Black Car Burning

by Helen Mort

  The whole thing was hard to take seriously anyway. The pub that was supposedly going to be turned into a mosque was now being turned into a fried chicken shop. What they wanted – what everybody wanted – was a pot for their anger. A name for what kept them up at night and made them swear over nothing and made them drunk and close to tears on a Saturday night, a night after a day like this. All the pubs round here were shut today. The EDL lot would have to go to the station tap on the way home, the yeasty back room full of day trippers with oversized bags who’d move away from them, lowering their voices for the sheer drama of it.

  Alexa was so busy focusing on the line, on the still heads and eyes screwed up against the sun, she almost didn’t see him at first: a man, near the turn-off to Horndean Road, squaring up to a group of Muslims. He’d broken away from his own side. He was drunk, red in the face. All of his movements seemed to come from his neck. He was mouthing off at one of the men, though he barely reached his chest. She pushed her way down towards the hubbub.

  ‘Step back, please! Step away.’

  ‘The fuck all you going to do about it?’

  Alexa stood tall, tried to keep her voice level.

  ‘Get back, please.’

  His body sagged. He worked his pockets with his hands. He backed away, but swerved towards Alexa. She looked around her for backup, but for all their numbers, nobody seemed to be watching. She was away from the main line of the EDL now, on the fringes of the pack. He was hardly as tall as her, but she could smell his sour, savoury breath when he drew close.

  ‘Ask me nicely, darling, yeah?’

  ‘I’m not asking you. I’m telling you.’

  His face darkened and his neck stopped bobbing for a minute. His voice tightened to a hiss as he leaned towards her, got right up in her face. He started as if he was going to touch her, grab her, take hold of her arms and pin them to her sides. She wanted to scream, but nothing came out.

  And she wasn’t in Page Hall any more. She was by the cemetery on Psalter Lane, ten years ago, only she couldn’t move backwards any further, because of the wall. And the lad from the club, the friend of a friend of a friend who said he’d walk her home, he was so near she could see the clumps of gel in his bleached hair. And his body was pressing against hers, so it seemed like he was all around her. His erection against her thigh. His hand down the front of her skirt and then down the waistband of her thick, black tights. And the night getting thick and black, too, the silence of it oppressive, in her eyes and in her ears and in her mouth. And why weren’t there any cars at the mini roundabout? And why wasn’t anyone walking back from the pubs? The boy grinning and chewing his chewing gum, that sickly mint smell as his small hand worked at her, dry, with her legs clamped together. How she couldn’t push him away. How she could, but she didn’t. A siren somewhere else in town, getting quieter.

  Alexa cried out. She’d stepped into another officer, a tall, thick-set woman she didn’t know.

  ‘You all right, love?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  She was in Page Hall. The afternoon was yawning out. The EDL looked like they wanted to go home.

  The lad from the graveyard was called Simon Timperley. He joined the police after they left uni.

  * * *

  It was her date night with Caron and they were going to go down to The Riverside, away from the hubbub of the bars in town and the Saturday scent of West Street. Alexa liked it there: staring out across the water to the sombre apartments on the other side, drinking Brooklyn lager from the bottle, watching insects bother the reeds. She was gasping for a first beer, the way it made her veins all soften under her skin.

  When she got home, Caron wasn’t back yet. Just the open window and the breeze going through yesterday’s paper. Upstairs, Leyton was stretched out on his bed trying to smoke away his cold, haloed by tissues. He’d left the door ajar and Roots Manuva was leaking out on to the landing.

  She knocked and Leyton opened one eye. He exhaled and beckoned to her.

  ‘How was the march?’

  ‘Bit of a letdown really. Not much action.’

  ‘All mouth and no trousers?’

  Leyton was in his boxers and a black T-shirt that belonged to Caron. It was too tight for him and it made his neck look large. He hadn’t shaved for days. Something about the musk of smoke in the room, the way it seemed to hug everything too close, made Alexa feel like crying. She wanted to hold Leyton’s head in her hands, press his rough cheek against hers. Just that and no more. They hadn’t fucked for ages. It wasn’t as if they’d grown apart, just got so close to each other they’d stopped wanting to. Maybe you can’t touch someone when they live under your skin. Leyton understood her too well. But in a house where everything had to be put into words, everything explained for the benefit of the group, they’d had to find a simpler way of announcing it.

  ‘You OK, Lex?’

  She nodded and sat down on the end of the bed, kicking over a glass of water. She watched the stain spread over the carpet and didn’t do anything.

  ‘Where’s Caron?’ she asked.

  ‘I think she went buildering.’ That was the slang name climbers gave to scaling urban buildings. Alexa found the term ridiculous. ‘There’s a kid from the university who wants to climb a route up the Arts Tower at night. If you ask me, he’s a bit of a twat. She’ll be back soon. It’s your date night, isn’t it?’

  Alexa nodded again. She’d always loved watching Leyton build a roll-up. The surprising delicacy. How he knew exactly how much Golden Virginia to pinch into the paper. The satisfaction when he licked along the seam and sealed it shut, looking up all the time.

  Roots Manuva was saying Left, right. Left, right. Leyton’s stereo was too small for the sound of it. It warped with the bass. Sometimes their whole house felt too small.

  ‘Hard day at the office?’ she asked.

  He grinned. ‘You know how it is. Still waiting for that sponsorship deal from North Face. It’ll be folded into my next giro. Living the dream.’

  Leyton lit up. It took several goes. Alexa felt like she was made of paper and he was made of bricks.

  The night she met Leyton, he’d helped her break into her own room in Halls. Up the drainpipe and through the window. He’d had so much Famous Grouse he fell off when he tried to follow her. She’d watched him, lying in the bushes with his leg at a strange angle under him, still. But by the time she’d found her phone to call the ambulance, he was scrabbling over the edge of the windowsill, feet paddling behind him. He fell into her room headfirst and never really left. It was because of Leyton she’d met Caron. It was because of him she’d told her own dad who she was and how she wanted to live. It was Leyton who took her to the coast for the first time and showed her, showed her that view that made her feel like everything was running out, everything led to the sea if you looked hard enough and it didn’t matter.

  ‘Come here,’ he said softly, without her having to ask.

  She crawled up the bed and buried her head in his chest. He smelled of Caron and all the day’s smoke.

  ‘Is it her?’ he asked and she shook her head into his hug and couldn’t stop shaking it. He held her tighter. ‘I know it’s hard sometimes,’ he said quietly. ‘For what it’s worth, I think she’s keeping stuff from us. Me as well. I think you just pick up on it more than me.’

  Alexa thought that if she could only hear one person’s voice again, it would be Leyton’s. His voice had always seemed better than him. She used to phone him up just to hear him answer. She wanted him to keep talking the way he did the first night when she’d said Tell me about your name, and it was after midnight and he’d made it all into a brilliant story, his dad and the football team that nobody else in the north supported. Orient. He could at least have picked that part. Afterwards, they’d moved like swimmers in the dark. He bit her neck and her nipples and left a mark.

  ‘Tell me something,’ she mumbled.

  ‘What? About Caron?’

  ‘No. About you. Tel
l me something you’ve never told me before.’

  He took a breath. She moved with his chest. He said, ‘I’ve told you everything.’

  ‘No you haven’t. Nobody tells anyone everything. Not even in this house.’

  He laughed. ‘Good or bad?’

  ‘Bad.’

  ‘OK … When I was a kid, me and my brother painted a telephone box. Actually, it’s not bad, but I’m going to tell you anyway. You know how all the phone boxes in Hull are white? Mum was doing up the front room with this emulsion stuff, sort of off-cream coloured. Browny-cream, really. Me and Max nicked the tin after school and went across the Avenues, down near the railway tracks. We couldn’t reach the top of the phone box, even when he lifted me, but we had a go at the rest. The sides. All of it. We were dead careful not to get any on the windows. Whenever someone came past we hid, away from the road and then we’d go back. It was mad really, because it wasn’t as if it even looked that different at the end. I mean, the paint were nearly white anyway. Cream, like I say. But we knew. Every time we walked past.’

  She smiled into Caron’s black T-shirt. She wanted him to carry on.

  ‘Mum went mad when she saw the tin was missing. I blamed Max and he blamed me. I said he’d taken it and tried to paint the dog. They believed me, because I was older. Next week we did try to paint the dog, but with varnish. That was different.’

  He’d made himself laugh and they shook together, one lumpy shape on the bed with the tissues and Leyton’s fag butts all around them. And it was suddenly better, better than any time he’d ever held her before.

  Hillsborough

  I’m in the news again. Stills of banners that say TRUTH and JUSTICE FOR THE 96. Images of fans in black and white, scrabbling over the barriers inside the stadium. A picture of a woman, holding a photograph of her son out in front of her at arm’s length like an offering. My name on everyone’s lips, body parts excavated and damned. I see it in capital letters on tabloids and broadsheets, screens and T-shirts, documents held by politicians, passed over furtively. In 1997 Tony Blair picked one up – a call for a new inquiry, my name swarming over the page. He took a pen and scribbled across the top: ‘Why? What’s the point?’ Now, everything is stirring. I feel it in the slim ribs of my fences, the arterial roads that split me. In the cafés and newsagents, people seem nervy. I see a man who sits for hours in the park some days, down by the tennis courts, thumbing through a sheaf of papers, scribbling in a notebook he’s bought. He finds writing difficult – his tongue pokes out through his teeth and he hunches forward, crooks one arm round the Moleskine as if to protect it. I’m in the breeze that ruffles the treetops. I gently lift the pages and let them drop.

  Leigh

  ‘Get in,’ Pete growled, winding down the window of the van. Van was a bit generous. It was a large sandwich tin on wheels.

  The traffic in the village was gridlocked, the side roads cordoned off with blue striped tape. Outside the garage, two police officers were stopping drivers. There had been a bank robbery last night at the Royal Bank of Scotland and the early morning hillwalkers gawped from the bus stop, watching. The village was bristling, busier and noisier than usual, as if the robbery had brought the city closer to Hathersage. This was supposed to be the kind of place where nothing happened.

  ‘Hurry up,’ said Pete. ‘I’m freezing my balls off.’

  Leigh hopped in and slammed the door. The warm smell of sweat and rotting apple cores hit her. If you live alone for long enough, she thought, you stop caring what you smell like. Maybe she stank most days, too.

  ‘What’s this about? You know I’m at work in an hour.’

  ‘Bollocks to that. Stretcher’s in town. Heard he’s going for something on Stanage.’ Pete was turning the van round. He mounted the pavement and a red Fiesta beeped at them. He grinned at her. ‘Don’t worry, the boss’ll just think you’re wanted for armed robbery.’

  ‘Apparently, they climbed in through the roof. They got them on CCTV, but you can’t see their faces.’

  ‘Wonder how much they got away with? Think what you could do with money like that.’ He gave a low whistle.

  The van lurched and Safi the grey whippet appeared at Leigh’s shoulder, panting, flung forwards. She eyed her master with curiosity.

  ‘Who the hell’s Stretcher anyway?’ said Leigh.

  Stretcher, it turned out, was big in the Eighties. He’d put up a host of new routes in Stoney Middleton, climbed Welsh sea cliffs that were more debris than stone, then moved to the Highlands and reinvented himself as an ice-climber. Nobody had seen him for years. Someone reckoned he’d lost a finger in the Alps, but Pete didn’t believe it. He told her all this on the walk up from the Plantation car park, gulping for breath.

  ‘Why’s he called Stretcher?’

  ‘Because he’s a tall bastard. And the last of his mates still standing. He’s lost more climbing partners than you’ve had pints. Careless, really. The stretcher-bearer. Don’t mention that. He thinks it’s because of his height.’

  They heard him before they saw him. He was belaying from the top of The Right Unconquerable, yelling down at a lad in a red waterproof jacket and vomit-coloured trousers.

  ‘Take your time, pal! I’ve got all day!’ His voice was high and thin. He had a Sheffield accent, but he went up at the end of sentences. He’d borrowed a Scottish way of saying ‘day’.

  The lad was puffing hard, struggling with a fist jam. His whole body seemed clenched.

  ‘For Christ’s sake!’ Stretcher sang down.

  ‘Hey, Stretch!’ hollered Pete.

  The boy on the end of the rope seemed even more nervous now he had an audience.

  ‘Chuffing hell!’ Stretcher’s face creased with recognition. ‘Look who’s back from the dead.’ He broke into a wheezy laugh and Leigh was worried he was going to let go of the rope.

  ‘A little bird told me you were coming over.’

  ‘A bird? Near you?’ Stretcher liked to laugh at his own jokes. ‘And who’s this nice young lady? What did you put in her drink to get her here?’

  ‘We work together,’ said Leigh.

  While they were talking, the boy on the rope had managed to wriggle and haul himself past the worst of the laybacking and was nearly at the top, though Stretcher hadn’t taken in any slack. He returned to the routine of belaying, grunting with irritation. The lad hesitated and then flapped his way over the top.

  ‘You’ll love Stretch,’ said Pete, cheerfully. ‘Once you get to know him, like.’

  When they stumbled down to join Leigh and Pete, Stretcher thrust his hand into Leigh’s. He didn’t bother to introduce his climbing partner, who was even younger than he’d looked when he was on the rock. Leigh asked politely if it was his son.

  ‘You must be joking. This nesh bugger’s not mine. Picked him up in Kinlochleven.’

  He didn’t care to elaborate and the boy wasn’t saying much either. Stretcher’s front teeth were missing. His face was threaded with thin scarlet lines. She thought his breath smelled of whisky, but she could have been imagining it. He reminded her of her Uncle Trevor, a red-faced fell-runner whose body always seemed too big for him, a man who couldn’t sit still, who’d leave his pint untouched for half an hour and then down it in one.

  ‘What’s on the menu today then, Stretch?’ asked Pete. Leigh could tell he was nervous, in awe of what Stretcher had done once, or said he’d done, what he thought him capable of.

  ‘Ah, I’m taking it easy for the lad here.’

  ‘Thought you might be gunning for routes.’

  Stretcher turned away and started unclipping quickdraws from his harness, laying them out flat on his rucksack, one by one. He stooped like a much older man. The lad rushed over to return the gear he’d retrieved on the route. Stretcher patted him on the shoulder and muttered a kind of congratulations. You stuck it out. You’re a tryer.

  Pete was watching them together. He didn’t say anything, but Leigh saw the weather of his face change. Envy. Or just w
istfulness. Leigh felt embarrassed for him, ashamed he could be so easily read. She opened her mouth to break the silence. Black Car Burning. She itched to tell them about Caron and her plans, her strength, her wide shoulders and her delicate feet. But the words died in her mouth. She could hear Stretcher’s laughter already. Some unknown girl on an E7? Don’t be a twat, she thought. You could kill a dream with too much talk. She bit down hard on her lip.

  Stretcher took a hip flask from his rucksack and offered it round. Pete’s face became his again.

  ‘See off the cold?’

  As she picked her way back down to the Plantation, she could still hear them swapping stories. Stretcher had taken a big fall once. Stretcher had on-sighted something at Curbar when he was still pissed. Stretcher had climbed Quietus in the dark. Stretcher had run off with Dan McKay’s missus and then dropped her off in a lay-by near Perth when she got on his nerves and couldn’t keep up with the climbing. Pete was giggling like a kid. They both laughed in the past tense.

  She was very late for work. But the boss wouldn’t care. She turned back and glanced up at Stretcher and Pete and the boy, small under the lip of the rock. They looked like nothing at all.

  * * *

  When she finally got to the shop, there was no sign of her manager, but Tom was waiting for her by the climbing-gear counter. She saw the side of his head first, his slim profile. Elegant. She paused in the doorway and tried to take a breath. One of the spotty teenagers who usually did weekend shifts was showing him a selection of blue and orange climbing helmets. Marvine. Or Max. Max moved under a permanent curtain of hair.