We all rushed to pull back the curtains and look out. And there they were, twenty or more of them, running amok on the pristine grass of the bowling green, hacking at its manicured surface with axes and knives, hurling rocks and bricks at the clubhouse. Blood-curdling screams and laughter filled the air.
The organizers of the dance turned out the lights and locked the doors, which seemed to me like madness. If the Cumbie had torched the place we’d all have been trapped inside. I fought my way through the crowd to find Jenny and put protective arms around her. I could feel her trembling against me.
‘Don’t worry,’ I told her. ‘The cops’ll be here any minute.’
But all she said was, ‘I’m going to be late.’
In fact it was nearly fifteen minutes before we heard the sirens, and the boys out on the bowling green melted away, dark shadow clouds vaporizing in the night.
Everyone was reluctant to leave after that, including Jenny. She told me she was scared to walk home alone. And even more scared of what her father was going to say when she got there. So I left the boys to pack up the gear and told her I would walk her home.
She lived in Stamperland, which was just over a mile away, and we set off in the dark, keeping a wary eye on the empty streets around us, frost sparkling on the tarmac in intermittent moonlight. Up through Clarkston Toll, and over the railway bridge where I remembered an ice-cream van once crashing through the barrier and careening down the embankment on to the line. We were scavenging for sweeties for days afterwards.
The road was better lit here, but there was little traffic around, and nobody on foot. I put my arm around her, our breath billowing together in the freezing night air, and asked her what school she went to. I was astonished to learn we both went to Eastwood Secondary.
‘Amazing I’ve never seen you before,’ I said. ‘I’d have remembered if I had.’
She smiled coyly. ‘Well, I’ve seen you. Often. Passed you in the corridor loads of times, but you never noticed.’
‘Well, I will now.’
‘Of course, I’m a year behind you.’
Which meant that she was only sixteen. She looked older. But I think girls at that age are older than boys, anyway. Mentally. So maybe the age gap kind of evened us up.
We were approaching the bend in the road at Stamperland Church when we saw them. Five or six boys heading our way, their collective breath gathering ominously around their heads like a storm warning. There were still a couple of hundred yards between us, so I took Jenny’s hand and casually led her across the road. Williamwood Golf Course lay brooding in darkness beyond the fence. The boys crossed to the same side, and the gap between us narrowed. I could hear their voices. Swearing and laughing. They sounded drunk. Jenny’s hand tightened around mine.
‘Come on,’ I said, and I led her across the road again.
Once more the group crossed to our side. I was beginning to panic when I glanced back and saw the last red bus from Mearnskirk coming from the Clarkston direction and heading into town on the other side of the road. Belisha beacons spilled their orange light across the painted stripes of the zebra crossing at the shops on the corner. Pulling Jenny along behind me, I ran out across it, in front of the bus. I heard a squeal of brakes in the night, and the shouts of the boys just twenty yards away.
We ran around the far side of the bus, out of sight of the youths, and jumped on board as it began to gather speed again, swinging ourselves up and on to the platform by the pole. I heard the conductor shouting, ‘Hoy! You can’t get on the bus while it’s moving.’ But I didn’t care.
The boys came into view again as we passed them running into the middle of the road. They gave up the chase almost as soon as it had started, realizing they would never catch us. I waved two fingers at them from the safety of the platform and shouted, ‘Fuck you!’
And then the bus suddenly started slowing, and my heart speeded up.
Jenny swung out from the platform to see why we were stopping. ‘Roadworks,’ she said. ‘The road’s down to one lane.’
‘Shit!’
The gang realized at the same moment as we did that the bus was going to stop, and they began sprinting down the road towards us.
‘Come on!’ I grabbed Jenny by the arm, pulling her off the bus, and we ran across the street into Randolph Drive, pell-mell down the hill, arms windmilling as we tried to keep our balance on the frosted pavement and still maintain our speed. I knew they were after us, but I daren’t even look behind. It was enough to hear the menace in their voices ringing out in the night. But there was no way we were going to outrun them.
We turned the bend in the road and Jenny gasped, ‘In here!’ She pushed open a wooden gate in the high wall that ran all along one side of the street, and we ducked into the densely shadowed foliage of a garden that fell away almost beneath our feet to a house in the street below.
I pushed the gate shut, and we moved down through the garden, following the line of a weed-covered path that dog-legged between overgrown flower beds. And there we took cover behind a length of frosted laurel hedge.
I could see in fleeting glimpses of moonlight that the gardens of all the houses below us rose steeply to the walled side of Randolph Drive, and that each one had a gate leading out into the street. Our pursuers, when they came round the bend and saw the empty street, would realize that we had gone into one of the gardens. But not which one.
We held our breath and listened as the chasing footfalls came to a stop and gasping voices consulted. Querulous voices raised in disagreement. Should they continue the chase or give up? And what were they going to do if they didn’t? Search every garden?
I turned to find Jenny looking at me, and to my amazement she was fighting a smile. Which brought a smile to my face. And led to both of us trying to stifle a sudden desire to laugh. Hands over our mouths. Nerves, I suppose.
At any event, the decision of the Cumbie boys was to give up. But their parting shot wiped the smile from my face.
A raised voice, ugly in its timbre and intent, rang out in the dark. ‘We know who you are, ya smart bastard. Yer fuckin’ deid!’
Good enough reason on its own, I suppose, to get out of town, though that wouldn’t happen for another six weeks or so.
With the voices of the gang boys receding into the night, Jenny turned to me and surprised me by touching my face with tender fingers. And on an impulse I kissed her. Just a brief, sweet kiss on the lips, but it cemented something between us.
We made our way, then, down through the garden in the darkness, creeping around the side of the bungalow at street level, and out through the front gate into Nethervale Avenue. It was another ten minutes before I got Jenny home. Or almost. We met her father striding down the street in his coat and hat, intent on walking all the way to Clarkston if he had to, to find his little girl.
‘My dad,’ she whispered when we first saw him approaching, and I dropped her hand fast.
His face looked as if it had been chiselled out of ice straight from the deep freeze. He glared at me and took Jenny’s hand.
‘The dance got broken up by a gang, and Jack brought me home,’ she said.
But he didn’t seem grateful. ‘There’ll be no more dances,’ he said. His eyes fell on me once more. ‘And you’ll not be seeing Jack again, either.’
The way he said my name, it was almost like he’d spat away a bad taste from his mouth. He turned and pulled her with him back along the street. She cast an apologetic glance over her shoulder, and I turned wearily to make the perilous journey home, sticking to the darker side streets, and hiding in gardens if I saw anyone or heard voices. I wouldn’t have survived a second encounter with the Busby Cumbie.