4 Bones Sleeping (Small Town Trilogy) Read online

  Table of Contents

  1

  4 Bones Sleeping

  By

  Gerald Wixey

  All the characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons or events, living or dead, past or present is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © Gerald Wixey 2012

  The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

  1

  Teddy -1945

  He woke up in the same bed.

  Always the same bed.

  His mind flew randomly around like a moth battering into a Street light. He understood most things, except for the depravity around him. The dim awareness that he was being dragged down into the abyss with all the other degenerates.

  He had to keep swimming away from these dark waters. Only two more days and he’d be safe.

  Watching the depraved.

  Watching.

  But not getting involved… yet.

  Teddy shivered in amongst the sweat. He must have a fever or something. Irritable and uncomfortable in an indefinable way. He wanted to run away, to be able to run for cover like a cat that escapes on the night before a disaster.

  Teddy sat bolt upright. No longer dead inside… he wanted the boy.

  No.

  The pretty young man with cheekbones like Veronica Lake.

  Please no.

  There's a shadow, cloaking every breath. Making every promise empty. Pointing every finger. All the others around him with their roasting rectitude. Their loathing, weakness and guilt all kept him alive.

  But for how much longer?

  He was wading knee deep into the depravity of it all. Going in deeper.

  Never to come back again.

  He’d already gone under twice.

  Keep swimming.

  Swim.

  Swim.

  ‘Teddy – can I come in?’

  Teddy lifted his head and stared at the young man’s sculptured cheekbones for a few seconds.

  Too late!

  He gestured with his head and the young man crept through the cell door and sat on the lower bunk.

  Jack - 1945

  I’d named them both. No real claim to fame and hardly original I know, but Harry the Ox and the Dashing Major they became. Harry liked nicknames himself and always called me Jack the Scribe. Wyn had given himself the sobriquet of the Major, I added the prefix. Wyn wasn’t the most glamorous of names, but giving yourself the title of Major when you had no actual military experience was a dangerous game at the best of times. In nineteen forty five it could be considered reckless. But Wyn needed danger in his system almost as much as I needed a drink.

  I’d hadn’t named them as part of my job. I wasn’t some high flying sport’s writer. Just a jobbing hack that wrote crime features for the Mirror. And lucky to get that job so quickly after being de-mobbed from military intelligence. But the Major always called me lucky, better lucky than rich he always said. I guess that not one person in the world, thought that he ever believed that one himself.

  But there was an element of truth in it. I even had more than my fair share of good fortune in my military service. The army didn’t think me robust enough for active service. Military Intelligence was a grandiose title. It effectively meant that instead of the Normandy beaches, I spent most of the time wandering around London looking for spies and deserters. The last two much the same beast I always found. A soft life, spending most of my days in East End boozers. Occasionally arresting a sharp-suited spiv, or a cowering runaway. Once we arrested a bewildered old Italian pasta house owner. He’d wandered back to Soho from an internment camp in Wiltshire.

  A soft life, never been in any danger.

  Until I bumped into the two brothers.

  We first met in the York Hall, Bethnal Green. How could I forget? Not that you could call me a regular frequenter of boxing halls just after the war. I always found them one up from a fascist convention. All of the wild eyed, shrieking hysteria that went with the whole package. But I had gone with a friend who was a boxing correspondent on the Daily Sketch. Ringside seats as well, that’s where I first saw them. Well I saw Wyn first, Harry was back in the changing room somewhere – pacing, shadow boxing, threatening anything that came within a boxer’s reach. Where his manager should have been you would have thought. But Wyn knew his brother too well, stay out of range and leave Harry alone with his temper to warm up punching fresh air.

  Anyway Wyn had company, a glamorous woman sat next to him. Not that you’d expect any woman in his company to be anything other than beautiful. He looked fabulous himself with his fur coat draped around his shoulders. Despite it being an especially mild evening, the coat remained steadfastly in position. That and the handmade brogues on his feet an early indicator for me of his ostentatious nature. Like a young Edward G Robinson, Little Caesar and a woman wrapped around him like a scarf.

  The woman I recognised from somewhere, statuesque and blonde. I’d seen her photograph in the newspaper, or on a billboard. Famous for something and she looked trouble in that blonde way that does it for most men. Lana Turner or Jean Harlow, a femme-fatale that twisted and turned men into whatever shape she fancied creating at the time. Had she got her hooks into Wyn? I thought so at the time, but Wyn was a shrewd operator. It took me months before I realised who was manipulating who.

  I struggled to take my eyes away from her and she knew that I had stared her way. She kissed Wyn’s neck and gazed right through me at the same time.

  Like what you see?

  Yes actually.

  I quickly glanced back down at my program, Harry Watkins. I just about remembered the name. Useful boxer but like many, the war had taken his best fighting years away. Then the booing began, I turned around and there he was. Walking down the gangway. No shadow boxing for him, nothing apart from a slow, slow walk and the two fists of his boxing gloves pressed tightly together in front of his chest. That and a frown that made me want to look the other way.

  The dense smell of embrocation and sweat wafted under my nose. Then I almost choked on my cigarette as he passed me. Too short for a boxer surely? Too short for any sport, his opponent a foot taller and a good stone heavier.

  He climbed through the ropes to be greeted by a wall of booing. He apparently thrived on this attention. A pantomime villain with a smile ghosting across his lips and he put his gloved hand up to his ear.

  Is that the best you can do?

  Some idiot behind me started bellowing, ‘Knock the short fat cuuuuunnnnt aht.’ I turned and stared at him, bulbous nose, wild, staring eyes. A trilby hat perched on his head. ‘What are you staring at four eyes?’

  You actually.

  I turned back as the booing reached a barrage; a few programmes were tossed into the ring. Harry laughed, mocking a thousand screaming fight fans. He beckoned them with his gloved hand. An invite into the ring if they fancied their chances. Then he mimed c’mon then and laughed again.

  The idiot behind was out of his chair. ‘Let me get in there – look at the short, fat fucker.’

  I felt him leaning over my shoulder and waving his fist. Hysterical like most of the others baying for the shorter man’s blood.

  Wyn had climbed into the ring himself by this time, a brisk couple of paces over to Harry and he slapped his brother across the cheek. I heard it from fifteen feet away, a rifle report that shot through the bedlam of noise.

  Concentrate!

  Harry didn’t even blink, just the frowning stare across the ring at his opponent. Wyn shouted, for the opponents benefit as much as his brothers. ‘Calm now, you can take that donkey out – calm.’

  Calm? I looked at t
he few women scattered around me. All wide-eyed, sat forwards in their seats. Hands bunched into fists. What excited them? The reek of liniment? The sweat that glistened off the two fighters muscles? The unwashed brutality about to be unleashed on us all?

  I shook my head, women always confused me anyway.

  Then the clanging bell broke into my puzzlement. But it never stopped me frowning as I proceeded to watch a man box like I’d never seen anyone box before. Perhaps his lack of inches meant that he had no choice. But all he presented to his opponent was the top of his head. As he leant forwards with the gloves protecting the whole of his face. Anything thrown his way was taken on the elbows or forearms. Whenever he got close, Harry grabbed the bigger man and held him in a clinch tighter than a blacksmith’s vice. Then his forehead went to work, always in the taller man’s face and the referee’s frantic efforts to part them.

  I could just about make out the over-worked referee screaming, ‘Watch your head. Break, break when I say.’

  Wyn never said much, no advice forthcoming like you’d expect from a wise manager. He just sat unmoved throughout most of the action. At times he paid more attention to the woman. Apart from just before the end, when he jumped to his feet as the taller man crumpled under the barrage. Wyn’s eyes bulged, his whole demeanour switched from relaxed spectator to lunatic in a less than a second.

  Then he began to scream, ‘Hit him, spear his eyes out – hit him.’

  He needn’t have bothered.

  Silence in a crowd this big is an unusual thing. As if someone off stage had turned the volume down. But the crowd had been cowed into sullen obedience at the ferociousness. A Jewish fighter thrashed in his own back yard just wasn’t meant to happen.

  I turned and stared at my big-mouthed friend, he looked back, a sullen gaze and he muttered, ‘Sheep shagger.’

  In the meantime, Wyn swaggered back to his seat like he’d won the bout himself. Strutting the short distance, an occasional cheery wave sent back in the same direction whenever a shout of derision came bouncing his way.

  The woman, like the rest of her gender, had watched the fight in a state of orgasmic, eye stretching disbelief. She sat back in her seat afterwards, took several deep, deep breaths.

  That was good.

  She put a cigarette in her mouth and leaned forward. Wyn, attentive from the moment I first met him, played the lighter around her cigarette. Even that took on an erotic dance as they hovered around one another in a teasing, ritualistic mating. Eventually lit, she dragged deep and flopped back into her seat. Wyn looked deep into her eyes and eventually, they both laughed.

  Then he too sat back and reflected on a good night’s work. He stared around, glanced past me, did a double take. The first time he had noticed me and his soft brown eyes came back and fixed on mine. Anyone with a front row seat must be worth talking to. Wyn leant across and said, ‘What a fight, the boy’s a bruiser that’s for sure.’

  Looking back, an incongruous place to start a friendship that would last well over thirty years. But there you are and here’s the second incongruity of the evening. I warmed to him instantly, despite recognising what he was. The clothes, the big coat and bigger attitude. Pretentious and he didn’t care who that bothered. I’d spent the last couple of years following black market crooks that mirrored this man’s appearance. Wyn shouted venality and flamboyant venality at that. Everything I despised… and yet I liked him.

  He nodded at me, ‘You press?’

  I nodded, his eyes spotting my press pass that I’d deliberately left just exposed in my breast jacket pocket.

  What did that make me?

  One who disliked pretentiousness in all of its manifestations. And yet I wanted people to recognize my own status. He gave me a card with a name and address, then a casual invite. ‘Come and have a drink in my club. Don’t bother to bring your wife.’

  Then the look … we’re all men of the world. He winked and my face must have given me away.

  Oh that sort of a club.

  I looked away and down to the address on the card, Beak Street, Soho. Not tonight I think. Another deterrent, the name, I laughed at it, “The Swinging Spoon.”

  Well it sounded like a queer boys club, or at the very best, a low class café.

  Teddy - 1945

  Teddy stood in front of the boy, leaned forward slightly and rested his head on the mattress of the top bunk. He felt the boy’s hands fumbling with the buttons on his prison trousers.

  Teddy groaned and his mind drifted.

  Back – way back.

  He always dreamed a lot. But then there was nothing else to do in this shithole. He liked to touch his mother’s auburn hair, once he crouched in the shade and touched it as she passed by. Her reaction stayed with him for ever, an ear drum-splitting shriek, a spin around, eyes bulging away as she back-handed him across the head and told him to fuck off.

  Did he hide in the shadows a lot?

  Probably.

  Did that make him unpopular?

  Probably not.

  Although he could be a morose child, not loathed so much, as generally just overlooked by his large family. This didn’t mean he disliked his brothers, or his parents come to that, he was just never smart enough to avoid confrontation. Not that he ever tried that hard to avoid it, perhaps that became the only way to gain their attention? Arguments got him going almost as much as the noises that came from his parent’s bed.

  Sharing a bedroom with your parents had its compensations. Not a voyeur yet, just an adolescent with a harmless infatuation for spying on adults. He listened to their noises, watched his father’s violent thrusts. Lay in bed thrilled, if a little perplexed, more confused when his father and his aunty regularly went through the same routine. This left him as delighted as any other morbid schoolboy would be.

  The sound of a man on the cusp of an orgasm.

  He couldn’t wait.

  The sound of the young man slurping away dragged Teddy back to the here and now. At least he wasn’t pacing the cell. Constantly, like an agitated polar bear in a small compound. Two steps, turn. Two steps turn, until he came back to square one. Then another circuit, then another, then another. It seemed that he’d spent the last six months pacing the floor. At least he was alone; virtually six months spent alone. Well that suits me he thought, the idea of months banged up with another smelly old lag, or a ponce, or worse, some little queer boy, turned his stomach.

  No, solitary did him fine; he couldn’t have coped with someone in his cell with him.

  Punch a guard and bingo, a cell on his own.

  Teddy Lewis didn’t need anyone, he thought of the birch that went with the solitary and he punched the hard pillow on his harder bunk. Bastards, the old lags always preferred the cat because it was always applied across the shoulders. The birch went across the arse. The humiliation of bending over with your trousers around your ankles worse than any pain involved. In this dump, you just never knew who was stood behind you. Then the token administration of first aid afterwards still bent over and you knew then all right. Always some little poof of a half trained medic rubbing ointment over your arse.

  Fuck it.

  He shuddered, all things considered, the administration of pain was more his style.

  Soon.

  Another day, one more night and then what? All that catching up to do, that’s what.

  Teddy blinked and looked down at the thick, wavy hair dark hair. He’d done what he always said he’d never do. Spent the night with a little queen. At least it was as dark as a crypt. He couldn’t see the eyes, especially when the young man was face down on the hard mattress with Teddy doing something else that he’d vowed never to do.

  He imagined a blonde head nuzzling its way around his lap. Teddy shut his eyes again.

  Shirley.

  Teddy had been hard for most of the night. He started to move his hips.

  Shirley.

  Hard thinking about.

  I’m coming baby.

 
Shirley.

  Then he heard the scrapping metal on metal sound of the spy hole on his cell door being drawn back.

  A harsh cockney voice – south London Teddy guessed.

  ‘Lewis, can we come in? Has he stopped fucking you up the arse yet?’

  Arse?

  He wasn’t a poof.

  Teddy looked down at the young queen wiping his mouth in the grey blanket. The young man lifted his head and their eyes met.

  ‘What are you looking at you cunt?’

  The young man quickly looked away as the door opened and the guard gestured with his head and the little queen bounced out.

  ‘Lucky boy Lewis – us giving you treats like that when you’re supposed to be in solitary.’

  Teddy stared at the two guards until they both looked down at their highly polished boots.

  ‘That’s better – show some respect you fucking half-wits.’

  2

  Teddy - 1980

  She was fucking mad.

  And he knew all there was to know about mad women as well. This one took the fucking biscuit. Still, he shouldn’t have rifled his way through her bedroom like that.

  Sleeping dogs.

  Better never to have found all that gear. A sleepy village in Berkshire, an expensive school – where did she get that stuff from?

  He blamed his wife.

  Or did he?

  The outer life. After all that time of peace, the outer life had become as unbearable as his inner life.

  His inner life had contrasted nicely with this period of calm. All through this time, his inner life had tormented, all the shocking images. The made up conversations. The horrific dreams, the insomnia. Two men with their throats cut. All the queer boys looking at him in prison. Four men burning to death. Two brothers that had mugged him and worse, made him look stupid.

  All of those things and more.

  But it was the most recent thing that tortured him more than anything. Not all of that stuff from just after the war.