501

Lena says, ‘Have a vodka in it. Calm your nerves.’

  She’s dressed like she’s up for a night on town, or on the tiles: short tight skirt, short tight top. And her hair – so much hair, curly and blonde. I’m sure it wasn’t that shade last week. And her eyes always flitting around the room. She’s a flirt, is Lena.

  ‘Anything in trousers.’ Scottie Dog laughs.

  ‘Better without the trousers,’ Lena says. ‘What do you think, Pegs?’

  Pegs says quietly, ‘I wouldn’t know, Lena.’

  ‘Wouldn’t know? What about you and Dave Trinder?’

  Pegs starts to say, ‘But we ain’t…’ when Scottie Dog interrupts.

  ‘Don’t tell her a thing.’

  But Lena persists. ‘Haven’t you Pegs? Ever?’

  Pegs is colouring up and Scottie Dog says meaningfully, ‘Perhaps she’s a bit fussier than you, Lena.’

  ‘Cheeky cow,’ says Lena.

  ‘Moo,’ says Scottie Dog, and Lena reckons she must be a Highland cow.

  Even Katy laughs at this.

  We win the team game for the odd point and then my single starts with the shot for bullseye and my dart sails in. I know people say I take it a bit too seriously but I play another game in my head. Each throw becomes a wish: a wish for Ken. If I can score a ton there’s a chance for him, a chance of regression out of the chaos of his mind. I know it’s stupid, superstitious even, but I can’t help myself.

  This is for one of his rare smiles.

  This is for walking out in the garden without getting lost.

  This is for a clumsy attempt to kiss Kayleigh on the cheek.

  This is for the miracle of ‘I love you, Maggie.’

  And this one is for coaxing him into loving.

  Because I want to be loved; I want to be a woman. Yes I may be over sixty but I still want. I want it to be like it was before all this.

  But Debbie doesn’t let me get away. She draws level with a treble nineteen and then clips the double top. I know she won’t give me another chance and my ninety shot-out looks a mountain.

  The girls have gone quiet and I’m glad the Motley Crewe are having a night off. Even the jukebox is between records. It’s in a pub silence that I hit the treble eighteen and skim outside the double with my second dart. I pause then, break my throw and concentrate, really concentrate. I’m thinking and praying and making the biggest wish of the night, of my life.

  And it works. And the arrow flights into double eighteen. And the jukebox blares into life. And the girls are hugging me in turns.

  ‘Good old Maggie.’

  ‘Not so much of the old,’ I say.

  Inside me the wish is growing and I’d like to be home to see if that wish is working.

  The Remnants are not giving up without a fight and poor Pegs is off form. The harder she tries the worse she becomes. She apologises after every throw and Irish tells her to, ‘Calm the fuck down,’ which doesn’t help at all.

  So Pegs drops her game and Scottie Dog comes second and Lena’s in one of her giggly moods. She loses a one-sided match.

  Irish says to Katy, ‘It’s up to us then.’

  Katy just nods. She looks too fragile, too hurt to be here let alone win at darts.

  Anyway, Irish blusters, drinks, swears, blasphemes – ‘Jesus guide that bugger in’ – her way to victory.

  ‘That’ll give me something to tell Gobshite.’

  So with the scores level there’s only Katy can save us.

  You know in some films when everything goes down to the wire? Well, this is nothing like that. Katy plays without smiling, without her usual exuberance, just drilling in dart after dart. Her opponent, Molly, used to the Katy we all know, tries the odd joke but Katy’s not listening. She wins hands down and, still unsmiling, accepts a drink.

  Looking at her face you’d think that she’d lost, that we’d lost. And looking at her you can see that what she’s lost is weight. Her face is thinner and the plumpness is going from her body.

  But it doesn’t seem to have made her life any lighter.

  Danny brings a plate of sandwiches around and Scottie Dog takes two before the plate’s on the table.

  Danny says, ‘They’re not all for you. What about the Remnants?’

  Scottie Dog says, with her mouth full, ‘The bread’s stale anyway, yer tight sod.’

  Lena says sweetly, ‘I’m not having any. Want to keep my figure.’ And she twirls around in front of an open-mouthed Danny. It’s the good job he’s put the plate down cos I think he would have dropped it.

  Pegs and Katy are sitting together and there’s not a smile between them.

  Irish carries the drinks over. ‘Cheer up, girls, it could be wo…’ She stops there because I don’t suppose it could be much worse for Katy.

  As soon as last orders sounds I’m ready to go.

  I say, ‘Anyone walking my way?’

  No one is, not yet. I think it must be against their religion to leave while the pub’s still open.

  ‘Thursday for practice, Maggie?’ Katy asks.

  ‘Some of us could do with it.’ Scottie Dog’s already on her way to the bar. ‘Just in case he really means last orders.’

  I’m thinking that I just want to get home and slip into bed next to Ken’s warm body. That thought is on my mind as I walk home, as Kayleigh slips out the door when I slip in.

  ‘Okay, Kayleigh?’

  ‘He’s been fast asleep all night, Mum.’

  I brush my teeth, go to the loo for a ‘Last minute widdle,’ as I used to tell Ken. Then I pull my nightdress on and sneak into the bedroom. I just want to curl up beside him, hold him like I used to, feel his warmth in the dark.

  But there’s a smell in here, a gut-heaving stench that makes me retch.

  And when I ease back the bedclothes, uncover my husband, it’s over the sheets, over his legs, up his back.

  ‘Oh Ken. Oh Ken. Oh Ken.’

  I’m crying. I’m looking at this mess in our bed, this mess in our life, while Ken snores gently through it all.

  And all my wishes have come to nothing.

  I cry to myself and it’s always to myself, because no one else will ever hear.

  Thursday night practice in November.

  Pegs.

  It’s four o’clock and I’m giving Dad an hour, helping him to sort out the metals from the mountain of junk he keeps on his breaking ground. It’s starting to get dark this autumn evening and we’re ‘helping to keep the wolf from the door’.

  Dad’s in his T-shirt and his arms are smudged with dirt and rust and grease. He’s still pretty much together, my dad: all those years of training and fighting, I suppose.

  ‘Dad,’ I say, ‘don’t forget I’ve got to get ready for going out tonight.’

  He stops work, lights up a dog-end. ‘Darts, eh?’

  ‘It’s Thursday, Dad. It’s practice.’

  ‘You won’t be late back?’

  ‘Dad!’

  ‘All right. All right. You know I don’t trust the gorgees; they’d rob yer blind.’

  ‘Dad, they’re my friends.’

  He laughs then; he loves winding me up. Sometimes he’ll come in the pub, buy the girls a drink, flirt with Irish, try not to stare at Lena and offer to tarmac Scottie Dog’s path.

  ‘I couldn’t afford you,’ she says. ‘And you’d probably steal the lead off my roof. That’s why Danny’s put those cameras in here; keep an eye on you.’

  Then Dad’ll have a pint with Pikey Pete and tell Danny his beer’s rubbish on the way out.

  He’s handsome, is Dad, with his dirty blond hair and carefree manner. Maggie says she can remember seeing him when he was a young man.

  ‘Could turn a girl’s head, he could,’ she laughs.

  But all the same people are a bit wary of him; they make room, shuffle along the bar to give him a place; Danny never keeps him waiting like he does some of his customers. Dad isn’t exactly big; he’s tall, all right, but he’s muscular, not fat at all. He moves on t
he balls of his feet and sways past people, like he’s in the ring. Only it’s more than that; he has a presence, does Dad; folk watch what they say in front of him. I can’t imagine anyone calling him a gipo to his face.

  From out of the trailer, Mum brings out a mug of hot meski for Dad and he flops into his old armchair – his outside comfort, He puts his feet up, spits out his soggy dog-end and rolls up a fresh tuv.

  ‘This is the life.’ He whistles Old Holborn into the evening air.

  ‘Spoilt, you are,’ says Mum, ‘sitting there like a rea roy.’

  ‘Lord of all I survey.’ Dad laughs.

  And what Dad surveys is his plot of ground, his atchin tan: an area of concrete and tarmac, an acre of overgrown ground bushed with elderberry and patched with dock and horseradish. There’s a shed where his punchbag hangs, and a toilet and a shower building. Juk, our old grey lurcher, is lying in the dust by the trailer steps. Every now and then he raises his head to sniff the air.

  ‘One day,’ Dad always jokes to me, ‘all of this will be yours.’

  He often tells me that I’m the son he never had. It makes me wonder why I’m the only child of Dad and Mum, why we’re not a big family like the cousins that we meet at Stow or Appleby. All Mum ever said when I asked her was ‘Bit of trouble’ and she patted her stomach.

  Mum perches on the side of Dad’s chair and he wraps an oily, hairy arm around her waist and nuzzles her neck.

  She struggles and hollers, ‘Get off,’ but she doesn’t mean it because she’s laughing at the same time.

  And they’re always laughing, Mum and Dad. I don’t think there’s anything that could come between their closeness.

  An hour later I’m washed and changed and riding in Dad’s old Transit van to the George.

  ‘Give us a call if you want a lift back,’ he says, knowing that I won’t, knowing that he might be in bed anyway. All the same, he asks, ‘Got yer mobile?’

  ‘Yes, Dad.’

  ‘Yer won’t be late?’

  ‘No, Dad.’

  ‘Yer got enough vonger?’

  ‘Yes, Dad.’

  ‘Got yer mobile?’

  ‘Oh, Dad.’

  He might be a scarred koramengro, who’s not afraid of anything, but he’s my dad.

  Katy doesn’t show tonight and it’s not the same without her. We all know why she’s not here.

  ‘Men: nothing but trouble,’ says Irish. ‘Should all be put down.’

  Scottie Dog says, ‘I knew a soldier from the Black Watch and he had some most peculiar habits. He had this thing about bottoms. What he liked to do was…’

  Lena interrupts, ‘You’re putting me off my drink, Scottie Dog.’

  ‘Let’s get the darts going. Stop all this smut,’ says Maggie.

  We practise, seriously practise. I’m always better when it’s not a real game; my hand is steady and I’m not nervous at all. There’s a fiver from each of us in the kitty and it’s to be shared between highest shot out and top score. Scottie Dog’s on the chalks, Danny’s put the jukebox on free selection, and the Motley Crew are concentrating on their beer. The only fly, or flies, in the ointment are the two big-mouths at the bar, Jackman and Robins. They’re lounging in their work clothes, overloud, over-rude, overweight and overbooted. And overlooked by Danny, who’s giving them the evil eye. They’re drunk, or ‘mutto’ as Dad would say. ‘Beer in, sense out.’

  I’ve known Jackman and Robins since my schooldays, since we came to stay with Gran. Even then they were chopsy to the teachers, trouble in lessons, and forever in detention. This is not their part of town. They’re usually up the King’s Head with all the no-hopers, the spaced-out cokeheads and the drowsy smokers.

  Anyway I’m waiting for Big Dave Trinder and I know they’ll shut up when he comes in, studded leather jacket and hair down to his shoulders. Folk are wary of Dave – he’s seen a bit of bother – but he’s as good as gold with me, gentle as a lamb. Although he dresses like a biker, he drives a beat-up old Transit like Dad’s: same make, same year, same dirty white; the most popular van of that year.

  Gran would have liked Dave. ‘A good man,’ she would have said. ‘A koorshti mush.’ I can hear her voice now, making her judgements of people, telling me what she thought of them.

  We could pass someone on the lanes, in the street, and she’d have an opinion of them in an instant. She was like that, my Gran.

  And sometimes she could be dozing in the sun outside her old vardo, jukal at her feet, and she might wake with a start.

  ‘I dreamed Caleb was here.’

  I knew – we all knew – that Caleb, whom we hadn’t seen for a year or more, would soon be rolling up to spend a few days with us. Gran could read the tea leaves too. She’d look in Dad’s mug, pucker her face, squint her eyes.

  ‘You be careful, my Henry. I dik a gorgee with no vonga. Empty morlers he’s got.’

  Then Dad would come home in a mood after working all day, topping trees or mending roofs.

  ‘Fucking mush wouldn’t pay.’

  I’d look at Gran and Gran would look at me and nod her head to say, ‘I told you so.’

  I’m eleven when we come to bide here with Gran. I haven’t seen her for years – in fact I can’t even remember her – but we pull into her patch of ground on the edge of town. Well, it’s more than a patch, it’s this ragged overgrown acre of railway ground with a workman’s hut and a square, block compound. An old Welsh cob is picking a meal amongst the weeds and an even older jukal is cocking his leg on our truck’s wheel. There’s a yog burning and a kharva’s bubbling up to boiling, and I’m staring at the woman who’s my grandmother.

  Dad’s out of the truck and he’s put his arms round her and she’s crying on his shoulder. Mum and I hang back until Gran and Dad let go of each other.

  Gran turns to me and says, ‘Oh Peggy, you’ve grown so big.’ And then she holds me and I can smell rose-scent and woodsmoke in her embrace, in her clothes, in her hair. And then she hugs Mum.

  ‘Lydia,’ she says, ‘I’m so glad you’re here.’

  This is one of the pictures I keep in my mind of that first day here, my Gran and my Mum, me and Dad. We sit on foldaway chairs around the crackling yog while Gran questions us on who we’ve seen, who’s died, and who’s gone brick. The words tumble out of Gran; she talks real quick, even for a traveller.

  Several times she catches Dad’s hand; several times she cries, ‘I can’t believe you’re here for good, Henry.’ She repeats it. ‘For good.’

  I sit with them until the sun goes down, the shadows creep in, and the stars are lighting the sky. I sit until I’m falling asleep and Dad carries me into our trailer to bed. He spreads a familiar heavy coat over me and I drift into dreams as my life begins to change.

  It does change; I go to school properly and Pikey Pete and I are the only two travellers there. He’s picked up the nickname Pikey Pete for obvious reasons, and my Peggy is shortened to Pegs, because gypsies make pegs and I’m a gypsy.

  So we stay here, settle on the edge of this little town. Oh, we still go away occasionally, take the little trailer to a family wedding or funeral, or a fight Dad wants to see, but it’s not like it was. Dad says life on the road’s too hard now.

  ‘Those new-agers,’ he says. ‘They got travelling people a bad name. All that choreing and drug-taking. Everyone thinks we’re the same.’

  Mum laughs at him. ‘You like yer beer and fags.’

  Dad ignores this and turns to The Foreigners. ‘Taken all the land work, they have. At one time you could work from Kent to Wales. Look at it now.’

  ‘Times have changed, Henry,’ Mum says. ‘And we’re all right here, aren’t we?’

  Dad thinks for a bit. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘We are, I suppose.’ He’s sitting in his chair, drinking a livvener and smoking a tuv and life is sweet.

  And life is sweet to me now; I’ve got Big Dave Trinder hopefully meeting me later and the girls – well, except for no-show Katy – making the evening a good l
augh. This is like my second home, the George. My second family, the girls. I suppose out of all of them I get on best with Katy. She’s like an older sister – I was going to say mother (Katy wouldn’t like that) – to me.

  Anyway tonight I shoot out on treble twenty, single twenty and double top. I win all the prize money, highest score and highest shot out in one throw, and I buy a round.

  At the bar Jackman says, ‘Gonna buy us a drink then, Pegs?’ His words are slurred and I don’t answer him; I don’t like him.

  Then Robins says, ‘C’mon, Pegs, you can afford it.’ He tugs on my arm and that’s enough for Danny serving up my order. He leans across the bar.

  ‘You’re not upsetting my customers,’ he says to the pair of them.

  ‘It’s all right, Danny,’ I tell him.

  But Danny’s got his excuse to turf them out and he’s not wasting it.

  ‘Out,’ he says. ‘Out.’

  Jackman says, ‘We’ve been good enough to spend our money in here.’

  Robins says, ‘You can’t make us go.’

  Now the whole pub is silent, except for the jukebox playing ‘Stand by your Man’ as Danny, spitting nails, picks up his phone.

  ‘Move or it’s the law.’

  Jackman looks at Robins. Robins looks at Jackman and you know that they’re on the edge of kicking off. Then Jackman looks at Danny pressing the numbers into his phone and Jackman shrugs in a conscious decision.

  ‘Come on,’ he says to Robins. ‘Let’s get out of this fucking dump.’

  They barge past me – well, at least, Robins does, snarling out the side of his mouth, ‘This is your fault, Gipo.’

  He twists his head and gives me a cutting glance, a nearly stare of mindless anger at his thwarting. And just when I don’t want it, my gift kicks in.

  It’s like Gran’s but not the same. Not exactly. Mine flutters like a butterfly, a little bit here and a little bit there: expected and unexpected. I can catch in a look, a peep behind the eyes, a person’s life.

  But most of the time I stop myself because I don’t want, I don’t need, to know. And I can play with the gift, I can ask for the good side.

  Like I did when I looked into Dave Trinder’s face and my thoughts were that I could love him and he could love me.