Cath Staincliffe - Stone Cold Red Hot

Shouting from outside startled both of us. I went and pulled aside the curtain. A crowd of youths were on the pavement, five of them. Two were leaning against my car. They were laughing and joking. Mr Poole joined me, he took off his glasses and screwed up his eyes.

“The two with ginger hair, on the car,” he said, “they’re Brennan’s twins, can’t tell ‘em apart. I don’t know the two in the middle and the lanky one on the right is Micky Whittaker.”

He had a shaved head and a pattern marked on his scalp. “What’s that on his head?”

“A tattoo, bulldog.”

“His father is mixed up with some neo Nazi group.”

“Yes and his father gave his life fighting the fascists. Died in Malaya, and now sonny boy’s running round celebrating Hitler’s birthday.” Contempt riddled his voice.

“I’d better get them off the car,” I said. “I pulled my coat back on and Mr Poole followed me to the door. I opened it and called out. “Can you get off the car, please.”

Jeers and catcalls. One of the twins mimicked me, “Can you get off the car, please,” and the other echoed him.

“Needs scrapping,” Micky Whittaker kicked a tyre with his boot. “We can do it for yer, you’ll get the insurance.”

I resisted joining in the banter and repeated my request.

“We’re not hurting it,” said one of the twins “are we?” he turned to the others.

“No,” they chorused.

“Get off the car.”

“Alright, alright,” said the other twin.

“She’s shitting herself,” one of them sniggered.

My cheeks burned but I tried not to react.

“Come on, lads,” Mr Poole’s voice was hard but not threatening.

“Alright, grandad, who’s yer visitor?”

He took a step down and went to the gate. “She’s my niece, up from London and her auntie is poorly in the hospital so I’d appreciate a bit of peace and quiet while she’s staying here, OK?”

There were shuffles and sniggers and a soft “‘kin‘ell” from one of them as they shambled off down the road.

Half an hour later the motorbike I’d seen on arriving became the focus for some excitement. The driver roared it up and down the Close screeching to a halt at the bottom where the gang had congregated.

I told Mr Poole that I’d film some of this for the record.

“If you need anything,” he said, “just give us a yell. I’ll be in the back room,” he gestured in that direction.

“What time do you go to bed?” I felt slightly foolish asking but I didn’t want to disturb him.

“Oh, I’ll be up till you’re done.”

“Are you sure, it’ll be after two?”

“I only need a couple of hours these days,” he said, “don’t worry about me.”

I went upstairs and shut the door so no light would spill into the room. I settled myself in my niche. I filmed ten minutes of antics with the motorbike and managed to get close-ups of each of the lads. The main aim of the game seemed to be revving it up as hard as possible then racing up the Close and squealing to a halt with a skid. There weren’t any girls hanging about. I wondered what they were doing while their boyfriends and brothers played Easy Rider.

There was no sign of life at all from the Ibrahims. I couldn’t tell if the lights were on in the house, all the curtains were drawn and no-one came or went. Things were quiet for a while apart from the sound of a child wailing and two dogs barking a duet. A plane took off overhead, we weren’t far from the airport. When it had climbed out of sight and the sound had faded I could only hear the child crying.

Later there was a burst of thumping music from a car passing on the main road. A man walked past with a small, Scottish terrier on a lead. The dog stopped and squatted, left a turd on the pavement. The man waited, no sign of concern about him. I should have filmed him, I thought to myself, sent it in somewhere and got him fined. Dog fouling seemed to have reached epidemic proportions in Manchester, every trip to the park followed by cleaning up the kids shoes with an old toothbrush and disinfectant. Horrible.

A woman pushing a buggy came from the bottom of the Close. Out late or walking round trying to get the baby to sleep?

I was getting stiff and the wig was driving me mad. I took it off and scratched my head furiously, plonked it back on. I was starting to feel drowsy too. Reckoned I needed a caffeine boost. I’d brought a snack with me too, cheese butty and a slab of flapjack. I’d have those, stoke myself up.

The door to Mr Poole’s back room was ajar. I knocked and went in.

“Wow!” It was like a library or a social history museum, books lined three walls, the fourth displayed posters and banners from past campaigns. Ban the Bomb, Support Nalgo, Victory to The Miners. A large table in the centre of the room was stacked with magazines, papers and more books. Mr Poole sat at the table in a high-backed chair.

“My study.”

“You’ve quite a collection.”

“Yes, it’ll go to the Mechanics Institute when I’m gone. Lot of these are originals, out of print now. And the pamphlets and leaflets, can’t get them anywhere else. I’m still cataloguing the more recent material.”

“How’ve you got hold of it all?”

“Well, I’ve kept the items that have come my way, through the union, been a shop steward all my life when I was in work. And things from the Tenants and then the different campaigns and such like. The rest people have passed on to me, knowing I’d a collection.” I thought of Lisa MacNeice with her hens.

“One chap I knew, Archie Ferguson, he was a big man in the unions at Ferranti. Well, Archie died last year and his wife Betty rang me.”

“‘George,’ she says, ‘I’ve half-a-dozen boxes here, Archie’s papers and he wanted you to have them.’ I got round there and she’s got a room full. He kept everything – minutes going back forty years, notices of meetings, old rule books, correspondence. I could have filled a ship with it. Well, I found what was worth keeping, and that took some doing, mind you, and I told her to get the scouts to take the rest for their paper collections.”

I smiled. “I’d like to get a cup of coffee.”

“I’ll do it,” he pulled himself up.

“I don’t mind,” I volunteered, if you show me where you keep everything.”

“I’ll show you now and then if you need anything later you know what’s what.”

Back in my viewing position I sipped coffee and demolished my snack. I felt an initial wave of fatigue as all the blood rushed to my stomach. I stretched and yawned and fooled around with the camera a bit. It was dark now, the scene illuminated in moody orange from the streetlights.

Two cars drove down the Close at high speed. People spilled out at the bottom. There was a lot of shouting and snatches of a song. “Engerland, Eng-er-land.” I felt my spine tense. I wondered whether Mrs Ahmed was listening too, waiting for the trouble to begin.

The group walked up the street and gathered on the pavement outside the Ibrahims’. I began to film. There were six in all. The twins and Micky Whittaker were there and another teenager, seriously overweight and with a shaved head. I filmed the group and the scene before cutting in for close-ups. It was obvious who the men were, they closely resembled their offspring: Mr Brennan, balding with thin patches of flame coloured hair, short, stocky, grinning a lot; his accomplice Whittaker, tall and stooping with lank, shoulder length hair and a thin moustache. He wore a denim jacket and torn jeans and looked as if he was freezing. He shivered frequently, stood with his shoulders hunched, arms crossed, hands tucked under his armpits.

A joint was passing round and the Whittaker boy passed round cans of super-strong lager. One of the twins sprayed the other with foam and got cuffed across the face by his father who screeched at him. “Don’t waste it, yer fuckin’ pillock.”