Short Stories: A Night In Leeds

We had left for the concert in the early afternoon. My torrid poverty was such that I clearly could not afford it, but at times in one’s life one realises that one is barely living, and that measures need to be taken. We had crossed the Pennines on a slow but comfortable train, arrived just as night fell, and the rapturous electricity of the concert marked the first time I’d felt anything in a long time.

Having spent so much on the evening, my dinner for the night was three raisin cereal bars, and I ate them as we wandered back to Piccadilly. Our return train took us only as far as Leeds, where we would pass away six hours, before heading back into the East Riding as the sun rose. The cost of hotels was prohibitive. We had made an exhilaratingly uncomfortable bed, and now it was time to lie in it.

As we climb off the stumpy late night service, we are hit sharply by the immediacy of the icy November air. We decide not to remain in the coldly lit terminus, but instead venture aimlessly out into the streets. The city is full of shadowy figures, striding towards unknown destinations with the vim that only winter nights can summon.

As we amble towards the centre of the town, a handful of drunken revellers begin to appear, and we enjoy watching their lopsided walks and their peculiar mumblings. Suddenly we strike upon a McDonalds. My heart is warmed by the gentle glow of globalized comfort, and we enter the bustling establishment.

I am quite surprised to see an alert, stern faced police officer stood next to the counter, eyeing up the patrons. What would bring him here? I order a black coffee and Jeff orders a burger of some description. I know I cannot afford the coffee, but neither can I afford another prescription charge if I catch a serious cold, so the investment is justified. We sit on stools, facing out onto a crossroads through a large window. At this point, we do not talk. We are distracted by our purchases, and the exhaustion of the evening’s events is beginning to settle upon us.

All of a sudden, crowds fill the streets. Scores of scantily clad club goers have been pushed out into the night, and gradually the restaurant fills to maximum capacity. A melange of harsh shouts and boozy slurs encompasses us, and we take great joy in watching a young man attempt to spin repeatedly around a lamppost, only to swing off, collapse onto the street, and cause great chagrin to a taxi driver, who offers him a deserved middle finger.

We enter into an interesting discussion regarding whether we act so when we have been partaking, but I am distracted as a cold rush of liquid splashes across my shoulder and onto the left side of my neck. I turn to see a girl racing across the room, hurling abuse at another girl sat behind me. She has large mascara streaks down her cheeks and fire in her eyes. She dives across the table, throwing a mass of fries and cardboard onto the sticky floor, grabs the girl’s hair, and drags her to her knees, before pushing her onto the ground. She straddles the victim, and begins throwing punches, but before any serious damage is done, the policeman from the counter intervenes. He struggles to get a grip on the attacker, clawing aimlessly at the modest strip of fabric covering her, but soon grabs her around the waist and carries her out into the street, where he leaves her. While this happens, the other girl begins to stand up, and expresses her displeasure through a motor mouthed torrent of gros mots.

We turn back to the window in shocked silence; I take the last sip of my coffee, and begin to nurse the empty cardboard cup. The longer we stay here, the less time we have to spend in the unheated atrium of the station. We continue to watch the bacchants, and smile knowingly at each other as a police car pulls up next to one particularly roisterous fellow. The officer seems to be suggesting that the young man may need to go home, but he would appear to insist that this is not the case, and that he is suitably sober. With the look of a man trying to prove a point, the merrymaker leans forward, and bends his knees gently, before leaping backwards. The moment is over so quickly, it seems almost like a dream. Our hearts pound, and we turn to each other. Did he really just perfectly land a back flip in front of a police car? For the split second at which he launched himself backwards, we both thought we were about to see a man’s neck break, but our pulses raced for no reason. He then saunters off, followed by his friends as the police car drives off to confront other inebriates. The night is beginning to feel increasingly like some type of macabre incubus, and so we decide to leave the city centre, and head back towards the station.

On our arrival, we select a bench facing a closed newsagent, sit down, and stretch blankets, taken from my rucksack across our knees. There is an eerie silence in the station, occasionally broken by the sound of someone striding through the atrium, or the sound of the man sleeping rough in the corner rearranging his cardboard covers. We talk for around an hour of banalities, and spot that a skinny short teenager has arrived, and has fallen asleep on a nearby bench. He is wearing tight jeans, and a small patterned t-shirt. The sight of his exposed arms in the bitter freeze of the night sends shivers through the mass of fabric which surrounds me, but I opt not to offer him any.

We continue talking, but are soon approached by a desperate looking young man, breathing deeply, and carrying two polythene bags.

“Mate, twenty quid for my PS2? Please Mate, you’ve gotta help me, my girlfriend kicked me out, and I need enough to get a taxi to my mum’s.”

We cannot tell if he is lying or not, but I could not help him even if I wanted to. We tell him to keep the Playstation, and Jeff offers him a two pound coin, for which he thanks him, before skittering away into the street. The numbing haze of tiredness is now very much present, and each happening seems ever more bizarre and dreamlike. We talk more, and the longer we sit, the deeper the cold sets into my bones. I curse the security guard at the concert who confiscated the plastic bottle of white box wine I had been saving for the night. Oh to feel the gentle ebb of alcohol’s ember in my stomach.

A tired looking man, dragging his feet across the marble floor, pulls a bunch of keys from his pocket, which draws our attention. He fidgets with the keys, before unlocking the station McDonald’s, and over the next few minutes, the outlet lights up. We again decide to enter, simply for warmth, and I order a hash brown, which I pay for with mainly coppers dredged from the bottom of my wallet. As I bite into the greasy golden hunk, I notice that the boy in the t-shirt has made the same decision, and is sat with his head in his hands over a cup of coffee. He is probably asleep I think, and my suspicions are confirmed as his head slips from his cradle, and lands on the coffee, spilling it across the table and onto the floor. He is woken by the impact, but after surveying the situation slumps down into the puddle on the table and falls back asleep. What depths of drunken depravity we have seen in these early hours. These displays of intemperance become even more unsettling as our eyes grow heavier.

The final hour before the train is a blur. Jeff notices that the copies of Metro have been dropped near the ticket barrier, and we both read, infrequently chuckling at the cheapness of the journalism. Desperate for a sugar boost, I buy a coke from a kiosk on the platform, and eventually the single carriage diesel arrives. We climb on, drop ourselves into the filthy seats, and I close my eyes.

They are shaken open a little while later, and I look out the window to see the sunless sky growing light over the desolate plains of East Yorkshire. I quiver at the thought of the day’s work ahead, and rerun the frankly baffling series of events the night has offered us. I congratulate myself on the decision to leave Hull for the night, and smile at the memories made in the hours since our departure. However harrowing the sights of the past few hours may have been, I find a dark humour in them, and smile as I close my eyes again. My smile soon drops though, as I try to inhale, and find that my chest has tightened greatly. I wince at the thought of another £7.85 worth of food, lost on antibiotics, but soon I fall into a foggy, stale sleep, and I do not awake until we arrive at the Paragon.