Instead, you can have the story I wrote, but did not present at Pudsey Writers last time...
Only it's not a story. It really did happen.
Oh the shame of it...
Ferry Cross The Mersey, Interrupted.
It begins with sound effects, a reverbing moog crescendo rising
in pitch and the drums beat their starting rhythms. The pitch drops and the opening break demands
attention as the bass kicks in. Vocals and lead pick it up, the psychedelia of
the synthesiser weaving in, through, around the fills.
This is the signature song.
This is Hawkwind, and in 1976, they played the Liverpool Empire, and now
I can never hear ‘Silver Machine’ without being taken back to the time I was
fifteen and stuck on a Mersey Ferry in the middle of the river on a dark
October night.
I was there with my friend Lesley from school, my sister Sheila
and Little Bugsy. His real name’s Paul.
He had waist length , pale brown hair that rippled down his back ,
intense, dark eyes and as much of a biker moustache as you can have at the age
of seventeen. He had a wicked, delicious smile, and I think we all were a little
bit in love with him. Even Sheila, who was 26 and so positively ancient. Even
if, of all of us, he was the shortest.
He wore his black leather jacket and his cut-off with an
almost piratical swagger and I could never understand why he even deigned to
breathe the same air as me.
On the night of the gig we were in The Swan, just back of
the venue, (Sheila wanted to use the toilets) and Little Bugsy was in the snug
with Kipper and Tramp. He waved me over and gave me his seat, and the dregs of
his Newcastle Brown – and put up with Sheila’s simpering after I’d introduced
her.
‘How’re youse gettin’
bach?’ he asked presently.
This was a good question. There were two ways of crossing
the River Mersey and getting home to Birkenhead, by ferry, famed in song, or by
train. We’d come by Merseyrail – it wasn’t far from my house to Birkenhead
North and trains over to Liverpool took less than twenty minutes. I shrugged, looking to Sheila who was nominally
in charge, her being oldest.
‘Cos,’ Little Bugs went on, ‘I could meet youse after the
gig an’ we can walk down the Pier Ed together if youse getting’ the ferry.’
I saw my sister’s eyes flick to Bugsy’s slightly older,
rather taller pals and she nodded a bit too fast.
‘Yes, good idea, fresh air and everything. Come on, girls,
we’d better get to the theatre. It’s quarter past already.’
‘See use lot later, then. Wait out the front for us, ‘kay?’
I nodded and got to my feet, startled when Little Bugsy
winked at me, and I followed my sister and my friend out of the pub with a soar
of my heart. It’d take us half an hour
longer to get home this way, but all that extra time would be spent with Little
Bugsy and, even though Hawkwind were at that time my favourite band, although
I’d been looking forward to this gig for months, now I couldn’t wait for it to
be over.
The gig passed in a riot of noise and music and adrenalin
and, outside, my ears humming and ringing with the aftershock of the sounds, my
nerves were jangling – he’d have forgotten, wouldn’t he? Or he’d have gone for
a quick drink before setting off and…
He was there, and he grinned that wicked, enchanting smile,
and we set off.
There was a bit of jostling for position; Sheila and Lesley
both wanted to walk with Little Bugsy, who seemed to want to stay by my side,
so we weaved in and out of each other’s paths like four drunkards all the way
down to the Pier Head, bought our tickets, and stood around the landing stage
waiting for the next ferry. We could see
it, rocking across the river towards us.
I shivered in the cold breeze lifting off the Mersey. It smelled of
salt, sky, and diesel.
The ferry docked with a bump against the tractor tyre
buffers on the landing stage, the chains on the gangplank rattled and crashed
as it lowered, the few passengers making the Birkenhead to Liverpool trip
disembarked and we went to board.
There were at least a couple of hundred passengers overall,
many dressed in dark leather, suggesting they’d been to the same gig we had,
and we wandered round, seeking a fairly empty place to ride out the
crossing. Sheila didn’t fancy the upper
deck; it was less sheltered, and we ended up not far from the gangplank,
between the saloon and stairwells up to the top deck and the wheelhouse above, and
down to the saloon.
I was so busy trying not to try too hard to impress Little
Bugsy, that I failed to notice until afterwards how hard he was trying to
impress me. I was aware of his smile, of
my sister’s foghorn voice as she tried to sound superior and interesting. My friend Lesley smoked an illicit cigarette.
Bugsy was standing near the guard rails of the boat, gesturing
expansively as he talked about the gig, and his hand knocked against a sign on
the bulwark. That was all, just a knock.
The fixings must have been loose, because one end came adrift, and
Little Bugsy gave me a beguilingly guilty grin and tried to reattach it. But then the other end came free and he was
left with a warning sign dangling in his hands. About to set it down and
casually move away, he jumped when a loud voice yelled down from the wheelhouse
above.
‘Oy! You! Vandal! Stay right where you are!’
Well, we all jumped.
And at least two of us swore as we looked around in blind panic. It had
been an accident, the ship wasn’t hurt, wouldn’t sink just because a sign fell
down, but if you wore a black leather jacket, everyone assumed you were a
villain… What to do?
‘Quick, stand back here,’ Sheila said, getting Lesley and me
lined up next to her near the outer wall of the saloon. We shuffled in as Little Bugsy ducked behind
us, just in time as angry feet came down from the wheelhouse and one of the
ship’s officers, in full uniform, glowered around the area.
He looked at us, reasonably respectable in jeans and
duffle-coats and anoraks, not a biker jacket in sight and we realised with some
relief that only Bugsy had been visible from aloft.
‘Where’d he go?’
‘Sorry, who?’
‘That Hell’s Angel that was pulling the boat apart. Didn’t you see him?’
We shook our heads dumbly; we must have looked suspicious,
at least, standing there lined up like three skittles, but there were other
people around now, and he went off to question them instead.
We let out a collective sigh of relief, relaxing our
positions but keeping close together.
‘Oh, well, we’ll be landing soon,’ Sheila said
breezily. ‘It’ll be fine.’
And then the engines stopped. And a voice over the
loudhailer.
‘This is the captain. The ship has suffered an act of
vandalism and we are holding position until we find the culprit. We will be
underway again just as soon as the vandal is apprehended. He’s five-three, very long hair, wearing
leather jacket and denim waistcoat and was last seen amidships. Police will be waiting when we dock.’
What were we going to do now?
Bugsy had an idea. ‘Swap coats?’ he said to me. I nodded
quickly and stripped off my much-loathed duffle coat. Bugs pulled his leathers free of the cut off
and put it back on over his tee shirt before losing himself in my duffle-coat,
keeping his hair inside so that the hood, swathed around his neck, hid the fact
that his hair extended down his back. I slid my arms into the leather, torn
between delight – it was a high honour to be allowed to wear a biker’s leather
– and panic that we would be caught and my duffle-coat would become an
accessory before the fact.
It seemed like hours, but could only have been ten minutes
or so before the engines started up again with a judder and we were underway
once more towards the Birkenhead side of the river.
We bumped against the dock and ropes and hawsers made us
fast against the side. The gangplank was lowered and we saw, beyond it, around
a dozen policemen waiting. The ship’s officer
who had seen Bugsy’s accident waited at the gangplank, and people were let
through only in ones or twos.
Little Bugsy winked at me and flashed that grin again. ‘See you outside the Woody in ten,’ he said,
and melted away into the crowd. A couple
of minutes later, I saw the plaid lining of the hood of my duffle-coat
disembarking, and I heaved a sigh of relief.
And we were off the ferry and walking up the covered walkway
to Woodside, and out into the bus depot beyond to find a dozen or so black
mariahs circling the entrance, police offers in attendance.
Making our way through the parked vehicles, we headed up the
hill to the Woodside Hotel. There, sitting on the wall and swinging his legs,
was the cause of all this mayhem.
‘Nice coat,’ he said as he divested himself of my
duffle-coat and I handed him back his leathers. ‘Good pockets. See you.’
He gave us a cheerful wave and set off at a loose jog round
the corner and off home.
I slid my duffle-coat back on. It was warm and smelled
slightly of bike oil and smoke, and somehow, I didn’t hate it quite so much any
more.
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