The Tightrope Walkers

by David Almond

  Took a pen from my pocket. Looked into Heaven again. Found an empty space, edged with a pair of angels, not too far from God. I drew my mother there: a clumsy drawing on the uneven rock, but as beautiful as those Jack Law had drawn. She stood straight, and she looked down towards me, smiling. I breathed easily. I lay and smiled back at her. I was with her, inside some vast and comforting open space inside this little slab of rock. Began to disappear, perhaps began to sleep.

  And then I felt the touch upon my cheek.

  And opened my eyes.

  And Jack Law was there.

  He lay looking in through the opening, his hand stretched out to me. His eyes so gentle, as was his touch.

  “Jack,” I breathed.

  He moved his lips in reply, and though no sound came out I felt his breath on me.

  “I drew her,” I said. “I put her in here, in your Heaven.”

  I pointed to the rock.

  “Look. There she is.”

  He looked. He nodded. He touched me again, upon my cheek. His face relaxed, almost a smile.

  “Can you speak?” I whispered.

  He just looked back at me.

  “Can you?” I said. “Can you understand me?”

  He tenderly touched my lips. Then pointed to his own. He touched his lips with his index finger, a row of three touches along his top lip, a row of three touches upon the bottom lip. Then pursed his lips together and made a little grunting sound, and relaxed them again. And then I saw the ancient marks at the edge of his beard, and I think I understood.

  The marks were stitch marks, three tiny marks on his top lip visible through his beard, three tiny marks on the bottom lip.

  “Oh, Jack,” I whispered.

  I imagined black thread tying the marks together.

  “Who stitched you, Jack?” I said.

  He sighed. Did he understand the question? Did he understand anything?

  “A teacher?” I said. “A priest? Your parents?”

  His mouth opened, closed.

  “Did it happen in the war?”

  A groan escaped from him.

  “Tell me, Jack,” I whispered. “Can you say anything?”

  He spoke two syllables. Two vowels.

  “E — U.”

  “Again,” I breathed.

  “E — U.”

  It could have been “Hello.” It could have been “Heaven.” It could have been meaningless. Just a sound, just a grunt. No way to tell.

  “E — U,” I whispered in reply.

  His face softened, he smiled.

  I didn’t ask him to try again.

  We gazed at each other through the narrow opening in the rock, two shy creatures encountering each other for the very first time, and recognizing each other.

  I pointed to Mam, there in the heavenly rock.

  “She’s there,” I said.

  He smiled. We looked at her together, in the space that seemed to have been prepared for her.

  And he opened his mouth and he sang, a single pure, wordless high-pitched note. He paused, took a breath, and sang the same long note again. And touched my cheek again.

  And then he stopped. There were no words. Just “E — U. E — U.”

  “E — U, Jack Law,” I breathed.

  A knock at the door and Bill Stroud was there, a white cloth folded across his arm, carnation in his buttonhole, and a great smile on his face.

  “Greetings, mes amis!” he said. “We should like to invite you to a celebration.”

  “What celebration?” said Dad.

  “A celebration to mark the great achievements of these two fine enfants of ours.”

  I laughed.

  “For the O-level results,” I said.

  I’d passed them all, as Holly had. Dad and I had celebrated in a way: cans of beer on the sofa, a couple of cream cakes, tears for Mam. He’d fallen asleep on the sofa. I had to shake him awake, tell him to go to bed, it would soon be time for him to get up.

  He was in his vest. He had a cigarette burning between his fingers.

  “I’m not dressed for it,” he said.

  “It is an informal gathering, Francis. A little pique-nique. Come as you are!”

  Dad shrugged, was about to step out.

  “Put a shirt on, Dad,” I said.

  “We’ll be two minutes,” I said to Bill.

  “We shall be ready for you. Red or white?”

  We both hesitated.

  “Wine,” said Bill. “White or red? Could I recommend the Côtes du Rhône?”

  “Aye,” said Dad. “That.”

  “What kind of bliddy crap is this?” he said as Bill walked back.

  “A party,” I said.

  “The kind of thing Mam would have put on to celebrate,” I said.

  “Shove off,” he said.

  He put a shirt on. He put a packet of Embassy and some Swan Vestas into its pocket.

  “Fuckin wine,” he said as we walked across.

  Holly kissed me twice on the cheek, as she said the French would have done. There was a long French stick, a bottle of sparkling water, black olives, a box of Camembert, slices of ham, tomatoes from Bill’s allotment.

  Bill poured the Côtes du Rhône. He held up his glass to the sky to show the beauty of it.

  “To our enfants magnifiques!” he announced.

  We clinked our glasses and we drank.

  “To our funambules!” he said, and we drank again.

  He was already tipsy.

  “That means tightrope walkers,” he said to Dad. “For these children, absolument anything is possible! To the ciel! Now drink it down, mes amis. There’s plenty more where that came from. We have made a very successful visit this very matin to Fenwicks’ merveilleux delicatessen. Aven’t we, ma petite?”

  “We ’ave, mon papa!” said Holly.

  He wiped his lips with the white cloth, topped up Dad’s glass.

  “A bit different from Federation Ale, eh, Francis?” he said. “Now ’ave one of these cigarettes.”

  They were Gitanes. Dad slid one out. He sniffed it before letting Bill light it. He cursed as he drew in the smoke. He coughed and cursed again.

  “Ah, oui,” said Bill. “They like their cigarettes to have a kick, those funny French! Some fromage, Francis! Some ham and bread! We bring the Mediterranean to the pebbledash. We bring sunshine to the North! Mangez! Buvez! Hoy it doon! Relaxez-vous! Enjoyez-vous!”

  Holly cut the Camembert into triangles, cut the bread into sections.

  “This is la vie!” said Bill.

  Dad threw the Gitane away and lit an Embassy. He sliced open some bread and put a slice of ham into it. He ate, he swigged more wine. Bill brought another bottle.

  I slooshed Côtes du Rhône around my mouth. I tried a Gitane and found it unsmokably harsh. Bill laughed. I leaned back in my chair, leaned against the pebbledash, and its tiny points pressed into my back.

  Soon Mrs. Stroud upstairs started singing Edith Piaf.

  “Ah, she’s in l’esprit of it all!” said Bill.

  “Chantez, ma chérie!” he called.

  A distant dog started howling, as if to sing along.

  “Hell’s bliddy teeth!” said Dad.

  We ate, we drank, all of us got tipsy.

  We went home soon afterwards.

  When I got there he groaned.

  “What kind of world we livin in?”

  “A lovely one,” I slurred.

  “Lovely! Mebbe you should move across the street and live with them bliddy nutcases!”

  We cleaned the house. We ate fruit and vegetables. Dad strengthened, but he said I was turning into the father and he was turning into the child and how could that be right? What kind of man was a man like that?

  “A good man,” I said.

  “Not till I pull meself up from the pit.”

  It was a northern spring. We had the fire blazing. He cupped my chin in his hand and regarded me.

  “I don’t know you, my own son,” he said. “How
can that be right?”

  “I don’t know you,” I said.

  “There’s nowt to know. A miserable caulker. But you, you’re different, and you’ll be grown and gone afore I know.”

  He stared from the window. Sleet splashed down onto the pebbledash outside.

  “And this is hardly a place that’ll draw you back,” he said.

  That Sunday all the sleet was gone. The sun began its peaceful relentless archway through a clear sky. It was a northern spring. The air was warm in the light. We walked together out of the estate and then downhill towards our little railway station. We took a train through Gateshead and Newcastle and along the Tyne Valley. He wanted to take me to the country, to a special place.

  I remember the sparkle of the river as we crossed it at Newcastle, the sooty stone of the buildings, the astounding green arch of the town’s main bridge, the cranes and warehouses, the boats and the seagulls swooping over them. I remember the nap of the red railway seats and the shiny patches where it had worn away. I remember how long my hair was, how short was his, how he had slicked it back with Brylcreem. He wore a white collar spread out over the lapels of his black jacket. I wore scrubbed-pale Levi’s jeans, striped cheesecloth shirt, Levi’s jacket and Kicker shoes. I remember the reflection of his face against the outside in the glass, how the window framed him within the places that we passed through.

  I said nothing today about his smoking, his wheezing, about my fears that he’d be taken from me, too.

  As we rattled alongside the river, he gently sang an ancient song, the song of lovers separated by the Tyne.

  “ ‘I cannot get tae my love if I would dee

  For the waters of Tyne run between her and me . . .’”

  I told him that it was lovely, that I hadn’t heard him sing since I was a little boy.

  “There’s some would say that that’s a blessin. Now it’s you.”

  “Eh?”

  “I do one, you do one. That’s how it was in the good owld bad owld days.”

  I shrugged and watched the water flowing. I had a notebook with me — words of mine, words of others.

  “ ‘Sweet Tyne,’” I read. “Run softly till I end my song.

  “ ‘Sweet Tyne, run softly, cos I speak not loud nor long.

  But at me back in a blast I hear

  The din of caulkers and the skylark’s song.’”

  “What’s that?” he said.

  “Poetry, Dad,” I answered.

  “Ha! See me meanin? How’d you end up doin bliddy poetry?”

  “It’s mebbe not so different from your songs,” I said.

  I watched the water.

  “Mebbe it was your songs that got me started on it.”

  “Aye? Then here’s another.”

  And he set off on “Felton Lonnen,” closing his eyes as he breathed the beautiful song of hope and loss.

  “ ‘He’s always oot roamin the lang summer’s day through,

  He’s always oot roamin away from the farm.

  Through hedges and ditches and valleys and hillsides,

  Aa hope that me hinny will come to nae harm.’”

  We were sunlit, suddenly brilliant in the gaps between fast-flickering shadows. We glanced easily at each other. I took in his scars and blemishes, the sadness in his eyes. I kept pushing my hair back, thinking of ways to express the fact of sitting here with him, being carried through the world with him, and thinking ahead to the time when I must leave him.

  “Used to come out this way when we were courtin,” he said.

  He kept on humming softly.

  “She liked the country, did me bonny lass. She used to say we’d come out to the country when me work was done. Ha. As if we ever could.”

  We went through Dunston, left the edges of the city, passed through Blaydon.

  “You should’ve seen her back in them days, boy,” he said. “She was a looker. How’d she ever end up choosin me?”

  There were fields of cows and sheep now. The first lambs were gambolling. Men stood in the water, fishing. A bunch of kids walked on the riverbank with a crowd of scampering dogs. The moors of the west were closer, brighter.

  We got out at Wylam. We walked through the woods above the station. We drank pints of bitter on a wooden bench outside the Dr. Syntax Inn. We ate the cheese sandwiches we’d brought. He said they’d sat exactly here on such a day as this. Said he could taste the hard-boiled eggs they’d had. And the beer tasted just the same as it did back then. He raised his glass to the sky. He laughed.

  “Praise be,” he said. “I love this stuff, ye knaa.”

  “I know.”

  He shook his head, he shrugged.

  “So lovely,” he said. “The taste of it, that bitterness and sweetness, the feelin of it gannin doon, the feelin of it settlin in you, spreadin through you.”

  The sunlight streamed through the liquid and the glass, illuminating the brilliant amber of it.

  “Is it daft to say it’s beautiful?” he said.

  “No.”

  “It is,” he said. “It truly bliddy is.”

  He swigged.

  “And the same sun shines,” he said. “And the same trees grow. And the same pub sign still swings in the breeze. And I close me eyes and it’s her I see that’s sittin there, not you.” He swigged his beer. He touched my hand. “Divent worry, son. I’m not descendin. It’s just I sometimes wonder, How come everything didn’t die that day?”

  We walked again through fields. There was still dew in the grass. He named the tiny blue flowers as speedwell. I played, walking in circles and spirals, kept looking back to see where we’d come from, the lovely patterns of our footsteps in the grass. He led me through a copse of birch trees to a place of ancient sandpits and quarries. He told me that all of this was like walking back into the past. A path led us right into one of the sandpits and he pointed up and showed me the line of holes that had been burrowed by birds into the sandy soil at the top.

  “Sand martins,” he said. “We done this as well.”

  He started to climb, on all fours, the sand falling away in waves and clumps around and below him. He told me to follow. Climbing was slow and difficult. The sand so soft, so dense, warm at the surface but cold within. We kept sliding backward, but then the earth became more solid where it became more steep. Almost at the top, he said we should pause. We gathered our breath. The brown-and-white fork-tailed creatures whirled around us, singing their alarms, beating their wings within inches of our faces.

  “Just the same as then,” he said.

  Poor troubled things — who were we to be here in their place?

  “We’ll just stay a moment,” he whispered. “They won’t remember nowt.”

  He shinned a little higher.

  “And mebbe that’s the way to be,” he said.

  He put his hand into one of the holes. He reached deep until almost his whole arm had disappeared. He sighed, drew his hand out again, opened it and showed the small white egg on his palm.

  “They won’t know,” he said. “They cannot count. There was five of them in there. You do it now. Another nest.”

  I didn’t dare at first, but knew I must. I shoved with my feet in the sand and climbed higher. I fearfully put my hand into one of the holes. Slow as slow I reached inside. I remember the grit, the cold sand against my skin, the rising thrill and fear. I recall how my hand and arm seemed to fit so well in there. And then I touched it, the bird that hadn’t left its nest. It shivered and vibrated and quaked against my fingers. I felt its feathers, its beak, its claws. I gaped and gasped in terror and wonder. I told myself do not recoil. I touched the stunning terrified frantic life within and then let go at last, and tumbled down the quarry slope and yelped.

  He slithered down and lay with me. I told him what I’d felt.

  As I told it, it intensified in me.

  He opened his mouth, raised his hand to it, and allowed the egg he was holding there to drop out onto his palm.

  “Safe
st place of aal,” he said.

  He showed it, the lovely impossible fragile thing.

  “Think what this is,” he said, and his brow furrowed as he had that thought. He pointed to the sky, where the birds were less frantic now. “And think what it’ll turn to. How can such a thing occur?”

  I gazed at his blemished nicotine-stained fingers and the beautiful white creation that they held.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Nobody knows. That’s the amazing thing about it all.”

  He kept on staring at the egg.

  “Is that the way to think about it? To think that naebody knaas?” he said. “Is that a better way than thinking that there must be a God and there must be a truth and there must be a bliddy answer to it all?”

  “I think so,” I said.

  “Good. I never really had much time for God and I never knew much truth.” He pondered. “But I guess that meks us lonely, eh?”

  I shrugged.

  “Mebbe.”

  “So what? Couldn’t be much lonelier than I am.”

  He reached out and took my arm.

  “Unless ye were took from me, of course.”

  Then he took a thin penknife from his pocket, made tiny holes in each end of the egg, put the egg to his lips and blew and the yolk and white spattered down onto the sand. He wiped away the salty dribble of yolk from the corner of his lips. He spat. The yolk and the white were just a mess on the earth. The creature that would have grown from them was gone before it lived. The song it would have sung was silent.

  “Used to have a hundred of these,” he said. “All boys did. All of us were collectors and admirers, back in them old days.”

  He wrapped the egg in a handkerchief, put it in his jacket pocket.