Guilt

Chapter 1

1

Young Red, christened Ronnie Patterson, a big youth of fifteen with ginger hair, woke as usual at fifteen minutes to six. It had been raining when he went to bed and a glance through the curtains told him nothing had changed.

"s**t!" he muttered under his breath. Rain always made his work more difficult.

Ten minutes later, in donkey jacket and jeans, he wheeled his Carlton racer from the backs into Victoria Road, an empty newspaper bag slung over his shoulder. He was half way down the street when Nancy, his mother, a still-attractive though careworn brunette, rushed from the front door of the big 1890s' semi with a raincoat across her arm.

"Ronnie – your mac!"

Red ignored her, cycling steadily away through the rain.

At 7.15 a.m., by St Margaret's church clock on the hill above the town, he was riding through puddle-filled streets of drab terraced houses, stopping occasionally to thrust the last of his damp newspapers through letterboxes.

On a gable-end hoarding large posters proclaimed Mr Acker Bilk's Stranger on the Shore and CND's annual march ALDERMASTON TO LONDON – EASTER 1962.

Red pulled a face at the posters – he wasn't concerned about either.

Two council trucks roared past, filled with men and sandbags. Red watched the trucks with sudden interest. Then he made the connection.

"Jesus!"

He pedalled quickly away.

Dismounting below the church clock, he wheeled his racer through the gate into the graveyard. Leaning the Carlton against a tall headstone he ran to a wall of moss-covered sandstone at the far side. He leaped onto the wall and looked down.

The rain had eased and a watery sun was struggling out through colossal mounds of storm cloud. He screwed up his eyes, dazzled by gleams of sunlight flashing from what looked like a plain of glass, just beyond the town where the river had been the day before.

Then, because it was Saturday, he let out a wild yell, remounted his bike at a run like a rider in Wells Fargo and hurtled from the churchyard.

Behind the closed gates of the Dykes's scrapyard a huge and nameless black guard dog on a chain sniffed the air suspiciously. Beyond the dog dilapidated outbuildings were almost hidden by piles of scrap metal. A shabby two storey brick-built house stood to one side of the yard.

Sam Dykes was a small wiry man of mixed indigenous traveller and diddicoy blood. He stood on top of the heap in work clothes shiny with grime, tugging at a length of lead pipe. Deborah, his wife, dark and attractive, with a ghost of the pure kaulo ratti in her features, chopped bundles of kindling in a lean-to by the house. Their swarthy fifteen-year-old son Len, nicknamed Mouth, worked in a nearby shed, laboriously stripping paint from a solid oak chest of drawers. His empty newspaper bag hung on a nail by the door.

Red skidded to a stop outside the gates. The guard dog erupted into furious barking.

Mouth stepped from the shed. He was dressed in dirty blue jeans and an old grey woollen jacket. He waved at Red then returned to the shed, to re-emerge pushing an old Raleigh Tourer. He glanced warily at his father.

Sam stopped hauling at the lead pipe. "Shut that bloody dog up!"

Mouth flung a stone at the dog. "Pack it in! He's a mate!"

The dog stopped barking and whined.

"Mouth, it's flooded!" Red yelled, unable to contain his excitement a split second longer.

Mouth approached the gates, wheeling his Raleigh. His rubber mask of a face broke into a malevolent grin.

"I know. I've seen it."

Sam freed the lead pipe and tossed it into an empty oil drum. "Back at twelve, you hear, boy? Load coming in from Donny."

Deborah stopped chopping and straightened up. "It's Sat'day, Sam. Let him have a bit of time with his mates."

"Keep to your own business, woman!" Sam snarled.

"But, Sam –

"Shut it!"

Deborah turned away, her eyes betraying her years of silent pain. She resumed her chopping.

Mouth spat savagely and glared at his father – a look of such venom Red was shocked. The relationship was more poisonous than he had realised.

Mouth opened the gate. "C'mon, Red, let's get outta this f*****g dump."

The two friends cycled quickly away.

Water had flooded the works' yards by the river: the woolgrowers, the bone mill, the brewery, the feed merchants. Council workmen unloaded sandbags from the trucks Red had seen earlier. The 8 a.m. male workforce, on foot or pushbikes, struggled through the flood at factory gates.

The largest building by far stood at right-angles to the river. One long wall of dull orange-red brick bore the words WADE'S POTATOES in large black capital letters.

To the right of the letters was the logo of a giant, in green on a buttercup-yellow background, clasping a brown sack of potatoes on his shoulder. His free hand juggled three large potatoes and his face bore a demoniacal grin. Several vans in the yard, axle-deep in water, bore the same logo.

The workers began sandbagging doorways and pumping water from ancillary buildings. It was the usual ritual. Red and Mouth stood with their bikes, watching the activity from the edge of the flood.

Mouth turned to Red with a mocking grin.

"Next fifty years in there, Red – bagging spuds till pension day!"

Red was used to Mouth's put-downs. He attempted a lofty tone.

"Better'n the bone mill, ain't it? Better pay than the railways too."

The prospect of his going to work at Wade's when he left school was certain as sunrise. But a time-span of fifty years was beyond the scope of his imagination.

Big Red, christened John Patterson, Red's father, a large powerful man with thinning ginger hair, dressed in a green boiler suit, shirt and tie, pulled up in his Ford Popular. The boiler suit bore Wade's logo on the right-hand front pocket.

He stuck his head from the car window.

"Weren't for bosses' greed we'd have a flood defence by now. Rot starts at the top!"

Big Red was foreman at Wade's. Caught in a lonely limbo between management and workforce he criticised everyone. Everyone was used to it and put up with his impassioned outbursts with tolerant good humour. He frowned, his son's presence suddenly seeming to register.

"Done your paper round, lad?"

Red shrugged. "Course."

"Had your breakfast?"

"No, dad. Not yet."

Big Red looked at the two youths sternly. "Well you ain't doing nowt useful down here!"

He waited until Red and Mouth turned to go, then drove into the works yard, shouting orders through his car window. For a couple of minutes the men in the yard made an effort to work a little faster.

Red sat cross-legged on the churchyard wall. Mouth urinated on a gravestone, then jumped up beside him. They looked down on the flooded fields to the east of the town. Mouth's eyes opened wide in wonder.

"s**t – it's got huge! Never seen it as big as that! Water's gone right past Wild Man! Hell didn't you tell me, Red?"

"I did."

"Bet most of it's gone by tomorrow. Up and down that fast. If we wanna see it at it's best we gotta go today. Best get Brock and Raggy."

Red looked troubled. "Raggy's a pain. If we take him we'll have to look after him."

For a moment Mouth's face took on an oddly calculating look Red was unable to fathom. "Raggy's useful," he said, without elaboration.

"But he ain't that bright," Red objected. "You never know if he's gonna do summat daft."

Mouth gestured impatiently at the gravestones. "You look after him, Red, if it bothers you. Tell 'em we're off to Wild Man. Be at the Roman camp at half-nine."

"Stuff! What's wrong with you? Why can't you get Raggy?"

"My gun's being fixed. Gotta go down to Battersby's yard and get it back. Tell Brock he wants his rifle and wellies. And fetch us a sandwich for later, okay?"

"Bossy sod!"

Mouth gave him his mocking grin, jumped from the wall and grabbed his bike. Red watched him go. He put up with Mouth's ways because the days adventuring with him were good. With Mouth he entered a wild world that everyone else seemed to have lost touch with.

Mouth was the most dangerous person Red knew.

After a breakfast of eggs, bacon and fried bread, followed by several slices of toast and marmalade and a pint mug of tea, Red remembered Mouth's injunction.

"Could you make some sandwiches today, mam? I fancy going for a bike ride."

Nancy turned from the big six-ring gas cooker in their newly-added kitchen extension. "You won't be back for dinner?"

"I might ride out to the castle. I won't have time to get back." He didn't mention Mouth or the flooded river, which were both guaranteed to cause fierce disagreements.

"Cheese and pickle?"

"Great."

"Tea at six. Don't forget."

While Nancy prepared the food he cycled off towards Brock's house. Frank Brockless was a planning officer at the local council and lived with his family in a detached stone property on a newly built estate at the western edge of the town. Edna Brockless was a legal secretary in a local solicitor's office. They had two sons, fifteen-year-old George, nicknamed Brock, and his ten-year-old brother Simon, who was a precocious little pain to everyone, especially if you were fifteen.

Red felt a bit daunted by the Brocklesses. They were better off than his parents and Frank believed in owning property, a capitalist notion Big Red denounced whenever the management at Wade's put him under pressure.

The fact that he had bought their house in Victoria Road was justified by the assertion that rented housing in the town was full of the river and cockroaches.

Red was about to dismount from his bike at the Brockless's front gate when a Rover P4, with Frank in a business suit at the wheel, pulled away from the drive and turned on to the road. Red cycled past, then turned and came back as soon as Frank was out of sight.

As he walked to the front door a short burst of sunlight broke through the clouds, glinting harshly, like a threat, on the glass of the modern bay windows. Before he could knock on the door Edna, short, plump and blonde, appeared from the garden. She wore gardening gloves and carried secateurs.

She eyed Red suspiciously and pre-empted his question. "George is studying. He's got to think of his future. How can he get on if you're always distracting him? He'll see you at school next week. Goodbye!"

Red had a choice reply on the tip of his tongue, but he kept it to himself. Mouth might have told her what she could do with her secateurs, hence his friend's nickname, but Red didn't want any conflict. Today, he had decided, they should just have fun.

As soon as Edna had returned to the garden Brock opened the front door. Fair haired and stocky, like his mother, with a sleek, well-fed appearance, he was smartly dressed in cardigan and grey flannel trousers. Red felt scruffy in his old donkey jacket and jeans.

"What's up, Red?" Brock whispered.

"Seen the river?"

"No."

"It's massive."

"We going hunting?"

"Course."

They grinned conspiratorially.

Red cycled through the backs in the poorer streets to the south of the town centre. He stopped by a shabby backyard gate and dismounted. He was about to fasten his bike lock but, on reflection, he realised there wasn't much point. Anyone walking by could just pick the bike up and run off with it. It was what they did in this part of town. He decided to take the bike with him into the yard.

With difficulty he forced his way into the yard, then realised there was an old clothes mangle with seized-up rollers behind the gate, preventing it from fully opening. Rusty bike frames, broken furniture and rubbish filled the yard. Children of all ages, the youngest half- naked, wandered in and out of the rundown house.

He leaned his bike against the mangle and wondered if he was doing the right thing. They would have a much more relaxed day without Raggy, as they would have to keep an eye on him all the time, in case he did something stupid. But Mouth wanted him so he could boss him about. And he wanted Brock too, Red knew, so he could taunt him. Mouth had to have folk around him to dominate and annoy.

Before he could even reach the back door nine-year-old Billy, in a torn and grimy shirt, pushed past and clumsily tried to wrench the lamp from the Carlton.

Red exploded in exasperation. "Gerroffit, Biily! Go nick someone else's!"

Billy fixed Red with a wide comic-strip grin. But he stopped tugging at the lamp.

Ricky Bottomley, aged fourteen and known to everyone as Raggy, appeared in the doorway in a dirty sweater with holes at the elbows. Raggy was stunted, pock-marked and pale. His grin revealed bleeding gums.

"Where we off, Red?" Raggy's voice was a burned-out croak.

"Wild Man." Red formed his words carefully, as Raggy was deaf and had to lip read. "River's up."

Raggy's grin grew wider.

"Need wellies and a coat."

Raggy nodded and cackled excitedly. "Okay."

Red stared at him with pity and revulsion.

A council truck filled with men and sandbags roared through the centre of town. The men on the back of the truck bawled and wolf-whistled at a teenage girl who walked up the street with an older woman.

"Eyup, Sally – show us yer t**s!"

"Gerrem out lass and let's have a look!"

Sally Bell, blonde, beautiful and fifteen, did her best to pretend not to notice. Her aunt Josie, plain and thin, wagged an accusing finger and shouted back:

"You should be ashamed of yourselves!"

The men on the truck set up a howling chorus, like oestrus-crazed dogs.

Josie took Sally's arm protectively and steered her towards the window of a butcher's shop. Above the door a sign announced: DAVID BLADES FRESH MEAT AND GAME. Josie peered short-sightedly in the window, cupping her hands to the steamed-up glass.

Sally hovered impatiently on the pavement. She was dressed in a cheap skirt and a top two sizes too small. She had blossomed in the past six months into the most stunning girl in the town and Josie couldn't keep pace with her need for new clothes.

While Josie rummaged in her purse Sally pressed a transistor radio to her ear, from which B. Bumble & The Stingers' Nut Rocker could be faintly heard.

"Just gonna go into Blades's and get us a bit of black pudding for tea. Sally – you hearing me?"

Sally removed the transistor radio. "Give us a couple of bob, Auntie Josie."

"What – for cigarettes? Cigarettes and pop music – that's all you think about!"

"It's rock 'n' roll." Sally corrected her with a frown.

"But where's it gonna get you?" Josie said in vexed frustration. "What you gonna do with your life?"

"I just wanted a cig," Sally pouted.

"Ain't it better we eat?"

Josie turned towards the butcher's doorway. Sally took a step backwards.

"Ain't going in there. That David Blades has eyes like spiders. They crawl all over you."

"Well don't go wandering off. We've to be at the jumble early. How you gonna get a job if you ain't no decent clothes?"

As Josie joined the queue in the butcher's Red appeared, cycling quickly. Sally called to him. He pulled up and grinned at her warmly.

"Quick, Red, give us a cig afore Josie comes back."

"I gave you some at school."

"That was yesterday. I've just run out."

"What do I get?"

"A snog if you want."

They stepped into a nearby alley and kissed eagerly and sloppily. Red tried to pull back, but Sally clung to him tightly.

"Stay a bit, Red. Cuddle me a minute. Council blokes upset me."

He felt awkward. Sally was warm and lovely and she drove him crazy, along with half the men in the town. But he had a prior arrangement.

"Can't, Sal. Gotta meet Mouth."

She looked hurt. She wanted to be with Red more than anything. He was so thoughtful and caring and – she wasn't sure – she thought she might be in love with him.

"What's Len Dykes got that I ain't?"

"He's a mate," he said somewhat stupidly. "We have a good time."

She pushed up close to him and ran her fingers over his chest.

"We could have a good time too, Red."

He felt torn. Another few seconds and he knew he would give in. He thrust a pack of Players at her.

"You owe me, Sal."

With an effort he reached a decision. He kissed her cheek and eased her away. She called after him as he left the alley.

"Whenever you want, Red!"

She lit a cigarette and watched him sadly as he cycled away.

At the end of the street Red stopped and looked back, his face a study of conflicting emotions. He knew he really should go back to Sally, before some greasy youth tried to steal her away from him. He had been going with her for two months and couldn't be sure yet what she felt for him. A Wade's van suddenly blocked his view of her. He suppressed his misgivings and cycled on.

As he turned the corner he was hailed by Cathy Raines who, like Sally, was a pupil at the senior school. Cathy was tall and raven haired and had s*x oozing from every pore. She waved at him eagerly.

"Hey, Red, we off shagging this aft?"

Red ignored her and cycled on. He'd been with Cathy once, but she was anyone's. She even went with the rough lads from the bone mill. She was no one compared with Sally.

Cathy looked after Red and scowled. That Sally Bell had hooked him. Little Miss Titsy. Red should be hers, not Sally's: a handsome hunk with a steady future at Wade's. She made a promise to herself that, one day, she would get even.