Crimson Pirates

CRIMSON PIRATES

Benny Black was just the 'funny wee man' who lived at the top of the
stairs. Squat, swarthy, dark and muscular, flat-capped Benny was a
charge-hand at one of the Dundee mills. We didn't see much of him
during the week, but he seemed to spend most of the weekend sitting at
the top of the outside stairs in front of the toilet door. We could
understand that.

The attic rooms at the top of the buildings were tiny and, in good
weather at least, it was natural enough to want to sit outdoors and
have a smoke. It became something of a joke: "If you want to ha'e a
keich aroon here, you hav' tae step ower Benny Black." But it was not a
comfortable joke.

More than once my mother came back from the toilet with a dark look on
her face. Only once did she let her feelings show: "That Benny Black
looks at you as if he was undressing you. It's not decent." She seemed
close to tears, which shook me. My mother never cried, not even when
pleurisy ripped through her lungs and a hot poultice blistered her
back. I caught Joe's look which was darker than mum's. Evening seemed
to fall more quickly than usual.

I knew how my mother felt though I couldn't have put it into words
then. A few days earlier I was having a piddle when Benny pushed the
door open. It had never crossed my mind to bolt the door. I was only
having a pee.

He stepped in, reeking of booze and sweat, and pushed the door closed
behind us. He was already fishing himself out of his baggy
overalls.

"Dinnae worry, we're a' men here," he laughed.

I was mortified. I tried to force the urine out of my bladder as
quickly as possible, which had entirely the opposite effect. Benny put
his free arm around my shoulder.

"Yoor ain o' Cathy's laddies, aren't ye? Yoor a bonnie laddie, you look
like yoor ma." I could hear him splashing into the bowl like a
waterfall, my own thin trickle felt puny in comparison.

"Ye hiv'nae got a dad, hiv ye? Every laddie needs a dad, tae learn
things like. Go on, ha'e a look at it if you want, touch it, it'll no
bite ye. Though it might bite yer ma." He laughed again.

I twisted under his arm and away, pushing myself into my pants, not
caring about the piss on my fingers and down my front. I only wanted to
be out of there, away from the smell of him and the claustrophobia of
that dingy cubicle. I took the steps three at a time, jumping the last
four. I got inside, closed and snibbed the door behind me, stormed into
the backroom, threw myself on the bed. Something was wrong. I wasn't
sure what it was, but whatever it was, it was wrong.

I was still on the bed when Joe got in from school. I hadn't cleaned
the grate, I hadn't set the fire, and it was my turn.

"You lazy wee... what's wrang?"

"Nuthin'."

"Come on, tell me."

"No, it's nothing, just leave me. I'll set the fire in a minute."

"Tell me or I'll tell mum when she comes in."

I sat up on the bed and faced Joseph. I felt a chill inside but with
the cold came a certain calm. "It's that Benny Black. I don't like
him."

Joe's face darkened. He pushed his hair away from his eyes, grey-green
like his father's. He became very still. I knew the signs. I felt sick
in the pit of my stomach.

"Has that bastard been bothering you?"

I wasn't quite sure what bothering meant, but I guessed it meant making
me feel uncomfortable when I shouldn't.

"He came into the toilet while I was having a pee. He took a pee beside
me. But he shouldn't do that. He should wait like everybody else, or
just do it in the sink if he's desperate. Shouldn't he?"

"Did he bother you?"

"No, he didnae bother me, but he said things about mum and that
bothered me."

Joe didn't interrogate me further.

"He's been bothering mum," he said. The stillness was unnerving.

"Why doesn't mum tell Mike or Pierre or even Meg McDougall? They'll
stop him bothering mum."

"They're not family," said Joe. "This is family business. We keep this
in the family. That's the way mum would want it."

This was beyond me. I already had some conception of our family as an
entity, of us distinct from them, of us and those who were not us, of
us and the world beyond us. I had even drawn diagrams to demonstrate
this: a series of concentric circles with my mother, brother and sister
at the centre, grandfather and grandmother in the next circle, aunts
and uncles, in the next, cousins in the next, and so on till I reached
my relatives in France.

Their numbers were said to be legion but as I knew nothing beyond their
putative existence, they were of hypothetical interest at best. My
mother rarely if ever took anything beyond the inner circle, so how
could the family resolve the business of Benny Black. The more
theoretical this became, the more fascinated and calm I became.

"Nobody bothers mum," said Joe sliding off the bed. "Now get up and set
the fire. I'll get the coal out of the bunker." Assistance like this
from Joe was unheard of. I followed him off the bed and headed for the
fireplace, much cheered and much relieved, switching the radio and
Children's Hour on as I passed. I could relax now. Joe had everything
in hand.

That Friday evening Joe surprised us all. "We're going to the show," he
announced. Joe never took me to the cinema unless under direct orders
from mum. What was more, I had no money, having invested that week's
allowance in a bumper edition of the Hotspur. "I'll pay him in," he
shrugged throwing me his black leather jacket which I was never allowed
to touch, let alone wear.

I pulled on the jacket and twirled in front of the wardrobe mirror.
"Aw, for Christ's sake, ye wee jessie."

"Sorry, Joe," I gulped and followed him out of the front door.

"Mind and be back by nine," came my mother's voice. "Don't let him sit
through the second show."

Outside I dared question my brother. "Are we really going to the show,
Joe?"

"Yes, we are. We're going to meet John Patterson and George Gardiner at
Delanzo's and then we're going to the show. The Rialto."

"What's on?"

Joe kept walking. I hurried along in his wake. Surprised and
suspicious, but elated to be treated as one of the gang. Real life must
be like this.

"The Crimson Pirate. Burt Lancaster and that wee dumb and deaf dwarf.
It's a couple of years old but it's okay."

I was thrilled. Some of the older boys at school had seen The Crimson
Pirate when it was first released. Everyone agreed it was brilliant.
Now it was my turn. I was suffused with a warm glow that embraced
everything, including my brother.

"Joe."

"What?"

"Thanks for taking me. I'll let you read my new Hotspur, it's a bumper
edition, I'll let you read it before me."

"I don't read that shite. Now hurry up, keep up with me."

We met John Patterson and George Gardiner outside Delanzo's. They
immediately went into a huddle with Joe that excluded me. I stood on
the fringe trying to look like one of the gang. After a few whispered
moments they strode off to the Rialto where Joe true to his word paid
me in. I was parked on an aisle seat - "Sit there, don't move." - while
Joe, John and George took their places centre row. They were secondary,
I was primary, we might be seen, it made sense.

I fretted for a few minutes until the curtains swished open and the
Pearl &; Dean anthem swept me into the programme. By the time an
athletic, bare-chested, devil-may-care Burt Lancaster flashed his loopy
grin for the first time, I was so absorbed in the movie that I hardly
cared if anyone else was in the cinema. I thrust every thrust, parried
every parry and swung through the riggings as if my life depended on
it. Bugger black leather jackets, this was real life.

My sidekick Ojo, the deaf dumb dwarf mute, was imprisoned. My lovely
Consuela was in the arms of the villainous Baron Gruda. And I, Vallo,
the Crimson Pirate, was in chains. This was definitely not Kansas. (The
Astoria had revived The Wizard of Oz only two weeks earlier.) But I was
not finished yet...

"Come on, we're going."

"What?"

"I said 'Move. We're going.'"

"But it's only..."

It was not a hard kick, but it was hard enough. I hobbled into the
aisle and was hustled towards the Exit, my attempts to catch a last
glimpse of the Crimson Pirate thwarted by the heads and shoulders of
John Patterson and George Gardiner. The last thing I saw was Burt
Lancaster's manic grin disappearing under a pile of enraged Spanish
soldiers.

Outside I was hurried along to the low wall that separated St Mary's
Church from the Lochee Public Baths and Wash House, the Washie, where
Joe and I helped mum do the washing on a Saturday morning. 'Helped' is
something of an exaggeration; we helped by keeping out of her way,
except when the heavy, soaking-wet sheets were man-handled from the
steam boilers and forced through the six-foot mangles. Two or three
women were needed to turn the massive handle for the first
squeeze-through. I did my bit though it was not much help to have a
small boy dangling from the handle when it reached the top of the
up-stroke.

We sat on the wall and received our instructions from Joe. George was
to take the public houses in the High Street, John the pubs between the
Rialto and the railway bridge at Muirton Road, Joe would patrol the
pubs in the side-streets, and I would mind the hammers.

Mind the hammers!

What hammers?

The boys opened their jackets. Each carefully took out a coal hammer
and hid it behind the section of the wall on which I sat. I was not to
move. I was not to touch the hammers. I was not even to look at them.
If anybody asked me what I was doing, I was waiting for my brother,
just waiting, that was all.

I could formulate the question in my mind but I could not articulate
the sounds necessary to ask the question aloud. I could feel tears burn
somewhere behind my eyeballs.

Joseph took me by the chin and turned my face towards him. His
grey-green eyes looked into mine. The stillness was terrifying.

"Benny Black. He's not going to bother mum anymore. Right?"

He waited.

I felt his stillness wash over me. The tears were gone. I raised an
eyebrow. I almost smiled.

"Right." Joe turned to go.

"Joe?"

"What?"

"Are we going to kill him?"

Joe smiled, "Don't be such a silly wee shite," and was gone.

I dangled my legs against the wall and hummed 'Somewhere Over the
Rainbow', a Saturday morning favourite on the radio. I imagined several
possible endings for the Crimson Pirate though it was difficult to have
Burt Lancaster swinging through the riggings 'where the bluebirds fly'.
There was a slight breeze. I wished I could wear long trousers like Joe
and the others, but that wouldn't be until I reached secondary school.
At least shorts gave me access to my knees and I could pick off the
crusted scabs, greyish brown against purplish skin.

"Why then, oh why can't...?"

A flurry of boys and whispers.

"He's coming up Flight's Lane."

"That means he'll tak' the Burnie."

"Come on, get the hammers."

We hurried down the back streets to Burnside, passing between the front
doors of St Mary's and the Washie. There were lights on in both.
Cleanliness next to godliness, I'd heard someone say.

It was dark down the Burnie, only a few gas lamps flickering. On one
side the high walls of Camperdown factory. On the other some of the
meanest dwellings in Lochee. We slid along as close to the walls as our
shadows. Scared, thrilled and frustrated, I was bitter that I'd been
given no hammer. Maybe I was only nine, maybe I was in shorts, but I
deserved a hammer.

"There he is."

My heart thudded beneath the leather jacket. There he was. Benny Black.
Lurching along the Burnie. Bouncing every now and again into the
factory wall. He was small and squat but he was strong, had to be
strong if he was a charge-hand. He was small but he had big hands, big,
dirty, hairy hands with big flattened thumbs. Tackety boots, greasy
dark overalls, a flat bunnet on his dark greasy hair. Benny Black was
small, but he was a man and we were only lads.

"Paul, keep a look out at the bottom of the brae. He'll go up it to get
into Whorterbank. Whistle if you see anybody coming."

Benny staggered across Burnside to the brae. Leaning against the high
stone wall of the Wary with one hand, he fished for himself inside his
overalls. I could hear him splatter against the wall, see the steam
rising from the hot piss, hear him chundering away to himself. Felt his
arm round my shoulders again. Remembered his remarks about my mother.
If I had a hammer...

They were on him, like ferrets onto a rooster. George Gardiner, the
biggest and heaviest of the three, threw himself at Benny's back, Joe
took his legs, and John Patterson, the wiliest amongst us, jumped and
hit him on the back of the neck with a hammer. I heard the 'oof' of
Benny's breath as his lungs emptied and the crunch as his face hit the
wall. Down he went like a sack of bobbins falling from a jute
cart.

"Turn him ower."

They rolled him over. George dropped arse first onto Benny's stomach.
There was a gurgling sound followed by a fountain of vomit from his
lips. It arched in the air and came down with a wet slap onto his
chest. "Ye dirty bugger," hissed George giving the prostrate man a
sharp tap on the forehead with his hammer. "Keep yer vomit aff meh
claes."

Joe and John kneeled on either side of the man's legs. Joe raised his
hammer, John raised his. They smacked Benny's shins simultaneously. A
gargled scream. "Harder." The hammers rose and fell. I could hear bones
break, splinter, fragment under the systematic pounding. George parked
his big backside over Benny's mouth. He farted and giggled, "Sorry, Mr
Black."

"That's enough," said Joe, rising to his feet. "He won't be bothering
anybody for a long time now. Will you, Mr Black?"

"Will I give his cock a smack for luck?" asked John Patterson.

"Dinnae be dirty. My wee brither's here," said Joe. "Get up, we're
going. Wha's fur chips? Eh'm buying."

There was a scramble as we assembled around my brother. The boys stuck
the hammers down their trousers, hitching them onto the snake belts. We
cut along the Burnie heading for Lochee High Street and Delanzo's.
Nobody looked back. Nobody mentioned Benny Black. Rain was starting to
fall.

I lay in bed and wondered if what we had done was wicked. I knew it was
wrong but was it wicked? I listened to the rise and fall of Joe's
breathing. Could the wicked sleep so soundly?

That night I slept well. I did not piss on my brother.