Nor, I say. Not really.
Not really?
None.
Sure? Nee hassle from the charvers on the estates or them woollyback sheep-shagging clodhoppers out in the villages? Nee-one chorring owt?
Nor.
And what about that other business?
What other business?
The tack and that.
What about it?
Nee-one minds that you’re not knocking out at the moment.
Nor. And there’s nee ‘at the moment’ about it Arty. I’m not dealing.
Aye, well. All in good time. How’s the flat?
Shite.
Arty smiles.
Aye, I say. But as soon as I’ve got the cash I’m going to get mesel a van.
What type of van?
A bloody caravan of course.
Arty nods at this.
Well, that’s the traveller in you isn’t it.
Aye, I say. I’m no good in this pokey little flat they’ve got us in Arty. It’s too much like the cells. Anyways, I’m used to the outdoors, me. It’s in me blood whether I like or not.
Oh aye, I don’t doubt that. Your lot have been around these parts as long as the castle.
I smile at him.
Your Dad. He had a right name for himself. He was hard to avoid really. He was quite a character round town, was Mac Wisdom. A big man, in all ways.
Hmmph, I’m thinking. Not all ways, like.
Unbeatable, he was.
Not entirely, I’m thinking.
I bet you like hearing the old tales, lad.
Like a punch in the cock, I’m muttering.
Aye we came up together says Arty, all oblivious. We’re of a similar age, me and your Dad. When he was younger he had a reputation as a good lad when he was sober – hard as fuck like, but a canny lad all the same. But then when he got the drink in him he was a demon. Oh, he was bad. Temperamental, you know –
I interject to stop his rose-tinted blethering.
So you knew him all the way back to before?
Before what?
Before what happened to him. Before he got his dome stoved in.
Late 70s. Aye. Terrible business that. Terrible. Before you were born. They said he was never right after what happened. But then, that’s the gamble with fighting. It’s a tough old game.
Arty pauses, lost in thought. Lost in the 70s.
Aye, he says again. Tough game. Ever fought on the cobbles yourself, John-John?
Not by choice.
Right, he says. Right. Because you’ve not got his build have you? Funny that. How your Dad and your Bobby were so big and broad, and you’re just a wean really.
Aye bloody hilarious, I’m thinking.
Like you got handed down the wrong genes or summat. Still, I bet you’ve had a few scraps though haven’t you. Tough little nut, I bet. Aye, he were a character, was Mac Wisdom. Larger than life that one.
You want to try being the son of Mac Wisdom and see what happens, I think. And then I say,
He was a bastard.
Who’s that then?
Him, I say. Me Dad.
I stop for a bit, feeling like I’m saying too much as it is – like I’m letting my guard down to another fella for the first time in years.
He treated us like shite, I say. Especially me. And our Charmaine. All of us. He ruined everything but he’s not gonna ruin my life no more. I won’t allow it.
Aye well says Arty, and I reckon he’s mebbe a bit surprised by me outburst. We all remember what happened. It was all over the papers at the time. Beat a dog every day and soon enough he’ll bite back, you know what I mean?
I don’t even need to answer that. Of course I know what he means. I, more than anyone else, know what he means.
Aye, but things were different then.
How’d you mean?
Well, says Arty, drawing the word out dead long. He might have knocked you about a bit, but they were more innocent times weren’t they?
How do you work that one out?
The world has got harsher, that’s all I’m saying. Crime is soaring these days.
Aye Arty, I say. Junkies everywhere. They need locking up. I blame the parents.
That’s not what I meant, he says. Our Tony’s a good kid really.
Oh aye?
Aye. I just meant that everything’s shit isn’t it. The government doesn’t know its scut from it’s earlobe, you’ve got bloody foreigners all ower the shop and there’s nee jobs for the younger lads so they get bored and they get out of line…
You’re talking a lot of fugging bollards you are, Arty. Anyroad, you’re bloody Italian.
Aye well, that’s different. Italians roam the world – it’s what we do. We build empires. Always have done, always will. We’re fighters. Gladiators in spirit.
Is that right.
All I’m saying is, mebbe if I had clouted our Tony a bit more when he were younger he’d not be where he is today. You can’t bloody raise your hand these days without someone calling the polis. I know you had your reasons for what happened son, and I don’t think bad of you –
Aye, the rest of this stinking place does though don’t they, I snap. Treat us like a bloody leper. They never had to live with Mac Wisdom did they.
All I’m saying is John-John, try not to hate your father too much. It’ll just eat you up. There must be some good memories.
I’m biting my lips as Arty says this. I’m biting my lips red raw because it’s taking all my willpower to stop mesel from shouting what the fug do you know you sodding gimlet? Bloody bell-end. Have you ever been kicked across a field of mud like a football or chucked out into the night at eight years old, starving-hungry and nithering your nadgers off, just because your auld man is pissed and hates you so much he can’t stand the sight of you sleeping? And then have to gan to school covered in mud to have the shite kicked out of you by ten lads, all of them laughing and hoying stones and sticks and bottles and that. Good memories, my arse.
Arty’s full of so much hot air I don’t even know where to begin. So I don’t.
Instead I do what I always do and that is zip it and keep quiet. Just bury it like we buried me Dad.
So I sit and smoke and hockle and wonder why the world is so messed up, then I say, well, I better get ganning and though Arty slaps us on the back like we’re best marrers after this man to man talk, deep down inside I’m thinking you’re just like every other twat out there Arty bloody Vicari – just another selfish knobber going on about hitting kids this and bloody foreigners that, and even though I’ll keep grafting for you, I’ll never trust you. Because you’re as thick as pig shit, you are. And I’m watching you.
And when I’ve got enough bloody cash together, I’m bloody gone.
Gone, marrer.
*
Then he left us. Your Dad took us back to the site, set down the van, give us a kiss and said where he was gannin was nee place for a pregnant lass. “I’m away grafting on the cobbles with Barker,” he telt us. “I’ll be back in a bit.”
I’d not done fifty miles and I was already back on the same bleached patch up at Edenside, only this time with nowt but the clucking hens for company. A bairn in me belly again.
All I heard for the next six weeks was the odd blank postcard shoved into an envelope with a few tenners, and sent to the post office in the village. There were cards from Kent, Dorset, Norfolk, Sussex. All over the shop. Each postcard was like a kick in the teeth to me sat up on the site with nowt to do but brood and stew, your Uncle Eddie popping in on us now and again while your Dad and Barker were following the travelling vine, that tangled line that sits beneath the English soil, a world of gossip and bloodlines and birth rights, vendettas and knuckle fights.
And that vine did bring them no shortage of scraps that season as they criss-crossed the country in Barker Lovell’s transit. It was a summer of knotted knuckles and ice buckets; blood-flecked spittle and red raw grazes. Torn faces, chewed ears and teeth marks.
It was at the horse fairs that the big money was to be made, and there came none bigger than Appleby in June, the most important date in any British traveller’s calendar. That’s why your Dad let us join him for this one.
You’d see them travelling in from every corner, two, three weeks beforehand. Vans and vardos by the roadside. Little camps in car parks and lay-bys all the way across Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cumbria.
Your Dad picked us up at Edenside in the van on the way and acted like he’d just nipped down the shops for a pint of milk. A peck on the cheek and then we were off again with no mention of his six week adventure.
We’d only been there two minutes when Mac got into an argument with a showman by the name of Lee Lerner while drinking in one of the packed tents. Your Dad took umbrage at the stranger flicking a spent cigarette butt too close for his liking, and that was that. It wouldn’t end until blood was shed.
Lerner worked the fairgrounds, collecting coins and spinning waltzers up and down England. The gaping gap in his front teeth suggested he was nee stranger to trouble himself. He was a git big ugly thing an all but, as your Dad was fond of saying, anyone who’d had his teeth knocked out couldn’t be that good a fighter.
The tent was too tightly-packed to fight properly. It took half a dozen good men to pull them apart. One of them was Barker.
“You want to fight,” he said with one hand on each man’s chest, both at least a head taller than him. “Then fight. But not here. You’ll do it properly.”
“And who be you?” said Lerner.
He had a thick accent. West Country maybe, thought Barker. Some Cornish too. And mebbes a hit of the Irish. A showman’s accent.
“He’s my marrer, that’s who.”
Mac lunged forward but more hands pulled him back. Lerner laughed a gummy laugh.
“Your boyfriend, more like.”
Lee Lerner’s lips curled around the words as they came out and his eyes darkened. “I’ll panel the both of youse,” he said to the tent, “This big lug first – then the sprat for afters.”
“Right you’re on,” said Mac, interrupting him before he could say any more. “One hour’s time. Flashing Lane field.”
*
The Nook is humming with tension like a railway track when a train is coming.
There’s fresh glass on the road, more cubed confetti to crunch between me warm tyres and the summer-softened asphalt.
The sun is high and business is good. People are out in the streets drinking and nattering, scheming little clusters of them. The season is still a novelty as the sun blazes down on pale bodies that slouch and bask like lazy cats. Even the smackheads have slowed their morning scuttle to a more leisurely clip.
Mind, it won’t last of course. It’ll all change later, after dark, when the sun’s gone down and the birds are roosting and the booze has turned bad.
That’s why I never drink, me. I saw what it did to my Dad. Saw what it did to all them knobbers inside, weakened and half-mad and still only in their teens. Above all else though, the grim potential of me with a skin full scares us.
I drive with me elbow sticking out the window and I pull up every couple of hundred yards to sell pop and crisps and cones and Rizlas.
And all the way round I’m keeping my eye out for the lass again. Maria. The girl with the nice dark eyes and the smile and the way with her tongue. I’ve realised what it is about her that’s got us all worked up: she’s the only living person I’ve ever actually talked to. Properly talked to, without stuttering or stammering or grunting or getting into a barney with.
I’m about to leave the estate when I pull ower one last time and sit for a bit with the engine running in case there’s any stragglers after owt. I do a rollie and smoke it while I watch people pass by.
On the corner I see Maria’s friend Kelly, and the way she’s standing there smoking a bine and wiggling her arse looks like she’s mebbes a prossie touting for business though I cannot be sure like. I don’t see Maria though.
I see kids on mopeds and auld biddies pushing hand carts and gadgies bent double from carrying the weight of the world for too long. I see two women walking and arguing and waving their mobiles at each other, then a pumped-up doorman type with a Staffy tugging at his chain, followed not far behind by a wifey with nee bra on and the biggest tits I’ve ever seen, massive heavy swinging things down around her waist they are, proper milkers, and she’s got names inked onto her arm. I see a kid on a BMX waving what looks like a machete around, and it’s gleaming in the sunshine like a light-sabre from that fillum, and I even see a big fat rabbit hopping out across the bloody road in front of us. But I don’t see Maria.
I don’t see her and I don’t see the lads who are suddenly crowding my hatch either. I recognise them though as the charver lads who are always outside the house that plays the shitty music.
There’s three of them about my age, late teens or summat, mebbes a bit younger, and they’ve all got that look about them. They’re skinny from too much speed and not enough vitamins and fresh air. Borstal complexions. They all have their tops off and one of them has a baseball cap on that looks like it is fixed to the tightest setting to fit on his cropped pinhead noggin. They look like plucked chickens in a butcher’s window. A right shower.
The lad with the cap on’s eyes are tiny black mirrors in his sunken face. There’s nee hope in them. And they make us nervous. Guarded.
He leans on the counter and looks in the van, squinting.
Who are you?
I’m selling ice creams I say, keeping me voice steady.
He looks at his marrers and laughs at this. Even though I’ve said nowt funny it’s a laugh I recognise. I’ve heard it a hundred times before from a hundred other fugging sarcastic blowhards inside and out. They’re beasts, this lot. Beasts of the field. Clear as day.
Nor, he goes. You don’t say. What happened to the last one, like?
I dinnar.
He was a puff, you nar.
Was he, I say.
Aye. A right proper bummer. He used to try and touch the young boys round here until we ran him off.
I never knew him.
Aye. Well he’ll not be back round here again. We proper mashed him up.
His marrers grunt in approval. I just stare at them.
What the fuck ye looking at man, says one of them.
His shoulders slide away dramatically to these long arms that dangle there like they’re seeking a purpose. I notice there’s not a hair on his body either. He’s like a bald chimp. Misshapen. A proper knuckledragger.
Have a good gleg, why don’t you, says the other, their sentences overlapping. Fucken dorty cunt. Here, are you a bummer an all? You better not be.
Knowing there’s nee right way to answer his question, I keep quiet.
And why’re you wearing them stupid clothes, the lad with the cap says.
I look down at mesel, then shrug.
They’re just clothes.
Well you look like a fucking mong.
They laugh again. I say nowt.
He looks like a kid playing soldiers or summat, says the hairless chimp.
Do you want to buy owt I say, me voice still steady.
Aye, says the one with the cap. The ringleader. I’ll have a thousand 99s please. And can you put some fucking spunk on top.
They all burst out laughing. But their laughter isn’t real. It’s forced. Same as them little shits last week: there’s nee joy in it, only a feeling of relief that they’re the ones in control here. Like I say, I’ve met a hundred twats like this before.
I pop an elbow up onto the pump, dead casual.
Nee bother. That’ll be five hundred quid. And a fiver extra for the spunk.
Baseball cap flinches at this and the smile fades from his greasy face for a second then returns, more forced this time.
I telt you he was a puff. You’re a fucking bender, you.
You’re the one who wants to eat me spunk.
W
ho the fuck are ye? he snaps.
I telt you, I say, making sure me voice stays nice and calm and level, and there’s nee violence in it like there is in theirs. Mebbes all that bollards we did inside about anger management and avoiding confron-whatsit has worked after all. Dickhead Derek me probation officer would be proud.
I’m the ice cream man, I go.
Who do you think you’re talking to? says the third lad. You look like a fucking pikey, you. Are you a dirty fucking gyppo? Is that what ye are?
I don’t say anything.
Cos if you are, he continues, I’ll put you in the fucking ovens where you and your lot belong.
Aye you fucking mong, says the ringleader. The one with the cap. Just give us some tack on tick before I smash your fucking face in.
Sorry. I divvent sell tack. Only kets and ice creams and that. I’ve got some cheap baccy an all, but nee tack.
You fucking mong, the hairless ape says again. Dirty fucking gybsy.
His voice is surprisingly high and squeaky and has a tiny trace of excitement in it.
It’s gypsy, I say. Gypsy.
Get this radge cunt, says the main lad. Coming here with his fucking ice creams and attitude. Hacky cunt. Get a wash, man. Povvy pikey bastard. We divvent want your fucking heather and we divvent want our drives doing neither. Just give us the tack and then fuck off before we do you.
The others laugh.
Howay lads, I say, raising me hands palm up. It’s a lush day and I’m sure you’ll be able to pick summat up elsewhere. I’m not after any trouble.
All the while I’m thinking three punches is all it would take to spark these skinny little twats.
If you fight him he’ll just try and bum yer Banny, says the squeaky one. Look at him – the spacker. Thinks he’s in the army.
Reckon you’re hard do you, says the the leader. This Banny one. You want a go? I’ll put you down, man. I’ll put you in the soil where you dirty pikeys belong. I’ll bury you man.
I shrug and keep it zipped, but inside I’m starting to bubble and boil. I want to smash their faces in and stamp on their bollocks and break all their limbs until they have to crawl home using their fingertips. I want to put their teeth on the kerb. I want to do keepy-ups with their eyeballs. Tear them new scut holes. They’re wimps the lot of them, just like they always are. Wimps and whatsits. Bigots. Just like them twats at school and just like all them bullying bastard gobshites in prison. For the first time in yonks me temples are proper throbbing and the old red mist is coming in.
Pig Iron Page 11