The Tightrope Walkers

by David Almond

  He saw me and he laughed.

  “Anybody that comes trying to nick stuff had better watch out,” he said. “There’ll always be one of us hid in here, waiting for the plunderers.”

  It was what many did, made dens inside their own bonfires, for there were always robbers and plunderers around at Guy Fawkes time, always those who wanted to make sure that their own bonfire would be the best in town. And they were children’s places, hiding places, dens, places to play.

  Bonfires appeared everywhere, on patches of waste ground, in back gardens, high up on the playing fields.

  We looked forward to the thrill of the night itself, when we’d gather to see Vincent’s bonfire burn, to see its flames and sparks raging across the waste, to see the black fumes stream across the sky, to feel the scorch of it, the thrill of it. To see the other fires burning all across Tyneside, to see the glow of fires by the sea that blended with the sky, the glow of fires beyond the hill, to see rockets screeching up into the night, the cascades of Roman candles, the whiz of Catherine wheels, to hear the snap and crack of bangers, to leap away when a jumping jack came snapping at your feet. To be with a crowd of adults and kids, all with faces shining in the light, all of them amazed, all of them excited and alive.

  Vincent’s wasteland turned to war zone. He patrolled with a stick through his belt like a sword. He wore his sheath knife at his hip. He put warnings on the fire itself. Keep Off. Property of the McAlindens. Get Lost. Danjer of Death! He had a snarling dog on a bright steel chain. He had Bernard at his side. He sat by one of his holes in the far corner, from where he could scan it all. He had a little fire burning there. He cooked sausages on sticks, beans in billy cans, potatoes in the embers. He smoked little cigarettes, No. 6. He coughed and spat and glared at anyone who dared come near. He and Bernard took turns in the hiding place within the bonfire, ready to leap out and scare any plunderer.

  It was on a Saturday afternoon, when the light was quickly falling, that the burners came. How did Vincent not see them? Perhaps he just wasn’t as perceptive as he thought. Perhaps he was asleep and dreaming. Perhaps he had become complacent: surely nobody would ever truly dare to trespass against the McAlindens. Perhaps it was simply the lack of light. But why did the dog not bark? Because it was sleeping, too? But the dogs of the McAlindens had never been known to sleep, had never been known to miss a chance to slaver and howl and bark.

  The intruders didn’t come to steal. They simply came to burn, to set the bonfire alight days before its proper date, and to quickly disappear into the gathering night. What a lark! Just a joke. Just a way of getting a one-up on Vincent McAlinden. They must have been silent as death as they approached, as they crawled through the shadows to trickle their fuel, to empty their can, to strike a match, to slip away.

  How were they to know that poor Bernard was inside?

  I was in the kitchen with Mam. There was a sudden shudder in the air. There was a sudden glare above the wasteland. Flames leapt towards the stars. We didn’t know what it was, but we ran, and as we ran others were running at our side. The air raged and crackled. There was the stench of blazing petrol. We found the fire roaring.

  Vincent danced at the edges of the flames, screaming the name of Bernard, his only pal. A dog howled at his side. Vincent’s mother stood further back, holding her arm against the heat, yelling for Vincent to retreat.

  Bill Stroud phoned the fire service. Minutes later the fire engine could be heard roaring through town with its bells ringing, minutes after that here it came into the estate, and here came the firemen running, unrolling great hosepipes, then unleashing streams of water onto the flames.

  Holly came, and we stood there useless, holding hands.

  “He was in there?” she said.

  “He must have been.”

  “I saw him just yesterday.”

  “Get back!” the firemen called to all of us. “Go home.”

  The fire became a soaked and sunken hissing, smouldering thing. The firemen began carefully lifting ashes and half-burnt stuff away. We were told again to leave. This was not a thing that children should see.

  “Come on,” said Mam. “There’s nothing we can do.”

  She crossed herself and turned her eyes to Heaven.

  “Who’d do such a thing?”

  “Kids,” said Dad. “Just bliddy kids doing kids’ daft bliddy stuff.”

  Then Vincent was beside us.

  “I’ll get them,” he told us through his tears and snot. “I’ll catch the buggers and I’ll make them pay.”

  He ran away towards the flames, ran back again.

  “Is this what it’ll be like in Hell?” he said. He glared at Holly: wild eyes, bared teeth, skin blotched with soot and tears. “Draw me now! Draw me now! Draw Vincent-bliddy-McAlinden now!”

  “Oh, Vincent,” she said. “Not now.”

  She reached out to him. He glared.

  “Go back to your mam,” she said.

  It was then that we saw Jack Law, at the far side of the fire with the smoke swirling around him. His mouth was opening, closing, opening, closing, as if in a ceaseless stream of sounds or words.

  Vincent ran through the smouldering waste to him.

  “How come you’re the one that’s always there?” he screamed. “How come it’s always you that’s always lookin with your beady bliddy stupid eyes?”

  He picked up a rock and raised it high as if to bring it down on Jack’s head. Jack backed away, backed away. Then he turned and walked, strode quickly past us. He met my eye, he opened his mouth as if to speak, and nothing came. Then he was gone, and Vincent was on the earth, beating it as if it were some great enemy.

  His mam stood uselessly over him.

  “Nothing we can do,” said Dad.

  We went back into the estate, past the police cars, the fire engine, the ambulance. Here came kind Dr. Molly in distress, with her doctor’s bag in her hand, and then the priest, with his hand against his heart and his black cloak flapping as he ran.

  No one was ever found. Nobody ever confessed. There were tales of a gang of scorched and gleeful boys running across the square that dusk. There was talk that the burners were wild kids from down Wardley way. But nobody came forward. No parents gave up their children. How could they live with themselves, knowing what they’d done? How could they live with such sin on their soul? And what would await them after their own deaths?

  An evil act, some said.

  No, said others. Just a prank that went wrong.

  But what was the name for a prank with such effects?

  How bitter that winter was, how beautiful. For weeks the temperature hardly rose above zero. Snow fell, it hardened, frost formed on the snow and turned to ice, snow fell again and hardened, hardened. I woke each morning to flowers of frost on the window. We scattered sand and salt onto the paths and pavements. We made thirty-yard-long slides in the schoolyard. In the estate, we carved out blocks of ice and formed igloos against the walls. We raced across the playing fields on sledges.

  Bernard didn’t leave us. He was there in all our minds. We prayed for him in church. We prayed for Vincent, his friend. Vincent was rarely in his wasteland now, and when he was, he had forgotten all about his name-calling and threatening. His body slumped, he kept his eyes downcast. Even the dogs became subdued. We saw an ambulance draw up at his house one day. It was to take him away to the mental hospital in Prudhoe, we heard. But Vincent screamed and fought and would not go and the ambulance drove away again.

  Once, Holly and I found him in his shirtsleeves, scratching the earth with a stick. Frozen mist hung over the wasteland. Foghorns sounded far away.

  He didn’t turn as we approached.

  “I see him,” he said.

  “See who?”

  “Bernard. He walks out here where the fire was.”

  He scraped the earth, lit a cigarette.

  “Do you think he does? Or d’you think his soul’s at peace?”

  “Vincent,” I said. “D
o you want to come with us?”

  “Where to?”

  “Dunno,” I answered. “Anywhere.”

  He pointed into the mist, towards the blurred lights of the estate.

  “There,” he said. “And over there. He doesn’t look at me.”

  I looked where he pointed. Nothing.

  “I hear him comin up the stairs at night. Hear him comin in the room, see him standin there beside me bed. You think that’s possible?”

  “No,” said Holly. “It’s nothing but a troubled dream.”

  “You believe in what comes afterwards? In Hell?”

  “That’s all nonsense, Vincent,” Holly said.

  “Go away from me, with your curse upon you, to the eternal fire.”

  “It’s just a tale to scare us, Vincent.”

  “Fire and flames and smoke forevermore. Burnin burnin bliddy burnin.”

  “Oh, Vincent.”

  He laughed bitterly.

  “Oh, Vincent!” he mocked. “Oh, Vincent, come and play.”

  And suddenly he grabbed Holly, wrapped her in his arms, started kissing her and licking her. He got me too as I tried to separate them.

  “You as well!” he snarled. “Oh, two lovely little bairns!”

  I caught the scent of him, felt the stubble on his chin, the icy wetness of his lips, felt this body thrusting itself at us.

  “Is this it?” he snarled. “Yes? Yes? Is this the kind of bliddy thing you want?”

  Then threw us free.

  “Go away, little innocents,” he said. “Go away, young bairns.”

  That night I dreamed him coming up the stairs and through my door. The stench of fire was on him. He stood in the doorway.

  “Leave the lass,” he said. “Come out with me and play in Hell.”

  We went on with our rope walking on clear days beneath astounding winter skies. Maybe the death of Bernard was a weird inspiration. We were ungainly, our ropes were inadequate, but we walked for life, we walked against death. Soft-soled shoes were best. In them, our feet could grip the rope, could hold it, making the rope less alien, less threatening, almost an extension of ourselves. We knew that at the best of times the rope and the walker and the air through which the walker walked would become one single thing.

  “Each time we walk,” said Holly, “we make a work of art.”

  She became braver, bolder, was soon leaving me far behind. Soon she could walk the whole rope without a fall, whereas I would always stagger, grab the upper rope to stabilize myself. It was failure of confidence, of faith, as much as of balance and skill. But I improved. I began to complete the walk without needing the upper rope, without a fall, and as the winter passed we knew we’d need greater challenges once spring arrived.

  Tyneside became monochrome: white patches of roofs and fields and tracks, black roads, dark walls, dark river, dark distant sea. Dad told of the freezing shipyards, of men in pullovers and hats and gloves and scarves working and cursing beside fiercely burning braziers. The men slithered across the salted decks and over salted gangways. There were many accidents: falls, stumbles. There were sprains, broken legs, even a couple of fractured skulls. Donny Linn got frostbite that turned to gangrene and he lost three toes. Many got the shakes. There were extra small allowances for working in such weather. But there was much absenteeism, of course. And some days the yard was closed down — everything seized up with snow and ice, and just too bliddy cold for work. And no overtime, no more extra shifts to bulk the pay packet out. The drawing office stayed open, Bill Stroud continued to draw his bits of ship, continued to get properly paid. Dad glared across the street at him, snarled at his overcoat, his scarf, his trilby, his leather gloves.

  “Why don’t they just bliddy bugger off out of here?” he snapped.

  Pensioners died in their homes. Chesty babies died in their cots. We found birds lying dead in frozen gardens. Cars slithered and crashed. Diesel froze in the tanks of buses. Trains didn’t run. Schools were closed. Kids slid and sledged through the streets and lanes. Our skin was chafed and scorched. We knew chilblains and delight.

  Holly and her dad joined the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament that winter. They raged against the Russians and the USA. Atomic weapons? Hydrogen bombs? Didn’t they know there was quite enough of death without the need of such stupid things? They marched for peace and disarmament in the Haymarket in Newcastle. Bill and Holly distributed campaigning leaflets. They showed mock-ups of a blasted world. IS THIS WHAT YOU WANT THE WORLD TO BE? JOIN NOW. MARCH FOR PEACE. SPEAK OUT AGAINST BOMBS AND WAR. SAVE THE WORLD FOR YOUR CHILDREN.

  “Typical conchie crap!” grunted Dad. “We’ve been battling each other since time began and we’ll be battling each other for everbliddymore.”

  “You can’t believe that!” said Mam.

  “Can’t I? Mebbe war is all there ever really is. Mebbe peace is just a gap, a time to count the ammo and gather your strength before getting back for a proper kill. And this time if it happens, it’ll be a proper kill. This time it’ll be the bliddy cataclysm!”

  “So we shouldn’t try to stop it?” I said.

  “How? With a bunch of long-hairs and beatniks and bliddy draughtsmen and their bairns walking the streets and singing happy-clappy crap? How do they think they know better than them that’s really in the know? Do what they say, and we really are wide open for the kill. Here we are! There’s no defences! Come along and bomb us now! You thought of that? No, you haven’t. It’s not the bliddy fairies that we’re dealing with. It’s warmongers that know how to go to bliddy war and want to go to bliddy war. Now, shut yourself up and do something proper with your time. And keep yourself free of the daft ideas of your bliddy Strouds.”

  Later he came to me more sadly, with the scent of beer on his breath.

  “War’s inside us, son. We might not want it, but we’ll never be bliddy rid of it. I’m your dad. I got to tell you what I think is truth.”

  At school, Miss O’Kane stabbed her finger towards the CND badge on Holly’s pullover.

  “What,” she said, “is that?”

  “A badge, Miss O’Kane. It stands for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. It is a statement against the evil in the world.”

  “I know what it stands for, Holly Stroud. It’s not allowed.”

  She reached for the cane of Miss O’Kane.

  Holly dared.

  “You wear a badge, Miss O’Kane.”

  “Yes, Holly Stroud. A badge for the Legion of Mary, which is a rather different matter. Now take yours off.”

  Even Holly wasn’t brave enough to continue to speak out against Miss O’Kane and the cane of Miss O’Kane.

  She unclipped her badge, held it in her closed hand.

  “Let that be a lesson to you all,” said Miss O’Kane. “There is naught to be gained by following the fashionable and flawed ideas of the time. Stand up for the eternal truths. Now put your hands together and we will pray for the conversion of Russia.”

  She put the cane of Miss O’Kane back upon her desk.

  The ice retreated. Even the kids were glad. We were sick of chilblains and chafed skin and sodden socks and wet jeans. Sick of the sniff and the cough. Sick of icy-cold sheets when you got into bed. Sick of teetering, slithering, sliding, falling. We wanted to walk and run with confidence across the earth. Wanted the sun to haul itself up from its sullen place low over the horizon, to get into the air above us and bliddy shine. Which it started to do of course. For the world turns, and keeps on turning, no matter how things might feel in the darkest of times. And carpets of ice on ponds retreated, and flowers of frost on windows faded, and pipes burst and homes were flooded, and gardens turned to muddy patches, and the whole world started to relax, to sigh.

  At last, at last. It was nice when it started but . . . Ee, we’ll remember this one a long time. It’s just like the one in — when was it?— ’47? Just a short time after the war.

  We stopped hugging our own bodies and swaddling them in too many inadequate clothes. A
nd the grass showed bright new shoots and here were the snowdrops, and even the buds on hawthorn and roses began to swell. And there were days when you could turn your face to the sun and at last feel some heat coming through all that blue emptiness from a hundred million miles away. And relentless work resumed in the yard, and the men knew the work was there and they’d be able to do an extra shift or two and they knew there’d be a packet of proper pay at the end of the week. They’d be able to feed the bairns and get a few pints in the Iona Club. The spring was coming back. Bliddy phew!

  Now at school we did endless English Progress Papers and endless Maths Progress Papers. Or the brainy ones did. The school had given up on the Norman Dobsons. No way a kid like that’d get the eleven-plus. Leave him to do his scrawl and mess and keep on spelling wrong and keep on adding and subtracting wrong. And fractions! What’s he going to turn out to be? A labourer in Reyrolle’s, a tank cleaner in the yard. What need of learning will he have there? Enough to count his meagre wages, enough to read the team sheet on a football programme, enough to listen to and bow down before the word of God. No need for deep understanding for any of that. No outcome for him and kids like him except Saint Timothy’s Secondary Modern. And anyway, in the end, what does God really care about the brains of Norman Dobson? Those of the simplest faith, the poor, are perhaps those that are dearest to his heart, those that will slip the most easily through that needle’s eye. Maybe it was an act of charity to allow the Norman Dobsons to stay dull.