You ever play for proper money in here? said the derelict.
Hagan broke into a grin and slapped him on the back, one of the trimmed eyebrows rakishly raised.
What’s your name pal?
Dermot.
That’s a pikey name. You a gyppo?
If you say so.
Dermot produced a bundle of wedge and placed it down on the rail. Took a cue from the rack and rested the butt down with one fingernail tapping against the tip.
There’s a couple of thou there, said Hagan.
Like I said, proper money.
Where d’you get it? Scrap metal? You must be the king of the gyppos mate.
If you say so.
Michelle shovelled notes from the till and handed them over to Hagan and he slapped them down on the table. Then he stepped up and put his ball on the break line and began.
I was sat at the bar but I couldn’t taste the lager. They drew in around the table and Lovebite stopped his dance. They cast crisp shadows, sharp as a blade, in the white light streaming through the street windows. Dancing like moths.
Hagan started his usual routine, bullying the balls with muscle. Blasted the pack from the break and got two reds direct. He swaggered round the table and the onlookers gave him room. Started to put a break together but ran out of position and left one on the jaws. Raised his eyes to heaven. I followed his gaze, up to the artex ceiling. Whorls and scallops in the yellowing plaster, dagger-sharp.
Dermot came to the table, grinned.
You got to take them by surprise, he said. When they’re not looking.
They laughed at him and he cued way off line and sent the ball squirting wide. Hagan smirked. Potted two more reds. There was a fly, trapped between two panels of the sash window. I watched it ricochet desperately from pane to pane. The bottle-green sheen of the body, the miraculous structure of the compound eye, the honeycomb of spiracles. Dead in a moment. Hagan planted the last red into the corner. Smiled broadly, the cue ball still scooting around the angles.
I looked at the security glass in the door, crazed and impact-rippled long ago but never replaced. Light crawled over the surface and rattled off a million facets, off the capillaries of wire mesh running through each shard. It seemed to resolve into a human face, mouth open and each tooth a talon of glass. Then it splintered into white noise.
The cue ball plopped into the middle pocket and the smile dropped from Hagan’s face. He retrieved it and replaced it on the break line, not looking too bothered. He only had the black left and Dermot hadn’t potted a ball. I gripped the bar stool beneath my backside, metal tubing and vinyl cladding. It gave an arthritic squeak, shifted and trembled under me.
Dermot hunkered down over the table and his grey eyes sparkled.
Charm, he said. Got to charm them in, not bully them.
But the white span comically off his cue again and missed all the yellows. The room dissolved into laughter and Hagan shook his head.
You taking the piss?
I’m trying me best son. Just getting me eye in, like.
An ashtray next to me on the bar, mounded high with cigarette butts, some still smouldering, others with smears of vermilion lipstick. Sour smoke rose, the agglomerated butts bristling like a hedgehog.
Hagan was on the black. He sighted on it and thumped the shot hard, but the ball rattled between the jaws like a beam of light refracted in a prism. Stopped. Hagan examined the baize and picked a tiny glittering fragment of something out of the nap. It was broken glass. He flicked it across the room.
Now I reckon my luck’s in, said Dermot, twirling his cue.
He pinged the cue ball into a clutch of yellows and the balls leapt like a shoal of fish awakened by the sun. Two straight to pockets and another two on the jaws. More balls rattling home like wayward comets. At the window, net curtains shifted lazily on gentle draughts of air. Ethereal limbs, spun from nicotine-yellow material, floated out into the room, gesticulated, and sank.
Now he was on the black.
Come to daddy, he said, with a wink at Hagan. Dynamited the ball around the table from cushion to cushion, sucking the room towards it. The ball slowed, flopped lazily off the side cushion. There was an intake of breath. The black plopped square into the corner pocket.
Dermot grinned and picked up the pile of notes. Their mouths opened and closed. No words, just the sound of insects feeding, an army of locusts on the move. Trajan bounded into the bar with spittle lashing from his jowls and jumped straight at him with paws on his shoulders and muzzle in his face. Dermot pushed him down but Hagan was looking at him, looking deep into his eyes. Saw the clouds racing across the sea, saw the mountainous waves streaming in ranges towards the shore. Recognition dawned. Yan grinned like a loon and slammed the butt of his cue into Hagan’s face.
I’ve seen any number of pub fights. It’s a respectable pastime in this town. We play down the violence. Talk about a bit of chew, a barney. That’s rhyming slang, by the way. Barney Rubble. The chew explodes out of nowhere and subsides almost as quick, like a sudden squall of bitter weather. And five minutes later you might be shaking hands and looking sheepish over your pints. But this one was different. This one had to be pursued like a theorem, right down to the proof.
There was a welter of movement, pumped-up tattooed flesh thrashing and bellowing like cattle on the killing floor. Hagan collapsing like a slaughtered ox, Yan slamming Lovebite’s head through the window and into the street, turning to thump a roundhouse into Magoo’s guts. Drinkers were going for the door, knocking over furniture in panic. Yan grabbed Magoo by the ears and planted a knee into his face and Michelle was stock-still behind the bar, absolutely entranced.
His eyes, looking at me out of the middle of it. Open and grey and full of the sea, mobile as weather systems over the Baltic.
Franco backed Yan towards the juke box with a lager bottle in each hand. Burst each one against the pool table and thrust the jagged ends out in front.
The eyes were looking again. I stayed rooted to the stool. He wanted me to help. It bothered him. Then the door to the bar fluttered open and Paul O’Rourke stood there, grinning like a mule with his newly shaven head shining like the moon.
I love a barney, me, he said.
And he rampaged towards Franco, bisected them broken bottles and stuck the nut on him sweet and square as you ever saw. Franco’s nose exploded like a barrage balloon and his blood and snot lashed across Paul’s face.
But Hagan wasn’t finished. He arose from his wreck on the floor and launched himself at Yan. The two of them in this staggering thrashing embrace, half fight and half fuck. Colour drained out of it and they carried on in monochrome, flickering like a silent film. Paul grabbed Hagan from behind and his teeth sought out that gold hoop and ripped it triumphantly from the lobe. Hagan bellowed and the back of his napper battered into Paul’s face but Paul held on, twining his legs and arms round the thrashing body while Yan groped for a pool cue. He began to flog Hagan about the head and shoulders, the cue rising and falling like a scythe until it snapped and the tip clattered to the ground in slow motion, bouncing slow across the floor of the bar like it was the surface of the moon. And Yan belaboured Hagan with the splintered shaft, his jaw set in concentration and his muscles jumping and bunching with the effort, and Hagan lost consciousness and slumped down but Yan carried on. The bar became dark, splashes of light and shadow moving slow and attenuated. He was a broken spring, shuddering and flailing, the stump of the pool cue still moving like a pendulum in his hand.
When I got back to Jonah’s I found him in the kitchen, peeling potatoes over the sink.
Thought I’d rustle up some chips, he said. Can’t afford the oven ones. Anyway, I prefer it the old-fashioned way. No E numbers. Just good honest grease. The peeler flickered over the tubers, exposing the ghostly white flesh.
Don’t you want to know what happened?
Jonah bent over the potatoes, brow furrowing.
I know what happened. He was alway
s hard to handle, your old man. Burnt a short fuse. Many times I’ve been glad he was around, though.
I leaned heavily against the edge of the kitchen table, the wood grating uncomfortably into my coccyx.
Why were you glad?
Jonah’s hands raced across potato after potato, dropping each naked vegetable into a bowl of cold water. They shimmered, like underwater corpses.
Imagine what it was like growing up half-caste around here, in the sixties. If people gave you chew you had to give it back. With interest. If you didn’t teach them a lesson they wouldn’t leave you alone. You couldn’t opt out of it. That’s why it was good having Yan around.
The potatoes were finished and he rinsed the sink out with scalding water, steam billowing from the stainless steel. He opened a drawer and produced a kitchen knife, dull and ominous. He chopped each potato in turn, first into thick slices driving down hard on the heel of the knife, and then quickly chipping each slice into long wedges, the blade rapping against the chopping board as he did so.
I can opt out, I said.
The blade clattered through another slice of potato.
How do you mean?
Yan’s the same as Hagan. Stags goring each other with antlers. Tom cats ripping each other to shreds. Wild animals turning on each other in rage. We’re more than that. We must be.
Jonah smiled, and laid the knife down flat for a moment, the blade dull with starch.
You’re idealistic, he said. I was the same at your age.
I rolled up my sleeve, showed him the purple bruising around my bicep. The livid, metallic brand of a man’s hand, where Yan had gripped my arm this morning.
Jonah placed the basket of chips into the deep fat fryer, and the golden oil simmered energetically, a deep rolling bubble.
I don’t want to be like that, I said. Jonah looked at me sideways, sweat breaking out at his temples.
None of us want to be like that, he said. Not in the beginning, anyway.
We ate the scalding chips in silence on our laps with salt smeared across them and globules of deep red ketchup on each plate. Once, I looked up and caught Jonah’s eye. He looked away.
I went back up to bed, though it was only mid-afternoon, pulled the eiderdown over my head. The scene in the pub came back. Paul stretched out a hand, grey as the dusk, and touched Yan’s shoulder. Yan looked startled. He examined the cue in his hand like he was surprised to find it there, let it drop to the floor beside Hagan’s body. As the light began to flicker, the projector slowing towards a halt, the strobe lamp caught his face, gaunt and bony. He turned towards the younger man and clapped him on the shoulder and the two of them locked eyes.
Breeze lifted the nets at the window and light roved over the shattered security glass in the door. And now Yan and Paul were struggling with a bundle between them. Black plastic like a rubbish sack, shimmering in folds and trussed with gaffer tape. Where the tape was stretched tight it revealed the shape of a man’s face. Nostrils, the tip of a nose, the channel at the centre of the upper lip.
Give us a hand, Dan. He’s fucking deadweight.
I stayed rooted to the stool. Yan caught sight of Michelle, still behind the bar, pale face turned towards him.
Get the fuck out of my pub, he said. You whore.
And then Kate was in the doorway. She stared at them, stared at me. Took in the broken glass and smashed furniture.
Yan, she said, her voice quavering.
Indulge me my sweet, he said. Some unfinished business, and then I am yours until the end of time.
She stood there, paralysed.
Outside in the yard they dumped the package inside the boot, Trajan jumping excitedly as Yan slammed the lid down. They were laughing, faces vibrant, and they lit cigarettes behind cupped hands, balloons of smoke rising from open mouths. Then the car started and they were gone. Rain moved in from the North Sea and hid them from view, and the projector finally jammed, the heat of the bulb melting through the frail acetate and consuming it in a pure flame of luminous white silence.
And I fled from them, out to where a raft of ducks huddled on the sea, wrinkles of grey water lifting and falling beneath them. The sea flowed into my ears and I could hear the eiders gabbling quietly, the black orbs becoming opaque with sleep. I moved close to the large, soft bodies, seeking their protection, and they shifted to accommodate me. Rain craters grew and spread as a sea squall passed over, and the coast swam into view, the mouth of the Tees with the long sweep of pale sand to the north.
24. Raven
(Corvus corax)
She’s got another bloke, says Matt. In case you were wondering.
He’s sat opposite me in the portakabin with a crinkly smile on his face and a roll-up wedged between his lips.
Clare, he continues. She don’t hang around long, and apparently you didn’t get in touch.
Seeing my confusion, he creases into a grin.
No secrets in our profession, you see. It’s the long hours in the pub, steaming yourself dry. All comes out in the end.
Glad to have provided some amusement.
I manage a wry smile.
Well, he continues, conspiratorially, I’m not sure you even did that. Apparently you were a very poor shag.
He wiggles a little finger at me, eyes sparkling. A moment of silence while my cheeks begin to burn, and then Matt explodes with laughter, teeth glittering in his beard.
Just joking, he says. She didn’t provide that much detail. But you should have seen your face.
I laugh along with him, relieved.
The webcam, he says. All packed up and ready to go. We’ll just load it into the back of your van. I’ll miss the old thing, you know. Got used to having my ugly coupon beamed around the world every day.
Your loss is the world’s gain, I quip.
Matt chuckles.
Got something to show you, he says, before you go. Always happens on the last day.
He gets up from the table and I follow him outside into a gunmetal grey afternoon. We step gingerly across the site, mud squelching over shoes, rubbing up the insides of trouserlegs.
Remember having a rant at you, your first time on site, Matt says. About the past. Being a fucked-up place we’ll never get our heads round. Something like that. Well, what Julie found this morning is the proof of the pudding.
Iron Age pit, says Julie, when we reach her. Bloody big one, too.
Her estuary accent twangs in the northern twilight, pale face like a moon beneath the hard hat.
Used ’em for storing grain, supposedly, Matt says. But when they’d finished, they filled them up with weird stuff. Broken pots, bits of animals, even bits of people. Not just rubbish. Kind of arranged in there, deliberately. Like it meant something.
A bit of insurance, Julie butts in. That’s my theory. Putting something back, like planting little seeds, to make sure it all grew back again. Regenerated. People and crops and animals and pots.
Never seen anything like this but, says Matt.
We crane out over the deep pit, excavated into dark grey glacial clay, and look down. In the gloom, it appears that a huge bird has been crucified. It lies on its back on a plinth of black soil, wings outstretched to each side. The late-afternoon light ripples over the pure white bones, turning each one a pale arctic blue.
Dunno what species it is, Matt says. Bird of prey? Whatever, it’s been laid out down there, freshly dead. Bones are still articulated. Then they covered it over with earth, and there it stayed for three thousand years.
It’s a raven, I say. Corvus corax. Like a bloody big crow. Look at the size of the thing. Birds of prey have a hooked bill, for tearing at meat, but look at that one. It’s just a bludgeon. An axe. Pure power.
Twitcher, beams Matt. Wouldn’t ravens have evolved in the meantime, though?
No. Been the same for millions of years, millions of generations down the line. Ancients, they are. Not like us. We’re the greenhorns on this planet. And they never forget. Got everything they n
eed wired in, instinctive.
We’re the buggers with collective amnesia, laughs Matt.
Even so, I say. The past doesn’t trouble them. A single bright moment. That’s all a bird worries about.
Better get on with it, says Julie. The light’s going. Photos tomorrow?
Matt nods and Julie vaults back into the pit and hunches over the skeleton, brushing crumbs of soil from the eye sockets, the massive bill and broad sternum. The two of us stand in silence for a moment, looking out over the heavy fields and the gurgling lights of a newborn conurbation towards the muscular hills straining at the leash. Not very long ago, in the same place, somebody not so different from ourselves arranged a dead raven, still warm, in a half-filled pit. They took a shovelful of earth, then a second and a third, and emptied them over the coal black feathers, the crumbly loam mounting until the glossy body was hidden from view.
Just come. As soon as you can, he says, the voice urgent.
I sigh and look at Kelly, who’s strenuously avoiding my glance.
I’m in the middle of something. I’ll come as soon as I’ve finished here.
I snap the phone shut. Kelly sighs.
Was that really him on the phone? she says. Sometimes I think he’s just inside your head.
He’s dying, Kelly.
It’s too convenient, she says. It’s like you’re having a conversation with yourself.
She’s gathered in the corner of the sofa, thighs encased in tight denim, firmly crossed like a giant nutcracker. Looks at me incisively, blue eyes calm. That slight hint of a sneer about her upper lip.
Anyway, get your dinner, she says. There’s some beer in the fridge as well. Then we need to talk.
Not hungry, I say. You can tell me now, whatever it is.
She sighs again, and sets her face.
I’ve made you some salad. You need to start eating properly.
I’m not sitting around noshing with we need to talk hanging over me. You’ve started it, so tell me what’s going on.
At least have a beer, she says, in a small, tight voice, devoid of emotion. Unfolds herself and pads to the fridge, baggy shirt swirling around her curves. Hands me an ice-cold cylinder and I pop the ringpull before swigging the metallic liquid.
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