Crime and Punishment

by G.F. Newman

Genres: General Fiction; Mystery

Synopsis

Hard to find

Release date: March 5, 2009

Publisher: Quercus Publishing Plc

Print pages: 705

Sample

The moment he heard the terrible sound coming from his granddad Brian pissed his pants. It was like an animal being killed. Seeing little piglets slaughtered in Hoxton market didn’t scare him, but Granddad was the strongest man alive – drunk or sober, Tiger Braden could beat anyone, Nan always said. Here he was, carrying on as if trying to frighten someone or not be scared himself. Sometimes Brian did that. Now he kept dead quiet and still.

The pee cooled on the inside of his leg and he wanted to cry. Instead he bit his lip to stop himself, like when he saw the Nazi parachute bombs floating down and didn’t know where to run. He didn’t move from behind the handcart in Sullivan’s yard, or dare to breathe in case his mum heard him. If she found him, she’d be as cross with him as she was with his granddad. She always told him not to go out on his own after dark because of the German night-bombing. He might not get to a shelter in time. There was a shelter in their backyard. It was scary in there and you were all alone. He didn’t like being alone.

Brian pressed his head against the wooden spokes of the large steel-rimmed wheel of the builder’s handcart and tried not to look, but he couldn’t stop himself.

When his mum arrived home early and came up to the small back bedroom and found Granddad sitting on the bed Brian shared with his uncle Jack, she started shouting. Nan left him in Granddad’s care while she popped out to sit with Auntie Alice, who wasn’t well because Uncle Jim was posted missing by his regiment. That was a long while ago and Auntie Alice still wasn’t well.

‘What you doing with him?’ his mum demanded. ‘What? What, you filthy sod?’

‘Oi, watch that tongue of yourn,’ Tiger Braden snapped, veins popping up in his muscular neck. His nostrils flared so you could see hairs like grey worms in his nose. ‘We’re only having a natter, ain’t we, son? What’s wrong with that?’

That made Mum angrier. She yanked her father up with such force it surprised him. She wasn’t small, and Granddad wasn’t weak, not like Brian’s dad. She dragged her father down the stairs, calling him a filthy sod again and again, saying she wouldn’t put up with him starting his nonsense with her son. Granddad was shouting. ‘Shut your mouth, you daft cow! A mad cow’s what you are, an’ no mistake.’

Brian jumped out of bed to see what was happening. Mum often exploded like this, but her anger never usually lasted. Now it seemed like an incendiary that wouldn’t die down. He pulled on his short, grey-flannel trousers and got into his plimsolls, then leaned over the banisters. They were arguing in the narrow, dimly lit hallway below. Mum dragged Granddad towards the front door, all the while slapping and punching him. Granddad threw up his arms, trying to protect himself, but didn’t hit her back. Brian’s dad didn’t say anything, except an exasperated, ‘Cathy,’ as if trying to calm her as he followed them out. The situation wasn’t getting calmer.

Sullivan’s building yard at the end of the street was open to Goswell Road and next to their locked coal yard – coal was in short supply. Sensing something terrible was about to happen, Brian hoped someone would get the rozzers* or even a fire warden – like they did in the pictures – but there in the yard they couldn’t be seen from the road behind the heaps of sand and piles of bricks. No one around there ever called the cops to anything anyway. Life wasn’t like in the pictures, Nan always said.

‘Hold him! Hold him!’ Mum was screaming as she grabbed a metal reinforcing rod that was twisted like a stick of barley sugar.

*see Glossary on pp. 695–7.

Dad could barely hold a cat, much less Tiger Braden. With an arching motion Mum struck Granddad on the side of his head. Slowly the thin covering of flesh seemed to tip down over his ear like the wet, peeling wallpaper on some of the walls of bombed houses. Brian gasped.

‘I put up with your nonsense all them years, Dad. You’re not starting it with my boy!’ Another blow struck Granddad, causing a louder scream. Mum shouted, ‘You won’t ever do that to anyone again, you rotten, filthy bastard. I won’t let you ever again. I won’t!’ Brian’s dad reached out as if to stop her, saying, ‘Cathy, Cathy,’ in the same quietly exasperated tone. Mum was growing more hysterical and took no notice as she landed another blow straight down on top of the old man’s head. There was a crack, like a lightbulb exploding. Then the screaming stopped. His dad let Granddad slip from his grasp and crumple to the ground like a sack of spuds he was no longer able to hold.

Held-in breath burst out of Brian now on a long sob. Instinctively he knew what the stillness and silence meant. Sometimes he saw dead bodies being pulled out of bombed houses, but he’d never seen one of his own family dead. His mum gave no sign that she’d heard him. All her attention was on Granddad. ‘I hate you,’ she was saying. ‘I hate what you done to me.’

She raised the iron bar to hit him again where he lay still and helpless-looking, but Dad caught her arm. ‘That’s enough, Cathy.’ He never really fought or argued with Mum. He was ill a lot in his earlier life with TB, so wasn’t strong. He’d lost his family to illness or something in Austria, but he never talked about it.

Mum dropped the metal bar, all her anger gone. She turned and looked straight at Brian and gave him a tight smile, as if to say, What’re you doing here? Still Brian didn’t move, except for his trembling limbs. Mum came over and unhooked his bloodless fingers from the spokes of the wheel. She didn’t tell him off for being there; she didn’t even tell him not to say anything to his nan or Uncle Jack. Brian knew he mustn’t: if he did, there’d be big trouble. He was scared to death of that, and even more scared that he would accidentally tell someone.

‘We’d better get you out of them trousers,’ was all Mum said.

She picked him up and carried him with ease, even though he was nearly five and heavy for his age. She pulled him close to her and left the yard without a backward glance.

Brian tried to look back but she pulled his head round. His dad was right behind them. Brian still couldn’t breathe: the air was being crushed out of his lungs by some great weight and he thought he might die.

When they were back at Nan’s house, no one said anything about what happened in Sullivan’s yard. His mum got him out of his wet trousers and stood him in the worn glazed sink in the scullery behind the kitchen. She washed his legs – the water from the brass tap was ice cold and stinging; she dried him with a rough towel. ‘I have to do it properly, or you’ll get chapped.’

‘Goodness, what you doing up still, Brian?’ Nan asked when she came in a little while later.

‘He was having a bad dream, weren’t you, love?’ his mum answered.

Brian wanted to tell his nan it wasn’t a nightmare, or not the sort you woke up from, because he was awake and still in it. But he knew Mum would kill him if he did. He shivered and clung to her. She was all he’d got – she reminded him of that over and over again. ‘And you’re all I’ve got, Brian.’ What about Dad? he wanted to say. His dad still wasn’t well and perhaps he was going to die like some of his friends’ dads. He tried not to think about that in case it made it happen.

When Brian was sipping the cocoa his nan had made with powder from the Rowntree’s tin, Uncle Jack came in looking as though he was already the world boxing champion instead of just training. ‘What you doing up, m’ ol’ china?’ he said. ‘Piss the bed?’ He dropped his boxing kit on a wooden chair.

‘Leave him be!’ his mum snapped. ‘He’s just going up, aren’t you, lovey?’

‘Oh, Mum, do I have to?’ Brian didn’t want to be upstairs on his own in the dark. At that moment he wasn’t sure if what he’d seen had really happened, and only just stopped himself asking if Granddad was still at the pub.

‘You won’t ever be world champion you don’t get plenty of sleep,’ Jack said cheerfully.

‘I’ve got a brother daft enough to get his brains bashed out,’ Brian’s mum said. ‘I don’t want my son doing it too.’

‘You won’t say that when I win the title,’ Jack said.

She laughed, slipped her arm around his waist and gave him a squeeze. ‘Course I won’t.’ Normally she didn’t get on with Jack. He was too like Tiger Braden, she said. Maybe things would change now.

‘Did your dad look in at the gym?’ Nan asked.

‘He stuck his head round the door. Said he was coming home.’

‘Home to the George, more like,’ Nan said, and started clearing up.

Suddenly there was no air in the room and again Brian couldn’t breathe.

‘You all right, my darling?’ Nan asked.

‘Course he is.’ His mum put her hand on his chest and rubbed in a circular motion – she did that with Vick when he was chesty. He didn’t know if he wanted her doing it now, but he didn’t move away.

His dad was sitting at the kitchen table, dabbing at a permanent tea stain on the oilcloth. Why didn’t he say something? Brian tried to speak but his throat started to close up. His tongue seemed swollen and wouldn’t let him form words. Perhaps his dad would tell Nan what’d happened and why, but he was silent. Brian knew with a deep, gnawing certainty if Dad didn’t say anything now, he never would. He and Dad were scared of Mum. Now he remembered how he’d felt when he walked across the thin ice on deep, dark Wapping Basin. It began to crack and the silt and slime below had tried to suck him under. He mustn’t let Uncle Jack find out what Mum did. His temper was worse even than Granddad’s, and he was much stronger. But not as strong as Mum.

She picked Brian up and offered him around the family to be kissed goodnight, Nan first, then Dad and Uncle Jack. Finally his mum kissed his lips and said, ‘You’re safe now, lovey. I won’t ever let anyone hurt you.’

Brian looked around the room, hoping one of them would save him from the dark and the picture in his mind of Granddad cold and still in Sullivan’s yard. No one dared to in case they got the same treatment. He clung to his mum. One day she might do the same to him if he upset her.

The wail of the sirens made Brian Oldman’s ears ring when they started at three o’clock sharp. Car hooters and bus horns, whistles and football rattles joined the din. When it stopped, a long cheer went up from the crowds on the street. This was the start of the Festival of Britain that would, they had been told, ‘usher in a brand new beginning for everyone after the years of austerity and hardship following the war’. A barrel of beer was wheeled up on a handcart and everyone cheered again, Win Booker’s mum doing a knees-up because she was happy to be alive. Some of the neighbours had gone up west to Buckingham Palace to see King George, Queen Elizabeth and the princesses at the head of the procession to Westminster Abbey. Life would be different from now on, Clement Attlee said on the wireless after the chimes of Big Ben struck three. They wanted to believe him. The crowd went wild, cheering and shouting, shaking hands and hugging, even people who didn’t normally speak to each other. At last things would get better.

‘You wouldn’t have thought we’d won the war, Brian,’ his nan said. ‘We certainly didn’t win peace under this bloody lot.’

Brian didn’t know what she meant. But now wasn’t the time to ask: whistles blasted again and people were throwing confetti and streamers over the Sullivan brothers as they rolled out a big papiermâché model of Britannia on one of their handcarts. They had several lorries now and were busy building houses for the LCC.

‘It’s like they won the pools,’ Brian’s mother, Cath, said. ‘The shoddy way they been throwing up them houses. ‘S daylight robbery. They must have pots of dosh stashed away. Serve ‘em right if someone robbed ‘em.’

Just mentioning the Sullivans, who owned both the coal yard and builders’ yard made Brian shiver. He refused to go there and always crossed the road to pass their place. Sometimes he wondered if his mum had forgotten what had happened, but then she’d do or say something that told him she hadn’t. Now everyone was joining in with a huge snake-like dance that was winding around the corner into his street. Neighbours ran to the front rather than waiting for the end to appear. Others raised their glasses or teacups in a toast to the dancers.

More streamers sailed through the air. A bright pink one wrapped itself around Brian’s tall, straight-backed Nan, Gracie Hill. She called herself that, even though she wasn’t married to Billy Hill. She was strong-jawed, with dark hair and determined, handsome features. Her face showed the resolve that you knew would see you through any crisis. That was how Brian felt about her. She laughed as she carried a large enamel teapot out of her terraced house, whose door opened directly on to the pavement. She stepped into the roadway to the trestle tables that stretched the length of the street. She set down the teapot, among the plates, freed the streamer and twirled it around Brian, who was eleven now and slightly overweight. ‘Come on, love,’ she said, and pushed him ahead of her to join the snake, her hands on his fleshy hips. The man behind her clasped her hips, and all the while Nan’s friend Eve Sutton, from number forty-seven, plonked her fat fingers down on the piano, which Brian’s uncle Jack and his best friend Bobby Brown had dragged outside.

People fell about laughing in confusion when they had to kick their legs out on the third step as the song directed. They kicked different ways and almost fell over. Brian got separated from his nan and suddenly Win Booker was hanging on to him. ‘Where’s Jack?’ she asked.

‘I dunno.’ Brian wriggled free of her to look around, as if he was helping her spot Jack. He knew his uncle wouldn’t want her to find him. ‘She’d ruin a bloke when he’s in training,’ Jack told him once. ‘Know what I mean, Bri?’ Brian didn’t, but he pretended he did. He knew it must have something to do with the fact that neither his mother nor Nan liked Win. They thought she was no good.

Gracie was pouring tea into an assortment of cups for the adults when Brian found her again. ‘They survived the German bombs,’ she said, referring to the best, cabinet-kept china, ‘but I’m not sure they’ll survive this lot.’

There were too many people for them all to have a place at the table so the children sat at it and the adults pulled armchairs or sofas from their parlours. Women like his nan, in Sunday-best with a pinny wrapped around them served men in the armchairs or fussed around the table. They made sure everyone had something to eat and no one got more than their share. Some kids were grabbing food as if they were starving. The table was laden with sandwiches, mostly fish paste, but there were a few with ham or corned-beef, which went in a flash. There were homemade cakes, too, and tarts with shop-bought jam.

A well-groomed seven-year-old, hair slick with Brylcreem, in a stiff grey-flannel suit that was slightly too small for him, grabbed a sandwich from a passing server to add to the cake and two other sandwiches on his plate. The raw hand of a pale, thin woman shot out and slapped him hard, making him drop the third sandwich back on to the serving plate. That was Brian’s aunt Alice: she was stopping his cousin John making a pig of himself. John was always being pulled up sharply by his mum. She was trying to make him into a better person, someone who wouldn’t offend God – she had turned to God in earnest when her husband didn’t return from the war. ‘She’s enough to make you take to the bottle,’ his nan sometimes confided to him.

‘He’s all right,’ Gracie said. She’d seen John’s shame and stroked the side of her grandson’s face to comfort him. ‘Leave him alone.’

‘He mustn’t grab, Mum,’ Alice said firmly. ‘It’s not Christian.’

‘He’s only a youngster.’ She held out the green enamel teapot to her elder daughter. ‘Here, more tea’s wanted. It’s Christian not to let these people die of thirst.’

She winked at Brian as Alice went away without another word. As soon as her back was turned Gracie put more food on John’s plate. He glanced around in alarm.

‘No, I mustn’t, Nan. I mustn’t,’ he said.

‘Don’t worry about that, my darling,’ Gracie said. ‘You eat while you can. Brian, look after him. Make sure he gets his share.’ That was his nan’s credo, always making sure her own got their fair share, plus a little more. She ruffled Brian’s hair, and immediately he flicked it back into place. Bobby Brown was always knocking off stuff and boxes of Brylcreem was part of one load. He had given them each a jar to celebrate the Festival of Britain.

‘Nan, can I have some beer? George Foreman’s got a glass and he’s only a year older than me,’ Brian said.

‘Won’t do no harm. Ask your dad or your uncle Jack. Tell ‘em I said.’

John Redvers looked up at her hopefully. ‘You can when you’re a bit older, lovey,’ she told him.

Win Booker came over with a plate of sandwiches. The tight top the eighteen-year-old bottle-blonde was wearing drew yearning looks from older men and tolerant smiles from their worn-out wives. ‘We’re running out of bread, Mrs Hill,’ Win said. ‘All that what Dad got from the Tip-Top’s gone.’

‘Mrs Thompson’s old man brought a ton of it, too. I’ll go and have a look,’ Gracie said, and went away.

Win caught Brian’s arm. ‘Did you tell him I was looking for him? Did you?’ she said.

‘Tell him yourself,’ Brian said. ‘He’s over there.’ He nodded through the crowd to a group of young men hanging around the lamp-post as he picked up an empty glass. He saw her eyes settle on Jack Braden. She only had eyes for Jack. He was dark and handsome, his plaid shirtsleeves rolled up over muscular upper arms. He was the handsomest man in the world, Nan said, and Brian couldn’t disagree, especially as his mum said so, grudgingly, too. He wished his dad, Joey, was more like him.

Win Booker had got it bad and was throwing herself at Jack, his nan said. Brian understood what she meant – he’d felt like that for a while about Mr Rush, his teacher. He was tall and had leather patches on the arms of his jacket, smoked a pipe, rode a BSA motorbike and seemed to be all the things his dad wasn’t. He felt a bit sorry for Win Booker, but he wasn’t going to tell his uncle because he knew Jack wasn’t interested in her. Jack’s wavy dark hair and violet eyes were like a magnet to women but, right now, he was only interested in becoming the light-heavyweight world champion.

Brian went over to the young men and held out his glass to Bobby Brown, who had a quart bottle of Watney’s brown ale. Jack stuck an arm round his nephew’s shoulders. Brian liked it when he did that; it gave him goose bumps and made him feel part of the gang. Because of his age he was always left out and he wanted to be grown up so he could go around with Jack. His nan always told him it would happen soon enough.’ But today was special so he was included and Bobby Brown was giving him beer. Brian watched the white foam rise up the glass.

‘Steady on, Bobby,’ Joey Oldman said. ‘You’ll make him sick.’

‘Da-ad! Nan said I could.’

‘He’s all right,’ Jack said. ‘We’re celebrating, ain’t we? A drop of brown won’t do no harm. ‘S like lemonade.’ He winked at Bobby.

Brian waited to see if his dad would go against Jack. He didn’t. People didn’t often argue with Jack, only his mum sometimes. Brian gulped the beer as his dad looked away, accepting defeat. Even though he’d wanted it, with its bitter taste of iron, he wanted his dad to argue just once, and insist on things being done his way. But he didn’t, just as he didn’t that night in Sullivan’s yard.

‘What you doing? You drunk?’ Bobby Brown jumped back as Brian’s glass smashed on the pavement.

‘No harm done,’ Jack said, kicking the broken glass into the gutter. ‘Get yourself another pot.’

Eve Sutton, having exhausted her repertoire of tunes, launched back into the conga, a real crowd-pleaser. Another snake was forming. Brian saw Win Booker join it and look their way as if longing for Jack to come over. She pulled an old man’s hands off her bum and on to her hips. Straightaway they slid down again. Bobby said, ‘Dirty old sod!’ Jack and the others laughed. Win blushed as if she thought they were laughing at her.

Brian’s mum, Cath, who had the same dark good looks as her brother and Nan, came past in the snake. Every time Brian saw her unexpectedly his heart pounded. It did now as she reached out for his dad and pulled him into the dance that was bumping along. She tried to pull Jack in, too, but he resisted her – not many did.

Bobby gave Brian a new glass and splashed beer into it. He took another swig, although the taste wasn’t any better. Really, he would have preferred Tizer.

‘Oi! Don’t you get him drunk, Bobby,’ Cath said, as she shimmied past, Dad in front of her.

Bobby gave her a tipsy grin and raised his glass. ‘Nan said it was all right, Mum,’ Brian called after her, but his mum was disappearing, his dad in front of her.

It was then that Win Booker captured Jack. Her red, work-worn hand shot out and seized his. It must have taken a lot of courage but she wasn’t letting him go.

‘She’s got you now, Jack!’ Bobby jeered.

Jack winked back at him. ‘It’s a knockout,’ he said, and thrust his glass at Brian. Win reached around and moved Jack’s hard stevedore’s hands off her waist and on to her bum. She looked up at him and smiled. Brian drank some beer, wishing he was in the dance line but too shy to push in. He saw his nan pull his cousin John across the road to join in. John couldn’t do it properly, and Auntie Alice wouldn’t do it at all. She stood on the pavement, frowning. Dancing was the devil’s way of making people more sinful than they already were, she would say. Her iron-grey hair was pulled back like wire against her head, making her face tense and painful to look at.

After the conga’s grand finale, Jack came back to the safety of his friends, but Win, emboldened now, tugged him in the opposite direction. ‘Come on, Jack,’ she said, ‘you can help me cut some more sandwiches. They’re running out.’ She wasn’t letting him go as she headed towards her house, Bobby and the others calling after him.

Suddenly Brian felt sick. The beer was rising in his throat, then settling back into his stomach. He didn’t want to throw up in the street in front of all these people because his mum would be cross with Jack, Bobby and his dad for letting him drink too much and then he’d never be in the gang. He longed instead to be with Jack. Only he could protect him.

The stench of decayed fish and rat urine hung in the Bookers’ kitchen. Mr and Mrs Booker didn’t get on. They fought a heck of a lot and Mrs Booker would sometimes come flying along the street to Jack’s house for his dad to stop her old man leathering one of the kids or laying into her. Since Tiger Braden’s death, when Sullivan’s yard had taken a direct hit from a V2 rocket, Jack had assumed that role.

Today the smell was mixed with gas from the cast-iron stove and made Jack’s nostrils twitch. Mr and Mrs Booker had been arguing when a pan of fish got tipped behind the stove and left there, both of them refusing to clear it up. There were fat stains up the yellowing distempered walls, while food and empty paste jars littered the table. Jack’s mum worked hard to keep their scullery clean – you could eat off the floor almost. In the Bookers’ house he wouldn’t have wanted to eat off the table.

‘What you gonna do now we got them new opportunities the government was on about, Jack?’ Win asked as she squeezed past, pressing her stomach into him. She reached for another loaf of bread and started to slice it. ‘D’you wanna scrape a bit of marge on them? Not too much.’

Jack found a dinner knife and started to spread bright yellow Stork margarine far too thickly over the slices. ‘No, like this,’ Win said, putting her hand over his to guide the knife.

‘I’m gonna have a shot at the world title,’ Jack said. He thought of little else. ‘I’m ready. I just need a chance.’

‘Pigs’ll fly, my dad says.’

‘What does he know about it?’ Jack wouldn’t let her dampen his confidence. ‘I’m better than Freddie Mills any old day. I could lick him easily. I just need a chance, that’s all.’

‘I wanna get right away from this street,’ Win said. ‘Everyone talks about me.’

‘Who does?’ Jack didn’t want to be drawn into this conversation, but Peewee, his trainer, had told him that only dummies stood by and said nothing.

‘They all think I’m a bad lot. Dad walloped me again last night, the rotten sod. I’ll kill him one of these days.’

‘You should’ve called me. I would’ve come.’

‘Would you?’

He would’ve gone because no man should take his belt to a girl. Win was fully developed, but being three years older than her, Jack still thought of her as a girl – one he’d known all his life.

‘You should see the welts on my bum. I’ll show you if you like.’

She lifted her pleated cream skirt to her thigh, revealing a suspender. Jack’s breath quickened and his cock began to stiffen, even though he knew it was bad for his training regime. As if sensing his rising urgency Win kissed him hard on the mouth. He felt something like an explosion behind his lips and cheeks, similar to the tingling sensation he experienced when he took a punch in the face, only much nicer.

‘Not here,’ she said, ‘in case someone comes in. We’ll go in our air-raid shelter. I’ll show you what he done to me.’

She brushed against the swelling in Jack’s trousers as she took his hand, then pulled him out through the scullery door. They crossed the narrow yard, past the privy and an empty chicken run to the rusting corrugated-iron shelter. Jack’s mind held a single thought right then.

The air raid shelter was small, dark and crowded with junk accumulated since the war. Iron-framed bunks, rusting jerrycans, broken chairs, bits of pushbikes, piles of newspaper. No one ever went near the place, other than to add to the pile. The thick, undisturbed air smelled of pee and damp.

Inside, Win lifted her skirt and undid her suspenders. She eased down baggy cotton knickers to show Jack the vicious welts across her buttocks. ‘Do you want to feel them? You can. Go on.’

Jack hesitated, scared of what was happening to him, afraid he was going to come right there and then. Win took his hand and laid it on her bum. The pressure he was feeling worsened.

‘Do you want to do me?’ she asked, in a trembling whisper. ‘Do you? You can, if you like.’

Whatever the consequences, whatever his mum or his sister might have said about Win Booker, Jack lacked the will to resist. His hand plunged into the sticky wetness between her legs. ‘Oh, Jack,’ she sighed.

Oh, strewth, his mind cried as her fingers found him. He was ready to let go at any second and would if she didn’t stop. In a flurry of clumsy movements they got her knickers off and his belt unfastened, along with his fly buttons. His brown cord trousers were barely down over his knees, along with his woollen pants, when Win’s hot hand clasped him. He didn’t know how he got inside her and worried that it would all be over before he was aware of doing anything. Only the sharp, stinging pain as he entered her stopped him ejaculating immediately. His foreskin tightened over the helmet of his cock, feeling like it was going to tear as it strangulated and cut off the blood supply; then moments later an explosion of sensation swamped the pain and left him moaning Win’s name.

Then Win was saying, ‘Quiet. Be quiet! Someone’ll hear. Me dad might come. He’ll go mad.’ She sounded angry, or maybe she was just scared.

Jack felt good, as if he’d done something really worthwhile. It was a milestone inasmuch as it was his first time and he was pleased he didn’t disgrace himself and come over her leg, like Bobby Brown did on his first go. But he was dissatisfied somehow, irritated that it hadn’t been better than he’d imagined. The pain from his foreskin robbed him of a lot of pleasure. He supposed it would get better. He remembered his training regime and what Peewee had said about allowing his energy and stamina to run out through the little bean when you played around: ‘When you get to the sixth round and can hardly get out of your corner at the bell, you’ll wish you’d left the little bean in its pod.’

As Win pulled her knickers on she wouldn’t look at him, and he was embarrassed now, tidying himself up. They slipped out of the shelter separately, Jack going quickly through the yard and out into the rear alleyway to skirt around the houses to the street. He wasn’t any good at making sandwiches anyway.

Old Bill was at the street party in the rotund shape of PC Tony Watling. He’d been forever chasing Jack Braden and Bobby Brown, but he was friendly enough today. Jack knew the policeman would still nick them if he got half a chance. They were like that. Over the years PC Watling had given them a few clips around the ears, but now he smiled benignly and unfastened some