Steve had no idea what she was talking about.

‘The house,’ she prompted.

‘Number two.’

He was going on to explain that it wouldn’t work, not even just the two of them, because old Matthews was so far gone that he was quite capable of thinking that Tracy was the devil in drag. But there was no one to explain to, for the girl had taken her hand away, got up and walked out of the room. The floor seemed to be shaking beneath him, as though the wind was making the whole house shudder. It made him feel slightly sick. It was the booze, of course. He was just drunk, fucked up, out of it. He couldn’t understand where Tracy had gone so suddenly, unless she’d had to pee. He lay there, waiting patiently for her to come back.

But she didn’t. Instead, wee Alex appeared in the doorway.

‘Come on,’ he said.

As the epithet that invariably accompanied his name suggested, Alex looked as though he’d been conceived on the cheap. There was a low-budget, no frills air about him which perhaps explained why Steve had never been frightened of Alex in the way he was of Dave or Jimmy. What had happened the week before had made no difference. The boy knew that Alex had just been trying to keep in good with Dave. He would have done the same himself in the circumstances.

‘Where we going?’ he asked as he got to his feet.

‘Ask no questions, you’ll be told no lies,’ Alex recited mechanically.

Steve looked round the room at the mattresses and the plastic bags full of Tracy’s things.

‘Shall I take something?’

Then Dave’s voice, outside the room, roared, ‘Just hurry the fuck up!’

Steve got moving. He had learned the hard way never to make Dave say things twice, because that wound him up. So when they got to the hallway, he was relieved to see that Dave looked quite calm. Tracy was there too, putting on her black and white make-up. Alex pointed to the stairs, wiggling his forefinger back and forth.

‘Upstairs?’ Steve frowned. ‘Why, what’s up there?’

Dave laughed.

‘ “What’s up there?” ’ he mimicked several times.

Each time the question made him laugh afresh. Alex and Tracy joined in the laughter, but Steve sensed that their hearts weren’t in it. They were just trying to keep on the right side of Dave, as usual. This seemed sensible, so Steve laughed as well.

‘What’s so funny?’ Dave demanded aggressively. There was no trace of humour in his voice or on his face. Alex punched Steve on the shoulder. The boy felt totally confused. It was as if they had all changed parts: Tracy had treated him like one of the stotters, while Alex was coming on tough like Dave. Steve couldn’t think who Dave was acting like, but certainly not himself.

‘Get the fuck upstairs!’ Alex told him.

This was easier said than done. The lower flight had been so extensively quarried for firewood that nothing remained but the framework, like a ladder without rungs. Steve and Alex clambered up, followed more slowly by Dave. When they reached the landing, Alex pushed Steve forward into one of the two bedrooms at the rear of the property. There was no electricity upstairs, but a faint glimmer from the next street showed an extent of bare boards and peeling wallpaper. Dave inspected the lock with a look of disgust that reminded Steve of Jimmy. Was that whose part Dave had taken? But then where did that leave Jimmy?

‘Might have known it,’ he complained. ‘No fucking key.’

Alex gave the lock a brief glance.

‘If I had another of them hangers …’

He nodded at the cupboard built into one corner of the room.

‘What’s the matter?’ Dave sneered. ‘You scared?’

He walked over to the cupboard and disappeared inside. A moment later he reappeared holding a wire clothes-hanger. Alex straightened out the loop at the top, stuck it into the lock and twiddled it back and forth, bending it against the edge of the keyhole. The bolt emerged with a sharp click.

‘Fucking brilliant,’ said Dave.

He and Alex turned to go out. Steve made to go with them, but Dave pushed him back.

‘Where you think you’re going?’

‘Thus far and no further,’ Alex supplied.

Steve looked from one of them to the other in bewilderment.

‘But those men, they’ll be back in the morning! They’ll find me here! I’ll get into trouble!’

Dave shook his head.

‘No, no, no, no, no,’ he said firmly, pronouncing each negative with great care and weight. ‘No, don’t you worry about that. They won’t find you, old son. They’ll just tear down the whole fucking place with you inside, that’s what they’ll do.’

‘What goes up must come down,’ mused Alex.

‘They’ll just ram that bulldozer at the wall, again and again and again and again,’ Dave went on with mounting enthusiasm, ‘until the whole fucking lot comes down, hundreds and hundreds of tons of it crushing you slowly to a bleeding pulp, your eyes popping out and your balls exploding and the blood gushing out of your ears. Pity we can’t be here to watch.’

Steve’s dash to the door was swift and sudden, but Alex threw himself at the boy’s ankles and dragged him down.

‘A match-winning tackle from the man they said was over the hill,’ he crowed. ‘The old skills still there.’

They put the boot in a few times and then flung Steve back into the bedroom.

‘Let me go!’ the boy pleaded. ‘Just let me run off! You won’t see me no more, I promise. I won’t bother you. Just don’t leave me here alone!’

An internal pain seemed to wrench Dave’s features out of joint. Steve was so unused to seeing any expression at all on that pallid face that it was several moments before he realized that Dave was grinning.

‘But you’re not alone!’ he said.

The two stotters burst out laughing. The door slammed behind them and there was a rattling as the wire turned in the lock. Then there was silence, broken only by a murmur of voices outside the house. Steve rushed to the window, but there was nothing to be seen but the vandalized garden, bright in the moonlight. He ran back to the door and pulled and twisted and shook the handle for a uselessly long time. Would the demolition men search