‘Take your sock off,’ suggests a helpful lad. His trousers are fastened around his waist with string, knotted tightly so they do not slip to half-mast. ‘Like this, sir,’ he says, pushing down an invisible stocking.
‘No,’ opines another chap. ‘He wants to get his foot out of his shoe, so he does.’
‘What?’ squeaks another. ‘And leave it behind?’ He clicks his tongue against his teeth. ‘I couldn’t afford a pair like that if I worked a month.’
‘A year,’ laughs another.
‘You’re not wrong there, mate,’ concedes the first fellow agreeably.
‘But if he gets his foot out of the shoe, then the shoe will follow after.’
‘Easy to dig it out if there’s no foot in it.’
‘There’s an idea.’
Round and round they go, nodding ruminatively and puffing away on cigarettes and pipes. The rut begins to vibrate, like an iron string plucked by a massive hand.
‘Fellows,’ I say. ‘There’s a tram coming.’ No one pays me the slightest bit of attention. The thrumming grows louder. ‘I mean it,’ I add.
‘Gorton tram’s not due for five minutes,’ remarks one old codger, back bent into a snake. ‘I should know, I take it often enough.’
‘I don’t care about the timetable,’ I say. ‘There’s one coming all the same.’
The Gorton man raises his head from its contemplation of Reg’s trapped foot and glances left, then right. ‘Don’t get yourself so wound up, lad,’ he mumbles. ‘Goes down the other track.’
The foretold tram squeals around the corner, takes the spur and bypasses our little group, sparks buzzing from the wheels. The conductor leans out, shakes his fist and bawls at us to get out of the way. We watch it trundle into the distance. More folk gather to watch the proceedings. One monocled worthy draws out a pocket watch with a face not much smaller than my own. He consults it gravely.
‘There’s a Belle Vue tram in a minute,’ he remarks. ‘Comes down this track. Cut right through this gent’s leg, if I’m not mistaken.’
‘He’d best be off, then,’ says an ancient woman.
‘He’d better, indeed,’ agrees another.
Reg tugs at his foot. ‘Someone get me out!’ he cries, sounding a great deal more sober than five minutes ago.
The clouds select this moment to drop rain upon the scene. One by one the bystanders gallop off in search of shelter, until I am the only one to remain at Reg’s side. His desultory attempts to free himself become increasingly frantic.
‘Help me!’ he pleads.
His breathing is shallow, his face changed from drunken puce to sickly green. The rain thickens.
‘Oh, lawks,’ I squeak, patting my cheeks. ‘Whatever is a girl to do?’
‘Please,’ he begs. ‘Grab my foot and pull.’
‘How can a girl possibly do that?’
He blinks at me through the downpour. ‘You’re not a girl.’
‘Oh, but I am. That’s what you said. I distinctly remember you employing that precise appellation.’
‘I don’t—’ His face grows paler, if that were possible. ‘You—’ he gulps. ‘Dear God in heaven. Have pity.’
‘Perhaps He will, perhaps He won’t. Best start praying.’
The space behind my eyes glitters, as though my head’s been filled with silver feathers. In that weightless place, I see my hands reach down and pluck Reg from peril. I am the hero of the hour; Reg and I are best pals forever, closer than brothers. The vision splutters, drowns. Rain pounds the cobbles, creating dense clouds of spray. Reg stares at me with eyes stripped of arrogance, the pupils swollen with terror.
‘What are you doing?’ he whimpers.
‘Watching.’
Reg swallows painfully. ‘Why won’t you help?’
‘What’s that?’ I say, cupping a hand around my ear. ‘Can’t hear you.’ My heart is hammering. ‘The tram can have both legs off for all I care.’
I fold my arms across my chest and press my hands into my armpits to stop them getting any ideas about rescue. There is a far-off tooting. Reg stares at a point over my shoulder. I turn to follow the direction of his gaze and see the Belle Vue tram turning the tight corner into Blackfriars Street, a dark blur shuddering through the torrential rain.
‘It will stop, won’t it?’ he whispers, soft as a child. ‘It’ll see me. Won’t it?’
‘That depends,’ I say. ‘On someone raising the alarm. Someone like me.’
He yanks at his foot with lunatic energy. I think of what he’d have done to me. I’m not actually doing anything to him. I’m just not getting in the way of fate. I step clear of the track. The shadow of the oncoming tram grows larger. The rain is filthy with soot.
‘Why won’t it stop?’ wails Reg, a small dry noise lost in the tumbling water. ‘For the love of Jesus, help me.’
‘Here’s a jolly turnaround,’ I quip. ‘I do believe Jumbo is going to have a ride on you.’
At the last moment, one of my hands works free and waves. My arm swims in the rain. The tram is so close I see the driver’s mouth fall open. The brakes scream, steel grinding against steel. It slows. And slows. And comes to a halt on top of Reg’s foot.
Despite the downpour, the crowd regroups, not wanting to miss the entertainment. The puddle under the machine turns pink, deepening into crimson. Reg won’t take his eyes off the spreading pool. A reedy noise comes out of his gob. I bend to his ear.
‘Take it like a man,’ I mutter.
The noise swells to a high-pitched keening. He slumps sideways, ankle twisted at an impossible angle. Some of the tram passengers have stepped down to get a closer look at the accident and those without umbrellas are craning their necks out of the windows. The driver leaps from his platform and dashes to my side. I’m roused from my reverie as he clouts me around the side of the head.
‘You little shit!’ he yells.
‘What was that for?’ I shout back, just as angrily.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I waved! I was the only one who did!’
‘I’ll lose my badge for this.’ He takes another swing at me, but his heart’s not in it and he is wide of the mark. ‘What a to-do,’ he gabbles, shifting his cap and scratching the bald patch beneath. ‘Didn’t see him. Not anyone’s fault. Certainly not mine.’
‘Not your fault by any means, sir,’ the conductor chips in, a man with a swollen nose the same colour as the bloody water.
The pool widens. I step out of its way.
‘Shall I call for a policeman?’ asks the conductor.
‘Yes, I believe you must. All must be done according to the correct procedures,’ blares the driver, as though he thinks courage can be demonstrated by raising his voice.
The passengers nod their heads sagely.
‘Police!’ shouts the conductor. ‘Is there no policeman to be found?’
There’s the deep-throated blare of a foghorn and the humped back of another tram separates itself from the murk. It toots again, more urgently, and scrapes to an unwilling stop behind the first.
‘This will not do,’ mutters the driver. His forehead furrows, rain streaming down his face. ‘We are holding up the service.’
‘Yes, sir,’ agrees the conductor.
‘We do no good by stopping here.’
‘No, sir.’
‘We must shift ourselves.’
‘Indeed, we must, sir.’
‘Look lively, Mr Bootham.’
‘Yes, sir!’ says the conductor smartly.
He ushers the passengers on board. They look pointedly at their pocket watches and through the smeared windows I see heads shaking. At last, a policeman arrives, more by chance than by good management. There is now a string of trams backed up along the track, every last one of them hooting like billy-o.
‘Here, here,’ he accuses the driver. ‘You’re holding up the trams.’
‘Not me, officer,’ he replies. ‘Him.’ He points at Reg. ‘He stuck his boot in the
track and he won’t move. Lay there where no one could see him.’
Reg sprawls across the paviours, mouth agape and collecting rain. His face is as washed-out as a dishcloth.
‘Well, now. He’s not going to move any faster with you on top of him.’
The driver’s eyes light up. ‘That’s the truth.’
‘So you’d best shift yourself, and fast.’
The driver tugs his cap, jumps into the footwell and rings the bell vigorously. The carriage jerks, clanks, and moves forward slowly, revealing what is left of Reg’s foot. The policeman sighs with an air of one much put upon. He lifts up his hand and blows hard on his whistle so that the following trams don’t get ideas and shunt forward.
‘Give me a hand, lad,’ he growls, glaring like this is somehow my doing.
We take one arm each and haul at the limp body.
‘He’s stuck, sir,’ I say.
‘I can see that,’ he replies, although I don’t think he sees at all. ‘Leave it to me.’
He grasps Reg’s leg below the knee and gives a colossal tug. The foot comes out, or what remains of it. I do not want to look, but my eyes are drawn to the mess. The policeman yells at two chaps lounging in a shop doorway. Very grudgingly they leave their shelter and approach.
‘Pick him up,’ orders the policeman.
‘What, us?’ one of them moans.
‘He’s half-dead, he is,’ says the other.
‘And you will be too, if you don’t jump to it. Get him to the Infirmary. We’re only a step from Piccadilly.’
‘A long step,’ grumbles the first, but they set to, hoisting Reg between their shoulders like a side of bacon. They haul him away, his mangled trotter trailing behind. The policeman gives a long blast on his whistle and waves the stopped trams forward. He gives me a final glance.
‘Get out of the way, lad. Don’t want you finishing up in the same fix.’
The rain thins. The show is over. The splash of crimson is already fading. I watch until it disappears completely, rinsed away by each tram that passes through it. It carries away my last scrap of kindness and washes it down the drain, where it belongs. I journey home with a fluttering feeling in my belly. It makes my skin crawl, like coming into the kitchen with bare feet and treading on a slug. At first I think it is the usual nonsense that descends upon me in the wee small hours, but it is not. It is cold and searing and unutterably delicious. It is the savour of revenge.
Grandma is supping tea and warming her knees before the range, stockings shabby around her ankles. A bit of a night owl like her grandson, so she is.
‘You’re late,’ she supplies by way of greeting.
‘And I love you too, grandmother dearest,’ I reply, giving her a peck on the cheek, which is as rough as a miner’s trousers.
‘Get away with you,’ she says, not unkindly. ‘Where’ve you been?’
‘Man got his foot cut off by the Belle Vue tram. I tried to help.’
‘You, help? There’s a funny thing,’ she hums, too disbelieving a tune for my taste.
‘Don’t you start,’ I snap. ‘I return to the bosom of my family, burdened with weariness—’
‘Stow it, Gnome,’ she retorts and slurps the last of her brew. ‘It’s near morning. Upstairs with you.’
‘Or what?’ Fagged out I may be but there’s a scrap of heat remaining.
‘Or you’ll stop in tomorrow night. And the night after.’
My heart shuffles, skips a beat. Not again. Not that. I snort. ‘I’d like to see you try.’
I stamp out of the room but she grabs my arm.
‘I can.’
‘You and whose army?’
‘Lad, listen. You’re going to get yourself in trouble.’
‘Maybe I like trouble.’
‘You know the sort of trouble I mean.’
‘Give over. I’m sick of it. Stay at home, be a good lad, don’t rock the boat. That’s all I ever hear. It’s not what I want for my life.’
‘It’s the best way for folk like us. The only way.’
‘I’m nothing like you. You can wipe that pitying look off your mug and all.’ I spread my arms like wings. ‘I’ve got plans, I have. I’m going to get away from all of this. See if I don’t. Trams, carts, trains: anything with wheels to carry me further than the eye can see. I want a steamship to America. I want wide-open spaces and a horse to gallop across them. I want—’
‘Put a cork in it, you little idiot. You might not want this life but you’re stuck with it.’ She peers at me. ‘Now. Get into bed – and take your boots off first, for once.’
‘I won’t!’ I clap my hands over my ears, but my insides are already writhing with defeat.
‘The sooner you stop fighting, the better.’
‘Never,’ I moan, voice shifting into a higher register. ‘Look. I’ll stay as I am just by concentrating.’ I clench my fists, squeeze my eyes shut and strain as if I’m pushing out a three-day-old turd.
‘No good,’ she murmurs.
‘I hate you,’ I hiss, drumming my heels on the floor to drown her out. ‘Hate you.’
Trust the old witch to hurl water over my budding joy the second I’m through the door. I’ve had it up to here. Never was a fellow so cursed with a family of interfering busybodies. Every last one of them with nothing better on their minds than keeping a good man down, that good man being myself.
I’ll play the dutiful son if that’s what it takes, but I’ve not the slightest intention of obedience. I can’t help it if I was born with wheels on my backside. If God didn’t mean for me to be King of the Moonlit Hours, He wouldn’t have granted me their dominion, would He?
Tonight, the curtain rose on a boy. At night’s close, I am a man, or as near as makes no difference. No more nonsense. I can’t hold Edie’s hand forever. She’ll have to hold it for herself. I have my own life to lead. No cage can hold me, nor will chiding clip these wings.
EDIE
1901–1902
It’s as well that I’ve discovered a source of strength, for I need every scrap. Although Nana is kinder, Ma is not.
Perhaps it is the poison of her hatred that infects me. My flesh crawls with ants that burrow fire beneath the skin. I stare at myself in the looking glass till I’m blue in the face but neither see nor find anything to explain it, not so much as a pimple. Yet I sicken. I hasten so often to the privy I may as well live there, crouched double, retching. I’m convinced that one day I’ll turn inside out, I heave so hard. For all my labour, I bring up nothing.
I seek understanding from my grandmother, who mutters about growing pains in such a way that I’m embarrassed for having asked. As for my hair being cut as soon it gets to my chin, I assume it is one of Ma’s inexplicable punishments to shear me as I sleep. There is no other explanation.
However, I shall not be overthrown. Not by this, nor by any other tribulation. And, as I enter my fifteenth year I begin to rebel.
In common with all of my station, I finished my schooling at the age of fourteen. The teacher bade us farewell with the words knowledge is power. It planted a seed that buds into a determination to pursue answers to my questions between the pages of a book. As the months pass, that desire intensifies into a hunger that drives me, trembling, to the King Street library.
The place is as grand as a temple; far too grand for the likes of me – or so sneers Ma’s voice in the chambers of my brain. I tick myself off. If I am going to become my own woman and not merely cower in her shadow, I have to start somewhere. I climb the steps to the colonnaded portico, a precarious courage carrying me through the doors and into the reading room.
I tiptoe between the ranks of shelves, tasting the scent of old paper mingled with morocco leather and pipe smoke. I don’t dare touch anything. My bravery trickles away. I am on the verge of bolting when a finely dressed matron approaches me.
‘Can I help you?’
I tug my shawl tightly across my bosom and stare at the floor, a jigsaw of wooden rectangles set in a
herringbone pattern.
‘Are you seeking any particular volume?’ she continues.
I shake my head a fraction.
‘Perhaps if you inform me whither your interests lead?’
I wish I knew the answer. I wait for her to hurl me on to the street with a flea in my ear.
‘Do you like stories?’ she asks.
I raise my eyes, startled by her kindly tone.
‘Hmm,’ she muses. ‘Mythology, I think.’
She sweeps away, navigating her way through the maze with mysterious confidence. I cling to her skirts for fear of becoming hopelessly lost. She comes to a halt before a shelf that looks pretty much the same as the others, runs a slim finger along the spines, pauses and plucks out a small volume.
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Tales of Greece and Rome. A good place to commence one’s exploration, don’t you think?’
She holds the book in my direction, clearly intending for me to take it. It is too wonderful. I extend my hand, more than half expecting her to snatch back the treasure and cry that she was only joking and I must leave immediately. She does not. Instead, she motions me towards a table the breadth of a coal barge and invites me to sit. I obey, unable to take my eyes off this wondrous creature.
She places the book upon the table and leaves me alone with it. It takes a few moments before I am valiant enough to touch it, a few more before I am able to lift the cover. It does not fly into pieces when I do so and gradually my fortitude re-exerts itself.
The first story is entitled ‘The Fall of Icarus’. It boasts a frontispiece of a young man, stark naked save for a towel draped around his hips. I glance over my shoulder, but no one else has noticed this scandalous display. His arms sprout feathers, his toes point to the earth and, very wonderfully indeed, he is flying.
I dive into the story: a wild tale about wicked kings, men with bull’s heads and Icarus locked up in a tower. The words convey me to his castle as surely as if it has sprung up around me. I smell the breeze floating above the waves, feel the stirring of plumes upon Icarus’s shoulders. The air teases, calling him to the realm of the sky. I yearn to go with him. He clambers on to the windowsill. I stand at his side. He spreads his arms. I spread mine. He jumps and I jump also.
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