Salt of Their Blood

by Gerald Wixey

  ‘You’ve done it this time’ I said, breathlessly trying to talk and run at the same time. ‘You’ve killed him, we’re for it!’

  But a voice from behind indicated life.

  ‘Come back here.’ The rasping voice kept pace with our running, relentlessly coming after us. ‘I know who you are, come back here, I know who you are.’

  We ran until we reached the edge of the allotments, pulling up sharply when I saw mum and my old man the other side of the fence, sitting in deck-chairs with coffee and newspapers in the garden.

  ‘What have you two been up to?’ My old man stared across the wrought-iron fence as two became four; Patrick and Declan completed a set of runaways. Dad’s mouth opened, a follow-up question put on hold as we all heard a deep wheezing noise inexorably approaching us, like a low velocity bouncing bomb coming across the allotments.

  Then Ron’s breathless denunciation. ‘Harry, that little sod’s out of control and thank fuck that maniac dog is going to be put down.’ Beneath all the slime, Ron’s face looked pained when he saw mum, ‘Sorry Peggy, didn’t see you there.’

  A suspicious look on mum’s face, a furious countenance on my old man’s. Ron moved quicker than I thought possible, despite bearing more than a passing resemblance to an asthmatic accordion. I turned and smelt him from ten feet away. The dog began barking, the stench too much, deeply offending his sensitive olfactory system.

  Dad didn’t know whether to punch, laugh or shout. He shouted, ‘What the…’

  ‘Harry – those little fuckers nearly killed me.’

  Ron’s wheezing suddenly stopped, anger replaced by tears, his voice breaking with passion, ‘Look at my fucking allotment.’ Furious, he pointed at me and spat the words out, a full stop after each word. ‘You. Fucking. Evil. Little. Fucking. Bastard.’

  Please don’t have a heart attack.

  ‘You little fucker – a year’s work… Fucker, you fucker.’

  Mum calmed him down and eventually convinced him of my innocence.

  He wouldn’t do that Ron – look at the little angel.

  My old man fetched him a four-pint jug of bitter and he sat in the garden, a beer-drinking tar baby. A chocolate covered hamster.

  After he’d gone, my old man looked down at a chastened Dudley and an anxious me, ‘You pair of goons, who wrecked his allotment? Did you do it?’

  I shook my head, Dudley looked across at me, oops!

  ‘If I find out it was you…’ He brought the back of his hand up, ‘And as for you.’ Pointing a stubby finger at the dog, ‘You’re a useless fucker!’ He gave us a withering stare and left. The dog’s head came up slowly, watching dad’s disappearing back. I turned back and stared down at Dudley.

  ‘Got away with that one.’ The dog’s mouth opened, his ears went back and the eyes narrowed. I waited and then his tongue came out, laughing again, ‘There’s the cat over there.’

  His ears stiffened and nose bristled, where? He sniffed for his quarry, panting and waiting for the word, ‘Go on, Dudley.’ Barking, whining and howling, as he closed on a startled prey – it had been a good day.

  ***

  As the holiday drew relentlessly into its last week, my old man’s grizzling levelled out onto a groaning, bumpy plateau of moaning. Inheriting his state of permanent unease meant any little thing bothered me; my old man’s constant mantra – someone will fix him one day – preyed and snuck into my head, agitating the whole situation.

  But Wyn always appeared at breakfast, cheerful and undamaged. ‘Good morning, young man.’ He ruffled my curls, ‘It’s lovely outside, what are you doing today – still running away from the Waffen SS?’

  I shook my head and said, ‘We went to see the cinema last night, saw the Bandit of Zhobe.’

  We had decided to become merciless Indian brigands jumping continents, away from war-torn Europe; unsure if the dog should be a horse or camel. I glanced uncertainly Wyn’s way, pleased to see him happy and in one piece.

  ‘Morning Peggy, why is my nephew bandaging his head?’

  ‘It’s a turban – I think he’s going to be Victor Mature.’

  Wyn’s face confirmed his unadulterated repulsion of anything American. ‘Victor Mature – my boy, why not a genuine thespian? Not some mongrel American ham actor.’ Bringing his hand up to his mouth and pointing at me with the other one, ‘Does your father know?’ I stared back at him.

  What?

  ‘He won’t let you back in the house if he thinks you’ve turned into an Indian.’

  Mum laughed that soft, slightly inhibited laugh of hers and the mood lifted. The constant, erosive attrition had ground its way into me, hearing her laugh seemed out of context somehow. They stopped talking whenever I entered the room now; my old man forever shooting ferocious glares in Wyn’s direction. Mum had lost her serenity and became ever more furtive, dad was just angry all the time and this got her down as well as me. Sometimes she sighed and looked at dad with a stare that said, why is he always so angry?

  Above it all was the impermeability of Wyn; unflappable, amusing and as ever, beautifully turned out. He placed the coffee tray on the draining board and went back through to sit in the bar and enjoy more of Shirley’s company.

  Mum watched him disappear; her amused look of a minute ago replaced by her more familiar resigned look, sad – sadder than usual. She looked around the room, suddenly developing quick sharp movements, a nervous wren. She came up close, put her left hand gently under my chin, stared into my eyes and said something strange, ‘Don’t turn out like either of them, please.’

  Vacuity furrowing my brows so much that she felt the need to explain. ‘You’ve already got your dad’s temper; don’t develop your Uncle’s traits as well.’ She shook her head and went into the kitchen muttering, ‘What a combination.’

  Why did she say that?

  I whistled for the dog, an unnecessary gesture as it turned out. He stared up at me – grinning away, waiting for the word. I wagged my finger at him, a stern warning. I’d made my decision. ‘You’re a camel today, no barking.’ I gave up with the turban and sneaked off with one of mum’s silk scarves in my pocket. Thuggees had to use something to throttle their victims with, after all.

  We stared across the allotments, watching Ron as he repaired the damage to his allotment, pulling some potatoes that had survived my carpet-bombing. He stared at me and I felt his hard little eyes drilling between my shoulder blades as I passed. We stood around at the end of the canal, uncertain as we dithered and contemplated our next move. I gazed up at the sky; a deep, serene blue, dark hills against the sky, canal mist burnt away; the most gorgeous of late August mornings.

  Declan suddenly developed this faraway look on his face that suggested he was about to go off on one of his unpredictable tangents. He whispered, ‘Tommy said it’s easy to make a bomb.’

  He always called his dad Tommy and the rest of us always pulled him up about it. Why do you call your dad that? Not this time, though; making a bomb sounded interesting and Declan ploughed on. ‘Weed killer and sugar.’ We looked blankly back at Declan’s blank expression, ‘Weed killer, sugar and a box of matches.’

  Patrick nodded his head and we all decided that making bombs was an appropriate outlet for summer holiday tedium. I had the money and Patrick had the nerve, and Declan… Well, Declan had the idea and my mind seemed confused somehow at this concept.

  ‘How much sugar?’

  A shrug.

  ‘How much weed killer?’

  A shrug.

  I got my money and we wandered down to the agricultural engineers where the store-man smiled benevolently down at me, ‘What’s Harry doing then?’

  ‘He’s got weeds.’

  ‘Weeds!’ The overall-clad man rubbed his chin, ‘Five pounds of weed killer, that’s a lot of weeds.’ He shook his head and frowned, ‘It’s poisonous, you know.’ He weighed the white powder and boxed it up for me. ‘It’s only four tablespoons with a g
allon of water. You sure he didn’t say five ounces?’

  ‘He definitely said five pounds.’

  Honest, guv!

  He nodded and passed it over to me. I scuttled back to the others with the last ingredient. Expectation rebounded between us, like static across charged poles as we walked towards the allotments.

  We were pulled up as a booming voice barked at us, ‘What are you three troublemakers up to?’

  Of the troublemakers, our self-elected bomb maker jumped the highest. None of us saw my old man behind his runner beans, parting them like Tarzan looking for troublesome natives, I glanced at the others and then back to dad.

  ‘Just going over the fields, might go fishing.’

  Fishing!

  Why did I say that? We all hated fishing, although Patrick did have his brother’s heavily-laden fishing bag, but there was no sign of fishing rod between us. My old man considered our options, gears clanked away, they can’t do much damage in a meadow… Can they?

  After a few seconds he barked, ‘Bugger off then, try and behave.’

  Under cover of a few willow trees, we opened the heavy bag and looked at the tools at our disposal; five pounds of sugar, mum would struggle to make dad’s tea later on with a month’s supply of sugar suddenly vanishing from the larder. The same amount of weed killer, two boxes of matches, rolled up newspaper and some cardboard spills Declan had cut lovingly at home out of an empty cornflakes box. We laughed when he told us how Bernice was so impressed to see him doing something constructive, she’d convinced herself that once Declan escaped from his ruffian friends, he would soon develop to his full potential.

  Declan laughed, ‘She thinks I’ve got an inquiring mind.’

  Combustion proved to be difficult, we stood staring as seconds crawled, slug-like, until the mixture began to splutter into life, making a noise not dissimilar to a firework fuse. But no explosion, no bomb-like noise, just smoke. Lots and lots of it, how much smoke we actually generated impossible to gauge, but we had become enveloped in it. A brilliantly, cloudless August morning had turned into a thick November fog.

  It took ten or eleven paces before the sun rose again. We stared at Declan’s conception, an artificial fog, a solid cylinder ten yards across; ten yards of impenetrable smoke towering into the sky. Our apprentice chemist had generated a small Nagasaki without the radiation; a column of dense whiteness connecting an ocean of green field with an expanse of dark blue sky. A flame-free, safe, smoke-bomb – we thought.

  The smoke towered ever upwards and we watched hesitant, like a Friday night crowd in the bar at closing time, unwilling and disinclined to break up. Nervous glances around an empty field, but no fire engine or police car to concern us. We let a couple more go, happy with all safety angles, our next step; where do we let one go and get the public acclaim we so richly deserved?

  Patrick looked around and said, ‘Where’s Declan?’

  We’d lost him, perhaps he hadn’t found his way out of the fog yet.

  ‘What’s the time?’ Patrick asked me, apparently going off on a tangent.

  Just after midday and our next target loomed up in front of us, like the Great Pyramid of Khufu in a cloudless Egyptian sky. The bus station, too close to home surely – but on the other hand, that meant a quick dart back to safety after ignition. Patrick wanted to do the bus station. His old man hated the place, a bus conductor who always said he wished someone would blow the building up. Everything appeared in our favour; lunchtime and all the mechanics would be in the tearoom, there’d only be two or three buses in, brilliant.

  The reasoning seemed perfect. If we fired up by the emergency exit in the back wall which was always open at this time of year, the heavy extractor fan built into the side wall would soon drag our smoke up and out, causing a brief, minor panic and nothing else. We crept through the open emergency exit, and peered towards the front of the building, where doors the size of aircraft hanger doors were three quarters open. There were only four buses inside.

  We did the lot; the combined weight must have been eight pounds.

  ‘Leave the box by the door, the fans will drag it through in no time.’ Impressed with my suddenly acquired bomber’s logic, I lit a taper and tossed it into our mix. We legged it, bolting back and over the fence into the garden, past my old man kneeling in his broad beans. We turned and looked at our handiwork.

  Bedlam; in the few seconds it took to run back, smoke billowed out from the front doors in a majestic, slow-moving, soaring, choking denseness. Wild shouts came from inside and my old man came over the car park to look. The smoke shouldn’t have come out this way, what happened to the extractor fan? We stared at each other, the corner of Patrick’s mouth turning down; he looked close to tears.

  Jack was stood next to my old man at the green picket fence as coughing, spluttering mechanics, bus drivers and conductors spilled out with the smoke. He dashed back into the bar and came out with his old camera and took his notebook out. Front page – we were going to make the front page. As I heard Jack’s camera click away, my heart beat like a tom-tom and then I saw a small figure carried out by two frantic bus conductors. Then the irregular beat; you could hardly call it rhythm as my heart spiralled out of control, my hand went to my chest. I noticed Jack frantically scribbling away as he squinted at the prone figure surrounded by the frowning, gasping uniformed bevy of bus people.

  ‘He’s dead, we’ve killed someone.’ Patrick said this and I glanced across at him, wide-eyed but apart from that, deadpan. I experienced a surge of energy. Thrilled by it all, until I realised the small, lifeless figure was Ron.

  ‘What’s he doing in there?’ Jack’s mouth hung open, taking notes and staring at the confusion at the same time. ‘Perhaps he’ll leave me alone now.’ Jack turned and looked across to my old man and raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Definitely, especially if he doesn’t come around.’ Dad said, ‘I never knew why you never let me hit the scrawny little fucker.’

  Jack shook his head, ‘Not the way, Harry.’

  I thought about Ron wheedling money out of Jack, but my train of thought was suddenly bypassed by two policemen hurrying across the asphalted forecourt. Don began to give frantic mouth to mouth to a dead-looking Ron, while Fred leant against a bus and chatted with coughing conductors. I crept close to the stretcher. Ron suddenly sat bolt upright and stared around at the carnage unfolding. His mouth hung open and he started ranting, ‘I found it. I found it.’

  Over and over.

  He lifted his right hand and stared at a green coloured, postcard sized piece of card. ‘I found it.’

  Then, just as suddenly, he lay back down and closed his eyes.

  A fire engine swept into the car park and firemen with breathing apparatus took their steadfast walk into hell. I focussed on Fred, more at ease with his over-casual, unconcerned manner. He’d strolled over and leant against the fence opposite my old man.

  Dad shouted at him, ‘What happened?’ Fred shrugged, my old man asked the question not one of us dared ask, ‘Is he dead?’

  ‘Who knows? Don’t think so.’

  Phew!

  I desperately latched onto Fred’s vagueness.

  Two police cars, five policemen including the Inspector, two fire engines and an ambulance. Mission accomplished and with a ready-made scapegoat walking across the allotments. Declan’s little face twisted into a confused ball at the pandemonium thirty yards away.

  My old man took his gaze towards Declan and then back to us, you buggers were buggering about all morning. He studied us closely. I appeared like a cat on a hot tin roof and Patrick had become customary deadpan Patrick again.

  Fred interrupted my old man’s detective thoughts, ‘See anything, Harry?’

  ‘No, picking some broad beans, heard a load of noise and wandered over.’ Dad shrugged his shoulders and shook his head, ‘How is he now?’

  ‘He’ll be okay.’ Fred nodded Declan’s way. ‘He’s always playing w
ith matches – I’ve warned him enough times. I think he’d manage to set light to an asbestos factory.’

  I asked Fred, ‘Why weren’t the extractor fans working?’

  Fred looked down at me, ‘Good question.’ Then Fred laughed, ‘Too noisy, that’s why, they can’t sleep with them running – always turned off at lunchtime.’

  I said, ‘I wondered why it was so quiet.’ I realised what I had said and just managed not to cover my mouth with my hand.’

  Fred wasn’t listening anyway, he’d got Declan in his sights and said, ‘Time for a word with Guy Fawkes.’

  ‘I bet it was him.’ My old man pointed at Declan, ‘Little fucker – he’s always playing with matches.’

  As it turned out, Ron recovered enough to make opening time. A dreadful Friday night followed; I sat indoors waiting for the police to knock on the door. I needn’t have worried, Declan confessed under interrogation. Bomber Declan was in bed, minus his dinner and supper.

  ***

  Late afternoon the next day and my old man drove into the car park driving one of Joe’s beat-up lorries. Tommy sat alongside, co-pilot as the lorry rattled to a stop and dad searched for reverse. From in amongst a crash of gears, gasping air brakes, vibrating prop shaft, a curse from the cab. ‘Fucking bastard clutch.’

  He backed the lorry up close to the garage, accompanied by a low-geared, low frequency whine.

  We ran over, my old man’s elbow sticking out of the window as Declan stared up and shouted, ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Hang on a minute.’ Came back from the cab above us.

  I remembered this lorry; the diesel engine cut-off lever had broken. To stop it my old man had to put it in gear, stand on the brake pedal and let the clutch up sharp. He did; the lorry lurched forward, the brakes bit and the wagon slumped back and died with a hissing, shuddering death rattle.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Mind your own business – go on, fuck off.’ My old man jumped down from the cab and said it again, ‘Fuck off and take the dog for a walk.’