Instead he fetched his tools.
Aye. He fetched his tools and he took her down into the woods again. We’ll get you fettled, he said. Fix you up.
He drove down in there to a different spot this time. Somewhere far away from the site. Miles, it was.
They drove for a long time until the track didn’t look like a track any more. Then he parked up and they went on foot down there. He took her by the elbow and when she flinched he took her by the back of the neck, down to a place he knew, a dingy dark wet spot on his poaching rounds, where the tips of the trees joined hands to formed a dark dome of branches that clicked and clacked and split the sky and rationed the light, divided it into cubes and oblongs and rhombuses and trapezoids. That’s what she concentrated on. The shapes. The shapes in a lifeless place. That damp, musty rotting place.
My girl. My poor daughter.
They left the path and he took her in there, into the trees, off the path, and this time she knew that summat else was happening. Summat even worse than the usual. Much, much worse.
The bag of clinking tools told her so, and her father not saying anything, just walking and grunting and dragging his bad leg, his breath heavy, twigs snapping as they went in deeper and darker into a place, his hand still clamped on the back of her neck.
She’d have been able to feel his calluses.
His tools. A git big clanking bag of rusty things by his side. Swinging by his leg. His bad leg. A bag of saw blades and screwdrivers. Drill bits and blades and tubes. Lengths of coathanger and coils of wires. Washers and spanners and cutters. Attachments. Appendages. His bits from the site.
All hard things though. Nowt soft. Nowt soft about your Dad, ever. His bag was full of angles and edges, twists and turns. Crude shapes. Man-made things. Functional things.
The tools he once used for levering tyres off flat-bed trucks and driving in posts and dismantling washers and tellies and fitting new tow-bars and fixing up trailers and making pens and kennels and snares and shelves and traps; tools for fixing and building and tools for dismantling too.
The bag swinging by his side, his other hand on her. Gripping and pushing. The calluses. What did they always say? ‘Too big for his own body, that one’. No room could contain him. Belongs outside, that one.
Their feet slipping on the carpet of leaves and the mud beneath.
Then the bag was open, the tools were in the mulch and Charmaine was on her back on an old blanket he’d thought to bring. Flung down on the topsoil. A nice touch. Thoughtful, like. Considerate.
The two of them deep in the woods. No soul for a mile or two. Father and daughter, her sobbing and silently shaking and him saying “Shhh girl,” and making her drink whisky and saying “Keep still or you’ll make us slip”, and him selecting something else from the bag, something unseen, something out of her view because all she can see is the primitive look on a dirty face framed by her shaking thighs, his tongue protruding with concentration as he leaned in, squinting.
My girl. My poor girl.
And then things did get torn and they did get ripped and she must have bled a hell of a lot. Blood on the leaves and blood on her legs and later, when she went to the bog, it’ll have felt like fire, and she’d have vowed never to go into those woods again.
Mac fluffed it. Got the shakes. Nerves shot.
He scraped and scratched but he didn’t destroy that thing inside.
It was dark in there, in the woods – it was dark in her – and he’d not thought to bring a torch. He knew nowt of the female anatomy, knew nowt about what went where and how things joined up. He didn’t realise bairns grew that far up. He thought he could just pull it out and stick it in the ground and that’d be it.
And Charmaine was tougher than he ever knew. A right tough girl. He’d underestimated her. And you never underestimate a Wisdom. He should have known that.
Then that night and the next night too she did ball up her clotted knickers and rheumy sheets faster than I could boil them, and that’s when I knew summat about this was rum. Summat was off. That’s what I mean when I say it started to come out in the wash.
Three days later Charmaine was still showing so the bairn was still in her and everyone did know about it now, and there’s Mac Wisdom pretending to be enraged that some wee shite had got his little girl knocked up, while Charmaine chose dignified silence.
Only then did I see it: it was all show. Show for me, his wife. Blind to it all along.
This time your Dad had gone deeper and darker than I ever could have imagined.
*
The green cathedral is calm and quiet but I’m all churned up so I spend a good while just wandering the woods, following the flattened grass of the animal trails and losing my way, then finding it again. Walking is the only way I’m able to control the hateful images and ideas that are flickering through me head; images too nasty to dwell on for long. Stuff from the past – memory photographs of smashed skulls and skinned animal faces. Stamped bollocks and strings of sloppy intestines being pulled still twitching from ragged wounds. Teeth chewing through cheeks and noses and thumbs twisting into empty eye sockets. Things that go pop and thud and crunch. Me Dad whipping off his belt and looming over us.
That look in his eye.
Being down in the woods.
Deep in the density of the trees, away from paths and clearings, I sit down against a tree and light a tab and decide to have a good old think about things. Rationalise, like. Ditch these grim visions rising in us and instead try and do what one of the shrinks inside called a personal inventory.
On the positive side this is all I can come up with: I still have me freedom. Freedom to go wherever I want, though it does mean having to break all the parole rules and going on the run so there’ll be a warrant on us.
Oh aye, and I have lots of kets and crisps and that, so I’ll not go hungry.
And that’s about it.
The negatives we know about.
I rest me head against the rough ridges of the bark and close me eyes as I draw on the dimp but even though I’m proper shagged and I’ve been running on adrenaline all day I cannot switch off because there’s this voice in me lugs. It’s been muttering all day but now it’s getting louder. It’s the voice of me Dad, Mac Wisdom: What ye waiting for? he’s going. Do them cunts you soft little shite. Let them come to you – and they will come – then do them. Do them quick. Do them for travelling men everywhere. Do them for your Ma and for Charmaine and Bobby. And if you can’t do them for your family then do it for yoursel. Do them in their beds if ye have to, but just make sure you end this because if you nash now, you’ll be running away forever.
I flick the yellowy dimp out in the trees and exhale.
Sherrup, I’m thinking and me heart’s pumping just thinking about it. You just sherrup. It’s you that caused all this, I’m thinking. It’s your fault, you twat. You bloody bullying bastard. Fugging headcase. You bloody predator. Beast. You caused all this. You made us come out small and runty. Destroyed our family. Tore us apart. Made us a freak.
You soft little shite.
Sherrup. You’re the reason. You’re the bloody reason. You’re the bloody reason I’m in this mess. You’re the reason everyone hates us and laughs at us. You’re the reason I’ve been running for twenty year. Cursed from day bloody one.
I hear mesel saying this in a cracked voice I barely recognise and I can feel me eyes getting puffy and sore as hot tears rise and well and spill out down me hacky cheeks and there’s salt in me mouth as a big fugging sob shakes my chest. I sound like a git big bloody bear with its paw stuck in a trap, and as I start proper blubbing alone here in the woods I realise it’s the first time I’ve allowed mesel to cry in years and years.
And now that I’m blaring I cannot stop and there’s snot coming out me nose and there’s so many tears that the green cathedral turns into a watery blur that’s swimming away from us like I’m sinking to the bottom of a very deep lake, and the saddest thing is there’s no-one about to witness u
s drowning alive.
And it’s the story of me short stinking life.
*
And so the bairn was born in blood and membrane on rough blankets on the floor of the van with me and a couple or three of our travelling neighbours too, with hot water and strong arms to hold her down, and all the while Charmaine saying nowt the entire time, barely even a scream. Only a moan and a whimper then the mewling of the newborn, under-sized and barely alive.
That night the moon had crossed the sun and the light turned queer in the moments that it slid out.
Born under a bad moon, said the women between muttering their muted prayers. A bad moon.
And it was you, my son. It was you.
And Charmaine did bear you. She was your mother. Not me.
Her.
Her and him.
And you. You were a tiny thing. A funny looking thing. Not big and strong and roaring like the Wisdom bairns, but a slight creature, brittle, with nowt on you but a wisp of dark down on a conical head.
It’s the moon they said. It’s a bad un. The moon knows this one’s a bastard, they said, but I shushed them and told them to keep their curses.
“I’m calling him Kane,” said the mother. “Kane Wisdom.”
“Funny bloody name,” said the women.
“It’s from the Bible,” she said. “Like Cain and Abel. But I’m spelling it wi’ a K.”
And your Dad did speak up just the once on the subject: “You’ll call him John-John after my Uncle John-John Wisdom, as good a man as there ever was.”
“But I’m calling him – ”
“John-John’s a family name. A good Wisdom name. We’ll hear nee more about it.”
“I want to – ”
“Well you can’t. The little cabbage is John-John.”
And there you were, my son, and I did raise you, as if I’d birthed you meself. Raised you as my own.
And that’s the bare truth of it.
*
I pull mesel together and blot the voice of the ghost out. Have to.
I stand and trace my steps back through the woods to the passing place where the van is parked. Then when I get there I nash in a different direction, following the same familiar path I brought Maria down just the other day, thinking how it seems like months ago now.
I’m soon back at the secret clearing that backs up against the cliff face to form a theatre in which nature’s dramas are played out. It looks even more overgrown and green and wild today, like all the seeds that have been lying in the topsoil since they were scattered by the breeze last summer have suddenly sprung into life. It’s turned into a perfumed jungle that’s never been corrupted by a single human footprint. It’s like consecrated ground. A holy place.
Water is still running down the rock and trickling down into a boggy corner. I walk over to it and scoop mesel a handful to wipe my teary face and rinse me mouth out. It’s brackish. It has the faintest trace of summat coppery in it. Metallic and tangy. The water makes us feel better though so I drink more and as I do I feel me mood lifting.
It’s funny how it’s the simplest of things that can make you happy.
I walk up the little bank up to the bottom of the rock where me and Maria lay down and did the business. I chuck my coat down and lie down on it and stuff the kit bag behind me head as a pillow. It’s still nice and warm and sunny but there’s this light through-breeze blowing crossways, a faint movement that’s like hollow fingers brushing the damp hair from me brow and gently pulling down me eyelids as if to urge us to go to sleep for a bit. Yawning, that’s what I do.
I must have had a proper deep sleep because when I wake up it seems like maybe a few hours have passed and though it’s not yet dark I know it’s in the post. I don’t much feel like moving so I lie on the ground for a while, searching the sky for shapes and patterns and listening to the trickle of the water down the rock, and it’s so still and peaceful it’s like I’ve not got a trouble in the world. As I lay flat, clinging to the earth, a big shudder runs right through us. A big pleasurable shudder, right down from me head to me toe.
But then a voice speaks to us again. It’s him. Mithering us again. Me Dad. He says: they’re coming for you, you know. They’re coming for you tonight and you’re just bloody laying there daydreaming.
Aye, I say. They probably are.
And what are you gonna do about it?
I dunno.
Well you better think on, hadn’t you lad?.
What do you care? I say out loud, my voice hanging there in the clearing in the woods, but there’s nee reply, and I’m pretty sure I’ve just imagined it all, this conversation, and mebbe I’m going a bit mental, or have been spending too much time on me own. A lifetime on me own, in fact.
And then I think, OK shite-arse. Mebbe you’re right. Mebbe they are coming. And when they do I’ll show you. I’ll bloody show all of you. I’ll be waiting for them. There’ll be nee more daydreaming. I’ll surprise the lot of you. Guaranteed.
Good, says a voice. Good lad. That’s my boy.
Get fugged, I say. I’m not your boy.
*
You’ll not remember but Bobby resented you right away. From day one. Because your brother had already set about making himself hard and cruel and detached just like his father. He’d not been to school in years and was working on the markets with Eddie from eight or nine year old. They sold cleaning products, dusters, rags, batteries. Bits and bats that people always needs. He was up at five and off to a different market every day. Always changing. Chester one day then Birtley or Washington or Darlo the next.
And you grew. Baby John-John. You learned to walk and talk and you were a tiny wee thing with black hair and sticky-out ears just like your Dad. And I called you me own.
Because Charmaine was to be sent away to work. Your Dad said she should go somewhere where they didn’t know her, so he got her up on the fish-packing plant line in Newcastle. Mac arranged it for her to stop in a van on a site run by his cousin Johnny Wisdom, a grassless patch of concrete over in the corner of an industrial estate out past Benwell way.
And time rolled on and the seasons came around and I buried the darkness of what had happened as best I could.
It was the accident what done him. That’s what I told mesel. He’s not been right since, I said. They wired him all wrong.
The limp and the stutter were there and Mac was not the man anyone remembered, but he was still strong enough to knock you about. His own son.
“He’s a mis-shape, that one,” he’d say.
Do you remember?
You must do. You must remember some of it.
Then Charmaine started seeing someone. A gorger lad with a house and a car. And she said she loved him and she wanted to marry him one day soon. Mac told her no daughter of his was marrying a gorger and she should stop coming around. So she stopped coming around.
“I’ll be back for the bairn,” she said. “As soon as we’re wed I’ll be back for my John-John.”
And that’s why we raised you as our own, the last child of Mac and Vancy Wisdom.
*
When they finally turn up I’m waiting for them. I hear them a mile off, crashing through the undergrowth and snapping branches.
I telt you they’d come, didn’t I.
I know Da. I know.
I see them soon enough too because the silly numpties are waving torches about and burning big biffters and acting like a right bunch of sackless gets. They sound pissed mortal and high an all, judging by the way they’re carrying on. I count at least three of them because there’s three torch beams fanning about down the hill. There’ll be more though. Loads more.
And I knew they’d come after sundown. Twats like that are too lazy to do much in the day-time. Too sober. It takes the curtain of darkness to drop before they can begin to feel brave. Because in the daylight the truth of themsels is laid bare. In the daylight they’re forced to face who or what they really are; and when they do all they see is fear and loneli
ness. That’s why they’re children of the night.
I’m sat in the tree that’s up the hill from where I left Arty’s ice cream van. I’m perched on the right-angled alder branch that extends straight out from the trunk sideways. It’s a good vantage point.
I’ve got me coat on and me hood up and I’m smoking a tab which I stub out then flick into the darkness at the first sign of them.
Flecks of burning tab ash fall, a mini shower of dying fireflies.
And that’s when I know that Maria has sold us out again. Grassed us. Snitched us out and stitched me up like a Craster bloody kipper.
They’ve probably been driving round for hours trying to find us before she’s remembered this place. I bet they’ve been to me flat again, then round the town and down the river and that. They might have paid Arty a visit for all I know. Roughed him up a bit or summat. He’s not a bad auld lad is Arty, but he probably deserves summat for getting into bed with the likes of them in the first place.
Sleep with dogs and you wake up with fleas.
She’s a smart lass, Maria, I’ll give her that, because it’s not an easy spot to find when there’s nee signs about and nowt in the way of street lights. It’s a proper remote spot, so she must have a good memory.
I still can’t quite believe she’d do that though. Na. Not after them tender moments we shared together.
Of course she grassed you up.
Anyroad, I don’t suppose it matters now. Because we’ll not share any tender moments again. I’ll not be opening me heart to her. There’ll be nee more living la vida loca. At least I know whose side she’s on now anyway.
Your problem is you’ve nee gumption. Letting some lass in like that. You deserve owt coming to you if you ask me.
Aye, well. I’m not asking you am I.
Mind, I’ve been busy. I’ve not been scratting me nadgers up this tree all evening. I’ve been preparing. I’ve been doing stuff. Getting ready to finish this once and for all.
Good lad. Do us proud. Mebbes you’re not as soft as I thought.
So I’ve got mesel ready. The green cathedral is my house and them coming at us like this, it’s nee different to poaching is it. All you’ve go to do is understand the landscape and understand your prey. You set and bait your traps, and you let them come. And when there’s bait in them traps they just cannot resist. Every time. Because all animals are creatures of habit. And this lot are just a bunch of beasts.
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