Free The Year of the Ladybird by Graham Joyce Page A

me. I had no idea what the wink meant. It did nothing to put me at ease.
    ‘Can I be honest with you, David, can I? Do you want a cigar by the way?’
    ‘Thanks, I don’t smoke.’
    I was given a pint of bitter and a glass of malt whisky, even though I hadn’t asked for the latter.
    ‘The truth is we don’t get as many students as we’d like. This is because we get a very bad press. Those newspaper people, they hate the working classes and they want to keep
them down. So they misrepresent us over and over. But we do want to get amongst the students, so I’d like to get your views. But not now because I’m going
through
.’ Prosser
nodded to his left and gathered up his own beer and whisky. His cigar he left smoking in the ashtray on the bar.
    I glanced around. The pub wasn’t busy. A few elderly couples were enjoying a lunchtime drink and chicken-in-wicker-basket type meals; a pair of young lovers holding hands and flirting,
oblivious to the world. I couldn’t see anything distinctive about the place.
    ‘Bring those,’ Colin said, ‘we’re in the pavilion at the back.’
    I picked up my drinks and he led me through an echoing corridor that ran behind the bar. We passed into a large concert-type room illuminated by harsh electric strip lighting and there it was
immediately apparent as to where I’d been brought. Though I think I’d already guessed; I just hadn’t wanted to be right. Because Tony had been the source of the original
invitation, part of me still clung to some preposterous idea that I’d been brought to an exclusive entertainment-business elite; perhaps a meeting of the Magic Circle; or even an afternoon
strip-club.
    Well, there were no strippers on show. The entire room was decked in the flags of the British union: the same flag that looked so cheerful and harmless and reassuring hanging from a painted pole
outside the pub. Every inch of wall space was draped with the red, white and blue. At one end of the room was a platform with tables and a microphone at the ready. These tables were draped instead
with the white background and red cross of the flag of St George. The wall immediately behind the platform was also decorated with the flag of St George.
    About sixty or seventy plastic chairs were drawn up in neat rows before the platform and most of these were already occupied, mainly by middle-aged males, many of whom wore a collar and tie on
this hottest of days, but there was a fair scattering of women there too. In some of the seats but also patrolling the room were a number of young skinheads in bomber jackets and high-laced Doc
Marten boots. They had a paramilitary swagger. It was obvious that they regarded themselves as foot-soldiers, or as some kind of unofficial security force.
    Some years earlier, when I was thirteen, I walked home from a youth club happy at having got my first kiss from a girl. I had to pass by a chip shop and a group of skinheads in Docs and braces
were laughing and joking outside. For no apparent reason they attacked me – maybe I made the mistake of making eye contact with one. There were five of them. Kicked to the ground, I cradled
my head in my arms as I felt the boots going in all over my body. I was rescued by an elderly lady who told them they should be ashamed. I got to my feet and limped home. I managed to hide my
bruises from my parents, but from that day I always treated any skinhead in the same way you would regard a rabid dog.
    One of these skinheads immediately approached me, peddling some publication pitched between a magazine and a newspaper. It was called
Spearhead
. I became aware of a lot of eyes on me. My
clothes were all wrong. The long hair, the open-toed sandals. Whatever the ‘other side’ might be I was pretty sure I resembled it. Some self-preservation instinct kicked in and I found
myself digging in my pocket for a few coins. The skinhead became friendly and let me know that someone was going around with a great pamphlet