‘I still work at the Palace too. Evenings. Not matinées.’
Dougie leaned in with more inappropriateness. ‘Come on, treacle! Lad wants to know if you have a man. He wants to get his end away!’
Maggie’s eyes flashed with an unfamiliar fusion of anger and embarrassment. Wilbur felt the familiar shame about Dougie. And then the inner shame about having the shame. And now there was an extra layer of shame, because the Ghost was ashamed as well. Both of Dougie and himself and of the entire situation that was about to erupt.
The song ended to wild applause and screams. They could speak, while instruments were being tuned on stage.
‘Actually, yes. Yes. I am with someone.’
A man in a shirt and tie came up to her and put his arm around her. Wilbur recognised him. He had gone to school with him. He was in the year above. Tommy Hetherington. Tall. Brylcreemed black hair. More a wannabe Elvis than a Jagger. But with a harder, vacant edge.
‘Him?’ Dougie acted disgusted. ‘Rocker-boy dickhead?’
Maggie looked disgusted. ‘No bloody way.’ And to Tommy: ‘Get off.’
The Ghost noted it. The moment it all went wrong. The pointat which things pivoted towards chaos. He could have just said nothing. He could have just walked away. It was crazy to see it, to see the instinctive moment – a brief nothing, a second, a couple of drum beats at the start of a song.
‘You heard her, Tommy,’ Wilbur shouted, wild-eyed, over the music. ‘Get off her or get a lamping.’
Wilbur’s Ghost realised, looking at his young self, so ready for violence, that he wasn’t so different to Dougie. He had the same switch, it was just a bit harder to reach. And then Tommy leaned in close to Maggie and planted a kiss on her cheek and Wilbur pulled him off.
Maggie also elbowed him away. Gave him a look so fierce he got the message. She said something neither the dead nor living Wilbur could hear. Tommy started walking away. Wilbur holding back. But then Tommy knocked Dougie. Slight but deliberate. Some bitter slopped onto Dougie’s shirt.
The Ghost was already watching in dreaded anticipation as Dougie’s face tightened into a gargoyle of hate, and he swung at Tommy. He was so fast he had probably thrown three blows before Wilbur had his arms around him, trying to hold him back.
The Comfort of Chaos
By the time Wilbur had restrained his brother, it was chaos.
Tommy was on the floor following Dougie’s punches. His quiff was now a mess, and blood was coming out of his nose and onto his hand, a broken pint glass and a puddle of beer beside him.
‘Jesus bloody Christ, Dougie! Leave it!’ Wilbur was shouting in his brother’s ear.
‘Get off me, Wilbur. I swear. Get off me, lad, for fuck’s sake!’
Tommy’s mates were crowding round. One of them punched Wilbur hard on the jaw, causing him to lose hold of Dougie.
‘It wasn’t him!’ shouted Maggie.
And as they started laying into Dougie, the Ghost noticed a kind of demonic smile on his brother’s face for a second or two, even as a beer glass was thrown hard onto the back of his head. Which became almost a laugh, even as Dougie fell to the floor.
And just as Wilbur was hauling one of the lads off his brother, Dougie was up on his feet again, pulling a knife from his pocket and flicking the blade.
Dougie’s eyes became those of a mad defender. He swiped at one of them, the tallest and drunkest, the blade ripping his shirt and flinging a button into the air. There was a moment of shock while the lad checked to see if he was wounded. And he was – the tip of the blade had cut him just enough to bleed.
This – the fight, the knife incident – had all happened within a few seconds. Much of the surrounding crowd was oblivious but some were noticing. And it was like a second show was happening right in the middle of the floor.
Dougie looked at Wilbur and nodded to the side exit near the bar at the back of the hall.
‘Leg it!’
So Wilbur followed Dougie, who was holding the knife out to clear a path ahead of him. The Ghost knew where they were going to end up, so he just walked a more direct route through the dancing and bouncing and jerking bodies, and then through the wall of the hall itself. Out into the night.
The Chase
The Ghost had arrived outside, on the street running along one side of the large city square. It was so quiet out there, even though it was the centre of Sheffield. A brown paper bag drifted past on the breeze. A pigeon was looking curiously at a cigarette butt. Music was faintly throbbing through the wall, but there was hardly anyone out here.
Hardly.
