Pig Iron

by Benjamin Myers

  Then she gans all loose. Disintegrates. She collapses like one of them tower blocks being detonated; neatly and from the inside.

  When I raise ma head and wipe me mouth she has her phone out.

  Here – who are you callin?

  Nee one, silly. I’m taking a picture of you.

  A picture?

  Aye.

  On your phone?

  Aye.

  How, like?

  On the camera.

  Your phone has a camera on it?

  Aye. Have you never seen one before?

  I shake me head.

  But why are you taking a photo of us?

  Because you’re the first lad who’s properly made us cum and I wanted to capture the moment.

  By taking a picture of us with me face down here? I say.

  Aye. Why – are you shy or summat? Here – don’t move.

  I divvent like having me picture taken.

  Why?

  The only people who I let take me picture are the polis.

  You’re funny. I’ll not show it to nee-one, John-John.

  You should get rid of it.

  You’ve nowt to worry about. Anyroad – I’m not finished with you yet. Come here.

  She puts her hand behind me neck as I crawl up beside her. She kisses us again, tasting herself on me, then she slips her hot hands down my trousers and I get ready to do everything that I’ve thought about doing a thousand times over, and all the ways I’ve imagined doing it, and I’m ready to let everything go dark and quiet again. I’m ready for owt me, so long as Maria is doing it with us.

  *

  Sides from the Appleby jaunt I’d not gone further than the three, mebbes four miles into town since I married your Dad. But that summer I saw there was life beyond the high tensile fence, the chicken coops and the horses snorting in the paddock; past the vans covered in rust spots and the crackle of the fire and the long wet grass. A life beyond the skyline I’d been staring at for months.

  The clothes, the haircuts, the cars, the food, the shops. Everything was different. It was a gorger’s world. It was leaving mumpers like me behind.

  It was as if the mottled concrete greys of the sky and the flat, muted greens of the site’s surroundings fields had been pulled back to reveal another world, one I’d all but forgotten about: a world of noise and electricity and laughter and traffic.

  Life. Real life.

  Colour was everywhere, as if someone had taken a paintbrush and a palette the size of England and coloured in all the gaps.

  For months we travelled the country. Up the roads and down the lanes stopping with them that knew your Dad. His name was known down in East Anglia, Kent, Cambridgeshire and Essex, places that seemed like a million miles from our world up north.

  Oftentimes we’d fetch up in darkened corners of fields and copses in the dead of night. Each morning the view was different. Sometimes it were a working farm but oftentimes it was the arse-end of an industrial estate or builder’s merchant or summat like that. One morning we were in pissing distance of the sewage works.

  Your Dad took a few days work here and there, just enough for food and petrol. Or he would buy a ferret from a market and he and our Bobby would spend a day and a night emptying a warren. They could bag a dozen or so rabbits that way. Maybe more. Empty it right out. They’d seal off all the exits with netting which they’d peg into the ground with sharpened staves they whittled themselves and then they’d slip the ferret in and sit back. When the rabbits came running out in a panic your Dad and our Bobby would be there waiting, with their cudgels.

  Betimes Mac would have to fight another man, just out of courtesy. It was sport. They wanted to see what all this fuss over big Mac Wisdom was about. Such scraps were the grapevine manifest. Teeth were lost and noses broken, but this was fighting for fun, fighting in lieu of rent. They got family names about.

  “You can stay if you fight our best man,” they said.

  “Tell your lot about the Ducketts of Cray’s Hill,” they said in Essex.

  “The Smiths of Lytchett Matravers fear no man,” we were told in Dorset.

  And your Dad’s jumper would already be halfway over his head.

  And they always shook hands at the end.

  It was the non-travellers we had to watch. It was in some of the towns that whispers did follow us like shadows. Parked on some land outside of St Albans we came back one day to find the van’s tyres slashed to ribbons. On the beach at Scarborough, Bobby and Charm were spat at and called “dirty gyppos.”

  But even then they knew better than to tell their father, who would give them a good hiding “for not standing up for yoursels”.

  Right enough the money ran out like water down the drain and your Dad decided he needed to earn something proper; none of this chump change for hops picking or what-have-you.

  He had to fight again. Properly fight. He had to be tested. Face death and taste a bit of blood.

  He had to muller someone. The fire was burning.

  He called Barker Lovell.

  *

  Afterwards, when we’re done, I walk right across to the other side of the clearing and piss into a thick patch of ferns. They must be seven, eight foot high. I’ve still got a semi-on and there’s a glow on my cheeks. The piss sprays everywhere. I feel good.

  And then I hear me Dad’s voice: So you’re finally a man then. About bloody time. We all thought you were a woofter.

  I shake off then pick a long blade of grass, clasp it between my thumbs and blow on it. It vibrates and makes a reedy, screeching sound. Maria looks up and I wave at her but she doesn’t wave back. She just looks down at the ground.

  I walk over to the water that’s trickling down the rock. It falls the last twenty feet or so from an overhang. I catch a handful to rinse me face and wash me hands. I cup some more and swish it around me mouth, then spit it out. Then I drink a bit of it and it tastes proper dopper, ancient and earthy, so I pour some ower me head and upper body, then give me pits a quick rinse. I feel fresh as a daisy. Alive.

  When I get back over to where we were sat Maria is dressed and her knees are tucked up to her chest and she’s smoking a tab. She’s taking short quick puffs from it. I take one from the packet, light it and then stand there smoking.

  She doesn’t say owt for a couple of minutes so when I’ve finished me tab I sit down beside her and offer her a ket. She shakes her head. She’s not said a word.

  What’s wrong, like? I ask her.

  Nowt.

  You seem quiet. Sad, like.

  I just feel like shite.

  Did you not enjoy it?

  Oh aye, it was dead nice. I’ve not cum like that before. Not with a lad anyway.

  I smile, wondering if she means she’s cum like that with a lass or with her own hand, or never at all. I decide not to ask her though because I’m feeling good and don’t want to spoil the moment. I’m feeling fifty bloody feet tall. As high and broad as the cliff face whose shade we’re sat in.

  We’re having a nice day aren’t we, I say.

  Aye.

  And the hangover?

  She smiles. A tiny smile at one corner of her mouth. You must have shagged it out of us, she says.

  Inside I’m smiling but I’m a bit worried an all, because it’s like someone’s flicked a switch and changed her mood.

  What then, I say.

  It’s nowt.

  Are you sure?

  Her eyes study the ground. Flick from side to side.

  Aye. I mean... I just feel like I’ve done summat I shouldn’t.

  With me?

  She shrugs.

  Did you not enjoy it like, I ask again?

  It was dead good John-John, she whispers.

  We both go quiet and sit there for a minute and me mind’s working overtime because I know she’s pissed off about summat, and I’m wondering if mebbes it’s summat I did or didn’t do.

  It’s nowt, she finally says through that same tiny smile that I can tell
she’s forcing her face to crack. It’s probably just PMT.

  I cannot bloody work lasses out me, I’m thinking. Not that I’ve ever met many mind, but one minute they’re noshing on your dander and taking photos of you licking them out and that, the next they’re being all moody and serious like someone’s just died or summat. I can’t help but wonder if it’s always like this after sex. Mebbes it is. There’s so much I’ve still got to learn. And then a thought occurs to us. One that makes us feel bloody stupid for not having had it earlier.

  Here, I say. Can I ask you summat?

  Aye.

  Do you have a boyfriend like?

  She looks away, out across the clearing. She inhales on her tab. She doesn’t say owt.

  This is what I’m on about John-John. Complications and that. Things getting spoiled.

  I’m not bothered you know.

  You’re not?

  No. Well, mebbe a bit. I just like being with you, that’s all.

  Things are never simple though, are they.

  Mebbes not, I say. But they could be. It shouldn’t always be complicated.

  Aye but it always is, she says quietly. Good things never just happen. Or if they do, it’s only for a bit, until summat comes along and fucks it all up.

  Mebbes we should just stop here forever and never leave, I say nodding out across the clearing, but then immediately feel daft. I try to turn it into a joke.

  I mean, there’s kets and water and tabs and that, I say. We’ll not starve. And I’ll protect you from the wild bears an all.

  She’s not laughing this time though.

  Aye, she mumbles. She’s still looking away.

  So do you, I say.

  Do I what?

  Have a boyfriend like.

  She sighs. Exhales smoke. Looks at us.

  Aye. Aye, I have been seeing someone.

  As soon as she says this, I know it’s him. That lad. That twat Banny. I don’t know why or how but I just know, like I know the sky is up above, the dirt is down below and chickens cannot fly proper.

  Up on the estate?

  Mebbe.

  It’s Bannon isn’t it.

  She looks properly surprised when I say this. She finally looks at us and when she does her eyes are open wide. Wide and black. Only for a split second though. Like, half a second. She’s about to say summat but she checks herself. Hesitates. Then pretends it’s no big thing.

  Do you know him, like?

  Aye.

  How?

  I shrug.

  From the round, I say. I’ve seen him about.

  Pause.

  I want to say nowt but the next thing I know me mouth is flapping and I’m talking in a voice that sounds a little too cold. Suddenly I’m going, so have you shagged him then?

  She looks at us sharply. Shoots us daggers.

  Of course I’ve shagged him. I’m not a bleeding nun you know. Not that it’s your business.

  I think of where I’ve just put my face, then I say are you in love with him?

  She snorts.

  Love? What ye on about John-John, man? Of course I’m bloody not. I mean what the fuck is love meant to be anyway.

  She sounds proper annoyed now.

  It’s just summat they sing about in crap songs and that. All I know is Kyle’s a knobhead – wait, I go, who’s Kyle? – and Maria says Banny, his name’s Kyle Bannon, then carries on going yeah he’s violent and he’s either going to end up in prison like me Dad and half his bloody family – and half the lads on the Nook come to think of it – or he’s going to wind up dead, but the one other thing I will say is he’s not always as big a knobhead as people think he is.

  Oh aye? And that’s the reason you’re with him, is it. Because he’s not a total knobhead all of the time?

  I’m not ‘with him’.

  Sounds like you are.

  She sighs.

  It’s compli-

  I know, I interrupt. It’s complicated.

  We sit for a bit.

  I’m not even that arsed I say, but I bet you any money he’s knocked you about. Any money. Twats like that always do. Bullies and that.

  I don’t expect an answer to this but Maria replies.

  So? she says.

  I knew it.

  I mean, so what though, she says before I can say owt. Everybody hits everybody don’t they? That’s nowt new.

  They shouldn’t though. Lads shouldn’t be hitting lasses.

  But they do, John-John. Lads hit lasses, lasses hit lads. Brothers hits sisters, fathers hit their bairns, the bullies smack the bullied. Even little kiddies smack each other. On and on. That’s they way it is. You know that. It’s life, isn’t it.

  Aye, I go. But sometimes it has to stop. Sometimes you have to say bollards to all this and walk away. Or mebbes you have to hit back. But either way you don’t just sit there and let it happen. Otherwise it’ll just carry on and on, down the generations, right round the world. People hitting people.

  He’s not had it easy.

  Maria says this quietly and for some reason I feel me hackles rising.

  Aye, well. None of us have.

  His Dad used to beat him up.

  So did mine, I fire back.

  He’s in the BNP, is his Dad.

  Big wow, I say.

  Well, they’re Nazis aren’t they.

  Maria pronounces it Narz-eyes. Then she goes, his dad does their security or summat. You should see him – he’s a nutter. He used to be a proper skinhead when he was younger. He showed us pictures of him with the boots and braces and that. Proper scary looking. Swastikas and that.

  I wouldn’t know about all that me, I say. There were lads that went on about that stuff inside – about England for the English and that shite – but they were thick as pig shit so I paid them no mind.

  Well you should because if they had their way they’d have you lot rounded up and shot. That’s what Kyle reckons.

  What do you mean ‘you lot’?

  Gypsies and that. Travellers.

  Why?

  Because that’s what they believe isn’t it, the narzeyes. Like you said, England for the English and that.

  But I am English. And even if I wasn’t they could go piss up a rope before they start telling me where I can and cannot live. Daft twats. Honestly.

  Aye, well. All I know is they just want everyone to be white.

  Well what’s the point of that? That’s like saying everyone’s got to wear the same clothes as each other or summat. It’s bloody stupid and pointless.

  I’m thinking Christ I’ve never heard so much rubbish.

  I dunno, John-John, says Maria. It’s about protecting England or something. White power and that.

  But England’s shite. And only an idiot would want to protect shite so that it stays the same. And, anyways, I am white.

  But you’re a gyppo.

  Aye, so?

  So they want to kick out all travellers. And the blacks and the Asians and that. Anyone who’s not from England, basically.

  I shake me head.

  But then there’ll be nee-one left but thick gets like Banny and his lazy-arse marrers probably sat around eating, I don’t know, bloody boiled potatoes or summat because there’ll be nee good food left for anyone. Nee pizzas and kebabs and curries and that. That’s just bloody stupid, that is. Anyway, it’s a bit bloody late for all that, isn’t it. I can’t see some of the big black lads I’ve met inside taking too kindly to that idea.

  Maria shrugs. Divvent ask me. I’m only repeating what I’ve heard them say when I’ve been round there. Here, his Dad has a tattoo of a dotted line across his neck that says ‘CUT HERE’ you know. And he’s got this massive eagle on his arm. Only it’s a narzeye eagle or summat. One of Kyle’s brothers has the same and Kyle reckons he’s going to get one an all. Or maybe Hitler’s face on his leg.

  I start to laugh and shake me head.

  Hitler’s leg on his face? Why?

  No, his face.

  Hit
ler’s face tattooed on his face I grin, taking the piss. How does that work like?

  Maria doesn’t notice, and I’m thinking God man you need to lighten up. All this white power bollocks.

  No – he wants to get a picture of Hitler’s face put on his leg.

  The radge gadge with the ‘tache and that?

  Aye.

  I grin.

  On his leg?

  Aye.

  I start laughing. I cannot help mesel.

  What a twat!

  Then I say: Here, mebbes I’ll get Kermit the Frog on me knob.

  She’s not laughing though. She never actually laughs that much, Maria.

  Look John-John, all I’m saying is, Kyle’s alright if you get to know him, but the rest of them Bannons are proper narzeyes and you’d do good to stay away from them. They’ve got swords and war medals and shit hanging on their living room wall and they go round smashing up corner shops and that. They go on marches and they knock about with other bloody idiots; fat twats with bald heeds that’d sooner stomp a traveller like you as look at you. Do you remember that Indian lad from the Nook that died a few year back?

  Na.

  Howay, you must do. It were all ower the papers.

  No, I don’t. I wasn’t around, was I.

  Aye, well, this lad got proper mashed up, then they set him on fire. Not on the Nook like, but that’s where he came from. He was only a young un. Sixteen or summat. He’d not lived there long and he’d done nowt wrong to nee-one. They found his body bloody miles away in the woods, burnt to fuck. Flame grilled like a bloody whopper. Ninety per cent burns they reckoned. They never caught no-one, but everyone knew it was Kyle’s Dad and his marrers and mebbes his brother, Ken. His big brother – the oldest one. Racialist attack the papers said. Mebbes even Kyle an all.

  I don’t know what to say to that. The whole conversation is depressing me now.

  But Maria continues.

  Here’s another question for you: how many non-white people do you see on the Nook?