Silent Voices

by Gary McMahon

  Brendan kneels beside the sheet of plywood. There are already holes drilled along one edge, perhaps construction joints for the piece of furniture the wooden panel was built to be part of. He threads one end of the rope through two of the holes, and then loops the rope over itself, securing it tightly. He tests this knot, too, second-guessing his own work. The knot holds.

  “Who’s going up there?” Simon looks up, at the rickety structure they’ve created across two sturdy branches.

  Brendan drops the plywood onto the ground. “I think the strongest one should climb up there. Marty, you’re easily stronger than us two, so you can go up. You’ll need to grab the edge of the wood and try to push it into place on the frame. It’ll be really hard, but me or Simon wouldn’t have a chance of doing it.” He holds out his skinny arms, as if to underline his point.

  “Okay.” Marty runs to the base of the tree and leaps up, catching hold of a low branch. He seems happy to be physical again.

  “We’ve gotta be careful,” says Simon. “We don’t want to get hurt. This thing’s got sharp edges.”

  Brendan glances at the wood, nods. “Yeah. Do it slowly.”

  “Okay, I’m ready. Throw one end of the rope up here!” Marty’s arm is dangling, his fingers grasping. “Hurry up.”

  Brendan grabs the loose end of the rope, gathers in a good length, and then stands directly beneath the platform. He swings the rope, squints as he takes aim, and then throws the end upwards. It barely lifts above his head before falling back down to earth.

  “Bugger,” says Brendan, his body going loose and his bottom lip pushed out in a sulky half-pout.

  “Don’t be daft,” says Simon, bending down to pick up a large stone. “We need to make the end heavy. Here... tie the rope around this.”

  Brendan takes the stone and forms the end of the rope into a tight knot around the heavy object. “It’s a monkey’s fist,” he says, grinning. “Old sailors used them as weapons when they had fights. I read it in a book.” He swings the rope, the heavy end whistling through the air. “God, I bet it would hurt if you got someone on the head with it.”

  “Throw it up!” Marty’s arm is still dangling. It looks like the tail of some weird animal.

  Still swinging the rope, Brendan takes a single step back and hurls the stone into the branches. Marty’s hand clutches, misses, and then clutches again; the rope wraps around his forearm, and his fingers close quickly over the rough hemp. “Got it!” he shouts. “I’ll sling it over this branch.”

  “Yay!” Brendan jumps up and down on the spot.

  “Yes!” Even Simon is caught up in the moment, thrilled by this small success.

  There’s a pause while Marty removes the stone, and then it drops at Simon’s feet. Then the end of the rope comes down out of the tree, twisting like a snake. Simon grabs the rope and guides it down. Then he and Brendan start to take up the slack.

  “Okay,” says Simon, loudly. “We’re going to start pulling.”

  “Tally-ho!” Marty screams from his spot on the branch, his voice funny and high-pitched.

  Laughing, the other two boys begin to pull on the rope. The plywood panel shifts, turns, spins, and then slowly begins to rise. The weight isn’t as much as they’d guessed, but it’s an awkward method of lifting a rectangular sheet, and the exertion starts to tell on them.

  “It’s coming! I can see it.” Marty is excited. He is in his element.

  Simon grits his teeth and concentrates on making his pulling action steady and rhythmical. He doesn’t want the timber to jolt or judder. It needs to rise as smoothly as they can make it; and if they try to rush what whey are doing, somebody might get hurt.

  The panel swings as it rises, and the two boys on the ground keep their heads down, staying low so that it won’t take off the top of their skulls. As soon as it is hanging at a level far enough above them for safety, they straighten up, planting their feet and keeping a tight grip on the rope. Simon is at the rear, and he makes sure that he gathers the loose end as more of the rope is fed through his hands, forming a coil near his left foot.

  “I’ve got it!” Marty sounds as if he is shouting through clenched teeth.

  “Brace yourself.” Simon sets his body, leaning backwards.

  “This is working...” Brendan peers up into the branches, trying to get a good view.

  “Careful,” says Simon, as he feels the rope tighten in his hands. The panel drops a few inches, then, as he takes the weight, it is suspended for a moment above them. “Bren... I can’t hold it... it’s gonna drop!” But Brendan is staring at the plywood panel, as if he is seeing something magical.

  Inevitably, the panel drops. The rope skids through Simon's fingers, burning his skin, and the panel plummets to the ground. He falls back, stumbling but not quite going down, and Brendan doesn’t move. He just watches as the panel drops towards him, whistling as it moves through the space.

  “Bren!”

  Brendan begins to turn, and it is this which saves him from taking a blow to the head. Instead, the panel slices across his right forearm, taking off a swathe of skin and drawing blood, as it flashes past him. Brendan falls down, grabbing his wounded arm, and opens his mouth to scream.

  Simon moves quickly, running to his friend. He goes down onto his knees and inspects the arm. Blood is running freely, and the skin has peeled away from wrist to elbow. The cut is not deep, but it is messy; Simon thinks he’ll probably need stitches.

  Brendan is wailing, but he’s trying not to cry. His eyes are wide. His face is pale.

  “Bloody hell,” Marty is at Simon’s side. “Bloody, bloody... bloody hell.”

  “Are you okay? Can you move?” Simon is afraid to touch his friend’s arm, in case he makes things worse.

  “Y-yeah... I can move.” Brendan sits up. His arm is coated in blood. The blood looks bright, like movie blood. That’s all Simon is able to think.

  “You need to go home. Or to a hospital.” Marty starts to move, bending down to help the injured boy to his feet.

  “No!” Brendan shouts the word. It is enough to stop the other two boys in their tracks. For a moment, they can’t move, can’t breathe. They just stand there and stare down at the third Amigo.

  “You’re hurt, mate. This is finished.” Simon feels a twinge of regret as he speaks. He doesn’t want this to be over, not any of it: the day, the den-building, the summer. He wants to stay ten years old forever, staving off an uncertain future by playing in the trees on Beacon Green.

  “No,” says Brendan, but softer this time. “I’ll be fine. It’s just scraped off some skin. Once the bleeding stops, we can start again.”

  Simon feels a sense of admiration towards his friend. A choice has been made. Blood has been spilled. Like a sacrifice. Brendan’s inner strength is revealed.

  “We can’t stop now. We have to finish what we started.” Brendan’s face is still pale, but his eyes are on fire. “We’ve gotta finish this.”

  For a second, perhaps even less, nobody knows what Brendan means. Then, like water flowing through a crack in a dam, reality pours in and they realise that he means the den, the work they have been doing all day.

  Now that the moment is broken, the boys feel able to move again. Marty takes off his T-shirt. “Here,” he says. “Use this as a bandage.”

  Simon turns around and stares at Marty’s body. The boy already has muscles: his arms are hard; there is the vague suggestion of a future six-pack airbrushed across his stomach. There are fresh cigarette burns alongside the old, white scars on his upper arms and in the soft skin of his elbow joints.

  He takes the shirt and slings it over one shoulder. He takes a handkerchief from his pocket – the one his grandmother bought him the Christmas before she died; he always carries it with him, but is never quite able to say why – and starts to scrub the blood off Brendan’s arm. The bleeding has slowed, almost stopped.

  Once the arm is relatively clean, Simon uses Marty’s T-shirt to cover the wound, which under clos
e inspection isn’t as bad as it looks. He ties it tightly, remembering from a film or a book that pressure will stop a wound from bleeding. It was probably in a war film. He loves war films. So he pretends that this is a combat situation, and he is treating a fallen comrade. In order to continue with the fight, the soldier has to get back on his feet, and it is his responsibility to make sure that happens.

  “Are you sure you’re okay, soldier?” He stares into his friend’s eyes, looking for the cracks in his wall of courage.

  Brendan nods. That’s all he does. He does not speak. Then, slowly, he gets back to his feet and walks over to the plywood panel, begins to inspect it for damage. “It’s fine,” he says without turning around. “Everything’s fine.”

  But for some reason Simon doesn’t believe that. Deep down inside, like a big bass drum sounding some terrible beat, he feels certain that nothing will ever be fine again.

  PART TWO

  Localised Necrosis

  “But you’re not going to be the one to save me.”

  – Marty Rivers

  CHAPTER NINE

  MARTY POURED HIMSELF a drink and waited for the phone to stop ringing. He glanced over, at the telephone table, and smiled. He knew who it was. It was her – Melanie. She wouldn’t leave him alone.

  He sipped his cold beer and crossed the room, stood by the phone. He reached out and laid a hand on the tabletop, only inches from the black plastic device. He wasn’t going to pick it up, but this felt like teasing, so he allowed his hand to creep across the desk and tickle the edge of the phone.

  The ringing finally stopped.

  His recorded message kicked in: “It’s me. I’m not here, or I can’t be bothered to answer. Leave me a message.” Then there was a short, high-pitched bleep.

  “Hi, Marty. It’s me. Again. I’ve tried you on your mobile and didn’t get an answer, so thought you might be at home. Am I going to see you tonight? I mean, if I’m not, you could at least do me the favour of telling me. I’m sitting here wondering why the fuck I persist with you. I get nothing back, so why should I keep giving you all this attention?”

  Marty took another mouthful of beer. He didn’t feel a thing as he listened to Melanie’s whining voice. He supposed that he ought to feel at least something – lust, irritation, interest, resignation. But, no; he was empty. The girl inspired no emotion. She was just another warm, keen body on a cold night, a name and number in his mobile phone contact list. Nothing more than that.

  When she ended the call he reached out and pressed the button to delete the message. She was history, this girl – he never wanted to see her again. Even the promise of her trim body, and the things she liked to do when she’d had a few too many Bacardi Breezers, held little appeal.

  There would always be another one just like her. Women like Melanie were drawn to men like him; they couldn’t help themselves. It was a kind of self-abuse, the desperate way they clung to the kind of bloke who lifted heavy weights, took drugs, and battled in back alleys when the pubs were closed. Melanie and her ilk were addicted to Hard Men – they were like groupies following a famous rock band around the world, all too willing to lower their morals and spread their legs in return for the slightest crumb of attention, even if that attention was ultimately negative. He had never been able to understand the mentality, but had exploited it his entire life. He’d taken hundreds of these women to bed, and not one of them had ever touched him inside, where it mattered. None of them had inspired within him anything more than a blunt craving for sex.

  Marty was not an evil man. He’d done many bad things, yes, but he told himself that he was not inherently a bad person. He was intelligent – unlike a lot of his peers – and he was self-aware enough to realise the error of his ways, but none of this insight had ever stopped him from doing what he did best.

  It was too late for Marty to change; the world had moved on around him, but he’d been stuck here in one place for twenty years. His chances were all used up. There was nothing left for him but how things were now, how they’d always been, and how they would remain until the day he died.

  “Sorry, Melanie,” he whispered. “But you’re not going to be the one to save me.” He smiled; he drank; he turned away from the phone.

  Marty walked over to the window and looked out at the Baltic Flour Mill and the river beyond. Gateshead had changed a lot since his youth, when he’d cross the river to buy drugs, fight in amateur boxing bouts in local working men’s clubs, and crack skulls on a Saturday night in the rough pubs along Low Fell before heading off into Newcastle to catch a late club and score with some orange-tanned slapper from Walker or Byker, or perhaps a single mother from Fenham or Benwell.

  Yes, things had changed a lot around here.

  Redevelopment money had turned the old flour mill into a magnet for the region’s artists, and people from all across the country came to visit the gallery and spend their money in the pubs and restaurants along the Quayside on both sides of the Tyne. All that cash, it meant good times for a lot of people – especially the criminal fraternity. And Marty had always been well enough connected to skim a lot off the top. His old friend Francis Boater had introduced him to a few people, and they’d vouched for him to others higher up the food chain, until Marty had become part of their world.

  He’d fought for them, these people. He had entertained them by knocking men unconscious in social club boxing rings, and then, when he was unable to get a license because of his injuries, in abandoned warehouses after midnight. It made his wallet fat and his body hard; he was a born fighter, and there was always someone ready to exploit that in a man, and money to be made off the back of it.

  He turned away from the window, the sound of skidding rubber tyres ringing in his ears. The soft thump of impact, the sound of breaking glass, a girl’s screams... it had happened a long time ago, but the accident had changed his life. The girl – Sally – had died from her injuries, and he had been damaged enough that the British Boxing Board of Control had revoked his boxing licence on medical grounds.

  His fists, however, did not recognise the board’s authority. So he’d carried on fighting. It was all he knew, what he was. If he peeled back his skin, there’d be steel beneath. He was solid all the way through, and no man had ever put him down.

  He stared at himself in the mirror above the fireplace. He was not wearing his shirt – he’d been ironing a clean one when the telephone rang. He looked at the muscles in his shoulders, the toughened pectorals, and the solid slab of his upper abdominals. He had avoided the crappy fashion tattoos that blighted the flesh of most of his peers. He didn’t have a six-pack; didn’t need one, in his game. Six-packs and absurdly defined guns were for gym bunnies. Fighters simply needed to be ironclad.

  The old scars along the inside of his biceps were clearly visible in the lamplight. The ones on his wrists he saw every time he took off his watch. Faded burn marks, from the tips of lighted cigarettes. When he was younger, he had become fascinated with body conditioning. If he toughened his body to accept and absorb pain, then no one would ever hurt him. Not his father, not the men he fought for money, not the bastards he battled for fun.

  Nobody.

  “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men...” He whispered the old nursery rhyme, staring at his lips as they formed the words; “...couldn’t put Humpty together again.” It was his mantra, the way he summoned strength from the dismal depths of his rage. Memories bristled behind his eyes, threatening to spill out into the mirror. Fear pushed the glass, like a hand pressing against it from the other side.

  He turned away from the mirror and went to the ironing board, forcing away his dark thoughts and the snippets of bitter recollections. He finished ironing his shirt, watching the muted television. There was some kind of talent show on, but he wasn’t really interested. He just watched the bright, eager faces as they scrolled across the screen, mouths open, he supposed, in song, but they looked to Marty more like silent screams.

  He swit
ched off the iron and left it to cool, and then put on his shirt. Feeling calmer now, more in control, he enjoyed the feel of the warm material on his skin. He turned off the television and went over to the iPod docking station. He put on his favourite playlist and hit ‘shuffle’. It was the one with all the old blues singers: Aretha, Billie, Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith. Most of the people he mixed with liked drum ’n’ bass, techno, or stomping euro dance anthems, but not him. Marty liked the blues, especially when they were sung by a strong female voice. He knew the blues well.

  Billie Holiday sang about Strange Fruit and Marty Rivers closed his eyes. He thought about those black bodies swinging from the trees, and then, as if a channel had been opened, his head filled with second-hand images of death: fleshless Jewish prisoners, liberated and staggering out through the sagging gates of Nazi death camps; the hacked-up victims of machete-wielding Rwandan death squads; a young Russian soldier beheaded by laughing Chechen rebels; nineteen-year-old British squaddies blown apart by Taliban devices in the deserts and mountains of Afghanistan. Bullets strafed the space inside his skull, and he accepted them, knowing that he had spent his entire life dodging the same shots. He lived below the line of gunfire, always ducking and moving, bobbing and weaving, trying to remain in one piece.

  The Holiday song came to an end and was replaced by Janis Joplin. Her broken heart flooded the speakers.

  Marty left the room and went into the master bedroom. He wasn’t quite ready to treat this place as his own. He’d only been living here for a couple of months, and was due to move out when the owner returned from New York in another couple of months’ time. He was house-sitting; none of this stuff was his. Even the iPod was borrowed, and he’d downloaded the music on his landlord’s computer. Marty owned nothing, and in turn nothing owned him.