I half-run up the hill. Up the hill and through the trees. Through the trees and into the warm August night.
I’m not far off the main path that leads up to the clearing where I know Maria will be leading them. It’s all plain now: one way or another she’s sold us down the river.
Then there’s a movement, a shifting of shadows just below us. Voices. Close by. Voices and breaths. Two of them. Lads. And I remember there’s them sharpened sticks between us. It’s all so perfect.
I jump out into the path and whistle.
Then I gan, Ower here, you sackless povvy charver Nazi gets, and I hop back into the trees and gan back, towards them, but unseen because I’m off the beaten track.
There he is, gans one of them, shouting, he’s ower here. Lads, he’s ower here. I’ve got the cunt.
He runs up the path and straight onto the spikes. It’s too dark to know where he’s been impaled but I’ve staggered them nicely so if one stabs you, you’ll fall forwards on to the second one. Good thinking, that.
Ayaz, he yells. Ayaz, yer fucker.
I move closer. I’m floating through the trees, and the moonlight shows us he’s face down on the floor and his marrer is tripping over onto him from behind. It’s proper whatsit. Proper slapstick. Like Laurel and whatsit.
The first spike is still in the ground, but the second must have stuck in the lad somewhere. And as the second lad falls I’m right on him. I leap out and kick his head like a football. It’s a proper kick an all mind, like I’m taking a cup final extra time penalty or summat. I nearly boot it right off his stinking neck and out the bloody stadium.
There’s a dull thud like a watermelon’s been dropped from a second floor window and right away pain shoots across the top of me foot and up me leg. It bloody knacks. He’s out cold though. Sparko. I don’t feel good about it, but this is life and death, this is. Survival of the dirtiest.
The first lad is trying to get up but his leg is mashed up from the gouging, and he’s trapped under his marrer who has gone all floppy on top of him. I almost feel bad for the pair of them. Almost.
Gan on then – stamp them. Stamp them both. Kick their bleeding jaws off.
I limp off into the trees again with the dead leg that the lad’s fat head has given us. I’ve still got the sword in me hand, dangling by me side.
What you doing, man? Get back there and finish them off. Chop their bloody heads off.
Them two’ll not be going anywhere fast so I stop for a moment and try to shake the pain and numbness out me leg. I stand stock-still for a few seconds, thinking, bloody hell this is ridiculous. It’s all gone proper mad, this. Like a bloody fillum or summat. It’s like when I was a bairn and the few times I’d be allowed out with the gorger kids we’d be playing cowboys and Indians. I was always the Indian – just me, mind – and they’d all be coming after us, hollering and hooting and shooting their imaginary pistols, and them yelping pow, pow, get the Injun would soon turn into get the fucking stinking gyppo, and then they’d pile on us and batter us, and I’m thinking about how it’s all exactly the same now, only there’s even more bloody cowboys and they divvent have guns made from their fingers nee more, they’ve got knives and bloody swords and nunchukkas and Christ knows what else. But I’m still the Indian.
You need to toughen up lad. Make your Dad proud.
You shut it you mental stammering peg-legged twat. This isn’t about you.
*
You stopped going to school at eight or nine. The learning was pointless and all them boys was always picking on you.
Of course they sent us social workers. They threatened us with prison but Bobby, when he was around, was good at sending them packing. He’d been through it himself.
You’d learned your ABCs and your 123s and that was enough. You were better off in the real world – the one with fields and woods, trees and leaves, grasses and streams.
Remember?
*
The woods fall silent again for a moment and then something weird happens. I need a shit. I properly need to go – like, desperately. Urgent and that. I’ve broken into a sweat and I’ve got the proper hot tingles. It’s like me innards are fighting to escape.
There’s nowt I can do but drop me kecks and undercrackers and squat where I stand. It comes out straight away in a git big fiery gush and splatters noisily onto the ground. Oh Christ. I’m reminded of landslides and liquidisers and lorries tipping out five ton of gravel.
I do a couple of trumps and then there’s another load, just as heavy. Sweet bloody relief. I let out a tiny groan of pleasure.
I feel light-headed, like I’ve just halved me bloody body weight. It stinks summat rotten like a creature has crawled up inside there and died, but I feel good with it, cleaned out, like. I feel like laughing at the ridiculousness of getting caught short like this.
And that’s when the torch beam falls upon us. It comes from nowhere. It swings around and illuminates us crouched there with my hands on me waist band and me junk dangling like bloody conkers. I’ve not even had a chance to find a leaf to wipe me scut with.
I squint into the light, but I can’t see who’s behind it. Don’t need to though. I know who it is.
Got you, you dirty little pikey bastard says a voice from behind the beam.
You divvy little prick. You couldn’t even wait for a bloody shite. You’re still a little babby, you. Did they learn you nowt when you were away? Looks like you need another lesson, boy.
Then another voice goes what the fuck’s he doing man? He’s bloody shat himsel.
Then another voice, unseen, a girl, pleading. Maria.
Howay, she says. Just leave him Kyle.
The first voice again. A dull flat voice. The voice of Banny.
Get him.
And I’m off again, turning and pulling up me trousers and legging it all in one fluid movement, me cheeks squelching. I can hear them behind us like dogs after a fox, but I’m moving like the wind, me.
I’m still fastening me belt when I burst out of the woods and into the clearing. I divvent pause for breath as I run round the side of the cliffs and scramble straight up the dirt bank in the half-darkness. I’m scrambling and scrabbling hand over foot but I get half way up there like a bloody rocket. I don’t need to see because me other senses are guiding us. Feel, smell, sound. I cover thirty, mebbes forty feet in what seems like seconds. I stop, look round and can see the sweep of Banny’s torch beam below us still in the trees.
I turn and leg it up the rest of the bank, pulling mesel up by roots and branches and rocks and owt I can get me hands on, praying that none of them come loose and send us falling backwards, down to the baying pack.
Then I’m up near the top of the cliff, above the trees, and it’s lighter up here. I’m close to the sky and I’m sweating cobs. The moon is high above us, clear and cold and white and round and clean.
The clearing sits way below us and the shadows of the cliffs creep across it like accusatory fingers. One minute there’s grass, the next there’s nowt but space. Nowt but a big, big fall onto the rocks. I need to watch me footing. Mebbes this clearing is an auld quarry or summat. I used to think that it was a natural hole in the ground but the way the earth just drops to nothing and the rock face is all jagged and vertical, I reckon maybe all of this is man-made, like mebbes a thousand years or more ago they plundered the earth here for stone to build the cathedral with. They dug it and shaped it and dragged it with ropes and rolled it on logs the many miles through the woods and across the fields to the city, where it was turned into a monument to God on that peninsula formed by the bend of the river.
Aye, I reckon that’s it.
All these years of coming here and I’ve only just realised that this green cathedral of mine was built by man an all, just like the one in town, only this one is the shell of a cathedral; a cathedral-shaped hole. My paradise. And there’s this lot that want to spoil it.
So do summat about it then. Do it now.
I bloo
dy will an all.
*
You had to find out the truth sometime, but when you did it came out all wrong.
All it took was an offhand comment and just like that, Mac Wisdom casually destroyed your life.
You were the same age as Charmaine had been when she’d given birth. Given birth to you, the bairn. Charmaine, your real mother. Not me, her. Fourteen she was and fourteen you were too, when you found out about him sticking it to her. Corrupting her. Seeding her. Month after month in the leaves and mud, under the trees and sky, in the woods. Her own father, the glass-eyed broken man. My husband, your Dad. Him that gave you a grandmother for a mother. A mother for a sister. An uncle for a brother. Him that made it all twisted and confusing and wrong and destroyed your life before it even began, then destroyed it all over again fourteen years later.
Just like that Mac told you who you really are and where you came from, and why exactly he thought you were nature’s aberration, and the worst thing was I think he enjoyed it.
*
And then they’re here in the clearing.
Some lad I can’t make out comes out the trees first. He’s holding the torch and carrying a bag, then there’s Banny, dragging Maria behind him by the hand. My Maria. Maria with a bairn in her belly.
Is this it? says the lad.
His voice carries up to me like he’s stood six foot away.
Shhh says Banny. Button it, you.
I’m up there on the cliff edge, the moon lighting the way. Lighting the clearing. I find where I perched the first boulder and I crouch down beside it. I keep low so me silhouette doesn’t give us away.
Banny turns to Maria and says summat I cannot hear. She says summat back and then he smacks her one. Properly backhands her. The cracking noise echoes round the clearing.
Banny’s got summat in his hand. It looks like a stick, but then I realise by the way he’s holding it that it’s not a stick. It’s a bloody air rifle. Me guts gan cold. What’s he need a bloody gun for?
Your thick head, that’s what.
Then he spots something and nods with his head. The torch beams moves round and I follow it as best I can across the clearing. It stops on something. Summat heaped on the ground.
Shite, shite, shite. I’ve left me bloody kit bag out haven’t I. Left it right there where I lay, at the bottom of the crack in the cliff. At the bottom of that little gully, right where Maria and I lay that time and all. Right where anyone could see if they were looking for it. Bollards. Big bloody bollards.
Some soldier you’d make. You bloody inbred.
I’ve got me glass eye in me hand and I’m rubbing it and squeezing it hard. So hard it feels like I could crush it. Then Banny does summat I divvent expect. He nods backwards with his head, moves the rifle from one hand to the other, then turns and heads back into the trees. And just like that they’re gone again.
That’s it then. He knows I’m here. He must do. He knows I’m close and he doesn’t want to be exposed, not when I’m picking them off with nowt but sharpened sticks.
His eyes are probably on us now. He’s probably sent the lad back to get the rest of them and now he’s waiting. Mebbes he knows I’m up this bloody cliff with nowt but a glass bloody eye and moonlight for company. Mebbes he thinks he’ll flush us out like a cornered rat. And mebbes he’s right because in front of us is the drop, round the sides the steep dirt banks that lead down the way I came up and behind us there’s just a thick tangle of brambles, then beyond that – fug knows.
I want a tab but I daresn’t spark up in case someone sees the flame. I take a couple of steps back and sit mesel down. Then I lay, me chin more or less on the edge of the drop that dips and slopes away into the night.
I fix me night eye on the woods as it all gans quiet. There’s nee voices or torch beams, just a spiral of smoke from the smouldering ice cream van off in the distance. I can see easy enough because over that way, out to the east, the sky is already lightening.
I wonder what Maria’s doing, what they’re planning, what her involvement in all this is and it’s sort of doing me head in, but at the same time I now know we can never go back to those moments riding round in the van living the vida bloody loca, or down there in the clearing, with our kecks off, writhing and moaning and listening to woodpeckers and that. Even a daft twat like me can see that.
Even stupid inbred povvy gyppo John-John Wisdom can see there’s no going backwards now.
Amazing really, how quickly it’s all turned to shite. And now I’ve got nowt to lose but me freedom.
What bloody freedom?
Exactly. What bloody freedom.
So you’re just going to lie here blubbing again are you, son?
Am I bloody bollards.
What are you going to do then? Hunt them and kill them, the lot of them. Aye, that’s exactly what I’d do. And that’s exactly what you’ll do if you’re a true Wisdom.
I’m not though, am I. A true Wisdom. And I never bloody have been. I’m the little bastard secret Wisdom and that’s the bloody problem. That’s why all of this started. All of this – everything that’s happened, right from day one. It’s all your fault, Dad.
It’s all your fucking fault.
*
And when Mac told you, sneering and stuttering, drunk and laughing with spittle on his lips, you wouldn’t believe him. Not at first.
“I done her and I seeded her and that’s all there is to it.”
You said nowt.
“Do you hear me? Your sister. It’s your fucking sister that’s your real mother. Not your mother. That’s why you come out all wrong.”
Then all them things that had troubled you, like why you were born small and puny, like why Charmaine was sent away, and why Bobby beat you, and why you had never felt a part of it, this thing of ours – being a traveller – and why it was you felt no attachment to any of us, except maybe your sister who always looked upon you with sad wide eyes and hugged you tight when she left, all of that suddenly fell into place. It all made some sort of horrific sense to you.
And now your father was a far greater beast than you had even imagined. And now your entire life was a mistake. So you did what you had dreamed of doing every day as far back as you could remember.
“You’re a bloody stillborn,” he said. “You’re the stump in the family tree,” he said, and that was when you took the poker and you brayed him. Brayed him and flayed him. Your Dad. Battered him right there in the rotting, stinking van on that cold and lonely site where we’d all festered for years and years.
You took the poker and you struck the man who was your father and grandfather.
You took the poker and smashed the skull of this once feared man.
You hit him so hard his glass eye popped out and rolled across the floor but you didn’t even notice because you were panelling his arms and legs too.
And then you stopped and Mac was over, your Dad was over, all of it was over, and you threw the poker aside and you sat down and waited and watched.
Then you noticed his glass eye and you picked it up and looked at it in your hand. You stared at it.
Sweat matted your hair. You closed your eyes and let yourself go, like you were drifting high above the van, a beautiful ascending angel, so high you were looking down on the field and it didn’t look so big from up there, just a small insignificant rectangle, nowt special, and mebbes you could see the lane and the road too, and then you were floating higher, up above the patchwork landscape. You’ll have seen the woods and the river, the village and the abbey, and over in the distance, in a hollow in the earth, the city gleaming and shimmering and twinkling. It was all you had ever known, but for the first time you could see what lay beyond it. You had done an evil thing my son, you had committed the ultimate sin and in that moment I knew that the life we had known was over, and by the time your Dad was in the soil they’d have sent you away and nothing could ever be the same again, that I’d have to turn my shoulder away from you and finally leave this
place forever, turn you out into the world and let you find your own way because in the end, somehow, I knew you would make it.
*
It’s getting light now.
The short night is ending and it’s at that stage where everything softens. It’s like watching an auld fillum. The air is grainy. The grass is rustling and the daisies are stretching and yawning.
I’m thinking about elephants’ bones and me Dad and I’m just about nodding off when I see a movement in the trees over to one side of the clearing. A lad emerges. I can’t make out which one. He crouches down then looks to his left. I follow his eyes and see someone else step out of the trees at the other side. They crouch low down, but they look out of place in their brightly-coloured street clothes. I can see them a mile off. They need some khaki on, this lot. A nice bit of cammo like me, the bloody great numpties.
I watch them. They sit like that for a bit, then someone else walks out into the clearing between them. It’s Banny. He’s got a bin bag and the gun is in his hand. He opens the bag and pulls something out of it and sets it on the ground in front of him. It’s one of them whatsits. One of them tape player things. One of the git big ones. Ghetto blasters.
He fiddles about with it for a moment then a noise echoes out around the clearing. It’s like nowt I’ve heard before. Like a howl or moan or a cry of pain, but high-pitched and sort of stretched out. It’s the worst sound in the world. There’s another one, and there’s a wash of noise behind it too, a swirl of crackling, distorted laughter. Banny turns the volume up and I hear it again. Louder this time. That tortured howl again, followed by a strangulated yap.
It’s a bark. The bark of a dog. My dog. It’s Coughdrop. Me Man Friday.
The bastards. They’ve got him on tape being taken apart in me own bloody living room and they’re laughing as they do it. Bloody laughing.
I go to stand. I go to stand and shout come on then you spineless bloody bastards, I’ll take the lot of you on right now with me own bare hands, I’ll bite your fugging noses off, I’ll cut your bollards off and stuff them down your throats.
Pig Iron Page 27