by Fiona Shaw
They were standing on a metal grid walkway, a safety rail running along it at waist height.
–Whoa! Jake said, looking down at the black. He could feel his heart speed up, till it was racing in his chest, and his hands were sweating so much he had to rub them on his trouser legs. –So what now? Cos even your Surfers can’t jump down there.
And Davie pointed to the far end. –Behold the ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reaching into heaven. And behold the angels of God climbing on it! he said, but his voice was tiny and scared, and when he looked round at Jake, his eyes were big as saucers.
The walkway wasn’t hard to walk along, but each time they took a step they could feel it bounce slightly. Davie’s knuckles were white, gripping the handrail. But it wouldn’t matter how hard they held the rail if the walkway came out of the wall. They’d still fall to their deaths, and no one would know, or ever even find their bodies. Jake shook his head to get rid of the thought. Breathe, he thought instead. That’s what his dad would have told him.
–Breathe deep, he said to Davie. –It’ll help.
When they got to the end, he saw there was a latched gate set into the safety rail. A metal ladder, set vertically into one side of the hole, dropped away beneath the gate, just reaching another walkway maybe twenty feet below.
–We’re climbing down that, aren’t we? he said, and Davie gave a small nod.
–Surfers’ den is six ladders down. They told me: there’s a rope hanging and a wooden ledge, is how you can tell.
Davie’s voice sounded tight, like it was difficult to get the sounds out. Jake couldn’t see very well in that light, but he reckoned Davie had gone very pale.
–It’s why you gotta be the one with me, Davie said. –Cos you ain’t—
–Scared? Jake said. –Of climbing down that ladder, no safety harness, no nothing? I’m way past scared. He could hear his dad’s voice in his mind, over and over: Always clip on before climbing. Always clip on before climbing.
–If one of us falls … Davie said.
–He’s mashed, Jake finished.
–If one of us falls, Davie said again, –then the other one has to go on an’ find the Surfers. Has to go on an’ do the trade. Else the whole gang’s gonna be dead with him. Agreed?
Always clip on before climbing, went his dad’s voice in his head. –Shut it! Jake whispered.
–You what? Davie said.
–Yeah, agreed, Jake said; and he wondered how long it would take to hit the bottom. A few seconds. It’d be quick probably.
Davie stared down over the safety rail, his beanie pushed back on his head. Sweat glistened on his brow. –Bit of a long drop, down there, he said in a quiet voice. –Yer dog’ll be blooming sad if you fall.
–If you fall, it’ll kill Martha, Jake said. –So don’t, OK?
–Ha! Very funny, dog boy, Davie said. He was trying to be cool, but his voice was choked. And then: –She be that sad, d’yer think?
–Yeah, Jake said. –She would.
Davie seemed to think about this for a moment, then he shook his head.
Jake’s dad had taught him rules about climbing: about who went first, about what you should do and what you mustn’t do. But the rules didn’t matter now, because Davie was shaking and ashen-faced, and the longer they stood looking at that black hole, the bigger it would become and the more terrified they both would be; and they couldn’t go back, and they had to climb down into it. So he pushed all the rules out of his head, had to push his dad out of his head too. And instead he took Davie by the shoulders and told him what to do.
–You gotta stop drumming, he said, because Davie was beating a tattoo on the safety rail, –else you won’t be able to grip properly. –All you’ve gotta do is copy me. Keep breathing, and take your time. Don’t rush it.
Jake got on the ladder first, crouching, hands gripping the sides, reaching down into nothing till his foot found the first step. The ladder shook slightly with his weight, and he could feel the tug of his rucksack, heavy with food, pulling him away into thin air. His mouth was dry. He licked his lips, took two slow breaths. Focus on the climb. Don’t look down. His dad’s voice again. If he put his hand out, he could touch the tunnel wall, break off one of the stalactites. He stared at the ladder: the cold metal lines, the corrugated surface of the rungs. Now he was on to it, feet on the rungs, hands gripping the uprights, his nerves steadied. He climbed down a few rungs to give Davie room to climb on.
–It’s OK, he said, –easy does it; and quietly he talked Davie on to the ladder. Davie was muttering below his breath, and Jake could feel the shake in his hands through the ladder metal. But he was on, and every so often, Jake heard him take a proper breath.
Slowly they started climbing down. Jake made himself concentrate, because it was simple, this ladder climbing. But one slip and he’d be dead. Scarier still: one slip from Davie, and they’d both be dead, cos if Davie fell off that ladder, he’d take Jake with him.
He could feel Davie above him: the slide of his foot on to the next rung, the shift of his hands down the ladder, his breath.
–Breathe steady, Jake whispered. –You’re doing grand. Keep your eyes on the tunnel sides.
A minute, two minutes, and they were down the first ladder, Jake feeling the stretch between the rungs where the first ladder ended and the second began.
–Down one. You gotta feel down for the new one. Careful, Davie.
–Steady Eddie, steady Eddie … Davie’s words chasing each other, faster and faster.
Jake could feel Davie’s foot search for the new ladder rung, and miss, and strike the tunnel wall …
Below them, a thousand feet of deadly air.
–Take it slow, take it slow. Steady, Davie. Because he mustn’t panic. He mustn’t.
–Steady Eddie, steady Eddie … Davie’s voice was rushed; scared.
–Shut your eyes, Davie. Jake made his voice strong.
–Shut them. Imagine this ladder is near to the ground. You’re just coming down to the ground, and it’s no distance. Now feel with your foot … that’s it.
Four more ladders, they had, but Davie had found his footing, and he wasn’t twitching, or shaking, and he didn’t miss his footing again. Then they were there: the rope and the Surfers’ ledge: a narrow wooden platform stretched over the abyss like some weird diving board, and behind it, set into the tunnel wall, another riveted door. Jake swung out on the rope and stepped down on to the platform, and Davie followed close behind.
Jake knelt down on the platform, felt the sturdiness of the wood beneath him. Relief ran through his muscles like quicksilver. They’d done it. He pushed from his mind the thought that they’d have to climb back up the ladder too. Gripping the rail that ran round the tunnel, he dared to look below him. They must have climbed down a hundred feet, but the tunnel below dropped another thirty and he still couldn’t see the bottom.
–Playground stuff, Davie said. –We good to go? But Jake could see the sheen of sweat on Davie’s forehead, and when they bumped knuckles, Jake could feel the tremor that ran through his arms.
The door opened with a push, and the boys stepped through into a narrow tunnel lit in pools by small lights set on the ground.
–What the— Jake said, because the tunnel walls were covered, every inch, with graffiti; and as Jake stared at it, he saw that the pictures rose and fell along the walls like waves, and that the colours were all the colours of the sea.
–Surfers, deffo, Davie said, grinning. –You all right to do the talking? Be better, cos my mouth goes off all over.
–Sure, Jake said, and he walked through the waves to the door at the end, and with his heart chasing through his chest, pushed it open and went in.
The room was a din of noise. Jake didn’t count, but there must have been twenty or more Surfers in there. They were all in hoodies and old trackie bottoms, and all padded up with leather on the knees and elbows. Davie’s description flashed across his mind: they rode the train roofs,
of course. That’s why the padding. They wore workmen’s boots, and baseball caps, and the ones without caps had short haircuts. It was hard to tell the men from the women.
–Top o’ the world, Davie muttered. Jake looked round at him. Davie was grinning. –Top den, eh Jake?
A brazier was burning in one corner, and Jake could smell food cooking and burnt toast. Tacked up on the wall to his left was a huge map, with a line of LED lights set out on the ground to light it up. It was a Tube map, but woven around the Tube lines, other lines were drawn in, and there seemed to be a hundred other places marked on to it, besides the Tube stations. Along the length of the opposite wall ran a bank of dead consoles, dead screens above them: the room must have been a control room once. Underneath the console desks, Jake could just make out sleeping figures, caterpillars in their sleeping bags. From the ceiling hung long blocks of dead lights. String had been looped between them, and washing was drying. All this Jake saw in his first glance. And in the moment before the boys were noticed, and everything stopped, Jake saw a room full of people doing ordinary things: cooking over the brazier, a man shaving with a tin can of water, people eating. Two Surfers looking at the map, pointing. Someone bandaging another’s foot. An argument going on.
The boys stared in at the room, and then the room fell silent and stared back, just the sound of a lowlifer cough rasping somewhere. Jake listened to the sound of the brazier, the crackling of the fire, listened to the cough, and waited. His heart was beating as hard now as when he’d stood at the top of that ladder.
–What’ve we got here? The voice came from the far side of the room, a deep voice that sounded like it knew it was in charge. –Who – are – you? The words were spoken slowly, then more silence.
Jake bit his lip. His mouth was dry. He tried to make his voice sound strong, but it came out small and childish. –Gotta speak to your boss.
There was a moment of silence, then the whole room burst out laughing. Heat rose to Jake’s face, and for two pins he’d have turned and gone.
–Steady Eddie, Davie murmured. –Steadfast, steadfast; and Jake was very glad that Davie was there with him.
When the room quietened, the deep voice spoke again, and Jake saw who it belonged to: a tall man dressed in the same Surfer clothes. On his hoodie, a jag of silver lightning, and where the other Surfers had short hair, he wore a blond ponytail beneath his cap. He looked a bit older than the rest, and it was clear that he was in charge.
–You made the ladder. Respect, boys. But you’re on our turf now and we need an explanation. And he beckoned them over to where he stood, beside the giant map.
The Surfers made way for the boys, and they crossed the room to where the tall blond leader stood.
–Let’s hear it then, he said.
The room had gone back to what it was doing, by the time Jake finished his story: a group of kids escaped from a Home Academy van, and got down here by mistake.
The blond Surfer ground his boot toe into the floor, thinking. Then he fixed Jake with a stare.
–Nice story, and for what it’s worth, I believe you. You look green enough to have escaped only yesterday. But so what?
–We ain’t— Davie started to say, and Jake elbowed hard to shut him up.
–We’ve got good food in our rucksacks, Jake said, –and we’ll trade it with you, if you’ll help us get out. We heard about the meet. We thought maybe it’d be easier then?
–The meet? the blond Surfer said, and something shifted in his face, like he’d thought of something. Then he was silent, thinking. Jake waited. Davie had started twitching, beside him, fingers tapping against his leg, and Jake could hear him swallowing sounds, trying to keep them in.
–Why should we do a trade at all? the blond Surfer said. –What’s to stop us just taking your food off you, and picking you both up, and holding you over that big, big hole, and letting go? Nobody would ever know. You’d be bones. Dust. Eh?
He was waiting for an answer, but Jake didn’t know what to say. And Davie was silent too, thank god, only his fingers beating their beat a hundred times a minute.
–All right, maybe this one’ll be easier. Why should we believe you? the blond Surfer said finally. –There’s people disappearing from the tunnels, some of our own included. Getting picked off. Means there must be an infiltrator down here. Now, you don’t look likely being kids, but you could be spies, for all we know.
–Spies! Spies for who? The exclamation came out before Jake could stop it. He could have kicked himself. He didn’t want to stay silent, but he’d spoken before he thought, and now the Surfers would think he was stupid. The blond Surfer stared at him, the hardest stare Jake had ever had, like he was trying to see into Jake’s mind. And then just when Jake thought it was all up, he laughed. Put his head back and laughed, and the whole room, like it had been waiting to see which way he’d go, laughed with him.
–Just kids, he said.
Ten minutes later and Jake and Davie were setting off back. Their rucksacks were empty, and in his pocket Davie had instructions on how to get to the meet. It was happening that very night, and the blond Surfer had been clear: they had to go there first, and by a certain time, otherwise no deal. That’s where he would come and find them. Davie was high: fist-pumping, zippy high.
–Knew it! Knew it was gonna go good. Surfers are the business: I’m gonna be like him when I’m older. Ponytail, the lot. Scotland! he shouted, and it echoed up and down the dark hole.
They found Poacher and Swift still sitting where they’d left them. And in the split second before they were leaping down the escalator steps, Jake saw despair in their bodies, in their faces.
–We thought … Swift said. –We didn’t think … And then Jake felt her arm across his shoulder and she laughed. Swift laughed!
–Tell us, Poacher said.
Twenty-seven
They told it by turns, sitting high up on the steps, to be away from the others still sleeping below, and Poacher and Swift listened without interruption to the end. Only halfway through Swift got off the steps and started pacing the escalator hall, to and fro, one side to the other.
Poacher shook his head. –Credit, both of yer. I couldn’t a’ done it; and Jake felt proud, because he knew it was true. Poacher looked down to Swift then. –Ain’t it right, Swiftie? But she didn’t stop her pacing, and when she spoke, it wasn’t to congratulate.
–So we go to the meet, find the leader, the blond Surfer, then the Surfers show us the way out. But if we don’t go, they don’t show us. That’s the deal, isn’t it? She looked round at Jake, at Davie, waited. Jake nodded, and she went on. –And you’ve given them all our passage-fee food, so we have nothing left now to negotiate with. That’s true. Again Jake nodded, and a cold feeling ran through him, because he didn’t understand Swift’s anger.
Poacher stood up. –Stay here, he said; and he went to join Swift on the hall floor.
The argument was nearly the worst Jake had ever heard. It was like the ones his parents had, the months before they died. And then he thought: course, cos it’s life and death again. And then he thought how long ago it seemed, another world, when he was that boy, with his mum and dad, and sitting on the stairs, listening, in his pyjamas.
Swift was shouting now, a quiet, fierce shouting:
–I don’t trust them. I don’t trust him, whatever Davie says. However much he promised. We all go, we all get robbed, or killed. There’ll be pills and poppers, and some white brew cooked up out of old skins, and everybody’ll be packing something, cos everybody does down here. You think I’m gonna take Cass into that?
Poacher shook his head. –The Surfer says it’s the only way …
–And what about lowlifers disappearing? That’s what Davie said. Different people from different gangs disappearing. What d’you say about that?
–I dunno, Swift. But the Surfers are as freaked by it as any. Some o’ them have gone missing too.
–We trust a Surfer! Swift snorted. –We do the
most dangerous thing we can think of cos Jake and Davie say we should trust a blond Surfer …
–If we ain’t gonna trust what he says, why’d we give them all of our food? We ain’t gonna get any more like that. We ain’t got no more stuff to trade with, ’cept ourselves. Poacher was almost shouting too. –An’ we ain’t gonna trade ourselves, no way.
–But a meet? We leave this den to head for a meet?
–A meet that every single lowlifer’s gonna head for. You heard them. It’s our best chance. I ain’t a betting fella an’ we ain’t got much to stake. But I’d put the lot on going.
–You know, well as I do, what’ll be going off there, Swift said, scorn in her voice. –Drink, and mandy. Our gang: it’s kids. They’re in our trust, Poacher.
–So we get there, wait for the blond Surfer, an’ we leave. You heard it all like I did. When the meet’s happening, then we can make our break, cos the other gangs won’t be guarding their patches. The Surfer’s gonna guide us out.
–Davie’s a kid, Poacher. Jake’s a kid. They don’t know what a meet’s gonna be like.
It was like nobody else was there for Swift and Poacher. Like they’d forgotten about him and Davie listening to every word. Like they didn’t see them any more. Swift was so angry she was slapping her hand against the wall, against a poster. Jake could read it: Brexit: The Musical.
–They got in with the Surfers, Poacher said. –Got their trust. You heard them tell it. The Surfers believed their story. Our story. It’s our best chance.
–So let the other gangs go to the meet. If they aren’t guarding their patches, we can make our break on our own, without the Surfers’ help.
–No, Poacher said. –We don’t stand a chance on our own. We’ll be lost in these tunnels. Die in them.