The Boy was crawling slowly and pathetically on all fours, trying to get to his feet with a sloppy clumsiness, as if he were crawling in mud. Mark fell to his knees behind the Boy and viciously twisted his arm behind his back. Like all children showing off, Mark seemed oblivious to the squirming spectacle he was making of himself. There was something about the floundering of the two of them that I could hardly bare to watch. The whole display was undignified, humiliating to those watching and at least one of those being watched. I inwardly groaned at the fact that Mark was giving away much more to his audience than he realised. Mark continued to go through his routine with the confident air of someone with a trick up his sleeve. I saw real pain flicker and spasm across the Boy’s face. Mark hooked the Boy’s delicate neck in the crook of his arm and squeezed.
‘Surrender? Submit?’
‘I submit,’ the Boy managed to gasp in a gurgling voice that was grotesquely comical.
Mark released the Boy as if he were a magician who had just made his assistant appear with a flourish. We were supposed to be astonished, perhaps by this coup de grâce. The Boy blinked, but looked unharmed and unharassed. He smiled as if at a joke that he didn’t get.
‘What’s everyone staring at?’ Mark addressed the whole room. ‘We were just having a friendly play fight, weren’t we?’
‘Yes,’ said the Boy politely and took Mark’s extended hand to shake it.
Everyone accepted this. They were probably aware at some level that they had been in complicity with the whole scene. They had let it happen, locked into a suspense of trust that the two figures would not make any wrong moves and let each other down in their violent balancing act.
The people watching dissolved back into their conversations and relaxed interaction. I sat back down at our table with Barry and the Boy. Mark came over, too, and plonked himself down, beaming as if waiting for praise. No one mentioned Mark’s attack of high spirits. I noticed Susan was still sitting glumly in her place with a face like a smacked arse.
‘Susan not joining us then?’ I said.
‘Naah. She’s sulking.’
‘Why?’ asked Barry.
‘Fucked if I know. . . . Time of the month. I can’t be doing with it anyway. “If you don’t know why I’m angry then I’m not telling you.” What kind of sense is that? Anyway, she can come over if she wants.’
Mark had never been good mates with either me or Barry, and was not usually prone to showing great eagerness to enjoy another’s company. His present behaviour was surprising and somehow, in this new surge of friendliness, presaged as it was by mock violence, there was a disturbing element. I decided to put some of his exuberance down to drunkenness.
‘You know, I like the new tattoo, Shane. It’s not really my kind of thing, but I don’t know, it’s kind of grown on me. In fact it’s pretty fucking cool.’ He turned to the Boy. ‘Let’s have another look.’
The Boy obligingly rolled up his sleeve again.
‘It’s fucking good, Shane.’
I suppose that despite the unusual subject matter, the workmanship was enough to earn Mark’s admiration. At any rate, he was no longer afraid to praise it.
‘Shane won’t do me any more, y’know.’ Mark turned to the Boy again. ‘He’s jealous ’cos the one I did is better than his.’
‘You’ve read the sign in my shop, Sparky. I don’t do anyone with tattoos on their face, neck or hands.’
‘This isn’t on my hand. It’s on my wrist.’
‘You can still see it when you wear a shirt. That’s the point.’
‘That’s a bleeding weird attitude for a tattooist!’
‘It’s a bleeding responsible attitude for a tattooist!’
‘Fuck that, man! Since when has tattooing been about being responsible?’
‘Since when have you known anything about tattoos? I’m not discussing it further.’
‘Anyway, I must say, Shane, you’re much better than you used to be. It’s not fair. You’ve fobbed me off with this inferior article.’
He touched his abdomen to indicate his tattoo. He pawed the Boy’s exposed arm again, his fingers stretching the smooth flesh into pits like the teeth of a guard dog playing with a kitten, and making the tattoo shimmer with a thousand tiny velvet wrinkles.
‘I want one like this, too. Tell you what,’ Mark’s hand slipped away and flashed back slickly in an instant. This time his fist was sharp and wicked with a flick-knife. It was old, ivory-handled, but the blade was sharp and bright, almost greasy, as if it had been polished with Brylcreem. Mark’s pride and joy. ‘What if I was to take this tattoo off you, and then you could get another one the same later? That way we’d all be happy. Or would you rather I cut your dick off?’
The tip of the blade was just at the Boy’s eye level, and he regarded it uncomfortably. Mark was using it to punctuate his words like a drunkenly jabbing finger.
‘Sparks! Hey, Sparks!’ Barry spoke like someone trying to make themselves understood to a moron, ‘Put the toy prick away. Cutting off someone’s tattoo ’cos you haven’t got one of your own is one thing, but cutting off their dick ’cos you haven’t got one of your own is just not going to work. Now put the toy prick away.’
The insult could have piqued Mark’s pride and goaded him into real violence, but something in Barry’s voice conveyed an effective warning. The sarcasm was well calculated to belittle any attempts to act out of pride. Also, Barry seemed to have adopted the Boy almost as an unofficial mascot of the shop, the lifestyle behind the shop, and the friendships that made up that lifestyle. I had never seen Barry in a serious fight, but obviously he was not afraid of Mark, and he was not laughing. So, for one reason or another, this time Mark acted with restraint and put the knife away. He folded in the blade and was just about to slip it back in his pocket when he drew it out again in a flash. The blade was still tucked into the handle, and he smiled. He circled the Boy’s right wrist with his thumb and forefinger, tugged his arm out and pushed the knife into the Boy’s upturned hand as if it were a handful of sweets.
‘Here!’ he said. ‘You need this more than me, I reckon. You should be more of a man. Learn to look after yourself.’ His voice was touched with concern.
The Boy regarded the flick-knife in his hand. ‘Thank you,’ he said. He located the tiny button in the handle that releases the blade and pressed it. The blade flicked out faster than a snake’s tongue. He held it up, turned it about, fascinated, perhaps, by the novelty of owning such an object.
***
I only met the Boy again once after that occasion. In this life there are one or two calm days that seem to belong to no particular time, when one is released from age. These days are for one reason or another unshackled by the usual chain of chores and obligations that make up human life, turning it into a tedious dream. You wake up and realise, with sad detachment and infinite relief, that the rest of life is meaningless; these few calm moments will in the end be your finest moments. In my work I have had more than my fair share of such sun-blinded, reflective days. I am lucky.
It was on just such a day, similar to the day I first met him, that I met the Boy for the last time. He dropped by almost casually, but with that strange, alien self-consciousness about him that I can only call nervousness, though it is more like an uncertainty of the usual social patterns of human beings. He obviously wanted to appear casual, but was too aware that he had no real reason to call except a social interest that remained somehow unspoken, unconfirmed.
Someone had cancelled an appointment, and Barry phoned to say he was having trouble with his bike and would be in later. So I was working on a few designs when I felt a silent prickling and turned around to see the Boy standing in the corridor with his hand on the doorframe.
‘It was so quiet, I didn’t know if you were open or not.’
‘Yes. Open for business. What can I do for you?’
‘Er. Well, I just thought I’d say hello, since I was passing.’
‘Yeah, come in, s
it down. I’m not busy.’
The Boy took a seat and sat very properly with his hands in his lap. He said nothing. He didn’t even seem to have anything on his mind he wanted to say. He merely sat, waiting. I didn’t know whether to carry on with my designs or wait myself in silence for him to say something. I tried working on my designs for a while, but could not concentrate. I sighed as if I had simply tired of the work and turned to him.
‘Fancy a cuppa?’
‘Yes, please!’
So I made tea—I don’t drink alcohol on duty—and managed to whet the conversation.
‘I’m sorry about the other night,’ I said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean Sparky. He’s a moron. I’m sorry. I put you in that situation and let you fend for yourself. It was pathetic really, everyone just watching while he showed off. Me too, of course. I’m afraid that is typical of the bad points of the kind of people I hang out with: selfish, cowardly, no sense of responsibility. Very little. . . . No respect, really, when it comes to it. They’re the kind of people who will tread their fag ash into someone else’s carpet and think that person is being uptight if they get angry.’
‘There’s no need to be sorry, honestly. I was honoured to be invited into your circle. And I don’t think it’s true that they have no respect, either. It was a very interesting night. I feel as though I’ve made the kind of contact that is only made once in a few lifetimes.’
‘Sparky kind of spoiled things though.’
‘No, not at all. He really made the evening.’
The Boy was smiling as he said this. I was surprised to feel a distinct pang of jealousy lurking behind my disapproval. Luckily it was distinct enough for me to step back from. I became very circumspect in my questioning.
‘So you didn’t think he was just a racist wanker, then?’
‘His racism is like his poverty. It limits him. It’s really just a fantasy world. I don’t believe he is a bad person. In his own world, in his own context, he is a good person. I know this because he is capable of true friendship.’
‘True friendship?’
‘Yes. Sweat is true friendship. As for me, my skin is cool, I don’t sweat enough. But that night we were both sweating a little.’
‘I don’t quite follow you. You can sweat while kicking someone’s head in. Doesn’t mean you’re bum chums.’
‘It’s so hard to explain. Everything is hard to explain, really. Usually I just tell myself that I can’t explain, and then just feeling the air on my skin is bliss. Life without explanation is rapture. But anyway, this time I will try to explain, and you must forgive me if it isn’t very logical.
‘When I see, for instance, workmen in a hole in a road, filthy and sweating after tearing up the earth with a pneumatic drill, and resting to have some tea and talk together, I think to myself, that is true friendship.’
‘Get away.’
‘No, really. Okay, so, for instance, I listen to Mark’s voice and it is tight with violence. It’s like the tightness of a football full to bursting with air. So full up with that invisible softness that it has become hard. And the violence is like the violence of that football bouncing off a brick wall. The boys kicking the ball are playing rough, but the game still has rules, and behind the violence, the roughness, they trust each other implicitly. They trust each other because they can be mutually rough. Usually that kind of person doesn’t know how to deal with me because they think they will only hurt or insult me by being rough. So they deliberately hurt and insult me. Mark, I think, really was trying to trust me, and not to insult me.’
‘Hmm. I’m not sure what Mark would make of what you’ve just said. I think you’re being too generous by half.’
The Boy attempted no further argument on the matter and we settled into silence again. Eventually, as if it was something he’d been meaning to say for a long time, he said, ‘Thank you for the tattoo.’
‘Don’t mention it. It’s my work.’
‘It’s more than just your work, I think. It seems to have settled into my arm very well. It’s better now than when it was first done. It’s like it’s blossomed.’
‘Show me.’
He was right. It was even fresher now. It looked as if it might even smudge, like the brilliant dust of a butterfly’s wing. Before, when I had looked at it, I had the faint illusion of smelling damp turf. Now the illusion was stronger. The thing was alive; as alive as the flesh it was indelibly impregnated in. The eyes winked, the Little Girl Death rocked on her heels. I caught a breeze of all the memories that were imbued in that body, and of other things that weren’t memories, but daydreams. Before I knew it a whole montage of images presented itself to my mind’s eye, a tapestry into which was woven something like a story. First there was the dark and soothing coolness of earth. Then I rose up, through the dense, shadowy tickling of the dozing grass. It was a sports field in a primary school, glaring in the sun, dazzling with daisies and with the daisies of girls doing cartwheels and handstands. There were boys, too, differently occupied, their navy blue jerseys wrapped around their waists like reverse aprons, their clothes covered in withered grass cuttings, tri-coloured sweat bands on their wrists. In the background, blackened bindweed spiralled between the interstices of a rusty wire fence. And beyond that were the back lanes and gardens of an English village. I sank once more into the damp, restful earth, and seemed to sleep the halcyon sleep of the dead. When I stirred upwards once more, through grass of a darker green, I was at the top of a hill overlooking a choppy sea. The hard, brilliant colours of a Union Jack streamed jubilantly in a snapping wind, and behind glowed the god-solemn clouds. A spiked palisade protected it from any would-be climbers or vandals. Seagulls wheeled and hovered around it in formations as broken as the wind. A hexagonal gun emplacement stood near by. There was no longer any gun. Instead it was full of graffiti, the stains and smells of booze and piss. Even now some muddy-haired grebos stood and crouched, swilling lager and bottles of beer and cider from the local offy. Even now one stood to slash his dripping initials in urine on the inside of the embrasure. There was a strange continuity between the two scenes I could not place. Both were somehow full of other images and associations too nebulous to enumerate. The buffeting wind and lowering skies of the latter scene left me with a feeling cold, threatening, and remotely beautiful.
I returned to my shop to see the Boy looking at me as if awaiting a reply. His face changed subtly to the face of someone who has been given a satisfactory answer. He sighed almost inaudibly. His visit had drawn to a natural end. There was little reason for him to linger.
‘Well, I should get on really,’ he said.
***
There are so many kinds of relationships we don’t really have names for them all. In fact, each is unique, and the most significant and influential relationships in a person’s life are not always those with people they see regularly and often. Sometimes there comes a relationship hard to place, not belonging exactly to the spheres of friendship, or family, or business, as if it has arisen for purposes far more specific and will take up no more time than is necessary to achieve those purposes.
Although I never again met the Boy in the flesh, I sometimes saw him about. His presence in my thoughts and my life only grew stronger. There were still some weeks of summer left, so my last memories of the Boy are of a fresh face, breeze blown hair, and arms exposed as far as the cool shadows of the T-shirt sleeves. Even now I know very little of the Boy’s background. I heard from Dave once that he’d seen him signing on at the Job Centre. He had apparently looked as out of place there as he did everywhere else. Amongst the sullen and resentful jobless in the queues, and the staff behind their desks who acted as if they’d been coached in exactly the disapproving, humourless attitude to adopt to make those they dealt with feel sheepish and guilty, the Boy had stood out like a natural poet, or a stooge. He had been pleasant in the face of the morale-wearing sternness of the staff, whose inquiries were so full of covert accusa
tions—much to their irritation. Any prospective employers, imbued with the same grey spirit of oppression, would no doubt be similarly irritated by the co-operative naïvety of this flower-spangled child. He was clearly unemployable and irrepressible. Barry bumped into him on a couple of occasions and exchanged a few friendly words. Others reported similar encounters as if they were lucky omens. He always seemed to be alone, on his way to somewhere, who knows where, to do who knows what? Boyfriend or girlfriend there was none. His, it appeared, was a mayfly existence, sustained by fresh air and sunshine. Whenever I saw him, or thought of him, there came to my mind visions like those I had when he had last showed me his tattoo. The visions deepened, became more detailed. Single enigmatic images would occupy me for some time till I saw them quite as clearly as life, but with a poignancy of meaning to them that life had long forgotten. Children on a nature trail. Haystacks. A boy watches whilst other boys and girls trampoline in the hay, and roll about, and kiss. In all this was diffused such a feeling of purity and loneliness that it wrapped me up in astonishment and wonder.
We entered autumn in all its pagan gloom, and then the bleak iciness of winter. Sightings of the Boy were few, then for a long time he was not seen at all, as if he had migrated or gone into hibernation. When I thought of him, too, it was as if I thought of an era so remote it was more legend than history. There was the abstractness about my thoughts of a passenger staring at wet streets from a bus window. The Boy’s face hovered vaguely across the sky like my own faint reflection in the window.
In early February, when pensioners were skidding on the pavements and fracturing their fragile bones, Barry came into the shop shaking rain off his leather, took off his helmet and looked at me as if searching for some shared knowledge or understanding. I will never forget that face, pale and almost brutal with the cold. There was a weariness about it suitable to the season that made his expression, his actions, his words, almost casual. On such occasions formalities are difficult to grasp. Life and events have confounded formalities, rendered them false and clumsy. There was enough news and gossip to piece together a general picture of what had happened, but although there had been many eye-witnesses, there were still a number of odd inconsistencies in their various accounts. What actually took place I will never know, but this at least is the oral fossil the event left behind.
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