His Coldest Winter. Derek Beaven

watched the girl turn away. He scanned the faces, saw Nob, caught a glimpse of Macbride. The names echoed grimly in his head. He’d already spotted a length of chain hanging from someone’s hand. His heart pounded softly as the two boys at the centre began to circle each other.

      The initial blows were feints. Fists skidded off leather, grazing a sleeve or missing a shoulder. Then Pete took a punch to the face and rocked back. The Stanmore gang roared as he rubbed his cheek, and Jimmy paraded in the applause. But Pete was canny, seized the moment to dart in, and came up under the other boy’s guard with a smack that glanced his eye. The sound was like fabric tearing. Instantly, the two were clutching one another, wrestling and sliding amongst the flakes while the crowd swayed. People ran this way and that to the rough shove and rhythm of the fight, and Alan moved with them in a wild, weird ballet. Whenever the combatants lurched towards him, he heard their breath as though it were his own, and watched the sharp, committed gusts snatched out of their mouths by the wind.

      Now there was a lull, and the fighters were locked, resting on each other’s grip. A different girl was across from him, framed momentarily in a gap. Fair-haired, she wore a blue scarf at her neck and a pale blue coat over her jeans. Their eyes met, and it was she who dropped her gaze first. Then the crowd swirled, and when he looked again she was nowhere to be seen, and the two fighters were tangling, kicking each other’s legs. It was Pete who slipped. He hit the icy gravel so hard it forced a noise out of him. The chants went up for Jim-my! Jim-my! Jimmy raised his arm and made to drop down with a finisher; but his victim rolled clear and was instantly, spiritedly, back on his feet, half-crouched, coming on with both fists, with the Watford lads yelling for him and Alan yelling, too, until the pair of them spun away and the ring broke up.

      Now it was all a whirl of limbs and faces in the slip and slide. Alan elbowed himself to the front. Two heads still bobbed and ducked in a fierce exchange, two bodies were still grappling. One flailed, the other got heaved up. One lost his footing and they were both scrabbling on the ground, here the point of a thin shoe, there a hand trying to get a hold on leather or fleece. But the hand went limp at the sound of a body blow, and another cry went up, and suddenly the figures were apart. It was a chase.

      The gangs cheered and surged after them, two forms reeling and stumbling in the dark between the bikes. Alan slid and fell himself in the rush. As he got to his feet, a shape came skipping past him with an outlandish, mocking step, turning first this way, now that – like a matador, the leather jacket open like waistcoat wings. It stopped in front of the café window and waited. The other caught up, floundered, lunged, slipped, and skidded front first into the snow.

      Something was spattering out of its face, dark drops falling faster than snowflakes, and it was Jimmy, staggering up, twisting away now and gasping, his hands on his thighs. Still more of the dark stuff was spilling down in the wind, leaving black garlands in the bright, fluorescent white.

      He tried to straighten, not in time. Pete came in hard, gave him three punishing jabs to the body, one more to the cut face, and a vicious dead leg with his knee. Jimmy screamed and dropped where he stood. He cringed in the white scuff, covering his head with his arms. ‘OK!’ His voice was thin. ‘OK!’ A couple of his mates went over to him. Pete stepped back, and looked away, dusting the snow off his sleeves and the backs of his jeans.

      Nobody in the car park moved or spoke. The mere exchange of a look seemed the riskiest thing in the world. Even the wind died, the fat snowflakes coming straight down while the cold plucked once more at the exposed skin of Alan’s throat and neck. A lorry from the main road revved in low gear and began lumbering in at the gate, its lights flashing and sweeping the rows of bikes.

      Then the mood broke. Someone from Stanmore cracked on at Jimmy that he was a fucking useless cunt. The insult was buoyant, the relief almost palpable. A roar of merriment went up. Alan felt drunk with events as some great wave of generosity and good humour threatened to make them all lifelong friends. Christ, it was a fucking good dustup, a fucking good Christmas, because that Pete had a few tricks up his sleeve and he bloody gave Jimmy Chapman something to fucking think about. Yes, he fucking did.

      

      JOSHING AND LAUGHING, the two gangs were returning inside to drink tea and talk bikes. Alan was at the doorway when he heard a voice at his shoulder.

      It was the fair girl again. She was adjusting her scarf over her head. He could see by the neon flicker and the snow-glaze from the café window her heavily made-up eyes, and her hair under the fabric, fashionably backcombed. Quite tall, she was handsome rather than pretty, seemingly preoccupied with tying the two ends under her chin. Her pale blue mac hung open to reveal her sloppy-Joe jumper, and the tight fit of her jeans. ‘They said you were going to Hemel.’ She brushed at the flakes just settling on her shoulders.

      ‘Sort of.’ He stared at her, then briefly down at his hands.

      But she was matter-of-fact, still glancing round, as though unconcernedly. ‘You couldn’t give me a lift, could you? It’s getting worse, isn’t it?’

      ‘What, Hemel? D’you mean now?’ It was illegal for him to take a passenger.

      ‘I told my parents I’d be back before ten. You needn’t if you don’t want.’ She spoke with an unexpected formality. Then she suddenly smiled straight at him, and the smile and her eyes – another blue – brought him back to that moment he’d first seen her during the fight. ‘Except that my … Except that no one in there…’ Her voice was disarming, musical. She gestured towards the café, and shrugged again at the weather. Her hair clustered at her brow inside the scarf. She was too attractive.

      He nodded. ‘OK.’ All at once, they were walking together through the bikes towards his own snow-powdered machine. He snatched a look back at the Bee. The only figure watching them was tall and ragged-looking, the one they’d called Nob. He was standing at the entrance under the sign, his scars catching the fitful glow like lines on a mask.

      She took no notice of the sidecar, but brushed off the pillion and seated herself, while he tore off the L-plates. Once he’d lowered himself into the saddle in front of her, he felt a warmth despite the icy wind. It was like the heat of a fantasy – but one suddenly sanctioned, and given approval.

      Three times he bobbed up and down on the kick-start before the engine fired. As he nudged the rig cautiously out on to the road, she put her hands in the pockets of his jacket and drew her arms tight around his waist. He could feel her fingertips. He looked down and saw her thin red shoes on the footrests, and her parted thighs. He felt her tuck her knees into the crooks of his and nudge her cheek close against the back of his neck. Her body on his was the one warm thing, and he thought he’d always known her, that she’d lain next to him since the start of things.

      The full storm had crept up on them. Now it matted the air and blotted out the road. The few cars crawled in each other’s tracks, the snow piling up in ridges either side. Drivers peered through freezing slots scraped in their windscreens; lights narrowed and swung. He guessed at the chaos on the low road and took his chance along the motorway. Five minutes later they were slogging up past Bricket Wood with the snow sweeping at them from over the hills, and the cold so intense he kept calling back just to make sure she was alive. Each time, she gripped more tightly and pressed herself more closely against him.

      At last, he took the exit and cut down past Hemel new town, driving under its hard sodium lights, beside its rows of council terraces, until she called out where she lived – in Boxmoor, she said, near the Fishery pub. He took her down towards the canal, and from there along a lane to a cottage which backed right on to the tow-path. And he was sure her family had lived there for centuries. And for ever, he reckoned, he’d known about them and longed for the girl in the pale blue coat.

      She got off the bike. He sat still, keeping the Triumph idling.

      ‘Thanks for the lift.’ She was halfway to her door.

      ‘Wait!’ He let the bike fail and went after her, his shoe skating on the path. He thought she looked frightened for a moment. ‘Will I see you again?’

      ‘Do you want to?’

      ‘What