by Phil Earle
He looked at me, seeing if I was bored enough for him to stop, but I just stifled a yawn, which seemed to shame him into carrying on.
‘By the time I passed out and joined my regiment, I was pretty much the biggest guy in there. Not the strongest or the quickest, but I was arrogant, you know. I wasn’t scared to mix it up with any of them, and I reckon that got me noticed, especially by some of the older lads. I had a few scrapes when I first arrived, got involved in a few fights, made myself a bit unpopular with the people who mattered.’
‘Did one of them set about you, then?’
He rubbed at his forehead with his fingers.
‘Not exactly, but they found a way of bringing me down a peg or two.’
‘Well? What did they do?’
‘A lot of regiments have initiation ceremonies. Sometimes it’s pretty tame, like proving you can hold your drink, or dumping you in the woods at night with no clothes or kit.’
‘Sounds like a hoot,’ I droned, trying to wind him up further.
‘They decided – well, half a dozen of them did – that they wanted to see just how tough I was. So one night, while I was sleeping, they jumped me, blindfolded me and tied me up, and dumped me in the back of a wagon.’
I felt my body straighten up in the chair as my heart rate doubled in seconds.
‘At first I tried to calm myself down. Reassure myself they were going to dump me in the forest like they’d done with some of the other lads. But when we stopped, we weren’t in a forest. We were on this gravel track in the middle of nowhere. Anyway, they chucked me out the back of the truck, told me to strip off, then tied my hands to the tow bar.’
‘Were you scared?’
‘What do you think? I was terrified. Part of me reckoned they were just trying to put the wind up me, but I also knew that I’d really hacked some of them off, and they weren’t the most forgiving sorts, you know?’
‘But they were just winding you up, right?’
‘Nope. Once they’d fastened me on with about ten foot of slack on the rope, they put the truck in gear and started to drive. Not fast at first, just enough to get me running at three-quarter pace and sweating. But when they got bored of me keeping up, they just knocked it up a gear.’
‘What did you do?’
Ronnie looked at me as if I was mental. ‘What do you think I did? I ran faster, didn’t I? Or tried to. But the road started to wind and after a couple of minutes I couldn’t stay on my feet, so they dragged me along on my back instead.’
‘They stopped, though, didn’t they?’
‘Oh yeah, they stopped. After a hundred metres or something. But it was enough to scrape my back up pretty badly. The medics were picking gravel out of it for a good few hours. When they found me anyway.’
‘You mean they left you there?’
‘Well, they were hardly going to pat me on the back and congratulate me, were they? In their eyes I’d overstepped the mark, belittled them. This was their way of reasserting themselves.’
I didn’t know what to do with myself. Couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing.
‘But you kicked their arses for it, didn’t you? You said you could mix it up with any of them.’
‘I could, but not collectively. There were six of them. And besides, I knew I could hurt them more without laying a finger on them.’
‘I don’t understand. How could you possibly get your own back without knocking them out?’
‘Because the army was all these lads knew. They didn’t have any other skills they could live off and they loved being part of this pack. So I hurt them that way. I had them chucked out.’
I tried to suppress a gasp but couldn’t. ‘You mean you grassed them up?’
‘Yep,’ he said, without a shadow of regret in his voice. ‘I know I was young and annoying. I would have thought I was a complete tosser if I was them. But they could have killed me, Bill. If they’d gone a few metres more, or if I’d hit my head, that could have been it. Are you trying to tell me that all they deserved was a slap?’
‘Well, no. But grassing them up? I thought you army types stood together.’
‘We do. And I never had to grass anyone up in the next twenty years. I had a few scraps in that time, though.’
He stood by the fire, and kicked a couple of logs further into the flames.
‘That’s the thing, I suppose. Sometimes it’s easier to have a fight, but the more you have, the harder it is to do anything else. That answer your question?’
I nodded, lost in my head. There didn’t seem to be anything else to say.
‘Well, I reckon I should go and give Mags a hand. She’ll crucify me if I leave all the washing-up to her. Don’t let that fire go out, will you? I fancy a brew before turning in.’
And without a backwards glance he pushed through the trees, leaving me with a lot to think about.
CHAPTER 25
The weeks that followed passed beneath a dark cloud. Stuff like the filming and the camping had been fun, but once they were over they just served as a reminder that everything was about to change. Whichever way I looked at it, the twins were going, and if that was the case, what was left for me?
My review had demanded good behaviour in return for keeping the three of us together, but with that chance in bits, I didn’t see the point in playing ball any more.
School was the first thing to suffer. I mean, I was learning nothing, and spending all day doing it.
Some days I’d struggle in, just to kill a bit of time with Daisy, but other days even that wasn’t enough and I’d lie in bed, trying to work out the best place to put my new star. So far it had remained in the box in the drawer. If I stuck it up somewhere it’d soon be as dull and lifeless as the others. That’s what this place did to you.
Course, Ronnie noticed my change in mood, and although he did his best to gee me up, there were only so many beatings his body could take.
He encouraged me to go to the gym on my own and get stuck into the bags, but that held no appeal. I wasn’t interested in boxing as a sport, so without someone to aim at there seemed little point.
In all honesty, the sparring had started to create problems of its own. The sessions had been all right for working through some stuff, but Shaun’s face loomed larger every time I pulled on the gloves. Worse still, I found it difficult to forget about him once the session was over. I spent weeks chewing it over in my head, trying to understand it all. It had been years since I’d laid eyes on him, and I knew that he and Annie had split ages ago. So why was he coming back to me now? Why couldn’t I shake his face from my head, or think about anything else except beating him the way he’d beaten me.
I carried him with me every day, whether I was awake or asleep, and I could feel him unravelling me slowly from the inside out. The anger that I’d been holding in, with the help of the boxing, was beginning to spill out, leaving me no option but to slip into old routines. I was back to walking the streets again, potting windows, breaking into cars, anything I could find to shift the clouds. Not even a bottle of cheap vodka flushed them away – and, believe me, I’d tried.
To make matters worse, things were pretty bleak with Daisy too. We still hooked up, but she was often subdued. She’d spend a load of time just staring into space, like she did when we first met. It was weird, but she looked smaller as well, like she was shrinking into her dad’s shirts. She walked slowly, and always with her arms crossed, like she was continually hugging herself.
It wasn’t until something happened at school that I worked out what was going on. She’d been walking like a zombie down the corridor, ignoring me as I shouted her name. I bolted along behind her, grabbing her arm to get her attention. It wasn’t as if I was being rough or anything, but she went mental at me, completely schizo.
‘Get off me, will you?’ she wailed, pulling her arm away, her face full of pain. ‘What do you think you’re doing, stalki
ng up behind me?’
‘Chill out, will you? I thought we were going to bunk off next lesson, that’s all.’
‘Don’t give you the right to start mauling me, though, does it? Jesus, Billy, you’re so rough.’
She was cradling her arms in front of her, and as I looked I could see a smear of blood on one of her sleeves, like a pen leaking in an inside pocket.
‘You all right, mate? Your arm’s bleeding.’
‘No, it’s not. It’s nothing.’
‘Don’t look like nothing to me. It’s getting worse. Want me to get you a plaster or something? You can’t walk around like that.’
‘Look, I told you. It’s nothing. I must have scratched it …’
‘That’s not a scratch. You should get someone to –’
‘Just LEAVE it, will you, Billy? Who do you think you are? Don’t try and help me when you know nothing about me.’
She pushed on down the corridor and out of sight.
It didn’t take much to work out what was happening and, once I had, I kicked myself for not realizing sooner.
Daisy was a cutter.
I’d seen it a few times with other lifers. Can’t admit to understanding it, but I knew it went on. There was one girl who’d lived with us for a while. She’d been moved from home to home. Reckoned she’d had a dozen placements in three years. No one believed her, but you could see she was screwed up. Rumour was she’d been messed about badly by some uncle or something, and by the time she arrived at our place she’d been cutting herself every day for months. She didn’t last long with us. Couple of months until the scummers realized they were well out of their depth. Maggie spent hours at a time in the office, cleaning the cuts or talking to her therapist. Not that it did any good. As soon as the bandages were on, she’d just go to the other arm and start again.
One of the older kids asked her one night why she did it.
‘Because I can. It’s not as if I get choices about anything else. So this is the way I stay in control.’
We’d all sat there and tried to work out what she was going on about. It didn’t make sense. Why would she choose to do that to herself?
One of the others reckoned she was just repeating what her shrink had told her, but that didn’t make sense either. I mean, how could you be in control and choose to cut yourself open?
I wanted to ask her to explain it again, but within days she’d gone. What was one more placement to a girl who’d already had a dozen?
Realizing Daisy was in the same boat terrified me. All I wanted to do was tell her that it was OK, that I understood, but in fact neither of those things was true.
I tried to bring it up the next time we sat on the bench together. It was one of those days when she was more like her old self, gobbing off about some film she’d hated, how all it preached was subservience, whatever that was.
There’d been no mention of what had gone on in the corridor, and when I tried to bring it up, it was clear that she didn’t want to go over it again.
‘How have you been, then? The last few days?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know. I was just wondering how your arms were.’
Silence, except for the exhaling of cigarette smoke.
‘I’m not trying to be nosy or anything, but –’
‘Then don’t ask me.’
‘Come on, Daisy. I’m just trying to help, you know.’
‘Well, there’s no need. I’m dealing with it.’
‘Didn’t look like that the other day. It looked like you were in pain.’
‘Look, Bill. I know you’re trying to help. But you can’t, all right. There are some things that talking about don’t help. Most of the time I can deal with it, but not at the moment.’
‘Why? What’s happening?’
‘Nothing’s happening. It’s just a difficult time of year, that’s all. And no matter how much talking I do, that won’t change. So why bother banging on about it?’
And that, it seemed, was that, as she picked tobacco off her tongue and stared off into the distance.
It was so frustrating. I thought we were getting beyond all the secrecy, that it was just easy between us. It’s not like I was trying get in her pants or anything. Since her comment to the twins, I hadn’t really thought about taking things further. No wonder when she was being so distant.
I worried about her, whether something had happened between her and the people she was living with. It was pretty obvious from the bits she’d said that they weren’t close, but I wondered if something else was going on, that maybe they’d taken to knocking her about. I even thought about following her home, checking the place out, trying to get a feel for what was going on.
I didn’t, of course. The risk of getting caught wasn’t worth it, so instead I’d sit on our bench and watch her walk to the end of the road and out of sight, hoping the next day would see her in a better mood. I always gave her five minutes or so, then I’d walk the same road, and head to Jan and Grant’s, hoping that one night I’d find the hall light on as I had done months ago.
Given my state of mind, I suppose it wasn’t a surprise that I found myself outside their house more often than not. I’d stand there, leaning against the lamp post, kicking myself that things were so royally screwed up. I’d had my chance to be part of something and I’d blown it. No matter how many times I tried to blame them, I knew the person at fault was me. I didn’t deserve them and they deserved better.
I don’t know what I expected to find as I wandered round the ghost estate. After all, it had been years since I’d stepped foot anywhere near it.
I wasn’t sure why I found myself on it now either. I was depressed enough at being shut out of Jan and Grant’s, so why was I intent on making myself feel worse? Suppose I reckoned I deserved it.
There were pockets of the estate that still looked dog rough. You could have built entire cars out of the junk that littered some of the front gardens. But these were just the odd house every now and again, most places had a bit of pride about them. Not a lot of money spent on them, obviously, but they were tidy, cared for.
As I turned on to Forbes Ave, I expected the memories to prick away at me, but there was nothing. This wasn’t home. It was just a place I’d lived in another lifetime.
One thing I did remember was the state of the house, because it always mirrored Annie’s state of mind: a mess. There had never been time for gardening or DIY. Not when there was booze to be sunk. The only time her and Shaun ever spent in the garden was when the sun was out and there was enough benefit left to stretch to an eight-pack of lager or, if they were feeling flush, a bottle of cheap whisky. Anyone digging up the yard in a hundred years’ time would think they’d found an ancient brewery or something.
I suppose I was here to do some digging of my own, desperate to find the house in the same crappy state. To find one thing I could take back to Ronnie, something that would make him say, ‘You’re right, Bill. She’s no good for the twins. Let’s call the whole thing off.’
But as I stood and stared at Annie’s place, I felt all hope dissolve, because it looked normal. There were no beer cans in the yard, no empty bottles of wine stood on the windowsills, just an average, small, terraced house. It annoyed me so much that I bent down and picked up a lump of earth and readied myself to hurl it at the window. But before I could swing my arm I heard a voice behind me.
‘Billy?’ said Annie, squinting into the darkness. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’
The mud fell to the ground as I struggled to find an answer, and when nothing sprang to mind, she cut back in.
‘Are you all right? You look a bit pale.’
Like she cared.
I blurted out, ‘No, I’m fine. Don’t know why I’m here really. I’ll be off …’ and I walked past her.
‘Was there something you wanted to talk about?’ she shouted, which sto
pped me in my tracks.
There was loads I wanted to say to her, but I doubted she wanted to hear any of it. So instead I gave her the simple truth.
‘You want to know why I’m here? I wanted to check your house out, because the last time I saw it, it wasn’t fit for living in. It was a shit-hole.’
She didn’t react in the way I’d expected her to. In fact, she barely reacted at all. She just wore the same expression, a mixture of confusion and sadness.
‘Well, why don’t you come and take a look, then? Be a shame to come all this way and not check it out. The windows definitely look better if they’re not broken, I know that much.’
I’d hoped she hadn’t noticed the mud I’d been holding, but I wasn’t going to apologize for it. A broken window was the least she deserved.
‘I don’t want to set foot in that place. Coat of paint won’t change what went on in there.’
As the words reached her, I saw the cracks begin to show. Her hand delved into her bag and whipped out her fags. I could see her shake slightly as she put fire to one, and she sucked in deeply like she was pulling on an inhaler.
‘That was a long time ago, Bill. Things change, you know?’
‘Do they?’ I spat. ‘I don’t think they do. You might be able to convince the others, the social workers and counsellor scummers. But not me. I know what you’re about.’
‘Really? And what’s that, then?’
‘Same as you always were. You’re a drunk and you’re a liar.’
She rubbed her forehead with her hand, the smoke from her cigarette swirling round her head like a dirty halo.
‘I’m an alcoholic, Bill, that bit’s right. But I haven’t had a drink for over three years now. I can tell you the date if you like.’