We Are Family

by Emlyn Rees

  Tony was standing a couple of feet back from the end of the queue at the bus stop, with his arm round the slim waist of Margo Mitchell, his girlfriend of the last two and a half weeks.

  The aroma of oven-fresh pasties and bread drifted through the open bakery doors, driving Tony nuts, making his stomach grumble, and leaving him wishing he’d taken his mother up on her offer of a fry-up before he’d left home.

  But he’d been running late and hadn’t had the time to spare. Because Margo Mitchell wasn’t the kind of girl you kept waiting. Especially when you’d promised to take her shopping for the day – which he had, to the cosmopolitan stores of nearby Barnstaple. And especially when you wanted to impress her enough to get her to finally unfasten her Bastille of a bra and take a tumble with you up in the meadows some time soon – which he most certainly hoped that she would.

  To get here on time, Tony had raced his bicycle at breakneck speed down the steep, treacherous, zigzagging road, which led from his village three miles up the West Step Valley to here.

  And the rush had been worth it, hadn’t it? Margo was worth it, wasn’t she? Tony breathed in her sweet lemony perfume and kissed her pouting rouged lips, before looking her over again.

  She was cute, all right, dressed in a rich cream woollen cardigan and sky-blue Terylene dress, with her golden hair tied up in bunches, showing off the silver earrings which she’d borrowed from her mother. And even if her and Tony didn’t exactly have much in common, there were still a whole stack of reasons to be with a girl who looked like her.

  ‘Like her tits, which are as big as beach balls,’ Tony’s best friend, Pete, had pointed out only last week with a faraway look in his eyes.

  ‘And her lips, which could suck a golf ball through a straw,’ their good friend Arthur had added with a sigh.

  Margo was a catch, then, and certainly the prettiest girl Tony had ever been out with. Not that he was without assets himself. He was tall, a little over six feet, and lithe, from time spent boxing for his school (before he’d got himself kicked out, that was). He had a sartorial streak and was dressed today in a black greatcoat, buttoned up to the neck (in the style favoured by Richard Burton), along with razor-creased grey trousers and a pair of polished black leather boots. His eyes were twinkling and blue, the colour of the sea when viewed from the top of a cliff on a bright sunny day. ‘Right bobby-dazzlers,’ his mother had always said. His eyelashes were dark and long.

  But if he’d been born handsome, he’d done his best to disguise the fact since. His face was a history of the scrapes he’d got himself into. One of his front teeth was chipped from popping beer-bottle tops for bets. The summer before, while showing off to tourist girls down at the beach, he’d misjudged a dive into a tidal pool and had crooked his nose on a rock. Up on his left temple ran an inch-long scar, a memento from the fight he’d got into at grammar school last September on his seventeenth birthday – the very same altercation which had led to his expulsion and put paid to any hopes he’d had of taking his education any further.

  He didn’t lose much sleep over his bumps and bruises, though. (The expulsion, however, that still made him mad . . . Since then he’d been washing dishes over at the Sea Catch Café on East Street, rubbing off grease and shining up glass, leaving his arms as hard as steel.) It was important, the way he saw it, to look tough, tough enough to stop people from messing with you. That’s why he kept his thick dark hair slicked back with Brylcreem, like in the photos he’d seen in the newspapers of the notorious cosh-boy gangs from London.

  Girls liked a guy to look tough, Tony reckoned, the same as they did in the movies. He thought he knew a bit about women, did Tony. Like how you could make them smile by telling them their hair looked nice, or what a knockout their new dress was. He’d learnt from experience that first dates were for necking, second dates for fingers and tops, and anything further a matter of guesswork and luck.

  What he didn’t yet know for sure, but had certainly begun to suspect, was that Margo Mitchell – with whom he’d never got past necking in all the time he’d known her - was a grade A tease.

  ‘Do you love me, Tony Glover?’ she whispered into his ear now. ‘Do you? Do you love me?’

  Normally, this kind of question (the silly, gushy, girly kind) would have brought Tony out in a rash, but seeing as it was the tenth time Margo had asked him in the last five minutes, all he did was shrug.

  ‘Why don’t we talk about something else?’ he answered, exactly the same as he had done the previous nine times. Stepping away from her, he threaded a Craven “A” cigarette between his lips and reached into his coat pocket for his lighter.

  ‘Because –’

  But Tony never heard whatever it was Margo said next, because at that exact moment, he looked up, distracted by a bright flash of colour directly above his head. There, on the mottled, weathered wooden balcony of the church hall – which protruded over the bus stop and which was halfway through being repainted – stood two girls. Their matching yellow scarves fluttered in the seaward breeze, as vivid as a butterfly’s wings.

  They’d been staring at him and he’d caught them out. And now they were frozen, guilty, staring back. He knew their faces well enough: Pearl Glaister and Rachel Vale. Both of them – one fair-haired, the other red – were lookers, dolls, known by all the guys Tony’s age in the town.

  Red-haired Rachel Vale was the little sister of Bill and the daughter of Edward and Laurel. Pretty as a Picture Post pin-up, she hated Tony’s guts and hadn’t spoken a single word to him since her father had died eight years ago.

  All pretty, sharp-tongued Rachel Vale had ever done had been to speak about Tony, usually within earshot, usually to tell other people exactly what she thought about him and his. She’d refused so much as to look at him, and had even crossed streets to avoid him. So why, he wanted to know, was she staring at him now?

  In the very same breath in which he asked himself this question, he found his answer. Because the moment his eyes wandered from Rachel’s, he noticed the open can of paint she was holding out above his head, waiting to tip.

  The can slowly slipped from her hands. Deliberate or accidental? He couldn’t tell. Either way – upright and full – it now plummeted towards him.

  Tony had no time to jump aside. Instead, he ducked down low and lashed out at the can in mid-air to protect himself, swatting it away with a backward sweep of the palm of his hand.

  As he rolled on to his side, he watched it spin over in the air – once, twice – with white paint spraying outwards from its rim like sparks from a Catherine wheel. As he came to a halt – half in, half out of the gutter – he checked his smarting hand and coat: nothing; not so much as a drop of paint.

  Talk about a piece of luck . . .

  Only then he heard the scream.

  He didn’t need to look over at Margo to know that it was her. He’d taken her to the flicks to see Bogey and Hepburn in The African Queen a week ago, and had spent the entire second half of the matinee French kissing her for all he was worth while trying to cop a feel, only for her to break free every time the music got scary and shriek hysterically at whatever fresh jeopardy had arrived on the screen.

  Yet this new scream – three seconds long already and rising like an air-raid siren – infinitely surpassed Margo’s previous efforts in both duration and pitch. It was a scream of real, not cinematic, horror. And looking up at Margo as he regained his balance, it wasn’t hard for Tony to see why.

  Which is more than could be said for Margo Mitchell’s face – which could hardly be seen at all.

  Tony blinked, stupefied. His princess had vanished and a whey-faced phantom now stood in her place.

  Finally, Margo’s lungs ran out of air and silence gripped the street. The other people who’d been standing near her in the bus queue had shrunk away like water from wax. Eyes wide, Margo goggled through the clown-like mask of paint on her face. A solitary, pitiful white bubble of paint inflated and popped at the corner of her mouth. Th
en, with her arms hanging loosely by her sides, her chest heaved and she started to wail.

  Tony glared up at the balcony of the church hall. But Rachel Vale and her accomplice had fled. He couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t believe what Rachel Vale had done to Margo. He couldn’t believe what she’d tried to do to him.

  ‘Right,’ he shouted, jumping to his feet. They weren’t going to get away with this. He’d find them and make them apologise. To Margo and to him. And pay for Margo’s clothes. And –

  ‘You’re bloody dead,’ was all he heard before the punch connected squarely with his jaw and he found himself lying flat on his back.

  Forty-five-year-old, spud-faced, cauliflower-eared Bernie Cunningham was a pig farmer by trade and a bar-brawler by persuasion. He had the strength of a shire horse and the stamina of a mule.

  ‘Get up,’ Cunningham snapped, tearing his paint-splattered tweed jacket off and hurling it into the gutter. Towering over Tony, he planted each foot before him like a tree. ‘Think you’re funny, do you, Glover? Making a mug out of me . . . Covering me in paint . . . Come on, you bastard – up!’

  Tony scrabbled backwards. ‘It’s not how you think,’ he told Cunningham, his face now rigid with tension. ‘I didn’t throw it at you . . . or I did, but only because it was thrown at me first . . . I mean . . .’

  But Cunningham wasn’t listening.

  ‘Margo!’ Tony shouted across to her. She must have seen what had really happened, mustn’t she? ‘Tell him,’ he implored her. ‘Tell him it wasn’t me.’

  But Margo wasn’t listening, either. In fact, Margo wasn’t even waiting to see what happened next. Poor, traumatised Margo Mitchell was turning and running back home to her mum.

  Tony searched for support among the faces in the small crowd of people now gathered around. But none of them would look him in the eye. Like he didn’t matter, he thought. Like whatever was going to happen to him didn’t matter either.

  Tony struggled up again. ‘Please, Mr Cunningham,’ he said.

  Cunningham hawked and spat at the ground between Tony’s feet. ‘Enough talk,’ he said, edging in within striking distance, before beckoning Tony forward with his raised fists.

  Tony stared, mesmerised, as the bigger man swayed gently from side to side like a caged orang-utan. People yelled encouragement from the crowd.

  The first punch – a jab – glanced off Tony’s temple, snapping back his head. Pain bit into him. But he’d been hit plenty before, by his brother and father, as well as in the boxing ring. Automatically, his posture realigned. He shielded his face with his fists. He drew his elbows in tight to his body, protecting his stomach and ribs. Jaw clenched, neck tightened, he swallowed down the blood that had surfaced on his tongue.

  Just a jab, he told himself, now watching Cunningham like a hawk. Because if it had been an uppercut or a roundhouse at that range, he knew damn well it would have knocked him out cold. He caught the glint in Cunningham’s eyes. He was testing him out, that’s all. Having some fun, before coming in for the kill.

  Tony’s adrenalin was up now. He focused not only on Cunningham’s face, but the rest of him, too, dividing his body into zones, like a butcher would a carcass, mentally carving him up into threats and weaknesses, fists and elbows, ribs and teeth and eyes.

  The next jab Cunningham tried, Tony pulled back from. The follow-up, he sidestepped. The old man wasn’t going to have things all his own way, then. Buoyed by the thought, Tony tried a trick he’d learnt in the sparring ring at school. He darted forward, feinted left and suckered Cunningham into an opportunistic uppercut, which left his whole right side exposed. Tony powered in, catching Cunningham hard around the ear.

  The crowd gasped.

  Cunningham’s response was to laugh.

  Tony could have run then. Logically, he should have. This was sport to Cunningham. So what if Tony had managed to slip one punch past him? Tony was nothing but a dumb kid who Cunningham was going to teach a lesson.

  But Tony hadn’t run from anything in his life. Not from his brother and not from every other kid who’d come looking for him these last eight years, seeking to carve themselves out a reputation from the remains of his. A thousand people lived in this town and if he ran now then every single one of them would know.

  ‘Come on, then, you fat ugly bastard,’ he jeered at Cunningham. ‘Let’s see what you’ve got.’

  Cunningham duly obliged. And what he had was a combination move which had secured him a place in two regimental finals during his service years and one county championship after the war: a left uppercut, followed by a right roundhouse.

  Both blows hit home. Tony tottered and fell. His cheek was on the pavement. He could hear a rushing sound, like a river in spate, only he knew the noise was inside, not outside, his head. Something wet trickled down his throat. He coughed and what he tasted was sweet. When he touched his nose with his fingers he saw that they were drenched in blood.

  ‘Get up,’ boomed Cunningham. ‘I’m not finished with you yet.’

  Tony tried to focus on the blurred image of Cunningham, which shuddered above him like a reflection on a wind-ruffled pond. He attempted to stand, but his legs bent like rubber the moment he put his weight on them. Cunningham grabbed at him, hauling him to his feet.

  She came out of nowhere, then: Rachel Vale, wedging herself in between the two men like a human crowbar, before ripping them apart.

  ‘Leave him alone,’ Tony heard her telling Cunningham.

  ‘You!’ Cunningham replied in astonishment. ‘You, of all people . . . You move yourself, kid, or I’ll –’

  ‘Or you’ll what?’ she demanded. ‘Hit me, too? If you so much as lay a finger on me, I’ll call for my brother Bill and he’ll . . .’

  The sound of gushing water filled Tony’s ears again. Nausea rippled through his stomach. He slumped back down on to the pavement, aware now of the crowd closing in and looking down.

  ‘He’s telling you the truth,’ he heard Rachel Vale insist. ‘It wasn’t his fault. It was mine. I . . .’

  Tony rolled over into the gutter and retched.

  The next thing he knew, she was helping him up. For the second time that day, that life, Tony Glover and Rachel Vale stared into one another’s eyes. Then she was supporting him, walking him slowly away from Cunningham and everyone else.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she told him. ‘You’ll be fine. You’re going to be just fine in a minute.’

  She kept on saying it as she supported him down the high street, leading him on past the fish-and-chip shop, beneath the flapping pub signs and then left at the end of the street, away from the quayside and harbour, out across the car park, until they reached St Jude’s Cemetery.

  She sat him down on the low stone cemetery wall. Gradually, the fresh sea air began to clear Tony’s mind and vision. Rachel pulled a tissue from her skirt pocket and pushed it into his hand.

  ‘Don’t stare,’ she told him. ‘It’s rude.’

  But he couldn’t stop himself. He’d known she was pretty, but he’d never looked up close, not like now. He noticed that her skin was soft and that her hair wasn’t really red at all, but a deep russet brown. Her nose, ears, mouth . . . everything about her looked sharp and angry. But beneath the mask – there in those pale moss-green eyes – he detected something softer, buried, deliberately concealed. Concealed from him. He’d have given anything right then just to see her smile.

  ‘Hold your head up and pinch the bridge of your nose,’ she ordered him, pushing the tissue into his hand. ‘It’ll stop the bleeding. I learnt it at school.’

  Bunching up her long pleated skirt, so as not to rip it, she perched on the wall next to him, and stared across at the vast mass of Summerglade Hill, which loomed up behind the town, stretching high into the sky.

  ‘You heard what I told Cunningham,’ she then said. ‘It was my fault what happened. Not yours. I’ll pay for your girlfriend’s clothes . . .’

  ‘Since when did you have the money to pay for som
ething like that?’ he asked her groggily, glancing down at her clothes, which were pretty but cheap, the same as those of most kids in this town. ‘Let me guess, your brother will lend it to you, because he’s my biggest fan –’

  ‘Don’t you even talk about him,’ she snapped, turning back to face him. ‘And never you mind how I get the money. If I say I will, I will. I owe you and I don’t want to owe you. Do you understand?’ Her eyes flashed with determination. ‘I don’t want to owe you a penny, Tony Glover.’

  ‘And I don’t want your money,’ he told her. ‘Not now that you’ve apologised.’

  She turned puce. ‘I never said I apologised. Only that I owe you. I don’t regret what I did, only that it went too far.’

  ‘Too far?’

  She grimaced. ‘Dropping the whole tin on you like that. It was an accident. All I meant to do was pour a few drops on your head. Just enough to make you look stupid.’

  ‘Well, that’s a relief . . .’

  ‘Why?’ she asked, peering at him through narrowed eyes as she tilted her head to one side.

  He smiled at her ruefully. ‘Because for a minute back there, I thought you didn’t like me or something.’

  She stared at him, stupefied. Then she realised he was making a joke at his own expense and the tension fell from her face. Suddenly, she snorted with laughter.

  ‘You know what, Tony Glover?’ she said. ‘Maybe you’re not such a nasty bastard after all.’

  ‘Why today?’ he asked suddenly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘How come you decided to cover me in paint today?’

  She looked down at her pale bare bony knees. ‘I don’t know. Because Pearl’s uncle keeps the keys for the church hall and we sometimes sneak up there to smoke. And we saw the paint there that the workmen had left. And I don’t know, just because . . .’ She shrugged, defensive again.