And why I’ve ended up here, in charge of this spaff-coated van.
It’s not an easy question to answer, even after she’s emptied my nadgers and I’m feeling brand new, like a bloody king or summat. Because even though I’m floating there’s still a stone in my stomach that’s stopping us from totally soaring sky high. I mean, I feel A1, but even now the past is still here in her question, tainting the conversation like a shadow or a ghost or a fever.
I draw on my tab and exhale slowly, then clear my throat, then feel mesel frowning.
I was, I say. Er. Well, I was a bad lad, like.
You and everyone else round here Johnny. But what did you do? Five years is a canny long time to be locked up. Especially for a young lad. It must have been at least some burglaries. Did you rob houses?
Nor. Did I bollards. I’ve never robbed owt in my life. Twocking is for numpties. I hate thieves, me.
I’m not bothered you know, she says. You can tell us. Personally, I reckon it was summat violent. GBH or summat. Am I on the right track?
I shrug.
Mebbes.
Did you bottle someone when you were leathered?
I look at her: Na. Not even close. Anyways. I’ve never been leathered.
What you’ve never been pissed and that? I know you’re weird but that’s summat else, man. What the hell have you been doing with your life?
I say nowt.
Did you nick a cop car and drive it into the Wear, then do a runner?
Nope. You’re not even warm.
Erm… how about drugs. Was you knocking out gear, but then one of the boys found out and came to tax you but you knew he was coming so you were waiting for him and when he stepped up you shanked him in the neck with a rusty screwdriver.
I smile. Na. It wasn’t drugs. Or screwdrivers.
Oh aye, I forgot: Mr Clean. So did you do a dump in the font at the cathedral, then use it to write FUCK THE POPE UP THE SHITTER on the wall.
Christ, I laugh. You’ve got some imagination, you. And anyroad, the cathedral isn’t catholic, so that would be a waste of a shite.
Did you rip some student’s ear off and cook it in a frying pan.
Oh aye, I say. That’s it. You’re bang on there. Ear and chips.
I say nowt for a bit and neither does she so we drive along in silence. I turn the radio on hoping that that Vida Loca song will come on again, but I get the news instead, so click it back off again.
Well, she says finally. You don’t seem like a psycho to me, John-John. I mean, you’re definitely a bit weird like, what with not drinking and them clothes you wear – and you’re not exactly the greatest talker either – but you’re no psycho. And you’re nowt like any of the other lads I know, that’s for sure. I mean, you’ve got a job and a flat and that, you’re not on the dole and you divvent chor stuff either. And then there’s the travelling thing.
Does that bother you, like?
Bother us? No.
She thinks for a bit.
No, not at all. Why would it? I always wanted to see the world.
I smile at her.
I divvent know about the world, I say, feeling a bit confident and cocky now, but there’s neewhere in this county worth knowing about that I’ve not been. Play your cards right and mebbes one day I’ll take you to Sunderland.
She digs us in the ribs with her elbow and I stick the ice cream music back on again.
*
The morning frosts began to melt quicker and tiny shoots started to push their way through the grass that surrounded the van. It had been a harsh winter there in the field miles outside of town, surrounded by nowt but the few other vans and only the hooting of owls cutting through the syrupy darkness that settled across the fields for sixteen hours of every day. Ice, snow and wind. As brittle as the husk of a pond reed.
But spring was on its way and life was returning, unfolding, stretching and yawning. And in the first days of daffodils I discovered I had fallen pregnant again.
My parents had been right. Of course they had. Mac Wisdom was from bad blood. Of course he was. Those Wisdoms. Rough lot. Untamed field beasts, them.
I’d already had plenty of chipped teeth, sore jaws and shiners to show that no-one escaped his fists.
I kept a steak in the ice box especially.
But you didn’t talk about these things. Not even with them next door; them that can hear it all. No man nor woman interferes with another man’s family business like that. You’d rather pretend it isn’t happening.
I soon came to understand that if Mac fighting on the cobbles meant there was less of the rage left in him then it was better he beat a willing man than me.
And there was summat about your Dad that made us believe in him. I reckoned there had to be otherwise there was no hope. And life without hope is death. So I told myself I did see summat in there, deep and dark. Summat ancient and immoveable in Mac, like a rock. Summat that sat there making him indestructible, mysterious.
This was the year that he would make a living for his family on the traveller’s circuit. And so it was with the first daffodils now drooping and my belly swelling he hitched up the van and we pulled out.
We left behind us a bleached-out rectangle of yellowed grass and a fire-blackened stone-ringed circle that had scorched the soil of land once blackened only by the riches of the earth, them dusky diamonds of the north-east fields – coal.
*
I had a friend once. A proper marrer who wasn’t made up, or didn’t have four legs, or didn’t turn on us and take the piss. A proper human one.
Fingers, he was called.
It was the summer before they sent us away; the last summer I had outside until this one.
I was fourteen, fifteen. Summat like that. It was when I was hanging around the town all the time to dodge me Dad’s swinging blows and trying to see if I could slot in somewhere amongst the rest of the world.
Fingers was this little homeless gadgie. He slept in a bush down by the river, on that nice green run that stretches from the weir below the cathedral – the view you see on all them postcards they sell to the touroids – along to Framwellgate Bridge.
I met him down there one damp June day, when the both of us ended up sat on the same bench doing nowt but smoking and watching the wet-backed river rats pop up from their hidey-holes in the bank side.
Fingers had the main two fingers missing on his right hand. He said he was on the run from the law. Then the next day he’d say he was on the run from gangsters in London, or some fella whose wife he’d shagged. When he said this he made like he was shagging some housewife, backskuttle. He was always going I’m a wanted man me you know and I’d be thinking, Aye right you are Fingers. Right you are.
Fingers said a lot of things. Fingers was full of shit.
Fingers was me marrer.
Whatever the weather he always wore this kiddies ski jacket and git big fat trainers that he’d got from a charity shop or mebbe a hostel or the cop shop, and he had this tongue that he used to poke out to wet his lips. When he did that he looked like a lizard. Always wetting his lips. He had these beady eyes too, Action Man eyes that moved from side to side like they were always looking for an opportunity. A bottle to lift. A dimp to smoke. Someone to tap up for summat. For owt.
I never knew how old Fingers was. He could have been forty-five, he could have been seventy.
We spent that whole summer walking the town together, the gypsy and the tramp, the both of us just glad of the company. We must have walked every inch of the town a hundred times ower, and when we’d done walking and we had some coins in our pockets, we’d go up the hill to the park with some cans and some kets and some tabs and we’d have ourselves a little party as the orange sun sat itsel down behind the cathedral over on the opposite hill. Sometimes Fingers would have a bit of tack with him and he’d roll these really crooked spliffs that he’d suck on, his lizard’s tongue wetting the roach til it was sopping, then he’d offer it to me, and I’d say no ta Finger
s, I’m alreet, but don’t mind me mate, knock yersel out.
And he had stories, mind. Hods of stories. He was always going on about he used to be an ace face down in London and other places besides. About how you could walk into any snooker hall in King’s Cross, Tiger Bay or the Gorbals and say his name and you’d get a big drink bought for you, no questions.
“Just say you’re a marrer of Auld Fingers’.”
Me and Fingers were down the riverbanks every evening, as it turned dark, him working on a bottle and me mebbes drinking a can of pop or summat, the both of us avoiding what it was we were both avoiding.
Other times we’d find ourselves up at Palace Green, standing on the lawn out front amongst the DO NOT WALK ON THE GRASS signs and staring up at the cathedral. When that happened Fingers would fall silent, and he’d lick his lips and say howay kid let’s have a gleg inside, and we’d pad across the grass that was clipped so that every blade looked the same length, over to the big wooden door with the gargoyle knocker and we’d push it open and step into the cathedral, both of us feeling like tiny insects.
Then ower to the same place every time: the great stain glass window down at the bottom end of the cathedral.
Looker, he’d say, and he’d point up, and we’d both stand there for a while, looking at the hundreds – mebbes thousands – of little pieces of coloured glass that had been clipped and shaped and painted and placed to make that window what it was. The most beautiful sight in the whole town. Summat to properly take your breath away.
Look at that, he’d whisper. It’s bloody magic that is. Have you ever seen owt so beautiful?
And I’d start to answer, but he’d shush us with a finger to his lips. Remember where you’re at son, he’d say. This place is not for talking.
So we’d stand there in silence, and there’d be blue and red and yellow and orange and green and purple light streaming down through the window, shining down on us, shining through the glass, beams of light, dozens of them, and we’d just be stood there, not saying owt, both sort of drifting off into our own little worlds, better worlds. Everything was bathed in colour and the only noise was the faintest echo of footsteps and murmured voices like the sound of long-gone monks or summat, and even the musty smell of stone and ancient dust was like perfume to me nostrils, and there’d be no trouble only colour and silence.
Then we’d walk back down to the river so Fingers could finish his drinks, and he’d just be sat there, licking his lips and staring at the water, like a shadow had crossed his funny little face and I’d become invisible.
Then when the sky was settled and even the moon was yawning and slumping ower the water we’d walk back down into town, and Fingers would nod his goodbyes and then nash along the river to his bush with the cathedral view and I’d set off to walk downstream for an hour, walking through fields and woods, and I’d get back to the site shagged and hoping to avoid the auld man.
I’d get under me blankets and I’d be thinking about Fingers out there in his bush and I’d wonder who had it worse: me stuck up here with this mad, cruel lot for a family, nee money, nee schooling and nowt that you could call prospects, or him down there, with nowt but the foliage and the worms and a tarpaulin to sleep under, his family scattered, his dreams full of regrets and mistakes.
Then one day late in the summer when the grass on the verges was parched and golden, and you could grasp a scent of burning leaves on the breeze, we were sat on a wall near the mental hospital. Out of nowhere this jam sandwich screeches up with its siren light swirling but the sound turned off.
Before I could even blink Fingers had it on his toes. He was fast for a gadgie whose joints had gone rusted from all them damp nights sleeping in bushes, but the polis were faster and they grabbed auld Fingers quick-sharp. They just scooped him up by the collar of his kiddies ski jacket so that his little legs were still running like a bloody cartoon creature running off a canyon cliff.
Now then Fingers, gans this copper while looking at me sideways. You’re a slippery one aren’t you?
Been looking all ower the bloody shop for you, says the other musker, the one who’d been driving. And he smiles as he says this. A smile of amusement.
Fingers said nowt though. He just casts us this glance and does this shrug that says, I telt you I was a wanted man. I telt you.
Howay then, says the first musker. Off we go.
You want to watch who you’re drinking with, the other says to us.
I divvent drink me, I say, but they’re already away, leading Fingers into the back of the car, where he looked so small like a lost bloody child or summat. They pulled away and as they did Fingers gives us a little wave of the hand like he were the bloody Queen or summat, and that was the last time I saw him – the one person I could call a proper marrer.
And it was not long after that that everything turned to shite for us.
*
The lights of the Scotch Corner cafeteria bathed the surrounding flagstones in patches of orange.
In a few hours holidaying gorger families would be pulling up to stretch their legs and picnic with sandwiches and tartan flasks of milky tea on the green grass surrounding the car park, the same people that looked down on us travellers for doing much the same thing the rest of the year round.
It was here where north met south and east argued with west just off a major A1 intersection where your Dad was fighting in a car park.
Off in the far corner of a truck stop where the lorries were parked in such a way as to make an enclosure away from the canteen and the petrol station forecourt, Mac Wisdom did take off his shirt, roll his neck, crack his knuckles and step into a barrage of blows from a sinewy, game young traveller known only as Yarm Kenny.
It was pre-dawn and the lights of the trucks were on low, dipped into the ground to avoid attention.
Shirtless, the two men stood toe-to-toe, grim determination painted on pink faces already swelling with knots and welts. As fist struck skull, the breathing of the two men was matched only by the scraping sound of boot soles on glass and gravel.
A jostling crowd of thirty-odd watched on. All had known about the fight but none had been told the location. That had only been revealed a few hours earlier. Many of them had been up drinking since the previous afternoon in places across the north and midlands. They were grafters, fighters, thieves, gamblers, scrap dealers, truckers and horse men, and there was more money at stake than their appearances suggested. Five hundred per bet was seen as standard.
They fought to find their stride, your Dad and this Kenny one.
“Smash him Mac-lad,” encouraged Eddie from somewhere over to his right. “Cave his cunt in.”
“Shut it, you little twat,” said another voice from the crowd.
They separated and Mac smiled through his fat, bloodied lips.
Barker was stood off to one side, quietly observing with one hand tucked in the breast pocket of his waistcoat.
Mac took the front foot and they came in low together again. He feigned with a left and then as Yarm Kenny ducked, unleashed a hard right that caught him on the cheek. It was enough to provide an opening. Mac went straight down the middle and struck him hard in the solar plexus. It was a bullseye shot. He knew Yarm Kenny would feel that punch into next week. The fight was his.
Yarm Kenny stumbled forward. His hands were still up but his mouth was gasping silently for air. His face read panic.
“Have that, mush,” said an excitable Eddie.
A small row broke out between Eddie and one of the men. Your Uncle responded angrily by saying “Or what? Or what?” over and over again.
“Turn it in Eddie,” said Mac out the side of his mouth, not daring to take his eye off Yarm Kenny, who was clutching his throat now. “Or I’ll put you out mesel. Brother or not.”
The men liked this and laughed. Eddie was silenced.
Kenny was desperate now – and as slow as a caterpillar. Your Dad sidestepped and put together a machine gun combination that opened up his
opponent’s eye and mouth. Yarm Kenny spat blood.
Mac rocked on his heels, savouring the moment for a few more seconds, then he was on him again. Two more punches had him sitting down and spitting more blood.
“Best?”
“Aye. Best.”
Mac dropped his fists. He spat, rolled his neck, then spat again.
“Right,” he said to nee-one in particular. “Time for some bloody nosebag. I’m starving, me.”
*
I’m sitting and smoking and hockling greeners onto the ground and having me morning time with Robinson Crusoe in the sunshine, reading about that stranded lad eating coconuts and that, when Arty comes down the depot.
Now then young John-John Wisdom.
Now then Arty.
How goes it – fare thee well?
Eh?
I’m asking if you’re alright bonny lad.
Oh aye. Canny.
I put my book down. I shield the sun from my eyes and look up at him.
Takings seem up, he says.
Aye.
Good.
Aye.
Keeping out of trouble and that?
Oh aye. Keeping out of town helps.
Good lad. You’ve not let us down – you’re doing alreet, you.
Thanks Arty, I say. Have you heard from your Tony?
Aye. Had a phone call or two.
How’s he keeping?
He’s alreet. Surviving. He’s going to make it, I think – so long as he doesn’t get back on the gear when he’s out, daft little get.
Good.
Here – mebbe you can show him the ropes. Get him on the route with you.
Mebbes, I say, though I’m thinking bollards to that, because marrers on the inside don’t always translate to marrers on the outside, and anyroad, if Tony joins us in the van I’ll not be able to take Maria or Coughdrop out with us any more, and Arty’s already telt us we’re not allowed anyone with us unless we’re getting hassle or summat.
Then as if he’s reading my mind he says: Nee bother on the route then?
Pig Iron Page 10