by Ross Welford
They all nodded and said, ‘How, Alfie, y’areet?’
The game was fast and rough. Our team (‘shirts’) kept our shirts on, the others (‘skins’) played bare-chested. Boys were tumbling into the soft sand everywhere, mainly because of the speed and power of the biggest boy playing for the skins: a wiry, muscled lad of about twelve who hacked and stamped his way towards me as I tried to defend the goal. Shot after shot went past me.
One of the dads was making a feeble effort to referee, but the most I heard him say was, ‘Oh, come on now, John! That’s not very sporting, is it?’ after John had elbowed the smallest member of the shirts in the throat. He awarded a free kick, but John just ignored him and carried on playing.
Then he was coming at me again, the ball at his feet, and I became determined not to let in another goal.
What is the worst that could happen? I thought in the seconds before I dived at his feet. I might get kicked a little but I could be a hero.
And so it was that, as John slowed slightly in preparation for shooting at the goal, I leapt forward, head down, and grabbed the ball from beneath his feet. I did not see him tumble over me, but I heard the thump as he hit the sand and the howl of pain that followed seconds later.
‘Foul!’ boys were shouting.
Others were saying, ‘Not a foul! He got the ball!’, but, as I got to my feet and turned round, John’s face was next to mine, red and furious.
‘You broke my bloody wrist,’ he screamed, waving his hand in such a way that it showed it was definitely not broken. Then he cleared his throat with a long rasp and spat a large glob of throaty spittle right in my face.
The dad referee was running up to us. ‘Hey, hey – that’s quite enough of that, John McGonagal. Where’s your dad?’
And there he was, standing on the sandy touchline: Jack McGonagal, staring first at me, then at his son and then back at me. He had hardly changed in the intervening twenty years. He was still lean, his shock of black hair unmarked by grey.
Our eyes locked for a second, and he stepped onto the sandy pitch, but I was already edging away.
John’s voice followed me. ‘You’re dead, whoever you are. I’m gonna find you and flamin’ pulverise you.’
Then I heard Jack call, ‘Alfie?’
But I had already turned and run. Back into the crowds of sunbathers, back to the safety of Mam. The day had been spoilt. Soon after, the clouds gathered, which gave me an excuse to suggest to Mam that we head back home, without telling her of my encounter with Jack and John McGonagal. She would only worry.
With good reason, as it turned out. John was already at the bend of our lane as we walked back.
There were two older boys with him, the three of them lounging on an uprooted tree trunk by the side of the path.
You do not live as long as I have without sensing big trouble when it is sitting on a tree trunk thirty feet in front of you.
Big trouble, for example, does not care if there is an adult present. I spotted that in John McGonagal when he simply ignored the referee during the game on the beach. The way he swore loudly, not caring if other people heard him.
And now the fact that Mam was with me was not going to stand in the way of his giving me a beating. He simply did not care.
‘Call the police, Mam,’ I murmured.
‘The police?’ she gasped. ‘Who are those boys?’
‘They’re trouble, Mam. Go on.’
She turned and headed back up the lane. There was a public phone box on the main road.
Avoiding officials had been an important part of lying low for so long. As soon as I had instructed Mam to call the police, I regretted it. I should take the beating and be done with it – no one need interfere in our lives.
In a thousand years, I had never gone looking for a fight. But if someone brought one to me?
Boys now are not taught how to fight. That is probably a good thing. If people do not know how to fight then perhaps they do it less and that, too, is probably a good thing.
Me? I was taught. I have been taught fighting skills many times.
I had learnt the use of a short wooden staff from a prizefighter from Aragon who would tell me it was ‘the noblest of all weapons’ for it was ‘without deceit’.
His voice came back to me over the centuries as the boys in front slowly got to their feet.
‘Yer mammy run off, has she?’ said the biggest boy, whom I guessed was about fifteen.
‘She’s gone to call the police,’ I said, and they all chuckled.
‘Don’t fret yerself. This’ll all be done long before the Peelers get here!’
They advanced, menacingly slowly, with John between them and much smaller. I stood my ground until they were about four yards away.
‘What’s up, soft lad? Ye just gonna stand there, are ye?’
John took another step forward, and that was when I moved. I dipped into a crouch, grabbing a handful of the fine gravel from the path in my right fist and throwing it straight at his face, hard.
I am a good shot, if I say so myself. Rafel the prizefighter had made us practise this again and again. The gravel hit its target and John let out a yell as the grit went into his eyes.
The other two goons were distracted and before I got to my feet I grabbed a thick branch that was much less straight than I would have preferred, but at least it was the right length and weight: about four feet long, and heavy enough to take a small amount of effort to lift.
‘No effort for you, no pain for him,’ said Rafel in my head.
With both arms, I swung it at the boy on John’s right and there was a satisfying crack as it made contact with the side of his knee. He shouted with pain and staggered backwards.
‘Knees first, slows him down!’
John was still rubbing his eyes, so with one end of the branch I jabbed him hard in the stomach. He did not see it coming, and doubled up with a wheeze and a squeak of pain.
By now, the goon on John’s left had advanced to my right side and made contact with a well-aimed kick to my shin which hurt like flaming heck, and he dodged the branch when I swung it at him. He was going to be trouble.
‘In multiple combats, target the strongest first when you have most stren’th …’
The boy advanced again, but this time I had the club ready, the weight steady in both of my fists. I raised it up, faking a blow, and as his hands came up to defend himself I changed direction and swung at him hard, thumping the side of his chest with a blow that knocked all the air from his lungs.
‘Now finish the job, Alfie!’ said Rafel.
There was a natural momentum for the branch to swing back, and I raised it slightly, adding my strength and smashing the wood into the side of his head, knocking him out cold. He slumped to the floor, tongue lolling.
There was no time to admire my work, for John and his other pal were both coming at me. His friend lifted his fist for a blow, and I blocked it with the branch, then kicked him in the stomach, sending him flying backwards into a patch of nettles. He squealed as he landed.
That left one: John, much bigger than me and with a vicious look in his eyes. By now, though, I could tell my branch – old and dry – was weakening. I had heard it crack before, and, when I swung it next at his thigh, he dodged and, as it made contact, the stick broke in my hands. I threw the pieces at him, missed and he guffawed.
‘Nice one, weirdo. Let’s see how you like it.’ Without taking his eyes off me, he crouched and picked up one of the pieces, advancing towards me. I would be powerless against it, and raised my forearms defensively as he lifted the stick high above his head.
At that instant, I saw a black-and-white blur, and heard an inhuman, high-pitched growl, followed by a scream from John.
‘Aaagh, get it off! Oww! Aaaagh!’ He dropped the piece of stick, scrabbling with his hands as Biffa’s claws dug deep into his skull. She mewled and growled and scratched while John McGonagal hopped about, flailing his arms and yelling in pain. Eventually he
dislodged Biffa from his head, and she stood in front of him, back arched, hissing and spitting like a boiling kettle.
‘You’re mental, you are! Weirdo! A bloody psycho!’ John yelled at me as he backed away up the lane.
‘Go on, then,’ I said, pointing at his friend who was now a safe distance away. ‘Are you going to join him? Get lost, the lot of you. I do not like rubbish littering my path.’
John helped his friend to his feet and they both staggered off.
‘Nice work, Biff,’ I murmured, but she was not listening. She took a few paces towards the retreating boys and they ran.
I felt good. Really I did. But I knew that would not be the end of it. Not by a long way.
‘In the real world, Alfie, you gotta kill ’em. Otherwise they come back for more.’
Rafel lived in the seventeenth century. It was a different world then.
The police came the next day, a Monday, ‘investigating an assault on three minors’.
I say ‘police’. It was a policeman on a bicycle, a young one. (The uniform had changed slightly, but he still reminded me of Jack in his WRC tunic during the war.) Mam and I had sort of known the previous one, a portly, incurious man with the unlikely name of PC Sargent, who accepted Mam’s assurance that I was visiting from Hexham and had a growth disorder. He simply was not interested so long as we caused no trouble, and we did not.
This one, PC Armitage, asked too many questions, and looked far too interested in everything. We sat in the backyard: me, Mam and him. Amy the goat (who had replaced the previous Amy) bleated and the chickens pecked around. The policeman looked uncomfortable: a townie. He even flinched when Biffa brushed against his leg. He took his pointed helmet off to reveal his shiny, bald head. He was only about twenty-five.
‘How old are you, son?’ He was writing everything down in a little notebook.
‘What’s your date of birth?’
‘Where do you go to school?’
‘How long have you been here?’
‘Tell me what happened yesterday.’
I told him the lies that I had practised. I was fourteen, I said. I had left school. Back then, you could leave school at that age.
‘You’re a little lad for fourteen, aren’t you?’ he said.
I shrugged.
‘And the fight? What happened?’
I told him the truth.
‘So, it was you against them three, was it?’
I nodded. I did not mention Biffa.
I think the man even looked a little bit impressed. ‘You know one of them went to hospital? Fractured knee.’
I shrugged again.
There was not a great deal more he could ask, but I could tell he was not satisfied. It was the way he kept looking round the yard, looking at me, looking at Mam, as if saying to himself, ‘There’s more to this than meets the eye.’
Trust me: I have lived long enough to recognise that look when I see it. Mam had seen it too. It always means that more questions will follow.
Some official, somewhere, will decide that ‘something’s not quite right’ and start finding reasons to pry. When that happens, we normally find that it is useful to move away for a while.
And so it was. A week later, Mam was questioned by a woman from the Local Education Authority while I hid upstairs. Then the policeman came back with another officer, and someone from the local council’s social services department.
Which was why, six weeks later, if anyone had come to check up on my age, or schooling, or anything else, they would have found the old cottage securely locked up, its windows boarded over, and it would remain like that for almost thirty years.
Then we came back, and things were fine. Honestly they were; they were really fine. A new housing estate had been built on the other side of the woods towards the golf course. Whitley Bay was quieter in the summer, because people started to go to Spain instead, but there were lots more people generally, and they all, it seemed, had a motor car, but still – no one really bothered us, apart from the little nosy girl and that was not what you would call ‘bother’.
And then … the fire happened and I discovered, for the first time ever, what it was to be totally alone.
The boy from the secret house in the woods looked at us with huge eyes, pale and terrified. The desk that I had tipped over lay on its side between us.
‘I … I’m sorry. I was greatly in need of somewhere to shelter,’ he said. ‘The … the fire.’ He started breathing quickly, and blinking hard, as if just saying ‘fire’ had a bad effect on him.
I stood next to Roxy, looking down at this filthy, soot-streaked creature, soaking wet and shivering. He knelt next to the overturned desk, one arm clutching the other, staring up at us, eyes flicking left and right, blinking repeatedly, his mouth moving with half-formed words and a sheen of snot covering his upper lip. I don’t think I’d ever seen a figure so pitiable.
Roxy spoke first. ‘It’s OK. We’re not gonna hurt you.’
The words hung in the air as he continued to stare. From time to time, tiny moans escaped his lips.
‘Me … mam … me … mam …’ he started again, panting between every syllable.
Roxy got down on her hunkers to be level with him, and I followed suit. She reached out and touched him gently on the shoulder, lowering her head to look at his face.
‘Al-vuh?’ she said and he gave a little gasp and a nod. My head spun round to look at Roxy. ‘Is that your name? Al-vuh?’
He nodded again. ‘Me … my old name. A. L. V. E. I usually, erm … Alfie. Alfie is good.’
‘Come on, Alfie. Come and sit down.’ Roxy spoke with such gentleness and such calm, never taking her eyes off his, watching his every movement.
Slowly he rose to his feet, still clutching one arm against his chest. He stumbled over to the vinyl-covered sofa and lowered himself onto it. Roxy sat next to him and turned her body to look at him while I straightened the desk, and sat on that.
‘Can I see your arm?’ Roxy asked, as she carefully lifted his hand out of the way. ‘Does it hurt?’
It looked like it was agony. His right sleeve was ripped, revealing a burnt forearm: deep red welts from the elbow to the wrist, with some skin peeling away. Roxy and I both sucked air through our teeth.
‘You need a doctor, mate,’ I said. I hadn’t said it harshly, but it was the first thing I’d said to him, and it was the wrong thing. He glared at me.
‘No. Definitely not. Under no circumstances.’
I got what he said. It was emphatic enough. But those words: ‘under no circumstances’. It struck me as an unusual thing for a kid to say. He looked about our age.
‘But, Alfie,’ said Roxy (using his name: Clever, I thought), ‘it’s really badly burnt. It could get … I don’t know. Infected, or something.’
‘See? You do not really know, do you?’ There was an edge to his voice, but he wasn’t really aggressive. Just sure of himself. ‘No doctor.’ He sank a bit lower into the sofa and the weary look returned to his face. ‘Just … leave me be, yes? I will be fine. No word to anyone. I will be fine.’
No, he wouldn’t. It was obvious that this was the ‘I will be fine’ of someone who would be anything but.
‘What happened, Alve? Alfie? In the fire?’ I thought it would be a good idea to get him talking, but a firm shake of the head from Roxy put me right on that.
‘Listen to me, Alfie,’ she said. ‘The first thing you need to do is to get clean and warm. You’re shivering. We’ll clean this wound for a start. Then we can dress it. It may be OK.’ She was looking at it carefully, touching the edges with the tips of her fingers. ‘Does it hurt there?’ she asked once, and he winced in reply. She turned to me. ‘Is your dad in, Aidan?’ she asked.
‘NO!’ said Alfie. His ash-streaked face filled with fear, and his eyes darted to the door as he made a move to get up.
‘It’s OK, Alfie. Sit down. You can trust us. We won’t tell anyone you’re here if you don’t want us to.’ She turn
ed to me. ‘You’re gonna have to sneak in somehow. Stand next to Aidan, Alfie.’ So authoritative was Roxy’s manner that he stood up next to me on her command. ‘Hmm. Have you any clothes that are too small for you, Aidan? You know, stuff you’ve grown out of?’
‘No. We gave them all away before the move.’
‘What about your sister?’
Libby was about the same height as this weird, filthy boy standing between us.
‘I’ll see what I can find. It might be pink, mind.’
If Alve – Alfie – minded, his face didn’t show it. His face hardly showed anything, really. He settled back into the sofa next to Roxy, and started trembling again, lips flapping. This was going to be tough.
Roxy got to her feet and flicked her eyes to the door. I followed her out.
Once outside, we picked our way through the mud for a few metres.
‘Classic signs,’ said Roxy. ‘PTSD.’
‘What?’
‘Post-traumatic stress disorder. He’s seen his house burn down, maybe seen his mum die in the fire: it’s a lot to process, hence the … you know.’
‘Odd behaviour.’
‘Well, yeah. He needs help but he needs to trust us first. He’ll run off given half a chance.’
‘And you know all this how?’ I said. It sounded snarky, but I was properly impressed.
She shrugged. ‘I read a lot. Now you go and get some clean clothes. Bring them round the front and I’ll meet you at the door. My mum’s in her den, working. She’ll have her headphones on, probably.’
‘I hope so.’ I hadn’t forgotten her fierce mum from last night.
Roxy gave me a withering look. ‘She’s fine, my mum. She’s just …’
‘Scary?’
‘Angry.’
‘Angry and scary.’
‘Whatever. You’ll have to help him get clean. You know, in and out the bath and stuff. Dry him.’
‘Me?’ I meant to say it normally, but it came out as a squeak.
The withering look returned. ‘Yes, you. What with you being a boy. I don’t think he’d be keen on being butt-naked in front of me.’