Three Bullets

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Three Bullets Page 8

by Melvin Burgess


  But she turned out to be hopeless at braiding hair! It was unbelievable – I looked like some crazy person had been trying to invent a new language on my head. It was dreadful. I was all polite to her and said thank you very much, that’s great, thanks, Mum. She was frowning at it and saying, I’ll get better than that, Marti, I’ll get better than that. But she never did. Every time it was crap.

  Maude was on at me to keep letting her, so’s she’d be happy she was doing something for me. ‘She just wants to be helpful, Marti, that’s all. She just wants to be useful.’

  Well, yes, don’t we all? But she wasn’t. I couldn’t go about looking like that! So instead I offered to swap foot massages and pedicures with her. Which I also regretted. I know, I know – I’m being a moaner and I hate moaners! But you don’t know my mum. Actually, although I was scared she was going to cut me, she did OK, did a good job on the pedicures. I had pretty good, well-cared for tootsies after that for a while. But I had to do hers as well, and what I hadn’t realised was she had toenails like a mountain goat! Great horny things that would have been more use for trotting up and down the mountainside than walking up and down Victoria Grove. Like hooves.

  ‘I know!’ hissed Maude when I pointed it out. ‘I wondered if you’d seen them when you volunteered.’

  See? Even Maude thought like that. But I had to keep doing it, although it nearly took my eye out a few times. Mum claimed it was some sort of fungal thing, so we got some treatment from a bombed-out chemist and I actually think we were making some kind of progress when that bomb came and cured her nails, along with a whole lot else.

  My memories made me cry, sitting on the back of the bike, listening to my mum’s dance tunes. My tears blew away in the wind behind me. My poor mum. She was the one who accepted me first. My dad kept saying, It’s just a phase, it’s just a phase, and she gave him a hard time until he came round. She knew how to love, but I don’t know what else she knew. She taught me one thing though. In this world, love is not enough, despite everything they say in the songs.

  Once we got into the country Maude really opened up the bike. We were swooping around the corners, me and Rowan glued to her, arms round her waist. We went so fast! I didn’t even care although I’m an utter scaredy-cat. We swooped, we soared, we flew, roaring along the valleys and up the hills, and the countryside just opened up before us.

  Our first stop was a tiny little village called Monyash, where we were supposed to drop off a couple of parcels from the FNA guys in Buxton. It was, I dunno, maybe half an hour away. Nothing really. Monyash was a secret supply store for the local FNA.

  It was such a pretty little village as we rode down the hill towards it. It was tiny – a few houses, some of ’em quite big though, all built with this honey-coloured stone. A church spire pointing up to the sky. There were some tall trees around it, dappled green with sunlight. Cows in the field. It was so pretty, Maude stopped at the crest of the hill so we could get a proper look. It was like, your eyes were parched dry from months of looking at rubble and frightened people, and this was a long cool drink of beautifulness. We just waited and soaked it up for a few minutes, then she pushed off and we swept down the hill, the engine just ticking over, past a farmhouse and barn and into the village itself.

  It was all very still. There was a smell like an old bonfire. That was the first thing. I made to get off, but Maude put her hand on my arm.

  ‘Just a mo,’ she said.

  We were on the village green, bright green and mown not long before. There was a cross in the middle of it, and a pond to one side. There was a rookery there, with the rooks cawing. There were other black birds at the edge of the pond, looking across at us, and a couple sitting on the cross.

  Maude drove over to the pond and then we saw it. That cross, it wasn’t a cross, it was just a pointed stone, the war memorial. The cross pieces were arms, tied to a plank. Someone had been crucified on it.

  We both froze. Then our eyes started working and we saw. There were more bodies in the mud around the pond. The crows were pecking at them.

  ‘Go go go!’ I hissed. But the silly cow didn’t. She drove over towards the church. I was crapping myself. I leaned against Rowan, put my arms round Maude’s waist and closed my eyes. ‘Maude, Maude, just get us out of here,’ I begged.

  ‘What, Marti, what?’ Rowan was going, but neither of us answered.

  That smell of charred wood was getting stronger but she went on, right up to the church door. I mean, they could have been anywhere, the people who did it. You could see then that the church roof was gone. How had we missed that when we were looking down from the hill? All we wanted to see was beautifulness, that’s why. The windows all had black above them like scary eyebrows.

  Maude got off the bike and took her gun out. The door was scorched black in the middle. She shoved at it with her foot, but it was locked so it didn’t open. But it crunched under her boot. She glanced over to me. I mean, that was a good thick church door. She stood back and gave it few good hard kicks, which made me die of fright – the noise she made! Anyone could hear it! – and the door caved in. It had been burned from the inside, you see, so the outside just looked like darkened wood, but behind that it was all charcoal.

  She stood back and gave it a few more hefty kicks that knocked a hole in it, and we peered in.

  Black everywhere. Charcoal. The stink of charred wood and burning, and... other burnt things. There was a pile of those other burnt things heaped up by the door and it took me a moment, just a moment, to work out what it was. You know?

  Maude jumped back, I jumped back. Christ! That was enough even for her. She leaped back on the bike double quick, drove us as fast as she could, fast, fast, fast, as fast as she could away. We were just getting out of it when someone opened fire on us... rata-tatat-a-tat-atat! There was a thud, the bike swerved, but we straightened up and we were away again. Fast as you like!

  I thought, So much for beautiful. Where does beautiful get you? That little place, that pretty little place, it did my head in. It wasn’t as though there were any fighters there. It was just because they supported the wrong side that all those people got killed like that. Some of those shapes by the door were only small. They’d locked them in the church behind that big door and set fire to it. All those people... children... old people... everyone.

  Rowan and I were clutching hold of Maude and she was clutching the bike, and we were going way too fast. After a bit I saw there was blood on me but I couldn’t work out where it was from. I patted myself but I seemed OK. Then the smell of petrol. There was a stream of it flowing out of the tank and I didn’t want us to stop yet, we weren’t far enough away, so I leaned around Rowan and I put my finger in the hole. Then I realised there was an exit hole on the other side of the tank, so I put my finger in that hole too.

  Then I saw that Rowan’s hand was bleeding – that was the blood, see – and he only had half a finger on one hand. I tried to press my finger on the stump to stop the bleeding, but then the petrol was coming out again, so I made Maude pull over.

  She cut the engine and got off. I was still straddling the bike with my finger in the holes. She went crazy when she saw that Rowan was bleeding. ‘Why didn’t you tell me, why didn’t you tell me?’ she shouted, and started ripping up her shirt for a tourniquet. Rowan, who hadn’t made a sound all the way through this, suddenly started screaming his head off and fighting her and shouting, ‘Marti, Marti, Marti!’ and holding his arms out to me. Which was so confusing and annoying. He never had any time for me and I never had any time for him up till then.

  Maude handed him over to me and watched while I tried to tie a knot round his finger to stop the bleeding.

  ‘It must be because you’ve been looking after him for the past few days,’ she said in a hurt voice.

  ‘Yeah, you were in the tank with the yank. Don’t worry, I won’t be doing it again,’ I told her.

  But it wasn’t over yet. Before you knew i
t, there were engines coming towards us. I slapped my hand over his screaming little mouth and made a dash for the hedgerow. Maude tried to get the bike, but it fell over so she tried to drag it. But it caught on something and it weighed a tonne anyway so she had to leave it on its side with the petrol glugging out of it, stinking the place up, and ran to hide next to me.

  A Land Rover went past. White folk in it. White-on-white atrocities here in the pretty old Peaks. They went gliding past, not in a hurry, not bothering much, like an old dog checking that whoever it had scared off was gone. Luckily, the bike was half hidden in the long dry grass from last year and they missed it. Once they were past, Maude dashed out and got the bike behind the hedge with us. Stood it upright behind the hedge, but God knows how much petrol we’d lost.

  ‘You silly bint,’ I told her.

  Rowan had wet himself by now which meant that he’d wet me as well because he’d been sitting on my lap, which was utterly disgusting. Then I had to sit there very still with the screaming wetter on my lap while Maude bandaged his hand properly. First aider, see? Woman of many parts.

  Then the car came back, and we were sitting in that hedge holding our breath and pooing ourselves because we’d realised by now that there was a petrol trail along the road that stopped where we’d pulled over. But these guys, they were all very good at locking families in a church and setting fire to it, but they obviously weren’t good at much else because they utterly failed to notice anything.

  And then we had to sit in that hedge quaking for ages, afraid to start the engine, till we felt safe to carry on.

  Inside that church. That was a sight you never want to see because once you have you can never unsee it. I saw it every day for a while, until worse things happened that I can never forget, ever, no matter what happens. Then being scared by the nutjobs that did it, then being wet by Rowan. And then to cap it all, little Rowan transferring his replacement Mumsie allegiance from Maude to me. How did that happen? I didn’t even like him.

  It didn’t last long, fortunately. Sitting in that hedge with my hand wrapped around his face to stop him screaming was a good start. He wasn’t so keen on me after that. I gave him a few hard pinches on the bike as well, which put him right off me. It was for his own good. Look, you know something about me by now. Less than you think, but some. Do I seem like the motherly sort? I don’t think so.

  We bunged up the tank with some bits of stick off the hedgerow and paper and wrappers and a T-shirt (one of Maude’s of course.) I had Vaseline in my make-up bag and we tried to seal it with that, not very successfully. And off we went. Me pushing the bike very quietly at first, with Maude a hundred metres behind keeping an eye out for nutjobs. Then after about half a mile we got on it – very slowly and quietly to start with, then a bit faster – then she opened up the throttle and off we went, fast, fast, fast – away from that evil place.

  So we got away, but we’d lost so much fuel there was no way we were going to get all the way to Nottingham. It wasn’t an utter disaster because the guys in Buxton had given us a list of safe houses in Matlock. It was touch and go if we’d make it that far, but we got there in the end. We had a little trouble finding the safe house, it wasn’t obvious, but I suppose that’s the point. It was tucked away in a little row of terraces overlooking some allotments.

  I was a mess, but Maude had held it together the whole way, really cool – so I thought anyway, but as soon as she got off the bike she started to cry and once we were inside she just flung her arms around one of the FNA guys and sobbed into his neck.

  The guy looked horrified. ‘What happen, what happen?’ he kept saying, but she couldn’t speak. One of them came to me, touched me on the arm and asked if I was OK.

  ‘Yeah, I’m OK,’ I said. ‘You could have a look at my brother, though.’

  They were horrified when I told them about the massacre. It was a big thing, one of the worst things that had ever happened, because it was families and kiddies and babies and old people. You know? It was a big brutal step up in the violence. Some of the guys there knew those people.

  Then they all went into a panic in case the people there had given away the FNA places in Matlock, so suddenly everyone was charging around, moving house. I wasn’t sure they needed to do that at first because the massacre had clearly happened a few days ago and they were still there, still alive. You know? But really they had to move because, well, how can you tell?

  So we didn’t have nearly such a good night in Matlock as we’d had in Buxton. But that’s life, I guess.

  12

  It won’t be a surprise to you to know that I used to get bullied at school. You know the ones – the cool, sporty ones who stick together and everyone wants to be like them? And they want everyone to be like them and if you’re not, it’s like some sort of insult? Well, I didn’t want to be like them. I thought I was the cool one and they were just jealous. They hated that.

  ‘What the f**k do you think you look like?’ they used to say to me.

  And I used to look them up and down, and say, ‘Are you kidding me?’ And then they used to hit me.

  ‘The thing about those kids is, they think they’re so great, but you know what? This is it for them,’ my dad said, when I went back home crying. ‘As soon as they leave school, they’re on their way down. It’s the geeks, the queers, the freaks, the gays, the Blacks and the monsters who are going to inherit the Earth, I promise you. None of them will ever amount to anything.’

  Which was hopelessly wrong, obviously. It’s the sporty, well-dressed bigots who rule the world now and people like me who are in danger of extinction. But still, it was a nice thought.

  ‘It’s downhill all the way for you guys now,’ I told them the next day. And then I got hit again. But I never stopped saying it, and it never stopped driving them mad, which convinced me that it was true, of course.

  So there was this time I got kept back after school because these kids had been bullying me in the playground. The teacher, Mr Siddon he was called, he came out and caught them kicking me on the ground. So he asked them what I’d done to deserve it and they said, ‘He said we’d peaked, Sir.’

  So guess who got into trouble? Me, of course!

  ‘Marti,’ he said afterwards. ‘Marti, I’m afraid that you are a deeply flawed character.’

  Deeply flawed? You know? But of course what I heard wasn’t ‘deeply flawed’, it was deeply floored. So I was looking around thinking, what is he on about? Deeply floored. I even looked down at my shoes to see if I was standing in a hole or something.

  Then off he went, about how provocative I was, and about my attitude, and how I needed to fit in better and give people their space instead of shoving my differences in their faces.

  So I went home and told my mum and dad. My mum thought it was hilarious and laughed like a drain being emptied. But Dad – he was furious. In fact he was incandescent. He went straight down to that school, and you know what he did for me, my dad? He had a go at that teacher, and he recorded the whole thing on his phone! How cool is that? So I could play it back and listen to what he thought of the guy.

  It was great. ‘This school is a hotbed of bullying and intolerance that goes all the way to the top,’ my dad said. ‘Yes – I’m talking about the staff, Mr Siddon. I’m talking about you.’

  And Siddon was spluttering and coughing. Boy, had he got it wrong, picking on a kid whose dad was my dad!

  ‘A child gets bullied and that child gets into trouble with the staff?’ said my dad. ‘What about the actual bullies? What happened to them? Did you give them a medal? What I want to know, Mr Siddon, is why you’re picking on my daughter yourself? Why are you bullying her? Is it because that’s your nature? Is it because you’re frightened of these boys? Do they have something on you? Or is it just because you’re just lazy and bad at your job. Well? Tell me. Which is it?’

  And so on.

  Dad told me not to tell Siddon I’d heard the whole thing, but t
he next time I spoke to Siddon I couldn’t resist dropping in the odd phrase, like... ‘Think again,’ which was one of my dad’s phrases that he used all the time. Or, ‘Pigs may fly but prejudice never can,’ which was another one. And which I’ve never understood, by the way, because it’s not even remotely true. I’ve noticed that about a lot of proverbs and sayings. They sound like they’re true. People say them like they’re being wise but as soon as you think about it you realise what bullshit it really is.

  I know what you’re saying. You’re saying, Why are you telling me this? What’s this got to do with anything? I’m telling you so that you know what kind of a dad I had. I had that kind of dad. That incident is one of many. So that you know why I adored him so much. He was my hero. Used to be, anyway – before he abandoned his family to go away and fight the cause and get himself turned into a racist fool.

  I tried to ring his phone when we were in Buxton and again in Matlock. It was stupid, really. It would break my heart to hear him go on the way he did in that video. Also I was scared that he’d turn out to be dead after all, because in a war zone, being alive can be a very temporary thing. And I was scared that if he was alive and not himself any more, he’d try to talk me round to his way of thinking. What if I started agreeing with him, just because he was my dad? See, when that teacher said I was deeply flawed, actually... he was right. I am actually a walking mass of deep flaws, as you may have noticed.

  But he never picked up. I guess they’d taken his phone off him or maybe he’d managed to destroy it before he got caught. Who knows – anything could be true now that they can change you into whoever they want. Maybe he knew that I was on my way, so that he could hand me over to the Bloods. Maybe...

 

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