501

  And talking of Danny, he’s taking every drink that’s bought him and the more he drinks the more maudlin he’s becoming. He’s plucking events from the confusion of the twenty years he’s spent in this pub, ghosts of those years that are sitting by the fire, raking over the embers and shuffling an extra place for a newcomer.

  But there’s one ghost who’s young and pretty, with a smile to break your heart, and that one Danny sits in the corner along with the five years she was in his life.

  But there’s no Maggie here, she’s spending most of the day holding the hand of a man who doesn’t know her anymore, doesn’t really know anything. She catches his eyes, holds them, but sees nothing in them. It’s like looking into the empty sky but still she looks and still she hopes for a miracle that can never happen.

  But there’s no Pegs at the George either; she’s at the railway site where a fire’s smouldering in the yard and Henry Smith is stacking up cans of Special Brew and rolling up fat tuvs. He coughs and spits into the yog in a hiss of phlegm. Pegs watches him, sees the sap twisting and turning inside of him and makes a wish that all this trouble will end very soon.

  Back at the George the afternoon’s wearing on and even the Motley Crew are drifting away. At four o’clock there’s only Scottie Dog propping up the bar and, when she’s had enough for the road, Danny helps her on with her coat.

  Scottie Dog laughs. ‘You’re a gentleman, Danny.’

  He says, ‘I’m just making sure you go.’

  And go she does and Danny watches her walk down the empty street on this Christmas afternoon; then he eyes up the optics, considers, selects, and pours himself a mighty rum.

  Then he sits at the bar and surveys his domain: glasses herded onto tables, a scattering of beer mats, a floor that’s screaming for a mop, a dying fire, a clock ticking away the day, windows that could do with a wipeover.

  Danny takes a swallow of the rum.

  ‘This is it. This is my life.’

  The thought doesn’t exactly cheer him up so he takes another swallow.

  Then another.

  Then he stokes up the fire, flicks the jukebox onto auto-select, dips out a pickled egg, tears open a bag of crisps, pulls the big armchair up to the hearth and settles down to his Christmas dinner.

  Afterwards he lights up a cigar; his only smoke of the year. (Well, except for the one at New Year. And Easter. And his birthday. And when he’s feeling really pissed off.)

  So Danny falls asleep because the fire’s warm, the rum’s warm and he’s warm. When he awakes, about nine o’clock, the bar’s cold and dark and his cigar has burnt a hole in the chair’s armrest.

  He mutters, ‘Christ I hate this time of the year,’ and it’s back to the optics and then a stumble up the stairs to an unmade bed. Danny sleeps until Christmas night is over and he pulls the curtains open to Boxing Day, to rain dribbling down the window. It’s ten in the morning and there’s already a sowing of little black bags lobbed onto his car park.

  ‘The dirty bastards,’ he mutters to himself.

  A Thursday night’s practice in January.

  Pegs.

  I walk up the hill into the top woods with Dad this morning. It’s still early and the mist is thick in places and the trees are dripping with the damp. Our jukal sets up two deer and they bound down the hill along the bor. Dad raises an imaginary rifle and says, ‘Wish I had my yogga with me.’

  I tell him he couldn’t hit a barn door if he was stood next to it and he laughs. Then he says, ‘Wish I had something else in my sights.’ and my laugh freezes on my face.

  And we’re back in that place again.

  Dad shakes his head ‘Sorry Peggy, I don’t mean to go on; it’s just…’

  He doesn’t even have to finish the sentence because it’s all been said before. It’s been worried over, sworn over, wrung to death in his strong hands.

  And I feel guilty as though I’ve brought this curse to our family, as though I’m responsible for this sadness, this raging anger in Dad and Mum’s silent tears.

  All this trouble.

  But Dad steadies himself, takes my hand like I’m a little chavi again and leads me down the hill. Before we’re at the trailer, he sniffs the air, takes a deep breath of breakfast bacon rising to us on the breeze. ‘Scran must be ready.’

  And this could be like any morning used to be. But it’s not; nothing’s the same anymore.

  After breakfast I sit in my room and listen to CDs. There’s a Country and Western one that Big Dave bought me and when it starts to play…

  We’re sitting in the front of his tatty white transit and Don Williams is singing ‘I Recall A Gypsy Woman’ and Dave’s saying, ‘I always think of you when I hear this.’ And I’m laughing and asking him what he wants from a scruffy didikai like me and he says, ‘I’d like to show you.’ And, still laughing, I say, ‘Not in the front of this rusty old van.’ Then he says, ‘Where, then?’ and suddenly it’s become serious and I say, ‘Don’t, Dave.’ And he’s quiet for a while, and then he says, ‘I think I love you, Pegs.’ And my heart leaps into my mouth. And all this happens before Don Williams has finished singing about his Gypsy Woman.

  Now I’ve seen Big Dave twice since That Night and the second times he says, ‘You’re not answering your phone, Pegs?’

  I don’t say much, just shake my head and mutter that I’ve been busy.

  ‘Busy doing what, Pegs?’

  He catches me with his eyes when he asks this and I can see the hurt in him.

  ‘Just talk to me, Pegs; I’ll make it right.’

  But no one, nothing, can make this right. They mauled me, those two, made me feel dirty. They touched me where I wanted you to touch me. Only you. What I was saving for you. It’s like I betrayed him, like I was unfaithful to him.

  I so nearly say this, so nearly ask him to put his strong arms around me but I’ve got enough to cope with Dad. I’m full up.

  ‘Please, Dave,’ I say. ‘When all of this is done.’

  And Dave, lovely Big Dave, says, ‘It’s all right, Pegs, I understand,’ although I’m sure he doesn’t. Then he says, ‘When you’re ready, just call.’

  And he makes me want to cry.

  So I’m in my room playing that CD and hoping that soon everything will be fine. ‘Fine and settled,’ I tell myself, and then I wonder what on earth I mean. Then I get a strange feeling of apprehension and I have to go out and find Dad.

  He looks at my face.

  ‘My Peggy,’ he says. ‘What’s the matter.’

  I can’t tell him, not properly, because there’re these flickering images forming in my mind. But they’re vague, shadowy. It’s like looking into the mist from the hill this morning.

  I tell Dad, ‘I just feel a bit odd,’ when I’m sure that my Gift is mingling with my hate and the curse I loosed, and that the unavoidable is closing in, waiting to pounce. Dad’s strong arms, like Dave’s, are around, protecting me, shielding me. And for now, I do what I always do; I shut off that part of my mind, draw the curtains on what I don’t want to see.

  The day goes slowly and at half past seven, after Mum and I have watched Emmerdale, Dad drives me to darts. Tonight he comes in for a drink, sits with us girls – well, women – for a while. He pretends to be his old self, buys a round of drinks.

  Danny says, ‘You’re splashing out, Henry.’

  Dad says, ‘Got to keep the heifers watered, Danny.’

  Katy says, ‘I heard that; cheeky sod.’

  ‘I didn’t mean you, Katy.’

  Lena, hands on hips, boobs thrust out, says, ‘What about me then, Henry?’

  Scottie Dog says, ‘Doesn’t worry me, I’ve been called a lot worse than that.’

  Danny says, ‘I’m not surprised.’

  Dad stays for another drink and Maggie asks him if he’ll call round and clear a load of rubbish from her garden. ‘It’s just that I’ve let things go a bit lately.’

  Irish, already on her fourth drink, says, ‘My garden could do with a ti
dy-up; least, my bush could do with a trim.’

  Danny, picking up glasses and poking his nose in, says to Dad, ‘You’d need a hedge-trimmer for that job, Henry.’

  Katy splutters into her drink and Maggie says, ‘Wish I’d never asked.’

  Then Scottie Dog asks how much he’d charge for a Brazilian cos she’s always fancied one and Dad says he thinks it’s time he was going.

  ‘I’ll be outside at eleven, Peggy,’ he says to me.

  I’ll be outside at eleven to make sure my little girl is safe and well.

  So our practice starts and I can’t help watching Irish. She’s flying high tonight, like she’s on drugs or something. She’s full of it, swigging back gin after gin, guiding her darts into the board with shouts of direction.

  ‘Sweet Jesus, will you hit that sixty.’

  But then I’m looking at Irish and she catches my eye and in that split second before she says, ‘Will you be after giving me some of that gypsy luck, Pegs?’ I see into her heart.

  I see a green, wet churchyard in the early morning and I can smell the freshly dug earth. I see a child’s coffin, a baby’s coffin, and I can feel the terrible pain of loss.

  And then, in a flash, it’s gone as Lena says to me, ‘She’ll be out of it at this rate, Pegs.’

  ‘She’s got troubles, Lena.’

  Lena says curiously, ‘And how do you know that then, Pegs?’

  ‘She just seems like… not herself.’

  Lena squints at Irish. ‘Suppose not, Pegs.’

  I don’t look at Irish again: at least, not like that.

  Katy pairs me and her for a doubles against Maggie and Lena cos Scottie Dog and Irish now seem more interested in the Motley Crew. Irish and Paddy are crooning some soft lullaby and talking of the Old Country, talking about going back home. It’s funny about the Gorgees, they don’t seem to know how easy it is to pack up and go. It’s like when Dad gets restless, Mum says, ‘Henry, if you want to go, just go.’ And Dad’ll be off for a few days: maybe a week, even. He’ll come back with a pocketful of vonger – ‘No questions, mind’ – and sometimes a black eye or a cut lip. But he’s always got news of who’s where, who’s been lelled, who’s run away with who. And if there’s a wedding, we’ll just hitch up the little wagon and we’re off. It’s like the Gorgees don’t understand how easy it is to drift home and away. I know I’ve got a job now but that wouldn’t hold me. Nothing would stop me.

  But then I think of Big Dave and suddenly I’m not absolutely sure.

  At the bar Scottie Dog is telling Jilted John, rather loudly, that it’s about time he got himself a woman.

  ‘Och, yer not a bad-looking boy. Someone would be glad to snap yer up.’

  Jilted John says women are more trouble than they’re worth, and besides that he’s ‘the wrong side of fifty’.

  Scottie Dog reckons he’s nothing but a pup, but Jilted John says why should he give half his food away to get the other half cooked.

  Then Scottie Dog says it’s a waste of time trying to help some people and he’s probably a fucking poofter anyway. And then Jilted John calls her a Jock strap and Danny tells them that if they’re going to fight they’ve got to do it in the car park, not in his bar. Scottie Dog says it was a private conversation and Danny should keep his big conk out of it and would he just pour the drinks like he’s supposed to do?

  Danny says, ‘It’s my pub and…’

  And then Irish bawls, ‘Where’s my G and T; a girl could die of thirst in here.’

  And Danny shrugs his shoulders like he’s a beaten man and turns to the optics. ‘I hate bloody chopsy women,’ he mouths.

  Me and Katy take a break from darts – Irish and Scottie Dog step up the oche – and we sit down and have a quiet drink. Katy puts her feet up on a stool and tells me she’s knackered.

  ‘Been a hard few days at work lately, Pegs.’ Then she asks when I’ll be back.

  ‘Soon,’ I say, and I know she really wants to ask if the rumours about what happened are true.

  ‘Well, when you’re ready.’ She sounds just like Big Dave and, for a moment, I think I might cry. Then Irish yells that she’s got her double out and she’s ready to ‘whup the arses off Katy and Pegs’.

  So Katy and I take to the oche again with Lena on the chalks and Irish tipping back and ordering Danny, ‘One more before the game.’

  Scottie Dog says, ‘If I have much more I’ll be on my back.’

  Danny reckons that she’s studied plenty of ceilings in her time and then Scottie Dog asks him if he still wears frilly knickers and does Jilted John find them a turn-on?

  Danny tells her she’s fucking sick.

  So that’s what tonight’s like in this world of the kitchema: darts and drinking, swearing and joking. I even have an extra vodka more than I usually do and, almost before I know it, last orders are being called and it’s goodbye ’til Monday.

  ‘Don’t forget,’ Katy calls to me. ‘It’s the Drum we’re playing.’

  Danny says, ‘Well, you should beat them.’

  Katy says, ‘For God’s sake, Danny, we hear that every time.’

  Outside the George, the pavement’s wet and shining. There’s fresh rain on my face and the night’s breeze is in my hair. Dad leans across, opens the van door for me and I climb into a fug of Old Holborn smoke.

  But it’s warm and comforting and familiar.

  It takes me a little while to drift off to sleep this night and for a while I listen to the rain on the roof. It’s a steady falling, a murmur of dampness soaking into the dark, while the bovel stirs in the rookers. It’s not a night to be out walking the muddy lanes or…

  walking home, down past the old cottage where the open door beckons. ‘Come in here, Pegs. This is where we’re waiting for you. Come in.’

  They’re standing there, those two, and they’re smiling their fox grins, holding out their hands.

  ‘Come on, Pegs; we know what gipo girls are like.’

  But behind them, in the doorway, tapping on the windows of the derelict house, there are darting tongues of flame.

  I close my eyes against these pictures, imagine that I’m a young girl again in the times of nightmares and Gran is at my bedside stroking my forehead.

  ‘Hush my little one. Nantee. They’re gone now. They’re all gone.’

  She banishes all the things of the night. She magics them away.

  And then it’s today, it’s tonight, and she’s stroking away my worries: Dad’s anger, that look in Mum’s eyes, the distance between me and Big Dave Trinder. Then she strokes away Jackman and Robins and it’s like they never existed. I fall into sooti, into peace, for the first time in weeks.

  So hours later, what wakes me? I lie in the dark and listen, and what I hear is a faint knocking, a gentle rapping on the trailer door. And you know what? I’m not afraid as I pull on my clothes, as I whisper aloud, ‘Don’t go. Please don’t go.’

  And then I’m in the lounge and the knock is still on the door, and it’s more like a stroke than a rap. I’m reaching for the handle when there’s a blinking of light and the ring of my mobile on the table. It’s automatic that I snatch it up to shush it, that I dik the name that comes up calling.

  Big Dave Trinder.

  And then I don’t care if it’s three o’clock in the morning, I’ve got to answer it. I know I have to.

  ‘Pegs,’ he says across the miles. ‘Pegs, I need to see you now.’

  His voice is softly hoarse and I say, ‘Just come, Dave. Just come.’

  Then I open the door and there’s the swirl of woodsmoke and rose-scent in the night air before the autumn rain coolly brushes my face.

  And when I turn around Dad is standing there.

  ‘Peggy,’ he says. ‘What’s going on, my girl?’

  Dad and I sit in the kitchen while the rain dribbles down the window. He rolls himself a tuv and I boil up the kettle for meski. Mum’s dead to the world; Dad reckons that she’d sleep through an air raid.

  ‘Dad,�
�� I say, ‘Dave’s coming here.’

  ‘Here? Why? At this time of night?’

  ‘I think there’s been trouble, Dad.’

  Dad scowls. ‘Trouble? What trouble? We got enough of our own.’

  ‘I don’t know, Dad.’

  But I do know. I saw it in Dave’s voice.

  So Dad has another tuv, drinks another mug of tea before we hear Dave’s van pull up and Big Dave Trinder steps back into my life. He’s got a smear of grease across his cheek and his leather coat’s in need of some blacking.

  But before he can even speak Dad says, ‘What’s been going on?’

  ‘Give him a minute, Dad; he’s hardly in the door. Let him sit down.’

  So Big Dave drops down into our sofa and speaks so quietly that I have to strain for the words.

  ‘They’re dead. Jackman and Robins. They’re dead.’

  Then, into a silence when I hear every single raindrop tap on the trailer roof, Dad gets up, goes to the cupboard and takes out the brandy bottle and two glasses.

  ‘It was them, my Peggy. It was them.’

  There’s no question in his words, no asking of me, but I still give him, ‘Avre.’

  Then Big Dave’s looking at me, holding my eyes. ‘I don’t know if I meant to do it, Pegs. If I even did it. I don’t know.’

  Then his head is in his hands and Dad is saying softly, ‘Tell me, Dave. Tell me everything that happened.’

  Big Dave Trinder takes a great gulp of neat brandy, coughs, and starts to tell.

  And as he speaks I’m looking again into his eyes and it’s unfolding in front of me like a film. I see the pictures of his words.

  The night is dark and wet and Big Dave’s on his way back from the other side of Reddyke. The van’s headlamps glisten on the road and the rain drifts across the windscreen as the wipers flap the miles away. Dave yawns, takes a deep drag on his roll-up, swigs a hit from a can of Red Bull. He’s tired, he’s done a long day’s work and he’s looked at another job, so he just wants to get home. But when he comes through Reddyke he needs to stop in the car park for a lag. As he drives in, the sweep of his lights picks out Jackman and Robins getting into a red Fiat Punto. He knows the car, knows the numberplate, and he swings around the deserted tarmac again to be sure, absolutely sure. But now their tail-lights are disappearing into the dark and his Transit is too slow and old to gain ground.