Derek Beaven - His Coldest Winter

He licked his lips guiltily, and stole a glance to either side, because he’d put on Lionel’s brainy nonsense, and been taken up as if into a flying saucer. Father and son were bound together, partners in brilliance, hero and villain, doctor and patient, hurtling round a planet that couldn’t touch them, peering down every so often at his aunt’s simple family in the house on Wickham Lane, who gawped back and admired. He licked his lips again. That had been the sci-fi story of his life. No rival version had occurred, until, on the Watford Bypass, in the Busy Bee café, when his hand shook as he tried to hold his tea and his feet burned as they thawed back to life, some scale fell from his eyes. The rest of the family couldn’t stand Lionel, and, by extension, they couldn’t stand him.

There was an exhaust roar outside. Another. He looked up, startled. Headlights flashed through the window and sparked the dribs of tinsel hanging down. Bikes were arriving, maybe twenty of them, revving and thundering in the car park. They wove in and out of each other, accelerating and braking, turning this way, now that, in an intricate dance. The din was shattering.

SHOUTS AND IRONIC Christmas greetings came from the door. Young men were unknotting scarves from their faces, combing quiffs, primping their damp leather, brushing at snow. They laughed, jeered, lit up fags. They strutted in tight jeans and tight shoes, catcalled at the owner behind the counter, punched buttons on the jukebox. Alan kept his head down over his tea, but a group of four or five were heading straight towards him, shouting their orders to friends in the queue.

‘Mind if we join you?’

He fixed his attention on a smear in the rim of his cup.

‘Oi! Got a tongue in your head?’ Immediately, they clustered round.

‘What? Sorry. Sure.’ He gestured. ‘Take a seat.’

Three lads sat down at his table. ‘All right, mate? How you doing, then?’

Involuntarily, Alan glanced at his watch. It was too early for trouble, tonight of all nights when everyone was still supposed to be at home pulling crackers. ‘Fine, thanks.’

‘Nice watch. What time is it?’

‘Half seven.’ ‘Hound Dog’ came banging out of the record machine.

‘Not thinking of going, were you?’

‘No. No, I wasn’t.’

The young man opposite him grinned knowingly. He had a narrow face beneath his blond, fifties, Teddy-boy wave, the skin pale, except where cold had turned the spots under his cheekbones a raw red. He shot a glance at Alan’s goggles and gloves on the table. ‘What bike you got, mate?’

‘’59 Bonnie.’

‘Fuck off. How old are you, then?’

‘Seventeen.’

‘Yeah? Santa come down the chimney, did he?’

‘My uncle’s a mechanic. Works with bikes down in Kent. He knew I was looking and sorted me one out.’

The newcomer sniffed and eyed him. ‘Not Watford, then, you?’ he enquired, as though idly.

‘Me? No. Stopped off for a cup of tea. I’ve got a few miles to go yet. Mate.’

‘Got a few miles to go, have you?’ The lad mimicked Alan’s speech and grinned at the other two. ‘That’s lucky for you, son. See …,’ he spread his hands like the crooked charmer in a cowboy film, ‘we’ve come looking for Watford boys. Got a bone to pick with Watford. Haven’t we, men?’

The others laughed. Alan felt his own cheeks crease. ‘Where are you lot from, then?’ he said.

The rider beside him spoke for the first time. ‘Fucking Stanmore, ain’t we.’ Then he laughed again, and swore, breathing out his cigarette smoke. His teeth were irregular. They showed like points beneath his top lip. ‘Yours that sidecar rig out there?’ he said.

The crease stuck in Alan’s face. He forced a chuckle. ‘Bloody thing just nearly killed me.’

His neighbour leaned towards him. ‘Why don’t you tell us your name?’

‘Alan.’ He could smell the breath. It was heavy, slightly tarry. ‘What’s yours?’

‘I’m Mac. Mr Macbride to you.’ His friends laughed. ‘See Nobby there?’ Mac pointed behind him to a tall figure standing at the counter. ‘Nob got banned, didn’t he. Doing eighty down fucking Clamp Hill. Oi! Nob! Has to ride up behind ever since. Or in a sidecar. Don’t you, Nob!’

Alan looked. A tall figure was staring back at them. He was older, grimmer than the rest, seeming to stoop slightly in his black, fringed jacket, the black hair straggling on the collar at either side. But the face … Nob’s pock-marked skin had been slashed. The scars ran in meaty weals on both cheeks, as though someone had played noughts and crosses on him.

‘Over here, Nob. This kid says he’ll give you a lift in his chair if you want one.’ Mac turned back extravagantly to Alan. ‘Where was it you said you was going?’

‘Over past Hemel.’ Alan pulled his gaze from the scars.

‘Hemel, Nob. Any use?’

Nob was just coming over, a bottle of Pepsi in his huge dirty hand, when a ruckus started in the far corner. It was with the boys who’d been there all the time. They were the locals, Watford. Alan swung round again, but his view was screened by the rows of leather backs. He heard threats and counter-threats, then a short, winded scream, a boy’s – or maybe a girl’s. For when a torrent of swearing rose over the jukebox guitars, and the crowd seemed to sigh, it was a girl who answered back, her voice spirited, her words unexpectedly eloquent. Someone shouted her name, Cynthia, and the scuffle began again, because she was the fucking cause of it all. A cup smashed against a wall.

Presley’s last chords clanged on the hush. Then the lads round Alan were on their feet, half-sneering, half-cheering, and he stood, too, relieved. He let himself be swept up in the action, even became part of it, shouting with the rest. Only the two lorry drivers remained unconcerned, their sports pages propped in front of their fry-ups. A round-faced Ted from the far side of the room stood on a table: Fight! Fight! Fight!’

The man in the vest called from behind the counter, ‘If you bloody lot want a bloody punch-up you can bloody do it outside. Go on! Get out of it! All of you!’ With his cleaning cloth over his shoulder, he stood unmoved at his urn. The mood hung for a second, steamy, and Alan felt his neck prickle. One instant could ruin another face. He clutched his goggles and gloves, alert for the click of the first knife. Then, as if at a signal, everyone crowded for the door. And Alan Rae went with them, thrust by the night into the thick of things.

VIOLENCE WAS A chimera – no one quite believed in it. That was a quirk left by the war: Alan’s mother had walked to work over broken glass, his uncle had seen a Normandy hedge trimmed by machine-gun bullets, the A-bomb had blown the Japs out of the fight. Violence lacked shape. Teds and bike boys seemed its only ministers. Wisecracking, fire-cracking, they were ambiguous as devils in an old pageant.

Light flared from the café windows. The car park was white where the bikes made a natural arena. They seemed to herd the rival gangs together, closing in with their welded angles and shimmering chrome. A ring had already formed, and Alan glanced to where his Triumph was parked, fifty yards from the exit. He heard the wind sough, felt the snow fall as cars passed by in the road, their engines muffled, the swish of their tyres powdery. The flecked gust, slicing through the trees at the far side, began to sting his cheek.

Two figures stood primed in the bleak little space, champions of Cynthia – whoever she was. They were identically clad, both the same height, but the Watford boy was thinner, and his face looked desperate in the harsh light. People were calling out his name. ‘Go, Pete!’ ‘You can get him, Pete!’ Pete’s eyes were hooded, his shoulders hunched too soon, defensive. He looked out from behind his fists, shifting his weight nervously from foot to foot. The other lad was chunkier, more robust, and his mates flanked him, egging him on. His hook-nosed profile was caught in silhouette as he quipped confidently to one of them.