Free Stone Cold Red Hot by Cath Staincliffe

collection.”
    “Yes, it’ll go to the Mechanics Institute when I’m gone. Lot of these are originals, out of print now. And the pamphlets and leaflets, can’t get them anywhere else. I’m still cataloguing the more recent material.”
    “How’ve you got hold of it all?”
    “Well, I’ve kept the items that have come my way, through the union, been a shop steward all my life when I was in work. And things from the Tenants and then the different campaigns and such like. The rest people have passed on to me, knowing I’d a collection.” I thought of Lisa MacNeice with her hens.
    “One chap I knew, Archie Ferguson, he was a big man in the unions at Ferranti. Well, Archie died last year and his wife Betty rang me.”
    “‘George,’ she says, ‘I’ve half-a-dozen boxes here, Archie’s papers and he wanted you to have them.’ I got round there and she’s got a room full. He kept everything - minutes going back forty years, notices of meetings, old rule books, correspondence. I could have filled a ship with it. Well, I found what was worth keeping, and that took some doing, mind you, and I told her to get the scouts to take the rest for their paper collections.”
    I smiled. “I’d like to get a cup of coffee.”
    “I’ll do it,” he pulled himself up.
    “I don’t mind,” I volunteered, if you show me where you keep everything.”
    “I’ll show you now and then if you need anything later you know what’s what.”
    Back in my viewing position I sipped coffee and demolished my snack. I felt an initial wave of fatigue as all the blood rushed to my stomach. I stretched and yawned and fooled around with the camera a bit. It was dark now, the scene illuminated in moody orange from the streetlights.
    Two cars drove down the Close at high speed. People spilled out at the bottom. There was a lot of shouting and snatches of a song. “Engerland, Eng-er-land.” I felt my spine tense. I wondered whether Mrs Ahmed was listening too, waiting for the trouble to begin.
    The group walked up the street and gathered on the pavement outside the Ibrahims’. I began to film. There were six in all. The twins and Micky Whittaker were there and another teenager, seriously overweight and with a shaved head. I filmed the group and the scene before cutting in for close-ups. It was obvious who the men were, they closely resembled their offspring: Mr Brennan, balding with thin patches of flame coloured hair, short, stocky, grinning a lot; his accomplice Whittaker, tall and stooping with lank, shoulder length hair and a thin moustache. He wore a denim jacket and torn jeans and looked as if he was freezing. He shivered frequently, stood with his shoulders hunched, arms crossed, hands tucked under his armpits.
    A joint was passing round and the Whittaker boy passed round cans of super-strong lager. One of the twins sprayed the other with foam and got cuffed across the face by his father who screeched at him. “Don’t waste it, yer fuckin’ pillock.”
    The teenagers glugged at the cans, toked on the joint. They moved closer to the house. Then in turn they ran up and hammered on the door, screaming and shouting. After a minute or two they’d swap places, like a sick relay race. The men began to sing a dirge; “Go home, go home, fuck off, go home...” to the tune of Amazing Grace. As the ditty finished they broke into a fast chant, obscene and racist. I caught fragments, I didn’t know how much the microphone on the camera would pick up, enough I hoped. “Coons and wogs, they eat dogs, ay allez oop...”
    I hated them. I wanted to silence them, kick their stupid, racist heads in. Not a civilised response, I know, just a gut reaction.
    Next time, if there had to be a next time, I’d leave the window ajar to catch more of what they were saying.
    I heard a movement behind me - Mr Poole opening the door. He’d had the sense to turn the landing light out.
    “I’ve spotted Brennan and the twins and Whittaker and his boy.