Pig Iron

by Benjamin Myers

  Here, he goes. You’re not on the gear are you?

  Of course I’m bloody not. I telt you, I’ve never done drugs in all me life.

  Oh aye. Not even the tack.

  You’re the hypocrite who’s knocking out, I’m thinking but I don’t say that because when all’s said and done I still need this bloody job.

  Anyways, says Arty. I can’t stop here all day so are you free to take the van down there or what? The sun’s out and we’ll clean up, no doubt. There’ll be a nice bit of extra cheddar for you. It’s usually Bomber’s patch but he got waylaid.

  Who’s Bomber?

  One of the lads. Git big sweaty thing. Used to be a Hell’s Angel. Married to that fat boiler. Looks like a ginger Giant Haystacks.

  Who – him or his lass?

  Arty thinks for a minute.

  Both actually. It doesn’t matter. Look I need an answer – work today on double time and you can have the morrow afternoon off, how does that sound?

  I dunno. I mean, I had plans.

  What? Staying in and wanking yersel blind?

  I have to crack a smile at this.

  Nor, I say defensively. Anyway – that means I’m just swapping a day off for a half day off. I’m not daft, Arty.

  Alright, you can have the day after off an all.

  Aye, alright, I say. Aye I’ll do it.

  Good lad. It gets a bit hectic down there but I reckoned you’d like to be back amongst your people.

  My people?

  Aye. What do you call them – carnies and that? Showpeople. You can speak their language, can’t you?

  What language is that then?

  Gypsy chat and that.

  Aye, well. A bit. But I’m not a bread-and-jam boy.

  You what?

  Bread-and-jammers. It’s what travellers used to call showmen. You know – penny pinchers. Hedge-creepers and that.

  I never spoke the auld lingo in the first place. Not properly anyway. But me Dad and his marrers and all me uncles used to sometimes, when they were round the fire, pissed up and that. We’re passing it on little lad, they’d say. Take note. Our fathers and uncles learned us the auld words and now we’re learning you. When I asked why, they’d say because it matters son. Because it’s part of you, like it or not. And if we don’t pass it down it’ll die. And if the language dies, we’ll die too. And if the travellers die off so will everything. It’ll all be fucked. Because even if people give us grief, a world without travellers is a world without freedom. Do you understand that little lad?

  And that scared us right enough. Scared us enough to make us listen and make us listen hard. Aye, I’d say. I think so. Good lad, they’d say, then carry on drinking and belching and spitting in the flames and chatting in that strange coded language that soon enough was a part of me too, like it or not. And even now, even when I’ve not heard it for years, it’s still there. It’s still inside us, bubbling up now and again.

  Here, the van’s outside, says Arty, breaking me train of thought. You’ve got the pitch from ten so drag a comb through that hair of yours. A bit of deodorant wouldn’t go amiss either.

  He looks around me living room again and shakes his head.

  You can drop us off on the way.

  *

  He stayed away the whole summer, your Dad. June, July, August and into September too. He didn’t return to town once. He just left us there, on the site, in the van, knocked up.

  The envelopes of cash kept coming, but it was scant consolation. Betimes he sent them by post and other times he sent them back with people he could trust who were passing through. He’d ask them to stop by the site to look in on us and that’s how I knew where he was at or where he’d been. But never where he was going. Because when you’re out roving, you just go.

  So Mac and Barker did drive across to Scarborough, to fight a traveller on a site near the North Bay, or so I was told. Then the next day he scrapped round the back of a frozen pizza factory on an industrial estate in Middlesbrough. They drove up to Glasgow for a fight in a pub garden, then he fought the same man’s brother in Cumbernauld a couple of days later.

  They went to London, to Bethnal Green, where your Dad was to fight a bouncer with a face that Barker reckoned could make an onion cry. That was a bare knuckle bill organised by some twins who were meant to be a big deal down there, but the fight fell through so they had a night wandering the West End of London drunk, your Dad filled to bursting with his first ever taste of Chinese food. He sent us a blank postcard of one of them gadgies with the big furry hats that mind the towers.

  A day and a night was enough; Mac couldn’t wait to leave the city. Barker too. All that noise and people rushing everywhere, hemming them in like bloody moo cows. And the straight lines did their heads in. The fields and lanes, that was where they belonged. The fields and lanes and woods. They needed to feel nature’s jumble. Anywhere you couldn’t see the sky for the buildings was no good.

  They went west for a bit, to Wiltshire, then up through the Cotswolds and onto the Midlands, sleeping in the van, and living on Barker’s stews and steamed jam puddings that he made with flour and suet tied tight in a piece of cloth. They drank with auld marrers of Barker’s and they’d be taken out in the woods for a bit of exploring and a bit of moon-lit poaching.

  They made many new acquaintances that summer, and the odd enemy too.

  Then finally as August crept into September and the skies began to turn, they headed north again and your Dad returned one wet morning with a broken nose, chipped teeth, a permanently dislodged knuckle, and a brick-sized pile of bank notes

  He never even noticed the new bump beneath me dress.

  *

  The fair is chocker by lunch time and stays that way all day. There’s screaming bairns running riot all ower the shop, getting sick and dizzy from the sugar and the rides and the sun, while their parents get pissed and stoned and turn pink in the heat of the afternoon.

  I’m parked up at the top end of the slope that runs down to the river and I’ve been working the ice machine all morning without a break. I get the cone, pump the handle, swirl the ice, stick a flake in it. I must have done five a minute for the first three hours. That’s summat like nine hundred ices before I’ve even stopped for a piss or a tab or a brew or owt.

  Sweat drips off me brow and all day I’m worrying about whether I’ve got enough change in the float or enough cones or enough hundreds and thousands or monkey blood to see us through the rush.

  I cannot complain though: I’m outdoors and the sun’s on me face and there’s nee screws telling us what to do or daft knackers leaving logs on my mattress.

  And then when I’m done, when the summer’s ower and I’ve grafted just enough to get mesel a nice bundle together, and Dickhead Derek and them lot have signed us off and unleashed us proper, I’ll be off into the sunset. I’ll fetch up and nash off past that horizon to set up somewhere new, away from this town. It’s this thought that got us through a five stretch, and gets us through each sweaty day and each lonely sleepless night an all. Mebbes Maria’ll come with us for a wander. We’ll be like Bonnie and Clyde, only nee-one’ll be after us.

  There’s this look on the faces of the customers today. They’ve got this sort of wide-eyed looseness about them. It’s a look of whatsit – aye, rapture – though that could just be the cider and the pills and the beer and the spliffs and that.

  Then as the sun paints the clear August sky first pink and then orange and the lights of the rides flicker and twinkle into life and the cloudless sky means the temperature drops and the sweat on me back turns cold, and the childish chatter of the fair is replaced by the howls and flirty screams of the pissed-up adults, business begins to drop off. Neebody wants an ice cream at night.

  I get the glass eye out from me pocket. There’s little flakes of baccy stuck on it so I give it a rub.

  What do you think, I say.

  The eye stares back at us, silent-like.

  Aye, mebbes you’re right. W
e should call it a day.

  I turn off the ice machine, lock the float box and then gan out onto the back step with a brew and a tab and take in the scene. Even though I’m not from showfolk I can see that there’s summat magic about the place, a type of magic you might try and chase.

  It’s tragic at the same time though, because a funfair is just an illusion, an escape from everyday life for all them who come here, with the lights and the candy floss and the rides that make you think you can fly providing a bit of colour and escape. That’s all it is. Temporary escape.

  Because when you look at it closely, look past the pink lights and the screams of the rides, you see the litter flapping around ankles, the vats of dirty chip fat and the screws coming loose on the scaffold beneath the Waltzer. You hear the splutter of a generator kicking out nasty fumes and you’ll see a pissed-off looking gadgie packing away an empty Hook-a-Duck stall that’s seen nee business all day, and he’s got armfuls of bagged up goldfish that you know’ll be dead by the morrow.

  Stuff like that cuts us up. Especially animal stuff. Animals never asked to be dragged into the shite human world. Animals do just fine without us lot interfering.

  Still though, it’s strange how all the fairground rides can change a space – how they can make an ordinary field seem ten times its actual size when you’re in amongst it all. And there’s a feel about the fair that has us thinking back to them places our Mam and Dad took us when we were nippers off on our summer travelling. The horse fairs and showgrounds and that. Special places. Places where owt could happen.

  And after years of being away, days of grey and beige and stone and lino, of noise and echoes and stale sweat and aggro, all the colours, sounds and smells of the fair drag us back to childhood, back to a life tainted with pain and fear and only the odd hour or two of joy.

  When I’ve finished my brew and sluiced away the grainy dregs I lock up and gan for a walk amongst the lurch and sway of the people with their faces lit by unreal colours, and the circular screams from the rides can be heard ower the grind and rattle of the rusted castors rolling in their well-worn ruts, as they’re spun by some tough-looking bread-and-jam lads. Hold tight, bellows the auld lad at the controls. Here we go!

  You can spot the showfolk and the travellers easy enough an all. It’s in the way they carry themsels about the place, their bodies built for working by long summer seasons spent as riggers and scaffold men, as operators, mechanics and all-rounders hired for their family name and their ability to break down a show in half a day. It’s in their same darkened earthtones as me Mam and especially my Dad. And me an all I suppose. The traveller’s tan.

  I overhear the odd accent from across the water an all. Because there’s Irish showfolk working here too. The Monaghans mebbe. Or the McGintys. Families who’ve been spending six months of every year travelling the show grounds of England for a century or more.

  Mind, it’s a decent fair this one. Proper. They’ve got rifle ranges and one of them old Kentucky Derbys with the little lead men riding the little lead horses. They’ve even got a tin can booth and all the other auld style stuff that’s slipping away these days to be slowly replaced by the big new rides with their airbrushed fronts of Hollywood characters who I don’t recognise and blond lasses with huge tits. Spew-sprayers with names like The Destructor and The Superscud-X and stuff like that. It’s what the kiddies think they want these days.

  Down the far end of the fair there’s a fun house called The Crooked Cottage that’s got a clattering cake-walk out front, then next to it a Ghost Train that’s back-lit in green, and further along one of them giant Tea Cup rides. There’s also the swings, a pirate ship that tips up near vertical and a Helter Skelter slide that’s shut down since all the bairns have left, a pile of hacky door mats stacked up all wonky by the pay booth. There’s a half-deflated bouncy castle too, crumpling and leaning as a couple of lads set to unhitching the giant pegs from the guy ropes and folding it away.

  The stars are pin pricks in the tight blue band of darkness that’s stretched ower us all. I’m glad I’ve got me jacket and combat boots on because even though it’s been a hot dry day the ground’s still clarty from all the feet and there’s little muddy puddles here and there.

  I’m over by the dodgems when I see Maria. She’s in one of the little cars, screaming her sexy head off. Some lass I don’t recognise is doing the driving.

  I stand and watch from a distance as they crash laughing into the rim round the side, the rubber bumper cushioning them as their bodies flop forward like rag dolls. They’re riding the auld cars, the ones powered by them floor-to-ceiling conductors that make sparks on the metal latticed ceiling. The operator is sat in his booth ower the other side. He’s a showman who’s wearing a thick pair of bottle top bins and taking nips from a hip flask when he reckons nee-one’s looking, and there’s young lads stood around the side of the track. Their body language is exaggerated. They can’t stand still. It’s like the floor is electrified as well as the ceiling. Books aren’t the only thing I learned mesel to read inside.

  I can’t lie: hope brought us here. Hope filled me heart as soon as Arty asked us to work today. I wondered, just as I always wonder every time I take a turn around the Nook, if I might see her, Maria, even from a distance.

  But now that I have it is not enough. I’ve spent two decades living life from a distance and now I want that to change. I want to be near to her, to smell her. To touch her face and her shoulders and her tits. I want us to sing that Vida Loca song again.

  So when the bumper cars slow to a halt and everyone starts unfolding themsels from the cars, I’m straight ower by the other side of the track waiting for her as she climbs out arm-in-arm with the other girl, both giddy, Maria clutching a bottle and still laughing.

  Hiya.

  She looks up. Her face changes. She seems a bit surprised to see us.

  Oh hiya.

  What ye doing?

  What’s it look like I’m doing? Getting monged and gannin on the rides.

  She’s wearing a hoodie top with the sleeves pulled down ower her hands and her cheeks are flushed red. She sips at her bottle through a straw.

  Then – bloody typical – my mind goes blank and I say nowt. There’s a moment where we’re all just sort of stood there glegging at each other.

  I mean, I say. I mean, how are you doing?

  I’m mint.

  Aye.

  What are you doing here, she says, though I reckon it’s as much to shatter the awkward silence that’s hanging in the air between us as owt else.

  I was working, like. Now I’m doing nowt.

  Do you work here, says the other lass. At the fair.

  Aye.

  Not on the rides though, Maria says. John-John sells ice creams.

  Oh aye? says the other lass.

  Aye.

  Aye. He sells them on the estate an all. From a van and that.

  Aye, I say. And not just ice creams either. I do kets and crisps and that.

  He doesn’t sell tack or owt else like though do you Johnny?

  Nor, I say.

  He’s on probation. The way Maria says this, it’s like it’s a good thing. Like it’s summat to be proud of. He plays for England. He’s got the world’s biggest dander. He’s on probation.

  Probation, says the lass. What for?

  I shrug.

  Same as everyone else, I suppose. Getting caught.

  Here, says the lass. John-John’s a funny name though innit.

  Aye, mebbes.

  Aye, it is like. I’ve never met nee-one called John-John, me.

  I’m just stood there feeling embarrassed.

  Here – are you in the TAs or summat?

  The what?

  The TAs. You know – the army for losers.

  Maria laughs.

  Speccy gimps that roll around in the mud at the weekends and that, says the lass.

  Johnny just likes to wear combat clobber, says Maria. Don’t you.

  Sh
e smiles when she says this, then she looks around and takes another sip from her straw. She looks good pissed. She’s glowing. It suits her, like a nice hat or summat.

  Why’s that then?

  Because they last a while, I suppose. They’re just clothes.

  Do you not have to wear an ice-cream man uniform or summat?

  I shake me head. Nor. I pause for a moment, then I say what’s your name then?

  Polite isn’t he, says the girl. I’m Olivia.

  Aye, says Maria. She’s Olivia. Here – show Liv your glass eye.

  I reach into me pocket, pull out me fist then unfold it so that the eye is sat there in the palm of me hand glegging right at her. Dead casual, like.

  Fucking hell, says Olivia. Did you win that on one of the stalls?

  Nor, I say, it’s made of glass, that is.

  What for?

  What for? So someone could wear it.

  Wear it?

  Aye.

  Where like?

  Where do you think? In their bloody eye-hole.

  Who would want to do that?

  I shrug. Just someone.

  You’re mental you are, says Olivia. You talk funny an all.

  I go, do you reckon, a bit defensive like.

  Aye, your accent’s dead weird. Are you from Newcastle or summat?

  Nor.

  Ireland? You Irish? Then to Maria: Is he Irish? Me uncle’s Irish.

  Nor, I say. Not Ireland.

  Johnny’s from here. From the town.

  Are you? You divvent sound it though, do you.

  That’s because he’s a traveller. You don’t mind me telling Liv, do you John-John?

  I shrug, acting all whatsit. All nonchalant.

  What – like a gypsy and that?

  Aye, I say.

  Do you live in a caravan?

  I used to.

  He’s lived all ower haven’t you John-John, says Maria her eyes widening in what I take to be encouragement to keep blethering.

  The way Maria’s talking is weird. It’s like she’s putting all the words in me mouth for us, in case I say summat stupid, summat that might embarrass her.