The Dark Inside

by Rupert Wallis

  When Billy rolled back the shutters as usual for the night, James leapt up to look through the bars to see where they were. Another green field. A knot of caravans and trailers too, parked far away on the other side of the grass beside a hedgerow, the lights in their windows glowing in the dusk. He saw the silhouette of someone walking and then lost sight of them in the failing light. There was no sign of the fair. Not a sound. Just bats clicking circles in the gloom.

  ‘No one’ll stick their nose in,’ said Billy as he came round in front of the bars. ‘Me ma’s word’s law round here.’ He walked away, over the grass, towards the caravans.

  James watched the lights in the windows go out one by one. Eventually, the voices dried up long after the bats had vanished. All he could hear was the sound of leaves rustling somewhere out of sight behind the wagon.

  He dragged his mattress in front of the bars and sat down, facing the people he knew were sleeping in the little cluster of caravans. As he stared at the new view, he looked for anything that might give him a clue about how to try and escape again.

  44

  Mist licked the bars and made them sparkle. The field was hidden behind a wet wall of grey, brightening to a hazy orange in one corner as the early morning sun rose.

  James shivered. Wrapped the blankets tighter, wondering what had woken him.

  Then he heard a sound. Boot steps on the wet grass.

  He waited, expecting to see Billy, but it was a much older man who walked straight past the wagon out of the mist, trudging right to left. His blue shirtsleeves were rolled up to his elbows in thick wedges. He was looking down at the wet green shimmer beneath his feet. A white pail of bright red berries was swinging gently by his side.

  ‘Hello?’ whispered James, scrambling to his feet. But his voice was papery and soft and full of grit. ‘Hello?’ he said more loudly. The old man stopped. Turned. Peered back through the mist. He was little more than a blur. James moved up to the wet bars, and stuck out his arm and waved it. ‘Over here,’ he mumbled. The figure took a few steps forward. A grey, tired-looking man. A ragged scar on the left of his face.

  James was sure he recognized him. He tried remembering where or when they had met, but his mind kept slipping. Words started bubbling up in his throat out of his control.

  ‘Help me!’ he croaked. ‘Please. Help me get out of here.’ The man shook his head. ‘Please,’ said James, his hands tightening around the bars.

  ‘You ain’t none of my business,’ the man half whispered and then turned round and began disappearing into the mist.

  There was mist in James’s brain too.

  Thoughts broke through it and then vanished again.

  He knew there was something important about the man. About the scar on his face.

  ‘Wait! I know who you are. I do. You’re a good man. Please. Just let me out.’

  But the man laughed and the laughter rang in the droplets of mist.

  ‘You don’t know me,’ his voice rang back. ‘And I don’t give a damn who you are, boy.’

  James squeezed the grey sludge in his brain. Memories sparkled.

  Quickly, he dug out the notes from the pocket of his jeans and ran through the notes in the margins until he saw the name he knew was written there.

  ‘Wait,’ shouted the boy.

  But the man had vanished.

  ‘You’re Gudgeon!’

  The squeaking of the pail handle stopped abruptly. A few moments later, the man reappeared for a second time out of the mist. He wiped his forehead with his free arm. Spat into the wet grass. And stared straight at James.

  ‘How do you know my name, boy?’

  James heard desperate words inside him. He didn’t know what to say at first. There was too much. He wanted to tell Gudgeon about Webster. He wanted to ask him to let him out of the wagon too. But he was cold. His shoulders were sore. His fingers were wrapped around the bars like wire as his mind kept slipping and sliding. When he blinked, he saw the old woman’s face. Billy’s too.

  ‘How do you know my name, you little bastard?’ hissed Gudgeon, edging closer to the wagon.

  James shivered. Every time he thought of the right thing to say, the idea wobbled and fell apart. But he knew what he had to do.

  He had to make friends with the man.

  Talk to him.

  Like Webster had done.

  Then maybe Gudgeon would let him out too.

  ‘I want to be your friend,’ James whispered as he shivered and shuddered. ‘You can trust me,’ he said and kept nodding as if that was enough. Gudgeon just stood there, the pail hanging by his side, the berries heaped in it shining as brightly as his scar. James hoped that the man would break out into a smile and whisper that he was a friend too. That he would help him. Just as he had helped Webster.

  But the man just hawked and spat again.

  ‘Is that right?’ said Gudgeon.

  James stared into his sneering face. And, suddenly, it was like a key turning in a lock inside him.

  ‘I already know lots of things about you. I can tell you about your wife if you want.’

  Gudgeon stood proud, bristling like a thistle, and not giving anything away.

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘I know she died a couple of years ago. She had golden blonde hair and lips as red as holly berries, and she ran away with you when she was sixteen. You gave her a bouquet of daisies on your wedding day,’ said James, willing his wandering mind to recall all the details Webster had told him.

  The old man stood there, his eyes shining as though he had been slapped in the face. His head tipped slightly to one side as he kept looking at the boy.

  ‘How do you know all that?’ he asked. ‘Who told you?’

  ‘I know you have three children too,’ sobbed James. ‘And that none of them stayed with you.’

  Gudgeon walked up to the bars and gripped them.

  ‘Tell me how you know!’

  James nodded as he steadied himself. He was going to tell the man. But he had to get the words right. He wanted Gudgeon to be friends with him. Everything had to be done carefully. He had to tell him about Webster. But, before he could speak, he heard different footsteps in the wet grass.

  Gudgeon stood for a moment, listening too. As though time had stopped.

  ‘You’re gonna bloody tell me,’ he hissed. ‘I wanna know.’ And he walked quickly away, disappearing into the mist, clutching the pail to his chest.

  James wanted to say something to make him stop, but, when he saw Billy’s outline appearing, all the words dried up.

  He waited quietly by the bars as Billy walked towards him with a bowl of broth in his hands. The man yawned. Rubbed his face. Then stopped when he saw the trail of footprints printed in the dew in front of the wagon. Billy looked back into the mist and listened. Then he knelt down and inspected the footprints more closely, measuring his boot against one, looking down at it for a long time. When he had finished, he stood up and went up close to the bars.

  ‘Who was here?’

  ‘No one,’ said James.

  ‘Someone was. A man.’

  ‘I was asleep. I didn’t see anyone.’

  Billy grunted. ‘You’re lying, boy, and liars don’t eat.’ He poured the broth on to the ground, forming a sloppy pool of steaming brown. Then he pulled on all the bars one by one. When he had finished testing them, he rolled on to his back and disappeared under the wagon. James heard him tapping the floor in places. When Billy reappeared, he walked right around the wagon, banging on the panels of timber with his fist.

  James crouched down in a corner when the door opened. But Billy ignored him and looked around the walls, studying them in a few places, before locking the door again. Then he closed the shutters over the bars and left.

  45

  When Billy banged open the door to Smithy’s caravan, he saw him sitting at the folding table, holding a mug of tea between his hands. Smithy blew away the steam. Set the mug down. Said nothing. Billy marched over. Lean
t on the table. Looked him full in the face.

  Smithy shuddered and looked away as the table creaked with Billy’s weight.

  ‘You been round my wagon again, Smithy?’

  Smithy shook his head. ‘I en’t done owt, Billy. Honest,’ he said. His hands shook. ‘I en’t been anywhere. Not at all.’ He grinned his mouldy, toothy grin and shook his head. ‘I never done nothing. Nothing.’

  Billy slammed down his hands on the table. Glared at Smithy. And saw nothing in those eyes but fear and simple-mindedness.

  ‘No,’ said Billy quietly. ‘But you did though, didn’t you? Before?’

  Smithy looked down. Looked up. Looked down again. Licked his lips.

  ‘I can’t remember,’ he said. ‘I don’t get to hold much of anything in this rotten old head.’ And then he brightened. ‘I know you taught me a lesson I en’t never gonna forget though. Took me thumbs so I’d never forget.’

  He held up his hands for Billy to see.

  Two healing stumps where the thumbs had been.

  He smiled. Shook his head. ‘I en’t done nothing, Billy.’ He reached for the roll-up lying on the table, and managed to scoop it up between both hands and offer it up in an outstretched palm. ‘Black Sea Basma,’ he said. ‘I grew it myself, Billy.’

  And Billy ground his jaw, then turned round and left.

  For the rest of the day, in the dark of the shuttered wagon, James worked hard on what he was going to tell Gudgeon. He knew the man would come back to see him. To find out how he knew so much.

  To begin with, James thought all he would need to do was tell Gudgeon he was Webster’s friend. That it would persuade the man to help him. But the more he thought about it, seeing it from Gudgeon’s point of view, he realized it might not be enough. To be sure of Gudgeon’s help, James needed to convince him he really had to be freed from the wagon.

  But how?

  Without a plan, the hollows of his head began to fill with gentle voices whispering to him that he would never be free. They told him he was better off staying in the wagon forever, not having to worry about where he would go if he was out in the world, and what he would have to do to survive there. They reminded him that running away had done him no good at all so far, laughing about what had happened on the moor. And they laughed even harder when he scored an eighth mark on the wooden wall for the night that had just passed. And the voices were slick and wet and cold, and made him shudder.

  When they became too loud, James put his hands over his ears, and shouted to try and scare them away. And when that didn’t work he stood up and ran his fingers back and forth over the Latin inscription on the wall, telling himself that Gudgeon’s appearance out of the mist must have happened for a reason. But the voices chattered and hissed, asking who would ever make such a thing happen in the world.

  With the day drawing near to its close, James sat down beside the shutters and leafed through his tattered pages, before the daylight dimmed too much between the cracks, and found what he was looking for. The drawing. The one he had made in the margin beside Gudgeon’s name.

  It was the face of a man, with a beard and flowing hair, staring up at him out of the page. He remembered drawing it the night he had stayed with Webster in the motel. He tapped the paper thoughtfully, spelling out the three letters of the name he had written down, over and over in his head. And gradually the boy remembered everything Webster had told him in the motel that evening. And, most importantly, he remembered why Gudgeon had helped Webster escape.

  As James’s mind worked everything through, he began to realize that Gudgeon was no different to him or Webster or Cook, or even the farmer. And none of them were different to anybody else who had ever lost someone they loved or known of somebody who had died.

  After the shutters were opened, Billy unlocked the door and walked into the wagon. James took his bowl of broth and began to eat. He could see the knot of caravans glowing in the murk. Someone had lit an open fire. Voices wove in and out of the clatter of pots.

  ‘Well?’ asked Billy.

  ‘I told you, I didn’t see anyone.’

  Billy leant against the bars and watched James eating, and when the boy stopped he told him to go on and finish the bowl because he was waiting to take it back. But James could not finish his meal, nervous about being watched because such a thing never normally happened.

  ‘Suit yerself,’ said Billy, plucking the bowl away and slinging the rest of the broth between the bars. ‘If you want to eat again, you’ll keep yer ears and eyes open tonight, and tell me if you see anyone.’

  James nodded.

  After Billy had left, he sat down in a corner, and crossed his legs and waited.

  And waited.

  But Gudgeon did not appear.

  Eventually, he lay down on the mattress and looked up at the stars. He watched satellites ticking by. Saw shooting stars rip lines in the dark. And he tried to see if there was anything else he had missed in the night sky despite all the times he had looked.

  46

  When James awoke, he felt something poking him in the ribs.

  A stick.

  Rattling between the bars.

  Gudgeon was holding it.

  The early morning light was purple and there was a light drizzle falling, making the air crackle. James rubbed his eyes and sat up.

  ‘That Billy’s been waiting up all night,’ whispered Gudgeon. ‘Hidden in the woods behind you. He’s dozing now, mind.’

  ‘He saw your footsteps in the dew.’

  Gudgeon leant closer to the bars.

  ‘But you didn’t tell him anything about me?’

  James shook his head.

  ‘We have to be quiet.’ Raindrops rolled down Gudgeon’s nose. They clung to the hairy parts of his face and dripped from the lobes of his ears. ‘So you tell me then, how come you know so much about me?’

  James nodded slowly, remembering all the time what he had planned to say.

  ‘I know,’ he said, ‘because I’m an angel.’ He stared at the man who stared straight back. The rain grew harder and the grass hissed as it fell.

  ‘An angel?’ whispered Gudgeon. His knuckles turned white as he squeezed the bars.

  ‘Billy and his ma cut off my wings so they could keep me,’ said James and he pulled down his sweater to show Gudgeon the red scars on his shoulders. The old man hauled in a breath and let it out slowly. He flicked the rain from his face.

  ‘An angel,’ said Gudgeon again as though not believing it and yet believing it at the same time. James nodded.

  ‘Your wife’s happy where she is now. You don’t need to worry about her.’

  Gudgeon pushed his head into the gap between two bars until he could go no further.

  ‘I don’t?’

  ‘No. She watches over you every day.’

  Gudgeon’s eyes glistened. Tears rolled down into the wet on his skin, mingling with the raindrops. He choked in his throat.

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘In a safe place.’

  ‘What’s it like?’

  ‘Light and warm. Golden.’ Gudgeon kept staring at him, expecting more. But James had no sense of how he should describe the place he was thinking of. And then he remembered where he hoped his mother might be, safe from harm. And where he hoped Cook and Webster were too. ‘It’s a place where nobody’s evil. Where nobody wants anything from anyone else. It’s where everybody knows the truth about everything.’

  ‘Is God there too?’ asked Gudgeon. He was entranced. Eyes bright and wide, his wet face sparkling.

  James juggled words in his mouth, unable to speak, because he was unsure what to say.

  But Gudgeon was waiting. Staring. James dug his nails into the palms of his hands and remembered how important it was to tell the man what he wanted to know.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘God’s there.’

  Gudgeon smiled. Nodded slowly. He rubbed a forearm over his face.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, and reached between the bars and to
ok one of James’s hands, and squeezed it. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I have to get out,’ whispered James. ‘Please. Help me get me out of this cage.’

  But Gudgeon let go of the boy’s hand and looked down at the ground. ‘You belong to Billy and his ma,’ he said.

  ‘But they stole me away. They keep me in here where I can’t be seen.’

  ‘Where not even God can see you?’

  ‘No.’ And James could see Gudgeon wondering whether such a thing could ever be true. ‘Billy’s ma knows magic,’ he said quickly. ‘All sorts of things. That’s how she’s keeping me hidden.’

  Gudgeon nodded his head very slowly as he thought it through.

  Suddenly, he looked behind him as though he had heard something.

  ‘I reckon he’s coming,’ he whispered. ‘Billy’s coming.’

  Gudgeon began backing away.

  ‘Wait. Tell me you’ll help me.’ But Gudgeon kept moving and disappeared from view. ‘Wait!’

  James heard someone running.

  Then a gunshot.

  And nothing else.

  Billy appeared by the bars. Cursing. Out of breath. His hair slicked back and shining. And James took a few steps back.

  ‘Tell me who it was?’ Billy growled.

  ‘I don’t know.’ James shook his head. ‘I’ve never seen him before.’

  ‘Little bastard!’ shouted Billy. He disappeared round the side of the wagon and opened the door, then marched towards the boy who dropped down into a corner. Billy stooped and grabbed him by the throat, making James cry out. ‘Tell me it was him,’ shouted Billy.

  ‘Who?’ cried the boy, tears sparkling on his face.

  ‘Tell me it was Webster.’ Billy squeezed harder. ‘Tell me it was him. I know it’s him. I know he’s not dead!’

  James blinked. He couldn’t breathe.

  Billy stared at the boy. Thoughts hammered in his head. He opened his mouth to speak, and then shut it again and let go of James’s throat, and the boy gasped for air. Billy marched out of the wagon, slammed the door and locked it, and started pulling the shutters over the bars.