Salt of Their Blood

by Gerald Wixey

  Ron’s whole outlook developed from his time as a prisoner-of-war and he swore all of the time about fucking Germans, Russians, the guards, the cold, the food, women – or lack of them. As he drank, I felt the hate flow out from him, like waves on a surfer’s beach at ebb tide.

  I turned and headed back to the living room, feeling his rodent’s eyes boring away at my back. Shirley somehow kept one eye on the mirror and monitored me with the other. One elegant eyebrow questioned away.

  I said, ‘Yep – he’s sat at the bar.’

  All the time I kept thinking, why did she need me to look? After all, Ron was a fully paid up member of the after-work drinking club.

  Shirley said, ‘I give up.’ Then she mouthed ‘bastard’ into the mirror and gave a tiny shake of her head. ‘He told me he was going to fix it this afternoon.’

  Shirley sighed and then resumed her master class, using every trick in the make-up artist’s arsenal. I stood behind her; Shirley’s eyes never left the mirror, a frenzy of darting hands and brushes, tweezers and a black pencil.

  ‘Are you going out with mum?’ I don’t know why I said that – they went out together a couple of nights a week, come rain or shine. Shirley’s brazen allure preceded her down the street, like a sports car with its exhaust blowing, a perfect partner for mum’s immaculate, conservative chic.

  I detected a hint of impatience in her voice, a little sigh just before she said, ‘Pictures.’

  Perfume dabbed on the wrist, rub the wrists together, smell the wrists. I watched her lips twist into a frustrated grimace – that’ll have to do.

  I said, ‘You should get a job in a film studio.’ Shirley frowned and I tried to explain, ‘As a makeup artist – you’re very good.’

  The phantom of a smile as she stared in the mirror. ‘I’m good at turning mutton into lamb… is that what you mean?’

  Then she laughed and her whole face lit up. She had the most gorgeous smile and you could see why every man in town loved her. I didn’t know what she meant, mutton dressed as lamb? But I laughed anyway.

  At that moment, my old man stuck his head around the door, stared at Shirley and barked, ‘I don’t know why you don’t just move over here – save all that commuting.’

  ‘Hmm.’ She adjusted her light-coloured, tight blue cardigan, lining the vee up – not enough cleavage I guessed, because Shirley loosened another button and lined it up again.

  ‘Perfect,’ my old man said, his face looking like it did just before he waded into his huge Sunday dinner. ‘Just perfect. Do you want an early one?’ He stared into the mirror. Shirley, had total concentration, curling her eyelashes obviously demanded focus. Then just the tremor of a headshake; his gaze fell to the floor and dad said, ‘Please yourself.’

  Heavy traffic tonight – as soon as my old man went back to his customers, Wyn came in the other door. He stared at Shirley and his eyebrows arched. His head twisted a touch and he rolled his shoulders – Wyn stared on, a fox out on the prowl who had suddenly stumbled across a solitary chicken far from its coop. Shirley must have been aware of his presence, his staring and his closeness, but she never wavered. He gazed at her and she looked unblinking at herself in the mirror.

  Then Wyn said something wrong and he never made mistakes. He walked up close behind her and said. ‘Shirley. Well, well, the sumptuous Shirley Anne Mathews and you look divine. It’s been so long. How are you?’

  Her name wasn’t Mathews, it was Catmore; everyone knew that – except Wyn, apparently. Shirley never contradicted him though, just mumbled something that I could barely make out, ‘Bad pennies, bad pennies always turn up… perhaps you should just stay out of my life.’

  She said it like a ventriloquist; nothing on her face moved, not a muscle. I couldn’t make out if she was angry, or just pretending to be angry. Her glower suggested the former, but it never bothered Wyn.

  He just smiled and said, ‘We both know that you don’t mean that. How’s that husband of yours? How’s Ron?’

  Ron!

  He knew Ron as well. This wasn’t possible, was it? I’d seen my uncle a few times in my short life. Mostly over the Christmas period and I knew for a fact that they’d never met.

  ***

  Friday evening was a good time. All of the adults, were either indoors or in the pub; watching T.V or getting drunk with my old man. A good time to rampage around our little universe. By the time I eventually wandered outside, Declan was already lying next to the dog, under the apple tree. We kicked the football for a few minutes, until a hissing puncture in the ball and boredom set in quicker than a fire in a match factory.

  ‘Go and get the gun,’ Declan said this, despite his mum bollocking me and smacking him around the ear the last time we played with it. We used to shoot each other on the back of the legs. I turned on my heel and went for the gun anyway.

  Two minutes later I walked towards Declan carrying a battered air pistol. In our fevered imaginings, it looked like a real Luger. I pulled a small box out of my pocket and said, ‘Two hundred pellets.’

  I took one out and placed it in the barrel, snapped it closed and pointed the gun at my sister’s cat. At the last second, I made an adjustment to my aim and fired. A sluggish air pellet came lethargically out with just about enough energy to exit the barrel and drifted aimlessly for twenty yards before affecting a soft landing.

  ‘Can I shoot the cat?’

  I ignored Declan and we tried a few shots onto each others’ shorts, then we upped the ante and started shooting the backs of our legs. It felt like a flick of someone’s finger on bare skin – a split second’s discomfort, and then nothing.

  We used the box of pellets, best part of one hundred each onto the backs of our legs.

  I glanced towards the garden wall, just a quick glance to see if Declan’s mum, with her freckled, hook-nosed ugliness, was giving us the kestrel death stare. Bernice squawked and shrieked and threatened to drag me up to the police station every time I shot her son. I lined the back of Declan’s leg up as a bulky figure strolled across the pub car park and pointed in my direction. Don Wilson, resplendent in his crisp, sharp uniform, shouted. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘He’s shooting me,’ came Declan’s obvious response.

  The policeman sighed, glanced at me and said. ‘I should tell your dad.’

  Go on then.

  My old man never got on too well with the local constabulary and an incendiary interlude would liven up the evening somewhat. I remembered the last meeting between them: my old man had told the policeman that you didn’t need a license for an air pistol. Don had raised his eyebrows and looked surprised that my old man knew something about the law. It didn’t surprise me; dad knew a lot about the law, he just chose to disregard it most of the time.

  Don pointed at us. ‘Don’t shoot Declan again, or I’ll have to confiscate it.’

  I hated Don, so did the dog who growled away, the whites of his eyes showing, his hackles crew-cut vertical.

  Don growled back, ‘And keep that thing under control – he’s a bloody menace.’

  I smiled and rested my hand on Dudley’s gigantic shoulder; having a bloody menace for a dog was brilliant.

  Declan fired imaginary pellets at Don’s disappearing back. We went over and sat on the wall by the road and fired more pellets at the passing cars. We sat there shooting cars and cats and each other, as the sun dipped lower into the sky and the day began to glide away. A few broken clouds became the dark red embers of a fire caught up in the last of the sunset. On Friday night, we stayed out later. Bernice had joined Tommy in the pub by now. Declan, like me, had his usual Friday late-night pass.

  We stared at each other.

  What to do now?

  I nodded towards Wyn’s sleek Jaguar, parked alongside my old man’s battle-scarred Ford Pilot. Wyn left a decent gap between the cars, as if parking too close might induce something infectious to jump across from the mass-produced beast and contaminate the deli
cate constitution of the four-litre creature. It wasn’t the car that moved me so much as the delicate aroma from the Jaguar’s fumes that contrasted starkly with over-rich mixture that came from the Ford’s twin exhausts.

  We moved camp and sat between the two cars. Declan twisted his head from side to side as he stared at the distorted image of himself in the polished paintwork. I nudged him and pointed at two figures coming out from the back door of the pub. They waved their arms about like a pair of hyperactive tic-tac men. Two familiar figures, both short men, but that’s where the similarities ended. Jack the Scribe, a small dapper newspaper-man and Ron. Jack whispered, Ron shouted. Jack, neat and tidy; Ron, messy in his oil-encrusted, machine shop attire, oily, steel-toecapped boots and greasy boiler suit.

  We held our breaths only a few feet away from the antagonists. I clearly heard Jack’s hushed tones. ‘This has to stop.’

  ‘Well-respected man like you.’ Ron jabbed his finger into Jack’s chest, then held the palm of the other hand out. ‘Give me.’

  ‘I should tell Harry.’ I thought Jack whispered this as a last resort. But a good one I thought, as my old man tended to punch anyone who upset a friend of his.

  Ron’s head pulled back, like a boxer sensing a stiff left-hand jab coming his way. He frowned for a few seconds. Resolve restored, he said, ‘Cough up.’ He pointed his nicotine-stained finger at Jack. ‘You tell him, I’ll tell the world.’

  Jack sighed and shook his head. Then he pulled a ten-shilling note out and passed it across the short distance to Ron’s outstretched hand. Jack hissed, ‘Get your beer money from someone else and leave me alone.’

  Ron slipped the money into the breast pocket of his boiler suit, snapped the brass popper stud shut and nodded. At that moment, Declan stood up, gun in hand; the two men did a synchronised double-take.

  ‘Where did you come from?’

  Declan pointed the gun at Ron. I held my breath; the boy in possession of our gun could be irrationally hard to predict most of the time and like me, he despised Ron. Declan waved the gun under his nose, the man’s rat eyes bulging cross-eyed down the barrel of the pistol.

  He stuttered a few words, ‘You, you, you little turd, I’ll…’

  Declan pulled the trigger and the pop of escaping compressed air rushed out of the short barrel. Ron collapsed back into the privet hedge. He went back at forty-five degrees to be well supported by the lush privet hedge. In fact, the all-embracing hedge wrapped him up and Ron was unable to extricate himself from the bear-hugging foliage. He wrestled an arm free and jabbed his finger our way, moved his lips but nothing came out.

  ‘Declan,’ Jack said, surprised and for once, lost for words.

  ‘It wasn’t loaded,’ came a reasoned reply from the sharpshooter.

  Jack’s mouth turned down. ‘That doesn’t make it all right.’

  Declan sat back down, his loose bottom lip hanging down and the scene fell silent. I joined him on the floor, two blank-faced choirboys. Ron struggled to break free from the all-embracing hedge. He rocked back and forth, trying to create the momentum necessary for escape. I thought he might swallow his cigarette. Finally he came up onto the balls of his feet with more than enough impetus and fell forwards onto the bonnet of the Jaguar. Declan jumped up and scurried behind me, expecting a cuff around the head at least.

  ‘Careful with Uncle Wyn’s Jag,’ I said, concerned for both the car and Ron’s health if Wyn found him sprawled across the expensive and expansive bonnet. I suppose it was me mentioning Uncle Wyn’s name; Ron’s head went back as if a strong-smelling salt was shoved under his nose. He stared at the car and glanced across to Jack. His eyes flicked towards us and ended up back on the car. Ron pointed at me again and tried to speak. He gave up and turned with his usual jerking, twitching, walk towards his allotment.

  Jack came up close, tipped his head a touch and sighed.

  Declan said, ‘Were you paying him? Does he work for you?’

  Jack shook his head, but said nothing for a few seconds. Finally, ‘He was sat in a hole on a Dunkirk beach, being shot at by Germans for three days.’ Jack started to massage his cheeks between finger and thumb. ‘Try not to upset him too much – it’s not been easy for him, you know.’

  I said, ‘Dad said he was shot up the arse running away.’

  We tried not to laugh, but I noticed Declan’s shoulders start to tremble and then it burst from us, like a pair of choreographed pressure cookers blowing at the same time. The gales of laughter blew Jack’s way and the trace of a smile on his face suggested that somehow we had balanced the scales a touch.

  Declan lost interest and stared into the polished paintwork of Wyn’s car, pulling faces again.

  ‘Did you owe Ron money?’ I said finally under control and asking an innocent enough question.

  ‘Something like that.’ Jack’s expression was as closed as a safe door by now. ‘How long has Wyn been here?’

  ‘Not long – Dad said he’s stopping all summer.’

  ‘Is he now?’ Jack massaged his chin with thumb and forefinger and walked back inside the pub.

  ‘What are we doing now?’

  Spare me; questions, questions.

  ‘Can we go and watch Ron?’

  I nodded and we sat under the apple tree and looked across at Ron on his allotment. He worked the soil with his typical, frenzied, jerky movements, head down, digging for a few minutes and then the rodent’s three hundred and sixty degree scan for enemies. He spent all of his time on high alert. Not tonight, he appeared to be miming, his spade never entering the well-tilled soil, hovering in the air as Ron stared towards the bus station.

  ‘What’s he doing?’

  I held my hand up in front of Declan’s face – shut up!

  We stared as Ron went to his shed and carefully placed his spade inside. Then he locked the padlock and did his furtive scan. Ron waited for a few seconds and the crept over towards the bus station. The emergency exit was always open throughout the summer and he sneaked through. It was fifteen minutes and almost dark before he sneaked out again.

  Ron was up to something again; his usual thieving tricks. My old man had him pinned up against a wall the other day. Dad shouted and called him a thieving, blackmailing little bastard. I asked dad later what Ron had done. My old man just told me to mind my own effing business.

  Ron Catmore frightened me the way he skulked around. A few weeks ago, he had wired his wrought iron allotment fence up to a couple of heavy-duty lorry batteries. The dog wandered along, cocked his leg and jumped two feet in the air as the usual relaxed piss turned into stabbing, piercing, albeit fleeting electrocution.

  Ron’s yellow-toothed grin turn into a cackle. He told the dog to fuck off and piss on his own garden.

  ***

  I couldn’t sleep. My uncle, Declan shooting Ron and being threatened by a policeman again. All these people crashed around inside my head, but it was Ron that always took centre stage; mixed with the humidity, I thrashed and twisted around in bed. A diesel engine throbbed away and I thought the mechanic whistled something, although the tune was indistinct.

  Then those five words.

  ‘What are you doing… Noooooooooo!’

  Chapter 4

  1972

  I lifted the muslin curtain, rain… Nothing more certain, raining and going to hammer down, set in for the day – the week – probably. With a wind wholly in proportion, a branch-cracking, reed-bending, tree-twisting gale. The rain drummed on against the window, a dense low sky as slow-moving clouds rolled north eastwards, a grey day all the way until dusk, a never ending greyness. How appropriate, given the turmoil that gripped me; the weather in perfect balance with the state of my mind.

  I had slept only fitfully; the unearthing of Declan’s body distressed me and generated spectral images of how his face would look now, after years underwater. Would the few trout that lived there have nibbled the flesh back to the bone? I kept thinking back to the moment l
ast night when Jack had told me about the discovery. Mum came through straight away, noticed me and her face shut down. Uneasy with bad news, she came up to me and said, ‘I’m really sorry, I suppose there can’t be any doubt, can there?’

  Mum glanced at Jack, who raised an eyebrow and then nodded, mum brought her steely gaze back towards me. ‘I just tried to ring Tommy, forgot they were away. I even rang Bridget, I thought she might know where Kathy was. Kathy answered the phone for some reason.’

  ‘Feeding the cat I expect.’ I’ve said some stupid things and that ranked right up there, sensing a roomful of furrowed brows, I tried to regain some composure. ‘Did you tell her?’

  Mum shook her head, ‘Don’t be silly! I asked her how she was; Kathy seemed preoccupied somehow.’

  Dad slid a gin and tonic towards her and silence shrouded the group once more. My imagination ran amok again, but mum kept staring my way. Were her eyes asking that question?

  Why did Kathy ring here the other day?

  Fortunately, a distraction; Wyn put his hand on my shoulder and said. ‘Run down and get Shirley for me, my boy. I’ll drive her into Oxford; she needs to tell Kathy.’

  ‘I’ll take her.’ You see, my selfish nature demanded that I tell Kathy the bad news, or at least be close by when she was told. Fortunately the others thought that I was just being a Good Samaritan, doing the decent thing and taking Shirley into Oxford, instead of being my normal petulant self.

  ‘OK.’ Wyn said, ‘I’d feel better if you did it anyway – I don’t know Kathy that well.’

  Mum started to talk to me as if I was the same age as when Declan vanished. ‘And you just make sure that Shirley, or her son breaks the bad news to her.’

  Her son.

  Mum still refused to acknowledge Kenny’s existence. I couldn’t work it out whether Shirley ever picked up on mum’s ambivalence.