Salt of Their Blood

by Gerald Wixey

  ‘That’s it? Kenny reckons you just crossed the road and nutted him, unprovoked like.’

  ‘I didn’t want to hit him. I had no choice, I saw the piece of brass twinkling up at me.’

  ‘Kathy never mentioned it’

  ‘She doesn’t know – I never told her.’

  ‘Perhaps you should have.’

  I wanted him to be his usual nasty self, unsettled by his new found cosiness and I couldn’t be bothered to provoke him. All the time Don smiled away. ‘When do you think Kenny found out about you and Kathy?’

  ‘Not till she told him.’

  I needed to believe this, but somehow it didn’t ring true. Neither did Don consider it in any way accurate. ‘Everyone knew. I saw you with her back in the New Year.’

  Fred’s eyebrow’s came up, that long?

  They told me what they knew: it wasn’t a piece of brass this time, but a piece of loose brick lifted from the wall. It wasn’t either Kenny or Ron. Shirley had said that they were all together that evening. The inspector no less, had put my old man straight; he lays a finger on Kenny and it’s big trouble. Would he take any notice of that?

  Probably not.

  Don stared at me again, a trace of a smile across his fleshy lips. ‘You and me never got on, but I wouldn’t have wished this on anyone.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ I said without any conviction. ‘Course you would.’

  Don laughed, ‘That’s what Harry said.’ He stood up, ‘We’ve got to go soon.’ He rattled the car keys and he sent a parting shot at me. ‘I said to Peggy – he’ll be all right. You know what a stubborn little bastard he is.’

  I shot him a glance and he just smiled.

  ***

  A sound so familiar suddenly dragged me back. Despite my uncle’s soft, languid gait, his handmade brogues clicked and clacked, making their customary ostentatious announcement of another grand entrance. I sat up on the edge of the bed and watched him stroll into the ward. He waved my way and then stopped and talked to the nurses. They soon began to laugh, heads back, uninhibited. He was telling one of his risqué jokes, usually best served when the audience is half cut, but nurses obviously don’t need alcohol. That’s the thing with Wyn; he always gets it right, amuses the women and never causes offence, although plenty of irate husbands would probably disagree with that. Wyn strolled down the ward, entertaining attractive nurses, life’s great mission successfully accomplished again. His ample face was ageless as he grinned away and swaggered alongside the bed.

  ‘My boy, going home at last how do you feel?’

  ‘Better for seeing you.’

  ‘Your dad’s just coming, he’s parked on a double yellow. We’d better get a move on.’ Wyn gently gripped my bicep and brought his face so close, I thought he was going to kiss me, ‘Don’t worry… You’re a young man, you’ll get over this. You know that, don’t you?’

  I felt uneasy with his earnest, eye-gazing sincerity. I turned and began to dress while he read the newspaper. I sighed, no more drifting in and out of sleep for me, oblivious to the time. Now that I had to face up to the world, the concept of staying here burying my head in the metaphorical sand had its attractions. Then I noticed dad bustling up the gangway. He came up close and my very own praetorian guard stared up at me. His argumentative nose was a deep burgundy colour, his bullet head set at its normal aggressive angle. He remembered somehow and resisted the temptation to give me his usual dig in the ribs by way of a greeting. This seemed to confuse him; dad frowned, his deep chest dragging a lungful of stale hospital air in, he grabbed my suitcase and said, ‘Ready? Do you want to lean on me?’

  ‘Might as well.’ After all I thought, I’d done it all of my life. I glanced across at Wyn and we smiled, a bittersweet, conspiratorial smile. I leant against my old man and said, ‘Lead on.’

  The physical closeness to dad warmed me inside like a good mulled wine. His beefy arm around my waist felt like a layer of insulating blanket. We walked like an old couple propping each other up after a boozy night out. Dad grumbled away with every step, ‘Arsenal lost again, why aren’t any of these bloody porters English? The Oxford Mail rang up, wondered if they could talk to you – I told them to fuck off.’ Each groan synchronised with every footstep, until we were within five yards of the entrance, when he pulled me up. ‘You’ve caused a bit of a stir but don’t worry, people soon forget. Ask your old uncle, he’s had enough practice in these situations.’ Dad found this amusing, barking a laugh in his brother’s direction, his fingers squeezing my shoulder, ‘Ready for some fresh air?’

  I blinked into a cloudy day, it was summer when I came into the hospital and we walked out to be greeted by a heavy, persistent drizzle. Autumn had arrived, rain dappling the lead-coloured puddles. Scudding clouds raced westwards down from Botley, breaking up and showing touches of blue here and there. Cold rain on my face, waking me.

  I felt alive again – just.

  Chapter 15

  1960

  Later that night she played the piano, repressed and subdued; a mood indigo evening. Mum played the piano all night.

  ‘Mood indigo, I just go weak when I hear mood indigo It could last for weeks until I decide to wake up Completely lost in my mood indigo’

  I was sat alongside, close by all the time. Too afraid to leave her side, either shivering like an anxious terrier or on the cusp of suppressed and frantic hilarity; too frightened, or too distracted to cry. Mum played, we all listened, I knew that we’d get Stardust next and I counted the beats, singing along silently.

  ‘And now the purple dusk of twilight time Steals across the meadows of my heart.’

  Cocktail hour in a dingy little boozer, cocktail hour and she indulged herself, flourishing in an emergency. Revelling in the chance to quietly calm and organize the rabble, a precious situation for her, one to luxuriate in. Only once did she ask a question that resembled recrimination, ‘Why did you hit him?’

  This dragged an uncomfortable response from my old man, ‘I thought he’d killed Wyn.’

  Mum shook her head, stared at him for a minute, her transparent thoughts heading back his way – you keep telling me that you don’t even like him. My old man’s eyes went towards the floor. I think she took more than a little pleasure in being the only person in the world capable of intimidating him, he hated it – scolded by a woman, again.

  Recent events crashed around and around in my head. Wyn screaming and Ron pumping blood. Although neither had died, I’d convinced myself that my old man had killed Ronny. When the police crawled all over the place, there was just one thought in my mind, that’s it – my old man’s going to be carted off and I’ll never see him again.

  Wyn got sixty-three stitches across his cheek; my old man reckoned an inch either way and it would have been the jugular or his eye that would have copped it. Ron lost a couple of pints of blood and gained a broken cheekbone, with worse to come, at least three or four years inside, and even that pissed dad off.

  ‘He’s a fucking good customer.’

  Tommy only said one thing all evening. ‘Well, there was a lot of language the fucken clergy wouldn’t have understood.’ This amused him; he drank, then stared at the others and said, ‘He’ll miss his gardening though, he loved Sundays on his allotment.’

  Someone had to say it and my old man duly obliged. ‘Well, that’s good, every days going to be a Sunday for him now.’

  Jack the Scribe’s first scoop, banner headlines in the Oxford Mail, made it at last. Fred got lucky, he just happened to be walking past as it all kicked off. The Inspector believed that nonsense; he never noticed, or more likely chose not to notice, the beer coming out from Fred’s every pore. But he still closed us for the night and that capped my old man’s mood, he went blue.

  ‘Fucking power-mad inspector of yours, Fred – jumped-up little fuckpig.’

  Despite everything, my old man’s primacy went unchallenged, saying what he liked. Hitting who he pleased; justifying
nothing. As for closing for the night – no chance. The chosen few; Stopcock Arthur, Tommy, Fred, out of uniform by now and Jack, all huddled together at the bar. They smoked nervously, looked at their watches a lot and then, as if not believing their own eyes, glancing across to the loud ticking clock for confirmation. The heavy curtains were tightly drawn, with that certain and reassuringly distinct early evening public bar smell. Every time mum stopped playing, a screaming silence echoed in my head, somebody say something – please!

  My old man in his customary position, elbow on the bar, the doors locked; the only light coming from the dart board spot turned away and directed at the piano, casting unnatural shadows around a virtually empty public bar. Whispers, that in itself made me smile – the idea of my old man whispering, ‘If I get caught serving tonight…!’

  Mum played on, ‘Guess I’ll hang my blues out to dry.’ She didn’t sing, just hummed occasionally and played so blue. They let me stay with them, never asking me how I felt – terrified and horrified. They never asked me that, but it was a tacit understanding of how I felt; neither of them were comfortable with what anyone felt in this situation, come to that.

  Sometimes I wanted to cry, but something always happened that had me on the edge of laughter – Stopcock Arthur’s wide-eyed, horror-struck, superstitious face, ‘Ron just sliced it open; Wyn’s cheek peeled away like a rasher of bacon.’

  I sat and let the music anaesthetise the terror. Every song washed over me, the bluer she played, the better I felt. Don’t stop – it’ll all come back if you stop.

  I stared across at the five of them, restrained and reflective, my old man unusually muted, taking Aunty Doris to the infirmary had upset him. He said that she had behaved as is if Wyn still lived with her. Dad had stopped with them for half an hour, then left Doris at the bedside. I heard him telling Jack, ‘She seemed happy, at least someone’s happy… She fussed around him. There, there.’

  Snatches of hushed conversations.

  ‘When did he find out?’

  ‘Yesterday.’

  ‘Had to be.’

  ‘No!’ Jack’s dissenting voice opened eyes and raised eyebrows; all this tempered by sending his cigarettes around the group. ‘He knew what was going on in 1945 and it was no different the second time around. We’ve watched a man crack up in front of us. He even knew that Wyn is Kenny’s…’

  I watched the others, all wide-eyed stares and a couple with their mouths hanging open. My old man brought his finger up to his lips and shook his head. Jack nodded and he glanced across at mum. Jack’s eyes fell on me and he quickly looked away as he said. ‘Ron hoped it would blow itself out, just like it did at the end of the war – it must have been a colon twisting time for him. But he said nothing – just hoped for the best.’ Jack drained his glass, gestured to the others with his head, c’mon, drink up, then he said. ‘Reality and all that, who needs it?’

  They all nodded and drank up, their cigarette smoke collecting just above head height, like an atomic mushroom, a jamboree of smoke clouds under the nicotine yellowed ceiling of a sun. Mum smoked constantly, but hers was just a slender azure skyscraper, regally curling its way upwards. She only took a drag between songs. Just a single, long drag then rested the cigarette carefully on the ashtray – two drags, two songs – one cigarette.

  She asked me to open the heavy curtains, casting the blue street light over us, washing over the piano; blue smoke, blue music, blue me.

  ‘Shut those curtains.’ My old man bellowed, forgetting his own self-imposed, silent running rules.

  Mum hissed at me, ‘Leave them, no one can see that lot at the bar.’

  Just me, looking pretty and playing the piano.

  My old man glared across at another public act of defiance, women. He turned to Stopcock and said, ‘How’s Shirley?’

  ‘She didn’t seem surprised.’

  But she wouldn’t be; nothing shocked her, life held no surprises, just a fatalistic acceptance of whatever hand dealt her way. Only Wyn knew her plans, but Stopcock convinced them that she had told Ron. Now Shirley’s chance of escape with Wyn had gone, maybe forever. Doris would be nursing him for weeks – together again… together forever… Until the next time.

  Mum played for over three hours. I knew it must be getting close to that time – she looked across, ‘bedtime soon.’

  Don’t send me to bed.

  Mum turned away and started to play again, I groaned inwardly, not this, don’t play this. She hadn’t sung all evening, but I knew… Please don’t sing.

  She started to sing.

  ‘There’s a saying old says that love is blind still we’re often told seek and ye shall find’

  I looked at my feet; it took a while but I suddenly realised my eyes were full of tears, running free now, twin tracks dribbling down my cheeks. My chest burned, but there was no shoulder heaving, wailing, just tears as she sang. The pressure that had been clamped around my chest for the last few hours loosened somewhat.

  ‘I know I could, always be good To one who’ll watch over me.’

  ‘That’s it, young man – bed.’

  ‘Did Wyn know Shirley during the war?’

  Mum’s hesitant nod was suddenly interrupted by an urgent hammering on the door. My old man’s eyebrows shot up and he brought his fingers up to his lips. The others fell in line and as he crept towards the front door. Mum began to play Begin the Beguine and he tiptoed, accompanied by the piano, like he was performing a solo dance routine.

  A shout from the other side of the door, ‘Let me in – hurry up.’

  Not the police; the door softened Bernice’s frantic screeching, filtering it down to a mildly hysterical request. The piano stopped and the sound of the key and the door squeaked its customary welcome. Bernice burst through and came to roost alongside Tommy.

  ‘He’s not home.’ Bernice saw me. ‘Where is he? What have you done to him?’ She wheeled back to the others, ‘Stop your drinking and get out looking for him.’ This was addressed to everyone I think.

  Jack asked the obvious question. ‘Have you rung the police?’

  Mum latched onto this as dad took on the role of Wyatt Earp and organised his posse.

  ‘Can I go?’

  She shut her eyes for a couple of seconds, shook her head and said, ‘I’ll be up in a while; you can read if you want.’

  Please don’t make me go up there. ‘I could take the dog, he’ll find …’

  I’d forgotten.

  Mum sighed and shut her eyes again, looked across towards my old man and said, ‘We’ll talk about school in the morning.’

  Day off!

  I nodded, wiped the tears away from my face and stood by her, she kissed the back of my neck and I made my short, self conscious trip over to my old man.

  ‘See you, master.’

  A pat on the back from Fred, Tommy looked the other way and Jack smiled briefly before his eyes went back to his beer.

  Dad came around to meet me, ill at ease, more comfortable punching someone in public than this. He said what he said every night, ‘Nighty night – sleep well.’

  And I got what I wanted every night; my comforting, beery kiss, goodnight.

  I watched them go from my bedroom window. Dad led his unruly little mob across the allotments – where exactly? The fields Declan and me always tramped? The canal? The railway line? No please, not there – that had caused enough trouble for all of us. He wouldn’t go there, anyway. Declan might have looked stupid, but he was anything but. Perhaps he was hiding in the airing cupboard again, or their loft, or sat in the meadow staring up at the moon, howling like Dudley used to.

  I turned and tossed in bed, run out of possible hiding places, all the time fearing the worst. I must have slept, vaguely remembering dad and Tommy coming in. My old man would let Tommy do some damage to the whiskey bottle before sending him on his way back to Bernice and Kathy.

  ***

  I could have taken the da
y off school, but I wanted to see Kenny’s face. I had to see the effect on him of Ron’s arrest, Shirley’s betrayal and now Declan’s disappearing. I should have felt sorry for Kenny, and maybe I did; either way, I just had to see his face. I turned up the hill; the weather had changed overnight, I was being buffeted by a late October gale in early September. I walked alone into a furious and sadistic wind. The clouds were so low they barely cleared rooftops. The eastern sky, not black, more a deep blue, a violent violet. It had blown all night, a sideways rain hammering on windows, blowing Dudley and maybe Declan, all the way to Nirvana. I smiled as I imagined Declan staggering against the wind like a sheet of newspaper, he would have kept crashing into me and laughing. I thought of Wyn, imagining a line down his face; stitches looking like railway sleepers running south east down his face.

  Lost in thoughts, I never saw him come out from behind the wall in front of the hospital. Kenny looked like a different person. Angry yesterday, he had a murderous look about him today. I turned, but too slowly. A kick somewhere close to dead leg territory; I went down and he kicked away, ribs and arms. Over and over he hit me, one on the temple and one on the cheekbone, most on the arms and legs, on and relentlessly on. The regular sound of a diesel engine close by, and I dreamt I could hear Declan’s periodic crying. Kenny’s cadenced kicking carried on and I thought he was trying to kill me.

  Kenny’s anger worked against him, although a rain of ineffectual blows that looked nasty, did hurt. But he wouldn’t step back and get some leverage into his kicks; he just worked away in a feeble rage.

  Then a familiar voice said. ‘Stop that, you cunt.’

  Patrick’s reassuring profanity did the trick. I imagined Kenny’s frustration at unfinished business, he broke away, looked down at me – I’ll be back.

  I needed Declan now; he always cheered me up. Patrick stayed close to me all day. Except for the walk home, he was nowhere to be seen. I struggled home, aching, limping slightly, looking for my nemesis. Just past the shop I saw Kenny appearing from nowhere, close to the pub’s front door. Christ – he had been waiting indoors for me.