We called her Charmaine.
Your Dad didn’t hide his disappointment; girls couldn’t do the things he did. Girls couldn’t fight – not properly. They couldn’t drink like he could drink and they never hauled scrap or poached or did any of them things. They were too dainty. Always crying about something. Always moaning and getting narky.
There was nowt he could do about it, except mebbe make another one, which he set about doing as soon as I was stitched up.
Every night he was at us, pawing and scratching. His beer breath at me ear. He reckoned he liked us best when I was carrying. Reckoned I looked full of life. Said I was wearing nature’s make-up.
Barker sent work his way that winter, and I was glad of it. Lifting and loading, mainly. Scrapping and hauling. Physical stuff. Crushing cars. And minding Barker when he was doing a bit of buying and selling with people he didn’t know.
Because your Dad looked the part. The fighting and training had shaped him.
He still wore thick wool-knit trousers, a starched white shirt, jacket and boots at all times. It were a style that set him apart from the recent explosion of colour favoured by students around town, who were now wearing floral prints, beads, bellbottoms, dungarees and shoes with platform soles.
He had grown his hair out though, and took to wearing it in a thick dark, unwashed mop.
And there was summat new in his eyes. They were cold eyes darkened by violence. Eyes on guard. Eyes as warning signs. Feral, like.
Within two months of giving birth to Charmaine, I fell pregnant again, twice in one year, and by that Christmas I’d had our Robert. Robert Wisdom. Bobby. A great gurgling bundle with a mop of black hair just like his father.
*
We’re well away from the fair, ower in the shadows of the field, and there’s the auld-time traveller and his son and there’s the three lads and there’s Banny and there’s me.
And there’s the fairground and there’s the darkness, then there’s us.
The rides and stalls are just smudges of neon in the distance now and the music and the screams seem lost in the night.
And suddenly I’m not even bothered. I don’t even care that there’s more of them than me because these two fellas being here suddenly makes it into a fight rather than a beating. A square go. And I don’t care that I’m on probation either because it’s not like Dickhead Derek and that lot are going to find out.
It’s just like being a kid again, the way I’m just minding me owns beeswax one minute and suddenly the next I’ve got all these lads wanting to knack us for nee reason. I don’t care though because this time I know the outcome. I’m going to knock the living fug out of him.
I carefully hang me coat from the hedge that we’re tucked in behind, then I pull off my top so I’m bare-chested. It’s cold but the adrenaline is working its magic.
What’s he doing? shrieks one of the Nook knobbers.
The gadgie looks at his son and nods and smiles. Then he says to the lads, he’s getting ready for a straightner isn’t he? I suggest your man does the same.
Sod that, it’s freezing says Banny, then realising how soft that sounds reluctantly takes his top off.
He might be bigger than us by a good few inches or so, but there’s nowt on him. His white flesh and flat little rib cage look ridiculous in the moonlight. He looks like a pigeon or summat. And he’s pissed and high. And he’s a fugging idiot who’s full of it. So I’m already winnin.
The lads are around us, pissed mortal and whizzing too. They’re hungry for it. They still want to see blood and fear and humiliation and submission, now even more than before. They want to see their man win. They want to see their game played out to the conclusion they expect.
But here in the moonlight he’s just another idiot.
And I cannot help but think about me Dad. I hear him too. All that advice he used to give us. Beat into us. Keep your fists up. Remember your footwork. Always gan forwards. And most of all: a Wisdom never backs down. Never.
While Banny limbers up and hoys some jabs I roll my neck and just stand there, fists clenched at my hips. I’m already warmed up from the day’s grafting and I feel dead relaxed. Almost too relaxed. It’s like five minutes have passed since all them days in the fields and lanes with me Dad and Bobby and Uncle Eddie and Big Slice and all their marrers, all them days they spent learning us how to fight lads twice me size. Bloody barbarians that lot, but in the moment I’m almost grateful for the education.
Do him Banny.
Aye, smash the bender, Banny.
Whenever you’re ready lads, says the gadgie. Ned here’ll be the referee.
Aye, says his son. This is boxing, so there’ll be nee dirty business. Fists only. You win by knockout or getting your man to give best. And any biting or gouging and that and I’ll put you in the river mesel. Clear?
Aye, I say.
Banny says nowt. He just sort of snorts through his nose, then he says, Come on then cunt, and he comes at us and that’s the first mistake he makes, because a good knuckle man never steams in like that. You weigh things up and you ration your energy. You don’t know how long you’re going to need it for.
So he’s opened himsel up right away, daft bastard and I step to him and he walks straight onto a short arm jab, thrown from in tight. I’m rusty so it’s nowt to write home about but I get him plum in the eye and the silly little turd yells out. Actually yells. Aye-az. He doesn’t even have his guard up properly.
Gan on Banny, man.
Hit him.
He swings recklessly and catches us on the cheek, only catches us mind, and then our bodies clash, cold skin on cold skin. It’s nowt. It’s like being tickled or summat. So long as I move my feet I know he can’t hurt us.
We separate and I throw two more quick right jabs to his face because it’s softer than his thick head and I don’t want to knack my hands, then I smack him hard in the kisser. It flies straight through the middle and properly mashes up his lips. Teeth on bone.
There’s nee subtlety to any of it and any decent fighter would have seen that smack coming a mile off. But he’s too wound up to concentrate. Me, I’m the most relaxed I’ve been in yonks.
Gan on Banny, man.
Then he makes his second mistake: he loses it. Proper loses control. Panics, mebbes. He charges at us, half kicking and half punching but not doing much of either and all I have to do is move me feet a couple of inches and mind me balance a bit, and me whole body follows. These are the things that you have to be taught. The short-cuts. How to use your whole body as a weapon; how footwork can win a fight.
He flails and I treat him to a smack in the solar plexus. I’ve thrown harder but when summat like that hits the target it’s still a devastating, dismantling punch; once felt, never forgotten. The breath shoots out of Banny.
Suck it up, mumbles the gadge.
I stand there, casual like. I even drop me guard to give him a chance. I’ve still not taken a step back.
You want to carry on? says the lunk.
Of course he does, says one of his marrers. Gan on Banny. Tan him. Tan the cunt.
Banny wipes his nose and nods, but he cannot talk and I know his will is cracking, breaking, the fight already as good as ower. He charges us with a flying head butt. It’s a dickhead move. Desperate. Dirty an all.
He misses and snarls in my ear as he goes past, and I think, well I’ve had enough of this bollards, so I push him back to open him up and follow it up while he’s still reeling.
All you can hear is the slapping sound of my punches landing and the thump thump of the bass line from the music way off in the fairground.
I’m working him ower good and proper when there’s a massive cracking noise then a bang above us and Banny’s face lights up and I can see blood running from his nose, but in this light it looks blue. It’s the fireworks. They’re colouring the whole scene.
Another one explodes overhead. Then another. The colours are so beautiful I pause from panelling Banny for
a moment, but then he comes at us with a wild, wide circling right and as his body is following through I punch him on the nose. Then again. Two punches in the time it takes for a rocket to explode. His sneck crunches and softens, broken beneath my knuckles.
Summat gives in Banny then. You can see it in him. In his eyes. His whole body slumps forwards and downwards an inch as blue blood runs from his nose. He looks properly deflated, the fight gone from him. Even gravity is kicking his arse. His marrers say nowt.
Then the whole sky proper lights up this time with fizzes and cracks and pops and ower in the fair you can hear people ooh-ing and ahh-ing, but here in this dark corner there’s only heavy breathing. The light changes from blue to red to yellow and the colour of Bannon’s blood changes with it.
I reckon it’s over, says the lunk.
Aye, says his father.
As expected.
Aye.
It’s like they’re commentating, these two traveller men. It’s like the rest of us aren’t here.
Do you give best, son?
Banny just stands there, gulping for air. He touches his hand to his mouth, then looks at his fingers.
He doesn’t say owt. He just turns away and pulls his top on.
Fucking hell, says one of the lads quietly.
That’ll be a yes then, says the lunk. He steps forward, holds my wrist and raises my arm.
The winner is the young Wisdom lad, he says. Well done.
Ta, but there’s nee need for that I say, pulling away.
The lads don’t know what to do with themsels so I turn to the hedge and put me top back on. The povvy charvers just sort of stand there sideways on, not knowing where to look. Aside from one hot cheek from the one glancing blow he got in, I feel like I’ve barely broken sweat.
I’ll be off then I say.
Had on a minute lad, says the wiry auld timer putting an arm round me shoulder and guiding us away. Divvent forget your winnins.
I’m not arsed about that me I say, because though I’d like the cash, money like this always comes at a greater price. It’s obvious these gadgies aren’t running a charity here.
Here, Ned. The lad says he’s not bothered about his winnins.
The big lunk smiles and shakes his head.
The wee bugger must be daft in the napper he says, then turns to Banny and his marrers. Right then, he says. Turn them out lads.
The lads just stand there.
Your pockets.
How that’s not fair that, says the lad called Shotter.
Turn them out or I’ll rip them out, and your bollocks with them. A deal’s a deal.
The lads leg it like a bomb’s gone off but big Ned is expecting this and grabs Shotter by one of his lugs, nearly pulls it off, and Shotter howls, then still holding him with just one finger and his thumb Ned digs through his pockets as overhead the sky keeps fizzing and popping.
Here, looker, says Ned. This one’s got a nice mobile.
Ah howay man, says the lad. I only just got that.
So you’ll not be too attached to it then. The lunk takes a close look at the phone, presses a few buttons, then pockets it.
Fucken hell, you thieving –
The lunk grabs him by his shirt and presses his face up against his. He’s way bigger than the lad. You could fit two of the lad inside him.
Say it. Gan on – say it. I dares you.
The lad shuts up and says nowt. He’s not that daft. The lunk shoves him back. Gan on then, piss off.
He legs it to where his mates are waiting and as they disappear, Banny raises a hand and points at me.
Wait till you’re by yersel.
I just look at him.
We’ll find you, shouts one of the others. We’ll find where you live.
You’re fucking dead you are Bender, shouts Banny.
Well he doesn’t look it to me, says the auld timer, the tab dangling from his lip.
*
With two kids mewling, the new trailer seemed to shrink in size. And Mac did begin to get the itching. It was only last summer that him and Barker had toured the country but all that freedom seemed a long time ago.
Now he was a young father to two and he had that violence burning in his belly. Drink dampened the flames, for a while. But then it came back hotter and sometimes even a good scrap wasn’t enough to douse the fire. Even after he and Eddie, or he and Simey Samways and Jim Brazil or any of the local traveller lads, or sometimes even just Mac by himself had clumped some bouncers, or whoever happened to get in their way down the snooker hall or outside a pub or at the taxi rank, the bus station, the market place – even after he had broken chairs and tables and noses and jaws, he would make his way back to the site where he would find a reason, any little reason, to start a fight with me over some daft thing. Summat small, like his tea not being ready, even though it had gone cold hours ago. Or the smell of the shite in the bairns’ nappies. Or the weather. Any little thing.
And then.
And then he’d become too big for the van. His eyes would go first. They’d just turn black like clouds had crossed them, and he’d start bellowing and throwing things and smashing things and punching things. Things like plates and pictures and me, his wife.
Fists in me mouth and stomach, the bairns crying. Me on the floor being kicked and stamped into the corner. The van rocking.
But you didn’t have to go and make a spleen over it. You took it. It was part and parcel of marriage.
And when that still weren’t enough, he’d take off looking for it again to anywhere that there was gobshites and braggarts who he could put on their arses just for looking at him funny.
Soon he was barred from all of the pubs around town so he had to widen his circle. He began to spend time around the villages outside of the city. The funny little places. Pit villages. Backward places, some said. One road in, one road out places.
Places like Wheatley Hill and Wingate.
Nowt more than hamlets, some of them. Clusters of houses and a couple of barns. A pub and a church perhaps, or the foundations of a new housing estate marked out in the fields with chalk like corpse outlines.
Then further afield too, widening the circle further around the city to take in Fishburn and Trimdon.
Places you’d need a magnifying glass to find on the map.
And out towards the coast as well. End of the world places. Places perched over the North Sea. Working places. Dirty places. Rough house places. Places unchanged.
Places he fit right into.
*
The fireworks are ower, and there’s just me and the gadgie and his son, who I’m secretly calling Ned the Lunk.
We’re sat outside their van on the edge of the showground, drinking strong brews and smoking tabs. It’s getting late and the last rides are closing up for the night. The fairground is darkening as the lights are turned off one by one. There’s a vague dull throb in me right hand.
So, says the gadge.
Aye, I say.
How’s your face?
Me face?
Aye.
That charver caught you, didn’t he.
I never felt it.
And your hands?
I turn them over in front of us.
They’re fine.
We sip some more tea and I’m wondering what I’m doing here, and looking for an excuse to cut out because I’ve still got to get the van back to the lock-up and get home to little Coughdrop. The auld gadgie reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulls out a massive wedge. It’s barely fits in his hand. Tens, twenties and a flash of red from the odd fifty. There must be thousands there. Thousands.
Here you are.
He peels off some notes. There’s a hundred there.
Thanks. I’m not bothered though.
You’ve earned it.
I shrug.
Fair enough, says the gadgie. You’ve a right to wonder.
Wondering why you’re giving us this you mean? I say.
Aye
– and it’s because you earned it, son.
Aye, but –
It’s alreet, there’s nee catch. We’re men of our word. Isn’t that right Ned.
Aye, says his son. That’s right. And a good travelling man never stiffs another travelling man.
How do you know I’m –
The gadge takes a slurp of his brew and interrupts us.
I could tell, just like I could tell you’d handle that streak of piss back there.
How?
Because bullies like that are crap at scrapping. They only win fights when they can jump on someone. Mob-handed. And that to me’s not fighting.
Aye, I say. But you could have lost a hundred quid there. And you can’t have made owt much from rinsing out his charver mate.
Doesn’t matter, says Ned.
But what if I lost?
I knew you wouldn’t, says the gadge.
Aye, but how? I mean, you’ve never even met us.
Ned and the gadgie glance at each other.
We’ve seen many fights, says the auld fella. Many, many fights.
And we knew you’d win, says Ned. Because it’s the quiet ones you’ve got to watch.
And because you’re a Wisdom aren’t you, says his Dad.
This catches us off guard. I fall silent while I try to work out how they know who I am. Then I realise he said my name before without me telling him it in the first bloody place.
It’s alreet, son, says the gadge. You’ve nowt to worry about.
How do you know me name though?
Because travellers just know don’t they? We know. And – he pauses – because we remember Mackie.
This surprises us again. Me Dad, I hear mesel saying, me voice a little too high and squeaky for my liking.
Aye.
How come like?
The gadgie drains his mug.
I knew him back in the day, he says. We used to run around together. On the fighting circuit, like. Ned was only a young un’ back then – and you weren’t even born – but me and your Da were pretty tight for a while.
A fighter were you?
Me? says the gadgie laughing and then coughing, then looking at his tab. No. No. Our Ned here’s the fighter in our family.
Pig Iron Page 15