I worked as a Bouncer - 7

The night it all kicked off and nearly – almost, did and then didn’t - went to shit. Part 2 - Saturday Night

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As you may recall, Thursday and Friday night we were fortunate that we escaped without serious incident at the club.

Saturday night may well have been a full moon, supermoon and lunar eclipse all rolled into one. From the start of the shift, customers’ tempers were frayed, bitching and back-biting amongst them, rife. A scuffle broke out in the reception area and people had to be ejected before they’d even paid to get in. Door staff were on edge; instincts were on high alert for some reason.

Dingo came in late and I saw by the set of his jaw and his flushed neck that he’d had an argument. He went straight up the stairs without a word to anyone. Becca came in through the door connecting the pub to the club. Her eyes brimming with tears, she was determined not to show how upset she was.

“You ok, Becca?” I asked.

“No, not really. I’m going home.”

“Aren’t you well? Are you sick?”

“Yeah,” she said after a pause. “I am. I’m sick of his shit. We’ve just had an argument and he’s told me he doesn’t want me working here.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, swiping at the tears in anger.

I nodded. I wondered how long it would be before Dingo gave her the ultimatum. To begin with, he was worried she’d kick off when she saw the amount of attention he got from female customers. Now Becca had got into her stride and become more confident in herself, it would appear that he was annoyed at how much attention she got from customers and how well she took it all.

I knew that Becca adored Dingo and there was no way in hell that she would cheat on him, but my theory on life is that people don’t judge others on their actions, they judge them on their own actions. Dingo had decided that he didn’t like the thought of Becca behaving like he did, so the opportunity to do so must be removed or he’d lose his mind to the green-eyed monster.

The phone rang at the side of me – you didn’t know I had a phone in there, did you? No, me neither.

“Hello? Harvey’s Reception, can I help?” Yes, I can answer phones with a bit of professionalism, even without knowing I had to answer the phone as part of my duties.

“Is Pete there, love?” Hmm… seems the professionalism only goes one way…

“I don’t think I’ve seen him yet, wait a second please?” As luck would have it, Pete arrived at that moment.

“Pete, phone for you.”

He took the phone from me, through the hatch in the door.

“Hello?”

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The conversation was short and sharp and Pete handed the phone back to me without a word. He went upstairs and within minutes, half the door team followed Dingo out of the front door. Dingo ignored Becca and I felt anger radiating from her at the slight.

It looked like the lunar influence extended across the county, everyone was losing their minds. Still, Dingo being out of the club meant Becca wouldn’t be getting any grief from him for the rest of the evening.

One doorman was more than a little late and the pressure of half the team leaving soon began to tell on those left behind.

Customers started arriving in droves and Pete told Becca to take her coat off and get upstairs to the bar up there. She passed her coat to me and I put it safe for her, with my own.

“Make sure that door’s locked and if you need to, lock down and watch yourself,” Pete said.

“Lock down? There’s a bloody hole in this door, what do you expect me to lock down with?”

Pete shrugged and followed Becca up the stairs. “Improvise,” he said.

Danny, was the one and only doorman at the front, outside. Paul handled the upstairs, watching over the bar. Pete was having nightmare of it. As he tried to keep his eye on reception and the bar, he cursed the missing doorman. One of his regulars had let them down and with more than half of the door team gone to back-up other teams, we were stretched beyond endurance.

“It’s not usually this expensive to get in here,” a woman complained when I asked for her admission.

“You usually don’t come in on a Saturday, you’re usually here on Thursday, it’s cheaper on Thursday,” I said, plucking the note from her hand.

She waited for her change with her hand held out. I looked at her, holding eye contact as her friend pulled her along after her. “Fucking bitch!” she snarled as she was pushed up the stairs.
‘Sorry,’ her friend mouthed at me.

I didn’t have time to turn around, the customers kept on arriving. Where the hell were they coming from? We hadn’t had this close to a capacity crowd in months.

The only thing I was thankful for was that the woman and her boyfriend from the previous night didn’t show up.

Pete regretted sending so many off to act as back-up and he phoned Henri to come over to help out. We didn’t see Henri very often on a weekend, he had other things on his agenda.

Henri strolled in, his trousers and work jacket immaculate. He said hello to the doorman and me as he passed through reception. The doorman was run off his feet, he had to put the barrier rope across the door once he’d allowed a handful of customers in. They had seen I was alone and busy and were starting to take a chance at leaning through the hatch.

In a lull of customers, I scouted around inside the little box I inhabited and found a brush handle, broken in two. The biggest piece would do in a pinch, and I propped it up close to me as I worked.

It was almost midnight before the influx of customers came through the door. We must be close to maximum capacity – what had happened and why on earth couldn’t we have these kind of numbers every night?

Danny finally allowed the last customers in. He followed them inside and closed the inner door behind him. The inner door comprised of two doors that swung outwards and met in the middle without benefit of a lock.

“I’m just going to grab a coffee,” he said. “You’ll be ok, won’t you?” He handed me the clickers – the devices used to count customers so we could gauge how many were in the venue at any one time – a click on one for an entry, a click on the other for an exit.

Without waiting for the reply of, “You’re not supposed to leave me on my own, you daft twat!” he went upstairs to grab a coffee.

Usually, he’d be fine grabbing the drink, plus he’d grab one for me and his partner too. He didn’t seem to grasp the finer points of skeleton staffing.

A group of lads opened the swinging door and came in.

“Evening lads,” I said. “A fiver each please.”

The usual rowdy flirtatious comments ensued, which I fended readily.

Then one seemed to realise just how alone I was.

“On your own, then, darlin’,” he said. It wasn’t a question; it was clearly a statement.

“Oh yeah, but I’m still more than a match for you,” I said. “Gimme thirty-five quid and you can all go on up,” I kept my tone even, with a hint of menace.

“You know better than to mess with a Ginger,” a comment from the back carried over the group.

They laughed and the guy leaning on the hatch counter took their money and handed it all to me.

He played a little game of ‘you want it, you can reach for it,’ but I don’t play nice. He took hold of my hand as I reached for the money. I didn’t resist right away. Instead, I took hold of his wrist gently with my other hand and I surprised him by bracing myself with one foot against the door and pulling hard on his hand, slamming his chest into the counter.

I smiled sweetly and said, “Thank you,” as I plucked the money from his hand. I even blew him a kiss. And the group of seven lads went up the stairs, their jovial banter echoing up the staircase. He looked back at me and winked. Oh boy, he liked playing rough… I’d have to watch that one.

Danny arrived a few minutes later. He’d been gone longer than I would have assumed it would take to grab a couple of mugs of coffee.

“What kept you?” I asked. “Did you have to fucking harvest the beans?”

“What?” he asked, perplexed. “Oh, no. There were a lot of guys coming up, I had to wait for them to pass me.”

“Oh, you mean that crowd of lads that came in while I was down here. On. My. Own?” I spaced the words out deliberately so he’d catch that I was not pleased to have been put into a dangerous situation. He had the good grace to colour-up and apologise.

The music was banging upstairs, the occasional laugh or shout echoed down to us as we watched the front door for new customers. Danny leaned against the counter, his eyes on the front doors. At least he was alert for any new customers. I could tell by his movement whenever a shadow crossed the threshold.

Danny’s radio crackled with the shout for back-up upstairs. I took his coffee mug from him and he dashed up to help.

Screams of alarm mingled with the music and shouts of anger followed. A bundle of thrashing arms and legs tumbled down the stairs, in much the same way as the lad Paul had thrown down them 24 hours before.
Angry voices, threats and swearing accompanied the tumult and I backed off from the doorway, grabbed the broken brush handle and braced myself.

I saw a limited flurry of activity through the hatch in the door as three doormen bundled a number of people out of the swinging doors. Punches were thrown from both sides but at last, the crowd of customers were pushed out of the door. Pete pulled both doors closed, but as there wasn’t a method of locking it, he had to stand holding the handles as the group tried to regain entry.

Paul dashed back upstairs where the screams were continuing. After a few minutes, I gathered the doormen had bundled the troublemakers out of the fire escape and locked that door.

Pete was a big lad, but the ones on the outside of the swinging doors were equally large. A tug-of-war for control of the swinging doors was underway. For one breath-taking moment, the doors were pulled outwards and Pete went with them, still holding tight to the handles.

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A head pushed through and that must have weakened the hold they had on the door because Pete managed to jerk back control. He pulled hard on the handles and the doors swung back to bash against the stop. I have no idea how someone wasn’t seriously injured in that movement because the guy’s head was still thrust between the doors as Pete slammed them closed. The guy gave a strangled squawk and pulled his head back. The doors slammed again and Pete put his back into holding them closed.

The battle for the door over, the taunts began.

The group of men stood away from the door, part-blocking the road outside. Angry motorists sounded their horns as they squeezed past the temporary road block. Shouts of ‘come on out if you think you’re hard enough’ and other cleverly-worded taunts came from the group.

Pete managed to find something to put through the handles to lock them.

Then the hubbub ceased. Pete looked out and the crowd had disappeared. He was about to remove the temporary locking mechanism and check outside when the phone in reception rang.

“Hello?” I said.

“Tell Pete not to go outside, there’s two lads with what looks like machetes. They’re waiting on the other side of the door. If he comes out, he’ll be killed,” a panicked voice told me.

“Pete! Stay inside, they’ve rigged up an ambush for you. Phone the police and stay inside,” I said, putting the phone down.

“A what? An ambush?” Pete asked, his voice trembling from the adrenalin.

“I’m calling the police,” I said.

Pete nodded.

Paul and Danny came down the stairs to see what could be done.

“Get the customers out. Send them down the fire escape if you can,” I said.

“Yeah, go on, Danny, you do that,” Pete said. “Don’t go outside, Paul.”

Danny ran up the stairs to follow my advice.

The inner doors were smashed inwards, against the stopper on the doorframe and a crowd of furious lads burst in. Mayhem ensued.

Pete and Paul scrambled over each other in the battle to gain the safety of the upstairs level.

Chairs came tumbling down the stairs as some of the attackers tried to storm their position. When the assault on the upstairs didn’t work, the attackers turned on the reception box.

A number of chairs were thrown up into the air in an attempt to get one or more over the top of the reception wall. Fortunately for me, the space between the top of the wall and the ceiling meant the chairs bounced off and back at whoever threw them. I grabbed the broken brush handle and held it roughly in the centre.

I have no idea what I would have done if someone had tried to get in, but one end was broken off and pointed and I’m sure it would have hurt.

“Get out of my fucking club!” I remember yelling.

No one poked their head through the hatch so I didn’t have to use the weapon I wielded.

It seemed like moments, but it had to be at least twenty minutes since it kicked off because that’s how long it takes from Nottingham to Harveys, Dingo and the rest of the lads stormed in, kicking the remaining fighters out as they went.

My adrenalin was running high and when Dingo poked his head through the hatch, shouting my name, he recoiled as I slammed the broken brush handle on the counter top.

“Get the fuck out of my club!” I yelled again – for the umpteenth time.

“It’s me! Shit!” he shouted. “Are you ok?”

“Yeah, I’m ok…” I said in a rapidly calming voice.

“Are you sure? I thought you’d be in a corner, crying,” he said.

“Does it fucking look like I’m crying, you tosser?” I yelled again.

The laugh that came from him sounded jittery and relieved. “Fuck…” he whispered. “Fuck!”

Though the police had been called by numerous fast-food outlets on the opposite side of the road, apparently, there had been a severe and sudden shortage of officers available to deal with the problem occurring at Harveys. The police didn’t show up for an hour after it had died down, by which time, the club had closed early and everyone had gone – staff and managers alike.

“Maybe you should have told them there was a bomb scare?” Bo said when he heard about it. “They come fast enough then…”