The mess is little Coughdrop.
Coughdrop with his fur and skin torn and peeled back, and his blue intestines pulled out across the carpet.
There’s bloody brown smears on the skirting board and there’s a sort of gluey shit-smelling substance dotted around too that’s starting to harden on the carpet and is mebbe fat and sinew and snot and everything else that creates life.
His rib cage is open and his guts are stretched out like a discarded flag or the tail of a kite or a pair of trousers that have been kicked off in the dark. I can see other things too. Organs. They look strange and new and too beautiful to be anything manufactured: only Mother Nature could have created these things.
His torso and face are demolished but other parts of him – his legs and paws – are intact so that little Coughdrop now resembles something weird and elongated and exaggerated, but his framework is still in place as if in defiance of his tormentors; as if to let me know he fought them til the end, the little scamp. Splayed there his body says to us: I tried to stop them, Dad. I did me best.
A turd hangs from what remains of his little black arsehole and his tongue hangs distended from the mess as if he’s catching his breath, as if he’s trapped between two worlds. Forever suspended in sleep.
But he’s not. He is definitely not sleeping.
*
They left Luton and headed west.
“Where you taking us, auld man?” asked Mac.
“I told you: to fight Cliff Pike.”
“Aye, but where?”
“To Wales.”
“Bloody Wales,” said Mac. “That’s miles away.”
A moment passed.
“Had on a minute,” said Mac. “I’ve not got a passport.”
Barker glanced at him and then thinking he was being serious, slapped the steering wheel of his BMW and roared with laughter.
It was the kind of laughter that Mac despised. Patronising, contemptuous and usually enough for him to knock any other man spark out. Because the warmth he once felt for Barker was gone; he didn’t like the way this gadgie spoke to him – him the king of the gypsies. Always using long words and gannin on about how to dress and the good old days and all that. Well. It took the piss.
“You divvent need a passport to get into Wales, you bloody div.”
They crossed Oxfordshire and the Cotswolds and the landscape rose and fell around them like great green waves. They went through villages and hamlets of wattle and daub cottages. They passed lush meadows where the cattle grazed with the sun settling on their backs. They saw tiny churches nestled in hollows, drove over chalk streams and past duck ponds and tightly-planted copses that Mac knew would be brimming with fat lazy pheasants just ripe for lifting. They drove on through the evening, chasing the sun.
Soon they were headed to that part of the land where England and Wales rub up against one another and only the widening expanse of the River Severn holds them apart like a referee.
“So tell us about this Pike lad, then,” said your Dad.
“He’s game and he’s nails. What else do you need to know?”
“How does he fight?”
“Dirtier than you.”
“I doubt that. Square go is it?”
“It’s a dirty-as-it-gets-go, lad. Does that bother you?”
“Does it hell. How much am I getting?”
“Half of the grand his lot have put up, plus I’ll cut you in on the side bets. They’ve not heard of you so the odds’ll be good.”
“I’ll muller him.”
“Don’t be so confident about that, Mackie Wisdom.”
Your Dad looked at him sideways.
“You know Barker, if I didn’t know you better I’d say you didn’t have any faith in us. I’ve not seen you for months and here you are appearing on me step at dawn with a scrap lined up for us at a few hours notice and you’re talking like I’m some turkey that’s ripe for fucking plucking. It just doesn’t sit right.”
“It’s not too late to back out you know.” Barker paused. “If you’re not up to it.”
“Fuck you take us for?” Mac snapped. “I never back away from fights, you know that. I’ll panel this Pike cunt and maybe if you’re lucky I’ll not panel you an all. You just make sure I get paid. How far to Wales?”
“We’re in bloody Wales.”
“It looks like bloody England.”
They were somewhere on the edge of the Brecon Beacons before Barker spoke again.
“So listen. When we get to the pub you just let us do the talking. You just sit tight until we’re up at the quarry.”
“Hold on a sec – quarry?”
“Aye.”
“You never said nowt about a quarry. Here – how well do you know these gadgies?”
“Well enough.”
*
It’s as dark as it gets at the close of August when I scrape up what’s left of Coughdrop into two carrier bags and leave the flat. He feels heavier in bits than he did alive. Not for the first time I know what the phrase a dead weight means.
I’m in a bit of a trance. Numb, like. I’m gasping for a tab but I was shaking too much to do a rollie in the flat and now me hands are full with the carriers in one and a kiddie’s plastic spade that was lying in the airing cupboard of the flat in the other.
I walk out through the estate and across the bridge over the dual carriageway. It’s late so there’s not many cars passing under us.
There’s tears on me cheeks and I’m cold. Motorways at night always make us feel sad and lonely at the best of times. And now we’re back in the worst of times.
Over the other side I gan past the Kingdom Hall where the Jehovah’s worship and around the side of the building and to the edge of the woods at the top end of the valley that drops down into town. The river’s hiding down there somewhere; these are the banks me Dad stalked as a young man. Upstream a couple of miles is where the old site is. Was. I’ve not been back there since that day. That final day.
It’s dark, but I’ve got a torch.
I don’t walk far into the woods. Just a couple of hundred yards. Once I’ve gone deep enough and stood for a minute making sure there’s nee-one about, and I’m not on any footpath that’s likely to be disturbed come the morning, I get to digging a shallow hole with the plastic spade. The ground is hard and dry but once I’ve cracked the surface it starts to come away in clumps and after about twenty minutes there’s just enough space to put the parts of the puppy in. My puppy. Little Coughdrop.
And I’m thinking, it’s my fault. My fault this happened. He was my responsibility and now look at him. All broken up in a bag. It’s not right, this. It’s not right at all.
Them cunts are going to pay for this, I think. Ten-fold, like.
I put Coughdrop in the hole and then I scrape the dirt back over with the spade but it seems to take ages, and it feels stupid, so I start to use my feet, and I kick the dirt back into place more and more vigorously and then I flatten it down a bit. There’s more tears silently streaming down me face. I feel like mebbes I should say summat but there’s nowt to say, and nee-one to say it to. Little Coughdrop. Me Man Friday. He cannot hear us now.
So I just stand there for a minute, then I roll a tab and sit there smoking it in the dark, tears and clart streaks on me cheeks and I know it’ll soon be light and though I know I’m going to have to do summat, I don’t want the morrow to come.
*
It was a hazy summer’s evening when they finally reached a pub called The Swan With Two Necks that sat in a clearing in a wood in deepest Wales.
Barker turned into a tight lane that led alongside it to a space that was neither car park nor scrubland.
A couple of transit vans were already there. Beside them men milled around drinking cans of beer and smoking.
“Look at these fucking woolly-backs,” said Mac, whistling through his teeth.
“Stay here and don’t get out of the car.”
Barker got out and went and spoke to them
. The men turned and glanced at your Dad hunched in the front seat, nervously smoking a cigarette. A halo of flies circled in the air outside his open window. Then the men all laughed.
Barker walked back to the car and re-started the engine. The men climbed into the two Transits and pulled out. Mac and Barker followed close behind.
“What were youse all laughing at?”
“Just some joke. Nowt for you to worry about.”
It was a balmy evening. The sky was pink with the last traces of light, the sun’s residue smeared thinly across clouds that were scudding along at a fair clip, like the last sheep being corralled into a stone fold for the night.
From a side lane a small car pulled out and joined the convoy behind them. Mac looked in the mirror and saw three bearded men in it. It felt presidential. Or mebbe funereal.
Your Dad was nervous. He wasn’t used to fighting this late. Most of his organised bouts took place just after dawn, as was the gypsy way. But, as he always said, a true warrior should be ready to fight at any time of the day.
“Which one is Pike?” he asked.
“None of them. Pike’s up at the quarry already.”
“Have you got owt to drink?”
“No.”
They drove for twenty minutes down a winding track barely wider than the car, riding rough through puddles and pot-holes. The trees formed a tunnel. A darkening green tunnel that closed in around them.
“Are you sure you’ve got nowt to drink?”
Then the trees ended and they were in a clearing, where there were more cars and more men. The headlights of the cars were turned on low to cast beams of light into a large, man-made hollow in the centre of the quarry, long since abandoned. Saplings had been planted around it that had now grown to three or four storeys in height, obscuring the quarry from the outside world. Hewn rock lined its sides. Only the sky offered an exit.
Barker turned off the engine.
“Right listen up, lad. This Pike one’ll try and rattle you early on but if you stay on your feet you can take this fucking Mammoth. Mind, he’s a git big lummock so you’ll need to put him down so that he stays down.”
“Where is he?” said your Dad. He was distracted. The adrenaline that usually fuelled him before a fight wasn’t there. He felt uptight and unnerved.
“In a minute. Let us do your hands first.”
They got out the car and stayed in the shadows. Mac pulled off his sweater then bent and stretched and threw a few jabs. His joints clicked and cracked. After hours cramped in the car he was nowhere near warm enough. He swung his arms wide to loosen his shoulders then shook the tension out of his hands. He rolled his neck and threw more jabs. The men glanced over.
“Alright?”
“I don’t feel radged enough, Barker.”
“Well pretend then. Pretend he’s fucked your mother or diddled one of the kiddies. Owt like that. Pretend you’ve walked in on him with his cock up your mother’s arse, and he’s grinning at you.”
“I don’t even know which one I’m fighting though. I need to know the face I’m going to tear open.”
Barker pulled out a roll of tape which he carefully bound around Mac’s clenched fists.
“You’ll see him in a minute. How’s that?”
Mac just grunted.
“You might want to lose your T-shirt an all. Less to grab on to.”
He peeled it off and tossed it through the open window of the car.
“Ready?”
“Have I got time for a tab?”
“No. Ready?”
“No.”
“Let’s go.”
*
I’ve had a bit of sleep – not much but enough to get us thinking a bit clearer – and I’ve tried to clean up the stain on the carpet and get rid of the smell that’s in the living room: a mixture of shit and blood or summat. Runny shit and puppy blood. Its the smell of the inside of a little dog that’s never done owt to anyone except be unlucky enough to end up in the care of the cursed John-John Wisdom.
There’s flies in the room. They’re manically tracing invisible shapes in the air above the stain that’s all that remains of Coughdrop.
Them bastards. Them povvy fugging bastards.
They’re dead meat, I’m thinking. All of them. I swear down.
Because despite everything I’ve said – despite the years away and the anger management and the psychologists and the probation meetings and all that cack – despite all that, I still want to do them cunts. Because in a moment like this I cannot help but revert to being a Wisdom; that auld bad blood is pumping and coursing and I want them to fear me. It seems like a taste for vengeance is my only inheritance. It’s funny how years of learning can just slip away in a second. Not funny ha ha. Just funny mental. It’s like reason can never beat violence. Violence always pushes through, like a weed through concrete. You only have to watch the daily news to see that.
I have to take it slowly though. Not rush into owt. Keep me head.
I’m up and about dead early mulling things over and two things are obvious. One: they know where I live and they’ll not leave us alone. That’s guaranteed. For not knocking out gear. For the fight. For being a gypsy. And mebbes for fucking Maria an all. Two: summat has to be done. A pre-emptive strike.
So I’m in town for just after the shops open, and I gan straight to the Army & Navy to buy a green kit bag and some other bits and pieces. I get mesel a knife. Then I pick up a pencil thin mag-lite, a length of rope and fold-up tarpaulin. I sort a new lock for the door and pick up some scran from the supermarket on Silver Street, some bread and tinned stuff and that, and some fresh baccy, then leave town before it gets busy.
The flat still stinks so I scrub the carpet some more I give the kitchen, bedroom and living room the once over and I bunch up a load of stuff into bin bags ready to be hoyed out. Parole papers, empty pop tins, jam jars used for ash trays, some auld clothes that I’ll not be needing. Just hods of crap. I cannot be leaving the place like a tip when I’m gone. Tidying up like this makes us think of me Ma. How she always kept the van spick and span, and then me Dad would come along and mess it up out of spite and boredom.
After I’ve put the mop and bucket away I sit down in my armchair and scarf down a sandwich and a brew, then have a tab while looking out the window across the top of the flats opposite over to where the dual carriageway is, and past that to the woods, where me dog’s still warm in the ground. I feel sick just thinking about him.
He never stood a chance.
As I’m smoking, one thought runs through me mind: how did they know? How did they know where I’m living when I’ve barely told nee fucker?
It’s pretty quiet for a bit, and then I can hear kiddies playing. Screams and laughter. I gan into my bedroom and fold away my mattress. Take the rubbish out. I pause down in the street and look around at this shite hole they’ve put us in. I’ll not miss it.
I drift off for a bit thinking about how that Robinson Crusoe gadgie didn’t have it so bad. Me, I’d bloody love to be stuck on a desert island with nowt but crabs and coconuts for company. Man Friday for a bit of a blether when you want it, but mainly it’s just you and your sunburn. No hassles. No parole officers on your back, no boss gannin on about the bloody route, no loose lasses messing with your head, no Nazis after you. Bloody lovely. Being stuck out there in a floating green cathedral can’t have been so bad. It sounds like heaven to me.
I get me bag, give the flat one final look over then lock up. I stick the keys through the letterbox. Good bloody riddance if you ask me.
I head through the estate and over the bridge. The sun’s proper blazing now and it’s going to be a rare old English day; one to remember I reckon.
I go down to the Jehovah’s church. It’s a funny looking place. New, like. Too new to be a church really, but they’ve got to be built sometime I suppose.
I go round the side and over the fence into the thicket at the edge of the wood. I’m only a couple of hundred yards away
from Coughdrop but I can’t think about him now, mind. Instead I stick me bag down, cover it up with foliage, then hop back ower the fence and gan back the way I came. In me pocket I’ve got me baccy, knife, lighter and some money.
There’s this bank alongside the dual carriageway. A grass verge with bushes at the top. I walk along it, behind the bushes so that the cars that are whizzing by at seventy mile an hour divvent see us. If I walk along here for a mile, then cut in past the top end of my estate and walk for another mile or so across the industrial estate and the playing fields and past the new Tesco, it’s the best way up to the Nook without having to get on a bus or pass too many people. Hardly anyone’ll see us this way.
I walk quickly, a tab jammed between me lips, puffing away and thinking about what them povvy bastards did and how that Bannon couldn’t accept a sporting defeat, and how stupid I am for even thinking such a thing exists.
I’m thinking about his lips on Maria’s lips, and how she looked when she spoke about him; thinking about how they couldn’t just leave it. About how nee-one can ever just leave it.
And I’m thinking about how there’s only one person who could have telt Banny and his mates where I live. One lass.
And that’s the hardest part to think about.
*
There were two dozen men or more down in the quarry.
They were wild men with thick forearms and scowls, mossy hair and brown teeth. Men with sunken eyes and flattened faces. They were creatures who carried the dark secrets of their valley; they were judge, jury and executioners of their domain. The true rulers of this dark, dank kingdom.
Mac and Barker climbed down a precarious set of makeshift steps, blasted into the side of the rock decades earlier. Hand over foot into a hole in the ground in the wood in the mountains.
A large bare-chested figure stepped out the darkness into the light of the car beams.
A mountainous-looking man. Cliff Pike. He was as tall as Mac, but squarer and with an upper body that seemed out of proportion with his legs. He had a shaggy mop of red hair and a thick untrimmed beard that covered his neck and chin and gave him a wild appearance. Animalistic. Elemental. He smiled.
Beneath the beard and hair, your Dad could see that this Pike one had a flattened face, as if he’d been smacked squarely with a spade. His cheekbones ran down to petulant lips and his eyes were set deep and protected by the scar tissue that had hardened and knotted across his brow.
Pig Iron Page 21