And this boy-man used to come down from the big estate, he was the gamekeeper. A man, but with the face of a kid, freakish. And his mutt, the Labrador, they walked about down there, picking between the stones at the bottom of our scaffold. That dog was pretty bright, it used to drink my tea. It had a taste for it, all that condensed milk . . . Tartar, dark brown . . . swirling in tea leaves . . . orange, heavy with a whiff of iron, the spoon stood upright! And then the mutt would bolt it down in one go! ‘Good Boy!’. . . That’s where Frank’s army tea ended up, him and his Berlin! ‘Good Boy, Good Boy!’... Really black, that dog was, a Labrador, I think . . . friendly, good natured, with a taste for Frank’s foul brew. As soon as nobody was looking, I’d tip it in his bowl, three laps and it was gone.
We could see the whole show from up there, we had a vantage point, the comings and goings . . . The grounds, the gate house, the walls and the village beyond . . . Then the lane and the car park . . . You could even see into the squire’s estate, clean over the wall into his living room . . . And the gamekeeper, way over there, checking on his pheasants, almost out of sight . . . knelt down in the bushes . . . And his dog, the black one . . . miniature, in the far distance. I watched them larking about.. . That dog, it had some fun, pouncing, prancing over the moors and through the heather. Like a little match stick dog, so far away it made your eyes ache. It was some look-out post we had up there, a crow’s nest on top of the world.
‘You see, over there, that’s the west wing, that’s where Queen Elizabeth the First took a shit . . . When she came down here to open it — the castle . . . when she visited . . .’
I give Ron a blank one . . .
‘Well, she’d have to take a shit, wouldn’t she?’
I nod . . . Hmmm, Queen Elizabeth, not the new one, the old one . . . over four hundred years ago, over there in the west tower.
‘There’s a big drop, you hang your arse over the edge, and there it goes, plop into the oggin!’
I take Ron’s word for it, who am I to contradict him? But still, it sounded a bit far-fetched . . . Plausible, but Queen Elizabeth? The First, not the Second . . . Upnor Castle? Shitting over the long drop? Hmmm, there’s a thought, a picture for the imagination.
‘If you see Ivor coming, give us a nod and we’re back to work, OK? Try and at least look like you’re doing something. Now look, who’s this?’ He stands and peers into the courtyard . . . ‘Here comes Fred, the silly berk!’
I look down through the criss-cross of scaffolding, between the planks, out through the ladder runs . . . Below us, a little to the left, I see him, hands jammed in his pockets. His lid pulled down over his ears, hobbling between one wall and the next . . . That’s him alright: Fred.
‘You see, he ain’t got no teeth, the stupid old bugger . . . Now watch him! Look, he’s taking a bite! Toffee brittle that is, he always eats that, but he ain’t got no teeth. Look, he has to gum it! He can’t chew it, he has to suck it. . . He can’t eat the nuts. . . look. . . see?’
I look down, I can just make him out. He takes something out of his pocket and breaks a piece off.
‘That’s it! Look, he took it out of his pocket. That’s his toffee brittle that is. He can’t eat it, he has to suck on it, he can’t eat the nuts, no teeth! He won’t wear false ones, the silly cunt can’t even chew on a sandwich! I offered him one once, ham it was, he was sucking on it for half a bloody hour, and that was only the crust! Next thing he just chucks the whole lot straight in the bin, the whole fucking sarnie, disgusting old cunt! Look, look! Can you see them, down there on the wall? You see them? Look, there they go!’
I look to the wall . . . I rub my peepers, nothing . . .
‘Not there, there! Look, at least fifteen of them . . . Ha, look, look, they’re following him!’
I take a second gander, double hard . . . I flex my retinas . . .
‘No, over there! They’ve moved!’
Fred cracks off another lump and sticks it in his biscuit shoot . . . He sucks on it . . . and moves on . . . I can see him now, directly below us. He sits himself down, and takes a breather. I can just see his cap and the tops of his ears . . . his cheeks pounding on the toffee.
‘There they go! They’re following him! Look, look, look! Down there, on the wall!’
Now I see them, a whole flock of little brown ones . . . all in a row, sitting along the wall, their little beaks going from side to side, inquisitive, expectant. A little commotion and they all ruffle their feathers and set off, two, three yards, and they perch again. Chirpy little fellows, just behind Fred, to the side and behind. Fifteen or so of them, hopping from foot to foot.
‘He’s going to do it any minute, watch! They know, they ain’t stupid . . . They’re following him, they always do . . . You know when Fred’s coming because you see his little flock first. . . Look he’s chewing it over!’
I peer between the boats. You would have missed it if you’d blinked. Fred looks to his left and to his right, then checks over his shoulder, and . . . Flam! a great spray of them . . . brown, revolving, glistening in the sun, mixed in with bits of spittle . . . He pulls his lips back over his gums, wipes his nose . . . One last suck and out they come, in the wink of an eye. One minute he’s still gumming, the next, a great fan of nuts . . . denuded, flying through the air, in a jet of spray . . . hot and wet.. . little groups, single ones . . . smeared with juice . . .
He shakes his jowls, puts his tongue behind them and pushes. He revolves his head, eyes bulging behind his glasses, and: flam! He unplugs it and they shoot out like buck shot, scattering from the left and to the right . . . They fall on the grass, in between all the green blades . . . a neat little semi-circle . . . Then the flock descends, they hop off the wall as one and follow their noses, pecking, scrutinising, in amongst the blades. I could see their backs, about ten or twenty of them, a mad flapping . . . the eating of the nuts . . . A mad flurry of the little brown ones . . .
I could have been quite happy on the castle stint, sitting on the scaffolding, admiring the view. But then came news from old Spring-heel. Ivor comes out his little tea hut and gives us a wave and a shout and calls me down. It’s Bill, he’s resurfaced, the van’s already on the way over to pick me up. I have to bid my fond farewells, pack my flask and fire my arse . . . I scamper about getting my bits and pieces together, an old lump of flint I’d been carving for my father . . . plus my drawings, six hundred of them in an old binder, done during the tea breaks.
36. SMASHED-UP HAND
The weather didn’t exactly get along with Bill’s health, great Northern blasts, showers of hail and sleet. He came in for a few days and just sat there in the tea hut blowing on his mitts.
‘It’s the damp, that’s what does it. The quack told me quit smoking and take a holiday, Tenerife or the Riviera . . . the poxy Riviera! Oh yeah and what on, my bike? Steer clear of the damp he says, and what hope is there of that, we’re virtually in the bloody river!’
‘Maybe you should try the Med-way, as in Mediterranean,’ jokes Charlie.
‘Har-de-bloody-har!’ Bill sits down, muttering to himself, removes the lid and dips in his fat fingers, wide, yet dainty, a few strands of tobacco. He extends his pinkie and licks: a perfect roll-up. I watch him, studying his movements; I take notes, learning his craft.
‘There’s no point you being stuck out there in Upnor, in the back of bleeding beyond! What they want to go and send you out there for? That’s what I ask myself, as if I ain’t good enough, as if I can’t teach all you need to know here.’
He wags his nose in disbelief, flicks a match and strikes it, it flares up, a little torch. He takes a lungful and lets it out slowly, in trickles, wisps of blue-grey, he bites at the air and makes smoke rings. I watch, mesmerised, caught in time, my chin at an angle.
‘You’d best go out on your own today. I can’t go out there, not in this weather, not with my chest! But you’ll have to do it by hand, don’t use the machines! Remember all that I’ve taught you, remember you’re a c
raftsman, an artist, not a demolition mob! Keep your set-square handy . . . I’d come with you, only my heart.’ He bangs on his chest and coughs, to show me, to prove he’s not skiving . . . ‘Here, pass me my tool-wrap!’
I go fetch it, and place it in front of him. He pulls on the strings and rolls it out on the bench. He smoothes out the corners with his palms, then extracts something heavy from the deepest pocket, double wrapped in chamois leather. He cradles it like a baby, removes the swaddling and passes it to me. I take the weight into my palm; burred edges, grey metal, a stick, some kind of a handle.
‘My club hammer, the big boy, four pound! My master’s master gave it to him, and now I’m passing it to you, a real granite smasher!’ I look at it mesmerised. ‘If the barometer rises, I’ll be out there and help you . . . But in this pea souper? in my condition? It’s not on, is it? I’ll give you my hammer, and you can use as many of the chisels as you like . . . you with me? Use your skills, handed down from me to you. Have respect for yourself and your craft, a noble craft, no bricky, no labourer, a mason! One of the stone, a dying art, but a right royal one! From Rameses to the Acropolis, from the Coliseum to Michelangelo, from Bill Cubitt to you — the heavy weight of tradition! Shoulder your responsibilities and bear them well! Here, roll yourself one, go on, I know you’ve been watching me, help yourself, fill your boots . . . No, like this, thumb and forefinger . . . that’s more like it . . . but here’s the tricky bit, aha, folding it back! You’ve got to catch the edge, and mind you don’t drop none . . . That’s the ticket, now lick it! Ah, now that’s an easy mistake to make . . . look, no . . . turn it round, you see the glue? It’s on the other side, you’ve rolled it backwards, never mind, it’s easily done, here take mine.’
He lights it for me, I taste it, hot and bitter.
‘Go on, take it down, don’t play with it, you’re not a girl, are you?’ I grin through the tears, I try to hold my cough, I take little puffs. Bill encourages me with his eyes.
‘That’s it, that’s it, take it all down! We’ll make a mason of you yet! Now don’t forget your tools, and give me a yell as soon as this pea souper lifts . . . You know where I am if you need me, I’ll be right here . . . I fancy a little buttered toast and maybe some beans in tomato sauce . . . Right, off you go now and don’t let Spring-heel catch you! Here’s some baccy for later: today this is yours, tomorrow you buy your own!’
* * *
The door goes behind me, I take a few lugs on my snout, then ditch it in the oggin . . . I grab my bike and cycle out into that fog: animal-like, trundling down in great waves, fathoms thick . . . Icy, droplets the size of stones!
Bill sending me out like that? Kicking me out into the cold so to speak? I button my collar, and shiver in that other world . . . me, the bike and just a bag of old blunt tools, next to useless. For starters, the castings are too brittle for granite . . . they just shatter under the blows . . . And that granite, a little on the robust side? Expanding, blue-grey, with a grainy finish, more like metal than rock! Two and a half foot across, exacting, precise, within thousandths of an inch, impossible!
I chew on my tongue, raise the hammer high over my head and bring it down on the chisel. There’s a blinding flash — the scene’s illuminated in a shower of sparks, they jump into the air and fizz to the ground. My hand is numbed by the terrible reverberations, completely peppered with shrapnel . . . I can still see lights and angels.
To get into the corners, the recesses, it’s just not possible by hand; the chisels just can’t cut it! The hammer slips, once, twice, real bruises! I lose my grip, numbed by the cold, I flex it, I claw my fingers . . . a dull feeling, little bits of electricity . . . I lay it on the block, lift the hammer and bring it down, three, four, five times . . . it bounces when it hits the flesh.
‘Dumb hand! Stupid hand! Hand that will never hold a woman! Ugly sinful hand! Unlovable and bad!’
I grit my teeth, raise the hammer and hit it again. I increase the power. I sob and wince. I teach myself a lesson! I show my hand what for! I let it know who’s boss!
I yelp and cradle it — a little tear, a tear for the self . . . One second I’m standing there, swallowing the fog, the next, everything goes in flashes. I poke my hand from my tattered sleeve, blooded and shattered. I draw it up to my breast, I whimper . . . take my scarf and wrap it, precious, a fold, delicate, I warm it... I leave the bike and stumble over to the medical centre on foot . . . I see snowflakes, stars, little planets . . . and something else, ghosting through the fog, over by basin number three.
Laid out flat on my back like that, I lost what little momentum for life I had. You get to sitting down for five minutes and you never want to get up again. I took to my bed and refused to budge, point blank, for several weeks . . . I wrung myself out like a rag, to the very last drop . . .
When my hand was finally fixed, and it came to getting back into my working boots, I was none too keen. I explained and re-explained. I told my mother that I just couldn’t work any more. Them and their cubes of stone gave me a limp dick! A right royal pain in the arse!
It’s true, I couldn’t face another rock. Angles bore me; inches, centimetres, templates and set-squares! I can’t even stand to look at a straight line — I go cross-eyed. The working life just isn’t for me. Besides, a young writer’s got things going on inside his nod, other than breaking his neck getting himself a poxy career. A young writer wants to go out onto the street, to take a gander about, to get drunk and feel sorry for himself.
37. SKIDMARK HOROSCOPES
They gave me a place but no grant cheque. My mother forked out five pounds a week pin money, but that doesn’t go far, what with the cost of living. I spent mine on pointed shoes and hair dye.
I didn’t get in there on maths, physics and English O Levels, hell no! I got in there on personal hard graft: one hundred per cent painter and not a qualification to my name! I learned the only way there is to learn, by myself, scribbling in the dockyard . . . Six hundred drawings in the tea huts of hell! I don’t mess about. Just dedication, bravery and a natural feel for portraiture. I get down the information. The look in the eyes, I capture it. The truth, the emotion, I put it down for all to see . . .
The first thing that you notice when you walk into a dump like that is that everybody’s flirting around the cupboard doorways, especially the tutors. Strange comings and goings, the hoarding of crayons and pencils. The world is punctuated with clandestine nods and winks, with favouritism and special favours. A young writer has no say in such an existence; the world revolves exclusively around the cunts of debutantes.
I was on my knees with unknown desires, seventeen years old. She fell for my bone structure. Love? Love? Oh sure thing, love is great when you’re a kid, when you’re brave and full of bluster, and Christ was I romantic . . . I used to cut a graze on my wrist for every slight she did me, for every word that she spoke with another man. And those little Chinese love poems I used to send to her, laboriously copied out in long hand. I used to read those magical lines and weep with self-pity. I was in love with all those sad little Chinamen.
I’m talking about two whole glorious months of acceptance, of knowing your destiny. She was like a wolf, suckling at my dick and looking me in the eye. I tried to lick her cunt, I just got my tongue in there and she pulls me off. She was in charge, the fuck mistress, and it tasted like burnt rubber!
I embarrass myself? Too bad, it doesn’t matter. She wouldn’t recognise herself anyway. People’s ears only prick up when you turn on the flattery. When you blab on about the subtlety of their eye colouring, the touching moments and little affections. All the things that in the end amount to pretty small beer.
When the obsession is over and the passion has passed out of us, we are left with nothing but empty love talk and lies. Later on, it’s the stench that repeats on you, and you start getting to be grateful that it isn’t going to be you who has to sit opposite her, and watch her slow, relentless decay. Your life twisted, out of unspoken resentm
ents, and stomach gone sour out of denial, until one day her bowels finally drop and she keels over. Another bastard’s dead and some silence comes into this world.
But I remember her eyes, her mouth, her teeth, her lips. And she said that the next time she wanted me to cum in her mouth. Only there never ever was a next time. The next time, I was sat crying on her parent’s garden wall for four fucking hours, ’til her old man comes out and tells me to clear off! That I’ve been dreaming, that I’ve made the whole thing up from start to finish! That I’m just a kid, that his precious daughter doesn’t love me, doesn’t know me from Adam! In fact, she was a liar. From then on, I began to thinking just how utterly scummy her cunt really was.
Next to the fact that it’s a knocking shop, the only other thing you need to know about art college is that everybody’s a genius. Every last little tutor, every last little student, absolutely no doubts. Hanging about like pop stars, checking their profiles, waiting to be discovered. They’ve no time to actually do any work, shit no! It takes every spare ounce of their time and energy sounding off, being witty and polishing their name plates.
I’ll tell you something else for free, all this talk about inspiration, the avant-garde and originality is all just hogwash. Rembrandt? A plagiarist! Picasso? They were doing it in the caves madam, in the dark! But that doesn’t stop your aspiring famous from gassing, far from it, they become ever more bumptious.
The artists are everywhere, it’s the modern plague. Standing on their heads and priming their arseholes, anticipating the big pay-off, the oiled surgical glove . . . In on every sales technique, fine art razzmatazz . . . Clanging awards between their legs instead of balls . . . Jabbering like a thousand demented piss flaps. They don’t even come up for air . . . and they’ve no time for pleasantries. Certainly not! Accolades is what they crave, and they deserve it by holy birthright! They’ve seen it written in the stars, in the shit stains in their underpants: skidmark horoscopes!
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