The White Room Read online

‘Listen, would somebody mind staying here to look after Joanne? She’s got school in the morning.’

  ‘We will,’ said Sharon, deciding before looking at Jack.

  ‘Thanks, pet,’ said Ralph, his voice quiet, wheezy. ‘You’re a good ’un.’

  A policeman’s voice came from the hall. Ralph turned towards it.

  ‘Aye, I’m comin’.’

  Then back to the room.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry, I’ve got to …’ He made a feeble gesture towards the front door.

  ‘You do what you’ve got to do,’ said Dan Smith. ‘Everything’ll be all right here.’

  Ralph nodded.

  ‘And don’t worry about what we were talking about earlier,’ said Dan Smith. ‘The offer still stands. That’s your job, Ralph.’

  Ralph looked at him as if he didn’t know what he was talking about, then backed out of the doorway. They heard the front door close. They looked at each other.

  ‘Well, what a night,’ said Dan Smith. He looked at Jack. ‘I was hoping it would be memorable for other reasons.’

  Jack nodded, said nothing.

  Sharon looked between the two men.

  ‘I’ll go and see where the tea’s got to.’

  ‘You do that, pet,’ said Dan Smith.

  Jack and Dan sat slowly down.

  ‘Dear, dear, dear,’ said Dan Smith, and made to retrieve his cigar from the ashtray.

  ‘Oh, no,’ he said, examining it. ‘It’s gone out. Got a match, Jack?’

  Jack shook his head. He said nothing.

  Outside, the air seemed colder, the night darker than when he had entered. Brian stood on the pavement, looked around. He either heard, or imagined he heard, sirens in the distance growing louder. Not wanting to find out if they were real or not, he turned away from the pub and began to walk briskly up the hill and back to the city.

  His heart was slowing down, adrenalin dissipating throughout his system, coming down. He began to see things more clearly. Grasped for perspective. Kenny Bell dying, perhaps dead. Johnny injured. The other one he didn’t know about. Eddie and Brimson injured. A pub full of witnesses who he knew would talk. Fighting was one thing, along with handling stolen goods – something else the Ropemakers was famous for – but murder was another thing entirely.

  He walked on, trying not to let the panic, the sense of hopelessness well within him. Halfway up Glasshouse Street the sirens became real.

  Brian looked around, tried to find somewhere to hide. A warehouse was on his left, fenced and gated. Chained. He looked at it, looked up the street, saw nowhere else to run. He took a run at the fence, managed to get a grip, began to climb. Reaching the top, he hauled himself over and fell to the ground. The sirens became louder. He ran around the side of the warehouse, away from the road. He pressed himself up against the brickwork and waited, breathing heavily.

  Panic set in again, along with a new thought: what if there were guard dogs on the site? He hadn’t thought of that. He stood still, allowed the sirens to come nearer, listened for growling or barking. The sirens approached, became louder, then receded as they sped to the pub. Brian breathed a sigh of relief. He waited until he thought the police and ambulance had passed then pulled himself over the fence and back on to the street.

  He walked briskly, sticking to shadows and backstreets, hiding in the patches of dark between streetlights, staying away from other people. As he walked he thought.

  He couldn’t go home. That would be the first place they’d come. He couldn’t go to Noel’s for the same reason. He couldn’t go back to his mother’s. Ever.

  He walked into the city centre. The streets were not particularly full; cinema- and theatre-goers mostly. Brian tried to keep away from them, keep his face hidden. He had to get away. Leave. He checked his pockets. He had money but not enough to get him far. He couldn’t bargain, a bus driver would remember him. He couldn’t steal a car as the owner would report it and wherever it was found would bring the police searching for him. He stood in the middle of Grainger Street, considered his options.

  And had an idea.

  He walked down to the Central Station, keeping an eye out all the time for police cars. He reached the station: tall, imposing, built in a neo-Georgian style to blend in with the rest of the area. He walked along the front, not wanting to go through the main entrance, and made his way around the side. The fencing was low. He hauled himself quickly up and over, looked around. Trains were slowly making their way in and out of the station. Only a handful; the service was winding down for the night.

  He checked them out, ticking off items on a mental list of suitability, until he came to the one he wanted.

  The mail train.

  He crossed over to it, looking out for station staff all the while. Bags were being thrown on, men standing around drinking mugs of tea. No hurry, no urgency.

  No security.

  Brian waited until the mail workers and station staff moved away from the train then put his head around the door. The mailbags had been thrown into a large carriage. It was full of sacks.

  Perfect, thought Brian.

  He climbed aboard, stepped through the bags until he had found a particularly high pile, then began to burrow his way into them. Eventually he had bags piled up on all sides of him and he was safe, cocooned within.

  He heard the door shut, felt the train move off. He breathed a sigh.

  Newcastle was left behind. And not just Newcastle: Monica. Kenny Bell. His mother. They were all gone. His past, behind him.

  He allowed himself a small smile, felt the train rock on the tracks.

  His future, ahead of him.

  ‘She off?’

  Sharon closed the door quietly behind her. The well-oiled click sealed them off from the rest of the house.

  ‘Yeah. She was worn out, poor dear.’

  Sharon sat on the settee beside Jack. She sighed.

  ‘I made you a cup of tea,’ said Jack.

  Sharon gave a wry smile.

  ‘Well done,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know men could do that.’

  ‘Very funny.’

  She picked up her cup, drank, replaced it in the saucer, set it down.

  ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘society’s palliative. The real opium of the masses.’

  ‘Don’t start all that university talk with me.’

  Sharon smiled.

  ‘Once a student, always a student,’ said Jack.

  ‘Don’t be a grump.’

  They looked at each other, smiled. Jack put his arm around Sharon. She snuggled in.

  ‘Kids, eh? Who’d ’ave ’em?’ Jack’s voice aimed for levity, shook with heaviness.

  Sharon said nothing.

  The Smiths had left soon after Ralph and Jean had departed for the hospital. Sharon, Jack and Joanne had continued clearing up, then Joanne had got ready for bed. Sharon had sat with her, settled her down into what would be an unsettled night’s sleep for the girl. Sharon had promised to stay the night.

  ‘You’d better go home,’ she said to Jack. ‘You’ve got work in the morning.’

  ‘I can go from here,’ said Jack. ‘It’s no problem.’

  She snuggled in further. She was glad he had said that.

  ‘Dan was right,’ he said. ‘What a night.’

  They sat that way for a while in companionable silence, listening to the old house settle.

  A nation of two.

  ‘What did you want to talk to me about?’ said Jack drowsily. He was beginning to drift off.

  Sharon stiffened.

  ‘What?’ She knew what.

  ‘Before we came out, you said you had something to tell me. What was it?’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I’ll tell you later. This isn’t the best time.’

  ‘You may as well tell me now. Everything else that’s happened tonight.’

  Sharon couldn’t see his face, couldn’t read his expression. She took a deep breath.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it’s not a hundred per cent cert
ain, but I’m fairly sure.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ve probably guessed. I’m pregnant.’

  Jack hadn’t guessed. His stomach flipped over, his mouth dried up.

  Jack said nothing.

  PART TWO

  The Brasilia of the North

  At night he dreamed the city.

  No vast, Technicolor pans, no panoramic swoops. He just found himself there, posited in the centre, standing straight at the heart. Feeding off it, feeding into it.

  He looked around: lights in the darkness, colour, speed, noise. Colour: neon and electric brilliance, a dazzling, artificial day for night, the adverts brighter than the stars. Speed: heart was right. It was pumping, living, sending tin and steel and expectant people around its body, arteries all tarmac and pavement. Noise: voices raised, shouting, laughing, screaming. Music wailing and thumping, rhythm tuned in to the city’s beat. And at the centre, surrounded by movement, Eros, Greek god of love. Still and frozen in time, bow raised, arrow flying. Aiming for anyone, everyone. Love in the city, love at the heart.

  He stood there, beneath Eros, arms out, and slowly rotated, head up, eyes sucking in everything, mouth wide, grinning. Alive. No cars hit him, no one shouted at him to get out of the road. Everyone smiled, laughed as they passed. Because he belonged here. He was part of the city as the city was a part of him.

  He gave a sigh of pleasure, turned, and walked back on to the pavement. He was protected. Charmed. He walked down backstreets, darker now, the contrast greater: the neon and electric light still bright, but sparser, more strategic, the darkness and shadows between now deeper and wider. He began to feel that familiar tingle, that thrill in the pit of his stomach. The thrill of the streets. These streets. His streets.

  He walked. His mind could see behind doors, down alleys, up and down stairways. Through walls. Could see the flesh sold cheaply but bought dearly. Could see the drinks drunk, the pills popped, the hop inhaled. The moods altered. The money eagerly parted with, gratefully taken. The money. The love. The love of money. He smiled.

  He walked. Looked through walls and doorways into other places, darker ones. Saw the flipside. The underside. What happened when the money ran out. When they wouldn’t or couldn’t pay. The lonely, sad chairs in empty basements, waiting for their next incumbent, showing the strains and stains of tens, or perhaps hundreds, of bloodied, broken bodies. The chairs: taken the weight of those bodies that had given up, attempted to dodge the pain, crashed to the hard, cold, uncaring floor. The chairs: acted as a brace for the kicks which inevitably followed. Brass rings, knives, cricket bats. Small electrical generators, electrodes and water if they were feeling inventive, pliers and Stanley knives if they wanted to be direct. The chairs were there now, some in use, some waiting to be used. He knew this. Because he had used them many times.

  Back here, away from the brighter lights, was where he found his Eros, his love. Was where he felt he truly belonged.

  But as he walked, the streets began to shiver. His reality began to blur. The pavement turned to solid water, his feet sending out ripples as he walked. He looked down. Another pavement could be glimpsed beneath. An older, shabbier one. He knew what it was. Where it was.

  He looked around. The buildings were shimmering, hopes appearing as other buildings, other places, began to show through. An earlier time, a darker time. The past breaking through to his present. He felt himself in flight again, running away. Over walls, down streets. On to a train. Away. He blinked, tried to focus.

  It was recurring, the same dream. Each time increasing in strength, each time the older, darker, shabbier streets getting more of a hold. He wanted to run again, over walls, down streets, get on to a train, escape. But he couldn’t. His legs turned dream-slow, his arms flailed but were useless. Each time he had given in, let the dream – the old city – claim him, wake him. Not this time.

  He stood still, closed his eyes, concentrated. Willed the old city to disappear, let the new one take its place.

  And it did.

  He opened his eyes, looked around. The new city was gone. His city. And in its place was the old city. And the old city was new again. New, like the city whose heart he loved. Where there was once black, white and grey, it was now neon- and electric-light bright. Where there had been silence, there was noise, slowness there was now speed. And, he knew, he had made it all possible.

  He smiled to himself. He looked around and proclaimed it good. The old city was gone, into the past. There was only the new city, now, only the future.

  He walked, enjoying it.

  The dream held no terror for him now. He smiled to himself. He knew what he had to do.

  Where he had to go.

  June 1962:

  Terms of Human Happiness

  The city was alive. Excitement flitted from person to person, buzzing and humming like a swarm of bees in a flower field, hopping plant to plant, flower to flower, but not to gather: to impart. Excitement. And like some highly contagious germ, everyone had caught it.

  There were flags and bunting adorning lampposts and telegraph poles. Streets were closed to cars, their places taken by tables and chairs laid out for communal gatherings, street parties, the first since the Coronation. Fireworks were dryly stored, waiting for darkness. Pubs were licensed for day- and night-long drinking. The party was on.

  Saturday 9 June 1962. The Blaydon Races Centenary. The event, immortalized in song by local bard Geordie Ridley, concerned a raucous coach journey from the centre of Newcastle, west down the Scotswood Road, then over the bridge to the unlicensed flapping track at Blaydon to watch the races. The song had propelled the event itself. For years it had been sung and celebrated. Now it had become a cornerstone for North-Eastern identity. And had to be honoured.

  Dan Smith stood on rough planking and looked around at the crowds before him. The city council boss, the local boy made good, the firebrand maverick clasped uneasily but hopefully to the city’s heart. He looked beyond the crowds to his own work. The work done in his name.

  Old Scotswood was nearly gone, just mud and rubble. Bulldozers and wrecking balls doing what Hitler and the Luftwaffe had failed to do. He had ordered the wholesale demolition of Scotswood. Slum clearance. Drastic measures for Newcastle’s drastic housing shortage. Some people moved out far away to new housing developments in Newbiggin-by-the-Sea, some not so far, to Longbenton.

  From out of that, phoenix-like, came the new Scotswood. The Elms. The first of six blocks of fifteen-storey flats. Conceived in imagination and hope, midwifed by scaffolding and cranes, borne aloft on confidence and pride. The future.

  A new way of living, Dan Smith had called the tower blocks. Parkland homes for whole communities, he called them, a countryside showpiece of imaginative municipal development. Taking parks to the people, he said. Landscape architecture with centrepieces made from different-coloured brick, vitreous-enamelled panels below windows, roughcast glass for balconies. Underfloor heating, electric cookers, wash boilers, stainless-steel sinks, plentiful cupboard space. Copper-roofed lifts to get up and down. Four adventure playgrounds for children to play safely. They have to be visited to be appreciated, he said.

  Dan Smith’s plan for a new city. A new region. The first step. The future.

  ‘Newcastle is doing the best job of any city council in the country.’

  Hugh Gaitskell, leader of the Labour Party. Standing next to Dan Smith in front of a tall, sheet-covered object, speaking to the assembled crowd before them. Reporters, photographers and inhabitants of Scotswood.

  ‘The rebuilding of any city must include the preservation of the past with planning and thinking for the future. Something Newcastle is doing supremely well.’

  Dan Smith nodded, glad he got that bit in. Not that there had been any doubt. The Blaydon Races Centenary had been Dan’s idea. Opening the new flats on the same day his idea too. Giving the illusion of looking backwards while in reality looking forwards. Dan smiled, pleased not to have missed a trick.


  ‘It’s always a pleasure,’ Hugh Gaitskell went on, ‘to be asked to open a new block of flats or any housing scheme because they mean so much to people in terms of human happiness.’

  Dan Smith looked at the Labour leader. He was sweating, breathing hard. Everything seemed an effort to him. That morning he had planted a tree, become a member of Newcastle’s Tree Lovers’ Guild, seen an example of Dan Smith’s imaginative use of architectural space, a children’s play area built on top of a car park, opened the Elms, now this. Later they were due to go to Balmbras, the newly opened old-time music hall, and start the grand parade. Dan Smith had doubts about Hugh Gaitskell’s stamina. He thought it best not to voice them.

  ‘Newcastle has one of the most dynamic and impressive town planning schemes in the country. I said that at a planning conference in London when architects and planners from all over the country were present.’ His eyes swept the crowd, made sure he had contact. ‘That took some courage.’ He smiled. ‘So I’m sure I can say it here.’

  He acknowledged the polite laughter, turned his attention to the sheet-wrapped object before him. It was over twice his height, solid and angular. Hugh Gaitskell tugged at the cloth, huffing and puffing, Dan Smith having to step in to help him. They struggled, but together got it uncovered. It was a huge, reinforced-concrete block with a rough patina of bronzing. Gaitskell looked at all twenty-five hundredweight of it, panting, his face twisted with distaste. It looked like an ugly, abstract totem pole, he thought. The kind John Wayne rescued kidnapped white women from. Knowing his place, he looked towards the sculptor, Kenneth Ford, who was hovering on the fringes of the crowd, and managed to find a smile for him. Ford looked nervous, uncomfortable, his wispy hair, ragged beard and pinched features lending him an air of a pained D. H. Lawrence.

  ‘Mr Ford,’ said Hugh Gaitskell, ‘is more or less unknown.’ He paused for breath. ‘But extremely talented.’

  He looked around at the crowd. Every negative emotion from apprehension to open hostility, derision to incredulity was being mentally flung in the direction of the sculpture. He found his politician’s smile again. Plastered it over the cracks.